#amreading good books

An Invented Life

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

In the midst of a tedious work project, I took my laptop to the laundromat, which promised the double advantage of using a clothes dryer and providing me with a clean, well-lighted place. Hardwick’s a slow place this time of year, and I had banked on a quiet space.

As things turned out, I ended up closing my laptop and chatting with a woman working there. She shared stories about growing up in town, sixty years ago, and showed me her scars from heart surgery. And then – as though I were someone else entirely different – I told her a half-pretend life for myself.

I couldn’t do much about my careless ponytail, but I created a different occupation, a husband with a steady salary, and a childhood in Maine. While my daughters are brightening up the house with Christmas carols, my laundromat foray qualifies as November humor in Vermont.

…Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow…

– Robert Frost, “My November Guest”

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West Woodbury, Vermont

Dirty Shoes

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

We’ve officially entered into the season of increasing darkness – not merely politically but because of the planet’s tilt. My teenager, home early from school, slouches at the kitchen table and moans about the gray. I advise her to head out for a run in the rain. She’ll return, pink-cheeked, and far more cheery, her running shoes smeared with greasy mud on their soles.

Post-election, all these words have surfaced again, the same ones Vermonters use over and over – community, persistence, hope – words that are distressingly meaningless without tangible action. How do our footprints mark our paths? For my daughter who will mature to adulthood under a new administration, I’m going to keep advising her to muddy your feet, girl. In my garden, the johnny-ups are yet blooming amongst the weeds.

I’ve been reading Scholastique Mukasonga’s Cockroaches, her memoir of growing up in Rwanda, and that’s all I’m going to write about this slim, powerful book.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

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November color

 

How the Water Flows…. Or Doesn’t

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

A number of years ago, The New Yorker published a photograph of Marina Oswald the morning after Kennedy’s assassination. She was pinning diapers to dry on a clothesline. Last night, I was remembering this photo while solving my washing machine’s leaking cold water. While my mothering energy often heads toward the future – what will my older daughter do after high school graduation? will I make it to my younger daughter’s concert? – the nitty-gritty of daily life is really the grease in family wheels.

Case in point: my washing machine. Leaking hoses have now led to a clogged water filter (or so I believe….) Some days, family life seems one problem-solving exercise after another. This problem, in the scope of things, will crest and diminish. Via google, I’ll remedy the situation or find someone who will. More fodder for the creative grist mill; an aspect of modern family life I’ll master; one more piece of know-how my fingers have dirtied their nails upon.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

– Alice Walker

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Folly

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

History’s legend claims the Roman emperor Caligula so loved his horse Incitatus that the animal was housed in a stable of marble, dined from an ivory manger, and dozed beneath blankets dyed a precious and beautiful purple. History also testifies to famines suffered by the citizens of the Roman empire. Now that our white house will soon shelter a man whom Holden Caulfield would have likely called a “prize horse’s ass,” we might want to brush up on some of those spicier historical stories.

In my own very minor public service on a local school board, always absent at the board table is the kindergartener who’s wearing a worn-out pair of shoes with laces he can’t tie – and yet every decision made considers that child. It’s folly to forget the little ones… and what’s the other word again? Full of hubris.

Here’s a line I gleaned from the library conference I attended yesterday:

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched back to everything else in the universe.

– John Muir

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twilight, heading home, Elmore, Vermont

Open the Door

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Visiting the University of Vermont today with four high school senior girls and one sixth grader, our tour guide informed us he grew up in Brooklyn and had hardly been outside before he enrolled at UVM. My gaggle of girls and I looked at each other in disbelief. The poor soul.

We may not have represented the highest SAT scores in the room, but at least the girls know the importance of matching footwear with the weather.

Here’s a few lines from the novel I’m reading, suitable for craft of fiction advice:

Detail established truth. The color of the dog. Without detail, truth was a metaphorically unstable idea: too general, too big….

– Melanie Finn, The Gloaming

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Burlington, Vermont

 

Burrowing Into the Shell

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

In the afterword of her late husband’s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, Lucy Kalanithi writes about retreating into the meat of her marriage after his cancer diagnosis, seeking succor. In different ways, I see my own children gathering strength from friendships, art, running – all creative, growing activities, rather than comfort in destructive habits. Early this morning, I found myself pulling the predawn darkness around me, the familiar patterns of wood stove kindling, coffee grinding, and reading.

I was also thinking of my brother and his insistence that free will and responsibility are central human tenets. Or, I might rephrase, small lights as a way out of the darkness.

“…Have you done anything good? Anything beautiful? Have you created anything? Music? Art? Have you made anything better? Even in a small way? A small light in this dark world? Have you even been happy?”

She throws the lit nub of the cigarette out the window. “You should ask yourself what the hell you think you’re here for.”

– Melanie Finn, The Gloaming

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Burlington, Vermont