nostalgia

Want to write before I forget. And it is quiet here.

Finished Solitude.

Struck by its beauty. Its sadness. Its passion. Its solitude.

A few lines that sealed it for me.

p. 407. His memory began to grow sad. That process of nostalgia was also evident in the pictures.

Thinking about pictures now. And what they are.

p. 408. One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.

Does he mock sentimentality or embrace it? Do I have permission to miss that which I have already experienced?

p. 408. In the postcards he sent from the way stations he would describe with shouts the instantaneous images that he had seen from the window of his coach, and it was as if he were tearing up and throwing into oblivion some long, evanescent poem: the chimerical Negroes in the cotton fields of Louisiana, the winged horses in the bluegrass of Kentucky, the Greek lovers in the infernal sunsets of Arizona, the girl in the red sweater painting watercolors by a lake in Michigan who waved at him with her brushes, not to say farewell but out of hope, because she did not know that she was watching a train with no return passing by.

Makes me realize how in love with images I am. The fleeting color of a moment.

p. 409. It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending.

Sounds like something I have read before.

p. 415. ...the age-old war between man and ant.

p. 417. ...dying of solitude in the turmoil of his debauches...

p. 417. It was the tail of a pig.

p. 420. Wouded by the fatal lances of his own nostalgia and that of others, he admired the persitence of the spiderwebs on the dead rose bushes, the perseverance of the rye grass, the patience of the air in the radiant February dawn.

Again. Images.

p. 420. The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants.

p. 422. ...speaking mirror.

p. 422. ...for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men...because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

"What is the book about," he asked me in coffee shop last Saturday.

She said, "memory, butterflies, ice" (I think. It makes me nervous to quote people. And the bar was loud.)

I agree.

storm

Will have better resolution next month. This will work for now.

new snow

new snow
Originally uploaded by stewingham.

Have been taking pictures instead of writing--in my head.

Discovered flickr--already uploaded my 10MB per month limit, though. Not even my favorite pictures.

Oh well. There is always next month.

I suggest checking the site out, but only if you have some time to spare. Some gorgeous pictures there.

butterfly

Unfinished letter to Aidan Elise and Cole Steven

Look at you my beautiful children and feel want, need, love. Eaten up with hurt when I think about the way I want your life to be. Wish for you enough pleasure and pain to learn but not enough to kill as can happen with those I love the most and with best intention. The wound of religion pulls, tears. Raw. No salt. As I try to do right for you, by you. For us. Heads of hypocrisy and disease. Not given you. By me. And silence, as yet, there is none. I can't promise. Only try to love. Invisible body yawning into existence. The only promise I can make.

Discovering Ice

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

Colonel Aureliano Buendia died. Not by firing squad. But after urinating. With his forehead pressed against the Chestnut tree. Tree that his father had been tied to. Tree of his father's ghost. Urusula remembers him weeping in her womb. Incapable of love. "He had learned to think coldly so that inescapable memories would not touch any feeling." Miserable solitude.

The Love Song of Proof and Rock

Chinese cookie prophesies: Excitement and intrigue follow you closely wherever you go.

"Do I dare?"

Oh sparkle how I love your--uh--shirt.

Oh how it sparkles. Oh how it shines.

So sweet.

Of you.

To sing.

That yellow song.

For me.

Let us meet.

Again.

Same time.

Same place.

Without fog.

But only if you wear

the shirt that sparkles

Like sun of a thousand moons.

dizzy

Ways to make self dizzy:

Find snowstorm with large quietly falling flakes. Walk quickly. Stop quickly. Look up. Blink. Walk quickly.

Visit mental institution. In sleet. At night.

Discuss One Hundred Years of Solitude without consulting family tree. Remedios the Beauty's father? Mother? Name all of Pilar Ternera's children. Grand children. Great grandchildren.

Spin. With or without children.

Mix cement.

class...

Tried very hard last night to write about class. Nothing doing. I don't recall ever having such a strong reaction before and I know it is tied up in so many ways it would be foolish for me to try to untangle it. Foolish to try to make it universal. There are people who have power and they decide how things work and they have hurt people I love dearly. I can't forget that. There are people who talk down to me when I am serving them and compliment me when I am in the garden. I can't accept that. There are people for whom nothing is impossible. I am not one of them.

I cried at Daniel-- it was some sort of breaking point. At one point going out seemed to fix the problems but it turns out that they are bigger than that, much bigger, and until they change Monday is just a quick fix.

I finished The Farewell Party a couple nights ago. It was drastically different from the last time I read it. Things have changed. I have changed. I could tear myself up with want but it would do me no good. Instead I will just try to deal with my life as it is.

I've got to catch up with Jane on 100 Years. I wonder how different that will be this time around.

Daniel

I do not much care for Elton John's music or for most of Bernie's song lyrics. How to explain, then, an inexplicable urge to weep while listening to Daniel at Rhumbline (and not out of disgust)? As much as I love Amanda and Mike (and a couple of other Monday night folks), don't know if I can go back--at least until something, somewhere settles a bit.

slow

Slow to realize that Ursula, in blindness, is clairvoyant like Tiresias--blind seer. Slow to realize that Amaranta weaving her own shroud and unweaving (is it a word?) at night (perhaps) in search of solitude is similar to Penelope weaving and unweaving shroud for O's father.

Allusions. Illusions.

Enjoying reading. Marquez tells a good story.

But the scholar of literature is present in Friday mother, somewhere.

What else have I missed?

Solitude

How can one spend most of one's day doing laundry? Why does one spend most of one's day doing laundry? I find myself disgusted that I have clothes enough to make this possible. I find myself obsessed with making them all clean. And I think about the woman I watched, in India, slapping her clothes upon a rock--to remove the water, to remove the dirt. Hanging her clothes to dry in Indian sun. Clothes embracing smell of fish, smell of sun.

I bow down to my washing machine and dryer at least once a week, worshipping their abilities--to ease my burden. Why is it then, that I feel cheated?

Have been reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. 260 pages in. Like this passage about Ursula and her refusal to let the dark cloud of blindness consume her.

pg. 251

"No one knew exactly when she began to lose her sight. Even in her later years, when she could no longer get out of bed, it seemed that she was simply defeated by decrepitude, but no one discovered that she was blind. She had noticed it before the birth of Jose Arcadio. At first she thought it was a matter of passing debility and she secretly took marrow syrup and put honey on her eyes, but quite soon she began to realize that she was irrevocably sinking into the darkness, to a point where she never had a clear notion of the invention of the electric light, for when they put in the first bulbs she was only able to perceive the glow. She did not tell anyone about it because it would have been a public recognition of her uselessness. She concentrated on a silent schooling in the distances of things and people's voices, so that she would still be able to see with her memory what the shadows of her cataracts no longer allowed her to. Later on she was to discover the unforeseen help of odors, which were defined in the shadows with a strength that was much more convincing than that of bulk and color, and which saved her finally from the shame of admitting defeat. In the darkness of a room she was able to thread a needle and sew a buttonhole and she knew when the milk was about to boil. She knew with so much certainty the location of everything that she herself forgot that she was blind at times. On one occasion Fernanda had the whole house upset because she had lost her wedding ring, and Ursula found it on a shelf in the children's bedroom. Quite simply, while the others were going carelessly about, she watched them with her four senses so that they never took her by surprise, and after some time she discovered that every member of the family, without realizing it, repeated the same path every day, the same actions, and almost repeated the same words at the same hour. Only when they deviated from meticulous routine did they run the risk of losing something. So when she heard Fernanda all upset because she had lost her ring, Ursula remembered that the only thing different that she had done that day was to put the mattresses out in the sun because Meme had found a bedbug the night before. Since the children had been present at the fumigation, Ursula figured that Fernanda had put the ring in the only place where they could not reach it: the shelf. Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them."

Did not want to figure out a way to include fewer words. Good thing I learned how to type. Is useful sometimes.

The Friday mother in me respects Ursula--woman who manages a household, daily life. I like that she doesn't want to feel useless. I like that she isn't useless--in old age, and in blindness.

Marquez captures the beauty in daily living in this passage, and elsewhere. Which leads me to ask the question: Is there beauty in daily living?

I know that beautiful moments exist...but beautiful days--one after the other? My daily living: there is dust. my children: they are always beautiful, but do not always behave in beautiful ways. Somtimes I wait for milk to boil.

It is interesting to me, the part about daily routines and lost items. Will think of Ursula next time I lose something.

And finally, Ursula, the matriarch, makes me think about what kind of a matriarch I am. What kind of a matriarch (def. 2: a feisty older woman with a big bosom (as drawn in cartoons)) I will be.