Lessons

McDermitt, Nevada.

Please, for one minute, indulge the writerly side of me, the part that salivates over a carefully constructed sentence, that is awed by the clarity and thought given to a subject, that is excited over a newly discovered word, that, right now, is so thoroughly enjoying the rambling sentences and divisive topic of the short essay "Irreconcilable Dissonance" by Brian Doyle.

Pause, for two seconds, to appreciate the opening sentence:

 "I have been married once to the woman to whom I am still married, so far, and one thing I have noticed about being married is that it makes you a lot more attentive to divorce, which used to seem like something that happened to other people, but doesn't anymore, because of course every marriage is pregnant with divorce, and also now I know a lot of people who are divorced, or are about to be, or are somewhere in between those poles, for which shadowy status there should be world like 'mivorced' or 'darried' or 'sleeperated' or 'schleperated,' but there aren't so far."

Now I've thought similar thoughts as I've watched the marriages of friends and acquaintances teeter and sometimes collapse, but never have I articulated my observations into a sentence coming near the length of Doyle's 104-word behemoth. Here are a couple more:

"The saddest word I've heard wrapped around divorce like a tattered blanket is 'tired,' as in "We were both just tired,' because being tired seems so utterly normal to me, so much the rug always bunching in that one spot no matter what you do, the slightly worn dish rack, the belt with extra holes punched with an ice pick that you borrowed from your cousin for exactly this purpose, the flashlight in the pantry that has never had batteries and never will, that the thought of 'tired' being both your daily bread and also grounds for divorce gives me the willies. The shagginess of things, the way they never quite work out as planned and break down every other Tuesday, necessitating wine and foul language and duct tape and the wrong-size screw quietly hammered into place with the bottom of the garden gnome, seems to me the very essence of marriage; so if what makes a marriage work (the constant shifting of expectations and eternal parade of small surprises) is also what causes marriages to dissolve, where is it safe to stand?"

I first read "Irreconcilable Dissonance" in "The Best American Essays, 2010" and it's the one piece I keep returning to, first re-reading it, then reading it aloud to Marcel, then re-reading parts of it for although there are things I can learn about rhythm and structure, there's even more wisdom to be found in the meaning within those sentences.

I am 40, now

I can't weave straw into gold, but I can make threads of silver. It surprises me, each strand sparkling brilliantly against the duller browns. I hadn't expected to enjoy turning gray.

***

I'm reading "Crime and Punishment." For some reason I'd never read it before, but then there are so many classic novels I've never read, and when I finally begin my reaction is always the same. My gosh, this is good. It's so good, so much better than this book or that book that I just wasted my time on. Why have I waited so long to read this? Then I go around telling everyone how great this novel is, as if I'm the first to discover it, when really, I shouldn't be surprised. It's why they're classics, after all.

Anyway, I had picked up "Crime and Punishment" again, the night of my birthday (long after song and candles and brownies had been sung, extinguished, devoured), when these sentences made me pause. I re-read them.

For although Mrs. Raskolnikov was forty-three, her face still preserved traces of its former beauty. Besides, she looked much younger than her years, which is almost always the case with women who keep their serenity of mind, the freshness of their impressions, and a pure and sincere warmth of heart to their old age. We may add in parenthesis that to possess all this is the only way a woman can preserve her beauty even in old age. Her hair was already beginning to grow thin and grey, crows'-foot wrinkles had long ago appeared round her eyes, her cheeks were hollow and shrunken from anxiety and grief, but her face still remained beautiful.

It's an odd feeling, learning that Dostoyevsky would've considered me old.

A lesson with fire or how words ignite

Courtesy of Daniel Y. Go.

I've kissed one Indian in my life, a bartender named Ray who served me shots of tequila and pitchers of cheap beer when I was a younger, single and (often foolishly drunk) woman living in Idaho.

One night Ray ended up at my apartment, which was a stumble up the hill from a favorite bar. Did we walk there together? Did he show up at my door? All I remember is us in my living room, me sitting on top of the furnace, him standing between my thighs, and his brown face and black hair smelling of alcohol and cigarette smoke.

I wanted his kiss to crackle like a forest fire: pine trees bursting into hot, bright torches, while the forest floor's carpet of dry needles smoked. Instead of burning ember, my lips touched powdery ash and I pushed him away, tired, annoyed that he was there, that he was keeping me awake when my boyfriend would be calling soon. My boyfriend, a penniless intern, and I had an agreement: He'd call collect, I'd refuse the charge, and then call the payphone back so we could talk for an hour or more on my dime. What we never talked about were the flames I stoked.

It was my dance, first with fidelity, then freedom, that sprang to mind when I read a poem from Sherman Alexie's newest book. "War Dances" is an excellent collection of short stories and poems that refract on the stories' themes of race, religion, sexuality and family, and it won the PEN/Faulkner Award this spring. But with this poem my memory shifted like a kaleidoscope and the pieces rearranged themselves and seared me. Here's an excerpt:

... I was working the night

Shift at a pizza joint and you were away at college. You dated a series of inconsequential boys. Well, each boy meant little on his

Own, but their cumulative effect devastated my brain and balls. I wanted you to stop kissing relative strangers, so I called you at midnight as often as I could afford. If I talked to you that late, I knew

(Or hoped) you couldn't rush into anybody's bed. But, O, I still recall the misery of hearing the ring, ring, ring, ring

Of your unanswered phone. These days, I'd text you to find you, but where's the delicious pain

In that? ...

Thoughts unrelated to the sentences that birthed them

Courtesy of lopolis.

Caroline's daughter, little Dorothy, is elsewhere, having reached the age of the disappeared -- her voice shouting orders from behind the locked door of her bedroom or even standing present, her body a studded cast of her former self; if she is somewhere within it she is very, very deep.

-- "A Short History of Women, a novel" by Kate Walbert

Do I like this because it's beautifully written, for its well-turned phrase "age of the disappeared" and for its dead-on description of a teenager lost far inside herself? Or do I like it because I see me and my daughter in these words? Because I am the sadness hinted of when someone slips beyond your reach even as they stand before you.

The last time there was a ball of cells growing inside of me, it was Sherry.

And somehow that tiny ball of cells became a pink screaming baby who became an adorable little girl who became an anguished teenager who became the mysterious grown woman sitting here in the driver's seat of a rented car in Cape Town, South Africa, asking me, "Are you scared?"

-- "Cape Town" by Claire O'Connor, "Best American New Voices 2010."

Here's another set of sentences I scribbled down in my notebook and return to reread and gnaw on. I'm walking this cycle, this circle, the known and unknown, mother and child. In the beginning the path was simple, though exhausting, the baby a mystery that could be solved with a changed diaper, a swapped toy, a spoon of oatmeal. But now rocks have cropped up and I stumble and feel anxious in where my daughter is going, alone in her room. So I stop at the door, realizing my own mother might have paused here too and wondered if she, if they, if we, were lost.

Someone needs to tell Muhammad

... a mountain can be moved.

Chaja balances Max on the mountain's peak.

The phone rang with a message that school was canceled, a text arrived that work was canceled, and email announced the evening's commitments to Cub Scouts and 4-H were canceled. And so the house awakened under a blanket of snow.

How did we spend this serendipitous day? Putting on hats, scarves, mittens, gloves, boots, jackets and snow pants, then pulling off frozen, wet ones.

Kids played, I shoveled snow, my husband discovered we had the wrong size snow chains, but ran his errands anyway, and the dryer ran all day long.

Kids fought, I shoveled snow on top of kids to shock them into shutting up, my husband made lunch, and the dryer ran all day long.

Kids watched Looney Tunes, I turned the house into a sauna by boiling a bubbling brew of plum jelly, my husband shoveled snow, and the dryer ran all day long.

Kids ate jelly on crackers, I drank 'nog while knitting and nursing the littlest grub, my husband read part of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever," and the dryer ran all day long.

The house slept under a blanket of snow, and the dryer ran all night long.

Courtesy of An Optional Holiday.

December is heavy with tradition, much of it passed down by family or steeped in religion. I enjoy the annual outing to cut the tree, the hanging of the Advent calendar, the nights gambling for nuts or M&Ms with the dreidel, but I cherish the traditions that are uniquely our own. These traditions, I think, are serendipitous creations -- like snow days. We do something one time, the kids latch onto it, and the next time around we hear the words ... but we've always done it this way. The annual part of reading the "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" was like that.

The family gathers in the living room on most December evenings to listen to my husband read Barbara Robinson's story's about a bunch of bad kids who lied, stole, smoked cigars (even the girls), talked dirty, hit little kids, cussed their teacher and took the name of the Lord in vain, but decided to crash a church's Christmas play.

Illustration by Judith Gwyn Brown from "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever."

"I've got the baby here," Imogene barked at the Wise Men. Don't touch him! I named him Jesus."

"No, no, no." Mother came flying up the aisle. "Now Imogene, you know you're not supposed to say anything. Nobody says anything in our pageant, except the Angel of the Lord and the choir singing carols. Mary and Joseph and the Wise Men make a lovely picture for us to look at while we think about Christmas and what it means."

"I think I ought to tell them what his name is," Imogene said.

"No. Besides, you remember it wasn't Mary who named the baby."

"I told you!" Ralph whacked Imogene on the back. "I named him."
"Joseph didn't name the baby either, " Mother said. "God sent an angel to tell Mary what his name should be."

Imogene sniffed. "I would have named him Bill."


It's all that good. I promise. If my husband's not careful to hide the book after reading it, one of our kids will secret it away and read ahead.

I'm curious. Do you have a tradition that's unique to your family?

Alliteration amoré

Because I love alliteration, and because a master of the form, William Safire, died this week, I'm dedicating today's post to this sentence he penned as a speechwriter for U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew:

"In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club -- the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."

Sunday, defined

Photo courtesy of hiromy.

Yesterday was filled with curtains of rain and flash-flood warnings, home-grown plums baked into a buckle, homemade mojitos that knocked me flat, and one beautiful sentence from "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon:

"Something about him reminded me of one of those figures from old-fashioned playing cards or the sort used by fortune-tellers, a print straight from the pages of incunabulum: his presence was both funereal and incandescent, like a curse dressed in Sunday best."

I particularly love this: a curse dressed in Sunday best. Isn't it brilliant? I took this thick library book on vacation, and got so wrapped up in its story of love and mystery, murder and redemption that I didn't have a shred of interest in seeing distant relations at the sea. I ignored everything -- Avalon and aunties, cousins and crabbing -- until I finished the book.

Photo courtesy of _e.t.

But once home and the tale told, I still was loathe to return it the library. I didn't want to part with the meandering story and its inhabitants (like the villain Francisco Javier Fumero, described above). I took the book with me on errands and reread favorite sections, but the library put me on notice and fined me for every day I kept it. So I let it go, and by Sunday all that remained were the words about the curse afloat in my rum-and-lime-soaked brain.

What happens in the backseat ...

Editor's note: The Slow-Cooked Sentence is devoting itself to song this week as part of its Joy+Ride, a month-long quest that involves planting, polishing and singing.

... stays there. Photo courtesy of Larsz.

So today's my anniversary and I forgot.

"I'm happy," my husband said as he reminded me. "I'm happy with you. The kids. The house."

"I think Ivan's in the toilet," I replied.

As he pulled out the toddler, I raised my glass in a silent, solo toast to fourteen years, four kids, but not one of them conceived in a backseat. I shrug. Sex, schmex, and then hum a little of that song from "Fiddler on the Roof."

(Tevye) ...
Do you love me?

(Golde)
I'm your wife.

(Tevye)
"I know..."
But do you love me?

(Golde)
Do I love him?
For twenty-five years I've lived with him
Fought with him, starved with him
Twenty-five years my bed is his
If that's not love, what is?

(Tevye)
Then you love me?

(Golde)
I suppose I do.

(Tevye)
And I suppose I love you too.

Want to know where some great backseat action is taking place? Check out Black Cab Sessions Chapter 60 featuring Calexico. I'm digging the song "Not even Stevie Nicks," particularly this line:

With a head like a vulture and heart full of hornets, he drives off the cliff into the blue.

Ain't it a beaut of a sentence? And there's enough in that song for me to pull my husband into the backseat for our own little session.

Hue are you?

"Color Wheel Magic" by Mary Anne Ciccotelli.

I recently read "The Commoner" by John Burnham Schwartz. It's the story of Haruko, who becomes the first non-aristocratic empress of Japan. It's a story of sacrifice set in a world mysterious and sealed off, yet still highly public. Schwartz's style is as exquisite as this world, refined, almost delicate, yet hidden in the silky words are burrs like those in this passage:

His tenderness was like a wound that could be bandaged but never entirely protected -- like his body, so badly burned in the fire of 1945 that he appeared more wound than boy. All except his spirit, which leaked out, as if through a dark curtain pocked with rips and tears, in silent, unexpected slants of light that if looked at directly would have dazzled the eyes.

The second example of this beautiful writing is when Haruko describes her girlhood friend Miko. The two short sentences shed insight into the two girls' personalities and their relationship.

If I was the routine blue sky, Miko was the twilight whose darkening colors never appeared in the same shade twice. One waited for her, never knowing which girl would appear.

Two metaphors comparing personality to light, the first shining through a torn curtain, the second to a time of day. After reading them, it got my mind wandering: where do I fall on the light spectrum? Not what is my favorite color, but what hue, tint or shade is my personality? I have one friend who's easy to color code. Her cheeriness, smile, bubbly laughter and optimism despite the drama of her life makes her as yellow as sunshine, as warm as the sand on the beach, as the sweet as the juice of a peach. I have another friend the color of sage, a pungent, yeasty green, pulling strength from its tap root sunk deep into the earth, nourishing and toasty as homemade bread. Incidentally, she's also writing about color this week on her blog. A third friend is definitely an energetic orange, sizzling and intense with midday energy, and a fourth is the color of a delicious wine, a deep burgundy, round and rich and generous with her life.

And me?

Perhaps my youngest brother Dylan decoded my color decades ago. Dylan was maybe five years old when I left for college, so his memories of me are few and far between. In fact, he may have no memories of me at all; he once drew a picture of our family and omitted me. Incidentally, he's provided a coloring page of himself. To find it, click here. Anyway, no matter how infrequently I visited, once home I re-assumed my place in the sibling hierarchy -- the top. Suffering at the bottom of the birth order, Dylan once asked, "Who does she think she is?"

The queen, of course. In purple.

Yearning

The Milky Way as seen from Death Valley, courtesy of NASA.

The earth cracks open and my heart explodes as blue eyes cut the starry sky and a silver river illuminates the world.

My favorite phrases from the Sigur Rós song, remixed. For a complete translation from Icelandic, click here.

Corn people

Photo courtesy of boopsie.daisy. Photographer's work is available for sale at Etsy.

I've been gobbling up Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals," but thought I'd take a break from my reading binge and share why I'm grateful for this good read.

The book begins by examining the conquest of corn and industrialization of the food chain. Pollan argues that we are walking, talking stalks of corn -- or more precisely, processed corn. How's this possible? Apparently, corn is incognito: It's in the syrup that sweetens soda and the wax that coats our apples. Corn feeds the steer, the chicken, the pig, the turkey, and even salmon.

How do scientists know we are "corn chips with legs," as one biologist put it? There's an isotope in corn that allows it to be tracked within our human tissue, much the same way scientists can determine the ancient diet of mummies using a piece of fingernail. But is the triumph of corn so terrible? Pollan believes it's to blame for America's growing waistline and our sickening environment.

A quarter century of government farm policies has encouraged the overproduction of this crop, and the industrialized food chain has made processed foods the cheapest in the supermarket. Corn-made calories can find our way into our bodies as a sugar, a starch or as a form of animal fat. "Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots," Pollan writes.

Growing only corn has ruined the farmer's soil, the quality of local water, the biodiversity of the Midwest, and the health of all the creatures living downstream. Cheap corn created the feedlot, where steer are fattened up before slaughter. Surviving on corn diets, many suffer from bloat and develop ulcerated livers.

Given such sobering news, I'm going to propose a game of hide and seek. Spend a little time searching for the corn in the products you eat and use. Involve your kids, keep a running tally, write down the ones that really surprise you, and, finally, share what you've discovered. Click here for a printable list of corn aliases, courtesy of Corn Allergens.

"There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn," Pollan writes. "This goes for the nonfood items as well -- everything from the toothpaste and cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash gas, cleansers, charcoal briquettes, matches, and batteries, right down to the shine on the cover of the magazine that catches your eye by the checkout: corn."

The hunt is on!

Hoops and hoppers

Because I recently shared my memories of gold earrings and small frogs, I thought I'd include their references in Luis Alberto Urrea's "The Hummingbird's Daughter." The first involves Huila, the medicine woman, and Teresita, the Hummingbird's daughter.

"Huila told Teresita to peirce her hears. Teresita was thrilled that Huila was interested in making her pretty. But Huila didn't care if she was pretty or not. Huila told her: 'You must pierce your ears to show God you are no longer deaf. You have not only been blind, but deaf. Punch holes in your ears to show God they are open, and you are ready to listen. God doesn't care if you think you're pretty!' But she gave her two beautiful gold hoops to wear once she had done the ritual."

Here is the reference to toads:

"In the summer, the rains came, and the magical event of toads bursting from the ground followed: toads started to shoot up from the soil, blinking their happy yellow eyes, excited by the first drumming of rain. Wildflowers were sure to follow. First toads, then flowers."

Writer's envy

Sometimes a writer leaves me coveting their words, wishing to see the world through their eyes so I may own their descriptions and phrases. Fruitless thoughts, I know, but sometimes I'm so overcome with a yearning for ownership that I copy them into my notebook, hoping that by forcing my hand to write another's words it will fire different synapses in my own brain.

Lately, I've been filling pages of my Moleskin with passages from Luis Alberto Urrea, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. He's the latest author I admire for his magical realism, the fusion between physical and psychological reality that also defines the gritty, lyrical prose of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and whimsical storytelling of Laura Esquivel's "Like Water for Chocolate." The fact isn't lost on me that these three writers are Latino, and that their countries and cultures infused my own childhood. It was in Oxaca, Mexico that I tasted my first Twinkie (yum!) and had my first taste of exhibitionism (at school, curious brown-faced girls stood in the door of the bathroom stall to watch me peel of my black leotard and bare my tiny white ass to pee). I was 5, and reality was magical: Rain-soaked roads bounced and bubbled to life with small frogs, and loops of red thread dangling from my earlobes (recently pierced with a sewing needle) promised to one day turn to gold.

Here is some magic from "The Hummingbird's Daughter." Enjoy!

Tomas rode his wicked black stallion through the frosting of starlight that turned his ranch blue and pale gray, as if powdered sugar had blown off the sky and sifted over the mangoes and mesquites.

But I like this, too:

"What are you eating?" she asked.

"Cherries."

"Cherries? What are cherries?"

He held one up. In the faint fire glow, it looked like a small heart full of blood.

And this:

As the light poured out of the eastern sea and splashed into windows from coast to coast, Mexicans rose and went into their million kitchens and cooking fires to pour their first rations of coffee. A tidal wave of coffee rushed west from the land, rising and falling from kitchen to fire ring to cave to ramada. Some drank coffee from thick glasses. Some sipped it from colorful gourds, rough clay pots that dissolved as they drank, cones of banana leaf. Cafe negro. Cafe with canela. Cafe with goat's milk. Cafe with a golden-brown cone of piloncillo melting in it like a pyramid engulfed by a black flood. Tropical cafe with a dollop of sugarcane rum coiling in it like a hot snake. Bitter mountaintop cafe that thickened the blood. In Sinloa, cafe with boiled milk, its burned milk skin floating on top in a pale membrane that looked like the flesh of a peeled blister. The heavy-eyed stared into the round mirrors of their cups and regarded their own dark reflections.

Share your beautiful sentences, whether you own them or not.

Another's words

Photo courtesy of psychedelicfivecats.

August is a month of too much. It's too hot. The kids have been home for too long. There are too many flies. There's too many zucchini in the garden. It's too hard to hold on to a writing habit. The dog days of summer snap my patience, but rather than harangue myself (for letting my writing wilt) or yelling at my kids (for driving me batty) or berating you (for being a silent blog reader), I throw us all a life line of exquisite writing and will meet you in September.

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightening, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

Excerpt from "Tuck Everlasting" by Natalie Babbitt.

A penny for your thoughts

Photo courtesy of Daniel Y. Go

"The memory manages to be found, like a dollar bill crinkled up in the pocket of old clothes. She fondles this memory a moment, a few seconds' worth, no more."

I love the above sentence written by Laura Valeri in "Furniture," published in Glimmer Train's, Summer 2008 edition, and was compelled to document a memory-in-the-making involving my children and money:

For every year my children have lived, they receive a quarter in allowance. This means my oldest, at age 9, gets $2.25 a week -- the value of a day's hot lunch at school, a pittance in a world where her classmates own cell phones, but (and I shrug here) it's all a large family can afford on one income. My daughter would be quick to point out that the "week" part of the above sentence is "weak," and I have to agree. Her father and I have been lax in filling their small hands with their even smaller allowances, and this may have contributed to their different attitudes toward money. I have a:

1. Hunter -- Eyes peeled for pennies on the floor and dollars behind the couch. Regularly checks the insides of washing machine for wayward change.
   
2. Hoarder -- Stashes money not only in the piggy bank, but also the bottom of the underwear drawer or the spare book. (When asked how this money would be retrieved, I was given an elaborate answer involving monetary amount equating to page number and letters in the title of the book.)
   
3. Habitual Forgetter -- Money rarely makes it to the bank. Usually relies on the goodwill of others for any spending.

The wails and shrieks that occasionally ricochet off the walls often have to do with money: Who stole it? Where is it? And why isn't it here on the floor where it was left six days ago? The yells are followed by heavy, angry footsteps thumping down stairs to report the infraction and demand that I do something. For awhile I tried, but their memories are tangled balls of string and the more I pulled, the more frustrated and tense we all became. So, now I hold out my hand, they turn over the disputed dollar (which is placed high upon a kitchen shelf for safety), and I tell them to come back when they've worked it out. Within a half-hour they usually return to report their resolution and ask for the money. Or the dollar sits on the shelf, forgotten, until I put it in my pocket and recycle it a week later as allowance.

Certain book read in a certain place

Field Tested Books, 2008 edition

I've been thinking a lot about books and places, and the bond that can be forged between the two. The idea that there's a connection is the impetus of Field Tested Books by Coudal Partners. From the introduction by Jim Coudal:

"We had this notion that somehow through experimentation we could identify how our perception of a book is affected by the place where we read it. Or maybe the other way around. Maybe it’s possible to determine how a book colors the way we feel about the place where we experience it.

"We know, without a doubt, that book and place do affect each other, and that they are bound as a single experience in our memories.

"Complicating the quest for a tidy conclusion is the fact that sometimes the place where we read a book is not just a geographical spot but also a psychological one. In fact, the most compelling Field Tests in this collection are the ones in which a book, a physical place, and a significant emotional moment collide."

There are many books I absolutely love, that shaped me as a child and teen, but only one that I can remember exactly where I was when I read it. Here it is:

The 2006 edition, "The Illustrated Jane Eyre."

I scan the school bus for empty seats and spot one in the middle -- a good seat. Location is important: Too close to the front and I'm sitting among the scumbags and dirt-heads -- the kids who smell like B.O., pick their noses or are in special-ed class. A seat too close to the back of the bus and I'm an easy target for the older, bitchy girls who drink cough syrup on the way to school in an effort to get high, and the guys who laugh and make rude gestures at their crotch when I yawn.

But today I find one in the middle. I slide in and sit near the window, dumping my backpack next to me as a sign that I don't want to share the space. I rummage around inside the backpack, searching with my hands for the felty soft pages of "Jane Eyre." The cover had been lost long ago and the rest of the book was held together by tape. It first was my mom's -- a required text from her days in Catholic high school -- and in the back it held the notes she had written to herself: "Helen Burns -- friend (died, Jane 10 yrs.), Lowood -- school, Miss Temple -- nice woman, Mr. Rochester -- owner of Thornfield."

I huddle down in the bus seat, creating a wall of vinyl green around me, making me, for all practical purposes, invisible, just like Jane. I wiggle and breathe a happy sigh knowing exactly how the heroine felt as she huddled in her own window seat, reading in secret and safety. I love Jane Eyre. As a marginalized teen struggling to define myself, I grok this "poor, obscure, plain, and little" orphan who challenges the bullies and the brutes, shapes her own fate and commands her own destiny. Jane speaks directly to me, she acts for me.

The emotional connection I have with this worn and musty smelling paperback edition doesn't make sense. It just is. The book is my guide through adolescence, because Jane's efforts to define herself mirror my own. It's comforting to know that when life is particularly lonely and difficult, Jane is there too, insisting on finding her own set of values and enduring punishing exiles because of it.

For an hour I sit hidden between the bus seats, miles away inside the book. I don't check the time or glance up to see where I am on the route. After years of riding back and forth, I can feel when my stop is coming up: a lurch at the railroad tracks, a right turn onto a washboard road, and I pull myself away from Jane and the English moor. Stumbling off the bus, I stand on the side of an empty dirt road, dazed and squinting under a hot desert sun. Alone.

My thanks to Write Now is Good for sharing information about Field Tested Books, and issuing the challenge to write about book and place. More essays on the subject can be found there.

One beautiful sentence

Swallow Print by Sarah Parrott, Little Paper Planes

I'm reading "Madame Bovary" and vacillate between identifying with Emma because her life isn't her own, and despising her for being so passive-aggressive. Regardless, Madame Bovary is a wreck, and had she lived today, she'd be popping handfuls of anti-depressants to deal with her life.

The book is filled with images that are beautiful and concise. Unlike many books that wander into paragraphs of description for no sake other than the author is in love with words, Gustave Flaubert is relentless in his demand that every sentence carry forward the story of Emma Bovary's revolt against the ordinariness of her life. Here's one superb example:

"... What deplorable mania had driven (Emma) to ruin her life with constant self-sacrifice? She recalled all her yearnings for luxury, all the privations of her soul, the degradations of marriage and housekeeping, her dreams fallen into the mud like wounded swallows, everything she had desired, everything she had denied herself, everything she might have had! And why? Why?"

Challenged by the blog Write Now is Good to find a sentence that moves me, I settle on the words above, on the simile, "dreams fallen into the mud like wounded swallows" because the picture, the words, struggle inside my head: birds fighting, wings caked in dirt, too heavy to lift. One such swallow carries my dream to write.