Playing Catchup

I've been wrangling two teenagers and a dog, doing dishes and laundry, driving the mom taxi, going to volleyball games and golf matches, trying to wrap my head around the hoopla that is modern Homecoming week, trying to navigate the stressful college selection process for the oldest, trying to figure out my new camera which I alternate between loving and hating, interviewing for a part time job at the local college, finishing my book and trying to write a relevant review and fighting a really snotty headcold. Oh and next week is our 25th wedding anniversary. We have no plans, mostly because I'm too tired to think that far ahead and I don't want to plan anything else. Our google calendar looks like a 64 color crayon box, and the greatest gift I can think of is not cooking anything and not doing dishes either. I imagine I am not exactly a hot date lately. My dad taught me to sing the old gray mare just ain't what she used to be and now I see the humor in that song as I sing it in my head when I feel overwhelmed.

Anyway, Nightwoods was a very satisfying read for me, because I loved the writing style, loved the characters, was very drawn into the story and did not guess the ending, not exactly. I hate when stories and movies are too predictable. I gained a lot of life philosophy to ponder reading that book, and I marked dozens of pages to reread and let it sink in a bit better.

The new camera is a high end point and shoot, the Canon G12, which is really heavy after my Powershot, and full of technomagic I don't quite understand. I'm enjoying the extra couple mm's of macro but I'm struggling with anything but letting it decide what to do on automatic, and it shoots more slowly than I had expected it to, but I'm still learning. Here's a few pictures from the past two week's walkabouts.

There is a chill in the air, and the gardens are eking out their last blooms as the trees are beginning to lose their leaves. I'm trying to pay attention, because I know the long season of browns and greys and whites will be here soon, and I'll be ticking off the days until the ground awakens again next Spring.

I've enjoyed visiting your worlds through pictures, and love that blogging lets me see the subtle changes in the seasons all over the continent and the globe.  Hopefully I'll see or think enough of interest to share here more often, as I admit to being a lazy and inconsistent blogger, especially when my life is crazy, which I expect is the new normal.  Also, hopefully I'll figure out how to work my new camera so it better captures what my eye sees, because there is something striking or beautiful around every corner.

Until then....

Nightwoods

Oh, I love LibraryThing's Early Reviewer Program. I am not exactly lucky when it comes to winning things, so I was happy to get one of the 25 books 1230 readers requested - 2% odds, and I can be one of three in a drawing and lose every time. Lucky me this time. Free books for the courtesy of a review are among the best things to happen to me in the last 5 years.  I'm looking forward to reading Charles Frazier again, it's been a long time since I read Cold Mountain and I know that man can write.

I love a story set in the Carolina Mountains, and I love a strong, interesting, complex female character. Vicki Lane and Kathryn Magendie are two fine writers in this genre as well, and I love their work. I was overdue for another good mountain read, so I was very excited when my book arrived yesterday.

This story reeled me in from the first pages, as the main character, Luce, grapples with raising her murdered sister Lily's strange children alone in a remote, abandoned resort lake lodge. Intriguing story - check. Great writing - double check. Chapter One just spoke to my heart over and over again. I wanted to sticky note about four passages; I wanted to memorize whole paragraphs of prose. I'm going to try to pace myself, to make it last. And I'm going to share some of the words, just in case they might speak to anyone else.  Enjoy.

.......

  Also, the children were here, and what was Luce to do? You try your best to love the world despite obvious flaws in design and execution. And you take care of whatever needy things present themselves to you during your passage through it. Otherwise you're worthless.


........


  WHEN SHE LIVED ALONE, Luce didn't go to the upper floors often, but not out of fear. Not really. It was little but bedsteads and cobwebs up there, and she didn't want to believe in ghosts or anything similar. Not even the portents of bad dreams. Yet the fading spirit world touched her imagination pretty strong when she was awake at three in the morning, alone in the big place. The dark sleeping floors, with their musty transient pens and cribs for the guests and their help spooked her. The place spoke of time. How you're here and then you're gone, and all you leave for a little while afterward are a few artifacts that outlive you.


  Case in point, old Stubblefield, who had owned the Lodge for the past few decades. Luce visited him several times during his dying days, and she was there at the end to watch the light go out of his eyes. In the final hours, Stubblefield mostly cataloged his possessions and listed who should get what........ The silver candleholders were a heavy weight on Stubblefield's mind because his wife had loved them so much. Oddly, he left them to Luce, who didn't love them at all and probably never would.


  Easy to be disdainful and ironic toward other's false values. Still, Luce hoped that when she was at the same thin margin of life she would be concerned with looking out the window to note the weather or the shape of the moon or some lone bird flying by. Certainly not a bunch of worn-out teaspoons. But Luce was half a century younger than old Stubblefield, and didn't know how she'd think and what she would value if she made it that far down the road. All her life, the main lesson Luce had learned was that  you couldn't count on anybody. So she guessed you could work hard to make yourself who you wanted to be and yet find that the passing years had transformed you beyond your own recognition. End up disappointed in yourself, despite your best efforts. And that's the downward way Luce's thoughts fell when ever she went upstairs into the dreary past.


.........


Luce opened envelopes at random, reading until she reached a sentence where it became impossible not to become critical of Lily's fatal hope and trust in other people. Everybody Lily met was so wonderful, and the shiny future stretched forever. Every page held evidence against her. Luce never made it all the way through any of the letters before she returned them to Lily's precise folds.


  Luce decided not to read them again until she could appreciate them more. Some far day when she had become a better person and could feel something besides stinging anger that her beautiful, gentle sister had not protected herself more carefully against a world of threat.


........


Maybe it's just me, but I needed to read some of those words right now. Sometimes books find you at exactly the right time.


I've had a reading drought since I burned out on the Game of Thrones bricks months ago, so I'm ready to read again, something with a soul and a purpose. Hope this one primes the pump and I get my reading mojo back. My to be read pile is not getting any smaller, and I'm not getting any younger. So off I go to bed with a book, and a head full of thoughts from the bit I've read so far.

Happy reading, and happy weekend.

Lake Effect On a Clear Day

On a clear day, from atop my neighborhood hill, I can see the Sears Tower, now the Willis Building, from 43 miles away.  It's a fuzzy zoom, but it's just to the right of the water tower in the center.

This week, cool fall air met warm lake air.

A mountain of clouds covered the eastern horizon.

These are not storm clouds, just warm air from the lake.

The clouds covered the entire length of the lake, from North to South, too vast for a camera to capture.

It was a beautiful and humbling sight, realizing that the lake made a mirror image of itself in clouds,

while we watched from clear skies miles away.

I couldn't look at the view without hearing Barbra sing this song.

Hope you enjoy the view and the voice.

Paying Attention

My photo OCD is in overdrive, again. 

I'm hoarding memories in pictures, but I'm OK with that.

Everywhere I look there is something Amazing to notice.

Attention must be paid.

I can't trust my memory, I need the pictures.

Happy little surprises are everywhere.

Some a little sad, maybe, but still Amazing.

Some are adorable, at least to me.

A million little universes everywhere....

Full of sublime, fragile beauty.

Paying attention makes me happy.

Calm.

Hopeful.

And even in the mundane, late night dog walks,

there are still surprises to discover.

Early morning dog walks, half asleep, grass wet and sticky,

there are still Amazing things to see, hear and smell. 

(I guess I should be more grateful for the dog.)

So when I'm not rushing around, 

stressing out,

driving in my car,

feeling older than my years,

and hurrying through my life,

I try to remember to 

slow down and look around.

To pay attention and look for the next

Amazing Thing.

to cross my path.

It's the least I can do for myself.

Hope you get to pay attention 

and have Amazing things find you too.