Damp, Drizzly November in My Soul

In the last few weeks I went from reading about six books to having only one or two I'm currently working on. I'm on the hunt for what to read next. Here are a few I've been tempted to pick up:

A Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

War and Peace Leo Tolstoy

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Those have all been on my "To Read" list for a while and while I want to read them, I feel like I'm in the mood for something else. This time of year I really like books that take place in the wild. It's hard to explain why but I think it's a feeling akin to that described by Melville in Moby Dick:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

I for moral and practical reasons will not be slipping out to sea, as much as I would like to, so I would like a book that would offer a similar escape. Something survival oriented. Any suggestions? I might just re-read Watership Down or Into the Wild or some Jack London but I would prefer something new.

If you're curious, the books I finished recently were Anna Karenina, My Antonia, Confederates in the Attic, The Red Badge of Courage, the poem The Rhyme of The Ancient Mariner, Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Hamlet, and the play A New Coon in Town (Proud of me Brian? It only took me 3 months)

O Willa Cather!

Aaron was sweet enough to buy me "The Complete Works of Willa Cather" for my birthday in July. I have since been steadily working through the collection and it has been deeply satisfying. I've become so attached that my day doesn't feel complete without a chapter or two from one of her stories or novels. I've been impressed by how pivotal memory is in her characters' lives. Memory determines their purpose, provides their bearing, reveals their identity, and sometimes destroys them. It's made me think about what events in life I choose to remember and focus on. It also made me think about how good writing all seems to depend on memory and one's ability to recall the details of existence. It seems that reflection allows us to tease out the profound from the pedestrian events of our lives.

Beard Today, Gone Tomorrow

Here are a few pictures from our excursion to the crangberry bog. Sadly the bog was all dried up so we did not get to go wading in trash bags as we had planned. It did make picking a lot easier. As I mentioned before, it was dear hunting season so we're sporting the brightest orange from our closets, or in my case Aaron's closet. I realized I really do not have enough prison jumpsuit orange in my closet. I'll have to work on that.

OH, and since it was around fall break Aaron was humoring me by avoiding his razor. Isn't he cute?

Nike Run

I'm in love with the Nike Run Training Log. You can select a training program and then track your progress on the calendar. It gives you a distance to run and even some helpful coaching. I'm the type of person that needs to be told to do intervals (even if its only inanimate software) because I won't come up with it myself. I'm training for a 10k at the end of this year and maybe a half marathon in spring. Having the log is really helpful.

Minority Report

This week at the UVA Soccer game the ticket seller asked me if I was under 18. Sigh... I told them, No, I was over the age of 18 and had been for quite a while. And then I started to think about just how long it has been since I was eighteen. That was SIX years ago.

That made me feel old, like I was watching my oh so finite life slip away before my eyes. Then I started to think about what some of the people I respect and admire had done by the time they were my age. Zadie Smith had published White Teeth. Orson Wells was making Citizen Cane, it came out when he was 25. Beatrix Potter had built a reputation as an expert mycologist. I have ...gotten a job. Which is good, I guess.

Christmas Means Carnage

As the holiday season rolls around the tension builds. Then we have a spat, then another, then an argument and finally a full on FIGHT. My family? Or His Family? For which holiday? For how long? But what about last year? What about the coming year? It makes me agree with Ferdinand, the anorexic duck, from the movie Babe* "Christmas Means Carnage!"

*Babe is one of my all time favorite movie. Ferdinand's whole speech goes:"Christmas? Christmas means dinner, dinner means death! Death means carnage; Christmas means carnage!"

In the Company of Stars

Randal, Theresa, Aaron and I were lucky enough to attend the Star's show at the 9:30 club this past Saturday night. It was AWESOME. So awesome that the 20 & 30-something DC crowd, which are usually the "too cool for school" type, got into it. They Danced. They Sang. They Cheered. They briefly escaped their pretentious devotion to yuppy hipster-dom. So Stars is a band of MIRACLES. MIRACLES, I tell you.

It was really one of the best concerts I've gone to. Stars played wonderfully and they're so delightfully over the top in their presentation that the show was just good melodramatic fun. They had these crazy fake flowers covering the stage and they periodically threw them into the crowd. Theresa, being the scrappy farm girl she is, fought off like five other kids for a plastic carnation. I was very, very jealous and impressed.

I know Stars isn't the most known band and I would spend more time describing the music but I don't have to, because NPR decided to do it for me. They recorded the whole show and you can listen and see pictures Here. In the photo galllery if you look at picture 8 of 21 you can see me! Well, my small pixelated blob of a head at least. I'm on the far right edge of the photo in the middle.