Bohemian Gospel - A Ride to Nowhere

Bohemian Gospel by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

What to say about this book?  I read the review as part of my job, and there was an interesting premise to it.  There is a girl who heals a king - she has some kind of powers.  He asks her to travel with him in case anything else should happen to him - she can heal him.  Then they fall in love.


Mouse, the girl, somehow appealed to me.  I thought the story would have more to do with her journey from insecurity, obscurity, and immaturity into having a place in the world.  But this book is more concerned with the supernatural aspect of her powers.  It follows the implications of what she becomes capable of to some drastic ends - until Mouse is living alone in the woods for decades with only a wolf for company.  It kind of defied belief that that would happen - and it became a story about the burdens of power, the loneliness of being different, etc.  And while I wasn't expecting that it would have been interesting if it had fit the overall story.  But instead it was gimmicky to me. 


So, once again I have tried reading contemporary fiction and have been mighty disappointed.  I never used to read current stuff, not since I was a pre-teen/teenager reading young adult fiction.  That fiction was actually good back then so in principal I had nothing against giving newer stuff a try.  I dislike that a reader cannot be guided by a book's reputation as it's stood up through time as you can with classic texts.  If someone tells you this classic is great, it's reputation is well deserved - when you read the book you can be pretty assured that there will be some meaning or even great meaning that you'll get out of the time investment and the experience.  This is impossible with current literature. 


And in truth I have so many classic books on my shelves that I don't need to make the attempt.  And I probably wouldn't have if it wasn't for working in a library and now reading reviews of current fiction books.  But what I've noticed about much of today's fiction is that authors invent a pleasing premise to a story - i.e. Mouse being a young girl who comes of age but also has a quality that makes her different from anyone else - it sounds interesting and it's what makes you want to invest your time.  And then the idea is so poorly thought out, so poorly executed, and the story so poor.  So I'm starting to beware of gimmicky writers.  Then I get a sense of how much more of that stuff is out there than stuff of quality.  And that's disturbing.  And then I realize that we all have to learn to navigate through a sea of nonsense to get to valuable finds.  It's odd that we should make it so difficult on ourselves.  The personal life can be that way enough as it is - why should the collective, cultural life be so as well?  I guess the only answer is the money that's out there to made...

Tom Jones: the Foundling

The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling by Henry Fielding 

I heard of this novel when watching the film Becoming Jane about Jane Austen.  Her love interest tells Jane that if she wants to be the equal of a male writer she must be able to write truthfully about experience.  And, in order to do that, she must experience things.  

This is a novel about many of the possible experiences in life.  Tom Jones is a bastard child taken in by a wealthy landowner, Allworthy, and raised by him.  Allworthy is also raising his nephew and the two grow up side by side and very different.  

Tom Jones is a free spirit.  Very hot-tempered, quick to react, loves the ladies, fickle-natured, but has the desire to do good by others.  It just doesn't always work out that way.  He falls in love with Sophia, the daughter of his neighbor: Squire Western.  The Squire likes Tom, but as soon as he begins to desire Sophia, the Squire locks his daughter up in the house.  

Tom Jones is forced to leave Allworthy's house due to a deception by the jealous nephew.  Allworthy writes Tom off & sends him out into the world without any protection.  He withdraws his good opinion of Tom and his support.  Tom is adrift.

And all manner of things happen to him: conscription, fighting, sex, and meetings with strange characters.  In this way, the book is a philosophical tale similar to others of the time (for me it reminded me of Voltaire's Candide - only much, much longer).  Through a fictional tale that asks how do you make sense of the cruelty of experience and of people, of injustices, of the many opinions you hear others espouse during your travels, of temptations, of that which glitters but is not gold, and of the twists and turns of trying to love another - the novel is a challenge to learn for the reader. To learn without having to be the one immediately experiencing the twists and turns.  

Tom's journey, though very drawn out at times, is therefore very interesting to follow & I think it's still applicable to modern experience in many ways.  And I like that Tom errs, he actually errs quite a lot.  He gets involved when he shouldn't because he's a willing participant - a recipe that can make one very beleaguered very quickly if it goes on too long.  He always learns what he learns the hard way.  That might be helpful for a writer creating a character - but for a person trying to live it is actually very inconvenient.  But despite getting into trouble more often than not, Tom somehow keeps a good, carefree attitude through most of his wanderings.  I liked that.

I also liked that Fielding discusses the treatment of women in this novel.  Sophia is heavily controlled by her father who is himself a drunkard and very reckless.  While she is intelligent and careful, he thinks that her only value is in keeping her "fresh" for a good and wealthy husband.  Oddly enough, Sophia is very concerned about this too, but much more intelligently.  Squire Western is a hot-head who thinks it can always be solved by simply locking her up and guarding the key no matter how unhappy it makes Sophia.  She wants to have access to living and men, but doesn't believe that they will do well by her simply because they're attracted to her.  She questions and challenges Tom to be more honest about how he feels and this counteracts his tendency to simply fly by the seat of his pants.  This is a quality I admired in Sophia and wish I could employ on my own behalf.  

Then there's another couple that Tom meets while he's living in London.  The man throws the woman over and it's clear how little the woman was left with once she was abandoned.  Then others get involved and try to get the man to do the right thing.  Again, showing that woman have to almost marshall men...or to focus their energies that often are simply hectically trying to attain their prize.  The woman must give that process meaning, probe it and test it to make sure it's in earnest, and that there's an art to this that is different than being coy or just appearing and disappearing at random.  And without this art life is harder for a woman.  
 

Newly Discovered Website - Project Gutenberg

On Project Gutenberg you can find books in their entirety.  And anyone can read them for free.
https://www.gutenberg.org/

Music at the Duke's Grave

http://www.npr.org/event/music/418845099/jazz-lives-at-duke-ellingtons-resting-place?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150702&utm_campaign=Music&utm_term=

The Long Black Bag

Understanding Your Shadow
 
Your ability to liberate yourself from the fears and doubts that have held you back is a vital part of your growth and development. Here is Jon Kabat-Zinn to explain how these fears and doubts accumulate, and how you can free yourself from them. Robert Bly, the poet, has a wonderful image of a little black bag — a Jungian image of a little black bag that we're born with attached to our hip. As we grow, and people don't like certain things about us, and we want to please our parents, for instance, they say, "Well, good girls don't do that" or "Good boys don't do that." To please our parents, we might take that part of us and stuff it in the bag. We're very sensitive to how society looks at us and how our peers look at us, and so forth.
As you get older, there is a tendency to take all those parts of you that you get the message are not really acceptable, and stuff them. By the time you get to high school, your bag might be a mile long, filled with all sorts of aspects of yourself that you don't show to anybody else. Then, after a while, you forget they are there yourself.
It brings up a lot of feelings of inadequacy and trepidation — "Oh, I could never do that" or "Oh, you know, that's not for me" — because we've whittled ourselves down into a very reduced aspect of this extraordinary genius and flowering of being that's called the human baby, a human infant, before they start to get the message that they're only okay if they sleep at night or they're only okay if they do this or they're not okay if they do that. We take those messages literally even before we understand language. We pick up on those messages nonverbally, and it does something to our self-esteem.
So by the time you're in the work force, your bag might be four miles long, with all the things you're not willing to look at and you don't want to show other people, or you might not even show to your spouse or admit to anybody. And when you go to work on Monday morning, you're dragging this long bag behind you. It may be invisible, but it's there nevertheless. It weighs you down. You wonder why you don't feel like going into work on Monday. Well, you're carrying a lot of darkness and grief, and a lot of it is toxic. And the more it stays shut in there, the more toxic it gets. It just festers.
So, is it valuable to peek in the bag every once in a while? Maybe open it up and let some of that stuff out? It is. Do you want to let it all out at once? Probably not. But practicing mindfulness, you can probably let out large amounts of it, and do well with it, because the mindfulness instructions keep you balanced.
If it comes up, just watch it. See it as thoughts in the mind, or feelings. They're not you; they're just feelings. They're just thoughts. If you identify with them — that's my thought, my feeling or my pain — then you're in trouble. But the "my" isn't necessary. It's extra because that "you" doesn't exist any more unless you want to keep it there.

So this is a profound area of self-liberation, and usually we have regulatory mechanisms so we won't get any more deeply into the black bag than we can prepare. So, maybe you just want to get your little toe in there, just for 30 seconds, and then back off. But after time, you start to actually absorb your own shadow material — your own dark side, so to speak — and open it up. And the more you're open to it, the more those shadows just dissolve. It's not that you have to solve all these problems of 30 years of horror in your life. They will start to dissolve by themselves. Why? Because human beings are intrinsically self-regulating, self-healing organisms, not just bodies.

Now, here are two things you can do on a regular basis to become a more spontaneous and happy person.
First, recognize that you were born with no fears, doubts, hesitations or reservations at all. Everything that holds you back today you have learned as a result of childhood conditioning. Within you there is a happy, liberated spirit yearning to be free.
Second, resolve today to stretch yourself to act in a way that is more consistent with your true self. Do something out of the ordinary. And don't worry about what other people may think about you, because they're probably not thinking about you at all.

Historic pictures of planets in our solar system

http://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2015/jul/16/pluto-and-other-historic-first-pictures-of-planets#img-1

This warms the lobes of my heart. 

Pluto, Pluto, Pluto!!!

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/24/pluto-nitrogen-ice-flows-atmosphere-collapse-red-haze

Music Therapy for ADHD: Benefits of Classical Music

Music and ADHD Mind

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Steve Jobs delivered a commencement speech to Stanford University students on June 12, 2005.  My father gave me a copy of it around the time I graduated from college.  I came across it again recently as I was cleaning.  I'm going to put some of it on my blog.

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.  So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.  You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.  This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

...I was lucky to find what I loved to do early in life.  Woz and I started Apple in my parents' basement when I was 20.  We worked hard, and in ten years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees.  We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.  And then I got fired...What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months...I even thought about running away from the Valley.  But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did.  The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit.  I had been rejected, but I was still in love.  And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that ever could have happened to me.  The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything...You've got to find what you love.  And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.  Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven't found it yet, keep looking.  Don't settle.  As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.  And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.  So keep looking until you find it.  Don't settle.

...When I was 17, I read a quote that was something like, "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"  And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.  Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.  Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.  You are already naked.  There is no reason not to follow your heart.

...Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.  Don't let the noise of other people's opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you want to become.

...On the back cover of their (The Whole Earth Catalog) final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.  Beneath it were the words, "Stay Hungry. Stay foolish."  And I have always wished that for myself.

Moby, Jill Scott & Blue Man Group Perform "Natural Blues" at the Grammy's

I was thinking of this performance the other day.  To be honest, it's a bit of an over-the-top assault to the senses.  However, it's still kinda awesome.  Decided to share it here.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x24zfi_moby-jill-scott-blue-man-group-natu_music

Om Mani Padme Hum

A few years ago I finally found the time to read The Lost Horizon by James Hilton.  My interest in this book grew slowly over time.  At first I heard it was where the place "Shangri-La" comes from.  Then I heard it was the first book to ever be published as a paperback.  Then I heard interesting things about the writer.  It was a slow road towards finally reading it.

And as I was reading it, I came across a Tibetan prayer that Hilton included in it without explaining much about it: om mani padme hum.   It was weird and I decided to investigate it.  I came across this website and decided to share it as a token that sometimes reading a book is the catalyst for coming across other interesting knowledge that you weren't expecting to find.  I love when that happens :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_mani_padme_hum 

A Musician Tries to Write a Book ~ the duldrums

The Original 1982 ~ by Lori Carson


Don't have much to say about this book.  It's not great but it has its positive qualities.  The writing is not great.  However, if the premise of the story interests you, you should try it. 

If you had an abortion twenty or so years ago, what would it be like to imagine a life in which you hadn't made that decision?  What if you could fill all that time that's passed in between with details from a life that never began?  That's what this book attempts.

I found this book had a few gems in it - whether it was a curiously written sentence, an interesting name, or an interesting thought here and there.  However, often it fails as a book - sort of because the writer is used to writing in the abstract, in songs.   She fails at the longer distance race that is novel writing.  That makes a difference as a reader because it is noticeable, distracting, and tiresome.  But,  for my part having read it, I try to remember the things I did enjoy about it.  And I had never read a book by a musician before.  Or one that so paralleled real life (the songwriter speaks of songs she wrote, put the lyrics in the text, and it turned out that the music really existed and I could listen to the song).  That was a really weird extra-book life that I've never known a book to have before.  It seemed cool but maybe it was just weird.

North and South ~ Elisabeth Gaskell
 I found this book only after seeing the BBC film adaptation.  I hadn't read a British Victorian-Era novel in a while, and was glad to return to that period.  As with other books from that place and time, this book is concerned with social issues especially as a result of the changes that came as a result of industrialization. 

Margaret Hale, the heroine, is an interesting if at times difficult to believe in character.  She is almost too perfect.  She escapes becoming a woman submerged in brainless/unrewarding activities of going to balls, reflecting only the interests of those around you without having any of your own, marrying the most affluent man you can find, etc. in spite of having grown up amongst such society/female role models.  Somehow, her temperament keeps her impervious to these influences even though she moved in with her aunt/cousin as a young girl.  

When the novel begins, she moves back to her mother/father who are suffering financially from the father's decision to give up his living as a pastor.  This change in environment/comfort level (her aunt is living well in London as is wealthy, while her parents need to live frugally) also doesn't seem difficult for her.  I found this particularly difficult to believe simply because it's a drastic change.  Margaret is very concerned for her parents' well-being and perhaps this distracts her, but it cannot be easy to go from no worries to many worries and how you are going to be able to live.  She comments on the change, but in a way it seems to escape her.  

In spite of this question of believability, Margaret seems to be a very strong character.  She faces making decisions even in the face of difficult emotions (which both her parents fail to do) and is very helpful in securing a new place for her parents to live.  She holds herself to high standards of behavior and morality, and is very intelligent.  I enjoyed this book because even though these are good qualities to have, Margaret does have them to the extreme.  She is a harsh judge of others and of herself, she has a temper, and often fails to bite her tongue even if it were better for her to keep her opinions to herself.  In a way, she's too much of a good thing.  Moderation & balance is something she struggles to attain and it's interesting to watch her try.

Much of this unfolds through life experiences and what they teach her.  Some of it is illustrated through her relationship with one man, Mr. Thornton.  He seems to represent her haste to bias/drawing conclusions very quickly, her dislike of unfamiliar things, and her struggle to allow for qualities similar to her own revealing themselves in another person.  Their relationships consistently forces her to work on these short comings of hers.  When she doesn't approach it like that she simply assumes the worst about Mr. Thornton's character.  

This interesting dynamic plays out between them as he falls in love with her, but she is unwilling to see any good in his character.  He has to learn moderation in his own right as she brings out intense emotions for him that he doesn't regulate naturally as he has never felt them before.  

I thought it was an interesting story, with interesting characters, and it presented some social philosophy about allowing economic need to dictate our behavior at any cost.  Much of the novel is about seeing two extremes and learning to find one's way to a middle path, as evidenced in the title.   A good read.   

 
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

I am also writing this long after finishing the book - so my memory is a little hazy.

The only thing I have to add is about the contrast/similarities between President Snow and President Coin.  For most of the book Katniss fights for President Coin and against Snow.  However, she realizes that Coin allowed Prim to die in order to make a political move against Snow.  Katniss realizes they are both murderers and will do whatever is necessary for political survival.  Essentially, there is no difference between them.

In the adult world, things are rarely black and white morally speaking (or really in any terms).  That is often terrifying and confusing when trying to decide how to act as an adult.  Katniss experiences that in this book.

Easy reads - glad I read them.

 

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

I waited so long to write on this book that I don't recall my thoughts very well.  I remember that I felt this trilogy probably could have been only two books.  This second title and the third, Mockingjay, seemed to stretched out in order to make two books and the reading became a little more tiresome.

These novels were quick and easy to read like much of young adult fiction.  The narrator, Katniss, doesn't withhold much from the reader and that makes it easy to enter her story.  The drama of the districts, her fight with President Snow, and her second competition in the hunger games is interesting albeit increasingly less believable.  In The Hunger Games, it was easy to read on because the notion of putting children in such a horrific situation was something you wanted to witness as Collins created it.  I also thought it was relevant social commentary for the time we live in.  However, in this book Collins creates a larger political role for Katniss - and this only grows bigger into the next book.  Katniss has a fighter's mentality - she fights Snow as she had fought off starving as a younger child.  From that perspective it's an interesting story as she continues to fight but on a very different battleground that she doesn't understand as well.  Fighting Snow is complicated, fighting off hunger was a hard and scary fight but one she knew how to wage.

Second to this central story of Katniss is her relationship with Peeta.  On one level this relationship, along with Katniss and Gale's, is very manufactured.  Gale seems to represent Katniss' fighting attitude while Peeta seems to speak to something softer about herself she never had the chance to explore.  These relationships are like externalizing those competing interests in herself.  However, I still found Peeta/Katniss' narrative an interesting one.  They shared a moment as youngsters when he gave her food because she was starving, but the hunger games hijacked that relationship and made it an unreal one created only for the media to consume.   Then within that crazy situation Katniss has to sort out how she feels about him and herself.

For me that was the most interesting aspect of these books.

Last year both my grandfather and uncle passed away.  Over the past nine years I've been trying to donate blood, occasionally, to the American Red Cross.  I first got the idea in high school when I saw an advertisement on television asking for people to donate to the national blood supply.  But it took me a while to get around to doing it.

When I donated just before the new year, I read some materials in the office saying that the national blood supply is dwindling a lot at present.  It seems to do that every year during the winter but according to the paper it seemed worse now than usual.  The paper also mentioned that donations are the only source of "material" for the national blood supply so, like a non-profit organization, it is totally dependent on the participation of the public for support.  Whenever someone gets cancer and needs transfusions, or has a traumatic accident and needs for there to be blood available upon admittance to the emergency room - these are the times when the national blood supply is called upon.  If I were in either situation I know I would appreciate the blood being there.

It is an odd experience to donate your blood.  Watching it leave your body, feeling the heat of it through the plastic tube.  Hearing the nurse tell you all the precautions you must take during the blood-letting, afterwards, and all the warnings she gives you about what might happen as a result of your offering.  It seems like a lot to do for a total stranger and this time I was wondering why I was doing it and more scared than previously that I might faint or something worse while on the table. I wondered more why I was doing this - it seemed more dangerous.  Previously, I had done it out of some sense of doing right or participating in something that I viewed as important.  But I didn't really realize how much it could put me at risk or how valuable what I was offering really was.

After I donated, I tried to stay as long as possible thinking I didn't want to just drive away in case something happened while I was behind the wheel of my car.  I ate a lot of food and drank a lot of fluids and just kind of communed with my own body.  I could see some people giving "double platelets" which is some kind of more complicated procedure which takes more time and apparently takes more "material" out of the body.  The people doing that were sitting watching television programs, drinking fluids and lying under warm blankets.   These people appeared to be taking an even bigger risk.  I overheard that one woman was doing this in memory of her mother who had recently died of cancer.  I thought about donating in memory of my grandfather/uncle and decided to do so.

STOP!!!

Something helpful I found on the Mindfulness for ADHD facebook page recently.  Though it's probably good advice for anyone.
 
STOP reminder can help us to do a short mindfulness practice in the midst of daily activities:
S=Stop
T=Take a breath (or two)
O=Observe (what am I doing at this moment? What thoughts, feelings or body sensations am I noticing right now, at this present moment?)
P=Proceed (Continue with increased awareness. Ask yourself: Do I need to change anything? ex. relax shoulders a bit; switch attention from a distraction to an intended task etc).

I recently began working at my public library.  One of the chores of a library is managing the current status between the amount of materials in your collection and the amount of space in the building.  Interestingly, it seems there are a higher number of authors out there with last names beginning in "A" and "B."  Almost every section that is catalogued alphabetically has a pile up in that part of the alphabet.  Recently, it was our local children's librarian who had a turn dealing with this pile-up.  And she posted this hilarious clip on our staff intranet to vent her frustrations.  I'm now sharing it on my blog because it had me smiling for two days straight.