What I'm Reading Now -- May 2012

 WHAT I'M READING NOW -- MAY, 2012


End of May. Long days and warmer weather here in Vermont means more time outdoors and less time spent reading. Luckily, I can read
books on my i-phone with the type face at the max. Butt on cold metal bleachers at Little League ball games and can read during interminable breaks and long warm-ups.

Finished two by Alison Bechdel: the first, "Fun Home,"  ordered from Amazon (that squid), a graphic narrative that needs to be read in real book form and examined minutely for the ingenious cartoon panels. The second, Bechdel's "Are You My Mother?" was borrowed from the local library. After going through these two memoirs -- the first about her closeted father, the second about her alienated mother, and both about her own search for self, for recognition, and for intimacy.

I can't say I am renewed by this spate of unusually demanding reading. I entered Bechdel's heartbreaking world and wonder how anyone could possibly have emerged from it, so emmeshed, so cruel and cold. These lives --  crypto, covert, internal -- make the usual tales of family dysfunction seem like "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm". The kind of secrets in the Bechdel household appear to me more lethal than the usual substance abuse and battering.

The main thing I take from Bechdel's genius is something I already knew but not deeply, and that is there are all kinds of abandonment. Being left, being lost, being cut off from love and security can take many forms and some of them are worse than others.

Look for Alison Bechdel's blog dykestowatchoutfor.com and the long-running comic strip by the same title. I forgot to say: she is very funny and very smart.

Another memoir I just started is Cheryl Strayed's "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail." The book opens as she looses a hiking boot over a forested ledge, and peers down where it might have landed far below. Then she chucks the other heavy boot after it, saying farewell to the pair that had pinched, caused blisters, blackened toenails that came off and then she was left, in the middle of nowhere, in her stocking feet. What the hell? You might wonder. Obsession. Doggedness. Stubborness in the first degree.

All of the above is what it will take to complete this ordeal of self-discipline and discovery. I will say more as I read on.

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CUTTINGS

CUTTINGS

The comfrey from Martha Dana

Thrives below the back stone wall.

Bees love the modest flowers

And the lavish greenery has

Many healing abilities.

Cousin Tom gave me creeping violet

From his rock garden and now it is

Among the stones, above the comfrey.

Lady's mantle swapped with Charlotte

for Hosta Elegans  fights for space

With silvery artemesia

From Stella, a constant gardener,

And the mother of my husband.

Years ago, walking with Virginia,

Before she lost her mind,

I pulled up some nice ivy

From a vacant lot

And trained it to climb.

Yellow iris from Susie's place in Fly Summit

Has survived, unhappy where it is.

Bishop's Weed from Loomis Street

Has taken over by the shed.

I've carried a shovel in the trunk of my car

And dug daylilies and asters from ditches.

Betty Ann and Helen poached

My white jonquils by moonlight

From somebody's front yard.

Rhubarb from Julia French is going crazy

Out on the compost

And Julia herself, well over 90,

Is in a nursing home over near Corning.

I treasure all these cuttings.

And watch for them each Spring,

Knowing exactly where each originated

And when it was planted.

When I'm gone, there'll be no remembering.

The next people

Will never understand rhubarb.

And the comfrey will be

Just another weed.

Elinore Standard

From Uptown Dogtown