Books and Love

I was talking with Matt on Skype a couple of weeks ago and he asked me what books I was reading.  I told him, I didn't read as much as any more, that my eyes make it hard to concentrate for more than an hour or so.  Maybe I don't have the attention span anymore, either.  Certainly books have receded in importance from our home.  When we were first married, I had a room (albeit a little room) that was filled with books: poetry and literature, philosophy and religion, history and everything in between. Dozen of tomato boxes of books were moved every time we moved.  But since we have been in this house, and even before - when I stopped working for Waldenbooks - books have slowly moved from bookshelves in the living room to bookshelves in a study in the basement to bookshelves in the storage room our basement has become.  And boxes and boxes of books have gone . . . to church libraries, to Goodwill, to the dump.  (Videos and games, on the other hand, grow and grow) Maybe it is not having time enough to devote to a book.  Matt mentioned going out to Aran with a pile of books for the weekend and doing nothing but read.  What a luxury that would be . . .  to have nothing to do but loaf and read.  When would I read my email? Post to my blog? Update my Facebook profile? Upload to Picassa? oh . . . . wait.

To be honest, I still read books. (I just finished a selection of stories about the Knights Templar edited by Katherine Kurtz.)  And I have a stack next to my bed that I have bought at library sales and that same Goodwill store I send so many to.  (I actually often have the experience of seeing a book I used to own in Goodwill and wondering if I donated it. . . or sold it sometime and it had come back to me.) I still read at least 4  times the average number of books read by Americans.  I just don't spend time reading the 'Great Books'.  If I don't get engaged in a book in 100 pages, I put it aside.  If I don't understand it, I leave it.  Life really is too short , and the number of books I have left to be able to read is finite.  If I read now, it is only for pleasure, not education.

I bought probably three new books this past year (sorry, Matt!) and this poem is from one of them, Intimacies, Poems of Love by Pablo Neruda.  I bought it for Dawn for Christmas because when I met her she had mentioned Neruda as a poet she liked and I thought I was going to be a poet at the time  . . . . well. . . . and Neruda writes so well about love.  Please find and read the poem in Spanish as well as it is the most beautiful of languages.  When I was in High School and college, I studied three languages: Latin, Spanish and German.  Of the three, the only one I can still understand is Spanish and that I learned 35 years ago. Next time, I promise some poetry of my own . . . though not as good as this at all.

Love by Pablo Neruda

So many days, oh so many days

seeing you so tangible and so close,

how do I pay, with what do I pay?

The bloodthirsty spring

has awakened in the woods.

The foxes start from their earths,

the serpents drink the dew,

and I go with you in the leaves

between the pines and the silence,

asking myself how and when

I will have to pay for my luck.

Of everything I have seen,

it's you I want to go on seeing;

of everything I've touched,

it's your flesh I want to go on touching.

I love your orange laughter.

I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.

What am I to do, love, loved one?

I don't know how others love

or how people loved in the past.

I live, watching you, loving you.

Being in love is my nature.

You please me more each afternoon.

Where is she? I keep asking

if your eyes disappear.

How long she's taking! I think, and I'm hurt.

I feel poor, foolish and sad,

and you arrive and you are lightening

glancing off the peach trees.

That's why I love you and yet not why.

there are so many reasons, and yet so few,

for love has to be so,

involving and general,

particular and terrifying,

joyful and grieving,

flowering like the stars,

and measureless as a kiss.

That's why I love you and yet not why.

There are so many reasons, and yet so few,

for love has to be so,

involving and general,

particular and terrifying,

joyful and grieving,

flowering like the stars,

And measureless as a kiss.

Por eso te amo y no por eso,

por tantas cosa y tan pocas,

y asi debe ser el amor

entrecerrado y general,

particular y pavoroso,

embanderado y enlutado

florindo como las estrellas

y sin medida como un beso.

There is so much of Neruda's poety on the Internet, including some great videos.  Here is one of my favorites.

Sub Heaven

This past Friday night, I stopped at Santoro's Sub-Villa in Saugus MA for sandwiches. I usually get the Sub Villa Special with everything but hots (chopped onions, chopped pickle,chopped tomatoes, ham, cheese, capacolla and salami (I think) on a crusty rolls with 'saltpepperoil', of course). For Dawn, I forgo the onions and hots. These subs (italians in Maine, hogies in PA, etc) are the GREATEST sandwiches ever made, bar none. The bread is crunchy and chewy like good french bread, the onions are redolent and the pickles (my favorite part) are tart and sweet. Along with the rich capacolla it is just is unbelievable!

The picture above is of the old sign for Sub Villa and is gone now. This morning, I was in bed thinking about Santoro's and I realized that I have been eating sandwiches from that sub shop for probably over 40 years! When I was a kid, my grandfather ("Grampie Earle") had lung cancer and went to Boston to have one of his lungs removed. Every year thereafter, he went down to Boston for a checkup and often we all went along. My father had gone to dental school at Tufts and we had lived for some time in Rockland, so he knew the area well. I am not sure why or when we first began stopping on Route One in Saugus at Santoro's, but I can clearly remember this old sign and the 'Jetson's-like' shop. I seem to remember at one time that you could get a sandwich and add your own condiments and vegatables self-service. In any event, when I began to travel to Boston for work, I made a point of taking Route One out of the city so I could stop in Saugus at Santoro's to bring home sandwiches for the girls. When we used to travel to Boston with my grandfather and family, the second stop was Putnam's in Danver's for Ice Cream Smorgasbord. For years, I had no idea where Putnam's was, since I used to jump on Route 95 before Danvers on my way home. Only recently did I finally find Putnam's, nestled in between superhighways. I haven't had a chance to stop there yet, but I hope to soon.

I was researching Santoro's for this blog and I found out that apparently part of the family left the North Shore of Massachusetts and opened a shop in Burbank California. You can read more about it at this link . The sandwich he shows certainly looks like a Santoro's sub. I have to agree with the blog post that if I was stranded on a desert island and had to chose one restaurant, it would be Santoro's. The Burbank shop is located at 1423 W Burbank Blvd, Burbank, CA, so maybe when I am out to visit my sister, we can make a pilgrimage and I can compare with the original.


THE ARMFUL by Robert Frost

So, this poem is especially for Alice, though I doubt she reads my blog. We had dinner in Cambridge recently, and I know she has a lot on her plate right now. When I was her age, I hoped too to have a specific plan and direction for my life. I didn't and so have pretty much drifted from experience to experience. I don't think that is such a bad thing. It is how I came to be here anyway. I think Alyssa will do fine. She is bright and passionate; inquisitive and loyal. Whatever she decides to do, she will glean wisdom from it, I have no doubt. And isn't that the real purpose of life, to accumulate wisdom? Anyway, as I often tell my clients, "nothing is set in stone". Life is a moving river, not a mountain.

I used to carry this poem around in my wallet and read it from time to time. To me, Frost is talking about that same juggling of hopes and expectations, his own and others for him. Sometimes it is necessary to drop everything and start over - reboot the system.

For every parcel I stoop down to seize,
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with, hand and mind
and heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced on my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.  

                                                                                (1928)

Happy New Year 2009

So I thought in keeping with the theme of Laika, I would post this Soviet-era New Years Day card. You can see more at this link. It has been interesting investigating Soviet-era art. I can remember as a child when the Soviet Union was our geo-political equal. "The Russians", it seems to me, tempered our ambitions in the world. The notion of nuclear war hung over my childhood as a real possibility. We always (eventually) understood our proxy wars in Africa and Asia to be engagements with the USSR. For some, the USSR represented a hope and an inspiration. For others, and I am particularly thinking of my own circle in college, understood Russia to be the failure not of Marxism, but a betrayal by politicians of the principals of Communism. We had to look beyond Soviet Communism to . . . . Chinese Communism for the better model of what Communism could be. Of course, now we realize that Mao was every bit as ruthless as Stalin. And what country in the world is more intertwined with world capitalism than China? The fortunes of the nation rise and fall on the fortunes of the USA and Europeans as much as any nation.

But I think I always had a soft spot for Russia. I suppose it was fueled by Dr. Zhivago and growing up in a similar climate. Those long trudges across open fields to get home from school in January, it was easy to imagine myself as a young poet Zhivago crossing the steppes to be with Laura. The movie was released for Christmas 1965. I would have been eight years old, but I have a distinct memory of going as a family to see it in the movie theater. Is that possible? Watching it now, I must have missed a good deal of the plot. I am sure, however, that I had a huge crush on Julie Christie. so maybe I did. The movie also has special resonance with me because it was what we saw on Dawn and my first date together. We saw it in the Fall of 1975 (ten years after its release) at the University of Maine.

Fairy Tales

I have been listening to a great podcast by a Jungian analyst in which he describes using Jungian techniques to interpret fairy tales. You can subscribe to the podcast here . Here is a tale I found while looking for images this week. A more detailed version is also available here.

The Snow Maiden

A Russian tale tells of a woodcutter and his wife who were childless. They were a good and kind couple but they were lonely. One winter day, to ease their loneliness, they began to roll large snowballs. together, and in short while they made a “snequrochka“, a Snow Maiden. She looked so beautiful that they called her their ‘daughter’.

At that same moment, hiding and crackling among the fir trees, was Grandfather Frost. He was an old winter god with a long, white beard and he carried a great staff that was filled with wonderful magic. He had overheard the couple and felt sorry for them. For people who were kind and good always touched his heart. And so he raised his great staff and suddenly the Snow Maiden came to life.

Some said the Snow Maiden was the daughter of Grandfather Frost and Mother Snow, sent to comfort the couple for a time. Others said she was really a spirit-princess come to earth. Whatever her nature, she remained with the couple as a true and dutiful daughter would be.

Now as spring approached and people began to leave their houses, the Snow Maiden fell in love with a young man from the village. But the price of surrendering her heart in love would be to lose her human mortality. Grandfather Frost continued to watch her from a distance for he knew what would soon happen to her.

One day she was walking with her beloved through a birch wood. The youth played his flute; the Snow Maiden walked beside him turning her face to the sun. Suddenly she gave the faintest sigh and began to melt. She was still a creature of ice and snow and could not stand the springtime sun. Soon there was nothing left but an icy mist, drifting upward into the blue sky. The frail creature could not survive the breath of spring.

But her spirit had leapt into the waiting arms of Grandfather Frost and Mother Snow and they carried her away over the stars to the far north where she plays all through the summer on the frozen seas.

But each year in winter, on the first day of the New Year, Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden return to Russia. And they continue to work their magic for those who are kind and good. And they visit, in particular, the children, bringing them gifts and helping them to make their dreams come true, as they did long ago for the woodcutter and his wife.

Edmund Dulac, The Ice Maiden, 1915, watercolour, The Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery & Museums, Brighton