Departure

 

I am off to the wedding of my friends A and M, down in the English Peak District. Things will be quiet, but I hope to take advantage of the (presumably) lovely scenery and take a lot of photos – snow is predicted. Which I would be excited about, but it’s March, and March snow is always a little wearying.

 

Happy International Women’s Day and World Book Night (for yesterday). I shall be merging the two holidays by reading a book by a woman on the long train journey down – The Secret History by Donna Tartt.  So if the landscapes going by the train are gloomy and misted like the picture of the Meadows above, I shall have something to keep my mind off of it.

 

Wishing you a good weekend, and that if you are in the frozen Northern Hemisphere, that you stay as toasty as you please.

 

Come up swimming

 

For the past week, I’ve been underwater. The week before that, I was mute.

 

Late winter is harsh on the body. I lost my voice, then I got the flu. The cold shakes and the fever dreams and the exhaustion and brain fog. And throughout that last week I could barely read at all.  Where do we go when we have this kind of unwellness, the kind we know we’ll overcome with time? We just sit in our cracked skin, I suppose, and wait for the mind to take a breath and function again.

 

Yesterday I surfaced. I went to the bookshop with D, and edited. Editing that was heartwarming, because it reminded me that yes, I’ve spent all this time and something is being made. I don’t know of how much worth. But I know I’ve improved as a writer doing it. Struggling and kicking and planing and carving and flights of fancy and sweat. Swimming in my preferred element, however ineptly I am compared to others. I’m listening to a playlist on 8tracks as I write this, so maybe that’s making me think of water, fluidity and so on. The gears are turning with outside help and though my skin is still peeling and my eyes a bit bloodshot, there it is. Thought. The bright flash of an inner field. A vista, a possibility.

 

The books I bought (with a Christmas gift card) are, l-r,

The Secret History by Donna Tartt, because everyone says it’s good.

Diaboliad by Mikhail Bulgakov, because of that cover and it’s Bulgakov, who also wrote-

The Master and Margarita. This version doesn’t seem to use American terms like ‘sneaker’ which has prevented me from re-reading one of my favourites – it’s been 10 years since I last read it. I’m scared I won’t be as much in love, but we shall see.

 

It’s good to be back on shore. Now I’m off to climb among the dunes.

An Endless Year in Review

 

2012 is nearly over – it’s been a year of open spaces. A year of close reading. A year of patient steps. Anticipations, damp days, wandering the city (see my love letters here)

Of writing this second novel, and hoping, still, for the first. Of making friends online (- you’ll see them on my blogroll there, though I should do a big long post addressing them) and discovering literary journals, where my work fits, or I  find what turns something in my heart.

 

I’ve read 44 novels this year, and I’m working on the 45th. I’m a pretty slow reader, needing to take breathers, often distracted, so I feel happy with this total. Before the year’s out, I want to say a few things about the writing that has stayed with me – I’m lucky, in that a lot of what I read this year was utterly wonderful. Not all of it was new, or even new to me. But here are my picks of the best:

 

I began reading Humanimals: A Project for Lost Children by Bhanu Kapil an hour before the bells rang in 2012, and its hybridity and excellent prose has haunted my imagination. If I get the chance, I’ll be seeking out more of Kapil’s work in 2013.

 

The Summer Book introduced me to the wiseness and gently wood-carved sentences of Tove Jansson. I’m reading A Winter Book right now, and loving it almost – though not quite as much – as the sunsoaked earlier novel.

 

Green Girl by Kate Zambreno – how can I begin to talk about how much this book inspired so much in me this year? I can’t possibly do the stark, girl-centred, needling thing justice. Or the many conversations it inspired across so many online platforms?  Just be glad that it sent me towards Zambreno’s blog and Heroines, which if you haven’t read it, what are you waiting for? Participate!

 

Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith taught me the power that can be contained in an almost-novella, written with such care, without an ill-placed word.

 

Zazen by Vanessa Veselka was on the other hand an explosion, an earth-scorching revelation of words. I await her next works with the eagerness of a sailor’s wife, standing on a pier, watching a maelstrom wreck the waters.

 

I Have Blinded Myself Writing This by Jess Stoner wins best title and Book That Made Me Cry and stare off into space thinking of it. It’s experiemental, beautiful, humane – let me just throw some more words till you decide to go investigate.

 

Fast Machine by Elizabeth Ellen is one of those rare collections – one that I cannot stop reading. Normally I struggle to find the energy for short stories, but each of these connects, refracts or sparks the rest, and I felt like I was in a workshop for what this form can do. It’s the second book after I Have Blinded Myself Writing This to be published by small press giants, Hobart.

 

Domestication Handbook by Kristen Stone, another hybrid work, charmed me with its twisty, raw-fingered deployment of memoir and textbook and poetry.

 

Special, rather shocked mention to 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, for being such a messy and plain and overblown thing, which nevertheless slowed me down in my own work, made me consider my audience and how to talk to them.

 

Not too many men on this list, but it’s down to my vowed focus on female writers. Only 11 of the 45 books were written by men. No regrets. The world of book and poetry reviews is heavily weighted in favour of men, as Vida proved true of America last year.

 

So what will 2013 bring?

 

A superstitious year. Bad luck and good ahead.

 

More books – the first of the new year will probably be Errantry by Elizabeth Hand. Anticipating good things, from what I’ve read around it.

 

More writing.

More of my work shared, I hope. I am coming on with this draft, and really think, after absorbing so much great writing, that my own has improved. Nothing can be known in advance. I am prepared to patiently keep stepping forward, honing and learning every day.

 

More adventures. More of the seashore and the mountains and the countryside. Glens and slopes and lochsides. Another trip to London, in mid Janurary, this time with D – a Christmas gift from my parents.

 

A move, at the very least out of this cramped flat. Perhaps out of Edinburgh – mysterious, but I’ll know more in the Spring.

 

So much more – a new camera, to replace the last. I hope to work on my photography skills bit by bit, and bring you better images, views of places that have innately such beauty that I cannot distorted it too much.

 

 

And of course, reading. A new Endless Reads – I hope you’ll let me know of what books you’re thinking of tackling, which you’ve loved, which you have great furious hopes for.

 

And I wish you all a raucous or peaceful and in any case charming Hogmanay – see you back here, after the bells birth 2013.

December reads

 

I know that lots of literary sites and blogs are putting up their Best Of 2012 lists about now but I am in resistance! The year is not over til those bells chime on Hogmanay. With that resolution in heart, Endless Reads 2012 continues into December. So far I have read Somewhere (which I will review shortly) and I’m closing in on 1Q84. After that, the titles above, so thoughtfully complimentary coloured:

 

The Missing Shade of Blue by Jennie Erdal, a philosophical mystery published by Abacus – the title comes from a philosophical problem posed by David Hume regarding the conception of a colour you have never seen (it’s a bit complicated to explain so here’s the wiki). It’s set in Edinburgh, which makes it I think the only first-read of the year set in my own city (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was a welcome re-read).

 

The Light and The Dark by Mikhail Shishkin (Quercus) is a book that has not yet been released and that I have acquired through the generosity of Blackwell’s on South Bridge’s Christmas Book Quiz. D and I inadvertently showed up when the quiz was starting, and decided to join in, though D was there  do some preparatory work for an interview and is not overly interested in contemporary fiction. Our team, Book Shaped Heart, came 8th out of 11, which was not too shabby considering the difficulty level. Because it was Christmas, everyone who participated had the chance to choose a book from a few boxes set up in the back and this was my choice – from the blurb on the back it seems to be a kind of Russian literary version of the film The Lakehouse. Which I haven’t seen because Romantic films aren’t really my thing. But! The book might be anything, really.

 

The Last title is Another Country by Anjali Joseph (Fourth Estate). This was sent to me by a friend, and the author is a friend of his. It’s about a woman in her twenties living in Paris, London and Bombay. I have high hopes – it was savaged in The Telegraph for being (shock horror) more about character than plot, and seems to focus on un-belonging and rootlessness which I think I will enjoy.

 

Whether I will get through all of these titles before the bells remains to be seen, but I’m going to have a good time trying. They’re all newly published (or in the case of the second, unpublished) so I’m still keeping to my promise of reading new, vibrant things. What will Endless Reads 2013 bring? I haven’t decided yet. Should I have a theme? Would that be too artificial? What would you like to see?

 

Mundane bones livid heart

 

Editing yesterday, and trying to disassociate myself from the words, which have become hard like soap, and tasteless. I feel like a discount Midas right now. But a good tactic I’ve found is to pick up an author, not necessarily one I am overly fond of, and to read a few pages before turning to my own. Someone who writes and thinks very differently from me is helpful. Murakami’s 1Q84, which I’ve been shaking my head over (so explain-y, so repetitive, so addicted to the cliffhanger chapter ending)  but also hoovering up – it is enough to jolt me out of my usual tendencies, and therefore my usual mistakes. It clears the text a little, reminding me that I do, perhaps sometimes, need to set out what is happening and why, rather than always making the reader act as archeologist brushing at my dust.

 

Here is the other side of being a writer, I tell myself. We cannot read Proust all the time (though I haven’t read my Proust in quite a while. Too many other more urgent, exciting books in the way). The thing is, I have always been a huge snob when it comes to reading. I find it very hard not to be. This only applies to fiction, not books of theory (which I struggle with and give up on far more than someone with a PhD in English Lit should really admit to). I only want to read the best, that is, the most ambitious and enchanting and devastating novels. I want to get lost in swamps of words and carry those perfect, glassy iceblocks of prose around to wonder at – but. I also have to learn to write clearer myself, thinner, if need be.

 

If I want to acquire more techniques, I need to be able to learn from multiple sources. And not just books that strive in different ways (1Q84 a kind of giant jellybean souffle that I would never normally want to imitate). I need to drink cups of artificially flavoured hazelnut coffee and remember the punch of coffee from roadside gas stations as D and I drove through the American heartlands. I need to sip weird combinations of teas. Take risks on picking up unusual things as well as the usual, the popular, that I often discard. This does not mean I’m going to start watching Strictly Come Dancing. There are limits. I just need to listen to how people really speak, or how they speak when they are bad actors. I need to watch silly TV dramas and eavesdrop more. I need to sit in company.

 

I went to see Alasdair Gray reading from his collection, All the Short Stories, and was startled to find how direct and simple and yet effective his works were. I need to learn these sorts of skills. To be brave is also to approach the everyday without the defenses of dismissal. Frightening stuff. If I can learn to refine, then that will not mean I must always take something out of my words. That I must always dispel the pretty mist that hangs about them. I can make the choice to keep it in. But it might mean that, sometimes. The acquisition of a sharper, less precious eye. It might mean mundane bones and cheap fabrics. If that’s what’s needed to set the semi-magical, semi-flesh heart beating.

Endless Reads Review at PANK: Maidenhead by Tamara Faith Berger

My review is up – and it’s not safe for work. Nor for any of my relatives! But I’d love input on this one from others who have read this book –  the whole review is basically a cry for aid:

 

I struggled for a long time with this review. Maidenhead has been well-received in reviews across the internet, but my personal response was murky, confused. My copy is dog-eared and when I touch it seems to trigger flashbacks of puzzlement and revulsion and interest and anger. It’s that sort of book, not one that will sit calmly on the shelf, glowing with read-ness.

 

Read more here

Thresholds – Winning by Michelle Bailat-Jones

 

 

A bright morning in the third week of May. Here is our Lia in the garage below the small condominium where she and Evan now live. She is yelling, her hand in the box she has dragged to the foot of the stairs and opened, certain that although he is pretending not to, Evan can hear her.

“Where is it?” she yells one last time. Silence from the upstairs.

Lia is not to be outdone by a Christmas ornament.

To understand her, we must go back to breakfast and a small dispute. A detail needing clarification.

“It was like those awful hair angels you used to put on the Christmas tree.” Evan was talking about a doll one of their grandchildren had selected at the store on a recent trip. “Why would any child want something so ugly? And let’s not discuss that it’s Ben who wanted the doll.”

“Hair angels?”

Evan dismissed her outrage with a flick of his spoon. “Yes, the ones you bought from that hippie store. Made of human hair. The girls were little. They loved them.”

“You’re insane, Evan. We’ve been living different lives. I’ve never purchased hair angels.”

He returned to reading his newspaper and Lia descended immediately to the storage shelves in the garage below. She has kept every single Christmas ornament ever acquired.

She rifles through the box at her feet. “Unless you threw it…” She begins but she gulps the sentence, not willing to give him a way out of their disagreement. She has kept her ornaments safe from every single one of Evan’s “spring-cleanings”.

At seventy-six and seventy-three, Lia and Evan are now like the two moons of Mars. They have found their orbit around the planet called their Life and they stick closely to it. Surveying it, watching it. Discussing its topography from a perfect height as they circle gently above.

There is a thump on the ceiling above Lia’s head. She smiles and shakes her fist. “Don’t stamp your feet, dear one, you can’t rattle me. I’m going to prove you wrong.”

Of course he does not answer. This is an established game. One of many the moons have discovered, useful ways to keep a careful watch on Life. Because Life has a way of shifting suddenly, turning into the darkness for a moment of obscurity. Blurred details.

Fifteen minutes later, maybe more, she emerges from the garage, a cobweb on her sleeve, dusty fingers clasped triumphantly around a delicate angel. It is not made of hair, but gold silk cords. She admits it has a certain 1970s handicraft look to it, but it is not gaudy. Or kitsch. Well, it’s certainly kitsch, Lia knows this; but Christmas cannot be otherwise.

“See,” she says, “I win. I always win. When will you…”

But Evan is no longer in his chair at the breakfast table. He is on the floor. His piece of toast has fallen with him and there is jam on his collar and in his thick white hair. Raspberry jam that looks like blood.

There is no blood. This has been the most peaceful of deaths. For Evan.

For Lia this is chaos. At first she does not understand the scene before her. She is sharp for someone of her age, but the impossibility of Evan joking with her a moment ago and now lying still on the kitchen floor creates a disconnect too broad for Lia to cross in a few easy seconds. This is an ordinary morning. Nothing extraordinary must happen on an otherwise ordinary day.

“This isn’t funny, dear.” But she knows this is not a joke. His stillness is the kind of stillness they have been warned about for the last few years. They are nearly elderly, many people—doctors, friends, their daughters especially—tell them this. So what has happened is not extraordinary at all.

Lia does not touch him right away. How can she? This is no longer Evan, and although her mind does not yet accept this, her body already understands.

But she needs to be sure. She takes his hand. There is something too taut about the muscles in the palm of his hand. She presses on them, bullying them, raging at them. She passes a gentle hand across his forehead. Evan.

No longer Evan.

How long was she in the basement? Why does she always have to win?

Back down the stairs she must go, slowly now, slowly, hold the hand rail. You have suffered a shock, Lia, take it carefully. Find the garage door opener, open the garage. Greet the angry sunlight, cross the untidy garden, find a neighbor.

Lia has left a medical alert device back inside the house, in the kitchen drawer, between a roll of masking tape and an expired coupon for hot chocolate, but she did not think to push it. This is not a medical emergency. This is her Life. There is no button.

Halfway across the street, she realizes she has left Evan alone. On the floor. She remembers her oldest daughter insisting on the medical alert. How she did not want to ‘impose’ on her parents, but she wanted them to be safe. Just in case, she said.

In case I win, Lia thinks.

She swivels to return to Evan and trips, twisting her ankle. Several minutes later, Mr. Dougherty comes out of his house because there is so much noise in the street. He wonders how this old woman still has such a voice. Lia is sitting on the curb, holding her ankle.

“He’s inside!” she says when she sees him.

“What’s that?” Mr. Dougherty is deaf.

“Evan!” she yells, and this time Mr. Dougherty understands. He has been orbiting his Life alone for some time now.

An ambulance arrives. Lia insists someone help her back inside her house. People in uniforms with careful voices and steady gazes take charge of the situation. A man walks into her home and comes out again much too quickly.

“Are you even trying? He needs your help!”

But the rush and panic are for her. She is injured. They want to take her to the hospital.

“You’ll need x-rays, ma’am.”

She fights them. She wants to stay with her husband. She tries to walk back inside the house but they hold her in the front yard, they make her sit down again, run their thick fingers along her swollen ankle and wrap it tightly. All these minutes, fussing over her, while Evan lies alone in the kitchen. When she cries, finally, one of the men, the younger one, takes pity on her and helps her back to Evan.

They’ve put him on some kind of a board, strapped his body for easy carrying. She kneels beside him and fumbles for a hand. What have they done with his hands? Someone is helping her to her feet again. Someone hands her a cell phone and gently tells her to call a family member.

But she cannot dial a single number, because which of her twin daughters should hear the news first? The kitchen stills, waiting for her. She presses buttons at random on the phone. She pictures her daughters—one at work in the city, the other in a university office—she closes the phone and returns it to the first outstretched hand. Someone will do this for her, someone who doesn’t know Evan, someone who feels nothing at the extraordinary event of this morning in May. But not Lia. Our Lia’s Life has cracked this morning and she does not have enough love for either of her daughters at this moment to give them the news.

 

‘Winning’ is an excerpt from Michelle Bailat-Jones’ novella-in-progress, Hush. Michelle is a reviews editor for Necessary Fiction and can also be found engaging with books at Pieces.

A Reading List

Recently, I compiled a list of reading for a very high level ESL student of mine. I thought I’d share it here – in part in case I lose it, in part because that student has now left, and I’d like to mark that in some way. It’ll be some time before I get to have literary discussions as part of my job.

 

I wanted to provide a list that would challenge. That would demonstrate various Englishes, from 19th century works to the modern day, from Scottish English, to African American dialect, to Nadsat. That I had read before and so could mark their varying levels of difficulty – in terms of vocabulary and structure and so on. That would be of interest to that particular student, I hope. The selections are unashamedly idiosyncratic. They are books that question and probe and twist, or simply tell a story. Some are serious, some fluffier, some influential, some brand new.

 

It is my wish that at least some of them will open up the world for this student a fraction, a crack. That the words will not only be new and add knowledge, but will charm and fire. What would you, personally, have suggested to someone new to literature in English?

 

Here’s what I passed on:

 

The Annotated Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (notes by Alfred Appel)

Textually rich, lyrical and fanciful in imagery. Challenging subject matter (in the disturbing sense – and in the sense that the narrator is openly unreliable)

Difficulty rating: Tricky – though the rhythm of the sentences should help you through them, and the notes will explain any obscure references.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Also lyrical – and short! The American Dream in the jazz age (1920s-30s) is one big party. Or is it? The end paragraph is one of the most famous in American literature.

Difficulty rating: Moderate, but short, did I mention it’s short? Taught in American High Schools.

Possession, A.S. Byatt

A very literary mystery – Roland is a loser academic living in a flat that smells of cat pee, but studying in the library one day, he discovers a previously unknown poem by a famous 19^th century figure. He pairs up with Maud Bailey to solve the mystery and evade a covetous American memorabilia collector. Meanwhile, in the 19^th century the poets Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte embark on passionate love affair which will have lasting effects on the present day. Far and away not as trashy as it sounds.

Difficulty rating:  This is an intellectually playful book, utilising poetry, letters and diary entries alongside 3^rd person narration. A nice mash of contemporary (80s) language and 19^th century conversational and written styles.  Longish. So moderate-to-difficult

One D.O.A., One on the Way, Mary Robison

Eve is married to Adam, a Southern gent with an identical twin. Eve may or may not be sleeping with the identical twin, who can really tell. Amongst the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, the story plays out. Witty and dark and bourbon-soaked.

Difficulty Rating: The minimalist prose style makes this one of the easier books on the list.

Beloved, Toni Morrison

A slave woman in the Southern United states is on the run with her children when she is cornered. Loath to see her children taken from her, she commits an act so brutal it will split the world from its reality. Brutal and lyrical, based partially on a true story. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature for this.

Difficulty rating: Pretty high, using African-American dialect in dialogue, but the sentences are shorter for the most part, which should make it a little easier going.

The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger

A charming love story between a  girl/young woman and a handsome librarian afflicted with a disease that forces him to jump naked through his own timeline.

Difficulty level: Easy (but contemporary)

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

A ferocious American preacher takes his family on a mission to the Congo. Told by the five women who surround him and must endure his fervour and madness and failures. A long but beautiful book.

Difficulty level: Depends which voice you are reading.

Glaciers, Alexis M Smith

Short, neat and moving – a story of memory, new love, and the landscapes of Pacific North Western United States.

Difficulty level – easier, very contemporary. Contains some of the most beautiful sentences I have ever read.

Green Girl, Kate Zambreno

A neurotic American girl with a fragile sense of self drifts and fails her way through her life in London. Every chapter begins with an interesting quote which will then be explored in some way. If you’d like to read ‘literature of the girl’ then read this. Some brutal scenes. Very contemporary.

Difficulty level: the quotes bump it up a little, but it’s crisp and clear.

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogg

The book that Fight Club might have been inspired by. A young religious man meets a person he believes to be Peter the Great and embarks on a series of crimes at his new friend’s suggestion. But why has nobody seen this friend of his?

Difficulty: old fashioned (18^th-19^th century writing style) but it’s a short book

House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Demented novel/movie transcript/not all that scary horror story/breakdown.

Difficulty level: how good are you at reading upside down?

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

A difficult childhood surrounded by religious hypocrites  and coldness does nothing to damage Jane’s strength of character. Which is good at because Jane’s first job as a governess at a draughty mansion, the glowering Mr Rochester will be testing that to the extreme.  A love story about God and the moors and being a poor woman in a rich man’s house.

Difficulty level: 19^th century – so long convoluted sentences. But there is a movie to help clarify things.

Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

The ‘prequel’ to Jane Eyre. But in fact a darker beast altogether. The action takes place on Jamaica just after the emancipation of the slaves – the land where Rochester was sent to make his fortune. It’s all chaos and faded fortune and steamy heat and colonialism and desire. Antoinette Causeway is brought up in a similarly lonely way to Jane, but her outlook on life is decidedly more fatalistic.

Difficulty level: straightforward, punchy sentences make this quite an easy one. Also short. But read after you’ve at least seen the movie of Jane Eyre.

1984, George Orwell

Because you must, if you like novels of ideas.

Difficulty level: easier than…

 

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

A sample: “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. […] The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence.”

Difficulty level: (see above) But you’ll be ahead with the Russian bits. There is also a film version.

Zazen, Vanessa Veselka

America is about to be torn apart, but what to do until then? Make tofu scramble and do yoga and protest something.

A sample:  “War A is going well and no longer a threat, small and mature. Like a Bonsai. War B is in full flower. Its thin green shoots reaching across the ocean floor like fibre optic cable. The TVs are on all the time all the time now. The lights dim and everyone moves in amber. They flicker like votives. That’s what we will all be one day, insects in sap, strange jewels.”

Difficulty level : It’s contemporary and full of unusual sentences like the ones above. But gorgeous, and not as difficult as A Clockwork Orange!

Orlando, Virginia Woolf

An aristocratic man lives for 400 years, changing gender and having various adventures. The style of the language changes as the years pass – from an Elizabethan English style to the Modernism of the 20^th century. Actually a cheerful story.

Difficulty level: hard.

What is worth reading?

What is worth reading?

A book that expands the universe, or shrinks it?

A book that hints at what we have not explored?

Or at the demarcations of what a human is and what a human cannot be?

A book that leaks blood out its corners, and pain, and gorgeous words?

A book with each word precious like a golden pin?

A book that answers, brooking no question?

A book that defies gender?

A book that defies the market?

A book that wants to seed your mind?

A book that thinks it knows your mind to seed it?

A book that is funny, just that.

A book that is cruel but honest and unflinchingly so?

A book that is trying?

A book that has failed better?

A book by a humble man?

A book by a woman who maps whole continental socio political shifts?

A book of furious ecstasy which will be read by 100 people?

A book of stolid depthless good-enough consistency which will be read by a million?

A book with a message?

A book studiously without a message?

A book too in love with language to care if there is a message, though look long enough there might be?

A book with weather inside?

A book that will love you back?

 

With a debt to ‘What is worth knowing?’ by Sujata Bhatt.

 

You are here

It’s been a long time. Finally, internet. Finally all of the stresses D and I have been working through seem to be drawing to a close (or will, in the near future). Nothing to do with writing, so I won’t go into them here, just to say that last night D woke me up to tell me I had been grinding my teeth loudly enough to wake him. I haven’t ground my teeth since I was an undergrad, I believe.

All day, those teeth have made their presence known, but the pain won’t last. It’s one of those tidy little aches that you know will fade. I had dreams of drowning, of trying to pull people up from a sunken cruise ship. My breath seemed to last forever deep down in the graded blue, kicking between the hulk and the debris. I still feel the pressure in my chest. Now I breathe out, for the first time in what feels like a month. It’s so simple, breath, and we make it so difficult, and surround it with language and critique. I’ll breathe out wonky. Take big gulps and hiss it out through those crumbly teeth.

Now, at any rate, I have the pictures of reindeer, so calm, or skittish but in an easy-to-soothe way.

This wee man is Domino, a yearling reindeer. A little feartie as our trek was one of his first, but amazingly responsive to soft murmurs, stopping on command and starting again. Reindeer were domesticated a long time ago, perhaps one of the first creatures we managed to tame. You can see from the picture below, with a fully grown deer next to a fully grown D, that they are smaller than us. We are stronger than them too. Not like horses at all. Not like dogs who are often lithe streaks of muscle (even the dainty lap dogs can drag you down the street). I lead Domino like a sheep, and even if at first they don’t agree with your choice of direction, they will concede to you. For the most part.

This is D with Puddock, looking out over the Black Loch at the top of the hill enclosure. Puddock (the Scots word for frog) is four or five, and was utterly calm. He didn’t care to walk behind D, and chose instead to walk beside him. A reindeer with a relative amount of spunk. He tried to eat everything in sight, and gave hearty burps whenever he could. Apparently this is something reindeer do a lot when relaxed. Otherwise they are nearly silent beasts. Bar the clicking in their heels as the older one walked – an evolutionary advantage on wickedly cold arctic winter days, when it would expend too much heat to call back to other members of the herd. They can follow the sound of clicking instead. A little disconcerting, yes.

And then there was Spike, another yearling, but born in Sweden, brought over to improve diversity of the herd’s genetics. He was on his first ever trek, and was led by one of the herders. He was prone to bucking when startled, and hit out at the guide with his hooves in protest at being tethered to the ground. It was time for a feed, but when the large pile of barley and brewer’s meal and lichen (favourite food of reindeer) he just looked at it. His nose wrinkled and he stood steadily, visibly sulking, for a good fifteen minutes until we turned our backs on him. Then he ate.

Reindeer have been in Scotland for only 60 years – since they were wiped out around seven or eight hundred years ago. They were reintroduced by a Sami man and his American wife. Mikel Utsi recognised in the Cairngorms a habitat that was similar to his native Sweden, so he petitioned to have a few brought over, and built on from there. The female reindeer roam free in the mountains with their young, while the males are kept mostly in a large hill enclosure, and are the only ones used for treks and at Christmas time, when they pull the sleigh for Santa all across the UK.

The centre is tucked off in the valley, and we drove up to the hill and walked for about fifteen minutes through the fertile slopes, until we hit the barren moorland. Despite the fact it was mid June, it was cold, around 8c, exposed, a little blustery. Mercifully dry. We were on the trek for around 4 hours, and at the end returned to the centre in order to see an orphaned infant being fed. Not fawn, apparently, not a pretty little roe deerling, but a fluffy, grunting calf. With the trek came a free adoption certificate, and we chose Domino: a mild, fretful animal, but a work in progress, a striver. Probably you can see why I went for him.

It’s been a while since the trek, and we’ve since received the bumper welcome pack with a certificate of adoption, a picture of a younger Domino with his mother Fly, and information about the celebrations for 60 years of reindeer in Scotland.

 

Looking back on it now, I see my birthday, when we went on the trek and drove around without plans or pressure, as a high point in the blur. I hope now for many more. What has kept me together, apart from D, friends and family, has been reading everything I could get my hands on. I’m a slow reader, but got through five books in two weeks, and there’s a review of one of them, The Bee-Loud Glade, by Steve Himmer, up on PANK, if you’re interested in something that focuses on nature, on the pace of living and the different forms of artifice.  I for one want to explore this idea of the self-in-the-landscape, the merging/effacement of the self into a being in a constant present. Or the impulse to resist this, to fire oneself up, to be ambitious in the different ways were are ambitious.

 

For the moment, that ragged, unshapely, urgent breathing in and out sits with the idea of the unartificial, the calm-which-is-beyond-me, and I am glad to be either and neither.