Monthly Archives: April 2008

Dream: The drive down Amsdell Road

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What a sad dream, and yet I didn’t believe any of it was actually happening.

I was somewhere public, with people from the past, and was so despondent that I could not stop crying. The more I cried, the less anyone noticed me or my pain, which left me crying all the harder.

I saw people getting ready for a big social event, including a boy I’d known in college. He was a quadriplegic now, but even years later he could not be bothered with me.

Another boy I had known had come along in the back of a pickup truck. He scarcely knew me then or remembers me now, but in the dream I understood from him, without words or even looks, that I was to get in. Wordlessly, my high school girlfriends made him promise that he would return me in time for the big party. One of them began to fuss over me, dabbing my mouth, face, and even privates with perfume, because I supposedly had the date of my life for the party, but I knew better than to hope, and I drove her off.

The truck ended up on Amsdell Road. The boy, facing me without looking at or even seeming to notice me, was singing in a bland, flat tone into something that resembled a WWII army field telephone. Briefly I wondered if it might be a portable karaoke machine. I didn’t recognize anything he sang and could not follow the words.

Although he ignored me, I had a sense that he was waiting me out, that I was supposed to tell him why I was so heartbroken. I couldn’t, nor could I tell myself.

I spotted a clump of trees along the left side of the road, a sight that made my heart hurt. On the right side someone was putting out copper goods so densely that the road had become almost too narrow to be passable. Ugliness was all around, and I cried again at the ruin of one of the few pretty roads that had been left.

The boy continued to observe me without looking and to wait. I thought that maybe I should explain the perfume and the overzealous friends, and that I expected nothing like that. I didn’t.

I wondered if he was ever going to bring me back. Even as he sang almost tunelessly and continued to ignore me, I almost didn’t want him to. I thought he might be taking me to a far better place, as ugly as the journey might seem.

I feel the earth move

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I’ve missed the excitement again.

I don’t remember everything that I dreamed about, although it involved a man with a fetish for three-breasted women. (Could I attribute this to a dinner of cottage cheese with garlic-and-herbs seasoning?)

After the dream, which was more complicated than this one detail I remember, I was restless. For an hour or more, I could not return to sleep, and then I was still semi-conscious. I woke up at 5 o’clock, set a vintage timer for an hour, and somehow without sleeping slept through its long mechanical bell ring.

I never felt the 5.2 earthquake. I didn’t even know about it until I was perusing the Chicago Tribune’s Daywatch at work.

A bit of shaking might explain why Hodge, who usually runs from me in the morning, was unsure and clingy today.

Although I didn’t feel the ‘quake, for some reason I feel vaguely disturbed and unsettled. And don’t have anything to cling to.

Dream: My mountain, my story

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I was in a mountainous region such as Alaska. The snow had melted and left behind sedimentary rock, laid out in smooth, even layers of varying shades of brown, like stripes. I came in to tell a group (church, perhaps), but went out again with a vague idea that I could not ascend to the top (although the side was sheer) or find fossils of the ancient seas.

I walked into a college classroom, where everyone was excited because one of my stories had been published in a magazine. When we leafed through it repeatedly, none of us could find it. I did spot a recipe with my name, but did not recognize it. Then I saw the name “Diane” with a different last name; after some puzzlement, I figured out that she was the artist behind the full-page illustration. My name and story were on the right-hand page. I didn’t know the story, nor did I read it. The magazine appeared to have a gardening/housekeeping theme.

I was starting to wonder what the class was about and why I was in it. Again I had the sensation of, “Haven’t I had enough of this type of education?”

At home, which looked more like a large chemistry lab, I was getting ready to demonstrate something to a group that had not yet arrived, but water was coming out of various parts of the faucet. I called a maintenance man, who wasn’t busy and also wasn’t concerned about the waste of so much water. “I’ll get to it, maybe tomorrow, maybe, if there’s not a gas leak or anything like that,” he said. I could not understand his nonchalance.

In the meantime, I was alone.

"If nominated, I won’t have a clue"

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Thank you to my communications acquaintances at Shades of Gray for supporting my nomination as Secretary of Blasting Education to Smithereens and Reforming It, based on my questions:

But if we’re going to start over, here’s the fundamental question:

What is the purpose of education?

Seriously.

Is it to create a literate, knowledgeable democracy informed enough to make good decisions and to understand the complicated ethical, technological, etc., questions of modern times?

Is it to churn out corporate worker bees who buzz around trying to make the most money for the least possible effort?

Is it to get our precious child that incredibly cushy, high-paying job that we can brag to all of our friends about, even if it’s not making him or her very happy?

Is it to encourage great minds to be great (doing research, philosophizing, governing, curing, etc.), and adequate minds to contribute what they can to society?

What is it? Who decides?

Of course, it’s easy to come up with the questions (“Why is the sky blue?” “What makes the sun shine?” “Why do apples fall out of trees to the earth?”). Answering them is the trickier part.

I guess I’ve got some work to do before I can accept my theoretical nomination in good conscience.

Dream: Treetop road

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With other people, I was searching the house of a dangerous man when we heard him return. The others escaped, but I had an idea that I could stay behind and observe him without his awareness. I sat in a chair, sure that I would be unobserved.

He saw me the moment he walked in — and behaved as though it were normal for me to be there.

I did not know what to do; I did not know his name. I began to try to catch a cat that I had seen, an activity that he seemed to find unexceptional. I began to wonder who I was to him.

Several times I climbed a ladder that ended in an upside-down V nailed to a rafter and commented that it seemed difficult and rickety, possibly to hide my inability to get off the ladder onto the rafter. The upside-down V was beyond my physical ability to master.

Now I was outside in what I thought to be my old backyard at home, with a single old tree in it. The actual yard had had no trees, but I wondered what had happened to the rest of them as if it had.

My dad came along and offered to drive me. We did not follow a surface road, but a miniature one made of wood that wound through the treetops. It seemed narrower than the wheel base of our van, which made me nervous. At one point, it rose at a 90-degree angle, so that it was like driving up a dry waterfall from the base. At another point, the road split off into an upper and a lower branch. The latter was low and close, but we took it anyway. My dad executed all these moves adroitly, but I was petrified from fear.

There was a house near the exit of the estate, and a crane was swinging another one into place across from it. I took these to be the homes of relatives and did not know why they should clutter our pristine grounds.

Dad and I were riding a train between the cars, but it did not appear to be especially dangerous. It may have been a city or commuter train. It wasn’t safe, however, and I knew the journey was to be a long one, so I moved inside to find a place. The authorities captured my dad and as I was trying to say they had to be gentle with him because of his advanced age, I saw them shove him a bit, then debate that they should not be rough with him because of his age.

I do not know our destination.

Today’s experiment: A use for stale Peeps

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Today’s experiment is one that I think Dr. Forrester would be proud of. I found some stale Peeps (what was I thinking when I acquired them?) and, being my father’s daughter, didn’t want to waste them. I made a cup of Equal Exchange hot cocoa and used a Peep as a large marshmallow. A Peep is a large marshmallow, so all is well with the world if not with the poor boiled Peeps.

Book review: The Other Boleyn Girl

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The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc./Touchstone, 2003. 672 pages.

Today there are still jokes about how Anne Boleyn lost her head, but life as a wife of Henry VIII was no laughing matter. In The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory gives a fictional account of Henry’s most famous queen from the perspective of her sister, Mary. Gregory tries to capture a sisterly dynamic understandable to contemporary readers. Anne and Mary are opposites in appearance and temperament; loyal to one another out of obligation, not love; and, we are told, lifelong rivals. Oddly, that rivalry never quite materializes here other than in spiteful and venomous words and feelings. While Anne seethes with ambition and resentment, Mary is too passive a personality to be a match for Anne, nor does she try to be. As portrayed, the conflict between the sisters is more petty than powerful.

Gregory’s choice for Mary to serve as narrator, as though it were her memoir, detracts from the sense of history. A Tudor-era aristocrat like Mary does not seem likely to set her story down in such detail after the events have passed. It might have been more effective to frame the story as a researcher’s discovery of Mary’s journals and letters. When handled adroitly, this type of framing device can make the characters and story more immediate and less obviously fictional. Another alternative would have been the omniscient third person, which might have been more convincing. As it is, I could not suspend my disbelief in Mary’s voice, with its anachronistic nuances and sensibilities. She sounds more like a modern author than a 16th-century woman remembering the recent and difficult past.

Therein lies another problem — Mary never explains why she wrote all of this down, why she delves into such detail, or who she expects the reader to be. It might have made more sense if she had said she wanted her legacy to be the true story of her and her family’s role in Anne’s rise and fall, that she wanted her own name to be remembered, or that she was writing for her children and Anne’s daughter, the Princess Elizabeth. We never know her purpose, which is strange because we learn from her that the Boleyn family does nothing without a reason. Given how poorly Mary’s memories reflect on all the Boleyns and Howards, including herself, it become even more of a mystery why Gregory chose this format.

The Other Boleyn Girl draws readers in the same way that 1980s night-time dramas drew in viewers. Never particular about morals and influenced by time and events, Anne becomes as ruthless and desperate for power as any soap villainess, with her family’s encouragement and support. Mary, once favored by king and family, is tossed aside when she proves to lack the will and desire to usurp the queen’s place. She chooses her own path, never losing sight of her rivalry with Anne and never envious of Anne’s sacrifices and sufferings.

Historical inaccuracies aside, including details about Mary and her children, Gregory fails to capture the larger world in which the Boleyn drama was enacted. She refers to France and Spain and their rulers, and the pope, but the complexity of the world outside Henry VIII’s court and its politics is relegated to the background, brought forward in snippets only as needed. Henry himself is portrayed as hunting, gaming, and dancing from morning until night, with only an occasional concern for the kingdom’s business or for the intrigues of his enemies and allies. The world here seems narrow and confined because it is only the world Mary sees — Mary, the other Boleyn girl who pretends to remain naive and who tries to focus on her own life, only to be drawn again and again into Anne’s drama.

Gregory tries to use the story of the Boleyn girls to illustrate women’s issues during the 16th century. As Mary notes, women are only pawns in the marriage game, played to achieve position, power, and wealth. It’s clear, however, that men who lack power are pawns as well; George Boleyn and Henry Percy are forced into miserable marriages. The lesson here is less about the vulnerability of women to the whims of men than about how people of both gender were played for power.

Despite Gregory’s comments about the charges against the Boleyns, found in the book’s end matter, Mary witnesses (and, significantly, remembers in detail) enough clues to know whether Anne and George were guilty of the crimes for which they were beheaded. This is disappointing, because Gregory’s hints, if not her stance of ambiguity, ignore the logic and the politics behind the charges.

Even at the end, Gregory misses an opportunity. Mary does not hear Anne’s last words and does not include them in her work. This makes no sense, as they were recorded and can be read today. Gregory fails to weave in the available documented details that would have added real-life drama and interest to the story. Why would Mary not reflect on the final message of “the other Boleyn girl,” given her inside knowledge of Anne and her willingness to write about her and the other Boleyns?

With its compelling historical setting, The Other Boleyn Girl had the potential to be an engaging if inadequate and flawed historical fiction. Don’t rely on it, as I have heard some do, for your knowledge and understanding of Henry VIII, his court, or the Boleyns.

12 April 2008
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Magic: From faune to forest

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One day when I was in junior high school, Mr. Albert played Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune by Claude Debussy. When he announced his selection to the class, which had been raised on Frank Zappa and Jethro Tull, I exclaimed involuntarily, “Oh, I love that piece!”

I paid for this outburst for years; no bully who had witnessed it could let me forget it. I’m not sure if the lesson was to keep one’s feelings or one’s weird music preferences to oneself, or both. It may have been after this that one of my classmates embedded chewing gum in my tangled locks.

What business did I have with Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, anyway? I was quite possibly the only student in the school who had ever heard it, let alone of it.

My outburst may have been the result of emotional stupidity (the opposite of the famous emotional intelligence that successful people are blessed with), but appreciation for Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune came from a love of reading. The Girl Who Ran Away by Joan Robinson was the culprit. In the story, an English girl sent to live with an aunt instead makes shift to live in a nearby copse for the summer — thus avoiding the unpleasantness of older relatives while being close enough to feel secure.

One day, Charlie hears a flute playing a tune that climbs the scale, then descends — Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Entranced, she finds the musician, a young man staying in a caravan (trailer) in the woods, and they become friends. He is a young adult, and she is still a child, but their meeting obliquely reveals the possibilities of the adult world of romance. When I hear Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, emotionally I am transported to a late summer’s day in the depth of still, sun-dappled woods, a misfit, outcast child wanderer meeting a man, that is, a man thought of as a man, for the first time. It’s beautiful, wistful, and melancholy, a point in time that makes me forget the past and yearn to know the future.

Perhaps the bullies were right to mock me. If you have had the patience to read this far, though, I think you are not one of them.

As a child, I directed my limited book budget primarily to two types of books: horse stories and mysteries (you can imagine my feelings if the mystery involved a horse).

A great story, like The Island Stallion (Walter Farley), combines a noble equine enigma with mystery of place — an isolated, lost world known only to the horses and to the boy protagonists. The concept of a place that is remote and unknown to man haunts me. In a recurring dream, I take a walk in the tiny woods next to the trailer park. Just beyond the thicket behind our yard, I suddenly see an unlimited vista of trees, ravines, and meadows, unseen and untouched by humans. In the dream I am surprised yet joyous, wondering how I could have not known of such a marvel and how long I could hold onto the incredible sense of euphoria and magic before it disappears. Did Lewis and Clark ever have a moment when they wondered if the land was infinite, infinitely lovely, and lonely?

The island stallion is hidden, and so is The Mystery of the Great Swamp (Marjorie Zapf). As Jeb works his way into the seemingly endless Okefenokee, I am lost with him, hearing only the hush of the great wetland punctuated only by animal calls, the movement of the trees, and the slithering of snakes into the water. In this dangerous world of primordial beauty, it’s not surprising that a great secret dwells undiscovered. I wish it could have remained unknown.

I believed in the island stallion. I believed in the mystery of the great swamp. I may not have believed in them literally, but I believed that such things were still possible. When I stopped believing in the possibility, the best part of the child’s imaginative spirit died in me, I think.

Some of my favorite books proved to be straightforward mysteries, but there was always something special that appealed to me. In Mystery by Moonlight (Mary C. Jane), the protagonist discovers a comfortable little shed where she can be by herself to think and to write. Jane’s description of this place, amidst autumn leaves and under a moonlit sky, made me long for something just like it. The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost (Phyllis A. Whitney) and Mystery in the Pirate Oak (Helen Fuller Orton) also create places that were so outside my limited experience that, while ordinary enough to most children, they seemed mystical to me. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) was another magical place, and I felt profound empathy for the three lonely children who discover its restorative powers. Even today, I could wish to find such a place, too — and a soul mate who appreciates it as much as I do.

While Avonlea is a wonderful place in Anne of Green Gables (Lucy Maud Montgomery), I saw myself in the intelligent, imaginative, wistful, stubborn, and misfit Anne. Unlike me, Anne gives free rein to her dreams. Unlike me, Anne is blessed with more than one kindred spirit she can trust — she wins over even her opposite, Mrs. Lynde. When people look at me, I wish they could see and appreciate those qualities that make Anne so loved. And I wish I could show those qualities, and I wish I could trust.

The final three books are mysteries, but with a clear, understated, haunting element of magic. In The Magic Tunnel (Catherine D. Emerson), an ordinary mass transit ride ends in an extraordinary place — the New Amsterdam of Peter Stuyvesant. How wonderful life would be if, at least once in a while, an ordinary trip could turn into such an adventure. The vividness of the encounter piqued my interest in history, too.

Today’s plastic snowstorms are no more than a part of the household bric-a-brac, but The Snowstorm (also known as The Snow Ghosts) by Beryl Netherclift takes us back to an eerie, silent, snow-filled world of Victorian children who seem to be trying to lead us to something important.

The Secret Pencil (Patricia Ward) appears to be ordinary enough when Anna, on vacation with her family in Wales, finds it, but then it starts to write enigmatic messages when the mood strikes it. It’s up to Anna to determine what they mean.

I have not re-read any of these stories for many years. In a way, they all end sadly. The mystery is solved, and all that is left is a return to everyday life and a memory. Even Anne, with so much promise, is dimmed by the cares and constraints of adulthood until she becomes almost dull. The snow ghosts disappear, and the snowstorm returns to being a decorative object. The pencil, once communicative, has nothing left to say, and no amount of wishing will animate it again.

I have changed, too. I’m an adult, with too many years of having the real world, with its practicalities, prevarications, and needs, beaten into me, and I fear that I might not be able to read these stories with the marvelous childlike sensitivity, feeling, and wonder that has been bludgeoned out of me over time.

Magic, literal or emotional, is ephemeral. A child like the one I once was is open to its possibilities, but there is always a sense that it will end, just as summer ended for Charley and the young man. Perhaps if we could cling to it (just as if I could hold onto my vision of the infinite, unspoiled wilderness), it would no longer cause the thrill of discovery and the longing ache of loss. Whether magic comes in a book, a dream, a vision, or a kindred spirit, love it while you can and remember that feeling as best you can because you may never experience it again. It is that possibility, that probability, that makes my longing and my melancholy stretch as far as my forest.

Book review: Sherlock Holmes and the Thistle of Scotland

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Sherlock Holmes and the Thistle of Scotland by L. B. (Pamela) Greenwood. New York: Pocket Books, 1990. 208 pages.

It’s been many years since I read the Sherlock Holmes canon, so I may not be the best qualified to judge the worthiness of Sherlock Holmes and the Thistle of Scotland as a pastiche. From what I recall, however, L. B. Greenwood has made a valiant if not entirely successful attempt to give new life to the great Victorian detective.

The outline of the mystery, which involves an impoverished earl, a contracted marriage, and a valuable historic gem, is pure Holmes. On the day of Lady Caroline’s wedding, her only dowry, the famous Thistle of Scotland amethyst, is stolen from her hair — in front of a room full of family, guests, and servants. The clues are odd and apparently unconnected: a white thread, deliberately damaged books, ugly trousers, uncurled hair, and the very elusiveness of the victim. Only Holmes could make sense of so many random clues.

Greenwood draws on as many Holmes canon elements as possible, including Mrs. Hudson, references to a previous case, Holmes in disguise, a train trip, ancillary puzzles, the Baker Street Irregulars, and (of course) a vainglorious Scotland Yard inspector. There are more Holmes elements than in any one Conan Doyle story — indeed, there are too many. Here, they serve as utilitarian devices that lack the evocative charm that Conan Doyle gave them. The brash young inspector is bland, without a distinctive personality. The train trip confirms a clue, but Holmes is not aboard to make chilling observations, such as how easily crime can be committed and hidden among the peaceful farmhouses of the countryside. The cabs roll along the streets of London, accompanied by mundane detail about how they are hailed and how expensive they are. Conan Doyle (who, I understand, was not familiar with London) evoked London’s foggy nights and murky underworld so vividly that the city feels tangible and real — so much so that people still look for 221B Baker Street. It’s as though Greenwood grasps the vocabulary, but not the grammar. The words and the physical references are correct, but the subtle nuances that would make Holmes, Watson, and the rest live again in the imagination are missing. Instead, they are flat characters in a somewhat efficient if not engaging plot.

Holmes himself lacks the sharp wit, intellectual arrogance, and emotional detachment that made Conan Doyle’s character enigmatic and compelling. He questions the servants too gently, he doesn’t brood in the way Watson always finds so disturbing, he fails to chide the doctor for his inability to make sense of all that he has observed, he offers no philosophical insights into human behavior, and he doesn’t express smug elation when he reveals what happened. Even worse, he doesn’t explain how he makes the enormous mental leap required to make sense of the clues, and focuses on how the clues fit his solution rather than on how they led him to it. There is no real evidence against the culprit other than possession (why the amethyst was not disposed of after the theft is not adequately explained, so even this makes little sense). The ending is rushed, and I felt cheated by the somewhat scattershot buildup to and presentation of the solution.

Sherlock Holmes and the Thistle of Scotland begins solidly enough, but Greenwood tries too hard to be clever and not hard enough to be evocative. The fate of Lady Caroline is more of a bow to 1980s feminist sensibilities than the logical culmination of the story as told. The broadest strokes are found throughout, but Conan Doyle’s subtle touches are missing. Most important, the great detective himself is missing. The man who says, “Five-and-three? Dear me! I foresee that this case is going to cost a fortune in cab fares,” is not the coldly incisive, yet strangely vulnerable Sherlock Holmes I remember, the genius who challenged Professor Moriarty and the misogynist who succumbed to the combined beauty, charm, and intellect of Irene Adler. The surface is here, roughly executed, but the substance is not.

8 April 2008
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf