Book #44 - The Bluest Eye

As a child, I wished I had blue eyes. My brother had blue eyes, as did my father and (at the time) all of my paternal cousins. All the pretty songs were about blue eyed girls*. My understanding of hair and eye color was still hazy, so I felt a little cheated that I had somehow ended up with blonde hair and brown eyes, as most blonde girls I had ever known or heard about had blue eyes. Instead, I had eyes so brown they bordered on black that consistently photographed red anytime a flash came within ten feet of my face.

My desire for blue eyes, though, faded in time. The same cannot be said for the young girl at the center of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove. The story of Pecola is told by people around her, illustrating just how passive Pecola is in her own life. However, where my lusting after azure irises was basically rooted in vanity, Pecola's wish has it's roots in a culture that values light skin and eyes above all else. A culture that tells her that as long as she is dark, she will never be beautiful. A culture that is responsible for a series of events that lead to her being shamed, traumatized, and finally broken by the cruelty of the world. Pecola's downfall cannot be laid at the feet of any one individual (though her father comes close), but rather at the feet of American society.

Through telling the story of Pecola, Morrison tells the story of a wide swath of black individuals living in America post Depression. The tiny details that are given to even the most inconsequential characters in Pecola's life paint an extraordinary picture of incredibly ordinary lives, and Morrison's ability to alter the narrative voice to match the person narrating that particular part of the story is masterful. The Bluest Eye is a beautiful novel, though difficult to read at times.

*Fun Fact: By the time we reach adulthood most brown eyed girls hate the song "Brown Eyed Girl".

Mid-Week Update

I'm half way through the camp I'm running this week and so far things are going well. None of the kids have been seriously injured, and none of the instructors have throttled a child. Win! Also, it looks like we might actually get a show moving and playing by the end of the week. Whether or not it's the exact show I've written remains to be seen.

However, and I put this out there to any parents who read this blog; if your child has a medical condition I understand that it's important to you that they have a normal childhood and be treated like any other child. Really, I do. But, if you are leaving your child in the care of others who are running a camp that requires physical activity, please appraise us of the medical condition prior to a conversation like the following taking place, making all of us look like assholes:

Instructor: Listen, I'll let it slide for today, but tomorrow I'm gonna need you to leave that bracelet at home. It gets in the way of playing.
Child: I have to wear it all the time. It's a medic alert bracelet.
Instructor: Wait, what?
Child: I have a pacemaker
Instructor: *makes self do lap in shame*

Book #43 - Thirteen Albatrosses (Or Falling Off The Mountain)

There are many things about Donald Harington's Thirteen Albatrosses (Or Falling Off The Mountain) that I don't like. The author himself is a character in the novel, there are characters who are aware that they are in a novel and are knowledgeable about events from other chapters that were narrated from the point of view of other characters, and about 80% of the way through the book there is an absolutely ridiculous and nearly pointless turn of events that serves, as best I can tell, no real purpose in furthering the plot but only serves as a method of tying the setting into another book by Harington, which a character in this novel reads. Seriously. Surprisingly, despite all this, I don't hare this book.

Thirteen Albatrosses tells the story of Vernon Ingledew, a genuine Ozarks bred genius and autodidact who decides that the best way to learn about politics (as he's working his way through the alphabet of knowledge and has gotten to P) would be to run for governor of Arkansas. Some things stand in Vernon Ingledew's way, such as the fact that he never went to college, never held public office, is not married but lives in sin with his first cousin, does not believe in God, is so shy of women that he can't actually look one in the face while talking to her, and so on. These reasons total 13 and are the Albatrosses that the title refers to. Despite this, Vernon convinces some of the best and brightest political minds to come work for him, and launches a campaign for governor.

Harington's writing can be pokey at times, and the parts of the book that don't directly concern Vernon and his campaign have a tendency to drag. Similarly, there are so many characters in the novel (7 campaign advisers, not to mention Vernon's partner Jelena, and some family friends) that some characters end up pushed to the side and as a result come across as two dimensional, or as being present more to move the plot forward than to function as their own person. This is particularly true of a character introduced midway through the novel in a vignette wherein she actually learns of the novel's events through an e-mail communication with the author Harington himself, Juliana Heartstays. Both she and her friend Big Ben seem more as foils for the other characters or as a way to create certain tensions within the context of the story than fully developed characters in their own right. Occasionally, even the well known characters act against their established personalities and that is incredibly frustrating.

In addition to these issues, Harington's work is literally self referential. He uses the setting of Stay More, Arkansas in all of his work and he does not let you forget is as other characters keep referencing characters or events that take place in other Harington novels. I've only read one other of his novels, and I found the constant references to other books distracting at best.

However, as I said, I kind of enjoyed this book. Harington does engage the reader in Ingledew's campaign, and you'll keep reading just to find out how the campaign goes. And I now do want to read some of Harington's novels that take place in Stay More, if only to further my understanding of just what the hell was going on in Thirteen Albatrosses (Or Falling Off The Mountain).*

*For those who want to know, the "Falling Off The Mountain" appears to come from a saying that one character relates to another during the story. "If you're falling off the mountain and you have a choice between screaming or flapping your arms, flap your arms first because you can always go back to screaming." This seems to be the idea behind the majority of the novel, that Vernon and his campaign managers are busy flapping their arms.

Who's Awesome?

I'm awesome.

So, with that whole list of stuff I published earlier, what did I dedicate about 90 minutes worth of time to tonight?


I made myself pajama pants out of fabric with a repeating pattern of shirtless cowboys.

Yup.

I have excellent time management skills.

Countdowns

Big events coming up

1. First day of camp I'm running - 3 days
2. Last day at Job #2 - 8 days
3. Trip to Boston - 12 days
4. Last day at Job #3 - 17 days
5. Move to Miami - 18 days

Things I need to do before those events:

1. Finish arranging music, write marching charts (called "drill")
2. Show up at work and not strangle people who demonstrate breathtaking rudeness
3. Find clothes to take to Boston, possibly get some shoes fixed too. Already bought new bathing suit.
4. Choreograph a dance routine, set up some guidelines for the gap between when I leave and when the other instructor gets back, solidify costumes and get paid, hopefully.
5. Pack up almost all my clothes, lots of books, figure out what gaping holes involving furniture I still have, look into purchasing said furniture but remember that I'm poor, milk my parents for every single scrap of supplies or food that I possibly can before going fully independent.

As a side note to the moving issues, For my room in the house I'm moving into I was given the choice between not having a closet in my bedroom, or having a closet in my bedroom and paying $50 more a month in rent. So, for the next year, I will not have a closet, but will purchase a $20 clothes rack from Ikea and probably use the $580 in "extra" money I'll have to, you know, eat. Seriously, what kind of choice is that?

Break

I'd be saying that today is the first day is almost a week I'll get to do nothing but sit around and be totally un-useful or productive, but that would be a lie. Today I get to have a meeting with my boss at job #3, and compose music and meet with parents for tangential side job #3.5, both of which are sort of related to job #1. I'd draw a flow chart, but that'd be too close to actual work and, as you can see, I've already got a fair share of that going on.

Anyway, this is more an update to explain where I've been than anything else. I am SUPER cranky today for some reason, even though I slept way late and haven't gotten out of my pajamas yet. I'm just having one of those days when everyone and everything seems to annoy me far more than they would normally. My brother is annoying me, my grandmother is annoying me, the dogs are annoying me, my inability to type well for some reason is REALLY annoying me. Be glad you're not around me, because I'm currently snapping and just about everyone who's trying to talk to me for no good reason. Which I then feel bad about, but can't seem to help doing, or accurately explain why it's happening.

Blah.

Shirtless Cowboys

Friends and Gentlepeople of the interwebs; have you recently felt a lack in your life? A desire for something… more? Particularly in your wardrobe or home decor? Are your curtains lacking life? Are your pajama pants putting you to sleep? Are you in the market for a new Hawaiian shirt that really says "I am confident in myself, and damn those of you who would second guess me!".

Today is your lucky day.

I found this fabric at work today. We have 8 yards of it. I doubt seriously that anyone else will ever buy this fabric for any reason ever, so tell me what you want (if you want something out of it) and I'll tell you if I can make it and/or how much it would be to make it.

Please, make my day. Let me buy the whole bolt of this and make my boss think I'm some kind of massive perv right before I move. It will be so much fun for me.