The Urbane Homestead

The dignity of the ancient world

Vicki has some lovely pictures today of Greek vases. The last two pictures are of a shallow, two-handled bowl, called a kylix and used for drinking wine. These were used at symposia—dinner parties, such as the one made famous by Plato—where participants would often get very drunk indeed, which is why many kylixes are decorated with pictures of grapes, wine gods, and people throwing up. A popular game was to set up a target in the dining room and guests would sling the dregs of their wine at it from their drinking cups, and as you might imagine many cups were smashed to smithereens by accidentally getting slung too.

That was one of my favorite things I learned as an undergraduate classics major. I could relate! Not about smashing the cups, of course, because for our Friday night "Keg Club" parties we usually used those red plastic cups which one still sees strewn about student housing neighborhoods on football Saturdays. But certainly the heavy drinking accompanied by hours and hours of twaddling on about deep and important issues regarding life. Are we born merely to suffer and die? That sort of thing.

I read recently about an entrepreneur who found herself dissatisfied with small talk at parties—all about weather, work, and children. She missed, she said, those in-depth discussions of her college days. So she created a conversation crutch—a set of cards, displayed in a fancy plastic box suitable for the living room, which contain a selection of "conversation starters" such as "What historical sporting event would you most like to witness?" Okay, first of all, she must have gone to a different college than I did, because we sure didn't talk about that kind of thing at Earlham, home of the Hustlin' Quakers. But secondly, get this—her conversation card business projects $5 million in sales for this year! That's a lot of money to replicate drunken post-adolescent blathering.

Maybe the conversation is better when the beer cost more than $5 a case.

Aw, shucks

Thanks, Emily! The truth is that I find you inspirational, too, because of the clarity and straightforwardness of your interaction with the world.

Maytime

In the words of Toad, "Could it be May so soon?"

Covetousness

I really, really want this comic book.

Books, books, books

After we finished watching the first season of Rome, that big blowsy soap opera, I hunted up my copy of Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars, which is sort of on the history-lite side, to check on how accurate my impressions of the accuracy of the series were. Suetonius is fun and easy to read, and I have a special fondness for him, having read him in 1983 on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. (I was wearing a plain one-piece bathing suit, while drunken coeds in bikinis and frat boys in shorts with the hems of their underpants hanging out below pranced around me in the sand, and I felt very superior.)

Suetonius focuses quite a lot on the personality and reputation of his subjects, and as I read, it became clear that the characters in the series were largely based on Suetonius' descriptions of Julius and Augustus Caesar. This made me wonder about other sources, both primary and secondary, and one thing led to another and eventually I went looking for my college copy of Cary's classic History of Rome. I looked high (literally; our bookshelves go up to the ceiling) and low (also literally, as they go down to the floor) as well as in between. It wasn't until later that I remembered that my brother Karl is teaching a high school class on ancient history this year and I had "helped" him, first by talking his ear off about my favorite ancient things, and then by dropping off several grocery bags full of carefully selected books at his house when no one was home.

This led me to another mystery. The books at Karl's house are core members of my library. How, then, is it possible that there are no spaces in the bookshelves where those volumes belong? And, moreover, that there is not a single inch of shelf space remaining, and in fact books are stacked up in vertical piles in front of the books on the shelves, and also on the floor? All this is made yet more curious by the fact that since I took those books over to Karl's, many of my usual sources have been dry: Afterwords on Main Street is (tragically) gone, the bookshop of the Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library was closed for months under a cloud, and I missed AAUW's Book Sale Bag Day this year. Where could all these books have come from?

I don't know where they came from, but I know where they can go, at least the ones that might be of use: to the Camel Book Drive. This wonderful project brings books—on camelback—to the remote areas of northeastern Kenya.  They are looking for appropriate books in English or Somali. As it happens, I don't have a single boook in Somali, but I'm going to put together a box of English books and send it off, so take a look at their website and if you have anything they can use, bring it over to my house and I'll send it for you. Alternatively, they have an Amazon Wish List.

 

Snow

When our winter was weirdly warm, last month, it was delightful, but in that doomed sort of way, where you know that you are taking pleasure from something that is just wrong and you are bound to suffer from later. Like eating fried food. And indeed, I feel much more comfortable now that the weather is bitterly cold and I am miserable, and the natural order of February is restored. And although it’s horrible now, we did have that gorgeous ice storm to set the season off, followed by days of soft white snow drifting down like cottony confetti. So beautiful, and so peaceful.

It seemed like the right time to start reading Orhan Pamuk's Snow (In Turkish, Kar). Orhan Pamuk is one of those writers whom I can't read much of the time; to enjoy his work, I need a particular convergence of mind state, weather, other activities, and patience.  But what better time than in the snow to read Snow?

What attracted me to this book, other than the weather and my general turcophilia, was the fact that it takes place in the forlorn Anatolian city of Kars, over a few days of snowbound isolation, trapped in this city to the far eastern edge of Turkey.

I am not sure I understood the novel, but I truly did understand why Pamuk chose to set it in melancholy Kars. I have been to Kars. I went there because—and this is the only reason foreigners travel there—it is the closest town to the abandoned medieval city of Ani, a beautiful ruined place of crumbling Armenian churches, caravanserai, and mosques that was a stop on the fabled Silk Road.

Ani sits on a bluff, below which a chilly river winds, and across the river is another country—now Armenia, but when I was there, it was still the Soviet Union, and for that reason it was necessary to request police authorization to visit the site, and to be accompanied by a licensed guide. No cameras were permitted there, no eating, no staring across the river, and no pointing. My companion George and I stood quietly and admired the tiny stone churches, and surreptitiously glanced at the other side of the river, where soldiers with rifles kept an eye on us from wooden watchtowers. The fields on the other side were glowing green and the river rushed deep below in the gorge, and I felt I had come to the very end of the earth and there was no farther for me to go.

After visiting Ani, we planned to move on, but I fell ill with some sort of flu, and we were stuck there in our tiny hotel room for several more days. I had a fever and felt almost delirious. George searched the city and somehow managed to find the only jar of Vicks Vap-O-Rub in all of eastern Anatolia. I got better, and we left for Ararat, which seemed oddly staid after Kars in delerium.

I understood Kars, and I also understood the snow. Falling snow creates an otherworld that is intimate and restful, but that keeps us distant. Like great beauty, it is for looking at and admiring, but not for being. Snow insulates and tucks us in, and makes us feel safe inside; it exhilirates when we go out, but soon it grows dangerous; there is always the siren call of warm sleep, which in the soft snow leads to death.

I was once on a fishing ship at night in winter in Alaska. One night, I watched as snow fell gently into the tiny island of the ship, appearing suddenly in the light from the black sky in white drifting flakes, sparkling as it fell. Some of it chanced to rest on the railings and riggings of the ship. But most of it danced and drifted on into the black, black sea that surrounded the ship, and was melted in an instant.

A meme

A meme is a cultural artifact to copy. Online, it's all about me. Me, me. In Mod. Greek, "Mi! Mi!" is how little kids say "Noooo!"

A few days ago my friend Vicki tagged me to list five things you might not know about me from my blog. Now my friend Emily has tagged me, too, so, a sucker for peer pressure, I guess I have to give it a shot.

The thing is, I’ve been racking my brain and discovering that most of the things I’m sure you don’t know about me are either boring (e.g., the brand of toothpaste I prefer) or embarrassing (no example necessary, thank you). Or both.

So here's a miscellany; none of my friends will be surprised by all these things. But let me see if I can surprise you at least once, however well you may know me.

1. I went to a Quaker college. This was largely because I had gone to a Quaker boarding school for 10th grade, and made some good friends there who subsequently went on to Earlham College. I went back to public high school, and graduated  a year early, planning to spend a year before college going out to California with my boyfriend and hanging out. But because they were incredibly unfair and totally ungroovy, my parents refused to bankroll this venture. So, in August, having taken stock of my options and found them wanting, I called Earlham and asked if it was too late to apply. Three weeks later, there I was. Did I like it there? someone asked me recently. Well, I said, It was 1979, and no one liked anything. That's true, she said.

2. Given my education, you may be surprised to learn that I once took—and passed—all the exams for the CIA. I was living in D.C. with Jayne and looking for a job, and there, in the want ads of the Washington Post, was a big old half page photo of an ethical-looking young American person standing on a Budapest bridge, gazing thoughtfully across the Danube. I sent in my resume and got a call a few weeks later for an interview, during which I managed to learn exactly nothing about what a job with the CIA might actually entail. In the following weeks I was called in to take a series of standardized exams on history, politics, culture, and my sanity (in the form of a psych profile). When I was asked to fill out a thirty page security clearance form, listing every place I'd ever been and everyone I'd ever talked to, it was clear that the joke had run its course and I let it drop.

3. I've been about 5'6" since I was ten years old (except then I weighed 50 lb. less than I do now). I've never gotten over the belief that I am a Tall Person. Now that other people have caught up, that belief pretty much amounts to nothing more than Napoleon Syndrome, a disorder shared with a lot of small dogs and Ross Perot.

4. I think one of the greatest contributions Southeast Asia has made to the world is ketchup. Yum.

5. If I had to start a career all over again, I would choose cartography. Why? Why indeed.

 

Off the wagon

Sadly, I've recidivised. (It's a word now, so be quiet.) A couple of weeks ago Jayne was here, and we spent a few pleasant hours wandering around town, looking at what's changed and what's not, and one thing lead to another and, well, there we were in a used bookstore, picking through the shelves and recommending this or that, each trying to get the other person to buy more books for the vicarious thrill. Jayne is the dearest friend of my childhood, and we have many years of practice at this game. Through an effort of will, I managed to limit myself to only a couple of things—one of which turned out to have a snapshot of a mutual friend tucked inside, the book clearly having been sold to the bookstore by that friend's husband, an x-treme book guy. This both recommended the book, since he has excellent taste, and disrecommended it, because why was he getting rid of it?

Anyway.

Normally I would be quite content to buy books, and then let them molder—or rather, mellow, like a fine cheese—on a shelf for a while before I actually read one. But since I've started on my strict read-along-the-shelf policy (as described in my earlier post), I couldn't resist the bad-girl allure of veering off-road and speeding off cross country, cracking open one of these puppies. Woo-hoo! Livin' large! That very night, I read one of Jayne's recommendations, Emma Bull's 1987 fantasy classic War for the Oaks. She's right, it's a very good read, and I enjoyed it. Well written, fun setting, decent plot, etc. etc. But what I liked best was this:

Sometimes, she reflected, she dressed for courage, sometimes for success, and sometimes for the consolation of knowing that whatever else went wrong, at least she liked her clothes. This promised to be one of the latter times. She dug through her closet for the long pink pleated skirt she'd found at Tatters. She added her favorite lace blouse and a man's gray suit vest, pink socks, and white sneakers. "Better," she said to the mirror over the chest of drawers, and bounced a little to get the feel of the sneakers.

As I read this, the winds of time came roaring through my room. Memories of clothes gone by danced in my head like sugarplums: the hot pink Shaker knit sweater from Bennetton, the ankle boots with Mercury wings, the black satin high waisted pants. The black angora tuxedo vest. The purple Harris tweed menswear jacket with the sleeves rolled up. Skinny, skinny jeans with zippers at the ankles. Ah, youth. I wouldn't go back there for all the tea in China (and you know how much I love tea).

But of course I wouldn't have missed it for anything. The insecurity of not knowing myself, the rootlessness of not being willing to commit to a place, and the aimlessness of not being able to commit to a career—these were part of the joy of it. When I was young, I flung myself on the currents that circle the globe and spun around free. I danced until the bars closed, I talked all night with people whose language I didn't speak, and I watched the sun come up over the eastern edge of the world as I knew it. I tried a million different ways of being, and I never cared if they were really me or not. Sometimes it was painful and lonely, but sometimes, it was glorious.

Occasionally, these days, I play mah jongg in the evening with my friends. It's our insurance against old age; we practice now so we'll have it when we need it. When we play, we also drink wine and chat about our jobs, our children, our houses. One night the conversation got so interesting—I forget why—that we stayed much later than we meant to and drank quite a lot. We care deeply for each other as women like us do; we bring each other food in times of difficulty and look out for each other's children and pick up prescriptions when needed, but that night, we also cared in the way that people who are drinking together do: superficially and brilliantly. We laughed and laughed when the stories were funny, and got all weepy when they were sad. When we left, it was much later than any of us usually stay awake at all. As I pulled out of the driveway with the warm summer air streaming through the open windows of my Ford Taurus, I thought, a) I really shouldn't be driving and b) life is still glorious. And I felt that for just that one night, we visited ourselves not as the middle-aged pillars of the community we have become, but as the girls we once were, thinking about nothing but fun on a June night.

Some good books, some not so good books, and a project

I love books; I always have. When I was a kid, and there was a special chore to be done, my father used to bribe me with the promise of a trip to the used bookstore. It was a motivator that always worked for me. I love to read, of course, but the ownership of books is not just about reading; having a book in my possession gives me the potential to visit another world, take up another craft, learn another language, or be another person whenever I want to. I don't actually have to read the book; it's the ability to do so, if I get around to it, that counts. But the day I realized that I could be locked in my house for a hundred years and never run out of brand new books to read was a day that changed my life. Well, okay, it didn't really change my life; I didn't stop buying books and I didn't even slow down much until Afterwords on Main Street closed. But now at least I'm making an effort to actually read some of these neglected books that sit so sadly and dustily on my (extremely crowded) shelves.

When the large bookshelves in our dining room (consequently called the dinebrary) were built, I populated them with some semblance of order—fiction on this side, children's books here, nonfiction on the other side by topic (classics, languages, art, and so on). Over the years, books have been shoved in wherever they fit, some stacked "decoratively" at an angle, some lying on top of the others. More shelves were added on the second floor, and then on the third floor. (And now there's that whole new basement to colonize! No, no, I can't let myself think that way.)

I picked a short little shelf on the third floor. It's directly across from the bed, so when I lie on my left side, the books there stare at me and dare me to ignore them. My project for the summer—and clearly for the fall as well, at this rate—is to read, or decide not to read, every book on the shelf.

It's a random assortment. I started with The Quincunx, by Charles Palliser, a hefty modern but Victorianesque novel likened to Dickens. I love Dickens; I bought this book years ago and have moved it to three different states without reading it. Ha! It had all the tedium of Dickens with none of the wit or humor. After a hundred pages, into the AAUW Booksale donation bag it went. Dumping it was just as satisfying as reading it.

On to some lighter reading. You know how grey is the new black? For me, science fiction is the new mystery: interesting themes and low expectations. I zipped through the fairly-engaging Wolf of Winter and the not-entirely-lame Daughter of the Forest, and moved on to The Book Borrower, a novel (which I bought from a sale table outside Shaman Drum because I liked the cover photo) about two annoying women and their lifelong friendship which was at least good enough to finish, if not to keep. After that I read the real thing: Laurie Colwin's Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object—like all her work, a book of jewel-like precision and grace.

Then, the complete poems of Cavafy, in a recent translation by Theoharis Theoharis. I didn't really need to read this, having loved this poetry since I was an undergraduate in Greece, but Cavafy's interpretation of classical themes, melancholy yet perversely hopeful, always speaks to me. Please do read his work if you haven't already. All the translations into English have their good points. This book, of course, went back on the shelf.

Also back on the shelf, after a leisurely reread, went Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. Not just an excellent rendering, but a beautifully designed book, and with the two Englishes (I like saying that) on facing pages for easy reference. Maybe there's something to that Nobel Prize thing.

I'm currently taking a break from reading straight through anything, while I browse in both A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander's treatise on the right way to build community by building for the beauty of good function, (the organization based on his work, interestingly, has one of the most unusable and poorly designed websites online today) and the vanity press Witch's Guide to Broomsticks. Don't ask me how I came by that; I don't know. I couldn't even find it on the web anywhere.

I'm about halfway through the little shelf. I feel like I'm making excellent progress, and that I'm really accomplishing something.

Some of us need these little victories, I suppose.

My talented friends

My friend Vicki is in Chicago, and is taking some truly lovely photos of the city at I Love Orange.

And my friend Steve has created a new blog, where he will treat us to his excellent writing at Deep Background.