Me and Dr. Robbins

In writing this post, I am either showing a.) great courage b.) great stupidity or c.) nothing that great at all. So here goes.

My family is mildly obsessed with Tom Robbins. He is a really great writer. Empirically. I admit that there are some people who might not LIKE his stories, might not LIKE what he has to say, might not LIKE his writing style, and probably even more who just don't get it. But when I say he is a great writer, it is not a matter of opinion.

I have read five of his novels, which admittedly does not really cover his whole catalogue, but I do feel that I have a pretty good understanding of what he believes in and what he wants to say, and and even better understanding of how he likes to say it.

Recently (after my quest to get through Anna Karenina), I gave myself a literary break by reading Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. And then I decided to continue on my kick with Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. (yeah, this is my idea of a break).

My sister, Bridget, gave me a copy of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues as a gift, because it is her favorite one of Tom Robbins' novels. If you haven't read the story, there is not a really good way to describe what it is about, although I will venture to say that if you have the desire to understand life in a simple, beautiful, and humorous way, you might want to read it.

The rereading of Cowgirls this year was a very cathartic experience for me, because even though you may not realize it when you pick up a great book, sometimes there is a rhythm to life that just makes it the perfect thing to be reading right at that moment.

And when I started to read Cowgirls again for the second (definitely not last) time, I had caught a heavy sneeze, and had a lot of birds of sadness nesting in my hair. So as the story of Sissy Hankshaw and Bonanza Jellybean and the whooping cranes (don't forget the Chink!) unfolded before my very eyes again, it was like a very good friend was holding my hand and saying, "hey, Podner, it's alright. You gotta Live the Beauty of Your Own Reality." Which incidentally is pretty much what the book says.

But whenever I get caught in a storm of depression, it's nice to have a good slap in the face that wakes you up like a rifle shot echoing across the Great Wide Open Plains and reminds you that there is magic in the world if you have the bravado to believe in it.

"Ladies, Gentlemen. Shhh. This is the way truth is. You've got to let those strange hands touch you."

And sometimes the truth is really painful. After all "success can eliminate as many options as failture," and in order to really squeeze the puddin' out of life, sometimes it is necessary to really create an art out of failing. You have to fail in the most unimaginable ways. Perhaps in ways that haven't even been invented yet. You may have to be the best failure to ever walk the earth and still not have found what you came here for. Failure and I have been spending a lot of time together lately, and I've come to recognize that some people can spend a lot of time on earth in a state of real contentment. I mean, some people are just really satisfied.

The thought of it actually exhausts me.

Even more than spending weeks on end punching my pillow and crying my eyes out and wandering around in circles in my mind for so long that I've created tracks in my head's living room.

Of course there are moments when I wish that I could stop fighting so hard against all the failures in my life (real and perceived). There are certainly times when I just wish that for ONCE I could succeed at something I really cared about. And of course there are times when I wish that I could care about my successes as much as I care about my failures.

But what's the fun in that?

These are the sorts of internal dialogues you're forced to have if you decide to read Tom Robbins. Or if you are lucky enough to be incarnated as someone who has been termed "the insatiable child." Maybe the two go hand in hand.

So...

For the Gift of a beautiful story that will never leave your side, not for a second, in the deepest moments of despair, a million times and to the end of the world, thank you to my beautiful and intelligent sister, Bridget. She's the girl who had enough bravado to get Bonanza Jellybean tatooed on her belly. Gotta admire that kind of dedication.

I do.

Reading Summer OR Poverty and Its Real World Effects

I've been doing a lot of reading this summer, as you may have surmised from the title of my post. It's been mostly fiction with a smattering of self-realization books thrown in for good measure. I'm not sure, all things considered, that those two categories can really be separated, but for the purposes of my experiment on NOT self-editing too much, there you have it.

The way I see it, I started out with Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. This book has a great deal of significance in my life for many reasons. First, it is a book that spanned a long period of time, both in story and in my life specifically. I started to read Anna Karenina several years ago when one of my sisters was reading it and happened to leave her copy in the bathroom at my parents' house in Aurora. At the time it was still my parents' house and not, as it has become since then, my father's house, so in a way, I started to read this novel a lifetime ago.

Also, it was just after a friend of mine, in true character, had written me an email including a line from Anna about something political and then had followed it up with a few well-worded and somewhat cryptic comments about the absolutely dreadful and desperate state of affairs in the world. (This person has since made a complete turnaround and is the most astonishing optimist). So I picked it up because that's what you do when you see a book in the bathroom at your parents' house in Aurora, especially one your friend's just quoted to you in a desperate email. I've actually finished a lot of books I should have read years before but never quite got around to because I was sitting in the bathroom. It's completely embarrassing to admit to this, but again, self-editing is out.

Anyway, at that time I never got around to finishing the book. I had every intention of doing it, but things got in the way, I got busy, and until this past spring, I didn't have another really good opportunity or really, the desire, to finish reading this long and involved work of Russian literature. I did, however, manage to blaze through Crime and Punishment. So I went to Borders one day and saw it sitting there. And I bought it. Ill-advised though this decision was, (poverty is the other theme of this post) I knew that if I took it out from the library, it would eventually cost me more than if I just bought it.

It was a great rediscovery. I really fell in love with some of the characters and found the whole history of that time period to be fascinating and really felt like I kind of understood the whole political atmosphere when Communism began to rear its scarlet head in Russia and how the aristocracy of the period could be so torn about the issue and how it really affected them personally, etc., etc. And I was lugging this book with me to work every single day, because I knew that I would have a lot of time to sit around and read between clients (take clients between reading). So I had this giant tome laying out on the countertop one day when a woman I work with (who happens to be Russian and also happens to have no sense of self-editing) took one look and said, "Whose book is this? Is it yours?"

"Yes." I replied proudly.

"This is the worst book I've ever read." And she giggled, as she is prone to do after every statement she makes. She proceeded to explain to me that reading this book in English was completely useless because the Russian language is so complex that it actually CAN'T be translated, not to mention that the ideas contained in the text are difficult to understand even in Russian. Getting that the situation was ridiculously futile and that no matter how hard I tried to really GRASP what Tolstoy was getting at, there was no way that I could even begin to THINK about the vastness of this story.

"Well, I guess I'll just have to learn Russian and read it again."

She laughed at me. "No," she said, "it is too difficult language."

I just smiled politely and sat down with my book, now even more determined to finish it.

Now one thing that I have failed to mention previously is that Anna Karenina has another giant significance in my life. Possibly my favorite book of all time (don't quote me on that) is The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. This might be the most pretentious thing I've ever said. But it's true. I have a relationship with that novel that can't be fully explained here. What I will say is that Anna Karenina plays a very important role in that story as well. In the beginning when Tereza shows up on Tomas' front door step with her heavy suitcase in hand, she is carrying a copy of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which for anyone who has ever read the thing or felt the need to lug it around knows that it represents weight. Literally and metaphorically, because damn, those Russians can't write anything unless it makes you feel like the weight of the world is resting squarely on your shoulders. Not to mention that the book itself is somewhere around 700 pages.

Long story short, I have always thought that being Tereza would be one of the most depressing things, because she created all these ties for herself that were constantly dragging her down. I mean there's a whole chapter devoted to talking about how she was clumsy and falling all over the place. And here I was, dragging my giant book around with me, which of course required its very own tote bag, which I proceeded to fill with a bunch of other crap I didn't need to be carrying around with me, so by the time I reached the halfway point (after Anna decides she has to leave Karenin, but before Levin and Kitty get married), I'd shrunk two inches and needed a therapist.

But seriously this is not a beach read. No matter what the women's magazines try to tell you.

And I finished it. And made a vow that everything I read from then on would be able to fit in my little green plaid knapsack. So I can walk swinging both arms.

So far, so good. I followed it up with:

A Series of Unfortunate Events Book 1 The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Paradise by Toni Morrison
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling (can't read the first one without reading the second)

There are personal stories that go along with each one of these as well. Some are much shorter and much less involved than the one for Anna. Some are not. But they are ALL the result of a girl with no money and WAY too much free time at work.

By the way, one thing that people don't tell you is that the story goes on after Anna goes back to the train station. (We'll call it that here for those of you who don't want me to spoil the most exciting part of the book). You don't really need to read all the stuff that comes after. In my opinion, it's just Tolstoy stroking his ego a bit and trying to really hammer you with all the pseud0-philosophical stuff that goes through Levin's mind. And Levin is just a really thin veil for Tolstoy's own mental meanderings. So if you're a glutton for punishment, read on. But if you're committed to getting through Tolstoy, you probably are.