This audiobook wouldn't work as a print book; it's specifically audio. The author does a great job at explaining the meditations and then walking you through them with enough time to breathe through it and enjoy it.
After listening to this, I brought it into my Meditation Group at work. I worried that the idea of chakras would turn people off, but we talked about considering it like a body scan meditation, and everyone seemed to really like it. After several voice-only meditations, which you can do seated or lying down, the author introduces you to a standing/walking meditation (we just walked in place). She starts with a steady and consistent drum beat that's easy to step to. Then she adds a 4-count breath in and a 4-count breath out. And there's something wonderful that happens when a group of people is all moving and breathing as one. When you've had time to get comfortable with that, she walks you through all the chakras, up and down, focusing differently with each pass. By the end, the energy level is high and joyful. I think everyone in the room felt like we had experienced something wonderful together. After that, there's another drum piece, but without words, so you can sit or lie down again and enjoy a more personal practice. It's a nice sort of "cool down" after the high-energy standing meditation. If you're new to meditation, I recommend trying this CD. Take maybe 30 minutes at a time, and over three sessions you can get the whole disc. Or spend longer, enjoy it from beginning to end. I really like the way she explains things to make it feel less foreign, less "weird," less scary.
Despite some plotting and characterization challenges, The Fate of Mercy Alban is an engaging and entertaining read. The ideas that push the plot forward are unique and keep the reader guessing, mostly.
Throughout reading this, though, I thought that the author struggled with how much credit to give her audience. At times, the characters come up with explanations for what's happening that are so unreasonable, it feels contrived. And yet, even when I thought "Obviously, it's not A, it's B," it usually ended up being C. So why do the characters stick stubbornly to A? They also at times seem to completely forget where they are and what's happening,which causes them to make other questionable decisions. For example, <spoiler> they finally find the manuscript that is expected to reveal the truth to everything that's happening. But then, they read it slowly, out loud, and have long re-cap conversations in between the chapters. And they leave it unread for most of the book. I understand that it would have totally disrupted the plot to have the characters so easily figure it all out, but what you would do? "Hey, this book should give all the answers we've been seeking! How about we skim through it, especially skipping to the end, to figure this out without endangering ourselves more?" "Nah, let's savor it, read it really slowly, and let things play out as they will." Really? Also, why does the Protestant preacher go to bed with the woman he just met, who's not sure she's emotionally ready for a relationship, who has returned home after a 20+ year absence, whose mother has just died, and who is going through one of the most difficult, stressful, and frightening times of her life? Did the author think that we wouldn't believe a romantic relationship between two adults if they didn't have sex within the first two weeks of meeting each other? Why make him a preacher, then?</spoiler> Even despite these complaints, though, there are some genuinely creepy moments throughout The Fate of Mercy Alban. And the plot is twisty enough that I was surprised even when I thought the characters were going out of their way to avoid the obvious conclusion. I see that this was the author's debut novel, and it reads like one. But if you like mysteries and creepy old houses, you'll find a lot to like here.
I've read a couple books by Thich Nhat Hanh now, and I consider him to be brilliant and inspiring teacher. This CD (which I thought was an audiobook) is actually excerpts from a series of lectures he gave during a retreat. On the first disc, he offers a few meditation techniques that are easy to incorporate to a regular practice. And on the second, he talks in more detail about the benefits of meditation and how to be mindful during daily life, especially with loved ones. The version I listened to did not include any music from the monks at Plum Village or videos, as I see some of the other versions do.
The longer I maintain a meditation practice and the more I focus on trying to be mindful, the more I hear about it. At the TEDxColumbusWomen conference last week, one of the speakers talked about using mindfulness to control the body monitoring that women do an average of every 30 seconds. Mindfulness is an important part of cognitive behavioral therapy, to help you understand your feelings and reactions by first observing them without judgement. During a recent keynote speech at a marketing conference, Arianna Huffington talked about being so overworked and under-rested that she collapsed in her office, as a result of which she made some lifestyle changes that included mindfulness. She went on to promote a session she was doing as part of Oprah and Deepak Chopra's online meditation series, which included Kobe Bryant talking about the importance of meditation. Even my health insurance company is pushing mindfulness and meditation as stress-reduction techniques. I think it's wonderful that living mindfully is becoming not only accepted, but encouraged in the US. If we all take some time to breathe, clear our minds, and reflect upon ourselves and our interactions with others, we can all be a bit happier and get along better. It's worked for me. I'm not exactly a Zen master, but I feel calmer and happier than I used to. I'm more patient, both with myself and with other people. I try to focus on being generous. And when I'm not being my best self, I find myself more able to step back, recognize what I'm doing, forgive myself for it, and start over. Meditation's not hard. If you're looking for a place to get started, listening to Thich Nhat Hanh speak on The Art of Mindful Living is a great option. So who might be closer to a real-life Don Quixote? I think a better example might be George W. Bush. I can’t claim to know his personal intentions, but my impression of him through his public persona is that he has (or at least had) a deluded view of the world. Given his upbringing, lifestyle, success, and the people he surrounded himself with during his presidency, this hardly seems surprising. And I think it’s likely that he really thought his actions as president were the morally right things to do, just as Don Quixote constructs moral justifications for everything from freeing the galley slaves to slaughtering the hotel wineskins. And Don Quixote too is quick to anger, unrepentant of his mistakes, certain of his understanding of right and wrong, and not convinced by reason. But Don Quixote was one man, and his actions involved a very limited number of people. Unfortunately, I think Bush surrounded himself with Ahabs and trusted the information they gave him, maybe on the assumption that they also were knights of chivalry. By the time it became obvious that Bush’s giants were actually windmills (read: among other examples, that Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction), he’d already committed too much to the effort. Too much industry, money, policy, and rhetoric--and too many lives--to make any deathbed reversal meaningful.
(I recently saw [the first half of] Longford and read Lord Longford's Wikipedia entry, and he seems like another Don Quixote candidate. I haven't done enough research to make a good case, but what I've seen so far is quite interesting.) Now that I've read Don Quixote, I keep finding references to him. They've probably always been there, but now I'm trying to understand more specifically what they mean. For example, I recently saw Central Ohio's darling dairy farmer, Warren Taylor, referred to as Don Quixote. Was the writer saying that he doesn't understand the world around him? That he's delusional? Then I saw Lost in La Mancha, the documentary about Terry Gilliam’s failed (so far) attempt to make a move of Don Quixote. The movie really wants to make a claim that Gilliam is Don Quixote, deluded into thinking that this movie dream of his is possible, despite the evidence to the contrary. But that never quite worked for me either. And here's the reason. I get the impression from this movie that Gilliam understands exactly what he's up against. He has experience making movies, even big productions. Some of them have been hits, and others have not. He's pursuing one specific idea, one that he knows will be a challenge but one that he's willing to try again and again until he makes it happen. Gilliam's not Don Quixote. He's Ahab. Moby Dick's Ahab was an experienced whaling captain with years of success. After losing his leg, Ahab becomes obsessed with finding the whale that did it--a whale that happens to be white and therefore recognizable as an individual he can track across the globe. And he does. He charts his course through waters not based on where the best whaling is, something he understands from his previous experience, but based on where he's heard rumors that the white whale has been spotted. At one point, the Pequod comes across another whaling ship that requests assistance--the captain's son has been lost during a hunt, and the captain is scouring that part of the ocean to find him. Certainly, Ahab, who even has children at home, could relate to this desperation, but he can't tear himself away from his own search. (Luckily for Ishmael, the captain is still searching for his son after Ahab has battled and lost to the whale.) Don Quixote would never do this. Don Quixote has a skewed understanding of the way the world works, but he tries always to do what is most noble and right, albeit by his own definition. When Don Quixote agrees to help (what he sees as) a damsel in distress, she makes him promise not to grant any other promises of help until he completes her mission. He has a really difficult time sticking to this, in part because of his short temper and in part because he so quickly recognizes injustices and feels a compulsion to right wrongs. After Don Quixote attacks his first giant, he doesn't keep attacking it once he sees that it's a windmill. Don Quixote's actions are completely coherent *given his delusion*, but he is under a delusion. Ahab, on the other hand, understands perfectly well what he's facing and what he's asking of other people, but he is intent on reaching his goal. I'm not recommending that Terry Gilliam give up on his white whale, a movie production of Don Quixote. If I can cross references here a bit, I feel a bit like the Duke and Duchess, encouraging him on in something that may not be good for him or others, but that is fascinating to watch. I want to cheer for Gilliam in a way I could never commit to cheer for Ahab, maybe because he's a real human and therefore more sympathetic. But he's still Ahab. So who might be closer to a real-life Don Quixote? I have an idea, but I'd love to hear yours too. Tune in next week to hear mine!
When I read Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger, I was blown away by the subtlety of the characterization and the quiet but steady pace of the plot. It’s one of the best contemporary novels I’ve read, and it’s hard not to compare The Paying Guests to the things I loved about it.
The Paying Guests falls little short of that bar. It starts strong in the same way--the subtle way the reader gets to know Frances through the omniscient narration, especially--but by the second act, it falls into something more straightforward that relies just on the tension of the plot and the stated actions of the characters. Similarly to The Little Stranger, The Paying Guests begins by revolving around the collapse of a grand house after the family has lost its money. In the former work, the slow collapse of the house cleanly reflected the collapse of the family and possibly their sanity. In the latter, it’s more of a plot point, something to keep Frances constantly busy and to bring Mr. and Mrs. Barber into the lives of Frances and her mother. When the novel opens, it seems like Frances doesn’t do much other than repair and maintain the house, cook meals, tend fires, and sit in the sitting room with her mother. She occasionally accompanies her mother to bridge or church or a movie. Then she takes a wistful walk through London, and we see her try to shake off the spinster persona. As we start to learn more about her, we see how wrong this persona is, and it immediately becomes irrelevant. Whereas the narrator’s voice in the first act seemed to encourage it somewhat, it's dropped so entirely and so soon that it seems odd that it was ever an issue. This is certainly not the only change in tone between the first act the rest of the novel, but it’s one I can mention because it doesn’t reveal any major plot points. Later, there are some sex scenes that make it hard to believe the word “subtle” could ever be applied to anything in the book. They’re not gratuitous, but Sarah Waters so excels at that quiet cloaking tone that the scenes feel like someone has flicked on the light just after your eyes have adjusted to the dark. All this said, The Paying Guests is still a good book that I would recommend. The plot is engaging, and the characters are worth getting to know. But it didn’t meet my expectations.
There is so much to say about not only Part 2 but also about the entire story of Don Quixote, that I'll never fit it into one blog post. I'll try to limit this one to my thoughts on Part 2--the way Cervantes tried to limit himself from digressing into entire other novels after the first book--and instead include other thoughts in later posts.
The short version is: Part 2 is a significantly better read than Part 1, but you really have to read Part 1 to understand Part 2. Part 2 starts with all those formalities that Part 1 lacked. The dedications in particular. And here Cervantes introduces us to an incident that evolves into a bit of an obsession throughout the work. After Part 1 became a success, someone else wrote a sequel without Cervantes's permission. He deemed it quite inferior, obviously, both in writing style and character development. The irony, of course, is that we're still reading Cervantes's Don Quixote 400 years later, and we would never even remember this counterfeit if he didn't harp on it so much. In this world of Part 2, we encounter our Knight of the Rueful Countenance (later to be known as the Knight of the Lions) still in bed recovering from his second sally, just a month or so before. And somehow in this time, half of Europe has read the true history of Don Quixote (the one by Cide Hamete Benegeli, of course, the historian Cervantes claims to be translating through both parts) and is completely enamored with the protagonist and his squire. They discuss the short-comings of the book--specifically the crazy novel-within-a-novel part I complained about earlier and a plotting mistake--and it's funny to hear that the complaints of readers 400 years ago are so similar to today's. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza decide to proceed on a third sally, and they sneak out of the house in order to do so. Since I promised to keep this brief, I won't recount their adventures here. The important difference between this and the first and second sallies is that they actually win sometimes. The reader cheers for them because not every adventure ends in a spectacular beating or a sheep slaughter. Not all (most) of their wins are objectively fair successes, but they think they're winning, and you can't help but want it for them. A lot of people play a lot of tricks on them throughout, but many of the tricks are harmless except that they increase the delusion of Don Quixote and Sancho. We love them for their delusions. When Sancho occasionally contemplates walking away, the reader wishes him to stay. As mean as some of the tricks are, we are the trick-players. We want them to believe, maybe because we want to live in a world where their beliefs are relevant. And that's the magic of Part 2. Despite all the cultural differences between early 17th century Spain and 21st century America, we can still relate to the emotions behind the characters and their stories. Maybe this is what earns Don Quixote the title of "the first modern novel," I'm not sure. But it feels modern. Whew! I've spent more than a month, using whatever spare time I could manage, transferring my website from WordPress to Weebly. I'm happy to report that the bulk of it is now done! (I haven't quite caught up with the blog archive, but that's in progress.)
So what happened? My previous website was hacked. To the point where my service provider had to shut it down temporarily. I'm not certain, but I think that the hackers were either using my (admittedly unimportant) site as training, or they were creating email addresses from my domain and spamming people. So, I took out the corrupted files and caused minor damage to my site. But, I was planning to redesign the site anyway, and even had a design in mind, so I thought about getting started on that. I then started to get dead-link notifications for URLs like jlsmither.com/[name of my WordPress theme]/fonts/easy-payday-loans-peoria-illinois. I stepped up my redesign efforts and started looking around for a WordPress theme that fit what I had in mind. But I didn't find it. And a friend recommended Weebly. And, to my surprise, that had exactly the look I was going for and is SO MUCH easier to use! The only downside was that I had to transfer all the site content manually. But it's done(-ish)! I think you'll like the new layout, which is much more visual than the last one. There's probably still some typos and other stuff that I haven't caught yet, and don't hesitate to let me know when you find them! One part I didn't bring over was the calendar--it was a lot to maintain, and I don't think it was very well used. If that was an important part of this site that you think you'll miss, please let me know that too! So enjoy the new site! And look forward to more blog posts, like the exciting conclusion to Don Quixote! (I am aware that I'm the only one interested in that. Sorry.) I am honored to announce that Gay City 5: Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. My lupanoid story, “Alexander’s Wrath," which takes place in the same universe as my forthcoming comic, appears in this anthology.
The Lambda Literary Awards, according to their website, “nurtures, celebrates, and preserves LGBT literature through programs that honor excellence, promote visibility, and encourage development of emerging writers.” Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam has been nominated with 9 other worthy competitors in the LGBT Anthology category. 2014 marks the 26th annual Lambda Literary awards, and past nominees and winners include Alison Bechdel (for Are You My Mother? A Comic Memoir), Jeanette Winterson (for Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?), Justin Hall (for editing No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics, and David Levithan (for Every Day) …and seriously, that’s only from 2013. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to have a project I’m involved in be listed among such great company. The winners will be announced during the Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony on June 2, 2014. Keep your fingers crossed! Last week, my website was hacked, and my hosting service took it offline for several days. Although, with their help, I’ve fixed the immediate problems, I’m discovering several other weaknesses that I need to address. Before this happened, I was already planning a redesign overhaul, so this seems like a good time to make that happen. I have my design sketched out, I just need to find some way to make it actually exist online.
So my goal for this weekend is to make all this happen. I’m not sure yet how ambitious this goal is. If you check back later and things look wonky, hang in there with me please. I’ll get it back to something pretty as soon as possible! And thank you for your continued support. |
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