In Repose Blog

Book Excerpt: River Horse, A Voyage Across America

In all of my 47 years, and a voracious reader for a good 42 of those, I have never claimed to have a favorite author. (Nor have I ever claimed a favorite food, color or animal either. The love I have for the wonderful variety of all of those things seem to me diminished by claiming to like one above the rest.)

I have changed my mind. I now absolutely have a favorite author and his name is Moon.

I have always liked William Least Heat Moon, first falling in love with his words reading PrairyErth, a Deep Map. Anyone who saw, as I did, the depth of beauty in a place called Kansas, and describing the elegance he found there held high marks in my own book.

I am currently reading River Horse. Its a non-fiction account about Moon's across the country river adventure undertaken 1995. Yes, across the country. The ENTIRE country!

                       

(Special note to my DAD...you HAVE to read this book. Seriously. Its all about boats and the trouble they get in, and the close calls they have and the successes they celebrate.)

Here is a passage from early on in their voyage. They put their boat in the water in New York City and make their way all by river, to Oregon. Sea to shining sea indeed.

The depth finder lined out a profile of the bay bottom, a place I began to imagine festered and festooned with antique arks and sloops--Dutch, English, Yankee--mired to the cold ooze ten fathoms below, the Hudson currents washing to the sea, working the wreckage and dunnage in the black and perpetual silence, where somehow the whelks learn to drone the sound of the distant surf and imbue it into their shells. Down in the weatherless deep there had to be jetsam from Henry Hudson's Half Moon, drowned ferrymen bluejackets whose "Yo Heave ho!" was forever gone, and concrete-booted malefactors trying to tread over the cinders blown from Fulton's steamboat, and sprawled across the bottom spars and anchors, capstans, soggy oakum, tar buckets, and sundered bare breasted figureheads staring in wide-eyed disbelief at their ill luck.

Then my old nightmare: I am submerged in some unknown waters where I watch the drowned drag their weary grief across the mud, their long and faded locks rising from their skulls like kelp wafting in the slow current, barefoot sailors stirring the silt come down from the  distant mountains, the agony of their end still on their faces, and a skeletal tar rises from the tangled rigging, turns, and motions me toward him, and I must approach closer and closer until I am almost against his moss-hung jawbone, and out from his eye sockets swims an eel, its toothy maw hanging with human viscera. I awake in strangled terror.

These imaginings Moon has are close cousins to ones I have myself, although it must be said his and mine are not always this morbid.  I always have had these thoughts however, about those who came and crossed this path before us, ever since I was a very small child. Usually I am wallowing in these silent imagined histories in just this way while my dad is either piloting a boat in the gulf or driving a car across the prairie.

River Horse describes impossible situations Moon and company find themselves in, and the amazing sometimes completely dumb luck that somehow brings them out of it so they can face another day and another impossible situation..again and again and again.

Now my dad knows why I like the book so much!

Eckhart Tolle on the Incontrovertible Proof of Immortality

The following is a book excerpt from  "A New Earth Awakening to Your Life's Purpose"

Ego comes about through a split in the human psyche in which identity separates into two parts that we could call "I" and "me" or "me" and "myself". Every ego is therefore schizophrenic, to use the word in its popular meaning of split personality.

You live with a mental image of yourself, a conceptual self that you have a relationship with. Life itself becomes conceptualized and separated from who you are when you speak of "my life".

The moment you say or think "my life" and believe in what you are saying (rather than it just being a linguistic convention), you have entered the realm of delusion.

If there is such a thing as "my life," it follows that I and life are two separate things, and so I can also lose my life, my imaginary treasured possession.  Death becomes a seeming reality and a threat. Words and concepts split life into separate segments that have no reality in themselves. We could even say that the notion "my life" is the original delusion of separateness, the source of ego.

If I and life are two, if I am separate from life, then I am separate from all things, all beings, all people.

But how could I be separate from life?  What "I" could there be apart from life, apart from Being? It is utterly impossible. So there is no such thing as "my life," and I don't have life. I am life. I and life are one. It cannot be otherwise. So how could I lose my life? How can I lose something that I don't have in the first place? How can I lose something that I Am?

It is impossible.

Its Only Temporary. The Good News and Bad News of Being Alive

Looking ahead to the Texas Book Festival...November 1 and 2nd, 2008. I spied this title by Evan Handler. Its a "I was supposed to die but didn't" book. I love his website. Dang. Evan Handler

Extremely popular with Jewish audiences for his role as Charlotte's husband, Harry Goldenblatt, on Sex and the City, Handler is an accomplished journalist, screenwriter, and the acclaimed author of two memoirs. His first, Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors details his unlikely recovery from leukemia, and his escape from the clutches of those supposedly devoted to its treatment. In addition to his many television roles, Handler has acted on stage, in feature films and currently stars with David Duchovney in Showtime's hit series Californication. Handler's appearance is a collaboration with the Austin Jewish Book Fair.

A provocative, funny, and whip- smart memoir of how one man learned to find joy in his own life after years of hand-to-hand combat with death.

Actor and author Evan Handler's new book, It's Only Temporary, is both a deeply personal memoir and a series of meditations on life, love, faith, gratitude, and mortality. In closely examining his own triumphs, mistakes, and less-than-ideal relationships since his miraculous recovery from a supposedly incurable leukemia more than twenty years ago, Handler zeroes in on the most profound question facing every human being: How can a person live well with the knowledge that time is limited? In doing so, Handler has created a poignant and wildly funny rumination on the ironies of human existence.

Structured as a collection of incisive and probing autobiographical stories , It's Only Temporary is a startlingly candid portrait of one man's struggle to find love and happiness within a life he knows he's lucky just to have. By turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, blunt and shocking, Handler's defiantly unconventional memoir ultimately succeeds as both a stirring love story and a classic coming-of-age tale. It's Only Temporary celebrates the transformation from boy to man—even if it took Handler more than forty years to get there.

Not familiar with the Texas Book Festival? Here is some info from the festival's site.

 

The Texas Book Festival was established in 1995 by First Lady Laura Bush, a former librarian and an ardent advocate of literacy. Mrs. Bush created a task force to plan the book festival to honor Texas authors, promote the joys of reading and serve to benefit the state's public libraries. The first Festival took place at the Capitol in November 1996; the Festival has quickly evolved into one of the premier literary events in the country, annually hosting over 200 Texas and nationally known authors. In 2006, more than 45,000 visitors participated in a week-end of author readings and presentations, panel discussions, book signings, and musical entertainment at the State Capitol in Austin.

Think I might mosey on down there come November.

 

Are We Really Just "An Accident of Atoms?"

"If you went out and asked people, “Who do you think has the power to bestow joy and suffering on a person?” the most common answer you would receive is God. The 'father' God of organized religion has become a symbol of how many have externalized their power. This has become so acute that some have rejected any notion of their divinity, instead choosing to believe of themselves as an accident of atoms that perishes at death. The middle ground being trodden by many at this time is the reclamation of All as God, divinity expressed from within. Some people fear that to realize God as being internal would somehow be the loss of God when, in actuality, it is the discovery of God. There is a God and you are a living self-determining expression of it."

Taken from article by Story Waters author of 'The Messiah Seed' and 'You Are God. Get Over It!'

Window Shopping

While walking downtown today I noticed this book offered for sale in the window of a little shop.

The subtitle was: "A Guide to Self-diagnosis for Hypochondriacs"

"Keep Austin Weird" Its our city's slogan. Guess we are doing OK in that department.

"The Gathering" Excerpt 2

"There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest. And the girls will be picked up from school and dropped off again in the morning. Your eldest daughter can remember her inhaler and your youngest will take her gym kit with her, and it is just as you suspected - most of the stuff that you do is stupid, really stupid, most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for people who are too lazy even to love you, even that, let alone find their own shoes under their own bed; people who turn and accuse you - scream at you sometimes - when they can only find one shoe."

From page 27.

The range of emotions in this paragraph is remarkable. I have read it perhaps a dozen times and each time I feel as if I am on a roller coaster of feelings, flung about and yanked hard on my heart.

The paragraph, of course, is really the rephrasing of the ultimate question that faces every one alive...What is the meaning of life, and perhaps, also, why bother?

The first string of words are the jewels here in my mind. They sparkle in the background as the rest of the passage plays out.  On the surface, claiming there is "something wonderful about a death" seems utterly absurd. How can there be anything at all wonderful about death?

But really, isn't she saying, that by experiencing the ultimate loss, she is really the closest to understanding what it means to be utterly alive?

 

"The Gathering"

My husband handed me this lovely book by Anne Enright. I have been reading a few pages before sleeping each night.

I am only on page thirty, but the prose is so tender, so vivid and yet, so subtle, I already find the work remarkable and wish to share it with my readers in the same way that I am reading the book; slowly and carefully, to savor the experience.

I would like to share small passages I find stunning to read. If you have the interest now or later to read the book, please do let me know and come back and comment if you would like.

Passage number one (from the very first page).

"My brother Liam loved birds and, like all boys, he loved the bones of dead animals. I have no sons myself, so when I pass any small skull or skeleton I hesitate and think of him, how he admired their intricacies. A magpie's ancient arms coming through the mess of feathers; stubby and light and clean. That is the word we use about bones: Clean."

I am not a boy, but I adore birds, and I love bones too. I always have. I have a "bone walk" here at our ranch. When I ride, I gather antlers and bones and tie them to my saddle with strips of leather and bring them back and line our little path with the white hard remains of deer, antelope, possum and cow. I even have a couple of llama bones, I think, from the "exotic animal" ranch to my east. The owner of that ranch unceremoniously discarded the dead body of one on the edges of our lot a few years back...just tossed the thing over his fence onto our land. Perhaps he thought no one would notice.

But of course I did. I always notice the bones.

Here is our Cowboy, nearly 6 months old...re-arranging the Bone Walk.

Photo by Candace Craw-Goldman 2008

   

In Repose Book Review, Widow Words

In Repose begins a new feature on the blog and in our Resource Forum at InRepose.com by reviewing our first book, Widow Words by author Marcia Curran, and published by VanderWyk & Burnham 2007.

The book is a thin volume with short listings of "100 simple pieces of advice from another widow." Most pages contain only one sentence or sometimes only a phrase. A few pages have a bit more information.

As I read this book, I thought to myself that actually, the best person to review the title would be not me but perhaps another widow.  Happily my own husband is alive and well, so as I read the book, I found myself thinking about my dear friend Marie who lost her husband not very long ago. I tried to put myself in her shoes as I read Widow Words.

Some advice is common and lovely even for women who are not newly widowed. Number 55 claims "It is never a waste to have fresh flowers." Some advice is purely for a widow. I like the one about buying a new bedspread for YOUR bed. Good idea and one I might not have thought of at all.  Perhaps one of the most poignant to read is Number 84, which suggests to go ahead and take scissors to the outfit you wore to his funeral because, "do you really need that reminder around?"

Alternately touching upon serious subjects such as finances or autopsy reports to more lighthearted thoughts about every day matters, Curran's musings move around subjects easily and naturally, as perhaps the thoughts of any newly widowed woman might.

If I would have any criticisms at all, it would be about some of the rather quaint assumptions about gender roles. Everyone, no matter their sex should know how to use a fire extinguisher or change a smoke alarm battery, for instance. And my friend Marie, who lives on a little farm I am certain would giggle at the suggestion to go ahead and keep and organize the garage tools, or not to worry about keeping the yard up as nicely as HE would have.

Despite that observation, the concept of Widows Words is a very lovely one indeed. Small moments of sharing and understanding delivered in a calm and friendly manner can go a long way in comforting a new widow. This book would make a fine little gift, perhaps tucked into a care basket, for the newly bereaved wife.

In Repose Book Reviews

In Repose has been asked to review books!

As someone who is always thrilled to browse the stacks in a library or happy to be in any bookstore, I am pleased to embark upon this new path.  Our book reviews will be published first as blog entries and then archived in the Resource Forum to add to our ever growing and expanding information collection.

Here are the titles in queue for review:

The Voice Within Premonitions of Sudden Death of Children (Sheehan, Henslee and Hardoin)
Widows Words (Curran)
Final Conversations (Keeley, Yingling)
Being Dead (Crace)

The first three on the list are non-fiction and the last is a novel.  I am looking forward to writing the reviews and reading even more books and sharing my thoughts with readers of In Repose Blog.  If you are a publisher or just an avid reader and have a suggestion of future titles please email requests to  Admin@inrepose.com