Present Tense, Torture and Bicycles Wheels

I am digging back into writing my book about my brother's battle with schizophrenia.  Hooray!  Not.  The story is actually tragic and hard to write about.  It got me pondering about the idea of a tortured writer.  Are writers tortured to start, or is the process of writing torture, causing anguish and angst?  I am voting for the latter.  Would I be happier if I didn't write?  That I cannot say, but I know I might be  better off floating in the cloud of denial instead of looking into the belly of grief and despair.

One nice thing about this blog is that I get to write in the present tense.  In the memoir, it is mostly about digging up the past.  I feel more alive writing about the immediate yesterday, today and tomorrow.

One nice thing about the blog is that I get to keep my bicycle wheels.  A writer friend asked me to review something she had written for her book.  It was a lovely piece, but it didn't fit in the scope of her story.  It was a bicycle wheel -- it was perfectly functional for a bike, but she was building a car.  They bike wheel wouldn't work, so she had to get rid of it.  I think one of the hard thing for writers is ironically to get positive feedback.  Sometimes, something can be well written and compelling, but it might not fit as part of a larger work, so it needs to go.*  They need to get rid of the bicycle wheels.


*  Unless you are Victor Hugo, which no modern writer is.  He could fit anything into the scope of Les Miserables, and he did.  The scope of the story is about the miserable ones: the orphan, the slave and the prostitute.  I just finished reading twenty pages of an essay on slang in the middle of his masterpiece.  He discusses slang as to how it unifies subgroups of society.  And yes, bizarrely, it fit.

Marius and the Middle: More from Les Miserables

I am still reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (Julie Rose translation).  I have just finished Part III on Marius.  Here are a few of my favorite passages.

"Misery is like anything else.  It reaches the point where it is bearable.  It ensues up taking shape and assuming form."  (p. 562)

"Misery, we will say again, had been good for him.  Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has this magnificent effect:  It turns the whole will toward effort and the whole soul towards aspiration.  Poverty immediately pares down the material life and makes it hideous; hence those inexpressible yearnings for the ideal life.  The rich young man has a hundred brilliant and vulgar distractions, the horse races, hunting, dogs, smoking, gambling, wining and dining, and the rest; occupations for the nether regions of the should at the expense of the higher and more delicate regions.  The poor young man has to toil for his daily bread; he eats, and when he has eaten all he can do is dream.  He gets in for nothing to the show God puts on for him; he looks at the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, children, humanity among whom he suffers, creation in which he shines.  He looks so hard at humanity, he sees its soul; he looks so hard at creation, he sees God." (p. 565-6)

"When his job is done, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplations, to sheer delights; he lives with his feet in affliction, in impediment, on the cobblestones, in the brambles, sometimes in the mud, but with his head in the light.  He is strong, serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with little, benevolent; and he praises God for having given him these two riches that are lacking in many of the rich: work, which makes him free, and thought, which makes him worthy."  (p. 566)

I love that last line.  As the great-great-granddaughter of pioneer women from Minnesota, I like the idea of work making you free.  Having just wrapped up a full-time volunteer job last year, I am struggling with idle time.  While I am looking forward to finding a new endeavor, I am having a hard time waiting.  I don't like being between or being in a cocoon waiting to come out.

"To be between two religions, one you have not yet emerged from, the other you have not yet embraced, is unbearable; and such gloomy half-light only appeals to bat like souls.  Marius was open-eyed and he needed real light.   The crepuscular* light of doubt hurt him.  Whatever his desire to stay put and to hold out, he was invincibly compelled to move on, to advance, to examine, to think, to go one step further."  (p. 557)

It appears Marius was not a big fan of the middle parts of life, the parts between here and there.  I feel like I am in the twilight, not in terms of approaching death, but not certain what the next few months will contain, let alone the next few years.

I read in the footnotes that Marius most resembles Hugo himself in terms of biography.   I thought that was interesting.  While I know Hugo didn't steal a loaf of bread and go to prison for 19 years, I would have thought Hugo most like the mighty Jean Valjean.

* Crepuscular is one of my daughter's favorite words.
crepuscular |krəˈpəskyələr|
adjectiveof, resembling, or relating to twilight.• Zoology (of an animal) appearing or active in twilight.

AFOL, "The Lego Movie" and "Les Miserables"

Here I confess:  I am an AFOL, also known as an Adult Fan of Lego.  I never would have been an AFOL if it wasn't for the Boy.

I never owned a lego set until I was 40 when my son bought me a yellow brick beach house for my birthday.  Since then, I've acquired the Medieval Village, the Friends Tree House and two sets with Johnny Depp minifigures, one from Pirates of the Caribbean and one from The Lone Ranger.

Jack Sparrow visits Olivia in her tree house.  He brings a rose.  She greets him with a sword.

My brother had legos growing up, but that was back in 1970s before the many of fancy sets with instructions came out.  Imagination fueled building, with a few pictures on the box for inspiration.  When I was in Ohio a while back, my son got out my brother's legos and there were still whirligigs my brother had built as a child.  I built houses with a door, windows and a roof.  I was not inspired, and building the same house over and over again got old.

The Boy took a liking to legos when he was a toddler.  He started with Duplos, bringing his creations to his sister's bus stop to show the other moms.  My favorite was the Stomp Drop Rocket.  It looked like a barge with a ladder.  Color patterns didn't matter.  He used whatever block was closest to his hands.  I had bought a generic box of the standard sized lego bricks for my daughter when she was four.  She had as much interest in lego as she did with Thomas the Tank Engine: almost none.  The Boy started playing with these smaller bricks when he was four.  His first set was the Airport Fire Truck, followed by the City Fire Station.  Six years later, he has tens of thousands of legos.  I am always surprised at how many bricks he has, until I realize he has gotten legos for every birthday, Christmas and random gift since 2007.  Toss in a few eBay purchases of ten pounds of random legos, and it adds up quickly.  The number of hours he has played with the bricks is almost as large as the number of bricks we own.

The Lego Room in a typically untidy state.

Given our passion for the little plastic bricks from Denmark, I took the Boy to see The Lego Movie last weekend.  I loved and appreciated the movie more than he did.  Unfortunately, I could relate to the villain.  Only once did I get out The Kragle.  One of his first lego sets was Sandy's Rocket from SpongeBob.  The Boy loved to carry the rocket around, but the fragile base kept falling apart.  Out came the super glue.  At the time, he didn't know it is considered extremely bad form--almost sacrilege--to glue legos together.  Now when he finds those old pieces, he looks at me with disbelief, and I am ashamed.

Since my supergluing lego faux pas, I've come around.  I started playing with legos simply as a way to connect with my son and spend time with him.  If I didn't, I would understand nothing about his world. While I am not the most creative builder, I have found my ways participate. I am his piece finder when he gets a new set and tidy up the lego room occasionally.  I also sort his legos by shape, making it easier for him to find the right piece when he builds.  (I find sorting legos a great way to relax.)  I keep all of his building instructions in a special place.  Instead of free building, I use the old instructions and rebuild sets.  Sometimes I'll look up building instructions on Lego.com for sets we don't own and build those.

"Why can't you just free build?" the Boy asks.  "Do you always need instructions?"

One day, to pull me out of my instruction filled world, he said we would have a free build contest.

"We get one hour and we each have to build a ninja house," he said.  My daughter would be the judge. We checked the clock, and started.  My ninjas had a Zen garden, with a brick wall surrounding the property filled with trees, plants and a gravel walkway.  I had better colors and bricks to work with, so the house was a bit more stylish than those I made in 1978.  Otherwise, I was back in my comfort zone, creating a rectangle shaped building with doors and windows.  I don't remember what the Boy's house looked like.  I think it had flames and was tricked out with an arsenal of lego weapons.  Mine had transparent bricks making a stained glass window.  My daughter declared me the winner.  The Boy was proud.

My daughter is generally not a fan of lego.  She got an Aqua Raiders set years ago.  She built it once, and that was it.  I took the kids to dinner last fall and we were discussing lego sets.

"The only lego set I would want would be Les Miserables," she said.  She is a huge fan of the musical.

This got us thinking.  In the car ride home, we brainstormed several scenes from the musical that could be made out of lego:

• The ship where Jean Valjean is a slave
• The Bishop's home with silver candesticks
• The factory that Jean Valjean owns and where Fantine works
• Jean Valjean lifting the cart off the Fauchelevant with Javert watching
• The Thenardiers' Inn
• The Barricade
• The Sewers of Paris
• Javert Jumping off the Bridge
• The Wedding

I loved the idea.  When we got home, the Boy and I started making the Thenardiers' Inn.  I had big dreams of making the several scenes from the musical and novel and submitting them to BrickCon at the Seattle Center in October.  I poached the windows from the Medieval Village, a structure which had yet to be taken apart.  The Boy started on the outside structure of the Inn.  I free-built a fireplace, and the Boy added light bricks.  We found minifigures for Jean Valjean, Cosette, Javert and the Thenardiers.  We didn't quite finish the Inn, and the Boy and his friends remodeled it several times before it was compete.  Some of the changes we not authorized.  Several of the patrons of the inn were regurgitating their meals, others were urinating.  Days after we started, the Inn caught on fire, was bombed, and looked like it was part of the barricade.

Which brings me to my conflict.  Should I commandeer the collection to build Les Miserables?  He has tens of thousands of legos.  Would he miss the ones I would use?  Should I let the Boy be a boy, and have his room?  Or should I get my time?  I've been his lego enabler for years, supporting his addiction.  When do I get to build?

Why am I so grumpy and greedy about this?  Shouldn't I be a gracious parent, letting him enjoy his toys?  It is complicated.  In this case, the parent is the pupil and the teacher is the child.  Doesn't the mentor need to let his student blossom, find her own way, create her own mini-masterpiece?  It is much harder when your protege is your mom.

My son always says he wants to do something important, to make a difference in the world.  At times, he is frustrated that he is only a ten year old boy, without the power to change the world.  He has made a difference.  It might not be an epic change, but he has taught me something new.

Is he ready to share his studio for the sake of his student?  That remains to be seen.  While he may be a great teacher, he is, after all, a ten year old boy.

Hugo

I am in the middle of reading the unbridged Les Miserables (Julie Rose translation).  I started it last summer and I am still plugging away.  I have read some other books in between.  It is so long and epic, I don't feel bad putting it down and picking it back up after catching up on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.*  I should have a wager with myself: will I finish my daughter's quilt or Les Miserables first?  It will be a tortoise race, for sure.

Hugo has so much empathy.

empathy |ˈempəθē|nounthe ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Some writers create heros and villains.  Hugo creates humanity.  He has everyone -- from the Bishop and his sister, the convict, the beautiful young girl who becomes a prostitute, the business owner, the general, the police, nuns, the orphan, the lowlife opportunistic scoundrels, students, urchins (or gamin), aristocrats, gravediggers, factory workers, and on.  (And I am only halfway through the book.**)  His empathy doesn't mean he likes all of his characters.  It means he understands them, the good and the bad.  He also treats them fairly, even the Thenardiers.
I tag my favorite quotations in the book.  In addition to complex and vivid characters, Hugo writes a lot about politics and philosophy.  Since I just finished my volunteer job helping parents advocate for their children, here is passage that struck me:
"[Combeferre] claimed that the future was in the hands of the schoolmaster and got involved in issues of education.  He wanted society to work tirelessly at raising intellectual and moral standards, popularizing science, circulating ideas and cultivating the minds of the young, and he feared that the current impoverishment of the methods employed, the dire narrowness of teaching literature, which was limited to two or three centuries said to be "classical," the tyrannical dogmatism of the official pedants, scholastic prejudices and routines, would wind up turning our colleges into artificial oyster farms."
One hundred and fifty years later, civilization is continuing to have this conversation, just like philosophers continue to wonder about the meaning of life and astronomers wonder if there is other intelligent life in the universe.

* Parts of Wimpy Kid are the funniest things I have ever read.  He really understands the middle school mind.** My elementary school teachers said never start a sentence with "and" or "because."  I have known this is bad form since I was six.  Sorry.

The Pack of Furies

“She can’t be dead,” he said, and he sprang up, quivering from head to toe.

The most awful thoughts flashed through his mind in a jumble.  There are times when the most hideous suppositions besiege us like a pack of furies, violently storming the compartments of our brains.  When it comes to those we love, we come with all kinds of mad things in our concern.” 

                          -- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, Julie Rose translation

My son has taken on a very deep affection for our dog, Fox, and it manifests in fearing for the small creature’s life.  Riding in the backseat of the car, the dog placed its paw on the automatic window button. 

“Mom, lock the windows,” the boy said.  “Fox might press the button accidently.”

A visitor came to the house and the dog slipped out the front door about two feet.

“STAY, FOX!  STAY!”  the boy screamed in terror, fearing the dog further slipping out of sight.

Walking tonight after dinner, Fox stopped to shake while crossing the street.  The boy’s father let the dog lollygag.

“You need to pull him,” the boy reprimanded his father. “You can’t let him shake in the middle of the street…”  He couldn’t articulate the rest of the thought, “because he could get hit by a car.”  Walking to the bus stop in the morning, the boy carries Fox across the street.

“He’s fine.  I am in control,” his dad replied.  This brought little comfort to my son.

“Why is it grown-ups can be strict and I can’t?” he said.  “Why do I have to wait to be 18 to be strict and tell people what to do?” 

I can’t imagine the boy becoming a father if he loves a dog this much.  The bigger the heart, the bigger the break.

This afternoon I had my own near miss when Fox ate a random berry fallen from a tree.  He started trembling, and I called the vet.  

“You should be concerned if he is lethargic, anxious or trembling,” the office assistant said.

“He is trembling,” I replied.

“Oh,” she said, and thought for a few seconds.  “Feed him.  See if that helps.”  I fed the dog, and he stopped shaking and otherwise seemed fine.  Nevertheless, he sat on my lap for the rest of the afternoon so I would know every time he quivered.  I imagined Fox living another twelve years, the thought forcing the furies to stay at bay.

My Favorite Quotes from "Les Miserables"

This summer, I picked up "Les Miserables."  It is surprisingly easy to read.  I feared it would be one of these long, dusty, irrelevant tomes but it is far more lovely that I imagined.  This is from the Julie Rose translation.

     Once Madame Magloire had said to [the bishop] with a gentle kind of malice, "Monseigneur, you are always to keen to put everything to good use, yet there is a useless garden bed for you!"
     "Madame Magloire," the bishop replied, "you are mistaken.  The beautiful is just as useful as the useful."  After a pause, he added, "Perhaps more so."  (page 21)

Here is another one about the bishop...

     He went easy on women and the poor, feeling that the weight of human society fell upon them.  He would say, "The sins of women and children, domestic servants and the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the sins of the husbands and fathers, the masters, the strong and the rich and the educated."
     He would also say, "Those who are ignorant should be taught all you can teach them; society is to blame for not providing free public education; and society will answer for the obscurity it produces.  If the soul is left in the darkness, sin will be committed.  The guilty party is not he who has sinned but he who has created the darkness in the first place."
     As you can see, he had a strange and idiosyncratic way of looking at things.  I suspect he got it from the Gospel.  (page 13)