Counterbalance

The Strangeness of Old Words

I've been road-traveling again. Not in California. I've got an entirely new batch of roadside insights to share that have nothing to do with old memories conjured by familiar landscapes and much more to do with deeply buried dreams unlocked by entirely new scenery. More on that soon.

When packing for a trip that was all about seeking out snow (new snow, powder snow, the kind you will not currently find in Mammoth or Tahoe), I felt instinctively that two things would be the things to bring with: an old journal filled with old writing scraps (time to make something of it all, perhaps) and a copy of Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet.

What I could not have known as I was flurry-packing down jackets, wind-block shells and low-light ski goggles is that these two items were, in fact, the items. I read a few scraps of my old work and had a strange sensation. I put them away. Picked them back up again. Felt strangeness again and again. Who had written these words? How was she so confident years ago in a way that I am not now? Where has she gone and can I get her back again?

I set my old words aside for the rest of the trip. This adventure was to be about fun, about snow, about wide open Wyoming spaces, about après ski and conversation with interesting locals. My old words had conjured up more than I intended. They'd made me feel somehow less. Somehow diminished. Somehow wishing the less wise me of years ago could re-emerge, then merge with the wiser (but meeker) me of now and embolden my future writings. It was too much to think about so I set them aside and didn't open them again.

I did, however, crack open Pessoa's disquieted thoughts. Here's what greeted me in fits & spurts throughout the entire first section:

"In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger."

                                     

"I often find texts of mine that I wrote when I was very young--when I was seventeen or twenty. And some have a power of expression that I do not remember having then. Certain sentences and passages I wrote when I had just taken a few steps away from adolescence seem produced by the self I am today, educated by years and things. I recognize I am the same as I was. And having felt that I am today making a great progress from what I was, I wonder where this progress is if I was then the same as I am today. There is a mystery in this that reduces my worth and oppresses me."

                                     

"How did I advance toward what I already was? How can the person who knows me today not know me yesterday? All this confuses me in a labyrinth where I am with myself and wander away from myself. I wander with my thoughts and I'm sure that what I'm writing now I already wrote. I remember."

                                     

"Once again, I have found something of mine, written in French, over which fifteen years must have flown now. I've never been to France, never dealt face-to-face with the French, never, therefore, exercised that language in which I had ceased to be fluent. Today I read as much French as ever. I'm older, a more experienced thinker: I must have made some progress. And the French in that passage from my distant past possesses a confidence which today I do not possess. The style is fluid, but in a way I could never be today in that language, with entire passages, complete sentences, forms and modes of expression that demonstrate a control over that language that I lost without ever remembering I had it. How is it possible to explain that? Whom did I substitute inside myself?"

                                    

"But what am I experiencing when I read myself as if I were someone else? On which bank am I standing if I see myself in the depths?"

                                     

"At other times I have found things I've written that I don't remember having written -- which is shocking -- things I don't even remember being capable of writing -- and that does frighten me. Certain phrases belong to a different mentality. It's as if I'd found an old picture, unquestionably of me, in which I had a different physique, unknown features -- but features undoubtedly mine -- all horrifyingly my own."

Though Pessoa tends toward the dramatic, I know (without question) that bringing along my old writing and casting it aside amidst a range of uncomfortable emotions only to pick up Pessoa's ramblings on the same is not an accident. 

I don't know what else it might be, but I am for the moment reassured by his words.

That many believe he was crazy is, obviously, beside the point, no?

On the (Writing) Road Again

I've been traveling a ton this past month and it is the kind of travel that has put me in a very specific kind of mood: the writing mood. What kind of travel does that? Road travel does it for me every time. Sure there are characters in the average airport who make me curious. Fancy hotels have their story to tell, too. Yet there's something about the scenery rolling by out the window, the long stretch of highway, the bizarre little towns along the way and the people who inhabit them that I find utterly fascinating and oddly in need of closer examination.

I've lived in California my entire life. I've driven these long stretches of freeway from San Francisco to San Diego, SoCal to NorCal and back again and again over many years. When I travel these roads, they feel like my roads. The strange people in the strange shanty towns feel like my people, the towns feel like my towns. The passing of the same landmarks, the same red rock formations, the same snowy peaks through so many phases of my life gives me a history to refer to, a future to look forward to.

A trip up to San Francisco from LA, then, is not simply a trip. It is a chance to remember what that trip was like when I was 13. Then 24 and in love. Then 30 and single and full of ideas anew. Then that time we all fought in the car, alternately shouting and laughing and stewing in anger. Then that time we were headed to a funeral, silent and sad. I remember the albums I discovered with each trip. The songs I played on repeat until my heart stopped aching. The beats I tapped on my steering wheel drive, drive, driving along. With every trip I take up and down this state, I revisit all that I have been and all that I hope to still become.

I've been on three California road trips in almost as many weeks. I have a lot of stories, real and imagined, to tell.

Loaded

We're in flight (Virgin America, digging your in-air wifi) and the eReader that shall not be named is loaded with much reading goodness:

• The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
• Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
• Nocturnes by Kauzo Ishiguro
• New World Monkeys by Nancy Mauro
• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
• Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan
• Lies My Mother Never Told Me by Kaylie Jones
• Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep
• Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott
• This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

First up, the much-awaited Baker book. Simply cannot contain self. 

And yes, it would seem that I'd need far more than a week of packed-full vacation days in DC to complete all this delectable reading.  But it's all there...just in case.

Stay tuned.

Away We Go

I'll admit that when I first started on this travel writing reading jag, I didn't know if it had legs. Translation: I doubted it could capture my interest beyond the first book or two.  Add in the bevy dearth of very excellent new fiction that is coming out over the next few months, and I seriously wondered how long I'd manage to be intrigued by this genre of writing and this ever-seeking out of new place/old place understanding and adventure.

So I'm entirely surprised to find that not only has Theroux completely enchanted me with his very specific point of view in Dark Star Safari, but I'm becoming ever more interested in devouring all sorts of travel literature as the days pass. That's the good news.

The less good news is that I'm now at a decisive moment.  I could give myself entirely over to Theroux and read all of his big travel books in one go (there is something about his writing that carries me along and piques my interest whether I agree with him entirely or no and I can see that this might be an excellent time to become a Theroux non-fiction completist) or I can hop skip jump around to all the other journey lit that I've been obsessively identifying, collecting and placing in library queues.

So - I could go Theroux:

• Pillars of Hercules
• The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas
• Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China
• The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific
• The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (which must obviously be read before...)
• ...Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar (published last fall)

Or I could go all over:

• A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire by Anton Chekhov
• The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey by Salman Rushdie
• Flaubert in Egypt by Gustave Flaubert
• And Let the Earth Tremble at Its Centers by Gonzalo Celorio
• A Trance After Breakfast by Alan Cheuse
• Hitching Rides with Buddha by Will Ferguson

Where would you go next?

Not My Typical Meet an Author Locale

As you know, bookstore readings are my thing (or at least they were before I started working so many hours a week that I find the last one I attended was eight months...eight months...ago) and I find the whole process fascinating -- from the reading itself to the audience's odd mannerisms and secret but not so secret conversations both before and after the author's part of the gig is over.

On the heels of both my grave disappointment at my recent track record for attending these events (I used to attend several per week so to say I'm out of sorts is to grossly understate this state of affairs) and my recent foray into journey-from-your-armchair-literature, I'm now considering kick-starting my anemic author-event attendance by showing up at...a business conference.  I know.

Whilst checking out the Triple Pundit and thinking about my secret sustainable wine project (which is also suffering from my crazy workload), I took a look at the Opportunity Green conference that will take place Nov 7 - 9th at UCLA.  After perusing the sponsors and speakers (MINI, I love you), I was delighted to see that Rick Ridgeway, author of The Shadow of Kilimanjaro: On Foot Across East Africa (which I finished a few short weeks ago and which inspired me to dive headlong into this reading direction), will be speaking in his role as VP of Environmental Programs and Communication at Patagonia.

Not my ideal author venue, but I'm willing to check it out.

Reader-Writer Moment #442

It is rare for me to be only pages - mere pages - into a book and scold myself for having missed out on such greatness for so long.  How could I have missed Theroux's travel writing entirely? It would be one thing if I didn't obsess about books daily...but to be so focused on writing and reading and to have missed this entire oeuvre of Theroux is just...maddening.  More worrisome: have others? The good news: I've discovered he writes more than novels, and boy does he ever. It is early going, but I suspect his work will lead me on a fascinating journey.  In addition to the work itself, I've already had a few of those extra-lovely moments where connections to other writers/folks of interest are made - writers that have either been on my list for a long time or those who've only recently come to my attention but now seem to appear in everything I read (which I always interpret as a message from the book universe that I must follow the tail as it darts in and out of whatever I'm reading and see where it takes me).

The first hook-line-sinker passage for me:

"Out of touch in Africa was where I wanted to be. The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change. Travel is a sort of revenge for having been put on hold, having to leave messages on answering machines, not knowing your party's extension, being kept waiting all your working life - the homebound writer's irritants. Being kept waiting is the human condition.

I thought, Let other people explain where I am. I imagined the dialogue:

    'When will Paul be back?'

    'We don't know.'

    'Where is he?'

    'We're not sure.'

    'Can we get in touch with him?'

    'No.'

Travel in the African bush can also be a sort of revenge on cellular phones and fax machines, on telephones and the daily paper, on the creepier aspects of globalization that allow anyone who chooses to get his insinuating hands on you. I desired to be unobtainable. Kurtz, sick as he is, attempts to escape from Marlow's riverboat, crawling on all fours like an animal, trying to flee into the jungle. I understood that.

I was going to Africa for the best reason - in a spirit of discovery; and for the prettiest - simply to disappear, to light out, with a suggestion of I dare you to try and find me."
 

                                       --Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari

Epic Journeys from Your Armchair - Prelude

It started with meeting a wolf expert, grew stronger with a bookshelf reorg in which I rediscovered my once-loved photo books on Africa, and swelled into grand proportions after I started watching a little show called...Man vs. Wild.  Say what you will about Bear Grylls and how likely it is that he is truly in danger during each shoot and so on (a quick search of YouTube on this topic would render anyone a skeptic in this regard), his fascination with the inner journey one goes through while trying to survive in the wild struck a deep nerve in me and reminded me of the epic journey literature that my father introduced to me as a child.

Growing up near Jack London Square, perhaps it was a no-brainer that the first man vs. wild literature I ever read was Jack London's Call of the Wild.  At the time I distinctly remember it all being a bit intense and rugged and...something possibly more suited to boys. Full disclosure, even Black Beauty was a lot of violence for me to handle at that time.  Either way, I moved on to other literature and never looked back.  I had torrid summer affairs with Clive Cussler's grocery store novels (my grandmother's term, not mine) and although I knew then that the writing was subpar, I gravitated towards his stories that were less spy-ops, more adventure in the wild.

I had a brief spell of wanting to move to Africa to study zebras and then I spent two decades ignoring all this entirely.

Yet a few back to back episodes of Man vs. Wild (thank you Netflix Watch Instantly) and all the power of epic travel writing and intense journeys that challenge everything we know and believe about ourselves and the vast natural landscapes that cover our planet came roaring back. I'm not sure if this renewed interest is more escapism from daily worries or if it is purely about the journey and the animals along the way, which was certainly the fascination when I was younger.  As I've spent the last several years of my life focused on new, new fiction, my overflowing bookshelves afforded me very little in the way of a quick fix once I determined that I wanted to read some epic journeys through difficult landscapes. 

The first book I plucked from my shelves a few weeks ago was Rick Ridgeway's The Shadow of Kilimanjaro: On Foot Across East Africa.  I'm hooked.  So hooked, that I'm already casting about for what I'll read next.  It was in this casting about that I disovered the vast array of travel writing - classic and brand spanking new - that I've ignored entirely with my ever-vigilant focus on new fiction. Quick scans of travel writing sections revealed Paul Theroux's books (ahhh, so that's what he does) and so many others that I felt like a right dolt for having missed out entirely (and possibly thumbed my nose at, if I'm being honest) on this genre of writing. 

The good news: I've found it now and it is fair to say I'll be exploring the world of epic journey literature for quite awhile. The tradition is so rich, the landscapes so vast, the life altering realizations so abundant. I've got a few books on my radar to read next (Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux tops the list) and I'd like to consider this post a prelude to a longer discussion about this genre of literature.  In my years of book blogging (and I'm stunned to find it has been four), we've never had this discussion. In all of our emails and comments and texts and tweets back and forth about craft and gorgeous writing and novels that have changed us, we've never covered any of this.  Why is that?  Is it a literature we've deemed somehow lesser than the great fiction we celebrate?  Why do these journey stories resonate for me now in a way they never did before and have all of you been steeped in this literature for years and I'm a late arrival?  These are just the first questions of what I hope will be an ongoing dialogue here at Counterbalance.

I'm oh so looking forward to it.

Truly Counterbalancing

Mr. Counterbalance and I are headed to a wedding up north this weekend and are extending our stay for a week in Napa.  Much as I rolled my eyes at Napa the entire time I grew up in the Bay Area, I find that while some of my angles have hardened with age, my attitude towards Napa has not.  Instead, it has mellowed and since Napa itself seems almost entirely over itself (finally!), it's a perfect time to visit.

I'll be blogging about it all at my new (not yet launched) wine blog.  I'll announce its launch here in the coming days for those who wish to check it out and follow along. Of course, no vacation is a proper vacation for me without lugging along a pile of books. As always, the pile is ambitious, but I'm confident I'll have quite a variety of reading at the ready.  My pile thus far:

• Flaubert & Turvenev The Complete Correspondence Edited & Translated by Barbar Beaumont
• Flying to America by Donald Barthelme
• By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano
• The Exquisite by Laird Hunt
• Couch by Benjamin Parzybok

For kicks, I've thrown in Delaney's dhalgren. I could just make my life easier and bring only the dhalgren...but then I'll get antsy and feel trapped without options.  While I'm steadfastly against The Kindle (for reasons I can't properly articulate) I can see its use in moments like these when I'd like to bring my entire library along for perusal...just in case.

Falling for Patrick Kavanagh

One of the best things about traveling by car through the Irish countryside is listening to the local radio - I find I can learn so much about a country by what they choose to cover on the radio. The past week of Irish radio has been a delight -- especially the bits when they talk of Irish poets and writers and play old audio of them reading their work aloud. We had a lovely day driving from Galway to Limerick yesterday and heard a two hour public radio discussion of Patrick Kavanagh, his poetry, his politics (he detested snobby scholars studying James Joyce at Trinity College) and his band of poet friends.

While walking through Limerick today, I happened upon an excellent volume of Kavanagh's poetry, No Earthly Estate with a foreward and analysis of a few poems by Tom Stack.  Whilst curled up next to the fireplace in our gorgeous Georgian hotel a stone's throw from a stunning castle, I' discovered this gem that I loved, then disliked, then loved again:

Epic

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided: who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting 'Damn your soul'
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel --
'Here is the march along these iron stones'
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind
He said: I made the Illiad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

I've also picked up Opened Ground, a collection of poems by Seamus Heaney. I know, I know, not an original choice. But when you hear him quoted in pub after pub, on station after station, on public plaque after public plaque, it occurs to you that you'd do well to read the man's work!  More on Heaney to come...

Ah, Poetry

The most inspired words I've ever seen printed inside of a brewery.  Ireland is slowly stealing my heart.  Spent several days in Dublin and now we're on the opposite coast in Galway.  Taking it slow after several very busy days packed with much goodness.  Many good chats with booksellers, great pints with local writers and now we're slowing down before we get busy again.