per·i·pa·tet·ic
ˌperēpəˈtedik/
adjective
  1. 1.
    traveling from place to place, especially working or based in various places for relatively short periods.
    "the peripatetic nature of military life"
    synonyms:nomadic, itinerant, traveling, wandering, roving, roaming, migrant,migratory, unsettled
    "I could never get used to her peripatetic lifestyle"
  2. 2.
    Aristotelian.
noun
  1. 1.
    a person who travels from place to place.
  2. 2.
    an Aristotelian philosopher.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Help Wanted: Special Delivery; No Heavy Lifting; Beautiful Feet Required

Jack Frost's Christmas Day handiwork on SAM's Dodge truck

It was quite chilly outside when I woke up this Christmas morning. The windshield on SAM's truck parked in the driveway became Jack Frost's canvas. Old Jack painted some interesting shapes for our enjoyment. Do you see the yin-yang heart figure at the bottom left corner of the glass? Then again, maybe it's not a heart shape. It could be that Old Jack was giving his backside a break from all the havoc he's been causing with my plants. Thanks a lot, Jack!

After a breakfast of sweet roll (recipe here), Havarti cheese, and strong coffee, I was ready for Christmas morn to begin. Wait, though. No stockings were hung by the chimney with care. No children or grandchildren were wiping the sleep from their eyes to find presents under the tree. It was just SAM and me present and accounted for this Christmas morn. It felt weird, I have to admit. Son and his family have moved back to Illinois. Daughter and her husband are spending Christmas with his parents. SAM and I are still recovering from a flu-like respiratory illness (stubbornly resisting going to the doctor). We've stayed home for the past nine days or so, trying not to infect anyone else if at all possible. Friends and neighbors know that we're sick so we've not had any visitors except for the package delivery people, God bless 'em. The Fed Ex man even brought a package this morning. Poor fellow, having to work on Christmas Day.

Peanut wonders if there will be any Christmas present for her?
Thinking about people who deliver things, I read a Christmas story that Charles Dickens wrote called The Chimes, in which a delivery man (known as a "porter" in Dickens' time) is charged with delivering more than a letter or a package. He falls into a reverie of sorts, is haunted by the spirits of the local church bells (sound somewhat familiar?), and encouraged (or rather scared witless) to change his sour attitude about life and his circumstances. Those footsteps have been followed before, I think, in other Dickens' stories and the like. They're amusing, I admit, but not life-changing.

 After finishing up Dickens' story this morning, I turned to another book that I've been neglecting, which could account for my own recent sour attitude about life and circumstances. I wish I'd looked into it sooner rather than later.

Now here is a present that doesn't need any special packaging. No cardboard, packing tape, or postage stamping is necessary. A few instructions for use, though, might come in handy for those not familiar with it or needing a refresher: "Handle with care"? Nope. No kid gloves necessary. "Do not immerse"? Well, that's not a bad idea after some use and much contemplation. How about "Take to heart on a daily basis and get those lovely feet in motion"? Yes! That's the ticket!

How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
"Your God reigns!"
(Isaiah 52:7)  

Saturday, December 7, 2013

'Gone Girl': Reading Saudade for Gen-X in Landscape


Gone (v.) 1. past participle of go. --(adj.) 2. departed; left. 3. lost or hopeless. 4. ruined. 5. dead; deceased. 6. past. 7. weak and faint; a gone feeling. 8. used up. 9. Slang. a. pregnant: two months gone. b. great; outstanding. c. exhilarated; inspired. --Idiom. 10. far gone, in an advanced state as of love, exhaustion, or illness. 11. gone on, Informal, infatuated with; in love with.

Saudade (n.) A Portuguese and Galician word that has no direct translation into English. It describes a deep, melancholic longing for someone or something that is loved but is absent. A repressed knowledge that the object of longing may never return tends to increase the nostalgia or melancholia.

*********************

After learning that Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was serving as the backdrop for filming part of Gillian Flynn's novel and screenplay Gone Girl, I decided to purchase the book and read it. I don't usually care for murder mysteries, especially when a husband is the prime suspect--too much of that sort of thing going on in real life--but I had heard from a reliable source that this one would surprise me. Boy, did it ever.

While someone else who has read this as well as Ms. Flynn's other novels recently gave me her opinion that the ending of this one was disturbing or unsatisfactory, I had just the opposite reaction. For some reason (maybe it's the gardener-in-me), the moment near the beginning when Nick Dunne (husband-suspect) comes home from The Bar (his business in a fictional Missouri town) to find his wife Amy missing, the mention of "red peonies along the border looking fat and juicy, asking to be devoured" stops me dead in my reading tracks. Why? Because when he wakes up that morning, it is to the glaring sun "revealing its full summer angry-god self." Peonies do not bloom in the middle of summer.

Green Lynx spider guarding her egg sac and babies

Naturally, I'm intrigued by this seemingly awkward intrusion of peonies on the scene. Is it just authorial or editorial ignorance or clumsiness? Ah. No, I don't think so. This is a New York Times bestseller, after all, carefully crafted and edited, and soon to be a major motion picture. Red peonies out of time, out of place are there for a reason.

Before the red peonies appear and the husband-suspect discovers his missing wife, before he gets out of bed that morning to face the glaring sun, he remembers what brought him back to his roots: the impending death of his "indomitable mother" with the expectation that his "nasty"-minded, "miserable"-hearted dad would soon follow suit. And if that weren't heart-string tugging enough, he has a twin sister, Margo or Go as he calls her, who needs his help caring for their parents.


A word of advice to the potential reader/movie-goer: Think critically. Don't be fooled and don't feel sorry. The main characters in this novel are Gen-X-ers, a generation caught in the throes of a midlife crisis.(A.O. Scott, a writer for the New York Times, established the presence of this phenomenon in an article published May 9, 2010.) Nick, Amy, Margo. They're all goners. They're over the hill and done (Dunne?) been sold down the river--unemployed--by dot-com washouts and various financial meltdowns. They have become Beverly Hillbillies in reverse. Their new-found poverty takes them from The Shiny Big Apple (New York City) to one of the unlucky buckles of the Rust Belt--Missouri....

When SAM and I were newly married and he was fresh out of college, back when the last of the Gen-X-ers were still toddling around and filling their diapers, we considered that we were relatively fortunate. We were debt-free (college tuition was cheap), one income was enough to pay the bills, and there were years ahead of us in which to work hard, have several children, save money for retirement, and eventually watch our many grandchildren grow up, in between long vacations to various far-flung, exotic places. New York City? Yep, maybe that too. It'd be nice to see what imagination can build with other people's money. The Rust Belt, though, would keep its grip on us for more than two decades while the dreams mentioned above slipped away. Life was a struggle, up and down, mostly down. But we stuck together and muddled through because that's what Rust-Belted Baby-Boomers are supposed to do....

Floodwall in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, overlooking the Mississippi River
The river that Life is takes its toll, I guess, on most people and their dreams. This past week saw the death of Nelson Mandela. As so many public figures have proclaimed, he has gone to a better place. His spirited fight against apartheid in South Africa was subdued by 27 years in prison--not vanquished, just subdued, but something else too. It was refined, like gold by fire, made brilliant like diamonds by heat and pressure. If he hadn't been caught and imprisoned, South Africa as a nation might have collapsed or been torn apart by a fiery uprising out of control.


With all of the media hoopla that has gone on surrounding his death, you can definitely sense saudade surrounding an iconic figure from a bygone era. According to a program I watched on PBS, Mandela belonged to a group of people bent on destroying the government of South Africa. His fellow political prisoners recall what life was like during those long years of waiting for change to happen. Theirs was a progressive movement, informed and inspired by communism. It was tired of the status quo and wanted change in a hurry, never mind the damage or loss of life. The river that Life is slowed them down, made them think, ponder, consider. Apartheid eventually crumbled, but the nation of South Africa remains intact. Blacks and whites alike mourn the man who is gone.

Now, going back to the book, Gone Girl. It has done a lot lately to "trouble the waters" of my mind. I guess that's what a well-written book is supposed to do. Now, I won't say that it's flawless, and I'm sure that a good critic can really pick it apart and expose the flaws. It's unsettling, maybe even disturbing, as my fellow reader mentioned at the beginning had decided. Isn't that what a well-written book is supposed to do? Unsettle. Disturb. Make you think, ponder, consider. Let's hope the movie does justice to its namesake.