Istanbul was Constantinople

I have these things that fire my imagination. They don’t go away. Places, objects, characters. They bubble up through my subconscious when I least expect them, some of them returning to me after months or years. One of these places is The Intersection at U.S. 285 and TX FM 1776 (Check it out at street view). I wrote about it here over the summer and have mentioned it in passing before. 

I go through this intersection maybe a couple of times a year, on the way to or from visits with family. In my brain, it is MY intersection and it is in New Mexico, but it’s actually everyone’s intersection and it’s in Texas. North of Pecos. Apparently it’s only been a four-way stop for a few years, though I remember it always being a four-way. One of the ways in which the present clouds our memory of the past, I suppose. 

It’s an odd place. There seems to be nothing around there for miles and miles, and I always wonder why the busy highway traffic should stop there. But the big trucks are some indication that perhaps there is more activity beyond the rolling ridges at the horizon. In recent years the intersection has been built up with warning rumble strips and flashing lights. HEY STUPID! I KNOW YOU’RE DRIVING OVER EIGHTY MILES PER HOUR BUT IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO STOP. NOWNOWNOW!!! I’m pretty sure that’s what the signs say. The intersection has been the sight of numerous fatal accidents over the past few years.  

When we drove through the intersection at the end of June, I didn’t notice any unusual activity about the intersection. Just the dry dry dryness of the desert. On our return at the beginning of July, however, just a week later, the landscape around the stop signs had changed. Earth movers were there and they had been fulfilling their life’s prupose. We made guesses that some sort of bypass was being constructed. I tried very hard to remember what the roads had looked like before all of that red dirt had been overturned around them. Next time I see it — if I even notice it as we speed by — it won’t be the same beast anymore.

Related: From the Alpine Daily Planet*, “U.S. 285 overpass to be built over FM 1776”

*You know that’s the coolest name for a newspaper you’ve heard for a long time, right?  

ABAW: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Houghton Mifflin, 1986 via Anchor Books, 1998.

This is Atwood’s classic book about a dystopian near future in which a Christian sect (anti-Baptist, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, misogynist, totalitarian, and violent, among other things) takes over the United States and establishes communities of surrogate pregnacy based on a very narrow reading of the Bible. This book terrified me. Atwood brings the tale of the dissolution of the US into Gilead so close to reality as to make it feel immediate and tangibly possible. Even now, more than twenty-five years after its first publication. 

The mood of the tale is claustrophobic. There is only isolation. Touching is a privilege mostly denied. The main character is isolated in her mind. No talking. No touching. No knowing. No trusting. Only grief, and fear, and uncertainty among the patterned certainties.

The only hope in the book is that the society is untenable. It is cruel and corrupt and in the process of collapsing on itself.

Two confessions.

1. While I am an academic nerd, I found the academic epilogue off-putting at first. I thought about it for some time before I understood the purpose of the pseudo-academic discussion of Gilead. I was still grated by the subtle cues that while Gilead had failed and the world had changed with the passage of time, that world still bore a great deal of the subtle and not-so-subtle misogyny that we can witness right now without much effort. Atwood deftly points to the biases that academic culture often bears when examining the “quaintness” of the past. And I use that word, “quaintness”, with a very sharp degree of etymological calculation. 

2. I did not — in spite of my time living and breathing inside The Canterbury Tales for several years of my life — connect the title of this book with Chaucer’s collection until I read that epilogue. (I know, duh) I’m still digesting the implications of the connection.

Beautifully wrought story about the horrors of fanatical and narrow-minded governance from an important contemporary social critic.

Bobby Pins in the Desert

I leaned over the sink and ate cake with my fingers. I listened as Jeff Buckley broke my heart again with that final kiss in “Last Goodbye.” I was alone in the house for the first time since May.

Ideas were tripping over each other, clamoring for my attention, but mostly I was thinking about writing, specifically about my writing practice. About when and how to get my butt in the seat and keep it there long enough to put down coherent ideas. I was thinking about inspiration. Not the inspiration for stories, but motivational inspiration, like Sugar’s exhortation to write like a motherfucker.

This summer Partner read a leadership development book called The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. I have no idea whether the book is worthwhile or not (I didn’t read it), but one bit has stuck with both of us, not just because it is something that we have always done well, but also because it is something we must continue to do.

Ritualize what’s important.

Want to remember to floss more often? Do it at the same time every day. Make it part of a dental hygiene routine. Want to get more exercise? Make a ritual out of it by incorporating exercise time into the patterns of your day. Want to write a book that others will enjoy reading? You get the idea. First, figure out what’s important to you, and then incorporate actions into the day in such a way that you don’t have to waste time choosing to do them. You just do them. Ritually.

My favorite rituals in our house surround bedtime. There are bedtime jobs, a fixed list of things that the kids do automatically (if noisily), like dental care and pet care and putting together their launch pad for the next morning. Once the jobs are done, we settle together on the couch and I read to them. Lately they’ve started knitting while they listen to me. The routine has evolved as their needs and abilities have changed, but the central actions are familiar, and at least for me, comforting in their regularity.

Around the time Partner was reading the leadership book and we were discussing how we could adapt and expand our rituals to emphasize what’s important for us, we wandered into an odd place called Tinkertown. Many things affected me there, as I mentioned in my post about the place back in June. One thing stuck in my brain and has floated the surface almost every day since then. I’d like to say it was one of the quirky displays in the ad hoc museum, but it was actually a cheap, mass-produced trinket in the gift shop. These tiny wooden boxes, called Dream Boxes. Their explanation suggested that if you had a goal or a dream to accomplish, you could write that goal on a scrap of paper and put it in the box. Then each night before sleep, you could read the note. The practice, the instructions claimed, would help the dream become a reality. A reminding ritual.

What would you write on the scrap of paper in your Dream Box, sweet peas? I’m writing mine now.

Sonars Overheard

Around the lunch table at home, the conversation bounced from their favorite line in The Princess Bride…

“Stop rhyming and I mean it!”

“Anybody want a peanut?”

…to Star Wars…

“Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

Until we got this delicious little mash up (complete with throaty noises)…

“Hello. My name is Yoda Montoya. You are my father. Prepare to die.”

*     *     *

In the car ride on the way to New Mexico a lengthy discussion about wizardry and magic led them to concluce that while using magic would be very cool, it would probably create worse problems. Like crazy power-hungry people with access to crazy amounts of power who might raise the dead and make zombie minions. Or accidental instant rapid self-combustion.

*     *     *

In the art museum play space…

SX6 (wearing a crown): You can be the king and send me on a quest to kill the evil jester.

SX11 (dressed in jester’s motley, with a sword): And then the evil jester kills the king!

SX8 (wearing a “wizard hat” that looks suspiciously like a sombrero, whispering): Mom’s writing down everything we’re saying on the back of my drawing.

SXMom (me!): No I’m not…. I’m writing it on the back of MY drawing.

Maybe I need elbow grease?

I have spent the past few weeks in an epic toss and declutter mission throughout our house. We have trashed and donated a huge amount of stuff. Though I’m normally a (compulsively) list-oriented person, this (spring) summer cleaning has unfolded organically. I’ve moved from drawer to shelf to closet as function struck me. 

Big jobs and small. Electronic and physical. Organizational and emotional. I have tackled it. I washed curtains! We even helped Sonar X11 face his burgeoning micro-hoarding tendencies. There is more, of course. In a functioning household, there is always something else that can be tidied up or sorted out.

In the middle of this cleaning frenzy, I also sewed, and baked, and knit, and planned for the upcoming school year. The house feels good.

There’s one problem.

This domestic sifting and discarding elbowed out other things. Like the writing. I know the Order will be pleasant when the writing recommences. I appreciate that.

But dude. The writing needs to start elbowing back.