Selfie: Favorite Colors

I took this a couple of months ago in February. Purple and green have become my favorite colors, specifically that shade of purple and that shade of green. And I love those shirts and that pair of shorts. It's just that Instagram wouldn't let me post the photo the way I cropped it; too vertical. And I didn't want to put it on Facebook: it'd just get a ridiculous number of likes. So here it is. I am kind of proud of the work I've been doing at the gym and watching what I eat and I like how this photo shows the results.

A Celebration of Life

I went to the Celebration of Life for my friend Anna Lucia today. I'm just posting this here and not on Intagram and Facebook because it would just get all kinds of likes for me and messages of sorrow for me, which would all be sweet and well-intentioned, but I'm not the one that deserves the likes. Those should go to Anna Lucia. And I'm not the one who needs the sympathy. That should go to Anna Lucia's family, boyfriend, and closest friend Nichole. 

It was a nice service and I'm really glad I went. Even though I didn't know anyone there except Nichole I'm glad I pushed through my awkwardness in unfamiliar surroundings. Everyone was really nice, of course. The singer's voice was weak but her heart was in the right place.

I met Anna at GEICO where our cubicles were right next to each other. After I left we kept in touch and not too much time passed before she also switched to Wawanesa. She was only there 9 months when she got the position at the Art Institute. We kept in touch at first and she did come to see me up at Scripps Green when I was in the hospital there. She came on the day after my surgery so I wasn't in the best shape. After that we mostly kept track of each other through Facebook. 

I loved seeing that she got a position with the San Marcos School District, a job that she loved. I loved reading about all of her activities and events with friends and family. I loved seeing her baked creations. I really loved learning about her new boyfriend. So I was shocked and upset when I read Nichole's words that she had suddenly left us.

Anna was sweet and sensitive and super smart. Not conventionally pretty she stressed about all of the mixed signals and expectations that fall heaviest on women in our culture. But her guiding star was to stay true to herself and to know that she was fabulous and she didn't have to be anything else. And that's what she passed on to all of us who knew her. She saw us as fabulous and we didn't have to be anything else but ourselves for her. 

I miss you, Anna Lucia.

Book Review

The Thief of Always by Clive Barker

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I started reading this book when a friend, acquaintance really, recommended it and I, being in the middle of the marathon that is Infinite Jest, thought it'd be a nice change of pace. Young Adults novels are often great tales and a fun read. Since the hero in this book is 10 years old and the reading level is about that I'd say this book is for children younger than YA. It's definitely easier to read than Harry Potter.

Harvey is bored, looking for a distraction, and open to temptation. He follows someone to a place where his every wish is granted. Everything is great at first, but he soon discovers it's all a sham and a trap. The story is creative and imaginative. The premise may not be original but the details are. There were times I thought it'd be better as a fully realized illustrated novel instead of a classic prose book and the gender roles are stereotypical with the 2 female supporting characters relegated to passive roles, but the pace picks up in the last section and the ending is very satisfying and well done. A good read.



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Book Review

When Sorry Isn't Enough: Making Things Right with Those You Love by Gary Chapman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


25 plus years ago when I officially started working in my company's customer service department I found myself tripping over the words "I'm sorry", as if they were stuck in my throat. That's just not something most of us are used to saying. I certainly hadn't had it said to me very often and never in any meaningful way. Realizing apologizing was part of the job description, that night, at home while taking a shower, I practiced saying "I'm sorry" over and over again as many different ways as I could think to say it; not to fake it, I've meant it every time I've said it, but to unstick it from my throat so it would be understood to be sincere by my customers and everyone I owe an apology to.

I'd read, and highly recommend, Gary Chapman's "The 5 Love Languages". After spending so much time learning what people need in an apology on the job, I was interested to get more information about apologies, especially on a personal level.

So many good relationships go bad because neither party know how to communicate their own or the other's love language, which is why the first book is so important. Lots of relationships go from bad to worse because one or both people refuse to admit that they're human and make mistakes. Even if someone is willing to apologize they don't know how to do it in a way that's meaningful to the other person. Remember, apologies are not about what you're comfortable saying. Apologies are what the other person needs to hear.

Which is where this book comes in. It does a great job of breaking down an apology into its component parts and explains how certain parts may be more important to the person you're apologizing to and what needs to be said so they'll understand you're sincere. The most important chapter may be the chapter on forgiving ourselves.

My main objection is it's use of Christian scriptures and values to justify many of the concepts discussed. This may put off non-Christians or people who've been demonized by misguided Christians. But the language of apology is such a basic need to getting through this life without leaving behind a lot of burnt bridges that I advise everyone to read this book, take the good information and don't be put off by what doesn't resonate with you.



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Book Review

Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"...novels do not begin the way you want them to, but the way they want to."

I was prompted to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's autobiography by his formative reading list put together by Maria Popova and her assertion that: "Living to Tell the Tale is a glorious read in its entirety — the humbling and infinitely heartening life-story of one of the greatest writers humanity ever produced." https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/04...

It is indeed a glorious read in its entirety. A master at the end of his life writing about the things he most loved and lived is kind of magical. This book is like a portal into another time and place and culture, a different way of being in world. In recounting the stories of his life and family he reveals the incidents and people that inspired events in his novels. My favorite: the Colonel who finds a different woman in his bed each night of the war resulting in the 17 Aurelianos in "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is based on his own Grandfather and all these Uncles he didn't know about showing up at their house with crosses on their foreheads one year on Ash Wednesday.

There are a lot of names in the book, but instead of being confusing they impart meaning and importance to each individual. This book is only the first half of his life. I'm very much hoping he wrote a 2nd part before he died in 2014. I was hoping it would give me an idea of which book of his to read next; I've only read the one, but most of his books were written later. Anyone have a recommendation?



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Death is Nothing at All

By Henry Scott-Holland

Death is nothing at all. 
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity of sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, 
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.

All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Book Review

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"I have been very fortunate in my profession. I have made enough money to satisfy both my needs and my caprices." Hercule Poirot

First I came across Steve Hayes' fun review of the 1974 movie 'Murder on the Orient Express'(https://youtu.be/segmFF7WQrc). The film is every bit as fun as his review; all 1940s glamour and fluff. Still glowing from the movie I started reading Agatha Christie's book.

The book is very good, of course, but not quite as much fun as the 1974 film(I haven't seen the 2017 film version yet). However, I've learned I'm no great fan of mystery novels. I enjoy the movies and TV shows made from them but the reading not as much. I did read 'And Then There Were None' and liked it a little bit better.

But Agatha Christie fans will love this. It's Hercule Poirot in all of his fastidious glory.



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Book Review

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"Before she was more gone than here. Before she started snorting crushed pills. Before all the little mean things she told me gathered and gathered and lodged like grit in a skinned knee."

I heard about this book when my friend Sheryl shared an article on Facebook about NPR's new book club Now Read This and this book by Jesmyn Ward as their first selection. I've never jumped on a book club bandwagon before, but this one resonated and, having just finished a book, I downloaded it and started reading. I'm very glad I did.

Sing, Unburied, Sing centers around a biracial(I kind of hate that word; we're all one race, but people with a black parent and a white parent do have a very different experience than the rest of us) boy growing up in the rural American South. His life is kind of brutal but he's got the strength for it.

While the book centers around Jojo, it's written in first person and each character tells their own story giving the reader insight into all of their strengths and blemishes. The sultry, humid Southern countryside is its own character woven throughout the story so that the people seem to grow out from the land and the land gets its character from the people.
"The music, all violins and cellos, swells in the room, then recedes, like the water out in the Gulf before a big storm."
I loved this book. I think you will, too.



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Poem

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is 

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend

Book Review

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away."

Not quite "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," perhaps, but still, to my mind, one of the great opening lines of a novel. And all of her writing is like that; powerful, evocative, setting a strong image of time, place, and mood in just a few words. Leon Edel said of Willa Cather; "The time will come when she'll be ranked above Hemingway." I prefer Cather to Hemingway. Both are efficient in their prose. But Hemingway wrote wonderful stories about life, while Cather wrote wonderful stories teeming with life.

Like Joseph Conrad's jungle and Herman Melville's sea, Willa Cather's land is, in many ways, the main character of this book. The characters seem to rise up out of it. She gives it her most poetic language:

"Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring."

But her people are no less three dimensional for their brevity of description. Touching on misogyny and racism, the novel centers around a smart, strong woman with great instincts who helps her family, and by example her community, prosper, but doesn't get bogged down with marriage and the men in her life, which I found very refreshing.

Before this I read her short story "The Enchanted Bluff" and her short novel "My Mortal Enemy" and loved those. I'll definitely be coming back for more by Willa Cather. Most highly recommended.



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Quote: "What Makes a River..."

“What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn't have any doubt - it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn't want to go anywhere else.” Hal Boyle

Book Review

Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World by Erica Benner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"...instead of praying for some new holy man to save you, learn the way to Hell in order to steer clear of it yourself." - Niccolo Machiavelli

I became aware of, and interested in, this book when I came across this interview with its author: https://www.vox.com/2017/7/24/1591382....

Erica Benner asserts in the interview and in the book that Machiavelli was not Machiavellian. Though his oft quoted Prince is How-to-Be-a-Tyrant, he wrote it ironically. Knowing that tyrants always eventually implode, he set out to encourage the current one to implode fasterc so better men could set about establishing a more stable republic.

Ms. Benner has written a sweeping, all encompassing, biography that engaged me like a well written novel. This book deserves to stand with Barbara Tuchman's The Distant Mirror and The Guns of August as important histories that illuminate our present.

Starting in Florence when it was its own republic the book expands to include the Medici, several Popes, the King of France, and the Hapsburg Emperor, all of whom Machiavelli interacted personally with as diplomat for the city he loved and devoted his life to. When he wasn't able to work directly for its welfare he studied the histories of Rome and Greece to learn when states flourished and when they faltered. This scholarship he put into a history of Florence that was a cautionary tale to current and future leaders. When he couldn't get people's attention with history he wrote comedies poking fun at himself, his city, and its leaders.

I love this book. Highly recommended.



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Book Review

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“...it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.”

Read Breakfast at Tiffany's. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. It's a short novel(I LOVE short novels) that you could read in a night; a few hours if you're fast. But don't. Like most great writing it's tempting to gobble it up like so much hot fudge sundae. But force yourself to slow down. Digest it slowly, savoring every bite. Read Holly Golightly as Audrey Hepburn spoke with her pauses and stresses.

Holly Golightly is a woman-child with earth-mother people skills and handwriting that's a childish scrawl. She's gone through hell and come out a pure soul who can only be herself. She's totally present in the moment and doesn't hold a grudge. She appreciates all of people, focuses on the good and isn't offended by the flaws.

A friend recommended reading Truman Capote, but I didn't think I was up to In Cold Blood. And it's brilliant. The writing is complete, not sparse like Hemingway. But there's no excess back story that should've been left in the author's notes. The story is a character driven snapshot of these people's lives. Through the author's eyes you fall in love with Holly and through Holly's eyes you love all of the souls who swirl around her. It's not tied up neatly with a bow like the movie, but that's the brilliance of books; they don't have to be. This book isn't more complex as much as it's more colorful. And more satisfying.




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Book Review

Awakenings by Oliver Sacks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As World War I drew to a close, besides the great Spanish Flu epidemic there was also an epidemic of a 'sleepy sickness' or encephalitis lethargica in which patients would be unable to stay awake and would sleep for days, weeks, or even months. Often they would seem to recover fully and live full lives for a decade or more only to be struct with a kind of Parkinsonism. They would spend the remaining decades of their lives rigid, catatonic, or a variety of other symptoms that prevented them from interacting normally with their environment. Unable to be cared for by family or even most institutions they ended up in long-term chronic hospitals.

In 1966 Dr. Oliver Sacks joined of Mount Carmel Hospital in New York where over 80 such patients were housed and having their basic needs seen to. Instead of dismissing them or avoiding them Dr. Sacks took an interest in his patients, saw their humanity through their disabilities, and set about doing what he could for them. A new drug, L-DOPA, had possibilities to relieve the Parkinson symptoms. "Awakenings" chronicles the history of the epidemic, Dr. Sacks' and his patients' experience with L-DOPA, and what they learned from their experience.

"Awakenings" is a good example of what Maria Popova calls "the everythingness of everything" of Oliver Sacks. He saw his patients as complete people, not the sum of their symptoms. He chronicles how everything affects their responses to their disease: the hospital environment of space, light and air, hospital policies, family relationships, the emotional investment the staff made in the patients, and the patients' own curiosity and humor towards themselves and their lives. He discusses many theories of people and events, not just medical theories but also physics and the catastrophic threshold of chaos theory.

My take away from the book, besides wishing very much to have a doctor like him who listens and observes and is interested in everything affecting my life, is how everything has a direct effect on peoples' lives; space, light, air, love, respect, support. And how our tendency to want to compartmentalize people's lives and expect exemplary behavior under horrible circumstances has no basis in reality.

Highly recommended



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Quote: Rumi

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
—Rumi

Quote: James Baldwin

"(An artist's) role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are."

Quote: James Baldwin

Book Review: 11/22/63

11/22/63 by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


While I'm really glad I read it, I didn't always enjoy the reading of it. To me, it's over written. Every thing and every action is completely described leaving nothing to the imagination of the reader. The first few chapters especially needed to be run through the editing process a couple more times. I much prefer authors who know how to provide all necessary details while leaving enough out for the reader to be fully intellectually engaged. Not every question needs to be answered.

The second thing not completely engaging about this book is the main character. I never sympathized or identified with him in any meaningful way. But there is something of a literary tradition of uninteresting main characters. Dickens' David Copperfield, who's interesting as a child but boring as an adult, is my favorite example. And like David Copperfield, Stephen King's other characters are all interesting, three-dimensional people readers will have no problem identifying with and caring about.

The other thing Stephen King has done incredibly well is research the events leading up to and after the main event. The movements, history, and people around Lee Harvey Oswald are all brought to vivid life and is, alone, worth reading the book. This book also brings the era, 1958 - 1963, to life in incredible detail putting the reader into the middle of American culture; food, music, clothes, cars, the easy hospitality and respect, the clean air, the quiet nights, the mills belching toxins into the air 24/7, the restrooms marked Ladies, Gentlemen, and Colored with an arrow pointing around back to a board with a hole in it over a ditch. Except for that one mention everything else in the book involves white people.

Spoiler alert: While the ending generally rings true, the changes after Kennedy is saved seem extreme; world wide earthquakes? the rending of space/time? the collapse of the universe? I found all that hard to buy.



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Book Review

The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World by Alan Downs

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“What was once a feeling has become something deeper and more sinister in our psyches—it is a deeply and rigidly held belief in our own unworthiness for love. We were taught by the experience of shame during those tender and formative years of adolescence that there was something about us that was flawed, in essence unlovable, and that we must go about the business of making ourselves lovable if we are to survive.”

I had thought I had my internalized homophobia well in hand. Being gay has long been the one part of my life that I'm most comfortable with, most secure in, and most willing to protect and demand respect of. I've long been aware of internalized homophobia, have examined my own, and kept a watchful eye out for the tiny ways it surfaces throughout my life. But still that line from the Friends theme song; "your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's DOA" is totally me. I had never associated those gaps with internalized homophobia. But in The Velvet Rage Alan Downs connects those dots in a direct line. He shows how the early message of "be this, not that" and the absence of a mentor or a sympathetic ear gets into our DNA and travels with us into adulthood, prompting us to foreclose on fulfillment in many areas of our life and not just in our sexual expression.

Based on a lifetime working with his own therapy clients, this is an amazing important book that remains imminently readable despite the complex ideas discussed. Best of all he includes a list of skills, actions we can take in order to move towards a more fulfilling life and he emphasizes that moving from shame to acceptance is a skill, a practice, something you do rather than something you think about.

Highly recommended, possibly required reading for all gay men.



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Book Review

On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Dear Oliver Sacks, or I should say, Dr. Sacks: Thank you so much for the gift of your book. It will forever remain one of my most treasured. Your love and joy and gratitude and curiosity infuse every part of it. I don't know how you do it because on the surface your writing is very straightforward, observational, but somehow that transparency allows all of your wonderful warmth to come through. Reading your book is such a pleasure that I did it in little segments, stretching it out so that I wouldn't finish it too soon. And at the end I had a true sense of a full, complete life; a life that left the world a better place.

My regret at finishing your book is tempered by the knowledge of the dozen other books that you wrote and the further chance to live in your world where life and people are endlessly fascinating. I can't decide whether to jump back to the beginning of this book and read it cover to cover again or start right in on Awakenings or make myself read something completely different in order to come back to you afresh. A hardcover edition of Awakenings is proving difficult to obtain, but luckily it's easily available as an ebook.

I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you in person. I have quite a crush on you. I would've loved to hear some of your stories, although I have little to offer you other than my attention.

Yours truly,

Tim Dominic



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