I have two hours this morning until my sister comes over for coffee on the front porch where I'm house/cat- sitting (for twelve more days), and then I'm working this afternoon. Busy!
But I really want to try harder to blog every morning--days go by, and without it, I feel drifty, unmoored.
Also--sorry, I've been slow responding to comments.
(I LOVE comments, so please don't stop.)
Yesterday was a day off, and I spent much of it reading on the couch. I looked up, and there were the girls, Sparkle and Bounce, leading their own lives on the porch:
Sister only lives five houses away, down the block, but since her wife, Sarah, and I had a screaming fight three years ago, I have not been invited back.
I could probably mend relations, but it'd be like mending an item of clothing you never wanted to wear in the first place, something that had been foisted on you.
So, why?
Sister doesn't seem to mind, either.
It'd be nice if family were a resting place. My sister and SIL never were.
I was talking recently with someone who is always hosting family from out of town, and I said it must be nice to be on good terms with family.
"Oh, they're all distantly related," she said. "Cousins and things. None of us siblings talk to each other."
Pretty normal, in my world.
Coded Language Is Kelp
More often than envying friends with family, I think of many friends, WHY are you tolerating family members who are chronically unkind to you?
"Break up like lesbians", I think.
Lesbians are––or, used to be––known for staying friends with their exes, so the community was a web of women who had intimate histories with one another. Lots of drama, but it was a fairly elastic web, and it kept people connected, who otherwise might have few bonds.
I don't know how that goes anymore though. I haven't been a close part of that community in ages. (Not since I came out as straight, but even before...) I'm not sure it still exists, except among the older folk.
The new generation has grown a different culture.
I see it from afar, and it reminds me of the lesbian culture I lived in in my twenties in form, if not in content.
The form is... um . . . a group of people toward the edge of cultural norms, connecting themselves with codes and in-language.
The codes, the scripts––
for instance,
"what are your pronouns?"
and all the names for gender identities––
"cisgendered", etc.––(and god help you if you get it wrong...)
––these function like the seaweed and hand-holding that anchor floating sea otters.
My generation had scripts and codes too.
Any group does, right? Burgundy was replaced with Merlot, then Cabernet, "Cab".
BOOKS ARE ANCHORS
I didn't realize until I worked in BOOK's how much popular books, too, are cultural anchors of their times.
Obvious, huh?
But I missed it!
I rarely read bestsellers when they're bestsellers--because I don't buy new books (expensive), the hold line for bestsellers at the library is always too long to bother joining, and I've never joined a reading group.
But working in BOOK's, I get old bestsellers in bunches.
Mostly they're like leftovers past their due-date.
Books such as The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Devil Wears Prada---don't sell.
But people do buy The Shipping News.
In fact, the other day a woman said, "I just bought these, new!" holding up two copies of that title. She and a friend read books together, and they'd started that one.
Which gave me an idea for my next display--books we have two copies of (sometimes three), with a sign:
"Start a Two-Person Reading Group".
First I moved the remaining Space & Moon books. (I love being at the cash register and seeing what people buy, and hearing their comments--one man bought Space, Atoms, and God (1959), saying, "When you made that display, you were making it for me").
This is one of my favorite displays--not so much for the books, which vary in wonderfulness (from the New Testament to A Man Called Ove...),
but for encouraging people to read together.
But I really want to try harder to blog every morning--days go by, and without it, I feel drifty, unmoored.
Also--sorry, I've been slow responding to comments.
(I LOVE comments, so please don't stop.)
Yesterday was a day off, and I spent much of it reading on the couch. I looked up, and there were the girls, Sparkle and Bounce, leading their own lives on the porch:
Sister only lives five houses away, down the block, but since her wife, Sarah, and I had a screaming fight three years ago, I have not been invited back.
I could probably mend relations, but it'd be like mending an item of clothing you never wanted to wear in the first place, something that had been foisted on you.
So, why?
Sister doesn't seem to mind, either.
It'd be nice if family were a resting place. My sister and SIL never were.
I was talking recently with someone who is always hosting family from out of town, and I said it must be nice to be on good terms with family.
"Oh, they're all distantly related," she said. "Cousins and things. None of us siblings talk to each other."
Pretty normal, in my world.
Coded Language Is Kelp
More often than envying friends with family, I think of many friends, WHY are you tolerating family members who are chronically unkind to you?
"Break up like lesbians", I think.
Lesbians are––or, used to be––known for staying friends with their exes, so the community was a web of women who had intimate histories with one another. Lots of drama, but it was a fairly elastic web, and it kept people connected, who otherwise might have few bonds.
I don't know how that goes anymore though. I haven't been a close part of that community in ages. (Not since I came out as straight, but even before...) I'm not sure it still exists, except among the older folk.
The new generation has grown a different culture.
I see it from afar, and it reminds me of the lesbian culture I lived in in my twenties in form, if not in content.
The form is... um . . . a group of people toward the edge of cultural norms, connecting themselves with codes and in-language.
for instance,
"what are your pronouns?"
and all the names for gender identities––
"cisgendered", etc.––(and god help you if you get it wrong...)
––these function like the seaweed and hand-holding that anchor floating sea otters.
My generation had scripts and codes too.
Any group does, right? Burgundy was replaced with Merlot, then Cabernet, "Cab".
BOOKS ARE ANCHORS
I didn't realize until I worked in BOOK's how much popular books, too, are cultural anchors of their times.
Obvious, huh?
But I missed it!
I rarely read bestsellers when they're bestsellers--because I don't buy new books (expensive), the hold line for bestsellers at the library is always too long to bother joining, and I've never joined a reading group.
But working in BOOK's, I get old bestsellers in bunches.
Mostly they're like leftovers past their due-date.
Books such as The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Devil Wears Prada---don't sell.
But people do buy The Shipping News.
In fact, the other day a woman said, "I just bought these, new!" holding up two copies of that title. She and a friend read books together, and they'd started that one.
Which gave me an idea for my next display--books we have two copies of (sometimes three), with a sign:
"Start a Two-Person Reading Group".
First I moved the remaining Space & Moon books. (I love being at the cash register and seeing what people buy, and hearing their comments--one man bought Space, Atoms, and God (1959), saying, "When you made that display, you were making it for me").
This is one of my favorite displays--not so much for the books, which vary in wonderfulness (from the New Testament to A Man Called Ove...),
but for encouraging people to read together.
A two-person reading group is great. I speak from four years of experience. It’s like exercising every day.
ReplyDeleteMICHAEL: After I made the sign, I thought, "This seems familiar" and I realized the name came in part from your and Elaine's Four Seasons, Two-Person Book Club! So, thanks for that inspiration!
ReplyDeleteYou’re welcome! Our official name is the Four Seasons Reading Club. You’d never know from the name that it’s a mere two people. :) It was originally a summer club (like kids have in the library) and it went on from there.
ReplyDeleteI loved being in reading groups... I don't know why I haven't tried to join one the past few years... maybe because I don't seem to make enough time to read multiple books (the ones I want to read, and the ones I would need to read for the group). I do like it when we read the same books, but they are harder to discuss because we don't read them at the same time--and my memory isn't great for discussion if the book isn't fresh in my mind.
ReplyDeleteHmm...I was just taking with couch pal Cady about a book we both read... I wonder if she'd be ripe for a reading group? It would be fun to have a little group of people...even more than two.