scene

There are a lot of famous scenes in the Godfather trilogy; some for shock and gore, some for cinematography, some for telling one-liners, others for plot-turning points or moments of betrayal. I love all of these, but in my opinion the brilliance also lies in the fillers, and even more so, in how the world of the movie extends beyond just the scenes that you see. It may be the best movie I know of that makes itself so palpable and rich, that you find yourself creeping in the unshown corners of the characters' lives and environments. It's like when a friend tells you a story about something that happened to them as a kid, and you can imagine not only the story itself and what your friend was like before you saw and knew her; based on her story--but also what may have happened before and after, how she might feel about other things similar and different; based on the time and space you've occupied together.

I can't do justice to this feeling, to describe it exactly or how incredible it is, but it's one reason why my favorite scene in all of the Godfather trilogy is a sliver of a moment. It takes place in Part II, during the flashback of Vito Corleone as a young man, before he's become the Godfather. The appreciation for the scene partly arises from what comes before and after. He's working in a grocery store, and the rising power of the mob sprinkles around him in smatterings. Vito gets laid off from his job because the mafia made his boss take on a relative instead. His boss tries to give Vito some groceries as an offering, but he thanks his boss for all his goodness and doesn't take it. Prior to getting laid off, Vito incidentally and innocently gets in the middle of some mafia drama. This happens while he's still working as a grocer, but after he's laid off someone offers to repay Vito for a favor by stealing a fancy rug for him to bring home to his wife. And because you've seen Part I where Vito isn't a grocer but the Godfather, you can see how the Corleone empire unravels from this humble ball of yarn. My favorite scene is right after Vito comes home from getting laid off, right before he acquires the rug from the mafia.

He returns home to their small apartment. It's dimly lit but warm with browns and yellows. It has this quietly lush quality about it that I love, because the lush comes from so little. The doors flanking the dining room make it so you really only see Vito and his wife standing and facing each other around a dining table, creating a slim rectangle in the middle of the screen. He unwraps a pear from some crumpled paper and sets it on the table. "What a nice pear!" she says, he kisses her, and the scene fades, leaving them in their small space with their small meal.

People generally dislike Part III; it's true that it's not as well made as the others. But completing the story makes scenes like this one in Part II all the richer. Enmeshed in grandeur and suffering and the massive drama of the rest brings you back to these moments, and you wonder, even as you know, how did we get from here to there?

I think we all wonder that too sometimes about our lives. Someone once commented on an entry, that it's funny how our lives take on logical trajectories and narratives given all the different choices we might take and random things that might happen. And while it is true that things connect each of our days to the next, I feel that when we each near twenty-five years like I am, we look at where we're sitting or standing or moving and say, this rug? What happened to my pear?

While it may seem otherwise, I'm not saying I think the pear is always better than the rug; it all depends. I never foresaw that I would be doing what I'm doing right now (at this very moment or during this larger timeframe) or that I'd be the kind of person I am now. Everything has its rough edges and rough centers, me and my life, but I'm incredibly grateful for what has become of both. And because there is so much to come, I know that despite all the changes and growth (and perpetual epiphanies of the need for more growth), growing up isn't about replacement. Working to achieve things is hard; I think achieving them while keeping what came before is harder, but possible, and better.

moles

By way of scrutiny from my mother and ex-boyfriend, I learned that my face contains numerous small flat black moles. I say flat to qualify moles because they aren't raised as I thought defined moles, but I can't think of what else to call them. My mom once called the two that are in proximity, in a sort of diagonal that follows their course between cheek and chin, twins. The fact of her saying this is fuzzy, but has sharpened from my thinking it.

Murakami has a thing for ears, and as I recently discovered, moles. I read a story of his the other day that made me smile hard and aloud: "There was a single mole, he noticed, on her right earlobe. His older sister had a mole about the same size, in the same spot. When he was little, he used to playfully rub his sister's mole when she was asleep, trying to rub it off."

The story, called Chance Traveler, begins by saying that he is narrating this story in his own voice. He wants to relate some strange events that have happened to him, that never get much response when he tells them in conversation. Even when written, people don't believe him because they assume that as a novelist, all his stories must be just stories. He'd like to try again, after telling us these strange events are real, and says he'll "stick to the trifling, insignificant ones."

This is the first one:

*

"From 1993 to 1995 I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was a sort of writer-in-residence at a college, and was working on a novel entitled The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. In Harvard Square there was a jazz club called the Regattabar Jazz Club where they had lots of live performances. It was a comfortable, relaxed, cozy place. Famous jazz musicians played there, and the cover charge was reasonable.

One evening the pianist Tommy Flanagan appeared with his trio. My wife had something else to do so I went by myself. Tommy Flanagan is one of my favorite jazz pianists. He usually appears as an accompanist; his performances are invariably warm and deep, and marvelously steady. His solos are fantastic. Full of anticipation, then, I sat down at a table near a stage and enjoyed a glass of California Merlot. To tell the truth, though, his performance was a bit of a letdown. Maybe he wasn't feeling well. Or else it was still too early for him to get in the swing of things. His performance wasn't bad, it was just missing that extra element that sends us flying into another world. It lacked that special magical glow, I guess you could say. Tommy Flanagan's better than this, I thought as I listened--just wait till he gets up to speed.

But time didn't improve things. As their set was drawing to a close I started to get almost panicky, hoping that it wouldn't end like this. I wanted something to remember his performance by. If things ended like this, all I'd take home would be lukewarm memories. Or maybe no memories at all. And I may never have a chance to see Tommy Flanagan play live again. (In fact I never did). Suddenly a thought struck me: what if I were given a chance to request two songs by him right now--which ones would I choose? I mulled it over for awhile before picking 'Barbados' and 'Star-Crossed Lovers.'

The first piece is by Charlie Parker, the second a Duke Ellington tune. I add this for people who aren't into jazz, but neither one is very popular, or performed much. You might occasionally hear 'Barbados,' though it's one of the less flashy numbers Charlie Parker wrote, and I bet most people have never heard 'Star-Crossed Lovers' even once. My point being, these weren't typical choices.

I had my reasons, of course, for choosing these unlikely pieces for my fantasy requests--namely that Tommy Flanagan had made memorable recordings of both. 'Barbados' appeared on the 1957 album Dial JJ 5 when he was a pianist with the J.J. Johnson Quintet, while he recorded 'Star-Crossed Lovers' on the 1968 album Encounter! with Pepper Adams and Zoot Sims. Over his long career Tommy Flanagan has played and recorded countless pieces as a sideman in various groups, but it was the crisp, smart solos, short though they were, in those two particular pieces that I've always loved. That's why I was thinking if only he would play those two numbers right now it'd be perfect. I was watching him closely, picturing him coming over to my table and asking, 'Hey, I've had my eye on you. Do you have any requests? Why don't you give me the titles of two numbers you'd like me to play?' Knowing all the time, of course, that the chances of that happening were nil.

And then, without a word, and without so much as a glance in my direction, Tommy Flanagan launched into the last two numbers of his set--the very ones I'd been thinking of. He started off with the ballad 'Star-Crossed Lovers,' then went into an up-tempo version of 'Barbados.' I sat there, wineglass in hand, speechless. Jazz fans will understand that the chance of his picking these two pieces from the millions of jazz numbers out there was astronomical. And also--and this is the main point here--his performances of both numbers were amazing."

*

I typed that all out, because I like to forgo cut and paste in favor of re-typing writings (lyrics, quotes, so on) and because in a Murakami story I read a couple months ago he wrote:

"Just below her shoulder blades were two small moles, lined up like a pair of twins."

maggie

This semester I pathetically finished one novel (Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler), only because I read about a third of it while traveling home for break (which, with train ride + subway ride + airtrain + plane flight, all in all takes a crazy 12 hours). Next semester it’ll be short stories, because losing the flow of a book by stealing a few pages here and there when I’m not intellectually or physically or emotionally drained (rarely) pretty much sucks the life out of it. When references were made to little things that came before, I had to neurotically search for the first mention of them because I couldn’t remember. Despite this, the character of Maggie emerged with palpable tenderness, and is now one I hold close. While the story was engaging enough and its feelings nuanced, and there were moments of the kind of writing that surprises with descriptions unusual and perfectly accurate (do you know what I mean? When something you’ve felt is encapsulated exactly right, in a way you’ve never thought before, and you wonder how it can be so far from your vocabulary and thought, and yet so right)…most of that wasn’t too special for me. For me it was Maggie.

Even though she’s a married woman in her late forties, with two grown children and a whole life to look back on and contemplate, in many ways she still lives by a philosophy cultivated before experience set in. To that quality in her I’m attached, if only because I foresee the same for myself, for better or worse. These are the things I love in Maggie, not necessarily because they are good things but because they give shape to strange things I’ve felt, whose tangibility I sometimes question. And more than a relation to myself, the value lies in knowing that they exist, on their own, elsewhere.

disheveled/clumsy: Maggie digs through her purse trying to find the same things that have inhabited it for years, because she’s never formed a system where each thing has its place. I often tell myself that I should just designate a certain coat pocket for my keys, phone, etc., so that I always know where to look, but when it comes down to the moment I reach for whatever feels convenient, which isn’t consistent. Maggie’s husband, Ira, and children sometimes perceive her as bumbling, silly in a way: “She was always making clumsy, impetuous rushes toward nowhere in particular—side trips, random detours.” I’m a little more straightlaced than that, but I can relate to having a messy demeanor, to being not-put-together. And while Ira sees it as not taking life seriously enough, I think it’s that Maggie takes so much to heart, it’s hard to find focus.

not too good at cultivating:Along the same lines, Maggie doesn’t have a knack for taking care of things, like her homegrown tomatoes that are always “bulbous” despite years of trying different kinds. She senses that people attribute the failure to Maggie herself, with her “knobby, fumbling way.” I’m awful at taking care of plants and my possessions in general (much to the chagrin of B. who helps me with each of my computer problems and N. who hates the torn insides of my peacoat), and I worry sometimes about whether this will translate to other things that require care, whether it does have to do with something internal.

she takes care of people: I think Maggie’s scared of the same thing because she tries really hard to take care of people. Instead of going to college, she continues her high school job as an aide in a nursing home, where concrete tasks make her feel capable and she knows when to laugh or nod during conversations. She tries to take care of those around her even when it’s not up to her or outside of her capacity…it’s a significant problem, leading to misunderstandings and misplaced feelings. I think it’s natural to try to impact others’ happiness in part because it affects our own, but Maggie can’t let go of the interconnections.

guilt causes overthinking, and vice versa: She feels bad about things, all the time. When placing a long distance call from another person’s home she considers leaving them some change. After playing a prank on a bad driver, she’s worried he’s been overly affected and makes her husband go back and check on him. Allison once said that she thinks guilt is a good thing, a sign of consideration for others. I think this has truth but I think, for me, guilt can be a kind of copout, a way of trying to keep your good after you’ve done something bad. Maggie, I think, is better than that; her regrets don’t stem from initial selfishness but instead from good intentions gone wrong, or from human responses. Even when she consciously sets out to right her ways, she’s horrible at not repeating her mistakes, because her characteristics are so ingrained, and man do I know something about that.

emotionally neurotic and impulsive: Maggie debates every emotional maneuver, and then in the moment her instincts take over, and they’re not always good ones. An image or thought can take hold of her so completely that she will feel that someone she doesn’t actually know is the most wonderful person she’s ever known, and it will be true because she feels it so.

easily affected: She forms incomprehensibly strong, oft impulsive connections to people removed from her, and she’s easily moved. In a hospital waiting room she encounters an elderly couple and across from them a burly man in coveralls. A nurse is asking the near deaf elderly man for a urine sample, and has to shout, “Pee in this cup!” The elderly woman is visibly embarrassed, explaining how deaf her husband has become, and Maggie doesn’t know what to say. The burly man shifts his weight and comments on how funny it is, he can pick up the nurse’s voice, but really, can’t make out her words at all. At this Maggie tears up. He asks her if she’s okay: “She couldn’t tell him it was his kindness that had undone her—such delicacy, in such an unlikely-looking person.”

acutely aware of presence and loss: On the loss of her cat: “His absence had struck her so intensely that it had amounted to a presence….But here was something even stupider: A month or so later, when cold weather set in, Maggie switched off the basement dehumidifier as she did every year and even that absence had struck her. She had mourned in the most personal way the silencing of the steady, faithful whir that used to thrum the floorboards.”

can’t give up even when it could be the right thing to do: She can’t give up on people she loves, to a fault, because she relies on what she knows they feel, and knows that they feel genuinely and kindly; rather than their actions and words, which are often not so kind. Her husband says that she believes the people she loves are better than they are. I’ve been told I do this too, but I don’t think it’s such an altruistic thing. It stems from the fact that I know my own faults but I like to think I’m still passably okay, and to believe this requires understanding others’ faults. At one point Maggie wonders whether she’s been a bad mother, too forgiving of her children because she remembers so strongly what it’s like to be a child. I really believe in understanding other people’s context, to know why flaws exist and persist, probably because I can get so complicated that I need that sort of understanding from other people. Sometimes, though, in allowing so much room for complexity, you miss the basics that are as much a part of people as the layers.

she believes in romance: Not just the pretty things in the right place romance, but the idea that through all the crap and non-ideals, people will love each other enough to make it work and be consciously happy. Even when she doubts this for herself she thinks she’s just missed out and it’s still to be had in this world. Sometimes you might get the sense that Maggie’s trying to find refuge, making it easier on herself by always trying and not accepting the hurtful truth. But who’s to say what’s reality, or that her refuge is any easier than the accepted reality (sometimes it’s damn harder)? In my own experience there’s been no shortage of crap and non-ideals but I’m grateful for the incredible amount of good that comes along in spite of and because of. My past connections, few and not straightforward but valuable and full, have played part in shaping what I can and should give, and what I seek, want, need. And it’s funny, this makes me think both how hard it will be find, and how amazing it will be to someday have.

**

I don’t know if things really work out for Maggie, and whether this is because of all the above. I get the sense that as you’re reading, you might get annoyed with Maggie’s meddling and desire to right things that aren’t meant to be controlled. You might want to tell her that sometimes beauty is past. You might want to stop her from perpetuating her poorly implemented good intentions, to dread the impending disasters that end in large disappointment for her and those she loves. But that doesn’t work, because it’s not about how fixing flaws would make life easier to accept, or to live. It’s about facing the difficult because you’re trying to preserve value, even if it’s stupid and mistaken and fails. I don’t know if it’s right, but for Maggie it’s true.

anastomoses

I used to think that fiction would bring about my downfall, but am finding that scientific fact is contributing too. Each offers a glimpse of beauty whose existence I appreciate and consequently strive to possess, but can't quite create for myself.

Everyone here turns to me when they want to know in what context the word "satiate" can be used or which Shakespeare play "Get thee to a nunnery" is from or what some eight-letter word means. I've almost never been able to give an accurate or complete answer. I would like to explain to everyone that for me, studying literature means only appreciation, not expertise. We speak the same language; I don't know any secrets. I can't verbalize myself any better than you--I'm probably worse at it because I value all the feelings and know none of the constructs.

On the other end of the spectrum, Aud says that I'm already using a different language now that I'm in medical school (something everyone warns you about). Three months of massive amounts of material and learning later, I find myself with a new vocabulary but little fluency. I know a lot of multisyllabic words but don't expect me to tell you a story.

"Kafka on the Shore" alternates chapters between two narrators whose stories appear disparate and converge as the novel goes on. A familiar device, but Murakami is aware of its contrived nature. He makes us conscious that he's conscious of it. We grow to understand that the point is not that this kind of connection actually exists. In fact, the out-of-reality happenings remind us that this doesn't happen and won't happen. The point is we can substantiate our underlying desire for connection in fiction. Murakami never confirms the connection, never actually says that this could happen, but nudges us and says, but doesn't it make sense to happen this way? Isn't it beautiful this way, doesn't it hurt in that lovely aching way and make you breathe slightly irregularly?

In anatomy we hear "anastomosis" over and over. Two arteries start from the same source (the aorta), branch off and become different things (the posterior and anterior intercostal arteries), then these different things come back and converge. So it does happen in a concrete thing, and it makes sense, and it's beautiful in how it works. Every part of the body is related to another, and it is a system of connections that keeps you breathing so you can tell when someone like Murakami comes along and makes you breathe offbeat.

But that's a body and that's a book, and this is me.

books

I finished “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen the other night; it almost made me cry which puts it in the emotional vicinity of Atonement, Lolita and King Lear. Except that I can’t compare, in the way that every book is so uniquely itself. The contemporary humor and bluntness and surface pessimism of “The Corrections” are unlike what moves me about the other books. Some feelings it evoked were similar to past ones I’ve had, but this isn’t to say that my response was the same at all. My favorite books have a lot in common; they make me a little (or very) sad, contain clear moments of happiness to cling to, articulate feelings or thoughts I’ve had that I haven’t described, or haven’t described well, or haven’t recognized. I usually finish them quickly. These qualities being general, the books that embody them are pretty different and I have a different relationship with each of them. I thought maybe I should start writing more about them (and writing more in general), to avoid the consuming inwardness that having a “relationship” with your books fosters, to think more about what I want to do with what the books give.

I went into the book without really knowing too much about it, though it’s well-known. The title made me think of journalism and for whatever reason that stopped me from starting it for awhile. “Corrections” turns out to be about many kinds of corrections; there are physical, concrete ones but also of course the personal, emotional ones. It’s a dysfunctional family story about parents and children and siblings and significant others trying to prevent, deny, and compensate for each other’s mistakes and flaws. It’s long and about a lot of things, but really it’s about this one thing—how screwed up we become by trying so hard not to screw up, by trying to correct ourselves into better versions of the flawed people around us.

I liked:

“When the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight—isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before?”...In typing this quote, I find that it reminds me a little of how I might think/write about something like that. Things for me are all about how I internalize them. While concrete events or singular experiences have an immediate impact on me, it’s the way they linger, build up, flow back in mind and heart over time that really changes me. We’ll see how that pans out in the future, because I’m sure I’ve only seen a tiny bit of what can change you through a life.

“He'd lost track of what he wanted, and since who a person was what a person wanted, you could say that he'd lost track of himself.”...Maybe the character believes in this line, but I don’t think the writer does. I believe in intentions, even as I feel they only go so far and am often disappointed in lack of actions (largely in myself and a small number of others from whom I expect a lot). I think what you want is a huge part of who you are, even if it’s not something you can be or do. Honestly, it’s what I fall back on when I need encouragement. I remember Mr. Floyd, our high school history teacher, asking us what categories he should grade our projects by—and I suggested effort. I remember Anna B. scoffing at this notion, and then Mr. Floyd said, effort would show in the quality of the work, so it doesn’t need quantification. Personally I think the correlation between effort and quality differs among people, and god, it’s hard to always be your best, so whatever, I’m making effort its own category.

So it’s easy to see how everyone’s felt a lost sense of self because they don’t know what they want. But maybe the things that lead you to uncertainty are just as much who you are, and maybe they’re the same things that lead you back. The book made me feel anew these cliches, of a self that stays in tact in the midst of lives falling apart and so much mess.

It scared me a little, as each day I both recognize and avoid more the reality that life will be imperfect—and not just imperfect in the romanticized way I look at flaws, mistakes, mishaps, difficult love, second choices…but imperfect in that gut-wrenchingly painful, that-was-not-for-the-best, damn-this-is-hard way. Yet, it’s easier to look back on pain in retrospect and see what each one meant and how important it was, when so much passing of time and life happens in a book...instead of trudging through it in real life. I think we develop a lot of expectations of how we’re going to feel during certain phases of our lives and through certain events, through stories—books and movies. I worry about being overprepared, because I expect certain emotions and events that I see in these fictional lives and maybe this will keep me from experiencing things I hadn’t foreseen. I worry about being underprepared, because I might think that life can be as neat of a mess as fiction is, and life will prove me wrong and it will hurt. I’m getting so confused writing this, but I also realize now I don’t have to worry about these things.

I wonder how people foresaw their futures before there was such widespread, accessible stories of fictional people, created by real people. Maybe people just absorbed things as they came, without knowing too much beforehand, without too many expectations based on what’s supposed to happen in a life. I like this idea, and believe that it still applies to us, as awash in other people’s stories as we are. Things are new and yours when they happen to you; your story is going to be the one you feel most, and most genuinely, and there will be surprises still, and you’ll be hurt and you’ll be fine.

And okay, since I mentioned it and because I came across a We-Hate-Atonement facebook group today that made me hostile and impulsive—I need to passively-aggressively defend this book. Not against people who have judged the book in its entirety and still don’t like it, but against the people who haven’t given it enough consideration to justify what they say. Not that I know the book, or any book, in its entirety but I do think there are things Atonement-critics overlook. Maybe I’m not as irritated by Briony, the protagonist, because I see a lot of myself in her, but I do see why she would annoy people. What I don’t get is how people focus on the fact that she’s to blame for everything. Yes, the book is about her crime and guilt, but it’s also clear that it’s really about atonement—which is different from forgiveness, which she isn’t asking for, or repentance, which she already obviously feels.

What’s more—people who bash the ending: the twist is not everything, and it’s more complicated than you give it credit. If you consider the implications of her self-representation, the notion of her fiction, then you see that the Briony you dislike is one that she’s created for you, and for herself. It takes a lot of courage to be honest about yourself, more so to (possibly) distort things to make your own flaws all the more apparent. Besides that, the ending isn’t clearcut. Maybe the twist is fictional, too, maybe it’s more self-inflicted punishment. Who really knows? But you just can’t hate on the novel’s premise without first considering how the ending changes not just the final parts but the entire book, without thinking of how it opens up endless perspectives on her character and the plot and atonement. If you give it at least that, you can then hate all you want. I’m mostly accepting of differences of opinion, though I have a lot of natural defensiveness that I’m trying to decrease; I just hold things I love very, irrationally close.