This series of pictures came together rather organically, as Janet and I had to laugh at the layers of CFL swag that I was naturally putting on to prepare myself to go dig out the cars after yesterday's snow storm. Seriously, why doesn't Canada just go ahead and give me citizenship already?
After so much anguish and so much mourning, so many tears and so many tricks, so much hate and injustice and despair, what are we to do?
I just finished Ignazio Silone's Fontamara, the first book in his Abruzzo Trilogy (the second is Bread and Wine, which I reread a couple weeks ago). Much like Bread and Wine, Fontamara includes a goodly amount of humor to somewhat balance out the unrelenting misfortune doled out to the cafoni (peasants) by the townspeople and officials and the Catholic Church during the Mussolini dictatorship. Early in the book those in power, even petty power, make it clear that they're not worried about the cafoni because always suffer and the no how to suffer, which only justifies more suffering.
Jokes of that kind are not easily forgotten, even if the town loafers constantly think up new ones. So our first thought was that the diversion of the stream was a practical joke too. After all, it would be the end of everything if men started interfering with the elements created by God, and diverted the course of the sun, the course of the winds, and the course of the waters established by God. It would be like hearing that donkeys were learning to fly, or that Prince Torlonia was no longer a prince, or that cafoni were no longer to suffer from hunger - in other words, that the eternal laws of God were no longer to be the laws of God.
Sadly, what hit me while reading was how true this sentiment still was in so much of the world, and how the wealthy and powerful in America were equally guilty of believing it to be true.
This book, and this trilogy, is highly recommended. I'm looking forward to reading more books by Ignazio Silone.
And here's a present that I gave myself for Christmas, a sweet Nathan Rourke BC Lions jersey. I generally think that the Lions have the ugliest uniforms in the CFL, but I'm sold on this alternate version. I'm getting desperately close to having jerseys for every team in the CFL.
Friday was Janet's birthday, so we headed out of town for the day. We both like Manchester, down in southern Vermont, and so this has become our go-to place for close getaways. Mainly, I was taking her there to treat her at Northshire Bookstore, but also to grab a great meal. It was an absolutely lovely time, and we're already talking about what we'll be doing on her birthday in Sicily next year.
"You should understand, Mr. Blodget, that one thing I have come to trust is that people find what they are looking for, what they believe on some level that they either need or deserve. I think this is proven moment to moment, so I take it as more than mere happenstance that you are here. I take it as a measure of your will, which honors us and obliges me to be honest."
Blodget looked up from the Tibetan pieces to find the doctor's eyes directly upon him. "Please."
"Well. Something else I've come to trust is that truth is provided in precisely the measure and form appropriate to each of us individually. I find, more over, that the disposition of truth is not, as it may sometimes seem, to withdraw and then appear. That is a function of our concentration. The disposition of truth is to remain constant. That way, when a man chooses to look, directly at whatever happens to be surrounding him - whatever it may be - he will find the truth there waiting. Am I clear?"
Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden
This morning I finish my latest, I'm guessing my fifth, reading of Brooks Hansen's The Chess Garden. As always, I sobbed. I didn't cry because the ending is sad, although it is in a way, but because of its almost crushing beauty. As I was saying to my great friend Sarah this morning, The Chess Garden is, to me, a remarkably generous gift. I mention Sarah mainly because she's the only person that I've recommended the novel to who has loved it like I do. Seriously, we can't talk about it without getting misty-eyed. Every other person I've recommended it to (and I've dragooned so many people into reading it) have either not finished it or tried to gracefully cover up how mystified they were by my love for the novel. It's on that short list with Dickens's Bleak House or Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet (if that's actually a novel) or Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio for the designation as my favorite novel. I don't know if I completely understand it - or that I'm supposed to understand it - although I also feel that I come a little closer with every reread. Recently I purchased an Emanuel Swedenborg (his life and philosophy play a huge role in the novel) reader, hoping that will give me more tools for my next reread. In the spring I'm going to start my latest reread of Remembrance of Things Past, although this will be my first with the new translation, with the more appropriate title In Search of Lost Time, I recently acquired. My plan was to finish the reread so that I wouldn't feel the pressure to take all seven volumes in my suitcase this summer to Sicily. My logic was much the same with The Chess Garden, especially since my copy is falling to pieces. However, the thought that I would go anyplace without the novel is madness. Obviously, The Chess Garden is remarkably, impossibly highly, recommended, and I'll apologize in advance. I would like to point out that Doctor Uyterhoeven, who is talking to Blodget above, and I share the same birthday. Like Doctor Uyterhoeven, I plan on leaving my cane hanging from the apple tree outside the cabin when I head overseas.
It's funny the pictures that don't make this blog, at least until years after they should have. Here's a picture that I snapped over a decade ago on the Spain/Portugal trip that I led with my friends Mike and Kelly. We disappeared into the streets of Madrid in search of a bar with the NFL package, and, clearly, we succeeded in our quest.
And how did I not post this picture earlier? I'm signed up with all the CFL teams as an insider so I get all sorts of emails from them, including a sweet sale from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Sooner I will have jerseys from all CFL teams (not even counting the various and sundry supporting t-shirts and sweatshirts), so I will be empowered to attend any game without identifying myself as a southern continent rube.
