In the last seven months, since I arrived in Seattle, I’ve read at least twenty-eight books. This does not include whatever I read over Thanksgiving at my grandparents in California, or the Russian books I read half of before I couldn’t renew them anymore.
Books include:
1 Kogda bogi spiat – Sergei Alekseev
2 Night of the Avenging Blowfish – John Welter
3 American Gods – Neil Gaiman
4 The Dust of Empire – Karl E. Meyer
5 e. – Matt Beaumont
6 Ordinary Wolves – Seth Kantner This novel was described by my mother (working at the time as a book critic) as the first true example of Alaska literature – written about Alaska, by an Alaskan, and written well. If such a description were one day applied to something produced by me, I’d be truly happy.
7 Microserfs – David Copeland
8 The Gentleman from Finland – Robert Goldstein
9 Survivor – Chuck Palaniuk
10 Snowstruck – Jill Fredston
11 Sea Legs: Tales of a Woman Oceanographer – Kathy Crane Kathy Crane has one of the careers I want: research in the Russian Arctic, and the Arctic in general. Hopefully I don’t have to face the same struggles she did to get there, since they’ve decided it might be okay for women to be present on research vessels…
12 Zorro – Isabel Allende I love Zorro. I heard many wonderful things about Isabel Allende. It wasn’t what I expected, being a fairly serious historical novel. Probably something was lost in translation.
13 A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers
14 The Russian Debutante’s Handbook – Gary Shteyngart
15 The Turk and My Mother – Mary Helen Stefaniak
16 The Unforgiving Coast – David Grover Despite being an academic account of mishaps met by large ships (tankers, ferries, etc) in the Pacific Northwest, I found this book quite fascinating.
17 The Inner Side of the Wind, or The Novel of Hero and Leander – Milorad Pavic I got this book because half of it is printed upside down. It turned out to be a wonderful piece of Serbian magical realism, and I may be trying to read some of his work in Russian, on the basis that it will be good practice for me, and closer to Serbo-Croation.
18 Cassandra French’s Finishing School for Boys – Eric Garcia
19 In a Sunburned Country – Bill Bryson
20 The Madonnas of Leningrad – Debra Dean Set partly in Leningrad and partly in the Seattle area, the only thing that bothered me about this book was one female character given a male surname. Otherwise it is a fascinating description of the art in the Hermitage, the seige of Leningrad, and the disconnect with reality caused by Alzheimer’s.
21 The Dreamlife of Sukhanov – Olga Grushin Reading this novel directly after The Madonnas of Leningrad was curious, since Sukhanov is also disconnected from reality, moving fluidly between his past and present, contemplating art and (spoiler) ultimately losing contact with sanity enitrely, which madness is precipitated by the Soviet ideological system and its sudden shifting in the 1980s.
22 Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
23 A History of the World in Six Glasses – Tom Standage The section on distilled liquor was the best.
24 Desolation – Yasmina Reza
25 Waiting for the Barbarians – JM Coetzee On Coetzee I will comment later, having more of his works still to read.
26 Death and the Penguin – Andrei Kurkov
27 The Master of Petersburg – JM Coetzee
28 Ape and Essence – Aldous Huxley

A year ago my plan was to live in Seattle and date a pirate…

The biggest event in my life today was repotting my peace lily, aka white flag, which is now resplendently green in a green pot. According to NASA, it has high air cleaning capabilities, but I got it because I had one before and it survived living with college folk. I’m tempted to name this one, something like Lydia.

Also I learned that woodducks are really quite pretty. I mean, for a duck. You just wish you had plumage like that.

It’s raining and things are turning green and I know exactly why I went back to the lodge last summer, even though I had sworn never to return at the end of the previous summer.

The rain makes me think of sleeping in the cabin, the bed so much cozier for the audible sound of rain outside. I’m remembering entire days spent wearing my rain pants, which seem so much more comfortable than the “business casual” clothing I wear for my job now. I’m remembering washing dishes in the kitchen, looking out across the bay and watching the damp shreds of cloud drag back and forth across the water, obscuring the ridge on the far side. I’m remembering sitting happily on a foot of old growth moss and surrounded by bushes dripping with blueberries and raindrops. I’m remembering the mornings where the first thing I did after crawling out of my sleeping bag was pull on my rainpants and a sweatshirt for the quick run out to the outhouse. The capricious gas stove (is there another kind?) heating water for tea…

And these thoughts bring the memories of the sunnier days, of course. There was an August afternoon, with that peculiar stillness you find during the midafternoon heat, when I discovered enough gripping quality in the soles of my xtratuffs to scramble up a small rockface and make a discreet inquiry as to the interior of this island on the beach of which I had eaten lunch for two summers. The sun came through the tall spruce in bright shafts, dust motes, etc, and there was copious moss and devil’s club, quite similar to the forest on the mainland around the lodge. This part of the island, however, was entirely lacking in trails; I didn’t even find an animal path to follow through the brush. Nevertheless, I found a blueberry bush somewhere and pulled off a sprig to carry back to the beach and the guests who I had rather rudely abandoned, since I was supposed to be guiding them. (That’s the only downside to guiding, you end up seeing the same place a thousand times, but you don’t quite have the freedom to go exploring. You have to stick around and explain this beach here, with which you are maddeningly familiar.)

The rain doesn’t make me remember, offhand, how the sheets have to be folded just so, how the “gourmet” food is full of mayo and margarine and velveeta, how you can’t both have the day off, even though there’s nothing to do but, oh, restack firewood. Follow Jon while he is weedwacking — sorry, “landscaping” — and rake up grass bits. And the management will be moving about hanging up framed posters bought in Anchorage, because that must be better than any of the art made by local artists in Homer. Homer’s not at all known for its artists, of course.

*sigh* Not bitter. Not bitter. Just frustrating and sad to see people, in one of the most beautiful places on earth, walling themselves into a Walmart-bought plastic box.

Spring and rain makes me want to kayak, that’s what I was saying.

tentative maybe sorta hopefully life plan:
summer 2006: kayak (crossing fingers)
fall 2006: irex it up
winter 2007: uw for some math and science
summer 2007: tahoe-baikal institute for a siberian summer
fall 2007: uw for some serious oceanography
summer 2008: graduate field research (Prof. Bourgeois) and/or kayaking
fall 2009: more serious oceanography
2011: in ten years since I finished high school, will I have achieved any stability in my life? doubtful. do I get to have a dog by now?
2015: through an undescribed miracle, my dog and I are paid to play outside in Siberia, Alaska, and the Pacific NW

A haiku for my commute home today:

April rain, so cold
Wet, exquisite misery
Gotta get fenders