Snapshots

– I miss Memphis. I want to go back. And I also want to go to Shreveport, and Biloxi. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a road trip. I’m getting restless.

– Been reading Seamus Heaney poetry in the early mornings. First thing when I get up. There’s one poem about eels squiggling through a field to get to the river, and Heaney writes that the eels “moved through the grass like hatched fears.” And that’s why he got paid the big bucks. I have been unable to get that phrase out of my mind.

– Had an X-Files mini-marathon the other day with my friend Keith. We holed up in his dark living room and watched 6 straight episodes from Season 1. We would have kept going but both of us had to be somewhere. He is clearly my go-to friend for X-Files obsession. It was so much fun!

– Babysat my little niece Beatrice yesterday. She’s such an alert and happy little person. I love her.

– Despite all the worries I’ve got going on right now, money/health care/survival-shit, I’m doing pretty good. My work interests me, my illness is handled, I’m fatter than I would like to be but I’m working on it, I have plans for the future, stuff I’m working on (and some stuff that is still in the plotting/scheming phase, and when I start to plot and scheme NOTHING will stop me) and also have been making time for reading for pleasure, as well as going on occasional dates, which have been surprisingly (for me anyway) really fun. I can get tunnel vision when I’m worried (I think that’s pretty common), but sitting around thinking about what worries me makes things worse. Pleasure has to be a part of life, if you can swing it. I’m trying.

– Been reading The Ionian Mission by Patrick O’Brien before going to bed. I had started the Aubrey/Maturin series and fell in love with them. I read 7 of the books and got my Dad hooked on them too (a surprise). He read them all. They were really the last books he was able to read before he got too sick. So I have been unable to pick them up again since then. They are too sad for me, too sad from those associations. But they’re such marvelous books, it’s been fun to meet up with those characters again.

– I bought a small tree this past summer, a tree in a clay pot. I wanted a big tree-ish like plant for my study. It has flourished better than I could have possibly imagined. As a matter of fact, it is close to taking over the whole room and the situation is very close to becoming totally out of control.

– Busy couple of days coming up before I head home for the holidays.

– Just finished an incredible book called It Came From Memphis, by Robert Gordon (hence my first bullet-point) about the music scene in Memphis – once you got the Big Kahuna (Elvis) out of the way. It’s about the studios and the arts scene and the musicians – going from blues to rock to the folk scene to the 1960s and 70s – and all of those now-famous studios: Sun, Stax, American … Despite that fact, Memphis was never a “company town”, like Nashville was (and is). Great book, with a couple of music CDs produced to go along with it, which I want to check out as well.

– I never get sick of looking at this picture.

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25 Responses to Snapshots

  1. Really, really good one, Seamus.

  2. Sheila says:

    Perfect, right?

  3. Dan says:

    Yay! More O’Brien!

    • sheila says:

      Dan – I know, yay! It’s been 5 years now – I’d try to pick them up, but I would have to put them down.

      The best part is – you can just get right back into the story even after this years-long gap! All the characters are so memorable!

      So now what’s happening is: Aubrey is basically running from the law suits on land – and takes a job to go join a blockade in the Mediterranean. Maturin just got married, and comes along on the journey. They just joined up with the fleet, who have been in a blockade formation for years now. So there’s a lot of nonsense going on – court martials and boredom – the ships just sitting there in a line for years on end. I had never thought about that before – what a blockade would actually mean!

      So that’s where things stand now. I read about half a chapter every night before going to bed. They’re such good books!!

  4. Darn. I was just wondering if you were getting the annual Memphis itch because I’m going there for a big family occasion next week….Anyway, you might enjoy this (kind of a three parter if you keep following the links):

    http://theroundplaceinthemiddle.com/?p=4469

    Hope you get there soon!

  5. Jessie says:

    I don’t have a favourite, but if I had a favourite, O’Brian would be my favourite. Hooray for Ionian Mission! I love the way that one begins. The firework powder! So evocative! My partner gave me the most beautiful collection of his volumes several years ago and they are like number one on my “save from a fire list.” I just treasure his writing. Everything happens in the gaps between the words. Everything happens underneath this prose that seems so superficially descriptive. His genius is knowing which detail is crucial and it’s ALWAYS character-focussed. He is so generous towards his characters; so empathic it makes my heart swell with love. And in those details he is so FUNNY. I can’t read them on the bus because they make me laugh like a loon.

    Have you read his pre-Aubrey-Maturin book Richard Temple? Superbly written of course; a very strange and dissociative character portrait of a painter. You can see him developing his style. Dropping character bombs so understatedly; at one point he writes of one of Richard’s relationships: He and Gay had always got along well together, but it was only in the last year that they had been such close friends, drawn together, it must be admitted, by the abominable vice of sodomy.

    ha ha ha! I love him so much.

    & glad to hear you are doing well!

    • sheila says:

      Jessie – Ha!! That line from Richard Temple!! I have not read that one!

      I love to hear your thoughts – people who love O’Brian really LOOOOVE him and that is such a great thing!

      Yes: the colored fire powder at the start of the book – so almost slapstick!

      I love how he prioritizes the relationships – and the sections on music are just stunning. The way Aubrey and Maturin communicate so fully in their duets – I never get sick of those sections. But I also love all the sea-faring stuff – I am a total land-lubber so it’s all Greek to me, but O’Brian has a way of making me see what is happening, and understand it. THRILLING books.

      And yes, he has this way of just slicing right to the heart of the matter. Almost every page has a gem.

      They’re such good books. I’m so excited that there are so many more of them for me to discover!!

    • sheila says:

      When I was reading the first in the series, I compiled all of these “jewels” of prose that I loved – moments like the one you mention at the end of your comment. Sudden startling observations, precise, and eloquent – funny and true.

      He’s just a master at this kind of stuff.

      http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=7536

  6. Todd Restler says:

    Just don’t start calling your plant Audrey 2.

  7. Jessie says:

    I am glad you’ve been able to pick them up again. It must ache. I associate these books with my dad too, as he’s a sailor — these books are the entirety of my nautical knowledge. Luckily the basic principles don’t go out of date. I tried to get him to read them but he began with Post Captain and the Austen-y shenanigans at the start turned him off. It’s good your dad was able to enjoy them.

    Thank you for the link, I loved reading those jewels. The characters were perfectly formed right from the start — their voices, their particular interests and objects. Their joys and melancholies are so vivid. I feel like cry (it must be cried) “Oh there you are, x!” at least once a week, and when I do whomever I direct it towards I love very much in that moment.

    • sheila says:

      I love Pullings so much. Got a big crush. And I agree – O’Brian’s character development is so sharp, and so … compassionate? Is that the word? In other words, he understands flaws, and understands the mess of the normal human personality. And he draws these distinctions so clearly and so immediately that you’re like, “Oh. I know this person.” And yet nobody feels stock.

      Like Diana, Maturin’s wife (at this point anyway – I can’t see how that situation could last forever!!) She’s so … unexpected! She’s not a ditzy heiress, she’s not a Dream Girl – she’s kind of a mess. But she lives her life in a certain way, and the way O’Brian describes her – it’s so clear I can practically see her walking across a room. It’s amazing.

  8. Dg says:

    Not to out-Heaney you but I’ve been reading along to the audio of Beowulf this week. I just love listening to Seamus read aloud.

  9. Dg says:

    I just read that Faber and Faber will be issuing a two disc recording of Heaney reading his later poems. As the article in the Irish Times said: There are few poets whose reading voice is so crucial to the poems’ effect. I couldn’t agree with that any more. Miss this guy big time.

  10. Jessie says:

    Pullings is the best! And Babbington, Bonden, Killick — they become family!

    Diana is amazing — she is so vivid and so separate. She is like Amelia Earhart to Stephen’s Putnam or something. I love seeing her from all the different perspectives. I think the perspective shifts are one of my favourite things about the books actually — to see all those filters in action! Talk about outsider POV!

    • sheila says:

      Jessie – definitely!!

      Diana swoops into the action, playing pool, throwing clothes into a suitcase, being kind of fabulous but also a WRECK … I’m fascinated by her, and very interested to see where her storyline goes.

      I’m 100 pages from the end of the Ionian Mission.

      The poetry contest that they have? Do you remember that? Mowett, who is known for his versifying, stands up to recite and makes some bumbling speech about the “simile” he has used – and after he recites the verse, he looks at the crowd of men, hoping they all will appear blown away by his simile – Instead, all he sees is “deep universal stupidity.”

      I laughed out loud!

  11. CGHill says:

    For some reason, this is the passage that made me pause:

    I can get tunnel vision when I’m worried (I think that’s pretty common), but sitting around thinking about what worries me makes things worse. Pleasure has to be a part of life, if you can swing it. I’m trying.

    And try you must. (As must I, facing a future that’s a bit more secure than some but still, at least in my fevered imagination, fraught with peril.) I’m working on playing out my leash a bit.

  12. Dan says:

    I’m glad you’re able to enjoy them again. They’re among the very best of books, and I kind of envy the fact that you can escape into them every night for the first time! I’ve been thinking I need to do a re-read.

    Also, Preserved Killick FTW.

    • sheila says:

      Killick is awesome!! He is extremely cranky in Ionian Mission. He has to sew Aubrey’s coat in the darkness and he is NOT happy about it.

      I’m psyched I’m only on volume 8 – many more to go!

  13. Jessie says:

    is that the one with the poem about the horrors of th’ leeward shore? And all the sailors are very impressed by and serious about the horrors? So funny!

  14. Dan says:

    It’s always the coat. Or the hat. Or the wombat.

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