I continue to contemplate and consider Jane Rule’s novel The Young in Another One’s Arms. (Post note: Actual title is The Young in One Another’s Arms, but I leave the mix up because I like the sounds) Right now I am struck by questions of whether or not the book could be seen as document of social history. Fiction rarely succeeds as social history it seems, and yet some work succeeds in an almost incidental manner.
The removal of the removed (displaced people) from the house, the tearing down of the house, which I’ve investigated and would correspond sources tell me to an initial period of gentrification in the early 1970’s in the neighbourhood of Kitsilano where the novel is set. The formation of alternative families, the quandary of draft dodgers where they went, how they lived, how they immersed into the city is all here in this novel.
I’ve been struck by the absence in BC fiction I’ve read, of certain, almost overwhelming aspects of where we live (labour, recessions, work, resource based industry, a turbulent labour history and so on) and at this time am busy trying to assess what is in the fiction in order to understand what did not breach the levees or the absence I allude to.
Another thing I contemplate as I read novels from the 1970’s period is the departure or starting point for the women in them. There are two extraordinary remarkings in Jane Rule’s novel that I must detail here on this point, but they’ll be detailed tomorrow in another post. They are simple, almost unremarkable in their mention and yet …. once you get to considering them, oh how they chime or rolling boil. Manana, manana.
Another hand ripping night on The Rings! Aside from the vicious assault this apparatus is on the armpits, hands and shoulders, it is a superb way to waste my time and a most unbecoming manner for an almost forty year old woman to hurl herself about each Wednesday.
But oh the progress. Aside from one disastrous entanglement between the two rope things which sent me whipping around like a demented, just shot, duck as I thought Christ I will never get down from here nor see the daylight again. I even managed to do the put your legs over your head thing from swinging and there I was hanging there, utterly amazed, pleading with the man beside me, er now what the hell do I do? Since I assumed I hadn’t done the move yet. You’re already there, says he. I confess I was quite terrified and again after an acceptable period said erm how the hell do I get down…
He’s terribly patient that particular coach. Otherwise my tutelage comes from one of the other young gymnast’s who is ace and shows me all these techniques that I am then unable to fully employ.
I was also learning front somersaults (front tuck?) on the trampoline, bounce, bounce up you go turn in air and wham onto this stack of mats, except the bounces and counting threw me & landing in that mad foam pit didn’t suit me. It is extremely torturous trying to get out of said pit when your legs are short and so I retired. I think I am not a woman for turning somersaults at this moment.
The back flip I am doing in threes on the tumbling tramp. At least one in every three is an epic fail. And one is just dandy. What’s interesting is the epic fail should come on the final one where you’re tired, but no the epic fail comes at any point in the sequence, which very annoying. And the epic fail always follows the really strong one. So much for momentum. And the problem with the epic fail is it absolutely rips the shoulders and arms of you. And that alone should teach one to throw it and land it properly. And it does not. And that is why it is an epic fail.
The last post about sweet peas was given the random number by this blog of 2666
Finally this week I read of someone who is reading 2666.
In 2008 I tried to find someone to discuss the taxi drivers in that novel with.
Now I have little recollection of why.
I love the way the blog generates number titles for the posts, it’s why I don’t put titles on them all.
I received two separate compliments and two criticisms on my shelves today. The criticisms were of the in home variety, where democracy prevails since the critic helped me build them. We respect each others difference of opinion on shelves and agree on comedy and nail polish. One person said I should be proud. As instructed I am proud of my dementing to build shelves. 100 per cent home made dementing.
Two blokes at the garden were digging out their plot to sow clover crops before they plant winter crops. V impressed by this dedication to nitrogen. The woman opposite showed us the buds on her brussels. I’d never seen them grown and found them v endearing. The inter communing of my fava beans and regular old skinny green beens has reached a high and agreeable point. I took a bulky bunch in my pocket which was like wearing an extra leg. My gardening assistant today insisted I multitask and play badminton as we walked. Without a racquet my job was to lob and catch the shuttlecock (birdy?) but with a pocket of beans and various accoutrements this req’d dives. It was great to have help with the watering until an accident with the hose occurred it hopped up out of the dustbin and in retrieving it my small male aimed it, accidentally, at me and drenched. It wasn’t such a bad day for it. Kind of like the cold baths at Lourdes, a rustle, a twitch and you’re dry.
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I am finishing up this Jane Rule novel and contemplating whether it could be considered a document of social history or some kind of recording of it. Why? you may ask. And why not, I may answer.
I am eating herring, pickled Canadian herring. This is herring eating weather and serious tea drinking weather for the wilting kiln inhabitants.
In a most pomocentric (pomumcentricity or semencentricity?) gesture I set up a domestic fan for the seedlings in my Greenhouse today. A diagnosis of pomi-morphism or phytophilous could be applied. They are happier this evening.
