Story Lover

by Kim Echlin

I don’t think I could ever not know what happened to my loved ones. I guess in the end Anne did know what happened, but being so close, yet so far away from the truth, drove her a little crazy. Maybe at the end, the people who know what happened hold the power. I can’t imagine such terror. I can’t imagine an entire country terrorized. An entire country grieving. I wonder what that does to the mindset of an entire nation. Can you ever recover from that? Does time heal all wounds?

“What we shared was so simple. I remember thinking, I am so awake.”

“Things do not suddenly happen to us. Things happen step by step.”

by Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida

First off, what an intriguing name! Vendela Vida. I wonder what kind of name it is. I found the screenplay much easier to follow than the movie, although the movie captures the tone and atmosphere much more so than the screenplay. I can see how things can be easily misinterpreted or catered to someone’s imagination.

They say biology and nature has this ability to adapt to its surrounding, to evolve. But meanwhile, our society evolves and morphs into these lifestyles that are so far beyond or outside of biology. We think that we can change everything based on our whims and when we learn that some things are outside of our scheduling, outside of our control, we try and go against biology. Like, how crazy and egotistical are we? Does everything revolve around what we want? When is what is, the line that doesn’t get crossed?

It kind of made me think of this conversation that I had last night with Gord and some of his other former students. And this one guy Jason, was talking about how he’s going to wait out his fiance’s biological clock. How they’re going to wait so long for the perfect conditions, that the only thing that won’t work is her biology.

“I wonder if we’ve been selfish, people like us. We wait until our thirties and then we’re surprised that the babies aren’t so easy to make anymore… And every day another million fourteen-year-olds get pregnant without trying… I just wish I could make it work for her. If I could fix it all and just make a baby for her. It’s terrible feeling this helpless, man. You just watch these babies grow and then fade and you don’t know if you’re supposed to name them or bury them or… I’m sorry.”

by Gene Luen Yang

I love the play on words. American. Born. Chinese. Maybe I’m Korean born American. Or Korean raised American. Korean transplant American. Banana. No idea, but this morph that we do to fit in with what is being reflected around us is pretty fascinating and saddening. I think we all do it to some degree or another. And it isn’t till now, long after the childhood taunts, that I am really intrigued by the invisible borders between race and culture. Perhaps after a certain amount of time, we have to embrace who we are and what it is that makes us unique. As Helen said, you can only really run from your strengths for so long.

by Sherman Alexie

I always feel like I have a responsibility to leave a library book in a condition that reflects how I felt about it. I’m always intrigued when I get a book that has dog ears dispersed amongst its pages or has a little post-it note still stuck on one of the pages. I wonder, is this significant or random? Sometimes I’ll leave a post-it on a meaningful page, like a modern x marks the spot. But most of all, I get sad when I can tell I’m the first person to read a book. It’s odd, since when I buy a book I almost demand that its pure, that I’m discovering it for the first time. But I feel almost the opposite when I borrow a book from the library, I feel almost as if it hasn’t been loved yet. And when books by my favorite authors are seemingly missing love, I worry for the careers of my beloved authors, for their souls. But, thankfully, I know this book just came out, that I am the first because I’ve placed a hold on it, and thus I feel like I need to communicate my love for its content to its next reader.

And how I love Sherman Alexie. May he have a long life. I breeze through the pages like an autumn wind. And his words leave cracks in my heart, in my soul. Their sentiment tear up my eyes. His short stories speak right to the heart of life and I think in the short story, War Dances, he’s telling the story of the grown up Junior from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Not sure though. And man, Ode for Pay Phones! He makes the modern day defeats beautiful. He makes the modern day beauties holy.

And just a curiosity. Why are both of the shoes right-footed? Or in the case of the right cover, left-footed? And why is there such a subtle difference between the two covers? If you’re going to go through the effort of designing and publishing two different covers, why make it so subtle?

“Nothing happened, of course. Nothing ever really happens, you know.” -Breaking and Entering

“We are tested, all of us. We are constantly and consistently given the choice. Good or evil. Light or darkness. Love or hate. Some of those decisions are huge and tragic. Think of those nineteen men and you must curse them. But you must also curse their mothers and fathers. Curse their brothers and sisters. Curse their teachers and priests. Curse everybody who failed them.” -The Senator’s Son

“We who shared the most important moment of our lives no longer have any part in the lives of the others.” -The Senator’s Son

“Despite all the talk of diversity and division – of red and blue states, of black and white and brown people, of rich and poor, gay and straight – Paul believed that Americans were shockingly similar. How can we be so different thought Pual, if we all know the lyrics to the same one thousand songs?” -The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless

“Could I have run that fast and won the right to live?” -Fearful Symmetry

“But O, the last track was the vessel that contained the most devotion and pain and made promises that you couldn’t take back.” -Ode to Mix Tapes

“And she’d rather be forgotten than inaccurately remembered.” -Salt

“Jesus, I don’t want to die today or tomorrow, but I don’t want to live forever.” -Salt

by Benjamin Anastas

Better to have never tried than to have failed. And while you’re at it, might as well make underachieving a work of art. By Anastas’ definition, I know a whole lot of underachievers that while, never formally manifesting themselves as one, take refuge in the despair of what will never be.

And I think back on the good fights that I myself have fought and I find that I was always more than up for a suicide mission, when failure was a sure thing. But when a mission was ambiguous, when there was a chance I might succeed, well that was a little too scary, too close to happiness, that it was better to just sit that one out. And those missions, those chances, are the only regrets of my life. Luckily I grew out of that in college, otherwise I myself would be writing my own diary to the world.

I like the left book cover more than the contemporary version (on the right). In an attempt to remain faithful to my experience, I always publish the cover or poster that I interact with. But I find the contemporary version a little too much of an achievement. You can’t get less ambitious than an all white cover with the name and author.

“And there I was, on a golf course at midnight with a girl I really liked, underachieving all over again in a misguided attempt to make it new, and pioneer a romantic avant-garde where nothing started, in the moonlight, would ever finish, and the greatest love, or kiss, would be the one that never grew beyond its promising beginning; that way no one would ever have to live with an imperfect lover’s guilt when things came to an end, as they do, inevitably.”

Edited by Dave Eggers

I love love love this series. I think it was one of the best things that happened to me living in Moline back in 2002-3. I buy it every year and every year I’m amazed and captivated by these worlds that I never would have known existed. I hope that in 50 years from now, I’ll have a span of the best thoughts, ideas, imaginations that dictated my times. I hope this series spans my lifetime and provides a peek into the reality of my culture and my life. That it will be the prized possession in my will. My favorite essays are always the non-fiction cultural commentaries. So far, there’s 8 volumes to this series. Long live the Best American Nonrequired Reading!

Relations by Eula Biss || This essay was pretty amazing and while it focused on the differences between white and black, I feel like the insights it makes can be umbrella-ed over all the races. I feel like on a spectrum of color with white being at one end and black at the other, I feel like all the other races, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, can all kind of choose their location between these two extremes. Asians in particular. When I was younger, I used to think that race was a state of mind. If I thought and acted like I was white or rather that I wasn’t Asian, then I’d be treated accordingly. Ha. Life is a context sport, not an individual one. And no matter how much I may think I am something, doesn’t mean that anyone else will believe me. And the following quote really resonated with me. Because I feel that who I am, as a race, depends on what context I am in. I want a word that defines me for who I am, an American part of a white family, who has been expected to be Asian because that’s what she looks like, who unfortunately has no idea how to be Asian, other than the horrible stereotypes that have been dictated by movies and other mainstream media.

“‘I feel like an unknown quantity,’ my cousin remarked at some point during the year that we lived together. She was referring to the algebraic term, the unknown quantity x, which must be solved for, or defined, by the numbers in the equation around it.”

Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side by Nathan Englander || Maybe nothing we know about our families is true. In the best efforts of making each other look the least foolish, the most gallant and the most respectable as possible, how much of our truths remain? Is there any truth to history? Our own and the world’s?

“51. The woman I love, the Bosnian, she is not Jewish. All the years I am with her, to my family, it’s as if she is not. My family so good at it now. My family so masterful. It’s not only the past that can be altered and forgotten and lost to the world. It’s real time now. It’s streaming. The present can be undone, too.”

The Ticking is the Bomb by Nick Flynn || I find this concept of becoming lost really interesting. I feel like here, trapped in this country, based in this house, I feel lost. I’ve never wanted to go and leave so much as I do now, when I know I can’t. I blame it on immigration. But if I did have the chance to leave, to do as I please, would I even know what that was?

“Here’s a secret. Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. … When it does, when one day you look around and nothing is recognizable, when you find yourself alone in a dark wood having lost the way, you may find it easier to blame it on someone else – an errant lover, a missing father, a bad childhood – or it may be easier to blame the map you were given – folded too many times, out-of-date, tiny print – but mostly, if you are honest, you will only be able to blame yourself.”

“I’m making this all up now from memory. I have the book on my bookshelf but I’m afraid to open it, in case I find out that the power it held over me proves to be thin, silly, superficial.”

“I tried to imagine what might happen if each of them knew how important their lives were.”

Wild Berry Blue by Rivka Galchen || I feel that sometimes I hang on way too long to things. Years later I’ll find my mind has wandered into an embarrassing memory and I’ll have to mini-scream it away. I hang on to things for too long. I’ll crimson at something that I’m sure no one else remembers. Yet the weight of it never eases. Time does not heal it. And I find myself constantly caught in the wonder of ‘what if’. All the past crushes, the past friendships, the past tensions visit me and I find myself pondering a completely different past. One that always manages to find this real present, but that has absolved me of all my past shames or regrets.

“They slip out from under their own control.”

“I never got over him. I never get over anyone.”

A Product of This Town by J. Malcolm Garcia || I like the idea of going somewhere where everyone is starting. Either starting anew or starting over. I think that’s the power of college. Or of moving into a newly developed neighborhood. Everyone is converging at once. We’re all open to possibilities. We’re all fresh and excited about what lay ahead. Those were always the times when I made friends easily. When people were open to things they might have already considered having enough of. Because when you just move into something already established, you’re lucky if they even make room for you.

“White kid: …My momma says I should go to New Orleans. Black kid: Yeah, start over in a place where everyone’s starting over.”

Your Exhausted Heart by Anne Gisleson

“disaster tourists”

Further Notes on My Unfortunate Condition by Nick St. John || I really enjoyed his illustrations. I’m finding that comics and illustration has become edgier, more mature, away from the childish assumptions. There are so many memories I wish were stronger. Life fades so quickly. Something that was so important, isn’t frozen in a moment of time, but rather it thaws, it melts as you progress into the future. To a point where, I guess, nothing but the empty spot remains. And sometimes you’re lucky to have the void to remind you.

If I had to trace back my life to a single point in time that altered my life. I think it’d have to be deciding to go on Semester at Sea. Looking back, it feels like I made that decision in a heartbeat. I heard about it, I applied, I sent in my deposit and I went. I can thank that former self for what has become my life.

“But it’s the memory I wish had been stronger than any other.”

“This event to which I trace all of the best parts of myself.”

by Nicole Krauss

I’m not really sure what to say about this book other than I loved it. I loved all of it. Even the bits I don’t understand. Or the big picture I’m not quite getting. But what I love most of all are the slight truths that appear throughout the book. It’s scattered onto all the pages and are expressed through a man named Leo Gursky. Reading it felt a lot like reading Everything is Illuminated or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It had the same tone and color to it. I loved the beauty of Leo’s imagination. It’s one I’d love to read again, every 5 years, to see what resonates then.

“At the end, all that’s left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that’s why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.”

“I’d been so busy trying to find her that it hadn’t occurred to me that maybe she didn’t want to be found.”

[I guess it's a hard thing to imagine, that someone might not ever want to be found. Because aren't we all looking to be noticed? Have our inner beauty seen? Be discovered and loved? Is that not the human condition? Found in love. Talents unearthed. Loved by an individual or by masses. To be remembered and acknowledged.]

“Why do people always get named after dead people? If they have to be named after anything at all, why can’t it be things, which have more permanence, like the sky or the sea, or even ideas, which never really die, not even bad ones?”

“Then I wondered if it ever really happened.”

[I have some memories like that. They seem to take place in a fog. Behind frosted glass. I can't ever tell if they were real or I imagined what I wish would have been.]

“I tried to think of what it was I wanted to say. ‘I’m not awake,’ I finally said. ‘Me either,’ said Bird.”

“And now, at the end of my life, I can barely tell the difference between what is real and what I believe.”

“Because of that wife who go tired of waiting for her soldier, I lived. All he had to do was poke the hay to discover that there was nothing beneath it; if he hadn’t had so much on his mind I’d have been found. Sometimes I wonder what happened to her. I like to imagine the first time she leaned in to kiss that stranger, how she must have felt herself falling for him,or perhaps simply away from her loneliness, and it’s like some tiny nothing that sets off a natural disaster halfway across the world, only this was the opposite of disaster, how by accident she saved me with that thoughtless act of grace, and she never knew, and how that, too, is part of the history of love.”

by Sophie Kinsella

I got the book for free at a book exchange and well, it was good enough to read on vacation. I liked parts of it, but I find these kinds of books make for better movies being watched than books being read. I was desparate for a book abroad.