A Title Like a Book

HAPPY NAILS, ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Happy Halloween Nails
It was just a fluke of timing that my orange tips
coincided with the Illinois Game (colors orange & navy).

I seem to remember this same thing happening once before.
Ben & Sam said, "Mom! Not orange!"
Well, no harm, no foul -- we won both times!

2011

Pumpkin Spice

Purdue Snazzy

For a literary blogger, a large part of the fun of having your nails done is the poetic quality of the polish names. Puns abound, and the word - play provides endless entertainment. Kind of like strolling through the library, reading title after title of a hundred books that I will never have time to read, I can easily stand at the polish display for an hour, turning over each bottle to read the clever names.

There are the food names: Beets Me!, Bitter Chocolate, Chocolate Shake Speare, Malaga Wine, Mimosas for Mr and Mrs (suggested for weddings), and Suzi Sells Sushi by the Seashore. There are those which immediately conjure a specific color: Teal the Cows Come Home, Turquoise and Caicos, Down to My Last Penny, Hollywood Blonde, My Chihuahua Bites (ouch!). My favorites are the concept names, where you must use your imagination to figure out what connection might exist between the name and the color: Amster-Damsel in Distress, Can’t Find My Czechbook, I'm not Really a Waitress, Nomad's Dream, Not Like the Movies, Optimistic, Road Trip, & Mrs. Always Right.

My friend Katy has an idea for a novel in which each chapter is named after a polish color. So imagine how delighted we were to discover a novelist -- Gabrielle Zevin -- who shares our interest in these color names and has actually used them to advance the plot of her novel The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry. Starting with the very first sentence of the book: "On the ferry from Hyannis to Alice Island, Amelia Loman paints her nails yellow and, white waiting for them to dry, skims her . . . notes." Later in the novel, Amelia explains to young Maya:

Amelia takes Maya to the drugstore and lets her choose any polish color she likes. "How do you pick?" Maya says.

"Sometimes I ask myself how I'm feeling," Amelia says. "Sometimes I ask myself how I'd like to be feeling."

Maya studies the rows of glass bottles. She selects a red then puts it back. She takes iridescent silver off the shelf.

"Ooh, pretty. Here's the best part. Each color has a name," Amelia tells her. "Turn the bottle over."

Maya does. "It's a title like a book! Pearly Riser," she reads. What's your's called?"

Amy has selected a a pale blue. "Keeping Things Light."

It is not lost on Maya's dad, A. J., despite Amelia's protestations, that perhaps her ever - changing nail colors reveal a hidden clue to the status of their tentative romance. Later in the day, he asks,

"What color are you wearing today?"

"Keeping Things Light."

"Is that significant?"

"No," she says.

On previous occasions, A. J. has asked Amelia, "What hue is that?" One day the answer was "Rose - Colored Glasses," another time "Blues Traveler." As the months pass, and Amelia and A. J. decide [spoiler alert!] to marry, Maya picks the perfect wedding day present for Amelia: " . . . a bottle of orange nail polish . . . A Good Man-darin is Hard to Find."

(132 - 133, emphsis added, 156; see also previous FN & KL)

Available on amazon

Nail polish serves as an effective metaphor in poetry as well as fiction. The color names chosen by poet Anya Krugovoy Silver symbolize not only the brief life span of the manicure itself but also a foreshortened human existence, opening with a Baby's Breath, a First Dance, and the recklessness of youth -- Russian Roulette; closing with a Curtain Call, accepting life's ultimate fate -- Bone (the skeleton takes the day):

Red Never Lasts
There’s no doubt it’s the most glamorous,
the one you reach for first — its luscious gloss.
Russian Roulette, First Dance, Apéritif, Cherry Pop.
For three days, your nails are a Ferris wheel,
a field of roses, a flashing neon Open sign.
Whatever you’re wearing feels like a tight dress
and your hair tousles like Marilyn’s on the beach.
But soon, after dishwashing, typing, mopping,
the chips begin, first at the very tips and edges
where you hardly notice, then whole shards.
Eventually, the fuss is too much to maintain.
Time to settle in to the neutral tones.
Baby’s Breath, Curtain Call, Bone.

by American Poet ~ Anya Krugovoy Silver, 1968 - 2018
in her book From Nothing

On living with cancer and the connectedness of all things in life, the poet explains:

“I have a tremendous amount of joy in my life, and my joy exists with pain. I don’t see those two things as completely separate. All of life is woven together, and separating the strands is impossible.”

Anya Krugovoy Silver
on Georgia Public Radio

One more connection comes from the futuristic novel Player Piano, a post World War II tale of Dawn or Doom written in 1952 by the visionary Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. In his imagined dystopia, the brave new machines have all but displaced meaningful human labor. Vonnegut explores the likelihood and the qualms of a society that reveres engineering above all else. However, it seems that he misguessed when he describes the "streetcorner manicure machine" that after a few minutes of buffing leaves the user "with gleaming, red - enameled nails" (239).

As it turns out, sixty - six years later, clients still value the undivided attention of a personalized, detailed manicure or pedicure. No machine has taken the place of that yet. What Vonnegut says of the haircut likewise remains true of the manicure:

"Used to be sort of high and mighty, sort of priests, those doctors and lawyers and all, but they're beginning to look more and more like mechanics. Dentists are holding up pretty good, though. They're the exception that proves the rule, I say. And barbering -- one of the oldest professions on earth, incidentally -- has held up better than all the rest. . . . It does seem like the machines took all the good jobs, where a man could be true to hisself and false to nobody else, and left all the silly ones, And I guess I'm just about the end of a race, standing here on my own two feet.

And I'm lucky barbering held out as long as it did -- long enough to take care of me. . . .

Anyway, I hope they keep those barber machines out of Miami Beach for another two years, and then I'll be ready to retire and the hell with them" (205 - 08).

In conclusion, I think the only thing left to say is long live the hands - on manicure and the colorful polishes with titles like books:

Back to Reality,
Envy the Adventure,
Adam Said “It’s New Year’s, Eve,”
Hello Kitty: Let's Be Friends!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, November 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ RED: Dress, Lipstick, Fingernails & Ersatz
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

O Ya - Ya of Little Faith

A LITTLE ALTAR
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

“Good Lord didn't mean for us to hate ourself.
He made us to love ourself like He do, with wide open arms.” (140)

“Don't ever worry bout bein holy, babychild.
Just keep your eyes wide open except when you sleep.
Then let the Lord's mighty vision see you through the night.” (144)

from
~ Little Altars Everywhere ~ Rebecca Wells ~
~ more on my book blog ~

"I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing
another person, or learning to love another person.
The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be?
What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves
and others into our hearts?" (346)

from
~ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood ~ Rebecca Wells ~

************
It has been awhile since the "Ya - Ya Sisterhood" has come up in conversation, but it's been on my mind lately in connection with my recent thoughts on religious indoctrination. Even the titles -- Divine Secrets, Little Altars -- imply a spiritual inclination. I loved the vocabulary: ya-ya, ya-ya-no, gumbo ya-ya, tres ya-ya, petites ya-yas -- and my favorite angel-gals.

The plot, on the other hand, was rather far fetched for my taste. Could you really have the same four best friends for seventy years? Well maybe if your fathers were all incredibly rich and your husbands were all incredibly rich and you never had to move across the country or be even remotely concerned about making a living and could live an entire life devoted solely to personal relationships. I was straining to suspend my disbelief, but I guess that's why they call it fiction. Still I prefer for my fictional characters to be a bit more like moi, and I'm a Yankee girl raised in a humble home of modest means. So I had a few hurdles to cross and some eyes to roll before coming to a full appreciation of the divine secrets behind the antics.

For me, the most memorable line will always be when Sidda (age thirty - something) goes to visit her mother and "tried not to feel five years old. She tried to feel at least eleven" (336). Another shining moment -- as quoted above -- occurs when Sidda gives up the idea of ever really understanding her mother: "The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be?"

In fact, early in the novel, Sidda's mother suggests the tenderness of etiquette, "Forget love. Try good manners” (25). This ya - ya advice is similar to Kurt Vonnegut's observation that what the world needs now is "A little less love please, and a little more common decency". Or Ralph Waldo Emerson's reminder to "treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are."

I like Emerson's "angels unawares" message here, but even more I like the face value of it, that being human is enough, being human is everything. If the sum of humanity is greater than the individuals, then maybe that sum is god. Instead of loving god (whatever that means) how about just being nice to other people. When it comes to faith, god, and religion, the quest to know (even as also we are known) can be good; but maybe a better goal is to be tender and mannerly.

In a memorable episode of Thirtysomething (can't remember which season), Elliot chastises his mother-in-law Eleanor for hurting his wife Ellen's feelings. Eleanor responds that she has asked god's forgiveness. But Elliot persists, "What about asking Ellen's forgiveness? She's the person you hurt." Why can't Eleanor be more tender? Why is she holding back?

Around the same time (1997) that I was watching Thirtysomething and reading Divine Secrets and Little Altars, a dear friend -- one of my angel - gals -- was reading The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie. She found it to be a very helpful way of looking at the heartache and frustration and occasional boredom of organized religion, and she wrote to explain some of Beattie's ideas:

She suggests acting "As If." Act as if you're happy and pretty soon you will be. Or act as if I have excellent self-esteem and pretty soon I will. That kind of thing. So if I act as if I believe in God, pretty soon I will? That could work! It's very important to me to start believing. I went to my counselor last night. Seems I have this core belief that "I am not enough." So I asked, "How do you get rid of those beliefs that you formed as a small child?" Of course, as adults, we can actively choose for tenderness as opposed to bitterness, but we can't always repair the damage done to us as children. I have a lot of work to do, and I really appreciate your thoughts and help on my issues.

In response, I shared with her the story of what had inspired me over the years and what had not. As a Nazarene kid (in the 1960s & 70s), I am definitely grateful for the singable hymns and the "fantastic grasp of scripture," which has served me well personally and professionally, as a teacher and writer. However, I never got the "strong sense of identity" or the "Nazzy street cred" that some adherents claim as their birthright (see, for example, Ryan Scott's blog post
"Nazarenes, Moralism, and _ru_p"). Instead, I felt constantly judged and criticized by my elders and my peers, perpetually weighed and found wanting. Always a goat, never a sheep.

As a child, my eyes were opened (and not in a good way) when I visited a Sunday school class for fourth grade girls. When one of the girls was excused for a few moments to run an errand, the teacher turned to the rest of us and said, "While she's out of the room, let's pray for her, because we know that she is not saved." What?! I hardly believed any of those cruel, heartless, irrational ideas from the time I was 8 or 9 years old. How do we know that she's not saved? My girlish heart was shocked then; and even now, half a century later, I remain highly suspicious of anyone who would pray for me behind my back. Don't do that!

I was exposed to numerous other severe dictates that totally backfired. Though I realized early on (by age 10) that it would never work for me, I stayed in the church, trying to remain in favor with my family, until age 26. With huge relief, I finally chose another path. I was committed to the insistence that religion has to make some kind of sense, and to finding a church where human intelligence is valued, rather than the hypocritical "please leave your brain at the door" attitude that I resented throughout my formative years. I knew that I would never want my children subjected to the criticism and judging and unnecessary shame of Protestant fundamentalism.

I also have to confess that I've never been much of prayer person, mostly because I don't know what that means. If I'm asking, who am I asking? If I'm praising, who am I praising? Yet I like doing things like reciting or singing or listening to certain prayers, poems, psalms, hymns because I like those words and I like the act of singing or choral reading or just hearing certain words or phrases. So it's not that if I act happy or uplifted I will become those things; it's just that for the duration (5 minutes) of hearing someone sing "Ave Maria" or for the duration (2 minutes) of reciting the Apostles' Creed, I feel convinced of meaning, grace, history, connection. I can easily believe that the world's most beautiful words, songs, and buildings have all been created to the "glory of God," even though I'm not entirely sure what that means. I'm not opposed to the idea that honoring god means honoring humanity, in manner of Rebecca Wells, Vonnegut, and Emerson.

My ya-ya sis replied:

I totally appreciate you sharing your thoughts on God. That really helped! What I understood you to be saying is that you have faith and you believe in God even though you're not sure what exactly God is or if God even exists? So it's kind of like a blind faith? And that if you pray to God that's your God? That just by doing the act (believing) it creates belief? Am I getting this? If I'm at all close, I think I know what you're saying, and I think that might work for me. I have trouble believing in anything supernatural (not concrete), but I guess if I just believe that something could exist, that is enough. Maybe?

One observation that I would add to our thoughts on God is that I'm not really trying to accomplish or grow into any kind of greater belief by the small ways in which I practice my "blind faith" (if that's the right term). It's not so much that "act creates belief" for me as it is that "act gives satisfaction" (however slight). So what I'm willing to do (and maybe this is my "faith") is go with that slight sense of satisfaction or fulfillment or participation as a worthwhile act in itself. For a specific example, let's say I take communion -- I have no belief in the body and blood and transubstantiation. In fact, I never even think about those things. But I do like participating in the ritual of having a tiny piece of bread and a tiny sip of wine with some other people that I know. I have no expectation that such an act will lead to or create any further belief; and as for the supernatural, I don't need body and blood; bread and wine is enough for me.

A little divinity, a lot of humanity. A little love, a lot of common decency. A little knowing, a lot of tenderness. A few divine secrets, a lot of little altars.

ANOTHER LITTLE ALTAR

"Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?"
Matthew 8:26, KJV
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS
FOR A CONTINUATION OF THIS DISCUSSION ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, August 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

How to Keep on Hoping

"Girl With Red Balloon: There is Always Hope"
By contemporary British graffiti artist, Banksy.]

" . . . in a time lacking in truth and certainty and filled with anguish and despair, no woman should be shamefaced in attempting to give back to the world, through her work, a portion of its lost heart."
~Louise Bogan, 1897 - 1970
Poet Laureate of the United States, 1945-46
When my heart is aching for the world's lost heart, I turn to novels, essays, and poetry. If you are feeling sick at heart, one writer you can count on to repair some of the damage is Barbara Kingsolver. Never shamefaced, Kingsolver is a consistent advocate of common sense and social justice. Embedded within the narrative of her novel, Animal Dreams, are a number of letters written to the main character, Codi Noline, from her sister Hallie who has involved herself with life - risking work in Nicaragua. Codi, conflicted and searching for meaning in her life back home, wonders how it is that her sister is "not afraid of loving and losing," how she retains her composure and determination, always moving forward with certainty. Hallie writes back:

"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?' . . .the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That's about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides" (Animal Dreams, 224, 299).

Hallie's metaphor of being on the road and knowing how to drive reminds me of the E. L. Doctorow passage that Anne Lamott quotes in Bird by Bird: " 'writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you are going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you" (Bird by Bird, 18). Life can work that way too.

Even more compelling than the driving metaphor is Hallie's description of running down the hallway of hope, touching the walls on both sides. I can almost remember that sensation from childhood, the rush that came from stretching my arms out to touch both sides of a narrow corridor at the same time. Likewise, I recall the intoxicating sensation of running outside, trailing my fingers along the borders on either side of an overgrown path or between two rows of tall vegetables in the garden. The current summer movie, The Last Airbender includes a similar scene, filmed from overhead so that the audience can see Aang, the little Child Avatar running between two hedgerows, arms outstretched, fingertips spread wide.

Hallie's simple hope for the world -- elementary kindness -- resembles the wisdom of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: "Please -- a little less love, and a little more common decency" (from the Prologue of his novel Slapstick). I guess calling it common decency is just an ironic play on words, since experience teaches us that it is one of the most uncommon sentiments available, despite being so necessary to peace and order. All we have to do is glance around -- international strife, national crisis, local incivility, anywhere at all -- to see how right Matthew Arnold was when he wrote in 1864 that "the general practice of the world" reposes not on common decency or common sense but on very inadequate ideas:

"The mass of mankind will never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the general practice of the world. That is as much as saying that whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle; but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. The rush and roar of practical life will always have a dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex . . . But it is only by remaining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the point of view of the practical man, that the critic can do the practical man any service; and it is only by the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and by at last convincing even the practical man of his sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which perpetually threaten him" (Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time").

It's helpful to remind ourselves that the world often seems crazy and inadequate because -- guess what? -- it is crazy and inadequate at certain times, in certain places. Speaking of inadequate ideas, too bad Arnold has to sound so classist and masculine, but what can we do at this point, aside from overlooking his gender exclusivity: "mankind," "himself," and so on? Perhaps he knew not what he did. It does seem that he's trying to say the same thing as Louise Bogan (above) about giving the world back its lost heart, about upgrading to "adequate," about leaving everything that we touch somehow better than the way we found it. We have to keep trying to do that, to stay collected and sincere, to stay within that small circle of seeing things as they are if at all possible, to keep running down the hallway touching the walls on both sides.

So how to keep hoping? How to figure out what to hope for? How to keep from selling out to the general churlishness?

Send answers soon!

Art Appreciation Sketch: Perspective Down the Hallway

DON'T FORGET TO
CHECK BACK FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com