p. 31
Okay, this wasn’t my favorite read of all times but this may not be Amy’s fault. I find that I lose interest in short stories really fast. I don’t have time to really get into the characters and I tend not to concentrate. Some of her stories seemed really good to me but others were a bit banal. I certainly do see how she gets her reputation as a reductionist writer. Her prose are very clear and simple and often leave you thinking. Here’s the places that I marked:
p. 31
“The best I can explain it is this—I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not the grisliest, but it’s the one that did. A man wrecked his car on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the wet bone—and when he looked at it—it scared him to death.
“I mean, he died.
“So I hadn’t dared to look any closer. But now I’m doing it—and hoping that I will live through it.”
Of course the other thing that gets me about short stories is that they are often highly symbolic and I have admitted in other places that I am a bit of a symbolism dork. At the same time, I have the tendency to hunt for symbols rather than simply enjoying the story. Perhaps that is why I’m not a writer. I would have the tendency to try to develop symbolism behind all of my stories. I don’t know how I would do at that. I would be comfortable, however, simply creating stories that are snapshots into everyday life.
Like much of Hempel’s quotes, this one about the “wet bone” can’t be read once and lightly dismissed. It stays with you. What kills us? We don’t often die because of who we are and what we are but because we can’t stand to look at who we are and what we are. Perhaps survival is in the seeing. Perhaps salvation is in the seeing. Survival might demand an epiphany.
I remember the depression of my young adult years just out of high school. I felt rejected by friends, girlfriends, professors, you name it. They didn’t like the fact that I smoke and drank. They didn’t like my writing. I wasn’t doing anything right. I only heard negatives and that after years of positives in high school. This time of heavy criticism taught me to look at myself in a way that I had never looked at myself before. I was now the guy who smelled like coffee, cigarette and alcohol. I was now stupid. These were the things I saw through the eyes of my friends. We all have negative things to look at in ourselves. It’s our choice whether to focus on them or on the positives.
It was finally in my second year out of high, once I had moved to L.A., that I started to change my perspective on me. I still was the same person that I was before. I didn’t change my habits at all. What I did change was my attitude towards my habits. Prior to this, I had a list of behaviors and a list of ideals and I did all that I could to get the behaviors to conform to the ideals and yet I failed dismally. That led to depression. During this particular year, however, I changed my tactic. I relaxed my ideals and let my behavior determine a great deal about who I was. I therefore saw myself differently. I changed nothing and yet everything changed.
Now there were more struggles through the years and I did have to come to terms with soe of my bad habits but this decision to see myself differently and to let my ideals go really did more for my survival than anything else I had tried.
p. 73
“The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge—though not, she threatens, for long.
“I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.
“I tell the woman about a man in Bogota. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep the man alive.
“Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.
“When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then—that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.”
This is a great metaphor, almost a parable. I think that much of Amy Hempel is trying to say is that it is in the seeing. In this case, I am struck by the fact that this kidnapped man must have seen nothing positive to his kidnapping during the time of struggle. Even after the kidnapping is over, it is not the victim who has the objectivity to realize that the kidnapping ended up being a positive in his life. The doctor had to name it.
How many kidnappings have I experienced? How many kidnappings do I experience today? I know that it is a great source of pride for me that I do everything that I can to turn all of my kidnappings to the positive. Perhaps, however, I try too hard to seek resolution while I am still in the moment rather than letting the experience be. There are times when it is way too early to ask someone what they learned from their experience.
p. 184
There is a great description of a train ride on this page. I’ll let it speak for itself. It is a classic example of this writing genre.
p. 239
This page begins with the narrator talking about how she grew up believing it was best to wear big oversized sweaters and sit in oversized furniture in order to make herself smaller. She then asks,
“Are you wondering why a person who is already small would want to make herself smaller? That should become clear. Not everything that I know is something I want to see. Though on highways and, once, on a mountain road, I have strained to see things I didn’t want to see. The worst I ever saw was a body without a head. That was when I realized that I don’t mind seeing everything as long as everything is there for me to see.”
More allusions to self-awareness I think. We are much more likely to want to see everything if everything is out there and not inside ourselves. We have a morbid curiosity about others that we consider inappropriate when that curiosity is directed towards ourselves.
p. 243
“The woman left to tend the other dogs, and Karen spoke to Banker; she said it was exhausting to always have two jobs—your job, and the job of being able to do your job in the first place.”
I long for the day when having a job is not such a job.
p. 252
“All I remember of church when I was a child is a part of a sermon about the ordinary. The title of the sermon was “The Blessing of Dailiness,” and had to do with why we should thank God for our toothbrush in the morning. We should thank God that each day much begins with an ordinary ritual, and does not go immediately into crisis. It’s a time-honored fact that after a close call, we all embrace the ordinary. But that is because it has become miraculous. Or we have—alive to see it.”
I think that church people, myself included, get addicted to the emotional high. Life is an ongoing struggle of going from one experience, conference, convention, meditation, prayer to another looking for the biggest feeling thrill. I am a emotional junky. There have been at least two times in my life when I’ve had to come down from years of emotional highs. The first time was coming out of high school. The second time is now. The first time I learned to meditate, to stabililize my feelings. I am still trying to figure out this second time.
When I think of the images that meant healing the first time, I think of late urban nights in Portland and jazz music playing on KINK radio. I have ridden the roller coaster ride of life and I have cruised. I am at a point right now where I miss the roller coaster and have not yet rebuilt the cruise. I’m also at a point where it is hard to favor the cruise over the roller coaster.
p. 265
“And she said, ‘Helping someone else can make you better.
“In large part, we are meant to heal each other. The garden is a metaphor. Seeding, tending, weeding, watering—all leading up to the harvest. Although leave it to Warren to point out these words that are synonymous with “plant”: hide, secrete, conceal, bury, entomb.”
If you have ever watched One Tree Hill, there’s some pretty profound conversation on there. This one comes from the season finale. Lindsey and Lucas are talking:
Lucas: “I’m thinking about taking off for a little while.”
Lindsey: “Lucas please stop running. You’ve got to let go of this dark weight you’re carrying around.”
Lucas: “This morning Nathan told me the darkness doesn’t have any answers.”
Lindsey: “He’s right. You saw him after his accident and look at him now. You know that romantic notion that all the garbage and the pain is actually healing and beautiful and sort of poetic? It’s not. It’s just garbage and it’s pain. You know what’s better? Love. The day that you start thinking of love as overrated is the day that you’re wrong. The only thing wrong with love, faith and belief is not having it.”
I have never been one who believes that pain is the best way to salvation or atonement or whatever. The basis of my theology is that this life we have been given is a gift. It would take a cruel God to choose to soil that gift. God wants things to be good for us all the time. The fact that things are not always good shows the extent to which we have faded away from our relationships with God and bad things also just happen frequently. I will never say that we should avoid our problems or not acknowledge the pain but maybe we are supposed to just go on with life, get over it, play the game with a little bit of pain occasionally. And if we get in there and start helping others, we will feels the healing increase a hundredfold. Maybe we are called to be what we are called to be and we will find healing primarily by being what we are called.
Here’s some lines from one of my favorite songs to sing to my kids at night night time:
Smile though your heart is achingSmile, even though it's breaking When there are clouds, in the sky, you'll get byIf you smile, through your fear and sorrowSmile, and there'll be tomorrowYou'll see the sun come shining throughIf you'll....Light up your face with gladnessHide every trace of sadnessAlthough a tear, may be ever so near,That's the time, you must keep on tryingSmile, what's the use of crying?You'll find that life is still worthwhile, If you'll just....Light up your face with gladnessHide every trace of sadnessAlthough a tear, may be ever so near,That's the time, you must keep on tryingSmile, what's the use of crying?You'll find that life is still worthwhile, If you'll just....Smile
‘Nuff said.
On the same page, the following:
“There is one counselor here we suspect of being something more. She gives such encouraging and optimistic guidance that one day I asked if I could tape her. We set a time to meet for a talk on the patio off the parlor. I turned on my pocket-sized tape recorder and showed her where to speak into the mike. She delivered a kind of pep talk, one I could not replay and refer to as the need arose.
“The need arose the very next day, so I grabbed my tape recorder, fitted in her tape, and went up to deserted Little Egypt. I pressed the “On” button, and closed my eyes. I let myself believe her good words; they displaced my bad thoughts for the length of an hour. When it was over, I pressed the “Off button. Nothing happened. The tape continued to wind in its cartridge. I held the “Off” button down with my thumb, and still the tape played, though there was no more voice to hear.
What is my tape?
p. 289
“San Francisco,” my mother once said, “is the only city that demands you love it.”
I love this sentence about SF. SF is like that. It’s like a puppy standing in the doorway waiting for you to come home. It jumps on you. It must be noticed. It is too rich, too rare and too much for the eye for it to be ignored. It jumps all over you.
Cindy’s gentleman called was due to arrive. Back in her room, I brushed green eyeshadow on her, but she said it made her look like she ate colored babies for breakfast. I painted on the palest lip color. “I’d sooner ride a hog to Memphis,” she said.
“The Hindus have a word for this,” Karen said, watching the makeup lesson. “Overexcitement. They say that when your pulse races and you get flushed and anxious, the person is bad for you.”
“He was trained to get us overexcited,” Chatty said. “By keeping himself still? By holding the best part back, and suggesting it? The best actors do that.”
More on addiction to high emotions. I”ve found that I do my best in life when I hold some back.
p. 322
working the hotline
“Some of the group never said the word man. Instead they said “potential rapist.” There were men who wanted to donate money, but there was a faction among us who did not feel right accepting donations from future rapists.”
Wow, what a great statement about prejudice.
Okay, this wasn’t my favorite read of all times but this may not be Amy’s fault. I find that I lose interest in short stories really fast. I don’t have time to really get into the characters and I tend not to concentrate. Some of her stories seemed really good to me but others were a bit banal. I certainly do see how she gets her reputation as a reductionist writer. Her prose are very clear and simple and often leave you thinking. Here’s the places that I marked:
p. 31
“The best I can explain it is this—I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not the grisliest, but it’s the one that did. A man wrecked his car on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the wet bone—and when he looked at it—it scared him to death.
“I mean, he died.
“So I hadn’t dared to look any closer. But now I’m doing it—and hoping that I will live through it.”
Of course the other thing that gets me about short stories is that they are often highly symbolic and I have admitted in other places that I am a bit of a symbolism dork. At the same time, I have the tendency to hunt for symbols rather than simply enjoying the story. Perhaps that is why I’m not a writer. I would have the tendency to try to develop symbolism behind all of my stories. I don’t know how I would do at that. I would be comfortable, however, simply creating stories that are snapshots into everyday life.
Like much of Hempel’s quotes, this one about the “wet bone” can’t be read once and lightly dismissed. It stays with you. What kills us? We don’t often die because of who we are and what we are but because we can’t stand to look at who we are and what we are. Perhaps survival is in the seeing. Perhaps salvation is in the seeing. Survival might demand an epiphany.
I remember the depression of my young adult years just out of high school. I felt rejected by friends, girlfriends, professors, you name it. They didn’t like the fact that I smoke and drank. They didn’t like my writing. I wasn’t doing anything right. I only heard negatives and that after years of positives in high school. This time of heavy criticism taught me to look at myself in a way that I had never looked at myself before. I was now the guy who smelled like coffee, cigarette and alcohol. I was now stupid. These were the things I saw through the eyes of my friends. We all have negative things to look at in ourselves. It’s our choice whether to focus on them or on the positives.
It was finally in my second year out of high, once I had moved to L.A., that I started to change my perspective on me. I still was the same person that I was before. I didn’t change my habits at all. What I did change was my attitude towards my habits. Prior to this, I had a list of behaviors and a list of ideals and I did all that I could to get the behaviors to conform to the ideals and yet I failed dismally. That led to depression. During this particular year, however, I changed my tactic. I relaxed my ideals and let my behavior determine a great deal about who I was. I therefore saw myself differently. I changed nothing and yet everything changed.
Now there were more struggles through the years and I did have to come to terms with soe of my bad habits but this decision to see myself differently and to let my ideals go really did more for my survival than anything else I had tried.
p. 73
“The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge—though not, she threatens, for long.
“I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.
“I tell the woman about a man in Bogota. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep the man alive.
“Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.
“When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then—that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.”
This is a great metaphor, almost a parable. I think that much of Amy Hempel is trying to say is that it is in the seeing. In this case, I am struck by the fact that this kidnapped man must have seen nothing positive to his kidnapping during the time of struggle. Even after the kidnapping is over, it is not the victim who has the objectivity to realize that the kidnapping ended up being a positive in his life. The doctor had to name it.
How many kidnappings have I experienced? How many kidnappings do I experience today? I know that it is a great source of pride for me that I do everything that I can to turn all of my kidnappings to the positive. Perhaps, however, I try too hard to seek resolution while I am still in the moment rather than letting the experience be. There are times when it is way too early to ask someone what they learned from their experience.
p. 184
There is a great description of a train ride on this page. I’ll let it speak for itself. It is a classic example of this writing genre.
p. 239
This page begins with the narrator talking about how she grew up believing it was best to wear big oversized sweaters and sit in oversized furniture in order to make herself smaller. She then asks,
“Are you wondering why a person who is already small would want to make herself smaller? That should become clear. Not everything that I know is something I want to see. Though on highways and, once, on a mountain road, I have strained to see things I didn’t want to see. The worst I ever saw was a body without a head. That was when I realized that I don’t mind seeing everything as long as everything is there for me to see.”
More allusions to self-awareness I think. We are much more likely to want to see everything if everything is out there and not inside ourselves. We have a morbid curiosity about others that we consider inappropriate when that curiosity is directed towards ourselves.
p. 243
“The woman left to tend the other dogs, and Karen spoke to Banker; she said it was exhausting to always have two jobs—your job, and the job of being able to do your job in the first place.”
I long for the day when having a job is not such a job.
p. 252
“All I remember of church when I was a child is a part of a sermon about the ordinary. The title of the sermon was “The Blessing of Dailiness,” and had to do with why we should thank God for our toothbrush in the morning. We should thank God that each day much begins with an ordinary ritual, and does not go immediately into crisis. It’s a time-honored fact that after a close call, we all embrace the ordinary. But that is because it has become miraculous. Or we have—alive to see it.”
I think that church people, myself included, get addicted to the emotional high. Life is an ongoing struggle of going from one experience, conference, convention, meditation, prayer to another looking for the biggest feeling thrill. I am a emotional junky. There have been at least two times in my life when I’ve had to come down from years of emotional highs. The first time was coming out of high school. The second time is now. The first time I learned to meditate, to stabililize my feelings. I am still trying to figure out this second time.
When I think of the images that meant healing the first time, I think of late urban nights in Portland and jazz music playing on KINK radio. I have ridden the roller coaster ride of life and I have cruised. I am at a point right now where I miss the roller coaster and have not yet rebuilt the cruise. I’m also at a point where it is hard to favor the cruise over the roller coaster.
p. 265
“And she said, ‘Helping someone else can make you better.
“In large part, we are meant to heal each other. The garden is a metaphor. Seeding, tending, weeding, watering—all leading up to the harvest. Although leave it to Warren to point out these words that are synonymous with “plant”: hide, secrete, conceal, bury, entomb.”
If you have ever watched One Tree Hill, there’s some pretty profound conversation on there. This one comes from the season finale. Lindsey and Lucas are talking:
Lucas: “I’m thinking about taking off for a little while.”
Lindsey: “Lucas please stop running. You’ve got to let go of this dark weight you’re carrying around.”
Lucas: “This morning Nathan told me the darkness doesn’t have any answers.”
Lindsey: “He’s right. You saw him after his accident and look at him now. You know that romantic notion that all the garbage and the pain is actually healing and beautiful and sort of poetic? It’s not. It’s just garbage and it’s pain. You know what’s better? Love. The day that you start thinking of love as overrated is the day that you’re wrong. The only thing wrong with love, faith and belief is not having it.”
I have never been one who believes that pain is the best way to salvation or atonement or whatever. The basis of my theology is that this life we have been given is a gift. It would take a cruel God to choose to soil that gift. God wants things to be good for us all the time. The fact that things are not always good shows the extent to which we have faded away from our relationships with God and bad things also just happen frequently. I will never say that we should avoid our problems or not acknowledge the pain but maybe we are supposed to just go on with life, get over it, play the game with a little bit of pain occasionally. And if we get in there and start helping others, we will feels the healing increase a hundredfold. Maybe we are called to be what we are called to be and we will find healing primarily by being what we are called.
Here’s some lines from one of my favorite songs to sing to my kids at night night time:
Smile though your heart is achingSmile, even though it's breaking When there are clouds, in the sky, you'll get byIf you smile, through your fear and sorrowSmile, and there'll be tomorrowYou'll see the sun come shining throughIf you'll....Light up your face with gladnessHide every trace of sadnessAlthough a tear, may be ever so near,That's the time, you must keep on tryingSmile, what's the use of crying?You'll find that life is still worthwhile, If you'll just....Light up your face with gladnessHide every trace of sadnessAlthough a tear, may be ever so near,That's the time, you must keep on tryingSmile, what's the use of crying?You'll find that life is still worthwhile, If you'll just....Smile
‘Nuff said.
On the same page, the following:
“There is one counselor here we suspect of being something more. She gives such encouraging and optimistic guidance that one day I asked if I could tape her. We set a time to meet for a talk on the patio off the parlor. I turned on my pocket-sized tape recorder and showed her where to speak into the mike. She delivered a kind of pep talk, one I could not replay and refer to as the need arose.
“The need arose the very next day, so I grabbed my tape recorder, fitted in her tape, and went up to deserted Little Egypt. I pressed the “On” button, and closed my eyes. I let myself believe her good words; they displaced my bad thoughts for the length of an hour. When it was over, I pressed the “Off button. Nothing happened. The tape continued to wind in its cartridge. I held the “Off” button down with my thumb, and still the tape played, though there was no more voice to hear.
What is my tape?
p. 289
“San Francisco,” my mother once said, “is the only city that demands you love it.”
I love this sentence about SF. SF is like that. It’s like a puppy standing in the doorway waiting for you to come home. It jumps on you. It must be noticed. It is too rich, too rare and too much for the eye for it to be ignored. It jumps all over you.
Cindy’s gentleman called was due to arrive. Back in her room, I brushed green eyeshadow on her, but she said it made her look like she ate colored babies for breakfast. I painted on the palest lip color. “I’d sooner ride a hog to Memphis,” she said.
“The Hindus have a word for this,” Karen said, watching the makeup lesson. “Overexcitement. They say that when your pulse races and you get flushed and anxious, the person is bad for you.”
“He was trained to get us overexcited,” Chatty said. “By keeping himself still? By holding the best part back, and suggesting it? The best actors do that.”
More on addiction to high emotions. I”ve found that I do my best in life when I hold some back.
p. 322
working the hotline
“Some of the group never said the word man. Instead they said “potential rapist.” There were men who wanted to donate money, but there was a faction among us who did not feel right accepting donations from future rapists.”
Wow, what a great statement about prejudice.
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