What I Love Right Now: PIRATE TALK OR MERMALADE

I’ve seen boats as big as this whale. I’ve seen gryphons the same size, with teeth growing in even as they were taking their last breath.


My friends always know about the coolest things first. Better still, they are usually involved. Lauren directed me (and the rest of Twitter) to an excerpt of Terese Svoboda's newest novel, Pirate Talk or Mermalade. I read it and now, many minutes later, I am still sighing at the beauty of it.

Pirate Talk is a "novel in voices." It reads like poetry set to pirate-speak (like that option on Facebook). I was immediately reminded of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, another book that left me breathless. The excerpt, the dialogue-instead-of-narration, left out just enough to make me wonder what might be coming next. As if the word "mermalade" wasn't enough to pique my interest.

Pirate Talk or Mermalade comes out on Talk Like a Pirate Day. Read this book.

Happy Birthday

A very late, very happy birthday to Virginia Woolf. When my thirteen-year-old self picked up a copy of Mrs. Dalloway after seeing The Hours, I never expected that we would become so close.

If you will, and I think you will.

Allow me to pause for a minute and tell you about all the Really Big Things that are happening to me. I should preface this post by saying that, for the past couple of years (since graduation, really), I've felt so static. Yes, I moved to New York. Yes, I started college. Yes, I went to London by myself. And on and on and on. INCREDIBLE things have always happened to me, or around me, and I'm certainly not trying to downplay my good fortune or anything like that.

But.

I have been stuck. I have the occasional great class, a wonderful advisor and an off-and-on appreciation of just about everything I see. But still, I've always felt like nothing was happening. Despite all my efforts to be proactive and get things going, I could never pick the thing (or things) that I was good at. I could never get busy enough, or care enough, to really push myself. As much as I stressed, I was totally taking it easy and not even exploring my potential. Gosh, that sounds egotistical. Here's another bit of ego: I'm good at publicity. I'm a good writer and, with time, I'll be understanding obscure literary references with the best of them.

Now, though, I am ecstatic. My life is moving so fast, and I have at least the next few months FULL of things to keep me occupied. My plane for home leaves in about five hours, and I'm planning to see a lot of friends, some old teachers, and talk to my daddy about money (scary). There will also be LOTS of reading (Lee and Gruber, specifically), and a fair amount of writing (outlining the 4 or so Woolf papers that sprung into my head at the Conference, publicity write-ups, and some data searches).

I have so much to say about the Woolf Conference. It was my first one, and I'm SO SO SO SO grateful that I had the opportunity to attend, to give a paper (a little one, but still), and to meet so many amazing people. If anyone would have told me even a month ago that I would have met the Woolfs, Katherine Lanpher, many random Woolf scholars and been able to use the phrase "on lock" and mean it---I would've laughed. Actually, I would've rolled my eyes, but whatever. I'm trying to not go into too much detail, because I'll just start gushing in a completely not-cute way. BUT--it was my first semi-independent publicity endeavor and it went AMAZINGLY well (how well? check back soon.).

As bummed as I am that it's over, I'm completely jazzed and ready for my junior year (scary) of college, for study abroad, for Woolf 2010, for EVERYTHING--even the bad stuff.

"Kew Gardens" and the (Un)Importance of Words

While I was reading "Kew Gardens," I must've listened to over a dozen different songs. I can't tell you what any of them wee, except that "I Am the Walrus" is coo-coo-coochoo-ing its way into my ears right now. The words don't matter, they just provide a backdrop for my thoughts.

In "Kew Gardens," several different couples go by. They all have something in common--they aren't there for the words, but they aren't there for the flowers either. I don't imagine that anyone really goes to Kew Gardens for the flowers though they are quite spectacular. Unless you're a botanist, the Gardens themselves simply provide the background for whatever conversation or introspection you might be engaging in that day. In "Kew Gardens," Woolf seems to be suggesting that the words passing between the couples are as unimportant to them as the flowers of Kew Gardens.

The first couple, a husband and wife, are so preoccupied with "thinking of the past" (85) that their children don't warrant any attention other than an occasional head-turn from the woman (84). The man thinks back to a time in the Gardens where one of the most important decisions of his life was made. Lily's answer to his marriage proposal, the actual "yes" or "no," isn't what the man notices. Instead of the words themselves, he hangs all of his hope on an aimless dragonfly who "went round and round: it never settled anywhere." (85) His wife, lost in thoughts of her past, remembers a time when an action, a kiss from an old woman, affected her more deeply than words ever could--"the mother of all my kisses all my life." (85) The words that pass between the couple, these "falling words," (87) between all the couples, seem to have all the importance of strangers exchanging small-talk about the weather. They're the soundtrack of a walk through Kew Gardens, but the important things are the ghosts of the past, all the might-have-beens and actions of the moments that really affect us. Woolf seems to be suggesting that words, though a necessary aspect of life, prevent us from fully reflecting on our thoughts, and startle us awake (87) to remind us of the canyon that exists between "one's happiness, one's reality." (85)