Citizen Beta

Yes, I finally powered  my way through A.B. Yehoshua’s The Liberated Bride. I did not dislike this book but I was not thrilled with it either. The main character, an Israeli professor specializing in Algerian history and Arab culture named Rivlin, is obsessed with the divorce of his oldest son. His son and ex-wife have never explained why they suddenly broke up after a brief but seemingly happy marriage. Readers eventually learn the reason but that reason itself is not as important as Rivlin’s quest to discover it. A parallel is drawn between the young couple and another: a Muslim student of Rivlin’s, and her cousin. She is married to another, suffering (possibly) from depression and the cousin, Rasheed, and Rivlin become friends of sorts. All of this set against the background of (mostly secular) Israel: Jewish, Muslim and Christian relations, politics and history as well as Rivlin’s competitive and stodgy academic life. It is a dense book with a lot going on including some interesting ideas on marriage, cultural identity, political and ethnic theories and even a few stories set within the story. Still, for all that, reading this sometimes felt like a chore and I often couldn’t get excited about it. In the end, I think I am glad I read it but nevertheless I am taking it to the used book store tomorrow to exchange it for something else.

This week I also read The Tender Bar a memoir by J.R. Moehringer. I had been wanting to read this for some time and found it randomly the other day while looking for kids books at a thrift store. Moehringer grew up mostly in NYC suburb Manhasset and spent a lot of time in a local bar called Publicans where his uncle was a bar tender and where he tried to find male role models to fill the void left by his absent father. I enjoyed this story for the most part but was bugged, as I often am when reading memoirs, by hubris parading as humility. Also, I have to say that the characters in this book are great fun but must be the most literate bar-flies in the world: all the drunks at Publicans could pontificate on F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shakespeare not to mention more obscure writers. Though my attention started to wane in the 3^rd quarter of the book, the author brought me back and I was pretty happy with this read by the end. Plus, I am a sucker for absentee father stories.

Speaking of which I am now reading A Childhood: A Biography of Place by Harry Crews which also begins with the loss (this time through death) of a father. It is a rough and sad memoir but I am liking it so far.

Here is a recent Bookreporter review as well:

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead

Oh, hi there! I am so glad you are still around. I have been busy with all those profane, mundane, day to day things that consume so much of my time and that waste so much of my energy and prevent me from baking bread, planting gardens, feeding the birds, reading the great Russian novels, shaving my legs, drinking eight glasses of water, looking on the bright side. Here it has been all blustery wind, parent-teacher conferences, trips to the pediatric gastroenterology clinic, too much Irish beer, and night weaning. Plus, I have been just trying to get paid. One local print publication I have been writing for since late November has yet to pay me. It is not a lot of money but just because I am freelancing doesn’t mean its free, people! I am always looking for small(ish) regular writing gigs and altogether the three or so places that pay me don’t pay me a whole hell of a lot but getting stiffed really sucks. I have some (big) ideas for some essays and the like but that kind of energy I am currently low on; I like to do book reviews because I like to read books and would be reading anyway. On that note here are a couple recent ones:

The Serpent’s Tale by Ariana Franklin

Standing Still by Kelly Simmons

I also had a few reviews published locally including one that was more of an article/interview with Pari Noskin Taichert. I enjoy doing author interviews very much.

For last months book club we read My Antonia by Willa Cather. I think I liked this book better than everyone else did but maybe that was because it was my pick and by the time we got around to discussing it I was halfway through my third beer. Anyway, I liked her descriptions of the Nebraska plains, and her stories within the stories. Yes, it was a very romantic view of immigration and rural life but it was such a change from the pace and subjects of the books I generally read.

I also recently re-read Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott and I have to say I liked it even better this time around. I read it for the first time almost four years ago right before L. was born and I was grumpier than usual and all the God and Jesus stuff sort-of wore on my nerves. I think really I just didn’t get it. It is not a book for a soon to be parent but a book for a parent in the thick of things. Now that both my kids are over one year old I really appreciate her perspective and honesty.

Lots of books piling up around here to review and enjoy. What are you reading? What are you writing about? Does anyone owe you money? Want me to punch their lights out?

In the 1970’s and early 80’s I lived in New York (Long Island) and summers were spent at the beach. My mom and her friends were all hospital nurses mostly working the 3-11 shift. They were all pretty young and all a bit rough around the edges. A lot of them were single moms. One summer a few got tattoos. Butterflies mostly, if I remember right. I was enthralled by the tattoos and wanted one so bad. I remember my mom saying when you are 18 you can get a tattoo. I waited until I was 17 (my mom waited until she was in her late forties or early 50’s to get one).

When I was 17, or maybe just 18, my friends and I drove about 4 hours south to Las Cruces to see a punk rock show. I cannot remember where we slept but I got a tattoo from a rocker kid younger than me. He lived in a small apartment with a friend and his cousin who had escaped from juvenile detention. The tattoo, a four-strand braid with a Hebrew word in the center, was meant to go all the way around my upper arm but when it got close to the soft skin close to my arm pit it just hurt too much and I stopped. There is a picture of me during the process with a wince on my face flipping off the camera. Later that night we went to the show which was at one of those self-storage facilities. The bands played in one of the storage garages and we all listened from the dirt around them or sitting on top of cars. I realized pretty quick that my tattoo was crap.

A friend of mine was learning tattooing and my next four tattoos he did for either very little money or for lunch. They are not horrible prison quality tattoos but they don’t really look professional. And, they are not small. Design wise they are all over the map: a Celtic dragon, a Hopi rain bird, a moon-goddess (or, as L thinks, a woman jumping rope), and a abstract flowy bunch of lines and bubbles all around the original braided band.

When I first was getting these tattoos Nirvana with its anarchy cheerleader video had not quite hit big. Tattoos were not quite mainstream but were soon to be. I found myself, many years later, just another tattooed twenty-something with Betty Page bangs in Seattle. That plus the fact I had started working and teaching in the Jewish community put the kibosh on more tattoos. I simply felt all tattooed out.

Fast forward a few more years (okay, more than a few years) and I am a mother of two who, while not quite a soccer mom, has definitely lost any edge I once had—at least externally. Ever since A was born I started thinking about tattoos seriously again. My old friend was now a pro but not working in town right now. I started asking around about tattoo artists. I started paying attention to tattoos. Whenever I saw a woman with a big visible tattoo I was jealous. It is not that I wanted to recapture my young adulthood (it was fun and all but things are just better now) or a hipness that I never had anyway. It is hard to explain but I felt like I needed to mark this moment in my life in a very physical way and permanent way. I am closer to 40 than 30, my family is complete, I am in the career field I plan to always work in and in the end saw no reason not to get another tattoo. Anyway, I just think they are cool. A friend of mine said he never got one because he couldn’t decide on a design symbolic enough of his personal or cultural identity. But, for me it is an art form and I don’t think a tattoo necessarily has to have some deeper significant meaning. Most of mine surely don’t.

Next year I am planning on getting another one that does have some real deep meaning for me because in just a few months I will be older than my father was when he died. Truth be told he was a religious Jew and would’ve hated all these tattoos so I hesitate to say what I get will be a tribute to him; I just feel the need to mark that milestone somehow and this is the way I am choosing to do so.

All this to say that about a month I ago I went to a tattoo shop and got four stars on my forearm. They are nickel-sized, in black outline only (I reserve the right to add color or more to it later) starting about an inch up from my wrist and ending about halfway to my elbow. The number four is significant but the stars, not so much: I chose them because they are a traditional tattoo design. So far the cold weather has kept them mostly under wraps and they will gradually be revealed as the spring warms up.

I am already used to these little stars and have no regrets. Because they are on the top-side of my arm (not the soft underside) where the skin is tougher and drier they look a bit tough and dry (I imagine if I had gotten them when my skin was still young and really elastic they would look smoother) but I know over time, as the healing continues they will smooth out a bit and either way they are a good reminder to keep my desert-dry skin moist with yummy lotion and sunscreen.

I have been told they look a bit odd or unexpected because of where they are placed but I like that. The whole thing looks random and accidental. Because my life is so much about order these days (deadlines, bedtimes, dinner-on-time) it is nice to have something that looks like a lovely accident, a smattering of the unexpected, a bold happenstance, in the middle of it all.