Altered Book Consciousness

Exposed,

the edge of disaster 

wolves eat dogs

and my shoes keep walking back to you.

Reality charting

family history.

If you loved him

(what’s a father for?)

there is room for you.

The plan:

behaving like adults.

-are we there yet?-

Life studies,

true enough,

nothing but the truth,

nothing to fear.

Used

to believe not to believe

the worst day of my life, so far.

The story of forgetting

this happy place.

All or nothing.

A greater good,

no hidden meanings.

You know better.

Fever, secret life,

the woman in the cloak.

She is me, 

who I was supposed to be.

Crazy woman blues.

How I got to be perfect.

My found friend, Ouende, makes altered books. She posted some photos of the books she has collected, chosen for their titles, and I made this poem out of them. The lines came together in a particular fashion, inspired by a young woman I know in her mid-20s. I bet a whole different poem could be composed of these same titles, with a whole different meaning - if someone had a mind to do such a thing.

Enthusiasm for "Here on the Edge" by Steve McQuiddy

"... there’s something about talking with the kids, something that resonates beyond sharing a great story. Something vital, that lightens the weight of time. I guess you could call it optimism...."
 /http://hereontheedge.com/2014/05/09/another-great-talk-with-the-next-generation/

One marvelous thing leads to another...

March 27, 2014

    I have the habit of looking at photos of people and reading the names underneath, thinking maybe there will be someone I know. And I sometimes find that there is. This time, it was a relative.
    Accidentally discovered, because there was an interesting article in Oregon Quarterly, Winter 2013, about Gordon Gilkey, the man behind the movie “Monuments Men” about saving art work from the Nazis during WWII. And this topic greatly interests me.
    In this issue also was an excerpt from a book about the conscientious objectors in World War II, and there was a photo, and under the photo were names. One of them was Dick Brown. I knew that Mom’s cousin Dick had been a C.O. so I emailed the photo to Mom and she said, “Yes, that’s him.” The book is Here on the Edge by Steve McQuiddy.

    Today I went to Tsunami Bookstore to see if they had a copy of the book, so I could give it to Mom for her birthday. She will be 89 tomorrow. I was carrying my copy of the Oregon Quarterly and when I walked in the door, the girl at the front desk was busy with a guy who looked like he was selling or consigning some books. So I decided to go to the restroom first. When I came out, she was free, so I showed her the article and asked her, “Do you have this book?” She said, “Oh, I was just talking to that guy.” I said, “What guy?” She said the author of the book; he had just dropped off a box of books for them to sell. I said, “Really??? Seriously? That was the guy you were just talking to when I came in?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Where is he?” She said he was gone; he had just gotten into his car and driven away on his way to the beach for a presentation. I showed her Dick Brown’s picture on the cover, and told her that he was my mom’s cousin. It seemed odd to me, how calm she was, like this was the most common thing in the world to have happen. But I was astonished.
    Maybe that’s why things like this happen to me - because I am continually astonished by them. Yes, I do enjoy the astonishing life.
    She told me that Steve McQuiddy was planning to do a presentation at City Club of Eugene tomorrow, so I bought the book. I guess I’ll go tomorrow, and ask him to sign the copy for Mom.
    So when I got home, I went to Steve McQuiddy’s website and looked around... he is a historian, and he has also written about Opal Whitely. He has fascinating links to fascinating history archival websites. I can get lost in that.


http://hereontheedge.com/

Thinking about Opal

Here’s a link to a beautiful website about Opal Whitely:
http://www.efn.org/~caruso/fairyland/
If you click on the right links, it will take you to her diary, which she wrote when she was seven. I absolutely love it. Opal became famous as a naturalist in her 20’s and then fell into “mental illness” and her diaries were questioned as to their authenticity. She wrote a book called “The Fairyland Around Us” which is very rare now.
When my daughter was little I found a copy in the children’s book section of a used book store here in Eugene. I thought it was going to be about fairies, and when I leafed through it I saw that it wasn’t; it was about nature. It had a price of $5.95 and I decided it was too expensive, so I put it back on the shelf! I was looking for cheap kid’s books for Heather at the time.
Later I found out who Opal Whitely was, read her diary, and realized that it was her book I had held in my hand! I think she was born around the same time as my grandfather (1901), so the descriptions of her growing up in the woods around Cottage Grove remind me in some ways of Grandpa’s youth in the logging camps of Washington State.
Opal died in a mental hospital in England, and one of my book group members got to meet her. Her mother had done extensive history and biographical work about her, and had corresponded with her. So Elizabeth traveled with her mother to England and was able to meet with Opal before she died.

What-a-Jolly-Street

First let me explain that on Lopez Island is a dump and recycling center where a man named Neil sorts and arranges those things that are reusable and opens his "store" a couple days a week for people to come and get anything they can use. People on the island donate items they no longer need. It's like a Goodwill, but free. It comes from the problem of being on an island where waste disposal is a challenge, and where people believe in reusing things instead of buying everything new. It's an inconvenience to go to a big shopping area to buy things, too. You have to spend an hour or more in transit by ferry, just to get to the mainland. Then there's the car trip to Seattle.

When we went to Lopez Island, I wanted to go to Neil's Mall (aka The Dump). Not because I wanted to bring home a bunch more stuff. No, this time I planned to bring back very little. After all, I've been going through closets and trying to get rid of stuff, so why would I want to bring more stuff home?

But I knew, I just had a feeling, that there would be something special there that would mean something to me. I just had a strong intuition about that. It would be something that really didn't matter to anyone else, but it would be meaningful to me. I thought I would find it in the book section, or on the shelves near the books. But I wasn't sure it would be a book. I thought maybe it would be a box or something. I had a sense about the size of it.. that it would be about 10 or 12 inches by 7 or 8 inches, and maybe two or three inches deep. It was a vague feeling and I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it, not consciously anyway.

When we got there, I briefly scanned the clothing, found a couple of items that looked cool, including a vintage flannel shirt with funny dogs on it and a black sweater with silver star buttons. I put them in the car and then walked over to the book section. My eyes scanned the shelves. (I'm always hoping to find Opal Whitely's "The Fairyland Around Us" but I don't expect to. I missed my opportunity for that one, the time I passed it by at Smith Family Books, before I knew who Opal Whitely was, back in 1989 or so.) Anyway, I didn't even have to search for the book I had come for. It was lying right on top of a stack of books on the childrens' shelf: "365 Bedtime Stories."

There was the familiar scene on the cover, brightly colored, the one I remember so well from my childhood, of old Mrs. Apricot telling stories to the neighborhood children. I think it was my sister's book, actually. We used to call it "What-a-Jolly-Street" instead of the actual title, because that was the name of the street that the characters lived on. Every page holds a different short story, one for each day of the year. It begins with Baby New Year and ends with Father Time. Okay, so my sister and I used to think the book was a bit silly, the name of the street especially so. Some of the stories were quite boring. We made fun of it.. but it inspired stories I wrote of made-up kids in made-up neighborhoods. And I remember well the map on the inside of the book cover. It depicted the homes on the street, where the children lived, and the school and Mrs. Apricot's house, all labeled with a key.

So I picked up the book and opened it. Printed on non-archival paper, the pages are evenly yellowing. It seemed so familiar that I was surprised to find that it was not the actual book that belonged to my sister. But there is no writing inside, and we always wrote our names in our books. The spine had been carefully mended with clear tape. The hard cover is cardboard, which is also disintegrating at the edges. The copyright is 1955. Overall the book is in good shape, considering the material it's made of.

When I got home, I googled it. I found that other revised editions were published later, and apparently this version is the original. It is a collector's item now. But for me, it's a memory. I can hardly wait to show it to my sister!