I keep seeing these reflections deep in the currents back to me (Israel Nash)

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

Here are ten things I thought worth sharing:

1) Reading Celestial Navigation (Anne Tyler) was an interesting experience. I've mentioned her books a lot in my blogs. She has an amazing ability to get inside her character's heads. Jeremy is a piece of work!

2) A quote from 365 Days with the Saints is a great way to start my day. Each day features a different saint and a quote. Today's was Blessed Anne of Saint Bartholmew: Silence is precious; by keeping silence and knowing how to listen to God, the soul grows in wisdom and God teaches it what it cannot learn from men.

3) Concurrently with whatever novel I'm reading, I also dip into Lennon on Lennon - a compilation of interviews. John on performing live on stage: You put yourself in front of the public, and it's like the Roman theatre...it's a very sort of masochistic scene to stand up there day after day, offering yourself as a target for their love or their hate, depending on how good you are or how they feel that night.

4) Rest in peace. The last Mojo magazine I read (Feb 2022) had obituaries for Graeme Edge (The Moody Blues' drummer); Maureen Cleave (journalist who wrote excellent pieces on The Beatles in the sixties. her 1966 interview with John contained the 'We're bigger than Jesus' idea that created headaches for the fabs); David Longdon (Big Big Train singer who died accidentally); and Billy Hinsche (honorary Beach Boy) amongst others. 

 
5) Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart plus Israel Nash albums Lifted and (especially) Topaz (on vinyl) have been my soundtrack this week. Blissed out summery sounds have helped with the cold snap as we officially started winter.

6) I dug out the DVD player on the weekend to watch a couple of films that I bought years ago but forgot about. Allied was good value. A Robert Zemeckis film starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. Billed as a romantic thriller - it was enjoyable! 

 

7) The Richard Linklater trilogy - Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, has also been sitting on the shelf for a few years. I bought it while living in the UK a few years ago after loving Boyhood. The late autumn, early winter cold/overcast/rainy afternoons have been perfect for catching up with these three romantic dramas.

8) Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth is my latest book. I've read some great books by him, but I've also stopped reading a few of them a couple of chapters in. Sweet Tooth, with a female protangonist, is of the former variety thank goodness.

9) Waves was a NZ band from the seventies. Their eponymous album (a second one, added to the first on that Spotify link, was recorded but not issued until years later as a bonus disc) is a bone fide NZ classic. It's the-three-amigos' album of the week!

10) Cheekily, here's a link to another six via my Jewels For The Thirsty weblog.

Love and peace - Wozza

The sound of the doorbell pulled her away.

Wie geht's?

Last week of the holidays and the frenzied painting is dwindling at Maple Grove as a consequence. I have two more sash windows to sand and varnish before I'm done and dusted - should be doable - it takes 2 days for each window - because each coat needs 24 hours drying time.

Aside from that I'm enjoying another one of Anne Tyler's novels - Digging To America (pictured above). It has an interesting premise - two different but loosely connected Iranian families in Baltimore (where she sets her stories) adopt South Korean babies. Fun ensues!

Tyler's writing style is easy as. Here's an excerpt that sums it up nicely (Maryam is one of the grandmothers in this drama):

Maryam excused herself and went off to check on dinner. She lowered one flame, raised another, and then allowed herself a little spell of gazing out the kitchen window before the sound of the doorbell pulled her away.

I should get it finished before school starts up next week.

Love and peace - Wozza

If they make Tony Adams captain we could all go screaming in the park (Joe Strummer)

In one of my happy places

Wie geht's?

For the most part, I'm a happy sort of bloke. A colleague and I were discussing happiness recently and she offered to lend me some of Gretchen Rubin's books.

These are The Happiness Project and The Four Tendencies (which I'll write about in the Baggy Trewsers blog).

Why am I generally a happy bloke? 

According to current research cited in Gretchen's book - its mainly about your genetics, so I have my parents to thank for 50% of my predelection for happiness (age, gender, ethnity, marriage status, income, health, occupation, religious affiliation make up to 20% and the other 30% is a product of how I think and act).

So thanks to Dulcie and Graham, Jacky Purdy (she's beautiful inside and out), and me - I'm a happy bloke. 

It also helps that I'm a teacher on a good wage who lives on a few acres in the country with no neighbours to speak of.

I'm pretty sure my other 30% comes from my love of music (15%) and English (reading and writing - 15%).

Here are the things that are currently adding to my happiness:

• It's autumn (I LOVE autumn) and we had our first frost yesterday (so good!)
• Music and reading (on the day I wrote this post I finished a Desmond Bagley adventure story, started another Anne Tyler novel, dipped a toe into The Happiness Project while listening to Brand X albums in the warmth of our Garden Room while the dogs slept at my feet)
• Writing (I worked on some posts to four of my blogs)
• I enjoy menial tasks like hanging out washing, picking up horse poo, baiting rat traps (rats don't like winter so they start casting around for some warmer lodgings)
• Following Arsenal F.C. - we play Liverpool overnight so I'm forever hopeful (if they lose I'll be momentarily less happy)
• Looking at my record collection and posting photos on the Facebook vinyl group I belong to (the Brand X live album is great so I needed to share that today)
• Listening to MNAC albums and writing about them (Herman Dune was the latest band I never would have discovered without Alex, Lew and Tom's input) 
• Seinfeld (the show - it figures in my daily life in many ways - quotes come to mind and Pinterest groups have stills that instantly make me smile)
• The Beatles posters in my music room (as well as my other decorations in there - they bring me joy everytime)
• Watching Asher interact with his mum and us (Papa and Mema) is a real source of happiness!

Love and peace - Wozza

I am he as you are he as you are me a nd we are all together (The Beatles)

Wie geht's?

Thanks to reading Anne Tyler's A Spool Of Blue Thread, I've been thinking a lot about the various stages we go through in life between being a child and old age.

Then Seth Godin put this on his blog:

And who are you really?
There’s a desire to celebrate our “authentic” self.

But perhaps our considered self, the one that shows up when we’re doing our best to be consistent, generous and professional–that’s our authentic self. And the voice that slips out when we’re tired, stressed or busy is simply an incomplete and lesser version of who we actually are.

We’re the sum total of the interactions we choose to create and the changes we contribute.

This made me reflect on my 'authentic' self and I tend to think it's just the present tense me. Whatever you see right now - that's my authentic self. So, yes, the sum total is the real me.

I do like how he has the 'considered' self, though. I take it that's the reflective self that you are reading right now.

Currently, I'm reading The Vivero Letter, an old Desmond Bagley adventure book. It was first published in 1968 and I first read it as a young boy.

Reading it again now is quite fun, as in the real world of 1968 John Lennon and The Beatles existed and they are alluded to a few times in the story as a cultural reference point for the times.

I'm certainly a very different person to the young boy of 1968 (I was 11) but yet I'm still very much the same person in 2021.  

Love and peace - Wozza

P.S. In my previous post I indicated that I may have been inconsistent with my own children re a movie on a birthday tradition. However, Jade reminds me that there were quite a few - including Tarzan (the Disney animated one); The Great Mouse Detective; Corpse Bride; Nightmare Before Christmas; and various Star Wars movies (the reboots plus Episode 1, 2, 3). I'm pretty sure the other three will be able to remember others.

Every picture tells a story don't it (Rod Stewart)

Wie geht's?

Alternating a 'serious' book with a 'light' book has been the way I've rolled during these holidays.

Anne Tyler novels and John Cleese's autobiography have been the light ones to heavier stuff - a Michel Houellebecq novel and a rereading of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

I read Invisible Man in the late seventies as an undergraduate - so about 40 years ago (time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like an apple). I picked up a copy recently from the Little Red Bookshop in Hastings and not remembering much, decided to read it again in light of the black lives matter movement.

Can't get much more serious and 'heavy' than that really. This extraordinary book is like a fever dream put into words. The cops' killing of Tod Clifton and its aftermath in the book is harrowing to read and, sadly, very relevant to black lives matter events in America.

During his lifetime Ellison only wrote one novel. If you read it you'll understand why (a posthumous novel Juneteenth came out in 2019).

After that one I needed something from my unread pile that would create a different mood.

Enter Rod The Autobiography (by Rod Stewart) - the very opposite of an invisible man! It's become an inspired choice as Rod turns out to be hilarious! It's all very laddish and he's certainly a cad when it comes to the ladies, but the humour is what saves him. 

Somewhat inevitably, it's prompted a Faces and Rod-a-thon at Maple Grove and a search for some of his early solo albums. 

Top three songs: Mandolin Wind; Stay With Me; Miss Judy's Farm.

Love and peace - Wozza

Hey hey, a sting in the tail (Scorpions)

 

Wie geht's?

This is my current 'to-be-read' pile (although to be accurate you can lop off the top three as they've joined the 'read' pile now).

It's the term 3 break so Lee Child has leap frogged to the head of the queue. No Middle Name is a set of Jack Reacher short stories.

After that I'll try something more challenging (Edmund Gosse's Father and Son) before heading back into Anne Tyler territory. She's great - easy to read, worthwhile, well-drawn characters, warmth and well written - a winning combination in Wozza's world.

Love and peace - W