Meneseteung - Alice Munro

This is my fifth encounter with Munro included in the BASS anthology.  

You can find my previous encounters here:

Spelling

Wood

Monsieur les deux Chapeaux

Circle of Prayer

I've been pretty brief with my writings on Munro and I will continue here.  I did find a bit more enjoyment in this story but I still cannot find true pleasure in reading her.  I still have 14 more encounters with her up to the BASS of 2012, and would suspect that she will be included in future editions of the book.  Perhaps over the next several years I will learn to appreciate her.

On a side note: I absolutely love the new picture I found of her.

The Management of Grief – Bharati Mukherjee

I gave a decent amount of thought as to what I could write about this short.
I initially thought that I could write about how I have made it to middle age without ever having to grieve and as I started typing, I realized that there was a trigger for grief and I could still be experiencing some sort of grief at the loss of my father due to the divorce.
I've written about my anger towards him and how I am still wrestling with forgiving him.  Now, as he is in his final stage of life, the grieving process over losing him will be one that is stretched out over years as he slowly fades away.  My management of this grief is strange and I wonder if I am actually managing it in a healthy way.  I talk to M about it, I talk with my brother –in-law and sister about it, I write about it in my little book I am now putting it out there (here).  
Is what I am feeling even grief though?  
Maybe it’s not.  
I just don’t know.  I do know that almost a day doesn't go by where thoughts of him in one form or another don’t cross my mind. Sometimes they are good thoughts but mostly they are thoughts of anger.  Just plain being upset with him and what he did all those years ago.

Displacement – David Wong Louie

In the contributors notes Louie writes that this story is about his own displacement.  I really enjoy what he has to say about the development of this story, his memory of its creation and evolution.

“With my other stories I can easily remember how each part evolved in the writing but the particulars of this story’s origins escape memory.  I cannot call back the clear-headed instant Mrs. Chow first walked across my imagination, nor the image or detail from which she bloomed.  I don’t remember a single crisis in the writing of the story, though I’m certain I suffered, as always, through many.  I suspect this haziness of memory isn't a matter of forgetting at all, but has everything to do with having known the story, in some deep way, even before I wrote a single word of it.  When the characters were new and strangers to me, when the story’s events were still surprising, they were at the same time familiar.  Nothing stands out about the story’s writing because this familiarity won’t allow it – in my memory the story wasn't revealed in steps, by a process, but was a piece that simply arrived, something had.  The Chows’ story is about refugees, people off balance, whose dislocation is not just spatial but cultural psychic, and emotional; it is, as I understand things, the undefined, unarticulated unease I have known my whole life – my own displacement.”

I don’t think many of us can make it through our lives without feeling a little out of place.  I’m one of the fortunate ones.  White male in America.  Yeah – not too tough sometimes.

I've written enough about my displacement – which was of my own choosing – and in the end was wonderful.  It altered my life. I need to find ways to displace myself more often.  Displace my mind.

I have found creativity and discovery in some of my displacements and I feel at some times that I am not displaced enough.  

I push myself into a physical displacement on the mornings that I run and in those mornings, I find something…something…something – not quite sure what it is yet – but it’s good.

Perhaps what I feel physically is a little bit of that unarticulated unease Louie writes about.  I know that it’s possible to displace my mind – I just gotta figure that out. 

Aunt Moon’s Young Man – Linda Hogan

Linda Hogan is quite the author and a strong voice for her people.  I am happy when I read a story in these anthologies written by a Native American.  The Native American voice is one of our nation’s that is often not heard enough…if at all. 

 

I went through a phase where I was fascinated with Native Americans.  It lasted several months – and I believe I lost interest because I simply couldn’t find, or wasn’t dedicated enough to the pursuit of this particular facet of knowledge to search for more information.  It was during (one of) my exploratory phases of life – and I’m sure something else replaced it

.

From the age of 5 through maybe 15 or 16, there was a family that lived a few houses down from our house with a mother/wife that interested me.

 

She was strange – a good strange. 

 

She seemed like a free thinker, like to have a good time and was genuinely a nice old woman (old to me but younger than I am now as I write, when I first met her).  She would sit on her front porch with her husband in the evenings and he would drink and smoke until he was blotto - I’m not sure if she drank – but if I were to guess, I would say yes. 

 

Their house was dirty and had a funny smell to it (you know how kids REALLY pick up on these things).  They had too many dogs and a few cats also several older children – in college or high school. 

With all of those barriers to acceptance by a young boy, the place was still inviting and the mother/wife is what made it so. 

 

Once the children moved out of the house, the husband and wife moved to the mountains of Virginia.  It’s where they belonged. The husband died shortly after their move and she occupied that cabin on the side of the mountain alone

.

We visited her once when I was in junior high school.  It was late int eh summer or early autumn.  The evenings were cool and the mornings crisp.  Plenty of leaves were on the ground but there were still ample brown leaves to provide cool shade in the warmer afternoons.   We picked wild grapes with her and made grape jelly.  I found a sturdy stick and fashioned it into a perfect walking stick.  I removed all the bark with a huge Rambo knife and dyed it a dark brown with boiled nuts.  We slept in her cabin in a loft that was heated with a wood burning stove – and dried out our sinuses.

She and her smelly house, her cabin in the mountains all were brought back to me by Aunt Moon’s Young Man.

Just another memory dislodged from the recesses of my mind by a good story.