The Gittel - Marjorie Sandor

I wondered if it would happen. I never thought that it would be so dramatic though.

I always thought that I had a decent sense of how to view the world through characters in a book. I thought I had a pretty solid sense of right and wrong. That I had a good solid level of compassion and love. I knew the suffering of women…of races other than my own. I thought that I could place myself into characters heads and really see where they were within a story. I thought I possessed that skill for years. At least the amount of time that I really considered myself to be a reader.

All that is over now.

The way I read a majority of my stories has forever been changed…and will continue to change.

You see, prior to the birth of my son, I read stories as a man. A man of a certain age, race and within a certain social structure…dictated by my finances and culture…you get what I’m saying.

Now, it’s as if all that has been thrown upon the rocks. Maybe I shouldn’t be that dramatic.

Maybe I should consider what has happened to be an enhancement.

Since the birth of my son, really, the way I approach these stories has changed. I think I can still draw a lot from my past and use the stories to discover who I am, but now, I am reading them as a father…not as the man that I described above.

As the man above, but enhanced as a father.

I think that it rounds me off rather nicely. And, as I grow into fatherhood, and as my son grows, and I learn from him, my perceptions and the messages the stories convey and the lessons they teach, and the pasts that they open up and explain… these stories will no doubt shift.

For example, this story. “The Gittel”.

Last summer, I really don’t know how I would have interpreted it. I would have read it as a soon-to-be father. I didn’t have the capacity to feel the emotions that I do now as I read it. Now as a father, I see it though different eyes. I feel the story with a different heart. I know the pains and joys of a father and a husband. And knowing that these feeling will evolve, I imagine that if I read this story 3 years from now, it would have a completely different impact.

Now, this causes me to wonder, will there be a perceptible shift in my thoughts as I write about these stories. Will my writings from a couple of years ago be something completely different than what I write now? Will this journal forever be changed?

Stories about children in the Holocaust, a war, or murdered. Parents fighting and how a child feels this. Families in crisis.

It will all be new to me.

An adjustment – realignment.

I suppose it’s an evolution.

I have grown into a new position in life. And I fully believe that when I began this exercise in reading and writing, that I was at the point in my life where I was ready to engage in such an “experiment”.

There has been a huge pause in my readings of these collections. I have been reading…just not The BASS.

I think that my writers shadow (the being that exists within me that is a reader and writer) has purposely taken a pause…allowing me to digest my new situation in life, and my ability to read and write about these stories will and I feel is returning.

For example, I have read a total of 7 stories from this edition since October. 7 stories in 4 months. That’s about the pace I had when I first started.

I think it’s time to get back to reading and writing. I have a purpose in this life, and these stories play a major role in discovering that purpose…allowing me to discover myself.

And now to discover myself as a father.

Secrets - Deborah Seabrooke

It took a little while for me to get into this story, and as I type this I am conflicted as to whether or not I really enjoyed it. I mean, we have here another story where a character (main) is dealing with the infidelities of one of their parents.

Sure it’s the 1980s and we are still discovering that in the 80s, divorcing and having affairs “was the thing to do”.

It was really until the last 3 or 4 pages that the story presented itself to me differently…as a story of a girl discovering the reality that she is living in.

Why do I see this?

I suppose it has to do with the fish in the hatchery the girl references throughout the story.

The camouflaged brown bass swimming together in their tank, and their “reveal” when they break the surface looking for food from a visitor.

As I read this story, I thought about my own father and his secrets. I’m sure he holds many, but as Alzheimer’s erodes his memory, those secrets will fade away.

I suppose that could be a good thing. There are secrets that we should never know. I’m not sure what secrets he could hold that would really shock me though. I think there is enough separation between us now and I have confronted him on the issues that may have upset me…so I am secure in the knowledge that the secrets he is loosing are not all that important.

I imagine that someday there will be someone in my life that will be looking at the pool of water that is my life and at the swimming fish wondering what they hold…and what will be revealed if one of those fish surfaces for food.

I’m afraid that they will not be pleased with what lies below the surface. They will not see beautiful fish.

Instruments of Seduction - Norman Rush

Norman Rush - October 24, 1933

Expectations---

I’ve sat on writing about this story for sometime now. I simply didn’t know what it was try to tell me.

Until this morning…

As the seductress in Rush’s story expected certain things from the men that she seduced I find myself all too often living my life expecting things from…well…life.

I feel that expecting things from life sets you up for disappointment.

We expect to find a job after college.

We expect to earn good money at that job because of our degree.

We expect that with our success, we will find a mate.

We expect that with that mate we will start a family.

We expect that family to run like a well oiled machine.

We expect that with a successful job, stable home life that our future can only be bright and rosy.

And sometimes, this causes us to never expect bad things to befall us.

But if we don’t expect certain things, does that force us to live a life of mediocrity or force us to not strive to greater heights? Do we just accept the ebb and flow of life and let the often rising waters of “bad things” drown us? Do we accept what happens to us as fate?

I think I need to find a happy medium between expectations and the unseen hand of “life”.

I knew that after my son was born that the majority of control that I like to have over my life would disappear. He would throw so many variables into the equations of events that it would be impossible for me to calculate how I could exert my control over events.

I am still learning to let go of some of that control and let go of expectations.

In the case of his birth, the expectations I envisioned of my life after his birth have been exceeded.

I never could have imagined the range of emotions that have saturated my life over these past three months.

So as I continue to live, and as I raise my son, I will learn, and he will in turn, unknowingly teach me how to flow within this world.

Why I read

Again, I have been thinking a lot about why I read, and in particular why I read short stories and looking even deeper into that question, why I have chosen to read the “Best American Short Stories”.

I found the answer in an interview that I was reading this morning. A piece of reading that – surprise – is not what I should be reading. But please look forward to a post sometime in the future with me complaining that I am not making any headway in my efforts to plow through the BASS.

Tobias Wolff in The Paris Review Fall 2004 issue no. 171.

That’s the way we view our lives, by way of stories. Jesus taught mostly in stories—in parables: the good Samaritan, the woman at the well, the prodigal son. The teachings of that ancient Taoist text the Chuang Tzu are essentially a series of parables that force the mind into unexpected avenues of consideration and intuition. That’s what story can do that statement can’t do, axiom can’t do, rules and commandments can’t do. And that’s why Chekhov with his freedom from programs and vulgar designs continues to have this power over us.

Full interview can be found here.

So – there it is. Simply.

No let me go read something other than what I should be reading. – ugh -

Raven’s Wing – Joyce Carol Oates

A strange, kind of “out of place” story for JCO. “Out of place” meaning…well…to me, this just didn’t slide into what my mind accepts as a JCO story. I certainly don’t expect every story that she writes to be about incest, murder, rape or cheating spouses…you know…the “type” that everyone expects JCO to write. I just really couldn’t get into it – probably because horse racing and gambling doesn’t do much for me. Sure, I cold look past that into the overall message she was trying to deliver…and blah…blah…blah…but I just couldn’t sum up the energy to really get into this story. And you know what, that’s a good thing. I haven’t fallen totally under her spell.

Yet.

City of Boys – Beth Nugent

Beth Nugent - ??

Ahhh…yes, another story to remind me how lucky I am to be born male. Jeeze…the headaches you women have to deal with throughout your lives.

Godwin hits us with the victim/victimizer one-two punch giving us this selection right after Angela. Sure it’s placement is due just by luck of the author’s last names…but, you know…is there a theme to her selections?

A gritty little story which ends up lending its name to the title of a collection of short stories from Nugent in the early 1990s.

Stories like this cause me to think back to my teenage years. I wonder if any of the girls that I knew in those days we in situations similar to that found in this short. Chances are, they were – and probably worse. Was it of their own doing…or were they subjugated?

Then I think back to my days in the classroom. I think about the young girls at their desks intimidated of me as I walk past them…intimidated just because I am a man, and someone has put that fear of men into them.

And then I am once again reminded that we are humans, and this is how things are, and this doesn’t make me happy but it does fascinate me.

Angela - Bharati Mukherjee

Bharati Mukherjee - July 27, 1940 –

My fortunate life has given me the opportunity to travel outside of this comfortable culture…this comfortable country, to discover the lives of people I will call the “others”. I’ve seen gypsy children in Russia, Romania and Italy. Legless beggars on wheeled platforms begging for food in the streets of Ireland and teenaged prostitutes in Eastern Europe. They are small slice of the “others” that remain bouncing around in my memory jarring me into facing my cushy life and recognizing that my petty problems are…just that.

Now that I have a son, I am hyper conscious of his little world. He lives in a warm house, with warm clothes, a soft bed… is provided with the best of food, has a set of loving parents and extended family. When he cries, he is consoled. When his diaper is wet or dirty, it is immediately removed and replaced with a clean one.

I have to work hard not to think of children that live in the mud, that are abused daily and go to sleep hungry. Children that look at their parents with a smile and see a frown returned.

At times, recently, I have been reflecting back to a train station in Rome.

The group of gypsies mark my father and I at about 20 feet.

Uh-oh… I’ve had run-ins with gypsies in Russia and Romania.

I mumble to my father to keep his guard up. We really don’t have an alternative path and we have to keep moving forward out of the station.

This of course was the reason why the group positioned themselves there.

Wonderful choke-point.

As we approach the group of 5 women, we clutch our packs close to our bodies and notice a swaddled baby being tossed through the air towards us.

Perplexing and fascinating as this is not a sight one encounters too often.

The mind is so quick to process this vision and to recognize that yes, in fact, there is a baby flying towards us and if we do not lift our arms to catch it, the little one will certainly fall onto the street.

Without consciously considering our actions, our arms lift away from our packs in an effort to catch the baby.

The group of thieves, having honed this maneuver to perfection, are able to calculate the speed at which we are approaching, knowing just the right time to throw the baby so that even if we do not reach out to catch the infant, their forward progression measured against ours, would allow them to catch the baby at about knee level.

But they knew!… that we would strain to catch the baby, raising our arms away from our packs and pockets, their forward progression allowing them to come against us in a “hug” with their hands quickly finding our pockets and making away with the contents while shouting and spitting.

Diabolical.

The baby came to rest in the “hug” created by one of the women and my father. His pockets were fortunately zipped shut.

I joined the scuffle which ended in the blink of an eye as the women scurried off with their little swaddled baby “bait”.

I placed the baby at about 2 months old. He probably had about another 8 months in his position. That is of course if he was caught after every toss. What was the success rate of a successful toss and catch?

It’s not that hard to imagine that his little life couldn’t have lasted into its first year.

My son has once again forced me to acknowledge that I, we, are so fortunate.

Angela.

“Angela” was/is an incredible story. Strong with raw detail and jarring in the images it paints.

But where does good intention butt up against exploitation? Love of a person or pity?

When can the good intentions of one, driven by love, actually do harm?

My son was born to us…here in America and is being held in my wife’s soft warm arms. Someplace in Asia, another “Angela” is pulling herself out of a leech infested mud pit…and in Rome a swaddled baby is flying through the air not knowing if this moment of weightlessness will be his final earthly sensation.