The "Twilight" trailer

I'm aware of the craze over Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga, though I never thought to see what the fuss was about. Vampires aren't really my thing as far as genre fiction goes (I made the exception only for Elizabeth's novel, and her book doesn't quite count as genre fiction), though there is something very erotic about lips pressed against a neck. At any rate, I nearly changed my mind about vampires when the actor Robert Pattinson (famous for playing Cedric Diggory) appeared in the trailer, because the first words that popped into my head were "Byronic hero." Byronic heroes aren't exactly my thing either, though I've noticed a number of appealing traits, and they certainly are interesting to observe. Heathcliff and Rochester, anyone?

The one who runs

It feels like a decade since it last rained. I can't even remember the last time it actually rained. These past weeks, the weather has been very suggestive, sending out signs and hints, luring everyone to believe it will rain - dark clouds, rumblings of thunder - but it never happens. The unpredictable and unseen wind almost always sneaks up on those gray clouds and blows whatever chance of rain there is right out of the sky.

The only form of precipitation I'm encountering is my own tears. Tears over a book, no less. I've been reading The Kite Runner again. I bought the novel a week before I left Ann Arbor in 2005, something I shouldn't have done as I'd already packed and shipped off most of my books and really didn't need another one to carry home. But I'm glad I did. Reading and crying over the absorbing and affecting novel was a convenient cover-up for my own sadness over leaving a town I'd grown to love and where I'd grown intellectually and spiritually. I wandered and dreamed a lot when I lived in Ann Arbor as an undergraduate and a graduate student, and my time there also led me to places far beyond the town itself.

It was watching part of the film adaptation of The Kite Runner on a recent flight home that made me want to read the novel again. Once more, over two days and nights, I smiled at the depth of friendship between young Hassan and Amir, the love Hassan bore Amir, and how profoundly Hassan knew Amir that it amazed Amir himself. My heart clenched as Amir later avoided Hassan, rejected and eventually drove him away. I thought long about the characters who kept running from their mistakes, running from the people they hurt, running from themselves. All except Hassan, who ran only for love of his friend, ran to retrieve kites for Amir and always returned to him. I think every person wishes they had someone who would offer to run the kite for them, who would say, "For you, a thousand times over."

On the last page of the novel, when I came across that line again, I cried, not for the first time in the night. I shouldn't have, because over the years, I've been steeling myself, telling myself to be less sensitive, less affected by things around me. So I'm confounded that even now, all it takes is a story to undo me. But after everything, I'm glad I'm able to cry; some part of the person I am is still the girl I used to be.

"Rain," by Priscilla Ahn.

"Kite Song," by Rosie Thomas.

The passacaglia

This is what I learned in music theory a long time ago: the passacaglia is an Italian music form. It can be quick and lively; it can be slow and grave. Either way, its hallmark is a repetitive pattern, line, or melody, that is, a melody that repeats almost unchangingly throughout the length of the piece while other lines vary freely. The passacaglia is also an ancient triple-time Spanish or Italian court dance based on this type of music. Listening to various pieces with passacaglia elements, I can imagine solemn dances held in grand, kingly halls; straight-backed men moving amongst bejeweled women in elaborate gowns, the sound of cloth and feet sweeping in time with the music.

The music, though, was allegedly played by musicians who belonged to the street and not in grand courts. They were wandering musicians; passacaglia originates from the Spanish words pasear (to walk) and calle (street). Musicians throughout history have often been wanderers, taking their music and instruments across lands and countries, enriching their repertoire with strange and stirring notes they hear from peers who look and dress differently, but who possess the same secret nerve that awakens when chords and phrases weave stories and pictures. Today, musicians and poets still embark on journeys to find new material, to widen their horizons and experiences in the hopes that doing so will make them better artists.

If the passacaglia marks the work of a wandering musician, I like to imagine the varying lines as the new and unfamiliar experiences the musician collects on his journeys, and the unchanging melody or bass line as the core within him, the self that remains true and unshaken while everything else is in flux. Similarly, we have a unique, constant rhythm within our minds, even if around us everything is topsy turvy, helter skelter - unpredictable. That rhythm can occasionally build with urgency or delight, or tumble with disappointment - just as heartbeats that quicken or slow - but it seldom varies beyond recognition, and sometimes that's all we can ever depend upon.

Here are three samples of the passacaglia. The first is by Handel, or rather, inspired by a theme of his and attributed to Norwegian Johan Halvorsen (this is arguably the most famous piece of music in the form of a passacaglia). The next is a composition by Luigi Boccherini, the fourth movement ("Passacalle") in a work titled "Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid." I saved my favorite for the last, "Passacaglia" by Bear McCreary. Boccherini's piece appeared at the end of the film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and McCreary wrote "Passacaglia" for the TV series, "Battlestar Galactica." It comes as no surprise that both the film and series are about characters and their journeys, whether they are taken across oceans or galaxies.

"Passacaglia," performed by Quartetto Gelato (Handel/Halvorsen).

"Passacalle," performed by Richard Erdoes, Michael Fisher, Simon Oswell, Timothy Landauer, Bruce Dukov (Boccherini).

"Passacaglia," performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (McCreary).

Wave goodbye

Well, the other shoe(s) dropped: Snowy's pretty sick. We wanted to take her to the vet last night, but the clinic wasn't open. I hope whatever she's going through won't be a major problem.

There's other news, but not much point in putting them in words. By now, I should be resilient enough to ride the storm out.

I have milk in the fridge, books on my bedside table, friends to see; I have a window that opens to a tree-lined sky (I'll ignore the few ugly roofs); my sleep is deep and restful, and long if I need it to be; I'm cleaning and mending my bike, and I'm heading out to the beach where the sea is a shocking blue-green in this relentless sun, where the waves shatter endlessly like dreams and glass.

Swimming, by Shelley Short

When will it pass?

There have been mornings when I'd wake with an inexplicable sense of dread, a harbinger of some unpleasant event or an unwanted development. On most occasions, I was able to shake off the feeling, glad to be rid of it, though having felt it somehow prepared me for whatever happened later. Should I be grateful for these premonitions, made better for their warning? I rose twice this week with that heavy feeling in my stomach. It should have been a grand week - last week of the term, the end of grading, the beginning of some time at last to write and read, time for walks, time to clear and pack - but something was wrong or about to be very wrong, and I couldn't name it.

This too shall pass, by Justin Rutledge

April

It's been a while. My days in April have been filled with stacks of grading, about 120 hours of editing, receiving books in the mail, conversation, a spot of travel, a lunch excursion courtesy of DSD and Vintage India, dinner treats (one during a nostalgic visit to Tanglin Club; another one given by my students on the last day of class), some tears, a few goodbyes, many sighs of relief.

I've been putting together a few things for my students: reading lists, a poem (they're quite a sentimental bunch; they love words of encouragement and inspiration), advice from Annie Dillard about writing and reading. The last are words I read to my first batch of college students when I was teaching in Michigan. They were freshmen then; this May, they will be graduating. And though I'm sure they don't recall me, I sometimes think about them, and wonder how much they've changed in the past four years. Also, I think about how much their lives will change, just as mine has. As I read again Dillard's words, which are clearly meant for young writers about to leave college and not thirty-year-olds, never more than now do I feel her words reaching a place deep inside me. They are words about reading and writing, of course, but also about living.

Excerpts from Annie Dillard’s “Notes for Young Writers”

Dedicate (donate, give all) your life to something larger than yourself and pleasure—to the largest thing you can: to God, to relieve suffering, to contributing to knowledge, to adding to literature, or something else. Happiness lies this way, and it beats pleasure hollow.

A great physicist taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He published many important books and papers. Often he has an idea in the middle of the night. He rose from his bed, took a shower, washed his hair, and shaved. He dressed completely, in a clean shirt, in polished shoes, a jacket and tie. Then he sat at his desk and wrote down his ideas. A friend of mine asked him why he put himself through all that rigmarole. “Why,” he said, surprised at the question, “in honor of physics!”

If you have a choice, live at least a year in very different parts of the country.

Never, ever, get yourself into a situation where you have nothing to do but write and read. You’ll go into a depression. You have to be doing something good for the world, something undeniably useful; you need exercise, too, and people.

You’ll have time to read after college.

Don’t worry about what you do the first year after college. It’s not what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life.

Learn grammar. Get a grammar book and read it two or three times a year. (Strunk and White is classic.)

Learn punctuation; it is your little drum set, one of the few tools you have to signal the reader where the beats and emphases go. (If you get it wrong, any least thing, the editor will throw your manuscript out.) Punctuation is not like musical notation; it doesn’t indicate the length of pauses, but instead signifies logical relations. There are all sorts of people out there who know these things very well. You have to be among them even to begin.

Check the spelling; proofread. Get someone else to proofread, too.

Don’t use passive verb constructions. You can rewrite any sentence.

Always locate the reader in time and space—again and again. Beginning writers rush in to feelings, to interior lives. Instead, stick to surface appearance; hit the five senses; give the history of the person and the place, and the look for the person and the place. Use first and last names. As you write, stick everything in a place and a time.

Don’t describe feelings.

The way to a reader’s emotions is, oddly enough, through the senses.

Don’t use any extra words. A sentence is a machine; it has a job to do. An extra word in a sentence is a like a sock in a machine.

Write for readers. Ask yourself how every sentence and every line will strike the reader. That way you can see if you’re misleading, or boring, the readers. Of course it’s hard to read your work when you’ve just written it; it all seems clear and powerful. Put it away and rewrite it later. Don’t keep reading it over, or you’ll have to wait longer to see it afresh.

The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write. You have many years. You can develop a taste for good literature gradually. Keep a list of books you want to read. You soon learn that “classics” are books that are endlessly interesting—almost all of them. You can keep rereading them all your life—about every ten years—and various ones light up for you at different stages of your life.

Stories, poems, and songs certainly light up for me at different stages of my life, as DSD very eloquently writes here.

Here is the song from her post: Why Do People Fall in Love, by Linda Eder. I hadn't listened to it in over a decade, but a friend (the only other person I know who's heard of and loves Linda Eder) spoke of it and told me to listen to it again.

Today, while I was looking through my folders to find material for my students, I unearthed a short story that I gave another batch of students at the end of a term some time ago. It's perfect for the month of April.

"On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning" by Haruki Murakami

Dog days

My brother is now in Frisco and missing the family dog, who he hasn't seen in over two years. So I made a short video of her during her evening play-time with my mom. For anyone who's read about her on this blog before, you now get to see her in action and observe her short attention span.