The Brothers Karamazov

Image via Wikipedia

Yes, it is true that I have just finished my second, yes, that is second reading of The Brothers Karamazov. Admittedly, the first reading must have been 25 years ago and why I decided it was important to read it again, I'm not quite sure. But now that the 956 pages have been devoured, or I should say chewed upon for quite a number of weeks, I have come to a conclusion and that is -

My first reading left me a bit clueless as to the importance of this piece of literature. Reading it the second time, I find that my conclusion - well, my conclusion remains the same!

Now Wikipedia points out that Sigmund Freud called it "The most magnificent novel ever written" and it is generally acknowledged to have had a deep influence on many writers and philosophers that followed it. At the Wikipedia link, you can download a full book report of The Brothers Karamazov. I would suggest you should plan on a long trip to "the reading room" to even get through the wiki words about the K Brothers. I am personally now reading the summary to find out where I've gone wrong in my personal evaluation of the book - or in order to confirm my humble opinion that one can read many other books in order to open one's heart, mind, and psyche, in much less time with a lot more benefits than eyestrain and aggravation!

Closing......in the words of newscaster, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, maybe some of you readers out there would like to "talk me down" on this point of view......anyone game?

Early a.m. date

5:30 - alarm clock rudely carries out its assigned task - it is pitch black outside!

5:35 - feet find the floor, brain aware of doggies in the room stretching and yawning, large lump in bed still dozing.

5:37 - toothbrush and paste in the mouth - the least I can do - I mean the very least! Drink of water.....

5:38 - 5:40 - underwear, teeshirt, yoga pants, shoes, socks - no need for lights or to look in the mirror - too ghastly anyway! Oh, check for teeshirt label - I hate to wear that thing wrong side out in front of other sleepy heads...not that they would notice.

5:41 - turn on car, thank goodness it's in its electric mode at start up, no noise! I'm certain the doggies are back in bed by now.

5:42 - on to the street, it's getting light but are the headlamps on? Stop, check it out, no - the oil change guy must have turned off the "automatic" button yesterday.

5:43 - oh, that's better, I can now see in front of the car, I'm beginning to wake up.

5:46 - YMCA parking lot - I'm beginning to breathe easier now as I'm joining those other crazy people who've crawled out in the dark to stretch and exercise their brains and bods!

5:47 - Drink of water, mat laid out, I begin to "connect with the breath" on my own, even without the instructor whispering those instructions gently into the microphone strapped on her head. The room is semi-dark with a thin line of lights and soft music playing.....Am I in India?

5:50 - Other beings are coming in the room, slapping out their mats and hoping we start out in a seated position.

5:55 - More breathing, mats slapping, throats clearing, noses being blown, audible groans of early morning wakening.

6:00 - We "begin." My body says, rather panicky... "Wait, wait - I thought we were just going to lie down here in this dark room for a while. I don't feel like moving, I thought 2 weeks off meant we were through with serious stretching and stuff!" My brain responds, "shut up and pay attention - we're supposed to be connecting with the breath - dang, where is that breath when we need it?!"

6:01 - "Is it over yet?"

6:15 - "Well, it's getting better now. Oh no, what does she mean Warrior 3, I've never heard of Warrior 3 - I thought there were only 2 Warrior positions!" Brain to body - "Shut up, go into Child's pose you baby! When you're ready, we'll catch up!" Body to brain, "Well, aren't you just too kind!! Oh, yeah well now here comes Pigeon, does she have to spring every unknown position known to yogie man on us this a.m.?"

6:30 - "Is it over?"

6:45 - "I'm feeling good now."

6:50 - "Final pose - total rest, ahhhhhhh."

6:55 - back in car - brain and bod awake and connected, lots of high fives and cheers. "We did it, we did it - now remember we cannot take off two weeks again....it's just too hard to recuperate:)"

7:00 - "Yeah, yeah, I'll see you on Thursday!"

What's been on my mind lately.....

.....10 days ago, life was clicking along rather nicely in our household but that sense of peace and security was abruptly interrupted by my spouse's trip to an Emergency Room, an overnight in the hospital, an angiogram, a blinking-light ambulance transfer to another hospital, an angioplasty and stent insertion! Whoops, where did that come from?

My spouse is on the slim side, does not smoke, exercises (sort of) regularly, gets annual physical checkups, takes a daily aspirin and a prescribed blood pressure med, vitamins, eats a low-fat, low-salt diet - oh and he does take a touch of red wine AND dark chocolate from time to time, which, he claims, are definitely for medicinal purposes only! So where did that silly occluded artery and accompanying sidekick clot come from? Well, folks, as the cardiologist put it - "your daddy had it before you and congratulations, you've got it now!"

We've always concentrated on the fact that my spouse's dad had serious diabetic issues; it never occurred to us that the heart issues were anywhere in sight as strong genetic factors. However, it now seems there was little more than that genetic trait to trigger all of the heart's malfunction. So, we might have delayed the issue but perhaps there is no way we could have totally sidestepped it.

So, in addition to all of the issues I've just listed (and there will be more in yet another post), I wonder.....genetics has so firm a grip on our bodies and sometimes in our minds is there nothing we can do to halt the genetic landslide, the proverbial boulder that sits atop a mountain with a single pebble holding it in place?

I think so, I believe so, I swear it to be thus......without attention to the diet, exercise, etc. my spouse would not have lived to be 65 years with no sign of heart malfunction. We could have ignored the physical aspects of our lives and met up with that emergency room and not as happy an ending as we're now living into. I believe that we have to rage against the enemy of genetics in every way we are capable of understanding. This may sound close to denial to some readers, but to others of you, I say - hear ye, hear ye - rage against the genetic weaknesses in that fig tree of yours with all the heart and mind that you have. Then thank God, when you've done all you can to safeguard the miracle of life, for the healing hands of your doctors' and nurses. Don't let your genetic fate step too easily into your being - keep your eyes open for the danger - but never, never give in to genetic traits as your lot in life!

So there you have it - "some" of what has been on my mind lately.....anything particular on yours?

Disparate choices -

Taking a seat in one of "the" special reading rooms of the house, my eyes glanced to the basket of available printed materials from which I might select a short "read." Two sources with clearly visible topics were in sight and with my mind on automatic (the mode with which we most often spend our time) it instantaneously switched to process mode. Faster than I can type these words, my built-in processor flipped through questions - what/why I should/would, should not/would not select one over the other..... would my pick be made based upon curiosity, habit, compassion, intellectual challenge, spiritual awakening, thirst for knowledge, the familiar, the unfamiliar?

So what were my choices? - Henri J.M. Nouwen - Bread for the Journey - or The Week's review of reviews: Books with the feature Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. Disparate to say the least - tomorrow I'll reveal a few gems (you know they will be if you read them here) about my selection pros and cons:)

Stay tuned.....how exciting:(

Photos - SS and her IPhone

"Memory - the presence of the past within us"

Reading Winter Grace, Spirituality and Aging by Kathleen Fischer, she describes in small part what memory is and how it shapes our lives. "Memory enables us to hold fast to our identity and shape it in new ways. Beneath the annoyance we experience at not being able to recall names and dates or find our glasses is the nagging fear that some part of us is slipping away." In later words - "We do not merely have these memories; we are these memories. Western culture tends to view time as more destructive than creative. But memory is a way of describing the cumulative nature of time, the presence of the past within us. Not only is memory fundamental to personal identity; it is central to religious identity. Memory reveals God's presence in our life."

Further on Fischer quotes from Fredrick Buechner's - The Sacred Journey - wherein Buechner stresses that we can continue to learn from all of our memories. "Memory," he says, "is not the looking back to a past that no longer exists. Rather, it allows us to look into an altogether new kind of time where everything that ever was continues to be."

I find the words of Fischer and of Buechner to be hope filled statements in that memory, i.e., ourselves are the wondrous result of everything that has ever been and still we continue with the chance to produce more memories and to become even more of what we were created to be.

Memory for me today, at least for now and as I settle into sleep tonight, will be the warm sunshine after days of rain, a drive through green waving wheat fields, with glimpses of new snow atop our mountains, casual, yet meaningful conversation with my spouse - blessings too rich to be forgotten quickly - not an ordinary, but an extraordinary day.

I hope your day was extraordinary also and that if you think it not to have been on the surface, that you'll reach deep into the day's memory and find that one sweet moment you were given - maybe it was just one quiet moment or just a drop of cream in your coffee:)

Photo memory - Cannon Beach, OR 12/07

Cafe Writing Exercise - gulp!

Don't take it too seriously, this little challenge from Cafe Writing. I chose Option 6 requiring a timed writing on the narrow subject of men and women. Daunting? Perhaps! Here's what burst out of my mind onto the keyboard during my seven minute effort....

Men and women, do we ever tire of hearing our own thoughts and comparing them to others’ thoughts? The women feeling quite sure they will never live up to their sisters’ lives, or work, or ambitions - the men perhaps feeling the same towards their respective brothers’ lives. When, in fact, the examples that, not necessarily blood relative sisters and brothers, strangers give us are oft enough courage to launch journeys, professions, loves, dangers, safety that we would never have thought possible having not seen the example of their respective lives from afar.

Why is it that both men and women will often take the word of a total stranger to be truth beyond that truth that their closest friends and relatives speak to them of unceasingly? Why is the stranger’s opinion needed to validate men and women’s talents - daytime pursuits, parenthood, friendship and artistic works – be it two dimensional, multi-dimensional, musical, theatrical, literary?

Are all men and women born insecure and grow into the security that will define them…….end of seven minutes.

I know - I should keep my day job! Thanks for visiting:)

Conversation between husband and wife during dinner out this week - reflecting upon what an amazing piece of engineering/creation the brain is - Here we sit knowing exactly where we are geographically, what city, what zip code, which table we're seated at, how many servers there are in the room, drinking our water, seeing the wind pick up outside the window, tasting the wine, smelling the food, entertaining each other, seeing the rose on the table has drooped and should be changed, wondering how many people have touched the salt and pepper shakers, the fresh (?) silverware and napkins, the art on the wall, the color of the carpet and upholstery - all of this being recognized rather simply and simultaneously through our brains with no real effort on our part.

Conversation continued through dinner and then cited in a church forum today - that the wonder of our brain and body coordination can only be classified as miracle. How else can the brain's extraordinary power be explained?

NASA has experimented for years with perfecting propulsion, projection, cause and affect, failure and success of its rocket launches; yet, on a college basketball court, with screaming fans, bright lights, terrible acoustics, whistling referees, fog horns blaring, buzzers sounding, two teams of young men charge from one end of the court to the other dribbling, passing, wrestling for possession of the ball, until one player, having run, pivoted, whirled, and jumped, seemingly all in one motion, hurls the ball in the perfect trajectory to place that object in the middle of a ring mounted high off the ground. Once more a miracle of the brain that cannot be easily explained other than - miracle.

Would that we were more thankful for the miracles of life that we see before our eyes each day and take for granted.