I'm Following Along As You Read Aloud

Most of the hip cats have a phrase for "I understand":  "I smell what you're steppin' in."  My lax version of "I understand" is "I'm following along as you read aloud."

Yes, I'm under the realization that this reference goes all the way back to kindergarten and the books with the records and headphones that played a "tone" when you were supposed to turn the pages.

That's the way things work in my world of flashback quotients.

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I come from a long line of discussion about reading aloud and being read to.  Here is the short list of memory:

• My mother reading to me before kindergarten (children's books were her favorite)
• My father reading the Reader's Digest issues to my mother while she made dinner
• My mother confessing to me while I was studying literature in college that she hated her literature classes in college because the professor read everything out loud (Mom?  Have you mentioned this to Dad?)
• Going to prose and poetry readings in college at the university during English Week at MSU
• Listening to Garrison Keillor read poetry on the Writer's Almanac
• Reading "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" to my mother the last two weeks of her life (You sure, Mom?  You wouldn't prefer music or, say, a book without dialect?)
• Selected Shorts
• Readings by the authors at LitQuake

All center me.

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"Writers write so that readers can read.  Let someone else read it."

~ "Finding Forrester"

During the two writing classes that I've taken in a college setting in my lifetime (one in Missouri, one at Berkeley), I was unable to read my work out loud.  I can read other's work really well (and make it sound better if needed), but mine is a problem.  Psychologically, it's on par with handing someone a magnifying glass and telling them to look very closely at my complexion.  Why would I want to put anyone through that?

I also have a hard time with audio books and/or lengthy podcasts.  The last audio book I listened to was when I lived back in Missouri eight years ago, and I didn't finish it.  I have a tendency to fall asleep when I try.  When it comes to podcasts like The New Yorker Fiction podcast, Selected Shorts, or This American Life, I usually end up breaking them off into bite-sized segments or listening to them more than once.  I have attributed this to an ever-decreasing attention span and a deep-seated fight with being read to.  Do I love it?  Do I hate it?

Did my mother know either?

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I haven't reached out enough when things look good.  Let's change that for a paragraph or two.

Whenever I'm going through a difficult moment (dental work, nausea, having to be present for others' arguments, etc) I touch my college class ring and my mother's wedding band and try to channel her and my strength, my composition.

Yesterday I found myself interlacing my fingers for a different reason:  sharing.

My sis-in-love volunteers for the local library here in Carlsbad, and yesterday was their appreciation "tea" at the Carlsbad Senior Center.  She asked me to go with her about a month ago when she received the invitation, and I, curious about volunteer opportunities and always looking for new ways to bond, said yes.  As frosting on the cake, the event promised a visit from a San Diego group called Write Out Loud, a troupe that "performs" short stories.  

The members of Write Out Loud do not write, or, if they do, they certainly don't read what they write.  Instead, they read obscure pieces from local or famous writers that fit into a theme, loose or clearly defined.  Yesterday they performed three stories, somewhat about marriage but about more, too.  The first performer, a woman, read a story of Twain's about a woman trying to marry a man who was continually maimed the night before his wedding day.  The second selection was a duet between the same woman and a man about a debutant who marries a man bound for Death Row and gets him acquitted, and the last selection was the same man alone, reading a selection about a father who refused to drive for the majority of his life.

When people perform stories, it's different than just reading them.  There's a love there, a lyric, a poetry to the prose.  Pauses are made, words are tasted and then released into the air like soap bubbles.  I sat there, getting more than a full effect, revolving my rings and thinking of my mother.  Mom, listen to this...

Maybe she did.  The dialect wasn't that far off.

Read on, dear reader.  Or listen, too.

Kinkade

I don’t drift into the religious or spiritual very often, particularly in public writings.  Unitarianism tend to produce solitary situations for me, and when I do drift into one of the other religions for a few minutes I tend to have stepped in too far.

I couldn’t help but notice, however, that a man who a decade ago was so publicly Christian (in the Protestant sense), passed away on Friday, Good Friday, under somewhat of a cloud of mystery.

The man I’m referring to, of course, was Thomas Kinkade.

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When I lived in Missouri, I faced a lot of potential salvation sessions, particularly after my mother passed.  “Don’t you want to see her again?” people kept asking me, they meant well with that creepy and abrasive question, I’m sure.  Still, I considered other options to the point where I bought a Bible that I could call my own.  Funeral homes give the immediate family a Bible, but I passed on that one...I wanted one that I’d treasure.  Or try to.

Right around Easter of that year (2002 or 2003), Barnes and Noble had a display of Easter books and Bibles.  There I found a devotional Bible (specifically tailored for women) with Kinkade’s prints and notes from his wife laced throughout.  For a Bible, this book was incredibly pastoral; I’m used to Bibles having either no illustrations at all or glossy plates of Christ throughout.  The choice seemed clear.

I also had a small history of admiring Kinkade.  I had couch throws and cross-stitch embroidery and notecards and calendars and journals with him work on them.  He wasn’t my favorite “artist” (go ahead, laugh)--that distinction belonged to St. Louis illustrator Mary Englebreit at that time--but his work mostly soothed me.

I have to admit one thing, however--his depictions of houses at twilight always felt a little off.  He seemed to have the concept of light down in his painting with one important distinction that I didn’t realize until I read the description years later in a New Yorker profile:  “all the windows are painted to look like a house afire.”  Yes.  Too much light.

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After I moved to California I forgot about Kinkade until one afternoon’s trip to Santa Cruz.  My brother was fishing on the Santa Cruz pier  and I was exploring downtown, as I was wont to do.  There, in downtown Santa Cruz and not far from a chocolate cafe, was a Kinkade gallery.

If you really want to test your passion for artwork, by a specific artist, go see it in person.  The first time I saw Frida Kahlo’s pieces I was surprised; some of them aren’t much bigger than the postcard versions of them.  In Kinkade’s case I was blown away going the other direction--the “originals” (turns out they’re all reprints, but...) are huge to hang behind couches and over mantles.

Either I had been without my accessories too long, or those huge versions scared me witless.

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In the ten years since I purchased that devotional Bible, apparently a lot has changed for Mr. Kinkade.  I have to admit that reading his obituary in the LA Times over the weekend that I’m glad I lost track of him.

I’m also glad I didn’t make any changes to my religion based on that particular Bible.

Had Kinkade not died on Friday, I might have gone on forgetting him, occasionally remembering him when I pull out my Bible (once? twice yearly?) for reference.  But die he did, and I have to wonder, will have have the same resurrection as say Whitney Houston from his death?  Will there be buying, en masse, of all things Kinkade?

Onward, dear reader, in sunshine and in shadow.