Watching 'The Wizard of Oz' in a Gale

A couple of weeks ago, on a wild and windy Saturday night, I happened to catch The Wizard of Oz on television. It seems to me that it used to be traditional to televise this movie in the spring, but everything else is different now, so I guess seasonal viewing has gone the way of the dodo, too. Here's a memory for you: I can remember huddling in my child-sized rocking chair, age 7, in front of the TV, in fear of the Wicked Witch but determined to peek through my fingers if I had to so as not to miss anything. I believe I was snacking on a bowl of ice cream.

I don't even remember the last time I saw this movie, but I think it was sometime in the '80s. I came across it by accident that recent Saturday night, but when you stumble on The Wizard of Oz, it's hard to think anything else that might be on is going to be more worthwhile. This was the first time I remember watching it when weather conditions outside approximated those in the film (though those were probably straight-line winds and not a cyclone I heard ripping around). It was quite cozy to curl up in front of the TV under a dry roof and watch while the November storm roared through the trees outside. My only regret was not having any popcorn.

You come to this movie as an adult perhaps slightly less intimidated by the Wicked Witch, more inclined to be amused than frightened by certain things, and less able to recapture the sense of wonder you once felt that a cyclone could take you to such a fantastical place as Oz. But maybe there are other things that strike you much more forcibly than they used to. The movie includes a charming dedication to viewers who are "young at heart." I don't think they were just saying that. I think the makers of the film knew and expected that viewers of different ages would experience this movie with varying levels of sophistication but would all embrace the film's underlying sweetness and optimism.

What struck me the most, something I only half-understood as a child, was the fact that all three of Dorothy's companions feel they are lacking some essential quality that in truth they already possess. The Scarecrow is quite wise in his way, the Tin Man is most tender-hearted, and the Cowardly Lion, while lacking in fierceness, is more than valiant when it really comes to it. They are full of self-doubt, but traveling with Dorothy and helping her to defeat the Wicked Witch helps them to realize what they really are. The Wizard only points out to them what has already become clear.

Dorothy's conflict, an uncertainty as to whether there is a better place than the familiar family farm where she feels a bit in the way and unappreciated, was a little harder to unravel. Was she wrong to dream of a place "Over the Rainbow"? One hardly thinks so--doesn't everyone dream of someplace better at least now and then? What she learns from her sojourn in Oz is not so much that leaving home is wrong but that if one is true to herself she carries home inside of her wherever she goes. Dorothy's new friends in Oz are remarkably similar to her old friends in Kansas (in fact, they are the same). Only Auntie Em and Uncle Henry do not appear there, as if to emphasize that leaving home represents growing up and standing on one's own, starting to figure things out for oneself. The crisis that precipitates Dorothy's running away, the wish to save her dog, Toto, is completely understandable but something Auntie Em and Uncle Henry are unable to do for her. She must act on her own for that to happen.

I wrestled with Dorothy's conclusion that she would no longer look any farther than her own backyard for her heart's desire, but I think I know now what that means. Dorothy is really saying that everything she needs, and everything she will ever need, is what she already has, her own sense of self and the love of those closest to her. It's easy to make life more complicated than that, but the wisdom of owning your own power and worth is what it all comes down to, no matter where you are. I don't think the conclusion is that one shouldn't travel and reach out for better things but rather that in doing so you should understand that the purpose of every journey is to bring you closer to yourself.

The easy affection and simple loyalty Dorothy and her friends have for each other had me a little teary-eyed at the end (sniff, sniff). It's much easier to take those things for granted as a child; the true value of these qualities only becomes apparent when you're older. As a little girl, I always felt content at the end of the movie, satisfied with the conclusion of a story well told, but I don't know that I ever felt like crying, so that was new to this viewing. There are some who would likely say that a world of such uncomplicated affection as Dorothy's is just as much a fantasy as any place "Over the Rainbow," but I think The Wizard of Oz is meant to be an antidote to such cynicism.

Ask yourself: Is there nobody you would risk your life for in battling the Wicked Witch of the West? Really? But why? Why would you do such a thing, why put yourself out like that, with the world being such a dreary place and all? What? What was that? Love? Love? What kind of a silly idea is that?

You really are getting sentimental in your old age, and Wordplay commends you.

No Country for Home Chefs

How do you celebrate Thanksgiving when you're living in temporary quarters and separated from all of your kitchen gadgets? I usually try to make an occasion of Thanksgiving, and this year isn't any different, though I'm limited in what I can do. I'm having a circumscribed dinner, but there will be pie; I had to give up cranberry sauce, though, since I'm not in a position to make any and rejected the idea of buying it in a can. I'm pretty sure it's the ginger that makes my homemade version successful, and I didn't think the store-bought kind would measure up, so I saved the $2 the canned variety would have cost.

With little to do in the way of cooking (other than taking the pie out of the freezer), I spent part of the morning watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The last time I watched it (a few years ago), it was a little trippy, as if maybe the organizers had gotten into the eggnog and hot buttered rum a little ahead of time. It almost seemed to me that part of someone's Halloween parade had sneaked in there by accident, as some of the dancing skulls and whatnot were a little macabre; perhaps the theme that year was "Nightmare Before Christmas" and I just didn't hear about it. This year I approached with caution and didn't watch the whole parade, but I got to see Smokey Robinson, there were some great balloons and floats, and someone sang "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" in suitably spirited fashion. I enjoyed it.

Earlier this afternoon, I read a New York Times article on the Internet that enumerated the various ways in which the original "Thanksgiving" was different from the way we have been taught it was. The article actually didn't have any major reveals (unless you've always thought the Pilgrims ate the same things you do on Thanksgiving), but it got me started on a little research into religious freedom in the American Colonies. Like many other Americans, I was taught that most people (not counting those who were forced to come) arrived in America seeking freedom and opportunity. Is it really true that the principle of religious freedom in colonial America was a myth with little basis in fact, as the article seemed to suggest?

We know, of course, that there was much intolerance in the Colonies, as the dominant groups frequently tried to force everyone else to believe as they believed and to worship as they did. I don't think that comes as a shock to anyone, since the Salem witch trials are as familiar to most of us as the arrival of the Mayflower. Many of those who arrived in the colonies were pursuing religious freedom, but what this often amounted to in practice was their freedom to impose their religious ideas on others, as the Times article points out. It's also true that some of the colonists did believe in freedom of religion for everyone, and though they were frequently persecuted, they persisted, and their ideas did, too. Many of the most influential founding fathers of the United States derived from this latter group.

Among the things we celebrate on holidays like Thanksgiving and Independence Day are the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution--freedom of religion and freedom of speech chief among them. I think most of us know that the reality sometimes falls far short of the ideal. There's what our Constitution guarantees us, and then there's human nature, as well as the fact that our democratic experiment always was and always will be a work in progress.

If there's one thing I've learned it's not to take anything for granted. So while I'm thankful for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the other things that most of us hold dear, I'm not sure we always appreciate that upholding these principles is never a job you can safely leave up to someone else. The myth of the "Land of the Free" is very pervasive and easy to celebrate with fireworks and flags; the task of making it a reality requires determination and courage, sometimes far beyond the common measure. I think most of us assume a certain amount of safety just by virtue of being American citizens that I'm not sure is really justified by the facts in all cases.

So now you know the answer to the question of what happens when Wordplay is separated from its kitchen appliances on Thanksgiving: we wax philosophical. Separate a home cook from her pie pans and clay roasting pot, and this is what happens. Your natural reaction is probably, "Reunite this woman with her kitchen implements as fast as possible! Any chance that next year you'll give us your recipe for cranberry sauce instead of a column on the Bill of Rights?" And my answer is, "I'm with you." The sooner I get back in a kitchen of my own, the happier I'll be. And I'll consider your request for the cranberry sauce.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Vitamin D Deficiency: What Not to Do

Holy moly! It's Vitamin D deficiency time here in Kentucky, with sunshine in short supply and cold rain in plenty. I feel suspended in time and space, as if I'm lingering in C.S. Lewis's "Wood Between the Worlds," a sort of twilight place in one of the Narnia books in which nothing much happens unless you jump into one of its numerous ponds. Each one of these is a portal that might lead just about anywhere, and you have no way of knowing in advance where that might be.

I haven't been jumping into many ponds, unless you count library books and job applications as portals to other worlds, which in a sense, they are, of course. In the Narnia book (I believe it was The Magician's Nephew), two children begin to explore the ponds in the Wood Between the Worlds out of curiosity, unleashing some rather powerful consequences. One would hope that the innocent choice of a library book or a job opening wouldn't have such dire implications, though you might be wrong in that hope, from what I've seen.

I try to be responsible in the books I choose to review, but suspended here as I am, living without a permanent address, not sure where I'll be or what I'll be doing a month from now, hoping something better awaits me than public assistance, I do end up reading a lot to pass the time. I will admit to being a more suspicious and skeptical reader than I once was (as you may have noticed), and this especially pertains to recent books, which I sometimes suspect of having a political subtext buried within whatever plots or themes the author has chosen to explore. This happens even with writers I respect, and it annoys me.

Let me be clear on what I'm talking about. I would expect that political themes and ideas could play a legitimate role in any work should an author wish to pursue them. Politics is a part of life. What bothers me is when I start to read something and get distracted by what seem to be coy, half-hidden, half-revealed references to things outside the scope of the fictional world itself. Yes, I know Dante's Inferno is full of topical references to events and people that he didn't even bother to disguise--and I know it's a great work of literature--but that is the thing I dislike most about it.

I think a work of art is powerful to the extent that it takes a particular instance and makes it universal (or you could say it happens the other way around). Literary conceits like taking potshots at people or sending hidden messages make me question the author's motives. I come to a book assuming the author's integrity and desire to tell a good story, maybe even to create a great work of art. If I start to feel that he/she is dropping names, manipulating me, or trying to send messages that will only be recognized by Abyssinian eunuchs or Macedonian spies, I start to feel that the contract between reader and writer, based on trust, has been violated. It makes me much less likely to bother with that author in the future.

Of course, I have reviewed some books recently that seemed to me to be referring to things slightly out of my ken, and I said so. One of them was Gregory's Maguire's After Alice, but I have to say that Mr. Maguire's book, while it startled me at times, did not offend me. Why not? It was simply a feeling I got that while parts of Mr. Maguire's novel were a little opaque to me, he was not trying to hit me over the head or sell me anything. It was a delight, rather than otherwise, to realize that some of his allusions were beyond me and not amenable to instant unraveling. His book wasn't reductive, in other words; it was more poem than mathematical equation. It raised questions without necessarily answering all of them, and I wanted to recommend it to other people to see what they would find in it.

This past week, I read a book about a World War II pilot who returns to France years later to reconnect with people he knew during the war. It was a good story and well written, but somehow I felt rather empty at the end of it. So why can I not recommend this book to you? Let me state that I know nothing of the author's intentions, so my reactions are strictly to the book itself. While it explored such laudable themes as memory, responsibility, humanity, and inhumanity, I just felt beaten down at the end of it. I kept getting distracted by names and references rather than feeling they were a seamless part of the story. I kept wondering why certain choices were made. And for a novel whose themes seem to be worthy and life affirming, it had a curiously deflating ending.

The pilot, who had succeeded in sneaking out of France during the war, reprises his escape decades later with the woman who assisted him years before but had never done the crossing herself. He hadn't wanted to relive the experience, for reasons that become clear, but the woman, with whom he has become romantically involved, insists on it, almost (it seemed to me) bullying him into it. Her motives somehow seem impure, though she is presented to the reader as a remarkable and courageous freedom fighter. Right about here, the author lost me completely. Why would this character, with so many painful memories of her own, insist that her lover relive one of his most painful war episodes? It all seemed a little sadistic.

I admired the author's skill in bringing the war vividly to life, but at some point, the plot and I parted company. Why did the pilot's life after the war suddenly seem to count for nothing until he returned to France? Perhaps that did not quite ring true to me. Why did he end up traipsing across the mountains after a vertigo-inducing journey by car that he hadn't wanted to make? I felt I had been left hanging. OK, so maybe this book wasn't the best choice for a cloudy week in November (though I don't think reading it on the beach in Cancun would have improved matters much). Something about it bothered me, making me wish I had chosen something more straightforward, or at least more straightforwardly opaque.

Picking library books is more of a crapshoot than it seems sometimes. I have no way of knowing how often anyone who reads my column seeks out books and films I've written about--maybe it never happens. But just in case you decide to track this book down, I recommend reading it by a sunny window or underneath a sunlamp, at the very least. I wouldn't want to be responsible for inadvertently adding to anyone's Seasonal Affective Disorder, and though it's quite possible you would respond to it differently, I can only tell you that I heard a giant whooshing sound as half the Vitamin D in my body seemed to escape when I turned the last page. It takes a lot of Ben & Jerry's to replace that much Vitamin D.

Turning of the Year

I'm pretty sure we reached the tipping point this week weather-wise, the point at which early fall slips into late autumn and those glorious October days morph into the gloomier part of November. When I came back here at the end of the summer, I was happy to at least be far away from the wildfire then burning in Southern California and the hurricanes down in the Caribbean. Late summer was still in the air, so it was hot at first, the humid, Kentucky kind of heat I'm used to. Then a period of rain set in, and I enjoyed watching it, as I had seen very little of that all summer in L.A.

I watched The Weather Channel as one hurricane after another headed toward the United States, but the weather here was generally calm. I'm not in the greatest area for taking walks, but I took them anyway, occasionally combining an errand in another part of town with the chance to park the car and walk through a leafier neighborhood. Those occasions were special treats. I have been reluctant to go back to my old neighborhood for walks, though--I have too many bad memories of an area that has changed radically from the way it used to be. Revisiting those streets would make it seem too much as if I had never left.

Last Sunday, I decided to walk near Ashland, the historic home of Henry Clay, knowing that the mild, sunny days of autumn were probably drawing to a close and wanting to make the most of those that remained. Obviously, a lot of other people had the same idea, and unlike on previous occasions, there were just too many other people out and about to make a solitary walk possible. Some of the foliage was breathtaking, and the sun was warm, but I was practically tripping over other people, so I finally called it a day.

We have had a good bit of rain off and on lately, and one or two very windy nights that seemed to mark the turn toward winter. In the last week, I've been reminded of what I dislike most about the weather in Kentucky: the cold, gray days that are so frequent from November to March. While the sameness of the weather throughout my summer in California didn't compare favorably in my mind with summer in Kentucky, just a little bit of winter in Kentucky goes a long way. Of course, with climate change, it could be a while before we see true winter (although I did see sleet and flurries one morning last week, nothing stuck). What we'll probably get is a protracted autumn.

You know it's starting to get cold when a sunny day of 54 degrees feels warm to you. We'll probably have more of those here and there, but I'm always surprised at how early November can fool you into thinking that the mild days and colorful foliage will just go on and on only to yield, almost overnight sometimes, to leafless branches and a pervasive, damp, end-of-the-year gloom. It never ceases to amaze me how different a rainy day in June is from a rainy day in December.

Insolidity

A number of years ago, I stayed in an extended stay hotel while renovations were being done on my apartment building after a fire. While there, I had cable TV, something I did not have at home, and I often watched it. Other than movies, my favorites were The Weather Channel and Animal Planet, both of which I could watch for two or three hours at a time.

This year, while staying in extended stays and motels, I've also had access to cable TV, but I find that overall the viewing experience is a lot less fun. Almost everyone seems to be selling something. I don't know exactly when this trend started, but it's frequently the case that, despite having dozens of channels to choose from, I'm not interested in any of them. In some cases, I enjoy the commercials much more than the actual programs; they often have more style and charm, which doesn't say much for the overall state of television land, but it's true.

One channel I do enjoy overall is HGTV, and if I were going to psychologize the reasons for this, I might say that it's the archetype of home drawing me in at a time when I don't have one of my own. There's probably some truth in this, but it's also true that I've always been interested in looking at houses and the different ways people go about using space in their homes. If I had access to HGTV back in the summer of the fire, I don't remember watching it much, but many of the programs they have today, which feature people making decisions about buying, selling, and renovating houses, fascinate me.

The big question with "reality TV" is how "real" or how "scripted" the programs are, and I think about that when I'm watching. Most of the series I watch are presented as if the people and situations are genuine, and even though I question that sometimes, I'm usually willing to accept that they are. My favorite is Property Brothers, though I also enjoy Fixer Upper and House Hunters (which apparently is heavily staged, or has been in the past). I was watching House Hunters one night when I suddenly became convinced that one of the people was an actor, and whether or not I was right in that instance, I often get the feeling that, just as elsewhere on the TV dial, there is some sleight-of-hand taking place. Nevertheless, I still enjoy watching.

The process of "demo," a prominent feature of many of these programs, has been a particular revelation to me. I always assumed that houses, floors, and walls are all more solid than they actually are, that is until I saw the gusto with which the Property Brothers and their clients rip down cabinets, tear out toilets, and knock down walls. (I still think it would be harder for me to take out a kitchen cabinet than it would be for Jonathan or Drew, who do it all the time, but some of their clients seem to have quite a knack for it.) I've also learned that what sells today is a much sleeker style than I would probably go for in a home of my own. The houses always look beautiful after they're renovated, but I sometimes prefer the pre-renovation, lived-in decor of homes that bear the imprint of the people living in them, even if the post-demo reconfiguration is usually a great improvement.

I enjoyed the Property Brothers segment in New Orleans in which the brothers competed against one another in renovating the two halves of a shotgun house. I would have had a hard time picking a winner; I liked Drew's kitchen and dining area better but preferred Jonathan's bedrooms. There was another program featuring historical renovation that I also liked, hosted by two women who fixed up a Montana farm house for a young married couple. I liked the way they were sensitive to the rugged, traditional style of rural Montana while completely updating the house and managing to make it both practical and cozy.

What else? Well, I've learned the term "shiplap," even if I'm not sure what it is. I've learned that my taste in bathrooms, far from being extravagant, is pretty much the norm in reno land. I have yet to see a kitchen that quite matches one I would pick for myself if I could, but I'm inclining much more to the open-concept floor plan than I used to. I was thoroughly charmed by an upstairs porch with a fireplace in a Knoxville home and have decided that, despite several years of fascination with the mid-century modern style, I am probably more a Craftsman person myself.

The irony of being further away financially than I have ever been from home ownership while digesting all of these HGTV shows isn't lost on me, and I'm occasionally offended by the demands and expectations some of the TV clients have when I think of the homes other people make do with (or don't make do with). On the other hand, I suppose it's a mark of optimism that I still enjoy watching these programs and seeing what's possible, despite my own circumstances. I still hope to have a home of my own some day, and while I have only a general idea right now of what it might look like, there is one thing on the top of my wish list besides a rainfall showerhead: no shared walls. Especially after seeing what flimsy things they can be.

Mythology for the Literal-Minded

It came to my attention this week, quite by accident, that author Mark Haddon included a piece in his collection The Pier Falls and Other Stories that retells the myth of Ariadne and Theseus. Neither is named, but the plot parallels the events of the myth closely enough (on a literal level, at least) that anyone familiar with the story will recognize what is meant. I'll be honest in saying that I didn't like the story, nor the one that preceded it, which was not myth-based, though it seemed to bear an odd kind of kinship to "The Island," the story I'm writing about. Both deal with horrific loss of life near the sea.

I sometimes feel that it's worth staying with an unpleasant book or sitting through an unpleasant movie, depending on what I perceive the artist's intent to be. I watched Munich, for instance, even though I found it difficult, because the theme was compelling. The question of just where the dividing line is between terrorists and anti-terrorists is a very real and important one, and it was brought home to me in a way I'll never forget in that film. It was worth sticking it out for the lesson it taught me.

Likewise, Mr. Haddon may well have a purpose in mind with his book, and if so, I may have gleaned it from the first two stories, though it's probably unfair to characterize the whole book without having read it all the way through. I guess what I'm saying is that if Mr. Haddon's purpose is to reveal the coarser side of human nature and the unfortunate tendency many people have of being drawn to the grisly and horrific events that befall others simply for the thrill of it, then I get what he's saying and thank him for his efforts, but I won't be reading any further. It may be that the rest of the book deals with other themes, but when I started on the third story and still found myself in carnival sideshow territory, I felt it was time to call it a day and go on to something else.

It's probably obvious to anyone who's read my book that I look at the story of Ariadne, Theseus, and the labyrinth as very symbolic and, underneath it all, life-affirming. My way of looking at it is not the only way, of course. Mr. Haddon's version is a horror story that nevertheless stays pretty close to the actual outline of the myth; the devil is in the details. His story even begins as quasi-realistic, as if Ariadne and Theseus might have been actual people--Ariadne a spoiled but sheltered princess who makes a fatal error in betraying her people for a man she's besotted with and Theseus a calculating and manipulative brute.

Mr. Haddon's way of dealing with the Dionysus part of the myth is not one I had seen before and conjures up the destructive aspect of the god. This side of Dionysus certainly appears elsewhere in mythology but not in the context of this myth, at least not to my knowledge, so it seemed to me a bit like mixing bad apples and worse oranges, though of course one has the creative license to do just that in a story of one's own telling. Ariadne's marriage to Dionysus in the classical version of the myth is a much more benign event than Mr. Haddon makes of it and supports the idea that Ariadne herself was viewed, at an earlier period of Greek history, as a powerful goddess. In some versions of the myth she, a goddess, was already married to Dionysus when she decided to help Theseus, so that perhaps the marriage on Naxos in later versions is a way of linking Ariadne, now a mortal, back to her original husband.

I discussed in my book some of the thinking about Ariadne's role in the myth, which centers on the idea that the labyrinth may originally have had a powerful religious meaning. I tend to see Ariadne as a positive figure guarding the secrets of life itself, the labyrinth in this sense becoming a symbol for birth, and even more than that, for becoming human. In that regard, her pairing with Dionysus makes sense, because he, too, is deeply connected with life in his associations with wine and the life cycle of the grape.

Whereas Demeter oversees agriculture in general, Dionysus's connection with the vine speaks of something that, paradoxical as it seems, is in some ways even more nuanced and refined. I'm talking about the life cycle of the grape and of how many things have to go just right in order for the winemaker to produce a fine wine. Dionysus presides over all of this, not just the growing of the grapes. The wine distills some of the essence of everything that goes into its making, the soil, the water, the sunlight, the container it's placed in, and, in no small amount, the soul of the winemaker, whose care of the vines has a great deal to do with how the wine turns out. Every vintage is unique, just as every person is.

By the way, I'm indebted to the movie Sideways for revealing to me so evocatively this nurturing aspect of Dionysus. That the main character, Miles, has a difficult relationship with wine, the very thing he loves and appreciates so well, is both a sad irony and a reminder that Dionysus does indeed have two sides, though bookish Miles is in some ways really more an Apollo kind of guy. Miles's boorish friend Jack, who has no appreciation for the subtle beauties of wine, embodies the dark side of Dionysus much better than Miles does. Miles's love interest, Maya, combines characteristics of both Demeter and Aphrodite, which really makes her the Ariadne to Miles's Dionysus.

All of this is just to say that in my reading of the labyrinth myth, Ariadne and Dionysus are both nurturing figures, and there is some support for this in scholarship. I was honestly rather shocked by Mr. Haddon's story, and even though I think most people realize there are many ways to read a myth, I want to point out, in this era of sensationalism and over-emoting that takes place everywhere from The Weather Channel to the nightly news, that the most shocking interpretation of a story isn't necessarily the best one and definitely isn't the only one. You can look at life through the eyes of love as a rich adventure filled with beauty and interest (despite its many serious problems) or you can look at it as a carnival sideshow, with one freakish event screaming for your attention until another one even worse comes along to take its place. I recommend that you not be that guy. (You know the one I mean.)

I don't know whether to thank Mr. Haddon for a lesson in the dangers of literal-minded mythology or to wash his mouth out with soap, but I rather suspect he had a reason for telling the story the way he did. As an example of literature as shock therapy, I'm not sure I've ever seen its equal. It's like a literary hairshirt. A tiny dab of that may be edifying, but more than that is going overboard. Whether he even expects you to finish the book or not is a question I'm not sure I can answer.

Getting Down With Alice

Author Gregory Maguire can usually be relied upon to spin entertaining novels with his clever, offbeat versions of fairy tales and children's stories written for grown-up children.  He has outdone himself with his novel After Alice, which I cached in a recent visit to the public library (yes, we're still in literary form this week at Wordplay). Mr. Maguire leaps fearlessly into Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, managing not only to land in the right "neck of the woods" (located near the tops of the trees, as one particularly harried bird in the story is careful to explain) but also bringing some wry modern humor with him.

I had a sense, while reading this story, that I was almost as perplexed as Ada, Alice's friend, who, in this telling, has stumbled down the rabbit hole after her, losing a jar of marmalade in the process (so that's where it came from). The novel is full of what appear to be in-jokes, allusions to things that you feel you ought to be able to figure out if you only think about them hard enough. However, like the mysterious key that remains stubbornly out of Ada's reach, this strange and surreal underworld doesn't give up its secrets easily. That you are having an underworld experience is the one thing that is clear; even Ada, who compares Wonderland to a Doré illustration she has seen of Dante's Inferno, soon realizes that.

Of course, you know that Wordplay always has your best interests at heart--and that is why we read After Alice twice in our resolution to be responsible and give you an accurate account of it. My assessment at this point is that while I got the gist of it, it has more in it than any one person can fully unravel, so I invite you to read it for yourself and see what you make of it. I feel sure you'll be entertained. If parts of it seem oddly familiar to you, I won't question that, because I had a similar experience. It wasn't merely the fact that I had read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland previously but also a feeling that, yes, something like that happened to me one time, too, and yes, that character reminds me of someone--even though the characters in this novel have the fluid identities of people in a dream, seeming to shift and reappear in multiple guises. Even the Jabberwock has a hidden identity.

While the geography of After Alice is firmly in Lewis Carroll territory, with many characters from both Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass making an appearance, Mr. Maguire brings a number of tangential characters fully into the story and introduces new ones. Ada, not Alice, is the focus of this story, and Alice's sister Lydia becomes a flesh-and-blood character in the upper world, carrying on a somewhat less-than-thorough search, along with Ada's governess, the highly strung Miss Armstrong, for the missing children. A visiting American has brought with him a freed slave boy, Siam, who makes his own way into Wonderland through the looking-glass in a closed-off parlor.

By turns, this underworld journey is topical, surreal, disturbing, amusing, and sometimes touching. Siam's worldly-wise outlook and American dialect introduce a New World rawness into the somewhat grim rectitude of Victorian Oxford, and some of the denizens of Wonderland express themselves in surprisingly modern though not always fully straightforward quips. "I stole a glance at her," says the March Hare. "So shoot me." And how about this from Humpty Dumpty: "I adore salt. Salt completes me." Ada is repeatedly admonished, "Don't look up," and, while frequently the recipient of advice, is also warned not to take it.

Crippled by a back brace and socially awkward, Ada is perhaps the only character who seems to gain by her underworld experience, which becomes somewhat of a hero's journey (though unacknowledged by anyone else). In Wonderland, she loses her brace and becomes surprisingly sure-footed amongst all the hucksters and dangerous characters she meets, though at the outset she would seem to be no match for them. By the end of the story, I was eager to find out what would happen when Ada returned to the upper world and was sorry when the novel ended, as I would have loved to follow her subsequent career. The final page definitely came too soon in this case.

Kings, queens, duchesses, knights, and other courtiers abound here, including Queen Victoria herself, who somehow makes her way to Wonderland in a bathing machine. Charles Darwin is a guest of Alice's father, Mr. Clowd, a failed scholar, and they discuss evolution and theology over light refreshments, oblivious to the three children who have gone missing in the neighborhood. The book Lydia was reading, "with no pictures or conversation," is revealed to be an essay on A Midsummer Night's Dream. Miss Armstrong has the hots for her employer but transfers her affections rather easily to the interesting American, Mr. Winter. The story begins and ends by a river.

That may seem like a disjointed way to summarize the novel, but the story itself flies about with great flapping wings, changing direction unexpectedly, which is only natural in a story in which the "surreal" and the "real" are tangled up so closely. Mr. Darwin poses a scientific question to Mr. Winter that you will have to answer for yourself, which may or may not sufficiently explain the reason for this novel but will in any case leave you feeling quite thoughtful.

True story: I once had dinner in a chocolate bar in St. Louis. Yes, there is such a thing--they even had chocolate martinis. When I visited the ladies' room, I had to descend a stairwell that was decorated with an Alice in Wonderland theme. On another occasion, while attending a conference in Southern California, I stayed at an Alice in Wonderland themed inn in which my room was named after the Queen of Hearts. It was a bit more room than I needed, but the inn's atmosphere was suitably whimsical and certainly carried out the theme. While either or both experience may have some bearing on why I related so much to Mr. Maguire's story, they don't explain it entirely. At least, I don't think they do.

What I Found on the Shelves

Lately, I've had pretty good luck finding interesting books at the library, so this week's post will be a literary one. Popular culture is a bit of a minefield these days, in my opinion, and the simple wish to be entertained can result in being subjected to all kinds of schlock. The trick, of course, is to try and be discerning, as we have all been taught since we were little children--though I don't recall discernment being nearly so difficult an art when I was small. The reason is simple: the age of innocence has flown the coop on us.

It's been a few years since I reviewed anything by author Tracy Chevalier, but some of you may remember my review of her book The Last Runaway, the story of a young Quaker woman starting a new life in the wilds of rural Ohio in 1850. That book painted a vivid picture of the dangers of everyday life on the frontier, when a simple wagon trip through the woods--at a distance that would be as nothing in the age of interstate highways--was a frankly hazardous undertaking. Ms. Chevalier returns to 19th-century Ohio for At the Edge of the Orchard, a novel about a family working the land in the perilous Black Swamp of the state's northwest region. In actual fact, this book provides an even more harrowing portrait of frontier life than the author's previous book.

The Goodenough family is dysfunctional, which adds another layer to the nearly insurmountable difficulties they already face in making a living from the land. A dark tragedy leads to the breakup of the family and to the beginning of years of wandering for youngest son Robert. Although Robert travels widely and sees many wonders, even ending up in California in time for the Gold Rush, the story is not so much Mark Twain adventure as it is Aeschylus Greek tragedy. 

The Fates do indeed seem to pursue the members of this family; rarely, while reading the book, do you shake off a sense of being haunted. Although there are humorous episodes and characters (Robert's cigar-smoking landlady, Mrs. Bienenstock, is everything a Barbary Coast landlady should be), the novel imparts a feeling almost of claustrophobia. Rather than Manifest Destiny and a feeling of endless possibility, the horizons have shrunk; you get the sense that no matter how far Robert roams, he will never escape the events he is running from. The novel offers a darker view of this period of western expansion than you get from many tales of Western adventure, darker in plot as well as in tone. While it looks like 19th-century America, it feels like Greece in the Bronze Age, as if the House of Atreus had somehow crossed the sea and fetched up on foreign shores. America does not seem so much exceptional as it seems doomed to repeat the cycle of the past.

As it happens, I followed this book up with another one with a California setting, María Dueñas's The Heart Has Its Reasons. I greatly enjoyed Ms. Dueñas's The Time In Between, a novel about a Spanish dressmaker who gets involved in the resistance during World War II, and I was curious to see what she would do with a strong female character in a contemporary setting. The Heart Has Its Reasons is the story of a woman who, after the breakup of her marriage, flees her university job in Spain for a stint as a visiting professor at a Northern California college. The ingredients for a great story--a woman making a new start, a picturesque setting, and an academic mystery entangled with personal tragedy--are all there, but I was thrown off by something in the storytelling itself, an awkwardness that was absent from Ms. Dueñas's previous book.

I at first wondered if something had been lost in the translation, since the style seemed little like what I remembered from the previous novel, not that every book by an author needs to sound exactly the same--though you don't expect one to be assured in tone and the next to be a little off-center. While I enjoyed the story and was intrigued enough to keep reading, I was distracted by a certain roughness in the prose. There is a scene early on in which the main character is looking at photos of the long-dead professor whose papers she is organizing when, for unexplained reasons, lickety-split, she is suddenly outside in need of fresh air. Wait . . . how did that happen?

It is as if some bridge between the two scenes, a connection supplying the reasons for Professor Perea's sudden exodus, is missing. I found it surprising that a writer as accomplished as Ms. Dueñas would write a scene that way, but whether the explanation is typographical, translational, or purposeful I cannot say. Did the character undergo a fugue state? Did she step into a wormhole? Later in the novel, there is a confrontation between Professor Perea and another academic in which she seems to overreact to the revelation that he's behind the fellowship that brought her to America. I didn't think the news quite warranted throwing him out of her apartment, much less her life, and it also seems inconsistent with her previous behavior--yet another example of something that doesn't quite fit in the story.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, though, and was reminded occasionally of my own experiences in California, both as a visitor and as a student. Ms. Dueñas certainly has the setting down to a T, and she knows the world of academia to boot. It's just that the storytelling itself seemed to raise mysteries, almost in the manner of a poem whose letters and lines are placed in an unexpected way on the page, pointing to something beyond what's in the words themselves, if I am not imagining it.

This is the beauty of browsing: I had been looking for some time for a book set in the Gold Rush era of California history, which seems to me a fascinating time, and I found one by luck just by poking around in the shelves. I'm also interested in the history of California missions, which plays such a critical role in Ms. Dueñas's book, and I came across that one by accident as well. Serendipitous finds like that are always fun, even if you don't quite get what you're expecting. NoveList is a wondrous thing . . . but there's nothing like finding a book yourself.

The Death of Tom Petty

While I wish I had the ability to say something useful in the wake of this week's violence in Las Vegas, I don't know what it would be. Sometimes it's better to let more information emerge before jumping into the fray, beyond condemning the bloodshed, as any rational person must. I'm turned off by commentators who start putting forward theories about an event before all the facts are known, and rather than be one, I prefer to let the investigators do their work.

I found my attention drawn to a different event, the death of rocker Tom Petty, the day after the attack, possibly because it was less overwhelming (except to his family and friends, of course) but nonetheless unexpected. I read reports that he thought his recently completed tour would probably be his last, and though I might be reading too much into it, I wonder if he had had any presentiment of what was going to happen. It wouldn't be the first time someone had succumbed right after completing an exhausting task; I'm remembering my own father, whose health seemed to fall apart not long after he retired. Still, I admit to finding the timing of Mr. Petty's death to be a little strange.

I listened to Mr. Petty's records a lot in the early '80s but never saw him live. I followed his career loosely, at a distance, and one or two of his songs pass the Wordplay "Turn Up the Volume" test (it's a very select group). In recent years, I've noticed that his song "I Won't Back Down" (from the Full Moon Fever album, which I don't have) seemed to be getting a fair amount of airplay--or perhaps it's more accurate to say that, out of a multitude of songs that I hear on the radio and elsewhere, this one seemed to rise above many others and stamp itself on my consciousness in a rather insistent way. It's the right song at the right time, I guess you might say.

I will admit to occasionally having a mildly transgressive thought, and I have a recurring fantasy involving this very song. I imagine myself somehow getting access to the public address system on Capitol Hill long enough to play a song that could be heard from one end of the building to the other. This would be the song I would play, on behalf of, well, let's see, the oppressed, the unchampioned, the forgotten, the ill-used, and the otherwise everyday people everywhere trying to keep going while the politicians play their Washington games. (I've also had similar fantasies about the B-52s' "Love Shack"--don't ask me why. It just feels like it would be a fun thing to do.)

On a personal note, I was at a blues festival several years ago in Southern California, walking through a crowd after hearing John Fogerty perform, when I thought I spotted Mr. Petty. He stopped in the crowd a short distance ahead of me and gave me a sweet smile. I'm almost certain it was Tom, and although he didn't say or do anything else, in my memory I can almost see him putting his finger to his lips, as if to say, "Ssshhh, you've spotted me--but don't say anything!" I wondered about it afterward, as I almost had the impression that it wasn't quite a chance encounter, though I can't really say why I think that. It was just something in his face, though it was dark, and I could be mistaken, of course. I had certainly never met him before.

So I think it was really that incident, along with the fact that he was one of my favorite rockers in my college years, that has had me feeling sad and thoughtful over the last few days. Though I'm often shocked to hear about someone's untimely passing, this death touched me in a way that many others haven't. I felt an almost personal sense of loss that surprised me at first but doesn't now that I've thought about it. When someone has touched you with his or her artistry and has been part of the soundtrack of your life for decades, as Mr. Petty has been in mine, it means something when he goes.

I looked at the videos of two of my favorite Tom Petty songs and was impressed with a sort of mythic sense that permeates both of them, especially "Runnin' Down a Dream" (also from Full Moon Fever). Students of Native American mythology may notice sequences reminiscent of Navajo and Lakota folklore; King Kong is in there, too. I was also reminded of such disparate elements as Madeleine L'Engle, a story I once wrote about children who fly into outer space by means of their bed, and an episode in the film Black Orpheus involving a spiral staircase. There is a feeling of magic, mystery, and something slightly out of reach in this video, a vision that, though I never would have imagined it just from hearing the song by itself, matches it perfectly. I especially like the part where the cartoon Tom scratches his head. (The animation in the video was reportedly inspired by Winsor McCay's comic strip Little Nemo.)

The persona Mr. Petty adopts in this video for "Runnin' Down a Dream" and in the video for "I Won't Back Down" (which features some familiar faces) is one and the same. He appears at the beginning and end as a type of storyteller/magician who has something he really wants to show you but won't explain. The blending of mythic/imaginative elements and a certain sly "world as we know it" allusive quality is priceless. Both songs (co-written by Mr. Petty) are definitely enshrined in the "Turn Up the Volume" pantheon of the Great American Songbook; in fact, be careful--either or both could cause you to drive too fast.

I guess it's mean to say it, but I particularly hope, if you don't like either or both of them, that you have trouble avoiding them in the coming weeks. Take it as a sign. And by the way, I never said I wasn't mean.

The Mystery of the Mockingbird

Last week, I wrote about my recent experience of reading Go Set a Watchman a full two years after its publication. I didn't re-read any of the reviews that accompanied its debut before writing my own because I didn't want to be influenced by what anyone else had said about it. The fact that this book even came out was controversial in some quarters; I, personally, have no objection to the publication of variations of an author's work, but in this case I was reluctant to read Watchman because of my affection for To Kill a Mockingbird, which dates back to the sixth grade. In a world in which hardly anything (OK, let's just be honest and say nothing) seems sacred any more, I was reluctant to have my Harper Lee bubble burst. Let some things remain as they are.

I realize that some critics don't even think Mockingbird is all that great a book--despite the Pulitzer Prize--but when I first read it I was positively floored by Ms. Lee's ability to capture the essence of small-town life and render it on the page. I felt that surely I knew all of those people, had walked down those streets, and had maybe even dressed up as a ham, as Scout did, for the Maycomb pageant--the story was that vivid and realistic. From that hour to this, I am still in awe of the verisimilitude Ms. Lee achieved in those pages.

I'm also aware that some commentators have been dismissive of Ms. Lee's treatment of race relations and her portrayal of Atticus as a champion of blacks in Mockingbird. While the trial of Tom Robinson is obviously at the center of the novel, for me, as for many others, it's the characters, the setting, and the details of everyday life that make this novel such a triumph, above and beyond its message about tolerance. While Maycomb, Alabama, is very distinctly a specific place at a specific time, it also has a universality that raises it to an almost mythic status: it's an Everytown--and we have all been there.

Besides reacting to Watchman as a reader, I also have a reaction as a writer--which I was not when I first read Mockingbird all those years ago (well, I guess I was a baby writer then but not a professional one). While the reader was not at all anxious to be let down, the writer was curious to see what an alternative vision of Maycomb's characters might look like, and the writer won out. Having read the book, and read or re-read some of the reviews of Watchman from two years ago, I've come to realize that my original objections--based on a personal reaction to its premise as well as reports that Ms. Lee may not have fully participated in the decision to publish--don't even go as far as those of some other people. Some reviewers (notably Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker and Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio) have questioned the official publisher's version of events, wondering if in fact the book as published could even be simply an early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.

That there have reportedly been inconsistencies in the stories of those who are said to have found the Watchman manuscript certainly adds fuel to the fire of any supposition that there is some mystery behind the novel. However, Mr. Gopnik, in particular, has gone further, saying that Watchman seems to require of the reader a prior familiarity with the people and events of Mockingbird even to succeed as a novel. He points out that the revelation that Atticus is a white supremacist seems to depend for its shock value on a prior acquaintance with him as something very different and that the book's nostalgic flashbacks into Scout's childhood don't make sense unless you already know Scout, Jem, and Dill. Mr. Gopnik and Ms. Corrigan have speculated that Watchman, as written, must have come after Mockingbird, making it a sequel rather than an earlier version.

I don't know the true story behind this manuscript. My experience of reading the novel was that it does seem to assume knowledge of some pre-existing version of Maycomb and its characters, but not having seen the unpublished manuscript or being privy to what was in Ms. Lee's mind when she first began writing, I can't say that Watchman would have to have been written later. It's possible that at some point Ms. Lee (or someone else) went back and reworked parts of the original Watchman manuscript that was rejected in favor of the Mockingbird version.

However, I'm also aware of what I might call the "inevitability syndrome," in which the finished version of a beloved work is so familiar to everyone that it's hard to imagine it could ever have turned out any other way. I'm thinking of the many Hollywood films in which actors who have come to be identified with signature roles weren't originally scheduled to do them . . . and yet after the fact, their participation seems almost to have been preordained. So Atticus could never have been racist--"he just couldn't, that's all"--even if perhaps that's the way Ms. Lee first envisioned him.

Could something similar be affecting the way we read Go Set a Watchman, or did some reworking of the material take place after To Kill a Mockingbird had already been published? Letters between Ms. Lee and her agents reportedly documented much of the revision process that occurred while the author was turning Watchman into To Kill a Mockingbird, so presumably these questions could be answered by comparing an early draft with the manuscript that came to light in 2014, assuming they are different. If this has been done, I'm not aware of it. So the mystery of Go Set a Watchman continues, at least for now.

In Which I Revisit Maycomb and Have My Mind Blown

Here's an admission: I wasn't falling over myself to get my hands on Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman when it first came out. I guess I loved To Kill a Mockingbird so much that I found it hard to get my head around the idea of a latter-day Atticus Finch as a white supremacist. (Having finished the book, I don't know what other term to use. Atticus asks Scout whether she cares to deny that Negroes are "backward." Even though he seems to believe this is a temporary and conditional state due to circumstances, the argument, falling from his lips, is chilling indeed.)

Two years ago, I argued with myself over whether or not it was cowardly to forgo reading the book simply because I didn't like the premise. After all, it was quite a literary event to have anything at all from Ms. Lee, not to mention another novel featuring Scout, Atticus, and the other more or less immortal residents of Maycomb County. I felt I would be missing out on something, even though I was sure I'd be disappointed in the book. By the time it came out, I had pretty much decided to give it a pass, and I put it in the back of my mind until I saw a copy at a friend's house a few weeks ago. I picked it up, read the first two pages, and was hooked. The opening scene, which describes Scout's homecoming on a train from New York, was almost perfect, if slightly cooler and more aloof in tone than its predecessor. (Well, hang it all, how do you expect a narrator describing an adult Scout's point of view to sound? She's no longer a child, after all--but still.)

When I got back to civilization (i.e., a place where I have a functioning library card), I came across Go Set a Watchman on the shelf and checked it out. While the experience of revisiting the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird a couple of decades down the line (in their universe) was mind-blowing, I also think Go Set a Watchman is a less assured novel than the former. Where Mockingbird incised its characters on your brain with the sharpness of a chisel and few words to spare, Watchman reads more like a draft in places. In particular, the portrayal of Scout's Uncle Jack, especially in the climactic scenes in which he tries to explain her father to her, is weak. With his pedantry, he's almost too eccentric to be taken seriously, and that's saying something in the universe of Maycomb County.

Scout discovers that her father and her oldest friend (and sometime boyfriend) Henry both belong to a citizen's group that has arisen in opposition to the activities of the NAACP and opposes equal rights for blacks. That Scout herself is angry about the Supreme Court's ruling against segregated schools and its perceived interference in what she perceives as a state's rights issue is one thing; what she can't condone is Atticus's feet of clay on the issue of basic human equality. I agree with her on that point.

While all of us have inconsistencies and changes of heart, the turnaround displayed by Atticus, erstwhile epitome of fair-mindedness, is almost too extreme to be believed. If he sided with his fellow Alabamians on grounds more similar to Scout's, it wouldn't be so shocking, but to hear him ask Scout if she really wants Negro children to attend the local school along with whites somehow doesn't ring true. The Atticus of yore was too decent a man to put forth such a question; you would expect him to be the first to say that the fastest way to equality is through education. Scout is made to feel that she is being unfair to her father and would do better to think about moving back to Maycomb permanently (where presumably she would come to understand why folks are the way they are faster than she would in New York).

Scout makes a sort of peace with her father, though it's a fraught one. In the end, she comes to realize what has been implied since the beginning of the novel, that she is in the unenviable position of being neither here nor there. She's too much a Southerner to be a New Yorker, and too much a New Yorker to ever live in Maycomb. This novel could have been subtitled, No, You Really Can't Go Home Again. I felt sorry for Scout, who seems somewhat adrift at the end of the novel, though her position is not an unusual one.

Certainly many Southerners had these very arguments in the 1950s, but I can't help but feel that the Atticus in this novel is not the same as the one in the earlier book: he's a variant. It actually seems that Ms. Lee may have been trying out slightly alternate versions of her Maycomb universe, and that this accounts for the awkward gap between the two books; I think I remember reading something to that effect. It's not uncommon for stories from ancient mythology to have inconsistencies, but time and distance make this almost inevitable. It's much more jarring when it happens to characters that many of us grew up to consider near-contemporaries because they seem much closer to flesh-and-blood people.

It's strange to think of the Maycomb, Alabama, of Scout's, Jem's, and Dill's childhood as a kind of paradise to which there is no re-admittance after a certain point. It was full of so many examples of the ugliness of human nature that there is nothing remotely paradisiacal about it, except in the way that a childhood home, filled with security and love, comes to seem Edenic when one looks back. In fact, the most enjoyable parts of Watchman are the flashback scenes in which Scout revisits youthful adventures that were not a part of the original book but that seem to have been lifted seamlessly from its pages: an escapade in which she, Jem, and Dill are caught red-handed re-enacting a revival by Atticus, the visiting minister, and the minister's wife; and the story of Scout's attendance at the high school prom, accompanied by a major wardrobe malfunction. Both episodes have the humor characteristic of To Kill a Mockingbird and were some compensation for the darker tone of Go Set a Watchman.

Childe Roland and the Dark Tower even make an appearance as a symbol for Scout's (sorry, I mean Jean Louise's) position in Maycomb, which pretty much lets you know you're in existential territory. Everybody has to grow up some time, I guess--but still.

Jane Austen in Scotland

This week I finished Val McDermid's retelling of Northanger Abbey while watching a gray September rain and nursing an upset stomach. It actually wasn't a bad way to spend time (other than the upset stomach) because Ms. McDermid's Northanger, with its Scottish setting and teenage girls enthralled by supernatural lore, was made for just such an occasion. As you've realized by now, I'm a big fan of Jane Austen, and while you might think that would make me leery of any latter-day attempts to spin her, I've found that in general her material holds up quite well in a number of different hands.

I understand that this book was a bit of a departure for the author, who specializes in crime fiction and suspense. In Ms. McDermid's hands, Northanger Abbey becomes much more like what I would call a young adult novel than Austen's ever was. To some degree this may speak of the difference in maturity between a teenager in Austen's time and a teenager today, notwithstanding the fact that Ms. McDermid's Cat Morland is in many ways a levelheaded and exemplary girl. I felt that the story took the viewpoint of its young protagonist sympathetically and without irony--if I hadn't read the original, I would have thought I had picked up a teen novel by mistake.

Cat is a young woman of 17 with all the typical concerns of a teenager on the brink of adulthood, although she does share with many of her peers a fixation on vampires that borders on obsession. I certainly had my own preoccupations as a teenager, though vampires and werewolves weren't among them, and I tried to view Cat and her vampire-crazed friends through the lens of an adult looking back at the rich fantasy life of my own teen years--but I still had trouble finding Cat's difficulty in distinguishing between reality and fantasy believable. It may be that I'm missing the gene that lets people appreciate the supernatural, because I understand that the Twilight series, for example, counts many adult women among its devoted fans--I'm just not among them.

It would be too simplistic to assume that people are attracted to bloodcurdling tales in equal measure to the tranquility and perceived safety of their own lives (though this is very much the case with Cat, a vicar's daughter with a remarkably happy home life). Be that as it may, I usually make my apologies for my own lack of interest in the genre by stating the truth, that I find real life quite scary enough without throwing the supernatural into the mix. I do remember a pre-teen interest in Hitchcockian suspense, the tales of Edgar Allen Poe, séances, and slumber party ghost-telling sessions, but again, I would say none of that is unusual for the age group. In my case, those interests had mostly disappeared by the time I was Cat's age, which is not to say that I was more advanced than other people, but merely that I had left behind any tendency to find romance in horror, if in fact I ever had it.

What I could sympathize with is Cat's proclivity to let her imagination run away with her (just as her predecessor Catherine Morland did in Austen's original) when introduced into a wildly romantic setting with a new group of people quite different from her own work-a-day family. You can see the budding writer at work, using the materials in her new circumstances--an atmospheric, castle-like dwelling, an aristocratic family, a tyrannical father, a romantic attraction--as the building blocks for a story she is trying out in her head. That she woefully misinterprets the circumstances surrounding the death of her new friends' mother years before is not surprising, as her limited knowledge of the world and matters of the heart make this line of thought predictable for someone with an active imagination.

What was less understandable was how Cat could seriously view her new boyfriend and his father as potential vampires and still be willing to go off on her own to visit them in their remote Scottish lair--but I guess this is just me being difficult. Apparently, there are those who would jump at just such an opportunity, and Cat and her friends are among them. If I found Henry Tilney's ability to overlook Cat's silly meddling and tendency to poke into matters beyond her knowing to be remarkably forgiving, I also found Cat's contrition and embarrassment to be convincing. She is sensible underneath it all and probably in need of just such a comedown to begin leaving some of her more girlish preoccupations behind. Her imagination is so full that it sometimes spills over awkwardly into real life; it takes a growing maturity to distinguish fact from fiction.

I enjoyed the updated setting that brought Cat and her friends to Edinburgh for the arts festival (instead of Bath, as in the original). I thought Edinburgh the perfect setting for a budding writer with a love for the Gothic to get both her first taste of a writer's life and to take her first steps toward adulthood. I found myself thinking, "This would make a good series!"--though Cat has grown up enough by the end of the story that the possibility is actually closed off before it can gain traction. It's too bad in a way--Cat poking around in other castles and abbeys of old England could have provided entertainment enough for several more sessions of rainy days.

Dresses and Queens

Last week, I sort of promised that this week I would venture into pop culture territory if nothing intervened. It's true that there are at least three hurricanes veering more or less in our direction, but since I'm not in the actual vicinity of landfall, no matter where they hit (unless it's in the middle of the continental U.S.), I can't beg off pop culture duty due to emergency weather-related status. So there's no putting off this jaunt into television land.

Therefore, I will go ahead and tell you that after hearing about Game of Thrones for years, I finally caught a few episodes on TV over the last few weeks. One minute I was innocently flipping channels and the next I was immersed in a battle involving some rather large dragons, what appeared to be an army of the undead, and a fellow with a blue face. Such was my introduction, with little knowledge of the back story, to the world of Westeros and all the rest of it. My initial thought was that it was a rather grim place, but on the whole, no worse than some other places we've all seen.

My other discovery was Say Yes to the Dress, a program I find almost compulsively watchable, in almost the same way that a box of assorted chocolates is compulsively eatable. You might think that after watching a few brides try on gowns, share stories about how they met their grooms, argue with their mothers about what's appropriate in a neckline, solicit advice, shed tears, and go for a happy ending (or not), you'd have your fill and never need to watch again. Don't all these dress tales have basically the same plot, anyway? Well, yes and no. The story of a bride-to-be and her dress turns out to have archetypal resonance: like any fairy tale, it has endless variants and an ever-evolving cast of characters, who, while filling a finite number of roles (counselor, sidekick, mother, court jester, fairy godmother), manage to make the story new and different every time.

Has anyone else managed to mention Game of Thrones and Say Yes to the Dress in the same breath? I hope not. My apologies to fans of both shows if anyone thinks I'm denigrating either one by bringing them together in this way. If Yes to the Dress seems too frothy a confection to stand up against the epic grandeur of Thrones, and if girls just wanting to have fun resent any implication that their nuptial preparations bear any resemblance to the maneuvering of scheming queens and warring kingdoms, all I can say is, in my opinion, "It isn't, and they do."

Characters on Game of Thrones are always talking about someone else wanting them to "bend the knee," to pledge their allegiance to one ruler or another, often someone they deeply distrust, have a conflict of interest with, or despise to the bottom of their boots, and the most common way out of this appears to be talking endlessly without ever coming to terms or giving one's word without meaning to keep it. Those who stick to their principles have a hard time of it with this hard-bitten crew. In fact, the choice to "bend the knee" or not actually seems to have quite a bit in common with the decision to say "yes to the dress"--or not. In both cases, there is power in delay and approval withheld, even for someone in a vulnerable position. Saying "yes"--whether one is a courtier or a bride--amounts to a life-changing decision that sets an entire process in motion whose ends cannot be entirely foreseen by anyone. It makes little difference whether the "yes" is enthusiastic or grudging, freely given or coerced. Larger forces are at work in love and war.

Now that everyone is thrown off-guard by this metaphor-juxtaposition-conceit-or-what-have-you, I might as well deliver the coup de grace, which is: I suspect that Game of Thrones and Say Yes to the Dress are actually the same program. Queens, dresses, what's the difference? The characters are being asked to commit to a choice that in itself is only the prelude to whatever follows, the joining of two people or the joining of two kingdoms (two or more: in Game of Thrones, the relationships may be polygamous--though none of the brides I saw on Dress seemed interested in more than one groom, which points to the limitations of this otherwise spot-on comparison).

If someone out there is complaining, "Well, there's just no end to this folderol, if Game of Thrones and Say Yes to the Dress are the same program, next you'll be telling me that Property Brothers is the same thing as the CBS Evening News"--and I'll be forced to say, "No, it isn't." Property Brothers is an enjoyable fantasy that indulges the belief that people have power because they can knock down walls and install expensive bathroom fixtures in their homes. The CBS Evening News is, I assume, a journalistic venture, and thus in a different category altogether.

Is everybody clear?

Eventful Week, Unvarnished Telling

Never a dull moment here at Wordplay. I'm speaking to you this week from my former home city of Lexington, Kentucky, to which I was forced to repatriate by financial concerns. My plan to do temp jobs while searching for a regular job in California should have worked but didn't; if those employment agencies are placing anyone anywhere, it certainly wasn't me, unless you count nearly ending up in the poorhouse as a placement.

In a city the size of Los Angeles, in the summer, that is certainly surprising, if not shocking. And then there was the agency that actually lost all of my application materials clean out of their database, or so they said. I was told by another agency, when I questioned the lack of opportunities, that a temp agency was a free service, as if to imply that my actually expecting to get a temp job after spending hours filling out multiple forms was unreasonable and ungrateful. What I do know is that the agencies profit greatly from the labor of their workers, who are their single asset, but I guess the woman at that agency somehow thought I was born yesterday.

After several surreal days of contacting and re-contacting employment agencies, potential employers, YWCAs, and other agencies about jobs and possible housing options (including shelters, which aren't even that easy to get into, even if you wanted to be there), I realized that unless I wanted to sleep in my car, I was going to have to leave L.A., at least temporarily, and try something else. Since my plan consisted of returning to the very place I'd worked so hard to leave, it wasn't ideal but was really the only thing I could think to do; I do, after all, have more of a history and a network here than I do in Los Angeles, not that it has done me much good in recent years in terms of job-hunting. It really shouldn't be this difficult for a flexible, well-qualified person, but somehow it is. Someone asked me if I thought I'd been blackballed for some reason. Who, moi? If I find out that that is the case, I'm definitely suing. And it's definitely not true that I'm working undercover for the FBI or anyone else, though I don't suppose anyone is really gullible enough to believe that.

I was contacted yesterday about a temp job in Lexington that I had only applied for yesterday morning, and I had to scramble to find some suitable writing samples on hand to send in, but I did so. I still don't know whether it will lead to anything, and I haven't received the link to the writing test I was asked to take, so although it sounded yesterday as if they were rather interested in me, it may come to nothing, as many of these things do. I don't mind whether I work here or in L.A., as long as I'm working, but I hope to get back to California as soon as possible, as that is where I had planned to stay.

The trip back wasn't easy, though I did get to break it up by visiting a friend in Texas. I wasn't in the hurricane--that was one thing I did manage to avoid, except for a downpour or two in North Texas, which may or may not have been Harvey-related. It was disheartening to see the very sights I'd whizzed by only three months ago coming at me in reverse, but I tried to make the best of it. I continue to be amazed at the beauty of our country, and even if I myself am not a desert person, I enjoyed looking at the often stunning scenery of the Southwest. (Even if the Mojave Desert isn't the most inviting place to pass through when you're driving by yourself, I realize it has its own beauty and would probably be better appreciated under different circumstances.) I enjoyed the clear night sky over Flagstaff, Arizona, the rock formations, mesas, and canyons of New Mexico, and the rolling range lands and big, open sky of Texas, not that I was that thrilled to be seeing them again so soon.

I am now sitting in a hotel room in Lexington watching the rain fall and enjoying even that, since I have always enjoyed summers in Lexington--with their varied but generally warm and humid days and long, drawn-out evenings--more than any other season. I like a lot of things about Lexington and Kentucky, despite having found life here limiting in so many ways for so long. One question I have answered for myself concerns my ability to go somewhere else alone and establish a new life: I can do it just fine, and that was something I was never sure of until I tried it. I like California and think it realistic to suppose I could be happy there with a job and a permanent home. It was the obstacles to achieving those modest and reasonable goals that were the real problem.

I can hear my readers now complaining, "Oh, Mary, won't you ever get back to writing about anything besides your job search and your struggle to get established in California? I used to love your (insert the option of your choice) book reviews, film reviews, dream interpretations, random observations, advice to the lovelorn, household hints, groundbreaking journalism, dissertation previews . . . soooooo much. This summer it's been one long travelogue, when it hasn't been you complaining about not having a job. It's just no fun any more."

Well, here's an idea. Taking a page from the temp agencies, I must remind you that this, too, is a free service, and if you're reading it, you're benefiting from my talents without giving me anything in return. If just one person on your block bought a copy of my book, you could all pitch in together, and it would likely cost each person only a few pennies to have a brand-new copy of a tasteful item that you could all share (you could read it aloud on long winter evenings or set it on your coffee table if you want to show people how smart you are). Think about what a difference that would make to my bank account! Incidentally, though it may not matter to you, my blog appears to have many more readers now than it used to have, so I'm not so sure that people don't prefer the unvarnished truth, whatever form it takes.

I can't offer you any sky miles, travel points, or gift cards as an incentive to support a writer, but I can offer my sincere thanks to those who do. And if you can't afford to buy the book, no problem. I don't so much expect people to support my career as to avoid hindering it. If you do that, you're asking for trouble, and people who ask for trouble rarely avoid finding it, like whoever is responsible for the magically disappearing text, opening and closing applications, and randomly appearing highlighting that have plagued me the entire time I've been writing this blog today. I should be paid handsomely just for persevering through this nonsense. My feeling is that somebody out there needs to get his own blog.

To fans of Jungian interpretation and Hillmanian seeing through, I say (along with Shiva), "Fear not!" I have been watching television! It could be that next week, I'll want to address Yes to the Dress, Game of Thrones, or both, if something more interesting doesn't happen before then. But don't expect a long, tedious, respectful study of either one--it's likely to be something vastly more playful, if I do indeed get around to it. I never take anything I see on television very seriously--and I don't recommend that you do either.

Goodbye until next week--and consider supporting a writer today!

Wordplay's Tony Bennett Moment

Attentive readers of this blog may recall a post in which I compared San Francisco with New York and London and gave a sort of Jungian interpretation of the character of all three. (I was looking at New York from a distance only, as I've spent little time there.) What I said about San Francisco was that it was introverted and hard to know and that it felt claustrophobic. While I don't actually disagree with this assessment after spending a few days there earlier this week, I felt my old fondness for the city returning even before I got there.

My feelings are caught up in a persistent sadness hanging over my last couple of visits and the death of a friend who lived there. Nevertheless (and quite surprisingly to me), I found the old San Francisco magic starting to exert its influence in the soft air and misty dampness that emerged somewhere around Vallejo, unmistakable harbingers of the city. I had too many happy associations with visits past to be able to deny the anticipation this created, and it wasn't even destroyed by the yellow ticket I got for not having enough cash for the toll. (Here's a hint, though, to the bridge authority: credit cards--embrace them. I'm not sure why you remain seemingly alone in taking cash only. I thought even Popsicle stands took credit cards these days.)

I had been in touch with an old friend before arriving but had no place to stay on my first night. I made my way through construction- and pedestrian-clogged downtown streets out to the avenues, where I managed to find a parking spot and a Starbucks where I could plug in and investigate the possibility of hostels and tourist hotels. I found a number of places, some with suspiciously low prices (if they were genuine) and was also considering 24-hour coffeehouses if worse came to worst. I was getting up to leave when someone brushed almost imperceptibly against me; I turned around and gave my signature dirty look to the gal who did it. I felt rage rising up and considered whether a verbal response was called for (I decided it wasn't because that would have required me to actually talk to the person, which may have been her ulterior motive, for all I know). Let it pass.

I began to feel the "I hate San Francisco" part of me taking ascendancy, so I decided to drive out of the city and try to find a low-cost chain hotel. That might or might not have worked even if the Silicon Valley weren't presently experiencing a second-wave dot.com boom (with prices to match) and even if there weren't some sort of classic car show taking place in Pebble Beach that apparently justified tripling hotel prices as far away as Morgan Hill. However, it didn't work, much to the surprise of more than one hotel clerk who seemed surprised that I didn't consider $140 a bargain for a tired and threadbare hotel right off the interstate. Instead, I ended up at a 24-hour Denny's near San Jose, drinking coffee, having breakfast, and thinking about the unlikely but undeniably true chain of events that had led to precisely that moment.

Back in San Francisco as dawn was breaking, I weathered the strangeness of the early morning crowd at Starbucks on Fillmore, played "move the car when the two-hour free parking expires," took a brief catnap while parked on Clay Street in Pacific Heights, and discovered how difficult it is these days to find true rock and roll on the radio in the City. The latter circumstance seemed so unlikely that I was considering asking for help in finding a rock station if only a knowledgeable-looking person would happen along. Maybe Pac Heights wasn't the best place for it, as I saw very few people who looked like they ever listened to rock music, most of them being either elderly or otherwise lacking in anything remotely resembling a rock 'n' roll vibe. Such is San Francisco in the year 2017, where the Summer of Love is almost as if it never happened, depending on how hard you squint.

What San Francisco hasn't lost is a certain psychedelic quality, which requires no mind-altering drugs but is present in the very air (though I don't know: perhaps there is something in the water that alters the behavior of residents over time?). I told my friend that it was very noticeable, in this introverted city, how many pedestrians made eye contact with you over the course of a day; I was wondering if there had been some major catastrophe in the news that I hadn't heard about that was causing people to eye one another closely, but if there was a precipitating event, I never found what it was. I would have enjoyed my walks better if not for this peculiar and unnatural watchfulness, but I wasn't altogether surprised, since San Francisco seemed altered in some indefinable way the last couple of times I was there. I can't account for it, but I do not think it a change for the better.

I found the spirit of the old San Francisco coming on me at odd moments, as if to prove that, yes, the heart of the city is still beating somewhere, hidden away in some obscure corner or shabby coffeehouse. Stopped in traffic, I would look up and see an elegant, many-turreted Victorian with a broad front and crisp paint and think, "Yes, I could live there." Searching for a parking spot, I would top a hill and glimpse a sudden view of the bay, a lovely vista that was free for the asking and almost made the frustrating parking game worthwhile.

Returning from an excursion to Marin, I would see the gigantic towers of the Golden Gate bridge, stately and serene in the golden afternoon light, framed by hills--an enormity almost too much to absorb, as if a race of Titans (instead of mere men) had placed it there as a token of might. I would think, looking out at the ocean as we crossed the bridge, "I don't know what I'll be doing a week from now, but I'm going to hold this image in my mind as a reminder of where I was today." Glancing down a side street on the way in from the Sunset district, I would encounter an enchanting view of a street of cozy houses with a leafy burst of fall color, a quiet street that whispered, at least in my mind, an invitation to come back and walk around some time.

Peering up while stopped at a light, I would see a white curtain blowing in the breeze at an open bay window, a homey and domestic sight in hyper-sophisticated San Francisco that suddenly made me wish it was my window and that I was returning to it after an ordinary work day. I would see how green the grass was in the city parks, catch sight of a laughing child in its parent's arms, get a peek of a morning side street full of cafes in the Financial District, read a sign for a show at the de Young and wish I had the time and money to attend, and pass a corner apartment building with an empty lobby and plate glass windows that was gorgeous as it was but seemed the perfect spot for a tiny cafe.

I was sorry to leave San Francisco, despite the strangeness that hangs over it, because it is a place that manages to maintain its beauty in spite of whatever miasma may be clinging to it. I saw many streets, buildings, quarters, and corners that seemed to call out for further exploration, and I hope to be able to accomplish this some time. I don't know if I could ever live there permanently, and I don't know if I could be happy there, but I could spend some time wandering around, looking here and there, trying to avoid the noise while letting the city itself, the actual city, speak to me. If L.A. is a prehistoric creature disguised as a trendy starlet, a nymph, San Francisco is a cultured dowager hidden behind the face of a computer geek, a graceful lady currently incarnated in a techie, dot.com persona. She may be acquainted with sailors and robber barons, but even earthquakes can't dislodge her.

Travels with Wordplay

Wordplay has spent the last few days touring the Southwest/Rocky Mountain region, waiting for job applications to bear fruit and connecting with family and friends, or trying to. As you may recall from last week, I was trying to avoid throwing myself on the mercy of charity by making my resources last as long as possible. This strategy would only work if it ended up saving me money, and the jury is still out on that aspect of the adventure. One thing's for sure, I have seen some places I haven't been to before and revisited some old ones, seeing them, as it were, in a new light. I've never been to the Southwest or the Rockies in late summer, and it's remarkable how a different slant of light transforms a landscape into something almost new.

What about a Jungian travelogue this week, just for a lark? That's not something you see every single day of the week, especially one written under annoying conditions in which a persistent wi-fi issue in a public cafe makes typing nearly impossible--which in itself seems like a great reason for continuing. Is it a conspiracy to prevent free speech? Is the person sitting next to me emitting negative gamma rays? Is Mercury in retrograde? Does this cafe need to replace its router?

Rather than draw any rash conclusions, perhaps it's more constructive to proceed with my groundbreaking travelogue and avoid getting sidetracked by minutiae, though whoever/whatever is responsible for this horrible connection probably deserves to have their ears boxed, at the very least. A day in court is probably more like it.

I headed out of L.A. via the 210, and the trip in reverse (I came into town that way) wasn't nearly as bad in the murderous Polar Express runaway train sense of bad as the journey west. We don't want to let you into town, but feel free to leave whenever you want to, is that it? Even the roads were in better condition on I-15 heading toward Nevada, though I put no great stock in that as an indication of anything, except perhaps the fact that too many people go to Vegas on vacation to let those roads deteriorate to any great extent.

What follows are archetypal impressions of some of the high points of my trip, and, as always, the opinions are entirely my own.

Las Vegas -- Never been before; not really my scene, though I was curious to see what the famous skyline would look like. If you're going to drive through, might as well do it at night, which is when it's really meant to be seen, was my reasoning. By the way, I have nothing against people going there, per se. Indulging in a little bit of what wouldn't be good for you in big doses is probably not a bad way to let off steam. For most people, it's merely entertainment, a way to escape the everyday and indulge in a little bit of frivolity--though it can have a strong undertow for some. The skyline was as glittering as one could wish, but some of the drivers are much less stellar. They in the business of running people off the road there? And that traffic stop that seemed somewhat gratuitous? No, thanks. Archetypal assessment -- Like going into the anteroom of the Underworld, from which you can still see daylight if you don't start mucking around in backrooms and alleys. Hades rules, not that that's a reason for you to cancel your vacation. Have fun, but don't forget to go home at the end.

Arizona Portion of I-15 North -- What the heck was that? "Watch for Falling Rocks?" All I saw were rocks. I'm sure this is seriously scenic in daylight, which is the reason I'm glad I was doing it at night. I was still trying to recover from Vegas and was in danger of scenic overload. Archetypal assessment -- In the dark, it looked like the aftermath of the clash of the Titans.

Idaho Falls, ID -- All I can really tell you is that I unexpectedly had the best sandwich and Caesar salad combo of my life in a downtown cafe, to the point that I had to tell the waiter about it, and that the back of the Tetons, normally visible all the way from Idaho Falls, could not be seen that day due to haze. (I say the back of the Tetons, but of course that's all relative. What I really mean is that the famous view, the one everyone is familiar with, is on the other side.) Archetypal assessment -- Olympus, brooding, hides its head in the clouds.

Salt Lake City -- I always wanted a closer look at its downtown, so being in great need of a break, I spent one night. I was nearly run over by a truck just before I got off the interstate in an inexcusable display of poor driving (not by me), but exit the interstate I did. I found a modest hotel with scary hallways but nice rooms and a view of the city lights from my window. I had a pleasant walk through a pedestrian-friendly downtown full of shops, businesses, cafes, and gardens, under a dramatic sky that threatened a storm at every moment but never really rained. I watched the sun setting behind the Mormon Tabernacle building and peeked in at the fountains and courtyard of the downtown mall. Archetypal assessment -- The Mormon Tabernacle building looks a little bit like Oz when they turn those green lights on at night, which gives it a bit of a fantasy look, but the main public library is as high-tech as they come. Salt Lake City seems to have it both ways, being both ethereal and gear-heavy. And those views of the mountains! Jacob's ladder might be sitting there in some back street, with angels going to and fro at all hours, each carrying an i-Pad.

I-80 Across Nevada -- Just don't do it if you can help it. The salt flats on either side of the road in the Utah portion throw off an uncomfortable glare; there are very few places to stop for gas; there's a section in which low-flying planes are a real possibility; the local microclimates make for sudden squalls during which tractor trailer trucks are prone to coming up right behind you and honking madly (Buddy, there are plenty of lanes here. If you think this is going to get me to pull off the road, you're sadly mistaken.); and you're out in the middle of nowhere--relatively speaking--for an ungodly amount of time. Archetypal assessment -- It's a bit like Eurydice and Orpheus ascending from the Underworld; just don't look back. The entry into California's Sierra Nevada after you pass Reno almost makes it worth it--but maybe not quite.

Sacramento -- Old Sac is fun in a half-kitschy but educational sort of way. Motel 6 in North Sacramento? Not so much. Downtown Sacramento is rife with handsome Victorians and wide streets, and the state capitol is impressive. Archetypal assessment: Zeus and Hera reside here, so you know the trains are going to run on time.

Davis, CA -- Reminds me of a Midwestern college town; I thought of living here once. Archetypal assessment -- Funny business with the wi-fi here. Hermes?

I Visit Skid Row and Come Away Chastened

Lately I've been thinking of ways to economize on my lodging as my job search continues, so I decided to investigate community resources that might be available to someone in my situation. The answer, as I discovered, is not many. Most of the resources are allocated (as is fitting) for people in very dire circumstances, and I guess the assumption is that middle class people have enough of a safety net in friends and family. I ascertained this for myself by visiting a downtown women's center, where I was told that they serve only the homeless, meaning women who have been living on the streets for a year or longer.

My immediate thought was that in that case a homeless person might be half-dead by the time they got there. I was incredulous, but I realize I shouldn't have been. I applaud the work these people are doing, but of course their resources are limited. Another agency I was directed to had a basement parking structure that was locked but so grim in appearance that I imagined a sign above it in medieval lettering saying, "Abandon all hope ye who enter here." Seriously. I could picture driving into it and never seeing the light of day again, so I was left to consider other alternatives.

This was my first visit to that part of downtown Los Angeles, and although I didn't find anything that would benefit me there, the streets were teeming with life, the good, the bad, and the ugly all side by side and on top of one another. The big flower markets and the homeless camps were within steps of one another: one block was lined with sidewalk tents and the next was clogged with tourists. I navigated a couple of narrow side streets packed with small shops and pedestrians that suddenly reminded me of London. I saw several landmarks--City Hall, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and Olvera Street--from different perspectives than I'm used to. And finally, I figured out how to get onto Sunset Boulevard from downtown without the weird little detour through a sketchy neighborhood that I remembered from the past. Have they possibly done some road work in that area?

I was sitting at a traffic light across from Olvera Street when I had one of those past, present, and future deja vu moments I was talking about last week. That is, I looked over and saw the exact spot where years ago I stood--on my first visit to L.A.--and looked with yearning in the direction of Sunset Boulevard, the street sign being all I could really see of it. I had been dropped off at the train station by the Amtrak bus and had a few hours to spare before catching my train back east, and boy, was I itching to see at least a little of the city I'd heard so much about. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any way to take a bus tour like I'd done in Chicago, and I'd been warned before I got there about wandering around alone (this was shortly before the city erupted over the Rodney King beating). Thus it was that my first experience of L.A. was limited to Union Station and Olvera Street, which nevertheless left a lasting impression.

As I was sitting at the light yesterday, I thought to myself, "This is one of those watershed moments in your life in which you realize that the present has finally caught up with the past (or perhaps it's the other way around). You'll remember this moment all your life." The truth is, though, that while I knew it was true, it didn't feel like a transcendent moment: I just felt like my everyday self, sitting in traffic, with my usual concerns, worried about splurging for coffee but feeling that, for the money, it was probably a good investment in mental hygiene, a small treat in lieu of bigger ones--and wondering when the light was going to change.

Despite the visit to Skid Row, it was a beautiful day. I was annoyed that my rental deposit from my old apartment has yet to arrive in the mail, but I still went in search of and found the cup of coffee I was looking for. (Well, maybe not exactly that cup. The coffeehouse, while suitably funky, was too full of hipsters, lending further credence to my feeling that I can't possibly be one.) The coffee was good, but the neighborhood didn't please me as much as it had on first impression. I capped it off with a walk in the park anyway (I do like the park) and was once again visited by local wildlife in the form of ducks and turtles as I stood enjoying the view across the water.

I had first taken the precaution of removing my road atlas, which contained a copy of my birth certificate and a job application, from my car and carrying them with me as I walked. That was after I noticed a white truck idling in the street near my car after I had parked it. Thinking that that looked a little peculiar, I decided to err on the side of caution, since my car's been broken into before. The truck pulled away as soon I started walking back to my car, not that it looks anything like a vehicle a typical thief would target. Never a dull moment, right? Actually, I think I would welcome a few dull moments, or at least a few ordinary ones.

Well, on the bright side, I am finding my way around a little better every day. For the second time in a row, I managed to get back on the Glendale Freeway going in the right direction and even remembered to get out of the exit lane in time to avoid a hair-raising last-minute scramble and a trip back to the neighborhood I had just left. I had decided against filling out the job application in the coffeehouse, where I didn't feel at ease enough to concentrate on it (I fell back on my library book, Martin Chuzzlewit, instead), thus necessitating a stop in a second cafe for the purpose of completing that task. I justified it in my mind as a business expense, though it will probably mean skipping coffee altogether for the foreseeable future.

With the job application completed, I headed back to my hotel, still wrestling with the same career and financial difficulties as before but having somehow managed to enjoy the day in spite of it. I'm a realist, but I try not to let that get in the way of a sunny day. The short cut I took on the way back didn't work out, as sometimes happens with my short cuts, which turn into learning experiences instead. I ended up in Long Beach, and it's a mystery to me how that happened, but it let me realize that some of the little trips I'd taken earlier, apparently fruitless, had paid off by allowing me to recognize street names and get myself going the right way while bypassing an area I'd rather avoid.

If there's a moral to this story, I suppose it is this: never drive into an opening that looks like the gates of hell. Nothing good could possibly come of it. Or else it might be: either you're a hipster, or you're not. Visit a hipster joint and find out; you'll soon know. Or possibly: you can learn something from everything, even if it's taking a wrong turn, as long as you figure it out in time. Or maybe it's all three.