Today I attended my first No Kidding event in several years: it was within walking distance and involved a book. I walked over listening to White Noise, which I've finally almost finished. In a front yard I passed played two five-ish girls. One shouted to me, "Do you have any puppies or kittens?" On my person? That's what her question sounded like. I told her no, just a bird. "Oh, I love birds!" I asked if she had any pets; no. I asked, just your sister? "That's not my sister. That's my cousin." (How foolish of me.) There was more, about her going off to the store to buy snacks for the puppies and kittens, and asking where I was going, and what my friends' names were.
My answer to where I was going was to some friends' house to read a book together. This answer to an adult would have felt like a lie to me (and sounded like one: read a book together?) To an adult I could have said "book discussion" but the "friends" bit would have felt, instead of like reasonable shorthand, like a lie. I would have gone on and on in waaay more detail about No Kidding than a casual question warrants, or obviously stopped myself and then felt like lying for stopping, or awkward for stopping. I need to learn how to interact with adults as easily as I do with children.
This kid cracked me up, and the timing amused me more.
I reread Frankenstein in the morning, my second time through; the first time was for Revenge in Lit. This time I noticed conscience and responsibility much more than revenge. It made me think of Grendel and Forbidden Knowledge.
The people were nice, especially the hosts, though not readers except one, a current English major. Someone spoke of Brave New World's topicality, a society in a constant state of war. I couldn't help myself though I could control my tone in time (an improvement) as I blurted, "That's 1984." Someone suggested "Fahrenheit Four Five One" [sic ] as also topical. I didn't say "four fifty-one" because who knows, maybe you should say "four hundred fifty-one" and of course what he meant was clear (unlike with the Huxley-Orwell confusion). Someone else said that I must be from Canada or the U.K. and I said no, Connecticut, but with a slight speech oddity around my vowels. The hosts read primarily science fiction and fantasy and also wanted to read H.P. Lovecraft, because they had never had (that, to me, is like loving fantasy but never reading Tolkien).
Frankenstein creates his Monster and is so terrified of what he has wrought that he runs away. He has no interest in and no concern for Monster until Monster kills William, although if Frankenstein had showed Monster one whit of responsibility, Monster would have remained, I am sure, as kind as he awoke (and Shelley would have had no novel). The obvious English major pointed out that as a parenting statement, Frankenstein was an interesting choice for No Kidding. I was so glad of this particular attendee: she had had the novel in her comprehensive examination, she said (which included five whole books!), and so brought into the discussion several of the things that had occurred to me in my morning's reread, such that the group had the ideas out there without my having to be most pedantic one in the room (just the second-most). We talked of how good a mother Frankenstein mater is, taking in Elizabeth (as a bride for her infant son) and then Justine (because she's pretty), and in constrast how good a father Frankenstein pater might not be: Victor first says he had an idyllic childhood, and later represents his father as kind-hearted, but between those, when his focus is not his father but the inspiration for his work, the man appears dismissive and Victor to smart from it: "My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book and said, 'Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.' If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies." The English major read aloud this entire passage, saying "AG-grip-ah." The point of this entire paragraph, therefore, is not the conversation this book can spark but how deliberately I included the name in a subsequent remark so that people would know that hers was not only the pronunciation option. She also pronounced "chimerical" as "TCHIM-er-a-kal" but, as with the Bradbury title, maybe I don't know that the word has been Englished away from "ki-MERE-a-kal."
Our first attempt at No Kidding in the fall of 1999 taught me that the mere commonality of opting away from child-rearing is not sufficient basis for friendship. The second, drinks at a nearby tavern, was better only marginally for not happening in the corporate 'burbs. This event was better, with a focus for conversation; the hosts knew how to host; and these days I am certainly more comfortable among strangers, confident in being myself but also not punishing myself for holding back. Non-breeding is not sufficient basis for friendship; reading can be, but perhaps not here, because only one of the eight others was a reader and even she volunteered that she struggles with One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I stopped in Park Hill books on the way home. How I have missed its basement all these years? It was a treasure trove. I knew only of the staircase leading to the loft, but what I heard as I squatted at a bookcase was footsteps going up and getting nearer: from below.
Down I went. Franny and Zoey, The First Four Years, A Man for All Seasons, The Dogs of Babel, Incident at Hawk's Hill, Beating the Turtle Drum, Miss Hickory, and a book fated for the hidden shelf, there to join my one other Stephen King (Eyes of the Dragon), The Stand. Pulp and the miniseries cover. Shudder.
In the evening, the neighborhood bookgroup. In this case, reading wasn't the only basis for friendship. I really cannot believe my luck (or my willingness) that I like each and every one of these women very much, most of them very much indeed.
Kal called me just at 5:30 to say everyone was on the corner to make the arduous five-(short)-block journey together. I was a few minutes behind and said not to wait, but of course they did, though of course not just for me but for Scarf as well. I jogged up to everyone just before Monkey's stroller emerged from her house. It's a Norwegian brand called Stokke and struck me as kind of like a Segway and also like her parents have put her on a pedestal (and indeed why should they not?). When Scarf joined us and hugged me, she exclaimed, "You're wearing make-up!" So yeah, that's how shallow I am, that I wore cosmetics during the daytime, to meet strangers. I pulled my lapel over my face, embarrassed at my own superficiality, and she pushed it down again: "Let me see!"--and naturally everyone else had to inspect me too. She said it brought out my eyes--thank goodness, that being the intended effect--and I said eh, make-up on me is like gilding the sow's ear. Mixed metaphors are so handy sometimes.
This month's hostess's selection was Grandmother's Secrets, a book about bellydance, a little memoir, a little instruction. The hostess takes bellydance class and had invited her instructor came to gave us a bit of a lesson and a dance. Oh, and the hostess had a collection of things for us to play dress-up with, wheee! I wore my own full skirt but added a coin belt. The instructor had a belly on her, and I loved how sinuous she became not despite but because of it. I love how a dance requiring strength, stability, and stamina is best performed by a generously abundant body. She had a great smile, and of course she enjoys the dance and a smile is part of it but it didn't look a bit forced despite having a right to be, and how that smile and deep eye contact kindled explosions of sensuality in the room. In a contrast perhaps too obvious to remark upon, Samuel Johnson would have said of me bellydancing what he said of a woman preaching: "A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
Admiring her belly made me think of what I said about barrel bellies the other day. I want to clarify that a belly dressed wisely is just fine (and in a bellydance outfit, can be delectable). A barrel (or any shape) painfully packed almost into clothing not sized or cut appropriately is what makes my eyes bleed.