Blog Posts (10/23 – 11/05)

A New Chapter

I like to write. I’ve started and abandoned a dozen (or more) different blogs over the past 10 years and have decided that one should be enough. That it will be okay to mix ideas within the blog and that it doesn’t have to be all about one thing or another.

I will post podcast show notes (when I record and post podcasts) and have various updates about the etsy shop (when those are made), but otherwise, I would like to use this as a regular old blog. No specific niche or solely about one thing. Just a smattering assortment of thoughts.

I love audiobooks. They rock my world. I love books and sometimes nothing can replace the feeling you get while turning the page of a new (or used) book. But audiobooks lend themselves to many situations regular books do not. My commute each morning and evening (which amounts to 1.5 hours a day), doing the dishes and other domestic chores, knitting and crafting. I feel like I can make the most out of my day when I listen to an audiobook while driving or cleaning. I’ve got a subscription at audible.com and while we’ve recently cut back on frivolous expenses, that is something I won’t give up. An audiobook, especially a long one which can run 40 hours, for $15 is most certainly a better value than a movie ticket, which will only last 2 hours if you’re lucky. Listening to an audiobook on my way home from work helps me decompress far better than just listening to the radio where my mind will wander and stay at work, even though I clocked out half an hour ago.

At the end of July I started listening to The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I had listened to books 1 – 4 and most of 5 previously, but I had only read the regular hardback book of books 6 and 7. I was excited to relive Roland’s adventures and listened to the books pretty diligently for the next several weeks. I listened to one book in between, but it was only 7 hours, so it flew by. The Dark Tower series as a whole amounted to 132 hours and 45 minutes of aural amazement. I finished the series this past Sunday, 10/17. I loved every single second of it.

I started another audiobook an hour or so after I had finished The Dark Tower series. (I was at work doing a data entry project and listening to audiobooks makes those go by much quicker – it helps me maintain my focus.) I decided on Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. I had previously listened to Shanghai Girls by the same author and loved it. I thought I’d love Snow Flower and the Secret Fan just as much.

And I did, sort of. It was a great story and well-told. It starts out with an old Chinese woman setting out her memoirs before she passes on. She was born in the late 1800s and talks about her life in her milk days and daughter days and her hairpinning days and so on and so forth. She becomes “old sames” with a girl in a neighboring village which improves the narrator’s life as it gives her more status. Of course, so did her golden lilies, which is the euphemism used to refer to bound feet.

I’ve heard of Chinese foot-binding before and have always been appalled by it. Shanghai Girls talks about it a little bit, but from a distance because the main characters themselves do not have bound feet, but their mother does. Hearing it talked about from the perspective of someone who had her feet bound and 20 years later bound her own daughter’s feet was mind-boggling. The social norms were so different and everyone felt powerless to do anything about them. The traditions they had made up the order by which these people lived, regardless of how it made them feel or if they wanted to follow them. I know all countries have horrible traditions that frequently people hate following but do anyway. Having grown up in a relatively free-thinking society, though, the book has left an impression on me that I cannot shake.

Not only the images of the foot-binding where toes and arch bones break under the weight of a 7-year-old girl and the ideal bound foot will be only 7 cm (I suggest getting out your ruler and comparing this with your own foot) from the heel to the tip of the big toe, but the feelings of worthlessness espoused by the narrator because she was a woman. That her only worth would ever come from giving birth to sons. After 11 hours listening to this story where women are devalued, beaten and maimed as a general rule it left me in a bizarre headspace I’m still trying to break free from. If it was all horrible images, it might not have affected me so much. But there were beautiful images too. The narrator and her old same embroidering shoes for their soon-to-be husbands, making clothes for themselves and writing in delicate, secretive strokes of Nushu on their secret fan.

It was a good book, but I think it might have been easier for me post-ending if I had read it instead of listening to it. If you ever want to feel grateful for your feet, I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

Great Scott!

I was born in 1982, so while I was technically a child of the 80s, most of the pop culture from that decade did not find its way into my sphere until the turn of the century when retro nostalgia kicked in. Sure, I had a few Hypercolor shirts, a pair of low-top canvas shoes that I decorated with puffy paint and every now and then wore a side ponytail. But I didn’t play Pac-Man and we didn’t get a Nintendo until the very late 80s. I watched Jem, but not Transformers or Thundercats often. Maybe that’s how it always is? You don’t realize the culture you’re a part of until 20 years later when it becomes hip again.

I definitely missed out on a lot of movies from the 1980s. My family wasn’t big on movies, not that we didn’t watch them every now and then, but we certainly watched more TV shows than movies. (Except for horror movies. We watched those a lot, even if Halloween was not looming around the corner.) In particular, I had never seen one of the classics from the 80s, Back to the Future.

I played (and beat!) the Nintendo game based on the Parts II and III of the movies and still vividly remember trying to unscramble the names for the objects and make sure I correctly identified each from my inventory.

But I had never seen the movie.

Until this past Monday. AMC Theaters ran two special showings of the original movie and my boyfriend and I went and saw the screening on 10/25. I was surprised at how well the movie stood up to 25 years of new movie innovations and technologies. The opening sequence, which in many older movies is tedious and lame, was fun and interesting. The plot was good and the characters were believe-able. It was a great movie, and I can see why it has become a tried and true classic from the 80s.

Next up, of course, we’ll watch Parts II and III and I’m looking forward to it.

Remember Remember

I love V for Vendetta, both the graphic novel and the movie. But, I’m partial to storytelling that takes place in a dystopian future, so really, how could I *not* like it? (I have no personal opinions about Guy Fawkes either way, though.)

Three years ago, though, remembering the fifth of November took on a whole new meaning for me when my Grandmother passed away in the wee morning hours. She was young, only 68, but had been diagnosed with lymphoma nine months before.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss her, of course. Honestly, I try not to remember the anniversary of her passing, because that’s not what’s important. All the days before, when she lived (and I would say to the fullest), is what matters.

It’s just harder when there’s an English nursery rhyme imploring me to remember remember the fifth of November. I don’t need the rhyme, though, because she shall never be forgot.