Reflections on Kathleen Winter’s Annabel

Annabel focuses on a child born a hermaphrodite in small-town Labrador. When I picked up this novel from a local used&new bookshop, the cashier put her hand over her heart, said “oh, that is a beautiful book,” and lapsed into a smiling-eyed silence while she rang up my purchase.

Having now read the book and let it resonate with me for almost a month, I concur that this is a very special piece of literature. Some reasons why: 

• It resists categorization. You could call it a coming-of-age tale, I suppose; it is that, and more.
• All the characters, including, from the first paragraph, the land, are integral elements of the story, and they are allowed to have full personalities, to change, and to grow. Though the characters occasionally judge each other, the author never seems to judge any of them. True, we never get to find out what drives certain bit-part assholes, but the way that the other characters’ lives move on without and despite these would-be villains is a joy on its own.
• There is nothing sensationalist in this book. The issue of sexual identity, so fascinating in its own right, and such ready fodder for tabloid gossip, is experienced so vividly in context of the full lives of real people, that it becomes rather a mirror on which anyone can project one’s own identity issues.  Surely we all have things we don’t know how to discuss with others, things that keep us from “fitting in” (as much as anyone could ever “fit in” to a changing world in any way other than by living one’s own truth – this was one of the points the novel strongly illuminated for me).  Certainly all the main characters here have their own such issues.
• It contains abundant passages of breathtaking beauty. Treadway’s conversations with the birds (and Treadway’s character as a whole) were some of my favourites.

When I closed the book I found myself longing to know more about everyone inside it… a sequel? A prequel? A spin-off or two or three? …and then I accepted ruefully that the story as it had been told was complete. The final movement of the novel took me smack-dab into the Now, into this moment of awkward beauty, pain and completeness.

And I am grateful.

♥

Unhappy? endings: Orpheus and H.C. Andersen’s Littlest Mermaid…

Why can’t I stop thinking about these stories? 

In each one the protagonist is on a quest to do something insanely ambitious, probably impossible, in the name of love.  The mermaid wants the love of a human, so that she can get an immortal soul.  Orpheus wants his bride back from the dead.  …And our heroes proceed to accomplish amazing feats!  The mermaid transforms into a human and walks on land!  Orpheus descends into the underworld and sways the hearts of the gods!  Our hearts are in our throats; we think they just might win after all; we start preparing for a Disney ending; we are ready to throw the confetti…

Ultimately,  these heroes are thrown gut-wrenchingly off course, resolving their quests in unexpected ways.  Bluntly, they fail.  But they are also completely transformed in the process.

What are we supposed to learn from these crushing defeats? 

Orpheus

The tale of Orpheus is often spun as a lesson about resolve, or faith… as if we are supposed to learn from his mistake and not repeat it if we find ourselves in similar circumstances:  don’t second-guess the gods; don’t look back! 

Really? 

This explanation rings hollow to me.  First of all, Hades doesn’t strike me as a particularly trustworthy fellow.  More critically, the lesson just doesn’t feel proportional to the emotional impact of the story.  What if Orpheus had succeeded?  Wouldn’t the happily-ever-after be a big letdown?  Resisting the temptation to check on Eurydice would certainly be impressive… but not heroic exactly.  Nor would it be consistent with the overwhelming passion which has driven our hero up to this point in the story.  His very human vulnerabity is the hook that grabs us (she, on the other hand, is only human — and, ahem, dead — by virtue of his obsession with her; she was a carefree nymph before he came along).  Also, his troubadour personality is great for the wooing and sacrificing aspects of romantic love, but I can’t help but feel that however wonderful and numinous Eurydice may have been, before long she would have put a serious kink in his groove.  As it happened, the first guy to hit on her at a party was her complete undoing (ok, via a snake bite, but come on… a snake bite?).  Hardly the basis for a great marriage.

I suspect we’re supposed to learn something about the nature of romantics and enchanters and what happens to them and to the world they live in when their passions are played out to the limit.   Hint: they end up disembodied and spiritualized.  The Littlest Mermaid becomes a ministering wind; Orpheus gets ripped apart by the Bacchante, and his severed head becomes an oracle on the isle of Lesbos.  (!)

I’ve also seen Eurydice described as a metaphor for the soul.  I am even further away from understanding that interpretation, but enticingly, it does bring us back around to the Littlest Mermaid chasing her soul.

If you have some light to shed on these stories, or this story-structure in general, please share!

Thanks for reading.

♥

The Bhagavad Gita in one paragraph

Do your duty.
Don’t know what your duty is?
Ask your heart.
Follow no authority but your heart.
Can’t hear your heart?
Get away from everything that makes more noise than your heart.
 ……… in a nutshell!

The Bhagavad Gita — a gift from my aunt Karen, bless her – sat on my bookshelf for a long time before I was brave enough to read it.  I had picked it up once and was put off by the lists of mega-syllabic Indian names at the beginning of the text.  As it happened, my fears were unfounded:  once I made it past the roll call in the opening pages, the Gita charmed me completely.  I recommend it to anybody.

The message above is what I took home from my first reading of this lovely text.  Maybe you get something different (…do tell!).    If you are looking for a good read, try it; it’s not that long.

It’s a conversation that takes place between the young warrior Arjuna, and Krishna, as Arjuna’s charioteer, as they are just about to plunge into battle against an army that includes members of Arjuna’s own family.  Arjuna is in crisis: he doesn’t know whether the right thing to do is to fight or abstain.  The two discuss the meaning of life, from a whole bunch of different perspectives; along the way Arjuna sees God and figures out what to do.

♥

“Mahtab”, a wakefulness poem

Presenting “Mahtab” by Nimā Yushij (1896-1960).

Hear the Persian original, read by Ahmad Shamlou (another brilliant poet, 1925-2000):  it’s quite magical.

In the original every stanza ends with the word ”mi-shekanad”, which means “breaks” or “is breaking.”   The rhythm is thus one of breaking, and breaking, and breaking again.   This is my best crack at an English translation.  I welcome feedback from native speakers!

~

Moonlight

Moonlight seeps
The glow-worm glimmers
Not one breath breaks anyone’s sleep, and yet
The sorrow of this sleeping heap breaks the sleep in my wet eyes.

Worried with me stands the dawn.
The morning wants of me that from their blessed rest
I bring out this soul-starved tribe, despite the danger.
In my gut, nevertheless, a thorn
At the road of this journey is breaking.

The slender stem of a green and flowered plant
That I cared for with my soul
That I watered from my soul
Alas, it is breaking in my breast.

I rub my hands together to open a door.
I knock in front that someone may come to the door.
The door and the walls spill out over themselves
And break over top of my head.

Moonlight seeps
The glow-worm glimmers
Left with blistered feet from the long road
At the edge of a village, a man alone
His pack on his shoulder
His hand on a door
He says to himself
The sorrow of this sleeping heap breaks the sleep in my wet eyes.

♥