At the game

The Boy attended his first Sporting Event yesterday. My big little brother's high school baseball team is in the playoffs, and we went to see them play. He got to see his strapping young uncle get a solid base hit, and make a great catch in deep center field. It was a fine example of the sport all around, and they won 2-0, moving a step closer to the State Tournament.

Of course, the real highlight had nothing to do with Sport (or perhaps everything to do with it): the bleachers full of tanned teenaged girls in tank tops screaming my brother's name when he got up to bat. That sort of thing really makes the trip worth it.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

The other day I was flipping through a notebook from college, seeing how many pages I had used up taking notes (not very many). But then I got to reading what notes there were, and inspired by what I read (yeah, I know: by my own class notes) I pulled this book off the shelf and read it over again.

I have read all three of Krakauer's full length books, and this is, without qualification, my favourite. The journey of Chris McCandless fascinated me from the moment I read the book's cover, and he has never entirely left my thoughts since.

For those of you who have not read the book, you should. At the risk of courting a charge of pretension (not that it would be a first) I would say that Into the Wild is an important book. Certainly it was important for me when I first read it, and it held up very well through a second reading.

The book opens with the discovery of a young man's body by moose hunters in Alaska. Krakauer, initially commissioned by Outside magazine and then driven further by his own fascination with the story, traces the journey of this Chris McCandless from his privileged life in suburban Virginia to his lonely death in the Alaskan bush, with as much detail as he can discover of the in-between. It is not a journey you will easily forget.

In the years since I first read it, this book has continued to be active in my mind, and the questions it raised are still there as I search for the answers in my own soul.

Son calls father

My son called me at work today.

Now, given that he is 16 months old, I should probably note that he did technically call me, not by himself. I answered the phone in my cubicle, and my wife said simply: "Your son wants to talk to you."

Apparently what he actually wanted to do was listen to me, and I obliged him, chatting brightly to the expectant silence at the other end of the line. I asked him about his day, what new things he had learned or discovered, whether he had eaten anything. After a few minutes of this my wife came on the other extension. She explained that stretched as tall as he could, reached the phone cord and pull it off the hook onto the floor. This feat accomplished, he held the handset in both hands, looked at my wife eagerly and said "Da?" repeatedly until she dialled me up and put him on the line.

It is hard being away from family all day as I am. It is suddenly that much harder now that he actually misses me when I am absent. It is both touching and devastating, depending on which end of the day I am on.

Ducks in the yard

Spring is really springing this week. Today my wife and son walked down to meet me on my way home from the Job. Free from my cubicle for the rest of the day, a cool breeze on my face and the warm rays of the sun upon my back, it was a very nearly perfect afternoon.

Just a few blocks from our apartment is a house whose yard is a sort of best-effort inner city version of a "wild space" which, to be fair, is a pretty good effort. Most of the yard is taken up with a large multi-tiered pond, ringed with rough blocks of limestone, surrounded by cattails, small trees, and marsh grass.

The house was recently on the market, and the new owners have been there only since last summer sometime, I think. As we walked by this beautiful spring afternoon, a middle-aged woman emerged into the yard carrying a rake and said, loudly and (to me) somewhat disconcertingly: "Okay, ducks, what are going to do now?" Before I had time to wonder why she was thus declaiming, a pair of Mallards flew up out of the pond and went winging off over the interstate just behind the house.

The woman then turned to us conspiratorially and said, "The ducks just won't stay out of my yard."

I just smiled at her. I wanted to say very carefully: "You have a freaking duck pond in you yard. What part of this is surprising or confusing for you?" But I didn't want to seem hostile, or smarter than her.

The boy is too much of me

The Boy takes after me more than I can begin to explain.

Let me just say this for the benefit of those who know me well, then I will attempt to explain:

The Boy twirled today.

That's right, he just started walking yestreday, and tonight he made this beautiful, smooth, controlled and completely random 360º as he strolled along the edge of the coffee table. Wow.

In case you don't know, I twirl. Not so much of late, because life hasn't made me feel so twirly these days, but historically I am known to twirl quite a bit for someone of my age and lifestyle choice. Some have even gone so far as to claim that I flit, the veracity of which I can neither confirm nor deny at this time.

And now my first-born son, who already looks more like his father than can possibly be permitted, is twirling with some of his first steps? It is quite too much to be borne, not just by me his overwhelmed proud papa, but by the world, which did nothing, nothing at all to deserve another creature like me. I have to keep reminding myself: he is his own person. He will have his own things. He will not be another you. I hope this is true. He can look like me, and stuff like that. That's pretty cool. He can have some of my more desirable personality traits; I'm okay with that. But Lord, a twirler? It is too much...

Traci DePree

Well I've done it. I've read not one, but two Christian novels by Traci DePree — a can of peas and dandelions in a jelly jar. If I came upon a third I'd probably read that too. While the writing started out immature, by the second book of the Lake Emily series she had found her voice and rhythm. It was not saccharine like a Chicken Soup story and the deus ex machina was only slightly convenient. The vignettes and plot lines are wholly plausible. While her multiple characters seem to be fixated on avoiding "self-pity" the lack of sex scenes is refreshing and the awkward prayers endearing. I cried healthy cries (a lot), laughed a bit, smiled with comfort and was inspired to tackle the dishes. There's my confession: I read a Christian novel and I liked it.

The Hamlet by William Faulkner

I just finished my first Faulkner novel The Hamlet. I just didn't enjoy it. Between his use of subtlety, euphemism and symbolism I never felt I knew exactly what was going on. I felt like this fluid writing was describing a panorama of culture, scene and plot. But I was looking through a cardboard tube and try as I might could not get the whole picture. Now I am comfortable with the surreal and postmodern, Shakespeare and Austen but I cannot fathom the point Faulkner was trying to make with this book. I'm sure if it were explained to me I would have enjoyed it more.

The Barn at the End of the World by Mary Rose O'Reilly

I truly sank in and savored this book. It explored the author's experience (and my pet interest) of practicing Buddhism as a way to practice Christianity in the barn, monastery or wherever you happen to be. It helped me to quiet my "what next?" brainstorming and listen. It was most satisfying to read of a spiritual journey where the author is not in the end docile. O'Reilly is as feisty and testy when she ends the book as when you meet her, and yet genuine spiritual growth is evident. Something in my questing soul was answered when I read this book.

The Zahir by Paulo Coelho

I have long wanted to read Paulo Coelho and I was not disappointed. At times I felt I was reading a book of magical realism like Nick Bantock. In the end it is a book about the nature of love and the stories we tell to obscure its true meaning. It is written conversationally with the gloss of popular culture and the mists of mysticism. I throughly enjoyed it and will now have to add Kazakhstan to my travel wish list.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

I picked up the book hoping for a feminine version of The Da Vinci Code and got much more. Immediately it was apparent this was a more intelligent book with a different, but no less mysterious/mystical, subject matter. Mosse hovered between thriller and literature. There were the thriller plot devices but woven in with real skill and thought to the consequences. Unlike The Da Vinci Code I was not disgusted with the ending, but found I had spent my time pleasantly and picked up something new about the langue d'oc.

Life with Mother by Clarence Day

Life with Mother does not remind me of my grandmother, but I enjoyed it none the less. The essays are similar to those in Life with Father, some making me laugh out loud, however they tend to be more descriptive, longer, and less focused. This unedited feel can be attributed to the fact that some were published posthumously.