Green Rider by Kristen Britain

Novels are funny things. They build up so many expectations, particularly when they sit on your shelf for a year, two years, maybe even three, and you glance at them occasionally over your university reading and long to pick them up and burrow into a delightful story rather than read in depth about the agricultural and occupational differences between the Hutu and the Tutsis in the 1850s.

I bought Green Rider by Kristen Britain several years ago at a lovely bookstore in Colorado called The Tattered Cover. I highly recommed this store if you're ever in Denver. I remember beautiful hardwood shelves reaching to the ceiling and lists of recommended books that helped me pick out this and other very enjoyable reads. In any case, this book sat on my shelf for years, a lovely fantasy novel with a cover of a pretty woman on a horse, riding fast over a forest path and looking behind her, concerned with the grey-cloaked rider that occupied the back cover. However, the title and the cover grew more and more plain to me - the wash of green over the woman's outfit blended too well into the forest cover, and as my writing professors told me that fantasy and science fiction were "genre fiction" (ie, not real fiction), I began to wonder if my choice of paperbacks had been mistaken.

Initially, I felt I was justified. The main character, Karigan, seemed flat, and the adventure she set out on - to deliver a message to her king - seemed like a micro-Lord of the Rings adventure. There was even a strange detour to a magical house occupied by two spinster sisters, a house quite like Tom Bombadil's in its ability to shelter and soothe those on a quest. But when Karigan is captured on her route by two warriors, and she is almost raped and forced to fight off two male attackers, my interest was renewed. The author wasn't afraid to put her heroine through hell, and the heroine actually survived it. My appreciation of Karigan grew, and the rest of her journey and her struggle over whether she should join the ranks of an elite messenger group that insits she was called to them (which is left unresolved at the end of the first volume) pulled the book from the run of the mill fantasy and made it into a story with real characters who don't take the choice of adventure over family as lightly as other novels might. Though the several continuing volumes that have been published since I bought this paperback so many years ago tell me that Karigan makes the more interesting choice, I appreciate that the author did not push the choice into the first volume. A quest, several murders, and a plot to overthrow the king is quite enough for one novel.

*My only criticism of this book, and it must be noted, is the poorly named country that Karigan inhabits. "Sacoridia" tripped me up again and again in the text. It sounds more like a GI infection than a country. I could not decide how to pronounce it, and not one pronunciation made it any more melodious or interesting as a name. Definitely should have gone back to the drawing board on that one.

Nothing to do at work

August is real estate's slow season. Any experienced realtor can tell you that, and they 're really not kidding. July 31st was busy and booming like any Monday, but August 1st hit, and SLOOOOOOOOOW down, we're coming up on a traffic jam that won't quit until early autumn. The phones don't ring, the houses don't sell (and they haven't been selling for months), and I am left with virtually nothing to do. I have done perhaps 45 minutes of real work today. The rest of the time, I have checked my email, read the news, and snuck chapters of my latest book, Green Rider by Kristen Britain. The book has turned out to be quite good, and I'm dying to know what happens next. But I'll save the review for when I finish.

I picked up a copy of Marie Claire today. I don't read most magazines aimed at women unless I'm going on vacation, but I read in the New York Times that the magazine was switching editors, and that the new editor, Joanna Coles, was looking to change the magazine's focus to "confident, professional women." The main things that turn me away from women's magazines are endless articles praising whatever star has a new movie coming out, and the fascination with things that I consider childish. I've picked up Marie Claire in the past because there are articles about managing situations at work and how to meet your significant other's parents for the first time. Articles that actually apply to my life. So I think I might enjoy this change. I wouldn't mind finding a new magazine to enjoy. I love reading InStyle precisely because it bypasses the subjects that should only interest teenage girls, and I really enjoy getting National Geographic Adventure again. Even if I never climb Everest, I'm still fascinated to read more about climbing, surfing, and particularly good hiking. I'm hoping to incorporate hiking and adventure more into my life, especially if we move to the West Coast next year. Hiking always gets my minding spinning with stories because I can imagine so many scenarios in my mind. It was hiking in Taos' mountains that inspired 30 pages worth of one of my novels. And I so love the feeling of a good story buzzing in my brain. At the moment, there's just a faint hum.

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

My most recent book was Midwives by Chris Bohjalian (ain't that a mouth full?). I've wanted to read it for years, and finally pulled it off my shelf a week or two back and took it up.

At first, I was uncomfortable with the "hippie" attitude of the parents of the protagonist. I wondered if I had to buy into pot-smoking, flowers in guns, and that love is all you need. But Bohjalian is very good at never requiring you to buy into a belief to enjoy his story. You can even believe that Sybil, the midwife accused of manslaughter after her patient dies in childbirth (and she subsequently delivers the baby via C-section with only a sharp kitchen knife), is actually guilty throughout the novel and still appreciate the drama of the courtroom scenes and the tense situation her family finds herself facing every day.

I once wanted to be a midwife, or an Ob-gyn. I thought it was such an interesting field, and I thought I would really like helping women through labor. Now, I'm not so sure. I think hanging out around women's vaginas is really not what I'm intended for, considering how much annoyance I experience around women. But the fascination is still there, and Sybil's diary entries, which punctuate the chapters of her daughter's narration, were fascinating and provided a welcome insight into her character. What women wouldn't want to know about massaging a perineum with baby oil to ease the passage of a baby and avoid cutting the mother? Well, many women probably don't want to know that, but I do. I like the idea of finding solutions to such difficulties in labor. I also like Sybil's word for contractions: surges. It isn't a contraction, which sounds like tightening and pressing and fighting against something. It's a surge, a wave rolling through your body to help you labor, to help you press the baby out into the world. I think I'll hold onto that idea when I first go into labor - the idea that each surge is a wave that helps me get my child into the world, that helps press my child out of the ocean and onto the beach. It also syncs well with the article I just read in National Geographic Adventure about surfing. But, yes, I like the idea.

And the novel was beautifully written. Prior to reading Midwives, I finished Leonardo’s Swans by Karen Essex, her first novel if I recall correctly. While I love historical fiction and loved the descriptions of paintings and the portrayals of two very powerful sisters (each strong in very different ways), the novel jumped in time from one moment to another. At first we would be in the 1st person with one of the sisters, and they would be a few years ahead of the last chapter, and disgusted or delighted by some recent occurence, and then the novel would slowly catch us up, backtracking and piecing together moments to explain how we got to this place. But the suspense of so many moments is severed by the very fact that we know the fate of Isabella and Beatrice. The novel is ruined because we are told at the very beginning who will die and who will survive. Two different women, each ruling over their court in very different ways, but only one's method will preserve her against her husband's infidelity and other men's mistakes. The final chapter really is triumphant as we view the victor and how she has stayed alive and charmed her way into success, and we are happy for her. But again, the repetitiveness, the loss of suspense, and the annoying repetition of facts - first Leonardo reveals a detail in his notebooks (the entries of which punctuate this book much as they punctuate Midwives). Then we hear the same detail all over again from one of the characters. Midwives impressed me so much because of the fact that it never repeated itself - if a journal entry said one thing, the narrator did not repeat it, and I was charmed by the creativity and attentiveness of this fact. I love reading for pleasure again, but I can't help noting techniques I would like to emulate in my own writing, as well as critiquing novels that show less attentiveness than one would desire. I am looking forward to reading more of Bohjalian's novels.

*One more note: I must credit Chris Bohjalian (a man) for writing so convincingly in two women's voices. I pray my own male characters may feel so real and come so close to what it is to be male as his female characters come to what it is to be a woman.

My Last

Here I am writing my last paper. Listening to Maria Taylor's Leap Year, which is the kind of song I have always loved and makes me feel like I have achieved some emotional fulfillment - that melancholy sweet bubbling in my chest and at my temples that I can be so in love, can be so brave, can be so strong and so vulnerable all at once. And I thought of burning the CD to take with me to the library tomorrow morning, so that I can listen to this beautiful song, bob my head, type my paper, print it off, live in this private but on display world where everyone can see that I am enjoying this music, enjoying my life, that I have something beyond the paper I am writing...

And then I realized that I will not be part of that community any more. I won't be in that private-public, on-display but on-my-own place where I exist as my own person but am so easily identified and defined as a student, preoccupied in the same things as everyone else: grades, classes, quarters, midterms, papers, men, alcohol, frat parties, dancing, bars, weekends and snooze buttons and limited budgets. I hadn't realize how much of an act my on-campus life could be, but it is. I have reveled in what I could present to other people, have manipulated my appearance through fashion, makeup, hair, the purse I carry, the shoes I wear, the look on my face or the confidence of my stride or my stroll or my swagger or my all-out run. This identity will be gone. And then, I am in the working world, one of so many more, and I can still present those things, but I will no longer be a part of that community where everyone else is trying to pose and present just like I am. I am headed into the vast world where it will not be so easy to pretend I am cool, I am confident, I am fine being alone in my world with my music. It won't be so easy to pretend because I am far less certain anyone is watching. Have I desired my whole life to have someone watching? Have I imagined my whole life that someone might be? I think so. I know so. Can I come up with a Big Brother when I'm out in that real world I'm supposed to confront soon? And if I can't, can I let go of that desire to be observed?

In my last days, I am returning to the long nights, the nights of procrastinating by getting down to the root of life and scratching at it to see the wick. The good old days with Sheila and the long nights and the treks to White Hen and the glow of our desk lamps in the windows and the harshness of computer screens and beeping alarms and warm beds and too-short catnaps that became too-long night's sleeps... The horror and the joy of those nights. The thrill of being alive and awake when no one else was, alone in a grey-blue night turning into day.

But I am too old for this, it seems. And so I return to my paper, too quick for my old self, but barely quickly enough for my new self who values sleep and not seeing dawn from the wrong side and getting to sleep in my bed with my partner and not feel that heavy curly-haired feeling under my eyelids.

Ostentatious Femininity Seems to Have Something to Do With Footwear

I don't know what's wrong with women my age. When I walk around campus, there is just this ultra, extreme, put-up femininity that I see. Women wearing rubber boots with colorful plaid prints, hip-hugging jeans (not that they have hips to hug) and a vest lined with brown-black fur. Or the women with pompons bouncing around their boots. The women who buy Ugg boots and wear them with oversized sweatpants and put makeup on, despite not showering. What is with women who do this? Why do these little symbols of femininity that some overpriced department store sells draw in women my age? What is it about patterned rubber boots that makes one feel stylish? I love fashion, but go for classic looks that you won't regret buying in three months! I bought the jewel-toned party shirts that every other girl was wearing last year, but I bought them because they were fun, cheap, and would look good for a party. I didn't buy them to be the height of fashion but to have something fun for partying. But on a day-to-day basis, what makes a woman put on short frilly skirts and boots and back-comb their hair and go to class looking like this? Do these women feel a need to be stylish at all times? Are they interested in attracting men and/or women? Is it competition between women?

Just as in high school, Jansport was the backpack to have, now we have women carrying bags marked with their sorority. They carry the weirdest shaped bags, and these bags are stylish on the justification that it is has their stamp on it? It seems any Brand justifies Fashion, not just clothing brands.

Thoughts on the State of the Female Sex

I have recently been pondering Elizabeth Bennet’s comment in Pride and Prejudice concerning “accomplished young women.” Darcy and Miss Bingley are discussing the talents required of young women: music, singing, dancing, drawing, language, “a certain something in her air and manner of walking,” and “the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” When Eliza has heard their definition of accomplished young women, she remarks, “I rather wonder at your knowing any.”

I must agree with Miss Bennet’s view on the state of female dispositions, even today, but my definition of “accomplished” must differ from that of Austen. Things have changed a touch in two centuries; I do not expect an accomplished woman to play the harpsichord or dance a reel. No, if I were to meet a truly accomplished woman, I would see intelligence, a quick mind, a deft ability with language, and a heightened self-awareness that enables her to master her emotions quickly when faced with less accomplished members of either sex. Indeed, though I wring out my dislike on this page, I most respect those persons who can hide their real dislike for others behind a careful and considerate visage. This too is the mark of an accomplished woman.

I do not claim to achieve such subtlety nor mastery in any of the areas that I have mentioned. However, just as a gay man may make fun of other gay men, I am a woman, and as a woman, I claim my right to pronounce that women are in a deplorable state. I believe it to be nearly impossible to find a truly accomplished woman, not for some deficiency in the sex, but for the fact that evolution and popular culture are against us.

Intelligence, sadly, I believe to be a genetic inheritance rather than an influence of environment (thus explaining why so many geniuses come from horrid backgrounds and so many nitwits from pleasant and privileged environments). Therefore, I cannot offer any sage advice on how to increase intelligence amongst young women, except to say that the bearing and raising of children today is made so bothersome and difficult that any woman of reasonable intelligence would think twice before willingly entering into a contract of eighteen years.

The difficulty I observe in our culture is that women who wish to cultivate their mind must devote time and energy on higher degrees of education and pursuing careers that actually interest them. However, it is very difficult to write a dissertation or devote one’s full attention to one client when one is required to breastfeed, drive children to soccer practice, and participate in other activities required of the good mother. Our own society demands women care more for their offspring than for themselves, and the intelligent woman knows this is not always possible or advisable. Indeed, the intelligent woman would note that population is already full to bursting and consider raising one spectacularly gifted child the best course of action.

Where intelligence is a genetic toss-up, a quick mind can be honed by training. Participating in debates with one’s parents and friends, reading the best authors and watching news programs that challenge one’s intellect will build up a woman who is well-read, capable of understanding many arguments, and unafraid to challenge others’ assumptions. She will know and understand her opponent’s argument before the other has thought it, and like a chess game, be several steps ahead of the actual debate.

However, what I find when I survey the women about me is that many are entrenched in their own limited experience of the world. They are unable to fathom lives beyond their own because they have never had to imagine another world, another upbringing. I do not require hardship in the childhood of the accomplished woman, but those-who-have-not always know about those-who-have, while the reverse is less likely to be true.

Here I come to the quality most difficult to find in the accomplished woman: facility in language. How delightful it is to my ears to hear a woman who uses language as a tool to argue more precisely her point or express exactly how she is feeling or what she believes. But facility in language, both written and oral, is in severe decline. I find myself impressed if magazines use the words “their,” “there,” and “they’re” correctly. If an actress or another highly visible woman were to use a word like “aplomb,” I would be struck dumb. If she continued with words like “efficacy” or “virtuosity” or another neglected, delightful word in the English language, I should die happy. However, since Plain Speaking is so celebrated by our politicians and our media, the pressure to hone one’s oratory is negligible. Women, particularly young women, get away with, “It’s like… you know” and the lyrical, incisive words that might fill that ellipsis are replaced with a hand gesture, a shrug of the shoulders, or, worst of all, a flip of the head.

Self-awareness is the magical element in this search for the accomplished woman. A self-aware woman knows when and how she is forming her argument. She is aware of how she holds her body as she debates with another. She is aware of her gestures and uses them to punctuate rather than express her argument. The self-aware woman knows how to express herself. If she wishes to be kind, she softens her tone and adopts a gentle manner. If she wishes to cut, she knows how to sharpen her tongue and fill her voice with power so that her words - carefully chosen - have the weight of her conviction. In short, the self-aware woman, by nature intelligent, with a mind honed by her own acuity, and a proficiency in the English language, is the most formidable force I have ever hoped to encounter.

But as language degrades into slang and un-nuanced body language, and women are set lower and lower standards for expression and intelligence, I cannot see how the accomplished woman can survive. She will move in ever-smaller circles, find less and less to pique her interest as reporting becomes so biased or base that there is no point in reading or watching, and the classics will seem products of beautiful, bygone eras that she will fantasize about as her friends babble and flip their hair and her teachers become more ignorant creatures. In short, the accomplished, self-aware woman is an endangered species, even more so than in the 19^th century.