When Books Choose You

Books that chose me

I think books are sometimes like cats...they choose you, not the other way around.
I said that  to a dear friend last week, referring to a book she'd recommended that I was rereading.
And then Tuesday, wandering around town, I stopped in Best of Books in Edmond www.bestofbooksok.com, just browsing as I often do, and to get a free cup of coffee.
The friendly staff asked what book I was looking for, and I said I wasn't.
Then as I wandered back to the coffee pot, a book on the shelf chose me, Austin Kleon's latest, "Keep Going." This Austin, Texas artist, is a delightful departure from the routine. https://austinkleon.com
It's his third unique book on creativity, and I've read and kept his previous. They're written with a sharpie, including some of his sketches, blacked out poetry, and more--and easy to read, though deep in provoking thought and perspective.
Just what I needed as I stumble through every day, and also provoking me to return to this blog after more than a month, as it stumbles toward its tenth birthday next month.
The blog is almost comatose, changing from writing to more than art. Not sure of its future as I'm close to having an art web page soon, but then, the older you get, the more you know you don't know the future.
It's not the only book that has chosen me this year.
The other book I referred to above was Parker Palmer's "On the Brink of Everything," about aging, and it helps me as I stumble on.
Another book chose me this spring, suggested by another  good friend, "Ace in the Hole" by Annie Proulx, a novel set in the Texas Panhandle, full of accurate description and McMurtry-like characters.
Made me think of McMurtry enough that I pulled his book "Roads" off the shelf and reread it, helping spur more travel fever.
Other books that chose me this spring, sort of, were the "Killers of the Flower Moon," and "Boomtown," both about Oklahoma, because my wife was reading them and they were the selections after I'd joined the UCO faculty emeritus monthly book club.
Best of Books called last week, telling me Anne Hillerman's new novel, "The Tale Teller," had come in, which I'd pre-ordered. It's set in New Mexico and Arizona, so of course it chose me.
Currently on audio books chosen to listen to in my car, when I was driving across West Texas, is the book "Sapiens," about the history of the human race, full of science and biology and perspective on our continuing evolution as another animal on this planet. Did you know there's some evidence that our brains are getting smaller?
So those are the eight books that have chosen me this spring. They've provoked thought, new ideas, creativity, and a routine of every night, writing down a few quotes and thoughts from those books in a journal.

Chaco Challenge--All About Geometry

Chaco Geometry, watercolor, 5 x 7, 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press paper

'Chaco is all about geometry on earth and in the heavens.'

Painting about, or at, Chaco Canyon in New Mexico is a challenge,  and it was for me last month during my daily happy things watercolors. About six attempts were unsuccessful
I wrote about it, and intended to post the painting, but didn't, so unhappy was I at the "happy" subject.
I've painted at Chaco before, and Fajada Butte is a favorite. But painting the ruins of the Anasazi is intimidating, because the Anasazi deserve respect. A poor painting would not be worthy. The stonework is varied in a million shapes and angles and shadows, and if you get too detailed, you lose the effects of Chaco, and the emotion the painting carries.  
As a detail-oriented person, that makes it almost impossible.
But last month, I wrote, after another attempt:
"Wanted to keep it abstract and failed. Chaco is all about geometry, on earth and in the heavens, and I've got to try again, keeping that in mind.
"But here's the attempt--failed because of the infinite geometry of the bricks--should have left them alone. "

Failure Number 1

Then yesterday my friend and former right hand at UCO, Sherry Sump, commented that the failed Chaco painting was her favorite (She's a Westerner and biased).
So today, I had to try again, keeping in mind geometry. "Paint what you feel, not what you see," said one art teacher.
"Paint shapes, not lines," said another.
Today's effort came from those thoughts. Better. I'm happy with this. It would not have happened without all those failures.
Here is the first failure, and what I wrote a month ago, and Don Strel's inspiring photograph below.
(I've written many times about Chaco, and if you search on the blog, you'll find lots of photos and comments and poetry.)

(From January 19, unpublished)

"Chaco Canyon in New Mexico makes me happy, but trying to paint it is an exercise in frustration.
I was inspired to try again today, because Anne Hillerman, daughter of the late Okie mystery writer and journalist Tony Hillerman who wrote about the Navajo nation, will be speaking at Full Circle Bookstore tomorrow.
The book by Tony and his brother, the late Barney who was an OKC photographer, is Hillerman Country. I have a signed copy of it, signed by him when we inducted him into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame years ago (He's a United Press International vet, wrote A Fly on the Wall, set in the Oklahoma Capitol, and ran the UNM Journalism School.) I've read all his books.

Don Strel photo in Hillerman's Landscape

I also have Anne's  book, Tony Hillerman's Landscape, photographs by her husband Don Strel. That's where I saw the photo that inspired this. It's also signed by them. She has continued her father's famous characters in her three mystery novels. Yes, I've read them.
Anyway, I'm going, thanks to info from a friend, and former student at OSU, Lynne Baldwin Matzell.
But I dug out the books and found this photo by Don. Had to try. 
Wanted to keep it abstract and failed. Chaco is all about geometry, on earth and in the heavens, and I've got to try again, keeping that in mind.
But here's the attempt--failed because of the infinite geometry of the bricks--should have left them alone.
Frustration in happiness--Chaco Canyon."

Stifling summer, IV--Of fiction and coincidence

Stifled this month by illness--actually infection, surgery and wound recovery, fiction became medicine in July.
Coincidence? Serendipity? I don't know, but instead of my usual diet of  good non-fiction, three novels and several short stories took my mind away from the science and facts of my daily existence.

First read was "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.   The first sentence is a killer, but afterwards I don't know: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
This famed South American author died recently and I was mortified that I'd never heard of him. He's know for "inventing "magical realism," and stories of common people. 
Unfortunately, as I posted on Facebook, I just don't get it. I am intrigued by his journalism background and want to read some short stories, but this book  frankly became boring and just dragged on. I gave up about two thirds of the way through. And will return. 
The book gets mixed reviews, many agreeing with me, but  my former student Farzana "Farzie" Abdul Razak, now of New York City, gives it five stars, and she's just deeper than I am, I guess.

Second novel was a quick and enjoyable read because it's the return of a favorite. Anne Hillerman's first novel "Spider Woman's Daughter" follows in the footsteps of her late father Tony Hillerman, who wrote mysteries set in the southwest and Navajo nation. 
Hillerman was Okie born, a journalist who worked in Oklahoma City, and then moved to New Mexico where he eventually started his famous novels, featuring Navajo Tribal Policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. His daughter brings them back to life, and weaves incidents from her father's stories into her award-winning narrative. I'm back home.

The third novel, just finished, is someone I should have read a long time ago, and the author was recommended by Farzie and others. Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" is a long one, built around the them that the old gods and magic of our immigrant ancestors die in America for lack of believers. Gods don't take root here.
Speaking of coincidence, this quote leads a chapter: "America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserve to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies the may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed."
The coincidence, serendipity? It's by Agnes Repplier, in "Times and Tendencies," another author I never heard of.  I looked her up, and she was an essayist who died in 1950. She was Catholic.
Her words echo the chapter we're discussing tonight in "Falling Upward," by Fr. Richard Rohr, that our should-detox group is using Sunday night. I wrote about this book  earlier this month, as one of the most important in my life.
Fr. Rohr's words: "Our problem now is that we seriously doubt that there is any vital reality to the spiritual world... . For postmodern people, the universe is not inherently enchanted, as it was for the ancients. We have to do all the "enchanting" ourselves. This leaves us alone, confused and doubtful... . This is the burden of living in our heady and lonely time, when we think it is all up to us."
Do you think that is coincidence? I do not.
Fiction is often more "real' than science.

The fourth book of fiction was one sent three years ago by my friend Jeanetta Calhoun Mish who operates Mongrel Empire Press, formerly of Norman and now of Albuquerque. 
"Blackjacks and Blue Devils" by Jerry Wilson has 14 stories "rooted in the red dirt and blackjacks of central and Western Oklahoma," where he was raised. The stories and images about poverty, despair and hope of Okies from the land runs up through the 1992 Irag war helped center me. It's been sitting on the shelf waiting and opened at the right time.
Good medicine and truth in fiction.