I no longer update The Literary Addict since I am so busy working on other projects. You can visit me at several sites linked on the sidebar to the right. Also, there are four pictures there of my book covers, so please look for me on Amazon as well.

There are many exciting projects in the works, and lots of writing to read at the links listed.

Thanks so much for all of your visits over the years!

love,

Lorette

I’m very excited to be doing more research on our heritage diet and will be bringing you another series of ‘controversial’ writings on nutrition, gluten, meat, fat, and the like, including an expose of how ‘The China Study” almost had me fooled. I’m currently peeling back layer after layer of propaganda and I’ll be sharing that with you very soon on an exciting new Paleo eating website!

On a less volatile note, I’m busy with two new spin offs from Fascinating People (fascinatingpeople.wordpress.com). Fascinating Queers launched at Out Impact Magazine, and starting next week, I’ll be covering Fascinating Canadian Women at Cahoots Magazine! I am also developing another column that you’ll be able to read regularly online later this spring- centred on major themes in history and their interpretation in mythology. Myth buffs will get their fill- not just of classical mythology, but of stories all around the world, how religions interpret them, how various cultures express the big questions, now and back through our history. All of this is very exciting and I’m very busy- but you will of course see entries again about my wild mood swings, and my compulsive reading habits.

Joy to all,
Lorette

Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (irreverent ramblings from the end of the world)
(by Lorette C. Luzajic)

but it wasn’t the longest title I found!

How to Teach Children About Money: A Step-By-Step Adult Guide to Help Children Learn About Earning, Saving, Spending and Investing Their Money
(by Hassell Bradley)

or:

Victorian Domestic Architectural Plans and Details: 734 Scale Drawings of Doorways, Windows, Staircases, Moldings, Cornices, and Other Elements (v. 1)
(by William T. Comstock)

Just try memorizing this one:

Amazons of the Avant Garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova
(by Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin)

and of special contemporary relevance:

Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us … and What to Do About It
(by Dick Morris)

This one sounds more interesting, though:

Hollow Earth: The Long And Curious History Of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations And Marvelous Machines Below The Earth’s Surface
(by David Standish)

For quite some time, this was the longest book title:

The history of the wars of New-England with the Eastern Indians; or, a narrative of their continued perfidy and cruelty, from the 10th of August, 1703, to the peace renewed 13th of July, 1713. And from the 25th of July, 1722, to their submission 15th December, 1725, which was ratified August 5th, 1726
(by Samuel Penhallow)

But 150 years later, it was outdone:

Our new West; records of travel between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean…with details of the wonderful natural scenery, agriculture, mines, business, social life, progress and prospects of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, including a full description of the Pacific railroad and of the life of the Mormons, Indians and Chinese
(by Samuel Bowles, 1869)

And again, it took another century and a half to write a longer title:

Daniel Radcliffe the story of the not so ordinary boy chosen from …….’ and ends with ‘to his ever royal crown of fame’

(1022 word title (That’s four pages long and I’m not going to write the whole thing out!)
for a book about actor Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame, by Dr Subramonian)

Dr. Subramonian may need this one by the time he’s done promoting the above:

A Handbook on Hanging, Being a short introduction to the fine art of Execution, and containing much useful information on Neck-breaking, Throttling, Strangling, Asphyxiation, Decapitation and electrocution; as well as Data and Wrinkles for Hangmen, an account of the late Mr. Berry’s method of Killing and his working list of Drops; to which is added a Hangman’s Ready Reckoner and certain other items of interest, New edition enlarged diligently compared and revised in accordance with the most recent Developments. All Very Proper to be read and Kept in Every Family.
(by Charles Duff)

Occasionally I hear myself talking in my memory, and I find it embarrassing. I don’t usually mind the fact that I’m brimming with ideas and opinions and discoveries and revelations and stories. Psychologists and clinicians refer to this human trait as hypomanic, or ‘pressured talking,’ aptly describing the intensity I might be feeling, and the wide variety of tangents I may go off on. I just accept that my mind spins quickly and that I’m enthusiastic. But there are occasions, certainly, when something I’ve written or talked about generates a bit too much controversy for someone who is sometimes quite shy. Worse, there are times when I have a very strong opinion, only to change my mind radically shortly thereafter.

It’s a good cardinal rule- to know something of what you’re talking about, and I’ve said it often enough myself- refrain from commenting unless I have read the text being commented on.

But there I am, in my mind’s recap, fuming and railing against ‘God haters’ with my friend Enzo, who has asked if I’ve read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Enzo is Muslim and definitely the most learned person of religious history I’ve ever met. He has read every book ever written about every religion, give or take. Most of the books he recommends I couldn’t possibly understand. This was one of them- because in this case, I hadn’t read the book. But there I am, yammering about the poisonous anti-mystical bent of this new rash of atheism books, including God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens.

To be fair, I’ve been raised by the literalist interpretation faction of Christianity- yep, right wing fundamentalism. So the knee jerk reaction is ingrained from the start- the Bible is, after all, divinely inspired and you sure as hell don’t question God or call Him a delusion.  But I’ve come a long way, baby, and have studied enough Scripture and history and psychology and science to know women are equal and genocide is not moral even if the Old Testament says so. I’ve added my own flaky comforts from the matriarchal nature faiths and de-condemned gays and black people from hellfire. I’ve had my doubts and my traumas and my grief and my disappointments with God, but I sure as hell have never called him a delusion.

But you never know where the spirit will lead you and this past week I’ve read both books cover to cover, by chance because of the sick, foul, vile garbage spewing from the mouths of “Christians” following the Obama election- the election of Satan in the form of nigger, pussy, Jew, raghead or faggot, I heard them all, pick your own conspiracy theory. Perhaps I was naïve in the first place to be shocked at the racism, homophobia, sexism, and bigotry of Christians today, given that faith is historically the primary motivator of ‘ethnic’ cleansing and hate crimes through all of history. But as with everyone else, it’s always been convenient of my church to blame the ‘other’ religions or the “other kinds of Christians who aren’t really Christians.”

I confess that the sick spewage of these ignoramuses has led to a complete collapse of my mystical leanings, and in defiance I signed these books out of the library to see what the atheists had to say for themselves.

And much to my surprise, both books are loving, compassionate, carefully thought out, witty, and as far as I can verify, quite factual. I admit that much of the science stuff in Dawkins went over my head- I’m still somewhat convinced by ‘irreducible complexity’ which he debunks, but I can’t argue for either never having had a strong science background. I come from a church that believes in the God snapped his fingers version of creation, but I’ve always felt okay not knowing the exact nature or our origin, a position I share with nearly seven billion others, and billions more before me. I couldn’t really believe we are this diverse and interesting without a little help from above, so I suppose I’d fall into the ‘intelligent design’ category of origin beliefs. And I likely still do, as I’m just too blonde to fully grasp the minutiae of scientific processes as complex as these.

On the other hand, both books were unbelievably fascinating accounts of religion through history and Biblical interpretation from thinkers who were not trained in Biblical apologetics. Additionally, my knowledge of other religious groups is limited to my spiritual dabblings here and there, nothing intensive. Both authors give an overview of historical atrocities led by Judaism- it’s all right there in the Old Testament, raping virgins, leaving no man woman or child alive, plundering lands, stoning anyone who works on Sunday or who failed to bleed on her wedding night- Christianity, and Islam, as well as other ‘cults’ or less populated, or obsolete faiths. I’ve always believed that humans love to kill and that we would find a way to war regardless of calling it holy or not, but the record shows something that might convince me otherwise- almost all ‘racism’ is actually ‘your God is wrong and mine is right.’

The fact remains, of course, that we don’t need to be atheist to reject the human interpretations of faith. But that leaves the question- from whom shall we then learn our experience of the divine? I’ve always felt that God is a sort of ‘sum of all parts,’ the whole, if you will, of universal experience. I’ve long left the fold that claims starving Hindu children in India are roasting in the pits of hell because they are godless. I believe that creativity is the reflection of God, that our unique talents and gifts reflect the spiritual. Is this just my personal mumbo jumbo, a cop out because I don’t want to believe I’ll never see my dead loved ones again?

After reading both books with an open mind, I have to give some credence to what I know deep inside anyhow: that religion may be universal, in whole or in part, because it is simply human nature to make sense out of what they don’t fully understand- that’s a no-brainer; we even call it the mystery or the mystical or the sacred, which mean exactly that, and of course, the other no brainer: religion as social control by men in power. Hence, the hatred of other cultures, of women, by the leaders of faith through the ages.

Despite our popular contention that humanity would go haywire with sin without God, both authors argue effectively that religion is the CAUSE of human immorality, including racism, murder, and sexual obsession. Those of you of any kind of faith, even you witchy new agers- have just recoiled from this statement, as did I before examining the evidence. You can’t argue with evidence, and the facts are truly disheartening when put into perspective. The perspective was unique, for a change, not because the authors were godbashing, but because they were making their arguments without emotion for one particular ‘side’ or faith. Each and every faith makes this argument- that OTHER religions cause immorality. That I had never made that connection when reading apologetics and philosophy is an embarrassment to my intellect that I’ve thankfully rectified.

But is that ALL God is? I’m still not convinced. Do I now take at face value the idea that we are not remotely spiritual beings? Of course not. I doubt I’ll ever claim to know exactly how we arrived here and what our presence means. And it isn’t these books that have opened my heart to seek knowledge of the origins of hatred and bigotry- it was those awful Christian bigmouths talking about how the new President should die along with all those abominable homos. The direct result of their actions was for me to search history for Christians who showed love- and while I found a few individuals and some group efforts, for the most part, I found nothing in the message bringers but genocide, punishment, torture, burning, raping, looting, vandalism, oppression, and repression.

I can no longer shy away from truth just because I don’t like it, and the truth is this: despite popular claims to the contrary, belief in God does not prevent people from moral atrocity. Indeed, it’s the other way around.

www.thegirlcanwrite.net

Lorette C. Luzajic

Well, because all the parts are here- actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, with cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Thomas Newman, nominated for Oscars 3,5,7, and 8 times respectively, plus Oscar winner Kathy Bates. The story is universal fodder for uncertain times- man’s search for meaning, in suburban hell. The real story is an important one that is not told often enough, – woman’s search for meaning in her role as wife, mother, and person. Though Leonardo questions his stifling, ludicrous job and the identity he forms there, his wife is told to see a shrink for feeling lifeless among the walking dead. It’s the post-war 1950s, and though hubby is tinkering around with the girls in the office and wifey is at home bored suicidal, to ask for an interesting life or to refuse to bear more children makes you a nutcase. When during an argument, Leo becomes violent and enraged and tells her how sick she makes him carrying his unborn child, the desperate wife looks into the abortion option. Polite society is no longer so polite.

Leo plays this guy again!

With a few million dollars and a bunch of Oscar-able actors, you’d think this could be made into a movie that isn’t so …boring. There were about eight amazing lines, and the rest of the writing was unbelievably forced. While I appreciate subtle unfolding in a film more than I do flashing lights and car chases, this had neither. It was an hour of sitting there wondering why Leo always plays the same guy. I respect Leo’s cool work buying limbs for landmine victims in Africa, and also his acting talent. Sometimes. Here, it looked like they were filming a theatre rehearsal. Leo was absolutely wooden. Where was the chemistry between Rose and Jack, albeit marred and used up, as marriage is wont to do?

Kate’s performance was subtle and strong, but not dazzling enough to make up for the monotony and some of the ridiculous lines she had to deliver. And for all the talk about the awesome cinematography, there wasn’t much to look at, and nothing arty in its absence.

Here and there some blood was pumped into the film, not enough to rescue it by any stretch, but enough to keep me from leaving my seat, just barely. When the toodle-looing neighbour, Kathy Bates, comes over and suggests Kate and Leo entertain her son, recently released from the funny farm, Kate welcomes the diversion. The couple finds their nut bar neighbour easy to talk to, and open their souls to him about suffering suburbia. Kate doesn’t feel he is crazy at all- he is tormented, truthful, and genuine, and he encourages them to get away from the hopeless emptiness Leo observes. Later, he comes for dinner and one of two scenes with an event occurs. Turns out Mr. Wacky Job is a bigger and better man than poser salesman Leo. Which leads to the big fight between husband and wife, the unsatisfying climax, and the still less satisfying denouement.

curl up with the book instead.

What went wrong? It would be easy to conclude that the subtext of feminist examination needed a feminine touch, but we had Kate’s very satisfactory one and it didn’t go far enough. Yes, the film is supposed to be bleak. Bleak, not boring. A bit of humour or colour beyond the nattering neighbours could have gone a long way. The script would need a total overhaul by another writer. Someone not so horribly heavy-handed. Remember what they told us in writing class: show, don’t tell.

Once Ann Landers did a secret study, asking people to anonymously report whether, if given the choice, they would go back and have children all over again. Fully seventy percent wrote back and said no way, no way, no way. It was earth shattering to the kind of social circles and societal pretensions portrayed in this film. It’s still earth shattering today. Because it’s still considered unnatural, crazy, and selfish for a woman to not want more children, or not want them at all. But really, we have  a population and environmental emergency where it’s actually most selfish and crazy to keep having kids- come on, what if all six billion of us have children? We’re already living that nightmare end.  For these reasons, any art reflecting on this topic is urgent viewing.

Otherwise, this would have been a one-word review: tedious.

Visit Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

I take my rightful place among a long lineage of artists and writers who felt such extremes, and whose creativity could not have manifest without. Yes, there are many creative people who don’t experience depression or the bizarre and exhilarating impulsivity and joy they call mania- you know, as in ‘maniacal.’ I don’t know those people, however, and the more I research history, the more I am convinced that the ‘bipolar mind’ is synonymous with creativity.

Thomas Chatterton, already a prolific and influential poet by age 17, committed suicide with arsenic before his 18th birthday

While this phenomenon has long been researched in relation to schizophrenia, with its trademark racing thoughts, the delusions and hallucinations, there is another madness called manic depression that explains the lucid periods of our artistic predecessors. Bipolars can range from fully functioning humans who are a ‘little offbeat’ or a little ‘moody’ or sensitive to those who swing between bedridden depression and speedometer busting psychoses. Those who go completely mad during mania can reach full-on psychotic breaks with delusions and bizarre behaviour, sometimes requiring hospitalization. It’s not always so extreme, however, and may simply manifest as rapidly spinning thoughts, heightened joy, extreme enthusiasm and productivity, speed talking, and radical impulsivity. Manic episodes that don’t necessarily interfere with functioning or ruin a person’s life are called ‘hypomanic,’ meaning ‘not quite as manic.’ The depressed phase can range from abject suicidal torment to listless functionality. Dispersed between these poles of experience are periods of complete normality. Creative people who experience this fluctuating range of sensitivities can produce work at all stages, most rapidly during mania.

Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison’s classic seminal study, Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, is a must-read for any bipolar person, and for anyone remotely interested in the link between creativity and ‘eccentricity.’ Students of art history and of literature do themselves a disservice to miss this valuable and fascinating scholarship. Jamison, one of the world’s experts on bipolar ‘disease,’ is herself manic-depressive. In this incredible exploration, she surveys a full range of artistic biography, from Coleridge to Schumann to Poe to Byron, documenting the mercurial temperaments and the creative productivity, and mapping the diagnoses of family relationships to show hereditary links.

Jamison eloquently maps patterns historically in the creative temperament, from drug and alcohol abuse to suicide, both traits extremely common to the bipolar person. She quotes thinkers and philosophers throughout history on the tempestuous minds of those possessed by the muse. While she points out clearly that not all bipolar people are talented writers or artists, the connection between creativity and manic depression is frequently occurring.

Intriguingly, I am not alone in feeling that my nature reflects nature, and Jamison, in a decidedly more scientific fashion, outlines the circadian rhythms of light, seasons, and weather and compares them to the biology of mania and depression. “The rhythms and cycles of manic depressive illness, a singularly cyclic disease, are strikingly similar to those of the natural world, as well as to the death-and-regeneration and dark-and-light cycles so often captured in poetry, music, and painting.”

Finally, after an incredibly vibrant journey through history, biography, music, painting, and writing, Jamison considers some volatile questions about our nature, about culture, and about the ethics or desirability of treatment. Will treatment, not available in the past, stop great art and music? Is it desirable to modify nature’s mood swings? “Clearly, a close association between the artistic temperament and manic-depressive illness has many implications- for artists, medicine, and society. Modern psychopharmacology and genetic research raise almost endless possibilities, both liberating and disturbing, but the ethical waters remain disconcertingly uncharted,” Jamison writes.

Touched by Fire, 1993, is by now a classic of bipolar literature, but I read it fresh and anew for the fourth time. This time, what I drew most from it was a sense of confidence. I commit to stop retreating from my temperament, hoping to appear more moderate and appease those peers who expect me to be anything buy my wild and creative self, prone to melancholy, prone to chaos, prone to joy. From now on, I will refuse to conform to a mold into which I do not fit; into from which nature herself recoils. Thank-you, Kay: I will celebrate the vividness of the highs, and see the truth in my depressions. It is upon these fluctuations that creativity flourishes.

Lord Byron

If you enjoy fascinating, creative, unusual biographies, you may enjoy writer Lorette C. Luzajic’s other blog, www.fascinatingpeople.wordpress.com.

You may also enjoy her book, The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos, available online through indigo or amazon.

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Astronauts-Wife-Poems-Eros-Thanatos-Lorette-C-Luzajic/9781847287335-item.html

Please support my blog by shopping for any books through this link:

chapters.indigo.ca

I admit Cormac’s strange style both intrigued me and frightened me away. He is known for dense and endless sentences, for not using quotation marks, for bleak themes, and for language that demands you read with a dictionary nearby. Because the subject matter tended towards the far spectrum of masculine, I didn’t make that effort until now, though I grew more and more curious about the master literary stylist. It takes a bit of patience initially to find the difficult rhythm, and then it takes you. McCarthy is Hemingway’s heir, and a thousand times better a writer.

Leading my special list for next year’s must-reads is another book with an incest theme, but Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex promises to much more cheery. It won the Pulitzer Prize winner in 2003, and I’ve been meaning to read it ever since. I was intrigued- there are not many books where the narrator is a hermaphrodite, but apparently it’s not as rare as we think. They walk among us. They may even be us: apparently, a convincing apparatus does not guarantee that nothing else is going on with our indoor plumbing. Anyhow, so many colleagues have mentioned how funny and brilliant this one is that my first read of 2009 is definitely going to be a walk on the wild side.

Hermaphrodite, Paris by Rolando Cervantes Gómez

I’ve decided the theme for 2009’s list is going to be filled with ‘shoulds.’ Only the most devoted of my readers will recall that a few years ago I wrote a lament to reading, a rarity in my usual praise of literature. In it, I let go of the stress associated with the impossibility of reading everything good, and I removed all shoulds from my list. I opened myself up to read anything or nothing, to pick up pulpy detective stories or soft porn. It’s been wonderful and lovely and the variety has been delightful. But I’m determined next year to kick my gossip mag habit once and for all. And that will take a little discipline. Now, I’m not against the importance of the Braddy Bunch. I’ve written at length on how celebrity is a surrogate mythology, a modern pantheon. We need our Medusas and our Ulysses and our sirens and our Furies and our Narcissi. But enough is enough, and I don’t want to be standing guard, wondering if Any Winehouse is still alive, when I could be reading Giller after Giller instead.

The Scotiabank Giller Prize is the largest cash prize for literature in Canada, fifty grand given annually to the best fiction, either novel or short story collection. The annual black tie gala announcing the prize is the kind of literati/glitterati function I revile, but I understand that the pretensions of society life have nothing to do with authors. I’m also grateful to that same circle of Canada’s upper echelon for the trickle down effect they have on reading literature, for bringing bucks and publicity to any writer. Though it does seem that the winner is always predictably Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, or Margaret Atwood, this is only true half the time. This year, the winner is Joseph Boyden, for Through Black Spruce. I love a book that has unexpected twists and turns, and a sucker for ‘looking for identity’ plots. Boyden has Metis heritage, and writes about aboriginal characters. He studied creative writing at the University of New Orleans, and lives between the north and south- Northern Ontario, and Louisiana. Those are two of my favourite places, and I’m hoping the book reflects something of this idiosyncrasy.

Year after year, Life of Pi shows up on my reading list, and it’s not exempt yet, as a Man Booker winner. Why can’t I seem to get into this book, heralded as an innovative, unusual and thrilling story? I’ve had this book on my shelf now for years, and it’s getting lonely. I take it out on one date, then put it back. Yet every one who has read it is incredibly enthusiastic. We’ll give it another whirl.

Forms of Devotion by Diane Schoemperlen is a 1998 winner of the Governor General’s Prize. Fifteen years in the book industry and somehow I never heard of it. Setting up those prize tables sifted all kinds of titles and names into my unconscious, but not this one. A quick look through my GG options and I leapt for this one. It’s an anthology of illustrated short stories, by an author I don’t know. I’m sorry that the list of prizewinners through the last three decades yields little that piques my curiousity, though I’ve read many and remember few. The Diviners, of course, Margaret Laurence’s outstanding piece of Canadiana, changed my life. But too many on this list are the predictably tedious efforts of writers who have made it, trying way too hard. So shoot me for this sacrilege.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones is another that’s been on ‘the list’ for awhile, even though the list had been technically abolished. The Pulitzer winner in fiction for 2004, this is a story about a former slave and a powerful white man in Virginia. It’s only fair to read this year’s Pulitzer as well, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Here, Junot Diaz has managed to feature a sympathetic character in Oscar, a fat nerd. Weaving Dominican- American history with a family curse and some love, it promises to be something new for a change, and not those GG borefests I referred to above.

Six- that’s it. I’m making a reasonable list, so that I attend to it instead of tossing it. Besides, I have to save room for all the poetry I review, and Wally Lamb’s long awaited 700 page The Hour I First Believed. I am determined to throw in a few classics next year also, it’s been a while since I devoted any time to books on the academic’s lists. And I’ll need at least a few sneak peaks at the Who Wore What pages.

What Posh Really Looks Like

While all that sickness was taking place in Europe, equally horrific conquests were taking place in the “New World.” Most of our history education here in Canada consisted of apologetics, how it wasn’t our fault, how we didn’t do it, and a few brief phrases about the European ‘explorers’ or ‘conquistadors.’ Diseases that the natives didn’t know of ravaged through them. Now one brave teacher told us about how the Europeans butchered east coast natives and made them into dog food to send back to the king’s pets. This detail of barbarism always stuck in my head, a black hole in the human heart.

Sure, I didn’t personally do it, and neither did you, but we have to stop glossing over the massacres in history, stop talking about military strategy and troops, and begin telling it like it is. Because none of us, maybe not even the few remaining natives of North or South America, have been told the full force of what went on.

Ines of My Soul, Isabel Allende’s 2007 epic novel of the Spanish in 16th century South America brings these days alive, with an eye for detail that will leave you sick to your stomach. Told from the viewpoint of the usually neglected Ines Suarez, a real life figure and a female conqueror of Chile, history comes alive. Allende captures the heady delusions of grandeur, the early excitement in Spain, the thrill of exploration for men. The Spanish hear tales of gold, of wild jungles, of ‘uncivilized savages’ who eat one another for breakfast and take multiple wives.

Ines’ first husband went off in search of the fabled city of gold, and she became sick of waiting in black, sewing, wasting her youth without love. She longed for freedom and decided to see what the world was like beyond Spain. So naïve that she didn’t know they wouldn’t see land for months on ship, she nearly bailed. She did survive the voyage, listening to a jaded man talk about life in the New World. He told her that the Spanish appeared on the shores of civilizations much grander than Spain’s, ransacked their wealth, raped their women, and expected them to worship two sticks sewn together. Ines, of course, is horrified by this blasphemy of the cross, but what she witnesses over her decades in South America is exactly that, but worse.

The history here focuses on Peru and Chile, detailing all kinds of native tribes and their cultures, whether grand like the Inca, or humble like dozens of tribes in the mountains and jungles. We know it happened, but it’s always told as if Christians went with a Bible and lovingly introduced the people to Christ. In our hearts, we know that isn’t how it was but don’t think about it. Allende forces us to look at what really happened: armed men, crazy for gold and power, filled with lust, staked their crosses wherever they wanted, raped and impregnated thousands of native women, made these mothers and the mestizos- ‘half-breeds’- into slaves, skinned the savages, cut off their hands and feet and noses, desecrated their graveyards, beheaded anyone they thought was a sinner, paraded the heads around half drunk on glory, filled their ships with emeralds and gold and silver that belonged to those who already lived there, all in the name of God. And disease- God’s will, of course, on the savages- disease the so-called explorers or conquerors spread sexually during their gang raping of any woman or child they could put their filthy hands on. Disease came from Spain not because these ‘civilized’ men of God were so superstitious they did not bathe- immersing in water was sin. Of course, it was not sin to rape and pillage and kill and then say, ‘this is mine.’

I’ve met many, many ‘civilized’ and ‘educated’ people who have a strange way of thinking about conquest. They insinuated, or spoke outright, that the conquered must have been weak, or that they liked it. Well, perhaps. Should we rape and steal from the weak? Then head down to the Sally Ann or the local women’s shelter and take your fucking pick, asshole. They may not have been weak- they may have been MEEK. Hospitable. Ines reports how some of the tribes could be conniving, but some did not have words or concepts for lies and manipulations, because a person’s word was always true. Tricking people doesn’t make you victorious, it makes you sick. Perhaps the people should have been less hospitable, or had better weapons, whatever it is men think to justify their sins. But imagine today, right where you are- at home with your family, watching Everybody Loves Raymond. Maybe you’re atheist, in vogue today, or you are Protestant, and one kid is off at Awana but the others are playing Monopoly. You’re not expecting anyone, so you’re not on guard. You’re relaxed. Suddenly, the door crashes through and some ancient Christians are standing there with some severed limbs. They fully expect you right now to convert to Catholicism, and they are telling you they just came on a ship from Europe, and that they now own your house and yard. Of course, you think this is absurd and totally immoral, and they can’t do this, it’s ridiculous. But now they tie up your kids and cut off your hands, or begin torturing you. They rape your wife repeatedly. They open the freezer and begin warming up some pizza in the oven, grab a bag of chips, and take over the living room, in time for a King of Queens rerun. When your kid gets dropped off from Bible Fun Group, he sees this awful horror. The men seize him and expect him to start slaving for them.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Ha! I can hear my detractors, telling me not to be so dramatic. That not all missionaries are or were evil. This is absolutely true. Many followed to try to bandage the wounded left in the darker one’s wake. Many charitable saints have walked the earth. But if you think that any of this is exaggeration or hysteria, you are incredibly naïve.

Then, of course, the priests condemned Ines for living for a decade, loyally and faithfully, with a man, General Pedro de Valdivia, a man she could not legally marry because she did not know whether her first husband was dead or alive. Though Pedro reportedly  had a wife back in Spain, it was Ines who was treated like a whore. The men had servant women they plucked out of any tribe they wished, knocking them up and leaving them to die, but that was easily overlooked in contrast to the crimes of a grown woman who stayed true to one man.

Ines crossed the dessert with this man and built Santiago with her own hands.

Ines de Suarez

Ines is a real woman, though little has ever been mentioned of her as the glory (I call it shame) belongs only to the men of that era. Allende deftly brings the story alive, telling it from the ‘victor’s’ perspective, subjugated enough to talk truthfully about what she did and what she saw. At times, it’s hard to fit the pieces of history together, especially when there are so many holes, conveniently unfilled, where our ancestral barbarism is glossed over. I understand that it’s hard to cope with the truth, but we have to. I also understand that it’s complicated- all humans are in some way victims of their era’s philosophy and doctrine. I doubt that every Christian who went over to the New World dreamed of raping and murdering, but they were incited to rabid lust and power, hyped to fear the half-animal cannibals they thought they would encounter. Nonetheless, most went with greed in their hearts, not just adventure, expecting to rob the people of gold and jewels, and tame their non-Catholic ways.

By writing this book, Allende has helped bridge history. Today we know that the Spanish and Portuguese colonized South America, and my friends from Peru have been Catholic for centuries. They speak Spanish. We live in Toronto, a magnificent city where somehow everyone from every corner of the world gets along and shares their food, and it’s all very nice and very sweet. So we don’t always see the pieces, how this came to be, and what it was really like elsewhere.

Allende does not look away or flinch. She does not minimize the atrocities her people committed. She does not idolize, either, the nature of the people already populating South America, recognizing their moral strengths and weaknesses. She does not lump all of the native tribes together, either, but tells of the customs, civilizations, languages, temples, tents, and graves of different groups of people with different ways.

Pedro de Valdivia

It might be easy to say that this is a work of historical fiction. And many, shame on you, are thinking, it’s by a woman and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. If that’s the case, evidently you know nothing of Isabel Allende, who researches with painstaking care: in this case, four years of intensive Spanish reading. She experienced the aftermath of Chile, born there to a prominent political figure, raised there before fleeing to Peru. Now she writes from the United States, where she met her second husband during a book tour. She says her imagination was used here only to thread the facts together. However, the problem with most books on war is that they leave out those details so inconsequential to men- the warfare tactic of rape and impregnation, used in every war. There are orphanages full of these offspring right now in Serbia and Romania. Because it’s  ‘a given’ most men barely mention it when writing their fiction, making it truly fiction.

It’s important to know how history did its dirty work. We always toss out that familiar quote by Santayana- ‘those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.’ But we don’t remember the past, because it’s icky, because we don’t want to shoulder any of the blame. Because we don’t want to know how we came to have the things we have.

I admit it was utterly depressing to read this book, despite the lively tales and the lush details and the amazing adventures and all the excitement. When I closed it, I felt such utter despondency at the human race, something that I was already suffering from after reading about those other soldiers of God- the Protestants. Today they are each still blaming each other.

The despair I felt thinking about what it means to be a hero was insurmountable. A character in the story, talking to Ines to prepare her for the inevitable, said it all: all men care about is eating, fucking, and killing. Is this really how it is, how it’s always been?
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A coincidence might be important in and of the simple fact that it draws our attention to an occurrence, rather than letting it slide by without registering or without contemplation.

Random examination of potential meaning in life leads to more meaning in life.

Yes, there is quite possibly a logical explanation for most synchronicities. And that very explanation is probably the answer you are looking for. It is not debunking but discovering.

Glass Abstract 4 by Ralph Martin

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Still, it can be intimidating to try to harness that muse when you’re holding something like Sue Sinclair’s Breaker in your hand. I wonder often whether the world really needs any more poetry, but then I read something like this, and know we can’t live without. We sleep side by side with eternity, and never touch, she writes. Birds that fly into that eternity- they are “chips of bone in the sky.”

Here’s a few lines from Portugal Cove, Night, that express something perfect that I’ve never been able to.

Shivering, you realize he’s the one
you’ve called on to keep chaos at bay-
how foolish you were.

Using nature to describe the nature of the heart is the oldest trick in the book, yet Sue manages somehow to make it all fresh, waves, stars, trees and all, as if the world itself was new and just unfolding. Breaker is her fourth book and I’ll be looking for the first three. Even their titles are poems of their own: The Drunken Lovely Bird, Secrets of Weather and Hope.

Like Sue, David O’Meara has also been shortlisted for a variety of prestigious awards, and he won the Archibald Lampman award in 2004. His third collection, Noble Gas, Penny Black is the kind of book you should read in a bar with a notebook open, scrawled thoughts littering page after page You read, you muse, you swig, you jot things down. You wish you smoked again, so that you could occasionally fumble for matches, or lean to the guy at the table next to you and say, “Got a light? Hey listen to this:”

Arriving here, across the blue sheet
at the inside of your thigh:
that supple groove

or

The sandwich was crap, the tea
magnificent

then,

the air all Bogart
with smoke and goodbyes.

John Donlan’s Spirit Engine is the last book of poetry I will read this year, so I leap right into the last lines as if to read my fortune for the next year.

yet once there wasn’t a single living thing
on earth: chemicals, complex mixes, lightning, and
something began remaking itself, stubborn,
creeping like happiness across the landscape.

Perhaps it’s cheating to sneak a peek at endings, to skim poems, or chew them, or reread them over and over, or perhaps that’s how you are supposed to experience a book, sprinting through the pages that aren’t relevant today but might be tomorrow. If the end is most important today, then a beginning may be more important tomorrow.

Regardless of the correct literary protocol, of the poet’s chronology here (John dates each poem, and they go in order), you’ll need to, want to, go through and ruminate and ponder. Donlan lives surrounded by Ontario wilderness, and you’ll want to pack this volume when you go canoeing, read it by a campfire, reflect on nature’s serenity and calamity with the poet while in its midst.

You can sing about the rain, he writes, but it won’t do a damn bit of good.

Oh, but it will. Another song about the rain, another poem about the sea. There is nothing new under the sun, oh, no, and so what flows out of my pen won’t exactly won’t shatter the earth with originality. We write of rain, of love, of eternity, same as all the poets before us, and those yet to follow. What is the meaning of this? Perhaps nothing. Or perhaps, as John writes, Birds repeat their parents’ songs as if their lives depend on it.