What There's Time For

Sunday Morning Chilly

Mr. PokesSisterInTheEyeForFunPants woke up Sunday at 6.  Lazy parents that we are, we tried to ignore him until he headed upstairs on his own at 7.  Even then, I didn't move real fast, which meant I had only myself to blame for the scene the top of the stairs...

And in the living room...

It would have been too cute if he'd said he was making pancakes, but, no, he was "building something".

Rapid cleanup, potty, clothes... we headed out the door for the Bäckerei, just the two of us on a late August morning that felt like Fall.  

Highlights from my little narrator:

"Wow, it's very chilly this morning!"

"Are the slugs chasing me?"

"Do slugs make noise?"  (I explained about the necessary lungs/throat/mouth/tongue...)

"Yeah, but they can have babies, and mommies, and daddy slugs."

"I feel very warm in my sweater, thank you, Mommy."  (His sweater from last year still fits, just a bit short; I do have yarn in mind for a new one.)

He even held my hand willingly for a little while.

 

And (with a great deal of coaxing) ate carrot soup for dinner (based on SouleMama's recipe, but much heavier on the carrots since half the tomatoes I bought three days ago were already rotten, and with milk instead of cream because our cream was a month past date).  I can't believe it's taken me this long to realize he eats soup at school... he might eat soup at home, if it's pureed to within an inch of it's life.

First Year Favorites and Piglet's New Home

Thank you all for your wonderful comments all the time and especially on my blogiversary!  It makes my day to hear from you.  

In case you want the Cliff's Notes version of the past year, here are the favorite posts everyone mentioned (yes, some people chose more than one - I am not complaining!):

Overheard

What does the news have to do with me?

The Perfect Gentleman

Reminders

Love

A Free Knitting Pattern for the Brave

If I had a trip like this for every dress I sewed...

About the Big Question

I Can't Hear You When You Talk Like That

The Worst Idea Ben Franklin Never Had

And, drum roll, please....  Piglet will soon be on his way to... 

 

Mike!!!  (Whose favorite post was Overheard and who was the first commenter on Friday's post... what are the odds a random pick would pick number 1?  (That's a trick question.)  In case you're wondering, I used RANDOM.ORG, which generates random numbers using "atmospheric noise".  Yep.)  

Congratulations, Mike, and thanks, everyone, for playing!

Here We Go Random

 I've started a sweater for Shmoogie's birthday.  I know it doesn't look like much, but that's the whole back and more than half of both fronts (it's a bolero/cardigan thing).  I decided to be clever and knit the fronts simultaneously, so that I'd be sure they matched and so that I wouldn't knit one and then never find the oomph to knit the other one (it's happened).  No sooner had I cast on, though, than I discovered a wrinkle - the shaping for the curved bottom is done on the knit rows for the left front, but on the purl rows for the right front.  I figured I could deal with that.  Then I got to the end of the front increases, which is also the beginning of the armhole decreases, and realized that somehow I was one stitch short on one of the sides (which I was having trouble keeping separate in mind, anyway, because I put them on the needles left first, then right, which made sense somehow in my head because I'm looking at them and the left is on my left and the right is on my right, except that the left is supposed to be the baby's left, so they're coming off the needles with the sides together instead of the fronts, not that that matters, it's just confusing).  I added another stitch on the last row, figuring that evened up the weird one-row mismatch between the sides, anyway.  But somehow that confused me (or maybe the issue was trying to do this while watching tv late at night at the end of a long week that had included unfortunately little sleep, I don't know) and the next thing I knew, I'd managed to bind off to start the armhole on both sides of the right (or was it the left?) front and put the next row of armhole/neck shaping on the left (or was it the right?) front only.  Oops.  Surgery will be required.  I hate that.  Chastened, I think I shall proceed one front at a time once I get things straightened out, especially since the instructions seem to get only more confusingly almost-mirror image from here.  I should have just done them simultaneously, reading the instructions for one side and mirror-imaging for the other.  Except that might not have worked.

Mr. NaturalConsequencesPants gave himself and me a good scare yesterday - I came into the kitchen, Shmoogie on my hip, to get him to go down for a bath and found him with the string of my apron wrapped around his neck.  I lunged to get it off and he lunged away from me, grinning like the devil, only to find himself flat on his back on the tile, string still around his neck, but - thank God - not in a solid knot and not constricting his airway.  He cried, I figured a way to hang the aprons without the string hanging enticingly, and I hope he's learned memorably that cords do not belong around his neck.

I have never been so sad to feel the summer heat waning, probably because it isn't really that hot, but also because it means that soon the gelato places will all close for six months, which is seriously depressing.

 

I read last night that ridiculous numbers of people would like airplanes to be segregated to keep families away from "normal" travelers.  People need to get a grip.  I could rant a good bit on this, but instead I'm just going to say that I think this is just one more facet of how our society finds children highly distasteful, which is, I think, a natural outgrowth of the hyperindividualism identified by Bill McKibben in his brief essay Where Have All the Joiners Gone?.  I think it's terribly sad how unhappy so many people are (and, no, I'm not saying that anyone that doesn't want to sit next to a baby on a plane is necessarily an unhappy person), and even sadder how we so rarely realize that it is exactly our hyperindependent, hyperindividual, hyperlonely existences that are making us so sad... which makes it really tragic that all these unhappy people reflexively grasp for even more isolation, thinking that's what will make them happier.

I can't wait 'til the boy doesn't need a nap anymore instead of just not taking a nap anymore.

Last but not least, rainbows at dusk are amazing enough to get napless just-gone-to-bed boys back out of bed to see.

 ***

I plan to announce the Piglet winner tomorrow...

His Mommy Decided

Maybe I'm overreacting here, but I really hate it when people tell misbehaving children, "You're a naughty boy/girl!"  I think it sends the wrong message.  Children are children.  Behavior is naughty or nice. 

Today Mr. SometimesNicePants came home from school and started jumping on the couch, narrating to himself, including, "Now I'm going to jump on the couch because I'm a very naughty boy!"

What?  Actually, it turns out, according to Mr. SometimesNicePants, Moritz (another boy at school, name changed) is a very naughty boy.

Oh, why is that?  I asked, expecting to hear about the toy Moritz took or the rocks Moritz threw.

"Because they decided his name would be Moritz and he would be a very, very bad Moritz," he informed me most matter-of-factly, "I think his mommy decided he could be a very very naughty Moritz.  I think his mommy decided that."

I asked Mr. SometimesNicePants if he was a naughty boy, too, if people said that about him today.

"No!  I'm a very nice kid because I can help people when Moritz hits them."

I said that was great and then explained how I didn't think Moritz was a naughty boy, but that he was instead just a boy who sometimes did naughty things.

Mr. SometimesNicePants would not stand for this, "No!  No!  No!  He is a naughty boy because his mommy decided he should be a very naughty Moritz!"

Ah, the power of mommies.  Did you know we even get our own breakfast cereal?  Mr. SometimesNicePants spotted the box on the counter and asked, "Is that for you?"  I guess so?  "Yeah," he seemed pleased, "because, see, it has mommies on it."

The No-More-Excuses Towel Bib Tutorial!

Once upon a time, when Mr. ThreapingThreePants was a wee little thing just learning to feed himself and it became clear to me that store-bought bibs were useless, a very dear and generous someone mentioned that in her day, people made bibs from towels that just slipped over baby's head and covered everything.  Hmmm, said I, interesting, in exactly the way people do when they're not really listening.

Dear and generous someone took that as an open invitation and soon presented me with a huge stack of towels and five colors of cotton/spandex ribbing.  And a sewing machine already set up for my visit.

What was I supposed to do?  I made about a dozen of them (with someone marveling throughout that You do this so well! and I'll really have to learn how to do this!) and put the project behind me.

A few months later, what should appear before me but a new stack of towels, pretty striped ones this time, and new (coordinating!) ribbing.  Dear and generous someone had been struck with artistic bib inspiration at the handtowel sale table, but still felt a little unsure of the actual sewing... would I mind?

Who am I to stand in the way of artistic expression through terry cloth?  I made the pretty striped bibs.

Now, years later, here we are with Shmoogie learning to feed herself and the original bibs are still with us.  (They don't keep banana mush out of her hair any more than they did with Mr. ThreapingThreePants, nor do they interfere with Shmoogie's own careful experiments regarding gravity - exactly as I remember her brother doing, she will pick up a small piece of food from the tray, lean waaaaaay over the side of the high chair, peer studiously over the edge, and drop! the food bit, watching intently as it hits the ground and - amazing! - stays there.)

Now, it's not like these bibs wear out, so we still have plenty of them.  They get a little stained, though, which must be the reason that in the past few months, this stack of supplies has come piecemeal through the mail, the latest one with a sweet little note...

Finally, I get it!  I get it!  You really really want a tutorial on making towel bibs!  Not that there aren't others out there, but this is how I do it.

How to Make a Towel Bib

Supplies:  1 hand towel (generously sized, but I'll warn you that too thick and cushy just makes for too much laundry space and drying time), 1/4 yard of cotton/spandex ribbing (1/4 yard is enough for several bibs), also a permanent marker, a 6" diameter paper plate, and basic sewing machine/thread/needle/scissors/pins.  Use a normal to slightly longish straight stitch throughout the project.  And remember - perfectionism has no place in useful baby projects!  Just do it!

 

Step 1:  Lay your towel upside down on a flat surface.  Place your circle template (the paper plate or bowl or whatever) in the middle of the towel (widthwise) and about 3/4's of the way toward one end (lengthwise).  Trace around the template with your permanent marker.

Step 2:  Cut out the circle you've traced, being careful to leave the rest of the towel intact.  Cut a bit outside the permanent marker line so you'll be sure there's no marker in your final project.  Cut a long rectangle (5"-5.5" tall and 15" long) on the cross-grain of the ribbing fabric (so that the ribs make vertical lines when your rectangle is horizontal, like this ||||||||||||||||||).  You might want to try putting the towel on an actual baby at this point, if you have one available.  The hole should fit easily over baby's head - the ribbing will fill in the extra space and too tight a fit over the head will make baby angry (not that I would know...).  Remember, too, that babies grow!  And these bibs are very useful all the way through toddlerhood.

Step 3:  Lay the front side of your ribbing (there might be a subtle difference between the two sides - the front side is the one with deeper ridges) against the back side of your towel, matching the raw edges of the ribbing with the raw edge of the circle opening you've cut and starting from the back of the neck.  Starting a half-inch from one end of the ribbing, stitch the ribbing all the way around the circle, stretching the ribbing (but not the towel) as you go (stretch as much as reasonable, you will have to provide some counter pull to the fabric behind the needle to keep from working against the feed-dogs).  When you get all the way around the circle, make sure to pull the extra half-inch of ribbing you left at the beginning out of the way and stitch right up to it.

Step 4:  Using the ribs as a guide for a straight line, match up the first end of the ribbing with the final end (there will be extra fabric at the final end).  (With right sides together, but you knew that.)  Pin and stitch with a half-inch seam allowance, then cut off the extra ribbing.

Step 5:  Turn the whole thing right side out.  Starting from the back seam, fold the ribbing in half and turn the raw edge under a quarter to a half an inch and pin in place all around the neck.  This is the most fiddly part, you may have to try a few times to avoid twists in the ribbing.  I find it best to put the first pin in at the back seam, which is easy to line up, then figure out the center front, then the sides, then a pin in between each of those (eight pins total).

Step 6:  Top stitch around the whole neck very close to the folded-under edge you've just pinned.  Then top stitch again, about 1/4 inch inside the line you just stitched.  This extra line keeps the neck lying nice and smooth over the long run.

All done!  Find a baby to admire your work on!

Mr. NoPants, meet "Natural Consequences"

Yesterday.

Mr. NoPants wakes up at 5:15.  (NOT normal.)  He dozes in our bed for a little while and then demands food, so Daddy gets him his oatmeal, which he takes two bites of and then refuses to stay in his chair, claiming he is no longer hungry, which means that when I arrive on the scene, Daddy is pissed off, Mr. NoPants is wailing, "DADDY TOOK MY FOOD AWAY!!!  BUT I'M HUNGRY!!!!!" (though still not sitting in his chair) and all that wakes Shmoogie, which means I get to go nurse her and let Daddy continue to deal with the situation, which he does, admirably, including getting Mr. NoPants fully dressed for school.

Then, Daddy leaves for work and soon Mr. NoPants is in time out for some very good reason (like, kicking his sister) and suddenly he wails, "I'M ALL WET!!!!" and I think, oh, he's turned on the shower on himself (which has happened a few times lately, though not since he half-drenched himself and demanded new clothes and I refused, since we were heading out the door), but then when I open the door after the timer goes off, there he is standing next to his rumpled pants, underwear, and one sock (still wearing his shirt and other sock) and looking at me pitifully saying, "My pants got wet," and I say, "Oh, how did that happen?" and he says, "Because I peed on them," and I say, "Why did you do that?" and he says, "Because I didn't know how to get to the potty," (the potty being mere inches from the scene of the "accident") and I say, "I don't think that's true, but here, you can wipe it up," and after a HUGE fit about that, he finally does it and I tell him we're about to leave and he needs to go get new clothes from his dresser if he wants to be wearing clothes when we go to school.

Which sounds insane, right?  Except that I swear multiple parenting books have used exactly this scenario (refusing to dress oneself for the day in a timely manner) to illustrate the proper application of "natural consequences," which is the most highly recommended form of discipline whenever possible (it's really a shame that the "natural consequences" of children's actions are often at least as painful for the parents).

So, time comes and he hasn't gotten any clothes and I tell him I'm going to go grab his clothes to take with us unless he goes to put them on right now and he says, calm as you please, "That's OK - I want to get dressed at school."  I grit my teeth, muster as much resolve as I can for the distinct possibility that I will actually be walking my child into school with no pants on, and shove the necessities in a bag and Mr. NoPants out the door.

As soon as we're in the hallway, he starts wailing, "I can't walk!  I don't have any shoes on!" and I tell him that's too bad.

Much moaning and griping later, we finally get to the car and I open his door, put in the bag of clothes and tell him, as calmly as possible, as if I don't care at all what he chooses, "If you want to put your big boy pants on before I buckle you in, they're in this bag," and go to put Shmoogie in her seat.

"No, I don't want to," says he, cool as a cucumber, and climbs into his seat.

No sooner have I (very carefully!) buckled him in than - surprise! - he discovers "This is uncomfortable!  I don't like this!" and I (oh, kind mother!) offer him the opportunity to get out and put his big boy pants on.  Which he takes, although not without significant begging me for help, even though he is definitely capable of getting them on himself (clearly, he has not yet realized the kind of resolve Mommy has mustered for this battle).

Then, as we get close to school and discover that the street is still blocked off, he realizes we'll be walking a bit of a distance and starts howling, "I CAN'T WALK!!! I DON'T HAVE MY SHOES ON!!!" and I (oh, kind mother!) offer him the opportunity to put on his shorts and shoes (I do help with the socks, those are tricky) by himself before we head off.  Which he takes.  Eagerly.

And, much to my relief, that is how I refused to back down and yet did NOT have to suffer the horror of being the parent who dared to bring her kid to school with no bottoms on.  (Please let it never come to that!)

Paltry Pickings Prevent Alliterative Accuracy

I've been puzzling and puzzling over the wildly inaccurate, but deeply held stereotype of the "Terrible Twos".  Everyone talks about them.  Everyone smiles knowingly when you say your child is about to turn two, or is two, or was once two, and says, "Oh, the Terrible Twos!"

But then when your child is three and he appears to be possessed almost constantly by a particularly pernicious demon sent from the far side of Hades and you say, mystified, "The Terrible Twos were nothing, why didn't anyone tell us about the Threes?" and other parents say, "That's weird, our kid was much worse at three, too, I guess we just got lucky with two," and then everyone shrugs and is quickly distracted by the look of devilish malice on the face of the Three as he tiptoes towards his defenseless baby sister.

Clearly, the problem is that we all like a pithy alliterative phrase and the "Terrible Twos" has got punch.

See, the 't' sound is a pretty common one.  Not so hard to find something to go memorably with "Two".  But 'th'?  The voiceless dental fricative is pretty rare in the world's languages (though obviously holds it's own in English).  Add the 'r' to match the initial consonant cluster of "three" and all I can come up with (after a perusal of Miriam-Webster) is the "Thrashing Threes", the "Threatening Threes", and the "Throwing Threes", which are all rather ho-hum.  So, I'm going to open it up to the "chiefly Scottish" category and declare the "Thrawing Threes" (from 'to traw' meaning 'to be in disagreement') to be a distant runner up to the clear winner...

"The Threaping Threes!"

(from 'to threap' - rhymes with 'bleep'! - meaning 'to scold, to chide'; or 'to maintain persistently')

Think it'll catch on?

(While we're on the subject of rare phonology, I've been wanting to tell you for ages that one of Shmoogie's most favorite sounds is the Welsh 'll', also known as the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative, which I was once told is a sound unique to Welsh, but apparently is also found in Navajo, Hmong, and a few other languages.  Prepare your mouth to say "la" and then use your throat to say "ha" instead.  She's also fond of the similar sound made by inhaling through the same arrangement.)

I was so fed up with the Threaping Threes last week, that I announced to Mr. Right that I was going to go to the fabric store (for the first time since moving here) by myself on Saturday morning.  But then Saturday morning rolled around and Mr. Right needed a haircut.  So, after some complex negotiations with Mr. ThreapingThreePants (first he wanted to go with me and Daddy would take Shmoogie, then when I impressed upon him that this was a very special treat to go with me and that he would have to be very very good, he pout-scowled for a few minutes and then decided he would rather go with Daddy... then had a fit once they actually left the house, but by then it was too late),I went to the fabric store with Shmoogie.

 

It was awesome.  I hardly even cared that they have no elevator and I had to carry the stroller up two flights of stairs to see all the fabric and the patterns.  Wools and linens and silks like you wouldn't believe.  Novelties like crazy... can I tell you how much I want a pencil skirt made out of stretchy knit with a loopy surface of bright red shiny stuff inspired by cassette tape tape?  I know, makes no sense.  When would I wear such a thing?  How would I hem such a thing?  Questions perhaps better left unanswered.  (I spent all my cash on patterns and they don't take credit card, so I don't own the red shiny stuff.)

Then, in an attempt to balance the scales back a bit from my altered Saturday plans, I went to a knitting thing Sunday afternoon, during which - I learned afterwards - neither child napped, so Mr. Right took them on a long walk, ending in Schnitzel and beer, which Shmoogie spilled a large portion of just because it looked interesting...

Mr. ThreapingThreePants sweetly told Mr. Right, "That's OK, Daddy, because there's more beer" ....but Shmoogie soon took care of that, too.

I had a lovely time knitting and, to be honest, I don't feel even slightly guilty.

First Blogiversary Celebration Giveaway for YOU!!!

 

Wooooooooooooooo!!!  I am celebrating today - my first post went up a year ago and since then... well, I'm kind of astounded by what there's been time for, to be honest.  I haven't even had time to go back and read it all.  I did find time to knit up a new banner to test some things and it turns out that my brilliant idea for knitting intarsia in the round (I knitted this in the round and then stitched two lines and cut) is not entirely new and needs some refinement to avoid ugly stitch distortion, plus is irritatingly fiddly.  If I ever get around to my Child's Christmas in Wales stocking idea, I think I'll be planning them so as to do without intarsia.

So...  BLOGIVERSARY!  I could go on and on about various nuances of this blogging thing, but how about we just hit the big points?

First, thank you ALL so much for stopping in here and reading so often.  Even if you don't leave a comment (sniff!), it means a lot to me that you choose to read my blog amongst the many many things you could be doing with those few minutes every day.  A bunch of you already noticed yesterday that you can now "like" What There's Time For on Facebook (there's a button over there in the sidebar), and I didn't even point it out to you!  You rock!

Second, blogging has made me a happier parent.  On a day like today, when I drove Mr. ThreeWithAVengancePants to school, visions of a nice morning naptime for Shmoogie and blogiversary blogging time for me dancing in my head, only to find the entire street totally closed (some festival, I think, but you'd think they could put up a WARNING, you know, YESTERDAY?) and decided I'd rather just have a different kind of morning than try to find a parking place and walk with a baby on my back and a not-at-all-wanting-to-go-to-school-because-it's-Friday-and-his-favorite-teacher-isn't-there boy for... half a mile? I wasn't even quite sure how far away the Umleitung had dumped me...

Anyway, we enjoyed a beautiful drive the loooooong way around (no going back home the way we'd come!  all streets had become one-way overnight!), through dappled shade, past fields looking something like this, but sunnier...

 

...and instead of being pissed off about my ruined morning, I was smiling about the beautiful drive and the chance I now had to share that beautiful picture (credit to Mr. Right) with you.

Other than becoming, say, a farmer, I don't think there's anything quite like becoming a parent/(cough!)mother  to blast into your brain how very very much energy living things - including the vast majority of humans - put into simply getting from one day to the next.  I find myself hardly outraged at all anymore over the near-total absence of women (especially mothers) from "history".  Now, as I spend all day washing the same dishes I washed yesterday, making more food in the same pans that I made yesterday, washing the same laundry that I washed yesterday, wiping the same faces (and floors) that I've wiped three times already this morning, reading the same books that I've read three times a day for the past eon... it's more like, Oh, duh.  There was no time for a mother to record her story.  And, really, I'm sure her story looked quite bland an unremarkable to all the important people out there doing real, lasting things, so why would they have bothered to record her story for her?  And how could they have done it justice if they'd tried?

Which is why I feel so privileged to be able to share my little story here, my one water drop in the vast ocean of mothers' stories, told and untold, heard and unheard.  It's a pretty awesome thing, even if all I'm doing most days is trying to keep myself laughing and hope you laugh with me.  At the end of the day, it's a real balm to have one silly little blog post, one actual completed thing that won't be undone for me overnight by adorable little elves.

Now that you've waded through all my philosophizing this week... here's your chance to win a prize!  A Piglet prize!

 

Mr. TWAVPants loves his Piglet.  Too much for his Piglet's own good, really, since his Piglet (having been played with, thrown up on, bathed, chewed, squeezed, and repaired) now looks kind of like a mutant cross between Piglet and Beaker.  

 

Mr. TWAVPants loves his Piglet so much that when he saw your Piglet, he decided that he needed two Piglets.  He's grudgingly come around to the idea of mailing the new one to someone, though, so leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite post of the blog so far ("That one where you couldn't find the coin slot for the laundry!" would be good enough) and I'll put your name in the hat!  (Comments will be open for a week.)

Thank you!

Love

Now, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel is one you really should read.  I'll admit I "read" it by listening to the audio version, but I also have the hard copy and actually pull it out to look up passages sometimes.  It's that good.

 

The most beautiful and the most funny writing about religion and faith I've ever read is in this book.  Pi comes from a secular Hindu family and yet by the age of sixteen has become, without his parents' knowledge, a devoutly practicing Hindu, Christian, and Muslim.  And also feels a "kinship" with his atheist teacher, saying "...atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith.  Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap."

 

 

 

I often feel like Pi upon his first introduction to Christianity - after a kindly Catholic priest relates the christian narrative to this curious boy, his irate reaction is, "What a downright weird story.  What peculiar psychology," followed by several other pages of total hilarity - you really should read it.

 

Pi is ultimately won over by the astonishing humanity of God made flesh in Jesus, and by the priest's only answer to all of his logical questions:  "Love," repeated again and again.  Which are also the reasons I call myself a christian (is that supposed to be capitalized?), even though I have only tenuous ties to any organized religion at this point and I never know quite what to say to those people who actually ask you, "Are you a Christian?"  (I figure they, at least, are capitalizing it.)

 

 

It's a good story, too, in its own right.  A big adventure.  A bit of a riddle.  And if you don't laugh out loud at the scene where Pi's family is converged upon at the beach by the priest, the pandit, and the imam, each (unbeknownst to the other) bent on praising Pi's parents for the ardent religious devotion of their son... well, if you don't laugh out loud at the fallout, I don't know what you would laugh at!

 

***

 

That's it for my little influential books series, thanks for playing along and don't be shy about chiming in!  Don't forget to come back tomorrow, either!  (Can anyone guess what it is?)

 

Here's Shmoogie showing off her new waving talent (it's making her so happy!) and, with a mist in my eyes, I have to admit we're waving bye bye to the babyness of Shmoogie.  I remember with Mr. I'mBiggerNowPants, I couldn't imagine how he'd ever turn into a toddler and then, all of a sudden, it happened.  Now I can feel it coming.  And in the meantime, Mr. I'mBiggerNowPants is turning into a real kid.

 

 

Sticky

You know how sometimes you read a book or an article or see a movie or a piece of art and it creeps you out and you really don't like it, but your mind just won't let it go?  For, like, years?  I'm guessing someone thinks that's the definition of great art.

I rarely recommend those types of things to anybody, though, because they're just so disturbing.  Like the movie Match Point - saw it years ago and still can't shake it, but unlike that reviewer, I don't find "the gloom of random, meaningless existence" to be in any way "fun".  Since I also can't figure out any kind of edifying nugget to pull out of the thing, I have to say it is a wickedly well-conceived movie but not one I would ever tell anyone to watch.

Then there's the movie The Magdalene Sisters, which has enough nuggets that I could recommend it, but not without saying that if you have any heart at all, it will be permanently wounded by the experience.  And don't watch it while pregnant, nursing, or possibly at any point after having children.  It kicked me hard in the gut before I even had kids.

I've been putting off posting about Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro because it falls almost in the same category.  Almost anything I could say would give away too much of the plot, and I could never compete with this review by Margaret Atwood (but don't go read that if you think you'll be reading the book, much of the experience of reading the book is about the very slow reveal of what's actually going on).  So I'll just say that I am continually surprised by how real these characters are to me, even four years after reading it, and how much I care about them, even though I didn't really like any of them that much.  Plus, the whole concept of the book is something my mind regularly wants to chew over, even if I don't like it very much.  It's a really bleak thing, but astonishingly full in spite of that.  A sturdy structure to hang years of existential angst on.

Actually, that's the one thing I'd add to the review.  I ruminate over this book less as a narrow ethical dilemma or general social commentary, but more as a stubborn thorn in my side that keeps prompting questions like, Why does it matter what or who imposes limits on our lives?  Are any of us really different than these people?  Do our lives really have more meaning?  Why?  Why not?  If not, why does their plight seem so tragic in comparison to our own?  Do I find the gradual understanding that dawns on these kids so chilling only because of the disturbing fictional details of their world, or is it because it's such a clear metaphor for the universal experience of growing up, gradually discovering exciting things, gaining independence, luxuriating in our aliveness, but always with frightening shadows at the margins, slowly revealing mortality, evil, our own moral imperfection?  It's compelling on so many levels, which must be why my brain won't let it go.