On my drive into work I usually listen to NPR, and following that it is not atypical for me to catch Garrison Keillor's five minute monologue "The Writer's Almanac". The other day he had a quote from the novelist Andrea Barrett that I liked. She wrote

I think science and writing are utterly the same thing. They are completely rooted in passion and desire, if they're any good at all. You can fall in love with the natural world in the same way you fall in love with a person. There's that same sense of helplessness, of lacking control over how much of your life you want to devote to it.

For the past few months my desire to learn about the trees and natural environment in my area has been something like that, although I wouldn't call it helpless and out of control. There is something nice about being able to look at the environment that I pass through every day and having a larger understanding of what I seeing. There are some pine trees along the highway on my way into work. I am sure they are not the white pines that are everywhere here, but I don't know what species they are. I will probably have to pull over to the side of the highway with my blinkers flashing, cross the field, and pull some needles down. I'm not out of control though. I've resisted the urge for a number of weeks now.

Barrett further wrote

It's hard to explain how much one can love writing. If people knew how happy it can make you, we would all be writing all the time. It's the greatest secret of the world.

That's something I can identify less with. Although this journal has been a good exercise, usually writing has been a struggle for me. I think I have a lot to write about, but I don't really enjoy the process itself.

So anyway, I got out Andrea Barrett's "The Voyage of the Narwhale" from the library to read over my vacation next week. So far it hasn't grabbed me but I'll push my way through it.

Last week I picked up and read another Joyce Carol Oates book: "Solstice". It is the story of two very close women friends. There is this ongoing hint that their affection for each other has the possibility of developing into something more than just close friendship, but it never happens in the book. At one point though they argue and separate, and that separation has a profound impact on one of the women. She becomes mentally and physically ill, and only gets better when she and her friend resolve their differences.

Oates, I think, likes to write about love in a very broad sense of the word. The two main characters in "Rape: A Love Story", are a married police officer and a young girl who is gang raped on his watch. They have maybe a paragraph full of words between them in the entire novel, and they never have any physical contact. The police officer never separates from his wife, and there are no passionate words or looks exchanged. Somehow though the notion of love between them makes sense. Last year around this time I read her novel "The Tattooed Girl". It had a similar, distant love.


Here's another quiz result that is strangely appropriate.


Velvet--- A-HA
Her skin is like velvet
Her face cut from stone
Her eyes when shes smiling
Will never reach home
But hear her how she sings

Her touch would be tender
Her lips would be warm
But when were together
Im always alone
But hear her how she sings

Her skin is like velvet
So I went to her home
Her place like a palace
With things you cant own
Her skin is like velvet
And hear her how she sings
Hear how she sings...
Yeah, she sings
And hear how she sings
Hear how she sings


What song describes your opinion in love?
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