I'm almost finished reading a book called The Vision of Emma Blau, by Ursula Hegi. This is the second of Hegi's books that I've read, and while the other had some disturbing and unsettling parts, this one is touching some sore spots that are making me very sad.

This is a multigenerational story of a German immigrant who builds an elegant apartment house in a small New Hampshire town. It's a story of his family, of longing and yearning and pretending; one of selflessness and selfishness; one where dreams and reality are interwoven in a way that is ultimately quite realistic, but hard and disillusioning, nonetheless. It's a story of giving all and of withholding love and affection, of giving or taking too much power in a marriage.

It is about the bittersweet emotions we get tangled up with in our relationships, both the healthy and the unhealthy. Personally, my own inability to have a child is somehow mirrored in the main character's having a child that she loves fiercely, but cannot devote all her time to, having two stepchildren and even the ghostly presence of her beloved husband's two dead wives who preceded her. People live and die, we mourn and go on...it's all infused with such incredible sadness.

While many of the characters experience moments of happiness, the world they inhabit is not one I think I would care to live in. Even the lightest times are tinged with darkness, foreshadowing some rift in a relationship that will never mend, a realization of a truth that one has been blissfully blind to up until that point. Siblings and step-siblings are in the end all alone, quibbling and distrusting and resentful of each other and their parents.

The heaviness in these character's lives that Hegi portrays is pervasive, even as I put the book down to go about my own business in my own life. Perhaps the inability to stop eating that plagues one of the characters hits a bit close to home, although I don't go to the extremes Robert does in the book. But the temptation to fill up our empty spaces with food, sex, shopping or drugs is surely real.

I haven't finished the book yet, but I suspect the ending will provide a kind of resolution, as opposed to just an ending. I do not expect it to point out that God is the only thing that can fill up that hole inside us all.

More Fall ATCs...

I seem to have inadvertently blocked people who might have read my blog from commenting. Sorry 'bout that, if anyone did indeed try to post a comment. Please try again!

These are a set of ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) that I did for a swap last fall. The theme, interestingly enough, was "Fall."

I finished the book. I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to, but I did. I can't say I made a deliberate decision beforehand, but I think I'm glad I did. I had already gotten involved in the characters and knew that Susan Howatch's books always allow for the redemption of the characters I care about. I wanted to see what happened. I noticed almost right away that at the point that I picked it up after not reading it for a couple of days, seemed to be where the main --- offensiveness, I guess --- started to give way to a character's changed life, to the point where he began to trust God, and things started to seem hopeful. I don't know that the end justifies the means here, because parts of the book were very disturbing, but I do believe that it's true to life --- that no matter how far away God seems, no matter how broken our lives are, no matter how bad the choices we've made, God's right there, always ready to take our hands and pull us out of the muck of our situation. He places people in our lives that can help lead us back to Him. We just have to ask.

Love it, love it, love it! Spend a couple of minutes making the pipe-cleaner guy dance.

Thanks, Mike, (and David Bessler, of course)!

I'm afraid I'm going to have to put down a book that I'm currently reading. For good. It's called The Heartbreaker, by Susan Howatch. She's an author that I like immensely; it's extremely well-written, it's interesting, and I care about the characters.

The problem is the plot line. While I'm sure that good will win out over evil in the end, the trip that Howatch takes to get there is rather disturbing. Some of her other books have definitely gotten into issues that I'm not entirely comfortable reading about, but this one seems to go further. Or maybe it's just me and where I am in my spiritual life.

The story centers around a group of characters who have appeared in previous novels, and their mission, so to speak, is to bring Christ into the lives of others who live on the seedier side of modern British life. I have no doubt that the characters and situations are realistic, and perhaps even based on real people, but I just don't want to read about them!

The "heartbreaker" is a straight(???) male prostitute who caters to very high-class, secretly gay men. He's troubled and confused, defensive, bright, articulate, and even likeable, in his better moments, but I feel kind of dirty, I guess, every time I read this story.

In the past, Howatch's novels have always skirted the edge of what's acceptable in society, what goes on behind closed doors, truly delving into the psyches of her very well-developed characters, but this one seems to go farther into the details of a degrading lifestyle of a young man controlled by some very evil people indeed. Maybe this needs to put out there as an instructive example of what kind of evil there is in this world, maybe, but again, I just don't want to read about it.

Why then, you may ask, all my throngs of readers, don't I just quit reading it and go on to the next thing in my stack of library books? Because it's such a good book! Dang it! But something about it doesn't feel right. After I put the book down, I've sometimes thought of the verse:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:7-9

and I don't think this book qualifies! Unfortunately.

Yeah, so I still love my job, but right now I'm feeling kinda low about things. Two of my students came to me after class and told me that they were sorry, but that some of the other students were upset, and didn't like my class, because, in a nutshell, I'm not their previous teacher. They wanted me to know because they don't like the negative attitude of some of the other students. This happens, not only to me, I know, but to other teachers, perhaps with those students who have had me as a teacher, and then have moved on to someone else.

I'm a good teacher. I'm well-trained, certified by the state (for whatever that's worth) and experienced. I have a very relaxed, casual style of teaching, with lots of conversation and vocabulary. I try to make it fun. This is why I do not teach the upper level classes. They are almost exclusively grammar, and that is not where I excel. The problem comes in (for me) when the students have had a previous teacher who is much more traditional in style and technique, and especially if that's what they think school is supposed to be, that's what they want from all their teachers. The problem comes in (for other teachers who inherit my students), when they do exactly the same thing they have done before, which made their students in the past happy. But now their current students think that class should be fun and relaxed and they should have lots of time for unstructured conversation, as well as the grammar and other things necessary for that particular level. So now they're unhappy.

I work with many very good teachers. I don't know the answer to this problem. The worst part of it is that there will be students who don't learn in the class with the new teacher because they are dissatisfied. They roll their eyes at efforts at conversation by other students in the class, or they get bored with just following the book, and are sometimes intimidated by the strictness of the rules; it really doesn't matter what the new teacher does...they're not their first or previous teacher, and therefore will never be good enough.

Sigh...even though this doesn't happen to me often, I know it won't be the last time. I would assume that it happens in other areas of education, as well as in other industries. If one goes to work at a new place, it's hard not to compare people and things, especially if you liked your previous job. That new doctor doesn't listen to us the same way the old one did...I'll never love this car as much as that first one...

I guess it's just a part of life.

How very profound. ;>)