The Queen of PCT

When the author Cheryl Strayed’s mother was diagnosed of cancer that sneaked on a person with healthy habits, she thought it must be her town docs who didn’t know much. While the docs gave the mom a year, she died in 49 days.

Cheryl had imagined a family with her as the substitute mother which didn’t work. After that her whole family came unglued, she was untethered but for her marriage which she pulled out of to ‘gather(ed) up inside of me’ through a hike on the Pacific crest trail.

The mode of walking she chose needs a comment. Her journey is halfway between a pilgrimage like ‘The Santiago’ but there is no one to stamp to validate that you went through all the stops and a road trip like ‘Going back to Bisbee’ by Richard Shelton where the landscape plays a major part with its detailed history. Here the author turns herself into the place that she delves into. Its said that driving is by muscle memory once you learn it but walking being the most natural act, frees your mind to do the thinking. But in the wild, solo the mind also fuels its fears. In this tug of war, what helped the author was the books she carried with her.

On the hike she wonders about the hardness of PCT vs the recent events in her life and thinks that ‘Perhaps the impulse to purchase the PCT guidebook months before had been a primal grab for a cure, for the thread of my life that had been severed’.

The way she begins her hike with an oversized pack that she is unable to lift is hilarious.

She comes across as a person with ‘should have read the guide’ seems ill prepared for the PCT hike. But after one day on the trail she feels experienced. Her hiking pace doubles in a couple of weeks. Her way of confronting the wild animals is calling out their names.

This act of strength is something that everyone applauds while at the same time they wonder about the parents who would let their daughter go it alone in the wild like this. This subject being broached up frequently by the fellow hikers, she has to find the coordinates of her family ties.

Serious hikers of long trails like this and Appalachian mail themselves food that can be picked half way or somewhere along, so dont have to carry all of their food for the journey.
She wanted to do the hike alone and turned down company during the hike. She wanted full responsibility of her survival on the trail. Yet, the vastness amazing her also left her lonely. At stop points she was always glad to have company and meet up with other PCT

Hikers.

The author chose ‘Bridge of the Gods’ as her destination. Bridge which is a symbol for transformation.

‘The bull, I acknowledged grimly, could be in either direction, since I hadn’t seen where he’d run once I closed my eyes. I could only choose between the bull that would take me back and the bull that would take me forward.

And so I walked on.’

We are now in the mountains

and they are in us ..

John Muir, My First summer in the Sierra

Survivor tale

A friend once sent an invitation with ‘save the date’. The first time I learnt of wedding planners was through the JLo movie. Put together, I was interested in knowing an event planner’s job experience of fixing up things.

Jennifer Gilbert with entrepreneurial ideas as a kid and ‘viral party’ throwing skills, was cut out for a career that screams power in her dreams as well as reality. After a life of wanderlust in Europe, a 22yr old, she was ready to fall into a fabulous life until a tragic event put a ‘before and after’ break in her life. The experience not only splintered her but sent her into a cocoon when she is not pumping energy into event planning.

The author can take you to the fanciest of places where its hard to get in – as an event planner. She can take you to the lowest of lows where even in a situation of shock, you wont panic but fight for life like her. After becoming a victim of a random attempted murder, she shared how she felt nothing. The one thing that saw her through was her passion for celebrating the memorable moments in others lives. When her tragic experience was ‘at leasted’ away she learnt to listen to the pains and fears of others, however small they may be, a trait that helped her in her business.The way she ran her event planning business, her experiences with hard to please clients, last moment ‘saving the day’ to make everything perfect even if it does not fall in the bucket of her job duties, its no wonder that she got the recognition for it.

She is written well of her victim guilt, strife being a broken person with no scars on the outside. Ironically when she later writes of her son’s alopecia a condition where nothing’s wrong inside. She has addressed issues like body image which took her a lot of time to overcome through the journey of peeling of her defense layers.

In this book, the author switches well between the personal tone when it comes to the pursuit of happiness through relationships and a survivor tone when she recalls the event and its effect three years later when she has to face all the bad memories again. The book is always optimistic even if the author sometimes thinks that she is the best enemy of her happiness. Control personified, her life experiences have taught her that the she may not have control over the events but she can control who she is after.

It got weary to read of the n love interests. I do understand that given the life changing experience, she had to take many chances at love and life.

I find it surprising that for a type A++ planner, she wouldn’t read up on signs of labor.

A book with similar turning point is Dear Marcus: A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me  by Jerry McGill

The April prompt of  switchback  is: "Thought is made in the mouth"

search led me to pg 87

Unfledged starling

A baby bird chip chips
for food
bobbing its head into
the air in different positions
Its like many baby birds
asking for food

Looking at the new bird
in the metal enclosure
of parking lot shed legs
with a little opening

I wonder if a bird mom
ever lays eggs in a place
where the eggs fit but the
born bird might not be
able to come out

Whenever I went that way
I saw the bird gape out
or heard it

Today I went from the other
side of the pole to see that
the bird's  is
immortalised neck up
stuck between a horizontal
beam and the falling edge of
the shed.
If it found it difficult to pull
it head back how did it
jut in there?

I was going to mark the day
I stop hearing the bird as
its first flight day

First portrait second portrait

I had great expectations from Saramago in 'The Manual of Painting and Calligraphy' after having enjoyed both his memoir 'Small Memories' and 'The notebook'. The title which presages the view of an artist is a subject dear to me. Despite being the right reader, I couldnt key into the book.
I liked the concept of exploration of a subject in another medium (the narrator's primary being painting and secondary writing) as well as another attempt stripping an artistic endeavour of its chance happening outcome (have you ever tried to draw something and realise that you drew something too well but you know you cannot repeat it again ) in the first attempt and actually knowing the subject. I kept myself interested just on this single concept but could not continue after half the book. when I read something new of artists or their work, I am inclined to reading more about it. In this book, there are many references to such works as part of the narrator's travelogue. But the accounts lack conviction.
I notice that the previous books I read were nonfiction and this is fiction. I enjoy nonfiction better. Still I cannot believe that the readability would differ so much. But this has happened in the past where I liked Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Remains of the day' and 'The Artist of the Floating World' but not 'Never Let me go'. In Ishiguro's case it was his latest work that did not come together. But in Saramago's case, I like dhis last works best.

GIGO

At Golconda fort, the echo was routed
If you make the noise at the bottom
someone at the top of the hill
hears the echo
In The King and the drum,
the drum echoed what the barber
told it everyday - The
king has horns.

Passing fancy

If you are planning a baby shower, then you might find these flowers from chart paper fascinating.

The Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers: A Guide to Making Unbelievably Realistic Paper Blooms

A kid attends a baby shower
He is told there will be a
baby
At the party, he wants to
meet the baby.
His mom pats on a pregnant
mom's belly to show the whereabouts
of the baby

At a new year party at his house
when the car door opens
the kid calls out the name
of the baby
He shares his toys with the mom
of the baby
He wonders who is the mom
of the baby
They play a game of saving a
motorcylce from the Optimus by
a 'hide and seek'.

On the rough seas

At first the two stories run parallel in narration. One, a riveting story of five fishermen who set out from Mexico and without knowing drifted to unknown place to be rescued by Taiwanese fishermen after 10 months on sea. The other is the author's own. It begins with the glitter of his success story and then the decline. These two stories join when the author has moved into the publishing business.

Survival stories. What about them attracts people? With someone living to tell the story is hope in adversity. In these kinds of stories, to know what the survivors went through is insightful. The author sets out to find the survivors and present the story to the largest audience possible. To that extent, he puts in all his resources into it.

A big problem that I have with the `intertwining' of stories - both have faith in common, which is what led him to the survival story but the part where he is trying to bridge the gap of how his marriage was saved through this story is not convincing. In fact his involvement with the story put his already strained marriage to a further test.

The author has a flexible writing style to suite the subject's tone. He can handle serious tone of a weighty survival tale, share the ups and downs of his personal life to show the influence of faith towards the better in a lighter vein. In the pursuit of the story, he showed his doubts voiced about it in the media which didn't reduce his interest because of the connection he felt with the survivors.