the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

Sunshine two days in a row! For serious! I even went out and sat in it for a while. (Then the dog wanted to come outside on the porch, then Mich came home from Costco and the dog jumped the gate to get off the deck, then there was a dog-fetching session, then I decided to come back in because it's kinda hot out there anyway.) But still. 

In other news, we decided to start watching Orphan Black last night, and called it a night after the eighth episode. I suspect more of same is forthcoming today. 

And my calf is feeling comparatively normal, y'all. But then, it was feeling almost normal from its previous injury (and I was still nursing it) when this latest ripazoid happened, so that don't mean nothin'. I'm scared to do almost anything anymore, injured or not. I'll probably warm up and stretch properly before going window-shopping now. 

Mich is shocking the pool and cleaning the filters, too, so we'll probably take a dip later. 

But mostly, I want to talk with y'all about the book I'm reading: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, by Anthony Marra. 

One of my Facebook friends (Katie) read it recently, and she posted the following: 

Just finished "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena." My heart is pounding; I am jittery and not capable of idle conversation right now. 

I am not the same person who started this book. Going to have to take a walk to try to push this story to the rear of my memory. I won't ever forget the characters--that would be impossible-- but I need a light and fluffy read to bring me back into the sun. 

Jesus, what a book.

This was her second comment on the book. It has an unusual title to begin with, but it was her second post on the book and it caught my attention. I checked Constellation out of the library after I finished In Pharaoh's Army. Her review made it sound irretrievably depressing--and it still may well be--but when someone says that they aren't the same person after having read a book, I tend to pay attention because that's a rare book indeed. 

And it is. The book is about a handful of characters in Chechnya in the waning years of their (ultimately lost) wars for independence from Russia. The narrative covers only five days. It begins with an older man who watches the secret police take his friend from his home one night, after which they burn down the house because they can't locate his 8-year-old daughter. The man waits until the police are gone, then goes into the forest behind the house where she's hiding with her suitcase. Not knowing what else to do, he walks her about 8 kilometers through the snow and forests, circumventing checkpoints, to a hospital because he's heard there's a doctor there who might be able to hide her and give her a place to stay. The doctor finally allows the girl to stay, but only because the man offers to work for her. None of them really hit it off. 

So far, I've met about seven characters, and they're all beautifully flawed and human. Marra's narrative skill, though, is simply exquisite. He discusses life under Soviet politics with simultaneous sadness, acceptance, and humor, and he does it--somehow--without tripping into sarcasm. For example, Khassan--one of the village residents--began writing a history of Chechnya in the '60s. It's 3000 pages long, and because of the dangers of Soviet historical claims, ends up in an apparently unending cycle rewriting history. After Khrushchev is deposed, the "murky shifts of politics" encourages Khassan's editor to "recede further into the safety of the past," in which he publishes only "pre-human geological surveys." These were "heady days for Khassan's earth-science colleagues." After this, Brezhnev "grab[s] the wheel of power and captain[s] the country with the exploratory heart of a municipal bus driver." Marra's metaphors are creative and dead-on. 

The doctor, Sonja, is at this point the only doctor in a hospital designed to be run and administered by 500 personnel. She's young and gifted, overworked and unpaid. She also does not like children, but she ends up with Havaa, the 8-year-old orphan. They both simply live in the hospital where Sonja works, neither having anything left to go home to. Sonja, in an effort to reach out to the child, gives her a Barbie doll from the lost and found: 

It had belonged to the daughter of a devout Warsaw Catholic who believed the makers of department-store toys were conspiring to turn his ten-year-old girl into a heathen, and so he had boxed up all but her Nativity figurines and, filled with the spirit of Christian charity, sent them to a heathen country where they could do no harm to the souls of children already beyond salvation. The doll, dressed in ballroom gown and tiara, appeared surprisingly chipper given her emaciated waistline. The girl inspected the doll, distrustful of this vision of humanity. 

"Why is she smiling?" the girl asked. 

"She probably found that tiara on the ground and plans to sell it for a plane ticket to London." 

"Or maybe she killed a Russian." 

This sort of serious humor runs through the narrative, lifting it from what would otherwise be a sad story of common people with forgotten lives into a tale of hope.

It's the sort of writing that gives me tingles of pleasure as I read. I'll probably add this to my Intro to Lit course this fall as my flex text. No one can read enough exquisite writing in their lives. 

d