A year or so ago, feeling that I should improve my knowledge of the classics, I decided to read Virginia Woolf, the Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Bible. Actually Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was on the list too, but I couldn't finish it, despite the images of my father's face in rapture when discussing it with me. Maybe I'm too much of a feminist to read Canterbury Tales. The depiction of women was so distracting I couldn't get carried away in the language like my dad seemed to have been. Discussing literature with my dad is always bittersweet, because he has a magnificent memory and in every conversation he will at some point tilt his head up, as though he were browsing a high shelf in the library, take a breath, and quote from whomever we are talking about with beautiful inflection. No matter that he read the words as a freshman in college (about 50 years ago) and hadn't seen them since. It is an awesome thing to witness, though it makes me wonder why I can't do it. Did growing up in the sixties give me brain damage? Or was I just not passed on the gene of awesome literary recall. Or do I just not practice enough? To my dad's credit, he used to keep himself entertained while driving a tractor by memorizing all the lines of Hamlet. Yes, all of them. And I am one of the billions on earth who can't get past "To be or not to be." Okay, I can remember to "outrageous fortune," but that's it.
Anyhow, I couldn't undo the sixties brain damage, nor recode my genes, so I thought maybe I could improve my brain with classic literature. Here's a quick review:
The Bible: really long, took me two years to read, and in truth, SPOILER ALERT I was appalled at how many people die in it. I had no idea. There's the hopeful beginning, but after that it's centuries of death, mostly fighting over the number of gods there are, one or many, and whether or not gods should be worshiped on high, no if one, yes if many. Thank God for the new testament or the whole thing would be a downer, like a really long version of The Road (SPOILER ALERT, no happy ending there). Actually, the Song of Songs is beautiful. The happy abridged version could be Genesis, up to but not including the expulsion, the Song of Songs, a few Psalms, and the New Testament up through the resurrection. True confession: I still haven't read Revelation. I've seen too many horror film villains borrow lines from it and that creeps me out.
The Odyssey: great romp. Loved it.
Beowulf: kind of a thin tale, though the original text sounds awesome read outloud. Big brave guy kills a monster. Odysseus rocks over Beowulf.
Which leaves Virginia. I read Mrs Dalloway, because I felt I should, and A Writer's Diary, because I love reading other people's diaries. I have two older sisters and, growing up, reading their diaries was one of my only forms of revenge for whatever mean thing they had done to me. My oldest sister had a very active and creative mind, so she was the interesting diarist.
Now I'm reading Moments of Being, Woolf's memoir writing. She reminds me a little of my dad, in that she is obviously really smart and has a way of making me feel a little dumb by comparison, but in such a lovely way that I don't feel resentment. Here's something I recognize in myself and in both Woolf and my dad: personal drive. When she takes on a project, she doesn't tootle around with it. She digs deep and hard, driven by a desire, it seems, for perfection and by an intense habit of self-criticism. My dad doesn't talk much. Neither do I. I imagine that Virginia Woolf didn't either. Sometimes this quiet is perceived as snobbery, but I think it is because we all have (or had) intense internal dialogue going on and can't (or couldn't) get a word out edgewise. My internal dialogue is almost completely self-critical, or impulsed by my intense trepidation about speaking. I plan my comments three moves ahead, like playing chess. And then replay the conversation and critique my performance. It's very time-consuming and can leave a person looking distracted and preoccupied (which looks a lot like snobbishly bored)
Now to the point: Perfection and self-criticism have this to do with walking. I have tried to resist my impulse to become obsessed with my new activity. When my dad took up running, he was soon running marathons and eventually ran from Kansas City to Boston. So I've been walking for about three weeks, trying to take it slow and make it fun. Yesterday, I went to REI and bought $90 walking sandles, a new BPA-free water bottle, and a book of all the hiking trails in town. Then I down-loaded a pedometer app for my phone. I can now be reminded everyday that my BMI (body mass index) is 26.4 so right above the little body graphic (a well-built male figure) in my app is the word "overweight." I paid $1.99 for that information. And when I walk, my phone counts my steps, calories burned, distance traveled, and progress towards my goal. Occasionally it beeps at me. But my goal was to enjoy walking. My phone can't measure that. I wanted to be more like John Muir ("I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown; for going out, I found, was really going in.") and a little less like the hyper-critical side of Virginia Woolf ("Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?") and get my LDL count lower in the process. Should be as easy as a walk in the park.
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