To Kill a Mockingbird

        

I read quite a lot of books mentioned or recommended by one of my Polish friends, Raf. I perhaps would have never read To Kill a Mockingbird if not for his passing comment that the book is remarkable. That and my guilty conscious (have I mentioned that I am a specialist in GUILT?) not having read such a famous book, featured for a long while on many short lists of must-reads. Now, I had a chance to redeem myself and I took it. I was a little surprised that my local library had a lot of school versions of the book but none in the form and length that was originally written. I got a copy from another library and having started to read I understood why my library has so many abridged versions but few originals. It is a book for school youth taught in many countries around the 8^th grade. But it is also a book for adults. For good, decent grownups or for children who we want to be trained to be sensitive, good, caring, tolerant individuals later on. I like very much the sentiments masterfully conveyed in the book and at the same time think that they may be a little (or a lot) outmoded. It seems to me that the core values of current societies are so different to those promoted by the book that young people may laugh at them or at least doubt in them. I sincerely hope I am very wrong.

                                      

Thinking more about the book I remembered the part when Dill Harris, the young friend of the main characters Scout and Jem, cries during the court case of a black person accused of rape of a white girl. Observing the proceeding Dill cannot cope with injustice he sees as he realises that the innocent person will be punished even if the accused is so obviously innocent. The boy cries because he realises the horror of people blindness caused by prejudice towards those who are different in some ways. Like having different skin colour. An older man says, Dill cries because he is still a very young and has not lost his innocence. This allows him to see how wrong and tragic is the situation of the accused. He has not been influenced by the society. He does not have any preconceived views on life yet. But while his innocence protects him from being like others, he is going to lose it and, in few years, he will not cry in similar situations and wrongs will not pain him in the same way. If I take this message as a lesson I see why the book may be embraced by young children, before they lose their ethical virginity.  This makes me retract my earlier doubts, at least to some extent.

The crying boy stands on the  right obviously in a different mood this time. Apparently the character of Dill was based on Truman Capote when he was a child. 

                                     

I am still afraid that in the current times with technology giving information to even very young they must see what happens around them and what values are important to be successful, popular, macho, admired, rich and famous… And they see that many countries in the world are currently ruled in populistic manner and that the need for truthfulness seems to be forgotten by many nations. People like Trump, Erdogan, Putin, the Polish leader and many others lie blatantly and too many people do not seem to have a need to stop and think if they are not pulled wool over their eyes. They vote for dishonest, racist, misogynistic politicians as long as they see some benefits for themselves in the election promises. It seems to be difficult to find an honest politician who really wants the best for their country. They seem to want the best for themselves. Australia was always, in my eyes, more upstanding in its politics, but this seems to belong to the past. The same seems to happen to the values of the citizens. Again, I hope I am wrong.

Looks that I have complicated the subjects again, but my mind meanders sometimes and finds new unexpected associations. Returning to the book I liked it for its language, humour, sentimentality and life lessons. I got reminded of some life rules that I may have not paid attention too lately. Like:

“It is not necessary to tell all you know. Folks do not like to have somebody around knowing more than they do.”

OR

“One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one cannot do anything about them.” This one will be always difficult for me to follow.

9 out of 10 for me.to be allowed to be killed.

I stay with the question : Are any Mockingbirds still around? I mean human ones who are too beautiful inside to be killed. I am sure they are even if not in politics.

On being a stoic and friendship

   

                                                                 

                                  

I have been reading books I believed to bring me better knowledge about living well and being wise for a long time now. I am not sure where the compulsion came from. I did not copy anyone here, it was my own idea. Maybe it was because books were good friends from a very early age? Being not all that confident (thanks God for that) I wanted to be guided by somebody cleverer than myself? People around were not well suited to do that. So, I went to books for my answers. And it stayed that way even if I met many clever people in my travels and some gave me better ideas than my own. Books are still the best source of wisdom for me.

I read Kierkegaard and Fromm… The choice was coincidental as in Poland books were a hot commodity and were sold out fast most of the time one could not buy what one wanted.  No Booktopia at those times. After Kierkegaard I became to worry about life, it was on a depressing side. So when, much later, I discovered stoics, I thought that this is something for me.  It stayed that way. I read some stoic books from time to time to learn from them how to live. The stoic philosophy and books got me through the hard hospital times and they are still of great value in the recovery times. One of my friends got me to practice being a stoic in a structured way and after initial resistance to include readings of The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday into my rather sloppy morning routine, I am actually doing it. Recently the same friend suggested and it was a strong suggestion, I must say, that I enroll on a Stoic Week that was just about to start. I do not respond well to strong suggestions, but I respect my friend’s judgement so I thought, yes, I will give it a go. I have enrolled and I am very glad I did. Firstly, the questionnaire results showed that all that reading gave good results and I scored 445 points out of 539 which makes me a fair dink-um stoic. Hmm… Have I cheated? This would not be a stoic way at all. I also turned out to be classified as satisfied with life. Hmm… again.

OK, so this makes me feel good about myself if not a little surprised and pondering about the value of such tests. But what is more important and what I realised reading the material, that is supplied by the organisers of the program, is what my major learning area will be this week. The stoics identify wisdom, justice, self-control and courage as the most important virtues one should work on to acquire. The area with the biggest need to work on for me is self-control. Will I manage to spend my time better, go for walks, exercise, read in longer stretches of time, listen less to Polish politics, play fewer computer games, eat well and not much? I think that I may at least improve a bit.

                                                     

                               

What surprised me a little and made me feel lighter was some depreciation of friendship and family life. Not that they are not important but they are not critical for feeling happy. According to stoics, that is. This should have been clear to me before as the stoic teaching is that we should not worry about things we do not have influence on. Like being pretty or healthy. It is obvious to me now that the friends and family are important and valuable but this is not always I can influence such relationships to what I would like it to be. And I still can be happy even if the best friend becomes a considerable source of grief.

I think I have done my today’s middle of the day meditation prescribed by the Stoic Week by writing this post. Now, that I have done my physical exercises I will continue to work on my virtues and inner strength. Wow, if I continue like that I will soon walk on water.

                             

A lighter post for a change

Some of my blogging friends noticed that my posts recently are on a heavy side. I have been aware of the fact that I am overly preoccupied with issues of a serious nature and that this has impact on subjects of my blogging. At the same time writing is some sort of therapy for me and the way to clarify for myself bothering me issues. I also know that I skirt around the real things which are serious challenges around my health. I have cancer and go through the regular treatments that are not much fun. There is also a lot of unknown ahead of me. One could say; isn’t it so for anybody? Yes, but the remnants of a mathematician in me come to think about probabilities and those are not in my favour. So, I worry and try to find answers how to live well with the situation I am in. This spills to my blog in some ways.

It is not a light start to what was going to be a light post, but my intentions are to write about Ladies in Black, the Australian film which is lovely, funny, intelligent and finishes with a number of happy ends. Just what the doctor ordered and I really enjoyed.

                                     

For my current mood it was a panacea of the first sort and I give it my personal, very subjective 10 out of 10.

The film is about Australia in 1959 when reffos (post war refugees from Europe) were finding their way to embrace the new life and becoming millionaires. The conviction that Australia is the land of opportunities, great weather, freedom and the place where if one wants to, one becomes a millionaire without much of a problem. I must say that I feel the same about the possibilities in this country, especially at the time of the action of the film. And especially concerning reffos from Hungary who came here after the horror of times of 1956. With their abilities, fresh outlook, knowledge of European ways and often good education they were bound to be successful and very rich as a result. I believe that statistics would confirm that. I often thought that my clever father and talented mother would have made me a millionaires’ daughter if they came of Australia after the war. Coming in 1979 I was not that clever or lucky, but I still have lived a good life here (at least in some aspects).

One of my favourite scenes of the film is the exchange between two Hungarian men who admire the weather and one of them raises his hands towards the sky praising the weather and the water views from the balcony of his house exclaiming: isn’t it wonderful! The other asks: Are you happy then? And the answer is somewhat hesitant: I would not be that trivial.

Very European, funny and very silly in fact. Also, this is how I was and perhaps still am. One must have some complicated Dostoevsky's feelings to be considered a sophisticated person. Pure happiness is for simpletons. Hmm…

Ladies in black are ladies who work in a prestigious department store for well to do Australians. The head of the fashion department is a reffo, a very stylish one with Parisian experience and exquisite taste in cloth.  She takes under her wing a young and very clever girl who took the job in the department store during the holidays after her HSC. She passed the exams with flying colours and will have a great future ahead of her. Very different to her mother as a new era is only  just starting for women in Australia. Germain Greer will soon start to provoke and change girls’ psyche. Our heroine wants to be a poet, or and actress, or… a novelist. She reads Anna Karenina and she wants to go to uni. Her father says that no daughter of his would go uni and we are observing the change in his thinking under the influence of salami and wine that he is introduced to and comes to the conclusion – I can get used to it. We all know that he will change his mind and that his clever daughter will go to uni after all. With his blessing too. In the meantime, she will be introduced to European society with Hungarians in majority, learn to dress well, drink champagne and deal with being kissed on the hand. I never liked this type of greeting, especially in Polish winter when one had to take off one’s glove in very cold weather to let a man, who she was saying hello to, clumsily kiss the frozen, shaking hand. Now I think that those times had a lot of charm even (or especially) this continental kiss on the hand. And Sydney of 1959 seems very attractive in the charming old fashion way.

                                                  

Lovely film that will be forgotten soon as it is just charming fluff.

My eclectic reading

                                   

This time I am reading Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong. I mean, I really read few other books at the same time like Dunbar - the Hogarth version of King Lear, a Polish book about a spirited Polish painter Stryjenska and others as well. Just listing some of them made me aware that such eclectic reading may cause a great confusion in my thinking. It most likely does but my attention span shortened somehow and this has influenced my ability to complete a book in a single stream. My chaotic reading has its pluses, I would like to say. Like coming across Glenn Murcutt and getting sidetracked to look at architecture from a new perspective. My preferences have been mostly for European architecture with Gothic as my favourite church style. I know that most of the people would not share my liking of old churches. I am not sure where it came from, but I get mushy and nostalgic when I think of old European towns their market places, town-halls, palaces and churches. Always churches. I remember when I discovered the Pelplin Basilica. My husband and I were traveling from Warsaw to Gdansk by car. Looking through my tourist guide I found out that we were going to pass one of the national treasures in Pelplin. As it was time for lunch I did not have much problems to convince my husband to make a little detour to see the place and have something to eat in this small town. The church was closed but there was a possibility to open it on requests of tourists. I made such a request and the huge doors of the cathedral opened for us. Somebody turned the lights so we could see the interior. It was magnificent, the paintings, the sculptures and most of all the vaulted ceiling from the XIII century.

                             

I was spell bound. My companion did not quite share my artistic euphoria so we did not spend all that much time there, but some years later I went to spend few days in the place and had an opportunity to see the church at more than one occasion and many more beautiful things there.  Like shrine Madonnas or one of the original Gutenberg's bibles.

  

I can feel the next post taking a shape in my head already. But this will be one of my next posts and this was only a “small” introduction to write about that beauty has many names and many representations. Thinking about all those treasures that the history and various artists have left for us to admire one may think that the young countries do not have that much to offer. So, Australians travel to foreign countries to find more beauty there than we can see around us. Often, we even do not notice this unassuming beauty that Australia offers in abundance. And here I read about Art as Therapy covering subjects of: Methodology, Love, Nature, Money and Politics and discover artists I never heard of and find out much more about those I thought I knew well but really did not. At one point to my surprise come across a picture of War Memorial in Canberra. The caption says – One is moved by the sacrifice, but unsure quite in whose name it took place. On the next page there is a picture of Glenn Murcutt House in South Australia. Here the caption says: An Australia to love – and, if it comes to it, die for. The picture of this country house shows the corrugated iron, big cylindrical water tanks, and the shed and the garage doors. All the elements beautifully belong to one another and the whole composition is magnificent in an unassuming way. So clever, so aesthetically pleasing and so Australian. Suddenly I saw something different to a Gothic cathedral but making me feel quite similar as when entering a monumental church and in owe thinking wow…. I wish I could see the house in reality. Maybe one day?

P.S. My list of books “in reading” has grown again;  I just got To Kill the Mocking Bird from the library.  

Why do we read?

There are different reasons for different people and even the same people read for various reasons at specific periods of their lives. I have realized that lately I read heavier type of books, and started to ask myself the question why do I read at all and what is my need for reading based on those days. Some suggestions which convinced me are to be found in one of the Alain de Botton’s books in the chapter about reading. Maybe the answer is “Because books are so good at helping us to become aware of certain things we feel”? Do the books provide us with answers? De Botton does not think so. He says “our own wisdom begins where that of the author leaves it off…” or “Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it introduces us to it: it does not constitute it.”
                                                        
So, let’s say that I read in this period of my life to uncover some of my feelings that may have been dormant or I have been blind to. I am not sure if I am progressing as my emotional life is still full of confusion. Things are messy while I like them nice and neat, well structured. Looks that I will not be able to have it my way, no matter how hard I try. Control over my life is also doubtful. Perhaps it always has been that way but I was not forced to see it so clearly as I am now, that I need to submit to medical treatments playing havoc with my well-being. So, I am looking for new answers to my perennial question: “How to live, prime minister?” Will books help? They should to some extent, at least I can use them to amuse myself while waiting till some difficult times pass. The only problem that reading purely for amusement does not work for me. At least not now. I thought, I try though. Since I am in still in a catch-up mode to cover the years of break in reading fiction, I thought that it is time to read some of Ian McEwan. People rave about him. I got two of his books from the local library, not exactly my pick, simply what was there.

Apparently and coincidentally the book is a remake of Hamlet even if not a part of the Hogarth project. McEwan was not invited to it and some think that it was a mistake in Hogarth Press judgement. So, he wrote his version without any invitation and published it before Gillian Flynn’s rendition of Hamlet will be finished. Did he win the race? This we will find out. The book did not resonate with me on a deeper level, but I admire the masterful story telling. At the same time, it was a good example of a mostly good book that did not do a job for me. Looks that I do not read books for their story line only. I think that the readers pleaser were the descriptions of the embryo imbibing the alcohol drunk by his mother and making in depth wine connoisseurs’ comments. Cute, I would say, and the writer perhaps could not take my complement as pleasing. Looks that I needed  to have my jibe as I only reluctantly give the author credit for the book. There is a bad taste in my mouth it left. I have ticked off Ian McEwan and do not have to return to his writing, unless persuaded.  

                                              

The children Act and Nutshell. After few pages of The Children Act, I realized that this is not going to be a book to read for fun. Well written, yes. Interesting, yes. Only I knew the film with Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci and I remembered it well, so I put it aside and started the next one. I must say that it was a novel idea to make an embryo a hero and the narrator of the book. One has to smile and shake one’s head at the concept. I responded to some of the humour, but a bit reluctantly. The style of writing is impressive, but style only never impressed me. I need some essence, meaning.