The Glory Through All the Noise

I love lists. I enjoy making lists and I especially enjoy randomly finding lists others have made. I recently saw this list on the inside of a friend's front door:



Cheese. Fridge. Duck. What could it mean? No idea, but I had to have a picture of it.

I've been keeping lists since arriving in the U.K. Well, I've been keeping lists for a long time but not seriously or maniacally like I do now. What is the psychology of maniacal list-keeping, do you suppose? I think it's probably a very reasonable stress response to all the changes happening in my life. Moving across the pond has been wonderful, but not stress-free. One way to feel more in control is to make lists. Often my list-making has to do with things I need to accomplish. I make lists for who needs a return e-mail, groceries, what needs to be done on my walk into town, and scenes that need to be written in my screenplay. Completing my application for Further Leave to Remain (BritSpeak for permission to remain in country) involved complex list-making tasks: lists and sublists, each with little check-boxes to tick when I'd completed the task.

But in addition to making lists of things I need to do, I find I'm keeping lists of things I've done. And it's not only satisfying, but encouraging. I've read eleven books since September of '09. That may not sound like many to some of you, but for me it's amazing. To say I'm a slow reader is a bit of an understatement. As a slow reader, I often get discouraged about it, but when I look at my list, I see success and I'm encouraged to read more. This in turn makes me a better writer. Now, here's where it's a bit over the top. I've stared an Excel workbook to track my ongoing lists. Keeping handwritten lists in my calendar became a bit unwieldy. Here are the headings of the tabs in my cherished Excel document: Books, Film, Pubs, Beer, UK Towns, Richard Serra. Most of the topics are self-explanatory. Richard Serra refers to which of the Richard Serra sculptures I've seen in person. Serra does rather large, anxiety-producing sculptures in thick steel plate. UK Towns refer to those I've visited so far and could include locations of interest other than towns.

I have developed certain rules about my lists. For example, in the films list, I'm keeping track of films I've seen since summer of '09, whether in cinema, on telly (yes, I said telly - I'm becoming more British by the moment) when we housesit, or on DVD. I am allowed to track a film I've already seen but only if it's one I haven't seen for a long time. So the Bourne films, Star Wars, The Sound of Music (yes, yes I admit it) and other flicks I watch again and again don't count. It's not meant to be a life-list, it's just to help me keep track of what I see from now on. I have a bad memory for things like this.

That brings up an interesting point about lists as memory aides. I can remember certain images, say for example, the time I was driving on East Harbor Road in Freeland on Whidbey Island and I saw a black cat walking on a frozen pond near some cattails and miserably bent reeds. I'll remember that until I'm senile - it might be the last thing to go - and I'll use it in at least three poems. But I can't remember what film I saw last week. That's a problem because I love films.

Ooooh, but what about the delicious concept of the afore mentioned life-list? I do have one for birds, though I haven't yet put it into a spreadsheet. I can hear each of you snickering, you know. Is it the idea of birdwatching, or is it the concept of putting it in a spreadsheet that makes you laugh? Well, you're just jealous. Come on, you'd love to have a neat Excel file of cool stuff you've seen or done, wouldn't you? I do have aspirations to have complete life-lists of certain things: addresses at which I've resided, books read, films watched, cars owned, all the people I've ever met, an exact accounting of air travel, lakes I've swum in, types of trees I've seen, every song I've ever heard. Alas, the moments, too many of them, have passed.

Here's what that desire for lists boils down to: I want to be aware of my surroundings and of my experiences. I want to be aware of, and to commit to memory, the daily experiences that are the building blocks of a life. But there's so much whizzing by, so many details that go by at such a ferocious pace as we get older, that I fear I will glaze over a bit and miss most of it. I don't have the sort of memory that tracks the details I find interesting. But making funny little lists serves that function for me. If it's written down somewhere I can leave room in my poor, limited brain for the other important but not easily listed memories. Like the memory of hearing my first canyon wren, that melodical tumbling-down-the-scale whistle, and how unromantically close it was to the highway near Twin Falls, Idaho. My partner and I stood looking over a dramatic, sage-filled canyon straining to hear the little bird as trucks rumbled by behind us. That's life, isn't it? Straining to hear the glory through all the noise.


For any interested parties, here is a selection of the lists I've been keeping since September 2009.

Books:

The Accidental - Ali Smith
Hotel World - Ali Smith
Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
English Passengers - Matthew Kneale
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - Jeaneatte Winterson
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
A House by the Shore: Twelve Years in the Hebrides - Alison Johnson
City of God - E.L. Doctorow
Insight Guide: Scotland


Films:

The Watchmen - Cinema
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Cinema
GI Joe - Cinema
Grease - Drive-In
Moon - Cinema
Sunshine Cleaning - Cinema
North By Northwest - Cinema
Four Weddings and a Funeral - DVD
Eurythmics Greatest Hits - DVD
The Prestige - DVD
Flame of the Barbary Coast - TV
The Watchmen - DVD
Tipping the Velvet - DVD
Pushing Tin - DVD
True Blood: Season 1 - DVD
Tim Minchin: So Fucking Rock - DVD
Top Gear: US Special - DVD
Top Gear: Polar Special - DVD
Top Gear: Botswana Special - DVD
Tutti Frutti - DVD
Top Gear: Vietnam Special - DVD
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life - DVD


UK Towns:

London
Canterbury
Chilham
Margate
Maidstone
Brighton
Ashford
Whitstable
Hastings
Rye
Romney Marsh
Dungeness


Pubs:

Hobgoblin
The Old Coach & Horses
Ye Olde Beverlie
Thomas Becket
The Unicorn
The Monument
The Parrot
Bramley
The Blind Dog
Rose & Crown
Bell & Crown
The White Horse
The Woolpack
The Duke of Cumberland
Garrick Arms
Ten Bells
That one on the beach in Brighton...
Eight Bells
Carpenter's Arms
The Dolphin
The Horse & Groom (know to locals as The Hearse & Gloom)
The Old Brewery

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes...

Does anyone remember in the movie The Sound of Music when Maria teaches the children not to fear thunder storms? She sings My Favourite Things. I’ve always loved that movie, and pretty much any movie with Julie Andrews. That might be the subject of another blog, however. For now, I’d like to share a few of my favourite things, discovered in my relatively short time in Britain.

Clothes lines and traditional airers. Everyone knows what clothes lines are in their various forms. Many of us know the pleasure of drying laundry outdoors in good weather: the smell of fresh air in your clothes and linens. Ahhhhhh. In case you aren’t aware, though, a traditional airer is a handy device made up of wooden slats attached to cast-iron fixings and a pulley system that allows the lowering and raising up of the device. These are indoor systems for drying laundry. The huge benefit of clothes lines and airers is that they don’t require the use of electricity. Tumble dryers, while they add a level of convenience and speed to the processing of laundry, also use quite a bit of power and make one’s carbon footprint that much bigger.

Speaking of carbon footprint, another thing I like about being here in the U.K. is that I do much more walking than driving. I’m fortunate to live at the moment in a town where I can walk everywhere I need to go. In fact, we really only use the car about once a week, maybe a bit more in inclement weather. It’s good for the environment. It’s good for the bottom line. And I must say, it’s good for the waistline as well; I am literally tightening the belt.

Another admirable thing is the continuing use of old locks on doors. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of modern locks. But I really love that I have at least two old-style keys on my keyring. Where I’m from, we call these skeleton keys, although to Brits that term might suggest a master key that could open many different locks. When I held them up and asked my partner what they were called here, she replied ‘Keys?’

I like pubs. There are many nice pubs to visit. And since I also enjoy trying new varieties of beer (it’s all about moderation, folks), that’s a very good thing. The number of pubs and number of new beers available to me is the subject of an upcoming blog entry, but suffice it to say for now that one of my favorites is a Belgian beer called Leffe. You can only buy it in wee glasses as it is very potent – and really, you wouldn’t want to drink very much of it as you would end up face down in the front garden. These lovely Leffe half-pints are pictured at a pub in London called The Ten Bells. Speaking of which, any Jeanette Winterson fans out there? Well, Ten Bells is just about a block away from Winterson’s London residence. The ground floor of the building she owns is a tiny, tiny shop called Verde & Co. It sells coffee, artisan chocolates and food, and select fresh fruit and veggies. Indeed, oranges are not the only fruit.

Now we come to a delightful seasonal thing called mince pies. They’re tiny and tasty. I love mince pies and I can’t wait for Christmas to come again. I have to admit, I had a bias against the very notion of the mince pie because I thought it might be similar to my grandmother’s horrible mincemeat pies. Sorry Gran. If it’s any consolation, Grandpa told me once he loved them and was happy to have my portion. I can’t tell you how awful they were – I think she put finely diced pork in them. But I’m not sure if it’s that they really were awful or if the whole concept of a meat and fruit pie is just plain creepy. Fruit pies should be fruit pies and meat pies should be meat pies and ne’er the twain should mingle.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that there usually is no meat in the modern British mince pie. When I initially expressed my disgust about mince pies, my partner assumed it was because I thought there would be meat in them (I did, but not for the reason she suspected). To understand how funny this was you have to know that the term mince in BritSpeak actually does refer to meat. Beef mince or pork mince or turkey mince would be ground beef, ground pork, or ground turkey in American parlance. So... my dear, sweet partner thought it was simply a language barrier – you know, the whole Mark-Twain-two-countries-divided-by-a-common-language thing. She thought I had visions of a hamburger and raisin pie.

When I informed her that the mincemeat pies of my past did indeed have meat in them, she thought I meant actual mince, as in ground meat. And she was horrified to think maybe hamburger and raisin pies actually exist in America (even more disturbing, I can’t verify that they don’t). The possibilities for miscommunication are vast in a transnational relationship. Hilarity is a near daily experience. Which is another thing I love about being here.