Reaping What I Sow

the lettuce patch

I hate gardening.  I've spent all morning planting.  The soil had already been prepared by hubby.  I just had to plop in seedlings.  Even so, I worked enough to remember why I hate to garden:

• the dirt--It's disgusting.  My gardening gloves are ruined.  Even washing them, they're never the same.  Somehow the dirt manages to penetrate through the gloves and into my fingernails--and I keep my fingernails short.  And (get this) when I went to take a drink from my water bottle, there was dirt on the rim.  I thought it wouldn't bother me, but I could taste it and now my teeth are gritty.
• worms, snakes, nightcrawlers--They're disgusting.  My garden is full of them.  The thought did occur to me to put a BAIT sign in my front yard.  Hubby says they're good for the garden.
• the sun--It's disgustingly hot.  I was wearing a big straw hat so I wouldn't get sunstroke.  But after awhile, my head was sweating and I felt like I was getting heat stroke.
• the bugs--They're a disgusting nuisance.  It's May.  Those little tiny gnats fly in clouds.  One cannot even talk without a swarm flying in one's mouth.
• my knees--They're disgustingly dirty and sore.  I suppose if I got down on my knees and prayed more, my knees would be in shape.

So why do I do it.  I garden because it's a together thing to do with hubby.  He likes it and he's an "old buck" and needs help. 

And then there are the vegetables.  There really is nothing like fresh vegetables. Since I hate to garden, I push myself to do it, and really do reap what I sow in more ways than enjoying eating the fresh vegetables.

Cheating

This post should be a book review of The Circle by Dave Eggers.  But I couldn't get into the novel.  I'm on p. 127.  I get that this company, The Circle is the best company ever.  OKay, already!

Book Club is tomorrow night.  I have 326 more pages to read.  I just can't.  So I went to see the movie, instead.

I liked the movie, in spite of Facebook friends saying they didn't.  One even said that he walked out on it. And it was the dumbest movie he ever saw.

Well, I disagree.  I think of it as the new 1984.  I can see a really good discussion coming tomorrow night, at book club.  

The Games Jerzy Played

You know how many books have written a disclaimer, in small print, somewhere near the front of their novels, “The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any apparent similarity to real persons is not intended by the author."  Well, Jerome Charyn, the author of Jerzy A Novel, writes the disclaimer more creatively, “This is a work of fiction.  Characters, organizations, events, and places (even those that are actual) are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.”

I consciously had to keep that in mind because Charyn’s Jerzy is real.  Jerzy was a real person.  His name was Jerzy Kosinski and he was a prominent writer from the 1960’s to the 1990’s.  He was popular and sold many books. Jerome Charyn uses Jerzy as a diving board to cannon ball into his imagination.  And what a ride it is.  Jerzy is BFF with Peter Sellers, Princess Margaret and Stalin’s daughter, Svetlanda. All the people he meets, befriends, loves, and marries, add color to Jerzy’s life and Charyn’s story. But eventually, Jerzy’s fame and fortune disintegrate when jealous people make accusations of plagiarism and opportunism.  The wolves surround Jerzy and he eventually gives up the fight.  He commits suicide.

Jerzy in real life, I gather, was an enigma.  His childhood in WWII was crazy.  He and his family had to live a double life.  And Jerome Charyn’s Jerzy depicts  Jerzy as continuing to live a crazy frenetic life.  Jerzy uses people and depletes them.  He has ghost writers—or does he?  Muses or just secretaries?  Genius or luck?  Saint or sinner?

The answer is “yes.”  Jerzy Kosinski is all these things and more.  Charyn’s novel, at the very least, will have you reading Jerzy Kosinski’s Painted Bird.  Charyn whets your appetite to learn more about Jerzy.  May I suggest, that you read Jerome Charyn, instead.  This author has written about other people: The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, I am Abraham, etc.  Compare Jerzy to these other novels.  You will learn to appreciate the detail, imagination and writing of Jerome Charyn.  I admit I do.

I was given this novel to review but there were no strings attached.  It was up to me to give a positive or negative review.

Jerome Charyn's Web Site: 
http://www.jeromecharyn.com/

Jerome Charyn's Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/jerome.charyn?fref=ts

Jerome Charyn's Twitter:
http://twitter.com/jeromecharyn

Jerome Charyn's Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/53408.Jerome_Charyn

Jerzy Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29633908-jerzy?from_search=true

Tribute Books Blog Tours Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tribute-Books-Blog-Tours/242431245775186

Jerzy blog tour site:
http://jerzyblogtour.blogspot.com

Jerome Charyn's Bio:

Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century, Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories, I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War, and The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel. Among other honors, he has been longlisted for the PEN Award for Biography, honored as a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, named a Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture, and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York.

  
Jerzy Book Summary:

Jerzy Kosinski was a great enigma of post-World War II literature. When he exploded onto the American literary scene in 1965 with his best-selling novel The Painted Bird, he was revered as a Holocaust survivor and refugee from the world hidden behind the Soviet Iron Curtain. He won major literary awards, befriended actor Peter Sellers (who appeared in the screen adaptation of his novel Being There), and was a guest on talk shows and at the Oscars. But soon the facade began to crack, and behind the public persona emerged a ruthless social climber, sexual libertine, and pathological liar who may have plagiarized his greatest works.

Jerome Charyn lends his unmistakable style to this most American story of personal disintegration, told through the voices of multiple narrators—a homicidal actor, a dominatrix, and Joseph Stalin’s daughter—who each provide insights into the shifting facets of Kosinski’s personality. The story unfolds like a Russian nesting doll, eventually revealing the lost child beneath layers of trauma, while touching on the nature of authenticity, the atrocities of WWII, the allure of sadomasochism, and the fickleness of celebrity.
 

Prices/Formats: $16.99 ebook, $16.99 paperback
Genre: Historical, Jewish
Pages: 240
Release: Jerome Charyn
Publisher: Bellevue
ISBN: 9781942658146

Amazon buy link:
https://www.amazon.com/Jerzy-Novel-Jerome-Charyn/dp/1942658141?&tag=tributebooks-20

Barnes & Noble buy link:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/jerzy-jerome-charyn/1123623732?ean=9781942658146

Indiebound buy link:
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781942658146

Bellevue buy link:
http://blpress.org/books/jerzy/

Close Call

Truly, Madly, Guilty, by Liane Moriarty is one of my book club, Argonauta's assignments. I had such a hard time getting into it, that I was wondering if I was going senile.  I just could get into it.  The plot revolves around three couple and I couldn't keep them straight.  Who's who?  Who's married to whom?

But as the day of the Argonauta's meeting approached, I sat down with the story and focused on just reading.  It is a good story.  Liane Moriarty drives you crazy with talk about an event, an earth shattering happening, something that changed the lives of the three couples.  She teases you because you think the next chapter contains the revelation.  But it never does.  Very late in the novel, everything will mesh.

It is a nail biter, easy to read, and the characters are people you know.  I mean they're believeable.  This would make a good beach book because its 400+ pages. And it really is a good book.

Why I don't Want My Family In the Audience

The expression, “It’s complicated,” is overused.  But in my particular case it is true.  I confess, I don’t really understand my own feelings.  They’re too complicated.  I never tell, never mind ask, any one in my family to come to an event I’m a participant in.  I feel:

·         Nervous because I can’t trust them to be honest.  They’ll be kind and tell me how good I was.

·         Rushed to get everything over with to let them off the hook—which means I’m not focused on my part.

·         Ashamed that they well be ashamed to have such an old fool for a relative.

·         Fear, that  I am belittling their image of their mother or wife.

·         Embarrassed to show a side to my family that they’ve never seen before.

·         Evil—did I force them to come and see me.

·         Exposed in revealing ideas that they can’t, won’t ever appreciate.

·         Worried about what they are thinking.

·         Self-conscious—are my clothes and demeanor appropriate?

·         Crazy—why am I like this?  I must be crazy.

Have I given you my explanation of “it’s complicated?”  The urban dictionary defines the phrase as “a couple in an ambiguous state between friends who maybe in a closer relationship.”  However, I know some people who use the expression as meaning I don’t have the time or the desire to explain it to you.

I’m using the expression not to describe a relationship, itself, but because of the relationship of a wife and mother stepping out of those specific roles to people who aren’t accustomed to seeing her step out of her usual supporting role.  However wonderful I may be in front of an audience, they won’t like it.  They will prefer their wife and mother, not a presenter, lecturer, teacher, etc.

All these words to explain why I don’t my family in the audience.  I can’t focus on the task before me if I have all the above feelings circling around inside my head.  

Contemplative Nuns v. "Cloistered Brothers"

Our Spiritual Advisor was with Chapter, today.  He was telling us that one of his students was amazed at how much my "cloistered brothers" were like the nuns in the abbey.  They were comparing my "cloistered brothers" to the Trappestines.

• community life
• prayer schedule
• worship together
• simple life

It seemed that the nuns and "cloistered brothers" have similar attitudes.  Their community helps them overcome any separate problems which an individual would have.  This sharing and community spirit is a testimony to their trust in God.  Their simple life of prayer lived within a community makes them strong. Happy, too!

Reaction of Jews and Romans to Resurrection of Christ

Reaction of Jews and Romans to resurrection of Christ: Q. I have always been puzzled by the lack of reaction to Christ's resurrection from Jewish citizens and Roman officials.

Oh, there was a reaction all right.  Read Matthew 28: 11-15.



What convinces me is the reaction of the Apostles.  Why would they all insist that Jesus rose from the dead?



There was no money in it.

There were no fame and glory in it.  In fact, they were persecuted.

What was in it for them except persecution and tortured to death? (John was exiled.)

And they all told the same story.



Read Father's Doyle in the link above.