Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays,
quotes, words, magazines, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
I just finished reading The Dream Antilles by David Seth Michaels who is a familiar DKos member. His blog by that name is on my blogroll.
The characters in the story would not be surprised when I say that the book came to me at a good time and when I needed it.
The physical book itself is a pleasure to own since the soft cover is shiny and the print and background are easy on the eyes. The chapters are short and broken into even smaller parts so it is easy to read a bit at a time and think about what you are hearing and seeing.
I used to tell my students that a short book means that nothing is wasted. Every sentence is carefully constructed. This is true with The Dream Antilles. I took a month to read it, but rushing through it would have been a sin.
The setting of the story is a dream-like world that we can escape to and place ourselves into as needed. There is an island where the people live in tree houses and who swim in the turquoise waters and cavort with dolphins. It is named desde Desdemona.
I have mellowed a lot since I retired and yet, I think I have always understood the idea of "being in the moment".
It was the adults in my life who grew impatient when I spent time sitting under a tree happily watching the squirrels play.
As a teenager while watching a bug try to get past a twig in its path, I saw the analogy with human life. It ran toward one end and nearly reached it, but quit a heartbeat too soon, turned around and ran the other way until it nearly reached the other end and then turned around, again. After doing this several times, it finally managed to crawl the hard way over the top of the twig and continue on.
Some of you will ask me why I didn’t move the twig for the poor bug. Alas, I was too interested in seeing how it would solve the problem. Such are the cruel gods on Olympus, perhaps.
But in The Dream Antilles story, we can be in the dream with the characters as well as form our own dream. I spent a lot of time putting the book down and thinking of memories that were provoked by the story.
I remembered my own trip to the Caribbean in 1973 and the islands I visited. I visualized the flame trees in bloom, the shades of the water, the black rocks, the cane being fired and cut, the fortress and the volcano. I heard the steel bands again and sat in the evening sun in the sugar mill wishing to dance.
I watched the many colored lizards on the window shutters and bathroom sink. I heard the soft sound of the people’s voices singing in a small church near by.
I imagine everyone will get something different from the book. It is witty and I wish I could put some of the many passages here that made me smile and laugh out loud, but that would spoil the book.
Here is one tiny bit to entice you, (pg. 63)
"Marley, Bardo, Acero and Carmen stand neck deep in the turquoise sea. Bardo likes to call this spot on the south beach his office, officina del Sur. There are small, sharp, incongruous needled cacti in the shade under the trees. And there are no waves. In the distance they can see the dolphins gliding across the surface and pelicans diving for their perpetual dinner. Beyond the dolphins and the birds, all the way to the horizon is unbroken, sparkling turquoise. They are discussing various alternatives."
I have many favorite places in the story (pg. 116 with Bardo and pg. 124 with John Coltrane Ramirez and El Pajaro), but the most favorite one is on page 11 when Bardo sees the sea is filled with stories.
"He smiled. The sea around Desdemona, he could see, was really a library. Maybe, he thought, I can have one of these stories."
Bardo’s discovery and the description in its longer form on page 11 is worth the price of the book entirely if there was nothing else at all, but there is so much else that is just delightful.
There are tense times, too, of course when decisions are being made and events bring people to the island. The question that Marley has if the love of his life will stay or go will keep you reading if nothing else does.
The story of Oscar and the ancient sea turtle is another story that grabs hold of the imagination. I could go on and on. But I will stop and let you find out for yourself.
Thank you, David, for writing this book that can take me whenever I wish to desde Desdemona.
I am also reminded of a personal story when I was taking my children to the library story hour. I had three children and they attended from age 3 to 5 so I spent six years going once a week in several six week sessions to the mothers’ room while the children were in a different room. We enjoyed cooking demonstrations, speakers and other good things. By the time of my third child, though, with three under the age of nine, I was very tired all the time and a bit cranky.
One morning, a lady speaker came to show us how to relax. We laid down on the rug and she said, "Imagine yourself on a staircase moving slowly down."
OK...so I imagined myself in a red evening gown wearing rubies and four inch red heels with my hair pinned up in dark curls. I was looking around at fabulous chandeliers as I descended the staircase until the lady’s voice broke in and said, "Now you are walking along a sandy path to a tiny pond where a little rowboat is waiting for you to climb in."
Ooooops! I had to make a quick change to a sweat suit and running shoes. By the time, I got to the boat and clambered in she was already saying that we were lying down and feeling the boat gently rocking beneath us. I was still trying to figure out how to lay down in a little rowboat when she said to stop...sigh. But, OK...I saw the point, honest.
I can still close my eyes and revisit the twenty acres and a pond where I grew up and so many other beautiful places I have seen in my life such as Carcassonne Castle in southern France. For beautiful pictures of the castle go here to wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Some of the hundreds of quotes about dreams:
"Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... We sleeping wake, and waking sleep."
Michel de Montaigne
"That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it... We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself."
Philipus Paracelsus
"Goals are dreams with deadlines."
Diana Scharf Hunt
and for plf who loves Calvin:
"I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night." Bill Watterson
quotes above from:
http://www.studyworld.com/...
I hope you all have had a chance to read a special book. Which one took you visually to a place you hope to return to as needed? When life hands you lemons, which book do you take off the shelf for comfort?
plf515 has a wonderful book diary on Friday mornings and all day.
pico has Literature for Kossacks on Tuesdays which is not to be missed.
Literature for Kossacks: the Book of Job
http://www.dailykos.com/...
pico says: next week we'll continue our discussion of meaningful incomprehension with contemporary Japan's leading pseudo-surrealist novelist, Haruki Murakami
davidseth discussed Latin American Novels About Dictators
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Other interesting diaries this week are:
Landscape of Numbers
bygmoke (about Daniel Tammet who wrote On A Blue Day (which is a wonderful book which I recommend highly, too.)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Literary News and Opinion
by Literary Monthly
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Book Review: Jeffrey Toobin's "The Nine"
by SusanG
http://www.dailykos.com/...
50 Years Ago Today: Little Rock 9
by sarahnity (Has many links for reading more)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
in support of a Kossack who has published...Congratulations!
Never Surrender! Kossack #22776 Book-Launch: Cybermancy
by KMc
http://www.dailykos.com/...
new today:
50 years ago - an American Classic by teacherken
http://www.dailykos.com/...
whole song here:
http://www.seeklyrics.com/...
There's a time for us,
Some day a time for us,
Time together with time spare,
Time to learn, time to care,
Some day!