I am what's left when there is nothing left.

I'm taking a break from repotting plants to eat lunch and get some stuff down. The plants, oh my wow, they're taking over. Even if it's not going to be summery outside this week (a couple of days with highs in the 50s are forecast), it's absolutely struck indoors; everydamnthing is expanding, blooming, bursting at the seams. I've already up-pot three that have been fine at their current size for a long time now, and potted three sets of cuttings (which I thought would have been two but the root ball on one of them was the size of the small pot I'd planned to use!). There are another four that need to go in larger pots, and the possibility of one division (one of my plants started out...as one plant, but is now five of mine, one of The Cat's, one of D's, one of coworker T's, one of former coworker T's, probably a dozen at the former spouse's, at least one with the Village Idiot, and on and on. I think that H even took one to Oklahoma with her, how ever many years ago that was. One of mine looks to be ~five separate shoots in the same pot, and although it likes to be root-bound, that's a bit much. I'm just not sure that I (a) have enough small pots for it, (b) have enough potting soil for all this, (c) have the money to buy the plants that I'm sure I'll buy if I go out for more soil (because some things never change), and (d) have enough friends with whom I can foster the babies, because I do. not. have. room. for five pots where there is one now. GAH. When did I move into a greenhouse?

Most of this weekend, however, has been devoted to reading. I've finished the two books that I'd been alternating, read a novel from start to finish last night, a collection of poetry early this morning, and another nonfiction after that. I have strong feelings about all of them (except the poetry, which was neither here nor there--sorry, Mark Strand) and need to sort them out.

[DAMN; I just had to shut the patio door because I couldn't hear the music coming out of the monitor directly in front of me because my asshat neighbor across the parking lot is playing his amateur guitar so badly and loudly. Even with the door closed, I can still hear it; the window facing in the opposite direction is open and the noise is coming in that way. What a jerk. This is the last nice day we're likely to have for nearly a week, and he can't keep his garage band crapfest to himself?! I hate people.]

The first was Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: why we can't look away by Eric G. Wilson. (Please click the title link, which directs you to the OCLC WorldCat record for this book; read the abstract there. Thanks. Now I don't feel compelled to repeat it, but also don't feel like I'm yammering about something you can't possibly understand.) I picked up the book because of my own, relatively inexplicable, fascination with evil. Not practical evil, of course, but the academic study of it. The history of it. The psychology of "the most evil person in history." What is it about me, that led me to break so far from what my family, my upbringing, the people who made sense to me growing up, to seek moremoremore knowledge about something that is so abhorrent? It's not just that Hitler is abhorrent, but that the study of him is, to so many people. I've felt for a long time as if it's something for which I need to apologize, or at least have a damned good explanation.

Much as law school didn't do a bit of good to help me learn more about the law of neutrality during World War II, this book brought no revelations about why I needed to study something that no one else I know (or, rather, no one else I'd known before I started) can stomach. I cannot equate my (am I deluding myself?) relatively benign intellectual curiosity with fans of gory horror movies, collectors of 'murderabelia', or gleeful viewers of "war porn." In the same way that law school was a complete waste of time--in that my stated purpose for going was unsatisfied--this book was also a complete waste of time.

But it's just not that easy. It's never that easy. I liked this book. Almost against my will, I learned a lot. Along the way, I came to agree with some--not nearly all, but some--of the author's arguments. Most importantly, I think, I came away from reading it with the sense that I will now think differently about people who hold affections for and interests in subjects and areas of life that I find distasteful. There are reasons, and the reasons make sense. (I also cried, which is quite something in an psych book.)

Wilson's got a gift. I'm glad that I read the book and got to share it.

The second book was Eyal Press' Beautiful Souls: saying no, breaking ranks, and heeding the voice of conscience in dark times. (Please click through and read the short abstract.)

First, the weird kismet: this book is about saying no, not just being obstinate but in refusing to do the things that others have no trouble refusing. Denying the urge to conform. The Wilson book, on the other hand, is about saying yes. It's about seeking what others deny. Accepting what to many is unacceptable. This philosophical connection was so strange, and reading them at the same time was absolutely perfect that way. They will always be linked in my mind, I'm certain, and neither is the less for it. (There are a few other pairs of books that are like this for me, for instance: Art Corriveau's Housewrights and The Evidence Against Her by Robb Forman Dew; Perfect Skin by Nick Earls with Erik Tarloff's The Man Who Wrote the Book; Anthony Bourdain's Bone in the Throat and the phenomenal The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano.)

I'd initially feared that Beautiful Souls would be a dry accounting of four individuals' experiences in saying no, and the prices they paid for it. It is, however, much more than that. Press reveals the historical context, the individual's social and personal context, and also the ramifications--positive and negative--of their choices and actions. As the book progresses, he compares and contrasts their experiences. The book is revelatory in the degree to which we humans rely on groups to make decisions and to take responsibility (i.e. blame), but also to the power of personal conscience. Although there are political and religious considerations for some of the subjects, there is no 'agenda'. Press did a masterful job combining personal, humanizing details about his subjects with the contexts in which they acted. There is no way of knowing what I would do in the same circumstances, but it's something to have even thought about it, isn't it? I started the book feeling tense and worried about what was ahead of me, but finished it feeling freed and hopeful.

This morning, I read The Guardians: an elegy by Sarah Manguso. It is one of the hardest books I've ever read, and also one of the most beautiful. A college friend of Manguso's was hit and killed by a train after being helped to escape from a locked psych ward. The book is about him: his death, his life, their friendship, his mental illness. Suicide, generally. Mental illness. Life. Friendship. Love.

I knew Manguso's work as a poet before I read this book (see, for example, this). She writes hard poetry--not icky, sharp stuff, but the sort of poetry that sometimes hurts to read because it's so good--and this book is just like it. This book is filled with gorgeous prose that can make you wince. Because it's so revealing of her personal life, it can do more than that, even.

It's all the more meaningful and painful because a friend and I had a long, difficult conversation on Friday night about suicide. I think that, as sometimes happens, I talked too much and didn't listen enough, and probably said some things very wrong, and what I really should have said was, "I'm sorry." I sometimes forget that my academic interests in this stuff--psychology, psychopathy, evil, conscience, rebellion, resistance, suicide, death--are nothing in the face of others' experiences with this stuff. I have a ways to go, eh?

I think that's probably all I wanted to say. Back to those plants....

[the title quotation is from 'Oblivion Speaks' by Sarah Manguso, from Siste Viator]