The West Commences: September 30, 2012

I missed the walk in a scenic spot last Sunday, because for the first time since I joined the VOC last season, I turned up at the carpooling place late. Everyone had gone, so I walked home and had a glorious day of doing nothing but read. I finished Jim’s novel and now face the decision of what to do with it. Much of his writing is clear and fluid; the dialogue is especially well written. Doug and I realized years ago that Jim could catch the accent and tone of people’s speech better than either of us. At that time, we three were working on a play about WW2 featuring characters like our parents. We gave up on it, but Jim carried on with a novel and short stories. The novel is good. The story moves through two main time periods and three different but linked narratives. Much of it flows together well, but at moments, he seems to be trying to do too much in one novel. The rhythm is sometimes broken by long passages of philosophical and literary contemplation and sections in which the main character recalls the past or adds descriptions; these slow the momentum. Although interesting to contemplate, they distract the reader. It even seems to me that one section could be left out of this work entirely and turned into a separate story. Now Albert and I have read Wearing Wings, and I must think about whether or not to do something with it. I would like to edit it, but I’m a bit hesitant because Jim’s last words to me, when I started to answer a question the doctor had posed, were spoken very quietly but clearly, “ You speak very well, Jan, but sometimes you don’t say exactly what I would say.” I now know, after thinking about it for a long time, that he knew the doctor was going to tell him that he was dying and ask him if he remembered that he had said earlier that he didn’t want any mechanical prolongation of the end. He must have worried that I would ask the doctor to do something that he didn’t want done. He was ready to die at that point and his last words to the doctor were, “ Go for it.” If I edit his work, I will change it, and I don’t know whether he would want me to. He didn’t ask me to edit it when he was alive, I think because he knew I would want to change things a bit. But then he didn’t throw it out either, so he must have known I’d read it. ???????????

We have had and are continuing to have a glorious fall. On Tuesday, I went on a hike to an area called Rimrocks where you can climb down a narrow chimney into a basin of broken volcanic lava rock. Once there, you are surrounded by old, cracked, grey/black columns of basalt. They are streaked in places with red lichen that lends them an almost festive fall splash. The only other colors were dark green and bright blue sky. Thursday’s bike ride was quite long and exhilarating and today’s hike was an easy walk around some lakes. There’s not a lot of fall color here, but the luminous yellow of the poplars is as breathtaking as it always is.

I met one of my Korean students at the library on Thursday. She’s in grade 11, and I like her very much. I think we’re going to have good tutorials. I will start with the other 2 and my own Korean/English exchange either this week or next.