The Summer of the Bear -- Bella Pollen

The Summer of the Bear is another book rescued from the pile of sun-bleached pool-side "recyclables".  It was the only brick in the pile that seemed to be without a serial killer or military adventures,  with the added bonus of having a bear in the title which sold me before I could read the back flap.  Like To Kill a Mockingbird, the book is divided into chapters that cycle through the characters one by one: the bear (or his wrestler-owner, I can't make out just yet), Letty, the bereaved mother of Georgie, Alba and James, however, it is in the narrator's omnipresent voice, rather than the character's.  It is set during the Cold War, which may explain why, after reading this until 3am last night, I dreamt of war myself.  I remember being told that there was a GPS coordinate where we had to go to defend ourselves.  I didn't want to be involved, but there I was, at the end of a dark street. There was nothing happening there, but we could here gunshots and saw that across a dark body of water there were tall hills where machine gun wielding planes were taking off, headed towards us.  We started to run back the way we came but the planes kicked up a thick fog of dirt and I couldn't breathe. I pulled a scarf over my nose and noticed that it was a red and white Arab headscarf, and was worried that I would be taken for an enemy.  We came out into a plateia where all the young people had similar scarves and I ran through them to a movie theater, where no one was aware that we were at war.  My husband threw 2 euros to the ticket taker who was my unrequited high school love, Duncan, and told him we were going to the bathroom. He said he would show us where it was and led us to a large underground ballroom where the bathrooms led to underground tunnels where we were meant to either protect ourselves or spread the word that we were under attack.  I wondered if Duncan could take better care of me than my husband and felt immediately guilty. In a room with very yellow light i saw my family and my daughter was spraying her whole body with my deoderant.  She was very thin, standing behind a ladder, wearing a peach dress.  I noticed my bag was torn and full of crap in the lining. My dad put it in a bag with paplomata and gave me a needle and sent me to the tailor to have it fixed.  I was surprised that the tailor had other customers during war time and wondered why i had such a large needle for him.  When I woke up it was after noon, I was groggy and still stuck in this dream world for hours afterwards.  

Two Weeks Later

I finished this book slowly, one paragraph at a time.  This is the second book I've read this summer about a father dying.  Life, unfortunately, imitates art.  How I wish the spirit of my father were in a bear who would come to save me from my broken heart.  I have to wonder if that dream of war and tailors that I had the night before my father's stroke, was a precursor to the battle we just fought and lost, if that big needle my dad gave me was to mend what broke?  It's unmendable. 

The Ultimate Frontier -- Kueshana

Super interesting, but after a few pages raging alarm bells go off.  I picked up this book because it was the only thing in English at the house in Samothraki.  We pulled the beds outside and I feel asleep reading under the stars.  Last year I had a lot of trouble sleeping for some time, until one night when I envisioned my ideal sleeping environment, outside, in a cove of trees with an opening to the night sky. It worked, I felt safe and embraced.  Whenever i feel too crazy to sleep, i envision that cozy cove around me, and I'm alseep in seconds.  The second night I feel asleep in Pano's yard in Samothraki, I realized that I was experiencing the exact thing I had pulled from the ether in my room in Ventura.  Strange that this is the night I would begin reading a book that explains that we are essentially existing in four coexistent, interpenetrating bodies; the physical (our bodies, bound to time and of which we are most aware), the Vital body, which exists on the etheric plane, maintaining the spark of life, responsible for the phenomena ascribed to the genes; the astral body, which is on the third plane of existence, which we use after three death of the physical body; and the mental body, which is our highest form of awareness.  Coincidence/irony that i am reading about the astral body which is not bound by time on the night I realize I've already been where I am at that moment, book in hand.  These concepts are not new or innovative, but interesting to revisit and form a deeper understanding of.  However, in reading reviews of this book, I can see where the alarm bells are coming from... Eklal Kueshana is the nom de plume given to the author and autobiographer, Richard Kieninger, by "the mysterious Dr. White, who tells him that he is The Judge of Israel, responsible for choosing the enlightened and starting a new society with the teachings he will receive from the Masters throughout his life.  Creepers. I was enjoying the story until I realized that he would go on to predict the end of America in 1976, and of the world in may 2001.  Later editions conveniently leave these dates out. Anyways, it's still an interesting read, if you aren't too worried about the people he duped into liquidating everything to move to his society in Stelle Il. I'm kind of looking forward to the chapters on how the world will end 14 years ago.

The Angel's Game and Prisoner of Heaven -- Zafón

Vendetta told me I needed to read The Shadow of the Wind by Zafón, and as usual, I did as she commanded.  I read it, loved it (even though I left it at LAX at the beginning of a 40 hour flight to a destination where I would spend hours of my life in a hammock)... and as her tutelage further commanded,  I purchased copies of his next two books. I'm currently at the finish line with  Angel's Game and the narrator, David Martín, has just taken a train to a sanitorium in the mountains, where he paid for two nights at a hotel before finding his love, Cristina, who has lost her mind. She goes on a walk out onto the ice on the night he comes to free her and run away with her.  He follows her bloody footprints out across the snow and runs on to the ice that is cracking in veins around her feet.  All of this, and what comes next; his journey back to Barcelona, finding his boss in an armchair and shooting him in the head, only to realize that he's just shot a dummy; finding a passageway to the basement where he finds more dummies; all of this is suddenly so familiar! Is it transplanted into/from another book verbatim? Has it been made into a movie? HAVE I ALREADY READ THIS BOOK? DAMMIT! !!!
I don't know the answer. 

  Two nights ago I dreamed that I was on the porch of a grey Victorian house at night drawing a baby.  As I was drawing, a great Dane paddled out into the black sea before me that surrounded the house where I sat.  He tumbled forward and had only his haunches outside of the water.  It was beautiful and I waded out in the water next to him to draw him.  The drawing was awkward, and I closed my notebook.  I also ducked my head under so that I was upside down, facing the dog. It was so completely peaceful and beautiful underwater until I realized how large a whale would be compared to me if he were to surface and I was suddenly afraid.  I tipped myself upright again and opened my notebook. The drawings of the dog and the baby were on pages facing one another and had completed the drawings of one another in confident lines that I would have never thought of using.

This has nothing to do with the book, but I feel that the book has somehow influenced my dream-life, and I want to remember the dream and the book in a connect four kind of way. But with just the two of them connecting.  Yesterday I painted an abstract teal and lime backdrop for a YouTube gameshow at Drew the carpenter's house in Encino with Bean the tranny-loving lead painter. Today I went golfing in Palm Springs. Those two facts can be the connect 3 and 4.

Ta-da, Zafón.