It's been a while since I did a longer, more contemplative post.

I think that's partly because I've just been tired, and allergy-ridden, and have let things get to me. Or, I've started one in my head and either forgot it or lost steam before I could get to the computer.

But I got to thinking about something this afternoon, and then that led to something else.

I came home around 3 (didn't get as much work done as I hoped and also had a longish phone call) and decided to work out (I hadn't this morning, but if I did a workout this afternoon, I could use tomorrow as my "off day" instead of today. It's kind of complex. If I've worked out two or three days in a row, I can take a day off to allow my muscles to rest...but there are other rules too).

Anyway, I listened to a tape I'd not listened to in a long time. It was a tape of Nordic music, sort of a mix of traditional, modernized traditional, and pop. (And some of the pop is rather drekky pop, I have to admit. North America does not have a monopoly on bad pop songs.)

A couple of the songs on there are very, very old, and sound very, very odd to a North American's ears. They sound - almost Eastern, in a way, or at the very least, not-Indo-European. (Well, some of the stuff is from Finland; that would explain the not-Indo-European-ness). One of the pieces is described in the liner notes as being based on a goatherd's chant.

And I thought about that as I listened. And it was one of those strange-sounding pieces that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up a little, and I didn't quite know why.

And I thought about it. I imagined a people living in a very harsh climate, where it's cold for perhaps 9 months out of the year, and where probably 90% of their waking hours were spent in hard manual labor. And yet...as they go about that labor, they come up with little ways to try to make it more beautiful or more tolerable or more enjoyable or however they might explain the idea of making a simple call-to-the-livestock into a complex and musical exercise.

And I also thought about how they lived in such isolation for such a long time - how they would have known nothing, the rural people, of the Renaissance or the courtly music or art or drama. I believe that making "art" (however you define it) must be something hard-wired into the human brain - all these isolated groups who have no experience of what other groups are doing, make some kind of art. (And in a lot of cases it is somehow tied up with their concept of the Divine or of the spirit world.)

I wonder how that link first formed, and why people first started making art. I wonder what the motivation was for the people in the caves at Lascaux and other early-human sites where there are animals painted onto the walls. Was it a simple need to feel control over something in the world, by manipulating tints and shapes to recreate what they had seen? For me, a big part of knitting and quilting (and when I was younger, having a doll's house and making doll clothes) was that feeling of having control over SOMETHING. Was it, for them, a way of asking their gods' favors? Sort of a cosmic shopping list? Was it a belief in sympathetic magic, a "if we draw ourselves catching lots of game, then in the real world we will catch lots of game."? Was it a record of things that had happened? Or was it simply a "we were here"?

And how did that continue to increase in complexity and grow and be found in just about every culture that's been studied? (And the origins of the differences? The differences between the complex and precise geometrical designs of Arabic culture vs. the freer and looser runic work of the Vikings and early Celts?)

And how did it come down to us, today, where some people never get the chance really to make "art" - where it's all prepackaged for their consumption, and, sadly (IMHO) some people either never feel good enough to take paint to canvas - or pen to paper - or needles to fiber - or tools to wood. Or they convince themselves that they don't need to, because they pay someone else to do it.

I wonder what kind of differences would be wrought in our society if everyone learned some kind of useful craft or art, and if everyone practiced that craft or art. My Pollyannaish side says there would be fewer people in therapy, and fewer people who were unable to see beyond the (figurative) tips of their noses. Because doing something like art or craft - for me at least - is a taking-oneself-out-of-oneself type of experience. I can kind of temporarily forget all the stuff that makes me screwed up. On a really good day of working on something, I kind of forget 'me' and become more or less one with the tools or with what I am working on. And in its own way that is a sort of spiritual experience. (And I wonder: maybe the early people who made art were doing it as part of a spiritual or transcendent experience). I like to think that people would be calmer and more patient and happier and have more of a sense of having a place and having value. (But, as I said, I'm being Pollyannaish about it).

And listening to those old, old chants, and the old fiddle-and-nickelharpa music, it made images drift up into my mind - people seated around the central firepit of an old woodbeamed building, where the smoke of the fire drifts up to a central hole cut in the roof. And I picture scenes from "Kristin Lavransdatter" (which I really should make time to read again). And I picture some of the medieval-era scenes from Connie Willis' "Doomsday Book." And that is what made me think of the second, and unrelated thing, in this discussion.

"Doomsday Book" is one of the (fairly few) books that I press on other people, one of the few books that I say "you really have to read this" or that I recommend to people. Because it is just a damn good book. It's an absolutely fascinating story - it is tremendously suspenseful in parts. And yet, it's also a morally complex book, one that asks questions about technology and because we can do something, should we? And also about how much we should intervene in situations that we did not create, where our intervention might lead to unexpected consequences, even though at the time, intervention looks like the conventionally "right" thing to do...

The novel is, I guess, generally shelved in the science fiction genre ghetto. (Most genre books tend to be ghettoized, and a lot of times "serious" readers seem to sniff at them: "Oh...you read...mysteries?" while they are all the while thinking, "Pity. And here I had her pegged as an Intelligent Person of Good Taste."). There is a lot of science fiction that I dislike. And, as in any kind of writing, there is some science fiction that is badly done. But "Doomsday Book" transcends science fiction - it's also part historical novel, part medical thriller, part just-plain-complex story.

I remember when I read the book - it was exhilarating. The feeling reading it engendered in me was probably the closest I'll come to an illicit affair - I would keep sneaking off to read a few more pages of the book, I'd ignore doing things I "should" be doing (like the laundry or cooking dinner) so I could read another chapter. The book was tremendously exciting, but I also came to care deeply about the characters and the dilemma involved...and without spoiling it, I will say I was not let down by the resolution.

And I was thinking about this book again, while I worked out (I do an hour at a time; that's a lot of thinking time). And I thought about a friend of mine who is a writer, and how she is often frustrated in publishing efforts, because it seems many agents and publishers seem to think that the Reading Public wants basically the same thing that the television programmers think the Viewing Public wants - more reality-based stuff. Preferably with lots of interpersonal blowups and innuendo.

And you know? That kind of thing just makes me tired. I realize I am a data point of one here, but what I want when I open up a book (or turn on the telly for that matter) is something that transports me somewhere else. Something that has a storyline different from the "storylines" people in my everyday life are living out. I want things that couldn't happen (or that could, but are unlikely to. I don't want to be too much of a Horatio here). I also want a sense of wonder, of suspense. I want characters I can care about - not spoiled brats, not lazy whiners. I want it to somehow be substantially DIFFERENT from everyday life.

I think of the few books I recommend to people:

"Doomsday Book" (already mentioned)

"A Sand County Almanac" - this is a book of essays by a very perceptive wildlife conservation professor, who also had training in the Bible and Shakespeare and other good-classical-education type stuff. And he looks at nature - but when he looks at it, he sees things that I didn't see and wouldn't have seen without his guidance.

"Middlemarch" - different from the everyday partly in its scope, but also in the fact that it now resides in a different era from us. And one of the things I loved about this novel was the way it seemed to require characters who made poor choices to deal with the consequences of those choices - but that there was ultimately redemption and happiness, at least for some of them. It's about the best antidote I know for Jerry Springer World.

"A Severed Wasp" by Madeline L'Engle. This actually veers closer to the "everyday" - but one of L'Engle's gifts as a writer (informed, I think, by her faith and spirituall sense) is that she can see the holy in the mundane, and can see that beauty can be present side-by-side with ugliness. It is not a "happy" book - there are places where characters have had to make quite horrifying life choices. I will admit that there were places where it got so intense that I had to put it down, put it aside for a day or so. It's one of the few books I've read as an adult that made me cry. But it ultimately has redemption - and there is all throughout it the sense of people doing the best thing - morally, in the long run - despite the horrible situations in which they have been placed. It's not an easy or happy book but is ultimately a very satisfying one, one that I think made me a deeper and more thoughtful person.

And, to add a fifth, although I've not pushed this on anyone recently: "The Dancing Wu Li Masters." (I forget the author. I am bad that way). It is about quantum physics and I know some people - who know more physics than I - adamantly insist that parts of it are quite wrong. And other people object to the slightly Buddhist or "new agey" tone to it. But I will say - as a rather conventional Christian - it strengthened my belief in God at a difficult time when I was having some doubts. Because, mainly - the whole idea that the world may be so radically different than how we perceive it. That there are these models of how things work on a subatomic scale - and logically they make no sense to us, on a "macro" scale - but they WORK. They fit with the data we have. And they fit better than the old Newtonian models do. And I remember reading it and being astounded, and coming away thinking, well, then, ANYTHING is possible. Even God. And I still get that feeling - of delighted wonder, that the world is far more complex and detailed and there's all this tiny tiny stuff we can't see going on...and maybe somehow deep down in there, really IS God, that somehow what we call God is part of the energy that makes up and binds together the universe...

All of those books - ALL of them - are books that appealed to my sense of wonder. After reading each of them, I came away feeling like I was a better person - that they had somehow expanded my personality, or my mind, or my spirit. And yet, none of those books fall into the mold that so many publishers seem bent on wearing out.

(I visited the big big bookstore up near where my parents lived last time I was there. Came away without buying anything - rare for me. But I had all the "classic" novels they had out on the shelves. And most of the "modern" novels either seemed depressing: people doing bad stuff to other people because they had mucked-up childhoods, or just-too-much-(un)reality-reality for me to take (the chick-lit novels where the pretty thin 20 something with a fabulous career and who has feet that can wear Jimmy Choos finds love in an unexpected [yet actually so very expected] place). And I wonder: are they still writing the kind of books that the kind of person like me reads?

I will say: One "modern" novel I loved - although it does not ascend to the Pantheon of "it had such a big effect on my life that I will foist it on others" - is "The Strange Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime." Which, again, fits my pattern: it is a book that offers a perspective VERY different from my actual everyday or the everyday of "reality" tv.)