Alex Jones's Blog, page 3

Feeling like an Inkling

This picture was taken at an amazing biergarten in Munich just a couple of days ago, far from Oxford. Still, at the time I couldn't help thinking that somehow J.R.R. and C.S. and the fellas might show up at any moment.

The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends

Peanut on the windowsill

Summertime is good for reading but when it gets really hot it's almost too hot to do anything except sleep and eat, and if you're my cat you can do both at the same time, lol.

We're the champions!!!

I try to keep myself busy, lol. One of my sidelines (besides writing, teaching, translating, singing in a rock band and being a husband and father) is coaching youth league flag football. And guess what? This year we, the Parma Panthers under-13, won the Italian national championship! Forza Panthers!

Yes that's the same Parma Panthers organization documented by John Grisham in his novel "Playing for Pizza." A big shout out to Mr. Grisham while we're at it!

My Children and Other Animals

Here in Parma, Italy, where I live with my family, the cockroaches are small and crafty things. You almost never see them. They stay well out of sight, and their only desire is to be left alone with those microscopic fragments of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese that they might be so lucky to gather here or there. I mean, who could blame them? They’re shy creatures, and frankly, kind of cute.
And yet my kids are terrified of them. Now teenagers, my children are far smarter and world-wise than I was at the same age. Nevertheless they won’t even approach certain corners of our apartment where a cockroach was seen several years before.
Now, I’d consider myself a father of the most encouraging and nurturing kind, but I find my children’s fear of Italian cockroaches unacceptable. They have no idea of the epic cockroach battles my sister and I went through in those distant semi-tropical summer nights, when we were growing up in Atlanta.
Back in Atlanta, the roaches could get as big as a can of Coke, and in the summer of 1987, if you were so unfortunate as to open the dishwasher between 11:00 pm and midnight, known to my sister and I as the “roaching hour,” you’d probably catch one of those gigantic diarrhea -brown pests by surprise and it would actually fly haltingly through the kitchen like a Wright Brothers aereoplane. If you’ve never had a six-inch cockroach fly in your face in the steamy darkness of a summer night in Atlanta, well, you have no grounds being afraid of an elegantly-built little Italian roach who just wants to impress his friends with the expensive cheese he brought home.
My kids are also afraid of lizards. Ordinary Italian lizards, no bigger than a Bic pen, without any special colors or markings. My daughter says she can’t stand the way they move. “They just sit there, looking at you, as if they have no soul, and then suddenly they skittle away making that awful noise,” she says, “It freaks me out. You know what I mean, right?”
No. I don’t know what she means. Back in Atlanta, my sister and I would wade through the murky waters of Nancy Creek every single summer morning, on our way to the swimming pool, and then wade back again in the afternoon. Sure, we could’ve avoided crossing that jungle-like ecosystem teeming with cottonmouth snakes, screeching muskrats, and blood-sucking leeches, but it would’ve taken us an hour and a half to get to the pool instead of twenty minutes. So my sister would bring a stick and bang it around on logs and the underbrush to scare off the snakes and I’d keep an eye out for the snappers.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, a couple of alligator snapping turtles lived in Nancy Creek as well. You know, the kind of turtles that lurk in the murkiest parts of creeks and grab children’s feet and never let go? They lived in that ecosystem, too, feeding on unwary snakes and children’s little toes. My sister Nicole and I knew of their lairs, their evil hiding spots. We simply navigated around those unspeakable leviathans, while banging our sticks on logs and whatnot. Morning after morning. Afternoon after afternoon. Because we wanted to get to the swimming pool to hang out with our friends, and because we wanted to get home in time to see the M.A.S.H. reruns at 5:00.
It’s hard to deny that my sister and I faced some of the most dreadful creatures that the animal kingdom has to offer. And we built up a sort of immunity to them. I’m simply not afraid of wild animals anymore. In fact, they totally fascinate me.
And yet what do I get, one generation down the line? I get children who are afraid of moths. Moths!
And it’s not like they’re afraid of those huge moths collected by serial killers and whatever. It’s the little ones they hate, those insubstantial dusty things that only flutter around the house or near a fire, back and forth, here and there, as if unsure of which career path to pursue. My son opens a closet, or the pantry, and a tiny moth flies out and… Horror show! My athletic eighteen-year old boy, top student at the local liceo scientifico, is screaming bloody murder down the hall. Oh come on!
For my children, only those animals which have been thoroughly domesticated and sanctioned by human civilization since the Sumerians settled in Mesopotamia are acceptable. We’re talking about dogs, cats, and the occasional parakeet. That’s it.
I think to myself: I faced the gaping maws of killer turtles for this? And there was worse. Much, much worse.
One morning in Atlanta, while eating breakfast, Honeycomb cereal if I’m not mistaken, I heard a scratching sound from the window next to the back deck. It was a Saturday morning because I remember listening to American Top 40 on the radio, I think Hall and Oats had one of their big hits at the time. Anyway I looked out the window, and there was a… a gigantic pink-eyed albino opossum staring me in the face! I leapt back, spilling my cereal, terrified at the sight of its bizarre beady eyes and razor-sharp teeth. Why oh why was a huge albino possum scratching on the windowsill at breakfast time, as if it actually lived in our house and wanted to be let back in to use the bathroom or something? I thought about calling my friend David who had a pretty serious BB gun, but eventually decided to deal with the creature in a different way. I knew of something far more effective than a BB gun.
It was a tried-and-true technique that Nicole and I had developed over the years, when facing deadly wild animals.
Ignore it, and it will eventually go away.
Which is precisely what happened with the giant albino possum. Never saw it again. Except in a nightmare or two.
Now, last summer, here in Italy we had a special guest in our apartment. That’s right, a small and very classy-looking gecko decided to spend the summer with us. Here's an actual picture of the cute little thing.

I was overjoyed. My kids, on the other hand, were suspicious. They brought out the usual complaints: What is that thing? What if it crawls on me while I’m sleeping? Can you make it go away, please?
No, I would not make it go away. I welcomed the gecko, and gave it the name Becky.
Becky would hang onto the living room wall, up high, with her cute splayed gecko toes, while I worked on my translations. She liked all different kinds of music, from Mozart to indie rock to Italian rap.
But then a few days passed and I didn’t see Becky anymore. I thought to myself, Oh no, have I ignored her too much, and now she’s gone away?
I got the answer soon enough. One evening, just before opening a beer, I found that Becky had been caught in a bug trap that we used in the kitchen. It was a sort of “roach hotel” also good for catching flies and mosquitoes, made of strong adhesive tape with a little cardboard roof over the top. Becky had gone in there to feast on the bugs, and had gotten stuck herself. What a tragic end to such a refined creature. But wait, the tip of her tail was moving, and her eyes were blinking. She was still alive!
I showed the trap to my kids and told them to have no fear, that I was going to free the gecko. They totally freaked out. Both of them bolted to their bedrooms and locked themselves in, swearing that they wouldn’t come out until the ordeal was over.
Not the least bit surprised, I simply got some tepid water flowing in the sink, creating a warmish pool of water at the bottom. Then I put the sticky “hotel” into the water. Becky looked at me pleadingly, like, You’re not going to drown me are you? No, Becky, I’m gonna give you a new lease on life! It took about an hour and a lot of me patiently picking the adhesive away from the gecko’s fragile skin, and I’m pretty sure she lost one of her toes in the process, but at the end she was freed!
My reward came from Becky the Gecko herself. Instead of running away, once she’d been freed from the trap, she decided to just hang out in the palm of my hand for a few minutes. I knew she was probably trying to get her body temperature regulated. Still, it felt like a gesture of friendship and gratitude. I called the kids, Come and see! I freed the gecko! She’s just sitting in my hand!
No answer from down the hall.
I knew that if I wanted my children’s company for dinner, I’d have to find a new location for Becky. So I placed her just outside our windowsill, near the flowers, thinking it might be a good spot to catch some bugs the next morning. Becky seemed to understand: she crawled off my hand and remained stoically next to the blooming fennel as the sun set.
The next morning she was gone. My wife claimed to have seen her once in early September, but I never laid eyes on Becky the gecko again. But now that the weather’s warming up again, I hope she’ll decide to pay us another visit.
Not my kids, though. I see them looking around, scanning the walls, and I know what they’re thinking. They’re hoping that they’ll never see such a ferocious wild animal in our apartment ever again.

Cormac, Martin, and Javier

Cormac McCarthy, Martin Amis, and Javier Marìas.
This has been a tough year for contemporary literature.
Rest in peace, gentlemen.
Thank you for your work and your words. Your books have added something unique to the world, and to my life in particular.

Martin Amis and The Rub of Time

Rest in peace, Martin.

Your writing has been called "unpleasant," and you got a reputation as a literary bad boy (whatever that might be... though it actually sounds like fun) yet your writing is, in truth, the opposite of unpleasant: it is always insightful, more patient than I would be, and wonderfully, bitingly funny.

There is love to be found in the reviews and interviews in "The Rub of Time." Love of literature, love of reading and writing. Love for life.


Maybe it was your honesty that rubbed people the wrong way. You were too insightful and ironic, and some folks are never going to "get" that. But reading your stuff definitely added a little zest to this reader's life. And it will continue to. Thank you.

In his reviews, we find that what Martin valued most of all is the GENEROSITY of the work. As a journalist, all his famously snide humor is merely ornamental, because what Amis sought, and delivered to his readers, was the HEART of the work.

As a reader and a reviewer, he's one of us, no more and no less. Over and over again, Amis states his case: we, as readers, must find that when we read we are tapping into a deep undercurrent of comprehension and innovation. The writer's task is monumental: he or she must be willing and able to forge scenes and images through words, which will come blazing to life in our minds.

Great writing provides a "throb", a feeling which reminds us of how mindboggly strange it is to be alive, how blessed we are to be here at all. Lacking that, Amis will savage you, snub you, label you as mediocre.

These words can be found on the final page of this treasure trove, words which encapsulate everything, about writing and about life, the way Martin Amis saw it:

"People are original and distinctive in their virtues; in their vices they are compromised, hackneyed, and stale."

Expressed in the words of a simpleton (me): excellence enriches us in a multitude of ways, while stupidity is always just the same old crap.

You were excellent, Martin. Thank you, and godspeed.

I Think My Language Wires Are Crossed, and I Like It

Yesterday I got to work as an interpreter at the presentation of Helene Stapinski's book Murder in Matera (Mistero a Matera in italiano) with the brilliant Elisa "BookWitch" Morini as host of the event.

First of all, it was a lot of fun. Helene is a wonderful, easy-going Jersey girl with a deep commitment for "getting the story." She speaks a little Italian, so I didn't have much to do at first, but pretty soon a bit of interpreting became necessary. As Elisa started to dig into her line of questions, Helene would look at me more and more often for a quick interpretation. Logically enough, her own answers became steadily more intricate. So my role was also to translate her responses to Elisa back into Italian for the Italian audience, which had begun with exactly one elderly fellow from Parma (who was super alert and even compared the book to Mann's "Death in Venice") and ended up as a full house with folks standing at the back of the Fiaccadori bookstore.



Again, it was fun! Though I don't do this kind of job very often, so something weird bagan happening to me.

Towards the end of the presentation, and then even afterwards, when we went for a stroll around "il centro città" and of course stopped for some delicious prosciutto, parmigiano-reggiano and a bottle of local Lambrusco, I began to realize that my neurons were scrambled.

My wires were crossed. I was speaking Italian to the Americans and English to the Italians.

It lasted only for about fifteen or twenty minutes (until the first glass of wine, lol) but I found it oddly fascinating. I was somehow observing my own criss-crossing of languages, with curiosity and humor, and since I was surrounded by friends and the presentation was such a success, everybody was laughing along with me.

Then, yes, finally I got a little of that sweet, fizzy red wine and suddenly English was English and Italian was Italian and as the waiter layed the table with a generous "tagliere" of local sliced meats, I hollered, laughing - MANGIAMO - to one and all!

Alluvione in Romagna

Solidarietà con la gente di Cesena e Ravenna e tutte le zone inondate della Romagna. Dieci anni fa c'è stato un'alluvione a Parma e so quanto può essere devastante, anche dopo, quando l'acqua si ritira e la città e le case sono tutte piene di fango. Sono stati giorni e settimane di faticoso lavoro per ripulire la città. Vedrete che le persone, anche i più insospettabili e improbabili, si uniranno come "gli angeli del fango" (ci chiamavamo così qui a Parma) per lavorare e aiutarvi a vicenda. Tenete duro!

Wisteria Day - a poem

WISTERIA DAY

Swifts shriek and dive
carving shrill improbable arcs
from the limpid blue sky
not quite as blue
as Cobain’s eyes
but softly brilliant
like the subdued crescendo of his voice.
Spring is here again.
And the swifts.
Le rondini, in Italian.
An irregular plural noun, which I had to learn by heart.
Cruel linguistic vagaries. Destinies.
No one knows the shape of this box.
And no one in this city is staring at the swifts.
Except me.
Swallows.
Lowers gaze.

Violet shadows, violent rush of memories.
Fragrant reminiscences in the purple saccharine haze.
standing among shadows within shadows
looking away from the light.
Oddly finding comfort in the subtle scent of stale dog pee.
The cracked stony wall where wisteria blooms
and other luminous emerald weeds thrive.
Unwanted and pissed upon.
This time last year
some people you dearly loved were still alive.

George Saunders on great (and good) writing

"The difference between a great writer and a good one is the quality of the instantaneous decisions she makes as she works. A line pops into her head. She deletes a phrase. She cuts this section. She inverts the order of two words that have been sitting there in the text for months...

We can reduce all of writing to this; we read a line, have a reaction to it, trust (accept) that reaction, and do something in response, instantanously, by intuition. That's it. Over and over.,,

I like what I like and you like what you like, and art is the place where liking what we like, over and over, is not only allowed but is the essential skill. How emphatically can you like what you like? How long are you willing to work on something, to ensure that every bit of it gets infused with some trace of your radical preference? The choosing, the choosing, that's all we've got."

from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain