This Is Beautiful: Alone Time

 So this past week my partner has been out working while I've been trying to spend more time at home, not working. (Impressive for a grad student.) It's been really nice having some time to myself just to decompress. I rarely have had alone time, or even time to just hang out, so this is a really nice change. I'm hoping to have more time like this to stay sane this summer before the school year starts back up again.

“The Red Pyramid” by Rick Riordan

I am continuing my journey through Riordan’s works with his series the Kane Chronicles about the Egyptian gods. I read this book back in high school, but I don’t remember the rest of the series so I am excited to read it all the way through. It is similar to the Percy Jackson series in that it is inventive, hilarious, and fun to read.

The story follows two siblings: Carter and Sadie Kane. Their mother died when they were little so Sadie has been staying with their grandparents in England and Carter has been traveling the world with their Egyptologist dad. They meet up one day a year, this year they head to the British Museum where their dad blows up the Rosetta Stone and releases the spirits of a bunch of Egyptian gods into the world. Whee! Sadie now is hosting Isis, Carter gets Horus, their dad latches onto Osiris, and it is unclear where Set and Nephthys went. This is bad though because the Egyptian magicians have outlawed hosting the gods out of fear. As a result, the Kanes are on the run with the cat goddess Bast as their guide to find their father and defeat Set. This takes them to the desert where they team up with magician Zia and their uncle Amos to fight Set and his huge red pyramid of chaos. Turns out that Amos has been hosting Set and fighting himself the whole way. Once this is revealed, they are successful at defeating Set, but they fail to recover their father. Zia is then revealed to be hosting Nephthys, she gives Set’s secret name to Sadie which allows them to win, but Zia also turns out to be an animated clay doll. The pair sets out to find the real Zia and learn more about magic.

This series has a number of very cool things going for it. The narrative style is that Sadie and Carter are recording what happened to them as they try to find more kids that can host gods. For the most part, this does not differ too much from Riordan’s usual style, but he throws in some asides between the siblings, usually at the beginning of the chapters. Sadie needling Carter or Carter defending himself really adds to their dynamic, even though it is technically separate from the action.

The characters are also different. Carter is explicitly a Black man, and Sadie passes as white but is still very much part of the family. The characters talk about this, how Carter has always been expected to behave impeccably and dress nice while people are constantly questioning Sadie being related to the rest of the family. It’s a different dynamic and I bet that kids reading the book with similar identities are thrilled to have that representation.

The book also does a really good job of having these twists at the end (Amos hosting Set, Zia being a clay doll) without overly relying on that as a plot device. There are clues throughout the story that I picked up on since I have read it before, but knowing how it ends did not wreck my experience or anything like that. Riordan’s just a masterful storyteller, not much else I can add there.

Anyways I am very excited to continue with this book series. Riordan does such a good job with the source material, I truly feel like I am learning more while having a good time!

This Is Beautiful: Time Alone

 My partner recently got a new part-time job and he had an 8 hour shift this past weekend. So I had a ton of time to myself! It was really nice, and while it's not like we are joined at the hip, there still isn't a lot of time I get the whole house to myself and can watch tv as I'd like or make whatever for dinner. It was needed, I have been in desperate need to recharge. This wasn't perfect, but it helped a lot!

“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt

This was another book that I picked up randomly from the library because I didn’t have anything else to read. I knew that my mom and grandma had really enjoyed reading it, but that was about all that I knew. It is a long saga, but a really compelling story spanning several years culminating in a statement about art and the power of art. So honestly this was right up my alley!

The story follows Theo who starts off as a young boy in New York City in the relatively recent past. He is living with his mother and has also been suspended from school. They have to go in and talk to the school administration together. On the way they stop by the art museum to check out an exhibit on the Dutch masters which happens to include the masterpiece “The Goldfinch.” Just then, a bomb goes off in the museum, separating Theo from his mom. When Theo wakes up, he’s covered in dust. And old man he saw before the blast is nearby and he talks to him and stays with him as he passes. The old man hands Theo a ring, and tells him to grab a nearby rectangular object. (This of course turns out to be the painting “The Goldfinch.”) Theo accepts both without thinking. Eventually Theo makes his way out and back to his apartment, where he starts panicking over where his mother is, and after a while he learns that she died. Theo then goes to stay with his friend Andy Barbour, who has a really rich family, and he almost becomes part of the family. While there, Theo manages to find out who to return the ring to and gives it to the old man’s business partner who repairs antique furniture, Hobie. He also meets Pippa, who was practically raised by Hobie and his partner. Theo falls hopelessly in love with her of course. But then his father returns for Theo.

Theo’s father is an alcoholic and not a great guy. He takes Theo back to Las Vegas with his new girlfriend. There Theo is an outcast but he manages to befriend Boris, another student from Russia. Together the two embark on a journey to be each other’s support, they feed each other what snacks they can find and get absolutely drunk together. This goes on until Theo’s dad dies while he’s drunk driving away from his debts. Theo knows what comes next, so he packs up the painting and the dog, says goodbye to Boris, and gets on a bus back to New York. There he finds Hobie and ends up staying with him.

Time passes, Theo becomes Hobie’s new business partner. He accidentally gets himself addicted to painkillers to self-medicate the anxiety. He gets engaged to Kelsie Barbour, who he grew up with. Then Boris reappears in his life and reveals that he stole “The Goldfinch” from Theo back in Las Vegas. He drags Theo with him to Amsterdam to recover the painting, they get it back but then are set upon. Theo ends up shooting one of the guys but they are unable to recover the painting. Boris disappears again and Theo spends about a week in his hotel high and anxious. Boris then comes back with a sack of cash for Theo, turns out that Boris took Theo’s advice and called the art cops and they recovered a ton of stolen paintings. Theo then returns to New York and tries to explain all of this to Hobie. The book ends with Hobie and Theo talking about art and Theo revealing that the whole book was his writings to his mother, and to Pippa, to try and recover their love.

Alright so there are a lot of things going on in this book! I left out a number of plot points and characters and that summary is still so long. The main gist of the plot is pretty depressing though, there’s a lot of characters that die and leave Theo depressed. It’s been called Dickensian and it certainly is that. There’s always the possibility that things will turn around for Theo and he is always such a charming narrator that you can’t help but hope for him. This is really what drives the narrative forward.

The most interesting part, to me anyways, is the end talking about art. Because really the whole book is about how art can keep you going, and as it turns out the titular painting is absent from the vast majority of the book. Boris steals it like halfway through and then it isn’t physically there, even at the end it gets returned and Theo doesn’t have it anymore. But nearly everything that happens is a result of the painting being in Theo’s hands. It’s all for the sake of this gorgeous painting.

The conversation at the end is about how paintings can be reproductions but still carry the impact of the original, like how the absence of the painting still drives things forward. And this beauty from art really only hits you at certain times from certain works, but it never truly leaves you. It stays with you forever and impacts how you see everything else. It’s present in the lighting and in other works you encounter. This beauty, it’s so hard to find and so hard to hang onto, but it drives you to try and find it everywhere, whether that’s reproductions or other works of art.

I think that there are certain works of art that stay with you forever. I know that I have a few. And I am constantly chasing after that high of seeing a beautiful work of art, that’s why there’s the “This Is Beautiful” series on this blog. You never know where it is or where you’ll find it.

This was such a lovely book to read, I would highly recommend it. I know that there’s a movie as well, apparently it is not very good though. Likely I won’t watch it unless there’s some level of chance involved, but definitely pick up the book if you get the chance!

This Is Beautiful: Conference

 Alright well I don't want to dox myself by saying the exact name of the conference that I was just at, but I had such a good time at it. This one I think hit the sweet spot of not being super tiny and we're all talking about the exact same thing, and not being so large you're overwhelmed. It was big enough that there were whole sections of talks that I wasn't interested in but small enough that I felt I could still learn things from the other speakers if I went.

And it was my first conference talk and I got a lot of great feedback on how well I did. That also was pretty nice. :)

“The Tower of Nero” by Rick Riordan

This is the final installment of “The Trials of Apollo” series from Rick Riordan and this was honestly such a satisfying conclusion to the whole thing (see my previous posts on the series here, here, here, and here). Maybe it’s because this is my first time reading it, but I really enjoyed this series and its arcs and the different format.

The book starts with Apollo and Meg making their way back east to Camp Half Blood. They get surprised by Nero’s forces along the way but end up escaping with the help of Meg’s old trainer. They get to New York, fake a fight with the trainer to split up, and then get to camp. There, Apollo greets Dionysus who makes fun of him a lot, and they make plans for the group of Apollo, Meg, Will, and Nico to head to Nero’s tower. Nero has issued an ultimatum: either Apollo gives himself up or he blows up New York. The plan is for Will and Nico to get the help of some beings that live underground to sabotage the explosives while Meg and Apollo distract Nero with a surrender. But first, they go get their oracle Rachel. The whole group then go underground together and meet the trogs, a like race of gnomes that can run and dig very fast.

Meg and Apollo then head to the tower to give themselves up. Nero catches on though that Meg’s trainer betrayed him, and he has her hands cut off. Apollo ends up in a cell with her and cares for her while they make a plan to bust out. Once out, Apollo meets up with Camp Half Blood and Will and Nico. He then heads to get Meg who’s imprisoned. There he fights Nero until Nico, Rachel, Meg’s trainer, and the trog leader shows up with the symbol of Nero’s power. Apollo gets in a stand off with Nero and regains some godly strength to pull it apart. Nero crumbles to dust.

That just leaves Apollo to fight his nemesis Python who leant his strength to the emperors and therefore is the true Big Bad. Apollo heads off on his own, and ends up annoying Python so much that the snake picks him up, giving Apollo an opening to stab him in the eye. The two then wrestle down to Tartarus, where Apollo finally flings Python into Chaos, the primordial soup that all things came from. He passes out, and wakes up on Mount Olympus as a god, victorious. He does a victory lap of checking in on all of his friends before the story closes.

The main thing that made this such a great ending was Apollo’s arc. I kept saying throughout this that Apollo can’t change that drastically or his narration will be much less interesting, but there was an excellent balance throughout of being witty and sarcastic with caring about the other characters. His main change is that he learns to value mortal lives and by the end he clearly cares about everyone he is fighting with, while still keeping the witty remarks and self-deprecating jokes.

This book also brings in things like disability rights and rights of children but really subtly. When Meg’s trainer has her hands cut off, Apollo keeps reminding himself to let her ask for help before he gives any. And to give her space to adjust to her new body. It doesn’t get in your face about it, but I bet a lot of kids learn from those interactions. Then there is the way he interacts with Meg and her siblings while arguing with Nero. You can see the argument go sideways when he pities the kids instead of treating them as agents with their own strengths.

Somehow the ending battle still felt so intense, despite the fact that the stakes were more-or-less the same as every other book (New York City gets destroyed) and no main characters died. I think it might have been the new allies of the trogs keeping things interesting, combined with how this book grays the area between good and evil with Meg’s trainer and siblings being good and worthy of rescuing, despite their loyalty to Nero. You don’t want to see anyone get hurt which makes it still very anxiety-provoking despite the fact that there are minimal consequences.

So that’s the end of the Greek gods series that Riordan has out so far! I think I’ll start his series on the Egyptian gods next, I read the first few but never finished it. It should be a lot of fun!

This Is Beautiful: Conference Talk

 This week I'm at a conference, and it's the first conference of my graduate career that I've been asked to give a talk at! Which is scary, but it's a great confirmation that I am doing good work and making progress on my studies! The talk itself is tomorrow, I'm nervous but excited!

“Gender Outlaw” by Kate Bornstein

I recently finished Gender Outlaw (importantly the more recent edition that has been edited) since it has been on my list of books to read for a while. I thought it was a really interesting book! So much of it really resonated strongly with me, which I was surprised as I often feel like a lot of the trans community can disagree about these things. It helps that Bornstein was writing this as a way to say that we don’t need gender, which she then updated to we don’t need any gender that restricts us, and I vibe with that a lot as someone that doesn’t fall into the gender binary.

It is interesting to read this now though, a lot of the terminology is out of date. Which she recognizes throughout the book, this is more a snapshot of the time than a definitive, up-to-date book. Which I don’t mind, I get what she’s saying. One example being that she talks about how bisexuality and androgyny are these midpoints that reinforce the binary. Which I think would be seen now as rather biphobic, bisexuality doesn’t inherently mean attraction to men and women. Often it means attraction to self and other, or to 2 genders (and take your pick of the 2). And I recently started identifying as an androgyne, someone who has a lot of masculine and feminine qualities. I don’t see that as a midpoint between the two but rather a blending into something new. But it just shows how tricky these words are and how much they change over time.

I also really enjoyed that there’s a whole script that Bornstein wrote about gender included in the book. I think it’s so interesting that many queer and trans people are drawn to theater as that allows you to perform as something you are not. It can be a way to try on different labels and experiences as a result! And theater can be really transgressive and force the audience to think about gender and performance differently. It’s very cool.

More than anything else though, I was really struck by how relevant the discussion about labels is. Bornstein discourages getting attached to any one label as they can all change and grow. Somehow this is years after and we still need more of this! I guess it is part of human nature to want to belong to a specific category, but the queer community as a whole can still embrace its fluidity so much more, stop the infighting, and just accept each other for who we are at the time. That aspect still hasn’t changed.

This was such an interesting book, and it still resonates so deeply with what is going on in the contemporary culture. I would say read it to both see where we are coming from as a community, but also where we need to go. It’s so insightful to both aspects of queer culture.

This Is Beautiful: Outside!

 This past weekend my friend had their birthday party outside in a park, so we were out all afternoon! It was lovely, we got to run around a park and sit in a big chair and play on a playground. There was also some public art, and some dogs, and a nice river to watch.

Combined with how rehearsals have started up outside again, I'm really looking forward to spending more time outside in the grass and in the sun. It's going to be so nice!