Finally!

 It was a gift and memory is refreshed by a little note inside the front cover.  Amy, who lives and works in Australia. happened to be in Minnesota for a conference just as Joanne entered hospice.  This provided opportunity for Joanne and Amy to have significant conversation. That's about 16 months ago, and just now, I'm reading the delightful book Amy gave us then...finally!  The book is Martin Marten, a novel by Brian Doyle.  And, yes, Martin is a marten...you know the mammal in the weasel, fisher, wolverine, family.
   Listen to Doyle...
        "People are stories aren't they? And their stories keep changing and opening and closing and braiding and weaving and stitching  and slamming to a halt and finding new doors and windows through which to tell themselves, isn't that so? Isn't that what happens to you all the time? It used to be when you were little that other people told you stories about yourself and and where you came from, but then you began to tell your own story, and you find that your story keeps changing in thrilling and painful ways, and it's never in one place. Maybe each of us is a sort of village, with lots of different being living together under one head of hair, around the river of your pulse, the crossroad of who you were and who you wish to be."  P. 152

       "Purity of mind is to will one thing" said the philosopher.  "I am legion" said the demon before entering the herd of swine. Unity of self is a thing to be desired but it requires agreement from the committee that inhabits us.  Let me illustrate,  After stepping on the scale, after breakfast, the part of me that would like to be thin decides to diet. This a sole decision without consultation with the other committee members of self. Not much later, after a strenuous morning, I'm guest at a particularly sumptuous lunch. Now another member of the committee of selves, this one focused on pleasure, comes to the fore saying "Diet? who says? Maybe later, but now I'm really hungry and this food is great."  So  ends the diet because there was no committee meeting to reach agreement for that decision.

   Yes, indeed we are stories, and those stories are the result of the ascendancy of one self or another and seldom from a unified committee of selves.

Takk for alt,

Al