And that was the first time I heard it.
X's ex had a thing for Godwin's (better known) work - and also for Mary Stewart.
My mom has been making fun of me for twenty-nine years now, over my habit of re-reading books - specifically, and *most* particularly: Stewart's Arthuriana. As he put it to me last week - she felt she didn't have to read any more Arthurian works. And I have always felt the same. Much of an Arthurian/Merlin nerd as I should have been, I was actually very limited in my indulgences - because nobody could have improved on my experience of The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment. Even The Wicked Day, though I liked it, almost felt extra-canonical to me. A good book, but the whole had already been produced.
X's ex, apparently, had that relationship with both Stewart *and* Godwin.
I've read Sherwood, Memory, and even Godwin's modern satires, Waiting for the Galactic Bus and Snake Oil Wars - but never have gotten myself to crack Firelord. It seems, with Parke Godwin, I'm almost obsessively a one-book woman. Sherwood was GOOD. But Memory is something deeper - and something far to special to me. TOO special. I can't let anything stand beside it - not even Godwin's other works. What if I felt about Firelord as I do about Sherwood? It would be a pointless read. And Stewart's Merlin did it all for me.
So it was a funny thing to find, after all these years knowing him, this strange new thing to know. That a man would find two women who are suckers for the same books - something so unique and so personal as a book - isn't anything odd. (As he put it, roughly, "geeky is as geeky does" or something like that.) What was strange was such an intimate similarity between myself and her. It shouldn't, yet it strikes me odd we have the same tastes in something that means so much to me. Obviously, we've had the same taste in something else that means rather a lot to me - and I am not of the type to find reasons to (a) dislike or (b) disrespect "the ex" generally. I'm not nuts about everything she does, but it's not as if our lives actually touch, so for the most part her existence is no-harm/no-foul as far as I'm concerned. Yet I've always maintained an implicit expectation of our dissimilarity overall. We've gravitated to vastly differing lifestyles - so the fact of our respective involvement with X has never generated much interest in her.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this odd little bump in the night - was that X felt some reluctance toward the reading recommendation. The mental association of the author is *that* strong, for him, with her. To go into a Godwin book - even one he's not sure she's even read - simply *speaks* of her, to him. My being something of a unique and special creature in his life, he recoils from tying me to anything else, even by my own association.
And that is the surprise.
Writing, for me - no matter my denials of how precious each baby word may or may not be to me - no matter how pragmatic about my work, my characters, my talent; or the marketing, etc. - is "mine". If it's not a badge I wear to prove anything to people, it IS a commitment for me. And I have learned how to commit, in this life. I am dedicated to my authorship, and "take it personally" so to speak. Right down to my voice - and where I learned it.
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Earlier this morning, I was listening to Rolling in the Deep again. A friend who's a coworker is in town for meetings, and she brought me both of Adele's CDs. So I had it playing - and Rolling is the first track on 21. It was all I could do to contain myself, listening to that song. Its power is unbroken for me, no matter how often I hear it - and here I was, sitting at my desk, all but weeping.
Not a lot of art nor even personal emotion actually can overcome me. It takes something I care about VERY deeply to exert such influence over me.
A Memory of Lions' influence over me is complete. As complete as Rolling is. As complete as that swelling, bombastic bit of Wendy Carlos' Moog-performed Brandenberg concerto, the piece my dad used to play to wake up my brother and me. As complete as the memory of a hospital ... where I held my dad's still-warm hand ... where I first held my youngest niece, and smelled her red-gold head. Memory is the one piece of literature which owns me outright; the work I would save from a fire; the one I would seek on the worst day of my life. It is beautiful, but not because it is fanciful. It's, like ... X-beautiful to me, actually. It can be so hard, it can be so sad ... it can be so joyous. It can make you stand up, make you want to fight. Make you silent.
I don't know whether the power of her books is the same for X's ex. It's odd, but I find myself incurious. And I don't resent his reluctance to partake of this thing, so meaningful to me. Life is an odd thing; sometimes it comes up with stuff like this - and if you ascribe too much to it, if you CARE about it beyond synchronicity's inherent interest, you can drive yourself a little mad. Perhaps it's reassuring, some thread in the women this man I love has in turn loved. He spent more than a quarter of his life with her; and he and I have spent almost as long, ourselves, knowing each other now.
X knows me better than any other person ever has - and yet his curiosity is inexhaustible, I sometimes think. Certainly, we never run out of things we want to talk with each other about.
Finding unexpected surprises is a part of the blessing of attracting fascinating people to your life. I'll never forget the time he showed me that ridiculously funny spit trick he can do. And he's unlikely to be able to ever wipe his memory clean of some of my funnier attributes.
It's kind of a joy, though, that not everything left to learn is just that much workaday triviality.
I contain multitudes (my blog profile says so!). So does X. What a neat collection of things human beings are.
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