“The biggest change for me in turning 30 is that I’ve become a huge weeping pussy bitch.
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to use those words, and I don’t mean to use them like that. It’s just that when I think about the way I am, when the talk is all inside, the junior high boy in me tries to take over a little bit. Adult me knows these words aren’t really supposed to be used like this. But the best adult me can do when the junior high boy is really raging is to at least pare the word “pusshole” down to “pussy.” I’m trying.
I read most of The Chronology of Water in two places.
1) The bathtub in my apartment. Including lavender bubble bath. The store brand that comes in a giant bottle. It’s bright purple. Pimp purple. Purple the inside of a porn limo purple. I don’t know how much bubble bath to use. The first time I poured it in, the white foam spilled over the edge of the tub before the water got anywhere near the top. I’d never even thought about it, but I don’t think I’ve ever in my life put bubbles into a bath tub before. I’ve been in bubble baths as a kid, but never concocted one on my own. I still don’t have the ratio right. It’s guess and check. I could ask my mom, but I don’t really want to go pussy bitch in front of her.
The bubble bath is necessary. The bubble part, I mean. It cracked the code on sitting in the bath tub.
Here’s the code:
-You have to take your entire naked body out of the equation, just floating there. Bubble screen.
-You have to start feeling the old where your body hurts and you’re ready to let the warm water do something. Ready to wait.
Drinking a beer doesn’t hurt either.
I sat reading The Chronology of Water in the bath tub more than once after the water went cold.
The other place I read a lot of this book,
2) A diner by my apartment.
This is where the weeping pussy bitch of a man really comes bursting out of the closet or the curtained bath tub or wherever he’s been hiding.
Again, I’m so so sorry. For the pussy bitch stuff.
My mom has been making friends lately. We have breakfasts together, but the last couple of weeks she’s had other stuff going on. This is good. It just means that The Chronology of Water has been my breakfast buddy the last couple weeks.
Which is how I end up sitting at a booth, old as hell couples at the booths around me, and I’m reading a book with a nude torso on the front, wiping my nose with the napkin, doing everything I can to keep a tear from busting right out of my left eye, the one that always cries first. Always. It’s the one that sees better too. My eyes are different in the mirror, and the left is the one that looks smart. The sharp eye. The eye that stays closed in bright light. The crier.
Pick up this book and read the two sections starting on page 263. The ones about Lidia and her son swimming. All you need to know: Lidia is your storyteller, Miles is her son, Andy is Miles’ father. If Lidia’s words don’t convince you to read her book, there’s no way I can come up with words that will. Hers are the kind of words most of us spend forever and notebooks and notebooks looking for.
I read those two sections starting on page 263 twice. Two different breakfast trips, two different booths, same “French Combo” in front of me. Both times, same thing. With the crying. Almost crying. Maybe worse the second time.
I don’t know what’s happening to me. Or what happened to the me who wouldn’t ever pick up a book like this, sure as hell wouldn’t cry over it. Wouldn’t cry over anything if he could help it, which he always could.
That guy, he’s rinsed away. At least for now.
I didn’t care for the way he talked to other people. Or the way he talked to himself. That was the worst part. Weeping pusshole bitchy bitch.
But fuck, he was reliable. He got me through everything that ever happened. He was the only guy who was there for me.
We’ll see what happens without him.
Read this book. I mean it. The rock collecting, the bike riding lesson. It’s all here.
I’ll do my best to invalidate some of the criticisms I see of this book. Some people will criticize this book because they feel the storyteller’s actions weren’t always right. And that is true. If you’re the kind of person who needs their storyteller to always be right, to always do the right thing, and if she doesn’t it’s always in service of a larger lesson of redemption, then skip this one. You won’t like it.
Others put this into the category of books about abuse and drinking and drugs and sex and out of control college years. Again, that stuff happens. A lot. Before you throw it on that pile, let me say something here. You can categorize anything. I was talking about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road the other day, and I said it was post-apocalyptic. Which it is, but I wouldn’t put it next to any of the books in that category. It’s not a post-apocalyptic book. That describes the setting, not the book. The writing is beautiful, and the emotion of the book has so much more value than the circumstances.
The Chronology of Water is the same way. It deals with all that shit, you know, life shit. The way it reads, that’s the real power of it. Sometimes I think people will categorize a book because then they don’t have to read it that way. Don’t have to pay attention. Once you decide, you can stuff it away. Fight Club is about men punching each other. The Yellow Wallpaper is about a kook. Beloved is about slavery. There, done, easy. This review is about a book that a guy liked. Now we can get away from it. Make the escape.
Don’t run away from this one. Don’t put it in a snare that keeps it from chasing after you. Read it instead. In the bath, at a diner. If you’re okay being a little weepy, that is. If you’ve accepted your pusshole bitch self.
In case you don’t read it, I want to share a passage from the interview in the back. Good for anyone who cares about books.
Everything has been sucked up into marketing and celebrity and the almighty commodity- so if you are a writer, you are meant to sell something. If it sells, it has worth. But in my heart of hearts I just want to sneak individual books into the pockets of sad people. Or stuff pews with them! Because writing gave me a place to go and be and grow when I wanted to give up. And I’d like to jam my foot in the doorway so that others might find this place too.
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