Kruse's Keys: Read "The High Mountains of Portugal" to Learn About Loss and a Path Home

First, hat tip to my mother in law for passing along this terrific read to me over the holidays...I tore through it in a matter of days!

Man Booker prize winning author Yann Martel has crafted a trio of related novellas that lay bare the trauma (sometimes literally) of loss and its psychic weight that can echo across generations like a deep curse. In “High Mountains” we join the journey of three characters: a bereaved widower on a mission to find a lost african crucifix; a grieving, delusional pathologist obsessed with Agatha Christie; and an aging widower/politician who buys a chimpanzee and retreats with the animal to his family’s ancestral village. It’s in this village--in the high (non) mountains of Portugal that all three stories intersect.

Martel has created a world and tale that falls into the realm of magic realism--if you’ve read or seen his other story, “The Life of Pi”, you will have a good idea of what to expect. My jaw definitely dropped numerous times at the action that unfolded but the author tells the story with such skill that the ridiculousness of the situation only draws you in further.

See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Key Quotes:

What his uncle does not understand is that in walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to God, he is not grieving. He is objecting. Because when everything cherished by you in life has been taken away, what else is there to do but object (12).

And now, how do I dare love anything? (202)

We loved our son like the sea loves and island, always surrounding him with our arms, always touching him and crashing upon his shore with our care and concern (200).

Grief is a disease (201).

For Macee: The First Goodbye (11 September 2017)

On that bright, shiny, Monterey afternoon when your mom and I received the call from your birthmother Jessica that she’d chosen us to be your mom and dad, all I could thinking about was getting to say hello to you when you’d born in a few weeks.  Having to say goodbye to you was never something that ever had crossed my mind. 

But this morning as I drove west on the 50, headed into the office after dropping you off for your first day of school, my heart trembled and I fought back tears.

Earlier, your Mom and I had taken you into your Kindergarten classroom to meet your teacher Mrs. McGowan.  We went into the classroom with you shyly hugging my leg.  Then you moved forward to find the desk with your name written neatly in all caps: MACEE KRUSE.  You wheeled your backpack next to your seat.  You were tingly with excitement.  Mrs. McGowan showed you which books you’d need that morning and then instructed Mom and me to take you upstairs to the “Opening”—the daily welcome session for all the school’s students.  We were a little late so it had just started and I walked you over to the Kindergartners gathered on the front row.  I told you that I loved you and I leaned down and you gave me a smooch and I said goodbye.  Then Mom and I walked out of the room.

Out in the hallway, through the open door we peered at you sitting there. 

So lovely, so little and so grown up in your blue skirt, grey sweater and white tights.

Your beautiful brown eyes were trained on the teacher speaking and your Mom and I lingered.   My eyes rested on you—calling you silently—waiting for you to look back at me.  You glanced at the girls next to you and then back again to the teacher.  We lingered further—love’s gravity holding us, waiting for you to look back at us one last time.  But you didn’t, you were a little student now—a kindergartner—your eyes stayed trained to the front of the class—already learning, soaking in new knowledge.  Our eyes moistening, mom and I left you there.

Sitting in traffic, I realized something for the first time.  It struck me that part of being a parent is saying good-bye.  Over the next sixteen years, we’ll be saying goodbye to you a hundred times as you grow older—as you progress through school, as you fall in love , as you leave home for college, as you leave home for good, and then one day as you fall in love for good, and get married.  I fought back tears, picturing the day when I’d give you a smooch and bid a last goodbye to you after walking you down the aisle. 

Today, dear sweet Macee, your sappy old dad wiped away tears as he realized that loving you and saying goodbye to you are just two sides of the same coin.  Each tearful goodbye to you is just a reflection of our ever expansive love for you.  Macee, we love you so much: from your never ending questions on just about everything, to your sweet smile, to your kind heart, to your tight endless hugs.  Dear sweet Macee, we love you to the moon and to all the stars in the sky.  

Related Posts:
Homesick reminisces for my daughters while flying high above the Indian Ocean

Sleepwalking Land (Mozambique): Couto crafts a surreal tale about hopelessness but also about never giving up in civil-war era Mozambique

Sleepwalking Land

Loved It Because: Mia Couto has crafted a surreal, engrossing tragic tale of the hopelessness of life during the fifteen year long civil war that consumed post-independence Mozambique.  I went into this novel knowing little about Mozambique's history apart from a broad knowledge regarding the brutality with which Portugal ceded independence to its colonies.  

Reading this novel won't give the reader even a brief overview of the country's civil war, instead Couto focuses on pulling the reader into the pysche of those affected most by war--the ones not doing the killing--the women and the children.  Early on, Kindzu the narrator relates one of the most bizaree stories that I've ever read--his younger brother is forced to live in the family's henhouse bu their insane father, and then forced to act like a chicken--for so long that he eventually becomes one and disappears.  This type of magical kafkaesque storyline is repeated throughout Sleepwalking Land, as the oprhaned narrators (yes, plural) struggle to exist in a country that is dying under their feet.  The very idea of life turns Kindzu into a fatalist as he remarks at one point: "the best things in life are those that don't lie ahead"--meaning that pleasure and meaning can only be found in distant memories or in the most immediate present.  

Read This For More:
2103 Paris Review Interview with Mia Couto
2015 Guardian Interview with Author
Sleepwalking Land (2007 Movie is free with amazon prime)

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.

 **See our 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

NOTES:

15  Kindzu is the worst as pronounced by his mother

16  Mozambique likened to a beached dying whale

17  An Indian doesn't have black friends

20  Sincerity is a childlike virtue

22  Wish to be men of no race--men of an ocean instead

33  The elephant as a symbol of the dying land

35-43  Recounts surreal ocean journey and a dream-like conversation with his dead father

40  Desire and journey to become a naparama (witch doctor of sorts)

41  Mozambique's plight is blamed on the country forgetting its ancestors

53  Mozambique's fate is that of a mat: "History will wipe its feet on our back" 

60-7  Surreal Skellington episode on repopulating Mozambique

62  'dreams are letters we send to our other, remaining lives'

75  in the end we all yearn for connection

105  The cause of the war: to license robbery...'death was necessary so that laws could be forgotten'

108  narrator's role from the beginning: a dreamer of memories, an inventor of truths...a sleepwalker like the land where I was born

157  "the best things in life are those that don't lie ahead"

158  the solitude and loneliness of war: "that's what the war had done:  now, all of us are alone, the dead and the living.  There's no nation anymore."

176  cunning = hyena = death

192  "those who suffer most in war are those not involved in the killing"  it's the women and children

Things I Love About Madagascar (TILAM): Drumline, Bubba, Chameleons, Dancing, Bazaars, Clouds, Tennis and more

Living overseas (PARTICULARLY in a third world country) can be exciting, interesting, terrifying, boring, sad, amazing, challenging and lonely ... in no particular order.

Eventually you come to some inner negotiated psychic truce wherein you realize that you will just have to ride out those valleys because they pass...they have to right?  Now that does not make them any easier but sometimes remembering the peaks can.

My lovely wife started doing these "Things I Love About Madagascar" posts on her facebook last year and I've collected them all here.  I still need to upload some pics for some of them but I wanted to get this posted...finally.

Things I love about living in Madagascar:  DRUMLINE. Around Christmas every year (we've been here now for three of 'em!).




Things I love about living in Madagascar: THE BIRDS.  Our little corner of the Indian Ocean has an amazing collection of beautiful bright birds that we've never seen anywhere before.


Things I love about living in Madagascar: BUBBA.  Bubba is "our" 20-year old irradiated tortoise.   These tortoises get passed down from family to family--our gardener mentioned that Bubba had about 4 different names before we gave him one.

Things I love about living in Madagascar:  Dancing with my husband :) 

Our friends throw some great parties and with how affordable babysitters are here ($2 an hour), it's so much fun to get to go out dancing together!

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
The Winnie the Pooh clouds :) Especially During rainy season!

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Meeting amazing people Who not only want to make a difference but do! 
Check out the website for Hay Kanto! Or Iris Oprhanage!  Or the Street Kids Center!

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Tennis lessons with my hubby on Friday afternoons! PS I'm really bad but maybe with some lessons  Annemarie Orr  Will play with me some day :)

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
The girls learning french (and Malagasy). Macee Took a bite of her lunch and said "C'est bon mama (it's good mama)" smile emoticon

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Fresh fruit / vegetable stands! 

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
When a fruit / vegetable season returns, it feels like Christmas :)


Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Fresh strawberries, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, etc from our backyard :) 
(I Realize we could do this in the states I'm pretty sure I Would not-have the full time gardener :))

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Jasmine in October. Amidst the ubiquitous red-brown dust covers everything, the unfiltered belching diesel fumes, you might catch a waft of sweet floral magic that belongs on a tropical beach somewhere.  

Things I love about living in Madagascar:  Christmas Bazaars.
Every year there's a huge Christmas bazaar downtown with a cornucopia of embassy tables from all over the world!  One year the Russians ran out of change and were giving out change in vodka shots.

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Rainy nights and mornings blue sky!


Things I love about living in Madagascar:
The neon green fields of rice paddies!

Things I love about living in Madagascar: WORK ORDERS.  When something breaks, you put in an embassy work order and the awesome staff comes over within a day to fix it.  But our favorite part is that they come over and hang up all your pictures!

Things I love about living in Madagascar:  CHAMELEONS! 
Almost every day for the past year the girls and their go on a wagon ride in our yard looking for chameleons, they've only ever seen 2!  But every day the girls are hopeful! The other day we spotted our 3rd! So beautiful! The girls were beyond excited :) 

You, My Love (My Life Poem for Emily)

You, My Love

You inhabit me my love

Grow deep and young inside me

Like a sapling

You sink your roots

They wander

and wonderfully

entangle me my love.

You transfuse me my love

My blood is no longer my blood

For you are present even there

Flowing

Ebbing

Beating

Searching out

my innermost places my love.

You have taken up residence my love

In the furthest reaches

Of the slumber of my sleep

You run with me

Your hand in mine

In impossible places

In surreal dimensions

of my dreams my love.

You come to me my love

A smile that creases my face

An echo of your joy

Surprising me

In the midst of my day

Memories of you

Flash and burn

Images of you

flickering and searing across my mind my love.

You, like a spirit my love

Like the inside of my soul

That I never knew

Before you

Who pulses now always

Inside of me my love.

You, embodiment of answered prayers my love

Extension of grace

Shining down upon me

Soaking into me

Seeping into my every thought

The crown upon my head my love.

You are there in the morning light my love

In my waking moments

I reach for you

I am drawn by the immeasurable gravity

Of your love my love

Against you

Amaranthine rock my love.

You infuse laughter in my life my love

You peal

And beckon me

Your song dances

Your voice

Clarion

Notes floating

And leaping

Whirling

And washing over me my love.

You abide restlessly in my heart my love

Always increasing

Pushing me further

Multiplying passion

Never ceasing

Insatiable hunter

Of my heart my love.

Always always always my love

You will remain the lover of my youth

As we grow old and everything around us decays and rusts

For you and I my love—nothing alters

For you my love

Are Beauty, eternally defined

Tattooed kisses accumulating overlapping everlasting

Across the story of my life my love.

You, the radiant carrier of life my love

Your belly swollen and growing 

Your face beaming and golden

You, emerging and evolving

Into an even higher form of beauty 

Me, falling deeper and deeper into you 

You, Possessor of generations, my love. 

You: succor, nourisher and protector, 

Our babies cling to you

Like vines they surround and grow to you. 

Pillar of strength and zenith of grace

Your love refuses to ebb and only grows

Washing over, sustaining, and imbuing protection

You are the sun and your gravity immense

Pulling us deeper into the chasms—of your love,

Mother and lover of our children my love.

Keeper of the worries, my love

Your heart is open and bare 

where my own toughens

You mother and love without a shield

Absorbing everything 

every tear, every cry

every scraped knee and bruised heart

you take on as your own

Carrier and champion of our hearts , my love.

Beauty amplified and multiplied

You exist outside yourself 

Like a spirit

Each smile on our children's faces

Every sparkle of their laughter

 is your own

Their kisses, their shared embraces exist

Because your beauty and grace seeps 

Into their very core, my love

You my love

Are me

And I

am you.

my love.
We
My Love
We.