Nabokov's quartet

Bought a book at the used books store in Lethbridge. "Nabokov - a master of English prose - the most extraordinary phenomenon since Conrad" (Edmund Wilson). The book was published in 1966./
Купила книгу, изданную в 1966 году в Нью-Йорке, в магазине подержанных книг. Набоков признанный мастер английской прозы. Люблю его стиль.

The Habit of being Happy

It sounds very easy and fun, like in Bobby McFerrin's song - don't worry, be happy.
When I was 14 years old, I had read the book of, nowadays, a classic inspirational writer Dale Carnegie "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living"
At that time, and very often now, it was hard to imagine for me not worrying because I was worrying about everything: my school, my appearance, my classmates, my teachers, and many other things, which any, relatively standard, teenager is worrying about. Therefore, for me it was an almost impossible task to digest and contemplate that book, but I have finished it and even memorized and tried to practice some parts of it.
Surprisingly, more than 17 years passed since, and almost everything in regards of worrying stayed the same, except the scene and probably some characters - classmates were substituted by colleagues, school by work; moreover, because my life has more activity, there are more things which "deserve" headache.
As a person with analytical mind, I am trying to find some logical and shortest way to solve this problem, before it reached its climax, after which normally follows an emotional collapse.
Practicing yoga and keeping a journal help me to focus on what important for me: my health and well-being of my family. However, sometimes, any person can be stupid enough to forget about these essential elements of one's life (yes, I want to be rude here and use word - stupid, because that how it is). This self-pity game happened to me last week again, I was on my way to C-train station, angry and unhappy about everything and everyone.
Then C-train arrived, I found a warm place to sit (do not forget about winter in Calgary), still contemplating my imaginary problems. Next to me was sitting a guy, tall, good-looking, strong jaw line, and skin which became rough from wind, from his clothing I was guessing that he was working at some construction site and was on his way home. He was chatting with his friend, smiling, in other words, he looked content. After some time, I have noticed that he doesn't have right hand, he was using his left hand dialing numbers on the phone, texting, and by the way he was doing it, was clear that he lost his arm just recently, a couple years ago. Watching him, I felt ashamed of my mood, my thoughts, which were minor compare to his or anyone's health related problems.
We dwell in the past or in the future, want some imaginary "toys", stuff, or promotions at work, then we get all above, and still being unhappy, we want more and more. Greed or constant desire of something imaginary, which, many generations were taught by Gordon Gekko, is good, occupied our minds like mantra, virus. Being pressured by media, which persuading us that we ARE already unhappy without some product: cereal, a shampoo, a car, a house (the list is limitless), we forget about the most important part of our life - the present, and everything, which surrounds us right now: our parents, friends, warm house, health.
There is nothing needed, to be honest, the rest of the list is just game, which we were forced to participate and toys, which we were told to acquire.
The answer sounds simple, but difficult to implement and practice every day, the state of being content and balanced should become a habit, which implanted into our minds. I have realized that reading the book "The power of habit. Why we do what we do in life and business" by Charles Duhigg, the power of habit, the habit loop, could be applied to almost everything: fitness, healthy eating, etc. and, also, I am pretty sure, to the state of happiness. It is not a part of personality, it is a habit which should be trained, nurtured every day.
I was lucky, my mom have thought me some elements of life-enjoyment. However, being many thousand miles from her, here in Canada, doesn't help me, and I forget, sometimes, the simplicity and importance of developing this habit. My mom could have been a professional motivational speaker - she knows a lot about Habit of being Happy (let's name it this way). She was born in a very poor family in the Southern part of Ural Mountains, Russia. When she was one year old, she had lost her right eye. Imagine being a teenage girl in 60s with one eye. My mom had been spending all her teenage years at the library, hiding, from such immature and very often cruel world, behind book shelves. What I admire in her the most that she did not give up, she studied very hard, entered the University to become a veterinarian. There, she joined various student groups, where she had met my dad, a bright and handsome guy. And here I am. All my childhood I do not remember any whining, complaining about life difficulties (trust me, life before, during, and after Soviet Union collapse was tough), there always was hope and enjoyment of life each moment.
My mom still knows how to cheer me up, when I call her, she knows a lot about Habit of being Happy. And, I assume, we all have a choice to obtain this knowledge and keep it in our hearts.

А люди как книги

Люди как книги.
Начиная где-то с 12-13 лет меня стали интересовать люди - разные личности, непонятные, потерянные, сильные, умные, глупые, зрелые и не совсем, они стали для меня заменой книг, которые я поглощала страницами начиная с 4 лет. А оказалось, что люди могут быть более интересными, познавательными, поучительными, мотивирующими, чем книги. С тех пор так ничего не изменилось. В дополнении к книгам, я прознаю мир через людей - этих странных и неизведанных, до сих пор для меня, существ..(пауза и смайлик)
Каждый из нас пишет свою, образно говоря, "Книгу жизни"... И когда я встречаю нового человека, я определяю хочу ли я прочесть эту "книгу" от корки до корки, просто полистать или мне достаточно посмотреть на обложку и все становится понятно. А есть такие "произведения", которые хочется перечитывать снова и снова или, прочитав "вступление", потом не терпится "поглотить" эту книгу. Наверное это и есть влюбленность

It's Raining in Love

"It's Raining in Love"
I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl a lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don’t say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don’t know,"
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That's all taken care of.

BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky
I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
instead of me.

First Published
Hollow Orange 4 1967: n. pg.
Published at 642 Shrader Street, San Francisco, California by Cranium Press
Edited by Clifford Burke
String tied wrappers
Featured three poems by Brautigan: "Comets," "It's Raining in Love," and "Nine Things."

About love. Once upon a time...(From "Committed" by Elizabeth Gilbert)

"Once upon a time, Aristophanes relates (in a scene from Plato's The Symposium), there were gods in the heavens and humans down on earth. But we humans did not look the way we look today. Instead, we each had two heads and four legs and four arms - a perfect melding...of two people joined together, seamlessly united into one being. We came in three different possible gender or sexual variations: male/female meldings, male/male meldings, and female/female meldings, depending on what suited each creature the best. Since we each had the perfect partner sewn into the very fabric of our being, we were all happy. Thus, all of us...moved across the earth much the same way that they planets travel through the heavens - dreamily, orderly, smoothly. We lacked for nothing; we had no unmet needs; we wanted nobody. There was no strife and no chaos. We were whole.

But in our wholeness, we became overly proud. In our pride, we neglected to worship the gods. The mighty Zeus punished us for our neglect by cutting all the double-headed, eight-limbed, perfectly contented humans in half, thereby creating a world of cruelly severed one-headed, two-armed, two-legged miserable creatures. In this moment of mass amputation, Zeus inflicted on mankind that most painful of human conditions; the dull and constant sense that we are not quite whole. For the rest of time, humans would be born sensing that there was some missing part - a lost half...and that this missing part was out there someplace, spinning through the universe in the form of another person. We would also be born believing that if only we searched relentlessly enough, we might someday find that vanished half, that other soul. Through union with the other, we would recomplete our original form, never to experience loneliness again.

This is the singular fantasy of human intimacy; that one plus one will somehow, someday, equal one. But Aristophanes warned that this dream of completion-through-love is impossible...the original cleaved halves of the severed eight-limbed humans were far too scattered for any of us to ever find our missing halves again. Sexual union can make a person feel completed and sated for a while (Aristophanes surmised that Zeus had given humans the gift of orgasm out of pity, specifically so that we could feel temporarily melded again...), but eventually, one way or another, we will all be left alone with ourselves in the end. So the loneliness continues, which causes us to mate with the wrong people over and over again, seeking perfected union. We may even believe at times that we have found our other half but it's more likely that all we've found is somebody else who is searching for his other half - somebody who is equally desperate to believe that he has found that completion in us."