Blankets: chapters 8&9 (leaving Michigan behind)

I like the quiet form, the various aspect-to-aspect transitions in Craig’s drive back to the restaurant after visiting Raina. As sappy, terrible, and journal-like as it may sound, I feel connected to that journey after returning from my Michigan trip last weekend, although that had nothing to do with significant others or any single person really. It’s so much more bleak and monotonous traveling back south, too. The snow recedes from the fields successively until, finally, the roads are bordered only by mud and soggy, flattened prairie grass (pages 504-506 capture this feeling so well, in the change of seasons rather than in the journey south, but still). It actually feels very much like falling off the edge of the earth, as Thompson depicts it. The closer I got to home the more the magic the weekend held dissipated, the more the real world crept back up behind me. At least I got to keep the people closer, though, so there’s that. Craig was missing out on that one.

Anyway, just as Craig and Raina realize the impossibility of running away together, of living indefinitely in their impossible dream, I suppose I had to at some point acknowledge the fact that I could not spend the rest of my days lounging atop a frozen wave one hundred yards out into Lake Michigan. The ephemeral nature of the whole ordeal, the surreal feeling of climbing ten foot mounds of ice. I could cling to the idea of them the way Craig clings to Raina for awhile, but that would only prolong my general disconnect from the rest of the world. It’s actually kind of exciting, though, to move on and feel so changed.

Blankets, ch.6 & 7

I love how we are led into chapter six, how unexpectedly the feeling of dirtiness, of sin and shame shifts from young, peed-upon Craig to teen Craig at the party. The framing on the party page especially encapsulates that feeling of loneliness and uneasiness in the midst chaos. It's every bad high school party ever rolled into one. It's also every event I've ever attended at the notorious big white apartment building by the Huck's gas station back in my home town. In much the same scenario, every time I visit people I haven't seen since forever and want desperately just to hang out and reconnect with, we wind up at that horrible apartment complex. I even worry about parking my parents' old van anywhere near the place. God only knows what could happen to it. Also, how can so many skeezy guys live in one building and why do my friends know ALL of them??
Anyway, in that sense, Thompson does a great job of making me feel tied to the story, a little empty and hurting for teen Craig.

Random thoughts:

I also love how, on the top left of p.345, Craig's thought bubble connects with Raina, as if through the poems he is able to get inside her mind in a way.

On p.346, Craig says "I love you" in beautiful script, but Raina replies "Oh Craig" in typed letters, robbed of their authenticity like her transcribed poems, in a sense. It's the first time we see such apprehension in her and it's so subtle. Or do the typed capital letters mean something else altogether which I failed to pick up on?

The magic's leaving somehow by chapter six, yet in all the crowds, rarely are Craig and Raina actually separated.

In chapter seven, memories of happier times when Craig's world centered around Raina lack frames, giving them a sort of intimacy, a warmth in the way everyone is clumped together. Craig's view of the outside world as he nears the end of his time with Raina, however, is not only framed, but doubly framed as in the second image we are looking into a room and through a window. Is that melodramatic overkill? The window to the outside world?

And just as a point of comparison, here's actual Michigan in the winter, on the beach by the lake (I spent the weekend there.):

Blankets Ch.2-5

This time I'm not just going to rant and try desperately to align the story to my real life like it's some terrible romance novel that clings to vague universal experiences in an unnerving and perplexing way. I think this is better than that.

The whole winter church camp ordeal seems crucial to the beginning of today's reading. My favorite part of it, strangely enough, are the parallel scenes of young Craig and his teenage equivalent finding respite in the game room. The loud, frenetic noises of the camp first give way to the hum and whir of the heating unit, accentuated by its transcendence of the panels on p.87. This "hummmmm" also surrounds young Craig, implying some sense of relief and comfort. As with the later scene, though, this doesn't lull him to sleep, rather it allows him to think more deeply and clearly, to be somehow more present in his surroundings.
On p.118, as we revisit the area, aggressive foosball noises and pool playing and have replaced the banging, whirring machine noises of Craig's first foray into the game room. When Raina disappears, we get the same lost, frightened look on his face as seen earlier when the heater started up. This time, however, it is Raina's soft breathing as she sleeps beneath the hoop shoot game that drowns out a world of inane noise (the rest of the room fades into sketchiness). This serves first and foremost to highlight just how enamored Craig is with Raina in the most subtle way. Once the last guy has left and Craig is touching Raina's hair the furnace whir finally returns and with it the same sense of peace, rounding out the chapter on a high note.

Some other observations:
1) Is vacation girl on p.136 the daughter of that teacher? That would be so rural Sunday school. Her hoity-toity, carefree assurance combined with the resemblance of the two gave me that impression, though it's never stated and pretty much completely irrelevant.

2) I also enjoyed what looks to be one of those radical, hip teen Bibles on the table called Way.

3) On p.154 it took me awhile to understand that the snowplow was in fact covering up the mailbox, which probably explains the lapse in correspondence. I hate how snowplows indiscriminately bury mailboxes, parked cars, sidewalks, and basically anything else near the road, not to mention how disgusting they make the snow. That little detail stood out to me as so small and sad. Those three frames encapsulate the isolation of a Midwestern winter quietly and perfectly to me.

4) In her childlike fascination with the snow on p.179, Raina looks a bit like Laura which is kind of sweet.

5) From the first time we see him, Ben appears as an amazingly complex character. There's so much going on with him throughout the story. He openly feels the pain of the divorce and of Raina's coming of age experiences (which leave him behind) way more than the other characters allow themselves to. He's such an unlikely and intriguing foil.

6) P.219, the bottom panels, are hilarious.

7) What's with the creepy stuffed animals on p.223 (especially the clown)?

Blankets ch.1 & VBS

First off, I sort of read all of Blankets in one setting, but I'll try to go chapter by chapter with this thing.

The setting of Blankets in general feels like my hometown, only my immediate family is ridiculously liberal, so I grew up completely on the periphery of the whole pious rural lifestyle.

The Sunday school teacher, the blindly attentive class, the hellfire and brimstone, all remind of one scary and bewildering day spent in a Baptist vacation bible school program as a kid. I tagged along with my cousin, whom I was visiting and following everywhere (I was maybe seven). I don't understand how parents allow things like that to be heaped upon their children in such a setting. It's like reading Steven King novels to them as bedtime stories. The activities were bizarre to me to, like in depth bible study that involved matching scriptures on a chalkboard. I guess the word "vacation" misled me. I was very much expecting to have fun. I gave up an entire day running through my grandparents' apple orchard for that, and I very much doubt my soul received any kind of redemption or anything out of the whole ordeal. Snack time, however, was decent.