iris

Iris
$0.99
I downloaded this to add to a bizarre collection of music for a Christmas party. Everyone loved the different genres offered.

Elegy for Iris
$14.00
My guess is that readers will take from this book what they need. It is sweet, gentle, and kind to Iris in her illness, and Bayley is very hard on himself for the times when he simply can't stand the repetition and mulishness of her dementia. I was affected, reading this, because the loss of a mind like hers is a tragic thing, but what engaged me more was the study of how the marriage between John Bayley and Iris Murdoch worked. How does a mind like hers claim and hold the intellectual privacy needed to write what and how she did while being married? And how does a thinking man deal with being married to a woman who is his intellectual superior? These are the real questions explored in this book, and while writing it, Bayley offer up a portrait of himself that fascinated me almost as much as his portrait of his wife.

He was drawn to her seriousness, her earnestness, but she was drawn to the childish play he offered. He is baffled by this in the beginning, but as the years go on, the private, personal nature of this bond delights him. Their shared language, the private terms that arise from their years of intimately shared observation, their friends and travels; all this is echoed by the absolute chaos of their domestic arrangements. The accretion and accumulation of their life together is matched by piles of domestic clutter that turn into garbage as it sits, their homes falling down around their ears, their gardens in disarray. I'm not sure why this satisfied me as much as it repelled me. Something about the accumulated chaos of it all fed her work.

It is heartbreaking to read his descriptions of her watching Teletubbies, and amusing in a very bleak way. But along the way, he shares with the reader that Iris Murdoch lacked the capacity for introspection, she was the least narcissistic person he ever knew, and nearly vacant of a sense of "self." This is perhaps the greatest tribute he pays his wife in this book. Despite her decades of writing complicated, important fiction, and her contributions to philosophy, she didn't care all all if she "mattered." She thought, she wrote, she lived, she died. In a world overrun by egoism, self-promotion and the cult of the self, I find this absolutely breathtaking.

Iris MP-8-BLU Airtight Pet Food Container, Blue, 30 Quarts
$19.99
This was just as advertised. I have two small dogs, and this works perfectly to keep the country pests out.

Iris Indoor / Outdoor Plastic Pen 36" W x 36"L x 24" H, 4 Panel
$59.99
The Iris indoor and outdoor plastic pen is perfect for small animals. I have a brand new little shihtzue puppie the pen is just right for him. I like this plastic one better than the ones made of metal because some time the puppie might naw at the plastic but can not damage the material because it is strong. The metal one might rust and cause the puppie to get sick when he naw at the metal. I don't think that my puppy will out grow this pen. I recommend this pen to anyone.