What news is there these days. I'm not sure anything will ever calm the deadening anxiety which befalls people when the new news comes out. Be stir my little heart. Well, I'm not sure I feel anything these days, mostly uncertainty. That ever present question - Now what? Where do I go from here? How is it possible? What do you do now? How do we do it? We want easy answers to the questions which plague our minds. How do we find them? Not easily is the answer. Nothing comes easily to those of our generation. At almost 23 my laid off brother is making more money on unemployment than I am working full time. Hell, he gets paid to have a social life -- I get paid to do tons of work...
But regardless nothing right now is really easy on anyone. And on top of this recession we've now got the swine flu problem scaring the shit out of people. I'm sure though, that much more could go wrong. But people are resilient. Like crocodiles or cockroaches. They live when they should die, and they thrive under conditions which would kill other things. Yeah, so we have a swine flu. It really isn't that different from a flu...The only death was a Mexican kid brought to the US for treatment. Why did we let him in??? I mean...holy spreading death batman. Hopefully this will be the only death in the USA.
The flu kills every year - this time it wasn't the expected flu, but regardless, there really isn't a huge need to panic. I'm sure Darwin would love the study of pandemics in the world these days, it merely proves his theories even though many still feel the need to debate them. But, it is quite a side of an argument when you realize that when pandemic hits, the elderly and the young die first...
In some ways I wonder if flus, like avian, and now swine, are like the brush fires in Australia and other forest land. They tear through a population - be it tree or human, and they massacre large numbers. but-from that massacre comes a re-growth of hardy survivors, and also, new growth. The earth is over populated anyway. Plague cut the population by a huge percent. So maybe survival of the fittest still applies these days. Maybe it has come to mean something else.
We are a powerful nation, but we are over crowded and we are ruining the land. Maybe V For Vendetta has the right prediction of the USA in a few years. Maybe they'll come through and Civil war will rage through the country. But still further, maybe we'll cycle back to the great dictatorships of the past. Maybe. They do say history repeats itself. I happen to agree.
Well, enough of that for the moment. I finished yet another book, well, two books, but only one was actually worth writing about. Songs of the Humpback Whale by none other than Jodi Picoult. Yet another of her novels read and I haven't yet read one which I haven't enjoyed. Vanishing Acts still comes a close second to Second Glance which I need to re-claim from my friend and read again. But I did enjoy this one. This novel was told in a rather scatter brained style. One character told the majority of the story going forward and the other main character told it from the end to beginning. It was a little weird. They had an awkward overlap in the middle where you already knew what would happen...but it was told in a different view. It was a little weird, but it got the story told.
one of the weird things about her books is that you always end up with a whole bunch of knowledge which was just back story in the novel. Almost as though you've very subtly been taught without knowing it. Cause after reading this last one, I know a lot about travel across country...and a whole lot about apple orchards.
I will admit that Oliver was not a very well written character. I didn't feel that any of them were overly noteworthy. But Jane stood out and Rebecca was a close second, but they weren't necessary all that interesting either. But the story line was just amazing.
A mother, Jane, emotionally despondent -- in a marriage where her husband treats her as though she is a piece of a finshed puzzle. Once done, it now needs to be ignored. The puzzle is his perfect world. And he couldn't care less about her. He would rather be doing his research and following his whales around the country. He fights with her when he isn't ignoring her and his daughter. They get into yet another fight and she leaves, Rebecca, her daughter, meets her in the car. And off they go from CA to MA (where Jain's brother, Jolie, works). Said brother, writes them across the country giving them the freedom of adventure they needed before getting to MA. He gave them the freedom they needed before they could make the real decisions they needed to in MA.
Their journey is an enlightening one, through the grand canyon and into Iowa, where 10 years before a plane crash nearly killed Rebecca, now 15. Jolie takes them on this cross country adventure by writing them letters. He tells us more of Jane's story while Jane tells us more of everything else. Those both done in different voices.
Rebecca's story, the one going backwards, begins at the end of the story and claws its way to the beginning. She is 15 and she falls in love with a 25 year old farm hand, Hadley. Hadley works on Sam's orchard, Sam is Jolie's boss. Sam falls in love with Jane. And so continues the story.
Meanwhile, Jane's husband, Oliver, is on his way to them, chasing them across the country. He makes it to MA in time to find his wife in bed with Sam and his daughter missing as she's gone after Hadley, who Sam sent away due to Rebecca. Rebecca left to find him having her own adventure through the upper north east. She ends up on Hadley's doorstep exhausted and feverish.
Hadley doesn't realize that she's really sick, and takes her into the woods to go camping so that they can spend the night together and get everything figured out. They are found the next morning by Oliver and Sam (Who have had a very interesting drive on the way up). Oliver and Sam have made the journey to find and discover them. Hadley picks up Rebecca when he realizes how sick she is and backs away from Oliver and Sam, who seem to be accusing him of horrid things with a child. Oliver and Sam ask and ask him to give her to them. Finally he does, and he pushes away from her, only to fall off a cliff. Rebecca tries to jump off after him but is held back. She screams and claws at herself as though trying to tear her own heart out.
she's exhausted and feverish. She screams as though she is dying, as though she's lost a part of herself she'll never be able to get back. That may have been the best written part of the whole book. Her description of losing part of her own heart -- and how later she manages to forget.
But, from there, the novel falls apart. Sam, who Jane has admitted is her soul mate, loses not only Jane but Hadley in a matter of weeks. He is force to watch Jane and Rebecca drive away with Oliver. The novel ends with Jane realizing that she can change Oliver and herself...but she leaves behind the one person she feels she is a part of...odd way to do that....
Though it wasn't the est book I've read by her, I enjoyed it none the less. I have The Tenth Circle to read and there after I'll read another I'm sure. But, a friend of mine gave me a book to read The Shack by WM Paul Young. We'll see what this one has to offer. Then maybe I'll get to the pile of books to be read that currently occupies my bed side table.
At least I'm keeping busy. And now the weather is turning I'll have to read outside, more when I find the time. Where I'll find the time I don't know, but I'll try.
But enough about the books for now. Oh how I can ramble on and on about the books I've read. The adventures flow from these authors' and there is little which contains their imaginations. The world is complete and open in these books. It is beauty and style. How I yearn to be able to take my mind to the places they capture on paper. Novels are so different an escape from music.
Music of late has been angry and oppressive or sad and depressing. I don't find things which are upbeat and happy all that often. Maybe that is just me, but I connect to what I listen to, and lately I'm not finding anything which makes me happy.
Though there are those who would disagree about happiness being overrated, I love the idea of it. I don't find it many places - and perhaps that may be why I so love to write. Maybe there is also a connection between my love of writing and my yearning to always be reading. I would live in a library if I could. Between reading and writing I would be in heaven. Maybe I could be oblivious to the world. The way I feel when I write. Maybe oblivion is just better than being here some days.
I can zone out and read books for hours. I don't hear people when they talk to me - much to my mother's annoyance. But I feel as though I'm watching a movie when I read. I feel that real good authors put their works on a screen with their words -- without the director.
But anyway -- enough about books and writing and reading and such... A week or so ago I was talking about Parallel universes and Quantum Physics through talking about parallel universes and how I felt they related to synchronicities. Meaning, something more than mere coincidence. Well, lately, these little things have been happening and they are not coincidences. They're pretty cool. I got up one morning and was thinking about a movie I'd seen one night and couldn't for the life of me remember the name. I tried to at work, talking to a co-worker, but couldn't get it. I came home and turned on the TV only to end up watching the very part of the movie I could see but couldn't name. That is just one example...
These happenings feel as though they are something smoothing the way between two universes. Things just flow better some days than others. But, lately, after cutting those people who had negative energies out of my life - I realize that things are actually looking up. I guess those changes where really for the best.
Anyway, So ends the rambling of the day... Ciao Bella
