Je me sens comme si j'ai redécouvert mon autre moitié.

Hey folks, time for a real update versus a random rant about something which is probably interesting to me -- and not to anyone else.

So what has been going on with me lately.

Work, and a lot of it has been going on lately. I guess that is just what I'm doing these days. I work five days a week and skirt the edges of forty hours a week. I'm making a pretty good paycheck, and speaking of paychecks I need to deposit my most recent one tomorrow. I'm supposed to meet with my boss sometime soon about a raise and such not, but I do not know if that will actually happen before I find another job and turn in my resignation.

Aside from working there has been not too much going on. I've had quite a bit of time to just be around, and do very little. I haven't gotten a lot done recently. I finished The Tenth Circle which was not my favorite of the Jodi Picoult novels. It was quite raw and rather disturbing in some ways. I don't particularly like books about some of the topics she writes about -- and this was very little exception to the rule. I was, however, told to read this book because it was good. I yield to the fact that it was another very well written novel -- but I just did not prefer the subject matter. Tons of things can tear families apart, and bring them back together. This particular novel was a little too -- and by a little I really mean a lot -- predictable.

As par the rest of life. I've a few good friends I'm still keeping in touch with. Angela is doing well and looking awesome lately -- on her new diet. This one is actually working. I've kept in touch with Katy to a large extent --when she actually answers her phone :-). I don't think that I would have imagined that I'd be in this particular situation, again, at this point in my life. I always assumed that eventually I'd figure things out and they'd just meld into the fabric of my lifetime. I almost figured that the memories would fade overtime and that is just how it would end up working out. But, in the long run it isn't the same situation and it isn't going to be. I've gotten back into whatever this awesome thing is with a guy who has been in and out of my life for years now...it is amazing to think that it has been five years. It feels like nothing close to that amount of time. I marvel every day at how much we've both changed, and yet, we're completely on the same page -- which is pretty fantastic.

I have been having issues with thinking up rhyming/coordinating stanzas for things...and then forgetting them. SO I wrote this one down:

When darkness yields to the light of morning dawning

The sadness fades to a field of yearning

Beauty stretches it's fingers through the world

And stories dance, futures untold

At Work Again

Work, work, and...work? I kinda feel like that is all I have been doing lately. I'm here a ton of my life. By the time I got home last night it was 10 pm and I was already feeling as though I wanted to curl up in bed and go to sleep. However, I was at the climax of a rather good book called Skin Trade -- by Laurrel K Hamilton. This is something like the 16th book in a series I've been reading since...Kat introduced me to the 7th book Sophomore year in college?? Needless to say, I'm addicted, and will continue reading and owning this whole series as she keeps writing them. The premise? you ask...well. It is the one and only Anita Blake - Necromacer and Vampire Hunter. The themes of the books have changed quite dramatically and sadly I feel the series coming to an end. I just hope good old Hamilton doesn't kill her off just for fun. I mean, this last book she makes two of the main Vampire warriors promise to kill her if she becomes to evil. I'm sensing this is where it is going... I need to go back and re-read some of these books, as well as this on, cause I keep thinking of things I read which just were not clear at all. I'll chat with Katy about it once she finishes it. Hear that Katy?? Get reading!

Currently I'm at work, though I may have already established that...so I'm going to peace and actually get something done for the next three hours. That something may well be reading The Tenth Circle -- by Jodi Picoult but regardless, it'd be something.

I don't have too much to write about today, perhaps it has all gone into my physical journal :-). Anyway, I'll probably post a little more here later if I do have some time tonight, which I should since I'm off at 6. *Happy Dance*

More Thinking

Welcome back to the world,

I've been doing some serious thinking lately about reading "The Shack". Number one, I think I'm going to read it again, even though I know the ending already. But the main reason I want to read it again is to take a little more time to try and figure out what is going on in the underlying text when I take the time to read it a little more slowly and really figure out what else there is hidden in the words on the page. It was a very very interesting read, and I look forward to getting through it again.

After that one, there are a couple on my list to read, including a few more Jodi Picoult. Looking around here, I realize that I've misplaced The 10th Circle. That is the book which I was to be reading next. I'm going to have to try and find that.

that's the run down for the evening. Until next time --

Ramble, Ramble, Ramble

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

Thought Dump? Or Creative Rambling...

There is nothing like being able to just throw up on a blog and write everything down. There is so much going on in my head these days, and yet, I'm so busy that I just can't specify one individual thing that is really hogging more mental cognition than any other.

I've been reading a lot. Or I was, until this last week hit and I spent more time training an incompetent employee than having time to myself. UGH. This woman drives me crazy. She is the epitome of slow. And, though she sees the need to write everything down, she doesn't seem to be able to remember anything at all. She has a chronic back problem which doesn't enable her to stand for long periods of time. I'd like to point out that in retail, you're standing for a good portion of a nine to ten hour shift. I'm not sure how this is going to work out. I don't know why my boss hired a 'friend' to work with us. She's dumb and slow and supposedly is well educated and can speak something like four languages, though english is apparently not one of them.

So, what have I read lately,

My Sister's Keeper: By Jodi Piccoult. I've gotten addicted to her novels by the way. She's real in a sense that everything she writes about is considered a taboo subject that you don't hear much about in your day to day life.

So far I've read My Sister's Keeper, Handle with Care, Vanishing Act, Second Glance, Change of Heart... I think that's it. I currently have two on my list, The Tenth Circle, and Songs of a Humpback Whale.

Is it funny or weird to think that I have found more of myself in these books than any others. I think the way she thinks, the way she writes. I love her writing style, though I hate the style done by other artists. The book I've liked the most so far was Second Glance. It was a story about a washed up ghost hunter, who ended up falling in love with a ghost and solving a centuries old mystery. But the beauty of the words was quite challenging. It took longer for the six degrees of separation to come together. It was quite a well written piece. I really loved it. Reading it made me feel a peace I've never felt before. I don't know what it was, but it gave me a belief in people which I think I may have otherwise forgotten over time. I'm not sure why it gave me this sense of peace, but it did.

Her other books are just as life changing. Handle with Care's last page made me cry. and then...throw the book across the room. I was not pleased. There are some rules to writing you just don't break. She made me mad.

I have some more things to write about, but I think they need their own spaces....