Moby Dick, or The Whale

 "ALL ME ISHMAEL. Some years ago never mind how long precisely-having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off-then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me." 

 

Hardcore Literature Book Club Host Benjamin McEvoy exhorts us to think about what our own Journey is; what our own trip to sea was all about. Who is our Moby Dick? Who is our Ahab? Are we Ishmael? Or are we The Whale?  

 

My own trip to sea started in 2001 when I agreed to move with my then partner from Champaign, IL to San Diego. I've never had much money in my purse. But I owned my coop apartment and had a good full-time job that paid the bills and friends that had known me may years. Family wasn't too far away.  

 

We set "sail" in two separate vessels; my 1997 black Mazda 626 and his white extended cab Ford F150 towing his livestock trailer stuffed with all of our belongs. Even though we "landed" in San Diego in August 2001, a few weeks before 9-11, I've never felt settled. I've never felt at home. I feel very much that I'm still on the voyage.  

 

Moby Dick is my inner, higher self that I’m still trying to find, meet, get to know. He's the elusive one that takes the scenic way home and I wonder why I turned that way. He's the one that says things and I wonder why those words came out of my mouth in that tone of voice. He has feelings I'm disconnected from, passions I don't know. I don't know what he's good at, while I seem to be bad at so many things. 

 

The White Whale is also Captain Ahabs higher self that he's at war with, that took his leg in an attempt to get his attention. Instead, Ahab's ego, that thinks it's in control of this life, declared war on his inner self. In his effort to prove his ego right, he lost everything. Like Javert in Les Miserables, he couldn't consider being wrong. Being in control was more important to him than being happy.  

 

My Captain Ahabs are my father, who always smiled and was never happy. His smile was a wall of indifference we threw ourselves against until we were bloody, but never made a dent; my mother, who, as she got older, became more childish and self-absorbed; my brothers who have no idea who I am and refuse to learn; boyfriends who only wanted me to be their ideal; bosses who only saw me as a list of statistics in a folder.    

 

In 2010 Moby Dick rammed my ship, blowing up my life. Stress, anxiety, depression, and HIV teamed up to land me in the hospital for 28 days with a years long recovery. I lost my job, had to move many times, learned to navigate the world of disability and assistance programs.  

 

In the book, Ishmael survives the destruction of the ship and we know he makes his way back home. That journey would have taken almost as long as the one outward bound. I feel like I'm still on that journey, still trying to find my way home, not sure where home is or what it looks like. 

In many ways, I'm still hunting Moby Dick.

Book Review

This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars — compassion, love, the subsurface unity of all things."

This is Water is a graduation speech David Foster Wallace gave in 2005 at Kenyon College. The 22 minute speech is available on YouTube. I got the book because I digest the written word better than watching someone speak. It's a short, fast read, easily completed in one sitting, which is great, although I'm still wondering why it cost as much as a whole book.

But I'm very glad I went ahead and got it. His insights and ability to look at things in ways we didn't think of are very eye opening. I especially like how he points out that we all worship something, even atheists; we just have to be aware and choose wisely.

My challenge will be to remember the above quote the next time I'm at the DMV.





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Not All Selfies are Egoism

Not all selfies are egoism. 
In a society that tells you you’re not enough,
And people that wish you weren’t there at all; 
Acquaintances that only see themselves
and “friends” that say you shouldn’t be that; 
With family that says “you aren’t that, 
You are not who you say you are, 
You’re who we say you are”
It’s often necessary to take a good look at oneself
And remind yourself who you really are
Without all the noise of those other voices.

Book Review

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The second of Willa Cather's prairie novels, this one is set in the high desert of Colorado and tells the story of Thea, a girl in ordinary circumstances with extraordinary brains, talent, and voice. It's also the story of the people in her life; her mother Mrs. Kronberg, her Aunt Tilly, Dr. Archie, Ray Kennedy, Fred Ottenburg, Spanish Johnny, Professor Wunsch, the Kohlers. Sometimes the story is told through Thea's eyes and sometimes it's about the other characters bringing in news of Thea indirectly. I loved it most when it's centered on the humble town of Moonstone. There the prose is most alive with the sights, sounds, and smells of a quiet corner of the American West. Fortunately the book only goes to Chicago and Germany briefly, returning to Aunt Tilly's quiet cottage at the end.



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CHILDE HAROLD'S GOOD NIGHT.

by George Gordon Byron

1.

"Adieu, adieu! my native shore
⁠Fades o'er the waters blue;
The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
⁠And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
Yon Sun that sets upon the sea
⁠We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
⁠My native Land—Good Night!


2.

"A few short hours and He will rise
⁠To give the Morrow birth;
And I shall hail the main and skies,
⁠But not my mother Earth.
Deserted is my own good Hall,
⁠Its hearth is desolate;
Wild weeds are gathering on the wall;
⁠My Dog howls at the gate.

3.

"Come hither, hither, my little page![1]
⁠Why dost thou weep and wail?
Or dost thou dread the billows' rage,
⁠Or tremble at the gale?
But dash the tear-drop from thine eye;
⁠Our ship is swift and strong:
Our fleetest falcon scarce can fly[2]
⁠More merrily along."[3]



4.

"Let winds be shrill, let waves roll high,[4]
⁠I fear not wave nor wind:
Yet marvel not, Sir Childe, that I
⁠Am sorrowful in mind;[5]
For I have from my father gone,
⁠A mother whom I love,
And have no friend, save these alone,
⁠But thee—and One above.


5.

'My father blessed me fervently,
⁠Yet did not much complain;
But sorely will my mother sigh
⁠Till I come back again.'—
"Enough, enough, my little lad!
⁠Such tears become thine eye;
If I thy guileless bosom had,
⁠Mine own would not be dry.



6.

"Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman,[6]
⁠Why dost thou look so pale?
Or dost thou dread a French foeman?
⁠Or shiver at the gale?"—
'Deem'st thou I tremble for my life?
⁠Sir Childe, I'm not so weak;
But thinking on an absent wife
⁠Will blanch a faithful cheek.



7.

'My spouse and boys dwell near thy hall,
⁠Along the bordering Lake,
And when they on their father call,
⁠What answer shall she make?'—
"Enough, enough, my yeoman good,[7]
⁠Thy grief let none gainsay;
But I, who am of lighter mood,
⁠Will laugh to flee away.



8.

"For who would trust the seeming sighs[8]
⁠Of wife or paramour?
Fresh feeres will dry the bright blue eyes
⁠We late saw streaming o'er.
For pleasures past I do not grieve,
⁠Nor perils gathering near;
My greatest grief is that I leave
⁠No thing that claims a tear.[9]


9.

"And now I'm in the world alone,
⁠Upon the wide, wide sea:
But why should I for others groan,
⁠When none will sigh for me?
Perchance my Dog will whine in vain,
⁠Till fed by stranger hands;
But long ere I come back again,
⁠He'd tear me where he stands.[10][11]



10.

"With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go
⁠Athwart the foaming brine;
Nor care what land thou bear'st me to,
⁠So not again to mine.
Welcome, welcome, ye dark-blue waves!
⁠And when you fail my sight,
Welcome, ye deserts, and ye caves!
⁠My native Land—Good Night!"

Book Review

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Opening the cover of Infinite Jest and starting to read is like opening your eyes at the bottom of a rabbit hole several levels below Alice's rabbit hole without having Alice's advantage of knowing she fell down a rabbit hole. Where are you? You're in the O.N.A.N. When are you? It's the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment. Everything looks mostly familiar, but everything is, somehow, ... off.

Most authors follow the rules of Rhetoric 101; tell the reader what you are going to tell them, tell them, tell the reader what you just told them. David Foster Wallace does not follow the rules. Like waking up at the bottom of a rabbit hole, like life, you are left to learn the rules from contextual clues; obscure contextual clues. This is not an easy read. This requires you to actively participate, to willingly follow the rabbit down into the dark. And be left there.

SparkNotes had just started to build their Infinite Jest page when I started the book. There are a myriad of websites and blogs about the book. I found the Infinite Jest Wiki, infinitejest.wallacewiki.com, most helpful for guideposts along the way. Or you can just dive in head first and find your own way without the burden of anybody else's impressions. Either way offers rich intellectual, mind expanding rewards. And if that's your plan, if that's the approach you want to take, then go now and good luck. The rest of what I have to say will mar your virgin experience.

An early reviewer of Neil Gaiman's had dismissed a story of his as "facetious nonsense." Oh, but what delicious nonsense it is. Infinite Jest is kind of like that; satire that may leave you scratching your head wondering what's the point. But the trip is so much fun. The point is to enjoy the ride.

The Seattle Times described it as: "... most thorough dissection of America’s addiction to just about everything, including treatment itself .… a high-energy satire of ’90s America." Kirkus Reviews said it's: "a raucous Falstaffian, deadly serious vision of a cartwheeling culture in the selfpleasuring throes of self-destruction.…"

Taking place, in part, in a junior tennis academy it's part Zen guide to the sport:
"Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This is why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary."

Down the hill from the tennis academy is an addiction recovery and treatment center. Here we get long meditations on the nature of addiction, recovery, spiritualism, psychotic depression, and suicide. Having been a junior tennis prodigy, an addict, an addict in recovery, and a sufferer of depression that ultimately proved fatal, these glimpses of a world most of us will never see are told by an insider, by someone embedded with the troops on the front lines of trying to survive our society's failures.

On a hill, a cliff, outside Tucson two men spend the night discussing current events, acting like something of a Greek Chorus making comments on the sociopolitical environment, mocking intelligence agencies and covert operatives in the process.

In the middle of it all is a woman so beautiful she's Hideously Deformed making us realize that we treat extreme beauty not that much differently than we treat extreme ugliness; looking only at the surface without seeing past to what's within.

The narration is stream-of-consciousness and casts a wide net, but read it all, including the endnotes, because buried in all of it are the contextual clues you're going to need later. Have patience. Keep reading. It may take several hundred pages, but eventually it all gets explained. Along the way you'll get treated to some really delicious dialogue and prose, the author using the same syntax for the narration as his characters bringing the whole thing to breathing, heaving, throbbing life. Like his junior intellectuals, he free associates meanings, uses words in new contexts, uses obscure words, misspells words, and sometimes just makes stuff up.

Published in 1996 it takes place at some unspecified point in the near future. Best guesses are around 2008, but considering Canada has a handsome Prime Minister and the US has a celebrity president making a mess of things it feels very current. As speculative science-fiction, it's a bit like reading Orwell's 1984 in the '90s; if 1984 was satire. Good luck.



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Selfie: Favorite Colors

I took this a couple of months ago in February. Purple and green have become my favorite colors, specifically that shade of purple and that shade of green. And I love those shirts and that pair of shorts. It's just that Instagram wouldn't let me post the photo the way I cropped it; too vertical. And I didn't want to put it on Facebook: it'd just get a ridiculous number of likes. So here it is. I am kind of proud of the work I've been doing at the gym and watching what I eat and I like how this photo shows the results.

A Celebration of Life

I went to the Celebration of Life for my friend Anna Lucia today. I'm just posting this here and not on Intagram and Facebook because it would just get all kinds of likes for me and messages of sorrow for me, which would all be sweet and well-intentioned, but I'm not the one that deserves the likes. Those should go to Anna Lucia. And I'm not the one who needs the sympathy. That should go to Anna Lucia's family, boyfriend, and closest friend Nichole. 

It was a nice service and I'm really glad I went. Even though I didn't know anyone there except Nichole I'm glad I pushed through my awkwardness in unfamiliar surroundings. Everyone was really nice, of course. The singer's voice was weak but her heart was in the right place.

I met Anna at GEICO where our cubicles were right next to each other. After I left we kept in touch and not too much time passed before she also switched to Wawanesa. She was only there 9 months when she got the position at the Art Institute. We kept in touch at first and she did come to see me up at Scripps Green when I was in the hospital there. She came on the day after my surgery so I wasn't in the best shape. After that we mostly kept track of each other through Facebook. 

I loved seeing that she got a position with the San Marcos School District, a job that she loved. I loved reading about all of her activities and events with friends and family. I loved seeing her baked creations. I really loved learning about her new boyfriend. So I was shocked and upset when I read Nichole's words that she had suddenly left us.

Anna was sweet and sensitive and super smart. Not conventionally pretty she stressed about all of the mixed signals and expectations that fall heaviest on women in our culture. But her guiding star was to stay true to herself and to know that she was fabulous and she didn't have to be anything else. And that's what she passed on to all of us who knew her. She saw us as fabulous and we didn't have to be anything else but ourselves for her. 

I miss you, Anna Lucia.

Book Review

The Thief of Always by Clive Barker

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I started reading this book when a friend, acquaintance really, recommended it and I, being in the middle of the marathon that is Infinite Jest, thought it'd be a nice change of pace. Young Adults novels are often great tales and a fun read. Since the hero in this book is 10 years old and the reading level is about that I'd say this book is for children younger than YA. It's definitely easier to read than Harry Potter.

Harvey is bored, looking for a distraction, and open to temptation. He follows someone to a place where his every wish is granted. Everything is great at first, but he soon discovers it's all a sham and a trap. The story is creative and imaginative. The premise may not be original but the details are. There were times I thought it'd be better as a fully realized illustrated novel instead of a classic prose book and the gender roles are stereotypical with the 2 female supporting characters relegated to passive roles, but the pace picks up in the last section and the ending is very satisfying and well done. A good read.



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Book Review

When Sorry Isn't Enough: Making Things Right with Those You Love by Gary Chapman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


25 plus years ago when I officially started working in my company's customer service department I found myself tripping over the words "I'm sorry", as if they were stuck in my throat. That's just not something most of us are used to saying. I certainly hadn't had it said to me very often and never in any meaningful way. Realizing apologizing was part of the job description, that night, at home while taking a shower, I practiced saying "I'm sorry" over and over again as many different ways as I could think to say it; not to fake it, I've meant it every time I've said it, but to unstick it from my throat so it would be understood to be sincere by my customers and everyone I owe an apology to.

I'd read, and highly recommend, Gary Chapman's "The 5 Love Languages". After spending so much time learning what people need in an apology on the job, I was interested to get more information about apologies, especially on a personal level.

So many good relationships go bad because neither party know how to communicate their own or the other's love language, which is why the first book is so important. Lots of relationships go from bad to worse because one or both people refuse to admit that they're human and make mistakes. Even if someone is willing to apologize they don't know how to do it in a way that's meaningful to the other person. Remember, apologies are not about what you're comfortable saying. Apologies are what the other person needs to hear.

Which is where this book comes in. It does a great job of breaking down an apology into its component parts and explains how certain parts may be more important to the person you're apologizing to and what needs to be said so they'll understand you're sincere. The most important chapter may be the chapter on forgiving ourselves.

My main objection is it's use of Christian scriptures and values to justify many of the concepts discussed. This may put off non-Christians or people who've been demonized by misguided Christians. But the language of apology is such a basic need to getting through this life without leaving behind a lot of burnt bridges that I advise everyone to read this book, take the good information and don't be put off by what doesn't resonate with you.



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Book Review

Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"...novels do not begin the way you want them to, but the way they want to."

I was prompted to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's autobiography by his formative reading list put together by Maria Popova and her assertion that: "Living to Tell the Tale is a glorious read in its entirety — the humbling and infinitely heartening life-story of one of the greatest writers humanity ever produced." https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/04...

It is indeed a glorious read in its entirety. A master at the end of his life writing about the things he most loved and lived is kind of magical. This book is like a portal into another time and place and culture, a different way of being in world. In recounting the stories of his life and family he reveals the incidents and people that inspired events in his novels. My favorite: the Colonel who finds a different woman in his bed each night of the war resulting in the 17 Aurelianos in "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is based on his own Grandfather and all these Uncles he didn't know about showing up at their house with crosses on their foreheads one year on Ash Wednesday.

There are a lot of names in the book, but instead of being confusing they impart meaning and importance to each individual. This book is only the first half of his life. I'm very much hoping he wrote a 2nd part before he died in 2014. I was hoping it would give me an idea of which book of his to read next; I've only read the one, but most of his books were written later. Anyone have a recommendation?



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Death is Nothing at All

By Henry Scott-Holland

Death is nothing at all. 
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity of sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, 
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.

All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Book Review

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"I have been very fortunate in my profession. I have made enough money to satisfy both my needs and my caprices." Hercule Poirot

First I came across Steve Hayes' fun review of the 1974 movie 'Murder on the Orient Express'(https://youtu.be/segmFF7WQrc). The film is every bit as fun as his review; all 1940s glamour and fluff. Still glowing from the movie I started reading Agatha Christie's book.

The book is very good, of course, but not quite as much fun as the 1974 film(I haven't seen the 2017 film version yet). However, I've learned I'm no great fan of mystery novels. I enjoy the movies and TV shows made from them but the reading not as much. I did read 'And Then There Were None' and liked it a little bit better.

But Agatha Christie fans will love this. It's Hercule Poirot in all of his fastidious glory.



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Book Review

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"Before she was more gone than here. Before she started snorting crushed pills. Before all the little mean things she told me gathered and gathered and lodged like grit in a skinned knee."

I heard about this book when my friend Sheryl shared an article on Facebook about NPR's new book club Now Read This and this book by Jesmyn Ward as their first selection. I've never jumped on a book club bandwagon before, but this one resonated and, having just finished a book, I downloaded it and started reading. I'm very glad I did.

Sing, Unburied, Sing centers around a biracial(I kind of hate that word; we're all one race, but people with a black parent and a white parent do have a very different experience than the rest of us) boy growing up in the rural American South. His life is kind of brutal but he's got the strength for it.

While the book centers around Jojo, it's written in first person and each character tells their own story giving the reader insight into all of their strengths and blemishes. The sultry, humid Southern countryside is its own character woven throughout the story so that the people seem to grow out from the land and the land gets its character from the people.
"The music, all violins and cellos, swells in the room, then recedes, like the water out in the Gulf before a big storm."
I loved this book. I think you will, too.



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Poem

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is 

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend

Book Review

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away."

Not quite "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," perhaps, but still, to my mind, one of the great opening lines of a novel. And all of her writing is like that; powerful, evocative, setting a strong image of time, place, and mood in just a few words. Leon Edel said of Willa Cather; "The time will come when she'll be ranked above Hemingway." I prefer Cather to Hemingway. Both are efficient in their prose. But Hemingway wrote wonderful stories about life, while Cather wrote wonderful stories teeming with life.

Like Joseph Conrad's jungle and Herman Melville's sea, Willa Cather's land is, in many ways, the main character of this book. The characters seem to rise up out of it. She gives it her most poetic language:

"Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring."

But her people are no less three dimensional for their brevity of description. Touching on misogyny and racism, the novel centers around a smart, strong woman with great instincts who helps her family, and by example her community, prosper, but doesn't get bogged down with marriage and the men in her life, which I found very refreshing.

Before this I read her short story "The Enchanted Bluff" and her short novel "My Mortal Enemy" and loved those. I'll definitely be coming back for more by Willa Cather. Most highly recommended.



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Quote: "What Makes a River..."

“What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn't have any doubt - it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn't want to go anywhere else.” Hal Boyle

Book Review

Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World by Erica Benner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"...instead of praying for some new holy man to save you, learn the way to Hell in order to steer clear of it yourself." - Niccolo Machiavelli

I became aware of, and interested in, this book when I came across this interview with its author: https://www.vox.com/2017/7/24/1591382....

Erica Benner asserts in the interview and in the book that Machiavelli was not Machiavellian. Though his oft quoted Prince is How-to-Be-a-Tyrant, he wrote it ironically. Knowing that tyrants always eventually implode, he set out to encourage the current one to implode fasterc so better men could set about establishing a more stable republic.

Ms. Benner has written a sweeping, all encompassing, biography that engaged me like a well written novel. This book deserves to stand with Barbara Tuchman's The Distant Mirror and The Guns of August as important histories that illuminate our present.

Starting in Florence when it was its own republic the book expands to include the Medici, several Popes, the King of France, and the Hapsburg Emperor, all of whom Machiavelli interacted personally with as diplomat for the city he loved and devoted his life to. When he wasn't able to work directly for its welfare he studied the histories of Rome and Greece to learn when states flourished and when they faltered. This scholarship he put into a history of Florence that was a cautionary tale to current and future leaders. When he couldn't get people's attention with history he wrote comedies poking fun at himself, his city, and its leaders.

I love this book. Highly recommended.



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Book Review

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“...it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.”

Read Breakfast at Tiffany's. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. It's a short novel(I LOVE short novels) that you could read in a night; a few hours if you're fast. But don't. Like most great writing it's tempting to gobble it up like so much hot fudge sundae. But force yourself to slow down. Digest it slowly, savoring every bite. Read Holly Golightly as Audrey Hepburn spoke with her pauses and stresses.

Holly Golightly is a woman-child with earth-mother people skills and handwriting that's a childish scrawl. She's gone through hell and come out a pure soul who can only be herself. She's totally present in the moment and doesn't hold a grudge. She appreciates all of people, focuses on the good and isn't offended by the flaws.

A friend recommended reading Truman Capote, but I didn't think I was up to In Cold Blood. And it's brilliant. The writing is complete, not sparse like Hemingway. But there's no excess back story that should've been left in the author's notes. The story is a character driven snapshot of these people's lives. Through the author's eyes you fall in love with Holly and through Holly's eyes you love all of the souls who swirl around her. It's not tied up neatly with a bow like the movie, but that's the brilliance of books; they don't have to be. This book isn't more complex as much as it's more colorful. And more satisfying.




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Book Review

Awakenings by Oliver Sacks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As World War I drew to a close, besides the great Spanish Flu epidemic there was also an epidemic of a 'sleepy sickness' or encephalitis lethargica in which patients would be unable to stay awake and would sleep for days, weeks, or even months. Often they would seem to recover fully and live full lives for a decade or more only to be struct with a kind of Parkinsonism. They would spend the remaining decades of their lives rigid, catatonic, or a variety of other symptoms that prevented them from interacting normally with their environment. Unable to be cared for by family or even most institutions they ended up in long-term chronic hospitals.

In 1966 Dr. Oliver Sacks joined of Mount Carmel Hospital in New York where over 80 such patients were housed and having their basic needs seen to. Instead of dismissing them or avoiding them Dr. Sacks took an interest in his patients, saw their humanity through their disabilities, and set about doing what he could for them. A new drug, L-DOPA, had possibilities to relieve the Parkinson symptoms. "Awakenings" chronicles the history of the epidemic, Dr. Sacks' and his patients' experience with L-DOPA, and what they learned from their experience.

"Awakenings" is a good example of what Maria Popova calls "the everythingness of everything" of Oliver Sacks. He saw his patients as complete people, not the sum of their symptoms. He chronicles how everything affects their responses to their disease: the hospital environment of space, light and air, hospital policies, family relationships, the emotional investment the staff made in the patients, and the patients' own curiosity and humor towards themselves and their lives. He discusses many theories of people and events, not just medical theories but also physics and the catastrophic threshold of chaos theory.

My take away from the book, besides wishing very much to have a doctor like him who listens and observes and is interested in everything affecting my life, is how everything has a direct effect on peoples' lives; space, light, air, love, respect, support. And how our tendency to want to compartmentalize people's lives and expect exemplary behavior under horrible circumstances has no basis in reality.

Highly recommended



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