This day shall always cause me to pause. It is the day everything changed. I still find myself waking in the middle of the night wondering about this day and the events that changed our lives forever. What we saw, what we lived through, what we became. I have planned to revisit two documents I created from the ashes of this event that provide me a map to find recovery. The first is our webpage of the day and those immediately following and then a community effort to understand and move on.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Monday, September 9, 2013
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki isn’t another book written by any Tom, Dick, or Harry and it isn’t for the birds, though Oliver might disagree. Ozeki uses two voices: Nao and Ruth. Nao has written a diary she keeps belittling. “I took a bitter sip and waited for the words to come. I waited and waited, and sipped some more coffee, and waited some more.” Ruth is a novelist, writing a memoir, which isn’t going so well, and is reading the diary.
Nao is a product of globalization. Her Japanese dad got a job in Silicon Valley. This fifteen year old was raised American, but had to return to Japan after the bubble burst. She isn’t Japanese and with their new poverty she is stuck in a junior high without the skills nor the means to acquire them. Ruth who has just met a man, Oliver, lives in two places, NYC and a fishing village, Whaletown, in BC. Oliver is a naturalist and is interested in birds and the ocean flotsams.
The earthquake and tsunami event at the nuclear plant in Japan is the central event of this tale. Oliver has artifacts from the gyres created and populated by the event, so soon and so far from the event. Ruth may have the diary of a victim. Nao may be the victim. Sprinkle some religion, Zen Buddhism well you have a stressful time for time beings. Nao’s diary provides details of her family back before WWII. We learn each generation has its own version of suicide.
This novel is a good example of a reader-writer arrangement, agency. The diarist has said she is writing for the reader and Ruth is beginning to believe the diary was written for her to read. The reader is using the Internet to follow clues, to uncover more connections, while the writer is writing and leaving breadcrumbs. This agency starts with Zen moments, and then moves on to quantum mechanics, Schrödinger’s cat, Everett’s response, and Mu-Mu. The reader-writer conundrum begins to take on a chicken-egg scenario and presents an enigma involving quantum physics and the ultimate notion of being, past, present, future and multiple worlds. Where will this take them?
Down a rabbit hole, that’s where it takes us. Shape shifting, ectoplasm, shadows, superpowers are just some of the treats as we navigate our mutual internal disasters. The antidote to suicide is “to live.”
Thursday, September 5, 2013
We Need New Namesby NoViolet Bulawayo is an apt title, when the main characters are ten and eleven year olds named: Bornfree, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho, and Stino. Chipo is eleven and pregnant. Since she became pregnant she has stopped speaking except when she recognizes the act that preceding her seeding. The narrator, Darling, “khona“ or “cabbage ears” a hated name regales us with family history which is loaded with violent deaths.
The kids wander from the slums of Paradise and the paradise of Budapest, nicknames for the communities in which these youngsters live, if this is living. “Her face has turned ugly now, like a real woman’s.”
Everything’s a game for these kids; otherwise life here would just be “kaka.” They live in a tin roofed shantytown called Paradise. From here they venture out to other communities on quests, missions, games to pass the time and rise above boring truth. “We are back in Paradise and are now trying to come up with a new game; it’s important to do this so we don’t get tired of old ones and bore ourselves to death, but then it’s also not easy because we have to argue and see if the whole thing can work. It’s Bastard’s turn to decide what the new game is about.” They play these games because they don’t want to be where they are. Their soldier games are too real, hunting bin Laden, and when they play doctor, they play doctor. Their games are reality. Vasco da Gama is a good guide.
The dialect and language are delightful and refreshing. The narrator’s aunt lives in an American city “Destroyedmichygen.” But our narrator lives in Paradise. “They say Paradiselike they will never say it again: the Papart sounding like it is something popping; letting their tongues roll a while longer when they say the ra part; letting their jaws separate as far as possible when they say the di part; and finally hissing like a bus’s wheels letting out air when they say the se part. “ Before paradise they lived in houses with all the luxuries of Budapest, then the bulldozers came. Why? And will the election bring Change as promised and hoped for?
This is a political story told from the point of view of children, the victims of politics no matter what color or what country. We are in Africa that shouldn’t be generically referred to as if it were a country. It is fifty countries. Her country is not a country chosen in the children’s “country game” game. The children’s games are inspired by the acts of adults. When they go into a white persons house for the first time they act like adults on the couple’s bed. The innocence is actually refreshing from these children being children in a horrific situation. The reenactments of events played out, witnessed by BBC reporters are too common. They learn by observing adults and many times safely hidden up a tree. They have limited knowledge of television and school prior to taking up residence in Paradise, enough to help us understand their world and their perceptions of that world as they move through Paradise, Budapest, Shanghai, and Heavenway. The theme of home is powerful throughout this novel.
“They are leaving in droves.” Our narrator has joined her Aunt Fostalina in Destroyedmichygen. Her Detroit experience is mind blowing. There is the language difference, the cultural differences, the customs that force our narrator into embarrassing situations. She is now a teenager in America with a Victoria Secrets catalogue. She is also an illegal immigrant and is the parent of her parents. One word dominates her and her fellows consciousness: JOBS. Not Steve, the working kind. More than one, too. Too many are too dangerous, too.
Future generations flash before us as the past is erased. Grandchildren don’t know the horrors the joys. Phoning home is Skyping and eye opening. “Because we will not be proper, the spirits will not come running to meet us, and so we will wait and wait and wait – forever waiting in the air like flags of unsung countries.”
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Bruno, one of my favorite characters has returned in The Resistance Man by Martin Walker. All the familiar characters and animals and byways are thrust forward into my face as pages turn. The new young basset, Balzac, to replace his last; a horse, Hector; and his women, Isabelle and Pamela are just some of the blasts from the past. And he has one of the best websitesout there. It gets complicated quickly, as we start with the natural death of a Resistance man, holding a bank note from that time and a famous bank robbery, the robbery of fine furniture and antiques of a house owned by a former M from Britain, and the brutal murder of an English antique dealer. All in one day that has Pamela return from Scotland, for good, and the return of Isabelle to over see the robbery and the securing of the Brits house.
The fun really starts when Bruno and his guests eat. Bruno is an exceptional cook. Walker does his best work in the kitchen and the garden. The history is excellent, the plot development is excellent, the dialogue is excellent, but the cooking is most excellent. The funeral, the burglary, the murder are all providing escapes from the dangerous waters in which the two women are swimming. Not to mention the homophobia that is rearing its ugly head.
Once again, Bruno is dragged back to evens of WWII that eventually have resurfaced today to create havoc and murder. History is revisited, unearthed, and shared over good meals and in good company, many who have a memory of those days and a stake in the outcomes of investigations. It is amazing how yesterday continues to influence tomorrow.
Deaths and accidents are suffocating Bruno as he tries to unravel the mysteries from his work. He’s betwixt a rock and the hard place. He of course saves the day, cause he “has the balls to do something.”
Resistance Man is a Bingo.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Harvest by Jim Crace opens with the joyous day after the harvest, the day off, the day of celebration, only to have to put out a fire in the Master’s stable. The fire is extinguished without a fatality except for Walt’s hands. Walt is the most recent addition to the Village. He is an outsider, a visitor who stayed. He married, but his wife soon died. He is a widower like Master Kent. Another visitor, Mr. Earle or Mr. Quill as the Villagers call him. Mr. Quill is so called because he wanders about the Village with a canvas and quill to record or account the property for the real heirs of the land. Master Kent married into the land and he is not blood. A third group of visitors have also appeared and are blamed for the fire. The two men are head shaven and pilloried while the older woman is head shaven and disappears.
Walt is our narrator and has slowly become “a beer and bacon man who knew the proper value of an iris bulb. It did not take any working days before I understood that the land itself, from sod to meadow, is inflexible and stern. It is impatient, in fact. It cannot wait. There’s not a season set aside for pondering and reveries. It will not hesitate or rest, it does not wish us to stand back and comment on its comeliness or devise a song for it. It has no time to listen to our song. It only asks us not to tire in our hard work.”
With the coming of the new master, Master Jordan and his evil minions. “He’ll put an end to all the sauntering. He will replace us with a nobler stock.” Sheep are his answer and he doesn’t need the Village, the people or the land as is. Things will change as Master Havoc and Lady Pandemonium rule the land now. What starts as fire will end in ash.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
The Testament of Maryby Colm Tóibín is the account of Mary after her son’s crucifixion. A first person narrative speaks of her suspicion of his friends or misfits as she called them, of Lazarus and his sister’s demands on her son, of never to use his name; just refer to as him, my son, our son, and other non-personal third person references. She speaks of the agony of the day he died and the pain he must have gone through. He wasn’t that person others bestowed such grand ideas, hopes, and accolades. She was his mother and remembered motherly things of his life, surely different from what is read in the gospels.
She reflects on the crucifixion after Lazarus goes home and Mary is told she is being watched and to be careful. When her son comes home, turns water to wine, walks on water, he tells her to leave and tries to separate himself from her. She becomes a shadow and is not welcome anywhere except at the home of Lazarus’ sisters. Mary can’t understand why people treat her as if she can perform these same miracles her son is attributed to. She is confused as he is sentenced to be crucified and wonders if there is anything to be done. She does sense a power about him, but she can’t explain it. All she knew was she had to wait to bury her son.
But she can’t, she must flee. She doesn’t believe he is the Son of God and also that this wasn’t worth it.
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