Together, best-selling author Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees) and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor recount their journeys to Greece and France as they navigate through life's phases: one entering adulthood, the other entering menopause. Both wrote alternating chapters in this memoir, which was a nice way to read about the experiences because "there is always two sides to every coin"...not to mention, this is how I envision Elizabeth & I writing our book.
A recurring theme is the myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, in which Persephone is abducted to the underworld (eats pomegranate seeds) and eventually reunites with her mother. As the real-life mother and daughter visit archaeological sites from that story and others, each relic and icon they visit becomes infused with personal meaning. For example, the Virgin Mary comes to symbolize hope for the mother. She prays to a black Mary icon in a church in Crete for encouragement to write fiction and after The Secret Life of Bees was published, she returned to the same Mary and offered a pot of honey as an offering.
The book lacked much plot and focused more on heavy introspection as they both were navigating the waters of growing closer in their relationship as adults. Also, the two writing styles were starkly different; Ann Kidd Taylor's being much more easier to read for me.
Probably wouldn't recommend it! (sorry, Jill! :)
Maybe it is a feminine thing, I don't know -- but whenever I've managed to find new consciousness and renewals of my work, my relationships and myself, it has been by going down into what seemed like a holy dark. p. 77
I sit on the stone ledge as depression floods in. I try to hold myself there, to not jump up and take more pictures, to not run away. I remember when I was around nine, playing rodeo in the ocean waves with my brother, straddling a raft, and how a large wave unexpectedly knocked me off and shoved me under. Before I could surface, another wave pushed me down, then another. But this is not a game. This is my life. The darkness tunneling back and back. p. 82
Journeying is the predominant means of developing one's self in this culture, not the habitation of place. It has been true of me. Always the seeker. Yet at this phase of my life, when I look at my house at the edge of the marsh, I want to learn how to be in it. I want to behave like a finder as much as a seeker. The irony is that I had to go on an elaborate journey to figure this out. So much of my growing older seems to be about paradoxes. The reconciliation of opposites. The bringing to balance. p. 121
She has been the keeper of home for me, and I have been the keeper of the journey for her. And now we look for the lost portion in each other. p. 123
The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning. p. 143
I have a special love for children's books. In fact, I have a story brewing in my head to write my own. I love their message; I love their simplicity. Neither of these were not present in the beautiful story of My Side of the Mountain.
My friend, Brent, and I were in a conversation one day about books. I love to get the "Top" recommendations from people -- "Instead of your Top 10, tell me you're Top Top Top book. That's the one I want to read." In this conversation, it turned to our favorite children's books. I got overly excited telling him all about my favorite book as a child. It was about a squirrel who made a house for herself high, high up in a tree...and how she collected food to store...and fought off ants who climbed up...and...and....The pictures were beautiful and it was my most favorite book in the whole world. I probably read it 1,000 times as a child. It still stands as such a vivid memory for me.
In response, Brent offers me this title as his favorite, citing: "If you love me, you'll love this book." And in the end, I still love Brent and I did love this book. It was nice to have a break to read something a bit easier and with such a warm, positive story. It would be perfect for anyone age 10 and up to read.
The story is about a small boy, unhappy with his overcrowded life in New York City, who decides to take up residency in the woods. He goes with only the bare necessities--a penknife, a ball of cord, some flint and steel, and the clothes on his back -- and escapes to the Catskill Mountains. There, reliant only upon himself and the abundant resources of nature, he survives and lives a life amongst the animals and trees.
Not only is the story enticing in many secret ways, but I learned so many practical new ideas about ways to use what nature readily supplies. For example, he journaled on white birch bark. I didn't know you could write on any bark, but you can. And, how to make a willow whistle. Even illustrations throughout! He taught me many lessons, if not inspired me for a more self-sufficient life myself.
I would highly recommend this, especially if there is a 10-15 year old you know that needs to be inspired.
Similar adult reads would be Into the Wild by Jack Krakauer and The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert.
I have to admit, this book came as a big disappointment to me. Hailing as a top recommendation by a good friend/ a good travelogue per a quick glance, I was very excited when it found its way into my hands via a second hand book shop in Darwin. I was convinced it was the best way to help me pass the time waiting on my plane to leave...and it was, for the fact that I focused on why I wasn't in love with the book.
While it was interesting and certainly covered several countries': The Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, India, and America, varied cultures of collective happiness, in the end, I just couldn't get past the authors grumpy attitude. Interestingly, he is a self-confessed grump, someone who has struggled with negativity and pessimistic perfusions his whole life. Why then, I wondered, is he the leading expert on happiness?? oxymoron; fail.
I did learn, however, that the Dutch are happiest because of their tolerance (not that their legal drugs, prostitution and avid cycling don't hurt!); the Swiss are happiest because of their contentment; the Qataris are falsely happy due to the excessive-make-you-sick materialism that comprises all of their country; the Thais are happiest because they are laid back; the Icelanders have no right to be happy but overwhelmingly are...
"...And then there is Iceland: a country that has no right to be happy yet is. Iceland gets the balance right. A small country but a cosmopolatin one. Dark and light. Efficient and laid-back, American gumption married to European social responsibility. A perfect, happy arrangement. The glue that holds the entire enterprise together is culture. It makes all the difference." P. 406
Unsurprisingly, the author ultimately finds that people make the difference. As I like to say: "It's not where you are, it's who you're with."
"Of all the places I visited, of all the people I met, one keeps coming back to me again and again: Karma Ura, the Bhutanese scholar and cancer survivor. "There is no such thing as personal happiness," he told me. "Happiness is one hundred percent relational." At the time, I didn't take him literally. I thought he was exaggerating to make his point: that our relationships with other people are more important than we think. But now I realize Karma meant exactly what he said. Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue." p. 408
Another thing I learned was the recent phenomenon, in the scheme of human history, of our ability to choose where we live. Over the centuries, most people grew where they were planted. It took some catastrophe -- flood or famine or the marauding hordes of Mongols who moved in next door -- to prompt a relocation. With the exception of the very rich people, people didn't move for kicks. Adventure, in the good sense of the word, is a modern concept. For most of history, adventure was something inflicted upon you, not something you sought out and certainly not something you paid for. p. 394
This, of course, spoke directly to me: someone who has not lived longer than 2 years in any one place for the past 13 years. I move alot -- for alot of different reasons. There are ginormous positives to these decisions, but also ginormous negatives (that I'm only just recently seeing and truly understanding). This about sums up how I feel: ...
"It is home 'for now', she says, And that, I realize, is the problem with hedonistic floaters like [girl] and with many of us Americans and our perpetual pursuit of happiness. We may be fairly happy now, but there's always tomorrow and the prospect of a happier place, a happier life. So all options are left on the table. We never fully commit. That is, I think, a dangerous thing. We can't love a place, or a person, if we always have one foot out the door." p. 400
And that, my friends, is the truth I've learned the hard way. 'One foot out the door' has given me an incredible myriad of adventures, people, places and lessons, yet left me with no home. I struggle with this, wrestle with this and am motivated by this --- but am somehow, despite it all, still deeply and thoroughly happy. I guess in the end, I am who I am because of my backpack.
In preparation for the Fall voyage with this man, I thought it only appropriate that I read his latest book. This way I can be geared up to ask him why he doesn’t support condoms in a country that has one of the highest rates of HIV than anywhere in the world (this, I’m quite confident, will probably be one of the first things out of my mouth to him, regardless of how I realize it might not be the best ice-breaker…)
It’s a good book, don’t get me wrong…just a bit too Christian focused for my tastes. It’s a very positive portrayal of the true nature of humans: goodness. And, for a man who was the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee after South Africa’s apartheid, this is quite a profound conviction that he has. I can’t say that I disagree with him, I just have not witnessed near the amount of evil he has, hence my opinion comes from quite a safer place…
Ubuntu recognizes the interconnectedness of life. My humanity, we say, is bound up with your humanity. One consequence of ubuntu is that we recognize that we all need to live our lives in ways that ensure that others may live well. Our flourishing should enhance the lives of others, not detract from them. P. 47
What does it mean to be at home in our own lives? Ideally, our physical homes are the places where we shed all striving and pretense. They are the places where no artifice is required in our self-presentation. Being at home in our own lives is a kindred experience. When we are at home in our lives, thought and action are all of a piece. P. 53
I often say that God would rather we go freely to hell than that we be compelled to enter heaven. P. 67
Life is more than breath and a heartbeat; meaning and purpose are the life of life. P. 75
We help people to construct a life that they can inhabit from the mosaic tiles of their experience. P. 75
In the Bible, depravity does not enter creation in a tidal wave of wrongness. It comes in as a slow, silent leak, drip by quiet drip, until the earth is flooded. P. 89
The practices of goodness—noticing, savoring, thinking, enjoying, and being thankful—are not hard disciplines to learn. But they are disciplines, and they take practice. P. 92
Sometimes things are not right of wrong; they just are! P. 149
We can choose goodness no matter the circumstances. We can always ask, “What is the answer my best self would give? What is the action my best self would take?” p. 190
This book, or rather essay (only 81 pgs) was such a wake up call for travelers who function as tourists.
The book is set in Antigua (AN-TEE-GA), a small island in the Caribbean. The author commentates on life in her home country from the eyes of a tourist, noting how tropical and wonderful the island appears to the outsider.
"Bright blue waters"
"Perfect warm breezes"
"White sand as far as the eye can see"
...but uses the essay to point out how one could easily stop seeing there. She goes into detail about the harsher realities of the lives of the people who are residents of the country. Influenced by a history of slavery, colonial rule by the British, a weak currency and a corrupt government an alternative reality challenges the tourist perception.
I really liked the book. Easy to read and very powerful message. It is the required reading for the Fall voyage of Semester At Sea. I think this is an excellent choice as all of the students will be challenged to see without tourist goggles.
“Who is John Galt?” – what more can I say? And, oh how much this one question sums up.
After wondering what this line actually meant for a long time, I finally know! I’ve been reading this book literally since about April; it was a long 1,069 pages but oh so worth it!
Typical of Ayn Rand, it took her about 700 pages to develop a solid plot. This was hard for me to stay interested in & only in the last 300 did I hate to put it down. It is too complex and intense for me to sum it any better than this: (thanks Wikipedia)
The novel explores a dystopian United States where leading innovators, ranging from industrialists to artists, refuse to be exploited by society. The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, sees society collapse around her as the government increasingly asserts control over all industry, while society’s most productive citizens, led by the mysterious John Galt, progressively disappear. Galt describes the strike as “stopping the motor of the world” by withdrawing the “minds” that drive society’s growth and productivity; with their strike these creative minds hope to demonstrate that the economy and society would collapse without the profit motive and the efforts of the rational and productive.
Interestingly, in the wake of the late 2000s recession, sales of this book sharply increased due to the high correlation between present day US and this novel. On Jan. 13, 2009 the book ranked #33 on Amazon.com’s top-selling book. This book is Rand’s “masterpiece”, as some have called it, followed only by The Fountainhead.
I highly, highly recommend this book to have in everyone's repertoire of knowledge, but I suggest you have space in your life to read it! It's a doozie.
I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine . p. 1042
I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about don’t exist. That this book has been written-and published-is my proof that they do. p. 1070
I.Love.This.Woman. I seriously have an addiction to her writing, her thoughts, her honesty and her vulnerability. Every one of her books just blow me away....including her latest, this one.
For many weeks, I saw this book smiling at me from the bookstore window. I had a strong determination not to buy it while I was here for the simple reason: I didn't want more baggage weight. Lame, but true. I loved her first book so much, that I was very excited about this release. Yet, I stood firm for several weeks, quickly walking by the bookstore, not allowing myself to even stop for a browse. Somehow....I faltered and eventually gave in this past week on a slow afternoon with not much else to distract me. I gave in and bought the book.
I'm so glad I did: It was just as fantastically, blissfully wonderful as I anticipated. Maybe because I suffer from my own hesitations towards marriage or that I am single (so that I can still reasonably analyze the hell out of the process...), I could identify in a very strong way every word of every page of every chapter. This book covered me in its cloak and I didn't leave the couch for 2 days straight to finish the book.
I think that the book fairy must be granting me some good vibes these days because Man! I have been fortunate lately. I highly recommend it for every man and woman, young and old, engaged, single, straight, gay, bisexual or asexual --- It's seriously that good!
What a fantastic book!! Having been told to read it for years now, it finally appeared in my world at exactly the right time. I couldn't put it down.
Part Philosophy 101, Part time warp story line that doesn't make-sense when-you-tell-someone -- Total great book with too much information to grasp with only one read.
The story starts with Sophie Amundsen, a spunky 14-year-old, who receives an anonymous letter in her mailbox, posing these two questions: Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?". What ensues is an entorague of letters from a mysterious instructor amounting to a history lesson of the timeline of Philosophy. Letters give way to lectures, questions give way to quests and Sophie (and myself!) grows her mind by engaging with the lessons.
What else can I say? : I loved it and highly recommend it!
Three Dog Night
Peter Goldsworthy
For those of you who follow my reviews, you know I don't naturally gravitate towards fiction reads. However, I absolutely loved this book! Maybe because I curently live and breath Aboriginal culture, or maybe just because it's a damn good story, I seriously ran home every day to read this book. I think I set a record for how fast I read 342 pages.
Martin Blackman, a respected psychiatrist, returns to Australia after living and working in London for 10 years. He brings home his new bride, also a physciatrist, whom he is blissfully in love with. They settle in Adelaide and reunite with some of Martin's old friends, one in particular -- his best friend, Felix. Felix, once a brilliant surgeon, has spent a large amount of time working as a physician in the Australian outback helping Aboriginal communities. The whole of him has drastically changed because of this.
The author also did a beautiful job painting the perfect Australian landscape that I identified with so well: for example, "a luminous morning saturated with sunlight and parrots". His prose was so crafted that I dog-eared most of the book!
I don't know that it would be easy to get outside of Australia, but I recommend this book for many reasons: culture lesson, as well as a confronting & unpredictable read! 5 stars.
"If love is an obsessive-compulsive disorder, then I have been illd for years. But never as sick with bliss, as diseased, as now." p.3
"I inhale again, immersing myself in the simple, vegetable pleasure of tobacco. Unhappiness comes from the human world, I have come to believe. The animal world. Happiness comes from the non-human -- the vegetable world, the mineral world. I am alone on the terrace, sole animal in an all-vegetable, all-mineral kingdom whose simple elements -- light, water, leaf -- have the power to gladden me directly, instinctively, entering unexamined through eye and ear. And lung. In, out, another cloud of smoke dissolves in the cold air.: p. 328
"There's a useful German word, Maskenfreiheit. The freedom we have when we wear masks. .... I'm interested in the masks we wear on the Net. In what those masks reveal to us when we don't have to look anyone directly in the eye. When we're hiding behind some chatline pesona...." p. 32
Tommy Wilhelm has reached his forties and is scared. He considers himself a failure – at his marriage, at his career, with his father, and at his finances. He is a broken man, past saving himself. Rescued by the likes of a mentor/con man, he has one monumental day where he reviews his past mistakes in light of forgiving himself and learning to “live in the here and now” and “seize the day”.
The book ends with a beautiful scene in which Wilhelm stumbles by accident into a funeral procession. He is led towards the dead body, and after holding back his tears for most of the book, he breaks down here and cries his eyes out. In the end, there is no neat resolution of all his problems, but instead there is a moment of catharsis.
Bellows did a fantastic job in this short novella of characterizing the trenches we sometimes can find ourselves in. The main character was a sad, weak man, yet one that, in some moments, we can all identify with. He was not what he thought he would be, nor where he’d be and ultimately he was disappointed.
It has been said: “When the student is ready, the teacher will arrive.” I believe this to be true and this book was a great example
A highly touted book came as a complete let down to me. Maybe my expectations were too high. It is considered a classic in these parts and a "must" read by the driver who takes me out to my communities. I wouldn't agree. Less the book and more the prose; we just didn't jive.
The entire book is Chatwin describing a trip to Australia - mainly in the Northern Territory - which he has taken for the express purpose of researching Aboriginal song and its connections to nomadic travel. Discussions with Australians, many of them Indigenous, give insights into Outback culture, Aboriginal culture and religion, and the Aboriginal land rights movement.
Interestingly: Songlines, also called Dreaming tracks by Indigenous Australians within the animist indigenous belief system, are paths across the land (or, sometimes the sky) which mark the route followed by a localised 'creator-spirit' during the Dreaming. The paths of the songlines are recorded in traditional songs, stories, dance, and painting. By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, Indigenous people could navigate vast distances, often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interior. The continent of Australia contains an extensive system of songlines, some of which are of a few kilometres, whilst others traverse hundreds of kilometres through lands of many different Indigenous peoples — peoples who may speak markedly different languages and champion significantly different cultural traditions. (wikipedia)
Even more than the book, I found the author to be fascinating.
'But if you took him blindfold to another country,' she said, ''he might end up lost.'
" The dry heart of Australia, she said, was a jigsaw of microclimates, of different minerals in the soil and different plants and animals. A man raised in one part of the desert would know its flora and fauna backwards. He knew which plant attracted game. He knew his water. He knew where there were tubers underground. In other world, by naming all the 'things' in his territory, he could always count on survival.
'Because he'd lost his bearings?'
'Yes.'
'You're saying that man 'makes his territory by naming the 'things' in it?'
'Yes, I am!' Her face lit up.
'So the basis for a universal language can never have existed?'
'Yes. Yes.'
"Wendy said that, even today, when an Aboriginal mother notices the first stirring of speech in her child, she lets it handle the 'things' of that particular country: leaves, fruit, insects and so forth. The child at its mother's breast, will toy with the 'thing', talk to it, test its teeth on it, learn its name, repeat its name--and finally chuck it aside.
'We give our children guns and computer games,' Wendy said. 'They gave their children the land.' "
After all the hype surrounding this book, I was a bit disappointed by the end. It was an interesting take on death – a perspective I really grew to love – but the overall story, one of love, loss and letting go, was a bit underdeveloped for my tastes.
The book’s narrator is a 14 yr old girl who was raped and murdered in a cornfield near her home. She ascends to heaven and from there watches how her death affected those around her.
Her father, who suspects the killer's identity, goes crazy with grief over the loss of his first-born, and his inability to do anything about it.
Her mother, who never wanted children, withdraws from her family and into an affair.
Susie's sister, Lindsey, fears the kids at school will forever define her by Susie's death, and her little brother, Buckley, struggles to understand the meaning of death.
The book has a strong first half as she commentates from heaven on how her death affects those she loves. The second half turns more into a ghost story when she revisits Earth.
My favorite lesson learned was the idea that heaven for her was always considered “my” heaven, as in everyone’s heaven is different based upon our own loves, comforts, and desires. I like this idea; it seems to make sense.
Overall, I was underwhelmed. I have not seen the movie yet, but the only person I know who has reports that it is “weird”.
"...Holly and I could be scanning Earth, alighting on one scene or another for a second or two, looking for the unexpected in the most mundane moment. and a soul would run by a living being, touch them softly on the shoulder or cheek, and continue on its way to heaven. The dead are never exactly seem by th eliving, by many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them. They speak of a chill in the air. The mates of the deceased wake from dreams and see a figure standing at the end of their bed, or in a doorway, or boarding, phantomlike, a city bus. On my way out of Earth, I touched a girl named Ruth..."p. 36
"I did begin to wonder what the word heaven meant. I thought, if this were heaven, truly heaven,, it would be where my grandparents lived. Where my father's father, my favorite of them all, would lift me up and dance with me. I would feel only joy and have no memory, no cornfield and no grave." p. 120
"It's one of my secret pleasures, she admitted. After all these years I still love to watch the souls that float and spin in masses, all of them clamoring at once inside the air. I don't see anything, I said that first time. Watch closely, she said, and hush. But I felt them before I saw them, small warm sparks along my arms. Then there they were, fireflies lighting up and expanding in howls and swirls as they abandoned human flesh. Like snowflakes, Franny said, none of them the same and yet each one, from where we stand, exactly like the one before." p. 155
"Almost everyone in heaven has someone on Earth they watch, a loved one, a friend, or even a stranger who was once kind, who offered warm food or a bright smile when one of us had needed it. And when I wasn't watching I could hear the others talking to those they loved on Earth: just as fruitlessly as me, I'm afraid. A one-sided cajoling and coaching of the young, a one-way loving and desiring of their mates, a single-sided card that could never be signed." p. 246
"She no longer looked haunted, as she had in high school, but still, if you looked closely at her eyes you could see the skittery rabbit energy that often made people nervous. She had an expression of someone who was constantly on the lookout for something or someone that hadn't yet arrived. Her whole body seemed to slant forward in inquiry, and though she had been told at the bar where she worked that she had beautiful hair or beautiful hands.....people never said anything about her eyes." p. 249
"I realized how much I wished I could be where my mother was. His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything -- for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment before the sun rose...." p. 280
"She's been great, he said, a rock. A spongelike rock, but a rock......and I watched as my parents kissed. They kept their eyes open as they did, and my mother was the one to cry first, the tears dropping down onto my father's cheeks until he wept too." p.282
Like a net cast across the nexus of time, space, politics and history, not to mention inter-racial relationships, this book spoke to a huge range of issues in Australia.
The plot remained fairly simplistic: woman is betrayed by her husband in Melbourne, she flees to her homeland in remote Northern Queensland, there she rekindles a relationship with an indigenous man from her childhood and they fall in love while discovering how intertwined their families once were. Whilst romance and landscape each play a part here, Journey to the Stone Country is about much more.
Interwoven within this story is the history of an Aboriginal tribe, the Janggas, and thus a depiction of Australian Aboriginals in general. Also, political themes of white men and big mining and cattle stations juxtaposed with one of the oldest cultures on Earth were present. Moreover, the "stone country" traversed by the book's characters represented not just a part of remote Australia, but an inner landscape which we all must travel and explore. It is a story of our own journey - of coming to terms with our past - individual and collective.
Only because I’m a slave to my quest of reading a wide genre of book types, I picked up this novel because it was particularly relevant to my surroundings now. It was a good book, but fiction is not what I tend to gravitate to, so…….I guess it was Ok. Probably wouldn’t recommend it.
She stood listening. There was a sound with her in the room. She had been hearing it on and off for some time.…. It was in the air around her. Close by. She realized then that she was hearing the termites. She put her ear to the books and closed her eyes, listening. A faint rustling from within the volumes. A nervous suspirations, like a vast army of pilgrims shuffling across a landscape of infinite extent, persistent and continuous, embarked upon a journey with an end in obedience to a restless urge to be on the move. Millions of white ants at their blind work, recycling the world and returning it some kind of cosmic dust, heartless, unconscious and inert…She was holding her breath. P. 181
“I don’t know what I mean!” Bo said, raising his voice angrily. “You don’t have to know what you mean to mean something.” P. 233
The mystery of sleep and the unconscious that we take for granted, that vast region where our longings and fears appear to us in the form of visions, the voices of the oracles, ambiguous and obscure, arising from our own depths. In our dreams the whispering voices of our gods. P. 301
Don't Sleep There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel Everett (Thanks, Milt)
Wow! What a great read! There is no way to categorize this story of a Christian missionary's linguistic adventures in the Amazon jungle. What started off as another journey to bring God to the natives ended up challenging Chomsky's key theory of language. It reminded me of Barbara Kingsolver's novel, The Poisonwood Bible. (also an excellent read)
I was recommended this book by a fellow "SASer" because the author served as Academic Dean on a Semester at Sea voyage. That means, in some really distant way, I am connected to the author through the mutual experience of sailing with SAS. Speaking of...if you're interested, here is a pictorial summary of my voyage this summer. (Way to go, Melanie!)
In 1977, Daniel Everett moved his family: wife, plus 3 kids to live with a tribe in the Amazon. His goal was to understand the language so that he could translate the Bible. What ensued was a 30 year commitment to the small, forgotten tribes in the Amazon, particularly the Pirahã Indians. It is an amazing story, not to mention a familiar one myself of going to 'convert' others and in the end, you yourself are the one forever converted. (In the end, he becomes an atheist!)
The Pirahã Indians are a very peculiar people. They number fewer than 400 and have no myths, rituals or history. Their language is unrelated to any other living tongue. It can be whistled, sung, hummed or spoken. It has no words for numbers, colors, left or right, brother or sister. Understandably so, it is one of the least understood languages in the world.
The Pirahã never sleep for more than a couple of hours and talk through much of the night. They live as hunter-gatherers in villages along 50 miles of the Maici River deep in the Amazon forest. They have plenty of contact with river traders and other outsiders but display no inclination to change their ways. Everett's 30 year span with these people is beautifully captured in the book with awe-inspiring details such as his wife and daughter's battle with malaria and the night the village decided to kill him. There is so much to the story that he tells; it's excellent!
If that were the extent of the book, it would amount to an interesting travelogue, another tale of a presumptuous Westerner finding enlightenment in the depths of primitive society. The difference here is that Everett, an academic linguist, also presents a radical challenge to Noam Chomsky's theory of universal grammar, which has dominated linguistics for half a century.
Everett's findings from the tribe amount to the discovery that the language does not include recursion, the process by which relative clauses are embedded in sentences to produce an infinite set of possibilities. It's this fundamental trait, Chomsky says, that distinguishes human from animal communication. For example, instead of saying, 'The man, who was tall, came into the house,' Pirahãs say, 'The man came into the house. He was tall.' The fact that Pirahã has no recursion, Everett argues, means that there is no universal grammar, as linguists have believed for decades.
Coming from an anthropology background, I found the book to be overly fascinating and extremely well-written as an ethnography of these people. But, the inclusion of the linguistic slant took it to a new level. I've already written my 2 linguist friends and strongly recommended the book. I learned so much! I wish I had known about it in Grad. School when I was critiquing ethnography style for my own research...
What a heart-wrencher! This book was about a break-up story, and without meaning to, I found myself feeling so much for these characters. It shouldn’t ever have to be this hard. Based in London, Nicola and Jonathan had a fine life together: happy, healthy, and whole…or so Nicola thought. Without any prior discussions, Jonathan decided to break up. This happened on page 2 (literally) and the rest of the book was about the pain and misery each went through disentangling their lives together. The author did an excellent job correctly articulating the stages of emotions a break-up causes, all the highs and lows and the games we play with ourselves to move forward.
My own pain from terrible break-up memories bubbled right under the surface the entire 2 days it took me to finish the book. Nonetheless, It was a good read because it was of a story most everyone can identify with. And, if you can’t, I believe that you should: everyone needs their heart broken one good time.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1997, this book was a memorable one. I liked it and recommend it. The ending makes you just want to slap him, though.
Some trace of genuine emotion seemed to have gripped him. “ I can’t seem to make you realize that I’ve done what was right not only for me but for you too,” he said. He wasn’t indifferent any longer. “ It seems never to have occurred to you, that entering into a permanent relationship, e.g. marriage, e.g. parenthood, is probably more dangerous than walking across a minefield. And the possible suffering is more prolonged, and affects everyone near you. When it isn’t absolutely right it’s absolutely wrong. And when it’s absolutely wrong you’ve got your back against the wall for the rest of your life. Did you really want to risk that?”
“Yes,” she said. “I loved you. That’s what it means, to love someone: to be willing to take that risk.”
“Then love is only a kind of insanity,” he said.
“So be it,” she replied.
Boost Your Life
Janine Allis
This was a part memoir, part business book by the founder of Boost Juice Bars. Allis claims not to have been born with an entrepreneurial spirit and consequently did not start the business until she was 35. With nothing more than guts and gumption, she developed a multi-billion dollar business via juice shops across Australia. The book offered lots of tips, but the moral of the story was simply: Go for it! And Do what it takes to be your own boss! Both I already knew.
Good book, but too simplistic. Wouldn’t recommend it. Better business books out there.
Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche
Robert A Johnson
A bit out there…but a good lesson overall. Johnson explores the need to “own” our own shadow – the dark, hidden part of the ego. This is accomplished by first coming to terms with the shadow, incorporating it and finally aiming to balance it. When I was reading it, I felt that he used lots of left-field jargon, but overall I liked his stance: He views this as a process by which wholeness is restored to the person.
Good, bad and ugly are part of us all. Normally, our culture only makes a comfortable space for the good ones. Becoming intimately whole is partly being able to identify and explore the ugly parts of us too, without the need to hide them away.
Ok, but I wouldn’t run out and find the book.
There is a wonderful saying attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “If you follow the old code of justice – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth – you end up with a blind and toothless world.” P. 37
I regret the prevailing attitude at present that goodness or sainthood consists of living as much as possible on the right hand, the good side, of the seesaw. Sainthood has been caricatured as an image of the all-right preson, the person who has transferred everything to the perfect side of his personality. Such a condition would be completely unstable and would flip immediately. The balance would be disrupted and life would be impossible.
The fulcrum, or center point, is the whole (holy) place. I agree that we must relate to the outer world with the refined product of the good side, but this canbe done only by keeping the left side in balance with the right. We must hide our dark side from society in general, or we will be a bloody bore; but we must never try to hide it from ourself. True sainthood-or personal effectiveness-consists in standing at the center of the seesaw and producing only that which can be counterweighted with its opposite. P.14
The balance of light and dark is ultimately possible – and bearable. All nature lives in polarity – light and dark, creation and destruction, up and down, male and female. P. 15
Romulus, My Father
Raimond Gaita
Ironically, I bought a bunch of black-market movies in Boliva and this movie (called Mi Padre) was one of them. In vain, everyone in my family has tried to watch it on all of our TV’s, laptops, Xbox’s, ect…and we couldn’t ever get it to play. I come to an indigenous community and there in the house was this book. Weird.
It is basically a book Gaita wrote in celebration of his father. It’s original form was the eulogy he read at his funeral. Some friends then urged him to try and write a book about their relationship and time together.
His father was born in 1922 in a Romanian speaking part of Yugoslavia. He was born into poverty, having to work hard his entire life. He immigrated to Port Melbourne, Australia in 1950 bringing his new wife and young son, Raimond. The wife turns out to be crazy, leaving her family alone; therefore, Gaita grew up in the home of his father. They worked and survived through years of poverty. In the end, his father becomes mental and dies. Touching story, mainly because it was inspired by love.
Wouldn’t recommend it. Slow read.
We sometimes express our most severe judgment of other people by saying that we will never again speak to them. I never heard my father say that nor can I imagine him saying it. That, perhaps more than anything else, testifies to his unqualified sense of common humanity with everyone he met. His severe judgment often caused pain, but the simple honestly of its expression, together with his unhesitating acceptance of those whom he judged so severely, convinces me that he never intentionally caused suffering to anyone. He was truly a man who would rather suffer evil than do it.P. 207
The philosopher Plato said that those who love and seek wisdom are clinging in recollection to things they once saw. Book jacket
There are very few times in my life where I literally am physically unable to put a book down. This book did it to me and I spent yesterday morning engrossed in the story. It reminded me a lot of A Long Way Gone, which I read last summer (equally as memorable) and even more of The Devil Came on Horseback, a film I saw in Portland several years ago. I became obsessed with the film and have it in my personal DVD collection, if anyone would like to borrow it.
The Translator: A Tribesman's memoir of DarfurDaoud Hari (Thanks, Barb!)
As a member of the Zaghawa tribe in southern Sudan, Daoud grew up experiencing the peace of the region when Arab and non-Arab tribesman cohabited together. In 2003, when he was only a child, his village was attacked and destroyed. He was literally taken by the attackers as a translator because he knew Arabic and English from school. From them, he escaped and roamed the deserts, helping the dying he found along the way. Eventually he made his way into Chad and became involved with international aid groups and reporters as their translator. To do this he risked his life to going back into Darfur time and time again with reporters. He was eventually caught and jailed, beaten and tortured for being a "spy". The US Embassy, Congressman and the UN eventually teamed up to save Daoud's life and bring him to the US. He currently lives in Baltimore as a resettled refuge.
This is a humbling tale of selfless courage told in Daoud's voice. It is simple to read and through the simplicity he makes so many poignant observations on humanity, love, courage and truth. I think what I liked most about it is his ability to convey a complex political situation, not to mention a devastating story, with gentleness and compassion. I don't know that I could do the same if my family and home had been destroyed and I had the journey of this man. His story is amazing. Loved the book. (Nichole, I know we both like this stuff. Get it and let me know what you think!)
Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
Anthony De Mello
(Thanks, Casey!)
This book was passed along to me on a whim by a friend who thought I might like it. And, despite the heavy Christian undertones, I indeed did. I’m secretly a sucker for self-help books and this one spoke to me in many ways. Although De Mello does include some Buddhist parables, Hindu insight, as well as conservative psychological analysis, this book was a bit too “Jesus-y” for me. (is that a word?) However, I believe he hits on a lot of salient points re. wisdom, growth, change, insight, and spirituality that would speak to every reader differently. These below being what I walked away with. I recommend this book as an easy read.
Wake Up! The book calls us to do and become aware of the “I” vs. “me” in each of us. “I” being the solid, unchangeable essence that cannot be affected or wavered by outward forces, and the “me” that, he argues, should be given the freedom to feel disappointment, frustration, devastation and selfishness, but not to identify with it. Allow the feelings to flow through us, but do not fight them off. Instead, attempt to understand their root and why we are affected. Even in suffering, we should not fight to feel better, but rather just acknowledge the feelings and let them move through us.
“Pleasant experiences make life delightful. Painful experiences lead to growth. Pleasant experiences make life delightful, but they don’t lead to growth in themselves. What leads to growth is painful experiences. Suffering points up an area in you where you have not yet grown, where you need to grow and be transformed and change. If you knew how to use that suffering, oh, how you would grow.” p.107 (don't know if I fully agree with this)
“Here comes a low feeling. Instead of getting tense about it, instead of getting irritated with myself about it, I understand I’m feeling depressed, disappointed, whatever. I admit the feeling is in me, not in the other person. I don’t identify with the feeling. “I” is not that feeling. “I” am not lonely, “I” am not depressed, “I” am not disappointed. Disappointment is there, one watches it. You’d be amazed how quickly it glides away. Anything you’re aware of keeps changing." P. 177
He strongly states that the more we try to fight and better ourselves, the more we give power to our faults. Rather, he states, that we should have a certain degree of passivity.
“The harder you try to change, the worse it can get. … The more you resist something, the greater power you give to it. …. You always empower the demons you fight. That’s very Oriental. But if you flow with the enemy, you over come the enemy. How does one cope with evil? Not by fighting it but by understanding it. In understanding, it disappears." p.121
“I thought of a nice image for that, a sailboat. When a sailboat has a mighty wind in its sail, it glides along so effortlessly that the boatman has nothing to do but steer. He makes no effort; he doesn’t push the boat. That’s an image of what happens when change comes through awareness, through understanding.” P. 159
“Insight. Not effort, not cultivating habits, not having an ideal. Ideals do a lot of damage. The whole time you’re focusing on what should be instead of focusing on what is. And so you’re imposing what should be on a present reality, never having understood what present reality is." P. 152
On Listening to Life:
“Now, you need awareness and you need nourishment. You need good, healthy nourishment. Learn to enjoy the solid food of life. Good food, good wine, good water. Taste them. Lose your mind and come to your senses. That’s good, healthy nourishment. The pleasures of the senses and the pleasures of the mind. Good reading, when you enjoy a good book. Or a really good discussion, or thinking. It’s marvelous. Unfortunately, people have gone crazy, and they’re getting more addicted because they do not know how to enjoy the lovely things of life. So they’re going in for greater and greater artificial stimulants." P. 164
“…What kind of feeling comes upon you when you’re in touch with nature, or when you’re absorbed in work that you love? Or when you’re really conversing with someone whose company you enjoy in openness and intimacy without clinging? What kind of feeling do you have? Compare those feelings with the feelings you have when you win an argument, or when you win a race, or when you become popular, or when everyone’s applauding you. The latter feelings I call worldly feelings; the former feelings I call soul feelings. Lots of people live empty, soulless lives because they’re feeding themselves on popularity, appreciation, and praise, on “I’m OK, you’re OK”, look at me, attend to me, support me, value me, on being the boss, on having power, on winning the race. Do you feed on that? If you do, you’re dead. You’ve lost your soul." P. 184
I’ve often said to people that the way to really live is to die. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave. Imagine that you’re lying in your coffin. Any posture you like.… So imagine you’re lying flat and you’re dead. Now look at your problems from that viewpoint.
Changes everything, doesn’t it? P. 169 (I would go one step further and add, not only look at your problems, but the course of your life. Are you proud of the one wild and precious life you’ve lived?)
An Italian poet said, “We live in a flash of light; evening comes and it is night forever.” It’s only a flash and we waste it. We waste it with our anxiety, our worries, our concerns, our burdens." P. 170
This book was a bit of a stretch for me; nothing that I would normally pick up to read. Thanks to Mr. Bruno (RIP 2/09) for tearing the pages out of the book that belonged to Chris & Paulene, and me ending up with the damaged one in my possession after buying them a new copy. Since I hated for it collect dust any longer, I thought I’d give it a shot despite a couple of chunks of missing text here and there.
This novel is based around an obituary that is being written by a journalist, Paul Tomm, and the murder he uncovers in the end. Essentially, a reclusive scholar dies under weird circumstances and while Tomm is trying to pursue the deceased’s story, he finds himself involved in a tale of stolen alchemical goods tracing back almost 900 years. Every other chapter is a historical glance at whose hands the articles landed in over the years, mostly in Russia and the Middle East. Names and places were very obscure to me, making these sections really difficult for me to read. However, also the story had a present day plot about Tomm meeting the individuals who help him unravel the story, including (of course) a love story involved.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book, unless you enjoy a bit of a murder mystery/quasi history lesson. In other words, I recommend this book to no one but Adam (if you’re reading this A, get the book. You’d love it!).
“A wife. I have a wife.” In prison I had learned to suppress all thoughts of her; now, warmed by the possibility of return, in my mind she thawed, first slowly and then uncontrollably. As I remembered her hands, her voice, her smell, I began shaking and bawling right there in front of a strange family. I couldn’t bear thinking of her anymore. P.132
Sunday was momentous and unremarkable. Everyone is entitled to one—maybe two—such days in a lifetime: a day spent not in the middle of love but at the beginning of it, maybe, a day that passes like the morning after a snowstorm or a broken fever, when everything seems almost too sharp to bear. Our actual activities that day were prosaic: we rose late; I made toast and fried eggs; we went back to bed; we drove to the New York border and took a long walk along a river; we stopped at a large and empty roadside tavern with the memorable slogan “Flyin’ Darts and Chicken Parts,” where we ate wings and played darts until ten-thirty, when we drove home again. … By the time we got home, we were treading a little less carefully with each other…. P. 176
It was an ideal conversation with an ex: flirtatious enough to produce residual little flutters, but noncommittal enough to avoid trouble; long enough to end with an ellipsis, but not so long that either of us got any ideas; glib, but with a warm and serious turn at the end, but not so serious that either of us brought out the knives. I was feeling ticklish; she tickled, and I went home almost missing her. P. 218
I always seem to read the Acknowledgements section, and this one is certainly very sweet: Finally, a note to my future self: If your son, two months after meeting a girl, tells you he’s headed for a tiny island without electricity, running water, or a way off, with the girl and her brother, parents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, do not panic. It might turn out okay. Many thanks for George and Paula Krimsky for ensuring that it did, and fo
r countless kindnesses large and small. But thanks to them most of all for raising an extraordinary daughter, without whom I would never have gone to Russia or written this book. The Geographer’s Library is for Alissa. So am I.
Hi there, my name is Stephanie ( + Jane, to some) and Collected Consciousness is where I write about what intersects with my life, travels and everyday interests. Often this takes the form of stories or photographs, recipes or projects. However, I am not committed to only these categories, as I’m quite open and expectant of unforeseen inspiration. I like the fact that this site is where my friends and family can easily connect with me when I am “away”, which is most of the time. Thank you for the support and enjoy!
Where In the World is SJ?
In Atiak, Uganda working at a Birth Center as a Midwife until October 2013.
Traveling with Pomegranates
