"The Casual Vacancy" a book review

J.K. Rowling's book "The Casual Vacancy" it a tough one for me to rate and review, in some ways it was a great and even an important book and in other ways I wish I'd never have read it. I posted a blog when I was about half way through the book saying it was about local politics, relationship politics and a lot of broken people, what I didn't realize at the time was that all these problems were really a set up to the real point of the story. For me the overall message of the book, and it is most definitely a message book, is that we get so caught up in the problems of our own lives, be they real or imagined, that we miss the bigger tragedies happening around us. It could also be viewed as a political statement about how people get caught in a cycle of poverty and abuse and how there are people who desperately need help to break that cycle. Good message, and very damning, I easily saw myself in the characters who turned a blind eye to the problems of others or who were to apathetic and self-centered to care. Rowling does a great job, as she did in the Harry Potter series, of drawing you into this world, introducing a large cast of characters and getting you to feel for them, by the time I got to the dramatic climax I could not put the book down, she is great at doing that. The characters themselves are all a bit stereotypical but even so Rowling doesn't let them become two dimensional, it's  like she took a stereotype skeleton and added flesh to it. The one character that really gets to come out of her stereotype, or at least that we get to see beyond it, is Krystal Weedon; it's her and her family that I believe are really the main characters in the book, everything comes back to them. Now here's where things get tough for me, good, important message, good storytelling, compelling but yet Rowling sets you up for a terrible heart break. I can imagine that the tragedy at the core of this novel was the first part she wrote and that all the rest was built up around it so that we could see characters quite literally so caught up in their own little worlds that they don't take the chance to avert calamity. I don't know if this book effects everyone the same, well of course it doesn't, but what I mean is I don't know if everyone gets as upset by it as I did. I cried, the last chapter was read with blurred vision and then afterward I sobbed and spent the next few days in a depressed emotional state. In a way that's another tribute to the writing that this fictional story could affect me so deeply but in another way it really sucks because I fight negative feelings enough already I don't need a work of fiction to bring me down. I've had a rough emotional week, due in large part to this story, so I'm torn on whether to say yes it's good you should read it, or to say avoid this at all costs. Either way I know I'm not likely to forget this book anytime soon, the Weedons will haunt me for years to come.

Stolen Glances

I see you staring at me every time I walk into the room, you know I'm with another right now but yet you keep catching my eye. I like your jacket, it's a little flashy but flashy can be okay as long as there's something good on the inside. I promise when I finish with the one I'm with I'll give you a chance, see if we're compatible, you wouldn't be here if I didn't think I'd liked you, I am the one that invited you into my home. I got you at the Goodwill, I like other things your author has written, your flashy dust jacket makes you sound practically irresistible.

 I assume this is how all people feel when looking at their bookshelves, am I right?

Broken People

I'm about a third of the way through J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy it's a story of local politics, relationship politics, social injustice, and some thoroughly broken people. In one of the last chapters that I read a recovering drug addict has found out about a death in her family and it brings back memories of all the terrible things that have happened in her life, and Rowling made sure they were truly awful, all these memories come flooding over the character until it drowns all her resolve and we see her running down the street in tears looking for a fix, something to wipe away the hurt. Rowling is truly a masterful story teller, while there's not the magic of the Harry Potter world here, she still draws you in to this world she's created, you feel as though you know the layout of the town, you know the people; and when this character breaks you can't help but empathize with her.
   After reading this section of the book I had a talk with my wife, Araine, I told her that while I thankfully never went through the hell this character had, I still feel as though I'm broken inside as well. I know that there's really no such things as 'normal' and for the most part I've come to terms with my quirks of character and the things that make me different, but there are some things, some situations in which I see others behaving as complete adults that I just find myself quite unable to handle. I have half joked that the song What is This Feeling from Wicked is my introspective theme song. My childhood and my life to this point have had a few pretty bad times, nothing compared to the characters in this story, nor compared to the lives of quite a few people I know; yet when I think back on my life it is the bad times that seem to resonate more strongly. The vast majority of my life has been that of the abundantly blessed, I've always had love, safety, food, clothing, shelter, so why do the bad times stand out more, why does the broken feeling seems so strong at times? Araine said (I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this) that she too felt broken inside and that she too seemed to remember the bad things of life more starkly than the good things. So I began to wonder if that's true for all, or at least most of us; do all of you feel like you're broken people trying to make it in a world populated by "whole" people?
  To help combat this negativity I've started purposely calling to mind the good memories of my life, the times that I've felt happy and content, the times I'd never trade for anything. I have a strong affinity and interest in Zen and Taoism, although (obviously) I'm not always so good at putting these practices to good use, but as another weapon against negativity I've been trying hard to put into practice the idea of living fully in the moment, where the anxiety of the past and the future don't exist. To this end I've begun to wear my yin/yang necklace more often where I can rub the charm between my fingers like a worry stone to remember to let go of things, to pray for clarity. And while it's nothing new to me, I've come to a new realization of the power of singing to take you out of yourself, one of the reasons I love to sing so much.
    I can't wait to see how this books ends, it's building to what can only be a highly emotional climax. I'll let you know.

A Winter's Tale, read, finally.

 I can usually read through a play fairly quickly but this one seemed to take a long time to finish. Part of that is due to the play itself but I think an even bigger problem is the very bad habit I've fallen into of reading and watching t.v. at the same time, not really giving my full attention to either. This hasn't been much of a problem, generally which ever is more interesting I give my attention to while the other languishes; unfortunately A Winter's Tale just never really caught my interest. In The Complete Works of William Shakespeare; Abridged the writers lump all of Shakespeare's comedies into one scene because, as they say, it's all pretty much the same thing (mistaken identities, cross dressers, star crossed lovers and every one gets married in the end). I also kept forgetting who the characters were, I should have read the sparknotes synopsis first, it cleared things up a bit reading it afterward. It's interesting how our preconception of something flavors our expectations of it, for most of the time I was reading this play, I thought it was a tragedy (it certainly starts out that way) and when I realized my mistake I also realized I had been judging it through a lens of what I thought a tragedy should be. For instance I couldn't figure out the inclusion of the comedic characters of Autolycus and (the aptly named) Clown, but even within the parameters of a comedy they still don't seem to have much to do with the plot.  Now it's time to read and reread and reread Born Yesterday as I try to learn my lines, but when not doing that I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk's Doomed. Quite awhile back I decided to read one book off of each shelf of my bookshelf, 6 shelves total, with EmbassyTown I finished that mini-challenge and now I'm going to read the sequels and prequels I have on my shelf. Doomed is the sequel to Palahniuk's Dammed about a 13 yr. old girl who dies, goes to hell, and promptly starts to take over. In between books I try to read some of the ongoing titles I've got on my kindle, after finishing Embasytown I read one of John Wesley's sermons, one of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories, a Sherlock Holmes story, and, of course, one of Shakespeare's plays. Speaking of the complete works of Shakespeare on my kindle, I've now finished all the comedies, all the histories, and all but one of the tragedies, then it's on to the apocrypha and the poems (I've read about 40 of the 154 sonnets). I don't remember everything about all of them, nor can I randomly quote passages from most of them, maybe some day I'll start memorizing sections like Peter Hawkins in Ken Ludwig's Treasure Island.

Silver Linings Playbook

I finally got around to watching "Silver Linings Playbook" last night, I've been wanting to see it since it came out. It was a good movie, I even had a little tear in my eye at the end, (can you feel a but coming on here?) but (there it is) it could have been so much better.
                                       Spoiler Alert!
 At the beginning of the movie I actually felt a bit like I was experiencing a mental disorder of my own, they did a good job of getting you into the characters mind set. Like the part where he freaks out over the ending of "A Farewell to Arms" because it doesn't have a happy ending, foreshadowing there but not the way I anticipated. As the movie goes along you see that silver lining (wait a minute that's not his name) Pat, is not the only character in the film with a serious mental illness, just the only one that's had, court ordered, treatment for it. The film moves along nicely with ups and downs, with comedy and drama and then it takes a Hollywood turn. Pat's father risks everything he has on a double bet which includes Pat and Tiffany scoring at least a 5 in a dance contest (which is a long shot at best) and Pat finding out that Tiffany actually wrote the letter that he thought his ex had written. Now it looks like everything is set up for an impossible happy ending but Pat gets a look in his eye and you think, maybe he's going to show everyone how ridiculous they're being; at this point I thought if they play this right it's going to be sad but amazing. But alas the film makers seemed to forget they were making a drama about people dealing with mental illness and instead were making a romcom, complete with a don't-let-the-girl-get-away speech, chasing-her-down-the-street, Jerry Maguire-esque you-had-me-at you-wrote-it-last-week moment. Yes it was somewhat satisfying seeing a happy (silver lining) ending but it was so unrealistic as to take away from an otherwise amazing movie. Yes, everyone's happy, but for how long? How long before they get in a fight and she starts sleeping around, and if she does will he lose it again? How long before Pat's dad risks everything on another superstitious bet? Maybe we're just suppose to be happy that they're happy for a moment and not think about the incredibly thin line by which it all hangs.

That Writing Feeling

It's been over 7 months since I last posted a blog, I've written a few between that time and now but deleted them when they went places I wasn't comfortable going on the world wide web. It's hard both walking the fine line between honest and t.m.i, and finding time to commit to the writing down of thoughts. For instance, I hadn't even finished the first sentence here before I had to stop and pull a Doc McStuffins and tape and action figure's arm back together. I have, however, been wanting to write and two movies I've watched recently have fanned the flame of that particular desire. The first flick was the mostly forgettable but not horrible film "Mom's Night Out", this was one Araine had wanted to see and while we didn't make it to see it at the theater we did rent it a few weeks ago. Patricia Heaton, of t.v.'s "The Middle" and "Everybody Loves Raymond", produced and co-stared in this somewhat faith-based comedy about a harried mom who tries to take a night out with her friends. The mom in the movie is a budding professional blogger (a profession that seems to exist more in Hollywood than in real life) who never feels she measures up as a mom, thus dampening her 'mom' blog; but, of course, by the films end she's learned that she's good enough just as she is and she starts blogging away. This set me thinking, I need to blog again, if a harassed Hollywood heroine can do it then perhaps this easily overstressed dad can do it as well. The second movie, I watched just this morning, is the not-for-the-faint-of-heart "Kill Your Darlings". Daniel Radcliffe, in a big departure from "Harry Potter", stars as Allen Ginsberg in a film somewhat based upon actual events. The movie is nominally about a murder that the founding fathers of the beat movement were implicated in, but the real drive of the movie is seeing how this group came together and came to be who they were. Radcliffe's Ginsberg starts out as a wide-eyed freshman at Columbia who soon falls under the spell of the troubled, anti-establishmentarian Lucien, Lucien then introduces Ginsberg to (among others) Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Lucien is both the Pete Best and Yoko Ono of the 'beat' founders. The neat thing to me about this movie is that you can feel "Howl" being born within this tumultuous time, even though he doesn't say it in the film (the poem came later in his life) you can see that famous first line, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." coming to life. While I don't support the use of mind altering drugs in general, perhaps it's a good thing for a few wild individuals to take the plunge and "expand their consciousness" for the benefit of us all. Worry not though, I'm no Raskolnikov thinking I'm a Napoleon, I need my consciousness intact; but the film did make me want to write. (Now before you rush out and watch this movie know that it is pretty graphic, perhaps you should read "Howl" before deciding if you want to watch the flick.
    Well, for better and worse, there's the blog. It was aggravating getting it written (you wouldn't believe how long it took) but it felt good to write and I hope to make it a more common thing, whether anyone reads them or not.

Some Thoughts on Love

Over the past week I've read and watched a few things talking about love, not romantic love (not necessarily) but the harder type, the unconditional type; but, being February (the month of celebrating love with expensive presents) I think I'll include a more romantic idea of love as well.
  I've started doing a couple of daily readings, all very short mind you, because I've got a lot to do; I mean Netflix isn't going to watch itself. There are two daily devotionals I follow on Facebook (see, it's not all cat pictures), I've got an intellectual devotional with daily facts (for instance did you know some experts believe the "Mona Lisa" may have been Da Vinci painting himself as a woman?), I read a chapter or so from the New Testament, a few paragraphs from Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha", and a section (too small to be called a chapter) in this really great (really short) book by Tai Sheridan called "Buddha in Blue Jeans: An Extremely Short Guide to Sitting Quietly and Being Buddha" (one of my favorite quotes from it is, "Events are not your ideas about them. Meet the world without expectations"). I know it sounds like a lot but it doesn't take more than 10 or so minutes to read it all. There's a lot about love in these readings, the kind of love that doesn't always come easy, the kind I struggle with quite a bit actually. The bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love our enemies, turn the other check and all that. When Siddhartha finds rebirth at the side of the river he's filled with a love for everything, with joy for being alive. In Buddha in Blue Jeans Sheridan writes, "The object of your love doesn't matter. You are love" and "There are no walls in the world of love." So what's so hard about all this? Well, I don't know about you but when someone gives me attitude, my first reaction isn't, I love you anyway; my first reaction usually involves a passive aggressive smile and an inwardly said curse word (okay, sometimes it's an audible curse, depending on the situation). So I have to remind myself that even if someone bugs me, I should love them, that even non-ideal situations should be handled with and approached with love. I have to try and remember that it is my responsibility to control my thoughts and reactions, that I can be negative or I can be positive. Now there are situations and people who deserve rebuke and reproach but it can be done from a place of love. The hardest part of this, for me, is to let go of anger, to not respond with anger and to let go expectations of how things 'ought to be'. I find myself being a Clark Griswold as times, building up unrealistic expectations of how things should be, families are seldom like the pictures on the back of board games, where everyone is happy and laughing and having fun at the same time; no life is generally a lot messier than that.
   We also watched the movie "Frozen" yesterday, and it's all about love. (I'm going to try and avoid specific spoilers here but I do want to talk about the movie some, so bear that in mind as you read.) It's neat in that while there is romantic love at play in the movie, that's not necessarily what they're talking about when they speak of true love. In the movie an act of true love saves the day and melts the frozen heart, it's also love that allows for the whole town to be saved. Love turns out to be the answer for the problem one of the characters has, she has lived her life in fear of herself and what she might do to others; fear, isolation, and regret have kept her from her family and from the world at large and it's only when she learns to love others despite all this pain that she's able to control her problem. I think this draws a great parallel to those dealing with addiction, hurt, anxiety, anger, and other problems that we think must be kept to ourselves. We think others won't understand, will judge us, will look down on us and so we hide away (physically or mentally) until the problem becomes out of our control. But if we would love ourselves and then love others as ourselves and open ourselves up to be loved by others then perhaps we could learn to control our 'problems' before they get away from us. In "Buddha in Blue Jeans" the author has a section about giving yourself to life, to others such as family, friends, and society at large and about giving yourself to immaterial things like creativity, and spirituality; the point being we need to open ourselves to the possibilities of life and love. As a somewhat introverted person at times this can be a struggle for me as well.
  Now to the more fun kind of love, romantic love. I've shared my thoughts on this before but I think they might bear repeating. There's a great feeling called love in which your whole being seems caught up in someone else, an emotion that makes you want to be with that person constantly, to stare into their eyes and make up silly love songs ("Some people want to fill the world with (them), I say what's wrong with that..."). That's a great feeling but it's also a fleeting feeling, it can come and go; sometimes Ariane or I will look to the other and say, I'm really IN LOVE with you right now, and it's this feeling of which we speak. But romantic love is also a commitment, it's saying that even when I'm not "in love" with you that I'm still going to love you. That is to say, I'm going to put your needs and desires first, I'm going to try and increase your happiness and do what I know is right for our relationship. It's funny because sometimes this can be hard to do, let's face it, selfishness is an inborn trait of humanity, but at other times it's the easiest thing in the world to do. I suppose it comes somewhat with maturity but also with that first kind of love, the one that says I'm going to love you even when I don't feel like it.
   So it might sound a little hippy-ish, or new age-ish, or even Christian-ish but I'm always trying to open myself up to love, to love life, to love family, to love work, to love all things up to and including you, whoever you are.