What A Life! #FTSF #SoCS

“What a life!” my oma would always say with a sigh.

She was right. I say it now, that line, in exasperation, and in my memory of her, to honour her unique brand of wisdom and her straightforward ability to speak the truth.

I just had a checkup with a nurse practitioner. She was very thorough and we talked for what felt like a very long time. No rush to see me briefly and get me out the door. No neglect of what I needed. I told her my entire history, as fast as I possibly could, but she did not want me to hurry through the details. She was wonderful.

It takes me a little while to get through my somewhat complex medical history. I had her curious and eager to look up my eye condition

and the rare syndrome I share with my brother.

This took me back, which it can most often do, and required that I look back over the years.

Mostly I spoke of how sick I was before my then gp finally diagnosed my end-stage kidney failure at age twelve. That sure took me back, into the bad and the worse in terms of memories and recollections. I told her how hard it becomes to remember to include all necessary details, with every retelling I give a doctor or nurse. She was very understanding.

I see how far I’ve come when I look back, using my medical story as the example. I reflect on the girl I was and the struggles in the following years. I want to think I am doing alright considering. I think of my oma and I leave my medical checkup and I sigh.

When it comes to the years, I do so much looking back that it is sometimes a heavy weight on my shoulders.

I like the romantic notion of the days of yore. I read such fairy tales, but life is never like those stories in literature in reality. People reminisce about how it used to be, but perhaps, just perhaps they are remembering a time that never actually existed.

That may come across, to you, if you’re only just hearing me for the first time, as a highly pessimistic slant to life. Perhaps. Your take on, say the last twenty years of your own life, it could very well be all rosy coloured and tinted through different glasses. I haven’t worn glasses since 1996 I’m afraid.

No self pity here, but my life isn’t now or never has been a fairy tale anyway. Just the sort of telling it like it is/was, just like my oma used to like to do. That’s about as stream of consciousness as I can get today.

There is thankfulness to be had here, (which will for sure include that wonderful nurse), of course, but that is still to come in my next post.

🙂

I’m doing a double linkup this weekend, starting with

Finding Ninee’s Finish The Sentence Friday,

followed by

Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday.

Why Men Lie – Not What It Seems, #VIP, #BlogShareLearn, #BluSkyFriday, #LinkYourLife

“I’m sorry,” said the server, with a tap on the shoulder, “But this is a VIP lounge. Not that the two of you aren’t important or anything, but…”

Two girls had been looking for the bar, while waiting for the official author event to begin. They’d wandered through a revolving door and into a world of words.

Okay, so now what? They’d stumbled into the wrong place. What a way to begin the evening. It’s hard enough to feel like she fit in there, even though she loved it so. It’s strange to feel so at home in a place, and still feel completely out-of-place all at once.

Where had they stepped into, being excluded from, politely excused? Who were those very important persons? They did not ask. The two girls simply continued to wander. Up the stairs, where the server had directed them, to the cash bar they were looking for, just to check the prices of the drinks.

By now they were afraid of entering somewhere else they did not belong, so when they approached two closed doors, they hesitated and right back down they would go, until they noticed others going the way they’d just come. So, back up they went, feeling more than a little ridiculous.

***

She was a doctor, not a writer like her friend. She was leaving her baby girl at home, for a couple hours, at the request of her oldest friend, who had wanted someone to accompany her to a literary event.

The main event was a question and answer session with a local arts reporter and a well-known Canadian journalist. He’d been an investigative reporter for Canada’s CBC Television for many years. The girl, relatively new to the world of writing, she had no aspirations to become like him, not as a journalist. She simply liked to listen to his maritime accent and the way he told stories about a diverse array of people, places, and things.

On this night he spoke about his books, works of fiction she hadn’t known he’d written. She only thought he was a reporter and a TV personality. Her respect and admiration grew, for this man, when she learned of his fiction. She was on a continual mission to collect books and have them signed by their writers. Her collection was growing. First Carrie Snyder, then Douglas Gibson, and now Linden MacIntyre.

The talk on this night was about the question:

Does a good journalist need “fire-in-the-belly” to be good at their job?

The journalist’s answer:

No. Fire-in-the-belly could get one into trouble. It could lead to emotional reactions and lack of professionalism or the required objectivity.

Wouldn’t fire-in-the-brain be more appropriate?

He made a good point. Many in the crowd nodded in agreement. While the writer girl cringed at her least favourite word, since childhood, “belly”, the doctor thought of physical conditions that might be the cause of “fire” in the belly or the brain: appendicitis or meningitis.

The girl with the literary aspirations sat and glanced around at the other tables, full of local college and university students mostly, and wondered what she was doing there with them. Did she fit in? Did she belong there? She tried to squash her insecurities, as she listened to the murmuring and the muttering, because, maybe, she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. After all, wasn’t insecurity and self doubt not uncommon for writers?

She knew only the doctor sitting beside her, her closest childhood friend, who felt more at home in the world of science than literature, but who put her heart into the evening and gave it her best, because that’s just the sort of girl she always had been. This wasn’t the first event the writer friend had dragged the doctor along for in recent months, and it always worked out, turning into some of the memorable times they’d always been capable of having together. The doctor and her little girl had been around, as fate or life’s cruel irony would have it, but this wouldn’t last.

A professor of humanities had organized the festival, with all the authors and events, spread over the weekend, including a poetry night, lectures on creativity, and much much more. He went on to introduce the panel of other writers: political writers, comedy writers, and poets.

After the panel answered questions and promoted their work, the two girls stood up, along with everyone else. They weren’t sure where to go next, but the literary one was determined to get her next signed book.

Immediately, upon the wrapping up of the presentation, the featured authors were swarmed by people from the audience. There was no other option. And so, back down the stairs the doctor and the writer would go.

Back down in the lobby and the doctor’s resourcefulness shone through. No lack of VIP status would stop her from helping her friend.

“There’s one of the authors. HE’s right behind you. I could walk us right into him, if you want. That’s how close.”

The doctor was one-of-a-kind and made even awkward literary events fun, disarming the beginner writer, making her feel less uncomfortable, in hopes of more less uncomfortable literary events for her in the future. They got themselves a copy of one of Linden’s novels, “Why Men Lie”, and off they went, on a search for possible answers to the question.

Very soon the doctor spotted him. He had made it down and away from the throng at the stage upstairs, down into the group mingling in the museum’s lobby. The doctor waited for the opportune moment, when he was not speaking to another, and introduced her shy writer friend.

“What’s the name of the one this is for?” Linden asked this to the two lovely young women standing before him, unsure which one it might be.

“It’s Kerry, spelled K…e…r…r…y.” People couldn’t be blamed for getting it wrong, but to avoid another Ricky Martin incident, clarification was necessary. “I remember, about ten years ago, when you did a story on the whale from the Free Willy movie. Not sure if you remember.”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “I went to Iceland for that one.”

He seemed pleased that someone would remember him for that one in particular.

“Well, I love writing about marine biology specifically,” the girl spluttered. These encounters were always a little uncomfortable for her. She took her newly signed book and the two girls departed.

But, before leaving, back out the revolving door and into the still November night, the doctor home to her baby and the writer home to her books…

“There’s the professor who interviewed all the authors,” the doctor spoke, conspiratorially. “Wow. He’s shorter than I thought he would be.”

“Shorter than me?” the 5 foot 2 writer asked.

“Maybe. Let’s go see,” suggested the nearly equally short doctor. This was just the sort of crazy idea she often had, of which made spending time with this particular doctor anything but boring.

And so the doctor and the writer followed the professor, darting through the people, until the two girls and he were standing only feet from each other.

“Well…is he?” the writer asked, attempting to speak quietly enough so she wouldn’t be overheard, but she already knew the answer.

The two girls had to leave then, as their attempts to remain inconspicuous would not last long if they remained in that serious literary environment. They then took their non VIP selves out of their and did not look back. They never did find out why men lie, but then again, some questions have no tangible answers.

***

Note: The writer girl in this story is, it turns out, a VIP (visually impaired person).

And, in that VIP’s opinion, so is the doctor. After all, aren’t doctors very important, in their own right, in the work that they do, everyday?

Not to mention the importance this particular doctor has played in her writer friend’s estimation, since the two girls were ten years old. She will play an extremely important role for so many patients who count on her expertise and her compassionate care.

VIP is all relative.

Journalism fuels Linden MacIntyre’s fiction writing

For the answer to the question of why men lie, guess you’ll just have to read the book to find out.

And if you are someone who is offended by the assumption of men as lyres, Linden wrote the book.

🙂

Not me.

Jean Louise the Silent: My Review of Go Set a Watchman, Part Two

“The time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right.”
–Dr. Jack Finch

Further Character Discussion:

In Watchman there are important characters to the story, a few specific Finch relatives, those who were only briefly included in Mockingbird. This made the story of this literary family of note even more layered and interesting.

Atticus’s sister Alexandra and brother Jack are two important characters in this second story. His sister has been watching over Atticus, as he ages and grows arthritic, freeing Jean Louise from the responsibility.

By the end of Watchman, Jean Louise’s short visit home has resulted in a few battles between the proper southern lady her aunt thinks she should be and the modern woman she sees herself as. They butt heads, more than once, on matters both big and small.

“Her father’s sister came closest to setting Jean Louise’s teeth permanently on edge.”

Her respect in her well read uncle is tested when she looks to him to provide answers to the questions being back home has raised.

“As I sit here and breathe, I never thought the good God would let me live to see someone walk into the middle of a revolution, pull a lugubrious face, and say, what’s the matter?”
–Dr. Jack Finch

Uncle Jack is a doctor, but now devotes his time to being a bachelor, who loves his cat and Victorian literature. Jean Louise gets along a whole lot better with her uncle than with her aunt, usually anyway.

“Uncle Jack was one of the abiding pleasures of Maycomb.”

While one may not always understand the older generations attitudes or behaviours, they provide vital information and context for those returning characters we all know and love.

The absence of Jem (rest in peace) is made more tolerable with the new character of Henry, a youth who grew up across the street from Scout and her family from soon after the TKAM story came to an end. He is a friend of the Finch children as teenagers, a possible love interest for Jean Louise, and someone Atticus can take under his wing to possibly take over the law practise one day.

“She was easy to look at and easy to be with most of the time, but she was in no sense of the word an easy person. she was afflicted with a restlessness of spirit he could not guess at, but he knew she was the one for him. He would protect her; he would marry her.”

Will Henry and Jean Louise live happily ever after?

“Love whom you will but marry your own kind was a dictum amounting to instinct within her.”

She is stubborn and undecided

“She was almost in love with him. No, that’s impossible: either you are or you aren’t. Love’s the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you-do or you-don’t proposition with them all.”

On the other hand, when it comes to returning characters, Go Set a Watchman does not bring back someone such as Cal (the wise old African-American housekeeper from To Kill a Mockingbird) without this story taking on a whole new level of seriousness.

“Calpurnia, the Finches’ old cook, had run off the place and not come back when she learned of Jem’s death.”

Things have changed in Alabama, in the south, and in the country in twenty years and not all relationships have necessarily survived the evolution in the intervening years in tact.

“She loved us, I swear she loved us. She sat there in front of me and she didn’t see me, she saw white folks. She raised me and she doesn’t care.
It was not always like this, I swear it wasn’t. People used to trust each other for some reason, I’ve forgotten why they didn’t watch each other like hawks then.”
–Jean Louise Finch

Jean Louise is grown now, a lady, but she is unable to be the good southern lady that she could so easily have become.

It was during a scene where Alexandra has organized a gathering of Jean Louise’s “friends” and acquaintances, a group of good Christian ladies for Jean Louise to socialize with while she is visiting, where I first was given the idea for the title of this review. This scene very closely mirrors one from To Kill a Mockingbird and Jean Louise feels just as awkward and out-of-place now as young Scout did back then, expected to grow up into the perfect MAGPIE.

Jean Louise sees these women as MAGPIES and finds nothing whatsoever in common with them and their inane chatter. She becomes shy and withdrawn, distracted and unable to relate to any of her contemporaries, her equals as they might be known by some.

She sits silently, in a corner of this circle of ladies, but she can not just sit silently by, while the men of Maycomb go to their meetings and have their say on the way the world has worked or will work. Things were all cordial for everyone, just as long as the races knew their places. This begins to change, but there is a fight to come as it does.

She must make a choice: soon, sooner than she thought, now.

“I thought I was a Christian but I’m not. I’m something else and I don’t know what. Everything I have ever taken for right and wrong these people have taught me-these same, these very people. So it’s me , it’s not them. Something has happened to me.
They are all trying to tell me in some weird, echoing way that it’s all on account of the Negroes…but it’s no more the Negroes than I can fly and God knows, I might fly out the window any time now.”

***

“Had she been able to think, Jean Louise might have prevented events to come by considering the day’s occurrences in terms of a recurring story as old as time: the chapter which concerned her began two hundred years ago and was played out in a proud society the bloodiest war and harshest peace in modern history could not destroy, returning to be played out again on private ground in the twilight of a civilization no wars and no peace could save.
Had she insight, could she have pierced the barriers of her highly selective, insular world, she may have discovered that all her life she had been with a visual defect which had gone unnoticed and neglected by herself and by those closest to her: she was born color blind.”

All character discussion thus far leads up to the bigger question – the big question really, for so many readers who’ve claimed To Kill a Mockingbird as their own moral compass over the last fifty-five years.

“She crossed the room again to straighten the stack of books on his lamp table, and was doing so when a pamphlet the size of a business envelope caught her eye.
On its cover was a drawing of an anthropophagous Negro; above the drawing was printed The Black Plague.”

There is one main reason so many people did not want to read Go Set a Watchman or regretted it when they did.

Both Atticus and Henry are members of The Maycomb Citizens Counsel. Jean Louise discovers this and she takes her place, that familiar place, up in the balcony of the courthouse where, as kids, her and Jem watched from above, as her father defended Tom Robinson.

“He walked out of the courtroom in the middle of the day, walked home, and took a steaming bath. He never counted what it cost him; he never looked back. He never knew two pairs of eyes like his own were watching him from the balcony.”

Now she is here again, looking down on white trash and respectable Maycomb men gathered together, discussing the preservation of segregation and of southern values.

“The one human being she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted had failed her; the only man she had ever known to whom she could point and say with expert knowledge, he is a gentleman, in his heart he is a gentleman, had betrayed her, publicly, grossly, and shamelessly.”

Would this newly revealed piece of the puzzle taint the beloved hero status Atticus Finch has held for so many, for so long, like it did poor Jean Louise?

Do these things change the man Atticus was, as a father and a man, in Jean Louise’s eyes.

“She knew little of the affairs of men, but she knew that her father’s presence at the table with a man who spewed such filth from his mouth-did that make it less filthy? No. It condoned. She felt sick.”

Whether Harper Lee completely meant to show Watchman off to readers or keep it hidden and buried – would this bring an end to the love and admiration?

I saw, just the other day, a Hollywood actress named her son Atticus. Others who had done the same seemed to regret choosing the name in the first place, as rumours of Watchman’s Atticus began to surface. Was he the same Atticus they knew and loved? Was he the complete opposite, a cold, bigoted, racist old man?

“Her nausea returned with redoubled violence when she remembered the scene in the courthouse, but she had nothing left to part with. If you had only spat in my face…It could be, might be, still was a horrible mistake. Her mind refused to register what her eyes and ears told it.”

Like the drunken and abusive liar of a man who spat in Atticus’s face all those years earlier.

***

I admit this was my main curiosity for going ahead and reading Watchman. I guess these rumours did help spread word and drum up publicity for the July 15th release.

After all, it’s all about sales and hype and even controversy.

Not for me.

For me, it’s all about the writing. It’s about relatable characters and the way in which they interact with one another.

It’s about the story.

“The novel must tell a story,” as Uncle Jack says vaguely to Jean Louise. That’s all Watchman must needs do, no matter what some readers may think or feel, which ever story came before, after, or during.

To be clear, I do not think of GSAW as a sequel, in any of the ways we all know a sequel to be. True, it takes place twenty years after Mockingbird and yes, it is being released more than fifty years after Mockingbird, but it was written a few years before. The timeline may feel dizzying as it is laid out, but it makes for an interesting study of Lee’s writing.

Lee’s publisher wanted more of the flashbacks, with the children, and less of what Watchman would have been back then. But it feels meant to be seen, if not then, then now, and here we are.

I would imagine English literature classes will be discussing and debating the merits and the classification for this book, as compared to Mockingbird, for years to come.

Literary scholars will do the same.

As someone who loves literature, I wanted to read Watchman because it is Harper Lee’s contribution, no matter how we ended up with it or what it might say about the American south in the 1950s.

I don’t know the ins and outs of the publishing world. I don’t know what it takes to bring a novel to fruition. I am not aware what the process entails. I would have liked to witness this particular process though, over those five or so years where Go Set a Watchman evolved into the bestseller that To Kill a Mockingbird became.

People like to label things and put them in their proper places. They like things to follow an order and they like to be able to map things out.

You can’t do that here. However the publishers may have marketed GSAW, read it for yourself before making up your own mind.

I am glad this story got to see the light of literary day. My enjoyment of each and every chapter was immense and a little unexpected, after my less than expected love of the classic elements of Mockingbird. As someone who prides herself on loving literature, I was pleasantly surprised that I took to Watchman as entirely as I did throughout.

Harper Lee dedicates Go Set a Watchman to her father (Mr. Lee) and sister )Alice.

Is her beloved character of Atticus (whom she said was based on her father) tarnished in the reader’s eyes forever? What might this mean about the kind of man Mr. Lee was?

What would Alice have to say about this book’s release, if she were still alive?

These questions aren’t ones I can answer here, in my little old Watchman review, but I am sure they will both be debated in the future, as a little time and distance offers perspective.

“Even his enemies loved him, because Atticus never acknowledged that they were his enemies.”

For my part, this line perfectly sums up what’s truly in his heart and intentions all along. Not sure others will see it that way or be able to let it go at that because he was a man of his time, whether I myself can accept that or not.

As much attention as is put on Atticus’s shoulders, Scout steals the show here. This does not mean the actions of America’s heroic father figure are of no importance. History and humans are rarely ever that simple, even though I wish they were, that I could snap my fingers and make them that way.

Henry tells her, “You’re gonna see change, you’re gonna see Maycomb change its face completely in our lifetime. Your trouble, now, you want to have your cake and eat it: you want to stop the clock, but you can’t. Sooner or later you’ll have to decide whether it’s Maycomb or New York.”
–Henry Clinton

She is stuck between two worlds and the past and future going forward.

“She looked at Maycomb, and her throat tightened. Maycomb was looking back at her.
Go away, the old buildings said. There is no place for you here. You are not wanted. We have secrets.”

Jean Louise can never remain silent, but this also means she can not remain in Maycomb either, or that is what she will end up being, unless she can find some way to make peace with things as they are, even work to make a better, more equal future for everyone. Her and her brother were raised by a white man and a black woman and yet, sadly, life’s rarely so black and white itself.

She has received the most important quality from her father, for good or bad, and that is conviction.

“She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life was the love of her father. She never questioned it, never thought about it, never even realized that before she made any decision of importance the reflex, “what would Atticus do? passed through her unconscious; she never realized what made her dig in her feet and stand firm whenever she did was her father; that whatever was decent and of good report in her character was put there by her father.”

She can not remain in Alabama and silent to an ever changing world. This makes her the heroine of this story in my estimation, of her story, which she is finally getting to tell.

For thus hath the Lord said unto me: Go, set a watchman; let him declare what he seeth!
–Isaiah 21:6

***

Wow. I must end my review here, for now, but there is still so much I could say, so many lines from the book that spoke to me and of which I wish I could include here, to prove my points.

But I realize that then this darn thing would end up being several thousand words long. And who knows if anyone’s even made it this far, managed to stick around to the end anyway.

One last piece of Go Set a Watchman wisdom if you’ve read to the end:

“I’m only trying to make you see beyond men’s acts to their motives. A man can appear to be a part of something not-so-good on its face, but don’t take it upon yourself to judge him unless you know his motives as well. A man can be boiling inside, but he knows a mild answer works better than showing his rage. A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.”

IN THE NEWS AND ON MY MIND: Lions, Tigers, and Bears – Oh My!

“Watching the news in the evening is a bit like being on an emotional Tilt-aWhirl. “Isis now sets people on fire.” “Harper Lee has a new book out!” “Some oddballs are bringing measles back because they’re scared of autism, which is a bit like saying I’m worried about birthday candles, so let’s start a forest fire.” “It’s going to be gorgeous this weekend!” “Look, a politician being deliberately rude.” “And also, look at these adorable puppies!” My limbic system does not work that fast!”

I would like to expand on the list of seemingly random news topics my FB friend started above, in my sporadic mid-week Wednesday post: IN THE NEWS AND ON MY MIND.

I thought about what’s been front and centre, in the news lately, and here I go:

**the recent hacks into the adult dating website Ashley Madison.

I don’t care what a couple consenting adults (and I use that term loosely) do, as long as it’s consensual. My problem is when there are lies and deceit involved.

The site’s tag line, “Life is short. Have an affair,” is the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard and I hate that it’s a Canadian company. My problem with it, even though it’s people I have no business with, is that it reflects badly on society at large. All I can add would be, I don’t feel badly in this instance, and karma’s a bitch.

However, this Vice article has an interesting take on the situation,

here.

**Then the long suffering story of Deflate-gate.

The final decision on the ruling and appeal is that Tom Brady is solely responsible. The coach and all others involved are off the hook, but of course Tom wasn’t the only one with knowledge, having done something shady here.

Tom Brady: Why I had deflate gate mobile phone destroyed

He destroyed his cell phone, for unrelated issues he claims, and now he is stuck with his mansion and his gorgeous super model wife. Poor guy.

I suppose all this affects other people, those who may not be involved. I can say it’s only a game, just a silly football player, but then I remember people and the pure joy I’ve seen in them when it comes to football, this team in particular. Although it may seem insignificant to me, I want to keep an open mind because sports can be a positive thing, something to make people happy.

On the other hand, cheating isn’t a lesson I want today’s youth to pick up from their favourite athletes.

**The Netflix Newborn Policy.

Netflix Now Giving Employees ‘Unlimited’ Maternity, Paternity Leave – HuffPost

“Looks like NetFlix is onto something,” the American reporter said, to end his news story.

They do realize how much of the rest of the world has been “onto something”, this something specifically, for quite a while now, don’t they?

First it was IT and tech companies who were in the news for offering egg freezing for their female employees.

Apple and Facebook Offer To Freeze Eggs For Female Employees – The Guardian

Do they offer on-site day care facilities?

The work force and these companies, society as a whole, has this whole thing all wrong. Don’t offer incentives for women to hold off on having children because they won’t have to worry, can focus on career, and just worry about starting families later. Offer time off for parent-child bonding from the beginning, without the pressures to get right back to work. Depending on frozen embryos isn’t the answer.

Why does America only seem to care for themselves? I am sure that isn’t everyone, but it’s still an “every man for himself…or woman, as it so happens” situation and this is so very backwards.

We are giving birth and raising the next generation. They matter. Invest in them. Don’t focus on money alone and what it will take away from everyone else.

No. Women are not going to milk it, having children just so they can get time off work. That is a silly excuse and a lame go-to rebuff to what most of the rest of the world has already figured out.

The other argument is, oh what about other women and men who have decided, for whatever reason, not to have children. It’s not fair and even for them. So life isn’t always fair.

I’m blind. What’s fair about that? I’ve learned to deal and they can too.

Even if this does start a trend, there will always be those who judge women on this, their loyalty or their work ethic, but now that fathers are included in this, I hope for more gender equality all around. This is including adopted parents too.

**Immigrants and migrants.

I heard it’s something like 2,000 so far this year. That’s the number of African and other migrants to have come, trying to sneak into Europe, being stuffed into boats by greedy smugglers, sinking and drowning by the boatload.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33791920

It’s so sad, the things, the types of persecution these poor people are fleeing from, hoping for a safe crossing to a better life. They may realize how unsafe their journey seems, but are desperate and willing to risk whatever they must. Those who capitalize on this vulnerability are the scum, but with all these stories I’ve tried to keep an open mind, even if it might not appear to be so.

        And last but certainly not least:

With the story of Cecil the Lion being talked about everywhere lately, with airlines banning transport of hunting trophies and 90s favourite Beanie Babies soon to release one of the lion and with sales going to wildlife causes, I thought of a movie my brother and I watched several years ago.

This was still when we lived at home with our parents and when VHS was how we watched our movies, the pre-DVD era in our household.

Have you ever seen the film starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas?

Ghost and the Darkness

He was famous Doors front man Jim Morrison, Batman, and a blind massage therapist. It was his highly convincing role as John Henry Patterson, real life engineer and author of the nonfiction book “The Man-eaters of Tsavo” that is as far from The Lion King as you’re going to get.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man-eaters_of_Tsavo

“Even now, if you dare lock eyes with them – YOU WILL BE AFRAID.”

A blogger I follow said it better than I thought I could:

https://mjwrightnz.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/cecil-the-lions-death-highlights-the-fact-that-humanity-is-the-scourge-of-a-fragile-earth/

However, with all the animal stories in the media and in the headlines I try to keep an open mind.

In Zimbabwe, We Don’t Cry For Lions – The New York Times

Do we here in North America truly know what it must be like ore in places like Africa and Asia, where some of the most dangerous animals live alongside humans? We shout our disapproval when a story of mistreatment happens to get picked up, but what do we really know of it?

In the time of “Ghost and the Darkness”, we had no social media to spread a story far and wide in a matter of minutes or even seconds.

I do know that we are all sharing this planet and deserve to share its resources, but our shared use of all this gives those determined to destroy for their own aims the chance to mess it up for us all.

Oil here in Canada.

The clear causes of global warming and the power of nature, with the extreme weather and lack of water in not just far away deserts, but drouth in California, which is so often in the news.

Is it such a surprise that wildlife is being poached illegally?

I disagree with how we treat animals, The Calgary Stampede or the Running of the Bulls for example.

I have had and do have hunters in my family. I grew up with it around me at times. Sure, it was never my thing, but I went on eating meat. I still do. I am not a vegetarian, but I have vegetarians in my family as well.

I love my family and respect their wishes. It’s a little harder to judge those you care about and know personally.

I don’t see why anyone would want to hunt a lion for sport. I don’t get the point of mounting an animal’s head on the wall. What satisfaction does that possibly provide?

Someone needing to feel superior to an animal. Yes, we humans have advanced weapons and we can come out on top. Doesn’t mean we should.

Defenseless, like so many are afraid to be without their guns, we would be at the mercy of a wild animal or an intruder, both of which may very well intend to cause harm.

I want to understand those living in Zimbabwe, just like I want to understand why the people living in the remote Faroe Islands have an annual pilot whale hunt as a part of their culture.

http://www.mappingmegan.com/understanding-faroe-islands-grindadrap/

I want to understand different cultures, not to simply sit in judgment from over here, without the foggiest clue.

I am definitely no radical activist. I respect the passion they have, if all they want is to save a species from being hunted to the edge or off the edge of extinction. I often wish I had it in me to go out and make a difference, but for now I remain here, writing to hopefully make my voice heard amongst the roar and the uproar.

Ghost and the Darkness seemed a wild, historical, adventure film. I was hooked by it from that first time I watched with my brother. He described the scenes where Douglas and Kilmer hunt the bloodthirsty lions. Truthfully, although characters like the doctor (played by Bernard Hill) meet their end at the jaws of the killers, it was more the cow that was sacrificed by the people and the baboon used as bait to catch the lions that bothered me most.

This true story made an excellent film, showcasing what it was like then and now. Why humans hunt. It’s an important part of many cultures, since the beginning of humanity, and our modern times now seems to have made it a trophy sport, for pleasure and for fun.

So many traditions should come to an end, in my opinion. We must learn to let go of certain practices, to make way for the advances we have made and the knowledge we now possess. There’s just no need for some things, unnecessarily curl things.

I commented on the above blog on Cecil and the wider problems, and it wasn’t a very optimistic comment. The blogger tried to reply in a more positive light, but I don’t know how to look at our world in just such a light most of the time, if I am being honest. It is apparent that many people care, as the response to Cecil shows, but at the same time we are battling a large segment of our world that just does not care, is only out for itself, as I have pointed to several times in this week’s “In The News and On My Mind” post.

Then there has been the demand for blood, directed toward the dentist who killed Cecil. I don’t know the man and his motives, nor what’s in his heart. I don’t condone his actions, but he is a human being, therefore I believe there can’t be mob ruled justice, as outraged as so many are.

Why should be be honest in our relationships or in athletics?

Why should we care about those being persecuted in their own countries or those who want to spend time with their newborns?

Why does it matter to think about how we use the world’s resources or why animals are important to our planet and to its future?

I hope I don’t have to even answer that, but some people just don’t get it, nor do they care, and I’m not sure that can be fixed with rational convictions or logical bullet points. I don’t know why “every man for himself” seems to be how humans think and act.

What are your thoughts on any of these topics I’ve mentioned here today? The discussion needs to continue. for all our sakes.

Reviewing Blindness

July is moving along.

Okay, well I could always complain, but I won’t. Not now. Maybe later.

🙂

Last week, I wrote about how:

Men Are From Mars, Women From Venus, and Then There’s Jupiter.

This week is a free post week.

I have freely chosen to go back seven or so years, to write a movie review of sorts.

***

I was randomly watching television the other day and suddenly I got this yucky, icky feeling.

It’s a feeling I get anytime I happen to think about one particular movie that I saw when it came out in theatres back in 2008.

It was only a commercial, announcing the airing of a film on television, coming up this weekend.

I had never heard of the novel: “Blindness”, before seeing the film.

Sure, the title intrigued me and my brothers. We chose to see it, but I had no idea, going in, what to expect.

What would happen if an entire city lost their sight?

This film, developed from the Jose Saramago novel of the same name, is a social commentary of sorts. It examines a very good question, but i did not like the results of this particular examination.

I did not like the answer to the question and I was not alone.

NFB Protests Opening of Blindness in 37 States

Several US organizations and groups protested the film on its release. They said it painted blind people in the most horrible of lights. I agree, but I know, deep down, that it is only a story.

It is a question that I have wondered myself. I know just how terrified most people become at the very thought of going blind. It is society’s worst fear, but that’s because it is so very possible. Losts of people lose their sight, mostly due to old age, but not always. What if it were to happen, as some sort of epidemic that began to spread, mysteriously?

The city in this film is not named. Most of the characters aren’t named either. It’s the boy or the woman with the dark glasses or the King of Ward 3, receptionist or the accountant or the man with the eye patch. We don’t learn about these characters as people, who they are or who they were, before they lost the most important of all the senses, the one most people could never ever imagine living without.

It has been several years since I saw it, so this review may be vague in some spots, but others are burned into my brain.

There is loyalty and compassion, but there is mostly chaos, disorder, and the sudden White Blindness seems to be the reason for a total breakdown of law and order, of civilization.

The doctor (Mark) he treats a patient who has suddenly and mysteriously lost his sight. Several car accidents are going on around this unnamed city, because the drivers simply lose their sight and crash into each other.

I remember the entire film sounding quite muted. There is a lot of silence, even behind the traffic noises, the dialogue, and eventually there is yelling and danger.

The doctor’s wife (Julianne) is the only one who is spared, for whatever reason, but pretends just so she can accompany her husband, so they will not be separated. This puts her in danger, but she shows her courage.

The newly blind citizens are locked up in an insane asylum, to keep them safe, but soon they are trapped and cut off from the rest of the world, from any possible help.

This is where the blind community has protested. The situation declines rapidly into madness. Sanitation becomes a problem. There is nobody cleaning the facility and soon there is filth and faeces in the halls. Food becomes scarce. People turn on each other and survival is their only goal. Mob rules is the way of it. Those in favour would claim that this is more a display of how humanity would break down, not blind people specifically, that this is no real reflection of blind people.

The Federation of the Blind would say it still paints blind people as unclean, violent, crazy and dangerous.

I know, logically, it is just a story. I knew that as I sat there, in the theatre, watching the events of Blindness play out on the screen in front of me.

I still reacted the way I reacted. It was a reaction I could not help, that I did not expect.

Are Protesters of Blindness Missing the Point?

As conditions decline, a gang of thugs holds food hostage from the starving prisoners, and then there was the rape scene. I was horrified by what I saw, a mass rape scene, which made me want to get up and leave the theatre then and there.

That, paired with the fact that the people were locked up in an asylum, both made me angry and wishing I had never went to see Blindness.

I guess the idea that any government would lock up its citizens, after they started to go blind, this is more drastic, but it made me picture segregation. I don’t even like the schools for the blind that do exist, but this was a fictional horror that I knew wasn’t real, and still I felt sick.

I will never be able to truly enjoy either Julianne Moore or Mark Ruffalo again, in any other role, after seeing them portray a couple who must survive and take care of each other and others in such a scenario.

I don’t know if I can or will ever read this novel. I don’t know, but maybe seeing it as a movie first is the reason, but watching it disturbed me so much, deep down. I don’t know, but books are often more detailed than movies.

Of course, the author of this book had feelings when he heard how blind people were reacting. He used blindness allegorically, to make his point about the humanity (or lack thereof) and breakdown of our society.

Everyone had their own right to feel the way they felt: whether it was the writer of the novel or the people with the disability he wrote about.

Author decries Blindness protests as misguided – Arts … – CBC

My reaction had nothing to do with the quality of the book, as I have never read it, but my physical reaction to seeing the story come to life on screen.

As for Blindness, the novel: I don’t think I will get to it. So many books; so little time.

🙂

I don’t think I could stomach it, but, then again, never say never.

But perhaps I’m missing out on something brilliant, a marvellous piece of fiction.

He was described as a pessimist.

No way!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness_(film)

So, upon entering the theatre, when they took our tickets…

Movie employee: Enjoy Blindness.

My blind brother and myself: We always do.

***

At what age were you or your loved ones diagnosed?

That is the question I will be answering, one week from now, for

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge

And…

Check out the

Redefining Disability Awareness Project On Facebook,

for all this and more.