Zeitoun

This excerpt is from Zeitoun, a novel about a resident of New Orleans who decided to stay in the city despite the warnings of the huge hurricane Katrina headed it’s way. He slept on the roof through much of the flooding, and when the city was covered, he took his second-hand canoe and paddled through the city to see how he could help.

As they made their way home, passing a half-dozen fan boats along the way, it occurred to Zeitoun that he and Frank had heard the people they had helped, in particular the old woman floating inside her home, because there were in a canoe. Had they been in a fan boat, the noise overwhelming, they would have heard nothing. They would have passed by, and the woman likely would not have survived another night. It was the very nature of this small, silent craft that allowed them to hear the quietest cries. The canoe was good, the silence was crucial.

On youth group trips in middle school, I would come home after a weekend of staying up late, singing loudly, and shouting with friends. Almost without exception, these trips resulted in a sore throat for a few days. This was the worst. I could barely speak. That meant I had to work hard to get people to listen to me, and I had to think hard about what I really wanted to say so I didn’t waste my words.

I have always struggled with speaking before I have fully heard. I assume.  I interrupt. I talk and talk. And so often because of this, I miss the point. I miss an opportunity to edify or just to listen because I want to say something.

I have seen such worth in listening. People are drawn to people who listen. People who listen often have better things to say when they do speak up. I have long desired to be that kind of person, and long failed to be so.

This passage strikingly reminded me of how you can leave people to drown if you surround yourself with so much noise. This could be the typical condemnation of dependence on technology -- that definitely does a lot of damage and leaves a wake of loneliness. But I also think we can ride the fan boat of our own “wisdom” or our own experience.

I’ve noticed the way that I and others my age (maybe all ages?) communicate. One person tells a story or a fact, the next says, “Well I heard,” or, “One time I...” Every time a new speaker interjects, they begin by relating the conversation to themselves. This can be beautiful; sharing personal anecdotes is a wonderful way of relating and passing on stories and creating conversation. But it can also be harmful. Is each person in the conversation spending the time that others are talking thinking, how does this relate to me? Again, not always a bad question, but if that is the only question, does it negate true listening?

I’ve noticed whole conversations I’ve had where by the end of it, I know myself better but I haven’t learned a thing about the other person.

It’s time for me to go canoeing.

:)

Well, thankfully, I'm better at reading than consistantly blogging, so here's what I've read recently --

-Finished Les Miserable by Victor Hugo(finally!)
-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

For Russian Literature class:
-Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
-Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
-Eugeine Onegin by Pushkin
-The Cherry Orchard by Chekov
-The Kingdom of God is Within You by Tolstoy
-Short stories by Tolstoy
-Dead Souls by Gogol

What I'm reading now:
-The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
-Prodigal God by Timothy Keller
-Animal Farm by George Orwell

What I hope to read this summer (although we all know how this kind of thing goes...):
-1984 by George Orwell
-Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
-Brave New World by Adolus Huxley

I'll leave room for the fact that new books will wiggle themselves onto my plate :)

Spoon River Anthology

A collection of poems that everyone should read. It's composed of poems from the perspective of all the people from the town Spoon River. So the reader gets to experience stories from varying perspectives. There are poems by the judge, the preacher, the town drunk, the everyday citizens, the school teacher, the lovers, etc. I will post a poem from the anthology, or perhaps two, when I have the anthology next to me.

fin.

So I finished Deep River. A strange ending. It deals with the two ideas I mentioned last night -- religion and tourism.

A man on the tour - Sanjo - fancied himself as an aspiring professional photographer. Taking photos at the cremation grounds at the River Ganges is forbidden. Naturally, as an inconsiderate tourist, he tried to take some. When a group of Hindus saw him, they formed a mob to chase him down.

If you remember, the story of Mitsuko is one of religious confusion and seeking for something real inside herself. Otsu was a boy who she slept with to try to steer him away from his faith. He went on to France to become a preist, after which he ended up in Varanasi where he would go throughout the city picking up the sick and the dead to bring them to the River.

Otsu was working at the river when the Hindus formed the mob. He ran in between the mob and Sanjo, who escaped. The mob settled for Otsu, until Mitsuko, who was near, came screaming to say Otsu had done nothing. When they realized it was not who they wanted, the mob subsided and went back to their cleansing. Mitsuko stayed with Otsu until his friends who would help him carry the sick and the dead to the River came to take him to the hospital. Mitsuko yells to him as they are taking him away saying that all his beliefs are futile, and look what they have brought you to.

The book ends on the day they are leaving to return to Japan. Mitsuko askes Enami, the tour guide, to call the hospital to ask about Otsu. He does. The last line of the book is Enami saying, "He's in critical condition. About an hour ago he took a sudden turn for the worse."

I don't understand why it ends this way. For the last few chapters, you don't hear about Isobe. You learned that he never found his wife, but someone had comforted him by saying she was "reborn inside of him." This was an interesting conclusion to his story, but it never said whether he stopped drinking, which he had picked up intensively in his search for his wife.

I learned. Hopefully you learned something. I love the book! I suggest it! It leaves one contemplating things.

FAILURE!!

Deep River. I have one more chapter to go.

For one, it is such great writing. Secondly, I have learned a lot about tourism and religious tolerance. For now, a bit on tourism.

As the reader, we get to see inside everyone's head -- or rather, whoever the author wants you to see into. One person we get to know is the tour guide. He has spent much of his life studying India and Hinduism. He wants to continue to learn because he believes that, even though he has been learning for years, there is still more to learn! His frustration is that these wealthy Japanese tourists come for a week or two and see highlights of famous, relatively wealthy Indian cities, and then they return home and make like they understand the whole of India. I have always been somewhat convicted as a tourist of places. This is where people live. This is where people suffer and where they take pride as their home and where they have learned every good and ugly thing that they know. I love to travel and learn bits of history and culture. I think it is somewhat important to be a well-rounded person to have some sort of cross-cultural experience. But how do you accomplish this without either being hyper- or hypo-sensitive? Is a snapshot worth it? Is it good not to understand something fully? Or is it better to avoid any knowledge so that you are not offensive in your ignorance? How can there be an acceptable balance?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future

So, as should be expected, I have not stuck to my reading plan at all. But one book I have taken upon myself to read is by Michael J. Fox entitled the name of this post. It was marvelous. He is so funny. The basic premise is that he dropped out of high school to pursue his acting career and didn't go to college at all; in spite of this, he basically got a college education in the "university of life." He was taught economics by being a starving artist. He was taught government by being an immigrant from Canada and becoming a citizen when he began a family that would live in America. He was taught physics mostly from Back to the Future. And he learned a thing or two about science and philosophy from contracting Parkinson's disease. Amidst the humorous, casual-conversationalist nature of the book, Michael had very valuable things to say about life and death. I can't say much more right now because I need to sleep, but I will be continuing this thought when i have my wits and the text about me!!

Deep River.

The basic premise of the book so far is this:

There is a tour of Japanese tourists going to see Buddhist temples in India. Each chapter looks back at the life of one of the people going on the tour. So it's a little bit disconnected as far as coherency between the chapters, but each chapter is full of emotion and heartbreak. I'll just summarize each chapter up to this point, with perhaps a few comments.

Chapter 1. The Case of Isobe
There is an old man whose wife was dying of cancer. He realized how he had simply taken advantage of her always being there for their whole marriage, and he regretted that he could not be more kind and understanding. But even in her last weeks, he could not bring himself to be honest or kind about how he felt for her. The reader sees his inner struggle as he fights against the love -selfish or not? I don't know, you decide - that he feels inside and wants to come out. He fears that if he begins to show love, she'll suspect the end is near. His wife would daily hold conversations with the trees and plants outside of her hospital window. She would pretend she didn't know she was dying because her husband didn't want her to know. But she knew. She believed in reincarnation, and told her husband to look for her wherever she would be reborn.

Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, it is such a sweet idea that a husband would look for his wife, even if she were born back as a flea or a loud, smelly boy. I can't decide if the husband's new-found love is selfless. I don't think it is. I think towards the end it bordered on it, but never was in the first place. I think it would be extremely difficult to make selfless love out of a selfish one all of a sudden, even in the face of death.

Chapter 2. The Informational Meeting
This chapter is a segue to understanding the set up of the book. Chapter 1 was simply the husband's story, and chapter two shows him going on this tour and meeting a nurse again who had been with his wife in the hospital. Chapter three is her story.

Chapter 3. The Case of Mitsuko
Mitsuko went to a Christian school in japan, and lived it up the way most college students do. She didn't buy into Christianity, and resented those who did. There was one boy, Otsu, who believed in Christianity because his parents had taught him to, and he had never known anything else. Mitsuko despised this, and so she tried to make him reject his beliefs. First, she and her friends tried to drink it out of him. Then she decided to seduce him in order to make him reject his god, only to be rejected by her. In later years, on a trip to France, she found him studying to be a pastor. They got together and caught up, and Mitsuko reflected on her destruction of his heart. She realized that while he was seeking and finding fulfillment, she had no joy or steadiness in her heart.

This chapter really caused me to think, because I think if I were not a Christian, I would be and think and feel similarly to Mitsuko. This thought makes me so grateful to be saved from needing to feed off of others. I was disgusted by Mitsuko's need to see Otsu cease to have faith and how she had so long ago lost respect for herself that she nonchalantly used her body to destroy others. Otsu had already comprimised himself enough by having relations with her, but then he was further wronged because he still had a hope of taking Mitsuko to his family and marrying her. He had justified his actions by telling himself it would have happened within the bounds of their marriage anyways, so it may as well happen now.

Another instance of selfish love.

Chapter 4. The Case of Numada
I don't remember this chapter as well, but I'll do my best. Numada was a little boy who became friends with the servant boy in a time when his parents were always fighting. Together they took care of a stray dog and the three of them were the best of friends. When the servant was accused of something wrongly, he was sent away, which left Numada only the stray dog as a friend, and this in secret. So he grew to love animals and animals loved him. When he was married, the only animal he had was a bird. He went to the hospital for something and he needed to have surgery. His bird died because no one took care of him. His wife felt terrible and bought him another bird for his hospital room. After the surgery, the doctor said that at one point, Numada's heart had completely stopped pumping. His new bird had also died. Numada wonders "I wonder if it died in place of me!?"

Chapter 5. The Case of Kiguchi
I read this chapter last night, so it's fresh in my mind. Kiguchi was a war veteran who had fought in Burma. The chapter recalls some of his more grotesque memories, particularly of a time he contracted malaria and had to stay behind from his unit. His close friend, Tsukada, stayed with him to wean him back to health. Many years after the war, Tsukada got a hold of Kiguchi and asked if he could find him a job in his business. So the began working together. Kiguchi noticed that Tsukada had taken up excessive drinking. He warned him about it, but Tsukada said it was the only way to stay reasonably happy. Tsukada worked very hard at his job, and many people around him said, "Men who are too serious are the first to break." After a few months of hard work, Tsukada had a hemorrhage and coughed up loads of blood. They found some problems in his stomach because of the alcohol, and he had to stay in the hospital for an extended time. Kiguchi could see that there was something bigger than just the war memories that drowned Tsukada in drink. He continued to urge him to stop once he got out, but Tsukada said he would not. Eventually, Tsukada confided that while Kiguchi had been sick and he had gone off to find meat, he had brought back the meat off of the other dead soldiers. ever since the war was over, he could not forgive himself for doing this.

In the hospital, there was a volunteer named Gaston who had faith in god. [It didn't say which god.] Soon before it was obvious that Tsukada would die, he asked for Gaston and told him about what he had done. He asked if gaston's god could forgive that. Instead of directly answering, Gaston told Tsukada that he was not the only person to eat human flesh. He told a story of a recent plane crash in the middle of nowhere and those who were badly injured told the ones who still had a chance to live to eat their bodies once they were dead. Those who ate them survived and returned to Japan. The families of the eaten were proud to have their loved ones help the survivors to survive.

With my over active imagination, this chapter was hard to read. There were many gross images, and my stomach wasn't too happy with me at the late hour. But I was reminded of Heart of Darkness, in which the cannibals seem to be even more humane that the "civilized" people oppressed them. They had a code of honor and were not savage killers. I certainly don't endorse eating our dead - I think it's sick - but these two things have caused me to think that sometimes the grossest things are the most merciful, and the most merciful are the grossest.