The Dogs of Babble...
Dec. 30th, 2004 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWasn't planning on posting again this week, but I'm home sick today and find myself in need of distraction. Yep, I came down with the chest cold/flu bug that's been going around - I think I got it this weekend, in which case I'm thankful I did not visit anyone (especially since the three invitations came from folks with either newborn babies or pregnant.) My boss ordered me to go home yesterday afternoon and told me that if I was sick tomorrow, to stay home.
"Keep your germs to yourself." Can't say I blame her, if I were her, I'd say exactly the same thing. It's eerie dealing with my boss, her management style is so close to mine or how I'd manage people.
I'd watch the news - but it makes me cry. All those lives lost. My heart goes out to my friend from Sri Lanka. I hope her family is well and safe. Watching the news makes my own problems seem somewhat idiotic and pathetic. It is also unsettling seeing all these weird natural disasters and occurrences happening close together... but maybe that's just me.
The Dogs of Babble is a book by Carolyn Parkhurst. A quirky small book that inspired a fevered ramble on Tuesday night that I wrote in my private journal not here. I've been running a low-grade fever off and on most of the week. The book is about a man who has recently lost his wife and is attempting to understand why. She fell from an apple tree. Her dog, a Ridgeback Rhodesian, her only witness. Before she fell, she did two odd things. She cooked her dog a steak and she re-shelved several of hers and her husbands books. The police rule the fall as accidental, the husband believes suicide but does not know why.
At any rate - here's an edited version of my ramble - which I liked enough to attempt to share and perserve here. What is about? Ah never much for summarization- but I think it's about communication - attempting to communicate, to understand, without what's the word? Disconnection? Annoyance?
Abrasion? Offense? But then, what our words mean to us - is often something different to someone else, I think. In this as in many things, I remain uncertain.
The rage of thoughts to put in words unfettered feelings upon a page. Babble. To make sense of. To understand. To calm the hurricane of emotion and uncertainity.
I write to unravel my thoughts, to make sense of dreams and feelings and anxieties - to communicate them to my conscious self - to know them and discard what hurts or muddles. Once upon a time I read that creativity comes from insanity, the fevered brain, the depressed soul - an attempt to claw its way free of its own chaotic thoughts and emotions. The words bugged me motivating my own emotional lashout of garbled words unwitting and misdirected. Barbed. Forked. Cutting.
Sometimes I wonder if we are two people. One sane, kind, sensible - the other a raging furnace of uncertainity and insecurity, demonic? Flipping from one to the other without a moment's notice? Is the line between the two persona's so thin?
I just finished The DOGS OF BABBLE tonight. A quirky book of some 257 pages, discovered by a woman in my book club. The club I'd considered abandoning earlier this year (2004), yet find now to my astonishment that I am one of the last three remaining members. Did not abandon because the woman who discovered the book told me how important the club had become to her - how it had nurtured her. She is a breast cancer survivor and oddly a BTVS devotee. I know I know the image of a book club conjures visions of gray-haired scholarly women drinking tea - or Oprah. But our's was different. Meeting in each others homes or restaurants, sharing wine, food, good conversation and using the book as a means of relating to each other. Not much different I suppose than a discussion board on a tv show. The tv show is actually unimportant - it is only there as a means of bringing the people together. Or it is important - but only to the extent that it gives the people the opening to talk with one another and share thoughts they never would have otherwise? It surprised me that it was so important to these two women, who I only saw once a month, for me to continue with the club. What did I offer? I thought, but my presence, my voice. Yet - to them that was enough. So much so that one had gone out of her way to give me the book when I couldn't get my hands on it.
DOGS OF BABBLE... an odd book. And this is not so much a review of it as
a means of sharing its insights.
Here's a few abbreviated passages from it: "I dreamed they cut me open and found I had two hearts. The second one was small and it was a different color. It was hidden underneath the main heart so they didn't see it at first...the doctor said that most people have two hearts...we just never know it."
Followed by: "It's the betrayal of the second heart of ours, its flesh tied off like a fingertip twined tightly round with a small hair, blue tinged from lack of blood...
"It's not the content of our dreams that gives our second heart its dark color; it's the thoughts that go through our heads in those wakeful moments when sleep won't come. And those are the things we never tell anyone at all."
Except for writers, particularly poets, who seem oddly compelled to share everything that pops into their heads, whether anyone wants to see it or not.
And this passage on suicide, which I thought explained the subject so well -
the book is odd in that it deals with both, the anger of those left behind and the damage, as well as what must be going through the mind of the one who does it. I'm not giving anything away when I tell you that book deals with suicide, since well you can sort of figure that within the first few chapters. These passages are husband's words on what he believes was going through his wife's mind, when she killed herself. To read all of it - you need to get the book.
"You wake up and you feel what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumbling of flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces inside you have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head - no, not voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one that says, "Turn Left at the corner", "Don't forget to stop at the post office." Only now it's saying "I hate myself.""
"The smile feels wrong on your face - you look at other people, and you know they have their problems, too, but it seems to come easier to them, all of it. They don't have that hollow sound in their voices when they talk."
"The more amorphous tasks, the things that are not so crucial this minute but will ultimately shape your life into something worth remembering, those are harder to face. You'd rather lose yourself in something stupid but occupies your mind for a few moments - TV, a crossword puzzel, a magazine about celebrities. You spend whole days doing things like that. And then you get scared because another day of your life is gone, and what have you done about it? What will they find, you wonder, when they find me dead?...What can you do to make yourself happy? In all the wide world there seems to be nothing..."
The book is interesting - because after and before those passages, we explore exactly what the woman who dies has in her life, what she had to live for, and how much her loss pains and devastates those left behind.
I wonder if we are the best judges of the importance of our own lives? If we should be allowed to determine if we've lived a worthwhile life? A good one?
If it is meaningful? How or if we affect others? After all our perception is so limited in scope. Right now for instance, I am writing this alone in my bedroom, no one in sight. Sick - physically. Fevered brain. And somewhat depressed from my dashed plans. I do not know what has happened in my friends lives or to them in the intervening period. If I hadn't watched the news - I would not know about the devastation in Southern Asia -which is so far away, yet so close. We have no way of knowing what our loss will cost the world.
Or anyone's for that matter. Just as I have no way of knowing what effect these words will have on others, assuming I choose to print them or release them. Will they guide more readers to this little gem of a book? A book that is
emotionally grueling in places? And does have a depiction of animal cruelty - so if you are a dog lover be warned. Or will they do the opposite? Life I've found is uncertain. There are no definites. No quarantees. Even though I spent quite a bit of time of this week and last attempting to get a few - for my company and myself. We aren't promised anything. It ain't for wimps.
The DOGS of BABBLE is a book about a grief-stricken man attempting to understand why his wife climbed a tree and fell from it. It is also about
how we attempt to understand and cope with our world around us, for good and ill. It is a book that will haunt me for quite some time I think.
"Keep your germs to yourself." Can't say I blame her, if I were her, I'd say exactly the same thing. It's eerie dealing with my boss, her management style is so close to mine or how I'd manage people.
I'd watch the news - but it makes me cry. All those lives lost. My heart goes out to my friend from Sri Lanka. I hope her family is well and safe. Watching the news makes my own problems seem somewhat idiotic and pathetic. It is also unsettling seeing all these weird natural disasters and occurrences happening close together... but maybe that's just me.
The Dogs of Babble is a book by Carolyn Parkhurst. A quirky small book that inspired a fevered ramble on Tuesday night that I wrote in my private journal not here. I've been running a low-grade fever off and on most of the week. The book is about a man who has recently lost his wife and is attempting to understand why. She fell from an apple tree. Her dog, a Ridgeback Rhodesian, her only witness. Before she fell, she did two odd things. She cooked her dog a steak and she re-shelved several of hers and her husbands books. The police rule the fall as accidental, the husband believes suicide but does not know why.
At any rate - here's an edited version of my ramble - which I liked enough to attempt to share and perserve here. What is about? Ah never much for summarization- but I think it's about communication - attempting to communicate, to understand, without what's the word? Disconnection? Annoyance?
Abrasion? Offense? But then, what our words mean to us - is often something different to someone else, I think. In this as in many things, I remain uncertain.
The rage of thoughts to put in words unfettered feelings upon a page. Babble. To make sense of. To understand. To calm the hurricane of emotion and uncertainity.
I write to unravel my thoughts, to make sense of dreams and feelings and anxieties - to communicate them to my conscious self - to know them and discard what hurts or muddles. Once upon a time I read that creativity comes from insanity, the fevered brain, the depressed soul - an attempt to claw its way free of its own chaotic thoughts and emotions. The words bugged me motivating my own emotional lashout of garbled words unwitting and misdirected. Barbed. Forked. Cutting.
Sometimes I wonder if we are two people. One sane, kind, sensible - the other a raging furnace of uncertainity and insecurity, demonic? Flipping from one to the other without a moment's notice? Is the line between the two persona's so thin?
I just finished The DOGS OF BABBLE tonight. A quirky book of some 257 pages, discovered by a woman in my book club. The club I'd considered abandoning earlier this year (2004), yet find now to my astonishment that I am one of the last three remaining members. Did not abandon because the woman who discovered the book told me how important the club had become to her - how it had nurtured her. She is a breast cancer survivor and oddly a BTVS devotee. I know I know the image of a book club conjures visions of gray-haired scholarly women drinking tea - or Oprah. But our's was different. Meeting in each others homes or restaurants, sharing wine, food, good conversation and using the book as a means of relating to each other. Not much different I suppose than a discussion board on a tv show. The tv show is actually unimportant - it is only there as a means of bringing the people together. Or it is important - but only to the extent that it gives the people the opening to talk with one another and share thoughts they never would have otherwise? It surprised me that it was so important to these two women, who I only saw once a month, for me to continue with the club. What did I offer? I thought, but my presence, my voice. Yet - to them that was enough. So much so that one had gone out of her way to give me the book when I couldn't get my hands on it.
DOGS OF BABBLE... an odd book. And this is not so much a review of it as
a means of sharing its insights.
Here's a few abbreviated passages from it: "I dreamed they cut me open and found I had two hearts. The second one was small and it was a different color. It was hidden underneath the main heart so they didn't see it at first...the doctor said that most people have two hearts...we just never know it."
Followed by: "It's the betrayal of the second heart of ours, its flesh tied off like a fingertip twined tightly round with a small hair, blue tinged from lack of blood...
"It's not the content of our dreams that gives our second heart its dark color; it's the thoughts that go through our heads in those wakeful moments when sleep won't come. And those are the things we never tell anyone at all."
Except for writers, particularly poets, who seem oddly compelled to share everything that pops into their heads, whether anyone wants to see it or not.
And this passage on suicide, which I thought explained the subject so well -
the book is odd in that it deals with both, the anger of those left behind and the damage, as well as what must be going through the mind of the one who does it. I'm not giving anything away when I tell you that book deals with suicide, since well you can sort of figure that within the first few chapters. These passages are husband's words on what he believes was going through his wife's mind, when she killed herself. To read all of it - you need to get the book.
"You wake up and you feel what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumbling of flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces inside you have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head - no, not voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one that says, "Turn Left at the corner", "Don't forget to stop at the post office." Only now it's saying "I hate myself.""
"The smile feels wrong on your face - you look at other people, and you know they have their problems, too, but it seems to come easier to them, all of it. They don't have that hollow sound in their voices when they talk."
"The more amorphous tasks, the things that are not so crucial this minute but will ultimately shape your life into something worth remembering, those are harder to face. You'd rather lose yourself in something stupid but occupies your mind for a few moments - TV, a crossword puzzel, a magazine about celebrities. You spend whole days doing things like that. And then you get scared because another day of your life is gone, and what have you done about it? What will they find, you wonder, when they find me dead?...What can you do to make yourself happy? In all the wide world there seems to be nothing..."
The book is interesting - because after and before those passages, we explore exactly what the woman who dies has in her life, what she had to live for, and how much her loss pains and devastates those left behind.
I wonder if we are the best judges of the importance of our own lives? If we should be allowed to determine if we've lived a worthwhile life? A good one?
If it is meaningful? How or if we affect others? After all our perception is so limited in scope. Right now for instance, I am writing this alone in my bedroom, no one in sight. Sick - physically. Fevered brain. And somewhat depressed from my dashed plans. I do not know what has happened in my friends lives or to them in the intervening period. If I hadn't watched the news - I would not know about the devastation in Southern Asia -which is so far away, yet so close. We have no way of knowing what our loss will cost the world.
Or anyone's for that matter. Just as I have no way of knowing what effect these words will have on others, assuming I choose to print them or release them. Will they guide more readers to this little gem of a book? A book that is
emotionally grueling in places? And does have a depiction of animal cruelty - so if you are a dog lover be warned. Or will they do the opposite? Life I've found is uncertain. There are no definites. No quarantees. Even though I spent quite a bit of time of this week and last attempting to get a few - for my company and myself. We aren't promised anything. It ain't for wimps.
The DOGS of BABBLE is a book about a grief-stricken man attempting to understand why his wife climbed a tree and fell from it. It is also about
how we attempt to understand and cope with our world around us, for good and ill. It is a book that will haunt me for quite some time I think.
