PostSecret

Once upon a time, I was spending a lame evening at home. Instead of making my own plans, I chose to lie on the floor and live vicariously by text messaging with a friend who was actually out doing something- I think she was at a baseball game. Perhaps to get me off her back, my friend sent me to postsecret.blogspot.com.

I spent some time that night reading through the secrets. Since then I've periodically gone to check it out. After a few months of that, I've decided to post a secret of my own right here: I don't like that website. I just realized this last night, but I have a weird mix of dread and curiosity when I hit the link. I've realized my curiosity doesn't outweigh the fact that I just simply don't want to be a secret keeper for strangers, some of whom confess horrible things. I probably won't go back.

I am intrigued by this concept, though. I think it is evidence of our desire to be known fully, to hide nothing. What it can't provide, though, is the healing that comes when you're accepted by someone even when he/she knows that *thing* you've buried. Not having a relationship with these individuals, at least not as far as I know, I can't accept them. Then again, maybe people aren't looking for healing or acceptance. Maybe they just want to speak. Who knows?

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: it's time to rant

This book is a national bestseller, if we can trust the cover. Over the couple of weeks that have passed since I read this, I've been trying to understand why. Maybe Canadians just like to buy books. Maybe it's a best seller because Canadian's lack discrimination- a great possibility since my brain reminded me that The Pillars of the Earth was also a bestseller. I will never understand that, not if I live to be a hundred years old.

But, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan...the story had potential. Sadly, I think that potential was squandered by See's decision to have her main character narrate from an 'end of life' perspective. By the end of the 'unfolding' in the introductory paragraphs, the story had lost almost all ability to surprise. Add to that the clumsy foreshadowing scattered throughout, and there's almost no reason to actually finish it.

Secondly, the main characters were flat and somewhat unappealing. Unappealing doesn't bother me. Some of my favorite characters have been characters I've disliked or despised- take Angel Clare in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, for example- but I can't decide if See deliberately made them flat or not. I think it's possible that she was attempting to emphasize the degree to which women were limited as those being 'acted on' in the context in which this book was set. However, if that's the case, I don't think she went far enough.

Generally, I'd say the book hovers somewhere around mediocre. I don't regret reading it- unlike The Pillars of the Earth... how I wish I could get those hours back- but I'm also glad that I got it from the library. So, that's what I think of the book as a piece of fiction. But it was not for any of these reasons that I threw the book across the room.

The Rant:

The two main characters in this book, both women, are joined as little girls in a kind of life-long covenant of friendship. I was incredibly disappointed when the author chose to add a sexual component to their relationship. Why, oh why, did she do that? Not every serious friendship between two men or two women is homosexual (in the sense in which we use that word today, not, obviously, in the sense that it is a relationship between two people of the same gender, which, obviously, it is). In the same way, not every serious friendship between a man and a woman is wrapped around sexual desire. How did we come to a point where we are unable to imagine a relationship, a friendship, that is NOT sexual? This is a tragedy, the consequence of which, I think, is shallow relationships or isolation.
Way to go, Lisa See.

While we're on the topic of old movies...

Mr. Holland's Opus.
I didn't have a blog back when this movie came out. Actually, I don't think I even had an email address. I've been trying to figure this out (instead of writing the paper I'm 'working' on). I know I watched it with some friends in Lindsay Osborn's basement. And I'm pretty sure we rode our bikes to Blockbuster to get it. Actually, it might even have been Jumbo Video. Needless to say, it's been a while. At least a dozen years, as far as I can tell.
So, this has been building up for a while.

I LOATHED this movie. Loathed it.

It's so good to finally get that out there.

Oh my word... it would NOT END.

Thanks, Michael Crichton

You know that scene in Jurassic Park where the two kids, Tim and Lex, are finally safe back at the visitor centre after a harrowing ordeal in the park? They're basically shovelling food into their mouths, it's all quiet. Lex has some jell-o on a spoon, she smiles at Tim, and then looks off-camera and the jell-o starts to shake. And all of a sudden the camera moves to a view of a velociraptor, the dinosaur they've been holding in reserve for the final spine-chilling conclusion of the movie, lifting with his snouth a veil with a printed image of one of his species to sniff the air of the dining room where the kids have just been. That's a good scene.

I quite enjoy Jurassic Park. I would also like to argue it should not be judged on the basis of any of the sequels which followed it. I'm sad Michael Crichton died last year. If one of them had to go, why couldn't it have been John Grisham? Aren't there enough books in the world about underdog, idealistic southern lawyers?

*next day addendum: I'm not saying I wish John Grisham was dead. I'm just saying enough lawyer books.

Synchronized Reading, Fourth Wheels...

I am supposed to be reading right now, so I'm going to make this quick.
My friend B came to Saskatoon with me when I went to my parents' place in early September. I really enjoyed having her there. She's a pretty laid back person so I didn't feel compelled to get up and entertain her- a key feature in someone who is going to come with me to my parents place where, for some reason, I struggle to rise and shine before 11:30 or 12:00. B is also a reader: another desirable trait in a vacation buddy. In addition to being capsized in sleep, when I'm on holidays, I prefer to spend many hours of my day submerged in lit, coming up for air when it's time to eat or to exercise or, I suppose, to shop.

I've been mulling over one other thing with regards to that holiday. I like having friends come to my parents' house because I find it opens up new insight for me into my parents. Fresh eyes, fresh questions. I think it helps me to see and appreciate my parents in a different light. I think this is true of anyone that you've known for a long time. Seeing them relate to someone new or different adds depth to my perception of them. It's a good thing.

More on ink and paper

I am taking a class called Engendered History. It's NOT women's history or feminist history: it's gender history and it's interesting and thought-provoking.

For my class today I read a book called A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812. The book won a Pulitzer Prize a while back and is quite good. I recommend it.

Martha Ballard kept a diary, making almost daily entries, for 27 years, but there came a day when it just ended. She didn't know, necessarily, that particular entry was going to be the last thing she wrote down, but it was. I can't wrap my mind around it. And maybe by it, I mean death?

She used a phrase about a person who died in her presence over the decades during which she practiced as a midwife that their life went out like a candle. I know she was not the first to use that metaphor, but neither was she a poetic, or even particularly emotive, woman and the visual imagery suggested by the phrase struck me. One minute you are alive, and the next, you are something else. And only very rarely can you guess which day that will be. I wonder what the last thing I write about in my journals will be. Will I be writing thankful words? Expressing frustration? Will I be relating the details and minutiae of my life or puzzling over the more abstract? Will I know my time's almost up, or will that be a surprise?

In our class tonight my prof talked about the work of 'doing history' from old records such as journals. She said it was like walking into a room full of strangers where the historian basically has to reconstruct, in every dimension available, an old community from records of people who already knew who everyone was, so didn't bother to explain. I'd never thought about it before. I have dozens and dozens of journals. I don't know if I've ever introduced 'characters' as they enter. I am hoping no one ever reads them, so I'm not trying to make them usable for posterity, but it is interesting to wonder what the relative difficulty would be for someone trying to use my journals to understand my context.

Waste of Ink and Paper

While I was waiting for my ride at the airport I read this headline on the back of someone's paper:
"Look to IT sector for future jobs, survey says."
I read this while listening to my MP3 player and in between texting the person picking me up and checking my email/facebook on my iPhone. Unless that article was written in 1990, there's nothing to say. Perhaps, though, a couple of questions might be appropriate: "Should I look to the east for the sunrise? Will rain come from the sky?"