Do you remember that feeling you used to get as a kid when it was your birthday and you had a whole pile of unopened gifts stacked in front of you? Each wrapped package a secret promise. As long as the gifts remained wrapped, they had the potential to be almost anything in the world! This was always the most exciting time for me; that brief moment when anything was still possible. Oh! I'm so lucky to be enjoying this feeling once again!
About a year ago, I read a wonderful book called The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. This book went straight to the top of my list of "The Ten Best Books I've Ever Read." Zafon has such a gloriously mysterious way with words. I hungrily devoured the first half of the book but by about midway through, I found myself forcing a slow down. I didn't want the experience to end! Zafon had created a dark, intriguing story line dripping with atmosphere and mystery and used words in ways that literally sometimes made my heart beat faster. The book was that good.
Immediately upon finishing the last page, I did an Internet search for anything else he might have written. But alas, he is a Spanish author and I was not able to find anything else that had been translated into English. Sigh....
Two weeks ago, I walked into Border's to pick up a CD of Bach cello suites. Unless your own life is blessed/cursed with a similar passion, you can not begin to imagine the excitement that surged through me upon seeing a display for a new book by Zafon. I raced over to the display, (pushing, to my shame, a young mother and her toddler out of my path; the Bach CD completely forgotten for the moment) and grabbed up the new book, The Angel's Game.
I felt light-headed as I turned it over to read the back cover. Another novel, set in the back streets of Barcelona, written in the same Gothic style as the first and claiming to be a "riveting new masterpiece" filled with plot twists and mystery. Oh Joy! Oh Rapture!
I've had the book home for two weeks now and have not read so much as the first word. I haven't even opened the front cover. I'm battling the urge to begin a journey that I know will end all too quickly. As long as it remains unread, I have so much to look forward to: each new day holds a whisper of promise for something I can't quite define. It's sitting on my coffee table and every time I catch a glimpse of it, my toes tingle and excitement fills the back of my throat like a fuzzy tennis ball.
I have decided to save it for my trip to Haiti next month. I leave on July 19th and have literally begun to mark the days off on my calendar; not in anticipation of my trip to Haiti, but in anticipation of my trip through the dark, back alleys of Barcelona!!
About Me
- Marialyn
- Wife of one. Mother of two. Sister of three. Just trying to get it all figured out before it's too late!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
I've been doing a lot of wandering around inside my own mind lately. I don't stay focused on any one thought very long before I'm off pondering something new. I'm thinking about life, purpose, after-life, the force we call God..... Why do we humans have such a strong drive to give life meaning?
A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a medical thriller. The cast of characters included an elderly man who had "locked-in syndrome" as the result of an accident. Locked-in syndrome is where your brain stem is damaged and although it still transmits messages to your brain, it can not transmit messages FROM your brain. As a result, the individual is completely paralyzed but can still feel pain and discomfort. By completely paralyzed, I mean unable to even breath without the help of a respirator. In a small percentage of cases, the individual will have muscle control in one or both eyes.
So, in this book I was reading, reference was made to Jean-Dominique Bauby, a Frenchman who was the editor of the magazine Elle. He suffered a stroke and as a result, ended up with locked-in syndrome. I wondered if this was a true story or made up for the sake of the book, so I goggled him. Turns out, it was a true story and he wrote a book about his experience called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
I logged on to Amazon.com and ordered the book. It's a small book and I was able to read it through in less than an hour. But the impression it made on me was immense! Bauby died within days of the book's publication. He was one of the "lucky" few who are able to blink an eye and it was by blinking, one painful letter at time, that he was able to share his trapped thoughts and experiences with the outside world.
The title of the book refers to his condition. The diving bell is his locked-in body, but the butterfly is his mind, which is free to travel wherever it wants and do whatever it desires. He had an amazing strength of spirit!
One passage that struck me was his reaction at seeing himself reflected in a window as he was being wheeled through the hospital. He writes,
...Reflected in the glass I saw the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde. His mouth was twisted, his nose damaged, his hair tousled, his gaze full of fear. One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain. For a moment I stared at that dilated pupil, before I realized it was only mine. Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter - when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke.
In another passage he declares that he would be the happiest of men "if I could just swallow the overflow of saliva that endlessly floods my mouth."
I'm thinking, here was this man who couldn't do anything but think and blink one eye and yet he managed to touch the lives of countless people and influence change. (Although I'd never heard of his story, it seems people around the world have because I read endless testaments to the positive impact he has had on individual lives.)
So, the aimless wandering I've been doing in my own mind lately is really a search for my own path. What can I do with my life of good health and privilege to make an impact of my own? And why is this even important to me?
A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a medical thriller. The cast of characters included an elderly man who had "locked-in syndrome" as the result of an accident. Locked-in syndrome is where your brain stem is damaged and although it still transmits messages to your brain, it can not transmit messages FROM your brain. As a result, the individual is completely paralyzed but can still feel pain and discomfort. By completely paralyzed, I mean unable to even breath without the help of a respirator. In a small percentage of cases, the individual will have muscle control in one or both eyes.
So, in this book I was reading, reference was made to Jean-Dominique Bauby, a Frenchman who was the editor of the magazine Elle. He suffered a stroke and as a result, ended up with locked-in syndrome. I wondered if this was a true story or made up for the sake of the book, so I goggled him. Turns out, it was a true story and he wrote a book about his experience called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
I logged on to Amazon.com and ordered the book. It's a small book and I was able to read it through in less than an hour. But the impression it made on me was immense! Bauby died within days of the book's publication. He was one of the "lucky" few who are able to blink an eye and it was by blinking, one painful letter at time, that he was able to share his trapped thoughts and experiences with the outside world.
The title of the book refers to his condition. The diving bell is his locked-in body, but the butterfly is his mind, which is free to travel wherever it wants and do whatever it desires. He had an amazing strength of spirit!
One passage that struck me was his reaction at seeing himself reflected in a window as he was being wheeled through the hospital. He writes,
...Reflected in the glass I saw the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde. His mouth was twisted, his nose damaged, his hair tousled, his gaze full of fear. One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain. For a moment I stared at that dilated pupil, before I realized it was only mine. Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter - when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke.
In another passage he declares that he would be the happiest of men "if I could just swallow the overflow of saliva that endlessly floods my mouth."
I'm thinking, here was this man who couldn't do anything but think and blink one eye and yet he managed to touch the lives of countless people and influence change. (Although I'd never heard of his story, it seems people around the world have because I read endless testaments to the positive impact he has had on individual lives.)
So, the aimless wandering I've been doing in my own mind lately is really a search for my own path. What can I do with my life of good health and privilege to make an impact of my own? And why is this even important to me?
Monday, June 7, 2010
What I've been doing instead of blogging......
I can't believe that it has already been over a week since I last blogged. Where is my time going? I set out to find the answer to this question and here's what I've been able to come up with....
1. Reading .....well, no surprises there, I guess. Since my last blog, I finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I read The Second Opinion by Michael Palmer, and I've started The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I enjoyed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo so much, that I got on Amazon.com and ordered the second book in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire.
2. Cooking ..... If you follow The Cooking Curmudgeon then you already know that I joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group. This has been great stimulus for my cooking creativity. I'm not by nature very creative in the kitchen, although it seems like I am because I like to try new things. But typically, I pick a recipe, gather the ingredients, make the dish. Now, I'm planning meals around the produce I get in my weekly sack. It's actually a lot of fun!
3. Pottery .... I've started taking a pottery class. It meets on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Day 1, I pretty much sucked. Throwing pottery is a lot harder than it looks! Whenever you see a skilled potter working at a wheel, the clay just seems to respond obediently to the tiniest direction. But for me, it was a messy misery! After three hours, I was covered from head to toe in wet clay and all I had to show for it was one miserable, lopsided, thick-walled midget of a pot. Here's a picture of me wedging my clay. (You wedge clay almost the same way you knead dough. You do this with the lump of clay you are going to throw. It's a process that is supposed to remove air bubbles from the clay.)
1. Reading .....well, no surprises there, I guess. Since my last blog, I finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I read The Second Opinion by Michael Palmer, and I've started The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I enjoyed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo so much, that I got on Amazon.com and ordered the second book in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire.
2. Cooking ..... If you follow The Cooking Curmudgeon then you already know that I joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group. This has been great stimulus for my cooking creativity. I'm not by nature very creative in the kitchen, although it seems like I am because I like to try new things. But typically, I pick a recipe, gather the ingredients, make the dish. Now, I'm planning meals around the produce I get in my weekly sack. It's actually a lot of fun!
3. Pottery .... I've started taking a pottery class. It meets on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Day 1, I pretty much sucked. Throwing pottery is a lot harder than it looks! Whenever you see a skilled potter working at a wheel, the clay just seems to respond obediently to the tiniest direction. But for me, it was a messy misery! After three hours, I was covered from head to toe in wet clay and all I had to show for it was one miserable, lopsided, thick-walled midget of a pot. Here's a picture of me wedging my clay. (You wedge clay almost the same way you knead dough. You do this with the lump of clay you are going to throw. It's a process that is supposed to remove air bubbles from the clay.)
4. Adoption .... This has been the real time-sucker! I've gotten involved in helping with another adoption. This time, I've matched two little girls whose mother died from injuries sustained in the earthquake in Haiti, with a family in South Whitley. The girls are 2 and almost 4 years old and so cute, it makes my heart hurt!
If you know anything at all about the long, rough road I traveled the last time I helped with an adoption, you're probably just as shocked as I am to find out I'm doing it again! I will probably be making a trip down to Haiti before the end of the summer with the adoptive parents to get the initial paperwork filed in Port-au-Prince. Adopting from Haiti is NOT for the faint of heart! It takes faith, hope, love, and tenacity! But mostly, TENACITY!
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