No Sleep
I had a hard time falling asleep last night--no real reason, except for my friend Liz was telling me about her friend who was walking to catch a bus recently and a tree branch fell on his head and he died. Such stories can prompt one to wondering if perhpas she isnt wasting a little too much time on marathon episodes of Law and Order SVU or computer Solitaire?
I also had just finished Janet Fitch's bok, White Oleander, which I purchased from a thrift store for a quarter recently. I would say that a quarter was about what one should spend on this book. That's not totally fair; I did read the whole thing pretty quickly (skimmed most of it), because it did have a compelling central situation and character, but it also made me wonder just how much bad stuff can happen to any one character in a novel. This girl could not catch a break. First, her mom was a sociopath-ish murderess who ends up in jail. Then, the girl is sent off to a series of foster homes, none of which are good foster homes. She gets seduced by the older boyfriend of one of the foster mom's, then shot in the stomach by this same mom, attacked by a dog so she has scars all over her body, discovers that one of her favorite foster parents has overdosed and died, she turns tricks, ends up selling all of her clothes, takes drugs, and then finally, in the last ten pages of the book, meets a nice guy and settles down in Berlin. But whatever, at least this woman wrote a book. My writing life is desolate in comparison.
I finally fell asleep and dreamt about a boy I knew in college. He had returned for a party, and he looked almost exactly the same as he had in school--same sharp face and curls--and was still elusive and pretty much uninterested in me. Will I be 95 years old and reliving my past rejections from my twenties in my dreams? That seems like some kind of awful modern day fairy tale curse.
I also had just finished Janet Fitch's bok, White Oleander, which I purchased from a thrift store for a quarter recently. I would say that a quarter was about what one should spend on this book. That's not totally fair; I did read the whole thing pretty quickly (skimmed most of it), because it did have a compelling central situation and character, but it also made me wonder just how much bad stuff can happen to any one character in a novel. This girl could not catch a break. First, her mom was a sociopath-ish murderess who ends up in jail. Then, the girl is sent off to a series of foster homes, none of which are good foster homes. She gets seduced by the older boyfriend of one of the foster mom's, then shot in the stomach by this same mom, attacked by a dog so she has scars all over her body, discovers that one of her favorite foster parents has overdosed and died, she turns tricks, ends up selling all of her clothes, takes drugs, and then finally, in the last ten pages of the book, meets a nice guy and settles down in Berlin. But whatever, at least this woman wrote a book. My writing life is desolate in comparison.
I finally fell asleep and dreamt about a boy I knew in college. He had returned for a party, and he looked almost exactly the same as he had in school--same sharp face and curls--and was still elusive and pretty much uninterested in me. Will I be 95 years old and reliving my past rejections from my twenties in my dreams? That seems like some kind of awful modern day fairy tale curse.
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