More fun with Shimelle’s Color Challenge… and therefore more about the wonderful color green… I would imagine that by now you can tell that it is simply my favorite. It has been my favorite for the longest time and there is no sign of that chaning any time soon.
Green for my glory– I love the color green. It is lush, smells of life, and surrounds me wherever I go. Color is so very important to me… that is why I am looking forward to joining in with Shimelle’s Month of Colour. I think it will be a wonderful exploration.
I now consider it quite unfortunate that I have not read any other novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez up until this point. This is one of those books that I had been meaning to read for quite some time, but some how had never managed to do so. Fortunately, I have now corrected that and plan to read much more of his work in the future.
This magical novel, set in the mythical town of Macondo, follows the rise and fall of the Buendia family. Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran are the heads of the Buendia clan and founders of Macondo. They inhabit this book and the town of Macondo with a fierce tenacity set on the survival and success of their clan. But while the Buendia clan does seem set on survival its members somehow always end up striving for this on their own. In life, love, war and death this is a family of individuals fighting their own very personal battles.
Each Buendia lives in a world that is self created. Amaranta looses her one true love and lives in a world of bitter jealously and resentment, never allowing another into her heart. She never finds peace even when she eventually accepts that she will die before her rival and sister, Rebbecca. Colonel Aureliano Beundia who fought 37 battles and won none retreats into his own world saying “I am sorry, but the war has done away with everything.” Melquiades, a traveling magic man of sorts, haunts the novel even after his death. But that is not so unusual for death in this world is never the end of things– it is merely a different way of being.
Too vast to pin down to any one place this novel takes over and envelopes you into its world. Taking much care that you enter alone- for it is the only way to truly grasp the heart-wrenching beauty of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
In this work Asne Seierstad managed to lift me out of my own reality and into Afghanistan and a reality so very different from what I know. A world where many different ruling factions have made selling books a crime and yet a man, Sultan, persists in doing so- because he feels strongly the need for books and history in his society. He is a free thinker and a modern man, but in his home he rules with an intensity that makes me shudder. It is so hard for me to grasp a place where as a woman you have no options, as I think of them now, no freedom to follow your heart or to walk your own path. A place where it is tantamount to adultery to accept letters from a boy and where a woman is most honorable if she expresses no will of her own.
Don’t misunderstand me- this is a slice of life from Kabul and does not represent the whole, a whole that I have very little understanding of… but this slice is mesmerizing. Seierstad artfully creates a space for you to sit with her as she observes this Afghani family trying to survive and thrive in the impossible seeming world that they live in.
Simply put this work is amazing.
oh sweet little place to write and dream- i have quite forgotten you, well not forgotten- just not done anything here in so very long… but now it is summer break and i feel like once again visiting and playing here and i am hoping that i make this space part of my day again. for what- i know not just yet, but it will come to me.
the air is warm and summer is all around me. as a teacher person this is the first proper summer break i have ever had (read proper as going back to the same school, not moving across oceans, not spending the entire time in classes, and generally getting to do whatever i fancy until the end of july– read wonderful).
i am quite pleased on the whole- though i feel like this will also be a good time to pay attention to a lot of the things that i want to pay attention to, but have managed, quite brilliantly to ignore. so it goes and we shall see what becomes of it.
This morning I awoke to the sounds of a bird symphony of sorts. When I looked onto the porch it appeared there were hundreds of birds coming to visit our home.
Can you love a place simply because of the birds?
Well, I can… Upon some detective work and with Jon’s help we decided that they must be robins. They stayed all day- flying about, flocking to one tree and then another, and singing- always singing. It was lovely.
Now, it is a quiet Sunday evening and all the birds are asleep or moving on- I will have to wait until tomorrow to find out.
The new year has started out quietly for me. It has been lovely though and I have taken great joy in focusing on the lovely moments in life that take you by surprise. Like a symphony of birds on a cloudly, sunday morning, or kittens that try to hatch avocado trees…
The world is full of wonder.
It has been cool this year for Georgia… today it is even 29 degrees- which let me tell you- feels quite chilly, but I know that it is not really…. and snow- not likely. But I like it just the same. The sky is blue this morning and leaves that have been slow to turn are starting to do their thing.
This year I intend to keep it simple… and use this journal as a way to jump start my writing, but no matter the details- This year I intend to journal my Christmas- to document each day, to celebrate, to remember, to be grateful. So simple, it will be, right here in my journal (and right here on my blog). It will be filled with lists and rants and doodles… and everything else. So there.
Today is December the 1st and it is the first day of the last month of 2008 and I say WOOT to that- because I am ready to move forward and this feels like the perfect opportunity to do just that. I currently feel a bit blah, but I just have to move through that. I am learning, I am growing- and I am continuing to walk forward. This year has been an exercise in patience- a pretty constant reminder that the only pace that I can dictate is my own. So one step at a time- no matter how slow it seems. I must keep moving forward. I can’t wallow in it or wait for things to move or happened on their own. I am realizing that it is not important to know exactly where I am going- only HOW I am going.
So here it goes… another step. If you feel like joining me and many others in this wonderful documenting experieice take a look at Shimelle’s site and join us in Journaling Your Christmas.
Scrap Your Day with Shimelle
Today is the day… to take pictures of your day. WOOT!
i have been feeling oh so very quiet here lately. i keep thinking of things that i might want to say, but somehow it doesn’t quite come to fruition. i have been rolling around in fall… trying to feel out where i am going and where i want to go- sometimes quite different things.
the leaves are starting to change color here in south georgia and it has even been feeling a bit like winter. still rambling and trying to put the truth down on paper- though as i get older the truth seems less clear… or maybe more clear, but not in need of being shouted from the rooftops. i am not sure which.
but it keeps going and for that i am grateful.
