Well, nothing new. I’m sort of doing too much right now. In my school bag, I have Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five; I’m reading that on breaks and if I’m early to school, etc. Then at home I’m reading His Excellency, a biography of George Washington and The Ways of White folks by Langston Hughes. A couple of days ago I picked up Harry Potter and The Deathly Hollows and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished the entire thing–a couple of days really. Of course, I’d read that before, so it doesn’t really count. At least this time, my crying was down to a minimum. Three, maybe four outbursts….but I could keep reading and wasn’t hysterical or anything.
I picked up the Langston Hughes in the school library. I had a few minutes and was flicking through a few things. After reading the first page of the first story, “Cora Unashamed”, I needed to finish it. While understanding that millions of people in all times and continents have found themselves at the mercy and call of others, it always strikes me as amazing that they are able to live their lives at the by your leave of others. Honestly, I’m not sure I’m that good of a person. The humility and patience she had. And then, she finds her voice over the death of a young woman who was not her concern, really, and takes actions that change her life forever. It felt so truthful, as if I were reading about an actual person. I love that. Right now I feel as if I got to know and admire her a bit, just from those few pages. I have to finish it, like Slaugterhouse Five within the next two weeks because school will then be over!!!! Yeah!
Slaughterhouse Five is really making me laugh. Vonnegut’s mishmash of time and circumstances is really fascinating. I can’t wait to see how this all comes out, and where Billy lands. Optomitrist or Alien zoo habitant? Hmmmmm. I’m always reading it in public and have to stop myself sometimes from giggling out loud. A sentance I love is, “Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.” Do we do that? Maybe, maybe not, but we do prove where we’ve been, and what we do with things we buy. Perhaps not all from gift shops, but purchases are so very important to the American way of life.
George Washington–havent’ decided yet. So far I’ve found it ironic that he complains that the British want to make the colonists slaves–comparing slavery to that suffered by his own hundred or so slaves. The disconnect is amazing. And yet he was very dedicated, and the Revolutionary war was undoubtedly won because of him. The thing is, he married one of the richest women in America, and then grew her estate and his inheritance hugely, cutting himself off from indebtedness to the British which was a way of life in Virginia. It’s as if his life were the product of his choices and his ethic. Nothing left just to chance. Sometimes he was loyal, and sometimes he cared only about his own bottom line. Like everyone, his views of life were colored by his own experience. I’ll have to see what I think in the end.