The Story Begins...

I finally started writing that story about the dream I had last month. I only wrote a few lines this morning, but it was a start. It seems likely that I will finish this one because the whole thing is mapped out for me; generally when I leave a story (or, ahem, a novel) unfinished it is because I do not know where to go next. It's either for that reason or I completely hate it. So far neither is the case.

Well, I could forget about it too, but that rarely happens.

I am also going to be reading three books at the same time: Madame Bovary, Ulysses, and Where the Red Fern Grows. I'm re-reading both Madame Bovary and Where the Red Fern Grows, and I'm nearly done (about 260 pages remaining) with Ulysses, but there will be least be some overlap between the books. I haven't read so many books at the same time since I was in school.

The reason I'm reading Where the Red Fern Grows is because I assigned it to the kid I'm tutoring and I need to follow along. I haven't read it since I was the kid's age (he's like 10 or 11). I had forgotten a lot of things about the novel, but I still remember how it ends, which is a downer. Oh well.

As far as Madame Bovary goes, I'm reading that because a friend wants to read it and cannot seem to get through it alone. Completely empathic to that issue (I often feel that if I'm bound to someone else, I can get things accomplished), I decided that I should read it again, even though I finished it just last year. The difference now is that I am going to be reading a different edition than the one I read. Instead of Eleanor Marx-Aveling's translation published by Barnes & Noble, I will be reading Geoffrey Wall's translation published by Penguin. Naturally, I will go back and forth between the two translations; I may just come out of this with more insight into the novel. Of course the best thing would to read it in the original French, but I would need to study that language first.

The whole point of all this is to try to keep myself busy so that I can get the ball rolling on other things. For instance, I need to apply again to Ph.D. programs, and I haven't started. If I let inertia take over, then maybe I can accomplish the things I don't seem to when I have all the time on the world on my hands.

Let's hope this works.

Worlds of Bodies

Yesterday I bid the Body Worlds exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum adieu by visiting the museum. I did not really want to go, but my mother had wanted to since the exhibit came to San Diego and I thought she should see it since it was its last day.

I came to a series of conclusions:

1. Beauty is only skin deep for me. Once you remove the skin of a person, I no longer find her attractive or beautiful.

2. It is extremely difficult to tell the difference between preserved dead bodies and plastic reproductions.

3. "Amygdala" would be a perfect name for a fictional character, especially an emotional one.

4. Science neglects (or so far hasn't empirically discovered) the soul. Thus, things like love are attributed to a special part of the brain (the amygdala), and therefore could be categorized and generalized. Creativity is also presumed to be caused by the brain (and not by muses... oh, those silly ancients!).

5. People can die in the middle of hitting a home run, scoring a goal in soccer, or doing yoga.

6. You have very little control over your body, much less control than you think.

7. Eyeballs without eyelids are frightening.

8. The human body, cut apart and suspended by strings, is monstrous.

What I couldn't quite decipher is the relationship of the soul to the body--but of course that would not be the place to do it. Still, I couldn't quite help but think that if the soul is somehow connected to the body, then were those people watching us as we watched them? Were we somehow torturing these deceased people, even though during life they willingly donated their bodies to science? It disturbed me a little, as if I were exhuming a grave.

I also found myself thinking along the lines of pre-Renaissance thinkers: the body is a sac in which is held bile and waste.

Nonetheless, it was hideously fascinating, and I learned quite a bit. But, like Doctor Faustus, I was left to wonder at what cost did I recieve this knowledge. Overall, the exhibit made me revisit questions (and definitions) of life and death and that element that makes us human and not merely a series of electrical impulses and chemical reactions responding to stimuli. I did not come up with any concrete answers for the important questions, however. At least my mother enjoyed the experience.