Ha! I finished. I always kick myself, but at 47 I don’t think procrastination is a habit I’ll be able to kick without professional help. I’ve found ways to live with it. I was surprised at my reaction to the story. There were passages that I found senselessly melodramatic juxtaposed with passages that were surprisingly triggering for me. There were moments that I had to walk away from the story for a bit and spend time standing in the garden. I loved the story. It felt real to me. It felt like a version of my family. There were times when it was so viscerally real, I had to build a real distraction for myself. Even on Wednesday when I was getting through the last few chapters, I found myself browsing the interwebs. I came across one of those utterly random blog posts – this one matching characters from children’s/tweens books and MBTI personality types. Please understand the depth of my need to be distracted in an unstructured way. Like, I work from home in addition to helping to run the store. I could have just logged in to work on a project. That would have been too much structure. I needed nonsense…and nonsense I received. I decided to rewrite that article but only use characters from books you might find in our store because the blog post just didn’t cut it for me. …so much distraction. It’s a wonder that I had a successful career as a meticulous scientist.
I’ll post the rewritten article once I’ve polished it a bit. I would link the original post but, alas, in keeping with how scattered I was, I couldn’t possibly recreate the path that led me to that nonsense article.
Anyway, I’m really excited about tonight’s discussion. I’m excited to see how the rest of you envisioned this story. I love how flexible magical realism can be. Leaving readers questioning their own perceptions of the work, within the work. Did we really read what we thought we read? (Isn’t it funny how that is the same word but with a different pronunciation it means something different?) Can we trust our own senses as we work through this piece of art? Can we trust the characters senses?
We’re meeting tonight at 5:30 at 1019 Princess Street. We’ll be meeting outside in the garden behind that building. I’ll be out and about to give aid and directions and Erin will be at HiWire to give directions as well if you get turned around.
yours,
jlj