Slaughter-House Five, Or the Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance With Death

 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut x2

Weight: 12 oz

Method of Disposal:  Gave to a friend who gave it back and then I donated that copy and another to Goodwill

I cannot guess how many times I have given away this book, and it is not my favorite Kurt Vonnegut book at all.  I am not even all that keen on it, though I do respect it.  It is impossible not to see it as important when you think about Vonnegut's time in WWII at Dresden, and the years he said he would right a book about it and finally did.  With that lens, it becomes even more powerful.  And with all that said, it is a Slaughter-House Five quote that I have tattooed on my back.  I got it after working at an animal shelter and losing some part of myself that felt pain, love, and passion intensely.  After losing so many dogs, cats, and people.  The sad stories and the tragedy occurring every day, over and over and over and over and over again.

 

The friend I had given it to now has Stage 4 lung cancer and has returned the book and says she loved it.  She does not even know what her treatment plan is, two chemo sessions in, because our medical system has grown too large and distant.  A life is so important and there are so many important lives.

Today, a coworker that I have known for 15 years lost his person and his kids lost their mother.  She was young.  It was unexpected.  He has been receiving treatment for cancer, in addition to the treatments he already receives for MS.  He is one of the hardest working people I know.  He is a great dad and a kind person.  She sounded like she was amazing too, and she made him happy.

The world is so heavy.  It is so beautiful and so painful.  It is so meaningful and so meaningless.  We all are clinging on in the balance.  We believe we are important.  We are important.  To us.  To some people.  We come slowly, and we go quickly, unless we go slowly, and there is no happy ending.  Though, a lot of happiness can be packed in before The End.  It is what it is.  Until it impacts you.  Then, it is so much more.  And, once you have been impacted over and over and over again, you have to decide whether to lean more into meaning or meaningless or everything and nothing.

The Secret History of Food

 The Secret History of Food (The Tribute Series) by Susan Tomnay and Nadine Wickenden
1998
Weight: 14 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating

This was a small, quick and fun read about food.  It has an English focus, but it covers food all over the world.  There are interesting tidbits all throughout, such as the first English Wedding Cake.  It was broken over the bride's head to represent the ending of her maidenhood.  An unmarried woman might sleep with a slice of the wedding cake underneath her pillow in hopes it would help her get married.  For awhile in history, the French thought you could get leprosy from potatoes and would not grow them.  All sorts.

Today, I ate an egg and cheese croissant, blueberry beignets, grits, and later chili.  Surely, trying to eat away my sorrows and worries, much to my later dismay.  I would like to do the usual resolution and make a vow of good health, but 2021 is already off to such an odd start that I have not even considered making or disavowing any resolutions.

With the exception of making sure that Harriet knows how much I love her on a daily basis.  While this is something I have always strived to do, I feel it even more important now after someone intentionally and directly threatened her life with a gun on the first of January.  I was at once so grateful to still have the love of my life in my life, not injured, and safe, while also despairing the fact I knew she would suffer trauma and cringing at the fear she must have experienced.  She was flitting about, trying to do nice things for everyone that morning and, yet, just like that, she was forced into a situation where she had to make fast decisions and hope for the best.  Thank God, she found her way back to me.  I force myself to stop thinking of what could have happened the second I start thinking it, but I start thinking about it all the time.

Extreme Encounters

 Extreme Encounters: How it Feels to be Drowned in Quicksand, Shredded by Piranhas, Swept up in a Tornado, and Dozens of Other Unpleasant Experiences... by Greg Emmanuel
2002
Weight: 16 oz
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

There was some interesting information in this book, but overall it is not my cup of tea.  It is a collection of short, firsthand accounts of what it feels like to die in a variety of ways.  Sometimes, every once in a blue moon, the person lives, which is nice.  The jokes are terrible, and the author clearly intends them to be.  I think it is just a matter of taste.  I am sure the younger you are and the further away from death you think you are, the more you are likely to enjoy this book.

Almanac of the Dead

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
1992
Weight: 1.4 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating

Seeing this book still gives me the slightest twinge of shame in my gut.  I read it in college, along with many other Silko books.  We had a white male professor who was wonderful and always trying to break out of his academic box without actually leaving it.  He would encourage us not to do grad school right away if ever.  He wanted us to read books by people who were not "old white men like himself."  He had a great smile and a little twinkle in his eyes.  The books he recommended were almost always great, and his expectations for us were high.

I did not do as well as I wanted to in his classes, but I would say I was pretty average.  After reading so much Silko, we were actually able to meet her one day.  She gave a talk and signed books.  She seemed so full of anger up at that podium and then frustrated with where she was at when signing books.  I don't know if she was or if it was me or if it was all of us, but I had this overwhelming desire to "fix it" and, of course, could not.  I would imagine coming to a school of predominantly privileged white women to discuss Native American life past and present wasn't a dream come true.  We were probably so disappointing and that is putting it mildly.

I remember enjoying this book and writing a paper on it.  Potentially hyped up on something that would keep me awake for days.  I flip through it now and see a few quotes underlined:

"Only a woman fantasizes bullets striking a man's back at orgasm; a man's fantasy at orgasm was firing bullets into the wife's husband" (p 362).

"Yaquis also understood that a person might need a number of names in order to conduct all of his or her earthly business" (p 227).

"The white men on the street were genetically defective.  Mosca was certain of it" (p 211).

"Each time a Palestinian child was shot by Israeli soldiers, Hitler smiled" (p 212)

I guess you get the gist.  Sadness and anger.  Frustration and violence.

In the Body of the World

In the Body of the World: A Memoir  by Eve Ensler
2013
Weight:8.8 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

I first read The Vagina Monologues in high school, and I loved it.  I walked around reciting "My Angry Vagina" to anyone willing to listen.  In college, I had the chance to meet Eve Ensler and Jane Fonda in one of many Vagina Monologue productions I would go to see.  Attending an all women;s private school, I also began to see some of the more problematic sides of the Monologues and white western feminism.  I would speak to these too and would be guilty of my own mistakes throughout the years.

It did not stop me from going to Charis, our local feminist bookstore, to buy Necessary Targets and have it signed by her at a reading.  I was never again enthralled like I was in high school, but I also never completely lost touch. 

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this book at the Dollar Store of all places.  I thought maybe it would be terrible and had been banished to the dollar bin for a reason.  I was wrong.  I enjoyed it and thought Eve did what she does best.  She shows truth no matter how disgusting, vile, negative, hateful, wonderful, idiotic, perfect, exciting, personal it is.  She has been accused of being self-involved, but this is exactly what allows her to dig deep.  Self-involved walks a fine line with self-aware and is often misidentified.  People who attend to themselves, speak powerfully from their own experience, watch their own back, love themselves, care for themselves--particularly women--will be called selfish.  Taught that selfish is wrong.  Even when discussing their own battle with a very scary, very dirty disease like cancer.

I appreciate watching Eve Ensler grow and change in the world.  I may not idolize her in the way I did as a teenager, but I do not really idolize people like that anymore (unless you are Gillian Anderson--kidding, kidding) or think that they must get "it" right all the time and every time.  That they are not fallible.  Eve shows us she is imperfect and allows us to look closely at our imperfect selves too, but she always asks us to do more and to be more aware.  There is nothing wrong with that.

The Writer's Harbrace Handbook AKA Things I Just Need to Get Rid Of

The Writer's Harbrace Handbook
2003
Weight: 1.2 lbs
Method of Disposal: Leaving Somewhere

I need to get rid of:

1.  This handbook.  No matter how much I might need it, I have others like it and this one is very heavy. 

2.  My Uterus.  No matter how much I might need it (questionable), other people have functioning ones and this one is very painful. I am about to RIP IT OUT.
 

The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
1972
Weight: 8 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving somewhere in Lithonia, GA

 

A broken tooth is a very annoying thing to have.  I am a wuss.  I have been learning these two things over the course of a week.  When you have a broken tooth, you cannot stop licking it.  Even if it makes you bleed.    The day it happens, you will be so horrified that you will proclaim to your best friend, "You are never allowed to tell anyone about this!" and the next day 10 people will know about it and the list will continue to grow because you cannot stop complaining.  The day after it breaks it is possible that another piece will crumble off while you are standing with a complete stranger.  You will stare into space while they ask you questions you do not answer because you cannot hear them.  You remember a time in your youth, or the day before yesterday, when you never even considered that this would happen.  You will look on in awe as your coworkers regal you with horror stories about all the much needed dental work they have avoided for years.  You will go to the dentist who will tell you that you need a specialist and everyone in your life--your boss, your fiancée, your friends, your coworkers will respond with, "Wtf?  I thought a dentist WAS a specialist."  You will buy the at home plaster they sell at a local pharmacy on someone's recommendation and then be afraid to eat.  This is all still more exciting but not more annoying than The Catcher in the Rye.