Animal Farm

I'm a big-time reader, but recent life events have kept me from being able to read as much as I'd like to. Actually, the freakishly disproportionate amount of time I spend on the computer nowadays is more to blame. So when I say 'life events', I guess I mean 'getting a computer', 'keeping a blog', 'getting a digital camera'. This is so not the person I was just a couple years ago.

Instead of reading books now, I mostly have been listening to them in the car. On Friday I finished Animal Farm. I never read this in high school even though it was on the list to choose from. I'm glad to have finally 'read' this book, but boy was it tough to get through. I know it's really just people that Orwell was writing about, but I can't stand to even think about the cruel way in which the animals were treated. I have this belief that anything you can think up, as creative or inventive you may be, someone before you has already had the same exact thought. There is nothing you can do that hasn't been done before. So when I read about something fictional, I can't even sooth myself with the thought that 'it's not real' because chances are, somewhere, sometime, a kind, gentle old horse was dragged off to his death and he might even have been aware of what was happening before that axe came down.

I kept having to turn off the radio in the car because I couldn't get ahold of myself. I was driving along some curvy Vermont mountain road with tears blurring my vision, slamming my fist on the steering wheel and whining about how there was no way they would kill Boxer, he was the hero. I know...I'm a dork.

So when I got to my mom's later that evening to pick up Jacob, I found him upstairs with Papa watching Stripes, I think was the title. You probably know this movie and are laughing at me because I don't know it. But anyway, Jacob was there on the foot of the bed with silent tears coming down his cheeks. He was just sitting there letting all that sadness in. My heart jumped out of my chest and grabbed him up. He didn't want to stop watching the movie. At the time I couldn't figure out why he wouldn't let me take him away to safety, but looking back on it, I think he was holding out hope that whatever was troubling him about the movie would either work itself out, or something would happen to reveal to Jacob that he was mistaken. Just what his mother would do. I avoid the evening news like it's the plague, but if I should happen to catch a glimpse of it, I sit there listening to the sad story about the kids trapped in the fire or the animals beaten with something horrible. I'm sitting there sort of paralyzed and I'm trying to tell my legs to move or my hand to turn off the TV but somehow the synapses aren't firing.

Based on past history with Jacob, my theory about the movie the other day is that he was crying because the baby wasn't with it's mommy. I wasn't there long enough to gather anything about the plot, but I did see a pony and I'm thinking Jacob believed it to be a 'baby horse'. How weird is it that we were both brought to tears by different fictional horses on the same day?

I'd written something back in December that I never ended up posting, but because it's relevant to my story now, I've post-posted (haha) it. Go here.

I do that a lot, you know. I start to write stuff and then I never finish. I've got half a dozen posts in draft form at any given time. I try to go back to them, but by the time a couple days have gone by and I go to finish, what I'm trying to write about doesn't sound as good in past tense. I'm working on trying to be able to write about my life in shorter little bursts and not so much the long-essay-type all the time. It would be less involved that way, and I prefer writing about something when there's a sense of urgency to it ("I've got to get this out or I'm going to explode!").

I've also posted something else from last week, but dated it for when I wrote it. That feels a little like lying or something but it's not. So if you ever come here to catch up on the happenings in the House of Creatures, and you see something that you swear wasn't there last week - don't worry, you're not going crazy; I've probably just been too busy to finish a coherent thought all at once ;-)