books, birds, and the absurd
I feel the same kind of anger that starts off the book life before man by Margaret Atwood, only about my job and my relationships with people. Writers are so good at communicating and picking apart their own feelings or the feelings of others, and I now realize it takes someone who really knows himself to be able to write about others and to have that confidence perhaps rarely the authors don’t need therapy and their work shows their years of work for themselves and on themselves that is the true gift.
I’m watching a large flock of assorted birds peck at some seeds. A stranger scattered as she walked through the bird park. She casually scatter aside of these birdseeds without even stopping to watch the birds come to pick at them. If I ran through these flock of birds, i don’t think that the birds will be permanently scarred or traumatized and avoid the seeds forever. They would return once the perceived danger has no longer been there for a certain length of time. Perhaps the scattering was a gift for me. It all depends on how you look at it.
I’ve been listening to a lot of funk and cozy music these days and realize I have been every year around this September-October time. I feel an urge to buy clothing and accessories and read Margaret Atwood. I think in this current period of stress, everything feels like a threat: opening up my phone to check messages, going outside and seeing my shadow appear misshapen, and especially contact with other people, where the outcome is unpredictable at best. It’s very threatening and most of the time, results some sort of on edge feeling or negative tremble down my spine. I’ve been dealing with a lot of anxiety and have been doing my best to live and sit with it, but what happens when the anxiety keeps happening day-to-day and there’s no respite and the only respite is to push it down further to get ready for the next day?
Going back to reading Yiyun Li's Things in Nature Merely Grow and there is such a frustrating, seemingly invisible idea that’s not being addressed. Perhaps the reason both sons died due was because her family was not the right fit for them, seen as the husband who was too embarrassed, even at the time of his son‘s death, to dismiss guests from his house.
In Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood, there’s this very obvious thought that comes to my mind after the first 5-10 pages: why doesn’t Elizabeth or her husband Nate just divorce or leave each other, instead of acting out this absurd drama? I think it’s these writers choosing to engage with the absurd is what ultimately creates a book. I guess this is parallel to today’s content creators. Whether these stories occur the same way in real life remains to be seen.
For me, reading these books, and realizing that most sane people would not want to engage with these types of stories feels frustrating, but it was because of my curiosity in these absurd, "what if" types of stories that I started reading these books in the first place.