a couple of comfortable bed-rooms

I think I've given up on Gideon the Ninth, made it to the 15% mark, I just can't follow it? I have no idea what is going on or why? I'm confused? It's a busy and harrowing/ugly narrative style, and the way it's written is hard for my brain to make sense of - and this is coming from someone who read and analyzed and wrote a paper on James Joyce's Ulysses and William Faulkner's Sound and the Fury.

The writing style was just irritating me, I think. Here's the first chapter.

How to explain? I think it's the made-up slang? My brain doesn't like made up words or slang laden novels. Examples? Clockwork Orange (couldn't make it through that book either). There are others. Their Eyes Are Watching God, also gave me a headache. Too much slang and dialect.

I don't know if an audio book would be better? It might. Because this book was playing havoc with the dyslexia. (I need poetic prose or sentences to have a certain rhythm to them or my mind won't grasp it.)

I've decided to start reading "Firebird by Susanne Kearse" on the Kindle now, it's only been waiting in the queue for the last five years. We'll see - it's a historical/supernatural romance. I tried it twice before and gave up. Ugh. I like my hard cover novel better.

***

Mental illness has increasingly become a problem in our society - and our media isn't helping matters. It's judgemental of the mentally ill. People are really judgemental of others, aren't they? I guess there are positive aspects of being judgemental - so probably not something we want to get rid of completely.

I keep thinking...there but for the grace go we or I or you. It helps push away the judgement, and superimpose empathy and compassion instead. Emphasis on compassion. Sympathy tends to fall into the trap of judgement. Empathy, often falls into the trap of over-relating, but compassion is just caring for the other person and being mindful of their situation and our own, and trying to not do more harm.

I keep reminding myself that I'm here on this earth, right now, to learn and to help wherever or however I am able (emphasis on able? I'm not always able.). And everything is a lesson. It helps. More than one might think?

***

Wasn't planning on it - but since it recorded instead of General Hospital, I watched King Charles III's speech. I was impressed - he's a good speaker and it was an excellent speech. (Granted the bar was set pretty low with Thing 1 and Thing 2 in the White House at the Moment, but still.) He said, words and actions matter - and made a very strong point about how we need to be careful about the ones we take and honor the past in doing so. Britain may not have wanted him to come - for well, understandable and obvious reasons, but I'm glad he did - because what he said to both houses of the US Congress - needed to be said, and both Houses and both parties for the most part were in agreement with what he stated. Specifically, that we need to fight against tyranny, and honor checks and balances. It's ironic that a British King is kindly admonishing and reminding the United States ( a former colony that rebelled against tyranny) of what it's shared values are - and why it rebelled and won that rebellion in the first place.
Made all the more ironic - by the fact that the King in question is a direct descendant of the one the US's founders rebelled against, and just a few months before the US's 250th birthday. But there you have it.

Maybe the people who needed to hear that - did? Let's hope it wasn't just the choir - but also the congregation? It appeared to be both? Nonetheless, it gave me a smidgen of hope. And the befuddled yet not quite dead historian in me celebrated and did a little dance in my head.

So make of that what you will.

Off to bed, to sleep, or at least I hope. It's been up in the air of late.