pondering life

Today as I was driving to visit Lauren, I happened upon a rather disturbing scene. Just after crossing Santa Monica Blvd., I stopped abruptly behind a line of cars that were stopped for a man who was walking right across the middle of the street. As he walked by, I noticed that his entire right side was covered in blood. From the top of his arm, down to the bottom of his leg. It looked like some people were watching him across the street and just as I was contemplating calling 911, the firetruck and ambulance pulled up. The good Samaritans across the street directed them to the man, who was wandering up an alley behind Cost Plus.

Not only was it troubling to see someone covered in blood, it was also disturbing that he was just wandering around. He was obviously somewhat of a lost soul. I've been thinking a lot about homeless people, especially since 1) Los Angeles has more homeless people than anywhere else in the US (and not because the weather's nice, it's because they are particularly poorly taken care of here) and 2)because homeless people often end up in public libraries, one of the few indoor places open to them during the day.

A couple of times this week I've seen a man in the library where I'm doing my internship. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure he has schizophrenia because he paces around the library, talking to unseen people. At first this was a little scary to me, especially because he sounded angry (referring to the voices as "you son of a bitch" or "you bitch"). But yesterday I spent quite a bit of time near him and I listened a little longer. I just ended up feeling sad. He kept plaintively declaring that he couldn't take it anymore and asking the unseen people, "why won't you leave with me?"

I don't really know what to say, except that I'm glad that there are some kind souls living in LA and that the public library is a place where people who have nowhere else to go find comfort.

stormy weather

Not here, where it is quite sunny (well, it was during the day), but in the Northwest. Poor little Tillamook County, home of our beach house, has been particularly inundated with the intense rain and wind of the last few days. In fact, the Oregonian reported "Tillamook County was so cut off that the National Weather Service in Portland had trouble reaching emergency officials there to find out how badly the area had been damaged by floodwaters." Not only is the power out in most, if not all, of the county, but the phone lines are also down. In addition, all of the roads that lead into the county are blocked by floods, landslides, and/or fallen trees (actually, I just read that they reopened one of the roads at 6:30pm). I am worried for all our friends who live full-time at the beach, but know that they are prepared for bad coastal weather and its consequences. Hopefully we will be able to contact them soon and find out how they are doing!

On a more humorous note, apparently OES had some flooding issues of their own from Fanno Creek (which makes sense since the next-door golf course runs the creek through concrete on their property, making it even more flood prone than usual). Their picture on the homepage is priceless: good thing all those people have their SUVs to get them through the flood.

just jumping right back in

How many of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2007 have I read? One. The Reluctant Fundamentalist . And that one only highly fortuitously. An advanced reader's copy was just sitting on a bookshelf in the common room of my program, waiting to be claimed. I read it in about a day and put it back on the bookshelf. It tells the story of a Pakistani man who comes to the US for his education, begins work at a Wall Street firm that values companies (so they can be bought by other companies), starts to doubt his work and life in general after Sept. 11, and realizes that the country he thought he escaped from has more value than he knew. His whole story is recounted by him to a mysterious Western man he meets at a cafe in Pakistan. As the story moves on, you begin to get an understanding of who this other man is too. Anyway, it is quite short and I would definitely recommend it.

How many of the New York Times Notable Children's Books of 2007 have I read? One again, but the list only has six, so I'm doing better. That would be the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which won the National Book Award. I also highly recommend that book, which is a fictionalized account of Sherman Alexie's own growing up on the Spokane Reservation. The main character has loving but poor, unreliable, and alcoholic parents and a sister who lives in the basement and never leaves. He decides that he wants to lead a different life and that the way to do that is to attend school off the reservation, in a white farming town 30 miles away. He never quite fits in either place, but does come to some resolution with his own community at the end.

I guess I just don't get around to reading books in the year they are published. Just this year I finally read the Poisonwood Bible, several other Barbara Kingsolver novels, and the first three Harry Potters. Silly me.