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It's been a very quiet day, except for the birds singing outside. If it weren't on Kindle, I'd toss Dune to the ground, immature as that may be. The birds are taking the edge off that inclination.

There's a huge tree outside my window and with it open, I can really hear them. They actually have helped me feel better...I wasn't really in the mood for music today, but somehow their sounds are helping. They actually sound cheery. :)

Even when I hear them around 4 in the morning (they can be so loud, at times) I almost kind of like it then as well. I feel less alone with them around and you just got to admire their pluck. I could never be perky enough to sing like they do so early in the day.

Not too long ago, Wired ran something on their website about birds and their singing, specifically...in the morning:

http://www.wired.com/2014/03/birds-sing-morning/


This actually made me smile>>>

"One idea is that in the early morning, light levels are too dim for birds to do much foraging. Since light levels don’t affect social interactions as much, it’s a great opportunity to sing, instead."


Dune (and an easily distracted mind) is absolutely driving me bonkers so I just had to take a break.

I feel like I could tolerate homophobia (at least, a little better) if there were certain rules involved, like say, an anti-gay person has no right to speak out against gay marriage if they are divorced or ever cheated on their spouse or been a player (I'm not sure if people still use that word anymore, forgive me if they don't) their whole lives.

Anyone who has never loved someone else with all of their heart and soul (whether returned or not) should also not have a say in who should be "allowed" to love and who shouldn't. And, please, before you speak out against gays marrying, be sincere about whether you are a bigot or you truly feel your religious rights are infringed upon in some way.

If only we lived in a society where how much sex or how little sex or having had no sex at all, ever, would matter less…if we lived in a world where sex’s relation to love could be kept in better perspective (as in you can have love without sex, but not sex without love) and the players of the world realized there is most definitely nothing casual about it and the haters realized love is not just more important than sex, it's not about sex at all.

I’d also like to live in a world where we are more defined by whether we have loving hearts than lovely bodies. I know I'm rambling, maybe not even making sense, but I had to get that off my chest. I get so tired when anti-gay people say "homosexual" instead of "gay," drawing out the former word so that the 'sex' part is especially emphasized. and said with complete disdain.



Occasionally, Dune comes with some good advice...like:

• I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

So I chose to read Frank Herbert's Dune for a class I'm taking through work and I simply cannot stand it.

I have tried to get into it at least half a dozen different times and have only managed about twenty pages during each attempt and now, two days before I'm supposed to have finished, I am less than half way from the end.

It's a hard book to read no matter how you feel about it, but even harder when your concentration level is not so high and you could care less about the characters and plot.

I thought looking to see what other people think about the novel (especially those who don't care for it, either) might help and there is a lot online (both good and bad).

Here are few things that jumped out at me:

-from a positive review (Jo Walton, Tor):

It’s an easy book to make fun of—ultra-baroque, ridiculously complex plotting, long pauses while people assess each other.

-On the Urban Dictionary website someone has defined "Dune" as a book that is overrated.

-This review is mostly in praise, but it does capture something I don't like about Frank Herbert's style:

George RR Martin’s hugely successful Game of Thrones novels clearly took some inspiration from Dune, right down to presenting each character’s inner thoughts as italicised sentences. It’s a style that makes Dune easy for infrequent readers to digest, but equally hard for literary readers to stomach.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/30/frank-herbert-dune-at-50-sci-fi-masterpiece

Oddly enough, despite how I don't like Dune, there are some quotes that are really speaking to me right now in my life. This is one of them:

“Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us.”  

I really dislike quitting things so I am going to do my best to finish this today and tomorrow, but oh, what a slug-fest it feels like.

...

So, it's hours later and I'm still reading Dune (yay for reading 20 more pages and surging on) and I'm thinking wow, I still detest this book but it reminds me of "Star Wars" (which I also am not a big fan of...sci-fi sacrilege, I know) and so I go searching for that theory and find this:

http://dune2k.com/Community/Articles/StarWarsAndDune

I think it may be because I'm a little punchy from not sleeping last night and still being up now, but it felt like this big discovery, which of course is not...tons of people already knew this before me!

 

I woke up early this morning to go to the MVA, thinking it wouldn't be so crowded because of the holiday weekend. I don't know why I would believe that; the place was packed.

 

I was going to read a book for a class I'm taking at work, but instead I ended up playing with my phone and people watching, then talking with the lady waiting next to me. She came in about an hour after I'd been there and we ended up talking until my number was called.

 

And then when I went to the deli next door, after a two hour wait at the MVA, someone else talked to me for a while and I realized...I relax more around strangers than I do many people I know. And it cheered me up that I didn't have that much anxiety speaking and that maybe I just need to get out and about more and then I won't get so locked up in my own bad thinking.

 

I also talked with the man at the used book and music store in the same shopping strip and he helped me find some great things that I bought. It's the first time in a while I've really had a passion for both books and music.

 

Coming home I played my Snow Patrol Greatest Hits album and the song "Run" came on...and somehow that made me feel better, too. It's gorgeous and sad, and it usually makes me cry, but this time I found it oddly kind of uplifting, mostly because of the "light up, light up//as if you had a choice," but also because of "even if you cannot hear my voice//I'll be right beside you dear."

 

 

 

 

"Run"

I'll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You've been the only thing that's right
In all I've done

And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we'll make it anywhere
Away from here

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

To think I might not see those eyes
Makes it so hard not to cry
And as we say our long goodbye
I nearly do

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

Slower slower
We don't have time for that
All I want's to find an easy way
To get out of our little heads

Have heart, my dear
We're bound to be afraid
Even if it's just for a few days
Making up for all this mess

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear



This is something new I got. I hope it lives  up to its name today! It certainly sounds promising!