grasshopper harmony

10/20/2001:
finished re-reading The God of Small Things. hopefully that means i’m also finished procrastinating from school work. we’ll see... i’ll try not to pick up another novel... but i don't know that that’s the answer. nor do i know that i’m any closer to know what to say about the book now that i’ve reread it.

strange. that i did that. still a great book. the style. the symbolism... rich and still a little unclear. the themes. “LOVE. MADNESS. HOPE. INFINITE JOY.” the children. the adults. the children as adults. the children in adults. and, the worst part, the adulterated children. or maybe the adults without children in them is worse.

strange that polarity. the world of children and the world of adults, as they appear in the book. 2 totally different worlds. with totally different rules and laws. they cannot be harmonized. you cannot live in both. sorry, i’ve lost my train of thought...

1 more thought...

on Muslims, crickets (grasshoppers, too, i guess) and harmony. on at least 2 occasions yesterday i witnessed a Muslim here not wanting to harm one of the countless crickets collecting around us before the dry season. while cleaning the mud outside the mosque... the insect was picked up and placed elsewhere.

and while sitting inside the mosque, the cricket lay on a man’s knee... it was left there, undisturbed. compassion, consideration and harmony like that is beautiful. serene, and somehow much more of a show of strength than the cruel brutality of crushing or torturing the little animals.

a humble strength. that knows its place and its limits. that reflects harmony with nature and with our ultimately small part in all of it. not like the cruel brutality that lashes out against smaller, weaker things to assert its tenuous control and power over those things. that’s what i saw in that cricket on the man’s knee.