Blog Entry 7: Freestyle

So, back to Pam Houston's Sight Hound...Part Five is called "The Fires," and I can relate to the blanketing of fives over thousands of acres of forestland. Fires occurred off and on throughout my childhood in Southern California and turned smog days into stay-inside-at-all-costs days for me (as a childhood asthmatic). Now, living, in Oregon, I dread the tail end of summer when the blazes begin. Thundershowers are so delightfully drenching and cool, but here, unlike Connecticut where they include huge but largely harmless lightning displays, they spark wildfires that can burn for weeks. Breathing ash is not the worst part. Many young people make their summer money fighting fires around here, and once in awhile, they don't come back. I wish for them to stay safe!

In this section, Rae introduces herself to Jodi, who owns a huge ranch with a natural aquifer. There's something magical about Rae's feet in the rare mud of this landscape. While the land is drying, cracking, and burning around them, Rae "was about shin-deep in sand when I first felt it, first a layer of sand that had to have been twenty-five degrees cooler than what was above it, then the bubbles of icy water bursting up through the sane against the bottoms of my feet" (225). The change in texture and temperature seems almost like a revelation, a spiritual experience. And, the mud isn't just goopy; instead, the water is "bursting up" as if to shout to the death-giving landscape around them that life continues and will prevail.

It seems like this book comments on life itself, with Dante miraculously living through cancer, befriended by a child who has survived also, the bubbling of life. I hope the book follows Dante all the way to the end of his rich life. There's also some indication that Jonathan isn't living at the time the narrative is being told. He calls the 9/11 people who jump from the Twin Towers "cowards" and says "they died of shame" (212). I almost sense that perhaps he will commit suicide and that this judgment of others in their last moments of life is a projection of his own guilt. I do think life is miraculous, which isn't to say it's not also deathly difficult for those of us who live longer than our loved ones. I am all for those precious bubbles of life, but I would hesitate to judge those who facing horrors chose another alternative, and I would hope not to be judged harshly if in other circumstances, I chose differently. Nancy