Greg S > Recent Status Updates

Dear Panagiota, if your hair is falling out in clumps, that sounds like a medical condition.

Sigh. Romeo and Juliet. Wikipedia says this doomed romance plot has been around since Ovid’s Metamorphose, which was written in 8 AD.

Ugh, no. People with glasses know not to clean your glasses with a breath and a shirt. It scratches the hell out of your lenses.

OK, first, kids don’t remember most of what their parents tell them. Second, maybe I am more conservative than I thought, but telling a child about the effects of nerve gas seems a little inappropriate.

Maybe it’s my fault for assuming they were brothers. I would’ve liked more foreshadowing. But aren’t we getting a little side tracked? Even the author recognizes the side story is more interesting than the main story.

Then there’s this book: “The shops were closed, the streets empty – save for the occasional stray cat curled up in a patch of shade, or a lethargic lizard, so still it might just as well have been an ornament on the wall.The heat had started in the small hours of the morning, swiftly building up…By three o’clock, the heat had morphed into a feral creature, a snake bent on prey.It hissed and slithered…”

First page of Dickens Litte Dorrit: “Everything that lived or grew, was oppressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were panting. Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out the stare.“

I’m as little invested in this tragic death as the author was in writing it.

Ada’s mom was a bit of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, huh?

No, it must certainly is not. Why even write this wild assertion? — “…you can hear it say chukar-chukar-chukar. The only bird that tenderly trills out its own name.”

Funny. Demon of the Punjab episode, aired in 2018, is the same story, except it’s at the partition of Pakistan and India. This includes the older brother, and younger brother personalities and conflict. I wonder if the similarities are just a storyteller bias in the choices of authors.

We’re at 40% and I have no idea what we’re doing. Ada had that meltdown, we have the aunt visit, we have narrative flashbacks, and the tree lectures me about something.

No. — “It happens. Sometimes family trauma skips a generation altogether and…”

Literature has taught me that if you don’t want to tell your kids about your Traumas then you don’t let family come over, not even your own parents. — “…and asked cautiously, ‘What do you want to learn?’
‘Everything,’ replied Ada.”

Uh huh. — “It smelled sad.”

Author wrote out the literal menu.

Trees basically have Locked-in Syndrome, right?

I’d like to know what purpose would a hawthorn tree have to communicate to a fig tree when neither of them can move.

Is this a satirical joke? — “You might call it transgenerational memory.”

Funny story but I remember the joke by John Oliver to remember that birds are just trying to get laid when you think they are serenely singing. — “…the whistling of warblers and wigeons, the birds of Cyprus, calling my name.”

This tree has some self-esteem issues if this is the third chapter that she keeps trying to convince us of her importance. Maybe it’s a trauma response from being forcefully cloned and kidnapped from her home and then violently mishandled by her captor.

After using Christianity as an example for the value of her genus, Tree fails to mention that it was Christian missionaries that cut down the mugumo tree. - “…it is the same women who defend us bravely whenever someone tries to cut down a sacred mugumo.”

Of course, the author chooses Jane Eyre as the reference for feminism. As boring as that choice is, I can’t blame her going to what most people would recognize. Personally, I would’ve liked to learn about a femanist protagonist I haven’t heard of. If we’re talking about “detanged” female tropes, why not The Yellow Wallpaper? What about Madam Bovary? Aurora Leigh? Adam Bede?

I’m going to assume her mother was a mythologist. Just because I’m from Brasil doesn’t mean I go into rants about Curupira. Could you imagine complaining to your kid about Paul Bunyan?

I’m going to lean into equanimity, but why is this here, author? — “pulled her into her embrace, her bosom, large and soft, bumping up against Ada’s chin.”

Ah, so this tree is a from a cutting from the parent tree. This opens up the idea of clones and I’m struggling to remember any clone stories I’ve read in the past. Brave New World by Huxley? Duncan in Dune? But also, I’m under no illusions that the author will pursue this old puzzle about identity.

As I skimm this random infusion of interpersonal drama with the introduction of a visiting aunt, I am bidden again to remember the book Semiosis by Sue Burke which has much better logic and an intriguing exploration of how different species interact with one another.

As I skimm this chapter I’m delighted by an unbidden memory the Roald Dahl story “The Sound Machine”. What a great short story about the invention of a machine that allows the MC to turn frequencies from Trees into audible sounds.

This tree has a trauma response.

This makes me think Kostas likes women that don’t talk back. — “But why do you always talk to the fig?’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes, you do, all the time. I’ve heard you before. Why do you do that?’
‘Well, she’s a good listener.’