First pages and I'm sad.

The God Delusion opens with a beautiful story of how an Anglican priest found his faith as a boy. Then Dawkins goes downhill and references a Carl Sagan quote. Actually I think Catholicism does stress the magnificense of the universe. A common meditation is to think of the cosmos, how amazing it is, its mysteries and secrets and to then ponder how great was the Creator of such a marvel. Sagan builds a straw man and Dawkins gives it air. It makes me sad.

Dancing with Dawkins

I am going to attempt to read "The God Delusion" with an open mind and a charitable heart.

Floodwall Afternoon

As I sat on the river's floodwall
the flax leaves slapped,
talking to the wind like a
murmuring crowd of concert goers
when the main act's late.

A fat landfill-fed gull slid
through the sky above
my chill metal bench which had
been canvas for pens
marking their territory.

And behind me on the
warm muscle of Mawhera Quay a
glistening sizzle of light washed metal drove
past. Mates who held the gauzy washed
spread of whitebait nets along the
outside door threw voices
full of hunter success through
the street.

And I stood but failed to
catch the strands.

Foreshore

High tide draws his salt touch along my reach.
Soft sea-foam ebbs on my shallow roots, as
my feathered punga green rolls out to catch
his rolling glassy wetness on my shore.

Smooth stone tumbles underneath his belly.
His seaweed chest reflects my kowhai eye,
as coral hard his hands grip deep to push
against his moon drawn twisting sandy depths.

The nikau rises tall her leaves my crown
as pohutakawa red blows in gusts,
pale ngaio breath extends a soft petal.
I wrap my watered stems against his thighs

of salt washed wood, his sister river's gift.
She tumbles them down mountain creek and stream
that he might pace along his water's edge.
Salt tide overcomes my soil rooted limbs.

My ngaio petal fast curls brown and limp.
My nikau crown shivers as she draws up
the salty broth that seeps next to her roots.
And he rewards with tide and sand a kiss,

the luna brackish dance of squall and storm.
When you walk on his shell flecked shore mind me -
My toe-toe feather flags whipping the wind
That skips and picks up misty veils of light.

Soon the silvered disk of arching weight
will draw again his salt touch in to me.

David Malouf's "Remembering Babylon" (1993)

I really enjoyed this novel's beautiful language. Malouf brings the Australian environment alive, from the buzzing teeming insect life to the soil and the people that live off it. This is a novel that is very much alive, brimming with sweat and heat. It's also a work about isolation and the human spirit. I really felt the isolation of Australia compared with the home of Europe, which is ironic given that I'm a New Zealander and for me Australia is a close neighbour. It brought home to me how courageous the early settlers were to reach out across the entire world and to move to such an alien land.

Sadly the feelings of alien-ness can become alienation and fear of difference. The indigenous people of Australia suffered (and still suffer) for their alien-ness. Yet they are at home in the land, it is their Eden as one character describes it. This character goes out and tries to understand and engage with the alien wildness of this new country, but his botanical knowledge is rebuffed and what is upheld is the ability to cast Australia in a mould of Europe with ripe soft peaches and asparagus. The settlers don't want to lose their life that they knew. You can see why this is, the vast unknown must have been overwhelming. How does the human mind process so many unknowns?

William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" (1930)

I hate Anse Bundren. I finished this novel and that's what I thought, how much I hate Anse Bundren. His selfishness drives the whole novel in a place and time where men worked women to death. Of course his wife Addie wasn't lovable either, but I understood Addie. She just wanted to be alone and at peace. Why she married Anse though, that is never really explained and in some ways seems out of character for a school teacher who hated children to choose marriage which meant bearing children.

I don't think this is my favorite of Faulkner's, I preferred Absalom Absalom, but I am glad I've read this book.

Toni Morrison's "Tar Baby" (1981)

I really enjoyed reading this book because it presented cultures that were so different to mine and yet I was still able to empathise with the characters. I also enjoyed the mystical/mythical aspects of the work, although that might not be for everyone. This is a story that has remained with me because I cared about the people in it, and the way that it dealt with acts of evil committed by complicated people who were at their core not evil themselves. It shows how we can hurt the ones we love and take advantage of them and that sometimes, redemption is just plain refused.