Thursday, October 02, 2003
Well.. there goes my beautiful blog skin. have to settle for this plain one. BUt oh hell.. the words matter more than the image don't they? and ah. my tag board is gone with the wind. SOrry ppl, but you've have to save your words for yourself. Jo ah.. just reply me on your tag board ok?
well, neway, the hols are fast drawing to a close. Just caught on with a dreadful cold so i spent the whole of yesterday in lala land. Yez, i'm adopting a new persona as an absolute PIG. Check it out, sleeping till 9am, waking up at 9.30am, pulling out notes of liver, falling asleep on top of them. Draggin myself to school, met steve for driving.. stalled the car 3 times in a row, much to his exasperation. Went to the lib, pulled out the notes on the dreaded liver.. and TADA> fell asleep again. Do i detect a relation between the liver and my sleep patterns?
THe lowdown?? I'm totallly behind my revision and still sleeping. oh yez.
Just finished a beautiful book written by Torey L Hayden called Somebody Else's kid. She was a teacher for for the intellectually disabled or troubled kids. Her job was to salvage kids written off by the mainstream school system as hopeless. Her writing style is ordinary, but the innate rawness and reality of the stories manages to move even the most frosty of hearts. One sentence in the story left me musing for a long time. One of her kids was shattered when he had to move away from the town, the school and his beloved teacher. He asked her.. was it fair for her to come into their lives and let them taste the sweetness of happiness, well knowing that the happiness would never last. Is it better to have love and lost, then never to have loved at all? Does it hurt more to be blind from birth, or is it more heart wrenching to have seen the vivid colours the world can offer and then lose that gift of sight? HH and I often discuss the issue. I feel that it is better to have tasted happiness than never have any contact with it at all. Not being able to enjoy the caress of this mysterious, yet lifegiving emotion would itself be a tragedy. Maybe I'm a romantic, but heartbreaking as it is to have that happiness taken away, I know that given the chance , I would make the same choice all over again.
Another part of the book that touched a raw nerve was when one of her kids had a fall and split his tongue, the doctor attending to him refused to give him any anaesthetic, claiming that the retarded kid probably didn't have any feelings.. I wished fervently i could have done a good surture on the guy's lip's minus the anaesthetic. MY GOODNESS. I would expect that a person of that calibre would have more humanity and maturity than that. He was inhuman. THere was no doubt about it. We see these ppl everyday in life. They're impaired in some ways, but talented in others. Like Boo, who was an enigma despite his severe autism; Like Lori who was so pure , so innocent, who could love anyone but could not learn to read. It's hard to see past the exterior, and we , the "normal " ones have the tendancy to shy away, ignore or look down on those whom we deem as abnormal. It's ppl like Torey who bring out the best in these special souls no matter how mammoth and utterly impossible the task may seem. Today at the lib, there was a student who seemed to be slightly mentally impaired. He would gurgle to himself at intervalsk, burst out into a senseless monolouge, and approach a soul at random and keep repeating some question about the weather. To my surprsie, the lady he approached was quite accomodating to his senseless, persistent questions. If it happened to me, i would most probably be heading for the exit in a flash, frightened by him, his differences, his innocence and egocentricity. Terrified by his eccentricity.
He was a rare gem. Despite his obvious mental impairment, he had made it to the university. And yez, like the punky dude whom i see so often, he could study. Amid his senseless gurgles and mutters about terrorist and hijackers, this guy had made it this far.
well, neway, the hols are fast drawing to a close. Just caught on with a dreadful cold so i spent the whole of yesterday in lala land. Yez, i'm adopting a new persona as an absolute PIG. Check it out, sleeping till 9am, waking up at 9.30am, pulling out notes of liver, falling asleep on top of them. Draggin myself to school, met steve for driving.. stalled the car 3 times in a row, much to his exasperation. Went to the lib, pulled out the notes on the dreaded liver.. and TADA> fell asleep again. Do i detect a relation between the liver and my sleep patterns?
THe lowdown?? I'm totallly behind my revision and still sleeping. oh yez.
Just finished a beautiful book written by Torey L Hayden called Somebody Else's kid. She was a teacher for for the intellectually disabled or troubled kids. Her job was to salvage kids written off by the mainstream school system as hopeless. Her writing style is ordinary, but the innate rawness and reality of the stories manages to move even the most frosty of hearts. One sentence in the story left me musing for a long time. One of her kids was shattered when he had to move away from the town, the school and his beloved teacher. He asked her.. was it fair for her to come into their lives and let them taste the sweetness of happiness, well knowing that the happiness would never last. Is it better to have love and lost, then never to have loved at all? Does it hurt more to be blind from birth, or is it more heart wrenching to have seen the vivid colours the world can offer and then lose that gift of sight? HH and I often discuss the issue. I feel that it is better to have tasted happiness than never have any contact with it at all. Not being able to enjoy the caress of this mysterious, yet lifegiving emotion would itself be a tragedy. Maybe I'm a romantic, but heartbreaking as it is to have that happiness taken away, I know that given the chance , I would make the same choice all over again.
Another part of the book that touched a raw nerve was when one of her kids had a fall and split his tongue, the doctor attending to him refused to give him any anaesthetic, claiming that the retarded kid probably didn't have any feelings.. I wished fervently i could have done a good surture on the guy's lip's minus the anaesthetic. MY GOODNESS. I would expect that a person of that calibre would have more humanity and maturity than that. He was inhuman. THere was no doubt about it. We see these ppl everyday in life. They're impaired in some ways, but talented in others. Like Boo, who was an enigma despite his severe autism; Like Lori who was so pure , so innocent, who could love anyone but could not learn to read. It's hard to see past the exterior, and we , the "normal " ones have the tendancy to shy away, ignore or look down on those whom we deem as abnormal. It's ppl like Torey who bring out the best in these special souls no matter how mammoth and utterly impossible the task may seem. Today at the lib, there was a student who seemed to be slightly mentally impaired. He would gurgle to himself at intervalsk, burst out into a senseless monolouge, and approach a soul at random and keep repeating some question about the weather. To my surprsie, the lady he approached was quite accomodating to his senseless, persistent questions. If it happened to me, i would most probably be heading for the exit in a flash, frightened by him, his differences, his innocence and egocentricity. Terrified by his eccentricity.
He was a rare gem. Despite his obvious mental impairment, he had made it to the university. And yez, like the punky dude whom i see so often, he could study. Amid his senseless gurgles and mutters about terrorist and hijackers, this guy had made it this far.
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