What I Want to Be When I Grow Up
This morning I was thinking about Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, which was the first book I ever read that meant anything to me. I first read it the same week I graduated from high school, in 1996, and I read it at least once a year for the next eight or so years.
The passage that came to mind was this one, from chapter 9, "The Bones in God's Backyard." In a letter, Hallie Noline tells her sister, Codi, a story about a shrimp farmer she witnessed in southern Mexico, where she stopped on her way to a volunteer position in Nicaragua:
I started thinking about this passage while reading this article in the New York Times.
The passage that came to mind was this one, from chapter 9, "The Bones in God's Backyard." In a letter, Hallie Noline tells her sister, Codi, a story about a shrimp farmer she witnessed in southern Mexico, where she stopped on her way to a volunteer position in Nicaragua:
He had a pole over his shoulders, with the bucket of shrimp hung on one side and on the other side a plastic jug of water. Every time he sold a kilo of shrimp he'd pour out that much water and drink it, to balance the load. I watched him all the way down the bay and thought, I want to be like that. Not like the man selling the shrimp. Like his machine. To give myself over to utility, with no waste.
I started thinking about this passage while reading this article in the New York Times.
posted by Christine at 8:58 AM
2 Comments:
I've been reading The Simple Dollar which covers pretty much the same subject matter.
I'm lucky to have a cushion of savings to sit on, but I guess the more careful I am with the pennies, the longer that cushion will last me.
Tight times really make me think about what I consider important:
Writing classes stay; yoga classes go. Book buying stops; theatre and cinema visits continue. Clothes buying halts; leg waxing happens.
Love the the paragraph in that NYT article where a 33 year-old woman was talking like a Vally Girl:
Lisa Germinsky, 33, a screenwriter who lives in Gramercy, has just begun to trim back. “My boyfriend and I, we were talking and he’s just like doom and gloom... so I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.’ ”
Such a shame that some females don't put their high school selves behind them until they are in their thirties.
Post a Comment
<< Home