Ivory and Sanserviera

this chapter in West With The Night was quite interesting, especially the end. it talks about her flying. about different letters going back and forth between friends. it also talks about hunting, not so much about her hunting, but her friends... Blix and Tom. that they are both great "white hunters". the thing that i found most interesting about this chapter was the end. most of her chapters "complete" so to say, but this one just ended abruptly like you would at the end of a paragraph.

my dream of pan's labyrinth.

i had a day dream today that i was in Spain and i was a little girl who was forced to live a life i hated. my mother was pregnant with a baby that killed her and i had a "father" who wanted nothing more than to have me gone. but i was a princess. a princess of the underworld. i went on quests to find mysterious things. like a key from a toad and a dagger from a room filled with a beautiful food and a man with eyeballs in his hands. i would learn what these objects were and how to use them with the help of fairies and a being only explainable by the wind. this world was my escape. my escape from the world that was going on outside, the one i didn't want to be part of. but soon i was gone with the blood of the innocent... falling away into a golden world with the humming of a lullaby softly singing in my ear... and then i was free, forever.

Na Kupa Hti M'zuri

just like chapters in your life or in mine, this chapter in Ms. Beryl Markham's was not my favorite. it was all about a horse race, and betting, and jockeys. thats just not my cup of tea. i love hearing about her riding her horses and the stories about the ones that get out of control, but I'm just not so fond of hearing about racing them. to me its just like buying ice cream, you think about what kind you want, (you think about what horse you want) then you buy it, (then you bet on it) and in the end you can only hope that its good (or it wins).

White Elephants.

if you've ever been to Spain you might have had "Anis del Toro" a special drink with water or not. you might have happend to sit at a tiny cafe near the train station and see a little woman looking down at her knees. you might have thought she was about to get a lobotomy. and this could happen, this could be true... but fortunately the lobotomy is actually an abortion. (you might have to read it twice.)
Hills Like White Elephants. it was written in the 1920's by Ernest Hemingway and was quite a scandal. those day abortion was not to be talked about, but he did... and he did it mysteriously and beautifully.

was there a horse with wings?

i do believe there was and is a horse with wings. in fact i believe there are horses with wings. and all though you may not see them in everyday life, they are some where, in some place, ready do fly. and i think Beryl's horse may not have been able to fly, but i do believe that it has wings somewhere inside of it. most horses do. and so if someone ever asks me if i believe in horses with wing, i will tell them the truth... that i do, and i have seen one once, when i went to visit the gumdrop land. that has trees that sing, fairies that live in peanut trees, and horses that can fly to the moon and back.

hodi!

this chapter was not my favorite. i understand how it is important for the rest of the book to write about how her feelings of flying began, but the rest of the chapter before that didn't really interest me. it felt a little fake. there were parts i thought were great, but more than that there were parts that i wanted to skim... no offense to beryl. in most chapters i end up underlining almost every page, but this one only a few passages stuck me. ah well, im sure the next will have pen marks all over it.

.silence.

there are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. there is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. there is a silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. there is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. there is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately certain silence that can speak. its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by left by a laughing child or the last notes of the last piano may have raucous and gay. whatever the mood or the circumstance, the the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. it is a soundless echo.
the silence that belonged to to the slender little craft was, i thought, filled with malice--a silence holding the spirit of wanton mischief, like the quite smile of a vain woman exultant over a petty and vicious triumph. it was not that kind of silence.

Dionysus vs. A Night on the Town.

this is how i relate:

it starts in Luca, Italy, where there was a fair. and this fair had cotton candy, corn-dogs, and rides... that looked fun.
i went with my brother and my nanny. we decided to try a ride called "Twister!!!" it sounds just like it feels.
after eating cotton candy, caramel apples, weird italian candies... we felt anything but mollified.
and soon we saw the corn-dogs and candy once again, splattered on the ground like a puddle of fun at a fair!
we promised we would never speak of that ride again... we assigned little "white" lies to each other so no one would know what happened.
it was not only the first time i threw-up, but the last time i will ever go on anything named "Twister!!!"
they say that dionysus was joyful and immoderate... well then i must be the opposite, because believe me i was nothing but joyful.