“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”
That is how one of the best ever written books ends. If you haven’t read ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ yet, pick it up immediately. I can’t believe it took me this long to read it. When I started it, I was afraid that I wouldn’t get it of fail to see what everyone went on about and it was a difficult first few pages but then Dickens describes a scene where wine spills on the cobbled streets of France and from then on I was taken in and there was no turning back.
Dickens has a mastery of the English language that is unequalled. He uses even the simplest words, sentences to take any kind of reader on his journey with him. There is no embellishment, the imagery is vivid because he wields his words like a painter would his brush and actually paints you the picture so beautifully and flawlessly that there is no chance you won’t want to go with him. Open any random page of this book and you will see what I mean.
“If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the love of the man you see before you – self-flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be – he would have been conscious this day and hour in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me; I ask for none; I am even thankful that it cannot be.”
Dickens continues to be excellent in the way he connects everything so seamlessly. It might be a tale of two cities but it is basically a tale of one group of people. Everyone you meet in the book is indispensable and somehow connected; there is not one wasted character. Watching the way he weaves the story is breath taking and as you read the excitement mounts as you guess at what might happen, where it might be going and then as you see where it actually goes and how he gets you there, this book is pure genius.
And I haven’t even talked about the plot yet. (I should warn you, there are spoilers ahead.) The book is set in 1775, at the time of the French Revolution. The French people had been oppressed for so long by their monarchy and their church and if there is a story that advocates for the separation of state and church this is it. The people were forced to tend land off of which they could not sustain themselves.
“…in the towers of the churches, where no prayers were said, for the popular revulsion had even traveled that length of self-destruction from years of priestly impostors, plunderers, and profligates…”
“Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way – tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: ‘The Earth and the fullness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur.”
They paid incredibly high rent and were in turn paid nothing for the work they did and the food they grew was taken by the richer nobles who owned the land they lived on.
“Doctor, they are very proud these nobles; but we common dogs are proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us; but we have a little pride left, sometimes.”
“We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs are by those superior beings – taxed by him without mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door barred and shutters closed, that his people should not see it and take it from us – I say, we were so robbed, hunted and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should pray for was that our women might be barren and our miserable race die out!”
“You know, Doctor, that it is among the rights of these nobles to harness us common dogs to carts and drive us. They so harnessed him and drove him. Taken out of harness one day at noon, to feed – if he could find food – he sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the bell, and died on her bosom.”
The suffering of the people is evident and the revolution is inevitable but the scale of it is unbelievable. The people and been dehumanized to the extent that taking a life of anyone of noble status and anyone connected with any such person was incredibly easy.
“I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?”
“It was nothing to her that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters in which she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, if she had been ordered to the axe tomorrow, would she have gone to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who sent her there.”
But more than all of this, it is a story about love; the love of a father for his daughter and of his daughter for him, the love of a husband and a wife which takes them through births, deaths, two possible executions and dark secrets, the love of a man for a woman who can never love him back and most of all the love of freedom, of liberty, of equality and of fraternity.
I will say again, if you haven’t yet read this book, buy it, borrow my copy but whatever you do, read it.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
A Tale of Two Cities
Monday, May 05, 2008
Bed of Roses
Bed Of Roses
Sitting here wasted and wounded
At this old piano
Trying hard to capture
The moment this morning I don't know
'Cause a bottle of vodka
Is still lodged in my head
And some blond gave me nightmares
I think that she's still in my bed
As I dream about movies
They won't make of me when I'm dead
With an ironclad fist I wake up and
French kiss the morning
While some marching band keeps
Its own beat in my head
While we're talking
About all of the things that I long to believe
About love and the truth and
What you mean to me
And the truth is baby you're all that I need
I want to lay you down in a bed of roses
For tonight I sleep on a bed of nails
I want to be just as close as the Holy Ghost is
And lay you down on a bed of roses
Well I'm so far away
That each step that I take is on my way home
A king's ransom in dimes I'd given each night
Just to see through this payphone
Still I run out of time
Or it's hard to get through
Till the bird on the wire flies me back to you
I'll just close my eyes and whisper,
Baby blind love is true
I want to lay you down in a bed of roses
For tonight I sleep on a bed of nails
I want to be just as close as the Holy Ghost is
And lay you down on a bed of roses
The hotel bar hangover whiskey's gone dry
The barkeeper's wig's crooked
And she's giving me the eye
I might have said yeah
But I laughed so hard I think I died
Now as you close your eyes
Know I'll be thinking about you
While my mistress she calls me
To stand in her spotlight again
Tonight I won't be alone
But you know that don't
Mean I'm not lonely
I've got nothing to prove
For it's you that I'd die to defend
I want to lay you down in a bed of roses
For tonight I sleep on a bed of nails
I want to be just as close as the Holy Ghost is
And lay you down on a bed of roses
This was the first rock song I ever heard. I remember it like it was yesterday, it was actually 1993. The video was on TV and I was in the room and this song comes on and I knew immediately that I would forever love this man's voice. I went to the living to watch the video and it kinda helped that Bon Jovi is pretty good looking. Seriously though, it just spoke to me and took me with it. I remember simply standing in front of the Tv 'til it ended and there was no turning back. I have been a rock fan since and I have loved Bon Jovi from that day. My favourite line is "A king ransom's in dime I'd give each night to see through this pay phone"
Do you remember the song that did it for you?
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Finally getting around to answering the Tag
Four Jobs I Have Worked
- Personal Assistant for a Proffessor in the History Dept. of MUK
- Hostess for an Events Organiser
- Personal Assistant for the Plant Manager of SBI
- Call Centre Agent for UTL
Four Movies I Would Watch Over and Over
- Fight Club
- How to Kill Your Neighbour's Dog
- Interstate 60
- Usual Suspects
Four Places I Have Lived
- Somewhere in Buganda Road till I was 2 years old
- Bukoto from then till I was 22
- A hall on campus (does that count?)
- Semawata Road in Ntinda.
Four TV Shows I love
- 30 Rock
- Friends
- House
- How I Met Your Mother
- Scrubs
- CSI (all of them)
Four Places I Have Been On Vacation
- Ndaija, Rwampara, Mbarara
- Rugoma, Kebisoni, Rukungiri
- Ssese Islands
- Jinja
Four of My Favourite Foods
- Sweet Potatoes and Eshabwe
- Stir Fried Pork and Xiangzhou rice
- Club Sandwich
- Bagel Sandwich with Egg Salad
Four Places I Would Rather Be Now
- In bed
- In a swimming pool
- On the set of 30 Rock
- In South Africa watching my best friend graduate
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Wonder Years.
Two days later and I have already finished 'The Family Way' and dearly paying for it. Why, you might ask. I'll tell you. I was up till 2.00am last night reading it and I had to be up by 4.00am because I had to be in the office by 5.00am. Just know I am dying of sleep, I have no idea how I am going to make it through the rest of the day.
You know what killed me about these photos? The 'fros. They were awesome weren't they?
I love the way my mother looks all regal with her head held up high and I just look confused. I remember I loved that outfit and only finally gave it away when I was 16 or so.
What can I say? The 80's were not the best time for high fashion. That's my dad, by the way, in the Malaachi (the shoes) he loved so and made us where for about 3 years of our lives. (My siblings and I.)
Another confused looking picture of me. I really wonder what it was I was staring at? Was I attracted to the camera from so young an age?
This is my favourite. I'm positive my Mom was off to the side making sure my head was turned to the camera by dangling some shiny something. I can almost remember it.
I thought these would be apt seeing as its my birthday on Thursday. Send me hugs and presents on Facebook.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
African Reading Challenge
I said I would enter the reading challenge and I have but I don't have a list of books. I have decided to read the books then add them to the list.
I just finished A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah and like he said it is worth the read. It is told in a very matter of fact way, no embellishments, no style but it gets the message across. I don't know if I would have been able to read it if it hadn't been written like it is. It is a harrowing story, a 12 year old boy slitting someone's throat with a bayonet is hard enough to comprehend without it being written in language that evokes the images vividly, so I am kind of glad it is not very well written. It is a very sad reality where these boys are taken from their families and recruited into the army (the army, not the rebel forces, the bloody army.) I am inspired to find out more.
Read this but I emaphasize, the writing is lacklustre at best.
I am going to take a break now and read the only Tony Parson's book I haven't yet read, The Family Way.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Snooze: A work story
You all know I work in a call centre for a telecommunications company that will remain unnamed, right? You also probably know that we hear some of the funniest things.
Some guy called in and talked to someone else but this story was the funniest thing I had ever heard. I will write it out in Luganda and translate it after.
(phone rings)
Agent: Good morning, (agent) speaking, how can I help you?
Sub: Gyebale ko nyabo. Nafunye mu obuzibu zibu mu ssimu yange. Osobola kunyamba ko?
Agent: Buzibu ki Ssebo?
Sub: Waliwo ennamba enkubila bulikanaku ku sawa zezimu naye essimu bwenjikwata, omuntu tayogela. Ono'musajja asumbwa nyo. Anzukusa ku sawa kuminabili ate natayogela kintu kyona. Nina kyensobola okukola o'kyilekelawo?
Agent: Ssebo, eyo nambe ki?
Sub: Enamba sijilaba, naye elinya ndilaba.
Agent: Bwoba olaba elinya, kitageza nti enamba mweli mu ssimu yo.
Sub: Neda, enambe telimu, najinonyeza nga sijilaba
Agent: Kale, mbulila elinya
Sub: Bamuyita SNOOZE!
Translation.
(phone rings)
Agent: Good morning, (agent) speaking, how may I help you?
Sub: Good morning. I am having a problem with my phone, can you help me?
Agent: What is the problem, sir?
Sub: There is a number that keeps calling me but when I pick the phone up no one speaks. It calls me everyday at the same time and it is getting very annoying. It calls at 6.00am and wakes me up and this person does not answer me, is there anyway I can stop this?
Agent: What is the number?
Sub: I don't know the number but I know the name. It shows on my phone.
Agent: If you see the name, that must mean the number is in your phone.
Sub: The number is not in my phone, I checked and it is not there.
Agent: Ok, tell me the name you see.
Sub: That person is called SNOOZE!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Love
