Edwin Abbot Flatland, #9

I've never been so confused reading a book. This was "The Phantom Tollbooth" on steroids. In the book the characters are two dimensional geometric shapes and their world is consequently littered with rules about conduct so they don't impale each other.  It was confusing to be me because I don't have a mind for geometry and I certainly am not interested in anything math related...so let's say I skimmed this one a bit and chalk it down to a read I actually did not like. The end. 9 down, 191 to go!

oil pulling beyond a week

I think the major benefits to oil pulling have been the increased cleanliness and nice feeling of my mouth. I know that that is difficult to quantify, but it's very true! It's also a nice ritual to have in the morning, I feel...cleaner...every morning now. I also very much appreciate the bright white teeth and smoother lips just because I added this routine in my life.

So I guess a spoonful of coconut oil makes the medicine go down as well! Here's to a new healthy habit I ventured through! I will try to write a longer post about my first dentist appoint after a regular oil pulling habit. Maybe I will even add an essential oil, or two, to the routine. Yay for new habits!

The Major Plays, Anton Chekhov #8

I have a confession...I found an edition of Major Play by Chekhov that had two other plays on my list. I just couldn't stomach checking out too many books and having a hard time keeping track! Plus, I'm still reading 4 plays!
The major plays I read were The Seagull and Uncle Vanya, they are both dark. There's this trend of memento mori in art and apparently Chekhov was a fan. Either play dealt with unrequited love and dreams gone awry (The Seagull) or an unrequited love, misguided love, and dysfunctional family drama (Uncle Vanya).
I might be getting burned out of reading plays about death, destruction, and questioning the fairness of life on earth. But these plays seriously made me very grateful for my simple life! I also started craving vodka for some reason....

Easy reads, but difficult to shake the feeling that life is surreal and something bad is going to happen at any moment. If it's not clear, I'm not a fan of stories with unsettling vague endings. Which both plays have.

Interesting reads, glad I am done! 8 down, 192 to go!

oil pulling days two and three

Yesterday and today have seen an increase in benefits. All day for these two days I feel like my teeth were just cleaned at the dentist's office. They seem whiter!

My nose is not as stuffy and runny as it used to be, which is a major plus for me.

Water is more satisfying, and my mouth feels less parched than usual. But I'm not drinking any more water than usual in case you were wondering.

I feel a little more clear headed, which is hard to explain. But basically I feel less foggy. I'm not sure why, but it might be a benefit from oil pulling since nothing else has changed in my diet/ lifestyle but the oil pulling.

So that's improvement. I just love the clean teeth feeling!

Oil pulling day one

Back in college I did the yoga track, complete with weird cleansing rituals. Know what? I never felt better. Then I put aside all those cleansing rituals for modern medicine while I was a paramedic. Know what? I never felt worse.
I never got into the oil pulling because I always though my trusty bottle of Listerine was better. Now that I'm trying to go back to crunchiness...I'm not so sure I'm doing everything I can for my health. Pinterest had some fancy slides and pictures listing all the benefits of oil pulling...but I'm just going to stick with my benefits and what it does for me.

First...I took a small spoonful of organic coconut oil and swished in it my mouth for 10 min. It wasn't easy to relax my jaw that whole time, but I persevered.
Then I spit it out in the trash...what did I feel...my mouth is not as sticky as it is in the morning. And my coffee tastes better. That's two wins for me. I will see how this goes.
I don't have anyway benefits yet besides those two.

Benefit:
My mouth feels less sticky.
Coffee tastes better.


Yay! A new venture!

Antigone by Sophocles, #7

Sophocles wrote a grim play in Antigone. Among all these Greek plays I'm reading I hope I can find some comedy. To summarize Antigone, she and her sister are all that's left after her father and two brothers die. The new king, Kreon allows her brother Eteokles to be buried properly since he kept the state. Polyneices is not allowed a proper burial, as he was against the state. Antigone is broken over this news and goes to bury him against the law. Kreon in his pride sentences her to death...which ends up undoing his family and causing him extreme anguish.

There are a few lines in the play that I just fell in love with. Haimon begs his father not to kill his betrothed (Antigone), "Please, be different this once. Believe in what someone else says for once. Whenever a man supposes that he alone has intelligence or expression or feelings, he exposes himself and shows his emptiness. Bit it's no shame even for a wise man to learn and relent." Line 856-862

Even today one can see the timeless roots of intolerance. When one side views their way as the only right way, most enlightened, or the best it closes off dialogue and understanding. Pride is the root of this but it's amazing to see a play from Ancient Greece resonates an ill of our current society.  It reminds me of Jesus' stern warnings about judging others.

Teiresias warns Kreon in line 1178, "My son, stop and consider. All mankind is subject to error. Once a mistake is made, and a man stumbles into misfortune, it is both wise and worthy of him to make amends and not be unbending. Stubbornness is stupidity. It is criminal. No. Give yourself leeway. Yield. When someone has been destroyed, do you stab him?"
How very true. How very relevant.

Antigone leaves me searching my moral inventory, checking to make sure I am following the narrow path. To me, that's what good literature does. It inspires, motivates, cultivates character.

7 down, 193 to go!

Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney, #6

Over halfway through my first goal of ten book in the first month of this challenge. Six books down and it feels good to be challenging my mind in a way I've neglected since college. I forgot how much reading does for the mind.

Beowulf was one of those long poems assigned in highschool and 3 times in college and I never quite finished it. I always read it in a rush trying to finish the assignment or find a point to argue in a paper. Which saddens me because when I read Beowulf this time, the conversational style took me in and made me ponder things. Beowulf is an adventure, a moral story, soemthing to aspire to.
There is a mead hall terrorized by Grendel, a monster, who Beowulf kills. Grendel's mom is killed in a macabre underwater death scene after she tries to avenge her son's death. They are happy for a minute then there's a dragon! Which doesn't end as well.

But the interesting thing are the lessons...there is a high value put on strength and morality. It's very inspiring to also read about Beowulf traveling as far as he did to help out the Danes who made the mead hall Grendel terrorized. I almost wanted to be a sword wielding Geat defending a mead hall, the romance of Beowulf's life were so awe filled.

The only thing I had a hard time following was the flashbacks. Sometimes in the poem they would flash to an earlier time to set the scene or fill in the story line. If I didn't read that close enough I had to reread a second or two again wondering how we were talking again about the earlier rival of the Geats (Beowful's clan) to the Swedes. Besides that there was great moral take away for me.

And I kind of wonder what mead tastes like. Not to mention this kind of story is exactly what my husband loves...just like Lord of the Rings. Mystery, dragons, quests, lairs. In many of these ancient books and plays I'm reading for the challenge I find many similarities to the newer quest and fantasy stories around. It's funny how creativity seems to have a cyclical nature.

6 down...194 to go! I'm almost ten in!

Poems, John Keats

I read the Selected Poems of John Keats published in 1993 by Gramercy Books. I did read all the poems, sonnets, longer poems....Hyperion, Lamia. Instead of writing synopsis of each poem, I am writing a general review of Keats. His mastery of language thrills the mind. Reading silently or aloud, it is difficult not to have a romantic surreal feeling coarse through your veins.
Keats has a fascination with the fantastic, the surreal, the fantasy. It is reasonable to make this claim because Keats did die young from consumption I believe. It's been a long time since my English class on Keats but I know that death was imminent for him.
Perhaps that is why his tone and syntax is so bated, breathless, with a sense of urgency. It feels like he has a desperate need to capture the beauty in life before the fleeting moment passes. This is why he writes on seeing various objects, reading things, even stepping in to Burns' cottage. Keats can't get enough of life and he wants to capture it before time runs out.

What a beautiful sentiment. He truly understood YOLO. And he tried very hard to fit it into all that he penned. These poems were an easy ready for me but I think that has something to do with the fact that I have read them extensively in college and squeezed out every possible meaning I could in those eternally long papers required to receive a diploma. It was more enjoyable to read them with no limit or imposed meaning pushed on me. Reading Keats for the sake of reading Keats is a wonderful past time that helps you fall in love with the world again. Even if it just a cat you see crossing your way.

5 down. 195 to go! Onward! Onward I say!

Medea by Euripides

Tragedy. This was a tragedy, a confusing one at that. Medea betrayed her family and homeland, killing a brother in the process for a man. She married Jason and had his children then he left her for a princess. He said it was to secure their family. Obviously. After being exiled by the princess' father she decided to kill them all...because that is the natural thing to do. What follows is a gory death scene for the new woman and her dad (the king), killing her children and her escape with her children's bodies in the sun chariot is how this macabre play ends.  I'm left with an unsettled feeling, certain that I'll be up the rest of the night.

Seriously? This sounds like a reality T.V. episode on steroids.  Each character has its pity and contempt. Jason sounds pitiful because he just fell in love, twice, and lost everything in the process. But contempt wins out because who in their right mind tries to justify adultery saying he did it to better them all? 

Medea is the poor left wife. She makes a pitiful remark that she should have happily stood by and smiled at his new nuptial bed...even though she's planning murder at this point...it's still pitiful. Contempt certainly overshadows any shred of pity I could have for her because she murdered the other woman, her father, and then her own children just to make Jason miserable. 

I guess, and I say this very very loosely, I might be sympathetic if she just killed the other woman and her ex. But killing your own children just to make your ex hurt is low. She claims it's because she didn't want anyone to kill them in vengeance. Because that makes so much sense. 

It's somewhat beautiful to read such a tragic play because it helps me see that even at my worst I can say at least I'm not a vengeful murdering lunatic. But this play is best left for horror reads during halloween. Seriously...I'm going to have trouble sleeping tonight. 

4 down, 196 to go.

The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne

I finished The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne this week. It took longer than normal since we had a polar vortex and power outage to handle!

But completed I am! What a tale he wove from mysterious happenings, curious environment, colonialism, pirates, and a destructive ending.This story is about 5 unlikely strangers who escape on a hot air balloon from Confederate Virginia and crash on an unknown island. It's an early version of the tv series Lost, without the supernatural time travel mayhem.

I think what I like most about the book is it's references to other novels and historical happenings of the time. But no spoilers here. I would highly recommend reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea first if you want to have a deeper experience with the text.

The plot is a little long, but it makes sense that Verne takes his time telling the story...where are the castaways going to go? It is enjoyable to read about their various industries and their husbandry of the island.

There are several twists that make it difficult to put the book down, I ended up staying up later than I planned this entire week because I had to see what was going to happen next.

Another great thing about this book are the science and nature lessons. There is an engineer, Cyrus Smith, who helps the castaways produce iron, pottery, and many other things needed for people to survive, even thrive, comfortably. It inspired me to learn about resources and stewardship in a new way. I wonder if that a simple statement Verne was making...that stewardship can allow all to live comfortably if we just share and work collaboratively?
This was a great read, especially during a winter storm. I was grateful not to be a castaway for 4 years. At least I knew my storm had a quick end in sight.
3 down! 197 left.