49. everything is illuminated in the dark

Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated
I am always intrigued by how much darkness amplifies things.  Waking up from a scary dream in the dark is much more terrifying than waking up in light.  The sounds you hear outside and inside are much louder when it is nighttime.  Even your sight seems to increase in the dark- little things you never noticed during the daylight are much more noticeable when they are ensconced in shadow.  Feelings seem to also seem much more intense in the night hours.  But is that because the rest of the world seems to be asleep (or wide awake when you want to be asleep.... aka the partying neighbors)?  And there is less to think about because you are left to your own devices?  I am currently left to my own devices and I am a little upset.  I should be snuggled up and snoozing right now, but i am not.  do certain things, like darkness, illuminate other aspects of life?  Does the past illuminate the future (or vice versa)?  Does the absence or presence of family/friends/loves illuminate our own selves?  In my mind this is what Safran Foer was trying to ask.... maybe I'm wrong. 

Good book, though.  The past and the future and the friends and the family and the lightness and darkness and absence and presence of sound illuminate ourselves and our true identities.  And there is nothing we can do to change that.

27. "The Airborne Toxic Event"

White Noise by Don DeLillo

This book brings up a lot of interesting questions.  Especially when you are reading it for a second time in order to create a project as a pair book for an ENT class.  don't ask- busy work and reading.  but i'm glad i got a chance to revisit White Noise.  No, it isn't the basis for the movie.... it is actually about a small, indescript town, and a family.  the narrator is the father of this family, an assembled modern day brady family.... kids and parents from a bunch of different marriages and such, all cohabitating in one odd household.  the father is the professor who chaired Hitler Studies department at the town college.  this is a key example of the strange but hilarious humor in this book.  then a tanker spills near the town and a "Toxic Airborne Event" occurs, leaving them to travel from shelter to shelter and ponder death for the duration of the middle of the book.  Then come the after-effects.  they discuss death a lot in this book but it is quite poignant- on the one hand, truly terrifying, but on the other, satisfying and thought-provoking in a good way.  the book also discusses the role that technology plays on our lives, seen most prominently in the random TV or radio quotes written in random sections.  just one line at a time about some sort of consumer product, cooking tip or Discovery show fact, inserted into the strange and amazing line up of words that make up White Noise.  fantastic.  really fantastic.  again.  if you want a philosophical book that is humorous and not scarily deep, but very thought provoking i insist that you read this.  if i have time later, i will post some of the more thoughtful quotes (that i have flagged in the book, for my pair book project.  so there!)  anyway, i hope you are having a lovely evening, or day, or whatever it is doing when you are reading this right here, right now.  even though 'now' has already passed by the time you were finished reading the word 'now.'  ha! think about that for a few minutes- i dare you :)