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Split personality. Liking the arts, especially opera, and hockey and Los Toros. I know, I know THAT one is non pc currently. But I can't help it saw some in Spain and got hooked, but good. But on the other hand right now opera and hockey are in the forefront!

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

If the future really...

could be seen in a crystal ball, I'd be telling everyone what will happen on September 15.

Lock out or No Lock out that IS question.

But for AEROS fans, October 13 may just be a WOW occasion,
considering those hot and eager hockey players crowding on the ice at the TC ready for action.
As one can read here:
http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/Russos_Rants.html
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But hockey aside, the next few evenings will be dedicated to Wagner as perceived, more or less interestingly, by LePage and The Met.
One can love THE MACHINE, one can hate IT, but one must admit it IS a daring concept,
creaky maybe, malfunctioning at times, but surely daring!
 
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And now to what has been occupying my mind until the wee hours of the morning.. and I never even heard of this author. So here is MY take.
Jose Saramago's BLINDNESS.
Translated from the Portuguese in true fashion, including dialogues without the usual :"..." etc. Which requires one to read carefully to understand who is speaking to whom, which is especially confusing when 3 or more are talking at the same time.
Otherwise it is a stunningly written novel. 
 
Now maybe it is that I have had decades of reading novels of all sorts and kinds,
 that I often felt a sense of deja vu!
Take for instance:
people who are different because they have turned blind seeing nothing but white! As they are perceived as dangerously infectious, they herded into quarantine quarters, "protected for their own good" by solders with weapons, where they are told to fend for themselves ( as blind people???).
Sounds like the banishment of the lepers to Molokai! Use your stumps to dig soil and plant, eh!
 
Then bring in more, crowding them into spaces unsuitable for so many.
With no hygiene etc, and lice and filth flourish! 
Add to the frightened mix a bunch of criminals with their weapons who although blind themselves become abusers of the weaker ones to the nth degree
(Gulags, Concentration camps come to mind).
 
Add indiscriminate shootings by solders, who eventually succumb to the illness themselves but are transferred to the tender care of the armed forces elsewhere, :-), rather then crowded in with the others.
 
Next, add an "angel" in the guise of the seeing (she never lost her vision-just pretended to in order to stay with her beloved) wife of a doctor. Who kills the tyrant while he and his cohorts are being serviced by women, herself included, forced to do so in order to get their men food which the tyrant and his cohorts are hoarding. (reminder, as above)
 
Huge chaos follows and finally, the 'government' is gone, lost all control.
The doors are no longer guarded. Since everyone is blind now-we, the readers, need assume.
The 'tyrant group' is dispersed in confusion while running out of bullets to coerce the others.
 
The '"angel" and her group exit into a city, occupied by blind people who wander lost from place to place in search of food and toilets.
 
Since nothing works, no water, no lights, no heat,  no cars, no ...
you get the idea,
it is dog eat dog, literally, as feral dogs feed on fallen people and people kill and eat raw meat where found.
 
BUT the "angel" has found a 'dog of tears' who licked her tears off her face when she was distressed,  then attached himself to her;  and the group finds an unoccupied apartment where they settle, take 'rainshowers' and wash clothes, foraging form time time for food.
 
Until, one day they can see again!
 
"Then she lifted her head up to the sky and saw everything white, It is my turn she thought. Fear made her quickly lower her eyes. The city was still there."ibid
 

And thus ends the book.
What are we to see or not?
Why are all blind except her?
Woman is leader?
Group living - is better.
Does she, or doesn't she loose her sight at the end?
My feeling is NOT.
After all angels cannot fall prey to this seeing nothingness!
 
But  read for yourself.

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