P.O.V. (the masterful experiment)

I woke in the middle of the night troubled by the weight of my unsent query letter. Is it specific? Is it succinct? I kicked my way out of bed and settled on the couch with The Sound and the Fury to take my mind off the unsent Memories of Snow. Thus it was that at two in the morning I was trying to get a handle on the confusing dialogue and brilliant but exasperating P.O.V. of the manchild, Benjy. Faulkner's narrative weaves back and forth between decades with no warning. It's no wonder I didn't understand it the first time I tried to read it. But I think I'm finally beginning to appreciate the greatness of this literary masterpiece, the risk of beginning a novel in the P.O.V. of an adult man who is mentally three years of age, and the sheer genius of pulling it off. I'm only now getting the symbolism of Benjy's castration and Caddy's soiled drawers (a symbol of her promiscuity), and the reason behind their brother, Quentin's, obsession with time and eventual suicide.

I was reminded of the recent news out of the state prison in Lucasville, Ohio about a prisoner on death row. His third execution date is set for today. He tried to commit suicide with a drug overdose before the last one, so they had to postpone it until he recovered. I wonder if he broke the hands off his watch and put them in his pocket like Quentin did? He was unconscious for some time and they nursed him back to health so he could be executed properly. He's recovered and they will execute him today by lethal injection. I expect it’s already been done.

One can only take so much Faulker at two in the morning, and I put the paperback, penciled up with dates in the margins to help me follow the shifts in time, aside (it is a tragic story, but at least it is fiction). I leafed through my Eliot Coleman gardening book, The Four Season Harvest. It, too, is wonderfully written with photos to complement the wealth of knowledge this gardener from Maine has accumulated over the years.

Earth is so kind - just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. -Douglas Jerold

I've been tickling the earth in the green house. I dug up a worm here amongst the argula ***envision picture*** and tucked him back under the soil. Please use your imagination as I live in internet no-man's land and couldn't download my pretty photo.

This morning I was gifted with another sign of spring. I heard them first and dashed to the window for a look. A flock of geese were flying overhead, heading north.

Godspeed.