Jumped the gun and went to see Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) in theatres before reading the book. Alex and Shannon were all for it so I figured I’d go too. I didn’t have any expectations for it really, but I walked away calling it disturbing, intriguing, stimulating, wild, and frightening. I’ve got a copy of the book wedged in one of the stacks of novels sitting under my desk and now I’m feeling compelled to read it through.
Come gather ’round friends
And I’ll tell you a tale
Of when the red iron pits ran plenty
But the cardboard filled windows
And old men on the benches
Tell you now that the whole town is empty
In the north end of town
My own children are grown
But I was raised on the other
In the wee hours of youth
My mother took sick
And I was brought up by my brother
The iron ore poured
As the years passed the door
The drag lines an’ the shovels they was a-humming
’Til one day my brother
Failed to come home
The same as my father before him
Well a long winter’s wait
From the window I watched
My friends they couldn’t have been kinder
And my schooling was cut
As I quit in the spring
To marry John Thomas, a miner
Oh the years passed again
And the givin’ was good
With the lunch bucket filled every season
What with three babies born
The work was cut down
To a half a day’s shift with no reason
Then the shaft was soon shut
And more work was cut
And the fire in the air, it felt frozen
’Til a man come to speak
And he said in one week
That number eleven was closin’
They complained in the East
They are paying too high
They say that your ore ain’t worth digging
That it’s much cheaper down
In the South American towns
Where the miners work almost for nothing
So the mining gates locked
And the red iron rotted
And the room smelled heavy from drinking
Where the sad, silent song
Made the hour twice as long
As I waited for the sun to go sinking
I lived by the window
As he talked to himself
This silence of tongues it was building
Then one morning’s wake
The bed it was bare
And I’s left alone with three children
The summer is gone
The ground’s turning cold
The stores one by one they’re a-foldin’
My children will go
As soon as they grow
Well, there ain’t nothing here now to hold them
The drear outside is making me dream about the days when my Dad finally gives into my Mom’s coaxing to start up a wine vineyard (which absolutely must happen)…the air will be warm and dry and on a good day there’ll be a breeze blowing with thin, ribbon-like, wispy clouds in the sky. The best part of all will be the sunshine making everything look like it was created in a lovely, golden hour. Can you imagine picking and eating grapes off the vine? When I go home to celebrate my 21st birthday this summer there will be a great clamoring on the morning of the grand ‘ol day while I force everyone to pile into the car to drive out to wine country so that we can all feel right nice under the sun, rows and rows of grapevines stretching for miles around us.
I do believe that I am quite tired of talking about metaphysics. After a while it all blends into a din of doubt and confusion on the proper reason for the existence of things and I find my eyes rolling at the entire conversation of it because really, what does it matter? I am not saying that it is unimportant to try and understand the fulcrums of our being, but one can only take the reductionary method so far before he begins to question why it was necessary to begin the ordeal at all. I recognize that it would be foolish to simply believe that what you already know is a sufficient understanding of our world—for that would note complacency and a narrow-minded approach. But taking a Decartesian method of trying to understand the metaphysical world fills one with so much doubt and discomfort that the long contemplations are not worth the addled ideas and sore, furrowed brows. We exist and there is a God of whom we were created by. That is really all I care to know, regardless of the fear of “dreaming” or illusions or imaginations. In either world, the dream or the reality, these truths are apparent.
