Tag Archives: Margaret Atwood

heatherfromthegrove’s New Year’s Revelation No 7 of 7: The Divine and the Sublime

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“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.
Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.
We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man.
In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.
They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
– Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

I began the first of my 2018 New Year’s “revelations” with “The solace of animals” and I will conclude this last (the seventh revelation) with “The Divine and the Sublime.”

For me, as I’m sure for many of you as well, animals are beautiful, divine creatures. I cannot imagine a world without them. I certainly cannot fathom my life without them. In truth, there have been many instances where I have preferred the company of animals to that of humans.

“Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.
Let it teach you Being.
Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.
Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.”
– Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

In ancient cultures (and still today), animals were worshiped as gods. Their mysticism is steeped in history and religion. In Native American culture, there is an intense respect for and kinship to nature – animals, plants and the environment. Animals are treated with equal respect to humans. Life is revered. One life form is not inferior or superior to the other.  But animals…. well, they can teach us quite a few things.

So I will end my 7 New Year’s Revelations on this note (with further comments below):

“God gave unto the Animals
A wisdom past our power to see:
Each knows innately how to live,
Which we must learn laboriously.”
–Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood
(Image via Maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com)

I’ve been writing these New Year’s Revelations for 7 years now and this one will be my last.

May 2018 bring each and every one of you much joy, good health and a renewed appreciation for the beauty of animals, nature and of those you hold dear.

Cheers,

– Heather

heatherfromthegrove’s story spotlight for today: “Oryx and Crake” by Margaret Atwood

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Monday, July 15 – Saturday, July 20

FICTION

@ heatherfromthegrove!

Enjoy some good summer reading.

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“He doesn’t know which is worse, a past he can’t regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there’s the future. Sheer vertigo.”

– Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

The creative and gifted mind of Canadian author Margaret Atwood unleashes itself yet again in the dystopian  novel, Oryx and Crake.  Written in 2003, it is the first in a trilogy in which Atwood takes us on a speculative journey into the future.  The story begins after a plague destroys civilization. The main protagonist, Snowman (formerly “Jimmy” before the world collapsed),  struggles with surviving in a world where he may be the last living human and coping with grief (and memories) over the loss of his best friend Crake, and the beautiful, evanescent Oryx , whom they both loved and coveted.  We learn more about Jimmy and his past, through flashbacks, and are drawn into his post-apocalyptic quest for answers.  Guiding this solitary man through his journey are these human-like, green-eyed Children of Crake.  As they travel through the wilderness which was once a great city, they see hybrid creatures (wolvogs, pigoons and rakunks) roaming the forest, and we later come to realize that these cross-species are the result of genetic engineering. 

It would be remiss of me to reveal more. I don’t want to spoil the story for you. 

I have read most of Atwood’s novels and this one roped me in from the get-go, and prompted me to read the second book (in the Oryx and Crake trilogy), called The Year of the Flood. Loved it. Her third installment, MaddAddam, will be released in early September (I’ve pre-ordered it).

Dystopian fiction is not for everyone.  In fact, I was ambivalent about reading Oryx and Crake but I am glad that I did.  It propelled me into a world of “what-if’s” – told by the award-winning storyteller par excellence, Margaret Atwood.

Other novels by Margaret Atwood:

*  adapted into a TV movie (2007, USA) by the same name; directed by David Evans and starring Mary-Louise Parker, Shawn Doyle and Susan Lynch

** adapted into a film (1990, USA) by the same name; directed by  Volker Schlöndorff and starring Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway and Aidan Quinn

*** adapted into a film (1981, Canada) by the same name; directed by Claude Jutra

In addition, she has written a large body of work:  children’s books,  short fiction, poetry, anthologies, television scripts, E-books,  and non-fiction.