Ocean Baby

Under the city we descended, 
Submersible explorers, loaded torpedoes, 
Dark hallways looming like sea caverns, 
Abandoning light to darkness. 
There we showed you a new world 
Aquatically hidden, bubbly as your bum, 
Fishes flowing freely round corals, 
Eels squirming out of their holes, 
Penguins plunging through the water. 
Our flotilla entered a tunnel most peculiar, 
Where we found ourselves surrounded 
By a school of sharks meandering above. 
You danced, you shrieked, you pointed, 
Eyes wide, brimming with joy and wonder, 
Adoration collected, waves coalescing, 
The city surrendering to your shiny glow, 
Dear baby, chubby little cherub, 
Roly-poly chatterbox, alert piper, 
Drawing faces to your smile like bees to a flower. 

A Dog's Journey

    On my flight to Thailand I saw one of the most touching movies of my life, A Dog's Journey.  Next to Spiderman, Into the Spiderverse, it's the best movie I've seen all year.  It follows the sequential lives of a reincarnated dog who's on a mission to protect a little girl.  In each life, he runs into her by chance at least once, all the way into womanhood. 

    The dog may be preoccupied by doggish things, but he has a big heart.  And he's hilarious- his thoughts narrate the whole film, so we always know what's going through his mind, whether it's while smelling someone's butt, or a sentimental memory about one of his past lives. 

    Most importantly, it's one of the most moral movies I've seen.  It does a great job showing people how to live correctly, and why you shouldn't take things so personally.  As a father, I believe it's a movie every parent should show their children, to teach them the values of loyalty and selflessness.  Also, reincarnation may be a fantasy, but it might be the best explanation of death for a child to understand.   

    I choked up on tears several times during the film, including the part where the dog's second life ends, when it's revealed that someone has cancer, and the return to the farm.  It's a literal tearjerk fest, similar to Forrest Gump in its emotional power.  It's also beautifully shot, and the acting's superb (even the dogs').  Yep, this is one of those rare perfect movies that make you feel grateful to be alive. 

The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak

 

Shams reminded me so much of my father that I started imagining him in the story. For all his preaching about love and divinity, he sure was a confrontational and quarrelsome person, always inspiring opposition by stirring up conventional thought with his unusual opinions. You might even call him heartless, for marrying 15-year-old girl who loved him more than anything and refusing to return it. His 40 rules of love are spiritual ones, not romantic- an irony the author uses by having him reject any love associated with real relationships (other than Rumi, whom he strangely cannot detach from). 

Ella faces a similar moral dilemma with love: that she has to abandon her children to find romance, with a man who also happens to be a Sufi. Only this Sufi lives in the modern age, and has no problem being in a romantic relationship with someone who left her kids. 

In light of this, the reader might gather that Shams' 40 rules aren't exclusive, they are only meant to be guidelines. None of them address dealing with loss, unrequited love, grief, sacrifice, or the challenges of being in a relationship. That the rules are limited to being spiritual means the author can expose the faults of people who can't see beyond this worldview. I kept waiting for one of Sham's rules that would put to rest the shame of marrying that girl, but none came. Similarly, I waited for Ella to discover a rule that would bring her back to her family. That didn't happen either. It makes the reader wonder if the author intended for Shams to teach such a narrow scope of love. Ella was, after all, one of his disciples. 

Either way, I found the rules to be very useful for finding peace. They are cleverly inserted into the story at all the right moments. I'll be reading this one again. 

Timeless

If we slept when we were tired, 
Ate when we were hungry, 
Worked whenever we wanted, 
Rested when we were weary, 
Timeless the clocks would fall. 
 
If we did things more slowly, 
Executed our actions with care, 
Drove like we weren't trying to get somewhere, 
Studied what we didn't know with patience, 
Timeless the clocks would fall. 
 
If we turned off our phones, 
Created our art with due diligence, 
Sailed the seas without a destination, 
Lived in the present, killed the past and future, 
Timeless the clocks would fall.