Beech Tree News Network

Lately, it seems like every time I turn on the news, there’s a report about dementia and the things that make you more likely to develop it.  The latest reports are about how women are more likely to develop dementia than men: and people with ADHD are more likely to develop dementia than people without it.  You know what that means, don’t you? I’m in big trouble, for I am a woman with ADHD.

With that information in mind, I’ve been making the effort to read more thought-provoking material.  Get my brain to exercise a bit more, in the hope of making more resilient brain cells.  I really like to read books that are entertaining and intriguing, but I am not readily drawn to material that is symbolic.  I think I’ve told you before that I don’t care much for poetry.  I have an attitude of if you have something to say, spit it out.  Stop beating around the bush.  And It’s not that I don’t like mystery.  I like having to figure out “whodunit.”  There are some books, however that leave me saying, “What?????”

While reading THE BURIED GIANT, by Kazuo Ishiguro, I kept waiting for a big reveal, a payoff for slogging through the constantly changing scenes and scenarios.  There wasn’t one, and I was sorely disappointed.  Yeah, I know the story of King Arthur and Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table.  I watched enough after-school movies on WAVE TV, out of Louisville, to be able to tell you all about it.

I got it that the main story of THE BURIED GIANT involved the enduring love between Axel and Beatrice and the fact that they were on a journey where they would be ultimately separated by death.  (The boatman would take only Beatrice to the island where their son was buried, Axel would have to stay behind.)  I got the part about King Arthur’s last living knight, Sir Gawain, guarding the dragon, Querig, whose breath spread a mist over the land, causing everyone to forget memories, both good and bad, keeping the land at peace.  I even got why the warrior, Wistan, insisted on slaying the dragon.  Querig’s breath had no influence on him.  Wistan remembered the brutality the Britons heaped upon his native Saxons, and he wanted everyone to remember, so that his fellow Saxons would seek revenge.

Here’s what I didn’t get.  We have this story about King Arthur and knights and warriors and dragons, and Britons and Saxons, so you would assume Sir Lancelot and Guinevere would make an appearance.  If you are me, you would assume Axel and Beatrice were really Lancelot and Guinevere, and the big payoff would come at the end of the book on page 362, when I could pat myself on the back and say, “I figured it out.”  That’s how I would have written it, but I’ve never written a bestseller, so what do I know.  My disappointment in realizing that Axel and Beatrice were just Axel and Beatrice says more about me than it does about the book.

I have always been a “jump ahead and figure it out” person.  I say things like, “I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen or how it's going to turn out or what they think is going to happen but isn’t going to happen.”  I suspect I became this person as a child when I was trying to figure out how to avoid raising the ire of the adults in my world.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion says, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”  I take that law literally, not just in the physical world, but also in my day-to-day interactions with people and situations.  Often, I have tried to anticipate problems and run interference, weaving in and out, and around, avoiding problems at all costs.  This has often gotten me into trouble, because all problems are not bad.  Some problems help you grow and change and make you better for having come up against them.

I have struggled with believing myself a worthy opponent, able to withstand adversity.  I have come to understand that my anxiety stems from not believing I can handle problems as they show up, and it is important to allow myself to work through things, not always push through them.  The archaeologist and naturalist, Walter Elliot, said, “Perseverance is not a long race.  It is many short races, one after the other.” 

I do understand that, but still I think the story would have been better if Axel and Beatrice had turned out to be Sir Lancelot and Guinevere.  Yeah, I probably have a ways to go before I really get the hang of symbolism.