My daily reading consists of having several books on the go,
one for assembling information that I intend to morph in the future, one to
search for a particular language that
will metamorphosize this information into something relatively coherent, and
one to give my mind a breath of fresh humour that clears out the guck that can
accumulate in the corners.
For example, I am working on a book, a photo-journal, titled
From the Perspective of a Tree. I
have photographed many leafy characters that, as individuals, also have a voice
and something to say – thus one book to inform me of their message. At present
I am reading Gaia: an Atlas of Planet
Management.
I know what I have to say, and I think I know what they, the
trees in this case, have to say, but the problem is in communication and the
translation – therefore, at the moment, I’m reading primarily,
North American Indian Reader, as what’s
left of their
language is far closer
to the source I’m looking for than the mind-set that we invaded with 500 years
ago.
So you can see that I require a mental disk cleaner and a defrag
to keep the synapses in good firing order, and for this I require humourous
reading. In this case I will tell you about two books that I have just finished
by
Terry Fallis, his first novel,
The
Best Laid Plans, and the second,
The
High Road, so much so that I have suspended all my reading just to absorb
and laugh at a superbly accurate political satire which is only the surface
delivery of a very crucial message for our current crises - the disease in our
political and corporate institutions.
Terry Fallis doesn’t rely on cynical, political satire as
fodder for the publishing industry, but more important here is a very strong,
clear and urgent message to a public that is resisting to be dumbed down. I
will quote from The High Road:
*Chapter two: (Lindsay, Daniel’s girlfriend) “Was
it different working with Angus?”
(Daniel, Angus’ EA in the first
election) “Completely different. He’s unlike any politician I’ve ever known. He
has more common sense than any politician that I’ve ever known. He doesn’t care
what people think. He seems congenitally programmed to do what’s right even if
it costs him support. And he’s as honest as they come. He refused to play the
political game. Instead, he changed the rules. And he made it work. One man
against a powerful political system more than a century in the making. There
are time-honoured forces at play on the Hill that Angus simply defied. One
man.”
And in the last chapter:
“(Angus to his Prime Minister) Yet
you sacrificed your Finance Minister and delayed the tax cuts. Why?” asked
Angus.”
“In the silence and dark of night,
while the city slept, I simply asked myself the
one question that seems to have guided your foray into public life.
‘What is right for the country?’ It won’t be always so easy to answer that
question, but in this case, it was quite straightforward, as you know,”
explained the Prime Minister.
“Aye, the course was clear, sir. I
commend your decision,” replied Angus.
The standard response to any proposal of this belief,
fictional or otherwise, is ‘Yes, but it takes political will!’, in other words,
‘not bloody likely’ which is purely lazy thinking and a just plain dumb response.
What I have learned from Terry Fallis’ Angus is that simply takes ‘personal will’ so we don’t have to wait
for someone else to kick this donkey in the butt because we can more readily
kick our own butt, saving the time and expense of going to the farm if you are
rural voter, or going to the zoo if you are an urban voter.
I highly recommend this humour-coated, political meds to put
right whatever ails you or to reconnect your addled brains.
*Quotes generously permitted by the Author, Terry Fallis
