My Roller Coaster

For those of you who know me you'll know that my life as of late has been a bit of a roller coaster. Ups and downs, all around (you can see it in my blog posts) - but hopefully, all with a better purpose in the end. Living in Vietnam, the novel The Quiet American bears an omnipresent resonance here. In my search for a picture of a roller coaster, I came upon the blog of My Cocaine, a literary critic in Arizona. His/her account of The Quiet American is here:

"In a work like The Quiet American, the roller coaster is much different. Greene wants us to go down, down, down psychologically, corresponding to the up, up, up of a roller coaster like The Superman, that rises seemingly indefinitely until it plummets back to the surface. It’s during this free fall that we realize with spine-shuddering certainty the mess we’re in as human beings, the mess Greene is trying to present to us. The regret – no, the sadness that Thomas Fowler expresses in the final paragraphs is the same sadness we sometimes realize when presented with the world in all its miserable, desolate glory. The book, in other words, does not move even slightly into the realm of optimism at the end, but remains firmly entrenched in the pessimism that humans are and always will be wretched creatures."

And it's interesting, with the weeks I've had, that I do not agree with this interpretation of the human condition. I fundamentally believe that we are all essentially good and our sorry, painful and loathsome spirits are only ignited in the pursuit of that goodness. And that's how I will exit this week. With hope. With love. With dedication to improve my condition. An that of those around me. I understand the reference to Cocaine in reference to blogging. This is my drug. My addiction. My healthy obsession. Thanks for coming along for the ride. This is the only place I can go to seek total refuge from the world around me and I'm happy you all choose to share it with me - my sanctuary - my cocaine, as well - my roller coaster of life.