Summer Flowers, Reads, and Writing

Hello Dear Blog Readers,

First, let me explain the pictures above. The first two are of the giant hen of the hens and chicks that is giving off a beautiful show in its end. After it flowers, it will die and slowly start to decompose giving nutrients to all the little chicks that have come from her.

The second picture is of the purple coneflowers (Echinacea) that are a native plant that bees and birds enjoy a lot. I have even cut some of the flowers off and dried the petals for Echinacea tea, which is good for when you get a cold.

Above, the first picture is a tall American Bellflower plant. You can make tea from the roots and in Korea it is used a lot and is called 도라지 (Doraji) and it is very healthy, similar to ginseng (but not as expensive) from what I know. There is a certain type of bee that really likes this flower.

The second picture is just lavender and marigolds that have voluntarily come up around it and are blooming. You can also see a bee in the top rights corner of the picture enjoying the lavender.

Moving on, I have managed to read two books this summer so far and I am trying to start a third one.

The first one is this year's Big Read for Purdue and the surrounding community, Aunty Lee's Delights by Ovidia Yu, which is a murder mystery that is set in Singapore. It was entertaining and I read it very fast, strong Agatha Christie vibes coming off of that one. The endingg reminded me a little bit of the musical Sweeney Todd even though I have never seen it, but you know the song The Worst Pies in London. If you don't, check it out on YouTube.

The second book was a collection of short stories called After the Sun by Jonas Eika. It was unique and surreal. I think there was a lot of sex or sexual stuff going on, but diguised or written in a way that wasn't explicit. It was also a lot about critcisng the world economic systems from what I could tell and the human condition of wanting to connect to something larger than ourselves. I am not sure how I feel about it, but the writing style was interesting for sure.

I am trying to start There There by Tommy Orange. I can tell you that the prologue was enough to make me cry. It goes through the brutal history of violence and attempted genocide of Native Americans by white European settlers and later by the U.S. and its citizens. It is stuff that I have not been taught or even things I have learned in my own independent research, but sure enough I could go online and find the information easily. I am going to try to read this book, but I am also quite busy with writing.

I won't say too much about how the novel draft is going that I am writing, but I have written about 114 pages now. I am not going to say anymore about how Clark and I are similar because that might get embarrassing.

I am not sure if it is because of the Bible Project that I have told y'all about in a previous post, but this year they are diving into Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, which can be found in the book of Matthew chapters 5-7. Anyway, not only that, but I am learning about how the Biblical story is all a unified narrative and how everything goes back to the Garden of Eden at the beginning and ends with this Garden of Eden state returning to earth some day with Jesus' ultimate victory and reign.

These themes of Eden being paradise and how humans lost paradise in the fall are apparent a bit in my novel whether I realized it or not. I have been thinking a lot about this theme of paradise lost. I am going to make an effort to go to the local used bookstore soon and try to find a copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost and also John Steinbeck's East of Eden. I read East of Eden my freshman year of high school and thought it was boring and didn't like it, but I feel the need to revisit it.

As a result, I have found myself going back to my prose about smells. I have written two more this summer even though I said I was done, but find that sometimes an idea just comes and I have to write it quickly. I will share my forty-fifth one that I wrote on the smells of Paradise Lost. I realize by publishing it here that I risk not being able to get it published anywhere else or as part of a collection later from what I understand, but still would like to share it here.

XLV. The Smells of Paradise Lost - June 25, 25, 2024 Once exiled from Eden, forced from its boundaries, what smells did Adam and Eve notice once paradise was lost?

Dirty smells. Did they start to notice how the other didn't always smell like new rain, flowers, or fresh fruit, but instead smelled dirty from sweat, passing gas, or morning breath? Did they then think of paradise lost?

Sickening smells. Did they for the first time see and smell death? Did they encounter a dead animal decomposing with flies buzzing all around or vultures swooping down to feast on the rotten flesh and blood? Did they become nauseous and even vomit, smelling the vile half digested food coming out of their own bodies? Did they then think of paradise lost?

Evil smells. Did they come to a community and see a couple fighting, perhaps a husband hitting his wife? Did they see a shepherd secretely take a lamb from its mother of another shepherd's flock? Did they smell the desire for illegitimate power or the desire for more, greed? Did it smell so toxic that they quickly turned away because they could hardly breathe? Did they then think of paradise lost?

Adam and Eve must've known how much they lost just by the smells, the stench of being human, away from living completely and fully with God and his love that not only covers, but cannot coexist with a single whiff of an unpleasant smell. Paradise smells like God, and that cannot be described wholly by anyone living outside of paradise.

I hope everyone continues to take care of yourself and of those whom you love.