Themes, themes, everywhere themes

Posted on by


“Thinking back on her own life, she couldn’t say exactly at which crossroads she’d chosen the wrong path, the path that had made her the woman she was now, the woman she saw in the mirror before her.”

–Maurizio de Giovanni
Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone

This is not the kind of sentence I expect to read in a crime novel. But there it was, near the end, near the point at which all is to be revealed, the “Whodunnit?” question answered.

It jarred me, made me look inside myself, revisit themes that already were on my mind after finishing The Book of Joy—these themes: owning your decisions (and indecision); acknowledging responsibility for your own life and actions; making your life and world the best you can make them, no matter what comes at you that is beyond your control.

Sometimes, it seems, life has themes. Or perhaps they’re always there, and recognizing them is a matter of awareness and mindfulness. My theme right now is self-awareness and accepting responsibility for my own happiness. That I’m finding this theme in books as divergent as The Book of Joy and the crime novel Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone may say more about me than the books. Regardless, here’s what I can say about Darkness: it’s a crime novel that transcends its genre. It’s both gripping and thought-provoking, and I enjoyed it thoroughly—so much so that when I came across the above passage I stuck a placeholder bookmark in the page and kept on reading to get to the end. Gotta find out what happened, you know.

Having answered the “Whodunnit” question in Darkness, I’ve moved on to a very different book: Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande. Short summary so far: it sucks to grow old in the United States. But don’t let that stop you from reading this book; it’s marvelous, insightful and thought-provoking.

One other theme has been cropping up for me repeatedly: homelessness. I’ve recently come across several riveting works about or inspired by homelessness. Here’s one:

And this project undertaken by the middle-school class taught by a friend of mine:

Here’s a gorgeous poem that calls out what I think must be one of the worst aspects of homelessness: being made invisible:

And tonight when I arrived home, my husband told me about a cartoonist who has become homeless—someone whose work he knows, though he doesn’t know the man himself.

Homelessness is all around us, so this theme doesn’t surprise me. But it saddens me. I try to do three things to combat it in a small way: donate to food pantries and shelters; give all of my dollar bills to homeless panhandlers, who need them more than I; and look homeless people in the eye, even when I don’t have something to give them.

Whadd'ya think? Leave a Reply.