So, the CD is just a small way for me to "spend" money on something other than momentary pleasure or paying off a credit debt incurred because I bought something I obviously couldn't really afford. Next up is opening an online stock account of some sort. E-Trade is the big name out there, obviously (you've probably seen their talking baby comercial,) but my dad suggested TD Ameritrade and so I felt a bit torn. Do I go with the talking baby, which obviously represents the ease and simplicity of investing with E-Trade or With Sam Waterston, the reliable and secure father figure from Law and Order? But then there's Ing Direct, the holder of my 403(b) retirement account. Arkadi Kuhlman, CEO of Savings, rides a motorcycle. I ride a motorcycle. And I already have a retirement account there. So, like I said, I bought a CD. I'll pick an online brokerage account later.
This week I read Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe. Being worlds different from any retelling of the story I've ever seen through visual media it was quite an interesting and eye opening read. It is mainly a book of one man's ability to find God whilst living alone for over twenty years. Although I think anyone would find someone to talk to in that amount of time, even a volleyball. But it is also about Crusoe's inability to be happy with the life he has been born to; what his father describes in the opening of the book as being somewhere in the middle of poor and rich. Not to poor to want for things to sustain him and not too rich to care what others think of him. This, alas, is insufficient for the young Crusoe who desires a life on the sea - a step below or above his station. A step down to be a seaman, a step up to be an officer. This fact doesn't stop him from following his dream. Even when nature, or God, intervenes to correct his desire to leave home and travel the world.
Crusoe is blown about by the wind and tossed upon the sea, he sallies forth. He is captured by pirates and made (though hidden in the thick language and only hinted at) into a sex slave. Being rescued he builds a quite successful life but apparently being buggered by pirates is not enough to keep Crusoe on land and he ventures, once again, onto the merciless sea - soon landing on his very own island where he is doomed (or privileged) to stay for the next 28 years.
As said, he finds God. He also shows what a good, solid, white man can do with raw nature when given, by divine providence, the proper tools with which to eek out an existence. He "finds" savages, or their left behind traces. Eventually finding and saving "Friday" his own personal savage (whom he later admits makes a far better Christian than he.)
"This frequently gave me occasion to observe, and that with wonder, that however it had pleased God, in His providence, and in the government of the works of His hand, to take from so great a part of the world of His creatures, the best uses to which their faculties and the powers of their souls are adapted; yet that He has bestowed upon them the same powers, the same reason, the same affections, the same sentiments of kindness and obligation, the same passions and resentments of wrongs, the same sense of gratitude, sincerity, fidelity, and all the capacities of doing good and receiving good, that He has given to us; and that when He pleases to offer to them occasions of exerting these, they are as ready, nay more ready to apply them to the right uses for which they were bestowed, than we are: and this made me very melancholly (sic) sometimes, in reflecting as the several occasions presented, how mean a use we make of all these, even though we have these powers enlightened by the great lamp of instruction, the spirit of God, and by the knowledge of His word, added to our understanding; and why it has pleased God to hide the like saving knowledge from so many millions of souls, who, if I might judge by this poor savage, would make a much better use of it than we did."
Quite enlightened for 1719, if I do say. It seems more like Defoe than Crusoe but then it is, at times, difficult for the writer to separate himself from the narrator. At any rate, the book is quite interesting up to the point at which Crusoe, along with Friday, leave the island and return (for Crusoe) to England. At this point the story looses cohesion and moves beyond the tale of a man adrift in the world (at sea as a castaway and within Crusoe's heart as a Christian) and moves into farce. Specifically, on a journey from Lisbon to France during which Crusoe (now quite wealthy) and Friday (along with a party of travelers) encounter wolves and a bear. The scene with the bear is exceptionally odd and out of place but, at least, somewhat within the realm of possible (though not probable) fiction. The wolves, however, are deployed in a manner not befitting any author worth his salt - a wolf pack numbering 300 wolves (the largest recorded wolf pack being the Druid pack and numbering, at its height, 30 animals.) Overall I was impressed with this book but could have used more substance near the end as was found throughout.
My next read will return me to the nonfiction realm with the book A History of the Arab Peoples, by Albert Hourani. Apparently I either am now or in the process of becoming quite the arm chair Arabist. Perhaps I am simply fascinated by the butting up of cultures against one another and nowhere is this more evident than in the history of the West and the Middle East. From Alexander the Great right up through Barack Obama and the current war in which West meets East on the battlefield of sand and religion.
Until next time...
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