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Heart of Darkness
27/06/2006 11:58 pmjust before pottering into Cyberia, Iz was listening to the Radio National book reading which for the last week (or is it two?) has been Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" For a long long time, been meaning to get around to reading this - just the title alone has this serpent most intrigued indeed.
First thing was triggering off the memory that in secondary school for English - in our year there was two major books as well at the selection of nine or so shorter and more modern novels. Some schools chose both but most picked one. Izzie had always been most peeved indeed that we did not get to do Conrad's "Lord Jim" but Jane Austen's "Persuasions". Since then, the Iz has developed an absolute pathological hatred of that whining boring fuddy duddy old bat. Read the damned thing at least four times from beginning to end and hated every damn minute of it but at least we could be a total snark in the exam and have evidence to back our bitchy opinions. Can't quite remember what they were but certainly not flattering.
So - looks like Mr Kurtz and friends might be worth a further peek. It is not as creepy and evil as we'd hoped so far but now the protaganist has finally met this mysterious creature and things are looking up.
But why bother with the imaginary worlds when the true darkness is in mundane muggle land. Last night at work, one of the residents had the TV on and there was some newsflash and the only bit Iz caught was that there was some story breaking and there'd be more details as they became available. Automatically assumed that it had something to do with the World Cup or East Timor. No - something smaller and infinitely spookier. The body of an 8 year old girl had been found in a toilet block in a suburban shopping centre.
It was today more details came out. The girl was with her uncle and 12 year old brother. They went to the men's toilet and she to the girls toilets and when she had not returned after ten minutes they assumed that she had gone down the exit to the car park (A lot of shopping centre toilets are down long corridors which also have exits to outside the building but cannot be opened from outside)
But she was not there and was eventually found in the disabled cubicle. Seems some stinking lump of slime had been lurking there awaiting some unsuspecting visitor to enter his lair.
It's not just the fact she was murdered and raped that the Iz finds so awful - but we can be almost sure of one thing - due to the inexplicable way that the human mind is programmed - the uncle and brother will spend the rest of their years blaming themselves for what happened and the dirty little rat who actually did the deed will probably portray himself as a poor little misunderstood victim who had a terrible childhood or at least will find a lawyer or two who will do so.
Izzie does not even know this family and is shocked and horrified by what happened (hot on the heels of a 15 year old girl being murdered last week by her two 16 year old so called friends) so can only begin to imagine what it must be like for her parents, siblings and other family members - her brother and uncle especially.
Some one has been arrested - in his early twenties and apparently is no stranger in the courts but had been clever enough never to leave enough evidence to be convicted.
Let's hope that this bugger does not get himself a solitary cell so that the other prison inmates can deliver the justice to him that the courts are unable to.
Iz visited this shopping centre once - last May when we visited Teresa with boxes of munchies. She was out that day so we went over to the shops which was about ten minutes walk from her house and thought that it was a nice new place - reasonably sized - not too big and not too small. Had a coffee or two and bought some bags of pecan nuts which were on special.
It just so so brought back memories of the little kid in Liverpool - Jamie Bolger who also disappeared in a shopping centre. Was living in Germany at the time and it was front page news even there. it was kind of like the 90's version of "Where were you when JFK was assassinated?"
So much for safe suburbia
First thing was triggering off the memory that in secondary school for English - in our year there was two major books as well at the selection of nine or so shorter and more modern novels. Some schools chose both but most picked one. Izzie had always been most peeved indeed that we did not get to do Conrad's "Lord Jim" but Jane Austen's "Persuasions". Since then, the Iz has developed an absolute pathological hatred of that whining boring fuddy duddy old bat. Read the damned thing at least four times from beginning to end and hated every damn minute of it but at least we could be a total snark in the exam and have evidence to back our bitchy opinions. Can't quite remember what they were but certainly not flattering.
So - looks like Mr Kurtz and friends might be worth a further peek. It is not as creepy and evil as we'd hoped so far but now the protaganist has finally met this mysterious creature and things are looking up.
But why bother with the imaginary worlds when the true darkness is in mundane muggle land. Last night at work, one of the residents had the TV on and there was some newsflash and the only bit Iz caught was that there was some story breaking and there'd be more details as they became available. Automatically assumed that it had something to do with the World Cup or East Timor. No - something smaller and infinitely spookier. The body of an 8 year old girl had been found in a toilet block in a suburban shopping centre.
It was today more details came out. The girl was with her uncle and 12 year old brother. They went to the men's toilet and she to the girls toilets and when she had not returned after ten minutes they assumed that she had gone down the exit to the car park (A lot of shopping centre toilets are down long corridors which also have exits to outside the building but cannot be opened from outside)
But she was not there and was eventually found in the disabled cubicle. Seems some stinking lump of slime had been lurking there awaiting some unsuspecting visitor to enter his lair.
It's not just the fact she was murdered and raped that the Iz finds so awful - but we can be almost sure of one thing - due to the inexplicable way that the human mind is programmed - the uncle and brother will spend the rest of their years blaming themselves for what happened and the dirty little rat who actually did the deed will probably portray himself as a poor little misunderstood victim who had a terrible childhood or at least will find a lawyer or two who will do so.
Izzie does not even know this family and is shocked and horrified by what happened (hot on the heels of a 15 year old girl being murdered last week by her two 16 year old so called friends) so can only begin to imagine what it must be like for her parents, siblings and other family members - her brother and uncle especially.
Some one has been arrested - in his early twenties and apparently is no stranger in the courts but had been clever enough never to leave enough evidence to be convicted.
Let's hope that this bugger does not get himself a solitary cell so that the other prison inmates can deliver the justice to him that the courts are unable to.
Iz visited this shopping centre once - last May when we visited Teresa with boxes of munchies. She was out that day so we went over to the shops which was about ten minutes walk from her house and thought that it was a nice new place - reasonably sized - not too big and not too small. Had a coffee or two and bought some bags of pecan nuts which were on special.
It just so so brought back memories of the little kid in Liverpool - Jamie Bolger who also disappeared in a shopping centre. Was living in Germany at the time and it was front page news even there. it was kind of like the 90's version of "Where were you when JFK was assassinated?"
So much for safe suburbia
