Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Reading White Oleander, by Janet Fitch. Right in the middle now. Through to the end of Chapter 17, Astrid is at Claire's. (OK, it's official, I do not remember names. I just had to look up Astrid's.) It's been too long since I've read anything not online; read anything that is not politics or technology, Drupal.

It is good. It reminds me that I am moved by words, no by narrative, as much as anything. That I am made to care about the characters.

Makes me realize that I want to care, to care deeply about the people I love, and that I want to be strong at the same time. To care also and about everyone in the world, and to be strong enough to do something that helps many people. Yet it is impossible to be everything, do everything even a single person needs. But caring and strength are the only ways to do anything, to start. That we need to be both at the same time.

That caring is, undeniably, vulnerability. Caring deeply feels like a physical weakness. That strength is... I'm not sure. But that it is more than a lack of vulnerability. If we are lucky strength has nothing to do with vulnerability. Being strong is, perhaps, a series of actions.

But like when lying in bed with one you love, the caring you want to expose and the strength you want to project do not necessarily go seamlessly together.

And it is harder to do out in the rest of the world, on a daily basis, because daily really means minute to minute, or at best hour to hour, actions based on caring. And that takes a lot of strength, strength I haven't shown yet.