“Broken Harbor” by Tana French

When I first picked up this book, I was a little sad that French decided to write with Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy as the main character. He annoyed me a lot during “Faithful Place” and I wasn’t really looking forward to getting inside his head that much. Having said that, French does an amazing job of making him an interesting and relatable character, while staying true to the image that we get from “Faithful Place” as well.

The most interesting aspect of this book that I find is how it raises several moral questions that she hasn’t really addressed in her other books. I’ll give a brief overview of them, with some discussion.

-What is the role of the police? Scorcher is of the belief that police simply follow the rules and have no wiggle room for moral judgement or decisions. Richie, his rookie assistant, believes that is an impossible task for anyone, let alone someone dealing with crimes on a regular basis. In the end, Scorcher does come to agree with Richie, but it wrecks his career in the process. I believe that this demonstrates that French agrees with Richie, no one’s perfect and therefore they cannot tune out of the morality of the situation, but since the detectives are supposed to do the impossible and do that, it means that they cannot be that inshakable police force anymore. Of course, this reveals the flaw in the system: that ordinary humans cannot perform this role without shutting down their humanity.

-Sanity. The victim, Pat Spain, started showing signs of unhinging after losing his job. What would it take for anyone to go over that edge? I don’t have a clear answer for this one, other than it involves losing everything dearest to you and varies person to person. French seems to think the same.

-What punishment do people deserve? Does the perpetrator deserve to die, or can they be given a shot at life? And what kind of life, while we’re at it? A fulfilling, happy one, or a wretched one? This is particularly relevant now, since many states have started to stop using the death penalty, but it’s still an ongoing debate. French seems to side with the idea that people deserve life, and a slightly decent one.

Similarly, she thinks that this fate is one that people should fight for, and risk a lot in order to ensure that it gets carried out. When you are a part of a murder investigation, you have a lot of people’s lives in your hands, and you should risk a lot to make sure that they are treated well. That’s the responsibility that you accept with the job. The exact point where you stop working for that is unclear, but characters risk their job, lives, and livelihood for this goal.

-How does your mental state and your idea of how others see you affect how you see yourself? This is a concept that affects several characters, notably Scorcher and Jenny Spain. Scorcher tries to preserve his image as a tough guy so that his colleagues respect him. Similarly, he then sees himself as the crime fighting machine that he has to be and gets the job done. Jenny on the other hand needs to hide aspects of her life from the neighbors so that she could keep on living, but that leads to becoming a recluse. In both cases, what ends up destroying them is their view of themselves, which to them is directly related to how others see them. Conor’s outlook ends up being healthier, as he is always insisting on doing his own thing and not caring about everyone else. Of course, not everyone is that strong, so a balance is probably the best.

-Suicide. Two characters contemplate killing themselves, and one is successful. There isn’t a whole ton of discussion about the circumstances of it, but French probably did that intentionally to show how there is never a concrete reason for it. She focuses on the aftermath and how it tore apart the family, and then shows how that saves the other character’s life. She seems to think that there is always something to live for, even if it isn’t apparent at the time.

-Do murder victims get what’s coming to them? Or can bad things happen to good people? These are the views of Scorcher and Richie, respectively. This is another one that I don’t have the answer to. French seems to think that both of them are right, murder victims do get what’s coming to them, but the circumstances of that can result from bad things happening to good people. Like everything else, there is no clear answer.

As you can tell, this book is loaded. Despite all of that though, the case is still fascinating, and the characters are well-written. The book manages to stay cohesive as a whole while raising all of these separate problems and issues. It seems to be a recurring theme in her novels that the case relates to a past event in the detective’s life that then destroys them. Which is getting a little old, to be honest, but there’s enough change up with the circumstances and the characters that it’s not that bad. Yet.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (and how it relates to Buddhism)

All my friends have been obsessed with this tv show forever, and I’ve finally gotten around to watching it. I really like it, for a children’s show it’s really well developed and realistic. What I find really interesting is the history behind the ideas shown on the show, such as the Buddhist influences and the classical elements.

Obviously, there’s a lot of influences from Buddhism in this show. Let’s start with the parallels of the Avatar and the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is the bodhisattva of compassion, as in he is an enlightened being who decided to remain on earth to help the rest of us along. As such, he is continually reincarnated every time that he dies. This is similar to the general concept of the Avatar, the Avatar is a being who bridges the gap between the physical and the spirit world and maintains peace. They both are here to help the rest of the world, and are continually reincarnated. There are a few differences though. For the Dalai Lama, his state is achievable by anyone, which is the nature of Buddhist enlightenment. Becoming the Avatar isn’t really possible. Also the relationship of the Avatar to the spirit world is very important for what he does. Buddhism does not really focus on their equivalent of the spirit world. There are several different planes that contain different spirits, but many of them are vestigial from when Buddhism developed out of Hinduism and are not essential to the religion.

Then there’s how they select the next Dalai Lama or Avatar. The Avatar reincarnates into the next element in the cycle, obviously the Dalai Lama has nothing like that, but the monks usually know where the next one will pop up because of a statement from the previous Dalai Lama or something like that. However, the actual mechanism is the same. In one of Aang’s memories, they said that he selected the same toys as the previous Avatar. This is basically how they find the next Dalai Lama. After meditating on his location (and if he was cremated noting which way the smoke blew) they present objects to kids that they determine are possibilities that all look similar, but one belonged to the previous Dalai Lama. This procedure is repeated several times. It’s pretty fascinating really.

Of course, the lifestyle of the air nomads is the most similar to a Buddhist monk. You only ever see Aang meditating heavily, and the Air leaders are referred to as “monks” as well. Their shaved heads and clothing resemble them as well.

Just in passing really, but one of the swamp guys mentioned that he reached enlightenment underneath a tree. This is the same as the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. Zuko’s journey is also pretty similar to his as well.

Then there’s the elements. The classical elements get mentioned in many different cultures, but they are most similar to the ones described as the Five Classical Elements of Hinduism and Buddhism. These are earth, air, water, fire, and aether. Aether is the fifth element and is more intangible than the others. It’s basically nothingness, space, what have you. It’s shown as the Avatar state or energy bending in the series.

It’s a very well thought out series, of course I have heard rough things about the first half of “Legend of Korra”, so I hope I can get through it all right. :/

LGBTQ Month

Ok so here’s the thing about Obama declaring June to be LGBTQ month, it’s a good idea, I fully support it, but it also completely ignores asexuals. And I get it, I understand why, but I’m still not happy about it.

So the way I understand it, there are two main ways of thinking about asexuals and the greater LGBTQ community. Either people think that they don’t belong because they aren’t discriminated against the way that gay or trans people are, or they do belong because screw heteronormativity.

And I completely understand why having a pride month would go with the former method of thought, especially since Obama is trying to frame it as a way to recognize those who are discriminated against in society.

But completely ignoring asexuals isn’t helping anything really.

By not acknowledging an entire group of people, you are effectively excluding them from a group that they should be a part of. And creating a rift in the community itself.

Asexuals feel alienated enough as it is, due to both heteronormativity and allonormativity (allosexuals are people who feel sexual attraction). Excluding them from the LGBTQA community only extends this.

And if the endgame here is to raise awareness of all sexual orientations, then asexuals should be included anyways. Because they don’t get enough awareness as it is.

So that’s my thoughts on this subject, again I get why this problem exists, I just am really unhappy about it.

Endings Suck

The thing about endings for me isn’t so much that it reminds you that time is passing, it’s that people are separating and times are changing. Time passing I think is pretty good, as long as it’s passing while you’re with friends and people that you love. Then you’re getting to know each other better, and spending more time together. It’s when you separate that I get depressed.

I dislike being away from people, to the point when I was younger that reading sections of books without all the characters gave me some anxiety (but that’s pretty extreme). And I’m an introvert so I need space a lot of the time, but not knowing where people are and what they’re doing gets me anxious. Partly it’s whether they’re doing ok or not, but it’s also whether they’re all hanging out without me (mmm that social anxiety). And I’m really bad at keeping in touch with people unless we get together on a regular basis, so I know that there’s a period of no communication coming up.

Then there’s this fear of change. It’s stupid, life is change, just need to accept that and stop fretting about it. The problem is that life has periods of time with a lot of change and periods of time with little change. So you get used to one level of change and then it switches to another and throws you for a loop. It’s something I know I have to work on.

I had a writer friend a while ago who had this quote about how it isn’t so much growing up and changing that separates us, it’s growing separately and taking different paths that really divides us. I think that sums this up very well.