I’ve been reading blogs out of Burma this month. I wont get into the current crisis or the Myanmar militia because there are much better writers in far better positions to discuss it. I wont even comment on the US media relegating the story to ‘Page 9′ or CNN and Fox News choosing to headline with Burgers and Brian’s Blog instead(!) I just want to do a bit of linkage.

Ko Htike’s Prosaic Collection
Burma’s Cyber Dissidents (BBC)
Protests Falter (The Guardian)

“The Church Without Christ…where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.” - Wise Blood

I’m a huge fan of Flannery O’Connor so when someone asked me to name my favourite novel I said Wise Blood.

Partly because the characters are, if not wholly understood, at least wholly familiar. Despite growing up around an assortment of Evangelicals and Foundation types I managed for the most part to maintain a pretty superficial view of them. Things like snake handling and female oppression were odd but ordinary and because of this ordinary I never spent too much time thinking about the misguided spirituality that a lot of it sat upon. Through a glass darkly, and all that.

Mostly, I’m moved to recommend Wise Blood again and again because it’s such a brilliantly layered and grotesque comedy with powerful and appealing themes of integrity, the disaffected young and redemption. It’s just one of those books you never really walk away from. Not really.

What about you. If you had to name your favourite novel: What would it be?

I should be in bed. Dreaming. Or at least trying to. It’s one of the reasons I’ve put off having children - I’d rather have sleep. But I’m not getting any. Insomnia does not rock.

When I was ten I went seven months not sleeping Sunday through Thursday. I’d snooze fine on Fridays and Saturdays (Exhaustion maybe?) but the rest of the time…

I’d go to bed at the usual hour. Lay in the black until everyone else was down for the night. Then I’d crawl from my bunk into the bathroom where I’d sit and stare at my toes and go over Pacman strategy for 7 hours. When my dad’s alarm went off at 5am I’d sneak back in bed and pretend I was there all along.

I had trouble in school that year. Saw the principal for for a lot of things I didn’t do - didn’t remember doing anyway. I mean, you’re ten years old and you don’t sleep for four days straight…by day five you’ve gotta be feeling pretty out of it. Who knows who you make fun of on the playground or accuse of having lice in the girls toilets.

Anyhow, my teacher figured something was up. She just didn’t know what. I think she thought I was on drugs. I know she thought I was peddling pornography (I had a crush on Rembrandt and brought a photocopy of his Danae to class…bible belt, whatcha gonna do). The parents got called a few times.

I remember going through episodes of heavy confusion that year. Standing in the gym, watching the room flip upside down. Seeing a giant black dot on top of Bo Duke’s head. Feeling like I was stuck in a vortex of swirling pre-pubescent ants. I hallucinated a lot. Seriously. In college I spent three weeks on third shift as a Subway Sandwich Technician and had some pretty heavy trips. Because:

I’m Buffy and I grew up in way-back Appalachia - not exactly on Walton’s Mountain, but not far from it either. I came to the UK in 98 as a postgrad. Plan was to leave after a year. Plans change. If you look real hard you can find me in X and Y.

I use to study victimology. Offender profiling. All the stuff those CSI-type shows try to be. Worked around it. Hung out in the middle of it. And walked away from it because, why waste time doing something you loathe - or something that loathes you - when you could be doing something you love. Now I’m a struggling writer. Of a sort. I work part time for X because I like things like food and roofs. If it were up to me, and money grew on trees, I’d do nothing but read. And write. And eat Cheetohs.

I was never a big contemporary fiction fan. Until last year. I had the opportunity to attend a lecture given by a certain British novelist. Picked up ‘On Beauty’ because I had to and ‘Atonement’ because I wanted to. Now, here I am…

I don’t, as a rule, post photos of other people’s children. But after gaining special permission from their mother, I think you’ll agree I couldn’t pass this one up.

Whenever I’m asked to list a ‘best feature’ I say HEAD. Not because I’m smart or anything, but because my forehead is large and it’s usually the thing people notice first. If I’m pressed to be serious, I say EYES. Because they’re right below my forehead and people notice them next.

A perfectly acceptable optometrist sends me to a specialist because she doesn’t like the “yellow tint” to my eyes. She mentions something about bad livers and bad health and since it’s the NHS I have to wait six months to find out I’m not jaundiced.

My mother, who has known me all my life, insists I wear contacts. “But they look yellow,” she’s always saying. I have to let her rub my eyeballs to prove I don’t.

And you know that Euro of mine, he tells me it was my eyes (so much for personality girls) that drew him to me.

“It was Gatwick. Three a.m.” he says. “You had on a black skirt and no makeup. I remember looking at those big gold eyes and thinking how beautiful they were…how beautiful you were.” He always rolls his own right about here because he’s English and the sentiment is getting him nauseous. “I think I said something to that effect at the time.”

He didn’t. What he said was this: “You have amazing eyes. They’re just like Amber’s.” Amber was his chocolate Labrador.

Lucky for me, he loved that Lab.

Went something like this…

Adam was sick when daddy killed hiself. Had an ole boil swolled up under his arm. That baby was in so much pain it screamed for a week. Lorrie kept him on her hip for a right smart spell. Cause mommy couldn’t done it.

Seemed like she had just lost little Lawrence. Now, that was the sweetest thing you ever seen. So full of love. And with the prettiest hair. He died and her and daddy never did get back to being the same. Course she’d had another baby die too and that was hard on her. And daddy losing his leg weren’t much help. Neither that or his being a man - or a half a man like he thought he was.

We women, we can stand more. It’s why we live longer. But men…they’d rather fight all sorts of demons than cry or be weak. Daddy liked to drink. It’s why mommy kept his guns hid. I reckon she knew. Or thought she might.

You see a thing like that, it’s bound to bother you. I was eleven. Too young to understand what really happened. And too old not to.