To continue on books for a while.....another book that was very life altering for me was Barbara Kingsolver's "Prodigal Summer". I read it during the first summer after my husband died so I was pretty much like a sponge just soaking up anything that would allow me to feel alive again. It is not Kingsolver's best work, I like "Poisonwood Bible" better and it is a better written book but Prodigal made me start writing and writing made me start feeling and feeling made me start living again.

It is amazing to me that after experiencing chaos in our lives we can self-organize again. One thing one learns from being in chaos is that it is our friend. For example, and I digress here a bit, Hurricane Katrina was probably the result of some butterfly flapping it wings in Brazil and causing all the seemingly unrelated chaotic events that ended up being Katrina. A lot of things that didn't have anything to do with weather, per se, made Katrina happen. The healing of New Orleans will be the same, Chaos and self-organization. Chaos allow us to be reborn into a new human being or a city. I am not the same person I was 10 years ago. I am not even sure I would like the person I was ten years ago. My spiritual and physical "Katrina" reorganized me into someone I like better. Does this mean that horrid things have to happen to us before we can reach some kind of enlightenment? I hate to say it, but I think it is true. Of course there is no guarantee that the horrid thing will bring enlightenment. It could just make you bitter or hateful or a victim and/or catatonic. The question looms though, will New Orleans be better? I sure could be. Then again it could become a plastic disneyesque version of it former self.

Another book, "Into the Forest", by someone I can't remember was so impressive that I am going to go to Amazon right now and buy another copy. It was the first book I read in my book club and everyone else pretty much hated it.