{"id":1734,"date":"2012-11-07T18:28:31","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T02:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2012-11-07T18:28:31","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T02:28:31","slug":"ghostly-debates-at-sea-10042012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1734","title":{"rendered":"Ghostly Debates \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [10\/04\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Everyone has the one aspect of their job that they dread doing. For a lot of the librarians in the fleet that\u2019s bridge. Bridge players can be nasty, overly serious and sometimes downright rude. Especially if they think you should be the one in charge and therefore able to solve all their problems no matter how impossible.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mind bridge, not particularly.<\/p>\n

For me, my dread is book club.<\/p>\n

I hate<\/i> book club.<\/p>\n

Even as a voracious reader myself I\u2019ve never had any desire to join<\/i> a book club, let alone lead<\/i> one!<\/p>\n

I never have any idea of what to say, or what to do, or how to sound remotely like I know what I\u2019m talking about, plus three quarters of the time the books are ones I don\u2019t even like and would never choose! For example, on one of my previous ships I had to lead the book club for Gardens of Water<\/i>, most depressing racist (against more than one race) horrible book ever written. I actually pitched it against the wall several times while forcing my way through it. The book club though, loved it. This confused the heck out of me, because a few weeks prior to that I had given the same group Annie Freedman\u2019s Fabulous Travelling Funeral<\/i> which I personally think is brilliant. I mean it isn\u2019t high art or anything like that, but it\u2019s a good travel read with a positive message. They detested it. Personally I thought at the time that it made them think about things they didn\u2019t want to think about, lost friendships and such, I still think that. Gardens of Water<\/i> however? They loved. I had to practically sew my mouth shut every meeting to prevent myself saying something that would get me in trouble because I thought the book was disgusting.<\/p>\n

Experiences like this are why I hate book club.<\/p>\n

Fortunately this time around I have actually got an excellent group, they\u2019ve taken the time to get to know me and they aren\u2019t condescending as many of my other book groups in the past have been. Often when someone much younger than the mean age of the group is running the group, her opinions are completely dismissed (back when I was going through Annie Freedman<\/i> with that other group, I always got hit with \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t understand you\u2019re too young\u201d).<\/p>\n

This time we were reading Lisa See\u2019s Peony In Love<\/i>, this put me in a particularly interesting position as Peony<\/i> is, at its heart, a ghost story and if there\u2019s one thing I know perhaps too well, it\u2019s ghost stories.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to see how different people interact with a subject that you have made an unofficial study of most of your life. It\u2019s also interesting to see how people hear what they want<\/i> to hear, not what you\u2019re actually saying. Today was the only time that got slightly heated, because there were two women who were bound and determined to contradict what they thought<\/i> I was saying, not what I actually was. The exchange went something like this:<\/p>\n

One thing I think is interesting and is worth touching on is the contrast between the idea of ghosts etc in the culture depicted in the book, and the modern western concept of \u2018ghosts\u2019\u2026the majority of western popular culture doesn\u2019t really encourage belief..<\/i><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t even get to finish the sentence which would have been \u201cin the supernatural and yet and yet in the historical culture presented here it\u2019s not only a part of everyday life, it\u2019s expected and respected to believe in ghosts\u201d<\/p>\n

Immediately these two women jump on me and get really defensive<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not true! The church has saints! We believe in the spiritual realm<\/i><\/p>\n

That\u2019s\u2026not what I was trying to say<\/i><\/p>\n

But we do! You can\u2019t say western culture has no belief in spiritual realms!<\/i><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t! That\u2019s not what I\u2019m\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

What about the Holy Ghost ?? What about the trinity!?<\/i><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the kind of comparison I\u2026.<\/i><\/p>\n

And this goes back and forth for a few minutes and they simply will not<\/i> let me finish my thought. Finally I actually was forced to raise my voice.<\/p>\n

Excuse me!! I need you to really listen to what I\u2019m actually saying here, because I don\u2019t think I\u2019m saying what you think I am. Historically speaking there has of course been a parallel chain of belief in the supernatural in almost every religion, and if you look far enough back you\u2019ll probably find all those beliefs are very similar because they\u2019re all rooted in the same place, that\u2019s not what I\u2019m talking about. I\u2019m talking about modern western culture. And I\u2019m not talking spirituality, or religion, I\u2019m talking ghosts, there is \u2013 in the mind of most people \u2013 a difference. What I\u2019m trying to say is this: Look at the way Hollywood portrays ghosts: twilight, paranormal activity I II and III, Halloween, is any of that really a serious way of portraying the concept? I hardly think so. *that* is what I am getting at. The concept of ghosts and the supernatural in modern western culture tends to be very sensationalized, glamourized and frankly falsified, that hardly is a respectful or serious way of portraying the concept. Contrast that to what is portrayed in the setting of the book. Where you would be considered crazy not to believe in ghosts. NOW do you see what I\u2019m getting at?<\/i><\/p>\n

And they all looked at me and blinked<\/p>\n

Oh\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Ghosts\u2026.might be the one topic of discussion you don\u2019t want to tangle with me on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone has the one aspect of their job that they dread doing. For a lot of the librarians in the fleet that\u2019s bridge. Bridge players can be nasty, overly serious and sometimes downright rude. Especially if they think you should … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-grand-asiaaustralia-2012"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-rY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}