"The Same River Twice" part 1 blog

Throughout reading "The Same River Twice" by Chris Offutt I found it very interesting.  Within the first paragraph I found the writing to be very descriptive.  He says, "the ripples left by forgotten tides"(page 9).  I feel he is trying to say that some things happen and are always forgotten, but maybe they shouldn't be.  I enjoyed him writing about the outdoors and his experiences.  He says, "Cloud shadows are great fish moving swiftly overhead."(page 9) from this you can tell he is probably laying outside looking up at the moving clouds.  I enjoyed this quote because it reminded me of my childhood and something we would do as kids.

The book starts off with a Prologue where Offutt describes nature and its ability to have great power.  He talks about how nature will always be here wether we are here or not, and how it has always been here even before us.  This shows how great nature is and one shouldn't mess with its ability.  I find his quote, "I should be a rock sculptor, carving a mighty pantheon to rival the debris we left on the moon."(page 10) very interesting.  I feel he is trying to show the change over generations through living on earth.  

Through the reading he talks about his home and being married to Rita.  I found his description of Iowa interesting.  When he says, "Farmers have used the land so long that the richest soil in the nation is just old dirt."(page 11) I felt he was describing how much they use their land for agriculture very well.  I found it amusing when he had to ask his wife three different times to marry him, and the only time she said yes was on the morning of her birthday when she has just woken up.  He goes on to talk about their attempts at having a child.  He uses this part to show humor in his writing.  He says, "DNA merged into the corkscrew that resembled the Milky Way's spiral, Hermes' Staff, the swift helix of infant birth."(page 16).  I felt he uses great language in this quote, especially being a redneck from Kentucky.

  When describing his home town he says, "My hometown is a zip code with a creek."(page 19) I really liked this quote because it allows us to see how small his town was.  One of my favorite quotes was when he said, "The completed road linked the world to the hills, but failed to connect us to the world."(page 20).  He uses this to explain how no one ever gets out of the small town.  If you life there you will probably stay there and not have a chance to go outside into the unknown world.  I felt it was a pretty quick change for him leaving into the real world.  When he says, "I felt bad being the first to erode the family, though I had already been at it for awhile."(page 21), this definitely shows his will to get out of the small town and become his own person and have his own life.

When he got out of the town and into the city I thought it was interesting that he found somethings still to be the same.  He had a hard time fitting in and finding his place in the city.  I found it entertaining when he had mistaken the women in the laundromat.  He thinks they are from Harlem just because they are black and he soon finds out he is very wrong.  Not just that they are from Puerto Rico but also they have been speaking spanish and he has just figured out the language.  All along he had thought it was some strange dialect.  I found the situation with the hermaphrodite very disturbing but also thought of it as a situation one might be faced with being from such a small town.  He is having to figure out his new surroundings and has to learn from his mistakes.

His relationship with Jahi was very interesting.  He seemed to learn a lot from her.  I also felt that she allowed him to figure out more of who he was.  He says, "Some of the pages held my full name and place of birth on every line to remind me that I lived."(page 34).  I felt he is saying that he felt more alive when he was at home rather than in the city somewhat alone.  Even though he has Jahi, I feel he is second guessing himself.  After reading all about her embarrassing or always making fun of him in public, I felt bad for him.  I was really proud of him when he said, "I hung up on her laughter and never saw her again."(page 37).  From this we can tell that he is standing up for himself and not following what others say or feel about him. Another part I liked a lot was when he was talking about him and his roommates and said, "We were all foreigners in the land of the free."(page 45).  I felt he is saying that even though we are all different we are free to be who we want to be.  We can all come together and get along fine just by being ourselves.