Morning Fog and Silent Hill

If anything, apart from video games contributing to my excelled skills in problem-solving and my ability to converge and connect with students and their interests, they have, along with horror movies, contributed to my sense of paranoia so much so that I have fallen more into delusion than Cheech and Chong watching a thriller.

Today I drove to university at around eight in the morning. The temperature was around four degrees celsius, and there was a blanket of fog so thick around me that I was afraid of accidentally inhaling a cloud. I thrived on the excitement, though. I immediately gained an adrenalin rush because of hardly being able to see the road beneath me or the cars around me, which was a dangerous thing altogether. I managed to pull through, and I might have exaggerated my lack of vision a little, however there is something that I cannot exaggerate;

And that is my imagination. My imagination is a force that I recommend you do not reckon with. My imagination stretches far and wide like the original map of the world, and it stands taller than the tallest towers in the world and lower than Hades' dirty toenails. It is heavier than the conglomerated weight of all planets in existence, and is an ever-growing thing. It is on a complete other level, and that is what differentiates my thinking process to that of others.

There are many benefits to my differentiation, however there is moreso one large negative aspect that I wish did not exist. And that is my imagination's ability to grab all that it witnesses in scary movies, and replay them on a larger scale and a more detailed and evolved scale than the original footage it remembers, scaring me terribly. Today, my imagination did not cease to surprise me in a nasty manner, and fortunately for it and unfortunately for me it had the right atmosphere to do it in.

Looking out onto the pasture in front of my university car park, and having taken the photograph above, one thing came to my mind: Silent Hill. My mind decided to imagine Silent Hill and all of its ghastly images. I was praising the Gods for having been surrounded by other students who were equally as amazed by the fog as I was, not to my level obviously, otherwise I would have been running to class and that would not have resulted in any success due to the fact that I have not ran since my primary school relay sports games. 

I must admit, though, I do mildly revel in my imagination. It makes things very entertaining. Had I not had the imagination I currently have, I would have just seen the fog as fallen clouds - or just as mere fog. I would have walked to my class without the constant fear that I was being followed by demonic entities, assuming of course they would leave their warm and comfortable beds in such weather.

Tony Birch's Blood Review

I have never been too fond of Australian stories, and that may be because I live and was born in Australia, so the excitement of anything Australian has surely died down since my eyes first opened – however, Tony Birch’s Blood was beyond my expectations.

If anything, it is a story, a journey, one that you feel like you are taking along with the main characters, Jesse and Rachel. Their journey was a tough one, reaching several climaxes and in each, I screamed internally, “no, no! Please don’t die!” And luckily enough, my wishes were answered. Throughout the book, which took me two days to read, I thoroughly connected with these young characters, and connected with every other Australian thing in the story – the ‘Scotch Finger’ and ‘Monte Carlo’ biscuits, the pies, the ‘servo’, the ‘jacks’, the Aboriginal paintings, and the famous ‘Commodore’. I felt at home the entire time.

And that is what was interesting about me reading this book. At first, I did not think that I would even want to connect with it at all, I had the motive of just finishing reading it for the sake of being slightly ahead of my Fiction class at university, and partly because I am excited to get on to the other three compulsory books. I like to be prepared, and in this case, I am glad that I am that way because it was the most interesting Australian read.

For its entirety I had not grown into boredom once. I was entertained, though in a negative way from all the violence, and the story played out in my mind just like a movie. I could picture the look on little Rachel’s face every time that she felt Jesse was emotionally slipping away, I could picture Jesses little pre-pubescent face as he tried to ‘step up’ to the bullies that they came across, and I could imagine the pain-stricken Gwen, the mother of these two children, who despite her best efforts in pleasing all of the men she had come across, failed her children to the point where her destructive lifestyle soon became theirs.

I automatically found myself wanting these children to evade the welfare, stick together and become reunited with their grandpa once again. I felt as though I was watching a documentary, only reading the subtitles. It all felt so real, and now that it is all finished, it still does not feel abstract. I still can see the children, dirtied with mud and blood and running through the back streets of the outskirts of Melbourne, my own hometown, trying not to bump into the criminals they are running from.

Tony Birch writes so brilliantly, in a down-to-earth manner, so as to make the reader feel as though they are not reading, which is in a way why this book was such an easy and fast read, just like my lecturer had made it out to be. It is addicting until the very last sentence, and captures every scenario in the most realistic way possible.

I do not regret spending double the money that I should have in the university bookshop to purchase this book, rather than waiting a couple of weeks after purchasing it online for around half the price I paid. I will gladly place it on my bookshelf, in its slightly withered state, and watch with pride as someone picks it up and asks me what it is about. “Home,” I will reply, “home.”