Before long, my boss comes to the barn and asks me to help her with her cow, Pearl. She has electric wire wrapped around her back legs and it’s cutting into her skin. The problem is, Pearl is a Highland cow, an enormous breed of cattle that are hugely shaggy and not only that, she has massive horns. I throw on a raincoat and head into the drizzle to rescue a cow.

Pearl is tied by her horns to the fence and she’s not happy about it. My boss Joanne says the plan is to move her to a different fencepost, where Matthew and I will squish her between a gate and the fence, while Joanne tries to clip the wire off her legs. And we’ll all try not to get smoked in the face by deadly hooves. Piece of cake.

We move Pearl from fencepost to fencepost, trying to keep the rope from going slack, but it does and every time Pearl goes berserk, bucking and kicking, trying to run away. We tie her head right up to the fence and wait for Matthew to come. Pearl throws her head violently, barely missing my head and she knocks the gate off its hinges. I scream “Whoa”. Pearl’s eyes roll and she foams at the mouth. I yell “Shush” to get her to back off but she presses herself against the gate.  Joanne and I brace the gate and she hollers for Matt to come. We move Pearl to another fencepost.

I grab the pliers and a halter from the garage and give them to Joanne. I slip inside the pasture and Matt and I grab an old gate. He stands at one end and I at the other. We press Pearl into the fence and Joanne starts tentatively clipping wire off Pearl’s hooves. Pearl kicks out and violently jumps, tossing her head and bucking. I manage to keep hold of the gate and Matt manages to not get gored. We reposition the fence and Joanne tries again. The old farm dog Kashmir nips at Pearl. He thinks he’s helping, but he’s agitating her more. I shoo him away. Pearl lurches and Joanne scrambles away but Pearl doesn’t throw a tantrum. Joanne snips the remaining wire off her legs. I can see that the wire cut the cow’s legs but it looks like it should heal on its own. Joanne slips the rope off her horns and on the count of three Matt and I remove the gate. Pearl doesn’t move.

After all that, she doesn’t even walk away once she’s free. I trudge back to the cooler. Maybe peony sorting isn’t so bad.

Before long I have to slow down for my poor dog’s sake. He has joint issues and even though he’s been sound for a long time, he’s not in shape. A black van passes me with the logo of a plumber plastered on the side in white letters. The man driving it cranes his neck to watch me as he passes by. Creep. The van pulls off to the side of the road, in the entrance to the conservation area I run in. I ignore the van and scoot in the gates behind the van. Samson gets distracted by something beside the path so I stop to let him sniff and pee if he has to. I’m about a hundred feet away from the still idling van. The passenger rolls down his window and looks at me. After a few uncomfortable seconds I lift my hands up in a “what?” gesture. The guy mirrors my actions and shrugs. I roll my eyes, use all my will power not to flip the guy off, yank my dog’s leash and keep running. I see the van remain in the corner of my eye. After a few minutes, the van pulls out of the drive and continues driving. Weird, but not abnormal enough to be suspicious.

Once I’m in the conservation area I take Samson down to the creek for a drink. I tiptoe across the dry creek bed until I reach the water. The dam must be open and the water level is low. Samson splashes into the water, getting wet up to his elbows. He noisily drinks and drinks. When he’s finally done, he slobbers all over me and we keep going. We’re less than halfway done and Samson seems exhausted. I walk the rest of the trail, only running up the hills. We slip out of the forest through a break in the barbed wire fence, back onto the road. The air is a bit warmer, and I enjoy the sun and brisk walk. Samson pants and looks up at me happily. He’s shedding like a maniac, and bits of dog hair cling to my pants and surround him like a halo. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m Samson’s favourite person. He follows me around all day when I’m home, and he mopes by the front door when I’m not. He sleeps outside my room and when he goes to bed before I do, he whines and stays awake until I go to bed. However, he’s also drooly, hairy, smelly and it’s aggravating when I can’t be anywhere in my house without a dog attached to my hip.

When we get home I get him fresh water and put him on his chain outside.

Birds chirp.

Sun shines.

Samson pants.

Life’s good.

I’ve never talked to my mother about what happened. Did that man just innocently want to show us his cats? Or were his motives more sinister? I’ve thought a lot about that incident. My mother obviously never had him charged. He still lives a few minutes away from our house. I don’t know if she yelled at him or if she just smiled graciously and pretended it was normal for her kids to get into stranger’s cars. The whole thing was weird. Did he want to kidnap us? If he did, he wasn’t very smart about it. It was broad daylight, he let us call our mom and he had lettering on his truck. On the other hand, who picks up three little kids to show him his cats?

I trudge upstairs, where it is even colder than in my room. I complain about the cold, Dad complains about the lack of coffee. Just when he gets the generator started to make himself coffee, the power flickers back on. He’s fed my horses since he was concerned about their safety. There are branches and trees down all over my fence and within my fence but none have hit it, and my animals are safe.

After mindless TV watching and breakfast, I get outside with my brother to clean up the backyard. The poplar trees that line our property are old and half dead. Poplars aren’t strong; they’re just big weeds. Every tree has branches down due to the heavy ice coating them and the terrible windstorm during the night. I feel bad for my horse. He’s hock-deep in mud and he hasn’t been dry for three days. I feed him an apple as a peace offering. He licks my hand and nibbles on my hat. I take it as forgiveness.

My brother finally brings the chainsaw outside and we start cleaning up the debris. Ice pellets and pieces litter the ground. Not only is it raining raining, it’s raining ice too. Poplar buds encased in ice lie on the swollen soil, dead little unborn trees. I drag branch after branch towards the fire pit, leaving deep trenches in the ground. Soon the flooded ground is crisscrossed with gouges, scars that quickly fill with mud and water.

I am wet. It is miserable. I throw a few flakes of hay at my horse and head inside for a shower. At some point in the afternoon I go to my feed store and buy a trace mineral block, two bags of high fat feed and a bag of beet pulp. On my way, I pass a white truck with distinctive lettering. I remember why his truck is familiar. I was lured into that truck more than ten years ago. A grown man asked me if I wanted to see his cats. He said he knew my dad. I said yes, I wanted to see cats. I climbed into his car. And he took me to a second location.

I open my eyes groggily and look at my alarm clock. It’s dark. No numbers. Power’s still out. Rain and ice tick against my window. I’m supposed to ride this morning, but I doubt it’s going to happen. It’s been raining for three days and it looks like there’s no end in sight.

I trudge upstairs, where it is even colder than in my room. I complain about the cold, Dad complains about the lack of coffee. Just when he gets the generator started to make himself coffee, the power flickers back on. He’s fed my horses since he was concerned about their safety. There are branches and trees down all over my fence and within my fence but none have hit it, and my animals are safe.

After mindless TV watching and breakfast, I get outside with my brother to clean up the backyard. The poplar trees that line our property are old and half dead. Poplars aren’t strong; they’re just big weeds. Every tree has branches down due to the heavy ice coating them and the terrible windstorm during the night. I feel bad for my horse. He’s hock-deep in mud and he hasn’t been dry for three days. I feed him an apple as a peace offering. He licks my hand and nibbles on my hat. I take it as forgiveness.

My brother finally brings the chainsaw outside and we start cleaning up the debris. Ice pellets and pieces litter the ground. Not only is it raining raining, it’s raining ice too. Poplar buds encased in ice lie on the swollen soil, dead little unborn trees. I drag branch after branch towards the fire pit, leaving deep trenches in the ground. Soon the flooded ground is crisscrossed with gouges, scars that quickly fill with mud and water.

I am wet. It is miserable. I throw a few flakes of hay at my horse and head inside for a shower. At some point in the afternoon I go to my feed store and buy a trace mineral block, two bags of high fat feed and a bag of beet pulp. On my way, I pass a white truck with distinctive lettering. I remember why his truck is familiar. I was lured into that truck more than ten years ago. A grown man asked me if I wanted to see his cats. He said he knew my dad. I said yes, I wanted to see cats. I climbed into his car. And he took me to a second location.

Before long I’m situated in the greenhouse, which isn’t really a greenhouse, just a round frame covered in clear plastic. I’m armed with instructions to weed, hoe and water the plants. My boss is going to a poultry show, so I’m on my own. Rain pitter-patters on the plastic roof. I play music on my phone to distract myself from the maddeningly consistent rainfall. I attack the creeping Charlie patch with a sickle. It only takes me fifteen minutes to clear it out. I haul the tangled mess of vines into a wheelbarrow, armful by armful. I reach down to pick up the last pile. A fat, black spider stares up at me with shiny eyes. I shriek and stomp it into the foliage. I hate spiders. More than anything. I tentatively shove the pile onto the wheelbarrow. The tower of weeds teeters precariously. I put on my coat and brace myself for the rain outside. I wheel the weeds out to the layer hens and chuck them over the fence. Chickens attack the weeds with fierce pecking and clucking. Rain drips off my hood and into my face. TS Eliot wasn’t kidding when he said that April is the cruellest month.

Back in the greenhouse, I move on to hoeing the eucalyptus plants. Tendrils of old spider webs hang from the low ceiling like party streamers.  I dodge them as best I can and tear some down, but they cling to my hair and I end up looking like I’m wearing a bad Halloween costume. An obese leopard frog leaps in front of me. I tell him he is stuck in the greenhouse since the sides are rolled down.  But maybe he likes it in there. It is warm, humid and filled with bugs. I ask him if he eats bugs, especially spiders, if for no reason than to hear my voice above the din of the rainfall. I tell him he’s my hero if he does. Then I carefully hoe around him. When I was younger, my siblings and I used to catch frogs in the vegetable garden and pretend they were our pets for the day. One time I accidentally stepped on one of my pets. We wrapped him in Kleenex, I guess to keep him warm.

He died.

And I’ll never forget the horror of killing something I had no right to be controlling in the first place. I tell him he shouldn’t hide because then I’m liable to accidentally kill him.

The rain begins to fall harder and harder, until I can’t even hear myself think. I scream, “Seriously!?” at the storm. I can’t hear my music anymore, so I pause it for a while. I finish the eucalyptus and go on to weed the peonies growing along the edge of the greenhouse. Some of the peonies are tall and robust; some are still small, fragile shoots; other’s still have buds but have black and curled leaf edges. Why are some healthy? Why are some so underdeveloped? Why are some obviously ill? It just goes to show that even when life gets the same start, some thrive, some survive and some die, for no reason other than because.

I water the eucalyptus, peonies, lilies and lavender. I come across my frog friend again. I also find the decayed body of a large mouse, maybe even a rat. I avert my eyes and keep watering. My boss kills them with poison. I know it has to be done, but I still don’t like it.  I continue with the hose, and its spray is louder than the rain drops drumming the plastic above my head.

On the rainiest of days, I am watering plants.

I pick up my pace again. I can feel the silence around me even though I am listening to music. I walk the paved bridge over the culverts in Spencer Creek. The air is still and the river emits a rhythmic hum despite the low water level. A single red winged Blackbird flits in the yellow rushes. He sings twice and then looks at me. There is a vague air of menace about the whole thing but I shake it off and continue running. I pass a girl running with her dog before I make back onto the road. A few clumps of red fur lay on the driveway, evidence that my shedding horse had been in there earlier. I smile. We all leave a mark, whether or not we are aware of it or even want to. The fur tumbles away in the breeze. I hear a low rumble. I pause my music and listen for more of what I think is thunder. But there is only silence. I come to the road once again. Struggling on the shoulder is a fat toad. He takes long, unsure steps, moving like a crab. I don’t know why he isn’t hopping. Maybe he’s sick or disoriented. Either way, I don’t want him to get run over by a car. I guide him back off the road with my foot. I don’t really want to touch him. Childhood myths of toads giving warts still haunt me. I take a few steps away and see a car coming towards me. I stay by the toad until the car zooms past, just to make sure he’s safe.

I start walking, and realize I’m on the wrong side of the road. A habit I picked up from riding my horse in the same direction of traffic. While heading home, I kick myself for not picking up the toad and bringing it to the other side of the road. That’s where he seemed to be going. He’s probably going to get hit by a car. Then it starts raining. Soft at first. Tiny pinpricks dimple the surface of the creek. I picked up my pace, not wanting to get wet. But it doesn’t matter. No matter how fast I run, I always get caught in exactly what I’m trying to avoid. My bangs curl and stick to my forehead. My whole body is damp and clammy. I make it to the house, trudge up the stairs and collapse into a chair on the porch. I wait for the storm to roll in. In the distance, birds sing of the coming thunder.

So the movie was really doomed from the start. At least to the average shallow movie goer.

I quite enjoyed the film. It was at times slow moving and the plot is unremarkable, but artfully done. The story centres on Hushpuppy, a 7 or 8 year old girl living with her Daddy on the bayou, in a fictional area called The Bathtub, reminiscent of Louisiana.  The Bathtub has been cut off from the rest of the area, an island in the middle of water no one else wants. The others have built a levee to keep the water- and the citizens of the Bathtub- out. They figure the citizens of Bathtub will drown eventually.

Hushpuppy lives in her own “house”, really just a shack on stilts. Her Dad lives in his house. Hushpuppy dons rubber boots, underwear and a dirty tank top. She cooks her own food, consisting of gravy and cat food heated in a pan on a stove started with a blowtorch. Nobody said her Daddy was a good father. Daddy disappeared for days. He came back in a hospital gown. Hushpuppy wants to know where he was. He tells her to shut up. When she insists he slaps her. She punches him over his heart. He falls to the ground. And in the eyes of the seven year old, the universe is now out of balance.

Between a massive storm, collapsing ice shelves, her Dad’s failing health and aurochs closing in, Hushpuppy’s world is crumbling.

It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not in this film. The story is told through Hushpuppy’s eyes and narration. In her mind, the thunder is caused by the collapse of ice shelves into the ocean, something she had heard at school. Her teacher also told her about aurochs, ancestors of cows that used to be the biggest baddest beasts around. When her dad falls and the storm starts, Hushpuppy makes the connection that hitting her dad has plunged the universe into chaos. She says, “The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right. If one piece busts, even the smallest piece… the entire universe will get busted.”

The film is quite symbolic and metaphorical. It requires attention and your brain needs to be engaged. Which is not what my family is looking for in a movie.

The acting on the part of Quvenzhané Wallis is incredible.  How a 9 year old can act that effortlessly is beyond me. It really was monumental for her to be nominated for Best Actress, the youngest actress ever, by four years. But I digress. If you’re looking for a fun and engaging movie, don’t pick this one. If you’re looking  for a though provoking and startlingly honest look at an impoverished seven year old’s life through her eyes, this is the movie for you.

This last line from the movie sums up the message of the film, as told by Hushpuppy, “When it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me lying around in invisible pieces. When I look too hard, it goes away. And when it all goes quiet, I see they are right here. I see that I’m a little piece in a big, big universe. And that makes things right. When I die, the scientists of the future, they’re gonna find it all. They gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy, and she live with her daddy in the Bathtub.”

I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like I’m never giving 100% in school. I feel like I’m half-assing things and I don’t know why. I feel like I’m trying to get away with doing the bare minimum amount of work. I feel like I don’t enjoy school .

And I’m wondering: should I stay in Journalism? Is this what I want? Is this what God wants for me? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m making a big mistake. I don’t know if I should switch programs. I don’t want to quit Journalism school because it’s too hard. My greatest fear is that fear itself will hold me back. I’m not afraid of hard work, or at least I think I’m not. So why am I so reluctant to commit to Journalism? I don’t really like interviewing people. It makes me nervous. I don’t like being pushed outside my comfort zone. But this is a necessity of life. I don’t like to be challenged, but I should. I’m trying to embrace it.

I know that I need to be pushed out of my comfort zone but if I hate interviewing and digging for a story, does that mean I’m in the wrong program? I don’t want to commit 4 years and so much work and thousands of dollars into the Journalism program if I’m not going to be a journalist when I graduate.

But the fact still remains, that I don’t really like what I’m doing. Is that a good enough reason to quit? Do I dislike it because it’s school and just hard work? Or is this career not for me? I feel like I can switch programs in first year, but not in second. I feel like I need to make a decision. One that I’m utterly unprepared to make.

Stay or go? I don’t want to make a huge mistake by switching into another program and then wishing I could go back. I don’t want to enter second year hating Journalism. But I don’t want to quit just because it’s hard. But am I making a huge mistake devoting 4 years of my life to something I don’t love?

There aren’t a ton of jobs in Journalism and it’s hugely competitive. Am I prepared to commit everything to Journalism? I don’t know if I can.

Am I just being discontent? Or is journalism just not for me?

I’m so afraid of making a huge mistake. I don’t know what to do. “In all you ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths.” I need some direction. And I don’t know where I’m supposed to get it from. Am I just being difficult?

“One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever face in life is whether to walk away or try harder.”

Am I at that point? Do I just need to commit more to school? Or is God telling me that this isn’t His path for me?

I don’t know. I feel like I’ve never known.

I feel like I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I’m doing in relationships, I don’t know what I’m doing with my horse. How can I make decisions about my future when I’m so unsure about the present?

Now what?

Piscine Molitaire Patel lives in India with his parents and brother Ravi. They operate the Pondicherry Zoo. Due to the unrest in India in the 1970s, Pi’s father makes the decision to move the family to Canada. They sell the zoo and the animals are packed on the freighter with them, to be sold in North America.

Pi (Piscine’s self-given nickname so the kids will stop calling him ‘Pissing’) is a Hindu/Christian/Muslim teen. Let’s get one thing straight- those three religions do not compute. You cannot believe all of them unless you too stupid to know the difference or if you don’t believe the foundations of all of them. Hinduism has 33 million gods. So throwing a few more in there isn’t a big deal, which is why Pi can justify believing in multiple religions. I don’t know much about Islam, but its pretty hard core about its practices and beliefs. And true Christianity denies all other religions as a pathway to God. These religions are so diametrically opposed. But does Yann Martel illustrate that? Of course not. He sets up an imaginary meeting between three leaders of the religions. And their arguments are unrealistic, faulty and plain stupid. Any priest or imam that can’t articulate the fundamentals of his religion isn’t really a priest or imam.

The first half of the book is riddled with questions (and wrong answers) about God, and the second half largely leaves God out. Was this intentional? I’m sure it was, but the two sections seem divorced from each other. And that to me is bad writing, not bad reading on my part.

Through a series of unfortunate events, Pi is shipwrecked, and he the only survivor. Well, he, a zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan named Orange Juice, and a tiger named Richard Parker. Soon, only Pi and the tiger remain. What ensues is an epic (although impossible) story of survival for 227 days in the lifeboat. In the end, they wash up on the shore in Mexico. And Richard Parker walks into the jungle, without ever turning back. Pi is upset that he never got the chance to say goodbye to his greatest enemy, friend and saviour.

In the end, Pi forces us to question the entirety of his story. Two men from the insurance agency looking into the sinking of the ship. Pi tells them his story. The two men don’t believe him. So Pi asks if they want another story. One that is more believable. One that doesn’t have animals or a carnivorous island. They say yes. So Pi tells another story, this one with humans surviving the shipwreck. A cook, he (Pi), his mother and a sailor. He tells a story of the cook being a savage man, one who killed and ate the sailor, and eventually Pi’s mother. Pi says he killed the cook himself. And this leaves us asking: which story is true? Is the first just a metaphor for the second? One that shows the animal-like savagery in our nature? One that sets up and understanding for the second? Did he just make the second story up to satisfy the insurance men? We don’t know.

This is a clever twist. One that makes you think. I appreciate what Martel was trying to do. He was trying to add more depth to his story. He was trying to make his book greater literature, literature that perhaps does more than entertains, but one that asks questions. To be honest, I thought it was lazy. Interesting, but lazy. Instead of incorporating the deep questions into the body of the story, instead of showing human nature, instead of asking who God is, instead of illustrating his point, he discredits it and expects us to do the rest. It’s a very post-modern story in the end. Who can say what Truth is? Who can say which story is true and which isn’t? Who says that an answer exists?

Now, after I read the book, I watched the movie. And while the storyline is similar, and in some ways identical, I got a very different feel from the movie. The visuals in the movie are stunning and the acting is great. That aside, God is woven throughout the story. At one point there is a huge storm. Pi yells at the storm, “What more do you want from me, God? What more can you take?” It’s a powerful scene. Pi believes he sees God in the storm. He rips the tarpaulin off the boat, he exposes Richard Parker to the fury of the waves and the wind. He almost kills him. The cat is thrown about, realistically resulting in broken bones, but that isn’t explicitly revealed in the movie.

The movie also omits some of the incoherent, random and plain non-sensical parts of the book. In the book, Pi talks to Richard Parker and he talks back. This is seen as the madness of a boy dying of thirst. Okay, I can buy that.  They are both blind with malnutrition. (Possible? Not sure.) Another life boat floats up. Somebody is in that boat. He too is out of supplies. He and Pi talk and then he climbs into Pi’s boat. Pi tries to warn him about the tiger. He’s too late. Richard Parker attacks and kills the man. Pi crawls into the other life boat and finds that the man lied. He had some supplies, which helps Pi survive until he comes upon a strange floating island covered in algae and inhabited solely by Meer cats. The island supplies Pi and Richard Parker with food. But the island turns carnivorous at night to all who are on the ground or in the water. Pi and the Meer cats sleep in trees. Richard Parker sleeps in the boat. Pi realizes the island is a lonely place where he will eventually die, so he gathers as much provisions as he can and then sets sail again. The movie includes the floating island, but not the strange, possible imaginary conversations between the boy and tiger and unnamed man.

This was a weird section of the book, one that isn’t really talked about much afterwards. I’m glad the movie omitted it. I’m not sure what Martel’s point was in telling us this. Apparently movie makers thought it was weird and unimportant as well. When Pi tells his second story to the insurance agents in the movie, he tells it much more convincingly than in the book. The book left me thinking that Pi just wanted to confuse and satisfy the agents. The movie made it a much more plausible possibility. He cries while telling it. He says he’ll never forget the cries of his mother.

Aside from that discrepancy, I liked the movie better than the book. The book was drawn out, focused on religion entirely too much without giving answers, and was too post-modern for my liking. The movie has its problems as well, and I almost wish they left the alternate story out of the movie. It would be very different from the book, but it would be superficial enough to make me happy. The relationship between Richard Parker and Pi is much deeper in the movie. At one point, Pi takes the tiger’s head in his lap and strokes his head. This made me cry. I have deep relationships with animals and that scene really hit home with me. Ultimately, the movie showed that savage beasts can put aside their savagery. They’re human, in a way. The book never alleged this. I listened to a podcast on Plugged in Online about the movie. (Podcast 177, available here: http://www.pluggedin.ca/familyroom/podcast.aspx) What Bob Smithouser said was exactly what I felt after the movie. “It was like looking into the eyes of a beautiful animal with no soul.”