QUOTE BLOG | PET SEMATARY
Unlike many bookish folks, I have never had a quote blog or kept a journal of quotes before. I have heard many book bloggers and Bookstagram/BookTube creators talk about them but it didn't seem like a great use of my time. I tend to get a little obsessed with 'wasting my time', which I think is a very negative quality of mine, so I hope that this doesn't offend anyone because I am not judging how people use their time at all! However, last year I started listening to a podcast called 'Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.' I would definitely recommend anyone check it out, as I feel that I've gained something very spiritually and emotionally significant from my time listening to this incredible and unique podcast. I have never been a church-goer and my family is not religious (and to be clear I am not a believer personally) but, after listening to this podcast, I finally understood why being in church is an experience so many folks find fulfilling and enlightening. One of the sacred practices that the hosts regularly participate in is called Floralegium and it is basically where you take quotes from a sacred book and put them together, one after the other, and think about what they mean in combination with each other. I'm sure I am butchering that explanation so I am sorry to anyone who practices Floralegium religiously! I would definitely be interesting in your input on the subject in the comments if you would like to do so! Personally, what I take from this practice is a way of better understand what the practitioner's personal purpose in or view of life is based on the quotes that speak to them and how they interpret these personally significant quotes side by side. I think that the meaning of life is different for each person based on what we find significant and interesting- it depends on our values and what we decide to do with the time that we spend here on earth. I think that Floralegium is a good way for someone to put these thoughts together and interpret meaning and the sacred from the profane, because I believe that everything in life is sacred, even things that seen profane. I would love to discuss what you all think of this in the comments section!
The following is my Floralegium (or quote blog) from Pet Sematary- I will be updating it as I go along reading and when I'm finished I'll be adding a quick paragraph on my interpretation. As I have read this book once before, almost a decade ago now, this may impact my interpretation of the text because this book is of great personal significance to me. This is because it's main themes are death, relationships, and the value of honesty. Because out ideas on these change as we grow, and because I fist read this book in High School, I think this experience will be very interesting! Also note that the page numbers included are consistent with the 2001 hardback edition by Scribner.
"Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret... He went to his son, and because there was no one there to see him do it, not even Rachel, he kissed his fingers and then pressed them lightly and briefly to Gage's cheek through the bars of the crib... All I'm saying is that you don't want to get messing around in there woods, Ellie. You might lose the path, and God knows where you might end up then... Here was am almost perfect circle of mown grass... The forest backdrop lent the place a crazy sort of profundity, a charm that was not Christian but pagan... Louis noticed that the place did not just seem to have a sense of order, a pattern; the memorials had been arranged in rough concentric circles... The commitment of love and grief seemed to him staggering... To Louis it looked like the skeletal remains of some long-dead monster... Its very randomness seemed too artful, too perfect fir a work of nature. It-... This was a lie, and he knew it... He held her and rocked her, believing, rightly or wrongly, that Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument or to a little girl's tear; that she wept over its cruel unpredictability; and that she wept because of the the human being's wonderful, deadly ability to translate symbols into conclusions that were either fine and noble or blackly terrifying. If all those animals had died and been buried, then Church could die (any time!) and be buried; and if that could happen to Church, it could happen to her mother, her father, her baby brother. To herself. Death was a vague idea; the Pet Sematary was real. In the texture of those rude markers were truths which even a child's hands could feel... It's that damned place. It's unhealthy. Kids going up there and tending the graves, keeping the path... fucking morbid is what it is. Whatever disease the kids in this town have got, I don't want Ellie to catch it... there was no such things as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery, And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a full-fledged pocket of alien strangeness... And then you trod lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; you tried to remember that anger at such a discovery was a province of fools who really believed it was possible for one mind to know another... I don't think children ever forget the lies their parents tell them... I'm sorry I was such a bitch... In the Pet Sematary... It's not the real cemetery... The Soil of a man's heart is stonier Louis... A man grows what he can... and tends it... Those rotten giggles rose in his throat again, and somehow he managed to bottle them up... I am following a dead man into the woods, I am following a dead man up to the Pet Semetary, and this is no dream. God help me, this is no dream. This is happening... The door must not be opened... Don't go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to, Doctor. The barrier was not made to be broken. Remember this: there is more power here than you know. It is old and always restless. Remember... I come as a friend... Your destruction and the destruction of all you know is very near, Doctor... His feet were filthy with dirt and pine needles... he wondered if he had always been within touching distance of such mad irrationalitites; if everyone was... He was frightened, but the fright didn't stop the laughter... simply terrified of the possibility that he might be losing his mind... His one visit to a whore in Chicago six years ago seemed like that now; they were equally unimportant... Louis pondered her attitude. The thought of Church's death had brought on near-hysteria. But the thought of grandmotherly Norma Crandall dying... that Ellie seemed to take calmly, a matter of course... I wish to God you were here...He shuddered, not because of the cold. It was a feeling of aloneness that make him shudder... He just felt himself, untouched and untouching... Church had rediscovered his real nature in dying... That feeling of contentment, odd under the circumstances but a pure fact, persisted. It seemed to come from everywhere... It is that way once in a while. You don't pick your times for feeling good, any more than you do for the other. And the place has something to do with it too, but you don't want to trust that... This place has power, Louis. Not so much here, but... the place we're going.... Don't go beyond, not matte how much you feel you need to, Doctor. The barrier was not made to be broken... It was crazy, but the craziness made it tremendously exhilarating... There's a lot of funny things down this way, Louis. The air's heavier... more electrical... or something... Then a shrill, maniacal laugh came out of the darkness, rising and falling in hysterical cycles, loud, piercing, chilling... He asked himself the old question-is there anything intelligent out there?-and instead of wonder, the thought brought a horrid cold feeling... What they don't think is that maybe they should be questioning those feelings of doubt before they question their own hearts... the worst thing about it was that he didn't feel bad, didn't feel guilty at all... as if he had known in some deeper, more primitive part of his mind that their night hike up to the Micmac burying ground had meant all along... And the Wendigo was supposed to give those it touched a taste of flesh of their own king... Saying the devil made them do it... three beers wasn't going to cure that knowing... He remembered thinking that Jud's decision to take Louis and Ellie's cat on that particular night journey has not entirely been Jud's own... but it was full dark... Like something that was meant... sometimes dead is better... Most of them just seem... a little stupid... a little slow... A little dead. Like they had been somewhere... and came back... but not all the way... You do it because it gets hold of you... You make up reasons... they seem like good reasons... but mostly you do it because you want to. Or because you have to... Has anyone ever buried a person up there? Some things it don't pay to be curious about... You do it because it gets hold of you... you make up reasons...Does that mean it's my place now? That it's mine too? No, not if I don't want it to be.
"Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret... He went to his son, and because there was no one there to see him do it, not even Rachel, he kissed his fingers and then pressed them lightly and briefly to Gage's cheek through the bars of the crib... All I'm saying is that you don't want to get messing around in there woods, Ellie. You might lose the path, and God knows where you might end up then... Here was am almost perfect circle of mown grass... The forest backdrop lent the place a crazy sort of profundity, a charm that was not Christian but pagan... Louis noticed that the place did not just seem to have a sense of order, a pattern; the memorials had been arranged in rough concentric circles... The commitment of love and grief seemed to him staggering... To Louis it looked like the skeletal remains of some long-dead monster... Its very randomness seemed too artful, too perfect fir a work of nature. It-... This was a lie, and he knew it... He held her and rocked her, believing, rightly or wrongly, that Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument or to a little girl's tear; that she wept over its cruel unpredictability; and that she wept because of the the human being's wonderful, deadly ability to translate symbols into conclusions that were either fine and noble or blackly terrifying. If all those animals had died and been buried, then Church could die (any time!) and be buried; and if that could happen to Church, it could happen to her mother, her father, her baby brother. To herself. Death was a vague idea; the Pet Sematary was real. In the texture of those rude markers were truths which even a child's hands could feel... It's that damned place. It's unhealthy. Kids going up there and tending the graves, keeping the path... fucking morbid is what it is. Whatever disease the kids in this town have got, I don't want Ellie to catch it... there was no such things as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery, And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a full-fledged pocket of alien strangeness... And then you trod lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; you tried to remember that anger at such a discovery was a province of fools who really believed it was possible for one mind to know another... I don't think children ever forget the lies their parents tell them... I'm sorry I was such a bitch... In the Pet Sematary... It's not the real cemetery... The Soil of a man's heart is stonier Louis... A man grows what he can... and tends it... Those rotten giggles rose in his throat again, and somehow he managed to bottle them up... I am following a dead man into the woods, I am following a dead man up to the Pet Semetary, and this is no dream. God help me, this is no dream. This is happening... The door must not be opened... Don't go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to, Doctor. The barrier was not made to be broken. Remember this: there is more power here than you know. It is old and always restless. Remember... I come as a friend... Your destruction and the destruction of all you know is very near, Doctor... His feet were filthy with dirt and pine needles... he wondered if he had always been within touching distance of such mad irrationalitites; if everyone was... He was frightened, but the fright didn't stop the laughter... simply terrified of the possibility that he might be losing his mind... His one visit to a whore in Chicago six years ago seemed like that now; they were equally unimportant... Louis pondered her attitude. The thought of Church's death had brought on near-hysteria. But the thought of grandmotherly Norma Crandall dying... that Ellie seemed to take calmly, a matter of course... I wish to God you were here...He shuddered, not because of the cold. It was a feeling of aloneness that make him shudder... He just felt himself, untouched and untouching... Church had rediscovered his real nature in dying... That feeling of contentment, odd under the circumstances but a pure fact, persisted. It seemed to come from everywhere... It is that way once in a while. You don't pick your times for feeling good, any more than you do for the other. And the place has something to do with it too, but you don't want to trust that... This place has power, Louis. Not so much here, but... the place we're going.... Don't go beyond, not matte how much you feel you need to, Doctor. The barrier was not made to be broken... It was crazy, but the craziness made it tremendously exhilarating... There's a lot of funny things down this way, Louis. The air's heavier... more electrical... or something... Then a shrill, maniacal laugh came out of the darkness, rising and falling in hysterical cycles, loud, piercing, chilling... He asked himself the old question-is there anything intelligent out there?-and instead of wonder, the thought brought a horrid cold feeling... What they don't think is that maybe they should be questioning those feelings of doubt before they question their own hearts... the worst thing about it was that he didn't feel bad, didn't feel guilty at all... as if he had known in some deeper, more primitive part of his mind that their night hike up to the Micmac burying ground had meant all along... And the Wendigo was supposed to give those it touched a taste of flesh of their own king... Saying the devil made them do it... three beers wasn't going to cure that knowing... He remembered thinking that Jud's decision to take Louis and Ellie's cat on that particular night journey has not entirely been Jud's own... but it was full dark... Like something that was meant... sometimes dead is better... Most of them just seem... a little stupid... a little slow... A little dead. Like they had been somewhere... and came back... but not all the way... You do it because it gets hold of you... You make up reasons... they seem like good reasons... but mostly you do it because you want to. Or because you have to... Has anyone ever buried a person up there? Some things it don't pay to be curious about... You do it because it gets hold of you... you make up reasons...Does that mean it's my place now? That it's mine too? No, not if I don't want it to be.
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