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<h1>Garden Sphere </h1>
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#health #personal #book-review<br>
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<br>
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<p>Heads up! Spoiling the novel <i>Sister Carrie</i> by Theodore Dreiser (1900).</p>
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<p>FOLFIRI is so isolating. Unlike FOLFOX's 2-day recovery period, FOLFIRI has me dragging for over a week with a relentless combination of fatigue, pain, and moodiness. Without being able to go anywhere or handle anything too taxing, my world's contracted into a tight, inward world orbiting the chemo spa and mild pleasures. This really isn't like me. </p>
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<h2>Alone Together </h2>
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<p>In 2017, ガンガンONLINE published a cute little manga series called <i>Garden Sphere</i>. (And, oh, how I'd love to cosplay Princess Shukuru and Prince Rou with my husband.♥) The title refers to the secluded castle they retreat into to negotiate a political marriage and end the national conflict between their people. War cannot reach them there, and no one intrudes on them but a skeleton crew of family servants. They are too young to understand politics, so they mostly have playdates and do fittings for their cute wedding clothes. It's shallow, but it's sweet. </p>
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<center><img src="/static/img/ent/Garden-Sphere.png" alt="(image: A scan from Garden Sphere. Princess Shukuru and Prince Rou are so cute. She's a little horned girl with messy long hair and an adorable ruffled lolita dress, and Rou is one of those animal ear boys who also has visible human ears. In the text, they are agreeing to have a pretend marriage.)" width="500" height="440"></center> <br>
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<p>This idea of a “garden sphere” resonates with me, where everything collapses into a small, comforting world curtained off from serious issues. Not just now because I'm really struggling with cancer lately, but always. Even as a kid. </p>
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<p>Every work of fiction has--or should have--a narrowed focus, edited under the governance of theme and character. Even grand epics with sprawling settings will carve out intimate spaces: the sanctuary of home, a confidant's embrace, or a moment of introspection that shuts out the storm. These spaces are grounding for the narrative and characters and bring a break in tension. </p>
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<p>These secluded worlds always draw me in, especially those with restricted access, designed to be sanctuaries of personal nurturing. Growing up, I cultivated my own garden sphere, a realm of imagination and contemplation, guarded by a reserved exterior. Few entered, but those who did are special friends. </p>
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<p>Some favorites come to mind: the Velvet Room in <i>Persona</i>, the towers in <i>Code Lyoko</i>, the Room of Requirement in <i>Hogwarts Legacy</i> (sorry Harry Potter people, I only know the game lol), and Ryan Gosling's AI girlfriend in <i>Blade Runner 2049</i>. Spaces like guild halls in <i>Guild Wars</i> and runecrafting altars in <i>RuneScape</i> give that sense of being whisked away to a private space only you and your friends can enter. It's more fun when that secret world is tied to a physical artifact, like the Modron Cube in <i>Planescape: Torment</i>. </p>
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<p>There are a few from my childhood, too. I ran away from home a lot (lol) and haunted the few spaces that felt safe and empty - a wedding chapel in the woods that was never locked, a strangely unused house in my neighborhood, and the unlit sanctuary of a church by my school. My childhood writing is dominated by scenes like this, periodically taking a character or two out of the scene and setting them on some island to play out their solitude. It's probably a disassociative misanthropic tendency of mine, but whatever. I just crave hiding places. </p>
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<h2>Cancer's Small World </h2>
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<p>I prefer a simple kind of life with fewer people and things. It's not like I'm not impulsive - I never grew out of lust for opportunities for urban exploration and day trips by myself when I can get away with it, but I trend towards depth in my interests rather than a pursuit of whatever flashes in front of me. </p>
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<p>Further, cancer's bred a superstition in me, that excitement, any stress, sabotages my body and wastes precious recovery energy. Eustress is still stress, no? And with chemo fog, my head churns like a slow computer. I always preserved my garden sphere, but now it's such a small, almost childishly shallow. Lounging and enjoying simple pleasures is not the life I've ever felt comfortable with. It's just not what I've ever allowed for myself. But what else can I do when my body and mind are so fragile? </p>
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<p>Straight out of the hospital, I marathoned Kitchen Nightmares to an extreme. I don't think I'm alone. The Youtube comments are full of hospital patients and people watching with dying relatives. Gordon Ramsay has perfected braindead TV. Any random episode is a safe bet--only a handful of employees to remember, a villain of the week, and gross-out humor. Nothing's so bad it can't be resolved with a coat of white paint, tiny pretentious burgers, and a quick heart-to-heart confrontation. This is truly the epitome of garden sphere reality cable. </p>
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<center><img src="/static/img/ent/PET.png" alt="(image: A PET scan comparison. My brain is pale in the December 29, 2023, scan, while it is very dark in the August 2, 2024 scan." width="500" height="124"></center> <br>
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<p>(I'm not kidding when I say braindead lol. Look at my old PEt scans. Dark areas indicate areas with good glucose intake. So obviously, that would be your brain, tumors, and digestive track. Out of the hospital, my tumors were eating so much of my glucose, my brain was barely showing up in the scan. Crazy. You can see the healthy dark color after a year of chemo, though, so I got better.)
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<p>As I've gotten better, my tolerance for media's marginally improved. I graduated to doll webisodes, MMO private servers, but no real literature. It's a sharp drop from Etidorpha, the Bhagavata Purana, and the church fathers I was reading right before my health decline. Chemo fog is thick as roux to cut through. It's awful. I just can't read anymore. That said, at the end of November, I finally managed to finish a book for the first time in over a year: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/233">Sister Carrie</a>. </p>
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<h2>Gilded Cage </h2>
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<p>Reading the 500-page Sister Carrie in a few days flooded me with optimism, but following with Père Goriot evaporated every little bit again. Honoré de Balzac immediately inflicts me with immense fatigue, like reading in my second language underwater. Balzac is too much for now. </p>
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<p>Not to undermine Dreiser's latent skill in governing plotting and character arcs under his theme, but Sister Carrie's characters and world are as claustophobically narrow as my own. She practically only interacts with 1 to 2 characters per arc and spends most of the novel in her apartment, admiring clothes or men. What a coincidence that the only book I can read is in the garden sphere genre. I read the original heavily censored version, too, no less. </p>
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<p>I don't compromise myself. Yet Carrie can take $20 and turn it into a gilded cage. She was letting Drouet stake his claim in the most primal way possible, too, ensuring her attachment. The dark mirror aspect of Dreiser's writing - taking a character who shares a similar life to me, let made every bad decision possible - is a staple of my gross interest in his writing, and Carrie is no exception. </p>
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<p>Carrie only cares about shopping for pretty clothes and having her ear tickled. Freshly 18 and moving to the city without any plans, she's quickly snagged by Drouet, a smooth and well-dressed salesman with money enough to shower her in whatever baubles she desires. He's dirty, probably a man in his late 20s or early 30s, targeting pretty but clueless young women like it's a game. He undoubtedly has a pet girl in each city for pleasure during his business trips, and a harem of hollaback girls besides. During Carrie's second meeting with Drouet, he gives her the equivalent of something like $600, enough to secure a tasteful and lasting outfit while squirreling away the rest for rent and food. Yet she blows it all on an overly trendy coat that won't last the season. During their third interaction, she takes his advice about ghosting her family and moves in with him. She gives up everything for nothing. </p>
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<p>Young, single girls in unfamilar towns can live off of the kindness of strangers, at least from my experience. With her natural charm, Carrie could secure a rogue's gallery of harmless, overeager boys; accept simple gifts; and walk away with her independence. If you need that leg up, you shouldn't trust anyone entirely, and you never let a man buy you. Drouet was charming and kind, but his brand of help comes with too many binding strings. Even if I'm starving, I'm not easy, nor a beggar. I'll refuse offers unless a boy's sweet earnestness becomes rude to ignore. An extravagant gift is a hard no. I'll be homeless before I let a man own me. Even when I was only getting money through excessively inconsistent freelance writing and going out with rich brats, I concealed my situation and split bills. Call it pride or stubbornness, but I carve out my own life. I had bad experiences growing up anyway, so the lesson of trust came slowly to me. </p>
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<p>Of course, none of these guys in my life stuck around, no matter how kind or how great our chemistry was. They were shallow, not looking for a deep relationship. They just want to make a girl smile, show her off to a few friends, then disappear, never entering my garden sphere. I wasn't looking for a boyfriend anyway, so it suited me. No boy deserves to be tied up in my messy life. I was content to play surrogate girlfriend in exchange for charity and good advice, then break without ties, advancing along my path. </p>
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<p>Carrie wasn't looking for a proper relationship, either. She never knows love, only longing for a higher standard of dress, dining, and entertainment. Despite Drouet, she easily becomes infatuated with Hurstwood, an even older but more clever and moneyed man. The two men fight over her, catching her between Drouet's condescension and Hurstwood's manipulation. When she goes to play wife for Hurstwood, she is trapped in his apartment in a new city without a friend of any kind. He's a monster, concealing his other marriage, kidnapping her under false pretense, and expecting gratitude for it all. </p>
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<p>Even when she moves on to Ames, an apparently deeper and more supportive boyfriend, their relationship is no different. Only, instead of the level of luxuries they share, it's built on the level of art and literature they share. Even if his impulse guides her into independence, he's just another passing step towards longing for happiness she may never feel. The shallow infatuation remains, him admiring her more as a muse than a partner. The manipulation remains, him pushing her into acting then specifically comedy-drama. </p>
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<h2>My Own Gilded Cage </h2>
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<p>Despite the monotonous cycles of fruitlessly walking the streets in search of work, letting men use her, and refining her blossoming charm, I couldn't put the book down. </p>
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<p>Even if the first half was spent in Drouet's apartment with a boy who stopped taking Carrie out after the honeymoon period, and the second half was spent in Hurstwood's, when he never took her out at all. Somewhere in the middle, I realized I knew the same monotony. Wanting to leave the house but barely being able to leave the bed is the same cage. It's even gilded a bit, with snacks and craft projects and all the gifts people have given me, but it's an aggressively small world. </p>
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<p>Sister Carrie's characters are shallow and easy to critique, much like any Kitchen Nightmares cast. Although the narrative is dramatic, the dangers are easily identified and long periods of inactivity subdue the monsters into something manageable. Carrie's boyfriends are few and never entirely leave her life, either, lingering like ghosts until time to pop up again. </p>
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<h2>Carrie's Garden Sphere </h2>
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<p>In a magical part near the end, Drouet appears out of nowhere, hoping to weedle his control back over the newly rich and famous Carrie, prettier than ever. He finangles Carrie into a dinner date, and for a moment, she falls for his old charms. Really, Dreiser brings him in to reveal all Hurstwood's secrets before an unexpected confrontation with him, but this is an archetypal scene to me and dreamy to read. </p>
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<p>To be at the end of a long, dreary novel; after such hurtful drama against you; and to be reunited in the end with a villain whom you can't strongly fear anymore... After all, what was Drouet's crime? Being shallow? He's done wrong, but others have done worse. Carrie could even credit him for having coining the stage name that started her career in a way. It's all a wash in the end. </p>
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<p>Honestly, I have this feeling like I'm very, very old, like an immortal at the end of a lifetime. Like I've been on so many adventures, probably more than most people who grew up with stable households and curfews and a healthy fear for their lives, but that chapter's long closed. I have a very good husband and a very good community now. Maybe it's not forever, who knows?, but I don't want to mess with what I have. </p>
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<p>Still, I grow terribly attached to those precious few who stubbornly remain in my little garden sphere of life. If I lost everyone, after so much time, I'd rather be strange bedfellows with a villain like Drouet. He's shown me every part of his villainy, and I've already developed every defense against it. Rather him than a seemingly kind stranger like Ames with who knows what lurking in his depths. Besides, I would think even a very antagonistic sort of villain, after so long, would surely have developed some sort of mutual respect or common ground after a while. I've mostly had bad people in my life, and I'd like to think they should become more like a bittersweet comfort, an old thorn dulled by time. </p>
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<p>Of course, not every weed in my garden is worth letting bloom. Hurstwood has an undercurrent of violence to him, and unlike Drouet who had a touch of magnamity and care for Carrie's well-being, Hurstwood is an entitlement elemental. He's a danger against which there is no defense, even at the height of Carrie's fame and fortune. True villains like that must never enter my little space. And he never really did enter Carrie's, either, not like Drouet had. </p>
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<h2>Overall Review of Sister Carrie </h2>
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<p>I went in blind, as An American Tragedy is one of my favorite books. I didn't know this was Dreiser's first novel, nor that it was brutally censored. It feels like I'm missing crucial scenes, like the censored version of <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/12310/Culpa_Innata/">Culpa Innata</a>. Dreiser surely wouldn't miss Drouet luring Carrie into his bed and her growing awareness of her power, given his gritty depictions of the destructive nature of lust and ambition in his later works. I've heard the unexpurgated edition includes all the risque details you would expect from his unvarnished realism. Of course, Dreiser is never lurid, just unflinching. </p>
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<o>With its teeth clipped, I'm definitely missing out on Drouet's scoundral. Worse, Margaret Sanger's birth control was yet to catch on in the 1900s, so the novel's also missing just how close Carrie was to unraveling her whole world. (Not that I support birth control, but still.) Dreiser lays this exploitation open bare in Roberta's case in An American Tragedy. Left is Dreiser's crude early writing, circling the drain of isolation and despair with dull company. </p>
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<p>Yet I adore this book. The ending is absolutely magical, the way Dreiser binds off his character arcs, looping each through each other, in a sequence of deliberate moves. Honestly, it forgives any sins along the way. </p>
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<p>An American Tragedy is so dear to me because I read slowly and at the same life stages as Clyde. I left home with him, made my first friends with him, started dating with him, looked for work with him, got into a serious relationship with him. Even our holidays lined up. Clyde was like that dark mirror to look into when I had time to read. I suppose when I look back, Sister Carrie will hold the same weight with me, accompanying the same cage I was in 2024. Dreiser novels are so intimate. Maybe whenever I become a cold-blooded Wall Street investor and railroad tycoon, I'll read his Trilogy Desire to chase that feeling again. </p>
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<h2>Anyway...</h2>
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<p>Maybe I'm a bad person, having stuff like this inside. </p>
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<p>Shallow pleasures... </p>
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<p><pre><code>All streams run to the sea,
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but the sea is not full;
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to the place where the streams flow,
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there they flow again.
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All things are full of weariness;
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a man cannot utter it;
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the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
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nor the ear filled with hearing.
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-Ecclesiastes 1:7-8 </pre></code></p>
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<p>Even pursuing the deeper things in life, so much of it is yet more shallow pleasures... </p>
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<p><pre><code>I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
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-Ecclesiastes 1:12-14 </pre></code></p>
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I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” ... And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
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-Ecclesiastes 2:1-2; 2:10-11
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I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.
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-Ecclesiastes 2:18-19
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Yet,
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There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.
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-Ecclesiastes 2:24-26
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For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
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...
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a time to break down, and a time to build up;
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a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
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a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
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a time to seek, and a time to lose;
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-Ecclesiastes 3:1,3,4,6
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I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. 19 For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.[b] 20 All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? 22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?
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-Ecclesiastes 3:18-22
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<p>Anyway. </p>
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