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 <h1>Garden Sphere </h1>
 #health #personal #books<br>
 <br>
    <p>Heads up: spoiling Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900).</p>
 <p>FOLFIRI makes me lonelu, I could bounce back from FOLFOX in a few days, but FOLFIRI has been taking over a week. It's a combination of super fatigue, pain, and moodiness, but it's made my world really small for maybe months now.</p>
 <h2>Alone Together </h2>
    <p>There's a very cute manga series called Garden Sphere that I read on ガンガンONLINE. (Oh, I would love to cosplay Princess Shukuru and Prince Rou with my husband. Konno's art is adorable.♥) The manga refers to the private little rural castle they live in as a "garden sphere," and very few characters are introduced there with very little conflict. </p>
 <p>I adopted this term for any kind of limited world. Fiction always does this. Instead of creating a world (regardless of how much worldbuilding the author has done in his own head), the finished work is usually going to edited to the relevant parts. There will be a limited cast exploring the theme in limited places. Even if it's a massive epic with a massive cast and high stakes conflicts, there's usually some pocket world within it, like a home or safe spot. </p>
 <p>I'm a very internally involved person. I've always had imaginary friends and a very active internal monologue and all that, while being more reserved in real life interactions. As a teen, few could enter my garden sphere, but we formed deep friendships within it. I think this is why I'm very drawn to garden sphere-like pocket worlds, especially the ones with extremely limited access. To name a few, the player-owned home in most games, Persona's Velvet Room, towers in Code Lyoko, the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter, the bonfires in Dark Souls, Guild Wars's guild halls, runecrafting altars in RuneScape, Planescape: Torments's Modron Cube, and Ryan Gosling's AI girlfriend in Blade Runner 2049. Most of my creative writing as a little kid was about taking a character or two away and setting them in some small pocket dimension, some room, some island, and playing out solitude. It's probably some disassociative misanthropic interest but whatever. </p>
 <h2>FOLFIRI's Small World </h2>
    <p>Over anything dramatic or Instagram-worthy, I prefer this. Especially trying to get over cancer, I have a superstition that any stress damages the body (including eustress), wasting my body's recovery efforts. Chemo fog limits your bandwidth, too. I always guard my garden sphere well, but now I keep it mildly pleasant and childishly shallow. Sometimes I feel guilty, having a natural tendency towards ascetism, and being forced into a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle. Lounging and enjoying simple pleasures is not the life I ever tried to live, yet what else can I physically and mentally do? </p>
 <p>Straight out of the hospital, I could only follow Kitchen Nightmares. The Youtube comments are full of hospital patients and people watching with dying relatives, so I don't think this is uncommon! It's truly the most shallow, limited, frankly braindead television out there, a very safe and easy garden sphere. The narrative is predictable, only a handful of employees are shown, and no matter the problem, it can usually be fixed with a white coat of paint, tiny pretentious burgers, and a heart-to-heart with the villain of the week. </p>
 <p>I've gotten better, but I still mostly watch doll webisodes, play easy MMOs, and can barely read - garden spheres all. It's a severe step down from Etidorpha, the Bhagavata Purana, and the church fathers, but chemo fog is draining to cut through. The first book I've finished in over a year is <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/233">Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie</a>. </p>
 <h2>Gilded Cage </h2>
 <p>Optimism swept over me when I read Sister Carrie, a 500 page book, in a few days, but it evaporated when I tried to read Père Goriot and immediately felt immense fatigue like I was reading in a second language underwater. Not to undermine Dreiser's masterful way of governing plotting and character arcs under his theme, but the 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. Maybe it's no 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>
 <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 who can 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 Carrie like it's a game. He undoubtedly has a pet girl in each city for his business trips, and a harem of hollaback girls besides. On their second encounter, he gives her the equivalent of something like $600, enough to secure a tasteful and lasting outfit while squirreling away the rest for easy 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. </p>
 <p>Young, single girls in unfamilar towns can live off of the kindness of strangers, at least from my experience. With her charm, Carrie could have a rogue's gallery of harmless, overeager boys, milked them all dry, and walked away with her independence. If you need to play that game to gain a footing, you never trust anyone entirely, and you never let a man buy you. Even if I'm starving, I'm not easy. I would refuse offers until their earnestness was 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 split the bills. </p>
 <p>Of course, none of the guys 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, because 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>
 <p>I'm not compromising 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. </p>
 <p>Carrie wasn't looking for a boyfriend, either. She never exhibits love throughout the novel, only longing for the sort of man who could elevate her to a higher standard of dining and entertainment. She easily becomes infatuated with Hurstwood, an even older but more clever and moneyed man, letting the two men fight over her, caught between Drouet's condescension and Hurstwood's manipulations. When she  plays wife for him. Trapped in his apartment in a new city, she takes a year to make a friend of any kind. He's a monster, concealing his marriage and kids, kidnapping her under false pretense, and expects gratitude. </p>
 <p>Even when she moves on to an apparently more cerebral and supportive relationship, it's ultimately built on the same vanities and manipulations. </p>
 <h2>My Own Gilded Cage </h2>
 <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. 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 for anything. </p>
 <p>Somewhere in the middle, I realized the monotony resonated with me. 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. </p>
 <p>The characters are shallow and easy to critique, much like Amy's Baking Company's staff. Although the narrative follows a dramatic path, the dangers are easily identified and long periods of inactivity settle them into something manageable. Even though Drouet, Hurstwood, and her third boyfriend Ames may disappear for a while, like ghosts, their presence still lingers until they reveal themselves once again.</p>
 <h2>Carrie's Garden Sphere </h2>
 <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 dinner with him, and for a moment, she can see herself falling into his old charms. Really, Dreiser brings him in to reveal all that Hurstwood had kept secret before she confronts him again, but this is an archetypal scene to me and dreamy to read. </p>
 <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>
 <p>Honestly, I have this feeling like I'm very, very old, lately, like an immortal at the end of a lifetime. Like I've been on so many adventures, probably more than most people who have stable households and curfews and a healthy fear for their lives, but that chapter's closed for something else'. I grow terribly attached to those precious few who stubbornly remain in my little garden sphere of life. 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 be more like a bittersweet comfort, an old thorn dulled by time.</p>
 <p>Of course, not every weed in my garden is worth letting it 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, he feels entitled to her. He's a danger against 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>
 <h2>Overall Review of Sister Carrie </h2>
 <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 scenes, like when I was playing Culpa Innata. He surely wouldn't miss Drouet luring Carrie into his bed and her growing awareness of her power he would boldly explore 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>
 <o>With its teeth clipped, I'm definitely missing out on Drouet's scoundral. Worse, I'm not sure how much Margaret Sanger's birth control was catching on in 1900s, but the novel's also missing just how close Carrie was to unraveling her whole world by letting these men stake their claims in the most primal way, an exploitation Dreiser laid 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>
 <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, and concludes his novel is magical. It forgives any sins along the way. </p>
 <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 the holidays lined up. Clyde was like a dark mirror to look into when I had time to read, always doing as I did but making the worst decisions possible in the meantime. I suppose when I look back, Sister Carrie will hold the same weight with me, accompanying the same cage I was in 2024. Dreiser is such an intimate writer for me. Maybe whenever I become a cold-blooded Wall Street investor and railroad tycoon, I'll read his Trilogy Desire. </p>
 <h2>Anyway...</h2>
 <p>Do you like to read? </p>
 I'm too misanthropic and prudish to read anything but Victorian and Edwardian era novels about the underbelly of the American dream, imperialism, the international slave trade, existentialism, and really anything depressing. Are there other genres and time periods to read from? It seems like any book I pick up and get invested in is always that way, even as a kid. I never really noticed until recently, but maybe I'm a bad person or something, sheesh. </p>
 <p>At least, I also like to read religious books, particularly growing interested in medieval age Christian mysticism and spiritual journeys. But I've read a lot of holy books, mythology books, and Christian books. </p>
 <p>I don't know. I really struggle to read much of anything with chemo, but I do like books. If you ever read anything cool, I guess you can chat me up about it if you want to play book club or whatever. </p>
 <p>Anyway. </p>