Looking through a window

I stayed at home yesterday, obeying doctor's orders for this middle-ear infection I got from somewhere, and I was extra pleased as the weather turned miserable right about the time I would need to trek home over Pyrmont bridge and then line up for the bus (one of my least favourite parts of the day is the bus stop on Elizabeth Street around 6pm, with its swarms of people behaving in inhuman fashion). So, while I was home, having quite a lovely time really because I was hardly "sick", I read one of my birthday presents: a book called The Secret River by Kate Grenville. I don't read a lot of modern fiction, or Australian fiction either, so this book is an adventure. So far I have been impressed. She writes with a lot of perception, but does it with a striking simplicity.

Here's one example, written after the family had just built a hut on their piece of forest up the Hawkesbury:

The forest took on a different aspect, too. Outside the eye was confused by so many details, every leaf and grass-stalk different but each one the same. Framed by doorway or window-hole, the forest became something that could be looked at part by part and named. Branch. Leaves. Grass.

It struck me that she could be talking about ethics or worldview with that simple paragraph - how we need a framework to understand things by, to make sense of the world, boundaries so we know where "home" is. I've always been glad that I had a defined window to through at the world, and glad that there's a fence, if you will, a fence built by God - even if I discover I'm on the wrong side of it, at least I know where home is. Anyway, that perhaps is a long shot from Kate Grenville, and perhaps a product of what was going on between my ears, but somehow I got there.