Title: Muddy Minutes: Is When Soiled Souls Exist
Author: Rima Jbara
Publisher: AuthorhouseUK
ISBN: 978-1-4567-7663-3
Pages: 60
Genre: Poetry, Philosophy, Body, Mind & Spirit / Inspiration & Personal Growth
Reviewed by: Beth Adams
Pacific Book Review
From the prolific mind of author Rima Jbara comes a collection of thoughts, quotations and unique observations of life in her book titled, Muddy Minutes: Is When Soiled Souls Exist. In a cross-genre style using poetry, snippets of conversations and most impressively one line quotations in her presentation, Jbara scribes universal wisdom and does so with such an original style, actually overwhelming me with accolades for her performance. Some of her most brilliant thoughts are the briefest and mostly terse, such as, ““Remember life is short, so live well by laughing and sharing love.” Albeit that quote may sound superficial, but in the context of her other words interleaved within the pages, the reader gets to slow down to the pace of having bullets of wisdom lobbed off the pages and into their minds.
The book follows Turquoise, an actress with values of pride, ego and self- awareness, often writing in her diary quotes which are excerpted into this collection. Turquoise would rather not work, than to simply do TV or commercials for the money. One in ten movie scripts would get her attention, and she valued her art of acting to a point of choosing not to work rather than doing anything mediocre.
Entries into Turquoise’s diary would show her ego and how she protected her privacy from the rest of the world, enabling the reader to sense the source of her, at times, cynical and sarcastic views of life. For example, she tried to perfect the art of doing nothing for a few days at a time, as doing nothing requires effort – hence she’s not doing nothing. She talks about how having nothing is richer than most with superficial riches, as many of the rich still are seeking something that is missing in their lives. Also was the concept of how in life we build such importance on many things, which we cannot take with us, so why waste our time doing such things? As you can see from these examples, the philosophy takes on a rather cynical undertone of values, one which strays from becoming a follower of God, or having a foundation of faith. God as a topic or subject was noticeably and blatantly missing from all of her writing.
Despite this criticism, I was completely awestruck by many of the prose and quotations embedded within some of her other benign writing, so finding the diamonds among the Muddy Minutes was an intellectual adventure and a very enjoyable use of time reading this book. So much so, I actually have read it now three times; each time finding hidden meanings and treasures within this book. As we are made of the Earth, be it sand and water, we are in a stretch of the imagination made of mud. Hence Muddy Minutes Is When Soiled Souls Exist.
