catching up on my reading, post-modernism, and my most random thoughts

"...Do you remember the first question i ever asked you?"

"Yes. You asked me if i knew what being crazy meant."

"Exactly. This time I'm not going to tell you a story. I'll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you're in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there."

"We've all felt that."

"All of us, in one way or another, are insane."

*excerpt from Veronika Decides To Die, Paulo Coelho

This is the book on my current reading list along with my daily reading of Purpose Driven Life. haha. It may sound ironic to read one book about hating oneself slash “deciding to die” and another book about discovering one’s purpose in life. But literature is, in every way, irony in itself. So as a reader, I decide to just plunge into the natural high of my reading experience and overlook the stereotypes and other predetermined systems of thought. Say what now? No, no. I’m not trying to be post-modern here and I’m not saying that I’m positive about what post-modernism is all about because even Jessica Zafra confuses with what post-modernism means.

But the truth of the matter is, I’m not done reading the book yet. Nah, not even close because I’m only halfway through. And also, not that I’m a big fan of Paulo Coelho, because I’m not so much smitten by the way he writes. I’ve read a few books he’d written such as By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept and The Alchemist, but he doesn’t really compare to my favorite writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But that’s okay, I mean, the book is okay. There is something interesting about reading a book that dwells into the taboos of suicide and of hating oneself without going too rebellious. The book has its subtle way of reiterating a person’s reasons for committing suicide minus the melodrama. Again, I haven’t finished the book yet so I might dispute this once I finish reading.

Veronika’s alienation with the world made me remember Holden Caufield. Now who can forget about Holden Caufield and Catcher In The Rye? One of the books that made me think twice about nothing. Hehe. As one of the blurbs in the book, they describe Veronika Decides To Die as, “Girl, Interrupted meets Catcher In The Rye.” I have watched Girl, Interrupted when I was in high school and have already read Catcher In The Rye during my senior year in college but I will always give my biases to J. D. Salinger’s book. Veronika Decides To Die is so much similar to Girl, Interrupted because in the movie, I remember Winona Rider being sent to a mental facility because of a suicide attempt. -Funny Trivia: Girl, Interrupted is the very first time I have learned what promiscuity or being promiscuous meant. Haha. Because I remember this flashback scene where Winona Ryder made out with guys, one after the other, (I think, or if it’s just one guy) and she was confessing that she’s promiscuous (or, it’s that guy or Angelina Jolie accusing her of being promiscuous…something like that) And I really needed to look it up in the dictionary. So, does that qualify as a coming of age experience or just plain porno thought? Either way, it won’t matter anymore because I’m so done with high-school and has always lived a "single" existence.

Because just like Veronika or Winona Ryder (haha) or Holden Caufield, it is normal to not feel and think normal once in our lives. And to begin with, “normal” is subjective and arbitrary all the same. The main idea on how people define “normal” depends from one person to another and it rapidly changes overtime because of the ever fleeting pop culture and a shift in status quo. Let me quote a reader’s review about Catcher In the Rye, “alienation is just a phase”. True. We all feel different and indifferent once in our lives. We all submerge into the pitfalls of what they call a Mean-World Syndrome, a gruesome world people create in their minds because of experience and inexperience. When I remember high-school, I never fail to remember it as an age of angst and self-insufficiency that goes along with the glimmering spotlight of proms and the joys of graduation. It’s a phase where uncertainty is cured by cutting classes, movie marathons, and failing grades. Been there done that. And on my 22nd year, let me just say that alienation is very high-school. And I so can relate to that. I can empathize with these characters in these books because what they’ve gone through is nothing but a part of human nature, of human’s ability to feel. We are all alienated, abnormal, and crazy in our own funny ways.

I know that I’m failing, and have already failed, to make this a book review. Because first of all, I haven’t even finished the book yet. So, who am I to write about a book that I’m only halfway through? Its like predicting the happy ending of Romeo and Juliet (lame example, I know) or foretelling that Life of Pi is a true story from page one up until the end (this applies to the people who haven’t read the book yet or to those people who, just like me, got confused with Yann Martell’s separation of the prologue from the beginning of his story-telling). I hope Paulo Coelho forgives me for not giving so much justice to his book and to his way of writing. Let me just tell him that this is just my hopeless attempt to write about what I read, and in this case about what I am still reading. And I am not planning to make believe that I’m amused by his way of writing and his very Hallmark-greeting-cards thoughts all because everyone (or not) reads Paulo Coelho. I believe that as a reader, you shouldn’t just be agreeing with an author’s way of thinking. I believe that reading takes into a deeper level if, as a reader, you are able to agree, contest, fight for or go against an author’s ideas. Again, this is just my hopeless attempt to write about something other than myself.

Pardon me for my disorganized thoughts, for my most random ideas. As I am reiterating, maybe my one year sabbatical from writing has taken its toll on me. Or is it that my one year of routinary existence weakened even the way I organize my thoughts? I can’t answer that because it will only lead to a yet another muddled explanation. All I know is that reading is my ultimate love at the moment. Forget about unrequited love, forget about writing about the love I never had. These are all passé. I believe that there’s no need for rhyme or reason in trying hard to bring back something that you’ve always loved doing. This is my first draft. And I'm open to all criticisms.