Giving in to Magic

So after years of friends nudging me to read the series, I gave in. After all, the final book just came out, and this means that I won't be ever needing to line up at 12am in front of bookstores to hold in hand the freshly printed copies of the latest Harry Potter.

Although - I must admit the movies are a lot more exciting. The book has more cohesion to it and I enjoy the backstories, things seem to make more sense now that I'm actually reading the books. Books 1, 2, and 3 in 4 days.. I'd say that's not too bad.
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Eloquently put.

Her mother seemed to know about the gulf that separated how she lived from what she was. And what was she anyway? She was of this place and she was not of this place, and though she might desire to be an American it was clear, as her mother said, that she had the face of America's enemy and would always have such a face. She would never feel at home here among the hakujin, and at the same time she loved the woods and fields of home as dearly as anyone could. She had one foot in her parents' home, and from there it was not far at all to the Japan they had left behind years before. She could feel how this country far across the ocean pulled on her and lived inside her despite her wishes to the contrary; it was something she could not deny. And at the same time her feet were planted on San Piedro Island, and she wanted only her own strawberry farm, the fragrance of the fields and the cedar trees, and to live simply in this place forever.

p. 206, in Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson.
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World's Largest Bookclub?

Ever heard of this fascinating idea?? BookCrossing is a network that facilitates "the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise." All you have to do is grab a book that you deem so good that you want to release it to others, register the book on their website, and then accidentally 'forget' it on a chair in your local cafe. When you've found a book (you can check for locations on their awesome website), you are encouraged to write a journal entry about your finding(s), and the person who registered that book will be notified by e-mail where abouts in the world their ex-book is.

I found out about this via my neighborhood community forum, and was so excited about it I registered right away!
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Life is a moving image.

...life is a moving image, unfolding and changing beyond our control. Despite our desire to freeze a moment or to go back into the past and alter events, time presses us forward.

Thus states in the afterword to The Memory Keeper's Daughter. The book was a grounding one, telling a story of how little control we have over ourselves and the world that we live in. Yet at the same time, this story of life's uncontainable chaos was also a story about the things we do have control over, and all the consequences of our momentous decisions.

Selective moments of the book left me in a restless unease, because Edwards is so emotionally vivid. Essentially she tells the story from the perspectives of all parties involved: their reasons, their feelings, and their logic. Told in this matter, everyone's actions and words made sense in their own ways. Many a times I caught myself thinking, "Oh, but s/he did that because..."

Several characters in the book fear life's unpredictability, and despise those who are so sure of everything because it makes them uncomfortable. Part of me stood in constant empathy with these characters, who expect the worst-case scenario all the time. To them--and to me--life is indeed about the difficulties and agonies rooted in its inconsistencies. Too often we turn a blind eye to all the goodness and beauty that prevail around us, and thus fail to take into account that hardship is but only half of life and never its entirety.

These characters are hence balanced by others who revel in life's perpetually changing nature. Needless to say, these characters were always ones to point out that things need not be so sad and difficult all the time. The relationships between these two types of characters varied. Some played off each other so that both parties grew stronger and gained, in the end, a greater and fuller perspective. Others, on the other hand, only made it difficult for each other. Fearing the worst, a reminder that life can only be only underscored worries, while these endless worries simply drove the other to wonder if there was even a joyous future awaiting them.

I was moved. Reading the book gave me a glimpse of things I knew about but did not acknowledge, like the consequences of dwelling in a single event for a prolonged period of time. This thing we call life is so uncontrollable, inconceivable in its greatness, and filled with unpredictability. One can barely call it organized chaos. But to be stuck in one moment that inevitably passes by means we shut out all that is beautifully changing--the key element that truly keeps us going--and we forget how to move on. Emotions are powerful--in its best moments they are uplifting and make us feel alive; and in its worst moments they are simply blinding. And none of this is probably within anyone's control.

So what do we do? We just keep on truckin', don't we? We try not to get too caught up in the details and try to give various forms of sadness a positive spin, so we can stay sane, at peace, and as content as can be. There just isn't an answer out there to the question, "How should we live life?" I mean, I haven't found any and no one that I know has, either. We just do. And it just keeps going. It changes and moves and we change and move with it, sometimes against it, other times completely separate from it. Vivacious time just pushes us along, in its most merciless, graceful way.

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bulls-eye.

Maneck studied Beggarmaster's excessive chatter, his attempt to hid his heartache. Why did humans do that to their feelings? Wheter it was anger or love or sadness, they always tried to put something else forward in its place. And then there were those who pretended their emotions were bigger and grander than anyone else's. A litle annoyance they acted out like a gigantic rage; where a smile or chuckle would do, they laughed hysterically. Either way, it was dishonest.

A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry. Page 493.
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Good reads

I started Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance over the weekend. It is such a good read (so far; I'm about 100 pages in) but the backstories of the four characters involved are just, sad. The first one left me in thought for a while about the safety of all the people who I love and care about. Hope you're all well! :)
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Snakes and Earrings

Recipient of the 2004 Akutagawa Literary Award
She was 19 when she wrote it, and this short novel contains ample sexual and visceral imagery. Although the award nomination committee accepted this work without much discussion, for a while both the book and the author were widely acclaimed amongst Japanese intellectuals with much debate and criticism. After all, the author was only 19 and, from the standpoint of the Japanese intellectual elite, what could a 19-year old possibly have to offer to our complex society?

The book was recommended to me by the English Department here, who all read it in English. I thought it would be neat to read it in Japanese (seeing how I'm fluent in the language anyway). Their reaction to the book varied, but was often one filled with a curious type of disgust and a desire to remain distant from, yet within reach of, the reality that it portrays. This reality, however, is the reality of youth culture in Japan, and although the author takes a radical example set from it, she still manages to show what it's like in the world that people rarely see.

(Breif analysis follows--it might ruin the ending. Read with discretion.)

"I'll be God myself."
They also thought that the reason why Loui goes 'back' to the tattooist, sadistic boyfriend Shiba (could be spelt Shiva, alluding to the Hindu god of life and destruction) is because she was lonely. I think there was much more to it than that. After her boyfriend Ama died, she didn't care and couldn't care less who she was with. The fact that the man was possibly related to Ama's death, in fact, only urged her to be with him. After all, Ama was dead and Shiba wasn't. The key was that this was another reality that she could change. She told herself, "It's okay, he might've killed him, but it's okay..." and then tried to change her surroundings--including the physicality of Shiba. While in some ways this probably was in an effort to get rid of everything tangible that existed and/or pertained to Ama's death, it was also a way for Loui to retain a will to live on. Loui's tendency to want to change the tangibles of her life was mostly apparent in her split tongue and her large tattoo on her back. 'Tis why Loui gradually lost the will to live as her tongue and tattoo were completed. By the end of it, she needed something else to change, something else to give her a purpose to live. Shiba was the answer.

At the same time, the reason for Loui's desire to make these changes is not necessarily because she needed constant change in her life. In fact, it is the ultimate paradox: the desire to change in order to attain perpetuity. She wanted to change Ama's hair color after finding out about the murder report on the newspaper not for the sake of changing, or just so that the police wouldn't recognize him, but also so that she can keep him, just the way he really is--gentle and at times childish, and always by her side. For her, changing his hair color would facilitate perpetuity. Then, when she loses Ama, she looks towards Shiba to provide her with the same opportunity, and it is here that her fundamental motive for change becomes particularly apparent (if it wasn't so apparent in Ama's case). At the end, she wants him to change how he looks, and she wants to change the scent of the incense, not because she doesn't want the police to find out in case there were any witnesses to his murder of Ama; rather, because she wants to make the change and make her desired reality stay. Just as she declared in the beginning of the novel, she had made herself 'God'.

Is such a phenomenon--the desire to always be changing but always be looking for a home plate--relevant? I think so, both on an individual level, as well as on the greater, cultural level, here in Japan. Highly recommended read.
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overrated secret societies

I resisted for months to read this book. I finally gave in after too many nudges that I have to read it. So I read the The Da Vinci Code after I finished my thesis, expecting that it would be a quick, fun read, which indeed it was. Perhaps a bit overrated. Secret societies and the mystery surrounding the Holy Grail is appealing and intriguing and eye-catching for sure, and its suspense was enough to warrant finishing it. But at the same time, its more obvious progression of events and plot development turned me off by a third of the way into the book. And of course the ending was slightly abrupt and anticlimatic. If you thought this was the best book you've ever read, you're clearly not much of a bookworm. Well, to each its own.

A moneymaker for sure, however. Something tells me that writing about God makes money. It is probably the ethereal that enchants us all, the desire to learn something new about the unknown.

Next book: Maia.
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