Haven’t had books to read so I might as well write something to show this blog is still alive. 🙂
Four months through graduation and I still find myself addled. Observing my surroundings has made me come up with the tortuous realization that reality sucks. I wasn’t wrong when I alluded that we, or more like I, would come scurrying back to my cave where all the comforts that define my humanity are simply within reach; moreover, with this inevitable realization, I discovered that my seclusion has gone worse to a point that I let my judgments blind me (I should seriously do something about that :s). What’s more, the further I get into the future, the more I grasp onto the past for fear of being swindled into a nebulous future. It’s true, reality crushes dreams. I see evidences of it more and more each day — from a random face in the street to the person in the next cubicle. I can easily recognize their insatiable expressions because I see it everyday in front of the mirror. Sad though this may be, I finally resolved to lock away my dream of becoming an ophthalmologist — lock it up, throw away the key, so not even a gleam of it could blind me anymore. That ideal formula has presented itself to me for some time, all I needed was a little push to reach it but reality had to release its manacles and tie me down to my resources forever; and I would just stare at the formula as it will eventually drift to the grasp of someone with a more magnanimous reality. A pedestrian career awaits me and I have no choice but to be very good at it, that way I could distract myself from the future that will never be mine [releasing sigh of disappointment :)].
My hands have been dying to get itself on a classic which was why I felt smugly triumphant when I emerged from the second-hand bookstore that I love. Poring over the classic titles that lined one of its shelves, my heart literally skipped a beat when I saw The Portrait of a Lady, not because it’s a specific title I sought but because I thought I finally found James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. So yea, I got too excited but I actually had reason to be because it was in the same place that I found Joyce’s Dubliners. Albeit disappointed, I picked it up and mechanically turned to the back cover to spoil myself. And wow, I ended up buying it.
oh portrait
I have not finished reading it yet but because I am, I might finally get idiosyncratic when it comes to handling my books. You see, I normally don’t fill my books with highlights and though I love quoting, I feel as though it’s a sacrilege to desecrate a book with colorful marks. Writing it down or saving it on my phone is what I have grown accustomed to. With The Portrait of a Lady, I might as well grab my orange marker and highlight –well, I don’t know– everything! Hahaha. Perhaps not all of it but each page has something worth noting that I can hardly keep up with writing it down. Oh why does it have to be so good?
Once I’m done with it, I might write something about it here even if my writing won’t give the novel its worthy praise. 🙂
In my quest for better topics, I came across a passage from the second installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in the words of Treebeard the Ent:
“But then the Great Darkness came, and they passed away over the Sea, or fled into far valleys, and hid themselves, and made songs about days that would never come again. Never again…Those were the broad days! Time was when I could walk and sing all day and hear no more than the echo of my own voice in the hollow hills. The woods were like the woods of Lothlórien, only thicker, stronger, younger. And the smell of the air! I used to spend a week just breathing!”
(No worries. One does not have to be Middle Earth savvy to keep reading, since this article is based on that passage alone of the book.)
We have to accept it. Since the beginning of man’s complacent settlement, a lot has been sacrificed to make way for obvious development. These obvious developments come in different forms of infrastructure and to have these manifest, once pristine beauties have to be given up. Long has gone the time when the air is as pure as the water is clear; human activities have led to the earth’s present state which is such a pity because as they say we are simply borrowing the world from our children. When the time will come that our children will profess their turns in this world, they will shake their heads at their forefathers’ disdainful treatment to their home.
In exposing myself to reading materials made way before my time or your time, for that matter (classics), I have discovered a temporal existence that cannot be experienced today, and if it could, you must encounter countless impediments to actually experience it. Though The Lord of the Rings is a work of incredible fiction, the nature described is a personified reflection of what used to be and what cannot be anymore. At one point in high school, we trekked the mountains of Bucari, Leon to behold one of its hidden beauties – a towering waterfall. See, we had to slip, jump, and fall numerous times to be beguiled by the waterfall even for just a short time; but for all the challenges faced, it was worth it. But of course, natural beauties are not only limited to waterfalls, if we know how to appreciate what’s in our backyard, a simple landscape can become a transfixing wonder. In my abode somewhere in Iloilo City, there was a vast area of green land where we used to go and embrace its untouched splendor but it had been converted into a roadway leading to the coastal road. Like I said, something has to be given up to make way for necessity. A friend once remarked that she had to go to our area to actually get a whiff of fresh air which, of course, is exaggerated since no air in the city could ever be pure anymore, but those were the good old days because all that’s left of that seemingly pure air had been taken by the coal power plant operating in the vicinity.
Although we know these changes are being done for the better of the community, still one cannot help but be somewhat bitter at what is happening. Time will come when there will no longer be even hidden beauties to discover, no meager fresh air to sniff, no natural landscapes to take snapshots of. All I’m saying is if there are still coconuts in your backyard to crane your neck at, then keep your neck craning because albeit time is gone when we could spend a week just breathing, we could at least spend an hour to behold at what’s left.
I apologize if this post has nothing to do with either anime or books but I just feel as though I have to let this out, otherwise it will get caught up in my mind’s abyss of crap.
I am seriously looking for enlightenment. I feel as though it’s too elusive that I might never get my hands on it ever — or I guess I’m just too blind to decipher anything that patently presents itself to me. You see, the feared graduation day had finally passed so you can now call me Ms. Officially-Unemployed-and-Unable-to-Do-Anything-because-of-No-Enlightenment. I thought by now I would already have set out my concrete plans yet I am still as stupid, lazy, and skinny as always; I just don’t know what to do with my life. You have no idea how much that statement is stressed out, my pedestrian writing is not enough to give it justice. My friend actually said it for me, “You don’t know what you want, you only know what you don’t want,” it says so much of my pessimism that I guess might affect my entire ways (or already has :s). Earlier today, I was once again reminded of my being a Schopenhauer believer when I stared into my glass of soda and thought it to be half-empty. I try to be more sanguine but I guess I have imbibed this negative approach to brace myself for the worse (or worst) things that may happen…I seriously want to pursue medicine but I my qualms are just too prevalent; I don’t think I have enough juice in my brain to last me my entire path to becoming a good doctor. Oh Lord, I need a little inspiration. Better yet, give me a vivisecting perspective so I could pursue the scattered symbols.
Again, I apologize for bringing up this personal problematic.
If there is one thing I would love to possess once again, it’s my imagination; you see, my imagination today is not functioning half as well as it used to when I was a kid. I guess it’s because the inexorable reality of life had to keep up with me and while I was enjoying the comfort of the temporal existence that anime and books gave me, it just was not enough. Life had to stress on me its harsh and irrevocable reality. As a kid, I could make worlds exist under a teacup, write one crazy story after another, and fill an entire notebook with stupid drawings — and it’s all because my imagination ran as free as it could ever get! Now, I could barely write a single sensible short story or even draw an elf without reality manacling me, it’s even a miracle I could come up with things to write about here.
all because he let his imagination go wild
Now the reason for my silly rants is J.K. Rowling’s Harvard commencement speech which I recently reread. Imagination, in her words, in its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared. Furthermore, she said, Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are…They can refuse to know.
So without an active imagination, how am I supposed to live beyond my experience? What I could do is imagine things to a certain degree — the only problem is, that degree has already been conditioned by insipid reality thus preventing me from going further. Is there a point in everybody’s life where the prosperity of one’s imagination is greatly tested? I don’t know about the rest but I could definitely attest to that which is why my life has been anything but a leap of faith. I have been to discreet in my choices and actions, never bothering to loosen the constraint for a moment.
I guess my shallowness will someday come to haunt me but hopefully it might put me back on track. 🙂
Life with Literature 