Posts tagged with "books"

Quartz

When peo­ple ask me what my favourite nov­el is, I tell them, “A Hero of Our Time”, and that’s been true for more than eight years now. It’s a prime exam­ple of Russian Romantic Literature, and I can appre­ci­ate that. It’s bril­liant, not only in it’s lyri­cal style but also for the com­plex­i­ty of the mind­set cap­tured by the pro­tag­o­nist, which makes it such a plea­sure to read through. It’s intel­li­gent, it’s inter­est­ing, it’s cre­ative, yet none of these things make it my favourite. It’s not even the book I’ve enjoyed read­ing the most.

It’s sim­ply been the most influ­en­tial.

Lermontov’s nov­el once offered me guid­ance (albeit blind­ly) when I need­ed it the most. His words have shaped me more than any­thing else I can think of, even though I’ve cast off most of my for­mer self relat­ed to this. I still see his work as being an inte­gral part of my devel­op­ment, in mak­ing me who I am at every chang­ing moment, and that is why I hold so much impor­tance in it.

All of it was a mat­ter of tim­ing. Otherwise, I’d prob­a­bly think that it was just anoth­er bor­ing book I was forced to read in grade 10 English.

The same goes with my rela­tion­ships, some­thing I would nev­er have thought was relat­ed to tim­ing. It’s fun­ny to think that my most sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ship was also my short­est by far, with a per­son who is most like­ly to think noth­ing of it at all. And every­thing that made it impor­tant to me was a com­bi­na­tion of a very spe­cif­ic mind­set I had at the time and the fact that this per­son was such a change from my pre­vi­ous girl­friend.

The same goes with my favourite movie and my favourite band. I’ve become a per­son who holds more sig­nif­i­cance in the things that change me than the things that please me.

And change is a prod­uct of time.

The Greatest Balance

When I went home a few months ago, I found a copy Soul Mountain at Chapters, which I had been look­ing for, ever since I found out about it. I’ve been read­ing as much as I can late­ly, when­ev­er I have the time and the ener­gy to con­cen­trate on what Gao Xingjian is try­ing to nar­rate to me.

The thing that makes the auto­bi­og­ra­phy inter­est­ing so far is that Xingjian was incor­rect­ly diag­nosed with fatal lung can­cer, and after prop­er review, had been giv­en a sec­ond chance on life. His out­look changes, and he begins to see every­thing around him very dif­fer­ent­ly.

I’ve late­ly felt that, although I’ve nev­er been threat­ened with any life-alter­ing inci­dents, I’ve begun to see things dif­fer­ent­ly as well. It’s as if I have noth­ing and every­thing to live for. That there would be no dif­fer­ence between dying tomor­row or in eight decades. It’s almost as if I’ve had my fair share of expe­ri­ences, each one as impor­tant as the oth­er in shap­ing who I am, good or bad, and that this is already suf­fi­cient for me to be sat­is­fied with my life. Perhaps I feel this is true when I com­pare the amount that I’ve already learned with the infi­nite amount that is impos­si­ble to learn. After all, what is the pur­pose of life any­way? For me, it is to con­tin­u­al­ly shape myself into a bet­ter per­son, whether it’s intel­li­gence, or a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion of music, or dex­ter­i­ty, or any­thing. And since there is no absolute goal I have to reach (or can reach), there is no way for me to fail, and death hence­forth becomes mean­ing­less.

When I tried to explain this to some­one, he got con­fused, and thought that I was telling him about how I had expe­ri­enced all there is to expe­ri­ence already. This could­n’t be fur­ther from the truth. There are a pletho­ra of things I haven’t done, that I haven’t been through, and when­ev­er I’m giv­en the chance to actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence one of these things, I feel as if I’ve gained more out of life.

Instead of see­ing the act of liv­ing as cross­ing out items on a life-long “to do” list, I see it as writ­ing down items on a “have done” list.

The great­est dis­tinc­tion for me between these two world­views is that I can take my time in doing what I want, instead of feel­ing rushed to accom­plish as much as I can before I die. Seeing life this way has cer­tain­ly allowed me to be a much more relaxed, flex­i­ble, easy-going per­son, unin­hib­it­ed by the fear of death. The good thing about this is that I did­n’t have to fool myself into this view, sim­ply because I was unsat­is­fied with my life. Somehow, this mind­set shaped itself in my brain, and even­tu­al­ly man­i­fest­ed itself through my ever-con­tin­u­ing matu­ri­ty.

It has made life mean­ing­ful and mean­ing­less at the same time.

Why, Vera?

I just fin­ished read­ing A Hero of Our Time again. It’s the book I’ve read the most in my life, and I’ve lost count of the num­ber of times I’ve gone straight from cov­er to cov­er through var­i­ous trans­la­tions. Every time I’ve read it for the last eight years, I’ve grown a lit­tle more. Certain parts that I may not have under­stood before become clear and relate­able.

One par­tic­u­lar pas­sage struck me this time; Vera’s final let­ter to Pechorin.

For three hours now I have been sit­ting at the win­dow and await­ing your return…But you are alive, you can­not die! The car­riage is almost ready…Farewell, Farewell! I am lost — but what of it? If I could be cer­tain that you will always remem­ber me — I say noth­ing of lov­ing me, no — only remember…Goodbye! Someone is coming…I have to hide this let­ter…

I now ful­ly under­stand Vera’s final wish, hav­ing since wished the same thing myself. Yet it’s some­thing I can­not explain, even when I myself share this feel­ing. Why this need to not be for­got­ten? Why does remem­ber­ing mean so much?

Is it the need to know that I am impor­tant to some­one, even if it was some ephemer­al rela­tion­ship or some per­son­al mis­take? Is it so that I can believe that I was so spe­cial as to be unfor­get­table, an ego­tis­ti­cal or per­haps inse­cure shroud to fool myself? Is it to give my life mean­ing, a sort of pur­pose to know that I can indeli­bly change the lives of oth­ers? Or maybe it’s to know that the feel­ings I expe­ri­ence, how­ev­er bathet­ic or affect­ed, mean some­thing to some­one. I usu­al­ly pride myself in being able to per­fect­ly under­stand the feel­ings I go through, but this idea has left me at a loss. I won­der if oth­ers have ever felt the same way. I remem­ber not under­stand­ing this desire in myself at the time, but believ­ing that I would even­tu­al­ly.

Now I’m not sure if I ever will.

Emotional Rollercoaster, More Mid-Terms, Etc.

This week has been such an emo­tion­al roller coast­er. I can’t describe the odd moods I’ve been in, the twists and turns my mind has been going in. I feel lost.

I have three mid-terms tomor­row, one of which I feel con­fi­dent about. I tried des­per­ate­ly to study dur­ing the three days I had off, and only one of them (today) had any progress what­so­ev­er. I think it’s just my study envi­ron­ment, com­bined with my cur­rent emo­tion­al fluc­tu­a­tions. I tried to study in the SITE build­ing today, watched the sun go from east to west, and felt my mela­tonin lev­els drop. I feel burned out already. I def­i­nite­ly need this read­ing week.

Speaking of which, I most like­ly won’t be going home for the week. I’ll prob­a­bly try to hang out with Trolley or Thom. I don’t have time to change the dates on my train tick­ets, or even get a new ISIC. I’m not even sure if I’m elli­gi­ble, since I’m a part-time stu­dent when not con­sid­er­ing my hon­ours project as a course.

My progress through Moby Dick has been non-exis­tent late­ly.

I’ll have to catch the Married with Children reunion spe­cial on Sunday. I always found the show to be amus­ing when I was a kid, though I nev­er laughed out loud as I would if watch­ing a fun­ny show nowa­days, like Family Guy. I think I was just mys­ti­fied by the open­ness with which the sex­u­al­i­ty was dealt with, some­thing that I nev­er grew up around. I’m sure the spe­cial will remind me of the sum­mers I spent at home long ago, some­thing I’d rather remem­ber for my inno­cence than my igno­rance.

I’m down­load­ing Full Metal Jacket. I still can’t get over how bril­liant the entire film was, pos­si­bly the best dis­play of genius on film I’ve seen so far. I still haven’t decid­ed whether I should buy it though, since it’s not quite a movie I can relate to, which is gen­er­al­ly the cri­te­ria I use to build my col­lec­tion.