Book reviews

I realize when I write book reviews, I always succeed at making the story seem dull. A lot of times, the essence or most beautiful part of a book is not the plot/ storyline. Sometimes it's about how beautifully the author can construct the sentences, sometimes it's about the facets of the characters in the book, sometimes it's the display of the human nature, emotions, etc. If I had look at the review of the cider house rules, I would probably not be enticed enough to want to read it coz the plot sounded so unexciting. I really do not know how to make a story come alive. 

Cider house rules - John Irving

The best line I like from the book : "how we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes."

A very awesome read. I had to watch the movie after reading the book but was vastly disappointed by the movie. Wilbur Larch was an obstetrician and head of an orphanage in St Clouds, Maine in the 1920s. He was a non-religious man who believed that everyone had freedom of choice and that he merely gave people what they wanted and would not give recommendations. He delivered unwanted children and also performed abortions which at that time was illegal. Homer Wells was an orphan who was adopted and returned twice and so would, as Larch thought, forever belong to St Clouds. Larch loved homer and trained him to become an obstetrician so that he would one day replace him. However Homer disagreed with Larch on abortions and said that he would never perform one as he believed the fetus had a soul. 

Then came Wally and Candy, a beautiful couple who came to St Clouds for the sole purpose of abortion. Homer fell in love with Candy at first sight and followed them back to Wally's family's apple orchard to work as a picker. Wally then went to the war to fly the Burma route during WWII. His plane was shot down and he was thought to be dead. Candy who was never good at being alone fell in love with Homer but they kept their affair a secret out of the protection of wally's mother's heart. Candy then got pregnant and in order to continue keeping things a secret, they delivered the baby at St clouds and then told everyone that they had adopted an orphan. This secret they kept till Angel, their son, was a teenager. Before their return to the apple orchard, they received news that Wally had been found (very Pearl Harborish) but was paralyzed after being bitten by Japanese B mosquito. He was also sterile after acquiring an infection during catherization  in Burma. Candy married Wally even though she told Homer that she loved him but she couldn't leave Wally now that he was a cripple. Homer continued working on the orchard despite Larch's continuous efforts in asking him to return to St Clouds to replace him. Larch then started faking documents (medical degrees etc) and stories so that Homer could officially become the head of the orphanage. Homer continued to refuse until he had to perform an abortion for one of the pickers who was abused and impregnated by her father. That was he relented on the belief that abortion is immoral. Larch then died of an accidental ether overdose and Homer had no choice but to return to St Clouds as his replacement. It was before his departure that he told Angel the truth and Candy the truth to Wally (although throughout the story there was the impression given that Wally already knew). 

The story is beautifully written as it portrays the dark and beautiful sides of the human nature. Dr Larch and Homer's father and son love for each other, Homer's unrelenting and insufferable love for Candy, Meloney's worship of Homer as her hero and her pursuit of him for decades, Dr Larch's and his nurses' devotion to the orphanage, the secrets that were hidden, the crimes committed (incest, fights, prostitution, etc), Homer as the prodigal son who returned to the orphanage, etc.i don't know how the movie could turn out to be so dull. 

18 July 2015

Ether dreams

She lay in bed half awake

Surrounded by the fumes of ether.

In a minute or in two

Her mind will be fogged

And she can begin to dream.

A dream or two

She wouldn't be counting

One dream may get lost

But what does it matter?

The colors of her dreams

Are vibrant and brilliant,

Like the sun that burns with ferocity.

She will be roused from her dreams 

When the ether loses its power

And she will be released once more

Into that dark grimy world

The one with a name that spells

Reality. 

Counting tears

She sits by the pier,

Overlooking the lake,

The water shimmers 

And her tears glisten.

She counts each teardrop 

One, two, three,

And wonders if they could be named.

The sun burns her soft skin,

Yet she wouldn't leave.

One, two, three

She continues to count.

Sometimes she wonders if the tears would never end,

And she would have to sit by the pier

And count her tears 

Till the end of days.

Do not go gentle into that good night-Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Life

I thought I could use these two months of solitude to carefully reflect on things and make a change. But almost two months have passed and I caught myself thinking where had all the time gone? Time is funny that way. Days just slip you by without you noticing it. I realize there's always something for me to do but never time for me to just sit quietly and think. There are just too many distractions. I also realize I don't even know what questions I want to ask myself, and where I see myself say 5-10 years down the road. What do I want? What does God want? How do I discern His will and my own desires? How do I live this life properly? Will I get a second chance at a life if this one goes awry or wasted?

Living alone somehow doesn't affect the rhythm of my life that much but yet at the back of my mind and in my heart, I realize im the type of person who will always need someone. I'm not sure if the need to have someone is a good or bad thing. Recognizing that we will always need someone is a good thing I guess, since men are not made to be solitary creatures. Bad in the sense that it puts fear in your life coz you know you may not always have someone. 

C                            Am

Dreams they'll only be dreams 

                F                  G

If you're not here with me.

      C                   Am

Xxx 

Melody's first dream

For the longest time Melody couldn't dream. Throughout her entire childhood and 30 years of adulthood, she had never had a single dream. She was envious of those who could dream. She would imagine that most people could do the impossible in dreams, like flying across rainbows, diving deep into the abyss of the deepest ocean, seeing creatures that one would never see on earth, or rocketing out into space and seeing earth at a vantage point. Her inability to dream broke her heart so that she would weep during the darkest hours of the night. 

If only there is a cure for dreamless sleep! She cried. 

Somewhere in the darkest of woods, lived a wizard. He felt the desperate cry of Melody and decided that he would concoct a treatment for her malady. He gathered some dried twigs, wild herbs that grew only in that darkest of woods he lived in, a lamb's ear, a sparrow's feather, nutmeg, cinnamon, star anise, and a wild boar's snout and brewed them for 3 days. On the fourth day, he muttered a spell and ended up at the doorsteps of Melody's brownstone apartment, between west 33rd street and Leicester square in New York City. 

It was 2:32am when he arrived at Melody's apartment. He entered the apartment and went to Melody's bedroom. Her breathing was even and her eyelids did not flutter a bit. 

Ah indeed she is having of those dreamless sleep! What a poor dear! The wizard thought. 

Carefully using an eye dropper, he placed two drops of the potion onto each of Melody's eyes. He blew on her eyelids gently and then, vanished into thin air. 

Melody awoke with a start. She thought she had just had her first dream and it was of an odd looking old man in her bedroom. 

That's quite impossible! No, it wasn't a dream I'm positive! Thought Melody. She didn't want to believe either that her first dream was that of an odd looking old man.

Melody went back to sleep.

Very soon, she found herself floating carelessly amongst thick fluffy clouds. She looked over her shoulders and didn't find any wings but yes, she could fly! She was thrilled beyond belief. She flew with the geeses heading south, chased after airplanes, whizzed past the roof of an ex-boyfriend's home, and hovered above the Statue of Liberty. 

She then flew to La Jolla beach in San Diego, and dove into the cool waters of the Pacific Ocean. She plunged deeper and deeper till she could touch the ocean's floor and saw spiky sea creatures, slimy eel-like fishes, colorful and luminous schools of fishes. She couldn't believe her eyes. When she had swam to her heart's content, she flew out of the depths of the ocean and to a small cosy apartment in Paris. She lighted the fireplace with a snap of her fingers and warmed herself before the cackling fire. She picked a book from the huge library inside the small apartment, the kind where you needed a ladder to reach the topmost shelves. She settled into a comfortable armchair and started reading Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast". She wrapped a soft throw around herself, sipped on a warm cup of thick gooey hot chocolate topped with tiny white marshmallows, and read and read. She fell asleep in her dream. It was one of the best nights of her 48 years of life and it was a dream. The best dream that one could ever dreamt of and Melody didn't want to wake.

Melody was found at 2:32pm in a small apartment in New York city, 4 days after the appearance of an odd looking old man in her room, cold and hard as ice, but with the most serene and beautiful smile on her face. 

The dreamer

She is a dreamer

And she dreams in technicolors.

When the world goes to sleep,

She awakes in her dreams.

She lives without fear in her dreams

Sometimes she flies

And those are her favorite kind of dreams.

The rivers are long and wide

And sometimes she rows a little red boat

Out to sea.

In dreams, she builds her reality,

And sometimes she wishes

She never has to wake.

Sorrows are things of the past,

Memories, what are they? 

Everything is born new

And the days are always bright.

She slides on the rainbows

Landing softly on the clouds.

Her technicolor dreams,

Where she is the creator,

She pens her stories

Paints her world.

Sometimes she wishes and she prays 

That dreams will never end,

But she is shaken awake 

And her dreams lay broken

As she faces another day without dreams.

Of independent bookstores

I really like these little bookstores such as books actually, littered with books, etc. There are too few of them in Singapore although I think they are starting to gain popularity in recent years. 

I can understand how difficult it is to sustain such businesses when books can be bought cheaply off the Internet and with youngsters going for the convenience of e-books. 

Although I really like the selection at books actually and littered with books and really hope they can stay in business, I can't bear to pay 4 times the price for a book. In the end I bought some used books including Dante's Inferno, 7 lives of Picasso, David Sedaris' I forgot the title, and enlightenment something. There were lovely cats roaming around at books actually and I always feel that cats go well with books, both are excellent companions when you are in need of some quiet time. 

Indian Tea Company

Teas. There are teas that are sweet, bitter, fruity, flowery, smooth, dry, light, strong. There must be thousands of teas out there. And it was so that Balrash who was enamored with the wonders of tea that he set up the Indian Tea Company with his entire life savings at the age of 32 (although his tea leaves were imported from Sri Lanka).

His little store is located on a bustling street in Mumbai, called Gandhi Marg. Men would come in after a hard day of labour, sat around, smoked their cigarettes, drank his tea and made coffee shop (or tea shop rather) talk. Balrash has a knack for guessing what teas his guests will order and for the uninitiated, he will recommend teas that he knows they will love. There was once a beautiful woman dressed in the most wonderful turquoise blue sari that glittered as she swayed, who wept after drinking Balrash's special tea blend and who later thanked him by kissing both of his cheeks. When Balrash was still reeling in shock from the kisses, she left the tea shop... without paying. Balrash then learnt to be wary of beautiful women in wonderful saris because one can never be too trusting of such people.

Balrash sees all sorts of people in his little tea shop. In the mornings, it is mostly the elderly with their canes and toothless grins, in the afternoons, it is mostly the housewives with their children in tow, or the drivers taking a break while waiting for their employers, in the evenings, it is mostly the shopkeepers, the bricklayers. Balrash would stand behind the wood-paneled counter, pretending to be polishing the tea cups but his ears are always pricked (much like a cat's) to the chatter in his tea shop.

Proof of heaven - Eben Alexander

It is really funny how I find myself being sceptical about what was written in the book, when the idea of heaven/afterlife is central to Christianity. It felt rather cliched with angels, paradise and all. But then again, it could be that all these were glimpsed before by the lucky few who experienced it and came back and hence, their stories gradually became part of the cliche. But this doesn't make it any less real. 

The story was written by a neurosurgeon who had the misfortune (or fortune rather) of contracting an extremely rare form of bacterial meningitis and subsequently went into deep coma for a week. His chances of survival were low and the general agreement of his doctors was that even if he had came back to life, he was likely to remain in a vegetative state for the rest of his life (doctors are grim like that). Just when Eben's doctor was communicating to his wife on the seventh day that they should consider pulling the plug, Eben returned to life to everyone's disbelief.

And thus the tale of where he had wandered to during that week of coma began. Eben first ended up at an assumingly hell, which he termed as the "realm of the earthworm's eye view" and subsequently ascended to paradise, accompanied by a girl with butterfly wings. He had no recollection of who he was nor did he remember anything from the past. He saw faces that he thought familiar but could not recognize.

During his wandering, he was able to feel the prayers of others and also a sense of warmth/ deep love.

I think all that he said is steeped in the Christian faith. We know that God is love and it was only natural that he felt the love of God while in heaven. What puzzled me a little was that he never claimed to have met God during his stay in heaven. Maybe the idea of God as a being is man's way of making God easier to understand and more palatable. But really perhaps God could be just a presence, an energy, or just this warmth/comfort/ love, etc. 

Eben went on to say that the consciousness is more real than the physical/ material world, including our body. He also said that we are one with the universe, that all of us are linked to one another. Maybe we really are. I don't know. I think in some theories of quantum physics, the same kind of argument has been made, that when we are all broken down into the tiniest particle/ atom, we realize that we are all  interconnected.

Anyway this experience changed him completely and he wanted his readers to be moved enough to recognize the fact that we are all eternal and deeply loved by our Creator. 

I know all these theoretically but find myself struggling to believe. I believe in God, I believe He is love, yet the concept of eternity is so foreign and at times, frightening to me. I know how the entire Christian faith is founded on one fundamental truth- love and yet, I find myself doubting and asking why I can't seem to feel God's love.

I want very much to believe in heaven, in God's unconditional love, but sometimes I just feel I have not found the key yet. 

Anyhow Eben was bent on sharing his stories in the hope that he could help others who are facing impending death with fear. Most of his colleagues/ scientists who heard his story tried to explain that his experience could be due to the brain's creation (much like dreams) but the argument he made was that the meningitis had rendered his neocortex and limbic system useless. Hence it was impossible that his brain could create such intricate and vivid "dreams". As he continued to share his story and met with skepticism, he himself was also starting to lose faith that all he experienced was real. It was then he received a photo from his biological family (Eben was adopted and never knew his biological family till a few years before his coma). The photo was that of his biological sister who had died and one whom he had never met before. He recognized his sister as the girl with the butterfly wings. It was then that he was finally convinced that all he had been through was real. I liked the analogy he made that he felt like the boy in a fairytale who had travelled to other worlds and returned to earth disappointed to find that it had all been a dream. However, upon reaching into his pocket, he found a handful of sand from the other world and realized it had all been real.

Completed: 30 June 11:58pm