Romance: False prophets and empty ideals...

I've just finished a pretty decent (though not great) book, considered to be a classic by one of the most well-respected authors of our time: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

It's a pretty straightforward account of a man (Florentino Ariza) who loves a particular woman (Fermina Daza) for his entire life, even though she doesn't love him. He goes on to live his life from one meaningless sexual encounter to another to divert himself from loneliness, and whenever anyone gets too close, he rebuffs them, because in his mind, he can never love anyone except for Fermina Daza.

How silly.

This is the real world. The idea that there may be "the one" sounds romantic, but it's just plain nutty. Think of it this way... if there really is "the one" for a person, out of 6.6 BILLION people in the world, what would be the chance of ANYONE finding their "the one". There's actually a pretty good chance that if you think someone is "the one", you're wrong, and a decision not to move on when your romance with "the one" can affect you for the rest of your life.

The fact is that there is no such thing as "the one" and holding on to the idea that someone (who might even have been so honest as to say they can never love you) might be "the one", and waiting for them to "come around" can only -- as the book proves -- lead to a very long, loveless life.

And when someone you love no longer loves you, MOVE ON! Let them go. Don't just pass the time with superficial relationships. But look for the next one you truly love, as a new person, not needing to be compared to the target of your unrequited teenagesque idolatry.

In my opinion, when we've lost someone, and then we manage to find someone we can love, and they love you, we really should try our best to make things work, even when imperfections appear! Don't be a quitter. And don't hold on to "the one", who has already told you you weren't for him/her.

When I lost M, who I loved with all of my heart, I tried to fix things for months. But I was still prepared to move on.

That says NOTHING about whether my love for M was true! Only that I think it's idiotic to live a loveless life just because of one rejection.

I guarantee you I loved M every bit as much as Florentino Ariza loved Fermina Daza. I just wasn't as stupid as he was, and knew when I had to move on, instead of filling my time with meaningless sexual relationships and rejecting anyone who gets too close, as Florentino did.

Alternative Identities: Appleinsider

I'm a regular poster on the Appleinsider Message Boards, mostly posting on non-Apple and non-tech relatied things. As message boards go, I find it one of the most well-educated boards on the internet, and there I'm able to discuss politics, humor, geeky things... basically whatever my heart feels like at the time, with a bunch of people I feel to be intellectually similar to myself. It's nice to have such an outlet, which is why I've been an avid poster for about 10 years or so, with dry spots here and there, but always going back there instead of somewhere else when my fingers get itchy to write.

Here's one of my recent posts there:

Whatcha Reading Now?

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Couldn't find the old thread on the first 2 pages, so I thought I'd start one afresh.

I've recently finished reading David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, and although it was well written as are all of his novels, I can't say I liked it nearly as much as either Cloud Atlas or Number9Dream. Right after reading this book, about a middle class English public schoolboy, I read Irvine Welsh's Glue, which is about four Scottish lower class public schoolboys (who grew into young men of various levels of success), which I have to admit I found much more pleasurable and rewarding. Maybe I missed some profound insight or something in the Mitchell book... not sure.

Now, I'm reading Nabakov, specifically Ada or Ardour, which despite having thouroughly loved Lolita from start to finish and having also enjoyed a collection of Nabokov's short stories, I found difficult to get into early on. Fortunately, I kept at it, and about halfway through I'm really enjoying it. This is despite the fact that, like Lolita and unbeknownst to me prior to reading it, Ada is another story of a love too taboo to be written about by any other than this eccentric Russian overliterary genius.

Was it that having just finished something written in vulgar Scottish proletariat dialect (and following that with a brief return to horrorsmith Clive Barker), my brain wasn't tuned to the complex sentence structures and roundabout descriptions Nabakov so loves? I don't know, but I suspect that it was!

This has caused me to formulate an interesting hypothesis:

Does our brain tune itself so quickly to the language to which we are exposed?

I've also noticed a transference of the intellectual style of what I've been reading to what I've been writing. Case in point my post in PO about the definition of "victory" in the War on Terror. I don't think I could have written that a month ago when I was reading Welsh or Barker. While I admit I can never come close to being a Nabakov (and who the hell can?), or even a Mitchell, I do think what I read greatly affects how I write. Having observed this, I've come to the conclusion that were I to immerse myself in sophisticated literature of the style of Nabakov and Huxley, I may be able to maitain a certain style that I respect of myself within my own writing.

Of course that would all become boring very quickly...

Maybe it's time to read some Chuck Pahlaniuk so I can better flame the likes of SDW and Trumptman... LOL

Actually, it looks like the next book I'll be reading will be Michel Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island so maybe you can look forward to me spewing out violent sexual annhialism in the near future.

But I digress...

So, whatcha reading?

Blurbs

Three things from various media that caught my attention yesterday:

1. I’m currently reading “Black Swan Green” by my David Mitchell (it’s so nice to get back to reading again – my depression had made me forget the joy of literature!), and this passage connected:

Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth
over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is
ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right.

2. At the same Time, I was listening to my iPod (again, in the deepest part of my depression I wasn’t listening to much music - a really bad sign for me) and a song “Someday Soon” by the Doves came on, with the following lyrics…

Someday soon you'll know how it feels to love someone
Someday soon you'll know how it feels to trust someone

3. Before I got home last night I was reminded of the movie “Flatliners” with Kiefer Sutherland and Kevin Bacon, where the premise was that we all had to face our demons -- those things that made us feel most guilty, and the things that made us the ugliest inside.

Up to you to figure out what this all means to me... ;)