I’m done.
I just watched the trailer for Love in the Time of Cholera. It’s quite promising. But then again trailers are supposed to be that way.
I finished the book yesterday. I was turning another ordinary page–although eager this time to find out what happens next–when I realized it was the last in the book.
Marquez’s intention for the last line was obvious, but I was not touched. Instead I felt like the story ended too soon. Bitin.
I thought the Captain and Fermina and Florentino were going to get in trouble [more than they already were] or at least construct a plan. And I also thought the two would actually get married, or Fermina’s son would get angry at their affair. (But I guess that was implied already when he realized Florentino was also joining the trip.)
Marquez definitely surprised me at that, albeit not in the way Ian McEwan did. The story should have had more to it… Besides, it seems stupid that Fermina just suddenly fell in love with him when they were older because she talked to him and realized he was something. What lesson does Marquez want to show? It would have made more sense if Fermina did really love him when she was a teenager. But if she did the whole story would become a cliche.
Florentino, on the other hand, was too stubborn to move on. You’d think that with his numerous sexual affairs with different women (and I mean different: black/white, fat/thin, married/single, etc.), he’d find someone to replace Fermina with. Or at least contract an STD for goodness’ sake!
But, whatever. I still believe in Marquez. Even if his plot for this book failed me, I liked his words and style. There’s a tone in it that makes you feel like you’re reading something so important. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t really find anything quotable, as I would have if it were Coelho I were reading. Or maybe I just couldn’t relate to some of the lines that were quotable (eg., “The important thing in a marriage is not happiness, but stability”). Oh well.
I have plans of reading his Nobel-prize winning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, although, perhaps not anytime soon.
Toni Morrison awaits me now with her first novel.
Can you feel the love… in this?
I’ve been reading Love in the Time of Cholera these past few weeks, and I am finally in the middle. I bought it not really knowing Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writing style; the only thing I’d read of his prior to reading the said novel was his speech for the Nobel Prize.
Normally I’m a fast reader. But lately, I haven’t been. I don’t know if my watching too much has affected my interest to read, but what I do know is that the love story in Marquez’s novel is not touching enough.
At least, so far.
I mean, I’m not feeling it at all. It’s not romantic.
A boy and a girl meet for the first time and instantly like each other. They correspond through letters and hardly have real conversations. While she is writing to him in class, a teacher discovers she is not taking notes, but writing a love letter. She gets expelled. The girl’s father finds out about the boy, he reprimands her and takes her on vacation with him so she’ll forget. As usual, she does not forget him; the boy works in a telegraph office, and he learns of the girl’s location. They continue to write to each other. After around three years, the girl and the father go back to where they came from, and the boy sees the girl again in the market. When he gets near, he whispers to her. The girl turns to look at him and realizes that what they had was an illusion.
After a while, the girl catches the attention of a doctor who is one of the most respected people in the town. She is hesitant, but they get married, and this hurts the guy. He spends years agonizing, spending time with other girls but never really moving on.
Half a century later, the doctor dies; the girl becomes a widow. The guy visits her and tells her he still loves her.
Seriously, there’s really nothing to it. Maybe back then (and in Mexico), love letters were everything. But it seems so shallow. They hardly really know each other, and yet the guy is so dramatic and convinced he deserves the girl.
And what about the girl? Well, she’s stupid too. What kind of a girl gets kicked out of school and sent to some faraway place with her father for three whole years because of some guy, and comes back to tell this guy that it was all an illusion? Sure, it’s hard to really identify what we’re feeling, but come on! Cut the guy some slack. She should have rejected him in the first place. (That’s a laugh though–I am one to talk about rejecting people). Or at least, totally forgotten him in the years she spent with some cattle and pigs (’cause she went someplace rural).
I am a romantic, but honestly, I don’t feel the love in Love in the Time of Cholera. And that makes it hard to finish the book. I can’t feel what Florentino Ariza is hurting over, because it all seems so shallow.
I was much more touched with books like Atonement and Eleven Minutes (I’m serious). Technically, Marquez is a good writer: very descriptive and knowledgeable. But his plot sucks. At least for this book. And at least for the part I’ve perused.
If the ending throws me off, then he’s good. Really good. But if my summary up there proves to be all there is to this story, then I don’t think there’s anything marvelous about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s little novel. And I’m sorry for that, because I really thought it was something.
But since I’m not through with the novel, I can’t judge it once and for all. I’ll write a follow-up for this entry. Once I’m done with it.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Gotta cross the line.
“It’s all about lines. Drawing lines in the sand and praying like hell no one crosses them. At some point you have to make a decision. Boundaries don’t keep other people out, they fence you in. Life is messy. That’s how we’re made. So you can waste your life drawing lines or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines that are way too dangerous to cross. Here’s what I know, if you’re willing to take the chance, the view from the other side is spectacular.”
-Meredith, Grey’s Anatomy
Trust issues.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my life this summer. I haven’t done much this vacation, apart from participating in my second cousin’s wedding, spending the holy week in Bicol, PE summer classes, my brother’s high school graduation, my first cousin’s college graduation, and attending the Philippine Press Institute conference at the Manila Diamond Hotel.
Those are big things, but if you look closely, only a few of them are my own activities. I’ve been wanting to improve myself. I’m so dull and boring–that’s the thing–and I want to change.
I’ve recently turned down an offer to join a campus organization. I’d been thinking about it for a year, and it sounds crazy that I didn’t push through with initial plans (because yes, when I first found out what the organization was about, I told myself I’d join. Easier said than done, I guess). It’s almost as if I quit, because like I said I’ve been entertaining thoughts of joining the whole year. But last week, when I was being pressured to make a decision already (although they said they weren’t pressuring me at all), I got scared.
What a wuss.
No, let me explain what frightened–or repulsed–me.
The basic thing that turned me off was the idea of an organization. I hate the initiation crap. What’s the point of people ridiculing you? They say it shows how determined one is. I say it doesn’t.
And then there’s the ninang, sis, brod. I dislike the terms of endearment, and would hate to call anyone my ninang when they could be my age. I must sound like sap, but that’s just the way I am. I never participated in those corny games back in elementary or high school where one of my friends is my mother, another is my grandmother, and yet another is my older brother or my “anak.”
You might say I missed out on a lot of childhood (oh, wait, is that what it’s called?), but trust me, I had childhood. And it wasn’t in some rural area playing House.
Okay, that was harsh. Forgive me, it’s just, in the last few minutes before I made my final decision, I realized that I just wanted some friends to be with. All I wanted was to not look like some pathetic loner anymore and start having some fun. Ever since I went through some complications with a few friends back in the day, I stopped trusting people. I was hurt. And I think in some way, I still haven’t healed.
So why didn’t I give the organization a chance? Because I think that no amount of ideal house-playing can pull me out of my dark abyss if I’m still not ready to trust anybody.
But when will that be?
I’m working on it.
Scrubbed.
I just finished watching Scrubs. 
Today was my first time to watch the show, and I kind of wish it wasn’t. On the other hand, I’m glad; it inspired me tonight. I mean, finally I’m blogging again!
Anyway, this episode I watched from Season 1 was about death. They say 1 out of 3 patients usually die in a hospital, but sometimes the odds are much worse. JD (he’s the main character) was conversing with this old lady who needed to be hooked up to a dialysis because of kidney failure. However, the lady wasn’t willing; she wanted to die already. She wasn’t senile, she just felt she had led a good life already and that she was ready to go.
Now, JD is sensitive about death, (although he’s a doctor), so he makes up this list of things a person has got to do in a lifetime. It turns out the lady has done most of the things he put in there. She then returns the favor: she says, “What about you, how many of those things have you done?…Promise me you’ll do them.” [I'm not sure if these are the exact words. And, as hinted by the ellipsis, I skipped a few lines. IMDB didn't have this in the 'memorable quotes' link for the episode.]
Well, I thought it was neat. I’ve been re-evaluating myself (for the umpteenth time), and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a ton of things I still need to do. Especially while I’m still a student. [It has dawned on me that I have only two years left of freedom before I have to start working.]
So here’s my own list of things I must do before I die [in no particular order]:
- Watch The Godfather Parts I, II, and III
- Watch an opera or a real play.
- Go to Palawan, Cebu, La Union, Ilocos, the Banaue Rice Terraces, and any place in Mindanao. Just for the heck of it.
- Visit all the continents, except Antarctica. I must go to at least one country/area per continent. My choices for each–Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Nepal, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore; Australia: Canberra, Sydney, Perth, Melbourne; Europe: Norway, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands; Africa: anywhere; North America: Mexico (when the swine flu stuff has died), Canada (although I’ve been; my best friend now lives there); South America: Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina.
- Learn a foreign language.
- Meet a writer I admire.
[to be continued]
