After Dark

"I have been told I've got a darkish personality a few times.""It's not as if our lives are devided simply into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. don't you think?"...

"I've managed to make something I could maybe call my own world... over time... little by little. And when I'm inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I'm a weak person. that I bruise easily, don't you think?And in the eyes of society at large, that would of mine is a puny little thing. it's like a cardboard house a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere."...

Whatever it is, something is trying to send a sign to this side through a tiny opening in the consiousness. Such an impression comes to us with certainty.Unimpeded by other schemes, this hint of things to come takes time to expand in the new morning light. and we attempt to watch it unobtrusively, with deep concentration. The night has begun to open up at last. There will be time until the next darkness arrives...

Book Column

“Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria.” This first sentence is long enough to explain why this book, drew my attention. “Once upon a time” is how all the best children’s stories begin and “prostitute” is a word for adults. This story begins with this contradiction. And as I read through, I could also relate those contradictions to our lives. I did not want to analyze what the author’s purpose was. However, I would like to start to analyze Maria’s life comparing to myself.
First of all, before I talk about the story, I would like to introduce my favorite author, Paulo Coelho. He is Brazilian author for best-seller books such as , , , and so on. When he published his first book, he was 38 years old. However, what interests me was about his pasts. He first studied the law. Then he found out that law doesn’t fit for him. He started to travel for two years. Then, he succeeded becoming a songwriter back in Brazil. But he was one of anti-social hippy groups called “subversive activist” so that soon later he was imprisoned for a short time by the military dictatorship. If we look for his lyrics, it is very harsh and tough and at the same time, contains deep meanings showing his possibility as a writer. In 1986, he walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. This journey led him to spiritually awake. I do not believe in certain religion. I just believe that the God exists somewhere and respect every religion. Therefore, I do not feel great about how Paulo writes about his spiritual concepts. However, every living things are connected to each other so I could agree with every incredible line he has wrote in his books. I applied for getting his online daily essays. He questions about lives and we, readers sometimes reply in his blog. Surprisingly, his daily ideas are related to my days. When I was assigned to write a book report, I cannot but decide to report a book of him.
Now, let’s go back to the book . As I stated above in the first line, this book is about a girl called Maria. She was born in a small village in Brazil. She has an attractive look and intelligence letting her to dream to go abroad for the better. However, she ends up working in a brothel on Rue du Berne, the heart of Geneva’s red-light district. Maria who is on a journey to find true love ends up letting her own life to guide herself. She enters a life that leads her down the path of sexual awakenings and almost leads to her self-destruction when she is introduced to all sides of sexual experience. The title, is also a time when a man and a woman truly feels their sexual relationship (as far as I know, it is named as an orgasm). But Maria also realized that the love is above the eleven minutes which means sex cannot happen without love. As I liked about other Paulo’s books, Maria also led me for self-discovery which I can never be able to justify though I read this book about ten times.
As I’ve already mentioned, I could find some incredible lines Paulo has wrote and I underlined it as I was meditating. I would like to mention some of them here.

“The power of beauty: what must the world be like for ugly women? She had some girlfriends who no one ever noticed at parties or who men were never interested in. Incredible though it might seem, these girls placed far greater value on the little love they received, suffered in silence when they were rejected and tried to face the future by looking for other things beyond getting all dressed up for someone else. They were more independent, took more interest in themselves, although, in Maria’s imagination, the world for them must seem unbearable.”

I know I’ve born with privilege. I have many talents. However, I never seem to be satisfied. Sometimes, I sit down and stare at people repenting myself. They look all happy. Why can’t I? However, I just need to aim higher. I cannot stop and satisfy like that. That is why I keep trying and keep dreaming. I have questions to myself just like Maria did. And this paragraph explains both Maria and myself.

“I stood for a long time by the roller coaster, and I noticed that most people get on it in search of excitement, but that once it starts, they are terrified and want the cars to stop.
What do they expect? Having chosen adventure, shouldn’t they be prepared to go the whole way? Or do they think that the intelligent thing to do would be to avoid the ups and downs and spend all their time on a carousel, going round and round on the spot?
At the moment, I’m far too lonely to think about love, but I have to believe that it will happen, that I will find a job and that I am here because I chose this fate. The roller coaster is my life; life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it’s taking chances, falling over and getting up again; it’s mountaineering; it’s wanting to get to the very top of yourself and to feel angry and dissatisfied when you don’t manage it.”

How perfect line it is! I could not but agree with this all sentence that Maria has written on her diary. Yes, there are ups and downs in life. We have to live with it if we want to have a higher position. I know my bad personality not being able to satisfy anything but I realized I cannot live normally and end up like others. But I realized that it is too complicated to have a certain rule for myself for higher dream enjoying my life at the same time.

“Honor, Dignity, Self-respect. Although, when I think about it, I’ve never had any those things. I didn’t ask to be born, I’ve never found anyone to love me, I’ve always made the wrong decisions.- now I’m letting life decide for me.”

Therefore, once, I had this thought all the time. “Action is enemy of thoughts”. I thought too much. So I decided to take actions this time. I did everything. I did not let myself to get rest and daydream. I was feeling rather great. I worked hard. I’ve dated a lot. However, soon later I found out that I was too exhausted getting illness all over my body and my soul. I was not thinking this time. And I realized it was wrong that way.

“I’m not a body with a soul. I’m a soul that has a visible part called body. All this week, contrary to what one might expect, I have been more conscious of the presence of this soul than usual. It didn’t say anything to me, didn’t criticize more feel sorry for me: it merely watched me.
Today, I realized why this was happening: it’s been such a long time since I thought about love or anything called love. It seems to be running away from me, as if it wasn’t important anymore and didn’t feel welcome. But if I don’t think about love, I will be nothing.”

“All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well that’s a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly. And the person who loves whole heartedly feels free.”

Now, I have come along with the question; BEING FREE to myself. It must feel a bit strange to relate love and freedom. However, as I read through this book tens of times, I have experienced those feelings; being free with love and being free without love. Without love, whether it is my lover, my family, my work, study or myself, I noticed myself feeling suffocated. Freedom only happens with love. I could not run far enough from what holds me down when I tried to get away by just taking actions. It exhausted me.

“Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.
On one wants their life thrown into chaos. That is why a lot of people keep that threat under control, and are somehow capable of sustaining a house or a structure that is already rotten. They are the engineers of the superseded,
Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other people responsible for their happiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything.
Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it- which of these two attitudes is the least destructive?
I don’t know.”

I always get myself to extreme situation. Either I hold myself too tight or let myself go too far away. It doesn’t seem to be able to find any middle point for me. With all ups and downs, Maria finally gets an excitement of orgasm in the end. She feels free. It could not be comprehensible. However, if we translate the text dynamically, her orgasm, what she calls the freedom, can be translated in many ways. It is a literature and it contains a lot of meanings. Some critics criticized this book saying that a stupid ending motivating sexual excitement by words for curiosity. However I was rather enticed by his metaphors. Besides, I was feeling free having a hope to find a real free in my life in the end.

If someone asks me who I am, I cannot answer but ask him or her to figure out. However, I will keep continue searching for myself although I know that it will take forever. I believe that every single person has their own fate but we fulfill our lives trying to change it. C’est la vie. Ainsi, Carpe diem! (That’s life. So, enjoy!)

When I had nothing to lose, I had everything.
When I stopped being who I am, I found myself…

J.

I heart NY

"Later that night, I got to thinking about fate… that crazy concept… that we’re not really re-sponsible for the course our Lives take.That it’s all predestined, written in the stars.Maybe that explains why, if you live in a city… where you can’t even see the stars…your love life tends to feel a little more ran-dom.And even if our every man, every kiss, every heartache…is preordered from some cosmic catalog… can we still take a wrong step and wander off our own personal Milky Way?I Couldn’t help but wonder… can you make a mistake and miss your fate?if you look at how brilliantly Monet suggest-ed glimpses of sky… and the luscious, tactile quality of the canvas…you can see how he established his fate as one of the true poets of nature…and my personal favorite.""It was official. A new season had begun.Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate.Without them, what Would shape our Lives?Perhaps, if we never veered off course… we wouldn’t fall in love, or have babies, or be who we are.After all, seasons change.So do cities.People come into your Life and people go.But it’s comforting to know the ones you love are always in your heart…and, if you’re very Lucky…a plane ride away."

Passion

Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.On one wants their life thrown into chaos. That is why a lot of people keep that threat under control, and are somehow capable of sustaining a house or a structure that is already rotten. Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other people responsible for their happiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything. Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it- which of these two attitudes is the least destructive?I don’t know.