I am so sorry for my hiatus. I don’t even recall my last entry here. I seem to have lost my way the past few months, and I forgot all about the one thing that usually makes me feel better.

How ironic!

Perhaps that’s what took me so long to get back here….

No one told us when we were children that life was going to be so cruel. Not in any direct way, but rather in its monotony, in its relentless numbing of our spirit. The inane repetition of staying alive, slowly kills that which is worth keeping alive. I wish I wasn't so morbid, but alas that’s where we are.

I missed putting my thoughts to paper…or the digital stratosphere in this case. The only way I can deal with that which exists in my head is really to put it somewhere else. Usually in a notes folder on my phone, other times in a text to someone I love, and sometimes, luckily or unluckily, for whoever stumbles upon it, right here.

Well, none of this will be making much sense, nor do I really care if it does. I wanted to make a return, and hopefully make myself realize that I find my greatest joy and purpose when I do just this.

I will speak to you all soon enough.

Lots of love (or whatever you want!)

Isabella

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Overall, I didn’t enjoy the book. Nor did I find it to be gratifying. There are plenty of instances where I embark on a journey, turning the first page of a particular text, and it quickly becomes clear that I don’t necessarily enjoy the plot, or the narrative voice, or the style of expression, however, I can always find some pleasure if the work is instructive. I can justify the time spent with the knowledge that the individual crafted something worth consumption, or that I am learning something in the process of cleaving through the work. A Spy in The house of Love was neither of these for me.

I will quickly recap the essence of this book. We are faced with Sabina, an angsty, unsatisfied, troubled woman. She values herself for her beauty, and her ability to be flippant sexually with men, along with this pervading complexity that prevents her from being happy. Sabina had the potential to be fully developed into an interesting character, but as I plodged through the pages, she just felt very one dimensional and lacked a deeper why. We follow Sabina on a string of affairs she has; meanwhile, her husband Allen is relegated to a realm far away from her activities. Concurrently, Sabina is being followed by a lie detector. In the end there is a form of reckoning, but it comes so out of the blue and is so literal that it feels somewhat artificial and insincere.

I found Sabina unsympathetic. I didn’t care what she did, nor really how she felt. In my opinion this stems from a lack of complexity– she was not complex, and therefore human, enough to sympathise with, rather I almost disliked Sabina. I say almost because there wasn’t even enough of a person there to garner negative sentiments. I simply didn’t care for her. She read as a flighty somewhat superficial woman who refused to take ownership over her actions or unhappiness. I don’t want to simply bash this text, there were moments that resonated with me, as a generally angsty woman; however, these moments weren’t enough to carry the novel. One of these that came up early on is when Sabina returns to Allen after an adulterous period of hers– But I am safe. He will be asleep. He will be happy at my coming. He will be there. He will open his arms. He will make room for me. I will no longer have to struggle” (14). Isn’t that the kernel of paradise? To be loved, to be saved from the turbulent seas, the lashing storm of the outer world? Even Sabina’s desecration of this union feels more understandable, in a way, when we get a flicker of true feeling, beyond just hedonistic indifference.

The overarching, driving force of Sabina’s behavior and that which I wished the author explored deeper, is the reality that we all must die: life is momentary, and many of us cannot cope with this fact. Sabina acknowledges this: “she felt acutely and with grief, the shortness of life’s physical span. Death was terrifyingly near…” (37). It’s the morose truth, possibly the only truth that all of us are forced to grapple with, and for many it destabilizes them, renders them unable to ever build something for themselves, or hold themselves to any convictions. It is understandable, and it also explains the behavior of Sabina; however, Nin does not delve deeper into this quandary. There are moments where it is brushed by, and these were the greatest in the novel. Sabina reflects that “no place, no human being could bear to be gazed at with the critical eyes of the absolute” (58). This concreteness ages things, it turns them sour and destroys them because it makes them real; and therefore, mortal, unlike the fantasy she escapes into.

I wouldn’t recommend reading this novel, unless you have ample time and a desire to turn a critical eye to a piece of literature that deserves a bit of discernment. There are kernels, sprouts of great ideas, within this piece; however, similar to Sabina, I felt Nin didn’t commit enough to it, in order to cultivate the ideas into a beautiful blossoming.

Rate: 4/10

Who would I be if I didn’t care about being thin? I look back to my adolescent years and so much of my mental energy, my focus was hyper fixated and devoted to being thin. The desire and devotion to thinness subversively guided my decisions. I loved science, and had dreams of being a doctor. But when I thought about the level of mental power and lack of physical movement that would have gone into becoming one, I shrieked back in horror. I would become fat, my subconscious whispered in horror. The same applied to my dreams of being an attorney. I still attempted to pursues these tracks, but the silent voice in the back of my mind haunted me, pursued me ceaselessly. I would want to eat breakfast, so I could start the day with energy and the vicious thoughts prevented it. I would drink four cups a coffee before three, using all my free time to study. I excelled academically, in high honors and AP courses my entire time in high school. However, outside of academics I couldn’t function. I didn’t have the energy; I was exhausted, emotionally fried and it was because I was starving myself. I would use all my energy for my academic tasks then be left a shell, however, I always found energy to workout.

I wonder now as an adult woman,— who I would have been had I not been in service to this evil succubus? Could I have gone to Harvard? MIT? Become a doctor? A scientist? Perhaps, someone happy?

Even today, years later, I feel the same pressures. It’s a demand on the psyche, a little leech that slowly drains one’s energy. How free would I be without it? What would I be capable of if that portion of my mind wasn’t enslaved to the prescriptions of our beauty standards? I let out a guttural sigh. I guess I’ll never know, but I wonder how may woman have experienced the same? How many of us have been stunted by the disease society implanted in our fresh virginal minds?

Maybe that is the entire point- to have disempowered us before we even knew what power was. Boys are taught to worry about being successful, strong, leaders; we are taught to worry about our appearance, our thinness, our love-ability, which is directly connected to our fragility (smallness, weakness, thinness).

So maybe this horrible side effect I’m lamenting was the entire point of the plot. How to keep women disempowered? Infect their minds with something that will make them strive to disempower themselves.

How are we to think about the larger picture, the state of the world, the inequity we experience, the unjust standards we are subjected too when we are starving? How are we supposed to move powerfully when we are physically weak?

The answer is, we are not, and that was the plan all along.

The title enticed me instantly, and it was primarily why I made the final decision to purchase and consume the text. Upon peeling back the first thin page, I was met with almost exactly what I had expected: disappointment. Didion’s style of writing, nor the content that it contains, is my cup of tea. This is not to say the writing is problematic, no, no she is a very beautiful writer, excellent in face. It was rather, a subterranean spark that was lacking. I felt disconnected and disinterested by the stories and information she was conveying. In tandem, I did not find myself reaping much from that which I was absorbing. At times it felt she wasn’t trying to resonate with the reader but rather flaunt herself as a writer, who didn’t much care about the readership.

The first half of the book are her professional articles that had been commissioned. In these there were small moments that struck me, plucking the cords that yearn to be caressed from the words that float through my eyes into the sacred place no other elements can access. I wished there were more of these moments, more jewels amongst the perfectly crafted, yet cold and distant prose. One of these moments was in John Wayne: A Love Song:

“As it happened I did not grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I wait to hear.” (30)

There is something so raw and vulnerable here that comes through more in the second half of the work, in the Personals and Seven Places Of The Mind; however, it still felt meager, like tiny crumbs of a meal that would have been so glorious if she had just served it fully. The brief moments of these flickers, it is beautiful and captivated me to continue plodging through the book. Specifically, On Keeping A NoteBook stood out to me, touched me and gave me a glimmer of a woman who felt my pain. She comments “keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss” (133). I feel a human here, one that hurts like I, and I love her and want to hold her hand. These moments revolt against the clinical, detached style that I view as a defense mechanism to avoid being completely eviscerated by her internal struggles.

The final essay Goodbye To All That was my favorite and in my humble opinion the strongest. Maybe it’s because it speaks to the pain of letting go of childish hope, of the fantasy of youth, but maybe it is because it was the truest reflection of what makes Joan Didion a great writer: her pain and her willingness, or powerlessness, at times to reveal this unadulterated, human pain.

Rate: 5/10

I

He sat by the water and sunk his teeth into the overripe papaya, as the bitter tears of a useless old man fell into the fleshy fruit. Foaming waves relentlessly crashed against the stone cliffs with a fervor that lulled him into a mid-afternoon torpor. Small beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. This is where he went in his moments of greatest sorrow, the solitary spot perched above the gurgling sea where one could overlook the entire faded town of Milagros. It took a grueling hour to make his way up to the beloved sanctuary that he once bounded to, fifteen minutes in his better years. When friends of his, or what he would call “my familiars,” being of the opinion that friendship was a deep everlasting bond that required a depth that nearly every individual he had met lacked, remarked that he should refrain from putting his body through the perils of climbing such terrain, he spat on the floor and hissed: “If I die it will be God’s will, until then I will never give in to the insatiable demands of old age.”

It was not death that perturbed our hermit, but rather the devastation that preluded the final act. He first noticed the presence of this erosion in his late twenties, which some may find extraordinarily premature; however, taken from a scientific and physiological standpoint, it is when aging first descends upon us, like carpenter ants that slowly eat away at the foundation of a home, initially only leaving behind small superficial indicators of their presence, tediously devouring all they can, until one day, seemingly out of the blue, the home is found dilapidated. A pile of rotten wood and debris. Such is the case with humans, or so he believed.

Most people are oblivious to the changes in their personage until they look in the mirror and find a wasted, gray haired intruder, at which point all they can muster is the cliche: “how did time go by so quickly?” But, not our protagonist. Not our dissenter.

At the age of twenty six, he stood before the one mirror in his home, staring fixedly at the brown sharply defined face before him. He interrogated his interlocutor with a rigor that a military captain would find excessive. To his dismay, small, barely perceptible lines beneath his eyes and around his mouth were discovered. This moment unearthed the sinister omen that had run as an undercurrent to all his thoughts and feelings from the time he could remember remembering. Fear descended upon him, as he realized that he had enlisted himself in a war against time. After that decisive moment, he began to make meticulous observations and notes on the process of his aging. By the time he was thirty he had filled eight medical notebooks with his neurotic insights. Now at eighty five he had an entire room filled with thick, dusty volumes of meticulously organized notes on every facet of the human organism one could fathom.

He finished the sweet orange fruit, licking the sticky remains from his trembling fingers then began his trek back into town. The descent was the easier segment of this journey, yet it still ravaged his joints. Stepping slowly, he hobbled with the gnarled remains of a body wrecked by years of labor noticed and valued by none. Like most men of his social standing, the only occupation available in the town was physical labor, constructing various roads and public services for the government, or bookkeeping for one of the few tradesmen left. In his good years he enlisted in the former ranks, selling his health and vitality for meager wages that barely supported the means of this very labor. After twenty five years of inhumane strain on his body, drained of every ounce of physical value, left a sinewy, withered doppelganger of the boy who first woke up and marched to work on a fateful September morning, clutching his work bag in one hand and the endless possibilities of his destiny in the other, he was removed from the line of duty. A lifetime later and he sat with both hands empty and a body unable to march. However, the wind of misfortune was not to blow with its full might just yet. In this moment of destitution, an old schoolmate of our protagonist had just left for America and offered him his previously occupied position as a bookkeeper in the Chief of Trade and Maritime Corespondence’s office. Having long ago sacrificed any hold over his fate, he gladly accepted and began the tedious monotony of the next forty years.

He woke up, ate stale bread with a sausage, two fried eggs and a cup of thick black coffee, went to work, sorted documents for eight hours, stumbled home, ate a pot of stewed meat, read for an hour, and collapsed into restful slumber. His only day off was Sunday, which he used to clean his home, attend mass, and make his way up to the sanctuary to eat his treat for the week, some sort of fruit brought in from the depths of the lush forest that very morning or imported from some vast distance he would never get the chance to see. This was his only pleasure in life, his only mark of humanity.

Up until five years ago, this was the entirety of his existence. At the age of eighty he was fired for no longer possessing the faculties to even bookkeep. His hands shook and it made for sloppy handwriting, which was unacceptable in the well oiled, unfeeling, machine of bureaucracy. Despite the cold callused nature of his business, the employer took pity on the frail, shrunken man who sat before him, staring with eyes no different from a child, and decided to issue him a monthly stipend that would sustain him at a level slightly above destitution.

Gasping for breath, he clutched at the towering oak tree that sat at the bottom of the mountain, cursing the prison that was his own body. The wide open field to his right filled his eyes, and he spoke softly.

“To have freedom, but no ability to utilize it, is the cruelest fate a man can be dealt.”

Soft green leaves fell. The roots of the trees creaked. A warm scent of summer sweet grass lingered in the air. In slow measured steps, he approached the locality of his utmost loathe; the nucleus of this insular, incestuous town, where all eyes focused from behind morally righteous shutters, whispering, whispering, while bathed in the shadows of their own towering hypocrisy. They spit venom, not out of spite, but involuntarily, sick from the black bile that waded in their souls. They must wretch the poison, and it spews in any direction, without rhyme or reason, spraying at the innocent and guilty alike. Those it lands on become stained, tainted, cast into the lot of exiles, and the perpetrator views this demarcation as the beaming proof of the victim’s fault, the reason these dregs deserved such spittle, unaware of their culpability, of their irrational cruelty, yet in some duplicity of soul, painfully conscious that it very much could have been they themselves who received the venomous blow. Those who snickered most maliciously, knew the power they wielded and took pleasure in the arbitrary ruin of those least deserving of it. An imp of the perverse, it was the very destruction of common sense that they savored, glutinously licking it up like a starved dog. Despite years of slander being heaved upon our hero, he remained unscathed, shielded by a steadfast vanguard, the greatest armor for such adversaries: a complete indifference to society and their opinions. Any salacious gossip, rumors, or outright attacks on his character he shrugged off, maintaining a stoic attitude in the harshest sieges.

He grumbled with disgust as a figure materialized before him.
“Look at who it is! How are you doing, compadre?” A sugary voice cooed. The stranger bore an inane smile, despite the repugnance that disfigured the other man’s face.

Julio De Cadrille was a bachelor in his forties, who had taken into his head, some years ago, that the two men were close friends, henceforth jumping at any opportunity to engage with the old man. His skin had a gray hue that housed two bulging black eyes, the nose of a toucan, and pouty lips better suited for a woman. Despite being quiet unattractive, some would even go so far as to say hideous, he had great success with women.

Throwing his veiny hands in the air, our old man groaned: “Ahh leave me alone, I am just trying to get a prescription from the doctor.” If he had the strength of his former years, he would have pushed Julio aside, jolted into the pharmacy, and briskly escaped the hellish enclosure that was the town center.

“Come on you benevolent curmudgeon, you need at least a bit of human contact.” His grotesque lips curled up in a idiotic smile.

“What I need is for you and every other maggot in this town to leave me alone!” Frantic for a sheer moment, seconds later he reverted to his haggard self, left especially exasperated by his brief fury.

Julio chuckled, then abruptly paused. His eyes narrowed as a young girl exited the laundromat across the street.

“Would you look at that,” he nudged his noncompliant accomplice, a sinister smirk stretching across his broad face.

“You probably haven’t heard since you live under a rock, but the entire town has been in an uproar, I mean an utter frenzy, about that little thing.” He nodded his flaxen head toward the thin girl sitting on the stoop, tugging stubbornly at her short white dress. “Appp-arr-eentlyy,” he stretched out cooly, attempting to accomplish some dramatic effect he had observed in other more dignified gentlemen of his day, “she was found in the mayor’s bed, naked as the day she was born, and the maid swears, just swears! She must have been there the entire week since his wife was out of town, and he had adamantly instructed her not to come under any, and I mean any, circumstances, until Sunday, which was the day before the wife returned. Very suspicious indeed…” His self satisfaction at his storytelling was painted across his fat face. “Now, to add to the depravity, it’s being said that the girl was paid for her time there. How much has not been determined.” The pitch of his voice increased as his interest piqued. “I would hope it’s a considerable sum, though, because an entire week is no small feat. She must have been exhausted afterwards!... Afterwards, afterwards, hmm where was she off to afterwards? It’s peculiar, no one knows where she came from or where she lives, but it must be that she subsists on selling her body. That is the only logical deduction…she’s a traveling whore!” The entire tale was relayed with the self satisfied, giddy excitement of a schoolboy.

“That girl!” the old man yelped, pointing to the one in question. “She looks like a child. She can’t be older than fourteen!” His sagging eyes bulged with indignation.

“That’s all you have to say!” Disappointment at the lack of intrigue in the salacious gossip restored his nerves to a calmed state. “Ugh, well you are a bit perceptive. Yes, yes… she is only seven-teen, but you know how some women are... Born to cause mischief. Just look at her, you can see it in her eyes.” He grinned. “I wouldn’t mind being caught in bed with her.”

“You’re repulsive Julio, get out of my way.” The elder hissed, and shuffled ahead.

The pharmacy smelt of antiseptics and decay. These visits were a glaring reminder of his decrepitude. He scorned medicine with a bitter vehemence for perpetuating his aging, rather than halting it all together. Leaning back in the rigid, plastic waiting chair, his vision was magnetically drawn to a photograph of a small bald man. What was most notable to the viewer was the fine blue linen shirt and pants the subject was drowning in, he wondered why they would dress the man in something that was clearly far too large for a man even twice his size. Scrutinizing the image, he finally read the large, bold lettering that sat above the shiny head:

“A hundred today! The oldest resident of Milagros.”

A mocking smile of derision distorted his face. “What is the point in living long, if you must do so in a rotted vessel? Medicine, science, all the progress of society, the wise men’s march toward modernity, all it can do is stretch out the suffering, prolong the decay, why can’t it preserve the good years for as long as possible and let us die when we are intended to. All these resources, all this discovery, and this is all we have! Enjoy an extra twenty years of sickness, pain, and the humiliation of being an invalid! Who would want that…” He crinkled his nose, knowing that despite his ravings, he too wanted just that. Indignation at his own weakness, at his own attachment to life upset him terribly. His mood was morbid, even rather caustic. The doctor merrily emerged from behind the white curtain, with a pink fleshy face that housed gleaming blue eyes and curled red lips, to hand over the medication. The perky mien flushed a greenish tinge the moment it met eyes with the patient.

“Oh my, oh my” the soft feminine voice bustled. “Have you been taking your pills like I instructed?”

“Yes, not that it does any good. I feel worse than ever. You’re not very good at your job are you? Or is it just all of medicine is an utter, abject failure? ” His eyes slanted while he hissed at the curly headed boy. He begrudged the doctor his youth. His glowing, endless health.

“You simply must relax.” Gasped the doctor, whose appearance was somewhat prepubescent. “I don’t want you overexerting yourself anymore, do you hear me? Only light, short walks from here on out, and the rest of the day you must rest. Why don’t you pick up some sort of hobby? Maybe knitting or painting?” The doctor retorted in a sprightly manor, emanating cherubic joy.

Our old man hastily snatched his prescription in a triumphant attempt to storm out of the establishment. To our dismay, however, he only managed an unsteady, sluggish totter. Slamming the door behind him, again nothing more than a strong closing, he stepped back into the sweltering heat, grumbling beneath his breath. The girl Julio pointed out remained unmoved the past hour, frozen in exactly the same position, like a wilting statue. Something stirred in the depths of our hero’s withered cavernous chest. Great vexation was felt at the individual who stood before him, for, despite what one might believe, he was secretly a great lover of children, especially those most downtrodden. The only soft part of his heart existed through and for their sake, and so, given this predisposition, he worried for her sitting so long exposed to the squelching heat, and resolved to go check on her well being. Shuffling across the street, he bent down to the young lady and handed her a bottle of icy water picked up in the pharmacy.

With thick purple lips, she spit out cherry pits into the sun baked streets. “How much is this going to cost me?”

Her timid voice revealed an unexpected childishness to her demeanor. This disarmed his rigid stance entirely. There was a tender innocence behind her stare, a purity of movement. For a brief flicker, his years dissolved, and he felt they were suspended in a liminal space of agelessness. He replied, with an unintended ring of endearment: “A smile.”

“I guess that’s a fair trade.” She snickered playfully, the notes of her laugh falling like soft powder.

He spoke with such tender sincerity that anyone familiar with the old man wouldn’t have recognized the voice as belonging to him. “Why are you just sitting here?”

“I don’t really have anywhere else to be.”

“You wouldn’t rather be at your home? It’s a bit hot to be sitting outside like this, no?” The cicadas rang ceaselessly around them. Eyes peered from within the shadows of windows boarded up for noontime siesta.

“I don’t mind the heat. I like being outside.” She dug her little sandals into the dust.

“Ah you and me alike. I can’t take this heat for too long though. When you get older everything starts to turn on you. Can’t combat common sense like you used to.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead and threw up his hands. “Ah, enjoy it while you can.”

Content to return to her solitude, she looked down and continued to eat her cherries.

Stammering a bit, turning right and left, he searched for any strand of thought, anything to say, desperately wanting to remain in the girl’s presence. “Are you a student? Or are you working in town?” He meekly questioned.

“Neither. I’m quite useless.” She shrugged listlessly, tossing newly discovered pebbles at a cat.

“Ah don’t say that! You are the embodiment of potential and unrealized feats. You have the rest of your life, in boundless rolling waves, before you.”

She looked at him with a frown. “No. My existence is nothing, an empty shell, an orchard with no fruit. It’s all pointless, really.”

The old man was stunned. “That is not true.” Pondering for a moment, a humble grin emerged with his thought. “You young people all feel life is over just as it begins. Be morose when you’re my age. Right now you get up and go. It doesn’t matter where, or what you’re doing, just do. Act, experience, feel, live. Then when you do it all, you can stew in your melancholy.”

“You’re a funny man.” She watched him with special attention.

He handed her a ten dollar bill. “Take care of yourself. Don’t worry about what tomorrow brings, just be grateful it has something for you because one day you wake up and no matter what it’s offering you can’t take it. Now, goodbye.” He tipped his hat and ambled back toward the horizon, occasionally whistling an eerie tune that beckoned phantoms of the past.

Small brown eyes stared at his outline until it dissipated into the horizon. Even after he had disappeared, the eyes watched the birds swooping in the empty space that remained. She thought about him long after he departed. Laying in bed, freshly washed for the first time in three days, she tried in earnest to decipher what the old man had meant, but it was to no avail. A thick calloused hand turned the lights off. Sighing and the stench of sin pervaded the room, while she yearned to understand what the meaning of his words could have been.

II

The sun crawled up the blue expanse, illuminating the wretched world below. One withered leg emerged from the white bilious sheets, worming its way toward the floor, while the other followed in tandem. A decrepit, hunched, coffee stain of a man lugubriously rose from the ashes of a sleepless night, coughing up the charred remains of a phantasmal dream. The intoxicating scent of honeysuckle lulled our elder into a joyous fog, leagues away from his local noxious aura of decay. Shuffling over to his kitchen, in green satin slippers embroidered with his initials and gold tassels, he began to infuse coffee rinds with sanctified river water. Every Monday, for the last five years, he had been acquiring this water from the local sage who collected the water with ancient relics, in the form of stone basins, and performed a sacred ritual of purification that took three entire days. Some say the water had the power to heal any ailment and had even, in rare cases, risen some from the dead. The holy liquid purged the physical vessel of evil parasites who existed to devour you whole. The holy man instructed his followers to drink the potion when they first rose from the other side, before ingesting anything else, but our elder reasoned that it was in fact the same liquid, even after running through his hand grown coffee beans, and so consumed it, solely in that state, every morning.

Misty haze veiled the vast fields that surrounded the small wooden home. A blue film enveloped the world that he gazed at through the murky glass pane. The next step in his morning ritual brought him into a miniscule bathroom, where a solitary mirror hung dejectedly. Scratching the stubble on his chin nervously, he gazed at the stranger standing across from him and the face drooped melancholically. The warm, fleshy human heart caged within his drafty chest transmuted into a leaden weight and sunk into the bubbling folds of his bowls. The terror was too much to bear; he trembled, despite being faced with the same horrifying, inconceivable vision each morning. Ah yes, there is no growing accustomed to your own deterioration. He wrote a poignant verse regarding this experience in Volume III, journal five:

“I look in the cruel reflective surface and it shows not I, but some old man who I am forced to call myself. I am the young man with healthy flesh, thick black hair, and a body strong enough to endure any labor. This is the person I knew myself to be all my life. This is the person I know myself to be. Why was I robbed of my very being? Why am I forced to exist as this impostor that stands on the brink of the other world. No, this grandfather cannot be I. How do I find my way back to who I was, to who I am? To the person that time stole from me and has hidden someplace far beyond my feeble reach? What life am I living if not his?”

Teeth brushed, thin hair combed, dressed in his walking linen, he renegaded against the crushing reality at hand and stepped into the brisk morning air.

Approaching the overgrown path, littered with fallen petals and tiny paw prints from the inhabitants of the surrounding forest, he began to make out a girl standing at the foot of the mountain. Black streams of silk billowed in the wind, whipping around her angular face, hiding her eyes then revealing the dark luminous orbs flashing, fixated on the traveler. A grin ignited the beauty that rested behind her somber gaze. A thin honeyed arm shot up into the air, flailing back and forth, ushering the old man in the direction of the owner. Unaccustomed to companions, the man momentarily questioned his sanity, believing the young girl was a mirage, some production of his subconscious, due to the unnatural amount of time he spent in solitude. He aggressively rubbed his sunken eyes then settled with the conviction that it made no difference if the girl was real or not.

“Hello, what are you doing here?” A cheerful intonation uttered.

“Do you remember me from yesterday? I’m the girl you gave the note too. I-I- umm, I came here to… say thank you.” The words escaped her lips, and she realized she had no idea why she had come. She twirled her fingers together behind her back, as she rocked side to side biting her lip.

“Ah, but of course. How could I possibly forget such an interesting young lady? It was my pleasure, I hope it bade you well.” Awkwardly he began his ascent up the rocky edifice.

Startled by his indifference to her presence, she all but yelped: “Could I join you in your walk?”

“I don’t see why not.” He was utterly confounded by her behavior, yet her mere presence before him ushered in an overwhelming sense of tranquility that he was unfamiliar with and simultaneously yeared for. So the two people walked side by side, rising above that which they left behind, the past, their sins, their pain, suffering, and for the moment floated, suspended in the joy of the other. Small twigs crackled beneath the four feet, the labored breathing harmonized with the swaying of the trees in an orchestra of respiration, while the tender bonds of kinsmanship took root in the damp soil.

A quiver in the silence, the soft voice reverberated in the hollow distance: “So what do you do everyday?”

He gnashed his teeth, perspiration streaming down the ridges of his wrinkles.“Continue the cycle. Everyday I rise and begin a repetition of the past. It almost seems that all these years have been one day on loop, bearing no distinction from one another,” he cut himself off abruptly “no, no, more aptly put, each epoch of my life has existed as a singular, drawn out day…childhood, early adulthood, mature adulthood…so I have lived three days in all the time I had gifted to me on this earth.” He exhaled violently. “We humans march to the beat of a very monotonous drum.”

“I see. When the river flows, you don’t realize how far downstream you’ve floated until something beckons you to look back. The distance traveled took only a moment, yet somehow you are miles away from where you began.” She grew excited at her ability to contribute to the thought. “ It’s like when I don’t work, I spend days wandering around, eating, swimming in the river, sleeping and it only dawns on me when I finally get alarmed about money that I have been drifting around for a week. But in my mind it was only a day!”

“In a way, yes that’s what I mean.” He wasn’t quite sure how to continue, so unaccustomed to encounters, especially with women, and one of her age at that. Silence pervaded the space. The two walked in tandem, a light drizzle coating them in a thin vapor.

Growing more comfortable with the passing time, she chirped quickly: “You’re not married? Why is that?”

Face flushed red, struck by the unexpected boldness of his companion: “I never had the time.” He clenched his fists, stepping over a cavernous dip in the mossy landscape. “I was so busy surviving, fighting with every fiber of my being, and what felt like every molecule of energy in the universe, just to keep myself alive that I never possessed the time to even think about love, nonetheless pursue it. By the time I had enough stability to ponder matters of the heart, I found myself a withered apricot.”

She giggled at his dramatized way of speaking.

He continued in a stream of recovered thought. “It’s peculiar. From the time I was a small child, I had the fear that I was already an extraordinarily old man, that I was in fact on my deathbed, and my consciously lived-present experience was just future me reliving my memories, that I would awake one day and suddenly be the hundred year old man, remembering the moment that I felt I was just in a memory, and the entire time leading up from that moment to this would be a distant, hazy, dream. I never felt I had youth, it seemed borrowed, momentary, and I desperately feared the loss of it, sensed its loss with every waking moment, despite never believing I fully possessed it. Ah but what does it matter? One must drink the cup they have been poured, otherwise they are just a fool.”

Stepping over a slug covered log, a sly smile spread. “Why not pour it out and ask for something else?”

Intrigued by her wit, a quick retort escaped him: “And what if that was it?”

“Well then at least you don’t have to drink something you are not favorable towards.”

Matching her juvenile resilience to reason with sober wisdom, or so he thought, he replied: “You would die of dehydration then.”
“Better to perish happily than to live long with the taste of repugnance on your tongue, no?”

A contemplative look washed over his face. He leaned back against a stern oak, petting the little velvet leaves that hung swaying before his eyes, and in that moment he had the overwhelming desire, almost a compulsion, to embrace the young girl and break into heavy, convulsive sobs. She glimmered before him in the early morning light, basking in the fresh dew that lined her skin with tiny droplets, emanating a life force that he felt transfused with, simply by gazing at her, by hearing her words and having his words heard by her. He wondered where such a light emanated from.

“You’ve asked me enough about myself. Now it is my turn.” There was a jovial ring to everything he said to her. “What is your name and what is it you do in this town?”

“You can call me Mariposa. I have no last name because I have no family. I do whatever it is that finds me. I used to live further into the country on a large plot of land with an uncle, but one day we took a trip to this town, so he could buy some items, as he was in the textile trade, from the cargo ships, and while I was going through the little trinket stands, see I love the tiny clay figurines the women sell there, you know the ones, they’re hand painted, well during that he gave me the slip, and I never saw him again. That was a few months ago, and I have been lucky enough that province has sent me opportunities to keep myself alive, as you put it.” She spoke frankly, with an openness that is only ever seen in very young children.

“And you like the… work… you do?” He paused on the word work, squirming at what it masked.

She looked up and flippantly scoffed. “I don’t mind it.”

“Hm, so you like the men you lay with?” Rules of formality never constrained our old man, and upon a moment of reflection, he felt complete candidness was appropriate with his peculiar little friend.
“A monster lives within me, and it eats through the mouth between my legs.” A moment elapsed where neither moved. She began to laugh hysterically.

Taken by surprise, he too burst into a cheerful howl.

And so, henceforth, every morning at dawn, that eerie hour when the fog drifts forlorn, searching for something it has lost in the night, the elder found Mariposa, solid and bronze, waiting to commence their climb. A great lover of little things, upon every visit, he unfolded his hand to reveal a tiny clay animal, no bigger than a coin. A miniaturized orange cat sitting curled up, a brown puppy standing on its hind legs, a monkey holding a miniscule banana, a luminous turtle with a blue tiled shell, a penguin, and then three baby penguins noted for their gray pelt, a disfigured giraffe, a tiger, which she had never seen before, a white owl, nine bunnies of varying color, for she said they were her favorite animal, then a myriad of other exotic and domestic pets that built up a beloved retinue in the girl’s heart. She took the butterfly figurine, special being the only one made of intricate glass embellishments, and hung it on a thin gold chain that was worn for the remainder of the summer, never once parting from its owner.

They spent their days seated within a lush cove, the elder combing Mariposa’s long black hair, while she told him wild tales from her storehouse of adventures, never daring to repeat a detail, living it seemed far more than he had, despite her comparative deficit in years. Laughter, joy, and indelible warmth defined these sanguine summer days. He held her head and felt the world between his weak fingers. Through her eyes, he had the wonderful discovery that within him existed a beautiful repertoire of redeemable qualities, of shining attributes, that were previously brandished as useless, ugly, insignificant, and relegated to a dark corridor of self hatred, most notably his age. Blind love, a devotion to all that was the mind and soul, allowed the matter of mortality to fade slowly. Cleansed of prejudice, he saw that his measured reason, laconic cadence, detachment from worldly matters, and stoic indifference, built through these very years, were the fodder for his yearling’s carnivorous love. If such an existence could garner the love of something so sacred, so cherished, was it then not worthy of redemption?

Elation reigned in the chimeric kingdom. Gusts of chilled wind, smelling of crisp leaves and decay, beckoned the end of the infernal heat and days of everlasting light. Fall was peaking the hill and was soon to be in the valley. The two sat in their customary positions at the top of the summit, facing the sea, their hands gripped to two succulent papayas. Juice dripped down their fingers, ran unnoticed in sticky beads down their arms. They devoured the fruit, tearing into the flesh, swallowing seeds and all. Eyes touched in a tender embrace, while the setting sun warmed their flesh. The light flickered, nearly extinguished for the day.

A bird fluttered haphazardly through the air, dipping and teetering, until it finally perched its bony little legs on a moldy branch. It ruffled its greasy feathers and opened its little beak crookedly, glaring at the old man with beady, black eyes, piercing through his tranquility. A prolonged silence ensued, shattered by the strained voice of words sung from the soul. “Forty years of trudging through the filth, through the God forsaken wilderness, to find you.”

A face deplete of understanding stood before him, yet he continued in the same vain.

“As a child I would lie in bed and wait for the sun in the darkness of night, feeling that all of eternity was spread over those few hours. That too is how I have sat waiting for you. The entire mundane drudgery, the senselessness of it, the grotesque hollowness, all was the price I was obliged to pay. You, you, you have led me out of the cave and blown away my unseen tormentors with divine light. My accounts have been settled. I have been granted a sheer moment, a singular instance of clarity, to see with my own bodily eyes, celestial truth, to surpass the filthy illusions and bare witness to the purest form.” He raved rapturously, eyes glowing. “I would happily trudge through another eighty years of torment for a minute of sitting with your head in my hands. What is the meaning of our time here if not to find in the filth, in the horror, a moment of recognition, a moment of tender humanity, a singular connection between two hearts discarded by the world? I happily embrace the cold claws of death. I invite the great slumber, knowing I found the world’s secret fortune. I touched paradise on earth. I fulfilled my purpose, the sole reason for being here—to love and to be loved. I bid farewell to the whole of my past in your image.” He had reached a point of ecstasy, unconcerned if his companion understood his words, he hummed on in a fervent whisper.

Perplexity contorted her delicate features, producing a heinous effect on the beauty that existed solely from the exquisite harmony which reigned the open landscape of her face. Large black eyes darted down toward her bare foot, digging its heel into the worm filled soil, a devious look flashed then a rush of wind, a blur of hair, skin, a single grain of sand dropped from the eternal hourglass, she rushed at him, frantically embraced his frail body, and forced her lips unto his. He stood frozen in the exact second before her siege. No attempt was made to stop her, though he would not have been able to even if he had tried. In the past few weeks, he had deteriorated with such speed that it was truly shocking that he was still able to make his way up to the precipice. His arms were so feeble, they constantly shook and resembled those of a starved prisoner. After her hand slid down to his peeling, leather belt, he grabbed her hand.

Eyes flaring with what could only be the fear of the powerless, he spoke sternly. “I am far too old to be doing this with anyone my own age, let alone you. Now calm down.”

Breathless, petrified by his rejection, her face shone with damp salt water. “But I love you?” Stammered her weak voice.

Having disarmed the panther, a sigh of relief brought life back to his pale countenance, and he lightly patted her silky head with paternal affection. “I love you too, but this is not right. I am your friend, see? More than that I am barely of this world anymore. What good could I be as your sweetheart?” A pained smile broke through his wooden stare. “Marita, you will find someone in the long journey you have before you. Don’t tether your beautiful flesh to a rotting leper.”

Tears fell in a stream of incoherent rage, bruised vanity, and preemptive grief. The immanence of his death, his permanent departure from this world, struck the final blow to the fragile creature, and she collapsed onto her knees howling, pleading like a desperate child. “No, no, no!” She was gasping for breath. “If not you, then who? What am I supposed to do here without you? You can’t leave me. Please, please don’t go. Just stay, we can be together forever, love each other forever. We don’t need anything or anyone else.” She was ripping at his shirt, shaking with despair. “Please don’t go. Stay for me.” Convulsive sobs shook her violently.

He kissed her cheek softly.

“My life is barren without you. ” She screamed with tears choking her rage. “What good is a field that bears no harvest? What good is a life void of color?”

He bore the painful reality of his finitude, of their fleeting time together, like every other blow of fate, with dignified submission. Before him, he saw a reflection of himself, before life had worn him down, beaten him with all the horrors of loss and deprivation, when he still believed one had the power to counter the senseless musings of destiny. “Be patient, you do not know what seeds may lie in that which appears barren. Don’t compare to the orchards of others that flourish, for while yours may take longer it may be the grandest one to be. Why abandon the plot before the sun has set? And if the world is gray then it is up to you to color it, however you may see fit.”

He smiled at the youthful sentiment that life is over just as it begins. “My time here is nearly up, everything is fading, all has bloomed and decayed. What good would it be to board a sinking ship, hmm?”

Purple from swallowing her violent, uncontrollable anger, she threw her few belongings to the floor and ran, fists clenched, down the mountain, never to be seen again.

III

Six days had passed without any sign of Mariposa. The old man had wholeheartedly anticipated her appearance after the second absence post incident, but despite his expectations, and in great disappointment to his hopes, the little figure never materialized as he approached the foot of the mountain. A grave foreboding began to haunt his dull mornings. Sitting in the desolate, clinically bare kitchen, he sipped black coffee hastily, feeling the silence that surrounded him like a thick veil, tasting the sour vapors of decay with every labored inhale of the brisk dawn breeze that snuck in through the gaps in the poorly maintained windows surrounding the room on all sides. In his daily, increasingly brief, peer into the mirror, a grave expression met him, something that harbored the dark whispers that he withheld from himself. The words, the thoughts, pushed into the furthest enclave of his mind, the graveyard of all he could never bare to face. He ceased his climbing on the final day of this mystery, and instead dragged his husk of a body into town to search for some semblance of solace.

Drenched in sweat, wheezing from the strenuous stroll, he finally arrived in front of the pharmacy. Grasping a wooden bench, attempting to gather what meager remains of strength he had left in his arsenal of fortitude against age, a cool gust of wind danced through his bones, smelling of salt, roses, and rotten wood, when he heard a young, feminine laugh echoing from the distance. He straightened up his sack of bones, and proceeded toward the voice.

The mayor’s house, lurking with gigantic proportions, passed in the distance. Each step heightened his premonition that the girl had gone back to her old ways, and he would find her huddled in some fanciful stupor over a slew of candies and cosmetics she purchased for herself after a night of sinister escapades. A little grin forced its way onto his sullen face, just when a hand grasped his jagged shoulder.

“A whole month goes by without any appearance in town, by God, I really thought you were dead this time!” Julio exclaimed, holding the scowling old man between his ring laden fingers.

“Ah don’t be too relieved, it’s coming any day now.” He wiggled away from his fraternal imprisonment. “Have you seen the little transient girl lately?”

Julio knitted his brows and frowned. Placing his hand on the back of his neck, he replied in a somber, yet typically vivacious timbre.“Ahhh you didn’t hear? The girl was raped and killed. Very sad, yes very sad indeed. They have been saying that whoever did it, which I think is more than obvious who did it, threw her body into the sea. Can you imagine, just tossing her in like any garbage…” The last phrase was thrown in to bolster his appearance as compassionate. Julio felt that was a perfectly appropriate place for the girl to be disposed of.

The old man, pale and trembling, cut Julio off in a shout. “Well how could anyone know it was her, if the body was thrown to sea? This- this- this- could all be rumors! Salacious gossip!”

Julio, struck by the old man’s hysteria, dipped into a softer voice to tell the next detail. “The bloated corpse floated into the harbor two days ago. She was a real mess, the flesh was gray and her face fairly disfigured from the sea water and the critters who go for anything they can get their little grubby mouths on. Oh yes, but one of the town officers contacted her uncle, remembering he was the fellow who bought all those Moroccan textiles last summer, and so upon getting the news he drove in from the country to identify the body.”

Barely audibly:“And he identified it as her?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t think this would affect you so profoundly. I understand early passing is tragic, but are we really much surprised? Well, I suppose I should tell you the rest of what I know, which isn’t much. He reluctantly took the corpse, which was completely devoid of clothing, besides a thin necklace, and arranged for the funeral to be held back at his ranch. That was this morning, and he was said to have headed out about two hours ago.”

A resurgence of energy fueled by righteous indignation reanimated the shriveled old man, “So no one is going to investigate what happened to her! What world do we live in, what kind of society is this, how, how can this be allowed! I will not allow this, I am going to the mayor, to the senate, to the president if I have to!” He began foaming at the mouth, pounding his hands against the cement pillar he was previously leaning against.

Julio gently placed his colossal palm against his curved spine. “No one will listen. Come, let’s get you something to eat.”

The old man shrugged the hand off his back, unwilling to surrender after a lifetime of resistance. “I am going home. Thank you, but I don’t need anyone to comfort me.” He tipped his small felt hat and continued down the path already traveled.

He settled himself on the lookout spot, perched above the world, and dreamed of a time before all this, beyond all of it, somewhere never seen but remembered in the deepest part of one’s soul. Tiny, shimmering offerings rolled through the valleys of age that marked his face, as he ate cherries freshly picked that morning and purchased on his way out of town, pit and all, until his stomach stretched out before him, swollen and engorged. The next day they found Jose Esperanza cold and prostrated, with tears still in his eyes, and a small butterfly perched on his shoulder.

In the spirit of mental disintegration, I chose to read one of my favorite Dostoyevsky pieces, Notes From Underground. What a strange, lovely little book this is! I remember the first time I read this work, it was also in January, four years ago. The narrative is relayed from a troubled, contradictory, self-effacing, yet vain driven individual, who promises these notes are not for a viewer, but rather a form of self-punishment. The first part is an ideological treatise on the underground man, and the ideas that encapsulate this phrase: interiority, suffering, and consciousness. The second part is a recollection of memories that depict these sensations, those of shame, suffering, and an inability to live in the exterior world. In this two part system, he reveals the state of his interior: deeply contradictory, sensitive to the point of neurosis, and in a way, a pitiful result of a psyche which is simply at odds with the world around it.

My first experience with this text had me aghast. How could this Russian man from the 1800s recollect my own sentiments in such a poignant way? I was twenty-two and my own depression at the time was catastrophic, unlike now, where it is a sedate curmudgeonly little man who is content to just follow me around. At that time, he had a malicious vengeance against his host. Well in this state, I truly felt Dostoevsky was mirroring thoughts and sentiments from my very mind. There is something deeply resonant to the troubled individual, to the individual who is trapped to a certain extent in their own minds, which as we come to see is the underground.

The root of the underground man’s ailments is his very consciousness. In the first part of his Notes, our narrator declares: “not only excess of consciousness, but any consciousness at all is a disease” (5). This is because he is unable to accept reality for what it is, and he is, as a product, entrapped by the lure of thoughts. He is able to dream. The greatest threat to the laws that govern reality is he who can desire that which he has not seen, and consciousness births this with the ability to discern that reality is not all there is. Such an individual is then tormented by an existence that he also can’t seem to engage in, as this consciousness renders all action a bit superfluous. It is through this very dissatisfaction that enlightenment is reached, as our narrator believes that “suffering is the sole root of consciousness” (34). Through consciousness there is a split, a render in the psyche between action and thoughts, dreams and reality, life and fantasy.

The underground man, having attained consciousness, finds dissatisfaction with the reality that pales in comparison to the dream, and is thus alienated. “The more aware I was of goodness and of everything ‘lofty and beautiful,’ the deeper I sank into my slime” (5). The underground man lives through dreams. He is nourished and sustained by the only world he can stomach: the one he has invented in his head. A life more noble and satisfying than the “real” world ever could have been. “I know clearly…it’s not at all the underground which is best, but something different, something altogether different, something I long for and can never find!” (37). The paradoxalist is morbidly aware of his own contradictions, yet he cannot accept them. He seeks utopia; meaning the good place, and simultaneously the place that cannot be. Is this not the case for most of us? We desire something beyond what we have, but what? We can only feel a longing for this unknown that, most likely, could never be. Is this not the root of most of our sufferings? The dream that will, and can never, be realized. Well, for our underground man, he is unable to accept this, and so “I invented a life for myself, so at least I’d live somehow” (16).

He digresses to an analysis of man’s driving force in life, and it is to assert his will. “All of man’s purpose, it seems to me, really consists of nothing but proving to himself every moment that he is a man and not an organ stop” (31). The larger message of this being: man will not act in his self interest, but rather in the way that expresses his freedom of will, his ability to choose, to assert his freedom. Interestingly, the underground man is inhibited from doing this because he is a slave to his own consciousness, and is thus “forever fearful of action” (48). He desires action deeply, the ability to assert his will, and consequently be a man. However, we see this fail throughout the second part. When he seeks to take action, to assert his will, when he sees “I am now facing reality” (68), he shatters, left “ignored by everyone, crushed, and annihilated” (75). It is only in the climax that he is ,to some extent, able to act. However, this, we see, is to his ultimate demise. He is left questioning: “which is better– cheap happiness, or noble suffering? Well, which is better? (128).

Notes makes us question what the purpose of our being is, and in what capacity can we say we have lived a true authentic life? What does it mean to be a human: to assert our will or to have a pure heart? Is love or power the defining feature of humanity? We see these questions played out in the arena of the underground man’s psyche. Well, where he ends up may answer some of these questions.

My take away is that the purpose for which we are here, the driving factor of man is not to assert his will. No, rather it is to have a human connection with other beings. The underground man asserts that man wants consciousness above all, but his actions and the resulting sentiments disprove this. It shows that man wants ultimately the purest human connection: love. He even says “you cannot have a full, genuine consciousness without a pure heart,” and what is a pure heart but one that loves and is capable of being loved? In the conclusion the underground man asserts his free will; he banishes the loved object. And in this he realizes that is not what he wanted, not what he desires, not what would save him nor give his life meaning, give him humanity; no rather, it was love. “Love means all of resurrection, all of salvation from any kind of ruin, all of renewal of life” (126). And so he runs after it, and in not retrieving it he is doomed forever to an underground existence, which we come to see isn’t consciousness at all.

The leap I am taking is not a new one in the least. I am following the road paved by Nietzsche, who made the astute observation that God was killed in the hearts of men, and continuing down the lane of Camus, who developed this conversation toward an appreciation of nature and centering of the present moment. What these men, and many other thinkers, have pondered was: what happens when Man destroys that which ruled over us, once gave us the guidelines to conduct, and defined our very existence? Is this destruction catastrophic? Again referencing Nietzsche, the answer is no. There is nothing inherently problematic with destroying that which we worship, that which we have given the power to define meaning. It is in fact the only way to freedom. However, if new meaning is not created by Man once he gives himself the power to act as God then issues will arise, and we see a world that is apocalyptic. Freedom without limitations, without meaning, is a prison of madness, an arena of destruction. This lack of ability to create a framework for meaning that establishes values, morals, and standards for conduct, leaves the world bereft of guidance and the individual floating in self-imposed agony. There is something of this dilemma in the world I see around myself, and it has resulted in a general depletion of meaning and a deification of that which serves the individual’s immediate desires, rather than their long term needs.

Having grown disillusioned with the concept of the sacred, the focal point of meaning in present times appears to be primarily the physical, yet not in the classical sense of the word. In previous times, the attachment to the physical word placed the importance of our existence on that which existed in the natural world and stimulated our more profound sentient senses. After the rejection of the Divine, along with the proposed concept that abstractions such as science, philosophy, and political theories also took the focus away from the real material world, and thus must not replace the role of God, there came a camp that resurrected the ancient worship of nature, and the values it embodied: harmony, peace, community in the world outside of ourselves, and an embracing of the material world that nature provides through and for us.

This is not what I see in the new cult of the physical. The advent of the new physical has none of these previous associations. There is not only an abdication of nature, the entire structure of orientation toward a larger tangible world has been extinguished. Rather this contemporary concept of the physical is an introverted one, where the individual turns toward themselves and consults only their own paltry needs. The values of nature are not consulted, rather anti-nature in the form of artificial intelligence, technology, and media have supplanted its role in the hearts of men. At this point, God has been killed, and along with it Nature. This includes the inherent reason, virtue, and limits it embodies. We are left only with the strange creation that is Man.

With the modern quasi-flesh, quasi-robotic manifestation of Man serving as the sole focal point of worship, what value systems and conceptions of morality emerge? If the individual is their own God, and their own locust of meaning is within this narrow fleshy unit that is alienated from existence, it leaves the parameters for meaning and morality emaciated. The Divine, Nature, Reason– these idols have been dethroned. How we arrived at this present juncture is a long road of individualism, capitalism, conservatism, and overall disillusionment of the human mind. To properly chart this development would require a separate, much deeper study and is not the point of this essay. The main claim here is that the Sacred has been supplanted by the solitary mortal individual in its most superficial form.

With this present adaptation of faith comes a worship of comfort, consumption, and convenience. The old moral order indoctrinated by religion, and the subsequent ones of nature, virtue, reason, science, and intellectualism, have been overshadowed by the order of comfort. This is not to say the existence of religion and its moralistic pressures no longer exist, or a passive appreciation for the natural world, science, reason, or intellect– that would be false to say. This claim is that there is a stronger, more powerful force guiding the individual: that of their own warped comfort. Thus, the entity that must serve as meaning maker, as Divinity, has been supplanted by Man’s very desire. A desire distorted to crave that which is empty and hollow. This development has been birthed by the consumption economy, where the entire point of being alive is to consume incessantly. If you are not consuming, are you exerting your will to live? People have been deluded into believing that consumption is the mark of free will, the mark of freedom, and the answer to the hollow echoing in their chests. It is the altar they worship at.

Coupled with this creed, is the advent of extreme convenience. Never before have human beings had access to such an appalling level of convenience: objects are delivered to you in less than 24hrs, if you need the answer to a question–it exists seconds away in your pocket, want to lose weight? There is a simple injection that can do that. Feel unsatisfied with your face? Buy a new one. Bored? Watch eight hours of mind numbing media that is free and sitting in your pocket. The access we have, the way we are catered too, has morphed us into animals of disgusting comfort. I overheard the other day: “Why would I go to the super market, when I can just have my groceries delivered to my front door?” It’s interesting the level of discomfort we now are willing to accept, what the new status quo of comfort has become. With this mutation of the status quo, along with the new worship of ourselves, we are left with a dynamic where the most important aspect of existence is our comfort: our actions are driven by what impacts that desired level of comfort.

What emerges is that Good and Evil in the classical sense have little bearing on the modern individual; rather, it is about comfort and discomfort. When we see most people “do good,” it is seldom due to a rigid belief in right or wrong, rather it is primarily because they have been conditioned to feel an internal discomfort at what is deemed “bad.” This could be through religion, socialization, culture, what have you, but it is a mental programing that acts on the mind in a positive or negative feedback loop. Things that are deemed as “bad,” “immoral,” or “unacceptable” impose a negative feeling on your conscience, and thus make you uncomfortable. This compels you to avoid such activity or action. On the other hand, arbitrary actions, behavior, and conduct that have been categorized as good produce no pangs to the conscience, and therefore leave the individual comfortable, and they will remain acting in line with those norms. There has in fact not been a total destruction of past meaning, rather just a disregard of it, and its power passively exists in our sub-conscious, while the individual reigns supreme, unaware of their own power or status.

In this strange new hierarchy of existence, bereft of clear moral standards or meaning, the human has little care for that which does not impact their comfort. One then asks: how can we make people care? How can we mobilize people to alter this system that is painfully hollow, unjust, and carnivorous? Well, what can be said is that the human being is not driven by positive impulses, nor is it easily swayed by matters of enjoyment. Their inclinations are to do what brings them the most enjoyment, yes, what gives them a pleasant sensation; however, this is the guiding force in their own autonomous actions. If we want to see what it is that can outwardly inspire them to action, to compel them to act beyond their will, it is as simple as looking to see what negatively impacts them the most. The inability to endure discomfort is at the base of the modern human being. They will be compelled to do anything if it is to avoid discomfort or an unpleasant sensation. Therefore, if you want to propel the human into action, make them experience an unpleasant, slightly uncomfortable sensation and promise that it will cease if they do said action. It has become the driving motive of every single human decision. Why do we want money? To cease the stress of poverty, to increase the quality of our homes, to acquire better food, to have people assist us, which are all factors of comfort. Why do we want love? So we do not have to experience the discomfort of loneliness, physical yearning, and to have the comfort of emotional validation, stability, and union. Why do we want anything? Think about it and you will see the direct link is to a desire for increased comfort and decreased discomfort.

This too, in part, answers the question of how such atrocities take shape in our modern epoch. Why would I feel compelled to act when I can make a preformative gesture online that soothes my conscience? The convenience of social media allows us to allay any guilt, to remove any discomfort at the horrors around us, because we can convince ourselves that we “did the right thing” that we “acted” in the name of what was right. However, posting something online does little to nothing in the material world, thus you have accepted an atrocity and passively allowed it to continue. Everyone who shared on social media for the multitude of recent travesties felt allayed of their guilt; they soothed their conscience, and therefore were able to sit back and comfortably forget the reality of what was occurring. Such things happen daily, and thus we as a society allow crimes against humanity, against reason, against life, to persist, content in our homes with our own conduct.

This predicament is analyzed and further developed upon, by Albert Camus in The Rebel. Camus states that:

“Evil and virtue are mere chance or caprice…in that we have no higher values to guide our behavior, our aim will be immediate efficacy. Since nothing is either true or false, good or bad, our guiding principle will be to demonstrate that we are the most efficient–in other words the strongest. Then the world will no longer be divided into the just and the unjust, but into master and slaves.” (Camus, The Rebel, 5).

With the Sacred being Man, defined by immediate desire, the focal point of existence, the meaning in our present world, has shifted to efficiency, progress, and maximized production. Hence, why incessant consumption is necessary, and we have been conditioned to believe that is where happiness and satiation lies. There must be a consumer to keep up with endless production. There must be a continual increase in demand for the supply to increase infinitely; in an inverse economic turn, supply artificially pushes the demand via an alternate channel of ideological conditioning. Thus, as it can be seen Camus’ observation still stands true, there is no good or bad, just a desire to be efficient, to be growing, developing, expanding, and in turn, increasing our comforts. In this we retain the divided nature of being; however, the master and slave categorization is more obscured, existing now, as a dichotomy between the comfortable and the uncomfortable.

In this present state both sides of the dialect are suffering. With this passivity and catering to the self, we see a deeper dissatisfaction and general malaise of the population, especially with young people. The reality is: worshipping false idols harms you. It leaves you empty, hollow, bereft of meaning, unable to ever attain satisfaction or fulfillment. Therefore, you are hurt and ultimately left uncomfortable on a deeper, more significant level. In this system of extreme alienation, there is no satisfaction, no meaning, no beauty; only momentary satisfaction, and by virtue, an illusion of comfort. So neither those that have won comfort, or those that are forced to be uncomfortable are benefiting from this system: one is either striving for a false paradise or is within it. Without real substance filling our lives, without a structure founded on a solid basis, the human sinks into dejection, into a state of nihilism that fuels the desire to be nothing at all. Or more aptly put, fill themselves with an endless train of nothings. Our modern rebellion against the sacred, having supplanted nothing substantive in its place, has allowed a metaphysical apocalypse, rather than a renaissance of the spirit. Man must resolve to act in order to exist, and yet we are all frozen staring into an illusion on a screen.

And so my final claim is that this system is destined to crumble. Something must be done to make people see, shake them awake, and in gaining enlightenment to the source of their general malcontent, action can commence. In a moment of rebellion from their alienation, the stirrings of a revolution can emerge, and in tearing down the false Gods of consumption, convenience, and egoism, new values, meaning, and morality can be established that feed the mind, heart, and soul allowing for humanity to rise above Man.

“All the stones are cut to build the structure of freedom, you can build a palace or a tomb of the same stones.” (Camus, The Rebel). The decision is ours and it awaits our action.

In a general respect, taking into account the emotional appeal, Franz Kafka is an exceedingly influential and impactful author. His existence birthed the Kafkaesque: nightmarish, absurd, bureaucratic, and alienating scenarios that have shaped Modernism, Existentialism, and Surrealism. There is a special, undefinable, element of his writings that magnetizes the human impulse to feel. The recognition of sentiments, which we often cannot explain nor convey to others, that Kafka so abundantly displays is what, in my opinion, draws people to him in such a fierce form. The intimacy of pain, of inexplicable torments, not only shared, but articulated where one’s words fall short, produces a bond, a love, an adoration for the individual who has given voice to the mute, solidarity to the solitary sufferer, and thus we see people begin to enter the cult of Kafka. I myself included.

Kafka, along with Dostoyevsky, Marquez, and Faulkner, are the most informative to who I am as a thinker, human, and consequentially, writer. The Trial is certainly not a favorite of mine. However, it is one of the most important. Before my encounter with this text, I had only read The Metamorphosis–a short story about a man who becomes a beetle. This was transformative, yet it certainly was not on the same plane as The Trial. I must take a moment to stress that it is very much still worth the read, and I encourage you to pause right now and go read it! Back to the main point: it wasn’t until I was obligated to read The Trial that I fully grasped the magnitude of Kafka’s mind, nor the life that existed within me that was worming its way out through every tortured text I gobbled up. This moment seven years ago, reading this strange text by an Austrian man from Prague, was the catalyst for the fire that would fuel the rest of my intellectual life. My interest in philosophy was born from this, coupled with a reading of Hegel and Goethe in that same week. My encounter with The Trial ushered in a ripple, a torrent of sorts, that inundated me with a fascination and need for this bizarre ecosystem Kafka offers.

The Trial is not a text to be understood, but to be experienced. I have read this novel four times, and each encounter with it reinforces my belief that there is not only no fixed meaning to the story, but the message, whatever it may be, is not intended to be understood. The plot is simple: Josef K. awakes one morning to officials in his room, who proceed to inform him of an arrest and impending trial, to which the remainder of the novel is consumed. Josef is prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. You, like Josef K., are meant to get through The Trial in whatever form that means for you, not to understand nor ever get close enough to the trial to pierce its veil.

Despite my conviction that this text is not intended to be understood, there are many interpretations and larger messages that can be gleaned from the rich, yet vague soil. The three dominant points I made out in my traversing of Kafka’s opaque world is as follows: firstly, a commentary on the absurdity of bureaucracy, secondly, the intentional disorienting and dismantling of what we take to be given (reality, truth, innocence), and lastly, the autonomy we have as an individual over the our fate, which is subjected to the powers that be, whether that be in the form of spiritual or corporeal authority. I will put a brief warning that I got carried away and the remainder of the review is very analytical and reveals some plot points!

The novel opens with a clear assault on our reason. “One morning without doing anything truly wrong, [Josef K.] was arrested” (The Trial, 1998, 3). The reader protests! Our reason immediately scoffs: well he must have done something, otherwise he is being wrongfully accused. Ah, but such is not so simple. The officers Franz and Wilhelm arrest him, their explanation being: it is not their job to explain, in their department they are the lowest level and thus being “marginal figures” (14) are not entrusted with any information. Despite this, K. remarks that “he was still free” (7). Even later on Fraulein Brustner, another boarder, remarks “you’re free,” to which he affirms, “yes” (29). Even with this acknowledgment, Josef continues to consent to the process imposed upon him, to engage with that which he openly admitted was senseless. The only concrete information pro-offered by the guards was “the Law states, is attracted by guilt” (9). Later, K. seeks out the court which by doing so accepts their accusation. In his pursuit, he addresses a thought: “the court was attracted by guilt, from which it actually followed that the room for inquiry would have to be located off whatever stairway K. chanced to choose” (39). Is this not an admission of guilt?

I will return to the strange volition we see in K.’s engagement with the court, but first I want to touch on the critique that this text offers on bureaucracy and totalitarianism. It is vastly different, yet there is some strange parallel to George Orwell’s 1984 in the shadow authority that consumes the populace’s existence. The organization of events and existences are controlled by an unseen “always vengeful bureaucracy” (119) that mirrors Big Brother. Throughout K.’s proceedings we see that the “the gradations and ranks of the court are infinite” (118), yet seemingly powerless. The true authority is inaccessible and omnipotent. “Given the senselessness of the whole affair, how could the bureaucracy avoid becoming entirely corrupt?” (50), and result in the utter and absolute abuse of the people. One message of the text can be on the paralyzing, deleterious effects of an all powerful system predicated on control and fear.

I return to the question of K.’s autonomy in his predicament. It appeared that the trial was hoisted upon him, yet he admits repeatedly that “they are only proceedings if I recognize them as such” (45), and such he does. In participating, in choosing with his free will to acknowledge the charges, he comes to be consumed by the trial. He allows the trial to devour his existence: he reaches a state where he is “almost happy to devote himself totally to his case” (139). This then progresses into a single-minded compulsion. K. becomes convinced “the trial is positively closing in on me in secret” (185). Despite this obsession, this sacrifice of all for the trial, it seems to make little difference. Later on in the story, K. goes to speak with a painter who works for the court. This man, Titorelli, reveals to him “the court, once it brings a charge, is convinced of the guilt of the accused....the court can never be swayed” (149). Then is not an accusation that has been acknowledged the equivalent of a verdict?

This brings me to my ultimate interpretation of the text: the power which oppresses the individual is not mortal but ecclesiastical, spiritual, whatever you may like to call it. The all powerful, unseen force is not the law but rather God. Leni, the lawyer’s nurse, explains “the higher judges stay in hiding” (106), whereas those engaged with are powerless are painted to look supreme. She continues to remark: “you can’t defend yourself against this court, all you can do is confess…that’s the only chance you have to escape” (106). I see it as such: Death is the end of the trial, the trial being life, and the verdict of guilty can only be escaped through repentance. It follows then that the individuals K. deals with are powerless to assist him because they are simply corporeal authorities, and “everything belongs to the court” (150), which answers to the highest judge, God.

My theory culminates in the second to final scene in the cathedral. As he enters, “K. crossed himself and bowed” (209). The cathedral is empty, and yet the priest is about to give a sermon, or so it seems. The question is asked: “Could K. alone represent the congregation” (210)? And the answer is, yes. K represents the individual, the human, and he has had to engage with the trial just as we all have to engage with life. The only escape from the demands of the trial, of life, is death. Hence why he obeys, why he participates with his free will, for the only escape is through exiting life, which he acknowledges from the first moment of the novel briefly thinking “to kill himself” (10). Hence why he continues to participate, why he answers the call of the priest. Said priest, who is a piece of the court, explains: “The judgment isn’t simply hand delivered at some point; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgement (213). Your life determines the verdict; innocent or guilty, good or bad, just or unjust. Just as with God: “The court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go” (224). In the end K. submits to death, more so he chooses it as the only escape from his trial, as the only mechanism for receiving a definitive answer. When the officials arrive “K. pulled the men forward forcibly” (228) to finally reach his “verdict” (232). And thus the book ends.

I leave you with my observations and expositions of the text; however, my initial opinion stays true, the text is obscure and everything that could clarify remains blurred. You can construct your own image from the fragments Kafka scatters abundantly, with the absurd unfathomable information you can find gems of truth to construct your picture. The reality is unstable, there is a fusion of the surreal and dream, of the pedantic with the fantastic; the absurd with the mundane, and thus anything is possible. In this work that bears the mark of a man suffering in spirit and body, who searches desperately for meaning, answers, a sense of purpose, maybe we can discover it for ourselves.

Rate: 10/10

“The tremendous world I have in my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me” (Diaries)

To be completely transparent, I did read a few novels this past month. I snuck them in on flights, in transit, and when I was feeling rebellious– why answer work emails when I can dive into the pages of Neruda then have a panic attack? However, as it happens, none of them inspired me to write a review. This issue bubbles up frequently, hence why so many of my reviews are of re-read novels. But this month it wasn’t simply a lack of direct inspiration, I really just did not feel like writing a review, or more so, I looked inside the bucket that is my little skull and there was nothing to scoop out. It was scrapped clean. Sparkling and polished? No, dull and scratched from overuse, strain, and slight neglect.

I am tired, no, more so, exhausted, and I refuse to write a subpar review for the sake of producing one. After the burn out of labor, coupled with a Thanksgiving onslaught of family socialization (Melissa don’t kill me!), I was left with two days to figure out what I could deliver to you, my beloved reader! So, sitting with a stew of pink matter where my mind usually habitats, I decided on a little letter. I can still speak, even if I cannot write–and this even affords the opportunity to show a bit more of myself, rather than hiding behind the tyrant that is my literary voice. She is a power hungry monster that gobbles up any trace of Isabella. Letters are the sole vessel where my personal voice is not swallowed by that of the writer; and so, I am introducing myself to you! It’s very difficult to overcome the general fatigue that comes along with being an adult. However, when we are allowed, or give ourselves permission, to simply exist, and not perform, it gives the stage to our innermost self. What a relief! I can just be.

With all of that being said (a lengthy prologue, is it not?), I wanted to offer some literary recommendations for moments like these– where you feel stuck in the current of life, gasping for air, flailing your limbs in any attempt to orient yourself or survive the turbulent waters that are ushering you toward a destination you know not of. In these moments, how could you even think of reading?! Well, sometimes certain works are the buoy that you can cling to amidst the chaos. The sparkling little light on the horizon that reassures you that you will get tossed upon dry land eventually, for isn’t that what is reflected in these stories? Redemption, salvation, the human plight that we all must endure? Well, let me stop chattering and get on with the point of these little notes I write you.

For moments where there is simply not enough time to commit to a large piece of work, or even a small one, there is a delectable little morsel called a short story. One that has a special place in my heart is by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, titled: “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” This story drips with the soothing salve of magic realism. Spanning a palatable twenty-one pages, it could be read on a lunch break or in the marginal time before your food is done cooking, or that liminal period where your friend is running late to the rendezvous you didn’t even want to attend. In “The Very Old Man..” a family discovers an old man lying in the mud of their backyard, who has large feathery wings. Such is told in a direct, factual way enforcing the view that magic is as real as the bark we feel on a tree. In the narrative, the old man is horribly damaged, rendering him unable to move from the mud. A neighbor who knows “everything about life and death” comes by and insists to the family that the man is in fact an angel. The family, unsure of what to do with this creature, leaves him in a chicken coop in their yard, and the entire village comes to see the sad, disconnected angel. The viewers perceive the creature as a freak, an attraction for entertainment, and quickly the town is distracted by a different attraction: a traveling show featuring a girl who has been turned into a spider because she disobeyed her parents. This story is quick, sweet, painful, and will indulge the appetite for a great piece of literature

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Secondly, if you have a bit more time in this turbid period, I would recommend Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin. This is a bit lengthier at one hundred and ninety-nine pages– however, the whimsical, playful, and endearing narrative will have you soaring through the pages, as if they were potato chips during a tv-series. The plot follows the journeys of Professor Pnin, who is pitiful in his strange obsolete ways, which bring non-catastrophic misfortune upon his life. The joy of watching, the soon to be beloved Pnin, offers a sweet, tender escape from the berating demands of life. While, as I mentioned before, it is a slightly more demanding read, due to its length, the joy and release it permits alloys that small deterring factor.

Ah, I said I was not going to slip into my literary voice and write a review, and what do I find myself doing! It seems in gliding away on my pink keyboard, I had forgotten the resolve I came to before sitting before my desktop. The sheer idea of these stories propelled me back into the rhythm of writing– is that not proof of their potency? I even find myself hunched over, lurching above the keys, not even pausing in the words I type. A sharp back pain is a sign of my enthusiasm! There, there, I am back to speaking like myself. I hope you, my reader, don’t find this month’s piece too strange. Well what have you, if you do, I apologize! If not, I am glad and will maybe add an additional second piece every month that is more like this strange agglomeration of thoughts, comments, and ravings.

That is all I have to say for this month. I hope you enjoy these delectable aperitivos until you have time to sit down and enjoy a sizzling full-scale novel. It was a pleasure chatting, and next month I will pay for my laziness by providing a short-story of my own making (maybe).

To give you some background before diving fully into the philosophy of the text, I will start where it begins. The novel commences with the return of university graduate Arkady Kirsanov, after a prolonged period, to his father, Nikolai Kirsanov’s estate in provincial Russia. The father is elated, yet also nervous, for the return of his son. Upon his arrival, the father sees Arkady has brought along with him an abrasive, untraditional young man, Evgeny Bazarov, who, we come to see, is Arkady’s idol. Very soon into their visit, they proclaim themselves to be nihilists, and that their creed is to subject everything to harsh critique, or as Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov states, he is “a man who…who doesn’t recognize anything” (Turgenev, 1861; 22). The novel then progresses into a general tension between conflicting ideologies.

I have presented the narrative premise, and now I will introduce the theoretical dealings of the work. From a macro perspective Father and Sons is a comparative study between the traditional and modern ideologies of Turgenev’s period. The novel confronts five major conflicts: Generational, old versus young, Philosophical, reason versus passion, Cultural, east versus west, Social, idealism versus realism, and Existential, life versus death. I don’t want to accidentally turn this into a dissertation on Turgenev, so I will keep it short and simple–I will only touch on the elements that feel relevant to my current morbid, brooding mood.

The first conflict that drew my attention is depicted in the juxtaposition between the young and old. The older generation, Nikolai and Pavel Petrovich, are associated with tradition, being referred to as “these old-world romantic types!” (Turgenev, 1861; 18), while the younger generation, Arkady and Bazarov, are linked to a new version of progress and modernity. The Kirsanov brothers “honor tradition as sacred, they are patriarchal, they cannot live without faith” (Ibid: 51), which makes them out-dated and obsolete, in Bazarov’s eyes. Evgeny Bazarov comes to personify the philosophy of Russian nihilism that started in the 19th century and culminated with the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Bazarov and Arkady represent the man “who doesn’t acknowledge any authorities, who doesn’t accept a single principle of faith” (Ibid: 22). More radical, Bazarov believes in destroying from the ground up, declaring “first we’ve got to clear the ground” (Ibid: 50), since everything is wretched, corrupt, and disastrous. This stance is rather appealing to the depressed, disgruntled woman! In a general state of malaise, don’t we all come to negate the world and seek its destruction? Well Bazarov, the unexpected spiritual compatriot of a twenty-six year old living in Brooklyn, continues on this path of critique, claiming, “reform society and there’ll be no more disease” (Ibid: 84). In his eyes, the goal is to dismantle the older social fabrics; nothing is sacred anymore, since it has putrified, thus uproot all old Russian values and traditions and replace them with modern values of science, reason, and materialism. The representative of tradition, Pavel, is outraged on seeing this radical stance, proclaiming: “Without principles only immoral or empty-headed people can live in our time” (Ibid: 49). Despite my attraction to Bazarov’s disillusioned revolution, I found myself agreeing with Pavel. If we lean too far into the darkness, we will never see light again.

Tradition, emotion, family–all of these things which Bazarov discards as superfluous are what gives life its glimmer, in our moments of greatest bleakness. The importance of these elements is further illuminated when he and Arkady go to visit the Odintsova estate. Upon encountering the two women, Anna Sergeevna and Katya Sergeevna Odintsova, it is immediately seen that the separation of reason and emotion is a difficult, and harmful, undertaking. The two boys come to stay at the Odintsova estate for two weeks, after which a transformation occurs with both. Bazarov, the scientific, reason based nihilist starts feeling the inklings of love for Anna. He is shaken in his convictions, reflecting that “the brain works and even desires something as well…” (Turgenev, 1861; 126), something beyond order, rationality, and science. However, committed to his radical stances, he denies the sensation, to his own detriment. We come to see that in a brazen desire to negate all, we also negate ourselves in the destruction of all that is human.

Anna, similar to Bazarov in her rationality and utilitarian views, is unhappy, and admits “I’m dissatisfied…if only I could feel a strong attachment to something or other…” (Turgenev, 1861; 98);yet, she too is unable to respond to love. They discard the idea of love, contented, and “they both thought they were telling the truth” (Ibid: 172). Alienated from their own sentiments, from the human element of existence, romance is nothing but fiction. Bazarov rationalizes his feelings as nonsense, dismisses them, and is left a shell of a man. Whereas, alternatively Arkady and Katya committed to emotion, nature, and tradition find love, and ultimately happiness. Arkady, confronted with love, rebukes the principles of his friend rather than the emotion, admitting to Katya “I love you eternally and irrevocably” (Ibid: 178).

In the ultimate crescendo of the novel, it can be gleaned that Turgenev is critical of this new form of progress, ultimately rejecting it as valuable if it does not embrace, to some degree, tradition. And after my experience re-reading Father and Son’s, I find myself in agreement. To be in the dark cloud, baring oneself from that which feeds the human element of our being, is not an existence anyone would truly desire to live.

Turgenev displays this by portraying the ultimate nihilist, Bazarov, as ending in tragedy, and Arkady, and his family, as joyously prospering. Nihilism is critiqued for its condemnation of all Russian traditions, including family, art, and emotions, which is depicted through Bazarov. He denounces it all, which Anna Odinstova notes as being because “in your eyes, it’s all romanticism” (Turgenev, 1861; 91). This is not productive as it leads one to feel “merely boredom and anger” and “so insignificant in comparison” (Ibid: 126) to all of creation. Rather than following this version of progression, it is suggested that there should be a maintenance of some semblance of tradition. In the end, Bazarov realizes his inability to improve Russia, remarking, “I’m needed by Russia…No, obviously I’m not needed” (Ibid: 196). This outcome is in stark contrast to how conditions at Maryino, the Kirsanov estate, have improved after Arkady rejected Bazarov’s nihilism, embracing traditional patterns of living and family life. Turgenev’s progress and modernity is based on a love of the family, the arts, and nature, which creates and sustains a common good that seeks to preserve and reform tradition instead of destroying it. With this, dynamic progress can prosper without destroying one’s humanity.

The culminating message of Father and Son’s is that you cannot, and should not want to, remove emotion from the human, cannot separate emotions from rationality, and there is value in that which we may at times find hateful. I left this novel strangely cheered up of my little spell of nihilism. What it shows is that emotion, tradition, and everything that makes life both messy and imperfect is what creates beauty and happiness. Without these elements, without the human heart that is willing to risk itself, society develops into an alienating, cold world incapable of producing positive change. This novel is a beautiful, simple portrayal of complex ideas that is subtly enlightening, thought provoking, and I recommend it to anyone in a terrible mood!

Overall rate: 9/10

My experience with Ms. Woolf has been embarrassingly sparse, only having read one of her novels, during an especially depressing winter in Paris, and a handful of her short stories in a far away land called High School. I was tentative to even begin the novel, because my previous experiences were less than favorable, but once I set sail on the black rigid lines of text, I felt myself sailing, pleasantly surprised by the soft salted sea winds caressing my mind as I journeyed further and further into the story. A few hours later, I lifted up my head to realize I had drifted along unknowingly and completed half of the book.

Mrs. Dalloway is the first of its kind. The narrative style is stream of consciousness, jumping from perspective to perspective without warning, while also dipping into the past without any indication of temporal shift. This novel might not appear revolutionary to the modern reader, but it would pave the way for many future writers, such as James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, and William Faulkner, who knowingly or unknowingly were influenced by Woolf’s use of stream-of-consciousness and thematic explorations of consciousness, memory, and time.

Despite this major positioning in literary history, the plot of the novel itself might sound dull. The story follows a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged London society woman, in the summer of 1923. The reader is compelled to follow Clarissa as she runs errands throughout London, in preparation for a party that she is throwing later that day. The contents of Clarissa’s day are exceedingly vapid, yet there are moments of profound emotional sincerity and socio-political amplification that peak through these mundane happenings. This is seen especially when her old friend Peter Walsh comes to pay her a visit, ushering in a flood of memories from her adolescent years. A pillar of these times, and reminiscence, is the intimate relationship she had with her peers, especially Sally Seton. The larger human issue, the depth of this monotonous existence, emerges in the display of how social customs dictated the trajectory of each of these individuals’ lives.

Throughout this narrative path, the complexity stems not from complicated plot themes, but from interiority and perspective. The reader is continually shifted into the mind of ancillary characters who unknowingly usurp the narrative voice: Elizabeth Dalloway, Peter Walsh, Lucrezia Smith, and a few others. The primary of these perspectives being Septimus Smith, a war veteran who is suffering from extreme PTSD which is misunderstood and thus neglected at the time of the novel. The experimental nature of Woolf’s writing here is difficult, and it demands the reader’s attention, however if given, the experience is enthralling, engaging, and ultimately rewarding. The style and unorthodoxy of this text is most obviously seen in the structure: there are no chapters, nor separating tactics for different speakers. It all flows on in a single cohesive stream, leaping from Clarissa to Septimus and back again without a single break. At our stage of literary development in 2025, this doesn’t appear too outlandish, but at the time of Mrs. Dalloway’s creation there was no written example so daring. This work allowed for other authors to take a leap into the abyss of non-conformity, existing as a predecessor for works such as the far more daunting Ulysses. As a writer, I found myself intrigued by the pioneership of this work, and the complexity which is swaddled within monotony.

The crux of beauty in Mrs. Dalloway is its simplicity: one woman, one day, is enough to represent the lived experience of the human being. Through the seemingly simple story, we are exposed to the systemic issues of gender, sexuality, class and mental health in this society. Over the course of just a few hours, we see Clarissa grapple with social pressures, love, family, the trauma of war and more. She is defined by domesticity, and so is every other woman presented in this text. They are simply extensions of their husbands: Sally, Clarissa, and Lucrezia. The only woman not attached to a man, Doris Kilman, is depicted as a slovenly, pitiful creature. Additionally, homo-sexuality is buried under oppressive layers of conventionality. Clarissa has stored away her homoerotic feelings for women amongst the other desires and dreams of her youth. Then the complexities and horrors of class get touched upon with Peter Walsh, and fully exposed with the Smiths. Septimus and Lucrezia are border-line destitute, and they are subjected to the worst hand of fate. Through this exploration of interiority via strangers, we receive a groundbreaking portrayal of consciousness and a poetic look at what it means to be alive.

Lastly, I find this novel and its treatment of the mind especially compelling due to the ultimate demise of Virgina Woolf herself. It is well known that she fell into madness. Given the knowledge of this, it is exceptionally intriguing that Woolf was aiming to portray”’the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side.” However, in diametrically opposing Clarissa and Septimus I believe we come to see how these two terms may not be so separate. Septiumus is a clear case of mental illness, as he suffers from schizophrenia mixed with some form of PTSD. However, with Clarissa, we see a similar mental anguish, and deterioration, yet she is not portrayed as mad, due to her external organization. Clarissa expresses early on in the novel: “The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.” Is that not the universal feeling of the mentally unwell? This leaves us with a compelling question of: what is it to be mad? What is sanity? What is insanity? And who gets classified as such? Is sanity simply determined by your ability to present as what society has deemed as sane? To perform sanity and bury your sick mind deeper in its own anguish?

This text and Virginia Woolf herself push one to question much of what we take to be natural truths, and for that I find this to be a fantastic read. I love to be destabilized in what I believe, to question the standards I have been conditioned to hold, and overall to think! If anything can jolt you into active thought, analysis, and even questioning then I believe it to be a great work.

OVERAL RATE: 7.5/10

Chronicles of A Death Foretold is more than a fantastic novel, it was a landmark moment in my personal life. The little green book sat, dust lined, on a bookshelf that housed all of my mothers beloved possessions, being an English Literature major herself. One afternoon many years ago, she mentioned to me that my grandfather, a monolith in our home, born and raised in a little coastal town in Ecuador, lived and breathed for the Colombian born Márquez. On hearing this I revealed to her that I myself had never read anything by him, and before I had surmised her shock and horror, she placed a small, tattered copy of Chronicles of A Death Foretold into the small female replicas of my grandfather’s hands. In the coming afternoon, I sat down and read the story from front to back, mesmerized by the world I had slipped into that I felt I had known from time immemorial. That day started my single minded obsession, adoration, and worship of the man who I would come to view as the greatest author of my life. 

The book itself is one of Márquez’s later works. It was based on a real-life occurrence between one of his family members in Sucre Colombia and was an event that preoccupied his mind from early youth. However, he had promised his mother that he would not write about the events until after her death- and so he did.  The story is centered on a murder that was known to the entire town but went unprevented- that of Santiago Nasar. The story follows Santiago on the day of his death, as he goes about the town, ignorant to the fact that all know; two men are going to kill him. Despite every individual coming to know about these plans of murder, no one warns Santiago, nor does he seem to avoid it intuitively. The cause for this attack is that Angela Vicario, a recent bride in the town has accused the victim of seducing her, and thus her twin brothers seek to avenge the family honor by killing Santiago the day after her wedding night. 

Unlike his preceding novels, Márquez is a character in his own novel, existing as the investigator who reconstructs the events of the murder that occurred twenty seven years prior. The structure of the novel consists of Márquez interviewing people who remember the murder, anecdotes from recollections, and even documents that he discovered from a flooded courthouse. The work itself is a story, a reconstruction of a communal memory, an accumulation of dream, rumor, data, gossip that in the end produces a chronicle of Santiago Nasar’s end. 

Márquez plays the strings of the harp that is one's heart, as he weaves the supernatural and the bizarre into an uncertain narrative that is nothing short of a hauntingly beautiful dream that has been realized within you. I compel anyone who comes upon this to read one page of Gabriel García Márquez’s writing because that will be enough to ensnare you into the beautiful, contradictory, magical world that is Márquez: the writing is so beautiful and the stories so compelling that once exposed you make it your obsession to read everything ever created from the authors mind. 

My final parting words are one a deep gratitude both as a creative, and as a daughter of a long lineage of forgotten people, the ordinary Latin American people, the people we don’t see stories about or hear stories from, the people who litter my past and fill the dark cavities of my heart, for the man who brought this world, these lives into the world stage of art. 

Rate: 10/10

Southern Discomfort

To get lost in layers of time, space, and identity is the trademark experience of reading William Faulkner. The mind is not something that one can pin down or corral into a linear structure, like we do with written language–words printed and organized on a page seldom reflect the disorder, spontaneity, and general unpredictability of the human mind. The rarity of Faulkner’s writing sits precisely in this disconnect: he is able to capture the erratic nature of the mind, fusing past with present, thought with expression, illustrating how the active consciousness flows upstream, downstream, jumps left then right, and he does so without any indication or loss of flow. 

This exploration and submersion into the mind is what I found most fascinating while reading The Sound and The Fury. I am well versed with the works of William Faulkner, and so knew to expect the bizarre structure and narration that one must grow accustomed to upon their first exposure to the Mississippi born writer. At its most fundamental level, the novel is a story of the Compson family's decline and fall, ranging from 1900 to 1928. The work is separated into four sections and orbits around the world of Jason Compson Sr, Caroline Compson, and their four children: Quentin, Jason, Candance, and Maury, who is later renamed Benjamin. The first chapter is narrated by Benjamin, the second by Quinten, the third by Jason, and the last by Faulkner, in omnipotent third-person. Each chapter is from the perspective and mental temperature of the chosen character, altering what we know of this world we have entered. 

Through submersion into the mind of each of the children, the reader is slowly shown a contentious, multi-perspectived picture of the family and the society they inhabit. The youngest son, Benjamin, is developmentally disabled, and thus through his positioning, the reader receives a matter of fact, innocent, slightly obstructed, yet equally as liberated, state of events. Quinten, the oldest son, is much more introspective. Haunted by a phantom from his past, he portrays a more philosophical understanding of this world, while also exposing the inherent darkness of the social structures his family represents. This chapter is the height of Faulkner's play with the mind. The narration slips, seamlessly, from past to present, from character to character, widening the scope of what the reader knows, while also mimicking, exquisitely, the erraticism of a troubled mind. Juxtaposed in nature, the middle son, Jason, never slips out of the present. These three perspectives depict the varying functionalities of the human mind, the stark differences not indicating a rupture, but rather the diversity and varying planes of reality we exist in. At times we only inhabit the present, at others a messy mix of temporality, and often we are limited in our understandings of what we are enmeshed in. Lastly, through third-person omniscient narration, the world is painted for the reader as an intricate, moving devastation– the creator takes over, and only he can know the objective facts of what occurs in the world he himself has made. 

While this novel is a remarkable feat of literary capability, I did not find it to be one of Faulkner’s greatest works. Due to the notoriety of this novel, being voted one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, I expected something of a magnus opus. However, having read The Sound and The Fury after exposure to many of Faulkner’s other works, I found it to be on par with his other writings, and even less impressive than a few that I hold to be masterpieces.  The novel takes its title from Macbeth's reflection that life is: "a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing." Therefore, one could surmise that the novel serves to show a reflection of life, and nothing more, hence the lack of a strong narrative arch and conclusive point. However, I found the writing itself, and the depth of meaning to be lacking compared to Faulkner’s later works. This novel was the predecessor, laying the foundation for future creation. The Sound and the Fury serves as a moment of artistic breakthrough into the sheer outrageousness that would characterise celebrated later works such as: A Light in August, As I Lay Dying, Go Down, Moses and Absalom, Absalom! 

Overall, the novel is worth the difficulty, and I would recommend reading it, if you are interested in challenging yourself and experiencing a disorienting liberation from standard literary forms. The piece is artistically inspiring, wonderfully written, and something that I do believe everyone should read once in their life. Yet, I stick with my first impression that it is not Faulkner’s best work, and if you are going to choose only one of his novels to delve into, it should not be this one. My favorite at this point in my life is, As I Lay Dying. Being similarly long, and equally as challenging, I find it to be much more rewarding of a read. The narrative backbone is stronger, more cohesive, the undercurrent of the story is not only substantially more profound, but diverse, and the characters are significantly more developed. 

The discomfort one experiences in reading Faulkner is a necessary evil. It pushes you to think, analyze, employ analytical investigation, and ultimately understand from a heightened plane. The reader is freed from any linear concept of time, and the stream of consciousness narration technique used here by Faulkner allows you to sync, slipping into the mind of the narrator.  One word the character hears will trigger a memory, then by another association of sound, idea, or emotion, it will lead to another one, and these events can have happened any time, and the reader will be along for the journey, experiencing it as if they were the very character themselves. Faulkner has mastered the art of southern discomfort, forcing us to squirm and sweat while we pillage the pages of his novels. 

Rate: 6.7/10

The work itself may be called a novel, a monologue, or a character sketch, but one which is largely a philosophical thesis on the modern conscious. The novel opens with Jean-Baptiste Clamence, the main character, sitting in a dive bar named Mexico City located in the red light district of Amsterdam. We are suddenly alerted that he is talking to another patron– a compatriot, both hailing from Paris. This begins an ongoing, one-sided, discourse of the protagonist in which the motives, beliefs, and virtues of modern man are elucidated to the reader–the holder of the modern consciousness itself. On the surface our anti-hero is vain, desires immortality, adoration of all, and will do all to avoid judgment. However, in the progression and awakening of the protagonist, Camus illustrates the deeper complexities of modern consciousness. 

At first glance this text is very simple. It is a confession, a venting of one man to another. However, Camus utilizes a suppressed, subconscious similitude to pry our eyes open to the ugly, dark shadow that we try with hands clasped, lids sealed to shun. In his general malaise, in his secret forebodings, Jean-Baptiste serves as a flesh-and-blood mirror to the modern man. Through his string of confessions, the reader is jostled into self-analysis. Why are we good and altruistic? Is it because of a natural inclination to be so? Or are we too like Jean-Baptiste and only motivated by self-aggrandizement, self-satisfaction. 

“I was on the right side; that was enough to satisfy my conscience…the satisfaction of being right, the joy of self-esteem…are powerful incentives for keeping us upright or keeping us moving forward” (p.18). 

Camus advances that the human of today is driven by their own selfish desires. The quiet whispering of vanity lulls us toward the only happiness that is possible in this epoche–one centered on the enjoyment of our own nature. Yet, furthering the darkness of this claim, it is put forth that this enjoyment of ourselves is not sufficient; there must be a sensation of superiority. One must not only be “master of my liberalities” (p.22), but above all the rest. In this state, the only concern is that which is connected to the I. “I lived consequently without any other continuity than that, from day to day, of I, I, I…I never remembered anything except myself” (p.50). Love is not even beyond the self: “I was satisfying the love I bore myself by verifying each time in my special powers” (p.62). Camus hands us a scathing, pessimistic assessment of the modern individual, which is itself an indictment upon the reader. We are forced to grapple with the picture set before us, and question how much of this image pertains to ourself? Am I not Jean? Can I say my motives and beliefs truly differ? 

In presenting a perverted modernized realm, where the individual has become the entire world, universe, and sole generator and locust of meaning, Camus illustrates how we have fallen from a belief system into the strange void of individualism. In the fall of man they become their own Gods, and thus their own judges, administering the harshest of condemnations. Once the veil of egocentric delusion is pierced, Jean is jolted into a recognition of this strange, inverted reality. He quickly comes to see that “People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves” (p.80) In this world, the crux of liberty is to recognize no equals–to be atop all. Moreover, the self-obsession practiced by most is a defense against the realities that haunt the enlightened individual. The origin of this deluded self-centering is not a megalomaniac's self-love; rather, it is the armor, the shield of ignorance we coat upon our soft flesh to render it impenetrable. Destroying all else, leaving ourselves as the epicenter of existence, we are both victims and punishers. Ah, Jean laments loudly, “since we are all judges, we are all guilty before one another” (p.117). But, the modern conscious does not perceive such a reality, no, no, that is where Jean has lept beyond us. We must convince ourselves of our innocence, our perfection, to be able to judge all others, to catapulte ourselves above them, and thus attain what we have grown to understand as happiness, liberty. Camus hopes in this reveal, to pierce our viel, just as he has with Jean. He seeks to liberate us from our own freedom.  

In the ultimate crescendo of this work, Camus leads us from a confrontation with our failings, to a quasi redemption, predicated on understanding the inherent flaw of human kind and our fallacy of freedom. From the presumed duality of modern human, Camus ventures to examine a schism in the very concept of freedom. In having thrown away our convictions, we are left a ship on the sea, a lone traveler in the great tumultuous unknown. Thus, “without God and without master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style” (p.133). This is why we must inflate ourselves, why we must judge mercilessly, why we condemn ourselves, why we construct dreadful rules. We exact a prison for ourselves, fearful of ourselves in the boundlessness of existence. The human requires an epistemological framework–an idea to believe in–or they are crushed by the weight of the unfathomable. The only escape, the only outlet to true freedom is to tear down the fallacy, to pierce the veil, to accept our wretchedness, our heinous duplicity and not hide from it in glass castles of grandeur.  Jean asserts: “I have a superiority in that I know it and this gives me the right to speak” (p.140). In condemning himself, in speaking the truth of his duality–his Jekyll and Hyde–Jean has freed himself from judgment, from fear, and the shackles of his own making.  “I have found the happiness that suits me…I have accepted duplicity” (141). In equating the reader with Jean, in tethering our worries, Camus prescribes the same route to redemption.

Camus leaves us no option other than to wrestle with his many accusations: that we care about nothing but ourselves; that we only like our friends because of what they can do for us; that we care for appearances far more than reality; that we have turned love into a means of domination; and, most of all, that we insist on our own innocence so that we can judge the whole world. This is a fiercely philosophical journey encapsulated in a dreamy narrative flow that carries you away, as a passionate conversation with a friend may. It is an extraordinarily complex, rich text that I have only scratched the surface of. The questions it prompts, the pathways of thought it leads one down, can open up an arena of conversation that could seemingly never end. However, I am limited to this space, so I have covered what speaks to me most in The Fall. I believe everyone would benefit from the experience that is this text, even if they staunchly disagree with the claims put forward. 

The Fall is a text of inverted redemption, a path to accepting one’s own evils to be set free, and it bears the question: must one fall in order to rise?

Rate: 9.1/10

Before we continue, one may ask, why would you want to read something in such a vein? Something that doesn’t show hope, nor inspire anything but rightful indignation in the reader? Well, you might not want to read it, and that is okay! But for those of us who are looking for a piece of literature that dissects the very inner workings of society, morality, ideals, and what it means to be a living being in this modern age, then The Idiot is the perfect find.

The novel opens with the hero, Prince Myshkin, who is the embodiment of purity, goodness, and morality even to the point of being classified as “an idiot,” on a train returning to St Petersburg, returning in a sense to society. His goodness, open-hearted simplicity, and guilelessness lead most of the more worldly, corrupt in comparison, characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight, hinting at the value placed on those attributes in our modern world. The novel follows our pitible hero through his first exposures to society, as he is re-entering Russia, and the social world, after being away at a rehabilitation institute for the past five or so years, the web of relations he gets entangled in, and how each individual's convictions dictate the course of their destiny. 

From the first pages of the novel, Prince Myshkin becomes enamoured by the fallen woman Nastasya Filippovna, who comes to serve as an emblem of self-punishment and suffering. He champions for her against the likes of Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin, Gavrila Ardalionovitch, the entire Epachin family, and society at large, all to his own detriment. I have to note that Nastasya is my favorite character, for various reasons, mostly overlapping with the Prince’s ardent feelings. She is a beautiful, complicated, crazed woman, who is driven to insanity by the cruelty of society and her own awareness of the stain that she can never remove from herself, being once a “kept” woman by an older man, Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky. While she is blameless for her own “disgrace,” we see that undeserved guilt haunts her, ultimately leading to her mental, spiritual, and physical self-destruction. In the end, her only escape from the cruelty of the world around her is death, mirroring Flaubert’s Emma from Madame Bovary, which Nastasya was reading in her final days. Throughout the tragic self-destructive and chaotic behavior of Nastasya, Prince Myshkin stands by her, the saint, the sheep, the perfect child; he would rather sacrifice himself than watch her ruin herself ultimately. This is only one of various storylines existing throughout The Idiot, but it is my favorite and this relationship, and tragic character alone makes reading the novel worth it. As a woman, reading Nastasya Filippovna’s tragedy, seeing the violence that has been done to her, and following the devastation of her soul is profound, disturbing, haunting, and in a way validating. 

 The second notable prong of the novel are the relationships between all of the aforementioned individuals, in addition to a slew of Russian characters who come to serve as emblems of ideology. A prime example of this literary device being Ippolit Terentyev, a young consumptive boy on the brink of death, who preaches the doctrine of nihilism almost to the point of ending his own life prematurely. Or Lukyan Timofeevich Lebedev who represents the two sided nature of mankind. Can we not be kind, charitable, loyal, while also being conniving, dishonest, and greedy? Such overarching questions are displayed in the arena of each character’s psyche, and how they grapple with the impulse to do good, but with the equally strong force to do things we deem immoral. Oftentimes, the force to do bad is incited by some societal pressure, whether it be economic necessity, the desire to be notable, or the general hopelessness that a cruel world can inspire in a person’s heart. These same forces are what crush and disfigure our heroine Nastasya Filippovna.

My ending summation, is this novel is just as much a work of philosophical introspection on Dostoyevsky’s part as it is of fiction. The Idiot examines the consequences of placing such a singular individual, the perfect man, the embodiment of goodness at the centre of conflicts, desires, passions, displaying the egoism of worldly society, and the corrupting nature of the modern world. It leaves the reader questioning, why do we place such a cheap price on goodness, morality, virtue, even to the point of scoffing at those who embody those attributes? How does the world around us taint that which is innate, our innocence, our kindness, and leave us forced to act in ways that chip away at our ideals? While The Idiot is a story of failed redemption, devastation, and stifled hope, it inspires something in the reader to vindicate the goodness that this world tramples on, because who is not to some degree an idiot at heart? 

I must note before parting that there are a considerable number of flaws to this epic novel. Due to the deeply personal philosophical nature of this work, there is much that is unclear, convoluted, and unpalatable. The overarching cons to the work would be the density and repetition. There are large portions that ramble on and seemingly serve no purpose, besides forcing the reader to get lost in the dark, murky labyrinth that is Dostoyevsky’s writing. While this may feel irksome and superfluous to some readers, if you allow yourself to submit and fall into the abyss that is Dostoyevsky’s mind, you will reap the benefits of experiencing each character and their plight on not only a critical level, but on a deeper psychological, and human level. Putting my biases aside, there is much of the novel that feels repetitive, drawn out, unnecessary to anyone who isn’t a staunch Dostoyevskian, and even chaotically organized. However, I would say, skim over anything that might overwhelm or bore you and stick around for the jems strewn throughout the long arduous terrain.

Final Rate: 8.2/10

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