The Alchemist. By Paulo Coelho

Not sure how to introduce this one. I was a little off put at first by the inornate language and simplicity of the words and imagery used. But that is what makes this book so powerful, in the end, really. It is a simple story of a boy in search for treasure. It doesn't seem terribly original or terribly engaging. But it subtly uncovers a philosophy about what treasure is and where it comes from that really rings true to me. Supposedly this is translated from Spanish. I really am thinking of getting the original text and rereading it while I improve my Spanish-the simple language here will be to my advantage. I'm really curious now to read other books by this author. Maybe my next will be in Spanish. Quien sabe.

I typed up the entire prologue. It's a really good illustration of what I tried to explain above about the marriage of simple language and complex philosophy. I was honestly thinking about this passage alone for days. Enjoy!

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PROLOGUE

The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.

The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.

But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.

He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.

"Why do you weep?" the goddess asked.

"I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.

"Ah, it's no surprise that you weep for Narcissus," they said, "for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand."

"But...was Narcissus beautiful?" the lake asked.

"Who better than you to know that?" the goddesses said in wonder. "After all, it was at your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!"

The lake was silent for some time. Finally it said:

"I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my bands, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected."

What a lovely story, the alchemist thought.

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"What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised.
"It's this; that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie." (20)

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"Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yean for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as times passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend." (23)

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"That's the way it always is," said the old man. "It's called the principle of favorability. When you play cards the first time, you are almost sure to win. Beginners' luck."

"Why is that?"

"Because there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success." (30)

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"Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you," said the wisest of wise men. "The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon."

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"Well, why don't you go to Mecca now?" asked the boy. "Because it's the thought of Mecca that keeps me alive. That's what helps me face these days that are all the same, these mute crystals on the shelves, and lucn and dinner at the same horible café. I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, Ill have no reason to go on living. You dream about your sheep and the Pyramids, but you're different from me, because you want to realize your dreams.

I just want to dream about Mecca. I've already imagined a thousand times crossing the desert, arriving at the Plaza of the Sacred Stone, the seven times I walk around it before allowing myself to touch it. I've already imagined the people who would be at my side, and those in front of me, and the conversations and prayers we would share. But I'm afraid that it would all be a disappointment, so I prefer just to dream about it." (57)

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"I've had this shop for thirty year. I know good crystals from bad, and everything else there is to know about crystal. I know its dimensions and how it behaves. If we serve tea in crystal, the shop is going to expand. And then I'll have to change my way of life."

"Well, isn't that good?"

"I'm already used to the way things are. Before you came, I was thinking about how much time I had wasted in the same place, while my friends had moved on, and either went bankrupt or did better than they had before. It made me very depressed. Now, I can see that it hasn't been too bad. the shop is exactly the size I always wanted it to be. I don't want to change anything, because I don't know how to deal with change. I'm used to the way I am." (60)

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"He still had some doubts about the decision he had made. But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision. (70)

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"Everything in life is an omen," said the Englishman, now closing the journal he was reading.

"There is a universal language, understood by everybody, but already forgotten. I am in search of that universal language, among other things. That's why I'm here. I have to find a man who knows that universal language. And alchemist." (72)

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"That's the principle that governs all things," he said. "In alchemy, it's called the Soul of the World. When you want something with all your heart, that's when you are closest to the Soul of the World. It's always a positive force."

He also said that this was not just a human gift, that everything on the face of the earth had a soul, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal-or even just a simple thought.

"Everyting on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive...and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognize that it is working for us." (80)

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"God revealed his secrets easily to all his creatures. He had only one explanation for this face: things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. Because people because fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the Language of the World." (89)

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"I want to stay at the oasis," the boy answered. "Ive found Fatima, and, as far as I'm concerned, she's worth more than treasure."

"Fatima is a woman of the desert," said the alchemist. "She knows that men have to go away in order to return. And she already has her treasure: it's you. Now she expect that you will find what it is you're looking for."

"Well, what if I decide to stay?"

"Let me tell you what will happen. You'll be the counselor of the oasis. You have enough gold to buy many sheep and many camels. You'll marry Fatima, and you'll both be happy for a year.
You'll learn to love the desert, and you'll get to know every one of the fifty thousand palms. You'll watch them as they grown, demonstrating how the world is always changing. And you'll get better and better at understanding omens, because the desert is the best teacher there is.

Sometime during the second year, you'll remember about the treasure. The omens will begin insistently to speak of it, and you'll try to ignore them. You'll use your knowledge for the welfare of the oasis and its inhabitants. The tribal chieftain will appreciate what you do. And your camels will bring you wealth and power.

During the third year, the omens will continue to speak of your treasure and your Personal Legend. You'll walk around, night after night, at the oasis, and Fatima will be unhappy because she'll feel it was she who interrupted your quest. But you will love her, and she'll return your love. You'll remember that she never asked you to stay, because a woman of the desert knows that she must await her man. So you won't blamer her. But many times you'll walk the sands of the desert, thinking that maybe you could have left,..that you could have trusted more in your love for Fatima. Because what kept you at the oasis was your own fear that you might never come back. At that point, the omens will tell you that your treasure is buried forever.

Then, sometime during the fourth year, the omens will abandon you, because you've stopped listening to them. The tribal chieftains will see that, and you'll be dismissed from your position as counselor. But, by then, you'll be a rich merchant, with many camels and a great deal of merchandise. You'll spend the rest of your days knowing that you didn't pursue your Personal Legend, and that now it's too late.

You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love...the love that speaks the Language of the World." (120-122)

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"The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom." (128)

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As they moved along, the boy tried to listen to his heart. It was not easy to do; in earlier times, his heart had always been ready to tell its story, but lately that wasn't true. There had been times when his heart spent hours telling of its sadness, and at other times it became so emotional over the desert sunrise that the boy had to hide his tears. His heart beat fastest when it spoke to the boy of treasure, and more slowly when the boy started entranced at the endless horizons of the desert. But his heart was never quiet, even when the boy and the alchemist had fallen into silence.

"Why do we have to listen to our heart?" the boy asked, when they had made camp that day.

"Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure."

"But my heart is agitated," the boy said. "It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it's become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I'm thinking about her."

"Well, that's good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say."

During the next three days, the two travelers passed by a number of armed tribesman, and saw others on the horizon. The boy's heart began to speak of fear. It told him stories it had heard from the Soul of the World. stories of men who sought to find their treasure and never succeeded. Sometimes it frightened the boy with the idea that he might not find his treasure, or that he might die there in the desert. At other times, it told the boy that it was satisfied: it had found love and riches.

"My heart is a traitor," the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses.

"It doesn't want me to go on."

"That makes sense," the alchemist answered. "Naturally it's afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you've won."

"Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?"

"Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you're thinking about life and about the world."

"You mean I should listen, even if it's treasonous?"

"Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you'll know its dreas and wishes, and will know how to deal with them. You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you'll never have to fear an unanticipated blow." (129-130)

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"Remember what I told you: the world is only the visible aspect of God. And that is what alchemy does is to bring spiritual perfection into contact with the material plane." (144)

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"This is why alchemy exists," the boy said. "So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play is role until the world had no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold. That's what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to becomes better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too."

"Well, why did you say that I don't know about love?" the sun asked the boy.

"Because it's not love to be static like the desert, nor is it love to roam the world like the wind. And it's not love to see everything from a distance, like you do. Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. When I first reached through to it, I thought the Soul of the World was perfect. But, later, I could see that it was like other aspects of creation, and had its own passions and wars. It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that's where the power of love comes into it. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."

"So what do you want of me?" the sun asked.

"I want you to help me turn myself into the wind," the boy answered.

"Nature knows me as the wisest being in creation," the sun said. "But I don't know how to turn you into the wind."

"Then whom should I ask?"

The sun thought for a minute. The wind was listening closely, and wanted to tell every corner of the world that the sun's wisdom had its limitations. That it was unable to deal with this boy who spoke the Language of the World.

"Speak to the hand that wrote all," said the sun.

The boy turned to the hand that wrote all. As he did so, he sensed that the universe had fallen silent, and he decided not to speak. A current of love rushed from his heart, and the boy began to pray. It was a prayer that he had never said before, because it was a prayer without words or pleas. His prayer didn't give thanks for his sheep having found new pastures; it didn't ask that the boy be able to sell more crystal; and it didn't beseech that the woman he had met continue to await his return. In the silence, the boy understood that the desert, the wind, and the sun were also trying to understand the signs written by the hand, and were seeking to follow their paths, and to understand what had been written on a single emerald. He saw that omens were scattered throughout the earth and in space, and that there was no reason or significance attached to their appearance; he could see that not the deserts, nor the wind, nor the sun, nor people knew why they had been created. But that the hand had a reason for all of this, and that only the hand could perform miracles, or transform the sea into a desert...or a man into the wind. Because only the hand understood that it was a larger design that had moved the universe to the point at which six days of creation had evolved into the Master World.

The boy reached through to the Soul of the World, and saw that it was part of the Soul of God. And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles.
(152-3)

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The alchemist said, "No matter what he does, ever person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it."

The boy smiled. He had never imagine that questions about life would be of such importance to a shepherd. (160)

The History of Love. By Nicole Krauss

Because I read it:

I'm just going to copy and paste was Amazon has to say about the plot of the book. Not that I didn't care about the plot, but this, for me, was not a plot driven book. It was driven by prose, by voice. Honestly, the writing is so evocative and poignant that if you have half a poetry-inclined soul you will get chills. Unless you are me in which case your chills will be accompanied by sobs. (Yes, even if you are sardine packed in the family van and on the way to Cirque de Soleil and reading by the light of your phone.)

So I give you the summary. But I think that you don't have to have read the book or even know what it's about to get something from the passages/quotes below:

The History of Love spans of period of over 60 years and takes readers from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe to present day Brighton Beach. At the center of each main character's psyche is the issue of loneliness, and the need to fill a void left empty by lost love. Leo Gursky is a retired locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in his native Poland, only to spend the last stage of his life terrified that no one will notice when he dies. ("I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even though I'm not thirsty.") Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer vacillates between wanting to memorialize her dead father and finding a way to lift her mother's veil of depression. At the same time, she's trying to save her brother Bird, who is convinced he may be the Messiah, from becoming a 10-year-old social pariah. As the connection between Leo and Alma is slowly unmasked, the desperation, along with the potential for salvation, of this unique pair is also revealed.

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"He wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard [...]. How could he have forgotten what he had always known: there is no match for the silence of God."

"When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely."

"...larger than life...I've never understood that expression. What's larger than life?"

"ONE THING I AM NEVER GOING TO DO WHEN I GROW UP
Is fall in love, drop out of college, learn to subsist on water and air, have a species named after me, and ruin my life."

"Sometimes I imagine my own autopsy. Disappointment in myself: right kidney. Disappointment of others in me: left kidney. Personal failures: kishkes. ... When the clocks are turned back and the dark falls before I'm ready, this, for reasons I can't explain, I feel in my wrists. And when I wake up and my fingers are stiff , almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. ... Yesterday I saw a man kicking a dog and I felt it behind my eyes. I don't know what to call this, a place before tears. The pain of forgetting: spine. The pain of remembering: spine. All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist: my knees. ... To everything a season, to every time I've woken only to make the mistake of believing for a moment that someone was sleeping beside me: a hemorrhoid. Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all."

"When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?"

"And if the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he'd never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn't because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn't help it."

"The truth is the thing I invented so I could live."

"Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact."


And, to culminate Leo's unofficial obituary, written by himself years before he was actually old: "He fell in love. It was his life."

This is me proving Zack wrong: a favorite pastime.

Today's run could merit a post all on its own. I set goals for myself last night as far as running and working out and it's doing wonders already. Case in point: I woke up feeling sick to my stomach and weak. I can't decide it this is actually a result of my running. My Dr. says that "running is hard on the female body" and that always makes me want to say, with some indignity "NOT fair". Anyway, I can't decide if it's the running that's doing a number on my "female body" or if it's just doing a number on my hypoglycemia. I wake up most mornings with a stomachache. I teeter-totter all day between being starving and force feeding myself because I have no appetite. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not eating enough to compensate for the calories I burn. And if the heat is just too hot. Fancy that.

ANYway, my retarded body aside, I forced myself to go running this evening. It was delicious. Had my itouch, a storm coming in at my back and to-do lists running through my head. At the start of my run I passed this guy in a park on a bench. He had a huge water bottle and was writing in a notebook. "He's a writer for sure," I told myself. Then "I wonder what he's writing."

I ended my run and did my stretches in that same park. I ended with some cartwheels and when I was done I noticed that the guy was still there, standing and facing me. It looked like he was sewing up his pants-they had holes everywhere. And as I was laying there on the grass raindrops started to fall and I wanted to go back to running again until I was soaked all the way through. Yet I knew that I would be overdoing it if I did. So I thought, well, I could just stay here and lay here and let it soak me. But the rain was slow in coming and there was this dad playing ball with his son eyeing me. And there was this guy, on the bench but not on the bench. Because he was standing. And I didn't want either of them to think I was sticking around because of them. But the truth of it is, I really wanted to walk over and sit on that bench. And talk to that guy because he looked like someone interesting. Totally out of the ordinary. And I just wanted to soak it all in. And maybe get soaked by the rain to boot.

But I didn't want him to think I was hitting on him. That's what I hate about life these days is that you can't just walk up to someone and be interested in them without them thinking you're hitting on them. It's bad enough with guys but it's way worse with girls. I mean, I always feel awkward around girls. Which is really too bad because there are a lot of interesting ones out there but I feel like I have to pretend not to be too interested or else they get weirded out. The games are totally sick. And the truth about people who aren't in the ordinary is that you never know with them. The other truth is that I sometimes go home and take notes about them because they have great paper-back potential. Which is totally normal, I mean Steinbeck did it and all, but I didn't quite have a clean conscious on the whole thing. So I got in my car and drove home.

And vowed that before going back to Utah I am getting soaked in a rainstorm and the next Jack Kerouac moment I have, I'm taking it.

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ON ANOTHER NOTE. A very long-winded one.

Today's to-do list gets several major checks. The first one being I finally emailed the grad advisor at BYU to figure out the best way to do the letter of recommendation thing. I haven't taken a class in 4 years (going on 5) and my French is at least 4 times better than when I graduated. I couldn't even use the subjunctive for crying out loud. ( Oh subjunctive. I thought you were the bane of my existence until subjunctive in Spanish came along to haunt so many of my Montreal dreams.)

So my options are to either get a recommendation from an old teacher on outdated ability or go back to school, paying $1000 and inconveniencing everyone at work because the class is midday to go back and retake a class I took junior year. Is it any wonder why every time I break out my GRE book to study that I lack motivation? Yeah, this things needs to become a reality and it needs to do that fast.

That is, IF I go into French. I've been at this decision since 2005 and it has yet to be made. So lame.

The reason being that I'm still torn about not pursuing an English degree. Especially after reading this most terrific and inspiring book "Mindset". My work bought it for us to read this summer and I finished it in a matter of days. I have to say really quick that when I went back into the school to pick it up before returning to Colorado after going to Yellowstone that I totally got emotional walking through those doors. How much better can life get when you have a job that not only continually cultivates your mind but also feels makes you feel so good that when you come back from being away it makes you want to cry? K, so maybe I should clarify that those are tears of joy. I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen, that life doesn't get much better. Sometimes I don't know why I feel the need to leave.

I'll leave the sappiness and book-reporting for later because I have a couple of other books I want to cover as well. But I do want to say that the book brought me to one major realization about my writing aspirations: in the course of my college career in the English dept I came to believe that you either were a born writer, or that you weren't. And I never pursued English because I thought I was; I did it because I liked it and then had enough credits to graduate.

I was never the kid with a stack of different moleskin notebooks and fountain pens that flashed across pages so fast it could make you sick. I never had a satchel bag for my un-moleskin notebook and un-fountain pen. I wasn't "burdened" by the need to write-the 'sign' of a 'true artist', was well groomed and said "like" too much. I believed that writing came easier to me than other things, that I had a "knack" for poetry. But I never believed I was a "natural". And poetry doesn't even sell so that doesn't even count. Point here is, I wasn't very open to learning how to write. I accepted my limitations.

And I've started to wonder what might happen if I tackled writing like I tackled French. Reading this mindset book has me realizing that just because we have a certain mindset-a closed or open one-toward one thing doesn't mean that we carry that through to other things. Even in the world of academia. The trick is to identify your mindset towards everything in life and tweak it. In English, I accepted any strengths and defeats as inevitable; in French I was convinced that if I worked hard enough, even if that meant studying abroad and reading 60 pages aloud every night, I would one day get it. The irony here is that people tell me all the time I must have a gift for learning languages. And I laugh and try to get them to understand just how unnatural languages used to come to me; that I had a strong desire to defy my ineptness and I worked hard and taught myself how to teach myself the tricks to learning a language. That anyone could do that.

I think a huge part of what I love about French it what learning it has taught me about me. French has brought me to cities wrought with memories of people and feelings and fears and discomfort that turned into delicious familiarity that I wouldn't have experienced otherwise. French brought me to my job that I love. It brought me here, to Colorado. It brought me faith in the power of boldness and of sacrificing.

It's only too appropriate now to quote from the Little Prince, another thing that French brought me and that changed me. For any of you who don't know it, it won't do just to quote from one part and you really should read it but until then I'll copy this section:

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"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince, "I am so unhappy."

"I cannot play with you," the fox said, "I am not tamed."

"Ah please excuse me," said the little prince. But after some thought, he added: "What does that mean--'tame'?"

"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties."

"To establish ties?"

"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think she has tamed me . . . "

"It is possible," said the fox. "On earth one sees all sorts of things."

"My life is very monotonous," [the fox] said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . . "

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. "Please--tame me!" he said.

"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."

"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . . "

"What must I do, to tame you? asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that--in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . . "

The next day the little prince came back.

........

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . . "

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added: "Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made a friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

And he went back to meet the fox. "Goodbye," he said. "Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.'

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose---" said the little prince so he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . . "

"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

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Someone once told me that the root of the word "sacrifice" came from French. Faire: to make, and Sacré: sacred. To sacrifice for something makes that thing sacred to you.

I have sacrificed a lot for French. In a sense, it has tamed me. Now I am realizing that I, if I did the same thing for English, well who knows what might happen. The trouble of it all is that the price to pay is a high one. I would have to probably enroll as an undergrad again. Take some more classes and make a concentrated effort to get published more. Creative writing programs are super competitive. And the risk is that you come out a better writer but at the risk of losing your voice and sounding like every other MFA grad.

So I have some research to do and some commitment to make here soon. And I share all of this in detail because a) this is what happens when you (okay, I) deprive me (myself) of my telephone and facebook and b) because I finished reading The Alchemist today and it's all about the discovery of your "personal legend" and of not being afraid to follow it. And I think that I am not the only one trying to figure out what mine is and so the sharing of the details isn't too excessive. At least I hope.

Now,

I was giving advice to a friend who was trying to decide what to do the other day and I decided to take it into account. Like every other person out there, I give great advice; following it and applying it to myself is the real trick. The advice I gave her was to put out in her mind the things she wanted to do. And in order to figure out where her priority lies, to tell herself which of the things, if she ended up not having it or doing it, would hang over her as a regret the rest of her life. Now, I'm not about living in fear of regret. But I think that it helps to put things into perspective.

In prep for grad school I have also been playing with the idea of taking a year off to travel beforehand. A sort of Eat, Pray, Love thing. I love taking the summers off but experiences are different when you know something is short-term versus long term. And I keep telling myself that writers can only write what they know. And that the only way to learn the world is to live it.

I was giving my sister, Lis, some awesome advice that I have been reflecting on as well. She was talking about school and a mission and a job and traveling, etc. And I told her that school is something she will end up doing because the world will require that of her. And she will end up getting a job and then finding better jobs because the world will require that of her too. These are the things that just kind of happen to us in life for the most part: inevitabilities. But traveling is different. Traveling is not an inevitability.

I got an email today about internships in Brussels. I have been thinking a lot about next summer. About needing to leave the country. And I have to ask myself, "If life were to happen but it would mean your traveling days are over-or at least for the next couple of years-would you have any regrets?

And the truth is I don't know. But 'I-don't-know' is not 'no'. And if the answer is 'yes' then I have some figuring out to do.

I'll get around to typing up my book reports later. The mere habit speaks volumes on just how much I need to go back to school. Or join a book club. I have "A History of Love", "My Name is Asher Lev", "Screwtape Letters", "Mindset", and "The Alchemist" to cover in quotes. For you but mostly for me. But also for you because maybe you will be inspired to read them and if you don't have time well then I spared you the trouble and handed you the best parts on a silver platter, free of charge.

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Oh silly Zack. You though I was gonna cave by day two. You obviously underestimated my ability to converse with myself in equally exhaustive ramblings via this blog. I win.

Everything's holy-everything, even me

So I finally finished reading Grapes of Wrath. I actually finished about 3-4 weeks ago and have since read Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Had to make up for lost time.

So Steinbeck is incredible. I would say that I can't get enough of him but that's not entirely true because I have lists of unread books that I won't let him get in the way of. But honestly, it was an inspiring tale. The night I finished it I spent probably two to three hours online reading reading guides and character/plot/historical analyses. It felt like being 17. Delicious. Especially because I didn't have to write a ten pager afterward: I could be affected by the writing but free from the task of forming my own conclusions.

In my reading I marked some of my favorite passages. I had intended to type them up anyway, since the book I marked isn't actually mine. Then the other night I was going through some of my writings. I have a few word documents that are kind of the equivalent to moleskin notebooks (which I love but never use because they are so beautiful. too beautiful.) in that they are depositories of verbal sketches; I usually only resort to them when I have some itch to get stuff out before I forget. The stuff is pretty raw and it usually stays that way. And I forget often enough about half of what I wrote.

So, I stumbled into this. And it is interesting because even though I wasn't yet reading the text of Grapes of Wrath, while typing up the quotes, I noticed some serious parallels between what I wrote and was trying to express and what Steinbeck wrote and did express. And beautifully. No surprise really that I loved it so much.

Given the parallels, I thought I'd present my writing alongside what I thought were kind of complementary quotations. Any other quotes worthy of mention will serve as a finale.

Written sometime in December, maybe the end of November:

Today I went back to the room whose clutter had lain untouched during the years I went from a child to an adult. It was recently hallowed out, had gone back to its skeleton frame. And I walked in, picked up scraps of sheetrock and started to haul them away. My size hasn’t changed much in the past 10 or so years. I’d like to think I’ve gotten stronger but it was hard to say. I didn’t want to overdo things so I hauled in small loads, much like I probably did back when work was being done in my room, those long years ago. But my gait, my grip, even my step as I took to the stairs, had a different energy to it. Call it purpose if you will. It was clear to me in a hushed kind of way that this time around it wasn’t about my room, wasn’t about me at all. Though my house is still my home, it is not my universe.

Today, I was helping my parents with what was theirs: our house, yes, but their universe. Somewhere, in a hundred different moments, I had lost ownership in that purpose. I understood as I did not or perhaps could not then, that building a house was more than slabs of sheetrock, putty, paint, trim and the perfect shade of carpet and furnishings. It was about building something, about creating. We all live in houses. We clean them, maintain them. And there is something to be said for that. But me, I grew up with my house.

I was flooded with memories of shovels, blisters, and hot summer days. Of cement trucks, nails, and the smell of sawdust. Of grubby clothes, some of the workers and their cute sons that I never managed to talk to for several reasons; one being those same grubby clothes. And how the sound of hammering or sawing on a Saturday morning was often the alarm clock I slept through because they were just the sounds of home.

As I worked I realized that my hands still remembered how to swing a hammer, drive a screw and that I knew the order of finishing things. I don’t know what most girls grow up learning. I imagine some of them, most of them maybe, learn about cooking. Even though I didn’t realize it, I had my own kind of education. And today I came to find that it had kinda stuck with me.

"How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.

They sat and looked at it and burned it into their memories. How'll it be to not know what land's outside the door? How if you wake up in the night and know-and know the willow tree's not there? Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, you can't. The willow tree is you. The pain on that mattress there-that dreadful pain-that's you."- Ch. 8

I am reading Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” right now. To tell you the truth, I’m still stuck in the introduction. In it, the writer explains Steinbeck’s drive to write, saying that he lived for it and that it was, for him, a redemptive or transformative act. I couldn’t help today but think of that explanation. I wish I had the same drive for writing but I’m no Steinbeck and that’s okay with me. But I think that writing is just another way of creating something out of nothing. Or of putting together the right pieces. Building a house, or building anything else for that matter, feels the same way to me. There is something so fresh, albeit exhausting at times, in the working of it.

"The last clear definite function of man-muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need-this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man-when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it.

This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live-for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strike stops while the great owners live-for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know-fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe."- Ch. 14

I know that there are more factors than the walls of my house, but today I became aware of that transformation in me; that what I was building was no longer mine even though it is a part of me just as I am a part of it. It made me kind of emotional, which seems weird, I know. But that feeling you get when you’re outside, in the mountains, in the country, on a boat or anywhere in nature where you feel embraced or where you feel like embracing it all or maybe it’s the same feeling altogether-that is the feeling I get from my house.

"No-the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds. And everything's holy-everything, even me." -Ch 23

Those walls have so many memories in them that weird as it is, sometimes, I just want to lean against them, hug them, even.

And so today, in a very poorly articulated way, I am especially grateful for what my parents have built and have created. If it makes it any more simple, I could just say that I am grateful for my house. For the work they put into it, the work they taught me and the pieces of their universe that they have given to me in the building of it.

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There is some serious food for thought here, (and can I just say I love how Steinbeck views women, he's so right on) but I won't get into it. I'll just whet your pallet with the following words:


"I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, "Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe," I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the HOly Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a dussent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it." p.24


"An' I got thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin', it was deeper down than thinkin'. I got thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kincin' an' draggin' an' fightin'. Fella like that bust the holiness. But when they're all wornin' together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang-that's right, that's holy. An' then I got thinkin' I don't even know what I mean by holy." He pause, but the bowed heads stayed down, for they had been trained like dogs to rise at the "amen" signal. "I can't say no grace like I use' ta say. I'm glad of the holiness of the breakfast. I'm glad there's love here. That's all." p. 81


"Ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? Ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought?"
"No," she said quickly. "No, I ain't. You can't do that. I can't do that. It's too much-livin' too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one. If I go ahead on all of 'em, it's too much. You got to live ahead 'cause you're so young, but-it's jus' the road goin' by for me. An' it's jus' how soon they gonna wanta eat some more pork bones." Her face tightened. "That's all I can d. I can't do no more. All the rest'd get upset if I done any more'n that. They all depen' on me jus' thinkin' about that." p.124


The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside theirn men-to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men's faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained.


I'll be ever'where-wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build-why, I'll be there. See? -Chapter 28


"Woman can change bette'n a man. Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head. Don' you mind. Maybe-well, maybe nex' year we can get a place"

"We got nothin', now," Pa said. "Comin' a long time-no work, no crops. What we gonna do then? How we gonna git stuff to eat? An' I tell you Rosasharn ain't so far from due. Git so I hate to think. Go diggin' back to a ol' time to keep from thinkin'. Seems like our life's over an' done."

"No, it ain't," Ma smile. "It ain't, Pa. An' that's one more thing a woman knows. I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk-gets a farm an' loses his farm, an' that's a jer. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right no. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on-changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on." Chapter 28


The women watched the men, watched to see whether the break had come at last. The women stood silently and watched. And where a number of men gathered together, the fear went from their faces, and anger took its place. And the women sighed with relief, for they know it was all right-the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath. Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were pale green with the beginning year. -Chapter 29