Camaraderie

For all my life,

               I'll wonder why

source

She is loving him still after all this time

The day was early, and the sun was already shining bright. 
We had matching white shirt; I know it meant nothing because so did a hundred other people there. But I was glad we did.
You look different. Bigger. Better. Older.
You grew up. And I believe so did I.
That small electricity under my skin when I saw you; it used to be a lot like love, but I guess it's more of an obsession now.
I don't know what to call you, though. An obsession? A past? A stupid mistake? The one that got away? The untouchable? A hopeless dream? The one I will always have feelings for? What?
I know the small details about you; just the way kids do when they think they have a crush on someone.
I know the struggle you're facing, and in some ways we're very similar that way.
But I don't know you. And you don't know me.
In a way, maybe this is the way I've always wanted us to be. 
Perfect strangers.
Because strangers will never hate each other. Because strangers have the appeal to always be the mystery we want to solve, and you can be that for me. A mystery. A case I will never close. The one thing that will keep me going.
You should stop feeling like you're useless. Because you're not. You've been a big part of my life, and you don't even know it. 
Across a park, a stolen glance.
A lifetime of wondering if I'll ever see you again.

The last two lines were inspired by Iain Thomas's I Wrote This For You blog. 

Shakespeare is a Half-God

I can be very personally involved with some fictional books, and Gayle Forman's Just One Day is one of the most remarkable books I've known. It has so many links to my side of life that I've been sharing in this blog; the one that I don't let out every so often. Most of you must have realized how different the me who's writing the whole posts in the blog and the me in real, everyday life. I can say that this book touches the me whose head is in the clouds and sometimes too far from the ground.

The premise alone was exactly the way I'd imagined true romance should started. It was actually my friend's idea when we had this light conversation of a dream romance (with mine being posted previously here). The idea was to travel somewhere in England and meet a striking stranger who happens to be very nice and spontaneous, so much that he asked the girl to get lost somewhere she's never been to. And while they're there, he'd ask her to get even more lost than they already are. It just adds to my pleasure that the guy in this book, Willem, is a carefree Dutch who act in Shakespearian plays, speaks fluent French, and happens to be a well-traveled person who can talk about love just as deep as he talks about his art. Not to mention how it is set mostly in Paris and Amsterdam; the two places I would like call home someday, because they're just that enchanting. And even better: Stratford-upon-Avon, the place Shakespeare would like to call home; and London. And you know how I feel about that city. 

Apart from that very personal experience, what makes me like this book so much is how I could go from disliking the heroine of the story, Allyson, to admiring her since the last quarter of the book. I can see how she, through what made her seem so lost as a person, could actually find who she is and finally deciding her life. I'm pretty sure each one of us had thought, at least for once, to change our vocations. To take a road that we're so wanting to take but didn't, because it's not considered good by people around us. But sometimes the way to know what we shouldn't do is by doing what we're not supposed to do. It may be easier to be said than done, but that alone is a sign that our heroine in the book is a girl with such determination to finally decide for her own life, and I guess in some ways, that's the kind of person we should look up to. 

Human Life Estimation

The Book Thief is the kind of book that gives you a chance to view life from a perspective that's not human's. I learn as much about mankind as I did from David Levithan's Every Day. It's a very well-written book about a German girl during the Nazi Germany era. There's so many books about the holocaust written from the Jewish perspective, so it's certainly a breathe of fresh air to read from a German family's point of view. A German family that's not blindly crazy about Der Führer, that is. Narrated by Death, it's a story about a series of unfortunate events happening to a little girl during the war. Her foster family was so poor; and she seek happiness through stealing books even though books are not edible. It's not so much about how really devious the Nazis were. It's more about how, even in desperate times like 1942 Germany, human are still capable of kindness and good. How even during the authority's threat, one can still exercise their belief in humanity towards fellow humans. How, despite all the teachings by the powerful, wrongful leader, the book's protagonists can still see the Jews as just human. 

Through Zusak's words, I can almost believe that I was there; that I lived in the '40s, have lived to see the two world wars, and was constantly in danger of being blown off by the Allies' attacks. I learn from Death that... Humans are so many things; and even Death, the one thing humans are always worried about, is constantly fascinated of how humans are virtuous and evil, and at the same time, mostly made of water.