It’s been a theme in my life lately that when I get overwhelmed to the point where I can’t go on, it is always something new that brings me deep satisfaction. Once it was biking as hard as I could out to the heirloom roses before the sun went down. Another time it was watching an old anime show for days straight. Last night as I suffered a total psychological melt down and turned into crazy Toni, I rushed around the house in order to get ready for bed, threw on my sweater and green sweatpants (my green sweatpants making Christmas colors with my red socks: something that normally would bother but this time I found strangely comforting), let just my hanging lights and fake candles set a soft and folkish feel and began to type like a mad woman.
Writing: it’s the only thing that calms the madness these days. When I can’t think, when all I can do is feel, and I need a fix of something, it’s writing that I turn to. Nothing else will do. So I curled up in my layers of blankets, surrounded by low lights and pillows, typed and cried and typed and cried and got everything out on paper, and felt almost the better for it. At least a bit more emotionally organized.
In my break from classes today, I crashed through my front door, went straight to my room, and I curled up with my pillows and blankets and low lights , in this room that feels so much like home now: the colors, hanging windchimes and lanterns, posters and anatomy, the good and bad memories that have already been made—and opened up “The Neverending Story” which I had pulled off my bookshelf the night before and thrown on my bed to sit next to me as I had written, and had left there to sleep next to me all night. So I picked it up and began to read.
I used to read all the time as a kid. Probably because my older sister was an avid reader. She devoured every book she could get her hands on and my mother would always complain that she needed to actually get off the couch and do something with herself. Go outside. My sister would always complain that no other mother ever demanded that her child stop reading. So I took after her and I too loved to read. I would go through series of books like the Star Wars series for kids, the Dinotopia books, and I still remember the young adults fantasy section of the Loussac Library in Anchorage, Alaska where I used to go and get books off the shelf by Jane Yolen. I remember I read a book once about a girl who grew wings and escaped out to a barn where other people like her were hiding. I always envisioned the barn out in the mountains to be right in a spot along the long and scenic Seward Highway: a spot I would continue to drive by, and years and years later even bike by, and it has never lost it’s magic.
I would read and read and sit on the couch and hide under the covers at night with a flashlight. And as I curled up in bed with "The Neverending Story" last night, I felt a deep satisfaction that was just what I needed. I was taken back to those days in my childhood when reading was something I had all the time in the world for.
In "The Neverending Story" there is a young fat boy who gets picked on by all the other schoolchildren. He steals a book from a bookstore, hides in his schools attic, and reads. He reads no matter how hungry and cold he gets, no matter how long he has to sit there to finish this book that it is his destiny to read. There is a line that says,
“If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger— If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early— If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless— If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won’t understand what Bastian did next. I am Bastian. I had to smile and laugh to myself as my one free hour ticked away and despite the fact that my stomach was growling in an audible way, I could not tear my eyes away from the pages. The thought had occurred to me as I had read the afore mentioned words: if I was hungry, or especially cold, I don’t think I could concentrate to read. But here I was starving and sacrificing all bodily needs for the sake of this all important story.
I’ve never felt like the pathetic character in a book. I’ve always felt like I could be the hero: that I could make the tough decisions and do what needed to be done. But now I feel like Bastian. When the book is depicting his life and what he’s thinking I feel akin to him. I feel like a failure, weak and pathetic; no good. Bastian and I read the same words of "The Neverending Story" as it tells us about Atreyu and his great adventure. How he has no fear and he rises early before dawn for his quest. How he knows what needs to be done and he fights through temptation without thinking twice about what he wants. He walks the edges of cliffs and out upon giant spiderwebs over endlessly deep canyons without fear. With a firm sense of duty. He goes on a quest with no direction and no understanding but just trusts that it will all be as it should.
Bastian and I read Atreyu’s story together and we both wish that we could be him. We see ourselves and we know who we are. We know we are not the hero. And we take pride in our hiding and reading alone, in our not stopping our reading no matter what: we’re persevering like Atreyu! We take pride in holding off eating until the last possible moment: we have a firm sense of duty: just like Atreyu! We know it’s not much, but it’s what we cling to.
I have loved feeling both satisfied by reading, and a kinship with another human being who feels as pathetic as I with Bastian. Both satisfaction and kinship not things I have had much to do with lately. But I have an advantage on Bastian. I have read this book before. And I know what will happen to us and so I already have hope in the darkness of our present state and I can’t wait to keep going and relearn what I’ve forgotten.
And maybe even now, though I’m exhausted and need sleep, I will stay up wearing my motivational glasses and read through drooping eyelids the story of Atreyu, Bastian, and myself.
10/10/11
