Surrender All Sense of Reality and Enjoy the Magic

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A lot of people have told me that this book is not their favorite. Actually, to be more precise, they have said, "It was impossible to get through."

Well my friends, one reason why some people may find One Hundred Years of Solitude hard to read is because they are applying the same reading methods that they would any other novel, and this novel in particular is like no other; you will need a whole new set of reading techniques.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is not a typical book about boy means girl, nor is it a stereotypical Latin American novel about dictators and oppressed women (although these themes do come up). Gabriel Garcia Marquez does something so magical in this book that the reader will sense an uncannily familiar feeling of deja vu over and over again throughout the novel.

This story isn't told in a fashion familiar to North Americans, that's for sure. It probably isn't familiar to most Latin Americans either. That is because GGM invents his own way of doing things and goes on to master said technique artfully, and this book is just one example from his canon that throws me every time I read it. He is a veritable genius! There is not one book or novella or snippet of his that I have read and have not loved. I mean, Chronicles of a Death Foretold goes down in history for me - he created a genre that only he can employ. Or, The Autumn of the Patriarch, yeah who needs punctuation anyway?

In any case, One Hundred Years of Solitude is confusing, that's for sure. It will make you're head spin and you will often find yourself flipping through past pages to be sure that what you are reading isn't something you have already read or that whatever part you are reading is in fact being read properly. These things can be annoying, but once you get past the fact that a book isn't only read for it's beautiful plot or what not, you might be able to see the beauty in a book that makes you're head hurt from thinking so much. Everything, every little thing, every word, every paragraph break, every punctuation mark is deliberate and thought out. Every little thing is part of a bigger thing. There is beauty in lyricism, and there is beauty in repetition. There is a certain 'je ne sais quoi' in the sadness that overwhelms this story, yet the triumph that underlies it. It's masterful and yet accessible all at the same time. Trust me.

One piece of advice: don't get lost in the nitty gritty. Don't try to figure out who is who and why they all have the same name. Don't try to figure out where they are or where they are going. Don't even try to figure out how the story got to where it is. Like an airline passenger, just sit back and relax and trust that the pilot will get you to your destination... there is nothing you can do that will make the story go any faster, GGM will get you there, and it will be one hell of a ride!

Finger Painting in the Dark

The colors are all here laid out in front of me, beside me, around me, behind me, under me, on top of me… everything everywhere. Blue is forming a little coagulated puddle right over to my left. It slowly creeps toward the yellow- you know what I mean, right? Blue like the sky or blue like water (reflected off the sky). Blue like me. Blue like you! That’s the blue I’m describing. When I fly in airplanes, I see only blue. Actually, I also see airplanes (insert picture of airplanes here - 5 to be precise). There aren’t always five airplanes. Sometimes, there is just one or maybe two. Ok, that’s good for now. Enough with blue.

I dab two fingers in the spot that’s red and I blot and I blot and I blot away! Blot. Blot. Blot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Blot. Dot. Blot. Dot. Speckles and freckles and speckles some more!

One, two three, four. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

More red in the tube – I squeeze, squeeze, squeeze out a pinch and let the droppings fall to the floor. Red on the floor! Red on the door! Speckle some more!

My jeans feel tight around my knees. My right leg is going numb. No. It’s already numb. I place my hands on the floor to help lift my weight off the ground. Shake, shake, shake it off. Shake, shake, shake and shake! I look down at the floor to see what I made, but I can’t see. I slide my fingers across my forehead and shake my bangs out of the way. Nope! Still can’t see. Bending at the knees, I kneel closer to take a peek. Nothing. I see nothing.

I reach far. I reach far out. I reach far out in front of me. I reach way far out all the way far in front of me. There it is: yellow. Yellow is a pretty word, but why is it spelled with a ‘w’ at the end? Of all the letters in the alphabet, ‘o’ is the roundest. Yellow should end in ‘o’. Yello. Y-e-l-l-o. The perfect word for the happiest color. Agreed? I wonder what yello smells like. I uncap the tube and pull it in to my face, toward my face, next to my face, onto my face… I smear a smudge under my nose, close my eyes and inhale softly. Just like happiness. It smells just like happiness.

ððð I wipe off the yellow from above my lip and fill my hands with happiness. I stamp my hand down- five fingers spread out- the palm of my hand is the sun and my fingers the rays. Sunshine and happinessððð

I sit back down on the floor, but I don’t just plop down. I have to be careful because all of the colors are everywhere. I push aside all that is beneath me, above me, near me, before me… and voilà! I sit down. I sit smack splat down on the green. I love green!

Green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green. It doesn’t even look like green anymore. How does it feel though? It feels large. Immense. Vast. Green is enormous, immeasurable, limitless. It’s everywhere. And ladies and gentlemen, isn’t she lovely?! I clench the tube in my fist tight, tight, tight. I choke out all that is left of it and flick it all away from me. I flick and flick and flick until it’s all gone. “Green, green go away, come back soon every other day!” Ta-Da! And, TRA LA LA! That song works every time! All that remains now is a fine layer of green between me and my hands N. My hands N and me. Me and my hands N. My hands N and me. “Um, I think I’ll take ‘my hands and me’, for 200, Alex.”  Ding, ding, ding! I made 200 beans. Easy-peasy. NNNNN HIGH-FIVE! FIVE-ALIVE!

Is there someone at the door? ‘Knock, knock.’

“Who’s there?” I asked.

“Who’s there?” I asked again.

Gotcha! It was a joke. I gotcha good, though. You really thought someone was there. But it was a joke all along. I just can’t remember the punch line now. I am supposed to say “knock, knock,” then you have to ask “who is there?” and then I say… Hmmm… Then I say… Oh! I remember. Ok, ok, let’s start again.

I think there is someone at the door. Can you hear that? ‘Knock, knock,’ I knock the floor with my knuckles two times.

“Who’s there?”

“Orange.”

“Orange who?” (I asked suspiciously, because quite honestly, I don’t know anyone named Orange, do you?)

“Orange-you gonna let me in? It’s cold out here!”

I love that one! It gets me laughing every time. HA! HA! I am so happy I remembered it. For your sake and mine. Didn’t it brighten up your day? But, come on. For a second there you really thought someone might have been at the door. I mean, even after you knew it was joke you thought ‘hmmm, maybe there is someone actually out there.’ I knew all along that it was a set-up for a joke. You know the ol’ saying- I set ‘em up, and then I knock ‘em down! Oooooh! Gets me every time. Not every time as in ‘time’ like a clock  or something big and smart like that. I mean every occasion. Time = occasion. In this context at least.  You get that, right?

I lean forward in concentration. Enough with the jokes- no more silliness. I furrow my eyebrows because that means business. I’m serious now. What color is missing? I did blue before you came. Then we did one, two, red and four, then the new and improved yello and of course, the hugest of all: green. Orange just got here.

Purple! Purple! Purple! One of my six favorite colors! Or ‘colour’ in some parts of the world. Everyone wants to be different. But really, we’re all the same. If I say ‘color’ and you say ‘colour’ we’re both saying the same thing and we most certainly understand each other no matter which way we spell it, right? Strange how this colorful world works (note: spelled colorful and not ‘colourful’ – see how that works? One point for color). The only thing better about ‘colour’ is that it has six letters. Cough, cough, hint, hint, nudge, nudge, ping, ping…

C O L O U R

– one letter for each one of my favorite colo(u)rs!

Isn’t that amazing? So, there was one point for color, but there were ten points for colour! I think we found our winner!

The color purple. Purple is on its way, but I think it’s too late.

There is no time for purple today. Thank goodness for yesterday!

I’m finished playing with my colors now. I need to put all six back in the box q: ⑥. Oops! I put them in a circle J. That happens to me sometimes. I put stuff in a circle m instead of a box q. At least I didn’t shove them into a triangle ∆! I’ll just leave them in the circle. They might fit snug, but at least they fit, see: ⑥. Nice!

I’m all done. I approach the map that will help me get home. These signs are easy for me to read, because it’s just the same finger pointing at things, but turned in different directions.

Look:  ☞ ☜ ☝ ☟. So, first I go right, then left, then up and then down. If I follow the finger, I’ll surely get home. Thanks for coming!

I’m out. Peace out. 

FOFOLLES

We are always ready for a good time, cheap thrill, party hardy. It’s kind of our thing.

Sometimes, the boys call on us to liven up the place, you know, provide the entertainment. We don’t mind being looked up, stared at, gawked at, like I said, we are down with all that.

Anyone who has ever seen us in action knows that we set the bar pretty high. We really know what we are doing. We get down right crazy – we really get into it.

We always ready for good music, hard alcohol and soft pillows. It makes us hot.

We don’t really care what people have to say about what we do. We know that we are high-class, fun-loving, good-looking girls and we get crazy. People can say what they want and to be honest, we use the whole twin thing to our advantage. What people don’t know? She isn’t really my twin, she’s my half-twin. That’s right, not so gross now, huh?

(ART by CLIO LUNIA)

Bitchcraft

I see it happening in my mind, but sometimes my imagination gets a little ahead of me.

I’m not always one hundred per cent certain that the things I see unraveling behind my lids have in fact occurred, to me or to anyone for that matter. The line is blurred between the external reality and my internal one. Sometimes I think to myself that it is quite impossible that all of these events could have occurred to me. Some of them don’t even make sense; too impossible to be true. But then again, why would I imagine such mundane events, like brushing my teeth. Maybe those ones were real, they must’ve been.

People are so concerned with the unlikelihood, if not impossibility of time travel. I say- you are all fooling yourselves. Time travel is a commonly practiced phenomenon. We all time travel. We might not get into some time machine, set a date and move through space to travel to the past or future, like those movies we’ve all seen and watched in disbelief. But, be honest with yourself for a moment and think about whether you are currently living in the present. My mom, well, she lives in the past. Everyday she tells stories of the good old days. She strolls down memory lane, recounting the great moments of her youth. When she’s not strolling, she is dwelling; dwelling on the things she suffered from as a child that have led her to be the woman she is today. Oh, mom. Oh dear.

My sister Jane, she’s living in a whole other world. She lives for the future. No. She lives in the future. She has yet to take stock of how great she has it in life at present time. She is way too busy thinking about how she can make it better, bigger, greater… later. Others would die for what she has now; she’ll die never knowing that she always had the ‘it’ she’s in constant search of.

The foreign, if not alien concept of time travel, not so strange after all. Think about it this way: you might not be on a plane going somewhere, your body might not disappear right in front of your very eyes like it does in the movies, but think about it. Think about the fact that there are very few people who have mastered the art of living in the present. Soon someone will try to convince me that witchcraft doesn’t exist. Yeah right!

I most definitely do not live in the present. I don’t live in the past or future either. I live in my mind. Not deliberately. I wish I didn’t. Well, that’s not entirely true. I don’t know in which time period I wish to live; I’ve only always lived in my head. Physically, my body lives right here, in my house with my mother and sister, and of course, our little puppy. But mentally, I suffer from self-diagnosed dream travel. What that means is that I dream things while sleeping, or I imagine things while awake, I remember moments that may or may not have happened. This may seem quite lovely to some- I mean, the idea of being capable of dreaming up absolutely anything and then not being able to distinguish that it was just a daydream… yeah, it sounds surreal. I have the pleasure of making up beautiful memories and then actually believing that they occurred. I am currently struggling to find out whether I am in fact an angel. Or maybe my name is Angel. Trust me when I say this is becoming problematic.

Most think it’s pretty cool, but nobody realizes that I call it ‘suffering’ for a reason.

It’s hard not knowing the difference. It’s difficult not having control over what happens to me in my mental life. Some people have the ability to close their eyes and imagine a better situation, or shut their eyes, curl their lips upward, breathe in a long steady breath and ahhh, think about what could be and then try to make it happen. I don’t have that ability. I have no control over what happens when I close my eyes. The same way I don’t have any control over what happens in my physical life. I’m sure there is a real medical term for what I have- maybe I’m delusional, or just plain nuts. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. My psychologist is trying to convince me that I have a craft I should hone in on and try to gain more control of. Basically, he thinks I’m cray cray, but he wants to me to believe that it’s a cool thing.

Maybe I do have a craft – bitchcraft. And maybe I am not the only one who sees that gunman behind me holding up a riffle shooting at a deer in the forest. Or maybe I am the only one who sees it.

Ok fine. Whatever. I’m crazy.

(ART by CLIO LUNIA)

UNITED WE STAB

One day, a while back, I was out with a friend. Yeah, a girl friend, but not a girlfriend. Anyhow, we were out walking around the stable just hanging out and talking.

Cynthia and I have been friends for a long time and obviously I like her like more than a friend, but that day when we were out walking was not the right time to tell her how I felt. I was gonna listen to my mom’s advice and just sit her down and tell her, “Cynthia, I like you like more than a friend and I want you to be my girlfriend.” But, my mom is not always right you know. Once, a while ago I had a friend over playing video games and I had told my mom that Brad totally sucked because he always cheated, and she told me that I should just tell Brad that he shouldn’t cheat anymore. Worst mistake of my life! Brad went all ballistic on me and stabbed me in the shoulder. It hurt so much I was all like, “Thanks a lot, mom.”

That has nothing to do with my story, but whatever, I just wanted to explain why my mom was so not always the right person to take advice from. Especially since, that time with Andrea – ugh! I almost forgot about that time. This girl at school was always making fun of me, and I told my mom about her so she could tell me how to deal with a bully like her. My mom said that I should ask her nicely to stop and if she still didn’t stop then I should tell Mrs. Finastra what had been going on. So, of course, I listened to my mom’s advice. Another disaster! Andrea never stopped harassing me, so I ended up telling Mrs. Finastra about Andrea and that only made things worst. Andrea waited for me outside near the swing set after class and she jumped me and stabbed me in the leg. Oh man! I swear, I don’t know when I will learn my lesson: my mom clearly knows nothing about being a fourth grader. This is some complicated stuff.

Whatever, back to Cynthia. She’s so pretty. I was going to tell her she’s pretty, but that’s what my mom had said I should do, and I was not listening to my mom anymore. So that day, while walking around the stable and just hanging out, I decided to shove Cynthia and call her annoying. She cried so much, she told me I was a jerk, but the weird thing is she didn’t leave. She didn’t punch me, and she didn’t jump me, she didn’t stand united with all the other bullies and stab me. It was amazing!

The short and the long of it is that from that day on I knew what I had to do to stay safe and keep my cool. If I just called girls I like and told them I liked them, I would be made fun of. So instead, I would treat that super crappy and they would stick around. Bizarre, but it works. Just ask Rosie – my new girlfriend.

Oh and by the way, do you see that green blob catching up behind us? Eesh, I am so scared it’s coming for me! I see it sometimes, getting bigger and gaining on me. I try not to pay attention, especially since no one else sees it except fro me – I don’t wanna seem crazy, and I know it looks all pretty and shit, but I mean, that is some big-ass blob! 

(ART by CLIO LUNIA)