arthur, you break my heart

A year and a half after first embarking on this journey I finally finished it. Because of the 60s musical Camelot and - my initiation to Richard Gere fandom - First Knight (and probably because I was a hopeless romantic) I've always associated Arthurian stories primarily with Lancelot and Guinevere. It wasn't until Hallmark's Merlin and The Mists of Avalon that I began to see it and appreciate as an epic tale of heroism amid clashing cultures in the making of a nation. Consequently, I found all of that and more in White's version of the Arthurian legend, which also completely subverted a lot of my Lance-Jenny preconceptions.

Arthur's will was built on justice, but his heart was on peace and mercy. I appreciated this conflict most and at times I hated Arthur for not being able to reconcile both. Or perhaps he did in a way, in always upholding justice even if it means war or the breaking of friendships but at the same time urging and hoping that those in the relevant positions would find it in their own hearts to forgive and have mercy.

There were many occasions wherein Arthur seemed helpless to patch up his Round Table, to prevent war from happening or to protect the people whom he loved most. In his moments of greatest despair, the way in which in the end, the long-standing feud between the Orkneys and Uther became Arthur's nation's unraveling, it made it seem like all he had built was for nothing. Yet he regretted none of it, because Merlin gave good advice, which I take now as my mantra.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust and never dream of regretting."

it's about addiction

I was thinking after my last post that as a cynic about romantic love, I read an awful lot of love-themed literature. Well, Choke was the ultimate detour of that trajectory. It showcases the perversion of all manifestations of love: motherly love, platonic love, romantic love and even God's love. While reading it I thought it was painfully ugly and horribly depressing. Yet, I can't deny that I was mesmerized - like watching a car wreck. To his credit, Palahniuk constructed the perfect credible setting for the most incredible antics as Victor Mancini's life rotates around a care facility for mentally deranged women, a live museum of 18th century Colonial America and sexaholic group meetings. And his characters, although worlds away from being redeemable, are fantastic. I particularly loved the image of his housemate/best friend rock collector who came home with a pile of rocks everyday and slowly filled up the house, like they were living in an hourglass.

It's odd that I began this post thinking I would berate the novel and complain about the time I wasted on it. I was going to rant about how far-removed it is from reality and how the whole selling point was merely in the shock value of the things they did for love, acceptance and even sanity. I was going to say I hated it. Yet thinking back on it now, I didn't hate it. I think I have a lot of their insanity in me and I think there are times when the things they did are merely slight exaggerations of what I do everyday to create order out of this chaotic world and its society.