Tuesday, January 05, 2010

On Escape (no, not that crap by Enrique Iglesias)

Woke up at 2:30pm, which is a big deal for me considering the fact that I honestly did not want to get out of bed today. My eyes hurt from reading and writing for too long on the computer (they feel heavy, as if they're trying to force me to close them), it was wayyy after lunch and nobody was home (and I had this stupid notion that the less I moved my body, the less hungry I would feel and I would be able to survive until dinner time at least), and I was right smack in the middle of a funny dream where I was talking Timmi the Internet Tough Girl about how gutsy she was during that Hong Kong incident of hers (this coming from her Facebook rant being the last thing I read before going to sleep).

Sigh, dreams and escape. This coming from the fact that the second to the last thing I read before going to sleep was the graphic novel Blankets by Craig Thompson. You see, the problem with all the melodramatic, emo stuff going around nowadays is that it gets easier and easier to distinguish the works that come straight from the heart, and those that are simply trying hard to get attention. Thompson's is a memoir of sorts, so that should tell you something about how heart-tugging this work is. In short, go read this, and see if you don't shed a few tears, or at least feel your heart beating just a little bit harder in the process.

Craig (who is also the protagonist) has two ways of escape from reality: his drawings and his dreams. And I guess this is what my eyes want me to do, at least for today: to escape the harsh realities that are the fact that there's nobody at home, that I'm totally unproductive due to this wasted schedule of mine, that my thesis is still unfinished.

As I am writing this, I hear the first lines of "World Spins Madly On" by the Weepies: "Woke up, and wished that I was dead, with an aching in my head, I lay motionless in bed". Which what I was exactly just a few hours ago, tossing and turning, with a stiff neck, and wondering if it was worth getting up at all.
I flash back to the time I was back in first year. It was the first class of Humanities 1, under Ma'am Ai (who wasn't my friend yet). As an icebreaker of sorts, she asks us what books we like to read. I, being a geek who was obsessed with the Legend of the Five Rings and Magic: the Gathering mythoi, answer:

Me: "I like fantasy, science fiction, that sort of stuff."
Ai: "Oh, so you're an escapist?"
Me: "Um, not really."
Ai: "Ahh, okay. Next?"

To tell you the truth, though, I never knew my answer to Ma'am Ai's question.


A tall, ice-filled glass of Coke, a good book, and a small speaker playing something relaxing, like Sigur Ros, Death Cab for Cutie, Owl City or the Weepies.One of the best ways of forcing yourself to write anything.

posted by Ocnarf @ 1:06 PM   20 have spoken