Tuesday, June 15, 2004

بالاخره امروز کتاب Life of Pi رو تموم کردم! بیست سی صفحه اولش زیاد کشش نداشت! ولی بعدش خیلی جالب شد. چیزی که بیشتر از همه جذبم کرد توصیفهای نویسنده از اتفاقهایی بود که برای نقش اول- یه پسر 16 ساله به اسم Pi- میفتاد. اینقدر واقعی همه چیز رو توضیح میداد که فکر میکردی واقعا همه ی اینها براش اتفاق افتاده. ولی جالبتر از اون، قسمتهاییش بود که راجع به زندگی حرف میزد. وقتی اون قسمتها رو میخوندم انگار که احساساتی که تاحالا خیلی تجربه شون کرده بودم برای اولین بار به شکل کلمه جلوی چشمم ظاهر شدن!
بعضی از تیکه هاییش رو که خوشم اومد مینویسم:

“Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

“Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.”

“Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctable. *I pause. What of God’s silence? I think it over. I add:* An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose.”

“People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work, their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that they might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else.”

“…the measure of madness that moves life in strange but saving ways.”

“Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.”

“Why can’t reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there’s so little fish to catch?”

“When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.”

“How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.”

“Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you, You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing, The sight brings on an oppressive sadness that no care about to hit you or water about to drown you can match, The feeling is truly unbearable.”

“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.
Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: Hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.”

To be continued…