The Valkyries: An Encounter with Angels

The Valkyries: An Encounter with Angels
Paulo Coelho

October 2005

Well yes...another Mr. Coelho's inspirational semi-religious booster. This one had much more God element inside than the previous titles I've read. As usual, thought provoking and since I feel the better part of it came from the words, here's a compiled list of good ones...

He told me that some things are so important that you have to learn about them on you own.

The planet has set aside certain places for itself. It tells us to go away. In those places, without the millions of life forms that walk on its surface, the earth is able to be alone. It also needs its solitude, for it needs to understand itself.

Everything we do in the daily world is a ritual. Just as a mass is a great ritual, composed of various parts, the everyday experience of any person is, also. A carefully elaborate ritual that the person tries to perform precisely, because he or she is afraid that- if any part is left out- everything will go wrong. The name of that ritual is routine. When we are young we don’t take anything too seriously. But slowly, this set of daily rituals becomes solidified, and takes over. Once things have begun to go along pretty much as we imagined they would, we don’t dare risk altering the ritual. We like to complain, but we are reassured by the fact that each day is more or less like every other. At least there is no unexpected danger. That way we are able to avoid any inner or outer growth, except for the kinds that are provided for within the rituals: so many children, such and such a kind of promotion, this and that kind of financial success. When the ritual becomes consolidated, the person becomes a slave.

He recalled that once an animal trainer had told him how he was able to keep his elephants under control. The elephants, as infants, were bound by chains to a log. They would try to escape, but could not. They tried throughout their entire infancy, but the log was stronger than they were. So they became accustomed to captivity. And when they were huge and strong, all the trainer had to do was place the chain around one of their legs and anchor it anywhere- even to a twig- and they would not attempt to escape. They were prisoners of their past.

Someone once said that the earth produces enough to satisfy needs, but not enough to satisfy greed

I said to the old woman that I knew that I was going to die. “No,” she said. Not like an old person does. For you, it’s a remote idea. It might happen some day. For us, it’s something that could happen tomorrow. That’s while many elderly people spend the time remaining to them looking only in one direction: the past. It’s not that they’re so fond of their memories; rather they know that in that direction they won’t see anything to be feared. Very few old people look to the future, and I’m one of them. When we look into the future, we see what it holds for us: death.”

Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman
Elizabeth Buchan

July 2005

I am not sure why I picked this book from the countless titles in PSZ. Perhaps it’s for a balance for the heavy reading I presumed from “Of Mice and Men”.

Or perhaps it’s related to the stories surrounding me. In recent months, my ears keep receiving tales of betrayal in relationships. And not surprising, the ladies are the victims. Initial feelings of contempt towards members of the opposite sex evolved gradually to continuous questioning, and now... complacent? It’s almost like, “if you accept to be in a relationship, you might as well also accept that one day he will have an affair”. Then the next question comes…is ignorance a bliss?

So back to the book. It’s quite the typical setting of how a wife was left by her husband after a twenty five year marriage. To add to the drama, the husband’s lover is her colleague and friend. And! She eventually also looses her job to the bitch.

However, the ending is not so typical, well at least not typically for fictional dramas. For one, Rose (the wife) did not stir up much of a row when the husband left her. Instead, she accepts and respects her husband’s choice and freedom of space. I hope I would one day have her grace and maturity, though while I was reading, I could not help but keep shouting inside my head, “Gosh! Why is she not making more of a fuss?! She should have done more to get her husband back!”

Instead, she paid revenge in another way. By being totally complacent and finding peace in herself. Definitely, she went through a bad time, described very richly by the writer, especially the different emotional change one goes through. She eventually picked herself up and began building her life again. A new career, a new home, even a new love life.

One thing too, the book stirred the domestic part of me which is hibernating underneath dreams of conquering mountains and building business empires. (Yes, surprising to some of you). Well, I used “stirred” because it is a momentary realization that I really value the idea of settling down. The idea of having a home and family, a beautiful one, where I will share with that someone till the wrinkles and crinkles creep in. Though for now, I will keep it in a hibernation mode, to be awaken at the right moment in life.

Yes, the book can be quite cliché. But worthwhile for light reading and especially since I do not often read books (or watch movies) with plots such as this.

Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck

"But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men ....................Robert Burns


This is one title that keeps popping up and each time, I would wonder what's the hoo-haa about this book. Well, the answer is obvious for any reader.

This book actually reminded me of an Irish play I watched in Beijing (Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett). It has the same absurdity although I doubt that it should be in the same category, but Of Mice and Men certainly does have quite an unusual form for a fictional story. As for the resulting feeling after reading the book, it leaves that similar feeling after watching the Beckett play. It leaves you disturbed (in certain extreme, depressing), a vague emptiness and pity for human life and in a nutshell, sad. I definitely welcome such feelings at intervals, since it gives access to different perspective of thoughts.

George and Lennie dreams of something that current society might find inspiring in its simplicity. The simplicity of wanting a place to call their own, security in knowing where your meals come from, reaping the hard earned rewards of a harvest etc. I especially liked the way both of them imagines and visualizes their dream, full with details, as if they've already seen it.

George and Lennie is also a contrast from the rest of the guys who work on the ranches. They can perhaps represent the idealist in a realistic world, the admirable idiots who are fighting for a dream. Another is the bond they have for each other. Especially how the simple minded Lennie depends on Georgeand how George seem to provide him unconditional brotherly love. Which leads me to the ending (for people who is interested to read this book, the following will be a BIG BIG SPOILER!)

I am still unable to grasp the intention of George shooting Lennie dead. To make it a fast death since the rest were already going to kill him? To get rid of him once and for all? Mercy killing? I guess it is a combination of all that. Is it a representation that Steinbeck felt there is no place for innocence in this world? By killing Lennie, George in a way forgoes the dream and tears down the ideal. It also tears down the difference he had over the rest.

Steinbeck in his characters portrays the loneliness of human life. Other than George and Lennie who has each other, everyone else is going about alone finding a place in the world. Although the story is set during the Great Depression in California, it can crudely be applied to current society. It has the similar setting where the strong forces their power over the weak, what is called predatory instincts. Capitalism perhaps utilizes this human nature and plays its role in strengthening this human behavior. To put it even more cruelly, this is the revolution of the “survival of the fittest” theory in the human world, though in current reality, strength in the modern world comes in term of money and power.

It is a very short read, like 103 pages? (yes, nice big letterings). It's short, but when I read the last sentence in a hawker stall in Ipoh (with Ming Kai by my side, I insisted to him that it is so mesmerising that I can't wait to know the ending, and as a bookworm himself, understood quite perfectly), I had that familar feeling of wishing it would go on, but then, it could not have chosen a more approriate ending.