Post-mocks

Mock exams are over and today is the day we all have to return to real life. Everything starts again where we left off -- the homework, the monotony. The holiday was full of studying but I felt a little better. As I write I can feel my soul withering away again and my personality dying. Everything feels gray again. Chelsea Manning's sentence was commuted; she'll be free in 120 days. I'll be free in 120 days, too. So I guess that's my motto until May: WWCMD? (What Would Chelsea Manning Do?) Be like Chelsea. She can do it -- you can definitely do it.

Last night I had a dream that I exchanged presents with Amy Santiago from Brooklyn Nine Nine. I gave her something small, but she gave me this massive pile of around 20 books tailored to my liking. There was a book by John Berger, among many others that she knew I'd love. Ah. I remember in year 8 or year 9, at the beginning of the school year, our English teacher Mrs Hancock (who is an absolute angel and is so... motherly) asked us to set a goal of how many books we wanted to read this school year. I said I wanted to read 100 books. So I started a page in my sketchbook to record the books I read. I reached my goal by January... I read 100 books in 4-5 months! When I think about it now, it's crazy. That's more than 20 books a month, more than 5 books a week... pretty much one a day! A book a day as a preteen keeps the SAT Reading revision away when you're in high school and need to study. (Seriously, I barely studied for the reading section and got 790.) These days it takes me 5 weeks to read a book. In 2016, I read... maybe 12 books? I know the first book I read in 2016 was The Trial by Franz Kafka. Then I tried to read America by Kafka but it was too Kafkaesque, I guess. It made me feel like I was suffocating, like I couldn't breathe properly. I couldn't finish it. It was unbearable.

I'm almost done with United States of Banana. It's pretty interesting. I don't really get it that much. The style is difficult to comprehend. But the whole thing is a channel for Braschi to talk about Puerto Rico, and the struggles that Puerto Ricans have in terms of identity and of sovereignty. I quite like it. I'll need to reread it in 10 years though. It's like The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I read it in the winter break of 2014-5. I liked the story, and I understood that it was about the importance of the ego or whatever... but I didn't really get it. I know people make fun of Ayn Rand for being totally wrong about capitalism or whatever, but I didn't understand that in the book. It did teach me a bit about architecture, though. Last summer at Harvard Summer School I would walk past the Widener library with its big Greek columns and be like "Yeah... that does look pretty kitsch."

Edit: I didn't want to make a new post, but I'm currently writing my French tache écrite based on Divines and I have to say how beautiful that movie was. I cried horribly near the end. But I think the most underlooked aspect of that film is the best part –– that is, the theme of religion. Maimouna's father is the local imam. She tells Dounia, the main character, that when she looks at the moon, she sees God, and they have a conversation about Him not caring for his flock. When Dounia first starts to sell drugs in that little passageway behind the apartment-mosque, she is beaten by a client who takes advantage of her small size and inexperience and steals her wares. As she crawls away, face bloodied, she hears (or imagines hearing) the chanting sounds of prayer leak out of the mosque. That scene is so spiritual. (Later, when she's in the bathtub, watching all the money rain down from the ceiling, there's a bit of a parallel –– though this time, she's worshipping cash, not God. Is that symbolism I see? The death of Maimouna, who was her link to her childhood as well as to piety, really signified her transition to adulthood and the cost of her loss of morals.) I saw this film in September, so I don't remember the details, but I do remember being struck by the loving & gentle & sincere manner in which religion is presented, especially today when a lot of people fear Islam.