"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief."
(Franz Kafka)
I like doing things differently. I try to always do something new, to be creative in my job, to challenge the people who are around me, to play a lot – with words, gestures, actions, both in my professional and personal life. Life is memory and playfulness for me. However,
stability is that one thing that I most want, expect and need from my people. To feel the ground beneath my feet when I am with them. To feel sure of what I am to them. Maybe, because as someone who I recently met remarked, I am not fond of material things, but of stories and human beings.
Empathy can be an annoying thing – imagine how it is to sit on a table and to literarily feel others’ emotions and worries. Most of the time, if you are with strangers, you have no clue why are they feeling the way they feel. I do not know how some people can be such a magnet of emotions. I can read people quite easily, but paradoxically, I am unable to read their feelings towards me. That’s why I tend to repeat things or to create my own routines. For instance, I tend to go to the same places where I felt their warmth or I felt sure of my people, be it summer or winter. I tend to repeat the old gestures. I tend to avoid the places where I felt insecure. I tend to create my own illo tempore, my sacred temple in my sacred spaces. I play with tradition, with the old memories, trying to make, to put together my puzzle of stability from different days, hours and images.
My need of stability, my insecurity in front of changes, makes me think of autism. I have always associated it with a strict routine, with a plan that should always be followed, of people who has to know for sure what is going to happen next. And then I go on to other characteristics, such as their emotional world, their physical features, or their intolerance to sounds or being touched.
Mark Haddon’s book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, could have been a good book. But it's not. It talks about an autistic boy, Christopher, but it lacks style, and it tends to be commercial. I acknowledge his knowledge of autism, and its message – it doesn’t matter your illness (or other problems), you can overcome it/them, and be who you want to be.
While I was reading it I felt like watching an ordinary film. That kind of film which is being shown on TV during Christmas, or that kind of film which you want to watch when you want to unplug your mind from everything. And let’s face it – I think that all of us watch from time to time such films. We search for the happy ending, for simple, superficial things, for an escape from our lives and meaningless.
However, I do not tend to read such books. Don’t know exactly why. Maybe my mind is so chaotic that it finds itself in books like The Brothers Karamazov (yes, that book helped me disconnect from my tiredness), or Faulkner’s/Marquez’s/Sabato’s books. Maybe because I grew up with books and found myself, and moulded a world in them.
To return to Haddon’s story, I think it would have been better if it had been written on different voices. If he didn’t try so hard to have a happy-ending. I get why it has to have one, but … I didn’t like the part with people who are dead and then they are not. And who return in people’s lives just like that. I think it is okay for children/teenagers, good for a school book-club, good for an English lesson (I did note something on it about this). But for me, as a reader, it simply didn't get to me.