Forgotten things of love
So recently (like yesterday), I got hooked on Goodreads & have been prowling about the site, taking part in many splendored lists like their Best Book Titles.
For me, it is undoubtedly Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (I think sometimes, I almost get a lady erection when I think of that title - it's such pure, flawless genius )
& then hidden in the list was The Effect of Gama Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, a play I read mainly because it was written by Paul Zindel.
Ah, Paul Zindel.
You know how when you are a teenager & you chance upon something that none of your friends are into, & not matter how geeky or cool it is, that something becomes your special thing.
It's like finding a secret garden that you would like to invite your friends into, but you don't because you are afraid they'll want to stay.
And much as you love them, you don't want them to because it's the one place where you can enjoy being the only one of your kind in the whole world.
That's what it was like with Paul Zendel.
I chanced upon Paul Zendel in some low ceilinged attic like place of a secondhand book store in Bahrain.
His books were all about teenage misfits & I don't know why it affected me the way it did, for I wasn't even a teenager then.
And years later, when we relocated to Dubai & I did become one, I still clung on to him even though I never truly knew what being a misfit in highschool was about.
And yet I read & reread his Pardon me, You're Stepping on my Eyeball and it touched me in literary ways that only Nick Hornby & Douglas Coupland do now.
That feeling of isolation from your parents and that angst, oh that glorious teenage angst when nobody knows what to do with you or how to reach you & you revel in that feeling that nobody ever might.
I forgot him for a huge while when college & various others took over and it was only as a 19 yr old that I went back to him again.
And then promptly forgot him again.
And now I am afraid to read him.
I think it's the realization that growing up means that when you reread your favs, you are now looking upon a young character with accommodating compassion rather than companionable empathy.
*Wistful smile*
In other news, this weekend has become the designated 'chancing upon forgotten objects of love', for when updating my itunes, I re-found the strange, strange flightiness of The Cure's Friday I am in love
& oh, oh, oh!!!
Shakespeare's Sister's Stay!!! My mom caught me so many times doing the singing to myself in front of the mirror with this one. I think I especially loved doing the gleefully evil lyrics.
For me, it is undoubtedly Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (I think sometimes, I almost get a lady erection when I think of that title - it's such pure, flawless genius )
& then hidden in the list was The Effect of Gama Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, a play I read mainly because it was written by Paul Zindel.
Ah, Paul Zindel.
You know how when you are a teenager & you chance upon something that none of your friends are into, & not matter how geeky or cool it is, that something becomes your special thing.
It's like finding a secret garden that you would like to invite your friends into, but you don't because you are afraid they'll want to stay.
And much as you love them, you don't want them to because it's the one place where you can enjoy being the only one of your kind in the whole world.
That's what it was like with Paul Zendel.
I chanced upon Paul Zendel in some low ceilinged attic like place of a secondhand book store in Bahrain.
His books were all about teenage misfits & I don't know why it affected me the way it did, for I wasn't even a teenager then.
And years later, when we relocated to Dubai & I did become one, I still clung on to him even though I never truly knew what being a misfit in highschool was about.
And yet I read & reread his Pardon me, You're Stepping on my Eyeball and it touched me in literary ways that only Nick Hornby & Douglas Coupland do now.
That feeling of isolation from your parents and that angst, oh that glorious teenage angst when nobody knows what to do with you or how to reach you & you revel in that feeling that nobody ever might.
I forgot him for a huge while when college & various others took over and it was only as a 19 yr old that I went back to him again.
And then promptly forgot him again.
And now I am afraid to read him.
I think it's the realization that growing up means that when you reread your favs, you are now looking upon a young character with accommodating compassion rather than companionable empathy.
*Wistful smile*
In other news, this weekend has become the designated 'chancing upon forgotten objects of love', for when updating my itunes, I re-found the strange, strange flightiness of The Cure's Friday I am in love
& oh, oh, oh!!!
Shakespeare's Sister's Stay!!! My mom caught me so many times doing the singing to myself in front of the mirror with this one. I think I especially loved doing the gleefully evil lyrics.
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