The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers – 3

I am having troubles in finding a good reading time, and whenever I am able to grab it, I just can’t stop. As much as I would like to continue reading, I have to discipline myself regarding my sleeping habits. Anyway, the opening chapters of the second part of this novel explored music, death, and families, which are all either the means to deal with loneliness or the cause of it.

Mick Kelly could not get music out of her head. Everyday, music was all that she could think about. Her head would always be up in the clouds summoning an event with a musical score floating in the background. She still took care of her little brothers during the day, but when the day was over, the night was all hers. She would be found sneaking in the yards of people who were listening to the radio, especially if they were tuned in to a beautiful music program. One night though, her dad called. She was in a real hurry to catch a radio program from someone else’s radio, but she could not run away from her dad. He immediately noticed this and decided to let her daughter go, but Mick saw that his father was lonely. Deep down, he always felt useless since the time he broke his hip and resorted to fixing watches for a living. She just let her father talk, with beer in hand, about his loneliness, and for a long time, Mick discovered that it was the first time that she really got to know his dad.

At the time, Mick was attending vocational school. Like most adolescents her age, she longed to belong to a particular group, but it turned out that she didn’t. To approach her problem, she decided to throw a party. She invited boys and girls that she thought would be interesting, and good enough, the party pushed through. During the party, everyone was stiff, trying to act like a grown-up. However, some gatecrashers caused a commotion which led everyone, including Mick, to act like the kid that she was.

When talking about friendships, does one need pretense to secure some sort of a belonging? Wouldn’t it be better off to be alone than to come up with such a facade all the time? When Mick came to her senses, she declared that the party was over, walked aimlessly, and found herself on the house where she always sneaked into in order to listen to her music. She crept in and heard Beethoven’s Third Symphony. She was so absorbed in listening that she was confused on whether to capture fragments of the music and repeat them on her head, or to listen to the whole of it without having to think of anything else. Afterward, she felt more alone. The music that she listened to only hurt her more. She wanted to hear more to soothe the pain, but the show was over. She kept hurting herself until she fell asleep, and in the middle of the night, she woke up and ran as fast as she could to go back home.

Meanwhile, Biff was going through tough times since he was dealing with the death of his wife Alice. His sister-in-law Lucile advised him not to think backward for him to get away from pain. As for her, she had her share of tribulations by raising a daughter singlehandedly and enduring two divorces from the same man. In short, Lucile chose to live blindly to save her from loneliness. Personally, I do not know if I should pat Lucile on the shoulders for deciding to do so, but there is a truth in her words. If you come to think of it, the shallow are somehow blessed for they will never find the depths of life, and it is in these depths where one can really drown himself in dread and misery.

After the funeral, Biff looked at his collection of newspapers, all stacked in a room that his wife asked him to convert into a ladies’ toilet. He did not grant this wish, and as far as he could remember, it was the only wish of Alice that he did not approve of. And while at the restaurant, he was observing his regular customer Singer, who seemed to attract a lot of people. Biff was wondering what quality did the mute have that made certain people seek for his company. Even in his sleep, it bothered him a lot, which led him to believe that there was something wrong.

Doctor Copeland continued to visit Singer. He even took the mute with him during his rounds. The doctor was indeed so busy fulfilling his purpose. He started to believe so hard in this right after he finished his education while working hard for it and being a slave before it. He knew deep down that he had a truth to share with his people, but his body was whittling him down. He was suffering from tuberculosis and he needed to rest badly, but he just wouldn’t. To aggravate matters, her daughter Portia informed him that one of his sons, Willie, was put into jail for assault that was caused by an ugly woman in a bar. He was sentenced to serve no more than a year in jail for that.

After a few weeks, the paternal grandfather of Doctor Copeland’s children went to town, along with the other two sons of Doctor Copeland. He had not talked to these two sons of his after he was separated from his wife and kids due to a heated argument that became physical. Portia, the only child that was constantly communicating with his father, urged him to go for the sake of seeing his sons after a long time.

The doctor attended the reunion. He saw his wife’s father and his two sons. The former made an effort to talk to him about medicine since it greatly interested him, but the latter two felt really awkward. No words were exchanged. The reunion had a little talk about spirituality, about God, about angels, and about miracles. All the people in the reunion fervently believed in such, especially about miracles, except for Doctor Copeland, who was a man of reason. However hard he tried to open his mouth, no words came out. Because of that, he started seething with anger. The talk went on and on, and he left without saying a word.

Somehow, I feel for Doctor Copeland. You try to hold on to your ideals and impart them to the people who mean a lot to you, but you end up misunderstood and worse, ridiculed. Doctor Copeland chose to live out his purpose, and he ended up with a life in loneliness and obscurity.

Life is indeed an intricate puzzle. Life is mysterious, but death is plain simple.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers – 2

This might be a novel about loneliness, but that does not mean that you will be put in a state of depression while you are reading it. It has a good pace, and if I only had all the time in the world, I would have read as many pages as I could. Anyway, I just finished the first part of this novel. There are two more to go, but before that, allow me to sum up the next series of events.

Jake Blount woke up from the room of John Singer, and for the first time, he found out that the latter was deaf-mute. Singer offered his room to Jake until he found some place where he could stay, but of course, the latter did not accept it. He then went out and his feet took him to the restaurant of Biff. They talked a bit and Jake asked for some directions regarding the location of a certain carnival where he would apply for a job. He got the job as a mechanic, but before leaving the place, he had a chitchat with a few men. He was feeling poetic, so he asked about the working conditions that were prevalent in the area. He ranted about the rights of a laborer, but the men that he was talking to did not seem to get it. More importantly, what ticked Jake off was that these men were indifferent. In the end, he was ridiculed for harboring such thoughts. He went back to the room of Singer bringing a fruit basket with him. They ate it together with wine, wherein he continued ranting to the deaf-mute about knowing something and trying to make others understand.

Is it somebody else’s job to make people understand, or is it the responsibility of each person to understand for himself? You can have all the teachers, the poets, and the seers in the world, but in the unfortunate event that the student fails to grasp certain truths, who is to be held liable? It is then no wonder why there are a lot of idealists who lose their hope and faith on humanity, and ignorants who further infect others with sheer apathy.

The next chapter introduced the last of the major characters in the novel, a Negro doctor named Benedict Mady Copeland. Doctor Copeland dedicated a huge portion of his life to his ideals, which came to a point that his children started to harbor feelings of fear for him. He dreamed a lot and he had grand plans for his four children, but the problem is, his children seemed to have failed him just for the very reason of having conflicting values. His children, who are now grown ups, preferred the simple life as opposed to the vision of Doctor Copeland, which was raising a scientist, a teacher, a lawyer, and a doctor. It could be said that the doctor was largely misunderstood and unappreciated by both his wife and his children. As a result, the visits of his children always end up in big quarrels.

Doctor Copeland had a tendency to be too prim and proper, as far as his family was concerned. He wanted to surround his family with intellectual things, but this did not work for his wife and children because they chose the ordinary path. Could it be that people would prefer this kind of life than a life filled with intellect and ideals? Apparently, Doctor Copeland was not able to reach his vision, which led him to lead both a solitary and a lonely life.

Through his daughter Portia, who worked for the Kelly’s, he found out about John Singer. This immediately caught his interest because he had a patient who was deaf-mute. Since then, Singer always had his share of visitors in his room. First was Doctor Copeland, then there was Jake Blount, then there was also Mick Kelly, and even Biff Brannon had squeezed in some time to visit him despite his hectic time at the restaurant. Singer’s visitors were all shocked when he left the room without telling them. He just left an envelope on the bed which contained his payment for the rent.

Where did he go? He spent a summer vacation at the asylum with his long time best friend. He brought gifts for him, but his ingrate of a friend disregarded all of these when he found out that there was no food. Singer was excited to share stories with Antonapoulos, but the latter did not feel the same. It was like a one-way relationship, wherein Singer was giving him high regards and attention and the other was just like blah. Is this because Antonapoulos is all that Singer ever had as a friend?

Singer must be starting to realize that he had no real place in Antonapoulos existence. When he went back home, his visitors where all curious about his little vacation, but he just disregarded every question concerning it. However, he did not change his ways. He was still the gentle deaf-mute that everybody knew. People felt that he could understand them in more ways than a normal person would.

And that ended the first part. The loneliness of the characters that vary in levels are now out in the open. How they cope with it will soon be unraveled.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers – 1

I was recently hired, but there was a bit of a problem so I have a week’s worth of unpaid leave, which is a bit of a blessing since it will give me some time to focus on this novel before I go full force in the world of employment. As an overview, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a tale about a deaf-mute, a restaurant owner, an alcoholic, a black doctor, and an adolescent girl.

The first chapter opens with John Singer, the deaf-mute. For the past ten years, he spent his life with another deaf-mute. This person was almost the total opposite of Singer, a fat and gluttonous Greek who had no interest in more intellectual processes. They were somehow getting along until this so-called friend of Singer got sick. He became almost impossible to deal with, wherein he came to the point of acting like a loon and breaking the laws and ordinances of their town, which caused washed out the savings of Singer. In the end, he was taken to the asylum by a cousin despite the pleadings of Singer.

He then moved to a new room to somehow cope with the loneliness. He ate regularly at the restaurant of Biff Brannon, who himself was somewhat lonely. He had a wife who always complained about another customer named Jake Blount, who was a carefree radical. This was because he had been drinking on credit for five days. There was yet no mention whether Biff had children or not, but one thing was for sure, he and his wife never sleep together on the same bed at the same time.

As for Blount, a veil of mystery surrounded him. The same mystery that emanated from Singer drew him closer. Blount must be an intellectual of some sort, and he appreciated the fact that Singer seemed to respond to his ramblings without knowing of his auditory and speech disabilities. In one of his drunken bouts, he beat himself relentlessly outside the restaurant of Biff. Biff decided to let Singer take care of him for the time being when the latter volunteered to do so. He took Blount home at the place he was renting, which belonged to the family of Mick Kelly.

Mick was at the threshold of the teenage years and was exploring the vice of smoking. She was drawn to the music of Mozart which she picked up from the radio of the old lady who was also renting a room in their house. She wanted to have a piano very badly so that she could play all the classical masterpieces. As a stepping stone, she transformed a ukulele into a violin. She was hoping beyond hopelessness that the little project of hers would be a success. However, after seeing the ukulele-mandolin-violin from another perspective and with her favorite person, who was her brother, she realized how stupid she was.

So far, this novel exposed the loneliness of four of the five major characters. Singer was lonely physically, a deaf deafened from the outside and a mute muted by his insides. The loss of his Greek firend, who could not really be considered a friend given the context, somehow triggered the loneliness that was enthralling him. He would eat methodically, alone and ignored save for Biff. Biff, like Blount, was drawn to Singer because of his disability. He was the type of person who took notice of freaks, as his wife put it. As regards to Blount, his loneliness bordered dangerously on depression and alcoholism. He was a disillusioned intellectual who must have gone to a lot of places and did a lot of things until he moved into town a few weeks back. He felt like nobody understood him, but in the silence of Singer, he felt like he was able to connect with him. Indeed, loneliness needs company.

And Mick, she was starting to harbor angst, which is quite common among teenagers. Despite the hustle and bustle inside their household, there was this loneliness that she couldn’t quite figure out. She longed to soar and to play music in a place that only she would know, but for the mean time, it was not possible.

As early as the first three chapters, the major themes that I was able to pick up are religion and racism. And above all, loneliness. I have a feeling that these would be prevalent in the rest of the book. How the author will do it is still in question. Carson McCullers wrote this novel with subtlety, so I am really excited on how the five characters will come to terms with their own respective conflicts and weave their resolutions into a seamless whole.

I just remember Mick feeling alone inside their house, despite the dinner and despite the guests their borders had. It is indeed true, that man is fundamentally alone.

Pre: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.

I am really looking forward to maintaining this blog despite my bad training schedule. Anyway, here is the next novel that I will read, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.

I really like the title. The words are simple, but the effect that it has over me is so powerful. If you come to think of it, the title of this novel is a basic fact of life.

I used the title as one of my previous SMS signatures. And oh, I do not really know what to expect. Perhaps this is something that will put me into tears.

Post: Death at Intervals by Jose Saramago

While writing this piece, I am currently listening to one of the Cello Suites of Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s Suite No. 4 in E-Flat Major. You might think that this has nothing to do with the last post regarding Death at Intervals, but trust me. After reading this wonderful novel, the first thing that you would do is to browse the web for Suite No. 6. I did that last night, and thanks to Wikipedia and YouTube, I was able to rediscover the beauty of the cello and relive my cellist dreams.

But that matter is outside the scope of this blog. Going back, I am supposed to rant nonstop about this novel about life and death. It has to be stressed that these two should come together because one cannot be discussed without the other. They might be perceived as polar opposites, but they need each other to exist.

However, all the things that I wanted to say last night for this post are now lost in the recesses of my mind, thanks to Bach. I am so lost in the melodrama of the cello. Death must have felt the same at the last page of the book when the cellist was performing for her in the living room. The Cello Suite must be the music that can conquer death, the death that we are all similar of and not the character in the novel.

And not so surprisingly, love is a central factor to this. Death revoked her power and her authority to take away the lives of people by choosing to be human and sleeping beside an old cellist. It is then no longer arguable that love can indeed conquer all things. I never thought that the novel would end in such a manner, which is not to say that I am disappointed. On the contrary, I was grateful to be reminded that it is important for one to be happy to lead a meaningful life and death.

The ultimate road toward happiness is through loving and being loved. Come to think of it, that seems like a very basic knowledge, but people keep forgetting it. They have to be reminded over and over again about this. And as much as it is important to live and to love, one must devote some time to think about death. People might find it a morbid subject matter and even suicidal, but it is an inescapable fact. I just think that if people would think about their respective deaths, they would be able to lead more meaningful lives.

As regards to the mood, style, and tone, the writer has a penchant for long sentences that a single one could fill up a whole page. There are always thoughts within thoughts within thoughts, and digressions within digressions within digressions. That doesn’t mean though that it is hard to follow. On the contrary, it has a fluid effect, much more like dissecting a web of thoughts and getting at the core of it.

You might expect a gloomy feel thanks to the title, but there are actually a lot of hilarious moments in the novel. It could be a way of saying that death should not be feared as much as it is feared by most now. It could not be avoided, but if one has no unfinished business, then I don’t think that there is so much to fear about death.

Death is the ultimate reason people make the most out of their lives. Without it, there is only a vacuous space in life. What things will be left in the absence of death? Thinking about it, death motivates us. It drives us, it moves us, and it makes us do wonders. Death then, is not so deadly at all.

Jose Saramago indeed deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature. I have just read one work, and I feel like I have read volumes in a mere 200 pages.

The following day, no one died.

Death at Intervals by Jose Saramago – 4

This is the last installment, and I was indeed teary-eyed while my fingers counted the last few pages of Death at Intervals as I was reading with voracious interest despite the distractions of the television. I am always like that when I am near the point of finishing a book. It’s like trying to deal with a separation, a farewell, a so long, a see you later, a goodbye, but I have to say that it is least likely the last one since there can never be goodbyes with good books.

The last time, death was looking at the cellist who wouldn’t die despite sending him the purple letter thrice. For the first time, death failed at doing her job. She never had experienced this before she decided to inform the people on her list that they were about to die. And before continuing, death doesn’t decide for herself on a whim who made it up the list. The people whose time were ticking closer to the grave were decided by none other than the index cards, which were controlled by a higher force.

So death continued to brood over her failure. There’s always a first, and in the case of death, she didn’t whine like a human. She struggled hard not to succumb to defeat, so she thought hard about what to do, occasionally speaking with the scythe her thoughts. She initially thought of changing the cellist’s date of birth. This would have radical effects not only on the life of the cellist, but also on the others’ that were intertwined with him. She thought she had the power to do so, since she alone had the power to kill and she knew, or rather could not remember, of any superior that was supposed to check on her once in a while.

Death continued to observe the daily activities of the cellist. She attended his rehearsals at the theater and even peered over his shoulder while he was reading a book on insects, which had a cover displaying a death’s head moth. This insect could have been the best messengers that she could have devised instead of the purple letters that she first thought of as brilliant. Needless to say, death continued to stalk the cellist, further uncovering some details regarding the cellist.

Finally, death decided to write a week’s worth of purple letters and let the scythe deliver them to the recipients on a certain schedule. After writing the letters in her room somewhere, which could be anywhere here on this planet or on another realm, she went through the only door in her room, which caused the scythe to react. This scythe had always been unresponsive, so going through that door meant a lot. It waited for death to come out and when she finally did, she was no longer the skeletal system with a cloak on, but a beautiful woman in her mid thirties.

Death decided to give the purple letter personally to the cellist. She went to the city, hailed a taxi, bought concert tickets, and made a hotel reservation. In short, she did ordinary human activities, and not only that, she instantly did awful things that humans tend to do. She was acting like a prick, and she didn’t like it. Could it be caused by muscle and sinew that was clinging on her bones, or could it be caused by the very nature of being human?

She watched the concert with gusto, and she was particularly taken away with the brief solo of the cellist. After the concert, she approached the cellist who somehow sensed trouble. Death was talking to the cellist cryptically, telling him that she had something to give him, which was the purple letter, but forgot it and decided to give it to him on the next concert. Little did death know that the cellist was somehow attracted to her. Who wouldn’t? She was a beautiful woman clouded in mystery.

As you may have known it, the cellist waited for her during the day of the second concert, but death never came. He was grumpy, he couldn’t sleep, and he couldn’t even play the piano and the cello afterward. He came to the conclusion that all that he would ever have with him would be his dog. But when Sunday came, he saw death at his favorite bench in the park, the very place where she peered over his shoulder while reading a book. She apologized for not attending the concert and told him that she was leaving. She also told him that she couldn’t give him the letter after he professed his love for her, a woman he barely knew. In a snap, she was gone.

Night came, and while the cellist was doing his thing inside his house, death came knocking on his door. He let her in, shaking with random thoughts in his head. Death requested the cellist to play the cello despite the fact that it was late at night. She requested the piece that was the most challenging one for the cellist, Suite Number Six of Johann Sebastian Bach. She had been eyeing on this piece during her unknown visits. The cellist had certain hesitations, but death insisted. The piece would take thirty minutes, and in all that time, the cellist never had a difficulty. He was playing like Bach himself.

When it was time to bid goodbye, something that would resemble an uproar happened. Death kissed the cellist. They made love on the bed where the cellist used to sleep alone. After that, he fell asleep. Death was awake of course, since she can never sleep. She stood up to take out the letter from her bag, unsure of where to leave it. She went to the kitchen, took a match, and burned that purple letter, leaving no ashes behind. And for the first time, death went to a place where dreams could be sown.

The end. That was it. The first half of the novel was a broad speculation of life without death. The second half was indeed a love story. I could not believe it. Death herself fell in love. I have to control myself now. I have to reserve all these rants for the last post about this novel tomorrow. But right now, I have to listen to that musical masterpiece of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Death at Intervals by Jose Saramago – 3

The past couple of days were a rowdy one, so I failed to read as much as I wanted to. The truth of the matter is I was not able to read as much as I wanted to due to the mere fact that I barely had time to sit back just like I used to do. However, that does not mean that the interest in Death at Intervals decreased. On the contrary, each chapter never fails to usher in new thoughts that could be worthy of a dose of mental exercise.

Going back to where I left in the previous post, death started to distributed letters to people who’s times were nearly up. She came up with this idea in order to give time to the affected people to make up what is left of their life. She thought that this would be for the benefit of the majority, but it turned out that people were not doing what death thought them to do. Instead, people who received death’s letters became depressed hedonists.

Before going any further, I would like to somehow rectify myself for thinking of death as a man in the previous post. It was mentioned in the novel that Death had always been symbolized as a woman, but I never came across that before, if this were a fact. I don’t really know why am I saying this, but going back to death, there had been a massive manhunt for her, which was a real blind shot. As you may have figured, death was never found by the police force, although they hired experts to produce a vague figure of her using three authentic depictions of her.

The priests and counselors had a role to play in these adjustments. The endless throng of  dying people put priests on a nonstop duty at the confessionals. However good they were in doing their job of consoling people who were about to die, they were not able to comfort themselves when they received their own purple letters from death.

With that, it is worth speculating if the following question: would you rather know or not know when your own time is going to expire? If yes, would you spend the remaining days of your life making the most out of it, or wallow in misery since there seems to be no point in doing so, or go on living and enjoy the day like you have never heard the news, or keep everything to yourself to prevent your family and friends from hurting? Would hope and optimism be defeated when the news of your death arrives at your doorstep? Would the very basic fact that death is informed to the dying shatter the philosophical beliefs that some of us hold true?

If this were the case, existentialism will be annihilated. The belief that one makes up what is there to life is a thus a big fallacy. With your destiny sealed, would it be any good to live up to existential thoughts and principles when the fundamentals have been crippled? If you still think so, it could perhaps be given a proper name, and you might have guessed it. It would be pseudo-existentialism.

However, that is not yet the case, as far as I know. This is an either good or bad news, and as for me, I prefer not knowing when my time would come. I still want the element of surprise in life, because without it, life would be really a monochromatic color palette.

Going back to the novel, death got accustomed to sending out around 300 letters a day to those people who were going to die in a week’s time. Much to the consternation of death, one letter was returned to her, which meant that one was challenging her authority and power. Someone was able to defy his own death, so what death did was resend the letter, but it came back. She then sent it for the third time, but that person was stubborn. He even went to the point of changing the death age recorded on death’s index cards from 49 to 50. This made death think deeply, so she checked on her files and found out that the person was indeed a he, a cellist who was living alone save for a pet dog.

Death decided to visit the cellist while he was sleeping. She took a little tour of his house, and found a decent living room, a minimalist kitchen, a music room filled with musical pieces, a cello and a piano, a wall of books, and a bed that contained the cellist. While staring at the only person who was able to break her rules, death thought about the recent turn of events deeply. The cellist and the dog both woke up from their sleep out of thirst, so they got up to their feet, went to the kitchen, and drank some water. After that, they went back to bed to resume their dreams, which were probably of each other. Again, death looked at them, almost dreamily. She even lied on the sofa across the bed, when suddenly, the dog jumped at the sofa right on her lap.

If you come to think of it, death is displaying a range of human emotions. She was becoming interested in this cellist. And again, if you come to think about it, death must be the only force that is exclusively thinking of the living. She is a god in some sense, but God is too busy looking over everything in the universe, whereas death’s only concern is us, the human beings from this tiny planet. If one is going to talk about gratitude, there should be as much of it to death as it is to God.

Since death has always mingled with humans from the start of time, then it should not be surprising that she acquires things which are thought to be exclusive to humans. But would it be appropriate to do so? Would it not interfere with the normalcy that she is maintaining? I am thinking about these things when I still haven’t decided for myself on whether death has an entity or not.

Death at Intervals by Jose Saramago – 2

I am so sleepy right now, but I know I would not be able sleep at peace without at least writing a thing or two about the turn of events that took place the last time I put Death at Intervals away from me. It was actually the cause of my sleeplessness, so I swear never to crack open a book when trying to get some sleep with the firm resolve to read only a certain number of pages, which will make you wide awake if you happen to get through that number somewhere between 4 AM and 6 AM.

As the government turned a blind eye on the services of the maphia, which were a great favor to those families that were more than happy to dispose their undying relatives, the said illegal organization made sure that everything was running smoothly. However, instead of increasing the number of people trickling outside the borders of the country, more and more families were shying away from it. This is due to the presence of death certificates, which clearly implied that the death of a relative was out of will. The matter was easily given a solution by putting something on that piece of paper, and that is the word suicide.

In another place, an amateur philosopher came across a certain spirit. The two had a lengthy discussion about death, wherein the two came to a conclusion that there is no single death. It is a different experience for every person, every animal, and every being. Dying is not the same thing as it is for the trees, for the birds, and the human species. Each death is independent from each other, however similar is the purpose for all cases. The church was called on to give light on the matter, but as it had always been the case, it dodged all the questions pertaining to the singularity or plurality of death.

On a personal note, it does makes sense to classify death depending on the soul that it is trying to liberate from the body. There is the vegetative soul, the animal soul, and the human soul. It would be dehumanizing to compare man’s death due to cancer with a plant’s death due to some pesticide, however low man is capable of acting. Or perhaps man deserves to be ranked with these lower forms of souls? But that is another concern.

Going back to the novel, aside from the demographical, political, social, philosophical, and moral issues that the absence of death brought about, the economical concerns were also not promising. Given the fact the nobody dies in the country, and all the retired citizens were to be given their rightful pension, the small fraction of the living young would have to toil hard to sustain the whole nation, a nation that would sooner or later file bankruptcy before finally collapsing into futility. This matter was discussed by the king and the prime minister, and before arriving to a conclusion, something happened.

The first purple envelope was sent to the director-general of a national television company. As you may have known it, the letter was to be taken seriously. Without further ado, the director-general talked to the prime minister about it, wherein the two decided to broadcast the content of the mysterious letter on prime time. The letter was from none other than death herself, saying that the so-called immortality that the country is currently enjoying is just a temporary matter. At exactly 12 AM, everyone who was terminally dying would finally cross over to the after life. In addition to that, there would be some changes on the fashion of dying. One would receive a week’s notice before getting buried six feet under.

Naturally, this again caused for an alarm, which was a mixture of dismay and relief. Balance would be regained, but the sudden upsurge of deaths would bring in another set of problems, which I really do not want to speculate about. What I am concerned more about is the letter that death sent to the director-general.

The letter was rather funny. It had a dark humor in it, which makes it not impossible to think about death personified. I am actually having some problems with the pronoun, because death is a woman here. I always thought of death as a man, not that I am being a chauvinist, but I just think that it would be a nice counterpart for Mother Earth. Anyway, that is not the detail that I would like to exhaust myself upon. It’s about death and Death.

The letter was signed with a lower d instead of the capital D. This was edited by one newspaper editor, much to the consternation of death, of which she demanded to be rectified at once. death said that what people experience is death, and Death is the one thing that will blow the fuse of all the universe. After all, as mentioned before, death is such a relative experience, which should not be easily mistaken with Death. The latter is the absolute and powerful form of dying, so now you can tell why death is a bit finicky with the capitalization.

The maphia started to roll its wheels again, going through every kind of extortion that they could pull off, this time taking the men from the funeral industry by their necks. They were fine anyway, since they no longer had to bear the shame of arranging funerals for pet animals. Hospitals and eventide homes called both for a celebration. The church was happy, giving praise to all the prayer campaigns that they were working on. And the insurance companies? They were taking a lot of considerations to see what can work best for them.

But is it really back to normal? One might have encountered the question regarding the things that one would like to do before dying. It would be very easy to answer the question without letting the situation sink in. But in such case where one, either from death or her messenger, can really receive such a short notice from death, would one still be able to answer, even if he has willed himself towards the other side of this earthly life?

However, in this life, death is not kind enough to let you know of your death. I say kind enough because this, according to death, is a favor. Would you rather know to make up some time, or would you rather not know to get away with all the sentimentality? It is indeed a tough call, and the truth of the matter is, I am torn myself. I would like to have an idea on when my death would come, or would it be Death that would serve me, but after that what?

Maybe I should sleep now so that I could think better.

Death at Intervals by Jose Saramago – 1

While reading the first quarter of this novel, I had to control myself from finishing the book in one sitting. I was never the kind of person who would do that. I prefer suspending the interest for a few days in order for me to relish the beauty of what I am reading.

Anyway, Death at Intervals opened with the New Year’s celebration without any fatalities, which is not the typical case in such a rowdy situation. This was not due to a series of safety campaigns that the government was pulling off, but it was more or less caused by a more enigmatic force. Days, weeks, and months went by, and still, there were no deaths recorded. This could have been a cause for celebration, as man was capable of enjoying eternal life right here on earth. However, things were rather looking dim and no one was able to explain why such a phenomenon was taking place.

Burnt, dismembered, and terminally ill people were all incapable of dying. Science was defied as people who were supposed to be dead were hanging on the thinnest threads of life. Death was denied of them, however willing they were to move on to the next life. This caused a lot of concerns to various institutions, the first among them being religion.

Without death, there is no resurrection, and the absence of resurrection rendered the church crippled, having no foundation to cling on. The same is true for philosophy, because it needs death as much as religion does in order to thrive. What could there be to philosophize on if life goes on and on, putting no end to it? How different could things be if one were to philosophize about the void? Would there still be meaning in life if there were no death?

Other matters that had more social concerns were the hospitals and homes for the aged. The increasing number of patients in these institutions were causing an alarm. There would have to be extra and larger buildings for these in order to serve their purpose, which was not at all possible because the number of people who were maintaining these places were outnumbered in incredible proportions. The homes for the aged preferred to have death than none at all, which sounded appalling to most people as the absence of death had been a cause for national celebration since the year opened.

On a business perspective, funeral homes were left with little options while insurance agencies were able to work on something, wherein the premiums paid by the policy-holders can be disbursed or even renewed at the imaginary death age of 80. As you may have known it, business will always be business even under such scenarios.

There were a lot of adjustments made in every sector of the society, but still, death remained an elusive wish to be granted. However, a country family was able to discover death by crossing over the boundaries of their country. This raised some issues, much like the issues concerning modern-day euthanasia. Instead of being mortified by the thought, a lot of people followed this example much to their own discretion.

Government intervention thus became necessary due to the rising number of people going to neighboring countries just to “kill” their relatives. Military checkpoints were established on every possible exit, but an illegal organization did not approve of this since the government was interfering with the business of transporting supposedly dead people over the imaginary boundary lines. This organization, as a retaliation, started to do things to unfortunate members of the military that would have killed them right away, but since there was no death to take their lives, they were transformed into useless members of the society. The said organization then negotiated an offer with the government to allow them to continue its business in exchange for the lives of the military people.

And what do you know? The government succumbs to it for the sake of peace and demography. It was indeed better for the government then to go with the deal in order to temporary solve some of the country’s pressing problems, but up to what extent? The heads of the country would have to condone the activities of this illegal organization, known as the maphia.

Okay, that was as far as I read. It was a rather stunning experience. All the reading was both a funny and a mental exercise. What if one were to be presented with options that offer no real solutions but only more problems and heartaches? How would you grant the morbid wish for death of a loved one? Is death really a morbid wish?

Of course, death will return, but only in a completely new package. Have you ever thought of receiving a notice of death? How is one supposed to deal with such a one week notice? Would this be for the better, knowing that you still have time to do a few things before dying, or for the worse, knowing that you might not have been able to live your life to the fullest?

Pre: Death at Intervals by Jose Saramago

The following day, no one died.

This is perhaps the best book to start this blog with especially with the holiday that is attached to this day. Death at Intervals is originally written in Portuguese. The title of the other translation is Death with Interruptions.

I have a pretty good idea on what to expect from this novel by Jose Saramago. Life cannot be contemplated on without conjuring the subject of death. How can one define life if there is no death?

Thus said, life is not life at all in the absence of death.