Looking Ahead

I just finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  Yes, it is life-changing like everyone tells you it will be.  It really is a well-written piece of art.  Anyway, I am about to refer to the ending of the novel, so if you haven't read it but plan on doing so sometime soon, here is your statement of "proceed with caution".  It shouldn't be too overly revealing though.

So, yesterday I stayed in bed literally all day because I was really ill and needed to recover because my friends from school are coming to Long Island for a week this afternoon.  This morning, I woke up really early, at around 5:30 AM and I couldn't really find my way back to sleep.  So I figured I would read for a little to try and put my eyes to sleep.  As I was reading, I just kept on observing my slight sense of sickness/recovery, the wind rushing against the house, and the sun beginning to rise.  It was just bringing me back to being in Paris again, waking up deathly ill in the hotel by myself after my group had left, with the wind hitting against the windows, and being in a foreign place.  At this point I should mention that I am still cat/house-sitting for Miss Hendrickson, and it kind of makes me feel like I am on a vacation in some other country because I kind of just shut myself up here and pretend like I'm back in Europe.  This all made me feel really in tune with my past and my future and how they are interrelated while reading the ending of the novel.

Anyway, after Charlie realises that he's standing up in the car in the tunnel, I too felt infinite - like something was new and changing, like I was free and beginning to live my life without the burden of anger or sorrow about things that cannot be changed.  I want to keep trudging ahead without regard to all of the things in life that could prevent me from being happy or attaining a fulfilling, successful life.  There's just no point.  And it seems like all of the books that Bill gives Charlie, especially The Stranger and The Catcher in the Rye which are two of my favourite books, have pointed to this for so long, and I have just been too clueless to really get it.

I want my life to move in this direction also, the way that Charlie's path is headed.  I want to live in a way that recognises pain but does not dwell upon it, but rather grows from it and and moves forward as a result of it.  There is such an element of Buddhism and Taoism in this novel that it also is encouraging me to further look up interesting writings and essays on these ways of being.  Anyway, this is my initial reaction to reading this novel.  I should probably re-read it again at some point while I'm still in college just to be reminded of all of its valuable lessons.  I'm so excited to begin my future anew, too.

Piece: This meay seem out of place, but for whatever I cannot get this out of my head, especially the first minute of the piece.  This portion of the piece especially seems to represent the embodiment of upcoming change, even though in the context of the opera, it's something rather different.

"The Coronation Scene" from Modest Musorgsky's "Boris Godunov"