so what is it all about?
i really need to learn to focus on one thing at a time. i always try to do multiple things at once, and when it takes too long to do all of them, i get bored before i can finish them, then i just start a whole slew of new things to do, only to repeat the cycle over again.
after work today, i went to barnes & noble intending to study GRE. while making my way to get coffee, i passed by this memoir/autobiography stack, and a book caught my attention. it was the author's name, augusten burroughs, that did it. i picked it up simply because i wanted to know if he's in any way related to william s. burroughs, the guy who wrote naked lunch (and whose books i'm always curious to read but can never stand for more than a few pages, btw).
well, i ended up reading the book until the last page, which took me about 4.5 hours. so yeah, i didn't succeed in my good intention of memorizing GRE vocabs afterall. and in the end i didn't even find out, or care, whether or not he's related to william s. burroughs.
the book was called "dry: a memoir", and it was about this alcoholic guy, who's a big-shot copywriter in a big ad agency in new york, who struggled to stop drinking, only to sink back down after a few months of successful recovery because the only guy he ever loved finally died of aids. a pretty depressing read, even more so because you know it's real. it's amazing that he can convey all these horror stories and still manage to put a lot of humor in them.
above all, though, it's an honest account of someone who still tries to get up and go on, even after going through so many falls in hell. this is a guy who was left by his mother to live with an insane psychiatrist and raped by a pedophile when he's 13, and unconsiously tried to kill himself slowly by drinking a liter of dewar pushed by a few lines of coke on a daily basis for years. and yet found enough strength to force himself to let go and go on. it's about enduring real life.
not like some commercialized "reality-tv" crap out there, which tries to portray 'reality' as some guy picking and choosing a girl out of several bimbos with boob jobs over a course of one week in a mansion somewhere in venice, while millions of people watch them flirt shamelessly on screen.
well, i'm not gonna spoil the story, just in case anyone wants to read the book. but one thing i found interesting is that augusten (the guy in the book), succeeded in his first phase of sobering up after the 30-day rehab and AA meetings in the weeks following because he felt that for the first time he could be himself, even with all his baggage and his craziness, and still be accepted in the group. he could be honest to others and to himself, without the fear of being rejected or feeling worthless, because these people went through the same things as he did, and they understood.
this reminded me of margaret cho. i watched one of her filmed shows, "i'm the one that i want," a few days ago. in this comedy monologue, margaret basically concluded that all she wanted was to be accepted as she is. you can't get more minority than being a bisexual, overweight asian-american woman in the entertainment business. she was forced to go on extreme diets by the producers of the 1994 "all american girl" tv show because they said that her face looked too chubby on screen, and they hired a professional to teach her to be more 'asian' in her manners.
so i can't help but wonder, what is it about acceptance and a sense of belonging that it is so important to people, that the lack of these things can lead to such horrifying acts of self destruction?
Comments
whoa, thanks des! ntar gua baca kali ya buku itu... btw, gua juga mau ngafalin gre vocab nih, uhm tapi kapan ya bisa belajar bareng?? (kayaknya nggak bakalan jadi belajar sih...)
Posted by: wham | May 30, 2003 12:12 PM
yuk kita belajar bareng... tapi ntar malah jadi ngegosip lagihhh...
ehhh tapi kan kita jadi bisa tanya jawab vocab gitu kalo berdua... dulu gitu metode gue ngafalin biologi di sma. :P
Posted by: d | May 30, 2003 01:05 PM
hahaha, iya gua juga kepikirannya ntar kita jadi bisa tanya jawab...
eh des, ngomong2 i've always been wondering about the same thing too. kenapa ya orang itu selalu berasa insecure dan selalu so self-conscious about what others think of them? btw, temen gua yang dari california itu gak jadi dateng, tapi gua sekarang stuck di lab gara2 ada tugas yang harus selesai sebelom nyokap gua dateng besok pagi.. huks huks..
Posted by: wham | May 30, 2003 07:35 PM
aduhhh kaciannn... ya udah, mudah2an tugas elo bisa selesai dgn lancar deh, biar ga usah kelamaan stuck di lab.
anyway, iya gue juga lagi mikirin, aneh juga yah... di masa yg serba menjunjung tinggi individualisme ini, you would think that people's need for other's approval and acceptance would be a thing of the past. tapi nyatanya, it doesn't seem to change at all. whether or not we are aware of this need, it's always there. it's a paradox, no?
satu paradox lagi yg gue pikir berkaitan juga is how being different and original is encouraged and promoted everywhere. you hear it all the time. but it's like there's this invisible threshold or boundaries within which you can be as extremely different and weird as you want, but once you go past it, you will simply be an unwanted outcast.
Posted by: d | May 30, 2003 08:44 PM
...d,
Finally, someone acknowledges this stuff. My whole life, most of the time, I feel like I am that unwanted outcast. The good thing is, I guess, I feel that I could empathize more with those "different" people. :D
Posted by: xinda | June 2, 2003 12:43 AM
GRE des..?...good luck yahh..you'll have tons of fun studying GRE this summer..hehe..i heard it's tough...and i barely passed my GMAT last year..hehe...:D
Posted by: hanzky | June 2, 2003 12:32 PM
O gosh I couldn't stand Naked Lunch. Burroughs is so off the wall I had a hard time figuring out what was what.
Posted by: Mona | June 2, 2003 01:26 PM
dessssssss, aaa gua udah baca bukunya... aduhhh i like it a lot (uhm, no i make it sound like it's fun stuff in there...).. iya cuman iya gitu deh, i like it a lot, and i'm reading running with scissors right now. gila bgt ya tu orang.
iya des, the whole being different and being accepted business is crazy. tambahan lagi, temen gua pernah bilang, sekarang ini orang2 semuanya struggle to be different such that they're all the same now. it's all about paradox.
Posted by: wham | June 3, 2003 09:24 AM
wah, running with scissors, wen? kalo gak terlalu depressing, gue pinjeeemmm donkkk!!! eh, ngomong2 buku elo yg girl from the coast itu udah selesai gue baca. i like it! elo musti baca bukunya pram yg lain, deh. gue ada beberapa sih kalo elo mau...
Posted by: d | June 3, 2003 09:35 PM
good point des! yeah i hate those stupid so-called reality show. it's just way too much. someone stop it already!
tks for the book tip. i'll look for it, after i'm done with the rest of my unread books *yeah about 15 of them, ha! ngeborong nih yee*
and by the way.. love margaret cho!! love her love her love her! she's so hillarious ..
Posted by: sLesTa | June 4, 2003 01:20 PM
yes, i love margaret, too! i almost died laughing on my chair when i went to see "the notorious c.h.o!"
Posted by: d | June 6, 2003 01:38 AM
thought this would be appropriate to be added here.
from a friend, rkb, regarding "the bachelorette," the latest addition to the ever expanding "reality TV" genre:
"to me, the concept of having one princess winnowing her way through twenty five grinning guys inan arbitrary 52-minute time setting on a weekly basis is far remote from the term 'reality.' matter of fact, it is a sheer insult to the living definition of the word. reality - to me - is having witnessed for a fact that there are countless number of black markets over in mainland southeast asia fortoday's thirteen-year-old boy to freely choose from to lay his hands on [read: own, not rent] a bootleg video CD that graphically tells the story of one willful woman being sexually degraded by thirty eight grinning men, all at once, for no more than twenty nine cents. even better: he can get the sequel [a.k.a. GANG BANG AUDITIONS VOL. 49] half-price. part of the deal. and that my friend, is reality. it's out there, happening. but, of course, they all refuse to set their lights&cameras up for that. why? because it's frightening. it's boring. it bites. it sucks. and, above all, it's real."
Posted by: d | June 10, 2003 01:05 PM