Gesamtkunstwerk

the gardens are green, the breeze is waning chill, and spring sun blazes overhead, reaffirming the fact it is Sunday. i fail to recall the last time i was up for a stroll through market and gardens on a glorious sunday, not to mention breakfast!

siu long bao with bacon & eggs! yowza!

pi finds a blind brother in a frenchman, similarly adrift and hungry, and he tells the latter a story.

"once upon a time there was a banana and it grew. it grew until it was large, firm yellow and fragrant. then it fell to the ground and someone came upon it and ate it - and afterwards that person felt better."

what a beautiful story, said the french. and i. thing is, bananas don't drop singularly. u hack them down. and even then they come in setandan - these huge-ass bunches from which smaller 'combs' are cut. so it's a beautiful story right from the start. if u felt better after swallowing it, who cares how/why it dropped? would it be as prominently fantastic if it came off a logical comb off a logical bunch?

the story to make u believe in god is actually the story to just open the horizons of your mind and accept that things are just... possible. to marvel and wonder innocently is to find god. to abandon the rational hows and whys and just see beauty for what it is, is to find god. that flash of understanding just between possible and impossible - That is also where u'll find god. now, i'm damn atheist but i'll have the unorthodox renegade banana, thanks.

this book is just sweet. elusively symbolic all the way. morphing metaphors. dialogue is very funny, very lucid - very Fai. vivid scenes, gross butchers, creative solutions. tarpaulin and urea and maritime life. fish called dorado dying like a rainbow (i'd love to see this if it's real). enlightening on tigers. featuring a devil-dark island, both haven and hell. nocturnal acid.

and i'm still thinking about it =)

san fran chronicles share my sentiments, but in better words: "it's difficult to stop reading when the pages run out."