Literature

I think part of the reason I like reading books that have a different cultural background than America or England is because of the idea of identity. I think that identity is so completely played out at least in the Asian American sense of "I'm neither here nor there, I'm neither white nor fully Asian" blah blah blah.

I think that I like the kind of literature where the cultural aspects are taken for granted (like Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami) because then you get to see the people beyond just the culture and the lens of culture molding the person's entire character. It's about individual struggles just with a slightly different background. I feel like those kind of books are more timeless than those "Who am I? What's my identity?" type of books. But I realized that a lot of these types of books are in translation and so it's obvious that those things are going to be taken for granted. I wonder if a novel by an Asian American where the novel doesn't address identity at all is possible. I'm sure there's good literature out there but I haven't read enough Asian American literature to really know.

At any rate, I like that divorce of culture and identity because even in real life, people look at other people for their culture rather than who they really are. I get bored by that. I mean it's cool learning about different cultures ("How does your country do it?") but there's definitely more to people than their country (or at least I like to think there is, right?). I dunno. What makes a person three-dimensional? Their interests? The quirks in their personality? Our seemingly individual emotions that everyone happens to feel at one time or another? Or are we all just definable by our race, jobs, religion and personality traits that we closely relate to though it doesn't define all of who we are?

"Define yourself in one word." I guess I could, but I prefer not to. "Define yourself in three words." "Happy-go-lucky. Eccentric. At times, boring." I dunno, if you really think about it, no one is what they "define" themselves to be all the time. Right? I can be happy-go-lucky but honestly, the pressures of society are definitely getting to me. It's dumb I think. But I can't help it. So does that make me "serious"? I don't like those associations or being pigeon-holed into such definitions. Break all the boundaries and all the rules, I say! (or try to at least)

Meh.

So it goes.

On a completely different note, I realized that whenever I think to write something (or blog it), it never quite comes out the way I envision it to in my head. It's weird (and annoying) and sometimes I feel like I wrote so much or something at least with a little bit of profundity to find that it's actually quite short and worse, not really all that profound. As it says in Ecclesiastes (I think), "There is nothing new under the sun." I think some author quoted it too. But it's true and sometimes everything I say, though the emotion is new to me, still seems played out in retrospect. That sucks man. I wish I could be more original that I really am.

Meh.

Such is life, I suppose.

Reading

I realized that reading for me is like talking to another person or really just listening to another person tell me a story. There are always different voices and when I start reading a new book, it always takes a page or two (or an entire chapter sometimes) for me to adjust to the author's voice.

I don't think I ever noticed that until relatively recently.