I am Your Sunshine

(拖了兩個月的心得… orz)
When I started to get tired of it, Hornby gave me something new.

I just noted down the parts that shook me most. In all, none these 4 characters Nick Hornby created is lovable. You can easily find faults in them, but while you are… okay, I am having a hard time to like those characters, I found myself identifying the moments/situations here and there. That’s why I like it.

“Course I do. You’re fucked.” She waved an apologetic hand in Maureen’s direction, like a tennis player acknowledging a lucky net cord. “You thought you were going to be someone, but now it’s obvious that you’re nobody. You haven’t got as much talent as you thought you had, and there was no Plan B, and you got no skills and no education, and now you’re looking at forty or fifty years of nothing. Less than nothing, probably. That’s pretty heavy. That’s worse than having the brain thing, because what you got now will take a lot longer to kill you. You’ve got the choice of a slow, painful death, or a quick, merciful one. ”
She shrugged.
She was right. she got it.

that was JJ.
As I was reading it, I thought, how dare she to put it so brutally honest and I was shocked again reading JJ took it unruffled. I’ll definitely be provoked if my deepest weaknesses and fears were revealed like that, in plain words, from a teenage wacko. But no, JJ has almost been to the edge of life, he’s living every day on the edge of life in his own sense. He had reexamined himself before he went up there, when he made up his story, on his way down, and when he confessed, and he had known better of himself and started to acknowledge his… fears and weaknesses.

“Oh, he’s a big fan of –”
“Just do as you’re told and pit them back.” said Martin. “Put them back or get out. How much of a bitch do you really want to be?”
One day, I thought, I’ll learn to say that myself.

This was Maureen.
Maureen is a woman with hidden power. She’s like a pressure pot. You can see that she felt intense feelings; however, her background and all that prevent her from being anything close to impolite. In the series of events that connected these people together, Maureen found herself wanting more, more than she’d ever thought she could have wanted before.

I wanted to go to Starbucks, because I like Frappuccino and all that, but JJ said he wasn’t into global franchises, and Martin had read in some posey magazine about a snooty little coffee bar between Essex Road and Upper Street where they grow their own beans while you wait or something… People go on about places like Starbucks being unpersonal and all that, but what if that’s what you want? I’d be lost if JJ and people like that got their way, and there was nothing unpersonal in the world. I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers – small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurant and cafes. I’m happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and Starbucks and PizzaExpress, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are. My mum and dad are always going on about how soulless those places are, and I’m like, Der. That’s the point.

Nowadays, people complains about the impersonality of global franchise, but I kinda agree with Jess here. To walk in neighborhood homey stores really requires confidence, while those big, bright, cold chain stores offers you privacy, similar shelfing logic (or beverage selections) ensure that wherever you are, you’ll feel right at home (well, at the same store where you live.) When you’re praising small, warm, personal, independent stores, make sure that you’re not just being posey. (Cos sometimes I think I really am.)

The guy who jumped had two profound and apparently contradictory effects on us all. Firstly, he made us realize that we weren’t capable of killing ourselves. And secondly, this information made us suicidal again. That isn’t a paradox, if you know anything about the perversity of human nature. A long time ago, I worked with an alcoholic. And he told me that the first time he failed on an attempt to quit the booze was the most terrifying day of his life. He’d always thought that he could stop drinking if he ever got round to it, so he had a choice stashed away in a sock drawer somewhere at the back of his head. But he found out that he had to drink, that the choice had never really been there… Well, he wanted to do away with himself, if I may temporarily confuse our issues.

I didn’t preperly understand what he meant until I saw that guy jump off the rood. Up until then, jumping had always been an option, a way out, money in the bank for a rainy day. And then suddenly the money was gone – or rather, it had never been ours in the first place.

This is Martin. I got what he’s saying. The realization of what you thought to be your choice was in fact never really an option can be devastated. It’s like, hypothetically, I hate my job and always think that I’d be beyond happy if I were a, say, housewife, hypothetically speaking of course. But if there’s a day that I become a housewife and hate it. It’d probably like the end of the world cos… something that I’ve been holding on to, a “dream” that had kept me going, thinking I’d be happy if only turn out to be not so fantastic. I need to find a new dream, but I’m too tired to dream anymore… A no-way-out situation.