mens sana in corpore sano

finished island, 'finally'-worthy moment, partially

felt guilty because i dragged through the middle part (on religious ceremony) & a friend's boyfriend asked how was the book when i was up to that part and i answered hastily, it was very bad don't read it

but i turned out to like it in the end

not very fond of the style of the language, could be really dry; but perhaps that was one of the reasons why my liking seemed to be earnestly different from my liking toward other books, it was really the content that vacuumed my thoughts in

it tells the story of will farnaby who is shipwrecked in pala, an island nation that is out of the world's reach, always covert with minimum contact with the rest of the world

curtain was closed with a sad ending, i skipped the last part where will encountered a moksha-medicine experience for the first time, skipped it because it seemed impossible to visualize when you haven't:

a) done hard drugs
b) received pure/legitimate kind of enlightenment

approximately twenty pages of an exhaustive attempt to write down things comprising an experience that in nature isn't meant to be written down (can this be linked to the strong oral culture in the ancient pre-asoka indian society), some parts glazed over with uncanny precision to emphasize/draw attention to mundanities, maybe in order to 'appreciate it' or to 'look at it from a fresh perspective', but i found myself half-laughing/smiling at "he was looking, will suddenly perceived, at a small square table, and beyond the table at a rocking chair, and beyond the rocking chair at a blank wall of whitewashed plaster....how was it possible that things so familiar and commonplace could be this(in italic, obviously)? obviously it wasn't possible; and yet there it was, there it was."

boyfriend seemed 'mildly' mad at me for pointing out the futility of a utopia portrayed in this book, i said it can't exist it's too late, because for a nation like pala to exist firstly it requires an untouched territory which nowadays can only be found in an undeveloped country, and this country must learn to let go of the plastic dreams of industrialization and choose an unfavorable route that is unyieldingly more difficult to tread on. this nation then will need to skip the 'industrialization' phase to a scientifically advanced phase where it can make good use of its resources without overexploiting them, both human and natural resources

i think i said rather loudly 'obviously this cannot happen', and he clearly detected a coarse undertone slipping through my one-way speech, damn stella artois. just thought there's no potential leader who can handle this task, or maybe i'm too harsh to believe in such an ideal

or i might happen to be just jealous of pala. there freedom is revered, but not that kind of freedom in america where everyone is practically subjected to mass consumption (i'm just reiterating what's been said on the book, not speaking of personal opinion). the education system is tailored to every person's physique, nature, etc since primary school; psychedelic drug is part of the curriculum; mutual adoption club doors open to children who feel threatened by a slight at home; birth control and 'yoga of love' ie sex part of innate culture. and yet they don't bother with oil and tanks and wars and fast cars. what an enviable society. i want to life with these pacifists

this is my first huxley's book, brave new world shall be next