Once again, I am awake at 2am coughing. This is my third night in a row. Last night I managed to pull a stomach muscle in a coughing fit and now I feel like someone stabbed me in the stomach everytime I cough. Now I must pass time until the heavy duty codeine cough syrup kicks in. And so, I am feeling reflective.
Paulo Coelho is one of my three favorite authors. He shares the spot with Maeve Binchy and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My favorite book of his is titled, Veronike Decides to Die. Not sure why I picked it up (ugly sounding title) but I am so glad that I did.
Synopsis from Publisher's Weekly: The bestselling Brazilian author of The Alchemist delicately etches this morose but ultimately uplifting story of the suicidal Veronika, who creeps along the boundary between life and death, sanity and madness, happiness and despair. Veronika, 24, works in a library in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and rents a room in a convent; she is an attractive woman with friends and family, but feelings of powerlessness and apathy tempt her to find "freedom" in an overdose of sleeping pills. When Veronika awakens in the purgatory of Villete, the country's famous lunatic asylum, she is told her suicide attempt weakened her heart and she has only days to live. At this point, Coelho takes a role in the novel; he describes the circumstances under which he discovered Veronika's story and then recounts his own youthful incarceration in a Brazilian sanatorium, consigned there by parents who couldn't understand his "unusual behavior." As quickly as he drops in, however, he drops out again, relying on interior monologues to set scenes. In a sedative-induced haze, Veronika finds companionship in white-haired Mari, who suffers from panic attacks, and Eduard, an ambassador's son who has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and she begins to question the definition of insanity. It is her supposed death sentence from the devious Dr. Igor, who is trying to shock her back into reality, that allows Veronika to reacquire the will to live and love. Employing his trademark blend of religious and philosophical overtones, Coelho focuses on his central question: why do people go on when life seems unfair and fate indifferent? The simple, often banal prose contrasts Veronika's bleak inner landscape with the beautiful contours of Slovenia, gradually culminating in an upbeat ending with the message that each day of life is a miracle.
I follow Paulo's blog where he daily adds some short message chock full of wisdom. The other day, Veronika was featured as his character of the week. One follower posted the following comment... "My own madness is something only I can understand, but I understand that the most normal and better thing for each of us would be to accept that normality doesn’t exist, it is just a nonsense thing we have created in our mind." Amen! Within each of us exists some level of "madness." In a sense, we are all "crazy." The only thing that separates us is the degree to which we are, our awareness of it and how we decide to channel it.
Something to think about... sweet dreams... good night.
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