superhylia

It's been quite a while since I used to read consistently. Ironically, before the pandemic locked us all into cozy couches in closed corridors away from each other, I read really often. I tried new books, and while I was always one for mystery, it was fulfilling. Isolation, though, led to interaction and I lost the interaction of words on a page with pixels on a screen. In a world that felt so slow, news felt like a progress check on everyone else; I returned my habit to read to the library and while I had many attempts to pick it back up, it wasn't long before I renewed and renewed and renewed on that goal for many years after. Even when COVID subsided enough to return to school, it wasn't the same. Assignments for books to read passed me by, with few exceptions; bad habits of summaries and notes to get past books from being stuck online lead to a cycle of knowing just enough for a quiz or quote, but never really engaging. Letters passed like grains of sand in the wind, felt perhaps, but ignored anyway.

This year, I said I'd try to read more and it hasn't gone amazingly well. It's hard to build a habit that's been shaved off for almost half a decade...maybe "shaved" isn't the right word. Redirected? I thought I'd start from the list of recommendations I've gotten by revisiting one of those grains of sand in The Alchemist. I got it as an assignment in that same pandemic that changed my reading and remembered nothing of it 5 years on. If there's any place to get back to reading, there isn't much more poetic than going to where it all fell apart somewhat.

The Alchemist is wonderfully written in a way that's can't really be described other than "dreamy," which for such a journey is probably very apt. The faith in God and his creations weaves through this novel, plot and prose, with an almost biblical way of vivid descriptions and phrases that are starkly constrasting.

But the desert is so huge, and the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent.

Santiago, who often recieves such phrases from the alchemist, initially takes it in mixed receptions, relating to the idea eventually but always wondering the relevance to his journey for treasure. As he continues his journey, however, and the treasure he sets out for changes its value to him and what he's learned and obtained, he starts to truly understand. What value does finding the treasure have if love is in the way? If I walk through the desert to find this treasure as a boy, who is the man that returns to enjoy his spoils? Hints, omens as Coelho describes them, reveal themselves to him in ways that appeal to his understanding. At first, he places faith in superstitial objects Urim and Thummim, but as iron turns to gold, simple dreaming turns to drive, the world opens up to him and the reader. The situations that surround us are informative, guiding even, only to those with searing eyes and a tongue knowing to close and to ask.

If he wanted to, he could now return to the oasis, go back to Fatima, and live his life as a simple shepard. After all, the alchemist continued to live in the desert, even though he understood the Language of the World, and knew how to transform lead into gold. He didn't need to demonstrate his science and art to anyone. The boy told himself that, on the way toward realizing his own Personal Legend, he had learned all he needed to know, and had experienced everything he might have dreamed of.

I don't have dreams of treasure across deserts: gold is nice, but it doesn't fill me. My oasis, then, is nebulous: I want to be creative to make something for myself with everything I've learned. A novel of a thousand phrases that a player gets to interact with themselves, perhaps. I study game design and try to write almost every day, but I find it hard because I always find myself at the brink of an idea but woefully unable to enact on it. A story so palpable I can see it in my dreams, but without drawing ability, I worry it'll be stuck as just that: a dream. With an oasis comes not just water, but shade and safety and for me that's understanding of value in myself, the final contentness of seeing what others see in me, that I haven't let others astray like grain in the wind.

Life was good to me. When you appeared in my dream, I felt that all my efforts had been rewarded, because my son's poems will be read by men for generations to come. I don't want anything for myself.

Will I ever find that oasis, my work lasting for generations or simply being present to watch someone else achieve that same goal? I'm not really sure, but maybe I need to find pyramids that are beautiful enough to spend time on. Maybe they aren't exactly stop A to B for my journey, but the me that reaches those goals only to see no value in the time spent getting there would be no happier than the me right now. It'll be tough getting back to reading, but when I do, I can look back on reading this book fondly, knowing that I read something worthwhile, inspiring even, in a time of minimal hope. It may end up being a brick upon brick, but the shovel will hit each block all the same and without those bricks, what would hold the Pyramids upon that I gaze over to see the tree of my labor in the distance?