*if you haven't read the book this post might contain some spoilers oops*
finished John Green's very famous book - The Fault in Our Stars last night. and oh my, did I cry.
I wept so hard I felt my heart throbbing inside of me.
anyways, it was a lovely book. so beautiful, and so so sad. when I started reading I knew someone was going to die, mainly 'cause I read Looking for Alaska (also by John Green) before this. and boy did I have the shock of my life when I found out *spoiler* the narrator (Pudge) was actually counting down to his friend (Alaska's) death. I teared really badly when I read that book too
well I thought Hazel was the obvious one who was going to die, giving her circumstances and all. she was just fighting for more time, her cancer couldn't be cured. Augustus on the other hand... was healthy and cancer free when they met. I was hopeful, I was ready, knowing that their love will not last until forever. (but how long is forever, anyways?)
I prepared myself when I started reading to stay strong and be ready for her death as it is inevitable, no one lives forever. then she met Augustus Waters, and the way he was with her, it was almost as if I can feel his love for her just by reading the book. it wasn't unrealistic, it wasn't the most romantic love story known to mankind. but it was real.
the book is great because somehow I feel like I was with them, on their journey battling cancer, and watching them fall in love. halfway reading, I was already in love with Augustus Waters. I love how positive he is, and his love for metaphors was charming. I loved even more how at the end of his life *spoiler* he remained the same positivity, not wanting anyone to know how painful it really is. it broke my heart just reading about him during his dying days. (how am I going to survive the movie?? I know I'm gonna cry real hard at the point when he starts losing weight. i just know it!!)
I am in love with this book because of their magnificent love story. How much Gus loved Hazel marvels me, is there still love this great in this world? are we capable of loving someone as much as Augustus Waters loves (present tense) Hazel Grace Lancester??
i doubt it.
and that's why i love this book
x
now for parts of the book i cannot and will not ever get over:
and only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn't unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn't want to.
"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you."
"You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was talking about fast Fourier transforms and she stopped midsentence and said, 'Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.'
"That's what I believe. I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it - or my observation of it - is temporary?"
"I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinity collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful."
and last but not least, the letter Gus wrote to Van Houten just before he passed:
*spoiler**spoiler**spoiler**spoiler*
Van Houten,
I'm a good person but a shitty writer. You're a shitty person but a good writer. We'd make a good team. I don't want to ask you any favors, but if you have time - and from what I saw, you have plenty - I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I've got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently.
Here's the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.
I want to leave a mark.
But Van Houten: The marks human leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
(Okay, maybe I'm not such a shitty writer. But I can't pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations.)
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless - epically useless in my current state - but I am an animal like any other.
Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.
People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die before I could tell her that I was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren't allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, "She's still taking on water." A desert blessing, an ocean curse.
What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
x
