My Bray Dunes

I got round thinking of how I'd die. I never bothered to know when just how. How did I came to I don't know. I just slept all afternoon without really being sleepy. I was in bed staring up--closed my eyes only to open them at dusk. I was bothered about how I spent my weekend. Doing inanities, daft and hypnotic, that's how it was. Funny, because I know I wouldn't let it slip any other way. My weekends, I realize, are slowly becoming routine as well.

I refused not to do anything productive, so I propped my head on the pillow and opened Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" the benefit being, my backlog would be one book less. But before I decided to read, I popped "Atonement" into the DVD player for background noise.

***
I found "Never Let Me Go" a bit dull. There wasn't really much happening, just one memory after another. The whole novel unfolded in Kathy's point of view, which I found a bit hard to sympathize with. If it weren't for the mysteries of Hailsham I wouldn't bother finishing it. But maybe there was a part of me that wanted to like it. It doesn't compare with "The Remains of the Day" but the premise was imaginative enough. Hailsham it turns out, was a "humane" human harvesting center with all the students being clones for medical use--more specifically organ donors. But I admired how the author set the tone of the novel. Yeah the cloning theme isn't necessarily unheard of but what makes it imaginative is creating this whole lore of "clone" behaviour: human enough with an innocence eerily resonating from creatures (monsters?) reared artificially. It could've easily turned into a sci-fi thriller. But Ishiguro decided to tell a love story set in an almost seemingly normal world. Mind you, the novel isnt't even set in the future, but the early 90's. This was achieved, I guess, by stifling the flow of consciousness to only one. Too bad it took me awhile to warm with Kathy's accounts. But I guess the dullness of her narratives from the past were really meant to be like that. I guess Ishiguro wanted us to be outraged at how these creatures accepted their fate almost readily.

Maybe this is what I disliked about the novel. Right in the end when the awful truth was explained to them, Kathy and Tommy were already numb. Yes, Tommy saw the absurdity and inequality of it all (the mud scene) but deep down they always knew their fate, it was explained and reiterated to them when they were young and in an odd way they were ok with it.

But I refused not to believe they didn't have a choice. In the end Tommy & Kathy could've run away or something. Heck, I would've even embraced the notion of them both commiting suicide.

The love triangle, one hindering the love of both, premise was ok. The theme of how it all being "too late" was ok too. But I just wished they had more passion, more willingness to rise above it all.

Instead Tommy soon dies (after multiple organ donations), and soon Kathy.

Maybe it's wrong for me to think of them as beings with freedom of will.I mean, they're clones after all. Or is the author saying we're all just like them?
***

My background noise was coming to an end, the scene was how Briony confessed the deaths of Robbie and Cecilia. I thought of Robbie's journey to Dunkirk. His long voyage to the sea hoping for salvation, to be with Cee, to be evacuated, to be with her. And how he actually reached the sea, Bray dunes, only to succumb to death, to septicemia.

Then I wondered, is that how I would end. Though, more prematurely w/o ever finding love at all.
***

In college I took a bus ride home, one afternoon. It was a stressful week, finals were coming up and I hadn't much sleep. I sat near the back seating myself next to the window. I was exhausted. And I rememberd how comfortable it was pressing my cheek on the cold glass with my eyes closed. I felt the buss gain speed steadily, folllowing a curved path. It slowly pressed my cheek further against the glass. And I remember how I thought of a truck suddenly smashing my side and how it felt good.
***


Is the universe trying to tell me something?