Sunday, November 22, 2009

EVERMORE - THE IMMORTALS

Finishing this novel reminds me of The Twilight Saga. This new novel was almost identical in content and character with Stephanie Meyer's novels but actually they differed pretty much. I found Twilight Saga has more mature and beautiful language than the latter. The characters also are more complicated and well-developed. The most basic difference is free sex is not endorsed in the first while in latter, the characters seem chasing how to get sex before marriage...that's why I like the Twilight Saga better.

Ever, was a teenage girl who lost all her families on one sad accident. She was the only survivor. She had to stay with Sabine, her Father's twin, as her only relative. Eversince the accident, she got strange power of able to read mind-the past-the present-and the future-, hear the thoughts by simple touching the object. Every touch made her suffer for she had to see things about the life of that person she did not want to see. Every person had an aura (this reminds me of the Nicholas Flamel stories of The Alchemist) that was traslucent and reflected their mood. Ever could not yet control her power that any contact to others inflict a tremendous suffering for her to hear, to see, and to feel. She concealed herself in a hoodie and IPod. Her classmates called her a freak. The only friends she could get along was Haven and Miles who were searching for self-identity just like herself. The srangest part was her dead little sister, Riley, would always pop in whenever she needed her.

Her life was in total seclusion until a mysterious man enrolled into her class and sat next to her. Next to him, all the sounds and auras died away and her head was no longer in total pain. The only voice she could hear was his voice. Around him, she felt normal again as his presence muted all the noises and auras she did not want. Damen was a total mystery man who mastered all science and art. Her new life began to feel normal when this gorgeous myterious man become her boyfriend. Stacia Miller and Honor and the rest of her classmates were crazy about this new guy. Yet, Damen had no interest to to all but the freak in a hoodie and I-Pod.

Her normal life seemed perfect until a strange mysterious beutiful woman appearing in their life. Drina always showed up when Damen was. Worst, she lured Haven into a cult of immortal chasing. The contanst disapearance and the almost perfect life of Damen heightened her curiousity to find out the truth about her boyfriend. With the help of Riley, she uncovered the truth that shocked her...Damen was an immortal. He was not a vampire like she thought him to be but he got immortality by inventing immortality through alchemy (just like Nicholas Flamel). Drina was the first immortal he created for his wife. Ever had come to their life ever and ever again before Drinal always killed her.

Now, Ever had to face her immortal enemy who kept chasing her ever and ever again upon her reincarnation, Drina or Poverina, who determined to get Damen's love back. Without Damen, Ever had learnt from her that the accident that claimed her family lifes was the result of Drina's trickery to get rid of her. As Ever was about to give in to die, this new knowledge generated a surging power for her to stay alive to avenge her family.

Ever had two choice, becoming immortal like Damen and be with him for the rest of their immortality, or becoming human again.

This novel is not quite amusing as I thought to be but it's a good reading though. Another series of this novel will soon follow. And i think there will be many immortals like Damen coz in this first series, there's a hint that there are others like Damen.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

My Heart Bled (mourn of Palestinian mothers)

My heart bled, to see my children lost their youth early, to see bitterness and resentment in those weary eyes, fear and pain beyond imagination, my heart bled, witnessing atrocities inflicted daily, on their pure innocent life, and the world stop to care, for we were alone to blame, my heart broke down in pieces, to know despair in their ashen faces, when happiness and joy was nothing but illusion, denied in their very existence, my heart cried in agony, to see they crawled in deathly tunnels, in the dark, damp, and narrow holes, full of poisonous gas and mortal dangers, just to get something for our tables, to feed every hungry mouth who waited in lines, my heart throbbed with pain, to see the wide vast cage around, stripping them away from any dignity, robbing their freedom and humanity, and the world only froze deaf and blind, i am mother, i am daughter, i am women, who cried in tears of blood, for humanity to hear, for humanity to see

Monday, November 9, 2009

JERUSALEM

Jerusalem, sanctuary of faiths,
bleeds every day,
mourns in decades,
for all the lost souls,

it has seen birth,
it has seen death,
and it cries in tears of blood,
for the masacre of innocents

Jerusalem, fought over for centuries,
a witness to most human atrocities,
a monument of everlasting carnages,
over the lost of humanity,

Making Sense of the Tragedy at Fort Hood

By Eddie Zawaski

Making sense of the Fort Hood shootings will be a difficult process for Americans. While some may swiftly consign this tragedy to the context of a black and white struggle between Islam and Christianity or Arab vs. American, others will look for more complex and more personal explanations.

How Americans and our military interpret and respond to this event will determine whether we have more or fewer tragedies like this in the future.

Thus, I would like to offer a personal and more complex explanation of what happened yesterday, an explanation that rings true for me.

When I read of the circumstances surrounding Maj. Hasan's recent life, I broke into a cold sweat. His nightmare was my nightmare. I had been down the same road as he forty years earlier.

Like Major Hasan, I had been trained by our military to work with returning combat veterans suffering from PTSD. In my case, it was the Philadelphia Naval Hospital in the wake of the Tet Offensive and stressed-out Marines were arriving in droves every day.

I was the admissions corpsman on ward T-15, the first place a medically evacuated psychatric casualty came to in the US. My job was to listen to their stories and then file a report for the doctor who would care for them in our hospital. It didn't take long for this job to wear me down.

Day after day, I listened to horrific stories. One Marine had shot his best friend in the back of his head and couldn't get his buddy's blood off his uniform. Another had "blown away" an innocent mother and child and had transformed himself into a German shepherd to avoid the responsibility for his action.

Six to ten times a day, I heard stories full of gore told by men unable to bear the burden of what they had done and seen. Even the glassy-eyed catatonics with no stories could not conceal the horror that they brought into my interview room.

The only way I could continue in this job was to disassociate, to refuse to believe that these stories were real or that any of it could happen to me. Then, one day in August of 1968, my armor was stripped away.

When I got my orders to be shipped out to Vietnam, I went into a complete panic. It was one thing to go into a war zone blind, not knowing what to expect, but it was an absolute nightmare when you already knew all the worst of it.

This was the point of the sword that both Major Hasan and I had been placed upon. Both he and I had been placed in positions of supreme responsibility on account of our intelligence and steady good judgement, but when the horror of the war became immediate and immanent, intelligence and judgement vanished. Panic set in.

I didn't know what to do as, I am sure, Major Hasan didn't know either. The real horrors that we had been living and working with so long tumbled over us and screamed at us to do something and do it fast.

Since we had been putting so much effort into disassociating, remaining objective about our PTSD victims and their circumstances, we hadn't given a glimmer of a thought to what we would do when faced with the possibility that we, too, would get in line for horrors of our own. Under such conditions, only the most irrational solutions seem possible. The use of force seemed the only way out.

In my case, the force I used was on myself; I attempted suicide. I had seen so many others pass through my station on their way to a lifetime of reliving war's deepest agony that I thought it better to take the quickest detour to a peaceful end. I did not want a life of veterans hospitals and tranquilizers. It was a stupid decision made by a man incapable of thinking clearly. I have no idea what Major Hasan could have been thinking.

Perhaps he sought to save the soldiers he killed from the horrors of war by dispatching them swiftly and unexpectedly at home. Whatever he may have thought, I'm sure he was certain that he would not survive his deeds, that he, too, was attempting suicide. Any explanation for what he did, no matter how crazy, has to be correct because what was done was done in a panic. When you are nuts, anything goes. When you are going to die, die now.

Both Major Hasan and I survived our moments of extreme panic. He will recover from his wounds, stand trial, be convicted and will have a lifetime to think about the consequences of his deeds.

I have been thinking about mine for forty years. While some may make conclusions about what happened based on Major Hasan's name, religion or origins, I choose to make my own conclusion based on my eerily similar experience during an earlier war. Here's how I see it.

War is the culprit in this tragedy, war and the people who declare it and wage it. It is easy for the Osama bin Ladens and George Bushes of this world to declare wars and prosecute them for they are the sons of wealth and privilege who will never suffer the consequences of the conflicts they seek.

Take away the war and everything is different. I end up going straight through college without being drafted and Major Hasan has a nice career as an army psychiatrist. Osama bin Laden and George Bush get lost in history. No matter what justification there may be for war, any war, the consequence of the horrors of combat are so deep and so lasting that all of us, even the best of us, are ruined by it.

Since he survived the shootings, Major Hasan will now have his forty years to relieve the massacre and try to make some sense of it. War just isn't worth it and this shooting proves it.

-- (Salem-News.com)

Source: Middle East Online