Paper Towns

I have just finished reading Paper Towns, by John Green and it was every bit as beautiful as I had expected it to be. It was heart-breakingly beautiful, bitter-sweetly beautiful, inspiring-ly beautiful and even heart-warming-ly beautiful.

It was, in a lot of ways, quite similar to Looking For Alaska, which was John's first book, but that's okay- more than okay, actually, that's good, really good because Looking For Alaska is one of favourite books for so, so many reasons, and Paper Towns shares these reasons.

What I want to really write about though, is the end of the book. If you plan on reading it, this will spoil both Paper Towns and Looking For Alaska, so turn back now, because I'm sure as hell not stopping.

The end of the book, from when Q and the others find Margo to the very end was, to say the least, thought provoking. Emotion provoking too, but I don't quite know if that's a usable phrase. Margo and Q have this big fight, which unsettled me, because, I realised, I shared Q's idea of Margo and even though I'm sure I knew deep down that Margo would not be Q's idea of Margo, I still wanted her to be. He loved her and so did I and so we both wanted her to be the Margo that he had not quite created in his head, but was still not accurate.

So they fight and then they talk about everything that had happened and things are cleared and explained and made sense- and yet, the actual plot mystery is not what I want cleared up.

And then comes more of the ending, beginning with this:
"She stares at me, her eyes and my eyes and nothing between them. I have nothing to gain from kissing her. But I am no longer looking to gain anything."
That is the type of beautiful that this book is.

The last paragraph, is a long paragraph, which really has few little paragraphs in it, but I'm not sure what one would call it and that's not important right now anyway. It did not make me cry, really, it just made my eyes well up. Q stands and watches Margo leave, thinking about what is happening and Margo is standing with her back to him but has not yet left and all I want is for Q to run to her and hug her and say goodbye again, but he doesn't. Instead, Margo turns back to him and "the physical space between [them] evaporates. We play the broken strings of our instruments one last time." And so, they kiss again, in the dark with their eyes open and it's bitter-sweetly beautiful and this is why I'm crying and then after they kiss, they rest their foreheads together, which makes me cry for a whole other reason, and then Q
"can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness."
and then it ends.

Because it ends here, maybe I could imagine that Margo stays and goes home with Q, but I know that she doesn't. I know she is kissing him goodbye but the likelihood is that even though Q is Q and not Miles (from Looking For Alaska) and even though Margo is Margo, and not Alaska and also not dead, Q will always love Margo Roth Spigelman, his crooked neighbour with all his crooked heart.

There is plenty more to be said about this book and plenty more than I have thought about- but this is all I want to say about it for now.

Merry Christmas to everyone. My friends have all gotten me the loveliest of gifts and they are all beautiful and make me happy- but I cannot go without mentioning Dom, who, in his in infinite loveliness, got my NaNoWriMo novel printed and bound and wrote the best foreward to any book that ever was and ever shall be.

Love,
Cíara.

Projects and things

I'm more or less writing this post as a sort of motivation for myself and to actually keep track of what I'm doing with my life and things. I finished NaNoWriMo, and despite how truly awful a literary piece my novel was, I'm still really proud of myself. The thing is, I realised had been channelling everything- all my crappy moods, 'cause it's not really a great time for me right now- into my NaNoWriMo, and then without that to channel everything into, things got pretty bad. But, I do actually have quite a lot of things to be doing, and so I do have more creative outlets.

1) Public Speaking - Ohmydearsweetjesuschrist asdfghjkl. The first round of the public speaking competition- which is for Mental Health Ireland- takes place on Wednesday, and my speech still isn't finished, because Ms. Corr comes up with something new every-single-day. It is fairly effing difficult to learn a speech off by heart if it never stays the same! Honestly, I know I should be glad for a creative outlet and the opportunity to work on speaking in front of people and all, but jesus christ, it's just annoying.

2) Kildare Youth Theatre Writing- Now this, I am super excited about. It's a chance for me to write a play. Really and actually write a play and then have people perform it.  I want to dance just considering it. I am a bit nervous about it, but I'm getting much better at disregarding that. I have to have an application in for this by the 31st of December, so I'm starting to work on it after Public Speaking on Wednesday.

3) Junk Kouture- I think this has to be finished by 31st of January- which suddenly seems all too soon. I decided to do it by myself this year, and actually think I've done more work because of it, but I'm kinda nervous about making and modelling the dress by myself, and to be honest, I feel a bit pretentious. Making it to fit me is just much easier than measuring someone else and all that, but I feel a bit silly. I've really only started work on this, and I can't work on the top part until after Christmas, but I'm sure it will be fiiine. Pictures to come soon :)

4) Less Than Three- This is not a definite, but it's something I would love to do. Two youtubers, Kristina Horner and Hayley Hoover, are writing a book of short stories about people meeting through the Internet, and it's a really lovely idea. As well as their own work, they are also going to take in some short stories from other people who can just write them and submit them by January 31st... so yeah, I'm going to see if I can come up with something adequate. I'm not really sure if I could come up with a good story, but it would a really great opportunity if I was to get into the book.

5) School Journalist- I'm so happy that I got to be school journalist, but now that I am, I have no idea what to do with it. Nothing happens except sport, and I'm leaving that to the other guy. Honestly, I'll probably end up doing a report on Public Speaking -.- I'm on the lookout for relevant news and stuff, but there's just nothing. I might do a feature on people's Mini Companies, as a bit of promotion, and then maybe I'll do a report on eating disorders or a good charity or something. I feel quite guilty for having not done anything yet, but I'm really stuck for opportunity- although, maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

I also have Mini Company -which I despise- regular school stuff, Gaisce, which means homework club on a Tuesday, Kickboxing on a Monday, and drums on a Saturday, some Tuesdays or Thursdays, and then whatever I do on my own obviously. I would like to do Project for Awesome, but I really haven't a notion of where to start. I'll be starting to learn ukulele when I get mine for Christmas, I have a lot of books I want to read and I really, really need to do my Christmas shopping. All in all, I'm pretty busy, and I'm still writing random scraps of literary rubbish in my diary/journal/notebook/thing-with-everything-in-it that give me some time to vent my thoughts about shitty things so that I can channel all my energy into creative things.

I shall be posting again soooon, because I am having a college-plan crisis, two and a bit years early, and I'd like to spread my thoughts out on the internets. Hope you've enjoyed reading what is essentially a to-do list with detail ^^

Peace and love,
Cíara xo