Turtles All The Way Down: The Tightening Gyre

Another book by John green, well its not that easy to extract one thing out of his turtles' version but yeah, the story behind turtles all the way down made me laugh a bit. Rest of the story you know it has to be a romance and then separation because that's what John do. I was a bit depressed when I read about the tightening gyre. Then the metaphor of metaphor. Then the power-wielding. A lot other mind-blowing stuff. So this blog is going to a bit long. The book I had all the praises for John and Fault in our stars and nothing about this book itself. So let me give a quick intro to the characters of this exhausting book. There is Aza a school girl with a mental illness, her mom, her best friend Daisy, Russel Davis Pickett Sr. and Jr., and others. Now Aza has this mental illness in which she can’t stop thinking about the same thing and she believes that there is no stopping to this.

Now let's see what this story had to absorb and think and reflect upon. As I said Aza has a mental illness of never-ending thoughts. “You don’t pick your thoughts” and I thought about this thought. So basically what it is, is the book gave me the thought, I didn't develop it. And now when you read it I gave you this thought to think over or let it go. This is what was a bit irritating when you being a normal person with a normal head can stop a thought from invading your mind the people who can't, might face a lot of trouble. So basically you keep thinking and over thinking about the same thing for so long. Usually, we over think at times, and by the end of 15-20 minutes we are absolutely tired and frustrated, so I thought about those who suffer from some chemicals messing their brains, what will they be going through? As I live in India and going to a brain doctor or a counsellor or a psychiatrist is a taboo, you don't see a mental illness doctor else you'll be considered crazy and that will bring shame to people of your family members. Unlike in the west, at least the close ones support those who suffer. So yeah, these are the thoughts that my surrounding, the news, the medical cases made me think. These thoughts came in because I let them in. And you thought about it because I made you think about it. So, who decides what thoughts you’ll get? You know you need food when your stomach growled so your stomach, more precisely empty stomach made you think of the food. Your gut is making you think about something “it” wants you to think. When your back hurts it's your back that's giving you thoughts about the pain, not you. So, who are you? Think about it and comment below. (Science explains everything.)

Aza was a super thoughtful girl. She was conscious of the bacterias living inside her and making her system work, responsible for her being, zillion cells of her body containing their own ecosystem, their own biome. You start thinking things like that when you read some stuff out of the order and it's perfectly fine. But when you can’t escape the spiral... then you are not a single person now. “I, a singular proper noun, would go on if always conditional tense.” So basically we are a single person but we are the ones carrying so many other organisms with ourselves. It's disturbing to know that most of those organisms can literally kill us any time. I won't emphasize on it as most of us know how stupid it is to think over it when we know our immune system is in control.

“Virginia Wolf wrote: English, which can express the thoughts of the Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and headache…. The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.”

Now, this is what Azas’ doctor said to her when she came in for her therapy and referred to her pain in a metaphorical way. The short conversation that goes on between them is a quality one. And look how apt it is said that the language our ancestors developed lack the words for the pain we go through. I never really noticed how hard it is to describe the pain. We generally use metaphors to let others know. The book contains a very beautiful metaphor for the mental condition of tightening gyre. It's not just English even the language I talk in that is Hindi doesn't describe pain without metaphor. For instance, if you have unbearable pain then chances are you'll use words like ‘extreme’ ‘unbearable’ ‘crazy’ ‘killing’ etc. now these words differ in person to person tolerance. Maybe metaphor was introduced to describe the pain. 

Davis used to write small blogs, and poems he thought were stupid. There is this one poem that I loved for some reason so I'll share it with you:

"You must never let truth get in the way of beauty,

Or so e. e. cummings believed 

“This is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart”

He wrote of love and longing.

That often got him laid I'm sure,

Which was the poems sole intent.

But gravity differs from affection:

Only one is constant."

There was a thought deeper than every other and that scared a little bit too. We think that we have control over things but actually, it is not a complete truth. “Adults think they're wielding power, but really power is wielding them.” How aptly and easily it was phrased in the book. We get educated, start working to earn then we start having control and power and forget the beauty of life as we are so stuck up with all that is going on in today's world. The ease of life is considered to be a large amount of money and luxury when it's not, and we blindly give the power in inanimate hands. The damage done is realized when we are at the end. Life has so many other things to do and explore and all we do is run in a blind race. Those who choose to be away from the race leading nowhere are considered insane.

John Green is all about romance novels and stuff so I'm not writing anything about the fine lines and phrases and the thought-provoking love. Fall in love and enjoy the sweet-bitterness.