a song, a tetralogy, a franchise

There is a recent addition to my immense obsession with the Twilight saga. It is a song from the upcoming New Moon soundtrack. The soundtrack is getting quite a bit of buzz for being an interesting, albeit moody, companion to the film and novel. The song is called "Meet Me On The Equinox" and is by Death Cab for Cutie. I am not particularly fond of the video, but the song is pretty fantastic with emotive lyrics and a haunting refrain: "Everything ends."

Death Cab For Cutie |MTV Music

In case you were curious about the other things I love about the Twilight saga, here is a short list:

1) Kristen Stewart because she is fierce

2) The theological questions the books raise regarding right and wrong, heaven and hell, souls, humanity, monsters, commitment, the erotics of abstinence, and choice

3) Stephanie Meyer's stay-at-home-mom-turned-novelist success story

4) How fricking big and pretty the books are

5) The mania over the novels!

For me, it is very exciting to have so many people, particularly young people, excited about a book. People cannot get enough of these books - they cannot get enough of reading! This sort of fever for books is something I relate to and cherish.

Certainly, most writers do not write novels so that there is someday a lunchbox or a clothing line inspired by their characters. However, there is something terribly exciting about people being so obsessed with a story. People are crazy about a world that someone dreamed up and brought to life.

While a multi-million dollar franchise is not necessarily a part of my ambitions as a writer, I would love to make readers feel as much as Stephanie Meyer does. I cry, I laugh, I blush, I worry, I gasp each time I read one of her books. If I could do that to a reader, I would feel like I accomplished something - like I got through, like I communicated, like I said something.

Don't you worry about the haters, Stephanie! Twilight and all the subsequent novels are wonderful.

With the opening of New Moon just a few weeks away, I am relishing all the Twilight mania while it lasts. After all, pop culture phenomenon or not, this craze will pass. As Death Cab says:

Everything, everything ends.

The above picture is my own. I crushed and preserved rose petals in a copy of Eclipse. It is a custom I learned from my mother. 

manifesta of a zafatista

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz tells us a Dominican creation story. Adam, Eve, the serpent, and the Garden of Eden play no part in this genesis. In Diaz's tale, there are only Tainos and Africans, invading Europeans, and the land. Diaz writes that when Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, the world was hit with fukú. Fukú is “a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and Doom of the New World” (Diaz 1).

The New World is fallen, and colonization is the original sin from which all subsequent loss, misfortune, and brokenness stem. According to Oscar Wao, almost anything can be the work of fukú - a hurricane, freak accident, or food poisoning. However, after reading about the lives of the characters in the novel, one can discern that the most sinister curses are the legacies of colonization. Poverty, racism, militarism, patriarchy, and self-hate, to name a few, are all fukú.

But Dominican folk wisdom contends that we New World babies have not been left defenseless against fukú.

"Only one way to prevent disaster from coiling around you, only one surefire counterspell that would keep you and your family safe. Not surprisingly, it was a word. A simple word (followed usually by a vigorous crossing of index fingers). Zafa."

(Diaz 7)

If fukú is what puts up divisions between us, zafas are what break down these walls. If fukú is danger and persecution, zafas are protection and sanctuary. If fukú is oppression and silence, zafas are freedom and imagination.

Diaz offers his first novel, Oscar Wao, as a zafa - a counterspell to all the hardships and distortions of history.

Here, a definition:

Verb

zafar (first-person singular present zafo, first-person singular preterite zafé, past participle zafado)

(transitive) To loosen; to untie.

(reflexive) To come undone; to loosen up.

(reflexive) To free oneself of; to get free of.

Source: Wiktionary.

The verb zafar is the perfect description of what good writing can do. It can loosen our bonds, help us find the strength and consciousness we need to untie one another and ourselves, and overturn the original curse of fukú.

I want to be a zafatista - zinging folks left and right with literary blessings. I want my stories to be the uttered words and crossed fingers that help my people be free.

Thus, I write to you from this blog. I will share some words and some pictures, some thoughts. Please send me your blogs so that I may read your work. Hopefully, together we can be some sort of community, counterspell.

Zafa!