I thought I already had a plan for my life until I read “Winter Journal” by Paul Auster

Javier Escobar
Jul 20, 2017 · 6 min read

If you plan to continue the reading, I have to warn you that there are some spoilers…

In my hometown, there is this small bookstore that I always visit due to coincidence. Every time I put a step inside is because I have to do something nearby, or wait for my boyfriend’s haircut (his trusted hair cutter works in the same building where the bookstore is). Located in the middle of a small shopping center, it’s not bigger than my bathroom. Having a modest collection of books, most of them are about self-improving, motivation and fitness. But it also has this small collection of novels, stories, and biographies. In the last twelve months, I’ve visited this place three times and left with three or more books. I tend to buy books without finishing the last ones. Sometimes I only read one or two and save the others for later. Counting, I’ve bought 10 books there and finished only three, the last one I read was “Winter Journal” by Paul Auster.

I’m not a fan of biographies but the notes on the back cover of the book caught my attention.

I’m not a book critic and I’m miles away from being a gurú on this topic. I’m just a reader and this book caught my attention, my thoughts, and feelings. It made me feel almost every story, location, scent, and emotion that he describes on its 223 pages.

The book contains some time shifts; you may be in the past of the writer and make a quick shift later to the present and come back to the past. Sometimes you make quick shifts between the past too. I love this technique which name I don’t know, but is not the technique the important, is how using this make you feel what have been the most important events of Paul’s life and how he felt about it.

I consider myself an emotional and emphatic person, and this combination made me feel lots of emotions reading such piece.

I loved how he described the 21 places where he lived, the best part of each description is that you actually travel into time and space to the location where the events were happening. You can visit small locations from Paris, New Jersey, Manhattan, Brooklyn and some other places from what you read.

There were these four particular parts of the book that left me thinking about what do I actually know about life and how I see it, (and how should I start seeing?). He had lived experiences that somehow resemble some of my own experiences in my whole life.

His grandmother’s death

Almost all of Paul relatives died of an unexpected heart attack but his grandmother. Dying relatively young, his grandmother dies of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Paul describes the sickness and each of the states lived by her. Such a slow and lethal illness. I could not handle it. I started crying reading this episode because my grandmother died seamlessly. Each of the steps was lived by my grandmother. She cried every day of impotence when she lost the ability to speak, and later the ability to write. I was just a child when that happened and I couldn’t understand why my grand mother and my mother were suffering so much.

Life can get really tough. Sometimes we think we have serious and problems that can not be solved. When I was a kid, my third-grade school teacher told me that every problem has a solution but one and it is death. In my entire life, I’ve had familiar problems, work problems, emotional problems. Sometimes I think I could not withstand with them. But I discovered a magical solution by the age of twenty (too late I think) and it was to cry a lot if you need it and then get to sleep. Once you wake up, your brain is more relaxed and you can think better on a solution. This has worked for me the entire life. When things get really tough, think that anything is tougher than death itself. And if death is the problem around the corner, then I have nothing to say. Resign and pray or whatever your religion advise you to do.

His first problematic relationship

Paul had a girlfriend whom he thought he loved… They broke up many times and they tried to make it happen. But eventually, it did not happen. I’ve been in this situation two times and sometimes I think I’m living my third… Paul, like me, realized that bad moments were surpassing the good ones. There were lots of trials with his first “stable” girlfriend. He doesn’t describe too much what were their problems. Eventually, he defined that they were not meant to be. Such a gentleman. I won’t detail my personal experience this time. But I did learn that once you use all your resources trying to make things work, in a way that you’re consuming yourself, feeling almost sick, and the other is not doing the same, then you have to retire; this type of battles can’t be won with the participation of only one of the parties. Once you retire, then you’ll be healthy again. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you have to lose to be able to win.

Facing death

Last year I had a “mortal” car accident. But it has not been the first one; I’ve had many “suicide” attempt because of my lack of attention. My mother says that somehow God loves me and my dad told me that I was born again. When I remember all those episodes, I appreciate the new opportunity that I’ve got. And likewise I said before, problems again dismiss from my head because anything but death can’t be solved and I’ve survived at least twice to it. I’m not proud of it, I’ve caused some harm in my mom’s and dad’s emotional situation. But beating death make me some kind of human that I know will be able to handle any situation. Paul almost dies when he was a child and later as a grown up man and I feel the resemble on his meditation about what is life and why it should be lived plentifully, and hear your parents when they advise you.

Finding your “ultimate” significant other

It is something that you do not plan, It just happens, it will just happen, and you’ll know it once it arrives to your life. Paul doesn’t help me with this one… He does not describe a single fight or misunderstanding with the love of his life. The woman that has been married to him for more than 30 years. Paul doubles my age and I haven’t reached the age when he found his true love. I wonder if your true love is like I can infer from what he feels about his wife: she is the best, she always right, and she is perfect. Sadly, I’ve felt that but it is not constant. I guess one day I’ll just know if he is the one, or who will be the one.

All these situations were like watching some episodes of my life from the outside happening in some other places. Every situation in Paul’s life was somehow unexpected, like life itself. Somehow I’m glad about how I’ve been able to handle them by myself using Paul’s as a reference. Yet when no life is identical and some many other factors can change its course, I’d like to live my next 30 years like Paul did.

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Javier Escobar

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No... No tengo. soy muy olvidadizo. Mi IG: javo.escobar. Mi Blog: http://intomyitlife.com

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