MANILA, Philippines - Two groups of people fascinate me:
First, the good-looking ones (because the world is nicer when you are good-looking. Haven’t you noticed? It seems like a lot of mistakes are more forgivable if a good-looking person committed them).
And second? Those who disappeared.
I do not mean those who disappeared because they were abducted and abused, to be found at some forlorn grassy area with hands tied and mouth shut by duct tape. I do not mean those who merely eloped, or escaped criminal prosecution, or some million-peso debt of some sort. These are day-to-day human realities. Heck, it is the stuff of human nature and circumstances.
By people who disappeared, I am talking about those people who vanished into thin air, who walked off the face of the Earth, who did not show up to the breakfast table or to class or to a meeting one day. I am talking about those who orchestrate their disappearances, planned their sudden and secret demise, leaving no trace or clue or indication of where they may have gone.
These people fascinate me on the grounds that to disappear — to vanish — is such a brave idea, so insidious and outlandish that for a person to devise his disappearance and erase his existence, he must be strongly motivated.
For me, suicide is for the weak. There is no grandeur in killing yourself. It is like realizing that there are no chances of you surviving this particular level of Plants Vs. Zombies 2 so you just hit pause and exit to menu.
It is this strange concept of intentional disappearance that revolves around the dark and cynic world crafted by Marisha Pessl in her outstanding debut Special Topics in Calamity Physics. A mystery novel disguised like a complicated textbook, Pessl has penned a winner with this one.
It was written by a beautiful 20-something writer whose prowess for narration and thick plots is as beautiful as her portrait on the cover jacket. Pessl writes beautifully, which can be overly done in this novel but still tastefully crafted. Quotable quotes litter the pages such as, “You are a nobody until you’ve had a sex scandal.â€
Second, the debut novel was awarded Top 10 Books of 2006 by the New York Times and the John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize also in 2006.
Meet Blue van Meer
Blue van Meer is the lead character. She narrates the whole story, describing her life before, during, and after the series of main events that compose Special Topics. She is this very well-educated and eloquent young lady, being a daughter of college professor Gareth van Meer. Mr. van Meer is the attractive and bookish type (Johnny Depp-ish, actually) capable of attracting bombshells of all sorts. After the death of his wife, he brings along his only daughter year after year teaching in one college after another across numerous states before they finally settled down in Stockton, North Carolina.
Welcome to Stockton
In Stockton, Blue attends St. Gallway, a private educational institution that is very much Gossip Girl complete with that preppy school uniform, spoiled kids, and passive teachers. In St. Gallway, Blue is invited to become part of The Bluebloods, a pack of beautiful and wealthy high schoolers who are suspiciously close to a film teacher, Hannah Schneider. Schneider is a dashing lady with an eclectic taste for mismatched furniture and for sleek clothing. She has a deep knowledge of film noir, a keen eye for disappearance in the newspapers, a mysterious foray into prostitution, and a ghastly death later in the novel.
This is the world Blue van Meer lives in and these are the people she mingles with.
Pessl won me over with this mystery. It is dark, foreboding, and also intelligent. I wish I could write forever about this novel as it is so thickly plotted with very rich personalities as characters. But if there is one reason that Special Topics is worth talking about, it is that it represents this: the mystery of the human soul, and the tragedy of the human life.
What moment or event has you telling yourself, “I wish I could run away?†I remember one. I asked myself that earlier this year. I felt the strong need to find my soul. To search for myself. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to find that in the comforts of the city I call home with all its familiar corners and familiar faces. For a moment there I wanted to escape reality, the demands of the people around me, the strong grip of human insanity disguised as “living in a civilized society.†I felt the desire to leave my phone, pack up my things, and I thought of not coming back.
Whenever there is an occasion for me to read or hear news of certain disappearances, I wonder if it was incidental or if these people had planned it all along. Truly, what in this world is worth staying for?
They may have made a bold choice to disappear. Wherever they may be — in some deep forest, in abandoned buildings, in some foreign territory — they probably did something none of us would be so bold to do. They made the right choice, or maybe not, but as they stepped back to observe us who remain and thrive and chug along this rat race, they see the grand scheme of it all, this tragedy that is the human life, how we survive for the next day or the next month, putting up a front of happiness in our interactions and in social media, pretending to be people we’re not, at the mercy of people we don’t like, held at the tail by a cruel deity called fate.
And for us who stayed? We who are being scarred in the process? I dared myself to stand at the edge of the possibility of disappearing, but chickened out and chose to stay. Call it cowardice. Call it whatever you want. I figured that even if there may be a million reasons to leave, there are twice as many reasons to stay. Life is messy and yet it is charming at the same time — like a person you know is bad for you but you cannot leave behind.
Truly, “some people pull the trigger and it all explodes in front of them. Some run away,†Pessl writes. “When your moment comes don’t be afraid.
“Do what you need to do.â€
THIS WEEK’S WINNER
Michael Veñegas Baylosis, 21, is a CPA from the University of St. La Salle. He is yet to start his career in the business sector and is looking at investments, corporate finance, and business combinations. He strongly believes in the cause of financial literacy in the country and for more Filipinos participate in the local financial market. Michael supports underground art and rock music. Secretly he wants to start his own rock band, and have tattoos all over his arms. But not now.