De la razón al caos

The good news is I managed to pre-order The Fault in Our Stars in time. The bad news is I’ll be getting it just until around March because it’ll be shipping to the house of my aunt who lives in Georgia. It’ll stay there until my grandmother visits them around February, brings it back with her, and then visits us for my birthday. So, yeah, it’ll be a long wait, but I’ll bet it’s worth it.

fishingboatproceeds:

(…)

Note 2: If you preordered the book and have not received it, it is safe to assume that you probably did not actually preorder the book (I mean, it has been more than a month) and you should probably contact whomever you ordered the book from. (Unfortunately, I cannot address problems like that, because I don’t have like a personal relationship with Amazon or anything.)

(…)

This is about how I preordered the book, haven’t received it but still know with a one-hundred percent certainty that I actually did preorder it. It’s a long story, and I wouldn’t like to tell it before it ends (with me receiving it). Oh, life, the problems you give me.

I very recently found out about John Green, the Vlogbrothers, and The Fault in Our Stars, being a follower of Mark Reads. So far, I’d bought all of John Green’s books for Kindle, because, as many of you might now know, I do not live in the United States. Actually, I don’t even live in a country that has an Amazon of its own, but that’s the magic of a credit card — even if they do charge you more for most titles. So, when I heard John Green would be signing all pre-order copies of TFiOS, I had already accepted my fate: shipping would be prohibitively expensive!

Then, a few days before release, I learned that my grandmother, who lives in the same country that I do, but not in the same city, would be visiting my aunt who does live in the U.S. So I tried and I tried and I tried to contact this aunt of mine to ask her if I could have the book shipped to her place and finally did the day previous to the release date. I promptly placed my order (IT WAS STILL A PRE-ORDER!) and waited.

So began my copy’s journey from… wherever Amazon warehouses are to my aunt’s house. And so, while many regular Nerdfighters were happily showing off their J-scribble to the world (at least to the Tumblr world), my aunt got the book at her house and I just sat, as Mr Jack Johnson would put it, “sitting, waiting, wishing.”

Some days after that, my grandmother visited them for like a month. I phoned her while she was there to make she made sure she had put the book in her suitcase, as she usually forgets stuff wherever she goes (which doesn’t really matter, because she travels a lot.) So she did, and the book travelled with her to my country, where it lay hidden away somewhere, waiting for the moment to be read (since my grandmother doesn’t read English, and I’m not sure if my aunt did).

So, a few days ago, Mom went to my grandmother’s city to attend some courses regarding the small business we run. Also, you know, contact suppliers, buy material, all that jazz. And yes, she brought the book with her. So finally, on the twenty-sixth day of February in the two-thousand and twelfth year of the current calendar, at approximately eight thirty in the morning, I woke up, and walked down the stair teary-eyed, with shuffled hair and still on my pajamas. I greeted my mother hugged her, sat with her for a while and talked for another while, and, before she went out for breakfast with my dad, she reached into her suitcase and grabbed the book. Of course, I had to keep my cool and not do a full Tom Cruise right there on the couch, but I did smile and thank her. And yes, it was a signed copy. My mom looked at the J-scribble and casually commented she could have made that herself. You know, I could have explained, but I just accepted it as a fact parents will never fully understand.

So here I am, with my hair still a mess and still on my PJ’s holding The Fault in Our Stars in my hand after all this time.

I also tried to take a picture of my dogs reading the book as many of you have, because apparently I live in a world where canines care about the literary content they receive, but in reality they could not be bothered to be raised from their current curled-up forms, so I left it at that.

God, you just can’t help smiling broadly when you get to page 90 of TFiOS, can you?

Oh. My. God. You know what I just realized about #TheFaultInOurStars?

MAJOR SPOILERS ABOUT THE FAULT IN OUR STARS AHEAD

On the last chapter, Hazel’s mom tells her it’s July 14th, Bastille Day, and she says that the storming of Bastille took place in such a day two-hundred and twenty three years ago. Of course the occupation of the Bastille happened in 1789. If you do the math, we can place a proper date to the events in the book. 1789 + 223 = 2012. That means that today, May 14th, 2012, Hazel is still alive. Moreover, according to Hazel’s own description, July 14th is twelve days after Augustus’ death, which happens on July 2nd, 2012. Which means, yes, Augustus Waters is not yet dead. I don’t know about you, but this discovery fills me with excitement. I know they’re fictional characters, but still. WE STILL GET TO SAY GOODBYE.

WAIT. No, no, WAIT. The way I read The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel Grace Lancaster died on Saturday. Let us grief and hope she indeed is Somewhere.