From Thunder to Storm

 After being in such a traumatic "accident" (if I may even call it that) the memoir won’t have much of a jubilant tone. It falls more or less into the category of sorrow even negative. I won’t dare to label this text with just one word that describes the tone just yet, after all I’ve only read one fourth of the book so I’ll probably wait and blog about it later. 

The way Brent decided to narrate the events of the accidents is brief and concise. He skims over those important details and feelings that the reader just begs to know, but that is how he felt and thought of the time. From the point where he pours gasoline on himself to when he is in the hospital I found a list if words to describe the emotion behind the text. For one part he is never pessimistic about anything, he accepts the fact he burned himself, but never is he wrathful and obnoxious. When he is having tubes being removed in the middle of the night and nurses picking out scabs from all over his body he sounds regretful. It convinces him he will never go through anything like that again, he begins to mourn to his parents in order to find some sort of conciliation as to why he is the only one who is trying to kill himself. His wounds make him feel disgusted and disturbed, “it makes me feel sick to look at them. God. I close my eyes"(40). 



I predict that the tone will change into the extremes later on in the book because he is going to have to confront everybody at school, he is going to have to find acceptance of his physique, and most importantly, he is going to have to overcome his suicidal feelings. All of this can transform some of my soft words such as remorse and mournful into wrathful and threatening when it comes to decoding the authors tone

Unrecognizable End

Committing suicide comes as a shock to me being 16 years old and not living much of a “fulfilled” life just about yet. When I read in the newspapers or hear about cases where people pull the trigger, hang themselves, and basically end their life it becomes unrealistic to me. I only stop and think wow they must have messed up really bad, they must feel so much pain it hurt to breathe just a second more, or maybe even worse, they are drowning with guilt. The Burn Journals illustrated a different version of taking away your life. Brent does not see it as mysterious and wrongful as most of us do; in fact I think he never really had the chance to reflect on the gravity of the situation. For him it was simple. I failed my science class and that can only mean punishment and suspension, so why bother suffering the consequences if I can just end it. Thank fully I have never been a witness of suicide, but unfortunately I know people who have, and I’ve seen movies where it’s all so dramatic and complicated. For Brent it’s just like starting all over, it’s an escape from facing his parents and his school for the mistakes he’s made. It’s weird of me saying that because those " mistakes" are really stupid things like failing a class and stealing school supplies , but he’s 14, his problems don’t get more complicated in the current environment he’s living in.

The most important part in the book I’ve read so far about is Dr.Rubinstein's visits. Brent does not like her at first for he’s used to the cuddling and feeling sorry from the people around him, he hasn’t even had to deal with the questions of why he did it up until here. Still it was surprising just how quickly he was able to open up to her.
"How many times have you tried to commit suicide?" “I don’t know maybe three or four" he says. This can only lead me to believe that he didn’t know he was doing something wrong and concerning until he was put through living an entire month in hospital grounds, going surgery after surgery and having to look at his purple bloody hands and enduring skin replacement on a daily basis. As a reader when he says “I won’t do it again" I honestly believe him, I try to put myself in his shoes even though it’s a pretty hard situation to stand by with. I am intrigued to find out how he will react to visits from his friends. Will he find his own world embedded in his skin like with Alice Walker, or will he fall into a road of recovery after depression and regret?

Kids just Wanna Have Fun!

Wow 15 pages into the Burn Journals and we already have a suicidal kid that apparently has already tried hanging himself and cutting his wrists. I would accept this if the character was a screwed up teenager with a handful of issues like in The Runaways, or like Kevin in the most disturbing movie I saw this weekend We Need To Talk About Kevin with Tilda Swintom. Now that’s something to cry about! But that’s not what the burn journals are about.
Brent is in seventh grade and he seems to be living up to the dream of being popular, being the class clown, messing with girls etc. He has a mom, dad, brother and dog. It’s like serendipity all over. I felt like he was dramatizing his life in a whole new maturity level, for example on page 18 he gives Stephen an Ace of Spades, so symbolic and strong he probably wants it to represent his will or last words. It just makes me want to slap him in the face saying “Hey wake up you’re only like what 13 and have a whole life ahead of you, it’s not like you’re in the notebook!"

It’s funny how he talks with his friend Laura so casual like “I’m going to go home today and set myself on fire". If it were me I would just laugh it off, but no. He was literary going to set himself on fire for all "the pain he’s caused". It’s interesting how compared to Darin Strauss who can write an entire memoir on just one moment that happened in the blink of an eye, Runyon did something so crazy and unjustifiable in a readers point of view and still he didn’t explain much as to why. Once he bathes his robe in gasoline you can’t help but think... s%#t just got real ( it’s not like he doesn’t throw in a few occasional f bombs in his memoir).He seems full on determined, but in that last second when he holds the match he does question himself, "Should I do it?". Let’s stop and think for a moment. We’re not talking about the kind of doubt that eats your insides when sending a cheesy text to your crush, were talking about burning yourself alive. The worst part comes when he lights the match but it burns out. That has to feel like playing Russian roulette with your life! Phew ok you dodged that one bullet, but now from somewhere deep inside you have to find the courage to light yet another match!

In all of this commotion if hospitals and tubes I couldn’t help but notice how Brent started to see everything in a beautiful way. Of all the things he did this is perhaps the only feeling I can relate to. He had just seen his reflection in the microwave, and after seeing 8 straight episodes of greys anatomy I can tell you third degree burns are not a pretty sight. He sees his mom’s eyes, pictures the Hawaiian volcanoes and it all seems beautiful because it is, he probably would have never thought about beauty if he hadn’t seen his face.
Also I couldn’t help but notice occasional humor in such tragedy. I have to admit I giggled a little when he compared the faces of his dog and his brother when they opened the door to a living torch, and when he couldn’t help but check to see if his penis was ok. I feel like he was being 100 % honest. He didn’t write about what people expected him to feel or expected him to react. He simply wrote what was running through his mind as a boy, and yes that included tits, masturbation, and sometimes just skipping the whole medical part of his collapsed lungs and recalling he just wanted to go home.

Augustine's Vocabulary Torture

While Augustine is off picking "suitable" women to please his shameful addiction to pleasure, he leaves me a list of monstrous vocabulary words for me to look up, otherwise his memoir becomes quite complicated. It's exhausting. I am left with a dictionary in hand page after page, reading how he lures in his next concubine(oh there we go another vocab word...... it means a woman who cohabits with a man without being legally married to him, so more or less a mistress in my own words). 


Acquiesced: to comply (with); assent to without 






Catechumen:(noun)
a person, esp in the early Church, undergoing instruction prior to baptism







Debar:(verb)
- To exclude or shut out; bar.
-To forbid, hinder, or prevent.

Calumny:(noun)
- A false statement maliciously made to injure another's reputation.
- The utterance of maliciously false statements; slander.


Alypius: A geographer and a vicarius of Roman Britain, probably in the late 350s AD. He replaced Flavius Martinus after that vicarius' suicide. His rule is recorded is Ammianus XXIII

                                                                                                                                                         
Mirth:(noun) 
laughter, gaiety, or merriment