GArcía Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez was born March 6 1927 and died April 17 2014.  Márquez and Ben Okri were like gifts to a teenage me. A relief, a discovery, an inspiration. I knew after that that I wasn't stuck inside myself or the only one to see everything as fluid and whole! One of the hardest things working in an office for me was that if something went wrong in my emotional life, it completely followed me to work. If I stopped showing it on the outside it got even bigger on the inside like a tide rising or the neighbours shouting, or some fantastic things sitting next to me, you know, super conspicuously. I felt like I was transparent and everyone would or could see the THING that was making a lot of noise. I did have friends at work, and would of course mention what was up or how I felt: that X was bad and so Y and Z had also become impossible! And this person says to me, 'you really need to compartmentalise your life'. But if that works for others, it never worked for me. The usually invisible and spectacular thing I was dealing with would only evolve into a greater and more ridiculous item, and would only worsen if I dared to ignore its unspecific but real and rambling threats. Compartmentalising works if you can be blind and deaf to your own inner life, but not if it's vivid and loud and demanding. Like Márquez. I am not saying I have his talent or his vision - just that people like him, help people like me to rest assured there are other ways to live. Better ways to struggle (even if it means you are cash poor) and that it is surely better if you are as I describe, to address those conspicuous creatures that are following you around and encapsulate, compress and banish them into the genie of the page, the stage or the microphone.
Surely everyone has read 100 years of solitude?