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The Blood Meridian Readers’ Support Group meeting was held yesterday afternoon at the Shangri-La Mall in Mandaluyong. Our original plan was to have it late at night in some dive with grilled meat and Jack Daniels, but since it was 2pm we had coffee and cupcakes. To match the reading matter the cupcakes were blood-red and the coffee very black. In attendance were Balqis, Momelia, Lestat, Brewhuh23, Niko and myself.

We talked about the historical context of Blood Meridian—the Wild West, American expansionism, the genocide of the native Americans, and why the natives were called “Indians” (because Christopher Columbus insisted violently that they had reached India). We noted that a few decades later the Americans would arrive in Asia and the Filipinos would be brutally subjugated in a war we don’t learn about in school. It sounds organized and “deep” when we put it that way, but it was more like a two-hour chismis session. (It was supposed to be an episode of Jessica rules TV but the participants did not want video recordings. “Huwag, haggard ako,” said Momelia.)

All agreed that Blood Meridian is a difficult read. For Lestat and Momel it was not the unrelenting violence or the use of dialect that made it a slog at times, but the long sections in which the author is describing the landscape. The language is beautiful, but they wished he would get on with the story. Which got us to talking about how we have lost our patience because we expect everything to happen at wi-fi speed.

Despite the difficulty we went on reading, roped in by the sheer weirdness of the world McCarthy has written. And the whole time we felt completely, unbearably alone. There wasn’t a shred of goodness or sympathy we could cling to. In Blood Meridian the universe is vast and spectacular but there is nothing in it for you. If you look for meaning you will not find it. The protagonists don’t even bother looking. The only articulate character is Judge Holden who is unspeakably evil The violence is particularly meaningless, people killed for no reason whatsoever, and reading what I just typed I wonder how I could’ve expected killing to have some meaning—is it because literature and cinema have portrayed war as heroic and glorious?

We talked about the ending and how the fate of the book’s protagonist The Kid is never stated directly. That after detailing the most gruesome, grisly events the author would decline to say what happened exactly, that it is the only sight in the book that witnesses react to in horror. . .do we want to know?

And after finishing the bleakest book we have ever read, we were happy. There was the satisfaction of having accomplished a great feat. There was pure relief. My own life seemed wonderful, bursting with love and affection. Balqis had the most interesting reaction to Blood Meridian: the sense of alienation was so overwhelming that it leached into his subconscious. One night he had a dream in which he realized, years after their deaths, that his parents were really, truly gone. He woke up feeling ravenously hungry, and for the first time in history he went downstairs and had a meal in the middle of the night.

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Our readers’ support group meeting was held in the conference room of the One Shangri-La Place show suite at Shangri-La Mall. One Shangri-La Place is the complex that is being built in what was once the Shang parking lot—the construction site that’s causing all the traffic? They assured us that it is worth the temporary hassle.

After our discussion coffee we entertained ourselves by pretending we live there.

Our readers went into the closet to wonder when a straight guy would ever join one of our discussion groups.

We admired the big shiny kitchen with the stainless steel fixtures.

Thank you to One Shangri-La Place for allowing us to use their showroom.