Archive for November, 2007

Addict

{ November 16, 2007 @ 1:36 p11 } · { books, love }
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It’s the high feeling. The feeling that the world shrinks and everything around you vanishes. It’s the irritation when someone disturbs you. the dreamy sigh when you reluctantly decide to rejoin the real world. This is addiction. 

I’ve been reading books ever since I could read. No. Let me rephrase that. I’ve been reading books ever since I memorized one. So that’s not not called reading, right? Well, other people thought I could read since my eyes moved while I would read out loud. And everything I read is correct. That book was a Mother Goose Book. I still remember how much I loved it. It was big and hardbound. It had beautiful illustrations and I learned about a house that was inside a house which is inside another house and so on. That was when my love affair with reading and books started.

When I was in 4th grade, I started reading the Baby-Sitters’ Club books by Ann M. Martin. I was captivated by the simplicity of her words yet the way she described things, like Stacey’s fashionable clothes, Claudia’s creative style, their shopping and baby-sitting adventures and whatnot. I collected a lot of those books and reread them many times.

Tidbit: It was because of the Baby-Sitters’ Club that I got curious about debate (Kristy and the Kidnapper). =)

The series ended in 2000 and it’s a good thing that I bought the last book the same time it was released. I practically grew up with Kristy’s leadership skills, Mary Ann’s quietness, Claudia’s art, and Stacey’s New Yorker behavior. I can say that I had the best childhood because of them.

I started exploring other teen books like Gossip Girl, The Clique, Sweet Valley Jr. High, etc. I spent my high school days with those rich snob girls and got lost in their world of fashion, back-biting, expensive juices, trips to New York, brawling over the latest designer clothes, and all that glitz. That was also the time when I got hooked to Candy magazine and I wanted to be a fashion designer.

College came and my taste in books and magazines changed. I now look at an author’s writing style and the plot of the story. I don’t impulsively buy books just because I collect that series. I must say that the first thing that makes me fall in love with a book is the author’s ability to describe even the simplest things in beautiful words.

Being an only child and staying in the house for days didn’t bore me at all. In fact, I love it! Being the book addict that I am, I never lived a lonely life. I now travel to India and New York through Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of Loss. I’ve been attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for seven years now and I’ve been with Harry Potter and his friends everytime they go to the Three Broomsticks and consume mugs of butterbeer. I’ve been to China with Adeline Yen Mah and witnessed her Chinese Cinderella life. I cried with her when her Niang treats her bad. I watched her stepsiblings with envy as they get to wear new European-style clothes while Adeline got traditional Chinese clothes. I studied with her while she wept. I experienced life during the Great Depression as I visited Scout and Jem Finch. I saw how blacks were discriminated during that era. I was enchanted by the courtroom scene and how Atticus finch defended marginalized people with all that he had. I learned that I shouldn’t kill a mockingbird.

Now, I’m curious about Haruki Murakami’s novels and I want to read a lot of books. I guess, being an addict is like that.

To quote Kiran Desai in The Inheritance of Loss,

“Books were making her restless. She was beginning to read faster, more, until she was inside the narrative, and the narrative inside her, the pages going by so fast, her heart in her chest–she couldn’t stop.”

I don’t want to feel trapped in monotonous routines. I want an escape. And this is my escape. My drug.      

 

Latin Mass

{ November 11, 2007 @ 1:36 p11 } · { life, love, meaning }
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A regular Sunday. My roommate and I woke up at 6am to attend the 7am mass. I hope that I can wake up early every Sunday and attend this mass as it is more peaceful and the church is less crowded. But halfway through the mass, my mind seems to fly away from the church and the mass and it settled on my unfinished news stories for Com22. I kept on revising a day schedule in my head while “listening” to the homily. After church, grab some breakfast, start writing my news stories, then go to the briefing for the David Pomeranz concert at 1pm. I can never give all my attention to what the priest was saying. Unlike Wednesday college nights, my whole attention is on the message of God and my mind stays put. What is it with the regular Catholic mass that it just can’t catch my attention for a whole one hour?

I think it’s because I’ve been attending these masses since I was a baby. No. I didn’t attend. My mother dragged me to go to church. But when I opened my inbox and read the article in New York Times about Pope Benedict XVI allowing the traditional or Tridentine Mass and listened to the audio slideshow, it was mysterious, enchanting. And for me, it seemed more sacred than the Mass I attend every Sunday in English or the vernacular. There really is something about the traditional mass that makes it more solemn and quiet.

According to Kelly Rein, 16, “It’s quiet. People are paying attention. In the English Mass, it’s noisy. There are babies crying. But here people are completely focused on God.”

More than 40 years ago , the groundbreaking Second Vatican Council introduced Mass in the vernacular, sending the Latin Mass into disuse and alienating some Catholics.

But last summer, Pope Benedict XVI eased restrictions on the rite, and new celebrations of the Latin Mass are flowering. To the surprise of many, the rite has attracted priests and parishioners too young to have experienced the Latin Mass when it was the norm.

The Tridentine Mass was codified at the Council of Trent in 1570, after which it is named. In it, the priest faces the altar, not the congregation. He prays in Latin, much of it in a whisper, although readings from Scripture and the sermon are in the vernacular. A missal in Latin and English allows parishioners to follow along.

“There’s a curiosity, and it is consistent with people looking for the transcendent and holy, which they maybe didn’t see in the Mass they attended growing up,” said the Rev. Keith F. Pecklers, professor of liturgy at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Reading all this makes me want to go to Rome or somewhere where a Tridentine mass is performed. I want to feel the mystery and experience it personally. Maybe…….

Source: The New York Times, November 10, 2007