Archive for books

Walking on Water

{ June 30, 2008 @ 1:36 p06 } · { books, life, meaning, thoughts }
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As I go through the day, I can’t help but think if I am indeed living in reality. Because in the core of my being, I feel that this is not it. I know. I’ve read it in the Bible and it’s so easy to say to yourself after reading it that it’s so true. That this is not yet the reality that we should be living in. Everything in this world is saying that this is all just temporary. And I have to admit that really feeling it’s temporariness is a great feeling. Everything suddenly becomes real.

After Take No Glory left Dumaguete, everything just changed. I cannot explain this awesome feeling but it is real. God is real and there is no turning back. I chose to walk with Him and I am discovering more amazing truths everyday.

Everything that I do in this world will leave a mark no matter how ordinary that can be. Time is not what we know it to be. It’s not just what we see in our watches. Time is not limited to what we do in this earth.

While we are talking about time, let me share with you something amazing I have just read from Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle:

As the echoes of the beginning linger, so, too, all that moves outward in gradually diminishing but never-ending sound waves. One of the more delightful mysteries of sound came when the on one of our early spaceships heard a program of nostalgic music over their sound system and radioed NASA to thank whoever it was who had sent them the program. From NASA came a baffled reply that they had sent the astronauts no such program and knew nothing about it.

This phenomenon triggered a good deal of interest and research: who had beamed the music to the astronauts? What was its source? All the radio and tv programs all over teh country that day and hour were checked out, and none of them was responsible for the music the astronauts had so enjoyed. Further research. Could they all have imagined hearing a nonexistent program of old popular songs? Was it a kind of mass hallucination? It seemed highly unlikely. Research finally revealed that that particualer program had been broadcast in the 1930s.[emphasis mine]

That just goes to show that everything that we do will always count. I don’t want to waste my time.

We have never been taught this amazing truth in the classroom when we were learning how to tell the time. In this world, we may never have to know it but if you’re looking for reality, this may count a lot. Everything that we know of reality is only a small percent of the real thing. There are a lot of things that our finite minds can never grasp. At least, not in this lifetime anyway.

You may be asking why on earth is that important. I have been trying to write stories and nothing makes sense. I figured that the reason behind that is I have to unlearn the “grown-up” perspective of this world. Honestly, it makes everything hard. Our so-called self-control and understanding can only do harm in us.

We have to be childlike in a way. People may be telling you that fairy tales or fiction in general is a waste of time. That you should be reading biographies or scholarly books. Why don’t you balance it? Fiction holds a lot of truth. The kind of truth that you can never find in “things that make sense”. Remember, Jesus never preached the truth in highfalutin words. He used parables, stories.

If life seems worthless to you, remember how you were when you were in the fourth grade and everything was new and beautiful. Remember the feeling when there was nothing between you and the world. And walk on.

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.      

 

Rant

{ September 18, 2007 @ 1:36 p09 } · { books, love, rant }
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This is going to be just plain ranting. I need to de-stress myself before starting on my Com21 homework. Okay. So my ranting time starts now…

What have I been doing for the whole afternoon? Doing my BC25 stuff. I’m drained. No. Wait. I shouldn’t be drained. Kuya Noel did all the work this afternoon. I guess thinking about something too much (particularly something that has a deadline) makes one drained. All my creative juices are squeezed out of my head because of all the formal stuff that BC25 requires (wordiness is a no-no). I feel so…uninspired.

My only source of inspiration at the moment is my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which I won’t be having much time to read. Waaaaaaaah!! I’m getting at the good chapters. No. Let me restate that. Every chapter is a good one. That’s why I am so eager to read it. I woke up early for the past two days just to read Harry Potter 7 with a cup of hot coffee and enjoy the cool mornings we’ve been having these past few days. Reading Harry Potter 7 is…heaven. I feel like I am drinking the yummiest coffee in the whole wide world everytime I read it. But I want to take my time and savor every word, sentence, paragraph, chapter, in short, the whole book! I want to savor the giddiness I feel because this will be the last time that I will feel giddy over a Harry Potter book. All the waiting is over. No more Harry Potter book to wait for. No more eagerness in reading the whole Harry Potter book. I’ve read almost everything. =(
Even though I have waited for the seventh book ever since the I finished reading the sixth book (which was two years ago, I guess), I feel really sad that the series has ended.

Anyway, have to stop this. I still have tons of homework waiting for me and a Filipino13 exam to study for. Harry Potter can wait. But I think I’ll wake up early again tomorrow and read a chapter with a cup of hot coffee. =) Just something to wake me up in time for my 7am class.

Baghdad’s intellectual core suffered, too

{ September 17, 2007 @ 1:36 p09 } · { books, life, love }
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An article from the new York Times really caught my eye. Normally, I wouldn’t read stuff about Baghdad anymore because I feel sick and tired of the war. But this is a new angle. It wasn’t about the American soldiers anymore or about the hundred’s of Iraqis dying. This one is about the death of the Mutanabi Street market which was the source of joy of Baghdad’s intelligentsia.

Mr. Ismail turned and faced the street. “Books, books: five books for 1,000 dinars, one for 250,” he shouted, his voice thick as a tenor’s, from his years of studying acting. “Come on, come on, those who are hungry for literature!”

Exactly 15 men looked on.

    I cannot imagine how life for these men had been for the past year when a daytime curfew was imposed for almost a year. Mutanabi is the capital’s 1,000-year-old intellectual core and that day, which was a Friday, people celebrated the market’s potential revival.
    A bombing on March 5 sealed this beautiful business and it hasn’t been opened until now.
    Despite people dying because of the war, the booksellers are slowly testing their freedom by opening their beloved bookshops for business.
Here is the paragraph that really tugged at my heart strings:

Books, on the other hand, brought reliable joy. Mr. Ismail picked up a black hardcover history of the Kurds, with an attractive photo on the front. Tapping it twice with his right hand, sending dust flying, he kissed the cover and said, “We are happy to be here again with these beautiful books.”

   Imagine the solace and comfort these books are giving to people like Mr. Ismail who have been haunted by the horrors war have brought to Iraq.

Here is a poem written by Ibn Al-Utri:

Baghdad in the ninth century, after rampaging armies destroyed the city in a dispute involving caliphate succession.

“Who invaded you, Baghdad?” Mr. Shatry said, his voice rising for the performance.

Weren’t you once as dear to me as my eye?

Wasn’t there a time when people lived within you, when being neighbors was a blessing?

Then the crow came and divided them. How much grief can you endure?

I swear by God, there are people lost who, whenever I remember them, my eyes start flowing with tears.
I am glad that the comfort I have always found in reading books have reached even war-torn Iraq. That despite the terrors war have brought upon them, they haven’t forgotten the beauty and warmth of books. =)