The Joys of Reading

I've always been a story addict. Loved fantasy when I was a kid. They're not always books. There's drama on radio, when I was little and I was looking over my kid brother while Mama worked in the kitchen--about twin brothers born with wings, the evil one looked like an angel while the good one looked like a demon, and people who judged what they see (which is kind of real worldly), and good triumphing over evil. When I close my eyes, I could almost feel the wind on my face as the good character described the feeling of soaring in the sky. And of course there's the beautiful mermaid who fell in love with a handsome human in one of those comics (komiks) we hide under the bed because Papa didn't want us to read them for fear of what we kids would see which would be very awkward to explain--if they would bother at all. They're not part of the generation of parent-children bonding, I'm afraid.

I've always felt that stories belonged to this other world separated from the real world not by physical boundaries but by walls created by the mind. There you can rest, if that is what you want to do. There you can dream, stretch your creative muscles. There you can soar with the wings of a dove or an eagle. Whatever landscape you make of that world, it will follow you. You can scare the hell out of yourself even and no one will mind you. During schooling, I discovered my librarian/teacher aunt's library in her house, and I started reading books I find there. That's where I was introduced to The Hobbit. By that time, I was devouring stories I found in the Bible. Epics, really. Glorious and romantic... though as a kid who cannot mask the truth of their thoughts, I wondered how God could be so cruel and prophets make stupid mistakes. There also was this giant typewriter that sadly got ruined when their house perished on fire. I also discovered that our library in my high school also carried non-boring books, and I went through Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. I discovered My Sweet Valentine pocketbooks outside of school, of course, and Helen Meriz, Maia Jose and Maria Elena Cruz were my favorites. There were Robert Ludlum, Kathleen Woodiwiss, Anne Rice, Stephen King, Michael Chrichton among the mix as I transitioned to college. By that time, my notebooks were littered with my "notes". Either they were written love stories, or in comics. Those notes got me through Chemistry Class. These books made me so ignorant of reality and real boys, really, that by the time I was nineteen, I was married and with my first baby. But that's another story. Stupid, really. And a whole lot of feelings over it. So that's another story I may never be willing to tell.

Anyway, I still love books, even now that I have written numerous novels (short stories of 25,000 words) and have had my share of tribulation and angst of the life of a published writer in my little pot of the world. Loving books is my saving grace when writing stories drain me out. I could never be grateful enough for audio books, because when I get old and my eyesight fail I will still be able to enjoy my favorite companions. That is a big comfort. There was a time when books gave me an alternate universe to run to when reality did not make sense to me at all. Why do adults do the things they do and then say something else? Why do they treat kids like they never learn anything from what they see, and then get surprised with what come out of the little devils' mouths? Why is love wrought with so many meanings that do not mesh with what I see before me? Why are  boys so stupid? Why are girls so stupid? What is life? What is commitment, REALLY? What is the difference between a literary hero and a real hero? When will the time come that I will truly believe they exist? What is my purpose on Earth? What can I give to society that will make me worthy to be called a member of the community? Will I reach old age? How? Questions, questions. Questions I used to run away from. Now that I'm older, books--stories--explain this to me. They make sense of what do not make sense. Because reality is something that truly does not make sense at all. The French Revolution did not make sense. The Holocaust did not make sense. The Japanese Occupancy did not make sense. But years later, books explain them and we understand a little. I hope enough to not make them happen again.

And still more, books make life truly simple if you will let it. A. N. Raquelaure  (Anne Rice) made me feel, after her trilogy about Sleeping Beauty's sex slave experiences, that I can go through life blissfully--it'll never be as hard as when Sleeping Beauty went through in her worst reality!  And God, how hard my life is! Harry Potter strengthened my principles. Vampire Academy made me realize it is okay to always show a brave face--and throw one dirty word or two against adversaries ESPECIALLY because they deserve it. I also found my literary hero in Richelle Mead's other series, Georgina Kincaid. I mean, who wouldn't fall for sweet Seth Mortensen? And Anne Bishop... oh, her exotic Black Jewels Series... hypnotic, mesmerizing... and though my favorite is witch queen Jaennelle Angeline, I hope to have assassin Surreal's spine. A New Heaven and New Earth introduced me to my ego--and gave me the perverse satisfaction that not all of my past stupid deeds were MY fault, nyehe. The Bible introduced me to the Goddess of Wisdom later in life, when I finally learned where to look and what editing mistakes to see. I mean, I was like a blind person. She was there all along! And reason why my twins both have Sofias linked to their names. And like at this minute, Fifty Shades of Grey  proved to me that curiosity does not kill all cats. (Though I still have to find out why Christian Grey became Christian Grey. I'm in the middle of the first book. Hell, yes, there's porn in there, but that's not the story. I am still hunting for the story.) There is something in there. It's not all porn, really. It is okay to read it. On the other hand, I have read A. N. Roquelaure so how could it faze me? I guess it is about different perspectives, after all. 

But I'm digressing. I love reading--I cannot say it enough. It gives me so much more than the time I invest in it. It happens that in this day and age--yes, post-Harry Potter days--some people does not still understand this obsession we nerds have. The keyword is "some". Me being quirky like this, is certainly not just one story in the world. We are hundreds, thousands, millions. And we have long since invaded your world in our quiet--well, sometimes noisy, unobtrusive, harmless way. Just as war should be. Our way.

A Lesson About Burn Outs: they pass if you'll get out of its way =)

More than five years ago, after a few years of basking in a "no rejection" zone, I suddenly received rejection feedbacks for two manuscripts I passed. Back to back. The worse of it is... I believed what's written there. They were particularly harsh because that was a time when they do pass harsh, personal-smelling, gritty, cruel, evil rejection feedbacks. Like you haven't written anything good at all and they always regarded you as trash... as if they're just waiting on the sidelines for you to trip and expose yourself for what you really are. That kind of thing.

(OK, I wish now I didn't destroy the bloody-shit rejection slips years ago so I can have an explanation why I feel this way still. But alas... memories last until dementia. And you can't even be sure you're that lucky.)

Anyway, since you're geared to work like a horse, the habit of producing something a day or two is not easy to shake away from your psyche. Someone should have been there to tell you to rest when you're tired. Ease your worries that you don't have to die to feed your family. No guilt-trips when you can't produce anything now except something worthier than a toilet paper. Suddenly, you're all alone and everyone treats you like the plague. Like you have HIV and it passes through sight. Anyway, to make it short--no professional friend at all. It's a paralyzing phase. The fear--the terror of thinking you will never feel that powerful surge of inspiration to write something good--freezes you. You feel smaller than a cockroach. When all you needed is a freaking advice to tell you to just STOP. Stop everything. Turn your back on them. And take a freakin' rest.

Then take the negative from the mess and throw it out the window. Consider the mess again and you'll see it's not all mess at all. You just kind of dropped the leash that will make all the links work. You've just been tricked by unfortunately cruel people that you are stupid and unimportant. Eat a little chicken soup. Everyday is not a bad day. Break the surface and breathe. You're not alone, you just... don't trust easily smiling people anymore. Geez, stupid you... you should have learned that in first grade. Weren't it hard when you were receiving rejection slips before, when you were still trying hard to get published, and you don't yet know those people? Breathe. It's almost exactly the same thing. Except in the recent rejection slip, you don't even get their freaking names. Anonymous editors. Can't even put a face on the ones who slammed you.

Because you know you did not get there at all if you haven't been brave. Remember when you sent your manuscript out on trembling hands? Hell, no. Everything's trembling. You were sweating all over. It wasn't a pretty picture at all. But you still sent that manuscript with your soul in it. And you do love what you do with all of your heart. And it is your fault, too. You let them feed your ego 'til it gets bloated. So get rid of the ego and their chummies. Be brave again. Love again. And learn again. Life's lessons are gifts. Don't throw away the gifts. Make yourself your inspiration. Create again. And hope the story that doesn't get written except on blogs will help others going through the same thing. Which is the most important thing of all.

And well, it is therapeutic. Kind of like plates crashing on walls. Whatever heals. 

Even if it takes a long while. Go back. Create again. 

God did not give you that gift to just let it waste away. 

Besides, it sucks staying another minute on the "rejected" zone.

      

A Thorn That Always Pricks

Ghaahhh!!!

You know when you're helping with you kid's assignment, and it's for Makabayan, and you see there a cleaned up/mocked up version of why Europeans sent expeditions to uncharted territory, and historians say there that they are seeking new discoveries or completing maps or something like that as if that's the only reason for it? And you wish you can just tear those pages off and to million pieces because it is not entirely true and reasons unwritten are the ones most important? And then you read there what your country learned from Spaniards...   AS IF these are the only reasons why your ancestors learn at all? They did not need to murder them, kill them, rape the women, teach them their cruel version of God and mutilate and burn everything that makes us who we are to the point that later generations say we are a country with no identity. Spaniards held us up for centuries. And we still could not shake off the lessons of corruption our government learned from their leeches. It's a thorn that will always prick until I die. And grr... I will never hear the end of it!

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

This  book is a page-turner, gripping, heart-wrenching, and thought provoking. Jenna Blum is  one of a few writers starting to brave the front of using a German perspective of the Holocaust. There are harrowing scenes in the book but if you have read other books about World War II  or has watched Steven Spielberg's movie, Schindler's List , these scenes  will not likely to shock you anymore. It is also a thriller, and although Trudy's part cannot measure the grip Anna's part has had on me, I had definitely turned pages, chapter after cliff-hanging chapter, and finished the book in one sitting in a day. Err, except when I had to fix coffee and when I had to go to the loo. I can understand why it has become one of the top favorites of Book Clubs all over America or why Jenna Blum is one of Oprah's Top 30 Women Writers. As a woman's literature, this is one of the best I've read, although I still consider Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance a WWII book favorite. I hope to come across her next book, The Stormchasers, in the future. The soonest possible.

Favorite Book Quotes:

“Heimat. The word means home in German, the place where one was born. But the term also conveys a subtler nuance, a certain tenderness. One's Heimat is not merely a matter of geography; it is where one's heart lies. ”

“…she should have known better than to tell him the truth. She can never tell him what she started to say: that we come to love those who save us. For although Anna does believe this is true, the word that stuck in her throat was not save but shame.“

“… It’s like being in a sort of club, isn’t it?  A bereavement club.  You don’t choose to join it; it’s thrust upon you.  And the members whose lives have been changed have more knowledge than those who aren’t in it, but the price of belonging is so terribly high.”

“Life is so often unfair and painful and love is hard to find and you have to take it whenever and wherever you can get it, no matter how brief it is or how it ends.”

“Why should they be permitted the cleansing of conscience that accompanies confession?  It is analogous to adultery; the guilty party, far from spilling out his misdeeds and easing his mind while injuring the innocent other, should have to live with the knowledge of what he has done.  A very particular kind of torture, subtle but ongoing.”

“The death of a parent, he says to it, is a profoundly life-altering experience, isn’t it? When I was a child, I often had this feeling of God’s in his Heaven: All’s right with the world—that’s Robert Browning. An English poet. But ever since my father died in the last war, I’ve awakened each morning knowing that I’ll never again feel that absolute security. Nothing is ever quite right, is it, after a parent dies? No matter how well things go, something always feels slightly off . . .”

The most provocative scene for me is actually a mellow one, yet, a statement when one refuses to be saved-the irony that made the title of this book more powerful and profound. When Rainer is leaving Trudy, when he says that happiness isn't for someone like him, it takes the story partly home. I can only imagine the burden of carrying the guilt of a sibling's death, watched in such a young age, the kind of death as cruel as it is. I cried buckets when **** was senselessly murdered in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (ok, so it is at the other end of Lit spectrum but you will see why I picked it on the next sentence), and I remember thinking then (this was on my first reading, since I've read the series several times already) that the Holocaust must have inspired the scene and **** could be a symbolism of the Jews. Ok, so we have all the answers that could be gathered about how that blight in History happened, but something in me is still so helpless, in disbelief, and questioning. How can a sane person really comprehend how a group of many people acted like psychopaths and killed millions of their fellow men--women, children... and babies? In this day and age, it is starting to become ludicrous to so many people when one race still acts superior to others, because this is inherently… well, scientifically and everything else, false. Why? Because of the Internet, and the phone, and it is now easy to see and understand that what makes up people in one island also makes up people in other islands in essential ways regardless of color, religion and language and no man is absolutely an island--except when it is man-made atrocity that cuts islands off from us and us from them, like war and religion. But it also relieves to understand that there were Germans then who had become complacent because most of the regular ones hadn't really known what Hitler really planned for the Jews; has no inkling of what's really happening until it was too late for them to follow their honor and morals; and was only able to scramble to be able to save their families from the effects of not just the war, but also of the insanity of mad men who believed the common falsehood that one race can be better than that of their brothers. 

Updates:

Jennifer Blum is writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of her first book, Those Who Save Us. It is going to be made into a film and I am already excited to watch it.

A Sad Goodbye The Original and Only King of Philippine Comedy

FAREWELL, TITO DOLPHY. YOU'VE BEEN A PART OF OUR LIVES AND YOUR MEMORY OF LAUGHTER, SINCERITY, SERENITY AND HUMILITY WILL LIVE ON. YOU ARE LOVED BY MILLIONS. REST WELL. 

RODOLFO VERA QUIZON, Sr.

July 25, 1928 - July 10, 2012

He is Beloved "Dolphy" to the Filipinos whose lives he has made happy for a long time.

It's been a comfort for my generation to have grown up watching your John & Marsha, your movies that have always consisted of themes of hope, kindness, responsibility, humility, and always, always of family.

How is it that only when the loss have happened, we realize how palpable or not the loss is?

In your passing, we have lost so much, yet have acquired a legacy of too many...

laughter, hope, humility, serenity, kindness, honesty, 

craft, creativity, ingenuity

a happy spirit, and above all, love.

Goodbye, Tito Dolphy.

You will rest easy to have known, as human as you are, you have done the task God gave you.

Thank you for making all of us happy.