Bibliophile

I am an amateur book-lover. I've decided to pursue reading books as an educational, recreational and as a self-fulfilling hobby slash duty when I was first year college (I'm only fifteen years old then). With the myriad treasures and literary satisfaction that can be found and extracted by reading, I've made a stand: I'll be collecting and having those books that I've already read and must-read items I've overheard, referred to and browsed through the Internet. But collecting books is not a cinch.

I always cry foul to see exorbitant prices and taxed books in mainstream bookstores. Why do they oppress and limit the reading capacity of people who can't afford books of such price ranges. That's insufferable indeed. Dead authors still posthumously make a killing through their expensive and bestselling literary tour-de-force. Or is it the publishers? Damn lucky dummies. Anyhow, this is not the intention of my blog entry. I'm here to list down my ever-expanding collection of my own books. I've already read the majority of them, the minority is still pushed to the back-burner and hoarded as though books are edible tangibles.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth

The Rachel Papers – Martin Amis

Atonement – Ian McEwan

Atomised – Michel Houellebecq

The Possibility of an Island – Michel Houllebecq

The Other Side of Midnight – Sidney Sheldon

The Tunnel Rats – Stephen Leather

War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand

Mr. Murder – Dean Koontz

False Memory – Dean Koontz

The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran

The Man Whose Teeth Was Exactly Alike – Philip K. Dick

The Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

The Lord of the Flies – William Golding

BFG – Roald Dahl

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

Gargantua and Pantagruel – Francois Rabelais

The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger

The forgotten virtue

At the Sermon on the Mount according to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus laid out the rudimentary precepts of morality that are to become the foundation of the universality of the church and its dogmas. The sermon included the preaching of the beatitudes and some enlightening discourses. Profound and evoking as they are, Jesus' messages centered on spreading the love for the innate tendency of mankind to be perpetually righteous, upright, virtuous and good. We have the commandments and capital virtues to abide by, and I must say it's kind of tough to catch up with this spiritual requirements (though that is just my two cents). In our constant dismay we find many things that have supplanted our values. We tend to pet our vices rather than uphold virtues and scruples. We rather commit a sin than perform a good deed for the benefit of others.

We already forgot certain things that should be inherent to our nature. Case in point is understanding. Understanding is far deeper and complex than knowledge. You can know someone, but you cannot fully understand someone. Understanding is the sinewy agent that binds gaps and rifts. Understanding holds power vast enough to make this world a good deal of a place to live. Without understanding, we will all be left slack-jawed and incapacitated to different negative thoughts and harmful sentiments. We will all go down the drain without it. Understanding is the key to comprehend the complexity and intricacy of our society, but I'm warning you, it will leave you goggle-eyed and perplexed if you want to understand this universe in general.

Erring politicians, philandering husbands, sleazy whores, snotty brats, mentally slow individuals, homosexuals, murderers, cheaters, no-goodniks, dipsomaniacs, gluts, misfits, con artists, Sunday Christians, sexual offenders, substance abusers, promiscuous women, freaks, racists - the list is pretty much endless. We must put ourselves in the position wherein we have to understand them- why they do, act and think things like that, why their being, chemicals and nature are like that, why they are saddled for the continuity of their lives in a rough, bad and universally unaccepted situation, why are they predisposed to commit socially untoward and misbehaved actions, why are they doing things that are generally and ethically against our founded norms. Unfortunately, the concept of understanding is given less importance and is always misunderstood in this society we are all in. Not because you understand someone already means that you tolerate someone. Not because you are fully aware of something doesn't necessarily mean that you completely agree on it. Not because you express a personal understanding to a crime or action committed does not mean you favor it.

Understanding - this is a long-forgotten virtue. Should people from different color, creed and race start adopting understanding as a virtue, then I foresee less bloodshed, genocides, crimes, wars, conflicts, personal rifts, and arguments in its wake. If we know how to understand, then we will find out that the errors and imperfections we encounter in our lives are part and parcel of our human making.

A Taste of the Hinterlands

Living in the city is very stressful, least to say very exhausting. A minute of celestial silence is as improbable and far-fetched as the idea of having an oasis in the midst of a bustling and hectic megalopolis. Urban developments such as condominiums, exclusive posh villages, and residential houses with claim-to-fame mantras such as ‘paradise in the city’ and other phony craps are tending to disseminate blatant and impulsive prevarication. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. For this matter, I find rural places and bucolic locations an honest-to-goodness seclusion, an abandon to the horrors of the city, a total dissociation from the monstrous traffic gridlocks, the noxious pollution and the barbaric acts of the unlettered.

A few days ago, my mother attended a seminar at Regency Inn in Davao City, Davao and given her long stay there, she grabbed the chance to revisit her quaint island province of Basilan – one of the many lairs of insurgent ASGs, rebels and commies. The tri-media always project Mindanao as the antithesis of peace and order, a piece of hell extruded upward from below. But when my mother arrived there, it’s not. Or it seems not. Development snowballed around the island; new houses were funded by US aids and sanitation was enjoined to every islander, roads were re-blocked, widened and repaired, coastal lands were reclaimed and nourished with immaculately white sand. PGMA even funded the reconstruction of the local parish church.

But I digress. The contention of this weblog is not to laud PGMA for her fruitful although dogged efforts to sustain development in the remotest islands and places domineered by pseudo politicos. This is just a sidebar. Moving on, my mother recounted that even though development has started to unfold, their traditional way of life is still being observed. The endemic fruit-bearing trees still yield productively. The tranquility of the rural milieu is still extant and indelible.

Having said those, my mother laments how scant the electricity is due to the rotating blackouts in Mindanao, and how her bath time rituals are curbed. Isn’t the absence of electricity a truly distinguishing hallmark of rural life, away from any technological intervention? Drought there is quite incredible, she observes, because the grasses and trees are as verdant as ever, and mind you, it rained there.

When my mother arrived here in Manila, she overwhelmed us with exciting stories back from her precious homeland. She brought pasalubong and some other stuff you can seldom buy in the city. She brought makopa ( Malacca apple) which is called locally as tambis, and purple makopa which tastes like duhat, (Java plum) the fruits just shed off from the branches and disperse profusely on the ground. She also brought agar-agar (seaweed), meat of baboy-ramo (wild boar), dried fishes, squids, small-sized shaddocks, durian macaroons, bukayo, lokot-lokot, and peanut purée. She would have brought home more fruits, had she been not collared in some frivolous air security snarl wherein she was weighed and was required to pay extra. It was totally unfair, she cries foul, because she’s overweight; the hand-carried items and backpacks notwithstanding.

New Year. New Fears.

Egad. It's 2010 already, and I still couldn't come up with a probable solution to end my delusions and illusions that are constantly haunting my consciousness. I haven't end up with a neat new-year's must do and the proverbial new year's resolution as well, but I think I can outlive those things. I am just looking forward to being an organized, proactive, Homo Sapiens who is perfectly exuding the aura of resolute will and unwavering principles. By the way, am planning to buy a New Year planner, though it is almost already a month late, and I am thinking that this might be a very big leap forward for me, a monolith of an imaginary bridge to connect the distant crevices of my present situation and the near-perfect situation I am always concocting in the convolutions of my mind.

Maybe, just maybe, having a planner would put a halt to my grandstanding hallucinations about this freakin' life. I am always pitted in a whirlwind of different reveries only to learn that gradually, I find my self dissociated from the normalcy of this world. And I think, this planner, (ooh, how I badly need you!) would become my lifeline to the two contrasting worlds where I find no difficulty to slip by into. Or would open another portal to another feasible dimension or dimensions, so that I could linger in the choice of turning my back on the world I am already inured with? I dunno. Maybe I'll have the planner first.

Poisoning the Well

It was poison. Yes, it was. That delicate thing preposterously dolled up into an amateurish veneer was nothing but a harmful lump of vomit-inducing crap. It would dizzy your senses and delude you into thinking that you were great, wonderful and awfully brilliant, but the harsh reality was that, you were a sore loser. Your vulnerable stance would just exacerbate it. And all the insensitive people around you would add more bitter insults to the irrevocable injury. You thought of it as a mighty thing worthy of your short-lived attention, and that it was as good as having a vanilla-chocolate sundae all messed up on your hands and mouth, but which was just fine, because the flavor was too deliciously decadent. You would laugh at how shallow the order of some things in life was, and at your back was a horde of uncouth shadows, casting aspersions upon your unwitting and pathetic soul for doing such a thing. The big surprises you had anticipated for so long, oh, they were all but fictitious fragments imbibed on your head.

As you mull these weighty tragedies over, your mortal body would just squirm in unbearable pain brought about by a substance foreign to your being. That substance was a debilitating poison meant to ruin the flawed logistics of your already ruined life. With all these bitterness and desperation, it was just as pointless as having a cessation in your physical motor, but it was just as stupidly moronic as having killed yourself for not getting even to those who wronged you. It was poison, you are pretty sure of that, and you were resolved to take the lion’s share in your own heroic story of defeat. And to make things straight, your foolproof plan of injecting that poison to those who were heavily involved would just do well. And it was too perfect.

Farewell, Penthouse

Let’s say goodbye, the hundredth time, and tomorrow we’ll do it again

– My Chemical Romance

Penthouse – this is a special place brimful of memories that will hold a special part in the hearts of its occupants lulled to a bottomless ocean of hopes and dreams. Its lofty location is a downside to weak and shaky knees unaccustomed to endure winding stairs, with the innumerable flight of steps to boot. Getting here to feel its magnetic warmth would surely offset the tiresome jaunt. This can be the only place in the campus where only few of the many bright minds meet, where individuals of different idiosyncrasies, ideals and endeavors congregate, where brainiacs gather to postulate senseless and sensible theories, debunk faulty procedures and standards, and raise significant and not-so-significant points for this small world to acknowledge or refute. This is the only place where intense intercourses are an imperative to ejaculate the irrepressible qualms of the curious mind; and masturbation is solace for the world-weary and downtrodden spirits (of course, this is done mentally). If you want to unwind after the school hours, feel free to sing and belt out gibberish to your heart’s content and drown your sorrows with a surplus of general knowledge, anecdotes, criticisms, bloopers, juicy gossips, highbrow words, prejudices, porno reviews and all that jazz. This is the only place where euphemisms are always triple-entendre, where the genderless Christian God can have a phallus, where formalities and politeness are temporarily disregarded for the sake of barbarism, and where appearances are just superficial attributes to the deception each and everyone is capable of doing. Those who have already set foot on this hallowed ground will surely realize that life is a cosmic joke of sorts. The transience and impermanence of life is but an outright contradiction against its essence and purpose.

Should the killer boredom strike unbidden, there’s another world which lay just on the other side of this working room. It is colloquially known as the Veranda. The vistas of the Manila skyscrapers puncturing the sky, the colossal statue of Lapu-Lapu facing west, the LRT carriageway with its three generations of train cars, the massive corroding columns and girders of the former Jai Alai Building, plus a beautiful sundown rendered picturesque by Rayleigh scattering and the polluted Manila air, make it a favorite haunt for those who want to kill time and want to derive inspiration from some elusive and unseen Muses.

This place has already charmed many generations; those who are too smitten by its mystical aura can vouch for that. At this point in time, letting go of an old friend may not become a piece of cake. Packing bags, stripping it of its contents and vacating it for good are equal to saying those unutterable parting words. So long and good-bye.

Star Gazing

I always love to look at the stars, to marvel at their nocturnal beauty, and to admire them wholeheartedly like a teary-eyed child after recovery of his lost cherished playthings. So God really loves all of us, and just by looking at the stars I feel kind of extra-special because of this mystery-laden wonder. He, who flung about lump of rocks and self-illuminating gaseous balls in this ink-black stretch of vastness, is the reason behind the intelligent design of all things seen and still unseen.

And now, we can enjoy romantic candle-lit dinners under the star-seeded heavens, with the faint but cute backdrop of the Milky Way, the ambient light of the full moon, the twinkling constellations and the short-lived pretty shooting stars in a collision course towards the Earth.

It never fails to amaze me that we are all just microscopic carbon-based specks dwarfed by celestial supergiants and humongous spheres of helium and hydrogen. These things, some of which are beyond human scale, do nothing but evoke perplexity and human insignificance.

Nevertheless, we are no ordinary creations; we can think, we can reason out, we can feel, we can fare the oceans, and we can reach the heavens and the outer space. But from an omniscient point of view, we are just wretched bunch of grasping creatures, ever clueless and confounded as to what the Creator’s intentions really are.

I always love to look at the stars and ask myself the absurd, oft-repeated question Why am I here? What if I’m just created to admire the starry skies? What if my sole mortal purpose – my raison d’etre – is to become astonished by the Universe’s inscrutable complexities? I don’t know… I don’t know yet.