A typical scenario where a reader is swept by the magical power of a book and considers it as one of his favorites is purchasing a title (learned and heard from a friend or those people he reads) from a bookstore. He then relish its content, probably with his feet prop up on a coffee table.
But then, there are other ways that can spice up the reading experience where the reader and the book get a complete concentrated connection, thus creating a memorable reading nirvana. The potency of the book itself strikes him like a battering ram straight to the marrow of his soul and the experience does not just come from the text itself, but also from the events surrounding him when he devours every written word of the book.
What can be a more extremely exhilirating experience than trying to finish a book amid a bombardment in a time of war, and the knowledge that any moment a bomb can end your life abruptly without reaching the last page? Well, that is far from my story. Nevertheless, I like to think of it that way.
With just enough money for fare on my way home (my broods just dropped me on the mall on their way to my parent's house as the night descended), I went straight to the bookstore to do some "free" reading, oblivious to the fact that I looked like a ragged bum in pair of borrowed sandals, hundred-peso t-shirt, and fading black shorts.
I could have picked Italo Calvino's titles from the bookshelves if there were no Kerouac titles that caught my fancy. I was then just recently acquainted with the literature of the Beat Generation, having read Jack Kerouac Big Sur and Dharma Bums and been salivating for a copy of On the Road (which I have to read until this day since it seems to disappear on bookstores the moment it hits the shelves).
What I found was just more than a hundred pages of a book titled Subterraneans, which according to the blurb, Kerouac wrote in marathon typewriter-yakking for three days and three nights. And probably he wrote that in an inebriated frenzy.
I picked a vacant chair and proceeded to devour the book with a resolution to read it in one sitting. What is a more apt way to read a three-day frenzied labor of typewriter-yakking than finishing it in one sitting with an estimated highway speed that can make your hair recede from the strong winds of printed words slapping your face and your brain. That resolution also stemmed from lack of dough and to avoid reading a book in weekly installments, which I know would slow down the momentum of the story and with me expectedly forgetting what the book is all about.
I breathed in a lungful of oxygen then promptly submerged myself in the ocean of reality of the post-war American literature of the Beat Generation.
The book is a narration of a bohemian writer Leo Percepeid, about the history of his breakup with a Negro girl named Mardou Fox, a member of an intellectual group called Subterraneans.
Here Kerouac wrote again about the free-spirited, amoral culture of the Beat Generation in search for an identity along their pursuit of artistic goals: be successful writers and poets. It was the time of bob jazz, never ending boozing and arguments about literary subjects. It was the time when the post-war children of America were growing up.
Amid this wayward culture of "tea" smoking, casual sex, teenage angst and rebellion to be left alone by the authorities, still, deep longing for love could blossom. But the twist is that that was an era when everybody was leeching each other.
By the time I submerged myself again into the book (seeing those sitting around me changed faces and I looking at the staff of the bookstore, wondering if they would approach and tell me: "Sir, there is a minimum quota of hours for reading a certain book for free. If you want to continue reading, go find another book), a Yugoslavian young poet by the name of Yuri Gligoric has already surfaced in the story.
I again zipped in the rollercoaster/talkfest/speed-typing text set by Kerouac on Leo and Mardou's bohemian love affair. And before I knew it, getting all weary in the eyes and the bookstore's well-lighted interior blurred before me, I failed to notice that I was up for a heart-wrenching ending as I reached the last several pages.
And there happened the tragic breakup of Leo Percepeid and Mardou Fox because of Yuri Gligoric. This is a 20th century fiction that can hit any reader's heart with the hip word: "Well, baby we made it together," with Mardou Fox telling Leo Percepeid casually about what happened to her and Yuri.
The jeepney I rode going home sped on South Super Highway with me still seeing visions of printed words on darkened factories, of the 50's America, of the Beat Generation, of Leo, Mardou and Yuri. And that hip word "made it" reverberating in my ears. My head was throbbing. I needed to pound on my PC to release this neverending yakking in my head.
And now, finally, I write this.
Note: This appeared on The Philippine Star on November 9, 2003 as the week's winning essay in My Favorite Book Contest. I posted it here since I could still recall the rush I felt when I first read the book.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Run Like the Wind
I planned a long time ago to write about my experiences as a seasoned jogger in this part of Cavite. In the hacked journals that had been deleted in my harddisk that brought me headaches as I tried to reinstall software components deleted along with all my files, there were a couple of scribbling about my jogging experiences as I was just starting to find this fitness exercise healthy for the body as well as for imaginative and observant writing-mind of mine.
There was a time, before the sun breaks out in the East, that I would run several rounds in the one hectare of vacant lot in front of our subdivision, my mother joining me or probably me joining her, being a hardcore smoker that I was and believer that there was no better life than living a sedentary life to ponder and write about life, stirring my limbs to sweat was far from my mind.
The experience brought boredom and uselessness since you could see nothing but cogon grasses, piles of garbage around, with pesky dogs barking at you as you do your rounds, and then made worse by defeatist practice of slumping on the ground as oxygen seemed had been depleted in the air. And to add more injury by taking puffs of ever-ready Marlboros in my pocket.
Where's the logic of it all, one would ask.
I said to myself, pondering for better running experience, that I would just have to postpone running, until I had a good running gears and ready to run along the stretch of Roxas Blvd., from Coastal Mall all the way to Luneta. Yet, that time would not come soon I thought.
Running came into my disordered rountine again after hearing that a highway, near us, Daang Hari as it was named, was suitable for runners. Of course, you still have to keep yourself on sidewalk to avoid being hit by speeding automobiles.
When the rebirth of my jogging journey began, running consistently was an ordeal. Just a short stretch was short of pushing me on the brink of collapsing, the nicotine accumulated through long years of smoking was hard to shake off out of my clogged, brownish lungs. A hundred meters of continuous running would make me gasp for air, my lower limbs faltering, and my world was getting dimmer. After two consecutive days of running, I returned home dead tired, the whole body aching, and the thought becoming sick. After running for one and half hours, I would sleep the rest of the morning.
Nevertheless, my body has gotten accustomed to running already. Myself still brimming with energy enough to write throughout the day.
Now, as a I have become a frequent runner along Daang Haring, the order of the day is to run longer stretch in the coming weeks and months. Attempting to run farther distance, I'm training myself to have the heart of an athlete, the go-getter, aiming to beat every competitor, including myself.
When I run, even as I am already panting, knees and calves weakening crying for a rest, I imaginatively beat my chest to keep running still. Shouting inside of me that I have the heart. "You can do it!" a variation of ancient Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi' chant: "Just do it!"
And yes, I'm gonna run with a heart as I did hours ago, and for the coming days ahead.
There was a time, before the sun breaks out in the East, that I would run several rounds in the one hectare of vacant lot in front of our subdivision, my mother joining me or probably me joining her, being a hardcore smoker that I was and believer that there was no better life than living a sedentary life to ponder and write about life, stirring my limbs to sweat was far from my mind.
The experience brought boredom and uselessness since you could see nothing but cogon grasses, piles of garbage around, with pesky dogs barking at you as you do your rounds, and then made worse by defeatist practice of slumping on the ground as oxygen seemed had been depleted in the air. And to add more injury by taking puffs of ever-ready Marlboros in my pocket.
Where's the logic of it all, one would ask.
I said to myself, pondering for better running experience, that I would just have to postpone running, until I had a good running gears and ready to run along the stretch of Roxas Blvd., from Coastal Mall all the way to Luneta. Yet, that time would not come soon I thought.
Running came into my disordered rountine again after hearing that a highway, near us, Daang Hari as it was named, was suitable for runners. Of course, you still have to keep yourself on sidewalk to avoid being hit by speeding automobiles.
When the rebirth of my jogging journey began, running consistently was an ordeal. Just a short stretch was short of pushing me on the brink of collapsing, the nicotine accumulated through long years of smoking was hard to shake off out of my clogged, brownish lungs. A hundred meters of continuous running would make me gasp for air, my lower limbs faltering, and my world was getting dimmer. After two consecutive days of running, I returned home dead tired, the whole body aching, and the thought becoming sick. After running for one and half hours, I would sleep the rest of the morning.
Nevertheless, my body has gotten accustomed to running already. Myself still brimming with energy enough to write throughout the day.
Now, as a I have become a frequent runner along Daang Haring, the order of the day is to run longer stretch in the coming weeks and months. Attempting to run farther distance, I'm training myself to have the heart of an athlete, the go-getter, aiming to beat every competitor, including myself.
When I run, even as I am already panting, knees and calves weakening crying for a rest, I imaginatively beat my chest to keep running still. Shouting inside of me that I have the heart. "You can do it!" a variation of ancient Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi' chant: "Just do it!"
And yes, I'm gonna run with a heart as I did hours ago, and for the coming days ahead.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Drat!!! Been raring to write something today since I woke this morning, though after a mug of coffee and a couple of cigarettes, I thought better get myself sweating first by running along Daang Hari to wake up my limbs and not falter or rather drift into the bed again when I sit before the monitor to write. But a lot of hassle came my way; virus infected pc, and a lot of tinkering in my pc to get me to this point where I can now write. The sad thing is I'm already tired.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
And Then There was Blog
And then there was blog. After several months of repressing the thought over the lost of my personal journal – consisted of essays, personal anecdotes, experimental speed-typing and display of story-telling prowess – that spans a ten-year vigorous effort to keep on writing, finally there came something that would handle the safe-keeping of my scribbling. There would be no queasy feeling over a sneaking hacker attempting to delete it. Second, it would be in the net. And for a bonus, the chance to be read by possible readers.
Of course I have heard of blogs before. Read about it on cyber conversations of net freaks. But it came to me something like a bulletin board where members put on their thoughts about a subject. The exact definition of it was as blurred as one would see a fish in murky water. Its usefulness was beyond my understanding.
To make the story short, as they would say it, I discovered it only now, late but not all together useless.
This discovery while surfing the net, straying from the chatrooms that throughout my net-life have been my primary cyber experience, pulled me up from slouching too much on my seat. I thought, “Drat! I’ve been so laid-back for so long. Time to do some work now. Time to do some writings. Time to have fun again.”
The thought also of being read, even by people half-away around the world, was a motivation. There could be no greater thing than be read by people. “And have you remember your motive when you started writing your journal?” I heard my inner-self asking me. “Yes, it is for the people to read the things I write,” I replied.
So, for the readers out there, as it is also for myself, wait for some marvelous writings I would post on this blog.
Of course I have heard of blogs before. Read about it on cyber conversations of net freaks. But it came to me something like a bulletin board where members put on their thoughts about a subject. The exact definition of it was as blurred as one would see a fish in murky water. Its usefulness was beyond my understanding.
To make the story short, as they would say it, I discovered it only now, late but not all together useless.
This discovery while surfing the net, straying from the chatrooms that throughout my net-life have been my primary cyber experience, pulled me up from slouching too much on my seat. I thought, “Drat! I’ve been so laid-back for so long. Time to do some work now. Time to do some writings. Time to have fun again.”
The thought also of being read, even by people half-away around the world, was a motivation. There could be no greater thing than be read by people. “And have you remember your motive when you started writing your journal?” I heard my inner-self asking me. “Yes, it is for the people to read the things I write,” I replied.
So, for the readers out there, as it is also for myself, wait for some marvelous writings I would post on this blog.
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