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Dakota Fanning As Lily? Too Young.

Circa Spring 2001, taken at a park in Tokyo, Japan with friends. If there's one defining signature for spring, it's the sakura.

From the book, The Secret Life of Bees:

She laughed again. "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily.  Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart -- now, that matters.  The whole problem with people is ---"

"They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.

"I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Carribean Pink.  The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."

I remember this book recommended to me by Blesh, one of my officemates and roommates back then, years ago, when I read books like a breathe air. It's different now where I don't read as often as I used to, not bad, just different. I've been outside nowadays out of my hammock and wanted to do and be lots of things and still trying to strike  a balance doing all the things I love doing, like reading. I put this book in my heart-warming shelf,  where The Girls Guide for Hunting and Fishing and Birds of America sit. 

This is part of my intention to read 1 book per month for the rest of 2012.  So far, I'm on track. A tinge of me feels like it's a wishlist bound to fail, but a huge part of me hates failing so still hopeful I get to meet lots of characters, both fictional and not, of different worlds this year. 

I need to buy that Kindle. 

100 Years of Solitude

But the lucidity of her old age allowed her to see, and she said so many times, that the cries of children in their mothers' wombs are not announcements of ventriloquism or a faculty for prophecy but an unmistakable sign of an incapacity for love.  The lowering of the image of her son brought out in her all at once all of the compassion that she owed him. 

And this is why I have a love/hate relationship with reading epic books. I get attached to them afterwards, I'd gush, I'd weep, I'd have emotional hangover for days. Even weeks. 100 years of solitude is magnificent in its sprawling entirety. I cannot choose a favorite Buendia because each one has its distinct charm, creatively described by Gabriela Garcia Marquez.  100 Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) is so highly recommended. 

Geek Love.

Borders announced it will close its doors.  It saddens me.  If I have a choice between going to bars or parties and going to bookstores, hands down it's the latter. I rejoice whenever I hear about a new branch opening nearby and I immediately get attached to them. I memorize the aisles to know where to go next time to browse a book I hid in some corner - tagged: wishlist, I note the details on how they arrange books and how they highlight their "bestsellers". I spend hours randomly reading pages of books I will never buy and will buy. 

When I moved here in Atlanta, Borders is one of those bookstores I hang out.  I like their section of "Staff Picks" - and as I pick a book, I nod in agreement and look around, wondering which staff has the same taste as I do.  I never get to talk to any of their staff, and I regret it.  The best feeling is editing out the potential loot (always takes me minimum 30 minutes), paying the cashier and excitedly taking the purchase to my car,  dumping them with great exhilaration at the passenger seat.  

It's that whole experience that I do not feel I can recreate if I click one button to download an ebook.  

I will miss my Borders at Ponce de Leon Avenue.  I will miss all the Borders in the world, even if I have not gone to all of them. 

The Hedgehog has Elegance!

I really dig this book "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" from Muriel Barbery (French, the book is a translation).  It jumps from philosophical to comedic to surreal to poignant. It's about the story of a conceirge who hides her real self from the world, tries so hard to be ordinary but beneath lies a very powerful, and yes elegant mind. In that same building where Madame Michel works and lives (The concierge), is a little girl named Paloma, almost of the same profile - special kid, mega intelligent but restrains from showing all so she can be normal. I like the ending, the beginning and the middle. I like how they touched each other's lives without meaning to.  Like subtly. Like how for example, if I read an email and somebody acknowledges me flippantly and it brightens my whole week or witnessing leaves slowly descending to the ground. I guess the book is kind of like that. 

I like the voice of Paloma the kid, but I  love the heart of the concierge. An excerpt from Paloma - she absolutely detest adults and being an adult,  and she's bent on killing herself and burning her house when she turns 13, but she won't do so if she finds something beautiful that is worth living for:

But just by observing the adults around me I understood very early on that life goes by in no time at all, yet they're always in such a hurry, so stressed out by deadlines, so eager for now that they needn't think about tomorrow...But if you dread tomorrow, it's because you don't know how to build the present, and when you don't know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it's a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up becoming today, don't you see?

So, we mustn't forget any of this, absolutely not. We have to live with the certainty that we'll get old and that it won't look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it's now that matters: to build something, now, at any price, using all our strength. Always remember that there's an old people's home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity.

That's what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.

 

Introspection But Not So Much.

The Type A self is obssessively glad that one thing has been checked off the list - document parts of the Euro-backpacking trip. Rome is done  - whew. I will continue perendinating journaling the Mt. Pinatubo/Taal Volcano trip, lately the Viaje del Sol trip, the rest of Euro-backpacking, the Bangkok trip, hey even that trip to the Big Apple with family - I love that adventure. I need a push! I need a deadline to get me motivated.

Fully Booked at The Fort is a monastery, peak of a halcyon moment, like world peace coming to life, the answer to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the center of my freaking universe. Oh my god, that place is...has..too many goodies, where their goodies = everything I love! I will never go there with only 2 hours left before closing time. Never. I was about to sob when they started turning off the lights. Bought a book, a gift for a friend, a checklist notebook.

I am so happy to read my second book this year: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Liking it so far. Hilarious and I can totally relate on Oscar's high school isolation - but with me, this is highschool:  despite being surrounded by cool friends who will eventually be my friends for life, there were times when isolation was still there ready to pounce, announcing you're different but not in a way you wanted to be different. Any case, who the fuck wants to be different when in high school? Ngayon pa lang, haven't finished it yet, the book is already highly recommended.

Get Lost in 'Eat, Pray, Love'

In this weird weather, snuggle in your sofa with your blanket, 5 pillows and Eat, Pray, Love...

Kung may chick-flick, eto yung chick-book hahaha! :) I read this book a year ago and have been forcing it to my friends (and it seems I have not succeeded yet!).  I love the writings of Elizabeth Gilbert, she makes her life open, talking to you like how your friend would talk to you -sometimes no-holds barred, sometimes hesitant, sometimes raw, most of the time heartbreaking. At the start it was like listening to a friend betrayed - who begs for non-judgment and understanding at the same time grappling on confusion and depression and she sprinkles it with funny descriptions and bloopers. She recently divorced her husband, herself coming from another relationship with another man which left her emotionally drained. She decided to travel to Italy, India and Indonesia, in a journey she called a re-discovery of herself.

I really like the way she writes - it's funny without being condescending, mostly self-deprecating and at the same time she imparts life lessons without shoving it your face. You could see her progress in learning to not judge herself and you kind of root for her. She writes about mundane experiences (eating pasta, learning a new language, talking to strangers) and she squeezes it dry with insights and it's all good. I love her attempts to meditate, it was so human - I could totally relate - especially the difficulty in making your thoughts empty -- but how could you when your sitting there and your mind is all over the place.

My favorite piece (one of my favorites actually) ..

"So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I’ve done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take the drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together. In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing on the page:

I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship—the lending of a hand from me to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace—reminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glance of myself in a security mirror’s reflection. In that moment, my brain did an odd thing—it fired off this split-second message: “Hey! You know her! That’s a friend of yours!” And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In a flash instant of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page.

Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend…

I fell asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance. In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of depression’s lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy loneliness beat it, too."

Jackals of Freedom

I just finished reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man which brought my total number of books read for the year, to a (pathetic) 5. I finished the book a week ago, latter half of it I finished while sitting at the dingy Land Transportation Office over at San Juan, waiting for my driver's license which I lost days back. The book was about the true-to-life confessions of an economist, working for an international firm that aims to help developing countries by convincing them great return of investments if they accept loans from World bank or some US-led financing institutions in order to build their economy and infrastructure.  By having third world countries indebted, United States will have a considerable amount of control on whatever that will benefit Uncle Sam -- natural resources, military cooperation, etc. Yes, political controversy - one of the things I'm always disinterested in.

The book reeks of conspiratorial tones and 80% of it is about John Perkins battling his conscience -- I guess it was not named "Confessions" for nothing. It was riveting but at the end of it, I felt the book was more to ease him of his guilt, more than a well-researched investigative type of tell-all book.  Oh I guess again, it was not named "Confessions" for nothing. Dette, I need a discussion group :).

For what it's worth, it wasn't John Perkins that get me, it was his story about this leader Omar Torrijos, Panama's revolutionary leader who fought for the sovereignty of his people and their rights, who claimed back the Panama Canal from the United States, who stood against United States meddling policies and yet insisted that by  disagreeing with United States policies, it does not mean having to turn our backs against them. It does not mean having to hate everything they do. It does not mean we should sow hate, but more still creating that opportunity on which we could work together.

And now this is the part I will go off-tangent and I'm happy I read this book if only for this realization : Maybe it's not creating factions in the hope of trampling the other side, that will unite us, it's not getting supporters to believe in our ideologies, it may  no longer be in the violent rallies we stage, or in protests vocalized in megaphones (because I no longer listen to those and sadly I think it's not just me). That by disagreeing with someone, it does not mean we wage war against them. With my lack of knowledge of how government and how politics work, I'm thinking now maybe diplomacy is just a part of it --  that will enable us to work together. It is sincerity to whatever cause you believe in. While browsing through information on the sites, I have no doubt in my mind that Omar was dedicated in building his country, in helping the poor and the middle class at the same time in opening its doors to refugees.  If he had wanted power, he could have easily succumbed to U.S.'s demands but he didn't, risking his life in the process (insert: consipiratorial undertones).

I don't really have much knowledge about how all this works. But I also feel that the reasons why I'm not involved it's because it did not tap me in a way that would inspire me to do anything. It's those kind of leaders like Omar or Barack that get me, not their politics, but on the way they lead, it's based on hope, on finding solutions that work on both sides, not on one other way alone. Omar may not have wanted to go an all-out war with America like how Russia and other countries did it, because he didn't think that would solve the problem of reform, of resolving differences. In the end, he gave the Panama Canal back to his people.  Barack started his campaign grass-roots style with nothing, writing a book that would inspire millions, yes, inspiring straight to the masses, and through-out the election, it was the people that mobilized his campaign and in the end, he won the presidential election.  Their solutions are not out of the ordinary yet exemplary, intelligent, creative and always based on positive reinforcement.

[By the way, in the the spirit of obamania I'm currently in, have you checked this out: Change.gov - Office of the President-Elect. This is really why I love Obama and not because this geek loves The Wire, but because he exploits technology to full use and does not underestimate the need for the people to know and understand the issues. Do you know that he did podcasts while he was still in the Senate?]. 

I appreciate the book, I do. It probably helped that I was sitting in a government office at that time and they're making me wait for 4 hours. Hmmph.

Siriusly.

I happily started with On The Road and I ended up finishing The Order of the Phoenix. Yep, Harry Potter is seriously a threat-to-my-eyesight page turner! All of 800+ pages I finished in 48 hours (alternately sleeping in between, On The Road is a measly 400 pages) and god, I'm appalled! Friends have told me before that the book killed Sirius Black but to read it first hand, shit, total shit! Sirius Black is one of the best characters in that goddamn series, intelligent, scruffy in a cool way, reckless, man of the (wizard) world, secretly kind but cruel when needed, rockstar attitude and the chic of all things hip - he's an Animagus! I've almost forgiven the franchise when they did not cast Johnny Depp for that role in the movie version, but Gary Oldman is pwede na, excellent character actor that he is. Feeling casting crew talaga ako.

The best thing about the book is that finally, the kids have grown. They no longer referred to Voldermort as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, yay! What you deny, makes it more powerful. I plan to read Book 6 & 7 by year 2009, because 2008 would simply be a wonderfully busy year (too busy for a Harry Potter).  Back to Sirius.  They should have a separate book about his return from the dead, he seems like the wizard who can. Not for originality-sake, goodness no, but for the fandom of Sirius Black, which includes me. Bring on the groupies, I love you Sirius! 

By the way, this is a good wiki read on the Magic in Harry Potter, full of interesting trivia.

The Divine Secrets.

drama at the clifton beach.., originally uploaded by ali khurshid.

Siddalee,

Good God, child! What do you mean you don't know how to love? Do you think any of us know how to love?! Do you think anybody would ever do anything if they waited until they knew how to love?! Do you think that babies would ever get made or meals cooked or crops planted or books written or what goddamn-have-you?  Do you think people would even get out of bed in the morning if they waited until they knew how to love?

You have had too much theraphy. Or not enough. God knows how to love, kiddo. The rest of us are only good actors.

Forget love. Try good manners.
- Vivi Abbot Walker

A few pages later in the book, Siddalee wrote:

I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others in to our hearts?

-----

Found the above, I handwritten in a paper which I inserted a decade ago in my leaf journal. This post is especially dedicated sa kaibigang nakamusta ko sa ym last week, at para sa nakainuman ko last Friday (sa kanyang walang-pahingang-lab-story-pang-maalala-mo-kaya caliber), at super-cry-with-the-book-this-quote-was-stolen-from dd.

South of the Border, West of the Sun

Narrated by Hajime, remembering moments of his high school love:

"Can you wait?"
Once again I nodded silently.
"Promise?" she asked.
"I promise."
"You won't hurt me?"
"I won't hurt you."

She looked down at her shoes for a while.  Plain black loafers. Compared to mine, lined up next to them, they were as tiny as toys.

"I'm scared, " she said. "These days  I feel like a snail without a shell."
"I'm scared too," I said.  "I feel like a frog without webbed feet."

She's not Shimamoto, I told myself.  She can't give me what Shimamoto gave.  But here she is, all mine, trying her best to give all she can.  How could I ever hurt her?

But I didn't understand then.  That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That  a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.

Sometimes it's sweet and then it becomes dark and then it becomes surreal. I cannot imagine reading another Murakami novel, it gets you but it leaves me confused but weirdly wised up. The above passage is my favorite.  Like a snail without a shell, yes, I felt that.  Or a frog without webbed feet.