Dearest Sofia, leitmotif of my imagined motherhood,
Unearthing lullabies the other day spurred this letter and for the umpteenth time, I tried to postpone another one of these whimsical missives to the future. But is my heart really incapable of further flights of fancy through long disuse of dreaming? I reckon not. So here I am - again. Again I think of you, not without a hopeful sigh, not without a smile, and not without a ripple in my heart.
First, let us return to the lullabies, the music. I am not in the highest of spirits at this moment, but oddly, I wish to speak to you of music and Joy. At last, at my tenth letter, I mention music. The reason for suspending the topic is to allay concerns that music might be imposed on you. I will do no such thing, but rather introduce you to the benefits of having music in your life. As you shall observe later on, I am appended to a number of interests, and yet no matter how mediocre my music skills are, I prefer being called a musician instead of other titles. Being a musician is not about playing an instrument virtuosically, it is about incorporating music in your life to enhance your being. When music is inculcated in your heart, you shall find out that you can do almost everything musically; write musically, laugh musically, listen musically, paint musically, think musically, and also love musically. Even emotions become naturally musical…
like pain, in A minor. Take note my dear, no one can force music on anybody, but I pray you’ll find it. I will help you find it. So too, with Joy. However, many confuse Joy with happiness. The difference is that one can be happy while crying internal tears, but one may have Joy despite external tears.
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It is only as I write that I apprehend why Joy and music appeared together through the corner of my mind like two cheerful friends holding hands: Both never cease to comfort me. It is my hope, that you shall always find solace in these selfsame things.
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P.S. The Chinese have the same character for joy and music. Isn’t that amazing?
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To read all Letters to a Future Daughter, Click Here.
The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off… They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unkown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.
There is no denying that reading Eco is one of the most stimulating modes of entertainment. Nevertheless, if the reader is in quest for “fun”, I caution that the fun wanes in the latter part of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, but even that does not mean that it ceases to be entertaining; the tone simply becomes more sober towards the finale.
In this eloquent book, Eco conveys an opulence of philosophy, psychology, Italian history, literary intertextuality, and pop-culture as Yambo, a rare-book magnate experiences a peculiar case of amnesia where he loses his episodic memory but retains his semantic memory. In other words, he memorizes poetry and the books he has read in the past, and yet he cannot remember anything about his family and personal life.
“Meanwhile the children were calling me Grandpa, I knew I was supposed to love them more than myself, and yet I could not tell which was Giango, which was Alessandro, which was Luca. I knew all about Alexander the Great, but nothing about Alessandro the tiny, the mine.”
By retreating to his old family home, Yambo attempts to repossess his past by rummaging through memorabilia of yore. It is there that he begins to rediscover the ideas, influences, and even the first love that frame who he is, and where Umberto Eco is successful in writing “not an autobiography, but the biography of a generation.” Despite an almost anticlimactic ending, it remains to be a brilliant novel.
“I had it wrong, like all lovers; I had given her my heart and asked her to do as I would have done, but that is how things have gone for millennia. Were it otherwise, literature would not exist.”
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After such a great read, I am tempted and fired-up to proceed to another book… but unwinding from one book is necessary, and post-reading reflections are needful, and I take to heart, one of the most important elements in reading.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana spoke to me on another level as it made me realize that even all the acquired knowledge from every book one has read will always be inadequate compared to one’s life outside book covers.
Umberto Eco is currently on my lap. Which one? You shall find out soon. All I can say is that the pages I have read so far are magnificent. I have a random trio of books piled up for May’s second half, all of which I planned on making a joint recapitulation. I have already read two from the stack, the Eco happens to be the third, but Eco’s insisting on having an entry all to himself.
The two other books are The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and The Joke by Milan Kundera.
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…there would be happiness, too. That was writing.
The Book Thief is one of the books I would eagerly recommend to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Truth be told, I did not expect to love this book as much as I do now. Not only is it unique in its narrative, but it is remarkable in every aspect especially when in the first few pages one realizes who is speaking to the reader; Not the orphan Liezel Meminger who is drawn to books and words during dangerous times in Nazi Germany, not her kind accordion-playing foster father, not Rudy who persists in asking for a kiss, not even the dismal mayor’s wife with the library, but rather, Death!
These passages are taken from the latter part of the book, They say that war is death’s best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly: “Get it done, get it done.” So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.
It’s probably fair to say that in all the years of Hitler’s reign, no person was able to serve the Führer as loyally as me. A human doesn’t have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.
This book seared the very core of my being and even by saying nothing more; I hope I might convince someone that this is a book worth reading. If one has a heart, I guarantee that this story will stay with you for a very long time. It is enduring… enduring… enduring…
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Fortunately, I have in my hands what they call the “definitive version” of The Joke since it is fully revised by the author himself after four deficient releases by other translators. I suggest that anyone who plans on reading this should find the same edition. There will not be a sixth edition, the author promised.
While the title might be merited to a joke which led to a main character’s ruin, I think it reflects so much on the absurdity of different ideals and the lives of the personae. The Joke is Milan Kundera’s first novel but in my humble opinion proves him to be Nobel-material. One can trust Kundera to yank the reader into a poignant melodic storytelling all his own. While it reeks with frustrating love affairs and human weaknesses, it flourishes with profundity and political insights. Nevertheless, it seems that its most infesting quality is the reverberation of the irredeemability of the past.
¤
Here are other passages that stuck with me:
“Morals were pretty strict in those days, people really overdid it, but maybe it’s better to overdo morality than immorality the way we do now.”
“True religion does not need the favour of secular power.”
“I say Christians. Yet where are they? Looking around me, I see nothing but pseudo-Christians living exactly like unbelievers. But being a Christian means living differently. It means taking the path Christ took. Imitating Christ.”
¤
“…no woman can live without feelings, she wouldn’t be a woman if she did, so why deny it?”
“Every man has a selfish streak in him, it’s up to the woman to stand up for herself and her mission as a woman.”
¤
“I had all kinds of answers ready for the commissions that called me in and asked me what made me become a Communist, but what had attracted me to the movement more than anything, dazzled me, was the feeling (real or apparent) of standing near the wheel of history… The intoxication we experienced is commonly known as the intoxication of power, but (with a bit of good will) I could choose less severe words: we were bewitched by history; we were drunk with the thought of jumping on its back and feeling it beneath us; admittedly, in most cases the result was an ugly lust for power, but (as all human affairs are ambiguous) there was still (and especially, perhaps, in us, the young), an altogether idealistic illusion that we were inaugurating a human era in which man (all men) would be neither outside history, nor under the heel of history, but would create and direct it.”
“Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they’ve memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality.”
An hour past midnight and yet the web is still stirring. Stirring with what? Names that one can hardly avoid… over and over again… the same names that will be as futile and insipid as day-old cola in a glass when yet another fresh tabloid intrigue bubbles up.
I could point my nose upwards and say that I could not care less even though these names caught my attention due to immoderate media repetition, but on another limb, I honestly don’t think they deserve more than mere Twitter-like lines.
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Set of Names 1: Adam Lambert and Kris Allen
What I Think: Sometimes, simple charm triumphs over extravagant talent.
Set of Names 2: Hayden Kho and Katrina Halili
What I Think: Shame on him? Shame on both of them!
Set of Names 3: Alec Baldwin and David Letterman
What I Think: I’m a Filipina. I know I am not a mail order bride. I am not offended. Filipinos have accomplished coarser jokes before.
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Now, we should really go back to caring about more important matters.
Solitude gives birth to the original in us,
to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry.
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Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought – these are the artist’s highest joy.
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…was it not known and familiar to him, the artist? Was not the same force at work in himself when he strove in cold fury to liberate from the marble mass of language the slender forms of his art which he saw with the eye of his mind and would body forth to men as the mirror and image of spiritual beauty?
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His love of the ocean had profound sources: the hard-worked artist’s longing for rest, his yearning to seek refuge from the thronging manifold shapes of his fancy in the bosom of the simple and vast; and another yearning, opposed to his art and for that very reason a lure, for the unorganized, the immeasurable, the eternal – in short, for nothingness.
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At the world’s edge began a strewing of roses, a shining and blooming ineffably pure; baby cloudlets hung illumined, like attendant amoretti, in the blue and hushful haze; purple effulgence fell upon the sea, that seemed to heave it forward on its welling waves; from horizon to zenith went great quivering thrusts like golden lances, the gleam became a glare and rolling flames streamed upwards, and with flying hoof-beats the steeds of the sun-god mounted the sky. The lonely watcher sat, the splendour of the god shone on him, he closed his eyes and let the glory kiss his lids.
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But evening too was rarely lovely: balsamic with the breath of flowers and shrubs from the near-by park, while overhead the constellations circled in their spheres, and the murmuring of the night-girted sea swelled softly up and whispered to the soul. Such nights as these contained the joyful promise of a sunlit morrow, brim-full of sweetly ordered idleness, studded thick with countless possibilities.
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Who shall unriddle the puzzle of the artist nature?
Have you ever felt silence like a shade of serenest blue, or pierce the setting sun with your violin bow or finger, or sit cross-legged in the bottom of the water and hear nothing but the beat of your heart, or permit the tiniest waves to kiss your feet and be stirred, or mind the sands’ humble erosions underfoot, or present music to a majestic mountain with rugged cliffs that neither applauded nor booed your performance and yet acknowledge that it was the best listener you ever had?
Reader, I sincerely wish for you these things. Feeling the azure waters envelope me during the day, the same waters which turn gold in the sunset, was in itself a celebration of the senses.
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When one speaks of sensual experiences, our understanding tends to lean toward the sexual or impure regards, but it should not be. In fact the senses are also God’s gift to man. For with the senses we can praise Him, with the senses we can take in His other creations, with the senses we may embrace, behold, savour, breathe, and heed all the sensations His universe offers.
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Believing that Mama had everything she needed with the exception of a holiday, my birthday/anniversary/Mother’s Day present for her was a vacation to Dakak. Away from the bustle of town, chores, cable TV, and the internet, it was there that the whole family feasted on nature.
Mama told me it was one of the best birthday gifts she’s ever received, and I believe her, for it is not only I who has written about experiencing and being conscious of God’s creation while in Dakak. Mama wrote about it, too. While the cool breeze toyed with our hair and touched the tip of our pens, we leaned on each other, but it was not our pens that were being poetic, it was Creation.
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Have you touched the heart of one of God’s greatest creations lately? Have you showed your mother how much you love her? I hope so. =)
“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.”
This cherished passage is the closest I ever got to reading Truman Capote. This summer, I decided to dip my toes and test the author’s waters. Breakfast at Tiffany’s was my first choice. With the glamorous Audrey Hepburn and Moon River in mind, it was supposed to be a pleasant and romantic story, or so I thought.
As the characters and colours revealed themselves, I was rather taken aback with Holly Golightly’s immodest fashions. She might have been charming in her own way but the novella did not appeal to me at all. It is a story with a dangling ending about a girl who set off to look for herself, and leaving the reader to hope that somehow she would…and unlike what I have heard about the movie, they do not kiss in the end.
This book includes additional stories by Capote: House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar, and A Christmas Memory. Norman Mailer and many great writers have lauded Breakfast at Tiffany’s but I appreciated Capote better in the latter stories. I suspect that this was where he divulged his inner sadness and loneliness. This is where I discovered faint strains of music. He is truly a colourful author, but his colours are usually of a dark shade with an almost garish surprise here and there. But that’s just me.
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Answered Prayers, Capote’s unfinished novel was next on my list. I’m afraid however, that it will also remain unfinished. I found it too obscene for my taste.
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To Read or Not to Read
A thought has been badgering me ever since Gabi asked me whether I would read Lolita or not. From what I gather, it is immoral. Period. But then, is not murder, adultery, or fornication, immoral too? Why does our conscience tell us that it is not appropriate to read about some sins but alright to read of other sinful acts?
A few weeks after baring my own Lilliputian bookshop, I decided to read The Bookseller of Kabul believing it would provide me a panorama of what the love of books and bookselling would be like in this far-off war-stricken country. It did, although it is much, much more than just that.
What I did not suspect was an exhaustive and copious account of what day to day life is like for a middle class family in Afghanistan – and already it is difficult, especially for women. Now I can understand why the bookseller Sultan Khan (or Mohammed Shah Rais in real life) would want to burn Åsne Seierstad’s book and sue her. There is too much truth in it.The Bookseller of Kabul summarized Afghanistan’s complicated history for me and also opened my eyes to the various characters’ struggles in the confines of his and her own geographical, religious, educational, social, and personal sphere.
The hate that the Taliban regime inculcated in first-year schoolchildren’s alphabet shocked me: “I is for Israel, our enemy; J is for Jihad, our aim in life; K is for Kalashnikov, we will overcome;…M is for Mujahedeen, our heroes;… T is for Taliban…”
War was the central theme in math books too. School-boys – because the Taliban printed solely for boys – did not calculate in apples and cakes, but in bullets and Kalashnikovs, something like this: “Little Omar has a Kalashnikov with three magazines.There are twenty bullets in each magazine. He uses two-thirds of the bullets and kills sixty infidels. How many infidels does he kill with each bullet?
Moreover, the book is surprisingly akin to Reading Lolita in Tehran in the sense that it bemoans the rights of women, or the lack of it. This follows a scene after a public bath in a hammam; The women’s own smells are soon restored. The smell of old slave, young slave. Various passages concerning the low treatment of women is what pierces me each time, including these closing sentences when the women in Khan’s household speak of the bookseller’s pregnant second wife:
“What if it’s another girl!”
Another little catastrophe in the Khan family.
It is not exactly what you would expect from an initial glance of a book about a certain bookseller. It is indeed as Denver Post’s Steve Wineberg declared, “A compelling book… Seierstad infiltrated a world most readers will never see.”
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Through it all, what really kept on nagging at my thoughts was this; There was no music, thanks to past Soviet and Taliban governments. Despite that, Afghanistan seems to beckon to me. One cannot help the urge to bring music in such a place (no matter how insignificant I am as a musician), and if it be God’s will, share His Love there, too.
It could have been a ludicrous scene authored by Isabel Allende or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but it was not.
As some of you already know, I live in an old house – a very old house. So old that it can be traced back to bayanihan days. In fact, this very same house had a different address more than 50 years ago. Only in the recent decades were the tin roof and concrete portions added and constructed to support the wooden structure.
Due to an architectural barrio characteristic common to that era, there is that space between the ceiling and the roof where birds are free to nest, and if one has neighbouring roofs, cats are offered the opportunity to make that particular space their playground, motel, or delivery room.
And it was last night when I heard the lovers’ mating call. Meowww… Meowowww… but as someone had tipped before, if you listen closely, it is the male cat saying “Nowwww!!!” and the female cat answering, “Tomorrowww!!!”
Now!!!
Tomorrowww!!!
Now!!!
Tomorroww!!!
And so on…
But it would always end up with the female consenting and approximately two months later, voilà! Kittens!
I fell asleep while the exchange persisted. It was at dawn when I woke up to what seemed like part of a novel by Gabo or Allende, for right above my bed was the lower half of a cat’s body struggling not to fall through a hole in the ceiling! I jumped out of bed hoping that by doing so, I would be jumping out from that bizarre dream. Yet, the cat continued to struggle and unidentifiable pieces of debris were already falling on my bed. Disgusted, shocked, and half asleep, I stood there aghast. Then I remembered what they were up to before I fell asleep. What a passionate night they must have had! How else would they have caused that gaping hole in the ceiling?
Fortunately, the worst did not happen. The frightened cat did not fall in my room and scratch its way through me or my things, but still, damage had been done. I knew I needed to have the ceiling fixed and have the whole room disinfected at once.
When morning came, the repairing and cleaning took place, but I was still dazed and my parents knew I was not in the happiest of moods. At breakfast, Mama put on the stereo and out came Bach’s Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Note by note, it tore off my awry feelings and by the last swig of my breakfast espresso, I was already laughing about the whole incident.
Papa, with an apologetic smile felt sorry for me, and I reassured him that I still loved to live in this house no matter what. Yes, I might dream of villas in Tuscany or cottages in England, but I am content with the house, the very old house, that I’m blessed with. There is no place like home – with or without copulating cats in the ceiling.
Dearest Sofia, leitmotif of my imagined motherhood,
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The Book Thief is one of the books I would eagerly recommend to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Truth be told, I did not expect to love this book as much as I do now. Not only is it unique in its narrative, but it is remarkable in every aspect especially when in the first few pages one realizes who is speaking to the reader; Not the orphan Liezel Meminger who is drawn to books and words during dangerous times in Nazi Germany, not her kind accordion-playing foster father, not Rudy who persists in asking for a kiss, not even the dismal mayor’s wife with the library, but rather, Death!
Fortunately, I have in my hands what they call the “definitive version” of The Joke since it is fully revised by the author himself after four deficient releases by other translators. I suggest that anyone who plans on reading this should find the same edition. There will not be a sixth edition, the author promised.
