Summer Musings: The Reads (Pt. 2)

(Continuation...)
4. The More The Crease Marks, The Better

I had this friend back in UP Manila whom I decided to borrow a book from. Without getting too technical with the details, it’s this little-known book by this little-known astrophysicist named Stephen Hawking called A Brief History of Time; and this very brilliant and bookish friend of mine is also a little—a lot—neurotic. Anyway, before I could even lay a finger on the book, she relayed to me the “ground rules” in handling it. No smears on pages (meaning if you “think” you might smear pages with anything, make sure to wipe your hands clean…no, make that, wash your hands clean—replete with necessary hand sanitizers, please—before touching the pages). No dog-eared pages or using of clip bookmarks. Accidental rips I think would constitute something ominous; I don’t know what it was exactly or how the atoning for those sins work, but I found it all insanely funny and frightening at the same time. The craziness did not stop there. Stuck on the back flap of the cover was the COMPLETE list of rules reminiscent of the ones you’d find in library books, with its full-blown details and menacing tone. After two days of paranoia (to the point that I could practically feel my friend and her guidelines breathing down my neck on every damnable page), I decided to return it. I forgot all about the book until that faithful day months later I stumbled upon a second-hand copy. Where? Right on. Book Sale. It’s semi-ratty and smells like cheese, but I’m eternally grateful for the absence of certain fear-inducing qualities.

I always had this theory that books read should, in the very least, LOOK like it was read. Reading is an experience. Your experience. I like to think that the mere human imprint to the experience, accidental or intentional, could somehow only add to depth and character of the book. Crease marks, coffee and soy sauce stains, warped and forlorn book covers—they tell their own stories, indelible and unique. I love the idea that when I re-read my books thirty years from now and I come across some of those markings, everything I felt, thought, heard, saw against all other sensations—suffused and frozen in space and time—could conveniently and lovingly be culled from memory. Much like wrinkles are to man, they are badges of a life lived and a life made worthwhile. And as my books and I age (we might even be turning yellow and gray together), I find myself taking comfort in that thought more and more.

5. The Best Things In Life Are Shared

One of the best people I’ve known in my life to talk serious books with(or just about anything and everything for that matter) is my long-time friend Madi. I anticipate our linguistic furor in describing characters or events. For example, if she happened to have read “The Lost Girl” by D.H. Lawrence too, we never would settle on just describing Ciccio as “hot” or “sexy”. That’s a little too Paris Hilton for us. Instead, we would sling out words like “feral” or swill a couple of adverb-adjective tandems like “sensuously primeval” (and knowing Madi, she’s not one to ever run out of adjectives once you get her heart racing; or ever—that girl has a motor for a mouth and a brain). It gets even better now that Madi is in a course that requires her to read A LOT of literature because when I tell her about a book I’m about to read or I’ve just read, she somehow creates the backdrop or tone of the story for me (“…Flannery O’Connor is classified under grotesque…”) or humbles me by correcting my pronunciation (“It’s Flo-be”—when pronouncing French author Gustave Flaubert’s name or, yeah, something to that effect).

But one of the coolest things about being friends with her for so long is that we share common cornerstones for the things we love and value. In our formative grade school years (wow, I haven’t thought of TLC for a while, but this is nice and fitting), we found lasting inspirations in our mentors, especially in our Reading/Civics teacher, Ms. Arcilla, who at the time swore would die a spinster before anyone would ever ask to marry her (which, ironically but obviously, will never happen; she got married and moved to Japan by the time we were freshmen in Zobel). She opened our eyes to the magical world of hobbits (J.R.R.Tolkien) and talking cats (Lloyd Alexander); and to the wonders of time-travelling (Jostein Gaarder and Madeleine L’Engle). She made us love strong, willful and defiant heroines who wore breeches and rode like men (Tamora Pierce). She made us love beautiful passages and words that don’t quite roll off your tongue that easily; and made knowledge derived from books precious, and our first impressions worth a second or third polish.

The book corner set up in our classroom every year allowed her to share her books with us, and in turn, made us share our own. I remember my friend, Nica (a true-blue Atenista even back in the day), whom we turned to for our usual fix of historical novels about Cleopatra and Elizabeth I; and my other friend, Danni(she later became our batchmate in Zobel and was always the trend-setter) who introduced us to that little-wizard-who-could, Harry Potter. It’s funny how Madi and I would talk about the days long gone in a reverential way, because undoubtedly, those times we had sharing, reading then gushing for months and months truly were some of the fondest memories we had growing up. Most of us went our separate ways in high school, joined different cliques; all of us went our separate paths even further upon entering college. But I like to think that when we do push through with the reunion this week, we will inevitably touch upon Ms. Arcilla and our Tamora Pierce days and someone, probably Madi, would get all sentimental. And we’ll all just smile and roll our eyes and go…“Haay, Si Madi…”
(Can you stand anymore "To be continueds"? TO BE CONTINUED...)

Song(s) of the Week: “White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes; “Lull” by Andrew Bird; “Tropical Iceland (Fiery Furnaces cover)” by Of Montreal; “Daughters of the SoHo Riots” by The National; “Elephant Gun” by Beirut; “River Card” by Atlas Sound