I said, “Beh, I need my books to come home to me.”
On a Saturday, Sly met us for dinner and returned my copy of Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” and Paulo Coelho’s “Warrior of Light”.
“Salamat pero yun Prince ni Machiavelli di ko mahanap pero alam ko nandun yun.”
I said, “Ok lang, sisipot rin yan. Did you like reading these?”
Sly said, “Oo, ilang bese ko na nga yan naulit.”
I said, “Pahiram ko sa ‘yo yun Gibran na Parables of the Madman. Para may shift ka sa perception on the darker side of reality.”
[So if you have books I lent (not gave), please return them to me read and ASAP, except if there’s a deal on returning them to me when I’m 40. I don’t know for sure who has my copy of Ted Hughes’ “Birthday Letters” or my book on Zodiac Signs or Caleb Carr’s “Killing Time”.]
I lent my first three books of Dave Duncan’s Blades to someone (and Duncan’s Jaguar Knights is boring the hell out of me right now). He lent them without my permission to his best friend who introduced me to steak. His best friend who once asked me, “You’re in City Jam now raw? I just left.” And I said, “I know. And that’s why I’m here now. Please don’t do this.” His best friend whom he suddenly told on his 24th birthday in front of me, “Hey there’s a knife on my back. I think it’s yours. Oh, here’s another one. I think it’s yours too. So that’s why you’ve been asking about her… the fuck?!” His best friend lent the books to his mother who took them with her to Pangasinan. This was in 2002 and they have yet to come home to me.
Pangasinan must be in a different dimension.
When Joey brought me the books today that I had lent to Oso, I saw a page marked with a piece of paper:
The same outer object may suggest either of many realities formerly associated with it—for in the vicissitudes of our outer experience we are constantly liable to meet the same thing in the midst of differing companions. William James (The Principles of Psychology).
True… but not if you aware.
Whatever I thought right seemed bad to others;
whatever seemed wrong to me,
others approved of.
I ran into feuds wherever I found myself,
I met disfavor wherever I went;
if I longed for happiness, I only stirred up misery;
so I had to be called “Woeful”:
Woe is all I possess.
Wagner,
Die Walküre
I smiled and shook my head: These Germans, so woeful! Whoa to those who only possess and give woe!
Chapter 14: the book was Caleb Carr’s “The Alienist”.
Oso used to say, “It’s not that I don’t understand what you’re saying. I do. I just don’t know how to say what I think and feel.”
He struggles and he would wave his hand (like Royalty Julie Andrews in “Princess Diaries”) when he’s struggling with words: language, that is the struggle, to put into words what we think and feel so that we would be understood.
We all struggle.
Wittgenstein: the limit of our language is the limit of our thoughts. Or I think it was the other way around. Or maybe it was something about the language of our thoughts is the language of our limits?
Just check for yourself.
Wittgenstein supposedly changed his mind from Philosophical Investigations to Tractatus. Just like how Leo Tolstoy changed his mind in his treatise on Art about what literature is on the twilight of his life and he declared that everything from Shakespeare to his time (including his masterpieces) are all crap.
He did leave some out in his book-burning-festival.
The peasants, the ordinary people, he decided, gets to choose which books get saved.
Eros Atalia once said to me (and the practicing teachers in that seminar) that his book Taguan-Pung (koleksyon ng dagling kathang di pambata) at Manwal ng mga Napapagal (kopi teybol dedbol buk) published by UST Press was also a participating incinerator in a book-burning-festival.
That really almost made me pee on my skirt.
And when he asked, “Ano problema ng mga taong grasa?”
They said food, clothing, shelter, etc.
I answered, “Sex.”
He said, “Tumpak! Yun talaga problema nila. Kasi kung yun iba ang problema nila, eh di dapat patay na sila. Eh sinong gustong makipag-sex sa taong grasa?”
I almost coughed to death while laughing.
Ma’am Marj once said to me in reference to something I said to her: limited reading, limited thoughts, limited journey.
I laughed so much when she said that for it was a beautiful way to say “stupid”.
I will never apologize for my intelligence because it’s something that the stork from the time of the Australopithecus Africanus tried and painstakingly procreated and it’s something I cannot hide. Though I am very good at playing stupid and looking stupid because it makes some people feel better about themselves or to feel superior over someone.
Hey, it’s “cool” to be stupid: you become popular.
Hey, it’s “cooler” to be intelligent: you become notorious.
The notorious also all struggle to be kind.
In my unkind moments, I lose patience for lexical gymnastics and just call someone/something stupid and all its synonyms. Or instead of just saying “I cannot excuse you from committing a lexical faux pas”, I write about a boo-boo in word choice.
Books and life taught me that, too.
“Ignorance is bliss.”
“Youth is wasted on the young.”
Let’s just all be rats eating, shitting, drinking, pissing, sleeping, fucking, et cetering in bliss.
Let’s burn all the books!
*Evil laugh and end of the world*
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