My not-so-secret love affair

            While still a law student, one of the few places I used to hang out to relax was the PowerBooks in Megamall. It was (still is) a nifty place to unwind during weekends for a cash-strapped student with a hungry mind: reading within the store premises is allowed, the sofas are comfortable, the aircon is free, and coffee and food is within easy reach (although not free).

            In one of those forays in the bookstore, I found a gem of a book which I believed had an unexplainable spiritual connection to the quintessential me---the book described, if not summed up, what I had long wanted to do since I was in high school. The book is Writing from Personal Experience: How to Turn Your Life into Salable Prose by Nancy Davidoff Kelton. The price: close to a thousand. (Quite steep for a penniless student.)

            I picked up the book and scanned a few chapters. Exactly what I wanted---or more appropriately, needed.

            “At this price, no way would I be able to buy this book,” I sighed as I replaced the book on the shelf while my mind conjured images of the student essentials I have to give up to afford this non-essential. At that moment, I felt like the mythical Tantalus who, whenever he stretched out for a branch of pomegranate hanging above his head, the branch would sway in the opposite direction.

            Indeed, akin to Tantalus was what I felt for the past thirteen years up until that point in my life. You see, I have always wanted to write (and become a writer or journalist) since I was in high school but life “got in the way”---- life and the related realities of parental pressure and expectations (both my parents are frustrated lawyers and they have passed their career frustrations to me since I was the one who always excelled academically and hence expected, rightly or wrongly, to carry the family “torch”), practical considerations and other concomitant twists and turns. In other words, instead of following my passion for writing, I finished a business course in college and proceeded to and graduated from law school. But through all those time, I still harbored the desire to express myself through the written word. Deep in my heart I knew the book would be the impetus to help me realize my heart’s desire.

            Then one fine day, my Tita Helen (a doctor based in Australia) vacationed in the Philippines. A book-lover, bookstores are one of her favorite haunts. Every time she visits the Philippines, book-shopping is at the top of her to-do list. (She reasoned that her dollar allowed her to buy more in the Philippines than if she were to spend it Down Under.)

                  And book shopping we did!

            That day when my aunt bought for me Writing from Personal Experience was quite huge for me. In my heart I knew somehow “something” was going to happen . . . for the better.

            Writing from Personal Experience: How to Turn Your Life into Salable Prose was my “get-out-of-jail-free card,” in a manner of speaking. It allowed me to finally and fully express what is in my heart and mind. In fact, it still allows me to express what is in my heart and mind long after, figuratively speaking, I had passed “Go!”

            Thanks to the book, I have since started writing while in law school. The book gave me wonderful insights into the writing process and what it takes to be a writer which would have taken me a difficult and long time to discover on my own. More significantly, the book has guided me to sift through the mess of my varied personal experiences and translate them into prose (and be pecuniarily rewarded in the process!).

            I was transformed from merely dreaming or pining about writing or being a writer to actually sitting my fanny down and pouring out my emotions and experiences unto paper. Nothing compares to insights I gleaned from the book: insights which allowed me to bear to fruition a life---or at least a slice of a life---I had wanted.

            Since that fateful moment I read Writing from Personal Experience: How to Turn Your Life into Salable Prose, I have churned out pieces which appeared in the Manila Bulletin, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and (several times in) The Philippine Star. One of my essays was included in a book published by the FEU Press. I also won a prestigious Palanca Award (for Peace Essays: 2nd prize). Recently, Iwas asked to write a column in a regional newspaper. With all the frustrations I had been through, this development is nothing short of an inspirational story!

            I am still happily writing: part-time; if not for publication then at least for myself, in my journals. Whatever else I do, writing has become my secret love affair; like an illicit lover waiting in the bushes for that illicit yet exhilarating tryst.

            By now the book belies its near-thousand price. It is a shadow to its expensive-looking, glossy old self: dirty, dog-eared, brownish due to incessant rereading. Yet every time I reread the book, I see the quintessential me. 

            Uncannily, it was the book that breathed life into me and pulled me out of my shell to hang out with my best self.     

[ This was written sometime in 2006. I found it in my journal. This is my first blog entry in 2012]

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

My world it moves so fast today
The past it seems so far away,
And life, squeezes so tight that i can't breathe

And every time i've tried to be
What someone else thought of me
So caught up, i wasnt able to acheive

And deep in my heart
The answer, it was in me
And I made up my mind
To define my own destiny

I look at my environment,
And wonder where the fire went,
What happened to everything we used to be?

I hear so many cry for help,
Searching outside of themselves
Now I know that His strength is within me

And deep in my heart
The answer, it was in me
And I made up my mind
To define my own destiny

And deep in my heart
The answer, it was in me
And I made up my mind
To define my own destiny

[This is an accompanying song to the essays below.]

The miseducation of Terence B

  There was this English textbook that our class used when I was in high school. In it was a story titled “Honorable Dishonor”. The story was about two bright students: one, a financially well-off boy who was posed to graduate class valedictorian and deservedly so; the other, the well-off boy’s closest competitor—a poor lad who would be the class salutatorian.

            One day while all alone in the classroom, the well-off valedictorian-to-be found a book which was inadvertently left by one of his classmates. Trying to determine to whom the book belonged, the valedictorian-to-be opened it and saw a letter inside. The book belonged to his closest competitor and the letter was for the latter’s mother. In the letter, the boy was saying sorry to his mother for not being able to graduate as valedictorian. The consequence was that he may not move on to college for the family was so poor that even his half-scholarship to college for being the high school salutatorian would not suffice. The family has absolutely no means to augment the half-scholarship. To add to that, this boy had many more siblings to be sent also to school.

            After reading the letter, the well-off boy went to the class adviser, related the incident, and gallantly declared that he was willing to give up graduating at the top of the class so that the salutatorian-to-be can graduate as the class valedictorian and be entitled to a full scholarship to college. This was not easy for this well-off boy to do since all his other siblings before him have graduated valedictorian but more than that, he also deserved to graduate as so. 

            In class, my high school teacher queried if I would be willing to do what the boy in the story did given the same set of circumstances. (I was the consistent first honors and expected to graduate at the top of the class.)

            Without really thinking, I readily said yes. At the time I felt it to be the proper response. The teacher praised and commended me without giving any justification why giving up what you deserve and fought hard for is the proper thing to do.

            Many years have gone by and I have developed into a critical-minded adult. If that high school teacher would ask me the same question, most likely I would have given a different answer. I would not have given a safe “yes” answer just to look (or sound) good and to please her. I probably would have said “no” and launch into a discussion on the ill-effects of having an “entitlement mentality”, the benefits of self-reliance and the difference between true altruism and false altruism.

            The above epiphany suddenly came to me when I read in the papers about the error-filled DepEd (Department of Education)-sanctioned textbooks and the courageous teacher (Antonio Calipjo-Go of the Marian School), initially thought of as a crank, who questioned the facts presented in those textbooks used by many (I think, high school) students all over the country.

            We need more people like him in the academe and in our educational system—people who are critical-minded and do not just accept facts and information as they are.

            As you can see, as one news organization put it, “facts are not mere facts; information is not just plain information”. Facts and information do have an effect on their consumers.

More important, however, than having error-free textbooks are teachers and/or educators who can think critically and can pass such ability on to their students. More important than having the gumption to kvetch is the ability to think critically, question or challenge the status quo and the guts to stand for what one believes what ought to be. “What is as important as a beautiful mind is a courageous heart,” so goes a line from the movie “A Beautiful Mind”.

            Again I am reminded of this incident related to me by one mother: Her son was supposed to get a perfect score in an exam but for one mistake. On the blank space before the question “What is the color of an egg?” her son wrote “brown”. The teacher put a big X mark on the answer.

            To a certain extent I believe that I may have been miseducated. (I may have also used those error-filled textbooks during my time.) So too those classroom kids who for many years have used those error-filled government-sanctioned textbooks and who have without question listened to so-called voices of authority who believe that all eggs are white.

            I have this not-so-funny feeling that my miseducation would take some time to be undone.  

[ I found this in my Journal. ]