To JK Rowling: Nicely Done

Call it the frustration or call it the emotional sap living within me, but I burst into tears after hearing JK Rowling's speech at the world premiere of Harry Potter 7 part 2. I wasn't crying while she was giving the speech because... sad to say, I am not that much of an avid Harry Potter fan. Let me clear that out - I skipped out in reading the books, for a very simple reason, my impatience with not knowing what will happen next and with reading details got the best of me and since the chapters had titles of what they contained, I skipped out on most of the other chapters and the other characters. So I gave up reading it. But the book was really good.

I remember that when the first wave of Potter madness hit, a lot of skeptics came up to do some damage to the newly rising best seller, saying that it promoted black magic and what not. Of course, in my house that talk was in the air as well, lingering there for quite sometime, but not really given that much weight as all the other arguments and problems that linger in our house. Those years were the years of controversial books so I can't really blame my parents for trying to be cautious with what their child reads. Anyway, I was still able to read some of the books in the series; those being books 1 and 3. Book 1, I hardly remember if I finished it thoroughly and then book 3 I finished in the skipping chapters method.

If my friends hear me, or read about this I am going to get a lot of sermons. Anyway, now that I think back on it... Anne Rice is an even harder read than Harry Potter.


Truth be told, I found the deeper meaning of the books in the films, it was the films that opened my eyes to the fact that this book was not some little bed time story book for kids. The take on the narration was simple, but the plot was complex. I thought it rather sneaky but intelligent. I think the best "writer" way of describing it is, JK had command over her language. She used it the simplest way she knows so that the appeal would reach even those that do not really think of reading as a leisure activity. And I applaud her for that, I can't do that. Make something simple and yet still sound intelligent and not like some teenage fan fiction writer.

So going back, I cried after JK's speech. After I told my friend, I want her life, that feeling of having done something you love or something you had poured a part of your life into, take on a life of its own and grow exponentially to touch so many people and so many hearts. That is something. I don't know if I envy her because she has made a name for herself and people will never forget her, or that she had done something so beautiful (period). I cried when I started to imagine how she must have felt crunching those last few hours, writing those last few lines, and then to finally end it. I envy her. I truly do.

I wish I'd get that someday too, to be in the same situation as when she was writing the last chapter of the Harry Potter series, maybe one day... but for now, Ms. Rowling, nicely done.

Kristin Bauer

I found out today that Kristin Bauer, Pam from True Blood, is actually into painting and that she even went to art school. That was quite unexpected. Anyway, I saw one of her paintings in http://www.perfectpictureframing.com/artistShowcase.htm and that just proved she is more than what I had thought of her, which is confined to just an actress (of course she also does well in this particular avenue). Anyway... that's it for the day... time to hit the books.

J.R.R Tolkien

Lament for Eorl the Young 

Where now is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

At Woodward's Garden by Robert Frost

A boy, presuming on his intellect,

Once showed two little monkeys in a cage

A burning-glass they could not understand

And never could be made to understand.

Words are no good: to say it was a lens

For gathering solar rays would not have helped.

But let him show them how the weapon worked.

He made the sun a pinpoint on the nose

Of the first one, then the other, till it brought

A look of puzzled dimness to their eyes

That blinking could not seem to blink away.

They stood arms laced together at the bars,

And exchanged troubled glances over life.

One put a thoughtful hand up to his nose

As if reminded--or as if perhaps

Within a million years of an idea.

He got his purple little knuckles stung.

The already known had once more been confirmed

By psychological experiment,

And that were all the finding to announce

Had the boy not presumed too close and long.

There was a sudden flash of arm, a snatch,

And the glass was the monkey's, not the boy's.

Precipitately they retired back-cage

And instituted an investigation

On their part, though without the needed insight.

They bit the glass and listened for the flavor.

They broke the handle and the binding off it.

Then none the wiser, frankly gave it up,

And having hid it in their bedding straw

Against the day of prisoners' ennui,

Came dryly forward to the bars again

To answer for themselves:

Who said it mattered

What monkeys did or didn't understand?

They might not understand a burning-glass.

They might not understand the sun itself.

It's knowing what to do with things that counts.

by Robert Frost (1936)

from: http://foundsf.org; they have a picture of the Woodward Garden Entrance... you might want to check it.

- I was somewhat in the middle of reviewing my OB book during the time that the urge to suddenly open my Robert Frost book at a random page. It might not really be what the poem was trying to say but I thought the poem meant that it did not matter whether I truly understood all the stuffs I'm cramming or trying desperately to read, it's knowing what to do with the stuff that matters most. It was a little comforting during the time. 

-Yes... I considered myself to be the monkeys and someone superior to me who flaunt their superiority to be the boy.

Kafka on Shore

I just finished reading Kafka on the Shore, one of the best reads I've ever had for ages. It really had been a long time since I last took a thick paper back book, sat, read and finished the whole thing. I did not finish it in one sitting though, it took me the whole summer to finish just this one book. I think I've lost my affinity to lengthy novels since the last novel I successfully finished was Peter Pan -- that was good too, after all, I am in love with Peter Pan and the thought of there being a real Peter Pan; anyway this particular novel needs to be talked about in another blog -- so going back, yeah, my affinity for thick, lengthy novels have dwindled down to almost nothing.

At the end of each chapter, I felt that connection to the characters, that odd experience of a metaphysical level was definitely there however underplayed it was in my life at that time... it was undeniably there. Oddly so, at first I felt that this book might not have been for me, it lacked the sheer excitement that I got from Anne Rice and her vampires and odd little action scenes. It lacked the feel of being thrown into the realities of another person's life which I got from Paulo Coelho, or that warmth and pain you feel in love from Nicolas Sparks. Yeah, I have such a small and cliched  repertoire of authors. But they are the ones I read.

I was almost to the half of the book thinking, this is not doing it for me, I can't seem to really enjoy it. Not that he wasn't good at telling his story or that the plot was a bore, I just felt like I wasn't excited, that's all. But I read on, thinking that if I always stopped reading in the middle because nothing excited me, my view of the whole thing would always be incomplete, like how I did with Pullman's The Golden Compass. So a little touch of maturity on my part (yehey for me). And true enough, the book proved to be more for me than what I first thought of it. 

I was somehow in the same situation when I read this. The same feeling like wanting to run away from something and start over somewhere else. And the story kind of grew on me, not like the feeling you get from watching strong big waves crushing against the rocks, but more like how you come to like the gentle breeze of a warm day, that neither blows through your hair or sweeps up your skirt, just a silent blow as gentle as a whisper. Anyway, my metaphor's bad so I'll put up something that helped me through that weird situation I was in. 

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. 

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. 

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about." 
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

Allan Popa

I still have my senior's copy of Morpo by Allan Popa and was leisurely reading it today... gosh it's too hot today. Anyway, here's one of the many good pieces in the collection.

TAGPO

Nagsalubong ang dalawang landas.
Saglit na nag-atubili.
Iwas sa kaliwa. Iwas sa kanan.
Kambal-hadlang ang pagbibigay-daan.
Nauudlot ang mga hakbang.
Magkabilang akmang
mga panaklong sa tagpo.
Pagkaraan, kapwa huminto.
Naghihintay sa udyok ng direksyon.
Iiwanan sila ng panahon

Haruki Murakami

I recently started reading Haruki Murakami. I came across this author from my best friend's sister, when she decided to sell her old books as she has already bought a "kindle". I bought all her Murakami books. I have heard the author somewhere before, I just couldn't remember where... So far I'm halfway done with his Kafka on the Shore and so far, it's a good read. The story for me somehow started quite slow and easy. I like the fact that he used such subtleties in introducing his plot twists and concentrated on the scenes that he was building in every chapter. I guess that's the genius of it. It is quite amazing how he could put out so much social issues without it coming off as offensive. anyway.. that's it for now. :)