Rewarding myself

When I work hard, I play harder. Playing includes writing and mailing letters, scribbling in my diary and reading or looking at art. Last week my daughter brought up a package I ordered from Nina L. Yuson consisting of her book Nina's Travel Sketches: Europe, a set of her postcards and another set of her heart-shaped, hand-sewn thingamajigs. The last will be trimmings for our 2020 Christmas tree, and yes, we're going all out in trimming the tree as an exercise in joy during an especially harrowing year. My husband Rolly and I take very good care in turning the pages of Nina's book. We find her drawings and watercolors delicate and fragile, even the way the book is constructed with a ring binder. But oh! We gasp at her skill in rendering, from a dog's, person's and bird's eye views, the places in the European continent that we working stiffs can only aspire to visit one day. Those spots remain an unreachable goal, never to be achieved in this lifetime given the swath of the COVID19 virus and our combined budgets. Even the artist, the founder of the Early Learning Center and the Museo Pambata on Roxas Blvd., has her own wish. She wrote in her foreword, "Although this is my fifth collection of sketches to be published, it is still my fervent wish that one day some of them will be chosen to adorn the menu covers of an airline, perhaps, our flag carrier, and what more I could see them on the side of an aircraft!" So what are you #reading this weekend? I'm reading, I'm looking and I'm unusually content.

Kai's shelfie

We live with an eight-year-old reader, Kai, who is also adept with gadgets but isn't addicted to them (yet). Her time with her video games is limited by us. She doesn't whine for extended time with her electronic toys.

In fact, she still plays with old plush toys and Disney dolls--that means conversing with them, laying them out on my bed, seating them on my pillows and covering them with my shawl or a short blanket.

When she sees me reading though, she imitates me, gets her own book and quietly settles at a corner. Sometimes she falls asleep as I do, too. When she wakens, she asks how long she was out. When I say an hour or two, her eyebrows meet and she worriedly says, "I may have a hard time sleeping tonight." I just advise her to read or reread a favorite book again.

For many years, Old MacDonald's Had a Farm was her favorite. These days, she rereads Roald Dahl's titles for kids and watches on Netflix the film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I don't know how many times she has sat through it.

On the foreground is the feminist storybook Prince Cinders by Babette Cole, a favorite of my own children, Kimi and Ida, when they were as old as Kai.

In the summer of 2018, her grumpa Rolly Fernandez built for her her own shelves for her books and toys. The shelves were made of recycled materials--two old cabinet doors that the carpenters cut up to Rolly's specifications.

Sometimes Kai and her cousin Max, seen in second photo at last night's premiere of The Lion King at Ayala the 30th Mall in Pasig, swap books.

Cousins Max and Kai at a movie premiere

As poet Luisa A. Igloria once wrote in her FB status, don't show us your selfies. Show your shelfies!

To Kai and Max I only wish a Happy National Children's Book Day every day.

‘Dictatorships are literature’s natural enemy’ –Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 Nobel laureate for literature, flanked by officials of De La Salle University at last Tuesday's conferment of doctor of literature, honoris causa. Vargas Llosa was educated at the De La Salle Academy in Bolivia and Colegio La Salle in Peru.

At age 80, Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 Nobel laureate for literature, described his relationship with the brothers of La Salle as “quite ancient.” His memories of these brothers, who taught him how to read and write, are “rich, vivid and moving.” There is one particular brother, a Spaniard named Justiano, to whom he owes a debt of gratitude for “the most important event in my life” –learning how to read.

At the recent conferment of the honorary degree of doctor of literature at De La Salle University in Manila, he spoke extemporaneously and called this skill “a magical operation” that transformed the letters of a book into “images and a living experience.” He felt his world enriched and transformed. Each time he discovered a book, reading remained magical after all these years.

He respects the invented life created by writers. His role as story teller was born in those early years “as a result of the extraordinary pleasure I had in reading.” But Peru then had a limited literary life so his “vocation wasn’t integrated with life. I felt eccentric and marginalized.” He was consecrating days, months, years to his writing with great difficulty in finding a publisher, “but I persevered.”

At one point, he supported his studies and writing by taking on seven jobs, among which was as a radio man and a journalist for the Agence France Presse.

He said writing has fulfilled his life “in an extraordinary way” and at the same time added that “it is difficult to demonstrate how books change the lives of readers for the better. Sensibilities, desires are stimulated. This shows the importance of books in daily life.”

He continued, “Good books are the best defense against prejudices, distorted views of people in different languages.”

Vargas Llosa signs a copy of his novel for short story writer-journalist Amadis Ma. Guerrero. The latter approached the Nobel laureate and introduced himself thus, "Yo soy Amadis Ma. Guerrero. Buenas tardes" and showed his copy of The Green House, a 1982 pocketbook edition well-preserved by a thick plastic cover. Pleasantly surprised, Vargas Llosa grabbed the book, scrawled his signature and said, "Mucho gusto!" After which others followed with assorted books and publications for autographing.

Despite these differences, the common denominator that is of utmost importance, he said, “is we are all humans challenged by the same obstacles” in order to continue to live.

By reading good stories, he said, “we make more accessible to us certain values” like the “freedom needed for societies to become modern and prosperous. Good books develop in us a kind of dissatisfaction with the world as it is. We hope that life will change, that we create societies that are more fair and nearer the worlds we create with our imagination.”

Vargas Llosa is convinced that reading good literature “is not only a great pleasure but also fundamental for the training of citizens in free and democratic societies.”

He warned that “all regimes that try to control human life have suspicions about literature. They try to control this activity and eliminate spontaneity. Dictatorships are literature’s natural enemy.”

He praised reading and writing of good books for helping “develop natural criticism of the world as it is.”

And he returned to Brother Justiano for having started all this with the young Vargas Llosa as he learned how to read and write.

He bemoaned how for some sectors of society, litearature is considered as “just entertainment.” Society pressures the youth to go into what he called “practical skills”

Yes, he said, literature is “the best entertainment but at the same time, it is a kind of knowledge of the world. Literature is able to make us feel we are having living experiences.” Through literature, he continued, “we enter into an intimacy with a culture, know the most secret personality of persons.”

Reading, he concluded, is not just for pleasure but also for the shaping of “better citizens to face the challenges in our existence.”

He thanked DLSU for the honorary degree conferred on him, quipping, “I will try my best not to deceive you.” -- Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

This article and the photos accompanying it were originally published in www.verafiles.org, Nov. 14, 2016.

Our poster girl for reading

Soon April comes and she will. She'll be called Literature Month as stipulated by law. I recently happened upon my Mom, our family's convalescent, reading from her bed with such concentration that I was able to snap a stolen shot without her noticing. Her concentration reminds me of that quote attributed to actor Charlie Chaplin: "Nothing is permanent in this world, not even your troubles." So relax and curl up with a book. It's summertime after all when the reading is easy. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

The playful, the serious collide in Del Tolentino’s book art | Vera Files

The playful, the serious collide in Del Tolentino’s book art | Vera Files

A gentle reader's confessions

Image from Pinterest.com

It's Sunday,worship day. Yesterday was supposed to have been confession day, but since I'm a long-lapsed RC (Roman Catholic, not RC Cola), I've done my confessions everywhere, except at the confessional (a traumatic Catholic girlhood took care of that).

What has replaced the old-fashioned confessional, with its historical reference to the betrayal of the Katipunan, is reading to music, writing to more music and moving through my days with a song in my head and my foolish heart and offering these riches to my Maker.

I can't imagine reading or writing or even meditatively folding my blankie (grandchild's word for "blanket") without a fascinating rhythm throbbing in my head.

Yes, it's a way of coping, a preventive measure from tipping over and falling into a dark edge.

Recently, author Romi Garduce wrote to say that he appreciates my blog because of an inherently optimistic streak, though cock-eyed. He, however, said that his blog is "dark" (whatever that meant). 

Okay, shameless plugging again for Romi's book, Akyat! Journey to the Seven Summits. I'm excited because copies will be made available in Baguio's Mt Cloud Bookshop this month (oh, sweet October). I've made predictions that have gone wrong, but my gut declares that Romi's inspiring life story, the National Pride that he is, will resonate with many readers, not just the sports and Ze Great Outdoors communities. Even I who confesses to a favorite sport of reading while reclining until my arms and eyes hurt thoroughly enjoyed his book. 

This blog is dedicated to my Community of Learners students--I've compelled them, using my secret dominatrix voice, to read read read to enable them to write write write and soar from whatever condition(s) they find themselves in.

Back to my coy voice. Copies of Romi's book are available at the following stores: