Lit Geek Update # 20: Moving On

(the Suite Francaise manuscript)

Whew. Finally.

A heavy read, this one (probably helps explain the snail's pace with which I read it?). It is a war novel, a big hint that it was to be no light reading fare; and what further padded up the weight were the circumstances around the novel's writing and publication.

Irene Nemirovsky's childhood was not what one would call a happy one. She came from a wealthy family, but her problematic, strained relationship with her mother more than clouded up her early years. I'm thinking this toughened her up and prepared her for the darkness which she was to grope around in during her final years.

Fast forward to her adult years--

An established writer/socialite, she and her husband had to move around a lot to flee persecution during the 2nd World War, them being Jews and their conversion to Catholicism not being enough to save them from certain, imminent death which awaited all the Jews during that dark period.

The novel was written in the middle of the chaos and done secretly, scribbled in handwriting so tiny that Nemirovsky's daughter, Denise, many, many years later, had to use a magnifying glass in order "to decipher the miniscule handwriting" (preface to the French edition, p. 512) and type the manuscript for publishing.

I found it uncanny, reading about how the novel survived and found its way into the world's bookshelves. Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz in 1942, and Suite Francaise was published 64 years later. Her two daughters, mere children when their mother died, had instinctively--seeing how painstakingly (and discreetly) their mother had labored over it--kept the manuscript in a suitcase. It became their constant companion in their transit from one place to another in order to escape the fate their parents had met (death in the gas chambers). The manuscript, through the children's loving protection and care--they had meant to keep it as a memento of their mother--miraculously survived the unfriendliness of the era.

The book, though unfinished, has a lot to say about the war (Germany's occupation of France, specifically), and even more about the human tenacity to cling to life in the middle of a death-strewn age, resilience amidst trials, the power of faith, of hope.

I am glad the book found its way into my hands.
Thanks, M--.

Next on my list: E. M. Forster's A Room With A View

Lit Geek Update # 19: Stuck

It's been weeks and I'm still reading the same book. It's not the book that's the problem--both the prose and the exposition are very, very good. It's time, or the lack thereof, that's the culprit.

Excuses, excuses.

It's that damn Facebook that's taking me away from my books. LOL

I'm giving myself until Friday. I should be done by then.

Allow me to add this to all that's been said

"The blackout takes over the night erases the city from the map erases everything"
-Conchitina Cruz, "I Must Say This About The City", from Dark Hours-

Since everybody has written, is writing, and will write about the typhoon that has recently come our way, I told myself, I won't write about it. So I kept it away, put off the urge for as long as I could. But the images in the news, the horror stories (made even more horrifying by the fact that they were not fiction, but fact) were just too much for me to take, while keeping mum and being passive.

It seemed almost irreverent to remain silent, when the rest of everything and everyone was, and is raging.

On my September 26 post, I wrote:

Let's all stay indoors. This is not a good time to be out.

It was morning when I typed those words and I was, as yet, completely unaware of the catastrophic scale the inclement weather (I thought it merely "inclement" at that time) was about to shoot up to. I was lucky that where I lived remained untouched by floodwater. The only complaint I could come up with was that rainwater came in through the window, creating puddles on the room's wooden floor. I grumbled even as I wiped. But still, I wiped.

The shame I felt, then, when, after turning the TV on, the screen presented coverage of a furious typhoon gone mad on the city and its people. Flood, flood everywhere, making lakes out of streets where people remained trapped inside floating cars; dark, filthy water risen and still rising to alarming heights, climbing up staircases, reaching up to terraces, chasing people up, up, so that they had to brave the rain and the wind in order to seek safety on their roofs. There were places where even the roofs failed to provide the shelter so desperately sought.

Really, who could have been prepared for this?

No one, I guess. And so the typhoon has left us in shock, in shambles, in shreds.

Returning

"Volver" is dominated by women's themes. The friend who recommended it to me was anxious that I wouldn't like it. As it turned out, I ended up telling him, "heck, I most probably got the movie more than you did."

Female relationships--mother-to-daughter, sister-to-sister, girlfriend-to-girlfriend--are key elements to how the film comes full circle, the glue being one woman's supposed death and believed return and regular appearances as a ghost. Depicting how a mother's love can transcend life and death, the movie is at times absurd, comic and often painfully real. The human tenacity to cling to faith and life, despite and in spite of the many obstacles death and its harbingers bring, is spun neatly into the tale.

I cannot allow myself to miss mentioning, too, that the predominance of superstition and myth in Hispanic culture is essential to the telling of the story, if not to the conception itself of the story.

Daughters (and sons, too) and mothers had better watch this film. Though often taken for granted and most of the time overlooked, we all need to return to that most precious--and binding--of ties.


*for an ever so much better and more erudite review, go to film guru Roger Ebert. =)

In Today's Movie Marathon:

Superb films, both.

And what of the rain lashing loudly against the windows, the walls, the roofs of each house? What of the wind, wailing, mournful?

Let's all stay indoors. This is not a good time to be out.

Feeling that blah feeling again. Not a good sign at all.

For M-- and M--:

When stuck in a car with two rock music aficionados conversing, what is one to do?

Listen.

And learn heaps!
=)

And What Came After

Once in a while, it happens: two people meet, fall madly in love and live happily ever after.

Once in a while.

And then there's the rest of the time, where two people meet and fall in love and wait, and wait, and wait for a happy ever after that never comes.

When I was a little girl, the couples I knew always found happy ever after. Now, I realize that the pages i loved so much were merely shielding me from the harsh, bitter truth: that Rapunzel's hair was never the same when it started to grow again, so that her prince eventually left her to look for a girl with prettier hair; or that the Beast, who went back to his human form because of Beauty's love, got transformed back to a beast because he had a difficult time shedding away his beastly ways; or that Cinderella, having broken free from being a slave to her stepsisters virtually all her life, left her prince and became a women's rights activist in some obscure land (the prince had turned out to be even more oppressive than the ugly old maids in her former home, you see).

Happy ever after turned out to be just another fairy tale, after all. Tsk, tsk.

Bummer.

And so, now, people who greet newly-married couples "congratulations" are actually muttering "good luck" under their breaths. A girl who announces her upcoming wedding gets greeted by frowning, knowing looks and unsolicited advice to "think it over first." Those who have been there and found their way out (and it's amazing just how high their percentage has become, just try asking around) no longer bite back their cynical opinions on the great M-- word.

It's most probably because they've discovered that there were still pages and pages that came after the endings--or supposed endings--of the fairy tales they'd read as children.

Now, Stillness.

Stepping indoors on a gusty, stormy day means walking into sudden calm, and warmth, and quiet.

The transition is extremely blunt and brutal that there happens an arrest of almost all the senses. The mind is jolted out of a memory of chaos--because that second when the door is shut is enough to turn the chaos into a memory--into a bed of languor and lull.

It can be startling, this distortion.

But the mind, and the rest of you, will need no more than a variation of seconds or minutes to achieve equilibrium.

Unless you desire the opposite.

Mercury's on Retrograde Again!

Mercury has retrograded and I didn't know! Tragic. Tsk, tsk.

I screamed "mercury's on retrograde now!" and M-- said, "so that explains it. Why you've been acting really weird lately. Pfft." Grins.

Now, I'm trying to think back on my week and, yeah, I do remember it as a roller-coaster ride to downhill from uphill (arrggh!). In fact, it's been the most sudden downturn I've had in a long, long while.

It's a good thing I watched "Kimmy Dora" a day before and got to be in one heck of a rollin' party hours before (Mercury turned retrograde September 7th, 12:39 am EST). Hours into it, I woke up with that terrible, terrible hangover. That should've been warning enough. Though the equation (or pseudo-equation) Hangover=Mercury Retrograde is hardly the first "put-two-and-two-together" one would come up with, under normal circumstances.

Mercury will turn direct September 29th.

In the meantime, folks, prepare for a rough ride ahead. And then, hopefully, lots of peace and order afterward.

Partying on a Monday

Looks like the rainy season has descended upon us for good (until summer comes again, that is). Time to bring out the sweaters, the cardigans, the knits, the coats, the tweeds, the wools, why not?

M-- made me a cup of really fab coffee earlier, perfect for the cold and the rains. Have just recovered from the hang-over I've been nursing since this morning, throbbing headache and dizziness, my goodness, I've reached this age without experiencing those, until now, that is. I loaded up on lots of water and it seemed to do the trick. Hydrating, they call it. Last night's proverbial company party did this to me-- which is not to say I didn't have fun, because I did have fun. Probably explains the hang-over, too:

Fun + alcohol = HANG-OVER.





This party meant a lot to me because I was one of the two people who organized it (good friend, Sheila, was the other one).




Like her, I was feeling mighty anxious days before and hours before and only really got to exhale an hour into the party, when things were already in full swing and the people looked like they were having a good time (read: rowdy).




Early on, I even had to help the waiter take the orders for rice, complete with pen and notepad gear, so that our AVP (dear, dear Barb), bottle of Jack Daniels in hand, jokingly asked me, "do you work part-time here?" and then burst into that distinctly evil laugh of hers.


They were able to coax me into a beer-drinking match with colleague, Myra. That was a first for me.



I lost, of course. hahaha

At ATC National Bookstore today:

I breezed into the store and heard a chime-like sound, which turned out to be the sensors, which were strategically placed by the entrance. If a bit timidly, the guard asked me if I was carrying a book with me.

A little puzzled, but at the same time beginning to realize what it was all about, I said "yes, I do,", my right hand instinctively diving into my unabashedly pink bag for the copy of Mookie Katigbak's The Proxy Eros, which I had recently bought at Festi's National and which I have been taking with me almost anywhere I went and which still had the price tag stuck to its behind. The guard asked me to leave it at the counter and I willingly obliged. If he had shown the least bit rudeness, I would have been pissed (irritable creature that I was), but since he was very courteous about the whole thing, I simply gave a mental shrug. He was just doing his job, I realized, and preventing further mishap because if he hadn't stopped me and asked me to deposit the book, things would have been really complicated--and awkward--on my way out.

And you can add to that the fact what a monster I could become whenever I find myself in any situation where I feel that my rights and dignity are being infringed upon.

Plus, the guy at the package counter was really nice, offering to take my book to their cashier so that whatever it was that caused the sensors to react would be removed.

There are still good people in this world. What a comforting thought.
=)

Sign of the times: Countdown

People in the office have begun the countdown to Christmas.

I've been, like, "what? So soon?"

Quite a number of friends are celebrating their birthdays this month. Happy Burp-day to: Sheila, Fenina, CJ, Mae, Wema, Emillie, Ribbon, Steve, Tatat, Gino, and Sweet.
=)