Voices in My Pillows

Voices in My Pillows

I can’t sleep. Jessica Zafra’s voice is still in my head.

Tw7sted reminded me of my very lesson in Jean Claire Dy in Creative Writing 101 that you should always try finding your own voice. Zafra also mentioned that in her article somewhere in the book. I figured out that this voice they were saying is not something that you try to speak inside your head, instead it is something inside your head whom you listen to. It is scary because for the past two years I have written for online-based news and on weblogs, the voice that dictates what I write comes from the image of Zafra. I’ve been reading Zafra now for four years and no other voice comes louder in my ears than hers. She is so noisy.

I have finished reading Catcher in the Rye and lent it to Bogart. Holden has a voice of an older brother. It was lovely. But the book was somewhat disappointing because I expected the final chapter to be a long whistle blow. The book was full of canon blasts and colorful fireworks that the end sounded only like a brief whoot, like a fart. The book was good all the same, though. It “killed me” when Phoebe put Holden’s hunting hat on him. I finished reading the book without fulfilling my prophecy of self-delusion about me becoming a Holden. It was the other way around: Holden became me.

While reading the book, my sister kept bugging me to let her bring the book with her to Ateneo where she worked her scholar-volunteer hours. She insisted even when I was still not through. She mentioned that she wrote the way J. D. Salinger does (she writes in her blog and plans to submit her works to her school paper) indirectly saying she was Holden.

I don’t know if I’m right, correct me if I’m wrong, but the kind of literary technique Salinger employed is called stream of consciousness. It reveals the character’s feelings, thoughts and actions and somewhat spontaneous to the character’s feel of the world. The speaker becomes the star in a work even if the story is about something else. I first saw this style on Bob Ong, then Zafra and many other more. It is the reason why I am not enthralled with how Catcher in the Rye is written. The best writer to ever put this style on work for me was the Irish-American autobiographer Frank McCourt. My sister also claims that her writing is similar to those of Ong and McCourt. She is not a Zafra, I believe. Zafra is too noisy for her.

Whatever the name of that style is, it is so appealing. It is easy to fall in love with the stitch of thoughts that some readers claim it is their own thoughts, it is speaking their mind and that it is their voice. Sometimes they claim that the author is stealing their identities.

It is really scary when other people’s voices leap out from their heads and penetrate on mine, especially when the voice I hear is from a self-confessed cynical mutant like Zafra. Much worse, the voice is taking my sleep. I keep Tw7sted under my pillow after I read it at night.

When I finish reading Tw7sted, I will cover the book with newspaper and write on it “KEEP OUT!” I will keep it in a carton box, under a bed, in a bodega, in a castle, somewhere out in the space.

5/18/2007 3:24:52 AM

Louse

Louse

Last night I went to see Bogart for first time this May. We rarely ever see each other nowadays and it was only our second time being together for the whole summer season. We like to think that we click like hell but we are two different minds that can’t occupy the same conversation at the same time. It is best for us to only see each other occasionally.Since my sunglasses broke while at the beach, I received a hundred and fifty pesos to buy myself a new pair. The heat in this country is unbearable but the glare is unspeakable. I went out of the house the moment the sun receded into the horizon. There was enough daylight for me not be called a creature of the night.

It was already dark when I reached Bogart’s house in Boulevard, much darker when we went out into the night. We walked the length of Roxas, talking and assessing her life and her relationship with her boyfriend I haven’t met. She told me that the guy confessed to her that he kissed another girl while he was in a game of dare. She said she thought of the worst. He would have never told her that incident if something more suspicious had happened. She added that while in a period of resentment, they never contacted each other. One night, she decided to send him messages for guilt trip. “If we don’t love other people blah blah we might as well spare them from hurting them.”

“That was a lousy,” I told her.

We talked all the way to Gaisano Mall and went into the same store we go to since high school days: National Bookstore. There, I saw new copies of Tw7sted by Jessica Zafra on the shelf, as pink and as alive as ever. I first saw the copies on October two years ago. I had the money then but I decided to postpone a week to see if I still wanted the book. When I returned, there were no more pink Zafras. I waited for another batch of stocks to come but there where none.

A month later after the first apparition, I saw Titiana parading her own copy of Tw7sted. I managed to borrow the book, only to return it immediately the next day. She never brought the book back to school after that and flew out of Davao the following months to study in Manila. She returned to Davao this summer and before I could borrow her copy again, she flew back to Manila. I barely got the time to read half of the Tw7sted articles in that one night she lent it to me, much more to memorize all of them by heart.

I was such a fanatic of Zafra. When I decided to become a writer, I wanted to be like her. I even went to the point of liking her by constantly writing her e-mails and comments on her blog. I told her that she’s the only person I look up to that even with my airy disposition I am humbled by her works and I am willing to be called her ardent follower. She never replied to any of my mails, and rejected all my comments on her blog. I silently criticize Bogart for being pathetic and look what I am. I make actions that I regret the moment I made them. Just weeks ago, I sent a text message to Benjamin, someone I’m in a bad term with for a long time. When he replied the next day afternoon, I was wasted. The only time that I may ever drink for the whole summer and I spoiled it by ruining the chance of getting along with him by sending him an embarrassing message. He never replied.

All of those things went into my mind when I saw Tw7sted back on the shelf. Unhesitant, I bought the first copy that landed into my hand. Before the mall closed, Bogart and I decided to call it a night and separated ways. People at home were looking for the sunglasses. I showed them the book. I remember that the book has images of Zafra’s spectacles.

Tw7sted cost a hundred and forty-five pesos. Five pesos less the year it came out. When I checked the pages for printing defects, it was seven pages less. Thursday, May 17, 2007 4:07 AM

pretty phony

Thursday, April 26, 2007

 

Pretty Phony in a Real Summer Country

 

There’s just nothing to do here in our house during summer so I just do things whatever comes my way. I play computer games, watch television and read books like The Catcher in the Rye.

I wasn’t expecting it but when I reached the moment that I would finally read “the catcher in the rye” being mentioned in the book, it was a quick sharp jolt of electricity going from my head through my fingers and onto the page where I was actually reading the words “the catcher in the rye.” It was like watching a moment in a Nora Aunor or Rez Cortez or whoever-superstar film when she finally says the movie title, only everything is in a series of déjà vu. It sounded something like “inagaw mong lahat sa akin ka” sort of drama and there goes a slap or a gunshot or a tear-on-one-cheek or a wine splashing on a pretty villain’s face. I was on this part where Holden Caulfield was talking to his sister, Phoebe, about a poem with a line “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” Holden was thinking the whole time it goes that way but Phoebe pointed out it was “If a body meet a body comin’ through the rye.” So another story was told where it has to force its reader to know why it was titled that way.

I won’t mention anymore of what a good badass writer J.D. Salinger was because his character Holden was a testament of Salinger’s greatness in itself. I won’t also be a freak giving analysis on what made Catcher in the Rye a killer. Holden himself was a killer and he’s enough to make generations idolizing for the dead. He was the reason why John Lennon, John F. Kennedy and Kurt Cobain died.

When I was reading the book I was worried because, at first, I didn’t find Holden striking. Maybe I’ve read too many books about junkies or watched too many Japanese cartoons that nothing strikes me good anymore. I was holding this idea on my head that he was just another adolescent boy character that has nothing better to do with his god-blessed young life but badmouth the world. In my idea, he was a stereotype. But I kept on forgetting that before Robin Padilla, Mark Herras and Chin Chan came, there was Holden, the archetype bad boy we either pinch in cuteness or strangle in too much cuteness. What I’m saying is that it was hard for Holden to melt into sublimity because I had already an idea on what he was going to be in the book. But as the pages and moments passes, it wasn’t hard to get the feel of Holden anymore. I was digging in the idea that his character is very catchable.

Holden made me feel depress as hell, though, like the way it depressed the hell in him when phony stuffs came crossing his way. What was more depressing was that the moment I felt his contempt for the world in my blood and actually liking him for doing that to me, faces of people I know who said that they were like Holden came flashing in front of my vision. These people, mostly had just finished reading the book, go around thinking everything was phony. I’m only halfway the book, and I’m very affected on how the world becomes a real phony place. I’m afraid because after reading the book, I may go around saying that I’m somewhat a Holden and go disliking things because I think they are phony and be a snob and just shut up about it, keeping these observations of phony stuffs to myself, thinking more that I am greater than anybody else because others only see the world as it is, while we Holdens see the world phony. If Holden is a real person, I won’t go near him. And if I were Holden, I would start disliking myself now, especially during this hot season.

There’s really nothing to do here in our house during summer so I really do things whatever comes my way. I play computer games, watch television and read books like The Catcher in the Rye. Need not to say the obvious, I’m just bumming around.

I read the book mostly around one o’clock in the morning until the sun blazes in around seven o’clock. I like staying up during the night because it’s cold and there’s no sun barging in and heating up our house. Plus, there are no people disturbing me when I’m bumming myself to death. I sleep around eight or nine in the morning and wake up just in time for the afternoon Japanese animé shows. If it’s still too hot in the afternoon, I will stab a slab of ice from the freezer and smothers it all over my neck while an electric fan blows wind to my face. Pretty bohemian, huh? (I wonder if I’m being conscious about the climate for the first time and beginning to notice that summer in this country is really hot or I’ve seen too much of Al Gore and his global warming documentary that I’m considering this summer as the hottest in thousands years since the last ice age.) Other than that, I just sit in front of the TV or lie on my back reading the book most of the time.

Few days ago, while watching a television show and while contemplating about alcohol, tobacco and guns after reading an Encarta article about this agency in America that deals with them, news about a Korean-American boy blares on the TV. Reports say he was on a shooting rampage killing thirty two students and teachers in Virginia Tech. I thought of the documentary by Michael Moore and the movie Elephant that tackled the subject of the Columbine Massacre: two White-American boys, in a rampage, shooting people around their campus, leaving everybody dead and killing themselves in the end. America is such a nice place to live in. There are no people tightening their asses, they don’t keep things to themselves and they don’t think what a great phony place a world we live in. If they don’t like somebody there, they shoot them.

I am not so affected by this kind of news, though. Everything that comes out of TV or books, even scenarios that are most likely to happen in our living room, comes out phony. I won’t say that I am an emotionless organism equally numb and stoic as a stone. It’s just that things like these don’t strike me anymore. Maybe it’s just America because anything can happen at anytime in that god-blessed country. Or maybe this just is Philippines where in no terrorism, calamity or massacre story scares the hell out of anyone. Unless it’s a story happening right in front of his or her face and he or she is the main character.

This is a summer country where, also, maybe due to the heat, nothing shocks anyone anymore. Especially the real. But I wonder what things should have not been phonies when those shooting kids were growing up in god-blessed America.