English is not a native tongue of the Filipinos. It takes reading, speaking, writing, and mastering English before one is able to express truly unfetterred with the language barrier. It is not easy to translate your experiences and the ideas in a foreign tongue.
When I was still in my elementary years, I knew then I had a passion for reading, and writing, but my penchant for playing kid’s games took the better of me. In a word, English was my handicap.
I went on to study in Jesuit-run school in my secondary studies, the phase of learning in which St. Ignatius de Loyola described to be formative, and hence critical. The first year was horrible. I was doing well in Math and Science, but I had a 78 grade in English. That was a bitter pill to swallow.
The rest of my high school years were spent in either basketball or reading; I had a passion for reading as well as basketball. I joined this Bibliophile Club where members were privileged to borrow books from the school library for a month, without any fine. My classmates used to tease me because during the second semester of my first year high school, I was still reading the Hardy Boys series while they finished reading the series in grade six. But I resolved to read those books nonetheless rather than reading James Michener or Sydney Sheldon or the Last Samurai. The long journey, as it were, must start from the single step.
There was this Short Story Writing contest when I was in second year high school. Still afraid to reveal my writing skill or the lack of it, I hid in my pseudonym, TIMOPA burala. The chairperson was searching for the real name of the writer, but I never came out in the open. I continued writing in that pseudonym. I did not have the guts to come out in the open during my entire secondary course.
Reading, when it becomes a habit, just like an addiction, is something you cannot just get rid of. I did not spend my nights studying my lessons but of reading novels, history, science, and any reading material my eyes could lay on. Then came the moment. My English teacher who gave me a 78 in my first year was our teacher in fourth year wherein we spent our time reading literary materials and classical novels. We were required to choose a classical novel, summarize every chapter, then at the end of the semester, come out with an extensive literary review.
I had to prove this teacher wrong. I chose the novel Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. That year, I lost my 20-20 vision. I had to wear eye-glasses as I poured over voluminous reading materials ranging from the history of the United States of America, the Mississippi river where the novel was set, literary criticism, the life of Mark Twain, ad infinitum. The high school library was not enough; I was in the bigger playground, the college library. Yes, reading was a foreplay, and writing was the orgasm; for me then, the whole thing was a play, effortless and blissful.
I always believed that efforts will have always its fruits. My English teacher gave me a final grade of 98, and everytime we meet, even up to now, she always take pride that she had never given a final grade of 98 except to me.
My real romance with reading and writing blossomed since then. I went to college brimming with confidence. I abandoned my pseudonym to carry my by-line as I wrote and edited the official student publication of our university, THE CRUSADER. My college years were productive of both literary and journalistic outputs.
After college though, the studies of law took all my time for another four years and six months of intensive review. The language of law leaves no room for imagination, while literary writing precisely titillates the senses. For four years, I did not have even one literary piece. My romance with writing took a backseat as I read law books after law books, which are written, in a language that is barren and frigid, a challenge to sheer comprehension but not the imagination.
I thought it was only four years. After I passed the bar exams in 1990, and before I was introduced to blogging in the internet, I was suffering from what others call, literary infertility. It was absolute zero in terms of literary piece. And gosh, it was only last year that I started writing aside from legal briefs. Counting the years, it was twenty long years since I wrote something literary.
Now, coming back to the title , Living and Writing. A lawyer’s planner is always full, and yet here I am blogging, pouring out innermost thoughts for the others to swallow or spit out, absorb or discard. Writing, is a way of life, (or is it not life itself?). Afterall, living is sharing one’s self to others. An individual is not only a speck in the sea of humanity. He is a parcel of humanity; and man is characterized by what he has contributed to the definition of man, or by what he has taken away from the noble idea of what it is to be truly human. Writing humanizes; killing dehumanizes.
Is it the need to share, to feel the heartbeats of fellow humans even if the bloggers live continents apart, that I blog here? I may never know the true , pure and undiluted answer. But as I am finishing this blog, even though I am still struggling to shake off from my legalese tendencies, I realize that after the foreplay of reading, and experiencing life, I am unleashing, through this writing, the searing energies of orgasm, which fulfills me, and therefore, makes me more human and truly alive.
