Unscrupulous Politeness
He paused at the words, “unscrupulous politeness.” The knife slices his eggs Benedict and it was heavy. His flimsy hands drop the knife and the clacking disturbs the quiet of the empty store. A waiter approaches with a new one wrapped in a napkin. He brings portions of egg, bacon, muffin and hollandiase to his mouth as the chorus of a song from Passion Pit sets in. He washes the food down with strong coffee. He thinks about 2005, writing in a Moleskine notebook in a CBTL in KL. 2009 reading Eric Gamalinda in Ortigas, playing songs in an iPod photo while waiting for lunch with his future wife. He remembers writing about those memories, the same way he is doing now.A nice, unfamiliar songs pipes in. He launches the soundhound app, and it registers a song by Sia. Looking out the wide, clear glass window he sees a bright day, sunshine warming up the bay. How many times he’s run along this bay, he wonders. He wonders how we can ever run the weekday mornings again, when the office keeps him. So much beauty brims over this view you’d find no reason to despair. He had the ability to see some clarity through whatever it was that was murky, and his realizations were clear as day. A wave of relief settles in, and he enjoyed the possibility of sustained mirth reading this book (and the resulting remembrance) will bring forth.
Hashtags
#StarkSimiliraties #Magnolia #DouglasCoupland #NickHornby #Singles(CameronCrowe) #LoveActually #Sideways #EmpireRecords #JaneAustenIn no particular order or emphasis.
Setting
It took you to New York, San Francisco, Naples, a safari in Africa, a country led by a dictator. So you took the first chapter in a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, the slide journal while having mint tea and honey at another coffeeshop near the office, at the dinner table one afternoon at home while having Lipton tea, the bathtub in Bellevue Alabang so the pages got wet, and finally the ending while slurping a pot of Taragon Tea in Tagaytay.
It was a happy day, finishing the book while celebrating the little one's 3rd.
The Proximity of the Greats
You don't remember it, but you knew you read it from a story. No, it wasn't in Butch Dalisay's Penmanship. You thought it was, and you ended up reading the whole story again for the nth time but the line wasn't there. But it's in your mind. A librarian didn't become a writer because he read the greats and whenever he tried to write, "the proxmity of the greats humbled him." You feel the same way. You're not a writer because you're not good enough. And you don't need to review heavyweights such as this book. You leave that to the Guardian or the New Yorker.Even your favorite quotes are somewhere in the internet.
But you try, at least to remember. That way you're not beaten by such a stealthy, sneaky goon.
