Bookends

Time it was and what a time it was it was,
A time of innocence, a time of confidences.

Long ago it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you.

-- Simon and Garfunkel
(Included in the OST of the funny, quirky, heart-wrenching 500 Days of Summer)

[To no one in particular.] Hahahahaha.###

Star

It was actually our barrio fiesta yesterday but I did not invite anyone over because we did not prepare any food except for our consumption.

But Star heard that it was fiesta and he invited himself over. Luckily, he came from another party so I asked him to eat before going to our house.

I haven’t seen him in a year, he works as a photographer on a cruise ship and I think he goes home once a year. Last time, we watched The Dawn perform at Trinoma. This time, I asked him to bring his camera so we can shoot some.

Then he whisked me away on his motorcycle at 3 in the afternoon. I told him I’m not used to motorcycle rides, I’m afraid of them, actually, but it did not matter. We travelled up north and we stopped for a lake, and a view of the mountains. I was telling him sana ginawa natin ‘to nung medyo bata pa tayo. Ang init eh, di ko kaya. So after two location shoots, and three bottles of Sprite, we drove back home.


I used to fancy him, Star. I even wrote an acrostic of his name. “Rocked in the cradle of stars in the night, Occasional meteor flickering in sight,” it reads. I used to sing “Addict sa ‘yo” to him and I once heard him singing Bilanggo, sa rehas na gawa ng puso mo and it quickly became my favorite.

And whenever I see him, I remember my younger self singing, Kahit na magkaanak kayo’t magkatuluyan balang araw, hahanap-hanapin ka, hahanap-hanapin ka.”###

Virgin Suicides

I have been looking for a copy of this book for a really long time, hoping to stumble upon it on one of my thrift jaunts. I never did. I found a DVD of the movie, though, in a treasure island of a bookstore in Shopping Center. I did not know there was a movie based on the novel, and by Sofia Coppola at that. I liked the movie so much so that I wanted to applaud when it was over.

When I saw the book in National Bookstore in Bulacan, I said, sige na nga even though it costs a hefty Php525.

The problem with movie-novel tie-ins is that one is denied the chance and the sheer pleasure of not knowing how things would go, and of imagining how things are being played out. I kept having visions of Kirsten Dunst, who played Lux Lisbon in the movie, copulating on the roof of their house, or a young Josh Hartnett sauntering the hallways of their school amidst swooning girls as I read the book.

I knew I would finish the book in a few easy gulps, and I did. I stayed up until 2 in the morning last night, hooked on the last pages.

I enjoyed the book thoroughly. It provided a fresh take on death, change, suicide, life and love, seen from the eyes of adolescent boys who were haunted by the memories of the Lisbon girls even as the former approach middle age. In an effort to understand why the Lisbon girls killed themselves, they probed, tracked down old classmates, teachers, acquaintances, doctors, anyone who can provide an insight on what the Lisbon girls were probably thinking or feeling. They collected pieces of evidence they labeled as exhibits. Every little thing said and done by the Lisbon girls were scrutinized in various lights to provide the slightest clue on why they ended their lives.

I want to say big words about the novel, that it is sentimental without being mushy, humorous despite being tragic, and most times funny. I chuckled at what the boys said, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or tell each other how pretty we were.These have been said about the novel in the first few leaves. Reviewers say the book is arresting, elegant and quirky, funny and touching, wistful, gloomy and chillingly funny at once, piercing, rhapsodic, extraordinary, tantalizing, remarkable, black and glittering, compelling, lyrical and darkly humorous, brassy and laden with irony and I cannot think of other adjectives to describe the novel.

The book was seamless from start to finish, the voice consistent – adulating, pining, wondering. Towards the end, the book started to feel like Michael Cunningham's The Hours: pulsating with life amidst the suicides, thriving, hopeful, the words describing the mundane so beautiful. However,one paragraph near the end disappointed me, because the voice faltered and sang a different tune, like a statement at the end of a movie glorifying thieves that the thieves were caught anyway, or an apology at the end of a soft porn.

It said:

“The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness. The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-centered, too visionary, too blind.”

Here, the tone dropped all adulation and wistfulness and desire and abruptly turned judgmental and accusatory. Would it have been better to cut that summation out of the novel? I don’t know.

Lastly, the ending summing up all the frustration the boys, now men, must have felt, made up for it and made me want to applaud again.

“It didn’t matter in the end how old they have been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.”

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