The great escape

To tell you the truth, my life is pretty boring. Every morning, I wake up and the day stretches ahead of me, full of nothing particular to do, so I begin it by playing computer solitaire. I tell myself that if the solitaire is completed swiftly, it means I will have a good day. That is not always true, life has taught me, but it gives me a bit of magic anyway and magic I cannot live without. Then I fix my home, arrange my closets and drawers in preparation for the new year. Where, please tell me, is the joy in that?

For me, these days I find tremendous joy in rediscovering my ability to read. I used to be a voracious reader who would go to the bookstore and go home with more than one book. This means I have quite a library, even if, when I had a stroke five years ago, I lost my ability to read. I could read, yes, but I could not understand, could not keep what I read in my head, could not laugh at the funny parts, could not cry at the sad parts. Books became virtually useless to me. I decided to sell my books at a street fair. Did not do well. Discovered then that in the Philippines, there are not enough readers, not enough people here have discovered that reading is the great escape.

But even after my stroke, I discovered certain books I could read. Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance was good post-stroke reading. It is like a calendar. Every day comes with a little essay. I would read the little essay for the day first thing in the morning, before I even began my computer solitaire, and it would be what I would think about while playing my mindless games. But beyond that I could not read a book no matter how I tried. That’s why when I got recruited to become president of the Bookworms Book Club, I immediately accepted. I thought it would teach me to read again. That was last year. It was a step in the positive direction.

Around the middle of 2008, I found myself reading books again. I rediscovered Penelope Lively, one of my favorite English authors, who wrote Moon Tiger, one of the most romantic books I have read. When I say romantic, I mean it on a higher level, differentiated from the teenage romance stuff which, I now remember, I also used to read when I was young, when the books were written by Emily Loring. But those I quickly outgrew.

And while we’re on the subject of teenage reading, I am a voracious reader because my mother was, too, and she didn’t censor her books. I could read any of her books. I never passed the stage my high school classmates did — marking off the naughty pages and passing around a book that they covered in plain paper. I remember now, suddenly, a crisis in high school.

One of the nuns accused me of reading Françoise Sagan’s A Certain Smile. She had found a copy of it in the other section and someone said it was mine. Well, it wasn’t. She asked me for the story. I did not know because I hadn’t read it. She didn’t believe me. She called my mother in. My mother told her she had the book and I could read it, but as far as she knew I hadn’t. Sister would not believe. The truth was, the book really did not belong to me and I haven’t read it until now. That nun I will remember forever as being so unfair to me.

Nevertheless, I love to escape into reading. I never care about the writer’s style except that I must like it. I like Gabriel Garcia Marquez though sometimes I find some of his books a little on the heavy side. For magic realism I love Tom Robbins, whose book, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates I am reading now. I have read most of his books and love each one for his absurdities, his far-out metaphors, and his funny, complicated plots. His books always make me laugh out loud even when I’m reading alone and, sometimes against my will, he sends me giggling all day.

As I write this, I realize that maybe I read to escape the boredom brought about by real life. Reading sends me to many other places without my leaving home. It tickles my imagination. I imagine Switters, the hero of Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, as looking like Jack Nicholson but with light green eyes. He wears boxer shorts with a chipmunk, baby duck print, and all sorts of other prints. He either goes around in a wheelchair or on stilts because he ran into a witch doctor, whose head is shaped like a pyramid, in Peru. This witch doctor or shaman put a curse on him: His feet cannot touch the ground, must remain two inches above it, or he would immediately die. Tell me, isn’t that magical? It’s an entire movie that plays out in my mind, making me forget everything, including my deadlines.

If you are tired of your life, if you are bored with your routine, go to a second-hand bookstore and pick up any book that catches your eye. Try a novel. Books will excite your imagination and make you realize how far away you can fly to escape without ever leaving home.

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