A life in fiction

This Week’s Winner
Chris Daniel Loza, 24, grew up in Bicol, but has spent the last seven years of his life mostly in Manila. He finished college at Ateneo de Manila University with a degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering and a minor in Philosophy some eons ago and passed the board exam a lifetime ago. He lives alone with a few ants and cockroaches, and has a reading backlog of almost a hundred books, which he plans to finish in the next two or three years. He plans to live on Pluto, now that it’s no longer a planet.

Once upon a time, I stumbled on Narnia. It was a long time ago, the summer between first and second year high school, when life was all about playing and wandering through streams and hills and rice fields.

I burst through our backdoor after an afternoon’s play, slipped across the newly waxed floor and did an astonishing somersault that started with a loud oops! and ended with an even louder thud! followed by a crack! and the rest of the summer was spent in a cast. 

Reduced to loitering in the house like an ailing member of royalty, like the Pevensie children during that rainy day, I rummaged around the house looking for interesting things that wouldn’t involve the use of my hands. It was in one of the cabinets (not a wardrobe) that I discovered two VHS tapes (gosh, I sound old!) that read: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I asked someone to remove the Betamax player (I am old!), hooked the VHS player up to our TV, lay on the bed, and entered the world of Narnia. It was a BBC-TV production, though I had no idea what that was, and it announced itself as "Book 2." So it follows that there must be a "Book 1," I thought.

Just before summer ended, with hands fully functional, I set off for the city and went to all the stores that had the slightest possibility of selling books that were not textbooks. Being in the province meant that my choices were limited. Fortunately, I found Book 1: The Magician’s Nephew. Unfortunately, when I read the back cover, it enumerated seven books in all and that was the only book I found even after I turned the entire Bicol region upside down again and again.

I spent the next summer with my uncle and his family in Manila, which meant only one thing to me — bookstores! I read the seven books every summer till I finished high school and set off to Manila for college like…

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (by C.S. Lewis)

Like the book, there was no major villain to triumph over, no Queen Jadis to defeat. College was more of an interplay between light and dark; discovering the good and bad and the gray areas of life. There was the world with its blazing neon lights at night and the bottles of beer the day after. There were the people who can be as corrupt as the governor on Lone Island, or who can be as scared and foolish as the Dufflepuds. And through all this, there was the self, wanting to find meaning and redemption in the daily flux of living. Like Eustace, who became this huge, fiery dragon, I felt the need to shed my old skin. And I did. Pound by pound I shed it off till I lost around 50 pounds of flesh in a year. 

The college years flew by, I got my heart and knees bruised, drank some more, was in and out of a seminary, drank some more, showed up in classes once in a while, drank some more, until finally, after six long years of extended college education, I went down the hill and plunged head first to…

The Odd Sea (by Frederick Reiken)

One fine day, Philip’s older brother Ethan stepped out of the door and disappeared. He had told Philip if he wanted to, he could join him outside, but Philip was reminded by his sister that he had a bird class to attend.

One fine day, my younger brother, Bryan, stepped out of the door and died. I had told him to hear Mass at a later time, but he refused since he had to study later.

News spread about Ethan’s disappearance. The days turned into weeks and Ethan became another case of a missing child leaving his entire family devastated and distraught.

Word spread of Bryan’s death from relatives to classmates and friends to acquaintances halfway across the globe that had seen his lifeless body flashed on the news. The days turned into weeks and Bryan became another case of hit-and-run, leaving our entire family devastated and distraught.

Philip discovered his brother’s journal, reliving his brother’s voice as he read through the pages, and wondered whether Ethan had run off somewhere or if maybe he had a found a rabbit’s hole to a whole alternate reality like Alice in Wonderland.

I discovered my brother’s journal, reliving my brother’s voice as I read through the pages, and wondered, just like Philip wondered towards the end of the book, what I would give to see the other side of everything. The other side where my brother is not dead and life is not…

A Series of Unfortunate Events (by Lemony Snicket)

After Bryan’s tragic death, I resigned from work. Two months later, my parents migrated to the US. Two months later again, just one day before I reported to my new job, the youngest sister of my mom (I can’t call her an "aunt"), in true Count Olaf fashion, stormed through our house hurling stones and pebbles and wooden planks and, when she ran out of things to throw, leaves, while demanding that she had the right to all my parents’ property, from the soiled tissue paper in the toilet to the house and the rice field and the trees and the air we breathed. She declared them all under Her Majesty’s Dominion, or Olaf-Land.

Being in Manila, my only recourse was to write her a letter warning her that if she didn’t stop with her mad theatrics, I would see her in court. But then again, like the Baudelaire orphans, I didn’t have much faith in the justice system. Especially when she threatened to counter-sue me for defamation, which, in Count Olaf’s case, had been anything but good.

Two months later, "Milenyo" came, toppling trees and electric posts, cutting off electricity in our house until the first week of November. By the end of November, "Reming" unleashed her fury, upstaging Milenyo, flooding our house, destroying the dike, creating a river beside our place and other things you may have read about in the papers or seen on TV. 

Fortunately, none of my relatives and no one I knew perished. But with some parts of our gate destroyed, we were vulnerable to robbers. One minute you had a potted plant, the next minute it was gone. One day you had a dog, the next you’d see the tambays drinking with a pulutan that tasted like chicken… but not.

Lemony Snicket wrote in Book 13, The End: "Sooner or later, everyone’s story has an unfortunate event or two — a schism or a death, a fire or a mutiny, the loss of a home or the destruction of a tea set. The only solution, of course, is to… lead a safe, simple life."

Indeed, there is nobility in the ordinary life, in living the right way in a world full of wrongs. In surviving the rigors of the everyday, for what it takes, simply…

To Live (by Yu Hua)

Set in communist China, Fugui loses, one by one, his family and almost everything to tragic, sometimes ironic endings until all he has left is an ox, which he calls by the name of all he has lost. The book, initially banned in China, is an unflinching look at an ordinary man trying to live simply, enjoying the joys and small pleasures — like his handicapped daughter being married off to a nice family or his wife’s loyalty through the years or a nice meal — despite the hardships of everyday life. It portrays, quite vividly, the sheer resilience of a human being — what it feels like to lose someone, to have your property taken, and to discover that whatever life throws at you, you find a way to move on, to live.

Set in a fading democracy, my life doesn’t have what it takes to make an epic story. It portrays, quite simply, the resilience of a human being. How it is to live through the loss, the threats, and the bills; and still appreciate and be grateful for the company of good friends, canned goods, good books, a cup of hot coffee and a starlit night. It chronicles one man’s voyage over odd seas and unfortunate events. What it is to grow up, to laugh, to cry, to love, and to live. To have that moment, a long summertime ago, when life was just about playing and wandering through streams and hills and rice fields. 

And to hope that one day, like the Narnians, my brother and I would say, "Further up, further in!" To have the life in this world just be the cover of the Great Story, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before. Thus we could say that we all lived happily ever after.