A teen girl's take on 'The Little Prince'

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines -Beatrice Hildawa Goyena, age 14, of Dagupan City, Pangasinan is a freshman creative writing student at the Philippine High School for the Arts in Mt. Makiling. With Korean, Filipino and American roots, she hopes to study writing at UP in the future, but for now enjoys K-pop and occasionally shares a round of OPM with her kape’t pandesal nostalgia.

I cannot make this article any better.

I want to tweak this laptop’s operating system and try to live a shouting life outside bland coffee. It would sound so dumb to radio out my thoughts to the public’s receptive neurons. But that was my upbringing.

Are you a child? Are you a grownup? The logic of labels reminds me of a television commercial catchphrase. It makes me really check the label for any contained sense. What do you have in you when you’re a child? Is being a child synonymous with the outgrowing of the childish, the acceptance of serious work? Is being an adult contrary to being a child, based on the above description? I say that with no consideration for easy comprehension, because writing tires me out. Is an emoticon for “sigh” available?

The vision itself clears out the smog — it was at that tender age that I mastered the art of choosing the shades of red for sketching Power Rangers drawn with emphasized head sizes on the blank canvas of which I knew back then was a wall banged by chilly gusts from the air conditioner. But the best part of the whole painting was the overwhelming self-surrounding power of Maligore. He demonstrated my fandom for Power Rangers, and as a kid I didn’t care how dirty the apartment walls looked, with all my childhood anarchy. And credit to Maligore, the moment I entered the life of pi, context clues and chemistry’s periodic table, I began to consider having a life in the process known as “Maligore.”

I didn’t understand how underrated my age would become at that time for it to get led astray by life’s compatibility. It was a rough ride down there. Childhood was easily destroyed by tons of homework and “group” projects. Well, that is until I realized that I was old enough to look on at that phase in my life.

I filed “ignorance” on every page of the book. And whenever I read it I only focused myself on how boas could be violent predators of elephants in real life. Imagination is real, I knew, and “believe,” whatever spelling you use to spell it, would always contain its real composition and usage.

A child would never give up on his or her first crayon’s smudge and never surrender to the first bike ride’s flat tire. And nor should an adult. Never take me literally, though.

The rose, as meticulous as it can be, got multicolored with every rainbow sprinkle we could find. The water well was every breadw---inner’s sustenance, because everybody also has a life. The camaraderie of The Prince-Rose tandem became every nostalgic friendship bracelet. The way the pilot dealt with the Prince’s excessive embellishments w---as like a two-minute guess of Pinoy Henyo: “Oo. Hindi... Pwede.”

And like serious life, we need not take it intensively seriously, if “Oo, Hindi, Pwede” is the only life it gives us. We are bound to live by nods and wrinkles. Between a grownup or a child, of course, choose either. Choose to be in a life outside a literal symbolic book’s binding. After all, every story has a concept we can understand and seek and live through.

How could you blame the pilot who set aside his would-be artist profession and delved into stuff forced into his wishing well? It was like a child dictating “When I grow up, I want to be...” when at that exact part of his speech everything gets censored out. The wall of mature truth suddenly skips the stage of chalk sticks meant for imaginative and legal vandalism. Do we really need to dress in a tux, get high in heels for everyone to accept us into society where trends and followers abound? Do we even need to enter aforementioned society?

“Draw me a sheep.” The three words and one article became the bridge between the Prince and the pilot. Draw me a sheep, and the bridge multiplied its cement foundations. But the construction remained clueless. Add “as a friend,” and everything else between the Prince and the pilot tags along.

My poetry instructor approaches the class in a Dead Poets’ Society way. All we could hear from him was “However, comma.” I had no experience with poetry, nor did poetry lay itself on my understanding. With a “friendly” approach, our instructor hovered with decoders for every word used in Antoine De Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince. Such a tactic, for our better appreciation of poetry, has diagnosed me with a critical interference from imagination and reality. Nostalgia’s nostalgia got next in line.

But there are many things life has in store for us. I don’t think I can cope with life’s fast service and no-warranty guarantee. The past sends out a sigh from memory cards. The hardest thing to do back then was to decide on how long the princess’s hair should be. Now choosing a nail polish color looks to me as if it’s a now or never question, and the world has gotten so hard to reach even though you’re already in it.