In Search of Good Books

It’s kind of precise timing taking up this subject matter for its sheer relevance as a subtle way of nurturing one’s mental faculty. Tomorrow is by and large the first opening day of school nationwide for S/Y 2008-2009.

Last week, I nonchalantly wandered inside a mall, drifted into a place crammed with pile upon piles of what appear to be old reading materials. Glancing now intently, I found myself holed-up in a store selling mostly used books and magazines of all sorts. Feels like I fell into a corner of finer things, it rekindled an old familiar feeling inside me, of feeling like a kid surrounded by a variety of toys, upon sight of those resplendent wide array of books, mostly imported, hardbound and of good quality print materials, paperbacks, magazines and assortments; and at bargain prices to boot.

In that fleeting moment, I was prompted to call my comrade back home in my humble hometown, Caramoan, Mr. Regalado A. Emerenciana, a scholarly teacher who is widely acknowledged around the academe as Man of Letters. I can not contain telling him my buoyed-up excitement in rediscovering my old flame, what else, but my utter love for books. And so, his natural instinct was awakened and simply becomes irrepressible too, breaking the long time withheld silent yearnings of his heart: to behold and possess those novelty reading materials I described which are all just within my reach.

Thus, I am entrusting him the following references:

1. The Writer’s Handbook 2004 – A premier compendium of writing techniques, inspiration, and advice.

2. Getting It Right – A survival guide to modern manners.

3. Better English – aims to help improve written and spoken English.

4. To Our Children’s Children – An attractive and engaging guidebook that makes recording a personal history as uncomplicated and easy as writing a letter.

5. Student’s Guidebook in Writing School Papers – Step by step process of writing various school papers can be found in this book.

6. Sample Social Speeches – A ready to use speech technique for all occasions.

7. Famous Speeches and Public Speaking – a handy collection of public speaking masterpieces of famous speakers.

I’m sure a lot of students in the academic community will be benefited should they be willingly lured into reading these references which are essentially instructional in form - aimed at improving not only their writing craft but also their spoken artistry.

These kind of information source books are Mr. Emerenciana’s personal choice. It is in view of his ultimate noble intention of incorporating them into his instructional tools inside the classroom. None the less, I’m quite certain it is also a subtle expression of sharing his love and appreciation of the literary arts, passing on to his students.

I am inspired by that gesture of him. And I think of growing old. And I remembered my old books, realizing they are also valuable treasures to keep, and worth enriching the volume as time
goes by.

And I wish someday, someday I will open my backyard with a mini-library filled with my lifetime collection of books. And I would invite Mr. Regalado A. Emerenciana, and bid him to bring those above-listed 7 book items with him to mingle with mine books, and together, we shall welcome the youth and olds alike, to inaugurate a READING CLUB under a tree.

I decided to make this an entry in my blog, to mark the significance of this small step in joint effort, our own humble way of propagating proficiency in reading and writing, as prelude to developing homegrown local writers.

Why a "Travelling Blog?"

I started writing for my web-log: “Cara Mo An” sometime in the middle of August 2007, as a matter of enjoying my new found small happiness while indulging brief interval of rest at any given time.

It becomes a leisurely experience squeezing literature out of my weary mind with the prodding of the heart. Writing becomes doubly encouraging with the aid of multifaceted facilities that are just click-away under the environment of world-wide-web.

This compilation is a 35 pages hard copy of those pleasant moments spent wisely. Printing production was made possible by computer desktop publishing. And proudly to say, I myself lovingly do the bookbinding of those first batch copies, and eventually commissioned the professional expertise of Visa Press in fixing the succeeding voluminous prints.

Recalling my formative academic years spent in my hometown school, I felt some longing ness then for materials of literary genre to satisfy my appetite for reading and somewhat awaken whatever latent endowment I might have on creative writing.

That memory of inadequacy, now serves as my inspiration to dedicate this humble work to all schools around my hometown, Caramoan; to share and spread the good habit of reading and possibly inspire the young ones to gain proficiency in creative writing.
Reaching out to budding writers in my hometown is my foremost consideration in reproducing this in printed form. Like them in my time, I too, thirsted for some material references to nurture the muse in my mind. Thus, I aptly call this: Traveling Blog, a vehicle for those who share my love and appreciation for literary arts.

The realm of consciousness on blogosphere, bloggers or blogs are not yet prevalent in the rustic
nature of lifestyle in the countryside such as my beloved hometown, Caramoan, a peninsula, 4th class municipality in the province of Camarines Sur, Bicol Region. I have chosen to launch this
maiden voyage of “traveling blog” into that uncharted blogging world in my homeland.

Let this blog keep on rolling.

On Slowing Down

I have learned to adapt into drifting gracefully by taking one day at a time. I must pause doing things that deliver me fast to weariness and let go of situations I cannot hold anymore.

Now, I found writing as a balancing act. It is an activity done sitting down. It does not cause blood pressure to shoot up, it only cause your heartbeat to slow down.

I got an inspiration, again from my writing idol, Wilfredo O. Pascual, Jr., a two time Carlos Palanca Grand Prize Winner for Literature, on an essay he read in 2004 from the book, The Best American Spiritual Writing.

In Joyas Voladoras, Brian Doyle wrote about and compared the hearts of hummingbirds, whales and men. " Consider the hummingbird for a long moment" he writes. " A hummingbird's heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird's heart is the size of a pencil point. A hummingbird's heart is most of the hummingbird...

" Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backwards. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest. But when they rest, they come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving, they retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal sleep rate, their hearts sludging nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be …

“ Hummingbirds, like all flying birds but more so, have incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms. To drive those metabolisms, they have race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye popping rate. Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fiber than ours. Their arteries are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death: they suffer heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures more than any other living creature. It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine. Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.

- Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle from The American Scholar

Wondered what a hummingbird is? It’s “Anga-wit” for Caramoanons.

http://caramoan-kanvar.blogspot.com

Feel Young

I really do have this morbid feeling that for every single day that passed, is a day less to my remaining days on earth. It is a mathematical certainty. And I consciously know that.

I found out that writing about the past, is one way of dispensing anti-aging therapy. I realized that whenever I view those scenes behind by closing my eyes, I could vividly see pictures of myself and colleagues still in our youthful dispositions, vibrant, mostly slim, black and long hair, stomach in, childish, not much money, yet, happy go lucky; sort of like that.

Even if I look at myself on the mirror today, or meet those old acquaintances in their new looks, no matter how grayish the hair, maybe balding, potbellied, good looking, dressed in style, or whatever they made of themselves, it would hardly alter my imagination. Still, the old images of ours will reverberate in that fleeting moment of tripping the memory lane. Really, our eyes under the dark has its own memory time line.

When the actual writing has been done, I post them for posterity on the internet, an infinite storage library on space. In this sense, I have this great feeling that I have defied a state of oblivion for a particular slice of my life.

At my age of 30 plus, yes, that is still mathematically correct, I have stopped counting beyond that, I frequently indulge recollecting the good old days, by rewriting those scenes that entails a lot of imagination. Thus, I feel young every time, by doing that.

You want to be young once in a while? Try to recover your finest moments behind, freeze them and take advantage of this timeless and boundless way of keeping it, the way I treasure them. And feel young along the way.






http://caramoan-kanvar.blogspot.com

Welcome to my Blog: http://caramoan-kanvar.blogspot.com

Greetings!

Reading Blogs has become my favorite pastime these days. It displaces a great deal of time spent on my supposedly old habit of reading books of general interests.

I become an avid follower of a number of blog authors who are churning out masterpieces that excites my imagination. It becomes my source of wisdom and entertainment. Somehow, such kind of exposures, evolved as an inspiration to me, to become wiser and at least witty.

I have been asked for my e-mail address from time to time for more than a decade, and I can't offer any. I stubornly closed my mind due to quandary of tasking my rusted faculty of learning anew the rudiments of internet surfing.

Somebody had then created for me my e-mail address. It took me some time to follow the mere procedure of opening it - to retrieve incoming e-mails, much more tedious, when I have to send outward e-mails.

The motivation and encouragement to learn how to open e-mails, and eventually accessing blog sites dawned on me when I met Wilfredo O. Pascual, a Carlos Palanca awardee for literature in 2004, and this year, declared winner again for literature , becoming a two time Palanca Grand Prize Winner. I was introduced to peek at his blog site: Secret Gospels, Sacred Sites with the guidance of a brod at CLSU Artist Club, Elito Circa.

I read a few of his opening lines:

" I was born on the eve of winter solstice, when the
earth is inclined farthest away from the sun, that
time of the year when the day is shortest and the
night longest." ......

The way his words arrived on me is just magical . That was the start of my zest in viewing all his recent entries and searching more from his archived posts. By and by, I gained little progress everyday pressing the right keys and learned to enjoy interacting with on line computer.

Thank God, for having Willi, Elito, and Caramoan@groups.msn.com, which served as my acclimatization and prelude to my taking a new role, of that being a neophyte blogger. Really a trying hard blogger.

Welcome to http://caramoan-kanvar.blogspot.com


Tony Co as Jack the Majic Dragon