I fell in love with reading and have blithely immersed myself into this affair for the longest, maybe not consistently, time possible. I love books. But i love reading them more. It immerses you into another new unexplored world filled with magic and the impossible. It lets you be who you can’t be, like a wizard or a superhero, who never really dies. It lets you be friends with a talking animal or an advanced robot. Good books let you feel the intensity and excitement according to the twist in the plot and it engages the readers to feel what the characters are feeling. You can burst into laughter or it can suddenly make you cry. And something so compact in manner can actually make the characters alive through words as you turn each page until the last.

The power a book has is that it can influence a reader’s mood, opinion, viewpoint, direction, decisions and so on. It’s a direct brain-to-brain download from writer to reader that only book can provide. When i watch movies based on the book and i happen to read the book first, i am merrily in control of its delivery. What i love about reading is when i halt in the middle of narrative to admire a exceptionally unusual metaphor. More importantly, books help us teach the things we don’t know. When i am so engrossed with reading, it has the dumbfounding ability to transport me and evoke feelings in an instant.

I tend to find that a good novel, one in which wrongs are righted, love is found and valuable lessons are taught, can restore one’s faith in life.

I read for pleasure and for learning in relative comfort, preferably without interruption. And after finishing the last page, i put it back in my shelf and maybe someone years down the road wil stumble upon the book i once read and the words will come to life again.

I am a crooked soul trying to straight up. No words really come close to what i feel and think. I am now vulnerable and inch by inch cull and failures start creeping in again just like the first time. I am swallowed by fear and entanglement. I want to drown my emotions into definite form. I try to build myself again with words and maybe, just maybe, when i put everything into my paperback notebook i won’t feel worthless anymore and i will forget. And more likely remember only the things that make me feel like walking on air. If i couldn’t sleep i would pick it up again where i left it and would relive the beautiful things that would make my heart swell and my bones shake. Don’t believe into the things i tell so late at night. But when nothing lasts how can you believe again? When everything else is broken, how can you trust once more? And maybe that’s what’s wrong with me now that makes me erratic. I always think and i am prudent about everything. I don’t feel anymore. I don’t feel alive. I don’t want to delude myself anymore. I don’t want to get used to something i can live without either. Because i don’t want to immerse myself with things and feelings that are wide of the point at the moment. I don’t want to settle, i want to live. I don’t want to give up. Help me feel the light.

Written last August 12, 2011.

I made this months ago and was planning to give it to you on your birthday. But since i can’t do it now, i’ll just be keeping it here. This is not really meant to be seen. Not even meant to be finished. But whenever i hear a memory, those strong emotions and dragging thoughts kept crawling back. Those feelings i used to have when creating this in a coffee shop almost midnight were consuming me. Those questions that never seem to have a clear answer. I always end up writing half-hearted songs and passionate poems about lost love and fragmented dreams. It conjures every fiber of me and plunder my sleep leaving me into a state of oblivion.

“Life is like photography, you develop from the negatives.”

Thick or thin. Good times or bad. Up or down. That’s life. Either you dwell on it or turn it around. All we want is to be happy and feel loved. I know it is cliche to say that things happen because there is some purpose behind it. But there really is. And people come and go for a reason. We have our own flaws and we make mistakes too. So i guess we either learn and grow from them or dwell on it and let it eat us alive. Indeed i’d like to capture memories through photography. I feel this glorious feeling whenever someone tells me that i can tell a story through it and appreciates each of my photos. As i click the shutter, i have frozen a moment in time by recording the visible light reflected from the objects in the camera’s field of view. The chemical record is very stable and can be subsequently developed, amplified and modified to produce a representation of that moment.

We all want beautiful images that’s why we should live in the moment and take a snapshot of life, whether it depicts a candid laugh or a magnificent place. Every photo tells a story. Maybe those negatives refer to my shortcomings and failures. I will learn and develop from them. I will become better each and everyday. I will develop from my faults. In time i would be able to grow beautifully inside and out. Just like a picture.