Books

I love reading books and everyone knows that I can't live without one but  these past few years were quite different. My high school friends might be shocked if they're reading this. Yes, it's true. I couldn't find time or the urge to read books with the exception of few renowned books like Twilight Saga and The Alchemist. It's been months since I told myself that I would read again. It's my dream to read as many books as I can but then I think it will always remain as a dream. It's quite expensive to buy books which I'll only read for a day or two if I want to but then the satisfaction that I get after reading can't be paid off. Maybe someday this will come true, if I'll marry someone who runs a bookstore or something. *wink* 


One afternoon, I went to a mall with one of my friends and she wanted to go to a bookstore to buy something. I went with her and we went to the different sections of the store. As usual, I ended up browsing some books in the literary works section. I saw the books of Paulo Coelho on a shelf then something caught my eye, the book that I had been longing to read--One hundred years of solitude. As my eyes roamed, I saw a lot of books that I wanted to read. I picked them out from the shelves and the last thing I noticed was my hands were full of them already, I could barely hold them. I was overwhelmed that I forgot to consider that books are expensive. One by one, I chose which book to buy and finally I settled on buying the book of Paulo Coelho and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I kept on telling myself that I should not be greedy. I had to stick with these two books and buy for more if I am done reading. 


Now, I'm starting to read 'Like the Flowing River'.  I get teary-eyed and smiles while reading it. I'm halfway through and I try to read it slowly for I think it will be better that way. The book is a collection of short stories and reflections. Before I read this book, I always think of Paolo Coelho as someone who is extraordinary but then I realize that he is just like any other person here on earth. He's so real. He did a lot of funny things that others might think of it as stupid.  This book let me have a fascinating glimpse inside the life of P. Coelho. A must read!

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

"Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light and reason… And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything."

--Edward

After reading this, my heart melted...
A girl can wish, a girl can dream that one of these days
something like this will be heard...

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Twilight....it was recommended by my friend ages ago but I didn't take it seriously...then I found out that everbody was reading it...I got curious..I went to a bookstore but it was sold out already. Too bad but then out of the blue, one of my officemates and closest friend, Grace, told me that her friend just gave her a PDF copy...why not? I hate reading using computer but then I have no choice but to grab it...then I started reading...then I couldn't stop...then I found out it was a simple but humorous and exciting book and the only word I was able to utter after reading it was WOW!

The story....mmmmm...better read it. I love reading about vampyres...They intrigue me.

Edward makes me fall for him...Seriously..I'm now head over heels in love with him...hahaha! I can't wait to read the rest of the books.

To my friend Koren and to my other friends who don't read a lot:

Read the book then you will know what I'm talking about.

I know that reading books sometimes makes you sleep but I swear this is so good.

I read a lot of books and this is one of them that is really worth reading.

Happy reading!

Beethoven's letter

Letter 3
Good morning, on July 7

Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us -
I can live only wholly with you or not at all -
Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits -
Yes, unhappily it must be so -
You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never -
Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves.
And yet my life in V is now a wretched life -
Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men -
At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection?
My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day -
therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once -
Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together -
Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell.
Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

ever thine

ever mine

ever ours

***********
This is the third letter of Beethoven for his beloved and if you've watched SEX and the CITY --the movie. I'm sure, you heard it read by Carrie.

I bet this is one of every girls dreams...a confession from someone they love...

The note

The note of Virginia Woolf to her husband:

"I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been."

I encountered this note while I was browsing the internet. When I read this,it made me think of how powerful love is. One can make sacrifices for the person one's love. Here I go again, the romantic me...Seriously, this note touched me. Virginia Woolf sacrificed her life since she knew that she would experience great depression again or let me say,mental illness and this would hinder her husband from doing what he loved most--writing for he would be bound to her.

Everybody wishes to find great love, fortunate for those who find it because not all of us will...

The Story of An Hour

"The Story of An Hour"
Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that owuld belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they ahve a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

*************

My professor, LDR, introduced this short story for our class in teaching methodology in reading and writing. When I read this short story of Kate Chopin, First, I thought this would be about the the character's grief and sorrow about her husband's death then when I was in the middle part of the story, I was shocked to find out that she was happy about what happened to her husband. Then, it made me think about the era where this story was written. Yes, at that time, women were oppressed and were no rights. That was the time when women were treated unfairly by the society. Oh~ I don't want to think about their struggles and their sentiments.
Anyway, when I read the next few sentences, I thought I would get a happy ending then she died. My reaction was--how sad. Then it sinked in to me that I would rather die than lose my sense of individuality.

To be continued...

Sandy Roistan--All because you kissed me goodnight

All because you kissed me goodnight

I climbed the door, and opened the stairs,
Said my pajamas and put on my prayers,
Then turned off the bed and crawled into the light,
All because you kissed me goodnight.

Next morning, I woke and scrambled my shoes,
Polished my eggs and toasted the news,
I couldn't tell my left from my right,
All because you kissed me goodnight.

That evening at last, I felt normal again,
So I picked up my mother, and called up the phone,
I spoke to the puppy and threw dad a bone
Even at midnight, the sun was still bright,
All because you kissed me goodnight.

--Sandy Roistan

This is the poem that my professor let us read yesterday. It's hilarious. The way the author used the words caught my attention and impressed me because he went against the norms. When we discussed this poem and when my prof asked us about the theme, the style and so on... I realized that the speaker was a teenager and very much in love. When I read it again, it gave me joy and it brought back memories of the feeling in love. huh? As if...I've been in love...maybe I should say it gave me a glimpse of the feeling of being in love...laugh out loud!

The sad thing...I tried to look for Sandy Roistan's biography but I couldn't find anything. I don't even know if this poet is a man or a woman. The name Sandy can be a name of both. I hope I can find more poems written by this poet for I will surely love them too.

Hope you will enjoy this...Happy reading!

The Saddest Poem

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

~Pablo Neruda

One of the saddest poem I've ever read.

Pablo Neruda's poems

Sonnet XVII

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close

Sonnet LXXXI

And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work should all sleep, now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
and let their soft drifting signs drop away;
your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move

after, following the folding water you carry, that carries
me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.


~ Pablo Neruda ~

Pablo Neruda is one of my favorite poets. Reading his poems make me feel in love and make me think that true love exist. His poems keep my faith in LOVE and sometimes make me feeel sad..because LOVE is real but some love is unrequited.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's POEM

PROXIMITY OF THE BELOVED ONE.

I THINK of thee, whene'er the sun his beams
O'er ocean flings;I think of thee, whene'er the moonlight gleams
In silv'ry springs.
I see thee, when upon the distant ridge
The dust awakes;At midnight's hour, when on the fragile bridge
The wanderer quakes.
I hear thee, when yon billows rise on high,
With murmur deep.To tread the silent grove oft wander I,
When all's asleep.
I'm near thee, though thou far away mayst be--
Thou, too, art near!The sun then sets, the stars soon lighten me.
Would thou wert here!
1795.

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This poem is one of my favorites. I first heard this poem in a Korean Drama, Wedding. When I read this, i find it so romantic. It makes you wish that someone will actually feel this way to you...LOL! Romantic sucker that I am will really be moved by this poem...hahaha!

Circle trilogy

I finished reading the book of Norah Roberts' Circle Trilogy, Morrigan's Cross, Dance of the gods and Valley of Silence, early this morning (around 5:00AM--kinda addict). The three books were about the sorcerer, witch, scholar, shape-changer, warrior and "one who was lost" (vampyre). The books were interesting but I think it would be better if she were more detailed especially when the war broke in the Valley of Silence. I felt like I want to read more about the events that had happened in the story especially the fights they had with the vampyres and of course the love stories of the six main characters. Among the three love stories, since each book has a love story of it's own, like in Morrigan's Cross, it was about Hoyt the sorcerer and Glenna the witch, in Dance of the gods, it was about Larkin the shape shifter and Blair the vampyre hunter and the last book of the trilogy was about Cian the vampyre and Moira the scholar. The trilogy had humor, friendship and team work. It did not just revolve around love and this was one of the reasons that made the three books wonderful to read.

The circle trilogy was a combination of historical and contemporary setting. It was meritorous on howNora Roberts was able to combine the two and how she was able to entrancingly described the characters. It was worth reading and I could not get enough of it.