Commence, Russian Literature Addiction!

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Nothing cheers me up than receiving a book on an ordinary day!

Especially if it’s a Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel.

Truth to be told, I’ve been looking for this novel for years, as my Fiction teacher recommended this one to us. I couldn’t find a copy in the college library back then.  Looking for Raskolnikov, that young and intellectual man, was never easy.

But I knew I always have that knack to get the things I want even if it’d take years, and this is just one of those days.

The Orange Fruit

The orange fruit falling

from your hand rolls

to the sidewalk.

 

You chase after it

under the orange sky

breeze sweeps over

your whole body

bringing to me

poignant cologne.

 

The orange continues

to roll on the pavement

slowly peeling your scent

until I could smell it whole

when you come back

such an orange-filled run.

Some Thoughts on the Essay Genre

The word essay comes from the French word meaning, “to try”.  In all instances, the genre is an attempt to write about any subject matter – relevant or mundane though maybe on the outset – in the hope to capture an interesting thought, experience and insight from it.  Compared to other genres in literature, essay is the least explored and may be considered to be the least popular, but the scope of this genre is huge, ranging from the formal, clear-cut essays popularized by Montaigne, Addison and Steele and Emerson to the informal loosely-constructed ones popularized by Scott Russell Sanders, George Orwell, EB White and other contemporary writers these days.

The history of the essay goes back to the works of

Aftershocks

We felt them, the tremors

when it first hit the earth’s core, creating

an undulation in this home.

We trembled like the

Means, Opportunity and Motive in Sequential Bilingualism

Language seems to be highly accessible now for other cultures and countries to learn.  Aided with and made possible by various factors, language is not anymore confined or exclusive to specific countries and geographical locations.  Acquiring a second language (L2) may begin at any age or life stage – usually during childhood or adolescence, although there are still cases in which L2 learners beyond those age range are still capable of

The Visit

Boarding the bus from Davao

to Digos, I passed by

San Miguel. I smell the brewed beer,

(probably in various

degrees of foam) rich in flavor –

 

like the same beer he poured, vibrant

like this afternoon’s tryst

but paler than the metallic

sun, half-hidden among greens.

The taste still remains in my mouth.

 

I taste it – mixed saliva and

beer – inside this bus

freezing cold, on my way home.

Long Distance

I think about you and the spaces between us

my thoughts rarely strayed away to

someone else.

I think about your stolen words of

Counter Offer

Father slipped into my dreams last night

(first time in years since I got out of uni).

I followed him through T-shaped sidewalks

like a long, uninterrupted tracking

Your Next Read, According to Me!

Last week, I received a request (via comment box, yes) asking me to list down some of my personal book recommendations  that I think everyone should read.  I haven’t been much into reading lately since I’m still oscillating between the demands of grad school and the large pile of work that needs to be done in time.   Right now, I’m currently reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground – a very difficult novel, something that requires a higher sensibility, of which I cannot fully give this time around.  So my reading pace lately is slow and halting, but only because I want to experience what Dostoyevsky probably wanted me to experience as well – to eclipse into “the underground” and to look into myself, in a very existentialist manner.  A little bit scary, but most of the time enlightening.

Truth to be told, I have so much books to recommend! But I’ll try to limit the list to a three, a list that constitutes some of my personal favorites.  Of course, I threw in some of the reasons why.

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Even William Faulkner said this novel was the best book ever written ever.  If I have to think about my most favorite novel then I wouldn’t have any second thought of choosing this one.  You probably have read hundreds of reviews about this novel but what I like best about it is that it is both an “external and internal narrative”.  A lot of people find this book too difficult to read.  Much of this “inaccessibility” is because the prose requires a lot of thinking while reading it.

• On the Road by Jack Kerouac.  Lately, I’m too engrossed with the sixties culture and I was recently introduced to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.  I’ve never read a prose anything like this one – it’s erratic and very beat; it’s the rhythm of everyday life pulsating through you.  Which is a good thing by the way.  I found it hard to get through the book on the outset; I wasn’t used to this kind of prose style as I spent much of my time reading the sophisticated and refined prose styles of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Richard Yates, Vladimir Nabokov, etc.  Kerouac’s prose was something new for me but once I got the hang of it, it was liberating.  He was a prolific speed freak in his words but on an everyday basis, aren’t we all?

• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.  This is not your average romance novel although the subject is very much cliched in both in literature and film:  a marriage gone sour.  But Richard Yates has a different approach to presenting this subject and this is why I consider his Revolutionary Road the quintessential marriage novel.  Yates is very subtle when it comes to dealing with emotions.  This is not an ordinary, murky romance novel – this is life.