BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 5
Oct 06, 2004
by Dulz Cuna
CONTENTS
Website:
What Books
May Come
The first treasure my parents brought to my
early years was a whole cabinetful of books that dominated my entire
childhood life. It was a shining cabinet with glass shutters that
kept these books inside the shelves and Papa gave me the privilege to hold
the keys to the shutters so I could have access to it anytime in my whole
elementary school years. It was a grand acquisition. While
nearby families in the neighborhood were buying cars and hi-fi stereos, I
prided my cabinet of books to my playmates who shrugged nonchalantly for
such was nothing compared to the Studebakers or Dodge or Frigidaires or
walking dolls they acquired. Nevertheless, I always hurried home
from school (St. Paul's College, was just a block away, no need of a Dodge
car then) at 3:30pm to be home with my cabinet of books and “baduya”
(fried bananas) merienda waiting for me. The top shelf
had the Atlases and World Geography called “Lands and People” and World
History books. I needed a stool to reach them. In the 2nd
shelf was for General Reference, that is, The Book of Knowledge and
Grolier's Encyclopedia, this was reserved when I had assignments in
Philippine History or Social Studies. The 3rd and last
shelves at the bottom was my favorite of all: The Children's Classics and
Masterpieces of World Literature and also the Collection of Classics
Illustrated and the Junior Classics Illustrated comic-books which
influenced me on drawing and illustration...
I was lucky to have a kindred spirit for a
playmate, Carol Lastrilla, who shared my passion for reading. After
dropping off her schoolbag at their home, she'd come over to the house and
share conversations of imagination and delight. What if we were
marooned in an island like Robinson Crusoe? Could we survive? Would
you follow the White Rabbit down the Rabbit Hole if you were Alice?
Perhaps Moby Dick measures two blocks from here! How on earth could
Jane Eyre love a lame tyrant like Edward Rochester? And so on and so
forth...
There was no television in Tacloban then, the book medium was unadulterated by boob tube celluloid and film which was reserved only in moviehouses. Hence books dominated my leisure and learning. In my 2nd Grade to the whole of my primary years, Mama ruled that movie-viewing was only scheduled at weekends. Only IF, quality films related to Literature were shown, she noted it down to Yaya Leoning. Thus I never missed The Adventures of Sinbad, Swiss Family Robinson, Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, The Wizard of Oz, Huckleberry Finn and countless early films which were in those books in my cabinet. We were notified by the “Now Showing” ad truck that went around our little city. It had a blaring gramophone that played a John Philip Souza march that “piedpiper”-lured me to the window to view the large paintings on streamers that festooned the truck. They were of movie scenes and letters that say: “Now Showing at Republic Theatre! HERCULES starring Steve Reeves, doubled with “A Summer Place” starring Troy Donahue. Thus Mama would censor the double feature and instruct Yaya Leoning to bring me home after Hercules.
I always got high grades in Reading. I sometimes made our student teacher look stupid when I told her that “Heidi” is not a child's game but a novel by Johanna Spyri and “Black Beauty” isn't a Negro but a Horse.
In Elementary, I wanted more than my
Philippine Readers books and the library was my favorite place of all.
During recess time, while everybody was doing jackstone, skiprope,
takyan, sato; I spent that 30 minutes reading Beatrix Potter's
stories of Peter Rabbit and other Brer Rabbit stories (guess this was were
JK Rowling got her name for Harry). She was this Victorian writer who
incorporated her drawings in her children's books. I also had that love
for mystery and whodunit, the elementary library had always the latest of
Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew Mysteries and Franklin W. Dixon's The Hardy
Boys. These were books that stuffed up my borrower's card.
Later in my elementary years, at grade six, I devoured the gothic tales of
Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. My buddy Carol's favorite
poem as she declaims in class convocations was “Annabelle Lee” and “The
Raven” and I close my eyes to hear the dark rhythm of these poems and try
to hum a haunting beat while she recites them. We became a performance art
form then...while other literary muggle classmates of ours snickered that
we were some sort of ReyCard Duet (a popular comedy duet at that time).
When my parents sent me off to my seventh grade at St. Theresa's College in Cebu, I had to say goodbye to my cabinet of books and comics... I couldn't bring them along with me to the dormitory then, and furthermore, I had to learn the Christian graces of womanhood like “Many Mansions” by St. Theresa's of Avila and Thomas á Kempis “Imitation of Christ”. The books preferred in my Interna-bound years at STC were the Barbara Cartland-Emilie Loring Romance novellas that thwarted my dreams of the nunnery. We usually sneaked them under our pillows in the dormitory, for these were prohibited readings.
Literature classes at STC centered on the plays of Shakespeare and Anton Chekov. I was proud to be a cast as a character in “Midsummer Night's Dream” and “Mother Courage” in our High School Drama Club. My favorite teachers were usually my Lit teachers, Miss Rosario de Veyra's (now Mrs. Utzurrum) perfume blended with the stories Guy de Maupassant and O Henry, while soulful Leilani Echavez (now Mrs. Verdan) made us illustrate our favorite poems. We rhapsodized on the poems of Carl Sandburg and William Blake, and sometimes a Lord Byron. Our textbooks were tomes from the St. Thomas Moore Literature series that I had to tote from the dorm's study room, past the garden to the high school classrooms...and in between I memorized my favorite line from William Blake's poem “Auguries of Innocence”:
To see a World in a
Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Books to me were the real treasures in my
mundane possessions. When I was a teenager, my Pa waxed irate when I
ordered “The Last Two Million Years” without his knowledge from his
Reader's Digest subscription. And then there was that survey in the
local Fire Department that asked which were the first things I'd take out
of the house in case of fire. I answered: “My Books!” When asked
why, I passionately blurted out, “It sets fire to my Soul.”
"Would you
follow the White Rabbit down the Rabbit Hole if you were Alice?"
"What if we
were marooned in an island like Robinson Crusoe?"
Beatrice Potter with pet rabbit