My Encounter with Rabid Paolo Coelho Fangirls

A while back, I went to my favorite bookstore so that I could vacillate about whether to buy a certain book or not. It’s easy to find where I am when I’m at this particular bookstore – if I’m not browsing the classics’ corner, then you’d find me at sci-fi’s; and if not, then children’s, philosophy’s, art’s or comic’s.

So anyway, I was skimming the first few pages of some books, when a bunch of giggling and attractive women walked briskly to my direction. Deluded into thinking they’re giddy by the chance of their lifetime to finally speak with me, I hand-brushed my hair a little and ahem’d as if to make my voice baritone-ish. It was a few seconds later when I realized just how foolish I was acting, as I saw them actually dashing to the books they wanted to buy, as if these books will disappear if not immediately attended to. These books were next to me.

“Okay, fine,” I thought, “I can still strike a conversation with them if they start asking aloud for recommendations.”

But I merely have to overhear small parts of their yapping, to realize that they’re determined to buy only one author’s books, and I can’t recommend any of his books at all. And of course it was Paolo Coelho’s, whose books seem to be regarded as the must-read for every caffeine-consuming and coke-sniffing college undergrad. I was flummoxed by what these books were doing near me. I suppose it’s at this point when I should tell you that the bookshelf where they’re located at were filled with heavy classic texts, like novels by Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Albert Camus, Anthony Burgess, Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac and Milan Kundera. I’m trying not to sound snobbish here, but I’ve never heard of anyone reading Paolo Coelho, and saying “Oh, his books remind me of The Fall, In Cold Blood and A Clockwork Orange”. And really, the titles of the books should be enough to tell you the tones of their contents are so far removed from The Alchemist, that the bookstore might as well put Harry Potter besides Fight Club!

So what of the girls? Well, as I said, they’re very attractive, but they also sounded like the most empty-headed valleyspeak-tongued ditz. So this first girl who was light-skinned, had long straight hair, wore high-heels, had great legs and smelled like Dandelions, said “Oh my God, Paolo Coelho! Did you know ba that I so like reading his books noh? I feel so saya whenever I finish his works! Grabe, he’s so classic!” Uh, compared to the books beside Coelho’s? Even at the more modern contemporary-corner shelf next to them - where I was - was teeming with Chuck Palahniuk, Haruki Murakami, and Orhan Pamuk, all authors who wrote intelligent stuff that actually criticized the society and had any urgency. Where are the intelligence and the urgency on any of Coelho’s work, like The Alchemist, Veronika Decides to Fly, and By The River Pasig I Sat Down and Puked?

The second girl who was bespectacled, beige-skinned, and sporting a Lisa Loeb look, wistfully remarked, “Alam mo, I really love to read short stories. What kaya kuya Coelho book has them?” (KUYA COELHO?!) Uh, there’s a Truman Capote collection above you, a Portable Jack Kerouac below you, a Margaret Atwood collection above you, and even after the quake beside you, and you choose Paolo Coelho? The third girl seemed to be the only one who doesn’t like Paolo Coelho. It’s too bad, though, when she said, “I don’t read books eh, they’re so nakakatamad”. Now that’s the most depressing. I’d choose someone who reads Coelho to someone who completely doesn’t read.

And not to propagate a stereotype or anything, but the girl who didn’t read was the boobiest. Her breasts were so big they could hold a book! Holy mothers! Anyway, you know where Paolo Coelho’s books should belong? Next to The Secret and Dianetics! And, yeah, way to dodge a topic, Nightdreamer!

I left the bookstore with Choke chucked inside my bag, and with more chips on my shoulders.

Too Early for Epitaphs

… but here are what people say about me anyway. And why am I doing this? I just wanted to feel good about myself, is all. This doesn’t happen often, so don’t worry.

“He’s childish and smart. He’s the childish kind of smart” - Liz

No, I’m not! I’m the childish kind of dumb! See my lack of affinity to attractive single women for reference!

“Everytime I hear his name, Disturbed ‘Prayers’ plays on my mind” - benj

Funny, I thought my online handle would remind people of the song based on, you know, my online handle.

Err, I meant the song my online handle is based on.

Night Dreamer (Wayne Shorter)

“Does Nightdreamer have a twitter? I likes him. Hugs?” - riajose

“You have a way with words.” - ozy

Yeah, like the “scroow joo grammers!” way with words.

"This guy is crackers!" - every civilians

Yes, yes he is.

“Picked up a copy of Fables, volume 1 of a collection from DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint. It was suggested to me by Nightdreamer and so far all the things he’s recommended have all been money.” – Brad

Will put that blurb on all my future novels! If I ever write one!

“I’m really envious of your gifted hands.” - Twinkle

Err, it’s not about kinky things.

“How’s my favorite student? ” – Iris

I never was absent on your classes. But don’t look at my attendance record!

“This guy has a fabulous number of pick up lines.” – Vivian

Says the bomb.

“he has this uncanny ability to bring out the best and the unseen” – Rache

I’m not a spirit medium!

" i think he has a crush on all da girls he know… even me! " - Seulki

Who says!

"He’s my best friend, and I would love to see a movie with him criticizing all the plot holes" - Michelle

It’s words like these that cheer me up when I feel so alone. *sniff* My God, I’m such a loser. 

“This guy is kinda shy, and at least he’s honest bout it” – Patrick Co

Again, not about kinky stuff.

"So so mushy. Hehehe. But I understand the feeling " - J

I’m not mushy. I’m hardcore x0x \m/.

Ok, that totally doesn’t fit me. 

“I believe he is someone you can talk with about anything.” – Patrick Ty

Not true. I refuse to talk about 2 girls 1 cup.

And don’t ask me what that is.

May is the Magic Word

In other countries, when people think of May, they think “clement weather”. Where I live in, however, May follows April for being the most torrid. But everything is different this year. It’s just a good two weeks into this month and already I’ve seen dark clouds depriving the noontime its usual summertime brightness. It’s affecting everyone’s mood and behavior: same time last year, I was accustomed to seeing off-duty invigorated yuppies jollily march their jolly way home, but all I see this year are facial expressions as gloomy as the shades of the umbrella they are covered with. And I’m at a circumstance that’s unprecedented in my entire life: my skin is shedding as consequence of the sunburn I got late April, and at the same time my skin is tingled by the rain’s pitter-patters. The contrast coming together felt peculiar, at best.

In a conversation I had with one of my old friends, I jokingly mentioned that this May ain’t May enough, and my life ain’t May enough either. If I am to write an autobiography, this month of 2008 would, hands down, be recorded as the nadir of my life. I have never felt so dead, so languid, so hopeless and so desolated. I wake up each morning with a hollow-like sensation running all over my spine, probably as a result from the world’s refusing to cooperate towards every decent person’s hope for peace. Everyday, I read news of catastrophes and food crises, I see “charity organization” televise shameless paeans to undeserving politicians, I hear passersby talk about unimportant thing as if oblivious to all the problems the world at large is suffering from. Nothing is determined to give me an honest and non-delusional happiness, and at one point I was so down and sick of everyone’s apathy, ignorance and colonial mentality, that I shut myself from the world for 2 days. The nadir, and that is word getting used a lot today, is when I’ve had a shouting match on the telephone with a person I very dearly admire. Yes, I am officially depressed, and as you can probably guess, this is not sadness so piffling as to be called emo. This sadness is more real than that, and I’m too tired to rely on vices and consumerism for respite.

I wish I could get away from everything, to where monies, credit cards, fast cars and government propagandas are meaningless. I want to spend a day surrounded by nothing but the color of water. Or maybe go to a place where I could be lying on fields of grass and under a tree, drowning myself to the music of birds’ chirping, leaves’ moving, and cows’ mooing, and the plants and I each taking part of the circulation of air. Or maybe I could be seating on sands, watching the yonder sky change its color from light blue to auburn, and breathing in a smell of brine. But these places all seem so far away, and like Stevie Wonder who is blind, I could only see them by the visions of my mind. I ask myself just how often modern people get to live days that look exactly as Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” described. It is May, when the world is supposed to look like seventeen. How come it feels nowhere like that?