don't just read, write!

i still remember when i was small (i mean im still small now but you get the point), i used to be so "kind" to my books. id always have my dad cover them up neatly with those clear plastic covers that we use to cover our school books with. i was very particular with my books - they had to be completely covered, the tag price had to be torn off and my dad should use the cleanest looking clearest plastic ever. i never wanted my books looking like a page torn off of a magazine or a rip off the birthday gift wrapper. i wanted to display them all, my sweet valley books, my children's books, my archie comics, everything. but then i got to read this short essay about truly loving your books.

we were incoming second year high school students then and our literature tutor for our advanced summer classes asked us how we preserve our books then she ade us read this essay. i forgot the title but its main essence was, the preservation of a book does not merely aim at its physical attributes. to really know the book was to write between the lines, at the edges; to absorb the book wholly, to leave nothing behind, to read even the smallest dot the page contains, to love.

from that point on, i realized yeah, i was so scared of putting my book down in a filthy place or have a scratches or marks in it. i was afraid of my book getting any water marks or black ink marks or whatever. i just want my book to look exactly the way when i got it, if possible, even better. but i guess since that day i read that essay, i got into another level of realization and it made me adapt a new philosophy in life. and up to now, i still believe and live with that perspective in mind. i don't want to be the part of that bandwagon of shallow-ness i used to be in before. ive learned.

and with that elarning, i never did let go of the taking-care of the books part. i may have let go of the o.c. freak but i still love them funny-smelling paperbacks. (hey, i do love the smell of a good book. i actually love smelling books.)

so what's with the connection of writing and making colored ink marks in the lining and edges of a book? well, i feel like there are times ive been overly obsessive about the pettiest things and ive wanted for things to run smoothly, perfectly, just like with my books before - they were the neatiest books ive ever seen. but i realize that sometimes, you just could not always be that smart-ass chick. you have to learn how to live life, you have to learn how to enjoy the littlest of things, you have to appreciate the smallest of beauties.

ive always told other people that the thing that can truly make you happy lies in the smallest thing, unnoticeable thing around you which abound like the bad grass farmers so hate. and we have to learn how to appreciate them. we have to learn how to love them. absorb them. wholly accept them.

i love the ink of my black pen. although i think i already lost it. teehee.