Dream

After a harrowing but pleasantly surprising workout session—leg day in the middle of week—I got my passport size photos printed. (It's the PhilHealth accreditation renewal season, that time of year when I have to contend with government bureaucracy.) The man asked if I needed a soft copy; he'd charge me 50 pesos more. 

"No, thanks. Just the pictures, please," I said. 

Outside it was raining—gentle and calming, the kind of weather that makes you think of hot Milo and pajamas. But adding rain to the rush hour to students and employees on their way home often exacerbates the traffic condition in the city, particularly along the highway where government construction is on-going, has been going on for years on end. 

I headed to the bookstore. I picked books in the discount bin. Agustín Fernández Mallo caught my attention right away: The Nocilla Trilogy. I hadn't heard of the author before, but the cover was interesting. People ask me how I plan my reading: there is no plan. 

The trilogy begins with "Dream." Each short chapters reads like prose poetry. The author is both physicist and poet. It's not the most linear book. I return to previous chapters to make sense of the current narrative. For instance,  a reference to Kelly and her friends going surfing prompted me to remember that it was Kelly who was diagnosed with sarcoma in her left femur. To read this book I must encircle the names of characters. They reappear. The narratives are interconnected. Holding a Blackwing pencil as I read makes the reading even more pleasurable. I encircle the names of characters. This was the technique I used to make senses of the many Aureliano Buendias in Garbiel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.