flashback

january of 2000 i'm in a Days Inn motel in Anaheim freezing my butt off at 1 in the morning.restless, i get out of bed, careful not to wake up my sister.i take out a brand new hardbound from the drawer and creep into the john.i wasn't going to shit or anything. i just wanted a well lighted room for a conducive read.i put down the toilet seat and start to unwrap the plastic off the book. i hear a loud snore, as if my dad's sleep has been disturbed, so i close the door gently and proceed to my unwrapping.

it is Hugo, his famous Les Miserables, and i am blushing with eager anticipation to read it. it is quite a big book, seven inches long and three inches thick. earlier that afternoon, inside Barnes and Noble, i was contemplating on whether or not to buy it because it was just too big to fit into my luggage. eventually, i took out $12.98 from my hardly spent pocket money and got a couple more books to bring home to Manila.going inside that bookstore was how it felt like when PowerBooks and Page One and Bibliarch first opened in our Makati malls.it was a haven for bibliophiles. and i remember all four of us: dad, ma, rach and myself were so amazed by it that we were literally giggling! talk about a filipino family magically enthralled by an american bookstore. it was funny, but it was memorable.

going back, i flip through the pages and begin to read. it was so quiet i could hear a continuous buzz in my head---the sound of a mind absorbed in the Bishop of D______.

what i'm gonna write here is a paragraph from the book. it's about a certain guy who has dedicated a big portion of his life to doing acts of kindness.i envy his passion for God, their intimate relationship, and his fondness for Him. by name , he is Monseigneur Bienvenu -- he and God are like two lovers who can't live without each other. it is love that is pure and unadulterated. just how it was really supposed to be with God and Man - in the Garden.

i wish I were like him. :c


"Nevertheless it was not complete if cold or rainy weather prevented his passing an hour or two in the evening...in his garden before going to sleep. It seemed as if it were a sort of rite with him, to prepare himself for sleep by meditating in presence of the great spectacle of the starry firmament. Sometimes at a late hour of the night, if the two women were awake, they would hear him slowly promenading the walks. He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring,comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendours of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. In such moments, opening up his heart at the hour when the flowers of the night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the centre of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him; mysterious interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.

"He contemplated the grandeur, and the presence of God; the eternity of the future, strange mystery; the eternity of the past, mystery yet more strange; all the infinities deep-hidden in every direction about him; and, without esaying to comprehend the incomprehensible, he saw it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by the thought. He reflected upon these magnificent unions of atoms which give visible forms to Nature, revealing forces in establishing them, creating individualities in unity, proportions in extension, the innumerable in the infinite, and through light producing beauty. These unions are forming and dissolving continually; thence life and death.

"He would sit upon a wooden bench leaning against a broken trellis, and look at the stars through the irregular outlines of his fruit trees. This quarter of an acre of ground, so poorly cultivated, so cumbered with shed and ruins, was dear to him, and satisfied him.

"What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the day time, and contemplation at night? was not this narrow inclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon; a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky."


~*sigh*~