Soul food

MANILA, Philippines - Books are like food. Although a multitude of gastronomic choices exists, the ultimate purpose is not just to whet one’s appetite but to satiate it. And, like food, people consume books with unequal edacity. Some books, like gripping whodunits or easy, breezy chick lits, are meant to be devoured with the ravenous speed of a suckling barracuda.

Some books, meanwhile, are meant to be tasted languidly, chewed slowly to get their full delectable flavor: the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the wavy stream of consciousness of Virginia Woolf, or the esoteric wisdom of C.S. Lewis.  Some people are more pragmatic in their intent though: they read to sleep. They read the words without really reading. Books are utilized as sedatives to tire their eyes out and placate and vacate their minds at the end of the day. It is like sham feeding in cases of post-gastrectomy — patients who are forbidden to eat; they taste the meat chunk, chew it until it becomes bland then spit it out. The truth of the matter is, they are never really nourished but their minds trick them into thinking that they are.

I wish I could be a little more pragmatic.

But to tell the honest-to-goodness truth, I read without really knowing my intent. Pablo Neruda’s lines from his poem entitled “Poetry” hit home:  I don’t know how or when,/no, they were not voices, they were not/words, nor silence,/but from a street I was summoned,/from the branches of night,/abruptly from others,/among violent fires or returning alone,/there I was without a face/and it touched me.

Despite the popularity of e-books and the practicality of PDF readers that hold a thousand promises, I am one of those people who still derive pleasure from the experience of reading an actual book.  I love smelling the pages of books old and new, leafing through them with my fingers and writing side notes and highlighting relevant lines.

I chanced upon Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring while sifting through books in a bookshop in true Brownian fashion: random and non-purposive. 

In a nutshell, it is a book about how a painting of the same title came to be,  or as the bird’s eye-view succinctly puts it: “how it must have been.” The 17th-century painting “Girl With a Pearl Earring” is considered a masterpiece by the acclaimed Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.  It is considered the Dutch “Mona Lisa” or more appropriately, “La Gioconda” or â€œLa Joconde.”  Both paintings are enigmatic and both have been subjects of much speculation. This book holds its own plausible theory, so believable that I forget it is fiction.

I couldn’t wait to devour it with my hungry eyes.

At first, I was afraid I would not be able to relate to it. The book is, after all, set in 1660 in Delft, the Netherlands.  But I remember my English teacher once told me that truth is universal and a classic book is able to transcend time and space. The book truly does that. 

The story revolves around 16-year-old Griet, a girl from a middle-aged conservative Protestant family who was forced by tragic circumstances into becoming a maid for one of the town’s prominent families, in particular, the painter Vermeer. Though boring as a maid’s life story may seem, it has all the right elements of a bestseller and even a blockbuster movie: a love story involving Griet and the son of a butcher named Pieter, an antagonist in the guise of the painter’s impetuous young daughter, Cornelia, and domestic drama involving the petulant mistress, Catharina, and a jealous maid, Tanneke, who makes her life even more miserable. 

The book tackles many themes about humanity: the fleeting nature of beauty, the mastery of one’s craft through strict discipline, the tempting allure of sex, the undeniable power of a woman’s charms,  the healing powers of art, the tangible rewards of patience, finding love in unexpected places and the triumph of good over evil.

What struck me most is right after an emotionally charged climactic scene, where the protagonist Griet is in the center of the town square that had an eight-pointed star in the middle, representing eight different directions in the town, eight different choices she knew she had. And in each choice lies an outcome she wishes she knew. In this moment of blinding truth, the main character realizes that she alone is responsible for her life through her choices.

Like Griet, I have always believed that we are responsible for the choices we make. I once read that every time one makes an important choice, the part of him left behind continues the other life he could have had. We are ultimately defined by the choices that we make.

As I read the book, I discovered that it is very much like the painting: the lines are simple and clear but very descriptive, paralleling the solid lines and vivid colors of the Vermeer’s masterpiece. Both seem fiercely real. Both are deceptively uncomplicated but the more one stares at it, the more one reads into the lines and shapes, the more one is struck by a force of illuminating beauty. In the original painting, the brightness of the pearl earring contrasts with the muted tone of the backdrop and the drab attire of the girl in the painting. And in the book, the pearl earring represents clarity, the truth that each of the characters is searching for.  For the painter, it was what made the painting complete. With the earring, the work was finished. For the subject of the painting, it was the retribution that was not sought but found.

As I read the last few pages of the book, I felt like someone who had just been treated to a sumptuous feast. I was reminded of why I read in the first place: books are as necessary as food. They are both a need and a want. They feed the mind, nourish the soul and sustain the life we have and could have had.

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

Elvie Victonette B. Razon-Gonzalez, MD, says she is defined by these roles: “a surgeon’s wife, a mother, a gastroenterologist, a budding clinical epidemiologist and an avid documenter of life.”