Shelf life
Third grade was a terrible blur. There were playground rules, multiplication tables, geography lessons, and the classroom’s caste system. I had friends but my social life was punctured by that one incident where I cried inside the classroom, during recess, because I wasn’t invited to a [supposed] friend’s birthday party. While most of them trooped to canteens outside the school grounds, binging on all sorts of happy childhood paraphernalia such as sour mangoes, teks, and gummy bears, I hauled my skinny ass down to the library. It was a dingy, narrow room that almost induced claustrophobia, with all its tall shelves (I was a small child) and thick hardbound books. Ever since I discovered the joys of reading at an early age, I always found myself gravitating towards bookshelves — at my uncle’s house, my playmate’s stack of books behind their NES and dollhouses, the textbooks at my ninang’s house — regardless of whether they are coated in dust or deadly spores.
Books about the universe fascinated me. My after school special meant hours of reading on black holes, the planets and their moons, and other enchanting heavenly bodies. These were the years when publishers were still happy to produce volumes and volumes of books dedicated to attract young readers, books dedicated to a topics that held children in thrall — Earth Science, dinosaurs, the solar system — and had lavish illustrations that mapped out infinite possibilities. Myths and legends were also a curious subject. I remember reading a sixth grade book that had a story about the local lore of a bridge “blessed” with children’s blood to reinforce its hold. I borrowed a book about some of the most notorious hauntings and supernatural incidents in history, including the Amityville case. Why a librarian would let a third-grader borrow such a book, at the risk of terrifying nightmares, was beyond me.
More than the obvious charms of reading (doubled by SRA rotations during the rest of my elementary years), what really drew me in was that distinctive feeling of being surrounded by shelves and shelves of books. Like a boy in a still life or a promotional photograph, I would neatly sit down beside a shelf, prop open a book and read there for hours, with the rest of the books looking in on me, as if anticipating which of them would I pick next. Never mind the moldy smell or my neighbor’s droning television set (our house wouldn’t have a proper bookshelf until I was in high school), I lost myself in the cadence of words and the vistas of each illustration.
BOOK STORE VISITS
Growing up, my hometown never had much of a variety of bookstores. There was the quintessential National Book Store, tucked inside the former Naval Base for several years and dwarfed by Duty Free Shops and surplus stores. My classmates and I would mount trips there, mostly to expend our youthful energy on our way to the bayfront area. But for me, each visit was a thrilling one. Though my pockets only held my laughably meager allowance, I always tried to fish something out of the bargain bin: blockbuster novels, trashy romances (I bought a Jude Deveraux once just because it was P10), and the rare find The Sandman: Doll’s House for P150, which I had to borrow from my best friend). There was the occasional book sale kiosk that popped up in random places around town but its impermanence was like an annoying game of hide and seek that I had to play until I learned how to commute to Manila.
My latter college years were marked by my Book Sale expeditions to Manila. Traveling alone with a handful of money on my backpack, my main trip would be to the University Belt’s academic book shops, where I bought dull but necessary school textbooks. The side trips to Book Sale would be the highlight. Sprawling space operas, dark fantasies, multi-volume series from writers I loved, and short story anthologies, these books almost made my bag explode.
Now that I am living on my own and armed with a certain degree of purchasing power, my book-centric odysseys reached farther. A recent visit to Kinokuniya in Takashimaya almost had me burst in glee and book nerd tears. Here was a sprawling expanse of a bookstore, a marvel of the modern consumerist age, that was almost a realization of my childhood fantasies. Aproned attendants pushed trolleys like a librarian would, stocking books in their rightful order. An inquiry was met with a warm tone as if welcoming you home after a long, hard journey. Each shelf had a book I’ve achingly lusted after: wonderfully designed editions, histories set in fragrant paper stock, and matte covers that amplified the tactile experience of reading.
Being there was overwhelming and exhilarating at the same time. The presence of books that I love and will come to love was a maddening rush, I wanted to touch all of them, whisper into their spines and, using terrible self-help books and awful bestsellers, build a fort where I would spend my remaining days, subsisting on bottled water, crackers, and the printed word. Days after, I went home with my purchases in tow, and placed them neatly in my own shelf, their covers a token of remembrance to that blissful moment. At night, when the light has taken away the noise of the day, I would quietly retire to my room, open a book, and proceed to entangle myself in someone else’s words.
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