Book Review: Utterly Yours, Booker Jones

I do believe in writer's block. But then I also do believe that sometimes writer's block is a product of our own inner problems, of radical changes in our lives that we can't seem to solve.

Mom was scavenging for old albums and books in their room and piled a number of old reads in the table when I found the book "Utterly Yours, Booker Jones" by Betsy Duffey, which I have read since I was in high school. The story revolves around a frustrated but hopeful at the same time writer Walter "Booker" Jones, who wants his fictional novels like Space Cows and Worms from the Planet Spaghetti to get published one day. Just like bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert, the 12-year-old boy frequently annoys different publishing companies with his very bad stories and novels by sending each chapter of his book. But every time a reply goes 'We're very sorry but your story do not meet the demands of our list.' In other words, he gets rejected every time.

But the story does not only revolve around Booker's passion in writing and his failures to publish his novels, but also revolves around how he has changed when his favorite grandfather, who is also a published author and columnist, got sick and fell and moved in to their house. This meant giving up Booker's room, living and doing long division problems under the dining table with drapes and a sleeping bag, and a virtually messed up family of a hopeless mother, a busy father and a bitch 'sistoid'.

The conflict started when Booker was trapped by his best friend Germ to write a speech about the rally because the PTA wanted to change the name of the school mascot Wolf Pack into the Fighting Pickles. Booker was currently writing his book on Space Cows and he didn't seem to get the hang of writing a speech. It entailed a deadline, an anxiety, another problem that can't be solved. A writer's block.

On the day of the rally, Booker was empty-handed. However, he began to realize the importance of writing with his grandfather's clippings of columns and realized that his Pop deserves being just a nuisance and a problem in the house. He began to rearrange his room and transferred all his grandfather's things to his room, while he moved his things to the dining room where he currently lives and sleeps.

"This is your room now, Pop," he had said. The rally was looming, but he felt peace, and for the first time in a long time, an idea popped into his mind about his speech for the rally. With nothing but a pen and a rally rag, the words flowed like a river from his hands. During the rally, he was able to pull off his speech and a lot of people especially the parents were moved. It was his first successful speech, and what's more, the newspaper reporter asked him if they could publish his essay to the daily newspaper the next day. It became his first ever huge break. He was not Booker Jones, person anymore; but Booker Jones, author.

I can really relate to the book because I also love to write and I've been breathing it since elementary; I wrote fan fictions about my favorite series Dragon Ball Z when I was ten, tried to make a novel about me and my crush at 12 and joined the journalism club in high school for three years. I started to blog four years ago and I still keep writing. During high school my mentor Ms. Josephine Bonsol always gambled me to schools press conferences but I always lost. I had my huge break in 2011 when my essay was published in The Philippine Star. I joined the same essay writing contest four times and got published twice. I felt I was invincible.

But I also experienced my writer's block in third year college when I was writing a linguistics paper. Something happened and I could not seem to add anything better for my paper and ended up submitting a really terrible paper to my professors. This was a radical part of my life that I could not seem to comprehend and so my writing was also affected.

But then I regained in the rainy season of July 2014 when I was 'reset' and I realized that I love writing more than anything else--it is not just a distraction, a way to pass the time, but a passion that I will always look for because it is my home.

Published Essays: Asking, seeking too much

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=818067&publicationSubCategoryId=86

I do not believe in God.

People in my community always said He is everywhere. Of course He’s everywhere, I thought 10 years ago: He was framed on our dining room wall, seated with a bunch of people eating bread and drinking wine; He was displayed on our bedroom window. He always had a special corner in the house where mom would light candles before a paper portrait of Him. He was always on TV every 3 p.m.; He was always in my pocket; Mom would hand me that beaded necklace before I’d go to school. He was always in my CLE books: still, unsmiling, strange.

For eight years I was educated by Catholic schools that tried to fill me with the significance of believing in God, but instead I felt they injected me with a rather strict culture: memorizing Bible passages, filling in the blanks with the Eight Beatitudes, reciting the Apostles’ Creed and the rosary every morning before the flag ceremony. I did not really complain about these “routines”; I was too innocent to care and too gullible to ask why I was supposed to learn the sign of the cross and to give P5 during the offertory at Sunday Mass.

Learning about the nature vs. nurture theory, I can say that I was nurtured to believe in God with a rich religious environment and society that worshipped Him in a unique way. With this I have come to draw a personal picture of Him, and have granted Him a mortal existence in my everyday life: I would thank Him for the new day every morning, talk to Him before I go to sleep and recognize His presence for every competition and elocution and dance performance and exam I had to overcome.

As time passed by though, I began to ask questions. Just like young Jesus in the book Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, and probably just like the author Anne Rice herself, my curiosity grew like wildfire as my environment gradually changed. Such change, however, I never considered to be a big deal or a revolutionary turn in my life as a Roman Catholic, as I began to look through a “new lens” of religion. I just became a little disturbed that as I explored this new world even with a descriptive perspective, my own picture of God, once a crystal clear view of Him as written in the Bible and of Jesus’ life as coherently described in the Four Gospels, seemed to blur a little, like clearly seeing yourself on a still pond then becoming distorted into a ripple.

The bright, detailed painting fading into a slightly indistinct work of art was gradual. Back in high school, after being pampered by two Catholic schools run by nuns, I learned of other ways of worshipping God with strange names like Iglesia ni Cristo and Born Again. I began to wonder why some of my classmates did not do the sign of the cross or did not attend our Mass at school. I once attended a seminar spearheaded by Born Again volunteers and they praised my God with religious songs that I had never heard in our own church. They sang with such passion and enthusiasm that they always closed their eyes, and I deeply wondered why my community was never like this and people didn’t sing very loud like they did.

At one point I feared this difference in religion would mark a sensitive border line, defining my social place and my friends at school. I felt compelled to box others according to religion when it should not have been. I later realized that such thoughts actually prevented me from discovering the uniqueness of people’s ways of living and their different cultures which have fascinated me ever since. But the questions surged like a landslide.

For one thing, growing up in a Roman Catholic-type environment, I was always made to conclude that good people are those who believe in God. But then as I tried on different lenses, I met people who were equally good and kind but didn’t actually believe in God. It was a strange and overwhelming discovery, yet it further blurred my view of God and more questions poured down like hail.

I struggled to keep my faith and tried to “see with eyes unclouded” by emotions when I took a class that dissected the existence of Jesus Christ born of a Virgin Mary. His unlikely existence, Jesus being a gay or an abnormal person in biological terms — it’s science bumping into religion, after all. Reading texts on the views of atheists and non-believers of Christ, watching the Da Vinci Code, all these new perspectives were overwhelming, yet confusing all together. Did Jesus really exist in the first place? How could he have been XY if he had no paternal origin?

But these questions were never rhetorical in any way. These were questions born out of curiosity, out of my itch to learn more about my belief and of others’. After all, my conscious acceptance of a God is an essential part of my life, and a very interesting part of one’s life holding a timeless controversy and conspiracy that has united and divided man throughout history.

These questions were also born out of the values I learned during high school and in my first college year: to keep asking questions, and treating every answer in a descriptive point of view. My mentor Josephine Bonsol keeps telling me to know the facts first before anything: before judging others’ religions, before starting to act like a hypocrite who memorizes every word in the Bible but gossips about his neighbor right after he steps out of the church; before starting to doubt the existence of my God.

I sometimes fear I ask too many questions and bother too many people. But Anne Rice taught me to keep asking questions, just as seven-year-old Jesus did.

I sometimes fear I seek too many answers and may not find or understand them all. But Jesus taught me, in his life as a young lad who cried and laughed and experienced nightmares just like the rest of us, to continue to find the answers and not to fear.

I continue to ask questions, and accept answers as they are, just as Jesus — kid as he was, once upon a time—did. Until then, I do not just believe in God; I follow His ways.

The "other side" of the white-haired woman

Chick Benetto: I saw her alive, right in front of my eyes.

Sometimes it only takes one day to fill up all the years you lost.


As part of the emotionally confused youth, I've always misunderstood my mother. At times I argue with her about the simplest things I suddenly realized were stupid enough. Ironically though I can never spit out the words she needs to hear from me, so she can tell her story and I can finally understand why she's like that.

"You can't be here."
"Why not?"
"Because you died."

True enough, nothing haunts like the things we don't say. Mitch Albom's For One More Day revolves around the ghost story of a mother and his son. Watching its adapted movie (produced by Oprah Winfrey), I once concluded it's a typical story of family love and the rest of its tragic conflicts. But taking it to the book, I realized it's how the story was told that made me want to love and understand my mother more.


Sharing the ghost story to his daughter, Charles "Chick" Benetto (Emmy Award-winning actor Michael Imperioli) recalled his tragic accident and attempt to commit suicide, and how he survived it with the help of his dead mother (Academy Award®-winning actress Ellen Burstyn) who appeared to him, in what most would say "inexplicable apparitions before death". For what appeared to be one ordinary day, Chick got to know his mother more and discovered a heartbreaking truth about the man he had loved more than his mom all through the years--his father and hero and baseball coach, having another family back then.

"Citizen of the World" Mitch Albom created a dramatic approach by letting Chick narrate his own story in the book; how he had struggled with the confusion of seeing his dead mother, and even inserted his mother's love notes to him during his first day in school and college. He had also recalled their rough relationship, divided in "Times My Mother Stood Up For Me" and "Times I Did Not Stand Up For My Mother".


The  story also observed how a child is culturally mislead when oriented with clashing principles, divorce,  family secrets and  big choices, thus making him carry the curse down to his own family and to himself. Chick had sought for his father's muted affection more, for his mother had given all her love too easily she didn't let him earn it. His father had also asked him he couldn't be both a mama's boy and a daddy's boy; he had to choose. 

Chick's ghost story portrayed the sad truth about today's parent-kid relationship as well. With social discrimation and entitlement disputes lurking in every corner of the world today, sons and daughters--as they grow up--are suddenly oriented with the culturally accepted norm of disregarding their time-worn parents. Less talk, less words, less calls, less visits.


It follows the worse truth that we youth make the least effort to understand our parents. Somehow it's very hard indeed, because the stained culture around us limit us to want to discover the "other side" of our parents. My mentor Ms. Josephine Bonsol has taught me to always try to understand my mom, because she may have frustrations when she was young that unconsciously made her pass it on to us.


In the end, what we kids don't realize and foresee are the days when we just want to hide under mom's dress and she's just not there. We don't foresee the days when we cannot taste their specialties anymore, when we can never use the word "mom" or "nanay" anymore.


What we don't clearly see, is the woman who's always going to save us at the end of the day.

Out of villains we worship heroes: So who's the real hero?

We learn better things from villains, because of villains and through villains.


Have we ever wondered if our childhood favorites like Superman or Spongebob or Avatar didn't endure enemies like the criminal Lex Luthor or the evil Zuko or the unfriendly Squidward, would we even idolize them? If such villains didn't stand up for what they selfishly believed, our heroes would be nothing but show-off, extraordinary people possessing useless in-born powers. I believe from villains--even from problems and conflicts--we find our own heroes.

To be appropriately dressed for the recent occasion, I studied and reread about Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Charles Dicken's epic A Christmas Carol. I thought about the irony of grumpy Grinch and cold-hearted Ebenzer Scrooge portrayed to be the spotlight for both stories. It's true, nevertheless--I believe villains are way beyond what heroes could ever be.

THE GRINCH


One can really blame Dr. Seuss for making the Grinch's heart "two sizes small", making the latter all grouchy and isolated and evil. But then we all know the story is not mainly about his wicked attitude and his insane plans of robbing the Who's Christmas paraphernalia.

Mainly it was about his redemption to descend from his 10 000-feet-high cavern and be not cold-hearted anymore, and about his conclusion that Christmas--and the happiness of having Christmas--is not defined by material things, but by pure love, acceptance and the act of giving whole-heartedly.


Dr. Seuss could've made the Who family the main characters. But he didn't. A sweet hug from a child, a thoughtful greeting from a stranger and a warm welcome can be easily portrayed by rather human-looking protagonists with powerful or humbler characters. But instead, Dr. Seuss made us learn something real from an ill-tempered, green-painted but motivated creature named the Grinch.

EBENZER SCROOGE


Charles Dickens was equally smart. His character was worse off and more serious, though. In his A Christmas Carol, Ebenzer Scrooge despised Christmas, loathed poor people saying the world's better off without them, strictly kept to himself and developed to be a workaholic.


And for rational reasons. Apparently disastrous tidings always came during the holiday season: his father left him in a boarding school as a child; his fiancée Belle left him for a less-workaholic man, and his closest relative and sister Fran died. These just made him more anti-sociable and apathetic to all the people in the world.


But then good fortune of Past, Present and Yet to Come spirits guided him and showed him the consequences of his grumpy actions. In the end, he decided to change, repented and finally knew "how to keep Christmas well".


And this might just be the biggest lesson for us: the power of change. We might never know anything about it if there aren't villains.

Through villains, we exclusively learn and understand more. We consider our bad-tempered teachers our worst enemies, but then we learn to be highly motivated to do what they said we cannot and prove to them what we got. 


We loathe criminals, killers, wayward children and the delinquent. But if we're open-minded enough we learn they've become who they are because of the Nature vs. Nurture phenomenon, and we can later conclude it was not their fault.


Russell Crowe once said: “I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person -- they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated.”


Heroes are made out of villains. If there are no villains, there are no heroes. We just might never know how much we could learn from them.