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Netnet Camomot

I FORGOT how it ended in the movie.

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Cagayan de Oro’s bookworms celebrated upon learning that Fully Booked would open a branch at Limketkai Center. But it remained an unconfirmed rumor as its intended location near Starbucks gradually and slowly transformed from an absolutely empty shell into an empty shell with escalators. The question, however, still hovered overhead, Are you sure? Fully Booked? Really?

Then, finally, it opened, inspiring me to drop by whenever I’m nearby. A hard habit to break while in Manila or Cebu, it has become a harder habit to break now that it’s here-ight here!–in CDO. I could go there anytime I want without the necessity of buying plane tickets and booking hotels.

But it’s not the kind of habit I’d like to break. Reading has always been my most favorite hobby since grade school. That’s hmmm, 20–hehe–years of reading, with that one page in an Anne Rice book making a church and cemetery in Manhattan look so familiar when I happened to pass by there.

Reading brings you to places you’ve never been to and may never visit, but when you do get that chance and are lucky enough to remember the paragraphs and sentences and words, it’s deja vu, like a dream.

On March 24, 2015, I was at Fully Booked LKK CDO again. I have this other habit, of writing my name, the bookstore and date of purchase on the title page or one of the first pages of a book, thus, I’m sure of the date.

The book for that day was David Nicholls’ “One Day.” Because I loved its first few lines and the other lines in the middle and the back blurb.

I vaguely remembered watching the movie, starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, couldn’t recall when that was exactly. But had I remembered how it ended, I would have picked the next book instead. I hate sad endings. Wait, I could suffer through sad endings but not in the last seven years. I need happy endings now. Yes, fairy tales, once upon a time, they lived happily ever after.

So, I cried after reading the book.

Dex and Em–OK, Sturgess and Hathaway, if that gives you a clearer picture of the story–had all the chances of having a life together, if only…

There was too much regret, there were times when I wanted to manipulate the story to bring them back together already. Emma overthinks, Dexter oversimplifies. They wasted all those years living apart, trying to find love through relationships with other people, when all they needed was each other. But they both refused to admit that, insisting and somehow sticking to the promise they made when they first met:

Emma: “Me and you. We’ll just be… friends. Agreed?”

Dexter: “Alright. Agreed.”

Their story lasted for 26 years. It’s the kind of ending that inspires the thought, How apt, for me to be reading this on All Souls Day, on a rainy gloomy Monday morning when some Pinoys opted to take a leave from work and visit their dear departed.

And as that Monday morning stretched to lunch, there was that unanswered query on how it would have been for both Dex and Em, Em and Dex, had they agreed to be more than friends right from the start.

I’ve always believed that there are things we make happen, since 50 years from now, would it even matter to anyone outside of that particular circle? A circle that has you, or you and the other. As long as it feels right, right now.

There are things that never feel right, not right now anyway. And there’s that moment where you’d rather be a mere spectator, when in fact you’re in there along with everyone else. It’s the feeling of being an outsider although no one is treating you as one, because you prefer to be a part of the audience, watching, observing, and absorbing, taking it all in. That’s the kind of life Dex and Em had for more than two decades after the day “where it all begins,” after that day where “Everything starts here, today.”

Since I don’t live in a cave, it took me many many days to read “One Day.” There were days when it sat there on the bedside table, waiting. And when I did resume reading it, there was this suspicion that the househelp had accidentally moved the bookmark while cleaning the room. So I would read from the beginning of the chapter where the bookmark had comfortably inserted itself, to help me recall where I was the last time.

That bookmark, by the way, is a price tag for an item described as “Wallet Small,” and above that is a motto, “In Rice We Trust.” It’s for an item I found at a store inside an airport. I now have two wallets made of recycled rice sacks. That’s another habit, dropping by an airport’s stores, looking for interesting things, while waiting for a flight. That’s where I also found wallets and kikay kits made of recycled tetra packs. That’s my little contribution to greening the environment since I’m not good in delivering green jokes. Heh heh.

Last Monday afternoon, while recovering from the sad ending, I began reading Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild.” I cried by page 12. To stop the tears, I went back to its title page and panicked–no bookstore nor purchase date there. O my gas. Why?! How could I forget? I tried to continue looking, and there it was on the page before the title page: “Fully Booked. LKK. 3.24.15.” Yes, same as that for “One Day.” So I bought two books that day? I’m not sure, for there could be another book hiding in the shelf with exactly the same details. March 24 must have been an emotional day, for we are attracted to books that can express what we can’t.

“Wild” has also been turned into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon, I haven’t watched it yet but a friend told me the character reminded him of me. That’s the reason I bought the book, which  is usually the better version compared to the movie.

I don’t know how “Wild” ends. But since I’m already crying this early in the story, I’m now looking forward to a happy ending.

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