I used to hate the rainy season.
Going to school is so difficult when your bed beckons you to sleep some more, while the clock rudely awakens you to scramble up from bed or get a late slip from the notorious Ms. Salazar. I can still remember that going to work is even more of a challenge. At least in school, you can have your nonsensical chatter with friends to look forward to, but when already working, even your semi/quasi-cute officemate couldn't liven the gray mood your freaky boss mandates in the office.
The roads are wet, traffic is bad and tempers run high. What's more, you cannot wear your favorite shoes because you know that somehow it will get wet. It's a daily dilemma what to wear. Wearing skirt is out of the question because showing legs is in, but showing wet, dirty legs with mud splatters is definitely out. Pants are the practical choice, though you still have to watch out for the mud. And isn't bringing an umbrella everywhere you go, a number one drag?
But that's all in the past.
When I bade farewell to corporate life and said hi to bum-hood, there's nothing better than opening one eye slightly at seven in the morning, looking out into the window and seeing the gray sky, weeping and pouring its heart out, and realizing that I don't have to get up just yet. The steady beat of the rain does wonders for my consciousness. I just let it go completely. I crawl back into the soft, warm blanket that envelopes my whole body, hug as many pillows as I can, and promptly go back to sleep.
Though now, I realized August brings more than a blatantly pathetic excuse for laziness. Other than signaling the nearness of adding another year to my sorry life, it brings forth music to the ears of bookworms like me – a month of book sale.
National Bookstore and Powerbooks chose August as the month of book sale. It’s a tradition. Save all your book money for August for it’s like an early Christmas gift to book lovers. Hundreds of us fly to the nearest branch to take advantage of getting a copy of the latest Paulo Coelho, 20% less. This month, I cannot spend as much as I did before. I used to buy ten to fifteen books in the past, but now I have to choose carefully as my budget will not allow me to get just any book I take fancy to. So I chose five books. Eleven Minutes by Coelho and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman are the top two in my list.
An added bonus for us was the International Book Fair in the World Trade Center. It gathers almost all the publishing houses and all major bookshops and publications in one place during one glorious weekend. As if that’s not enough for us to get excited about, they slashed the prices and we get more discounts. Wee!
What else can I do? I have no choice, but to borrow money from my mom and buy more books.
Some people buy shoes, bags and clothes, I buy CDs, books and magazines. Some people wait in restaurants, I wait in bookstores, sifting through the latest book titles. Some people love to watch movies, uhm, I also love to watch movies. Tee hee.
And so in the midst of all this rain, floods, and very wet roads, I see sunshine. Just imagine rows and rows of shelves filled with hundreds and thousands of books. That’s my sunshine in August.
I used to rattle off this nursery rhyme way back in college: rain, rain, go away, come again another day. Nowadays, however, I command the forces of nature to let it rain on occasions I need the languishing feeling of sadness to be washed off. Certainly, there is a glimmer of sunshine in a rather gloomy and wet day of our lives. And when we think about it, we see so much joy when realities bring us to a conditioned life. Now, that is what we call a perfect miracle. It is close to a genuine smile for a poor family living in cardboard quarters.
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