Foot and Fire

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir Haruki Murakami, Alfred Knopf, 2007 Translated Copy, 2008  119 pages Forget the title. I can say that this book is a book on meditation. Okay, just almost.  Murakami transported me to the world of marathon without fondness or favor. He just wanted to run for the sake of running. He loves to undergo the physical challenge in the process of preparing to a marathon. While physically challenging himself, he also make me understand that his character is being challenged too. Discipline, perseverance, focus, stamina, self-examination, and many others are all put to test and use while one is running, just as in writing. Of course, as I expected, while he is writing about his running, he inevitably talked about his writing novels. And mostly on the virtue of what he does, running and writing.  Though I was not able to read his novels, the genre of which I believe I could not ever read, I still loved t...

I love to write. Writing for the sake of writing became a secondary thing in my life when I became a lawyer. In real life, lawyering -- which involves solving the legal battles of other people which are often laced with emotional pains -- can be seriously stressful. Stress can get to a lawyer, if she does not know how to compartmentalize work and give space for play.  To get away from stress, my first attempt to blog was to document my occasional kitchen adventures as I do not want to blog about serious matters. So born the www.beforesixdiet.blogspot.com in December 2009. It was a playground for me because I cook as I usually do, shoot with my camera or phone camera and eat slowly as I do, then blog. Let's say, it became my online recipe resource. It was titled as such not as a diet fad but because after 5 o'clock office time off, I try to cook. So it became a before six o'clock diet, more of before six o'clock cooking.  However, as in all matters, one cann...

BOHOL BUTTERFLY GARDEN. I wish today that I can narrate how tickled I was  when these two butterflies were placed right on my ears like earrings. yeeeeey. ***        One of the reasons I travel is because I want to write. And I discovered lately that in order to chronicle my travels itself, I have to write right away. Otherwise, the thrill, the zest, the freshness of the recollection will be abandoned to almost forgetfulness. Photos help but it is not everything there is. There is a crisp quality in one's writing when done right after the travel as well as magical feeling after putting everything down. I am not referring to insights and essays which can be written even years after as a reflection. I just miss the chronicling of what happened. Those moments one do not want to forget because they are fleeting moments. I don't even want to forget the name of the guide or places we went to. While I have a lot of backlog of travels to tell (One reason...

XI'AN, CHINA 2012. Behind me is one of stone tablets in a museum that houses tablets which date back even B.C. The painstaking carving of the handwriting centuries ago now forms part of the Chinese history. This visit validates my personal belief that something written now counts years after. On the occasion of renewing my commitment in keeping this blog alive, I am transporting my worthy notes in Facebook here as I feel I should be sharing them with everyone outside the networking site and into this bigger blogging world. We humans easily forget. That is why, writing is a device we needed to remember, to be reminded. I myself always take awe over the fact that  an archive write up which I wrote years ago speak to me at present as if I have not written them a long time ago. The feeling of "I-wrote-it-then-and-now-I-read-it-as-if-it-spoke-to-me" is euphoric. A year ago, as an introduction to the inspiring write up of WCW, I wrote, "A writer is everywhere...