Close to a week ago, Elmo came back from the Philippines, and handed me a copy of a classic book that I've been wanting to read for some time: Francisco "Balagtas" Baltazar's Florante at Laura. Right off the bat I was hooked. It might have been the feel of Tagalog coursing through my mind and coming out of my mouth. That's not to say that it's easy to read aloud. It's got lots of archaic and classical Tagalog words that even my parents haven't heard of!
But now that I am getting by in it, I am discovering how emo it really is. It figures, really... it was written in 1838, right smack dab during the Romantic period (or maybe a few years after... at any rate, it allows for the idea of Romanticism to reach the Philippines). That seems like it's worth writing a paper about. What do you think?
Oh, and yeah, I should be writing more haiku. But I guess I'm waiting for them to write me.
Song in my head: Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely". There's also the Kris Aquino version.
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