Mind's Eye: A Review

Imagine getting stuck in heavy traffic, your skin turned sticky caused by the combination of sweat, dust, and smoke. The sweltering heat and the humid Manila air are of no help at all. You try to make yourself more comfortable by adjusting your sitting position, only to realize that there's no room for you to move in because the driver assured everybody that his jeep could seat twenty people. Judging by the location where you're currently at and by the snail's pace this trip is going, you estimate another thirty minutes of this same situation. You're utterly bored. You left your iPod at home, your smartphone's battery is flashing a red 3% and you can't possibly spark up a conversation with the person next to you because she seems irritated that her arm is adhering to yours as if that is your fault. If there were another way to spend your precious time than mindlessly looking at the static vehicles, you probably would have taken it.

A similar problem of wanting to escape an inconvenient situation is what drives the story of the play, Mind's Eye. But unlike our imagined scenario of getting stuck in a crowded jeep for the next thirty minutes, the protagonists in this story are to spend the rest of their lives in a convalescent room, with no more family to visit them and no more view of the world outside except through their room's window.

The play revolves on two women: Elva, an 88-year-old former literature and drama teacher who is gradually losing her sight; and Courtney, a 16-year-old girl who became paralyzed from the waist down after a horse riding accident. When Courtney was admitted to the convalescent home where she became roommates with Elva, the former teacher tried to initiate a conversation with the young girl by reciting poems and asking her if she knew any. Courtney, however, was still bitter about the new path her life is taking and paid little attention to Elva's speeches. But Elva was persistent, even bordering on being insensitive, and kept telling Courtney stories and asking her questions until she came to the point of offering Courtney a means to travel despite her condition. Through reading an old travel guide, they could embark on an imaginary trip to Italy! The young girl was strongly against the idea, skeptic as to how they could do it only by reading. It is when Elva admits the reason why she terribly wants to go to an imaginary trip to Italy is for her to fulfill a promise she made to her deceased husband, and how her failing eyesight has prevented her to do so, that finally convinced Courtney to at least give it a try.

On 'Fourteen Love Stories'

Whether we are its readers or writers, a love story is invested with many guilty pleasures. We remember our own lives, when we are lovers and had lovers. We imagine having the strength, or the weakness, to yield to the uncharted and the forbidden. We wish for a love to take us away from the reality of the present. We relish the encounter, taking it on with recklessness and youthful abandon. Our pulse rushes and our throats tighten. We feel a dull ache. The story takes us, and we fall in love, literary predilections be damned.

This is an excerpt from the Introduction of Fourteen Love Stories, an anthology of stories written by Filipinos. Its first featured story, Dead Stars by Paz Marquez Benitez, was our book club's "book/story of the month" for February and so when Bennard chanced upon a copy in NBS-Katipunan, he immediately bought it. I have read Dead Stars back in high school but since it's only sixteen pages long, why not refresh my memory, right? Besides, when we read a story a second or third time, we tend to find new details we might have overlooked the first time, or discover a new interpretation based on new experiences we've undergone since our last encounter with the said story. So I read it again and, true enough, I got to relive past emotions and more--feelings that were incomprehensible to my high schooler version who only thought of coming up with a reflection essay for English 2.