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.

Nonverbal Magic

"You don't speak, but I hear you."

These words were uttered by Sofya Andreyevna to Leo Tolstoy on his deathbed, as portrayed in the biopic film "The Last Station" starring Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer. Needless to say, it moved me to tears.

Scene from The Last Station

I am writing not to comment on how beautifully made the film was, or how it has been the ultimate factor to persuade me into reading Anna Karenina and War and Peace. I am writing because that particular scene between the dying Tolstoy and his muse had created a turmoil inside me that must be let out.

Isn't it such a beautiful thing to not speak and yet still be understood? To just look into each other's eyes, not uttering a syllable, and yet a great many feelings have already been evoked? That is the language of love. It doesn't require words because it communicates directly to the heart. Oh, what joy it is to have that person whom you can enjoy comfortable silence with! True, what's said matters, but the things that are expressed through a simple squeeze of the hand or a meaningful gaze are also equally important. In fact, sometimes, they say a lot more than words can ever do.