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"Journey to the Past," Aaliyah, Anastasia OST |
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There are really only six or seven stories, it's said by those jaded enough to espouse such beliefs; everything else is just a permutation of them, some quirk or foible or subtle hue distinguishing one tale from another.
I've never really believed that; if we're to reduce things to such simplistic elements, then really, what's the point in telling a story in the first place? If everybody knows everything that you're about to say, then why bother saying anyway?
However, I can't argue against the presence of certain tropes, certain thematic elements, that persist in the universal unconsciousness. The star-crossed lovers, the noble house fallen into disrepair, the hero and his opposing shadow, these are properties of all mankind, and must be acknowledged as such.
This story, then, may be counted among them, and is probably one of the oldest of the six or seven immortal themes. The story is simple: a lost son comes home, and finds himself reconfigured and transformed in the wake of his journey. It's been done before, up and down the world and over it besides.
It's in the telling, though, that things get interesting. It's like--the way I like to think of it is like with school uniforms. You know, when you go to a school that requires uniforms of its students (and for all the counterculture tight-pants-and-shaggy-haircuts going around NYU, this school might as bloody well require us to lift a uniform out of a Bright Eyes video or Spin magazine), it's in the little things you can get away with, the buttons on your regulation blazer or the hemline of your skirt, that set you apart the most from everybody else around you. I like to think about storytelling the same way: it's all in the accents, not in the language itself.
Speaking of accents and language, what with me and all my broken Filipino (Tagalog baloktot, as my aunt Livia likes to say), I'll take the time to apologize now for any sparsely-peppered Filipino phrases you may encounter herein. Sometimes, a guy just has to write what he knows.
Anyway. That's neither here nor there. What is important, right here, right now, is that this is precisely what's happened to me for the past two weeks of my life. I don't know if this was one of those life-changing bolt-from-the-blue stories, not just yet; I'm still writing the story down as I go along, and who knows where I'll be or how I'll think a week, a month, a year from now, anyway? What I do know is that right here, right now, this is about as true as it gets, with me, and that's probably enough. For now.
Because this is a story, like my grandmother likes to say, that comes out of the bones.
Buto ng buto ko, dugo ng dugo ko.
Don't worry if you don't know what that means just right now. You'll get it before the end, I promise.
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