No Smoking Joint

Smog-Free. Shiny-White. Clean Lungs.

it was one of those rare occurrences that i managed to end a story i started---most merely simmer in the hard drive on an endless wait for the right kind of muse to drop by and remove the leash to its culmination. 

to work on a vignette for more than a couple of days in excruciating, let alone the sci-fi short that i've been working on for a week now, still stuck on the fourth page with nowhere to go except to relegate it on a temporary hibernation. although i have the best way on how to end it, but the flow of thought had escaped me as i was on the process of writing. hence, it inadvertently stalled. 

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the recent days found in the online forum i frequent was this disturbing reality of Bradbury-esque proportions. 

the levying of duties on the importation of books in the Philippines in violation of a United Nations agreeement signed in Florence in the 19050s. the sad fact is, one of the signatory countries is the Philippines. moreover, the Customs bureau--with direct coercion and perhaps, nudging by the Department of Finance (whose Undersecretary stupidly iterated that novels and such are not publications of any educational nor cultural nor scientific importance---apparently she never touched a book ever in her life?) vehemently implemented the so-called appropriate taxes on the shipment of imported books on a basis of a misinterpreted Republic Act that contradicted the ratified 1950 agreement. 

as a bibliophile myself, and one of those who believe that the free-flowing of ideas are mostly achieved by one's appetite for anything of the written word, this turn of control by the Philippine government probably has some both ulterior and blatant motive behind. whether to curtail the stream of knowledge or merely to attain a certain quota, such discriminate conduct does warrant public outcry. 

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speaking of books, i'm currently treading through Haruki Murakami's wonderful collection of short fiction: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. 

and a line on this particular short really caught me on my weakest: