Standing On My Own

Saturday Stories

July 9, 2016 Edition

 Standing On My Own

My work, as a writer and in my present office job, is all about creativity and spontaneity. Yet I want my life neat and ordered, designed by my own individual needs.

I'm a man of habit like Saul Grisman, the hero of David Morell's The Brotherhood of The Rose, the epitome of precision and an absolute professional at the top of his game.

The orphan Saul, his best friend Chris and their foster father Eliot have become more than just protagonists from a novel for me, even now when I had lost the book along with over a hundred other paperbacks during the Ondoy flood in 2009 when I was still in Manila.

A character becomes special when you see an aspect of yourself in him. I'm not a covert intelligence operative like Saul, but I was also an orphan, and I saw the death of my best friend and my own foster father.

I am a survivor, and I have known how it is when you look around and find that the people you love are gone, when you somehow feel abandoned, even though you knew deep in your heart you are never alone.

~ Huggybear Diaries, Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Brotherhood Of The Rose

Photo courtesy of booknvolume.com