THIS August 2020, the prolific Ilonggo writer Peter Solis Nery releases his 28thbook, “Heart of My Youth”. It is a volume of collected memoirs written in the late 1990s, which are released in one volume after two decades. With the original books compiled here are newly written forewords that introduce each memoir to a new generation of readers.
2018 Peter’s Prize winner for Poetry and broadcast journalist Serafin Plotria of Bacolod City introduces “The Essential Thoughts of a Purple Cat”, which was originally published in 1996.
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His Unique Self: Declaration And Celebration
by Serafin I. Plotria, Jr.
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“All the attacks on special people like us are defense mechanisms to cover the inadequacies of other people to become special themselves.” — Peter Solis Nery
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Long before the fabulous, enigmatic, and multi-hyphenated Peter Solis Nery became The PSN, there was a tentative, tender, and reserve young man who struggled to make his true self understood and appreciated. The Essential Thoughts of a Purple Cat revealed it all in a stream of thoughts written by the young Peter sometime before 1996. And Purple Cat already hinted who Peter will become in the next decades of his career as a Filipino writer.
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Written in a very personal and contemplative fashion, Peter bares his intimate thoughts and longings that he often restrained, and fought in silence. As a young mind set to explore the world beyond what others contained him in, his writings in Purple Cat showed his innermost struggles to be free, to love beyond what human love can express, and simply to live as he is — a being who is quite different from the rest. Peter masterfully draws the similarity of his persona with a cat. His training in Biology during his university years seemed to have made his text mellifluously rich in his profiling of a feline’s world, with all the glorious details and characteristics of the cat, and almost showing off his full knowledge of his chosen avatar — and himself. In reading the text and thoughts beyond their literary aesthetics, perceptive readers will notice that Peter’s revelations in Purple Cat are really more about his profound understanding of himself, and what he wanted to put on the table. In sublime details and crisp characterization, he helps his readers to fully understand how it is to be a Peter Solis Nery.
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The Essential Thoughts of a Purple Cat is an important introductory text to grasp a very fluid-thinking and ever-in-flux PSN. If one were able to read him in Purple Cat, it would be easier to appreciate his later works, particularly his essays and other memoirs. Written in relatable and easy to digest passages, readers will never miss the chance of getting two important learning from this book: first, that of knowing a fabulous PSN in his most vulnerable and deeply honest introspections; and second, that of understanding how to effectively get along with a real-life feline. How’s that for hitting two birds with one stone?
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Peter here is channeling his self-understanding into an attempt to inspire others to embrace who they truly are, and to go on loving despite the odds. Several times in the book, the author is supposedly advising someone he is personally close to in real life, but the resulting effect is more like the author giving life instructions to anyone reading the book. In Purple Cat, the PSN is raw with his emotions and insights — even deeply philosophical and spiritual. His voice is clearly of one who is coming from a profound reflection of life, living, and even mentally preparing the final days way ahead of his time. What is noticeably unique in this work is the author’s emphasis on his spiritual understanding and firm grasp on his faith. Purple Cat is arguably the most spiritual among the PSN literary canon.
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In his effort to open himself up to others through this book, the author in turn liberates the readers from the mental slavery that shackles them in various forms and intensities. The fact that he is openly declaring his uniqueness here makes a sensible argument in his future celebration of being different from the rest — in finding happiness, in embracing self-truth, and in giving his all to realize his fullest potential.
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The Essential Thoughts of a Purple Cat is, above all, a primer to the Peter Solis Nery canon. The prolific writer in him — who will eventually take on various genres, themes, languages, and even at times affected and assumed voices in literary paradise — is already recognizable here, and most conspicuous, long before his full blossoming into an important Filipino writer, and Hiligaynon icon, in the years ahead.
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Now, if all your other readings fail, consider Purple Cat as the virginal adventure of Peter Solis Nery in his then-unchartered territory of self-disclosure, without yet knowing what he will encounter along the way — whether it will be a welcoming acceptance, or a debilitating rejection. Nonetheless, the young author braved each and all of them in putting out this, his most important early book./PN
