The youth who stole PSN

A FAN reader had confessed that he stole my book from his friend when he was 15 because he liked my poetic voice. 

That it was like I was saying the things his young self wanted to say then. 

And more than just the articulation, he admired how I seemed to have understood what he was going through in his adolescence. 

Short of putting me on a pedestal, he also spoke of how he “borrowed my voice” for some time. 

How he used my voice to sing his own poetry. 

*

His words, in bursts of messages on Facebook Messenger:

“When I was in high school, I wrote you a letter, and you replied to me with a handwritten one. 

I was so happy considering that I was so young, and said the most naïve stuff, even comparing you to great writers that weren’t even in your comparative field. 

Just imagine, a small-town boy from Zamboanga getting a letter from someone like you. Back then, that was like a huge affirmation. 

Thank you again. 

… I grew up with your poetry. 

And every time I read them, somehow I hear my voice, too. 

Know that, somehow, you are one of those voices I hear when I write. 

I swear, a part of my writing voice is from reading your work. 

I’m not even trying to patronize you. 

It’s just as it is. 

Rated R, … Purple Cat, and Moon River…were my canon growing up in the province. 

It was the standard that I heaved myself from in writing. 

… To sum it up, I’m just the boy who stole a book, and saw the world differently after reading it.” 

*

My vanity may be legendary, but I’m also human. 

Quite sensitive and easily touched by honest confessionals like his. 

So, in a way, this young man made me think of republishing my memoirs. 

Because personally, I think that my memoirs were better written than the poetry I produced before the turn of the century. 

If I may say so myself, the heart of my youth, pure and sincere in its intent and vision, is really in my juvenile memoirs, not in my uneducated poems in the English language.

*

At some point during our online exchange, my beloved reader from Zamboanga said, “Write for those who need to borrow your voice, PSN. We are many.” 

And with that, I could only cry like someone hungry, and bursting, at the same time. 

Right there and then, I truly felt that my writing, my juvenilia, and my self-indulgent writing life have not been in vain. 

I felt at that point that I could republish any sincere work written in my youth, and trust that it would find a receptive 15-year-old heart, a youthful reader, who would buy, steal, or borrow a PSN book. 

*

Not counting the four Peter’s Prize anthologies that I published in 2014, and two other poetry collections that I have edited for The Peter Solis Nery Foundation, Heart of My Youth is officially my 28thbook. 

(Book No. 23, the DIWA Creative Writing textbook for Philippine Senior High School published in 2017, with a second edition published in 2019, sadly does not carry my name on the front cover. 

Seriously, you may have to look as far as the bottom of the copyright page to find my name.) 

But in truth, except for the brand new appended introductions, this is but Book No. 3 — The Essential Thoughts of a Purple Cat (Giraffe Books: 1996); Book No. 6 — Moon River, Butterflies, and Me(New Day Publishers: 1997); and Book No. 8 — My Life as a Hermit: 19 Letters and a Dream(Giraffe Books: 1998) — all three memoirs from the late 1990s bundled into one volume as The Heart of My Youth: The Purple Cat Saga. 

*

I do not know the real value of republishing these memoirs that are more than two decades old, except that the first editions are now out of print. 

From my self-indulgent perspective, nostalgia is the biggest part of my decision to republish. 

I turned 51 this year, and, occasionally, over morning coffee, I indulge myself thinking about my literary legacy. 

(I already told you that my vanity is legendary!) 

No doubt, the social distancing forced on the world by the crazy, scary COVID-19 pandemic has also pressured me to produce a few more books this year, even if one or two, like the latest, are simply rehashed material. 

(Believe it or not, I am aiming for six titles this year 2020, including two commissioned textbooks for Philippine senior high school: one on 21stCentury Literature, and the other on Philippine Contemporary Arts.) 

Well, that, and also because some youth need “to borrow my voice.”

I mean, that’s how I become the PSN, the legend./PN