As a kid, the only power books had one me was the ability to make me fall asleep. My mom would often find me dozing off with a book in my hand. Yet as strange as it may sound, the same thing that caused my brain to shut down has caused countless others a nervous breakdown. One only needs to recall how Rizal dropped a bombshell on the Spanish government with his Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. One may also look at the Da Vinci Code that shook the two-thousand year old Catholic Church almost to its foundations. At this point, we see the full power of books, not so much as it can cause us to fall asleep but in so far as it can make us dream. It took one book what an explosion couldn’t, awaken one of the greatest philosophical landscapers from his dogmatic slumber, although I dare say, he went deeper into sleep.
It’s one thing to write a poem and another to reshape the rules of making one and books can do both and more – they could ignite a revolution, regardless of it be futile or Copernican. But this formidable tool, a thing that Napoleon brought into war zone and what Hitler slept with, is dependent on another thing, someone has to pick it up and open it.
Even if it says ‘touch me not.’
By: Mrs.Elena H. Fabian | Tapulao Elementary School | Orani, Bataan
