Bite that tomato!

2009-02-12T12:55:00.001+08:00

There's something about clean slates that get to me everytime. Ergo, the new blog.

Will post the link when it's up and ready.:)

2009-02-06T19:12:00.002+08:00

I'm sorry. If you read this, I'd like to make it official: You are humming inside my head. Humming. Do you understand?

2009-02-06T18:46:00.004+08:00

What you will remember most from that evening are the branches from the tree that loomed above your pickup truck. There was wine although I could have imagined it. There was an elephant but everyone says elephant nowadays, as if it were something real to begin with. Let's try song or kiss. There was a song in the room. Let's talk about the kiss in this room. A line from a song I 'discovered' a couple of days ago clearly illustrates the feeling: In the back of your car I feel like I have travelled nowhere. Isn't time strange? Once, you believed all those things that you thought kept you standing on your feet and in another minute you are in the middle of government property where are no lamplights. After all, a good story doesn't have to start with two strangers meeting under the most extraordinary circumstances. It could be this; this could be the part of the story where all the endings get stripped away like an afterthought. There were words, many of them. Some I could remember, some I could understand well and cry at. And no one can ever say that we are or that we will ever be sorry for all the things that happened in between that last time in this same car and that moment. There were many good people to meet, many lessons to trip over, vows that we both refused to keep. The tree, you see, doesn't hold any secrets for anyone. It'd be a fine mistake to think that. And if someone loved me at that very minute and if I knew it, I wouldn't have laid my weary head on your chest. And we wouldn't have waited for morning to come before we kissed so that we could see each other, clearly, closely, for once.

2008-12-20T15:20:00.005+08:00

There is a part of me that wants her to see the things I write. To let her see that I do something well. That I am not nothing.

Now that I'm older, it's harder to convince myself about my own worth without leaning to one side, watching for someone else's reaction. Sad, yes, but oh so true.

2008-10-31T22:47:00.002+08:00

Because I fell in love with Hornby's book, 31 songs, I've decided to resurrect my music blog: http://leopardskinhat.vox.com/

That's it, I guess, for this blog. Nyahaha.

2008-10-09T17:54:00.004+08:00

So. I just got home from my wild and wunderbur Which-SSS-Branch-Can-Help-Me chase. Inspite of the fact that I slept at 3am today, I forced my very unwilling self to wake up at around 630am. See, I had to go get an SSS ID because I've been working for 5 friggin years now and I still don't have one and apparently, it's one of the things that normal people consider important and useful so I really had to go. I started with the nearest branch, which was SSS Binan and I was even feeling pretty smug because I got there at 7:15. While I was waiting for the branch to open, I pondered on what I'd do after I got my claim form or whatever it's called. I felt so happy and giddy and gave myself a mental pat on the back for my extraordinary leave-plotting skills.

Then. Then. Then. The branch security guard went outside and barked instructions at us. I couldn't really understand what he was saying at first because it was too early and his enunciation sucked. Manong, okay lang mag-Tagalog. But after some time, we understood that he wanted us to form only two lines: one for claims and one for claim form submissions. I thought that he just forgot to mention the people who were applying for IDs so I came up to him to ask. Then he gestured lamely at a sign posted on the door. It said: NO ID CAPTURE. So I asked him what that meant. And he said, Wala pong ID aplekasyun ngayun. Sa lahat po ng branch.

So I stood there and planned on what I should be doing next. Should I go home or should I go to the Makati branch? So many tantalizing choices so early in the morning! After a few minutes, I reached a decision. I hauled my ass over5 to the bus stop and rode a bus to Makati.

I am a big fan of bus rides. Really. When I was in college, I constantly fantasized about meeting some stranger on a bus, which was of course an extremely romantic and dumb notion that could ONLY be produced by the combination of having watched Before Sunrise one too many times and overactive hormones. Now that was a very long, very unnecessary running sentence. If you feel slightly annoyed by all this, feel free to send me your edited version of this entry. Humor me, why don't you.

Anyway, so the bus ride was okay. It afforded me time to think about certain things that I'd rather keep to myself for now. Anyway.

So it wasn't hard getting to Makati but I didn't know where SSS was. So I rode a taxi and chatted with the taxi driver. All my life, I've never experienced meeting a rude taxi driver. I mean, I've got friends who constantly complain about meeting these obnoxious, impossible drivers and I really never have. Anyway.

So I got there and went from one window to another. Everyone was shooing me off without even listening to everything that I was supposed to say. They cut me off mid-sentence, saying: Doon, sa Window 6. Or 7. Or 5. Gad, I wanted to wreck havoc in that fucking insensitive place. But days like these, I try and behave like a good citizen. Because guess what, if I blow my lid off, will I get that ID real fast? The answer, of course, is a resounding NO. So what would be the point, right?

Anyway, so I get to the final window right and the lady managed to listen to me without batting an eyelash and she said, ever so snidely, that I had to go to the QC branch near GMA7 to get the fucking thing. All I wanted to do was collapse right then and there. How'd you like that, Ms They Got Me Dirt Cheap That's Why I Have To Be Rude To Everyone? And yes, at that point, I was so ready to go home.

Here's the thing, I know how to commute to Makati from Pacita. I know what I should do to get from Pacita to QC. What I didn't know was how to get from Makati to QC. So, I'm a bumpkin, big deal.

I first told the taxi driver that I wanted him to drop me off at the Pacita/Alabang Bus Terminal near SM but I changed my mind at the last minute and decided that I'd go to QC instead. I was thinking, I was in Makati already and I don't know when I'd be able to take another leave just to go to the main office and it would be a shame to waste all this time. The nearest MRT jeepney terminal he said was in MOA. I reall didn't want to take the MRT. I've only ridden on it once and never wanted to do that again. I want to humor you and say that I'm generally very prissy but I'm not. I just find all that proximity alarming. I can't take being physically close to someone I don't know.

So there, we headed off to MOA and when we got there, I gave him the only money I had left, which was a P500 bill. He said he didn't have any change for P500 so... he let me go. For free. That ride cost him P120. The kindness of strangers, really.

Then. Then. Then. I rode a jeep to the MRT station but like I said, I didn't have any spare change on me so the driver gave me a free ride too. I couldn't do anything about it so I just graciously thanked him and kept saying my mantra (I am a child of the universe) to myself so that I wouldn't feel so guilty. I mean, two free rides? Even my friend P doesn't let me off that easily anymore.

So. I got off when I saw buses going to Ortigas (I really, really wanted to ditch that impending MRT ride) and rode a bus. I got off at GMA, walked a little, rode a jeepney and arrived at SSS at around 12:30pm.

I haven't eaten anything all day. In Makati, I bought 5 Max candies and that's all I had to eat. No water, no nothing. I was a person on a mad mission; I couldn't afford to miss one SSS minute.

So I went in and boy-oh that site's BIG. Have I died God? Have I gone to SSS heaven?

So I got a number and filled up my form. My number was 772. I strained to hear what number they were calling, fearing that I'd hear a 10 or a 9. But since I was there, I really had no intention of taking off, even if I had to wait 'til evening to get through. But lucky me, the last number they called out was 560 so I figured I just had to wait a little while.

And from there really, all I did was relax and wait. I don't remember a time when I had as much pleasure waiting. I just people-watched, which is something I've actually missed doing. And of course I looked at the employees and couldn't imagine how this kind of set-up could be normal for anyone. I even felt a bit ashamed, really. I get to talk to 35 people a day at most and I complain about how tough my day was. They had, I guess, over a thousand people in that building but still they went on. No snide remarks here, just tired faces.

There was this one employee who really caught my attention. She smiled a lot and tilted her head coyly when she asked customers questions. She really lit up that area, seriously. And I promised myself that I'd be like that tomorrow. I hope I remember that promise.

Anyway, so when my number was called, I felt so giddy, like I won something. Hahaha. So I went up to the teller/employee and told her a little about my day. And she told me this: that I don't need a friggin' SSS ID to get a loan because I've already made enough contibutions.

Fuck. Don't you just love me? Don't you feel attracted to my obvious talent for making the most stubborn decisions, my misplaced willfullness, my endearing knack for not ask the questions that do matter?

Don't you just love how fucked up life sometimes is? Those times when all you can say is: Dang it. How conceited is that? There are 8 billion people in the world and I have the gall to even think that this is going to be my day? Fuck that.

So there. I'm dreadfully exhausted. Now I'd like to know how your day went. Tell me, please, that it has been as bad as mine. Humor me. Send me a postcard with a lipstick mark on it. Then tell me you love me, do. What I really need is a barf bag, though. That'll do for now.

2008-09-28T21:41:00.003+08:00

My passion for language is one thing that I have always been vocal about. But sometimes, I feel so betrayed by it; that inspite of these words, I can never really tell you how I feel today, or how much I want to know about death, or why I think anger is necessary for one to keep on living.

2008-09-28T21:40:00.002+08:00

It's funny how we develop associations for things we love so that no one can really catch on that we keep on talking about one and the same thing.

I am existing in a world that thrives on codes.

2008-09-28T21:36:00.002+08:00

This morning, I plucked out a single white hairstrand from my head. Then I think, who first thought of the word forever? He must've been the most hopeful person that ever lived.

That ever lived.

And now that person is gone and no one knows about the fact that he was the one who was able to name the first real lie. This, I think is one of the world's greatest tragedies.

2008-09-26T23:35:00.004+08:00

At this very minute, someone
has decided to die of loneliness. On his last day on
earth, he reads his favorite book and looks up at the sky
when he reaches the line that has haunted him
from the first. I won't tell you what it is because
the tree outside his front door has promised to keep
it a secret for him. At noon, he walks two whole
blocks just to find out what is happening in the world. The
newspaper man tells him what he already knows, Nothing
is new. Nothing is happening. His cat sleeps on
his cold kitchen floor and for the first time, he wonders
if it dreams of him. What color am I in animals' dreams? A
useless query but still, someone somewhere would
pay for that kind of information.
Then he sits on a stool and waits for a god. Aloud, he says, I'd like
to know you better now before I change my mind. But a minute passes
and the truth gently blows on his forehead. He believes
it is time for a kiss. He calls up someone
he barely knows and asks for it. She says she'd like to oblige
but she's too busy making tinola for a family dinner that night.
He, of course, tells her about this recurring dream he has about fishes.
The yellow fish, the one with the smallest fins,
says that it knows the code of a kiss. Why do they know this, he
asks the woman. She tells
him, I'm busy and shuts off the world.
How do they know this, he repeats to an empty room and it's the
afternoon light, this time, that reminds him of the hour, how
it would be better used if he breathed in a little less of faith.

2008-09-26T22:38:00.009+08:00

So far, I've only had my heart broken three times. The first time was when my mother died; the second time was when I first discovered that a person whom I loved deeply loved someone else; and the third was today. You'd think that having survived the loss of both my parents and bankruptcy and finally having severed existing ties with blood relatives would make me more adept at losing. You'd think that the sting would gradually change into something more forgiving, less harsh. But today I was reminded that when you lose, it always brings with it a new hurt, so different from all the ones that came before that you'd make yourself believe that it's the first time something so integral has been snatched from you. But after going through the motions of a day that never really ends, you sit and stare out the window and say So that really happened. Jesus Christ.

Which brings to mind one of my favorite childhood memories. My father, who was a crybaby himself, never allowed us to give in to indulgent bouts of tears. He read somewhere that real sadness lasts for approximately 21 minutes. So he literally trained us to cry for a full 21 minutes and after the minutes were up, he'd pat us gently on our backs and would say That's that for now.

So imagine the concentration that I exerted in staring at our office clock for 21 minutes. And all I wanted was to keep from crying. And I did.

It has been roughly 9 hours and so-so minutes since I heard the news. Forgive me, but I still feel so out of sorts. Nobody died, not really. I just feel, I dunno. Disconnected, somewhat. Honestly, what devastates me most is the realization that I do have a very deep need to be appreciated and accepted. This need is something that I've almost always denied in the past. I mean, how many times have I crowed about my independence, my solitary interests, my private faiths? You must know this about me. Then comes this ruinous affair and I just don't know what's what, really.

But inspite of the disappointment and frustration, I am not kneeling. I will keep on, still and always, simply because I have to. Because I am in love with silence's more interesting twin, with the stops and starts between definitions, with the mystery and salvation in the words that exist to defy all these blank spaces.

2008-09-25T22:24:00.003+08:00

If there's one thing I don't have, it's patience. I hate waiting; an hour's usually the most that I could take just standing still. I get irked easily when someone asks me to repeat things I've just said. And most of all, and this is something that I am both guilty and feel mixed up about, I cannot tolerate slow people. I am always tempted to snap my fingers at someone who takes a lot of time thinking up responses to relatively easy questions but I mentally kick myself right after the image of me doing that forms in my head. Yesterday, I bit my officemate's head off because he just kept asking the same fucking question all day long. One minute, I was minding my own and the next, I'm telling someone to just shut up and stop being such a loser.

On one hand, I don't regret it because he was really asking for it. I mean, c'mon, get a fucking number, why don't you? But this morning, when I felt that he was being unusually quiet, my Safeguard konsensya reared its weak head.

I just don't get why I feel bad. I mean, he was really being a pain. But I guess I shouldn't have screamed at him. Not when my boss was around or anyone else was around, for that matter. I seriously could do without the bitch points. But at the rate I'm going, I'd have to do some major ass-kissing for the next 34 years.

Sometimes, having to live up to society's standards just plain sucks big time.

2008-09-23T20:31:00.002+08:00

I am the invention of the people who have loved me.

2008-09-20T23:56:00.009+08:00

I've been caught up in a deleting frenzy since Friday. For once, in the three years that I've been working, I cleaned out my office mailbox. I deleted unnecessary mail in all my email accounts. I've even deleted some entries here that made me go Ick when I read them earlier.

Out with the old indeed.

Truth be told, I should spend less time online and more time reading the books I bought. I think I still have 23 unread ones. Yes, I keep track. The book I am currently reading has made me weep with relief twice already. It's not one of mine; my friend Cyril lent it to me. Its title is History of Love by Nicole Krauss. A certain passage I have come across made me stop reading it for a full hour because it felt so painfully accurate and made me say, That's the way it was. Exactly. It's extremely validating to be reminded that I am not the first and the only one who has experienced these necessary losses.

Oh and I've been writing again. Not blog posting, but writing. I started just this morning and have already filled up around 6 pages of my company notebook. Am looking forward to buying a new Moleskin soon.

Also, I guess I need more time to write the way I used to. Need is the operative word. I need to be less focused on what other people might think and concentrate more on what I think. I need to truly write for myself, without pretention but with more pride. I need to be more honest and open. I need to remember why I started writing in the first place. I need to find that strength that has been so evident in me when I was younger, less structured. I need to see things clearly and not be afraid of the things I would see. I need to be needed less.

I need to relearn my life.

2008-09-10T23:28:00.002+08:00

Beside the Point
Stephen Cushman

The sky has never won a prize.
The clouds have no careers.
The rainbow doesn't say my work,
thank goodness.

The rock in the creek's not so productive.
The mud on the bank's not too pragmatic.
There's nothing useful in the noise
the wind makes in the leaves.

Buck up now, my fellow superfluity,
and let's both be of that worthless ilk,
self-indulgent as shooting stars,
self-absorbed as sunsets.

Who cares if we're inconsequential?
At least we can revel,
two good-for-nothings,
in our irrelevance; at least come and make
no difference with me.

2008-09-10T20:25:00.006+08:00

1. It's nice to be quiet like this. When I wake up, I feel a fine buzzing inside my head. I walk three blocks each morning and three more going home. I pass by many things I'd like to have. The urgency to write like a madwoman has gone from me. Maybe one of these days the bubble will burst and the very thing I know is true will reveal itself. But that's for another, more terrible day. Tonight, it's raining and I am planning on sleeping early.

2. Passing by one of the big hotels in Alabang, I saw two people kissing. I inched closer for a better look but tried to hide myself in the shadows because I am not entirely shameless. They were two women -- the other had short curly hair and the taller one had a small earring on her nose. How nice it is, I think, to experience this kind of abandon, a feeling that I can still remember but am finding hard to mimic now that I've grown older.

3. What I would like is to hear from you. But again, you have dropped off from the earth. Where are the places you vanish to? I would like to know, truly.

4. I miss my mother's chicken soup. Even if she has never made chicken soup, even if she is not really my mother but a sigh and sometimes, just a name that I keep putting in between these self-imposed distances.

5. What does it take for a person to be truly happy in the body s/he walks around in? Is it really no longer a question of happiness but of comfort, a certain acceptance? It makes me lonely, somehow, thinking that.

6. If I am a blur, you are radar. Whatever that means to us now.

7. Last Sunday was perfect. I never thought I could describe any experience in a theme park as perfect but there we were and it was not raining and my brother kept posing next to these obscure, uninteresting structures, saying Take my picture as if his life depended on it and he and Darling's cousin rode the bump cars and I recorded how fast their cars went That ride took about 2.6 minutes Oh and we rode the ferris wheel and Darling's cousin was trembling with fright because it was his first time and you know how it is, that very certain fear, when you do things for the first time ever and we ate a Family-sized pizza because it was a Family Day and what could be better then eating a Family-sized pizza on your Family Day and we watched the fireworks while eating and the colors exploded all over our faces God-cum says P who never knows when to stop being crass and Darling he loved me so much that night I knew it as much as I know the curve of your back because you've walked away from me so many times and we rode every ride we possibly could and laughed at Darling's cousin's nervousness Oh we were radiant We were a flying trapeze, a six-foot heart undone and un-miserable I could not believe that my life looked like this If you took a picture, you'd be afraid of how terrible we seemed and on our way out we saw Cinderella and her prince and I was fine with the way Prince Charming looked at me as if he was about to say something dreadfully, painfully important but he couldn't, what with all that prettiness draped on his one good arm so he walked past me, so quickly that I could've imagined it all, oh well, there goes that. Story of my life.

The Muse This Time

R. Zamora Linmark

I am, at the moment, a patron of the meat market. Profession: a poet on-call because poetry only comes when it wants to; hobbies; listening to Gershwin while looking for Freud in Woody Allen movies; history of the heart: six lovers who wanted to be immortalized.

“Funny,” said my fourth, “you can cook up a poem about bumper-to-bumper traffic, but when it’s time to write about me…” How do you explain to someone who makes you come thrice a week and gives you head and foot massage at bedtime why it is much easier to write about gridlock in the land of diesel than return to that humid night in Makati, where we had met, in a Korean-owned steam room, a misnomer since lust provided the heat.

The fifth and sixth were more demanding. “Screw the acknowledgment page,” said the fifth. “I want a biography that sings,” said the sixth. Completely unaware they were making the same request an hour apart from each other, I told them, “What do you take me for? a mail-order poet? Dial-a-poem?”

“I don’t get it,” said the third. “You can create beauty from a dead fish,” said the second.

“Destroy buildings in one line,” said the first, “but you cannot write about the good ole devil?”

Their words are stinging now as I approach twilight. Truth is: love’s hard to live with. I forget to set the alarm clock, I buy everything on credit, I start making up words, I call in sick to the world. “Are you a poet?” asked the second. “A lover?” asked the third. “Just shut up and write,” said the first.

I can’t. Nothing is entering. Except the voice of my first lover, the one who set the picture straight. “The problem with you is you think you’re Woody Allen in Manhattan.”

Gershwin’s blue clarinet, black-and-white Big Apple, an ice cream parlor. At the counter, Woody is buying Hemingway’s daughter, Mariel, a milkshake before he delivers the bad news. Tears coursing down her cheeks, she asks, “Why? Because I’m too young? Because I don’t know Rita Hayworth from Veronica Lake? Because I’m not Diane Keaton running with you in the rain?”

They split, then a minute before the credits roll, he changes his mind. “I’ll take you back,” Mariel says, “when I return from London.”

That’s the closest to my idea of love: watching the skyline, making out, making mistakes, making believe desire means it’s with somebody else, then breaking up, and, if we’re lucky, forgiveness that comes right before take-off. There, I’ve said it. What more can one want? A lover who loves me as much as the rain. Rain, and, from the opening credits to the closing heart, Gershwin.

2008-09-09T23:05:00.004+08:00

There are two things that have made this day bearable. Learning about this and hearing this, both quite unexpectedly:

This is the last song that I've managed to sing to someone without quitting halfway. Would it make you feel good, I wonder, if I told you that?

2008-09-08T20:00:00.000+08:00

Isa pa:

Cameo Appearance
Charles Simic

I had a small, nonspeaking part
In a bloody epic. I was one of the
Bombed and fleeing humanity.
In the distance our great leader
Crowed like a rooster from a balcony,
Or was it a great actor
Impersonating our great leader?

That’s me there, I said to the kiddies.
I’m squeezed between the man
With two bandaged hands raised
And the old woman with her mouth open
As if she were showing us a tooth

That hurts badly. The hundred times
I rewound the tape, not once
Could they catch sight of me
In that huge gray crowd,
That was like any other gray crowd.

Trot off to bed, I said finally.
I know I was there. One take
Is all they had time for.
We ran, and the planes grazed our hair,
And then they were no more
As we stood dazed in the burning city,
But, of course, they didn’t film that.

2008-09-08T19:25:00.002+08:00

Since I can never really tell you, can never express joy fully in words, I'll just let one of my more favored poets do the talking:

So Much Happiness
Naomi Shihab Nye

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands,
like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

2008-09-03T22:16:00.006+08:00

1. I've always sort of envied quiet women. I don't really know why. Today I had the pleasure of talking to one. She kept her hands folded on her lap and her voice had a soft, lilting sound to it. It was hard to stop staring at her face. Once, she said, I never feel lonely. Strangely, I believed her.

2. These days, I find it easier translating poems into puns. There is a smug sneer on my face that I can't seem to wipe off and for the life of me, I can't even remember why it's there.

3. It's terribly ironic how much I want to get out of a job that helps people get jobs.

4. You know what else is strange? You storing away certain moments to remember when you get to be alone and when you already are, you'd find that you've forgotten them.

5. I do not want constant messages. I do not want to have to go out every Friday to talk and bitch about men and jobs and panty hose. I do not want to check out new bookstores with you because there are never any. Really.

Sometimes, I think I'm not built for the consistency of friendships.

6. I miss V, though. I miss the way he used to indulge me. He always said, "Sunshine, you've never been easy to love."

2008-09-01T21:56:00.008+08:00

Some days are like this. We talk softly, pretending that someone else is in the room and is straining to hear what we're saying. We pretend that we are important enough to be heard and in truth, we are, but I suspect, only to each other. It is nice, being able to reach up and cup your face even when there's nothing special going on. Routine soothes me,makes me believe that I am a part of that part of you that closes and gives itself to the earth. Faces this small should be illegal, should be ridiculous but yours is not. I tell you,as I have many times, that it is my favorite face, the one I'd need to search for in a crowd.

I wake up to this face every day and I find something new in it from time to time. I try to kiss all these gentle discoveries.

Romantics find it easy to live in the world. They think that when you love, you'd develop a sort of super-sense. I don't have it, and neither do you. What I have is this need for you, gloriously named. And that is all.

The sun squeezes itself into our small and loving world. You say, "Let's see if they fit now." pertaining to a joke about how our hands seem awkward together. Not quite right, as if the sky has decided to fall into the sea. Imagine what that must look like, something so large and looming, landing smack dab in the middle of a riddle no one can quite understand. Our hands are incomparably incompatible together. It amazes me sometimes, how we've grown to love this fact.

you're going to reap just what you sow

2008-08-26T18:09:00.000+08:00

Which Trainspotting Character Are You?

2008-08-22T17:57:00.007+08:00

My life revolves majorly around two entirely different but overtly material things: books and ice cream. I don't know why, exactly. That's just the way things are.

Like right now, I'm in a mall and I'm walking, right? Well, not now now because right now, I'm typing. But I'd like to use the present tense because YOU might find it more interesting and in a writer's life, YOU matter the most.

Have you noticed how much we look alike? We could be blood sisters; we could be identical granny apples.

Anyway, as I was saying, you might find it more believable if I narrated this story as if it's happening now. It has come to my attention that I used to always start my stories with the phrase I remember, or That day, or some such nonsense, which is evidence, really of how I like reviving circumstances that are sooooo yesterday.I want to do things differently today so kindly cooperate and pretend that what I'm talking about is all happening to me right this very minute and I'm not sitting in front of a PC I'm renting by the hour, typing so fast my head hurts.

Pretend that I am there. I am walking inside a mall and glancing at clothes mounted distastefully on the shop windows. My brother is bound to arrive at about 8pm so I have lots of time to kill. From this distance, I can see For Sale signs inside one of the more pricey bookstores. There are stacks of books by the entrance and I look at the selections for a while. Everything seems so uninteresting but I'm thinking, if I had $3,232,084,242, I'd buy them all. I'd even buy a David Sedaris. Is he any good? It seems that his books are always on sale. How would you feel, if you saw a published book of yours on the sales rack? Like 10 copies of your goddarned unsold books huddled together and they all look so fucking alike it's annoying. Would you, honestly, buy your own books?

So anyway, I was looking listlessly at the titles and my eyes, oh joy! my wondering, ever-curious eyes were persuaded by some unnamable force to look a little to the left and I see... I see... ICE CREAM! So I go up to the vendor and select the flavor of the day, which is apple crumble, and I happily eat it while looking at the books on sale.

And then I spot a familiar face. The person is looking at a stack of books and is wearing a pretty black bowler hat. I'm hopeless with names, really, but I have a good recollection of faces. She is supposed to be someone who attended the same church that my brother and I did back home.

She moves away from the stack of books she was inspecting and walks away from the bookstore. I decide to follow her because I haven't made up my mind whether I was going to talk with her or not. She goes to five different stores and I still could not decide on whether I wanted to come up to her and say hi.

Her hair swings. That's right. When she walks, it sways from side to side, like women's hair do in shampoo commercials. Her left elbow, strangely, is higher than her right and she walks with a slight limp. She turns her head and I notice that she has a small mole on the corner of her mouth.

Reading Peter Pan for the first time drove me nuts. Seeing that mole makes me remember that time in my life when I envied Wendy for having that mole so when I moved on to Kindergarten, I drew a mole on the corner of my mouth using my father's black felt pen.

She stops in front of a shoe store and looks at the shoes displayed on the store window. That's when I decided to just walk up to her like a normal person would. She had this polite look on her face when she turned to me.

That look was so familiar that for a split second, I thought she was me.

Truth is, I think the years have changed us, made us look eerily alike. That was my face, I thought. I was in college and I was in a boy's car. I was screaming Pulis Patola! at the top of my lungs and I never knew when to stop, when to say That's it, I'm getting off now. I never do.

And this woman looks at me as if she's seen me for the first time in her life. I am dismissed within a span of 4 seconds, before she even fully turns away. She opens her mouth and says,

I'm sorry, I'm not Grace.

Oh, I say, my mouth forming the shape of the dot at a bottom of every question mark.

Oh.

We can store around 232778 words in our heads. Of course, I'm guessing. It's a guesstimate. Now isn't that smart? That's one more word so I can say that I have 232779 words in this noggin of mine. Isn't it funny, though, how in important situations, all we can say is

Oh.

I wonder sometimes about what I would say if I die on the spot because of heart failure or a car accident or a shark bite. Would I get to talk to someone I love, like characters do in movies? Or would I be able to say

and move on? Like the way I did after I saw that woman. I moved away and headed over to the ice cream stand. My brother isn't here yet and I think the flavor Strawberry Rush sounds promising.

2008-08-17T20:54:00.006+08:00

I've invited a choice number of friends to view this blog. I guess I've reached the point where I feel more comfortable with myself. Comfortable and confident enough not to broadcast my whole life to people who are more than willing to dissect it into itty bitty pieces.

I'm just fed up with wanting to really talk but I never get to because certain people find it so easy to misconstrue what I say.

So if you're here and you can see this, it probably means that I think we're either a) good friends or b) you don 't really give a fuck about what I write about but you spend a lot of time online and sometimes, you find yourself staring blankly at the screen and would like something, anything to read.

I'd like to thank you for visiting this site with an open heart.

My public-friendly heeheehee hahahaha posts will be reserved for my Multiply account.

Welcome to the slightly expurgated version of my life.

2008-08-14T19:50:00.008+08:00

My friend sends me poems during the days when I tell her that
I don't feel at all like myself. Because she is good, she believes
in me. She also believes that what other people say will convince
me that life is wonderful. There are days when I do not
want words; there are even whole months when I feel
that water is not enough. For example, on the way
home today, I sat close to a stranger and
challenged myself to stare intently at his mouth for a full
minute. This man never snuck glances at me; transfixed
as he was by everything else. I envied
his wonder. I'd like to pluck it out of his ears and attach it
to the side of my left shoulder so that everyone could see
it and say So that's wonder! Wow! Where'd you get it?
But I couldn't do it because I considered the man, how
bereft this stranger would be without it. There are days
when looking at the world seems
as strange as mistakenly stepping into a
house of mirrors. You look so
much like Dolly Parton, it kills you.
I am so petrified, I never think to look up.

2008-08-10T09:42:00.006+08:00

"The comedy is over."

What I was then was young. You remember being young, don't you? What those years presented was an excuse to be irrational, carefree. It was an excuse to see you in a different, a more refracted light. You would have to respect that the things that I believed in and held in awe during those years aren't the same things that I understand now.

It was your silence --the singular thing that stretched me out then made me immobile and hard. It should have made me want more of you but it did not. There should have been accusations, shouting matches on anonymous sidewalks, complaints, desperate measures to be rid of each other. Instead, there was that empty world, a back turned to me forever. And now, I will tell you truly, that that home in me that you spoke of so fondly once is gone. There is no one to blame, only fate, perhaps. A confusion of chances, our hopeful beginnings.

You remember being young, don't you? That's all there was to it, really. I have moved on, have outgrown your secret poetry and your tired hands. This is all you need to know, all I will let you know.

2008-08-10T02:39:00.007+08:00

If it were at all easy to start over, I would have.

*****

The experience that I remember with stunning clarity dates two years back. For some reason, even the things I've experienced yesterday aren't as clear as this memory is.

It started that day when I received the Phone Call That Changed My Life. My aunt gave me a call. It was past 8pm and I said I'd just be calling her after 5 minutes because the reception was bad. I went out of the apartment I was living in then and walked to the phone booth across the street. I dialled my aunt's number and she informed me that I'd have to resign from my Dead End Job. I asked her why I'd want to do that. Then she said, quite matter-of-factly,

"Your mother is sick."

"Sick? That's it?"

"Sick. You'd really have to resign ASAP. Then come home and go straight to the hospital."

"Okay. She calls the shots."

So I attended my last shift and informed my supervisor about what I had to do. I apologized for how fast things had to be but my mother was sick, I couldn't do anything about it. Strangely, she was very amenable to the arrangement. It was the fastest exit I've ever made. In two hourstime, I had my clearance slip already filled out and I was formally out of the company I've enjoyed working with for the past two months.

I packed my meager belongings, which consisted of some articles of clothing and books, and rode a taxi to the bus station in Buendia. I don't remember exactly what I thought about during that four hour drive home but I remember being angry. Again, I thought. Just because she's my mother, she thinks she can control my life this way. And using her sisters as allies, Jesus. It was just too much. In my mind, I just kept ranting about her, how unstoppably mercurial she was. I hated her because I could not let her go. But after some time, I think I mellowed down. I talked myself into believing that she meant the best for me. Besides, I never really enjoyed talking with Americans who did not know what a Dial Up Service was.

I dropped my stuff off at our place then rode a tricycle all the way to the hospital in Iyam where she was confined. I did not know what I would say when I did see her, I mean, what would you say to the person who kept making decisions for you all your life? That it did not matter where you went, so long as she could tell you what to fucking do.

So I see her surrounded by two of my aunts. One looks at me with reproach, asks me why it took me so long to get there. I ignored her; I made a beeline for my mother's hospital bed and asked her,

"O, ano na?" (So what now?)

Her hair was tied in pathetically short pigtails and it looked as if it had not been washed for days. This is not the first time that I've seen her sick. But she looked so different that I was slightly taken aback. I was surprised by how shrunken she appeared to me -- this woman who struck terror into the hearts of children and some adults she knew just by opening her mouth. How changed she looked. My heart gave a little twitch. I did not know this woman. And all she said to me was,

"Masakit, anak, e." (It hurts, my child.)

I went out of the room for a while. To find the doctor, I told them. I went out and I saw our school teachers at the lobby. Their faces were drawn, as if someone had announced that Christmas was cancelled that year. It was December and it was cold in the hospital.

A doctor approached me and said he wanted to talk to me. He didn't lead me into an office, he just stood at a certain corner behind the small hospital chapel and said,

"Your mother has cancer."

"What kind? Where's the origin?" (I was actually surprised by how even my voice sounded. Then I realized that I wanted it to sound exactly like that. Unfazed. Normal.)

"We don't know."

"Oh."

"Hers is already in stage four."

"How many stages are there, doc?" (I remember snorting a little after I asked this question. God, I thought I was being so clever.)

"Four."

"Shit."

So I went back to the room, notably dry-eyed. I did not want the people inside the room to see any change that I might have gone through. I was, for once, going to be in control of something. And that woman on that bed would not be able to say STOP this time.

One of my aunts (the less nosy one, the one who was born after my mother was) approached me. She asked me if I already knew, if I already saw the doctor. The teachers were waiting outside, she said, because they have not received their pay for the month yet. They were waiting to hear what I had to say.

As I stood there, pondering over what she said, she told me,

"You're the brave one aren't you? Must've taken after your father. Your mother... well, she was always scared as a child. But I remember when she learned that she was going to have you, she said she did not feel fear."

And I could not take that. That statement put too much blood on my hands. I averted my gaze then I cried. Softly, so as not to wake my mother, who was, at that moment, sleeping.

2008-08-03T11:00:00.005+08:00

I wanted to use a metaphor
for my sadness and translate
into a beautiful posey of a poem. I could say that
it is the hour stretched before one gets ready
for gaol but I've never been to gaol. I've
never lost a husband to cancer, never eaten a fish
cooked wrong, never stepped into a new
land only to find it more
imposing in pictures. I've never seen hatred;
I've never seen a miracle. The other day, I looked at a map
and saw that my
country is the color green and I believe it is so,
even in real life. Then I realized
that I do not know what it means to truly suffer,
if there is such a thing as a singular meaning
for a feeling; something so small and secular,
you can tie it around your finger to remember
to forget.

What are the things that console me now?
Is it this knowing that all things end?
Or is it the weight, the sudden tumult
of beginnings?

2008-07-31T23:01:00.008+08:00

Today, I added

around 9 new blog links to my Google Reader account and have read 165 entries from different blogs. Eight full hours of nothingness. Sarap.

Yes, officer, I was in the office that whole time.

People are paying me to do nothing.

I don't have a problem with that. I guess you do, though.

Today, I wanted

to tell you to stop...telling...me...what...to...effing...do. When you made that last crack, I just wanted you to have it. You are not the boss of me. And you have to accept the fact that you will never be.

Today, too, I realized

that it's so easy to point out other people's flaws. People who feel good about themselves diss people who don't. People who believe in a higher power smirk at the ones who can care less.

So honey, when you tell the world how good and blessed you are, leave the other half of that equation out of it. In this lifetime, the only wrong answers are the ones we so adamantly profess are right. I hope you know that by now.

Today, I also came to the conclusion

that most of the time, I seem to want to eat more than I can chew. After office hours, P and K and I went to Festival's Food Court to grab a bite. It was a fantabulous street food fest and I loved it loved it loved it. I hope I can get to do that again.

Today, when we were waiting for K,

P and I headed out to National Bookstore. This will sound pathetic but I haven't done anything spontaneous in a looooong time. And believe me, the trip to the bookstore can be categorized as just that! I didn't get to buy anything and guess what, I never even knew there was a constant sale going on in there. Jesus. Who would I have to kill to get these kinds of information? I'm just so glad P asked me to tag along or else the whole day would have seemed more humdrum than it already was.

Today, I would like for you

to read this. It will inspire you. Oh yes, it will inspire you.

I am a creature of want.

All the things I want translate into things I need. I do not know if this poses any real danger of any kind since I've been this way my whole life.

Especially when it comes to books. When does one ever not need books? The thought is ridiculous. So when he told me earlier that I shouldn't buy any more books because I still have a lot of unread ones dying to be used, I felt slightly annoyed. But I didn't let on because I remember asking him to help me control my spending habits (prolly a week ago) because my budget's pretty tight right now. It's just weird 'cause no one has ever told me to not buy books. My parents would have maimed anyone who controlled my book-buying. But it's irrational to feel angry since I was the one who asked him to help me out in the first place. So whatthefuck, right?

Missy, a lot of people are angry

not because they want to seem cool, not because they want other people to admire them for how detached they seem. Some people are angry and sad and think that the world's unfair because some things that you can't even imagine happened to them.

I'm not saying that you're wrong. No one is. Just be a bit more compassionate. Then maybe, just maybe, you can convince some of us to live in your world's terms.

Oh, and have I told you

that I've already gotten those eye glasses that I've been waiting for for quite some time? It's uber-kapal and makes me look like a total geekazoid. Which I like.

Pictures to follow. Hehehe

Sometimes, it takes real effort to not expect anything in return.

I steel myself against all these bad vibes but here it is. Here is the disappointment, followed by the what-ifs. Regrets come last. They always do.

I have been happily loved as a child.

I seldom felt neglected. I did not have to live up to anyone's set standards (until now, baby). I do not know where this hatred is coming from. I tell myself that the world is not so bad. There are still plenty of satisified people so it can't all be hell and damnation around here. But why do I feel so down and out most days?

I hope that you feel better.

And oh yes, that other thing, too.

2008-07-27T12:17:00.002+08:00

Better Than Ezra - Wallflower

Do you forget who you are
when you're the last one in the bar
and then morning unfurls
on the wallflower,
wallflower girl?

2008-07-27T11:30:00.001+08:00

My brother tells me he misses me by saying that he needs money for the weekend.

I tell him I miss him too by texting him a long message regarding the importance of money and how he should learn to save up for times like these la-dee-da.

It is strange how we do not know how to say the right things. And how we know so well.

****

Hurts like something godawful. I miss my family.:(

2008-07-27T10:43:00.014+08:00

This picture is seven months old.

What I would give to see him again, paddling behind the tricycle I am riding in. The wind blows stronger in those parts and I can still feel it rushing across my face. It is an old friend, reclaiming me, asking why it took me so long to return.

I remember this boy following me, peddaling furiously as if he believed that if he relaxed, even a bit, I and my fancy carriage will be gone. And I don't know what that meant to him but I didn't want to think of that because it meant falling back into the old rhythms of self-absorption. I do not know how he found me or if he sought me out or when he decided to go on this crazy pseudo-voyage. What I know is that it felt like summer and a young boy was following me on a bike.

We stopped at the port's fish market and the smell of fish was so strong, I felt like licking my fingers because it seemed that the smell rested on them, too. I took a few pictures and everyone went all agog. Perhaps it is rare for people to go there on ordinary sunny days to expressly ask them to pose next to their wares. This kind of inactivity was probably unthinkable for them; it somehow did not equate. Before I knew it, many of the fish sellers wanted to have their pictures taken. They never even asked if they could secure copies. They just wanted to be a part of a stranger's day and I was so grateful for having found kindness and openness in a place brimming with life.

Afterwards, I took pictures of old remains of boats that were left on the shore. And that was when I asked him if I could take his picture. He did not know how to reject me. Instead, he put one hand up and covered his face. But you can see that his eyes were smiling and that he was happy.

It is odd to fall in love with people this way. But I do, over and over again. And I never regret this vulnerability, this tenderness that I hope to keep. It's what preserves my sanity, what makes me realize that it's okay to go on living.

2008-07-27T09:30:00.002+08:00

It was taken in the morning, first thing. All that
I remember of this day makes me laugh out loud. That day, I had
to be roused from my bed. I imagined that when my
mother turned her back to me to head downstairs, she
had that worry crease on her forehead because I had forgotten
something as important as this. My father was the first to go.
He seemed so brave all of a sudden, my meek father who never
raised his voice to the woman he married even behind closed
doors. He stepped in front of the blue backdrop and was asked to
put his foot on a stool. His eyes, I knew, were looking
at the person behind the lens. I knew this because
he once told me that he did not respect instruments. What's
important is the great mystery behind everything, he said. I'm sure
he wasn't thinking of that moment but was dreaming,
instead, of my mother, 20 years younger
in a red sundress. Then it's my mother's turn and she
preens in front of the camera, as if she is convincing someone
that she is leading a different life, that this is
who she really is. It is sad in an awkward
way and I drift off to somewhere safe -- to
that day when I was three and she was making a peanut butter
sandwich and stopped and stared at me for 15 seconds. I forget
that she is a body that is apart from my own, that
the cord has been severed since day one and
didn't even exist two decades ago. Then after what seems like a long
year, I am asked to step in front of the lens. I am unsure about
what I should do in front of it, of
what I'd need to know. The intricacies of this
activity is something that wasn't taught to me
or to anyone else, really. My parents are no
longer in the room; perhaps they thought I'd be shy and
self-conscious going about things if
they had stayed. I fix my eyes on that object and
shiver a little because I'm so ready for it. And after that,
everything else blurred into one and the same thing. You say that
you feel cheated, you were expecting something more personal, more
romantic. But don't you see me? I am staring at you
full in the face. I am alone and my hands are younger
than they've ever been. That is exactly who I am.

2008-07-27T08:42:00.002+08:00

From Possession by A.S. Byatt:

He saw, or thought he saw, how those qualities had been disguised or overlaid by more conventional casts of expression -- an assumed modesty, an expedient patience, a disdain masking itself as calm. At her worst -- oh, he saw her clearly, despite her possession of him -- at her worst she would look down and sideways and smile demurely, and this smile would come near a mechanical simper, for it was an untruth, it was a convention, it was her brief constricted acknowledgement of the world's expectations. He had seen immediately, it seemed to him, what in essence she was, sitting at the Crabb Robinson's breakfast table, listening to men disputing, thinking herself an unobserved observer. Most men, he judged, if they had seen the harsheness and fierceness and absolutism, yes, absolutism, of that visage, would have stood back from her. She would have been destined to be loved only by timid weaklings, who would have secretly hoped she would punish or command them, or by simpletons, who supposed her chill look of delicate withdrawal to indicate a kind of feminine purity, which all desired, in those days, at least ostensibly. But he had known immediately that she was for him, she was to do with him, as she really was or could be, or in freedom might have been.

2008-07-27T08:06:00.005+08:00

I would like to be good. I would like to be someone who believes in something greater than the mythical silver lining, these small blessings. I would like to look at a child and love him because he is a child and he knows nothing of the world and this love would push me to do great things. I would like to look at women and not feel obliged to forgive them of their weaknesses. I would like to run into a man on a common street and then forget him the moment I turn the corner. I would like to be strong enough to be able to turn that corner. I would like to see my brother and realize how hungry he is, how he is collapsing into deceptive versions of kindness, time and time again, finding out that he has exchanged his eyes for something far less miraculous. I would like to seek out my father, who has been drunk all his life but never lets on. I would like to see him and I will run my hands gently over his face to let him know that I am a child, still, but with strange, almost incoherent needs. And I will suppose that he will understand and recognize me, inspite of his old rage, for he is more me than I am. I would like to visit my mother in her crumbling solitude. I would like to tell her that everything is not what it seems, that the world has turned me into something she might not be able to see fully. And in that warm and familiar place, I will nestle my head on her shoulder, the way I did when I was so much younger, when there was nothing else but love and warm soup on the table. I would like to skip the apologies and move on quickly to something true. I would tell her this and I hear her talk softly about herself and her body would assume the blank spaces of what we've all forgotten, what we need to accept. This time, I would listen. I would be good.

2008-07-20T12:13:00.002+08:00

"You're like the drummer of REO Speedwagon. Nobody knows you."

-Russell, Employee of the Month

Is anonymity necessarily a bad thing?

Is it something that would kill you eventually or would make you stronger?

Is being a complete nobody saddening for someone like you?

I guess not.

2008-07-20T11:20:00.002+08:00

Bombs - Scanners

He's building bombs in the bathroom
The man who lives right next door
Why don't you go round and ask him
If that's what all this noise for.

He's building bombs in the bathroom
Right next door to me
His bomb factory
Not how this country used to be.

It seems like years ago
When everyone you know
Would live the good life
Just like you and me.

The time of my first suspicion
When I first became aroused
Well the smell that came from his kitchen
Almost made me call the council round.

He's building bombs in the bathroom
Right next door to me
His bomb factory
Not how this country used to be.

It seems like years ago
When everyone you know
Would live the good life
Just like you and me.

Right next door to me
His bomb factory
Not how this country used to be.

It seems like years ago
When everyone you know
Would live the good life
Just like you and me.

2008-07-20T09:59:00.003+08:00

The Bones Of You - Elbow

And it's you, and it's May
And we're sleeping through the day
And I'm five years ago and three thousand miles away.

2008-07-19T10:14:00.004+08:00

The Courteeners-Not Nineteen Forever.mp3 -

Earlier today, I visited their Friendster profiles. The first one already has a wife and two kids. The second one has a kid who looks like him. The third one hasn't had a girlfriend in 7 years but he has one now. He does not mention her in his blog but he mentions me. Reading one of his entries has made me realize how different I am now. Let me correct that: each of them knows about or have been with different versions of me. This makes my heart break. I want to apologize but I can't pinpoint,really, what I'm sorry about.

2008-07-19T08:29:00.005+08:00

I've always had dreams where I was falling. You probably have had those too but I've been having them a lot lately. The best advice that I've been given is to consciously brave those dreams out and see them through. I'm bad at trying to control circumstances occuring in my dreams. I never even thought it was possible but I've already tried it twice so it is, after all, possible. But it's hard to do and I end up with a headache.

This morning, I tried to look up what the dream meant. I clicked on the very first link that I saw and here's what it says:

Falling dreams are another theme that is quite common in the world of dreams. Contrary to a popular myth, you will not actually die if you do not wake up before your hit the ground during a fall.

This is true. Else, I'm a zombie.

As with most common dream themes, falling is an indication of insecurities, instabilities, and anxieties. You are feeling overwhelmed and out of control in some situation in your waking life. This may reflect the way you feel in your relationship or in your work environment. You have lost your foothold and can not hang on or keep up with the hustle and bustle of daily life.

True as well.

When you fall, there is nothing that you can hold on to. You more or less are forced toward this downward motion without any control. This lost of control may parallel a waking situation in your life. Falling dreams also often reflect a sense of failure or inferiority in some circumstance or situation. It may be the fear of failing in your job/school, loss of status, or failure in love.You feel shameful and lack a sense of pride. You are unable to keep up with the status quo or that you don't measure up.

You understand, this is all an euphemism for: Buckle up, loser.

According to Freudian theory, dreams of falling indicate that you are contemplating giving into a sexual urge or impulse. You maybe lacking indiscretion.

Stop right there. Maybe lacking in indiscretion. Now this is me, right down to the period in the end. Maybe what I need right now is indiscretion and I'll be alright.

So here's my Be Indiscreet: Get a Good Night's Sleep Project:

1. Blatantly cheat on the boyfriend. Ask a lot of men (and possibly women) to call me up during the wee hours of the night. When asked where I'm going, say, "With someone you don't know." Wink while saying it to heighten suspicion.

2. Strategically place computer on cubicle. Enable total visual access for everyone. Let officemates and top honchos know that all I do all day long is surf the net, looking for things that interest me.

3.Tell mentally challenged applicants to shut up forever.

4. Tell people about my college escapades during non-exclusive parties. (Like one time, in EIC camp...)

5. Pick my nose in public.

6. When wearing a skirt, don't forget to splay legs as far apart as they would go.

7. Dance to the Stones' Beast of Burden. On the street. At rush friggin' hour.

8. Spill all the secrets I know.

9. Laugh boisterously in a library.

10. Run for office.

2008-07-19T07:34:00.006+08:00

What I have always found mysterious is why Gotham City folk are such suckers for disaster. Whenever there's something major going on, Gotham residents go to the city in droves. Oh shoot, is an evil and terribly twisted person planning to bomb the city hospital? I'll be damned if I miss that. Oh is there a crazy ass clown who is on the lookout for people to kill? I'll have to see that for myself.

And why are they all... still... in Gotham? It's been nothing but chaos and destruction in that sick city since God knows when. Why are they still living there? Someone should tell these people that the world is a big place and since most of them are probably American citizens (I did see a Chinese guy in one of the scenes), they'd have easy access to all the other places.

Have you noticed how Gotham City is so much like the Philippines? The similarities are so uncanny, it kills me. We hate everything, we complain about everything, we vote for a hero only to find out that the hero is a villain after all and we complain about that, too. We have a lot of drug syndicates going on and people are so quick to turn against each other. And let's not forget how similar the ferry dilemma was to the recent ZTE catastrophe all of us witnessed. And yes, all the good ones have been turned to two-faced freaks.

And like those lovely Gotham residents, no one really wants to fucking budge. And the people who do get out say they never really wanted to go. Weird innit?

At this point, it must be pretty apparent to you that I've already watched the Batman movie and boy-oh, that was the best Batman movie ever, hands down. I was able to get over the icky love stuff because Gyllenhaal's character redeemed herself (by dying) in the end. Why is it that whenever I look at Maggie Gyllenhaal, I think slut slut slut. Which is why she was perfect for the lawyer role.

The movie is definitely in the watch-in-cinema category. And yes, Ledger was very convincing as Joker but he surely would not be winning any awards because of it. If the Academy Awards committee is bent on giving an award to anyone, they should give one to the Gotham City people. For misplaced optimism, if not for anything else.

2008-07-15T23:01:00.025+08:00

Today, I shall personally show you my top 17 favorite books. However, I'll be presenting them in no particular order because my books are all extremely sensitive and might feel more than a little slighted if they think they've been underappreciated and might run off with the milkmaid first chance s/he gets.

So, here they are:

The Blind Assassin. If anyone ever so much as undervalues this book in any way, I will come after you. Oh yes, I will come after you. And that's that, really. I'll just follow you around, like the good stalker that I am.

The Book of Illusions. Paul Auster. No explanations necessary.

Catch - 22. Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb!"

Einstein's Dreams. Alan Lightman, make sweet love to meeehhhh!!!!!

Fear of Flying. I panted my way through the entire thing. You would, too. (wink, wink)

Fight Club. Edward Norton was great in the film version. Edward Norton was great in the film version. Edward Norton was great in the film version. Edward Norton was great in the film version.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I am in this book. Every orphan is.

Henry and June. Anais Nin will seriously rock your world out of kilter.

The House of Mirth. I cried a full 30 minutes after I read this book. Amazing. Wonderful. I'm running out of trumped up adjectives.

Lord of the Flies. I will be eternally grateful to my Comm II teacher, Beng, for encouraging me to read this book.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Swear that you'll read this. Swear.

Possession: A Romance. Last year's Best Book Read By Someone Who Rarely Reads Anymore. Possibly even better than The Blind Assassin.

Sputnik Sweetheart. I fall in love with this book over and over again. Went to bed with it the first time I finished it. Gets better everytime.

Tarantula. Bod Dylan slays me. He slays me until I am nothing but a big sighing heartbeat.

The Bell Jar. When I was in college, I almost lost my mind because I thought I lost it. Was a necessity for me during my EIC days for LB Times.

The Reader. Possibly this year's best book. It has yet to be rivaled. The film, they say, will be out by December this year. Starring Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet. Wouldn't miss it if I were you.

White Teeth. Zadie Smith is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. A lot of great insights in this book. Keep out of children's reach.

Well, that's it for now. All of those, and more, make me a happy and healthy girl (until the drug tests prove otherwise).

2008-07-15T10:06:00.008+08:00

In my dreams, it is always summer

and the boy in those dreams is always picking pockets. He

never tells me why. My mother, she

does not know this boy

but he looks a lot like her. I am waiting for him to step

up to me and say On my watch, you're never

going to die. And I dread that day but in my dreams,

everything is still in place so I try not to be too afraid. The dreams

aren't always about the boy. Some of

them are about how the wind

makes the red kite fly. The kite is a miracle

making zigzag patterns on a sky

that is overcast with sadness.

I think I've never seen anything lovelier than that, except maybe for

the boy's hands, how small and

insignificant they look. I'm sorry,

I could've sworn that the dreams were not all

about him but they were.

Strangely, he moves me. The kite never has, honestly. Like

many things, it acts as a disinterested constant, floating around and

doing nothing spectacular. But the boy was fast

and careful, always

making someone's load less heavy. In today's dream,

I see him lifting the sun out of someone's

beach bag. For a moment, he

makes believe he is stealing from God.

But I know he is not; I know he knows the truth for

God is not here. He is in someone

else's summer dream,

picking someone else's pockets with

bright, small hands.

2008-07-15T08:24:00.013+08:00

Now that I've grown considerably older, I can admit that I was never Holly Golightly. Never. I did spend a lot of years deluding myself into thinking that the movie character that best represented me was the character that Audrey Hepburn played that no one forgot. I never had a serious penchant for glamor. If anything, all that debauchery makes me want to throw up. I think diamonds are useless; they don't taste good and you can't really count on them if you want help losing weight. On top of it all, I have zero ambition. So I just have to accept facts. I have never been and will never be Holly Golightly.

Who I have always been is Janeane Garofalo. It took me some, um, 3-5 years to accept that painful fact but there it is. We have the same superhuman ability to look like total nerds next to our good looking best friends; we even look like we have a bad hair year every year.

Consider Exhibit A:

This is what seems to be Ms Hepburn's highschool photo. I'm not sure but it looks like it could be one. If it were, I'll tell you now that I have never looked anything like that in highschool. My idea of hair care was shampoo and water. I went to prom dressed like a character from a Tim Burton movie. I ate all the food, too.

Exhibit B:

Now this look is really more my speed. Note the chasm of difference between the two pictures. This is me on a very, very good day.

Exhibit C:

See? Notice the starved, crazed look around the eyes. The hairbrush stuck on my head is not for mere posterity, ladies and gents. The lip bite is not intentional. No, it's not, you ass.

Now I know the topic was not about looks at all but more on the differences between the characters these two icons have played in the past. But characters' looks have as much to do about the part as the way they act out the part. As an interviewee so eloquently said: I am not a cow. I don't have a confusion about the bush.

As I was saying, I have always been the Janeane Garofalo type. Since grade school, I've always belonged to a three-girl group. And there was always one very attractive girl in the group. And you guessed it... it wasn't me.

I'd like to make it clear that although I've made my image issues apparent in this entry, I've never boo-hooed about it. Having an attractive friend is something that I've always taken in stride. I guess that's why I studied extra hard so that I'd have a sort of edge. I always had to be the smart alecky one or else, I'd be no one, really. Because believe it or not, wit can be developed through years of solving complex, nearly incomprehensible math equations. Over and over again. If character is all you're hoping to have, make sure that you'd have loads of it so that you'll never run out until the day everyone is old and gray and looks like everybody else.

I remember a classic college story. My friends and I were freshmen then. A always got to be invited to freshmen beauty pageants and such and such and she was clearly the most attractive person in the group because B looked too thin and miserable and I could only be described as staunchy.

We all went to the same history class (blockmates!). Now there was this guy, I believe his name is Charles, who was in that same class with us. He wasn't distractingly attractive. I guess he was just very nice and accomodating and had that kind of smile that could blind you if you stared too long. Everyone liked this guy. Seriously. But he never seemed to realize how appealing he was and that... that was the best thing about him.

Imagine my (our) surprise when he walked up to me after a class and asked me if I wanted to go to the movies with him. All I could say to that was: EEEEKKK *^(*^*%&^&^R^$#^!!!! Anyway, gibberish, balderdash, then I said, Yes, of course, I'll go with you, Charles. (To the ends of the earth! To the ends of the earth!)

He bought tickets to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Which he picked, of course. Well, this is romantic, I thought. Nothing like some intergalactic shit to get a decent conversation going.

At the start of the movie, I informed him that I was happy that he's a Star Wars fan and all but I wasn't and I warned him that I'd be asking him questions throughout the entire movie. I knew guys hate the way girls blabber their way through good movie parts but I wanted to let him know that I had a genuine interest in what he was interested in. I had to establish a connection. And he was so nice... he explained almost all the parts that I didn't understand. So we watched and laughed. It was fun, in a completely wholesome way. It was terrible.

Then, at some point (and this is the part that's still as clear as day to me), he leaned closer to ask me something. I was beside myself with juvenile joy. This guy likes me, I thought. Not A. Me. And at that moment, this notion that I devised all by my lonesome did wonders for my ego.

Then I heard him. His voice was suddenly so clear. He was asking if A had a boyfriend.

I said, "No, she doesn't." I was aware of how horribly deadpan my voice sounded but I no longer cared. At that point, I had kissed coherence goodbye.

Then he said, "You think she'll like me?"

"What's not to like?"

And he went on and on about A and all the things he noticed about her. He was as bad as a girl with a crush. He was as bad as I was 5 minutes ago.

And the worst part was, he asked me if I could ask A if she wanted to go to the dance with him that was happening the next day. I said, sure, of course I'd tell her. And when the movie was over, he took me back to my apartment and the first thing I did was call A. I tried so hard to sound nonchalant (which was a tough feat, I'm telling you.) and she just kept squealing with joy.

So yeah, I'm so Janeane Garofalo. But I never really get the guy in the end. Let's just say my life feels like a movie, sometimes, and I'm playing a Garofalo character but my endings are almost always the My Best Friend's Wedding ending.

Well this is all sufficiently saddening. I hope I made you feel better about your life. Toodles.

2008-07-15T08:06:00.004+08:00

Did'ya know that Glen Hansard also acts as the vocalist in the band called The Frames?

Taken from Wikipedia because it's 8am and no one expects anyone to explain anything coherent at 8am:

The Frames is an influential Irish band based mainly in Dublin. Founded in 1990, the group has released six albums and appeared in numerous music videos. The band's ex-bassist John Carney has become a film director, writing and directing the award-winning 2007 film Once, which stars the band's singer/guitarist Glen Hansard, who wrote much of the music for the film.

I really like their version of one of my favorite Van Morrison songs:

One Irish Rover - The Frames

Here's the original version:

One Irish Rover- Van Morrison.mp3 -

2008-07-14T18:28:00.006+08:00

One of my favorite Woody Allen movies is undoubtedly Annie Hall. I'm a sucker for conversation pieces but I consider this Allen hit the best of its kind because it's very unsentimental, honest, and easily relatable. It's to the 1998 version of Great Expectations as borsche is to chicken soup.

And it ends with this line: “This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor says, Well, why don’t you turn him in? And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. Well I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. You know they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd but I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.”

So true.

2008-07-14T10:12:00.004+08:00

Song preferences are extremely subject to a couple of things.

Well for one, the melody/lyrics should be interesting enough to strike you, and by strike I don't mean a mere bop on the head. I mean serious cranial damage, I mean a whole World War happening inside your already overwrought brain connectors. Seriously, it should blow you away.

More importantly, though, it should be relevant. If you haven't noticed yet, people are big on relevance. The song should be something that they think can unravel in their action-packed, monotony-free lives. This is why there are songs that we liked in highschool that we won't ever tell anyone about now. Songs are like husbands and wives -- they're easy to divorce as long as the severance is discreet and everyone's still alive.

There are also songs that you've never noticed before and one day, you mistakenly hear it on your Ipod and it magically turns your heart around. Suddenly, tears are running down your cheeks. You are a pool of regret and self-pity. The next day, you put it on repeat so that the agony can continue.

This is not that kind of song.

Ks Choice - 20000 Seconds.mp3 -

This is a song I liked so much in college. And yes, back then, I put it on repeat and thought about all the boys I liked that I failed, ever so harshly,to attain. I liked the way my heart constricted and died and revived itself the whole 2 minutes and 24 seconds this song played.

But yesterday, I listened to it and I screamed.Who the fuck changed the lyrics on me? What kind of insensitive brute would make this song so blatantly senseless, so utterly un-cynical? This is murder, I'm telling you.

And I listened to it again and tried to sing along. I got everything right but I was different.

2008-07-14T09:18:00.006+08:00

Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again - Bob Dylan

My head is reeling and I just woke up.

Let me repeat that... my head is reeling and I just woke up. There absolutely was no point in repeating that, I just wanted to play the words in my head to see if it really was something true. And it is.

Last night, I went to bed after posting the final entry that you'd see down below. And now, I'm online again. I don't think it's a good idea, really, wasting my time like this. I'm on leave today and am supposed to do other, more relaxing things. But I don't seem to want to.

Yes, the blogging addiction is back. And it's taking it's toll on my dwindling eyesight. My head is reeling and I just fucking woke up.

I've always had poor eyesight. I had my first pair of glasses (started out at 350 for both eyes) when I was in third grade. My mother blames this on the genes I've inherited from my father and my propensity to lie down while reading one book after another.

As a kid, I was a voracious reader. I'd lug around about 7-8 books around the house and try to finish them all before nightfall. I was a silent kid, was never really allowed to go out much because I was allergic to practically everything -- pollens floating around, dust, the heat from the sun, possibly other people. Probably the picture I presented to her back then -- quiet, studious,observant -- gave her hope that I'd be something larger than life.

Boy, if she could only see me now... haven't been promoted for a year now, stuck in a job that can only be described as routinary, and filing leaves just to post this kind of gibberish. Also, I don't get to read that much anymore. I sort of carry around 2-3 books during weekends and I just stare at them. I will myself to muster enough enthusiasm to learn something new and that's the moment everything goes downhill. I'm lucky if I get halfway through a book.

I still go crazy in bookstores, though. I buy around 5-6 books and psych myself up silly. But now I have a pile of books that I don't get to read and bad eyesight to boot. Gah.

This is not the way to start the day. Definitely not.

2008-07-14T00:15:00.004+08:00

Paper Hearts - Moving Units

This song makes me feel inordinately young, for some reason. Whenever I listen to it, I want to bash car windows up, send a spitball sliding down from the fifth floor, eat a vat of greasy french fries at 3am, and tell you that I want you, I need you, oh Baby, oh Baby.

2008-07-13T23:44:00.006+08:00

One of these days, a poem will come to me. Most probably, it will be during an ordinary hour, with ordinary minutes ticking around inside it. And during one of those minutes, I will think of a word, which will undoubtedly be followed by a lustrous string of other words which might make up an entire coherent phrase. But alas, during that moment, I'll be conducting an interview with a person who looks this:

And of course, I'd excuse myself, telling him I'd be back. It's just that a literary emergency has come up and this person will no doubt understand how inspiration works since he himself is something imaginary and fragmented. So he'll let me go ahead. He'll say Take all the time you need. I'll walk away thinking how gruff and deep his voice sounds.

Then I'll sit at my tiny cubicle which looks like all the other cubicles in our floor. I'll take out the Post-Its that I bought last January. All the Post-It pages are unused. This give me a sense of vindication because they are clean and devoid of any meaning.

Finally, after many months, I'll be writing a poem. I'll be immersed in all its goodness and its hefty love. I will forget about the world and this crazy year and my insane life. I am buzzing with meaning now and understanding and gratitude. I am a reservoir of words, all possibly American, enriched by thought-up derivations and differing meanings. I am neither happy nor intelligent, I can stand apart from emotions and stereotypes. I am a reservoir of words then just a word then just a letter then the air.

After an hour or two, I'll be done with the poem. I will fold the pages neatly and carefully and will put them inside my small drawer which can be locked by a key I carry around with me.

I will not notice the silence at first. But when I return to the room I left an hour ago, I will find that he is gone. And so is everyone else.

2008-07-13T22:50:00.007+08:00

They say that around three o'clock in the pm, they were already noisily hedging around the sofa to see if I were still alive. Catatonia around these parts is unacceptable, they say. But since they could not fully explain why it was bad, they weren't successful in getting me fat bodeh out of the couch.

I am a firm believer of nonsense. There wouldn't be enough living without it; there'd probably only be a generous amount of serious conversations and predictable drama and haywire neurosis. And that's not a life, my dearly beloved and intimate friends. So whenever I have a lot of time on my hands, I try to catch up on all the nonsense that the world has to offer.

So today I watched entertainment news, cartoons, sitcoms and was lucky enough to watch three hours of Pageant Place. That's a whole lot of useless shit, I'm telling you. It'd last me well into the decade.

Pageant Place is a product of an MTV-Donald Trump team-up. It's a new American reality series that will follow current Miss Universe Riyo Mori, Miss USA Rachel Smith and Miss Teen USA Katie Blair as they live together in a New York City apartment and represent their different crowns. There are the usual catty and ultra-dtitzy scenes but I really liked Rachel Smith. I think she's really purty and she's smart to boot so she was really all I looked at during the entire show.

I am woman who is quick to admire other women. I am also very vocal about it, so much so that some people at the office have asked me if I actually preferred women (wink, wink). Do I really have to, erm, prefer women to be allowed to say that I appreciate them? Come on, let's not be immature skanks about such a simple thing as that. Don't get me wrong, though. I also don't like many kinds of women. Let's just say that from where I'm standing, I think my appetites are still fairly healthy.

Anyway, if you still don't know what she looks like, here's a picture:

Cherry Pie - Warrant

Nice, right? Anyway, that's it about my tres interesting afternoon, I guess. I better get out of here before I sound like a total pimp.

2008-07-13T11:18:00.002+08:00

This just in: I just discovered that Ben Whishaw, who played Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Perfume also starred as Spud in the movie adaptation of Enduring Love.

Note to self: have to find the Enduring Love adapatation.

2008-07-13T11:16:00.000+08:00

Choosing to Think of It

Today, ten thousand people will die
and their small replacements will bring joy
and this will make sense to someone
removed from any sense of loss.
I, too, will die a little and carry on,
doing some paperwork, driving myself
home. The sky is simply overcast,
nothing is any less than it was
yesterday or the day before. In short,
there's no reason or every reason
why I'm choosing to think of this now.
The short-lived holiness
true lovers know, making them unaccountable
except to spirit and themselves--suddenly
I want to be that insufferable and selfish,
that sharpened and tuned.
I'm going to think of what it means
to be an animal crossing a highway,
to be a human without a useful prayer
setting off on one of those journeys
we humans take. I don't expect anything
to change. I just want to be filled up
a little more with what exists,
tipped toward the laughter which understands
I'm nothing and all there is.
By evening, the promised storm
will arrive. A few in small boats
will be taken by surprise.
There will be survivors, and even they will die.

2008-07-13T09:47:00.004+08:00

Everyone has fantasized about being stalked, at some point. People rarely talk about it but I believe that people think about it, and more importantly, are intrigued by the idea. We hide under our suspicious suppositions, our traditonal upbringings and raise umbrage when we feel that our privacy is being disregarded. But secretly, we are tickled pink whenever we notice that someone is paying more attention to us than is usual, than is appropriate.

Stalking, like anything else, varies in depth. From the simplest to the most complex stalking cases, one can see that there is an evident need for something. It may be the need for information, acceptance, answers. It may be love, jealousy, hatred.

For the more "normal" populace, we accept and understand that we can't choose the people whom we love. Stalkers believe they can.

Now I don't appreciate stalkers. I am not writing this to champion their cause, whatever that may be. But I do recognize the underlying reasons and in a completely warped and sick way, I can sympathize.

My real reason for writing this is to ask you to watch Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. It's a movie that I managed to see earlier this week and I can't get over it, really.

Do try and watch it. I think you can still catch it at Star Movies.

And because it's the weekend, you can try reading this and checking this out.

2008-07-13T08:56:00.005+08:00

That night was supposed to be an ordinary night. I could've mapped it out as if I were psychic: will arrive at venue at 9pm, listen to a couple of nice renditions of first world angst at around 11, head home at 2 or 3am, grab a bite to eat, get home at 3 or 4am , then sleep. No one expected that that would happen, except you, of course, you sentimental oaf.

After the band was done with the second song, you announced that someone would be singing with you on stage. It was really easy to inch closer to where you were since there were a lot of empty tables that night.

Then there she was. By the way her arms stiffly remained by the sides of her small body, you could tell how shy she was, how new at all of this she seemed. But she kept her head up, her gaze never wavering from yours. It was as if at that point in time, we did not exist. She had on those little cream-colored boots that made her look steady on her feet. Then the song started and we were all lost in this picture: you, bending your head close and inviting her to come closer, to not be afraid. And she was not. She was not.

I have known that kind of love. Distance does not lessen it, or make it dry up and wither eventually. That's the kind of love that will help you bear many things, the only kind you'll ever honestly be thankful for.

2008-07-12T23:09:00.004+08:00

I happened upon this piece of news today:

Unpublished Pablo Neruda poems highlight last romance

A series of unpublished poems by Chile's late Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Nobel prize for literature, are shedding light on his last romance with his wife's niece, who was more than 40 years his junior.

Collector Nurieldin Hermosilla said the 14 poems were found in a book titled Black Island Album, after the house in central Chile which Neruda, his third and last wife Matilde Urrutia and her niece Alicia Urrutia shared.

The lawyer and Neruda collector said he bought the book recently from a book dealer, who in turn had acquired it from an anonymous seller.

The poems are handwritten in Neruda's traditional green ink and are "a direct and definitive confirmation from the poet's own pen of his love for Alicia," Mr Hermosilla said.He said Alicia Urrutia decided to go public with the poems after years of keeping silent about her affair.

"I think she decided to confirm her love with Neruda and put this book on sale to lend herself some legitimacy and put an end to the myth," he said.

Read more here.

Honestly, this doesn't make me feel good. Of course the poems would be edited then published for the curious public's perusal! Of course movies about the love affair will follow! Then faster than you can say hippopotamus, the poet will be fashionable again, the way Bob Dylan became fashionable because of that disgusting OC soundtrack and the film that was released last year. People will come to bookstores in droves to get their hands on Neruda's anthologies; he will be quoted in blogs and more and more people will post lines from Neruda's poems as YM status messages.

Just thinking about it gives me the willies. Alicia, Alicia, how I'd love to wring your lucky, lucky neck.

2008-07-12T22:56:00.002+08:00

I so love Zooey Deschanel. Not much of an actress, really but I do like the way she looks. And the hair! The blue eyes! Gush gush gush!

She has the kind of voice I prefer. Listen to this:

Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? - She and Him

2008-07-12T21:54:00.006+08:00

The Naming of Things - Andrew Bird

What I'm really into these days is the Google Reader. I know it's kind of loser-ish (to borrow P's term) and sad to actually come out and admit that but I do like, no, love blog hopping and Reader makes my surfing activities loads easier.

Best of all, it's not blocked in purgatory. My take on that is this: because of his special love for me, God puts a glitch in our tech systems every time those wonderful IT guys at the office check for the most visible sites. Thank you, God, for being so double-standard about things.

I've always liked reading about other people's thoughts and/or experiences. I'm a total information whore. Don't psychoanalyze me, please. I wasn't left out as a child and I don't really have trust issues (harhar). I'm just unusually interested in other people, that's all.

My Reader account hosts different kinds of blogs. There are writers' blogs, bloggers' blogs, and some informational blogs. Admittedly, I like the writers' blogs best. Nothing else in the world can make me feel as shitty as a really good, well-thought out post can. Someone totally whack once told me this: where there's shit, there's potential for growth. I never really got it then but now, I guess it kind of makes sense, in a truly warped and gross way.

What I'd like to do is write non-stop for long stretches of time. I'd like to fill this blog up with insightful and terribly touching stories that would make you scream with insecurity. But I can't. I feel sometimes that I just keep repeating ideas and nothing really, erm, progresses, you know? I need something new, I'm telling you. I need something more.

And here's where you'd say, Come off it! You were just talking about Google Reader then here you go again with that self-depreciation shit. Who cares, honestly? Who cares if you don't write in a million years anymore or if IT does eventually block everything? This sadness doesn't make sense! It doesn't make sense!

Oh yes it does. It does. So if you don't mind, I'd like to crawl into a car now and bawl my eyes out.

2008-07-12T20:55:00.004+08:00

Bob Dylan - Stuck In The Middle With You

Then God said, "A pox on both your houses."

This time, the author is not going to apologize for the intentional misquote. For all you know, frog face, he really did say it first. Shakespeare took himself too goddamn seriously, anyway.

If you consider yourself an observant person, you will discern, just by reading the first four sentences of this really pathetic piece that the author thinks is "post-able" (which says a lot about the author's standards, really), that the author had a very rough week and by rough the author doesn't mean rock-rough or stalagmite-rough or old lady skin-rough because by rough the author means sticking it out in purgatory, which is office-slang, of course, for, well, the office; coming home and watching underwater music videos completely by accident, you understand; having conversations with lady officemates about what kind of underwear the author would like to buy after she gets out of the office at exactly 5pm and here you are trying your damndest to read a very long running sentence that does not seem to make any tangible reference to the author's real thoughts and feelings but is, rather, the author's weak attempt to sound smart and artistic even if all she ever does, really, is lug around 6 or 7 random books to let people know that yes, she knows how to read, and more importantly, can understand what she is reading, which is a lot more than she can say about most people who are so smug about Foucault you'd think they've slept with the man and at this point you are thinking this is the right time to put a period in because you, the reader, are fed up with the author's limited vocabulary and her unoriginal metaphors but the author says to hell with that and all the other things that are occupying her mind right now like how much she has to spend these days just to go to a job she sucks at (is it the job or is it the author, really? your thoughts), how many minutes she actually thinks about going home while she's at work, how much some people hate her because she likes different and no one else really does but no one will really admit it, how many hours she thinks about her main problem, which is this: she thinks she's such an individual and she wants to get over herself but she can't, really, because she can't stand feeling mediocre and in her heart she knows she is not but she never says it out loud; she just posts her frustrations online and says it all in a long-winding sentence that doesn't know when to stop; it only knows that the word because has been used in it approximately five times and she begs you to contest that; she wants to know if there are really more because that's all she really wants: more.

2008-07-05T22:55:00.004+08:00

Guilty - Yann Tiersen

Is it a sin,
Is it a crime
Loving you dear like I do?
If it's a crime than I'm guilty
Guilty of loving you.

Maybe I'm wrong, dreaming of you
Dreaming the lonely night through.
If it's a crime then I'm guilty
Guilty of dreaming of you.

What can I do
What can I say
After I take on the blame?
You say you're through
You'll go your way but I'll always feel just the same.

Maybe I'm right
Maybe I'm wrong
Loving you dear like I do.
If that's a crime than I'm guilty
Guilty of loving you.

2008-07-05T22:36:00.004+08:00

I like for you to be still-Pablo Neruda; Read by Glenn Close for Il Postino (The Postman)

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.

As all things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Melancholy.

I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.

And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it's not true.

2008-07-05T22:28:00.001+08:00

When one uses another's words in wooing a lover, does it count?

2008-07-05T11:21:00.007+08:00

When the whistling part comes on, listen carefully. That's Dave Eggers right there.

Little Tornado - Aimee Mann

Little Tornado
Aimee Mann (and who would have thought it, Dave Eggers, too.)

Little tornado
Bane of the trailer park
Lifting houses to leave your mark.

Little tornado
Noah can build his ark
But he will never disembark

Make it go faster,
Baby go faster,
Make it go twice the speed of you and me.

Little tornado
You and the hurricane
Close your eyes and go campaign

Make it go faster,
Baby go faster,
Make it go twice the speed of you and me.

Oh no, no we don't
No, we don't know.

Little tornado blew out the window pane
Left the inside to the rain.

Make it go faster,
Baby go faster,
Make it go twice the speed of you and me.

2008-07-05T09:20:00.009+08:00

When you reach a certain age, you'd recognize the effort that you exert in remembering things. It was yesterday, yes it was, when you were telling a group of friends a story that your mom told you four years ago. Now you strain to recall what it was, careful in separating what you remember from what truly happened.

The day when fiction becomes fact is the same day when you'd feel the slow waning of the years, the soft solitary footsteps of their leaving.

Here are some things I remember:

1. my aunt says I was 2 years old when I said my first English word. the English word was dead.

2. the smell of sampaguitas after we've mixed them to make bubbles

3. a strip of sunshine landing on my uncle's face some random afternoon

4. mothballs in my father's closet

5. old and rusty gold-rimmed glasses on a bedside table

6. cold green bathroom tiles

7. a storybook that I wrote for myself about two girls who went around the world and never came back. the illustrations were horrendous.

8. peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a red lunchbox and a thermos of hot milo

9. a boy named george who made faces at me during recess.

10. my 1st grade uniform: moss green skirt and a cream polo with moss green piping.

11. a small blackboard with the alphabet written on it backwards

12. two wooden doll's houses, one smaller than the other. both had two floors. the bigger one was better furnished because it had more rooms.

13. Ura, an old crazy lady who walked around the city with big plastic bags tied to her skirt and a purple bandana around her head.

14. the taste of Tita Magdalena's mechado.

15. the lilting way my mother pronounces English words

16. my mother facing her vanity mirror, looking blankly at her face

17. how steady my mother's hand was while she clutched my arm when i was almost taken by a sipay(rumored pirates who kidnapped children in the early 80's. possibly an urban legend but someone did try to take me.).

18. a yellow box with a golden lock, a memory of folly and forgiveness attached to it.

19. my mother's maimed middle finger

20. the smell of a Perry Ellis perfume wafting in rooms my mother has occupied

21. Frank Sinatra singing on a Sunday.

22. soft, sweet pilipits (squash sweets)

23. combing my father's hair

24. the unsolved mystery of the broken vase

25. secretly unlocking my brother's room whenever he's punished for something

26. my grandmother's spaghetti

27. Ate Glenda's laughter when she was very young

28. someone throwing a fit over paper doll cutouts

29. Max's fried chicken after Sunday Mass. they don't make 'em like they did anymore.

30. selling stationery, P1.00 a piece for the small, square ones and P1.50 for the page-length ones that smell good.

31. eating Serge chocolates while lying on new sheets, reading a book.

32. the smell of new books

33. a pack of Bazooka bubble gum, the comic strip wrappers

34. Santa Claus and my last memorable Christmas

35. reunions at Lolo Ramon's boat-shaped house in Antipolo

36. the heat from stage lights

37. Cyril Maano

38. my mother's shame at something I told our relatives about over dinner

39. Perfect Strangers and the sound my father's rickety rocking chair made during commercial breaks

40.going to school without taking a bath

41. a red dress and a sailor hat

42. smoke from cigars; a group of men wearing fedoras

43. my father's shiny Knights of Columbus sword

44. laughing with Anthony over Pugad Baboy comic books

45. the gift of a small lab set

46. scores erased from a pink examination notebook

47. tricking our family driver into buying me Scramble after school lets out

48. balled up handwritten letters thrown from school buses

49. my Jeffrey fixation: Jeffrey Gaggalang (1st Grade), Jeffrey Sarmiento (2nd Grade), Mark Jeffrey Querubin (6th grade), Jeffrey-no-last-name, a waiter from a pizza store, Jeffrey Tam (2nd yr. highschool)

50. Sam, then Theresa

51. brown suspenders hanging from a coat rack

52. a perfect, blue sky from my bedroom window

53. playing hooky

54. a spelling bee; the word chaos

55. Felix the Cat and an early farewell to innocence

56. Stephanie's mom's Fusilli dish

57. Kuya Boy singing Besame Mucho in the dark

58. My father's voice; my father's stories

2008-07-05T08:59:00.004+08:00

Just recently discovered McSweeney's. It has done my dyslexic heart a world of good.

Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite McSweeney stories:

PROUST DISCOVERS

LIVEJOURNAL
BY SUMMER BLOCK KUMAR

I spent the morning in bed, my sleep so heavy as to obliterate utterly my consciousness, like a man who falls asleep on a fast-moving train, letting a well-worn novel slip from his hands and onto his lap, and whose dreaming head remains throughout his long journey through quaint country towns wreathed with memory; countless hours pass and the sleeper stays motionless, his interior vision turned away from the markers of civilization outside his window and inclined instead toward his interior existence, like another man, who, tormented by the practice of a hidden vice that alienates him from his fellow man, seeks sympathy in the forgiving eyes of simple beasts, and the first man awakes with a jolt to find his head has slipped onto a stranger's shoulder and he is drooling.

I've been spending a lot of time in this room lately; I should do some redecorating. I've heard good things about cork.

Location: My room

Mood: Pensive

Music: The whistle of a country train muffled by a passenger's gentle weeping

Tags: memory, trains

- - - -

I spent the morning sleeping again; in the space between dreaming and waking, I found myself wandering in the distant country of memory and recalled again a succession of the comfortable bedrooms of my youth, where I would recline, weeping, on a counterpane embroidered with nodding daffodils and wait for my mother to come up with a plate of toaster pastries; then I shifted in my sleep in response to the remonstrance of an aching joint; the nature of my rest changed and, instead of my lovely mother, I saw the patterned wallpapers of the different darkened rooms where I had played as a child, and I awoke two hours later disoriented, like a young man who falls asleep at a failing seaside resort and wakes to find the sun has set and the tide gone out, all the hotel's many windows have grown dark, and someone has stolen his beach umbrella.

Today's Amazon recommendations include someone named Joyce. I should look into that.

Location: My room

Mood: Contemplative

Music: Dashboard Confessional

Tags: memory, weeping, Mother

Read the rest here.

Do, do check it out.

2008-07-02T19:20:00.007+08:00

In the movie Loser, there is a scene where Mena Suvari takes Jason Biggs to a Lost and Found Station to get him a new hat because the hat he had on was really ugly. That scene left an impression on me, honestly. I mean, before that day, I never knew that it was possible to get anything absolutely for free anywhere. It's so simple it's ridiculous!

So this morning, when the facilities manager sent an email to the entire site regarding the company's lost and found stuff, I was beside myself with joy. It's high time I did some indirect stealing.

Here are some of my top choices:

1 Shade

Pond Facial Watch Silver

1 Red Hunky

1 Unbrella

Biader Paper

2pcs Head Set and Carle

106 Pcs Unbrella

Medical Polyclinic Diagnostic

Wallet or Coin Porse

Blue Ponch

Mod Station

Rhaki Jacket

Ooooohhhh... nobody told me it would be this tough. Everything sounds so wrong, they're right! Can someone help me out purty please?

we will always have paris

2008-07-01T22:46:00.013+08:00

Vienna - Billy Joel

I used to think that the act of walking away from something was a sure sign of cowardice. Not enough love, I said, if love were the main factor. Not enough interest, I said, if the situation pertained to a job or career choices. All those final scenes in movies showing lone women boarding planes, walking away with other men, their images fading out or cut short -- these were women whom I immediately tagged as weak and unworthy of another chapter.

Tonight, while watching one such movie, I realized that it takes gumption to walk from Point A, a decidedly familiar and cozy place, to reach Point B, which is strange and cold and wrought with projected fears.

The trouble with movies is, no one ever sees the main characters after they board their departing trains; we haven't a clue whether they are happy or sad about the choices they've made or whether they will eventually return to the exact spot they've left. We are merely observers; we are not allowed to go any further.

A genius once wrote this famous line: We'll always have Paris. Meaning the movie continues in everyone's minds. It has to because intelligent movies do that. They make us realize that life allows us to devise our own repectable endings.

Here's an admission: many a time, I've prayed for enough courage to leave some things behind. Most cannot be named here. Baggage weighs you down after a while; harbors become prison fixtures, reminders that there is no such thing as a turning point where you are. So tonight, I'd like to say that I respect you for finding a nameable truth in your heart and you were faithful to this truth, despite everyone and everything that may have blocked your path. I still believe that it takes a lot for someone to stay. But you risk everything you are in leaving, one foot after another, out of a story you once knew by heart.

2008-07-01T20:49:00.005+08:00

Goodnight My Someone - Music Man

"Oh, my dear little librarian. You pile up enough tomorrows and you'll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays. I don't know about you, but I'd like to make today worth remembering."

2008-06-30T23:23:00.007+08:00

The words engaged and committed have always bothered me. I always felt the restriction in each, an almost tangible pull of a force coming from someplace else. When a person says he or she's engaged, I have this distinct need to ask, In what, exactly? And if someone says, he or she is committed to someone, my mind immediately summons an image of an asylum building -- cold, impersonal, prison-like.

I don't think of myself as engaged or committed. I refuse to. What I am is loved. And because the word I used is as flimsy, as ordinary, as common as, let's say, the word toast, there is always the possibility of ties being broken, one lost then forgotten. But I'd rather have that than feel hedged in. I'd rather feel free with someone than be bound by words that are limiting: a noose around the neck.

2008-06-30T20:58:00.005+08:00

Hey, I never said I was a mind reader but I know you don't like me. I'm fine with that. Whenever I'm in a group, you look at all the other people and you skip me altogether. I'm fine with that. Whenever you take extra pains to not cross the paths I frequent, I'm fine with that, too. I guess after all those loser-ly years, now's your chance to make someone else feel invisible.

2008-06-30T20:44:00.005+08:00

I've got a headache because it's Monday. Monday's not such a good day for most of the working class. I used to have this Oh-God-I-Am-So-Very-Different-From-You phase and decided that Monday would be my very favoritest day. Didn't work.

Some days, it's okay, really. But there are days when the fact that I'm trying my utmost to ignore hits me: I don't like what I'm doing. I'm not fit for what I'm doing. I should be grateful to the people who've put me here. Somehow , I am not.

2008-06-28T09:45:00.008+08:00

From a drinking spree that started on Saturday with my light o'love, a stormy night among new-found friends, going to and from work with P, Manong's and the difference between imagination and experience, heated discussions between wrong and right and laughing at the futility of such talk, waiting for 5pm to hit (already?), sudden smiles and the innocuousness of life, someone forgetting all about me ( which was a definite blow to my ego), someone forgetting about cats that purr and hiss -- my week was everything but uneventful. Thank you for making me realize that.

2008-06-28T09:16:00.005+08:00

Isn't it atrocious, how people can get away with certain things? And what's even more fantastic is that we let them.

A good example is stated in Benjamin Pimentel's article on the recent White House dinner conversation between President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and George W. Bush.

I've read some comments in previous blogs about this but there's one that really struck a chord.

An excerpt from Ninotchka Rosca's entry, Bushwacking Gloria:

Because the Philippine government refuses to recognize and rely on the indomitable character of the people it purportedly governs and represents, because the Philippine government continues to be led by suck-ups, all who are of Philippine ancestry become vulnerable to ethnic stereotyping, public humiliation and the disgrace of being perpetual beggars even as the Philippines gives away all of its resources -- from human to natural. Sad, just too sad.

Here's the entire post.

2008-06-26T19:16:00.000+08:00

I like comfort food. But I like comfort songs better.

What are comfort songs, you say? Well, these are songs I listen to whenever I find myself in really rotten and heavy and confusing situations. I'm not saying that listening to these songs help things along. They don't, really. But it's nice to feel grounded and safe, even for just a few minutes. Or an entire hour, if I have the time to just lie down and listen to them all.

Here are some of my comfort songs, all of which are currently in my MP3 player:

Caramel -- Suzanne Vega
Vienna -- Billy Joel
Stuck In the Middle With You and I Want You -- Bob Dylan
Cryin' and Crazy -- Aerosmith
This Year's Love -- David Gray
That's the Way -- Led Zeppelin
She Talks to Angels -- Black Crowes
To You I Bestow -- Mundy
Forget Myself -- Elbow
Everlong -- Foo Fighters
Real Love and Do You Want To Know A Secret -- Beatles
The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get and Tomorrow-- Morrissey
There's a Light And It Never Goes Out -- The Smiths
Hey and Here Comes Your Man -- Pixies
To Be With You -- Mr. Big
Perfect Drug -- Nine Inch Nails
Sour Girl -- STP
Patience -- Guns 'N Roses
Like a Friend -- Pulp
Beast of Burden -- Rolling Stones
Crazy Love -- Van Morrison
Sixth Avenue Heartache -- Wallflowers
Such Great Heights -- The Postal Service
Something Beautiful -- Tracy Bonham
Ghost and/or Mystery -- Indigo Girls
Strange Little Girl -- Tori Amos

After all of this, I listen to Ramones songs. Now THAT makes me happy. But that's another list altogether.

2008-06-23T20:38:00.000+08:00

In between thinking about dear dead George and the lyrics of a Kooks song, I was struck with an epiphany. I realized that I am grateful for you. Really, I am. In many ways, however indirectly, (and I'm sure this is not the effect that you have initially intended to have on us) you have helped us grow stronger together, more firm in resolutions made in light of new wisdoms. Thank you for forcing me to see h0w important it is to remain standing on tiptoe, for making me understand concepts that I refused to acknowledge, for letting me realize that other people are capable of intricate and contradictory feelings. Thank you for reminding me everyday about the futility of love and how essential this quality is to someone who loves. I am happier now, I suppose. But I still keep tabs; there are still days when I wish nothing but the worst for you. In your photos, you seem happy. Two years ago, this would have irked me no end. But it doesn't bother me as much now. I no longer see your existence as an affliction that needs to be remedied.

This slow process of forgiving makes me feel good.

2008-06-23T20:26:00.000+08:00

My main man George has gone to see his Joe Pesci.

MSN.com says that it was heart failure that did him in.

I find it hilarious and dazzlingly ironic, the fact that he died on a Sunday. If you've watched one of his acts before, you'd know what I'm talking about.

Woe, woe to the laughing world.

what would you do if i sang out of tune?

2008-06-21T10:10:00.000+08:00

Music blog!

2008-06-09T10:46:00.000+08:00

I've been busy deleting my Vox account (finally). All my poems, from late 2006-2008 are here.

Check them out if you want to. Toodles.

2008-06-09T08:29:00.000+08:00

Hi. As you can see, I've changed my Blogger Template yet again. I guess it's an understatement when you say I get bored easily. Anyway, I'm not ready to edit the links section yet, since I may still change this template this week. Harhar.

Did I really have to explain all that?

2008-06-08T09:39:00.000+08:00

Who the flying Jesus is Big Burt?

Do you know?

2008-06-08T06:34:00.000+08:00

Do I still fit? Do you?

So many things that I have learned from your faces in a span of an hour. There is evidence of wear and tear, love lost and then found in no man's arms but in a child's wet kiss. Minutes when I had to bury my face in my hands, wondering where you are now, asking the perpetual how has life been treating you? question.

Once. I laughed out loud because of your rendition of how to hold a chicken. Then I stop because I remember that everyone in this house is still asleep.

I see you sitting on a beach with friends whom I do not know. It would've been a nice picture, if it weren't for that exasperating pose: your backs turned to the camera, a hint of a smile on someone's face accidentally turning sideways. Explain to me why, in 500 words or less, it is fashionable to have your picture taken on a beach in such a manner. Are you ashamed of how you would look under the mad dashes of light? How it can expose the years, all stretched and yawning on your once bright face?

Many of you have children now. I find that astounding, the way I'd find a school of yellow fish walking on the street using their small, flippery tails astounding.

I am not ready to have children. I fear that I will not make a good mother because I am too tolerant, too liberal. I do not know which is greater: my fear of not having any or actually having some (or one).

But you, you've all done it. Wows all around.

Two years ago, we were eating ice cream. I was sitting on the sidewalk and you were standing up and yapping about some fight you had with your boyfriend. I hope you remember that afternoon. I hope that last year, in the middle of that Jollibee party, you remembered me. I am imagining you telling your husband, I wish she were here. And he would instantly know who it was you were talking about.

Mirth is what I feel, knowing that your tongue is still as sharp as it ever was. You tag a picture: My Husband the Pig. I hope you are speaking metaphorically and with a lot of humor. Else, I shall worry.

I recognize now that we could have been good friends. It surprises me, how many books you've read that I have also. We listen to the same type of music. I'm sorry that you had a bitch of a friend who kept us apart. I see that the wicked witch has built a thicket around your heart. I'm sorry about that senseless fight we had. I don't even remember what it was about. You've grown so interesting over the years. When you wear that kind of shirt, your breasts stand out, like ripe plums. Pardon the French. (I am half in love with you. Sue the establishment.)

How would you like me to remember you by, I asked you then. You said, I want you to remember the way we sat singing in the park some random afternoon.

Forgive me, I've grown into a grandma overnight. Your kid looks very healthy, as if you've manually packed him with all nutrients known to man. His cheeks have a slight shimmer to them, as if someone smeared Vasoline on his face. If my Vaseline-theory were true, I know that it would not have been your doing. You're humorous in a different, lazy kind of way.

Here's a secret: I remember most of all that first day. You were reading a newspaper on top of a flight of stairs leading to the Animal Science Department. I assumed you were a freshman; I asked you, Where is History I? And you said, Here, gesturing at the empty space beside you.

This is not all. This is not all.

I'm happy you already have someone. You deserve my exact opposite.

When I was in college, I found you very pretty. Your haircut does nothing for your doe eyes. In pictures, you look like that dancer, the one who writes all that trumped up poetry and never really dances anymore, no, never.

These spaces are ones you've put out yourself. Have a good life.

One of your captions read: Smile! Mi Amore! Your happiness is the swooning kind, which is forgiveable, really, since you are in the city of love.

Remember the salads your mother used to make us? Where is she now?

You left my brother for him? Yergh.

This is so you:

"someone, simply. someone worth meeting the first time, so we could look forward to doing so again."

It's morning. The dawn is nothing new; let's not overdo descriptions about it. It is simply what it is: a play of light, a good time to remember.

(Yes, I won't be deleting my old account anymore. I have to confess that I've been holding on to it for the longest time because I met you through it. We are an online romance! We are a cliche! Friendster is fiendish. Amen.)

2008-06-06T21:40:00.000+08:00

Today is April 20, 2005. I am waiting in a mall. It is a Saturday, there're a lot of people milling about. I am fidgety, as if this is the first time I'll be doing this.

This is the first time that I'll be doing this.

You are not here yet and I am waiting by the bookstore. I decide to go to the restroom to freshen up. I hope you won't arrive yet, I need some minutes to myself. I reach the restroom and check how I look in the mirror. There are circles and fine, thin lines around my eyes. My mother just died five days ago. I am unsure about how I look.

I shouldn't have worn this black top. It drains the color from my face. Now, I look pale and my cleavage is showing. I wore it exactly for that purpose but now, I am not so sure about my decision. (decisions.)

I remember asking someone restroom directions. I realize that I need someone to guide me to places.

I enter the bookstore only because you say that you're coming, that you're almost here. I imagine that I could smell you in this place. This is true. In the insanity of these passing minutes, I pretend that I know what scent you wear. When you asked where we'd be meeting, I said The Fiction Section, please. I thought I was being smart, that there was something decidedly poetic about strangers meeting in a section where only the surreal survive.

Someone in the Fiction Section knows me. He was a college classmate of mine. He speaks to me as if we are intimate friends. It always strikes me as funny how people who are on nodding terms get chummy when they meet in strange and new places. I try to look out for you but I don't know exactly what kind of face I am looking for.

Then you appear. The details blur into each other. I remember coming home for the first time.

*******

It is September 20, 2005. I am breaking up with you. I had one beer too many and other drinks besides. I have plans to go to Singapore. I am sitting on the mattress when I open the topic. You came in and out of the room afterwards, occasionally texting some anonymous person and smiling.

I think it's going to end tonight. That was fast, I whisper to myself. But who expected it to last, really?

Tomorrow, I have an interview downtown. I have to sleep, have to get some rest.

*******

Today is September 21, 2005. I am on a bus. I am going back to my real home. I look out the window; I can't stand this sudden space. I leap out of the bus like a woman who stars in a romantic movie would. The bottom line of everything is romance and how much you can squeeze out of it. This is what I really believe.

It only takes me thirty minutes to get here. I wait for you. You make me wait for you. I sit silently, disbelieving this, how I can't stand to be alone even for a day.

*******

Today is November 14, 2005. I look her up, research stuff about her with the same detached feeling that I used to exert in dissecting frogs for Biology class. I ask my officemate to walk me to the terminal because my legs feel wobbly. Truth is, I feel like collapsing.

When my officemate is gone and I am safely inside the rental van, I cry slow, silent tears. Once, I sobbed out loud. I hope the driver didn't hear me.

*******

It is April 2006. I give a quick glance at the room that I'll be sharing indefinitely with my officemate. This is her family's house. I get the top bunk. I strongly suspect this is because I am not a real part of the family. My officemate and her sister shares the bottom bunk.

I eat with her Chinese/ Japanese family. Her mother gives me an orange bathing suit. She hands it to me after our first meal. I accept it, I am at a loss for words. I am at a loss, period.

*******

It is May 2006. We meet at another mall. We were supposed to watch a movie but decided to veto it at the last minute.

We take a jeepney ride home. You've curled your hair a month ago and now it looks unmanageable, is being blown raucously by the wind. It is a windy day. Your hand has reached out, has cupped mine. The lady sitting across us dismisses us, as if we are long-time lovers, something she's already seen before.

*******

It is October 2006. I've brought you fruit and am staying the night. Almost everyone is here. They are visiting you. Your platelet count has gone down the day before and everyone wants to see you, to know how you are. I like acting as hostess; I do it seldom.

By 10pm, everyone has vacated the area. Only I am left and your cousin, who also got inflicted with Dengue. His mother is accompanying him at the other area; we assume that they are sleeping. I am sitting on a small stool. You look at me and say, You are my hero. You feel a bit emotional because a lot of people dropped by today. I smile softly and do not look at you. It is nothing, I say. Don't mention it, it is nothing.

*******

It is May 7, 2007. It is my birthday and we are on our way home. You aren't in the van; we dropped you off somewhere because you had to go to work. I feel down and am not talking much. Besides, I am nursing a hangover. The hotel was beautiful. I wish I were rich enough to be able to spend every summer there.

I arrive home and take a nap. I wake up after some time, I hear you come in the room. You sigh and seem tired. Turns out that your student wasn't at school. You seem so heavy, like a lot of weight is on your shoulders. You hug me half-heartedly. I have a present for you, you say, handing me a plastic bag. In it is a book. It is a book of short stories by an author I do not know. I stare at it, trying to find some meaning in it. Sadly, it had none.

*******

Today is October 16, 2007. I am looking for scissors to cut out the tags from the clothes I just bought. I have draped them all over the mattress. I know that I shouldn't but I look in your drawers. I know that I shouldn't but here it is, something else. Not what I was looking for.

*******

Today is May 7, 2008. It is my birthday. You are home; you kiss me and tell me you love me. I believe you.

******

Today is June 6, 2008. I am trying to remember everything. I won't pretend that I've always understood you. I have to admit that there are some days when I don't even try.

I do not know how you'll react when you read this. I don't think I'll ever know, since you never seem to visit this site, anyway. Which is not a bad thing, really. Odd, but not something that can be completely categorized as bad.

I want to relive you and these years. I want to feel like someone who has reached the top of a mountain and say Hah! I've come this far. There's no turning back, not now. I realize that there are a lot of parts that I've left out, parts when, if relayed, may give a fairer depiction of our circumstances. Forgive the rags of my memory; they can only absorb what has been understood.

Remembering is good. Remembering makes me realize how much I have changed. How much we'll continue changing in the coming years. Here is something true: I am not less afraid now. I am not stronger. There are even days when I wish that our relationship consisted wholly of days reliving that first day, the day we met. Imagine, twenty-six months of going to the mall, meeting in the Fiction Section, then coming home. There are many things that I still feel ambivalent toward, many questions that I do not ask. I want to say, I need to touch you. But I do not. I don't know why.

2008-06-06T21:02:00.000+08:00

Both of them tell me that it's important for me to keep a journal. Not the moleskin ones because that would be too expensive for someone with as tight a budget as I have. Both of them have said, at separate times, of course, that it would be better if I kept one of those small ones that can fit easily in the tiny purses I carry. That way, whenever an idea pops up, I would be able to reach in any inane purse I was carrying and speedily jot down what I've thought of, else, it will be lost. One of them said it is possible for these thoughts, these magical phrases to be lost forever.

I've been home for almost a week now and have experienced those rarities flittering in and out, as if they were guests that were too busy. I took too much of their delightful time. There was one moment yesterday afternoon when I thought up a fabulous beginning for an insanely romantic story about a woman with long hair, coming in from the rain. I find the occurence of rain romantic. Once, I imagined a whole stanza for a song. There were, of course, the lilting voices of phrases, keen on maintaining the distance between me and the rest of the text that I was supposed to make them fit in.

People like me --- people who don't keep notebooks within reach, who easily forget the occasional key in certain locks, who neglect turning out the lights --- have it easy. We say, Oh, I've forgotten, when the truth of it is we're believers in the temporariness of things. Seeing a part of some vast and incomprehensible whole doesn't mean that you'll understand eventually. Being the sole witness to a singularly spectacular phrase doesn't mean that it is yours to write about. People like me do not get to own anything or anyone and in return, we flounder; we go through life mostly by ourselves. What we want are witnesses, like the two people I mentioned earlier, companions who will remind me what the essentials are, what things should be accomplished today. I always maintain that each day is vastly different from the day before it. I'm talking Mars and Bigfoot. I'm talking eggs and rainbows. The morning light goes loom and you're different from who you were at 11:59pm.

Everything is so extraordinarily transient. Don't you see? Tomorrow, I can say that I've decided to be a tiger. And that's what I'll be for the day. I'll prowl and hunt and roll around under the sun. I'll talk with my fellow tigers with short but persuasive growls. Then tomorrow, it'll all be different. Tomorrow, I'll be a vase. Then you can put daffodils in me. You can water the daffodils, even put some plant vitamins with it. It's always easier to imagine that you can be something completely different, that simple things like daffodils, water, and vitamins are all you're really allowed to contain.

2008-06-03T10:40:00.000+08:00

If This Were Not Love
by Sid Gomez Hildawa

If this were not love,
I wouldn’t kiss you.
My head would turn
the instant your head
would rise to meet
mine, allowing
our cheeks to console
each other as I distract
you with a tight
embrace. My fingers
would comb your hair
the way mangrove
roots sift through mud
to anchor at the swampy
edge of the bay, extending
the land but not
sailing away. My legs
would entwine around
your legs, with my feet
locked on to yours, as though
we were one immortal
creature with many arms
and many legs, but with many
hearts as well. And my body
will rub against your
body, like millstone
to the mill, skin
on smooth skin, grinding
watered grains
into milk, but only
for spilling.

I wouldn’t kiss you
If this were not love.

the truest excerpt in the world

2008-06-03T10:15:00.000+08:00

We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy.

But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years.

But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable.

You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real--but you create the context. And the context is everything.

The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.

From Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live.

coming home: parts and pieces 2

2008-06-03T09:19:00.001+08:00

Woe is me. I am at home, nursing a sprained ankle. This is the product of a gloriously intelligent decision that I made sometime between 11:35 and 12:01 a.m. last Sunday, the details of which I won't be discussing here or anywhere for that matter. I spent the whole Sunday prostrate in bed, with nothing else to do but read. Okay, so I won't be a hypocrite and pretend that I was very miserable. This is the only time that I've managed to succesfully finish a book in months. Oh, and I watched Unfaithful again, which is something that I've wanted to do for the loooongest time. I want to stress out that it is definitely not the right movie to watch when your right foot hurts like hell.

My brother was so sweet. He went out to attend band practice Sunday afternoon but came home immediately afterwards. He wore such a concerned look in his face that I had to ask him, ever so wryly, So who died? And in the middle of dinner while we were watching a supposedly funny sitcom, I cried all over my hotdog sandwich. He had to listen while I ranted on uselessly about how I shouldn't have done this or that, how I should've been in Laguna by that time, how I may never walk again because my foot hurt so badly. He must've been pretty shaken because he texted all the nurses he knew (he was once a nursing student) and asked about my plight. No, they replied, it couldn't be broken because she can still move it a bit. No, it's not something to worry about but it's best to have it X-rayed.

Monday, I couldn't come to work. It still hurt badly but I could move it a bit. Bro took me to the station and refused to leave and he probably hadn't had I not threatened him that I would not be giving him any allowance if he fails to enroll this semester. So he finally went to school and I was left in the station with Kurt Vonnegut and his dud of a book.

Inspite of the nerve-wracking transpo shifts, I arrived at Laguna in one piece. My boy showed off his new tatts which were very nice but I don't care much for stars because they remind me of something hateful and sad. Since we didn't see each other for a week, we talked about everything that happened during the week that we could remember. One of the nicest things about being with someone sensible (him, not me) is that you never seem to run out of things to talk about.

Today, we're off to the clinic. I opted to come home because if I have it X-rayed and checked here, I wouldn't have any over-the-top expenses. Two words: company benefits.

I am still a bit scared but I can walk using the foot now. It doesn't hurt so much but still and all, it pays to be cautious.

coming home: parts and pieces

2008-06-03T07:47:00.000+08:00

It has hard to describe the slowness that I felt, waking up to watch the rays of light coming in from the large French windows. I stretch my arms and realize that it's Sunday and there is nothing to do. It is Sunday and there's nothing to do. One can be smug about such a simple pleasure.

I slept on my aunt's couch, which is blue and long and roomy. It is a big couch. I easily fall in love with big couches. I once told someone that my house would consist only of couches of different sizes and colors. No ratty chairs, no beds. Just couches. But the biggest and softest couch of all would sit in my room. It would be done up in teal so that when friends come over and they say, Oh what a beautiful couch and such a lovely color! I'd say, It's teal. I've always wanted to use that word in a regular conversation, as if by inserting it, it would make the sentence better and more meaningful.

I refused to leave my warm couch and let my mind fill up with lovely, serene thoughts. I remember thinking about how happy I was with my life in general. Nothing is outwardly wrong and everyone I love is healthy. It's good to wake up this way. It is very rare for me to have time to think about things in this manner because most of the time, I scamper out of bed, almost always rushing to take a shower and then head on to more socially meaningful things.

I see a man pass me by. He does not spare me a glance. He is wearing a brown tophat; the rest of his outfit is nondescript. He is smoking a cigar at 7:30 in the morning. This is an action that does not surprise me. My father's friends smoked cigars non-stop, so it didn't matter whether it was morning or night.

The man I am talking about is one of my cousin's old school friends and the couch I have spent the night in is in my aunt's house in Lucban, Quezon. The last time I spent the night here was when I was 10 years old. I remember that I slept over in order to bond with my cousins from Saudi Arabia, all of whom I haven't seen since they were toddlers. Back then, Saudi Arabia was just a piece of paper in the grand design which my 4th Grade teacher called a map. It was yellow and not as big as Australia. I ended my visit earlier than I had intended because my cousin, the eldest and the most Arabian-looking, cornered me in one of the rooms upstairs and asked me to lift my shirt up. I, of course, refused and was shaken. It took me 16 years to come back and this time, I made sure that they weren't there.

Another man passed by, sans cigar. I have already been awake for 30 minutes. I hear voices in the kitchen, men's voices which were gruff and loud. They are talking about stocks and bonds, horse races and the latest car models. I recognize their voices, they are my cousin's childhood friends. But I cannot see them because of the thick, white curtain that separates the living room from the dining area. So I imagine that they are all just mouths, talking and masticating. I imagine that they are the most interesting mouths in the world and people pay to see them talk about stocks and bonds, horse races, and the latest car models.

I stare at the white cat which has situated itself on a stool. It looks uncomfortable. Poor cat, I think, I've robbed you of your throne and you're too polite to tell me off. I proceeded with my morning rituals then headed off to look for my aunt.

My aunt is my father's sister who never married. I believe I've talked about her in one of my previous blogs, but never at length. She is 93 years old and can still chat up a storm. My father once told me a story about why she never married. The man she loved was about to propose one night. He decided that it would be clever to start with a harana (a love song) so he sang loudly and confidently under Tita Nena's window. What he didn't know was that Lola was sick and could not stand noise of any kind (at this point, my father always used to snidely say that the man wasn't what you can call a singer so his voice registered as a caterwaul). So what Lolo did was, he filled a pail with urine and water and poured everything on the man's poor head. The suitor never came back.

I wonder sometimes if she thinks about him, if she tries playing it over and over again in her mind how dreadfully humiliated he possibly looked like at that moment when Lolo dumped the contents of the pail on him. Or maybe, she imagined other, better things about him.

My cousin noticed that I left my makeshift bed and told me to go to the dining room. He and his friends are having breakfast. Today breakfast consists of batchoy and brown puto and an assortment of fruits. I sat with them and ate while deliberately trying to look attentive and interested. I volunteer information regarding what they're talking about and am careful in phrasing questions. My father always stressed the importance of being able to conduct oneself properly and intelligently within groups. He refused to see me looking meek and shy, like someone who doesn't have much to say. He used to tell me that the mark of an intelligent woman is how confident she appears in a group of men. That eventually, if she's witty enough and knows enough, they won't think of her as a separate entity, rather as a pleasant and remarkable addition. This is why I believe that I've always been more at ease in the company of men. I feel it requires less superficial effort from me, but more brainwork.

After breakfast, I go back to the living room and sit beside my aunt. She is watching the telly. We talk about a myriad of things -- past and present situations, what's what and who's who in which person's life. We talk about sad things and fall into quiet reminiscence afterwards. She is clutching my hand all the while, as if I were a bubble that has no other fate but to vanish in thin air. I feel so much affection from her, and belief. I wonder sometimes if a person deserves that much love. But then I realize that no one actually deserves love. When it is given, all that can be done is to be grateful for it.

*an excerpt from my journal, dated June 1, 2008

...

2008-06-03T07:46:00.001+08:00

I would have loved to be man. Just so I could fall in love with a woman in a red dress, playing the violin.

so you say you're tired of being elitist?

2008-05-29T22:55:00.002+08:00

If you're really someone who cares about what other people read but you're not in a position to teach literature because you didn't graduate from an EngLit course or anything remotely connected to Lit; if you're someone who gets affected when people disregard the importance of literary canon; if you simply consider yourself a writer or a reader, then by the name of the Lord H Christ, you've got to do something about it. Let's just stop all these discussions for a while and think about what can possibly be done to improve the situation we are all in. Think!

I have a plan but it's not a remarkable one. It's something that starts small and I'm sure that it's not anything that's new. If some people can get wind of it and do it, they are bound to get results.

I was actually inspired by my supervisor, who was never a reader. But when I shared my insights about certain books with her then eventually lent her some books, she became interested in them. Now she picks out books all on her own. She's now trying out Alcott and Bronte, I think. And these are authors who I started out with when I first got hooked with anything lit.

So my Anything Lit Project is for people who're tired of talking and want, instead, to act on the things they say. I repeat, this is nothing grandiose. I'm sorry, but I can't wait for someone to start something grandiose.

So here are the steps for my Anything Lit Project:

1. Think of someone who isn't a reader. This person can be someone you work with or someone whom you know. But, this should be a person whom you have established a relationship with so that you know that that person already trusts you about certain important things.

2. Share stories about concepts you've read that s/he may be able to relate to. You have to be subtle and you have to muster a lot of enthusiasm about what you're trying to relay to him/her. Try not to sound like a dork or an Avon lady. Maintaining someone's interest is very tricky so don't scare the person off.

3. When you see that s/he is interested enough, you can volunteer to lend the person a book. Don't push it if the person feels that s/he doesn't have the time or is not ready yet. The last thing that you want to do is drive the non-reader away.

4. Scrutinize the books that you have in your collection. Try to make an objective analysis of each. Think of what type of book that person will appreciate reading based on the things you've talked about. Bring it along with you during times when you know you'll see the person. Then if the person asks about it, lend it to him or her.

5. If the person has shown appreciation for the book (s/he should if you've made the correct book choice), encourage him/ her to read another. Pick books that s/he might be interested in but increase the difficulty level for comprehension and, well, aesthetic qualities.

This works, trust me. It's exactly what my mother did with me and what I've tried to do with my friends. Most of my friends have read books that I've been reading. The downside of this though is, of course, if they show you the door at the onset or after the first book has been lent. Or, s/he could stop reading once you stop seeing each other. But at least you've tried. Devising ways to help others overcome ignorance is always better than trying to contest it.

2008-05-29T22:49:00.000+08:00

Go easy on me. I'm still learning (ever so slowly) not to be scared.

2008-05-29T21:32:00.000+08:00

Over lunch, M and I talked about the woman whom I interviewed. I told M about the bruises I saw on the woman's arms and the matter-of-fact way she showed them to me during the interview. The woman said that her husband, who came home drunk last night, hit her. She was applying for the job because she felt that this was a way for him to see that she was useful, too. I just couldn't understand it. Why are some women such a glutton for punishment? And in this day and age when every possible liberty has been afforded us. Why do they let men do this? Is love the only thing we can blame or is it something else; something more legit and comprehensible to the average human being?

M gets remarkably trite when she's eating. She tells me that no one wants to get hurt, that no one's actually asking for it. I tell her that I know that. Then M continues with her spiel on how abuse takes different forms, reminding me of one instance that I would have gladly forgotten. M is particularly adept at illustrating befuddling situations; her trick is to find something about that experience that you can relate to in another, but not so different, level so that you can understand it from where you're coming from.

"Or we can think of it this way, " she says, " that women do all these remarkably insipid things because they want to cope with the life they've chosen. They want to say, Hey, world, I'm okay. The superhumanwoman complex."

"Nah."

"Alright. You might be thinking about the "motherly instinct" phenomenon which I used to buy but I don't anymore because so many people are using it as a sorry excuse. It has become redundant. Anyway, has it ever occured to anyone that women put up with bad men -- not because they think by doing this, they'll be loved more or that eventually she'll be able to turn him into someone decent --but women do it because they're trying their hardest to find out why they still love the person after everything that went on? It's more of nostalgia than love, really. Same goes for people who cheat on their significant others, for people who run after the same person for years. They want to put a finger on the reasons why they still love her or him, why they can't find it in themselves to leave. They think, maybe tomorrow is the day that he will wake up from whatever it is that's ailing him and he'll remember me. You see, they can't miss a single second of the nightmare they're living in. That's because they might regret turning their backs on the person on that very day when everything turns back to normal again. All that we as bystanders can do is sit still and hope that they would realize how tired they've gotten of chasing the ghost of the person who they fell in love with. Because some people don't get it. Some people don't get that people change."

And after this long tirade, she resumes eating her lunch. Today, it's Cesar Salad from Wendy's and a cheese sandwich. I sit beside her and stare at nothing.

2008-05-27T23:31:00.001+08:00

A person who dresses well always catches my attention. When I say well, I could mean a variety of things. I could mean that the person knows how to dress appropriately for most occasions; or that a person has a good idea of what styles work for him/her and are fashionable at the same time; or I could mean that a person dresses neatly, donning shirts or skirts that almost never have any creases on them. Or I can mean all of these at the same time.

I have gone through innumerable days when I absolutely knew that what I was wearing wasn't smart enough, probably was even not color-coordinated or even worse, the less endearing have-seen-better-days style. What I find shameful is the fact that I knew I wasn't going to get any brownie points for being stylish and I didn't do anything about it. Instead, I strolled down the street, wearing my devil-may-care, i'm-not-dictated-by-fashion sneer and that was the only thing I had to show for.

People who are too focused on the way they dress to the point of stupidity and impracticality disgust me. But I don't like not caring, either. Truth of the matter is, we live in a superficial world filled with people who may judge you for how you project yourself to the world. I hate to sound like a total cheesecake but if people see that you don't care about yourself, chances are, they'd pass you by faster than you can say Armani.

The place I work in and the actual nature of the job is a classic example. We are the first people whom applicants see. When we set a foot out that door doth which separates the employed from the job-seekers, the people who see us tend to make these following calculations:

a) how we look compared to the other recruiters from the other companies they've applied at

b) how much our annual salaries are

c) where we shop, or more importantly, where we can afford to shop in

d) will they look like us X years from now

See, it's not just us who's making the judgment call. They are also capable of arriving at their own set of conclusions. Sure, you come off as someone who's very smart. People know that your stats are off the roof. However, if you look like someone's dowdy aunt from god-knows-where, people may start questioning your company's financial capabilities. Will this company pay me as stingily as it seems to be paying her? Naku, wag na lang.

I'm not saying that they'll respect you less. It's just that the package adds to the value. It's good that you give others the benefit of the doubt and think that almost everyone would have the understanding and the intelligence to let you off the fashionable hook that easily. But come on. Stop watching that stupid Tyra Banks show. Looks matter. Looks are important. They aren't everything, that's right. You don't need a college degree to know that. But looks count, in more ways than you can probably ever imagine.

That's why I like checking this site out. It gives me hope for the world.

2008-05-27T23:25:00.000+08:00

The Poems I Have Not Written

I’m so wildly unprolific, the poems
I have not written would reach
from here to the California coast
if you laid them end to end.

And if you stacked them up,
the poems I have not written
would sway like a silent
Tower of Babel, saying nothing

and everything in a thousand
different tongues. So moving, so
filled with and emptied of suffering,
so steeped in the music of a voice

speechless before the truth,
the poems I have not written
would break the hearts of every
woman who’s ever left me,

make them eye their husbands
with a sharp contempt and hate
themselves for turning their backs
on the very source of beauty.

The poems I have not written
would compel all other poets
to ask of God: "Why do you
let me live? I am worthless.

please strike me dead at once,
destroy my works and cleanse
the earth of all my ghastly
imperfections." Trees would

bow their heads before the poems
I have not written. "Take me,"
they would say, "and turn me
into your pages so that I

might live forever as the ground
from which your words arise."
The wind itself, about which
I might have written so eloquently,
praising its slick and intersecting

rivers of air, its stately calms
and furious interrogations,
its flutelike lingerings and passionate
reproofs, would divert its course

to sweep down and then pass over
the poems I have not written,
and the life I have not lived, the life

I’ve failed even to imagine,
which they so perfectly describe.

excerpt

2008-05-27T23:03:00.000+08:00

There remained with her, as she had told him, the uplifting memory of his faith in her; but she had not reached the age when a woman can live on her memories. -- The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

what's your first chapter like?

2008-05-27T22:08:00.000+08:00

My first memory of all time was when they took Anthony, my brother, home. I guess I was around four years old then, all curious eyes and chocolate-tipped hands. I remember that I was standing near the stairway and I saw my thin mother cradling a bundle of something in her hands.

Here's a secret, which is really not a secret because I've already told my brother about it: I don't remember Mommy ever getting pregnant. I mean, I don't remember seeing her walking around the house with a big tummy. But then again, I don't really remember anything that happened before the day they came home with Anthony so my un-memory can't really hold that much weight, right? It's strange, though, how I know that I haven't seen her pregnant. That's why since that year and until I was probably 8 years old, I walked the earth with the assumption that all babies could be purchased in a place which was mysteriously given a very itch-inducing name: Makati.

I repeat, there's nothing that I remember before this incident and all my other memories took place after it. I consider that day my first real day as a human being. That's why my brother has a special significance in my life and I know that I can never completely let him go.

If my life were a book, it would've started there. How about you, where would your book start?

hodgepodge for a hedgehog

2008-05-27T21:05:00.000+08:00

Haven't you heard the news? I'm trying to qualify for a world-wide contest for Bloggers. It's called the Post-Silly-Stuff-In-7-Minute-Intervals-Even-If-You-Say-You-Feel-Like-Shit contest. What, you haven't heard of it? I hear it's very rewarding. The person who contacted me (aka Mr Jesus) said that if you win, you'll be able to get a lifetime supply of tissue and a date with destiny. Well I've always wanted to meet destiny. Don't you? Haven't you a curious bone in your body, son? What are you, a hermit? A Jack O Lantern? A Blogger who wants to escape the drudgeries of life, who has realized all the atrocities that all this transcience has in store for hapless human beings everywhere, therefore, doesn't want to have anything to do with it and turns to posting silly observations online which no one else will even bother reading? If you are any of the above, you have to come out of your shell and venture further into the world of Debauchery and Utter Nonsense!

Let's join the stupid contest, already! Who knows, you might win. If you do, tell me if destiny's a complete knock out or what, hmkay? But I don't think you would. Win, I mean. As you can see, I'm a couple minutes ahead of you and I don't see myself stopping. I'll only stop until someone thinks up a cure for the common cold! So someone needs to think things through really fast or else I'll have the blog world filled with so much shit, all of you won't be able to see straight.

******

Newsflash: I like being long-winded. I don't see anything wrong with it. So what if I repeated the statement that I've repeated that you know I'll keep on repeating 'til the day of holy judgment? So what if I tell you, in excruciating detail, about my dog's week-long activities? There are things that have to be there, that just have to be said, and more importantly, that I want to be said. If you were paying me to write about myself, then definitely you'd have a say in how you want things to go. But you aren't shelling out anything to read this piece of blogheaven, right? Maybe you just happened to check this blog out and thought it high time that someone did a bit of criticizing 'round these parts. Have I got news for you: I don't need you to pull any stops. I don't want you here.

******

I was reading my former blog and I've realized how so many things have changed. Nowadays, I take less control of what I write about. I think I've entered a phase that is pushing me to talk only about things that are real to me. This is cleansing season, a time for shedding old clothes. I hope these new ones would fit just as well.

There are days when I get bored with this "embracing reality" project. Sometimes, I feel sorely tempted to go back to my unseeing poems, my faulty definitions of love. During those days, I remind myself that I am not any less if I talk about things that truly concern me. I am not any less if I fling myself out in the open, arms outstretched to a world that can care less about my life. I am not any less if I say this is what I want and this is what I'll do. I am not any less but am not anything that's more, that's larger, either. I have to learn to be okay with that.

In moments when my ego rears its ugly head, I tell myself about what I've recently discovered: that what sustains me is my knowledge of who I am, which is composed of all my personal thoughts and feelings, my interaction with people who matter/ don't matter to me and my going through actual circumstances that belong to my life, not anyone else's. What I'm doing is learning how to be happy and content about that fact. Until I get re-acquainted with who I started out to be as a writer, I won't be able to push through with what I originally set out to do.

I got lost in the rain. I've heard that it happens, sometimes. Someone once told me that it's okay if it does. I used to doubt what he said but I believe him now.

don't talk, just sniff

2008-05-27T20:25:00.000+08:00

Don't give me no shit because;

I've been tired (6x)

-- Pixies

My cold is a whore. My cold is a whore that never lets up. My cold is a whore that has attached itself to my system and refuses to let go. I want to get rid of it but here's the thing: I... don't...know... how. And no one else knows, either. It doesn't want money nor fame nor any brilliant diatribes. It just wants to fuck my nose silly 'til the cows come home. Hang it all.

I have been sniffling and blowing my nose for almost three hours straight. I feel really terrible but didn't feel this way earlier on in the day. I just came back from our two-day HR outing and boy oh boy it was a vaca that we all deserved. The place that we went to in Rizal was really great and had such a quiet, restive atmosphere. We were fed three times a day (with merienda, besides) and I felt like I've absolutely recharged myself by just lazing around and checking my Facebook updates and here comes this dreadful cold and I feel awful all over again.

Since I was a kid, I've always had colds. I'm not exaggerating. I don't remember a time in my life when I was sniffle-free. When I get even the slightest whiff of dust particles, my system goes all manic on me then gives up. During these days, I can't avoid hating myself and I throw in God and my parents in the activity, at times. Why me? Other people seem pretty normal and healthy but I have this doody weakness. Jesus.

It's either dust or exposure to cold weather or changes in weather. Drat, I feel so tired. And to think that the week hasn't even started for me yet. Darn, crap, shishcobob.

I think the only people who deserve to have colds are:

... the ones who are so rich, they can afford not to work for the rest of their lives. They can wipe their noses off dollars, for all I care. Just let them have the friggin' ailment.

... the people who are chronic liars. Every time they think up some lie, an attack occurs, which renders them speechless for 10 days.

... mothers who don't take care of their kids and go out playing mahjong or social climbing with friends.

... models. i can't really think of anything substantial to back that one up.

... stupid people. because they're stupid, silly.

....cheating husbands and boyfriends.

Gad. Since I'm feeling so gadawful, I'd like it if you'd tell me that your life isn't so swell as well. If that's the case, contact me. Let's go out, drink lots and lots of beer 'til we pass out. Then and only then will we be able to attain salvation. Amen.

i can play your instrument

2008-05-27T19:24:00.000+08:00

Oohlala! It's the International Hug A Musician Day tomorrow! Groupies and wanna-be groupies all over the world are so going to love this.

I was looking at some comments that people made on the event's Facebook profile page and this made me laugh for a full 8 seconds:

hug a musician...no way!

I did that...now I have 4 kids...

Here's the list I made of musicians I'd love to hug or have hugged:

1. Morrissey (49 but still rockin')
2. Billy Joel
3. Black Francis
4. Jim Morrison
5. Billie Holiday
6. Jon Bon Jovi
7. Justin Timberlake
8. The singers of the group All-4-One
9. Chris Robinson
10. Bob Dylan
11. Mick Jagger
12. Keith Richards
13. Bon Scott
14. Joe Satriani
15. Joe Strummer
16. Dee Dee Ramone
17. Frank Sinatra
18. Suzanne Vega
19. Mozart
20. Jeff Buckley

I'd hug my musician but he's in Isabela. I already miss him silly. :(

What I don't get

2008-05-25T16:31:00.000+08:00

is how much people champion duplicity. Some people seem to think that it's so cool hiding what they really think or feel about others. I think that's really disgusting and so 6th-grade. There are days when I'm convinced that I'm merely whiling my time on the film set of Cruel Intentions.

Honestly, I also indulge in the occasional malicious chitchat. This is something that is unavoidable, that I believe that even the best of people may have, at some point, engaged in. What's ridiculous is that some people don't know that they do it. We talk about how we don't like this or that person blah blah blah when what we're doing also speaks of poor character and judgment. At least, I can admit to doing it and be honest with myself. I know that merely acknowledging how wrong these activities are are not enough. I'd have to do something about it.

But I digress. As I was saying, I hate duplicity. I don't understand how a person can take pride in lying to people then telling others about it. How you can expect to gain another person's trust after opening up that you're not totally keeping it real with everyone else baffles me completely. And to think that people tolerate those kinds of actions and how I myself have acceded to it once before makes me cringe.

I'm not the poster girl for manners. But I know myself and I am aware of how I should conduct myself in the world I'm operating in. If I'm angry, I say so. If I hate you, it will show. I find that I have a certain difficulty deceiving myself.

death 101

2008-05-25T11:51:00.000+08:00

it struck me as funny the other day how no one in this country explains death. no one i know, that is. when i was 5, i lost my dog to it -- death, the culprit, always sneaky and unannounced. no one cared to explain the intricacies of how it happened and why. death takes things from us, this is the fact of life, my mother once said. that was all the education i had about the matter. but once when i was 10 years old, i watched a movie where the American parent sat next to the American child and patiently explained where the child's dog has gone, but not necessarily why. because death is an inevitable part of our lives, i propose to have an introductory course that would discuss it. why not? there's a course about sex, a course about botany; almost all the courses taught here are affirmations that life does exist and continues to exist. i want a semester that could teach me what to do if one of my aunts, in the middle of a party, mistakenly chokes on an artichoke and keels over on the spot. i want a full three months worth of discussions about sudden-deaths, mid-deaths, temporary flights. it would be good to have someone sit 256 students down and explain to all of us why some things need to be lost forever, if it's true that nothing here would continue to go on indefinitely. if by chance no one is capable enough to teach us about it, then i'll settle for someone who'd be able to announce it before it waltzes in, the way maids inform their employers about guests in victorian novels. the maid hands you a card and says, "madame, death is here and he's calling for you, this time." okay, so it doesn't really matter who does what, i was just thinking that it might be good for us if there's someone who'd be able to explain death at length for us to be able to appreciate what we have. so many people are throwing precious minutes away, stuck in jobs they don't want to be in, stuck in a marriage that's empty, stuck in a world they're not doing anything for. don't you see, there should be someone who would be able to give us back those lost minutes we drowned in as children, seeing death for the first time. a favorite saying: time heals all wounds. it does but it never leaves out the questions or picks up pieces of your wondering then hands them back to you and says, here you go. i'll help you get it all back in no time at all. i wish we had a compass all pointing us home but wishes are unreliable, like bubbles that can't stop forming then bursting into this air. so i guess i have to make do with you. travel with me. tell me what it's like for you, what you also need to know.