And, oh yeah, watch this, too

It's kind of a "guy movie" but I liked it. I can be guy, too, I realize.
blech
=)

Just a tiny thought

I can't believe it's raining and raining hard. It's been extremely dry, lately Thank goodness the December breeze is lending us its presence during certain parts of the day, somehow. If not, the heat would be unbearable.

My blah list for the week:

1. Strings and strings of girls (and the odd handfuls of boys, or "guys" if you must) are trooping to the movies for that "New Moon" thing. Ugh. I've long since given up trying to even get myself into any discussions--or debates, as they most often turn out to be when I dig in my heels and sharpen my claws to pounce on the just as stubborn opponent who is convinced that the Twilight "saga" (arrggh) is the end-all and be-all of literature and filmdom--about this fad. It's a waste of time, so let the girls scream and swoon and fight over who's hotter, the vampire, or the wolf... am I getting it right? Don't even remember those guys' names. I know the girl's name is Bella, though. Haha. I'm such a Twilight dork.

2. As for me, I am currently obsessed with Joel M. Toledo's The Long Lost Startle.

3. Well, Facebook's Cafe World would rival the attention I give the above-mentioned book, though. This game is so addictive, it's made me forget all the other FB apps I've been previously hooked on.

4. As if things couldn't get any shallower, I've also been indulging in back issues of Instyle.

This post is a whole lot of nonsense. Didn't even reach to 5.

Oh, and yeah, 5) watched "Paranormal Activity" last night. Spooked me out, it did. For once, I was thankful to be in the night shift. At least I didn't have to worry about sleeping--or not getting any sleep--in the dark.

Okay, now I remember: the vampire's Edward and Jacob's the other guy. Oh, wait, is it Jacob, or Jakob?

Here, Now.

The poem indeed is the long lost startle. The moment has passed, it is again lost, but having been lived, it might be imagined, recuperated. And so it is there again, in the poem, for through language a path to it has been found; it is held now and here in the poem's all too human hands--too human, finite, mortal, so that in one or the other reader, it may also be nowhere.

So, Dr. Gemino Abad writes in his introduction to Joel M. Toledo's second book of poetry, The Long Lost Startle. I serendipitously found this book while waiting in a bookstore for a colleague. We were to buy art materials. The wait led me to find poetry. Poetry, which, I realized, I have been gravitating towards more than fiction, lately. The cache of good poetry proves small these days (I mean, what percentage does it represent in this pop-lit-and-bestseller-that-sells-because-it -is-more-sensational-than-literary-dominated culture?), so that discovering a good book of poems is actually tantamount to unearthing a treasure.

Now you want to believe again, as if you've lost/ how it is to find things. (from "What is Required")

Hence, Joel Toledo and his Long Lost Startle. Following suit his Chiaroscuro, it explores the world as it is in the here and the now, where the "here" takes up the smallest fraction of what here means for most of us, and the "now" is the actual second you are in now. The result is, indeed, the startle that we have long since forgotten, that moment of awe which most of us had lost along the way, having gotten entangled in the speed of our own lives, so that there is no more moment to pause, catch our breaths, and just look and see what's before our eyes, and whatever newness there is that we might find, whatever wonder there might be for us to experience.

The clock declaring its singular point, the hour,/ the now again it is midnight, full minute of it,/ fulfilled and finishing./ ("The Long Lost Startle")

With the moment not even seen, the discovering would be totally out of the equation. And so much, too much, would have been lost.

/And, finding nothing to fear, you lean back into/ the silence that comes next: the lack of clock, the rest./ (The Long Lost Startle")

This part of my world has been so painfully neglected. Sorry, dear blog. I've been bad to you.

Some updates are due, then.

...

...

But my, oh, my, I'm drawing a blank. Or, ellipses.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. What's up with that?

Nerina, Where've you been all this time?