from the weekend couch:

Lit Geek update #... er, I've lost track

What I'm reading right now:

"There's nothing that could convince someone  who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to."

Lose that flab (hmm, whatcha say?)

My team in the office has an on-going love affair with weight-loss. I've already lost track of how many bets they've had on criteria like who's gonna lose the most pounds, or who'd be able to stick to eating the least number of times, who'd be able to spend the most time in the gym, etc. Their latest game is on who'd be able to forego rice (the winner will get the pot money, though I am unaware as to how much it is) until December! An interesting detail is they're banned from eating rice only in a specific area in and around the office building, which includes a certain food strip across the office called Fastbytes. Go figure. I laughed when, once, a team member came in, absolutely gloating because he said he knew for sure he'd be able to resist rice the whole day because he already finished a half kaldero of kanin before leaving for work. Tsk. Haha

I frequently have to bite my tongue to keep from letting any smart-ass retorts out because my team is just too loveable for words. And though I fail to see the sense in this grandiose scheme, I wish them good luck on their newest endeavor. =)

The next minute

is an entirety in itself. Mere specks that we are in the vastness of the now as we know it, how to make it in the spaciousness is to loosen the grasp, whatever length of time it may take--we each have our own learning curve to consider and after all, five minutes could really be an hour, right?--to finally let go and go on letting go until the act of letting go finds itself under the same category and on the same level of difficulty as fixing oneself a cup of coffee.

Because one minute could take but a moment from our day, but the next could ask the world of us.

So, take a deep breath and keep saying let go, let go, until it becomes as easy as stirring the cream into the cup.

from "The Telling"

What's earth-stopping is the howl
of a train expressly on its way
to not here. It moans a phantom hunger
all the more terrible because unseen
--Hear it?--This is the sound of all
that rifles through us and does not stay.
Everything is in the details: wail of the train
through tracks unseen, destination unknown.
When I show you how you and I
have more hunger than we know
what to do with, I am telling you
goodbye before you know it.

-Mookie Katigbak

My dirt-cheap, priceless finds from this week's Booksale hop:

Yeah, life is good.

Today, I:

came in three hours ahead of my shift,
attended a colleague's farewell party,
had coffee with Sheila,

ran a calibration meeting,
grew roots on the chair in front of my desk, hell-bent on finishing the pre-weekend deadlines,

made it to the deadlines,
hit the gym and faced myself squarely for forty-five minutes on the mirror in front of the treadmill, gave up on the stationary bike just minutes before my thirty-minute goal because my legs were aching like crazy,

saw "Inception" and nearly got a headache, but nearly cried, too, because the movie made me emotional,

went home, took a shower, made myself coffee and had my requisite tunganga moments before taking a nap,
woke up to get a drink and ended up typing this entry,
and will soon be hitting the sack for a much-needed hibernation.

How was your day?
=)

And it all goes poof

It's almost the end of the week and I feel like I barely had time to blink. When there are things to do, places to go and friends to go there with, time becomes inconsequential--a thing of the present, a present that is ever here, never there. What, is it Friday tomorrow? ooh, la la! And the weekend holds so much yellows, too, with "Inception", "Crazy Beautiful" and "Delicatessen" waiting to be experienced. Funny, how I hardly have enough nows now to do everything that's waiting to be done!

reconnecting

with dear, old Joni

Mais, c'est La Vie en Rose!

Last night, I fell asleep to the soundtrack of "Amelie". Watching "An Education" has definitely put me into a spin of everything French. I love things that have something French in them. In "An Education", Jenny, the main character, had a fondness for things French, saying things in French, falling in love in France, singing along to French songs. And she was an English Major who loved reading and writing, her room filled with books, her life filled with books. I love movies with books in them, where the characters are writers, or write every once in a while, or read tons, or fall in love with writers, or write papers about Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. (insert sigh here)

Which led me to a good quarter of an hour of musing about my life, and how I'm alone right now and how I came to the point where I realized that being on one's own can be a beautiful thing. You know, you do what you want, you eat what you want, you watch movies which have the things you like in them and there'd be no one to laugh at you, movies like "You've Got Mail" where Kathleen,  the heroine (oh, how old-fashioned, but I love it!) owns a bookstore and knows and loves the books she sells and talks about them with affection as if they were people dear to her.

Knowing what the things are that are dear to you, it is a wonderful feeling. Having them surround you, as if they were well-loved flowers in your very own garden, is priceless. For what price can you put to that warm, indescribable feeling that sweeps over you when you wake up and see the sunlight inching its fingers into the cover of your favorite book, which you left lying on your bed when you fell asleep the night before?

And, oh, Edith Piaf's "Milord" is simply a delight!

from the weekend couch:

"The life I want, there is no shortcut."

Yellow

Watching “You’ve Got Mail” for the nth time reminded me of the yellow butterflies that have seemed to be innocuously intruding into my days, a sign of something beautiful about to happen, perhaps, or some spirit making their presence felt, or just some random occurrence I have been over-reading into, I’ll never really know. It just makes me wonder, I guess. Because, really, did they all have to be yellow, or are most butterflies really yellow?

The first time was at a Starbucks in the middle of a bustling mall, where a yellow butterfly sat on the arm of the chair beside the friend I was having coffee with. Next, two yellow butterflies flitting together by the fire hydrant very near to where I was standing. Next, two butterflies, again--about two days after the butterflies-near-the-hydrant-day--one of which rested briefly on my right shoulder.  The friend I was chatting with said he was sorry he didn’t have a camera with him, he would’ve wanted to take a photo of me and the butterfly. I felt sorry, too. It was a real nice, pretty feeling, having a butterfly perched so trustingly on my shoulder.

Staking claims

At some point or another, one reaches the age--biological, or otherwise--where the heart (as how they call it) allows itself to be at the complete mercy of the brain. Some war or another happens before clarity claims dominion over everything else, but, war and all, it is logic that should always be allowed reign.

If one has a mind to boast of, in the first place, that is.

Cobwebs

wafting in one's peripheral vision blown softly by some wind magnified then blurred by the night turn out to be tendrils of stray hair

the fingers instinctively pull them away from the face and the legs are willed to keep going forward into the small hours

but from the corner of one's eye one remembers the dance from the corner of one's eye

If walls could talk

then maybe it could talk some sense into us. What with its being privy to all the time we waste brooding and sulking and thinking and staring up at ceilings, it just might be familiar enough with us to say, "hey, buddy, quit it. All this drama is taking you absolutely nowhere.You've got books to read, my dear, and laundry to fold." 

Oh, but my books. Am missing them so. You know how remembering a particular title makes you want to take the volume from the shelf and look at it, run a hand over its cover, flip through the pages and read a particular, or some random passages? Then details begin to skim your mind, like how old you were when you bought this book, or who gave you that one, or where it was you found this one. It was particularly stormy when you finished that volume. This one here made you cry buckets. 


And so on. 


Books are houses of memories, chronicles of a life. 

I have no idea what shape this post is taking. 

Oh, but there is laundry to fold. And a new book to read.

Goal for today: finish reading Elphie's tale

Because this is: an exercise in senselessness

Because a moonbeam falls on the unlikeliest places.
Because a myth is a myth is a myth.
Because it takes time for sand to find itself.
Because eight hours do not make a day.
Because naming things does not mean owning them.
Because nothing can be equal to something.
Because soon or late, hours do go away.
Because not being does not mean disappearing.
Because yesterday has no place here.

At the height of laughter,

the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.
-Jean Houston

You, sunlight.

     the rain
is brightening now.
-Elizabeth Bishop, "Rain Towards Morning"-


The wind takes something with it when it passes by: dust, moments, pain. The rain could bring flood in its wake, but washes away, too, heat and heartaches. 

The heart emerges refreshed, whole again, after a storm. From a newly-opened window, the mind sees the sunlight streaming in.