from the weekend couch:

I noticed that there haven't been much to see around here lately. Maybe it's the approaching holidays that's bringing in the sloth but I haven't been seeing much updates. Oh, well. Time to ho-ho-ho, I guess.

Ho-hum.

In the mean time, I'm looking forward to another coffee date with my brothers when I go home this Christmas:

Now that got me hankering for chocolate! This, in particular:

CRISPY M&Ms!!! Yummy!
*sigh*

(Random) Thoughts (as usual):

1. Nowadays, the pattern of the bi-monthly paycheck saying "hello" and, after a wee bit of time, "goodbye" has become so noticeable that it's gotten to be a basic expectation. (sigh)
2. I started reading a book almost a month and a half ago and I still haven't found the time to finish it. grrr
3. Christmas weather is descending upon us. I only wish the days weren't as scorching as they still are now, as the night breeze is such a welcome cool.
4. I'm so itching to catch the latest Harry Potter movie but haven't found the time to do do.
5. This is the first time in years that so many people in the office are grumbling about their 13th-month pay (me included). I just hope all those taxes are going where they should be going.
6. I miss my mom's spaghetti.
7. A list doesn't always have to have ten items on it so I'm ending this at seven.

Cinderella

The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels,
Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan
Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels
Begin on tilted violins to span


The whole revolving tall glass palace hall
Where guests slide gliding into light like wine;
Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall
Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,


And glided couples all in whirling trance
Follow holiday revel begun long since,
Until near twelve the strange girl all at once
Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince

As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk

She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.

--Sylvia Plath

These days, I mainly just breeze along. With the minutes, with the hours, with the days. If you asked me now where my month has gone, I'd probably answer with a shrug, proof that time has, indeed, passed by without my knowing. My "days" end a couple of hours after the sun rises and  I am usually to be found outside, talking to a colleague, or two, with my mind really flitting away into wondering where the hours have gone and did they have to go so quickly, and had I done all I had planned to do when the day began? The weekends drift by too quickly, and I hate that it has to be that way.

Whether the breezing along is a good thing or not remains to be seen because I have a nagging feeling that it could very well be just one manifestation of my determination to detach from things and detachment, though it wards away hurt and disappointment, could also leave one cold, and unfeeling, and just plain lonely. There are two sides to most things, that much we know.

So, how've you been?

Ennui.

So jazz music is really a conversation

one eavesdrops on and it is of course a good kind of eavesdropping, though one could always choose to exert effort and pretend to be discreet as if the conversation isn't something one should be privy to. Either way, the

chatter between the drums and the sax and the trumpets and the piano and the cello and all that scatting

should perk the mind up into action so that one emerges more intelligent after the whole auscultating-slash-snooping thing, or more awake, at least, because all that exchange could only be more poetry than non-poetry

and poetry more often bestirs the brain cells than not, so it is, perhaps, safe to say that aside from a confabulation among voice and/or instruments, jazz is also poetry.

Blink/Blank

Mostly, I just stare, then blink, and realize there's nothing to write about. Scenes from my day, or my week, flash briefly across some blankness and then go away, just as quickly. I blink again and realize, once more, that there's nothing to write about. There's this germ of a writing project that's planted itself into my mind's soil that's been haunting me from time to time, though when I sit down to begin, I find that there's nothing there.

Even that last sentence was an afterthought (whose verity should not be discredited, however).

I should go away, one of these days.

Then I'll probably bring something back with me, something to tend that seed with.

Excuses, excuses.

The trouble

with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.  
-Patrick Young

Dedication to M

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Swing of the heart. O firmly hung, fastened on what invisible branch. Who, who gave you the push, that you swung with me into the leaves? How near I was to the exquisite fruits. But not-staying is the essence of this motion. Only the nearness, only toward the forever-too-high, all at once the possible nearness. Vicinities, then from an irresistibly swung-up-to place --already, once again, lost--the new sight, the outlook. And now: the commanded return back and across and into equilbrium's arms. Below, in between, hesitation, the pull of earth, the passage through the turning-point of the heavy--, past it: and the catapult stretches, weighted with the heart's curiosity, to the other side, opposite, upward. Again how different, how new! How they envy each other at the ends of the rope, these opposite halves of pleasure. Or, shall I dare it: these quarters?--And include, since it witholds itself, that other half-circle, the one whose impetus pushes the swing? I'm not just imagining it, as the mirror of my here-and-now arc. Guess nothing. It will be newer someday. But from endpoint to endpoint of the arc that I have most dared, I already fully possess it: overflowings from me plunge over to it and fill it, stretch it apart, almost. And my own parting, when the force that pushes me someday stops, makes it all the more near. P.S. Happy Birthday to: Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Italo Calvino, P.G. Wodehouse, and Mario Puzo. Libras, all.

I'm thinking that around eleven hundred dozen thoughts

must already have been in my mind and gone away and I never had one chance to really mull them over. Well, maybe a chance, or two, but the days have again blurred into so many yesterdays and I'm left with nothing to reign them in with. The world I know has been--and still is--afloat with five, six figures preceded by dollar signs, percentages, goals to be reached, action plans to put into action, a team to lead, differences to neutralize.

Numbers, numbers, more numbers. This is one of the great ironies of my life. When I was in school, I hated my Math classes to the core, but look what I have become now: an employee in a bank, munching on numbers for lunch.

But anyway, on my ride home today, I found myself grinning like a fool while in my head I danced to some cheesy 90's song from some juvenile girl band. It's been a recurring daydream, really, and it tickles my funny bones to no end, the fact that I get so much entertainment from watching myself performing, on stage, some really basic, corny, girly steps. And then the scene shifts to another dream sequence where I am Shania Twain and her "That Don't Impress Me Much" video is really my video and I'm wearing that leopard print outfit and I have red hair and I'm rolling my eyes at the rocket scientist, the guy with the hair kept in place by so much extra-hold gel and the guy who's really Brad Pitt. And I'm singing, of course. And then there's a shift again and it's still the same song but I'm singing it live, in front of an audience made up of the folks at work and I'm still wearing the same outfit and rolling my eyes.

Hmm. Whaddya say, could it be that in the deepest recesses of my subconscious, I have some delusional hope that I could become famous? The word is delusional. But, hey, we all have to take a break from our own daily grinds, right?

After all, it's really the light, seemingly silly things that help us get by.

Here

is never where there is and I am made to make do with what is in it: the two shoe boxes under the shoe cabinet, the coffee mug on top of it, the yellow stress ball perched so snugly on the mug's mouth, the film of dust on the ball, the nothing in the dust which can't be nothing but which I call nothing because I cannot see it--

Men With the Heads of Eagles

by Margaret Atwood

Men with the heads of eagles
no longer interest me
or pig-men, or those who can fly
with the aid of wax and feathers

or those who take off their clothes
to reveal other clothes
or those with skins of blue leather

or those golden and flat as a coat of arms
or those with claws, the stuffed ones
with glass eyes; or those
hierarchic as greaves and steam-engines.

All these I could create, manufacture,
or find easily: they swoop and thunder
around this island, common as flies,
sparks flashing, bumping into each other,

on hot days you can watch them
as they melt, come apart,
fall into the ocean
like sick gulls, dethronements, plane crashes.

I search instead for the others,
the ones left over,
the ones who have escaped from these
mythologies with barely their lives;
they have real faces and hands, they think
of themselves as
wrong somehow, they would rather be trees.


found here.

Brr

Walking in the rain (and I don't mean a drizzle) on a gray morning (and this is not some drama shit, I had simply forgotten to bring an umbrella, is all)

So it's the rain who ushers October in. I forgot who did for September.
It's officially windburn season for me. Time to stack up on lip balms again.

Thinking life

could be contained by mere words, you throw two into the air, carelessly because you were asked too soon for, well, something someone could live a day by, and without so much as a minute to consider what it is you will hand over, and because you have to go where you will be expected to throw out more words and catch them in return; you leave not knowing that when you come back, what you had so impulsively given will not take the form you had expected it to take (because where you had gone, you had time to form a notion of forms even if it meant shaping them in between, well, words).

From the weekend couch:

"Tonight, I'll show you how dreams are prepared. People think it's a very simple and easy process but it's a bit more complicated than that. As you can see, a very delicate combination of complex ingredients is the key. First, we put in some random thoughts. And then, we add a little bit of reminiscences of the day... mixed with some memories from the past...
Love, friendships, relationships... and all those "ships", together with songs you heard during the day, things you saw.."

And the cherry is the clincher

I am so not a beer drinker. Never did learn to like the taste. During nights out, 2 bottles are usually more than enough for me. I'd rather have a frozen margarita, though not all margaritas turn out to my liking, either.

Recently, I've discovered the perfect companion to my occasional happy hours with some favorite pals:

Plus, it doesn't make me drunk no matter how many shots I've had, and the cherry that comes with each fat glass makes me happy in some sweet, weird way.

Have you had a shot lately?
=)

And "Never Let Me Go"

Oh, oh, oh! Another film to watch out for!

Norwegian Wood

Watanabe and Naoko have come out on film! Unbelievable. I just hope Tran Anh Hung did justice to this lovely Murakami book.

And Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood did the music.
This is definitely something to look forward to.

Thank you, Ace, for the alert. =)

This dress, I love

I am such a sucker for tiny, girly dresses and I so love this one! I couldn't stop staring at it as it reminded me so much of my rustic childhood, hihi. I think I had a dress similar to this one when I was a little, little girl.
photo via A Cup of Jo

Moments and Nescafe (this post is not an ad)

The moon was a shining, round plate last Friday, and it was a shame that I couldn't linger outside long enough to admire it. Three minutes, and that was it. Why couldn't we have more time to just do things like that--look at a full moon, listen to the sound of chirping birds, savor a butterfly-on-our-shoulder moment? The to-do lists beckon too strongly. We really should add "enjoy the evening quiet" to it.

On a different note, I think Nescafe's "Para Kanino Ka Bumabangon?" commercial is really nice. Tugged at my heart strings the first time I saw it, as it made me realize that although we have different reasons for plodding on and facing the grind of the repetitive everyday, it really is the people we love we wake up in the morning for. I couldn't find it on YouTube, sayang.

Ikaw, para kanino ka bumabangon?

Because I'm too lazy to look up the synonym of random

Because I like starting my sentences with "because", I let it go at that. Even if the clock shows 8:19 a.m. and the bottle of my favorite perfume is nearly empty and I could hardly recall the stories I had told last Sunday night, or what I might have told if my umbrella were orange instead of blue. Or who would ever think it isn't really a book that's underneath the three books on top of my dresser but a planner that goes so well with how hard we all had laughed when we realized the tequila hadn't at all gone to our heads because sober is as sober goes as far as that pile of bags is concerned. So two pairs of shoes have died this month and I linked my arm around a friend's arm because, indeed, I couldn't bear to walk without mulling this thought over my head and it's forget-me-nots, my dear, not Deep Purple, or Carole King.

Night Cap

The discovery that you like cherries comes with the discovery of Tequila Rose and the lateness of both introductions hits you the way milk is painted pink by the right amount of red. Gentle. Subtle. Absolute. Like the finality in the absence left by all the cherries you had thrown away. Like the certainty held by the eyelids just before they shut into sleep.

Lit Geek update---

What I'm reading right now:

"...the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our love for our love for things--"

from the weekend couch:

"So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much." 

Synching

Facebook status for the day: "why is the moon so slight,/ And why does it seem that as soon/ As I locate myself, I move/ Away again/" -from "The Insomnia of Izumi Shikibu", by Mookie Katigbak

(insert roses here)

As if copious amounts of coffee weren't yet enough, you fix yourself another cup while trying to recall in which movie it was that the girl said she could never be with a man who didn't know who Dostoyevsky was or was it really a movie or was the girl a girl you knew and you realize the girl was you and the thought leaves you pensive and staring at the roses

painted on the cup

Thursday has spilled over

to Friday and now, technically,  it's already Saturday and I am still awake. We-ell, there was a nap of an hour and a half in between, but it almost doesn't count. Not complaining, though, except, maybe, for the shoe disaster incident last Wednesday, which I plan to write a separate post on--oh, but that was Wednesday and we're talking about Thursday. And Friday. And, oh yeah, Saturday, too. Oh, but this week has been fabulously busy and fruitful and now it's time for a fabulously long stretch of slumber.

Good night, my dears. Or good morning, if you will.

(owl flown in from this site)

from the weekend couch:

Monday night, free dinner

I generally do not like Japanese food, but last Monday's free dinner (care of our AVP) at Red Kimono kinda changed that.

I regret not having taken photos of the food. I got stuffed midway, and just talked my head off the rest of the time.

(Celine, Maureen, Vanessa)

Well, hello, Japanese!

After three hours and a half, I wake up

Another butterfly sat on my shoulder. Not yellow, but still, a butterfly.

Am still adjusting to my new schedule. Daylight is not the friendliest of bedmates, I realize, but am determined to make it. The thing about the sun is that it makes me think of action, as opposed to the inaction that sleep is, however much we see it as a verb and therefore, an act, something that we do and need to do, even if all we really do in sleep is not do and be anything, except when we dream, of course, or toss and turn, of which most of the time we are unaware, so that the complete lack of consciousness after the waking could be argued to be inaction, and there you go so I have lost the thread of my thoughts and pffftt the lack of sleep is probably making me do it, the word "do" encapsulating the concept of action or does it?

And perhaps the best thing to do right now is to turn right back in.

Hang in there, little brother.

We are behind you every step of the way.

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.

Me want these:

Gotta schedule a trip to McDonald's for their latest Happy Meal toys. Oohh, these babies are precious!
=)

photo via the baghag

Ride

Traversing the city's roads, the mind's eye conjures safety, blocking out the images that pinpoint pain, threshing out the familiar where the bitterness resides, learning to see by itself and for itself, feigning numbness for distances and distances, until the need to be numb disappears, and all that's left is the newness, the heart's eagerness to start seeing again where the mind left off, empty spaces waiting to be filled, and the heart, breathless, keen on filling them.

Suddenly, sunshine. The world sparkles, once more.

A Day in The Lives of the Tropang Puyat

for C-- and L--

I have come to the conclusion (after much deliberation with myself, days after that Monday afternoon at Pergola) that what brought on that mad tea party was the charcoal in the inihaw na liempo and inihaw na bangus that we had for lunch. It must've gone to our heads, hence that crazy mix of laughter and tears and more laughter and extended statements on the silliness of love and the madness that is life, our taking turns at playing guidance counselor to each other, but which role I must have played to the hilt, just because, and then more, more laughter, the tummy ache that came from too much laughing, the dead airs that might as well have been dots leading to the next bout of laughter.


At the end of the day, my dears, we have each other, is what I realized. 


Ang sarap tumawa, lalo na pag may kasama ka sa pagtawa. Cheers, mga amiga. You are living reminders that life is, indeed, good. =)

Inihaw ulit, next time.

"Sshh. Ssshhan.."

--one of the most comforting lines anyone has ever given this crybaby.

Finally,

something to look forward to.
=)

Memory lapse

It completely slipped my mind.

This blog turned 3 a week ago.

Random thought for the day:
In the city, people age faster.

Detail from a dream:
Someone, pointing.

Message to self:
None.

Sabi ni E.E. Cummings:
The mind is its own beautiful prisoner.

I will

press the backspace key until you disappear from the page.

What is my heart to you
that you must break it over and over

-Louise Gluck, "Matins"-

Sleep, blessed sleep

The dreams have stopped. I have been able to sleep through the nights. The rain is the only thing that wakes me up. Even then, I have only to count a handful of seconds before sleep takes over, once more.

Day #__

somewhere unspeaking sits my life;the grim
clenched mind of me somewhere begins again,

-E.E. Cummings-

On a clear day...

Nabibigatan na ako sa hangin dito. Pagaanin naman natin.

I-click ang link na ito.

=D

Sunday

But only say the word and I shall be healed.

When we are left with nothing, we are not left with nothing.
For at our most forsaken, we are being thrown a cue to remember that there is more to here and now than here and now.

There is always faith.

Peace be with you.

"A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, / A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, / Which finds no natural outlet or relief / In word, or sigh, or tear."


-Samuel Taylor Coleridge-

...

Pag natapos na ang lahat ng ito, magbabalik-tanaw ako't maaalala ko na ikaw ang isa sa mga dahilan kung bakit nalagpasan ko itong pinagdaraanan ko ngayon.

Maraming salamat, kaibigan.

When we love a wanderer,
We wait for footsteps
That may, or may not, come:
First the hours-the-days;
Then-years. Then, never.
Yet always we do know
Whereof we wait:
The creaking gate
The scraping on the steps
And at the door the level gaze;
For these we wait to know
The roving one is home.
...
So it's the space between
The wishing and the end
That is the true unknown;
The massive world's timekeeping
And our own agile flow
Never to blend.
And thus we care,
And thus we live
Not for the end
(Since it is not unknown),
It is the wait, creative
Life and love in full;
Unfinished, uncertain, unknown,
Yet mocking the known end
That comes sooner,
Later, or not at all.

-from "Between-Living" by Edith Tiempo, Beyond, Extensions-


We wait for the end while we pray for it not to come; and yet, with its arrival comes freedom from whatever it is we want to be freed from. While waiting, we do not think of that freedom, do not know that it is what comes with the end.

Oh, but here it comes,

the end.

What's next?

Massacre+key+witness+killed+in+Maguindanao
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/194255/maguindanao-massacre-witness-killed-lawyer

And the DOJ is pointing fingers.
Tsk.

And, as usual, huli na naman ako sa balita.
Tsk.

Zero, in.

There comes a time when you swim or sink
So I jumped in the drink
'Cause I couldn't make myself clear 
-Aimee mann, "Invisible Ink"-

A couple of days ago, J-- told me, "when the water is agitated, you won't be able to see yourself clearly." True. When we try to make sense of things even as we are kicking and screaming and whatnot, whatever perspective we might end up having and whatever decisions we come up with could only be blighted. We find ourselves on the wrong side, where we started out. Back to zero, as they say. And zero shouldn't be good. Unless zero is where we want to be.

And if one is the loneliest number, what does that make zero?

Hay, gising na agad ako. Ang aga. Though I'd have to say, early morning can never be half as gray as twilight. Here is light, all light, no matter how much we deny it entry.

Sabi ni M. V. Arguelles sa kanyang "Matin":

Kay-kinang, napakakinang

From my dream: Charlie Chaplin's "Smile". Parang "Glee" lang eh. Geez.

Sex and the Shitty 2

Watching this

has been a complete waste of time and money.

Well, at least I get to bash it in this blog, I guess, like i did the first one. I mean, the movie has obviously been another flimsy attempt at glorifying woman, with horrific results. Oo na, sige na, madaming LV at Hermes sa movie. And then, what? What did the movie have to say about woman's strength amidst aging and domestic angst and (ehem) true love? Nothing that we didn't, and don't, already know.

The entire thing was an insult to its viewers' brains. Pwede ba. Scrabble na lang tayo. Or, nood na lang tayo FTV, buti pa, then chika tayo about our wonderful lives.

Poem 3

Tumbling-hair
                        picker of buttercups
                                                         violets
dandelions
And the big bullying daisies
                                            through the field wonderful
with eyes a little sorry
Another comes
                       also picking flowers 


-E.E. Cummings

Away

"silence, and the keenly musical light/ of sudden nothing..." -E.E. Cummings-

The evenings and the nights have not been good to me; they've been almost as cruel as the days have been. When I do get to hoodwink sleep, I'd wake up in two hours. 

It's one dream per night, now, too. I could still recount them, could still remember the faces peopling the stories, except that I could not name the strangers strewn here and there, every now and then. 

Just last night, I was almost sure I felt someone--something--sit on the empty space of the bed. The gentle push of (its) weight shook me out of the precious sleep I had so long tried to woo, an hour and a half prior. I am not easily scared. But I did feel the fingers of fear touch me. I turned on my phone's mp3 and left it on until drowsiness, once again, took over. 

And then it was 7 a.m. and I was almost grateful for the moon's unannounced absence.

Loot bag! =)

A visit here (some time last week)

and a twenty-something-minute wait among these beautiful greens

yielded these:

Your absence

brought these lines

into this page.

You are not here.

Without us,

the world will turn.

excerpt from E.E. Cummings' introduction to his Collected Poems 1922-1938

     Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles:they are by somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn,a human being;somebody who said to those near him,when his fingers would not hold a brush "tie it to my hand"--
     nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening,innocent spontaneous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden, but actually flowers which breasts are among the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted;brain over heart,surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow,mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstacies of inexistence;never to rest and never to have:only to grow.
     Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question

E.E. CUMMINGS

Another part of the text may be read here.