Today, I tried to make the most of daylight. I read one hundred eighty two pages of Byatt's Elementals outdoors. I prefer reading by sunlight. Artificial lighting distracts me. I find reading lamps too glaring. They take away most of the pleasure of drinking in the words off a page.
Mental note to purchase a low stool. I had to make do with a make-shift one, a tin shoe box whose cover sunk where my weight rested.

Lit Geek update:

Last book I read:

What I'm reading right now:

They filmed Gatsby!

And how deelish is this? Baz Luhrmann, you're so tops!

Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, Leonardo Dicaprio as Jay Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan

They seem perfect for their roles. Can't wait to see Leo being Jay! In 3D!
My spine is positively tingling from the anticipation. Though the wait will have to last 'til its projected release date, which is December, 2012, pffft.
Oh, oh, oh!

from Flavorwire

"The nuns taught us there were two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow."

Terrence Malick, 2011

"Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it, too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.
The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end."


Roger Ebert reviews.

Found

I’m always breaking
something, a hand-thrown
mug, a path, a promise.
This life requires a map
I can’t find, a gentleness
I can’t feel, a surety I know
only in these edges that keep me
from stepping on a mess
of my own making.

- Karen Schubert, "Breaking"


from Jonathan Carroll

Lit geek update: What I'm reading right now

Sunday

Listening to my girls Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell, with some sprinkling of Diane Birch and Carly Simon, dreaming of green hilltops and meadows full of flowers, of a wreath of blooms for my head and sunshine bouncing off glasses of sparkling wine...

We ask that life be kind...

Without a doubt, my favorite version.

Thanksgiving, 2011

party theme

Congo Grill, West Gate, Alabang

Registration peeps

The boys, first

Then, the girls

party peeps

The audience

Photo shoot, as always

Joni Mitchell-ing on this rainy evening..

Oh starbright, starbright
You've got the lovin' that I like, all right...

Up there's a heaven
Down there is a town

Blackness everywhere and little lights shine
Oh, blackness, blackness dragging me down
Come on light the candle in this poor heart of mine...

-This Flight Tonight

Vacillating vixens. Meandering mannequins. Grappling grizzlies. Pixies' pinkies. Clamoring clarinets. Magnets magnified. Smiling smokers. Flaming fleets. Spiny spinsters. Cruising in crowds. Marinating marsupials. Demarcated demographics. Harping harlequins. Sleepy slopes.

Coffee and Christmas

(photo from Coffee Mood)

I treated myself to a tall Toffee Nut Latte for my first taste of Christmas at Starbucks. Toffee Nut is the only one in their Christmas series that I buy. This particular cup comforted me. The very mild coffee jolt, the hint of toffee, the nutty aftertaste -- all blended in with my after-work exhaustion and turned into a homey, peaceful feeling. The day seemed in no hurry to begin, no thanks to the gray clouds smearing up the sky, no thanks to the drizzle which, however much intending to be propitious, still seemed like an unwelcome intruder to most, me included. Like most people, I have an aversion to rain. It depresses me, dulls my energy, slumps me down to melancholia. But this morning, the coffee acted as balm. The aches didn't seem as salient.

And so, I sipped away, thinking of the blue-and-silver tree in the office, loving the lack of greens and reds and yellows in it, wondering if this Christmas was going to hold any magic, at all.

Domestic Diva -- Not!

I know, I know. I should have come up with a better title, but the first word that came to mind was "domestic", and then I naturally thought of Nigella Lawson and her irritatingly perfect dishes, and then I thought, no, I will never be an inch close to that good, hence, the word "not".

So, anyway, today, I learned that to make old champagne extra bubbly, you have to drop a raisin into the glass. Not that I'm a champagne drinker (heck, I say "no" to most drinks), just that I found it interesting, the things one can do to "repair" things. I was blog-hopping while working up another experiment in pasta, and I found that bit of information over at Joanna Goddard's blog.

I'm not much for measuring stuff when I cook, so each dish comes out different, every time. I've had hits and misses, but thank god I've had more of the former than the latter. I know what I want, so I generally just follow my instincts, throwing in a bit of this, or a generous helping of that, without forgetting the basics, of course. I like  putting in loads of garlic, and I get a thrill from watching the bits sizzle when thrown into the hot oil, love the smell they sweat out just a few seconds into the swim. I've mastered the art of sprinkling in just the perfect amount of minced pepper, whereas I used to wreck dishes with putting in too much of it. It's still touch-and-go in the al dente pasta part, but I manage. How elementary, but hey, these are the stuff cooking is made of. Oh, yeah, and I love putting in melted cheese and cream of mushroom in to just about any pasta dish I whip up. I had planned on a cheese-and-cream-of-mushroom macaroni earlier, but because the original sauce came out just a tad too salty, in went the tomato sauce. I'd have to say it turned out pretty well, despite the rocky start.

Cheers!

And, oh, yeah, gotta have music with the cookin', otherwise, it's just another chore.
=)

Good night

"...morning is the soul's night." 
—  David Foster Wallace,  Infinite Jest

Twilight rouses the soul from its slumber, and the soul stays awake all night. The mind accedes precedence, the heart submits. Thoughts, so carefully kept in check, and emotions, fenced in with circumspect, get free reign, run amuck in the darkness, find solace in the promise of moonlight, mill about with the stars...

The senses keen up, taking toll on the body. The body is helpless, eclipsed by shadows.

The soul dominates. And the soul is a difficult master.

How am I?

Let's see.

So, I've: added Hershey's milk chocolate with almonds and Green Cross hand sanitizer to my grocery list and Escada Ocean Lounge to my favorite perfumes; scrapped Kylie Minogue from my playlist, replaced her with Sarah Jarosz and Melody Gardot; spent less time in heels; been watching stupid comedies for relief and relaxation; and toned down my tendency to seethe and pounce when I don't get my way. Well, I still seethe, but not as much. At least, I don't pounce anymore.

Aside from that, I still: listen to Jazz for those I-wanna-feel-smart moments; read Rilke, Louise Gluck, Conchitina Cruz, and Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta for my poetry fix; am addicted to "Glee"; think that pink lipstick is pretty; depend on my stash of music to lift me from despondency; wallow in despondency and don't see it changing, at least not anytime soon; adore Lea Salonga; look to the moon for inspiration; wear cuffs, the bigger, the better; think that a narrow mind is a sad, sad mind; keep on finding myself stuck between rocks and hard places. And there is an item here on this second list that I badly wish I could cross out, but it seems that more waiting has to be done, in order for me to do so.

Anyway, dear reader, how've you been?

The night stretches out before me, the hours small from where I am, the shadows innocuous, the dark presenting no threats, but only from where I am, I am quite aware of that. My mind is occupied with the music in the background, calmed by the light in this place, at peace with the smallness of this sphere, undisturbed in this solitude.

Let the tranquility stay, for as long as the great schemes of this universe will allow.

Is that too much to ask?

If the line forms to the right, chances are, you'll find me on the left. Surely there'll be one, or two, others there, on the line, with me?

If not, then, let me be by my lonesome self. I figure that's where all these are going, anyway.

I don't know what my point is.

As usual.

I want to write about

moonlight and cool breezes and my favorite perfume and gold-colored flip-flops and sunlight in the morning and pink curtains and teal nail polish and mauve sunsets and benign raindrops and dewdrops on blooms and internet connection and talks over coffee and baby powder and thick, fluffy pillows and flowers and vanilla and drowsy afternoons and the sound of strings over hushed conversations, and pink quartz and fairy dust and fuchsia and purple and Daphne's flight and Breakfast at Tiffany's and happy endings and Rilke and Eeyore and clean sheets and nice-smelling towels and love and violins and weddings near the sea and mild waves against waiting rocks and Oscar the Grouch and shoe boxes and baskets of freshly-baked bread and newly-trimmed fingernails and walks in the park and green grass and Shakespeare and things...

Instead, I write about you, and I write about me.

Pulse check

Weight: 97 lbs (gained 3 lbs from the recent week-long break from work)
Height: diminutive, still. pffft. hahaha
Books read: .5 (I know, right?!)
Movies seen: 4
Moves watched: 17
Hours of sleep missed: 76
Mood: ennui, extracted from determined resolution to detach from issue(s) causing chronic headaches, both actual and imagined
Number of (actual) headaches since last blog post: 4
Inspiration for this post: coffee date with girl friend
Girl friend's name: Celine
Celine's status: confused
Comparison with girl friend's status: same
View from the window: brown gate, neighbor's water meter counter, dried-up tree whose name I don't know
Plans for the near future: read the e-mails accumulated while I was on break from work
Tanduay Ice bottles consumed since general confusion began: 9 (so not an alcoholic, thank God, haha)
Closing in mind: a giant sigh, a shrug, a prayer for resolution of issue(s)

Have a ___ Day

by Lou Lipsitz

Have a nice day. Have a memorable day.
Have (however unlikely) a life-changing day.
Have a day of soaking rain and lightning.
Have a confused day thinking about fate.

Have a day of wholes.
Have a day of poorly marked,
unrecognizable wholes you
cannot fathom.
Have a ferocious day, a bleak
unbearable day. Have a
riotously unproductive day;
a grim jaw-clenched, Clint Eastwood vengeful
law enforcement day.
Have a day of raging, hair-yanking
jealousy and meanness. Have a day
of almost grasping
how whole you are; a finely tuned,
empty day.

Have a nice day of walking and circling;
a day of stalking and hunting,
of planting strange seeds and wandering in the woods.
Have a day of endearing nonsense,
of hopelessly combing your hair,
a day of yielding, of swallowing
hard, breathing more deeply,
a day of fondness for beetles
and macabre spectacles, or irreverence
about anything you want, of just
sitting and wondering.
Have a day of wondering if it's
going to help, or if it just doesn't matter;
a day of dark winds
and torrents flowing though the valley,
of diving into cool water
and gasping for breath,
a day of sudden hunger for communion.

Have a day where the crusts you each
were given are lost and you stumble
with your fellows
searching endlessly together. 

It's been chaos here there everywhere. It's as if everyone I know is in a whirlwind of some kind, or other. The crescendos, all around, are deafening, and have stayed too long where they are, so that one begins to wonder, when does it all end?

The exhaustion brought about by roads and crossroads and detours and highways, the mind's fatigue of housing images of roads and crossroads and detours and highways.

The only thing I want right now is to sit beside you and have that calming, unpretentious talk, of words and lines and stanzas, and the worlds in the words and the lines. Over nice mugs of hot coffee. Sweet. The warmth, tactile.

Your loss

is mine, too.

So many days, oh so many days
seeing you so tangible and so close,
how do I pay, with what do I pay? 
-Pablo Neruda


How to assuage the bewildered heart, beating and constant, arbitrary in its evenness, questions aswirl in the rhythm. 


The eyes open to daylight, determined to drink in a stretch of the view out front. The mind lingers in the background, seeking what isn't there to be sought, grappling with its cerebrations, nursing unforgotten wounds, lingering where it should no longer be, insisting on remembered sunsets on forgotten places, wishing on dead stars, still flickering with waiting hopes. 


To take a step forward, or keep pressing on to the past minute, hour, year--


one finds the self in the middle of things.

"While I'm writing, I'm far away;
and when I come back, I've gone." 
— Pablo Neruda

from the weekend couch:

"I have three children, six grandchildren. They're busy. They're too busy to talk to me. I gotta make an appointment. They got lost some place. They don't need anybody. People changed, life is changed. Today, you shake hands with somebody, you gotta count your fingers to make sure you got five fingers back."

You should go on a vacation, book a flight to LA. I'll grind the coffee beans right before the plane lands and we can talk - about the despair you seem to try to keep at bay, and my despair that's threatening to launch an all out assault. Sigh. And I thought age would give us immunity from loving things and people that shouldn't and couldn't be had. Haha! Please write and quiet my mind  I miss your blog.


-message from Leiv, sister from a past life

Not from the weekend couch:

Movie seats.
Chris Evans is gorgeousness.

from the weekend couch:

"But whatever I do with this cage, I cannot get at you, and it is your soul that I want."

This is for you.

There is no cure for envy.

Move on, lady.
And look in the mirror before you do. Maybe you'll see something there that needs some fixin'.
=)

And your hunger is not for experience
but for understanding, as though it could be had in the abstract.
-Louise Gluck, "Moonbeam"

What are these promises for, if not for breaking?

Steadfast, this loop, that goes round, and round, and round, and arrives, always, to give and take, and take away more than was given to be taken.
Nobody said that wish you wished, once upon a transient star, would ever be more than what it was when it slipped out of some random, fugitive dream.

There is reason to all this naming.

And that explains it

So, Mercury is retrograding today. Gives light (however twisted) to all this mess.

Best to keep still. Resisting would be futile.

Until August 26th.

SONNET LXXXI

And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work should all sleep, now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray
wings, and I move

after, following the folding water you carry, that carries
me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all. 


Pablo Neruda

The broken heart is a remarkable thing:

it holds on to what it shouldn't, pines after what is gone, long gone; from what is there, chooses what is no longer there and, therefore, can no longer be had; languishes where gloom and anguish are; talks in its sleep and yet, is mute when asked to speak the pain out; slams the door on sunlight and insists on turning all the lights off because they are "too bright", and then complains of seeing darkness everywhere, trembling, like a sick heart, because the dark illuminates what should be obliterated, cloaks what should be suffered.

A Large Number (by Wislawa Szymborska)

Four billion people on this earth,

but my imagination is the way it's always been:

bad with large numbers.

It is still moved by particularity.

It flits about the darkness like a flashlight beam,

disclosing only random faces,

while the rest go blindly by,

unthought of, unpitied.

Not even a Dante could have stopped that.

So what do you do when you're not,

even with all the muses on your side?

Non omnis moriar—a premature worry.

Yet am I fully alive, and is that enough?

It never has been, and even less so now.

I select by rejecting, for there's no other way,

but what I reject, is more numerous,

more dense, more intrusive than ever.

At the cost of untold losses—a poem, a sigh.

I reply with a whisper to a thunderous calling.

How much I am silent about I can't say.

A mouse at the foot of mother mountain.

Life lasts as long as a few lines of claws in the sand.

My dreams—even they are not as populous as they should be.

There is more solitude in them than crowds or clamor.

Sometimes someone long dead will drop by for a bit.

A single hand turns a knob.

Annexes of echo overgrow the empty house.

I run from the threshold down into the quiet

valley seemingly no one's—an anachronism by now.

Where does all this space still in me come from—

that I don't know.

Translated by Joanna Trzeciak

Bends in my road

The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
-Wislawa Szymborska, "Nothing Twice"


At times, I fancy my feet planting themselves on palpable ground. The air pauses in its billowing, the heart trembles, sighing, for a little while, hopeful, wondering: is this where the hapless, aimless chase ends, where things are found and held, where I am to be found, and held, at last?


Somewhere,  a clearing.  Nearby, a promise. From the soul, a hunger, inchoate. The longing to stay. 
Oh, to stay. 


And then, the breeze turns, unannounced, a host of forebodings descend, whirring with the wind, and the time for trembling, sighing, closes in, like all days do. 


But it was so still in that last second, so still!


Still, the feet, reluctant, spring into a run. Gently, at first, then swiftly, as always. Only this time, questions weigh the mind, the heart down, will the eyes to turn toward directions other than forward.

A "Thank You" Note

by Wislawa Szymborska


There is much I owe
to those I do not love.


The relief in accepting
they are closer to another.


Joy that I am not
the wolf to their sheep.


My peace be with them
for with them I am free,
and this, love can neither give,
nor know how to take.


I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Almost as patient
as a sun dial,
I understand
what love does not understand.
I forgive
what love would never have forgiven.


Between rendezvous and letter
no eternity passes,
only a few days or weeks.


My trips with them always turn out well.
Concerts are heard.
Cathedrals are toured.
Landscapes are distinct.


And when seven rivers and mountains
come between us,
they are rivers and mountains
well known from any map.


It is thanks to them
that I live in three dimensions,
in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,
with a shifting, thus real, horizon.


They don't even know
how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I don't owe them anything",
love would have said
on this open topic.

Ellie Goulding : The Writer

Ellie Goulding 'Your Song'

Happy Birthday, Dear Blog!

4 years. Hmm. It's been a while.
Glad to still have you in my life.
=)

This greeting is 11 days late.
Haha

David Foster Wallace, in the house:

"There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us---these are just the hazards of being free." 
— from Infinite Jest

"Logical validity is not a guarantee of truth." 
— from Infinite Jest

"Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?" 

I give." 

You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog." 


— from Infinite Jest

"Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer." 


"Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still." 
— from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

"...morning is the soul's night." 
—  from Infinite Jest

"Mediocrity is contextual." 
—  from Infinite Jest

"But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?" 
— from Consider the Lobster: and other Essays


"Words and a book and a belief that the world is words..." 
— from The Broom of the System


"No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home." 
— from Consider the Lobster: and other Essays


"To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type if death, the death of childhood's limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress-this will happen, mark me. Childhood's end." 
— from The Pale King


"life's endless war against the self you cannot live without." 
— from Infinite Jest


"I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. "
— from Infinite Jest

Loveliness

Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart
- from "In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden" by Matthea Harvey

No in-betweens

There can be method to the madness, but a choice has to be made.

Neither mid-way nor half-way is a good place to be. Something either is, or is not. I will not stand for half-baked, or halfhearted. A half-life will not sit well with me. Neither will half-tones, because there is no pleasant shade between black and white.

Half is not a good word. I have yet to come to terms with halves.

Corinne Bailey Rae - Closer

Don't make me responsible/ for something that you can't find./
I don't mind us to build tension/ but we've got to move in the same direction./
Lay down what's impeding you/ 'Cause I want to get closer to you./

Autumn

BY AMY LOWELL

All day I have watched the purple vine leaves

Fall into the water.

And now in the moonlight they still fall,

But each leaf is fringed with silver.

"To raise the veil. 
To see what you're saying goodbye to." 
— Louise Glück

Town Hall Fun

And how predictable was it that I should go to our Town Hall as Daphne? My purple sheath dress, wide, brown belt, nude Anthologys (good as bare feet), and the garland of purple (the Daphne flower is purple, incidentally)

and white flowers on my hair certainly got lost in the grandiose costumes--people actually came dressed as Greek gods and goddesses, Red Riding Hood, the Mad Hatter, Green Lantern, Paris Hilton, Spiderman, mafia lords, gladiators, drag queens, etc.--but I couldn't think of a better role to fit into than Daphne. Well, it was really a choice between her and Holly Golightly, but my procrastination at buying a pair of black gloves and a tiara finally left me with no other option. Though a colleague had offered to do my hair in an Audrey Hepburn bun (giggle).

This month, everyone is agog with dancing, and, my love for the art and the penchant for movement and rhythm that I got from my folks come into play as I take on the role of choreographer for my team. We are dancing the hustle, to the music of "Kung-Fu Fighting". And some colleagues and I will be opening the show with a Pitbull song.

Whew. Haha.

I wonder what's coming up next.

But first, here.

‎"At first I saw you everywhere. 
Now only in certain things, 
at longer intervals." 
— Louise Glück

For no matter how much clarity we tried to outline the expectations with, the beginning still brought us here.

Here.

Where your walls are down, and where my guards lounge with ease, too much ease. And where the course of friendship goes on, undisturbed, except now and then, with questions of what will come next, and where.

But first, here, where speech is low but devoid of sadness, where secrets spill out with the smiles that could not be suppressed, where rain could just as well be sunlight, the way it rolls with so little weight, where rainbows and stars are not strangers to each other, where frowns and facades are read, and construed with kindness and patience, where one takes, and then gives back, where childhoods brighten and dim, and commingle, brightening together, where one life touches the other and leaves little chance of either one staying ever the same again.

Yes, first, here.

Areas, Gray (by Mookie Katigbak)

Now that I have your mind by heart,
Silence becomes this space
Between us, singular as breath.

Now that you have my heart by mind,
You say, "Silence has a way so terribly exact
Even when it means neither no or yes—"

So all the meanings we unsay, we let
Close in on us in gray ambivalence.
If it weren't so precise—

You do not want my heart.
I do not want your mind.

Rainy Days and Mondays no longer bring me down

"Each moment is a place you've never been." 
— Mark Strand

It's been a while. The days have gone by, one after the other, in a seemingly perpetual stream of hours and people and places.

But let me start with my dad, and the cherished hours the two of us, once upon a sunny morning, whiled away in music, and talks about melody and lyrics, and performing on stage, and the Beatles and Crystal Gayle and books and writers, and family, and life. Priceless, that's the word that comes to mind. I am lucky to have a father who understands me and whom I understand and with whom I can talk to about things in languages that are familiar to us both.

And, from there, comes everything else that's keeping me on a high these days:

the job I have that's become more than just a job, recently, something more than a reason to get out of bed at a certain hour and drag oneself to start and complain about and finish because one has to, but something that has finally, finally turned into a place where I know I can be (extremely) productive and useful and, yes, happy, at the same time;

the weekend getaways that are proof of the importance of work-life balance, the bouts of conversations and laughter--be it in holes-in-the-wall, or bowling joints, or a cinema where "Transformers" is proof that robots can also wear shawls with flair (hello, Megatron!) or loud music-infested joints, or quiet cafes--that are best shared with well-trusted buddies, or peers with whom one can be comfortable, or new-found friends that one is getting to know better;

and, not least of all, the moments I spend with myself, those few, precious hours that keep my sanity intact and my sense of the world and my reason for being in it, in place, where my only companions could only be either of these: a good book, or a good song. And where the only constant is coffee, with sugar and lots of cream.