Whistling for Moonbeams

2011-12-19T17:57:00.000+08:00

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:

2011-12-18T22:33:00.000+08:00

Last book I read:

What I'm reading right now:

They filmed Gatsby!

2011-12-14T11:59:00.005+08:00

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."

2011-12-13T08:06:00.004+08:00

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

2011-12-09T16:36:00.001+08:00

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

2011-12-05T18:43:00.003+08:00

Sunday

2011-12-04T10:25:00.001+08:00

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...

2011-11-27T00:16:00.001+08:00

Without a doubt, my favorite version.

Thanksgiving, 2011

2011-11-26T23:17:00.005+08:00

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..

2011-11-15T18:15:00.002+08:00

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

2011-11-15T16:43:00.001+08:00

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

2011-11-15T16:20:00.001+08:00

(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!

2011-11-14T15:10:00.004+08:00

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

2011-11-13T15:36:00.002+08:00

"...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?

2011-11-08T01:14:00.002+08:00

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?

2011-11-07T21:18:00.000+08:00

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?

2011-11-07T20:22:00.000+08:00

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

2011-11-02T12:37:00.003+08:00

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

2011-10-31T13:52:00.001+08:00

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

2011-10-27T20:22:00.001+08:00

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.

2011-10-27T16:23:00.000+08:00

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?

2011-09-01T16:34:00.000+08:00

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

2011-09-01T16:12:00.001+08:00

is mine, too.

2011-08-14T20:17:00.001+08:00

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.

2011-08-14T19:43:00.001+08:00

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

from the weekend couch:

2011-08-14T19:38:00.003+08:00

"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."

2011-08-14T18:22:00.002+08:00

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:

2011-08-09T13:03:00.000+08:00

Movie seats.
Chris Evans is gorgeousness.

from the weekend couch:

2011-08-09T13:01:00.002+08:00

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

This is for you.

2011-08-09T04:30:00.000+08:00

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'.
=)

2011-08-05T09:56:00.001+08:00

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

2011-08-02T12:58:00.001+08:00

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

2011-07-26T11:05:00.000+08:00

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:

2011-07-26T11:00:00.000+08:00

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)

2011-07-25T21:02:00.003+08:00

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

2011-07-25T20:48:00.006+08:00

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

2011-07-25T20:05:00.000+08:00

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

2011-07-22T09:20:00.000+08:00

Ellie Goulding 'Your Song'

2011-07-22T09:19:00.000+08:00

Happy Birthday, Dear Blog!

2011-07-18T23:05:00.000+08:00

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:

2011-07-14T10:22:00.001+08:00

"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

2011-07-14T09:29:00.000+08:00

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

2011-07-14T09:28:00.003+08:00

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

2011-07-14T09:21:00.002+08:00

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

2011-07-13T19:27:00.000+08:00

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.

2011-07-13T09:59:00.002+08:00

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

Town Hall Fun

2011-07-13T09:09:00.004+08:00

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.

2011-07-11T11:28:00.005+08:00

‎"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)

2011-07-11T09:39:00.003+08:00

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

2011-07-11T09:30:00.011+08:00

"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.

Found:

2011-07-10T22:20:00.000+08:00

Quiver

2011-07-07T20:06:00.005+08:00

by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

Speed of neither wind nor ripple,

neither hawk nor dove; she darted

quick across the woods through blister’s

roots, and hyacinths, the river’s blue

narcissus—

gleamed like a pair of scissors

clipping silk. And with what haste

did I proceed, imploring limb and bone

to make the light as we sped trackless

through the night, and I flagged behind.

Gave her the lead by small leagues,

and watched her quicken when the miles

between us vanished by degrees.

Now the light within me slows, quivers

somewhere into color. I know her

like a heft in the blood, like an arrow

that arrives with a sudden red notion.

And wherever you go, I am to follow.

2011-06-17T18:00:00.001+08:00

There are people whose frames seem to droop, however which way they shift, and carry, their weight. It's as if the eyes are perennially searching for the ground, or some place close to it; the mouth is fixed in a frown that has a mark of semi-permanence about it, adding a stratum of sadness to a countenance already doleful. Is it a passing grief, some enduring heartache, or some constant solitariness? One may never know, unless the courage to approach and the patience to dig unearths for one an answer. And the answer may well be another trench of more questions, more speculations.

A look upwards, toward a sunlit sky, perhaps, and a breath of fragrant, greens-and-blooms-kissed air, should lighten the encumbrance, a little bit at a time, and then a bit more, until the shoulders inspire themselves to straighten up, the eyes tire of the browns and the grays, and the mouth curls up into the beginnings of a smile, one that will keep coming back, again, and again, until the heart to make it stay finally makes it stay.

Loveliness Found: From Leiv's Facebook wall

2011-06-17T17:13:00.000+08:00

I miss home. Where the old woman comes to chase me away from the sea to tell me it's time for lunch. Where playing tag with monstrous waves as the tide rises in the early evening is as common as orange-riddled sunsets. Where everyone knows everyone but not well enough to take the other for granted. Where there's a palatable concoction of the strange and the familiar.

2011-06-17T16:09:00.001+08:00

"He knew her, he believed. He would teach her that she was not his possession, he would show her she was free, he would see her flash her wings."

— A.S. Byatt, Possession

2011-06-14T17:01:00.001+08:00

To what distance and by what path
-"Silence Wager Stories"
Susan Howe

These sudden, stalling, momentary standstills make me wonder, sometimes, make me ask when all the running will finally stop.

Picking up

2011-06-13T23:43:00.002+08:00

and she pauses, five breaths
long, but soon the clouds
draw over the now vanishing glow,

and she turns to resume
her flight.

Vanessa

2011-06-13T11:57:00.001+08:00

That dragonfly should've been a butterfly. LOL

Herman Melville's 1856 U.S. Passport application

2011-05-28T14:45:00.003+08:00

"Back then, it was on you to tell the authorities what you looked like. How a person could self-diagnose “Forehead: medium” or “Face: oval” eludes me (what were the other options?), but that might just be one of those things that people knew back then. Another thing they knew, judging by documents related to the Melville application available at Footnote.com, was how to cut through the red tape and go right to the top. Melville addresses William L. Marcy, then the U.S. Secretary of State. The body of the letter is brief: “I am about to visit Europe. Will you be good enough to supply me with a passport? I sail four days hence.” It seemed to work: Melville made it to Europe."
-from this blog, via The New Yorker.

As some anonymous someone once said, "Bad weather always looks worse through a window"

2011-05-25T14:23:00.001+08:00

Weather forecast for tonight: dark.
- George Carlin

Losses, irreversible. Echoed by this wind, magnified by those clouds, brought to glorious visibility by this rain. Lightning, perforating the mind like a rush of unsought memories, and thunder, hobbling into the mind like some rude, uninvited visitor.

Striking sadness chords

2011-05-25T03:45:00.001+08:00

All this angry lashing by the rain, all this careless whipping by the wind --

I'm suddenly afflicted with the blues. =(
How was your day?

Let's give this one a shot

2011-05-24T03:32:00.002+08:00

A whiff of the air as I stepped outside told me I should look up, which I would have done even without the scent of grey clouds, anyway, because I almost always look up whenever I step outdoors, and which, anyway, I did. And what I saw was a darkened sky, much altered from an hour ago, when I had taken a peek through the white curtains, and when all there was to see were sunshine and brightness.

I looked with regret at the pair of shades I had in my hand, but which I punctually slipped back into the cream-colored canvas bag slung on my right shoulder, the bag being filled with orange cats with black tails (drawings of, that is) and equally teeming, likewise, with the word "cat". I had bought said bag along with another, similar one, which was orange and had a girl and a red apple (drawings of, of course) on it, both bags having been sure lures because of the ridiculously under-priced tags they had on them at the time that I saw them at some perfectly forgettable shop, but which, of course, I had not forgotten yet, just because it was too soon to forget.

For some reason or another (and especially not necessarily any of the details mentioned above), I was reminded of the pain on my left shoulder, which had been giving me the most annoying of discomforts for quite some time, but which was conspicuously absent at that time and, thankfully, at this time.

Right now, there is no sound of rain to listen to. But the paragraphs above, I will have to end with raindrops. Because by the time I had shut the door behind me, a downpour had already begun.

Jeanette Winterson, in the house:

2011-05-23T20:09:00.004+08:00

"What you risk reveals what you value."
(Written on the Body)

‎"You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so how could we take it back without asking?"
(Written on the Body)

"The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. "
(Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)

"I have a head for heights it's true, but no stomach for the depths. Strange then to have plumbed so many."
(Written on the Body)

‎"I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them."
(Lighthousekeeping)

"I am good at walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject."
(Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles)

"Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there."
(The Passion)

"I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first. And that is the stubbornness in me: I do not want to be someone’s little home."
(Gut Symmetries)

‎"He wrote on a piece of paper with his pencil.
Psychosis: out of touch with reality.
Since then, I have been trying to find out what reality is, so that I can touch it."

"It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment."

"The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive."
(The Passion)

"When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling."

"Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour."
(The Passion)

"I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had."
(Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)

‎"What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you."

‎"I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line."
(Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)

Anything goes

2011-05-23T11:01:00.000+08:00

My daughter's been complaining of "writer's block" for weeks now.

I just realized: we are on the same page.
Paging my muse. Paramdam ka naman, o.

And, oh, before I forget, a couple of days ago, Tori Amos appeared in my dreams, as a lovely, red-haired fairy handing me the most outrageous freebies ever: a YSL bag and spanking new Prada boots. Hahaha. What am I supposed to make of that?

2011-05-23T01:40:00.004+08:00

And where begins the night?
-Rilke, "Girl in Love"

the awakening of dormant stones,
depths that would reveal you to yourself.
-Rilke, "Remembrance"

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life
-Rilke, "Sunset"

From out of nowhere, this image:

2011-05-19T13:18:00.000+08:00

Gray skies, a cafe, the smell of warm bread and steaming coffee, and I, bundled in a purple, knit sweater, my nose against the glass window, watching the rain falling on the cobbled street, listening to the sound of raindrops tapping on the window sill.

Me. Me. Me.

2011-05-17T23:24:00.003+08:00

Amos Lee - Flower

2011-05-17T12:55:00.000+08:00

Corinne Bailey Rae - Paris Nights/ New York Mornings

2011-05-17T12:52:00.001+08:00

Breakfast at Mickey's, make-up still on
Elbows on the greasy table cloth
One more coffee and one last cigarette

Smiling at the rain cause you hold me close
My best dress on underneath this old coat
Walking down Bleecker no one is awake yet

Still, seven hours
Nothing but clouds
It's enough to make your heart sigh
We should try
So pick me up and take me out

Oo we crash into love-filled nights
(Paris nights and New York mornings)
Oo we race till we're out of time
(Paris nights and New York mornings)
And now that you've taken me up so high
(Paris nights and New York mornings)
Don't let me down
Don't let me down

I could see the lights from the restaurant
I couldn't quite perfect that nonchalance
Paris and champagne with one brown sugar cube

And we danced while the band played "She's not there"
Kissed me in the rain by the Rue Voltaire
It's a perfectly good way to ruin those silk shoes

Still, seven hours
Nothing but clouds
It's enough to make your heart sigh
We should try
For each other and for the lovers

You change and you grow
But we were young
We were young and we didn't know
We didn't know

Oo we crash into love-filled nights
(Paris nights and New York mornings)
Oo we race till we're out of time
(Paris nights and New York mornings)
And now that you've taken me up so high
(Paris nights and New York mornings)
Don't let me down
Don't let me down

With a thud

2011-05-17T10:59:00.002+08:00

On my FB wall: These past weeks have made me realize that not all minds are broad enough to house the lengths and widths and chasms and heights of the universe. As it is, I am thankful to have friends who I am able to see eye to eye with, given the free reign I allow my perspective, and the hatred I have for boxing things up.

There's a bit of frustration in those lines, to be truthful. Prior to the number of epiphanies that I had this past week, I'd carried on as if the rest of the world were in tune with my ways of thinking, were on the same wavelength I had placed (or found) myself. Which was, I realized, downright stupid of me to assume; just because we belonged to the same generation (more, or less) didn't mean our minds operated the same way.

Again, Chanson: upbringing, environment, books read (or, lack of), music consumed, tears shed (or, absence of), cakes deprived of (or, grown fat from), battles fought (or, run away from) --so, stop dreaming that all the world will ever be in one platform. Sheesh.

Just another twilight post:

2011-05-16T19:58:00.001+08:00

There is always something to be made of pain.

-Louise Gluck, "Love Poem"

Dusk found me getting a pedicure at a nail salon. The glass walls let the outdoors in freely, and I saw the sky changing colors. I mumbled "look away, look away," but still found myself stealing glances at the sunset-streaked heavens.

Under the Influence of

2011-05-10T12:04:00.004+08:00

Yes, the allergies seem duller, but so do my thoughts. Is it "are" or "do"? It's a bit hazy, too, like, where have the days gone? Or, what day is it today? Or, how many days has it been since Sunday? I could try to count, why not? But it seems an exhausting task. Parallel lines never meet, or do they? In some secret alley (like yours and mine), unknown to the best minds, do these two constants ever meet? Are they constant (like me, unlike you)? Or did I just dream the word up (like I had dreamed you up)? Like I do a lot of words. They populate my dreams (like you do), words, although I hardly ever remember when I wake up. It's just a nice thought, I guess, having one's dreams peopled with words (my dreams, by you).

I hate prepositions. Though not so much, right now.

from Ann Lauterbach's "Alice in the Wasteland"

2011-05-10T10:51:00.004+08:00

You have very low self-esteem, Alice said. Everyone here thinks the world of you;
you are always mentioned in poems and songs.
I know. It makes me cringe with shame. Moon this moon that, lovers and
moonlight, nocturnes and sonnets. It’s a total cliche. Stick an r in and you get
moron.
Alice stood up, casting a long black shadow.
Look how tall I am!
I will never be tall, answered the Moon, and disappeared behind a heavy cloud,
erasing Alice’s shadow and sending her back into the total dark.

-from Or to Begin Again

Axioms

2011-05-10T10:46:00.005+08:00

We are parallel lines, an exponential bloom
where Zeno predicted your retreat;

and where I come through a, you come through b
—the two of us watching unyielding axioms

fill the space between us. One geometry says
we will meet, but each time I bend, you bend

toward a point beyond my reach. I want you
to be where I am, or I want to be where you are.

But a single truth has fixed us here,
and you are further for it.

-Barbara Perez

Heather Nova - Paper Cup (Love, Actually)

2011-05-09T12:15:00.000+08:00

Wishful thinking I might be yours/ And every dream is just a dream after all/ And the night's in a paper cup/ When you want it to last/ Wishful thinking you might be mine

But how to keep

2011-05-08T22:33:00.001+08:00

this day folded,

safe.

‎"It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment."
— Jeanette Winterson

A long, loud grumble of thunder

2011-05-08T22:02:00.001+08:00

from up there. I feel the ground beneath me shake the littlest bit. Such a chilly, windy night, on the heels of a cold, stormy day. These past 24 hours bring to mind Edgar Allan Poe and Wuthering Heights.

How wonderful to be indoors.

My current obsession:

2011-05-07T17:27:00.004+08:00

Sa hindi inaaasahang
Pagtatagpo ng mga mundo
May minsan lang na nagdugtong,
Damang dama na ang ugong nito.
Di pa ba sapat ang sakit at lahat
Na hinding hindi ko ipararanas saýo
Ibinubunyag ka ng iyong mata
Sumisigaw ng pag-sinta.

Bakit di papatulan
Ang pagsuyong nagkulang
Tayong umaasang
Hilaga't kanluran
Ikaw ang hantungan
At bilang kanlungan mo
Ako ang sasagip saýo.

Saan nga ba patungo,
Nakayapak at nahihiwagaan na
Ang bagyo ng tadhana ay
Dinadala ako sa init ng bisig mo
Bakit di pa sabihin
Ang hindi mo maamin
Ipauubaya na lang ba 'to sa hangin
'Wag mong ikatakot
Ang bulong ng damdamin mo

Ba't di salubungin ang puso ko at kunin
ang diwang malaya, wag na wag magpapapayapa
ikaw ang pag-ibig, pakinggan ang himig ko,
wala na sanang lalayo/ mundong ito ay hihinto

Of breezes and blues

2011-05-06T11:26:00.002+08:00

Goodness, this heat. These days (and nights), I find myself sorely tempted to forgo my heels for flip-flops, my turtlenecks for tank tops, these concrete floors for sand. The daily latte has already been replaced by iced coffee.
The chilly breezes have been so unceremoniously shooed away, and summer is irrefutably here, languishing in the sun and partying away the buzzing, moonlit nights.
All these talk of cool, blue waters and beach bumming are distracting me from my day-to-day, makes me wonder what it would be like to get away, far away, in a little dress abloom with flowers, and just lie on the warm sand, count the stars, and fall asleep to the sound of waves crashing and the drifts of a guitar and the beat of a lone drum cavorting in the distance, a snappy, frisky breeze kissing my cheeks...

2011-05-05T05:03:00.001+08:00

"Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation."

— Gabriel García Márquez

Apprehensions

2011-05-04T10:59:00.000+08:00

There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself --
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.
They are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

A grey wall now, clawed and bloody.
Is there no way out of the mind?
Steps at my back spiral into a well.
There are no trees or birds in this world,
There is only sourness.

This red wall winces continually:
A red fist, opening and closing,
Two grey, papery bags --
This is what i am made of, this, and a terror
Of being wheeled off under crosses and rain of pieties.

On a black wall, unidentifiable birds
Swivel their heads and cry.
There is no talk of immorality amoun these!
Cold blanks approach us:
They move in a hurry.

by Sylvia Plath

Song

2011-05-04T10:47:00.000+08:00

The weight of the world 
     is love. 
Under the burden 
     of solitude, 
under the burden 
     of dissatisfaction 

     the weight, 
the weight we carry 
     is love. 

Who can deny? 
     In dreams 
it touches 
     the body, 
in thought 
     constructs 
a miracle, 
     in imagination 
anguishes 
     till born 
in human-- 
looks out of the heart 
     burning with purity-- 
for the burden of life 
     is love, 

but we carry the weight 
     wearily, 
and so must rest 
in the arms of love 
     at last, 
must rest in the arms 
     of love. 

No rest 
     without love, 
no sleep 
     without dreams 
of love-- 
     be mad or chill 
obsessed with angels 
     or machines, 
the final wish 
     is love 
--cannot be bitter, 
     cannot deny, 
cannot withhold 
     if denied: 

the weight is too heavy 

     --must give 
for no return 
     as thought 
is given 
     in solitude 
in all the excellence 
     of its excess. 

The warm bodies 
     shine together 
in the darkness, 
     the hand moves 
to the center 
     of the flesh, 
the skin trembles 
     in happiness 
and the soul comes 
     joyful to the eye-- 

yes, yes, 
     that's what 
I wanted, 
     I always wanted, 
I always wanted, 
     to return 
to the body 
     where I was born. 

                         San Jose, 1954

by Allen Ginsberg

Bend

2011-05-04T10:26:00.002+08:00

Daphne, dazzled
by a slice of radiance,
finds herself

turning--

The Way Things Work

2011-05-03T11:16:00.006+08:00

is by admitting 
or opening away. 
This is the simplest form 
of current: Blue 
moving through blue; 
blue through purple; 
the objects of desire 
opening upon themselves 
without us; the objects of faith. 
The way things work 
is by solution, 
resistance lessened or 
increased and taken 
advantage of. 
The way things work 
is that we finally believe 
they are there, 
common and able 
o illustrate themselves. 
Wheel, kinetic flow, 
rising and falling water, 
ingots, levers and keys, 
I believe in you, 
cylinder lock, pully, 
lifting tackle and 
crane lift your small head-- 
I believe in you--
your head is the horizon to
my hand. I believe 
forever in the hooks. 
The way things work 
is that eventually 
something catches.

by Jorie Graham

The Dangers of This Craft

2011-05-03T10:21:00.002+08:00

by Ma. Fatima V. Lim Wilson

For your own good, do not claim to be a poet.
-Advice of a well-meaning friend.

How we sing, even as we are boiled alive.
Those who torment us strain to sustain
our last notes. In a landscape
of sameness, our crooked towers scrape
sensibilities, the well-trained eye.
Why, when starved, do we thrive?
Remembrance of childhood's bread
rising. The taste of dulcified
droppings of air. Our well-
meaning friends beg us, please,
speak in the measured tones
of the mediocre. Show off
our mastery of muteness,
the ambidextrous virtuosity
of work-stained hands. Let
those knitting needles, heavy
handled axes fly. Why must
we hear voices? See the moving
parts of still objects? And so,
we insist we no longer see
through white-washed walls.
We confess our dreams of flying
have ceased. We scheme,
the miracle of money keeping us
awake. Our pleasure lies
in memorizing the exactness
of recipes. We are found to be
most eloquent when quiet, even
as we argue happily with the teeming
inhabitants opening doors in our heads.
We stare seemingly unmoved at the fire
of our burning books, all the while
enthralled, reading secrets in the flames.
They think they've killed us off
even as somewhere, everywhere, a child
recalls the beat of the ocean womb.
They dance upon our tombs, unaware
of how they have fallen
victim to the rhythm
of our singing bones.

From this morning's browse

2011-05-03T10:03:00.000+08:00

Poor Love, you were but Color, Motif, Mood --
Need of my poetry, not my womanhood.

- from "Love is My Need" (1945),
Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido

Mooning over this cup of coffee

2011-05-03T09:54:00.005+08:00

The interminable tapeworm of time unreels
unwinds and stops dead.
-Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta, "The Time Factor"

Where he is, my dad is currently building his fish pond. Miles away, sun-lovers are frolicking on beaches. Sundry, unknown distances separate me from the bibliophile chewing away at his book with a cup of coffee; from the little ones having snacks of milk and cookies; from the corporate dweller crunching away at data and gossip; from the mountain-climber trekking, inhaling the breeze of the outdoors. A butterfly is cooing, soundlessly, at a newly-opened blossom, and a puppy barks at a yellow moth, flitting by.

I wonder what twilight is like in other places. Where I am, and in the places I've been, it is almost always sad.

What's it like, where you are?

Face Paint!

2011-04-28T17:41:00.002+08:00

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.

- Sicilian Proverb

Take-home quote for the day:

2011-04-26T03:50:00.002+08:00

"Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air. "
-Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton, 1803-1873
English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist

from the weekend couch:

2011-04-25T22:26:00.000+08:00

Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999

Songs of the self

2011-04-24T12:18:00.013+08:00

"…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew…."
— A.S. Byatt, Possession

This morning, not by chance, at all, I unearthed my old copy of Songs of Ourselves: Writings by Filipino Women in English (edited by Edna Zapanta Manlapaz) and spent a good hour and a half browsing through its pages. On the upper left hand of the flyleaf, I had, with a red pen, written my name and, in blue ink, "1998". Whew, such a long time ago. I was 18, then, just beginning to adjust to life far, far from home, and to English Major-hood in the UP. I had bought the book at the Katips branch of National, hell-bent on making up for the time I had lost in Grade School and High School, being confined to reading Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson, stuck in the time and literature of Shakespeare and Keats, thinking that Robert Burns's "A Red Red Rose" was the end-all and be-all of poetry. I seethed, a little angry at my former English teachers for keeping Angela Manalang Gloria, et al, from my sphere of consciousness. Oh, that there were lines as beautiful as

They tried in vain
to understand how one so carved from pride
and glassed in dream could have so flung aside
her graven days
(from "Soledad", Angela Manalang Gloria)

or

she concentrates upon the rosebuds

of the china, hoping, hoping

they would break.

-Merlinda Bobis, "Dinner in Progress"

and that Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta and Gilda Cordero Fernando had been, and still were, churning out wonderful works of poetry and fiction--I tried to devour as much of their, and other Filipino writers', works, as I can. I was hungry and eager and greedy for understanding, and the book's pages bore the marks: underlined passages, marginal notes written in pencil, my alacrity showing in the slits of what should have been O's, the pointy L's, the exclamation points after the comments. Some examples:

as if by burning the clothes, she could also burn/ kill the memory of Pedro's dead wife ("The Small Key", Paz Latorena)

the controversial poem, Commonwealth Awards ("Revolt From Hymen", Angela Manalang Gloria)

work of a genius, as expected ("Paradox", Angela Manalang Gloria)

love this! so amazing! ("Speck of Rain Roaring", Edith Tiempo)

the failure/ inability to grieve; to acknowledge the loss as such ("Behind the Fern", Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas)

this is foreshadowed by the preceding stanzas; still, it is jolting enough./ suspicion; stirrings of rebellion/ protest --very mild; still inchoate ("Tribeswoman", Marra Pl. Lanot)

this is so nice! poignant, really, without being glaringly so. very subtle. ("Dinner in Progress", Merlinda Bobis)

Yes, yes, you can tell that literary criticism was not one of my strengths when I was a student (and it still isn't, by the way, and I don't think it will ever be), but coming upon these small, candid lines is a precious experience for me, mainly because these scraps of observation remind me of a time when I was wide-eyed and ardent, bringing back that all too familiar longing to drown myself in lines and whole texts, that itch to fish for words and play with them on blanks and spaces, the incomparable high of being in a roomful of people who understand what it's like to be hungry that way. Instead, I'm stuck in a daily grind of facts and statistical analysis and numerical figures, where people think that Dan Brown and Paulo Coelho write literature.

Still, I keep the faith and continue to make time for cherished moments like this: stolen and swift, and all the more precious because they are so.

Breakfast at Tiffany's Final Scene

2011-04-23T18:40:00.000+08:00

Moon River - Breakfast at Tiffany's

2011-04-23T18:38:00.000+08:00

Daylight.

2011-04-23T14:38:00.006+08:00

I used to tell you my dreams.
- Louise Gluck, "Siren"

These short, sudden silences, in syncopation with each other, like the miscalculation of tears, and, in between, the small pauses. The words, spread across spaces, as mute, as immobile, as the reach of this depleted while. The sky dissolves the moon, and the stars slip away, like nights often do. And because everything melts into everything else, we lose the moon. Soon, that gush of sunlight, bathing the sylph-like vagueness in clarity and certainty, revealing the gaps, the hideousness, in things.

Fluorescence, fizzling, flimsy, faint, fade, futile, forsake, forget.

Found:

2011-04-23T13:19:00.002+08:00

My traipses into Jonathan Carroll's blog almost always yield loots of beautiful snippets. This morning, I found this there and it just really hit right home:

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person - without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.

- Osho

Is that beautiful, or what?

May the Holy Week hold for us all a time for reflection.
Peace be with you.

THINGS SHOULDN'T BE SO HARD by Kay Ryan

2011-04-19T14:07:00.001+08:00

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small —
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn't
be so hard.

*Kay Ryan won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan (Grove/Atlantic)

And then, there's Estella

2011-04-19T12:44:00.006+08:00

"...life is made of ever so many partings welded together."

'So,' said Estella, 'I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.'

"The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her nonetheless because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection."

"I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death."

- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

Stowaway Holly:

2011-04-19T00:37:00.002+08:00

"I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. "

"Never love a wild thing.... If you let yourself love a wild thing, you'll end up looking at the sky."

So, it's Argentina for Ms. Golightly.
I'm definitely adding her to my list of favorite girls.

quotes are from Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's

Rest Day

2011-04-18T22:33:00.003+08:00

"And today is whatever I want it to mean."
- Beth Orton, "Central Reservation"

If my eyes are to be trusted, I'd say it was a full and orange moon I saw in the sky, early this evening. The wind was benign, not biting, at all, just all coltish and balmy, bringing memories of violins and vanilla. Beth Orton was in the background, and Miles Davis followed suit with his trumpet and his band. The lines of a just-read poem still floated in my head and I breathed it all in: the aftermaths of twilight, the cool scent of the evening, the loveliness of beat and song, the exquisiteness of words and spaces, the lucid state my mind was in.

I had my music and my sanity. Everything was in its right place.

So much loveliness here...

2011-04-12T17:09:00.002+08:00

What are regrets?
They're just lessons we haven't learned yet
It's like catching snow on your tongue
You can't pin this butterfly down
Can't pin this butterfly down..

Another day draws away
And my heart sinks with the sun