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. 

Beginnings

are wondrous things. A beginning might purport a preceding end, which is a death of sorts. It could be a circling back to something old that had been forgotten, an unearthing (accidental or otherwise) of buried loves, an act of resurrecting, of breathing hope into a previously abandoned dream. It could be a picking up of a scattered life. It could be a fresh start, altogether--one small, but prominent, stroke on a sheet of paper. It could be that sheet of paper, too, clean, white, unscented.

From the (not-so-weekend) couch:

Caught this on the Turner Classic Movies channel last night. My dad had taught me "Over the Rainbow" (yep, that Arlen/Harburg ballad that was to become Judy Garland's signature song) when I was a kid and so I finished the movie, even though it turned out horribly outdated (but what did I expect?).

And yeah, I was Dorothy, too, as she uttered the line "there's no place like home" over and over , on her delirious way back to Kansas.

So, what's new?

Read Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog".

Therese

            She could not stand the anger in her mother’s body and so she made her way out much, much sooner than they had expected. She couldn’t very well refuse the blood that was being pumped into her, a continuous stream of pure pain and anguish welling from her mother’s tight, cramped mind, could not do much with the movements she had been confined to making; her kicks were puny and her turns measly.

            So there she was as the doctor found her, her eyes shut at the bright, yellow lights, her tiny, wrinkly body just a little bigger than her mother’s hand, not a cry escaping her crimped mouth, so that she had to be coaxed into letting out a shout, a soft wail, really, if one thought about it, a wail that multiplied into four others. And with those, they were satisfied, and they put her near her mother’s cheek for a few, perfunctory bonding seconds, but her mother’s cheek wasn’t warm enough for such matters and so they whisked her away to be washed and was, promptly and as part of SOP, examined for further signs of life, and put inside an incubator, where she was to stay for the next two months of her life. And between these two months, a total number of three blood transfusions were done--in essence, none of the blood running through her was her own—the last donor was a friend of her uncle’s, who was now a lawyer.

            She remembered none of these, of course. 

            None of these.

An idle mind...

Thoughts can be such devils. When so much time is in one's hands that one runs out of things to do, the mind takes over and disaster often follows. The mind takes one to places better left alone, and yet one goes to visit because the lure of the imagination is hard to resist. Granted, yes, a wonderland could lie out there from which one could harvest a whole slew of new things (but as if I needed another wonderland!). And what if the wonderland turns out to be Captain Hook's lagoon pala? Pa'no na?

I can't wait to go back to work. Baka mapunta pa ako sa bahay ng "The Others". Ayoko nga.

The Pond

by Louise Gluck

Night covers the pond with its wing.
Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows and the small
echoing stars. In the night air
the surface of the pond is metal.

Within, your eyes are open. They contain
a memory I recognize, as though
we had been children together. Our ponies
grazed on the hill, they were gray
with white markings. Now they graze
with the dead who wait
like children under their granite breastplates,
lucid and helpless:

The hills are far away. They rise up
blacker than childhood.
What do you think of, lying so quietly
by the water? When you look that way I want
to touch you, but do not, seeing
as in another life we were of the same blood.

(from The House on the Marshland, 1975)