This took my breath away.

I thought it was a scarf.
Turns out it isn't.

In Beautiful Bloom

*All snippets and photos are from the article written by Christopher Jobson, Creator and curator of Colossal, an art and design blog. Go visit! It'll be worth the while.

"In 2003 a building housing the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC) was slated for demolition to make way for updated facilities. The closure was a time for reflection and remembrance as the MMHC had been in operation for over 9 decades and had touched countless thousands of patients and employees alike, and the pending demolition presented a unique problem. How does one memorialize a building impossibly rich with a history of both hope and sadness, and do it in a way that reflects not only the past but also the future?"

"To answer that question artist Anna Schuleit was commissioned to do the impossible. After an initial tour of the facility she was struck not with what she saw but with what she didn’t see: the presence of life and color. While historically a place of healing, the drab interior, worn hallways, and dull paint needed a respectful infusion of hope. With a limited budget and only three months of planning Schuleit and an enormous team of volunteers executed a massive public art installation called Bloom."

"The concept was simple but absolutely immense in scale. Nearly 28,000 potted flowers would fill almost every square foot of the MMHC including corridors, stairwells, offices and even a swimming pool, all of it brought to life with a sea of blooms. The public was then invited for a limited 4-day viewing as a time for needed reflection and rebirth."

In-star-gam

The glare. Of the sun.

via Instagram

This girl

Awake by the wee hours. Crisped some corned beef. Toyed with the rice on my plate. Posted on instagram. Put Bon Iver on the player. Tweeted. Threw out the garbage. Washed the dishes. Looked up The Beatles "This Boy" over at YouTube. Felt happy watching the video. Now listening to The Beatles' albums I got from my dad's stash.

Simmer, folks. Have a lovely Saturday.

=)

Waiting for Batman

What kind of lazy

The kind of lazy that won't get out of bed.
The kind of lazy that won't lift a finger.
The kind of lazy that lets the dust settle on the floor (or lays out plans of sweeping them under the rug, later).
The kind of lazy that stares at a wall.
The kind of lazy that draws blanks.
The kind of lazy that won't budge from its seat to walk toward the bed (because the bed is in the other room), no matter how sleepy.
The kind of lazy that's too lazy to open its mouth when a yawn comes along.
The kind of lazy that watches (without budging) a cockroach cross the room.
The kind of lazy that will watch you walk away with its favorite shirt.
The kind of lazy that leaves things (all sorts) unfinished.
The kind of lazy that falls asleep with its coat on.
The kind of lazy that will watch you walk away.

That kind of lazy.

How to hurry

un-finish the to-dos so you can grab a wink before the day is done because another one waits in the outskirts of your week but take care not to spill the coffee even if you'd rather have tea but oh oh the tea place is too far and you barely have half an hour to check what needs oiling or fixing or combing yes button up those discs and grab the nearest pair of sleeves shove yourself into those nudes that go along with everything check yourself can you blend into the nearest wall when things get worse than 7 o'clock run run slam the windows shut run is there ever time to pause or pause to look but oh the plug goes un-pulled forgotten until the first stop your life goes past your nose past the last lie the present blurs but your mind is on the lack of light while you smudge your left cheek with pink tint did you put the right shade on the jerk was too sudden good the puppy flees unharmed there's always tissue on hand to wipe the stray brush strokes away relief can't be too far ahead but the clock is never on your side so wring your sweaty hands you think you could wing it everytime and everytime is never anywhere except when you don't need it oh why why don't you ever learn remind yourself to stop making lists of shoulds and musts they never get done anyway--

Happy Birthday, Jay

87 years ago, The Great Gatsby was published.

.

"With every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 7

Posting, post-Lent

In spite of myself, I found my fingers leafing through my CDs and going for my copy of The Madz's "Acclamation", that well-loved compilation of religious hymns ("I Will Sing Forever", "Anima Christi", and "Panalangin sa Pagiging Bukas-Palad" are my favorites), pushing the play button, walking into the porch, sitting on my tiny stool, and falling into reflection at the beautiful strains of the choir's impeccably-blended voices. I was grateful for the quiet that only an early morning can bestow, the mild sunlight, the pause that the world takes come Holy Week.

Even as I have learned, over the years, that religion is in one's heart, or that respect for all kinds of faiths is the right thing to cultivate, or that prayer is best done heartfelt and not through routine and custom, I still found myself pulled in by the impressions of muteness that had embraced my side of the world, saw my much, much younger self lost in a sea of people, staring down at a dusty road peopled by people's shod feet, trailing the heels of a life-sized figure of a Mary Magdalene decked in a deep-blue, bejeweled cassock, the scent of burning candles saturating the air, the drone of prayers and conversation filtered by a warm summer breeze, that younger self walking, walking, feeling the ache in her feet, but trudging on despite the dust in her new sandals, because Mama said to keep walking, and besides, friends (who had decided they would rather be St. Peter's disciples because he was first to go) waited somewhere along the fringes of the church, where there was promise of five-peso hotcakes and softdrinks-in-plastic later, endless chatter on the way home, where Dad and Mom waited, a cup of hot tablea chocolate on the table.

Oh, but how far back it was I had gone. I had not meant to. And I didn't mean to, now, thinking of that peaceful morning when I was pensive and quiet. I didn't mean to look that far back, not with the distance cleaving those two worlds. But I long to cross the chasm. If only time weren't so locked in. I would have jumped, head-on, if jumping meant going back.

Coolio!

from this site

What do you know, My father has the makings of a blogger.

A couple of weeks ago, my dad posted this on his Facebook:

The Son Also Rises (With apologies to Hemingway)

After waking up in the morning the father, still with ruffled hair and his maintenance medicine awaiting, immediately pounds the keys of his laptop for his FB...

...while the son, awkward for lack of skill, prepares their breakfast.

The title totally cracked me up. My father has a quirky sense of humor.

=D

The strength of my father

The strength of my father tears down walls. It builds bridges. It resurrects dead faiths, rekindles dying fires. The strength of my father sneers at pride and walks over the hot coals of weakness.
The strength of my father has kept this family whole; the years have only served to deepen the ties that he has so lovingly preserved.
The strength of my father pushes lives forward.
I march on, with him ever by my side.

Oh, summer, bummer.

Cheeks as red as tomatoes. Sunburn after an hour outdoors. Ants marching in organized multitudes toward unattended food. Then a cold comes along to officially usher me into summer.

=/

"For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit."
-C.S. Lewis, Til We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

haha

from flavorwire

"I think you can tell, when you meet someone, whether they read novels. There's some hollowness if they don't."
- Philip Hensher

"So cry all you want. I won't tell anybody."
-David Foster Wallace, Oblivion

"As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.

But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think...The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. "

I will always regret not buying that DFW book.

Errors in Conjunctions

1. And my breath catches at the discovery that you still haunt these roads, and those.
2. But I curb the vagaries of thought and feeling; the heart is weakest where memory dictates.
3. Or I could have bought the old book of watches, the bag of coffee beans, the barely-touched Dostoyevsky volume.
4. Yet sunlight still slants sadly over my little shelf of books.
5. For much of this story is undone--locked inside drawers, shut behind doors, swept under rugs.
6. So the hours go by, sinking into slumbers.

from Explore

Kung kasadlakan man ng pula't pag-ayop 

tubo ko'y dakila sa puhunang pagod; 

kung binabasa mo'y isa mang himutok 

ay alalahanin yaring naghahandog. 

- hango sa "Florante at Laura"

This little banquet

"It struck her... that here was spring, and the whole year to be lived through, once more."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

My current fixations:

milk tea, scented oils, tea light candles.

After a long day at work, and a drawn-out week crunching away at data, daylight, and anxiety, there's nothing like a large cup of cool milk tea, or the sustained whiff of fragrant oil kindling mildly over the soft flicker of a tea light candle.

The milk tea invigorates, the scents bring pleasure to the tired mind, the sight of the candle's softly quivering flame subdues the cares and the distress... ah, but life seems kinder when the air is filled with strawberries, or apples, or amber, or vanilla-and-cinnamon-flavored donuts...

And outside, flits a lone moth and nine fireflies, a breeze lingers just a bit longer, trees breathe over weary pavements, moonlight slants,  invisible, on the surfaces of things.

The daily grind is sapping enough, so sip away and take it easy.
Have some tea and candlelight today.

Just Little Things

The small things are often the most neglected. 

But catching them could just turn out to be the best moments of our day.

more here

"How silently the heart pivots on its hinge."
- Jane Hirshfield

Twilight, along the highway--

The drone of cars speeding past, drowning my errant thoughts, the ghost of you slowly fading into the deepening dusk, my consciousness finding solace in the dull din of this confused, billboard-infested city.

‎"Set your life on fire. 
Seek those who 
fan your flames."
- Rumi

A strange lot

Funny habits of famous authors

Truman Capote

and 15 Writers' Bedrooms

via Apartmenttherapy.com

Sylvia Plath's bedroom

found on (where else?) Twitter

=)

Gandhi's Top 10 Fundamentals For Changing The World

via Explore

From thin air

March 17, 2012

2:01 a.m. 

Training room

Desultory thoughts

Your penmanship has changed 6 times on this page. You are a fickle-minded person, unreliable in relationships, you cannot be trusted. Your decisions change 47 times in a minute.

The person sitting at the corner of the room has been nodding off to sleep in the past hour.

The person speaking (who is very animated) has failed to rouse him from his journey to dreamland.

The person at the other corner of the room is also trying his best to keep his eyes open.

You smile. At 2:00 in the morning, can one expect less?

Population in the room: female-dominated.

There is an overpowering mix of scents. Woody, floral, fruity. 

You wonder about your perfume.

The table in the middle. Tumblers, coffee mugs, plastic bottles. Water, coffee, fruit juice.

Half-empty, half-full, empty, full.

The dominant colors are pink and black. Only one female is wearing a dress. The rest are in jeans, pants, trousers. You think of Celie from The Color Purple.

You remember that you have a meeting to attend in the next room. And the session here is only half-way done. 

Unearthed from your locker from the random security check of two hours ago: two empty bottles of perfume, an old scarf, your favorite mug (forgotten), your running shoes, three key chains (a bear, an orange, a red boot), two stress balls (one covered with writing).

Your coffee has grown cold.

Towards the end of the lecture, you suddenly remember your grandma.

You become sad.

Goobye, Adrienne Rich

Tonight, an August night, feeling
the apples yellow as young moons
on the tree behind the house,
I think of my winter—
- "The Corpse-Plant"
Adrienne Rich 
May 16, 1929 - March 28, 2012

Coffee

via Explore

Macy Gray, Covered

2012

Ms. Gray's "Covered" is definitely a whole crew of well-diffused sound waves. The perfect soundtrack for a 5:00-in-the-afternoon coffee shop meet-up with your quirkiest friends, or an early evening jaunt to some little-known, kitschy bar (again, with your quirkiest friends).

My favorites are: "Nothing Else Matters" (Metallica); "Wake Up" (Arcade Fire); "Love lockdown" (Kanye West); "Smoke Two Joints" (The Toyes); and "Maps" (Yeah Yeah Yeahs).

I'm not too crazy about "Bubbly" (Colby Caillat), and Radiohead's "Creep" has been covered enough times (my fave is Damien Rice's), but Ms. Gray still pulls off the dark charm and is able to put her spin on 'em.

Two thumbs up. Plus a glass of tequila rose on the side, if you will.
=)

The Decemberists - Down By The Water

"The season rubs me wrong/ the summer swells anon..."

via brainpickings

Blanks and blues

on random things and loneliness

The dust keeps settling too nicely on the floor. And now I need to wipe them off my books. I ask myself how it is that I keep forgetting, when I keep reminding myself to bring that notebook everywhere, but it's a lie. I often forget to remind myself. The thought seldom crosses my mind. But today I will put it in my bag and have it dig a snug space in my bag. 

Later, yes. 

I have just committed the sin of looking back at what I have written. I shouldn't have done it. But what gives, when this space is so tiny, the ceiling, not high enough? No matter, I have enough space inside to put things in, though there isn't much headroom for memories as there is for listlessness. 

Time, I steal--because I have to, because I want to. Twice, during the last eleven seconds, I typed spave, instead of space. 

Let's see:

It's March and yet much rain has already fallen. What is the world coming to? There isn't much to be seen where I am. There never is, but how come I see so much?

How many sunsets more?

Cohere

"Life is a sum of all your choices. So, what are you doing today?"
- Albert Camus

"Sometimes, from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to."
- William Stafford

"I still feel kind of temporary about myself."
- Arthur Miller, "Death of A Salesman"

"In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?"
- Gabrielle Rothou

"Your sorrow is an infinite circle
that never begins and never ends."
- Nicanor Parra

"Each time you happen to me all over again."
- Edith Wharton

Always, Daphne.

It never ends.

Ah, daylight. Early morning, to be a bit more specific. Exact time, not important. The mildness that brushes everything is what matters: the lack of glare, the expectant coffee cup, the stirring households, the dew on the leaves, the distance from darkness. The newness of the day comforts the mind, that just an hour ago had been at odds with the unfriendly shade of dusk.

"We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it."
-Rainer Maria Rilke

This morning's Facebook status:

Conversations with my daughter are almost always sprinkled with her exclaiming (with those animated, beautiful eyes of hers), "Mommy I took so much after you!" And this is from all sorts of things, from outlook in life, to fashion sense, to socio-political view, to artistic elitism, to shoe choice, etc. My dear Jackie, Mommy's wish for you, among so many others, is that you would not have the sadnesses she's had, and that you would not make the wrong choices she's made. (teary-eyed, sniff sniff)

Lit Geek update:

What I'm reading now:

John Fowles, A Maggot, 1985
his last work of fiction

After the novels, after the teacups.../

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?

- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

And if I were to be asked about it, I probably wouldn't know what to say.

The heart unknowingly pushes down names, thoughts, entire sentences of long scripts. Memory fades at desire's ferocity. And if it is forgetting which the heart decides on, surely, it can be done.

There are four corners to the typical room. More, to the unconventional ones. The outdoors can be limitless. There is so much space for the mind to roam in. The inanity of insistence at the same spot, of knocking on the same shut door, does not, and will not, make much sense to the remote, impervious day-after.

Unless pointlessness is what the heart is after. Unless it is pain that makes more sense? For, after all, the glory of torment has been much written about, and much fuss has been made out of its necessity.

But none of that for me, now, please.

I'd much prefer not digging at what is no longer there.

And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window panes;     There will be time, there will be time -T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

*title of post borrowed from T.S. Eliot

#19. Accept loss forever.

Jack Kerouac's "30 Cool Tips"

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

via Dodo Dayao.

Follow me on Twitter:

                                                     https://twitter.com/#!/chansonata

Minimalist has never been this cute!

I found this wonderful little link over at writer Maria Popova's twitter. Designer Christian Jackson created a series of minimalist posters for popular children's books. Such whimsy and delight!

Here are a few examples of his works:

=)

A Panorama of ‘Middlemarch’

A Panorama of ‘Middlemarch’

from the weekend couch:

Oh, Miles!

You fill my heart with joy. You're the best companion to anywhere and anything.
Don't you ever go away.

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little
Why the Gods above me, who must be in the know
Think so little to me, they allow you to go 
- Cole Porter, "Everytime We Say Goodbye"

It's Sunday morning, again. Still dark outside, and here, too. I will not look for where the sun will soon rise, do not care for that sliver of light heralding dawn. No, none of that for me.

Ella is crooning in the background, and Neil, singing along with her.

What sad thoughts fill the mind.

And would it have been worth it, after all, 
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 
Would it have been worth while, 
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 

- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Your promises:

lackluster, empty,
as brittle as your will,
dust in my hands.

I dust off my hands.