I am drawing shadows for you to disappear in. I put on one dark hue after another, so no light can pass through--until no question is left of darkness, no space for silhouettes to linger in.

I am drawing shadows for you to disappear in.

Daphne, once more

I cannot have you follow me
this way--

Today's dose of madness

Reading the final pages of Fanny Howe's The Winter Sun, I was struck by the similar thread through which most of what I had read in the past days seemed to run. These materials--a number of blog posts, some really striking passages on Twitter and Facebook, another book which I had reread--all seemed to resonate with a similar theme. If I had been my younger self, I'd probably be making (thwarted) attempts at deciphering its meaning, some secret message, perhaps, that the universe is trying to deliver to me, some hidden design that would make sense out of whatever's happening in my life.

As it is, the years have taught me that coincidences like these are nothing more than what they are: coincidence. The recurring themes in our lives find their way to our everyday because our choices have made them do so. And the patterns with which we make decisions can be traced to what and how we are as individuals--our backgrounds, our experiences, our reactions to those experiences.

Hence, this seeming tapestry of words must have arisen from nothing more than a chance click (or, several chance clicks) on random links, or from my mind's proclivity for certain subjects that had made me retain only the encounters with those subjects, and that had, in turn, consigned the others into shadowed blurs.

Arrggh.

Coffee.

A Starbucks table napkin found, stuck between pages 156 and 157 of a book--a collection of essays, to be specific--told me I might have brought this book with me on one of my frequent stays at the coffee shop. The napkin's edges were yellowed, and I hadn't taken the book out of the shelf in a long while, besides, so that particular trip to caffeine-and-laziness land must've been some years back.

This encounter with a napkin isn't really something to be made much out of, but I being I, my mind wandered a little, away from the paragraph I was reading, following my eyes as they landed on the rectangular, light brown object, lying flat on the desk. 

I wondered about that day and hour, irretrievable as they are from my cache of memories, when I had stuck this napkin between these pages; wondered about how I was-- my frame of mind, my mood, my clothes, my view, my companion (if there was), the weather. What song was playing in the store? Were they playing any, at all?

It is a blank that I draw, of course. Aside from its discolored edges, there was nothing in the napkin that provided any sort of explanation, or clue, that would have enlightened my musings.  There was neither an actual memory to anchor a memory on, nor an actual measurement of time and distance to base a recollection from. I had to shake off some unexpected wish to, somehow, go back to that time and place.

Some passing regret over not having scribbled anything on the napkin's surface, that time, flits by. And that must be why this bit is posted here, at all.

It is when the losses--gathered, counted--seem at their most, that the hands start teaching themselves to unlearn the act of grasping.

Caption: Triangle

They stand there, bodies and faces so close, that from a distance, the picture they paint is one of nearness, of intimacy. They are oblivious to the loud music, they are at a safe enough distance from where the dancing is: two tall, good-looking men about to lock in an embrace, until some stray beam of light zeroes in for three seconds, five, and you catch sight of the barely concealed wrath on their faces. They are both wearing blue shirts.

Their chests are heaving, impassioned.The muscles in their arms are tense, and one can imagine punches straining to break free. One realizes that they are not so much about to embrace, as to grapple. Their feet are planted firm on each one's ground, and the onlooker senses that each is insisting on a height inches above the other. The light around them is a blue haze.

They are shouting at each other, and one can make out expletives from the emphatic movements of their lips. The music drowns out any chance of the (heated) discussion ever being audible, but one can certainly make out that this is a brewing fight.

About  three long strides in front of the pair, one's eyes zoom in on a girl, diminutive, even in the heels she had so carefully chosen for the night that, hours before, stretched out before her like a gleaming promise. Her hair is one long, sleek mass, and the sequins on her white shift dress are blinking at the blue lights, as she had, when she first entered the crowded hall, hoped they would.

Her face is crumpled in an agonized frown; the cigarette she's been smoking is forgotten, as her fingers seem mechanical in their hold of it. She shifts weight more often than she would care to, but this is probably the last thing that's on her mind. Biting her lower lip, she would look upward and sigh, then blink back at the scene before her, of which she is, obviously, more than just a passerby.

Indeed, that is no mere speculation, for the girl had just been dancing with one of these two men, several minutes ago; and she had watched her world crumble down when the other shut the door behind him for the last time (or so, she had thought), a couple of months ago.

And these two men, furious at their blighted, lacking knowledge of who each was to her, all but seem to remember her presence in their lives, in this one heated moment of boyish tempers.

If she walked away now, they probably would not have noticed.

Versions

1. at the approaching sight of pain, turn
into stone

2. at the scent of pain, close
into a bud

3. at the threat of pain, curl
into a fist

Post-Birthday post-it:

I've just had a very long, eventful weekend. And though it seems that the proper thing to do right now is to write about it, all I feel like doing is collapsing into bed. The grind starts again tonight, after all, so I'm going to do just that: collapse.

Good night.

P.S. Mercury's turned direct yesterday, by the way. I am looking forward to some semblance of order around here.

*crossing fingers*

Found:

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.” 
--Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem

Weather report

The clock said 12:52 when I glanced up at it from the plate of greens I was picking on. A peek out the window yielded a sight of bluish/purplish clouds and a grey-tinted sky.

Non-movement. Muteness.

The beads of sweat forming on my arms, for some reason, ended whatever suspicions of rain/non-rain I had had this morning when I went outside and felt the sting of the sun against my skin. It looks like rain, I remembered thinking, as I looked up and saw the sky ablaze with sunlight.

Meanwhile, and more so because of the inclement state of the sky, I felt that sensation of being suspended nowhere and everywhere. The possibility of renewal lay somewhere, but I insisted on abeyance.

Quagmires lie where there is flux, and we've all been through enough storms to want another mishap, another fall.

But here comes a drizzle, and I find myself begrudgingly wishing the winds of a week ago back, the memory of a just-risen, benevolent sun--eavesdropping on a conversation about moonbeams and pathways and dreams--ambling into my mind like a cool, confiding breeze.

Sunlight slanting over surfaces is a breathtakingly beautiful thing. Like sadness, sometimes. Or, certainty.

Throw in particles of dust (star, or fairy), let them glimmer for a little while, and the mind's eye settles.

Exquisiteness is in the seer's point of view.

Admonition

Knowing all that you do, now, you should no longer be surprised. It isn't pain that hardens us, but the decision that comes after. 

The child that you once were, now looks at you with helpless eyes; the woman looks back, wistful. But in between, a valley of years: murky with the mire of tears, cloaking clocks of time, and underneath, a shroud of stories told and untold, the width between the torment and, always, the letting go. 

It should be no wonder that you walk away.

It shouldn't be.

Go.

And because I insist on images, I draw blanks. One after another, empty and unperturbed.

I wonder about the soul in things, turning them inside my head, as I stack stray sheets of hollowness on top of a desk. Loss is hackneyed, its heart a dead river. But we persist in making tangible, demanding preciseness out of space. Drawing blanks, along the way, from dug-up graves, from forgotten gaps.

"I am deliberate and afraid of nothing."

-Audre Lorde

Today, I take a pause, to celebrate the women I know, have known, and will know, who have suffered, risen, and moved forward, once more. I salute your greatness and enshrine your legacies.

Diving into this wreck (an exercise on randomness),

these are what I came up with:

A list of things to do, two items in all. A bunch of keys, minus one key. A view from a window, moonlit and square. Left-over sadness in a yellow mug. 

A thin volume of poetry, dog-eared where the months have settled. Some random dream of forgetting, wafting in some fugitive breeze. 

A movie ticket, a concert ticket, four recital programs, three laundry receipts. 

Strings, an unlabeled bottle, forgiveness. Irony. A lotus flower, lilac and plastic. A smooth, round paperweight, squinting under the lamplight. 

A torn piece of laughter. Dust. A pill. 

An empty notebook. Shyness, folded beneath folded years. A pinwheel. 

Four pencils, sharpened and useless. A memory of trees, the comfort in shadows. 

A lone moth. A strand of sunsets. Blue post-its. An unfinished letter. A question. 

Nine questions. No answer. No answers.

A moment, a pause.

It is inevitable that they come along; first, one, and then, the other. Along with trailing noises--a puppy's bark, some jazz--and the daily sight of things, walls, maybe, or a folded shirt, an empty glass; some invisible door opens, and the moment tiptoes in, with the pause, in tow.

The moment stretches into something almost palpable, and so does the pause. One is made to acknowledge both, and the hours that came before. How long has it been? The question begs to be asked. How long since the once constant companions--endless wakefulness, maybe, or periodic stupors, insuppressible tears--have left? The days have been kind, one realizes. They have brought one to the present, where the certainty of pain, the sting of anguished thoughts, and the seeming permanence of grief for lost things, are but memories, that consign themselves deeper into some indeterminate recess of the healing heart. 

Some dull ache taps one on the arm. But the day waits outside and has, in truth, begun pulling one out of the hour. The interlude ends, and one stirs back into one's locus, where breakfast waits, and shelves need dusting.

Somewhere, the sudden loudness of a door shutting, the footsteps of someone walking away. Somewhere, the sound of someone leaving. 

But here, the sunlight streams in. And for a moment, the handle of the coffee cup sparkles where the light slants, like newness. 

I continue to astound myself with my own contradictions.


When will the heart ever learn?
The years have failed to teach.

From Marjorie Evasco's "For Maria Kodama's Other Borges"

II. Orpheus Falls Who has not heard the Poet's lament/ for one descended into dream's dark stairs?/ Who has not heard the gods'/ admonition, given with knowing smile--/ Do not look back--/ last trick to play/ on the body's lighted book of memory?/ Every single instance, the lover fails,/ falls,/ quick to where the sought-after/ back to the surface of time. He sings/ to her, "Ascend with me!"--/ yet in a/ moment's breathlessness, hers,/ he/ looks back and she's undone,/ charred bones/ and ash./

"Finally,

the things we love demand more love,/ as if we have always been capable of it. Yet/ I can only offer belief, mirages that mean water,/ long travels leading somewhere./" -Joel Toledo, "Attachments"

Coming to terms: a journal in parts

I was taught Art--fed books for breakfast, given songs to wipe my tears with, pushed to poetry for solace--and it is through Art's glasses that I look at the world. The search for meaning, and the beauty in it, are innate. I find that I have the need to turn things over and under and look for smoothness, or dents; I question things that don't make sense. I question, to the point of breaking, when I do not find the answers, or when the answers I am pointed toward do not collide with my faiths. I search until I find what I had hoped to find, when I began. The failure to sate my anxieties breaks me. I insist on reading between the lines, even when there are no spaces, no gaps to poke through. My downfall is often my stubborn insistence at the soul in things. Or, is it my salvation?

This morning's companions

I promised myself I'd catch up on all the sleep I keep losing during my work week, but here I am, with my cup of coffee, reading and scribbling, musing and smiling in between, sighing, every now and then. I missed this, hopping from one blog to another, becoming privy to other people's thoughts, finding affirmation in their hopes and solace in their griefs, knowing that I am not alone in my mind's episodes of darkness. That these people are strangers makes the balm even sweeter, as the knowledge that other people go through brokenness, too, and that they, too, write candidly about life and love, make for delicious companions on a Tuesday morning, that could very well find itself buried under a pile of other days as the weeks and months and years progress. One could not escape what one is, and this could just be who I am. Cheers to the beautiful creatures that words are. Life seems less lonely, with them in all these (seemingly) blank spaces.

Coming to terms: a journal in parts

"I choose a color and it connotes sadness./ But how long must the symbols remain true? Blue/ is blue, not lonely. After a time, one gives up/ reading the sky for shadows, even rain./ There is no promise, only a possibility./ A moment moves to another, and still it feels/ the same./ -Joel Toledo, "Attachments" ************************************************** *The awareness--or belief, if you will--that everything is transitory: is it a blessing or a curse? This lack of faith in the faithfulness of things lends a cynicism that, yes, gets shaken from time to time, yet stays, always rooted, a habit of years that veers the heart away from believing that there is value in the things that one does, in the people one has known and knows. The mind trembles under the very sun of hope. Despair is a constant. It is one yardstick with which existence is measured. Happiness becomes a stranger whom one welcomes but does not allow too close, because parting is always imminent, parting must be inevitable.

Signs of the/my times

After my recent bout with the flu, here comes the itching in my hands. The unbearable urge to scratch is once more a constant companion, with the actual scratching coming in at a close second. I uncurl my palms and see the beginnings of countless rashes, small and red and annoyingly there. My lips are starting to chap. Rashes flower on me at the merest of scratches. Whenever the temperature goes down to a particular level, and the wind blows this way, like this, I turn into a walking rash. I'm thinking it'll be a while before the scratching ends. March should be a good month (I hope).

Going through this blog reminded me that David Foster Wallace's been dead for four years. I didn't realize so much time has passed since stuff and people and places. But, yes, apparently.

From the weekend(s) couch:

So this morning I find out that Ebert gave "Shame" and "Cloud Atlas" 4 stars, "Melancholia", 3 and a half, and didn't care much for either "Detachment" or "The Tall Man" (the latter did leave a bad taste in my mouth and the former is second to next of my movies to watch, after "360".)

Coming to terms: a journal in parts

This preoccupation with loss. This fear of what the next moment will have in its hands, or already does. Ah, my mind. What are we to do? That I could restrain you within this small space: these quotidian-smeared walls, this dusty floor, these narrow stairs, this endless day-to-day. That I could pull you back from your stubborn forays into the great unknowns, bigger than you could comprehend, deeper than you could fathom. Why do you stray so? You venture out with the very things that taunt you, the very spaces that house your fears. Why do you insist? What is the sense in this persistence? Stay, stay, stay. Stay and be safe. Be safe.

From Proust

"But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; whenever it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day."" --Marcel, Swann's Way

Coming to terms: a journal in parts

Propitious that I should find my way back to this book at a time like this, when the losses seem at their most, scattered at my feet like fallen leaves, demanding gathering. I am reading Swann's Way. In Search of Lost Time. Remembrance of Things Past. The former seems ever more apt. Lost time. Lost things. Losses. I have to pause, every now and then, as reading the book sometimes becomes painful. Sadness for lost things, for the ecstasy and the agony in the act--voluntary and involuntary--of remembering. We lose something everyday, I remember thinking, when Proust was recounting the episode of the tea and the petites madeleines. Man himself is a canvass of loss, an abyss whose depths hold so much light and darkness, impalpable, unfathomable.

E words

Endearments, Endings, Ennui, Entropy.

This rain, that sky. The weather reports have unanimously decided that the best place to be, right now, is indoors. The pots on the wall are making their presence felt; the dust on the floor cower at the lack of warmth. My mind is an empty room and no, I did not intend for that line to sound like that Death Cab For Cutie song. I guess what this is, is an exercise. Self-imposed and done with much slowness, after what has seemed like an entire ocean of procrastination, of excuses dressed up as reasons, of thinking, and, finally, of over thinking. It's a disease, I surmise, that I will never really get cured of. But a really bad cough is just as bad. In the space between that line and this, several words passed before my eyes: pedantry, decrepit, lucid, distance, meander. Alliteration unintended, attempt at meaning, nil. The order of the words elude me; I merely typed from memory. The perfunctory movement of a curtain's hem has disturbed the stillness, from this shut window, of what storm there is outside. There is cadence in the sound of rain and thunder. Or, maybe not.

Let The People Speak.

As protest to the so-called Cybercrime Prevention Law, this blog is temporarily closing down.

Chiaroscuro

One of the worst places to be in is between laughter and tears. There is that series of seconds tracing indecision that is almost painful especially in the afternoons, when the eyes take the most time to adjust to the dis/appearance of shadows.

Cornflake, or somewhere along that hue

This morning, I watched the sky turn from black, to indigo, to sienna-tinged, to powder-blue. Along the lines, I remember thinking it was a bit dark for 5 o'clock, then quickly forgot about it as Miles Davis started playing in the background. I was glad that I remembered to look outside. Because I'm writing again, I'm once more aware of things, my senses alert to my surroundings, my psyche alive with the rest of me. But I'm sure I would edit that line out, mentally, once I'm out of here. The coffee waits. Let it wait.                                                                                                                                       I am seriously starting to pine for my books; been lately wondering if I'll ever get them back again. True, then, that the things that matter to us, that we've loved all our lives--or the most significant parts of it--always come back to haunt us. Notebooks, pens that were loved and clutched and written with, coffee mugs, old shirts, books, people, years. Irrevocably lost, but whose presence we feel, even as we go on with the day-to-day, scrolling through playlists, tinkering with our messes, mending tiny holes, tearing at candy wrappers, walking home. But, books. We forget, remember, then soon wonder.                                                                                                                                                          But the sky's a golden patch right now, from my window. And I remember picturing the sun's rays slanting snugly on my shelves.

Hope

Peace comes settling, at last. Evening bears no more threats; there are less shadows when the sun rises. The doubtful mind, programmed from years of asking, still feels the questions creeping in, but the heart is just as stubborn, and, with surer eyes, follows the light as it slants, upward now. The motes of sunlight bring delight, as before they only did sadness. It is almost dawn and yet the only regret I feel is that of the clock's measured ticking--unchanging  even as everything else has moved on, even as the heart has learned that each moment is different from the one that came before, and from that which will come after. Still, the losses have been counted, and tomorrow remains, steadfast.

Moving House

Movement requires action. A verb is a tiresome word. But the mind dictates the body, and the mind is a merciless master. Often, I am drawn to ask, "what dictates the mind?" And now, I ask, "how did I get here? What miracle of will, what dust motes, which roads?"                                         And I am led downstairs, down slopes, past years and trees, and footsteps and decades, behind closed doorsm and mute walls, inside old rooms and beneath familiar ceilings, across sunsets and evenings, in front of fences, and faces, through beats and rhythms and voices, beyond tears and laughter, behind space and time, across space and time.                                                                   Tonight, I must remember to look at the clock. But first, buy the clock.                                                 This place needs a clock.

From the weekend couch:

Wong Kar Wai, 2000

David Fincher, 2011

Darren Aronofsky, 2006

The pause, after "The Color Purple"

Few movies have touched me the way this one has. And after having seen it again, now that what I consider the most difficult parts of my life have come and gone, the story has taken on a new path. It has--apart from showing me the beauty in its cinematography, its actors' ability to keep everything within the bounds of understatement, its director's sure hand, and its well-written music--triggered different emotions and jump-started new insight. It's probably my age, and the keener sense to redirect perspectives that I have acquired with it, that are the roots of these feelings.

The book is miles more poignant than the film, and when I first read it, I was young, and angry, and in the middle of the quietest desperation I would ever know, against which I struggled without struggling. The analysis I wrote of it in a Contemporary American Literature class in college was a virtual treatise on the oppression of women and the importance of making one's voice heard. I had found an ally in Celie, and with that piece, I had so valiantly meant to champion her and all the women who had ever suffered in the hands of a man; and all the while, the paradox of my inability to champion myself hovered, like a shadow. The one thing I could do, back then, was to scribble passages from the book that had driven wherever home was for me, during those times.

Needless to say, I attacked the book with a vengeance, and cried my eyes sore when I first watched the movie. This morning, despite familiarity with the ins and outs of the narrative, and knowing exactly how it was going to end, I still cried, but for reasons entirely different from the ones that had so made me sniffle, the first time I saw it.

After all, it was Celie's constant reminder to herself to "just keep breathing," that had helped me through some of my darkest hours, and her heartfelt exclamation of gratitude, "I'm here, I'm here!" that reminds me of the many things I should be, and am, thankful for.

Mood Indigo - Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington

Oh, my gosh, this is just so lovely.
The perfect strains to my sashay with the sunrise.

After the cake

There might you see one sigh, another rage,

And some, their violent passions to assuage,

Compile sharp satires; but, alas, too late,

For faithful love will never turn to hate.

- Christopher Marlowe, "Hero and Leander"

Leander, on my mind. And Apollo, at the heels, but as always. Where is the man who will love like they did, where, the modern-day wooer who will defy distance and speed, and laugh at scorn, who will cross a sea every night for his beloved, who will brave danger and death, or let reason go unheeded?

Modern woman, you are unfortunate to be living at a time like this.

head shake (translate: natauhan)

Well, not really.

Now, back to regular programming. 

Or, put those heels on and step on their ego-coated toes.

Only the chilliest nights can make me bundle up. I rarely ever layer clothing, too lazy to slip on cardigans or jackets, even in the office where it's cold, all the time. Neither am I crazy about shawls, or scarves, and the like, seeing them more as hindrances to freedom of movement, ridiculous accents to this unpredictable weather of ours.

I wear turtlenecks only because I like their chicness, and, too, because they make me feel grown-up, tough, protected. I choose material that's all-weather friendly, most of the time. I'd rather really just wear something that could take me from warm to cool, to warm again. I think to myself, what if the sun decides to stage some grand, unannounced entrance, like it often does, and I'm caught shod in knee-high snow boots (the presence of which in our country, I count as some fashion anomaly, really)?

I practically live in sleeveless tops. The body will sync itself to the temperature outside, in one way, or another. Mind over matter, as the cliche goes.


So, what was the last movie you saw?

These rain-soaked months--

And the moments fall like rain, hungry for pavements to land on, longing for surfaces to find shape in. Most of the time, the dream never materializes, the way raindrops do, and the mind succeeds in containing the chimera of unnamed lines and guises, finding affinity with the lack of symmetry, like how torrents are, when angry winds encroach.

The skies and their sheets of rain. The lonely, stirring their cups of coffee. The waiting, looking through moisture-soaked window glass. The preoccupied, walking on puddles. The others, plodding through the change in weather like they always do, keeping up with the hours as best they can, in boots and raincoats and hot soups and smokes. And the listless, tossing in their beds day, after night, listening to the thunder, cringing at the lightning.

Where are you, these days? Where do your days go? How many times have you sat, indoors, waiting for a downpour to end? What do you do to pass the time, the agonizing wait for a storm to pass? Why are you where you are? Why do you dwell on the thoughts that slip in to your mind? Or, why don't you? And, what do you do, so as not to?

I keep telling myself, this inclement weather will pass, as all things do.

We just have to keep an umbrella nearby.

From the weekend couch:

Richard Attenborough, 1992

Pampahaba ng buhay:

Girl friends--

Daddy

...it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

-"Sonnet 116", William Shakespeare

Once upon a sleepy afternoon in a sleepy town, I was seven years old and, rubbing my tired eyes, I sauntered over to the hammock in the backyard, where my dad was reclined, poring through the day's newspaper.

"I just finished Beauty's story. The drawings are kinda strange. But the story had a lesson."

"Ah, yeah?" my dad's eyes didn't leave the page he was at, but I knew he was listening. He was always listening. "And what's the lesson?"

"Um, that a person's true beauty can't be measured by his or her looks?" I squinted at the afternoon sunlight.

"That's true. Good that you read it that way," he looked at me briefly and kept quiet, in case I had something more to say.

I gave him a grin, nodded and skipped away, proud that my dad approved of my take on the tale. Our conversations, then, were short and crisp, but we understood each other, counting the few sentences, and all. His good opinion meant the world to my childish heart and to this day, world-weariness and cynicism aside, I still seek to please him in what way I can, and more so now, that I'd already given him so much heartbreak and disappointment.

Whenever I finish a good book, read something smart online, or come across music by the artists we both like, there's always still that urge to tell my dad about it. I've long stopped harping about "lessons" or "morals", and, instead, bicker to him with all the candidness my blase heart can afford to express through the distance and the phone lines. At most, I hear him laughing, or giving me verbal nods at achievements I tell him about, could picture him--ever the benevolent man that he's always been--shaking his head, could hear an inaudible sigh escape from his weary chest at whatever recent sadness I share with him.

After all these years, my dad is still my go-to guy when something ground-breaking cuts a mark on my turbulent life. Though these days, I try my best to refrain from over-reacting to things, try my damnedest to stay strong for the sake of my family, as I know they have their own troubles to take care of.
The winds of time have taken away so much of what once was there. But the strength of my father, fired ever so constantly by the love he has for his children, has remained unwavering.

To this day, I still think of that hammock in that little town. And to this day, I remain that little girl, looking to my father for consultation on the things that matter, for concurrence on decisions I have to make, for a shoulder to cry on when the tears prove too difficult to keep in.

And I could only pray that I, too, could be those things for him, someday.

Unfortunately, it was already 3 a.m. when I woke up, and there was the whole business of whipping up breakfast to take care of, and the irresistible urges to just stare at some blank wall, in between irrepressible bouts of checking my Twitter wall and looking up movies to download, so that the plan to continue reading from the page of the book I'd left off yesterday afternoon was forgotten.

It's a gloomy, drizzly morning right now, and I have found the perfect way to spend the day: watch Woody Allen's "To Rome, With Love", prodded to look for it as I was from a post on Twitter that said this could as yet be Mr. Allen's best movie, to date.

Waiting for this to come out:

From the weekend couch:

Yann Samuell, 2003

tap, tap, tap.

In four days, I was able to finish three articles.

The first one was a writing assignment so unceremoniously dumped on to my lap and for which I made a big, grumbling fuss about, one-hour deadline, and all, but oh, the satisfaction at having won against the clock was almost as sweet as the nod of satisfaction from he-who-gave-me-the-task.

I had a day each to finish the other two, but, of course, me being the way I am, I waited until the last three hours to work on both, and couldn't believe how great a master pressure can be, for I managed to alt-tab, type, pause, type, alt-tab (repeat X number of times) between the two word files, and come up with, I should say, still decent write-ups. I enjoyed writing the profile most. People are an interesting subject to study, and tap the letters on one's keyboard for.

I'm making lots of progress with the novel I'm reading, too, so this should be a good weekend.

But now, for some shut-eye. I hope to still be in a reading mood when I wake up.

"Dearest, I feel certain, that I'm going mad again. I think we can't go through another of these terrible times and I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can't concentrate, so I'm doing what seems the best thing to do." - Virginia, "The Hours"

Black Maps by Mark Strand

Not the attendance of stones,
nor the applauding wind,
shall let you know
you have arrived,

nor the sea that celebrates
only departures,
nor the mountains,
nor the dying cities.
Nothing will tell you
where you are.
Each moment is a place
you’ve never been.
You can walk
believing you cast
a light around you.
But how will you know?

The present is always dark.
Its maps are black,
rising from nothing,
describing,
in their slow ascent
into themselves,
their own voyage,
its emptiness,
the bleak temperate
necessity of its completion.
As they rise into being
they are like breath.
And if they are studied at all
it is only to find,
too late, what you thought
were concerns of yours
do not exist.
Your house is not marked
on any of them,
nor are your friends,
waiting for you to appear,
nor are your enemies,
listing your faults.
Only you are there,
saying hello
to what you will be,
and the black grass
is holding up the black stars.