These days, I spend a lot of time watching you. I'm not entirely certain if it has something to do with the years I didn't get to spend with you, like they are something I have to make up for. Maybe it does. Maybe they are.

Now, I watch you pace the length between here and there and wonder how far you've gone from where you are.

Is it true, what you say, that the number of times you stir your coffee makes a difference? Does it take more of the bitterness away, the more circles you make? I wonder.

You are looking at the road and I am looking at you. To your left, a darkly tinted window; to its left, an unrecognizable twilight. I realize that I don't mind if it is so, at all. I trace your profile with my eyes.

I couldn't bring myself to stop at four segments; and so I write you down again.

Because your birthday is coming up, I will write about our garden

We agree that someday, we will have a garden, and that garden will have: lots of green grass; a perennially mild sun, whose light plays on glass tabletops; five old, friendly trees with trunks as thick as years; nice, wooden chairs with brown cushions for seats; unread books kept in a woven basket; pink and red flowers that are perpetually in full bloom; a wisteria-wrapped bower.

And a huge, yellow-and-white striped umbrella, of course.

We agree that it will never rain in that garden unless we wish for it to rain, and only after we've put the books and the cushions away.

We agree that we will wear big, straw hats when we sit in that garden to talk, or read, and those hats will be identical. I have picked out an ensemble of long, white skirts and frilly white tops, and it's up to you whether you would choose to stick to the floral shirts you'd said you would wear for those daily breathers. It's not too late to change your mind.

We agree that I can laugh to my heart's delight at anything you say that I might find funny. My laughter will ring and rise and be loud, unlike how it is now--muffled, silent, almost-- while you're there, and I'm here.

We agree that the only thing we will argue about are the books we've already read; we will never argue about politics, or about how good, or bad, people can be, and you will never disagree with me when I say that life isn't always all that bad, because once upon a time, you had told me so yourself, and just because you are very sad right now doesn't mean you will always stay that way.

We agree that crying is allowed, but only if we are both there. We will each keep a hankie in our pockets.

We agree that there will always be warm tea and cold water. I will fix you fresh garden salads, and we will already have sworn off junk food, by then. You will absolutely not be allowed to eat anything that's bad for you--delivery of any sort doesn't reach that part of the world.

We agree that in that garden, we will have all the time in the world to talk about our favorite writers, the movies we've seen and want to see, poetry and loveliness, how complicated relationships can get, Woody Allen, Fiction. We will take our time making plans, like dropping by Paris for cups of coffee; watching the rain soak my sandal-strapped feet at an outdoor restaurant in Prague; hugging in a crowded mall for half an hour; attending a conference in, say, New York, and sharing a plane seat, just for laughs.

We agree that we will not wear watches; the sun, setting, will be the only clue that it is time to go indoors. We can always choose to stay until evening, however--there will be lamps, and candles, and watercress sandwiches.

We agree that in that garden, I will always be 18, and you, 24. There will be no such thing as aching limbs, or wrinkles, or brittle bones, or failing eyesight. Never.

We agree that we can keep coming back to that garden forever, or until one of us decides we don't want to, anymore. Even then, one of us just might still keep dropping by for a peek, to take the chance that the other might be sitting there, reading.


For L--

Because I do not know which scary place my thoughts will take me to.

This is how I know I'm not all right; this is how--and when--I know you're not with me: no matter how late the hour and no matter how drowsy I am, I feel almost afraid to go to bed without popping a pill.

You wonder.

You wonder about the storm, wonder about the things it may have taken with it when it went away. The dust, the prayers, the hours, the night, the morning. You wonder about roofs, floors, houses. You wonder about children. You wonder about sadness.

You wonder about rain, trickling down glass windows, wonder about rain, whipping at shut doors.

You wonder about overflowing rivers, wonder about books and plastic cups washed away by flood, wonder about wet, shivering skin, about fear, helplessness, loss. You wonder about hope beneath a torrential rain, hope against the wind's merciless lashing, hope despite them.

You wonder about words--do you describe the wind as "howling", "roaring", or "wailing"? You wonder about meaning; you wonder about meaninglessness.

You wonder about the trees: some, uprooted and fallen, streaking the grey streets green; the others, leaning low against the sides of roads, nodding even as the air momentarily keeps still. You wonder about puddles.

You wonder about the blank look on people's faces as they walk under a drizzle, you wonder about their thoughts.

You wonder about darkness and light, wonder about the correct way to strike a match to light a candle, and how there is loveliness in the sound. You wonder how you can think of loveliness at a time like this.

You wonder why the sun shines the way it does right now. You wonder why you wonder.

You wonder what will come next.

Passage, or something like that

There's an element of strangeness in it: being half in love with something for as long as one can remember and then, one day realizing one doesn't like it anymore. This was the case with my (erstwhile) addiction to coffee and sadness. One morning, I woke up, fixed myself my usual cups of caffeine and gloom and, after a few sips, decided I wanted no more of both. 

I poured them into the drain, turned the water on, pelted the sink with disinfectant, and scrubbed with more force than usual. 

I went out to buy some tea and bask in the sunlight.

Variation on a theme: Daphne and Apollo

You have betrayed me, Eros.

You have sent me

my true love.

- Louise Gluck, "The Reproach"

Waning, trembling, loss of breath: the first signs of the permanence that will become the end of this story.

Picture woodland, Dear Reader, imagine trees with whorled roots, and leaning branches; picture sunlight and comforting shade; picture the occasional brook, silver rivulets crossing brown earth and clusters of green grass; the sky must be a blinding blue, for it cannot be otherwise, the mind will always insist on blueness; let the breeze be a delicious balm--in the beginning, at least. Isn't this how most stories start, after all?

Or imagine the city, if you will, the city with its absent stillness. I prefer the woods, but do what you must.

STICK TO THE STORY. A reprimand. There should always be a reprimand.

The mind is where the chase leads; the mind is where the chase is, and I begin:

The shadows lengthen as the day loses ground. Two shadows, they were, and one of them was faceless.

MIND YOUR TENSES.

At the body's swiftest, the limbs persevere, and the mind endures.  Soon, twilight, herald of night. Soon, the wind; soon, the truth. YOU ARE GETTING AHEAD OF YOURSELF. But it is a race, is it not?

IT IS A CHASE.

I erase a word and replace it with the same word and think that I am discovering newness. It is a form of madness. I look out the window and see a small, round moon. I think it is more yellow than white, but then I change my mind.

One shadow fleeing from the faceless one, from the impermanent one, he whose being is always a makeshift one. I come up with a list of adjectives: transient, shifting, short-lived, they. They is not an adjective. Impermanent, then.

And that was why I ran. An epiphany.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? A reprimand.

The other shadow, breaking, then, turning into someone else, breaks again.

Daphne, dazzled by a slice of brilliance, finds herself turning--

That was not in the outline. That sentence pushed its way from below, from somewhere unseen. That sentence was an insistence I did not foresee. It begs to be italicized, but I would rather look the other way. It was I, after all, who was dazzled, it was I who turned; it was I who mistook that slice of brilliance for light. There is no outline.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? There should always be a reprimand.

It never ends. I cannot have you follow me this way.

WHO IS THE You HERE? But must there always be a reprimand?

I have (finally, finally) taken the great myth and torn it apart.

You are the tree that I want to become.

The Walk Home

what surprises you most in what you feel,

earth's radiance or your own delight?

- Louis Gluck

The lamps were lit, the street was pale yellow, and my steps were unhurried as I walked.

I was thinking, it is no longer the night that's catching up with me; it is I who's catching up with the night. I was remembering a particular moment--daybreak, it was--when you made me realize twilight no longer made me sad, the way it used to, for a very long time.

A small, unforeseen smile, a quickening in my chest, the deep, languorous texture of evening--an aqueous joy was rushing through my veins, and I felt light, like a murmur, or a ripple. A faint memory of, of--something brushed my left cheek, and was gone before I could give it a name. The word/s seemed far away, too blurry for me to make out. Or was it a breeze?

I laughed, out loud, and the sound echoed upward, toward the sky (like I knew what sky meant), like my laughter always does when I am laughing, and happy. I felt my heart swell with anticipation. Just a few more steps and I would turn the corner that led to you.

Thoughts of hot tea, of music and books, of hope and love, wafted in my mind like promises about to be fulfilled. I brushed back some wisps of hair that fell over my eyes and quickened my pace. Awake and pensive, by the light of the furtive moon, I knew you were waiting.

Story

Sacred and unutterable Mind

flashing thorough the universe one thought,

- John Berryman

Let me tell you how it happened:


My foregoing thoughts of you: did we have to be all those? I cannot let go of this loveliness, all blurry and countless, unlike

the wondering I had done: oh, let me, let me ask, where? Where

are/ you/ are you

(in) the things I had seen you in: streets and highways, titles in bookshops, random twilights, a handful of rainy days, this solitary tree,

the accidental skein of prayers: let me ask you one final question, or be, or here, my love, here--

converged into one dazzling, lushly flickering light.


And you, beloved, were, one enunciated night, licked by the sudden warmth of a far-reaching flame. From the immeasurable--because, with time, turned into something unseen--distance, you crossed the rift between before and after. And by crossing, you sealed the hollow, drawn as you were by the brilliance: a known strangeness, yes? Beckoned, you came.

Summoned, you arrived.

And here is the afterglow: you and I, 

here.

Summer

Daybreak. Pale rays of light cleave (your) consciousness into humid halves. Edges start to blur. A book of poetry, sprawled on your left thigh, disappears as your lids finally drop.

Slumber and desire are both fluid--

The ceiling, dock to your longing: this will be your first thought when you open your eyes again, hours later. Oh, merciless heat. When and where, deliverance? A dull ache lingers as a montage of tarnished dreams dissipates from your mind, but

--so let me flow--

not yet. Meanwhile, your mind roams in unbearable brightness, through tepid skin and agitated hands, above rising, and rising heights, underneath the glow of distant moonlight and alongside a frugal, sultry breeze, through restlessness and crawling mist. A dark, nameless hunger, an absent stasis. The eyes seek dim corners, entanglements. Blue lights flit about.

A specter of you, faceless, all brilliance--

On surfaces, sweat breaks, and breaks, and breaks into tiny, oppressive beads and

you dream of skies unfastening,

of you, opening

of rain falling on parched ground, of you catching the drops finally, finally, with your

tongue.

Interlude

Mo chuisle, you have come back.

Rest now, dear heart. Rain has laced the evening with crystal drops; look at how they shimmer in the moonlight. The night has shed away its mournfulness, and is once more fragrant with promise.

Do not keep this brightening at bay; let yourself be consumed by its radiance.

Tomorrow's sunlight waits. Love hovers at your fingertips.

Debris

Slanted stems of sunlight bathe the room in the aftermaths of a stowaway morning, and my eyes catch movement, elsewhere. Elsewheres are faraway places. A quick brush, an agitation of sorts, the noiseless rustle of absence. One more hand slices into the stillness and I realize it is the mirror, stirring: the mirror is the explanation, and my hand is in it. There doesn't always have to be a reason. I look, and my elbow materializes.

That is my wrist, and that is my hand. The sunlight lingers, waiting. My fingers are flipping through the pages of a slim volume; my fingers are looking for a memory. There is no face, and I move away, grateful. You will only find that which you really look for. The air hangs heavy with what comes next. And I'm sorry, but there are no more gaps I can put you in. 

Hand and book disappear, reappear, and I scoop them out of the mirror.

Somewhere, mute, small and distant, a misplaced hollowness. Here, the poem I was looking for.

Your Franz Ferdinand Shirt

And indeed, there will be time...

There will be time, there will be time.

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

A girl and a boy once roamed the city under sun and starlight. Their portion of the years, once swallowed by the city, are now resurfacing into a single moment. Once upon a time, the girl and the boy drifted into parallels and disappeared into the years. But some sleight of hand, hosts of cogent thoughts, some vagrant wish, a strange, mute sadness--they will never know which, or that even all of these--have driven the years away and pulled, tilted them into a single point.

The girl and the boy are now talking about a shirt. The girl is telling the boy about her dream, because the shirt--and the boy--were in it. They are laughing, and in their laughter, their thoughts are careening backward into another time. The boy is remembering a Thursday, the girl, a Saturday. They were both in those days. As they talk, they are thinking of each other, and they are bending back into each other. Now, they are starting to grope around for the lost years, inching their way into them, picking up the luminous fragments and handling them in a circumspect way, avoiding the cracks on the floor, kicking the shards away. 

In this moment, they are not aware that the wounds have healed, or that they were ever there. They are not thinking about healed wounds; they are not thinking about wounds, at all. They are asking each other about the last movie they saw, about the books they have read. The boy is telling the girl about the book he finished two days ago; about how, upon shutting it, he had found himself wishing he were also shutting her memory forever, because the years have failed to do that. "But here I am," the girl says, and the boy replies, "no you're not here. You're there, I'm here. And I want to be there." The girl hesitates, then laughs, and the boy does, too. They are walking around the gaps.

They start talking about something else.

Grace

She caught her by the wrist and said, "Your wings are bleeding."

Startled, Czarina slowed her steps down and looked beyond her right shoulder. All she saw were sunlight, some trees, the sidewalk, a lamp post, and a man, sitting on a bench, reading a book. She stopped and stood where she was, staring at her right wrist where the woman had touched her, remembering the distinct whiff of cold air that seemed to have brushed past her when she was touched. The woman. It was a woman's voice she had heard, and the words had been spoken in an unmistakably feminine way.

She felt her heartbeat start to slow down; it had accelerated to an alarming pace two, three minutes ago. She walked to a nearby bench and sat down, finding relief in the familiarity of wood. Your wings are bleeding.

She gingerly touched her right shoulder blade with her left hand and winced a little. It still felt sore, and she could picture flowers blooming on it. Some were purple, others, bright red. Rudy. He had planted the blooms on her skin; he had imprinted himself on her consciousness for always. She had cowered and cried, remembering other pains and hearing other insults, feeling them again, hearing them again.

She thought it would never end, and she was right. Bathed in daylight and so many hours removed from that evening, she knew that it was still happening. Her heart, she felt, was still breaking; her soul, bleeding. She wiped the tears on her cheeks with the back of her right hand and made a decision. She was going to look for a new place.

She stood up and started walking down the path, thinking of angels and dreaming of flight.

Here is your line.

He sank into the couch like an old friend and lit a cigarette. His pockets were full of unused scripts, obscure facts, and cryptic notes; most of them, hoarded from walls and pavements, a few, borrowed from random years, none of them useful, except when it really mattered, none of them hollow, except where the edges began. He watched the smoke float aimlessly in the space between him and the cream-painted wall, like a nameless shadow looking for a place to go, looking for a parallel to press itself against, and he wondered at these thoughts; he knew they didn't make sense.

Outside, the darkness lingered like wine in a glass.

She threw her head back, laughing at something he had said, and she felt the space between them turn into undulating rings, becoming smaller, and smaller, and smaller. And in her mind, she was thinking, will there ever be a question I can throw at you that you cannot answer?

"Probably not," he said.

"What?" She blinked, twice, wondering if she had asked the question out loud. She was sure she had not.

"Forget it," he grinned. "Are you somewhere else, again?"

"No," she shook her head. "I'm right here."

They started talking about The Beatles and as she listened to him speak, she remembered other conversations in other places, other days, another year. It occurred to her that they had both become different people, but then, afterwards, wondered if they had stayed the same, all along. She was a lost child who had insisted on clutching at the same straws, and in one way or another, she would turn to him for answers to questions, for when nights got too dark and things that were lost became irretrievable, blackened out.

She had a tendency to slip away; he was a drifter who knew his way about, and always found his way back. She was liquid; he was the breeze. She felt like he could see through her, somehow, could read between her confused billows. She constantly found herself struggling against waves and waves of untold stories, in storms both real and imagined, in self-made whirlpools, in conjured images of drowning, in nightmares of frighteningly high tides. And she would always come back up, gasping for air.

Conversations with him were balms to her many wounds, and listening to him talk, she realized that it was really she who had dreamed up the unused scripts, the obscure facts, the cryptic notes. It was really she who looked at the smoke for more than what it was. It was she whose thoughts were looking for a place to go, it was she who was looking for parallels, and she knew that these thoughts didn't make sense, at all.

Not yet.

Meanwhile, they talked about Beethoven.

Segment

A door in the mind closes, its sound barely perceptible. It may never leave an imprint in the memory, may never be heard, may never be felt. But in some random series of seconds, when the mind is at the crest of wakefulness, it comes back, that previously unnoticed wafting of a slight breeze, that faint click of the knob.

Celine: A Sketch

The onlooker is drawn by her face and he is never left with much choice: either he stares, outright; or averts his eyes, only to take a second look. The delicately chiseled nose, the oriental eyes, the flawless complexion--they coalesce into something that teeters dangerously close to perfection, and the effect takes one's breath away. Never cloying, her beauty is the kind that stays, the longer one looks. This opinion is shared by male and female alike, by the way--you can ask around. But let's not get sidetracked. There's more to her than surfaces go.

But let me add, while we're on the subject of countenance, that there is a certain imperviousness to her persona that, now and then, shuts doors on strangers. Maybe it's the tilt of her chin, or the veneer that is completely devoid of self-consciousness; maybe it's the unflinching look she gives you right back; it could be all of the above. 

Overall, it is the distance between her and those who remain outside her borders, that sustains the speculation.

To her friends, she is perfectly human. She constantly finds herself tormented by her own very high expectations of herself and the painfully keen eye for detail that she seems unable to dismiss when it comes to whatever it is that she's working on. The degree with which she finds fault in herself can come up to saddening heights. But the anxieties remain masked; she is the last person you should go talk to if you're in the mood for either wallowing in self-pity, or dullness, at that. She has this uncanny talent for digging deep, and keeping her own conflicts buried. A banter-cloaked monologue is the most you'll get; if you're lucky, she'll bare parts of her heart out. But always, the funny asides will be there; the laughter, too. Now, if only one could teach her a thing or two about allowing the deeply-buried ghosts to surface, maybe they'd stop haunting her in her dreams.

Her fierce steadfastness is something I'm sure her friends will attest to. No hour is too late and no madness too trivial--she will be there. She will listen and help in all the ways that she knows how. Her capacity for empathy is limitless. She might crack a joke, or two, besides, so you'll almost always end up minus some of the heaviness. 

Do not be fooled. For all her lighthearted repartees, she is perfectly at home in cerebral conversations. You'd be surprised at her fascination with the metaphysical, her excursions into the artistic side of life, her theories on the subconscious, her musings on loneliness and hope and love. You might want to bring a pen, too. You just might find a metaphor sandwiched between her laughter and her stories. 

The observer knows nothing of these, of course. She was named after the moon, after all, and she is just as mystifying--and radiant--after nightfall.

Saved

Hollywood Giant Walt Disney's 20-year chase to obtain the film rights to P.L. Travers' Mary Poppins books finally sees its end; meanwhile, the author finds herself having to confront her own childhood. If you're a girl and you adore your father, make sure you have a box of tissues with you when you watch this movie. I didn't have one handy, so I had to use the hem of my shirt.

There isn't much to be said about Tom Hanks's and Emma Thompson's acting; only that they were perfect. And damn that Colin Farrell guy for making me cry.

"You think Mary Poppins has come to save the children? Oh, dear."

Director: John Lee Hancock ("The Blind Side")
Year of release: 2013
Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, Ruth Wilson

Forgive me for I shall document

Aside from movies, books are my favorite things to snack on. In between my Oscars craze (3 titles left to watch: "Nebraska", "Philomena", and "Gravity"); a Woody Allen binge (close to half a dozen movies in the past couple of weeks--my favorite of the lot being the hilarious "Love and Death"); and hunting for Joaquin Phoenix movies (I had "Walk The Mile" for lunch yesterday), I also read.

These are the books I've read these past few weeks:

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto
Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion
Fates Worse Than Death by Kurt Vonnegut
The King of Nothing to Do by Luis Katigbak (all in all, I've read this collection three times)

I tried to restrain myself from listing down the books I read during the final months of 2013, but I lost. So, off the top of my head, here:

In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon
Poems (1962 - 2012) by Louise Gluck
The Double by Jose Saramago
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Here by Wislawa Szymborska

Right now, I'm reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods and 158 pages into the novel, I still can't decide if I like it, or not. Excepting Smoke and Mirrors, my feelings for Neil Gaiman's writing tend to be ambivalent. It took me a while to get the hang of Neverwhere, and it's taking me forever to finish this one.

As it is, I'm itching to move on to either Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, or Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Decisions have to be made.

Meanwhile, I shall nap.

Happy Birthday, Momsy

I've heard it said that if you want to know how a girl, or a woman, will look when she's older, the thing to do is to look at her mother. I do hope they're telling the truth. My mom's turned 61 today, and she doesn't look a day past 45. She has aged so gracefully, that I couldn't resist asking her, just a month ago, how it is that she manages to look so young. With a smile, she told me, "there's my secret", and pointed to my dad (who, I think, was scrolling down the news, that time).

Aside from my father (I am quite certain she'd given the best answer to my question), I think it's my mom's possession of that joie de vivre that has enabled her to ward off the "old woman" look. Laughter is one of the things she's not stingy with; it's quite contagious, too, her laugh. She has an innate ability to shrug stress and sadness away; she's an advocate of clean living (which she doesn't forget to remind us, her kids, about, by the way); and she seems to have that perennial twinkle in the eye for new things, undiscovered places. She's always loved to travel, go places; lakwatsera, as we call her. 

All in all, she's managed to maintain a certain sense of wonder for people and places and things, which is not something that I can say for myself, tsk.

Today, I raise a toast to my mom, and all the things that she is, most of which I continue to hope I could still become. 

But first, that youthful glow. I should ask her for more tips.

Like chopping garlic; or, Love in the Modern Age

It's been almost a week since I saw "Her" and I still think about it. I was putting up new curtains this morning, and I thought about Theodore and Samantha; I started to wonder what Spike Jonze's favorite color was, or if he preferred grapes to pears, like I did.

I guess it's one of those things that stay with you, or that would suddenly cross your mind while you're in the middle of doing something totally dissimilar, like chopping garlic, or putting your shoes on.

Like other great films, "Her" prods you toward introspection, pushes you to confront your own central beliefs (no matter that you have to chisel your way down to your own untraveled depths), dares you to ask questions you have difficulty constructing. In this case, you may start with "what is love?", a question that has seemed to acquire various elements of the commonplace--largely because it has so often been thrown out with so much familiarity, at times, even in jest--but is really, on closer inspection, one of this life's deals that have yet to be clinched, despite numerous attempts to do so.

So, "Her". And this documentary, "chronicling reactions to Spike Jonze's Oscar-nominated film, Her. The documentary, directed by Lance Bangs, features stories and reflections from writers, musicians, actors and contemporary culture experts, including Olivia Wilde, James Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis, on the film Her, and their thoughts on love in the modern age."



Thanks to Mr. K. for the alert.

Watch Conan visit a doll store

I was watching Conan O'Brien clips on YouTube last night, saw this, and cracked up.

photo from laughingsquid.com

I couldn't resist;  I just had to share it with you.

=)

Go talk to someone.

You're at the grocery store. A Lady Gaga song is playing, and you're trying to decide which brand of canned peaches to buy.

You remember a particular writing assignment one of your teachers had asked the class to do. This was from ten years ago, and the exercise had nothing to do with a grocery store, Lady Gaga, or peaches.

You find yourself wishing you could have a chat with that teacher. You wonder where he is now, and if he does his own groceries, like you do.

And the nominees are...

"Sometimes, I feel I'm fighting for a life that I just ain't got the time to live. I want it all to mean something."

- Ron Woodroof, Dallas Buyers Club

The wee hours after the Golden Globes have ushered the Oscars season in. Here are my one-and-a-half-cents' worth:

"Captain Phillips" bored me. I think I dozed off somewhere in the movie. Maybe it's just me.

Michael Fassbender shines in "12 Years a Slave". Vicious like the villain that his role is, his presence is both loathsome and commanding, as expected. Or maybe I'm simply biased. After all, how can someone as good-looking as he is not be brilliant everywhere else? Ugh, yes, maybe I am biased. But, think Daniel Day Lewis. 

photo from collider.com

"Her" is a beautifully rendered rumination on consciousness and being; on loss and the emotional debilitation it often entails; on ennui and confinement; and on how, in this age of volatile, fragile relationships and, even with so many ways to connect to and with people, loneliness really--and still-- stems from the inability to communicate, if by the term "communicate" we want to highlight being understood. Spike Jonze is one of this generation's best screenwriters; he's a genius in my book. And why doesn't Joaquin Phoenix have more movies? Or maybe I just haven't seen enough.

"The past is just a story we tell ourselves."

- Theodore Twombly, "Her"

"The Wolf of Wall Street" is one prolonged, graphic paean to sex, drugs and alcohol. Or maybe I'm missing the point, perhaps somewhere along the lines of how a life of excess will, eventually, come snowballing down on he who lives it, yadda, yadda, yadda. I must be, for the phrase that comes to my mind, where this movie is concerned, is sensory overload. Though Leonardo DiCaprio's acting is superb, Scorsese's seat may have been a little too hot, as his instructions came out just a tad overblown. If we were on more intimate terms, I just might be tempted to tell him to google "restraint". Ah, well. Maybe I'm just getting old.

My money's on "Dallas Buyers Club". Matthew McConaughey disappeared into the character, the movie evaporated into the story, and I was entirely drawn in. And don't even get me started on how luminous Jared Leto is. There are no movie actors in this film, just people. Well, maybe except for Jennifer Garner. But what am I doing, making bets this early?Maybe I should watch the others first. 

"American Hustle", "Nebraska", and "Philomena" are still, and next, in my bucket, so maybe I ought to shut up and stop being stupid. "Blue Jasmine" wasn't nominated for Best Picture, but I'm watching it, anyway, just because it's a Woody Allen film, and Cate Blanchett bagged the Best Actress (Drama) award at the Golden Globes. For some reason, I don't at all feel inclined to watch "Gravity".

But maybe I should.

Highway

Dusk, the highway. The drone of cars speeding past drowns all possibility of conversation. Not that there will be much, given their track record at exchanging ideas. She glances at him and takes in the all-too familiar, semi-permanent frown, the set of grim lines that make up his mouth. His eyes are on the road, his left hand resting on the wheel.

She keeps her mouth shut, wondering how long the ride home will take.

"Try to be quiet out there. I'm tired, and it's gonna be a long drive." He, after turning the ignition on, several minutes earlier.

So there she sits, an obedient puppy. Glued to her spot, counting billboards.

Almost everything you want to read about

is in The Best of Brain Pickings 2013

Here's a sample:

"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble."

- Bill Waterson

and another one:

"Though “about” a cat, this heartwarming and heartbreaking tale is really about what it means to be human — about the osmosis of hollowing loneliness and profound attachment, the oscillation between boundless affection and paralyzing fear of abandonment, the unfair promise of loss implicit to every possibility of love."

- Maria Popova

Lost

Red liquor, a warm breeze, orange-tinted chairs. The evening has turned into a slow dance. People are asking for ice.

She is tipsy and drowning in a pool of music and low, inaudible chatter, still mildly conscious that what she is doing is trying to keep afloat in the crowd of twenty-somethings she had so unceremoniously found herself, some hours earlier.

Loud cheering erupts at the first strains of a popular rock song, and she turns to look at the band. Her eyes meet his and they both smile. She remembers watching his fingers fly, light and sure, over the guitar strings, and realizes she'd lost track of him when the alcohol started quickly working its way through her nerves.

He nods, and she wants to believe she knows what that nod means. They are both anachronisms here, after all; both lost, in some shared, unutterable way. The bench he's sitting on seems too short for him, somehow, and she giggles and raises her glass to him.

For a moment, her head feels clear, and her smile creeps from her lips to her soul, and she is asking, could I, perhaps now, risk my silence for your keys and strings? A promise of other moonlit conversations gleams from afar; in the muted distance, soft music waits.

Ah, but the moment, like most other moments, darts into a blur of bygones. A waiter asks if she wants a refill, and she hands her glass to him. While he's pouring the drink, she looks down at her hands. Still slightly intoxicated, she finds herself back in the subdued safety of obtuseness, where questions so often get lost in tangents, and answers, though found, are seldom ever the ones to the questions we ask.

By the time she raises her head again, he is no longer looking.

It's the last day of the year and I am fidgeting.

So my New Year's resolution is this: stop fidgeting. Be cat-like, instead.

Notes and tea

I'll put the Thursday on, wash the tea,
since our names are completely ordinary--
- from "Identification" by Wislawa Szymborska

There's water in the kettle, the tea bag waits in the cup. The book I'm reading has tea in it, has teaism and Okakura Kakuzo in it, has Basho and Sei Shonagon in it. My eyes automatically dart toward my bookshelf, where my copy of Shonagon's Pillow Book is, and I remember the lists my teacher in poetry class once asked us to make. Lists like "things that make your heart beat fast", or "things that make you sad". I don't remember the items in mine. My recall of details has become feeble, and clutching at memory's hems requires much effort, most of the time.

"And then one comes across the letters of a man one used to love.

Last year's paper fan. A night with a clear moon."

- from the Pillow Book

But, tea. Tea pots, tea cups. I have lingered over store displays a few times, trailing my fingers along the tea pots' thin, graceful necks, inspecting the cups' ears, admiring the artwork. They are the daintiest things, but I've never bought any. Maybe I didn't feel I'll have use for them, maybe I felt that it was too early in my "tea stage" to buy them. My knowledge of tea is confined to Lipton, Starbucks, and the instances it has come up in the English novels and Zen stories I've read. And, of course, there's the memory of poring over Proust's In Search of Lost Time and being profoundly affected by his tea-and-petites-madeleines passage.

photo from dinahfried.com

But I will buy a set, one of these days. It's on my list, definitely. Something that has little flowers on their faces. In white and blue, perhaps.

Meanwhile, the kettle sings.

"Come along inside...

We'll see if tea and buns can make the world a better place."

- from The Wind in The Willows

Good morning, Thursday.

from www.newyorker.com

Horrific.

In case you haven't seen it yet.
Poor Sylvia Plath. She would have cringed at this.

More here. (Thanks for the tip, Mr. K)

Meanwhile, I recently discovered lettersofnote.com. My starter meal was Doris Lessing's letter declining Britain's offer to make her a Dame. A delightful read, feisty and brief.

Notes and photos

I'm reading an interview on Jack Kerouac and I smile when I get to the part where I discover he's a Pisces. My mind drifts to James Merrill (he's a Pisces, too) and the James Merrill phase I went through after discovering him in my Contemporary American Literature class in college. I feel a pang of sadness as I think about the thick James Merrill book I found at a book sale (I don't remember where). It's one of the books I've lost in the turbulence of '11. I remember the Irish Setter in one of his poems, "The Broken Home". I can still recall, quite vividly, the smile James Merrill was wearing in the picture on the book's jacket. His smile was shy and sad, a faraway look in his eyes. He didn't seem to be where he was. Very similar to this one, though he was a little younger in the other:

Something in me grows heavy, silvery, pliable.

- from "The Broken Home"

But yes, Jack Kerouac reminded me a little of you.

photo from www.brainpickings.org

And that's probably why I started jotting down these notes.

Notes and flowers

Living things don't all require 

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light:

- from "Lamium" by Louise Gluck

This poet's obsession with flowers has single-handedly strewn your mind with blooms. Never mind the uncertainty that lives there, or the sadness that comes for occasional visits. You can count on them not to mind.

The poet has a book filled with flowers. Roses, zinnias, irises, daisies, asters, buttercups, lilies. The pages whisper pinks and lavenders, burst into yellows and oranges, spew out reds and violets, echo blues and incidental blacks. They speak of living, and pain, and sorrow, and death, and hope. So much loveliness lining the hedges, colors brightening the pathways.

But you have zero interest in gardening. Once, you planted lavender Milflores (scientific name: Hydrangea Macrophylla, the internet says) in some grassy front yard from your past. They died, all four of them. Did they know you were going away?

photo from houseonahill.net

Your shopping list has only once included "flowers" (you can picture Mrs. Dalloway shaking her elegant head in disapproval) and the ones you bought were plastic. Tulips, they were, and white. Or were they purple? You wonder.

Are there even purple tulips?

You must remember to buy a vase, next time you go out. Write that down. Now.

From this point on, the silence through which you move
is my voice pursuing you.

- Louise Gluck

Naming

The beloved 

doesn't 

need to live. The beloved

lives in the head.

-Louise Gluck

From that conversation and others that came before, I am able to see that your proclivity for naming things stems from your almost instinctive tendency to dig up graves for what you refuse to deal with.

Pain, memories, losses. Things that matter enough to be seen, acquiesced, named. Guitar strains you once loved, warmth you once felt, dreams you once conjured, luminous tears turned to dim aches, questions you once asked, over and over.

Names. Faces.

You close your eyes and push, push downward, push, until they're deep enough, until they're gone enough.

So they haunt you in your dreams, people your untold tales, disappear into deliberately forgotten landscapes, blur into uncertain photographs.

You end up drawing blanks. Blanks you're unable to fill.

For C--

Day 5

Waking up to CNN's Anderson Cooper's coverage of Typhoon Haiyan's aftermath in Tacloban  has paved the way for gloomy thoughts to come.

Today's rain seems a fitting backdrop, too, highlighting patterns of grays and blues, and grays again. I have been told to stop following the news, but an inner voice is telling me that isn't the way to go. That I have been spared by this catastrophe should be reason enough to be in accord with what is going on. My sense of decency tells me that anything in proximity to celebration (the sumptuous lunch we just had, the weekend party we've been planning), luxury (that expensive gadget we've been wanting for months now), and pettiness (the headaches and traffic we normally complain about) have absolutely no place in the middle of all the grief, desperation, and destruction that the people in affected places are currently going through.

photo from www.nationalreview.com

But let me stop there before this turns into a lugubrious and preachy post, if it isn't already one.

Aid continues to come from all over the globe. People are braving the backwash of the storm, setting aside differences and comfort and safety in order to rebuild. The days and nights to come will be long and dreary (as they have already been), but so long as there are people like the ones out there who are lending out hand and limb and heart, the sun will shine again.

Sketches

I can almost be sure I had warned you before: you will find your way here.

Hope Floats: Baby being rescued in Tacloban.

I found this on Ninotchka Rosca's Facebook wall, and was haunted by the image.

Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda has ravaged so many, but hope lies in those who help bring to shore whomever, and whatever, can be saved.

*Photo posted by Armand Bengua Frasco, courtesy of Gen. Charly Holganza/ via Willy Ramasola

Because this miss is on my list (ugh)

I have decided to give up on the book I've been reading. I seldom ever go this far into one (3/4) and not finish it, living by the belief that if the first few pages of a book doesn't appeal to me, the only recourse should be to put it down and move on to the next. One of the very few exceptions was Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, which somehow proved my judgement on its beginning chapters wrong, and it was, perhaps, the memory of this experience that was one of the reasons why I stuck to Kundera's Life is Elsewhere; the other being that of reading his The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and liking both.

The book has its merits, but the current mood I'm in has been unable to find a juncture to settle in, so for now, I'm putting it back on the shelf. I could probably pull it out it at a later time, though judging from the list of books I still want to read (not counting the ones that are yet to be added), I'm predicting the chances to be very, very low.

Meanwhile, I'll be having this for breakfast, lunch and dinner:

Sheltered by this roof

In the wake of the typhoon that has passed our way, the slightest darkening in some patch of sky now brings with it some foreboding of disaster.

The mind's eye conjures an entire city well on its way to being wiped out of the map; the heart remembers the shudders that came with the images flooding the news; a little fist of conscience recalls the shame one felt while digging in to a tub of popcorn to chomp away the fury one felt because the internet connection during the last few days was faulty, when distances away, families may have lost everything they had worked all their lives for, death tolls have come up to alarming heights, psyches have been forever tainted by the trauma of having lost so much, of having been lashed at by winds and rains so merciless, that living will never be the same again, even after the wounds have become scars.

It seems almost a sacrilege to be surrounded by so much warmth and safety, and to still be wanting more than what comfort and luxury there already is, when one has become aware of the loss and devastation that has been gone through by countless others, in one single afternoon, within the stretch of one night. 

If one were to look back at the headlines, one would see the glaringly sorry state that our corner of the world has come to: Trailing the Napoles brouhaha, typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda comes along. Do not mistake me for blaming one for the other; because in the scheme of things--where, after all, there is no scheme--there is no connection, whatsoever. I juxtapose these two events not out of superstition, but merely to illustrate--and highlight--the outrage that the former ought to incite in us, and the contemplation that the other inevitably brings with it.

It is at times like these that one, in spite of oneself, is made to pause, and reflect on the the significance of living: what is it that truly matters? 

You've been having dreams lately and, as you wonder about it now, you remember thinking about it some days ago, though which day it was, you don't remember. A line of words dances before your eyes: cease, seize, bees, sky, window. Another follows its tail: chair, smoke, bloom, tea, pavement.

The attempt to rationalize is quickly assaulted by the reprimand There is no pattern.

Last book I read:

What I'm reading now:

Morning

See how the day glimmers with clarity, framed by the four sides of your window. The corners are there so the eyes do not stray. Take a step back and keep enough distance, should the longing to look beyond them seize you.

If the distance doesn't douse the impulse, take a walk outside.

Remember how you described that movie in a conversation from years ago. Remember how pinpricks feel. Remember the lilt in voices. Remember voices. Remember the way a surface can both be sunlit and not. Remember how a smile tugs at your mouth. Remember the distance between your eyes and that wall from years ago. Remember that wall. Remember distances. Remember how a crease can draw attention to itself. Remember how empty losses can feel. Remember how rain feels on your face. Remember the sound of a car being driven away. Remember the oblivion in corners. Remember the strangeness of cold floors. Remember how nights can stretch for miles and miles. Remember the strangers in your dreams. Remember dreams. Remember your dreams. Remember what weariness feels like. Remember that chair. Remember all the keys you've lost. Remember doors and doorways. Remember that hall. Remember what vagueness feels like. Remember the sound of wind chimes. Remember violins. Remember the impossible softness of this pillow. Remember water. Remember the smell of an early morning. Remember rain-soaked mornings. Remember the sounds of morning. Remember how quiet sadness can be. Remember what laughing feels like. Remember how your laughter echoes upward. Remember the falls you've had. Remember how soft surfaces can be. Remember how hands are surfaces. Remember soaring. Remember solitary silences. Remember shared silences. Remember what hunger feels like. Remember sweetness. Remember what bland tastes like. Remember soaring. Remember how awake the mind can be. Remember lullabyes. Remember Thursdays. Remember that Thursday. Remember forgetting. Remember the comfort in slumber. Remember this road. Remember your footfalls. Remember remembering.

"We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you."

- Sylvia Plath

Monday is when you're in-between weeks.

At least, I am.

Watching "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is just the sort of thing that could get one fired up on a Monday morning. More so since it came after the reading of Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad just a week ago--in a parked car, surrounded by twilight.

Homer's been in my thoughts, lately.

But Lou Reed died yesterday, and the local elections are well underway. All in all, a gloomy morning.

October 27th was also Sylvia Plath's birthday. I remember reading her Unabridged Journals a few years ago and being struck (and left thinking about it for days) by how she was much the same person, inside and outside her poems.

Have a good one.

Post Script

But there is dullness, too, and gaping time. As much as there is that constant exercise in quiet and contentment, the unaccustomed mind finds the (oftentimes) unfamiliar silences a little disconcerting. What of the previous life spent asking and chasing and turning things over and over until there are only more questions, more distances to run? What of the sleepless nights, the burning days?

But I have books to read, and music to play.

I have promises to keep.

Sunlight

I am grateful for today's sun, and that there is sunlight where I am. The rain can bring such gloom, can stir so many dormant, nameless sadnesses.

A window is a blessing. I am grateful for windows, too.

Some days are made of downpours.

Someone asks a question and suddenly there is a click from the lock. The utterance of a name is an invisible hand that turns the knob, that opens the shut door.

The memories come rolling out and the intrusion of remembering, so painstakingly thwarted many sunsets ago, resumes where it had been left off.

We end up finding ourselves in the last place we want to be: inside a dark, erstwhile forgotten room, counting could-have-beens.

The question of tenderness

How I would like to believe in tenderness-
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way.

-Sylvia Plath, "The Moon and the Yew Tree"

Another series of points, revolving around the word "tenderness":

the end of an exhausting week, the body collapsing into vague relief; limbs weakening to softness; the mind yearning for rest; that conversation on poetry with my daughter, exchanging notes on Christina Rossetti's "Remember" and agreeing on the sadness in its lines; next, a flashback of my sunlit childhood, glimpses of orange twilights, a song; that word, tenderness, this line, "because there, too, is tenderness" limning my thoughts like some sad loveliness; pages on a page, Sylvia Plath, "The Moon and the Yew Tree", that line, "How I would like to believe in tenderness--".

The question of love breaks, certain, under its own weight. Remembrance, instrospection--they come in, swift and incorrigible. The night falls, wistful, its softness more pronounced. Solitude, daughters, childhood, the promise of sleep. Where there is poetry, where there is tenderness, the heart succumbs.

Where--

For we are ether