But she knew what it was like to be still, that piece
of a moment when the mind wakes up to the sound
of something crashing...

-from "Sleepwalking" by Joy Icayan-

A Visit

Well, what do you know...

It's raining tonight.

April

The days seem to have acquired an aimlessness to them. Perhaps, it's that standstill brought by the heat, that dry, dry mist in the air that paralyzes the mind into a stasis of some sort. The occasional wind, blowing at whim and frugally, too, doesn't prove much of a help.

The mind dreams of rain.

Rain, glorious rain.

For now, we watch our thoughts desiccate, crack into dust.

Girlfriends

Forsaking despair, we are keen
on shoving this faith into ourselves...

-J. Neil Garcia, "Smoked Salmon Surprise"-


The two of us, facing each other across a wooden table in the middle of a hot afternoon, 1:04, to be exact. Beer in a glass, half-finished iced tea on another. A breather, right after the quarrel with the boyfriend who's oceans and oceans away, accusing you of "never being there" for him just because you were unable to answer the phone when he called, an hour earlier. Then, forty minutes of talk, of explaining, of assuring, of telling him he's a great guy, in spite of his inability to find work, of reminding him to take some medicine or another for his flu, of promises, hush, it's alright, it's alright. After the click, a sigh.

Dearie, it's alright, you know how men can be. Yeah, I know. He needs you, you see, needs you to be strong for him. But he can get so paranoid, at times, you know? It gets to me, it really does. You love him. So it is all about that, no? Not all the time, I'm just saying he's a lucky guy because you love him and you stick by. Oh my God, imagine if I got tired of it all and just left him. You've got to be kidding. He will absolutely go mad. Yeah, he's already mad, the way things are. But, see, it can't be easy for him, too, I mean, being so far away and all alone. I guess you're right. I have to be strong for him.

Men. They are such boys.

One nods, the other shakes her head. Laughter.

Cheers to us. 

(giggle)

You'll be fine. We'll be fine.

Madaya ka, you didn't finish your beer. 

*For L--*

Weekend browse:

A walk across the rooftops 
by Luis Katigbak

Teach

the feet to arch, nonchalant, on heels. Each conversation is a potential fight to be won. Paint the eyebrows just so--even a frown should spell not doubt but mere deep thought. Stare when stared at. Don't storm off, just walk away.

Women on glossies and other surfaces: stop looking.

Resist

Simmering after that extended outburst did you think it'd be this soon the blue takes over In the middle of pretending to give options would any of those two have done it for you That secret relief oh that blessing of an exhale over his refusal to choose it brought in the calm oh what heaviness a sigh takes away what appeasement after the knockdown how tempting to give in to the pull of that traitor of a smile tiny and tugging

From "Gift" by J. Neil Garcia

And you are everywhere
even as you are nowhere
in touch, for here is the place
things cherished are laid bare in--
the edge of body's knowing,
the edge of the world.
And I know my task
for the day
is no different from the tide's:
to take in and let go,
to push against land and
pull away, to love you without claims.
For nothing given
is ever owned, and ghosts
we already are
of fickle matter's imaginings.

Hindi Man Malaman ng Mundo

ni Mesandel Virtusio Arguelles

Hindi man malaman ng mundo
nilalaman naman ng mundo

Hindi man malaman ng mundo
nailalaman sa mundo
ang hindi kailangang malaman ng mundo

Hindi man malaman ng mundo
sapat na ang nilikhang mundo
sa iyong mundo

Hindi man malaman ng mundo
sapat na ang kaalamang minsan
nagkalaman

at maaaring maabo
ang mundo hindi man malaman

I stepped into a bookstore yesterday

and was greeted by Jorie Grahams, Louise Glucks, Billy Collinses, and Robert Hasses.

Why, oh, why does money always have to be an object?

Oh, well. One book per payday, then. That's the best I can do.

PSYCHE

by J. Neil Carmelo Garcia, from The Sorrows of Water

Her error is believing she can only love him with the soul. For her sake he has been real enough-- shadow-clad and without a body, the way she accepts everything must be in the naked beginning. His voice, to her, is water: when he speaks she feels she hears his true self purling out of rocks in a blurred, dreamy forest-- a thought which makes her shimmer, unrecognizable, to herself. His words: she does not mind stepping into them, makeshift houses of sound, which the soul inhabits if only to be known at all. But the rest of his breathing absence, his lack of shape and face-- she fancies to be his most beautiful feature. Thinking herself enlightened, she must make him see she seeks him past the accidents of sight, smell and taste-- faint flowers crumbling under her sheerest touch. So it comes to her as a surprise she needs him whole, after all. Like a craving for something sour, the desire for texture seizes her one breezeless night-- and she finds herself stealing toward him with a lamp, dim and sighing. The rest we remember as a tale about gods teaching mortals a bright lesson in temperance: love, a labor of roots and sap ascending from soil to fleshy fruit, is not so much given as deserved. But in her mind what will linger is the specter of his skin, filmed and warmly gleaming with drops of fragrant oil. Beholding him laid open, at once, she understands: the love of body is the love of form. Body-- the luminous edge where the soul can begin.

this frown this mole that shirt these books these days this lock of hair those handkerchiefs those years those years those years that weariness this page those songs these eyes this sigh

me

Seasonal whining

Every summer season seems hotter than the last one.

One feels almost ungrateful for the breeze because the heat it brings along stings the skin like so, just so, so that the mind feels the pinpricks of a dizzying soreness that will not succumb to the numbness that is usually easy enough to assume.

No, not when it's this hot, this dry, so that we are almost prompted to ask why ever did we wish for sun, now that so much sun is here.

Tsk. The heat indeed does things to the mind.

What's keeping me afloat,

these days, is my capacity to drift by and over and back, that penchant for indifference, that c'est la vie attitude, that shrug, that series of languorous blinks leading to a series of standstills.

What can I do, it does seem to work.

Most of the time.

What about you? What do you do?

Again

Mercury is retrograding come April 18th.

Exhale, my dears. The thing to do is to chill.

Sorry, M--.

This crossed my mind while I was brushing my teeth this morning:

Between "Before Sunrise" and "Singles" is the distinction between "being" and "is".  

These days...

image from erinsavage

1st of April

The book I'm reading, even as it is remarkably written (and perhaps it is owing to this, too), hits too close to home and I find that I have to put it down, time and again.

I am more than halfway into it. I will finish in due time.


I guess the Holy Week does bring gray skies. Bright blue would be too much of an incongruity.

Last year, I wrote this. A little ashen, as it should be.

What I'm reading right now:

from chapter 10, p. 497:
And she, Frederica, had had a vision of being able to be all the things she was: language, sex, friendship, thought, just as long as these were kept scrupulously separate, laminated, like geological strata, not seeping and flowing into each other like organic cells boiling to join and divide and join in a seething Oneness. Things were best cool, and clear, and fragmented, if fragmented was what they were.
     "Only connect," the "new paradisal unit" of "Oneness," these were myths of desire, the desire and pursuit of the Whole.
     And if one accepts fragments, layers, tesserae of mosaic, particles.
     There is an art form in that, too. Things juxtaposed but divided, not yearning for fusion.

Heartbreak

is seeing one's child shed quiet tears.

Thank you for getting well, my baby. You gave mommy quite a scare.

For S--

We talk of sadness and agree

not to.

TODAY:

What's yours?

"As though the very act of unbosoming one's secret self were simply another way of affirming it."
-J. Neil C. Garcia, Myths and Metaphors-

It's funny how we eventually find ourselves looking for the things we love, even as they intermittently blur themselves from our immediate surroundings, even as we find ourselves losing them in the course of the day-to-day, because the drone of the quotidian is a plane that's easy to disappear into.

The pull soon comes and we give in, only too willingly.

I experienced such a relinquishment--consciously, at that--when I came across where Garcia described how "lingering in it can induce in you such feelings of sharp melancholy", pertaining to "one's solitude as a poet".

I make no claims, at all, of being one, oh no, that would be a sacrilege.

I meant that I realized how I would always have that hunger for words and the many designs I could make of them and out of them--no matter that they are clumsy, at best and feeble, at worst.

There would always be that desire to design some imagined tapestry, because I know that I have my own loom on which to weave--my years and the gaps in between, for even in those gaps, there is, and there will always be, something to create something with.

As, of course, there would always be that struggle with the self over what is real and what is imagined, over the self and the desired, that all too consuming desperation which can only find rest in line, in stanza.

Arrgh. Total lack of understatement up there.

Convoluted, convoluted, convoluted.

I need another cup of coffee.

Nakakaloka

Yesterday, over snacks of cookies and chocolate cake:

JACKIE: Mommy, which would you rather choose, the heart or the soul?
ME: (silence)
KIM: I'd rather choose the soul 'cos the heart can be really stupid.
ME: (silence)


Hay.

Gloria Jean's Cafe, Robinson's Galleria

So this is what it's like on a Monday morning here.

There are too many people, too much noise from the adjacent road, too many conversations going on, that my powers of alienation refuse to shut out. The jazz music from the store's speakers are drowned into paltry strains.

OMG, there is an Anthony Hopkins look-alike sitting on the couch two meters across mine, eating a grilled sandwich, could be BLT or something. Blue eyes, and all. Yup, he's white. The guy, I mean. M-- says he looks more like James Gandolfini.


Noise, noise, noise. Zone out, Shan.

Nope, can't do it.

Grrr.

The weight of ninety-seven ticking clocks

Facing a door almost always brings about that feeling of waiting, that sense of expectation, some imminent arrival--

even when there is no beginning to circle back to, in the first place.

I guess one's distance from the door presents what available gradations of anticipation there may be.

I am approximately eleven wide steps away from a door. And, no, I am not waiting for someone, or anything, in particular.

Still, yes, there is that feeling. That feeling.

“Fear can keep us up all night long, but faith makes one fine pillow.”
-author unknown-

From the weekend couch:

"Being alone: there's a certain dignity to it."
-Janet Livermore, "Singles" 1992-

These days,

I keep hearing more and more people end their sentences with "or am I just getting old?"

Or am I just getting old?

Hangover: extended

I was sitting in front of my office desk this morning, staring at the PC and not trying very hard to lull myself out of the lazy, hazy stupor I was in, now and then saying a weak "hi" to co-workers passing by, my right index finger playing absently with the miniature chandelier on my right ear. Then, a thought crossed my mind and I blinked and froze. I took off both my earrings, looked at them and realized I was wearing mismatched ones.

Oh, the shock, the awe. Yes, the awe.

I mean, how could I?

I put the poor, unrelated objects on the desk and realized it was time to wake up.

I am about to leave my 20s.

This statement poses a lot of questions.

Hopefully, I would be able to come up with answers.

I know, I know. I'm just being emotional.

But, really, what is 30 like?

I don't feel "30", at all.

Yeah, yeah, I'm still in denial.

=P

Today's Find: The Proustian Meme

From Vanity Fair:
"First, the Proust questionnaire was dreamed up neither by Vanity Fair nor indeed by Proust. In fact, it was a Parisian parlor game among the novelist's bourgeois crowd, and it is believed to have been popularized by the daughter of the 19th-century French president Felix Faure. "Antoinette Faure's Album"--a red leather journal adorned with an ornate, blind-embossed trellis--contained entries from many in Faure's social circle. She would invite friends over for tea and then ask each an identical sequence of questions: "what is your favorite virtue?... Your idea of misery?... Your present state of mind?," and so forth. They would all answer, in long hand, in her little red book.
Proust, who twice filled out Faure's form with precocious gusto,--at ages 14 and 20--subsequently published his answers as "Salon Confidences Written By Marcel," in an 1892 article in La Revue Illustree XV. His name would become associated with the questionnaire posthumously..."

This could well be one of the earliest forms of what we know today as the meme. Imagine having to invite friends over and prepare lunch, or snacks for them just so they could answer your meme. Buti na lang may internet na ngayon. =D

Some interesting answers I read in the mag today:

DORIS DAY, actress, My greatest regret: "Most of my marriages." (April 1995)
GORE VIDAL, writer, My greatest fear: "Elevation to the papacy." (October, 1994)
DAVID BOWIE, musician, My greatest fear: "Converting kilometers to miles." (August, 1998)
FRAN LEBOWITZ, writer, humorist and social critic, How would you like to die: "Vindicated." (November, 1994)

For the questionnaire, go to vanityfair.com

From the weekend couch:

My fifth Almodovar


("Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", 1988)

I think, therefore, I squiggle

My friend, M--, is very anal about his books, which translates to his being finicky, as well, when it comes to my books. He used to scold me about dog-earing (I know, I'm bad, but I've changed my ways--I use book marks now) and barks at me when I leave them lying on the floor, or any other surface aside from a clean one. He thinks that the only proper place for a book--except, of course, when one is reading it--is a bookshelf.

He was shocked when I, so proudly, showed him my old poetry books, which had notes on the sides of the pages. "But it's a sign that it's been read, that it's being read. And that the person reading them actually cares about comprehending them, about studying them, right? And, besides, my analytical skills are heightened when I write things down."

If he weren't enough of a "guy" guy, I'm sure he would have rolled his eyes at the logic I was trying to present. "Write them some place else, then."

Heartless. Bigot. Purist.

Today, while I was blog-hopping, I came across these:



So, it turns out, the late, great David Foster Wallace wrote notes on his books. Now, I have someone on my side.

(images via We Love You So)

Diet? What diet?

I can resist most chocolates, but not Twix.

This is a staple. period period period.

Ube hopia. Sarap!
Especially if it's eaten after being made to cool in the ref. =)


I'll be a good girl again, tomorrow.
Promise.

And now, for something light...

My lunch:

After lunch:

The only thing missing was a breeze.

Roof

four years ago, she was a brown, bent object hunched amongst six years worth of her life--six years' worth, four years ago--wrapped in black garbage bags, huddled, doleful, in the jagged, empty space enough to fit four wheels, a body, just one, in the empty lot beneath the trees--

--the trees. Even now, she thanks those trees, the shade that made the sun's glare seem less harsh, kinder than how he put six years'--no, six years' and a lifetime's--worth of her into those bags as if they were trash

Embrace

You know the parlor trick.
wrap your arms around your own body
and from the back it looks like
someone is embracing you
her hands grasping your shirt
her fingernails teasing your neck
from the front it is another story
you never looked so alone
your crossed elbows and screwy grin
you could be waiting for a tailor
to fit you with a straight jacket
one that would hold you really tight.

-Billy Collins

From the weekend couch:

"Just because there are things I don't remember doesn't make my actions meaningless." -Leonard Shelby, "Memento"-

A snippet, or some

When we talk about other people, we do so in fragments. Fragments, because, in reality, that is all we have of them and that is all we will ever really know about them--of their moles and their scars, the barely-there sadness in their smiles, the lilt in their laughter, the secret fears they keep, the lifetime's worth of memories they hold in themselves. We might know one, or some, but even that knowledge will certainly be in fractions, and the pieces could be smaller then we would ever know.

The next person probably doesn't know that a strand of hair on their very own head has already turned gray.

Do you remember, with absolute certainty--even as you say you recall it in vivid detail--that single event, or that sequence of episodes that you know changed you forever?

For even as we think of ourselves, we think in fragments, too--larger ones, perhaps, yes, but still, fragments. For what memory is too clear, too present to be whole enough to be called whole? Even the the conversation over yesterday's breakfast blurs away into scraps. Last week's talk over coffee shrivels into crumbs. Pillow talk agenda disappear into smaller and smaller bits. The us of three weeks, five months, fourteen years ago might already be strangers should we meet them again tomorrow.

The odds could certainly vary, but our actions this morning might no longer make sense to us two days from now.

It's been an overcast week

and I sure know I'm not talking about the weather.

So, yeah, I guess this is me:


Gloomy. Old. Eeyore.

And how to handle fear is to shut it out

shut it out
shut it out
over and over exhale put it in a paper bag and throw it away but is that the way to go or is it to remind oneself that the fear might not be real it is not there it is just a figment a chimera a trick conjured and therefore it is the mind that one has to drill because if one is able to bully the mind then the fear should it be there at all should be there enough near enough to be gripped and gripped hard hard enough that it might soon die from the tightness of the grip but what of the nothingness in the fear what of its not being there but here what of its non-manifestation except in one's dreams in one's thoughts in one's blank spaces where nothing is nothing and only fear is real enough to be because the fear is real or is it but yes it is there is it not or is it here here here

Whisked away

It saddens me to think of all the words I should have written down that I had let go of, instead. The absoluteness of their loss weighs down on me like some long-forgotten heartbreak that has come back and refuses to go away.

What wind, which wind, I wonder, had carried them off, and where to?

And what about the journals I had misplaced, or may have thrown away out of some sort of anger I may have felt that time, what of the many manuscripts I had written, in longhand, typed and edited and re-typed, and then lost? What of them? What of the sleep given up just so the words could be strung together, just so the lines could be worthy, at all, of touching the whiteness of paper?

And what of the aches so deliberately recalled, what of the joys so painstakingly pinned down, labored over so they could be just as real on the page?

"Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths."

-Etty Hillesum-

And so, it goes, that we sometimes find ourselves gasping from running too fast. We race with seconds and outrun minutes, trying to beat deadlines, chasing whatnots and what-ifs.

I had just such a run today. But, for some reason or another, I found myself stopping midway because I realized I had forgotten what it was I had been running after. What was it I was chasing? Whose invisible fingers were putting creases on my forehead (good thing they were temporary--the creases, I mean)? What was it that made me worry so, that gave me such restlessness, such unease?

Halfway through the lunch I was picking like a bird on, Sheila asked me, "why so quiet?"

I told her I was trying to remember what it was I might be forgetting.

And who's to say that our lives aren't all spent running? One of these days, we ought to have our heads examined. Perhaps, there is some winding mechanism there that we can turn maybe counter-clockwise or a button we could press to slow down and therefore ease the agitation?

Caffeine update

BEFORE: Double tall mocha, please.

NOW: Double, non-fat, no whipped cream, 2 packs Splenda,tall mocha, please.

As a tot she was
Surrounded by fishbowl silence
She had no horns
No wings, no tail
Just a smile nobody
Noticed while adults
Talked at mealtime.
She did not ask
What worth she had--
Who am it or
What is I.
When guests arrived
She gulped down food
Slipped out of her chair
And floated into her room
Like a bubble and
Burst behind closed doors.

Now she's an actress
In search of a script.
Sometimes she freaks out
Tired of her horns
Wings, tail, tired
Of bowing, smiling
For no one. Guests come
And do not wonder
Who she is or
Is she an it
A doormat, an empty chair
A wallflower or decor.
She still remembers to
Sneak out like a bubble
Float into her room and
Burst behind closed doors.
She is protected
By her fishbowl silence.

-"Wife" by Marra PL. Lanot-

Almost March

I departed from my usual greens-and-wheat bread-and-proteins diet today. Ate lasagna (I had one plate and finished the portion my son had left uneaten) and a few spoonfuls of some rich, sinful chocolate cake from Starbucks. Ugh.

Ah, Sundays. They make one forget.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that tomorrow marks the beginning of women's month.

M-- here says it's ridiculous that only one month should be alloted to celebrating woman's greatness--an entire argument that would be quite interesting to pursue, but I'm too tired and I have to haul my a__ off to work later.

Round about the same time last year, I wrote this. It's leaning towards the corny side, and kinda overstated, besides, but there you have it, my angry stance at making sure that woman is given her proper place in this world.

Fly high, my girls! We are beautiful!
=)

What torture lurks within a single thought
When grown too constant, and however kind,
However welcome still, the weary mind
Aches with its presence.

-from "A Fixed Idea", Amy Lowell-

Differences

Tell me about your childhood.

Tell me about what you woke up to each day, and what woke you up. What time on your clock? Were your sheets soft? Were they thick enough? Could you remember the scent of the sun on your pillow? Or were there more important things than sunshines and pillows? And did it matter? Did it matter if you woke up early or not?

Did you get lots of presents during Christmas? Did you celebrate Christmas? Were Sundays fun days, or were they just gloomy transitions to Mondays? Did you have ice cream on Sundays? Or were there more important things to spend on than ice cream?

Tell me about the people around you. Were they nice to you? And what is "nice" for you? Did they smile a lot? Did they smile at you? Did they tell you you were pretty and did they tell you enough? Did they hug you when you were good? And what is "good" for you? What is "bad"? What did they do when you were bad?

I'll tell you about my childhood. Let's compare notes.

Then maybe we'd understand each other more, and judge each other less.

Ted Neeley, 27 years after JCS

A friend shared this video on his facebook.



"Gethsemane" is my favorite song from "Jesus Christ, Superstar" (1973).

One word for dear ol' Ted: amazing.

from youtube