Lit Geek Update: What I'm Reading Right Now

"He said, "The word for moonlight is moonlight." 

from the weekend couch:

Revisited

Sophia Coppola, 1999

From this book:

Jeffrey Eugenides, 1993

"From five, they had become four, and they were all the living and the dead, becoming shadows..."

Daphne as the Runaway Bride, and vice versa

After a "eureka!" moment a couple of days ago, which happened while I was watching "Runaway Bride" for the 17th time, I am finally allowing myself to verbalize the idea that I have been toying with, since:

That my obsession with the movie and the myth are intertwined, in more ways than one.

photo from this site

In the end, Maggie Carpenter finds true love, and Daphne turns into a tree, both of which could very well stand for deliverance. 

And as for me, well, let's see.

from the weekend couch:

Had to have this:

(Despicable Me, 2010)

after my mind got blown away to super negaland by this:

(Requiem For a Dream, 2000)

Whew. Darren Aronofsky, you are definitely something else.

Right Here

the method to this madness the drifts the thrums pulsating the quiet in this music the solitude in this togetherness the reeling mind reeling from this tumult your childhood their childhood my childhood our childhoods one childhood locked this love of form and song and memory this love this love subterfuge and delusion the rhythms in one rhythm ecstasy in one moment misery in the next redemption in the symmetry symmetry in song the anguish of a breaking heart the broken heart conceding conceding at last clarity in this haze of smoke and melody the descant and the silence this silence tormentingly deceivingly eternal but the bliss in the music the music always the music

Daphne, in my time (part 2)

Next, the mind,
where the chase leads,
the mind--
where the chase is

Stripin'

Lovin' lovin' lovin'

via Joanna Goddard

Then, they brought out the numbers.

The two-day training course was going smoothly, if a bit without any major surprises and/or excitements. I had successfully psyched myself up to be in its zone (after a little while of battling with the worries and sorries that I would've been better off working on my deliverables, instead of being stuck in a training class for two whole days, burning my bum off from all that sitting and cramping up my face from all that smiling and pretending to be interested when what I really wanted was to be somewhere else) and decided to breeze through it all as best as I could.

And I was doing fine, I guess, for someone who hadn't attended a training session (as part of its audience) for quite a time. I decided that I was going to open my mind to learning, and so I earnestly listened and happily jumped into the classroom discussions, surreptitiously checking the clock on the wall, from time to time.

Until the last two hours of the class, when the trainer's voice boomed with the line, "now, we'll be doing a bit of Math."

Bummer. Major, real-time bummer.

It all just went downhill for loveless, hapless me, forced to crunch away at numerous statistical formula, sadly confronting my undeniable mortality as I worked, as slow as a tortoise, on all those text-free and extremely unromantic excel sheets.

Oh, but there were always the friendly seat mates who were understanding enough of the mathematically challenged lot of this world and who were more than willing to help.

Whew.

I therefore conclude (for the umpteenth time) that I am an English Major.

Goodbye, Liz

Her unquestionable celebrity and prolific contributions to the arts; her tumultuous love affairs and the numerous men who chased her shamelessly and whom she shamelessly claimed; her efforts at humanitarianism and equality of rights; her determination to live life to its brim along with all its heartaches and turbulences; her breathtaking beauty and unabashedly violet eyes...

Elizabeth Taylor was, and will always be, a force to reckon with.

She was a Pisces.

Damien Rice - Volcano - Official Video

Found: Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew"

and am lovin' it to bits!!!

Detail from someone's dream:

Toadies - the currency of frogs.

So, this is how I am

Last night, while I was having my nails done, I felt the stirrings of an earthquake (the salon was at the third floor of the mall, so, ok, yeah, maybe it was really more than a stirring). The so-called "Super Moon" has come and gone (yes?) and I never got around to so much as a peek. And the earthquake in Japan, tsk. I've mostly kept mum about these, and more, perhaps that have gone past my nose without my knowing.

Sometimes, even I am appalled by my capacity to shrug things off (the getting appalled episode happening during my more lucid moments, if I may add). The yawn, the almost-empty stare, the absent smile, the mechanical nod: these are characteristic of me, even in times of crisis, or those occasional bumpings-into with the distraught acquaintance, or the emotional peer. 

(Though let me insert here that I, too, am perfectly capable of jumping up and down and shouting to the top of my lungs when I win bets (like the most recent one, on whether it was Lennon or McCartney who wrote "Eleanor Rigby"), that my eyes do sparkle and shine when I am in a conversation where books and music are fodder, and that tears stream down my cheeks when I watch movies that strike to the core of my ideals and beliefs.)

It makes me sad, when I think about it. Is it disinterest? Selfishness? In/voluntary detachment? Or is it that parallelism to my other sphere, that predisposition toward despair, that ease in falling prey to breakdowns, that faculty of feeling too much--and hurting too much--where I should flick things off and accept them as part of life and, therefore, something that I will soon get through?

All in all, it could be that search for balance, the desire for that ever so delicate sense of equilibrium that I know I have so little of; bluntly put, it could simply be that instinct for survival.

Daphne, in my time (part 1)

Loss of breath, the first sign
of the permanence
that will become the end
of this story.

Bill Evans-My Foolish Heart

B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L !!!

Miles Davis Quintet - It Never Entered My Mind

Miles, oh, Miles! This always brings tears to my eyes.

My Favorite Things - John Coltrane

This

soporific tune. Forget the words if you may, the words will not forget.
Strum away the drifts that our cares may drift away.

Daphne and Apollo (by Ross Cohen)

I could never compete with you Lightfoot, skipping across the moss and stone. I crashed through tangled woods, Ripping roots from the earth, Snapping branches, clearing a path by force. You were a speck in my eye, Just visible behind the vines; A mirage on an empty plain. I could never see you directly, I could never sleep where you had lain. I had grown accustomed to the dip And dive of your back cutting Through the clearing where, Panting and parched, we stopped For a fatal moment. You turned. The war Between flame and stream, Between you and me, Swelled to crisis: Your skin cracks and grays Like cooling embers; the ground surrenders To toe-roots; thighs stiffen and petrify; Bark works its way up To the bole-knot in your stomach. Shoulders and arms explode Into clouds of flickering green and gold. Soft shrapnel litters the ground. Sitting beneath the sole tree In the forest’s barren place, I sift through the leaves For the memory of your face.

Daphne (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Why do you follow me?­
Any moment I can be
Nothing but a laurel-tree.

Any moment of the chase
I can leave you in my place
A pink bough for your embrace.

Yet if over hill and hollow
Still it is your will to follow,
I am off;­to heel, Apollo!

Thoughts on listening to your little tirade on how perfect your little life is

For what life, after all, is not complicated?

What set of sensibilities is not without peculiarity, what mentality without absurdity? What environment is so ideal as to be almost what it seems to be, when the dysfunctions distributed among countless generations of lives lie within each childhood, manifesting themselves in each day-to-day?

There are as many gradations of complexity as there are shades and hues, if not more. The way I look at that piece of news on TV could be 180 degrees apart in judgement, or lack thereof, from yours. My perception of your present dilemma could be the 703rd in the 1,534 assessments diffused out there. Psychology could very well be in its incipient stage when it comes to understanding the way with which people look at, and/or experience, an emotion, an epiphany, an event, an ordeal. Instinct could just be as unpredictable as chance, if one looked closer.

So-called charmed lives could not be as charmed as they appear to be. It just isn't possible, not with how differently each mind is programmed by context and circumstance, not with the inexhaustible contingencies brought about by each ticking of the clock's hands, the clock itself a symbol of man's never-ending battle with the exactness of the space between each second, the spaces themselves containing an infinitude of aberrations.

If I hadn't been brought up the way I was, I would already have rolled my eyes at your rattle on how so-and-so should have lived her life more "morally" than how she's living it, at how so-and-so should not have done what he had done because it was just,well, "wrong". Though oftentimes I fail, I try my hardest not to pass judgement on the weakness of others, knowing fully well that I am just as human as everyone else.

As it is, I continue to listen and endure. I cross my arms over my chest and tap a finger on my elbow. My years have taught me that there are simply some things one should not waste energy on.

Some things never change.

It was how it was with "Snow White", "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", and "The Princess and The Frog".

Now, after watching "Tangled", I realize that it definitely is still how it is:

I still love fairy tales.

And, yes, I am 31 years old.

I have a feeling I will love them until I am 70.
Or forever.

Whichever comes later.

Dixie Chicks - Landslide (live)

Took my love and I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changin'
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes bolder, children get older
I'm getting older too, well

So take this love and take it down
Yeah, and if you climb a mountain and you turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide brought down

And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well maybe, well maybe, well maybe
The landslide will bring you down


Smashing Pumpkins version
Glee version

The clouds and suns of my childhood are coming and I can't can't can't wait!!!

I have read the novel a thousand times and now, this movie.

The anticipation is sending shivers up and down my spine. No kidding.

Lit Geek Update: What I'm Reading Right Now:

The rustle of skirts on a balmy afternoon

reminds her of Franciscan sisters clad in gray habits and blue veils; of her fourteen-year-old self, falling in love with those nuns, wanting to be one of those nuns, reading St. Therese of Lisieux' Story of a Soul and spending sleepless nights repeating the lines in the book that had caught fancy; of singing in a choir and feeling the peace that only youth and hymns of praise could give; of a four-page essay she had written for a Creative Writing class, on the first page of which her professor had scribbled the lines, "Bravo! I could have sworn you were a nun in your past life!"

And then, the humdrum drone of passing cars brings her back to the present, where her last memory of prayer is that of trying to remember when it was she had last prayed.

(photo)

India Arie - Beautiful Flower

‎This is a song for every girl who's 

Ever been through something she thought she couldn't make it through
I sing these words because
I was that girl too
Wanting something better than this
But who do I turn to

Now we're moving from the darkness into the light
This is the defining moment of our lives

'Cause you're beautiful like a flower
More valuable than a diamond
You are powerful like a fire
You can heal the world with your mind

There is nothing in the world that you cannot do
When you believe in you, who are beautiful
Yeah, you, who are brilliant
Yeah, you, who are powerful
Yeah, you, who are resilient

This is a song for every girl who
Feels like she is not special
'Cause she don't look like a supermodel Coke bottle
The next time the radio tells you to shake your moneymaker
Shake your head and tell them, tell them you're a leader

Now we're moving from the darkness into the light
This is the defining moment of our lives

Keeping Things Whole

(Mark Strand)


In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

This morning

"It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road." -Holden Caulfield in Chapter 1, J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

It's Women's Month, once more

So let me share with you a list of the women I stalk online, just because they remind me that a woman with a mind of her own is a wonderful woman to be:

Daphne Osena-Paez
Katrina Stuart Santiago
Jessica Zafra
Conchitina Cruz
Anne Boyer
Mary Anne Moll
The Cat with the Fiddle
Lea Salonga
Chella Courington

Go and get yourself a haircut, a hot-oil treatment, a pedicure, a Starbucks, a new pair of shoes, a hug from your kids, a look of tenderness from your man, a high-five from your boss, smiles from your fans, er, friends! You deserve to be adored!
=)

As always, my dears, let's all fly high, for we are women!

"I come here and imagine that this is the spot where everything I've lost since my childhood is washed out. I tell myself, if that were true, and I waited long enough then a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy. He'd wave. And maybe call. I don't know if the fantasy go beyond that, I can't let it. I remind myself I was lucky to have had any time with him at all. What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time."
-Kathy H., "Never Let Me Go"

from the weekend couch:

Mark Romanek, 2010

The artist's mind is a terrible, beautiful thing. This line germinated and went floating in my thoughts for approximately an hour and a half after watching this film, and only sleep made it go away.

I'd been waiting to watch the film after reading the book three and a half years ago, can still remember that it was twilight when I finished it and that the twilight I finished it in was an orange one and that I was sitting outside, hunched on a chair and fighting back tears. It's funny how certain memories stay with us with such vividness. And this film, like the book, will certainly stay with me: its images, snippets of its lines, Carey Mulligan's brilliant acting, how everything is so understated and quiet and yet so heartbreaking and conveys so much despair. I'd say that Mark Romanek's direction and Alex Garland's screenplay did complete justice to Ishiguro's dystopia.

So depressing and yet so beautiful! Makes me want to finish my half-read A Pale View of Hills.

Hehe

via thegloss.com

Lit Geek Update: What I'm Reading Right Now:

The House Gun, Nadine Gordimer

PHP20 lang yan!
=)

from the weekend couch:

Todd Field, 2006

remember remembering writing

about the girl
who prayed
to St. Jude

the sad clump
of candles
drooping
beneath the weight
of flame
and supplication

that unlocking of so many doors, and yet, everywhere else, the knowledge that there were so many other doors that remained locked, and will stay locked just because there are more reasons for them to stay that way, no keys to open them with, no keys, 

no keys--

because there is infinitely better, more beautiful, than nowhere. Because you are there, and not

nowhere

Your

cryptic thoughts. Your evasive mind. Your vacillations, five in a minute. Your irresoluteness, even in things that don't matter. Your unfathomable brain (where does it lead?). Your smile, the secrets that tug on it. Your lack of circumspect, even in things that matter.Your taciturn nature. Your listlessness, neurotic. Your capacity to turn your back, even on things that matter.

*art, Salvador Dali, Landscape with Butterflies (Paysage aux Paipllons), 1956

The RH Bill debate: Yes, this woman will rant

This entire hullabaloo over the RH Bill is so frustrating. What the antis need to realize is that women have as much right to their bodies, their reproductive and overall health and their LIVES as the next man does. This is one of those times that I regret the backwardness of the Catholic Church, choosing to turn a blind eye on reality and insisting on ideologies, as if they were, indeed, experts on both the former and the latter. That this certain throng would rather have women going through teenage pregnancies and the requisite failed marriages and broken lives which are to follow, would rather have women die in abortion clinics, would rather have an entire population of children going hungry,  would rather deny its youth of the education they rightfully deserve, would rather that sex be seen as a topic to be reserved for semi-conversations in whispers, that the very word "sex" itself be seen as taboo and, in the process, stripping it of its very dignity--is an appalling state of affairs. That we are a predominantly Catholic country would mean that a bill such as this would offend a lot of sensibilities; but for us to be deprived of the kind of education necessary for the elucidation of this certain topic means letting us even further down, shoving us into an even darker dark than what we are already finding ourselves in.

The whole thing spells further poverty for this country, the continuation of the on-going oppression of its women and more suffering for its children, spells the certainty of the elusiveness of progress.

The non-committals belong to an entirely different plane. Educate your people. If they weren't so in the dark, perhaps they'd find the backbone to speak.

Love in the context of "lost".

Love in the context of choice. Love in the context of reality as reality dictates, of the non-dream, of the non-fairy tale, of the non-illusion. Love in the context of day-to-day, of years against the ephemeral now. Love in the context of hospital rooms and office halls. Love in the context of the war, not of Helen. Love in the context of spaces between rocks and hard places. Love in the context of morning versus evening, of ticker tapes versus piano keys, of the light-bathed versus the sun-kissed. Love in the context of Alice out of Wonderland. Love in the context of unpaid bills and food on the table. Love in the context of right against wrong. Love in the context of lines and wrinkled brows and crow's feet. Love in the context of Daphne and Apollo. Love in the context of adjacents and acrosses and antitheses and polarities. Love in the context not of cascading guitar melodies, tenderness, smoke rings.

Love in the context of absolutes, of senses and sensibilities.
Love in the context of not-you.
Love in the context of not-us.

from the weekend couch:

Tony and Maria, for the nth time, and I still love this film to bits. I remember getting irked when, years ago, I heard someone say how it's so ridiculous that the Jets and the Sharks dance more than fight when they fight. I mean, this is Broadway, duh. Can't we have some culture around here?

I. want. you. both.

But then again, this question would always beg to be asked: after the bills have been paid, from which bowels of my paycheck do I get the funds to buy a Tory Burch with, huh? Hah.

My birthday's coming up. Paging Santa.
=D

And while we're on the subject of shoes...

These came in from the (e)mail today:

Chanson's shoes at age 5 (?) or 6(?), kept by mom all these years, unearthed last Christmas

Here, sitting alongside Chanson's shoes at age 30 (OMG I'll be 31 soon!!!!!!! Waaahhhh!)
My feet didn't grow so much, I realize. =D
Photos taken by my very handsome brother, Earl. Thank you for sending! =)

Not so high now, please

Nowadays, my compulsion to wear 3-inch heels has definitely mellowed. Call it growing old (cringe) if you will, but I seem to be realizing what a welcome respite comfort is, versus the second-by-second effort (the intensity varies, dependent on heel height/width) one needs to exert and all the balancing and pretending-to-be-completely-nonchalant-even-when-one's-feet-are-turning-blue thing when one is walking, or simply standing, in heels. It might even be the wearing away of the self-consciousness one experiences when the need to fit in (with the tall crowd? hahaha) dwindles away as one's self-confidence shoots up, that je m'en fiche! attitude one acquires after an epiphany of some sort happens, which has something to do with the acceptance of things, in general, and of one's real image/being, in particular.


So, I'm small, ehem, petite. So, sue me. Whatever the reason, sooner or later, that almost instinctive election of form over function begins to make less and less sense, until it reaches a point where its logic altogether disappears. I haven't reached that point yet (I would still never wear shoes or sandals that are totally flat--give me an inch and a half, at least), and I cannot be entirely sure if I'll ever get there, but things almost always change, and who knows perhaps I'll get there, someday (not that I'm wishing for it). After all, we are as tall as we feel. And, as far as I'm concerned, I've been feeling 5'9" high, recently.
=D

This unfluctuating propensity

to compartmentalize my life.

"Cause all I want is the moon upon a stick/ Just to see what if..."

The latest from Radiohead:

"Lotus Flower", here.

The Month That is

Tailing the heels of a funked-up first month of the year, my February is brimming over with laughter and Oscar nominees and Grammy winners and my kids' bout with and eventual recovery from measles and bonding time with my mom and prayers for and hopes for a good year and occasional givings-in to purchases and work, work, work and once more teetering in killer stilettos and allowing myself to indulge in conversations with good friends and revisiting old haunts and entertaining dreams of Tory Burch bags and Anthologie shoes. =)

I am blessed, and for that, I am thankful.

Friday morning, half-awake

We find ways, or look for ways.

When the creaking of a door reminds us of someone leaving, of someone arriving, of a door opening for memories to come in, or go out of; when a half-open closet brings to mind a messed up life, or a recently-concluded fight; when an indentation on a pillow intimates a sleepless night, or sleepless nights, of dried tears from those sleepless nights.

We look for an open window to look out of, to breathe through, then look up and mumble a prayer for a swirl of wind to whisk the despondency away.

The Carpenters "I Believe You"

Since it's almost hearts' day and all, thought I'd share this piece of loveliness with you.

Indeed, few singers could rival Karen Carpenter's heartbreakingly beautiful alto. Melancholic, enchanting, delicate.

Have a love-filled week. =)

Thank God For Mothers

This week promises to be a real grind, as Kim's got the measles and I won't be able to take time off from work so I'll be jetting (I wish!) between the office and Makati Med, and this I'll have to do everyday, until the doctor decides that the little guy is fit to be discharged.

A blessing comes in the form of my mom, who'll be coming here all the way from Bicol, so the little one will have someone watching over him while I'm at work. This has me musing about the cycle of life that my mom usually speaks about: one day, it'll be my turn to do what she's doing, when my kids have kids of their own and grandma Shan'll be on call to watch over their little ones when Mom/Dad can't.

Can't wait for Kimpot to get well. He looks so wawa with those rashes and the discomfort of being sick.