Face Paint!

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.  

- Sicilian Proverb

Take-home quote for the day:

"Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air. "
-Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton, 1803-1873
English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist

from the weekend couch:

Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999

Songs of the self

"…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew…." 
— A.S. Byatt, Possession


This morning, not by chance, at all, I unearthed my old copy of Songs of Ourselves: Writings by Filipino Women in English (edited by Edna Zapanta Manlapaz) and spent a good hour and a half browsing through its pages. On the upper left hand of the flyleaf, I had, with a red pen, written my name and, in blue ink, "1998". Whew, such a long time ago. I was 18, then, just beginning to adjust to life far, far from home, and to English Major-hood in the UP. I had bought the book at the Katips branch of National, hell-bent on making up for the time I had lost in Grade School and High School, being confined to reading Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson, stuck in the time and literature of Shakespeare and Keats, thinking that Robert Burns's "A Red Red Rose" was the end-all and be-all of poetry. I seethed, a little angry at my former English teachers for keeping Angela Manalang Gloria, et al, from my sphere of consciousness. Oh, that there were lines as beautiful as

They tried in vain 
to understand how one so carved from pride
and glassed in dream could have so flung aside
her graven days
(from "Soledad", Angela Manalang Gloria)


or

she concentrates upon the rosebuds

of the china, hoping, hoping

they would break.

-Merlinda Bobis, "Dinner in Progress"

and that Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta and Gilda Cordero Fernando had been, and still were, churning out wonderful works of poetry and fiction--I tried to devour as much of their, and other Filipino writers', works, as I can. I was hungry and eager and greedy for understanding, and the book's pages bore the marks: underlined passages, marginal notes written in pencil, my alacrity showing in the slits of what should have been O's, the pointy L's, the exclamation points after the comments. Some examples:

as if by burning the clothes, she could also burn/ kill the memory of Pedro's dead wife ("The Small Key", Paz Latorena)

the controversial poem, Commonwealth Awards ("Revolt From Hymen", Angela Manalang Gloria)

work of a genius, as expected ("Paradox", Angela Manalang Gloria)

love this! so amazing! ("Speck of Rain Roaring", Edith Tiempo)

the failure/ inability to grieve; to acknowledge the loss as such ("Behind the Fern", Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas)

this is foreshadowed by the preceding stanzas; still, it is jolting enough./ suspicion; stirrings of rebellion/ protest --very mild; still inchoate ("Tribeswoman", Marra Pl. Lanot)

this is so nice! poignant, really, without being glaringly so. very subtle. ("Dinner in Progress", Merlinda Bobis)

Yes, yes, you can tell that literary criticism was not one of my strengths when I was a student (and it still isn't, by the way, and I don't think it will ever be), but coming upon these small, candid lines is a precious experience for me, mainly because these scraps of observation remind me of a time when I was wide-eyed and ardent, bringing back that all too familiar longing to drown myself in lines and whole texts, that itch to fish for words and play with them on blanks and spaces, the incomparable high of being in a roomful of people who understand what it's like to be hungry that way. Instead, I'm stuck in a daily grind of facts and statistical analysis and numerical figures, where people think that Dan Brown and Paulo Coelho write literature.

Still, I keep the faith and continue to make time for cherished moments like this: stolen and swift, and all the more precious because they are so.

Breakfast at Tiffany's Final Scene

Moon River - Breakfast at Tiffany's

Daylight.

I used to tell you my dreams.
- Louise Gluck, "Siren"

These short, sudden silences, in syncopation with each other, like the miscalculation of tears, and, in between, the small pauses. The words, spread across spaces, as mute, as immobile, as the reach of this depleted while. The sky dissolves the moon, and the stars slip away, like nights often do. And because everything melts into everything else, we lose the moon. Soon, that gush of sunlight, bathing the sylph-like vagueness in clarity and certainty, revealing the gaps, the hideousness, in things.

Fluorescence, fizzling, flimsy, faint, fade, futile, forsake, forget.

Found:

My traipses into Jonathan Carroll's blog almost always yield loots of beautiful snippets. This morning, I found this there and it just really hit right home:

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person - without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other. 

- Osho


Is that beautiful, or what?

May the Holy Week hold for us all a time for reflection.
Peace be with you.

THINGS SHOULDN'T BE SO HARD by Kay Ryan

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small —
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn't
be so hard.

*Kay Ryan won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan (Grove/Atlantic)

And then, there's Estella

"...life is made of ever so many partings welded together."

'So,' said Estella, 'I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.' 

"The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her nonetheless because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection."

"I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death."

- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

Stowaway Holly:

"I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together.  I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. "

"Never love a wild thing.... If you let yourself love a wild thing,  you'll end up looking at the sky."

So, it's Argentina for Ms. Golightly.
I'm definitely adding her to my list of favorite girls.

quotes are from Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's

Rest Day

"And today is whatever I want it to mean."
- Beth Orton, "Central Reservation"


If my eyes are to be trusted, I'd say it was a full and orange moon I saw in the sky, early this evening. The wind was benign, not biting, at all, just all coltish and balmy, bringing memories of violins and vanilla. Beth Orton was in the background, and Miles Davis followed suit with his trumpet and his band. The lines of a just-read poem still floated in my head and I breathed it all in: the aftermaths of twilight, the cool scent of the evening, the loveliness of beat and song, the exquisiteness of words and spaces, the lucid state my mind was in.

I had my music and my sanity. Everything was in its right place.

So much loveliness here...

What are regrets?
They're just lessons we haven't learned yet
It's like catching snow on your tongue
You can't pin this butterfly down
Can't pin this butterfly down..


Another day draws away
And my heart sinks with the sun

Sana - Up Dharma Down

Paulit-ulit-ulit-ulit kong pinakikinggan ang kantang ito. Tapos, susundan ng "Oo", kung saan galing na galing ako sa bass, ang sarap sa tenga, sobra. Parang obsessed lang, hahaha.


Nang walang babala
Lumipas ay nagbabalik pala...
Kumakapit sa natitirang sana.
Kung babalik ka pa hanggang kailan kaya?
Ako dito mag aabang na magdutong na ang patlang/


Kumusta?
=)

Presence

Here is where it all leads, this emptiness that shall be filled with words, and it shall go on, yes, it will go on, gap after blankness after void, and then, words, words, line after line surfacing, wafting on the undulating hollowness, the clean space, which shall be filled and we, we shall smooth along, certainly, like the certainty of the next blank page, the inevitability of the next word.

So keep your faiths. And I shall, mine.
The pages will hold, and the words will lock, for always.

from the weekend couch:

from the weekend couch:

Roman Polanski, 2010

"Oh yes, the wall of ego. We all have one, our equivalent of the dentist's fish tank."

None of those sapphires, today.

Give me a pretty, unpretentious scarf, instead, with nachos and lots of cheese on the side. Give me The Postal Service, please, no Maria Callas, not today. And maybe a good two hours of lingering on the sidewalk, ice cream in hand, to soothe the heat in my mouth, a pair of aqua blue, no-nonsense flip flops to cool the frazzled nerves down, and sunbeams to even out the coolness, because too cool can eventually turn into a cold, and the frozen center is what I mean to thaw, today, yes, today. Let me read my book in peace, the one where happy endings come true, but not before the heroine decides she will live her life, first. Then you can pull my hair back in a pony, or pigtails, and bring in lots of wind to make the loose tendrils dance, and I will sashay to the song in my head, in my head, the songs in my head that I will listen to, finally, after long stretches of pretending, of pretensions, of teetering along heights and trying my damnedest not to appear like I am teetering, no stiff trousers and turtlenecks, give me my short shorts and tank top, make the shorts gray, the top pink, thank you, no make-up, no excel formulas, no worries. No. Today, I will laugh and sing and dance, and to hell with what they all may think, let them have double dutch ice cream.

Or, strawberry.

Beatles- two of us

Today,

it's "Julia", "Norwegian Wood", "Something", "And I Love Her", "Eleanor Rigby", "Two of Us", "I Feel Fine", "You're Gonna Lose That Girl", and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" all around me. I realize that The Beatles have so many lovely songs, and most of them sound really familiar even if I rarely touch my Beatles playlist, just because I grew up in a house where their music was a Sunday morning staple, thanks to my dad.

Oh, but now, I alternately sit and lie on the bed, wrapped in a jacket and a blanket, nursing tonsillitis and a bad cough. Been drinking lots of water like a good girl, though swallowing is agony and the cough makes my already sore throat hurt even more. Yet I am thankful, 

thankful that I have the Beatles to coo me to sleep, to sing the pain away.

Here it comes again,

that blah feeling, that "BBB: Bored Beyond Belief" status on facebook, that perpetual stare at the ceiling, that urge to roll the eyes over most--no, over everything, that limpness, that utter lack of interest in anything except nothing, that vacuity, that pull to doldrums-land that even coffee can't pull back, that other BBB: Blankness, Barrenness, Bleakness rearing its ugly head.

Was it a gust of wind that brought it in? But, I suddenly miss Katipunan, that strip where the National Bookstore, Cravings, and Sweet I are, that strip in front of Ateneo where a fairly new Starbucks is nestled, where I know I could spend a whole evening, just watching the people walk in and out, or stay and laugh or space out, where I know I'm sure to grow nostalgic over remembering my student days in UP Diliman, because that strip was a constant piece of concrete, a favorite tambayan of those days, along which I would saunter --at times, aimlessly, at times, with a purpose , like, to buy a book at National, or, to give in to a Sweet I cake craving--wait, may Tita Amys' pa ba dun?

Hayyyy.

Is it summer already?
Hmp. Thought so. Time to switch to iced coffee.
Hate it.

Daphne, in my time (part 3)

at its swiftest. The limbs fail

to persevere, though the mind
endures, still, the shadows

lengthen, two shadows--

soon, the night, the shadows,

touching, the plea, the wind,

the truth, one shadow, still,

the other, breaking, finally, the 

end.

Ito daw ako, sabi nya

"You have a poetic sensibility and an ability to see beyond the day to day. You often seem to be living in a higher realm, or to be not-of-this-earth. Occasionally you imagine interior lives for friends and associates that are near-complete fabrications based on your fears or hopes for the future. You are often not aware of your own feelings. You have a strong sense of right and wrong, and because of this are often disappointed. Despite what can sometimes be a destructive inward-turning anger, you are very gentle. You are sometimes a bit out of touch with the ebb and flow of modern life. If your behavior is out of synch with your moral values, a severe psychic disturbance can result. Because connectivity is so important to you, you can become quiet and sulky if you feel that others around do not understand your point of view."


This is the result of a test I took, which I found over at Luis K's blog.

See how he makes love to the guitar

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)