I continue to astound myself with my own contradictions.


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

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

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

"Finally,

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

Coming to terms: a journal in parts

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

This morning's companions

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

Coming to terms: a journal in parts

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

Signs of the/my times

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

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

From the weekend(s) couch:

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

Coming to terms: a journal in parts

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

From Proust

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

Coming to terms: a journal in parts

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

E words

Endearments, Endings, Ennui, Entropy.

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

Let The People Speak.

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

Chiaroscuro

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

Cornflake, or somewhere along that hue

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

Hope

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

Moving House

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

From the weekend couch:

Wong Kar Wai, 2000

David Fincher, 2011

Darren Aronofsky, 2006

The pause, after "The Color Purple"

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

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

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

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

Mood Indigo - Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington

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

After the cake

There might you see one sigh, another rage,

And some, their violent passions to assuage,

Compile sharp satires; but, alas, too late,

For faithful love will never turn to hate.

- Christopher Marlowe, "Hero and Leander"

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

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

head shake (translate: natauhan)

Well, not really.

Now, back to regular programming. 

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

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

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

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


So, what was the last movie you saw?

These rain-soaked months--

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

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

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

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

We just have to keep an umbrella nearby.

From the weekend couch:

Richard Attenborough, 1992

Pampahaba ng buhay:

Girl friends--

Daddy

...it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

-"Sonnet 116", William Shakespeare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waiting for this to come out:

From the weekend couch:

Yann Samuell, 2003

tap, tap, tap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black Maps by Mark Strand

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

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

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

When I am old and grey and full of sleep

and nodding by the lamp, I will take down a book from my shelf and apologize to Yeats for putting his work in vain, and pour myself a cup of tea (yes, tea, not coffee), and remember all the chilled milk teas I have consumed in my lifetime, and wonder why I had never started on the book of fairy tales I had planned my entire life to write. 

Yes, my entire life. 

The moment my dad handed me my first book of fairy tales, I knew it was what I wanted to create, too. And then, I met the Grimm brothers. Then, Cupid and Psyche, and Daphne, with Apollo at her heels. And then, real life came along, soon after, with JD Salinger, and Kafka, and company. Good thing women like George Eliot and AS Byatt were in the wings to help me keep the faith. Oh, but Nabokov, shoot.

So, here I am, paying homage to all the kings and sorcerers, and princes who had wrecked my perception of reality, but most of all, to all the dysfunctional individuals who had helped rebuild my psyche. 

Oh, who am I fooling. 

But, yes, someday I will read Finnegans Wake. I love Alice to bits, after all.

Place, date and time, irrelevant

Yes, I violated the dress code and got away with it. So I'm staying in and taking it easy. Been stretched enough this week so I'm 'a loosen up real good. 

Tea for two, and the boy's been singing Ray Charles and trying his hand on the Beatles. I must be doing something right. Today, I saw someone texting while crossing a busy street. 

Bayo Whats Your Mix 30% nymph 30% elf 30% mermaid 10% human -- walang kokontra. But, oh, this schizo weather. How is it possible that I can't ever seem to get enough of you? Cryptic is what you are. 

The morning stretches out before me, like a giant yawn. Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Natalie Merchant, Aimee Mann, Joni Mitchell. Spending QT with my girls. Slept the night away. For once. Glad to note the sun's toning it down a bit. Orange twilight, yesterday. 

12-year old girl, reading JD Salinger's Nine Stories. Am I making the right decisions? 

Finding comfort in numbness. I am currently obsessed with pens. Life's getting a little too fond of throwing me lemons. Waiting for the door to open! Pinks and paisleys, I love. 

Your coffee has grown cold. I need a Miles Davis/John Coltrane fix. Ah, what a noisy world this is. Been awake for 28 hours, and counting. You keep telling me to stop thinking too much. Know what? Maybe I should. I realize that to get out of this box, I ought to start digging. And I realize that to undo your sadness, I have to undo your childhood. 

I miss the coffee and the conversations. Was that thunder I heard? 

I think I made you up inside my head/

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

My glass of water refracts the morning.
-Sylvia Plath

From the weekend couch:

Thelma and Louise

Ridley Scott, 1991

Norwegian Wood

Tran Anh Hung, 2010

Elm

-Sylvia Plath


I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radience scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?--

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults 
That kill, that kill, that kill.

Don't look for coherence here.

                                           

-mine, I call it, because
these day-hammered fields

of dazzled horizontals
undulate, summers,
inside me and out-

-Mark Doty, "Description"

May has passed me by in a blur of scorching heat and work weeks (the weekends are even more hazy). This city has had more than its share of baking under a merciless sun, but still, the heat seems incorrigibly here, and I have found myself staying indoors even more, as if my natural aversion to the outdoors wasn't yet strong enough.

My download of "The Beatles Anthology" has just completed ("Never Let Me Go" strains--eerie much!), and I plan on making it the soundtrack to the weekend where I will do nothing but laze away, the weekend that tails a 6-day work week that has drunk me to the lees of all, and, any urge to stand up. This bunny's Energizer batteries are all drained out.

Some serious recharging needs to be done.

My Summer Shot

I blame the incredible heat and the sheer blueness of the pool's tiles. Yes, I had no extra clothes and had absolutely zero plans of swimming, but, yes, I jumped into the water, anyway.

So, summer.

And now, hello, June.

To the depths, and back again. And after having gone through so many similar travels, I realize that there's really nothing sublime, or noble about it. It's simply something that one goes through, many times during one's life.

Ah, been spending too much time on twitter. I can't even write a decent paragraph anymore.

I'll get around. One way, or another.
But not now.

Night, blogger. Now, back to Twitter.

This took my breath away.

I thought it was a scarf.
Turns out it isn't.

In Beautiful Bloom

*All snippets and photos are from the article written by Christopher Jobson, Creator and curator of Colossal, an art and design blog. Go visit! It'll be worth the while.

"In 2003 a building housing the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC) was slated for demolition to make way for updated facilities. The closure was a time for reflection and remembrance as the MMHC had been in operation for over 9 decades and had touched countless thousands of patients and employees alike, and the pending demolition presented a unique problem. How does one memorialize a building impossibly rich with a history of both hope and sadness, and do it in a way that reflects not only the past but also the future?"

"To answer that question artist Anna Schuleit was commissioned to do the impossible. After an initial tour of the facility she was struck not with what she saw but with what she didn’t see: the presence of life and color. While historically a place of healing, the drab interior, worn hallways, and dull paint needed a respectful infusion of hope. With a limited budget and only three months of planning Schuleit and an enormous team of volunteers executed a massive public art installation called Bloom."

"The concept was simple but absolutely immense in scale. Nearly 28,000 potted flowers would fill almost every square foot of the MMHC including corridors, stairwells, offices and even a swimming pool, all of it brought to life with a sea of blooms. The public was then invited for a limited 4-day viewing as a time for needed reflection and rebirth."

In-star-gam

The glare. Of the sun.

via Instagram

This girl

Awake by the wee hours. Crisped some corned beef. Toyed with the rice on my plate. Posted on instagram. Put Bon Iver on the player. Tweeted. Threw out the garbage. Washed the dishes. Looked up The Beatles "This Boy" over at YouTube. Felt happy watching the video. Now listening to The Beatles' albums I got from my dad's stash.

Simmer, folks. Have a lovely Saturday.

=)

Waiting for Batman

What kind of lazy

The kind of lazy that won't get out of bed.
The kind of lazy that won't lift a finger.
The kind of lazy that lets the dust settle on the floor (or lays out plans of sweeping them under the rug, later).
The kind of lazy that stares at a wall.
The kind of lazy that draws blanks.
The kind of lazy that won't budge from its seat to walk toward the bed (because the bed is in the other room), no matter how sleepy.
The kind of lazy that's too lazy to open its mouth when a yawn comes along.
The kind of lazy that watches (without budging) a cockroach cross the room.
The kind of lazy that will watch you walk away with its favorite shirt.
The kind of lazy that leaves things (all sorts) unfinished.
The kind of lazy that falls asleep with its coat on.
The kind of lazy that will watch you walk away.

That kind of lazy.

How to hurry

un-finish the to-dos so you can grab a wink before the day is done because another one waits in the outskirts of your week but take care not to spill the coffee even if you'd rather have tea but oh oh the tea place is too far and you barely have half an hour to check what needs oiling or fixing or combing yes button up those discs and grab the nearest pair of sleeves shove yourself into those nudes that go along with everything check yourself can you blend into the nearest wall when things get worse than 7 o'clock run run slam the windows shut run is there ever time to pause or pause to look but oh the plug goes un-pulled forgotten until the first stop your life goes past your nose past the last lie the present blurs but your mind is on the lack of light while you smudge your left cheek with pink tint did you put the right shade on the jerk was too sudden good the puppy flees unharmed there's always tissue on hand to wipe the stray brush strokes away relief can't be too far ahead but the clock is never on your side so wring your sweaty hands you think you could wing it everytime and everytime is never anywhere except when you don't need it oh why why don't you ever learn remind yourself to stop making lists of shoulds and musts they never get done anyway--

Happy Birthday, Jay

87 years ago, The Great Gatsby was published.

.

"With every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 7

Posting, post-Lent

In spite of myself, I found my fingers leafing through my CDs and going for my copy of The Madz's "Acclamation", that well-loved compilation of religious hymns ("I Will Sing Forever", "Anima Christi", and "Panalangin sa Pagiging Bukas-Palad" are my favorites), pushing the play button, walking into the porch, sitting on my tiny stool, and falling into reflection at the beautiful strains of the choir's impeccably-blended voices. I was grateful for the quiet that only an early morning can bestow, the mild sunlight, the pause that the world takes come Holy Week.

Even as I have learned, over the years, that religion is in one's heart, or that respect for all kinds of faiths is the right thing to cultivate, or that prayer is best done heartfelt and not through routine and custom, I still found myself pulled in by the impressions of muteness that had embraced my side of the world, saw my much, much younger self lost in a sea of people, staring down at a dusty road peopled by people's shod feet, trailing the heels of a life-sized figure of a Mary Magdalene decked in a deep-blue, bejeweled cassock, the scent of burning candles saturating the air, the drone of prayers and conversation filtered by a warm summer breeze, that younger self walking, walking, feeling the ache in her feet, but trudging on despite the dust in her new sandals, because Mama said to keep walking, and besides, friends (who had decided they would rather be St. Peter's disciples because he was first to go) waited somewhere along the fringes of the church, where there was promise of five-peso hotcakes and softdrinks-in-plastic later, endless chatter on the way home, where Dad and Mom waited, a cup of hot tablea chocolate on the table.

Oh, but how far back it was I had gone. I had not meant to. And I didn't mean to, now, thinking of that peaceful morning when I was pensive and quiet. I didn't mean to look that far back, not with the distance cleaving those two worlds. But I long to cross the chasm. If only time weren't so locked in. I would have jumped, head-on, if jumping meant going back.

Coolio!

from this site

What do you know, My father has the makings of a blogger.

A couple of weeks ago, my dad posted this on his Facebook:

The Son Also Rises (With apologies to Hemingway)

After waking up in the morning the father, still with ruffled hair and his maintenance medicine awaiting, immediately pounds the keys of his laptop for his FB...

...while the son, awkward for lack of skill, prepares their breakfast.

The title totally cracked me up. My father has a quirky sense of humor.

=D

The strength of my father

The strength of my father tears down walls. It builds bridges. It resurrects dead faiths, rekindles dying fires. The strength of my father sneers at pride and walks over the hot coals of weakness.
The strength of my father has kept this family whole; the years have only served to deepen the ties that he has so lovingly preserved.
The strength of my father pushes lives forward.
I march on, with him ever by my side.

Oh, summer, bummer.

Cheeks as red as tomatoes. Sunburn after an hour outdoors. Ants marching in organized multitudes toward unattended food. Then a cold comes along to officially usher me into summer.

=/

"For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit."
-C.S. Lewis, Til We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

haha

from flavorwire

"I think you can tell, when you meet someone, whether they read novels. There's some hollowness if they don't."
- Philip Hensher

"So cry all you want. I won't tell anybody."
-David Foster Wallace, Oblivion

"As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.

But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think...The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. "

I will always regret not buying that DFW book.

Errors in Conjunctions

1. And my breath catches at the discovery that you still haunt these roads, and those.
2. But I curb the vagaries of thought and feeling; the heart is weakest where memory dictates.
3. Or I could have bought the old book of watches, the bag of coffee beans, the barely-touched Dostoyevsky volume.
4. Yet sunlight still slants sadly over my little shelf of books.
5. For much of this story is undone--locked inside drawers, shut behind doors, swept under rugs.
6. So the hours go by, sinking into slumbers.

from Explore

Kung kasadlakan man ng pula't pag-ayop 

tubo ko'y dakila sa puhunang pagod; 

kung binabasa mo'y isa mang himutok 

ay alalahanin yaring naghahandog. 

- hango sa "Florante at Laura"

This little banquet

"It struck her... that here was spring, and the whole year to be lived through, once more."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

My current fixations:

milk tea, scented oils, tea light candles.

After a long day at work, and a drawn-out week crunching away at data, daylight, and anxiety, there's nothing like a large cup of cool milk tea, or the sustained whiff of fragrant oil kindling mildly over the soft flicker of a tea light candle.

The milk tea invigorates, the scents bring pleasure to the tired mind, the sight of the candle's softly quivering flame subdues the cares and the distress... ah, but life seems kinder when the air is filled with strawberries, or apples, or amber, or vanilla-and-cinnamon-flavored donuts...

And outside, flits a lone moth and nine fireflies, a breeze lingers just a bit longer, trees breathe over weary pavements, moonlight slants,  invisible, on the surfaces of things.

The daily grind is sapping enough, so sip away and take it easy.
Have some tea and candlelight today.

Just Little Things

The small things are often the most neglected. 

But catching them could just turn out to be the best moments of our day.

more here