Tomato Maria and the Definitive Nightcap

2006-11-09T07:37:00.000+08:00

The God Who Loves You
Carl Dennis

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures,
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week--
Three fine houses sold to deserving families--
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college.
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a life-long passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.

******

The morning bore terrible tidings of the impending unsolicited cheer in the form of a jeep adorned with caricatures of prancing reindeer. Words ran alongside garish red ribbons - Sison of cheer. (shudder)

******

Mary: How much do you love me?

Mrs. Tilford: As much as all the words in all the books in all the world. -Hellman, the children’s hour

******

I am that I am, your late and lonely master,
Who knows now what magic is:- the power to enchant that comes from disillusion.- WH Auden

Because the above quote has always served as one of my long-standing ideologies, I have always been a sucker for illusionists. magicians, underworld/ otherworldly capers.

I'll definitely watch The Illusionist. The movie seems promising.

I, admittedly, am not very good with movie critiques. This is because I firmly believe that critiques should have a certain sense of objectivity or a set of guidelines that give a coherent format to an analysis. I detest people who say that certain movies do not do justice to its subjects. I guess that's why it's a movie, for christ's sake. From time immemorial, the main goal of movies is to entice, to hide truths, to exaggerate realities. If everyone else made movies that were true to the form they represented, then who the hell would watch them?

******

Words are green eggs and ham:

As You Say (Not Without Sadness,) Poets Don't See, They Feel
Karl Shapiro

As you say, not without sadness, poets don't see, they feel. And that's why people who have turned to feelers seem like poets. Why children seem poetic. Why when the sap rises in the adolescent heart the young write poetry. Why great catastrophes are stated in verse. Why lunatics are named for the moon. Yet poetry isn't feeling with the hands. A poem is not a kiss. Poems are what ideas feel like. Ideas on Sunday, thoughts on vacation.

Poets don't see, they feel. They are conductors of the senses of men, as teachers and preachers are the insulators. The poets go up and feel the insulators. Now and again they feel the wrong thing and are thrown through a wall by a million-volt shock. All insulation makes the poet anxious: clothes, strait jackets, iambic five. He pulls at the seams like a boy whose trousers are cutting him in half. Poets think along the electric currents. The words are constantly not making sense when he reads. He flunks economics, logic, history. Then he describes what it feels like to flunk economics, logic, history. After that he feels better.

People say: it is sad to see a grown man feeling his way, sad to see a man so naked, desireless of any defenses. The people walk back into their boxes and triple-lock the doors. When their children begin to read poetry the parents watch them from the corner of their eye. It's only a phase, they aver. Parents like the word "aver" though they don't use it.

******

Proverbs according to Dennis Miller by Johnny Carson:

1. A rolling stone. . . if not acted upon by any force will keep rolling in a straight line at the same speed.

2. Every cloud has. . . water vapor that has the potential of producing ice crystals or raindrops, depending on the Bergeron or coalescence process.

3. The grass is always greener. . . if it receives an adequate supply of C55H70MgN4O6.

4. A penny saved. . . if doubled every day for two months would be worth more than the combined GNP of the industrialized nations of the world.

5. A bird in the hand. . . is dead or alive, depending on one’s will.

6. What goes up. . .will stay up if it has an escape velocity of 11.3 kilometers per second.

7. When the cat’s away. . . the mice will play cautiously if it’s Schrodinger’s cat.

8. People who live in glass houses. . . are surrounded by a strange hybrid of solid liquids or liquid solids.

9. Nothing is certain but death and. . . Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

10. There’s a time and place. . .but not before the Big Bang.

******

And now, a joke:

What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is every night?

A widow.

******

Urban Legends 2

You will be shocked to find that there are people who:

"have been working on restaurants for 7 years now"

"have a desktop on our house since we were in elementary level."

Lewd-icrous!

"I came in UPLB. A year after, I got pregnant."

"I did everyone there."

"I did the liaison officer there."

"I do room attendants well. I worked in the wines. I like going around the bushes."

Does this remind you of annoying poets who exhibit confusing syntax?

"doesn't speak my mouth"

It's nice to have a strong sense of self-awareness:

"i'm very nice. very gullible."

"i’m very oblivious and cool."

"I am quite peculiar in some different ways."

Sige nga, are you this rich?

"I have a train at that Call Center"

Words for the week:

infective representative

Definition: STD victim who works in a call center.

emphathetic

Definition: Someone who, when told about a problem, wrings his hands and wears a sack cloth for days while whipping himself into a frenzy with a thorn-laden lasher.

turd (could be third. who could really tell, though?)

Used in sentence- "I am the turd siblings in the family"

Definition: Someone who has low self-esteem. Either that or s/he has a ridiculously strong sense of reality.

******

All I Want for Christmas:

In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster

Turtle Voices in Uncertain Weather by Alfrredo Navarro Salanga

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

The Mooring of Staring Out by John Ashbery

(it's either one of these or a pair of socks. teehee)

******

I and the Griffin went to Powerbooks last Saturday before watching The Prestige. Even though I always do get a bit insecure at the onset everytime I step into Powerbooks, that sense of inadequacy wanes when I actually look around. There are really a few books there that I can consider a good read. Most of them are your run-of-the-mill, oh-i'm-so-literary-and-boringly-rich editions. There are shelves and shelves of pure balderdash and surface-glitter. It gives me the chills. The classics are expurgated versions (weak tea). The Filipino section is pitifully comprised of two shelves of uninformative loquaciousness.

It's funny what supposedly adroit people consider important these days.

*******

It is still best to end things with a song:

Some Journey
Suzanne Vega

If I had met you on some journey
Where would we be now
If we had met some eastbound train
Through some black sleeping town

Would you have worn your silken robes
All made of royal blue?
Would I have dressed in smoke and fire
For you to see through?

If we had met in a darkened room
Where people do not stay
But shadows touch and pass right through
And never see the day

Would you have taken me upstairs
And turned the lamplight low?
Would I have shown my secret self
And disappeared like the snow?

Oh, I could have played your little girl
Or I could have played your wife
I could have played your mistress
Running danger down through you life

I could have played your lady fair
All dressed in lace like the foam from the sea
I could have been your woman of the road
As long as you did not come back home to me

But as it is, we live in the city
And everything stays in place
Instead we meet on the open sidewalk
And it's well I know your face

We talk and talk, we tell the truth
There are no shadows here
But when I look into your eyes
I wonder what might have been here

Because if I had met you on some journey
Where would we be now?

today and yesterday

2006-10-30T08:12:00.000+08:00

One of the perks of being an orphan is that you can do almost everything you ever dreamed of doing when your parents were alive. You can drink as many Slurpees as you want, even if you have been coughing and sniffing for three whole days. You can dance in the rain and see your brother watching you surreptitiously from an open window before he joins you minutes after. You can stay up late, watching Somewhere in Time over and over again and no one will come up to you, serving sermons on gilded platters about health and the dangers of romanticism. You can sit and stare at absolutely nothing for hours and no one will come to envelope you in a furious hug, saying that for them, you exist. You are loved.

******

One of the moments when I wished I had a digicam or any camera of any sort was yesterday, when, upon leaving the apartment, I saw a large orange tabby glaring at me from a neighbor’s doorstep. It was so beautiful and sleek that I was really tempted to steal it and hole it up in my room for a day.

******

The new owner of my father’s ancestral house was kind enough to let us take some furniture from the house. He said that it would help us remember. I wonder if he thought that he was doing us a favor.

Here are some treasures that I found:

1. I unearthed a writing table from my uncle's old room. It probably was an antique mahogany sewing machine (sewing table?) that belonged to my grandmother, which was later fashioned into a kind of writing desk, now unpolished and a bit dusty. I fell in love with its intricate foothold patterns that scrolled and unfurled, like so many wild vines.

Time to take out my writing cap. I will not be blamed for future Dickensonian entries.

2. I also found my mother's other painting- a still life composed of apples and peaches and round patterns swirling on large jars.

Her name on this one is C. Usebio. My mother rarely signs her name on her paintings. She said she used other names on most of them. This will make the ones she sold in Japan and the other paintings of hers hard to track down, even if I do get to become a billionaire. She has had too many lives, too many secrets lost in the wailing wind.

********

Two books that I've read over the weekend:

1. Lady Oracle : Margaret Atwood

The reason I enjoy Atwood books is because I believe that I am a narcissist. No matter what people say, everyone likes seeing themselves in black and white, in another person's clothes, hidden in a heart. Atwood's characters successfully elucidate parts of me that, to use a cliché, I have never chanced upon before. When I read her, I feel that I am on a treasure hunt. In her characters I see my plots, my hands, my tired, black heart.

2. The Wayward Wife and Other Stories: Alberto Moravia

Two movies that I've watched (they're really good. but don't take my word for it.):

1. My life without me - Isabel Coixet

"I am classically in love!"

2. Garden State - Zach Braff

"What's the word that's burning in your heart?"

***********

You won't feel pain immediately after a fall. You first think about what you would've done better if you haven't stepped on that particular railing. You were forewarned but you decided to be a regular troglodyte and risk it. A few minutes after the fall, you feel your knees go slightly numb. You lift your skirt an inch and you see pinpricks of blood adorning flesh. You press a finger to the scar, lightly trace its irregular pattern. You laugh at your instability - at your penchant for accidents happening even before the journey. You try to divert your attention from the discomfort so you watch the wipers on the windshield mechanically move from side to side, as if the movement will heal you, will make things disappear like rabbits in top hats. After a while, you notice that the pain has stopped. You imagine yourself victorious. You are a riot of dry autumn leaves spinning around, finally happy. But you lift up your skirt an inch and see how red the prinpricks still are.

only a phase, these dark cafe days

2006-10-28T20:22:00.000+08:00

after i've bawled my eyes out for roughly an hour, i groggily went out of my room, my mouth sulky with so much sugar due to the meringue pieces i've been consuming while listening to the ramons and being clinically pathetic.sweets never really do compensate for desolation, no matter what the hersheys ads say. if anything, they make you feel weaker, more pliable to assaults.

so i forced myself to sit in front of the TV and just flipped channels. there was nothing good on, as usual. as i sat there, feeling so out of sorts i started crying again, i realized that this was definitely the saddest year of my entire life.

i am more lost than ever.

******

last wednesday, i watched the prestige with a couple of my officemates. funny how i finally identified with a lead character and she ended up hanging from a ceiling in a room full of birds.

******

this afternoon,i looked in the mirror and did not know who i was.

******

i finally realized that i have no right to be so smug about where i am right now. every action that i'm against may very, very well happen to me so i should just keep my meddling mouth shut.in this day and age, when everyone else seems to find solace in strangeness, it's very risky to throw stones.

******

Two poems by Yehuda Amichai that are fitted for the nearing occasions:

Memorial Day For The War Dead

Memorial day for the war dead. Add now

the grief of all your losses to their grief,

even of a woman that has left you. Mix

sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,

which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning

on one day for easy, convenient memory.

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,

in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.

"Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding."

No use to weep inside and to scream outside.

Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up

as a little girl with flowers.The streets are cordoned off with ropes,

for the marching together of the living and the dead.

Children with a grief not their own march slowly,

like stepping over broken glass.

The flautist's mouth will stay like that for many days.

A dead soldier swims above little heads

with the swimming movements of the dead,

with the ancient error the dead have

about the place of the living water.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies off.

A shopwindow is decorated with

dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white.

And everything in three languages:Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.

A great and royal animal is dying

all through the night under the jasmine

tree with a constant stare at the world.

A man whose son died in the war walks in the street

like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.

"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."

A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

******

because forgetting, even for a moment, is a wave of vindication:

Drinking Song

Silvia Curbelo

In every half-filled glass a river

begging to be named, rain on a leaf,

a snowdrift. What we long for

precedes us. What we've lost

trails behind, casting

a long shadow. Tonight

the music's sad, one man's

outrageous loneliness detonated

into arpeggios of relief. The way

someone once cupped someone's

face in their hands, and the world

that comes after. Everything

can be pared down to gravity

or need. If the soul soars with longing

the heart plunges headfirst

into what's left, believing

there's a pure want

to fall through. What we drink to

in the end is loss,

the space around it, the opposite

of thirst, its shadow.

******

All I know of you is in my memory; All I ask is for you to remember me. -Suzanne Vega, Rosemary

******

it's best to end things with joni mitchell lyrics:

THE LAST TIME I SAW RICHARD

Joni Mitchell

The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68,
And he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe
You laugh, he said you think you're immune, go look at your eyes
They're full of moon.

You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
All those pretty lies, pretty lies
When you gonna realise they're only pretty lies
Only pretty lies, just pretty lies

He put a quarter in the Wurlitzer, and he pushed
Three buttons and the thing began to whirr
And a bar maid came by in fishnet stockings and a bow tie
And she said "Drink up now it's gettin' on time to close."
"Richard, you haven't really changed," I said

It's just that now you're romanticizing some pain that's in your head
You got tombs in your eyes, but the songs
You punched are dreaming
Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet
When you gonna get yourself back on your feet?
Oh and love can be so sweet, love so sweet

Richard got married to a figure skater
And he bought her a dishwasher and a Coffee percolator
And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on
And all the house lights left up bright

I'm gonna blow this damn candle out
I don't want nobody comin' over to my table
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings
And fly away
Only a phase, these dark cafe days.

today, you are golden

2006-10-26T13:15:00.000+08:00

Great Art
Lawrence Raab

There's so much I don't want to look at,
big religious scenes especially,
big historical battles,
almost anything, in fact, containing
large numbers of people.

Three or four people—that's the right number
for a painting. Then you can think
about what they might mean to each other,
why they're standing around that beach
at sunset, walking toward that mountain.

Or they're at home: a woman sewing, a child
playing, a dog, a man at the door,
much more ominous, I'm sure, than the artist
intended. And I like that, imagining
this isn't what I was supposed to feel,

the way I'm pleased with small imperfections,
stains and wrinkles, erasures particularly,
where you sense the artist changing his mind.
And sometimes a shape's been painted over,
although the ghost of it remains.

In Vermeer's Girl Asleep at a Table
she leans on one hand, dreaming
perhaps of love. Behind her there's a mirror
in which nothing is reflected. Once,
x-rays have shown, this was a portrait of a man.

And we would have understood, given
the conventions of the time, he was the subject
of her thoughts. Why take him away?
It's better, I want Vermeer
to have decided, not to show that much.

Let her keep her dream to herself.
Let the light be our secret.

2006-10-22T22:08:00.007+08:00

I'll come running

Even if Ms Paltrow's acting skills in this movie left a lot of things to be desired (come on, how hard is it to LOOK blank and devoid of any real ideas? you'd know what i'm talking about IF you read the book), Great Expectations really was a good movie.

2006-10-22T21:35:00.000+08:00

Argh. Blogger is making me soooo insane. My links are all so screwy.:(

I'm really moving on to BETTER pastures. Prolly Wordpress will do. I was practically salivating when I saw how easy it was to maintain a blog there.

Soon, anyways. When I have time and have decided to make the effort.

By the way, check out PLUMA, our group blog. As of today, it has no posts yet (just registered 5 minutes ago) but try checking it out after a coupla days.

2006-10-21T15:12:00.000+08:00

More than anything, it is always the death of someone or the end of an event that makes you stand still and listen to your own solitary insignificance.

----------------
It somewhat saddens me - the fact that I cannot even make an effort to wake up early in the morning to jog. I, instead, go to the gym now to make up for lost days. Thirty minutes on the treadmill, for me, does not constitute a real run. You miss out on a lot of things- the first kiss of fresh air, sounds of people waking up, the day slowly unraveling.

We still have the best mornings. Upon waking up, everything seems to have that old, blurred quality, as if you were stuck wallowing in an old photograph. And in the photograph, whispered promises of better things - an untangled life, a greater good, a future happiness. This is probably why a lot of Filipinos are incurable optimists. (This is not meant to be taken as a compliment)

-----------------

My friend A, who works for a monthly, was asked by her boss to do a write-up on a boy, all of 12 years old, who is an advanced chess player, a talented instrumentalist, and a wunderkind of sorts. This boy has ADD. But A (who became a blood sister of mine during our days at the Journalism Department at UP) is supposed to write about how normal this boy is when really, there's nothing usual about him.

So I ask her, what are his interests, what are the games that he likes to play?

She tells me he has no friends.

Okay, I ask, favorite breakfast? Crispy meteorites? Salty Mars men?

Nothing that special. Sausages, I think.

Oh okay, that's normal enough.

It's hard enough to begin an article, she says, and now I'm stuck with an opening paragraph that
has the word sausage in it.

Sounds juicy, A.

--------------
I do not appreciate my having memory lapses at this day and age. Especially in the business that I am currently in, I cannot afford to have misplaced adjectives and spilt infinitives.

Note to self: Resume reading the dictionary.

----------------

Margaret Atwood on writing:

“I look back over what I’ve written and I know it’s wrong, not because of what I’ve set down, but because of what I’ve omitted. What isn’t there has a presence, like the absence of light.

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.” – Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

-------------------

The perennial question: Which would you choose, what you want or what you need?

I think you choose this - the thing that you want - because it is something that you have not owned; a treat that you can’t have on a regular day like you would something as usual and expected as a toothbrush. A need is a given, a sum of laid out parts. You consider its consistency a weakness, something that you can do without. And you say, I’ll get it tomorrow or some other day or next year because you know that you only have to look sideways and there it is – on shelves, inserted in books, stuck in the limbo of your neglect and its love.

With something you want, there will always be that element of surprise, that strange perfection, an urgency that overwhelms. It is the grotesque apple, the calming hour, the sudden crisp smell of cinnamon when you close your eyes. It is devoid of banality because it is unknown and oblivious. It weaves itself in and out of your cup of regret. Tucked in your shirtpocket, drowned in your cigarette smoke, wrapped in your blind faith. In spite of all this, you reject its presence in your life because you are afraid of saying yes to weakness yes to probable events yes to upheaval.

Still you reach for it –this thing that you want- and keep it hidden from everyone else. You can’t let other people see you hanker after it, what with all the private hunger going on.

----------------

At the gym, there is a trainer named Jayne. She looks so much like her. Or what I imagine her to look like. This infuriates me most nights but I refuse to be taken in by my recollections. But seeing Jayne here is like having her around, in the flesh. It makes her less of a myth, which frightens me. My imagination has gone amok. She is squished under the leg crunch machine or helplessly pinned down by one of the more muscular weightlifters, her eyes reduced to little black x’s. But I decide that I’m being too cruel and am doing Jayne an injustice. I am sure that she is a lot nicer and doesn’t lack the necessary characteristics to qualify as a human being. She smiles patiently at me when I can’t complete crunches. The smile hangs on her face like a dangerous ornament, a curved amulet.

------------------

My former Journ classmates from UP and I are collaborating on a blog account that we’re planning to put up soon. The ideas that we have gathered so far are both stimulating and refreshing, to say the least. Most of my Journ batchmates have managed to pursue their/our craft (sniffle), so I’m sure they are better writers now than they were before.

I’m not going to mention the specifics yet since we haven’t sat down and discussed everything. Everyone involved wants to do things right, especially since this would ,again, involve writing for the public.

------------------

It’s almost summer. Can’t wait to enroll in a workshop.

-------------------
Admittedly, I am not longer a Sexton fan. But there are really some poems of hers that still strike me numb.

Like this one:

For Johnny Pole On The Forgotten Beach
Anne Sexton

In his tenth July some instinct
taught him to arm the waiting wave,
a giant where its mouth hung open.
He rode on the lip that buoyed him there
and buckled him under. The beach was strung
with children paddling their ages in,
under the glare od noon chipping
its light out. He stood up, anonymous
and straight among them, between
their sand pails and nursery crafts.
The breakers cartwheeled in and over
to puddle their toes and test their perfect
skin. He was my brother, my small
Johnny brother, almost ten. We flopped
down upon a towel to grind the sand
under us and watched the Atlantic sea
move fire, like night sparklers;
and lost our weight in the festival
season. He dreamed, he said, to be
a man designed like a balanced wave...
how someday he would wait, giant
and straight.

Johnny, your dream moves summers
inside my mind.

He was tall and twenty that July,
but there was no balance to help;
only the shells came straight and even.
This was the first beach of assault;
the odor of death hung in the air
like rotting potatoes, the junkyard
of landing craft waited open and rusting.
The bodies were strung out as if they were
still reaching for each other, where they lay
to blacken, to burst through their perfect
skin. And Johnny Pole was one of them.
He gave in like a small wave, a sudden
hole in his belly and the years all gone
where the Pacific noon chipped its light out.
Like a bean bag, outflung, head loose
and anonymous, he lay. Did the sea move fire
for its battle season? Does he lie there
forever, where his rifle waits, giant
and straight?

I think you die again
and live again, Johnny, each summer that moves inside
my mind.

updates

2006-10-16T08:40:00.000+08:00

Birthday bash

Last Friday, M, a co-worker of mine, and I left the office at around 9pm, went and paid our bills at Slimmers World, and decided to go out and celebrate her upcoming 24th year of existence. We went to Gilligans at Festival and were appalled by how crappy the place looked but since we were too tired and lazy to even think of going to ATC, we decided to rough it out.

We sat on a couch and were talking our way into a frenzy when she noticed that there was this man, three o'clock, who was taking pictures of us. Of me, in particular. He kept aiming his cam at us and we were motionless for a while, stay or go, we couldn't decide. The place was packed with people and we wouldn't be able to find another seat. We were expecting our drinks so we decided to stay put for awhile, glancing from time to time at the weird man with the weird mustache in the weird overalls.

So finally, after 10 minutes, our request to be relocated was granted. We specifically stated: a seat as far from masculine activity as possible. When we got there, we couldn't even really talk since the showband that performed that night had their instruments up so loud. After our few pathetic attempts to restart our previous conversation, we decided that it would be better if we called it a night. So we went home, slightly disgruntled and very tired. Our feet ached and she laughed when I said that I felt like I was really 80.

Funny how taxing it is to unwind these
days.

Once there was a way, to get back home

It says on the receipt they gave me, in exchange for my P100 bill (that I was hesitant to let go of), that I commited an infraction against a particular indecipherable ordinance written on the receipt.

I jaywalked. I don't know if there is such a word, but that's what I did. I thought it was okay, really, because there were three of us (all women. tsk, tsk.) crossing the street. The stringy policeman, who looked so much like the mangongotong in the Pugad Baboy Strips, said to the women, Hoy bawal dyan. He even laughed a little. To my surprise, he asked me to stop and chat awhile. He said:

"Hindi mo ba alam na bawal tumawid dyan?"

I was skeptical, to say the least. I really did not need to go through this conversation with a policeman who looked like he hasn't bothered to shave for a week since I only had roughly three hours sleep 'cause I went to The Outlaws' gig in Katipunan. I was a bit irritated and decided to play the dumb provinciana role I usually use to get
myself out of particular scrapes that I generally commit in the city. Inspite of all my sordid attempts to look dumb and innocent (o yes, they are two different characteristics), my plan was foibled. I decided to lay it to him straight so I told the freaky Pugad Baboy character look alike that I did not have money on me. And I said, with the cheekiest voice that I could muster at seven fucking thirty in the morning:

"E bakit yung mga babae, tumawid tapos pinalagpas niyo?"

So basically, my horrid attitude did me in. He called in a restback, a policewoman who looked like she wrestled when she was younger. He said Woman, take care of this worthless infidel, and she took me by the elbow and led me to the third floor of the Muntinlupa City Hall. I yakked all the way to the third floor and I was so aware that I was already making a nuisance of myself. I truly applaud her restraint. She talked to me calmly, guaranteeing that she would make sure that next time, all violators would go through the same process. Because I am the spawn of two loveable but extremely skeptical people, I told her outright that I did not believe her. Then she said that just because others were let go doesn't negate the fact that I violated one of their ordinances. She left me on the third floor, staring at a woman
surrounded by dilapidated chairs in an otherwise empty floor. She shoved the receipt at me and held out her hand.

I wasn't mad because I was fined for a violation that I clearly committed and I am glad that the policeman wasn't the usual mangongotong. It just felt so unfair - the way he let the other two women get off without so much as a reprimand and I was stuck with walking all that way to the friggin city hall alone.

But I paid the P100 fine. Was still mad afterwards.

---------

After my horrendous experience, I walked to the bus stop (ever so careful of pedestrians, this time) and my heart absolutely sank when I found out there were no air-conditioned buses. I will not feel guilty about sounding ditzy. Really, I needed a break. Since there were no buses of the sort that day (according to the conductor), I decided to board the ordinary buses. After I paid the fare, I fell asleep.

I woke up to the sound of spattering raindrops. Everyone else were closing their windows. I left mine defiantly open. I faced the window, closed my eyes, and felt the raindrops fall on my cheeks. The bus radio played The Platters' Only You. I felt like I was four again and alone in the house on a rainy afternoon. I remember holding tea parties for my books. I smile and sigh a little. Can't wait to get home.

--------
Overheard a woman calling her daughter 'Nil Anne'. That's the way she pronounced it, anyway. Fancy naming your daughter after nothing.

Names are wishes, Papa believed. You are a slate. Someone else's history is written on you. Eventually, when you are strong enough, you will have your own story, written on someone else's bright face.
--------

Antonio

So, when I arrived at the apartment, my brother's friends were there, eating lunch and laughing. Such happy boys.

I kiss my brother on his shoulder (I sadly cannot reach his face and he is not too keen on stooping) and he introduces me to his new girl. She is a slight person, has a small frame ( so like Mommy, before she had me). I think of her as shy, but perhaps she's just not accustomed to strangers. But I won't be one for long.

I am happy that Anthony has found someone. Not that there's anything outwardly awful about being alone. Actually, I would've preferred that he be by himself for awhile so that he could have time to do some thinking without some other voice clogging his questions that only he can answer. But I guess, nowadays, especially since Christmas is almost here, it will be hard for either of us to be alone.

Anthony actually takes more after Papa. Ma's stoic soldiers. My brother, so far, has had only three girlfriends. He will be turning 21 this November. Like Papa, he has
never had a roving eye but they both appreciate/d seeing beautiful women. And they were/are both very frank about it.

Anthony is not much of a charmer. But he has an earnestness in him, a sincerity that I think appeals to women.

If there's one thing I'm proud of, it's the fact that I was raised by and have grown up with such achingly faithful men.

I am happy that Anthony has emerged out of the rut that his ex left him in. I am happy that he has lived up to one of my father's most fervent hopes - that we both be undefeated by other people's shortcomings; that we never wait for anyone, no matter what the consequences would be. One can only hope for so much, after all.

Round Robin

2006-10-12T12:19:00.000+08:00

I am beginning to wonder why I find it so hard to rouse myself out of bed these days. Is it because I feel so light lately (FYI for those who are not in the know: I am finally dieting), that even the mere idea of getting out of the house seems preposterous? Or is it because I am finally ready to admit that I am tired of the place I am headed to?

----------

I also wonder why my being on a diet is such a big deal around here. Yesterday, two of my officemates came up to me and kept snickering and giving me unsolicited advice like : don't starve yourself, it's not like you'll be committing a mortal sin if you eat chips, blah blah blah. This irks me. a lot.why do people feel the need to take it upon themselves to insinuate their petty little concerns into my life?

----------

So today, M told me 'You look better now. I think it's working.' Thank God. Not that I was about to give up on myself.

----------
Yesterday, too, my good friend, MP told me, ' Let's you and me get out of this dingy office.' Our office is anything but dingy but we decide to leave our cubicles anyway. We get two cups of free coffee from the vendo and step outside. We feel the cold air on our faces and remember that it’s almost January. We are suddenly pensive, as if someone, or something, is about to leave us.

----------
Speaking of departures, my supervisor up and left us. She is now working in the other site. Funny, when she was here, I wondered what I'd feel when her voice no longer existed for me. I was appalled by the fact that I didn't feel anything. Zilch. Nada. Zero. Then I remember - this is usually how i respond to departures, to inevitable losses. A barrier redeems itself in my mind, saying that it doesn't matter. Things will remain separated. I believe this, at first. Afterwards, on some random morning, while reading a book or staring at the living room lamp, I cry for no reason.

----------

A gem that I found through the poemhunter site. Written by Yehuda Amichai (a favorite of Langston Hughes), translated by Chana Bloch:

Forgetting Someone

Forgetting someone is like forgetting to turn off the light
in the backyard so it stays lit all the next day

But then it is the light that makes you remember.

--------------

When in doubt, restart

--------
I owe my father an apology for feeling, for the first time in my life, the need to be like other people. Is it really all that bad, Papa, to be on the safe side of things for once? (In my head, my father says, Surely you mean insipid. Foolish can be a good word. Not safe. Never safe.)

----------------

Someone sent me this email yesterday. It's an excerpt from one of Murakami's books, Kafka on the Shore:

"At any rate, you--and your theory--are throwing a stone at a target that's very far away. Do you understand that?"

I nod. "I know. But metaphors can reduce the distance."

"We're not metaphors."

"I know," I say. "But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me."

A faint smile comes to her as she looks up at me. "That’s the oddest pickup line I’ve ever heard."

"There’re a lot of odd things going on---but I feel like I’m slowly getting closer to the truth."

"Actually getting closer to a metaphorical truth? Or metaphorically getting closer to an actual truth? Or maybe they supplement each other?"

"Either way, I don’t think I can stand the sadness I feel right now," I tell her.

"I feel the same way."

-------------

B told me this interesting anecdote (antidote?) yesterday about an ex-boyfriend of hers. I call it "Actual Conversation with a Lemming."

EB: Miss ko nang alagaan ka, puntahan ka senyo. Tapos nood tayong movie.

B: Yeah, but we can't do that anymore 'coz we have both moved on.

EB: Saan?

----------------

Marguerite Duras on desire:

"I acquired that drinker's face before I drank. Drink only confirmed it. The space for it existed in me. I knew it the same as other people, but strangely, in advance. Just as the space existed in me for desire. At the age of fifteen I had the face of pleasure, and yet I had no knowledge of pleasure. There was no mistaking that face. Even my mother must have seen it. My brothers did. That was how everything started for me-with that flagrant, exhausted face, those rings around the eyes, in advance of time and experience."

--------------

Check out Harvey Finkle's photographs in his series, The Readers:

--------------

It's always best to end things with a song:

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
U2

You're dangerous 'cause you're honest
You're dangerous, you don't know what you want
Well you left my heart empty as a vacant lot
For any spirit to haunt

Hey hey sha la la
Hey hey

You're an accident waiting to happen
You're a piece of glass left there on the beach
Well you tell me things I know you're not supposed to
Then you leave me just out of reach

Hey hey sha la la
Hey hey sha la la

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna drown in your blue sea
Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna fall at the foot of thee

Well you stole it 'cause I needed the cash
And you killed it 'cause I wanted revenge
Well you lied to me 'cause I asked you to
Baby, can we still be friends

Hey hey sha la la
Hey hey sha la la

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna drown in your blue sea
Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna fall at the foot of thee

Oh, the deeper I spin
Oh, the hunter will sin for your ivory skin
Took a drive in the dirty rain
To a place where the wind calls your name
Under the trees the river laughing at you and me
Hallelujah, heavens white rose
The doors you open
I just can't close

Don't turn around, don't turn around again
Don't turn around, your gypsy heart
Don't turn around, don't turn around again
Don't turn around, and don't look back
Come on now love, don't you look back

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna drown in your blue sea
Who's gonna taste your salt water kisses
Who's gonna take the place of me

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna tame the heart of thee

---------------

country daisy juxtaposes

2006-10-10T22:16:00.000+08:00

peter mccormick, i know why
you do not love me.
it is because i am normal.
mediocre, if you may.
i know that you've seen me put the
tissue roll face up. my knees are bowlegged
and scratched a bit. when i was in highschool, i won the science
prize for best in original manuscript.
i whistle in the dark. i believe in God and go to the church regularly to pray for lost souls like tommy harris who painted the town billboards red
last may. i do not drink aspirin. i paint molehills out
of obtuse planets. there are days when i like singing
in the rain. i am a cliche, a round robin.
there are no secret crannies that i plan to take you to.
with me, there would be no nameless lovers
popping out of nowhere, like they do in cinemas.
i have never been to the Pentagon. i have a difficulty
playing scrabble and am comfortable talking in txt lnguge.

oh, peter mccormick, my malady is this:
i am not at all banal. when i wear my hair a certain way
or don a new pink blouse, do you not notice that i am as unique as everyone else?

For M

2006-10-10T21:30:00.000+08:00

they whispered about her infront of her children.
they claimed that they remembered her, or rather

the christmases when everything she bought them
did not fit. this was a sign, they say, that she never bothered

to know them - why their feet were made of
sand and stone during the times when they

were children. she was a mystery to the youngest sister for she ran off to a convent and said prayers to a god

whom she denounced years after, finding
the right footstool for her faith

and knowing somehow that she
would always be better than who she was

then - a hollow child who breathed her life into words and dreamt of gold to fill herself, instead of mopping the floors and helping mother

create kamote sweets to feed the rich. rich is what she wanted to be. imagine the length of chances, the various lives she can lead.

her dreams were monsters, they say. she was undone, disgruntled, reimbursed from gods she did not acknowledge. her children hear them whisper that she died of wanting,

of having known hunger. it is late and they decide to move on to the part of the narrative when it is already night time. in the scene,

she has snapped. she is commanding everyone to move out of the house she had bought with foreign blood. she screamed at their mother. imagine that.

disregard the fact that all her life, there were no arms around her. disregard the fact that she was a stranger to them - a stray wound that everyone forgot existed.

this is their favorite memory of her - she lying on a yellow sofa,
death leaning over her shoulder. she is whispering that she is sorry

but by now, she doesn't know that she's even saying it. or to whom. it was the morphine talking, carelessly moving around,

finding resurrection in her veins. it told her stories
of grandeur, stories that she passed on to her frightened children.

in her passing, her sisters do not remember her loving notes.
they do not remember her smiles that said see me. know that i am here.

but they are reminded of everything else - the smell of weakness on her clothes, fistfuls of her tears, her loss. they smile a knowing smile.

her children, orphans now, do not say a word. they traipse
down to their newfound sadness and wonder if it is

all true. but when they dream, they see the bright blue flame of her body. she advises them not to hurry towards her.

in the morning, they remember their hearts, so constricted with love that again, they are emptied out.
---------------------

this poem is for my mother, who always smelled of summer rain.

Come, I will tell you

2006-10-10T20:14:00.000+08:00

the one true story of my life.

you might find it disconcerting because it does not include passion.

there are no descriptions about daffodils rising forward; no solace in boredom.

my life is made of soft velvet.

it is a story that begins with smoking fat cigarettes at dawn and ends while chasing new promises around corners.

in it is a dew drop mixed with the milk of the cities and the slow waiting of harbors.

my life is a lover who has forgotten about the way i smell.

it is a hand let go, suddenly.

indeed, there are deaths of remonstrations.

there are swift songs of the wind.

in it, too, is a crease on a page and hole in the nook.

it is me saying o yes, innocence with cherries on top please please god.

my life is a cat that licked the rest of the cream. it was always a hungry little bugger.

at times, it is a window. you must not use it as an alleyway.

there are always pictures of me walking against traffic, carrying salvation in a purse.

i am a mountain of kisses and a grave of clocks.

(you are in it. you wake me up sometimes.
and with my eyes open, i look surprised everytime i realize that I am still here.so much so that my mouth opens, gapes into a balloon that is flying towards something, always farther away.)

so you like sad songs?

2006-10-09T17:34:00.000+08:00

It won't do

to dream of caramel,

to think of cinnamon,

and long for you.

It won't do

to stir a deep desire,

to fan a hidden fire

that can never burn true.

I know your name,

I know your skin,

I know the way

these things begin;

But I don't know

how I would live with myself,

what I'd forgive of myself

if you don't go.

So goodbye,sweet appetite,

no single bite

could satisfy...

I know your name,

I know your skin,

I know the way

these things begin;

But I don't know

what I would give of myself,

how I would live with myself

if you don't go.

It won't do

to dream of caramel,

to think of cinnamon

and long

for you...

I for Infuriate

2006-10-07T13:59:00.000+08:00

Things I am furious about at this very moment:

1. My blog template

I have never pretended that I was even slightly knowledgeable about tech stuff. But this is rather stupid - worrying about how my page looks like to people when I'm already so fucking worried about my writing. I really don't need this. Look at my page. Some entries are not aligned, some dates of previous entries are missing. Then there are these annoying icons of what looks like a pencil and an envelope. Danged eyesores. I've tried deleting these icons but I can't find them in the Template section.

For the love of Christ, I just want to fucking write! :(

2. The irrevocable gum under my shoe

Again, you kid yourself. Your strength does not lie in anything other than the irresolute FACT that you know you would always, always have someone stupid enough to fall back on. I would like to quit breaking my neck over you but sometimes, I would have to admit that it's rather fun being utterly disgusted by your complete lack of scruples. Makes you wonder what all that education was for.

3. Work during the weekends

'Nuff said.

4. Lack of time/ place to write

Can't here because it is a workplace. As I've been reminded a gazillion times before - this is not a place specifically designed to satisfy my artistic needs. No effing kidding?

Exactly!

2006-10-07T13:18:00.000+08:00

A Game of Anonymous Names
Ian Rosales Casocot

1. She, in her old age, now counts her "I love you's" out like a miser's spare change, and you wonder somehow how love can be like that, always under a scowl, afraid to bloom to trembling truth.

2. He was the one who kept heads spinning in his ambiguities. Even after he has explained himself, there it still was -- mystery wrapped up as a beautiful boy. Of course you fell for his quiet smiles, the way the light turns soft brown in his eyes, and the way his words roll out, when he speaks, with such sweet, precise enunciation. Maybe you even love the way his hair, kept trim (and always under a cap), shies up, close to forehead, to a curl. You keep your ground, though, with practice. You know this can't lead anywhere.

3. She tells you she has never seen heaven like this, in intoxication, and away from home. She is beautiful and sixteen. "You are an angel," you tell her. When she smiles, you find yourself longing for a sister.

4. He is inconstant, but is always bliss and pure joy. His body is home. Of course you hate him for your falling deep into his eyes, and knowing that while you pretend you are strong, you can easily get lost without the comfort of his becoming familiar, like life.

5. She, in her sweet abundance of beautiful flesh, stumps you with sudden intimate moments. She knows, doesn't she? is your eternal question, a refrain that soon gets lost in both your bubbles of laughter and sad joys. You hold her hand, and silently you wish her well, and then you wish her love as well.

6. He has become a stranger, a spiteful man without context for his sudden black moods. You wonder how that can be, how a beautiful summer can suddenly turn upside-down for somebody you once knew as friend and ally. You realize, seeing the blankness in his cigarette eyes, that nobody really knows anybody.

You write somewhere, on a piece of blue paper: "Every man is an island. There are waters of separation between us, our lapping waves the only means with which we touch each other -- inconstant, and frequently breeding sadness. We are all connected by our disconnections."

2006-10-07T10:41:00.000+08:00

"poverty's a secret the country knows well." - angelo v. suarez, juan de la cruz meditates on his idiomatic expressions in cubao a few years after the beginning of the new millennium

News Flash

2006-10-06T09:45:00.000+08:00

People do stop waiting, at one point or another.

And the pendulum swings

2006-10-05T09:35:00.000+08:00

I've been thinking about deleting my friendster account for some time now. This has made me think of moving instead.

Harhar.

--------------

Hide-and-Seek

Someone hides from someone
Hides under his tongue
He looks for him under the earth
He hides on his forehead

He looks for him in the sky
He hides in his forgetting
He looks for him in the grass
Looks for him looks
Where he doesn't look for him
And looking for him loses himself.- Vasco Popa, translated by Simic

booster

2006-10-05T09:33:00.000+08:00

You Should Be A Poet

You craft words well, in creative and unexpected ways.And you have a great talent for evoking beautiful imagery...Or describing the most intense heartbreak ever.You're already naturally a poet, even if you've never written a poem.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

2006-10-04T13:57:00.000+08:00

Because she wants to touch him,
she moves away.
Because she wants to talk to him,
she keeps silent.
Because she wants to kiss him,
she turns away
& kisses a man she does not want to kiss.

He watches
thinking she does not want him.
He listens
hearing her silence.
He turns away
thinking her distant
& kisses a girl he does not want to kiss.

They marry each other--
a four-way mistake.
He goes to bed with his wife
thinking of her.
She goes to bed with her husband
thinking of him.--
& all this in a real old-fashioned four-poster bed.

Do they live unhappily ever after?
Of course.
Do they undo their mistakes ever?
Never.
Who is the victim here?
Love is the victim.
Who is the villain?
Love that never dies.- Parable of the Four Poster, Erica Mann Jong

Here's where the story ends

2006-10-02T20:49:00.000+08:00

People I know, places I go,
make me feel tongue-tied
I can see how people look down, they’re on the inside
Here’s where the story ends
People I see, weary of me showing my good side
I can see how people look down
I’m on the outside
Here’s where the story ends
Ooh here’s where the story ends

It’s that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes my eyes feel sore
Oh I never should have said, the books that you read
Were all I loved you for

It’s that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes me wonder why
And it’s the memories of your shed that make me turn red
Surprise, surprise, surprise

Crazy I know, places I go
Make me feel so tired
I can see how people look down
I’m on the outside
Oh here’s where the story ends
Ooh here’s where the story ends

Oh the devil in me said, go down to the shed
I know where I belong
But the only thing I ever really wanted to say
Was wrong, was wrong, was wrong
It’s that little souvenir of a colourful year
Which makes me smile inside
So I cynically, cynically say, the world is that way
Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise

Here’s where the story ends
Ooh here’s where the story ends- Here's where the story ends, The Sundays

let me tell you the truth

2006-09-30T21:25:00.000+08:00

it is this:
i have forgotten about you.
i have carefully moved on, like a
tidal wave, a jack in the box sans the spring. see me, the vehicle stealthily
moving upwards a steep slope. however
gradually, i will get there. i am now dreamless and righteous.
my head, a bubble burst out
of proportion.

the chair where you sat on no longer holds
your weight. i have smoothed over the creases on the
side of the bed that used to have your imprinted shape,
lying sideways. i have forgotten to pick up your laundry.
your photographs are now quietly burning in the furnace.

i have contacted my woman support group. on tuesday, we'll be going
to the beach. we'll be carrying cartolinas adorned with the words, "will have slings
like last summer."
our shoulders are festooned with anxious roses. of course, it is
inevitable that flings would be more than welcome.
i am hoping to meet the man of my dreams. or at least someone who is uncannily
unlike you. someone who is a long stretch, a dream of summer.

i have signed up for yoga class and i feel my center now.
i did not realize that it was as cavernous as it is. i also shop alone
and even went to the zoo once.
i see my face in the mirror and check my teeth for stains.

but lately, the strangest things are happening. i am reminded of you when
i am shopping for cinnamon. your hands jump out of the
page of a book i'm reading. the busboy is you, as well as the lady
who is saddened by green dresses.
my mind has turned traitor. it is spinning me in circles and is hurtful when it rains. the
beer has gone bad without prior notice. suddenly, i
feel a chill everywhere. i am not stronger.
the clock hands stop moving and i write about you.

what is unsaid

2006-09-30T20:31:00.000+08:00

everything begins with the boy who is tying his shoelaces.
in the corner of his eye, he sees a young woman
who is seated on a park bench. it looks like she is waiting for someone.
she glances from time to time at a piece of paper. if you look closely,
the paper is slightly torn at the edges. it
looks like it has been folded many times.

the woman smiles softly at times, puts a hand against her cheek.
there is a desperate anticipation surrounding her.
it is a shield, an expensive fur coat. sometimes she yawns and stretches her arms
then looks around. she glances at an imaginary watch. when will
she decide when it's been long enough?

out of her bag, she takes out a knife. she holds it gently
as if it were fragile. it glints in the sun. she shudders
and puts it away. she anxiously looks around her.
the little boy has seen her. he watches her intently now,
suddenly afraid of her wistfulness, her quivering impatience.
but she sits there for hours and sometimes she forgets to blink.
she wrings her hands and gives them comforting kisses.

the boy stays, even after the world has turned a few years older.
he pretends that he is playing
with tufts of grass. he is her lone witness, her afternoon soldier.
after some time, she sighs and gets up hastily, like
she suddenly realized that she was late for an appointment.
she shoves the letter in the bag then
stands up and leaves.

the boy watches her walk away.
he thinks about the letter. he'd like to get
his hands on it just so he'd know what she was waiting for. he
believes that it will explain everything. after all, everyone,
at some point, is tired of reading between the lines.
but why do we stay, if not for the sacredness of things
that are unsaid?

because it's wednesday

2006-09-27T18:00:00.000+08:00

Blank Joy
Rainer Maria Rilke

She who did not come, wasn't she determined
nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?
If we had to exist to become the one we love,
what would the heart have to create?

Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are
the center of all my labors and my loves.
If I've wept for you so much, it's because
I preferred you among so many outlined joys.

Translated by A. Poulin

when commendation is due

2006-09-25T14:06:00.000+08:00

kudos to my friend C who finally, FINALLY cut the ties!:D

got the message, huh? look forward to an interesting ride, my friend. i never really thought you had the guts and the courage to do it but for once you proved me wrong. i'm sooooo proud.:D

sana tuloy tuloy na yan...

Song for D day

2006-09-25T07:28:00.000+08:00

Last Goodbye
Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Long before your rusted chains
Busted walls and barbed wire cage
Tried to hold me down
Time was just a fist of change
Tossed in the water just incase
You ever came around

I could lose myself
I could curse like hell
But I’ve lost the will to even try
If you ever doubt, listen to the sound
No lies
No, no, no
This is my last goodbye

Pardon me if I appear
To see beyond the now and here
And try and save myself
I’m not the kind of them to blame
I'm not the kind to pin the blame...
But I can't take more of the same
Livin’ on your shelf

I could lose myself
I could curse like hell
But I’ve lost the will to even try
If you ever doubt, listen to the sound
No lies
No, no, no
This is my last goodbye

Door closes
Another one opens
I feel the cold wind blowing
Over me
Long gone
But not forgotten
I might be lost
I might be finally free
I’m finally free

After the Fiesta

2006-09-25T07:11:00.000+08:00

Some things are left here:
Bright confetti spilled on the hard ground,as if by mistake.
There is a lonely, inflated balloon near the
spot where the stage used to be. The remains of
candied apples are peeking out of hiding places.
A solitary chair is waiting for someone.
A forgotten teddy bear lies on its side. Its face
is noticeably askew - testifying to rampage, to
carelessness.
And there is a boy of eight, standing in the middle of it all,
whose mouth is open with wonder.
He thinks it is a battlefield and believes that he has seen glory.
Already, he has forgotten how the
place looked like some nights before. He does not
recall the parades, the whirlwind happiness, the
clowns who cried : step right up and you will see
the miracle of your life. He would rather forget them all.
He prefers the debris that laughter leaves.
It reminds him that he aches when he is bruised.
Suddenly, he hears music that he cannot place.
He makes a sidestep into a remembered dance.
The tune that he carries, which for a moment sustains him,
guides him years afterwards.
Still, he does not remember where he heard it first.

procrastination

2006-09-24T18:01:00.000+08:00

come here.
sit down next to me.
for once, let us talk our heads silly
about it -
the inevitably broken heart,
the light and shade of truth,
the pretext of coming and going.
we both know that it will all lead
to the same scenario.
i can see it all now:
i want you to think i am stoic and
god-like, unhurt by calamities so i sit down calmly, eyes dry, while
you bend over with apologies. you are a wreck - a truck
overturned by the sudden push and pull of an unexpected event.
but what do words have to do with anything
at this point? i say i never saw it coming and
privately you think me a bit foolish because it has
happened so many times you are wondering when
i would catch on. you are looking at me as if for the first time. you question
whether i am really as smart, as unhurried as i claimed i was. i used to
say, because I was so young,
that I believed in nothing. leave me and i would not even notice.
everyone is someone else's antidote. you take this as a truth,
as a part of me, like an appendage or a finger.
but privately, i admit that unjustified as it may seem,
there is still the subject of love. even you cannot deny it -
the fact that it exists between us, like a table or a roof over
your head (once). it has already taken the
shape of your cushions, the curve of your arm around
my shoulder. there was nothing like our orange afternoons, i claim, but what have
emotions (mine) have to do with newness, with old/found lovers?
you are decidedly bewildered, like i left you out
of the conversation. slowly, you let yourself drift off peacefully,
allowing yourself to be mesmerized
by her unrealities, her golden mouth. slowly i see you locking all doors, shutting
every creavice leading in and out of you, swallowing your
various keys so that nothing might be wasted on me,
on my pitiful figure so full of hope for returns (yours),
now lying on the floor. and i want to say do not leave
because there's still leftover wine.
there's still the moon, so much dancing to be done.
the band has not stopped playing. don't you hear that?
don't you hear anything other the piano keys
on the other side of the ship - the sound that has pulled
us together and has toppled us overboard.
everytime, you are left in pieces. i try finding you.

but you are gone before i know it.

i want you to know that my eyes are still dry, inspite of you.
i always expect spilled milk.

seeing all this, i change my mind suddenly. today, rules can be broken
because we are laughing and talking about
something riotous.
there is always tomorrow, anyway. it is a tiger burning holes
in my head, waiting to pounce.

2006-09-22T15:56:00.000+08:00

Nina Paley

-------------------

I've been meaning to post this for some time. Banksy, an underground guerilla artist, has replaced Hilton's CD with his own remixes and has given them titles such as Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For? Check out the rest of the information here.

-------------

Quotes:

It's easier to be disconnected than connected. I've got a huge hallelujah for all the people who're connected, that's great. But I can't do that. -- Bob Dylan

I will tell you something about stories.

They aren't just entertainment.

Don't be fooled.

They are all we have.

Leslie Marmon Silko

For K

2006-09-22T08:25:00.000+08:00

The Painter
John Ashbery

Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea's portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.
So there was never any paint on his canvas
Until the people who lived in the buildings
Put him to work: "Try using the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter's moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer."

How could he explain to them his prayer
That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
He chose his wife for a new subject,
Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
As if forgetting itself, the portrait
Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
"My soul, when I paint this next portrait
Let it be you who wrecks the canvas."
The news spread like wildfire through the building
He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: "We haven't a prayer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!"

Others declared it a self-portrait.
Finally all indications of a subject
Began to fade, leaving the canvas
Perfectly white. He put down the brush.

At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
Arose from the overcrowded buildings.
They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush
As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.

2006-09-22T08:14:00.000+08:00

Someone asked me this question today:

If afterglow had a scent, what would it smell like?

Like the first day of summer - when everything around you smells like the sun, raw and new all at the same time.

something borrowed, something blue

2006-09-21T07:56:00.000+08:00

Sister Golden Hair
America

Well, I keep on thinkin' 'bout you, Sister Golden Hair surprise.
And I just can't live without you; can't you see it in my eyes?
I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find.
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind.

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?
Well I tried to fake it, I don't mind sayin', I just can't make it.

I'll be Back
Beatles

You know if you break my heart I'll go
But I'll be back again
'Cause I told you once before goodbye
But I came back again

I love you so
I'm the one who wants you
Yes, I'm the one who wants you, oh ho, oh ho, oh

You could find better things to do
Than to break my heart again
This time I will try to show that I'm
Not trying to pretend

I thought that you would realize
That if I ran away from you
That you would want me too
But I got a big surprise Oh ho, oh ho, oh

You could find better things to do
Than to break my heart again
This time I will try to show that I'm
Not trying to pretend

I wanna go but I hate to leave you,
You know I hate to leave you , oh ho, oh ho, oh
You, if you break my heart I'll go
But I'll be back again

forever young

2006-09-20T14:16:00.000+08:00

happy birthday!

to what ifs

2006-09-20T13:57:00.000+08:00

Just walking around
John Ashbery

What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is not a name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,

Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again

That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.

------------------

from avs, today.

this is what i think of you

2006-09-16T11:19:00.000+08:00

there's nothing like freshly brewed sarcasm in the morning...

Common People
Pulp

She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge,
she studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College.
That's where I caught her eye.
She told me that her Dad was loaded,
I said "In that case I'll have a rum and coca-cola."
She said "Fine."
And in thirty seconds time she said,

"I want to live like common people
I want to do whatever common people do
I want to sleep with common people;
I want to sleep with common people like you."

Well what else could I do -I said "I'll see what I can do."
I took her to a supermarket,
I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere, so it started there.
I said pretend you've got no money,
she just laughed and said,"Oh you're so funny."
I said "Yeah? Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here.
Are you sure you want to live like common people,
you want to see whatever common people see,
you want to sleep with common people,
you want to sleep with common people,like me."

But she didn't understand,
she just smiled and held my hand.
Rent a flat above a shop,
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
’cause when you get laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all
You'll never live like common people,
you'll never do what common people do,
you'll never fail like common people,
you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.

Sing along with the common people,
sing along and it might just get you through,
laugh along with the common people,
laugh along even though they're laughing at you,
and the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.

because blogging is a bitch sometimes

2006-09-16T09:16:00.000+08:00

i had to repost these:

For C.C. ,who is permanently lost in the flood

the world has lost these pretty young girls.
their angst has woven a different, more impenetrable
planet around them. they sob and weep about
atrocities that take place in other dimensions of space where
everyone else is a lost mother , a drunken father, a neglected urchin of chance - versions of monsters
under beds, the dagger in the closet. they no longer know the importance of mystery,
of holding out. everything takes place outdoors. i would like to peep under
their skirts and find out if the myth is true -
if down there, there is really nothing much you can see but a built in boombox,
a transistor, and dozens of blue and red connectors stumbling all over themselves,
pricking their veins that are seas so blue they look painted on.
their mouths are always hungry for trophies of intellect, for disasters then and now,
for vague properties of love. they say words like "atrophy" or "vindication"as if they were new weapons that still have the capability to hurt. but their ideals are different.
they prefer them raw these days so that they’d be easier on the palate when they swallow them whole.
this fact alone makes me think less of the weaker ones - the ones who scar easily or those
who consider a bad hair day an opportunity for suicide. maybe this is just me,
barring time. in dreams, i see my younger self, running with bared teeth,
my brown skin soiled with so much anger.
i remember being unafraid. but now, i ask myself,
what was i running against? and for whom?

--------------------------------

House Cleaning

Today, I left him.

It was because of all that dust, really, the kind that sticks all over your furniture like an unwanted guest. Somehow, one of us invited it in. Or maybe at that time it was both of us, ushering it in our sunlit rooms, all the way to our new found feelings because we were scared to admit the fact that there were no divinities, no gods in blue.

I remember a day in September when I volunteered to clean the whole house but there was always something he hid, something precious but pointless, wrapped carefully in scented paper that smelled faintly of rotting flower petals. But because he was afraid of losing things, he always remembered where he kept them. He labeled the boxes " for further use." Before I realized it, there were already containers stowed away in darker parts of the room.

I hated stumbling upon them. It felt like I was spying.

There was also a time in early May when he decided to clean up. He got suffocated by the noose the dirt crafted around his willing neck.I thought he threw the boxes away, on account of the dust. We had splendid afternoons then – drinking wine from new bottles, making love on the green couches. He said "I am finally free to love you." Everything was cleaner than god. I forgot about other things, like the urgency of prayers, the anticipation of falling bricks.

But after a year, there it was again. It started with a whisper, a dialogue with wooden tables. It lurked in corners, in shadows of remonstrative possibilites. Then its voice became more insistent, laced with unfeeling confidence. It told me that I wasn't necessary anymore. I have never been. It told me that the past was present and future. There was nothing else. And that I was, after all, the interloper, the singular lie. After the end of the day, whatwas important here was really the insatiable mystery, divine interventions, the fluid liability of fate.

I realized then that doilies can only do so much. I can only do so much.

So I admit I left on account of all that dust. I took a train and went on that long-delayed trip to Panama. At least there, the sun shines without complications. Everything seems to belong to its proper place.
The most that can happen to you is sunburn. I don't really mind scorching a little skin. At least, that's all just surface vanity.

2006-09-14T20:05:00.000+08:00

the thing with being paranoid is, you're always one step ahead of everyone. most things are demoted to black and white, really, even if some people deny it. it's always the heart or the sword against your neck. nothing ever surprises you anymore. when the expected happens, all you can do is look away, pretend that nothing ever goes on when you know exactly that things aren't all they're cracked up to be.

it's either you're a very good guesser or things have just become sadly predictable.

funny thing is, you miss the times of being unaware. oblivious,even. you miss feeling anything other than the steady gloating of being right.

Poem sharing!

2006-09-05T16:46:00.000+08:00

Here are some poems I'd like to share. Enjoy.

Circe's Grief
Louise Glück

In the end, I made myself
Known to your wife as
A god would, in her own house, inIthaca, a voice
Without a body: she
Paused in her weaving, her head turning
First to the right, then left
Though it was hopeless of course
To trace that sound to any
Objective source: I doubt
She will return to her loom
With what she knows now. When
You see her again, tell her
This is how a god says goodbye:
If I am in her head forever
I am in your life forever.

One of the most beautiful poems I have ever read:

Under One Small Star
Wislawa Syzmborzka

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness,that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railways stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.Bear with me,
O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

The time will come when,
with elation you will greet yourself
arriving at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread.
Give back your heart to itself,
to the stranger who has loved you all your life,
whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Omissions: A Vignette

2006-09-02T12:21:00.000+08:00

for A who says please before killing anyone

Not that she was a sadist, or hankered after being lonesome. Not that she was aroused by anger. It was more of the fact that she found it all ridiculous, these rites of passage for the mute and the eternally dumbstruck- the tiptoeing, secret handshakes, letters sent on the sly. Because she was curious, she could understand the logic behind omissions. What drew her to him was his inability to be farcical. For her, it was harder to break- this honesty, this total lack of regard for acknowledging sacredness. In his hand he holds poison that he never hides. No, he was not like the others. He liked holding it out, displaying his intentions. She sees this as more potent, more damagingly addictive, like the pungent smell of earth after the rain. A field of daffodils, yellow and bursting with strange revelation. Always, there was the promise of bloodshed, of bared wrists.

He tells her, all this is not about you My stories my poetry Some days, I write her letters She responds and it makes me lose my mind for a time I cry when she says she remembers me when she eats cold noodles You know she is in Korea studying I tell her about you She is not pleased Oh yes you are a likely substitute The slant of your neck when you bend down to tie your laces reminds me of hers Your eyes are hers teeth mouth candy ears But here it is, my hand over yours, however you would like to take it I'd like to think my heart is a carrot I will not pity you when I turn my back and say I don't know if I'll ever see you again Parting is never romantic It makes you feel oddly like snow written on then eventually smoothed over to make room for a new writer I will never omit never die for you never ever ever

When he gets this way, his hand brushes against hers. He says how's this for romance the moon you and overpriced coffee Love like everything else is a marketing tool. She smiles. This is the most love she's had in years.

A letter after the wedding

2006-09-01T07:38:00.000+08:00

Tell me, what do I call you now?
Now that the tides have turned,
Now that the autumn leaves are my hands,
kissing cobblestones.
Now that you are no longer what is dearest.

Believe that I have always meant to write to you.
In my head, I scribble you notes everyday. I say
that lunch was lovely or that
I feel I will be coming down with a cold soon.

Some days, I write you real letters. He
encourages me to do so. I start off with
mundane weather reports - sunny, cloudy,
indeterminate. Then I move on to furniture,
to the smoothness of freshly polished woodwork.
Sometimes, I write down words
describing my perfumed happiness, about how
cold the new tiles feel under
my feet during early mornings, about
the occasional car passing beneath the window,
about the sound of raindrops falling on the new roof,
which by the way,was painted red.
Red for distress, for the solitary
offering of blood.I also tell you that I am sorry
you missed it. The papers said it was the
wedding of the century- a wedding of tulle, angel cake,
of great promises of everlasting etc etc.

There are moments when I would like to write about him,
to tell you about the way his
arm curves along the rumpled sheets,
an anchor weighing down this
mattress where I drown. I do not do this. Instead, I inquire
about how you are, how you have been,
have you been seeing someone. I try
to see you objectively, like I would
patterns on doilies he asks me to pick out or
the twirling of the wet clothes
in the new laundry machine.

Then I realize that
you are lost to me, that we are no longer
time and tide, twin stars, related incidents. So I write down I miss you.
The words remove themselves from
the page and pounce on me, eating my poignancy, my collection
of polite inquiries, my careful secrecy. All is lost.

I sometimes would like to ask a picture from you. In it, you should
be near the sea, standing on the deck, alone and waiting as if
nothing has changed.
As if the tides have remained still.
As if it is not already autumn.
As if you are still what is dearest, what is true.

I kept my promise. I continue carrying this memory of
you. It is my valise chained to a ready flight. But I am fine. We are all
fine. He sends you his love.

Yours, for always.

when you're bored and you know it

2006-08-29T12:52:00.000+08:00

Funny what you discover on the Internet:

Anna looks like she has a clarinet up her nose!

Anna looks like a Special Olympics participant when she's trying to run

Anna looks like rain.

Anna looks like a different person in every panel

Anna looks like she smells something bad

Anna looks like Pingkan Mambo (yeah!)

Anna looks like Underdog Lady from the Howard Stern show.

Anna looks like in an emulator (?)

Anna looks like she's going to vomit as the MC quotes Harper Lee and mentions Atticus Finch and talks about all the great reasons why great people are great .

Anna, looks like you're having fun this summer traveling around 'ol Mexico

Anna looks like Shirley Temple, Katherine Hepburn, Demi Moore and Uma Thurman. Oh, and Muhammad Ali.

Anna looks like a toothpick (why i oughta!)

Anna looks like she's been struck (I always am)

Anna looks like she MIGHT have worked at Hooters

Anna looks like she is handling everything great

Anna looks like a rabbit in a barbie car.

Anna look like she needs a makeover (why i oughta!)

Anna looks like an adolescent at age two (i was never young, really)

Anna looks like her daddy too

Anna looks like she was born to play guitar, doesn’t she?

Anna looks like a joke

Anna looks like a great day out (aw…)

Anna looks like a mess in the rest of my pictures

Anna, looks like it’s neither of our years.

Anna looks like she belongs in our family (really now? think twice, buster)

Anna, looks like me and u are on the same boat (yep. the same shitty boat)

Anna, looks like a lovely place to be

Anna looks like that kid at the family reunion that is sick of having her cheeks pinched by well-meaning relatives (my life in a nutshell)

Anna looks like a modern woman on the prowl

Anna looks like a peasant

Anna looks like she’s having a blast

Anna looks like a Norwegian goddess who can hammer out notes as if she were Thor.

Anna looks like the photographer has taken her by surprise

Anna looks like a demented dwarf

Anna, looks like we goofed

Anna looks like she really takes dog grooming to the next level

Anna looks like she's playing a virtual reality game

Anna looks like a grumpy, unhappy, miserable sunflower

Anna looks like now!

2006-08-24T16:02:00.000+08:00

Works on Paper
by Alice Fulton

A thrilling wilderness of bio-morphic script, you said
my letters scared you. And it's even worse
in person: pink oil of lipprints, unnervingly organic Hi's,
those kisses like collusions. For a moment
we vibrate like underwaterstones. What is this windfall? We are not
easily becalmed. How you pull back
as if to deflect affection. How I pull
back, swear to work at blandness, clothe myself
in jokes. Graft the properties of bland
to the social handshake
and we'll have it: how to get through
this world intact. Placebos do
nicely—expressions never pointblank but fixed
like bets between grin and grimace.What I work to know is whether passion,
roaring, snapping its head, can be prelude
to entertainment, harmless as MGM'sold lion.
And is seduction a scienceor a pattern of cheap frills; can you make it
from a kit? What suave
improverishments we chose.
And I can do it: fake
formality, dissemble
with the best, lady it
over lessers: Pick me!Pick me! Of course not
to care, to keep
the heart complacent as a dumpling,that's hard. What of emotions
that grow so steep they can't holdshape and the pinnacle
leaps forward, breaking as it does
in waves. I'm afraid
those emotions keep us lonely.I'm afraid there are no bribes
equal to the body-guards. We love surface
articulation. And when we say
Abandon abandon we mean it
as a command. Here's an illustrative touch:
Delacroix, old realist, got so excited
entering a harem's room he had to be calmed
down with sherbets. Passion! Maybe
it only works on paper. But once
in a well-lit room I buried my face in the material,
shirting, that opened to darker emulsions, rich
scents unlike others as burnt umber unlike other colors. It was about expansion.
There were brief constellations
down the willing
nerves, an effulgence: worth it, worth it.

there are oracles and there are the indigo girls

2006-08-23T17:34:00.000+08:00

indigo girls. creepy stuff.

i don't know if it was real or in a dream
lately waking up i'm not sure where i've been
there was a table set for six and five were there
i stood outside and kept my eyes upon that empty chair
and there was steam on the windows from the kitchen
laughter like a language i once spoke with ease
but i'm made mute by the virtue of decision

and i choose most of your life goes on without me
oh the fear i've known
that i might reap the praise of strangers
and end up on my own
all i've sown was a song but maybe i was wrong

i said to you the one gift which i'd adore
the package of the next 10 years unfolding
but you told me if i had my way i'd be bored
right then i knew i loved you best born of your scolding
when we last talked we were lying on our backs
looking at the sky through the ceiling

i used to lie like that alone out on the driveway
trying to read the greek upon the stars
the alphabet of feeling

oh i knew back then
it was a calling that said if joy then pain
the sound of the voice these years later
is still the same

i am alone in a hotel room tonight
i squeeze the sky out but there's not a star appearing
begin my studies with this paper and this pencil
and i'm working through the grammar of my fears

oh mercy what i won't give
to have the things that mean the most
not to mean the things i miss
unforgiving, the choice still is
the language or the kiss

when new heroes look like old ones

2006-08-22T15:15:00.000+08:00

The god abandons Antony
by Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933)

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by with exquisite music,
voices, don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans all proving deceptive—
don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say it was a dream,
your ears deceived you: don’t degrade yourself
with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window and listen with deep emotion,
but not with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—
to the voices, to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

strangely flattered

2006-08-21T14:05:00.000+08:00

HUWAG KA SANANG MAGAGALIT

Huwag ka sanang magagalit
kung sasabihin ko
na hanap-hanap ka
ng aking mga tula.

Huwag ka sanang maiilang
kung tuwing umuulan
isip-isip ko ang init
ng ating katawan.

Ngayon, butas lamang
sa langit ang lahat ng bituin,
Ngayon, sukatan lamang ang buwan
ng layo mo sa akin.

Anumang kuwento
ang simulan ko’y
sa iyo rin nauuwi.
Sa bawat aklat
na aking buklatin
naroroon ang iyong tingin

Alam ko: may sarili kang tanong
na dapat sagutin; may sarili kang misteryo
na dapat harapin.Huwag magmadali: panahon ngayon
ng liwanag at sari-saring dilim;
Oras ng sugat at lamig at ng
paurong-sulong na pagpapaumanhin.

Ngunit Tess, mahal,
pinakamatalik kong kaibigan,
huwag ka sanang magagalit
huwag ka sanang maiilang
kung aking sasabihin

na tuwing humihinga ako
naaamoy kita,
na tuwing pumipikit ako,
ikaw ang nagiging umaga - Ramon Sunico

today, just because

2006-08-19T12:52:00.000+08:00

you agree, right? some of these lines should be screaming red.

Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror or my own selfish death
outstared me. And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside of myself,
you would not know that the worst of anyone can be,
finally, an accident of hope.
I tapped my own head;it was a glass,
an inverted bowl.It is a small thing
to rage in your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself;
it was you, or your house
or your kitchen.
And if you turn away
because there is no lesson here
I will hold my awkward bowl,
with all its cracked stars shining
like a complicated lie,and fasten a new skin around it
as if I were dressing an orange or a strange sun.
Not that it was beautiful,but that I found some order there.
There ought to be something special
for someone
in this kind of hope.
This is something I would never find
in a lovelier place, my dear,although your fear is anyone's fear,
like an invisible veil between us all
and sometimes in private,
my kitchen, your kitchen,
my face, your face. - For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further, Anne Sexton

SOS

2006-08-19T12:37:00.000+08:00

If there was one poem that I wish I'd have written, this is definitely it. I do so hate being depressed. It requires too much energy.

Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
born expecting the kiss of mercy,
born with a passion for quickness
and yet, as things progressed,
I learned early about the stockade
or taken out, the fume of the enema.
By two or three I learned not to kneel,
not to expect, to plant my fires underground
where none but the dolls, perfect and awful,
could be whispered to or laid down to die.

Now that I have written many words,
and let out so many loves, for so many,
and been altogether what I always was —
a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
I find the effort useless.
Do I not look in the mirror, these days,
and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?
Do I not feel the hunger so acutely
that I would rather die than look
into its face?

I kneel once more, in case mercy should come
in the nick of time. - Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women, Anne Sexton

2006-08-19T12:16:00.000+08:00

it is still too early to dream of you
the herons warn me against it
in my fists, handfuls of fidelity
rise up as dreams, as chaste as rivers.

everywhere, your face.
i wonder how many lifetimes more will
my love be constituted to only this-
a yew tree, waiting under seven suns,
an unsent letter left out in the rain.

II. Jesus got through life by answering surveys.

2006-08-17T19:27:00.000+08:00

1. DREAM NICKNAME:

Ilsa. Bwhahaha.

2. WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE?

The pursuit of happiness.

3. I USUALLY SMELL LIKE:

Rust and/or stardust.

4. WHAT MOVIE BEST DESCRIBES YOUR SEXUAL POWERS?

What kind of question is this?

5. CURRENT CELLPHONE RINGTONE:

I dunno what it’s called. My phone’s prehistoric.

7. FAVORITE STORES IN THE MALL:

National Bookstore, Powerbooks, Book Sale. You mean there are others?

8. WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD:

Is when you find yourself in the middle of a large group of people or a party and you know you don’t really belong there and that you shouldn’t be there, really. But when you try to think about where you would rather be, you come up with thin air.

9. FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING:

How long it’ll take me to brush my teeth.

10. MOST EMBARASSING CD IN YOUR COLLECTION:

The party CD. It’s got Nelly and Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. The whole gang. I dunno whose is it.

11. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME:

I'm not into counting unhatched eggs, thank you.

12. FAVORITE BAD GUY/S:

James Dean, Tommy Lee, Johnny Depp, Humphrey Bogart

13. BY CHOICE, A TIME MACHINE WILL TAKE YOU WHEN AND WHERE?

1970’s, wherever.

14. IF SOMEONE WAS MADE RULER OF THE WORLD (dead or alive), WHO SHOULD IT BE?

Michael Jackson. He already is, anyway.

15. FAVORITE "SURVIVOR" CHARACTER EVER:

I don’t even watch Survivor.

17. TV SHOWs THAT MAKE YOU LAUGH?

Everybody Loves Raymond, The Late Night Show w/ Jon Stewart, Distraction, Sex in the City, Friends, Saturday Night Live, anything featuring Paris Hilton is bound to be funny.

20. PEOPLE WILL BE SURPRISED THAT I LIKE:

The song Stars are Blind by Paris Hilton. Right.

21. ESTIMATED NUMBER OF TIMES YOU EVER PUKED
FROM ALCOHOL:

Roughly 31 times. I really don't keep count.

22. WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR CHRISTMAS?

All I want for Christmas is you. Hahaha. Nah. What I REALLY want is the Ariel collection by Sylvia Plath, a notebook, and a dishwasher.

23. WHAT'S GONNA BE YOUR WEDDING SONG?

I used to want it to be Real Love by the Beatles. But now, I’m thinking maybe I’d just want a poem read to me. Everyone else has been singing songs.

24. DESCRIBE YOUR TYPICAL SATURDAY NIGHT IN VIVID DETAIL:

Gadzooks! In vivid detail?! I’d rather not, thank you very much.

25. WHAT SONG ALWAYS GETS YOU IN A ROMANTIC MOOD?

Dancing with Myself by Billy Idol

I. Jesus got through life by answering surveys.

2006-08-17T19:08:00.000+08:00

1. Favorite breakfast is:

Blueberry pancakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pardon my excitement. It has been a while.

2. The movie I've watched the most number of times is:

Somewhere in Time and yes, Elizabethtown. It shot down Clueless by a notch.

3. Least favorite subject in school:

Trigonometry. No doubt about it.

4. I spend my leisure time by:

Reading and writing, most of the time. Other times I look for green elephants.

5. Worst smell:

How an air conditioned bus smells at around 2pm when it’s jam packed with people. Week-old garbage.

6. If I could have any car in the world, what would it be?

A hansom cab.

7. Favorite household chore:

Arranging books, getting my stuff out of the way.

8. When I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming a/ an :

An astronaut, a librarian, a bandaid, a wallflower.

9. Favorite colors:

Daffodil yellow and red.

10. Favorite performer/s:

Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, The Doors, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Vines, Simon and Garfunkel, Mr. Big, Bob Dylan (though I actually don’t think of him as performing), Frank Sinatra, etc.

11. When I die, I'd rather be cremated or buried:

Cremation, and then just scatter my ashes across a body of water so that I can choke little fishies.

12. If I could repeat college, I'd take up:

Creative writing at UP. Then Masters.

13. One thing I can't leave home without:

My mind. Not that it’s detachable. (What the f*** am I saying?) I’m not really good at answering surveys. Honest.

14. First thing I bought with my first salary:

A copy of The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler.

15. I'd like to be remembered as:

Someone who had an interesting life.

16. If a book was made into a movie, would you still bother buying the book?

Depends really. If it was a good book, I probably would have read it before it was turned into a movie.

17. Specialty in cooking?

Green eggs and ham.

18. First crush?

A classmate in 1st Grade. His name is Jeffrey Gagalang. Because we both live in the same small town, we still manage to see each other once in a while. The last time I saw him, though, was 2 years ago.

19. Favorite hangout:

Desolation Row.

20. Best place to shop?

Not fond of shopping.

21. Do you like to watch plays?

Let me put it this way, if I were a millionaire, I’d go see ALL of them.

22. Favorite place in the house?

This is a no brainer. My bedroom, of course. That’s where all my books are.

23. Best gift you've given?

Books that people have been looking for for quite some time. It gives me this queer sense of satisfaction when their faces light up. Priceless!

24. Weirdest gift you've received:

A kettle. It was utterly useless to me during those times.

25. Gift that you want to receive at this moment:

Every book that I’ve been looking for since I was 12.

26. Gift you want to receive on Valentines Day:

A pair of socks.

To a Lover

2006-08-17T17:13:00.000+08:00

There are days when you are cucumber.
I sharpen my knife
before I peel your skin off, pretending it is flesh on bones.
Inside you, there is nothing but pulp-
fiction lying in wait for the
next lover to immortalize you in poetry.
I slice you into thin pieces
until you are almost opaque, as transparent
as a memory. Sometimes, I make stars out of you,
or rabbits, depending on where he slept
the night before or if he came home
early.

At times, you are fresh meat.
I keep you under running water for
more minutes than is
necessary. This is because
I don't want your blood on my hands.The
meat looks wrinkled after this prolonged
exposure to water, as if it is hurt by my
insecurity.
I wonder if you look this patient,
this nonplussed while you lie on some
anonymously dingy motel bed
Unlike him, I do not justify your
weaknesses nor do I find
your vulnerability attractive.I wear gloves
to keep my knuckles clean. At times, I
make like a god and
pound at you with my newly bought pestle
until you are as malleable as my heart.I like
putting you in a grinder. It makes me believe
you are human and can be subject to
impermanence.

I have seen you before. You have this way
of wrinkling your nose when you are nervous,
making you look as unthreatening as raw fish and
as unattractive.
I believe that I am not imagining things.
This is why I never make you into soup. You do not deserve
any allusion to warmth, nor kindness.You are
neither as essential as sugar or salt. You
do not have the same confidence that vinegar has.
Your skin may be as smooth as caramel but you seem to me
as naive as fresh pudding, as interesting probably as ordinary spices,
like thyme or rosemary.

In this kitchen, I try to find an end to you.
All around me are the bricks that built my life,
that define who I am. Here, I am free to reinvent you.
Outside, he may consider you kingdom, a harbor,
a masterpiece. But within these walls,
you are in bits and pieces,
wrapped up in foil or sometimes stowed away for future use.
You are reduced to elements, to momentary necessities.
But you never go away. You live here- sleeping on our bed,
peeping through jars,
rotting gracefully on the wooden shelves. You take
the shape of steam rising from noonday kettles.
Your message is darkness and silence.

2006-08-16T20:14:00.000+08:00

This is a poem that was sent to me today. I’d like to thank you for taking an interest in my, um, interests.:D

Litany
Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine.- Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass,
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is no way you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner,
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery in the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's teacup.

But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and- somehow- the wine.

Because I got tagged

2006-08-15T21:08:00.000+08:00

Thanks for tagging me, Mike.:D

Books that changed your life?

Changed may not be the right word. Influenced is probably more appropriate. They probably, in one way or another, influenced my writing style, my views about life, how I treat streetcats.

Here's my list of 'influential books'

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams
The Secret Garden - Frances Burnett
Henry and June- Anais Nin
The Bell Jar and Ariel- Sylvia Plath
The Robber Bride and The Blind Assasin - Margaret Atwood
Hard Times- Charles Dickens
Their Eyes Were Watching God- Zora Neal Hurston
The Darling and Other Short Stories- Anton Chechov
Franny and Zooey- JD Salinger
Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Einstein's Dreams- Alan Lightman
White Teeth- Zadie Smith
The Trial and The Metamorphosis- Kafka
Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
The Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway- Virginia Woolf
Animal Farm- George Orwell
Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Letters To A Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
The Art of War - Sun Tzu
The Story of an Hour and Other Stories- Kate Chopin

Books you have read more than once?

Some of the books I've read more than once:

Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence
Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Possession, A. S. Byatt
One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Ken Kesey
Persuasion, Jane Austen
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Blind Assassin, Atwood
Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
The Stranger and A Brave New World, Albert Camus
The Solitaire Mystery, Jostein Gaarder
The Lord of the Flies,
Henry and June, Anais Nin
The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb
Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
A Room With a View, EM Forster
Far From The Madding Crowd,Thomas Hardy
So far from God, Ana Castillo
White Oleander, Janet Fitch
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos

Books you would want on a desert island?

The Bible, in case I turn over to the other side. You'll never know, really.

Books that made you laugh?

She's Come Undone, most PG Wodehouse books, books by Irving

One book that made you cry?

The Great Gatsby, for some unknown reason.

One book you wish you had written?

The Blind Assassin, The Blind Assassin,The Blind Assassin. Did I mention The Blind Assassin?

One book you wish had never been written?

There are a lot, really. Any Coelho book, The Horse Whisperer, and A Walk to Remember.Ugh. Is there any way that I can ask these authors to just... stop... writing?

One book you are currently reading?

A complete compilation of Edgar Allan Poe's works

One book you have been meaning to read?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. They say it's supposed to be good.

now, they are purely girls

2006-08-15T21:07:00.000+08:00

when i was 16, my boyfriend
said he liked girls who were simple.
i did not know what he meant by that. when i asked my mother about it,
she said that simple meant someone was a little gone in the head,
that the screw was
not loose but was already strewn around obscure places
like forgotten car keys, that the light bulb was running short.
short of what? expectations, cunning,
snappy retorts. because of that definition, i thought i
was simple because i liked complicating
things- putting mustard on pancakes, mistaking the moon
for jupiter, reading the newspaper upside down. once,
when we made a trip to the city,
i caught my boyfriend staring at a billboard. it displayed a model
whose lips looked like two fire hydrants
squished together. she was not wearing a
shirt and her legs were splayed into an open parenthesis.
so this is what he meant by being simple, i thought
to myself. I was a bit disappointed when
we drifted apart after that.

but i swore i would never be simple.

at 20, my college boyfriend said he liked
women who were nice. i wondered what he meant by that.
so i tried to act nice. bake sales were nice so i held them
for orphanages. everything was labeled ‘for the benefit of’.
I even worked for mr. petrowski, who was really old and
spat at sunbeams gliding across his
wooden floor in the afternoons.
i adopted stray kittens and did not pick flowers from
restricted areas. but johnny, he broke up with me after 2 months,
6 days, and 2 hours. he said i didn't nurture him enough
and that i was always too busy with my charity work. i didn't understand
what he was saying but he got me at nurture though.
i was, by now, afraid of words that were too reliable to have any kind of
character.

but i swore never to be nice again.

at 27, my lover said he preferred women
who were straightforward. He said he would get
a hooser thinking about women who would
do what they said they would.
I wanted to be that kind of woman but i couldn't
shrug off the image of
my aunt's show dog, the one she couldn't
stop feeding strawberry crackers
to. so everyday, i told him how
i felt about him, even during days when i thought
he was nuts and deserved to be in a straightjacket.
that went well for a time but
after some months, his face took on a sallow, empty
look, like he's been held in prison for years. ten months and he was
running after some woman who had never wanted him anyway.
he was a kite, flying, disappearing into the stilting
blueness of his new apartment.

so i vowed to keep my opinions to myself.

i've changed so much over the years that i feel as
if i've shrunk. sometimes, i believe that i am the size of a
well-reared mouse and i am reaching for something,
a piece of cheese perhaps or one of those celery sticks
but i end up with my hands as empty as
a bell jar- always lacking, always
guessing where is what and what is whom
and why is this what it is and why is that
a never or a nowhere.
these miscued words are
mazes, puzzles, someone’s unfinished needlepoint.
i am gliding through them,
pretending all the while that all the other roads lead
somewhere else other than here.

or maybe it was my choice of men
that did me in- men who could not stand up for
their ideals. somehow, if i am
not simple, or nice, or straightforward, i am no longer what can be
categorized as a counterpart, a rib,
a reservoir that can nurture and
build. but now that they're with women who are fancy,
who are sentimental, who are growing thorns all over their bodies,
i realize that the ideals they paraded around me
were mere hoaxes,
like fairy myths or santa claus. they put
these impossibilities close to their breasts
like steel armors to excuse
themselves from being wounded or from bleeding.
everyday, they burn uncertainties.

but all these fears confound me.
i wonder why when they love, it is
never as simple as boiling a three-minute egg,
or as nice as an unassuming child,
or as straightforward as freedom.
love always has to have a thorn, a perpendicular rainbow,
a hurricane, a mountain made out of beeswax
or else it will not do.

this is actually the reason why i live
with sandy now. i sleep as naked as a jaybird
and even snore at times.
somehow, this is comforting.

i'd like to tag you but i don't know how

2006-08-14T21:23:00.000+08:00

1. Your blog "user name" & what it means

Nobody has called me Maria. Ever. Just living out a long, drawn out desire, I guess.

2. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest) how well does your blog represent who you actually are?

I guess it would be a 7. I realize that most of the stuff I write here at times are truly just for posterity. Pardon the French.

3. How much about your life do you post to blog?

Who wants to know?

4. Is there anything you refuse to post about?

To quote Nin, “I never wrote about him, but he is the most important person in my life.” Sacred things. If you can’t stand up for it, don’t write it.

5. On a scale of 1-10 how interesting do you think your own blog is to others?

I dunno, really. It would depend on who’s reading the entries, I guess.

6. From whom/how did you find out about blogs?

From college friends. I’m a really late starter, though.

7. Has anyone ever started a blog because of you?

Yeah. Some of my officemates. But I think they’re not using Blogger.

8. Has anything written on blogs ever caused you to establish, rethink, or even change your belief or position on something?

Oh yeah. But in an entirely distasteful way and on a more sensitive note. Remind me of it and you will probably die.

9. How often do you respond to/comment on other peoples' blogs?

I don’t usually like commenting on people’s works online. If they deserve a commendation, then they should hear it from you personally.

10. Do you prefer to write in your blog than reading other blogs?

I am fond of both, actually. But of course, writing will always come on top. Regarding reading other blogs, I believe that I am supposed to have 9 lives. I’d like to see if that warranty is guaranteed.

11. Have you ever had something mean said to you or have you been stalked, harassed, or did you get into an argument/flame war on your blog (or did it to someone else)?

I have never been a recipient of a single, ugly word. (Note the word recipient)

yowza!

2006-08-14T20:43:00.000+08:00

You're The Dictionary!

by Merriam-Webster

You're one of those know-it-all types, with an amazing amount of
knowledge at your command. People really enjoy spending time with you in very short
spurts, but hanging out with you for a long time tends to bore them. When folks
really need an authority to refer to, however, you're the one they seek. You're an
exceptional speller and very well organized.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

something borrowed by subs

2006-08-14T20:05:00.000+08:00

A poem sent to me through email. And as for your query, yes, there is nothing wrong with borrowing words as long as they are amply cited and as long as the phrases are as beautiful as these. Thank you.

Please Come Late
Hugo Williams

Please come late,
so that I have almost given you up
and have started glancing round the room,
thinking everyone is you.
Please don't come
until I have started missing you,
thinking I will never see you again,
praying you are lost.
Come too late for me not to notice.
Make me suffer,
wondering what you are doing
on the other side of town,
still in your dressing gown.
Make me beg for mercy
when you pick up a magazine.

Are you looking in your mirror,
suddenly remembering me?
I'm on my second coffee by now,
eating the little bits of sugar in my cup.
Haven't you set out yet?
I decide I don't want to see you after all.
I don't really like you.
I'd rather be on my own.
I know it is all over between us;

but I go on sitting here,
reading a newspaper,
not understanding a word.
If you came in now, I wouldn't recognize you.
Don't come anywhere near me
until I have gone slightly mad for love of you.

because i am in a cycle

2006-08-10T16:06:00.000+08:00

"it's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh over it all again. "- Leonard Cohen

Deciphering fire

2006-08-09T20:33:00.000+08:00

“And I made my own way, deciphering fire.”- Pablo Neruda

The first thing that you will notice would be
the absence of the strange coldness that you have been
familiar with since you were five and everyone else knew all the
dance steps to a certain country song except for you. During the
right time, the sudden warmth will lick your shoulders,
your tired hands, your mourning eyes, pulling out its
yardstick to take your measurements. It will need to know
how it would best fit you and during what occasions it would be most appropriate
to display so that you don’t go and nurture the notion that you are anyone
other than yourself. It decides how you will grow and by how many
inches each season. But it knows better than to make you hurry,
to make you want more from it than what is required.
Some say, yellow flowers are composed of this;
water when you are especially thirsty.
It holds the timidity of first love and the grains of sweat
coursing down the backs of rice farmers.
It is the sound you hear when the wind howls and the
echoing loneliness in seashells. But mostly, it is fire, burning down
your mindless rage, renewing the true magnificence
of your own beliefs. But when it becomes too hot and mistakenly stifles you,
it eases its grip slowly but doesn’t dare let you go. It will keep its finger lightly
on one of your shoulders, or will maintain its hold on a particular hair strand.
You are, at times, jealous because you know it doesn’t belong only to you but in these circumstances, insecurity would be as inappropriate as
tulips in May. Only those who do not know,
who do not have the certainty that they are knowledgeable,
are aware that the journey may last long, may lead them astray,
may be perilous, but it will always be as unique
as an unpremeditated gift, as precious as love before dying.
For whatever reason it may have, you are lucky enough that it chose you.
It can never be the other way around.

So be silent and let it lead you. Let it take you home.

Poem sharing!

2006-08-08T16:47:00.000+08:00

susanna's death

when her body was all that they had left of her,
he passed the time counting faces that showed
disapproval, disappointment, sometimes relief.
He put their reactions in labeled boxes, to keep the situation more organized.
some of them said she was probably tired and wanted out,
others thought she was wasteful,
jumping in front of that
train like a wounded bird. They are weary and illiterate gods,
strangers to romance. He sees her body outlined in the sky,
like a holy fixture or an ornament that smells of the sun
and of faraway cities.He feels odd,
like he has swallowed torrents of ill will.
There are seconds when he travels outside himself and sees the both of them,
sitting on the bedraggled couch, watching movies where heroes were always
the only ones lucky enough to die. She says she will sing for him
when he keels over. It was always her, surviving,
flourishing in the arms of southern winds. Maybe because she always
seemed younger then. but he has never heard her speak
of her own mortality, which is something about her that he
has not noticed before. He looks in the mirror
more frequently now and hopes that he'll see her
looking through him. They say the dead visit the disbelieving,
the ill-equipped, the needy.
He waits for her prayers.
He does not hear them.

Spider webs

2006-08-07T20:35:00.000+08:00

Privilege of Being
Robert Hass

Many are making love. Up above, the angels
in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing
are braiding one another's hair, which is strawberry blond
and the texture of cold rivers. They glance
down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy--
it must look to them like featherless birds
splashing in the spring puddle of a bed--
and then one woman, she is about to come,
peels back the man's shut eyelids and says,
look at me, and he does. Or is it the man
tugging the curtain rope in that dark theater?
Anyway, they do, they look at each other;
two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious,
startled, connected at the belly in an unbelievably sweet
lubricious glue, stare at each other,
and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically
like lithographs of Victorian beggars
with perfect features and alabaster skin hawking rags
in the lewd alleys of the novel.
All of creation in offended by this distress.
It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes,
rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,
it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that
they close their eyes again and hold each other, each
feeling the mortal singularity of the body
they have enchanted out of death for an hour or so,
and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,
I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized
that you could not, as much as I love you,
dear heart, cure my loneliness,
wherewith she touched his cheek to reassure him
that she did not mean to hurt him with this truth.
And the man is not hurt exactly,
he understands that life has limits, that people
die young, fail at love,
fail of their ambitions. He runs beside her, he thinks
of the sadness they have gasped and crooned their way out of
coming, clutching each other with old, invented
forms of grace and clumsy gratitude, ready
to be alone again, or dissatisfied, or merely
companionable like the couples on the summer beach
reading magazine articles about intimacy between the sexes
to themselves, and to each other,
and to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels.

Androgyne
Stephen Dunn, Different Hours

My lost love, back when Zeus split us in two --
our intelligence and completeness
a threat to the gods -- this ache
began, this perpetual wandering.

I've seen you in the teeming, concupiscent
streets, I married you, at dusk I followed you
into bars; every time I found you
I recognized you as someone seen before.
I could not choose not to respond to desire.
Only you understand.

Old now, I admit to you
I've been content watching deer
play out their nimble, nervous lives.
I've considered flowers and without sadness
watched them drop their yellow leaves.

In dreams you still whisper to me
and in dreams I whisper back.
But we make fewer plans.

I will tell you, Androgyne, what I learned today
about the sublime. It's that moment
when a compound changes
from one state to another. It's chemistry.
All lovers know it's chemistry,
not physics, that makes the world go round.

And maybe when we meet again
after one of our long journeys towards the other,
you will find me wishing
to do little more than brush back
a lock of hair that's fallen
across your face, too close to an eye.

We'll be sitting side by side,
noontime, in a park.
We'll not be able to see the sun
due to the excess of light.
I'll raise my hand to your face
and you'll tilt your cheek my way,
and I'll move that lock of hair, now gray,
to where I've always liked it to be.

2006-08-06T13:48:00.000+08:00

Foreign Window & Irish Rover

thank god for you tube.:D

For you, on a rainy day

2006-08-05T19:24:00.000+08:00

because you are my lover, you may believe
that i will not change 'til you say thus,
that my temperament will remain as sweet and amiable as the
soft pattering of raindrops on your shoulders as we kiss;
that my love will persevere
despite changing seasons, holocausts, wars.

because you are my lover, you may believe
that you will be enough to save me,
you remember the way you have salvaged me from so many fears,
you will believe that your hands will always be capable of
protection,
your mouth, of sound advice.

because you are my lover, you may believe
that i will want for nothing;
that this love that we forsake others for
will be our redemption-
the fine balloon of salvation that will succeed in finally lifting us out
of the direness of memories that used to hold us captive and unquenched.

because you are my lover, you may believe
that this love is enough to erase remnants of unsolved history.
you say it is fairy dust sprinkled all over me
or a cloak that you help me put over my confused head.

i would like you to remember that i am only human.

that because of its quality of impermanence, love will tire of weaving
forevers out of drunken silk.
i guarantee only some things:
that i will indeed change, for i will get caught in the frenzy of moments that may
be both taxing and unsensual, all of which may have the power
to eradicate sweetness.
that i will be, at times, dissatisfied with silence and will take to loneliness.
there will be hours that i will not require your company,
seconds when i will be content with solitary pursuits and might forget
to ask you to come along.
there will be wars that i will have to come out of scathed and defeated.
i will sometimes heed the wailing of my own wants and will not ask
you what you think about them.
and like any human being, i will want for something more than who i have become.
i would thirst for other things than what i now have.
and yes, i was only made from dust.
my strength will waver, for i have my own recollections, my own versions of past events that chain me.

but inspite of all this, i give you only
a love that is as real as your left hand,
undiluted and without deception.
it is not a by-product of romance in movies or passionate deaths in novels,
it has never been the kind of love that springs from infinite longing,
but it is as constant as the wind that dried your tears
when your sole comfort was loneliness.

this is all i can give you
for this is all i have.

there, of course, is a fervent wish
that things will be different, that we will be undefeated by
cliches and wanderlust;
that we will be happy and content with only this to adorn our existence.
but if time proves us unworthy of this ideal,
i will claim myself happy
because i have stood beside you,
because i have given you
my version of stars.

Dreaming in the afternoons

2006-08-05T19:13:00.000+08:00

i dream of change
like i dream about uneasy seasons
or of fitful warriors dying in chariots that fly faster
than comets;

i dream of change
like it is something that i remember happening;
a glass memory that i have mistakenly placed in someone
else's hands -
hands that i thought were capable enough to hold it.

i dream of change
as if i were
a marching hunger artist,with bagfuls of ideal sacrifices
hoisted on my shoulders.
i know i am tired but my hunger means nothing.
my beliefs propel me to the stars.

i dream of change
as if you were here
as if there were, again, boatrides and candied apples
during eternal afternoons that were as glossy as
newness.

but most of the time, i wake myself out of these dreams.
you can never know where all this freedom will take you.

The real thing

2006-08-05T19:10:00.000+08:00

"all my innocence is wasted on the dead and dreaming." - angels of the silences, counting crows

Growing Pains

2006-08-04T17:33:00.000+08:00

i am still turning 10 'til now.

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed. - Billy Collins

Turning Japanese: The New Prozac

2006-08-04T14:27:00.000+08:00

"I'm turning Japanese, I really think so." - The Vapors, Turning Japanese

Check this site: www.engrish.com

Hope you likey.

sing me to sleep...

2006-07-31T18:38:00.000+08:00

Foreign Window
(Van Morrison and Bob Dylan)

I saw you from a foreign window
Bearing down the sufferin' road
You were carryin' your burden
To the palace of the Lord
To the palace of the Lord

I spied you from a foreign window
When the lilacs were in bloom
And the sun shone through your window pane
To the place you kept your books
You were reading on your sofa
You were singin' every prayer
That the masters had instilled in you
Since Lord Byron loved despair
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord

And if you get it right this time
You don't have to come back again
And if you get it right this time
There's no need to explain

I saw you from a foreign window
Bearing down the sufferin' road
You were carryin' your burden
You were singing about Rimbaud
I was going down to Geneva
When the Kingdom had been found
I was giving you protection
From the loneliness of the crowd
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord

They were giving you religion
Breaking bread and drinking wine
And you laid out on the green hills
Just like when you were a child
I saw you from a foreign window
You were trying to find your way back home
You were carrying your defects
Sleeping on a pallet on the floor
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord

seconds

2006-07-29T22:39:00.000+08:00

before it enters your mouth, you think
the first bite should be enough to do you in
to make you ask for something more than what
you think you have.
with something that looks this boisterously tempting, that's usually the case.
it is like love, this bewildering attraction
at first taste.
everytime, you will find that the present passion overshadows,
if not eradicates, memories of innocence and good intentions.
suddenly you forget the name of the first sweet you have gone back to
time and again when you were
still in trousers and weren't allowed to nurture your sweet tooth.

as with all temporal passions,
what truly matters here
is the now of things.
you have no time to think about consequential calories
or toothaches or the actual probability of diabetes.
this is all you want- pleasure that makes your mouth silky with
sugar- for now.
the past has too many residual claims on you.
it seems ridiculous to contemplate the future at such an early point.
so you decide to forget and embrace the undeniable sweetness
of what is in your mouth, on your unfaithful tongue.

before minutes you realize that
all of it is gone.
you have mercilessly consumed it. it has now become prey to your
mystified hunger.
so it offers itself up, not just in pieces now,
but its entire frosty self.
it trusts that you can finally muster enough courage to
eat it all up.
it recognizes that you are not a god.
it waits patiently for your screaming lust to take over.

pleasure,pleasure,pleasure rises up like moonbeams.

so you get another piece.
you are close to finishing it when
the phantoms of reason (unwelcome, of course,) all come up tapping on your shoulder-
visions of you fat and prostate with
indulgence flash before your eyes;
you in your deathbed, resentfully dramatic.

there is of course, the proverbial battle.
you look at the confection before you.
you remember the time when you were just passing by this store window
and you looked at it with the furor of impatience.
granted, you could not wait to get your hands on her
indifference, on her vulnerability.
you remember feeling disillusioned and cavernous.

this time, you realize that this is not something that you need.
the fact that you even wanted it makes you sorry for yourself.
you push the plate away and wonder how all that
frosting managed to leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

Nights like this...

2006-07-29T22:32:00.000+08:00

Most of the time
(Bob Dylan)

Most of the time
I'm clear focused all around,
Most of the time
I can keep both feet on the ground,
I can follow the path, I can read the signs,
Stay right with it, when the road unwinds,
I can handle whatever I stumble upon,
I don't even notice she's gone,
Most of the time.

Most of the time
It's well understood,
Most of the time
I wouldn't change it if I could,
I can't make it all match up, I can hold my own,
I can deal with the situation right down to the bone,
I can survive, I can endure
And I don't even think about her
Most of the time.

Most of the time
My head is on straight,
Most of the time
I'm strong enough not to hate.
I don't build up illusion 'till it makes me sick,
I ain't afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind.
Don't even remember what her lips felt like on mine
Most of the time.

Most of the time
She ain't even in my mind,
I wouldn't know her if I saw her
She's that far behind.
Most of the time
I can't even be sure
If she was ever with me
Or if I was with her.

Most of the time
I'm halfway content,
Most of the time
I know exactly where I went,
I don't cheat on myself, I don't run and hide,
Hide from the feelings, that are buried inside,
I don't compromise and I don't pretend,
I don't even care if I ever see her again
Most of the time.

----------------

Exactly how I feel. I'm not sure, though, if the lyrics I've posted are all correct. Feel free to correct them anytime.

2006-07-28T16:10:00.000+08:00

Women Don't Riot(For N.B.S)
Ana Castillo

Women don't riot,
not in maquilas in Malaysia, Mexico, or Korea,
not in sweatshops in New York or El Paso.
They don't revoltin kitchens, laundries, or nurseries.
Not by the hundreds or thousands, changing
sheets in hotels or in laundries
when scalded by hot water,not in restaurants where they clean and clean
and clean their hands raw.

Women don't riot, not sober and earnest,
or high and strung out, not of any color, any race,
not the rich, poor,or those in between.
And mothers of all kinds especially don't run rampant through the streets.
In college those who've thought it out join hands in crucial times,
carry signs,are dragged away in protest.
We pass out petitions, organize a civilized vigil,
return to work the next day.

We women are sterilized, have more children
than they can feed,don't speak the official language,
want things they see on TV,would like to own a TV--
women who were molested as children
raped,beaten,harassed, which means
every last one sooner or later;
women who've defended themselves
and women who can't or don't know how
we don't--won't ever rise up in arms.

We don't storm through cities,take over the press,
make a unified statement,once and for all:
A third-millennium call--from this day on no more, not me,
not my daughter,not her daughter either.

Women don't form a battalion, march arm in arm
across continents bound
by the same tongue, same food or lack thereof,
same God, same abandonment,
same broken heart,raising children on our own, have
so much endless misery in commonthat must stop
not for one woman or every woman,but for the sake of us all.

Quietly, instead, one and each takes the offense, rejection,
bureaucratic dismissal, disease
that should not have been, insult,shove, blow to the head,
a knife at her throat.
She won't fight, she won't even scream--taught as she's been
to be brought down as if by surprise.
She'll die like an ant beneath a passing heel.

Today it was her. Next time who.
--1998, Chicago

2006-07-28T16:02:00.000+08:00

you can check my other link sometime. i'm planning on writing on my former blog again. for variety.:D but of course, i'd still be writing stuff here. it's just harder to access, 'is all.

2006-07-27T17:52:00.000+08:00

just when you think that you have finally found the strength to believe, everything just smack dab shits all over you.

serves me right, though.

Remembering

2006-07-27T13:12:00.000+08:00

In the back of my mind, there will always be the two of us, waiting. When I find myself thinking of you, I remember worn photographs of past wars, blurry with so much undiluted history.Until now, I find myself saving you by writing countless half-truths and surviving passages from your letters. I believe that if I let you live in me, I myself will never be lost again.

If there is anything I recall, it is not your penchant for sarcasm, nor your ability to cheat at chess, nor your laughter that was never laughter, really, but more of a forced chuckle. I will always remember your loneliness. It was, in a way, your saving grace. This loneliness rose from you as smoke, forming a generous halo around your white, knowing head. That halo would be mistaken for kindness by most, but we would know better. As the nights loomed dark without her, that halo would flourish and beam like a headlight, fueled by your silence.

You were quite the storyteller. I have learned that only men who know the veriest of tragedies usually are. You spun distractions, soft promises, great heroes for us. You could never be a hero to me because I remember days when you were as frozen and mad as any thwarted lover, waiting for your wife to come home.

Til today, it amazes me how, when people talk about marriage, they see it as the appropriate measure for love. Marriage , for most, is the armageddon, the waterloo, the eternal harbinger of endings.But for most, it's a carnival ride that is over too soon, a cork that traps in the resounding irony in an empty bottle.

I realize that it must have been very painful to see her, yet never fully owning her. She was always as free as butterflies and was not as romantic. She never said you were her sunrise. She never said in you, she found all beginnings.

It was the year 1995. The electricity was down. You have just finished telling us a story of how you saved a man from drowning. You were very brave, I'd have to say, to sacrifice yourself in this manner. You never told us what the moral of the story was. You let us figure that out for ourselves.

My brother, who always exhausted himself by mimicking you or indulging in exultant fits while you told us stories, was asleep on the couch. You were in your room, reading by candlelight.

I was bored and decided to spy on you. You were not reading after all but were looking out your window. You were so still. Your back was turned to me, stooped and defeated by years and senseless aching. I could hear you whispering, Come home to me.

You were not a god, after all. Now, I was able to love you. I was touched by your hidden admission, this fall. And since my head was so full of the urgency and the luxury of the concept of saving, I thought I could try and get you out of your unfulfilled love. I would save you. I would be your heroine in this tragedy.

Of course, truth always finds the opportunity to spit at illusions of greatness. Years passed and I didn't get to do much saving. The most that I could ever muster was to serve as your unnecessary solace, someone who had the consistency of tough bricks. You used my strength as an excuse to wait longer, to worship her better. I pity myself sometimes, remembering how content I was just to step into your shadow. But there was nothing I could really do about it. Such is the desperation of unrequited love.

What is strange is, when I was growing up, I felt a strange attraction to people who were patterned after you. During the many stages of my life, I have found myself with people who were left behind, who were suffering, who needed to be raised from cunning variations of death. And I sit there with them and wait for God knows whom or what. Sometimes, the people they wait for come back. These are the people who are easy to forget, who I bury in more than six feet of tender feeling. But there are the ones who are eternally fixated, who become strangers even to themselves because of so much useless hunger. These are the people who I bade goodbye to quickly and without sorrow. But there are those, who acknowledge my presence and turn to me for comfort. These are the people whom I have had the strength to stay with for a time.

After a while, saving will sap the strength out of a person. There are times that I wish that instead of loneliness, you gave me the gift of desirability. I wish you taught me how to be more elusively frail, more interestingly weak, more fearful of aloneness. Maybe then, I would be loved for myself. But these are the things I am dealt with. I know that there truly is no turning back.

It amazes me how I have never found anyone who was intact,as ripe as sunrise or as whole as bright, red apple. I pried people open just to find some semblance of you in their hearts, kidneys, brains.

I realize now that my life is a series of consequences of reliving you.

I believe that you are, finally, the crux of my frustration , all that I am doomed to protect, and all that I will ever have. We had all the tragedies of a cycle, really. It is here, in the splendor of my waiting, that I will remain with all my bewildered happiness. I will sing in peace, until I see you again.

beautiful words

2006-07-22T18:05:00.000+08:00

I ask the impossible: love me forever.
Love me when all desire is gone.
Love me with the single mindedness of a monk.
When the world in its entirety,and all that you hold sacred advise you
against it: love me still more.
When rage fills you and has no name: love me.
When each step from your door to our job tires you--love me;
and from job to home again, love me, love me.
Love me when you're bored--when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last,
or more pathetic, love me as you always have:not as admirer or judge, but with
the compassion you save for yourself
in your solitude.
Love me as you relish your loneliness,the anticipation of your death,mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.
Love me as your most treasured childhood memory--and if there is none to recall--imagine one, place me there with you.
Love me withered as you loved me new.
Love me as if I were forever--and I, will make the impossible
a simple act,
by loving you, loving you as I do. - Ana Castillo, I Ask the Impossible

Soundtracks

2006-07-22T16:41:00.000+08:00

I got to thinking the other day about movies that have great soundtracks. So far, here's what I've come up with:

(eddie!!!!!)

I've added some other links. The PC isn't working that well so I guess you guys have to make do without the pictures.

when harry met sally

the wonder boys

somewhere in time

breakfast at tiffany's

when a man loves a woman

jerry maguire

reality bites

Where's the fine line between hysteria and illumination?

2006-07-22T16:20:00.000+08:00

It's been hours and I'm still laughing.

Okay this can no longer be classified as laughter borne out of happiness. This is now bordering on hysteria.

It's friggin tiring me out.

Anyway, visit this link. I like this song. It's part of the soundtrack from the movie The Girl Next Door.

2006-07-22T15:11:00.000+08:00

My father on growing up (written in one of his August letters, 2001):

"If the problems that you have encountered when you were 16 are the same problems that you find yourself mulling over when you're 25, it just shows that we haven't accomplished much here."

It's funny how you make me remember so much.

Remembering laughter

2006-07-22T14:15:00.000+08:00

"I will not fight events."- Anais Nin

For some utterly bizaare reason, I found myself laughing like a hyena for a full 30 minutes this afternoon. I was laughing so hard that I found it difficult to breathe for a few minutes. Afterwards, my sides ached and I had to take a quick trip to the bathroom. (teehee)

I seriously cannot remember the last time I laughed that hard.

There was no specific cause really. I didn't see a particularly hilarious picture nor did I read a laughable anecdote. I was just suddenly struck (really, this is the most appropriate word I can think of) by the banality and the ridiculousness of everything that's been happening to me. Everything suddenly seemed dastardly funny.

I guess this is a part of my current personality series. I believe that I grow older only during select seasons. Lately, I've noticed that I have (again) been stumbling over variations of coquetry, new clothing lines, new lives. Finally, the season has come to shed skin.

This is not to say that I'll not come back howling at certain issues ever again. I'm just saying that I will try to remember to take things in stride, to remember that I've always had and will always have options. I have to remind myself that inspite of everything that has happened (and maybe is still happening), I still know myself better than anybody and I have not been raised to be mournful and childish. It's good to know that after all the bullshit, my sense of the ridiculous is still intact.

It's amazing how the things that I found hilarious as a sarcastic 16 year old are still the same things that I cringe at now.

I admit that for a time, I did want to fall into a certain role. I tried to emulate, to change (eeps), to drastically morph into someone who I never really had the stomach to be.

I am happy to announce that I am officially stopping today. I have always been happy about myself and I will never change for anyone. Not even for my own sake.

I just finished apologizing to my officemates for the unnecessary ruckus I caused. I really was penitent. After all, not everybody gets lucky enough to be freed in a day.

2006-07-20T21:02:00.000+08:00

I didn't know that I'd say it, but Billy Collins should be pretty smug.

This is a poem of his. I especially like The Art of Drowning.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Robert Frost as Oracle

2006-07-19T20:55:00.000+08:00

We dance round in a ring and suppose.
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Cleaning House

2006-07-16T12:48:00.000+08:00

Someone drew an irregularly shaped heart on one of the red doors. The practical joker used chalk so it was easy to rub off. I am sitting on the pavement, feeling cheated. I shouldn't be here, rubbing off graffiti and waiting for who knows what. It's a Sunday. On Sundays, I usually like wasting my time and forgetting things.

I came home expressly to have my aunt's ancestral house cleaned. It was 10am and I have been waiting for the cleaners for almost half an hour. Because the house is located near the main road, it is lamentably dusty,even on the outside. The dust motes are unforgiving, almost loverlike in their hold on doors and on the cement walls.

Finally, I see the cleaners crossing the street. The other one is a stranger to me but the other boy used to be our janitor in the building that we owned. I talked to them for a while before putting the key into the lock. We could hardly open the door because of the profusion of electric bills left by the electric company. They managed to pile up and together served as an annoying blocker.

I truly have no intention of paying for the electricity because they were going to take this house anyway. Just the way the others took our own house and the school that my mother spent her whole life building. This effortlessness calls to mind insipid phrases. Easy as pie. Nothing to it. Piece of cake.

This is how my life is now- a fortress of carefully defined words that I have built around myself so that I can justify the things that are happening around me. During my free time, I string together words and tie them on my head. They form a pink, happy bandana.

I let the two cleaners in and I continue sitting on the pavement. I shield my eyes from the sun. This house, it's supposed to be good luck because it faces the sun. We've been trying to sell this house for years now and they say that it's actually bad luck because it is surrounded by funeral parlors. Never mind that this house is a lot cheaper than the others being sold in the other side of the street. Nevermind that this house has a beautiful balcony. Bunch of sissies. I wonder at these people who find strength in superstition. I wonder how they have managed to come this far.

I read the book I have brought with me. Soon, I am finished reading. I feel incredibly dizzy because of the heat. I don't like the sun much. The light gets into my eyes and I am momentarily confused.

I decide to buy something cold to drink from the store next to the house. It feels like summer around here. I realize, suddenly, that this is a strange city. Summer when it's raining in other places. Rainy during summertime.I feel surprisingly conventional and am disgusted with myself for expecting that things should be a certain way when I should know that they never are.

I drink the soda straight from the can. I distrust straws because they don't give me enough of what I need and using them makes me feel like I'm commiting an infidelity. I can hardly see the cleaners because of the crazy dust motes and the heavy furniture. There are still couches and chairs in there. The sofa bed that my mother died in is covered with dust. My father's old tv set is lying on its back, wondering what has happened to our days of splendor.

The cleaners finish with the rooms downstairs. I am still outside, taken aback by how alien this place is to me now. I believe that I have stopped loving it, like I would an irrational lover. Seeing this house again made me realize that the people I have loved are no longer here. They are reduced to smiling faces in sepia, covered in months of neglect and forgetting. This place, this city will no longer serve me any purpose. It only makes me remember, which is, at times as bad as having insiduous nightmares.

The cleaners move on to the other part of the duplex. I hear the banging of chairs that they have probably mishandled because they are tired. More furniture. What I am to do with all this history, with these remnants of war? I am a remnant myself, a blemished residue of things past.

I am scared of being mishandled. I know I make people tired.

I decide that I am finally lonely so I muster up enough courage to go upstairs and see if they were doing their job. The first thing I notice are the green walls. I peep at the green kitchen and look in the green comfort room. So much green. It was my parents' favorite color. I want to be disassociated from the color and take pains not to touch it. What was it supposed to symbolize? Was it life? Luck? When I have a family or a house of my own, I don't want to see a speck of green in it. It would make me too weary.

I look around warily. I have always been afraid of ghosts. People seem to have the habit of foisting their own ghosts at me when, clearly, my cupboards are filled with them.

I climb up the stairs. This used to be my home, I tell myself. I feel ridiculously melancholic and lose my family all over again.

It is dark upstairs. Dust everywhere. I look curiously at the old room where my parents used to sleep in the first year they were married. There was a small sink, a tiny bathroom, then the bedroom itself. Leaning on one of the cabinets was the store sign that belonged to Ma. Melle's Mart in red, looping letters. The rest of the board is green. I touch it and feel her smiling.

I go out of the room and proceed to the balcony but once I get there, I stop, content to just stare at the blank space. There used to be a table there (made of Narra, no doubt) and a chair. Newspapers would be strewn all over the table and also his mug. This was my uncle's and mine's nook. I see myself as a young girl, unmistakably overweight which didn't matter because I was loved. I am peering through his magnifying glass while he is explaining the difference between mites and ants. Do you see the difference? Have I taught you well? He keeps on repeating these questions after every lesson. Then we would go downstairs and pretend to look at movie stars that have suddenly come visiting.

Afternoons in this house were peaceful. This was where I was forgiven anything. This was the house I thought of running away to when I was 5 and furious at my mother. Nevermind the fact that it was a jeepney ride away from the house that we lived in before. Distance to me was inconsequential then.

My uncle would buy pumpkin sweets from the vendors and I would tell him stories. I continued telling him stroies until I was 16. When I reached college, I did not visit anymore. He surrendered to complications of diabetes in their green comfort room one Wednesday night. I was sorry but not repentant. I refused to look at his face in the coffin.

When the cleaners open the door of the other half of the house, I see, beyond the flitering dust an old, heavily-framed family photo. I do not know if it was the heat, or my loneliness, or my guilt for feeling misplaced but they were all there, shouting at me, asking me Do you see the difference? Have I taught you well? They were no longer still and waiting but were reaching out to me, their arms wonderfully elastic and willfull- their voices carefully fashioning caricatures of death out of my soul.

Infidelities

2006-07-15T21:53:00.000+08:00

Andrea started jogging on a Tuesday. It was raining then.

She used to belong to the college track team but she smoked too much so she was kicked out when her lungs gave out. She decided to start jogging when she was 15 primarily because she was overweight. There were also other more humane reasons. She liked the feeling of the wind on her face She liked how its carelessness elbowed out the madness that she felt stealthily growing in her because of latent loneliness. She does not recall why, inspite of her being loved most of her life, she always felt like a marooned ship that was always far from knowing home.

She has gone a long way since those times when she felt so insecure that all she could eat were tomatoes. She preferred them ripe and red and ate them all the time. She stopped consuming them when, during a Physics class review, she fainted deadaway. It was the heat she mouthed pleadingly to her crying mother. I wasn't trying to kill myself. It was the heat.

That Tuesday, she decided to take up jogging again because she felt the same madness crawling on her skin, then eventually they found a way into her veins. She stopped wringing her hands for awhile to suit up before she went outside.

She loved jogging on pavements. Every step made her feel hurried, always moving towards something. Most of the time, when she ran, she never thought about a particular destination or a stop. The road that she was on was enough to keep her going, to tell herself to move without precaution nor doubt. The road was all she had.

This resolution actually stemmed from the picture she saw. Girl, mid-20's, with legs that went up to her armpits. Found it pressed in his copy of "Of Mice and Men." She laughs at how fittingly ridiculous it all is. At the back of the picture, enclosed in asterisks was the word Remember.

She wonders why he always seemed to prefer ordinary women. Women who were stunning until they opened their mouths. Women whose eyes made one drown in the sheer magnitude of unused space. Souls bursting open but are always as opaque as moonlit walks and talk over wine.

She is arrogant enough to acknowledge that there was nothing common about herself. Published at 16, she was a wunderkind of sorts in literary circles. Many tried to copy her writing style, her effortless way of putting things in a more practical, less sentimental light. On her wall, she has positioned framed commendations that she likes to look at from time to time.

It is comical how she has fallen flat on her self-worth. All of it meant nothing, after all. She seriously doubted if that woman, whose sensual mouth forms a constant O , even reads anything other than the oppressive women's magazines.

Her friend tells her that maybe the reason why he kept flitting from one paramour to another was because he was bored with her. Bored. The word left a dry taste in her mouth, the way you would feel after you drank so much gin and forgot to brush. Her resolution was her noose, her salvation.

She jogged twice everyday since that Tuesday. Tomatoes were again everywhere- on baskets, in the crisper, on the kitchen table. She went to the gym everyday. And everytime she weighed herself, she smiled a secret smile that told him nothing.

Tom, as usual, was perfect. He lacked nothing, therefore wanted nothing. He never lacked giving out the right words at the time whenever they were needed. They were his versions of chocolates, cinnamon,candied apples. And she would just smile and told him to wait. Wait until I reveal my true self . She smiled like a Madonna she'd seen in church once.

While jogging, she met someone. What drew her to him was his insolence. Tom would never be insolent, nor raggedy-looking, nor mediocre. Paul, he never accomplished anything in his life. No stage play productions, no ladders to fame. And everyday, he fell in step with her while she ran and they talked. His words were blankets for he was never condescending nor expected anything of her. Why would you love me? I've never been loved before. Why would I ask you to take on the impossible?

And at times, he would mumur, You and I, we're the same sad story.

You and I. Words that tasted like tomatoes. Tom always used the pronouns I and you separately. It never dawned on him that linking them would be appropriate. Right.

And she would listen and nod her head and feel sorry for his lamentable ordinariness. She would watch him want her. This interests her for she hasn't been made love to for quite some time. She realizes that it's almost 6 and she still has to prepare dinner.

She and Tom were invited one night to a soiree. She doesn't like these stuffy bores. She always feels, when she walks into one of these parties, that she has grown an extra arm. They seem so silent, so watchful, like cats hunting.

She tries on a black dress and puts on her pearls. She is now 94 pounds- no longer chubby or any cutesy adjective. That Tuesday, she weighed 120.

Tom looks at her. She tells him she won't go after all. She puts her hands on her head and weeps softly. All she can think of is that tomorrow, she and Paul are going out to eat chocolate mousse. He promised he'd bring strawberries.

On Running

2006-07-14T17:38:00.000+08:00

The robust landlady in the blue apron says that she hasn't been in for a week now. No one has seen her. The landlady seems fond of talking to strangers, treating them as great friends who she has had over for barbecue parties. She, on the other hand, did not seem to have had any friends. For someone her age, the landlady relays, it is odd that I have never noticed her asking a friend or two over. No male companions, either. It is a wonder to know that she has a sister who is now looking for her. I figured that she lived alone, without family or anything. It was with the way she dressed. I read people well, you know.

She was a good tenant, though. Never bothered me with issues about non-existent rats and pest problems. When she played her music, (she liked classical music, I remember) it was always toned down so low that you had to strain to hear it. Not that I'd ever spy on my tenants. I believe in the sacredness of your own space, if you know what I mean.

My daughter, she talked with her once. Said it was during that night that she was locked out and she seemed to have left her key. She seemed normal enough, says my daughter. Her voice seemed rather uncertain though, as if she's not used to talking that much.

My daughter, she told me (she tells me everything, by the way, that sweet kid) that she accompanied her to her room because that was the night that we had that blackout because of the storm the night before. She went in the girl's room. The girl, it seems, liked books. And candles. It seems that her whole room had a candle in every nook. Maybe later, you could take a peek and see for yourself.

She lit some candles so that she could change her clothes. It was still raining a bit, see. I don't know why she asked my daughter to stay. My daughter, she's a stickler for good manners so I'm sure that she didn't just sit there without being asked first.

While she was in the makeshift dressing room of hers (my daughter, she says that there were embroided peacocks on the partition cloth. you could never tell that she was vain. it's because of the way she dressed.)

Of course, my daughter, she got bored. So she let her eyes roam over the boxes that she found stacked on the foot of the bed. Yes, she was sitting on the bed. It wasn't a real bed, really. More like a futon, she says. The boxes were very plain. My daughter, she takes my best interest at heart, you know. That's why she looked in those boxes in the first place - so that she could find out if that girl was trustworthy or not.

So she rummaged quietly though the boxes. She was careful, mind you, so the girl wouldn't get any ideas and think that she was a-stealing something. The boxes... they held trinkets. On each box, a name was written. I guess they were, well, labeled. The names were all boys names. My daughter, she's a bit of a romantic. Says that they were probably names of the boys the girl loved. Or vice versa. In this crazy world, who knows?

In one box, there were chocolate wrappers and there were hearts drawn all over them. Then, there was an empty plastic bag that used to hold strawberries. My daughter knew they were strawberries because the container smelled so strongly of them. Then there was a piece of string. There was also a brown parcel which smelled of cinnamon.

In the next box, there were slips of paper. Unused vouchers, they seemed. Then, there was a man's slipper which had seen better days. There were also the remains of a yellow candle then a baby's blanket.

The third box held letters. My daughter says some letters were scented, others smelled of coffee. The letters were all written by one person. Adrian, she says the name was. There was also small vial in it labeled TEARS. Very strange, if you ask me.

The fourth box (and mind you, this is the last box that she managed to look in) contained a couple of charm bracelets (two, three? i'm an old lady, i can't remember every detail, see). It also had an old champagne label (an expensive kind, at that). It had a man's bow tie in it and a small tiara that sparkled, even in the darkness.

The girl finished dressing and went out of the peacock dressing room and thanked my daughter. She says though, that when she was leaving, the girl held her hand and kissed it. Like she was apologizing for something. Very strange, if you ask me.

So if you care to, come and take a look at her room. Maybe you can go over some of her things and put them in for inspection. I think, though, that she just went away for awhile. Where else can she go? I'm right, you know. I always am. As I've said, she doesn't look like she's the kind of girl who can go places. I read people well, you know.

My son? Yes, I have one. That boy gives me headaches and heartaches all around. Always alone and quiet.

Plays his flute at night and that's it. No ambition, no anything. Because you asked, I remembered that I need to go to church after our little chat to pray for my boy's poor soul.

When the landlady, opened the door, the room was empty. It looks like it hasn't been lived in for months. There is no sign of the girl, nor are there any boxes stacked around any futon.

They only found one box sitting solemnly in one of the dimmer corners of the vacant room. The inspector lifted the lid. In it was a flute.

2006-07-14T17:19:00.000+08:00

Last night I disappeared.
It started in the afternoon
In mid-laughter.
My hands were the first to go.
I saw the smoke rise up from my fingers
as if they were waiting dreams
And the smoke kissed the air and was gone in seconds.
Next were my legs.
They dissolved in minute tears that accumulated in a puddle
That drifted off to lakes and oceans
Where they floated with orange fish.
By night fall, the only part of me left was my singular head
And clearly, it was uncomfortable staying put alone
But after minutes, I looked in the mirror and it
disappeared completely
Leaving me with so much illuminated space that left me
cold and strangely excited.
It was my anxiety that made me run to you,
Naked as the sky.
I did not know what to do
with this empty splendor.

Yet inspite of my screaming, you did not notice that I was there.
You were too busy
Chasing ghosts.

Lessons

2006-07-14T17:00:00.000+08:00

The woman who did not know how to dance moved in with the dance instructor on a lazy Tuesday. It was one of those decisions that did not require a long and obtuse deliberation. She was always a practical girl and was never given to romantic expeditions. It just so happened that during the time that she met him, she was in need of an apartment. The third time that they saw each other he proposed (over coffee) that she move in because he had lots of room to spare, so she did.

He admits that he was initially drawn to her because she claimed that she did not know how to dance. When she said it the first time (that Tuesday, when they first met), he thought she was merely being coy and was just trying to get his attention. Surely at this day and age, everyone knew how to dance. To him, it was no longer an art form but a different kind of breathing, of making love. Someone like her made him suddenly unsure. He asked her to stay with him to see if he could make her learn how.

He puts on an old record. She watches the disk whirl until she becomes slightly dizzy. "There's nothing to it really," he says. He demonstrates by swaying his hips. She tries to do it but she looks like she's just pointing at something.

"Listen to the beat,” he says. He moves with the music and closes his eyes. For a moment, he loses himself and forgets that she is there. When he opens his eyes, he sees her staring at him. She looks frozen over, like the rubber duck he has mistakenly left in the freezer the night that he shivered from drunkenness. He shakes his head slightly and puts off lessons for the day.

He does not intend to give up on her. He has been a dance instructor for 5 years now and cannot afford to live with mysteries.

The next day, he lays down yellow foot cut-outs on the floor and arranges them in friendly patterns. He puts on some music and instructs her to listen to the beat and follow the footprints. She awkwardly steps into the cut-outs. She does this anxiously and he sees her shoulders shaking. She misses the beat by a mile. He gives out a whimper which reminded her of the dog that she had when she was five and alone. He looks at the time and tells her he has to go the studio.

The studio where he works is in a two-story building in the shabbier part of the city. The building is orange because it used to be a mental clinic of some sort. He works with Manuel, a worried 26 year old who came up with the idea of putting up the dance studio. Their clientele is composed of 5 middle-aged women who have nothing better to do but gripe about their rich husbands and step on their feet. During summer, they hold classes for young women whom their mothers enroll because they are too fat and unattractive to do anything else.

While she waits for him, she walks around the apartment. She stays in because she has no money to go the city and she got tired of sightseeing alone. She unfolds and refolds her clothes as if they were made of linen. She tries to clean up the place but is careful not to rearrange the sparse furniture because she has no plans of putting her mark anywhere. She’d rather remember these times- these tragic loveseats and tablecloths, these quiet metaphors- than live them. She does not see herself dying here.

She stares curiously at the cut-outs he left on the floor. It is almost nighttime and it's so dark in the living room that the pseudo- feet almost glow. She steps in one and tries to do a little jig. She loses her balance and stumbles a little. She hears her laughter in the emptiness and reaches out to touch it.

He is at it again before dinnertime. He asks her, "Don't you remember the sensation of you floating inside your mother's belly before you were born? It doesn't really require grace, in special cases like yours. You would just have to feel the swiftness of the glow, the tantric flow of emotions."

"My mother was a chain smoker and had a difficult time having me,” she replies. " I was almost never born."

"Feel it." he says.

"My favorite color is red," she whispers.

"What are you talking about?" He looks confused. Distorted, somehow.

The next day, while he is gone, she sits and does nothing. Already, she is tired of picking up and dusting after him. When he is away, she does not think of him. She is neither jealous nor crazy with despondence or any of those things. Love without the trimmings.

There have been others before him, sure. But everything always seemed miscued somehow. Conversations. Surprises. Kisses under bridges. Flowers that wilted too soon.

It is in his face- the disbelief and frustration. She knows that time is running out.

She stares at the cut-outs and gets a pair of scissors that she found on the dinning table. She traces hearts on the paper and cuts them out. They come out irregular and beet-shaped, as displaced as peacocks in winter.

I have loved hours at sea

2006-07-12T19:20:00.000+08:00

I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply --
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,I shall be tired and glad to go.

-----------
Although I think Sara Teasdale's work is, at times, a tad too Hallmarky (although she does scan well), I always find myself touched by this poem of hers.

What is past is prologue

2006-06-27T08:59:00.000+08:00

It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, " Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me." Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll-then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.

------------
"It seems to me," said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, "that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the island with an X. It seems to me its too late in the day for all that."

------------
"What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they've got behind it is a bathroom or a lounge. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody's historical shit all over the place. They're not constantly making the same old mistakes. They're not always hearing the same old shit. They don't do public performances of angst on public transport. Really, these people exist. I'm telling you. The biggest trauma in their lives are things like recarpeting. Bill-paying. Gate-fixing. They don't mind what their kids do in life as long as they're reasonably, you know, healthy. Happy. And every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be, what they were and what they will be. Go on, ask them. And they will tell you. No mosque. Maybe a little church. Hardly any sin. Plenty of forgiveness. No attics. No shit in attics. No skeletons in cupboards. No great-grandfathers... Because it doesn't fucking matter. As far as they're concerned, it's the past. This is what it's like in other families. They're not self-indulgent. They don't run around relishing, relishing the fact that they are utterly dysfunctional. They don't spend time trying to find ways to make their lives more complex. They just get on with it. Lucky bastards. Lucky motherfuckers."

----------------

Some excerpts from Zadie Smith's novel, White Teeth.

Hope these will serve as reminders for most of us.

Envy is the new pink

2006-06-23T14:04:00.000+08:00

As far as I remember, I have never envied anyone in my entire life.

Never. 'Cause I have never known anyone who had this kind of opportunity.

Sometimes, Intimacy

2006-06-21T13:25:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, they called it Name Your Memory. Sometimes, Intimacy. It was a game they concocted together. A game they were proud of.

They were feeling a little tired, the afternoon they invented it. They were surprised at how exhausted they felt, considering that they have just known each other for four months or so. Hence, the need for a game, a ruse, a new distraction.

The rules of the game were deceptively simple. One of them would drop a name of a person or a place casually during insignificant parts of the day. Sometimes, one of them would play a song. Because they weren't allowed to ask questions, the other person would have to guess.

After the clues have been laid down, the name-dropper waits. He (or she) would try to sense if the other person guessed who or what the memory was and what it meant to him or her. They believed that it would help them keep track of each other. It would help them eradicate the stilting commotion that secrets usually bring.

Once the other person guesses what that memory was, s/he would write it down on a journal that they shared. This is where the game becomes more elusive. This is the part where skill comes in. The guessee should write down a code that the other person has to break in order to know if s/he guessed the memory correctly or not. But because they were new lovers and new lovers are prone to invent their own kingdoms and languages , they managed the whole affair pretty well.

So they tiptoed around each other, dropping names between silly conversations, singing songs while walking home, mouthing inconsequential phrases as they kissed each other through glass windows. They were never bored but they were always restless, untangling their furled histories.

They told each other, there was never intimacy before we came and conquered the world. For seconds, they knew happiness.They never wanted the game to stop.

But one day, while they were sitting on the porch, the woman uttered a name that the man was unfamiliar with. He let the name stand there between them for a while, like an unwanted couch. Then he forgot it when she told him about how her day went.

Later that evening, she played a Spanish song. Furious violin strains whirled around him. He still could not guess what the memory was.

When they cuddled in their small bed, she spoke that name in her sleep. She spoke the name backwards for three times. He was so frightened by this change in her that he shoved her awake. When she opened her eyes, she asked him what was wrong.

This went on for two months. By now, the man was bent on finding out what the memory was. He, who used to be superfluously curious, now looked through bits of paper that she left in her bags. He tried to decode her sentences and tore them to pieces when he was alone. He looked through her purse, through her magazines.

Their journal, which used to be filled with languaged silk and words of exclusive endearment was now dusty and untouched.

She was fraught with insipid changes. To a stranger, her mood swings would mean nothing. But because he believed that he knew her, he became bothered by her sudden wishes, by her whining.

He does not understand this new game- her leaving him out.

Then one orange afternoon, she played the Spanish song again. She sat on a wooden chair that they bought together a year ago. She just sat and looked at him. Her eyes were fixed stones.

Then he remembers, The afternoon that we invented the game was as orange as this one.

Suddenly, he is struck by an epiphany. Visions of endless afternoons stretch infront of him like lazy cats. He remembers a man's voice. A dial tone. A strange green notebook that he has never seen before, locked in her desk drawer.

He whispers, It is not a memory. It is not a memory. It is not a memory.

It is only then that she looks away.

what to do when you are left behind

2006-06-20T09:54:00.000+08:00

The best thing to do, in most cases,
is to stay exactly where they left you.
It would be a travesty if you went out of your way to go looking for them
for they might not be in any of the places you imagine them to be. Just remember
to stay close to the sidewalk
else you might be pulled in by crowds of lonely faces and you'll lose whatever is left of yourself.
It is also important that you check
how you look from time to time.
You should know that you are not expected to change
into any other form , size, or color. There are so many things about you that
should remain as they were - your complexion, the soft whispering gestures of your hands,
the light tilt in your laughter.
Avoid talking to strangers. Some may like you and convince you to believe that
you don't have to stay where you are
for there are new salvations everywhere, everyday
selling like hotcakes on street corners
but you don't want to go through the agonizing process of coming and leaving.
You tell yourself that it's a different hunger this time so you'd rather wait it
out. If you can, you should avoid looking at watches owned by passersby. To you, time should be
as irrelevant myth. When you get lonely, you can twiddle your thumbs. Or you can talk to yourself. It would be
wonderful if you have managed to bring a book with you. Just remain still.
Wait.
And when they, by a trick of memory, remember their leaving
and decide to return,
You will relish the look on their faces when you say,
Look, I am as unchanged as dusk.

Books!

2006-06-19T13:52:00.000+08:00

Something that I got from LN’s blog. I have never even heard of some of the books listed here. I don’t know if the book titles or the names of the authors of these alleged books are even spelled correctly (some seem very, very dubious to me). As you go along, you will notice/learn that:

a. I am a Dahl fan
b. I was a precocious child.
c. I prefer classic literature.
d. I do not want to have anything to do with The Lord of the Rings, Harry Pothead and His Current Mishap, nor the Series of Unfortunate (But Very Predictable) Events.
e. That I absolutely hated The Horse Whisperer.

Rules:

- Highlight the books you have read
- Italicize the books you read as a child.
- Underline the books you intend to read
- Strike the books you hated so much you couldn't finish them
- Add three

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials Trilogy, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. 1984, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck (about to)
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (about to)
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd,Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Susskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (YECH. The most overrated piece of gibberish I have ever read.)
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (another mistake)
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot (right)
100. Midnights Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120.The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick Obrian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch (aka Outlander in the U.S.), Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx (Jek says this is good)
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Gross-Smith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine (which issue, I wonder?)
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans (The WORST book I’ve ever read.)
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews
201. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
202. The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
203. The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
204. The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan
205. Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan
206. Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan
207. A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan
208. Winters Heart, Robert Jordan
209. Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan
210. A Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan
211. As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto
212. Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
213. The Married Man, Edmund White
214. Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
215. The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault
216. Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice
217. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell
218. Equus, Peter Shaffer
219. The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
220. Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
221. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
222. The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
223. Anthem, Ayn Rand
224. The Bridge To Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
225. Tartuffe, Moliere
226. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
227. The Crucible, Arthur Miller
228. The Trial, Franz Kafka
229. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
230. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
231. Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther
32. A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
233. Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen
234. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
235. A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
236. ALIVE!, Piers Paul Read
237. Grapefruit, Yoko Ono (hmmm…)
238. Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde
239. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
240. Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson
241. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
242. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
243. Summerland, Michael Chabon
244. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
245. Candide, Voltaire
246. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
247. Ringworld, Larry Niven
248. The King Must Die, Mary Renault
249. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
250. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle
251. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
252. The House Of The Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
253. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
254. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
255. The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson
256. Chocolate Fever, Robert Kimmel Smith
265. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
267. Where The Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
268. Griffin & Sabine, Nick Bantock
269. Witch of Blackbird Pond, Joyce Friedland
270. Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, Robert C. O'Brien
271. Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
272. The Cay, Theodore Taylor
273. From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
274. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
275. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
276. The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan
277. The Bone Setter's Daughter, Amy Tan
278. Relic, Duglas Preston & Lincolon Child
279. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
280. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
281. Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry
282. The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum
283. Haunted, Judith St. George
284. Singularity, William Sleator
285. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
286. Different Seasons, Stephen King
287. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
288. About a Boy, Nick Hornby
289. The Bookmans Wake, John Dunning
290. The Church of Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns
291. Illusions, Richard Bach
292. Magic's Pawn, Mercedes Lackey
293. Magic's Promise, Mercedes Lackey
294. Magic's Price, Mercedes Lackey
295. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav
296. Spirits of Flux and Anchor, Jack L. Chalker
297. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
298. The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, Brenda Love
299. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
300. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
301. The Cider House Rules, John Irving
302. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
303. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
304. The Lion's Game, Nelson Demille
305. The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Stephen Brust
306. Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh
307. Foucaults Pendulum, Umberto Eco
308. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
309. Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk
310. Camber of Culdi, Kathryn Kurtz
311. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
312. War and Rememberance, Herman Wouk
313. The Art of War, Sun Tzu
314. The Giver, Lois Lowry
315. The Telling, Ursula Le Guin
316. Xenogenesis (or Liliths Brood), Octavia Butler
317. A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
318. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
319. The Aeneid, Publius Vergilius Maro
320. Hanta Yo, Ruth Beebe Hill
321. The Princess Bride, S. Morganstern (or William Goldman)
322. Beowulf, Anonymous
323. The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell
324. Deerskin, Robin McKinley
325. Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey
326. Passage, Connie Willis
327. Otherland, Tad Williams
328. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
329. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
330. Beloved, Toni Morrison
331. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
332. The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel, Ellen Raskin
333. Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
334. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
335. The Island on Bird Street, URI Orlev
336. Midnight in the Dollhouse, Marjorie Filley Stover
337. The Miracle Worker, William Gibson
338. The Genesis Code, John Case
339. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
340. Paradise Lost, John Milton
341. Phantom, Susan Kay
342. The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice
343. Anno Dracula, Kim Newman
344: The Dresden Files: Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
345: Tokyo Suckerpunch, Issac Adamson
346: The Winter of Magics Return, Pamela Service
347: The Oddkins, Dean R. Koontz
348. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
349. The Last Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
350. At Swim, Two Boys, Jaime ONeill
351. Othello, by William Shakespeare
352. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
353. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
354. Sati, Christopher Pike
355. The Inferno, Dante
356. The Apology, Plato
357. The Small Rain, Madeline L'Engle
358. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard E Cytowick
359. 5 Novels, Daniel Pinkwater
360. The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Juliet Marillier
361. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
362. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
363. Our Town, Thorton Wilder
364. Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King
335. The Interpreter, Suzanne Glass
336. The Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
337. The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
338. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
339. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
340. The Phantom of the Opera
341. Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg
342. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
343. Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
344. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
345. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
346. Shosha, Isaac Bashevis Singer
347. Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck
348. The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
349. The Lunatic at Large by J. Storer Clouston
350. Time for Bed by David Baddiel
351. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
352. Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre
353. The Bloody Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley
354. Sewer, Gas, and Eletric by Matt Ruff
355. Jhereg by Steven Brust
356. So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane
357. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
358. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
359. Road-side Dog, Czeslaw Milosz
360. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
361. Neuromancer, William Gibson
362. The Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
363. A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr
364. The Mask of Apollo, Mary Renault
365. The Gunslinger, Stephen King
366. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
367. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
368. Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
369. Ivanhoe, Walter Scott
370. The God Boy, Ian Cross
371. The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King
372. Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson
373. Misery, Stephen King
374. Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
375. Hood, Emma Donoghue
376. The Land of Spices, Kate O'Brien
377. The Diary of Anne Frank
378. Regeneration, Pat Barker
379. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
380. Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garcia
381. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
382. The View from Saturday, E.L. Konigsburg
383. Dealing with Dragons, Patricia Wrede
384. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
385. A Severed Wasp - Madeleine L'Eengle
386. Here Be Dragons - Sharon Kay Penman
387. The Mabinogion (Ancient Welsh Tales) - translated by Lady Charlotte E. Guest
388. The DaVinci Code - Dan Brown
389. Desire of the Everlasting Hills - Thomas Cahill
390. The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris
391. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
392. I Know This Much Is True, Wally Lamb
393. Choke, Chuck Palahniuk
394. Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card
395. The Memory of Earth, Orson Scott Card
396. The Iron Tower, Dennis L. McKiernen
397. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
398. A Ring of Endless Light, Madeline L'Engle
399. Lords of Discipline, Pat Conroy
400. Hyperion, Dan Simmons
401. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor
402. The Bridge, Iain Banks
403. How to Be Good, Nick Hornby
404. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
405. A Map of the World, Jane Hamilton
406. Eragon, Christopher Paolini One page in and I knew it sucked.
407. A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket
408. Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk
409. Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho (blech)
410. White Oleander, Janet Fitch
411. The Land of Laughs, Jonathan Carroll
412. Forrest Gump
413. Roots, Alex Haley
414. Kleopatra, Karen Essex
415. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire
416. The Psycho-Ex Game, Merrill Markoe, Andy Prieboy
417. Digital Fortress, Dan Brown
418. Deception Point, Dan Brown
419. Bookends, Jane Green
420. Little Men, Louisa May Alcott
421. Vectors, Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell
422. Redwall, Brian Jacques
423. Millennium, Felipe Fernàndez-Armesto
424. Disgrace, J.M.Coetzee
425. Shardik, Richard Adams
426. Tehanu, Ursula Le Guin
427. Z - A Love Story, Vigdis Grimsdottir
428. Diary, Chuck Palahniuk
429. Don Quixote I, Cervantes
430. Season in hell, Arthur Rimbaud
431. Collected poems, Anna Akhmatova
432. Breath, eyes, memory, Edwidge Danticat
433. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
434. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, José Saramago
435. Not Before Sundown (or Troll - A Love Story), Johanna Sinisalo
436. Hannibal, Thomas Harris
437. The Iron Dragon's Daughter, Michael Swanwick
438. A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
439. The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde
440. The Universe in a Nutshell, Stephen Hawking
441. Complicity, Iain Banks
442. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
443. The Bane Of The Black Sword, Micheal Moorcock
444. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
445. Delta Of Venus, Anais Nin
446. Lost souls, Poppy Z Brite
447. Belle de jour diary of a london call girl -
448. Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
449. City, Alessandro Baricco
450. Hippopotamus, Stephen Fry
451. Thank you, Jeeves, PG Wodehouse (ooh… I love wodehouse!)
452. Tout à l'Ego (Everything for Ego), Tonino Benacquista
453. Betty Blue, Philippe Djian
454. Naive.Super, Erlend Loe
455. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
456. Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
457. Krabat, Otfried Preußler
458. Lieutenant Hornblower, C. S. Forester
459. The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
460. Drawing Blood, Poppy Z. Brite
461. Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence
462. The Bounty, Caroline Alexander
463. The Matarese Circle, by Robert Ludlum
464. Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
465. Searching for Dragons, Patricia C Wrede
466. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, Douglas Adams
467. The Flanders Panel Arturo Pérez-Reverte
468. This Alien Shore, C. S. Friedman
469. Beauty , Robin McKinley
470. The Eight, Katherine Neville
471. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
472. In this House of Brede, Rumer Godden
473. The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
474. Reginald, H.H. Munro (Saki)
475. Queen Lucia, E.F. Benson
476. A Shadow On The Glass, Ian Irvine
477. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
478. Obernewtyn, Isobelle Carmody
479. The Ancient Future, Traci Harding
480. The Surgeon, Tess Gerritse
481. Blindness, Jose Saramago
482. The Quiet American, Graham Greene
483. Portrait in Sepia, Isabelle Allende
484. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
485. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
486. A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin
487. Sammy's Hill, Kristin Gore
488. The Ordinary Princess, M.M. Kaye
489. To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
490. Miss Manners Rescues Civilization, Judith Martin
491. Mythology, Edith Hamilton
492. Danse Macabre, Stephen King
493. The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy
494. The Whale Rider, Witi Ihimaera
495. Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
496. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
497. The Metemorphoses, Ovid
496. Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory I: Conquest, Greg Keyes
497. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
498. This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
499. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
500. Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien
501. Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (and Other Observations), Al Franken
502. The Kalevala, assembled by Elias Lönnrot
503. New Treasure Seekers, E. Nesbit
504. Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros
505. Morality for Beautiful Girls, Alexander McCall Smith
506. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
507. Schwarz's Principles of Surgery
508. Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson
509. The Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis
510. Shanghai Baby - Wei Hui
511. The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
512. If on a winter's night a traveller - Italo Calvino
513. Lighthousekeeping - Jeanette Winterson
514. Case Histories - Kate Atkinson
515. The Last Camel Died at Noon--Elizabeth Peters
516. He Shall Thunder in the Sky--Elizabeth Peters
517. The Ape that Guards the Balance--Elizabeth Peters
518. White Teeth- Zadie Smith
519. Animal Dreams- Barbara Kingsolver
516. Henry and June- Anais Nin

Mirrors

2006-06-19T13:36:00.000+08:00

She likes seeing herself through different mirrors. Their curiously mishandled variations of her intrigue her, at best. But when she finds herself alone during random afternoons, their residual claims make her feel enslaved in moronic patterns.

There were mirrors that told her outright that she was fat. There were days that she preferred that kind of honesty rather than the recurrent limbo of indulgent euphemisms. But there are moments when she would like to be drowned, face first, in flattery and there are mirrors that oblige her.

There were mirrors that left her desolate. Some made her feel like a deity in days of rain. But she avoided these mirrors-the ones that made her irrationaly happy. She never knew where their kisses would lead her. If they would even lead her somewhere.

She used to settle for mirrors that eradicated her sense of self for she sometimes got tired of living alone. She let them mold her, let them pull her into automatic delusions (she was a gypsy princess, a fairy, a miasma of unrequited emotions). She liked laughing a lot during those days and basked in the freedom of reinvention. She pranced and preened in front of these mirrors while trying out different personalities. But at the end of these half-shadowed days, she would disrobe slowly. She shed off skin after luxurious skin for hours at a time. She knows that they do not appreciate the spontaneity of revelation.

What she likes best are the ones that reflect her accurately. Her minute details do not bother them. And because they are rare, she always tries to stand as close to them as possible. She hopes that they would tell her the secret of beginnings- clue her in about something newer and more tangible than regret. But because she stands too close, her reflection fogs up. In minutes, she is as blurry as a distant memory. As dismissible as old photographs.

Sometimes, when she clutches these mirrors too eagerly, they break and shatter and all of a sudden, she finds herself in irredeemable bits and pieces, as lost as the sky.

When this happens, she merely stands up and brushes off remnants that may be stuck in her hair, on her dress. She doesn’t want to leave any traces of past misfortunes. It is not because she is unfeeling, nor can the forgetting be owed to false coyness. She believes that this is the only way she can remember who she was before all this. The only way she can relearn happiness.

2006-06-17T13:13:00.000+08:00

To passersby, she makes a pretty picture, standing alone by the doorway. The afternoon sunlight is the only adornment that she needs. It casually flickers and flutters on her face, giving her skin an almost luminous quality that is almost akin to a child’s. If not for the slight crease on her forehead, she could be mistaken for a student from the nearby university.

She does not notice the friendly stares that the afternoon strollers give her. Her eyes, which are usually intensely animated, are now solemn. They are fixed on the piece of paper that she is holding. She has actually finished reading the contents of the letter. She turns it slowly in her hands then folds it. After a few moments, she decides to unfold it. She reads a few lines out loud, as if she were reading to a child.

The letter is slightly creased, which made her initially think that it was written recently. She reads the date written in ardent loops next to his signature. It was written a year ago- March 25, 2004.

She remembers that day. Not the details, surely, for her memories usually have a way of losing themselves in her mundane concerns. But she remembers that that was the first time she ever saw this house.

She puts the paper close to her nose and sniffs. She tries to guess what the scent was. Apples? Strawberries? Of course the scent is not hers. She was never partial to fruity smells.

But it really doesn’t matter now. How it smells, when it was written, who it was for. He used to chide her for her penchant for curios. Her mother used to say that her hankering for mysteries would be her own undoing.

Let things lie, her mother said. Don’t go looking under rocks if you’re afraid of the dark things that lurk beneath them.

What is she here for, if not to learn? she used to retort, because she was sassier then.

What good would learning do if it would break you? her mother says.

Pain is something that you can never unlearn said her father.You open that box, you face the music.

I opened this box, I’ll face the music, she now whispers to herself.

Some sentences in the letter are familiar. When she read them for the first time, she could not help but remember his beautiful mouth whispering them, as if they were incantations. They were whispered to her. She tries to assess how she feels about being the recipient of rehashed compliments. She suddenly feels the heaviness of her weightlessness.

It is indeed a letter of love. But it obviously wasn’t for her. She did not meet him at the museum that day. She says the date aloud and marvels at the unfamiliarity of the words. Nor did she remember sitting on a pavement a couple of months before the museum visit, sharing thoughts about life while smoking. It is not their seventh year of writing to one another.

It amazes her now, this calmness. She acknowledges the fact that she has seen this coming. Intimacy is, again, just an old piece of twine haphazardly tying the boat she has been sitting on to a rickety pier. It’s one of those circumstances that completely drowns you out with a curious hopelessness.

She arranges the thoughts in her head, like she would daisies on their breakfast table. She chooses the memories she would like to weed out but she realizes it isn’t that easy. She wonders which of those memories really happened. Maybe she has dreamed him up all along. I may have been alone in this house for years and I never even knew it.

She begins to ask herself if he is really coming home. If this was home. Four-letter words are the most ambiguous ones, she thinks. Maybe this was just a halfway house where they were both stuck in because they lost track of all the road signs and didn’t know which direction to push forward to.

She hears a dog barking and this unexpected intrusion breaks her concentration. She looks around and suddenly realizes how bright the world seems, even at four in the afternoon. She observes the people chatting as they pass by her door. No one seems to notice how much she has changed. How light she now feels.

She turns around and shuts the door. She will fix dinner while waiting for him.

----------------------

Yes, this is a draft.

I hate sounding mediocre. Still, I decided to publish this so that I can remember to tweak it.

I dood it

2006-06-16T19:42:00.000+08:00

How to make things worse:

1. Mope.
2. Sulk.
3. Abuse Internet rights and post a lame survey.

Lame survey:

(x) snuck out of the house
(x) gotten lost in your city
(x) seen a shooting star
(x) been to any other countries besides the united states
( ) had a serious surgery
(x) gone out in public in your pajamas
(x) kissed a stranger
(x) hugged a stranger
( ) been in a fist fight
(x) been arrested
( ) done drugs
(x) had alcohol
( ) laughed and had milk/coke come out of your nose
(x) pushed all the buttons on an elevator
(x) swore at your parents
(x) been in love
(x) been close to love
( ) been to a casino
( ) been skydiving
( ) broken a bone
(x) been high
(x) skinny-dipped
(x) skipped school
( ) flashed someone
(x) saw a therapist
(x) played spin the bottle
( ) gotten stitches
( ) drank a whole gallon of milk in one hour
(x) bitten someone
( ) been to Niagara Falls
(x) gotten the chicken pox
(x) kissed a member of the opposite sex
( ) kissed a member of the same sex
(x) crashed into a friend's car
( ) been to Japan
(x) ridden in a taxi
(x) been dumped
(x) shoplifted
( ) been fired
(x) had a crush on someone of the same sex
(X) had feelings for someone who didnt have them back
(x) stolen something from your job
(x) gone on a blind date
(x) lied to a friend
(x) had a crush on a teacher
( ) celebrated mardi-gras in new orleans
( ) been to Europe
( ) slept with a co-worker
( ) been married
( ) gotten divorced
( ) had children
(x) seen someone die
(x) had a close friend die
( ) been to Africa
( ) Driven over 400 miles in one day
( ) Been to Canada
( ) Been to Mexico
(x) Been on a plane
( ) Seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Thrown up in a bar
(x) Purposely set a part of myself on fire
(x) Eaten Sushi
( ) Been snowboarding
(x) Met someone in person from the internet
( ) lost a child
(x) gone to college
(x) graduated college
( ) done hard drugs
( ) tried killing yourself
( ) fired a gun
(x) purposely hurt yourself
(x) taken painkillers
(x) love someone or miss someone right now

impossible things

2006-06-14T17:07:00.000+08:00

Such a wreck today. Glad it's all almost over.

This made me feel better, though. Thank you...

http://006.tenkuu.net/i-t2/index.html

...

2006-06-14T15:10:00.000+08:00

this will never end, will it?

Listen

2006-06-12T16:10:00.000+08:00

I’ve been let down
And I still come ‘round
I’ve been put down
And I’m still comin’ round for you
Comin’ round for you.

Take away everything that feels fine
Catch a shape in the circles of my mind
Make me feel like I belong to you
Make me feel, even if it ain’t true

Catch a train on a silver afternoon
A thousand miles and I’m getting there too soon.
Take me there when I should be going home.
Tell me why I'm still feelin’ all alone.

I’ve been let down
And I’m still coming round
I’ve been put down
And I’m still comin’ round for you
Comin’ round for you- Mazzy Star, I've Been Let Down

isn't life just dandy?

'Round Here

2006-06-12T14:10:00.000+08:00

There is truly no other place I would rather be.

70's Bistro

2006-06-12T14:03:00.000+08:00

Last Friday, I had my first Bistro experience.

And what an experience it turned out to be.

I was so proud.:-)