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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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!

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."

"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

People do stop waiting, at one point or another.

And the pendulum swings

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Nina Paley

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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.

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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

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.