Eclipses and Ellipses

Ito ang sinabi ni Eduardo Galeano tungkol sa pagkakaibigan:

"On the outskirts of Havana, they call friends mi tierra, my country, or mi sangre, my blood.

In Caracas, a friend is mi pana, my bread, or mi llave, my key: pana from panaderia, bakery, the source of wholesome bread to sate the hunger of the soul; llave, from . . .

'Key, from key,' Mario Benedetti tells me.

And he tells how, when he lived in Buenos Aires in times of terror, he would carry five alternate keys on his key ring: the keys to five houses, to five friends: the keys that proved his salvation."

* * *

Ito ang sinabi ni Marguerite Duras tungkol sa pagnanasa:

"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."

* * *

At dahil hindi ko ito makanta kagabi/kaninang umaga sa labas ng Jade Valley, eto ang paborito kong kanta ng U2, galing sa Achtung Baby:

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses

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

* * *

At dahil naka-post sa blog nina Jeline at Sistah, kinuha ko na rin ulit ang test na ito. Nakakagulat na hindi.

The Sudden Departure Random Brutal Love Master (RBLMf) Sweet. Dear. Loving. At Gate 18. Final call. You are The Sudden Departure. You've been in a lot of serious relationships. More than a few have ended ugly. Uglily. Whatever. Our guess is that you're a really fantastic girl who doesn't really know what she wants, and you've broken a few hearts as a result. You fall for people easily, and you enjoy the feeling of falling in love, but once you're there, either boredom or the old "grass is greener" syndrome sets in. The mind wanders, and with it goes the flesh. And then the toiletries. We know you're not the classic "love 'em and leave 'em" type, at least not in a purely sexual sense. You have too many serious bonding tendencies for that. But even though you're theoretically looking to settle down, you don't settle long on one person. "Serial monogamist" is probably something you hear a lot. "Emotionally loose" is another way to put it. To the poor guys eating your dust and sniffing your panties, it doesn't really make much difference. Of course, it's not really your fault that people get hurt. You have every right to move on when you choose. ALWAYS AVOID: The Backrubber, The Gentleman CONSIDER: The Vapor Trail, someone just like you

So after a two-week moratorium, I drank---a lot---again last night at Magnet (and at Tribu, AND at the Meatshop). With Sigh, Marie, Mikael, Joel, Peachy, Pancho, Daryll, Mookie, Gelo, Ken, Ricci, and others I forget now. The City Poetry Reading was the best I'd been to in a while, much better than any of the Conspiracy readings. Lovely audience, energetic readers, the 3 people I wanted to ask recommendation letters from were there...panalo. Got home at 5 am, slept at 6, woke up at 9:30 to haul most of my stuff away from the department cubicle. I have a late(!) article that needs writing, a headache, and a bad attack of nostalgia.

So, a poem:

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.

1.
There's a window table at Sugarhouse Megamall that's perfect for checking papers, reading, and musing. It's on the second floor so it overlooks/ intersects the road between buildings A and B, and you can watch the cars coming towards/under you as well as the cars on the other lane moving away. It's good, after being drawn into pages of good fiction, to look up and hear and see the world moving around you. The apple pie---succulent apples, crumbly and cinammon-y crust, whipped cream---doesn't hurt, either. Sugarhouse apple pie is---hands down---the best and most sinful I've ever tasted.


2.
Last Christmas, Lem and Lia gave department friends postcards---photographs by a man named Harvey Finkle, who did a series entitled The Readers. I think of the series as a lightweight, monochromatic Hopper for bibliophiles and photograph-lovers. The black and white shots are mostly of solitary subjects reading in various urban areas: beside garbage cans, in a busy cafe, on a train platform, in a park in full sunlight. One of my favorites is of two upright figures reading the newspaper on the subway train. We only see the sides of their faces through the glass squares formed by the doors, which (we imagine) have just closed. They are oblivious to each other, to the seated passenger looking away, and we wonder: Did they arrive together? Did they just happen to be both reading? Why are they standing by the doors when the train doesn't look particularly full? Are they passing the time, actively shutting others out, or urgently scanning the news for something important? We never know what they mean to each other. They're on the brink of disappearing.

I want that photo, or something like it transposed to a Philippine urban setting, on the wall above my desk. Or on the cover of one of my (still unwritten) books.



3.
By Colette Brooks:

"What kind of a person is a city person? One possibility: the kind of person who doesn't feel the need to finish a jigsaw puzzle, who relishes jagged edges and orphaned curves, stray bits of data, pieces of stories parsed from sentences half overheard on the street.

A person who picks up crumpled sections of newspaper in the streetcar or subway and reads haphazardly until the next stop....

...Each of these city dwellers is studying for something. But the one who may learn the most, I suspect, is a young woman who has recently decided, on a whim, to read only the books that she sees others reading at random. Though she is working her way through a degree-granting institution, this course in the arbitrary that she pursues in her spare time may be the most valuable of all. For what better way to live in the city than to surrender, unresisting, to its rhythms?

If nothing else, she is preparing herself for a lifetime of learning."


4.
I did nothing for two days and nights but read the new Vintage paperback edition of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. It's really been years since I've devoured a novel of this length (615 pages) with as much sustained ferocity. I blame this rediscovered appetite for fiction on the ridiculous amount of time I'm now free to spend, and on Murakami's ability to engage readers with oddities.

The alternating narratives follow two unlikely protagonists: a 15-year-old who literally runs away from his Oedipal curse and calls himself Kafka; and a mentally retarded 60-year-old who can talk to cats, named Nakata. While the connection between them unravels, we meet a weird mix of characters: a cross-dressing, too-smart-to-be-true hemophiliac; a beautiful, post-menopausal librarian with a mysterious sadness (like Miu of Sputnik Sweetheart and Reiko of Norwegian Wood); KFC's Colonel Sanders as a benevolent pimp; Johnnie Walker of whiskey fame as a Lecter-like cat-killer; and Hoshino, the ponytailed truck driver with a criminal record and a loyal heart, who would definitely feel at home drinking with the bayaws on Monday nights.

There's (possibly incestuous) sex, (un)necessary murder, stones opening portals into another world, a lot of philosophizing, missing women, and sardines and leeches falling from the sky. An altogether rollicking ride. Read it!


5.
From 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."

...into a shorter, pixie cut today (yes, my third in a month---talk about an identity crisis), this song was playing in my head. Thanks to Vince and Peachy, I now have three Aimee Mann CD's, and this strangely peppy song is my favorite from Bachelor No. 2 (next to "Save Me", of course):

Susan

Oh, Susan, you were clued in
You knew just how this thing would go
A prognosis that was hopeless
From the very first domino
I guess I see it all in hindsight
I tried to keep perspective despite
The flash of the fuse, the smell of cordite

Now I’m in that place again
And I know he can’t come in to get me
And someday he will live to regret me
Susan, I can see it now

Oh, Suzie--they get to me
They can really be wearying
But he threw me rope and buoy
Let me use his decoder ring
There must have been some kind of parade
We kissed for a while to see how it played
And pulled the pin on another grenade

Now I’m in that place again
And I know he can’t come in to get me
And someday he will live to regret me
Suzie, I can see it now

Oh, Susan, the hope of fusion
Is that the halo will reappear
It may be pure illusion
But it’s beautiful while it’s here
I had some trouble with the goodbye
I checked my roman candle supply
And watched the vapor trail in the sky

But I’m in that place again
And I know he can’t come in to get me
And someday he will live to regret me
Susan, I can see it now

because last Monday, after helping someone encode grades and attending an LS Bulletin meeting, I escaped to Tribu with Elmo and Miggy. (Sistah, tama ba ako't natatawa ka ngayon?) And we drank six bottles of Strong Ice each in a span of five hours. When Waps and the bayaws sauntered in, I became a blathering texter and willing victim of mathematical magic. I woke up the next day to a pounding head and the meowing of an annoyed Metaphor, who looked at me disdainfully as if to say

[Metaphor to poet]: Hungover again, hmph?
[me]: Eh
[Meta]: Litterbox needs cleaning. And I'm hungry. I smell corned beef.
[me]: Hrrr. Wait---
[Meta]: Feed me-eow. Feed me-eow.
[me]: I said wait. Besides, you're getting a little pudgy.
[Meta]: Look who's talking. And it's not my fault you're overfeeding me to compensate for the guilt of not letting me out at night.
[me]: So you can woo the female felines of Suny Square? No guilt here.
[Meta]: I'm an adult male cat. I have---
[me]: An adult who still loves hide and seek. Who goes berserk over corned beef and dangled pieces of string. Who still (gasp) sleeps next to his mother.
[Meta]: You're not my mother.
[me]: That's true.
[Meta]: You're not the only one here with crazy hormones, you know. I have, ehem, needs.
[me]: I know. We can all hear you meowing at night with your retractable little pink **** out---
[Meta]: Anong little?
[me]: Lalaki ka talaga. Anyway, I'm having you neutered soon.
[Meta]: What does neutered mean?
[me]: It means we're taking away your balls.
[Meta]: What?! But that's inhuman!---
[me]: Er, last I checked, you're not. Human, I mean.
[Meta]: But you are! And why'd you want to deprive me of my balls?
[me]: You peed on my brother's guitar.
[Meta]: Yeah. So? It smelled a little funny.
[me]: Soon you'll be spraying all over the house, marking your territory. Humans do it too. If we let you out, you'll be humping some one-eyed streetcat and her sister with the scalded fur, fathering unwanted kittens into a world with an insatiable demand for pulutan and siopao.
[Meta]: Slippery slope fallacy. Besides, I won't hump the disabled.
[me]: I wouldn't put it past you.
[Meta]: Won't you reconsider? Would you condemn me to a life of impotence?
[me]: Hmm, yeah.
[Meta]: Hmph.

And with a swish of a tail, he leaps from my bed, not looking back once.

* * * * *

And because I didn't take this test too seriously...

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to those who are unbridled, untrammeled, and free. In love, you feel the most alive when your lover is creative and never lets you feel bored. You'd like to your lover to think you are flexible and ready for anything! You would be forced to break up with someone who was ruthless, cold-blooded, and sarcastic. Your ideal relationship is open. Both of you can talk about everything... no secrets. Your risk of cheating is high. You can't resist desire and lust. You think of marriage as something that will confine you. You are afraid of marriage. In this moment, you think of love as something you thirst for. You'll do anything for love, but you won't fall for it easily.

...the test took me seriously.

So I turned 24 eleven days ago and had a happy birthday drinking session at Tribu with department friends and the bayaws. So I've resigned from teaching and had a drastic haircut to signify a new chapter of life. And since I believe writing things down is the first step to making them real, here are my birthday wishes and actual plans---because I need to get off my daydreaming birthday ass and actually accomplish something this year.

* MAJOR WISH: GET ACCEPTED INTO AN MFA PROGRAM
1. Have my passport reneSwed.
2. Schedule my TOEFL for November 9.
3. Apply for transcripts.
4. Fill out application forms.
5. Ask for recommendation letters.

* MAJOR WISH: HAVE A BOOK OUT SOMETIME NEXT YEAR
6. Revise the old manuscript; throw out what doesn't work.
7. Write more this last quarter: try for one poem a week.
8. Ask Karen if ORP still wants to publish it.

* MAJOR WISH: BE FINANCIALLY SMART (WHILE TECHNICALLY JOBLESS)
9. Find more writing and editing rackets.
10. Get old PDI and Summit checks.
11. Spend less on cab rides, drinks, unnecessary kikay stuff.

* WISH: BE HEALTHIER
12. Have my eyes checked; get eyeglasses if needed.
13. Lose at least 5 pounds by December.
14. Eat more fish and vegetables; drink less beer; no more Mongolian buffets and cakes.
15. Take vitamins every day.
16. Find the nerve to take dance classes again.

* WISH: GET RID OF CLUTTER
17. Clean and move stuff out of the department cubicle.
18. Return books, CD's and DVD's I've borrowed.
19. Organize my room and throw out clothes, papers, make-up I haven't used in a year.

* Miscellaneous:
20. Have my cat Metaphor neutered---on November 5.
21. Make back-up files of everything on my computer in case it crashes.
22. Learn to play the drums.
23. Read more fiction.
24. Reply more promptly to e-mail and text messages.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com