Eclipses and Ellipses

Put your ear to a life, any life, and there it is, the tell-tale tremolo, slur and slap of the unexpressed....Language makes me a stranger to my own life, forcing me to speak from both sides of my mouth. --Susan Mitchell, "Self-Portrait with Two Faces"

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Tequila on a Sunday Afternoon

Rissa and the rest of the cousins knocked on the door, inviting me to drink out in their garage. Cousin Jimmy had sent a bottle of clear tequila from San Francisco, and this was the only time we had to drink it. So at 3 p.m. on a sweltering Sunday, we had shots of tequila with rock salt and calamansi (!!), and semi-fresh salmon sashimi.

The first time I ever went drinking with them, I was 12, in grade 6, in 1993. It was New Year's Eve and we were listening to 89.9.'s top 100 (or 40?) countdown of the year's best songs. It was the year of the Cranberries' "Linger," of Def Leppard's "Two Steps Behind," of the 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up". I distinctly remember that "Heyayeaah-heyayay" in the background while I took my first swig of tequila, felt its thick heat down my throat, and thought I was exhaling fire. I remember wanting to be in high school or in college too, certain that life had thrills and misadventures in store for me. Before surprise babies, before marriage plans, before suicide attempts (and one success), we had this communion, we passed the shots around, we drank past the songs and the laughter and the firecrackers, until everything turned quiet again.

posted by the city reader @ 8:39 AM   2 comments

Saturday, April 22, 2006

"A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far" -- Adrienne Rich


After a nice long chat with Jeline, we both came to the conclusion that we are spoiled by good friends, many of whom specialize in the kind of conversation we love --- playful yet insightful, freewheeling yet focused, personal and immersed, yet at the same time detached and aware of the world beyond the dialogue, beyond the page.

The quality of conversation often depends, of course, on the level of familiarity with the other person and the number of shared interests you have. But a lot of it also has to do with personality. I like to think I generally like people...but in the past couple of weeks, I've come to realize that, whether from new acquaintances or old friends, there are a bunch of characteristics that bug me, and delight me. So I've made two lists.

I can't stand people who...

1. get by on charm and feigned expressions of sympathy
2. are extremely self-absorbed yet unable to analyze their own motivations and defenses
3. can't survive without an audience, who must always be out to impress
4. go out of their way to spread malicious gossip, perhaps to cover up envy and a lack of color in their own lives
5. don't know how to listen, who hear what you say without truly absorbing it then steer the conversation back to themselves
6. never look at other people's faces after searching for their own in group photographs
7. are smug, self-righteous and condescending
8. habitually use drunkenness as an excuse for bad behavior
9. mangle language in an attempt to be cute
10. play up their "victim" status and reject their share of responsibility for the failure of a relationship
11. promise to accomplish something then conveniently forget to do it, leaving you to cover for their carelessness
12. are Edie Brickell's "What I Am" embodied, who never get too deep
13. are too charmed or clouded by their own projections to see through other people's pretenses

* * * * *

But at the same time, I respect and am attracted to people who...

1. embrace difficulty, whether in life or in art, and more importantly who LEARN from it
2. are driven by curiosity, who ask questions in a sincere attempt to understand other people or ideas
3. are dissatisfied with some aspect of their life, and are DRIVEN to better themselves
4. are self-aware enough to own up to their faults and contradictions
5. are broad-minded enough to know they are not the center of the universe, that they are secondary characters in other people's stories
6. have excellent and diverse tastes (in music, cuisine, literature) without flaunting them or lording it over you
7. love possibilities, yet know when to love within limits
8. are observant of the world and other people's quirks
9. love laughter and substance in equal measure, and hence, who know how to tell good stories
10. are comfortable being alone, who don't require constant company or endlessly chase after love objects to make their lives more meaningful
11. know when to forgive, and when to get fed up with friends
12. combine realism and optimism in their love of the world and other people
13. are unflinchingly yet kindly honest, both with other people and with themselves

Cheers!

posted by the city reader @ 12:54 AM   4 comments

You Are Rain

You can be warm and sexy. Or cold and unwelcoming.
Either way, you slowly bring out the beauty around you.

You are best known for: your touch

Your dominant state: changing

posted by the city reader @ 12:52 AM   0 comments

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Three of my favorite people...


...and a camera-happy waiter who could have just been trying to take a picture of himself in the mirror. Haha.

When I look through the old family photo albums, with pictures chronicling beach trips and Hong Kong vacations, I'm often struck by the people at the edge of the photos. The ones who are rushing past in a blur, who are tiny figures looking out at the shoreline, who are caught in that awkward moment between trying to maneuver themselves out of the frame and attempting to smile just in case the camera does catch them. Those are the people I love. We are all people at the edges of other people's photographs, strangers forever in albums we will never open.

posted by the city reader @ 6:31 PM   0 comments

Monday, April 17, 2006

How to Escape from the Authorities


I dreamed I was at a rock concert with most of my high school Theresian classmates. They were acting all prim and proper in their uniforms, and I was acting out of character, waving my arms and knocking people over. When they started getting annoyed, I reached down and pulled my shirt and bra off and started jumping up and down. The song ended and everything was quiet and they were all staring at me. Two policemen arrived carrying a grimy white monobloc chair. They said they were going to arrest me and carry me, topless, on the monobloc towards the police car.

I grit my teeth and said as fiercely as I could, "Haha, wala kayong hawak sa akin, PANAGINIP lang kayo. Ganito, on the count of 3 magigising na ako. One, two, three..."

And I do wake up at 4:45 a.m., sweaty, like I've just danced my heart out at a concert.

posted by the city reader @ 10:33 PM   2 comments

Friday, April 14, 2006

Mrs. Dalloway on a Good Friday


One particularly draining summer afternoon, after interviewing frivolous women for a Best Dressed List article, I watched The Hours in a Megamall cinema. And cried, alone, on a seat by the aisle. And masochistically watched it for a second time. And swore to go out and get a copy of both Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham's novel to see how the former had influenced the latter and how the film had taken off from both books.

Three summers later, I finally opened a musty, yellow-paged 1926 copy of Mrs. Dalloway that Elmo borrowed from the Rizal Library for me before he left for Spain. I still hadn't read Woolf's fiction, though I did pore over her A Room of One's Own when I was taking my MA, and I know of the stream of consciousness technique she was famous for.

And that's all I did yesterday---read 296 pages of a day in the life of party-throwing Clarissa Dalloway, a day detailing the impressions and observations and nostalgizing of the title character and the people she comes across. Though the novel touches on cross-class tensions, war's psychological aftereffects, spurned love, social climbing, religious intolerance, and the pure mundaneness of people's lives, the soul of it lies in its awarenes of multiplicity---of the multiple stories and lives converging, crossing, tugging, detaching.

Though at times I did find the shifting from one consciousness to another a bit tedious, I understand the impulse behind it. How often I'd wanted to do that myself---read people's minds, find out how they react to the same event, how they reconfigure memories. It's such an interior-focused book, but at the same time it's so expansive and empathic. Even the little epiphanies her characters undergo---that we are most alone when we're in love; that an abyss separates us even from close friends; that the best parts of us attach themselves to places and people and strangers we feel an affinity with---resonate.

I do wish there were more "events" besides Septimus' death, but plot really isn't the point of the novel. It's an elaborate, delicate exercise in point of view. And while I can't say it truly blew me away, it was quite refreshing to read on a sweaty, slow Good Friday. Maybe I'll take on To the Lighthouse next.

"She would not say of anyone in the world now that they were this or that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."

posted by the city reader @ 10:02 PM   2 comments

Monday, April 10, 2006

Stir Crazy and Sunday

Last week was the most enjoyable work week so far. And after three weeks, I finally went out drinking at Stir Crazy with Peachy and a few TDP guys last Friday. We must have had around six buckets too.



(Pensively wondering what to order)



(Brian, Jordan, me, Mark, Peachy)


(strange hand movements)


(Peachy drinking beer from a bucket)


(Peachy, here's a glass, why don't you use it)


(going home in a tipsy blur)

* * * * *

Spent the entire Sunday afternoon in the Katipunan area: had lunch at Fruit Magic, bought Artline pens at National, checked my mail at Internet C@fe, and had my hair cut into a flippy shag (c/o Chris at Azta). Dunkin Donuts was boarded up, gone the way of Eyrie and Xavier Grille, and I couldn't help but miss it: the donuts, the free crosswords, the refuge it gave me and a few others this year.

I passed by Loyola Memorial Park on the way home and visited the grave of my cousin Winkle for the first time since the funeral last January. Someone had just been there: he or she had left roses and two candles burning. There were so many candles burning on separate graves at twilight on Palm Sunday.

* * * * *

I suspect the probability that I'll be gone come August has changed the way I deal with people. Though I like the friends I've made at work, I think I'm wary of making close friendships I'll likely be unable to maintain. Yesterday I spent two hours with a good friend and found myself analyzing his behavior, finally able to see him with detachment. Has it begun, the distancing? It shouldn't be this way.

posted by the city reader @ 12:05 AM   2 comments

Saturday, April 08, 2006

the urge behind some authorship:

posted by the city reader @ 12:03 AM   0 comments

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

looking back

Triggered by a surprise e-mail and link from elusive and extremely talented co-fellow Gil, I remembered that it's been five years since my UP writers workshop in Baguio. Here are some pictures I dug up:



1. The UP38 batch wearing workshop shirts on the steps of Villa Romana



2. Fellows' Night, when I was awarded the "pajama alcoholic (pasuray-suray pa) queen" sash. Haha.



3. The boys dancing to The Doors' "Light My Fire"

Haha. I remember drinking in nipa huts, chimes and a cliff, taking the ukay-ukay by storm, me and a certain sistah attending morning sessions unbathed, sharing a bathroom with ten guys, trudging down a hill to get Good Shepherd goodies, Mark and his knit hats, Allan and his black shirts, Cel singing Sinead's version of "Nothing Compares To You" with Cos on bongos, the smell of Grey Flannel, Egay getting drunk, Kathy singing "Kiss Me," Gerry playing big brother, and other things that started a cycle of eventful summers and earned me a lifetime enemy. Oh my. Five years? Feels like it's been a decade.

posted by the city reader @ 11:20 PM   0 comments

And here's one of those silly and narcissistic how-well-do-you-know-me quizzes if, like me, you're killing time.

posted by the city reader @ 11:15 PM   3 comments