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"

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Why I (sometimes) enjoy my job


So it's been weeks since Peachy and I were shifted from writing to proofreading/ QA'ing other people's copy for the newly launched websites. And I've come across plenty of samples of priceless phrasing:

1. a warm welcome: "Welcome to one of the only sites you will find like this one!"

2. missing keywords: "Andi Multer specializes in adjacent areas."

3. people with no lives: "We live, eat and breathe real estate on a full time basis."

4. a town that reminds me of the Village of the Damned: "This peaceful little rural farming village in the Cache Valley has always been very proud of her most important crop -- her People."

5. a last resort: "Our small communities feature the charm of a rural setting and the resort of being on the Atlantic Coast."

6. an obvious biological occurrence: "Mary and Al are recent grandparents and have two grown children."

7. must be a South Park fan: "I can help you in choosing the "right" property, making an offer, negotiating, financing, getting the best mortgage rates, and everything involved in making a smart real estate decision and South Park."

8. the ditziest realtor I've read: "In those years I've also been nicnamed "The Home Diva," for not only my serious, forward thinking and professional attitude towards Real Estate, but also my flare for Fashion and love of shoes!"

9. how to make tiny towns sound more inviting: "Take a leisurely ramble in your car, finding grand mountain views, weathered barns, and tiny towns that are nothing more than a filling station and a post office."

10. because even trains need grooming: "Highly recommended are the un-groomed trains with the Beaver Brook Association."

11. can you hear the desperation?: "I have personally bought and sold 19 homes in my life! I appreciate my customers and I answer my cellphone!"

12. a suspicious-sounding city: "Hyde Park is a city located in Cache County, Utah. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 2,955. A 2004 estimate states no net change in population, remaining at 2,955."

13. for a real estate site: "It is little wonder that so many people return to Clarkston to be buried. It is like going home."

14. one that was actually witty: "St Johns Forest -- where families and expectations are raised!"

15. I'd be friends with this person but wouldn't trust him with the purchase of my house:

A Little About Me
I have lived in Arizona 16 years. It's hot down here in the summer.
Graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science in Finance. I can calculate numbers and spell now.
Accredited Buyer's Representative. Most likely a meaningless title for many people.
Extensive childhood experiences in the housing industry. I loved to play with Lincoln Logs and Monopoly growing up.

posted by the city reader @ 9:32 PM   3 comments

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Today's horoscope for Libras:

Old friends will be back in your life soon. Get together and trade lies. Use these contacts to your advantage. It's good to have history with others.
* * *
How uncanny. Sometimes the Inquirer's horoscope-writer hits the nail on the head. But, trade lies?!

posted by the city reader @ 9:15 PM   0 comments

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Because I've been tagged...


by Em, here are 8 descriptions of my so-called "perfect lover" (bleechh). He...

1. is curious, knowledgeable, and a creative thinker. I'd like genuinely stimulating conversations that can bridge ravines if necessary, and are as free as possible of muddy thinking, grammatical mistakes, or common notions treated as gospel truths.
2. generally likes and gets along with a wide variety of people (without needing to impress, improve, or manipulate them), and cherishes a handful of close friends, but is comfortable being alone.
3. wants to see the world and is willing to brave inconveniences, try new things (whether they be food, hobbies, ideologies, or, umm, positions) and go out of his comfort zone without losing his sense of self.
4. is good-looking, in a quirky and inconspicuous way -- preferably lean, with high cheekbones and an angular jaw, and a dark/brooding aura (pagbigyan nyo na ako! haha).
5. has both gravitas (and knows what gravitas means!) and true wit, and tells stories and jokes well.
6. does not smoke, do drugs, or play around; but can handle his liquor well, and is good in bed.
7. is emotionally accessible, and loves to give both small tokens and grand gestures of affection.
8. loves books (not just bestsellers), music (please, not just R&B), movies (from B-horror movies to foreign art films), and me. Only me.

* * * * *

by Liz, here are 10 of life's simple pleasures that I like the most:

1. my cat Metaphor curling into a black, furry ball at my feet or next to my pillow on a rainy night.
2. lifting the cover of a box of freshly cooked Yellow Cab pizza, and inhaling.
3. receiving mixed CD's from friends with good and eclectic musical tastes.
4. finding a pair of jeans that fits my hips perfectly without making my thighs look (even more) gargantuan.
5. the first bottle of ice-cold San Mig Light right after work.
6. wiping an oil-blotting paper across my face and seeing the surface fill up with oil.
7. random texts from old friends in the middle of the night.
8. reminding someone of something he said years ago, by referring to a journal where I'd written it down.
9. DVD marathons with my fellow couch potato, my Kuya
10. the slow shivers down my spine right after I read a good poem, like this one:

Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm
by Carl Phillips

So that each
is its own, now -- each has fallen, blond stillness.
Closer, above them,
the damselflies pass as they would over water,
if the fruit were water,
or as bees would, if they weren't
somewhere else, had the fruit found
already a point more steep
in rot, as soon it must, if
none shall lift it from the grass whose damp only
softens further those parts where flesh
goes soft.

There are those
whom no amount of patience looks likely
to improve ever, I always said, meaning
gift is random,
assigned here,
here withheld -- almost always
correctly
as it's turned out: how your hands clear
easily the wreckage;
how you stand -- like a building for a time condemned,
then deemed historic. Yes. You
will be saved.

posted by the city reader @ 2:43 AM   0 comments

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Random mode


1. Finally read Amy Bloom's Love Invents Us, which I liked despite the bad reviews. (How can you not love that title? Hehe.) Bloom's depiction of passion---often inconvenient and unacceptable---simmering in the precocious Elizabeth Taube sometimes reminded me of the audaciousness of Sharon Olds, tempered by the wisdom of Marguerite Duras. I liked it so much Peachy gave it to me, in exchange for my old copy of Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride.

2. My favorite songs of the past 2 weeks:
  • "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens -- the ultimate I-want-to-embrace-the-world road trip song, with refrains you can shout out from a car window
  • "Nothing Like You and I" by The Perishers -- quiet and (admittedly) mushy, the kind of song you can play in the morning while someone you love rests his head on your pillow
  • "Calendar Girl" by Stars -- from the "Manila-Toronto Express" mixed CD Jeline gave me a while ago. I love this so much! I can imagine feeling depressed during winter (winter! oh lord, what is snow like?) and listening to this
  • "Chocolate" by Snow Patrol -- yet another good find from Romy's music folders... "With a name I'd never chosen/ I can make my first steps/ As a child of 25"
  • "For the Driver" by Ron Sexsmith -- a beautiful, compassionate ballad from the guy who sang another lovely song entitled Dandelion Wine!

3. I think I fall in love with groups as much as I do with individual people. While drinking at Stir Crazy last night, I realized I love my Design People friends -- the way I also loved the faux-kajologan of my Totaleclipse barkada, the intellectual playfulness of my English department buddies, and the swagger, poetry and abandon of the Monday Club. I love how they're all creative and hardworking and, for lack of a better term, grounded, rooted to the world, unlike some friends I've made in the writing world

4. What poetic form would you be? Larry compared himself to a villanelle. I said I'd probably be a sestina, with recurring key words and variations of issues, unrhymed and seemingly unrestricted, but with a complicated inner structure. He said one of my key words should be yes. Yes? Yes!

5. Finally received the acceptance letter and registration procedures from Toronto -- which now terrifies and baffles, more than it excites. Ask me why elsewhere.

6. A poem by William Stafford:

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

posted by the city reader @ 2:18 AM   2 comments

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Have you thanked your pediatrician lately?


So I had another of those strange dreams where: 1) I was dancing, and 2) I knew I was dreaming. I was attending a ball at the old STC Social Hall (why oh why does my subconscious looove my icky high school?), and was dancing, no, waltzing with one of my friends in the office---the one who stoops and whose hair perpetually falls into his eyes. And who was so fluid and slippery he turned into a fish in my arms.

Covered in fishy muck, I was pulled away from the crowd by my mother. Suddenly we were walking in the old Lungsod ng Kabataan, which made me panic. This chidren's hospital, with its life-size paintings of Imelda Marcos and hundreds of kids frolicking on the walls, fueled my childhood fears of doctors and injections. Not to mention Imelda. I wanted to wake up from the dream already, but my mother nudged me and said we were going to see Dr. Bibiano Reyes, my pediatrician.

I looked at my watch. "But it's 10 p.m.!" I said. She said, "Oh, he's sure to be up working late. You have to see him." So we rounded the corner, with the painted Malakas and Maganda coming out of the bamboo stalks on the walls, and I went into his office. It still held framed pictures of The Muppets and Kermit the Frog on one wall. And Dr. Bibiano, who was my tita's pediatrician before me, looked even more emaciated than I remember, his hair pure white, his eyes sunken, his hands bony. As a kid, I was terrified of him. In the dream, I wanted to hug this tired old man, who could have been the grandfather I never knew.

He motioned to me to move outside, and I saw two patients on hospital beds at the end of the room. He explained that the hospital was running out of rooms, and he had to take care of these dying kids overnight. Then he said, "How are you? I hear you're a writer now. I even have a copy of your book." And sure enough, he was rifling through a tattered copy of Reluctant Firewalker the chapbook.

I got teary-eyed from guilt that I'd never once thought of saying hello to him after my last check-up, when I was 16 and embarrassed at still being in a pedia's office with all the infants and pre-teens. I woke up for a few seconds, rubbed my pillow, and willed myself back into the dream with such frenetic urgency I felt like I was slammed back into my seat in a braking car. I patted Dr. Bibiano's back and gave a sappy monologue, thanking him for saving me from typhoid and bronchitis and dengue fever (twice!). He took both my hands in his, sighed, and said something I couldn't hear.

And I woke up. Looked for his number, but we don't have a copy of it anymore. I have the strangest feeling he might be dead.

posted by the city reader @ 1:41 AM   4 comments