between chapters

1.

Tanong: mukha bang kamay ko ang nakahawak sa pisngi ko? May nagsabi kasi dati na pag pinapatong ko ang pisngi sa kamay ko, mukhang kamay ng midget, o kamay ng taong nasa likod ko na pinatungan ko lang. Ahaha. Wala lang.

2.

Last Sunday, my parents celebrated their 36th wedding anniversary with a sumptuous lunch at Prince of Jaipur. We feasted on lamb vindaloo, chicken tandoori, lamb curry, palak paneer, and our alcoholic drink of choice (I had my usual Bloody Mary).

All these years, my parents have said that the secret of their marriage is "tolerance, with a capital T," which used to sadden me. How can two people, even if they are my parents, stay in a relationship where they merely tolerate each other?

Now I think tolerance is just one form their love takes. It must have taken more than tolerance to survive the rough patches and secret maneuvers and screaming matches of yore. Now that they're in their 60s, I finally see the genuine fondness they have for each other. Maybe it's taken them all these years to fall in love with one another again.

3.

Today marks the end of a month of moping and of a near-hermetic lifestyle where I did nothing but watch seasons 2 and 3 of Gilmore Girls, sleep until noon, master cooking midnight meals (fried green tomatoes, onion-and-mushroom omelettes, and hot chocolate, anyone?), and lose myself in other people's prose. So far I've enjoyed reading:

• Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
• Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
• Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
• Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride
• Haruki Murakami, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World
• Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
• Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
• David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Salamat sa mga nagpahiram, at magpapahiram pa. :)

4.

This week I was interviewed for a web content writer position at Jeline's old workplace, and was hired three hours later. The only other time this happened was last January, when I was accepted to this amazingly named company. At least this new job is something I actually want to do. But it scares me too: I've never held an 8-to-5er. Even when I had 8:30 classes, they were only thrice a week (minus my cuts, haha).

I still want to take my MFA abroad, and I still have this unquenched wanderlust, but with neither scholarship nor sugar daddy in sight, I've more or less accepted the fact that opportunities will not miraculously land in my lap, that I will have to wait and work and save up and pay my own way to see the world. I'm so impatient to do so.

5.

I reread this story B wrote more than three years ago. If I'd known then what I know now, maybe I would have been able to write a better reply.

6.

Watched V for Vendetta with Waps and Elmo last Wednesday, before going to the Dean's Awardees' inuman treat. Unlike those who've read the original Alan Moore graphic novel and compared it to the adaptation, I enjoyed it thoroughly. Plus it seemed like a timely release, what with the recent state of emergency scare and all this talk about being unable to trust our government.

What moved me most was the montage of scenes where the bald Evey would read the letter hidden in the walls of her cell after being tortured several times. Man, I love that letter. "Within that inch we are free." Yes, taken out of context even I'd consider it sentimental, but (since context is everything) the urgency of the situation made it such a pure, fearless testimonial to the strength human spirit and all that cliched shit. It reminded me of this song by the Indigo Girls. That's what great writing should do: communicate, and change us.

7.

"I'm producing too many stories at once because what I want is for you to feel, around the story, a saturation of other stories that I could tell and maybe will tell or who knows may already have told on some other
occasion, a space full of stories that perhaps is simply my lifetime, where you can move in all directions, as in space, always finding stories that cannot be told until other stories are told first, and so, setting out from any moment or place, you encounter always the same density of material to be told." (Calvino)

8.

If on a Winter's Night was a book of beginnings. I think that if I wanted to, I could write a book of endings. There are so many of them to mine.

The eclipse is over. Time to move on. Time to breathe again.