20 more days

1. To whom it may concern: if I lent you Susan Mitchell's Rapture, please please return it to me in the next 19 days. I love that book and I want to bring it with me to Toronto. And to all those I lent other books to, please return them asap.

2. My flight's on August 29, Tuesday. Here's a list of things I don't have...yet:

3. ...a visa. Yes, I followed it up last week, and got a medical exam, but still no word. There's still the slightest chance my application may get rejected, so I'm holding my breath.

4. ...an apartment. Maita and I have been looking online, but as we won't be there until the 28th and 30th, we can't reserve or check out the places. I won't be entirely homeless, as my cousin lives on the outskirts of the city -- but I'd rather not sleep on a living room couch for my first month in a new country.

5. ...a laptop. My brother and wife Agnes are getting me one -- for which I am entirely grateful -- but it hasn't materialized yet.

6. ...a digital camera. I'm planning to use my last paycheck on one. Any suggestions on what I can buy with 8-12k?

7. ...winter clothes. My cousin and aunt, who have also been blessed with the Romero thighs, have stuff to lend me. And if the coats don't fit, I'll be taken thrift-store shopping come November!

8. ...extra cash to treat everyone I love to dinner/drinking/ wasakan before I leave. I do want to see everyone, though!

9. I've had the flu these past 3 days, and am glad to be almost rid of this sniffling, this itching at the back of the throat, this perpetual heat and heaviness that kept me stuck to the bed.

10. I've never had to be sick alone, never had to nurse myself back to health without my mother peeping in at least once during the night, feeling my forehead and replacing my glass of water. My mother was at her most tender when one of us got sick growing up. Despite our tiffs, I think I'm going to miss her a lot.

11. My mother has been telling me not to go home too soon. She has high hopes that I'll find work there after I graduate from my MA, and is encouraging me to stay there for a year or two, to help me pay off the debts I'll be incurring during my 2 years of study. And yes, this pressure is scaring me.

12. From Atwood's The Tent:

Fear is synonymous with the future, and the future consists of forked roads. I should say forking roads, because the roads are forking all the time, like slow lightning. A road is a process, not a location.

13. For the first time in my life, I'm doing advanced reading (on Lillian Hellman and Tenessee Williams), before the term begins. I'm determined to do well, to study harder than I ever have. If I maintain an A-minus average, I can apply for an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, which can take care of my entire tuition for the second year.

14. From Hellman's play, The Children's Hour:

Mary: How much do you love me?
Mrs. Tilford: As much as all the words in all the books in all the world.

15. This weekend I met up with the three people I last loved (from 2004 onwards). And in between shoe-shopping, stuffing my face with pizza, and watching episodes of House with these charmingly infuriating (or infuriatingly charming) people, I realized how truly lucky I've been.

16. Must buy a copy of Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, and vow not to touch it again until the 29th, while waiting at the airport. Oo na, pretentious na kung pretentious, but Murakami seems like the best reading companion while in transit and in between lives.

17. I promise a free beer to friends (meron ka na dapat, Jeline) who will make me mixed CD's for Toronto, with the ff. possible themes: living in a new city, leaving friends and loved ones behind, new beginnings and chapters, identity crisis, possibilities.

18. It's beginning, this collecting, being a secret conoisseur of last looks, as Orlando Bloom put it in Elizabethtown.

19. Today's favorite songs: Belle & Sebastian's "The Blues are Still Blue", The Delays' "Nearer than Heaven" and Morcheeba's "God Bless and Goodbye".

20. From Susan Mitchells's "Wind/Breath, Breath/Wind":

Sometimes I think there are two people breathing
inside me, one running in terror
at last gasp, the other in hot pursuit, a killer, a maniac

I am the hysteric caught in between, I hold them
here in my chest where they begin
to warm and take on the shape of my ribs...