At night, flowers of corals bloom (illustrated)

At night, flowers of corals bloom orange and yellow--
branches of underwater cherry blossoms, heavy and ripe.
Soft sponges of tangerine and grape juice pad the walls
while their pulp carpets the low stair steps
that climb down deep from the sky.



Lionfish spread their gossamer tendrils
and take flight on their vermilion wings, mane aflame.
Thousands of eyes, more than their sisters in heaven,
shine light back and keep an unblinking watch over the evening.
Bright red fish with gashes of iridescent warpaint
that shout glances in insult throughout the day
sink like weary children into beds of anemones, at its end.



Feather stars languidly stretch their arms and curl back,
daintily skip home over oiled staghorns and antlers.
Spanish dancers that whirl their skirts in tempo
to the percussion fish beat on the reef,
slow down to bow and curtsy,
as the hush spreads over like a blanket.




At the heart of the sea
lies a little boy
who slumbers with his fists fast against his cheek
whose breath pulls the tide in
whose every sigh rushes it back to the shore
inexorably
again and again
until the dawn.

Heretofore Unwritten Rules of Geekhood

After almost nine years of living with a geek, I learned something one night. These code warriors live by an esoteric Bushido, some of which I hazard my life to make public:

1. Geeks do not share their notebook chargers. To each his own power supply.
2. Geeks may be slobs on the outside, but they keep their computer desktops clean. Desktop cleanliness is next to godliness.
3. Geeks religiously check for Software Updates. If your computer crashed because you haven't installed the latest OS update, it's your bad.
4. Geeks name their machines. And pick a gender, first of all.
5. Geeks use BB Edit for word processing. Anyone using MS Word is a pussy.
6. Nobody, but nobody, should go to a geek for tech support without the exact error message. "Something went wrong and now my computer doesn't work" will not cut mustard.
7. Never try to second-guess a geek when he instructs you on how to fix your machine. Instructions are sacred; the word "ReadMe" should be taken literally.
8. Geeks communicate in binary, prime numbers or Fibonacci sequences. If geeks had bars, they'd brawl over who knows pi up to a higher decimal place.



Maybe my next computer will be gay...

The Man in Burma

I visited Burma when I was still a student. It was a singular opportunity: the reclusive state was ruled then as it is now with the obsidian hand of the military junta but it was slowly opening to tourism and visitors from outside; an international gathering was possible for the first time in years. My research wasn't on Burma but I tagged along with my Canon SLR as my companions had the most fascinating interviews with former politicians (including a member of parliament during the early years of Burma's independence five decades ago), members of an ethno-nationalist movement as well as a visit to a monastery.

I remember the monastery in particular. The abbot was seated on a mat on the floor, with his legs folded in the customary way. As he spoke in a lilting voice that I didn't understand, I busied myself with my sketchbook and pencil, trying to capture each line on his face and the feeling of frailty and power that emanated from him. The young monks were clustered around us, their leather slippers scattered two by two outside the door. The slippers were so worn with steps that probably could be counted in years; the grooves of time had left deep imprints of the ball and heel of each foot.

The police had questioned the mother of a home that housed us, simply because we were foreign. One of our companions was interrogated as he left the country, simply because he was Burmese.

Internet access was unheard of in those days and one could only check one's email at the swanky hotels for a lot of American dollars; things improved in the last few years up until Sunday, when the military cut off the country's internet access.

Flash forward: 2007. After over a year of preparation, we finally organised a meeting on human rights last week in Cambodia. I had put a lot of myself into this meeting. It was, bar none, the most difficult project I've handled to date. I think it was because of the subject matter itself: freedom of expression. The freedom to think, say, paint, sing, write what one wants; and the freedom of accessing information particularly from the government--this is a fundamental right protected by international law; from which other freedoms emanate. The freedom to assemble and protest, the freedom of people to demand for the basic minimum standards that all human beings should enjoy.

And a thousand miles away, as we spoke and emailed and surfed the web and ate our hotel kitchen food, monks, nuns, students, activists, journalists, street vendors, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters were being shot at, clubbed and beaten into submission. As I write, they are probably being interrogated, tortured. Monks have reportedly been disrobed and hundreds detained. The monasteries are empty. Midnight raids of homes and abductions continue. Fear is the rhythm that beats in the hearts of the people; a threat hangs over Burma as the darkness of night spreads.

Throughout history we've seen this kind of injustice play out over and over with different faces, in different places, different times. Eternity spans and is indifferent.


Drawn in pencil on the back of a random envelope, December 2001.

He wrapped his maroon cloak around his body like a mantle from a higher power. Nearly six years later, his image presses itself to my mind's eye. I don't believe in prayer. But last week, I joined a few others in a Buddhist temple at Angkor Wat to pray for Burma and to be blessed by the water of belief... if just for the tenuous hope that my thoughts for him and his people reach the indefinable ether of collective human consciousness. For whatever that's worth.

Facebook Obsession in Four Easy Steps!

Wikipedia, font of all knowledge in today's online world, defines mental obsession as a condition that may cause mental, physical, or even emotional pain, associated with insomnia as well as other health-related issues, and may keep one from focusing on more important tasks such as work or social activities. Some examples of what people can be obsessed with are: music, shoes, coffee, gambling, fire, celebrities, drugs, health/fitness, plastic surgery, royalty, money, religion, love, fame, cleanliness, diamonds, etc.

This latest facebook craze has ignited certain levels of obsession among people. Obsession? Nay, you'd say. But I have a hypothesis that it is addictive because it pushes the right buttons of longing to belong and be noticed. So, employing rigorous sociological field and survey research, I've plotted out how it happens.

Stage 1: You Join.
You scoff, roll your eyes, raise your eyebrows, snort, shrug, do the hokey-pokey and turn around--why are people all around you talking about Facebook, you ask yourself. Whatever. Sure, you'll join to stop people from bugging you to. It'll be passé soon enough. You blithely and obligingly fill out the forms, select a photo, sit back and wait. You claim that you are just checking out the Facebook bandwagon. Yes, that's what you tell yourself. And it's probably true. For now (ominous laughter...).

Stage 2: Your inner Narcissus rears his egotistic head.
Someone has tagged you in a photo or video! Now things are getting interesting. Obviously, the Facebook people have read Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People"--an opus of ego manipulation and instruction manual for sycophants. People love to see photos of themselves. When presented a photo, the first thing they search for is their own face. So, at this stage, you are now more seriously trawling through your friends' profiles, noticing strange and possibly interesting features of Facebook like publicizing what you like (or hate) about life. You begin to understand that this can be an outlet for your inner celebrity slash publicity hound. And you start to believe that people might care to know what your absolute favorite movie is, or--channeling Oprah Winfrey--what book you're currently reading. You also get to find out whether your friends think that you're most likely to get swindled by a couple of old ladies in Vegas or show up in a bunny costume for no apparent reason...

Stage 3: You have all these friends to poke and bite and compare and throw inanimate objects at.
Facebook requests for undying friendship come flying into your email Inbox unexpectedly. You start to log in more frequently, directed by those insidious little email messages. Why not ignore them the way you're used to ignoring Friendster, Multiply, Linked-in and other social networking messages? Well... it doesn't hurt that someone's bought you a virtual beer or compared your smile to someone (and thought yours was nicer). This guy or girl you used to have a crush on or go out with is suddenly back in your life; wanting to be "friends" again--you can finally be magnanimous, it costs you nothing; besides, he/she sent you the invite first! Plus, once someone's chucked a shaved monkey at you, there's no turning back.

Stage 4: You're Hoooked
The first time you spend more than an hour on Facebook exclusively, you're hooked. By the time you start competing for Mogul status on Superlatives, you're doomed. If you were handcuffed 10 feet away from your computer, you'd gnaw off your hands and learn to type with your toes.



Your only hope is to live on an island. Without internet connection.

Spaghetti in Sol's Midnight Marinara Sauce

I found myself pretty hungry at around half past one AM. When I couldn't convince Junior to fix me anything to eat, I resignedly went downstairs to cook.

I didn't grow up in a family that expected me to learn how to cook. My mom didn't really cook a whole lot, but she has a number of "signature" dishes, cakes and pies. My dad, according to family legend, has some sort of onion and tomato thing; but that may have all been just hearsay. I have three sisters and May, the second, is a really good cook (but she's also always been the "girly" one anyway). Gay, the eldest, can bake great blueberry cheesecake. Anna, the youngest, who lives on coffee and cigarettes, at most knows how to boil water by microwave (or at least I hope she does).

My first kitchen foray happened one summer when I was about eight or so (my most vivid childhood memories seem to begin at eight). Gay and May had this idea for us to cook an elaborate lunch for ourselves, complete with a fancy menu for dishes like "sautéed zygotes" i.e. fried egg. I contributed the beverages for the meal: "nestea con hielo con sprite".

Take the tallest glass in the kitchen. Fill three quarters with sprite or a similar colorless soda. Add two teaspoons of lemon-flavored instant iced tea powder. Witness the Rootbeer Float Effect: the powder causes the soda to fizz and a light brown froth bubbles to the surface. Take a long and slim teaspoon and stir gently, taking care that the froth doesn't diminish too much. Add a few cubes of ice.

I tried baking in high school and I wasn't too bad at it. Partly because they taught it in "home economics" (I also had a "practical arts" class with the boys, where I welded a swan-shaped ashtray for my class project). And partly because I had, for a long time, secretly wanted to grow up to be just like my best friend Lille's mom (who was a cool, single mother with her own company; and she gave away baskets of homemade pastries at Christmas).

I never cooked even when I lived on campus throughout college. I only tried my hand at cooking again years and years later when I started living with Junior. As a grad student, I had a pretty free schedule. But I eventually learned to hate sharing a kitchen with him--he was really merciless when it came to my dubious culinary eptitude. He made fun of my lack of common sense (with cooking and life in general--but hey, who cares about details when you're a genius, right?) and rolled his eyes at my reliance on recipes. When he petulantly complained that I had made spaghetti marinara one time too many, I literally threw the towel in (and at him).

But then Gabby came into the picture. Finally! A captive audience! An uncomplaining customer... at least before he could talk; and it is pure coincidence that his first word after mama and papa was "no"! Anyway, on Sundays (the nanny's day off), I started to cook for him. An improvisational spirit that I had sort of learned from Junior emerged. I got on a diet earlier this year and started cooking for myself, too.

Which brings me to tonight. The height of my haught cuisine. After two years of experimentation, I've come to the conclusion that I have a specific talent for combining a few specific ingredients into lush, flavorful food nouveau: tomatoes in any form (fresh, peeled, puréed, sauced), shrimp, olive oil, pasta, and oregano. And I've written my own rule of cooking: you can never have too much garlic--just be prepared to keep your trap shut for the rest of the evening!

And tonight's dish was a product of imagination.

Cook wholewheat pasta in boiling water and drain; place in a bowl. At the same time, heat a sauce pan, add a dollop of olive oil; fry a little minced fresh garlic and a few fresh large peeled shrimp or prawns. Don't be shy about leaving in all the weird orange gunk from the shrimp heads for flavor. Add some chili flakes. Add a couple of heaping spoonfuls of taba ng talangka or crab fat (available from Filipino stores at Lucky Plaza). Set aside. In the saucepan, leave in the sea-foody residue and add midnight spaghetti herbs (available at Carrefour; they come in little flat bags with brown paper labels) with just enough water to submerge the herbs. Wait until the herbs/spices are fully re-hydrated, then sauté with a little olive oil. Add chili flakes and tomato pesto. Stir into pasta. Top with shrimps and "marinara" sauce. If I'd had any fresh orgegano leaves, I'd have used them as a garnish. Cooking & preparation time: 20-25 minutes


Junior offered me fifty bucks to whip up another bowl, haha!

Do-Gooders Anonymous: Coffee & the Laws of Physics

So Chocolatini and Divehammie get into this deep and highly technical discussion about theories of motion and kinetics.

Chiaroscuro: Curtain Call

I caught a play by myself last Sunday (the day after the final curtain call was made on Chiaroscuro). Two modern noh plays written by Yukio Mishima; Richard Chua was co-director and Mishima is one of my favorite authors. I was late, and there were only two people outside the theater, handling the ticket sales. The lady asks me if I'm a student and I say, no. The guy looks at me and says, "Oh... Sol!"; he turns to the lady and says, "She's an actress."

Nat and Rahiman will kill me for repeating this story, but it really brought home the message. Am I an actor?


screenshots of the DVD that Junior produced for Project Chiaroscuro 2007

In the first place, how did I negotiate between and among the roles of actor, playwright and director?

First, I suppose, I had to grapple with the role of playwright. Rather than use the book as just a point of departure, I really worked more to adapt a 230-page book into 15-20 minutes on stage. This required an intense reading of the book, taking notes, doing further research on the author (especially since his book was semi-autobiographical). What powered me along was the words. Pessoa writes beautifully, and it was a matter of (1) piecing together what struck me the most in his writing; (2) reading common themes throughout what was effectively a journal, and identifying them; (3) trying to form a character. What I ended with, to cut a long story short, is a character who is a woman, a writer, looking for affirmation as an artist and who writes in the belief that her art necessitates cutting herself off from the “vulgarity” of reality and humanity, but at core she is lonely, unloved and thinks that she is ugly.

Second, starting with a script, I had to be an actor and director simultaneously. I had a vision for how I wanted the performance to look (I knew I wanted to play around with a table, chair, notebooks full of writing, a cup of coffee, cigarettes, and a window) and I wanted to convey that the character was alone in her room, speaking to her unseen readers (the audience), speaking to herself. So when I first wrote some stage directions for the script, they were based on a vague idea of what I imagined the performance should be; but I had no formal training either to act or direct and no concrete idea of what I wanted to do. Without Anjeli's help (she made me try to perform the first draft script a couple of times very early on; just before I left for Timor on 21st June) I wouldn't even have gotten a script together.

In the end, became most instructive was actually performing—especially the preview performance that we did barely a week before the actual event. Here, I got feedback from the audience, which included both friends, other people in the theater scene and the Chiaroscuro director-mentors. What they said was that I had stage presence and could create tension within the audience, but what the performance lacked were: clarity (movement and speech), effective dramatic build-up and breaks in the tension, and a lack of conveyance of the motivations for what I was doing. I had further talks with Michael Corbidge and Richard Chua in particular, that put me on track to re-work the sequences in the script and think further about what tension I really wanted to convey and how I should convey it.

Thus, the result was that I re-sequenced the script. I let the audience in first, to see the character, lonely and alone, before going into this whole diatribe of how life as we know it is not really life, how everything is nothing—the whole existentialist shebang. I reduced the words and cut the script down by a third of the original. There are three movements in the performance.

Click here for the full script and images from the performance.

First, I show with hardly any words, the lonely writer; alone in her room, writing in a frenzy but finding it hard to concentrate. There are distractions she needs to overcome: street noise from outside the window, which she shuts; food and drink on the table—she’s hungry but can barely stop long enough to have a proper meal; she spills her coffee and almost ruins her work... The reward is finally getting a clear thought through; and she lights a cigarette and enjoys her little triumph.

Second, she starts to reveal what she’s been writing about. She feels defensive, as if her little victory is empty. She lashes out that she, alone in her room, knows better than anyone about what the meaning of life is. But she starts to reveal that this knowledge is painful.

Third, there is another battle: she wants to continue to write, but she is distracted by the life outside her window. She goes to the window and tries to see whether the beauty outside is reflected in her. But it’s not, and she reveals her true fears. That she is nothing, that her life and her writing mean nothing, and she tries to reject all her work.

Finally, resolution: she cannot reject her work nor her life. She picks up her writing and leafs through it, seeing the beauty of the characters she has created. And this is the truth of her life: to produce art, she took herself out of the stream of humanity (even if she suffered for it with her loneliness), but by creating art, she has contributed to humanity. She returns to her table, and as a reward, lights a cigarette.


here's a little self-promotion... heh heh

It was my interaction with the directors and the other actors, that was most instructive. I learnt from their advice on how to better bring out the dramatic tension in what I wanted to convey with my performance, and from the excellent talents of the other actors, I learnt how to use more visual cues and other means like my voice; demonstrating how little challenges (distractions) needed to be overcome in order to win small victories (writing, deserving a cigarette), things like that. I would not have been able to do this alone.



At the Q&A with the audience after my last performance of From the Book of Disquiet, I said something that I hadn't verbalized until that moment: "I could no by measure or account have been considered an actor; but now, maybe I can start to define myself as one."

East Timor Notebook: Hateh logo, Timor-Leste!

4th July
Somewhere between Dili and Denpasar

It’s the fourth of July and I am on a plane. I took one last look at Timor and its cold, foggy mountains, the 100% cotton clouds, the blue skies.



It’s goodbye to the four little kids in Villa Clara—Acela, Asoko, Abai and Anoko.

Goodbye to Kevin, who could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but was a good guy in his own way.

Goodbye to Humberto and Boni, who were the best Timorese partners possible in a team like ours.

Goodbye to Ainaro and all its cute ponies, piggies and especially the cows that are still animals* and not beef.

Goodbye to the aussies, who were all so kind and were great election observers. Goodbye to Damon and Tom, who let Kevin and me tag along their hike up the hill on Sunday afternoon, to get a good look at Ainaro from above.

Goodbye to all the UNPol, especially Joginder from Singapore, who was always looking out for the tired and hungry at the counting center.

Goodbye to the hard working (and good looking!) UNV peeps, even to the funny German guy who flirted so outrageously that it was amusing.

Goodbye Hans, goodbye Gustav, who were always a pleasure to have around, especially for games of “name the author” and other trivia, on the sidelines of vote-counting.


this way to dili

And goodbye to the team: Jill and her leadership, her attention to process rather than just output, the good food, good wine and good conversation, the cigarette breaks, the airport send-off and the tais; Dee and the lucky lighter she was sweet to leave behind for me—it brought me back safely from Ainaro but exploded last night when it fell out of my pocket at dinner; Bron, who cemented our friendship from Day 1 by suggesting that I move into the blue room and share it with her, her open-heartedness and ready smile; Endie, my first friend in Dili, with the smoke breaks on the veranda and late at night on the back porch, the insights into Timorese society, politics and the international solidarity movement; Jeff, for the trash runs and security checks with the Kiwis down the road; David, Willy, Barbara, Roy, Jakob, Sue, Katha…

I’ve just landed in Bali. My heart is heavy, not for sadness, but because it is full.



* On Sunday morning, after the elections, Kevin and I took a walk down the field behind the primary school in front of Villa Clara. There was a group of five cows, including a couple of calfs, grazing. As I walked toward them, they ran away and it struck me as odd. I realized why: they were acting like animals normally act around humans—evasive and wary, on the defensive—and not like slabs of uncut beef. As Belinda from the Aussie observer group put it: they were still able to express their cow-ness! The alpha cow kept one eye on the herd and one eye on us the whole time.


This was my first trip to East Timor. Won’t be my last.

East Timor Notebook: How did I end up here? cont'd

1st July
Counting Center, Ainaro

The possibility of actually going to East Timor was a kernel of an idea because of the paper that I’m revising. I was always apologizing for not having done any field research to substantiate my paper. I remember writing, at the start of the year, about how I was simply not doing enough with my life, and asking myself: is tomorrow the day I finally go to East Timor?




And here I am.

East Timor Notebook: How did I end up here?

30 June. Election Day.
Sitting on a hillock outside a Polling Center, Ainaro

East Timor. How did I end up here? The story as I tell it is this: I’d first heard, even just heard, of the country when I was a freshman or sophomore at don’the University of the Philippines. APCET (Asia-Pacific Solidarity Coalition for East Timor, methinks) had invited Ramos-Horta to speak on campus and then president Fidel Ramos barred him from entering the country. In some circles, particularly in UP—which holds academic freedom above all (or mostly) else, there was a furor, and I was dimly, dimly aware of it. I really don’t know how the incident seeped into my consciousness, but my mind retains an image of Ramos-Horta’s face on a poster about the event. That was in ’93 or ’94. Probably a consequence of international attention on the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre.


santa cruz cemetary

in 1991, to protest the killing of sebastiao gomes, a student activist, hundreds of timorese in dili walked in a procession to the santa cruz cemetary, where indonesian troops trapped the protesters and killed a reported 271 people with hundreds of others injured, hospitalized and 'disappeared'.

In September ’99, I had just moved to Singapore. On the daily commute to hang out with Junior at the Yacht Club, I’d read the Straits Times—its coverage of Southeast Asia especially. Somehow, I followed the developments in the news as the 1999 referendum for independence in East Timor unfolded. I’d complain to Junior: why hasn’t the UN intervened? Then, why have only the Australians sent troops? Et cetera.

In April 2000, I was thrilled to discover the Singapore International Film Fest. My graduate studies and scholarship hadn’t yet started yet, and Junior and I was still living very simply on his salary. I was surviving on a contract for some technical writing (a procedures manual) from the Yacht Club. But I allowed myself this one luxury: to watch as many films as I could in the week and a half of the film fest. One of which was Punitive Damages.

Punitive Damages is a documentary about a young Malaysian student activist named Kamal Bamadhaj. It’s about the underground student movement in East Timor that developed in the 1990s. It’s about the human rights groups and NGOs in Australia and elsewhere that supported this movement. It’s about Kamal, killed among the Timorese massacred in the Santa Cruz cemetary by the Indonesian military. And the case lodged by his family in American courts that indicted the culpable parties, though none have been brought to justice.

At the screening, they sold copies of a book of Kamal’s journal and essays and analyses by his sister, Nadja, of the political context of Kamal’s life and death: the Suharto regime, the occupation of East Timor, and military oppression in other places such as Aceh and Irian Jaya. I read the book avidly and finished it fairly quickly, poring over it through silent evenings in the little bedroom that was home then.


christo rei or christ the king, a massive statue overlooking built in dili by, oddly enough, the indonesians

In Kyaw’s class on social movement theory, I decided to write my course paper on East Timor. I read books and books on the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor and on Fretilin especially. John Taylor, Helen Hill (who I met in Dili, completely randomly, last Thursday!), Noam Chomsky, Matthew Jardine, Constancio Pinto, Ramos-Horta, Joao Saldanha—through these authors, I tried to understand what had happened in East Timor. Pinto, an underground movement student leader who fled to the US, is now ambassador to the US. Saldanha is the lead candidate and president of the Partido Republikan. I attended their campaign rally at Kampo Demokrasya.

So I’ve got this paper. I presented a version at the International Convention of Asia Scholars in 2005 in Shanghai and Kasarinlan Journal of Third World Studies is interested in publishing it.

East Timor Notebook: You know how people always say that having children will change you?

26th June
Dili

You know how people always say that having children will change you?

Until Gabby, I’d always been dismissive of children. Not that I disliked them. Not at all. There have been plenty of occasions where I prefered the company of children to grown ups. I still remember what it was like, holing out in my bedroom, hoping not to have to entertain my parents’ guests. Seeing affluent foreigners in a country like Burma or Cambodia going all Angelina Jolie with the children had always made me cringe inwardly.

But things are remarkably, remarkably different now.

I see children suffering, little children who should have every chance as anyone to a decently life, suffering, my heart contracts painfully into a little fist, and I see Gabby’s sweet face on theirs, thinking of the impossible.

Oh Timor-Leste.
Maubere, maubere,
stand up, and let me stand with you.
Your wounds are the wounds of all humanity,
your hopes are too.

Maubere, maubere,
you sing without sorrow,
you dance without tears.

Remind us what it’s like
to love a people,
to dream a tomorrow.

East Timor Notebook: What is a full life?

25 June 2007
Dili

What is a full life? Pessoa argues that one should abdicate from life, otherwise abdicate from one’s self. To belong to something is banal. Creed, ideal, wife, profession: prison cells, shackles.

I gallop in the opposite direction. I feel mortality closing in on me and race to fill my life with ideals, with living out my dreams, with pursuits of grandeur, with turning my hobbies into passions. Because it is an effort, there is a skein of falsehood in this attempt. And yet, how can it not be an effort? How can I not push myself to achieve more, to travel farther, and to fill, fill, fill the pages of my notebooks and screens with the words and evidence of the density of my life.

I can’t pause. I can’t stand still. I’m a motor that is constantly running.

Last week, EC tender.
These two weeks, election observer mission in East Timor.
After that, Chiaroscuro.

And now, I am alone with Pessoa’s coffee cup and cigarette, following the blinking cursor to the next thought.

Traveling to Dili was like travelling to any destination I’d gone to before. Sitting here and typing on my iBook, alone in the living room, is no different from staying up until the wee hours of the morning, doing the same thing with Gabby and Junior sound asleep upstairs at home.

Thirty years and I still can’t tell you the meaning of my life.

I’ve tried so hard to be independent, need no one, touch nothing; but without the love and friendship of the people around me, I’d be bereft and forlorn.

I need to be liked, I need to be loved. Respect and admiration are food for the craven soul.

From needing to be the good girl, as a child, I’ve grown to needing to be a great person.

I wish I could write, right now, about all my mundane observations in coming to Dili for the first time. Is this the Dili of my dreams? In that, Pessoa was right: nothing in reality could ever be as good as their versions in our imagination, in the ether where there exists only two: you and your thoughts.

Dili was familiar territory because I’m always carrying around the same baggage of who I am. There is nothing alien about the wide, empty highways and the small, uneven streets, littered with the rubble of 25 years of Indonesia’s brutal military occupation.

You don’t see it in the wide, smiling eyes of the women and children. Children play in the street, scattered by the occasional big vans with “UN” emblazoned on them. They play soccer and own the road. They laugh and practice English on me and on any foreigner they see, probably. They grab at the US dollars of my guilt for being a thousand times more affluent than them. They sing and dance and link hands with you and step forward, step back. Maubere, they sing, man, woman, stand up for Timor Loro’sae.

Chiaroscuro: From the Book of Disquiet (A Script)

Nothing, nothing.
Just the night—
The silence of emptiness—
the space that exists between me and me—
a thing mislaid by some god.

We are death.
This thing we think of as life is only the sleep of real life, the death of what we truly are.
The dead are born, they do not die...
When we think we are alive, we are dead, we live even while we lie dying.

Oh, that I should die--feelings first!

We must learn to sublimate the pure from the contagion of the vulgar.

We must know, immediately and instinctively, how to abstract from every object and event only what is suitable dream material and to leave for dead in the External World any reality it contains...

Harboring no ambitions, passions, desires, hopes, impulses or feelings of restlessness.

The very fact of completing or achieving anything, be it an empire or a sentence, contains what is worst about all real things: our knowledge that they will perish.

To belong to something—that’s banal. Creed, ideal, lover or profession: nothing but prison cells and shackles.

To be, is to be free.

Touch nothing!

Abdicate from life, so as not to abdicate from one’s self.

Do not think with your feelings, feel with your thoughts!

Find for every feeling the most serene mode of expression; reduce love to a mere shadow of a dream of love...

Make of desire something vain and inoffensive, the delicate private smile of a soul to itself...

Lull hatred to sleep like a captive snake and order fear to preserve agony only in its eyes and in the eyes of our soul.

Let pain instruct you. The pain of not understanding the mystery of life, the pain of being unloved, the pain of others' injustice to us, the pain of life crushing us, suffocating and imprisoning us, the pain of toothache, of pinching shoes--who can say which pain (is) worse?... Everything is nothing, and our pain is no exception.

If my heart could think, I think it would stop beating.

A cup of coffee, a cigarette, the penetrating aroma of its smoke, myself sitting in a shadowy room with eyes half-closed...

I want no more from life than my dreams and this... It doesn't seem much? I don't know. What do I know about what is a little and what is a lot?

Summer evening out there. How I would love to be someone else.

I open the window... Everything outside is so gentle, yet it pierces me with an indefinable pain, a vague feeling of discontent.

And one last thing pierces me, tears at me, leaves my soul in tatters. It's that I, at this moment, at this window, looking out at these sad, gentle things, ought to present a beautiful figure, like someone in a picture--

and I don't, I don't even do that.

I'm nobody, nobody.

I am the outskirts of some non-existent town.

I don't know how to feel or think or love.

My life is a tragedy, booed off the stage by the gods after the first act.

I am the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book, a character in a novel as yet unfinished, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me.

I am... the very prose that I write. I shape myself in periods and paragraphs, I punctuate myself... I've become a character in a book, a life already read.

With all this rewriting, I have destroyed myself.

Everything in me is a tendency to be about something else; an impatience of the soul within itself as if with an importunate child, a disquiet that is always growing, always the same.

... For light fleeting moments, I manage to forget the taste of life, to leave life and noise behind and die, feelings first, into an empire of anguished ruins, a grand entrance amidst flags and victorious drums, into a vast final city where I weep for nothing, want for nothing and not even ask not to be myself.

My imaginary world has always been the true world for me. I never knew loves so real, so full of passion and life as I did with the characters I myself created.

I am the very prose that I write. I shape myself in periods and paragraphs, I punctuate myself... I am a character in my book, a life read.


words adapted from Fernando Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet"

Only Pinoys will Unnerstand why this is so Funny

not the, but a, scream

bittersweet, fruit i eat,
up the spiral down again,

nicotine, and caffeine,
cursor leads me where i go,

clock strikes thirty; sound, no fury;
lots to show for; not enough,

stare at myself staring at myself--
am i just worth my weight in gold?

tick
tock
drip
drop

how many Sols does it take
to screw things up?


it's three a.m. and i'm stressed out

open house!

the return of prodigal books, dvds, et cetera is welcome. i want my stuff back.

Do Gooder's Anonymous: What Does a Hero Make?

Move over, Peter Petrelli and your wanker hairdo!








And Chocolatini goes on to say: Well, he has a magic lamp!

Do-Gooders Anonymous: Scene from a Cubicle

Dilbert wouldn't last five minutes at this fictitious organisation (that I fictionally doodle about). Say hello to the lovable kooks at Do-Gooders Anonymous, saving the world one email at a time!

Today's cartoon: Random Thoughts from Kapten Umbad on George Dubya

Chiaroscuro: Mislaid by Some God

Here's the "Previously, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer" rundown: Pessoa was a poet "who wrote poets" and not just poetry: he created what he called "heteronyms"--personalities whose philosophies and writing styles were distinct, and ostensibly distinct from his. The book is Pessoa's only major work in prose: the novel is written as the journal of Bernardo Soares, a clerk in a small company. The text was written over a quarter of a century--published post-humously possibly never meant to become public. Pessoa scholars apparently think that Soares as a character is very close to being Pessoa himself. How do I bring this to the stage? This is the question that has haunted me over the past weeks, a hum of worry like a crease on the skin at the back of my mind. Come mid-July, I've committed to performing a monologue, along with five other performers, at The Substation. Each of us has our own book to dramatize, in whatever way works.

"Nothing, nothing, just part of the night and the silence of whatever emptiness... the space that exists between me and me, a thing mislaid by some god." That is how 'The Book of Disquiet' by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa ends.

Throughout the book, my mind's eye saw Pessoa/Soares quite clearly. Demystified. Or I thought I did. Pessoa (I think of him as Pessoa more than the character Soares) was socially maladjusted, intelligent but intellectually arrogant, sexually repressed and alone. Lonely and loveless. Sometimes his angst was palpable to me--even close to my own inner Munch-ish scream. Other times, I felt appalled by his misanthropic tendencies.

Although the book was never properly edited by Pessoa into a novel before he died, several threads ran through the work: isolation, love, hate, nothingness, tedium, the meaning of his life and of life in general, his writing and the meaning of writing, and--most importantly--sublimation. Sublimation is the process of separating two or more mixed substances; what Pessoa tries to do is sublimation in the literary and ideational sense of distilling the pure from the unpure. With words, he tries to render the base, transitory and meaningless material world into the purity of its substance in ideas, dreams and writing. Sleep is to life, as life is to death. "This thing we think of as life is only the sleep of real life, the death of what we truly are. The dead are born, they do not die... When we think we are alive, we are dead, we live even while we lie dying."

Pessoa reveled in the objectification of emotion (writing that he should die, "feelings first"), in his self-imposed distance from humanity and in his belief that this distance made one superior to others. He extolled indifference as an aim: "(t)o know, immediately and instinctively, how to abstract from every object and event only what is suitable dream material and to leave for dead in the External World any reality it contains... harboring no ambitions, passions, desires, hopes, impulses or feelings of restlessness.

"We must find for every feeling the most serene mode of expression; reduce love to a mere shadow of a dream of love..."

The consequence is best exemplified in a passage about pain: "The pain of not understanding the mystery of life, the pain of being unloved, the pain of others' injustice to us, the pain of life crushing us, suffocating and imprisoning us, the pain of toothache, of pinching shoes--who can say which pain (is) worse?... Everything is nothing, and our pain is no exception."

But was he just hypocritically trying to assuage his own loneliness? Was this intellectual and psychological onanism simply a defense? He admits on page 159 that he was once truly loved, once. Pessoa scholars speculate that Pessoa died a virgin. Apart from passages about being (or striving to be) above sensuality and the sappy sentiment of love ("If the heart could think it would stop beating"), here was one entry that I think betrays his struggle for equanimity with all his futile passions roiling in him:

"A cup of coffee, a cigarette, the penetrating aroma of its smoke, myself sitting in a shadowy room with eyes half-closed...

I want no more from life than my dreams and this... It doesn't seem much? I don't know. What do I know about what is a little and what is a lot?

... I open the window... And one last thing pierces me, tears at me, leaves my soul in tatters. It's that I, at this moment, at this window, looking out at these sad, gentle things, ought to present an aesthetic figure, like someone in a picture--

and I don't,

I don't even do that."

What I also found interesting was Pessoa's many references to himself as the book itself (or as the product of his art)--Pessoa the "written voice" and "intellectual image", indistinguished from Pessoa the person, mind and existence. Writing four years before he died, he despairs: "I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me." Also: "I am... the very prose that I write. I shape myself in periods and paragraphs, I punctuate myself... I've become a character in a book, a life already read." And, with irony and uncharacteristic humor: "With all this rewriting, I have destroyed myself."

More likely, it is Soares (the character) speaking in direct address to the audience acknowledging that he is only the product of Pessoa's pen.



"Everything in me is a tendency to be about something else; an impatience of the soul within itself as if with an importunate child, a disquiet that is always growing, always the same."

Dirge for the Departed

Vending machine.
Your cold glass slabs,
warm only in our memories
of the saccharine drinks you purveyed
to slake our thirst
and fetishes for
aspartame and carbonated fluid.

You are no more.
It took four men
to carry you out
while a funeral dirge
wailed
in our hearts.

i really want an ice cold can of green tea right now.

ambient noise vol 3

dakota | stereophoics
I turn my camera on | spoon
another devil dies | badly drawn boy
criminal | fiona apple
fall at your feet | crowded house
leaving so soon? | keane
to the end | blur
this charming man | the smiths
caring is creepy | the shins
i fought the law | green day
the importance of being idle | oasis
can’t stand me now | the libertines
is this love? | clap your hands, say yeah
golden | fall out boy
evil | Interpol
yeah is what we had | grandaddy
i predict a riot | kaiser chiefs


OPTION+COMMAND+5. Check out iTunes's album artwork flow view

Chiaroscuro: Disquiet and the Malconent

Chiaroscuro is a technique for painting and sketches that uses the contrast of light (chiaro) and darkness (oscura), with the falling of light on uneven surfaces or from a particular source. It heightens the drama, signifies depth and dimension, and could denote something sinister. This is my journal on Project Chiaroscuro, a production by Little Red Shop and the Substation, which will culminate in a performance of six original monologues at The Substation on 12-15 July. Each performance will be inspired by one of six selected books.

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pesoa

First, let me admit that I still haven't finished reading it. Not because it's boring but because it's totally absorbing. I think I need to simply take a day off and finish the damn thing. It's been a while since I've had to read a book line by line, and life is full of distractions.

From what I've read so far, the Book of Disquiet isn't plot or character-driven; yet one can't compare it to stream-of-consciousness type works as Virginia Woolf or getting into the mind of the protagonist like Dostoyevski (I'm referencing Crime and Punishment here, at least). What comes to mind is prose by Albert Camus, who used his fiction to explore his ideas about life and existence.

The book is essentially the journal of a book-keeper/accountant named Bernardo Soares, whose life is largely circumscribed by his neighborhood--even his street--in Lisbon. Overtly, he spends his days without change and without incident: he goes to work, eats at the same restaurant, cuts his hair at the same barber's, and so on. He is a non-descript, quiet man, who doesn't make any ripples around him and walks through life as if he is unmindful of what happens around him.

Overtly.

His inner life is full of tumult, richness and expanse. Although he has never been far from home, Soares cogitates over life and existence from his own love of Portuguese and other literature. He pores over the minutiae of his own life and his impressions of his surroundings and the people around him. The people around him have no clue of how much they affect him. He writes about the meaning of existence and life, religion, even sex and love; but from the vantage of a limited scope of experience. And all this happens behind his eyes, behind the veneer of the constant, consistent and unassuming book-keeper, who somehow has the ability to do two things in parallel: enter the credits and debits of his mundane irreducibly material existence while living, in his mind, within a maelstrom of ideas and ontological questions that do not cease.

Here are some quotes to illustrate:
"One must monotonize existence in order to rid it of monotony. One must make the everyday so anodyne that the slightest incident proves entertaining."

"I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love... I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall."

"Because I am nothing, I can imagine myself to be anything."

Part of what makes the book remarkable is also its author. Fernando Pessoa is a Portuguese poet and this book is his only major work in prose. Moreover, the book was found (and published) post-humously from papers among his possessions. He started the book in 1912 and wrote, on and off, until his death in 1935.

This presents an occasional idiosycracy in the book, or perhaps it's just that the nature of one's thoughts and attitudes change over time: sometimes he comes across as religious; others, atheist. Sometimes, he is intellectually arrogant; others, he is exceedingly self-deprecating.

As a writer, Pessoa was also noteworthy for the his use of "heteronyms" (as opposed to pseudonyms), where he explored the philosophy and thoughts of other individuals--writing as them--with outlooks and styles different from his. Bernardo Soares in the Book of Disquiet, however, is seen to be a vehicle for Pessoa's own thoughts and life.

In terms of dramatizing the text, I was thinking of developing a character who is translating the text from Portuguese into English, thus grappling with the ideas presented, Pessoa's life himself, and how this relates to the character's life. I'd be interested in reading the translation by Margaret Jull Costa (the one I'm reading is by Maria Jose de Lancastre), who is considered to have written the best translation of the book into English, and fictionalize on her experience. Perhaps the character's life is in disarray, and she takes refuge in Pessoa's world of ideas--by disagreeing with him, but also finding that some of what he writes resonates in her like truth.


thanks go to sunita, for providing perspective.

red hot chili party

a merry 30th birthday to me, to me
a merry 30th birthday to me, to me
it's great to drink to someone,
and i guess that's me, whoopee
a merry 30th birthday to me

statistics prove that you've one life,
one birth day, once a year;
the little deaths, all other days,
are also cause for cheer
so

a merry 30th birthday to me, to me
a merry 30th birthday to me, to me
let's all just drink the night away
be happy as can be

a merry 30th birthday
a merry 30th birthday
a merry 30th birthday
to me!


i'm gonna get me soooo wasted...

ambient noise volume 2

last nite | the strokes, is this it?
cause=time | broken social scene, you forgot it in people
this is how it goes | aimee man, BTVS radio sunnydale
like a stone | audioslave, audioslave
thinking about you | radiohead, pablo honey
rudie can’t fail | the clash, london calling
garden grove | sublime, sublime
lithium | nirvana, nevermind
crazy | gnarls barkley, st. elsewhere
all is full of love | death cab for cutie, the photo album
everybody got their something | nikka costa, BTVS radio sunnydale
sunshine and clouds (and everything proud) | clap your hands, say yeah, clap your hands, say yeah
everyday i love you less and less | kaiser chiefs, employment
hard to concentrate | red hot chilli peppers, stadium arcadium
little wing | jimi hendrix, experience hendrix
road to ruin | the libertines, the libertines
cheated hearts | yeah yeah yeahs, show your bones

i'm pretty happy with this CD and the process of putting the songs together was less torturous--probably because i was buoyed by alvin's enthusiasm (by alvin standards) over the first one. so i was at public house last night and this was played (when i came in, alvin was like "i knew you'd bring a new CD!"). it was fun, sunita, saad and i were enjoying the music and talking about beloved TV shows (and singing the theme music!) BUT the CD started skipping by the time the kaiser chiefs were on and had to be stopped. argh. technical difficulties. alvin, get a frakking iBook!

just a couple of notes on the music. "hard to concentrate" is one of the coolest songs for a wedding (lyrics here).

"all is full of love" is a cover of the bjork song by death cab for cutie. (thanks go to qiuyi for this)

sunshine and clouds is a one-minute instrumental interlude, which i thought was a charming notion.

two songs have been played on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "this is how it goes" (season 7, with aimee mann doing a cameo and saying "i'm sick of playing at vampire towns") and "everybody got their something" (season 2 or 3, methinks, with Buffy, Xander and Willow dancing to it in the Sunnydale High library...).


me desktop. check it.

The skin of the world, peeled

The skin of the world, peeled:
here is reality behind that which is beheld.
We think, therefore it is.

Distance is a measure of words,
weight is the dichotomy of being and nothingness,
and time is counted out in cigarettes and cups of coffee.

Meaning and absurdity are sisters,
born of sentience and civilization,
destined to die as us, live as us.

Thoughts are faster than action,
travel farther than light, sound and stone.
Flesh is a clumsy container for infinity.

Why then, is it, that
the body remembers
what the mind forgets?

Singapore, 17 March 2007


The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its former dimensions. I read that on a bookmark once.

Ambient Noise for Public House, or Early Steps to a DJ Career

This is the CD I cut for Public House, the bar that Natalia and I (and other miscellaneous friends) frequent. Credit for Virgin State of Mind, Belong and Days Go By, as well as over-all criticism in the process of putting the songs together, goes to Natalia.

Everything's Just Wonderful
Artist: Lily Allen
Album: Alright, Still

Starlight
Artist: Muse
Album: Black Holes & Revelations

Virgin State of Mind
Artist: K's Choice
Album: Music from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Zephyr Song
Artist: Red Hot Chili Pepers
Album: By The Way

Drive
Artist: Incubus
Album: Make Yourself

Days Go By (Acoustic)
Artist: Dirty Vegas
Album: The Best Acoustic Album in the World (I shit you not)

Dani California
Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Album: Stadium Arcadium

There is a Light that Never Goes Out
Artist: Morissey
Album: Redondo Beach

Pursuit of Happiness
Artist: Nuno
Album: Schizophonic

Belong
Artist: R.E.M.
Album: Out of Time

Eleanor Put Your Boots On
Artist: Franz Ferdinand
Album: You Could Have it So Much Better

Yellow Sun
Artist: The Raconteurs
Album: Broken Boy Soldiers

Bohemian Like You
Artist: Dandy Warhols
Album: Radio Sunnydale

Shiver (Acoustic)
Artist: Coldplay
Album: Trouble (B sides)

Angel
Artist: Dave Matthews Band
Album: Everyday

My Hero
Artist: Foo Fighters
Album: Skin and Bones


CD Cover Artwork by sdri 10 March 2007

today's epiphany: i hate to write

i do. i hate it. i have fragmented thoughts. i lack cohesion and depth. increasingly, as an occupation hazard, my vocabulary is getting limited.

but i digress.

the point of this post was supposed to be that i got in. what i auditioned for, i mean. i'm in.

it isn't quite clear what the parameters of this production will be, but i am under the impression that we have been given a number of books to go through, and that the monologues we'll perform will be based on these texts.

- Soseki Natsume's "Ten Nights of Dream, Hearing Things, The Heredity of Taste"
- Lorenzino de' Medici's "Apology for a Murder"
- Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception"
- Barbara Comyns' "The Vet's Daughter"
- Fernando Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet"
- Junichiro Tanizaki's "Diary of a Mad Old Man"

none of which i've read.

plus, today, i got an email from the Kasarinlan people, asking me for my article on East Timor. Aaaaagh!!!!!!

i'm feeling mentally constipated today.
*listening to franz ferdinand*

i wish i had a voice that carried texture and emotion. that came from the depths of my chest instead of the top of my head.

i wish i were a different kind of person.

i wish i had more mental discipline.

i wish that my ambitions for myself were matched by my capacity for action.

inertia is defined as the tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged. a body at rest will stay at rest. a body in motion will continue in a straight line unless a force is exerted on it, to change its direction.

that's what i am. inert. there are voices in my head, screaming at me to act, but i'm oddly silent.

act on what?

the extent of change in direction is directly proportionate to the force impelling the change.

Random thoughts in the middle of today

The Red Army Faction & Cameron Diaz. Coming across this article on the release of Brigitte Mohnhaupt from 24 years of imprisonment for terrorist activities of the Red Army Faction in the 70s, it reminded me of this film called "The Invisible Circus". I bought a copy of the DVD for 6 Euros in Paris. It stars one of my all-time favorite actors, Christopher Eccleston (who incidentally has been introduced in Heroes Season 2; Heroes creator Tim Kring, in another bit of random trivia, was a writer for another of my all-time favorites, the short-lived Misfits of Science--end parenthetical thought). It's about this young girl (Cameron Diaz), who travels through Europe, hooks up with Christopher Eccleston, joins the Red Army Faction, you get the picture...

The Acting Bug! It’s 8:45 in the morning on a Sunday. The phone rings and Gabby wakes up, plaintively yelling, “Mama! Phone! Mama! Phone”. Gabby helpfully hands me my phone and I pick up.

“Hello, this is so and so from Little Red Book or something like that.” And then he goes on relentlessly about how I’m being invited to audition at the Substation for this monologue project that they’re doing.

OK, reality check. A, yes, I submitted a piece just before 11pm the night before; on my way out to meet Natalia and Ira for a drink. B, it was 8:45AM.

Unfortunately, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to be much nicer and less bitchy to all and sundry. So instead of yelling at the motherfrakker to go frak himself and his gay boyfriend, I very nicely suggested that perhaps 8:45AM on a Sunday wasn’t the best time to go around calling people with information that could be emailed or, better yet, left ‘til Monday.

So. Whoooooo! I’m auditioning! I honestly don’t know what the performance is all about and plus, due to the exigency of editing my story into a 500-word monologue, I’ve boxed myself into the role of “I was curious about girl-on-girl action”. I’m not actually sure I can pull this off on stage.

More importantly, what do I wear??????

I see with the unblinking eyes of my mind

I see with the unblinking eyes of my mind. Paralyzed and mute.

Car accident. Life moves on outside my hospital window, without me, I guess.

Raphael framed by a dense carpet of stars, on a beach. Stella parading around the room naked, laughing. The bright orange point of Teddy’s cigarette describing the arcs of his emphatic ranting. The darkness. The inhuman scream of tires on asphalt.

The nurse is padding around the room, checking on this and that; my only evidence of this is the swish of fabric on fabric and the occasional metallic resonance of the equipment. She seems to be talking to me—or to herself? My attention has wandered.

I’m back in my apartment with Stella, a year ago.

She likes it best when I fuck her like a man. A subtle irony I never comment on.


Click here to read the full text.

Tampontification

So until today, I'd never learned to use a tampon. First of all, I hardly ever get a period (which makes Gabby's birth even more mysterious). When I was in high school, it started at three-month intervals. In college, it became semestral. When I started working, it turned into an annual event. Finally, when I started working where I work now, I had one period in my first month here. Only. It's all stress-related, so you can imagine what my working life has been like in the past four years.

Then, all of a sudden, in Bohol, THE DAY BEFORE I WAS SUPPOSED TO START MY WEEK-LONG DIVE TRIP, I got my period. And since I was too freaked out to dive with my period for the first time, I didn't dare use a tampon. It was a horrible horrible experience. Aaargh. Blech.

Now, today, I got my period again. I'm like, wow, two months in a row. I discovered it in the bathroom, as Anjeli and I were about to leave for lunch.

ME: (in the bathroom stall) Anjeli! I got my period!
ANJELI: Yay?
ME: SOS! Can you please check to see if anyone has a pad or tampon?
(pause... she returns with both)
ME: OK, the pad is way too big for my underwear. I'll have to use the tampon, and I've never used one before.

And then the most touching moment between two female friends unfolds.

ME: Will you... help me?
ANJELI: Are you twelve?

So, anyway, I'm behind the stall door again and she's coaching me from the sink.

ME: Do I sit down or stand up?
ANJELI: Well, you could do either but it's better if you stand up.
ME: Will it fall out?
ANJELI: Just make sure that the string is still out, you idiot.

So. That was the high point of my day.

If men had periods, they'd brag about the size of their tampons.

Conversations with the Brain Dead

After a botched attempt at coming up with "Comeback Fantasies" as a sequel to my previous post (the only blog-worthy one was mine: looking at the crater where our building used to be), I've decided to faithfully transcribe stupid conversations that I've been a party to.


Umbad: Of course my life improved after I stopped sleeping with my teddy bear
***
Umbad: I hate pingpong. I can't stand balls being flung at my face.
***
Einosk: (joking about how the word "unagi" sets Umbad to laughing uncontrollably)
Umbad: Hey, if you keep making that joke, I’m really going to get de-sanitised about this whole thing
***
Then they start talking about Star Trek
Umbad: Personally, I’m really looking forward to the day when I can say, “Scottie beam me up..”
***
Umbad: It was a highly sophisticated joke, I'm just sorry that you don't get my sense of humor.
***
Umbad: Of course dogs are color-blind. It's not like they're going to be painters.
***
Einosk: Why are poverty statistics like 'half of humanity lives on 2 US dollars a day?'. Why don't they say 400,000 rupiah? Then it sounds like a lot......... I'm not sure if I got the conversion right.
***
Einosk: If the vet could treat him (office hamster) or perform surgery, we'd do it. But unfortunately, hamster science has not evolved to that stage.
***
Raymond: (For bulimics at the end of dinner) Let's just pay up, and throw up.


And that's intellectual exchange.

Quitting Fantasies

Me: Declaring to BF that I'm leaving and him not being able to change my mind.

Chocolatini: Being the ONLY one in charge of a major, politically important conference and quit a couple of days before the event.

Einosk: Going up to the Big Boss, handing him a pile of cash (a month's salary), and saying, "Here's your money. Go to hell."

Umbad: Just not showing up at the office one day.

Raymond: Leaving his resignation letter on the boss's desk the day he leaves for the summer and people only noticing a couple of months later (meanwhile, his salary keeps coming into his bank account).

Supernonsense: Getting into a fight and then getting called into BF's office. BF tells her, "you can't do that if you want to work here" and she's like "well i don't WANT to work here" (she then takes resignation letter out of cleavage and flings it at him)

Muse

OK, this post can't wait.
1. I went to the Muse concert last night. Matt Bellamy is so fucking talented. Voice and guitar aside, what impressed me the most was him on the keyboards. Technical proficiency and amazing energy.
2. I was in the crush of the crowd way up front. Couldn't smoke, couldn't drink. So I decided to leave for a while and get a drink. The girl at the counter was a sweetheart. I ordered a double whiskey coke and she gave me one without charging me extra. Needless to say, it packed a wallop. So I went up to the building in the back, sat on the steps and chilled out for a while. It was kinda fun, dancing and yelling all by myself.
3. The people I was with started appearing (apparently, I was on the way to where the bathrooms were). I belatedly realized that the concert was over. And I couldn't believe it. As we walked out, I baffled the security with my intellect and Vulcan logic:
Me: Is the concert really over?
Them: Yes.
Me: Is it over enough for me to get on the stage?
Them: (Puzzled, but programmed) Uh, yes.
I thereafter ran up to the stage and got one foot on before they scrambled over to stop me.
4. Went to Public House after, to meet up with Natalia and gang, Muse crowd in tow. Had one chocolatini. Cheated at pool and lost two games. But, hey, I couldn't shoot straight by then.
5. The Muse crowd leaves. I get these messages on my phone that Muse is at Loof, where they are. I'm like, no way. Aswhin's like, yes, for real. OK, whatever, Public House was almost closing by then anyway. So I arrive at Loof.

Now this is the point of my indignation and this whole post.

1. So the band was at the bar. I didn't want to be all groupie-like and made a point of not talking to Matt Bellamy. So I chit chatted with the other guy, who I THOUGHT was the drummer. This morning, to my utter mortification, I found out that he was just a random keyboardist. I sidled up to a ROADIE. Who, by the way, was perfectly nice and had no pretensions. For a ROADIE.
2. After that whole episode, I came back to our table and found myself talking to some OZ dude named Elias or Elliot. WHO TOLD ME THAT HE WAS A ROADIE FOR MUSE. He was all blah blah blah about where they're going to next and I was all "don't you secretly wish you were working for Radiohead?". I may have even introduced him to someone else (but it was probably this psycho groupie from Taiwan, so that doesn't really count). I just found out this morning that he's a fucking banker for BNP Paribas. Sonofabitch.


Not that I was impressed at all with his whole "I work with Muse" schtick

to junior on his 35th birthday

there is a long and unending string
that ties my heart to yours;
yank it, and i’ll falter.

you can leave it slack,
you can reel it in,
keep it in your pocket and carry it around.

not just one tie but many;
not binding but a bond;
not an always straight line;
theseus in the labyrinth—
you at its aperture, me at its center.


Manila. 5th January 2007.

Resolutions, Typically

In no particular order:

1. Write more
2. Love better
3. Be less evil
4. Smoke less and be healthier
5. Listen to more pinoy music and read the Philippine Daily Inquirer daily
6. Get shit together again, work-wise
7. Manage finances
8. Get involved in a performance art
9. Resume French lessons
10. Work toward grad school again


what was that about a leopard and its spots?