07 April 2007

Mild devastation

That Will to Divest
Kay Ryan

Action creates
a taste for itself.
Meaning: once
you've swept
the shelves
of spoons
and plates
you kept
for guests,
it gets harder
not to also
simplify the larder,
not to dismiss
rooms, not to
divest yourself
of all the chairs
but one, not
to test what
singleness can bear,
once you've begun.
Made some more cleaning today. It hurt my head and body. Reaching the top of the cabinet, inhaling dust, and sorting—especially sorting—make me weak.

I filled three big plastic bags with trash: student handbooks, bookmarks, scrapbooks. I put one bookmark in the plastic bag and thought, why not throw the other two bookmarks? I forgot my reasons.

I kept all those things before, thinking it'd be nice to look at them in the future and that I might need them. It wasn't nice to look at the free Jollibee pocket calendar and I cannot use it now. No nostalgia's even slightly evoked by it.

Am done with the closet. There's still the study table to organize, and another small cabinet of files and... stuff. I need to fix everything for me to sleep well in my room, because having my own place is still far ahead in the future.

At one point I wanted to burn everything and start life from scratch.

06 April 2007

My playing is my praying*

1.
Afternoon, I was watching my friend, Heizel, on ABC 5's reality show, "Ang Pagbabalik". But I'm not going to talk about Heizel (my friends and I will talk about her and the show when we meet, hehe).

The show was basically a retreat recorded for public consumption this lent. Watching, I was imagining my self there with a different group of people. I always enjoyed having retreats in high school. We go to a clean, open place; trees abound, birds chirruping; songs were sung, good breakfast was shared. And I must admit I had satisfiction crying with people.

I only felt reluctant to get involved in sharing life stories, for the plain reason that I had no stories to share. I felt experience-poor.

Not that I have tons of experience now. But when I was younger, I only had fantasies. Now I have fantasies and failures. When I speak of what I dream of, there already is an anxiety in knowing I may or may not make it; and that making it is not the end of sadness.

2.
Retreat master, Father Bert, discussed the different types of prayer. I was glad he mentioned that by being aware, we are praying—some think attention is the highest form of prayer. And I believe that is why art exists, because we pay careful attention. I trust art is not made, but discovered.

3.
I cleaned my closet. I'd gone through many closet-cleanings and I kept a lot of clothes, thinking I would use them in the future. Now I got rid of them.

*From a pianist

04 April 2007

You don't know me

Whenever I hear someone say that—in defense, I think, Well of course I don't!

I am never one to claim I know a person. Or say, Ah, si ano, hindi niya gagawin 'yon, kilala ko 'yon, e... I am always ready to be surprised by people both in a good and bad way.

03 April 2007

Word. A silence charged with sweetness*

The moon has been terribly violent these nights. It wakes me up at 3 in the morning. Pulling down the curtain doesn't do any good, because my curtain's too thin—you know how hot it is in the Philippines.

In other news, I am completely immersed in Seamus Heaney's book, Death of a Naturalist.
The Play Way
Seamus Heaney

Sunlight pillars through glass, probes each desk
For milk-tops, drinking straws and old dry crusts.
The music strides to challenge it,
Mixing memory and desire with chalk dust.

My lesson notes read: Teacher will play
Beethoven's Concerto Number Five
And class will express themselves freely
In writing. One said 'Can we jive?'

When I produced the record, but now
The big sound has silenced them. Higher
And firmer, each authoritative note
Pumps the classroom up tight as a tyre,

Working its private spell behind eyes
That stare wide. They have forgotten me
For once. The pens are busy, the tongues mime
Their blundering embrace of the free

Word. A silence charged with sweetness
Breaks short on lost faces where I see
New looks. Then notes stretch taut as snares. They trip
To fall into themselves unknowingly.
* From Seamus Heaney's book, Death of a Naturalist

02 April 2007

Fourteen/twenty-four: Still, fool

Just saw The Virgin Suicides (thanks, Jen, for the gift DVD).

At the beginning, I envied Lux for being the elusive object of Trip's desire. Trip, who was every girl's fantasy. After the Lisbon sisters' suicides, he, already an adult, was interviewed and said his love for Lux was the real thing.

When I was in high school, my goals consisted of writing a graphic novel, find the nearest available puppy love and construe it as the real thing. Just finding things to call mine. I never had both.

By the next half of the film, it was suggested that Trip had been mentally unstable. I felt a strange relief, because their love failed, or that there wasn't any solid love at all.

After the many small accumulations in life, there is this and that that I proudly and securely call mine. But I'm still confused with reality. It's very hard for me to convince other people that I love them as well as it is hard for me to be convinced I am loved.

Finally Trip said that he was happy he experienced it, because other people just don't. It being the thing he and Lux supposedly shared.

The relief had been taken away from me. What if it indeed was the real thing? He left Lux alone in the field, in the cold. —Left her the burden of their irresponsibility. He promised Lux's parents he'd take her home. But what if for the briefest moment there was really love? That they've had it and I just won't?

01 April 2007

April fool's smile

There, I've done it. I mean, here, I've done it.

Due to my OC-ness, I'd been itching to alter, make more functional this blog's template. And for the longest time, I badly desired to have the codes cleaned. Now I can breathe. Now my chest is light.

As you can see, people change, but not really. I moved to a different house, but virtually retained all the furniture. I would've gone for a totally different look, but with lack of technical skills (or money to hire a webpage designer) and time, I'd have to settle with this skin. All that I need is here: labels, hierarchical display of archives, recent comments feed, selective expandable posts, and you.

This weblog is important to me, if it's not obvious yet. And so dear Blogger, I hope you continue to improve your services. I shall remain loyal to you.

*

Anyway, with this online journal's overhaul, I've just completed another item on my birthday to-do list and it really feels good! (I can't believe I'm using an exclamation point in a tone such as this! Now there're three exclamation points! [including that one], so you should understand that it indeed feels good).

RaSelAnd speaking of my birthday, I thank Mich for the personalized birthday cake. I usually get furious when my name's misspelled or mispronounced, but that time, I just smiled and thought, ang jologs.

Now let me get dirty. The truth is this is just a test post. I want to see if I got the codes right. I believe I did, since there should be no other way.

A special mention to Alts, because I envied some of the features in her personal blog; that if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't know there were such features and it was also in that blog where I got the links to the hacks.

As for Diwata Nakpil, don't ever think that I killed her, or will. She's very much alive and active, and she's currently writing under the pseudonym, Razel.

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