I'm of consenting age

And so this bloated weekend is coming to a close, and I hate it. I've done nothing but sleep all weekend, give or take a bottle of Mudslide or a couple of glasses of RhumCoke, some books I've been meaning to get to, and mad scribbling on my journal. I just want this weekend to go on, and on, and on. But it can't. Damn it, it can't. And then, there are other things.

On Pseudo-Writing
The subtitle is an attempt at self-deprecation. Just enough that you'll feel a little sympathetic while I recount how blah writing's been for me lately. It's all part of my grand plan. Anyway. I've tried to look over and revise some pieces I'm thinking of applying with, to the Heights workshop, and even though I just want to grab a convenient stapler and whack my laptop, I've got to grin and bear this, because meh, if I don't get in, or don't make the deadline, at least I've got two new stories for Acorn Purposes, that is, acorns, term borrowed from Stephen King's Bag of Bones, these refer to those stories you exhume when a deadline's coming up, or you need to show somebody you're actually writing. If you're wondering, I've run out of acorns. Everything's been trashed in workshops and I'm not feeling up to touching them yet, or published/about to be (yey), or written while I was about thirteen (with titles like, “Deliverance” and “Twisted Angel” and “In Moveless Woe” and the borrowed, “Crash Course in Polite Conversations”). I need to stock up. I get this indescribable panic when I look at my file folder labeled “!Completed Stories” and realize there's nothing there that I can use.

And so I'm writing. Or trying to, given the ridiculousness of senior year, the myriad demands of life and love as we know it. As we know it. I started a story a couple of days ago, and the main character's a teenager with the proverbial chip on her shoulder, and I love her so much, but then Sparkly Literary Moodliness gets in the way, and so that story – with the working title of “Stay” – has been put on hold, indefinitely. And then there's this other story, about two pages of which I started writing this afternoon, and it's in the first person, and said first person is a jaded old coot, and so schizophrenic little me has been bitchy since then. And both are about love. Because I'm eighteen, and apparently a girl, and that's all I can write about, you know? Like, because love is like the only thing that's like, yeah, worth writing about, talking about at 3 AM in a McDonald's, crying over while The Cure plays in the background. All you need is love. And who said, “If love is the answer, what is the question?” Not in the mood to Google it. Just know it's not mine, and I don't know who said it. Yeah.

There's a blinky deadline on all the walls I look at. Plus I've been spending the past few weeks narrating my life as I lived it. This is madness. This is Shpartah.

UPDATE: My laptop officially refuses to turn on. I've whacked the adapter a couple of times, which usually works, but now. Yeah. Dead screen. Literally. God damn it.

On My TBR-Mountain
And perhaps I'm compensating for something, but I've been amassing quite a lot of books, half of which I haven't even touched. God. I do admit that I am gloating. Because most of you friends and frenemies like books, and even though some of the titles here do not appeal to you because either they're not just your type, or you're a snob, haha, I kid, anyway, I know you'll understand the un/fortunate condition of Book Whore-age.

My name is Sasha Martinez, and I am a Book Whore. Book whore, you know. You've got to buy that book, because even though you stink at math, you know that the odds of finding the same book at that idiotly priced price is nil. Jesus. And damn it, never mind if you won't have any money left to feed yourself for a week, you have to buy that Hoffman, because Christ, how many pristine hardcover editions of Skylight Confessions will practically throw itself at you?It's a hopeless condition, I've long ago accepted that.

Many thanks to my mother and Pancho, who are crucial in encouraging this disease. That is, I will send my mother a message, something like, “I'm broke, but I've got A.S. Byatt on my bookshelf.” And she'll pretend to give me a sermon on me being too thin, but then we've always been those strange girls whose top three material priorities consist of food at third place, with shoes/clothes and books vying for first, with books bitch-slapping shoes/clothes most of the time. And then there is Pancho. I don't know a lot of people who'll gleefully spend five hours in a bookstore, digging through the discount bin, or going through the overload-age of the shelves on the fourth floor of NBS Superbranch at Cubao. He understands when I screech, “OMGWTFBBQ, it's Toot and Puddle! For 150!” or mutter, “God, I am so hungry – is that Janet Fucking Fitch?”or whisper all-too-reverentially, “It's so cheap. Thank God for stupid people,” never mind the meanness, the inanity, the addiction. One kick-ass memory: the two of us wheeling our pushcart of purchases out of the bookstore, stopping for a cigarette break, and realizing our palms are covered in nerd-dirt. Ah, sweet.

Basa pa. You can never have too much books. And on that note: malapit na akong mag-birthday. I can never have too much books. You hear me? I will be nineteen soon, and I can never have too much books!

Ahem. And a happy week to all of you.