Fight the fire that's in your hand

1
A few months ago, when it seemed like everyone around me was getting their congratulatory Palanca letters, I went back to my dark corner and banged away at my laptop, trying to shoo away the hurt and, yes, the outrage of missing out on all the excitement. (Call me childish, fuck you, haha.) Beside the sincere happiness for friends, and yes, pride (in Marie's case, oh god, you make me want to cry, I love you, I am unexplainably proud of you, sweetie!), there was resignation, yes, that I should yet again be content with living vicariously, and yes, damn it, the confirmation of the goddamned fact that the world doesn't owe me anything, none at all. And so I banged away, banged away at the laptop, came up with a story, then another, coming up for air to drink with friends, to get some hugs and awkwardly given pep talks.

But what nagged me, damn it, what was stuck in my goddamned craw was my mother. I wanted to give her something tangible, damn it, something that could make her incredibly proud of me, more proud of me than she'd ever been. I wanted to give her the honor of walking on Palanca-winner-dust-spattered carpets of some hotel, in shoes we'd bought specifically for the occasion. I wanted to go up on a stage (or whatever it is) and grin at her while I hold a medal, and the, hehe, the check. I wanted to give her a hug, what medal there was between our sternums (it's her fault I'm flat-chested), cool at first, then warming to the skin beneath our dresses. I wanted to tell her, "Mom, I won a Palanca. Apir!" But I didn't. And I couldn't do all that, not this year, no.

I sent her a message, a couple of days after all the winners of the category I'd joined in had surfaced: "Mom, I wish I could tell you that I won a Palanca, and that it was for you. But I didn't. Sorry."

And she replied with, "Oh love, that doesn't matter, and yes, this is cliched, but there's always next year. You will always make me proud, Palancas don't matter, not really. Know what? Just give me your diploma, and I'll be the happiest mother in the world."

And I cried, and I couldn't send her a reply, because I was too preoccupied, bawling with my face buried in the nearest welcoming chest, which smelled of wood chips, soap, High Endurance, a good night's sleep, a hell of a good morning, and that moment when you sit down with the clothes that have dried on the clothesline and you just need to smooth the creases with your chafed palms.

"What's wrong?" he asked, and I showed him my phone, and he kissed the top of my head, and he said, "Awww." And then I punched him on the stomach, and he laughed, and I knew exactly what he meant.


2
The first time a certain award-winning, highly esteemed poet (buwahaha) made me cry (yes, this wasn't a one-time thing), he made a shot at my mother. This was at the heels of him saying my mother was hot. (Men are weird that way.) And then a few seconds later, he said, in not so many words, and I do not quote (so italics na lang): Your mother, she is bad, yes.

See, I had launched into the inner workings of my family, of how my brother and I sneak out at the dead of the night to share some Lethal Mentoses, of how my mother always let us go our own ways, make our own choices, but never letting us forget that the family was always there for us. All that mushy stuff that I couldn't really verbalize, and so I just gave examples. Poor ones, apparently, because then Mr. Poet said something, implying my mother was a bad mother, and before I could reach for the nearest beer bottle and rid the world of a great literary man-dude, the glare I'd directed at him had turned wobbly, and before I knew it, I was trying to stoically stare at my shoes instead, and damn it, I was crying. Gah, guerilla-girl tactics, crying, yech. Conscience-ridden me, fuck it, decided I'd have more satisfaction fantasizing his death by molasses and fire ants, rather than me doing it myself with any blunt object, or my elbow (which is also considered a blunt object anyway).

Mr. Poet apologized, and I think he knew he should never tread on that plane again, because I may have cried that one time, but the next time it should ever happen, I will draw blood. Promise. Reminds me of the time when my principal kept hinting that I was the spawn of damned people, and my head was abuzz with, One word about my mother, you hag, and your face will blend in to that blackboard behind you not too nicely.

Mr. Poet said, "Oh, don't cry na, Sasha, sorry. I said your mom was hot naman, di ba?" Orayt.


3
My mother wrote me a letter a year ago, for an Ethical Will project for a Nonfiction seminar. And this is what I wrote for that project, or tried to write (yes, my nonfiction sucks ass):

The night before this paper was due, my mother sent me a text message: “I have emailed the values. Please insert where you see fit – Never lose your sense of humor and your belief in the wonders of one-liners. Approach life with passion not timidly and safely. Do not be afraid to get hurt but be afraid if it does not make you stronger.”

Reading the message aglow on my screen, I was struck with some sort of trepidation. My mother has never been the sort of person to give out Hallmark cards during birthdays. She’s never been the type of mother who baked cookies on weekends or demanded hugs and kisses as she came home from work. My mother is an abysmal cook. Maybe because it’s inevitable that she be compared to my father, who does all the cooking, and with good food, at that. Over the years, my mother’s repertoire has changed little: sushi, salsa, chili, tacos, penne with seafood sauce and molo. The one time she baked some brownies for us, they came out rock-hard and she was forever banned from approaching the oven by a two-meter radius – banned by me.

She’d not the type of mother who would ask you aside and talk to you about your life, begging for some tidbits about boys, school, boys and more boys. She doesn’t ask, “How are you feeling, dear?” as she tucks a wayward curl behind my ear. My mother asks, “How’s school?” And I would mumble the token, “Okay naman,” all the while, not-so-surreptitiously making a beeline for the exit. When given a more honest answer like, “I’m miserable. I hate school,” she asks, “Why? What’s wrong?” and we’d get to the bottom of it, but not without making some U-turns and detours here and there, talking about the latest The Simpsons episode, or some favorite wrestler, fencing all the while with one-liners from TV, mostly cartoons. An inquiry about my location would be a paraphrase from Dexter’s Laboratory, complete with mangled accents:

“Sasha, where are you?”

“Right here.”

“Where here?”

“Here here.”

“I don’t see you . . .”

With the last line being said together: “Uh-oh, I think Dee Dee’s become the caaar!”

Completely inane, as you can see.

The mushy words that linger between us like secret farts have all been uttered under duress, complete with squirming and really awkward laughter. Happy Birthday? Hug. Happy New Year? Hug. Merry Christmas? A hug, plus a kiss if she gave me something really pretty.

My mother shows her love in a markedly different way from all the “normal” mothers out there. (Yes, all of us, including her, admit that my mom is abnormal and weird.) She does it matter-of-factly and in this way, she manages to surprise me. Like before college, she asked me if I wanted to be a writer. When I said yes, she asked me to shift into this course. When I thought about applying for a writers’ workshop, she told me to go through with it, only if I wanted to. I did, and she let me. Of course, she listened, patiently, as I told her of my irrational fear of flying – mainly because I haven’t done it before. She listened and told me, “Come on,” with her signature smirk.

But I know that I can tell her anything because I know I will be heard as an adult. And she has a way of putting things into perspective for me. When I lost a phone, I fretted and cried and she said, “It’s only a phone. Sayang, sure, but we love you more than that.” And she was hugging me. When I sunk into episodes of depression, she’d call me everyday, saying as little as possible, and our small talk slowly pulled me out of my funks.

No, my mother is not the conventional mother of fragrant kitchens and spotless aprons. My mother is the mother who laughs at cartoons with us, the one who goes with me to spelunk for books in second-hand bookstores, the one who squirms at a hug, the one who occasionally slips and calls us “love” once in a while.

The following is a letter from her to me. Reading it at such an opportune time once again put things in perspective for me. These tidbits from my mother are things I am grateful to receive, and something that I hope I will carry with me, as Hallmark as that may sound.

*

Dear Daughter,

In terms of material wealth, there is not much, if none at all that your father and I can bequeath to you. It saddens me personally as I have made it my vow that my children will never experience how it feels not to have money in the pocket, to have to ask a parent and have her give you a litany of how hard life is, that money does not grow on trees, blah, blah and more blah. I have made my needs of the least priority if my children have urgent needs of their own. Perhaps this has made me a push-over. This is of no consequence, however, as long as they will know the feeling of belonging. My life is governed by past rejections that my perspective has been warped by what not to do. The values that I wanted to impart to my children are based on everything that is opposite to my personal experiences and my hurts yet with the attempt to intersperse it with the sense of right and wrong. My upbringing was one that is sheltered because of my mother who for selfish reasons did not allow me to go out anywhere not even for a Girl Scout jamboree. With you and your brothers, I took the other route and allowed you to mingle with your peers, to join activities and thus expose you to different environments, opportunities, scenarios, judgments which I am hoping will translate to future intelligent decisions based on actual knowledge and experience rather than vicarious learning.

Along the way, I try to guide by example hoping that my actions will be passed on and lived by my daughter and sons. I am aiming for financial stability and independence. To achieve this, it should be done through hard work and self-reliance. Each task is important on its own and there is no job too small or too big that it cannot be done the best possible way it can be done. Everyone should be treated with fairness and respect. Prejudice or bias does not have a place in this family. Always carry with you a sense of honor. Hold yourself liable to your commitments and meet them whenever possible and always try to make everything possible. Let no one belittle you not even yourself. Brand and luxury is not a priority. Comfort is. Make this your mantra – form and substance, substance and form. Do not approach anything armed with only one. Always take them together. Set your immediate objectives, however selfish they may be. However, this should only be at the start. Your objectives must always end with plans to pay forward, to give back what you have been blessed with through hard work. Stay practical. Never let your heart rule your mind. Focus on your objectives. Keep your eyes on the prize and do not deviate. There is always the right time and place. Analyze all actions with pros and cons. There is no fate. There is no destiny. Your future is set by the choices that you make. Do not over analyze either that you will never act. Your first instinct is usually always right. Be forthright. Do not hide behind lies and half-lies and as the UP people say, the truth will set you free. Face up to your decisions. Do not fret and try to anticipate other people’s reactions and, more importantly, do not dwell on their reactions. However, if you decide on something, you should be able to prove yourself right.

Your father cannot stress enough the importance of family. Between him and me, he is the one who has heart. He’s Homer. I am no Marge, sadly. What I am is a mother who wants to see all her children happy, content, leading useful and productive lives and who watches out for each other. The success of one is the success of the other. I am not talking of dole-outs. I am talking of time and effort and follow through to make each one’s life meaningful. All I can give right now is unconditional love, free of judgment but filled with action plans and guidance. And hugs. Yes, really.

I love you, Elisha. I say that with implicit fact rather than sweet sentimentality. Chill.

Always,
Mami (I am your)



4
I cry easily. A compliment, a spontaneous hug, an e-mail, that Globe commercial when there's a man in a wheelchair and there's a woman fussing over him and he sends her a text message and the woman looks up and smiles at him really soft-like. I cry easily, and even though I'll probably lynched by the gliterry literary world, I mean every tear when I mean every tear. Seeing my name in print, for example, or on a bulletin board along EDSA walk, those kinds of tears. And then my mother, who's caught me off-guard more times than I care to count.

I remember when my Pollyanna essay, Everybody Has a Story appeared in the Youngblood column and I called her while she was in the office, and when she came home, she had eight copies of the newspaper and a tub of strawberry ice cream, and she told me, laughing, how she'd knocked on the metal door of every closing sari-sari store just to get the copies. I remember, when I got accepted in Ateneo for AB European Studies, she told me to write a letter to the administration, asking to be shifted to BFA Creative Writing, because that's what I really want, wasn't it? And I remember, after a class with Sir Krip, when my short story The Return was discussed, and he'd told me during consultation, "I can't teach you anything else. You're a writer." And I called my mom, and we did some mutual giggling. I remember when that story got published in Free Press, and it was my mother I called first, and she kept saying Wow, and she kept saying, You're first short story published, in Free Press. Oh god, that's a big thing, right? and I remember how I stayed on the line as she Googled what Free Press was, and what it could mean. I remember that a year ago, in Calatagan, Martin sent me a text message, congratulating me on some good writerly news. And I ran to the nearest Internet shop (hard to do, in Calatagan, hello), and before I could think of the damage to my ridiculously unhealthy body, I ran to my mother, who was curled up in the bunk bed reading Byatt, and I said, "Mom. I got in. Dumaguete." I remember how she helped me pack, making a table of what I should be wearing for the day, and how we both forgot to pack some underwear, and so all my bras and panties were stuffed at what available nook and cranny there was. I remember her calling me up right after my first story was discussed, and I told her everything they said, and then I called her after my second story was discussed, I remember this phone call happened while everyone was in a Dance Tribute, and I was weaving my way in and out of the lawn, trying to keep my voice low. I remember when I came back, and my eyes were glazed, and we were in a cafe in Quezon, and she ordered some coffee, and she said, "You want to talk about it?" And I said, "I can't." And she said, "Ew, I don't think I want to know then." I remember when another story was published, and she laughed, and said, "Good job, love." I remember when Sarge Lacuesta sent me a (suspicious-looking, haha) email, informing me that The Return was a finalist in this year's Free Press Awards, and I'd stared, dumbfounded, at the computer screen, and then it was my mother I first thought of, and I sent her a message (short on load), and she replied with, and I quote, "WOOHOO." And then she called me and squealed, and said, "WOOHOO" again. I remember sending manic messages to her during the ceremony, telling her I had to go to the bathroom real bad, screw everything, and her telling me to Calm down. Apparently, B. loses her hair when she's stressed, and you lose your bowels. And I remember I texted her, "Didn't get anything, save for a box of matches. I'm off to get drunk." And I remember she replied with, "Okay. But not too drunk. You've got class tomorrow." I remember when I saw my name on the Heights bulletin board, telling me I was a fellow, and I remember I told her first. I remember the morning of the workshop, and she sent me a message, "Have fun. Chin up when criticism goes your way. Don't let your head grow big with whatever praise they give you." And I remember coming down from Antipolo, having lunch with her, and we both didn't have to say anything. I remember when Marra Lanot of Graphic told me This Fleet of Shadows would be published soon, and I remember my mother telling me, "You never cease to amaze me." I remember when I got the Heights issue came out, and I told her I had two stories there, and she said, "Yay, love. You never cease to amaze me, kid." And I remember her telling me, after reading Quick, the Tomatoes, "You never cease to amaze me. Can you really smoke aphids out?" And I remember I cried because of that, but I replied that yes, you really can smoke aphids out. I remember, just last night, telling her, "Mom, oh my god, the story in Graphic is out! Page 42! And Sir Krip's column, buwahahaha!" And she replied with, "Ah, wonderful. Congratulations! Where can I get a copy?" And I remember, how, just this morning, I told her how a professor had told me, "This girl can write," over that overly dramatic story of mine about the Japanese Occupation, and I remember that I quoted a barf-able line to her, "I truly have nothing to live for. And that makes me the perfect candidate to die for anything at all," and I remember how my mother wrote me, "Simply amazes me how you meld seemingly disparate words and turn them into a story." And I remember how I just sat back, and just stared at the computer, and tried to telepathically hug my mother, trying not to cry, because I was in Mag:net then, and Sir Rock was beside me, and it didn't seem polite to cry while he was staring at a picture of Sisig-stuffed Sili.


5
I wanted to make this as short as a paragraph, but you know how things are.


6
From Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson: "You said, 'I Love You.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I Love You' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. I did worship them but now I am alone on a rock hewn out of my own body."

Wala lang. Bzzzt.

They taped over your mouth

1 – My dad called me, said, “Magaling na raw magsulat ang anak ko a.” And I laughed, and joked, “Ay, kagaling raw nireng anak niyo, kagaling.” And I remembered how, in Calatagan, I’d be walking with my grandmother from our day in the market, and she’d stop by, it seemed to me then, every freaking house on the street, making idle chatter with the neighbors. And I’d listen to her talk to them, say, “Parang uulan ngayong hapon,” and then, she’d say, again, “Parang uulan ngayong hapon,” but slower now, almost as if the last thought was just for herself, something gentler than a mutter, something more iterative than a mumble. Ah, words.

2 – A week or so ago, P. got Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores and Of Love and Shadows. And so I sat down, ignored everything that I should've been doing, and read Memories, and hours later, I was done, and I had this gem: “Don’t let yourself die without knowing the wonder of fucking with love.” Amen.

2.1 – I hereby resolve that before I turn twenty, I will have read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and this one, and that one), and not just have skimmed them, looking for the juicy parts. Pramis.

3 – Medyo late news 'to, ha, pero mahirap lang mawal sa utak ko. During the Heights book launch, AHWW co-fellow Brandz handed me a contributor’s copy. The pretty, hardbound one. The kind I never knew existed until about a year ago, when Martin brandished his, and I growled, “They give you that when you get published? I am so sending them my stuff.” Anyway. There I was, wearing pink (the pinkness of my shirt is relevant, it just is), with the book nestled in my spread palms, and I thought, Shit. The kind of Shit you say when you’re not exactly about to cry, more like so giddy and gaga over everything that you just want to go on a Hug Rampage. That kind of Shit. Yes, kinilig ako. (Translation: Yes, I so got kilig.) I opened the book to the table of contents, saw my name (saw my name again, buwahahaha). I ran to P., (and to Martin, to Marie, to Panch the Younger, and to Petra, haha), and I said, “Oh god, look.” Wasak lang.

Siguro dahil may history kaya wasak na wasak ako, haha. Siguro. I remember, freshman year, I submitted about five poems, and five short stories (sinagad e), and each and every one of them got rejected. Fine. Haha. It’s emo daw kasi (and this was before they all started using the word – iba talaga ‘pag pasimuno, hehe), pa-gothic. Astig lang na meron na na-publish na ‘ko sa wakas, haha. That’s the sentiment, haha: finally.

Wala sa isip kong magyabang. Kinikilig lang talaga ako. Malabo siguro, may mga iba diyan kung saan-saan na na-publish (parang pinaparinggan ko sarili ko, ang labo, haha), pero, eh, basta. Ayoko i-analyze masyado, pero eto masasabi ko: It’s almost the same feeling when you get yourself a new pair of skinny jeans, and you try them on for the first time, and you’re hopping around the damned room because they’re just so freaking tight on you, and then when you’ve calmed the zipper and the buttons down, ang sarap ng kapit ng tela sa hita mo, every centimeter of your legs can feel the rasp of that denim, the weave, even the stitching running along the side. So, yeah, beyond the observation that I wear really tight pants, that’s what this particular publication feels like. Apir!

(At sa wakas, na-publish din kami ni Martin sa (technically) isang anthology, or publication. Sabi naming dati, at least once, simulan namin sa Heights. Sure, you have to flip over the book to see each of our names, pero okay na’ko dun, for now. Cool lang, hehe.)

4 – I have been chanting, “Get thee to the nunnery!” since yesterday afternoon, and it is, quite frankly, driving me crazy.

And it was all yellow

While tweaking the short story “Marga” (for FA workshop class), some thoughts, here are:

1 - It’s hard to give a convincing description of a very important tree when you don’t spend too much time thinking about them. What was it that Zoe said? Something about hating nature in general, but trees are pretty? Zoe? Anyhoo. This will not turn into a moralistic soliloquy (I love how that word’s spelled) about the environment, about trees dying, about other things the environment people are worried about. I am simply saying that when it comes to a pretty obvious objective correlative, I am epically failing. Like, okay, the tree. It’s big. And gnarly. Sort of brown, but more green. That’s about it.

2 - “Marga” is the story of Nora Ortiz, who, as some of you may know, is Michelle and Alice’s stepmother. This thing has been brewing in my head for quite some time now, and a couple of months ago, it simply refused to be written. (I remember that I’d despaired about this to [Sir] Larry Ypil, and he’d told me something like, “Sasha, I think you should move on.”) Anyway, I was banging away on my laptop, talking about the mangoes in various stages of rot on top of the hill (you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, do you?) and it just came to me, like, yeah, you know, whapaaak! – I’d described Nora, in “The Catherine Theory” as: She smelled like mangoes, picked at just the right time. And there I was, alone in a messy fall-out shelter of an apartment, whooping and screaming at the gahdamned synchronicity of it all. Bad writer ba kung hindi mo talaga sinadya yung mga bagay? Bahala na kayo sa opinyon niyo. Basta, I love it when it all comes together (*rubbing hands together*). Good job, subconscious. Or unconscious. Whatever. Wee.

3 - I was an idiot to volunteer to have this butchered for FA workshop class. And be butchered, it will. The story screams, Yes I know this particular tree is quite important, but I simply do not like trees right now.

4 - I do like trees, though. I do. (See "Pancho Birthday Renga 2008" below.)

5 - The computer tells me I can’t describe the leaves as aflurry. But it makes sense, I want to tell the computer. It makes perfect sense! Leaves! Aflurry! How about a-flurry, then? Oh, never mind. Tree's leaves are are green-ish.

6 - Uh, yeah. Midnight deadline.

PS - Fire trucks are whizzing along Katipunan, and they're, like, making wang-wang, you know. And me, stuck here in the internet shop, having uploaded the short story for the class, I have to wonder: Are they going to my dorm because they better not because oh god my books, my red boots, Donkeybert! Ahem. On my way now, keep yer fingers crossed.

C'mere, I'ma feed you a leaf

Pancho Birthday Renga 2008
by Various Artists (harhar)

I am thinking of a tree,
or a leaf, the lone downward spiral
I will think of again in a colder hour
when the space between words allows
the murmuring of certain brown things
that used to gleam and glint upon flight,
and still do, sunlight catching perfect
geometries, the way old pictures seem
so precise – brown background, brown
clothes. Pigments turning into a shade
of sepia, setting a saffron brilliance upon faces,
upon the length of one’s arm resting.
But then comes the turning
of season, coming of green, and other vibrant,
innocent birthings. This is a leaf,
I say to the tree. Thank you for this.
I am held in awe.

*

Marami akong puwedeng sabihin. Pero sa amin na lang yun.
Happy birthday, love. You are now divisible by 5, and/or 7.
Good job. Apir.

Feel my bones on your bones

Taking a break from work:

1 – Taking a break from the paper I have to finish by early tonight – an analysis of the Magsaysay and Garcia administrations – I picked up the book Karyl lent me (and I want it, not-so-subtle nudge nudge, wink wink, haha). In my new cave at the dorm (yeah, moved a couple of rooms down the hall), I read, and, some odd hours later, finished reading Belle de Jour: Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl. Yeah, I know. It’s quite entertaining, funny, shamelessly honest, and overall an intelligent read, and I say this last bit with my Serious Face on. Whoever this Anonymous is (ah, that long-running joke about Anonymous being a prolific bastard, harhar), some girly applause to you. Yes, this might all be fictional, written by some middle-aged balding man with too much of a gut, smoking fat cigars, while his pet poodle rests against his pennyloafers . . . and this last bit just went on too long.

If only prostitution were as lucrative here in our sunny-muddy little country, as it is in England, particularly in London. (See, there is an elephant [or hippo, or whale, or rhino, or whatever ample creature there is around] growing in the room: the matter of my degree. Rich-and-powerful awesomeness with a Creative Writing/Literature diploma seems like a rather dim possibility. And so I’m keeping my options open.)

Also, it’s making me consider, more seriously, writing a purely fictional sex blog. Think of it as a literotic exercise of some sort. And schizophrenic too: why not detail the nonexistent existence of theoretical sex blog author? Why not? I’ll tell you why not: There is this hurdle to leap over: I cannot write a decent sex scene without giggling. Just typing in nipple could send me into paroxysms of seven-year-old laughter. Where’d the sexy-time juju go? My blockmates say it’s because I’m no longer repressed. Foucault says there is no such thing as repression, that society deludes itself with and within a repressive hypothesis. I say, there’s just too much information. Besides, although my imagination is giddy at the thought of writing one squeee-and-squick entry every day, there is such a thing as the creative juices drying up – what the hell is it with these innuendos?

2 – Because I had to finish yet another paper in History (oof, did I just sound like I was complaining? Did I, oh my?), wasn’t able to prepare my application for the Ateneo Nationals [read: didn’t get to actually finish writing any decent story]. Yes, I am vaguely pissed – only vaguely because everything exhausts me these days, from choosing what brand of tissue won’t scrape the skin of my bleep off, to being pissed. I cannot believe I actually prioritized school over my writing (insert ironic little laugh here). Well, the bright side is, I’ve got two-and-half new stories [with my usual WTF titles of “Marga,” “Understanding Fish,” and “The Children of Mira Bella” – I’ve always sucked at titles; methinks every CW curriculum must offer an elective dedicated solely to titling the shit you do] wanting of a couple of sentences to tie them up. And so, there’s always my thesis.

[3 – If you’re interested, I submitted my almost-two-year-old story, the hastily (and ineffectively) revised “These Dark Hours,” for that History class project. It’s got everything: action, romance, betrayal, patriotic bull, Japanese soldiers, water torture, women slipping notes into their camisoles (and I remember asking about five people the question: “Did women wear bras in the forties?”). The assignment, then, for Sir Krip’s fiction class was: develop a love story (about twenty pages) in the time of a great crisis – have one character be conscious of the fact that he may breathe his last in a couple of pages’ time, or bomb the country into itty bits and pieces, or Global Warming. Tempted to go for that last one, but seventeen-year-old me couldn’t think of anything sufficiently romantic about the Earth melting – although a scene pops into the mind: woman lying on her stomach, on a floating piece of ice, in the middle of a freezing ocean, holding on to the near-stranger loverboy submerged in aforementioned freezing ocean. But that one felt rather familiar. Meh. So yeah. Made the lay-out of the story sparkly-er, if only for creative plus points (because in some circles, fiction ain’t creative enough, gah).]

4 – In connection with numbers 1 and 2 above, I have decided to submit something smutty for my thesis workshop class next week – that is, if I finish the damned thing before the Thursday midnight deadline. It’s called "Bones" (get it? get it? ugh). To say that this piece was, erm, inspired by P. and his collection of bulalo/lechon bones would most probably just make you think nasty thoughts – for the record, I speak of the literal kind bones (as opposed to, what, the figurative kind of bones, gah?). Bones. Italicized, bold, underlined, font 25. And yes, being that I find myself the illegal spokesperson for the man’s cute widdle idiosyncrasies – and I know I’ll get in trouble because of that, haha – allow me to say it more clearly: P. collects bones. It’s a rather impressive collection, if decidedly morbid. Downside: the stench is just awful when they rot, or when he marinades them in a concoction of bleach, brake fluid, and whatever liquid there is lying around the house; restaurants probably we think we keep mutated gargantuan puppies as pets when we ask for a doggie bag of every bone that happens to be in the kitchen. But whatever makes the man happy, though objectively disgusting, is, erm, tolerable. Haha!

PS – Googling some do-it-yourself decomposition strategies for P., trying to remember what it was in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" that's being triggered. Upon sight of some really icky sites of graphic walk-throughs of decomposition and skeletonization processes, I had it: It's not the arsenic, you idiot, it was the motherfucking lime! Lime, rarr.

PPS – If y’all would do me a favor, and not tell him that you know about his bones, and his blow torch, and god knows what else I’ve yakked about him, that would be really nice. Hehe. He.

5 – Reading Octavio Paz’ The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism. Blame it on the endless Foucault, and the recent re-call for submissions for the Coming Soon anthology. Long story: The last call for submissions, there I was, staring (giggling) in front of my laptop, hours before the deadline. Needless to say, I did not make it, because by the end of the night, I most probably just picked up a Theo reading to calm the hormones – among other, erm, handy things [I did not mean that to be suggestive, I swear].

Anyway, so there it was, the re-call for submissions (and mental hugs and congratulations to all the writers who got accepted on the first go, esp. almost – birthday girl Margie de Leon, and hunny-bunny Marie, whose poem "If I said I was drawn to the idea of the body," I just commented on a couple of nights ago, saying, Oh god, this is hot, I love it, I really like it) and there I was, thinking Yeah, why not? So I did a round at the library for research [research because the only erotica I’ve been exposed to is the online, typo-ridden smut, but yes, I admit you didn’t need to know that], booed it for not having any Anaïs Nin handy (although hello, Harold Robbins, subjective eww, haha), and found Paz. I don’t know how this will help me, because it’s booty-ful, and makes the probability of me giggling at my own work more, er, probable, but hey. Yeah, whatever.

6 – A quote of some sort is the usual closing for these entries, no? "All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh..." This one's from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, which I need to re-read, not because it's been quite relevant for sometime (ha-haaa, people), but because, well, I want to... Along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, because it turned my then-pubescent brain into moosh.

Now. Back to work.

Somewhere down the road

On School
1 - For Philosophy: Supplementary readings four inches thick? Bring it on. Sasha is (not) reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Plato's Cretan City (although she does giggle when she says, Cretan -- haha, Cretan). Sasha (did not) read The Use of Pleasure anyway, and (randomly highlighted parts of) the introductory volume of The History of Sexuality. Who's a good student, who?

2 - Compilation of works for thesis, deadline October four: How to complete a collection of stories for your fiction class when the crummy (Krame) laptop that contains everything you've ever written refuses to cooperate, to actually turn on when you poke the On button?

3 - History film: I wanted to do a John Torres, settled for Mangled Sasha Martinez and Homicidal Groupmates. The professor was pleased, perky-pleased. And I, to quote, "gave [her] goosebumps" with that paper I wrote on the American Occupation, and the English language (angas eh), and the analysis/slammage of Agoncillo. The groupmates who, less than two days ago, had me on top of their To-Strangle list, I hear, are, I hear, relieved that I actually did not fuck this one up. Meh.

4 -In Theo class, while discussing the book of Amos, on that passage that warns that if the people stop running around in gleeful sin, God will step on mountains, and the mountains will melt. And the teacher asked, "What does it imply, those mountains melting?" And I said, "Global Warming." And everybody laughed. Amen.

5 - Western Classical Lit: Sir Gawain's Green Knight is literally green. Because of some juju Morgan le Fay did, but what matters is that he's literally green. I forgot to ask if he glowed.


On Writing
1 - I need four stories by Monday, and then another by the eleventh. Yes? Yes.

2 - Sasha is happy. Tayo na sa Antipolo: Fellows for this year's Ateneo-Heights Writers Workshop announced, and I'm one of them. Wee, plus a bounce around the room.

3 - Writing? Yes. Uh. Right. "...I know that the words are collecting at the tips of my fingers and that if I don't shake them out over the keyboard they could go backwards and form word clots around my heart. Word clots are worse than blood clots -- because blood clots more or less kill you as soon as they reach a vital area in your body, but word clots just stay, occasionally giving you heartburn with all the things you could have said but didn't." From You Are Here by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan. So, yeah. Bring on them word clots.

Just because we use cheats

1 - Martin sent me a superfantabulous write-up for the yearbook, and it is love. Like I wrote to Martin, although the first part made me squirm (I do not like to imagine myself as a, erm, monument), those last bits made me smile, really smile, and then, yeah, cry a little (and, as I've said to Martin, yet again, making me cry is not exactly that difficult thing to do, but this one's just a whammy). You know that feeling when you're faced with such a seemingly insurmountable delight (weird word choices, but I'll keep them), and you don't know whether to hide under the nearest blanket, or launch yourself to the world and hug the life out of it? That feeling? Yeah. This write-up pretty much rocks that. :) Salamat, Martin. Maraming-maraming salamat. Fluffy pink bunnies are cavorting as we speak.

2 - Some good writerly news: There is Wednesday to look forward to, yes? Yes. If I don't get to bring anything home to my mother (and no self-deprecation here, just a really strong hunch), there's always the free booze I can filch for my proud, darling father. And yes, I said darling father. Cool it. And there's more, yes, there's more. After three years of rejection/snubbery, two stories of mine are set to be published in Heights. There's "Quick, the Tomatoes," and that piece with the long-ass title of, "Because Tomorrow They Come And It Will Be Raining When They Do," which I'm thinking of giving a title-makeover, to something like, "Oh Fuck It." And then another story is getting published in Graphic, "This Fleet of Shadows." I don't know why I'm letting you know all this. Like my legendary write-up says, this is not my thing. But I don't know. Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts, and then I'm going to float. Float. Float. A pat on the back to me. (And now I better go back to writing that paper for Philo, the one about Recto as a possible sexual landscape. Gah.)

3 - This here is a shameless birthday plug. I'm turning nineteen on the second of September. I would like to get a cookie. Preferably Mrs. Fields, because they've gone bankrupt, and I don't think I can live with myself if I've never eaten a goddamned cookie of theirs (hers). Stop sniggering. Mrs. Fields' Cookie. Stop sniggering, damn it. Anyway, a book would be nice too. A couple of days ago, I finally relented, and watched Love in the Time of Cholera with Pancho, though I haven't read the book. So, yeah. Books would be nice too. And a laptop. Maybe some new shoes. And I've always wanted a yellow dress. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

4 - "It's strange how your mind plans ahead for such an eventuality while simultaneously hoping against hope that it will not happen." - from A Friend Like Henry, by Nuala Gardner. Yeah. That's sort of what my mind's running on these past few weeks.

5 - My mom suggested I go as Daphne. You know, the ditzy redhead in Scooby-Doo. But I've always liked Velma. So I don't know. On the 28th, it's either purple leggings, or orange ones. Yeahba. Hay. I planned on going as Sharon Stone's character in Basic Instinct, before she uncrosses her legs. That would be cool. Rawr.

6 - Yeah, I'm just procrastinating. See you, everyone. It's Shpartah time.

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.

Love Me Sexy

1 - Love Me Sexy.
Come on, people, haven't you seen Semi-Pro? "That’s right girl, let me whisper in your ear / Baby wake up, we’re naked and we’re humpin’ sexy / For the last fifteen minutes baby, that’s what’s been happenin’ / Yeah, too late now, it’s on." Watch the movie, if only for the song. Although that Jive Turkey part was priceless. Hm. I think only two people know what I'm talking about.


2 - I'm benta when you're drunk
Apparently, I'm a fantastic comedienne when about 2.4 people in the vicinity are drunk. I'll take that. Oh, love. Waps says I have a blorvely manly-man voice. Blorvely. What a wonderful name for your theoretical child. Hello, these are my kids: That one's Anja, this is Lucas, and that one there, we don't talk about it much, it's name is Blorvely. Blorvely, c'mere boy, c'mere, that's a good kid, who's a good kid? Who's a good kid? Yes, you are, yes, you are! Yes. You. Are! Ah, shit, Blorve, not again! Oh, sorry, we've been trying to potty-train him for about six years now, but I think he takes comfort in bare walls. Hay, that was an awfully belabored point-proving right there. Quite mean, too. Eh.

Give me a bit of space to tell you people that I wasn't drunk. No, I wasn't. That I was swaying only because I was identifying with the motion of the Earth in the most infinitesimal level. That I quoted Neruda because it really felt like the heavens unfastened. That when I asked about seven people if they liked sex, I really meant to say, "A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved," from Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. That when I told everyone, "Dude, I love you. No, no, I don't think you get me -- I. Love. You. Cool, no?" That when I laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more, it was because I was trying to hide the pain (okay, that had me snorting, hahaha, tangina). That I sat on the McDo counter, and crossed my legs because the cashier asked me to. No, I wasn't drunk. Of course I wasn't. Three Vodka Mudshakes, 2 1/2 glasses of RumCoke more Rhum than Coke don't do that to you. Nope, wasn't drunk. No. Apir!

Hahaha, thanks everyone. Mass hug!


3 - In your head
Philo class, Foucault, approach the professor and say, "Father, I might collapse in your class. Can I sit at the back?" Listening to Rey Valera in the study hall, admitting you feel giddy when he sings Maging Sino Ka Man. Unable to explain why you're pissed as hell at girls who wear hair bands (head bands?) in the middle of their skulls, so half their faces are still hidden by their hair. Ooh, stylish.

Thesis class. A workshop piece three weeks - pending. Salamat sa mga nagbasa.

The whole day, dragging your ass around school, feverish though you may be, hugging mango shake and a pack of cigarettes to your chest because those are a few of the fewer things that make you go on, sleepless little missy. Those, and knowing that your frequent disappearances could make a saint give you the finger. (People tell you, You're sick all the time, and you manage to restrain yourself from retorting, Well it's not as all fluffy bunnies and butterflies as I make it look like. People care, me thinks.) Those, and knowing that after this day is done, you're free to crumple in any relatively horizontal space. Those, and knowing that at sundown, you can run and you run, while you grumble, Get out of my way, fuckers, I'm sleepy! Those, and, amazingly, a long-awaited hug and a kiss at the spot where your neck meets your shoulder (which is called trapezius, if I remember my high school bio lectures correctly).


4 - Hating rain together
Writing at the crack of dawn because you can't sleep. Going back to the three poems you wrote with friends, writing a new one, called, "And Lastly," because you're reminding yourself that you need to sleep, your eyeballs are melting in your head, and that's your only clean shirt, eyeball moosh is hard to wash off.



5 - Crush
I'm turning 19 on the second of September. I realize that's a long way off, but I've decided to be generous and give you enough time to hunt down a book for me, Crush, by Richard Siken. This one's from "You Are Jeff" -- "...and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for." And then this one's from "Straw House, Straw Dog" -- "I don't really blame you for being dead but you can't have your sweater back." Wala lang. I need me some man-man love poetry.

And since we're on that note, (the note about the second of September, not the man-man love), ihanap niyo na rin ako ng -- teka. Naaliw. Haha.


6 - ELE
To close, a quote from Semi-Pro: "Everyone Love Everyone!"

A city wall and a trampoline

Sasha is...

... writing a story that begins, The average person spends about 20, 160 minutes kissing in his lifetime, or something like that. Everything is difficult, and she couldn't be happier. Ngitian lang natin 'yan, oks na. And did you know that there are neurons in the brain that allows people to locate another's lips in the dark? Di niya alam kung totoo yan, kaya nagtatanong ngayon.

... drooling over the red suede ankle boots she bought with her mother, among other things.

... wondering if she's strong enough to make tuna sandwiches for what she feels will be a happy night.

... inviting everyone to the Happy Mondays Poetry Night in Mag:Net, tomorrow, at 7:31-ish. Gawin nating field trip. Buddy system, don't forget your IDs.

... referring to herself in the third person, yet again, which means she will be wearing black tomorrow. Gah, the pabaon.

Look inside your head

After Waps' torn-off piece of yellow pad paper:

*

I would like to be the moon. I already see which mothers are tending to their sleeping first-borns, when I close my eyes. Only when I close my eyes. Because otherwise, it is my father I hear intoning from the next room: Do you not love me anymore? and then: the obligatory rustle of bed sheets. I have understood that the world makes the noises that matter most when it thinks no one is listening -- the butterfly-wing beat of the fingers of widows too sad; the sudden thunder of a car down the street, about to drive away; an abrupt lullaby; the inexplicable sadness of that widow, who may be too young, and her sleeping son. My father would chant, Love-Love-Love, and I know everything confounds him, especially those noises that matter most. Especially those.

I am the third son. My mother is sleeping. I can wake her up if I say, Mother, I would like to be the moon.

*

I would like to be the moon. Then, I no longer have to write about grown men leaning to kiss new blooms by leaves, about how I can never spell obsession right the first time, about how that girl I fell in step with on the street happens to write too -- that just last night, she sat with the man whose name she was been writing on the margins of her books, and he asked her to Please, tell me a story, and she began, A year ago there was a girl who'd only been kissed twice, and the man held up his hand and said, Stop, and the girl looked at him, and she became quiet. I would like to be the moon because I only need to concern myself with pulling oceans and holding gazes, with men and with word -- none of which I know anything about, not really.

The pebbles forgive me

It's not everyday I walk around Katipunan with copies of Homer's The Iliad, Burton Raffel's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, and, er, The Sad Clown and Other Five-Minute Tales for Bedtime inside my bag.

Buti na lang. (That's thank goodness, for the konyo.)

(I text my mother: "Foucault is cool." And she replies, "You should check out my pendulum." I'm sure I'm not the only one with a compulsion to giggle at that statement, no?)

All this pretending-to-be-smart-and-well-read thing is a strain on my budget. And oh yeah, on my mind. And my eyes, as some idiot lost her glasses. Gahdammit, what kind of idiot loses her glasses while she's wearing them? Never mind the sudden rains last Wednesday, never mind the flash-lake around the overpass. Those glasses were on your head -- how could you have lost them?

Ahem.

Everything about me is either about to melt, or go poof! so I leave you with an excerpt of the latest short story I managed to squeeze out of wherever these things come from. It's called Park 9 Alley, and I have a feeling this will be one of those bitcheries of a story that would forever be in-progress, guh. Anyway:

Somewhere in this street, someone is kissing someone he is not supposed to kiss. I suspect it is Francisco Revelar, the architect [note to self: scratch that -- change it to "accountant."] who has not seen his wife in two years. It is understandable that he kiss someone else – I think he is kissing the girl Marta from the sari-sari store in front of his house for she often has that sad, faraway look on her pale, prematurely lined face and I’ve learned that it is those sad looks that make the men rise from their beds in the middle of the night and cup a young girl’s aging face. It is understandable that Francisco Revelar kiss Marta. After all, two years is a long time, a very long time. Dishes get stacked in the sink, the sinks are cleared, then get filled again. Drains record the remains of breakfasts, lunches and dinners, until they revolt by clogging up, and someone has to push his sleeves to his elbows sooner or later so water can make its proper descent into the sewage that spreads like misplaced roots underneath the gray concretes of this city. Windows turn muddy, then are wiped down one procrastinating afternoon months later. Doors squeak, complaining of the capricious comings and goings of men, these doors swell in their hinges after a thunderstorm, they crack in the heat of a summer, until they are oiled into silence, or replaced by something sturdier, not necessarily prettier. Oh, don’t let me get started on floors.

All this and more, over and over for seven hundred and thirty days, more or less – am I the only one who wonders what I should do with the quarter-day that helps define a year? What exactly is “365 ¼ days a year”?

Anyway. A lot happens, two years is a long time. Imagine all that waiting, all those mornings with no one to listen to you say, “Five minutes more.” All those noontime show summaries not recorded. All those six o’clock bell tolls without some floury, sun-kissed arms thrown around your neck. All those nights lying in a bed that grows larger and wider with every passing night.

Two years is a long time. Francisco Revelar knows – he has waited that long.

The classic story: Ida Revelar goes out one night after making dinner, she tells her husband of twenty-two years she needs more vinegar. Her husband, the architect, looks up from his newspaper for the barest of moments just to nod – trifle acknowledgment in a marriage that has lasted that long. It used to be enough, that little nod, a swift kiss on the shoulder before he went off to work, a distracted squeeze of the bridge between thumb and forefinger in social gatherings.

Francisco Revelar gives his wife a nod, returns to his newspaper.

He has read through the Obituaries, notes that someone with his first name died yesterday, and he looks at the front door, expecting Ida to come bustling in, her hair escaping the loose bun arranged at her nape, apologizing for taking so long, the neighbors wanted to chat about the president’s daughter, dinner will be ready in a bit, god she hopes she didn’t burn anything while she was away gossiping.
But she does not come in, she won’t. Although Francisco stays in his chair, at first puzzled, then worried, then a dismal bewilderment – Ida does not come in.

And he thinks then: What will I eat for dinner?

She’s dead, she’s surely dead, he thinks three months later.

What is wrong with that sink? he thinks two months after that.

I can’t change the locks, he thinks five months after that.

Where did the brown of the linoleum go? he thinks four months after that.

Another Francisco Something is dead, he thinks a month after that.

What now? he thinks, finally, eighteen months into that nightly ritual in his chair.

Every night, in that chair, he wonders. He cannot help it. There is so little one can do when one is waiting. He has tried, many times. He has busied himself with a company that used to bear his surname, he has started a garden (he has discovered a fondness for ferns), he has even decided (with the help of a self-help book) that it is his calling to be a poet. The distractions worked, to a point, although the last one did not work very well. But Francisco Revelar has learned that no matter how many ways he busies himself, he ends up, every night, on his chair, with the day’s newspaper in his hand, reading it from cover to cover, saving the Obituaries for last.

Until tonight, apparently. Because he is kissing Marta from the sari-sari store in front of his house. He is still waiting, of course, he must, he always is – any minute now Ida will shuffle into the living room with a bottle of vinegar and an unplanned basket of vegetables. He should be in the house now, he should be waiting. What if she comes home? What if she can’t see through the grime of the windows? What if another Francisco has died, and he can’t pour some Scotch in honor of the unfortunate soul?
But there he is now, kissing a sad young girl in the middle of the night. He has cupped her face in his hands. Her cheeks are so pale beneath his callused fingertips. Two years ago, his wife went to get some vinegar. He does not even remember Ida’s face when she told him so. He remembers that someone named Francisco died, and that he shall be remembered through life by a wife and two daughters. Not Ida’s face, though.

He is kissing Marta. He is kissing her with his eyes open, so he can watch how her eyelashes flutter to rest on her cheeks. Marta is young. Two years is a long time.

All right? All right. Off I go now.

Pahabol, a wave to Pancho, who's probably running in a field of strawberries with A.G. right now. Brokeback Plateau. Okay, fine, corny.

Toodles.

Portraits hung on empty halls

I've got a buzzing headache from those Lights I kept chugging down, just because I had something to prove to myself -- mainly that I can drink something as vile as beer. Yes, beer is vile. It is yellow, bubbly, and clings to the tip of your tongue and the back of your throat. I'm writing this as I wait for work to load, because work is technological that way. My mind is whirring with things I have to write down. God, my head, it hurts. There was too much poetry written down tonight, all those epic rengas, especially for someone who's in a Fiction diet. Gahdammit, my head. I hate beer. I am not drunk, just piss-ass mad at the world. Insert momentary Zen moment here --

Say something interesting: Good morning. Today I woke up to the neighbor singing Don McLean. I cannot go on with how his voice sounds like, if it sounds like anything at all, whether the timbre shivers the bones by my heart, because he is in another house, and the walls are thick. But I hear him. He sings and when no hope is left inside and it is easy toi magine him sitting up in his bed, a glass of water suspended in the air, forgetting its own path to his lips. Would I know if, right now, he thinks of Van Gogh, the one who took your life as lovers often do? Does he wonder who this Vincent is, does he know the man cut his ear off to stop the voices in his head? No, I don;t think I would know, because the walls are thick. But then, I could always leave this house and go knock on his door. But then, what would I say? Something interesting like, Good morning. I hear you through the walls. And by the way, I'm just your neighbor, trying to get some song out of her head.

-- okay, that was done. And this bleeping headache won't go away and I've got somewhere to go early tomorrow, early later, god, head, shut up shut up shut up.

I came to this strange world

Nothing to see here, folks.

1 - Just a girl who's not sleeping very well, aggravated by the fact that I was conned into watching The Matrix Trilogy plus Animatrix for the entire bleeping night last night. (But hey, all is good -- at least I get what it all means now. Sort of. Watch out, nerds.) School starts this Tuesday and I'm still only just starting to sleep around 11 in the morning. This is not good, no? No, no, I don't think so, especially with eight more episodes of the fourth season of Lost. Gah, I'll just wing it.

2 - I've officially enrolled, and learned I'm taking a slew of teachers who either terrify me to bits and pieces, or those of whom I know nothing about. And I've got class everyday -- yeah, I'm mortal now -- which means this kind of fucks up work, not to mention hangover-indulging. Anyhoo, I guess this is as good a time as any to get into Serious Student mode. Watch out, Arneow, I'm going to work my effin' ass off.

3 - I'm writing again, after a month of nothing but revisions and Hellgate and sad, sorry attempts at poetry. It's Fiction, folks. There's this girl. And then there's this other girl. And in another one, there's that girl, with that mom and that dad. And in another one, there's this mother, and that hot mathematician's daughter. And then looking out at them all, there's Sasha, who remembers that the first short story she ever wrote (er, completed) was written in a ten-peso notebook whose cover may or may not have been Judy Ann Santos.

4 - I wish I have something to say that's actually worth those few, endless moments of inanity I put you through, but there's nothing. Nothing, really.

5 - From Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Love in the Time of Cholera:

"Contrary to what the Captain and Zenaida supposed, they no longer felt like newlyweds, and even less like belated lovers. It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion : beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid, the closer it came to death."

6 - Yeahba. I am made of love.

Paper paper obsolete

1
Am I here to gripe about AISIS? About how I left a reading/inuman at Green Papaya to hole myself up in an internet shop until 2 in the freakin' morning just to fix my schedule? And how I couldn't sleep last night, so I finally collapsed on the bed (after many futile attempts to nudge my makeshift stuffed toy to awaken?) at 630 in the morning? And how, at 930, I had to wait for so long, grit my teeth at the incredibly slow-ass pace of the pages to load? And that I have no available Theo and Philo classes? And that I have to loadrev eventually because puro itlog sa free-for-all (the available slots, not the remaining teachers) and the ones that are available are in conflict with the classes I've already enlisted in, or are held Tuesdays and Thursdays -- no-go because I have, er, work to do? And how much I spent in total -- all the cigarettes, the iced teas, the internetting, the gahdamned coffee?! Am I here to gripe about AISIS, ladies and gentlemen? No, of course not. Wouldn't dream of it.

2
To quote the piggy from Sinfest, "I am made of looooove!"

3
Downloaded Caesar III during enlistment woes. Haha, wala nang tulugan 'to. Yeah, hello, Freshman Nights Geekdom, remember me?

4
Sasha needs to write (see Number 7). Which means she has to stop reading Virginia Henley and Jaid Black, titles like The Glass Stripper.

5
Pol Doble -- you made me smile a coupla entries back. You are special, you charming old goat. Here's a smiley stamp for your hand. :')

6
Currently taking a survey on whether or not I should cut my mermaid hair. (Yeah, same sentiment as last year, and the year before that.) I could get Audrey Hepburn's Roman Holiday hair, but kulot, buwahaha. [He said: if you cut your hair, I'll tie the curls together with a ribbon, and go to sleep stroking it, whispering, It's okay, it's okay.] So. Goodbye, mermaid hair, hello, Bob Dylan hair? Or stick with it until I look like Lady Godiva, sans nekkid horse-riding?

7
From "feeling a little good tonight," a poem by Charles Bukowski:

Thou shalt not fail as a writer
because the very act of writing is the best protection
from the madness of the
world.

Clubs are weapons of war

Spread the love, people. These here are brainfarts of the day.

1
I've finished with packing. Now I can get evicted with dignity. Never mind the gigantic box of condoms I bought sans condoms from Rustan's. It contains a shitload of shit, and is labelled, "Will do the Earth a lot of good if this was incinerated in the atmosphere of another star in another galaxy." It contains my Theo book from sophomore year. 'Nuff said, yo.

2
More on packing, and blind items: Guess who gleefully stepped back from crazy-taping Box #05? Said person was grinning like an idiot at the time, feeling incredibly proud of her gangly self. And then she realized her roll of packaging had run out. And so said idiot reached towards her de-cluttered desk to get the other roll of tape (which she bought because her foresight is simply astounding)? And guess who freaking packed said other roll of tape into galvanized - with - packaging - tape Box #05? Who, huh, who?

Another idiot: when all was said and done and packed, who was itching to light a stick and found out that the lighter had probably magically teleported into one of the boxes? Who, damn it, who?!

3
Watched Malena during lunch, and I kept thinking, "Man, I'd be more screwed up than I am now if my mother was Monica Bellucci." And then my lunch said, "Tangina, feeling ha." And so I ate it. And then I listened to the Mulan soundtrack, and realized that my childhood crush of Captain Shang has never faded. Hearing him sing I'll Make a Man Out of You just makes my heart twitter a little madder.

4
What? April 29 na? Sure ka? Uy, are those burritos? What? Anong walang tulog? Natural 'tong nasa ilalim ng mata ko. Pinaglihi daw ako sa puyat sabi ng nanay ko. Tulog nga siya nung pinanganak ako eh, tapos -- what chu saying deadline? To rip off Captain Jack, I like to wave at them as they pass by. Ano kamo? Ha? Ako? I shall play the Am Lazy, Get Out of Pressing Literary Opportunities card. And -- ooh, is that a dry seal? Puwede pahipo? Cool. So, gusto mo ng kasama bukas? I can guard the car and listen to Mulan and Rent on loop while you go and rule the universe. Sure. What? Yeah, yeah, I can always change my mind. No day but today, sabi nga ng Rent cast. Are you going to eat that?

5
One of these days you're going to have a visitation. You're going to be walking down the street and across the street you're going to look and see God standing over there on the street corner motioning to you, saying, 'Come to me, come to me.' And you will know it's God, there will be no doubt in your mind — he has slitty little eyes like Buddha, and he's got a long nice beard and blood on his hands. He's got a big Charlton Heston jaw like Moses, he's stacked like Venus, and he has a great jeweled scimitar like Mohammed. And God will tell you to come to him and sing his praises. And he will promise that if you do, all of the muses that ever visited Shakespeare will fly in your ear and out of your mouth like golden pennies. It's the job of the writer in America* to say, "Fuck you God, fuck you and the Old Testament that you rode in on, fuck you." The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.

- Ken Kesey "The Art of Fiction," interview by Robert Faggen, The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994)

*Kahit saan naman siguro, no? Haha, sige, I'ma split. My laptop's waiting for me. I have Battle Realms! And damn it, shut up, Tomatoes, I'll get to you in due time!

Good luck, errybooty. Uh, well, not everybody. Hehe. :)

If you ain't got no money

Oh goodness, I've grown bored with procrastinating. It's gotten so bad, I'm writing three-page love letters disguised as your run-of-the-mill Howyadoin? e-mails to people I'll likely see the next day. I've nothing left to do, really [note to self:] but do laundry by the bucketload (because I'm tired of washing the same two shirts over and over again), get boxes in which to dump my Clothes, Clothes Not Worn In Six Months, Shoes, Things Not Used So Much (like, three years worth of college shiznit), Books Read Once And Will Never Reread Again (hello, Virginia Henley), and Books Me Likey (like my six-year-old Eight Stories by Sir Krip and lovely lovely Barthes and, hehe, Susan Elizabeth Philips-es). Oh yeah, and go back to revising "The Twenty-first Month" like mad, because my ever-dependable no-bullshit critic was foaming at the mouth when he read it. And Holy Pickled Tuna, Batman! I have to start writing new stories, if I have any self-respect left in me! [/note to self].

So. Ahem. In other news: Early this morning (around midnight, oh dear), thanks to the shame-a-turtle slowness of Aisis, I learned I did not go into epic failure, thus retaining my Atenean status. Yeahba. Good thing to know, because I've already signed up for a summer of writing so I'm less hassled with thesis next year (gasp, I know, the foresight is astounding). So expect me to roam the hallways of our dear old university with my mermaid hair flung behind me and hitting some choice people. That's one worry over and done with.

I'd like say more things that will prove I'm a sane person who spews sense (I dare you to say that three times fast!), but my ass is numb from sitting in front of the computer all day doing absolutely nothing, and I have to go take a bath and I have to think about saving them orphans in Malawi and the black-footed ferrets in South Dakota. (Gasp, will no one think of the ferrets?)

Okay, that's it. Toodles.

Like I never needed love before

Yawning, stretching, grasping my nth mug of coffee. Pressing Ctrl + S, then Alt + F4, grinning hugely. “Damn, I sound so smart,” I say out loud, to no one in particular. “It must be inherent.”

The man off to my side grunts.

“What? Aren’t you glad? I can talk about Francis Ponge and the duality of poetry, about literatures of the Non-Western World, about Estrella Alfon, about Nolledo and his Maria Alma. Quiz me on Dobyns and the crisis of language and the poetry of the city, and I can prattle on, sleep-deprived, wanting of a bath and a proper meal, surviving on sheer stubbornness, caffeine and nicotine. Aren’t you glad?”

Another grunt.

“Well, I’m a magnificent conversationalist.” My voice has taken on an English accent, culled from years of reading Victorian romances out loud. “I happen to know a lot about mandrakes, sweetness. Yes, mandrakes, and not the Hogwarts version. Mandrakes, mandrakes. What eighteen-year-old in a five-mile radius can claim to know about that?”

“You need sleep.”

My laugh sounds shrill, even to my delusional ears.

*

Weeks ago, I watched as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss the boy who had ignored her for three years. Wow, I thought, we’re in for it now.

“That’s for ignoring me freshman year,” she told him, sure to keep her voice more impassioned, certainly louder, than a whisper.

I walked beside her then as she sashayed away, an unmistakable new sway to her hips, a smile of pure, gloating satisfaction playing on her face.

“I can see everything through your skirt,” I told her.

“I bet he could too,” she said.

*

One more time, he told her, impatient for the slap of her moans against his neck, of the near-desperate clasp of her hands against his back. You can have me one more time, he told his Maria, this new mythos found on yet another port – who, in time he was sure, would succumb to the gray that wrought all his memories of whores in places far-flung, humid and too-bright with sunlight. But for now she was still real, the color apricots from home, the scent of the moon when he was traveling – pale, timid, keeping an unrealized power that ensnared many a sailor to walk to the edge of the ship and simply walk farther, hands held high in hopes for a touch of the cool surface. But, oh, his Maria: the heat, the openness, the unabashed wanting making them both moist with a glance, near-erupting with an accidental grazing of sun-kissed skin. One more, he repeated, already hardening where he still nestled inside her, willing her eyes to open, her grip on him to tighten. One more time, Maria my darling, he implored. I leave on the rooster’s first crow.

*

Last night, I dreamt I shared a hopia with F. Sionil Jose.

Strawberry dreams

1
I'm practically done with junior year. Imagine that. (I reiterate practically because, well, technically, I haven't exactly finished with requirements. There is still the matter of submitting the essays on Stephen Dobyns and Federico Licsi Espina. And then that blasted paper on Francis Ponge. And then another essay about oppression, freedom, and the notion of beauty in the literatures of the Non-Western World. [No, no name-dropping here. No, oh look at me, I'm so smart, reading up on such smart-sounding people, and all those relevant subjects! Pfft. I'm swamped, damn it, in over my head and I know it.])

2
I finished that story I told you was brewing in my head the other day. It's called "Quick, the Tomatoes" and I'm quite pleased with myself, thank you very much. :) Maybe it's the influx of domesticity in the literature I encounter lately -- in academe, in leisure --but "Tomatoes" could very well be a variation on the theme tackled by "Digressions" and "The Twenty-first Month." But then, almost none of you have any idea what I'm talking about now, do you? Oh well.

3
For the life of me, I can't find the page in But for the Lovers that says, "Garlanded thus, the world was tolerable." (Beats me why this is a matter of such significance that I gleefully tossed my first draft of the Ponge paper to scour to Nolledo's novel.) And I don't even know if "tolerable" is the correct word. So, PLE classmates, a little help here?

4
This is for all the bitter old people who (to paraphrase My Chemical Romance) have the shit scared out of 'em by us adolescents:

"When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, becuase we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible becuase we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."
- from Looking for Alaska by John Green

HAHAHA, peace and love, people. :)

The Bible didn't mention us

Miss me?

1
I have not been abducted by aliens and put alongside cows and dolphins. No antiseptic capsule was constructed with me in mind, no silver jumpsuit was sewn from fibers found only on a moon in a galaxy named Sardo. No swashbuckling pirate, no down-on-his-luck cowboy, no bored multimillionaire decided to kidnap me. No one threw me over his ship, his horse, his Benz. Not even a tricycle. I wasn't thrown, gagged, my hair all a-tangle, in a ditch in Marinduque, with the remains of a popsicle in my bound hands. Any tacky impersonator of Jame Gumb did not strip the skin off me, because frankly, I doubt anyone would fit in to it the way it looks now. I have led a completely boring weekend life of DVD marathons (ohmygod, laglag ang panty ko kay Jean Reno sa Leon!) and hopia mongo, chronic oversleeping, and uncharged mobile phones.

2
I have been reading Ann Beattie's Secrets and Surprises, at Sir Larry's suggestion. I have been suffering from Literary Booger Complex. I have never had this strong an urge to hurl a book across the room for its vomitociously galing literary merit.

3
I have a copy of Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse on my bookshelf. My grandfather, fresh from the hospital, got it for me -- they all told me it was the only copy they found, after scouring bookstores upon bookstores. At Borders, there it was, sitting lone and alone, flanked by Barthes' books on Mythologies and Signs, seemingly waiting for that one person who would stride through the door with its name reverberating in his mind. Oh, thank you, everyone.

4
We've been productive, haven't we? I started working on them ideas germinating in my widdle mind, and got "The Evident Muse" (don't hassle me because it's a freakin' cheesy title, orayt?), "Sunday Morning", 90% of "The Eye Maker", and another one very tentatively titled "Nacho Libre" because I have no idea what to name it... Yeah-huh, I gots my short story mojo back.

Oh, and I think I wrote two poems. I think, I think.

This might suffice as an explanation why I look and sound and read out of sorts. Me back from dead, ug ug.

5
No way to measure time / when you cannot see the sky --