flowerchild

this review of Rosario the movie is up at gmanews.tv.

what to do on rest days, and to get this:

See the full gallery on posterous

a memory: “No, Neeenaaaang. Deees wan ees a stormtrooper,

that wan’s Boba Fett.”

1

we are late for simbang gabi for the first time in six days. we horde candles because we missed one day to light them all. all 12 candles. we pray for the world.

today we light 24 candles. 

2

mama and i drive aimlessly in search of breakfast. it is in the end the same pizza and pasta we could’ve gotten somewhere closer to the house. but the joyride meant getting some puto on the way. the family with the stall — the father and mother, and four children who look to be the same age, seemed relieved.

buena mano.

3

erwin tells me to watch sapul sa singko. erwin’s my editor in UNO, my twitter kachika, and one of few friends i made the past year. i’m home now with pizza and pasta for the family here, and for the ones i keep next door. i am in love with this show. i think it’s changed the landscape of early morning show viewing. and yes, i will put my name on that.

erwin greets me happy birthday at the start of the segment Love Hurts and buckles on the Stuart. he repeats my whole name, smiles at the camera, and says: happy birthday ma’m. 

naging si robin padilla siya sa bday ko, ganon?

4

it is noisy at home. mama and papa are asleep despite, and i talk to Kuya from another timezone on the phone. that’s all of the family in one sentence. i’ve always known that was enough, but the past two years, that has become an understatement.

brevity, conciseness: lessons in writing the more truthful sentences.

5

i look through the teeny tiny flashdisk that the kids from holland sent for their Lolo in manila: it is filled with photos of the three inaanaks, playing in the snow, posing at home, being themselves. i realize that for the first time, i know exactly where that is, i have that space as context. and i remember how they aren’t quite themselves in those photos. they are just so much bigger than that, even more so for Ninang Inang in the past year. 

in that home in Holland, in the little known The Hague, there was love at its most basic. at its most true because there was — is — wonder. 

6

it’s crazy, i realize, the FB bday reminder. the truth is, i have FB on spam, so i don’t receive notifications of any kind via email, and i’m all for just looking at the first couple of items on my newsfeed as a matter of discipline. but on FB today, it can only be overwhelming. i wonder about FB. and birthdays. and friendships. and acquaintances. and the virtual world.

i begin an essay.

7

i turn on the photobooth option of the computer Kuya sent me as a surprise for today and christmas, that which Mama didn’t know to keep. the camera captures Wisa in the background, at her perch. we take pictures. 

it’s a good day, i think. it’s a good day for some quiet. 

some good comedy, is what this is. 

“Pero hindi ka marunong mag-drive!” 

“Ang sabi ko, hindi ako marunong mag-drive nang pasulong!” 

best actress award for knowing how to cry while driving away backwards.

it’s as absurd as it sounds, and that photo above? as strange as it looks.

Oh My Girl! directed by Dante Nico Garcia and written by Tanya Winona Bautista.

“These aren’t even mistakes. It’s just growing up.” —  Madonna, on Britney Spears and the fishbowl she lives in.

and that documentary’s got me thinking. about plenty things OTHER than britney spears.

parang si Lady Gaga lang.

Pilipinas Street Plan shows us — in many ways — HOW.

photo by Gerhard Bandiola.

Jovit Baldivino as the poor boy, reality show winner, who could.

Arnel Pineda as the symbol of struggle, of persistence, of some Pinoy pride.

Sam Milby as the one rockoustic heartthrob we know, proof of how the cute can rock it.

Yeng Constantino as the girl who rocks it, with a lot of creativity and an insistence on rakenrol roots.

READ UP! these are up at Pulse, Music + Culture! Part One and Part Two!

been finishing up, writing like mad, in Filipino, and translating words concepts like feminine, late capitalism, transnation, globalization, leisure, amusement as extension of work.

i imagine that if i say it with emphasis — italics should do the trick — that they will become Filipino. that these words and concepts already are, as we do live them here more than elsewhere, as we know these words without realizing it.

as i do, i think, imagine the possibilities that will end and begin with writing this, finally. i’m afraid to stop half the time, i’m on a roll i tell myself, and i do sit and force words out, as a matter of survival this time around, as a matter of letting it go, or just letting it all hang. as a matter of knowing that in the end the things i write of, the world that’s oppressive, is really about me. ultimately. otherwise i wouldn’t write about it. otherwise i wouldn’t feel it urgent. 

because things can only be such, given the way i live, the manner i choose to live. it does seem too late to rewind / reboot / retrace. it also seems to be the last thing that’s needed.  

See and download the full gallery on posterous

then sometimes it’s exactly the irrelevant, the unnecessary, the nothing but pretty, that i need. somewhere in the midst of forgetting christmas and constantly refusing to think about my birthday (yes, that too falls within the month), i am invited to a party that requires hats. 

i wouldn’t know how to wear one, or wear to get one, but it’s about right that the idea itself makes me smile, makes me imagine the world, differently.

even just the word requires it: equal amounts of giddy and silly. i find that it’s as much of the world that i need, as it is nothing to this world. it’s a passing fancy, and there are no explanations. just a lot of transience, as thingspeoplemoments get lost in translation. sometimes there are no equivalents, no need for such.  

fascinator.

it sounds like a person doesn’t it.

***

photos via Mich Dulce’s Multiply Page, from a December 2007 AIDS Awareness Exhibit, photos by Everywhere We Shoot!, make up by MAC, clothes and hats by Mich Dulce.

“It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don’t know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.”

quote from mlq3. photo by chingbee cruz, edited by adam david.

and writing longhand rarely done. plus a mauristhuis flyer, which speaks of a time away.

real espresso, can only be served in real espresso cups.