I am allergic to another drug (Arcoxia).
Who gets itchy? According to www.netdoctors.uk, between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000 people. Fun!
Once you get to triage, screw modesty.
Lift your shirt and show them all the "pinkish, itchy swellings on the skin, also called hives or nettlerash." It will spare you from a nutty two-hour wait. (When I finally got to the ER doctor at 2:00 a.m., she started freaking out at the nurses. "Dapat kanina pa yan! Bakit sya nasa non-urgent list?")
Now that I think about it, I am very, very fortunate (knock on wood) that my allergies only present themselves as welts and red splotches on my skin, and they stay away from my lungs, throat, and tongue.
Every time I wind up in the hospital and they have to stick a needle into me, the nurse and I play tug-of-war.
This time was no different.
Nurse: "Ma'am, ang liit talaga ng ugat mo."
Camille: "Oo, alam ko. Mag-w-wrestling tayo dito."
Cybs: "Pwede ba sa pwet nalang?"
Nurse (laughs): "Bukas-makalawa tayo dito kung ganon."
Five painful attempts later, the more experienced nurse replaced the first sweet-but-I-have-a-feeling-he-was-practicing-on-me nurse and finally got it in. I am now very tempted to tattoo the words "Insert 22-gauge needle here" on the back of my left hand.
I love my sister.
But I already knew that. :) She always says she's never around when something big happens. Early this morning, while waiting for me to wake up, she was. And I have a feeling she was a big comfort and help to those people.
But that's her story to tell.
12 December 2008
03 December 2008
Choices.
I just sent an email that left my touch-typing fingers cold.
You wonder what you're worth. And where your driven, workaholic, I-eat-stress-for-breakfast self has gone. (Actually, I kind of know where she went--to clean the house and do yoga poses a lot.)
If you stick to your guns, are you going to get what you want when the dust settles?
Agent B, how did you do it??
You wonder what you're worth. And where your driven, workaholic, I-eat-stress-for-breakfast self has gone. (Actually, I kind of know where she went--to clean the house and do yoga poses a lot.)
If you stick to your guns, are you going to get what you want when the dust settles?
Agent B, how did you do it??
29 November 2008
For the bookworms out there.
Stolen from Tet's Facebook.
Rules: * Grab the book nearest you. Right now. * Turn to page 56. * Find the fifth sentence. * Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall. * Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.
If I go with the one to my left:
As we continued on farther, Charlie had concealed himself and set up an ambush, which he let us walk right into before he sprung the trap.
If I go with the one on the shelf above me:
4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
How fun! Your turn :)
Rules: * Grab the book nearest you. Right now. * Turn to page 56. * Find the fifth sentence. * Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall. * Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.
If I go with the one to my left:
As we continued on farther, Charlie had concealed himself and set up an ambush, which he let us walk right into before he sprung the trap.
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam
If I go with the one on the shelf above me:
4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Cookery Book: The Cook's Classic Companion
More from Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam
September 19, 1966
Dear Mom, Dad, Shrub, Peach, and the Future President:
I was walking along a trail and turned to my left to tell one of my men to get his tocus up to the head of the column when I heard a loud noise below me and felt like some one had kicked me right in the butt. So the mighty oak fell to the ground, [after] having urged his men on to greater heights of glory with the resounding battle cry of "Oh, shit!" I thought I had been hit by a booby trap, and it wasn't until three to five seconds had passed that I realized that people were shooting at us in general and me in particular since I was still lying on the road. This also occurred to my unalert band of cutthroats, and one of them dragged me off the road and down an embankment, which felt oh, so good.
By the time I regained my form and was screaming at my men to return fire and charge the ambush--which they did to no avail--while my corpsman was explaining to me that they had never taught him how to bandage up a wounded butt. I explained to him in graphic detail what the consequences to his personage would be if he didn't think up a way, and quickly. He invented a way, using my penis as an anchor or something--anyway, as an integral part of the mummifying act. The helicopter came, and I was thrown aboard and taken to the hospital in Chu Lai...
So, I am lying in bed here, and it comes time for that most thrilling event: "When the General Gives Out the Purple Hearts." The general in this case is a two-star general, a big, gruff, hearty type whose first words to me were, "Aren't you the one who wrote on that form that supplies weren't getting to the troops? Can you give specific examples?"
So, what the hell, I gave him a few, and he, predictably enough, cut me off, explaining how the folks back home were having to be forced to make utilities. And in a very small voice I pointed out that a great deal of the problem was right here in River City. He ignored that and never stopped smiling, although it got a little forced after a while and his entourage stood around with little grins etched into their empty faces, which occasionally laughed heartily whenever the general made a funny, which was signaled by his own chuckling. All in all, it was a dreadful performance by everyone but, in a way, a classic of stereotype, one of a large number of stereotype characters and situations I have watched acted out, much to my growing concern. They finally left me sicker than I was before and with a medal I never wanted anyway...
Dear Mom, Dad, Shrub, Peach, and the Future President:
I was walking along a trail and turned to my left to tell one of my men to get his tocus up to the head of the column when I heard a loud noise below me and felt like some one had kicked me right in the butt. So the mighty oak fell to the ground, [after] having urged his men on to greater heights of glory with the resounding battle cry of "Oh, shit!" I thought I had been hit by a booby trap, and it wasn't until three to five seconds had passed that I realized that people were shooting at us in general and me in particular since I was still lying on the road. This also occurred to my unalert band of cutthroats, and one of them dragged me off the road and down an embankment, which felt oh, so good.
By the time I regained my form and was screaming at my men to return fire and charge the ambush--which they did to no avail--while my corpsman was explaining to me that they had never taught him how to bandage up a wounded butt. I explained to him in graphic detail what the consequences to his personage would be if he didn't think up a way, and quickly. He invented a way, using my penis as an anchor or something--anyway, as an integral part of the mummifying act. The helicopter came, and I was thrown aboard and taken to the hospital in Chu Lai...
So, I am lying in bed here, and it comes time for that most thrilling event: "When the General Gives Out the Purple Hearts." The general in this case is a two-star general, a big, gruff, hearty type whose first words to me were, "Aren't you the one who wrote on that form that supplies weren't getting to the troops? Can you give specific examples?"
So, what the hell, I gave him a few, and he, predictably enough, cut me off, explaining how the folks back home were having to be forced to make utilities. And in a very small voice I pointed out that a great deal of the problem was right here in River City. He ignored that and never stopped smiling, although it got a little forced after a while and his entourage stood around with little grins etched into their empty faces, which occasionally laughed heartily whenever the general made a funny, which was signaled by his own chuckling. All in all, it was a dreadful performance by everyone but, in a way, a classic of stereotype, one of a large number of stereotype characters and situations I have watched acted out, much to my growing concern. They finally left me sicker than I was before and with a medal I never wanted anyway...
Love, Sandy
21 November 2008
Lucky.
Finished reading Lucky by Alice Sebold for the nth time last night. I still can't read every word of Chapter 1. I still cry in the same parts (we're talking hagulgol mode here). I still marvel at how the truly gifted can write about the truly painful with such grace and clarity. I still feel lucky every time I put it down.
"He knew...that memory could save, that it had power, that it was often the only recourse of the oppressed, the powerless, or the brutalized."
"He knew...that memory could save, that it had power, that it was often the only recourse of the oppressed, the powerless, or the brutalized."
20 November 2008
These days...
...I am trying to get used to "styling" my hair in the morning (instead of shoving it into a ponytail).
...I am taking it one page at a time (or I will go mad).
...I am all about lists. (Something tells me I should buy a corkboard already.)
...I enjoy Edie the Speaker's company.
(Especially when I am cleaning house.)
...I am doing a Hugh Grant and dividing my days into blocks of time.04 October 2008
What would Buffy do
02 October 2008
i can see clearly now.
Literally.
Last 25 September, I underwent Lasik surgery at the Lasik Surgery Clinic in Megamall.
Just this afternoon, I went back for my check-up, and apart from swimming and super smoky clubs (one week pa daw yun, just to be safe), I can go back to my normal life.
...Consider me overwhelmed. So overwhelmed that as I sit and type this a part of me is thinking I should take my contacts off. So overwhelmed that even now, a week after the surgery, I still can't articulate my joy and awe and wonder. I keep reading everything (DVD titles, book titles, labels of syrup bottles at the coffee shop, the BIR thingie that's posted in establishments). I keep thinking I'm still wearing glasses or contacts.
I figured out I needed glasses back in fifth grade. Usual first Friday mass in Zobel, and I could read the lyrics of the church songs more clearly when I was all teary-eyed (senti pa ako nun). I remember my Dad looked so sad when he heard, like his favorite dog had to be put down. Now he calls me Bright Eyes.
I didn't do yoga for a week (though the doctor said I could the day after, call me paranoid), so I'm looking forward to that tomorrow morning. Also cleaning the study. And maybe taking pictures somewhere. A part of me wants to travel back in time and return to all the museums and tourist attractions I went to when I was still bulag. I've only seen Syd once since the operation and I was wearing the protective goggles the whole time. I'm excited to see him, too :)
Now if only they had a similar surgery for Sense of Purpose in Life ;p
Fellow four-eyed friends and loved ones, get your eyes zapped! Kakaiba. I was so scared going into surgery (my mom said I looked pale. Me. Miss Morena Me.), but when I was in there na it was nothing. After all these years of poking my eyes with contact lenses, it was nothing. Post-op was painful only for the first night. Grabe. Just DOH it! :) :)
Last 25 September, I underwent Lasik surgery at the Lasik Surgery Clinic in Megamall.
Just this afternoon, I went back for my check-up, and apart from swimming and super smoky clubs (one week pa daw yun, just to be safe), I can go back to my normal life.
...Consider me overwhelmed. So overwhelmed that as I sit and type this a part of me is thinking I should take my contacts off. So overwhelmed that even now, a week after the surgery, I still can't articulate my joy and awe and wonder. I keep reading everything (DVD titles, book titles, labels of syrup bottles at the coffee shop, the BIR thingie that's posted in establishments). I keep thinking I'm still wearing glasses or contacts.
I figured out I needed glasses back in fifth grade. Usual first Friday mass in Zobel, and I could read the lyrics of the church songs more clearly when I was all teary-eyed (senti pa ako nun). I remember my Dad looked so sad when he heard, like his favorite dog had to be put down. Now he calls me Bright Eyes.
I didn't do yoga for a week (though the doctor said I could the day after, call me paranoid), so I'm looking forward to that tomorrow morning. Also cleaning the study. And maybe taking pictures somewhere. A part of me wants to travel back in time and return to all the museums and tourist attractions I went to when I was still bulag. I've only seen Syd once since the operation and I was wearing the protective goggles the whole time. I'm excited to see him, too :)
Now if only they had a similar surgery for Sense of Purpose in Life ;p
Fellow four-eyed friends and loved ones, get your eyes zapped! Kakaiba. I was so scared going into surgery (my mom said I looked pale. Me. Miss Morena Me.), but when I was in there na it was nothing. After all these years of poking my eyes with contact lenses, it was nothing. Post-op was painful only for the first night. Grabe. Just DOH it! :) :)
19 September 2008
What Tarot Card are You?
You are The Star
Hope, expectation, Bright promises.
The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised
The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
13 September 2008
we have lift-off!
May internet na kami sa apartment, yahoo!!!
Now I don't have to be an insane internet lady when I hang at Syd's.
Now I can't say, "I'll wait for internet before I start looking for projects/work/life path." -- Complete with the "Can't I just travel the world" thought bubble.
Now I have to stop myself from downloading every television show I've missed in the last four years, when I was working my butt off.
Sigh. I just don't know what to do with myself...
Now I don't have to be an insane internet lady when I hang at Syd's.
Now I can't say, "I'll wait for internet before I start looking for projects/work/life path." -- Complete with the "Can't I just travel the world" thought bubble.
Now I have to stop myself from downloading every television show I've missed in the last four years, when I was working my butt off.
Sigh. I just don't know what to do with myself...
05 September 2008
Super Sigh.
A modern-day Flickr fairy tale
By Pam Pastor
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Last updated 16:37:00 08/04/2008
MANILA, Philippines—It is an unforgettable image—a couple on a bed in a soft embrace, wrapped in glowing fairy lights.
It is a beautiful photo, that will be clear to anyone. But for the members of the Flickr community, it is so much more. It is a fairy tale come true.
Once upon a time, two people found their way to the photo-sharing website Flickr.com.
Fate
Call it fate—24-year-old designer and photographer Aaron Nace and 17-year-old student and part-time waitress Rosie Hardy found each other’s photos on the same day. Rosie’s friend Natalie showed her Aaron’s 365 Days Project self-portraits. “I was so so so impressed and made a mental note to add him as a contact when I got home,” Rosie said.
She didn’t know it yet but Aaron had already found her then. “Upon seeing her images I just had to send her a message, it was like we had the same brain,” Aaron said.
And when Rosie got home, she discovered that Aaron had posted a comment on one of her photos and he had added her as a Flickr contact. “I was over the moon!” she said. They clicked instantly.
Rosie loved Aaron’s playful sense of humor, the way he laughed at himself and how he wasn’t afraid to look silly. “I loved all his expressions and simultaneously loved how he could produce shots full of darkness and raw emotion—something I find incredibly captivating in photography,” she said.
Aaron thought Rosie had an amazing mind. “She has a special way of seeing the world and it all comes out in her photographs. No one can deny she is very special,” he said.
There was just one problem though: Aaron lived in Chapel Hill in North Carolina, USA, while Rosie was from Buxton, Derbyshire, England. But Aaron and Rosie didn’t let the distance get in the way.
The two started exchanging Flickrmails. Aaron said, “It became obvious quickly that we got along very well. We started writing to each other three times a day.”
“I asked him what our first date would be like. He then went on to write the first of many adventure episodes we write to each other,” Rosie said.
Writing adventures
Through their written adventures, even before meeting each other, Aaron and Rosie had “swum to the bottom of the ocean, dragged a giant singing clam to the shoreline and been abducted by small hairy men, swung through a jungle and jumped off cliffs to be taken by birds to huge rock towers with big yellow superslides, dressed in Batman and French maid costumes (Aaron was the maid, Rosie said) and defeated evil, built their own house filled with monsters, flown to make-believe lands of legomen in a spaceship and risked our lives to save each other.”
Writing those adventures meant a lot to Rosie. “Writing those stories and writing about each other’s characters before we knew the other person really proved how alike we were. His imagination completely captivated me from the start—all I wanted was to be inside his mind.”
Aaron felt the same way. “Somewhere through our adventure I was positive this was the girl I wanted to be with. The first time we spoke on the phone was the most amazing feeling i have ever had in my life. and every day since has been more amazing,” he said.
The two started chatting on Gmail and exchanging YouTube videos. Then Aaron started calling Rosie every night through Skype and they exchanged text messages all the time. “We talked for at least three hours a night and it is not uncommon for us to fall asleep on the phone together,” Aaron said.
Blooming romance
They first exchanged “I love you’s” during a Gmail chat. “I felt it was time to just jump out on a limb and I wrote I love you. It took her a second to respond, but she said I love you in return. I smiled for days,” Aaron said.
Rosie added, “I’d never told a guy I loved him before, so it was pretty big for me.”
Their romance bloomed before the eyes of the Flickr community. Soon, they were posting photos that were veiled love letters. Rosie uploaded an image of herself in a box with the caption, “Please Mr. Postman, Could you do me a favor? There’s somewhere I want to be.” Meanwhile Aaron made bold declarations of love with his images.
They also started working on a series of photographs which they called Collaboration Sundays, photos that were shot individually and edited to make it appear as if they were together.
Aaron soon announced that he was flying to see Rosie. “I knew from the second I first saw her photos that I would meet this girl, providing she didn’t think I was a total loser. Buying a plane ticket was something I didn’t even think twice about,” he said. Countless people online waited with bated breath for that day.
Face to face
It finally happened a couple of weeks ago. Three months after they first met online, Rosie and Aaron finally saw each other face to face.
Rosie talked about that day. “I was incredibly nervous! Me, my mum and my dad drove to Manchester Airport to pick him up and I was shaking like a leaf! Not because I doubted who I was about to meet, but because I felt like I needed him in my life so badly and I couldn’t bare to lose him. Obviously people look different in real life to how they do in their photos, so there was always that small thought in my mind that he would be disappointed in me. Luckily, he wasn’t at all!”
Aaron added, “It was amazing, I was nervous, but I was pretty sure everything would work out, within minutes it was like we have been around each other for a lifetime.”
Aaron will stay with Rosie in England for 17 days. They’re trying to do everything they can together—go to an amusement park, visit a zoo, watch shows, go kayaking, explore the country side, have a picnic and watch movies.
Rosie believes that they’ve made the best memories doing regular things, like “making breakfast together and having him chase me round the kitchen, waiting for a train at 11 p.m. and deciding to slowdance on the platform, going on an ice cream hunt in the middle of the night and walking through the town singing Disney songs at the tops of our voices!”
Aaron said, “We also have spent plenty of time just staring at each other in disbelief that all this is real.”
And together, they take lots of photos. Aaron and Rosie are very creative on their own and together they are even more so. They are currently in the middle of a self-portrait project featuring the seven deadly sins. The images they produce are surreal, occasionally creepy but always beautiful.
Everything
When asked what they love about each other, they had the same answer—everything.
Rosie said, “Everything. His silly faces in the morning, his silly accent, his silly crazy mind. I love how he not only accepts me for who I am, but loves me for it and inspires me to be a better person. I love how he sees me without makeup, hair a mess and still tells me he thinks I am the most beautiful girl in the world. I love how he makes positive out of everything, and thrives off his bad experiences. I love his honesty, his compassion and his thirst for life. I love how he is crazy to live and crazy to love.”
“If you’ve met her you wouldn’t be asking this question,” Aaron said. “Everything. She is the most amazing person I have ever and will ever meet. Period.”
Worldwide support
The Flickr community continues to watch their story unfold, every photo they post is received with so much warmth.
Aaron and Rosie have been amazed at the support people online have shown them. Aaron said, “It’s really amazing. It is hard to believe at times that so many people support us. Some have even said we have renewed their belief of love, I can’t think of a bigger honor. It really feels as though the whole world is cheering us on, how could everything not be perfect with support like that?”
Rosie said, “It’s outstanding. Incredible. The way other people have come together has really proved that love can overcome everything—age, 4500 miles, online relationships—not us. We have proved that we can overcome it as a couple, but the way people have reacted has shown that anybody at all can. And for that reason, these people have changed my attitudes about love and life, most definitely for the better.”
Their own families have been giving them the same kind of encouragement.
Supportive parents
Aaron’s parents have been very supportive. “My parents are absolutely in love with Rosie, I am pretty sure they would kill me if I didn’t marry her,” Aaron said.
Rosie’s parents feel as passionate about Aaron. “Age-gap wise, they were completely fine with it,” Rosie said. “My parents are 13 years apart. Aaron made them videos to introduce himself to them and they saw his photos all the time and saw how happy he made me. Of course, they were happy for us. Now that they met him, they adore him! My mum loves talking to him and my dad has told him that he wants his wardrobe.”
Plans
“Now that I am here, I never want to leave,” Aaron said.
Although the two will be saying temporary goodbyes soon, they are busy making plans for the future.
“We’re planning on getting me through college this year and onto university next year,” Rosie said, “then he’ll come here to live with me and we’ll get engaged at some point then. After I’ve finished uni, we’re planning on moving back to the US and setting up a business, and setting up a home—so marriage will be on the cards then.”
“The wedding will come within a year of our engagement, and we plan on getting engaged when we can live together. Hopefully everything will happen as we dream it will,” Aaron said.
One thing’s for sure—this is going to be one story they can tell their grandkids over and over again.
Visit Aaron and Rosie on Flickr: www.flickr.com/aknacer and www.flickr.com/rosie_hardy.
(Super sigh again. Especially when I look--no, stare--at the pictures "i am colorblind", "wrapped up in you" and "long distance lovers". Sigh.)
28 August 2008
Hong Kong Snippets
I love, love, love the Metro.Whether it's in Paris or New York or Hong Kong, they have all these arrows that tell you where to go, and you can walk under the city and get to exactly where you wanna go, and it's perfect for directionally-challenged people like me because I don't have to memorize the turns, I just have to keep looking for Exit N or New World Centre. Sigh. Subways are so practical, so efficient, so...democratic. I hope I live to see the day that our beloved Manila MRT will be mega-extensive and kickass.
Hong Kong's skyline rocks.
I've been a die-hard NYC lover since childhood, but I must admit, this view has its own charms...Plus I kept thinking of Han Suyin & her beloved Mark Elliot walking the same streets, talking about the moon and their doomed love on this sea-wet rock...
(Photo by Syd)
TST Promenade is my official Hong Kong Happy Place...
Hanging out there was very calming (especially after 1am). People were walking their dogs, or having a midnight snack, or making PDA. Nobody bugged anybody, and it was one of the few times that I felt like no one was stepping on my aura (there is no sense of personal space in Hong Kong; people push in other countries, but this is the first time I never heard anybody say, "Excuse me," at the very least). It was nice to just sit there and watch Syd take pictures. I didn't even bring my camera, I just wanted to soak it in. The fact that the water didn't stink at all was a major bonus. (Photo by Syd)
And this is my Official Winner Lamon--Beef with Japanese Noodles in Mongkok. Di ko na naman naubos kasi bundat na ako, pero ang sarrrrraaaaap
Pinoys at Hotel Panorama rock.
They went out of their way to make us chika, to give us directions (to the point that they'll escort you to the subway entrance pa). We met around 5 of them in our hotel alone (plus a really cool Nepalese guy). Wish I had taken their picture. Our room will have to do. (Photo by Vanessa)
Kailangan ng Round 2!
Can't wait to travel with Syd again. It was really fun. His family was fun to hang with. Bad trip lang na we lost 1.5 days thanks to the storm. I really wanted to go to the Po Lin Monastery & the Chi Lin Nunnery (duh, I even made a POWERPOINT PRESENTATION of my hit list :)), but I guess there's always next time :)
Special thanks to my dearest Kaka, who gave me the best HK map and tons of chika! We only got to ride the Star Ferry on our last day, about 1.5 hours before we had to leave for the airport, pero worth it ang slight Amazing Race mode.
Thank you, Syd, for inviting me. And to my Dynamic Duo Parents & Fellow Egg Kapatids, for years of hardcore bootcamp training for travellers.
Malapit na talaga ako magtrabaho sa airline para tapos ang usapan at ID 90 na ako ulit...
14 July 2008
while piggybacking on our neighbor's internet connection...
(Thank you, kind kind neighbor)
I have to put this on cyberpaper, because (gasp!) I can't find my journal (because the study/yoga room is still buried underneath books, boxes, shoes etc.)
1. PANTS (places, animals, names, things, score) is the coolest game and I'm really sorry I didn't run into it when i was younger!
2. My Lifestyle Network Sistahs sure know how to cook up a storm and videoke til they drop! Thanks ghelz! Winner party, please post pix!!! :)
3. Winner Strangers Moment 1: On the MRT (first car), may pumasok na buntis so tumayo ang isang matandang ale. Tapos may pumasok na may hawak na baby and at first ayaw pa nya umupo hanggang sinutsot sya nung matandang ale.
4. Winner Strangers Moment 2: Rode an FX this morning and I wound up being the 4th passenger sa backseat. My medyo low-rise jeans became mega low-rise and the woman next to me was being all nice and trying to scoot over and she wound up touching my um, mega lower back (among other things) and we had a laugh attack until I got off the FX. I'd like to think we made each other's mornings.
I have to put this on cyberpaper, because (gasp!) I can't find my journal (because the study/yoga room is still buried underneath books, boxes, shoes etc.)
1. PANTS (places, animals, names, things, score) is the coolest game and I'm really sorry I didn't run into it when i was younger!
2. My Lifestyle Network Sistahs sure know how to cook up a storm and videoke til they drop! Thanks ghelz! Winner party, please post pix!!! :)
3. Winner Strangers Moment 1: On the MRT (first car), may pumasok na buntis so tumayo ang isang matandang ale. Tapos may pumasok na may hawak na baby and at first ayaw pa nya umupo hanggang sinutsot sya nung matandang ale.
4. Winner Strangers Moment 2: Rode an FX this morning and I wound up being the 4th passenger sa backseat. My medyo low-rise jeans became mega low-rise and the woman next to me was being all nice and trying to scoot over and she wound up touching my um, mega lower back (among other things) and we had a laugh attack until I got off the FX. I'd like to think we made each other's mornings.
30 June 2008
The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
June 5, 2008
J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination," at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates...The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience.
Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.
An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.
Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement.
Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child.
I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.
J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination," at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates...The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience.
Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.
An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.
Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement.
Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child.
I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.
19 June 2008
moving.
Not counting all the times my parents moved houses down south, this is the fourth time I'm shoving things in boxes. If you count the Southern Division, that's nine times in the last...good Lord, 8 years.
Just spent the last five hours going through all the stuff I've accumulated in the last two years and three months living in our apartment.
A pile of GamePlan calling cards. Renegade photos. My now super-ratty freshman college journal (oh, the drama). A small spiral notebook with a photo of Angela Chase & Jordan Catalano on the cover. A "Certificate of Appreciation" from Carrera Habagat. A little scrap of paper with "My sister Katia" and a phone number on it, in very European handwriting. A pocket map of Paris, a million and one CPI acknowledgment receipts, and birthday cards from Charlie's Angels.
And the most painful pile of all--my New School University & Leeds Metropolitan University papers in OC-ily labeled envelopes ("Housing", "Visa", "Financial Statements", "Acceptance Letters Etc."), complete with checklists.
That pile has been under my bed (in this apartment, and the last) for the past 3 years. Didn't realize I'd been holding on to it so...tangibly. So cobwebs and why-didn't-I-wear-a-mask-listen-to-your-mother-ly.
So I threw them all out. And now I'm sure I'm in for a white night--and a bad cough tomorrow morning. Sigh.
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. - Carl Jung
This is Phase...4? 5? 3,000? of Oplan Lipat Bahay. All three of us have been so busy at work we haven't had time to really dig our heels into this and coat ourselves with dust from head to toe--though Da Sistah has done a truly kickass job overseeing the painting and the tiling and the baseboard-ing (which comes, unfortunately, with the occasional backache).
We've already dumped our most precious cargo in the new place (CDs/DVDs, books, bags and shoes). So now all that's left is all our furniture, appliances, plates, glasses, curtains, toiletries and clothes.
I have half a mind to burn it all and just start from scratch.
Just spent the last five hours going through all the stuff I've accumulated in the last two years and three months living in our apartment.
A pile of GamePlan calling cards. Renegade photos. My now super-ratty freshman college journal (oh, the drama). A small spiral notebook with a photo of Angela Chase & Jordan Catalano on the cover. A "Certificate of Appreciation" from Carrera Habagat. A little scrap of paper with "My sister Katia" and a phone number on it, in very European handwriting. A pocket map of Paris, a million and one CPI acknowledgment receipts, and birthday cards from Charlie's Angels.
And the most painful pile of all--my New School University & Leeds Metropolitan University papers in OC-ily labeled envelopes ("Housing", "Visa", "Financial Statements", "Acceptance Letters Etc."), complete with checklists.
That pile has been under my bed (in this apartment, and the last) for the past 3 years. Didn't realize I'd been holding on to it so...tangibly. So cobwebs and why-didn't-I-wear-a-mask-listen-to-your-mother-ly.
So I threw them all out. And now I'm sure I'm in for a white night--and a bad cough tomorrow morning. Sigh.
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. - Carl Jung
* * *
This is Phase...4? 5? 3,000? of Oplan Lipat Bahay. All three of us have been so busy at work we haven't had time to really dig our heels into this and coat ourselves with dust from head to toe--though Da Sistah has done a truly kickass job overseeing the painting and the tiling and the baseboard-ing (which comes, unfortunately, with the occasional backache).
We've already dumped our most precious cargo in the new place (CDs/DVDs, books, bags and shoes). So now all that's left is all our furniture, appliances, plates, glasses, curtains, toiletries and clothes.
I have half a mind to burn it all and just start from scratch.
12 June 2008
03 June 2008
A Many-Splendored Thing (Han Suyin)
"So I wish my love, if it be love that I bear you, to rest upon you no heavier than a butterfly."
"Darling, no one will say these nice things to her lover in your New Democracy," said Mark. "Everyone will be so busy with work, self-criticism and dialectics."
"Politics don't stop love. He will say to her: 'You are as beautiful as our new hydroelectric plant.' And she will reply: 'Comrade, how progressive of you.'"
"Darling, no one will say these nice things to her lover in your New Democracy," said Mark. "Everyone will be so busy with work, self-criticism and dialectics."
"Politics don't stop love. He will say to her: 'You are as beautiful as our new hydroelectric plant.' And she will reply: 'Comrade, how progressive of you.'"
* * *
To go on living one has to be occasionally silly; to cherish memories which in more detached moments exhale a pungent odor of embalming fluid; to finger old letters which the silver worm punches, to distort in the trappings of sentiment the ardors of love; to magnify into a saying the light, mocking word.
29 May 2008
I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose. - Woody Allen
photo taken by FB/VJ at Erika's weddingI haven't seen a picture of me laughing in a while. Smiling doesn't count--that's what you do after the "1, 2, 3!" cue. I recently saw a colleague's album of candid photos taken during one of our events, and I always seemed to be frowning.
A month ago an editor-in-chief (and former philosophy professor of mine) said I looked like crap. I looked tired as hell, my aura was so heavy, yada yada. Yesterday afternoon I ran into her and she said, "Hey, you look so much better."
I feel better, too. My laughter now, as a friend observed, is inches away from "maniacal", but I suppose that's what happens when you exhale...and you have no idea what you're going to do next, and you may have to consider singing in MRT stations, but that's okay.
"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." - Thomas Jefferson
A month ago an editor-in-chief (and former philosophy professor of mine) said I looked like crap. I looked tired as hell, my aura was so heavy, yada yada. Yesterday afternoon I ran into her and she said, "Hey, you look so much better."
I feel better, too. My laughter now, as a friend observed, is inches away from "maniacal", but I suppose that's what happens when you exhale...and you have no idea what you're going to do next, and you may have to consider singing in MRT stations, but that's okay.
"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." - Thomas Jefferson
15 May 2008
Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam
October 20. 1966
Dear Aunt Fannie,
This morning, my platoon and I were finishing a three-day patrol. Struggling over steep hills covered with hedgegrows, trees and generally impenetrable jungle, one of my men turned to me and pointed a hand, filled with cuts and scratches, at a rather distinguished-looking plant with soft red flowers waving gaily in the downpour (which had been going on ever since the patrol began) and said, "That is the first plant I have seen today that doesn't have thorns on it." I immediately thought of you.
The plant, and the hill upon which it grew, was also representative of Vietnam. It is a country of thorns and cuts, of guns and marauding, of little hope and of great failure. Yet in the midst of it all, a beautiful thought, gesture and even person can arise among it waving bravely at the death that pours upon it. Some day this hill will be burned by napalm, and the red flowers will crackle up and die among the thorns.
So what was the use of it living and being a beauty among the beasts, if it must, in the end, die because of them, and with them? This is a question which is answered by Gertrude Stein's "A rose is a rose is a rose." You are what you are what you are. Whether you believe in God, fate, or the crumbling cookie, elements are so mixed in a being that make him what he is; his salvation from the thorns lies in the fact that he existed at all, in his very own personality. There once was a time when the Jewish idea of heaven and hell was the thoughts and opinions people had of you after you died.
But what if the plant was on an isolated hill and was never seen by anyone? That is like the question of whether the falling tree makes a sound in the forest primeval when no one is there to hear it. It makes a sound, and the plant was beautiful and the thought was kind, and the person was humane, and distinguished and brave, not merely because other people recognized it as such, but because it is, and it is, and it is.
The flower will always live in the memory of a tired, wet Marine, and has thus achieved a sort of immortality. But even if we had never gone on that hill, it would still be a distinguished, soft, red thornless flower growing among the cutting, scratching plants, and that in itself is its own reward.
Dear Aunt Fannie,
This morning, my platoon and I were finishing a three-day patrol. Struggling over steep hills covered with hedgegrows, trees and generally impenetrable jungle, one of my men turned to me and pointed a hand, filled with cuts and scratches, at a rather distinguished-looking plant with soft red flowers waving gaily in the downpour (which had been going on ever since the patrol began) and said, "That is the first plant I have seen today that doesn't have thorns on it." I immediately thought of you.
The plant, and the hill upon which it grew, was also representative of Vietnam. It is a country of thorns and cuts, of guns and marauding, of little hope and of great failure. Yet in the midst of it all, a beautiful thought, gesture and even person can arise among it waving bravely at the death that pours upon it. Some day this hill will be burned by napalm, and the red flowers will crackle up and die among the thorns.
So what was the use of it living and being a beauty among the beasts, if it must, in the end, die because of them, and with them? This is a question which is answered by Gertrude Stein's "A rose is a rose is a rose." You are what you are what you are. Whether you believe in God, fate, or the crumbling cookie, elements are so mixed in a being that make him what he is; his salvation from the thorns lies in the fact that he existed at all, in his very own personality. There once was a time when the Jewish idea of heaven and hell was the thoughts and opinions people had of you after you died.
But what if the plant was on an isolated hill and was never seen by anyone? That is like the question of whether the falling tree makes a sound in the forest primeval when no one is there to hear it. It makes a sound, and the plant was beautiful and the thought was kind, and the person was humane, and distinguished and brave, not merely because other people recognized it as such, but because it is, and it is, and it is.
The flower will always live in the memory of a tired, wet Marine, and has thus achieved a sort of immortality. But even if we had never gone on that hill, it would still be a distinguished, soft, red thornless flower growing among the cutting, scratching plants, and that in itself is its own reward.
Love,
Sandy
Sandy
On 11 November 1966, less than three weeks after he wrote this letter to his great-aunt Mrs. Louis Adoue, Marine 2Lt. Marion Lee Kempner, from Galveston, Texas, was killed by a mine explosion near Tien Phu. After he disarmed one mine, another was tripped by one of his men. Although wounded by shrapnel, Lt. Kempner ordered the corpsman to take care of the other wounded man first. He died aboard a medevac en route to the hospital. He was 24 years old.
For the red thornless flowers I have seen and heard and felt, both strangers and friends alike; past and present, in passing and in the trenches.
For the red thornless flowers I have seen and heard and felt, both strangers and friends alike; past and present, in passing and in the trenches.
31 March 2008
The things that get stuck in your head.
- Charly Baltimore: I'm leaving the country, Mitch. I need a fake passport and I need money, lots of it.
- Mitch Henessey: Well, why didn't you say so? Hold on a minute while I pull that outta my ass.
Last night, Cinemax gave me the answer: The Long Kiss Goodnight.
If I'm not mistaken, Mia and I watched it in Town together (siguro Twin Cinema pa yun noon). And I think that was the first time I screamed at noisy idiot moviegoers. At siguro di kami pinatulan nung mga yun kasi waaaaay under 5 feet pa kami nun...
In other news, my favorite boy is #1. Yippeekayey, mother[toot]!
20 March 2008
Holy Week so far.
A lot of laundry.
A lot of sweeping and mopping.
A lot of DVDs--so far: Elizabeth The Golden Age, Robin Hood (retro!), Shining Through, Bourne Identity & Bourne Supremacy. Right now, The English Patient.
I love it I love it I love it.
In other news, I caved in and signed up sa Facebook (because, Klur, there are so many things you can find out there na you can't find out here! Hihihihi). Mukhang Time Suckage yun, though. I'm staying away.
A lot of sweeping and mopping.
A lot of DVDs--so far: Elizabeth The Golden Age, Robin Hood (retro!), Shining Through, Bourne Identity & Bourne Supremacy. Right now, The English Patient.
I love it I love it I love it.
In other news, I caved in and signed up sa Facebook (because, Klur, there are so many things you can find out there na you can't find out here! Hihihihi). Mukhang Time Suckage yun, though. I'm staying away.
19 March 2008
Cute tees I wish I had!
1. Emo Bear (bwahahahaha)
2. I Love The (Eighteen)80s
Ang cuuuute.
Thanks, Papa J for the chika. I do hope I see you & Maui in Tagaytay this weekend :)
13 March 2008
catty.
People who know me really well know that I so do not like cats. I used to have nightmares as a kid that they were scratching me all over. I once dreamt that a tiger was attacking me and I screamed loud enough for my dad to come running down the hallway to my room.
Recently, though, I found myself talking to somebody and it came out that I can be, when introduced, catty. Not catty in the Mean Girls sense (though heaven knows all girls can be that way, present company included)--catty in the...nangingilala sense. In the I-will-look-at-you-first, maybe-sniff-and-slink-and-then-smile sense.
It bothered me. It still does. I don't want to be catty. I want to be the yellow labrador-like, oh-can-I-take-you-home-you-pretty-baby-who-let-me-carry-you-instantly type. I've always thought of myself as such.
So I asked two people who know me really well--my beloved sistah and my beloved boyfriend--if I am catty on Day One.
And they both said yes!
Harumph. Can I help it if I'm nearsighted?
I guess I'll have to meet somebody new to try my Yellow Lab Self.
Recently, though, I found myself talking to somebody and it came out that I can be, when introduced, catty. Not catty in the Mean Girls sense (though heaven knows all girls can be that way, present company included)--catty in the...nangingilala sense. In the I-will-look-at-you-first, maybe-sniff-and-slink-and-then-smile sense.
It bothered me. It still does. I don't want to be catty. I want to be the yellow labrador-like, oh-can-I-take-you-home-you-pretty-baby-who-let-me-carry-you-instantly type. I've always thought of myself as such.
So I asked two people who know me really well--my beloved sistah and my beloved boyfriend--if I am catty on Day One.
And they both said yes!
Harumph. Can I help it if I'm nearsighted?
I guess I'll have to meet somebody new to try my Yellow Lab Self.
* * *
In other news.
I had an existential itch I had to scratch last week, so I found myself walking to the kanto parlor and saying, "Please cut my hair." I said till my shoulder, she got amnesia and cut it till just below my chin. So now I have invested in 50,000 bobby pins and look like I did in college--only now, at least, I didn't cut my own hair in the Gonzaga bathroom.
Grow, I command you. Grow.
I had an existential itch I had to scratch last week, so I found myself walking to the kanto parlor and saying, "Please cut my hair." I said till my shoulder, she got amnesia and cut it till just below my chin. So now I have invested in 50,000 bobby pins and look like I did in college--only now, at least, I didn't cut my own hair in the Gonzaga bathroom.
Grow, I command you. Grow.
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