the pottermore post

So last week, I got into the Pottermore craze when I finally got my welcome e-mail (after weeks of whining, heh).

The experience so far has proved to be very magical indeed -- the graphics are awesome, you get to find things by zooming in, there's a lot of meta going on about J.K. Rowling's process as a writer (a personal favorite, absolutely -- I have enjoyed what I have read so far about things not in the book), PLUS I totally got my wand and GOT SORTED.

Well, as far as SORTING goes, you all know how that turned out:

Slytherins: Sleek, powerful, misunderstood.

(Here's why I agree with the Sorting Hat's decision-- WARNING: SPOILERS. Just in case you care.)

her fearful symmetry

Niffenegger's "Her Fearful Symmetry" --
different from "The Time Traveler's Wife"
in its own endearing way.

Just a quick note to say -- oh wow, I can't believe I've already finished this book! And yes, I liked it.

(Spoilers under cut, of course)

seven-twentysix: the post-sona playlist

She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her.
Text from Audrey Niffenegger's "Her Fearful Symmetry"

kwentuhan lang

(Cut for old school)

Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood)

Finally finished this one (much thanks to Eliza, who let her copy stay with me for a ridiculously long time.)

What an adventure. Glad to have managed to savor this tale (several of them actually in this massive story) as slowly as I could let myself.

(4/11 EDIT: cut for weird dreams, spoilers and quotes)

now reading

"It was an effort for me now to recall the details of my grief -- the exact forms it had taken - although at will I could summon up an echo of it, like a small whining dog locked in the cellar. What had I done on the day Mother died? I could hardly remember that, or what she'd really looked like: now she looked only like her photographs. I did remember the wrongness of her bed when she was suddenly no longer in it: how empty it had seemed. The way the afternoon light came slantwise in through the window and fell so silently across the hardwood floor, the dust motes floating in it like mist. The smell of beeswax furniture polish, and of wilted chrysanthemums, and the lingering aroma of bedpan and disinfectant. I could remember her absence, now, much better than her presence."
--Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Dear Ms Atwood: How are you so good? Oh my God.

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nanowrimo 2010

37,090 / 50,000 words. 74% done!

On other news: Just reached 37k in my Nano attempt, and for the first time in 22 days I felt I'd actually be sad if I lost this file to Word runtime errors. (Backups)

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On other, other news: MONTH 38 TODAYYYYY. ♥

of aftermaths (the year of pleasures, berg)

Elizabeth Berg's "The Year of Pleasures" reminds me of Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" in terms of subject matter. Like Didion, whose book chronicles her process of coping after her husband John Dunne died in December 2003, Berg's female protagonist Betta Nolan here is also struggling in the aftermath of her husband's death, incidentally also named John. And before you even ask: No, I don't actively seek out books about death and coping, but you see I've always had a soft spot for anything that discusses death and discusses it well (like, remember this?); I admire anyone who manages to have the right words for loss and anguish (Didion most especially; I can't do it in fiction, but Didion did it and it was all fucking real.)

(Mandatory cut for spoilers)

the angel's game, zafon (2010)

Carlos Ruiz Zafon's "The Angel's Game" starts like this:

"A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood, and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price."

First paragraph: SOLD! WE HAVE A WINNER!

(Cut for generally non-spoilery rambling)

someday, this too will make sense

(I feel sad this isn't going anywhere. So I chopped off the rest and kept three paragraphs. Murder.)

She asks about how you are, and you think, how is this so easy, falling back into old routines of How-was-your-days like nothing hurt in between today and the last day you saw her? Seven years. Is it long enough for things to be written off, just like that?

And yet, you say, "Older and wiser," smiling as you lead her into the kitchen, pulling out a seat for her at the table and flipping a switch on. She squints at the light, and she suddenly looks so young; something tightens in your chest as your heart turns itself over. "You?"

"Older," she just says, shifting her eyes back down to the surface of the table. "A whole lot older."

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improved attention span is improved

I should tell you I am extremely pleased that I actually still manage to finish books nowadays. Even if they're depressing like whoa.

To wit:

The truth is, I was warned that it was sad, as in Hang myself afterward-sad. And I just said, Perfect!

a mix of things

First things first: Month number 33 today! ♥ Monthsary weeekend spent watching Toy Story 3 and eating popcorn. OMG this movie made me cry.

(Spoilers under cut, whatever)

the fiction class

The Fiction Class (Susan Breen)

So Arabella Hicks teaches a writing class on Wednesdays, which is also the day she visits her mother at the nursing home. Her class is a curious mix of interesting people, including a 53-year-old man named Chuck, who is also Arabella's love interest. But this is not completely a love story, more than it is a story about a daughter trying to come to grips with the fact that her mother's about to die.

Will you learn a lot about writing, per se? Well, Breen does provide useful advice about voice and dialogue and developing character and finding the proper motivation to write -- a good deal of the story is set in the classroom, after all -- but not in the magnitude that Anne Lamott does in "Bird by Bird" or the way Stephen King does in "On Writing" but then again she's juggling a love story with Chuck, her mother Vera's own story, and their story as mother-daughter which is particularly affecting, and the book's only about 300 pages long, so you get the picture.

Breen's language is deceptively simple. Deceptive, yes, because at some point she throws in something like, "She feels like a fist unclenching," and I am left staring at those six words for a very, very long time.

Things that have broken my heart in this: Arabella's love-hate-love relationship with her mother Vera, the moment Arabella learns the entire truth about her father's death, and the last few scenes. It was ill-advised for me to have read and finished this in public - at Conti's Greenbelt and then at Coffee Bean - because I would have loved to cry over some parts at great length in the privacy of my own home (in better days, the yearning would have been to read this with alcohol, but yeah. Good times, good times) but in all I am glad to have finished it finally.

One thing that did not work for me though: I wanted desperately to fall in love with this guy Chuck - this older man who is suave and gentle, etc etc but I don't know. I wanted to see what it was that Arabella found so seductive but I just... pfft. He lacked something, he didn't tug at my heart strings despite the fact that I think he was a rather good guy - clean-smelling, good-looking, dashing, well-off, accomplished, can cook, domestic etc etc, but I don't know what it is about him that in the end did not win me over at all. *shrug* He read like a dream guy - I guess that's what didn't work for me. Too perfect. And it's not even because I'm not into boys - I remember liking Henry in The Time Traveler's Wife, after all, and Murakami's male leads, though I may not like them all, at the very least, they affect me. Not Chuck. I needed more tension, I guess? Maybe it felt a bit too rushed to be believable? IDK.

[cut for excessive mother rantage]

meanwhile, a life roundup

Andrea got back in the country on Saturday, right in the middle of my hyperacidity bout -- which was a kind of nice surprise, since there was no way I would have been in our flat on a Saturday if not for this illness, so YAY. (She says maybe the hyperacidity thing was the Universe's way of telling me I needed to have more oatmeal in my life; I said I would have understood a postcard. Hehe.)

Oh hey, she got me a Panda Hat!

LOL that photo will never get old.

ANYWAY. Andrea has her mega-China update over at her LJ involving pandas, tiananmen square and the forbidden city, the Great Wall of China, terracotta warriors, Guilin, and Shanghai. WHEW. That was such a week.

Anyway again, illness update: been on Omeprazole for roughly a week; stomach's all better now, though I am keeping off soda, alcohol, greasy food and caffeine FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE I SWEAR. Also: Man, Maalox Plus is one tasty chewable tablet. I mean, tastier than bubblegummy Kremil-S. (LOL addict - drug of choice, Maalox Plus. LAME.)

Also, I've managed to finish a few books I've been meaning to finish while Andrea was away, to wit:

(Under cut: Books. WOW.)

over and over

We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It's like drinking water; we don't drink a glass once and never have to drink one again. We don't finish one poem or novel and never have to write one again. Over and over, we begin. This is good. This is kindness.

- Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind.

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(I promise to slow down on Sundays. I promise to slow down on Sundays...)

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Unexpected kindness is unexpected. Thank you; lately, I've been too prone to complaints and disenchantment. It must be the heat and all this hate that edges of regimes bring people. Horrible, horrible times, but again, as always, we overcome. Don't we? Thanks for the reminder. ♥

reborn into our numbers

"We hurt you because we love you," says a Lady Master in Lakambini Sitoy's The Sisterhood, one of the short stories off Jungle Planet and Other Stories, which tells of a law student's journey into a nameless sorority in a nameless university.

The thing grips me as it's painfully real - girls together are sometimes the meanest lot, this is the truth. But they're such interesting creatures, aren't they? Like they become this one thing whenever they congregate, and it's impossible to resist the charm of their company, the temptation of their acceptance.

And boys think it's hard being with girls? Try being one.

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Also, I will not deny being guilty of some form of psychological torture similar to this one - it's not as thorough as depicted in the book, but it's similar, and torture just the same, and the applicants are never right and are always in the middle horrible choices. Looking back, it's all a bit... indulgent. (To quote Simon Cowell) And lazy. Like it couldn't have been done some other way? Like it had to be propagated because this was how the Ones Before Us had done it all along? I understand tradition. To some point, I also enjoyed... I don't know, power? Respect. But these days when I bump into these people I had once subjected to these things - children then, full-grown media workers now - there's a sort of shame. We're all the same now. What was the point of that thing before?

a present to end all other presents

Oh man, this Christmas rush is precious. Nothing says Christmas like these aching limbs. :)

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So the other day I was walking along Mascardo when I saw these children running around carrying kittens in their hands. No, really, I mean, a kitten in each hand. So that's four children with EIGHT kittens. Or maybe more. Judging by how they were running, I suppose it's a catnap or something.

When I was a kid, we couldn't find kittens we could steal. This is sad, of course.

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I am praying for you.

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So I finished (after ten yearrrsssss) Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and man it is AWESOME. Which is not to say I am back to writing, because I'm not LOL. Instead, I am reading another writing guide-book-whatever, and it's Erica Jong's Seducing the Demon. Yes, she's that girl who coined the phrase, zipless fuck. It will be amazing, I KNOW.

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Here, have a panda:



OH MY HEART MY HEART ♥

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Also: GUYS! You know what you should do this season when you have enough time off for it:

REWATCH GLEE 1 to 13. ♥

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This entirely nonsequitur entry is brought to you by... the present that will end all the others. (smile)

the year of magical thinking

I’m nearing the end of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which is an account of her husband’s death and the process of coping that came later. Didion wrote it with startling clarity and honesty and reading it feels like she’s picking on a few of my stitches and prying them open.

In keeping with the theme, I rummaged through one of our cabinets and unearthed my earliest account of my mother’s death. I had brought it here after I moved out from QC to Makati, perhaps thinking it was time I had re-read it. It was handwritten, dated Dec. 20, 1997 and severely stapled on the edges. It had an extra blank page that I must have used in lieu of an envelope. I must have written it while on Christmas vacation during my first year in high school, and then, re-reading it upon finishing, I must have gotten scared my parents would clean my room and chance upon it so I stapled it up, thinking it would be safer that way.

That Christmas was horrible and we wanted to do everything we could to not remind each other of the tragedy; this four-page journal entry, if discovered, wouldn’t have done any good to any of us. I must have had this thought when I tore the pages from my spiral notebook journal and stapled them close, taping the “package” with clear tape against the inside of the back cover.

As a 12-year-old, I seemed to have had a lot of foresight. (This despite the fact that I kept on repeating in that note about how I did not see it coming, did not see my mother’s death coming so quickly.)

Looking back, the whole attempt (of stapling and taping the bulky thing) wasn’t at all inconspicuous, but seeing its preserved, untampered state about a decade later, I guess dad and auntie hadn’t strayed into this journal, or into any of my journals, for that matter.

It had a lot of the details that I had been repeating, time and again, whenever I came to writing about mom, usually during her death anniversary in November, birth anniversary in January or around Mothers’ Day in May. Sometimes I worry if I am too repetitive, but then again, I figure, this was a way of keeping her memories alive, for when I am older and when that time comes that I would be too far away from that day. I guess, I’ll never tire of writing about her, basically because I feel like I owe it to her to remember, always.

But then, it was also quite striking how my younger eyes had in fact taken note of some other things that I must have edited out of my later remembrances. Like how I had in fact written that I should have taken the fact that I had left my wallet and lunch money at home that morning as a sort of omen. I had written about how we had come home from school that day: I cut class half-day, Auntie came to get me and Krista with her shades on; I was called to go to the Prefect’s Office via the PA system, something that just doesn’t happen at all since I wasn’t the kind of girl often called into the principal’s office to begin with, or at least, not at the time.

At the time, there was no text messaging; I had called home via payphone, asking Auntie to look for my wallet and bring it when she attends Krista’s math contest that morning. That should be in time for recess, I said. I was on my way back from the contest venue, which was already empty when I got there and everyone I ran into all told me the same thing: I was being called into the Prefect’s Office. The fact was that I didn’t hear myself being called. I could only imagine how more harrowing things would have been, had I not fled the lounge, had I heard my own name myself. Maybe it was meant to be that way.

I wrote about how when we got home, we found that the living room had been re-arranged. I was amused to see how my 12-year-old self had written, “There was a plain white curtain hung by the wall.” Two reasons: One, I had completely forgotten this fact. Two, while there were many cringe-worthy, ill-constructed sentences and fragments in the whole thing, this one seemed to stand out. I wanted to take my 12-year-old self aside. I would have told her, Nice sentence kid. Now, if only you would remove all these annoying ellipses.

I should have saved that paper I had written my mother’s eulogy on – yes, I delivered my mother’s eulogy in that last Necro before the burial. But then, it wouldn’t have survived my sweaty palms. All that’s left of it is the first line, which I remember until today. I had started with, “When I came to know about my mother’s death.”

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By way of ending, I had written, inexplicably within quotation marks, about how death was both a sad and joyous thing, depending on where you’re coming from. There was no attribution, so I think that I must have used the quotation marks more as aesthetic devices than practical ones. In the succeeding, “non-quoted” paragraph, I talked about perspective briefly, a sort of analysis of what the whole ordeal has taught me. I had written it the way students usually ended their essays – “Through this experience, I developed a better perspective about death.”

Have I, really, at that moment, so quickly “developed a better perspective?” At 12, I must have been faring well with b’s-ing my way through school papers with this kind of language. Thinking about it, this thought really made me smile.

Incidentally, by way of going back to Didion, the page I am on is Page 192:

“People in grief think a great deal about self-pity. We worry it, dread it, scourge our thinking for signs of it. We fear that our actions will reveal the condition tellingly described as ‘dwelling on it.’ We understand the aversion most of us have to ‘dwelling on it.’ Visible mourning reminds us of death, which is construed as unnatural, a failure to manage the situation. ‘A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty,’ Philippe Aries wrote to the point of this aversion in Western Attitudes toward Death. ‘But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.’”

If I were to try to write down everything that strikes me so closely about this book, I think I would end up quoting pages of passages. But I’m not ruling that effort out entirely.