Ryo Nishikido meets Albert Einstein

Another product of my hits and misses with Adobe Photoshop.

Explorations

Because I was learning how to make GIFs from my twin (lumpofmud/Rachel) and I missed reading verses out loud and the film boy A was too much with me then:

Movie Review

I went to see the independent film 100 with a friend. I was (as it is turning out these days) yet again a kaladkarin. The movie stars Mylene Dizon and Eugene Domingo, Filipina actors who have a string of good films under their belt.

The film is about dying. Cancer. Everyone seems to be dying from it these days. Mylene plays Joyce, and Eugene is Joyce’s childhood friend, Ruby. It’s Joyce who is stricken with the disease. In her last months, she makes a list of things she wants to do bucket list style, only more down to earth. Real. Cleans up her house. Organizes her photo albums; finds Pinky, the ugly toy she’s alwas liked as a child. Quits from her job. Travels. Eats. Eats and eats. Like there’s no tomorrow. Well, there isn’t, really.

It’s a good film. Go see it. Count on me. Count on my good taste.

Photo grabbed from http://cdmartinez.multiply.com/

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There’s this other movie. My roommate and I did not intend to watch it. We happened to pass by the cinema and she’d seen a trailer of it somewhere. She said Let’s go see it and I went but we have to buy your sister a dress. Turns out everything had been taken care of and I thought what the hell are we here for then? So I ended up in an SM theater watching The Day the Earth Stood Still. It stars Keanu Reeves.

My impressions? Keanu’s grown old. He’s got wrinkly skin now. Quite different from the Keanu of Speed. I watched that film like a thousand years ago. I must be getting old. Anyway, it’s a good film, too. I haven’t seen a decent Hollywood film in a while, made me feel good about the 146 bucks I spent on it. Worth every peso, I tell you. Good film, really.

Photo grabbed through Google Search, original link: http://www.circuitempire.edison.secure-xp.net/Comingmovie.aspx?MID=1196

Good film. Simple plot (You can never go wrong). Mysterious sphere lands in Central Park (Why there of all places?). Everyone thought it was an asteroid and prepared for the aftermath. I thought it was another blow up Manhattan kind of movie. Turned out not. After the huge sphere lands, out goes an alien. They shoot it. OF COURSE. Count on the Americans to shoot anyone an alien. You have invaded our airspace, crippled our defense systems, therefore, you are hostile and a threat to national security. Shoot the thing. Shoot the unknown. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. So they shot the damn thing. Then the scientists take charge. They operate on it. Voila! to their surprise the alien is human (wearing a bio-organic spacesuit). Or at least, the alien is in human form. He speaks of all things, ENGLISH. How convenient. He has come to save the earth says Keanu Reeves the alien. Let me give you a hint: Save the Earth from what/whom? That’s the question to ask. Now, go see it.

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For a decent summary of 100 look up: http://cdmartinez.multiply.com/

& (Ampersand)

Last December 9, 2008 was the release of the first issue of the annual creative writing journal of the UP DECL, & (Ampersand). To my knowledge this is the first UP publication of undergraduate creative writing.

About a year ago a friend from the Ateneo gave (not lent) me a copy of Heights (in full color), and I was at that time wow-ed. I planned to write an article/rant about the absence of such channels for undergraduate students in UP, but due to my procrastination, the publication I’ve been looking for has had ample time to catch up. Hurrah! I can’t offer a decent review at the moment (perhaps never). We’ll see whether I can muster up enough arrogance over the Christmas break. I am halfway through the titles though not in chronological order. I’ve just been randomly choosing which entries to read.

First impressions: FRESH, imaginative, quirky, intelligent, experimental, bold, daring, COOL.

Favorite: Lambert Varias’ Ss.

Before I manage to disinterest and discourage you, here’s the cover illustration grabbed from a group mail sent by the maiden issue’s editor Prof. Conchitina Cruz:

ampersand

Features work by the following authors:

Jessica Balaquit
Melissa Villa-Real Basmayor
Gustav Brandon Trinidad Cruz
Dana Lee F. Delgado
Arlynn Raymundo Despi
Aaron Galzote
Georgiana Diane O. Go
Gayle Krystle A. Grey
Hong Song I
Tracy Ignacio
Justine Kison
Sarah Matias
Cristina Morales
Anna Oposa
Theresa Russel Padillo
Janina Pascual
Pedro Ilustreto B. Publico.
Francis Paolo M. Quina
Eris Heidi L. Ramos
Richard Dean Reposar
John Lester P. Roque
Louise Jashil R. Sonido
E.M. Tobias
Lambert Varias

Prof. Conchitina Cruz wrote about &:

& is an annual publication that collects the best work of the year written by both undergraduate and graduate students in the courses offered by the UP Creative Writing Program. Ensuring diversity in subject, substance, and style, it features the most imaginative work to come out of basic courses in creative writing (CW 10 and CW 100); workshops in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, writing for children/young adults, and comic book writing; special topics courses in creative writing (such as Erotica and Science Fiction); as well as CL genre courses in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Edited each year by a member of the Creative Writing faculty, & aims to challenge young writers to strive for excellence in their craft by serving as a healthily competitive and elegantly produced venue for them to see their work in print.

So what are you waiting for? Pocket a hundred bucks and get to the UP Press (Balay Kalinaw) or the DECL (at FC). Get your ass moving!

Beginning the Pressing Questions Series

These days I dislike pauses. I must stay preoccupied. I must not allow myself a moment to think. When I get home from class, I merely have to open the laptop, push in a CD to the drive and I am safe for hours. Anything will do, but I prefer romantic comedies, feel-good movies, slapstick humor, action films—the cinema of comfort. Something you can discard, forget right after. No need for mulling. I draw, toy around with photoshop if only to fill the hours. Even a class requirement becomes a welcome distraction from the things I know I should really start thinking about. When there is nothing else that’s left to do (a rare occurrence) there is the comfort of sleep and momentary forgetfulness.

The problem arises from the simple unengaging everyday tasks—

The long uninterrupted silence of washing my panties.

The long uninterrupted silence in the shower, bathing myself.

The long uninterrupted silence of meals eaten alone .

The long uninterrupted silence of jeep rides. The long uninterrupted silence of walking to class.

The pressing questions can only grow in number with my neglect, and so is my growing anxiety. These can no longer be left unsaid. This blog in the first place was begun with the intention to answer questions that kept popping up in my head. I intended to write about them hoping to get questions and answers from others, but more than six months have passed and I have yet to write about the questions that nag at me.
So let us sit down and think.

I’m nineteen. I’m already nineteen and still nothing makes sense. There were particular times, yes there were, when I knew where I was going, how, and when. But throughout adolescence my paradigms and beliefs have been intermittently put to the test. Many of them have been found wanting. Some of them I’ve relegated to the pile of unrealistic romanticized ideals, which one must hold secretly and silently in keeping. I’ve gone through a lot of burning and shedding just to grow up, to finally accept where I am and what I am, to finally live with this world as I lived with myself. I have become more honest with how things really are, but I suppose people have other labels for me, like cynical, jaded, atheist, alienated, maybe even apathetic.

For honesty’s sake, then, I will tell you this. Nothing makes sense to me. This world doesn’t make any sense. My existence has no sense. God/god(s), especially, doesn’t make any sense. My country, too, this Philippines, doesn’t make any inch of sense. But I know, at least, that I need sense. I need it so badly, painfully so. I need sense from all these nonsense, and if I have to build myself some sense, construct myself a god, then I will. I definitely will because I can no longer take living out my days aimless and without drive. I’ve tried letting go and letting be but all I got in return was a feeling of disappointment. What a waste, I had thought, to do nothing with my potential to create and invent, to make better. To engage myself. To invest myself.

What drives people to ask questions? Isn’t it an attempt at sense? To make sense of something we ask questions. We seek answers. The easy answers, I think, will come from outside. The harder ones to find are those that arise from the inside. They are the painful answers. The answers that are a pain to think, a pain to find, a pain to accept. This is me anticipating what’s coming my way for asking questions. But the hell I will ask, oh yes, and all be damned.

*Darn it is so difficult to make text dance on the wordpress page.

Night

I sit silently in my room, in the darkness. I remember that time I came home alone, walking from the highway on the rutted dirt road towards the neighborhood interior, not so much seeing my way through the muddy path as feeling my way by memory. I knew that path by heart, its width and length, and the point at where it bends and slithers its way, avoiding houses and fenced properties to bring me home. I walked calmly though it was near pitch, the makeshift streetlamps dark and dead. Someone must have forgotten to turn them on. When I got home to dogs barking, I gently swung the gate open and crossed the overgrown lawn. The wet grass licked at my ankles as the dogs leaped happily at me. I opened the main door with my key, threw my knapsack on the floor and groped my way to a corner. There I sat for the next two hours hugging my knees and my back against the wall. No one came home early that night and I am glad for it, otherwise I would have been teased for my sentimentality. But still, two hours sitting in the darkness and nothing happened. I was waiting for the world, listening, but there was no answer. No one has consoled me for that black hole night.

Weight

I am heavy with stories and many times I consider wresting them away. To be over and done with. To escape the pull of the gnawing, gnawing empty hole. To escape the vast vast background against which miniscule I am, looked down upon by multitudes of distant, distanced stars. But they come, god! they come, and sharp, stinging. Catching me unprepared, gasping, barely surviving with my sanity whole, always impaired, bent this way, that, and I grab on nonetheless with a salutation of curses. Then the story leaves as I clutch at the gnawing, the tightening in my chest.

For Leyla

Favorites

So the truth is finally out, and I was right: my parents keep favorites, and it isn’t me. I never was and I’ll never be. While this knowledge would have hurt me during my rebellious years, I only flash Mama a knowing smile as I hear her tell me this.

There is consolation in this. That I was right, after all. That the angst I felt then was justified. I did not hallucinate my insecurities into being, and perhaps, everyone is wrong when they say I read too much into things.

Some photographs for some simple memories

I must say I really liked how the editing turned out on this one. ^^

This was taken at McDonald’s, Dumaguete on our first day out with our little (mischievous) cousin, Charrie. Mother was with us as well. Could this be a start of the Quirante women’s congregations?

Charrie and Rachel [L-R]

Some trick up her sleeve. = )

Peace, man.