Heaven is a five-storey bookstore.

P and I have been frequenting the newly opened book/music store on Bonifacio High St. Upon entry to the store, P and I say a cheery goodbye to each other, temporarily divorcing, as he heads to the fourth floor to browse art books and CDs, while I start my pilgrimage at the ground floor, paying homage to books by category (this is my obsessive-compulsive thing. I must always begin my scouring in an organized manner, the same way I do my grocery shopping, i.e., aisle per aisle. This is to avoid missing anything. If I do not do it this way, the whole experience is ruined for me). Some books are competitively priced in this store, but others are expensive by 10-30 pesos compared to competing bookstores. Oh, well, at least their inventory is extensive and of quality. My blood secretly rippled in delight. I almost made myself dizzy going from floor to floor, inwardly wrestling with the desire to buy new books because of the recent moratorium on book and DVD buying that I imposed on P and myself, but, eventually giving in and buying books and CDs with a promise not to buy anymore in the future, that these purchases are the absolute last!

In the store, we bump into friends, fellow book/CD addicts, and after perfunctory hellos, we each quiz each other’s buys or recommend new ones. This is the only bookstore in the country with a Starbucks. I don’t know how remarkable this is because I’m not a Starbucks habitué as I’m not addicted to coffee, I’m more a tea person and I’m very particular about my teas so no Stash or Gold Leaf for me. Besides, things are expensive in Starbucks although I’m currently addicted to their "Banoffis."

One time, I was waiting for P to finish working in an event sponsored by his company and I went to this bookstore’s Starbucks to have a snack. The crew very politely inquired if the sandwich and juice I ordered was dinner, whether I’m alone, if I would like a glass of water, and if I’m attending the Christina Aguilera concert. I always get these sort of inquiries from people, something about me must encourage small talk. I’m the type who can start conversations with strangers and when we say goodbye to each other we’re already friends. This aspect of my personality is alarming to introverted P to the point that he sometimes shushes me or frowns when I get into gregarious mode. I can’t help it. I’m honestly interested in people. I’m the type who’ll help old ladies cross streets or pick up dropped things, or give advice or offer my services to strangers. With the amount of distrust people have against other people these days, P said that I should temper my outgoing nature because people might misconstrue my intentions. Like, when we were abroad, I offered to take this woman’s picture because she was traveling solo. I saw her stop to think if I were only offering to take her picture so that I could run off with her camera. She looked me up and down and decided that I was safe. When we bumped into each other at the airport we waved at each other and inquired about each other’s destination. There was also this one time when we were on this rickety boat in China, on our way to sample the local cooking of a seaside town, I tried to start a conversation with a guy asking him where he was from (Ireland), if he was traveling alone, if he thought that traveling alone was romantic, etc. I saw P roll his eyeballs. The guy probably wanted to be left alone to his thoughts. He looked a bit like Gerard Depardieu.

Anyway, back to the bookstore. At the cash register, I fingered the Moleskine merchandise as I waited for P to pay for our purchases. Said to be the notebook used by the likes of Hemingway, Picasso, and Chatwin, Moleskine is leather bound and expensive (at 800-1,000+ pesos a pop). I had to reconsider as I still have a lot of notebooks and journals given by P, E, and E. I have never bought an expensive notebook in my life because even though I love them, I’m too stingy to spend too much on parchment. I’m all for recycling and mostly just use the backs of used bond papers for composition (que horror!). Also, I’m a bit of a messy writer. I sometimes can’t even read my own handwriting. Ha-ha. E recently got me two pocketsize, leather-bound notebooks from abroad. Not Moleskine, but equally beautiful and made in Italy. I can’t wait to use them! 

The light was great.

We just came from Serendra and on our way to another mall. It was drizzling, traffic was bumper to bumper, P was talking, I opened the cosmetic mirror, saw that the light was good, and started taking pictures . . . 

Baby Grand.

In 2010, I’ll buy me this baby and I’ll play on it lovely music on weekends (something Patrick Doyle or Dario Marianelli), whilst P paints his abstractions in his studio slash my library. 

P’s Meditating on Puddles (13”x10”, watercolor on paper).

Religion.

After attending Mass, P just blurted out: “You know, according to Nietzsche, religion is for the weak.”

I rolled my eyeballs. “Of course, he was a socialist,” I said.

“No, contrary to what most people think, Nietzsche actually liked religion. He once said, ‘What is morality without religion?’ We actually need religion . . .”

“To keep us in line.” I cut him off.

“Precisely.”

“Me, I’d rather believe in something than nothing,” I said.

“Nietzsche didn’t believe that we should pander to the poor because the Bible said that the poor would inherit the earth . . .”

“I think that what is meant by that is that Jesus wanted the non-poor to share what they had with the poor. Remember he said that what we do to the least of his brothers, whether good or bad, we do to him?” I said.

“But, Nietzsche said that the poor should not be satisfied with being poor. They should work hard to rise from poverty.”

“You know, there’s a reason why there are poor and rich people and I’m not talking about capitalism. In life there should be balance. We can’t all be rich; otherwise, no one will agree to work the industries anymore . . .”

“No, what Nietzsche meant is that people should excel in their chosen profession, they should aim for perfection. If you’re a blue-collar worker, say a cook, you should try to be the best cook. People should not use poverty as a crutch. To say that this is all I can be, this is my lot in life because I am poor.”

“Agree,” I said.

“I should read more Nietzsche,” P said.

:D

What the Dog Says

I lie belly-up
In the sunshine, happier than
You ever will be.

Today I sniffed
Many dog butts — I celebrate
By kissing your face.

I sound the alarm!
Paperboy — come to kill us all —
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I sound the alarm!
Garbage man — come to kill us all —
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I lift my leg and
Whiz on each bush. Hello, Spot —
Sniff this and weep.

I hate my choke chain —
Look, world, they strangle me! Ack
Ack Ack Ack Ack Ack!

Sleeping here, my chin
On your foot — no greater bliss — well,
Maybe catching cats.

Posted by: "SS Alzona"

Because "poetry doesn't belong to those who wrote it, but to those who need it."

Even though we only have two seasons in Pinas, I always do my major cleaning and organizing in spring (April, May, or June). While organizing this year, I came across poems that I’ve clipped from newspapers and magazines as far back as 1990. I reread them, threw majority of them out, but managed to keep these two:

Huwag Kang Kukurap
Ni Manolito Castillo Sulit

Minsan, gusto mong isiping
madyikero ang pagkakataon.
Na ang sangbeses na pagtatagpo
sa burger house
ay mauuwi sa ganito.
At sasabihin mong sana’y
di na lumakad nang napakalayo
ang gayong sandali,
mula sa pagtanaw mo sa kanya
sa isang mesa
at sa pagitan ng subo at nguya
ay walang anumang sabing,
“Parang artista nung 1950s, ano?”
Hanggang doon na lamang sana
sa sandaling bahagya siyang umirap.

Subalit madyikero nga ang pagkakataon.
At gaya ng rabbit o kalapating
dinukot sa sombrero,
mamanghain ka ng lobo,
bulaklak, hanggang sa sandali’y
maging panyo

at panyo lamang.


Nagmamadaling mga Taludtod
(kay Abbey)
Ni Danilo R. Dela Cruz Jr.

Pinagbaga ng aking marubdob na pag-ibig
ang iyong talampakan,
at pumaimbulog kang
lapnos ang damdamin at isip
sa kalawakan ng walang katiyakang paglukso
ng mga gunitang para sa iyo, para sa akin,
gaano man ito kalupit.

For lack of things to do.

Last Friday, I asked P what plans we have for the weekend. He said, “I thought we were watching that play at the CCP?” I said, “No, the play I wanted to see had been shown already.” P said, “Hmm, so wala pala tayo gagawin this weekend?” I said, “Wala . . .” He said, “Okay, let’s just stay home and have lots of s*x.” Ha-ha.

But Saturday actually brought us to a group exhibit at a museum in Makati where an acquaintance had two of what he said were old paintings. That done, we ate at a favorite restaurant, dropped by MW to buy “dibidis,” went home, and settled in bed for marathon movie watching. Unfortunately, the pickings were slim in MW. We started the film fest. with As You Like It, directed by Kenneth Branagh. We got really excited when we saw this in MW because Branagh is, to quote P, “Adik kay Shakespeare” and we still have fond memories of a Shakespearean adaptation of his that we were able to watch way back in the early nineties (Much Ado about Nothing).

As You Like It is one of my favorite Shakespearean plays. I even wrote a paper on said comedy in my Drama class. The very popular quote: “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" came from this play. Branagh’s film was interestingly set in nineteenth-century Japan and although P and I marveled at the lush look and feel of the movie, we both agreed that we found it too "experimental." It is difficult enough reading Shakespeare’s Elizabethan prose in print, but to watch actors deliver them in staccato speech (Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter and the reading of the stage verses has to have an aural pattern or beat), with some of them careless in their enunciation, is even harder. Compound this with the fact that as one watches Branagh’s adaptation, one can’t help but ask, “What the hell are these people doing in nineteenth-century Japan?” Bryce Howard’s “Rosalind” also failed to sparkle for me. Romola Garai (I first saw and appreciated her as the young lead in the film I Capture the Castle) as Celia almost upstaged her. The film dragged and lacked the witty repartees of the original script. I have yet to finish the film because I fell asleep halfway through. The next movie in our marathon was aptly titled Next (starring Nicolas Cage as a man who can foretell the future), but I was still so sleepy from the first film, I slept through this one, too. P had to nudge me awake. He said, “Ano ka ba tulog ka nang tulog!” I snarled, “E, bakit ka ba nanggigising?”

After my afternoon “nap” of 4 hours, I told P that I was ready for Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom. I first saw this film as a teenager and had chanced upon the film maybe twice or thrice in the cable movie channels in the past. No matter how many times I’ve seen it, I can still bear to see it “one more time.” The film just transcends time, plus, I’m really a sucker for “dance” movies. One of my favorite dialogues in the film is “a life lived in fear is no life at all” (this kind of theme echoes in other Luhrmann films, like in Moulin Rouge where the lead actor, in one scene, declares, “A life without love is no life at all.”) Now, whenever I come across something that paralyzes me with dread, like killing a cockroach for example, I tell myself, “A life lived in fear is no life at all!” It helps. It really does.

It surprised me to learn that Luhrmann currently has only three films to his credit (there’s Strictly, then Romeo + Juliet, then Moulin Rouge). As is typical of other Luhrmann movies, Strictly is fast-paced, cinematographically beautiful (and colorful), and has kick-ass music. Here's a scene where the two lead characters dance on the rooftop of their studio (a Coca-Cola billboard as backdrop) with “Time after Time” as score:

According to P, the reason why I only truly like films that are beautifully set, written, acted in, and directed is because watching a film for me is a total experience of the senses. Therefore, in order for me to appreciate any film, it has to blow my mind away. It has to appeal to me both on a cerebral and emotional level. Totoo ba yan?! Boo! He-he-he.

Anyway, since P scoffs at my Korean and Japanese contemporary film fixation, I let him sleep while I watched Isamu Nakae's widely accepted coming-of-age film, Sugar and Spice. It stars two award-winning young actors (Yuya Yagira and Erika Sawajiri) said to be the “future of Japanese cinema.” The film is about a seventeen-year-old boy about to transition into adulthood. It is a bittersweet tale of “firsts”—first love, first heartbreak. I like the film because it is totally relatable, it provides wonderful and real insights into life and relationships, and has beautiful dialogue like:

“Relationships that are allowed to mature over time and effort can be the best kind.”

And, my favorite:

“When something fragile seems about to break, what choice do I have but to treat it gently?”