Monday, March 31, 2008

Breathing. Barely Blogging

Scoured the exotic books and magazines section of Chatochak and survived its dense, labyrinthine stalls. And that's the short of it. (I'll probably write about all the hilarious messed adventures.) So, yes, misterhubs, I am still alive but barely blogging. I was busy with work. In another corner of the earth. In my haste because of trip details fuckups I never really had the chance to blog or inform people except X that I was exiting Manila. It was so hot. And I just didn't mean the spicy food and the weather. Hormone-crazed dorks, wipe out that nasty grin off your face.

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Sunday, March 23, 2008

Risen


This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
- PSALMS 118:23


Jesus Christ is risen!
Happy Easter Everyone!

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Saturday, March 22, 2008

Summer Sparks, Springtime Simmers



Unpredicted things happen, but no wisdom imaginable could have possibly equipped me to weather your easy charms. How did it happen? Not long ago you’d merit a casual shrug or a skilled detachment from me: You are way out of my league and I distrust fairytales and Hollywood endings. Now, this... How simple, surprising even, that it only took us a casual drink to cast all creeds of self-preservation and send them reeling into a wild tailspin. I am trying to sober up from that laughter-laced moment when we discarded our respective cares and flung open the doors to our well-guarded vulnerabilities. I am not laying the blame entirely up to myself: You have muddled up the precise mechanisms of logic, and, in a disarming way, seized my attention into that of ripe interest. I was enraptured. You lobbed my misjudgments. You made me absorb the kind of depth and substance I have miscalculated to be not dwelling beneath your coy giggles, your bright eyes, your lovely face. The more I seek suitable explanations to justify my confusion the more I wanted to lock out the cautious howls of reason. There are a hundred raison d'êtres waiting to take place as to how we shouldn’t encourage this thriving closeness. But the more I inch them out towards the edges of my mind, all the more they dodge my grasp and quiver into lucid scenes of familial tales and ecstatic anticipations of flights that streamed out your intoxicated laughter. I had intended to rhapsodize these things through writing, but suddenly, language fails me. It is as if for the first time I do not wield supremacy over words. It is as if they refuse to be committed into awkward phrasings. It is as if they resent being fossilized in clumsy shells of fumbling declaratives that speak no honor for that genial connection. So I struggle. I struggle because I would like to make it tangible. That I hadn’t just imagined it, that I hadn’t slide into the clutches of illusory wistfulness. I so desired for it to be palpable, something I can sense like the brutal hiss and simmering of summer on the pavement. I would like to revel in it for a few breaths before I bundle and set it aside like old letters and creased photographs to be forgotten in old shoeboxes or buried under bedposts, attics or drawers. There, it would noiselessly wait for yet-to-come spring cleanings to be rediscovered, to be retrieved once more, with all the ascribed sweet melancholia attached to their memory. Like the awakening of rivers in springtime, it would flood back like forgotten lives, like a wistful smile that accompany remembrances. How can I ever tell you that on that I am still struggling as I write this? I continue to struggle because it’s inconceivable to bottle up your smiles, to preserve them like sweetened pickles for future consumption. I struggle because all these unguarded moments are uncertain, transitory, like the rhythm of our breathing as we toast newfound discoveries about ourselves. I struggle because I may not be able to faithfully reproduce our words as they disappeared into the din of the bar’s screamed conversations, raucous laughter and those sad sappy songs escaping the poundings of the live band onstage. It was a humid Wednesday and the smug calmness of summer night was upon us. But inside me, looking at you, it’s the most temperate of springtime. Inside, I’m weightless, soaring past the now fading blinks of the city’s lamp lights. Inside, I’m lost. Lost, but dancing.

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Good, The Badge & The Ugly (The Typo, That Is)

For those who want to display the TBAC badges in their sidebar, feel free to download the size-adjusted logos after the jump. Thanks muchly for supporting the blog awards challenge! (P.S. the ad should spell blogosphere not blogospher. Ugh. You get the gist, though :-) I'll update the jpeg ad later.)


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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Pen & Play



The Blog Awards Challenge is a blog competition combining literary skills, interactivity and peer polling. The Blog Awards Challenge is bi-weekly theme-based writing event for everyone in the blogosphere. A challenge is posted in the site every two weeks. Bloggers who wish to compete will write about the theme and post the entry in their respective blogs. A panel of regular and revolving set of guest judges will select the ten best entries out of the submissions. The ten finalists will be posted in the Blog Awards Challenge website and is open for polling by readers.

The first challenge THEME will be posted on April 13, 2008 (Sunday). However, before that exciting day comes, we want you, dear bloggers, to help us create a buzz by writing about this newest delight to grace the blogosphere.

Write a post that helps promote this site. No limit of words. Write anything you want, well, positively. The only requirement is to link back to this page, theblogawardchallenge.com, using the keywords "The Blog Awards Challenge". You may also download and use the promo jpegs on this site.

Once you have your post ready and published, please tell us by leaving a comment.

Since we so much value your help, on April 12, 2008 (a day before the posting of the first challenge), we will be giving out prizes to the lucky few who have participated in the promotion. A winner will be selected in a random drawing and will receive an iPod Shuffle. Books will be given to two runners-up. Titles of the books will be posted soon. The first runner-up will get the chance to select the book he/she wants. Automatically, the book remaining goes to the 2nd runner-up.

Winners will be posted immediately and be contacted through email for sending details.



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Push That Digital Pencil


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Lapses

Updating a blog just for the sake of updating a blog really means, no, I'm not decomposing unloved and unmourned. The past seven weeks have tremendously overwhelmed me despite my most steadfast optimism and stubborn trust in the basic goodness of other people. I do not know where this week will lead us. It's grim, uncertain and the only thing that keeps me persisting is blind faith.On a more personal note there are a couple of expectations I need to make good of, which, in the flurry of flying shits at work, got neglected. Job priorities took precedence and my personal life's credibility slid.Professional life has consistently canceled my personal pursuits out. I'm beat, weary, but not giving up quite yet. Another day, another shot at optimism.

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Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Scattered

Eagle-eyed voyeurs of this blog have probably noticed by now that I have been tweaking the template mainly because my head is scrambled. I am currently floating someplace between anticipation, hopefulness, wistfulness, and that seductive blueness which is two miserable steps from self-absorbed depression.

So much about clarity. Allow me to be vague for now. I will write something sensible when I finally get a grip of coherence.

~ ~ ~

Dear N,

Remember third year, pre-internship midterm exams? Remember how I have lost all the will to persist on a misguided belief that medicine is the path for me? How, in that unexpected breath of gentleness, you brushed aside my unfounded fears and led me into the greatest revelation of my life: I did paramedical studies to please my Pop and shifted to Liberal Arts to please myself. Remember how, in those grey moments of indecisiveness, you made me realize that I am capable of recognizing that faint, warm feeling?

I cannot exactly put a finger on how or where we drifted; all of those overwhelming moments got diluted by our respective priorities. All I knew is we had it once, we had it great, and now looking back all that's left of us are a handful of anecdotes, a boxful of letters, three near collisions with the possibility of spending adulthood together and how can i forget, endless streams of laughter. Nowadays we are reduced to a smile creeping up our faces when thoughts of the aforementioned intrude into memory.

It stung like hell. I know it did. That I am not worth more than a flashy car. Since then I have made a promise: I will not spite our great moments by aspiring for a flashier car just to prove you wrong; that what you did was a mistake.

My dreams are shallow these days. I drowned myself with work and forgot all about owning something with no backseat, something impractical, something less homey. I perished—and still avoid—all thoughts of owning something suitable for PTA meetings or junior league weekend soccer practice.

Because I'd remember. Because it will only amplify the degree of my loss.

Yours, LC, wishing you favorable weathers on your trips to the pediatrician.

[song removed. will be restored when i finally figure out this widget mess]


~ ~ ~

I have deleted the awkward fiction and posted mediocre attempts at poetry.

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