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Last sem before I go on to take my internship. Oh how the spectre of adulthood looms. Well, not really. I've recently gotten quite obsessed droolfest over BrickCon '07 photos posted on Flickr despite the fact that I haven't played with my lego collection in forever. I think I'm pining for my childhood or something. My minor subjects have given me a sudden sense of disconnect with my past. Filipino Rhetoric and History have left me with the disconcerting feeling of looking down at the ground beneath my feet and seeing instead an inexplicable void. They are parts of my past, things that have made what I am in the distant past and not knowing much about them has made me feel like I'm standing on the thinnest of clouds with only my ignorance keeping me afloat. Idunno, rambling here.

I've taken to carrying this book of poetry from my sister's library, a book that she won from a poetry recital thing in her course. It's titled "Six Filipino Poets". I realized that the book was initially published in the 1950's as the introduction stated that but I only recently realized that the book says that its published in 1955. A fact that I find so hard to believe as the book is in such good condition.

I'm researching it now. I have a sinking feeling that I'm going to feel guilty for not taking better care of it. My 2D anim prof, Sir Gilbert saw me reading the book and he commented that one of the poets used to be his teacher at UP. I think I found the poet's son's blog. Incidentally, Taking back the word Filipina.

I think I wanted to write more about the profundity of carrying around a book with more than half a century of history but I believe my words will be an epic failure so instead I will abstain... holy crap I carry an $81 book like its nothing. *commits seppuku* Is it bad that the realization hits me more when I find out the price? I'll post one of my favourite poems from the book since I can't seem to find it online:

Love Poems For Vi
By Oscar Zuniga

1. Room with April Rain

Once I was the punctual lover, the tenant
of your room,
Whose walls are yellowed by other men's
sulphurous dreams.
I was desire, the essential need to your
dancer's body
Which took passion as wine pressed from
summer fruits.

But now you are no longer what you were,
the beloved,
Who traded hours of sleep for moments
of harried love.
And yet I could not let you go, not while
the heart
Still remembers the room fragrant with late
April rain.

2. Remembrances

Now we are strangers in this room,
A sheltered world thick with mold of love;
The old arm-chair, the pillowed couch
Are hollow graves where dreams have died.

We dare not speak: harshness of speech
May flay the flesh with memores;
The lamp between us, we are as shades
Mingled with the night's flowing darkness.

The heart having felt your indrawn cry,
I flee the room, its walls quivering with hate,
Once outside the gate, remembrances of love
Accompany the jar of closing doors.

3. Red Rose

Then it was over, I had become a stranger;
My name a bitter food to a woman's
hunger.

Now a woman with a dancer's body
Walks teh streets of loneliness,
Lost to the memories of youth,
Exiled from home, love, and day.

She feels the night's dissolving darkness
Seep through her love-strained flesh;
Hears the silvery sound of wedding bells
Once set in an April that never came.

All is past: it's over now: in the morning
She meets a man with a red rose in his hand.

4. Graveyard

Since I can only love you when April violets
bloom
From your fingertips and your tongue of rotten
dust
Turns into white sand, I can only love you
when death
Walks into my house with green leaves
in his mouth.

My hate is a man's dying dreams
That creep through the shades of moonless
houses;
My hate is a concubine's melting kisses
That taste like ungathered poppies.

I should then slay you in the mesmerized waters
Of a darkening moon, amid the green,
Choking weeds in a graveyard with salty walls,
With the spine of a naked fish for knife.

I feel inadequate after that.

The pulsing beat that resounds in my head is the mere echo of that which pounds in my chest.

I'm afraid of stopping and realizing something heartbreaking, something that I already know.

I'll never grow old. Not a positive trait. There is a lack of emotional maturity that makes me wonder why I get so serious about girls.

Emerging from a tunnel, it's like a new world. We enter in the rain and emerge into an arid world.

I'm back to my old insomniac behaviour. Got up just to write this post down that has been festering in my mind since I don't know when.

Went to watch plainsunset's 2nd ever Manila gig over at Mag:net Bonifacio where they played alongside Urbandub. It was awesome to finally see them live after listening to their music obsessively and somehow intertwining their music with images of Singapore, despite never having seen them play before.

Sister and I were going crazy and melancholic and giddy-happy when they went up to play. My sister more so than me but god did their song "River" make me all maudlin. Talked to plainsunset and got my sister's "the gift" cd signed for her. It felt good to feel myself dropping back into singlish while talking to the bassist. It got us wanting to go "home" even more.

I still find it strange to think that you get more mosh pits back in Singapore gigs than over here, I would have thought it to be the reverse. Oh, and saw Surreal's lead singer with them although we didn't accost him for an autograph. Kinda sad to find out Surreal is breaking up though.

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I was doing my philosophy homework and I got to four pages of mindless answering when it struck me that I've expended more words on that piece of blah report than I've ever spent on the current crush. It's depressing somehow and a situation I want to remedy.

What's not so depressing is having two new books to read! I got a bit disheartened that I couldn't get Douglas Coupland's jpod at the book fair after pining after it all this time. Got Eleanor Rigby instead but it's alright since it's been a great read so far. Other book is Flowers for Algernon, chosen by my sis. Reading again has got me wondering, will I ever be known at school as "that guy with good books"? I mean, I'm resigned to the fact that I'll never be known as "that guy with good looks" but the former would be such an awesome reputation to have :D

Although I'm quite sure my sister will be quick to point out that all my good books, in fact, are hers. :p

The book fair was fun, just wish I had more time. Apparently we missed you at the book fair Mia! Our driver says he saw you there, you weren't at the RoD booth when we went by. Saw your prints, they're lovely! Wish I could have seen the books though, they sound rather pretty!

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Douglas Coupland is surprising me yet again. I fell in love with his writing when I first picked up Microserfs at the library, the book that affirmed my belief that geeks can have love too :) Then I read Girlfriend in a Coma, a post apocalyptic book thats very humanistic which was a very different read from Microserfs. I've read a few chapters of Shampoo Planet and it surprised me again with the lead character's pretty cynical worldview.

And this time around Douglas Coupland is writing a heart breakingly lonely novel that I have to put down once in a while to recover emotionally from. Though the main character, Liz Dunn, is a female I can just see myself in her shoes and its just so painful to imagine the loneliness. I didn't really flinch at all when I watched the anime Welcome to the N.H.K, a series that gets bandied about in anime circles as the one that gets geeky loneliness but something about the way that Liz Dunn is written hits so close to home for me. And then Coupland has scenes that recall the creepiness of Girlfriend in a Coma which sends shudders up my spine.

I look forward to finishing the book. It's shorter compared to his other works but none of his other books has had me as emotionally sympathetic to the character as I am right now.

First things first, belated happy birthday and a hearty congratulations to my sister Lystra. She's 21 which is practically ancient! Also she was named as one of the outstanding writers of her batch in De La Salle's lit program, an achievement that simultaneously makes me proud and jealous of her.

The new Blogger archive style has opened my eyes to an interesting pattern in my blog. I fervently posted in my blog the first year, tailing off on the second and then it sees a drastic fall in the last two years. Heck, this post makes my posting this year much more proliferate than my writing last year.

When I think back on my emotional status, I think I see an inverse relationship between how much I write and how well I feel. If one trusts this relationship then one is forced to conclude that I am feeling crappier about this year than the last :p

Which is not to say, that I am feeling crappier. I'm just attempting an amusing observation at 5 in the morning. And. Failing. Probably.

Lystra's lit status is kind of cool as I get to bask in the reflected glow of literature, something I love quite dearly. As she mentioned in her blog, I am jealous of her growing bookshelf filled with books of excellent quality.

And I think it also gnaws at the part of me that wants to be a writer, that piece of me that against all logic attempts to string words together to describe beauty that I never know. I hardly know the world and love and most of all people and yet I seem to be under the illusion that I can be its scribe. It's been far too long since I've written anything I consider good.

Like I remarked to a friend, I want to write. I don't quite know what to write about but I will write. Lystra once related how she finds it difficult to place herself amongst local writing because she has no idea how local culture is like how it does not have relevance to her world view and thus her writing can hardly be considered "local".

I think I fall into the same fate except make the scope of the not-knowing-a-single-thing-ness (5 am diction is bad) anything about the human condition. Sure, conventional wisdom says "write what you know" but I fear that I will fall into the trap of writing a Mary Sue character. The story I'm working on has me worried about that.

I just don't know.

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I am puzzled over my feelings for her. Reading my entries about my previous crush makes me wonder why I am not breaking out the angst over my feelings for the current crush. It just bothers me that I have not invested myself in her as much as I did previously. I place such importance on words but yet I hardly make attempts at beauty when I write about this girl in contrast with the previous girl who made my blog appear... filthy with my excreable attempts at romantic words.

At least I took... something today.