But what do I have to report? Much has happened and yet I have nothing to say.

Life has been mostly a series of misfortunes but I find myself lacking the heart to complain for, at the end of the day, I figure it's not all that bad at all.

And, I have new books: Possession by A.S. Byatt, Against Gravity by Farnoosh Moshiri, and Points of View which is an anthology of short stories by James Joyce, Katherine Anne Porter, Truman Capote, Nikolai Gogol, John Updike and everybody else who matters to me for my intellectual growth, haha. :) It's an eclectic collection and I'm doing my best not to read everything too quickly. All three books purchased for two hundred and so pesos.

And I bought an artsy journal for someone I ♥ this Christmas. :)

If I have to rate myself, I am faring particularly well in my world even though I may be experiencing the worst year of my life yet but 2009 is coming to an end anyway. So, all I want for next year is, a new planner. Haha. (And no, gad no more Starbucks planner. No.) That, and a more interesting year, please. I am bored to death with all this emo-ness.

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell
by Marty McConnell


leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

Emphasis mine.

Gestern, ich habe nicht die Hausaufgaben gemacht.
Gestern habe ich die Hausaufgaben gemacht. (The verb stays in the second position in their normal sentence. I almost forgot that.) 

What a bad student, I am, I know. That's why I'm cramming today.

The instruction was to answer the question: Was haben Sie letzes Wochenende gemacht? (10 Satze, im Perfekt)

Here's what I came up with:
1. Wir sind zu Hause geblieben.
2. Das Wetter schlect war.
3. Wir haben schwer gearbeitet.
4. Ate Sarah hat in der Waschküche gewaschen.
5. Ich habe im Badezimmer geputzt.
6. Mein Onkel hat das Arbeitszimmer abgeräumt.
7. Wir haben alles die Fenster zu Hause geöffnet.
8. Ronald hat den Rasen im Hintergarten gemäht.
9. Wir sind totmude.  9. Wir waren totmude.
10. Um 9 Uhr wir haben geschlafen.  10. Um 9 Uhr haben wir geschlafen.

Most of these were copied and pasted. Gah.

Things are looking up now, for me at least. This poem serves as my pat on the back after everything I've been through this year. Thank goodness for poetry.

I get a good laugh when hearing out other people's Tagalog vocabularies because I realize I am barely scratching the wide range of Tagalog words when I speak.

For instance, awhile ago I emailed Auntie Arlyn...

Me: Hi Auntie, I received this letter from Deutsche Bank. I almost forgot about it Auntie. But I don't understand what it says.
AA: That is the present balance of the bank account. If there are changes, they always send a copy. May anak na 4.33eur!!!!

May anak? May anak? It took me sometime to understand what that meant, until I figured that the supposedly untouched figures got "impregnated" by the interest rate and gave birth to 4.33 euros. Cool!

This laughtrip also happens more frequently when speaking to Ryan Beaufort Edward Julio, who has a very interesting collection of Tagalog words.

Me: So wag nang sasabihin, ganun?
RB: Wag na, baka maging lantang gulay pa sila pag nalaman nila.

Lantang gulay? Hahaha. I don't get to hear this often at home, really. So he provides me entertainment without meaning to. He peppers his talk with similar words such as, "bomalabs" aka malabo, "bwenas" aka swerte, "anakngjueteng", and when it comes to food, it's never "kinakain" but "binabanatan".

I also get to hear this slang when I work at Shaw. When Ryan Clemente had his haircut, people called him, "Boy Tabas". And for a few days he was always referred to as the one was "bagong tabas". Hahaha. When Kuya Larry morphs into a pain in the a, someone always asks him, "kung ilang gramo ang tinira niya kagabi." And, most of all, when I get sarcastic, they ask me, "kung gusto kong masampal ng boobs ni Dors". Great! Great diba!

Wala lang, natutuwa lang ako sa mga bagay-bagay. :P

This is my poem for the day.

I Know the Way You Can Get

I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

...

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one’s self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

...

From: “I Heard God Laughing"
Renderings of Hafiz: by Daniel Ladinsky.


+

I know now why I have never liked you. Or been frustrated about you. Because when I look at you, I see myself. We always have "one feet out the door". 

I am engulfed in thine words, oh Rumi.

The smell of pride and greed and lust
will betray you when you speak
as much as the onions you have eaten.
Many prayers are rejected because of their smell;
the corrupt heart reveals itself in the tongue.
But if your meaning is pure,
God will welcome even your clumsy expression.

-- Mathnawi III: 166;169;171
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski

It's not fun to be always sober. 

I am drunk and you are insane
tell me, who will lead us home?
How many times have I asked you not to drink so much
for I see no sober soul in town.
Come to the tavern my dearest and taste the wine of love
for the soul is joyous only in the company of lovers.
The tavern of love is your livelihood
your income and expenses, the wine.
Be careful, not to trust a sober soul
with even one drop of this wine.
Go on playing your lute, my drunken gypsy but tell me,
between the two of us, who is more drunk?
As I left my house a Sufi approached me,
in his glance I saw a hundred gardens.
He swayed from side to side like a ship without an anchor,
while a hundred reasonable men watched on enviously.
Where are you from? I asked him.
He replied, "Half from Turkistan and half from Farghaneh,
half from water and clay and half from soul and heart,
half from the edge of the sea and half from the depths of the coean."

-- Ghazal (Ode) 2398
Translated by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi

I have never been totally drunk  in which I couldn't walk anymore. (And I'm already twenty four. How pathetic is that.) When intoxicated, I still know what it is that's happening and I can still think straight. What the hell. Where's the fun in that? I've never puked infront of anyone, never emabarrased myself in any drinking spree. When I couldn't take the alchohol anymore, I fall asleep and then again, where's the fun in that? 

I'd like to be stupendously drunk one of these days. 

Death Comes to Me Again, a Girl
Dorianne Laux


Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip.
Barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible, she tells me,
not like you think: all darkness and silence.

There are wind chimes and the scent of lemons.
Some days it rains. But more often the air
is dry and sweet. We sit beneath the staircase
built from hair and bone and listen
to the voices of the living.

I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair.
Especially when they fight, and when they sing.

"Abschieds Symphony"
Dorianne Laux

Someone I love is dying, which is why,
when I turn the key in the ignition
and back the car out of the parking space
in the underground garage, and the radio
comes on, sudden and loud, something
by Haydn, a diminishing fugue, and maneuver
the car through the dimly lit tunnels
with their low ceilings, following the yellow arrows
stenciled at intervals on the gray cement walls,
I think of him, moving slowly through the last
hard days of his life and I can't stop crying.
When I arrive at the toll gate I have to make myself
stop thinking as I dig in my pockets for the last
of my coins, turn to the attendant, indifferent
in his blue smock, his white hair curling like smoke
around his weathered neck, and say Thank you,
like an idiot, and drive into the blinding midday light.
Everything is hideously symbolic,
and everything reminds me of cancer:
the Chevron truck, its rounded underbelly
spattered with road grit and the sweat
of last night's rain, the dumpster
behind the flower shop, its sprung lid
pressing down on dead wedding bouquets--
even the smell of something simple, coffee drifting
from the open door of a cafe and my eyes
glaze over, ache in their sockets.
For months now all I've wanted is the blessing
of inattention, to move carefully from room to room
in my small house, numb with forgetfulness.
To eat a bowl of cereal and not imagine him,
scrubbed thin and pale, unable to swallow.
How not to imagine the tumors
ripening beneath his skin, flesh
I have kissed, stroked with my fingertips,
pressed my belly and breasts against, some nights
so hard I thought I could enter him, open
his back at the spine like a door or a curtain
and slip in like a small fish between his ribs,
nudge the coral of his brain with my lips,
brushing over the blue coils of his bowels
with the fluted silk of my tail.
Death is not romantic. He is dying,
no matter how I see it, no matter
what I believe, that fact is stark
and one dimensional, atonal,
a black note on an empty staff.
My feet are cold, but not as cold as his,
and I hate this music that floods
the cramped insides of my car, my head,
slowing the world down with its
lurid majesty, transforming everything I see
into some sort of memorial to life,
no matter how ugly or senseless--
even the old Ford in front of me,
its battered rear end thinning to scallops of rust,
pumping black classical clouds of exhaust
into the shimmering air-- even the tenacious
nasturtiums clinging to a fence, vine and bloom
of the insignificant, music spilling
from their open faces, spooling upward, past
the last rim of blue and into the still pool
of another galaxy, as if all that emptiness
were a place of benevolence, a destination,
a peace we could rise to.

For Paolo

I bear equally with you
the black permanent separation.
Why are you crying? Rather give me
your hand,
promise to come again in a dream.
You and I are a mountain of grief.
You and I will never meet on this earth.
If you could only send me at midnight
a greeting through the stars

А́нна Ахма́това

This was my goodnight quote yesterday:

Before I fall asleep, it occurs to me that life consists of days like this. Points that in the end, if we have been fortunate, connect a line. That they can also fall apart into a meaningless pile of spent time, that only a continuous unswerving effort gives a meaning to the small units of time in which we live.

Christa Wolf, One Day a Year

With emphasis on the words , "continuous", "unswerving , and "effort". My new seatmate borrowed this book for me. I still do not have a library card.

Things to look forward to: 

Maru's graduation day.
Her post-grad swimming party. :) 
Turning 24.
Taking the Start Deutsch 1 Exam and passing it.
Job hunting again.

So, until March 9 I didn't know there were gendered nouns. I asked why, and their answers can be found here.

And oh, I'm ticking off Equatorial Guinea Ethiopia and British Antarctic Territory from my stamp wishlist which is all thanks to Finn. :) Yay!

All the book talk made me curious about book origins. So, to find out, here's a chain to every bookworm out there! 



The Pillowbook by Sei Shonagon trans. by Meredith McKinney
where: National Bookstore, SM Makati
why: I bought this book for two reasons:
1. To keep my mind off the very frustrating thing that happened on February 2008. In other words, to cheer me up! Books can do that to me!
2. And to see for myself where Whitney Otto patterned her book, A Collection of Beauties at the Height of their Popularity. The Pillowbook or 枕草子, Makura no Sōshi is actually a collection of a lady in waiting's observations and musings during the Heian Period in Japan. It's a curious read and I love the setting, although it can be too light.
price: Php500.00+

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
where: The Floating Bookstore, MV Doulos
why: I’m a sucker for mysteries! The Sherlock Holmes cases are my favorite whodunit stories and to have the best of Holmes’ cases in one book, plus how he and his biographer, Watson, started out in Baker Street = priceless!
price: forgotten

Selected Essays by John Berger
where: Book Sale, SM Southmall
why: This book serves as my guide to the critique of the arts. Art = photography, sculpture, paintings, and the artists behind them.
Price: Php175.00

Alexandria by Nick Bantock
where: Powerbooks, Alabang
why: I say you can judge a book by its cover because when Alexandria’s cover beckoned to me in Powerbooks, it stayed glued to my hand forever. Hahaha. When I opened its pages, my heart pumped faster and harder than usual. It has actual cards and letters in almost every page!

It appealed to both the geek and frustrated artiste in me so much that I bought it instantaneously, with eyes wandering away from the barcoded price. This is the very first book I bought with my own money so I have already forgiven myself for splurging.

The only drawback? It’s the fourth of a series! Two years after buying this, I still don’t have the first three.
price: Google it!

Happy Endings by Luis Katigbak
where: UP bookstore book sale in UPB (parang tongue twister lang =P)
why: Long before he became popular with Happy Endings, I already had a copy of Luis Katigbak’s “Document” which is one of my favorite short stories. So when I saw his Happy Endings in the UPB Lobby some years ago, I told myself I had to buy it.
price: Php100.00+

I'm tagging: Kath, Alex, Xai, Andrea, slashgeek86, kill_the_onions, Sophie, petite_star and Lisa. Yey! 

Books, books.
1. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
2. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
3. Good Omens cowritten by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
4. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
5. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
6. Eintein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

As for the last two or more: Suggestions, anyone?

Alice. If I ever sat next to you in the lobby or saw me fumbling for an answer in a class I barely show up for, chances are, you would probably call me by my "Alice" name and remember that I was your absentee classmate.

Alich. If you call me the "Alich" version, maybe you've seen my facebook screen name and decided it sounded nice to call me "Alich" every now and then. Anyway, "Alich" was coined in high school, by Ron Rimando, who was my Math wiz seatmate in sophomore year (at least, that's how I believe it originated).

Coco. If you know about my "Coco" nickname, it's because you're mi familia. Or you're a family friend. People outside school have been astounded to learn I have a "Coco" name the same way that my cousins have been surprised to learn I'm named "Alice" because to most of them, I'm simply "Ate Coco".

Corinna. But if you ever knew I had a second "Corinna" name, you would probably be:
1. A stalker stalking this blog (because I don't say this name out loud or write this name in exam papers or use it in Friendster;
2. a follower of my Flickr link;
3. someone I whispered to when you couldn't guess what my second name was;
4. an incredulous officemate;
5. my parents;
6. my siblings;
7. someone I hold dear.

Lately, I have begun to embrace this name, and much LOVE goes to Wiki yet again, for introducing me to perhaps, one of the very first people who have been christened with "Corinna".

She was was an Ancient Greek poet alright, who lived around 6th century BC. Here is...

A fragment of Corinna's poetry

ἐπί με Τερψιχόρα [ καλὰ Ϝεροῖ’ ἀισομ[έναν Ταναγρίδεσσι λε[υκοπέπλυς μέγα δ’ ἐμῆς γέγ[αθε πόλις λιγουροκω[τί]λυ[ς ἐνοπῆς. (fr. 2)

Terpsichore [told] me lovely old tales to sing to the white-robed women of Tanagra and the city delighted greatly in my voice, clear as the swallow's.

:) I love "Corinna" already.