Wedding Day Rainy Day

Agnes, a long-time friend and classmate in graduate school, invited me to her niece’s garden wedding at the Mango Farm of Kingsville Court in Antipolo. It started out okay, with the place looking so romantic with Japanese lanterns everywhere.

While waiting, we took pictures.

During the ceremony, while the groom was professing his vows to his bride, it started to drizzle. Some took shelter, some whipped out their umbrellas.

When the drizzle became cats and dogs, the pastor announced that the affair be transferred to the reception area. Hmm, I thought to myself, there go those prettily lighted trees.

With everyone seated in the reception hall, the wedding continued. Here's the oh-so-cute ring bearer.

Agnes, her daughter Erika and I:

As the night progressed, the wedding turned into some sort of a prom with flashing disco lights and booming disco music – and the newly married couple in their early twenties, leading all the dancing.

I asked my friend, “is this how they do weddings nowadays? The traditional waltz is out and modern jazz is in?” Our age is showing.

Eternal Whine

I woke up today wondering why our healthcare provider does not cover mental health. A person’s psychological health is surely as important as his or her dental health, or is it? If only mental care were included, it would’ve spared my boyfriend from listening to me bitching about the irreversible futility that is my life. Only a shrink can patiently listen to my eternal whine.

Schadenfreude!

It's been a year now since you first visited this page and declared August 27 as your Schadenfreude Day. Has it all been worthwhile? It has been for me.

In case (and I thought) you want to know

• I am: Angeli, a fat frustrated writer, classical pianist and opera singer.
• I think: that this tag is cool.
• I know: that once you’ve hit rock bottom, there’s no other place to go but up.
• I have: reclusive habits and a renegade mentality.
• I wish: that I could write as good as Updike.
• I hate: noise.
• I miss: my macushla so much.
• I fear: losing my mental faculties.
• I hear: Oprah’s voice talking to Drew Barrymore as I’m typing this.
• I smell: the shea body butter I've just put on.
• I crave: for cheese-filled pizza, buco, and green mangoes.
• I search: for old, used, discarded, discounted, on sale books.
• I wonder: what life would be like if we can just push a button to undo things that we would've wanted undone.
• I regret: not learning to speak Ilocano fluently.
• I love: the Beatles.
• I ache: for our lifetime oneness.
• I am not: a snob, though my boyfriend thinks that I am.
• I believe: in looking my best all the time.
• I dance: but I’m not very good at it.
• I sing: all the time, every day, for no reason at all.
• I cry: whenever I’m sad.
• I fight: despair from taking hold of me.
• I win: only to realize that it’s not it’s not really winning that matters.
• I lose: my sanity sometimes.
• I never: voted before.
• I always: believe in what my 12-year sister has to say. She’s got more smarts than I do.
• I confuse: my mind over unimportant things, sometimes failing to see the bigger picture.
• I listen: to President Arroyo’s voice and I shudder with distaste.
• I am scared: of being alone for the rest of my life.
• I need: to eat something. I feel hungry.
• I am happy about: what I have right now.
• I imagine: the glass half full and not half empty.

I was tagged by Kayni. I’m tagging Nina.

How quickly we become history

What a quick idle thing a life is, in retrospect. How quickly we become history, while wanting always to be news. When you make the mental effort to lift yourself a little off the planet, and you see our particular species gobbling up all the land, so that soon there won’t be any other big animals left, just rats and ants and poisoned mussels, all that earth and oxygen and airspace to give Homo sapiens sapiens room to breed and eat and starve and build and war and watch TV and listen to the radio, you see that the human race is just one immense waste of energy. The lifeless surfaces of Mars and Io must sigh in relief.

- John Updike, Memories of the Ford Administration, 1992

Religious Views

A few weeks ago, an old friend invited me to join Facebook. So I did. That total strangers want to add me on their friends list (and even send those flirt-with-me requests) I didn’t find odd or creepy. I actually find it amusing. What struck me was this particular information being asked for in the profile area:

Religious views

I had to think twice. “So what do I write here?” I asked myself. Is agnosticism a religious view? Or is it a lack of any religious views? Do I dare reveal to the facebook world my strong strong suspicion that this is it for us, with no heaven or hell to go to when we die? Being branded as a heathen or a heretic is perfectly fine with me. What is shameful, I admit, is my being a waffly straddler—unable to commit to believing, with conviction, in either the existence of non-existence of a supreme being.

Mindanao on my worry list

I can’t help but be alarmed with what’s happening in Mindanao. It’s just horrifying. I cannot comprehend how the supposed peace process came to this.

[Yes, honey. Mindanao is now included in my worry list--along with the standard ones. But on this one, the sky is really falling.]

What is it with men?

What is it with men who, armed with their chutzpah, would do everything to get your attention then once they have it, leave you asking for more? If you can’t sustain something, why even start?

What is it with men who boast of their sexual conquests but cower in uxoriousness when confronted with their wives’ wrath? Conquer and cower—they don’t really match, do they?

What is it with men who, after 18 years, are still bothered—even anguished--with how their “crush” back then thought of them? That was eons ago. For god’s sake, can’t you get over it?

What is it with men who have to preface what they have to say with “I know this may sound silly and I don’t know how to say this to you but…” Saying that already established that you are, indeed, silly. Just spill it out.

What is it with men who vow undying love yet have the temerity to say, “I do not give a damn if I hurt you or not”? Are you sure you’re clear about what loving is all about?

Would I Have Been a Good Wife in the 1930s?

You Would Make a Great 1930's Wife
You've got a few retro ways, and you would make the ideal 1930's wife. At least, that's how it looks on paper. You may just be an easygoing, pleasant person. With a personality like yours, you'd be a great wife in any era!

Tenderness of Heart

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” said she afterwards to herself. “There is nothing to be compared to it. Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the world, for attraction, I am sure it will… I have it not—but I know how to prize and respect it….”

- Jane Austen, Emma, 1816

Nothing Fazes Me Kind of Girlfriend

Struggling to become that calm, oh-so-strong, nothing-fazes-me kind of girlfriend, I tell myself to breathe in that air of easy unconcern and breathe out my maddening habit of being needy and clingy. My mind’s interior monologue goes like this--So what if he didn’t call? Just shrug it off. Let him do what he wants. So what if you feel alone and your friends are scattered all over the world and there’s nobody to talk to? Just talk to your books. They’re always there for you. So what if he cannot give you the attention that you need or deserve? He loves you anyway. You need to get your mind right. Quit clinging and stop needing!

But it’s hard. My mind’s discourse digresses, puts up arguments and contradicts itself: How can you love a person without needing him? How do you draw the line between “letting somebody in” and “not letting yourself get affected too much”? And more importantly, why do I even have to change in order to fit that preconceived idea of what a man wants for a girlfriend-- the non-clingy, non-needy type?

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. The nothing-fazes-me sort of girl – I’ll be her someday.

Verbal Shorthand

D asks, “Do you still love me?” I answer, “Very much. So you need to go now?” He replies, “How much? Two pesos?” I say, “Two-fifty, walang maski-maski.”

That’s how our daily space-distanciated conversations usually end. For other couples, the question “do you still love me” requires a yes or no answer and means just that. To us it means something else. Whenever D utters that dreaded line, it’s an indication that he has to go. It’s his way of saying “bye-bye for now.”

The bulk of our relationship being conducted in a distance, we had unknowingly built some sort of verbal shorthand that consists of witticisms turned into truisms, adages made into jokes, and hackneyed phrases transformed into honored maxims. Lilipas din yan, beer volcanoes and female strippers, mag-check out kang mag-isa mo, walang maski-maski, and finding a pantalan are just some of them. In this bizarre system of quick allusions and sly winks that do not need any further referencing or elaboration, we continually create our own language and pay homage to each other's bizarreness.

Readers or Commentators?

As said by Albert Camus, “Those who write clearly have readers. Those who write obscurely have commentators.”

Hmmmmm... I think - no, I believe - I have commentators.

a wired life

Taking care of our eyes: that was one of the news features last night. The doctor being interviewed said that staring at a computer for two hours straight will surely ruin our eyes, leading even to degenerative myopia and glaucoma. Two hours? They must be kidding me. I spend at least fourteen hours in front of the computer! The first thing I do when I wake up is to go online. When I get to work, I can’t but spend most of my time staring at the computer. And when I go home, which takes me around five minutes, I go online again. No wonder I can’t see without my lenses anymore.

But what can I do? I live a wired life. As much as I want to exist without a computer and the Internet, I simply cannot. Only through these does my cave lets in a little sunlight.

Book Tag

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag as many people as you want.

The Book:

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)

The Sentences:

My father was born to contend but also to protect, and to inflict damage on an enemy didn’t make his sprits soar as it did his older brother’s (not to mention all the rest of the brutal entrepreneurial machers.) There were the bosses and there were the bossed, and the bosses usually were bosses for a reason—and in business for themselves for a reason, whether the business was construction or produce or the rabbinate or the rackets. It was the best they could come up with to remain unobstructed—and, in their own eyes, unhumiliated—not least by the discrimination of the Protestant hierarchy that kept ninety-nine percent of the Jews employed by the dominant corporation uncomplainingly in their place.

I was tagged by Artemis. Now I’m tagging Martha and Nina.

The Best Revenge

Last night I got a call from a person from the past, the man who used to be the center of my universe. During our unpleasantly protracted conversation, as he was trying to guilt-trip me into taking him back, a particular line from Seinfeld, the “show about nothing”, flashed into my mind:

“Living well is the best revenge.”

Despite all the welts and bruises he inflicted on me throughout the length our relationship and all the B.S. I had to put up with, I did not attempt to strike back or retaliate in kind. I could have sought retribution yet I simply retreated in silence while trying to pull myself together. But I got my vengeance after all. Seeing that I am now living well is killing him. Realizing that he was never able to make me happy as I am now pains him.

I am now in a loving and mutually supportive relationship with a good man--totally unlike what I had with him. That is my revenge.

If I Marry

If I marry, it will either be a man who’s strong enough to boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss. So I shan’t ever marry, for there aren’t such men. And heaven help anyone whom I do marry….

- E.M. Forster, Howards End, 1910

Ignorance

My favorite professor in college--the former dean--once said that as she goes up the ladder of learning and acquire more knowledge, the more she learns that she doesn’t know. Isn’t this usually the case for those who let the love of learning influence their lives? The more we know, the more we do not know—the paradox of profound ignorance illustrated in Plato’s Apology—is the humble realization of how ignorant we remain despite our attempts to be the opposite. And this profound ignorance is perhaps what drives us towards a lifelong quest for learning.

As I read more books, try to learn new skills, and strive to understand new ideas, I realize that there are more books to read, more skills to learn and newer ideas to understand. Never a day passes by that this thought doesn’t cross my mind: “Ang bobo ko talaga.” It has become a daily incantation that propels me to continue learning—which, in turn, plunges me deeper in ignorance.