10.26.2014

My car broke down yesterday so today I woke up early to call the insurance agency to have it towed to the nearest shop. In the shop I was told that I could have it fixed in a jiffy if I buy a new alternator which costs 200+ BND. The nice person that I am, I agreed to this (also to save me the troubling "car engine" talk). The rub is, an hour later they told me that they can't have it done today because the shop opens till 11 am (knowing it's a SUNDAY) so I have to come back for it at 10 am tomorrow. I have no choice but to cancel the classes which I mapped out for today, hurrah). Since I am too sick (with a mean flu), broke and miserable to be anywhere at all, I decided to jazz up in the kitchen and make use of the "alone" time I have. I rummaged for some ingredients (which I have, luckily, except for a few drips of this and a meager amount of that) and though I lacked the appropriate devices to cook the recipe to perfection (haha) I went on with the plan, kicked my (sick) heels up and decided to cook "by instinct". The baked cookies weren't that bad at all! For someone who sucked in the kitchen, the cookies were marked as a real triumph! I have pictures of course!

29/09/2014

September 29, 2014
Starbucks, Beribi 
Brunei

August 31, 2014

How our Sunday went.
#toast
#smoothiefail which made me very :-(
#rehearsals with Synnee's students for the upcoming recital on Sept. 19
#Toto's Africa on #repeat

Japan, Billy Collins

Japan

Today I pass the time reading 

a favorite haiku, 

saying the few words over and over. 

It feels like eating 

the same small, perfect grape

again and again. 

I walk through the house reciting it 

and leave its letters falling 

through the air of every room. 

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it. 

I say it in front of a painting of the sea. 

I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf. 

I listen to myself saying it, 

then say it without listening, 

then I hear it without saying it. 

And when the dog looks up at me, 

I kneel down on the floor 

and whisper it into each of his long white ears. 

It's the one about the one-ton 

temple bell

with the moth sleeping on its surface, 

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating 

pressure of the moth 

on the surface of the iron bell. 

When I say it at the window, 

the bell is the world 

and I am the moth resting there. 

When I say it into the mirror, 

I am the heavy bell 

and the moth is life with its papery wings. 

And later, when I say it to you in the dark, 

you are the bell, 

and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you, 

and the moth has flown

from its line 

and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed. 

--- Billy Collins, Picnic, Lightning

Mr. Woody Allen THE TALKS

MR. WOODY ALLEN: "THE WHOLE THING IS TRAGIC!" 

(check out the original source by clicking this link)  http://the-talks.com/interviews/woody-allen/

Mr. Allen, do you truly believe that happiness in life is impossible?
This is my perspective and has always been my perspective on life. I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it. I always have since I was a little boy; it hasn’t gotten worse with age or anything. I do feel that’s it’s a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself.

I think it’s safe to say that most people would disagree.
But I am not the first person to say this or even the most articulate person. It was said by Nietzsche, it was said by Freud, it was said by Eugene O’Neill. One must have one’s delusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and clearly, life becomes unbearable because it’s a pretty grim enterprise, you will admit.

I have a hard time imagining Woody Allen having such a hard life…
I have been very lucky and I have made my talent a very productive life for me, but everything else I am not good at. I am not good getting through life, even the simplest things. These things that are a child’s play for most people are a trauma for me.

Can you give me an example?
Checking in at an airport or at hotel, handling my relationships with other people, going for a walk, exchanging things in a store… I’ve been working on the same Olympus Typewriter since I was sixteen – and it still looks like new. All of my films were written on that typewriter, but until recently I couldn’t even change the color ribbon myself. There were times when I would invite people over to dinner just so they would change the ribbon. It’s a tragedy.

Do you distrust the good things in life?
Life is full of moments that are good – winning a lottery, seeing a beautiful woman, a great dinner – but the whole thing is tragic. It’s an oasis that is very pleasant. Take a film like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. This is a film of great tragedy, but there is a moment when he is sitting with the children and drinking milk and eating wild strawberries. But then that wonderful moment passes and you come back to what existence really is.

Are you equally pessimistic about love?
You are much more dependent on luck than you think. People say if you want to have a good relationship, you have to work at it. But you never hear it about anything you really like, about sailing or going to soccer games. You never say: I have to work at it. You just love it. You can’t work at a relationship; you can’t control it. You have to be lucky and go through your life. If you are not lucky you have to be prepared for some degree of suffering. That’s why most relationships are very difficult and have some degree of pain. People stay together because of inertia, they don’t have the energy. Because they are frightened of being lonely, or they have children.



Can a man love two women at the same time?
More than two. (Laughs) I think you can. That’s why romance is a very difficult and painful thing, a very hard, very complicated thing. You can be with your wife, very happily married, and then you meet some woman and you love her. But you love your wife, too. And you also love that one. Or if she’s met some man and she loves the man and she loves you. And then you meet somebody else and now there are three of you. (Laughs) Why only one person?

Things might get a bit tricky if one were to follow your advice…

It’s important to control yourself because life gets too complicated if you don’t, but the impulse is often there for people. Some say society should be more open. That doesn’t work either. I think it’s a lose-lose situation. If you pursue the other woman, it’s a losing situation and it’s not good for your relationship or your marriage. If your marriage is open and you’re allowed to, that’s no good either. There’s no way, really in the end, to be happy unless you get very lucky.


Do you ever cry?

I cry in the cinema all the time. It’s probably one of the only places I ever cry, because I have trouble crying. In Hannah and Her Sisters there was a scene where I was supposed to cry, and they tried everything, but it was impossible. They blew the stuff in my eyes and I couldn’t cry, but in the cinema I weep. It’s like magic. I see the end of Bicycle Thieves or City Lights. It’s the only place – never in the theater and almost never in life.

You used to star in almost all of your films, but in recent years you’ve been in less and less of them. Why?
Only because there is no good part. For years I played the romantic lead and then I couldn’t play it anymore because I got too old. It’s just no fun not playing the guy who gets the girl. You can imagine how frustrating it is when I do these movies with Scarlett Johansson and Naomi Watts and the other guys get them and I am the director. I am that old guy over there that is the director. I don’t like that. I like to be the one that sits opposite them in the restaurant, looks in their eyes and lies to them. So if I can’t do that it’s not much fun to play in the movies.

What’s your take on getting older?
I find it a lousy deal. There is no advantage getting older. You don’t get smarter, you don’t get wiser, you don’t get more mellow, you don’t get more kindly, nothing good happens. Your back hurts more, you get more indigestion, your eyesight isn’t as good, you need a hearing aid. It’s a bad business getting old and I would advise you not to do it if you can avoid it. It doesn’t have a romantic quality.

Will you ever stop making films?
I simply enjoy working. Where else could I develop ambition? As an artist, you are always striving toward an ultimate achievement but never seem to reach it. You shoot a film, and the result could have always been better. You try again, and fail once more. In some ways I find it enjoyable. You never lose sight of your goal. I don’t do my job to make money or to break box office records, I simply try things out. What would happen if I were to achieve perfection at some point? What would I do then?

Short Profile

Name: Allan Stewart Konigsberg
DOB: 1 December 1935
Place of Birth: New York, New York, USA
Occupation: Director

Jonas Jonasson's "The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden"

One of the books that were given as a birthday present this year was Jonas Jonasson’s “The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden”. I am currently taking a break from Marcel Proust’s “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower” and now opting for something that’s easier to read (more like a bedside-table or a bathroom read). 

Jonas Jonasson's protagonist grew up in a shanty town of South Africa. She empties latrines for a living ever since she was 5 years old. Although borne an illiterate, fated to destitution and later on die of tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrhea, pills, alcohol (or the combination of these) like the rest of the kaffirs (as the blacks are called) she shares this menial task with, Nombeko Mayeki’s inherent genius offers her the position from being a mere latrine emptier into a managerial position. She soon managed to escape town and by some freak accident, becomes a cleaning lady to Engr. Westhuizen, the top representative of nuclear weapons of South Africa. Things got crazy along the way, of course with Nombeko always saving the idiot of an engineer’s ass. 

Another story follows the lives of the Holger twins and their father, Ingmar, a fanatic of the Swedish Monarchy who later turned into a detractor after the king refused to lay eyes or even speak to him (in one of his chases). Although one bears the spitting image of the other, they can’t be confused because Holger Two seems to be more sensible than Holger One (who took after his father’s anarchist teachings and penchant for ruinous decisions). However it is Holger One, who by manners of Swedish Registry, who truly existed. Later on in the story, Holger Two met Nombeko and later on fell in love with her. Their love affair did not take up the bulk of the book's pages but instead the little incidents that intertwined their lives with the most unlikely characters: The Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Countess Virtanen, an American potter, 2 Israeli Mossads, some Chinese  swindlers and an angry young woman who shared the foolish Holger twin's beliefs. A "non-existent" atomic bomb was also involved.

Although this book wasn't nearly as exciting as his “The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of The Window and Disappeared” which I read in 2013 it held the author’s knack for piecing together a comical skit that renders a light hearted take on international politics. 

Kerouac Quote

 

 

 

 

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

 

-- Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Today I woke up feeling better. The fever (and coughing) that broke out 2 days ago has subsided thanks to the amount of pills I've been popping and the mandatory 8 hours of sleep I've been getting. As always the case when I fall ill, I hankered for food like my whole life/sanity depended on it. The flu that struck gave me a monstrous appetite which is quite ill-timed knowing it's the fasting month and although every single food chain is permitted to serve food, no one is allowed to eat in full view of those who observes the fasting month. But what to do with these sudden cravings for a heavy meal (despite the debilitating symptoms)?

What I mostly hate about getting sick is how even the simplest things felt like torture and that I have to set things aside because of the nagging headache and the sniffles. 

But despite the improvement, my body is telling me to slow down. 


So, here I am  . . .  

reading, finally.

B&W

Botanical Garden Shots

 
Today Carem and I decided to do another outdoor shoot. The venue was at the Botanical Garden somewhere in Rimba (I think). Our models (whom we had to coerce) were Regie and Tin-tin. I'm supposed to be the one behind the camera but then Carem forgot to bring her SD card with her so I offered my camera and sneaked a few chances of being shot. So, behold.

On trying to show how it's done (to Tin-tin who's never done any photo shoot). Lovely shot though. And yes, that's Proust.

The very shy first timer.

And the not so shy-just-shoot-me-damnit, Regie.

Bukit Shabandar

We had to drag a friend to Bukit Shabandar under the pretense of a photoshoot (despite the awful rainy weather) before sending her to a party we've been organizing in secret for the past few days. It's my first time to come here as I usually turn down invitations for a hike or a run or anything physically exhausting in this place. So, yes. The lady who took my photos is the one whom we're throwing a party for. Her boy friend also proposed to her today. Thanks, Carem. Many beautiful and fruitful years with you and Gian.

Happy 6th

 

  Another year that we nearly failed to celebrate. More to come ...

The Beef Noodle Mee at Kitaro Japanese Restaurant

Sashimi at Kitaro Japanese Restaurant

Green Tea Latte

"

Thanks, Regie for the drink.

HONY

 

"I asked her for a piece of advice. She reached in her purse, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to me. It said this:

Life isn't fair, but it's still good. Life is too short-- enjoy it. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present and the future. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. If a relationship has to be secret, you shouldn't be in it. 

 
Take a deep breath, it calms the mind. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. It's never too late to be happy. But it's all up to you and no one else. When it comes time to go after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer. Burn the nice candles, use the nice sheets, wear the nice lingerie, wear the nice clothes. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

 
Over prepare, then go with the flow. No one is in charge of your happiness but you. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In five years will this matter?' Always choose life. Forgive but don't forget. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time. However good or bad a situation is, it will change. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

 
If we all threw our problems in a pile and we saw everyone else's, we'd grab our's back. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have, not what you need. Yield. Friends are the family we choose. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."

                                                       ----from "Humans of New York".

Cupcake Boy

Vanilla Muffins with Strawberry Frosting baked by Regie.

Years and finally an Ocean

A few days ago, you mentioned about leaving Brunei for good. My response was of course tinged with a bit of sentimentality brushed with the best jokey attitude I could muster because I didn't want to break into tears before we even had dinner. But you already knew that about me, how I jest by default. I could name a hundred more who does. But it's hard being a goof especially at times when I find myself on my own. The meals I had to take alone, the decisions I had to do on my own, of how I should style my hair, of how I am to wash my own dirty laundry from now on and of how my room will only be flecked with my own strands of hair, how it's gonna bear a single guys's mess or a lonely man's stench. For once, silence becomes unbearable. How there used to be tons of things to do, things to tick off a list, songs to sing, books to read, little wonders to write about, stuff to do in order to survive the daily grind of boring routines or to distract me from these heartbreaking moments. How I never seem to find the reason to accomplish any these anymore (or yet). Then comes the loneliness, palpable, bestial, aged and familiar but of which I kept brushing aside. Today, I took a faulty turn on a block as I absent-mindedly drove to breakfast at 6:30 am. One time I switched engines the way you warn me never, ever to and as usual the car took a deathly choke and stopped in the middle of a round about. There was only your nagging voice amidst the heartspin of honkings and angry looks. They must think me insane. How many of them can figure how desperately lost I am? It took me time to press the hazzard button. It took till your nagging voice (with exclamation points) rang in my head. Because in the heart of things, love, there is you. That is why I dread this separation like I dread many things that I knew has left me empty and scarred. I dread the many things after it. But here I am, conveniently opening the door for you because that's what one does, right? How I used to watch you walk off, many a times and  how you sometimes look back with that smile that never seems to say "goodbye" or break anybody's heart but instead bore a gentleness that makes me feel the least deserving person. But how I delight at the fact that at some point, I became the reason why it grew to become sweeter and more gentle as the years walk by. There were years between us until finally an ocean had to grow within it. That the boat may travel safe and steady for you. May the seasons be gentle with you. Remember the moments when it felt like a joyous Bach counterpoint, an Elgar melody or a redeeming Beethoven symphony. Remember, remember how I loved you dearly. 

June 9, 2014

On Nabokov's "Speak, Memory"

Here is one book which I wish didn't have to end at all. Vladimir Nabokov recounts the treasured items of his past; his pampered childhood, his highborn ancestry, his artistic developments, his travels (with his family and later on in a forced exile during the Bolshevik Revolution), the many things that has escaped me as I blush over his luscious and shocking book "Lolita" many caffeinated afternoons ago. That the literary man when he is not bent on pen and paper, composing the best written narratives, is a lover of butterflies. He has devoted many hours since childhood in isolation, scouring floras in search for winged insects and various slugs, studying them and later authored an undiscovered species the Plebejus (Lysandra) cormion Nabokov. Apart from being one of the prominent writers of the 20th century, Nabokov is a synesthete. Pages were devoted to this queer condition of "sensory appetite" (well-written pages, with photographic clarity of a scientist and practiced flourish of a literati). I envy his prose: tender, sophisticated, meticulous in every sentence in uncovering the past "as if seeing through carefully wiped lenses of time", a voice reminiscent of the earliest literary pleasures I've had. I've never burned as much as I did with "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul." Yes, as with my early loves, I never got over it. I don't think I could ever put into words just how much I enjoyed this book (to think this was something that's been on the "to be read pile" since 2012).

****

"In thinking of my successive tutors, I am concerned less with the queer dissonances they introduced into my young life than with the essential stability and completeness of that life. I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past. I like to imagine, in consummation and resolution of those jangling chords, something as enduring, in retrospect, as the long table that on summer birthdays and namedays used to be laid for afternoon chocolate out of doors, in an alley of birches, limes and maples at its debouchment on the smooth-sounded space of the garden proper that separated the park and the house. I see the tablecloth and the faces of seated people sharing in the animation of light and shade beneath a moving, a fabulous foliage, exaggerated, no doubt, by the same faculty of impassioned commemoration, of ceaseless return, that makes me always approach that banquet table from the outside, from the depths of the park- . . ." -- Speak, Memory

"The act of vividly recalling a patch of the past is something that I seem to have been performing with utmost zest all my life, and I have reason to believe that this almost pathological keenness of the retrospective faculty is a hereditary trait." -- Vladimir Nabokov, "Speak, Memory"

 "I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness-- in a landscape selected at random-- is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern-- to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal."-- Vladimir Nabokov, "Speak, Memory"

"While scientists sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time."-- from the pages of "Speak, Memory"

from Lorrie Moore's "Bark"

   


"What is the thing you regret most in life?" he asked her, standing close. There were perhaps a dozen empty bottles, and she and Tom methodically tipped every one them upside down, held them up to the light, sometimes peering into them from underneath. "Nothing but dead soldiers here," he murmured. "I'd like to say optimistically that they were half full, not half empty, but these are just totally empty."
      "Unless you have a life of great importance," she said, "regrets are stupid, crumpled-up tickets to a circus that has already left town."
     His face went bright with amusement and drink. "Then what happens to the town?" he asked.
     She thought about this. "Oh, there's a lot of weather," she said, slowly. "It snows. It thunders. The sun comes out. People go to church and sit in the sanctuary and sometimes they see escaped clown sitting in the back pews with their white gloves still on."
     "Escaped clown?" he asked.
     "Escaped," she said. "Sort of escaped."
     "Come in from the cold?" he inquired.
     "Come in to sit next to each other."
     He nodded with satisfaction. "The past is for losers, baby?"
     "Kind of like that." She wasn't sure that she agreed, but she understood the power of such a thought.
     "His stance grew jaunty. He leaned in close to her, up against the kitchen counter's edge.
     "Do you ever feel that no one knows what you're talking about, that everyone is just pretending--- except for me?"
     "She studied him carefully. "Yes, I do," she said. "I do."
     "Ah," he replied, straightening his posture. He clasped her hand: electricity burst into it then vanished as he let go. "We're all suckers for a happy ending."

Lorrie Moore, Subject to Search

Javier Marias "The Infatuations"

   Javier Marias's "The Infatuations" is one of those books I am incapable of talking about because WHO THE HELL AM I TO. So

here are photos of me taken at Starbucks, Mabohai nalang. Nyehehe #book na medyo #Zzz

Colette's "la vagabond"

I didn't know it was the day before Colette's Birthday when I started to read this again. Well, Happy Birthday Dear Colette! She would've been 140 years old.

I was quite lucky that during my late teenage years I became friends with people whose choices in literature had a lasting influence in me. Works by writers Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Laura Esquivel, Oscar Wilde, Herman Hesse, Milan Kundera, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (to wit a few) were amongst that brought  joy to a little table shared by 2 or 3 other people, breathless over what book at lunch or quick breakfasts at the school cafeteria. There were also nights spent sipping coffee our meager college allowance allows until the early hours of dawn. These were cheap joys, pocket-sized memories that never fail to cheer me up especially at times when I brood over a boring or exhausting day at work. When one comes across something: a song, a poem, a book, a thin ribbon of scent, a work of art, a photo that marked a moment some number of years ago, one can't help but wish for a secret passage to those rare, rare times. But I'm getting sentimental, again. 

But it is just as so while I read Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's "The vagabond" again. One of the books I had the instance of sharing with my like-minded friends. It was actually my literature teacher (who I became close chums with up to now) who lent me her own copy then one of my professors in grad studies offered her own as she assigns the very book to discuss in class (which I did a horrible job at). Over the years I never own a copy of it and though I found a collection of her short stories during my visit to the Philippines in 2007 (?), I had to give it away as a present for a dear friend. However, during my visit last year (December 2013), I came across the very book sold at P154 (around 5 BND) in Robinson's Booksale. So here, again, what must've been my 4th or 5th rereading of this literary gem which I find was and still is a delightful, charming and fascinating little book.

    

Miracle and Colette ( I gave as a present)

The story is about Renee Nere, 33, who earns here way into life as a music-hall artiste ( and once as a writer). She then meets an admirer, the rich Maxime Dufferein-Chautel who woos her despite her obvious disregard for the fellow. It's interesting how their relationship turned sweet somewhere in the middle of the book, but what's more interesting is the prose itself.

****

      To write, to be able to write, what does it mean? It means spending long hours dreaming before a white page, scribbling unconsciously, letting your pen play around a blot of ink and nibble at a half-formed word, scratching it, making it bristle with darts and adorning it with antennae and paws until it loses all resemblance to a legible word and turns into a fantastic insect or a fluttering creature half butterfly, half fairy. 

     To write is to sit and stare, hypnotised, at the reflection of the window in the silver-ink stand, to feel the divine fever mounting to one's cheeks and forehead while the hand that writes grows blissfully numb upon the paper. It also means idle hours curled up in the hollow of the divan, and then the orgy of inspiration  from which one emerges stupefied and aching all over, but already recompensed and laden with treasures thst one unloads slowly on to the virgin page in the little round pool of light under the lamp. 

     To write is to pour one's innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one's hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god who guides it-- and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in the dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower. 

     To write is the joy and torment of the idle. Oh to write! From time to time I feel a need, sharp as thirst in summer, to not and to describe. And then I take up my pen again and attempt the perilous and elusive task of seizing and pinning down, under its flexible double pointed nib, the many-hued, fugitive, thrilling adjective . . . The attack does not last long; it is but the itching of an old scar. 

**** 

     A vagabond, maybe, but one who is resigned to revolving on the same spot like my companions and brethren. It is true that departures sadden and exhilarate me, and whatever I pass through, new countries, skies pure of cloudy, seas under rain the color of a grey pearl --- something of myself catches on it and clings so passionately that I feel as though I were leaving behind me a thousand little phantoms in my image, rocked on the waves, cradled in the leaves, scattered among the clouds. But does not a little phantom, more like me than any of the others, remain sitting in my chimney corner, lost in a dream and as good as gold as it bends over a book which it forgets to open?

Aimee Bender's "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake"

With its gentle prose and fascinating characters, it is easy to love Aimee Bender’s “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”. For someone who has never been acquainted with the author’s seemingly surreal stories, the characters strike me as odd. Though they are admirable, one can’t help but ask “Did I just pick another super-heroes-with-super-powers themed book?”.

 A young girl, Rose Elderstein, is a prodigy of taste.  As she took a bite from a lemon cake baked by her mom during her 9^th birthday she did not only taste the cake’s citrus and buttery taste, she also tasted the contents of her mother’s heart. The cake, despite its blended taste of sugary sweetness and lemony sourness, was hollow. And that was how she knew the amount of loneliness her mother was going through. I enjoyed reading the book especially because it was this gifted young girl, Rose, who voiced the story. The prose was womanly: intricate, florid, sensitive and sweeping. It keeps ones senses (especially taste) in a clockwork. I actually remember eating twice as much as I read on, what with all the talk about food and taste.

As her narrative unfolds, the reader will discover that it wasn’t only Rose Elderstien who was gifted with a special streak. Her paternal grandfather who with a slight whiff of a person’s scent, can tell a lot about the person. She also has a brother, born a savant but later on deteriorates and becomes a piece of furniture (One needs to understand the nature of Aimee Bender’s stories to know why this is so). And if one does not limit his or her imagination or speculation to Rose’s narrative, one would assume that the father, too, has a gift (albeit he’s too scared to discover it’s boon or bane).

 Although the characters possess a superhuman ability, they do not go fighting for the sake of saving the world as we are all inclined to think with characters like these. The story was not of an earth-shaking kind but through the eyes of a young girl one will come to share her silent struggles, her gift, the wads of secrets she bore, secrets that came to her without her asking. Don't we, at some point in life, also hold secrets that by mere breath of it and its unknown outcomes just causes a shudder? Secrets with no trace of telling whether its a blessing or a curse? This is how I’ve come to appreciate the story, as always is the reason for admiring any book regardless of how far-fetched or irrelevant its characters and their circumstances are, there is always that tiny keyhole that one can peep into and find the slightest resemblance to one’s life. As Aimee Bender’s fiction progress, we are told about the mother’s palpable loneliness, that it was because of the almost-always-absent husband who’s too frightened to embrace his own weakness, the self-absorbed first-born and of course the many entanglements and complications a married life leads to. The other sibling reveals about how her mom has an affair to fill this void. But despite knowing this, Rose hid it as she did her “gift”. And she hid it well until she’s at that age when life’s mightiest of blows teaches us to accept the things that fate has bind us to. It is a thoughtful story that’s a blend of magic and realism.

I lifted some parts in the book which I liked

“I bit into the chocolate chip. Slowed myself down.

By then, almost a week in, I could sort through the assault of layers a little more quickly. The chocolate chips were from a factory, so they had the same slight metallic, absent taste to them, the butter had been pulled from cows in pens, so the richness was not as full. The eggs were tinged with a hint of faraway and plastic. All those parts hummed in the distance, and then the baker, who’d mixed the butter and formed the dough, was angry. A tight anger in the cookie itself.”

“He smiled at me, and it was genuine, but it was also a smile from further away. Our boats on the river have drifted apart. There was a loyalty call he’d had to make, and I could hear the popcorn popping in the kitchen, and the alluring smell of melting butter in a pot. Joseph muttering away, as he prepared it. That popcorn, a puffy salty collapsing death. I would not eat a piece of it.”

“Then he left. Mom went out to talk to him. I lay against the pillow and aged many years in that hour on my own.”   

2014 Blog Entry #1

first #SefieOf2014 if you think I looked yonderly  in this pick it's because I'm making sure I press the right button

I'ts already 2014 and though it's quite late for those so-called New Year's Resolution as I am writing this a few days towards its 2nd month I am going to give it a shot just to get me started. Most people I know already have  a host of things lined up as their New Year's Resolution. Though I am a person who rarely observes traditions of this kind, I think I'll give in with hopes of surprising myself with how much I can keep these promises till the end of the year (but I still welcome spontaneity). Perhaps something manageable, nothing too daring or out of the ordinary, something that doesn't take weeks or months to accomplish (or if it does, it better have gratifying results) and mostly, nothing that drains my very meager patience.

I am not about to go into details but some of my NYS are: 

* Travel: to places other than Brunei or Philippines (but again: nothing too daring like eating slugs or getting too drunk in an unknown place or succumbing to terrible a weather... in midair) 

* Save MONEY (redundant, but I seriously don't want to experience getting broke even for a week)

* Exercise some more (lame, but)

and perhaps more?

Another 2014 resolution is to enliven my blog(in terms of entries), a bit. It's been months since the last blog post and since work is not as demanding as it was in 2013(not yet, at least ((or the previous years for that matter)), there's definitely more than enough time to read or re-read books. That's the geek in me talking. In a way of looking back at 2013, I consulted my journal entries (written in rather scraggly penmanship with the occasional crossing out  of words like this that defiles the page to an annoying degree). My journal entries hardly contain the usual  juvenile voice that says "Dear diary" but I admit that some entries are just downright embarrassing. Most of the entries are about the books I've read within a course of a week or month followed by a modest writing of thoughts; a mere 5 sentences or sometimes a silly 3 pages worth of outpourings and reflections. There were one liners, that's supposed to start off a short story but never raised its head for a second or third line. There were experiences that started out as clear account of my encounters yet ends up into a twisted, tasteless attempt at fiction. There were rants and ramblings, the occasional love-ridden entries, some badly written spontaneous prose, a critique on food (what?) ... etc.  

But, really, about books. 

In 2012 I kept a list of all the 41 books I managed to read. If you're curious about it then click on this link (Link: http://boyinwonderland.blogspot.com/2013/04/book-list-of-2012.html). The additional 35 books from 2013 was reason enough to buy an extra bookshelf (that's one less dull corner, at least), a few books less that the previous year (all because I harassed myself with outrageous work-related plans). But here is a list of the books read in 2013. 

an unguarded moment

*The Hobbit, J.R.R Tolkien (read 2x)

*Wild Abandon, Joe Dunthorne 

*The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson

*On Photography, Susan Sontag 

* The Road, 

*Hope: A Tragedy, Shalom Auslander 

*The Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson 

*The Book Thief, Markus Zusak 

*The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith 

*The Radleys, Matt Haig 

*American Dervish, Ayad Akhtar

*Journey of a Thousand Miles, Lang Lang 

*Of Love and Other Demons, Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

*The Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (re-read) 

*Nineteen-Eighty Four, George Orwell 

* Will Grayson, Will Grayson, David Levithan and John Green

* Black Swan Green, David Mitchell 

* Legend of a Suicide, David Vann 

*The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender 

* The End of Your Life Bookclub, Will Schwalbe 

* Ghostwritten, David Mitchel 

* The Girl in Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender 

* Escape From Camp 14, Shin Dong-Hyuk 

* One Day, David Nichols 

* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

* The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery (re-read)

* Call Me By Your Name, Andrei Aciman (re-read)

*Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman 

* Maya, Jostein Gaarder

* Essays in Love, Alain de Botton 

* Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore, Rober Sloan 

* Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes

* A Novel Bookstore, Laurence Cosse 

* How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton 

* Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare and Co., Jeremy Mercer
* Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell