Poster by Kevin Tong

That’s why it’s so nice having friends who read and whose taste for certain oeuvres greatly differ from mine. Without them, it would have taken me much later to pick this up on my own. Although, I have been nurturing a soft spot for science fiction for quite a while now and thus had no excuse to be oblivious to a classic of the genre.

Whenever I read during my morning commute, I always notice other readers and imagine approaching them (ninja-style) with a high-five. Was there ever a time when having books were as commonplace as cellphones are on public transportation?  I wonder.

The following is one of my favourite quotes from the first book:

 “Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”

I’ll leave you to think about it.

I feel as though I went through phases after a recent break-up: denial, fear, longing and then, acceptance. Like the moon and its phases – I have turned and changed. Now, I am full and glowing in spite of darkness.

I started reading Haruki Murakami’s recent novel “1Q84”, which talks a lot about the moon and its power to orient/disorient us, a few weeks after the break-up. It was a time of self-doubt, which is very suitable to Murakami loneliness. I think this is why, despite having known about the novel months earlier, I chose to start reading it right then. The copy I own is a three-volume box set, which I found while on an errand. Its case was slightly damaged, but it was their last copy and I was drawn to this particular edition even with its corners crooked. I devoured the first book within a week. It was amidst a messy time early on during the aforementioned phases I went through, and it took a while to find the right momentum to move forward.

Four months later, all loose ends have been resolved; the personal messes have been sorted and the book, finished before my tropical December begins. I even managed to squeeze an interesting non-fiction book in-between. The end of 1Q84 (which in the novel, also coincidentally, ends in December) seems to have been perfectly synced to meet me at this apex of singlehood.

I was never a huge and gushing Murakami fan, but I have always appreciated how he writes about loneliness. In this recent work, he even tries to find a solution for it. It echoes Aristophanes belief that there is someone out there for each of us, our other halves. I am still unsold on this idea of having a soulmate. I grew up thoroughly believing in its magic, hoping that my unfortunate encounters were mere setbacks. I have felt, too proactive, in meeting it. Maybe, you are supposed to wait with your hands pinned under you: for the right time and the right person. These will come, as long as you want them to, but you are not supposed to force any sort of collision (which I feel I may have been doing). These rationalizations come and go. I have been too shy to admit to anything aloud. Reading this novel has certainly made me toy with the possibility of a soulmate again, but still, I am mostly, unwilling to be disappointed.

So here I am, alone but not in a lonely Murakami way. This is not an exhaustive hole of a bleak singularity but a space – a kind of temple – I have built for myself. I have measured it to certain specifications:  I can lie inside it, jump and dance inside it, but it is unable to fit another body but mine. Its walls are neatly lined with photographs, in a grid, of those I have loved and learned from, each one candidly capturing the fall: the moment I appreciated them the most, the moment I thought I fell in love. This place would have looked differently ten years ago when I had imagined love to be reserved for a lifetime partner: a boy friend who became a boyfriend and then idealistically, a husband. My soulmate. He would have fit in here with me, and images of him would surround the room (it would have been less a temple and more of a shrine).

In this temple I find myself building and rebuilding time and again, apart from the photographs, I imagine that inside it, is also a canvas. It holds my thoughts, ideas and self-proclamations. It contains many layers of words, some of which have been noticeably erased, in a profusion of colour. In the middle of the scrawls and scribbles, of these things I hold true, surrounded by a membrane of whiteness, but occupying a significant amount of space is a word painted clearly and boldly: ALONE. It does not try to explain or define itself; it is unashamed.

It is the perfect time to be done with 1Q84. Though I was enamored and charmed by the story (it is probably my favourite Haruki Murakami so far), I am ready to be more adventurous. Love is different now, and so is loneliness. Neither of which, are so terrifying.

Photo by Ilya Maeda

A lot can happen in a few weeks. The possibilities multiply based on how often you socialize and meet new people and how often you make things happen for yourself. A routine will make any day slower, especially, if much of it is spent alone. Being alone means you’ll spend more time thinking, and if your brain is the kind of brain with a selfishly wild imagination, you’re in for a difficult few weeks.

Otherwise, if you’re lucky enough to be spending your time for a bigger purpose (i.e. outside yourself, coexisting with other humans), you realize that how fast or how slow it runs, is actually relative to many factors. Often, you think things are going by quickly because you are doing too many things according to certain time markers you’ve set for yourself. When the laundry’s done. The minute you arrive your workplace. The last sip from your first cup of coffee. Lunch time. When you finished photocopying. When the e-mail was finally sent. Dinner.

But you can also stretch your time markers to gauge durations. Instead of a second or a moment, time stretches and becomes specific: How long it takes for you to reach his doorstep, or how quickly you can hide your feelings. Or perhaps the few minutes before your cab arrives. The long and silent ride home. The time it takes you to find songs in your music library to compile a thirty-two minute digital mix. Or the time it takes you to write an accompanying reflection about how a lot can happen in a few weeks.

You don’t have any time left for another batch of laundry tonight. But this is a first in a long time, when you’re able to sit down and really think about anything. You’re thinking back on the last few weeks and there are moments you want to rewind, moments you want to fast-forward, and a rare few that you actually want to pause and freeze. These are the moments with someone else, away from your selfishness and away from your imagination. Thanks to your smart phone, you might not have been in the same room. If there was anyone physically there with you, who were you with? Did your eyes ever meet or were they shut with the image of someone else?

You can’t have all of time; you certainly can’t have everything, but you are allowed to keep some things quietly yours.

Digital Mixtape 001 – You Can’t Have Everything

This isn’t an argument about whether or not the Kindle changes the experience of reading a book, because obviously, it does. This is about how much more I would have cried if I had read the last few pages on a book. It’s definitely not for everybody, but what thing is? I love words and how they can move me. Not just the figurative, transportation of my physical being into any new world with new people, but also how they stimulate my brain and are able to force my whole body to react. I get giddy and restless when two characters fall in love, and will cry if someone feels pain. I don’t just read for the sake of filling my head with something to distract me from my life, but I’m one to appreciate how writers can make bracelets out of the words they have chosen to use.

I’m really late on the fawning over of this book, but I’m glad to be one of its fans. A lot of my friends read this in college, but I stopped any leisurely reading then, and as a general rule, I try to avoid reading a book at the peak of its hype. I learned this after reading Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which I didn’t enjoy as much as I thought I would. The praise, and my own experience reading it, did not mix well. I bought my copy of ELIC one or two years ago and finally, finished it. I loved it so much that I went on to read his wife, Nicole Krauss’ works, hoping to catch a glimpse of why they fell in love with one another.

I was surprised to read that she was less poetic (not to be confused with the word talented – because that is not what I was driving at), but was amazed at how she mapped and structured her novels. I was definitely not as taken to the first book I read of hers, The History of Love, as I was when reading ELIC, but I found myself feeling heavy and ponderous afterwards. I didn’t feel the need to be emotional, but I wanted to be hugged in silence for a very long time.

I continued to be intrigued by Nicole Krauss, and so proceeded to read her latest book, Great House as soon as I had finished reading The History of Love. Her novels really are intriguing, and yet I found it difficult not to compare her prose with her husband’s. I was ill-at-ease upon finishing Great House, because I felt there was this big thing missing from what I read. However, I’ve since realized, that that may have been part of the message of the novel.

I’m happy I took the time to read these. The variety of books out there, is making me so hyper. Today marks the last day of unemployment, so again, I will probably have less time to read, but I’m still going to try to finish at least one each week.

I spent the whole day on the coding and so this short post is a result of my impatience (and my post-rock-climbing aching body). I couldn’t figure out the code for one of the links, but Joe helped me with it and now the link back to the main page (on the right) is blue!

If you are interested in Women’s issues as well as feminism, here are some interesting articles that have kept me awake:

Sex offenders (AKA Rapists) vs. Lads’ Mags
Women’s Day 2012: (No) Progress Report

Don’t be scared of the F-word. It’s more than what you think it is.

Young adulthood is that time in one’s life when one struggles most with one’s identity, character and emotions –and it wasn’t too different for me. I was quietly troubled and would spend a lot of time at home, reading and amassing large quantities of music for an Internet radio show I’d do instead of, whatever many other teens my age were doing. In general, I magnetized towards the sadder songs, but there was also just something in the way she sings Gloomy Sunday that made it better than any other sad song. I’ve always loved how the tone of the song changed to one of hope in the end and because she made the first verses so devastating, the happy ending was all the more emphasized. Listening to her on repeat would help me rise above my own troubles.

With this affinity for Ms. Billie Holiday, and not knowing much else about her life, I couldn’t help but buy, With Billie by Julia Blackburn at the Page One book sale recently. I am in general, wary of biographies but I must admit that (and I know this is a weird thing to admit), the little quote/recommendation from The Economist at the back got to me. They’re trustworthy! And they used the word ‘variegated’! The purchase didn’t result in any regret, because once I started to read, I couldn’t put the book down. I had a vague idea what she must have gone through as a black woman from a low socio-economic background, but the book offers more insight, as well as more questions as to who she really was as a person.

The book’s format was interesting too. Each chapter was written with the point-of-view or perspective of a person who knew her closely, based on old interview transcripts done by Linda Kuehl (who was originally tasked to write a book about Billie but she took her own life before it was finished). The author, Julia Blackburn reiterates from the beginning, how she “never put words into [the interviewees'] mouths or added any detail that wasn’t actually there”. This helped you put her story in a clearer perspective.

Notorious for her drug use and for her abusive boyfriends, the book helps to remind that there is definitely something more to Billie Holiday than those bits of things that dramatized her life. Her sadness goes far deeper than Boy Blues and mere escapism. She was troubled but she was also a strong and capable woman. The drugs and abusive boyfriends painted her with the familiar desperation found in similar stories, of fame and abuse, but I imagine the forces she had to work against during her times, as a black woman with her history, and there’s a part of me that wants to believe she chose what she chose, as if to say yes to life and the obstacles that come with it, each and every time that she had to face the possibility of cruelty, torture, or death. And until her actual death in 1959, I believe it was her body, and not her spirit that gave in to the gloom.

Write letters?

I struggle with time, which is only made worse by the unfiltered flood of information. I still have difficulty distinguishing which information is more important. Now that I’ve built a new path for myself, where I am forced to find worthy causes for my time, it has become a heavier thing. I want to spend it as easily, as I breathe, but I become too conscious that there are sixty seconds in a minute, and I then spend it in spurts – as if hyperventilating. I need time, but my body doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Do I pace the room? Do I let my mind wander? Do I sit to read? Do I search for videos of kittens on Youtube? Do I use time to talk to someone (on Facebook, Twitter, Gchat)?

We’d like to think that as long as one’s happy, one’s making good use of time. So if one spends his own happy time, making others happy too, the cycle of happiness then becomes self-perpetuating, expands and extends out to one’s social circles. This is the dream, that my friends and the people I surround myself with, live in a peaceful community untainted by greedy self-interest and modern-day loneliness. You’d like to be less conscious of time because you’re busy and you’re busy with meaningful preoccupations and people.

Ask questions?

But the joke’s on me and the time I have chosen to spend, drawing and mailing postcards to friends, grows heavy with the silence that follows it. I write this with no bitterness or resentment whatsoever. I have been struggling to come to terms with the fact that this is the sign of our times. Social bonds are weak and people come and go in clicks (of mice) and with the push of a power button – we get lost in our own infinities. You don’t just have a group of people coming to terms with an infinite reality, but you have each and every person dealing with infinity in their own way.

∞

That’s a lot of infinities to think about. With the convenience of self-reliance, it’s harder for us to reach out to friends to ask for inclusion. The multiplicity of infinity is excruciatingly isolating. Someone intelligent who I look up to, I can’t remember if it was Ben, described Twitter as a room full of people shouting their thoughts at each other,  fighting to be heard. In a way, this too describes how it feels like to be in a room full of people, anywhere.

Thrust with more time, I am learning again how best to spend it – how I’d like to spend it. I have a new appreciation for the details of daily living, of friendships, of talking to people, so that I can find a way to my dream community, where infinity is dealt with together. It doesn’t matter if opinions differ. In my dreams, we acknowledge that we are in the same pursuit of happiness, contributing to help each other’s confrontation with infinity. We don’t have to be holding hands, just respecting each other and listening. Kind of like how Livejournal is (yes I still use it), but more public.

I know that I like spending my time asking hard questions, and being with people who like to help find an answer, so I throw this back at you: Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

I’d like to think we can still strive for that.

I encourage you to join Redditgifts too, that is, only if you’re brave enough to be disappointed. I feel lucky that I got Joe and I enjoyed putting together the gifts for my Redditor – but Ib for example gave really cool stuff – and got a jar of sand from his Secret Santa. I still laugh just thinking about it.

Like anything on the Internet, Redditgifts should be used wisely. If you’re in it to give, then it’s a happy thing but if you’re expecting a Kindle or an iPad, I think you should play Secret Santa somewhere else.

This was supposed to be an homage/surprise for my friend and band mate, Ayon, but he hasn’t said a word to me since he got back to Manila. He’s probably going wild, since he was living too anonymously in England. Back-story on the Koala: In order to initiate new members into the band, I’d ask them for their “spirit animal” and Ayon, chose this animal.

I’m not sure if he received this yet. I hope he does eventually. It was my attempt at shading with ink. I obviously have much to learn, but – I’m getting there!

It’s really when you think you got it, that the world conspires to prove you’re small. I think I was trying to increase momentum for a turn when suddenly, the board flew under me. Next thing I know I’ve hit my face on the concrete floor and my right cheekbone is on fire as if I’d been punched. My brain feels like it has been shaken, my gums and teeth hurt a little and all the while I’m hoping the injuries don’t show. Staggering towards the kitchen, I open the fridge and grab the ice tray and let the whole thing cool the side of my face. But while I’m collapsed on the bed, spitting all kinds of expletives, there’s a huge smile on my face because while it hurts, I think I found a new fun thing to do.

I’m going to buy a helmet.