Before the Beginning by Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as we are made,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words, the numinous words,
we hear before we begin:

You, called forth by your senses
reach to the edge of your longing.
Become my body
grow like a fire behind things
so their shadows spread
and cover me completely

Let everything into you;
beauty and terror.
Keep going, remember
no feeling lasts forever

Don’t lose touch with me.
Nearby is the land they call life,
you will know it by its intensity.

Give me your hand.

The Venom

Anger as soon as fed is dead –
‘Tis starving makes it fat.
- Emily Dickinson


On some days, I could really be such a hardheaded bitch. But I realized it would be extremely difficult not to be. There are just some instances when you totally have no choice but to let the venom out. Or else it’ll turn on you. And when you finally let it all out, the feeling of relief is just so overwhelming you could almost touch it.

Talking about anger, I would have to admit that I’ve always been manipulated by my own temper. But I do find a proper outlet, a suitable conduit so I wouldn’t end up throwing an F to random strangers on the street. Sometimes when I feel my temper slowly rising on the surface, I get my guitar and strum a happy tune. Or I’d flip open a book. Or I’d switch my laptop on and write to my heart’s content.

But I could say I was never at ease with the anger phase. Despite the intensity of the feeling, I keep my old self anchored at the base, just to stop myself from blowing things out of proportion. So even when a “stray bullet” (a codename for the malicious words I often get from a certain someone at work) comes speeding my way, I could recover easily from the attack. Or if I’m lucky enough, maybe I could dodge it using a well-devised counter-attack (again, IF I’m lucky, which I hardly ever was).

It’s OK to let your anger consume you. Sometimes, it’s the only way you can free yourself from all the shit that’s been burdening you. Just as long as you won’t lose yourself in the process and that you would know how to get back to your old, lovable self again.

Carpe Diem

I rarely have the whole weekend to myself. Most of the time I spend it doing part time work for a small web copywriting business that a friend of mine owns and operates. On some days, I would volunteer to do some household chores (I would always prefer washing the dishes so I could get my fingernails cleaned). At times I would ask my boyfriend to come over and watch a basketball game on TV with me (him enthusiastically reliving every glorified basketball moment he had in his life and me feigning interest) or to just talk about things (if I’m lucky to even get him to talk).

So now, let me just seize this chance.

Yesterday, while I was updating my Facebook account, I had a very interesting conversation with a close friend at work. At first it was the usual humorous banter we often had, until it got a bit serious. He asked me how I was and I was all “I’m not sure but I could do with some piece of advice.” I remember telling him days ago—while I was all drunk and pooped after a drinking session with my colleagues at work—about how I couldn’t seem to have the time to do the things I used to do and actually enjoy them. Was I being too hard on myself, staying up until one in the morning doing part time work that would only get me as far as a few dollars and then waking up at 6am to prepare for my regular 9-to-5 job? Am I missing a lot in life now, having been held prison by my own noble virtues, slaving away with the responsibilities that are just too big for me to handle?

To that he said “Life is a matter of choice”, which, in my twisted mind, would most definitely translate to, if you choose to be this way then suck it up. I know, but it makes so much sense. He said I should stop stressing myself with so many things. And maybe I should stop rushing through life like a maniac an start to take it easy. Why not seize every moment of happiness and enjoy it? Life is too short to burden yourself with too much stress from work, financial foibles, conflicts, etc. God only gave us 24 hours in a day to make the most out of it. So seize the day. Carpe diem.

I wanted this weekend to be totally different by doing absolutely nothing. I thought it would be good to stop being productive just this once, for a change. Slept through the day, read a book, learned to play a new song in the guitar, ate a full meal, watched TV, laughed hard and prayed. This is how I seize that one-off chance of being totally unburdened and unoccupied with work. This is just how I choose to seize the day. And as the weekend draws to a close, I’m just so glad I can end the day without so much as stealing a glance at the clock.

The Cure For Death

“I’d be struggling with a lot of other long-forgotten things…But all that is just a part of life; and the price you pay for having to deal with those minor problems is far less than the price you pay for not recognizing they’re yours.” – Mari in “Veronika Decides To Die”

When people decide to end their lives, I come to think of two possible reasons: one, they think that their lives have suddenly become meaningless and they get tired of it; two, they think they’ve finally fulfilled their purpose in life and have reached the end of the road (in which case, going on living will only prove pointless). But either way you see it, there seems to be no evident systematic approach as to how you’d know when the right time to die has come. I mean, how would you know if your life has suddenly taken a turn for the worst and there’s no other way out but to end it? How would you know if you’ve finally arrive at that certain point in your life when you can say that all your dreams have been realized and the person you are now is the person you’ve always wanted to be? The thing is, there is only way to find the answers to these questions: you have to live through the rest of your life—living while never having to worry where this life is taking you—and thus, discover up to what extent this life can be relished.

Paulo Coelho’s “Veronika Decides to Die” opens our eyes to the awful truth that sometimes, the only way to appreciate life is through experiencing how it’s like without it. Based on real events on Coelho’s own life, the novel tells the story of 24-year-old Veronika who seems to have everything: loving and supportive parents, youth, beauty, men who adored her, and a fulfilling job. But one day, she decides to die. Overdosing in sleeping pills, she prepares her own deathbed with much passion and enthusiasm for a dying person. But she wakes up and finds herself in a mental hospital (Villete) where she is told that she only has days to live. In Villete, she meets people of varying degrees of insanity, develops a lasting friendship with two women who had touched her life, falls in love with a schizophrenic, and learns to appreciate life each day as she struggles against death.

The characterization was brilliant; Coelho painted exquisite portraits of people who are themselves victims of the nonsensical monotony and conventionality of life, manifesting their revulsion for such through different gestures of madness. There’s Zedka who suffered from depression because of a long-lost beloved she never had the strength to fight for; Mari, a brilliant lawyer who experienced severe panic attacks before she could make the career change she had wanted; Eduard, a diplomat’s son who withdrew to his own make-believe reality to search for a “paradise” that nobody believed existed; Veronika who turned her somewhat “perfect” existence upside-down when she got tired of the seemingly endless cycle of life, never having the chance to go out of her comfort zone; and Dr. Igor who devoted a lifetime in search for the elusive cure to Vitriol, a sensation characterized by bitterness and hatred, which he believed to have caused one’s sudden apathy for life.

Also, the unexpected romance that blossomed between Veronika and Eduard moved me in ways no other love story could ever have done (given that I'm not much of a sucker for love stories). I mean, what could be crazier than two crazy-in-love people who have so much love to give to even be cautious of the risk of “overdoing” it? In a time when people keep to what’s rational and reasonable when it comes to love—conscious that they might go overboard for fear of losing a significant part of themselves—would you even go as far as to ask yourself, “Did you ever love at all?”

The same applies with how people go about their lives today. There are too many rules to follow, too many ditches and stumbling blocks to dodge, too many tasks to accomplish, too many consequences to face that it would feel tremendously pleasant to just leave them all behind and go on living without taking notice of these things. But think of this as—like in the movie “Click”—being in “auto-pilot”. You wake up in the morning, eat, drink, take a shower, dress up, go to work, make some calls, get home and sleep without actually “living” every moment of it. So you wouldn’t really know what “living” means because you haven’t actually experienced it, not even once. And as a consequence, you’d have this terrible nagging feeling that something is amiss. Then you’ll die without having to know what it’s like to live.

But maybe you don’t really need to actually die to appreciate life; perhaps all you’ll really need is to grab a copy of this book and read it to your heart’s content.

The Rush

If there’s one thing I’ve picked up from this sort of one-week-away-from-it-all vacation, it’s that you’ll never really have enough time to do the things you want, regardless of how much contemplation and deliberation you’ve put into it.

And no matter how badly you want it.

A week before my much-anticipated one-week vacation leave from work, I was just so psyched! Why, I had everything planned, from start to finish. And it wasn’t easy! There was just a f*ckload of things to do, and I tried my best to keep tabs on them. And this is why it went all f*cked up in the end: I just got way too overboard!

Now, I’m experiencing post-vacation trauma (goodness knows if there really is such a thing). What kills me the most is knowing that I haven’t done so much as sorted out my to-do list and kept a zero accomplishment count. Not to mention that tallying your achievements for the day is sooo depressing.

So for the benefit of the tard who’d be reading this now, this is the list I conjured up before plunging into the nothingness that is my one-week vacation:

1. Gather all requirements for Graduate School. And when I say gather, it means GATHER in all the effin sense of the word. Good: all the requirements were listed down. All that’s left for you to do is to, well, have it printed and check check check away. Bad: it was too much work! One day is simply not enough to complete them! There was a two-page essay, much like a personal selling thing about how you see yourself years from now, how you can contribute to society and a fuckload of crap; some 300-peso-worth documents from my old school; other documents I needed to get from my previous employer; and a lot more.

2. Get some work done. Being the Little Miss Responsible Employee that I am, sure, I took home some paperworks. And I intended to really get them done this time, I do. Really. Sucks coz I always sound like I’m trying to convince myself.

3. Hang out with my boyfriend. OK, this is serious. Our idea of a date had gone from the sweet, classy wastefulness of fine-dining galore to the unceremonial tuhog-tuhog savagery in the rundown eateries along the streets. Yes, these days, all we ever did was share a measly merienda and endure the excruciating one-hour bus ride home.

4. DVD marathon. You might be wondering while something as instinctive as watching DVD should be in the list. Oh well, if you know me enough, you’d even think I needed to list down “cut fingernails” or “make coffee for breakfast”.

5. Finish a book. Now I bought this book almost two weeks ago and I really am starting to be hysterical because I haven’t gotten around to finishing it.

6. Get that vector art done for goodness sake!

7. Fill up my blog. And hell yeah, I’m just about to that, thank you very much.


So I filled my to-do list to the brim and a few moments before the end of my so-called one-week vacation, I realized I still haven’t accomplished fuckloads! Now how could I cram them into an hour?

As I was preparing for work, I told myself, heck, maybe I should take it easy next time. Maybe next time around, I should be savoring every minute of that hard-earned vacation. Yeah, maybe next time.

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me

One of my favorite novels finally hits the big screen! Haruki Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood” is by far the best love story I’ve ever read (in recent memory), and I’m a huge Beatles freak (i mean, who isn’t?) so I’m just so psyched about this! And oh, Kenichi Matsuyama of Death Note is casted as Toru Watanabe.

Just recently, the producers of the film secured the approval to make use of the original Beatles song of the same title, Norwegian Wood. As all ye Beatles fans know, the song Norwegian Wood was first recorded in the Beatles album “Rubber Soul” released in 1965, including hits like Michelle and Girl. The song inspired Murakami’s 1987 novel, from which the title was adopted. Set against the backdrop of student movements during the 60s, the novel tells the story of a young college student named Toru Watanabe who struggles against the overwhelming influence of death, alongside his troubled girlfriend Naoko. Sometime later, he meets the vivacious, outgoing Midori and soon finds himself choosing between the future and the past.

Director Tran Anh Hung felt that it was only natural to use the song Norwegian Wood as the movie’s theme song, but Apple Records, which owns the rights to the Beatles catalog, refused at first. Hung persisted and soon his efforts paid off and they were given approval last December. Apple Records has a policy against using songs of the Beatles in any commercial work, but they made an exception for “Norwegian Wood” owing to the “tremendous popularity” of the novel.

“Norwegian Wood” opens in theaters this December. :)