free Cuts

you wake up quite earlier than usual. even if you promised the night before you ain't gonna sleep so you don't miss anything. you wake up anyway after succumbing to sleep. and you, with great apprehension, take a bath and grab a bite and hastily pack your stuff and leave for school.

only to arrive to a free cut.
wow, 'twas my earliest in school in weeks and to nothing but a free cut. well, at least she was there. i mean, the teacher. see, if anyone should complain about the world being unfair, she should. she declares a free cut yet she's there. waiting for our reactions as she declares it.

interesting how things turn out and how strong some people come off. surprises me at times. and i try to react as okay as i possibly could. with a jitty giddy youthful groan. it doesn't help some people of course, but it sure works for me. and though i continue not really caring of what is going to happen next, i end up wondering and curious and excited.

for days to come and cuts declared free.

lisnin to Michael Jackson.
sortof readin The Giver. thanks sir ariel
feelin kinda full. like tummy full

Love nga naman

Love actually
or i don't know. how will you ever really get to translate:

Love nga naman

i have a castmate who consistently reminded me how it's such a great week for me-- closing a great musical, staying alive after elections, meeting new & interesting someones, being adukado, etc. etc. and it's so hard to get it out of your head, to be so overwhelmed with what is happening, that the dust has settled, and the some-good-some-bad baggage we bring along with them.

one does get so overwhelmed. then God reminds one of U2

Love makes strange enemies Makes love when love may please

Soul in a strip tease Hate brought to its knees

Sky over our head Can reach it from our bed

If you let me in your heart And out of my head

Oh can't you see what our love has done

-Window in the Skies

and boy is God just great. [if there's any you can't get too overwhelmed of, it's Him] and U2 ofcourse. it sings over and over that last line and confesses:

to love I rhapsodize

we all have cheesy notions of love. but i'd be cheesy than unloving, any day. i confessed to mel of gk last night that i seriously pray i stay as excited all throughout. she then allowed me to bug her even after graduating. i'm pretty sure i'd figure out a way how.

to those hurt, to those confused, to self-confessed brats, to the rationalizing rationalists in all of us: oh can't we see what our love has done

lisnin to U2
sortof readin women's week to-dos.
feelin kinda happy. break a leg blueREP!













and catch HSM!








and this short film called QWERTY

never too cautious

here's to the best parties where you don't necessarily end up screwing anyone.
and to long tests you realize you're supposed to take only the day before.
and to movies that never really reach everyone but you end up loving
and to words that try their best to capture the very moment you broke free

lisnin to Be Without You - Mary J. Blige
sortof readin spanish. sortof
feelin kinda real lucky

three roses

you never really appreciate Valentine's Day until you realize it gives her just the right confidence to tell you something you not so obviously want to tell her. the holiday creates just the right atmosphere for just that right amount of confidence.

not too whoa-y, not too im-shy-y. just right.
and though i still think it's the worst day of the year to be passionate for an other, it now looks better a holiday than how i looked at it a year ago.

there are those of us who disregard Valentine's, myself included. but we never really disregard those attempts, those oh-my-god-i-can-say-this-today-no-day-else moments.

simply 'cause we don't deserve to disregard them.
and also 'cause we are healthily guilty of attempting, of being in those moments.

yes, love ain't for sale. but maybe it can be for rent. [sorry, i just want to include that rent the musical line]
and just maybe, it's still a lot lot lot better cherished with an other.

we stay happy, the hotels stay full, the flowers stay purchased, the chocolates stay sold.
and always with the thought that the happy part, the hotels part, the flowers part, the chocolates part, they never really stay.

much like the words we just said, the promises we brag about, the persons we attempt to display.

and so the roses don't stay. but knowing there were three
really really helps

lisnin to lotsa typing in this pc lab at ctc
sortof readin political sophistication
feelin kinda healthy

like Columbus

or Cortez, whose entrance ends Apocalypto.

my glasses were two weeks old when i broke them and so i had to go back and have them fixed. and for someone who thought his vision was all normal and okay, a new world suddenly revealed itself upon wearing them new glasses.

it's pleasure overload, really.
like last night, sandaang panaginip's critic's night where i had fun fogging, them stars just looked better with my glasses on. like the color of that house on the corner. yes.

new worlds, seriously.
just found out that i got accepted as adukasyon scholar, it's a 4-Saturday ad education and training program by AdBoard. me excited.
'cause i seriously want to do non-traditional marketing. like this street installation by Mark Jenkin:



















and another interesting photo from hedonistica that i might copy and do for manalamin, my mirror installation, also from dailydoseofimagery:















here's to art and those that fight for its appreciation

lisnin to Candide and The Fray
sortof readin my future
feelin kinda unhealthy. colds, cough and a mild hangover

Epicurean & Suicidal

you don't really kill yourself when you really seriously want to kill yourself.
and that's why i think thoughts of suicide are healthy, productive thoughts. there's something beautiful about thinking about destruction that you get to value creation more and that yearning to be oh so prolific.

suicide is about giving up, they say. but the coward in me thinks otherwise, that maybe you just reach a point in your life when you realize what matters to you may already be passe. at the end of the day, you ofcourse don't give up. at the very least you make do with what you have and move on until you chance upon something so seemingly new and fresh and matter-ful that you think the mere thought of suicide is just absurd. then comes the pleasure of realizing that you've thought about thinking about--thinking about thinking about thinking about.

pleasing 'cause not only does it not hurt, it also temporarily isolates you from a lot of good and bad things. and that's why the question of suicide and living is always a question, mysterious albert camus would say. always a question because whether it's pleasing now, suicidal later, pleasing after, suicidal again, then pleasing then good then bad then good, the question begs to be attended to. and so you really seriously think about it.

only to live another day.

happy
pleased
but serious
thought of
and mysterious.

a sense of purpose

an american in france out to lead a fleet of first time pilots

an 11-year old jerone soria in payatas out to learn

a night guard out to freak himself out further

a student out to re-redefine studenthood

that last one ought to be me. i do what i can. but what most amazed me recently is how, for some people, the need to be deliberately conscious of their purpose is so so so persistent. otherwise they die, they give up, or they get piled under lots of trash.

literally, like jerone for example who sleeps behind a huge mountain of trash. i had to tutor him yesterday and he learned how to multiply using his fingers far faster than i did back when i was younger, maybe 'cause he has a better tutor. just kidding. but he's really good, despite the desperate uber melancholy mood of his surroundings, of the community he is in that sits literally on top of a huge mound of trash [aside from the one beside them].

as we were about to leave, the house 4 houses away from where we were teaching microsoft word started burning. everyone was freaking save for tita maricon, which saved me from panicking. we had to leave using an alternate route, and blocks away from where we left, talk of the fire still was abound.

each day, you get to include more and more people in your prayers.
and each day, you get closer and closer to a sense of purpose.

there are those of us who can't live without it.

lisnin to Spring Awakening. ms Chari shared it in the e-group and i just realized why it's so familiar--sir bong asked me to be melchior, i think, for his ccp class. and now it's a musical! by duncan sheik! and it is good!
sortof readin Businessworld
feelin kinda inspired

cold Outside

if you're in Manila, i need not tell you that it's definitely colder than usual.
global warming, maybe. and it sure needs getting used to.

especially 'cause each night 'til 10, we rehearse outdoors.
for a show that opens in 10 days.
right after miting de avance and slate's launch
right before valentine's day
right when it's cold outside.

right now i'm still not catching up academics-wise as much as i want to and my lame excuse is that our internet connection is faulty. well not really. just not up for it, i guess.
priorities priorities.

you know the best thing about outside being cold?
everyone seems more pressed to warm you up.

lisnin to funky background music
sortof readin P&G SEA. wonder when's the deadline
feelin kinda good about the cold

Gawad Kalinga has begun to stem this tide. At the very least, it offers hope that previously helter-skelter efforts at reform need not wait for a political messiah or a bloody revolution. But when a mayor comes knocking at the door, demanding a vote or offering bribes for it; when soldiers confuse community building with subversion; when revolutionaries start preaching reform must come out of the barrel of a gun, what will Gawad Kalinga do?

The decade in which it has gathered steam and begun to make an enduring mark was a grace period. It won’t last. And for every community that stands on self-respecting feet, thanks to its efforts, the challenge must be confronted: Now that the poor have homes, and have organized themselves, what next? Can they afford to stand aside and let their work be swamped by those who have no incentive to respect it?

-Philippine Daily Inquirer Editorial, Jan 31, 2007