December 18, 2007 : Sports Festival 2007

i am putting the sequence shots of ky&co. in ANOTHER album because there are just too many of them. this is a lot as it is.

new way of crediting, yay me:
C - cara
D - sir don
G - gerone
J - jessica
K - kevin
N - nikki

December 8, 2007 : Bene Singko ang '82

Batch '82 alumni homecoming.

boring until _______________. I didn't take most of these photos.

0024-0055 - credit [the guy who's name is pronounced Joan but I don't know if it's spelled like that hahaha]
0060: credit Paula
0074-0076 : credit Jill
0078-0083 : credit whoever was holding the camera
0163-0187, 0215-end : credit Ana

06

christmas wishlist

handwritten letters
hugs
inspiration
to be blown away

November 28, 2007 : Before and After the Main Event

before and after the WNCAA. more of a This-Is-for-Cara-To-Grab-Because-She-Took-Most-Of-Them Album and a Tammi-Photoshoot Album.

0067: credit Ky
0005-0054 ; 0056 ; 0064 ; 0072 - 0117 ; 0134 ; 0048 - end : CARA
0148 : credit Gerone
0143 - 0147, 0149, 0155 : either Gerone or Cara

(cara you're on the cover because the photo is too funny not to put as the cover. yay you.)

November 28, 2007 : WNCAA 2007

ninoy aquino stadium, where we owned school spirit. complete with balloons and the loudest cheers and even a prefect chanting "walang pasok!" as aftermath. (not true, of course...)

congratulations you guys :)

0157: credit Cara

photos from before and after the event will be posted some other time. some of these are rather blur, sorry.. steal all you want but i'd just like to know where the photos go, so let me know.

November 24, 2007 : Outreach - Mother Spinelli's Treasures

to those who didn't make it - you should have.

keeping the children company and making them smile and laugh, i'm sure, was well worth the arm muscle aches some of you may have now, yes?

but i must say what made this day most special was the prayer at the end. we were given the open field at the back of the building to use for a short prayer. it was around five in the evening, the sun was setting, the breeze cool, the air filled with the little circle of us singing. i couldn't give it a pass. i found higher ground and tried to squeeze all of this in a photograph (0380).

thank you God for not bringing the storm in to the area yesterday because none of this would have happened it it had.

-

0147 - 0164; 0170 - 0176; 0185, 0189: credit Dru
0197 - 0199: credit Kevy
0218 & 0220: credit Joey G (I think. I can't remember who I asked to hold the camera while I fiddled with the camera bag.)
and
on 0218: OKAY FINE YOU GUYS WIN (for this only) THE PERSON IN THIS PHOTO LOOKS LIKE A DUDE. wtf.

0239: credit the cute girl in green in 0238
0405 - 0414: credit Carlo
0417 - 0431: credit Dru (use the flash next time yo :D )

05

Every now and then I try to fill up a white box on the screen, with text. If I am lucky I can muster a few paragraphs (see blog entry 03, and probably this one once I'm done with it) but really, in truth, everything I want to say is in the one-worder (see blog entry 04).

Either it's the same thing over and over, or nothing else interesting really happens, or something does happen and it is so special I want to keep it to myself (and also because anything I would say would not do it justice). Or something like that.

Within the six-month span of lost writing momentum:

A home in faith, a new way of expression that words alone could not fill the shoes of; a new level of candor and honesty, letting words slip out, pushing words out; the language of touch, the brushing against, the circling, the Stay; and eye contact, and a prayer I wish I could have kept in a bottle to listen to whenever I wanted, and a friday, and going back to sleepovers, and unspoken understanding, and the rarity of being together wrapped in cozy silence, and knowledge of who sticks around despite distance

I have a habit of suddenly breaking paragraphs just because. And the last paragraph in particular because I don't know how to continue or expound further.

Also, finally feeling the adjustment to the big transition ending. Madeline and her sisters did sing that home is where the heart is (ha ha ha). But this is all still too raw and even the slightest uprooting is rather unbearable (i.e. I have to attend the school's retreat this weekend and I am really not looking forward to it [and I like letters, especially handwritten ones, but if it's not it's perfectly okay, if anyone writes me it will be my Home throughout the retreat meaning it will mean so much to me]). The ending of my essay on Community for CVE (Christian Values Education) last quarter:

With my mother being a diplomat, we never settle in one place, and that sense of never having enough time becomes the norm. It is less shocking, but does not get easier – my life has been spent thinking how much time I have left, and this is a lot harder when thought on smaller scale (as opposed to the bigger scale, which is when life on earth ends). The good this lifestyle has given me is the early realization of what home really is. It is not four walls (or more) and a roof; it is not even a country. It is community, the broader sense of family, that sense of belonging, that something you look forward to seeing, that something that gives, and in turn takes away a part of you and keeps it for itself. With that, you will always find your way back to it.  

My family leaves for another country again, late next year. Leaving is always the worst part, no matter how many times it is done. All I can do now is make the most of the time that I do have, and make sure I leave a home, not just a country.

How do you know if something you want is something you deserve? And how do you know when to stop chasing after it, to stop making the effort, though you really don't know which is more painful, the stopping or the trying.

The parents are once again beginning the preparation for departure and this is really all too soon it gets quite emotionally exhausting and I am blowing this out of proportion again but that's the package that comes with sentimentality. My teacher in grade school who still keeps in touch (and takes beautiful photos), is in Thailand now, teaching children in the provincial areas. He has the ability to do things with everything he has AND slip out of the life he gets used to. So easily. Sometimes I wish I could do that.

The meaning of the word "toska" is in an older blog entry here ("where the english language fails, somewhat"). The meaning can also be found in unbearable silence between you and your person. In the darkness you stare at when you lie in bed at night, clutching your pillow, crying loud enough for only yourself to hear. In every move you make that feels forced, pointless and incessant. In the sense of worthlessness when you realize you are being juggled with something else, when you are pushed to second, or third, or fourth... In the last lines of Grey's Anatomy episodes; in the lack of knowledge of one's wants or confusion about said wants. In the inability to express everything inside you that is screaming to be heard. In the words of another that once felt true, but now cause doubt and denial. In the desperate hope that those words are actually still true. In the longing for something unsure of, in the longing to know what said something unsure of is. In waiting. In trying so hard not to expect anything so that any hope will not be sent crashing down. In that heavy chest feeling when you try not to cry. In missing.

Or maybe it isn't the same thing over and over, maybe it's not that nothing else interesting really happens, or something does happen and it is so special I want to keep it to myself. Maybe I want you to find me.

Or, yanno, something like that.

04

toska

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY / The Little Prince

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life . I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..." The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. "Please, tame me!" he said.

"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."

"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me..."

"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me, like that, in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."

The next day the little prince came back.

"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you... One must observe the proper rites..."

"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.

"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near...

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added: "Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. "You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world." And the roses were very much embarrassed. "You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you, the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox. "Goodbye," he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

October 31, 2007 : Kickin' It Old School

Halo-ween 2007 at Ate Pat the Air Freshener's (my shepherd, yo).

a lot of photos are out of focus because i forgot my external flash, and it was dark. :(
great, i forgot to duplicate the last photo. so the last isn't loading again. multiply sucks.

October 19, 2007 : Cara at Sixteen

pretty in pink at BF Club!

i wanted to delete some of the photos here, because some are test shots, some are double-takes... but yeah the sixteen-year-old happy flower didn't want me to.

superprops go to tita grace, cara's mom, for preparing everything. (yes, down to the purple colored water in the sushi bar, down to the little colored pebbles glued to the candle holders.)

September 27, 2007 : Of School and People

well, mostly people.

i was excused from classes the whole day today because i was on graduation
pictorial duty with tammi. i jumped at the chance of having free time in school, and asked my dad if i could bring the camera. was sincerely shocked when he'd said "okay".

0001 - 0004 ; 0198 - 0199 : credit Ky
0159 : credit Sir Juni (HELLO CANON EOS 5D with amazing pro series lens)

0160 - 0172 : is a funny story involving students sleeping when they shouldn't be; thus being humiliated by filipino subject teacher.

p.s. the last photo isn't loading again :(

47, 2007-2008

since everyone was complaining about only being able to buy one photo, and since i was the one who'd brought it home, and since i have a scanner.

03

Today I took three tests I did not study for. For some reason I am nonchalant about how I perform academically, and this is not complacency because of being third in class for the first quarter. God knows I was just as nonchalant before that. Right now, I am not studying for the last three tests I have tomorrow though I should be.

Last week for English class we had to write to either Daedalus or Icarus (Ovid's "Daedalus and Icarus"). Icarus was Daedalus' son. They were locked up in tower in the middle of the sea. Daedalus was a very skilled craftsman, and made wings out of real bird feathers and wax.

"I warn you, Icarus, fly a middle course:
Don't go too low, or water will weigh the wings down;
Don't go too high, or the sun's fire will burn them.
Keep to the middle way. And one more thing,
No fancy steering by star or constellation,
Follow my lead!" That was the flying lesson,

But then:

...... And the boy
Thought This is wonderful! and left his father,
Soared higher, higher, drawn to the vast heaven,
Nearer the sun, and the wax that held the wings
Melted in that fierce heat, and the bare arms
Beat up and down in air, and lacking oarage
Took hold of nothing.
Father! he cried, and Father!
Until the blue sea hushed him,

No cookies for the ones who guessed who I (and probably most of the class) wrote to. It could only be ten sentences long:

Dear Daedalus,

You do not know how much my heart went out to you when I heard about what had happened. I would be lying if I said that I knew what you were going through, but please understand that this will not stop me, or your loved ones, from wanting to be there for you.

The worst thing that you could do is hate yourself. If your son were here right now, I know he would not be angry with you. Let your love for your son resonate within you, let it be known to the rest of the world through your actions. "All work is empty, save for when there is love," as author Khalil Gibran has written. "For work is love made visible."

The world may seem a dull, lifeless place right now, Daedalus, and what you need is closure. Be open to everything; do not hide from happiness. Let it find you. Live the life you have now twice as much, for now you live for Icarus as well.

--------------------

But on the whole, yet, despite this, inspite of everything, I don't know what to do. Illumination only comes through me, but not TO me. I will tell you things and they will mean the world, they will mean everything I am, I would want my words to be arms wrapped around you, I would want them to grab you by the shoulders, shake you and scream for me, I am here! but I myself have yet to be able to be enlightened by my words. It is so much easier to believe in the people you love than it is to believe in yourself.

The past week has been less than fantastic. I have been cruelly reminded of how it is like to be on the verge of tears twenty-four-seven (how accurate! hooray), except now the alien feeling has been replaced with a dull throbbing familiarity, how everything seems to have been sucked dry of whatever it can offer.

As if everything around you is falling short.

Then again that could be but an illusion, and when reality throws you the morning paper it will tell you that you are, in fact, too far ahead/away (circle one, optimist/pessimist) for anything or anyone to reach. You reach out, a little, slightly, shyly, say hello. I'm in a bit of a knot here, could you help me out? (This works best with an English accent. Try it!) But you end up a voice they think they heard.

I think my mind is swaying about college course. I am in trouble

Hopefully it rains soon, Because the heat really does not help and because (cough) misery loves company.

If you have read up to here, tell me how your day has been. How are you? What's your favorite color? Ice cream flavor? Has anything made you smile today? Why does sadness tow with it an ache in the chest area, despite the heart being but a muscle that pumps blood? Why is emptiness such a dominating feeling despite, well, the whole "empty" factor?

VIRGINIA WOOLF / suicide note to leonard woolf

Dearest,
I feel ceratin that I am going
mad again: I feel we can't go
through another of these terrible times.
And I shant recover this time. I begin
to hear voices, and cant concentrate.
So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have
given me
the greatest possible happiness. You
have been in every way all that anyone
could be. I dont think two
people could have been happier till
this terrible disease came. I cant
fight it any longer, I know that I am
spoiling your life, that without me you
could work. And you will I know.
You see I cant even write this properly. I
cant read. What I want to say is that
I owe all the happiness of my life to you.
You have been entirely patient with me &
inredibly good. I want to say that --
everybody knows it. If anybody could
have saved me it would have been you.
Everything has gone from me but the
certainty of your goodness. I
cant go on spoiling your life any longer. I dont think two
people
could have been happier than we have been.
V.

August 26, 2007 : SJRM Family Fiesta

too funny Not to put as the album cover, thanks.


i think i was sitting down for a total of fifteen minutes throughout the whole event, starting 10am after mass.

this stash was originally of 400+ photos. still, editing 262 photos all in one go is no joke.

0017 - 0027 : credit my dad
0094 - 0163 : credit kevy (and his fascination with the multiple shot function on the camera)
0182 - 0198 : credti kevy
0240 ; 0268 - 0295 ; 0438 : credit my dad
0422 - 0426 : credit javi

02

Monday, August 6, 21:07 p.m. - an epiphanic moment! I have finally decided what to take after high school:

photography

Mind, I ask of you but one thing: please do not sway.

This has been rather enlightening. I will worry about "job opportunities" another time hopefully further into the future, unlike my mother who is telling me to think of job opportunities now. Please, if I am going to be studying One thing for four years, then I am sure as hell I am going to make it something I love and will not grow tired of.

On a heavier note, the hope of having the presence (read: ART SCENE) of Europe (only a few weeks ago my parents were hell bent on heading off to the Netherlands) around as distraction (leaving is always the bitch) has vanished, as of this week the Country of Choice is New Zealand, the land of cows and mountains (and green hills? I should stop abusing the parentheses).

I bought a new book last weekend, I hope I find time to read it soon, for some reason I feel busy although I am procrastinating (homework-wise) to the maximum extent, I should never ever blog spontaneously (as in in the Compose Blog Entry box, like right now) again, I have spray-painted my school file (green) with the word "illuminate" (my favorite word, can you tell how much fun I am having with the parentheses? Any confusion caused is... uh, regretted I guess), I need new music to listen to, I miss Grey's Anatomy, I would like to be able to verbally speak like I mentally speak, Oskar what if our brains had microphones?

SYLVIA PLATH / Notebooks, February 1956

What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination. When the sky outside is merely pink, and the rooftops merely black: that photographic mind which paradoxically tells the truth, but the worthless truth, about the world. It is that synthesizing spirit, that "shaping" force, which prolifically sprouts and makes up its own worlds with more inventiveness than God which I desire. If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward, the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine: it is that kind of madness which is worst: the kind with fancies and hallucinations would be a Bosch-ish relief. I listen always for footsteps coming up the stairs and hate them if they are not for me. Why, why, can I not be an ascetic for a while, instead of always teetering on the edge of wanting complete solitude for work and reading, and, so much, so much, the gestures of hands and words of other human beings. Well, after this Racine paper, this Ronsard purgatory, this Sophocles, I shall write: letters and prose and poetry, toward the end of the week; I must be stoic till then.

(published in "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams")

01

(this is me, this time, the things in italics from this
anonymous commenter i have somewhere else.
written some time in april.
for references to "Oskar", please see and hopefully read
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer)

What books do you read? Are you into literature?

I am not very sure how to answer that first question. Do you mean, genres? I was never good with genres. (I have filled the "Genre" column of my iTunes list with the year the song or album was released.) How do people stick to genres, confine themselves to such a tiny space when there is still such a vast area of whatever to be acquainted with?

I could give you a list of the books I have read. I would be more than happy, you sound interested and that is not very common anymore. A funny story: on the second day of summer class, I was re-reading one of the conversations in my folder while waiting for class to start. "Reading is considered an act of self-improvement. Work. Homework. Probably something you are not smart enough to do and enjoy. If just the act of reading were more present," I read, a line from Jonathan; and right after that I looked up to find my teacher standing nearby and he said, "What is that? Why are you reading, are you studying?"

That has happened before, and when I say "I'm just reading because I want to," I get a weird look.

But, that list would be nowhere near in showing all that has influenced my writing and has inspired me to do so. (Assuming that the question was posed for that reason.) All I can say about the books I read is that it always finishes by taking something from me in exchange for what it gave. It's that slightly breathless feeling when you finish a book, when you turn the rest of the blank pages (or advertisments of the author / publisher, depending on the book. My personal preference would be the blank pages.) to the back cover, close it, turn it over to the front, and think about the whole book you've just digested while staring blankly at the cover.

My The Book is Jonathan Safran Foer's "Everything Is Illuminated." I will leave you with the excerpt I posted a while back, because any attempt to describe or worship this masterpiece will not even come close to what it is worth. Jonathan Safran Foer breaks hearts beyond our own repair (and then promptly does just that) for a living.

Novels, short stories, poetry, journals, philosophy, news and magazine articles. I read everything. If you're interested, there are some very awesome places online...

In English class, my very fab English teacher taught us, according to the syllabus, that prose appealed to the mind, and poetry to the heart. I didn't exactly agree because it was such a defined line separating the two. The writings I read easily fall in both categories.

An explanation for inspiration would be incredibly futile. The word "inspiration" comes from "inspirare", Latin, meaning "to be breathed into". How would one explain what keeps her breathing, feeling, seeing, being? Forget scientific analysis (something amazing just happened: as I wrote the phrase before this parentheses, Natasha Bedingfield sang "questions of science, science in progress, do not speak as loud as my heart" through my speakers. I live for moments such as these, really.) of any sort, Science can not explain how one lives on through others after death, how would one explain what drives her to creation, everything we do is creation, reading a book is creation, Picasso said "Everything you can image is real", destruction is creation, how would one explain how an apple rolling onto the road inspired the ending to a story, and how would one explain how even something that does not exist is inspiration? "Everything you can imagine is real."

You should be a writer.

Thank you for that. I have been thinking a lot about that lately, because these years are definitely not passing by any slower. I need to decide, because it may or may not make a dent in my parents' decision on where to go for my mother's next assignment (which is late next year). I thought I had already narrowed down my choices to the different writing courses, but the thought of going into serious art just keeps knocking on my skull at regular intervals to make sure its presence is not forgotten. And Hugh Jackman on Inside the Actor's Studio just backed that up lately, describing the arts school where he took his course in theatre. This is really not fair.

Help, anyone? Writing is only thrilling when I can come up with something. I am constantly distracted by the thought of having a dead-end desk writing job, slumped in an old chair, staring at the computer screen, thinking of how to start an obituary; half-hoping to be able to surprise myself and the public with a haiku so amazing it will land me in a publisher-sponsored white empty apartment with agents waiting for me to write my next masterpiece.

Me and Art (this would include photography) would have the same situation, except imagine my grubby basement-turned-living-quarters, newspaper spread on the floor half-coated with every single shade of every color of paint, art paraphernalia everywhere, paper paint glue pencils crayons markers scissors pens gift-wrapping paper more and more and more paper canvas several easels several tables lyrics hastily written on paper dried flower petals cameras empty film canisters patterns on walls photographs on walls drawings on walls ... ... With me in one corner, face lit up by the dim glow of a computer screen, complaining about my shitty pseudo manqué-artist life into this very journal.

Oskar, how about something that will manifest our thoughts when we fail to do so ourselves? Here is a blank white wall, here is a clean sheet of white paper. Take what's in my mind and paste it there, my hands don't do enough of a good job.

Maybe that's too much, though. What if we had a machine that could transport us anywhere in the universe, at any time, Oskar? Something a la The Glass Elevator, except with really good ventilation. Inspiration is everywhere, and the very grand problem is, we aren't.

July 21, 2007 : God's Kitchen

A girls / boys cook-off (the latter won, thanks to their spaghetti), all fruits of labor gone to the stomachs of the cute little kids of SOS Children's Village.

since i wasn't always the one holding the camera:

0243 - 0249 - credit Jarro
0282 - 0283 - credit whoever took it (haha sorry I can't remember!)
0363 - 0375 - credit shepretty Pat
0384 - 0403 - credit Kevy

where english falls short, somewhat

(not an excerpt this time)

The Ilocano dialect of the Philippines has three words for the word "this" :

1) For things in view
2) For things not in view
3) For things that do not exist

Fernweh : (German) The deep desire to be somewhere else, far away.

Toska : (Russian) "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom." - writer Vladimir Nabokov

Onsay : (Boro, an Indian dialect) To pretend to love
Ongubsy : (Boro, an Indian dialect) To love from the heart
Onsia : (Boro, an Indian dialect) To love for the last time

Litost : (Czech) A fusion of self-pity, regret and fear

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Got any more? I have a list, I only selected a few to post here.

I posted this somewhere else a long time ago, and until now, I have not found those three Ilocano words. If you know, sharing would be very much appreciated.

July 14 - 15, 2007 : because children make the best subjects

Relatives coming down from Europe for a holiday meant a big family get-together. These are only a few, and are mostly of children, because, duh, they're the best.

I can't even remember the name of the village we were in, but all the rest houses were huge. This one had a pool, a bahay kubo, a cleared first floor for dining in big groups, a pool table, and three bedrooms with at least two beds in each. 10k per night though, damn.

p.s. can ANYONE tell me why multiply keeps screwing up every last photo uploaded?!

BLOC PARTY / Two More Years

(this is called bloc party love)

In two more years, my sweetheart, we will see another view. Such longing for the past for such completion. What was once golden has now turned a shade of grey; I've become crueler in your presence.

They say, "Be brave, there's a right way and a wrong way" This pain won't last for ever.

Two more years, there's only two more years; two more years, so hold on.

You've cried enough this lifetime, my beloved polar bear - tears to fill a sea to drown a beacon. To start anew all over, remove those scars from your arms, to start anew all over more enlightened.

I know, my love, this is not the only story you can tell. This pain won't last for ever.

You don't need to find answers for questions never asked of you.

Dead weights and balloons drag me to you. Dead weights and balloons to sleep in your arms
I've become crueler since i met you, I've become rougher, this world is killing me.

We cover our lies with handshakes and smiles, we try to remember our alibis, we tell lies to our parents, we hide in their rooms, we bury our secrets in the garden.

Of course we could never make this love last, the only love we know is love for ourselves, we bury our secrets in the garden.

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE / I Will Follow You Into the Dark

(because lyrics are literature too)

Love of mine, some day you will die. But I'll be close behind - I'll follow you into the dark. No blinding light, or tunnels to gates of white; just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark.

If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied, illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs. If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks, then I'll follow you into the dark.

In Catholic school (as vicious as Roman rule), I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black. And I held my tongue as she told me, "Son, fear is the heart of love."
So I never went back.

You and me have seen everything to see - from Bangkok, to Calgary; and the soles of your shoes are all worn down. The time for sleep is now, it's nothing to cry about 'cause we'll hold each other soon... (in) The blackest of rooms.


If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks, then I'll follow you into the dark.

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER / Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

      I went to my room.
     My hands were dirty, but I didn't wash them. I wanted them to stay dirty, at least until the next morning. I hoped some of the dirt would stay under my fingernails for a long time, and maybe some of the microscopic material would be there forever.
     I turned off the lights.
     I put my backpack on the floor, took off my clothes, and got into bed.
     I stared at the fake stars.
     What about windmills on the roof of every skyscraper?
     What about a kite-sting bracelet?
     What if skyscrapers had roots?
     What if you had to water skyscrapers, and play classical music to them, and know if they like sun or shade?
     What about a teakettle?
     I got out of bed and ran to the door in my undies.
     Mom was still on the sofa. She wasn't reading, or listening to music, or doing anything.
     She said, "You're awake."
     I started crying.
     She opened her arms and said, "What is it?"
     I ran to her and said, "I don't want to be hospitalized."
   She pulled me into her so my head was against the soft part of her shoulder, and she squeezed me. "You're not going to be hospitalized."
     I told her, I promise I'm going to be better soon."
     She said, "There's nothing wrong with you."
     "I'll be happy and normal."
     She put her fingeres around the back of my neck.
     I told her, "I tried incredibly hard. I don't know how I could have tried harder."
     She said, "Dad would have been very proud of you."
     "Do you think so?"
     "I know so."
     I cried some more. I wanted to tell her all of the lies that I'd told her. And then I wanted her to tell me that it was OK, because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good. And then I wanted her to tell me that Dad still would have been proud of me.
     She said, "Dad called me from the building that day."
     I pulled away from her.
     "What?"
     "He called from the building."
     "On your cell phone?"
     She nodded yes, and it was the first time since Dad died that I'd seen her not try to stop her tears. Was she relieved? Was she depressed? Grateful? Exhausted?
     "What did he say?"
    "He told me he was on the street, that he'd gotten out of the building. He said he was walking home."
     "But he wasn't."
     "No."
     Was I angry? Was I glad?
     "He made it up so you wouldn't worry."
     "That's right."
     Frustrated? Panicky? Optimistic?
     "But he knew you knew."
     "He did."
     I put my fingers around her neck, where her hair started.
     I don't know how late it got.
   I probably fell asleep, but I don't remember. I cried so much that everything blurred into everything else. At some point she was carrying me to my room. Then I was in bed. She was looking over me. I don't believe in God, but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything ever could be. But it was also incredibly simple. In my only life, she was my mom, and I was her son.
     I told her, "It's OK if you fall in love again."
     She said, "I won't fall in love again."
     I told her, "I want you to."
     She kissed me and said, "I'll never fall in love again."
     I told her, "You don't have to make it up so I won't worry."
     She said, "I love you."
     I rolled onto my side and listened to her walk back to the sofa.
     I heard her crying. I imagined her wet sleeves. Her tired eyes.
     One minute fifty-one seconds . . .
     Four minutes thirty-eight seconds . . .
     Seven minutes . . .
    I felt in the space between the bed and the wall, and found Stuff That Happened to Me. It was completely full. I was going to have to start a new volume soon. I read that it was the paper that kept the towers burning. All of those notepads, and Xeroxes, and printed e-mails, and photographs of kids, and books, and dollar bills in wallets, and documents in files . . . all of them were fuel. Maybe if we lived in a paperless society, which lots of scientists say we'll probably live in one day soon, Dad would still be alive. Maybe I shouldn't start a new volume.
   I grabbed the flashlight from my backpack and aimed it at the book. I saw maps and drawings, pictures from magazines and newspapers and the Internet, pictures I'd taken with Grandpa's camera. The whole world was in there. Finally, I found the pictures of the falling body.
     Was it Dad?
     Maybe.
     Whoever it was, it was somebody.
     I ripped the pages out of the book.
     I reversed the order, so the last one was first, and the first was last.
     When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up through the sky.
    And if I'd had more pictures, he would've flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would've poured into the hole that the plane was about to come out of.
    Dad would have left his messages backward, until the machine was empty, and the plane would've flown backward away from him, all the way to Boston.
     He would've taken the elevator to the street and pressed the button for the top floor.
   He would've walked backward to the subway, and the subway would've gone backward through the tunnel, back to our stop.
    Dad would've gone backward through the turnstile, then swiped his Metrocard backward, then walked home backward as he read the New York Times from right to left.
     He would've spit coffee into his mug, unbrushed his teeth, and put hair on his face with a razor.
     He would've gotten back into bed, the alarm would've rung backward, he would've dreamt backward.
     Then he would've gotten up again at the end of the night before the worst day.
     He would've walked backward to my room, whistling "I Am the Walrus" backward.
     He would've gotten into bed with me.
    We would've looked at the stars on my ceiling, which would've pulled back their light from our eyes.
     I'd have said "Nothing" backward.
     He'd have said "Yeah, buddy?" backward.
     I'd have said "Dad?" backward, which would have sounded the same as "Dad" forward.
     He would've told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from "I love you" to "Once upon a time . . ."
     We would have been safe.

MILAN KUNDERA / The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).

    If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.

    But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

    The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

    Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements are as free as they are insignificant.

    What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

    Parmenides posed this very question in the sixth century before Christ. He saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: light/darkness, fineness/coarseness, warmth/cold, being/non-being. One half of the opposition he called positive (light, fineness, warmth, being), the other negative. We might find this division into positive and negative poles childishly simple except for one difficulty: which one is positive, weight or lightness?

    Parmenides responded: lightness is positive, weight negative.

   Was he correct or not? That is the question. The only certainty is: the lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all.

JON MCGREGOR / If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

He says do you want to see another special thing, and he points to the rooftops opposite, he says can you clap your hands for your daddy, and when she does so the whole ridgepole of pidgeons springs up into the air, ballooning off down the street as a group, circling, landing on another rooftop in a matching single line.

He says, do you see them now, do you see they do not bump into one another, do you think this is special? and she looks at him and she thinks she should nod so she does.
He says you know in the place you were born in, and he doesn't say back home because he doesn't want her to think like that but that is what he means, back home where they were a family and they belonged, he says in the place you were born in there would be flocks of thousands of birds, gathering at dusk, and when they tunred in mid-air the whole sky would go dark as though Allah was flipping the shutters closed for a second. And not any of those thousands collided he says, do you think this is special?
He says my daughter, and all the love he has is wrapped up in the tone of his voice when he says those two words, he says my daughter you must always look with both of your eyes and listen with both of your ears. He says this is a very big world and there are many many things you could miss if you are not careful. He says there are remarkable things all the time, right in front of us, but our eyes have like the clouds over the sun and our lives are paler and poorer if we do not see them for what they are.
He says, if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?

Angels, he says, and she leans forward as if she is expecting him to pass on a secret. I do not know about angels he says, perhaps there are many, perhaps they are here now he says, and she looks around and stands closer to him and he smiles. But there are people too he says, everywhere there are people and I think it is easier to hold hands with people than it is with angels, yes?
He stops to get his breath back, he knows he is confusing her and maybe boring her, he knows that really he is saying these things to himself.

June 16, 2007 : A Youth Saturday

I really wanted to take photos during the worship but I wasn't sure if it would be polite or allowed... anyway.
1) Ultimate Worship Experience
2) Gian's place, where a lot of the photos weren't even taken by me, the camera kept disappearing from my side.

0206 - 0226, the last bit, are from the swimming thing at joey's a few weeks ago, the 6th i think. i threw them in here because there were too little to put up a separate album.

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER / Everything Is Illuminated

Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of One’s Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life. She learned impossibly difficult songs on her violin, songs outside of what she thought she could know, and would each time come crying to Yankel, I have learned to play this one too! It’s so terrible! I must write something that not even I can play! She spent evenings with the art books Yankel had bought for her in Lutsk, and each morning sulked over breakfast, They were good and fine, but not beautiful. No, not if I’m being honest with myself. They are only the best of what exists. She spent an afternoon staring at their front door.

Waiting for someone? Yankel asked.

What color is this?

He stood very close to the door, letting the end of his nose touch the peephole. He licked the wood and joked,  It certainly tastes like red.

Yes, it is red, isn’t it?

Seems so.

She buried her head in her hands, But couldn’t it be just a bit more red?

Brod’s life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table, ivory elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doily… None of it moved her. She addressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don’t love you. Bark-brown fence post: I don’t love you. Poem too long: I don’t love you. Lunch in a bowl: I don’t love you. Physics, the idea of you, the laws of you: I don’t love you. Nothing felt like anything more than it actually was. Everything was a just a thing, mired completely in its thingness.

If we were to open to a random page in her journal – which she must have kept and kept with her at all times, not fearing that it would be lost, or discovered and read, but that she would one day stumble upon that thing which was finally worth writing about and remembering, only to find that she had no place to write it – we would find some rendering of the following sentiment: I am not in love.

So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love – loving the loving of things whose existence she didn’t care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.

 

June 2, 2007 : Garage Sale / Prayer Meeting

0012 - 0034 taken by javi ("dude keep moving your mouth!")
and i think 0059 - 0068 were taken by juls because he's the only other one i remember who borrowed the camera

i don't know why multiply always messes up the last photo in the album. plus it won't let me add photos, wtf.

May 25 - 27, 2007 : The Experience

a.k.a LSS weekend, fluck yeah :D

since i was a participant, photos are only from the breaks and in-betweens and afters.

there is really a lot going on in the big group photos so be sure to check out every single face, haha.

the photo dump

my friends rachel (piggyback-ee) and tania (piggyback-er). east coast park, singapore. [cue nostalgia]

(p.s. the shirts they are wearing were by me, mwahaha)

because i can. hopefully multiply lasts longer with me than i did with deviantART and humblevoice...



remember kids, dumps are always works in progress.

May 19, 2007 : Youth Prayer Meeting

slash swimming.

i don't normally use the camera i was using for this one, so thank you exclusion-ed dark blue layering, and thank you brightness/contrast tool. photos were desaturated / colorized to sepia when color could not be salvaged.

and for the first time EVAR in my whole life behind the camera people didn't fling their hands to their faces when i faced the lens at them! no one ran away! fantastique, people, fantastique.

i'm a bit lazy to caption (plus i'm horrible at remembering names, sorrrry it takes me a while, haha), feel free to take them if you want but it would be nice if i knew where these photos went, so. you know what to do.

enjoy

February 15, 2007 : Outreach

obviously i wasn't the one holding the camera in 0014 - 0025