EnglizeroLiterati

2006-11-29T04:20:00.000-08:00

dark a midst the recovery of days.
there is an awaiting sun.
he will see me..
and i will be there to be seen by him.

light against the firey morning.
tightens against it is my dream.

Gut-twisting ads (hahah)

2006-10-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

2006-09-10T05:53:00.000-07:00

You're Still You
*Words and music by Linda Thompson and Ennio Morricone

Through the darkness,
I can see your light
And you will always shine
And I can feel your heart in mine
Your face I've memorized
I idolize just you
I look up to
everything you are
In my eyes you do no wrong
I've loved you for so long
And after all is said and done
You're still you After all, you're still you

You walk past me
I can feel your pain
Time changes everything
One truth always stays the same
You're still you
After all, you're still you

I look up toEverything you are
In my eyes you do no wrong
And I believe in you
Although you never asked me to
I will remember you
And what life put you through
And in this cruel and lonely world
I found one love
You're still you
After all, you're still you

malena

2006-09-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

Like his Academy Award-winning Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo cinema Paradiso), Giuseppe Tornatore's new film, Malèna, dwells in a nostalgia for the past, and for the coming-of-age of a single young male protagonist. Additionally, both films are set against the backdrop of the end of World War II, and focus on the young hero's maturation and subsequent loss of innocence. Though the war occupies a more prominent thematic position in Malèna, Tornatore's suggestion in both films is clear — there is no innocence possible, individually or culturally, after Mussolini, fascism, and the Holocaust. Indeed. As Theodor Adorno declared years ago, "Poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."

Cinema Paradiso's major failure is that, while it raises the specter of post-war social and cultural transformations in Italy, it is content to wallow self-indulgently in its protagonist's sexual failures and naive desire to escape his past. Malèna allows no such flight. Here the past is not dead or inert, it always influences the future; unlike Cinema Paradiso, this film recognizes the futility of its own nostalgia. Furthermore, the rather treacly love story — between Renato (Giuseppe Sulfaro) and the war widow Malèna (Monica Bellucci) isn't "merely" commentary on a boy's sexual awakening and his first impossible/unrequited passion. Renato and Malèna represent traditional Italian social and gender relations, as well as the political and cultural effects of Il Duce's dictatorship. The success of Malèna lies in how both Renato and Malèna's bodies and stories become national bodies and national stories, and in its negotiation of a delusional nostalgia for an Edenic, pre-Mussolini Italy in a post-Auschwitz world.

The film takes place in the small Sicilian village of Castelcuto around 1941, and we follow 12-year-old Renato's obsession with Malèna. She is left alone, with only her aged father for family, when her new husband Nino (Gaetano Aronico) goes off to war. As Renato's fascination with Malèna grows, we watch him engage in a series of rather predictable youthful shenanigans (which are nonetheless entertaining), including stealing a pair of her panties from the laundry line, masturbating incessantly, and causing his conservative Catholic family much consternation. Recalling Tornatore's previous work, Renato's masturbatorial fantasies cast him and Malèna in the roles of classic Hollywood romances — Tarzan and Malèna, Cowboy Renato saves Malèna from savage Indians, and Gladiator Renato proves his worth to the Empress Malèna. In these images come the first suggestion that nostalgia is untenable: while these cinematic romances point out the unattainability of any relationship between Renato and Malèna, they also belie the realities of the decidedly non-idyllic relationships Renato observes around him. In the end, Renato cannot save Malèna from any of the tragedies that befall her.

Isolated and beautiful, Malèna soon becomes the object of every male's sexual fantasy and the scorn of every local woman, all of whom seemingly exist only to spread rumors about Malèna's sexual habits. Each time she walks through the piazza, Malèna is met with lecherous stares and catcalls from the men, and stony glares and hand-covered whispers by the women. After she receives word of her husband's death and her father is killed during an Allied bombing of Sicily, Malèna finds that she, literally, has nowhere to turn. With no one to protect her virtue, Malèna is a target for sexual predations. After the smitten dentist Cusimano (Pippo Providenti) is caught lurking around her house, much to his wife's outrage, Malèna must prove in court that she is not guilty of "indecent behavior," or face two years in prison. This ham-handed commentary on the place of women in traditional Catholic Sicilian society (it's a virgin/whore thing, you know) is one of the film's major shortcomings. The second is that while Renato comes out of the war and his obsession without a scratch, Malèna is repeatedly exploited and abused; as usual, the miseries of the world are seemingly best "understood" (by whom, I wonder) through the debasement of women.

Also victimized by a local merchant who offers her rationed sugar, coffee, and other foodstuffs in exchange for sexual favors, Malèna soon sees that prostitution is the only avenue to ensure her own survival, and she actually becomes the "whore" about whom all the tongues have been wagging. What the film never really attends to, despite the lengths taken to show how "chaste" Malèna is contrary to village gossip, is how she so easily comes to this decision. But this is also where Malèna is transformed into political allegory, which is perhaps the only reason for her expeditious transformation. Malèna prostitutes herself not to the local men who so desire her, but to the German officers who occupy the town, just as, the film is suggesting, Il Duce prostituted Italy to Hitler's Germany. Now that Malèna's body and story have become the stuff of national symbolics, her fate at the hands of Castelcuto's women after the war is anything but surprising. Once Mussolini is overthrown and the U.S. army liberates Sicily — in a particularly gruesome scene — these women drag Malèna into the piazza, where they beat her, shave her head, and banish her.

In the aftermath of the war, the integrity of the nation must be reasserted, and this is effected on the local, Castelcuto level by abjecting the compromised body of Malèna. That is, her body and her life are a past that must be forgotten/gotten rid of. The film continues to demonstrate how the villagers attempt to rewrite history — as well as their own roles in that history — and how local knowledges are thus transformed into official knowledges. We overhear a local businessman talking about Malèna's whereabouts, and he muses that she is probably a "Commie" and has gone to the Soviet Union. According to this logic, Italy's cozying up to Nazism can only be forgotten by focusing on a new enemy, and behaving as if the "Commies" are and always have been the antithesis of everything Italy stands for. This man, of course, was also the leader of the local fascist cadre during the war, a role he quickly repudiates when asked if his new party line doesn't contradict his previous political role in the village.

For all the townsfolk's various attempts to erase or forget their own roles in the war, in the end Malèna returns to Castelcuto and becomes a constant physical reminder of the past, its continuity, and presence in today. Malèna's presence repeatedly challenges the nostalgia for an "innocent" past that infuses the population of post-war Castelcuto. The past is never simply past; this is the "lesson" that Renato learns. And while Malèna at first seems to be about one boy's sexual awakening, on a much broader level, it is about his — and Italy's and "our" — coming into historical consciousness, our awakening to the vicissitudes and legacies of the past and how they influence bodies and histories, both individual and national.

2006-09-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

the pride lives behind the cliff.
suffering the white ness behind this dirt.

"I don't want to be happy today,
For tomorrow IF I will be sad, and I will remember that I was happy yesterday --
It will be the saddest day of my life."

-the Hours.

i am leading you back...

2006-07-14T06:15:00.000-07:00

it was almost 4 months now since i had my last thoughts put into writing... my psycho-world has suddenly dropped into a halt after all the undoable pain and retrospect... i am leading myself back. and i have finally succumbed into my 'renaissance.' rebirth. ready and aback to hear my outcries and realizations. fleeting to embrace a new beginning and surrounding endings. waiting to exhale the new truths of my be coming and coming ness. again. again.

judas... gospel

2006-04-17T00:07:00.000-07:00

more about it...

http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/

Gospel of Judas

2006-04-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

The Gospel of Judas Surfaced.
HENK SCHUTTEN

AMSTERDAM - About 1800 years after its ban by the Church because of its 'blasphemous' content, the Gospel of Judas has been made public again. A Swiss foundation discovered a copy of the forbidden gospel and is currently working on a translation.
This Saturday the Parool is the first to publish a couple of fragments from the Gospel, consisting of a dialogue between Judas Iscariot and Jesus.It is one of the oldest Christian documents discovered so far according to Mario Roberty, the president of the Swiss Maecenas Foundation who currently owns them. He says that the content of the Gospel is 'explosive' as Judas is portrayed as a hero, not a betrayer.Roberty can not provide any origin of the document written in Coptic.
The documents have probably already been discovered in Egypt
in the fifties or sixties of last century and smuggled out of the country. "But the price was too high and moreover no one knew that it was about the Gospel of Judas."For twenty years the manuscript had been in an American safe. Roberty: "It was in a terrible state when we laid hands on it. Pages were stuck together or had fallen apart. A team of scientists is busy piecing all the bits back together."
Scientists are really excited about this find. The American coptologist Stephen Emmel calls it 'a very exceptional find', which will cause a lot of commotion. "From an historical point of view this find is as important as the Nag Hammadi-writings half a century ago. Everything points to the Gospel referred by Prelate Irenaeus in the second century AD."Emeritus Professor Gilles Quispel who discovered the Gospel of Thomas calls this discovery also of 'great historical importance'. "For scientists all Gospels are equal."

closing cycles by coellho

2006-04-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What was passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents,lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it maybe!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood.Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the ideal moment.Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.Closing cycles. Not because of pride,incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record,clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

near...

2006-03-25T04:00:00.000-08:00

it is... exactly 3 days more before our big day... the most awaited moment of my college life... my graduation... i am expecting, tears, smiles, tears, and lots of smiles... as i walk down the red carpet to my awaiting seat... i will be there.

on that single seat waiting for me.

i, would be reminiscing the pain, hardships and things that roped my life in my school. the grass in the field. the dusty chair in my room. the rushing of students for their first class. and my being tardy and sloppy every morning. (laugh!)

but most of all, is encouraging the beauty of it. my best happy memories of events. i cannot count them on my fingers...

Purpose

2006-03-21T01:08:00.000-08:00

This is an interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren said: People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond, in a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body - but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillion of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act, the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense. Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one , or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ-likeness. This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you got to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes,or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, "which is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others. We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people...You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for you to own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72. First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan - to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free. We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)? When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better ...God didn't put me on earth just to fulfil a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.

Reflections on Teaching

2006-03-21T00:09:00.000-08:00

When I began thinking about teaching, I began it with a rather self-centered outlook: I will teach the way I wanted my teachers to teach me. I will be the kind of teacher I'd always wanted in high school. I also had a dream to be the revolutionary teacher from such faux-inspirational films as Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds. I wanted to buck the system, improve the quality of public education. This, I realized later, was also a self-centered (and extremely unrealistic) pursuit.

Upon studying more about educational theory and working directly with a number of public school systems (as a student-teacher, a long-term sub, and an on-call sub), I felt the shortcomings of my individuality: I had to learn to work with a community, and I had to serve the needs of members of that community (both students and faculty) who did not share my values, my learning style or my intellectual background.

I had a chat with Deborah (another teacher at my current school) once in which she lamented that she actually felt guilty for teaching in a private school. I reassured her she had nothing to feel guilty about. As one of my fellow graduate students once said (I'm paraphrasing): "We always talk about being where the students are. The students are everywhere." It's true there's a definite need for good teachers in public schools, particularly in lower-income schools, but truthfully, I see "good teachers" as only part of the solution. Schools that are struggling to meet even the "basic standards" of the state (whatever state it is) need administrators willing to change, parents willing to invest time and energy in their children's education, a supportive rather than a demanding government, and a workable budget that allows a school to function easily. "Good teachers" aren't enough.

I found myself, as a public school teacher, spending the bulk of my time dealing with discipline and paperwork. I would have to keep careful track of tardy slips, write cut slips and detention notices, make sure students did not physically harm one another, manage bathroom passes and hallway passes... the list of tasks that had no immediate bearing on curriculum weighed heavily on my idealistic shoulders. It was then I realized I wanted to be with students who wanted to learn in an environment that supported me, where parents, students, faculty, staff and others worked together to create not only good lesson plans and curriculum but also a good learning environment and a community. I thought Frisbee Dogs was a great addition to my current school's "Spirit Week" last year. We have Spirit Week events, faculty and student retreats, even Grandparents Day to foster community and remind ourselves that education is not just about the classroom.

Before coming to this school, I'd had a few encounters with self-selected groups of students and they were all wonderful. I worked as an SAT instructor for Kaplan. I taught conversational English to high school students in Hong Kong. I even taught Sunday School to middle school students in my family's church. Self-selected students know why they are there (in the classroom) and are more likely to take responsibility for their education. It is for that reason that I take the somewhat radical view that we should not have compulsory education in this country. We quickly went from little free, public education to much mandatory schooling. True change in education will not happen with the police, vice-principals, teachers, and parents strong-arming the children into classrooms. If the students bring themselves to the classroom, then they're ready to learn.

So, here I am at a private school, taking the time to learn from experience, from my fellow English department members and from the students. Suddenly, in a community where learning (not paperwork or discipline) is the primary concern, I can remind myself of the theoretical principles of quality teaching we talked so often about at my graduate school of education. I've always had a heart for education and a passion for teaching. Honestly, though, in recent years, I've gone back and forth between wanting to teach for the rest of my life (teaching and students--yay!) and quitting altogether in order to get a desk job (grading papers--boo!). I don't know where I'm headed. I love this community--the opportunity I have to teach wonderful students, work with supportive fellow faculty members, and have the educational luxuries I'd always dreamed about when I used to teach five classes (of 20-28 students per class), supervise two study halls a day, and have to plan my bathroom breaks.

The idea of schools having more money instead of better teachers sounds counter-intuitive, but there are numerous ways we benefit from a large endowment and a tuition- and donation-driven school. Faculty and staff are reimbursed for expenses. Students have to purchase books--so the books are less likely to be in bad condition, and the students can write and take notes in their books. Technology is readily available to students and faculty. Faculty can significantly cut down on "meetings" as well as stay in touch with each other better through the use of email. We have retreats, etc. --A.Y. Siu

On Flying Kites

2006-03-20T23:52:00.001-08:00

One of my childhood dreams was to be able to fly a kite. For one reason or another, I could never quite pull it off. I envied greatly those playmates of mine who could launch a burst of color into infinity with apparently little effort. My kite seemed destined to be earthbound forever, and I didn't like it, not one bit.

I still don't like being earthbound. I want to fly! I want to explore the heights -- Up and Out There! I yearn for deliverance from the bondage of my humanity. I want to shake off the shackles of my aching muscles and poor hearing, my Tragedy Queen personality ("Nobody knows the trouble I've seen!") and my 3-M complex (mother-martyr-messiah). I want to be free of all those things which limit me, restrain me. Ah, yes, I want to be above it all!
But I can't fly. At least not by myself. I am like the kite, needing wind to bring me to life. Yes, I depend on the Risen Jesus to raise me up. Often He comes like a gusty March wind, stirring me up, shaking me out of my complacency, my boredom, my apathy. But for all His gustiness, the Lord is gentle. "A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench" (Is. 42,3). How grateful I am that He respects my limits! In His mercy and compassion, He both honors and hallows our human condition.
Again like the kite, I cannot launch myself alone. I need the assistance of others. Sometimes the other will be one of the marvelous comrades God has given to me -- a cherished friend, a trusted confidant, a kindred spirit, a beloved spouse. More often than not, I will be launched by the very person who crosses me, angers me, hurts or disappoints me. We are all God's gift to each other. In one way or another, we touch and move every person who comes into our lives. We can either tie each other down or set one another free.
Kites fly best in wide-open spaces. So it behooves me to venture forth out of myself, out of my own little ideas and hidden agendas, surrendering myself with confidence and joy to the Risen Christ who goes before me into all the Galilees of my life. I must allow Him to lead and even carry me, if necessary, where He will. Letting go is essential. Kites that are tightly controlled remain earthbound and don't fly at all. In His own time, in His own way, Jesus will lead all of us out of our captivity, whatever it may be. In Him we are not only shown but given the Way.
So it is that here and now, in our earthly exile, we can share in the risen life of our Lord and Savior. Ours is the resurrection song for we are indeed an Easter people, raised to new life with and by Him who once was dead but now lives forever. ALLELUIA!
Alice Claire Mansfield
© March 1991

On Teaching

2006-03-20T23:52:00.000-08:00

On Teaching
Kahlil Gibran
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.

And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

Give Us Hearts to Understand

2006-03-20T23:45:00.000-08:00

Give Us Hearts to Understand

Give us hearts to understand;

Never to take from creation's beauty more than we give;

never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed;

Never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth's beauty;

never to take from her what we cannot use.

Give us hearts to understand

That to destroy earth's music is to create confusion;

that to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty;

That to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench;

that as we care for her she will care for us.

We have forgotten who we are.

We have sought only our own security.

We have exploited simply for our own ends.

We have distorted our knowledge.

We have abused our power.

Great Spirit, whose dry lands thirst,

Help us to find the way to refresh your lands.

Great Spirit, whose waters are choked with debris and pollution,

help us to find the way to cleanse your waters.

Great Spirit, whose beautiful earth grows ugly with misuse,

help us to find the way to restore beauty to your handiwork.

Great Spirit, whose creatures are being destroyed,

help us to find a way to replenish them.

Great Spirit, whose gifts to us are being lost in selfishness and corruption,

help us to find the way to restore our humanity.

Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind,

whose breath gives life to the world, hear me;

I need your strength and wisdom.

May I walk in Beauty.

Today I purpose to live

2006-03-20T23:40:00.001-08:00

My life will shine
As the morning sings
I walk in liberty
Bound in true dreams
Manifested promises
Chase my forward motion
A covered path before me
The fruits of my hoping
The fruits of my living

Today I purpose to love

My love will speak
With the sound of grace
Merciful within mercy
The works of my faith
Smiles of overflowing
Inspire my giving
Abundance of joy as rain
The fruits of my living

Sunlit paths of inner peace

2006-03-20T23:40:00.000-08:00

Now I say to you in conclusion,
life is hard,
at times as hard as crucible steel. (Mmm)
It has its bleak and difficult moments.
Like the ever-flowing waters of the river,
life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. (Yeah)
Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons,
life has the soothing warmth of its summers
and the piercing chill of its winters. (Yeah)
But if one will hold on,
he will discover that God walks with him, (Yeah. Well)
and that God is able (Yeah) to lift you from the fatigue of despair
to the buoyancy of hope
and transform dark and desolate valleys
into sunlit paths of inner peace. (Mmm)

eulogy for the martyred children - martin luther king jr. - 1963

Modals

2006-03-20T23:02:00.000-08:00

Life, I cannot
sleep and pain.

Speak, I will not
of restlessness and deeplessness.

Wither, I would not
reveal with uselessness and tranquility.

Make, I shall not
leave life without nothing ness.

Fool, I could not
write honesty and wrath.

Lose, I must not
defy my battle and boredom.

Death, I should not
with pain, happiness, and painless ness.

strollings

2005-11-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

the wind and his powerful guest strolls.
in the weakness of the warm air and its sunless beauty
pain and joy stringing.

living and wishing for hope less ness

a posting,,.

2005-10-25T05:29:00.000-07:00

the silentlessness posting of the hour to its clock.
is bursting.

to the cloud of life beneath it.
twilight and beyond.

starting yet in its end.

chocolate.

2005-09-12T07:40:00.000-07:00

wake me.
up from this needless restlessness.
feed me.
with this starltled deceit of life.
park me.
like fire on a moldy haven of salt.

make me.

Cathartic

2005-09-12T07:37:00.000-07:00

QUESTIONS

2005-09-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Few weeks ago, i had this certain realizations in my life. Pasts. Different views of the hurrying future. Its like becoming part of the wind in the dusty air. Then I feel a huge braking. Braking.
It stopped. SO sudden. and swivling.

One big question went into me:

What am I doing here?

What is my purpose in this earth? Why I am doing this stuffs? Why do I go to school? Why do I spent hours reading all my books? Why do I go to church? or see people? or talk to them?

Before this questions happened into me, one friend once revealed to me that he is doing everything in his life for one single purpose. reason. why-answer.

He said that it is this single person. being. that he dedicates and sees through all his be comings.

GOD.

No one else.

It actually answered the questions I had... and thousand other questions I have.

But how? I asked again. He referred me to one verse to the HOLY BIBLE.

"Ask for repentance. And He will allow you to enter again HIS kingdom"

Not yet. He answered.

2005-07-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

God have just shown me the world today. Later this morning, I joined a big talent-singer search at a TV station in Quezon City. Actually, it is my final deliberation in being a contender for the competition.

Before entering the audition room (with all the shivers and nerve-wrackin stuffs), I prayed to God, "Am I really for this? Do you want me to go on?" Then I performed in front of the camera, brightly absorbing my being on the stage. I did exactly what the coaches told me, "stand still.... focus... be yourself, let God guide you." Its like being in an abyss-like state. All I am seeing are the lights and the small red thing from the camera. It was perfect. One of the judges even commented that I am almost professional at doing it. My recording was great.

Then the final moment came. The other 5 final auditionees went inside with me in the audition room. Of course, the judges added comments on our performances. good, bad, just okay. First, they thanked us for giving all our best. And undoubtingly, we all have good futures in performing. But sadly, they have to choose only three contenders. Two names went by, then the third.

It wasn't me. I did not here my name. Not a single utterance of it. Echoing or snitch of it.

God answered my question earlier. This is not His plan for me. not yet. Maybe I am into some other time or place.

I left the room believing that it doesn't stop there. That there is something more. But in a much Different package and moment.

Thanks.

2005-06-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

Dear God,

I just celebrated my 21st birthday last Friday. I feel so old to have wishes, so I could feel sending "Thank You's." for letting me embark in this stage of my life...

21 huh, I really feel excited just on the thought of it. I Wonder how big and bashful your plans for me. But please extend it to my family, friends and to every people I will be meeting in my life. Make their days challenging and distant to their dreams, and lighten up the future path they have to seek.

Thanks for my mama and papa, my ates and my kuya and the wonderful titas, titos, and lolas. And of course, my cute pinsans, my choirmates, classmates, schoolmates, professors and teachers.

And for the great YOU, for watching my every step.

Because I COuld not Stop for Death

2005-06-22T01:15:00.000-07:00

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

Imagine if death can be so soft, serene and tranquil, just like how Dickinson shared it.

lasting...

2005-06-22T01:10:00.000-07:00

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

 -- William Carlos Williams

I really love the deepening structure of this poem. It reflects many things that we dont
seem to matter. But really matters. I hope you can feel the same as I do. Enjoy Life!

a dozelle

2005-05-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

a dozelle

glimpse.

2005-05-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

a friend just talked to me about a very important decision he has to make in his life. he explained this importance because he sees it not just a-priority thing. thus a major loop hole to his family, and himself.

well.. it doesn't matter what we have talked about. but then in those slow minutes and seconds, he made me realize one thing. i love my family and i don't want to hurt them.

read it. think about it.

my friend, he just took the blair out of his head. he is now somewhere in the air. regressing. and unthinking what he did.

JUST look INside

2005-05-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

JUST look INside

a deathspace

2005-05-16T23:29:00.000-07:00

imagine. a black withered box, full of shredded laughter -- which means pain. a mild reservation like a parking lot to somewhere up in the sky. through milleezed cycle of flashbacks. silently, into the immediate crashing and folding and smashing of bones. so it might fit and never grow.

over my head-blogspot of my tita lori

2005-05-16T23:12:00.000-07:00

over my head

whoozy

2005-05-10T01:53:00.000-07:00

Sometimes... ok... lotsa times, I often get shivered with choices and decisions... I feel them totally twiddled like stress clods. Hush bush, certain things made it more difficult to untwine, like certain difficulties like an icing into a chocolate cake, devilish and vain.

I could not learn to consider myself as reasonable monster of fate. Should I be this or be that? OR be everything... Oh God! Please let me be everything I could. Certainty is to blame for the ranting hilter-sight of fire in me.

With Life...

2005-04-27T23:26:00.000-07:00

Life, can be anything. It can be a chair
lying on wooden mahogany staircase, or a magnificent picture of your mom
at her wedding day. Life can be a mysterious tune made by the spoon on your coffee
at dimly-lit coffee space or a big excitement someone felt when he waited for the
rain to stop.

Every human person can create and
determine life at its meaning. I, myself, wanted to make life a meaning.

Just like a glass of HALF-FILLED water
lying on a table. Half filled, you ask? Because of teh sense of waiting I have
in it. Waiting to be emptied or filled. I can always consider it meaningless
when I see it empty, not filled. And so meaningful that I wanted to see it so
much filled. Or in days it would be.

The sunflower, as its life can be seen -- yields to face the bright yearning sun every morning.
To make her own meaning. Her Life.