A Good Year

I was in the kind of coffee shop where the barista tries to up your order of Tall Mocha Latte and you realize there's not that much reason to say No, so you spend extra 10 bucks for something you knew right away you'd feel bad about later.

  And then I started to read. Then thought about Marion Cotillard's substituted line in A Good Year, the movie being screened in this cafe's free TV. Then I realized how wrong I was in railing against this movie. Who would've thought this movie could be this brilliant if we didn't let all the actors talk and just stream running images of Russell Crowe and Marion Cotillard?

Then of course I had to watch these ladies in front of me lay-out a photo album. It's partly a scrapbook, because they're using green paper-cut-outs shaped into those kind of round flowers you make as a kid. Those flower shapes that never seem to capture any real flower's shape, if you think about it.

Then I was now watching the barista watch these ladies finish their scrapbook. And then I hear her tell the lady customers, "Wow! That's really good. "

Whatever happened to conflict of interest, I'm happy.

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Almost Cacti

 I know this sounds cliche, and I know that saying it's cliche is cliche, and saying it's cliche is cliche is cliche, but do you know that feeling of going out one day to not really mean to do anything special but just futz around the mall, eat FishBall Ramen and other Dimsum before brownies and Dunkin Donuts medium brew and maybe visit some toy store and then it just hit you to buy more toys even though it wasn't that long ago you bought a whole 40-piece package of Pokemon and Naruto totems? And go to the Transformers Toys section and check if they have StarScream action figures even if you're quite unsure if you've got the right name of that Decepticon in the movie you missed but in the original cartoon series you always associate with innocence? And then head on to the Beyblade aisle and pick up some latest models that won't fob you off but still would include the Beyblade launchers you know you can't use the digital Beyblade Top without? And then while you're at it you might as well pick up two Hot wheel cars and a skateboard toy before grabbing that G.I. Joe Snake Eye action figure beside the Darth Vader keychain which you'd also get because why no?

And then go to BookSale and buy Vanity Fair, Discover, and Harper Magazines where Jean Paul Sartre's duologue (omigod I'm so pretentious, using that word) with someone I don't know is put on record? And a G.I. Joe coloring book which have sticker graphics like Oatmeal's? And then a pencil shaped like intentionally tasteful flotsam? And then maybe, just maybe, to make it a wee bit special you decide to, well, just purchase, I don't know, a cactus plant? And before opening all the toys you decide to stare at them while you eat your corned tuna and corn grits dinner in your apartment alone? And write about it after reading The Magic Income Number by Freakonomics? Do you know how that feels? How that feels, alone?

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Inside The Square

There was no one else sipping the shop's sipping hot chocolate specialty inside the square. Half to the brim was what I supposed to be the usual measure when you order a regular cup, which I don't consider fair considering its price. The mall is noisy, but not more than the usual volume one normally feels when it's some sort of holiday season you're too busy to be part in or if it's just regular mall Sundays. The view from where I'm sitting with my sipping hot chocolate's a general advantage. I could see here what might be deemed unseen in areas behind me. This could probably be a good time to learn what Ian Rankin meant by a Good Hanging.

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The Rain Outside

I moved the trash can out of its original place as the rain outside is strong enough to fill water in it and be carrier of disease. The view of the mountain is harsh and makes you think of days when you just badly want to go outside and find a spot in a coffee shop and read Simenon. I miss being excited by a Simenon. The last time I read it I almost wished I'd never actually finish Maigret's Christmas. I'm almost finished with The Big Lebowski. And I now have to buy more bottles of alcohol for my stove.

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Rankin's Black

Unfinished with reading Ian Rankin's Black and Blue by my bed, I went outside and stared at the stretch of man-made light. The patio's a minor mess; pieces of dried fish, a laundry hanger, rods made of nylon lining the pillars of this structure I've spent at least a month in. There are no interests to travel; only books offer the cleanest form of passing days. Inside the books are left near the window and prone to tearing from the rain outside.

The neighbor's house is queer because its second story has a door to a place that passes for a terrace but minus the floor and the railings that make it real.

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Fixing The Door and The Usual Tiresome.

I finished taking a bath and went for the door to hang my towel. I tried opening it but it was locked. From outside. Such was the case because the set-up of the locking system outside could lock people in just from simply closing the door. There was no panic, the thought of shouting resurfaced, but not enough to actually commence doing. My room's on the third floor; across, there were no people, at least no one I know, only a two-story building whose second one isn't halfway done. The floor became its roof.

I fixed it by forcing it open. There was no panic, an almost cry and tired shriek came out, but no more than that. No more than the usual tiresome, of course.

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Landscape

A shoe-repair shop selling bottles of toilet bowl cleaners. Beside it a bakery. Students coming out of a building, a seen transom. A cafe where cubicles of TV monitors are connected online; the second story is an ear and nose and throat clinic. A walk in an unpaved road and in one of the aisles children are seen eating soya porridge with an old lady. You look up and the mountains have wire posts that parallel the vague slopes. There's no light sometimes and the water runs from a deep well so it isn't sometimes safe to drink.

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Everybody here's walking.

On my left are two girls watching on Youtube a video of two boys soaked in mud and french-kissing in a bathroom. By the looks of the angle the camera couldn't have been set on a table, so they were probably more than two inside. On my right a boy I met and dismissed as nothing short of a retard in college years ago is playing Grand Theft Auto, murmuring lines to himself that I couldn't consider normal, with kids behind him, talking older than their age. Everybody here's getting by.

 

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Troll

These past days have been confusing me like hell and I've all the reasons to say it's probably not just because of the elections spectacle that wake me up to my more suffering. It's all this intentional disregard for everything worthy of being made fun of through irony that's not making it better. For example, the line "it's not like we're going there and working our ass out just for the money" is undervalued to have no meaning more than what it directly is. What about reading it as actually just going there for the money? Haven't people thought about that?

A few hours before I wrote this I bought french fries from a kiosk in a mall. I asked for some tissue paper and the store manager, or should I say, cashier said they didn't have any. So I said, "Oh, thanks. Eating this would REALLY make my hands clean.

I'm not sure I'm not entirely being a troll.

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Kung Nganong Dugay Ang Pagpiyong

sa mga kwaknit sa langob Argao
dili dali ang tubag

mapangitaag katagbawan

kay sama nianang gugmang gipiyong
sa paglikay-likay adlawng dako

pagawas sa dakong liti palayo
sa kasakit sa pag-ikyas sa pag-ambak

balik sa pag-inusarang lakat-lakat

sa tisa sa colon sa bisag asang
lugar hidangpan ang tiil,

ang kahayag
dili baya sa kadugay kadali

ang iyang siga masukod kung dili
sa laming bugnawng dugayng nakapilit:

kahilom sa kangitngit

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