I’ve been back from the beach a week now. I’m only able to get my bearings back now, albeit not completely. My head’s still up there, floating listlessly away. Going about my round of sites, I’m thinking the internet is right up my cloudy alley! That’s a lame little insert. I know. Forgive me. I’m not fully back yet. They look so good to eat!

(photos from 101cookbooks)

such pretty clouds!(photo from apartmenttherapy)

Ok. That’s about my procrastination. I’ve a huge presentation tomorrow. Wish me luck!

I was a weekend away from payday. So instead of trying a new recipe, the ingredients of which I still need to buy, I decided to get on with a project I had been planning to do since July. Anyway, I already had my materials.

From the usual white:

to a nice yellow aptly called Sunny Day:

Fact: There is a Spanish proverb, “Hay no Sabado sin sol.” It loosely translates to “there is no Saturday without sun.” My mom told me this about three years ago, when I was worrying my head off on a Saturday because it looked like it was going to rain and I had an outdoor shoot. She said, “Hay no Sabado sin sol.” And since then, I have noticed that it’s true. No matter how grey or glum the weather gets on Saturdays, the sun always manages to say wazzzup. That’s my hand getting all the sunbeams the paint affords.

dripping wet

TADA!!!

I’m reserving the chairs for when my niece arrives in December. We will paint each of them a different color. Top of mind: pink, blue (for my nephew) orange and green. Then we can all roll around and pretend we’re sitting on rainbows.

Next Saturday, I will try that recipe. Yay, I’m excited.

2. Publish a book

3. Win a writing award

4. Get amazing assignments, both here and abroad

6. Travel to write

7. Travel with my boyfriend

8. Live abroad with my boyfriend

9. Get married

*not that I have a boyfriend.

I don’t think you ever really get over losing a parent. Today is dad’s birthday. It’s been three months since he passed away. We have reached some semblance of normalcy, our footsteps now echo of moving on. But I can’t say, just yet I’m over it. Because dad’s absence is almost often, and immediately felt.

Take for instance the sudden quiet in laughter, where his smart-aleck comments used to be; the sudden uninterrupted peace I now have  whenever I sit myself in the most coveted part of the bed, which is really, legitimately his; the extra shade of character that not only allow this gang of personalities, farmed together by chance, to stand strong as a family, and to seem as special as the Tenenbaums, but a character that completes them; a cold quiet accompanies me now, where once dad’s chuckle of sarcasm was all was needed to cushion life’s blows.

But as life keeps us busy, and as deadlines keep us busier, his death keeps us the busiest. There is the paper work for one, and the duty to country his death is required to serve. There is suddenly a lifetime’s worth of clutter to clean. And there is the slow accumulation of things: You give yourself a little reward for surviving his death, another because it’s on sale, and yet another, still in the hopes of it filling the void.

But the thing nobody tells the bereft, the thing self-help books leave out, or the stuff well-meaning friends who’ve known such a loss manage to forget, is that along with the fading of this hurt come the fading of dad’s presence. The further you move away from the pain, the farther you move from the time when he was alive.

Sometimes I don’t know if I want to forget. Other times I don’t know if I want to remember. It doesn’t get any easier. But three four months on and I think it’s true what they say: You do get better at it, at handling such loss, at handling such hurt, at handling yourself.

It’s as though his death has left this gaping hole in front of me, a space especially for life to especially pass through, a room especially for love to grow.

Yup, it’s a double issue with Cesar Montano on the cover of FHM collections on the flip side of Bianca’s cover. It was a most tiring of shoots. We went to subic, waited about 4 hours before finally starting with the shoot that lasted just about 3 hours. She was, well, her legs are amazing. Whatever leg length that was meant for me during creation must have been given to this girl.  She stands a whopping 5’10.

The interview could have been better, I admit, but I was tired and she, more so. If anything, Bianca has a quick mind. And also, she’s funny in a very fiery way. She’s very honest but she held back on a few examples, choosing instead to keep peace rather than courting controversy. Had she zoomed straight and allowed her misgivings to rule, I think she would have proven her point better (and I would have had a juicier story!).

But it all went well. According to this story, Bianca allowed us more candid info about herself during yday’s presson: She gets teary-eyed whenever she hears this song:

Hawk is Isobelle Campbell and Mark Lanegan’s third record. The duo doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, burning out, boredom or complacency. It’s fucking awesome.

My happiness at the duo’s fantastic release is probably overshadowed only by my happiness at technology. I wouldn’t have access to the record if it weren’t for online streaming.

So this is Day Two of non-stop Hawk. (Well, I did listen to Philip Selway’s debut solo record but that was because I had been trying to get to it yday but internet was fabulously slow so this morning, when mercury-in-retrograde had yet to take full effect, I jumped at the chance. More on this later).

Oh lordy. The record opens with “We Die and See Beauty Reign” And immediately, you’ll know this is for keeps. I thought I’d be used to the combination of Lanegan’s and Campbell’s voices by now, with their records on repeat for a good three years (it’s on my ipod’s most played) but I am mistaken. There really is magic there and it will grab you every single time.

“You Won’t Let Me Down Again” is the record’s lead single and rightly so. Its energy is compelling. There’s this dirrrrty vibe to the song; as though you were on a road trip and there’s no denying the grime on your face. It might be haunting and daunting but the power is there.

Whenever “Come Undone” and “No Place to Fall” play–they play right after one another–I keep on wondering and thinking if I had friends abroad who can get me the record. Such is the sense of urgency I get from these two songs. It’s so fragile and so pretty and so raw that I can’t help but feel the need to have it for myself, pronto.

“Come Undone” is typical Campbell and Lanegan: slow, seductive, sinister. It builds elegantly, with what sounds like violins only for the song to break and return to minimum. Campbell’s twee hides behind Lanegan’s baritone and it’s perfect.

Lanegan takes front and center in “No Place to Fall.” Girls will easily wish for their boyfriends and their lovers to dedicate this to them. It’s sweet. I can listen to this repetitively and I have. These two, I believe, is the climax of the entire 13-track record.

“Get Behind Me” follows and it’s pure rock n’ roll, as though they were commanding satan to get behind them. “Time of the Season” is deceptively upbeat, but no lies are told. The duet is sinister-sounding. The contrast, which will be present in the succeeding songs, is pure.

“Eyes of Green” is a cute little number; you can tell they probably just had a good time with the track. The record ends with a very uncharacteristic “Lately.” Lanegan here is accompanied by a gospel choir that all sinister tones and eerie colors may as well be washed away. The relief you get from the ending song only makes you want to hear the earlier darker tunes.

Hawk is not for everyone, this is for sure. But if Americana is your thing and you are familiar with the duo Campbell and Lanegan, Hawk will not disappoint. If you are a follower of the Campbell and Lanegan duo, you may even think that Hawk is as compelling and as surprising as their debut. (Not to say the second record was a bust. Sunday Morning at Devil’s Dirt is a great record. It’s just that, your appreciation would have been already set by the debut record).

The question is: Where can I get this, in this third world hole?

Interesting, no? I wouldn’t have learned of becky (or yamanachi which is gaynese for rich or backstreet boy which is gaynese for a cute guy behind you) if it weren’t for Spot.ph‘s super cool feature on gay linggo. What do you know, they’re on part 2 already!

Language scholars, sociologists, pop culturalists, and just about anybody looking for entertainment will most certainly enjoy this read.

I found it in a second-hand store ages ago, and only picked it up recently. It’s about how he fell in into schizophrenia and how he god back. It’s a very good read, in that its honesty is engaging. You know how people can be very emotional when talking about how the shit hit the fan and they lose their points in the details and in the billowing emotions? Not Mark.

There are a lot of branching out but that’s a given. It occurs when he talks about his sickness, right in the middle of it. I don’t know if it’s scary that I get it but I do. It’s hard not to be emphatic.

I don’t know if it’s a fact but in the book, I learned that KV actually attempted suicide. Yikes. I thought about it and really, it’s not very far off; life wasn’t exactly kind to KV. Of course, the most moving part for me were tangent to KV.

I finally said fuck it
I don’t want to buck it
I’m tired of being alone

Also:

One big clue was a line in my father’s last letter to me. He was talking about his teaching at Harvard and how he was giving up. “At least it gave me a chance to get to know people who were at home on Earth.”

Pretty compelling. I’m 2/3 done but I don’t know if I want to end too soon.

Which is exactly what I felt when you asked me what my beef was. Maybe I am too sensitive, I’ll admit. But I’ll also be the first to admit my fragility, which was the first thing I mentioned to you. The judgment in the question completely put me off-balance for what I wanted to do, which was lay down all my cards.

When you asked if I liked him—did you still need confirmation? Did you have to prove anything to yourself? Because I thought that was completely irrelevant. Did you want to bring me back to heartbreak? Why so eager to see me fall? Again, maybe I am too sensitive. But I seek shelter in my fragility.

But anyway, this wasn’t the point. The point was, ahh, yes. I was thinking about our conversation and I felt I may have said something so easy for you to judge. It was that I had a hard time seeing other people happy because I am bereft. For a minute there, I saw myself in my mom and I saw my (negative) reactions to her in yours.

Please don’t take that the wrong way. It isn’t so much that people had no right to be happy, it’s that they are gloating. It isn’t that happiness isn’t allowed, it’s that when I see them in my still sad state, it’s that I feel I am not allowed happiness.

In the past couple of months, so much had been taken away from me, it was disorienting to say the least. My new-found freedom, that seemingly last-standing opportunity to romance, dad. People and things that had made life bearable.

Allow me my metaphor; maybe this’ll illustrate better what I mean. This whole thing is like waking up in the morning. I know it is morning and I know I need to get up. And I am practically up, I’m just terribly slow. So please don’t open the curtains: it’s too sunny out and I haven’t had a good night’s rest.