When did your heart go missing?

Forgive me. I have my weaknesses. One of them is music that sounds like British Invasion Rock.

This is one of my favorite bands, Rooney. You might remember them if you watched that episode of The OC (best episode evarrr, the tween in me wants to type). My favorite of their songs is "I'm a Terrible Person" and "When did your heart go missing?" Here are some of their most popular videos (though they're better listened to than watched; the videos aren't, you know, terribly brilliant. I'm just going to... embed away, aren't I.

And I just want to comment that the hair was *theirs* long before the Jonas Brothers came into the scene.

It occurs to me, you might recognize this first song from "The Princess Diaries." Yeah yeah, the vocalist is that guy.




I love "I'm a Terrible Person" because it sounds exactly, exactly like a young man I once knew. No, really. Hi mom! This is a live version since I don't think there's an official video.


It's gonna be a bad day, come Sunday... it's gonna be a bad day, come Sunday...

What belongs to eternity

The hardest thing about this Christmas is trying to be happy when, only a few hours ago, I overheard that a former friend of mine (a practicing Catholic... at least on the surface) performed an "abortion" on herself by giving herself abortifacients. Mga "bote-bote" daw. And to see you still in Church, receiving the sacraments as usual. You were not lacking in doctrinal education--you went to the same Catholic schools I did growing up and we were in the same class--to decide that what you did was wrong, and that to receive communion now is sacrilege. Unless you confessed it. Which of course I wouldn't know.

I'm trying to be compassionate. Trying to understand your circumstances. But the first instinct is not to feel sad for you. The first instinct is to think of that poor child, and to be so angry that I want to scream at you. You, a victim? Yes (though not really, because everything you did was of your own free will--you were never coerced and it was a lifestyle you'd created for yourself), but it was never said that a victim could not also be the perpetrator of a different crime.

I have one thing to say to pro-abortionists and to those who would kill for their own convenience or reputation. It sounds like something an old puritan would say and it sounds terrible, as if I were the kind of person who would go around saying things like "Anathema! Anathema!" But if you stop to think about it... well.

The sinful man has his day? Yes, and God his eternity!

Hands Down

{Photo source}
Because, you know, despite myself I still remember.

On second thought

We spent the day discreetly (or perhaps not so discreetly) making origami flowers for a fund-raising activity for the class. I remember when I was little and origami was a regular part of life, along with white shoes (for inside the classroom) and black shoes (for outside), songs in Nihongo, and learning to drink tea and make sukiyaki. I studied in a school run by Japanese nuns, and aside from learning how to read and write in Japanese, we learned to make paper cranes and were given colorful squares of paper as a reward for jobs well done. I was never much good at art that needed to be made by hand. I'd get the creases wrong and would often have to start again, to the consternation of my favorite nun, Sr Monica.

And even when I got it right after a laborious stretch of time (and repeated gentle instructions from the presiding sister), there were still marks on the paper where there weren't supposed to be any. I could never erase them, like indelible marks on my saggy paper cranes.

They're kind of like mistakes that way.

I wrote that last entry (and how come we can't say "I wrote the below" as a reverse to "I wrote the above"? I digress) before I had any idea of the proceedings that went into revoking the title. Before finding them out, I was okay; after that, it was as though someone tugged the rug out from under my feet and I was left gasping and reeling, unable to believe the sheer amount of (I'm sorry.) stupidity that is responsible for hurting the feelings of about 300 people.

I feel like I should just write about it and I'll feel better afterwards, and then be able to work, so here I go.

If maturity were graded and if the last week was a test, I would be in the bottom half of the class--probably even rock bottom of 160 or so students. I don't know anyone who has handled the disappointment as badly as I have. Not disappointment in our final loss, but extreme dissatisfaction with the way things were handled. I should have handled things with more humility. I don't understand why I felt so angry, and for such a long time, because had we lost on TRP night itself, I would have mourned for a few hours and then moved on. I could never begrudge anything of 2013, the upper batch and the final winning class for TRP 2010, because I have a handful of friends there--among them, friends I know I will have for life. It also isn't knowing that our song was better, because it wasn't; I mean of course I liked it more, having gone through each step of the "Detox" we described in our song's lyrics with as much gusto as the next person, but it wasn't necessarily better. In terms of performance, I have to give the thumbs up to 2013 as well, because theirs was cleaner than ours. My attachment to our song is a strictly sentimental one, and were I one of the judges needing to exercise a professional eye (or ear), I know it'd have been a toss-up for me too.

So why does it hurt so much? Is it because I've wanted to win TRP since I wanted to be in UPCM which is, en effet, forever? I keep joking with anyone who will listen that I am not, I will never ever ever, return the TRP trophy, which is sitting in the same position now as it was that night--previously a sign of victory and a source of fond memories, now like a gaping wound my roommate and I can hardly look at.

The truth is that at this moment I want to go up to our unit, pluck the trophy from the kitchen counter, whisk it downstairs, and plonk it in the middle of the MSS tambayan, no questions asked, because it hurts to look at it. Unlike some of my classmates who adamantly maintain that we are still the winners--as of course they have every right to feel--I could never believe in it myself, and the trophy, with that sad, gaudy piece of Christmas tinsel wrapped around it, is just a nasty reminder.

Bad events have a way of bringing out the best and the worst in people. The best, in some classmates who unexpectedly maintained their cool and kept a level head throughout the whole thing; congratulations to you, because you are better men and women than me. The worst, in me--and in a select few (some of them my very own classmates) who treat 2014's anger, which is very much deserved, with disdain. And the thing is, it's all right. We all have the right to feel the way we feel about things. Class 2013 has the right to celebrate, and the right to post celebratory status messages on facebook--a right taken from them for a few sad days--and class 2014 has the right to moan about the unfairness of the world. Everyone has the right to be angry for a few days, and then to be forgiven afterwards.

It's just--I expected better of myself.

That is all.

In te Domine speravi. (TRP chapitre trois)

In you I have hoped!

So we were wrong. But, to be totally and brutally sincere, though I did feel a bit of regret... I was never, not even for a moment, sad that it turns out that we lost this year's TRP. There are bigger, more important things in this world than winning TRP, and one of them is the building of character to be good, valiant people who can take disappointments well and who can be detached from their feelings.

Tandaan natin kung sino talaga ang bida, 2014, and then we won't be sad anymore. :)

Sometimes poetry says it better.

O you,
Who came upon me once
Stretched under apple-trees just after bathing,
Why did you not strangle me before speaking
Rather than fill me with the wild white honey of your words
And then leave me to the mercy
Of the forest bees?

Tao rin pala, chapitre deux

This photo is of one of my favorite reredos in the whole wide world. It belongs to a humble little chapel somewhere in San Juan, in a small conference center that holds a special meaning for me. In that little oratory I learned what I was made for, and I'll never forget it. Over the break, when I was there, I sat constantly in the first row of pews for no other reason than to keep looking at the reredo and to imagine myself part of the scene. Whenever I was distracted during prayer I would wrench myself back by imagining that I was the one holding up the Baby Jesus' head. (I mean if you think about it, I don't think an infant this young should have been able to hold his head up so tensely yet.) You move me, my Lord, broken beneath the rod--but I also like to see you as an infant, because, like a saint once said, I can fool myself into thinking that you need me.

So what does this image of the Blessed Virgin Mary have to do with the Tao Rin Pala? Moments before we went backstage for our performance in the chorale competition, I realized that we hadn't prayed as a class, something we used always to do before any Big Thing. I mouthed this to Dane, our conductor, who mouthed back something to the effect of "I know--wait!" But the prayer didn't happen, because we had to go in right away. So backstage, I squared my shoulders and said a Memorare. In fact I said all the memorares I could fit into that brief period while class 2015 was finishing their song. Part of me was amazed at my daring. You know that rhyme--when she was good, she was very, very good; when she was bad, she was very very bad? Well, this week, I was very very bad indeed. No presence of God, no interior recollection, no spirit of penance--and so much ego, so much bad behavior and lack of charity and all-around kasungitan.

And here I was, on a Very Important Night, asking with all temerity for a favor: that we might win. It seems a very conceited thing to ask. In fact, the better, humbler, more loving plea would be: Lord, through the interecession of the Blessed Virgin, please help us to do our best but to accept Your Will whatever it may be! But I also know that, like a child asking her father for the moon, a father (or a mother) will love you for asking for even the most ridiculous things, because he knows you trust him enough to ask.

Of course there was some quick rectifying to be done moments before we crept on stage--Lord, scratch that; whether we win or not, I'll be happy because for a Christian, there is no reason to be sad!--but my point is that the Memorare is one prayer that comes spontaneously, and that it has never, ever failed me. All it takes is a sincere act of will and a looking back to that beautiful reredo, and all sadness, all fear evaporates. I prayed to win, sure; but I prayed for a good disposition too, which was more important.

Mama, I entrusted TRP to you (and I'm sure some of my classmates did too). And we won, and that victory is yours too. Let it be my (and Dane's) small rose for you, during this novena to your Immaculate Conception, and thank you, Mama, for hearing me, despite how terrible I've been to you and to my father.



For me, Mama, ikaw ang bida!