Ultimate aesthetes

'But my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all.'

'Can't I?'

'I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.'

"Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea.'

'But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea.'

'But I do. That's how I believe.'

--Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

Belated happy Christmas, everyone!

Je suis loser

It's a little embarrassing that the thing of which I am actually most proud, in my entire life, is my fic. When I am very down I google my author ID and look at all the recs on tumblr and livejournal. I am more proud of this than I am of making it into med school or anything else.

Especially this December

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace.
Oh, I wish I had a river
I could skate away on.
I wish I had a river so long,
I would teach my feet to fly.

All things considered I guess you don't have to buy it

I only recently learned that the Borders stores had shut down. I've never been inside one--I think I might have been inside a B&N while I was in the states but never a Borders--and I'm a little sad, not that it affects my life in any way but because future generations of off-Broadway fans will likely not understand the following words in "A Summer in Ohio":

I saw your book at a Borders in Kentucky
Under a sign that said "New and Recommended!"
I stole a look at your picture on the inside sleeve
And then I couldn't leave!

The Forest of Dean

Maybe we should just stay here, Harry. Grow old.

Feeling sad, and mortal

For a friend, because I hope one day he will see me as a friend, too.

I cannot give you solutions to all life’s problems,
Nor do I have answers to your doubts or fears
But I can listen to you and share it with you
I cannot change neither your past nor your future.
But when you need me I’ll be by your side.
I cannot prevent you from stumbling
I can only offer you my hand to hold on to you so you won’t fall.
Your joys, your victories, your successes are not mine.
But I truly enjoy it when I see you happy.
I do not judge the decisions you take in life.
I constrain myself to support you, to stimulate and to help you if you ask me to.
I cannot draw limits for you within which you must act,
But I can offer you the space needed to grow.
I cannot avert your sufferings when some pain is breaking your heart.
But I can cry with you and pick up the pieces to armour it again.
I cannot tell you who you are, nor who you should be.
I can only love you as you are and be your friend.
These days, I have been thinking about my friends, amongst whom you appeared.
You were neither on top, nor at the bottom, nor in the middle.
You were not heading nor concluding the list.
You were not the first number, nor the last.
And neither do I pretend to be the first, the second, or the third on your list.
It’s enough if you want me as a friend.
Thank you for being one.

--Jorge Luis Borges

Lark Rise to Candleford

Dorcas Lane, you are my new best friend.

First times.

I held a stroke patient's hand yesterday. It was his second stroke. He wasn't even my patient. I was just sitting in to observe a transcranial doppler and he just happened to be the patient. But as I was leaving I caught his eye, and he looked at me while he was laid out on the stretcher, unable to move his right arm, with a tube stuck in his nose and a doppler probe on his right eye. He was edematous and it was obvious he was having difficulty breathing. He could not speak. And I thought of how my mother looked before her second open heart surgery--I thought of how my dad, who's hypertensive, might end up just like this man. And I smiled at him encouragingly, and for one wonderful moment he smiled back--and then to my horror he burst into tears.

I tried to get him to calm down, telling him that he shouldn't cry or his BP would spike. I held his left hand, the one on his stomach, and tried to stroke it reassuringly, and it was the most amazing thing ever to feel him stroke back, though a little bit weakly--his thumb moved over mine even though he was still crying, and seemed unable to stop. He made no sound--his shoulders just shook and tears streamed down the sides of his face--and somehow that makes it worse.

A day later and I'm still crying. I know that I will come face to face with death many times over the next years. Rather than reassure me, or remind me not to make a big deal of it, it just makes me more afraid--for my parents, for my patients, and most selfishly, for myself.

The art of losing

The art of losing isn't hard to master:
So many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master,
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Being unrealistic

My mind spends half the time in PGH and half the time in Camelot, dreaming, dreaming.

No wonder I don't get any work done. On the other hand... The Once and Future King, sigh.

Besoin d'amour pour remplacer l'habitude

Tout doucement
Envie de changer l'atmosphère, l'attitude
Tout doucement
Besoin d'amour pour remplacer l'habitude
Tout simplement
Arrêter les minutes supplémentaires
Qui font de ma vie un enfer
Je l'aime encore mais plus vraiment.
Tout doucement
Sortir de ses draps et de son cœur
Tout doucement
Sans faire de bruit pour pas qu'il pleure.
Tout simplement
Changer de peau oublier tous les avants
Fermer les yeux se sentir de nouveau autrement

Tout simplement
Fermer pour cause de sentiments différents
Reviendrait peut-être dans un jour, un mois, un an
Dans son cœur dans sa tête
Si encore il m'attend ….
Tout simplement
Fermé pour cause de sentiments différents
Tout simplement fermé pour cause d'inventaire
Dans mon cœur dans ma tête
Changer tout vraiment.

Curieusement les aiguilles tournent
Mais ce ne sont pas celles du temps qui passe
Presque en silence quand on débute on s'aime
C'est pas vraiment la solitude mais c'est la certitude
D'un sentiment indépendant de son attitude

Oh ! Tout simplement
Fermé pour cause de sentiments différents
Reviendrait peut-être dans un jour, un mois, un an
Dans son cœur dans sa tête
Changer tout vraiment.
Si encore il m'attend…

Tout doucement
Sur la pointe du cœur tourner la page
Tout simplement
Choisir un nouveau livre d'images
Tout doucement
Prêt à apprendre à aimer passionnément
Tout simplement
Une autre histoire dans un monde différent

Tout simplement fermé pour cause de sentiments différents
Reviendrait peut-être dans un jour, un mois, un an
Dans son cœur dans sa tête
Si encore il m'attend….

Foot! a la TV5Monde Asie

When I'm angry with the world, I turn on TV5Monde and listen stupidly to the news, like a passive exercise in French. Right now they're covering the footie (Evian/Auxerre), and I've just never cared about football, and for some reason watching news about things that don't have any bearing in my life makes it easier to let off steam. It also helps that I don't exactly understand everything I'm hearing, maybe because there's some French sports jargon mixed in with everything. And with this cacophony as accompaniment, I try to study. Not the best study habit in the world so I don't encourage it, but I have to admit it works for me.

And you, Helen

In 1916, while in the army, Edward Thomas often sent drafts of his poems to his wife Helen. Some of those poems mentioned love, which caused her to worry that they were written about another woman. On February 24, Thomas wrote to her:

"As to the other verses about love you know that my usual belief is that I don't and can't love and haven't done for something near 20 years. You know too that you don't think my nature really compatible with love, being so clear and critical. You know how unlike I am to you, and you know that you love, so how can I? That is if you count love as any one feeling and not something varying infinitely with the variety of people."
- Edward Thomas

On April 9, 1916 - a year before he was killed at the battle of Arras - Thomas wrote the following untitled poem:

And you, Helen, what should I give you?
So many things I would give you
Had I an infinite great store
Offered me and I stood before
To choose. I would give you youth,
All kinds of loveliness and truth,
A clear eye as good as mine,
Lands, waters, flowers, wine,
As many children as your heart
Might wish for, a far better art
Than mine can be, all you have lost
Upon the travelling waters tossed,
Or given to me. If I could choose
Freely in that great treasure-house
Anything from any shelf,
I would give you back yourself,
And power to discriminate
What you want and want it not too late,
Many fair days free from care
And heart to enjoy both foul and fair,
And myself, too, if I could find
Where it lay hidden and it proved kind.
- Edward Thomas

Barcarolle (or a rainy day song)

A cloud lets go of the moon
Her ribbons are all out of tune
She is skating on the ice
In a glass in the hands of a man
That she kissed on a train
And the children are all gone into town
To get candy and we are alone in the house here
And your eyes fall down on me.

And I belong only to you
The water is filling my shoes
In the wine of my heart there's a stone
In a well made of bone
That you bring to the pond
And I'm here in your pocket
Curled up in a dollar
And the chain from your watch around my neck
And I'll stay right here until it's time.

The girls all knit in the shade
Before the baby is made
And the branches bend down
To the ground here to swing on
I'm lost in the blond summer grass
And the train whistle blows
And the carnival goes
Till there's only the tickets and crows here
And the grass will all grow back

And the branches spell 'Alice'
And I belong only to you.

Doctor Who and racist/sexist hiring practices

Can I just write about this, please?

Seen on livejournal:

The short version is that, yes, 100% of the writers and directors were both male and white. Because Steven Moffat can't even be bothered to make a little effort to find one person of color and/or one woman. This explained a lot for me about why the show has been drenched in fail. The people at the top can't even bestir themselves to give a shit about their racist and sexist hiring practices. In all of Britain, tell me there isn't a single person of color and/or woman who would like to write or director for Doctor Who. Tell me, and you'd be a liar.

First of all, I think that for a show to be drenched in fail, the writing has to be bad. It doesn't actually matter if the person writing is black or white or Asian or whatever. It's the actual quality of the writing that matters.

Second, I am getting a little tired of people looking at the cast and crew of a show and raising hell when there isn't a "strong female character" or "strong colored character." For a society that loves artistic license so much, can't we allow the artists behind shows to decide what they will, and to let their own imaginations and talent dictate their creations, and not political correctness? I would rather that the writers be chosen because they're good, NOT because it would look good for the show to hire someone from a minority group. You can't just scream "racist!" or "sexist!" without any proof, and you can't just declare that a show is awful once you discover that the people behind the scenes are of a specific race or gender. It's unsound and it's not evidence-based, and it's such a hair-trigger reaction that really irritates me. People should be conscious of representation in the media, sure, but maybe they should do their research before saying things that are potentially libelous.

If we're going to discuss the quality of shows, let's dwell on the script, the production, the character development, the plot. Let's at least acknowledge that these are things that quality depends on--NOT whether the only black character in a recent episode gets killed within the first five minutes. (AND! It's a show that features, as its main characters, a couple--Amy and Rory--where the woman wears the pants in the relationship, and where the lead character's female love interest, River Song, is made to look superior to him in athleticism, in knowledge of things to come, in general awesomeness, and even in operation of his own spaceship. One of her regenerations was even black, which was completely unnecessary, and yet which was done in an effort to include a colored character. Isn't it just so convenient to overlook these things, as well as the existence of female producers for Doctor Who, when you're arguing about discrimination.)

The bottom line? People who write for one of the biggest shows in Britain should be hired because they're good enough, not because of tokenism.

A Three-pipe problem

I have to write this here, because no one in real life is interested enough to listen to it. Ha. Ha.

The Sherlockian , written by Graham Moore, came in 2010 to a world recently reminded of the existence of the Great Detective of Baker Street. There was the Hollywood film starring Robert Downey Jr., and that other unremarkable British film that piggybacked on its success, and then the BBC SHERLOCK series. In a way even the most staid Sherlockian purist should be grateful for the influx of new blood brought in by these adaptations. I mean, if the old school fandom could survive “Detective Conan” and “The Great Mouse Detective” and “Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century,” then what can’t we survive? The Baker Street Irregulars and other scion societies live on.

The adaptations also stirred activity by way of more online communities interested in discussing the canon as well as the newly-created fanon. I appreciate this because, being one of the first—if not the very first—fandom, Sherlock Holmes shouldn’t be lagging behind in the consciousness of geeks everywhere, while more and more fandoms crop up with every new book written, every new series filmed, every new movie made. Long before either the internet or Star Trek was born, fanfiction (pastiches) of Sherlock Holmes was being written and published and enjoyed worldwide. Authors now famous for a variety of things—GK Chesterton, Christopher Morley, Ronald Knox, and so forth—participated in the Game.

The Game, as stated in the second Morley principle, consists of pretending that “The characters in the stories are not fictitious creatures of some author's imagination. They are real people.” Arthur Conan Doyle, if he is mentioned at all, is mentioned as the Literary Agent of a real John Watson.

The Game began, with Ronald Knox and Christopher Morley, a new kind of literary criticism. For example, a biography of Sherlock Holmes—again, an entirely fictional character to a sane mind—was pieced together by WS Baring-Gould from tiny clues in the ACD’s narrative. The existence of a son by Irene Adler was even posited (and that son eventually turned out to be Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe—a fact still tenaciously believed by many). After all, Holmes himself said: “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” The application of Holmes’s own methods to the text spawned a game that is still being played more than a century later.

Which brings me to The Sherlockian , a book focusing heavily on the first and most exclusive Sherlockian society: The Baker Street Irregulars. To call them fans might be correct but inaccurate. These are scholars who have gained prestige in the study of Sherlock Holmes. Whether they’re doing it for fun, as Ronald Knox and Christopher Morley appear to have done, or for altogether different reasons, is immaterial. The point is this: in The Sherlockian , Alex Cane—an Irregular who claims to have found the lost volume of Arthur Conan Doyle’s diaries—is found dead in his hotel room, garroted with his own shoelaces and with the word ELEMENTARY written in blood on the wall.

The chilling part is: in 2004, Richard Lancelyn Green, a Baker Street Irregular and an authority on Arthur Conan Doyle, was found dead in his luxury flat, garroted by a shoelace tightened with a wooden spoon. No, he hadn’t found the missing volume of ACD’s diary, but the event did come after the sale of a collection of “lost material”—letters, drafts, notes—at Christie’s. He believed that these materials belonged in the British Public Library, where the public could access them, rather than being dispersed among private bidders, most of them American. He publicly opposed the sale. After some time, he began to believe that his life was in danger. Whether these concerns were unfounded is unknown. The coroner gave the case an open verdict—it was quite possibly suicide but nobody could rule out murder. The case remains unsolved even today, despite the best efforts of Sherlockians everywhere.

And that is probably the most interesting thing about Graham Moore’s novel, The Sherlockian —that it’s based on a real case. On the one hand, it does offer a Sherlockian the opportunity to read something (relatively) mainstream and enjoy being smug about something he already knows, but which has to be explained to the uninformed reader. There is hardly a page without a reference to a Sherlock Holmes story or to a known event or fact of Arthur Conan Doyle’s life and times. And, I have to be honest, seeing this line from a well-known and much beloved poem about Sherlock Holmes--“Only those things the heart believes are true”—gave me goosebumps and made me want to put the book down to hold some tears back. (I posted the poem in this blog some time back; it’s found here.)

The Sherlockian captures some of the most frustrating and wonderful things about growing up obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. Harold, the main character and the only one who does manage to solve the mystery, is the socially awkward and youngest Irregular whose highest aspiration has always been to be inducted into the BSI. He likes Sherlock Holmes conventions because they are the only place that he can wear his deerstalker hat and people wouldn’t laugh at him. (He has what might be an eidetic memory and he probably has Asperger’s.) However, his lifelong obsession with Sherlock Holmes doesn’t stop him from seeing the flaws of either the creator or the creation, and he’s aware that he probably looks ridiculous to Sarah, the (Non-Sherlockian) journalist who accompanies him as he flies across the pond to solve the mystery. I suppose it’s the best perspective with which to view the fandom: a gut-wrenching obsession coupled with awareness of its inherent ridiculousness.

None of this squee-making fannishness, however, can disguise the fact that The Sherlockian is really two very flimsy whodunits combined into one mystery that is only slightly more substantial.

In the present day, Harold and Sarah track down the location of the diary and Alex Cane’s killer; in 1900, Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, brought to life by Graham Moore, are on the trail of the murderer of three young women. (As an additional layer of complexity, the mystery is also obliquely related to the "death" of Sherlock Holmes when ACD decided to push him off the Reichenbach.) Little impressive detection is actually done in either mystery. Most things that the author was at pains to conceal are actually very apparent from the first pages (e. g. Sarah’s true identity). And I know that real life doesn’t work like mystery novels do, but I wish that, in writing the Arthur-Bram mystery, Graham Moore had stuck to the first of Ronald Knox’s (50% tongue-in-cheek, 50% entirely serious) Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction: The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

Criticism on the nature of mysteries aside, The Sherlockian also offered little by way of narrative richness and style. I’m not Laurie R. King’s biggest fan—her characters, even if they aren’t Mary Sues or Gary Stus, still tend to be one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs—but I wonder what she could have done with the book, with her skill for weaving narratives with sumptuous detail, if the premise of The Sherlockian had fallen into her lap. I can think of a handful of Sherlock Holmes pasticheurs who might have handled the text more deftly. Even Neil Gaiman, whose work I don’t like but who apparently was inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars in 2005, might have written it better… no, wait—he couldn’t.

Still, The Sherlockian seems to fall apart if you take away the fun and interesting facts rooted in ACD’s canon. Mystery novelists have fought for so long to get the genre recognized as “legitimate” literature, and writers like Dorothy L. Sayers and PD James have gone to great lengths to ensure that their books are actually novels—concerned with the human experience and condition, not just telling a corking story. I don’t mean that Graham Moore’s novel is less legitimate or less clever; only that I found the sparse style unsuited for a novel which might have held so much potential. A novel that might have explored more thoroughly the nature of awkwardness and obsession and death among people who like murder so much in theory.

I would still recommend the book. After all, it isn’t everyday that a mainstream introduction to Sherlockian culture (of the BSI kind) comes along. And because I have a soft spot for the way the author brought to the fore one of the biggest Holmesian mysteries of all--why Sherlock Holmes was killed off, and why he came to live again in 1901. The book made me want to hunt for a black arm-band to wear in honor of Holmes's (temporary) death.

I just wouldn’t recommend the novel as a three-pipe problem.

And wow, I really hate that nobody reading this blog is going to get that last reference.

Links:
The Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction: http://www.mysterylist.com/declog.htm
Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes (Ronald Knox):
http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/books/knox_essays_in_satire/essays_in_satire_knox.pdf
In the Beginning was Ronald Knox: http://members.cox.net/sherlock1/grand.htm
An article in The Guardian on Richard Lancelyn Green:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/may/23/books.booksnews

this timorous beastie

I once read this story where Snape (yeah yeah) made a very valid point. (In fic he's always making valid points anyway.) I mean about how people assume that Hermione has a very organized mind because she has all these timetables and lists, when in fact, it's people with disorganized minds who really need them. I think he was right. (It turns out I'm one of those pathetic people who quote fic wisdom as gospel.) I like making lists--grocery lists, things to do lists, things to bring on trips that are two months away, things to do in the summer when it's only September. Right now I'm up to my neck in radio transes, and my detox in between every two transes is making a list for a trip two weeks from now. It somehow feels like this tangled bramble that is my mind gets sorted out somehow, and it makes me less afraid of the future.

And I have no idea why I felt like sharing this now. Excuse me while I ramble on randomly.

Hello, clerkship

One day you're a student, and the next, BOOM, you're a doctor.

No, not really. The thing is, I think I've been living in a happy bubble for the last three years, where the reality and gravity of my profession still hadn't sunk it. Things did a 180 for me yesterday when, after an extremely benign orientation at Psychiatry care of the chairman, a resident came into the room (where we were all lounging about waiting for the next thing to do) and said, "Alam niyo bang mayroong dalawang ICC na dapat naka-24 hour duty ngayon?" I felt like a headless chicken for the next few minutes. Apparently, because there are no clerks (who, if they're rotating in Neuropsychiatry, are assigned for duty in Neuro rather than Psych), WE--third year know-nothings--have been assigned to monitor patients and do 24-hour shifts, from 7 am to 7 am, AND we're still expected to show up for all of the classes from 8 am to 5pm.

I know my seniors will probably roll their eyes at this because they've gone on duty a gajillion times, and because monitoring a patient or making admitting notes is nothing to them, but wow, suddenly it was like I was a limbless person thrown into an ocean and expected to swim. In fact I'm still feeling a little bit at sea here. Up to this point we had only ever met patients who had already been evaluated before we got to them, so nothing we said or did could possibly have an impact on the management or outcome of the patients. We diagnosed things pretty much like people sitting at home watching HOUSE. We were just having fun. And it was really okay to make mistakes.

I'm also a little bit afraid. I saw the notes that an intern had made before me and I just couldn't believe my eyes. It was like he did this thoroughly horrible and careless examination of the patient, taking everything she said as gospel. You don't do that. You just don't. So instead of a schizophreniform or schizophrenic patient, his notes read more like the patient was just depressed, because he believed everything she said without realizing her lacking reliability or without consulting the two available relatives.

What if I missed something vital during MY evaluation of patients? My decisions will have such an impact on their lives. Eventually there will come a point when I won't have anyone to rely on but myself, and my (extremely bad) clinical judgment.

I know I used to complain that medicine takes so long. Now I think that maybe it shouldn't be five years but twenty, PLUS specialization.

What some call censorship; CCP, the art exhibit and "blasphemy"

I don't agree with death threats. I don't agree to anything that threatens to cause material harm to any party.

But.

Imagine an art exhibit with photos of famous people from the LGBT community. The photos are defaced and strong words like "whore" and "fag" and, you know, words I can never bring myself to type, dot these images. These images, imagine them, show these people as the lowest of the low, as though they're hardly even human.

If the LGBT community took a stand to have these photos removed, calling them offensive, insulting, and an outright manifestation of discrimination, they would be completely justified. I'd probably be campaigning right along with them. The whole world would probably be campaigning right along with them.

So why is it so different with images of Jesus Christ? I'm really trying to understand other people here; I am in no way trying to be smart-alecky. If those imaginary photos of LGBT-directed insults were removed due to pressure from the relevant groups, wouldn't the LGBT community heave a sigh of relief and satisfaction? (I mention the LGBT community not to make it a polar opposite of the Christians and Catholics and the Bishops; only to use it as an example of a minority group that has its rights like every other group does.) What makes it so different that this time the people who raised an outcry were Christians? Why is it OK to discriminate against Christians? Why is it not okay to campaign to have art exhibits like those in the CCP removed, when they do offend a lot of people? Why would it be okay, in my hypothetical but all too possible situation, to apply the correct pressure to remove those slanderous photos from CCP, but they call it censorship when the force behind it is "conservative" and "conventional"?

Why is it censorship as long as the CBCP is the first one to speak up? They're just one group, like the rest. Whether you believe they have power or not, they are just one group, and they have rights like we all do, and they have freedom of expression as well. Whether the powers that be will bow to the pressure they exert is another thing altogether.

Just help me understand. Why is it not okay to discriminate against the atheists and the freethinkers and the LGBT, and always, always okay to discriminate against Catholics? I am getting a little tired of this double standard, and all I really, really want is to understand why it exists so that I can stop being so hurt.

Why is it okay for movies like Easy A to have words like "Jesus-freaks"? Why is it okay to make fun of Christians and not of everyone else? Does the fact that Christianity has been "in power" (an absurd and oversimplified concept) for two thousand years justify the violation of human rights against discrimination in the present? Why? Why? Why?

Why is it that everyone's catchphrase is "respect", but that no one ever seems to remember it when it comes to Christians and Catholics? Why?

I don't think I'll ever understand.

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

ETA.
...And, you see, because I understand that freedom of speech is not absolute--meaning it is NOT the same thing as freedom from criticism--I'm just going to let you come at me. I will let you say what you want. Because that is what freedom means.

I just wish that you, whoever you might be--whoever might be reading this and might be thinking of commenting--would approach the topic with the same sensitivity, and respect, and fairness of outlook that I try, try, try to use. Because I have tried. I really, really have. When we're angry we tend to use strong words. Sure. I get that. But maybe, just maybe, you can understand that topics like these require something more than strong words. That they might, for example, require kindness.

Art, imitating life

I used to have this HUGE thing for Jason Robert Brown's music, and today I was searching my iPod for songs to listen to while traveling to community, and I thought of him. I googled him again and found this strangely appropriate paragraph, which is apparently how he rephrased something that Stephen Sondheim said to him:

Nobody cares what you think. Once a creation has been put into the world, you have only one responsibility to its creator: Be supportive. Support is not about showing how clever you are, how observant of some flaw, how incisive in your criticism. There are other people whose job it is to guide the creation, to make it work, to make it live; either they did their job or they didn't. But that is not your problem. If you come to my show and you see me afterwords, say only this: "I loved it". It doesn't matter if that's what you really felt. What I need at that moment is to know that you care enough about me and the work I do to tell me that you loved it, not "in spite of its flaws", not "even though everyone else seems to have a problem with it", but simply, plainly, "I loved it." If you can't say that, don't come backstage, don't find me in the lobby, don't lean over the pit to see me. Just go home, and either write me a nice email or don't. Say all the catty, bitchy things you want to your friend, your neighbor, the Internet. Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe someday down the line, I'll be ready to hear what you have to say, but at that moment, that face-to-face moment after I have unveiled some part of my soul, however small, to you:that is the most vulnerable moment in any artist's life. I beg you, plead with you to tell me what you really thought, what you actually, honestly, totally believed, then you must tell me "I loved it." That moment must be respected."

And the thing is, that really surprised me. I've always thought of Sondheim as a really tough guy, who just puts his art out there regardless of what people think of it. (And through the years, despite his genius, there have been some pretty mixed responses.) But I think that was wrong of me, and that I missed something that is so integral to his work: that it is all so intensely personal. (And I think I missed a huge chunk of what "Sunday in the Park with George" was all about! Now, despite myself, I think I understand it better.) Whether it's good art or bad art, or good musical theatre or bad musical theatre, whenever I pop a CD of his into a player (or a CD of Jason Robert Brown's, for that matter), I am actually listening to pieces of a man's soul, put to music. Interspersed, too, with the art and soul (haha.) of the people who sang his songs, the musicians who played the notes.

I know that my little story--my 13,999 word story that took so long to write but still ended up underdeveloped and a little awful--is nothing to Sondheim's immortal work, and that ten years from now the fifty people or so who have read it will probably have forgotten all about it, but it is still a part of my soul, and I hope that when it's revealed people will be... nice to me. Nice enough. Nice enough to tell me, "I loved it."

Les examens

The smell of possibility means everything
On this wet morning
When the third exam is placed before you.
It's an old exam and you've seen
The questions before; you know
All the answers and how
You got them wrong before.
Again and again crashing through fences
And then backing up sheepishly once you've realized
You're wrong, not you, never you
Never right.
You think you know the answers now
But there's something, something in the light
And the possibility
And the feathered hope, light-winged
That travels over your exam paper
Confusing you
And the warmth in thinking
Maybe just maybe
But you've failed this exam before
And should know exactly
The right places to shade
Because there is no other option, and if you fail again
You've failed
Forever.

Real

眺める空の下　それぞれの毎日が巡る
輝く星の下　それぞれの思いが街を照らしている
僕は退屈なのに　泣けてくるんだ
気がついてないね　僕がいつも思うこと

聞こえているよ　届いているよ
僕の中の世界で
強がりだけど 素直になれず
いつも空回りする
でも大事なのは
「今　側にいる　君のReal」

行き交う人々が　目の前を通り過ぎてく
ざわめく風の音が　聴き覚えのある声を　僕に運ぶ
こんな毎日なのに　ただ詰めないんだ
気がついてないね　僕が君を思うこと......

分からないこと　聞いてみること
言葉にすると何故か
進みたいのに 進みたいのに
いつも空回りする
でも　答えは　ただ
「今　側にいる　君がReal」

聞こえてくるよ　届いてくるよ
僕の中の世界へ
会いたいことも　会えないことも
心には抱えてる
でも　大事なのは
「今　側にいる　君のReal」

でも　大事なのは
「今　側にいる　君のReal」

The Last Word

The anatomy of elegance

While looking for images for a cultural activity in August, I found a LOT of links on modest fashion. Even Google's autocomplete on my search was "modest fashion". To me it means only one thing: that there are people out there who are looking for ways to be updated and trendy without baring all.

I don't know much about fashion--in fact most days I vacillate between "frumpy" and "ridiculous"--and I don't exactly have the body type that comes to mind when discussing the anatomy of elegance. But I think that even if I were as skinny and beautiful as Audrey Hepburn, I still wouldn't want to walk around in the extremely short shorts that are so common in the La Salle area. I know that my friends think that I would dress in a nun's habit if I could, but it isn't about covering yourself up. I think it's about being considerate so that you don't distract the man (or woman) on the street. People are inevitably drawn to the sight of a bare leg or an exposed chest. If you don't want to attract that attention, then don't. (I certainly don't want to.) If you do want to attract that kind of attention, then maybe you should be thinking about why those are the things you want people to notice about you.

There are probably better ways of explaining why I love modesty so much, and I might think of a better paragraph than this sooner or later, but right now I just want to give some helpful links to anyone who might be dropping by. It's so hard to find clothes that are elegant but still keep that high standard. (Personally I love the tops from Marks and Spencer, which you can pair with simple skirts and well-cut chinos and trousers, and the dresses and skirts from Dorothy Perkins. But then again, I really have never been all that trendy, so the links below will probably be of more help.)

- ELIZA - a very pretty-looking magazine with an online blog
- Momomod.com
- Just Like Molly - which has some really exquisite photos
- Modest Fashion and Style on livejournal - which has some helpful shopping suggestions and discussions

Here are two draft posters that I'm still tweaking for our activity. (The image on the left is from justlikemolly.com; it isn't being used for profit.)

Once in a lifetime

I find myself almost unbearably affected by all this fuss about the last HP film. It shouldn't matter to me in the least, because honestly I was never able to suspend disbelief long enough to believe that Dan Radcliffe was Harry, or even that Alan Rickman was Severus Snape. (It's a little different with Emma Watson. As much as I disliked her from the very beginning, there was something about how she portrayed Hermione Granger in the two most recent films. I could almost believe that the same Hermione I've been dreaming and writing and thinking about for the last eleven years was her, in Burberry plaid, dancing with Harry in a sad tent.)

So I guess it shouldn't matter. Unfortunately it does. I've stayed away from fan communities and livejournal in an attempt to keep studying for exams and to keep my head down until all the fuss was over--which is basically the same thing I did when DH came around--but with everyone in my class discussing it and with my Facebook feed spilling over with mournful status messages and meaningful, tear-jearking pictures of the actors and of fanart, it's hard to get away from it all.

I know that this is an unrepeatable point in history. Harry Potter, despite what my theatre teacher and my Uncle Johnny used to say, is going to live on forever. It will perhaps be even bigger, on the scale of eternity, than Lord of the Rings or that most adapted, most fanficced creation, Sherlock Holmes. I know that this will never happen again. People from future generations will wonder what it was like to stand in line for the first Harry Potter movie, or the last.

And I don't really want to miss it, but at the same time I do; I get irrationally, unbearably affected when it comes to things fictional and fannish. About a month ago I spent a whole night crying miserably while my mom fussed over me, just because I kept thinking what it would mean if SNUFF came out and it's Terry Pratchett's last book, because he might die/never write one again/both. I couldn't stop crying over the last Harry Potter book, too--I hid from it for as long as I was able, read through it quickly so it would be less painful (in the old rip-off-the-band-aid stratagem), and never touched it again. I'm not ready for big emotional upheavals; I've never been good at dealing with them. I can't study and can't sleep, and eat too much, and I just can't even. I cried for two whole days about Severus Snape back in college, when I found out (through some unwelcome spoilery) that he was going to die.

And now I'm twenty two years old and I still feel the same way, if not more intensely, more tenderly.

And the thing is, what does this say about me and the culture I've been moving around in? Is it still abnormal to get so worked up about fictional things? Given this milieu, what is abnormal, what is maladjusted? Is this on the same level as that three year old on Jay Leno who was crying, without reason, about Justin Bieber?

I don't really understand. Without Severus Snape it might have just been one more children's story. But it wasn't, because he was there, a silent figure, more real than anyone I've ever read about--more beloved, more true to himself. Although, if you think about it, almost everything he did was behind the scenes--taking a backseat, it seemed to me, to balls and parties and butterbeer and all those things that were Harry. I shouldn't have fallen in love with him, but I did.

I know that half of the world can probably relate to the dark mess that is my feelings--I know that a lot of us are crying. And I know that a lot of us who have invested so much of our lives in fic and in actively participating in this fandom, in not just being passive receivers of something wonderful, are both dizzyingly happy to be a part of it, and devastated that somehow it's an end of something. Which is probably irrational because it's going to be there forever anyway.

I think this is called mourning.

In Defense of Snape

You are unrepeatable and everything that is loveable in the books--without you it would have been just one more children's story. They are named after Harry but they revolve around the consequences of one man's actions: yours. You might have loved her for thirty years or so--since you were a child--but you were the focal point of my life for the last ten, and I'll love you forever. My greatest wish was always to give you a happy ending. It will never be goodbye.

Nine

In the same twenty-four hours:
You and I, flying over rooftops and trees
Landing on two distant doorsteps.
You, white house picket fence stethoscope you
Stand with a sparrow well-groomed.
I, ending the journey alone
In a red-brick window sill
Peering inside.
I have broken a few bones
Over our journey of four years
And my wings need are in need
Of resetting, and a man
Is inside the red-brick house:
He is a little jealous, and opens the window
To keep me close, so I can't fly away again.
He puts the bones back in place
And if I could weep I would
Through the white sharp icepick pain. That moment
Protracted over days weeks months years,
Ending when you say the words
And I do not hear them
Because I am listening believing to the red brick man
Who tells me sweetly that I am worth
More than many sparrows.

Litany of an LO

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,

Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved as an LO...
From the desire of being extolled as an LO...
From the desire of being honored as an LO...
From the desire of being praised as an LO...
From the desire of being preferred to other LOs...
From the desire of being consulted as an LO...
From the desire of being approved as an LO...
From the fear of being humiliated as an LO...
From the fear of being despised as an LO...
From the fear of suffering rebukes by classmates
who act like I'm being paid to work for them ...
From the fear of being calumniated as an LO...
From the fear of being forgotten as an LO...
From the fear of being ridiculed as an LO...
From the fear of being wronged as an LO...
From the fear of being suspected of not texting things on time...

That other LOs may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That other LOs may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
other LOs may increase and I may decrease ...
That other LOs may be chosen and I set aside ...
That other LOs may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That other LOs may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become better LOs than I, provided that I may become as good an LO as I should…


Adapted with fondness from Cardinal Merry del Val's litany of humility, found here.

You Don't Know This Man

Being a hugely emo person, I get carried away by the small difficulties of the day. The past two days have been terrible ones, if we rate days based on the happy-making and sad-making things that happened in those small twenty-four hours. The terrible things are mostly my own fault, and that's what sucks most of all--my own weaknesses and incompetence, my lack of organization and forward-thinking. I get humiliated by my own shortcomings and wish I could quit a position of responsibility that others might take lightly, but which I take truly seriously but can't manage to do well.

And then after dinner my friends and I sat down to watch clips from a movie, There Be Dragons, about the very man I was talking about in my last entry.

I know you've probably heard about it. You might google it and see all of the terrible reviews, most of them bashing either Opus Dei, or the Catholic Church, or the simplicity of the plot.

I don't care. Just go see it. Because if you are honest with yourself--if you have the necessary strength of character--you're going to sit through this movie and allow it to help you to think. To think about what you're doing in this world, where you're headed, what the meaning of your life is. If you have that kind of honesty, you will get rid of any bias you've ever had against the Catholic Church or the Work before you sit down and watch it. If you had any integrity at all, you will acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, this is closer to the truth than the other portrayals of Opus Dei in the media have been, because those attacks have been uninformed and uncharitable.

And what does this have to do with my two bad days as a liaison officer? Everything. Sitting through those clips--watching young Josemaria follow the footprints of a Carmelite walking in the snow in the dead cold of winter--sharing his thoughts of "If that person can give up everything for God... then what am I doing with my own life?"--was a poignant reminder.

We're in the world to sanctify ourselves and the world. To do it silently, hidden in the small difficulties and humiliations of life. Each one of us, made of the precise "stuff" needed to be saints, whatever our defects, whatever things we have done in our past. Anyone in the world--butcher, baker, candlestick maker--anyone, taxi drivers, magtatahos, tricycle drivers, lawyers, doctors, anyone doing good and honest work--becoming a saint, without doing anything extraordinary, maybe even without other people knowing. Each one of us sinners, but each one called for the demanding perfection of being saints.

It's not a new message. It just sounds new because the world has forgotten it, and it took one man--a young priest, kind and gentle while being strong and firm, and always fully Human--to remind the world that when Jesus said that we must be perfect as His heavenly Father is perfect, he didn't just mean priests or the religious or people who leave the world to be in monasteries and convents. He meant everyone, in any corner of the world, doing any honest job. Married people, single people, old people and young people. People of all sorts of backgrounds and temperaments and faults and talents. People... like you, and me.

People like a twenty-two year old medical student with faucets for tear ducts and so much self-consequence that she gets profoundly hurt with even a hint of rebuke, however deserved. Like a medical student who has so many flaws she can't count them. Like a medical student who knows that, no matter how many flaws she has, the only thing that matters is that she struggles, and believes, and knows she's loved as a King loves his daughter the princess.

So forward, always forward, we go. And if we're faithful, we'll get the reward that Josemaria got when he went to his true Home.

Teacher and Father

There was once a man who had nothing except his mother, brother and sister; a handful of friends; a sense of humor; and the grace of God. He had no power and no money, and sometimes he had barely two pesetas to rub together. But within a century he changed the world and changed the lives of thousands (if not millions) of people.

I am one of those many people. I found him and everything changed. Before I met this man I led a dissipated life, without sparkle and without purpose, without true joy and without meaning. My only thoughts were for myself and I didn't stand for anything, and fell for everything.

Now I'm still wildly imperfect, but he taught me never to be discouraged, and to know that whatever changes I need to make in myself and in the world around me are possible, as long as I rely not on myself, but on a higher power.

He taught me how to work with intensity, and he taught me how to struggle to be holy even in an unfavorable environment and with my thousands of defects. He taught me to love others as they are, which may be very different from what I am.

I have to admit that I get hurt when people say things about him that are unflattering or slanderous, because whatever they've said about him is wrong and without basis. I used to have this totally false idea of him, long before I met him, and when I finally came to know his spirit and his life, he totally blew any expectations I had of him out of the water. He is the kindest, most gracious, most refined human being I've ever met with the exception of his Mother and his Brother. The final proof of his kindness is that he has never spoken badly about the people who spread stories and rumors about him; he greets even the worst and dirtiest lies with a peaceful smile and a ready prayer. He is the real thing--a man who walks the talk.

I love him with the love a daughter has for her father, and with the gratitude of a student to a beloved teacher. I wish everyone could meet him and his poor, large, faithful Family.



Happy feastday, Father! I only wish that I could be half as kind, as loving, as obedient, and as faithful as you.

Fandom

This is not a legitimate entry. Come back next time for regular programming.

- - -

When I was twelve, I wandered into fandom. And really, if you're the kind of person who really devotes time to fandom rather than, you know, having a real life, you end up crossing fandoms. From Harry Potter I went through Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Mary Russell, Discworld, Rex Stout, Terry Pratchett, Diana Wynne Jones, blah blah blah. It was all downhill from my first click into Mena Baines' website, Hermione's World.

My involvement in the various fandoms varies from time to time--lurking here, actual participation in fic exchanges there. However, one thing it has never dipped into is large-scale, real-life encounters. (One of the highlights of my life, though, came really close: I got sent three books by Dan and Jerri Chase, from the LordPeter groups, all the way from California to my humble home in Laguna.) I know fan communities regularly meet up via conventions, but I've never had the courage to go to any of those, and anyway, there have never been too many of them in the Philippines--except for anime, and I'm only going to dip my toes into that, not dive the whole way by cosplaying. (I guess that's because most of my fandoms are less based on graphics and based more on books; harder to cosplay, then.) I did meet one friend, though, who shares most of my fandoms (both DWs: Doctor Who and Discworld, plus a handful of other fandoms) and I remember how thrilling it was to be sitting, shatteringly terrified, in a Starbucks until a girl in a La Salle jacket came up to me and said, "Oh, hello, are you wallyflower?" That was the best. I know we didn't really remain close friends, but occasionally we still talk to each other online, and somehow, that connection can feel so much more concrete, so much more real, than a lot of connections you can make in real life.

I read recently that the internet tricks us into a facsimile of friendship; it convinces us that it's enough to send a person a message via FB, and that it's not as necessary to meet up in order to maintain a friendship. To some extent, I agree. I'm facebook friends with all of my close friends, but I haven't met up with 72% of those closest friends within the last year, and I wouldn't even know what they're thinking, who they're in a relationship with, what their after-school jobs are like, how their families are doing--because the peremptory FB status and that comfortable, lukewarm button "Like" has replaced some of the need for phone calls and meet-ups.

On the other hand, I don't know where I'd be without the internet. For the socially awkward, fandoms are a safe haven, and sometimes they can be the only happy thing in a grey, mean week. Not just because of the anonymity--you'd think that, maybe, but actually a lot of lj friends really post pictures of themselves and you'd know where they live and who their relatives are--but because, like it or not, it's the least threatening way of making a connection. You can't really reason that the reason we veer into fandom is that we're afraid of being rejected in real life, because rejections happen in fandom all the time. Comment counts on lj entries and lj-posted stories, as well as the number of people on your flist, are a way of "gauging" how rejected you are by your fan community. Replies to reviews left in stories can brush you off like a speck of dust.

In fact in so many ways, if we're talking actual livejournals or blogs rather than a profile page in FB or myspace or whatever, fandom interaction is so much like real life. You have the popular kids--the "BNFs" (big name fic writers), like Cassandra Clare, who will probably migrate into "legitimate writing" even as their comment counts and lj friends skyrocket to the thousands. You have the nobodies--people with under 20 friends, who never get comments on their ljs, whose stories hardly ever get reviewed. You have the sycophants and the hangers on (OK, if you want a really entertaining read and want to waste the next ten hours of your life, read The MsScribe Story, which is a weirdly fascinating account of a pathological liar who created earthquakes in the early days of the Harry Potter fandom).

You have the cool kids who just don't care--people who are genuinely talented but don't seek attention or advertise themselves and just do it for fun, and who basically keep to themselves. (In case you're wondering, I'm a nobody, and I think it's better that way because you're not as self-conscious about how you write, and you're surer to get solid criticism if you're a relative unknown.) So I think it's less about escapism, than about trying to find people who are more like you, to assure yourself you are not quite so alone or not quite so weird and horrible as you imagined.

It's just... it's always home. No matter what has happened elsewhere, you will still find the same community waiting for you. If you're talking to people who are genuinely interested in the same things, it's like you speak an entire language, and they just get you. They won't know your favorite colors or your mother's maiden name, but they will talk to you about the things you are most passionate about--writing, writing, writing--and they'll know what you mean when you say it's the glorious 25th of May, and they'll know what you were feeling the moment Amelia Pond was tucked into bed by a time-travelling alien she'd waited for all her life. They'll know it's seventeen steps to 221B Baker street and they'll know The Lord of the Rings is legitimately one book, not three.

I guess all I want to say is what Kathleen Kelly, as shopgirl, said to ny152.

The odd thing about this form of communication is that you're more likely to talk about nothing than something.

But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many... somethings.

So thanks.

In the end, only kindness matters

Whether the RH bill gets passed or not, we'll still have to LIVE with each other. So can't we keep discussing but keep the snide remarks and the condescension and the name-calling to a minimum? You can win the argument but lose the person, and is that honestly what you really want? Similarity in political beliefs is not a pre-requisite of friendship.

My Candidate for Twelve

This is Jeremy Baines. I have no idea who the Twelfth doctor will be, but if I root for any particular candidate it'd be him.

Matt Smith's winning the part of the Eleventh doctor made me realize that, because we'd got used to David Tennant's good looks, we were kind of let down by Eleventh's strange features--that broad forehead and those crazy eyes and unattractively disheveled hair. (I don't know, I still think he's kind of handsome, but then I think Benedict Cumberbatch is handsome too; obviously I have no taste.) But I was thinking what, no doubt, a lot of Doctor Who fans before me have thought: that it's not about looks, but about character. The Doctor, no matter who plays him, is supposed to be a memorable person with lots and lots of character and self-confidence, as well as a particular quirk that will make you remember his particular incarnation. I think Matt Smith has character in spades and is knee-deep in quirks. Similarly, I think that Harry Lloyd, who played Jeremy Baines in the series 3 episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood, would make a beautiful, unforgettable Doctor.



Look at those crazy eyes and that slanted mouth as he plays this school boy "possessed" by a species of aliens bent on destroying the Doctor. I hope he gets chosen!

A bit of snuff

I'm not dealing so well with the advent of SNUFF, the 39th (and upcoming) Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett.

If Vimes dies in this book, I'll just go die with him.

Just kidding. But honestly. I cried for two days straight when I found out Severus Snape died, and I hadn't even read the book yet. When Inspector Morse died I couldn't even read the book (it's still just sitting there in my library). And now to have Samuel Vimes shuffle off the face of the Disc? I can't handle it. The Watch were my best friends during my saddest and most awkward years, because there was a little part of me in each of them (or is it the other way around?).

I LOVE Samuel Vimes and he's one of the few characters who have never, ever, ever disappointed me. When a new Watch book comes out I just go uunggggh! and have to get it LIKE NOW (ie have it shipped from the States because it takes the Pratchett books a long time to get here). Personally I'm not a huge fan of most of the other Discworld subseries, like the Tiffany Aching stories and the Rincewind books, and it's been breaking my heart that the Watch books have been so few and far between. (Though, yes well, I did enjoy the Moist von Lipwig books very very much and they were a nice break, but I probably enjoyed them best because they were still set in Ankh Morpork and Vimes and Vetinari still play a role).

Probably I'm overthinking. But the cover has just been released, and see that little hourglass there on the boat with him? Sometimes an hourglass is just an hourglass, but sometimes an hourglass is something Death (or his apprentice, Mort) carries around with him to see how much longer a poor bugger has left.



Sam Vimes, if you can hear me all the way there in Ankh-Morpork... please don't die.

A plea

Please be nice to me if you do read my blog; unfortunately I have extremely thin skin and my feelings are really fragile. Haha.

Anti-gay Ugandan bill

I thought the Ugandan bill that gives the death penalty to homosexuals was a joke, until one of my friends linked to a petition site and I got wrapped up in the whole thing. I'm just... it's coming from both sides, really. On the one hand there are the ultraliberals that make me want to just sit and stare at the walls, depressed at the state that humanity has come to--that it's okay to be abortionist, that it's okay to treat divorce as casually as any old break up, that it's okay to show things on tv that you can't watch with your family without blushing and wanting to close your eyes. On the other hand there are these extreme conservatives, who want to protect the "cohesion of African families" by extending the criminalization of homosexuality, including and up to the death penalty. Who want to uphold ideals by sacrificing human dignity and freedom.

I do believe that there are plenty of things that damage the family as a social unit. I believe that the current climate of promiscuity has contributed to this--leading down a slippery slope of teenage pregnancies, increased abortion rates and sexually transmitted disease, child pornography, human trafficking, and the like. Society has made all of these things, to some extent, acceptable. Do I wish they'd disappear? Sure, because I can't stand to see holy purity and prudence stepped on at every turn, and to see marriages breaking up easily because people knew from the very beginning that there was a way out.

However, as a Catholic, the most basic premise of my faith--and here no sane Catholic will contradict me--is that people have free will; this freedom, not license, comes with responsibilities and the knowledge that you are free to choose, but whatever choice you make will have consequences. I have the choice to turn away from God or to fall in love with Him, and it is a personal choice; nobody can force me, and I won't let them; more importantly, I can never force others to believe in the same things, primarily because of freedom, but also because faith itself is a gift and not a fruit of coercion. Another consequence of this freedom is that I must respect the choices others make; I might disagree with my classmates on the RH bill or similar topics, but I would be the first to defend their right to make their own informed decisions and to express them. I might not be comfortable with homosexuality, but I would never ever ostracize or penalize somebody for their sexual orientation.

Others brand Catholics as extremely close-minded, along with all those hot-blooded other Christians, all set to smite those who do not match their ideas of what is good--homosexuals included. But if you really studied the Catholic stand on homosexuality, you would see that actually, Catholicism is one of the few religions in the world that truly respect a person's freedom and his ability to make his own choices. Whether these choices are misguided or not is a matter of moral truth--and the consequences of our moral decisions will always be there--but that doesn't change the fact that each person comes equipped with intelligence and will, both of which can be educated and enlightened, and that each person has an inviolable dignity.

Christianity is a religion of love. It bothers me that we should be branded as haters, and sometimes with good reason--because we can be overenthusiastic and self-righteous and defensive, feeling that society is beating us down on all sides. I know because I've been there, and sometimes I can still be all of these things. But what matters, before anything else, is that I and my fellow Catholics should remember charity. To fight for our beliefs--to picket, if necessary--but to know that there is a line we can't cross; we can only do so much; to cross over to violation of human rights is to contradict our own objectives. Charity before anything else, understanding before anything else.

It's a good reminder for me. And it would be good to remind the legislators at Uganda, too.

A visit to the pulmonologist

On the plus side:

I'm off the steroids. I might still have asthma, but it's pretty controlled.

On the negative side:

While I was walking in, he told me hi and asked how I was, before looking at me more closely and saying quite bluntly (though nicely), "Are you gaining weight?"

AAAAAARGH.

A late entry

From March 27, 2011.

It’s raining where I am. Tomorrow (Monday), we have a huge exam (that may determine whether I’m to make it to third year med school or not) and on Tuesday we have two more—medical jurisprudence and a comprehensive exam that encompasses the entire year. It’s all a bit much to take in and over the weekend I did experience a few moments of sheer unadulterated panic. But the human body can only take so much worry. This morning, having gone to mass and having shooed home a beloved friend who came to spend the night and study with me, I went to a coffee shop near the bay—not so near it that I’d smell the water, but close enough to be feeling the breeze. I tried studying there from about nine to twelve, but was getting nowhere. I was struck with the brilliant idea of cutting my hair, and called my mom to ask if she thought this would be a good idea; moments later I found myself in a tiny salon a few streets away.

I’ve never gotten a hair cut for fifty pesos before. Somehow the sheer cheapness of it made me even giddier as I sat there, watching the scissors snip away more than a year’s attempt at growing my hair out. Where it reached down to the middle of my shoulder blades, now it’s barely past my chin. I find it kind of glorious. It does make me look a bit fatter, but I do think I look five years younger, and that’s enough. I went to another coffee shop by the bay, sitting out on their terrace, and watching the rain fall really gently and silently. Everything smells like grass after rain and where I’d usually find it a bit distasteful, I couldn’t stop breathing it in today. Everything is peaceful.

Only two days left til the school year. How can I not be excited, and how can I not want to step into a small oasis of calm in the middle of all the panic?

The ballad of Ranma and Akane

My favorite Ranma 1/2 episode isn't at all a special one, and I doubt that anybody else in this world--out of the thousands of fans that still like Ranma 1/2 today--would think of it as a particular favorite. But if I were to have only a half hour to watch any episode of Ranma I think I'd watch this one: Akane Goes to the Hospital.

Because of a classmate, Gosunkugi, taking pictures of Akane during gym class--and Akane losing her balance when she gets distracted by the flash of the camera--she has to spend three days at the hospital. Ranma, who knows that the accident is partly his fault, tries to work up the courage to apologize and to visit her and spend time with her in the hospital, but is foiled by his own shyness and the fact that he and Akane are so awkward around each other that every conversation turns into a fight. But all throughout this episode there's a tenderness and softness that isn't found in most of the noisier, more plot-heavy episodes. This episode kinds of drags the way time in the hospital would, if you were the one injured or if you loved someone who had been injured. Eventually, when friends come to visit Akane and are treated to dinner at the Tendo house (courtesy of Kasumi, Akane's sister), they spend more time thinking of fun things to do at the Tendo house rather than of things to comfort Akane and to help her pass the time. In the middle of all this merriment and noise is the quiet Ranma, who's restless and who doesn't know what to do with himself--who's paralyzed both by longing and fear, but who can't even identify these feelings, much less act on them. He is such a boy.

This blog entry doesn't really have a point. It's just, I identify with a lot of things in this episode, and I think it encapsulates the most endearing things about this series that I grew up with. I even wrote a story once that was inspired by this episode--not that it ever saw the light of day or was read by anybody but me. Ranma and Akane are young, and always will be, but I'm not anymore, and I don't have their excuse when it comes to having feelings I don't know how to deal with. I should be able to tackle my moods and my maudlin sentimentality with greater finesse by now.

But sometimes it's nice to remember when it was okay not to know how :)

Faith for all defects supplying

Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui:
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui:
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.

Genitori, Genitoque
Laus et jubilatio,
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedictio:
Procedenti ab utroque
Compar sit laudatio.
Amen.

Have a good Good Friday!

For more

Wait, I just feel like I have to blog about this. Since my grade school friends came over last Sunday I've been on another trip down the rabbit hole of childhood memories. Since I don't remember most of what actually happened, I feel compelled to track down the media that surrounded me then--music and cartoons and other TV shows. It was really wonderful watching my favorite anime, Ranma 1/2, and knowing I could talk about the series at school; it was still showing on RPN 9 and was so mainstream that it wasn't odd for us to know the show. One of the most squee-worthy moments of my early life was when I was discussing with one Sister what song we could sing for a presentation, and I said I was thinking of doing this song from Ranma 1/2 called Omoide ga Ippai (see previous blog entry). Imagine my surprise when she not only readily assented, but even furnished me with a MINUS ONE TAPE. How cool were those nuns? Other than being extremely talented (they wrote all of the beautiful songs for our musical play, Tsuru no Ongaeshi), they were also terribly kind and patient and just awesomely cool.

On a somewhat related note, there is this song from Fushigi Yuugi that I've been singing to myself all these years. When it was showing, I didn't even know the word "fandom" existed, and anyway there weren't many resources like lyric sites or anime information sites back then, so I never knew the real lyrics--I just listened to the VHS recording I had over and over again, wrote down the lyrics as best I could, and, armed with only a smattering of Japanese, to understand some of what it meant. Needless to say I was entirely unsuccessful. It never occurred to me to search for the song using God's gift to my generation, Google. After a few hits and misses, here it is. It's as beautiful as I remember it :)

通り過ぎる　恋人たちの笑い声
胸をしめつける
雨上がりの　週末の午後なのに
私　一人　街を歩く
そばにいたいのに

そんなこと　わかっていたはず
好きになれば　なっただけ
苦しむこと
せつないね　わかっているのに
想っている　あなただけを
こんなに　逢えないときも

どんな時も　一緒にいてほしいなんて
思っちゃいけないと
おさえていた　私の心の声
止められずに
今もあふれそうで　苦しいの

☆私には　わかっていたはず
　愛したって　独り占め
　できないこと
　でも今は　大切な想い
　私だけが　見える真実(ほんと)
　信じて　愛し続ける

Romanized lyrics

toorisugiru
koibito-tachi no waraigoe
mune wo shimetsukeru

ameagari no
shuumatsu no gogo na no ni
watashi hitori machi wo aruku
soba ni
itai no ni

sonna koto wakatte-ita hazu
suki ni nareba natta dake
kurushimu koto

setsunai ne wakatte-iru no ni
omotte-iru anata dake wo
konna ni
aenai toki mo

donna toki mo
issho ni ite hoshii nante
omoccha ikenai to

osaete-ita
watashi no kokoro no koe
tomerarezu ni ima mo afure
sou de
kurushii no

watashi ni wa wakatte-ita hazu
aishitatte hitorijime
dekinai koto

demo ima wa taisetsu na omoi
watashi dake ga mieru hontou
shinjite
aishi-tsudzukeru

watashi ni wa wakatte-ita hazu
aishitatte hitorijime
dekinai koto

demo ima wa taisetsu na omoi
watashi dake ga mieru hontou
shinjite
aishi-tsudzukeru

English translation

The laughing voices
of lovers passing by
makes me get all choked up.

Even though the rain has stopped
on this weekend afternoon,
I'm walking the streets all alone,
even though
I want to be with you.

I should have known this.
If I fell in love with you that much,
I would hurt just as much.

Even though I know it's heart-wrenching,
I keep thinking only of you,
even when
I can't see you.

Even though
I know I shouldn't think about
how I wish we could always be together

Even now, the voice of my heart,
which I've tried to suppress,
seems to overflow
endlessly...
so much so that it hurts.

I should have known.
I just can't keep my love for you
inside, all to myself.

But now, it's a precious thought.
I believe in the truth
only I see,
and keep on loving you.

I should have known.
I just can't keep my love for you
inside, all to myself.

But now, it's a precious thought.
I believe in the truth
only I see,
and keep on loving you.

It's what I know, but may not always be so.

There were so many things I chose to forget about both grade school and high school that it now seems like a strange blur. It seems I've got very immature defense mechanisms. When something is unpleasant or painful, I choose to forget all about it as much as possible, and to forget the surrounding events too--like a surgeon excising a malignant tumor who also takes out the normal skin around it, just to make sure there are no metastases left. It seems fairly unnatural to remember so little. The thing is, I think I forgot that there were times when I was really happy.

Last night, my friends Timmy, Ginny, Mia and Athalyn came over and we talked a lot. Mia was there for about seven hours and the rest arrived some time after. I remembered so many things that I chose to forget and that I shouldn't have forgotten, and so many of the painful things were no longer painful. And I did experience a kind of mildly vindictive sense of triumph--that I might have been bullied for being chubby and ugly (not that I didn't do my own fair share of bullying.), but that I survived childhood and adolescence, and that while all around me former batchmates are getting pregnant/falling into petty crime/generally living quite dissolute lives, I'm a fairly stable adult.

Not that I feel happy about bad things that might have happened to them; only that, years later, I don't really believe I had, or have, anything to be ashamed of after all, and that the taunting was not a consequence of some fundamental flaws in me, rather a fruit of the cruelty and pettiness of young children. Even my extremely public crush on one of the boys at school, whom I liked for about eight years, is no longer a cause of embarrassment for me; I realized over time that I never really knew him, and that I was just looking for someone to be Arnold to my Helga, and that were I to see him now I could face him with a semblance of equanimity.

What I regret the most is that I allowed some bad memories to get between me and my friends. I forgot that it was the first group I'd really belonged to and that they had actually loved and accepted me--our letters to each other, dug up all these years later, prove that. I forgot that I loved and accepted them too. I forgot lunch time in the canteen when we'd share food and talk about boys and Japanese club (when everyone else in school simply assumed that we were talking about academic things, because we were nerdy like that). I forgot how much fun we had singing karaoke together, how sweet our letters were, how wonderful it was to automatically have someone as your partner or groupmate when the teachers chose to pair us off or force us to work in groups.

And the songs we sang! We were part of this musical play, book and lyrics having been written by the Japanese sisters, about the Fairy Crane (Tsuru no ongaeshi), and the songs were really beautiful. The wonderful part is that we still remember the lyrics. In Japanese club we also had to sing this song called Kimi wo nosete (from the Hayao Miyazaki film "Laputa"/Castle in the Sky) and yesterday, we sang it, complete with different voices, and I was so amazed that we could still do that despite not having sung the song in about ten years or more. When Mia finally uploads the video we took on Facebook, I'll upload it here, too.

The only thing that can really encapsulate everything is this song. We sang it once for a Christmas party. (Another great thing about is that we were all singers.) It's the opening theme from a Ranma 1/2 song--which is not as nerdy or out-of-place as it sounds, considering that this was the 90s and that we studied in a Japanese school. Wasurenai (kono sora wo), wasurenai (kono yume wo)...


Dreading the school bell, we can't help but worry…
Classmates behind me, we can't help but hurry…
They'll catch their breath then they'll say:
"Go-od- Mor-ning!"
Sweet summer grass that grows wild by the roadside..
Starting each day with a smile that I can't hide…
It's what I know … but may not be so.
Casual moments like these mean so much to me…
Treasured times that don't need any key …
In the album of my heart I keep, old times keep like new.
No, I won't forget…How the sky is blue
No, I won't forget … How this dream came true
They're the gentle times we'll share forever, long past all those times are through
Even when I'm sad … days I just don't know
Even when I'm glad … days the tears just flow
Memories of days I'll never, ever let go.

Without your consent

I haven't been writing a lot lately, not because I didn't have any time, but because all the things I felt like writing about were sad things, angry things, useless things--things that, really, wouldn't benefit anyone reading them. I thought I'd write this anyway.

When I was younger, I was bullied by a teacher who thought I was too smart and too conceited for my own good. For four years there would be weeks on end that each school day was hell for me: full of snide remarks and insinuations, and public humiliation, and the painful disappointment of having an authority figure not only deny her approval, but even her basic respect. I'd come home unwilling to talk about it, because it's hard to talk about those things that pain you the most. It gave my mother a lot of pain, my refusal to talk, but I think that we should be able to keep to ourselves, even for just a little while, the things that bring us the greatest sadness and despair, just so we can decide how to approach them. Just so we can put up walls where they need to be put up. Just so we can deal with being bullied.

It occurred to me today that it's like history is repeating itself. I am no longer the wunderkind (is there a way to feminize the word?) who got up the nose of an old lady who took her frustrations out on an unsuspecting adolescent. I'm a twenty two year old medical student who has a degree and, I used to think, at least enough self-confidence to get me through adulthood without too many mishaps. But it's like I'm still standing in the same classroom, letting someone make me feel bad about myself. Allowing someone else that power.

My teacher was a bully, and I think she knew what she was doing, though she might deny it to herself. She never said sorry for any of it, after all--grading me differently from everyone else (and this conclusion was supported by one of the Sisters, who took it upon herself to look through my grades), humiliating me in class, writing snide remarks on my papers which were half begrudging compliment, half commentary on my supposedly huge ego ("You know *very well* that you write very well!"). And so many other things, all adding up to make the high school experience a boiling pot of misery and paralyzing self-doubt. I've forgotten most of it by now, having chosen to forget the less savory part of high school.

But I remember what being bullied feels like, and now that I'm twenty-two, you'd think I'd be safe from all that. But I think I'm not. Sometimes I think, wow, this feels familiar, what the heck is happening? My tormentors are not, I think, consciously setting themselves up as bullies. I think they're pretty satisfied with themselves, actually, morally, physically, and on any other level.

I don't know why I allow myself to be sad about the things that are said to me about my personal appearance--things hidden in jokes, things that are outright insults but that you're not supposed to take offence at since, after all, it's all in fun isn't it, and don't be so balat-sibuyas? And I know I'm guilty of making the same kinds of remarks as well, though never as directly and never as meanly, never with the intent to make someone feel so small that, through daily abuse, the fortress of their self-esteem is slowly eroded and all that's left is a mass of nerves and social anxiety. As if there weren't enough social anxiety to begin with!

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. I guess. St Josemaria's mother used to tell him to be ashamed only of sin. After all, it's only God's opinion that matters, when everything is said and done.

Bullies will see your imperfections (and may forget their own, thanks to that wonderful myopia we all have about our own flaws), but they don't see the way you pray, the things you sacrifice, the number of times you say no to your own will (and yes to God's) in one day, the things that involve your taking the harder path--they will not ever see the things that matter. They don't see you trying to overcome your painfully persistent shyness to make friends, and they don't see how you offer your work to God, daily, consciously, silently, blending in with everyone else. They won't see you crying about your mistakes and being sorry for them, and they won't ever see you getting up and struggling, despite past experiences and the prospect of few rewards, to be a genuinely better person.

It's okay, Kay. Possumus. Nulla dies sine cruce.

With death there's a funeral, or: quarter life crisis

This is a cautionary tale. I wrote this when I was in college and, looking back on it now, I can relate to the stress and melancholia and the feeling of wanting to run away, but in college I came really close. Now it's unimaginable. How can someone who loves God allow herself to be so unhappy? The answer is simple: a lack of constancy.

There are days when I just want to curl up on the couch and watch an Apocalypse. With stakes, and vampires disintegrating into powder, and Giles wiping his glasses on his shirt. (Hopefully with no Michelle Trachtenberg in her profound annoyingness.) To identify with all of that drama. I don't wish I were the Chosen One or anything as melodramatic, though I do wish I had an ex I really broke up with, rather than a couple of overgrown men who had no idea what their priorities were and who basically tossed my heart around as though it were a football, all the while without me ever getting to change my Friendster status. (It's an inexplicable ambition. It's not as though I even use friendster.) I wish I could have days that are not off days, days that are not Buffy days.

As excited as I am about thesis, most of the time I just want to effectively disappear. Disintegrate, become invisible. An option is running away. But my mom would die of a heart attack (no, she would. Really.) and my dad, of despair, and my brother, of the overwhelming happiness that I am no longer part of his life and he can have my parents' attention all to himself. I imagine myself disappearing, disintegrating into tiny unseeable balls of cells, all floating away to be part of one ecosystem or another, feeding the fungi and the algae on the edges of the sea. It's more and less than death, because with death there's a funeral, and so much black and so much fuss, and coffins are so expensive. I want to disappear, and go where they will never find me. Maybe I should try, but I don't think my conscience can handle the guilt.

I've alienated my Tahilan friends and many others from various social spheres. Mom and dad are probably the only people who really love me who I actually want to see. The feeling is deeper than loneliness but I have no word for it but loneliness.

I wonder where I'd go if I actually ran away. I wouldn't take my laptop. I'd say goodbye to it and delete all of my files except a .txt one saying I'm sorry, as classless as that is. I'd bring a pair of Crocs because they can last me through the rainy season, and my mom's old Nike jacket, and a picture of me, mom and dad, and my copy of The Fifth Elephant, and my Daily Roman Missal, and an umbrella, and a prayer card of St Josemaria. I'd bring a notebook and a pencil, and a big packet of instant soluble coffee to get me by, and some underthings and a clean shirt, and that I think would be it. I'd put it all in one of my brother's duffel bags.

I'd go somewhere very far away, somewhere with trees and sun like Alabang but with the dirty Ankh-Morporkian anonymity of Manila. Maybe I'll work in a cafe. I've always wanted to work in a coffeeshop, never a Starbucks because one day I might see someone I know. Just one of those little coffeeshops, like the ones attached to bed-and-breakfasts, where there are terracotta pots and cats sunbathing by the windows, and I can spend my breaks reading or taking really, really long walks. I don't know where I'd sleep, but I'd find a way to keep off the streets because even beggars steal from beggars.

I don't know what I'd do, because stripped of my parent's ambitions and the expectations that people have built up around me over the years, I have actually no idea what I really want.

I could be a doctor. I know that. It's within reach. Whether I get into my dream med school or not, I can still have that MD attached to my last name. But I think that maybe this will make me desperately unhappy. That maybe I'll regret it. That maybe I don't want a life with no time for science fiction and crawling around in the garden looking at fungi and the slime molds on my mom's orchid planters. If I don't become a doctor, I'll be a scientist, and while that would be lovely, I just sometimes think that maybe I don't want that, too. That maybe I should just follow what my heart really, really wants when I wake up at four in the morning and can't see the point of anything, of microfuge tubes and PCR machines and biosafety gear, when we're all going to die anyway.

I think that if I run away I can get that quiet kind of life. I think I was happiest when dreaming. Maybe when I run away I'll have time to dream again, like I used to when I'd come home from school and sit, Indian-style, on the library floor thinking of all the fabulous things I could be, all the books I could buy. When--should that be an if?--I run away I'd live quietly, by myself, and it would be lonely, but such a different kind of loneliness from the one manufactured by an unwanted isolation from the people who used to care for you. At least this time the isolation will be of my own choosing, and I can put all the people I used to love in a neat compartment, an attic box labeled "past", to be set aside and not opened for years. Maybe when I run away I'll take my violin too, and learn to play again, if maybe my landlady (if I get one) will let me practice despite the noise.

I really have dreams of wearing an apron and working somewhere quiet. A simple job no more complex than greet-the-guests take-their-orders make-some-java. When--if--when I run away maybe I can start anew, stop thinking about what everyone else wants and figure out what I want. I'd cut my hair really short because there would be no need to impress anyone, anymore, and besides I'd need to save on the shampoo. I'll I guess that after a few months I'll end up quite thin, and I wonder if that will make me any happier.

The tension between two desires

Sometimes your heart
is like a fracture,
The two ends pulling so strongly
that the bone can't be reset.

Remembering

Molly Gibson: It's the one you did a drawing of.
Roger Hamley: You remember?
Molly Gibson: Of course I remember. I remember everything you wrote in your letters. How could you think I wouldn't?

--Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, adaptation.

Fish and Bird

They bought a round for the sailor
And they heard his tale
Of a world that was so far away
And a song that we'd never heard
A song of a little bird
Who fell in love with a whale.

He said, 'You cannot live in the ocean'
And she said to him
'You never can live in the sky.'
But the ocean is filled with tears
And the sea turns into a mirror
There's a whale in the moon when it's clear
And a bird on the tide

Please don't cry.
Let me dry your eyes.

So tell me that you will wait for me.
Hold me in your arms
I promise we never will part.
I'll never sail back to the time
But I'll always pretend you're mine
Though I know that we both must part
You can live in my heart

Please don't cry
Let me dry your eyes

And tell me that you will wait for me
Hold me in your arms
I promise we never will part
I'll never sail back to the time
But I'll always pretend that you're mine
I know that we both must part
You can live in my heart

(It's a rainy day song by Tom Waits, for bad asthma-inducing, mood-depressing days like this!)

Attack of the Asthma

{Photo source}

Asthma, asthma, go away
Come again another day!

Every time we say goodbye

You know those days when everything appears to go wrong? I felt like that girl during her slump in "Just My Luck." You know the drill. You try to send a file but it's too big, your laptop runs out of charge and there's nowhere to plug it, you have to reply to about a gazillion people but you've run out of load. Your asthma attacks seem to be hardly responding to your meds.

And on the one day of the week that you didn't bring your umbrella, it rained like there was no tomorrow, both on the way to school and on the way back. And the rain came with a goodbye.

Rain often makes me sad. It always reminds me of that scene in The Parent Trap (reminding me once again that my life is a tapestry of movies with no originality), the saddest scene, when "Every Time we Say Goodbye" plays on the background.

Oh, Every time we say goodbye
I die a little.
Every time we say goodbye
I wonder why a little
Why the gods above me
Who must be in the know
Think so little of me
They allow you to go.

When you're near
There's such an air
Of spring about it.
I can hear a lark somewhere
Begin to sing about it
There's no love song finer
But how strange the change
From major to minor
Every time we say goodbye.


Yesterday I was running home in the rain, jacket over my head and over my bag, when I ran into someone in front of Robinsons Mall. I was amazed he recognized me because I was half-hidden by my jacket. He greeted me just as I was crossing to go to National bookstore, and I said hi back, and was left wondering (like Charles Ryder) how our lives, so closely intertwined once, could now intersect only in the few times a year we'd bump into each other, when there was a time we were close enough to study in Starbucks Adriatico together and we'd share things about Maria Mena and other singers. We first met when he and one of my best friends were classmates in UP Dentistry, and he was always extremely nice to me. I remember thinking how odd it was for a guy to like Maria Mena's kind of music.

I'm not writing this now because I was particularly fond of him--more like I was amazed at how we make such a big deal out of goodbyes, when in reality we say goodbye all the time, sometimes without even knowing it. If you made a friend at some class or elective you took back in college, when the semester ended, you probably wouldn't really meet each other for coffee right? I know I didn't, not really; I used to sit next to this girl called Hannah for a whole summer, and now I can't even remember her last name, her course or what we ever found to talk about. Also, I took part in summer stock theatre and fell sincerely in love with some people, but after some time we stopped communicating, too.

I thought about all this on the way home. Today I have had to say a different kind of goodbye. In a way it is an artificial sort of goodbye because we will remain friends. But there is a thread that has been cut, and has been cut forever, and it won't ever be the same.

I can let myself be sad--but I can also let myself shrug it off, as I have shrugged off a thousand other goodbyes, and know that the same wise Person behind preludes and encounters is also the same person behind epilogues and goodbyes.