ignore me, I’m actually poor

A friend tells me she gauges her appearance by promo peoples’ approach towards her. So if those men with pointed shoes, long sleeved polos and well pomaded hair insist on spraying the latest Bulgari scent on you, take it as a compliment. It means you look like you can afford it. You appear elegant. The same goes for people who hand out glossy paper flyers on condos & townhouses. However, if the flyers advertise  overseas jobs or herbal meds, then the above rule does not apply. They’ll hand it out to anyone who has a free hand. That’s why I try to avoid eye contact with them; and keep both hands full.

Everywhere, most of the time, we are judged by our physical appearance. What a sad, sad world.

 *          *          *

I leave you with a Gilmore Girls line from the very indifferent, most lovable egotist, Michel:

Michel (on Jackson’s family staying at the Inn):

“They’re so cheap, they get paper cuts on their wrists from prying perfumed magazine pages…”

how I discovered the wonder that is Jhumpa Lahiri

Work has been a little stressful, just a tad bit. Only because we’ve been procrastinating for 6 months before the actual work went ‘live.’ So, yeah, let me rephrase that: the workload is starting to grow heavy.

But still there are days when there are no tickets to work on, so for entertainment –in a form not so colorful, or interactive, that might be too conspicuous for the bosses–I revisited DailyLit.

That day, it was offering a free Jhumpa Lahiri short story. I was clueless, and didn’t know the prestige attached to that name. I simply read the Preview (first installment) and then I got hooked. Unlike the other classic materials on the site where you can read the work in its entirety, this piece had to be sent to you in installments, via email. (Probabaly because it’s a new upload) So I clicked the Subscribe button.

In a certain degree, Lahiri writes like Oates. But her power lies not so much in the manipulation of words to evoke an emotion, it’s in the straightforward telling of the tale.

After reading Hell-Heaven, I had Veto download The Namesake –Lahiri’s novel-turned-film. It was just as beautiful. I bet the book was much better:

I leave you with:

bieber has the exact same problem

Sourced

 
  Sourced from this cool site.

Adolf

Adolf,

You’re the biggest megalomaniac ever to walk the earth; thus, you’re the saddest excuse for a human being. I hope you’re uncomfortable wherever you are.

~anti-Third Reich

death, labour, & fear: my young self’s precocious introduction to the elements of life

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It was the morning that the dog got rabies. I remembered because it left mother no choice but to hit the dog’s head with a shovel. And before she did, she threw a sack on the puppy to keep it from running around like mad, growling and salivating and threatening to bite. We were five small children getting ready for school and the three-minute walk that would take us there. We looked on as the small heap under the sack lay motionless after the third blow.

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One gloomy afternoon, after mother had retrieved the not-really-sun-dried pieces of apparel from the clothesline, she called me into the living room. The clouds were swollen with the notion of rain and she said I’d better get inside the house and help her fold the laundry. I was bad at folding shirts and shorts. She didn’t mind. After a while, when I gave up altogether, someone –my sister or my father, I can’t recall now–someone came in with a toy and I abandoned my duty (or my mother’s attempt at introducing ‘work’ into a child’s routine). It was a light, plastic toy in the shape of an alligator (or crocodile, I was to know the difference at a later time) and it had a basket on its mouth with a lightweight ball. You were supposed to blow into the small opening on its tail-end and it would send the ball afloat. It was a much better case of worry to keep the ball afloat than folding the shirts into neat squares.

 ============================================

Before that moment, I didn’t know the earth was so fragile that it could be quaked. My mother, and someone else–probably a nanny or a niece–were having fun just teasing me, the only child at home. I’m guessing it was a time when my older sister was in pre-school and Mama was still pregnant with my younger sister. On that lazy afternoon they found amusement in rolling me into the carpet and lifting me up to my feet. Of course, I had lost the facility of my limbs and could only mince through the living room wrapped in the stiffness of the carpet. Apparently I looked funny because my movements set them off to boisterous laughter, and as with any child the proportionate response was to keep at it. I was several steps from mother when I started losing balance. The adults started saying ‘It’s an earthquake…’ and I didn’t know what that meant. I had only to look at their eyes and recognize alarm and agitation. Mama started to walk towards me and struggled to un-roll me. I had started to cry.

Dear Holden

Holden,

mga rukdug nin dunong [morsels of wisdom]

Premise:          Facebook is an alternative reality even for pre-teens and it encourages precocious non-physical pubertal
                      qualities in otherwise innocent boys.
Scene:                      sa loob ng tricycle
Sharing seats with:     a grade schooler
Sa likod ng driver:       kaklase ng gradeschooler na katabi ko

Overheard conversation:

Li’l Boy #1: May bago ka bang friend sa facebook?
Li’l Boy #2: ‘Di ko nga alam kung i-aaccept ni M’am Lana eh…’

Conclusion: Ka-blagh!

*        *        *

If your fiance starts calling your favorite game StarCrap 2…it doesn’t mean she loves you any less.

*        *        *

Our Lady of Guadalupe~

Nevermind the weeds amongst the Jesus and the soldiers under Pontius Pilate’s command, just walk the steps, winding up, towards the oratory. Do not fail to stop half way and look at the city below. To your right, behold the sea; and the mountain called Sleeping Lion. Even the unimaginative can see that it does, indeed, appear to be a lion at rest (perhaps after crouching and tailing and devouring a prey). From up there you can see a ship-like building. It’s the Pacific Mall-Gaisano, the emergence of this Cebu-native enterprise has not threatened the local ‘mall’ LCC. [I have not gone up there now that Embarcadero is almost completed, so I can’t tell you how it looks from that vantage point].And my mother is glad that LCC just bent under the foreign giant, because if it had broken, then that meant losing the familiarity of aisles when grocery-shopping.

Let’s go there together. Because I intend to override memories involving a horrid person. I want to hold your hand when you read the metal plate outside the oratory’s door, and you notice the groundbreaking was the same as my birthdate. Remember on New Year’s, San Sebastian Church & after the mass we stood outside to read the embossed plates on the walls. I was incredulous that every part of the church was made of steel, as you claimed they were. You started knocking on a column and I was partly ashamed but mostly amused. 

Crowds grow in number during Holy Week. Groups would start at the bottom, and make their way up, stopping of course at each ’station.’  Most of them do not know what prayer truly means. It is believed that if you do this for seven days into Easter Sunday, your prayers will be heard.

When I bring you up there, I will not pray for anything. I will just thank Whoever’s In Charge of this sometimes cruel & sometimes kind cosmos.

Because I have found a milkweed amongst the grass.