Here’s the Thing

October 13, 2009 at 7:04 pm (Opportunities, Other Sites of Interest, Sayings, Surprises, Writing, short fiction)
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Yesterday was quite an amazing day as self got the absolutely amazing news that a story of hers was a finalist in a flash fiction contest. Self’s been trying for years to get into this journal, with no luck. And now she’s a finalist?

The prize was $500.

Unfortunately or perhaps just unluckily, the story was “Appetites,” which is in the current issue (# 31) of cool website Cafe Irreal.

Alas!  She had so little faith in her chances (or is perhaps too much a creature of impulse) that, yes indeed, amazing as it may seem, she submitted the exact same piece to the contest and to Cafe Irreal, which published it. (Then again, dear blog readers, what are the odds? Of you becoming a finalist in a contest? Given the fact that there are hundreds of writers equally or perhaps more talented than you, all of them also submitting to contests? Isn’t becoming a contest finalist then akin to the rich man going through the eye of a needle, or whatever analogy the Bible used to illustrate the difficulty of getting into heaven?)

Self had to withdraw from the contest, today.

Here are a couple of thoughts that presented to self:

There is always a first time for everything. So now self has the unique honor of knowing how it feels to have to excuse herself from a contest in which she has become (quite improbably) a finalist.

Also:  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?  Hopefully?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Damage Assessment

July 1, 2009 at 4:01 pm (Gardening, Sayings, Surprises)
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Orange tree dead, dead, beyond salvation. Imagine if you will, dear blog readers, a tree that has stood outside self’s kitchen window for 20 years, whose top reaches the roof. It is now a skeleton. How could this have happened, in less than two weeks?

On the other hand, Johnny Depp is apparently a very fetching gangster and looks really hot brandishing a tommy gun. Wonder if this makes up for the loss of the orange tree (about which self feels real grief)?

Another source of comfort: this weekend is the Fourth of July, one of self’s faaave holidays of the entire year.

Self will attempt to be philosophical: After all, in life, you’ve got to take the bad with the good. As Sage Master Shih Cheng-Yen would say:

The difficulties and struggles in human affairs are among life’s challenges.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Most Inspiring Memory of the Weekend

June 18, 2009 at 12:07 am (Quotes, Sayings, Son, Surprises)
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Aside from what was on son’s mortarboard:

Sign that son put on his mortarboard with blue tape, the night before the Cal Poly Commencement

Sign that son put on his mortarboard with blue tape, the night before the Cal Poly Commencement

Aside from this message on Kramer’s T-shirt:

Kramer's T-shirt (He runs cross-country at Harvey Mudd)

Kramer's T-shirt (He runs cross-country at Harvey Mudd)

The most inspiring memory was something self doesn’t have a picture of.  When the graduating seniors were headed to their respective departments, after the main ceremony in Spanos Stadium, self saw a young man walking quickly along the sidewalk.  He was tousle-haired and tan, and he was wearing shorts.  He had a prosthetic arm and two prosthetic legs.  The legs connected mid-thigh.  The arm connected above the elbow.  Self gaped.  She looked at the young man’s face.  He was smiling to himself.  He walked quickly along, and no one so much as turned their heads.  Self tugged urgently at hubby’s arm:  “Look!” she said.  “Look!  See him?  The one in the grey t-shirt?”  Hubby looked.  But the young man was walking so fast that he was almost out of sight.

Self will never forget it, dear blog readers.  Never.

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Luck # 2

June 6, 2009 at 8:06 pm (Gardening, Sayings, Surprises)
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Our neighbor around the corner had a garage sale, and these are the goodies self bought from her:

a dozen hyacinth bulbs; a kind of tiny rake that neighbor said she used "for candles"; a wicker basket

a dozen hyacinth bulbs; a kind of tiny rake that neighbor said she used "for candles"; a wicker basket

Off to the side, out of the picture, another set of bulbs:  watsonia.  Self spent a grand total of $7, broken down this way:

  • 50 cents for a dozen (pink) watsonia bulbs, to plant in the fall
  • 50 cents for a dozen (blue) hyacinth bulbs, to plant in the fall
  • $3 for a wicker basket with compartments (for self to use toting around her trowels, shears, and what-not)
  • $3 for a tiny rake that bears a stamp saying “Briddell No. 60″.  It looks very old.

Self does the happy happy joy joy dance.

*   *   *

OK, self did a little nosing around the internet, and she discovered that the tool stamped “Briddell No. 60,” which neighbor told self she used “for candles,” and which self is planning to use as a gardening implement, is actually an ice pick, used to “break large ice blocks into smaller chips for drinks.” You can see more pictures of similar tools here.

As Spock himself might say:  “Fascinating.”

It looks evil.  Self would just love to use it to impale snails.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Famous Dearest Mum Quote of the Day

June 3, 2009 at 12:04 am (Relatives, Sayings)

When a woman’s feeling depressed, all she needs to do to feel better is buy herself a new lipstick.

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(Pictured:  The famous bronze-y metallic tote, and various splashy additions to self’s wardrobe, courtesy of Dearest Mum!)

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About “Angels & Demons”

May 25, 2009 at 8:12 pm (Movies, Sayings)
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As self’s Dear Departed Dad used to say, If you can’t say anything good . . .

Tom Hanks plays a Harvard professor.  Which means he can do anything.  Still, self would just like to know where a Harvard professor gets off telling Roman carabinieri what to do.  And why a Harvard professor doesn’t know that when handling priceless archival documents, one should always wear gloves.  And why, anyway, would a Harvard professor be doing laps in a pool at 5 a.m.?  Not that she has anything against Harvard professors (some of them may even be hunks), or that she minds seeing Tom Hanks in swimming trunks (bod, or what she could see of it anyway, still OK), but the “swimming at 5 a.m. thing” was a little much, self feels, even if it was there just to establish that this professor, despite being a member of academia, is indeed a very very virile guy.  Which is absolutely essential to the veracity of the plot, considering the number of things Hanks’ character is required to do later.  But, self digresses.

An even bigger outrage is what the movie does to Ewan McGregor.  Ewan McGregor, perhaps one of the finest actors of his generation (here playing the hottest priest in cinematic history), is in this movie reduced to –  to –

AAARGGGGH!!!!  Self can’t say because then she’ll be giving the whole movie away!

(Ewan, self is so confused.  Did you accept this role just for the money?  And why did you still have that Scottish accent, even though your Dad was supposedly Irish and you told Tom Hanks you were adopted by a Cardinal at the age of 9 and had lived most of your life in Italy?  And, didn’t you see what the last movie did to Paul Bettany’s career?  Self hasn’t seen him in a movie since he was last seen playing a self-flagellating albino monk/assassin in the execrable The Da Vinci Code!)

Self can’t believe she sat for two hours in a theatre watching @##!!@@##

Afterwards, hubby declared it was very, very good.  Which shows you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it –

This was absolutely the worst movie self has seen this year, last year, or — or since she saw The Da Vinci Code.  There, she’s said it.  Sorry, Dear Departed Dad!

Counting yesterday’s Terminator:  Salvation, that makes two strike-outs in one weekend.  It’s enough to drive a person nuts.  Or, at least, back into the arms of J. J. Abrams and co. This week, Star Trek again, for sure.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Letter From a Man Who Has Re-Read GOING HOME TO A LANDSCAPE

February 17, 2009 at 8:24 pm (Books, Publishers, Quotes, Sayings, Surprises, Voices, Writers and Others)
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I get these letters from time to time.  They are addressed to:  “Author, Going Home to a Landscape, Calyx Books.”  Calyx always forwards them to me.

This one, dated February 6, 2009, reads in part:

Dear Marianne,

I came across your book again and have a renewal of interest in poems and stories with a more in-depth look.

. . .  Your other stories are thought-provoking.  My favorite poems are “We Go Back to Manila” (by Angela Torres), “My Father Has Stopped Eating” (Virginia Cerenio), and Leny Mendoza Strobel’s “The Power of Adobo” (makes me hungry)

I think your book Going Home to a Landscape deserves a wide readership that extends beyond the Asian community.

Regards,

B. Stafford

*  *  *

Sometimes you enter into a zone.  I was just at AWP, on a panel with Luisa Igloria, Grace Talusan, Angela Narciso Torres, and Karen Llagas (three of whom are writers represented in Going Home), and Angela read part of “We Go Back to Manila in 1999,” which I’ll excerpt below. 

We Go Back to Manila in 1999

    by Angela Narciso Torres

What will our children remember
of the shape of that year? Perhaps
the city skyline, swathed in blue
smog, a plane landing at daybreak,

arms reaching to encircle their small,
flight-weary bodies as they melted
into the waiting crowd. But those
were fleeting glimpses, through eyes

still fogged with sleep. More likely,
the sticky heat and stench of fumes,
a van weaving through early traffic
to the village that housed their mother’s

memories, verdant still, a jungle-green
deeper than California’s silver-sage.
Most certainly, the tile-roof house, where
they learned to call their grandparents

Lolo and Lola, learned to say ulan for rain;
rain filling potholes and gushing in gutters,
drumming on the low eaves, on windows
slammed shut to monsoon winds. Breakfast

of sweet sausage and rice, the clatter of pans
begun long before morning’s hushed light,
punctuated by the calls of a bread vendor
peddling hot pan de sal on a bycicle.

    – from Going Home to a Landscape, Calyx Books, 2003

How can I repay this stranger for his kindness in writing? I turn once again to Sage Master Shih Cheng-Yen, who writes, in Still Thought # 44, “A person’s heart is like a field; if no good seeds are sown, nothing good will grow.”

So, plant seeds, dear blog readers. Plant many, many seeds.

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Self is Sorry

January 21, 2009 at 11:06 am (Food and Drink, Places, Sayings, Surprises)
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. . . that she wasn’t able to get a copy of The Philippine Star today: otherwise, she would have had many more things to blog about this evening. She sent the driver out to buy a copy late, about 4 p.m. (after lunch at the Mall of Asia that lasted from 11:30 to 3 p.m. — self knows this is pretty hard to believe, dear blog readers, but she swears this is entirely true! Unfortunately, all she could take a picture of was the very last dish, a bowl filled with creamy tapioca and chunks of green jello that reminded her of ginataan). Driver returned with the news that the vendors on the corner had sold out, hours ago.

And then self went hither and thither on errands around Makati (Dear Bro could not lend her his SUV, but Dearest Mum’s car was “exempt” from the color coding, for some reason, and so, self being quite resourceful, she was able to put together Dear Bro’s driver and Dearest Mum’s car, and was able to cobble together a few quick trips — she’d have gone to the National Museum and faced down the surly guard, except Dear Bro’s driver told self that Dearest Mum’s car had no aircon!!!)

Self wandered around Ayala Avenue and Buendia. She found that there was a street named after one of Ateneo’s most brilliant teachers, Horacio de la Costa. She found yet another sign to add to her (growing) collection of Filipino signage, this one on de la Rosa Street, close to Ecology (on the San Lorenzo Village side). The sign was written in red block letters and affixed above a tin shack of no discernible purpose:

TANGGALIN
Maskara, Totoong
Kulay Ninyo
ALAM NA!

Is that poetry, or what???

And now self realizes that translation is a much harder job than one would think, dear blog readers, as she’d be hard put to maintain the pungency and flavor of the above in a word for word translation.  Suffice it to say that the above sign is an admonishment about wearing no masks.  Pretty stern stuff to encounter at 6 p.m. on a busy Wednesday evening in the city . . .

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Thought for the New Year

December 31, 2008 at 7:28 am (Movies, Quotes, Sayings)

From Sage Master Shih Cheng-Yen (who has been too little consulted in the Year 2008):

Still Thought # 98

With great kindness, one has no regrets; with great compassion, one has no resentments; with great joy, one has no sorrows; with great generosity, one demands nothing in return.

On that uplifting note, self would now like to vent.  Following, self’s picks of the WORST movies of 2008:

(Caveat:  If you, dear blog reader, are one of those people who were rendered ecstatic by the Golden Globe nominations of Happy Go Lucky, as Best Picture for a Comedy or Musical, or for Tom Cruise as Best Supporting Actor in Tropic Thunder, then read no further.)

Happy-Go-Lucky:  Congratulations to Mike Leigh, his movie succeeded in getting self to walk out, after only 20 minutes.  Perhaps it was the relentless cheer, the lingering shots of people doing nothing, the grade-school-teacher-dressed-as-a-chicken stunt.  Perhaps it was that Sally Hawkins reminded self of a certain person, too soon after that person’s departure.  Perhaps it was because self firmly believes that people ought to be allowed their moods: not everyone wants to go around with a smiley-happy face all the time, particularly not in a bookstore, when one is engaged in reading.

Max Payne:  That makes two stinkers this year for Mark Wahlberg, the other one being The Happening.  After the high point of The Departed, this year was particularly disappointing for this Mark Wahlberg fan.

Tropic Thunder:  Only the first half hour was funny.  After that, self felt as if she was expected to find everything funny.  Which was tedious.  Profanity/Jack Black/smoking 12-year-olds, even cute Asian ones, are not funny.

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Happy Accidents: How Greek Pottery is Like Writing

November 2, 2008 at 8:12 pm (Quotes, Sayings, Writing)
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Last summer was Before.  Self was doing a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.  It was hot.  There was a swimming pool.  Dinner began at six every night.

Every few days, self would walk from the main residence to the office, down a lane that led past a white gazebo, to have someone photocopy passages from the books she happened to be reading.

There’s a stack of such photocopied pages in a file folder by self’s desk this morning.  The top pages are about Greek pottery.  Self doesn’t know the title of the book, or even who wrote it.  Here’s what she reads:

Defects in the preparation of the clay, in the construction, in the glazing, in the firing, all are revealed when the vase emerges from the kiln.  That there were plenty of mistakes and mishaps in Greek vases as in modern ones becomes evident when we examine even museum pieces.  We see many cased of warped lips and sagged shoulders, of dents and cracks, and of red spots in the black glaze.  Spalls –  that is, chips produced by particles of limestone which became embedded in the clay and then explode in the fire –  are not infrequent, likewise rifts in the glaze, caused by a more rapid shrinkage of the glaze than of the clay.  Occasionally the different sections in which the larger vases were made were not put together successfully.  For instance, the body of a column krater in New York was not set straight on the foot; it leans slightly to one side; consequently neck and handles had to be shaped irregularly so as to produce a level top.

Sometimes the body is not the usual pinkish buff but has turned gray, owing to a reducing fire.  Occasionally the different fragments of a vase differ in color (from pink to gray), the vase having evidently been broken at the funeral pyre and its various parts subject to different conditions.

When a Greek pot was broken that was not the end of it.  There are many instances of broken vases repaired with rivets in antiquity.  Generally only the holes are preserved, occasionally parts of the bronze rivets also.  The repairs sometimes go right through the decoration, even when this could have been avoided.  Pots were obviously prized for their use as well as their beauty.

Self loves this notion of art, this appreciation of its functionality, this contentment with imperfection.  Elsewhere in this section, there is this singular utterance:

The test of a pot comes in the fire.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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