- “This pub’s come to our attention for its lack of ice.”
The Famous (or Infamous) Daphne du Maurier Jump Cut
October 10, 2019 at 10:36 am (Books, Conversations, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: angst, Daphne du Maurier, English writers, favorites, nostalgia, novel
If Daphne du Maurier were alive today, she would be an indie filmmaker. Her stories, her eye, her ear — perfect for cinema.
As is this novel self has been reading for almost a month: The Parasites.
She generally dislikes du Maurier endings, but loves her books for the absolute authority of her voice, and for her painterly eye.
If she were to cast the film adaptation, hmmm. Who would be Niall? Someone dark-haired, tall and slender.
Who would she cast as Maria? Someone blonde, tall, and slender, and also pretty.
Who would she cast as Celia? Someone not-blonde, not-tall, slightly overweight, and not-pretty,
These three siblings have self shaking her head; she sees a little of herself in all of them.
The first jump cut in The Parasites was after Lord Charles walks in on Maria disrobed in front of her (step)brother Niall. Suddenly, here we are a year later, and Maria has an infant named Caroline.
The next jump cut has just happened: Last we saw them, the sibs were in their mid-20s. Now they’re in their mid-30s. But self is so happy to see them all alive and together, no matter their age.
Niall is reminiscing about Freada (is she still around? Probably not, she was quite a bit older):
- This was one of the many things he had learnt from Freada. ‘Carry what you can upon your back,’ she used to say. ‘It all saves time and temper. Have no real possessions. Stake no claim. This is our home, for three, for two nights only. This studio, this lodging-house, this unfamiliar room in a hotel’ . . . Once they went a bust and took a suite in a palatial kind of palace in Auvergne . . . She got up at eight in the morning and went off to drink the waters or have the waters poured upon her, Niall never really knew which; but he used to lie in bed until she returned in the middle of the day, and he read every one of the works of Maupassant, the book in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other.
The way Niall’s getting all nostalgic makes self worry that Freada is dead.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: CIRCLES, CURVES, AND ARCHES
October 9, 2019 at 10:00 am (Family, Food and Drink, Links, postaday, Relatives)
Tags: art, Cee Neuner, Garden, memories, nostalgia, Redwood City, summer
It’s been a while since self has done Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge. So happy to join the challenge this week: CIRCLES, CURVES, AND ARCHES.
Dropped by Diane Varner’s El Granada studio, about a month ago. She’s growing succulents!
Self’s Plum Tree in August, 2019
Cleaning Out Closet in Son’s Room, Found These Old Toys!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Niall in THE PARASITES, p. 164
October 8, 2019 at 1:34 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Daphne du Maurier, English writers, favorites, inspiration, novel, Paris
The song hit the ceiling, and echoed from the walls; it was fun to do, it was play. But he did not want to write it down. He did not want to have the sweat and toil of writing it down. Why not pay someone else to do that part? And, anyway, once he had thought of a song, and played it, and sung it to himself and Freada about fifty times, it was out of his system, he was bored with it, sickened of it, he did not even want to hear it any more. As far as he was concerned, the song was finished. It was like taking a pill, and the pill having worked, he wanted to pull the plug on it. Finish. Now what next? Anything? No. Just lean over the balcony under the sun. And think about the foie de veau there was going to be for lunch.
Niall, 18, a precociously gifted songwriter, has just run off to Paris with Freada a much older woman, a friend of his parents. He is secretly in love with his stepsister, but that’s apparently more of a taboo than running off to Paris with a friend of his parents, so that other love goes unrequited.
Self loves how taboo-breaking this book is. Not to mention, the writing is drop-dead gorgeous.
When Niall and Freada take the evening air along the Parisian boulevards, no one gives this May-December pairing a second glance, it seems the most natural thing in the world:
The sky turned an amber colour, like Freada’s scent, and an amber glow came upon the city, spreading from the west, touching the roofs and the bridges and the spires.
Gorgeous scene-setting. Self hasn’t read a novel like this in a long, long time. Maybe not since Once Upon a River.
Stay tuned, dear blog reader. Stay tuned.
The Parasites: p. 80
October 4, 2019 at 5:52 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Daphne du Maurier, novel, reading lists
She walked down the gangway, on to the quay, and caught another bus, and then along the street to her lodgings, and she realized now that she was tired and very hungry, and she hoped with a sort of passion that there might be meat to eat, hot meat, and that there would be a brightness to the fire.
Photo-a-Week Challenge: SOMETHING NEW
September 19, 2019 at 4:47 pm (destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended, Relatives, Traveling)
Tags: Bacolod, happiness, memories, restaurants, The Philippines
Thanks to a Photo a Week Challenge prompt: SOMETHING NEW.
And self did do something new: She went home.
Not only did she go home, she went one better and returned to her Dear Departed Dad’s home island of Negros Occidental.
She stayed with cousins.
7th Floor, Belles Artes Condominiums, Galo cor. GV & Sons Street
She saw, for the first time in six years, the house where her Dear Departed Dad grew up, the Daku Balay:
Daku Balay, 50 Burgos Street, Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, The Philippines
In Bacolod, she had the most delicious pizza! Here, smoked bangus pizza and basil pizza:
Café Oscar, Galo Street (Ground Floor, Belles Artes Building), Bacolod City
Great trip.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Doreen G. Fernandez: Fruits of Memory
September 14, 2019 at 9:55 am (Books, Dearest Mum, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Memoirs, Women Writers)
Tags: Doreen Fernandez, Filipino food, memoir, memories, The Philippines
from Doreen’s Introduction to Fruits of the Philippines (Bookmark, Inc.: Manila, 1997):
I remember gathering lemons in our farm: they were large and lumpy and not like the neat American lemons in supermarkets, but they were fragrant, and basketfuls of them made cooling lemonades. Right near these trees were aratiles, which we called seresa, low enough to climb, and almost exclusively for us children, since adults did not usually bother to gather the little berries, although they willingly ate what we shared with them.
During the Pacific war about ten families, all related, lived on the farm, and, guided by a young uncle, we children picked wild fruits called tino-tino and maria-maria, which I have not seen since then and cannot identify. The tino-tino looked like the cape gooseberry, except that it was usually not eaten raw, but sliced and fried like tomatoes. The maria-maria was delicately sweet, but where is it now? The farm never seemed to run out of guavas, which we ate green or ripe, or of nangka, also delicious both green and ripe (cooked into ginatan or eaten fresh).
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
FOR Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 62: SILHOUETTES
September 8, 2019 at 10:22 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Food and Drink, Links, Traveling)
Tags: fast food, Manila, Mondays, Philippines, Redwood City, restaurants
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 62: SILHOUETTES
Silhouettes “are a marvelous technique to add to your photographic repertoire because they can add drama, mystery, emotion, and atmosphere to your photos.”
Can they ever. Self’s favorite types of shots are silhouettes.
A Little Past Midnight, Jollibee Drive-Thru, Manila
Reading Nook, Self’s House in Redwood City, California. The lamp is one of her favorites: She bought it several years ago from Harvest, a furniture store in Menlo Park.
Menchit Ongpin, wearing jewelry of her own design, at a dinner with former college classmates, Fely J’s, Greenbelt 5, Makati. Self asked Menchit to turn her head so she could capture her in silhouette.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
A Photo-A-Week Challenge: TRADITIONS
September 7, 2019 at 11:32 pm (Conversations, Dearest Mum, destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Relatives, Sundays)
Tags: Manila, memories, The Philippines
This week’s Photo-A-Week Challenge asks us to “share photos showing a tradition you have.”
Self is visiting Dearest Mum in Manila. Been a whirl of activities, since there are many people to see.
She had a small get-together with her college classmates, and lunch with one of Dearest Mum’s oldest friends, Tita Ateta Gana.
College Reunion: Fely J’s, Greenbelt 5, Makati
Tita Ateta Gana and her daughter Tessa treated self and Dearest Mum to lunch at Romulo’s
Finally, self’s headboard back home in Redwood City: made by a metallurgical engineer, to self’s own design: an atis tree!
Self’s headboard in Redwood City, CA: Made in the Philippines
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Tim Dee’s LANDFILL and the Night Market at Old Delhi
August 10, 2019 at 2:13 am (Conversations, Food and Drink, Places, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: Fridays, India
Tim Dee’s gorgeous book – about gulls, and human waste, and interdependence, and evolution – is making self think about India.
She’s back in Old Delhi, the night market. She has a guide, but everything is just TOO. MUCH. The people, the open vats of food, the crowding, the muddy gutters, the smells.
She couldn’t resist buying food (Someone told her cooked food was okay): she tried some samosas, wrapped in an old newspaper. Delicious!
When she had finished, she looked vainly around for a garbage can. She clutched that oily piece of newspaper in her hand, alley after alley after alley. Finally, she asked her guide where she could dispose of her trash. The guide pointed straight down.
Self was confused. “Where?” she asked, looking at her feet.
“Just throw it,” the guide said. Meaning: anywhere. Throw it anywhere. Right here if you want.
Self looked around, and saw that other people were doing just as the guide suggested: eating and then dropping the containers on the street as they walked, never breaking stride.
She truly felt as if she was in a nightmare. The idea of eating something and then just dropping the wrapping or container ON THE GROUND while walking around. Oh God. She almost heaved.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
