September 19, 2019 at 4:40 am (Artists and Writers, Dearest Mum, Family, Filipino Writers, Great First Lines, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Relatives, short story collections, Traveling, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: humor, Manila, The Philippines
(Read all the way to the end; this post has many digressions)
Re-reading a fantastic short story, “Hothouse,” by Gilda Cordero-Fernando, a mimeographed copy of which self just pulled from a closet overflowing with old files.
Thank you, Jennie and Marie Kondo for inspiring self to organize! She had to drop everything and leave for Manila for two weeks, supposedly Dearest Mum Read the rest of this entry »
September 5, 2019 at 12:35 am (destinations, Family, Filipino Writers, Flowers, Links, Relatives, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: Manila, seasons, The Philippines, transitions
To self, FALL means changing weather and fading summer flowers.
It is rainy season in Manila, which means grey skies:
Self loves the light:
As the weather turns, the hydrangeas on self’s front porch are starting to fade:
Hydrangeas on Front Porch, September 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
August 9, 2019 at 4:44 am (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Filipino Writers, Lists, Places, Traveling, Weather, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, horror, Ireland, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, work-in-progress, writing process
from the Dictionary of Birds (1985):
from Birds of the Western Palearctic (Unforgivable, in self’s view, that Dee fails to provide a date of publication):
Self’s horror story The Rorqual (currently 51 pages — self is so out of control!) uses exactly these kinds of dictionary definitions (in self’s case, pages long) to describe her ‘pagos’ and her ‘longnecks’ and her other what-not. She birthed this horror in Tyrone Guthrie. She can’t seem to write any of it until she returns to Annaghmakerrig. California is just too dry, too intensely hot, too savagely suburban.
Stay tuned.
August 3, 2019 at 10:31 pm (Books, destinations, Flowers, Links, Movies, Places, plans, Recommended, Weather)
Tags: California, Garden, inspiration, psychology, Redwood City, Saturday, summer, summer movies
Self’s current book, Mihaly Czsikszentmihalyi’s FLOW: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE is a very, very interesting book.
Her son and daughter-in-law were Psychology majors at Claremont, the school where the author taught. In fact, she read about him in the Claremont Graduate University alumni magazine, The Flame.
She is trying to practice Flow thinking (see graph below). She is trying to achieve “complexity” in her consciousness. This will be her project for the rest of the summer.
She thinks this goal is very much tied in with the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: TAKING A BREAK.
Today, she walked downtown, which she hadn’t done in two weeks. Courthouse Square was empty. Nevertheless, the trip was not in vain, for she saw a movie: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Is this a ‘Flow’ experience? Self thinks it is. Watching movies is one of self’s most enjoyable activities.
Mid-Afternoon, Courthouse Square, Redwood City, CA
And, she spends A LOT of time in her garden, where her efforts are repaid with gorgeous blooms like this one, on her Sheila’s Perfume rose:
Sheila’s Perfume, last week of July 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
July 23, 2019 at 3:52 am (Recommended, Surprises, Weather)
Tags: Mondays, summer
Self is soooo glad this little thingamajig from Manila still works. She found it in a desk drawer (she’s doing massive excavations of every single closet in her house). She has no air-conditioning so it is really handy. Amazing! All she needs to do is lift that thing right against her face. Heaven!
Cool!
She also JUST noticed that the thingamajig is shaped like a penguin. Must sell like hotcakes in Manila. Or other hot places.
Stay tuned.
July 21, 2019 at 5:36 am (Books, destinations, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Memoirs, Places, Recommended, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, English writers, Kepler's, memoir, Menlo Park, novel, restaurants, Saturday, summer
Bookstores are fine places.
Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park: That woman is very wisely dressed.
Staff Picks, Kepler’s Books
More Staff Picks! Leanne Shapton’s mother is Pinay.
The order line at Café Borrone, around 10 a.m.
July 12, 2019 at 5:12 am (Conversations, Lists, Places, television, Weather)
Tags: "The View", California, causes, CNN, elections, news, politics, summer
California light is harsh. There are no subtleties between light and dark.
You’re young and then you’re suddenly old. It just happens.
We’re at the very middle of summer. After tomorrow, the days will get shorter. Self is sorry that she didn’t enjoy the summer as much as she should have. The weather every day was so unsettling: some days cool, like early spring. And then, the very next day, intensely hot.
She loves watching CNN: that succession of animatronic talking heads. The best moments of the Democratic Campaign so far have been: 1) Pete Buttigieg being confronted by a crowd of angry black citizens of South Bend, asking him if he believed in Black Lives Matter (“Are you asking me if black lives matter?” Buttigieg asked. “Of course they do.” A woman yelled: SAY IT. WE WANT TO HEAR YOU SAY IT. High drama, self loved it. Buttigieg did not back down. 2) Michael Bennett’s speech highlights, shown this morning before he came on The View. Until this morning, she barely registered a thought about him. WOW, that speech they aired this morning was a scorcher.
Both Buttigieg and Bennet are long shots, but they each represent a uniquely American energy. Which is COMPLETELY LACKING in the GOP.
She watched both Democratic debates. She was not enthused by Kamala’s unleashing on Biden. Self means, someone had to go after Biden, and no one was doing it, good for Kamala for having the keenest ambition of all the candidates. But really, it felt almost too easy. She won’t find it that easy to go after POTUS the same way.
Self tries to imagine a presidential debate between Trump and Kamala. She doesn’t think he’ll go for creepily stalking her across the stage, as he did with Hillary (Or maybe he will. Who knows? He’s clearly used that tactic before. On someone. Alas, Hillary was completely unprepared for the grotesque gesture)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
May 27, 2019 at 4:31 pm (Holidays, Surprises, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: humor, London, memories, Mondays, nostalgia
Prague was very pretty but people do not speak English there.
London is adorable because as usual there is traffic and the skies are grey.
It’s another Bank Holiday. OMG, so many of these! Can someone please explain what is going on?
The last thing she remembers doing in London was watching John Wick 3 at the Odeon on Tottenham (Five Stars!) and meeting Jennie for dinner at Chez Nous immediately after. Then walking with Jennie down Great Russell Street and pointing out the British Museum and the Antiquarian Bookseller and paying a very brief visit to the Bloomsbury Hotel (The lobby looks like most of the space is taken up by a bar. Or mebbe it’s always been that way and she’s just mis-remembering?)
In Paddington, she used an ATM to withdraw pounds. A message told her: PUT YOUR CASH AWAY QUICKLY.
Then, as if she needed another reminder, the PA system began to squawk: THERE ARE PICKPOCKETS HERE.
She dashed into an exit elevator like her pants were on fire. GOTTA GET OUT OF PADDINGTON I’M SURE I’M BEING STALKED BY SOMEONE WHO SAW ME USE THE ATM.
The taxi rank was beautiful: it snaked all the way back, looked like at least 50 taxis, each moving smartly forward evey few seconds. She wished she had the wherewithal to take a picture. But she was SO deathly afraid of pickpockets. Seriously, though, that is some serious taxi business going on at Paddington.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
May 26, 2019 at 11:42 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended, Sundays, Traveling, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: Fowey, literary festivals, novel, Prague, spring
Diane Setterfield was the guest speaker at this year’s Fowey Festival of Arts & Literature which self also attended. Unfortunately, self arrived a few days after Setterfield’s event had taken place. Self was tempted to get a copy of Once Upon a River, Setterfield’s new novel, at Bookends of Fowey, but it was in hardback and, at that time, she still had a lot of traveling to do.
Today, in Prague, self walked from her hotel to the Globe Bookstore on Pstrossova 6, Prague 1. Regretfully they did not carry any of Setterfield’s books.
But, it was a beautiful day. Everyone seemed to be out upon the river.
Vltava River, Prague: Sunday, 26 May 2019
It was a perfect day for a walk. Nice to see families out and about.
Near Prague’s National Theatre: Sunday, 26 May 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
May 16, 2019 at 4:49 pm (Conversations, destinations, Holidays, Links, Places, postaday, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: Fridays, memories, Paris
For only her second post participating in Nadia Merrill’s Photo-a-Week Challenge, she has to go back, waaaaay back, to 30 December 2017. She’d just spent one of the loneliest Christmases ever, in Paris. Lo and behold, when it was time for her to leave, she realized she’d come to feel comfortable in Paris (after spending two weeks holed up in a hotel just a few blocks from the Arc de Triomphe, where a very discreet hotel staff never asked her a single personal question, and only interfered with her routine once, when they insisted she go to the Louvre on Christmas Day — No lines, Madame!)
This week’s Photo-a-Week Challenge is RAINDROPS.
She thinks that’s what’s going on in these pictures. Or mebbe she was just too tired and it was too early in the morning and her hand was shaking. She was in a cab headed to the airport, where she was going to fly, first, to London, and then to the Philippines.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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