Self’s choice is RED.
Self at 19, with Masako in Shibuya, Tokyo
Red Woven Bag from the Philippines, in Self’s Closet
Self’s Red Knapsack: The Penn Club, London, 23 November 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: COLOR OF YOUR CHOICE
February 13, 2019 at 9:06 pm (Personal Bookshelf, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Japan, London, memories, nostalgia, Philippines
CHARLIE CHAN IS DEAD, Vol. 1
February 5, 2019 at 8:56 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Filipino Writers, Memoirs, Publishers, Relatives, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, grief, illness, Mayor of the Roses, medicine, memoir, memories, Miami University Press, short story, teaching, writing process
For the workshop this weekend, re-reading some old stories to show different ways of writing memoir. In particular, thinking of a story called Lenox Hill, December 1991, which Jessica Hagedorn included in the anthology Charlie Chan is Dead.
When Jessica contacted self to solicit a piece, self had nothing, nothing, nothing.
Her sister had died just the month before. She did keep a diary, though.
The diary became the story. The first story in what later become a cycle of grief stories: Mayor of the Roses (Miami University Press)
For a while, a course called Ethics in Medicine, taught at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, included the story in their syllabus.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, 27 January 2019
January 28, 2019 at 1:05 am (Explorers, Lists, Movies, Philippine History, Sundays)
Tags: history, memories, news, politics, San Francisco Chronicle, South-East Asia, The Philippines, Vietnam War
Loving the cover story:
In 1969:
Nixon became President, the Beatles released Abbey Road, Sly and the Family Stone released Want To Take You Higher, The Who released Tommy.
Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid premiered. TV’s Star Trek got cancelled.
Woodstock happened, Chappaquiddick happened, the moon landing happened, Berkeley’s People Park happened, Charles Manson happened, The Gap opened its 1st store, the Vietnam draft lottery was televised, William Calley was convicted of six counts of murder for My Lai.
Self was in summer camp in England. That’s where she heard about the moon landing.
Ferdinand Marcos won re-election as President of the Philippines.
Wonder what groundbreaking books were published that year? No mention in the Chronicle. There must have been some.
Where was Gloria Steinem?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Sunday Read: Philippine Religious Imagery in Ivory (Exhibit Catalogue, Intramuros, Manila, 1982)
January 21, 2019 at 12:24 am (Dearest Mum, Family, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Philippine History, Sundays)
Tags: Manila, memories, art, exhibits, The Philippines
Self’s childhood home in Manila was crammed with santoses (religious statues). Dearest Mum collected them.
L: San Vicente Ferrer R: San Pedro Martir
The santos carvers were unknown. It was an industry, like making furniture. The head and hands of the figures were usually ivory.
The caption for San Pedro Martir reads, in entirety:
- Ivory head and hands on batikuling body. A bolo (machete), now missing, the instrument of his martyrdom, was originally embedded in his cranium. He is usually depicted holding a palm of martyrdom, also missing. 19th century.
Batikuling is a Philippine tree, presently listed as endangered.
Stay tuned.
Proust and Versailles
January 19, 2019 at 3:37 am (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Places, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: Fridays, memories, novel, reading lists
As self lingers over the Introduction to Lydia Davis’s translation of Swann’s Way, she learns that Proust wrote most of Remembrance of Things Past in Versailles, in an apartment on 102, boulevard Haussmann. The apartment is now owned by a bank, but one can still see the bedroom where he spent most of his writing time.
Self’s niece planned a trip to Versailles in May 2017, and self, so impressed by niece’s thirst for adventure, agreed to accompany her. The lines to get into the palace were overwhelming (and most were Asian tourists). It was hot.
But — Proust! If only she had known!
Here are a few pictures from that visit.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Close-Up or Macro
December 5, 2018 at 6:22 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Movies, Places, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, England, humor, indulgence, London, memories, museums, Oxford, restaurants
Self loves posting for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge. It gives her a chance to post photographs from her archives that might otherwise be overlooked. Such as the close-up of her bedside lamp at The Penn Club, where she stays whenever she is in London:
Room # 1, The Penn Club: Bedford Place, London
Or this tea-set:
London Review Cakeshop: Bury St., London
Or this amusing pair of socks:
Gift Shop, Ashmolean: Oxford, England
Thank you, Cee Neuner, for the prompt!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Stonehenge/Pacifica
October 14, 2018 at 12:02 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Places, Sundays, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: England, flash fiction, history, inspiration, Literary Magazines, memories, mysteries, short story, Stonehenge, Wigleaf
In 2014, self went to see Stonehenge.
She signed up for a small-group tour, the only one allowed on the site towards sunset. All the big tour buses had left. The guide, a retired military officer, led the group across a sheep meadow.
This is unquestionably the best approach. It allows the view to unfold gradually. You are reminded that this was how people, in time immemorial, must have approached the monument: in procession. Self could hardly contain her excitement at her first glimpse of the pillars of stone.
The mystery of the site has stayed with her. The fact that no human habitations were ever built around it. What was it used for?
From this vantage point, we could clearly see the jagged outline of the stones, just above the rise.
Well before she saw Stonehenge, she’d written about it in a piece called Stonehenge/Pacifica, published in Wigleaf, 2012.
It was a dream I had, some restless night. One of those weeks or months or years when we were worried about money.
But when were we ever not worried?
First there was the mortgage, and then the two.
And then your mother got sick, and your father died.
And my mother I think developed Alzheimer’s, but we never mentioned it.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Story-in-Progress: Problems With Sleep
September 27, 2018 at 2:24 pm (Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: memories, short story, Stanford, work-in-progress
I have problems with sleep. It gets much worse during Dead Week. I keep myself going with Red Bull and Adderall; I live off fear.
The truth is, a B at Stanford is like an F everywhere else. We’re the half-percent smartest people in the world. And we’re undergraduates, which means we’re, most of us, rich.
Re-reading Robert E. Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power
September 25, 2018 at 5:52 am (Books, Conversations, Personal Bookshelf)
Tags: advice, Bacolod, indulgences, memories, Mondays, Robert Greene, The Philippines
An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings. — Robert Greene
Plus, from one of her old journals:
- Today I had a massage . . . lol
Written, of course, in Bacolod. In Bacolod, self was always so mellow. She was never angry. A one-hour massage averaged 500 pesos, about $9. She had daily massage, over there. Heck, she could even have had two massages daily, if she felt like it. All the masahistas had strong, unerring hands. They seemed to know by instinct. Only once did self ever have a bad message in Bacolod: the woman just moved her hands skimmingly over the skin, didn’t really knead it. Ugh, self felt she’d spent a full hour just being tickled.
One night, during a massage, self kept hearing the distant, popping sounds of what she thought were gunshots. It made her so uneasy. The masahista said it was Firecrackers. Oh, it was New Year’s Eve? It had completely slipped self’s mind.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Dog Training in THE DOOR
September 11, 2018 at 9:40 pm (Books, Recommended, Surprises, Women Writers)
Tags: beagles, humor, memories, novel, pets, reading lists, translation
9/11 is almost over. Self is sick. She stayed in bed all day, reading The Door.
Magda and her husband find an abandoned puppy and take it home. Emerence, the housekeeper, becomes a completely different person with the dog: she is loving, she is affectionate.
Which reminds self of that long-ago time when her two beagles were still alive. She trained them to SIT.
Dogs Meeting Cute in Trieste
Someone later told self that if she just raised a finger, the dogs would sit. She didn’t need to say the word. And that was when self realized that every time she said the word SIT, she raised her index finger.
lol
And that person was absolutely correct! Beagles would sit if she just raised her index finger!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
