June 26, 2017 at 6:00 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Lists, Movies, plans, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: action movies, England, Fort Bragg, humor, London, memories, Mondays, Naomi Watts, Oxford, performances, praise, summer, summer movies
Self has been so starved for movies.
In a prevous life, she’d be in her local cine-plex every other day.
The past couple of years, though, unless she feels really driven, she’ll go months without seeing a movie.
Here are some of the ways she shows her movie geek street cred:
Oxford, UK: She gave up seeing the Ashmolean in favor of watching Captain America (In all fairness, the movie theatre was so conveniently situated: just across from Gloucester Green)
London: She walked — walked — in full summer heat, from Russell Square to Shaftesbury Avenue, simply to watch X-Men in the Odeon.
Fort Bragg, CA: She went during a lull in a storm. The movie? Kingsmen, with Colin Firth. When she came out of the movie, the wind was blowing flat out. Self thought she was going to be swept into the ocean.
Now, in the past four days, she has seen three movies:
- Band Aid
- Beatriz at Dinner
- Wonder Woman
Sorry to say, she nearly fell asleep during the action sequences at the end of Wonder Woman. But woke right up again when she saw, in the closing credits, the name of her friend’s daughter:
DIRECTED BY PATTY JENKINS
Of the movies she’s seen so far this summer, her favorite would be Beatriz at Dinner. For Connie Britton and John Lithgow’s performances.
Today, she’s going to see The Book of Henry, even though it hasn’t gotten good reviews. She loves Naomi Watts, even though she’s been so under-used by Hollywood lately.
A long time ago, self met a Mills College student at one of her San Francisco readings. Chatting with the young woman after the reading, the student revealed she made money by working part-time as an exotic dancer. And self happened to mention how much she liked Naomi Watts (What’s the connection to exotic dancing? Nothing), and the young woman said even though Watts had turned 40, if the young woman were a man, she’d definitely consider her hot.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 17, 2017 at 3:37 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Family, Flowers, Links, Places, postaday, Relatives, Traveling)
Tags: England, flower photography, Gardens, London, memories, photography, postaday, postaweek, Saturday, Wordpress
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is FOCUS.
David W. asks:
Are you a stickler for getting in close to your subjects and capturing every detail, or do you prefer a more ethereal look that illustrates the sensations of the moment? Or both?
Self definitely falls into the latter group.
Much has happened in the world in the four months self traveled through England, Ireland, and France. She took this picture standing on the steps of London’s St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where she’d gone to listen to a candlelight Pachelbel Canon concert:
Iconic Double-Decker: London, Early June 2017
Before London, self was in Paris. She spent one day at Monet’s Garden in Giverney, which was awash in blooms:
Blooming in Monet’s Garden in Giverney, Early June 2017
Finally, Versailles. The lines were incredible. It took all of her niece Irene’s ingenuity to get us both inside. Self took this picture staring through the gilt iron gates at the front entrance, on a very hot afternoon in late May:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 14, 2017 at 5:27 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Links, Places, Plays, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: Emma Rice, England, London, memories, photography, postaday, postaweek, praise, Shakespeare, summer, Wikipedia, Wordpress
The bokeh that resulted give the lights of the city a magical quality and creates a unique look for a heavily photographed location.
— David W., The Daily Post
Self had to look up the definition of “bokeh”, here.
Last night, self saw “Tristan and Yseult” at Shakespeare’s Globe. Such a beautiful, high-energy production, Emma Rice’s last as Director at the Globe.
Audience Leaving the Globe After “Tristan and Yseult”: Tuesday, 13 June 2017
Leaving Shakespeare’s Globe after a performance of “Tristan and Yseult,” Tuesday 13 June 2017
Going home, over London Bridge, she snapped this shot of Big Ben:
London Bridge Last Night, Around 10 p.m.
And this one of the London Eye:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 9, 2017 at 2:33 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Links, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, breakfast, California, coffee, desserts, Fridays, Ireland, memories, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, websites, writing process
Self originally posted a different photo for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, but that was because she hadn’t read the prompt, only looked at the title, boo.
The prompt is supposed to be about finding Photo Ops In Your Own House.
Since self hasn’t been in her own house in years, here are the closest things to it:
- Her writing table at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, with her cup of coffee next to her MacBook Air. She always starts the day with a pot of coffee.
- A friend’s house in San Gabriel, CA
Crushing the Writing: Thursday, 2 July
Having breakfast outside with Connie Ignacio Genato, friends since grade school in Manila
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 4, 2017 at 7:04 pm (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Links, Publishers, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, Events, fantasy, Literary Magazines, memories, Readings, restaurants, short story, Washington DC
Read it at Sixth Engine in Washington DC, at a group reading organized by Quarterly West in conjunction with AWP February 2017. The editors took a chance with this one, it’s all fractured syntax and stars a professor named Fire Lizard. Self is writing a sequel right now.
What a blast:
Quarterly West reading at Sixth Engine, Washington DC, February 2017
Discussion of the First Corollary: What is average is perfect. Thoughts dark as dark. Big arguing with her. But but but. Her winking at me behind his back. Me thinking: sunlight and glass.
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June 4, 2017 at 6:09 am (destinations, Lists, Places, postaday, Sundays)
Tags: art, California, Capitola, Golden Gate Park, memories, museum, postaday, postaweek, San Francisco, Wordpress
The Beach at Capitola
101 North
Missing home and friends and familiar places:
- The beach at Capitola
- Highway 101 on the northbound approach to San Francisco
- The sculpture garden in the de Young Museum
- More Capitola beaches
Stay tuned.
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June 3, 2017 at 9:24 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Filipino Writers, Lists, postaday, Publishers, Relatives, short story collections, Traveling, Venice, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: AWP, Los Angeles, Mayor of the Roses, memories, Miami University Press, postaday, postaweek, teaching, UCLA Extension, Wordpress, writing conferences
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is FRIENDS.
Which is a very fun theme!
Three Cheers for UCLA Extension’s Writers Program! Love the people. Here they are, doing Spin the Wheel at the 2016 AWP Book Fair in Los Angeles.
Keith Tuma of Miami University Press, at the 2016 AWP Book Fair in Los Angeles
Self and Irene, Café Flor, San Marco Square, Venice: November, 2015
- Nutschell Ann Windsor, Program Administrator, UCLA Extension Writers Program (She writes, too!)
- Keith Tuma, Director of Miami University Press, which published self’s Mayor of the Roses, the first in their fiction series
- Amy Toland at last year’s AWP Book Fair in Los Angeles
- Irene Lacson, niece and travel buddy
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 28, 2017 at 1:06 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Family, Holidays, Niece, Personal Bookshelf, Places, postaday, Relatives, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: happiness, memories, novel, Paris, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
Self with her usual gear: The book she’s reading is the novel THIS IS YOUR LIFE, HARRIET CHANCE!
A Woman stares out into the gardens of the Chateau de Vaux-le-Vicomte. Woman stood there so long that self got tired of waiting for her to move and made her a part of the picture.
Mementos of a Trip, Never To Be Forgotten: Paris, May 2017
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May 24, 2017 at 9:10 pm (Artists and Writers, Eavesdropping, Links, Places, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: art, memories, museums, Paris, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is EVANESCENT.
What is fleeting, what is most evanescent.
Look at the pictures she chose to take at the Musee de l’Orangerie. Instead of waiting for people to clear out of her photograph, they became part of the moment. And that was even before she found out what this week’s Photo Challenge was.
Moments. That’s all she was interested in capturing this afternoon. Apparently.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 22, 2017 at 8:14 am (Books, Family, Memoirs, Women Writers)
Tags: history, memoir, memories, Mondays, South-East Asia, Vietnam, Vietnam War
Early 1960s. The “war” was the Vietnam War, which pitted the North, where Moi’s parents were from, against the South, to where they fled:
How long does it take for a mother to read Alone in the World and The Story of Perrine to her child? My mother read to me almost every evening, because my parents went out only three or four times a year, and never had guests. It was wartime, but that doesn’t explain it — war had only just begun and nobody imagined at the time that it would last some 15 years and that we’d face shortages of everything, especially freedom, the basic freedom to move around as we chose.
This sense of frugality was something my parents were born with, just as others live with a heart murmur or an irregular heartbeat. It was the region of their birth, the North, that had triggered this simmering anxiety.
At bedtime, my mother would decide on a number of pages, but I would beg her to carry on, and she was always happy to continue the story of Rémi the abandoned child or of Perrine Paindavoine, an orphan searching for her family . . . From one episode to the next, in those days before TV series, I traveled from one family to another, and from town to town, in the comfort of knowing I would fall asleep sated with emotions.
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