Peeved

I am still pissed. A couple of days ago I was picked on, bullied, scrubbed to the bone, dragged across the floor, ego flattened, and kicked in the butt like I’ve never been before. I’ve been through a lot in my life, but I never felt so small and humiliated and angry as I was at that moment. Looking back, it really turned out well in the end and the whole display was for my benefit, but it hurt like hell and I do not want to be ambushed that way ever again.

I am still angry. I don’t think I can snap out of this soon. I am so peeved I want to get up and take the world by its collar and shake it till all the silly, snooty, pompous pricks fall out. I know it was for my own good, but I hate getting hurt. I can’t promise that I will not resort to witchcraft someday to remedy this pain, but I will shut up about it after I click on the publish button on this entry and move on with my life. I know my truth and that is enough. The effing bastards can just choke on the dust I leave behind as I (trail)blaze my way to the future.



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"Well behaved women never make history."
-- Maria Shriver

Illustration Friday: Monster

Control Freak

Ink on paper

27 March 2006

When I think of monsters I think of the dark things lurking inside us.

This is part of a series of drawings/studies I've been making for my sculpture/installation (tentatively) called "ROOTS." I still can't decide what to do with them!

Illustration Friday: Feet

Not a Hobbit

18 March 2006

Ballpoint pen on paper

This was inspired by René Magritte's 'La Modèle Rouge' and 'The Treason of Images.' And, of course, Frodo. :) I am a big LOTR fan!

Swimming lessons

Drown
Originally uploaded by Fith Fathing Magic.

I can’t swim. That’s probably one of the deepest, darkest, silliest things I am most ashamed to admit about myself. Well, that and the fact that I don’t know how to drive. Yeah, I know, with my luck, if I ever get behind the wheel, I would probably run over some poor unsuspecting bastard jail-walking on EDSA (The traffic is always bad there so nobody ever gets hit), fall off the Guadalupe bridge, and drown in the murky, poisonous water of the Pasig river. Not exactly the most glamorous way to exit this world, okay, but let’s leave that for another post. Right now (FO-CUS, FO-CUS), this is all about my goat-like aversion to water and my determination to frolic freely one day at the beach.

I never did learn how to swim. Believe me, I’ve tried countless of times to overcome my lack of buoyancy in the pool. I even have a copy of my High School transcript showing that I passed swimming class in my junior year. HAH! Goes to show you can’t really trust certificates and ‘official’ documents to prove anything. God knows how I managed to wrangle a C. The teacher probably knew how hopeless I was, took pity on me, and turned a blind eye when I took the final exam. I remember I used to grab the sides of the pool (do you call them gutters?) and with one hand would hop my way to the other end. Come to think of it, she probably gave me high marks for my creativity, gumption, and sheer cheekiness. Or maybe she didn’t want to see me for another semester.

It’s not the act of swimming that repulses me really; It’s the act of submerging myself in water I’m not comfortable with. I get panicky and shrill when the water reaches my shin. I blame all of this on my irrational fear of suffocating and that unfortunate incident when I was 5 or 6 when my nanny left me floating on a life preserver. I drifted alone, mildly fascinated by the contrast of temperatures between my butt (which was in the water) and my steadily toasting knees, for what seemed like an eternity. I don’t know why, but I didn’t make a sound nor called out for help. With steely countenance I calmly observed my one-inch tall sister build sandcastles along the edge of the beach.

Although nothing dramatic really happened to me that day—my nanny found me after some time and I got to eat chicken adobo with rice for merienda—I began hating dipping my toes in large bodies of water soon after. That explains why I never became a let’s-scuba-dive-and-commune-with-the-fish-this-weekend kind of girl. I must admit, though, that I like being near the sea. I love looking at it from the top of a cliff and hear the waves crashing violently on the rocks below. I always say that I would like to grow old in a house rooted by the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. I’d take that over white-washed beach houses anytime.

I get better and bolder throughout the years, though, at tackling my irrational fear of swimming. Thanks to the potent mix of beer, red wine, and other—ehem—mind-distracting, courage enforcing substances, I was able to dive into the Mediterranean sea during my late-night despedida at the beach last year. Dive in meaning I waded into the water hand-in-hand with a friend, stopped when the water level reached my waist, then dipped my head in to complete my wild beach-babe look. Since I couldn’t follow my friends swimming freely in the water, I sat down and let the waves lap at my shoulders. Unfortunately, my friends and I weren’t the only energetic ones that night—the waves excitedly smashed again and again, one after the other, against the sand, repeatedly dragging this squealing little piglet from the edge to the middle of the sea and back again. So much for poise and glamour.

I think I am prepared to give swimming another go this summer. I don’t see myself volunteering to become a lifeguard or passing each free weekend schmoozing with the pretty fishies, but I think swimming would be a good skill to learn. When you come down to it it’s really not about doing fancy butterfly strokes and clean, precise flips. It’s about learning how to breathe and let go, to know when to sprint and when to keep still, of staying afloat no matter what, and knowing when to stop moving, get out of the water, and call it a day. Who knows? These things might even help me on dry land.

Illustration Friday: Tattoo

I made two drawings this week...

Bang, Bang

14 March 2006

Ink on paper

Do you guys remember Tattoo from Fantasy Island? It doesn't exactly look like him, I know, but I tried! It's a bit redundant--a tattooed tattoo! :)

Here's the second one:

PSSSSST!
14 March 2006
Ballpoin pen on paper

I did this one while watching TV. Don't know why I did it. Sorry Mickey! :)

Book Monster

I started cataloguing my books last night. It’s number 53 in my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I got the idea from Triplux, the website/blog of Photographer Michael Green. I still haven’t had the chance (courage, actually!) to post my to-do list in my blog (task #48), but I will probably put up a partial one soon or an update of what I’ve already done. Having it published on the world wide web is such a scary thought for me—it means that I have to make a real commitment to do everything I said I would do. I know, that’s the point of the whole exercise, but UUUFFFFFFF! Afraid. I’m also superstitious so I am wary of jinxing myself and my future. I just try to think of this as an affirmations list of things to come. It’s a very useful tool, though, for a procrastinator like me. I’m not into long-term planning either, so every little thing helps.

I’ve had my list for some time now, but I never got around to number 53 till last night. I went on a book-hunting frenzy after watching Pride and Prejudice. Twice. In a row. I absolutely adore Matthew MacFadyen’s Mr. Darcy! I wanted to prolong the lovely-touchy-lighter-than-air-kilig feeling I got from the movie by reading the novel. I knew I read it a looooong, loooooooong time ago, but I wasn’t sure if I had a copy at home or not. It turns out that I don’t. Sigh. So in my desperation to keep my spirits up, I looked for a similar type of book (i.e. something light, sweet, romantic) and, unfortunately, couldn’t find one. NADA. What I did see and what I realized was that I have a vast collection of novels that were written by white, middle-aged, angst-filled men who are (almost all) dead. Hmmm… Interesting.

I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of my collection. I forgot my initial assignment to find a "happy" book and wanted to read every title I saw. Julian Barnes’s Staring at the Sun… I don’t remember reading this. I had forgotten that I had Dostoevsky’s Demons! I want to read Witches by Roald Dahl again. Oooooh… and I have a copy of his Tales of the Unexpected. I love, love, love them all! God, it would be hard to just pick one to read again.

TING!!! Amidst the flurry of dust and excitement I created by rummaging through my library, I challenged myself to name 10 of my all time favorite books. VERY difficult thing to do, right? Quite cruel, actually, considering I have so many to choose from. Which ones can I read over and over again? Which ones would I take with me when I move again? I certainly love most of the books I have, but if I can narrow down my list, which ones would make it? Which ones touched me the most?

I didn’t give myself much time to think and just brainstormed for a couple of minutes. I decided not to include the Lord of the Rings trilogy in the list because, well, it’s a given already. I also wanted to keep it to one book per author, otherwise, the top five places would all be occupied by just one person. The following came off the top of my head:

1) The Stranger-Albert Camus
2) Kitchen/N.P.-Banana Yoshimoto
3) Franny and Zooey-JD Salinger
4) Letters to a Young Poet/The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge-Ranier Maria Rilke
5) Something Wicked this Way Comes-Ray Bradbury
6) Dracula-Bram Stoker
7) Darkness Visible-William Styron
8) The Garden of Abdul Gasazi-Chris Van Allsburg
9) The Talisman-Stephen King and Peter Straub
10) The Fairy Tales of Herman Hesse/Steppenwolf-Herman Hesse

The Stranger (Outsider) could be my number one choice of all time. I’ve read it more than 10 times already and I never get tired of it. I can still feel the scorching heat emanating from the book every time I read it. It’s easy enough to digest, but its simplicity belies the complexity and tension hidden underneath. I love reading it while listening to the Cure’s Killing an Arab. Camus wrote this after years of campaigning for Africans/Muslims who had been maltreated, were misunderstood, and wrongly accused of crimes. This was almost 50 years ago and, still, we face the same issues.

Most of the books I picked were "quiet" ones—not much is happening on the surface but they silently make your soul churn on the inside. They like passing though the backdoor unnoticed before whacking you over the head.

I have to write down the honorable mentions, the ones who almost made it to the list:
Romantic Movement/How Proust can Change your Life-Alain de Botton
A thousand cranes-Yasunari Kawabata
Veronika Decides to Die-Paulo Coellho (It would have been on the top 10 but my feelings about it change every time I read it. It depends on my mood, I guess)
In Search of Stones-M. Scott Peck
An Artist of the Floating World-Kazuo Ishiguro
Notes from the Underground-Fyodor Dostoevsky!
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Egypt Game, Headless Cupid, The Witches of Worm, Libby on Wednesday, etc, etc.
Madeleine L’Engle’s grown-up and kiddie/fantasy books
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series (the first 3)
The Sorrows of Young Werther-Goethe
A Prayer for Owen Meany-John Irving
Dawn-Elie Wiesl
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man-James Joyce (I brought my copy of Finnegan’s Wake to Spain and lost it!)
Gordon Korman’s Bruno and Boots series
The Lust for Life-Irving Stone

Books I’ve read recently that I liked:
Time’s Arrow-Martin Amis
Angela’s Ashes-Frank McCourt
The Life of Pi-Yann Martel
Lovely Bones-Alice Sebold
A Woman Speaks-Anais Nin
Atonement by Ian McEwan. I’ve yet to read Amsterdam.

I like reading non-fiction as well—
Man and his Symbols by Carl Jung
The Hero with a thousand faces-Joseph Campbell
Howard Gardner (Creating Minds, Framing Minds, etc)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow, Creativity)

*Special Note on NEIL GAIMAN: He is still one of my all time favorite writers. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE HIM. I didn’t include any of his books in my list though because as much as I like his novels, nothing beats his illustrated stories and comic books. He has a separate category of his own.

I realized the following things by looking through my collection:
Like a lot of people, I have a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, but I never read it.
I don’t like Hemingway.
I like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien!)
I thought I liked Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary but when I read it again recently I actually couldn’t finish it because my blood pressure went out of control. What was I thinking?!?!
I LOVE Short stories. I have a lot of anthologies and collections of horror ones.
I’ve never read mills and boone’s (spelling?) but I loved reading sweet dreams
I have 3 copies of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (hardbound/US, paperback/UK, Spanish)
I frequently peruse through Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable
I have a Klingon-English Dictionary and 2 Star Trek Encyclopedias
I have 3 For Dummies books: Vegetarian Cooking, Astrology, and Art History (which I can’t find!)
My favorite and most used cookbook is Filipino Cooking Here and Abroad.
I love Shel Silverstein but, amazingly, I don’t have a copy of any of his books
I can’t find my copy of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild things Are
I’m not much of a fan of Latin American Literature—I love Rayuela (Hopscotch) by Julio Cortázar though. A Hundred Years of Solitude was just that—a hundred years of solitude.
I’ve never read Cervantes’s Don Quiojote (I read the comic book or Cliff Notes for school). I would like to read it in Spanish someday.
I’ve read Noli Me Tangere in Spanish. I am still looking for a copy of El Filibusterismo.
I only have one management/business book in my collection—Make it So: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek the Next Generation by Wess Roberts, PhD and Bill Ross. You have to trick me into reading one of those.

WHEW.

As you can see, #53 is turning out to be a real chore. Distractions, distractions. Such an enormous task of making an organized list for someone with an attention span of a five year old. GARGH. And if I wasn’t so OC (obsessive-compulsive) about it, I would probably finish in no time. Thank God for Excel though.

The spider weaves again

Porcelain
Originally uploaded by Fith Fathing Magic.

The spider wove her magic web
the friendship was sealed as well.
The foundation was weak, so what?
Did anyone really care?
Around and around with her silken thread,
she created a beautiful design.
We made a promise, together forever
but our hearts were never entwined

Together we were great, we had fun
but the echo of our time was a hollow laughter.
We forged a bond of thin silk strands,
did we really think it would last forever?
A strong wind blew, the thin strands broke,
the spider left to weave again.
But nothing was left of the friendship we knew
except for the memories of what was then

Grounded

Dead bird in Toledo
Originally uploaded by Fith Fathing Magic.

A friend accused me once of having a bizarre interest in dead birds. He pointed that out to me while we were in Toledo, standing in the immense shadow of the cathedral. He found it outrageous that while all the tourists were busy posing outside its façade or, like him, admiring the architecture, I was down on my knees with my camera snapping away at the battered remains of a pigeon. The site was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful places I’d ever visited and clearly merited a piece of my film, but I knew it was not in danger of being picked up any minute by the garbage collectors. I had my priorities straight.

Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t deny to him (or to anyone else) that I had a “thing” for these unfortunate critters; it wasn’t the first time that I had been caught indulging in this morbid act. People who have seen my photo albums have also taken note of this. Mind you, it’s not an obsession or anything pathological. At least I hope not. I don’t go around searching for carcasses in gutters or ambush unsuspecting sparrows so I could have a nifty snapshot. I just get an impulse to click away when I see one lying on the sidewalk.

My compulsion to record the avian dead started about two years ago while I was walking home from school. The streets were always peppered with bodies in various stages of decomposition, and I remember that I used to cringe with disgust every time I would spy one. Then suddenly, one day, I realized that I didn’t bother to cross to the other side of the street anymore to avoid a bird. I even found myself slowing down to quietly inspect the remains. I wanted to see the broken places, the details of the withered feathers, and the fascinating structure of the wings. The place itself—whether the muddied pavement, the pile of rubbish, or the lamppost nearby—interested me. They were the unstirred witnesses to an event. I can’t pinpoint exactly what happened inside me, maybe it was the daily dose of seeing those bloodied bodies, but I unexpectedly became immune to (or hyper aware of?) death.

It’s a cheap excuse to say that I like taking pictures of dead birds because I like death per se. I don't do it for the sake of being morose. Or because I like blood and gore. Or violence, even. I’d like to think that I am capable of avoiding being, you know, literal. I am not trying to frame death with my lens. And although enthralling, this is more than aesthetics.

It is really more about me trying to catch my moment with the place (ehem... Kodak, anyone?). What strikes me the most is the solitude that marks the space and the loneliness of the body. There’s a certain sadness that hovers over the street whether it’s busy or not. And it dawned on me that it is not just the figure splayed across the concrete road that is alone, it is also the one who looks at it. Whenever I see a carcass it makes me feel as if I’m privy to some big, dark secret. It’s like knowing something most people are not even aware of (though it’s lying right there beside their feet) and of sharing the experience or being connected with something outside of yourself.

Ironically, though, it is precisely this connection that severs you from everything else—Death isolates you from the living even if you are just a passing witness. Even for just a second, it rips you from your reality and makes you think of finality, fragility, honesty, and truth, and of being grounded in every sense of the word.

Illustration Friday: Insect

Insect, 5 March 2006

Ballpoint pen and pencil on paper

I'm posting this for Illustration Friday. I'm so happy I finally did it! My first! :) It's good practice... makes me draw even if I don't feel like it. You guys should try it!

Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow

Originally uploaded by Fith Fathing Magic.

I made this last year, a study/sculpture about SHADOW.

I think it's sad that a lot of people relinquish ownership of their lives to others or to objects and situations and circumstances so quickly that they forget they have the power to change things and can actually take control of what happens to them. It’s so easy to give excuses not to move our butts and push for the things we want or point fingers when things don’t go our way—“It was his fault,” “I had no choice,” “I was so overwhelmed by it,” “He made me feel so insignificant so I stopped talking,” or “I’m afraid of what I’d do if I don’t get this job.” We constantly forget that we are responsible for our lives and that we can control how we react to things and not the other way around. It’s rather unfortunate that most just won’t bother to stand up and take what’s theirs. In the end they become a mere impression of who they are and what they should be.

Four Weeks

One month. Have I really been away from cyberspace that long? I had almost forgotten that I had a blog. Like I said before, real life gets in the way of blogging. I’ve been disturbing the universe in other ways! I guess it’s good that I stayed away for a long time because it shows that I can survive without my computer, but I can’t help but feel like I missed out on other things.

Four weeks is a lot of time. I’ve done a lot of things, I’ve challenged myself in different ways, and now I am back, taking a break, coming up for air. I’ve received a lot of emails from friends who were wondering where I’d been. I was online practically everyday and would reply to emails as if they were instant messages. Then nada. Some are used to this Steph though—I go on cycles and tend to hibernate once in a while. Some think I’m flake, others anti-social, but great friends know I’m just being myself. So what if I am a flake or anti-social. HAHAHAHA.

It’s weird to be blogging again. I miss the net, though. I missed reading other blogs (especially Neil Gaiman’s!). I’ve been submerged in the world of shapes and colors for a long time so I am really having a hard time flipping the switch and think in words again. This business of words is rather difficult.

Thirty-one days of not writing… I’m not totally out of the loop though even if I haven’t surfed in a while. I still read the papers and watch CNN and the BBC (I get hypnotized by the crawl sometimes). The internet is different, though. It’s more immediate than the other sources. Plus you get to read the points of view of normal people like me. Kinda reminds you that we are all the same and that we all have opinions, however diverse and contradicting they are. It’s a comforting thought. And I’ve been wanting to pick on some stuff, too, like the whole Danish drawings brouhaha, the growing racism in Football, and the whole EDSA/coup attempt/declaration and lifting of PP 1017, but again, words, words, words. Too much for my right-sided brain to handle right now. Maybe tomorrow or in another month. :)