A Roman Weekend

by May Dy

I didn’t intend for my “birthday celebration” to become prolonged. I turned 22 a few days ago, last 6 May. But since it was a Monday and I had midterms, I had to wait until the weekend to see my friends (whom I haven’t seen for about two years). This coincided with a meeting/casual talk I had with some fellow poets and preceded Mother’s Day (which in my opinion shouldn’t be celebrated at all, because we’re supposed to honor mothers everyday— even with the annoyances and grievances we have with them).

The friends and the poets both (incidentally) decided to hold the meeting/celebration at Leona’s Art Restaurant, which was right in the street where I lived. (How convenient! All I had to do was to walk a few steps and if I found myself short of money, I could come home, which I did.)

Note that the two groups never knew each other and met, only peripherally, last Saturday.

I didn’t have problems with the arrangement. I look forward to these visits. Because despite being a resident of Teacher’s Village and a neighbor to these “famous” establishments (like Burger Project, Van Gogh Cafe, and Black Soup art cafe), I never really get to visit these places unless I’m with friends.

Leona’s menu consists of Italian and Mexican dishes. They’re famous for their pizza all you can and the buy two-take-three (priced at 500 pesos). They do make excellent desserts, pesto, and soups, too. Actually, in the three years that I’ve known this place, I haven’t encountered a dud in the dishes.

The dinner was followed by a brief walk to look for dessert. M wanted to try the Icescreamist which is famous for its “liquid nitrogen” and crazy ice cream flavors (one of which, G told me, is Guiness as in the Irish drink). When we got there, the place was jam-packed and looked like, pardon for the words, a crack-house or a rave party place with the ultraviolet light and black upholstery.

So we walked on and somehow ended up at a place called Ally’s All Day Breakfast near Dondae and Pino Restaurant. It fit nicely with our comfort food vibe. What I immediately noticed is the generous use of oreo cookies in their dishes. I remember “oreo truffles” and an oreo shake. We ordered oreo pancakes. The crunch of the oreo contrasted wonderfully with the softness of the pancakes. Instead of butter, vanilla ice cream was served on top.

For myself, I ordered a mocktail called “tequila sunset”.

On this one, the marriage of tangy to sweet was just right. Soda added a pleasant tingle to the tongue.

After a good amount of catch-up and gossip, I felt that it was going to rain. G and M walked me back home.

The next day, a Sunday, also Mother’s Day, it was my sister’s turn to treat my mom (and inevitably, me) to lunch. Talk about getting stuffed!

Admittedly, the two ladies in my life were more indecisive than me. At first we wanted to go to Megamall. I think we have this silent agreement that the further the place is from home, the more special it is. (And while I don’t share this kind of thought, I’ve been going along with it). I initially wanted a plain lunch in some mall nearby, since we already have a few good ones around here. But in the end, we drove around 15 kilometers to this gigantic and horribly jam-packed mall to eat at an American style restaurant— the likes of which we could’ve gone to in less than 3 kilometers.

The lunch was pleasant enough but it was the stress of that particular mall crowd that I think spoiled this Roman weekend. (A side thought: why do people walk so slow in malls? Don’t you go there to buy something? And buying has some sense of urgency and purpose. My older sister pointed out that people have begun to treat malls as parks. While malls can be places for recreation— made so by capitalist-consumerist dreams!— it’s certainly not pleasant to be walking behind a slow moving person, what some people call meanderthals.)

On the bright side: the heat of day is slowly giving way to cool, gray skies. Also, pre-enlistment for the first term (of my fourth and hopefully last year in the university) has begun.

Despite some annoyances, this Roman weekend served as a great repose and pace-maker for the numerous tasks ahead of me.

Cheers!

‘50 Shades Of Grey’ As Imagined By 6 Film Directors

by Thought Catalog

Reblogged from Thought Catalog:

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Co-written by Dominick Suzanne-Mayer.

Indie film auteur Gus Van Sant recently submitted an audition video for Focus Features’ 50 Shades of Grey film adaptation. He filmed a scene starring Alex Pettyfer as Christian Grey and an unknown actress as Ana. Focus is currently working on hiring a name director to bring their own vision of the novel to the screen.

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9 Lessons On Power And Leadership From Genghis Khan

by Thought Catalog

Reblogged from Thought Catalog:

On one end of the leadership spectrum, there is Machiavelli–conniving, ambitious and ruthless. On the other there is Cyrus the Great–humble, generous and loyal. Along this spectrum of great leaders and motivators, used so often in business books, speeches and anecdotes, there is one unmentionable: Genghis Khan. A man so evil, unwashed and bloodthirsty that he is impossible to learn from.

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15 Photos Of A Week Of Groceries From Different Countries Around The World

by Thought Catalog

Reblogged from Thought Catalog:

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Whenever I go grocery shopping I always get just enough food to last for a couple days, mostly because I don't know what I'm going to want to eat on Thursday if today is Sunday. But when I was growing up, my mother used to take us to the grocery once a week because that was the only time she could go.

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Sortes Virgilianae: A Dialogue

by May Dy

Open a book, sort randomly through the pages, stop and read. The passage can be treated as some sort of augury, a sign, or an explanation to your current state.

I learned about the lonesome game of sortes virgilianae, not incidentally, from a novel by Graham Greene: ” Travels with my Aunt”.

Being the youngest child and a very lonely one at that (my older siblings were years ahead of me), the games I played were usually one person games. I might have already played sorteswith the Bible even before I became acquainted with “Travels with my Aunt” which gave the game its name.

Even as I age, even as I learned to play group games, from time to time I come back to solitaire and sortes. Today, I decided to do something like it, but more contrived. I think it’s about time I lessened my dependence on closing my eyes and waiting for Chance to strike out.

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Clouds roll by outside and the bedroom window alternately becomes bright crystal and gloomy. When there are no clouds, I watch dust motes floating in a band of light. They’re not quite dust, really, and I’m reminded of that light are both waves and particles. Up close, incandescent.

~is it love if you use people to keep you sane, keep you “occupied” (Cyril Wong,After Albert)

Now it is dark. But the heat still envelopes me like a suffocating embrace. The curtain stirs idly, though there is no wind. The fan keeps on going in circles— thoughts appearing then disappearing, like shadows on the ground once there and the next moment, gone. There is a sound at the gate, but it is drowned by the laughter of children and the banter of mothers outside. Even this emptiness is love, the poet tells me.

~for every year of peace there have been four hundred/ years of war (Margaret Atwood, The Loneliness of a Military Historian)

Two days ago I found a good reason to restore old bridges to my past. I’ve once again begun correspondence with old friends and my dear piano teacher. I’ve always been the kind of person who likes to keep things the way they are as much as possible. I don’t fear change but, I often wonder, why change things which are good and beautiful to me? I’ve long forgotten to come after the truth, because there are as many truths as there are heads in this world.

My dear piano teacher, who plans to leave the city and live in the mountains up north, tells me that she recognizes my young self but also, that I’ve grown. She tells me about a certain “Rosamund Raymond” and why I should leave some people behind.

Imagine, I felt that I never moved an inch within. But somehow this shell has grown and so did the flesh. I felt that I never moved an inch within. But how do I explain the great distances between me and certain persons? So that when they call my name, I hardly hear them as if we were oceans apart. And their sounds turn into sea foam, washing up at my feet, turning into bubbles popping one by one, howling and roaring soundlessly in my ears.

~I will go away to a far country/ separated from you by the sea/—on which I cannot walk—/ and refrain from even sending/letters/describing my pain (Alice Walker, Walker)

Dear teacher also told me that, next time, I ought to keep copies of the letters I write to people.

I am almost living off emotionally on writing letters to people I know and like.

But to that one, it is too late. And I rather hope that the letters are now sitting in a trash bin or a dump site. Pulped and mashed into intelligible love-words, into stinky oblivion.

Putting it under a silly light: if ever I become great, famous and one of the young-dead, if he outlives me for some reason, he may sell those letters and help himself get some stem cells to prolong his life.

But none of that will ever happen: I shall die old, happy, and in obscurity. By the next line, he will become irrelevant in my life.

~Some men say an army on horse and some men say an army on foot/ and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing/ on the black earth./ But I say it is/ what you love. (Sappho, If Not, Winter fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson)

Without shame, I admit that when utterly depressed, I open up the cashbox and count the money inside.

Let’s go back to my childhood, in my parent’s store, where I first learned to talk money and sell fancy radios to accented people. You need this, I tell them. And they listen to my eyes more than my mouth. It’s the eyes that bend people to your will.

But even Pierpont Morgan, that famous banker whose fortune outlived him, longed for his father’s respect. I imagine, his wife could have felt all his sadness and desires. From the very tip of his purple nose to his fingertips smelling of Wall Street and rain.

Heartless, one could say. And I could be Heartless if only, I didn’t use the money to fill this emptiness. This emptiness, I’d been told, was also love.

~So what if I were called, if I was hardly aware./ The next time early I would search for wisdom,/ I would not pretend I could be just like others:/ Only evil and suffering come from that. (Czeslaw Milosz, One More Contradiction)

Rain resounds from the distance. In my mind I say, please come to me now. Like death. But the call for death lasts for years. And I’ve learned to be patient in this heat.

Is this normal? To be talking to books? Suppose I made up my mind to fall in love instead with the poet or the character whom I think best complements my personality? Rather than the objects which carry them and make them real. Where could I find a proper process for carrying out such ventures? Do I simply strike out to the air, just do it?

I’ve set myself to tasks that cannot be done completely. Asked myself questions that cannot be answered. Rain might come to me tonight. Tomorrow, the saplings grow an inch taller. There is hope in all this.

~Back then, I’d reached the age of twenty/ and I was crazy. (Roberto Bolaño, The Romantic Dogs)

“And because you were no fun, you couldn’t understand me.”

I’ve completely lost my desire for normalcy. And just as well, just as well.

~All Thought expresses a Throw of the Dice (Etienne Mallarme, Un coup de des jaimais n’abolira le hasard)

Golden light recedes, the sky against my window is completely gray. Should I give way to reticence and brevity or should I simply tear open and out-sing the wind and my terrors?

I envy those people who can still dream in their sleep. It seems to me that the waking life and my dreams have gotten married. Now I’m no longer sure if I am true, what is true.

Should I give way to Chance, close my eyes and wait for it to strike out?

Rain falls, sing-song, down on the roof, sounding like a bony hand rapping the screen door. Or a small hand, enough to clasp a pebble, knocking humbly.

Light from the hallway seeps under the door, a incandescent hand reaching for my toes.

I will open, stand up, let the scent of an early dinner and familiar voices envelope me once more.

one, two, many words: a self-portrait

by May Dy

(c) May Dy

Once I thought of empty streets, mirrors as pages.
So that images, shadows were words imprinted,
Made real upon them. 

from “Encircle”

Hurdles

by May Dy

It’s been a few days since I wrote anything substantial in this blog. Or wrote anything at all. And a few days, to me at least, feels like weeks, even months. I look forward to the day when this won’t be the case and a day will seem like a month in passing.

Summer is not very bad but it’s not fantastic either. Not as fantastic as last year’s summer. But not as bad as that Summer 2010, when I  suffered from flu the whole month of May and my nose bled all the time, and I was depressed as heck. A lot of depressing things happened in 0-10.

At this point in my life, I gain confidence and strength by looking at things as if they were hurdles to be jumped. Not that I’m great in athletics, but mentally at least, I can manage myself.

And today, I just jumped two hurdles. A group report and a quiz that was all or nothing (which means, if one item was incorrect it’s an automatic Z-E-R-O).

See, even the littlest things worry me. Sometimes I think I’m too paranoid it must be schizophrenia. Then again, what kind of schizophrenic woman (yes, I think I’ve earned the right to call myself woman now) would worry about her schizophrenia. Birds aren’t interested in Ornithology. (Well, except for Blu from Rio— but that’s fiction, okay. And I’m tired of all that cute shit.)

I’ve jumped even bigger hurdles, I think. At least now I no longer cry like a wounded dog when I remember all those times I suffered from some kind of rejection or denial. At least then, I know I’ve never been angry or harbored grudges to people who’ve hurt me. (They might not have meant that.)

Besides, why focus on the angry-bad things when you know that someone recognizes the good in you and is totally invested in getting to know you?

I’m glad I’m starting to feel better and gaining the confidence and self-worth I lost.

Flowers from My Sister

by May Dy

What To Do When You're On The Edge

by Thought Catalog

Reblogged from Thought Catalog:

When you're on the verge of a nervous breakdown, you're usually the only one who can help yourself. If something upsets you enough to nearly throw you over the edge, it's not going to be a quick fix. It's obviously not something that you can easily change, you would have done so already.

I know, it sounds absolutely impossible while you're hurting so badly.

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6 Ways To Be Successful Without Your Liberal Arts Degree

by Thought Catalog

Reblogged from Thought Catalog:

Your quarter-of-a-million dollar Liberal Arts degree is great for many things, of which few are conducive to becoming what the late D. F. Wallace once called “well-adjusted.” The following is a non-exhaustive list of 6 ways in which you can prepare to avoid disillusionment when your intimate understanding of Plato’s Forms does not land you a job as an analyst for a top-performing hedge fund in New York City.

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