“Di ka ba natatawa, o kaya’y nagtataka…” Hey, does anyone remember the rest of the “Angat Sa Iba” jingle from the Sarsi commercial? I remember archiving it back in my DVD authoring days; I probably should have saved a copy for myself. (`Twas this MeFi thread that brought it to mind.)
Virra Mall Bomb
Bomb defused in Virra Mall. Whoa. I practically grew up in Virra Mall; it’s just down the road from home in Greenhills, and I used to skate down there every week for school supplies, comics, clothes, Tae Kwon Do lessons, and busloads of (ahem) “demo” software CD’s. A bombing in that crowded, decades-old fire hazard would have been utterly disastrous.
Super What?
The what- Bowl?
Cutting
After she left me, and after I had given up hope, destroying the burden of past things began the process of healing.
Photo taken with an Aiptek Mini Pencam 1.3MP SD.
(Update: I wax melodramatic at times, but believe me, I’m doing much better now, six months later. The pain never really fades away completely, but I rest in the knowledge that it’s all God’s way of shaping me into the man He wants me to be. I will rejoice and give thanks in all things, and I know I will fall in love again, and it will be a wonderful thing in the future, to love with a mended heart.)
It was in 1994, and we had been together for about six months, when she gave me the pillow, a mini-bolster, for Christmas. The pillow went with me almost everywhere, and once even had a hole burnt through it when I dropped it on a mosquito coil in my sleep on a beach trip (hence the heart-shaped patch — her deft mending).
I kept it even after she left me, partly out of habit, partly out of the small comfort of feeble hope. Last month, I decided to inflict that comfort upon myself no more: I took the pillow, and tore it up.
It was not an easy thing to do, in more ways than one. The pillow was tougher than I had expected, and did not yield to bare hands. I had to go through the deliberate and even more painful act of slicing through it with a cutter — an act which, in the doing, felt like I was stabbing myself in the heart. Deeply.
With the casing torn and mangled, the stuffing revealed itself after six long years: a rolled-up sheet of loose cotton, not unlike a giant cotton ball. The tear in the pillow case had gone right through the heart-shaped patch, splitting it cleanly in two.
I laid what was left of the pillow out on the floor, snapped a photo for posterity, and stuffed the whole mess into the trash. Then I collapsed into my chair and wept, and wept, and wept; bitter, anguished tears, through which I whispered to the air how much I hated her for her fickle, uncaring heartlessness. There was just no love left. None. Only sad regret, and disappointment, and other terrible, horrible feelings that I hated myself for letting pass through my heart.
The garbage truck came to pick up the trash the next day. I was away at work, and tried not to give it a thought.
It’s been a couple of weeks. It’s been half a year. It’s been almost a decade. I sleep with only one pillow now. I do not think I will sleep with more than that for a very long time.
—- COMMENTS RETRIEVED, DB GOOF, SORRY :P —-
:(
Comment by rowster on Mon 10 Feb 2003 at 05:31 AM
it may have been for the best.
but in any case…
*hugs*
Comment by tonigrrrl on Mon 10 Feb 2003 at 08:54 AM
time heals the wound.bp.
it would take some time but it will.-g
Comment by garfield m on Mon 10 Feb 2003 at 08:56 AM
It hurts. I know.
Comment by Jenn on Mon 10 Feb 2003 at 10:07 AM
:^(
Still praying for you.
Comment by Valerie (Kyriosity) on Mon 10 Feb 2003 at 02:30 PM
it could have been the catharsis needed to help you get on with life…
it hurts, true, but i saw it as a necessary act.
Comment by Richie on Mon 10 Feb 2003 at 10:07 PM
Beautiful writing from your pain. Spare and sadly lyrical. You haven’t come back from desolation with empty hands.
In prayer still that you be healed and lifted.
Comment by Francis on Tue 11 Feb 2003 at 06:00 PM
A Barukatash Wedding
Congratulations to Brian and his new wife Stacey, who were married yesterday. We got together with Valerie, the Garvers, and Daniel to fill up the Bloggers’ Pew at Valley Presbyterian, and later the Bloggers’ Table at Oak Crest.
Through the course of the day, I tried my first Gin and Tonic (so as to establish myself as a True Hitchhiker) learned that the “Here Comes the Bride” introductory wedding march was by Wagner (as opposed to the Midsummer Nights’ wedding march by Mendelssohn), saw the good professor do the Twist and YMCA, texted Kristen for dordting tips, and found that Daniel and I share the same dancing habits — that is, get on the floor and shuffle for 30 seconds, then go back to the bar for more hors’d’oeuvres and gin and tonic.
Quite a fun and full day, and I wish Mr. and Mrs. Barukatash all the love and joy in the world.
Freezing Points
Okay, you know it’s cold when you look at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and see parts of it completely frozen over, so solidly that a beer bottle sits atop it, rolling placidly with the waves that rock beneath, while seagulls walk on the sheet, picking at bits of food that tourists have thrown to see how hard the ice is.
Or if you want colder, Dave Nat went to Montauk Point and got photos of frozen sea foam. Of course, if you want even colder, there’s always Antarctica.
Nyne Otpushchaeshi
I’m listening to Rach’s Vespers, performed by the Choir of King’s College, and it just blows me away how low the basses are able to reach at the end of the Nyne Otpushchaeshi while still being able to project, even at that pitch. Whoa. WHOA.
Nyne otpushchaeshi raba Tvoego, Vladyko, po glagolu Tvoyemu s mirom: yako videsta ochi moi spaseniye Tvoye, ezhe esi ugotoval pred litsem vsekh lyudei, svet vo otkrovenie yazykov, i slavu lyudei Tvoikh Izrailya.
Crisis Links 1/23
Every Thursday, we have our “Crisis Century” class, an overview of modern media and culture in the feverish, fast-paced world of the 21st Century. Our professor, writer and curator Tim Druckrey, usually begins the morning with a reading from Harper’s (yes, definite left-leaning bias there ;) and a show of links to modern art resources and other sites of interest to the subject matter. I think that every week, I shall blog a sample of links from class, just to share a bit of the new media millieu which I am currently immersed in:
Information Awareness Office. Innovating new ways to intrude on your privacy from sea to shining sea! I love their slick, clipart-enhanced, MS FrontPage designs, as well as the effective use of corporate jargon. Our taxes are paying for a lot of alarming stuff, such as the EARS program, which aims to develop ways to transcribe eavesdropped phone conversations into rich text format. Ooohh. Scary high-tech money sinks.
Illegal Art. “On the legal fringe of intellectual property.” Art made to challenge and address issues of copyright and creativity through subtle and blatant duplication and reproduction of existing work.
The Zgodlocator. A giant, elaborate technological installation piece: whole computers and computer parts are destroyed and crushed into a fine metallic dust, which is then thickly strewn over a pattern of powerful electromagnets. Pressing buttons in the installation triggers the magnets, creating abstract sculptures from the “granulated landscape” to explore the raw physical manifestation of stored information.
386 DX and the Leningrad Cowboys. Russian bands respond to the influx of Western culture with their own form of parodic postmodern cut-and-paste techno-Dadaism. 386DX plays reprised rock music on a 386DX PC with customizable text-to-speech and MIDI synthesis. The Leningrad Cowboys reinterpret classic American rock into bombastically Russified masterworks, complete with stentorian men’s choruses and harmonized Cossack dances. Their reprise of “Stairway to Heaven” is even better than the original. Good stuff.
Cold Snap
A few nights ago, when temperature was still up in the 20’s, I tried running to the grocery in jeans and a t-shirt. (It’s only a block away, and I was too lazy to put on all those layers just for a bottle of milk.) I will not be trying that stunt tonight, as any protruding part of my body that I stick out the door will most likely snap off within seconds.
Bleaked Housed
It took a year and three months of on-and-off reading, but I’ve finally finished Bleak House, Charles Dickens’ tragicomedic tale of bittersweet lives and loves in a protracted court case whose legal costs ultimately outweigh the value of the assets in question. Some people die, some people marry, some people discover they are Lady Dedlock’s illegitimate daughter by a derelict ship captain who meets his unfortunate drug-induced end while transcribing court documents in a dingy apartment, a dark past discovered by an aloof lawyer who is later murdered by the crazed French maid who seeks revenge on her secretive mistress.
Afterward, I took a break from the heavy reading with a quick hop through Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, which I finished in a couple of days. (Fulltext in Palm DOC .PDB format here.)
Now I can finally start on Piper’s exceedingly hedonistic Desiring God.