Tuesday, January 23, 2007

last song syndrome

i would think of these two songs every so often in the past 25 years. am pretty happy i found em on youtube. so now i just click when i need my nostalgia fix. both songs were written and sung by the same guy (according to youtube comments)--steve zuckerman daw. my friend E has a term for this: trafficking in nostalgia. can't think of a better way to say it.



Tuesday, January 02, 2007

but i do have to say this

sometimes, at night, i just find myself crying. i can't explain it clearly. well, maybe i can--but i'm not yet ready, so let me just ramble a bit here and hope it will be a bit coherent in the end.

they always catch me unawares, these flashes of desolee*. often, it happens at night. always when i'm alone, but sometimes there can be other people too. i try to keep it from happening by keeping busy. i pack my days with stuff to do, which is easy because i do have tons of things to do. but still, it happens because you can't be constantly doing something all the time. you slow down for a bit to rest (and these days, everyone is telling me to rest a bit)--before you know it, there it is. the tears well up, and you reach for the kleenex.

why does it have to happen at all? this kinda reminds me of a question someone asked me quite recently: why did you have to cry? believe me, i dearly dearly wish i don't cry this easily. is it even a choice? i wish it were. my crying has given me grief all my life, with certain people accusing me of wallowing, or being spineless and useless and weak. i could just stop, actually, make that inner vow to never cry, to never allow this or that person to hurt me again, to refuse to even feel hurt. but i've done that, did it for years, and so now i'd rather "give it all up" (to quote tenz, he knows what i'm talking about) than go back to how i was back then. what they don't know is that a lot of it is rage that i've just tucked away for some reason or another. convenience, maybe. or shame for wanting to be just a little bit happier.** or not wanting to mess things up with people i care about. i know i have to manage this better but there it is.

i'm not sure if it's just about one thing. i suspect it's many little things that are connected to two or three biggish other things. i just know that it tells me that things are not all okay on all fronts, that i have to square things with myself and with other people. all of a sudden, i'm reminded of a song*** that sounds very happy-clappy but there's a bit there about wanting to knife someone in the heart. that should give you an idea. so, lyrics at the bottom of the post for your enjoyment.

and it's strange how it's my over-30 female friends who understand what this is like. like Pj, who sometimes gives me a lift to katipunan. she's all chika-happy and deliriously busy with 3 jobs all the time and i once asked her why she just crams her life with everything the way she crams her huge bags with stuff like cracker-munchies, razors and lysol spray. her answer didn't surprise me: because you have to, to keep those weird thoughts from happening.

the last thing i need to hear in reply to this post is something condescending and dismissive along the lines of "you need to stop thinking too much," which i admit has been said to me too many times by various people who are no longer in my life now. sometimes, the thing we need most is someone who'll just really listen. but in this case, i suspect i need something much more solid to hold on to. like what my friend, Yj, told me when we had our first and last fight (she's still my friend in case you're wondering): "but those are just words! words! lip service!"

true, true. (i find i'm quoting from my favorite people a lot in this post; in my head i see and hear them saying these lines delivered just so--does this mean i'm really going nuts?)

but yes, she's right. we can have all these good intentions and feelings, and say all these things, and apologize if we screw up but really, it's what we've done and what we choose to do now that's really important.



* i don't know what to call them. "the blues" just doesn't work. neither does "the sads". "desolation" feels overwrought. so i borrow from the french for "i'm sorry" (je suis desolee) and hope it doesn't sound too pretentious.

**
okay, cringe-worthy provenance: i caught the hollywood remake of that japanese film Shall We Dance on cable yesterday, the one with richard gere and j-lo. the not-quite salaryman character of richard gere says something like that to susan sarandon, who i must say has an amazing cleavage for her age.

***
You Keep It All In
Artist: The Beautiful South
Album: Best Of-Carry On Up The Charts

You know your problem
You keep it all in
You know your problem
You keep it all in

That's right
The conversation we had last night
When all I wanted to do was
Knife you in the heart
I kept it all in

You know your problem
You keep it all in
You know your problem
You keep it all in

Midnight, a husband getting ready to fight
A daughter sleeps alone with the light
Turned on, she bears but
Keeps it all in

Just like that murder in '73
Just like that robbery in '62
With all these things that have happened to me
I kept it all in
Why do you keep on telling me now?

You know your problem
You keep it all in
You know your problem
You keep it all in

That's sweet
That conversation we had last week
When you gagged and bound me up to my seat
You're right, I do
I keep it all in

Monday, January 01, 2007

mea culpa and all that

to those who patiently check here every so often for updates (yes, both of you), i am really really sorry for being a lazy-ass blogger the past three months. below are my reasons:

1) we had to dismantle the desktop computer again and i didn't know how to hook up my laptop to the dsl here at home. and am too cheap these days to buy a wifi card. actually, i just don't like paying for internet, heh heh. but finally, the desktop in my brother's room is back online and so am i.

2) been sleeping at our grandparents' place since the end of october and my time here at our house is limited to barking orders at the guys fixing up the house and my scuttling to the mall next door to buy hardware.

3) i have lots to write here and pictures to post but i haven't had the time to scale down the photos to web-friendly resolutions. also, i spent the first half of december writing a nonfiction piece for the UP workshop. meaning, i was actually productive!!! hahaha! no time to blog!

but to give some of you something to read, lemme post some of the stuff i wrote in the past year or so...one of these days. my flashdrive is in my bag somewhere but i'm kinda too lazy to get up and get it right now. more patience, please, my darlings. muchas gracias.

(this is the point where most people would write their yearend summary lists of music and videos and films and books. uhm... i'm kinda not in the mood for all that right now.)

i will, instead, end with a short list of 5 people i am extremely grateful to have spent time with in 2006, off the top of my head, in no particular order:

1) the polymath (yeeha)
2) germaine
3) eung hwa
4) tenzin
5) tita maryan

if you didn't make that list, don't worry. the list is actually much longer, and i look forward to making up for it spending more time with you (yes, you!) in 2007.