"Europe Through Cinema"

European Filmfest at Shangri-la Plaza!
Watch them until October 2!
Admission is free! (First-Come, First-Served)


http://yasunta.deviantart.com

Untitled.

Wow...I just got a gift...three Neil Gaiman books and a collection of photographs from Tita Marites! I can't believe it. It's like I was a kid again and it felt like I was actually excited and looking forward to celebrating my birthday. The feeling was so different, it's like being lifted off my messed-up life. I'd say this will be one of the best ones I'll ever have in this lifetime...heehee.







Here's my favorite picture:



Yes, back to my thesis: I have been going to places the whole weekend, interviewing people for it. I guess it was a new form of renewal, having heard things that these people went through, and how uplifting it was to hear them talk about their struggles and still stand strong.

I went home this afternoon, and fell asleep because I was too tired to think or do anything...and then I woke up listening to Tori Amos' "Silent All These Years". I'm like, what the heck have I been doing with my life? Twenty-one years, and still I felt as if I didn't learn anything at all. Sure, I'm well-versed with a lot of computer thing-a-ma-jigs, but about self-renewal and soul-fulfillment...? I don't think I'm anywhere near that now. So I decided to listen to India Arie's Live In Brazil DVD... and I've always loved falling asleep to the words of her song...

"I wanna go where the mountains are high enough to echo my song, I wanna go where the rivers are deep enough to drown my shame. I wanna go where the stars shine bright enough to show me the way, I wanna go where the wind calls my name."

It's like I'm not meant for all this crap. I have a calling, yet I don't know where...ahahah. I'm beginning to sound like a teenager wanting freedom from late night curfews. Ima stop now.

To my pinoy_mohican: you rawk ma worlds pare \m/

Static.

I rode the bus traveling from Las Piñas to Taft Avenue, but I got off too quickly so in the dark, I walked almost half of Buendia to where I rode a jeep around 10-15 minutes later. Funny thing was, I wanted to keep on walking not until I get to my house, but even farther. Any place where my feet would take me. I wish I could walk my way out of this misery. Hahaha. That really sounded melodramatic...that's a load of crappy lines.

Anyway, I did feel a little melancholic while walking. I was thinking of just running into the middle of the street, stopping to lie there so that the high-speeding buses won't see me in time for them to break. Jeez, I'm turning suicidal. The truth is, I've never been this helpless. Last time I was this depressed, I knew I could cope with things. I was thinking I was going to have a better life in this new system I was gonna enroll myself into for education, a whole new sets of friends I wanted to meet, and a new standard of self-proclaimed confidence. There's just one problem, it's been almost two and a half years since that forced change of optimism and like gas refilling a car, I'm running out of places to get my resources from...and that no matter how much I want to convince myself that I'm doing better, I've never had this strong an urge to let go.

Let go of everything.

Every single thing.

Even life itself.

Damn.

But I can't.

I've never been this helpless in my life. My sanity's being torn apart with all the pressure coming from my parents, my family's health, my health, my _______ deadlines, my __________ crap, and my thesis. People coming and leaving...oh, and this temporary psychosis my friend told me that your mind goes into when you don't get enough sleep, which is not so temporary anymore since I've been sleeping at 2 o'clock am, and waking up at 5 o'clock in the morning for more than a year now. I wish I was a student. No, I am a student. I wish I could stay and dwell in being a student, and be problematic about nothing but my academics.

Hayy. I'm going to stop whining now. No matter how hard I try, I'm not getting poetic enough to write anything moving right now.



Did you say "no, this
can't happen to me,"
and did you rush to
the phone to call?
Was there a voice unkind
in the back of your mind
saying, "maybe... you
didn't know him at all."
-Jeff Buckley

How to kill a dozen million ants with mustard...

Can you actually do that? I was thinking of drowning them with chocolate, but since it's too sweet it might get swamped by about a couple of dozen million more.

I've been staring all day in front of the computer for the past few weeks and I still didn't come up with anything for my thesis. Zilch, mehn. I've never been this brain dead in my entire f*cked-up life. Oh, and by the way, depression has just found its way back to one of my favorite past-time activities. When I get depressed, it's either I eat or I completely don't...and I'm gaining weight.

Then again, I was still figuring out how to kill a dozen million ants with chocolate, but I can't, so I thought mustard would be great. If I'm able to figure out how to count all the ants, making sure they're exactly a dozen million without getting bit (so I'd know how much of their population I'd actually kill...sensus!!), then I'll probably figure out something for my thesis.

Until then, I'll have nothing else to dump outta my...hmmm...crapped-in brain cells.


-------------------------------------------
The moon visits once in a while,
sweeps me off my sleep to let me lie
on its scorched skin,
letting me cover it
from the light of the blinding sun;
a savored few seconds of freedom.
-Eclipsed
-------------------------------------------

I need water!

I don't know what's exactly wrong with me but I've been sick for almost a month now. One of my friends told me to keep drinking water and tons of Vitamin C ... nothing's happening!! My brother told me to have myself confined in a hospital already...I'm like, no way! No hospitals for me, pare! Anyway...nothing new still. Just the same old laggin on my thesis ... crap. I need to get started on it right away...e0n. Ima be emailing jersey boy in awhile..see yah all around.

Ahem ... for the lurkers ... ahem ahem ahem ... you know who you are ... you better start telling me your links so I can put you in my insane list found at the right column of my blog...HA! Stop lurking y'all...bwehehehe!

A darker shade of black.

I went to Fete De La Musique last night, part of the annual French Festival celebration, this year in El Pueblo. Going through the crowd was exhausting. There was actually heavy traffic from too many people gathered in one place. I was able to get passes, though. I used it to take some pictures of them musically-inclined artists performing onstage.

It was fun, especially seeing some of the artists I've known since my first few months in college. It's just sad that I wasn't able to take their pictures because I was not feeling well, and going from one place to another was really, really tiring because of the crowd.

Twenty-four hours later, I find myself back in my room. Rested, but not completely well enough to do the right things...(sheesh, thesis...)

I felt that one person whose made this perfect importance in my life right now is beginning to disappear; how faint this person I fear would be with everything that will happen. Every bit of detail that connects him to me is slowly flying away in search of new aspirations and anticipation.

It just gets crazier, and darker.

The only light in this room is coming from my monitor, and I've been using and looking at it for the longest time I forgot how the rest of the room looked like. I turned around and realized that there were different shadows sealing their places on the walls. There was a lighter shade of gray that played near the edge of my curtain blinds, and the shadowless space beside my computer where the monitor is not pointed at. It's insanely compelling, knowing that this might last for months. Years, even. I find it uncomprehensible; how everything can completely turn around after the first hand of the clock hits the same number again...

but I can never grasp, and yet forget the pain of someone leaving, and the agony of waiting.

There's no end to this tale, nor this entry. Just the cycle of going back and starting [writing] anew, or dwelling on the emotions that liveth the same melodrama.

I'd leave earth if I was alien enough.

I just don't know what else I have left to say to the people living in this planet, much more to those who make it harder for those to go through life on an everyday basis. I've been trying so hard to stop myself from cussing, cursing, and f*cking other people's lives because of this resentment.

Well, f*ck it.

I'd leave earth if I was alien enough.

Dulaang Filipino Pictorial

Nothing really new except for the pictorial. We'll be featured as one of the school's artist group in BLIP's next issue (Benildean Lifestyle, Interests, & People). Yes, that's a tutu...HA! Everyone wore a costume (eeks). Anyway, that's it for now. I'm off to Shangri-La Plaza in a few hours for the chinese film festival.

Chinese Film Festival 2005

Gada Meilin is about a meilin (he who caters to people's problems, if I remember it right...Gada is the protagonist's name) who revolted against their government from taking over their grassland. This movie shows an arrangement between the Japanese and the Chinese officials taking over the mentioned land. I guess it's the typical movie where a hero tries to lead the men to freedom, but not as typical as what happened in the end.

I'm really in no condition to be poetic and even pretend to be a good writer in trying to explain this movie after having only an hour's sleep for almost a week now. I'm almost brain dead, but I've realized that there's so much to know about certain emotions that we, asians, have encountered from different races of oppressors...might it be foreign, or that of our own kind. I felt betrayed, so humiliated that while others, whose generation has long surpassed even our own timeline, has fought for freedom, for what is right, and for the betterment of the community.

It's just one of those times where I'm actually confused at how to make our own race stay in this country to painstakingly uplift whatever values it has left while our own people backstab us, but it's just that there's so much left to discover, to know about, and to learn about our own past to even begin planning so much for the future.

I just think that we should know so much about ourselves and our roots even before we try to step out of our cocoon.

Anyway, Gada Meilin is part of the Chinese Film Festival 2005, presented by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCAA), organized in cooperation with the Embassy of the People's Republic of China, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television of China, and the Shangri-La Plaza. This festival is one of many activites celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Diplomatic Relations between the Republic of the Philippines and the People's Republic of China. This partnership has been a powerful example of beneficial cultural exchange, a crucial tool in the actualization of global harmony and collaboration.

So check them out because admission is free, and it will be running from June 10 - June 13...here is the schedule:

Gada Meilin
June 10 - 7:15pm
June 12 - 2pm
June 13 - 9:30pm

Nuan
June 10 - 9:30pm
June 12 - 4:30pm
June 13 - 7pm

Judge Mama
June 11 - 4:30pm
June 12 - 9:30pm

Story of Lotus
June 11 - 7pm
June 13 - 2pm

Live in Peace
June 11 - 9:30pm
June 13 - 4:30pm

Splendid Season
June 11 - 2pm
June 12 - 7pm

Live a splendid extended weekend. Ma pinoy mohican jp would have enjoyed watching these spectacular movies though =(

Beyond Incandescence

I've spent almost my entire childhood dreaming to be a writer, and spent the past few years of my college slaughtering that dream. I stopped at 18.

Almost two reams of used bond papers piled my cabinet, waiting to be burned, more than 3 dozen stories without endings...some of them were just outlines and didn't even reach any kind of introduction.

Trying to live that dream meant years of giving life to inanimate objects, and splendidly making the deaths of protagonists seemed ultmately rectifying. Some called it fiction. I called it my time-consuming attempt at writing poetry. The use of short and rhymed phrases were never really my thing, so I resorted to prose instead.

I've learned a lot in those years when I used to attend prose workshops. Professional writers would gather in a circle and have our pieces read. We'd talk about it for hours, some advised me to change the way I write, while others told me to seek out the rationale behind every move in the story. Always keep it plausible, they said.

It was a whole new timeline of complications running alongside my then-confused teenage life.

I did learn something, though. In creating art, all you need is passion...and you have to call on that. She, who taught me, called it a "muse". You have to summon your muse to guide you, she said.

So I did.

Summoning your muse was the hardest...it entails a long wait, and extreme patience for the whole process to begin. The idea, the structure, the emotions...but things were complicated. No, I was complicated. Sometimes, during those days when I stopped calling onto it, it started to show itself almost everytime I try not to succumb into getting a pen and jotting down whatever it dictates...until it started to fade away.

Weakened...yes, not gone, just slowly deteriorating beneath my cerebrum's cap of thought; slowly entangling itself with the rest of my subconscious, like a past that would rather cease to evolve than continue to battle its massacre.

It was slow torture, like the rest of the world's cry against hate and sarcasm. It was a lot like love between thousands of miles, fighting to hold on, uncertain in its own agenda.

After so many years, I summoned my muse for one last time. I wanted to know if it can still give life, if it can resurrect me. One man came, in its utmost and perfect features. So I began to write...

I could still smell his perfume as if he was seated next to me, see him laugh at a lousy song playing over the radio, hear him whisper how he loved me, and see him get excited in buying independent albums of local artists he could bring to his new home.

I tried to use the right words to say the right things, but the words ran out on me, like bullets running out of bulletholes to dig themselves into when fired. Soon, there was no space for any kind of emotion but depression.

He held my hand so tightly at the airport, and I couldn't let go. I didn't want him to let go, either..but I bit my lip and told myself that there was nothing we could do, but wait.

So, once again, despite the dreams that haunted me in the middle of the night, and the grueling slumber where the muse tried to avenge its forced annihilation by poking needle-pointed nails in the middle of my chest, I tried to write.

I wrote words that were insignificant to the sane, I wrote words that were lustful. I wrote words that made me cry my heart out from sunrise to sunrise the next day, for weeks. I didn't do anything, but write...because I know it lives.

It thrives, sometimes there to comfort me amidst the mourning of its own death, even in the distance that separates us.

It will be with me and I will call upon it, every moment of my waking hours.

And I will just be here...waiting.

in this life ...

There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better.
And some have gone, and some remain.

Dave Matthews Band's version of it brings me back to the first time I saw it on a local television channel in the early 90's, Bette Midler was singing, as part of a movie called "For The Boys".

I think I'm suffering from what you call an early 20's crisis, if such a term actually existed. I felt like I've done so many crazy things and so many wacky stunts at the age of 17. The irony is, now that I'm 4 years older, I feel like I haven't done the things that still need attention.

I'm still scared of places where I can see right through the next floor, especially when people or cars are moving under it, and I am still fond of playing with stuff toys, especially Stitch...things I never wanted to do when I was youngER.

All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall.
Some are dead and some are living.
In my life I've loved them all.

There were times of depression, which was made up of almost 75% of my life, with people coming, staying for a few years, and leaving for good. Some people just wanted to pass by, some decided to stay until now. Some of them I can't even remember how they looked like.

I remember watching Highlander when I was in fifth grade. It's been so long I've forgotten if it was one of the movies or the series, but if I recall it right, there was one scene where MacLeod brought his 80+ year old wife outside to talk for awhile. She was near death and MAcleod wanted her to see how the outside looked like while having their last conversation. The wife noticed noticed how he didn't age at all, and I think Macleod just smiled. He then buried her after she died, left the place, and went to where he could move on with his life.

It's just weird sometimes, when from the start you can have all the time in the world, and yet feel that it's not enough even if almost a decade has passed. I'm only 20, and I feel this way. I couldn't begin to imagine if immortals actually existed in this world; the trauma, the depression...such remorse and agony.

But of all these friends and lovers,
There is no one compares with you.
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.

But sometimes, some people who stay do make a lot of difference even in the shortest amount of time. There were people whom I thought I could share a lifetime with, but now, I don't even know if they're still alive.

Changes. Evolution. Satisfaction doesn't come easy for people who live in the fast lane. They...we...tend to always crave for something new, something exhilirating and more dangerous. We're like fools who want the best, but doesn't realize it until it's gone. Yeah, we're the whole population of shitheads who just don't know when
to stop sometimes.

Though I know I'll never ever lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I'll often stop and think about them.
In my life I love you more.

With all the things I have done, and with all the crap I've put myself through, there are things that I'll never forget: people I know I could go home to, and people I still love.

What people don't see sometimes is that it really doesn't matter if you stay long enough or not, sometimes you just have to make that difference, even for that split second in that someone's life, and sometimes...just sometimes, it could worth living a lifetime for.

on oysters and CSIs...

There's always a certain hint of poetry with the way CSI handles murder cases scientifically. May it be William Petersen, David Caruso, or Gary Sinise. From the professional night work in Las Vegas, the marshes that surround Miami, and to the crazy politics of the very infamous New York.

My brother taught me that intellectual people are fond of intellectual games and puzzles during their rest time. He said that practicing your mind with a lighter load of problem solving during a break makes your mind more flexible when you go back to work. Chess, for example. You don't play chess for a living, it's just a game you play. Of course, if athletics is your life, then that's a whole new totally concept ~_^

There was also this conversation I had with one of my friends, a comparison of all three CSI series. They were debating on what was more artsy, or which one gave more emotion, etc. It was kind of hard on my part because I liked all three. There was this episode, though, about transvestites that totally changed my perspective. This
episode just made me respect them even more.

I then realized that CSI is more than just portraying a certain aura: the wild life in Las Vegas, the depressing swamps in Miami (I feel melancholic when it comes to bodies of water), and the monotonic feel (colors) to New York's episodes.

I guess it's just any other art form that tries to portray itself through the murder cases; the type of shows that show the real meaning of life through death.

It's like watching HBO's Six Feet Under (that I miss watching so much), but on a different setting and a totally different timeline. It's all about life, and its appreciation of its own true and perfect sense.


There are two types of male oysters,
and one of them can change gender at will;
and before man crawl out of the muck(?),
maybe he had the same option.
Maybe originally, we were supposed
to be able to switch gender,
and being born with just one sex,
is a mutation.

~Grissom

...the kind of lines I'd use as my signature.

============================================================
A dose of marijuana can actually take away your depression,
but people tell me that too much of it can cause depression
even when you're not taking it anymore...HA!
Now, that...is one helluva sh!t to deal with it.
============================================================

====================================
When do you step over the edge,
and say you are a renewed person?
Is it when you stop smoking, stop
drinking, and stop taking drugs,
or is it when you stop magnetizing
all the wrong people?
====================================

=============================================
why does Jeff Buckley's "Last goodbye"
make people cry? Sorry I just had to ask.
Listening to it has become a very contagious
act and I'm beginning to get irritated.
=============================================

===================================
Someone told me that you only
have either yourself, or the
other person as your enemy.
I think he's right.
The enemy is either him, or me,
and everyone else stays neutral.
So I guess you don't win a fight
by choosing who's better,
you just have to find out
who you're fighting with.
===================================


wtf ... say what!?

Time Space Warp.

I swear, there have been more than a zillion times I've heard this song that just makes me want to reminisce the good old days back when I was still a student dj, in this radio station in Novaliches.

There was an episode in Quantum Leap, a very old TV series that I used to watch when I was in elementary, probably around third grade. There was an ending when Scott Bakula and his wife (I think...) were looking up at the night sky and was looking at the same star, despite the time differences they were experiencing (the protagonist was leaping through time). In that moment, they felt like they connected. Oh, and they were also able to communicate through a hologram that visits him in whatever time Scott Bakula was in.

There's this song: Hands To Heaven, by Breathe, it was one of the favorite songs of one of my friends in the radio station. Everytime I hear it, I find myslf looking at either the sky or the ceiling, and it usually gets played when I'm at the lowest point in my life...haha, whatta load full of crap, I know.

It's just that whenever I hear this song, it makes me feel like I was hearing it for the first time, with all the good and bad memories flooding my brain, but as if nothing actually happened in between them. It's like that episode in Quantum Leap when both of them looked up at the same star, it was as if they were reunited in that split second.

Yeah, yeah... a whole lotta emotional sh!t. HA! I could even make a video of the whole song with me in it.

Starting from the time when I was handling the console, to one of those low moments when the song would suddenly play out of nowhere, whether in the mall, the jeep, or the fx that I seldom ride...even the LRT. Yes, out of a thousand trips I've made in my lifetime, there was this one time that they were playing a song...and yes, you guessed it right.

Guess what again? It's playing right now.

Alright, that's it...'till next time's dump of ma crap on your brain :D

tUrNiNg tHe LiGhTs dOwN LoW

I remember the first time I cried my heart out for this song; Bob Marley's version of "Turn Your Lights Down Low". It was already sunrise and I could see its rays seeping through the opening in the curtains back in ma old house. I fell asleep listening to the song the night before and woke up to it when the alarm rang that morning. I think I was supposed to go to class at that time...the last day of my tormenting 7am-9pm class schedule that happens once a week. I had to finish and submit everything so I'd pass the term...but I stayed in bed, all day. God, it was this feeling of remorse that came over me, wishing that I could just remain hidden behind the curtains and just stay out of the sun's rays that almost cut the room in two, like a vampire hidden in the shadows...but yeah, like them say: there are bills to pay, and trains to catch, words to say, and eggs to hatch...bwahahahaha... that's the lamest rhyme I've heard in my entire life. Well, next to my friend's neverending quest to perfect the hippity-hop lingo, that is.

Right... where was I? I'm listening to the song's jazz version right now, off Lee Ritenour's produced album way, way back in 2001 (A Twist of Marley). Actually, it makes me relax, not all tensed up and wishing to cry my heart out once again.

There's a line that goes "You know I love you and I want you to know right now 'cos I want to give you some love. I want to give you some good, good looooovin'..." The song is so relaxin' you don't ever want it to end. Well, I don't. It's been on loop for more than a day while I do my acad stuff.

Thinking back to that time when I was crying my heart out, I'm not sure if I was all tearful because of the lyrics or was it just because of the melancholic beat of the song? Is it because it's about a love that you want to give, but no one's worthy enough to receive it?

... or do I mean no one stays long enough to receive it entirely?

Yeah...I think that sounded almost right.

-------------------------------------------------------
The moon calls me from beneath the yielding stars,
the rain slowly engulfing me in its wretched embrace.
-------------------------------------------------------

The bounding perimeter...

The world goes around the globe...yeah, it does. The physical body continues with its delegated work even if the heart or the mind disagrees.

I'm sure a lot of people would react about how I said that, or what I've exactly said, especially the critcs who never fail to question your line of thinking even if it meant the old-fashioned debate about the egg and the chicken, about which came first, and blah, blah, blah.

What's my point? It seems odd that when there's so much time to waste, I always do end up putting it to waste without working on anything decent, anyway. Then again, don't we all?

Again, what's my point? I guess I'm just not comfortable when the world becomes suddenly all too small for me in just a split second. When I get uncomfortable, I get paranoid, and when I get paranoid, I tend to drown my mind with all the typical fallacies human beings often commit...and when the world becomes too small for my sh!t, where would everything go?

Imagine a world where everyone knows each other and everyone can love one another freely because we all know each other and since we all know each other, we should love and take care of each other. Sheesh, I swear that's the only time I used the word know more than twice in a sentence and on stressing a point at that.

Where will "being left in the dark" all go to? When will the line "I need space for myself" ever be used? Where will the word adventure thrive on if we knew exactly where we're going and the people we will relate to?There's no sense in redefining yourself over and over again if the same people know the people you will get to know in the future. If ever you do want to start anew, people from your past who know the people you will meet may have already tainted their minds about who you are and what you are even before meeting them. Say what?

Sure, there's this "check and balances" that make people go gago and say "oooh, she's changed over the years..." or the ever-so-destructive ones that go like "...damn, girl, what the hell did you do to your hair!?" HA... it does seem funny to read about it now but for people who know too many other people...geesh, don't you feel like Jim Carrey in this one movie where his whole life was a lie and people paid to watch him on TV?

Alright, so I might be overdoing it, but I think I'm really beginning to hate those online communities on the internet...you know the ones where you get to create your account, upload your pictures, get connected through the people in your network, and write your testimonials to each other. Yeah, that. Well, I really don't hate it...I just got annoyed this afternoon when I found out that the people I used to hang out with back in high school, these people in the lower batch, know some of my friends in the senior year in college. Aah, you're probably thinking...there goes her insecurity level turning red again, aye? I don't think so. If you've read my entry well enough, then you'd totally understand where I'm coming from.

I guess writing this entry was one way of unloading useless crap out of my now-dazed-and-confused head. It would make me think clearly, I hope.

So...did I just mention that the body continues with its delegated work even if the heart or the mind disagrees? Yeah...don't we all.

something about new things and $#!T

I've decided to do some writing again, after a few years of ex-communication with Macromedia and Adobe softwares. Is it going to be prose, poetry, or emo? Emo!? That I don't know. There's this song of Fra Lippo Lippi that I surprisingly seem to relate to all of a sudden...

"Sail on the wings of a cloud
Where to, well nobody knows
And cry, cry if you want them to see
Die every day to be free
Be proud to wear the colours that you call your own
Be loud, speak out when the world to know
Be strong, hold the flame for everyone to see
Be weak, if you want to love..."

...too much sentimental sh*t for someone like me, I guess. Yeah, something like that. Writing a diary is the kind of change I dread the most. I never wanted to write in a journal, or have a diary of my own. Heck, I haven't even written more than 20 entries in my deviantart account; one that I've had for almost 3 years now. So for me to have a blog is like me suddenly turning suicidal when I'm the type to enjoy life. It's different, though. I know something's going to happen soon, I just don't know what. I just suddenly had this urge to write, as if I wanted things documented before it occurs.

Queer. Haha. That word reminds me of a lot of things. I just wish I'd be strong enough, as I always tried to be, in this kind of future. Whatever it is, ima just let the sun shine in and make love to the brightest stars in the universe.

http://yasunta.deviantart.com