The character talks to a dog destined to be a Christmas present and tells it, “You’ve got to have a dream.” She tells herself, “I don’t know what I want. I’m just drifting.”
As though it were something pathological, I’ve been having a mounting compulsion to document everything. It would have been much easier if I subscribed to the idea of eternal recurrence, and relived my life, to the detail.
How can one run out of words you are trying to document something such as fascination or happiness? One can only dig deep into that wellspring.
Right after watching a TP play in CCP, I went home and had dinner. I spent the night watching Pulp Fiction while having a few beers. Quentin Tarantino’s craft is so original. All the gruesome violence in that non-linear form of storytelling. The script, or the conversational dialogue of the film, came out naturally with its easy, yet intelligent, funny conversations with a lot of fuck, motherfuckers and fuck yous on the lines. It’s like Douglas Coupland on drugs and made violent. The film’s plot and its events, from a wannabe writer’s point of view, was something I myself may never have thought of. It’s worth a million praises. Only a Quentin Tarantino could have pulled up a feat like that.
A Midweek Interlude. I just had two days of easy, dedicated e-mail days at work. Upon arriving home I read a little of Jeanette Winterson, listen to my CD’s, and get the full relief of an eight to nine hours sleep. After work today, I walked with one of my officemates to Glorietta. We went to bookstores and that part of G4 for home furnishings, candle shops, and then to Tower Records. The best part of my day was getting good Jazz find --- a compilation with 2 titles from Thelonious Monk, 2 from Miles Davis, a song from Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and some others. Since more and more coffee shops began increasing in number, as though they were algae on trees, more people have been widely interested in this music. It’s not mainstream but it became more commonplace. The advantage is that the music becomes more available on the market. A Philippine record company released this one, together with a local coffee shop --- Figaro. All these artists in one good compilation for the glorious bargain of 250 pesos, with good packaging and a coupon free upsize on any selected drink at Figaro. That’s how we market Jazz in this country. I can probably get a pirated copy later on, but I can’t wait. I just might buy the other ones in the collection in pirated versions.
We had lunch at Italiannis. I was pretty stuffed. And now I read some more, have coffee and listen to jazz and no matter how brief the sleep would be for work tonight, no matter how few the money in the bank I have left, nothing beats the feeling of almost having everything you fucking want.
Look at the now and you can throw your dreams away.
“This is it!” sounds so much better now.
After almost eighteen months of walking around the vicinity of Valero, I finally found the doughnut place in front of Philam Life Tower’s Valero side. Like discovering the shroud of Turin. I may occasionally grow weary of life, but I will never be weary of Croissants for breakfast. As though it were Holy Communion, croissants make my life less wearisome.
Perhaps it’s just me, or how I read it, my own eye that spots the element of human alienation in Jeanette Winterson’s chracters. I read (while having a beer or two) most of the stories upon arriving home from a rather alienating occupation. I’m slanting towards relating to the alienated characters of The Green Man, The Green Square, Disappearance I, or O Brien’s first Christmas. Winterson is sometimes like Camus made more dreamlike, more boldly playful with her worldly, other worldly and mythological images. Sometimes the stories or events that take place wherefrom, aside from being fascinating, are just plain disturbing --- which in my measure is therefore good.
“Orion” proves to be the best project for feminist reading, and would best demonstrate her ingenious storytelling. I once thought of making up my stories using, or alluding to the Greek gods.
Her imagery and ideas are just fascinating: from pasta machines, cities where it’s illegal to sleep, to islands where coals are more valuable than diamonds, tortoises named after books of the bible, to families who jointly dream up of traveling the world in model aero planes. The images in the stories are of course, suggestive ideas which comes from the title, “The World and Other Places.” You start to wonder where she draws up these kinds of images, these plots for stories, and deposit them in this seemingly mesmerizing language to delicately and carefully form the fullness of an excellent, entrancing story. That kind of storytelling is something that I want to imitate. But I never tried to. If I did, I’m bound to fail. How could one ever dig up from the facet to the very depths of vivid imagination, like having your own divine system of creation, weaving each fabric of your character’s fate --- write stories, and make it so seemingly easy?
However, some of these stories require a more intensive scrutiny in order to appreciate her literary genius, e.g., The Poetics of Sex. It’s a profoundly interesting read, but I can’t say I understand it. That’s something that requires secondary readings and discussions in class.
The Christmas story had the mushiest ending. The character talks to a dog destined to be a Christmas present and tells it, “You’ve got to have a dream.” She tells herself, “I don’t know what I want. I’m just drifting.” I sniff my tears back.
I like the “Green Square” best, since it’s the one the affected me the most. The phrase “Green Square” is endowed with a whole new meaning right after your read it. I realized how so few of the squares in the calendar are marked as special occasions.
I also especially enjoyed “Disapperance” because the premise of the story was so clever yet simple and elegantly executed in a story. Marquez or even Lightman already brought up the idea of a sleepless city in their novels, but this one cultivated it.
Tired from work, I let the dreams come, and slept so well after reading that, already looking forward to ending work and begin reading again.
