Morning Shift

After a decade working at night, so much sunshine entered my life when I went shifted back to the morning. The world appears more alive. Yellow gold spreading itself on the skin, peering through glass panes and the buildings of the city, beautifully blazing the afternoons with tropical heat. The sunsets happen everyday but we never get exhausted in saying that it's spectacular. The drive along the bay at 5pm, coming home to see D. and I. - being able to say, I have lived the day and I saw a bright spark or two.

Coffee tastes better in the morning when it perks you up from a night's sleep, as opposed to trying to stay up when I work the nights. I've also been able to run more often. And I've been drinking spirits more often - the nights are just too seductive. At the same time, we no longer demand so much out of the nights and evenings. We recognize the rhythm that granted us some happiness and the recent days allowed us to keep pressing that button: lovingly prepared meals at home, some dinners out, many conversations on the collected stories of our days, movies and books over beer, vodka or whisky.

It's largely because the job's still too easy at this stage. This relaxed state will change when I'm out of the training and transition phase. Worrying is a natural propensity but over the years I'd like to think I've developed a slightly sensible, if not a more poetic perspective. I saw a spectacular sunset, and there will be another one tomorrow.

Icarus and Daedalus

I was already in high school when I consciously read about Icarus and Daedalus. It was from Edith Hamilton's Mythology. Some of my friends liked it too.

Recently, I scored a copy of the same book in an electronic version. At age four, the story of Icarus and Deadalus was one which you frequently wished to read.

At age thirty-three, I spoon-fed you the moral of the story. Stay humble. Follow your parents. Don't let the attractive brightness of the sun deceive you into having the wax in your wings melted.

Let's soar, and let's remember never to fly too high.

Here with You Where the Wild Things Are

At age four and a half, I. eats stories for breakfast, and demands for it all day. He asks mostly from D. And I pitch in to give him a healthy dose.

"Where the Wild Things Are" is one of the stories he can read along to, a favorite among those I read to him. We both love the drawings. We set ourselves off to a wild rumpus when we read it. It's always fun, with sparks of unpretentious, ambiguous profundity.

There's a movie adaptation by Spike Jonze.

It gets more wild, and crazy, more incredibly real. Children really are like that, and so are adults. So we had to do some explaining. And it's really beginning, he's figuring out some many things on his own. But the wild things cried, “Oh please don't go- We'll eat you up- we love you so!”

And in my Head, An Octopus

A season of Spring Snow out in the green with specks of gold, in a country with neither spring nor snow. 

Spring Snow
by Yukio Mishima
ePub version 512kb, 394 pages

We can only surmise how many dissertations have been written to try to figure out why Yukio Mishima committed seppuku after completing his Sea of Fertility Tetralogy. It also seems like the wrong question to ask, especially when you’re reading him for the first time.

The richness of Mishima’s metaphors takes a life of their own. When I read Spring Snow it is as if a huge octopus sat in my head. The octopus started moving its hands – orchestrating the story in my imagination.  Take the ubiquitous kimono as a symbolism, for instance. The color, folds, and movement are intricately woven into the story.

"What it was he didn't know, but whenever this bright certainty seemed to shine within his grasp, the fluttering sleeves of Satoko's aquamarine kimono interposed themselves, trapping him once again in the quicksands of indecision."

It may not be the best comparison, but I succumb to saying how it often swiftly flew me to the feelings of aflutter as in a Jane Austen novel, or even Downton Abbey. The Japanese, as always, take the world’s best without forgetting their own.

So the novel was not just all nervousness and gushing excitement. The sorrows were so gracefully written, and the characters carried out their conflicts pitting elegance against logic.

This octopus sure works with such elegant hands.

Bloody Distractions, Growing-Up and Immortality

We are grieving, groping in this darkness in a path with no recovery. The what-ifs repeat themselves and we draw from the new emptiness inside us. No matter how strongly we handle these fresh wounds, we know we are permanently scarred.

The movies come as welcome distractions. On weekend nights, the couch turns into a twin bed, and we let the TV interfere with movies acquired as the millenials would.

Boyhood

It had the missing elements of a grandiose film I was looking for in the “Before” series: for one, a sensibility that was sustained with a powerful, 12-year stamina. Acting out what appeared to be “spontaneous” conversations were rehearsed expertly to the appearance of reality. You’d remember Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight as good films sometimes bordering on the so-so. Boyhood, to me, is a period-definitive magnum opus: more than a bold step, it is a creative, methodical, patient leap.

The first scene bursts brightly with Coldplay’s Yellow, and while the narrative is non-linear, the time sequences become recognizable through the soundtrack. The time was defined by both Britney Spears, but also by Phoenix.  A line from  Mishima in Spring Snow, spoken by Honda goes:  “You see that is the easiest way to establish the essence of our era--- to take the lowest common denominator.” This movie endeavored to present not just the lowest common denominator to define an era. It escaped the catch-all presentations of adolescent milestones such as acne, losing one’s virginity, the prom date, graduation. In it their places were the difficult conversations around those milestones.

“You know how everyone's always saying seize the moment? I don't know, I'm kind of thinking it's the other way around, you know, like the moment seizes us.”

Some lines were probably intended to sound silly – because that how it is, to feel things: our enlightenment, our awkwardness. Nobody comes out of it elegantly. And I’m thinking it’s never really too late grow up.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Creativity, genius, art, scientific progress: these are inevitable consequences of immortality. Vintage equipment, good books and music are weapons of choice versus an all-powerful boredom and disgust with humans. It’s a vampire movie tailor-fit for hipsters. It calls out pseudo-intellectuals too, bringing up literary controversies such as: Shakespeare is Christopher Marlowe’s ghost writer. He faked his death four centuries ago and he's been lurking in Morocco. The science of Galileo and Tesla, the music of Paganini – it was handed down to them because the vampires wanted "to put something good out there."

Tilda Swinton delivers a commanding performance as Eve. As a vampire  - she danced, listened to music surrounded herself with pillars of books (including recent ones such as Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace). They had iPhones, traveled red-eye flights.They drank blood from cocktail glasses as if it were shots of Patron. She tells her bored lover:

“How can you've live for so long and still not get it? This self obsession is a waste of living. It could be spent in surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing.”

There’s a formula for immortality! There's the holy grail. But sometimes you have to resort to biting off someone’s neck.

Land Ho

A coming-of-old film, which is the senior equivalent of a coming-of-age film. A well-delivered road-trip comedy.

Some of the most earnest discoveries, the funnest things come later in life. This time around, you'd think you're never too old enough for anything: travel, drugs, being charming.

These two friends do get it: why waste the rest of your life when you can spend it surviving things? Appreciate nature, nurture kindness and friendship, dance. Reykjavik, Skógar, Jökulsárlón, Landmannalaugar, Gullfoss, Strokkur, and Blue Lagoon are the perfect places do all of it.

Francesco

The Pope Francis frenzy filled Manila's streets. He arrived a day before you decided to make your way into the world, rather too soon to come out of your mother's womb. The apostolic nunciature is less than a kilometer away from our house and when the pope's motorcade passes by, people come out to see him wave from his vehicle. Seven million of our countrymen heard him say mass. And while we weren't one of them, we follow him and believed profoundly in his crusade against greed in the form of the economic and political systems. And while we frowned upon his conservative views on gay marriage, he did open the doors of the church to other religions, atheists, and scientific ideas. We were touched by his genuine compassion for workers and the poor. The pope is also coming out with an encyclical in support of action against climate change.

We didn't know then if we were having a boy or a girl, but we knew Pope Francis would be your namesake. And little I. was right, he would have had a brother.

I was wrong about a thing or two. I saw D.'s pregnancy as a fragile one and as she wasn't as young, I thought she wasn't as strong as before. Seeing her bleed life out, I realized that she is strong as ever. We were ready, I thought. But we weren't ready for you leaving us before you can grace our lives. We weren't ready to fall off the cusp of our happiness.

We may try again, our doctor says. And one day things might even appear normal. We will mend, but there will be a special, empty chamber in our hearts that will always be meant for you. We will be peppered by what-ifs, both regretting what wasn't meant to be and thinking about  reaping the joys of what could have been. I know because I live this way. I had a brother who was born and died the same day. I took his name, wrote as him.

We live our lives not just as our own.