THe_uNcErTainTy_pRinCipLe

i need a book.  a really good book. something like Unbearable Lightness of Being. or maybe One Hundred Years of Solitude.  or Love in the Time of Cholera.  perhaps a Yukio Mishima will do.

i need a movie.  i think i need to watch A Clockwork Orange.  or Battle Royale I for the fourth (?) time.

because i am so into overpriced coffee, this got my attention:

my favorite is caramel frapp
hehe.

Something from the late nineties (I belong to the class of ‘98, however).

“Your choices are half-chance, and so are everybody else’s.”

“Do one thing that scares you everyday. ”

Did you know when you go it’s the perfect ending to the bad day I was just beginning?

My Favorite Mistake (Sheryl Crow)

i find it rather odd that it was a young adult novel that introduced me to thomas. thomas stearns eliot, i mean.  it was that line - do I dare disturb the universe? - that engulfed me in his poetry, and like light flirting with a black hole, i couldnt escape from it. 

nothing like ive tried before.  i just got more and more addicted.  first it was the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  when the Lit prof back in college mentioned a verse from it as an example of an elaborated metaphor, i was enthralled.  i could tell which poem it was taken from, and i felt a certain tinge of pride at this.

but the poems got harder and harder to understand.  i am aware that i dont understand them at all, but that’s ok.  maybe poetry is not always to be understood, ambiguous like theories in modern physics.  maybe my own understanding of it evolves. maybe, as with everything in my life, my understanding of it arrives a bit too late.  here’s one that i really like:

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

how i miss reading stuff.  i was reading a student’s blog some weeks back, all those books she had mentioned made me realize that i havent been reading a lot these days.  see, i constantly catch myself thinking how bored i am with my life right now, how much i crave for new experiences to thrill me. maybe, just maybe, i just need to catch up on my reading.

You know what’s funny? My life in 2008.

I carved out plans that didn’t push through, among them a major-life-changing-this-is-it plan. Wait, there were two of these.  Two life-changing plans.

Oh, I was able to get a second degree.  But that didn’t really feel like a big deal (well, except that I now have a better understanding of all things physics).  I still harbor this nagging feeling that I had things rather easy.  Like I know I should have exerted a bit more effort than I had. I was always thinking that some profs could have been less lenient, could have been a bit inhuman or something.  Oh well. Big surprise here.  The entire second and third terms I was feeling only half-alive most of the time.  But then, I must say, I did learn a lot, both inside and outside the school. (Insert knowing wink here.)

I did get to have my hair colored. Light brown something.  I’m thinking of having it recolored (ooopsie. Is there such a word?) sometime before March.  I more or less maintained my weight, but I really want to lose some pounds. I was able to purchase clothes that I really like, and shoes that I really like (back in DLSU, everytime that I would be taking a test, I would buy a new blouse or shirt, for I seemed to do well in exams when wearing new garments).  And I did get to buy THE laptop that I want (You can go ask: I am probably the only public school teacher in Mandaluyong who owns a laptop like this. :))

I was able to go to Mindoro for the second time. So what, you might ask?  See, I don’t get to leave the house often, and it’s a real challenge to get my dad to agree on any travel plans (I know, I know I’m already 27, but hey, go figure) — so this is a big thing for me. Oh, but I traveled more in 2007 than last year. And unlike in 2006 and 2007, I didn’t get to see San Miguel’s Octoberfest (because they changed it a lot, and it didn’t feel right at the time). I wish I could have flown last year….hmm, to where could I have flown? 

So it really wasn’t a bad year for me.  I didn’t get to do the things I planned to do, like those two above-mentioned LCPs (life-changing-plans).  I think I succeeded in two of the five resolutions I had last year, though, such dire consequences they have on me and the way I teach.  I resolve not to continue with those two resolutions anymore.  Also, I know I should be reading more.  I met people, I met really good teachers.  I took the trains. I took the bus once, for old time’s sake.

Hmmm, I didn’t get to do what I wanted to.  But in the same breath, I could say that I got to do the things I wanted to.  I didn’t get what I wanted, but I also got what I wanted.  And I also got things I didn’t want, but, hey there they are — but I could just ignore them.  I had an awesome birthday.  I celebrated.  I lived. I smiled a lot of times.  I think I cried, too. I traveled the length of EDSA. And somebody loves my soul.  And that’s one LCP I didn’t exactly plan on.
 

REM

I’ve found a way to make you
I’ve found a way
A way to make you smile

I read bad poetry
Into your machine
I save your messages
Just to hear your voice
You always listen carefully
To awkward rhymes
You always say your name,
Like I wouldn’t know it’s you,
At your most beautiful

At my most beautiful
I count your eyelashes, secretly
With every one, whisper I love you
I let you sleep
I know you’re closed eye watching me,
Listening
I thought I saw a smile

Lazy on a Sunday Morning

There Must be a Way

Still loving picnik.com.  Loving it so that I wasn’t able to write my lesson plans last Sunday.

“But the music plays and you display your heart for me to see.”
Tom Waits

Chris, my co-teacher, often criticizes my hearing. He says I’m losing it, like the way people who are fast approaching their senior-citizenship do. Odette, the Bio teacher who occupies the table beside mine, blames it on my incessant listening to music.

But I turn a deaf ear to both of them, pun intended, of course. You see, I couldn’t possibly live without a song in my head and a yearning in my heart. I couldn’t possibly get through each day without hearing a tune or two, especially if they happen to be the ones that I love. The Beatles. The early 90’s rock. The Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana. All that teenage angst that paid off well, and now I am bored and old. Oh, I am old. But I am not as bored as I believe myself to be. Nothing is better than hearing a much loved song over the radio, and oh so suddenly too, like being reminded of something you like, then telling yourself: oh, how I’ve missed this and that. I must have changed my playlist an indefinite number of times, which depends a lot on the mood that I am in, or whatever cloud decides to hover above my head. Sometimes I go for my staple: early 90s rock, mixed in some alternative music, a few mellow rock (a dash, let’s say, of Dashboard Confessionals), and I am on. Sometimes, too, I’d go for my classic rock — the Beatles being foremost on the list. Then some Rolling Stones, maybe. Definitely, a bit of the Doors, and a sprinkle of all that was good and fun in the 70’s: Abba, Blondie, Led Zeppelin, some Credence Clearwater Revival. And sometimes, too, I’d go for those New Wave 80’s stuff, in particular, The Cure, U2, and all those British New Wave bands. Then, at some point, I’d grow tired of all these stuff, and switch to some Aimee Mann, Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Joan Osborne, maybe some of the Carpenters’ and the likes. Then, maybe, as the mood takes hold of and leads me, I’d go for the standards, some Big Band type of music. And Frank Sinatra. One can’t go wrong with Old Blue Eyes. Makes me just want to fly to the moon and lay among the stars.

Oh music. No wonder at the start of each school year I have this need to know what my students listen to, what they think is the song that hovers in their hearts at that moment. I don’t judge them for the type of music they like… You see, I only want to find out if, they, too have a song in their head that is in perfect dance with a yearning in their heart.