AT THE STOA

When we find ourselves growing mold on our skin from lack of exposure to air outside home and university, we go out (where the air is more poisonous, but at least different).  Manila, (yes, I am using the term as a mass noun) in general, is overwhelming with sights and sounds and smells - especially smells, that my brain skips entire chunks of it in self defense.  There are some very interesting things to see in most places, however, and they dominate my otherwise clunky picture of cities pushed together to sardine conditions. Certainly there's the teeming industrial architecture all over the place.  I was observing to Pasco that we don't have any distinctive style of contemporary architecture, at least if you don't consider narra and coconut wood as materials.  He replied, very wisely, or world-wearily, that having no unique architecture is one of the trademarks of being colonized.  Being a smartass I hastily added that all our claim to having any sort of ...

So I once again found a Murakami book to wrestle with, and, following his subliminal message, ate at a McDonald's and proceeded to get no amount of nutrients whatsoever.  While, I might add, reading Murakami's book. I found myself seated between two people in one of the corners, where the seats are barstools and the table one long countertop that you're supposed to share with everybody.  I was the only one carrying a tray. The school girl on my right was obviously waiting for somebody and decided to hang out inside the place without evidence of having ordered anything, and the lady on my left was obviously waiting for somebody inside the place without evidence of having ordered anything, while the man next to her was talking loudly on the phone, obviously waiting for somebody without evidence of having ordered anything.  Maybe I sat on the urban hobo corner of that particular McDonald's. Or maybe they finished all their food and put away their trays of their own accor...

My favorite time of day is this, in these rooms, with this light. It makes me believe that I can while away the hours of daylight remaining and never use them up.

I think the title quite neatly sums up all of my questions and problems about writing.  I'm not talking of writing term papers for school courses, for those questions can be answered simply: one writes by forcing nosebleeds to become decent grades, one writes the relevant answers to the thesis statement and/or question, and finally, one writes for the aforementioned decent grades.  Should one get decidedly metaphysical about these questions, one writes to prove that one exists, that one therefore thinks, and that one therefore has something worth writing about - briefly, about his existence. I'm talking about the writing done through social media - notes and statuses on Facebook, blog entries on blogs everywhere you care to look (obviously including this one), and, by extension, the more "respectable" articles on more respectable media sites.  I don't need to be told that the internet (and again by extension social media) is for information, since we have alread...

I went back up to my hometown before the holidays to spend Christmas with my family.  However, before the 25th is, surprisingly, the 23rd, during which my friends Armand and Singkaw surprised me with a birthday cake. The cake had three lit candles, commemorating the fabulous day I turned three.  It was a very happy surprise. Come Christmas eve my mother and I were at La Union, where my sister and her family live.  We traveled to Tagaytay the better part of Christmas day and spent the night there, and from there trekked to Taal volcano on the 26th.  I took about three hundred forty-seven pictures of the hike, all of which are still in my sister's camera. By the 27th I went back to Marikina to spend the New Year.  It was my first new year celebration here, and the fireworks last far longer than they do in Baguio.  Moreover, due to the difference in urban planning, which I can't quite put into words, I was privy to fireworks going off nearer to me than h...