RANTING TO GET THIS OUT OF MY SYSTEM (WHILE I WAIT FOR CLASS TO START AND WATCH EARLY STUDENTS EYE ME SUSPICIOUSLY).

First, my film montage (I was going to make parallelisms on representations of eros in film and literature) was not prepared, err, correctly. So I have no introduction and I find myself about 20 minutes short.

So I thought maybe I could come up with an informal survey, powerpoint it, and discuss the answers and let that be my pre-lecture presentation, which could seque quite seamlessly into my dating discussion. But no, I can't even come up with a decent survey, informal or otherwise. I'm not getting anything from the answers I've been given. (Extremely grateful to my supportive classmates. Sadly, 8 good responses do not a "valid representation" of any social grouping make. Besides, your answers were too obviously, err, Sapphic.) Ugh. This is so frustrating.

So now I am to settle for guest speakers. Two, actually. Out of the bowels of downtown Manhattan, with around 10 minutes to spare, I was finally able to get two people to take pity on me and help me out. Yay me.
It's a debate/open forum thing. Students love that (I hope).

What is this thing I'm so worried about, you ask? Oh, just my first practical exam. We get three for the semester and if you get an okay grade, you can move on to the teaching semester, which I hope to do next year. I need at least a B+ for this class, or I might not get the go-signal to have my teaching practicum concurrent with a class term. (Usually, an internship or practicum is done alone, meaning you don't go to class, but since I'm also taking an additional teacher certification course (supposedly another term) and I still want to finish in two years, I have to squeeze what should have been 2 1/2 years into just 2.

I'm told it's also the informal application process for being considered as a potential faculty member.

I had already prepared myself for getting a not-so-impressive grade, because of the non-preparation of my film montage. I thought I could balance everything out if I get a good evaluation from the students.

Ugh.

Now I just want to jump off the bridge. Wish me luck.

I want to jump off the bridge. Want to do that too often nowadays.

Ateneo is going to the finals.

Dual citizenship act now in place.

I have a lecture on the evolution of eros (desire, struggle, denouement) today. Still revising lecture notes. I will probably suck so I'm going to forget about impressing the faculty and will just make sure the students get into it. There are two parts to the lecture proper: reader and writer. I wanted to illustrate how this dialectic can work both ways.

For the reader: closer look at romantic novels (NOT trashy romance, btw) and the development of eros in these stories. For the writer: juxtaposition of concept of Eros with the life on the page and reality.

Introduction: Film montage care of Grant.

Concrete discussion topic example (for the class participation part): dating today.

It will not be very academic, but it will probably be funny and fun. I'm guessing only 20% of the class read the reading material anyway. It's just that kind of day. I just hope I don't suck THAT BAD.

I can be a good teacher. Promise. Just not today. And maybe not for NYU.

Yes, I’ve made changes in the template. I think I’ve finally outgrown black backgrounds and gimmicky facades. The words are the focus here.

I got my review from Alex last night, and what he said struck a once-dormant chord in me – the idea of actually writing a (poet’s) novel.

I’ve always said that I’m not a novelist. I can submerge myself in my self-authored alternate realities, I can play god, I can be the crux of tragedies and dramas, I can even reside in my own multiple realms, but only for specific and contained moments. I have neither patience nor stamina for sustaining this focused intensity long enough to deliver something so protracted.

Or so I thought.

It’s true. Most of the pieces I love are imbued with the same voice, the same unfinished creation in my head begging for closure. When I change her words, they come out garbled and obscene. When I edit out certain emotions, she bursts. When I play with her personality, she turns into stone. I am not her master; I am only the force by which she becomes.

I didn’t see it before, probably because I’m too close to her, and probably because her life didn’t come to me in any logical order. In the gap in which she thrives, when my conscious mind is perched on dream, there are no anchors for time or space. And they become arbitrary, called upon on whim.

But she is real, even if the world she resides in is not. Her essence will be solidified in the lines across a page. Temptation has been dangled so deliciously on a string.

Perhaps it’s time.

Why am I blogging when I should be neck deep in novels and dissertations?

Because:
1. I need to breath.
2. I'm beginning to feel a wave of annoyance for my once-revered writing mentor, because he hasn't sent me his review of my work yet. He is officially reinstated as Supreme Wise Man.
3. I am anxiously waiting for the mailman.
4. I need to have some lunch.

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I have to go to the city today for class, where I shall lead a discussion on "The Southeast Asian Aesthetic in Literature". No, I'm not quite sure what that is. I'm guessing the only reason I got picked for this responsibility is because I'm Southeast Asian AND I actually grew up in Southeast Asia, which means I should have an intimate knowledge of this topic by default, which probably means that even if I bullshit my way through all 2 hours, no one would know the difference.

The joys of my quasi-exotic background.

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John and I watched Underworld last night, right after a nice sushi dinner. It wasn't bad, but we both agreed that the movie could ease up on the close up shots.

John: They have close-ups, extreme close-ups, and a close-up of the extreme close-up.

Which leads us to the question: Must audiences really be privy to the state of Kate Beckinsale's pores?

Maybe we should have stuck to th original plan and watched "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" instead. I can stare at the texture of Johnny Depp's face anytime.

In the interests of self-promotion, I will direct you to this link: www.nuvein.com. I'm in Issue 16, which was quite a few seasons back, yes I know. They have NUvein caps, mugs, shirts, etc for sale too.

The writings I have there are not ones I'm particularly proud of, but since they're the only ones that are easily accesible, what the hell, there you go. I will work on getting more stuff out, if you work on giving me money (it's for my book, gadamit).

Now back to the two-faced, stressed out chunk of boredom that is my life.

Inadequacy is a state of being. It's not a noun, it's verb. "I am inadequate" is a not a description, it's the definition. Yes, boys and girls, a step to insanity. Closer and closer I edge into asylumatic bliss.

Am I stupid? I hardly think so. Impulsive (at times), distracted (often), and absent-minded (eternally), yes, but those qualities aren't the benchmark of idiocy. And after all, I am doing graduate work at NYU, that must count for something.

Am I lacking in passion? Somehow, I doubt it. After all, I did manage to get myself across the globe, in *ahem* pursuit of a fish-slippery dream. I've worked my cortex straight out of my cerebrum, and I've even managed to forget my superiority complex (at the heights of stress).

Am I untalented? Not particularly, I would think. So I'm not Sappho. Or Walt Whitman. Not even Marilyn Chin. (YET). But hey I'm not looking for a Pulitzer Prize (just now). And I seriously think I've got something to offer. Yes, I know my ego is showing.

The thing is, I find myself unsatisfied. Unsatiated. Actually, disappointed. With me. Uh-oh. The universe has turned in on itself, and I don't know how to fix it.

It's unnerving to be reminded that you're not God sometimes.

I leave you now with an excerpt from a book of John's: E.L. Doctorow's City of God. New York, New York.

From E.L.Doctorow’s City of God:

The city grid was laid out in the 1840s, so despite all we still live with the decisions of the dead. We walk the streets where generations have trod have trod have trod.

New York New York, capital of literature, the arts, social pretension, subway tunnel condos. Napoleonic real estate mongers, grandiose rag merchants. Self-important sportswriters. Statesmen retired in Sutton Place to rewrite their lamentable achievements… New York, the capital of people who make immense amounts of money without working. The capital of people who work all their lives and end up broke and gray. New York is the capital of boroughs of vast neighborhoods of nameless drab apartment houses where genius is born everyday.

It is the capital of all music. It is the capital of exhausted trees.

The migrant wretched of the world, they think if they can just get here, they can get a foothold. Run a newsstand, a bodega, drive a cab, peddle. Janitor, security guard, run numbers, deal, whatever it takes. You want to tell them this is no place for poor people. The racial fault line going through the heartland goes through our heart. We’re color-coded ethnic and social enclavists, multiculturally suspicious, and verbally aggressive, as if the city as an idea is too much to bear even by the people who live in it.

But I can stop on any corner at the busy streets, and before me are thousands of lives headed in all four directions, uptown downtown east and west, on foot, on bikes, on in-line skates, in buses, strollers, cars, trucks, with the subway rumble underneath my feet… and how can I not know I am momentarily part of the most spectacular phenomenon in the unnatural world? There is a specie recognition we will never acknowledge. A primatial over-soul. For all the wariness or indifference with which we negotiate our public spaces, we rely on the masses around us to delineate ourselves. The city may begin from a marketplace, a trading post, the confluence of waters, but it secretly depends on the human need to walk among strangers.

And so each of the passersby on this corner, every scruffy, oversize, undersize, weird, fat, or bony or limping or muttering or foreign-looking, or green-haired punk-strutting, threatening, crazy, angry, inconsolable person I see… is a New Yorker, which is to say as native to this diaspora as I am, and part of our great sputtering experiment in a universalist society proposing a world without nations where anyone can be anything and ID is planetary.

Not that you shouldn’t watch your pocketbook, lady.

Sometimes I find myself surrounded by so many bad verses and over-used clichés that I just want to jump off the Queensboro Bridge. And then I realize that they are all mine. The mess of deformed metaphors and retarded imagery were brought to this world by my sad little brain. I usually aim for the kitchen knife after that, except I’m always distracted by the scent of beef simmering on the stove so that I never get to moving blade over flesh. My flesh, anyway.

In all the time that I’ve been writing, I can honestly say that I am only proud of one poem and one short story. All the others may perhaps shine in their respective 30-second moments of glory, but they usually tumble to earth on the re-read.

I am a writer only because I’m a stubborn, egotistic ass. That’s the awful truth of it. It isn’t because I’m particularly talented, or that I’m particularly motivated. I am a writer only because when my mind was reviewing career resumes, it inexplicably held on to this one. Then it sunk its fangs in and never let go.

And sometimes, I’m a writer only because I can be a con artist too. Only the gods (Hail Bacchus!) know how I did it, but there are people out there on this earth who are utterly certain that my future in the literary canon is assured. I let them exist under these delusions, because admittedly, it makes me feel better to know that I have believers, misguided though they may be. Besides, when one digs into the canon deep enough (you know, just when your shovel hits hell), you’ll probably find all the books ever conceived by man somewhere along the pile.

Ah, conceiving. Here I go again, comparing writing to sex.

The thing is, conception isn’t the hard part, not really. What’s hard is carrying the book to term. I must be guilty of a million manuscript abortions by now. Then there are the accidental miscarriages, and the false alarms, and you just end up screaming for some form of contraceptive control.

And then you get too much contraception and you don’t know if you can give birth anymore. Not just get pregnant, but to go the whole nine yards. To deliver. To give birth to your story, in whatever form it may be.

Ay, there’s the rub. To give birth to a story even while maneuvering around a billion other stories you know you can’t have. Or can’t possibly want to.

Sometimes I figure that this title of “writer” is the enemy. That’s what boxes me in and keeps me stagnant. Stale. If I could be something else (princess, heiress, model, maybe?), then maybe I could be a writer too.

My friend's new blog has a "Make a Donation" button on it, and the stupid thing is he actually receives money! So, in light of that, let's all take a moment to think about the things this blog has done for you. Kept you happy by feeding off my misery? Kept you entertained? Kept you from keeping a date with me? * Thus ensuring your sanity for the years to come.

The Wanda Fund is the best way to keep the blog alive and show your appreciation. Credit cards now accepted.

I think I might need it soon. It's not only the fact that I'm barely hanging on to a decent account balance, it's also the work that I'm doing on my papers. Yes, plural. I just now figured out my thesis for the long paper: A comparison of the concept of the bittersweet in desire and love throughout the ages as imaged in the work of ancient poet Sappho and contemporary poet Anne Carson through a close reading of If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (edited by Carson) and Eros: The Bittersweet (by Carson). I know it's still pretty vague, it's a work in progress.

Then there are three other mini-papers all due Monday next week. Shoudl come out to 30 pages all in all. Wish me luck. Better yet, click on the button above and give this poor artist wannabe a hand-up.

I am back online. After 17 long days. No internet at home for 17 long days. It's like being re-injected into society. Hallelujah.

Updates to come.

To rock a world.

Yes. To those who know what the question is, the answer is yes. But not in the way that I imagined.

It wasn't the wind, or the trees, or the ground below me, or my tastes, or my thinking that shook. It wasn't even me, not really. I know who I am.

And yet. It was who I wanted to become, my picture of my "ten years after", my happily ever after. I didn't stop asking my questions, I didn't even change them. But I have added more, and the difficult part is even the things I thought were carved in stone suddenly seemed so ephemeral. The tangibles have changed, the concrete has softened, and I find that it seems nearly impossible to bridge yesterday with each day coming after.

It wasn't just a quake. It was a tectonic shift. Suddenly everything once held sacred is circumspect. Convictions have spawned holes, and anchors, well, anchors change everyday.

It's a bittersweeet awakenning to realize that foundations are illusions. Dreams we come up with to rationalize, to make sense of, to give ourselves some sort of self-important purpose. And yet,I find that they must be made anyway, because without them the world stops, refuses to turn. And I cannot be stuck in limbo.

Yet that is where I am. I am pushing forward, but I don't know which way I am going.

To those who know me, you will know that this goes against the grain. The not knowing, the helplessness. I have given someone this much control, and with that comes a certain measure of fear. An immense measure of fear.

And why? Because sometimes whys are irrelevant. Because I want to. Because he is worth it.

That is how my world has been rocked. Off the scale. Off everything I know. Careening in midspace. I am breathless with anticipation as I wait for it to land. If it ever does.

Waiting with a smile upon my face.

Oh BTW, watched a couple of films.

American Splendor and Uptown Girls.

American Splendor was okay, but a litle too long. Some characters were like a really badly cooked chunk of chicken -- burnt on the outside, bloddy red raw in the middle. That niyerd guy for example. They kept on focusing on his speech, err, difference and his obvious nerdiness, it was like they were ramming it down our throats. And ramming, as you well know, gets old after about 10 seconds.

Hello. We are not all stupid and fat, dear people. We got it the first time.

Harvey Pekar, as a character, was entertaining in his own way, but that was just it. He was only a character in his own movie/comic book. We didn't really get to see Harvey Pekar as a person, and I think this is where the movie fails. At the end of the screening, you don't begrudge the movie it's $10 worth, but at the same time, you didn't come away with anything. You just sort of came away.

Uptown Girls, on the other hand, wasn't pretending to be anything other than a good old girly walk down your average coming-of-age. It wasn't mind-blowing or anything like that, but it wasn't bad either. Just don't watch it with your boyfriends. It's definitely full of estrogen.

Got to run folks.

Alright.

My new home looks like a cross between a secondhand furniture store and a garden supplies storage space. Good thing is we got the bedroom set up already so that part of the house looks nice, at least.

No internet, no phone. Yet. We have cable TV though, so that just shows you where are priorities lies... just kidding. I think if we had both our ways we'd choose the internet over TV any day. But obviously, that is not to be. Sob, sob.

Classes start next week. Something due end of this week. Bleaching, cleaning, disinfecting, sweeping, painting, and other bits of domestic activities must still be done. If only Tom, the previous tenant, would get his crap out of our place, then maybe we could start working on the dining-room-kitchen-green-room area.

Oh yeah, we also bought a whole new set of dinnerware from Macy's. Plates, cups, dessert plates and bowls. No forks and knives and glasses yet though. Or pots (we only have on pan). But we do have chopsticks. (So I have sangley-fied. You know it was bound to happen.)

Will post pictures of the new home when it's ready to smile and pose. It's still the slightest bit groggy from it's long, deep (and dust-collecting) sleep.

That's all for now, I guess. This isn't the best of entries, yes I know. Until we get back online, it'll have to do though.