Celestina

Time, such a strange thing.

It took me years but I finally understood that I had encountered a true mystery that night, that I had taken a living miracle into my house. That Celestina del Sol was from a world I would never understand. That sometimes Nature improvises. That Nature created a woman that lived outside the field of time and may never die. That someday everyone who ever knew her and remembered her would be gone. That she would live forever in that physical perfection like some kind of exiled and forgotten goddess. And that trying to understand such a life, and why love matters to it, why a god would need to be loved too, was like trying to understand the anatomy of the wind or the architecture of silence or cloud tectonics. Yeah. What better way to respond to a miracle than to fall in love with it?

Anibal de la Luna in Cloud Tectonics by Jose Rivera

Waiting

A mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. “I shall be yours,” she told him, “when you have spent a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool, in my garden, beneath my windows.” But on the ninety-ninth night, the mandarin stood up, put his stool under his arm, and went away.

- from A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes

It’s hard to keep track of things. I don’t know where my copy of this book is. If anyone has it, our house number is 33.

This wind reminds me of better days

Years ago, I remember walking around the neighborhood with a friend. It was as windy as today. We saw an empty lot overgrown with sunflowers like that scene in Everything is Illuminated, except the sunflowers were the local kind. The whole place was yellow, and it shifted shades everytime the wind swept through.

Little Souvenir

I remember, I still have your book.  One of these days, I’ll enter a public place, put it on a tabletop, pretend I have an important call and leave it behind.

What now?

Night Song
Louise Glück

Look up into the light of the lantern.
Don”t you see? The calm of darkness
is the horror of Heaven.

We’ve been apart too long, too painfully separated.
How can you bear to dream,
to give up watching? I think you must be dreaming,
your face is full of mild expectancy.

I need to wake you, to remind you that there isn’t a future.
That’s why we’re free. And now some weakness in me
has been cured forever, so I’m not compelled
to close my eyes, to go back, to rectify—

The beach is still; the sea, cleansed of its superfluous life,
opaque, rocklike. In mounds, in vegetal clusters,
seabirds sleep on the jetty. Terns, assassins—

You’re tired. I can see that.
We’re both tired, we have acted a great drama.
Even our hands are cold, that we’re like kindling.
Our clothes are scattered on the sand; strangely enough,
they never turned to ashes.

I have to tell you what I’ve learned, that I know now
what happens to the dreamers.
They don’t feel it when they change. One day
they wake, they dress, they are old.

Tonight I’m not afraid
to feel the revolutions. How can you want sleep
when passion gives you that peace?
You’re like me tonight, one of the lucky ones.
You’ll get what you want. You’ll get your oblivion.

—

My cat, the big one that will eat anything, is licking the breadcrumbs off my other cat Petunia. Oh Lord. Who will save your soul?

Don’t name your daughter Penelope

Says here that after Odysseus’ death, Penelope marries Circe and Odysseus’ son Telegonus. Telemachus, Penelope’s son by Odysseus, marries Circe. That is one very strange family. It reminds me of “I’m My Own Grandpa” from The Stupids. Anyway, they’re Greeks. They had sodomy and bestiality long before those words entered the dictionary.

Someone told me he’d name his cat Penelope so that it would always just wait at home. If I were to rename my cat, it would have to be Medea, because I don’t want kittens.

Disclaimer: Did I ever say that this blog will make sense?

Girlfriend in a coma

Tara’s been declared as totally and permanently disabled. I guess I already knew that at the back of my mind but refused to acknowledge it without hearing it from the doctors/Tito Larry. I just read Tito Larry’s note re Tara’s discharge from Medical City. It’s elating, at the same time I felt a door close somewhere. I was hoping we’d be able to go to Agno again and get drunk by the sea. Hi Tara! I’ve got lots of kwento for you.

Optimus

So this is what happens when you drink too much apple juice. You stay up late, you harass cats, you make one too many posts on Facebook.

Meet Optimus:

Postcards

“I’ve always been fond of September. Spring is never a good time. It’s a trussed up and beautiful drag queen but autumn is real.”

- from George Pringle’s Carte Postale

We don’t have spring here or autumn, but I get it. I suppose it has something to do with the falling leaves and that subtle drop in temperature and the thought that maybe you won’t survive the winter. Well now you have heaters for that but think of the cavemen.

It’s been raining quite a lot recently. Sometimes it rains like it’s the end of the world. Feels like God somehow forgot all about us in those few hours. If one day, God suddenly thinks of sending animals from the heavens, let it be fish with wings or any mammal that could fly. I’m thinking of P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia and all those frogs. It’s OK, as long as there’s Aimee Mann in the background.

We used to run around in the lawn of our house in the province when it rained. I was around five then.  If you do that today, you’d probably die of pneumonia or your father will start thinking you’re doing drugs, so I’d rather not risk it.

So, everyone, bring an umbrella. If it doesn’t rain, maim random pedestrians with it. (Pls don’t actually do this if you’re not one of them four droogs.)

The Rain in Spain

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