THE ROAD WILL TAKE YOU

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

-George Harrison, Any Road

Having a little fun making an animated GIF. I miss (being a hippie in) Vigan.

LET IT FALL, I'LL NEVER MAKE IT IN TIME

"She's waiting for the night to fall, let it fall

I'll never make it in time"

-Beirut, East Harlem

East Harlem is just one of the many beautiful songs I got out of the indie radio station in the trusty music-streaming site Grooveshark. My favorite parts are of course,

• the instrumental after the above quote is sung; and
• the instrumental proper.

I have always loved Beirut since Postcards From Italy. If anyone else like indie rock mixed with some World Music with an old school vibe, you'd have to check Beirut out.

According to Wikipedia, the band genre is Balkan folk, which the article says is influenced by Southeastern European music and characterized by complex rhythm. I therefore declare that I love complex rhythm. I have been trying to coin a definition that describes something like a "complication of instruments", or when different instruments are played simultaneously and make a great, euphoric effect. Complex rhythm sounds just about right.

(credits to popmusicrundown.blogspot.com)

Above is the CD cover of the band's debut album, Gulag Orkestar, which included Postcards From Italy. If anything, the picture gives an impression of the kind of music Beirut makes, although there is some sort of crazy distortion going on with that girl's left foot. Maybe it was moving?

PRETENDING TO BE ASLEEP

"While it is always possible to wake a person who's sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep."

-Jonathan Safran Foer (Eating Animals)

Eating Animals is a non-fiction novel written by (of course) Foer, a vegetarian. He discusses several topics from the horrific realities of factory farming to the cruel deceptions and ugly truths beneath the quack assurances of meat industries and phony promises of fast-food chains.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for Foer's dedication to vegetarianism. I understand that he isn't strictly vegan (a vegetarian doesn't eat meat, poultry, or fish but may eat dairy products, while vegans incorporate the avoidance of animal products entirely in their diet and lifestyle). Vegetarianism was a choice he made for himself, and while most people would find it impossible/deplorable/incomprehensible (the list of excuses could go on), I give him so much credit for keeping it real and for doing what he believed in.

My favorite was when he accounted in the book the time when along with an activist, he adventurously trespassed into an unnamed poultry farm at the wee hours of midnight, just to see with his own eyes what really happens inside. I love how mad he is! Going undercover is just so thrilling.

I am no stranger to vegetarianism myself. I have tried several it times in the past, sometimes as a diet fad or sometimes as a belief, but circumstances always suggest that I pursue it a later time when I could afford to buy my own food and have the freedom to eat whatever and whenever I want. Friends and family would always ask why (much to their amusement or plain curiosity), and I always find it hard to explain to them, that I would need a whole session for predicted arguments (whatiswrongwithyouwhatisallthisnomeatdrama). Better yet, it is easier not to explain at all (and leave some thinking that I am obnoxious for not eating meat). My reason may not be as deep or as fulfilling as any vegan activist's, but I always find it a breather to try unconventional things and defy the reason why people eat meat (for pleasure, not for need).

I am uncertain if I will try it out again anytime soon, though. I am still focusing on more important things, and Cebu is not really an ideal place to go vegetarian and not go crazy. Hello, for the love of lechon, barbecue, siomai and sutukil! You cannot not miss these things when they are almost always in front of you. Hay, excuses!

Anyway, I don't know why I'm ranting about vegetarianism. I should be talking about other things (aka the meaning of the above-mentioned quote), but at least you get to know one of the notches that ties up the belt to my otherwise crazy side. Teehee :)

BUT IT ALSO MEANS YOU HAVE TO LET THEM GO

"So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in!

But it also means you have to let them go!"

- Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

If you want to know why there is an exclamation point after every sentence, it is because Mr. Black, the character who spoke the line in the book, aside from being old and weird-looking with a red beret and an eye patch, is deaf and had to scream everything he says.

I will tell you that the line is just one of the endless streams of wisdom in Foer's book. I most possibly have never been moved by any book as his. I fell in love with the syllogisms, the poetic verses, the unconventional typography, the illustrations. It was a novel you had to feel along with, and is not necessarily factual or scientifically correct. I think people who always try to make a sense of things wouldn't really get it. It would take some sort of madness to appreciate madness ;)

And since we're on the topic of the open door which leaves people to come and go, I chanced upon meeting a familiar face yesterday in the bathroom outside the office. It was Karen, or Yen as we all fondly call her, or Karen of Iran as we used to joke each other with (mine is Iris of Paris and I couldn't remember why we called each other that haha). We were high school classmates, and I will tell you that she is really, really pretty and smart! Anyway, I found that it was Yen's 2nd week in her new job and her office is on the same floor as ours. Hella amazing! We planned to lunch out tomorrow along with Reen and hopefully, Robee, whose office is just in the next building.

It was so cute that Yen posted our bathroom encounter in her blog, so I couldn't find it in my heart not to post as well. Haha. In exchange of the Eiffel Tower picture she posted (Iris of Paris), I will post one of the Azadi Tower in Tehran (Yen of Iran)! I am not quite sure of its symbolic attribute, but isn't it beautiful?

Azadi Tower

(photo credits goes to one of my favorite sites Beauty In Everything)

As I am now tired and sleepy and in this ungodly hour, I will have to retire in bed and know that I will wake up just as tired and sleepy. Quest-ce que le pointe?

Bon nuit!

THE BIRTH OF ART (THE BIRTH OF WORK)

"In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art."

— Rumi

A piercing message structured beautifully. How wonderful it is to know that beauty (songs, poems, paintings, books, endless forms of art) is made out of love. Doing things you love for the people you love. Such is the life we all want to live. But the reality of life suggests otherwise. In his book Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer (my favorite) tells us, through the character Alex Perchov:

"I am doing something I hate for you. This is what it means to be in love."

Poignant, a little foolish, a little truthful. In the book, the line was Alex's excuse to one of his girls when asked why he had to go somewhere far to "toil currency". If you had read the book, you would know that Alex's mother had told him the same thing when he asked her why she had to do endless jobs. Doing things you hate for the people you love. This is what it also means to love, and to be a family. Above anything else, there is an honorable, beautiful reason why we get up early against our will. Thank God for work.

And now..., I am suddenly reminded of the vast amount of time and effort my current work engagement is gonna take this week, and maybe the week after this, and maybe the next. It sounds heavy (it is), so I am going to preoccupy (distract) us with some of my favorite things.

cute Polaroid coasters from this shop

mixtape cushions from Pepper Stitches

hot Tyler Blackburn, who could pass for (forever hot) Ben Barnes' younger brother

And if you have seen the movie Juno and have good ears for music, you would know that the cool Kimya Dawson, 1/2 of the band Moldy Peaches, wrote quite a number for the movie soundtrack. One of my favorite tracks is her song Tire Swing, which you can listen to here. Save the awkward guitar strumming, awkward random lyrics and even more awkward singing (the 3 elements that make up the greatness of Moldy Peaches), I love this line:

"The sound of our voices made us forget everything

that had ever hurt our feelings"

COMMON COLD OF THE SOUL

"To sinful patterns of behavior that never get confronted and changed,

Abilities and gifts that never get cultivated and deployed – until weeks become months

and months turn into years,

And one day you’re looking back on a life of deep intimate gut-wrenching honest

conversations you never had;

Great bold prayers you never prayed,

Exhilarating risks you never took,

Sacrificial gifts you never offered,

Lives you never touched,

And your sitting in your recliner with a shriveled soul,

And forgotten dreams,

And you realize there was a world of desperate need,

And a great God calling you to be part of something bigger then yourself-

You see the person you could have become but did not;

You never followed your calling;

You never got out of the boat" (Emphasis mine)

-Common Cold of the Soul by Gregg Levoy

How can I not fall in love with the deep insight, the poetic verses, the way it says exactly how I would have wanted my feelings to sound like?

The office memo (who wanted to be a love letter). The getting out of the boat (and not be afraid to drown). The more I read, the more I hold on to it.

On a lighter note, it is a free Saturday for me and I plan to stay in due to lack of currency and whatnot. I have an unfinished book to read, an exercise to sweat out to, maybe a little office work to finish, and some furniture rearranging/bedroom renovating (a favorite activity) to work on.

The past weekends have been spent out and about, but this time I am revolutionizing the homebody in me (and it never hurts that a coffee maker is at hand to brew my perfect French Roast).

EPIPHANY (IN A BATHROOM STALL)

"Every office memo dreamed of being a love letter. If only it had the words."

- Me of I Wrote This For You

There is so much beauty and depression in Me's words that always, always, draw me to his (or her? I am not sure) blog, which apparently I declare to be my favorite blog. Amidst a pool of the beautiful words are just as equally haunting black-and-white photos and nostalgic waves of unfiltered emotion post after post after post.

I may have just sounded like a TV commercial, but the point of this post is really the fact that I have been feeling like a bloody office memo for the past few weeks. For the second time in my life, I had an epiphany in a bathroom stall, of all places. And then yesterday while talking to some friends, I came upon an idea, a decision, the thought of which gives me freedom and a peace of mind.

Maybe the office memo was really a love letter in disguise. Maybe it was just waiting for the right words.