jiunabug

snowstorm

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:22:35 GMT

a now, when its presence,
there is no, never was

blank, still, fraught

lost alone, but
gathered; universe.

worshipful

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:17:54 GMT

you are the ocean.
when i hold you in a cup
i carry the moon.

positively 4th street

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:44:49 GMT

joke!

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:44:09 GMT

This guy comes home from work one day to find his dog with the neighbor's pet rabbit in his mouth. The rabbit is very dead and the guy panics.
He thinks the neighbors are going to hate him forever, so he takes the dirty, chewed-up rabbit into the house, gives it a bath, blow-dries its fur, and puts the rabbit back into the cage at the neighbor's house, hoping that they will think it died of natural causes.
A few days later, the neighbor is outside and asks the guy, "Did you hear that Fluffy died?"
The guy stumbles around and says, "Um.. no.. um.. what happened?"
The neighbor replies, "We just found him dead in his cage one day, but the weird thing is that the day after we buried him we went outside and someone had dug him up, gave him a bath and put him back into the cage.

A straggler entering two places (an exercise on setting)

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:14:30 GMT

Emma agreed to meet me at The Monarch at 8:00 pm but I got there at 7:45 pm and it was already snowing so there was no sense in waiting outside like we said we would. I had my leather envelope, with a copy of F. Scott's On Writing inside. I had already finished it on the way but I wanted to reread it so that I could underline the passages I found appealing.

There was a band playing onstage already, Freddy and the Blue Sockets. Their drummer wore a white t-shirt, an East Asian man who looked like he just stepped in from the street. Their bass player was a woman with a boy's haircut wearing a periwinkle turtleneck. There was also a pianist, and a man who sang occasionally. The place was packed with an older crowd who followed me with carnivorous look when I came in but who quickly settled back into their barstools when the band started swinging.

I guess I didn't look like their average customer. I wore a black blazer and tied back my long hair. With my brown envelope and sweeping trench coat, I was the sort of drama that belonged in a scholastic setting. More a university campus than a jazz club.

To fit in, and because it was the thing I was expected to do, I ordered Black and Mild. Then I took out Fitzgerald and kept an ear to the music. Every few minutes I looked outside. I had to get up from my chair several times to do so; I must've looked out of place and very awkward. I didn't even finish my beer. It was 8:20 when she finally entered, her dark hair trailing like volcanic ash. She was wearing a curve-hugging black dress and her lips were very hot pink. A vaudeville actress, an opera singer. Drama in 5'4". She was as out of place as I was, but for an entirely different reason.

But still. She was late. "I could've left 10 minutes ago," I said by way of greeting.

"But you didn't." She beamed, then leaned in towards me to give me a kiss on the cheek.

This was going to be an interesting night.

----

I went into the top floor of the Oasis, a quick sweep of the eye revealing the same group of “alternatives” and pseudo-hipsters with their laptops and beanies, dreads and hookahs. I began setting up for my hour-long residency. I knew exactly what to do. Very neatly on the table I set my laptop, my thick black journal, my pink pen, my cell phone, my Styrofoam of water, and the free issue of Current magazine I picked up from downstairs. Beside the house ashtray I arranged my pack of menthol Parliaments, and on top of that, my cheap, blue plastic lighter. I lit a cigarette with the distracted, and yet insistent flair of someone who had many things in her mind, then set the stick snugly in the crook of the ashtray. I flipped through the magazine, encircled shows I thought were interesting. I tapped the keys on my laptop, typing random thoughts my mind spat out. Anyone who looked would have realized I had many things to say, many immediate things to worry about. I knew I seemed serious and intimidating, but approachable. I was interesting but not petty, mysterious but not nebulous.

My cigarette just kept on smoking itself. When I looked, it was almost all ash, burnt close to the filter. My preoccupation had turned from a schtick to something real. The cigarette had spent itself in the ventilated room even though I did not even suck on it. I sighed and pushed the pristine butt into the ashtray with my fingertip and started packing up. No one was going to come over, enchanted and ensnared by my mystique. No one could be intrigued enough to sit on my table and introduce himself. I forgot that everyone else in the room might be wishing for exactly the type of thing I was wishing for. That somehow, someway, by my sheer desire to be known, without moving a muscle or giving any indication of interest, my soul mate, my kindred spirit, would approach and reveal himself to me. No, I was no different from anybody else. I belonged to the same group of stragglers. We were all the same latecomers who didn’t wake up early enough to catch the bus that took everyone else so far from where we were.

the terre

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:12:44 GMT

ji: when you love someone, you are owning someone. it's like a seed. you wrap the seed but when it's growing you have to let go, to shed.

me: then what happens to you? when you fall? you just decompose?

ji: no. you become part of the terre.

Little Nub!

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:11:06 GMT

The Little Nub was born blind and low to the ground.
It did nothing that other nubs did because it was the only one.
It had no mother because everyone was its mother.
Its mother did not have a vagina because she was all vagina.
Mother Nature is all vagina.
She secretes morning dew, perspiration,
she secretes liquid at the height of transformation.

being a fine, fine time

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:08:21 GMT

sparkling pond out there
the sun in you is golden--
fellow poetess.

culture

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:06:55 GMT

i never even booked you.

i was buzzing out on this, too.

Sartre’s quote on the beautiful woman

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:05:28 GMT

From these remarks, one can already conclude that the real is never beautiful. Beauty is a value that can only ever be applied to the imaginary and that carries the nihilation of the world in its essential structure. This is why it is stupid to confuse the moral and the aesthetic. The [moral] values of the Good presume being-in-the-world, they aim at conduct in the real and are subject from the outset to the essential absurdity of existence. To say that one ‘takes’ an aesthetic attitude to life is to confuse the real and the imaginary. It happens, however, that we can take the attitude of aesthetic contemplation in the face of real objects or events. In that case, everyone can observe in themselves a kind of standing back from the object contemplated, which itself slides into nothingness. Starting from this moment, the object is no longer perceived; it functions as an analogon of itself, which is to say that an irreal image of what it is becomes manifested for us through its current presence. This image could be purely and simply the object ‘itself’ neutralized, nihilated, as when I contemplate a beautiful woman or the death at a bullfight; it could also be the imperfect and muddled appearance of what it could be through what it is, as when the painter grasps the harmony of two more intense, more lively colours through the real spots encountered on a wall. In the same way, the object, given as behind itself, becomes untouchable, it is beyond our reach, and hence there arises a kind of painful disinterest in relation to it. It is in this sense that one can say: the extreme beauty of a woman kills the desire for her. In fact we cannot simultaneously place ourselves on the aesthetic plane with this irreal ‘herself’ that we admire and on the realizing plane of physical possession. In order to desire her it is necessary to forget that she is beautiful, since desire is a plunged into the heart of existence, into what is most contingent and most absurd. Aesthetic contemplation of real objects has the same structure as paramnesia, in which the real object is functions as an analogon for itself in the past. But in once case there is nihilation and in the other there is pastification (passeificiation). Paramnesia differs from the aesthetic attitude as memory differs from imagination.

-From The Imaginary

finally, some looking back to move forward

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:24:17 GMT

january 1st. apparently i'm not supposed to have a good year as a scholar, but compared to the last couple of years this has to be a good year. i don't resent 2009 at all. even though it wasn't easy it's the year i really learned how to be good, to be mature, to get a hold of myself and stop being hopeless all the time. i just feel more confident about my place in the world in a way that is almost difficult to explain because i'm the fish in the water. saying this sheds doubts on its authenticity but this feels like getting over an uncertainty. my horoscope predicts it will be an average year, but i say, bring on the average. i need a respite, a way to recover from all the lessons learned. 2007, 2008 and 2009 were the years of being lost. the ground opening up below me. now in 2010, something in me says, do not doubt. you are strong, you are capable, and you can bear the difficult to get what you want. so now i'm looking forward to a year of change and inner stability. i will surely travel in one way or another. 2009 was not a year for travelling, save for the 3 days' grace in ann arbor. we'll have to change that this year.

i also feel much more capable and creative this year. confidence and creativity spewed forth with a bang on january 1st, when i read two pieces at a poetry marathon. i'm very proud of myself for doing that. now that i've done it i just feel like it wasn't even that difficult. like i could do it anytime, i can do it! i feel really productive and at ease with my writing powers, too. i want to explore my range some more, really go for the edgier stuff, the stuff that comes with just not giving a fuck about standards but really expressing something original and still true. all the stuff that lay dormant in me or probably weren't there yet because i hadn't found my writing hand yet. 2009 in general was not very stable. was a lot of second-guessing and lack of confidence: the worst thing yet that has happened to me. but all that stuff is behind me. just something i had to get over in order to get here.

in terms of love: i spent a looooooooot of time in the first half of the year still moping about "the one who got away" and really feeling shitty and a loser. but i've cut off ties with that person and that really helped me realize that the obsession with the past was just a pipe dream. i've come to terms with the idea that there are bigger things out there, that whatever we had was good but things could only be better. i mean, that can't have been the apex of my love life. middle of the year was not even spent on thinking about anything like that, although what i had instead didn't help abate the loneliness and feelings of abandonment. the third quarter was pretty good--summer time fling with someone i really respected and whose company i enjoyed. though that didn't last very long, it was really a balm for my soul, a jumpstart for my severely abused self-esteem, a reflection of my prowess. and it also majorly helped me get over the one who couldn't leave my mind alone. and the fourth quarter was spent recuperating from the craziness of the past year, knowing my worth, actually learning to love myself. boss. bingo.

i have a good feeling about this year. i have this hard-earned confidence in myself and i am no longer emotionally crippled and needy. what a relief. i don't feel lonely these days. nostalgia hardly visits. i spend a lot of time planning my life instead, trying to schedule everything i want to do and save money. i have lots of fun with friends, meet many people, and don't come home feeling like i sold myself for the sake of other people's acceptance. because i've tried so many different things last year, i have a better understanding of what i can do, and i only want to expand that more.

things i did last year:
1. moved out and paid my own rent!!
2. presented a paper at the first filipino canadian symposium!!
3. joined a band and performed 16(!!) shows with them all over the city
4. taught two language classes to 20 students!!
5. biked around downtown and learned more about toronto in general
6. smoked in the streets
7. drove a lot and took the public transportation a lot. was everywhere!
8. made local friends!! with artists and people my age.
9. started working as a server
10. juggled that with working at the smoke shop
11. visited ann arbor and was recognized by the people i held in high esteem
12. applied to grad school
13. performed my poetry in front of a crowd!!
14. fixed my relationship with my father/ family in general!!
15. stood up for myself!!!
16. got more settled at the k.
17. changed my life.

moan:

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:36:09 GMT

so beautiful, unabashedly solid, this dancer
he is a mass claiming space,
shifting the molecules around it because
because it is
throbbing or thrashing, arms akimbo
holding itself still
it declares its territory
and all that surrounds it
is only setting for his sparkle
only accessory
disappears.
this is a body that's meant to be seen
the reason why we have eyes altogether.

venus rising
a whale surfacing
this is a fluidity that belongs in the water
we ask, "well is he?"
he declares, "i am."
his movement defines the medium
the medium doesn't define him
is this air?
is this air he swims in?
reexamine the very reality of physics
the truth is you do not know.

he is a tightrope walker
at every point along his spine.
time and space are tunnels
he slithers through with ease.
"this old thing," he scoffs.
everything is made new, with him.

fast slow, fast slow,
a rhythm that pulls and pushes
a movement that has music
gazes will graze and pupils will flicker
trying to capture that last pose
but these eyes have no control
they cannot hold him down
for he is quick then in repose
flashing and then lounging,
languid and then active.
and you thought you could just see
you thought it was the easiest thing to do
just open your eyes and that's all you have to do

"you're wrong," he says,
"let's really learn how to look this time.
watch it blossom this hand of mine
watch it uncurl the clocks of time
let it flower while the rest of me holds."
his arms extend from his chest
to his elbow, to his wrist,
to that force field in the west,
one by one by one
the muscles stretch then flex.
his legs are roots
his torso the stem,
"i am not a man or a fish
neither an asteroid nor an acrobat,
i am just a plant."
then he isn't
then he is
all of them
one by one
or all at once.

2010

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:25:40 GMT

resolutions:
1, be courageous
2, don't depend on others for my own happiness

visions:
1, live on my own (july 1)
2, and/or: travel (summertime)
3, banff, alberta and/or nyc and/or nice and/or nagoya :)
4, poetry marathon
5, singing voice

educations:
1, statistics
2, graphic design
3, photography
4, kulintang
5, soc @ u of t

creations:
1, cd
2, tour
3, book of poetry
4, paid publication of creative work

Thumb Baby

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:18:11 GMT

"I want to eat your baby," Daniel declared earnestly.
"What? What baby?" His eyes were trained to a palm-size bulge below my navel. I looked back up in surprise, and he put his hand on my hip. Something inside the bulge was throbbing when I lifted up my shirt to look at my belly. In another second a fissure appeared, grew into a slit, and then opened up like a pink mouth. Out of it popped a wriggling warm thumb, and it rooted around the space it had come out of, then nestled in the slit like a bird in a drawer. In a daze I brought up a hand to touch this part of my traitor body, to grab it and toss it as far away from me as possible. But Daniel grabbed my hand and kissed it.
"Leave it," he ordered. He moved me closer to him and cupped the bulge, preventing my escape. I looked at it again. It seemed like a cozy bird in its muscular nest. As if it could read my thoughts, the thumb wriggled again, started crawling up my belly towards my chest. It was a blind, needful thing tracing a line of blood on my skin. So weak and so determined! A thumb baby!
"Shhh," he whispered, or maybe I did, for soon my heart had stopped racing.
"You're still bleeding." He took his hand away and it was wet with redness. I felt no pain. The thumb had rested below my breasts. He took a hanky from his pocket and held it to the mouth, putting pressure on it. I felt a warmth between my legs. My nipples tingled and my lips felt like they were pumped with blood.
"Kiss me," I said. He leaned down and gave me a long tongue to suck on. The he pulled away, and he was holding my thumb baby in his hand. "Watch," he said smiling. He stuck the thumb baby, nail first, in his mouth where it wriggled stiffly on the joint.
"Stop!" I tried to grab it from him, but he turned his head away and sucked. Thumbbaby disappeared into his mouth like spaghetti.
"Stop!" I yelled again, and he ran away from me. I ran after him, the hanky stuck wetly against my skin. He wasn't going to stop, I knew, so I lunged and tackled him. We both fell on the ground and the thumb baby bounced on the carpet a foot from his head. While Daniel tried to get up, I grabbed Thumbbaby and kept him warm inside my fist. It started rooting around and I loosened my grip a bit to give him space.
"Give it to me."
"No."
"Now."
I backed up slowly. "It's not yours." Thumbbaby had nestled into that snug space between my thumb and fingers. I could feel little pricks like claws digging into my skin.
"What?" He advanced towards me.
"The baby, it's not yours."
I held up my hand, palm facing him. Thumbbaby was taking root beside my fingers, a second thumb.
"Do you know how ridiculous that looks on you?"
"I don't care." I put my hand behind my back and backed away again.
"Give it to me, or you're going to regret it."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You don't?"
I turned just as he grabbed my arm. I closed my fist again as we fell back on the ground. Pinned to the ground, I kept my fist closed as he forced it open. But he was too late. Thumbbaby was attached to my hand, a sixth appendage. As if he had always been there.
He looked in shock, his mouth slack and his shoulders rigid. I took my hand back and slapped him hard.
When we're in bed, Thumbbaby always ends up in Daniel's mouth.

kulintang in the classroom

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:34:28 GMT

kulintang in teh classroom is a program meant to expose and introduce canadian youth to a non-western musical and artistic culture from southeast asia, specifically southern philippines. the kulintang is a set of eight brass or bronze gongs that are pentatonic in range and which are played using two wooden sticks made from light wood (example langka). it is a musical ensemble that is predominantly used in the maguindanaon and cotabato regions of the philippines but which is slowly being recognized internationally due to the work of artists in North America (give examples).

kulintang music is quite different from contemporary western music in many ways. it's a percussion instrument that is played "straight" although it has embedded within its form instances for improvisation and change. for example, a line of melody may be repeated as many times as the player chooses, so that the same song can range from a couple of minutes to 5 minutes or longer. it's different in the sense that it is passed on by demonstration, not by notation (although there are some ethnomusicologists who are beginning to do this now). this demonstrative nature again allows it to accommodate changes from its original iteration as the melody changes according to the player.

traditionally women play the kulintang gongs. other parts of the ensemble are also gender-specific, although not all of them are. the agung or giant gongs are usually played by men. this is the bass of the ensemble. the other parts of the ensemble are: bandir (a single gong used to keep time), gandingan (four hanging gongs of medium size), and the dabak (a skin drum used as a running accompaniment to kulintang).

in the family tree of musical instruments, the kulintang is closest to instruments of the indonesian gamelan, which are also percussion instruments made of brass and which are played using sticks.

control

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:59:52 GMT

everything seemed much more promising back then, in that state of potentiality. and everything needed to be recorded because each day was different, one more inch closer to the starting line, or the end of the crevasse. how utterly spent we seem these days, for our lack of discontent. it's the acceptance of the mundane which deadens us, our inherent ability to adapt which inevitably leads to our demise. complacency is a beast to achieve, and a beast to get over.

i am a recovering depressive. even in the best of times i suffered it, and in my conversations with like-minded people i have been advised more than once to take medication. but i knew, in a morose and pedantic way that i know it now, that medication was/is not the best repair. the discussions in my life between myself and my past self have revealed an alarming but hopeful trend: the problem was not hormonal but structural. it was an affect borne out of relationships with power.

perhaps the strongest motivating force for me to review my life and renew it continually through the written word was, ironically, to detach from it. my current theory for the state of things is the following: distancing is the only way to be able to view things with coherence. the obvious downside to this is that now it's very difficult for me to relate to people who understand life through feeling, not thinking. i am a cold person, at the end of the day. but at least i'm not cruel.

or rather, i'm not as cruel as before. i realize that i have, over a course of a day, belittling thoughts for my fellow sufferers. "the only thing that differentiates people is intelligence" susan sontag wrote when she was 16. i have barely learned all the things i need to understand why i'm here. endless hours are spent with an emptiness that is unforgivable, if not restful. i get a lot of rest in my mind these days. easy thoughts all the week long. "the only thing preventing me from being a great writer is laziness"--she wrote that too.

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:38:46 GMT

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:21:01 GMT

lip to glass
glass to glass
lip to lip
glass to lip

my heart is neither broken
nor scheming now
not pushed to snag a fellow sufferer
i can't remember what i did yesterday
but i woke up with good spirits
in teh shining sun
but now it's dark and quiet and
"i miss you but
i haven't met you yet"

wintry

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:53:16 GMT

walking in the park with sam
until he's sniffed each yellow ice
we come upon the train tracks where
orange lines echo from space.

you would have liked to see
the relief in the light blue sky
by patterns of dark winter-equipped birds
against stark streaks of white.

my toes were prickling in my shoes.
the frozen ground's a crunchy feat.
i picked up a clump of icy snow
and dashed it hard beside my feet.

they shattered in uneven sparks
and broke apart unfeeling.
we could walk away conscience intact
if only hearts were as unfeeling

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:16:15 GMT

the waft, the whim
i am human after all

random quotes

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:25:39 GMT

The laws are not just some construct of the human mind, although human beings are engaged in an effort to find successive approximations to those laws, and finally, perhaps, discover their exact form.

-Murray Gell-Mann

Who are you, Ned Plimpton? I find myself asking that question. I hope you allow me to find out.

-Jane, The Life Aquatic

The storm comes or is it just another shower?

-The Chameleons

aint no safe place under the bus

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:36:58 GMT

11:08 pm the storm has come or is it just another shower?

11:16 pm Hospital quiet

11:18 pm touch n grab phone

11:28 pm wow i'm listening to elvis right now. mirror images of dreamers in a turtle van. honkytonk. useless, useless to say.

11:32 pm watching the st. michael's choir mass--is that a big deal to catholics?

samantha jade

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:10:05 GMT

Her name is Salamander. Salamander Jade to be exact, like a flower and a jewel in one. She is ReMarc's sister and she wears her silk hair like a gumamela over her ear.

"This is hash from Montreal. It's not really hash."
"That's why it's ash."

(Laughter)

She has an enigmatic beauty mark that dances like astrolabes around her face; whenever i try to imagine where it must be located i cannot capture it. her mark is as flighty as moonbeam. in my mind it rests most frequently on her cheek, somewhere below the left eye. but...

it is a beautiful mark, a mark exotique, or perhaps i am the one who's lost, spatially afloat, but well, there it is. voila. the beautiful tragic mark. they say the person who has a mole by her eye, whose beauty mark is the marker of tracks the tears will trace as they fall down her face, will cry. she is a woman who will cry.

so for Salamander Jade, with her tragically enigmatic beautiful mole, we have pathos. we have compassion and human feeling for a person such as her.

we hope she will not cry. and in fact, that we do not. but Salamander Jade, despite her enigmatic beauty mark, is not one to linger on sadness. for to be around her is to be a red balloon, held up by a child against the blueing summer sky. carefree and freedom and lightness all abound.

her name is samantha

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:57:42 GMT

the dim sum is a wave, the dim sum is a cresent. the dim sum is a way, the dimsum is a present.

here i am rolling a joint
here i am rolling the wires around my voicerecorder

here i am putting the said item in a safe place
here i am putting it inside my drawer.

are you american?
you're an american, right?

facebook is ~~ruining~~ taking over my life.

it's the new f word.

to write you need to be alone.
no more internet enabled computer time all the time.

google wave dramas

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:50:31 GMT

drew: i'm so confused right now. also apparently can't type well.
me: haha be all embarassed. i can't spell. now you can see that too.
me: wanna see my underwear? might as well.
[drew goes back to convo and changes:
me: wanna see my _______? might as well.]
me: YOU!!! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!