Author: elizavictoria

four eyes, etc

My right eye is a traitor. So in order to prevent its inevitable deterioration, doc says I have to wear glasses whenever I’m in front of a computer.

Fine. (Sigh.)

* * *

District 9 is absolutely brilliant. I will not say anything more. I deliberately avoided reading the summary or any blog entries or film reviews discussing this, so maybe you should too.

DISTRICT 9

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Meanwhile, at the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards

When our names weren’t called, Dean Alfar turned to me and sang, Don’t cry out louuuuud. But I wasn’t crying. I didn’t even expect to be shortlisted!

But the night became so much fun because –

Okay, later. Look at this list first:

Judges (Poetry) Ricardo de Ungria chairman, Danton Remoto, Neil Garcia

Judges (Short Story) Charlson Ong chairman, Timothy Montes, Dr. Paraluman Giron

Finalists (Short Story) Sunboy by Dean Francis Alfar, Bad Heart by John Bengan, Outlaws, by Mary Jessel B. Duque, Big Yellow by Jean Claire Dy, The Death of Roy by Sharmaine Galve, Photo Sessions by Joy Anne Icayan, Catherine Theory by Sasha Martinez, Epic Life by Rhea Politado, Marita Pangan by Mechu Aquino Sarmiento, Wishes Do Come True by Mia Tijam, An Abduction by Mermaids by Eliza Victoria

Finalists (Poetry) Infinite Mondays by Mads Bajarias, Mebuyen by Mikael de Lara Co, Textbook Statistics by Arkaye Kierulf, Slowness by Marie La Vina, Instructions by Marie La Vina, Meals Without You by Arvin Mangohig, It Is 1980 by Natasha Gamalinda, Poet Looks at Satellite Picture of Home by Sid Gomez Hildawa, Poet Talks to an Old Movie by Sid Gomez Hildawa, The Little Things by Rafael Antonio C. San Diego

Winners (Fiction): 3rd Place: Catherine Theory/Bad Heart (tie), 2nd Place: Marita Pangan, 1st Place: Epic Life

Winners (Poetry): 3rd Place: Mebuyen, 2nd Place: (one of Hildawa’s poem, sorry I can’t remember), 1st Place: Textbook Statistics

Congrats to the winners!

* * *

As I was saying: the night became so much fun because I was finally able to attach a face and a voice to the names in my email Inbox, and my Plurk/Twitter pages.

I am still reeling: Before the program began, crazy crazy talk with Dean and Nikki Alfar, Alex, Kate, and Vin Simbulan, and EK. Always a pleasure.

When Sarge Lacuesta read the names of the finalists in Fiction, some people behind me cheered and applauded. I knew there were people behind me but I also knew that I do not know them. Why are they cheering? Who are these people?

Then a voice asking Dean, “Kilala mo?” and Dean saying, “Ito, ito.”

I turned and there was Mikael de Lara Co, who said he loved my poems (the ones that won the Palanca). When he said his name I couldn’t stop myself, I felt the need to clutch his arms and blurt out: I LOVE YOUR POEMS OMGZ. Yes. Like a crazy fangirl. Ew.

Mookie Katigbak, Sarge’s lovely wife, even actually said they are “big fans”. Or maybe she meant, some people she knew are “big fans”. Fuck it, I heard big fans and my brain didn’t even want to accept it.

Mookie: It is a big win. It is such a big win. We were saying Who is this? Who is this? And you look so young!

When she asked my age and I said 22, EK turned to me and said, “No way you’re 22.”

Very 22, sister. So sorry.

I finally met Sarge and Carl. Yay!

Philbert was also there, but I didn’t get the chance to talk to him. Anyway, he probably wouldn’t remember me.

Crazy Sharmaine kept saying Palanca Award! Palanca Award! Like she couldn’t believe it. Well, I couldn’t believe it, so there.

When I approached Charlson Ong and introduced myself, he said, Maganda ‘yung istorya mo.

Love it.

Can’t wait to see these guys again at the Palanca awarding ceremonies, eeh.

* * *

So I didn’t win, but I win Best Title, sabi nga ng mga Alfars, hahaha.

* * *

Special thanks to EK for the pictures (photos are over here) and the company. Enjoyed the chika. <3

* * *

When I got home, Nina and Tere, the girls from the flat, stepped out of the elevator, saw me, and said they have been looking for me, and oh, do you drink?

All in all, lovely night. (It’s one in the morning and I am typing this intoxicated.)

oh yes

If the poem’s language isn’t adequate for its subject, it isn’t poem; the subject eludes it, or we read only among its ruins. On the other hand, if the poem depends too much on language, it isn’t poem either. The poem must always transcend its language, and not be entangled in the language’s endless play of meaning. That infinite regress is the curse laid upon the mind’s hubris that denies spirit and mystery.

What is fixed in the poem is not meaning, as in interpretation, but a meaningfulness that, for one thrilling moment, is all of life for one human being – the very sensation of living, of being real to oneself, with all that lives. That one human being is the poet only, but he opens that meaningfulness to all the poem’s readers.

– Gemino Abad (High Chair Free Association: What are poets for?)

living beyond your means, and other things

moopf-stickers

Photo from Emelegifts

Well, thank goodness it’s just free stickers and not something urgent.

I heard about the free Moopf stickers promo from Kate a year ago, 2008. So I sent an email to the people at Moopf, and got no reply. The promo promised I’d get the stickers the week after I sent them my address. Oh well.

Apparently my free stickers have been hurting inside a box at the office lobby since June 2008, unseen and unclaimed. If my boss didn’t go rooting for her lost phone bills there these stickers wouldn’t have been found.

Hmp. Maybe it’d be better if we had a mailbox right outside the department. Like the one  in Up! We’ll put our handprints on it! Then I’ll have the intern decorate it with sequins or something! Ha-ha. Hay.

* * *

So my fugly handy-dandy notebook had ran out of pages, and I finally cracked open the handmade notebook Tata had given to me as a gift the last time we met for dinner and chika. I’m in love with this notebook, it has the loveliest cover print and the brown pages are very sturdy. On one page I’ve written: story ideas – poetry fragments – here traipse the muses. A spell of sorts. ;) I’ve already written my first draft of a poem, hee. Writing longhand still has its charms. It works particularly well with poetry, the writing of which requires you to slow down.

I’m planning of buying another handmade notebook after I’ve filled this one. Look at this beauty.

toffee1

Photo from  Folksy

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This morning while waiting for the water to boil, I calculated the money I’ve spent so far and yikes for July-August I’ve spent an amount bigger than my salary. Oopsie. But then I’ve bought dresses/tops from the mall to wear to…certain…events. I’m thinking hey let’s consider these as gifts to yourself.

But, books. I’ve bought way too many books. I may have also spent too much moolah on FOOD. And the CINEMA.

Shame, shame. Never again.

* * *

Hopefully, Eula, I’ll have money left to buy stuff at the Manila Book Fair in mid-September. Otherwise, I’ll just watch you fill your bags with envy, sigh.

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I’m looking forward to the Friday Free Press event, EK. :) Dean Alfar will also be there, nice.

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Before I end this post, some words of wisdom from the Twitter page of the lovely – and very sensible – Lauren Bacall:

@Lauren Bacall – Yes I saw Twilight my granddaughter made me watch it, she said it was the greatest vampire film ever.After the “film” was over I wanted to smack her accros her head with my shoe, but I do not want a book called Grannie Dearest written on me when I die, so instead I gave her a DVD of Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu and told her, now thats a vampire film! and that goes for all of you! watch Nosferatu instead!

Aye, milady. :D

mini-reviews, 6

First, second, third, fourth

and fifth

Okaaaaaaaay, go!

Up

up

I hate the people at Pixar because they’re sickening geniuses. They can make anything work, anything at all. An old man who flies off with his entire house? Using balloons? Done, they say, and guess what? We’ll make you cry, too. Damn them. Amazing how they are able to hide the real story of this animated masterpiece and still be able to show an effective film trailer. The opening montage, sans dialogue, is very poetic, a beauty. Even Partly Cloudy, the short film that precedes it, is a treat!

I hate the people at Pixar, oh I really do. I abhor them.

Bedtime Stories – I knew that was Lucy Lawless! I knew it! I love you, Xena!

Nice, warm, family film. I love it, except for the overload of cheesiness in the end. Eh, it’s a Disney film, what did I expect right.

I Love You, Man – Jason Segel nails it as the sunshiny Sydney. Awkwardness on top of awkwardness on top of awkwardness. The “You’re a whore, Peter” confrontation scene made me laugh. Fun.

Akane-iro Ni Somaru Saka – Funny enough adult animated Japanese series, but feels to me as if it simply ran out of time. On to Skip Beat!, then, which seems more promising.

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A Really Random Life Share – Last night I was in Greenbelt with a female friend. We were sitting near the glass wall inside Starbucks. Outside was a foreigner, a male Caucasian. While my friend and I were talking, this guy knocked on the glass, pointed at the two of us, and gave us a thumb’s-up. He did it twice, maybe just in case we didn’t see him the first time. What the fuck.

(Unless he’s a proud gay man who was just showing his approval of what he thought was a loving, lesbian relationship. Then I suppose the interruption was cool.)

(Nah, I didn’t think so, too.)

i am amused

by this lecture given by the ever-brilliant Conchitina Cruz. She says, My enchantment with genre bending has to do with the possibilities it yields through an unyielding stance toward the question: What is it?

From “To Essay a Poem: Notes on Genre Bending” :

Our creative writing program here in UP, like many others, is organized by genre and divided into three basic tracks: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. On occasions that call for quick descriptions of these strains, it is convenient to go tongue-in-cheek: poets pay attention to sound and image, fiction writers to plot, and nonfiction writers to “what really happened.” Or: poets play with line cuts and language, fiction writers with narrative and time, and nonfiction writers talk about themselves. Easy to tell which genre demands, as far as reputation goes, the most amount of chika and the least amount of skill. Which also explains the order of elimination CW majors typically go through (“Well, it looks like I can’t do fiction, and I know I can’t do poetry, so I guess that leaves…).

…

There is nothing more tiring than hearing yourself say the same things in the same ways again and again, nothing more exasperating than hearing others say what you are also saying in the same ways again and again, homogeneity being another cause of claustrophobia. If writing is a means of ushering thought into ordered existence, and what you say is how you say it, then the cross-pollinations of the genres can only guard against monotone and redundancy in making possible varieties of articulation and therefore varieties of thought, diverse shapes of imagination.

Read the whole thing; it’s an absolute treat. :D

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Ms Cruz also provides a link to Cesar Ruiz Aquino’s “The Distance to Parnassus: A Palanca Commentary”. In this article, Aquino critiques “three poetry collections-The Gospel According to the Blind Man by Marie La Viña, Sl(e)ights by Ana Maria Katigbak, and Morphic Variations by Francis C. Macansantos-which won in the Poetry in English category of the 2008 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. This critical commentary highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each collection in terms of imagery, use of language, manipulation of form and structure, theme, and prosody.”

Interesting! The last time I checked the Palanca website, I was only able to read Marie La Viña’s Gospel, which bagged the 3rd place for Poetry last year (I adore this poem).

I’ll go download and read what Mr. Aquino has to say.

the time traveler’s wife

Confession time: Usually after reading a book, I review it immediately, but I had a hard time reviewing The Time Traveler’s Wife because I couldn’t figure out then (I read it last year I think) whether I liked it or not. I couldn’t match my friends’ crazy worship of the book, and I thought it might be necessary to do a bit of reevaluation.

I admire it, that’s for sure. It’s a very well-constructed story, and the language is gorgeous. However, the narrative style felt inconsistent to me. Inconsistent in the way that at times Henry sounds like Clare (the book is divided into segments, with two perspectives – Clare’s and Henry’s). There is an entire block of description about a dance that did nothing to me. At that point where Henry tells Clare about how his mother died, I cringed. Not because it is gruesome, but because it is too gruesome to be believed. My reaction was not, How awful; it was Oh really? It did not help me some that the melodrama reaches a high at that point in the book. Drama, yes. Melodrama, no. Gomez and his wife are interesting characters, but their communist posturing gets old after several chapters.

Just my opinion. I only read the book once, so perhaps I may have to read it again. Don’t shoot me.

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TimeTravelersWife_one_thumb-thumb-550x304-21724

Photo from scifiwire.com

Bottom line is, it’s a damn good premise. Good enough for a film? Why of course. The film itself has high production values, everything looks pretty. Rachel McAdams has a lovely smile, and Ron Livingston is a joy to watch. (Not too much of an Eric Bana fan, haha.)

It can, however, use more pauses, more silences. And with a running time of only 108 minutes, it can actually use another hour.

Most effective scene for me: When Henry meets his mother on the subway. Heartbreaking.

an abduction by mermaids

As a finalist at this year’s Philippines Free Press Literary Awards, this story has a chance to win. Not sure if it will, but being shortlisted is already an honor.

I wonder how that will go at the awarding. Will all the finalists be made to stand onstage and hold hands? Will we be given a chance to cry? Can we put our hands over our mouths and shriek when another person’s name is called? Can we hug each other but secretly think ‘You bitch, that crown should have been mine’?Tell me, is there going to be a suspenseful drumroll? GASP.

Oh, you’re still here. How kind of you.

Anyway, here’s “An Abduction by Mermaids”. Special thanks to Katt, who read it first.

Hope you enjoy it.

P.S. My poem, “Storytellers” is now up on elimae. Click on the link to read.

Okay, back to the story. :D

Continue reading an abduction by mermaids