huwaw. may christmas lights na sa kabilugan ng QC circle?

so am i post-modern?

i loooove zooey deschanel. loved her in failure to launch and yesman. there's something so quirky and in-your face about her yet she is also very soft and feminine at the same time. so, when i heard that she is starring in the new semi-indie flick '500 days of Summer' i checked the trailer out.



click here for the full trailer. the movie is produced by fox searachlight which was responsible for juno, little miss sunshine, once, and slumdog millionaire. these movies i call semi-indie, as they employ an other-than-usual approach to filmmaking but with considerably higher budget than most indie films. '500 days of summer' looks promising enough, at least from the trailer. it has a nice atmosphere and color theme (i love the browns and the beiges). soundtrack is cool (the smiths, the clash, regina spektor, spoon, feist and simon and garfunkel?! what the...these are my people here! i nearly fainted). story line is something which every one can relate to at one point or another. and heck, zooey deschanel is reason enough to watch it.

oh, plus i love the writeup:

"Tom believes, even in this cynical modern world, in the notion of a transforming, cosmically destined, lightning-strikes-once kind of love. Summer doesnt. Not at all. But that doesnt stop Tom from going after her, again and again, like a modern Don Quixote, with all his might and courage. Suddenly, Tom is in love not just with a lovely, witty, intelligent woman but with the very idea of Summer, the very idea of a love that still has the power to shock the heart and stop the world. The fuse is lit on Day 1 when Tom, a would-be architect turned sappy greeting card writer encounters Summer, his boss' breezy, beautiful new secretary, fresh off the plane from Michigan. Though seemingly out of his league, Tom soon discovers he shares plenty in common with Summer. By Day 31, things are moving ahead, albeit casually. By Day 32, Tom is irreparably smitten, living in a giddy, fantastical world of Summer on his mind. By Day 185, things are in serious limbo -- but not without hope. And as the story winds backwards and forwards through Tom and Summers on-again, off-again, sometimes blissful, often tumultuous dalliance--all of which adds up to a kaleidoscopic portrait of why, and how, we still struggle so laughably, cringingly hard to make sense of love and to hopefully make it real."

when i showed the video to her, toni made an observation that the movie looks very post-modern. last week, my architect colleague just explained to me during our rounds that that post-modernism in their field just means something that exists in defiance of modernism or anything that reverts to the classical and the traditional way of doing things. he said that post-modern architecture is an aberration, something which does not last 20 years, and therefore "utot lang sa buong sistema". i am not too keen in agreeing to that. i still believe that post-modern architecture is very respectable in its own right, at least for its courage and irrepresible search for the sublime.

i figured, post-modern in architecture won't help me figure out what toni meant. foraging through the recesses of my stock knowledge on political and literary theory therefore (because i majored in the former and minored in the latter), i tried to recall what post-modernism really means--to no avail. as i'm getting rusty, i consulted my old friend wiki instead:

"Postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, which was the basis of the attempt to describe a condition, or a state of being, or something concerned with changes to institutions and conditions (as in Giddens, 1990) as postmodernity."

and then toni explained: the movie is post-modern precisely because it has to look into self and explain/rationalize everything. the best example she says is moulin rouge--it is a story of someone telling a story.

i forget where but i read somewhere that american cinema is too bent on creating 'closure'. european cinema, on the other hand just does not care. in fact, the point of european cinema as an artform is to imitate life accurately. it leaves the audience with unanswered questions and agitation that accompanies these. i agree. when i am in want of mental stimulation, i turn to the subtitled obscure european films but when i want a feel-good movie with a good (even if it's not a happy) ending, i reach for hollywood. i don't know about '500 days of summer' i am bent on watching it on the big screen even though it's already available in internet live streaming sites. but i'm pretty sure it will have a good (even if it's not a happy) ending. and it's just in time because right now, it's what i'm sticking around for.

Going Green

This time last week, I went to Payatas and Montalban for fieldwork to accompany the German Boss to the community savings and resettlement sites. Because we finished early, I decided to visit Chayie in Fairview in the afternoon as she was leaving that Monday for her media internship in Nepal (excited for my banderitas! :) Chayie's mom is an avid horticulturist with a big heart. Aside from filling my tummy with delicious pansit and some salad, she gave me lots and lots of cuttings of her beautiful plants. If I had not said thank you, this looks a lot and I might just kill them all, I'm sure she would have given me a fourth of her garden! Haha.

And so, tasked with an important responsibility of making sure they live, I set out to replant the cuttings. You see I don't really know if I have a green thumb. The last time I had taken care of 'em plants was when I was in gradeschool. I enjoyed watering our class plants then. I would get them out into the sun in the afternoon after class, water them, then my classmates and I would clean the rooms spic and span and then bring 'em plants back in. In our school, we didn't have janitors to do these for us. Some plants lived, some withered out. I remember that prior to that I had a sunflower field at the back of our old house's yard. But sunflowers are not really difficult to manage. You just throw the seeds out and they will grow cheerfully and abundantly. The sunflowers were taller than me when I was in Grade 3 (believe me, I was tall for my age then). And I would spend afternoons in my improvised swing that hung from a karamay tree (yes I made that one myself too), just looking at the sunflowers being softly illumined by the orange setting sun. Yeah, yeah. As a kid, I was already kinduh emo. Heh.

Anyway, my flatmates laughed at me when I was doing this. I guess they couldn't imagine me gardening. Well, surprise surprise, I actually enjoyed it. Nothing like the gritty smell and feel of damp soft earth in your hands. But first, I had to improvise with some pots as this new folly is not really part of my current budget. Good thing we have recyclables stashed below our backyard sink. You never know when you're gonna need 'em tin cans!

I don't intend to cultivate a forest....yet. But I have successfully repotted 18 plants. They've lasted a week now. And I greet them goodmorning everyday when I wake up. So far so good! Now, what to do with those shiny lids? Hmmm. Maybe I can make some sort of a wind chime. You think?

two bad news and two good news for me are all right. feels like i'm running in place, though. but come to think of it, i'd take that versus tripping on the treadmill and having my face dragged from the rubber with my two front teeth spewing out of my bloody mouth.

the bad:

1. i actually refused an important shooting assignment because of some insane file size requirement and my lack of suitable gear

2. the misereor project changed research guidelines (can you spell arbitrary???) which means half of our work were scrapped, deadlines were extended, more data have to be collected--all without extension of pay. boooooo!

the good:

1. my brother lloyd snagged the job he wanted -- finally! (well not THE job, but he's gotten into the system)

2. my new job starts today. yay! fieldwork makes me happy. it means less time cooped in the apartment, more time around the city, more opportunities to shoot on the streets, more calories spent, less time to stare at the ceiling at night!

the hopeful:

although the orgin is hazy to me at the moment (i think this was borne out of a whimsical inconseqential talk that we shared), my brother paul is holding me to a supposed promise of treating him to a skydiving adventure after he graduates from college. makes me wanna scour for bucks even more.

i have always had a negative relationship with time. i complain when things are slow but whine even more when deadlines loom largely overhead. i also am very wary of how the universe works. basing from others' and my own experience, anything--and i mean anything--can happen this instant which can fuck your life oh so completely, it's scary. but i wonder how a change in attitude can actually lead to a change in results. they say that the mind is a powerful thing and that you can attract your destiny based on how you actually think.

so from now on my new mantra should be:
father time needs respect; the universe is my friend, it's got my back covered (repeat 3 x daily).

Once More, the Minister

This time opportunity comes as a streak of light, thin and almost always
Prepared to fade, shining on less things visible, more things imagined,
And things we once had but have forgotten and now up for recovery.
This is made obvious, today, by the enormous dry season canopy
Of rows and rows of old trees, allowing only a few, through daggers
Of sunlight, the fortune to glow: the graceful gathering of dust,
Slow talk on justice, and long undisturbed stares to a misdemeanour-
Riddled past. In this position, reach is only the venerable response
To the endless lengths of recollection. How we try and how we fail
And how we never really learn: reaching, bound by what we can remember,
Recovering what we cannot, as they slowly lose light, drown,
And be one with the dark.

-- E.J. Galang

i think that in a parallel universe, i may be living in an apartment similar to this:

and it definitely would have a room that looks like this:

despite years and years of browsing through home design magazines, watching space makeovers, killing time at interior design shops and wowing myself time and again with sleek modern functional art furnitures, i'm really a messy, country, mix and match kind of girl at heart (read: blue, white, wooden floors and wonderful light). in a few years' time, i'm gonna have my dream space. yipee! right now, i just envy my parallel self. sigh.

(photos courtesy of www.peoniesandpolaroids and www.mila-loveology.blogspot.com )