the starless sky

the madness world

crises terror 

spinning spinning five billion people time zipping

past present

…future?

can prayer be heard pain given space  

in this ocean of mess love ugly beauty?

heart-books-heart

i got this from somewhere in the www.  (i’m a stalker, as my good friends know…)

bold – for books that i have read; italics – those that i intend to read; underline – those that i love.  (plus hearts hearts – well…

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy  (my copy’s been gathering dust)
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller (dust collector, too)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (when will i find the time?)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger (bad review from a friend…)
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot (couldn’t get past page 40-something but will…!)
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald – plus hearts hearts
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens (very intriguing…)
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (put this down when i was a law student.  reality might imitate art…:)
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (masterful)
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (something about the slightly-heavy count in the beginning chapters did not appeal to me.  will get back to this soon…)
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen (i’m tempted to underline…)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth (where???)
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt (plus hearts hearts)
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell (plus hearts hearts)
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

i wanted to say something…

… the other day, but wasn’t able to so i’m gonna say it now:

WALA AKONG PAKIALAM!!!  I DON’T CARE!!!

baaad

During a conversation with old friends and after stating my opinion on one random topic, I thought:  what if, for all my attempts at becoming a decent human being and a true human rights worker and activist, I were, deep down, a bigot?  What if, for all the attempts to become humble, I were, truly, holier-than-thou?

Will I someday be judged based on a “casual” remark?

Scary.  Time for a retreat.

three questions

The past couple of days, I have been asked questions that I was unprepared to answer –

While helping a a three year old boy look for his turumpo, he suddenly touched my hair and asked, “Bakit girl ka?”  (Why are you a girl?)  I got speechless because I never really asked myself why.  His question was so funny because growing up, I thought people suspected me of being other than a girl.  Does having long tresses make one a girl?  At any rate, minutes later, the little boy threatened to throw a tantrum if his mother would not paint his toenails pink.  That was a fun/funny day.   

The next day, while in a bus headed for the metro, Doctora and I got to talking about lives (ours both) and loves (hers, mainly).  In the middle of my speech about being physically exhausted, she asked, “Pero masaya ka ba?”  (But are you happy?)  Ah, that’s the gazillion peso question.  A question that I could not and cannot answer because everyday, in my line of work, I am faced with problems, conflicts and issues, and I very rarely see truly meaningful and satisfactory resolutions.  Almost on a daily basis, in our profession, we deal with loss, or the threat of loss, and the breach of rights.  Almost always, a beautifully, well-written and well-argued pleading does not stand a chance against big bucks.  In such a place under the sun, can I just say, without missing a beat and without qualification, that I am truly happy?  We are proud of the work that we do, we feel that it is worth our while in this planet.  It is just a bit difficult to be happy when institutions and systems are in place and are established to precisely work against you.  (Am I even making any sense?  I keep thinking of Chowking and its spicy noodles…)

Then, the following day, while in a seminar and speaking with smart and independent women, Fatima asked me not one but two questions.  The first one I am not ready to divulge, but the second one seems okay to share.  She said, if someone gave me this “miracle drug,” would I use it?  This drug is illegal in the Philippines, but legal in other parts of the world.  It has already been condemned by the Church.  Her two questions really got me to thinking.  Hopefully soon, I shall have my answer.  So…

Why are you a girl/boy/woman/man? …gay?

Are you happy?

If you were gifted with an illegal (says the Philippines) and immoral (says the Church) “miracle drug”, would you use it?

Give me sleep and a weekend and then probably, I could give a half-intelligent answer.  Meanwhile, let’s have those spicy noodles.