I think it was Julia Ormond as Sabrina who said "I must've been taking pictures all my life, long before I even had a camera."
Funny/sad phone episode with Prado last night. We must've been on the phone for four hours, sometimes talking, mostly not. It was such an Oedipus Rex night (minus the incest) - when a truth was unraveled and the only seemingly sane thing to do is gouge one's eyes out. (Don't get any ideas, Prado, it's just an analogy. It's going to be okay, meng. Carry na lang. Kung kaya ko, kaya mo rin. Love naman kita baby.)
She said, "I wish I were seven again, so I can do stupid things and forget about it after 2 seconds." Watching my little cousin, it amazes me how much children can tolerate: inconstancy of attention, temporary neglect, outright rejection. But they never give up, they go on pestering and nagging, single-mindedly pursuing a simple objective: to be loved. Maybe at 21, not much of that has changed. We're still as needy and insecure as we were 14 years ago. We just don't have the same courage as they do. We always feel like we have so much more to lose at this point in our lives. Do we?
"The greatest happiness love can offer is the first pressure of hands between you and your beloved." Stendhal is not good for me. But I am addicted. The first few days I couldn't put it down. Later I recognized, I had to, for it made me so miserable. Away from it I didn't know what to do with myself, and so I would fall into it. I hoped that it would exorcise all the longing that lingered, but it made it worse. Stendhal, no matter how vile he made being in love seem like, how utterly absurd ("in love realities obligingly rearrange themselves to conform with desire") and irrational ("From the moment he falls in love even the wiseset man no longer sees anything as it really is....He no longer admits an element of chance in things and loses his sense of the probable; judging by its effect on his happiness, whatever he imagines becomes reality"), still he colored it with a sliver of pathetic heroism.
I suppose I was going about it all wrong. If I wanted to stop being sick with love, it probably wouldn't help to read about why people do it, and how they fall into it. Far from being able to distance oneself from the feeling, one would even feel a greater inclination for it, reinforced by the act of placing oneself comfortably amidst a seamless narrative, forging bonds with countless, nameless, faceless others suffering the same miserable fate.
It didn't help to think of my actual situation either. It made me confused ("Torn between doubt and delight, the poor lover convinces himself that she could give him such pleasure as he could find nowhere else on earth"). I knew it wasn't going anywhere ("It only needs a very small quantity of hope to beget love") and I knew I didn't want to go on like this ("Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will").
It is common knowledge, the only way to cure an obsession is to find another, stronger one. The strongest love is often forged during childhood: the bond with one's parents, siblings, first pet, etc. So I found myself, as I did when I was three, in the presence of one of my first loves, the black and the white of a piano. I must've played for fourteen hours the other day, stopping only to eat, nap, answer the phone. I can't say I'm cured, but I've found a new disease. A month ago, alone in a hotel room in Japan, I was a glorious wreck. Now, still in general a mess, but at least, once and for all, finally over it. ("There are moments in violent and unrequited love when you suddenly think you are not in love anymore. It is like coming across a spring of fresh water in the middle of the sea.")
Stendhal is not good for me.
Yes!! Done, done, done. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who phoned and wrote cards, posts, comments, e-mails and text messages. Thank you thank you thank you Suri for metaphorically holding my hand through the break times. Thank you thank you thank you Ji for celebrating the end with me! It feels kind of weird. Now I'm unsure what to do with myself. Even if I didn't let it take over my life this summer, studying for this test at least enforced some structure into my summer. Now, well, it's a whole lot of reading, watching TV and general house-bumminess for me.
Right after (well more like several phone calls after) I walked to the Strand and bought Harry Potter 6, The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde and Stendhal's Love. Ji and I had dinner at McDonald's and watched 40-year old virgin. (Watch it! It's wicked funny!) All in all, it was a perfect ending.
Jenny and her friends drove in yesterday from Chicago and we met up at the Met from where we walked to the Guggenheim. Shelby got us free tickets! I'm going to kidnap her (and her free tickets) several weekends from now and go museum crazy. We had dinner at the Hard Rock and wandered around Times Square a bit. I'm so tired (and broke) I just want to stay in for the rest of the summer, until Fort Lauderdale.
Off to breakfast and Harry Potter.
Mini Apple boxes. Yay! My ipod mini came today. Wheee!!
Doom is T-2 days. Eek! I've resolved to not freak out, but would definitely appreciate e-cards, e-mails, phone calls, text messages or comments of support. I've been pretty good this past week, no blogging (as obvious from the lack of updates) and not spending more than an hour each day online. (To be honest though I've just found a different distraction. Piano. I think I spend 8 hours playing and 4 hours studying a day.)
I'm a little bit worried that I'm not going to fall asleep the night before my exam. I've been so good with sleeping. My favorite part of training for the MCATs has been training myself to sleep 8 hours straight each night. But I think my nerves are getting the best of me. Last night I couldn't sleep at all! Tsk tsk...
Anyway, to my beloved friends, think of me, and send me good vibes! Talk to you all soon!!
Sometimes, friendship is a decent conversation at the 47th St. McDonald's.
and i answered its call. I went to the New York Public Library today to do my practice test. Well, two-thirds of it. It was the perfect place to study - the nice long tables, gorgeous ceiling, the cool airconditioning. Even the people around me gave the perfect simulation for an actual exam. All in all, I had a productive day.
I don't know why I ever hated New York. It seems that it's everything a city is supposed to be. It's so easy to get around and there are so many public spaces where people can just sit and be. After a late lunch I sat down at Bryant Park behind the library. They even have these bookshelves where you can grab a book to read while you're passing your time.
Maybe it's the first time that I'm seeing New York with the independence that the city requires of its inhabitants and visitors. I used to think New York was a hard lonely place - that's why I hated the tourists who crowded the streets and covered up its emptiness. But I suppose we carry our own loneliness, and it's only now I've learned that I'm everything but alone. As with loneliness, you can carry the love and support of those who care about you.
Did I change this summer? I can't tell. Something is definitely different. I'm happier. Not giddy, not delirious. Not even not-sad. Less afraid. Less controlled. More certain? No, more hopeful. Ready.
On repeat: Be still my heart (Postal Service)
Oh how you laughed
At my complete lack of grace.
But I could not recall
A more perfect fall
Cause when I looked up into your eyes
It didn't hurt at all.
And I thought, be still my heart...
Prado said this morning "We just keep on digging ourselves deeper holes here [in Manila], hoping that our planes will pull us out when it's time to leave." Planes won't do it. Over 8,000 miles away and mine still got deeper. But you know what works? Friends helping you up.
That's the big lesson from this summer's non-internship. I love you all! Thanks for everything.
New season starts September 8. Whee!!
12 more days till doomsday. Gaah! I'm going to go insane.
On other news, Abu Dhabi is out this summer. My sister called to say it's not going to happen. Lucky for her, my other sister is making up for it by getting me an ipod! Whee!! I told you Prado, we will join each other very soon. I might just run away to Boston, or make for Florida two weeks early. Or I could hang around New York, too. What to do? What to do??
If she wants me (Belle and Sebastian)
I wrote a letter on a nothing day
I asked someone “Could you send my letter away?”
“You are too young to put all of your hopes in just one envelope”
I said goodbye to someone that I love
It’s not just me, I tell you it’s the both of us
And it was hard
Like coming off the pill that you take to stay happy
Someone above has seen me do alright
Someone above is looking with a tender eye
Upon your face, you may think you’re alone but you may think again
If I could do just one near perfect thing I’d be happy
They’d write it on my grave, or when they scattered my ashes
On second thoughts I’d rather hang about and be there with my best friend
If she wants me
And far away somebody read the letter
He condescends to read the words I wrote about him
And if he smiles, it’s no more than a genius deserves
For all his curious nerve and your passion
I’m going deaf, you’re growing melancholy
Things fall apart, I don’t know why we bother at all
But life is good and “It’s always worth living at least for a while”
If I could do just one near perfect thing I’d be happy
They’d write it on my grave, or when they scattered my ashes
On second thoughts I’d rather hang about and be there with my best friend
If she wants me
If you think to yourself “What should I do now?”
Then take the baton, girl, you better run with it
There is no point in standing in the past cause it’s over and done with
I took a book and went into the forest
I climbed the hill, I wanted to look down on you
But all I saw was twenty miles of wilderness so I went home
I watched Florida drive away in a minivan and now I'm all alone. I could say with some regret, "If only I had studied while in Manila." But I won't, because I wouldn't mean it. I wouldn't exchange that time for a million weeks in all the theme parks of the world. It's probably better this way. I should be able to study much more efficiently now. At least there are five empty rooms in the house without computers/internet where I can set myself away from distraction.
I had a panic attack this morning after scoring abysmally on my first practice test. Sometimes I think maybe it's not meant to be - that I'm not supposed to be a doctor. But I forget that that language is reserved for romantic love, or things that have more to do with luck (which I suppose includes romance). Not for life's dreams. We may not be 'meant to be' with certain people we strongly desire. We may not be 'meant to be' lottery winners. But how the rest of our lives unfolds, that is mostly up to us.
Thanks to Dita and Jen for cheering me up! I'm only too lucky to be surrounded by people who love me everywhere I go.
I should stop blogging.
Happy birthday, Ma!
In the book I'm reading, one of the women complained about her husband: You don't know what it's like being married to Hal. He's like a big black rubber ball. Nothing you do makes an impression on him.
Maybe she should freeze him, then he'll explode. Physics. Chemistry. MCAT.
Inspiration comes from the most unlikely places.
"But what could be odder than the way that books which chime with one's condition or stage in life insinuate themselves into one's hand?" (4)
and so does Doris Lessing's love, again. I bought this book six years ago, read a couple of pages, and against the self-imposed rule of never leave a book unfinished, I dropped it without giving it a second look. But this summer, these words insinuated themselves:
"There seems to be a rule that what you condemn will turn up sooner or later, to be lived through. Forced to eat your vomit" (2). And later, "...the hard law ... says you must suffer what you despise" (9). Some people are better than others in living what they preach. But I suppose most of us are caught in the middle, pulled on the one hand by the logic of living with the restraint required to maintain one's sanity and on the other by the desire to know what lies beyond the rules (the paradigmatic forbidden fruit, borne from the tree of knowledge). Or plain recklessness. Ultimately, the universe has its way of making us understand, live how the other half lives.
I've been exchanging study hours for time rewards to read a few pages of this book. I don't get past more than a few pages, because the words jump at me, pulling me back, to read them over and over and over.
"Her body burned more fiercely, if this were possible. Burn, the word we use, shorthand for such shameful, such agonizing physical symptoms. Quite poetic, really, the word burn." (109)
"She was raging with desire. (Rage: another good word, like burn.) But why describe it, since there is no one who has not felt the mix of anguish, incredulity, and -- at the height of the illness -- a sick sweet submersion in pain because it is inconceivable that anything so terribly desired cannot be given, and if you relinquish the pain, then the hope of bliss is abandoned too." (120) This part is all too familiar, the madness that accompanies being 'in love'. I remember saying these words to myself some three years ago. To let go of the love that caused so much pain is, to let go of love. Why would anyone, for we all crave to love, even consider this a viable option? Yet now, looking back, I don't know why it should have been so hard at all. The phantom was a coverup for shame. I just couldn't see through it.
(Is it repeating itself now? Youth is a fountain of mistakes. But today I am not raging. And today there is no pain. Perhaps the hope of bliss has long been abandoned, with the quiet acceptance that this life comes in overlapping phases and the only reasonable hoping left to be done is the hope that this too shall pass.)
"There seems to be a general agreement that being in love is a condition unimportant, and even comic. Yet there are a few more painful for the body, the heart, and -- worse -- the mind, which observes the person it (the mind) is supposed to be governing behaving in foolish and even shameful ways...For people are too often in love, and they are usually not in love equally, or even at the same time. They fall in love with people not in love with them as if there were a law about it, and this leads to...if the condition she was in were not tagged with the innocuous 'in love', then her symptoms would be those of a real illness." (140) Psychosomatic. Emotional anguish manifest in physical pain.
The book is an antidote. There is no better cure for emotional distress than the detached, clinical study of it.