From Yesterday.
Whenever I hear that 30 Seconds to Mars song, I’m reminded of high school. I don’t know why. I suddenly miss it. There are so many things I’ve forgotten about it, like how I felt, waking up every day to face school, or what I did to pass the time when I was alone during dismissal. I didn’t write about everything.
Now things are so much different. I’ve more responsibilities now because I’m a college student–I’m an adult. It’s surreal, the transformation. And it scares me how things might be when I’m already working.
I worry too much.. Not the point though.
I miss high school. I miss my friends.
Trying to figure out this life.
I don’t want to think about school. I have one week left of vacation, and I should be using this time to keep resting and not worrying. But it’s the beginning of enrollment, and my units aren’t complete yet. In addition, I still don’t know my grades in two of my subjects because my instructors didn’t submit the grades last week to the college secretary. And now my tuition fee exemption form is bound to be late because of those teachers. Sucks really.
I don’t want to think of school because next semester scares the hell out of me, and I haven’t really moved on from last semester because of those [non-existent] grades. Plus I don’t know where I’ll end up after graduation. I’m not sure if I’m cut out to be a journalist, I don’t want to be a teacher, I don’t know. I’m deathly afraid I won’t wind up anywhere good–anywhere I love/will love. Others have it so much easier. My batch mates in DevCom have it all figured out–they’re eyeing places they’ll work at in the future. And people who are studying something different right now have no problem with what job they’ll be having in the future, like my brother. He’s taking up Civil Engineering, and of course that means he’ll be a civil engineer after his board. I know it’s not that simple, but at least they know where they’re going. I don’t know. I don’t know.
On Halalan 2010.
Yesterday my parents and I registered for the elections next year. I’d been looking forward to doing so all semester but we never found the “right time.” Luckily, the process was quick and we didn’t take too long.
I don’t quite know what excited me about registering. Maybe it was the idea of being old enough to be able to do something so important. In any case, I’m not exactly psyched for the elections… Who knows who our next president will be. I can’t help being pessimistic about the politics here, but I do sincerely hope change will come. People are tired; it’s time for a clean and honest election.
Back at One.
When I was a kid, what I loved most in the world next to my family wasn’t my barbie dolls, but music. It would serve as my companion when I found it hard to fall asleep at night.
See, I had sleeping problems as a child, and my parents didn’t know what to do to help me sleep. Sometimes my mom would sleep beside me and assure me that God was watching over me and that He would let me sleep, but she found it taxing to keep doing that all the time. So my parents gave me this old radio they had lying around (which was later replaced with an Aiwa boombox), taught me how to operate it, and told me to just listen to music because it might make me sleepy. It worked, but it took a while.
Eventually I got hooked to the radio stations and found a favorite–Delilah’s station. It’s a lot like Home Radio here in the Philippines, except people get to phone in (on air) their requests. Sometimes kids would dedicate songs to their parents. When that would happen, I’d think about dedicating something to my parents. But I never got around to doing it. I was too afraid my parents would freak out if I did.
So anyway, Delilah would play songs usually about love. I got acquainted with her favorites like Valentine and I Swear. But a song I really liked was Back at One by Brian McKnight.
I remembered it tonight because I kind of am. Back at One, I mean. Back at Square One, even.
I thought I finally had a good thing going–with the sembreak being near and all, and me finally admitting to myself that I was crushing on someone–but things took a giant turn when I discovered something unpleasant, which I don’t even feel like posting here.
So there. I’m sad. But not completely. Like a crush is such a big deal.. Because if you haven’t gathered yet, it’s about him.
I thought I lost you somewhere
But you were never really ever there at all
Wanting to be elsewhere.
Twister (1996) is one of my favorite movies. I don’t know why. Maybe because when I was a kid the whole thing seemed so exciting (and scary). And after more than a decade, it still keeps me on the edge of my seat.
I caught it on HBO last week, and I couldn’t stop watching. I was supposed to be doing something at the time, since I got home early. But I was hooked to the tube.
Lately my life has been so twisted, I kind of wish I could just disappear and be somewhere else. Somewhere better. Watching Twister last week made me forget where I am. It made me remember where I was, 12 or so years ago, watching Twister for the first time and feeling like I’d get sucked up in the tornado–because the visual effects were so good, it made me feel like it was real.
My favorite lines include the following:
Bill: Jo. Things go wrong. You can’t explain it, you can’t predict it. Killing yourself won’t bring your dad back. I’m sorry that he died, but that was a long time ago. You gotta move on. Stop living in the past, and look what you got right in front of you.
Jo: What are you talking about?
Bill: Me, Jo.
Aunt Meg: He didn’t keep his part of the bargain, did he?
Jo: Which part?
Aunt Meg: To spend his life pining for you, and die miserable and alone.
Jo: Is that too much to ask?
Dusty: He strolls up to the twister, and he says, *have a drink*. And he chucks the bottle into the twister, and it never hits the ground.
Source: IMDB
Empty.
I’m tired, and sad. I really want this semester to end already. It isn’t fun anymore. I don’t even know if it was fun in the first place.
This is terrible. Me not having fun, when I am loaded with major subjects. Not that that’s supposed to be fun, but I really like my major.
Anyway. I’ve got a meeting in approximately 11 minutes. I’m not excited. Why should I be? But I have to be in this meeting. I missed the one yesterday. Wasn’t entirely my fault… But it sucked. Really.
I can’t wait for semestral break. I’ve got so many activities lined up already….
SIGH. Damn it.
I’m rambling…… nonsense. I’m so uninspired! Maybe that’s my problem. I don’t have a life. And the one person who can bring out the life in me is a thousand miles away, living her own life.
What a bore I am. No wonder my days are like this. I’m so unenthusiastic about everything, because I’m so… empty.
Somebody fill me up. Now.
That’s the way it is.
I’m so sick of all the groupings this semester in my major subjects. I try my best to be a leader most of the time. (It doesn’t show, does it?–That I lead? I look more like a follower who doesn’t give a damn for a project.) But I care. And I am so tired of caring. I’m tired of choosing the direction we’ll go towards, just because nobody else has the initiative. And then nobody even bothers to reply when I contact them.
I’m not saying I’m the only one concerned in a given group. But…
I’m just pissed. And insecure. Do people respect me at all?
Oh God look at the time. I’m in the middle of brainstorming for story topics. Must go.
I’m done.
I just watched the trailer for Love in the Time of Cholera. It’s quite promising. But then again trailers are supposed to be that way.
I finished the book yesterday. I was turning another ordinary page–although eager this time to find out what happens next–when I realized it was the last in the book.
Marquez’s intention for the last line was obvious, but I was not touched. Instead I felt like the story ended too soon. Bitin.
I thought the Captain and Fermina and Florentino were going to get in trouble [more than they already were] or at least construct a plan. And I also thought the two would actually get married, or Fermina’s son would get angry at their affair. (But I guess that was implied already when he realized Florentino was also joining the trip.)
Marquez definitely surprised me at that, albeit not in the way Ian McEwan did. The story should have had more to it… Besides, it seems stupid that Fermina just suddenly fell in love with him when they were older because she talked to him and realized he was something. What lesson does Marquez want to show? It would have made more sense if Fermina did really love him when she was a teenager. But if she did the whole story would become a cliche.
Florentino, on the other hand, was too stubborn to move on. You’d think that with his numerous sexual affairs with different women (and I mean different: black/white, fat/thin, married/single, etc.), he’d find someone to replace Fermina with. Or at least contract an STD for goodness’ sake!
But, whatever. I still believe in Marquez. Even if his plot for this book failed me, I liked his words and style. There’s a tone in it that makes you feel like you’re reading something so important. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t really find anything quotable, as I would have if it were Coelho I were reading. Or maybe I just couldn’t relate to some of the lines that were quotable (eg., “The important thing in a marriage is not happiness, but stability”). Oh well.
I have plans of reading his Nobel-prize winning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, although, perhaps not anytime soon.
Toni Morrison awaits me now with her first novel.
Can you feel the love… in this?
I’ve been reading Love in the Time of Cholera these past few weeks, and I am finally in the middle. I bought it not really knowing Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writing style; the only thing I’d read of his prior to reading the said novel was his speech for the Nobel Prize.
Normally I’m a fast reader. But lately, I haven’t been. I don’t know if my watching too much has affected my interest to read, but what I do know is that the love story in Marquez’s novel is not touching enough.
At least, so far.
I mean, I’m not feeling it at all. It’s not romantic.
A boy and a girl meet for the first time and instantly like each other. They correspond through letters and hardly have real conversations. While she is writing to him in class, a teacher discovers she is not taking notes, but writing a love letter. She gets expelled. The girl’s father finds out about the boy, he reprimands her and takes her on vacation with him so she’ll forget. As usual, she does not forget him; the boy works in a telegraph office, and he learns of the girl’s location. They continue to write to each other. After around three years, the girl and the father go back to where they came from, and the boy sees the girl again in the market. When he gets near, he whispers to her. The girl turns to look at him and realizes that what they had was an illusion.
After a while, the girl catches the attention of a doctor who is one of the most respected people in the town. She is hesitant, but they get married, and this hurts the guy. He spends years agonizing, spending time with other girls but never really moving on.
Half a century later, the doctor dies; the girl becomes a widow. The guy visits her and tells her he still loves her.
Seriously, there’s really nothing to it. Maybe back then (and in Mexico), love letters were everything. But it seems so shallow. They hardly really know each other, and yet the guy is so dramatic and convinced he deserves the girl.
And what about the girl? Well, she’s stupid too. What kind of a girl gets kicked out of school and sent to some faraway place with her father for three whole years because of some guy, and comes back to tell this guy that it was all an illusion? Sure, it’s hard to really identify what we’re feeling, but come on! Cut the guy some slack. She should have rejected him in the first place. (That’s a laugh though–I am one to talk about rejecting people). Or at least, totally forgotten him in the years she spent with some cattle and pigs (’cause she went someplace rural).
I am a romantic, but honestly, I don’t feel the love in Love in the Time of Cholera. And that makes it hard to finish the book. I can’t feel what Florentino Ariza is hurting over, because it all seems so shallow.
I was much more touched with books like Atonement and Eleven Minutes (I’m serious). Technically, Marquez is a good writer: very descriptive and knowledgeable. But his plot sucks. At least for this book. And at least for the part I’ve perused.
If the ending throws me off, then he’s good. Really good. But if my summary up there proves to be all there is to this story, then I don’t think there’s anything marvelous about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s little novel. And I’m sorry for that, because I really thought it was something.
But since I’m not through with the novel, I can’t judge it once and for all. I’ll write a follow-up for this entry. Once I’m done with it.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Gotta cross the line.
“It’s all about lines. Drawing lines in the sand and praying like hell no one crosses them. At some point you have to make a decision. Boundaries don’t keep other people out, they fence you in. Life is messy. That’s how we’re made. So you can waste your life drawing lines or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines that are way too dangerous to cross. Here’s what I know, if you’re willing to take the chance, the view from the other side is spectacular.”
-Meredith, Grey’s Anatomy
