Blueberry Nights

Jude Law + Norah Jones + Warm brew + Sweet Pastry = A++ movie.

My Blueberry Nights is no different from Norah Jones' crooning. You always get that laid-back and cozy quietude as she warbles a tune.

Digression: Odd as it may seem but I'm drawn to beautifully slender and dainty hands. Naturally, somebody oohed and aahed as the limelight turned to those beautiful hands of Ms. Jones. One time, when some friends shoved my carcass to a rock concert, I couldn't remember a damn song they played but I had the perfect mental picture of the vocalist's hands.

By the way, you can watch My Blueberry Nights here.

Quick guide to roll with the punches

Life doesn't have to be a continuum of pain. One can be the victim of some unknown force's wry (and even sick!) humor for certain days or months but it doesn't have to be that way for always. Or at least I choose not to.

Of course, the surest pick-me-up of a thick glasses-clad bibliomaniac is a quick trip to the bookshop. It's easier to roll with the punches when you're literarily inebriated.☺

I'd rather have tragedy.

14,400 pretend sheep have gone over the fence. Yet, something as waiflike as sleep easily eludes me. I have misread the signs again. You maybe right, I should only be reading books and not persons. Except that I am addicted to mysteries and riddles. You're one enigma I have yet to decipher. Your reappearance is a story whose grand denouement I have awaited. What is it to me if the denouement is a tragedy?

Tragedy is better than nothing.

Tragedy is better than having to recite a religious litany hoping such divine incantation lulls me to sleep when I would only be awaken by someone whispering your name.

In any case, I have been careful to chafe my words free of any expectation of this second encounter. Just don't go saying things you don't have the intention of keeping because the thrill of your reappearance makes me such a helpless prey for you words.

Spooled or not to be spooled to antecedents

The past has a way of guilefully sneaking right behind your back when you have been too engrossed daydreaming about the near future plan. I say the near future because this plan ought to materialize early or middle of 2009. If not, I'll take the easiest route of wimping out which is suicide, as I told close friends in jest. None really took me seriously because, well, I don't really know for sure why but I can only guess my being squeamish over blood-needle-and-anything-of-that-ilk has got a major factor to my friends' unconcern to dial the schizophrenic-in-the-house hotline.

Perhaps I have been reading too many existentialist novels that I have lingered in a what-is-the-point-of-life-but-death state for quite a long, dreary time that I actually stopped plotting long term plans and goals. Until an almost forgotten bolt of motivation just gushed out from nowhere rousing a dormant dream. To be completely honest about it, the motivation did not just come from nowhere. It has always been there just immobilized and fraught with unmet expectations and unnecessary career detours. It took Jeanette Winterson's tour to an old English city and Spitalfields to recharge a frayed circuit. Daydreams of this goal has been compounded by some lines and narratives on Winterson's The PowerBook that somehow, I can almost taste the spaghetti laden with salsa di pomodori made from fresh, plum tomatoes like some lovers' lips bruised from excessive kissing, and then topped with parmesan and basil. This is one of the joys of reading. No, I'm not talking about the joy that comes from an imagined puckering of lovers' lips although, that can easily be one of those. Reading exhumes forgotten but valuable perspectives and in some rare fortunate occasions, you get to exhume your old better self.

Exhuming my old self and the process of accepting the responsibility it entails is not entirely an easy feat. I could merely view this exhumation as an end in itself. But that would defeat the victory of finding oneself. Thus, certain goodbyes must be said. A comfortable hermitic lifestyle must be shed. Hard as it is, exhuming your old self also dredges the so-called unfinished business of your past. In my case, there were several. One of them crept up unexpectedly reminding me of an old, familiar thrill. What unnerves me, is my too perfect memory of the feeling. Too perfect that I felt the same tingle when we first held hands. This is the past's ideal bait for someone who always wants to know the end to every story.

What do you do when the past creeps up behind you and teases you with memories of a certain smile? Do you allow yourself the chance to know how the story unfolds? Or dismiss it as one of life's tricks that you need to ignore and quickly get on this regained track before opportunity leaves you behind completely?