As it turns out, the rule—-tell me on monday instead of friday—-applies to me. Me! The person who has willing ly given up the security of a 9 to 5 for the sake of working (or looking for work) 7 days of the week. I thought weekends didnt really exist anymore. Because for the past months I’ve been working hard for no fuxking money during what most people call weekends.

And tonight after leaving a Friday gig, I thought with awe that my Saturday was actually mine (a birthday party for the nephew is just gravy)

Except for a fuxking email that I can’t do anything about tomorrow. An email that invokes the word fairness but then completely ignores that my time has worth, that yes it has monetary value.
Because I’ve been staring into space for the past two hours trying to figure out how to argue my points with collapsing into tangina feelings!

The thing is, I thought I didn’t care but it looks like I do. I have to effing blog about it. Because there is just too much screaming going in my head (fxxxzccckkk!!!!!!) for me to sleep.

This is an ending obviously, am dealing with the frayed edges. I wish I coukd throw money at it, but that’s another thing that’s causing the hysterics in my head.

Looks like my winter came late-ish. And damn it, I can’t enjoy the cold weather because it makes my throat dry and my chest heavy. And oh yeah, I live in a tropical country so there’s no winter here so what the hell is happening.

But seriously, don’t send me things I cant solve when am supposed to be resting. As it turns out, I will worry about it. Even if it is the fucking weekend, even if no life is at stake.

Damn it, that was so incredibly inconsiderate.

Gush, sweet pea. Just gush.

I’m currently reading Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things:Advice on Love and Life. It’s a collection of her columns, Dear Sugar from the Rumpus.

It should be a guilty pleasure, but right now, I must say this book matters. Like, I am taking it seriously. I am all for the earnest. Enough, enough about being cool. Nakakapagod na. I read this book, and see it as permission to finally let that inner censor whispering that I should be harder, I should be more logical, more rational die. 

(I used to read chick lit and historical romances to let my emotional creature flag fly. Ever since my painful realization that piolo pascual and chick lit films in general just don’t do it for me anymore, I’ve been looking for more hardcore kilig stuff.* Yes, this does feel like I’m coming out as an emotion junkie.)

This is my favorite column so far:

A man writes asking if he will ever find love in his old age (having lost someone to cancer, then just ended a 10-year monogamous relationship.) He’s also worried about appearing so needy especially that the loneliness is overwhelming. She responds by telling him the friend who suggested that he pretend to be Cary Grant was right, but adds that Cary Grant used to pretend to be Cary Grant himself. Then she adds this:

[…] Your longing for love is only one part of you. I know that it feels gigantic when you’re all alone writing to me, or when you imagine going out on that first date with a woman you desire. But don’t let your need be the only thing that you show. It will scare people off. It will misrepresent how much you have to offer. We have to be whole people to find whole love, even if we have to make it up for a while.


That last line is teetering, but I’ll take it. Hahaha. Anyway, she continues by narrating a conversation she had with her husband when they were starting out, when they were still itching to know EVERYTHING about each other. This is where she has me by the throat.

[…] When I got to the part about cutting myself, Mr. Sugar stopped me. He said, “Don’t get me wrong. I want to hear everything about your life. But I want you to know that you don’t need to tell me this to get me to love you. You don’t have to be broken for me.”


[…] Because here was a man—a good, strong, sexy, kind, astounding, miraculous man—finally calling my bluff.

There it is—calling a bluff. Perhaps we realize it, perhaps we don’t but when we share the more humiliating, the more painful parts of our lives, we are testing the waters. We are actually asking, “Kaya mo ‘to? Mamahalin mo pa ba ako after knowing this?” 

            It must be said that in the biblical sense, to Know someone is to have had sex with   them. this matters to me more than I can really explain.

It is not to say that we shouldn’t share these parts of ourselves. But it is easy to forget, especially when we hold on so tightly to these broken pieces, that they are not who we are.

                We lose control, we are helpless, things happen to us, we are irrelevant, we forget our worth. 

These big, monstrous things in our lives become the foundation, the crux even of which we are most certain. Everything else can change and does. So these are—to be crude—our trump cards. “You love me now, but what if you realize this?” And that question, that story you share for the sake of ‘intimacy’ is that, a bluff. We are waiting to see who will blink first.  He can’t love me if he knew what I was really like, or what I had gone through. Or even worse, he’ll love me because he’ll see how much I’ve endured. 

And if you think about it, setting up ourselves for rejection or oh gosh, salvation. The metaphor of a wall captures it perfectly, it seals everyone else out and us in. The self-righteous wall that ensures that only the worthy try to love us. The self-defeating wall that gets stronger when we are proven right that we can only be loved by the rarest, the most fantastic of creatures.  But in places where there is no need to hide, we know that we’re waiting to be proven wrong, for someone (anyone!) to break down that wall, to storm the castle. Even if you were the one who laid the brick in the first place. Because really, it is so much easier to hide behind these monstrous things than to actually be your best self—the one who is playful and open and out there (even if in the corner of her eye always sees the beasts that lurk.) 

The one that makes him laugh, makes him just look at you with wonder and delight.

*sigh*

Get yourself a copy of the book, or begin reading her columns. She is that friend who is sweet, encouraging, but never ever lets you hide from yourself. There is such bravery in her being earnest. 

*Episode 2 of Newsroom, Jim talks Maggie down from an anxiety attack. It is sweeter than it sounds, and not as dramatic. No get-PAK-a-PAK-hold-PAK-of-PAK-yourself-PAK-woman!

…I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it should lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it.

why do i even think that i can ever run away from wanting to write love letters, love poems, love songs? i learned to write because you are not in my life. 

simple. 

the quote above is from Vita Sackville-West’s letter to Virginia Woolf. 

Source: brainpickings.org

I’m not sure I like that outfit—billowy sleeves and shorts? I’m quite confused. Though it’s not that I would look fantastic in a unitard. But still.  It’s not that super women feel this all the time, but it happens. Usually when you’ve been up 3 days straight and haven’t had a decent meal. Otherwise, everything’s peachy. 
Pop-upView Separately

I’m not sure I like that outfit—billowy sleeves and shorts? I’m quite confused. Though it’s not that I would look fantastic in a unitard. But still. 

It’s not that super women feel this all the time, but it happens. Usually when you’ve been up 3 days straight and haven’t had a decent meal. Otherwise, everything’s peachy. 

(via bbook)

Source: nickdrake

Topic of Discussion

It’s fascinating to trace the path force travels on a shattered face of glass, or to even distinguish the gradient of colors skin makes when bruised. We begin here.  A close examination of the wound itself will give you clue of the offending tool, and even perhaps the perpetrator of the injury.

Just as an elementary exercise of cause and effect. A series of events resulting in the next.

For example, welts. Ridges caused by a long thin flat surface like a belt. Those gouges are from the buckle. Almost perfect circles on skin? Textbook, it’s a cigarette. A cursory knowledge of the properties of color will tell you how long flame lingered.

Then there are the countries formed by blunt force trauma. Their national anthems have different words, but they mostly march to, “This is your fault, this has always been your fault.”

But that’s not what we’re talking about. The body merely responds to impact. You could have fallen down stairs, or run into a door. Capillaries break, leak. Things swell, turn blue then eventually heal. The body forgets, most of the time.

The forensics of abuse catalogues the incidents, organizing neatly an embarrassment of emotions. Data filed away for analyst or poet. This is where it happened. Analyst nods, and scribbles. Poet runs fingers over the spidery ruptured vessels. Car rides in heavy traffic were high wire acts.


But that’s not what we’re talking about. This is the matter after the fact. (Not the how do I tell you you’re not why I flinch.) We’re just talking about what happened, Ma’am. 

Bag Lady, Part Deux

Actually, I think I’ve written about what goes into my bag so many times. Each time, a confession. Here, I am at my most sappy. 

But this year, and the last weeks from the previous year, this is what’s in my bag. 

Photo_3
It also comes with the revelation that when harassed and asked to pack a bag quickly, I grabbed two toiletries —facial wash (Clean slate) and feminine wash. What that says about me, I’m not really sure. 

But don’t think that I’m not meticulous with what goes into my bag—because this resonated largely with me.

“When you can find whatever you need with your eyes closed, from your lipstick to your hand lotion, you feel light on your feet and self-reliant, like you’re on top of the world,” said Julie Morgenstern, a professional organizer based in Manhattan. “It’s your power on-the-go.”

from here

That’s pretty nuts, ano? But hey, if it quacks. 

In other news, I succumbed to the new year ritual and cut my hair—my porn star locks are now either a mullet or hmmm, a mullet. My stylist cut six inches from my hair—he said, “I cut 2011 from your hair.” Which is just as effective as this:

and what does it say that camp and men in crisp short shorts just makes everything right in my world again? (yes the weather girls of it’s raining men)

all together now—I’m gonna wash that man right outta of my head….and send him on his waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! 

Crossposted from http://www.irrationalfitsofbeauty.com

Just hibernating.

Hi. You might have been wondering about the wondrous adventures of Anina Diva La Rue (who obviously has to think of a better drag name,) so I want to say Hi for a bit. 

If you’ve been reading the blog for the two years-ish that it’s been up, I have dry spells. This might be a dry spell—this might be a transformation—and like a phoenix, I will rise up from the ashes with a feather boa and lipstick on. 

But right now, make-up just doesn’t cut it. It still surprises me how much better I may look (and some guys—oh Lord, I’m the girl who likes guys in mascara and eyeliner, I do oh I do,) with some shpackle on, but for the past weeks—my face has been bare. I will say though that my skin may not be flawless, I do feel it’s definitely better (hear the product placement) and Face Canvas is all that goes on it. My hair whoop whoop yay is still big and lovely (here’s the next one,) chalk that one up to Clear and Present. 

So what is a girl like me to do? Well, I’m still obsessing (on a pasty white Brit who likes jumpsuits no less) but now it’s about the funny. especially since a lot of my life isn’t funny—it isn’t like tragic sad oh woe is me (not at all) adulthood is turning out to be a lot of dull things, a hum of tedium, the repetitive and invasive need to make money—like a chronic headache. you don’t really whine—why would you? you’ve known worse (ever had a toothache? now that’s an angry mothafucka shitload of pain.)

It doesn’t help that Christmas isn’t exactly the joy-filled love fest. Though I will give you this (because it is a gift.)

Things may change around here, but it won’t be abandoned forever I promise. I hope you’re all safe and well. Kisses. 

Crossposted from http://www.irrationalfitsofbeauty.com

And there is life outside of make-up.

And it seems the dull reality of being a writer on your own dime has begun to rear its inevitable head. 

I’m sorry for the silence—there have been wisdom teeth to be pulled, brochures to write, and other not-so-exciting things to be dealt with. But there are some things to be shared: 

It’ll give you a pretty good idea of what it means to be a writer and a reader in the Philippines. No matter that you say you are apolitical and you just want to write, I think that you just have to know that this is going on because writing really is just another word for thinking. 

2. So Pride March on December 3, 2011 at 4pm, Remedios Circle. 

Crossposted from http://www.irrationalfitsofbeauty.com