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Literature Network Forums - Blogs - Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?63905-Scheherazade85 The largest classic literature discussion forum on the Internet. Read Write Teach Share. en Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:50:24 GMT vBulletin 10 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/images/misc/rss.jpg Literature Network Forums - Blogs - Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?63905-Scheherazade85 Basketcase https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11547-Basketcase Tue, 29 Mar 2011 01:08:33 GMT Just when you thought that the brick wall has hardened and has become impervious from a tiny prick, you discover that the brick is a mere cardboard,... Just when you thought that the brick wall has hardened and has become impervious from a tiny prick, you discover that the brick is a mere cardboard, revealing a hollow interior from where all the strong emotions emanate. Then, an unforeseen blow maims you.

There’s no place I’d rather be than the office—the mundane routines, the inanities of call-taking, the shallow conversations, the dullness of the computer screen. It’s the most comfortable blanket that I could find. At home, the only music that’s melodious to my ears are songs such as Fool on a Hill, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, Let it Be, and Something, all by The Beatles and some of Damien Rice’s. Instead of aiming to be uplifted or to be liberated from the kind of pain that paralyzes, the heart tends to snuggle between the sheets made of the fabrics of misery and desolation. Somehow, there is a certain kind of pleasure in the state of falling and feeling the nearness of the abyss. I think that the heart matter, the reason why it has such a general label, unlike brain-related diseases such as dyslexia, psychosis, etc. is because it is fringe—it belongs to the world between the real and the unreal, the limbo, the middle earth of man’s existence. There is no medical remedy that directly cures a heartache.

With Krissy gone for good, I only have Kristoffer as my seat mate. So I asked him what he does when he’s depressed. Without answering the question, he suggested that I go to amusement parks—do something exhilarating to dispel all existing emotions. Enchanting, I thought, but the temporariness of the suggested solution doesn’t escape me. I asked him to sell me a comforting thought. He said he has none. Because he does not think about it, just feels it, and trusts that it will go away eventually, like everything else. Sold! There goes the wisdom from simplemindedness and the apparent bane of deep thinking and foolish attempts at rationalizing.

Having recognized that heart matters belong to the realm of the fringe, if one ever wants to bring a remedy to it, then one has to go through the irony of bringing it to the plane of reality by feeling it and fearlessly sticking to that feeling, than attacking it with reason, until the feeling evaporates, like all else. I guess I could make use of a hidden wisdom in a friends’ blog, when he was all messed up—nights of trash talk, mornings with puke at the bedside, series of hangovers, maybe all the elements of the Dark Age—but having the balls to take it all in and DEAL WITH IT. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11547-Basketcase The Beloved https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11523-The-Beloved Tue, 15 Mar 2011 06:16:15 GMT Aging with restlessness I was fooled by my years Nothing comes after the waiting Waiting is all there is. Aging with restlessness

I was fooled by my years

Nothing comes after the waiting

Waiting is all there is.

“How dare you accuse your father?”

Jesus said with contempt

I could still taste his spit

It was cold and sweet.

I turned to the man next to me

“Sir, how come I have nothing on me? Where am I?”

His eyes with the same contempt dug into mine

And so did his two soiled fingers into my flesh run dry.

Of all my songs

My heart recalls only one

That of mother’s

As she buried her own hands.

“You invented love and it damned us all”

The man said with tears

He led me to the river

So I could remember how to weep. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11523-The-Beloved a blissful rumination https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11483-a-blissful-rumination Sun, 27 Feb 2011 13:20:45 GMT Nothing is ever that good. When the heart accepts that, one is truly happy. Grateful, even. Reminds me of Descartes: We can only approach the... Nothing is ever that good.

When the heart accepts that, one is truly happy. Grateful, even.

Reminds me of Descartes: We can only approach the state of perfection. And never, ever reach it.

Hence, once can only go as far as happily verging upon. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11483-a-blissful-rumination <![CDATA[Isn't it great]]> https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11318-Isn-t-it-great Sat, 08 Jan 2011 09:07:37 GMT We can only verge upon. Nothing more.

We can only verge upon.

Nothing more. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11318-Isn-t-it-great <![CDATA[Vonnegut's Game]]> https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11317-Vonnegut-s-Game Sat, 08 Jan 2011 09:02:13 GMT
- from Cat's Cradle

And I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?"

It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.

This is it:

"Nothing." ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11317-Vonnegut-s-Game Taking It Easy https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10941-Taking-It-Easy Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:46:51 GMT A prisoner Refusing to look out Urged to hammer That centrepiece That sole tarnished furniture of steel And deafen the desolate corners ... A prisoner
Refusing to look out

Urged to hammer
That centrepiece
That sole tarnished furniture of steel
And deafen the desolate corners

Crush its contents
Of a life of waste—

Of chores and churning stomachs
Of a mirror and the morning papers
Of fences and flights of stairs
Of clashes and clasped hands.

A prisoner
Pondering on a cigarette’s worth

Urged to indignation
But sticks to the cigarette’s worth. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10941-Taking-It-Easy <![CDATA[A Marsh's Plea]]> https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10939-A-Marsh-s-Plea Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:16:13 GMT Just give me this, I beg you. Here, sag this bosom Clomp that boot on my breast Mar this body, lash these thighs With your luscious whip. ... Just give me this,
I beg you.

Here, sag this bosom
Clomp that boot on my breast
Mar this body, lash these thighs
With your luscious whip.

Conjure a smile on my face
But that would be too much.

In this succulence I thrive
I, the old everglade
Not minding the muck
How could I?

Just don’t keep me dry. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10939-A-Marsh-s-Plea Sharing Lasch, Hitting Bottom https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10927-Sharing-Lasch-Hitting-Bottom Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:34:21 GMT Today I am lashed with questions of the unforgiving and punishing kind. Do I always have to not get it the first time around? Do I not pick up... Today I am lashed with questions of the unforgiving and punishing kind.

Do I always have to not get it the first time around? Do I not pick up quickly enough?
Do I have low EQ? And do I compensate it by trying (so hard) to be an intellectual (thereby becoming a pseudo-intellectual)?
Do I tend to over-think?
Do I agree with the individualism of Ayn Rand? It felt great for a while, but only for a while. Is society that overruling that it turned greatness to guilt?

“The ‘good girls’ would actually marry foreigners for their money.”

Simply careless and cavalier, he said it offhand. Or purely, this foreigner-seatmate of mine in one of my classes has become that comfortable with me. He meant to say that he does not negatively perceive the fact that some, if not most, Filipino women who marry foreigners marry them for their money. He thought it’s only plausible that these women would marry their foreigner-husbands’ money since they are good daughters—the kind that would think of economic liberation for their families. He talks as if he has triumphed in attaining a firm grasp of the Filipino culture. He claims to love this country and blames all its social and politico-economic horrors and unsightliness on the “system.” He claims to kn ow of what was going on in the back stage of the Marcos and Ninoy act as well as what People Power I actually signified—what it represented and who represented it. I agree at some point that he knows quite a lot about this country, at least relatively and comparatively with the others. And I intend to leave it at that. It is not my wish today to present the big BUT, if there is, with regards to my foreigner friend’s familiarity of our country.

I got to remember that conversation with my foreigner-friend as I stumbled upon the ideas of Christopher Lasch, the author of The Culture of Narcissism that was first published in 1979. Lasch frowned on the narcissistic (in the classic Freudian sense) self that has become of each modern individual as a reaction to the chronic dissatisfaction and anxiety inhibited by capitalism, with consumerism as its machinery. Where people are made to be dissatisfied by stressing what they lack, people lead restless and unhappy lives. Relationships are severed and the family as a social unit is undermined and is eventually disintegrating. From one of economic, the dissatisfaction traverses to the self and to interpersonal relationships. With consumerist tactics that include product commercials, people are made to invent a hologram of the “ideal” man or woman, appearance-wise, that’s in reality an illusion, in the same way that the advertised “perfect” product is a form of trickery. This illusion that starts with the self is passed from the self to the interpersonal relationships—the ideal partner, the ideal mother, etc.

People in the slow telegram world decades ago must have imagined of today’s technologically sophisticated world as one where people are more connected and intimate. But we have proven them wrong. Lasch was said to have claimed:

…The modern dream of a rich, satisfying, erotic and emotional relationship is an illusion, and that "personal relations crumble under the emotional weight with which they are burdened". Love is based on trust, and it is hard to trust anyone in a culture of narcissism. People are so isolated, so vulnerable, so fearful that they can't have satisfying emotional relationships. The sexual revolution has not, contrary to the hopes of 20th century liberationists, allowed people to become more intimate. It has simply made us promiscuous.

Despite being misconstrued as one who’s “anti-pop,” The Culture of Narcissism was an objective exposé on many social issues with existential themes. Lasch wrote:

“…The best defences against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable us to explore a small corner of the world and come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or to expect too much of them. Our standards of ‘creative, meaningful work’ are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of ‘true romance’ puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves.
...We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity, permanence or connection with the world around us. Relationships with others are notably fragile; goods are made to be used up and discarded; reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images. Everything conspires to encourage escapist solutions to the psychological problems of dependence, separation and individuation, and to discourage the moral realism that makes it possible for human beings to come to terms with existential constraints on their power and freedom.”

As always, the truth that stuns and arrests me is one that’s simple and understated. I have highlighted the said truth in the quote by Lasch, that the best defences against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work and family life. Work is the material evidence to keep the individual at equal pace with reality, reminding him that his possibilities may be limitless but his capabilities are limited. Therefore, he must make use of what he has and the extent of what he can do in his seemingly prorated existence. Individualism is great only to the extent of not allowing social constraints to impede maximum human capacity for greatness. When man reaches the top, what then? Greatness derived from individualism is therefore only significant when it has a purpose greater than the self.

Finally, an individual may skate in different routes for escapes but in the end, he comes back running to one familiar road leading to his own “home,” where familiar homely comforts lay waiting. No wonder my tear ducts were inundated as I watched the now immortal protagonist Chris in Into the Wild as he agonized to inscribe the following words as he was about to perish: Happiness is only real when shared.

This is the bottommost of the abyss. It took me quite a while to pick up but at least I got there. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10927-Sharing-Lasch-Hitting-Bottom Counting raptures https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10298-Counting-raptures Thu, 29 Apr 2010 06:32:18 GMT - that Christmas-morning feel - comfortable robes - house in a valley at dusk and sunset - fireplace - sitting outside with a guitar - that Christmas-morning feel

- comfortable robes

- house in a valley at dusk and sunset

- fireplace

- sitting outside with a guitar

- morning coffee in the province

- puto, mangga and tsokolate

- revisiting old elementary schools

- sleep-overs for "thesis and school projects" (note the quotes)

- buying pandesal from the vendor on a bike

- dreaming of sitting in one of those benches in a park in movies, with a good book or a good conversation

- coming home after a long vacation and looking for your old slippers, and finding that the other pair is lost somewhere

- childhood memory of mothers removing curtains and replacing them with new fresh ones

- childhood memory of fiesta celebrations, when everyone is busy with all the cooking, while you and the other kids are carefree, horsing and running around with a euphoric feeling

Still counting... ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10298-Counting-raptures Wicked clash https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10280-Wicked-clash Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:56:11 GMT The heart is stubborn and juvenile. When reason talks, it stays silent. But out of resistance and defiance. Surely, it just never listens. The heart is stubborn and juvenile.

When reason talks, it stays silent.

But out of resistance and defiance.

Surely, it just never listens.

The heart silently murmurs its own certainty as reason brusquely speaks.

The certainty that it beats for you.

Still.

(Goddamit.)

]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10280-Wicked-clash In Coffee Veritas https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10272-In-Coffee-Veritas Sun, 25 Apr 2010 03:59:50 GMT

I dread having to have found the words for this. I wanna do other things. I wanna go to places. I wanna write about other things—miserable country travels, inferior accommodations in some substandard shelter (calling it an inn would be too charming), wearying and exhausting bus rides where you find yourself all sticky and sultry—anything spectacular, ordinary and what-not, just anything, but this.

Twelve o'clock midnight, on a Saturday. I am at a loss as to what to do with the rest of the weekend. The damned guy is full of bull, as usual, sending emails of how he misses me and us together, all that ****.

Then I remember that unplanned evening with the girl, just the week before. Yes, one of those awkward and discomforting moments that nobody ever wants to be in.

We exchanged besos in the counter, after which I faked a name (as usual) with the barrista that the hot mocha was for Ophelia. I felt defeated still coz he spelled it Ofelia. Mæn! Later, we tried making ourselves comfortable in one of those tables for two in a patronized coffee shop (why do I have to not name it, it's just Starbucks, for godssake). The conversation was lively, I should say. It was comparable to discussing the three basic problems of our desolate country with all the cheerfulness and soft tones of Audrey Hepburn. (Well, two Audrey Hepburns, at that.) When one of us got nervous, the coffee and reds (hers were whites) were our ready armors. To say that we were diplomatic would be inaccurate because far from the usual and the ordinary, we had a bond. There was a bond—not the fake platonic or lover-to-lover kind of bond but that of feeling like knowing a person like you've met before but not really. It was quite a surprisingly comforting feeling. But the hell, that "bond" was illusory and if I'd known better as to where the hell it emanated, where the hell else but from that thing... the hell, never mind. (The tone is not of bitterness but one that's indubitably brusque and harsh that comes from objectivism and coming into the right senses. And by the way, I never thought you could insert multiple the hells in a sentence.)

Then I said jokingly (I knew the joke was lame though), "In coffee veritas." But she only stared at the table. Blank. I didn't know if she heard me. If she did, I didn't know if she understood the joke or she was too pensive and preoccupied. I choose to believe the latter, okay? Anyhow, all else that were brought into the open became insignificant when one thing was discovered—apart from sharing the same lover, we discovered that at one point in that infamous love entanglement, we both got an indecent proposal from the bastard, him using similar words. (I am tempted to end this here, the way the both of us wanted to rush home upon that discovery. Until now, it remains a spoiler.) That discovery was like an extended brick wall in that old Pink Floyd album that appears out of nowhere and knocks the senses out of you, telling you to go home, shower and wash away the drunkenness out of you.

I still feel strongly for that bastard. Of love, longing, hatred, disgust, I'm not sure. But I say this with objectivity: it doesn't matter, not anymore.

If I have one precious possession right now, it is that god-given salvation that I will never be that bride who, on her wedding day, instead of best wishes and thoughts of hope, would fret and worry about the uncertainty of that day itself. To a typical woman, there is no greater horror than to live in worry, on her wedding day, of all days, as to whether, in that day of crisis, her partner would chicken out like he did so many times before. And if at all, we would survive that day, how about the life (where there's no escape, only a cul-de-sac) of living in anxiety and fear that he would one day turn into the dishonest, disloyal and distraught man who once had the sickness of indecision. And worse, there's nothing that he could say or do that could ever take that fear and worry away. I may have felt beaten and that I've lost but at least, I have the promise that I will never be that woman. Therefore, I am thankful—thankful that I am saved.

With all the courage that I could possibly muster, I take heed of the wisdom of the already immortal Melanie Lim (then again): Avoid men afflicted with serial infidelity like the plague. Don't make the mistake of welcoming a philanderer into your home or your heart. Walk away and know that you are a better woman for having walked away from a lesser man. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10272-In-Coffee-Veritas That Ingredient https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10265-That-Ingredient Fri, 23 Apr 2010 04:24:07 GMT (Listening/watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jgmgE-QDzA) I am a sucker for anything that stimulates the tiny innumerable cubicles of my...

(Listening/watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jgmgE-QDzA)

I am a sucker for anything that stimulates the tiny innumerable cubicles of my mind. Gladly, it doesn't stop there. The stimulation is only a beginning, as it is meant to be.

I have just discovered what it is in stories, in songs, in movies, or in crap that urges me to light a cigarette like it's the last one (just like what I'm doing now), to sometimes cry unstoppably without warning like in that last scene in Dead Poets Society, and to dream of possibilities that may never come.

It is simply the theme of inspiration. I have uncovered this constant need to be moved (in whatever way).

I can think of how music takes us to somewhere far away or lifts us up from all the **** that happens without our control and how it moves us without even meaning to. I can also think of some people who touch our lives without them knowing it.

You may be wondering what this video link has got to do with this post. In fact, nothing. Except that it has been posted by someone that I admire and venerate (without her knowing it and without her even knowing me) in her blog. She has successfully shared it and like the rest of her writings, it has put me in an unexpected commonality of being in the same trance and reverie that she extracts out of life's different abstractions and hapless entanglements.

And I know it doesn't stop there. Inspiration doesn't necessarily have to stem from grand things. In fact, most of the time, it is more dramatic and full of impact and bearing when it emanates from the subtleties, from the seemingly imperceptible and from the understated. Ultimately, inspiration doesn't occur only when one is happy and contented. Our finest moments take place in anguish , angst, or in any discomfort for it is in those times that we, out of necessity, rise above our pigeon holes and search for grander and more worthwhile things than our inadequate selves.

That is what I'm talking about. That ingredient. That elusive, and at the same time, spectacular ingredient.

This, I am sure. As how Oscar Wilde (then again) in De Profundis has put it, everything that is realized is right.

]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10265-That-Ingredient Monday Spark https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10264-Monday-Spark Fri, 23 Apr 2010 04:11:29 GMT (written on a Monday)

Only one incident brightened my blue Monday.

I visited my ex's mom and when I got there, a kid greeted me. It was his six-year old niece that I was very fond of and haven't seen for quite a long time. Eyes widened, she paused to examine me carefully and when I raised my arms to hug her, she unhesitatingly embraced me, looked me in the eye, smiled and said, "You look like my Ate Maf2x (That's me!)."

That just killed me.

(Kids still call me that. Kills me everytime. ) ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10264-Monday-Spark Eternal Moist https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10226-Eternal-Moist Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:51:41 GMT
So you said, lightly and laughingly, just like that, that—

So long as yours gets stiff

and rigid

and so long as mine

pulsates and throbs

in a liquefied, flowing

contradictorily blithe

unstoppable, forceful

unique rhythm

that is born

in this damned

eternal moist,

this

will not cease

from taking place. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10226-Eternal-Moist That boy that I barely ever speak of https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10179-That-boy-that-I-barely-ever-speak-of Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:47:08 GMT He appeared as a robber I caught him in the arm And disarmed him He suddenly became my brother The boy that I barely ever speak of
He appeared as a robber

I caught him in the arm

And disarmed him

He suddenly became my brother

The boy that I barely ever speak of

The boy was tall, so not like him

He's short and robust, my brother

At least the last time I saw him

I looked him in the eye

And saw that he was afraid

The cops came and was about to take him

We embraced and I told him to be good

I kissed his forehead

For the first time after a long time

Then I woke up and wept irrepressibly.

I never knew what happened

Or ceased to happen

Maybe we just

Grew up. ]]> Scheherazade85 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10179-That-boy-that-I-barely-ever-speak-of