thought vomits of a justified sinner.

My whole life is an epigram calculated to make people aware. - Søren Kierkegaard, Journals

[chronophotographic-gun]

Yojimbo (1961)

[gentilenextdoor]

Rewatched Yojimbo today in its 4K restoration. Couldn't stop admiring the quality.

[gentilenextdoor]

Identity politics

Carlota Rebelo meets the veteran graphic designer whose national branding for Portugal became weaponised in the country’s recent elections.

One of my favorite stories from the Monocle.

[takethemonetandletsgogh]

Perfect Days (2023, dir. Wim Wenders)

[gentilenextdoor]

Push as hard as the age that pushes against you.

-- Flannery O'Connor

[gentilenextdoor]

like a prodigal, i return.

Today is Valentine's Day, 2024. Also Ash Wednesday.

It's been at least 3 years since I last updated this blog. Peak Tumblr was a fun and engaging era, but in between getting married and uprooting myself to start a new life in a new country, things have been a bit busy. I'm so glad I didn't delete this blog though. I hold these writings precious and looking back, I find that I'm encouraging myself. Here the past meets an entirely different version of me.

I went back to the Philippines in August and intentionally revisited my old journals. This space, too, is a journal. Here I raise my Ebenezer.

I'm here now in my remembrance, my homecoming.

[loveandknowledge]

It doesn’t take much to destroy a person. All one would have to do is convince him that the work he does is completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (via loveandknowledge)

[strappedarchives]

Michael Jordan photographed by Walter Looss Jr. while making a phone call before playing in the 1988 NBA All-Star Game in Chicago, IL - February 07, 1988

[gentilenextdoor]

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you...

Khalil Gibran

[gentilenextdoor]

Ceiling fans remind me of Apocalypse Now’s opening scene. 

Also, fidget spinners.

[gentilenextdoor]

The Day of the Triffids

At first, I thought that the premise was slightly hilarious. But when Bill takes off our own eye bandages as he did in the opening of the book, I was plunged into something terrifying and utterly engaging.

The one who can see is superior. Take away his sight and watch him suffer.

[gentilenextdoor]

Here’s to the distractions that let us pour our hearts out. To the blank pages and looming deadlines that indicate signs of life. To visiting foreign lands for the unknown, and to returning home for the familiar. To the hustle and procrastination, crests and troughs, circadian rhythms, to effective Pomodoro cycles and dreams of a 4-day work week. To the annual reviews, to winging it and succeeding because grace is real. 

[fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors]

Lady Bird dir. Greta Gerwig (2017)

[larmoyante]

Every act of communication is a miracle of translation.

Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (via larmoyante)

[gentilenextdoor]

The daily practice of incarnation—of being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of flesh—is to discover a pedagogy that is as old as the gospels. Why else did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash feet and share supper? With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal, he did not give them something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do—specific ways of being together in their bodies—that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself.

Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

[thebookcraft]

basically.

[gentilenextdoor]

Me, especially this year.

[01sentencereviews]

Mudbound (2017), Dee Rees

It’s definitely a difficult film to watch, about the trauma and damage of war, the racial injustices and the terrifying violence committed due to racism, and the struggles associated with family and the forbidden companionship between black and white people in the WWII-era U.S. south, themes which sometimes infuriatingly parallels the cruelty in many instances still experienced by black U.S. citizens today, but it’s matter-of-fact and honest, from the mind and perspective of Dee Rees, who continues to show impressive skills as a visual storyteller, capturing both the big, cinematic terrors and the sprawling, numbing feelings of isolation experienced due to seemingly inescapable warfare and oppression. 

Metacritic: 86, RT: 97%, IMDb: 6.9

[gentilenextdoor]

Mudbound is at once beautiful and devastating. It deserves an Oscar IMO.

[wesandersonfans]

“Nobody’s giving up around here and don’t you forget it. Ever. You’re Rex. You’re King. You’re Duke. You’re Boss. I’m Chief. We’re a pack of scary indestructible alpha dogs. Sneezes.” Isle of Dogs (2018)