Sincerely, Pinky

[sincerely-pinky]

2015: What’s On Loop

My choice of songs in 2015 isn’t an exposition of my sentiments or prolonged moods. I’m just really predisposed to melancholic, dark, and inexplicably sad music once I kick it off, but if I were to sum up the year, I’m afraid it would be dominated by kilig and Jack Johnson/Jason Mraz/Donavon Frankenreiter feel-good kind of mix. Bwahaha! Not to say that 2015 swept by without punches and blows. I sure had my fair share of battles - a lot of self-doubting peppered with colds and migraines. Yet, I will only look back to it with an overwhelming gratefulness.

Enough of the chatter. Here, I’m sharing my top earworms for the year that was, in no particular order.

Hozier - Work Song

Sara Bareilles - I Choose You

Vance Joy - Fire and the Flood

Miguel - Coffee

Jessie Ware - Say You Love Me

Oh Wonder - Livewire

Mumford & Sons - Believe

Taylor Swift - Out of the Woods

Sharon Van Etten - Love More

Hannah + Gabi - Finlegs

Wale - The Bloom

The Staves - Make It Holy

Jaymes Young - I’ll Be Good

Amy Winehouse - Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

Florence + the Machine - Delilah

Bon Iver - Stacks

Stevie Nicks - Dreams

Jesso Tobias Jr. - Without You

Some things about this list: The two most-played songs are Sara Bareilles and Jessie Ware - both sappy love songs (needless to say, my heart’s been getting a lot of TLC). The album that got the highest hit is Mumford & Sons’ Wilder Mind despite its palpably different vibe; it was a struggle to pick just one song, as a matter of fact. I got to squeeze in a cool OPM one-man band, Hannah + Gabi, whose songs make great company for stormy days. My [girl] band crush is The Staves, and their music is so good that it hurts. Flo came up with an other-worldly album, and it blows my mind. Fire and the Blood may not have stuck as Riptide, but a year later, I’m still smitten by the Aussie crooner. Stevie Nicks deserves my good oldie spot. For the first time ever, I got to really listen to Amy Winehouse’s music after watching the docu-film, and it was only then that I truly, deeply mourned for her loss.  But what makes me happy is Miguel’s Coffee; it’s smooth, sexy, playful - everything I love about R&B. And before I forget, yes, there’s Taylor Swift - the one song from my roommate’s morning playlist that doesn’t make me cringe. If I were to choose among all though, I am giving all my loving to Jesso Tobias Jr. in a nanosecond.

Obviously, I’ve been listening to a lot of folk. But hey, on the first day of the new year, I did rekindle with my first love, which is rock alternative.

Turns out not where but what you think That really matters We'll make the best of what's around

Wishing everyone a lot of rocking and rolling this 2016! Cheers!

[sincerely-pinky]

It’s certainly a joy (and a headache) to wake up to the running, shrieking, and the convulsed laughter, which could potentially lead to crying with one or the other being hurt. I’ve yet to take my morning cup of coffee and they have been patrolling around for a while, still in their PJs and pambahay. These kids are growing up so fast, and sooner or later, they start discovering how big and beautiful but treacherous this place we live in is. But I hope weekends and holidays like this in Lolo and Lola’s house become a core memory to them - a comforting and warm thought when times get rough and the world disappoints - as it is to us.

[sincerely-pinky]

Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha was shot using a Canon 5D Mark II and post-converted to black and white. These movie stills are incredible.

Needless to say, it hits close to home.

[sincerely-pinky]

I’m not sure why I hadn’t heard of Short Term 12; it got lost from all the mainstream noise and swallowed by the Hollywood Goliaths. This Indie drama is one of the best films I’ve seen recently. It is, as cliche as it sounds, gripping.

The film’s setting is a short term facility for troubled and high-risk teens. I have no idea about the home-group life, so I cannot judge its authenticity, but it sure moved me deeply. The drama in this film is quite heavy, but I like how they chose a cute and endearing canvas to end it. 

Brie Larson received a lot of praises for her portrayal of Grace, the protagonist. She definitely has something to bring to the table, but it was Keith Stanfield’s performance that left me in awe. He plays as Marcus, who’s turning 18 in a week’s time, marking his exit from the facility. The first time I saw this rap scene, I choked up on my emotions. You know how a single quiet (yet very real) scene makes you emotionally paralyzed? This one’s it. 

I hope you get to watch it too. 

[sincerely-pinky]

Literary critics dubbed "The Goldfinch" as "pretentious", "monotonous", and "absurd" - something that they can't take seriously. Nonetheless, if I may say something about it as a reader more than a critic, it's enough that I willingly burdened myself by carrying a bulky book in my bag for a month and never thought for once of giving up and moving on.

Did Donna Tartt deserve the Pulitzer? I cannot speak for everyone. I will also not be going around, saying that this is a "must-read". I understand that the plot may be flimsy; it has so many threads that sometimes fail to come together. 

Speaking for myself though, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite the corny scenes she could have done away with, the confusing plot twists and the mystery that sometimes fail to come through, I like it very much. The characters are imperfect, with obvious proclivities toward human error, but I rooted for them until the end, which is always a positive sign that I am all for it. Above all else, I basked in its fine prose. 

I look at the blanked-out faces of the other passengers--hoisting their briefcases, their backpacks, shuffling to disembark--and I think of what Hobie said: beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful. Only what is that thing? Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet--for me, anyway--all that's worth living for lies in that charm? A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are. Because--isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture--? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart." Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted--? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?...If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or...is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?

And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.

What if — is more complicated than that? What if maybe opposite is true as well? Because, if bad can sometimes come from good actions—? where does it ever say, anywhere, that only bad can come from bad actions? Maybe sometimes — the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be? Or, spin it another way, sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right?

And I'm hoping there's some larger truth about suffering here, or at least my understanding of it - although I've come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand. What's mysterious, ambiguous, inexplicable. What doesn't fit into a story, what doesn't have a story. Glint of brightness on a barely-there chain. Patch of sunlight on a yellow wall. The loneliness that separates every living creature from every other living creature. Sorrow inseparable from joy.

That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.

If you are looking for something to make you feel good about your life and life in general, this is not it, but Donna Tartt indeed dropped a lot of truth bombs here.

[sincerely-pinky]

My first adventure for 2015 was a weekend trip to the beach. It was short but undoubtedly sweet.

I was flipping through my journal when it opened to a “SAY YES TO LIFE” mediocre calligraphy I wrote a couple of midnights after New Year. I was writing about how my year built up, aside from the (safe) one-liners list, and I realized that the best things that happened to me were a product of me saying “yes”. 

I said “yes” to Happy Hours where most of my new friendships have flourished, to short-notice trips that made me discover new places to come back to again and again to escape the sometimes-superficial city life, to an invitation to have coffee that taught me that some people are worth letting your guard down for despite uncertainties and anticipation of loss, to trying out new things and finding out that I could be really good at some but suck bigtime at others. And more.

If you know me well enough, I can be obsessed with lists, schedules, researching and creating itineraries down to the last detail, and making meticulous plans. I need to know what my day is gonna look like. I like having control. Quite an irony to my messy and indecisive behavior and generally disorganized self. It’s because I don’t respond well to surprises and unforeseen twists and turns. I panic, and it does get ugly. Yet, 2014 taught me that beauty can come between control and chaos, that the best experiences can come about from the unscripted moments – when I “let my hair down” and let things be and exist.

Towards the end of Boyhood, before the screen goes black, there’s this conversation between Mason and the girl that struck me.

Girl: You know how everyone’s always saying, “Seize the moment?” I don’t know why…I’m kind of thinking it’s the other way around. You know, like, the moment seizes us.

Mason: Yeah… Yeah, I know. It’s constant, the moments. It’s just… it’s like, it’s always right now, you know?

You know how a quick scene and a simple dialogue like that can make such an immense impact on you and you’re just left speechless? There are so many reasons why Boyhood is genius, but when I reached the end and the credits started rolling, I could only think of that scene, the hairs at the back of my neck rising. It’s like an epiphany.

En route to Zambales, I was daydreaming of spending quiet times at the beach – writing plans for the New Year (I know, this activity stretches on for so long, even longer than actually carrying out one’s New Year’s resolutions) and finishing a new book. I was imagining the common area, excited to play the ukulele with Annel. I wanted to make the most out of this trip, to “seize the moment” so bad.

None of that happened. I did not get to write anything or read more than 10 pages of my new book. It also turned out that some guest broke the ukulele.

What happened was, we met new friends who indeed felt like family and explored a place that indeed felt like home. Even just for the weekend. I abandoned all plans and expectations and allowed every moment to seize me. I mean, it’s not every day that you get a chance to drink with new found friends on the beach, under a full moon and behold the stars, right?

Like most people, I like romanticizing New Years. Drafting New Year’s Resolutions always tops the list. There’s something about clean slates and new beginnings; they spring hope in you that the year ahead would be promising. But who am I kidding? I could only sustain my #fitness posts until the second week (because it starts getting colder making working out feel like hell). I am skipping all that bullshit and only promise to do one thing unfailingly this year – saying YES to life. It doesn’t mean being young, wild, and free by getting drunk and wearing last night’s hair more often. A line has to be sketched so as not to walk further than the reckless-and-irresponsible area. For me, it's more about having the conscious effort to be more present, really present.

So if you ask me whether I enjoyed my weekend even if plans were thrown out the window, I say, yes, I enjoyed more than I hoped. Because I just let things be and simply existed in and within those very moments. 

[sincerely-pinky]

Three months. That’s the amount of time we spent working together. Just three months of everyday conversations and after-work yogurt run. After that, we’d only see each other a few times a year.

One recurring topic of discussion that I have with different people is how we seem to outgrow some friends through time and how it’s actually okay. I used to have feelings of guilt and shame whenever I’d feel that some friendships lose their relevance to me, but I have also come to accept that when we get older, friendship becomes a choice. We got to cut our friends loose if they hold us back, if they are becoming too toxic to be around with, if they don’t care to understand us, or if there’s simply nothing connecting us anymore.

Annel and I, we just get each other, and it’s always refreshing to spend meaningful time with a friend who I can connect with past the surface-level.  Stories and updates thrown on coffee tables are more than welcome but usually never enough. So when she sent a random text message last week  asking whether a short weekend trip to the beach would be possible, I said, sounds like a plan.

We shared honest conversations, and we had healthy discussions regarding our faith (or the lack thereof), our need for creative outlet, our unconventional beliefs in relationships, our disgust in traditions and awkwardness in family reunions, our urge to settle in a new environment, our pro-choice-in-everything conviction, and many more.

Turns out Annel and I have so much more things in common than I thought. Although I would have to say she’s the funnier one with the wild and outrageous ideas. I fully support her hunt for a VW Beetle to be filled with books to be handed to kids on the road and her mission to invent a pepper spray to put to sleep babies crying and throwing tantrums (which sounds morbid but would admittedly be one of the best discoveries ever).

Aside from life issues, being away from the city fed our soul with enthusiasm, and we churned out creative ideas if only to feel less miserable with our 8-5 jobs. Here’s to jamming with our ukuleles, finding the perfect vintage typewriter, creating playlists for all life’s highest highs and lowest lows, sending snail mails and postcards, exchanging literary and film recommendations, and doing all our seemingly impossible and unreasonable creative explorations.  

This weekend's track is very fitting, by the way.

You have been warned, I'm warned to be contrary Backward at school, I wrote from right to left Teacher never cared for me Preacher said a prayer for me God help the girl, she needs all the help she can get

[sincerely-pinky]

Highly-acclaimed food critic, Jonathan Gold, was interviewed for the 13th Volume of Kinfolk. 

It makes you sick to say "no" to good things, but too much of anything kills. 

[sincerely-pinky]

This Sylvia Plath line has some kind of a deafening appeal to me now more than ever.

Pulling my journal dated January 1st 2014, I cringed at my declaration albeit an actual attempt to make it a creative year. Life consumed me shortly after that I had completely ignored my craft. The year before it, it was the other way around; I had been doing too much writing and too little living.

This year, let me strike a balance between the two.  

[sincerely-pinky]

Tracks of the Year

Every year, I make it my goal to listen to more good music and discover more artists. Last year, I neither listened to good music nor discovered new and old artists alike enough. But together with other cheesy year-end rituals, I still made an attempt to squeeze in the highlights (and all ordinariness) of the year that was in a playlist.

Music’s got to be in my survival kit. These songs helped me pull through 2014.

Riptide – Vance Joy

Stay Alive – Jose Gonzalez

Walt Grace – John Mayer

Come Around With Me - Bernhoft

24-25 – Kings of Convenience

Grizzly Bear – Angus & Julia Stone

Something from Nothing – Foo Fighters

Feels Like We Only Go Backwards – Tame Impala

Another Story – The Head and the Heart

My Silver Lining – First Aid Kit

On That Day - Asgeir

I See Fire – Ed Sheeran

On Top of the World – Imagine Dragons

When the Night Feels My Song – Bedouin Soundclash

A Sky Full of Stars - Coldplay

I Don’t Want to Change You – Damien Rice

Fools – The Ransom Collective

Love Never Felt So Good – Michael Jackson, Justine Timberlake

Come And Get Your Love – Redbone

Place to Be – Nick Drake

I like a few things with this year’s tracklist. One, it’s not as depressing as the years before that; see, I have more upbeat songs than I ever threw in one playlist. Two, I accidentally discovered Nick Drake, who turned out to be dead already (same reaction I had when I stumbled upon Jeff Buckley and found out moments later that he’s also dead) but whose records are just too darn beautiful. Three, Damien Rice - it had been a long time coming, thank you for this dose of beauty/melancholy. Four, I have a local artist in there – yay to the awesome The Ransom Collective!

Runner-ups include songs from my roommate’s morning playlist namely, Magic’s Rude, Sia’s Chandelier, 1D’s Night Changes. Just kidding.

[sincerely-pinky]

2014

I ended the longest period of my non-employment, got a full-time job, acquired skills that may or may not be useful in the future, and validated my lack of desire to stick to, let alone make it big in, the corporate world.

I stressed less about money, paid a lot of bills, and spent the rest on leisure.

I met interesting colleagues that easily turned into good friends.

I camped by the lake during the coldest month of the year and was warmed by bonfires.

I camped on the beach with hundred others, planked on the sand under a sky filed with the biggest and most number of stars I had ever seen at once.

I helped facilitate a writing workshop and remembered how teaching brings me unequaled joy and fulfillment.

I discovered the joy of staying in hostels and befriending strangers from all over the world.

I turned 26 and did not make a big deal out of it Quietest birthday so far.

I ended heartbreak not by having the heart to pursue a love that was once there but by growing a spine to let go of it.

I embraced the real meaning of solitude. Of being alone but not lonely.

I went to the movies, walked in the park, visited coffee shops, drank wine, savored a full meal all by myself.

I formed a friendship with someone who was most unlikely to be a friend. Good distraction for a short while until the monotony bored the wits out of me.

I reunited with my college roommate, spent nights laughing, drinking wine, dancing, and (unsuccessfully) decoding men.

I said “yes” to friends’ invitations over coffee or 2 bottles and went home one bit wiser.

I agreed on a few dates and feared for the first time that I might end up being an old maid. Men could be one-dimensional. Or I was simply undateable.

I went to La Union thrice and fell hard every single time.

I was a bad friend and missed weddings, birthdays, baptisms, and reunions.

I became a bridesmaid and witnessed one of the most wonderful weddings I had been to.

I consumed alcohol more than my total consumption for all the prior years combined.

I bought less shoes, clothes, pretty little things and accumulated less trash.

I was still skeptic about life insurance.

I still did not learn how to put on make-up.

I eased my way back to yoga, stopped to try boxing and got lazy, but I skipped all the unnecessary whining regarding weight gain.

I cooked more recipes for family and friends.

I liked someone a little too much and just went with the tide.

I  snacked on so much gelato.

I danced in clubs and turned up during Happy Hours.

I got drunk and puked my lungs out.

I read books that I wouldn’t have probably picked up in bookshops and got lost in them.

I went back to grad school then quit.

I traveled alone and realized one important thing: in spite of and despite myself, I still like myself and enjoy my own company, for the most part.

I trekked for 2 hours, with only the company of a tour guide, just to see the falls.

I wrote on my journal more than I wrote on the blogosphere for people to read.

I went to Boracay on short notice and had the most “chill” trip.

I was told of all my crap and BS that I needed to set free.

I sang on stage.

I took a second chance at poetry and wrote some on scraps of paper and coffeehouse napkins.

I got myself a ukulele for more than the price I was willing to pay, and it was well worth it.

I practiced forgiveness, kindness, and gratitude.

I am over you already, 2014, but looking back, it was a whole lot better than 2013. Quiet, steady, typical. Except for a few people I met, it was nothing monumental. Maybe it’s the instant before the take off. The rising action in preparation for the climax. The odd and awkward pause preceding an exciting episode. I am ready to have 2015 take me by storm.