A Toni Meme

Grouchy!

1. He's sitting in front of the TV, what is on the screen?
Nat Geo or Asian Food Channel.


2. You're out to eat; what kind of dressing does he get on his salad?
He won't order salad. We are carnivores through and through


3. What's one food he doesn't like?
He's not a big fan of middle-eastern cuisine


4. You go out to eat. What drink does he order?
sprite

5. Where did she go to high school?
Lazal (LSGH)


6. What size shoe does he wear?
I don't know...10?


7. If he were to collect anything, what would it be?
coffee table art books


8. What is his favorite type of sandwich?
double quarter pounder, bully boy...


9. What would he eat every day if he could?
salmon sashimi


10. What is his favorite cereal?
I have no idea but I'm pretty sure he'd prefer rice for breakfast


11. What would he never wear?
hip-hop, emo punk  grab and statement shirts. I would NEVER let him


12. What is his favorite sports team?
Green Archers! eww! hahaha...I don't know.


13. Who will he vote for President?
I think he voted for Gibo


14. Who is his best friend?
I am


15. What is one thing he wishes you wouldn't do?
hahahaha! I don't think I want to share...


16. What is his heritage?
filipino


17. You bake a cake for his birthday; what kind of cake?
one of them no-bake refrigerator cakes


18. Did he play sports in high school?
He was a varsity swimmer. It's been awhile but you can still tell from his pecs and 45!! :)


19. What could he spend hours doing?
Talking to me, sleeping, reading up on stocks and financials


20. What is one unique talent he has?
It's not so much a talent than a trait...Toni has a heart of gold. Seriously, the best guy I've ever met. I so win at life!

White Supremacy

The problem with beaches in close proximity to the city is, well, they're a bit gross.

For me, only sugar-white sand will do. If it ain't white, it ain't right.

But that doesn't mean I did not have the best time. I did! But that has more to do with the company, I suspect. You rock my socks, Toni!

with lightning

without

  

Nacidas Para Sufrir...not!

The Spanish Film Fest is tradition for us. And the only thing that made the night better was the buffet at Yakimix!

stuffing myself silly + movie + friends + night cap + gifts from the boyfriend = the perfect Saturday

Your Wife is Dead

Ted Hughes cheated on Sylvia Plath and she killed herself.

Ok, I'm sure it was a lot more complicated than that. In fact, a recently discovered poem by Hughes describing the night Sylvia Plath died gives us a glimpse of just how complicated it all was. It's hauntingly beautiful in a way only hommages to tragic love affairs can be. 

LAST LETTER, Ted Hughes

What happened that night? Your final night.
Double, treble exposure
Over everything. Late afternoon, Friday,
My last sight of you alive.
Burning your letter to me, in the ashtray,
With that strange smile. Had I bungled your plan?
Had it surprised me sooner than you purposed?
Had I rushed it back to you too promptly?
One hour later—-you would have been gone
Where I could not have traced you.
I would have turned from your locked red door
That nobody would open
Still holding your letter,
A thunderbolt that could not earth itself.
That would have been electric shock treatment
For me.
Repeated over and over, all weekend,
As often as I read it, or thought of it.
That would have remade my brains, and my life.
The treatment that you planned needed some time.
I cannot imagine
How I would have got through that weekend.
I cannot imagine. Had you plotted it all?

Your note reached me too soon—-that same day,
Friday afternoon, posted in the morning.
The prevalent devils expedited it.
That was one more straw of ill-luck
Drawn against you by the Post-Office
And added to your load. I moved fast,
Through the snow-blue, February, London twilight.
Wept with relief when you opened the door.
A huddle of riddles in solution. Precocious tears
That failed to interpret to me, failed to divulge
Their real import. But what did you say
Over the smoking shards of that letter
So carefully annihilated, so calmly,
That let me release you, and leave you
To blow its ashes off your plan—-off the ashtray
Against which you would lean for me to read
The Doctor’s phone-number.
                                                 My escape
Had become such a hunted thing
Sleepless, hopeless, all its dreams exhausted,
Only wanting to be recaptured, only
Wanting to drop, out of its vacuum.
Two days of dangling nothing. Two days gratis.
Two days in no calendar, but stolen
From no world,
Beyond actuality, feeling, or name.

My love-life grabbed it. My numbed love-life
With its two mad needles,
Embroidering their rose, piercing and tugging
At their tapestry, their bloody tattoo
Somewhere behind my navel,
Treading that morass of emblazon,
Two mad needles, criss-crossing their stitches,
Selecting among my nerves
For their colours, refashioning me
Inside my own skin, each refashioning the other
With their self-caricatures,

Their obsessed in and out. Two women
Each with her needle.

                                       That night
My dellarobbia Susan. I moved
With the circumspection
Of a flame in a fuse. My whole fury
Was an abandoned effort to blow up
The old globe where shadows bent over
My telltale track of ashes. I raced
From and from, face backwards, a film reversed,
Towards what? We went to Rugby St
Where you and I began.
Why did we go there? Of all places
Why did we go there? Perversity
In the artistry of our fate
Adjusted its refinements for you, for me
And for Susan. Solitaire
Played by the Minotaur of that maze
Even included Helen, in the ground-floor flat.
You had noted her—-a girl for a story.
You never met her. Few ever met her,
Except across the ears and raving mask
Of her Alsatian. You had not even glimpsed her.
You had only recoiled
When her demented animal crashed its weight
Against her door, as we slipped through the hallway;
And heard it choking on infinite German hatred.

That Sunday night she eased her door open
Its few permitted inches.
Susan greeted the black eyes, the unhappy
Overweight, lovely face, that peeped out
Across the little chain. The door closed.
We heard her consoling her jailor
Inside her cell, its kennel, where, days later,
She gassed her ferocious kupo, and herself.

Susan and I spent that night
In our wedding bed. I had not seen it
Since we lay there on our wedding day.
I did not take her back to my own bed.
It had occurred to me, your weekend over,
You might appear—-a surprise visitation.
Did you appear, to tap at my dark window?
So I stayed with Susan, hiding from you,
In our own wedding bed—-the same from which
Within three years she would be taken to die
In that same hospital where, within twelve hours,
I would find you dead.
                                                  Monday morning
I drove her to work, in the City,
Then parked my van North of Euston Road
And returned to where my telephone waited.

What happened that night, inside your hours,
Is as unknown as if it never happened.
What accumulation of your whole life,
Like effort unconscious, like birth
Pushing through the membrane of each slow second
Into the next, happened
Only as if it could not happen,
As if it was not happening. How often
Did the phone ring there in my empty room,
You hearing the ring in your receiver—-
At both ends the fading memory
Of a telephone ringing, in a brain
As if already dead. I count
How often you walked to the phone-booth
At the bottom of St George’s terrace.
You are there whenever I look, just turning
Out of Fitzroy Road, crossing over
Between the heaped up banks of dirty sugar.
In your long black coat,
With your plait coiled up at the back of your hair
You walk unable to move, or wake, and are
Already nobody walking
Walking by the railings under Primrose Hill
Towards the phone booth that can never be reached.
Before midnight. After midnight. Again.
Again. Again. And, near dawn, again.

At what position of the hands on my watch-face
Did your last attempt,
Already deeply past
My being able to hear it, shake the pillow
Of that empty bed? A last time
Lightly touch at my books, and my papers?
By the time I got there my phone was asleep.
The pillow innocent. My room slept,
Already filled with the snowlit morning light.
I lit my fire. I had got out my papers.
And I had started to write when the telephone
Jerked awake, in a jabbering alarm,
Remembering everything. It recovered in my hand.
Then a voice like a selected weapon
Or a measured injection,
Coolly delivered its four words
Deep into my ear: ‘Your wife is dead.’

I pity Assia Wevill (mistress-turned-wife) more than any other character in this tragedy. She committed suicide by placing her head inside an oven a la Sylvia Plath. I imagine Plath would be a very tough act to follow. How very Rebecca it all was!

One-Woman Book Club: September Edition

Today’s random musing: Why are there so many songs written about September?

It’s been awhile since I’ve made a book-related post but I haven’t been remiss in my promise / New Year’s resolution to read a minimum of four books a month. So, here goes.


1.  Dexter by Design (Jeff Lindsay) – I did not know that what I read was a fourth book in the series. Serves me right for not reading the fine print and jumping right in.

Anyone familiar with the TV adaptation of the books knows enough to expect blood and gore but it turned out a lot tamer and, for lack of a better word, sterile than expected. When it comes to the actual murders, Jeff Lindsay leaves a lot to the imagination.

Though the book is narrated through the eyes of the vigilante serial killer, Dexter, there’s none of that unsettling and even frightened feeling a “normal” person would (and should!) get when in close proximity with all things grizzly. Perhaps it’s because, being the psychopath that he is, without a conscience, remorse or any strong emotion, Dexter narrates his nocturnal activities with an almost droning and mechanical matter-of-fact-ness.

I can’t wait to read the other books, but just to be safe; I think I’m going to wait a bit. I don’t want to saturate myself with the macabre.

2. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) – I know I said no rereads but my resources are limited, so give me a break. Besides, I think enough time has passed.

What can I say? It’s another example of the wrong girl messing up a man’s life. It seems to be a common literary theme, but does it follow in real life? Personally, I’ve seen more cases of men --or should I say boys, messing up girls’ lives, or at least trying to, but never really succeeding --because we’re stronger and more resilient than they think!

In all fairness to the flirty, flighty and shallow Daisy Buchannan’s of the world, myself included, we mean no real harm and we need the love of a good man same as everyone else. And in behalf of my kind, I apologize for all the pain we've inflicted on hapless boys half of whom probably deserved it.


As a parting shot, though I understand the desire to impress someone from our past, if I ever get offered another chance with my ex or any one of the guys I've dated (however briefly), I WONT TAKE IT! I really don't care about what they think of me, in fact I'll be better served if they don't think about me at all. So YOU there, LEAVE ME ALONE!!!


3. Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert)– If I don’t “discover” phenomenal successes before everyone else then I prefer reading it once all the hype has died down. I think by now everyone and their cousin has read the book and has formed an opinion about it so none of what I have to say would be original but I will say it anyway.

Elizabeth Gilbert writes beautifully. She’s charming, funny, endearing and she laments about broken hearts and decomposing dreams while simultaneously raving about good food. How can anyone with a heart and a healthy appetite not fall in love?

I forgive her for India where she bored me. I tend to shy away from anything new age-y. Clearly, I experience God and his divinity very differently and I try not to judge but, I’m sorry, it was just too weird for me.

Also, I would not go to an Ashram to “find” myself. (Italy, I understand!). I’m a big believer that we find ourselves in other people whose lives we touch, not through endless, self-indulgent introspection which can entail not talking for hours. I went to a silent retreat when I was in high-school and I didn’t even make it two hours! The retreat mistress heard me talking and rebuked me! “Get away, Satan! Do not rob us of our peace!” It freaked me out!

Somewhere in Indonesia is Gilbert gets very literal with the self-love concept and masturbates. I almost didn’t finish the book. I’m generally not squeamish about sex in literature, except, it turns out, in memoirs! I’m never picking up a memoir with masturbatory bits again. The cover should come with a warning.


4. Committed (Elizabeth Gilbert) – I say skip Eat Pray Love and go straight to Committed. I suppose Eat speaks more to the shiftless single girl while Committed speaks to the girl completely in love (yet still shiftless) and seriously contemplating marriage, which is one of the reasons I find it more accessible. It has all the travel, love, relationship, history and random trivia bits that I loved in Eat and none of the New Age drivel. It's reassuring to read about marriage from the point of view of someone who doesn't want to be a wife, at least not in the conventional sense of the word. You see, I don't want to be a wife either. I want to spend the rest of my life with my one great love in a legally binding way, indeed I do. That's another question altogether.