09.22.09
Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 12:28 am by Miracle ♪♫
“Like a saint in the legends who reached out and took jewels from the sky,
I had the same kind of talent for gathering miracles in my life.”
Amrita, Banana Yoshimoto
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This week I read two Yoshimoto books consecutively: Kitchen and Amrita. The idea of a grieving girl who finds solace in kitchens drew me in somehow. It is a charming novella and yet full of meaning. Within the same book is an accompanying story called Moonlight Shadow and this is where I noticed glimpses of magical realism when Satsuki’s dead boyfriend reappears in an apparition to say goodbye. I’m glad that I read Kitchen first since both stories kept me asking for more because I felt that their closures arrived too soon. Then came Amrita. It seemed to compensate for what Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow lacked.
Amrita turned out to be more complex than I imagined as death, loss, recovery, and uncommon representations of “family” – leitmotifs in Yoshimoto’s stories, were weaved with Proustian parallels. What is even more amazing is how one cannot identify with just a single character; instead, one finds oneself in many. From the heroine who loses her memory in an accident and tries to retrieve them and through a novel finally recaptures them, to her clairvoyant little brother who yearns to belong despite his extraordinary abilities, to her boyfriend, a nomad writer who also happened to be the former boyfriend of her sister, a beautiful actress who committed suicide, to several other outlandish characters.
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With her concoction of magic realism, eccentric characters, slightly disturbing disclosures, and off-beat relationships, she is the kind of author that I would have admired as a teenager. I am definitely not saying that I find her writings unimpressive because she truly knows how to touch a woman’s heart and make her sigh in contemplation. I just doubt that she would have the same reverberating effect on reading men, hence my estimation of her as a Japanese Laura Esquivel, and right now I am simply more drawn to books that transcend gender. Nevertheless, this did not hinder me from appreciating Yoshimoto’s writings as it allowed me to savour an altogether different and unusual reading experience.
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09.19.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:51 pm by Miracle ♪♫
“Whenever I see a woman at work in a kitchen, I’m reminded of something. But what? Something sad, something that tugs at me, making me feel pain. It had to be something related to death, and life - the process of living. It just had to be.”
Amrita, Banana Yoshimoto
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Today the sun shone in the morning, in the afternoon it was raining: I was all smiles and surprisingly energetic, and yet deep within, extremely melancholic; I missed someone immensely, so I fused loneliness with parsley; I made pizza along with some colourful Vietnamese vegan noodles; My students did not appear at their allotted schedules; Listened to a Japanese sing Italian songs while in the kitchen - a marvel; Today was as strangely and intensely hued as a Banana Yoshimoto novel.
I mixed cuisines,
mixed ingredients,
mixed emotions.
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09.17.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:31 am by Miracle ♪♫
(Love, The Scrabble Way)
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Dear Sofia,
Let me tell you about a mother’s love, so magnanimous and ubiquitous. I bore witness to this last night as Mama, Misha, and I were caught up in a game of scrabble. Misha was trailing behind us when suddenly, at the last round, he landed with a Z-word, on a triple word score square! He overtook us instantly, and with my pure futile vowels, I knew I had no chance of beating him. Mama on the other hand had a promising balance of consonants and vowels that could have busted Misha’s lead easily (I was not aware of this during the game), but she somehow ended up surrendering her lowest-scoring tiles on the board, acknowledging that it was the best she could do, and had her valuable consonants deducted from her total tally and added them to Misha’s winning score.
Mama’s eyes twinkled as we kissed Misha and cheered for his first and unexpected victory. He was all smiles and was absolutely basking in the moment. But I recognized that twinkle: Mama lost on purpose. All at once, amidst our squeals of excitement, Misha’s victory was my madeleine dipped in tea, it was my essential drop of remembrance, for it immediately brought to mind the many instances in my life when I felt like a winner, and I realized that there was always a uniform formula behind all those winning moments: A mother’s love.
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Sofia, I will love you in so many different ways… and yet, my mother has taught me a certain way – and I too, am looking towards the day when I can love you that way – the scrabble way.
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To read all Letters to a Future Daughter, Click Here.
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09.14.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:57 pm by Miracle ♪♫
I love the colour of Aubergines to the point of imagining a painter’s palette everytime I see them. I know Papa would use some magenta mixed with a darker hue to achieve such a shade. Unfortunately, they do not retain their royal colours after cooking. So, if one has to thieve these rebels of the berry family of their colour, it better be for a very good reason.
Misha presented me with such a challenge by requesting for some ratatouille. I knew the “real” ratatouille would not come close to a kid’s Disney-influenced expectation of the recipe (another case of how Disney distorts reality, but yes, back to food), and as usual, I was led to improvise. Come to think of it, aside from pastry recipes, I have never been obedient to a cookbook. In the kitchen, I am jazzy, and a defiant bohemian… besides, the original recipe did not have espresso in it!
Therefore, my aubergines and bacon (yes, bacon for that meaty texture!) were espresso-cured, and a gratin-like process was incorporated to achieve a semi-Disney ratatouille. Ah, the things one does for a beloved little brother! I hope this was worth the discolouration.
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Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 10:15 am by Miracle ♪♫
A swan of olden times recalls that he,
Splendid yet void of hope to free himself,
Had left unsung the realm of life itself
When sterile winter glittered with ennui.
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One more volume to go and In Search of Lost Time can at last rest from my eagerness. The Fugitive conveys the impression of an unexpected leading tone towards an unpredictable finale. The grief I felt while reading Sodom and Gomorrah was only intensified here although it is disguised as the slimmest volume of the entire In Search of Lost Time.
The fragment of a poem above featured in The Fugitive is not by Proust but by Mallarmé and the same poem’s opening lines is one of French Literature’s most memorable verses. What struck me most about this particular poem was the mention of the swan. One cannot help but conclude that the symbol of the swan must have meant a great deal to Proust after likening a beloved’s thigh to a swan’s neck, naming a main character “Swann”, and christening a yacht Swan.
I may not be adept in interpreting poetry, but for me, Mallarmé’s poem suggests an embodiment of a monumental percentage of Proust’s thought. I see the swan as an artist in his beautiful and yet captive state while habit robs the artist of the whole adventure of living life to its fullest.
I am once again seeing another facet of the kaleidoscope that Proust provides, and the kaleidoscope is not telling me directly how to live my life… but alas, it leaves clues. Very beautiful clues.
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09.11.09
Posted in 2009 Medley at 3:44 pm by Miracle ♪♫
(Music, The Street Where I Live, and My Mind’s Coffee Residue)
Proust regarded habit as an annihilating force which suppresses the originality and even the awareness of one’s perception. And since it was not a habit of mine to walk down the street where I lived, being laptopless and locating a nearby internet café drove me to stroll this fairly peaceful street – in terms of traffic – which visitors always mistake for a road inside a subdivision even though it is a mere extension of Dipolog’s main road.
Notwithstanding the church music emanating from the cathedral which is erected in the heart of the city, the same which divides Rizal Avenue from Rizal Avenue Extension, I live in a musical street. I cannot say this with too much pride however. One of our neighbors hosts rock band rehearsals whose rock wars with my Rach, another neighbor boasts of a videoke station (lonely rivers flow, to the say, to the say… I’ll be coming home, wait for may, and all that stuff), while a brass band practicing funeral marches to Sousas plays on in another home where a bandmaster lives. (My uncle who lives next door has hearing problems. So does my dad. Go figure.)
There was nevertheless one morning when nobody felt like practicing, and that was when I went out our gate in search of that internet café. That was when I heard the unsung tutti of my neighborhood: Audible sounds but which were like Chopin’s music to a violinist – less significant than Paganini’s since Paganini provided a striking and attention-grabbing world to the violin repertoire, whereas Chopin composed steadfastly for the piano. And I was that violinist at that moment who suddenly took notice of another kind of music because she was in love with the pianist; the pianist this time was the candidness of the moment which performed sounds that were always present but were obscured in a more powerful oblivion.
The diapason of our gate hinge signified the “A” of the oboe which the entire orchestra subjected to, and other A’s wavered as the atmosphere’s instrumentalists tried to match its precision. I closed the gate behind me. The orchestra was tuned – or so I thought. Mischievous percussionists weren’t done conditioning their instruments; the bato lata of neighborhood children rattled along with the hammers of carpenters from a nearby construction. Nevertheless, the conductor had the last tap and silence was observed for a moment.
What came next astounded me. Vehicles passing through an intersecting road blew their horns in greeting – or warning, but these were no ordinary horns, to me at least. I do not know how or why, but they emitted the eight opening notes of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto. The notes and tempo were exact and so were the rhythmic intervals! I wanted to grab the next passerby and exclaim hysterically, “Did you hear that?!” But I know I would have been thought insane and be questioned with a “Vor-what?! Vor-who?” I stood dumbfounded for a period of time until I realized that the orchestra decided to abandon Dvorak for another unsung symphony along with the secret choreography of the carpenters, the children on the street, the few honking vehicles, and the candid street population.
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Is it right to suppose that the universe already contains all musical possibilities and the artist only has to be intent to extract what he hears from what is given him by the universe?
Is composing, like any other art, really creating something out of nothing? Or are we merely borrowing, selecting, and gathering from the universe (what we deem the choicest berries from a coffee plant, and then roast them to the perfect bronze, grind them, add sweeteners and creamers to suit our taste and satisfy or disturb the senses)? If so, is keenness to our universe the primal requirement to being an artist? Would this supposition humble the artist into acknowledging that only One has created something out of nothing?
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09.08.09
Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 6:50 pm by Miracle ♪♫
“Intelligence makes you unhappy, lonely, and poor…”
“Intelligence was just a word people used for stupid remarks that were well presented and prettily pronounced, and… intelligence itself was so corrupt, that there was often more to be gained from being dumb than from being a sworn intellectual.”
“Alcoholics are pitied, they are cared for, they are thought of in medical terms, humanely.But no one thinks of pitying intelligent people.”
“But no, intelligence is a double curse: it makes you suffer, and no one thinks of it as an illness.”
“…there are no detoxing cleanses for intelligence.”
“Id prefer it if you did the talking instead of calling on some goddamned writer. If you want my opinion, it’s too easy quoting other people, because there are so many great writers who’ve said so many great things that no one would ever need to express their own opinions ever again.”
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These lines are mostly by Antoine, Martin Page’s intellect-tormented character (who thought too much and was tired of it) from How I Became Stupid. The book is a satire on both intelligence and stupidity. A quirky little book, I must say.
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09.03.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:09 pm by Miracle ♪♫
In Italian cuisine, Carpaccio pertains to the thinly-sliced, raw, red meat drizzled with a custom-made sauce. In the Philippines, it usually refers to tuna carpaccio – the Asian variation, since tuna is more abundant here as opposed to veal and other red meats, and also because other than raw fish, our palates are normally unaccustomed to rare meats. (Pun intended.) For Marcel Proust, Carpaccio corresponds to the Venetian artist after whom the recipe is named owing to his application of particular color schemes.
For me, Carpaccio points both to the artist who painted one of my favorite reading-women paintings, Virgin Reading;
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and for the tuna dish I relish preparing, and of course, digesting.
Here’s my two-part variation.
There you have it. Carpaccio by the reading woman.
It’s no masterpiece but it is darn good. *winks*
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09.02.09
Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 9:30 am by Miracle ♪♫
What a momentous volume The Captive is! Herein do many of the earlier story lines culminate and divulge themselves. It is also where, after four preceding massive volumes, the narrator’s name is revealed. Deaths of significant characters occur, while new ones are introduced as buttresses for those who came before. The Captive primarily describes Marcel’s conjugated life with Albertine in Paris, which causes him more sorrow than joy, and Proust denotes that even though Albertine be the obvious “captive”, in a relationship between two people, both are in a sense captive and captor. (This has nothing to do with my other blog, by the way.)
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“Music, very different in this respect from Albertine’s society, helped me to descend into myself, to discover new things: the variety that I had sought in vain in life, in travel…”
The best parts for me were not those that concerned the plot. Just when one begins to reckon that Proust could not be capable of becoming more musical than he already is in prior passages, The Captive is an inundation of music, literature, and phenomenal reflections on art. This volume is truly an artist’s feast! There is so much I wish to quote and my notes are overbrimming that I am having trouble controlling myself.
“Was there in art a more profound reality, in which our true personality finds an expression that is not afforded it by the activities of life?For every great artist seems so different from all the rest, and gives us so strongly that sensation of individuality for which we seek in vain in our everyday existence!”
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“…the author would like to say how grieved he would be if the reader were to be offended by his portrayal of such weird characters. […] It would be a more serious objection, were there any foundation for it, to say that all this is alien to us, and that we ought to extract poetry from the truth that is close at hand. Art extracted from the most familiar reality does indeed exist and its domain is perhaps the largest of any. But it is none the less true that considerable interest, not to say beauty, may be found in actions inspired by a cast of mind so remote from anything we feel, from anything we believe, that they remain incomprehensible to us, displaying themselves before our eyes like a spectacle without rhyme or reason. What could be more poetic than Xerxes, son of Darius, ordering the sea to be scourged with rods for having engulfed his fleet?”
Truth be told, I find our narrator quite disagreeable at some points, but these only add up to the reality of human flaws which we all possess one way or another. It is a mistake perhaps to look for a hero in Marcel’s character, but it would also be a terribly big mistake not to learn from him.
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“Observation counts for little. It is only from the pleasure that we ourselves have felt that we can derive knowledge and pain.”
I am beginning to recognize the inescapable influence of Proust in many authors, but he is indeed one of those very same artists which he describes as possessing the ability of “using colours not merely so lasting, but so personal that, just as time has been powerless to spoil their freshness, so the disciples who imitate their discoverer, and even the masters who surpass him, do not dim their originality.” Proust was so keen to these personal colours which he refers in different parts of the book as an artist’s “inner homeland”, “the violin within”, or “the mode in which he ‘hears’ the universe”, and this keenness remains exemplary, and this is precisely why after all this time, he has not been overshadowed.
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