Blogging as living

Weekend reading consisted of this book by an author I've never heard of (that sounds so snotty - okay, so he's never heard of me, either) but apparently he's kind of famous because of this hip book he'd written previously called Nothing Feels Good.
Miss Misery by Andy Greenwald is about blogging and becoming so engrossed with reading other blogs that you lose track of 'real life' and focus on the lives depicted, described, painted, desecrated, cursed and created over the web.
Envying how other people live their lives, or wanting a life other than the one you have because yours is so, so boring and you wish you had the courage , the chutzpah, the daring to go out and live a life you'd actually want to write about and describe in full detail.
Anyways, it wasn't such a big deal. I liked it and all; I don't regret that I shelled out P90 for it (got it from a Power Books affiliate Book Sale type store called Buy-Out Books in Manila) , and I don't regret using up an entire afternoon reading it. It had its moments, no major epiphanies, but a few keen observations about what why emotional people are the way they are:living on the edge of falling into something that could either break you or give you wings.
Siguro if I were younger I would've liked it more, but am older, and am done with whining about life and why it's sometimes boring. Life is what you make of it kung peti-burgis ka. May sapat na kakayanan na umunlad at iangat ang sarili; o mas mainam, magkaroon ng buhay na kapaki-pakinabang hindi lang para sa sarili kundi para sa lipunan. No excuses for whining, moaning and groaning about how life is so, so boring.
I don't envy other people's lives as depicted in other blogs,  but I do envy their energy - their drive. I regret my sloth and my easily-bored brain, my impatience and my conflicted need to be comfortable but intellectually challenged at the same time. I am frequently reminded that everyday, good songs are being written, new books rolling off the presses, new art being created and while at least 95% of all these works speak about the human condition without prescribing any remedies or cures, they are, at least, there to be enjoyed  and appreciated in refreshing, teeny tiny sips (kasi mahal, at kasi mas maraming mahahalagang bagay na dapat pagtuunan ng pansin).
I don't really have an agenda for this blog, either. I just write whatever is in my head at the time I log on, and I rant away. Kim has previously slashed my wrists about writing about what he terms as 'personal stuff' instead of sticking to more meaningful things like, say, politics and the economy and human rights and the war, but I told him to go write in his own blog and quit reading mine if he doesn't like what he reads.
How boring! Lagi na lang pulitika! (Actually, you can never really run away from it: everything is political)
Anyways, what I most liked about Miss Misery is how Greenwald also included lists of music albums and artists the main character (lazy, no-ambition writer David Gould) likes to listen to while he's blogging or reading other people's blogs. In the next few days I will be checking out this albums (mostly grunge and emo. Okay, mostly emo by bands like Jimmy Eat World and New Found Glory) and listening to the songs and maybe I'll like them. Last album I really liked is Keane's 'Under the Iron Sea," and I haven't gotten over it it. It's been a year, gad. Hmm, there's a new All-American Rejects album out. And am still looking for that album by Damien Rice.

Okay so maybe am not being completely honest here. Something else also struck me about the book's theme: about being lost while in the middle of something you're doing more or less expertly; about wanting, for a moment, to step out of your own existence and try new things regardless of how scary they are, nevermind that these things are 'so not like you.'

I am 'so not like' ..

(1) Riding roller coasters

(2) Singing videoke

(3)Wearing make-up

(4)Wearing slinky, feminine clothes

(5) Going to parties and being the talkative, jokey and popular one.

Not that I want to do any of these things. I don't regret not being able to do them, but sometimes I do feel like it would do me really good to get happy drunk in a videoke bar with my closest friends (and Kim, who really has a good voice, believe it or not).

I want to

(1) Go Bunjee jumping;

(2) Get a tattoo (I've wanted one since 1996 when I went to Silliman University in Dumaguete for the National Creative Writing Workshop but always, always hesitated at the last moment: security reasons daw);

(3) Wear mascara (yeah, yeah, you can laugh all you want);

(4)Cook a four-course dinner for my friends;

(5) Get drunk. I am so sober right now my brain hurts.

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Next up for reading:Kiran Desai's "The Inheritance of Loss" and Andrea Levy's "Small Island", Both gifts from Tita Agnes.

I like it when am reading something I've not read before -- a book by an author whose work  I haven't previously encountered. I look forward to slipping into a new stream and feeling the current and wondering where it will take me.

I eat raisins and drink bubbly flavored water while I read. When I write, I drink tea. Lately I've been drinking caffeine-free, peppermint herb tea so I don't end up shaking like a leaf three hours later.

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When I read friends' blogs, I feel close to them in a way that I never do when am actually with them. Isn't that strange? Or maybe, I feel closer to them because I read their words, and there's the assumption that they've been honest as the words poured out of them. Not that my friends are dishonest, it's just that, well, so many things one could never share with the world even by BEING. One must write and write well and compellingly to be understood or, if one doesn't care about being understood, to at least be able to explain and acquit one's self well.

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One cool painting-  notice the detail! 

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Am compelled to write something about the Pacquiao-Barrera match, given that almost everyone is raving about it (mostly over the frustratingly large number of ads that kept flooding the screen every two minutes, I was told).

I completely missed it, but all the while Kim and I were aware of it because all the tv sets in the neighborhood were tuned in to the match and there was palpable tension as all the residents glued themselves to their sofas or floors to watch two grown men try to reduce each other to a bloody pulp of blackened eyes, broken noses and swollen cheeks and lips.

I don't care about boxing - I think it's a brutal sport, the boxers' faces all smashed and mashed up like so many overripe tomatoes under the wheels of a cement mixer. I find neither grace nor beauty in it, and the fierceness that goes with every punch thrown makes me avert my eyes.

I love Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Boxer,' though. And Morrissey's "Sunny.' That's as far as I would ever get to liking boxing -- loving songs about it.