last evenings

so many things i wanted to talk about--now forever lost.

i sit in front of the screen tonight in front of me twinkles the Xmas lights i bought to give the house the only "holiday" treatment this shack is ever going to see. Warm yellow they are, curtain-like, 350pesos ++ (at SM)--and i love them. i'm thinking of keeping the lights throughout the year but it takes out the novelty don't you think? they aren't special anymore if i keep them for the 365--the lights i bought have six different "modes" of flickering, I like the slow fading mode, as Shelley (or Byron?) once said like dying embers of coal luminous with the lick of the wind--something like that--

anyways. i'm savoring the no WORK mode for two weeks, I'll enjoy it while it lasts...and though i've promised myself that i'll take this generous time to sort out my incomplete grade...i've given up trying to give a shit. really. i mean i still like to finish it but just not now--i've missed this idle life so much it's as if i don't have to work or study come january.

arghhh.

So i hope you enjoyed your christmas this year, man, one thing i realized during the 25th is that i'm old--with so many new kids in the family, i think i'm going to have a run for my xmases bonuses till the daY i die. but i dont mind it's nice to play santa once a year--so i'm just trying not to think of all those books i could've bought with the christmas dough i got. but heck my mom's happy with her olay, and pop was pretty pleased with his new pair of columbia pants--i'm such a good son right? well i couldn't play the ungrateful brat anymore, its kinda getting old--and how could i get grumpy when the fact remains that this year i've bought an unprecedented amount of books in a single calendar's worth? (and i bought a new celfone!) --God i feel really blessed, and mind you most of them are in the plus 500 range--so im always broke-- but damn it, i'm alive, life is short... make the most of it.

the idle days drove me into a lot thinking too, especially when I'm watching TV. one afternoon just before Christmas i watched this show on the History channel about the rise and fall of the city of Carthage. Queen Dido, Hamilcar, and yes, Hannibal--and i found myself so moved with Hannibal's chivalry...crossing the alps (with elephants!) and crossing that giant-assed river...i was so moved that it brought me to tears...oo para akong tanga dun sa higaan ko, naiiyak (man i really am losing my mind)--just because i thought of history, its palimpsestic quality...the power and horror of memory and forgetting....and i said to myself...will the world ever see such display of valor ever again?

these sentiments were even brought to greater heights after i saw some of "The Rape of Europa" on Nat Geo (superbly narrated by Joan Allen) a few nights after...how the Nazi's hoarded all the priceless works of art from italy, paris--man ALL of Europe--man all the rembrandts, matisses, degas, boticellis......

and was so caught in the moment of horror at how easily all those relics could be lost in time never to be seen again...truly horrific!

and what about the fate of human scholarship? thousands of years of letters and ideas, scorched and erased as if it all, as if we all, never existed...the horror.

and before this year closes, i am going to give a shot out-- again-- to one of my greatest discoveries of the year (of my life?)-- Roberto Bolaño,

i dont know why but i have a new conception of a great book that really changed your life...like Catcher in the Rye in the arms of an assassin...there are certain books--no matter how morbid--that you feel proud to have died in/with---i mean like, just simply crossing the street on your morning commute when a car slams you just like that...crushing your bones, puking your brains out...and that book lying beside you, with its pages being slowly drenched from your pool of blood, with the wind caking the it on the pavement...

Roberto Bolaño...
how can i even begin to rabidly rave about the "The Savage Detectives"? its so fragmented...with small gleaming gems of scenes...i just don't want it to end. ...visceral realism...lee harvey oswald, Garcia Madero...God! wherever you are...i just want you to know that your work has touched me...i'm so not ranting against fate when she brought me to that bookstore, and armed me with just enough dough to buy your expensive-ass book...

and what's this new discovery that "2666" has a missing fragment-- a part 6? i hope it remains lost...you know why Bolaño? to leave a gaping whole in all of us...never to be filled...just like with Sartre...what would i give to be able to read "The Last Chance"? les chemins de la liberte is masterful but to be honest i just want to know if Mathieu Delarue is still alive after the tower crumbled, what do you think Roberto?

did you ever fully realize the extent of your work's impact?
does it mean something to you as i am saying this right now?
I hope you felt some of it... on your last evenings on earth.

how melancholy you make me feel.
thank you
you really fucked me up.