Fish stories

I wish one day I can try to sit on a boat in a tranquil lake somewhere and then cast a fishing line out into the water, and discover what thoughts can swim into my brain as I wait for the fish to bite. 

My last student for tonight was a lawyer who likes to fish. He wanted to have a free conversation lesson, but didn't appear to be willing to make the effort of talking. Perhaps he was sleepy or tired. Well so was I. I slept at three in the morning this Sunday, and woken up at seven-thirty, because I had an 8 o'clock class. Now this student didn't really tell me a lot about himself so I just revolved around the topic of fishing. 

So we talked about Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea, which he said he's heard of but haven't read yet, a favorite foreign language indie film of mine, which was Japanese, but he hadn't seen (understandable- indie, remember?), Fish Story, and Hayao Miyasaki's Ponyo, an animated film about a fish-princess who fell in love with a human boy.

I was mostly the one talking during the 30-minute lesson, and I hoped I didn't bore him when I told him why he should read The Old Man and The Sea-- Hemingway's classic tale about the determination of one old man who was determined to finish a task he had vowed himself to do against all odds. 

As for Fish Story (フィッシュストーリー Fisshū Sutōrī), I saw this movie last 2011 (?) amid all the hype about the world ending on the 21st of December, 2012. This was what that movie was about - the end of the world, and how punk rock saved it. Superduper awesomest punk rock movie ever made, by director Yoshihiro Nakamura.

Ponyo he was familiar with. I guess Hayao Miyasaki was a household name in Japan. So. I told him I really liked the films of Hayao Miyasaki because they always send a positive message. He said he's kind of a pessimistic person, so he needs to watch these kinds of films more often to encourage him, although he didn't sound eager to be encouraged. Hmm, it was kind of ironic (and I told him this) for somebody who likes fishing to be a pessimist. "What, you're hoping for the fish not to bite?" I asked him.

In hearing/inferring on what he said about himself, an image of a man who sits on the grassy bank of the river, fishing rod cast out to the shore, unmoved both in spirit and body came into mind (I hope I can find a better avenue for this sudden image - poetry perhaps). And reflecting about it, I realized he has every right to be pessimistic, and I have no right to challenge that. I too, have my dark days.

I haven't fished in my life, who am I to know what thoughts flow through a man's stream of consciousness as he draws his fishing line and watches the current and waits for the fish? 

Homer Winslow's "Boy Fishing" 

Accreditation as I see it

Dali,
manghabol kita ka ramig kag tun-og kang bag-ong bun-ag nga adlaw.

This is a late post of my personal snapshots taken of the fuzz that is called AACUP Level 1 Accreditation. These photos are the sights that I rose up to one morning (December 10th, if I'm not mistaken) when we stayed overnight at school to prepare for it:

 The fog makes the oval behind the mango trees look as if a hundred invisible sprinters has started an early run on it, and disappeared in a cloud of dust. This is just outside the School of Education building.

An Appallingly Forgetful Geek

I've been rooting to attend the first-ever Iloilo Comic Con (Robinson's Place, December 1, 2012) ever since Nong Donne posted about it a couple months back. I think I even scribbled it on my organizer and put an entry on my cellphone's calendar.

But I forgot.

Amazing moments that transpired so far on my 27th year

Amazed.

 Alternate title: My first semester as a part-time instructor in a college situated in a non-urban environment

Also: How life has been so far, for the first whole year (it’s not actually a year but I feel like it has been) that I spent in a non-urban environment

I know I do this all the time. I come to you and delight in you and then I leave you because I become too busy with my life. But remember this, you’re always in my mind.

Blurry Sunsets

Because words escape me often nowadays.

Dorano, Dorano, you made me weep

It's the first of those days in a month and I'm feeling wonderfully weepy. Random things are making me shed tears of inexplicable origin. Among those things is this sidebar story I read while researching about the Olympics on Encarta Encyclopedia:

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Italian marathon runner Dorando Pietri became one of the most famous Olympic athletes in 1908 for the manner in which he lost the marathon event. British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, described Pietri’s final few agonizing yards in this account. American runner John Hayes, who crossed the finish line second, was awarded the gold medal.

If I were a rock star, I would be very, very afraid now

Morbid thoughts on becoming (Forever) 27

 

If I were a rock star, and not just any rock star but a superstitious rock star, I would be a shivering, nervous piece of wreck by now. My thoughts would be plagued by the inevitable tragedy (becoming part of the special group called Forever 27 Club) that's going to befall me any day from two days to 365 days from now --my 27th year in this world, an age when most rock stars who are true to their music choose to die, with tragic as their preferred approach to dying.

Wake me, Supermoon

The moon has been and will always be one of my favorite things. Everytime I travel at night, like when I'd be late in going home from the city, the sight of the moon right outside the FilCab (commuter van service in our town) window makes my heart miss a beat. I can truly attest that the full moon indeed is force that stirs powerful desires from the hearts of women. It drove me to full blown impassioned writing in the middle of the night during high school. It inspired me to create poems about love found and lost. Staring at the moon transported my mind out my room and into the night.

Almost a year ago, on March 19, 2011, the moon came closest to the earth on its elliptical orbit and many lucky people, and luckier photographers, all over the world were able to witness, and capture (in the case of the photographers) Luna at her full grandeur.

I missed seeing this rare phenomenon last year although I remember seeing this on the news. Either that, or I read about it on Facebook. Anyway, March 19,  I knew I was out at Jesther's (one of my former creative writing students) 18th birthday party at El Dorado. A few days before, I guess you could say I was already feeling the supermoon's pull because I was out, or rather in(doors) with a werewolf.

And so since I missed blogging about this uber-duper-extra-supermoon, let me do so now. Hmm.. Come to think of it, this topic wasn't even included among the list of things I should have blogged about the past year. I also haven't really thought about the moon the way I once regarded it for a long, long time now and along with that lost devotion/belief went a bit of my ability to dream, my ability to soar into the unknown. So this post is just proper.

Enough of the intro, here's the actual body of my post-- ten of the 50 awe-inspiring pictures of the supermoon taken by amateur and professional photographers, as featured in Buzzfeed.com:

1. Williamstown, Australia
 
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2. Upstate New York
 
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3. Miami, Florida
 
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4. Portugal
  
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5. Athens, Greece

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 6. The Netherlands
 
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7. Mexico City

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8. Colorado
 
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9. Bangalore, India
 
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10. Germany
 
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These are my choicest picks of the 50 photographs featured. I hope they've re-inspired you as they did me. To view the rest of these amazing supermoon photos, click here.