JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Photo from INK Illustration.

There’s a wonderful blog called Invisible Library which catalogs books that technically don’t exist: fictional titles mentioned in works of fiction. Like D.B. Caulfield’s book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, which his brother talks about in The Catcher in the Rye. (In a meta-move, a real-life author published a book entitled The Secret Goldfish.) Or all those books by Benno von Archimbaldi that the characters were obsessed about in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. And a ton of titles in the novels of Vladimir Nabokov.

Here’s one for the Invisible Library: Under A Loggia by Eleanor Lavish, from A Room With A View by E.M. Forster.

Invisible Library has teamed up with the London-based INK Illustration for an exhibition. Brilliant.

Photo from INK Illustration.

Which brings me to my project: I’m going to produce completely handwritten books for friends. Hard labor, but I like writing anyway.

Take a visual journey through Voltaire’s Candide, illustrated by Rockwell Kent, on the New York Public Library website.

Just saw Channing Tatum in that movie. It’s like watching a big, fat, juicy steak sizzling on a grill. A big, fat, juicy steak that was mistakenly sold you at 70 percent off. Brilliant.

What movie? Right. She was in college, he was in the army, they wrote letters to each other. Yeah, it’s the kind of movie where you watch people reading letters. But Channing Tatum. Look at that neck. You couldn’t encircle it with both hands. Then the girl does something noble and self-sacrificing, which is great unless you happen to be her boyfriend and are expected to be noble, too, even if she doesn’t bother to explain what’s going on and why you have to suffer. Noble people can be so inconsiderate. But Channing Tatum takes off his shirt again so you forgive the movie. It’s based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks whom I’ve never read, whose other books were made into movies I’ve never seen. I hear someone always dies or falls ill in them. Anyway the girl from Mamma Mia and Elliot from E.T. are in this one. I can’t tell you if it’s good or awful because I don’t remember it, but Channing Tatum.

It’s a Lasse Hallstrom movie?!

Did You Hear About The Morgans starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker.

If you’re at the movies and you find yourself checking your phone every two minutes even if you’re not expecting any messages, it means you are hoping for a reason to leave the theatre so you should just get up and leave.

I left.

Tomorrow I will check out Dear John (Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried) and Love Happens (Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart) to see if I can stay seated.

Installation by Costantino Zicarelli, Manila Contemporary, Whitespace, Makati City.

REPORTS of politicians who have extramarital affairs while complaining about the death of family values, or who use public funding for private gain despite condemning government waste, have become so common in recent years that they hardly seem surprising anymore. Anecdotally, at least, the connection between power and hypocrisy looks obvious. . .

Read The psychology of power: Absolutely in The Economist.

I missed the opening of A Thousand Times Yes at Manila Contemporary last Saturday but I visited the gallery yesterday. It’s the Valentine show at Valentine’s gallery; naturally the theme is love.

Drawing by Christina Quisumbing Ramilo

Photograph of an installation by Ringo Bunoan

Painting by Ugo Untoro

At that stupendous moment, he ate a watermelon.

My project—Anton Chekhov’s The Lady With A Little Dog, handwritten on index cards in a card catalogue box—was displayed on a pedestal as if it were something precious. No one had read it (though the curators had googled a synopsis). What was the point of all that labor if the viewers treat it as a museum piece and keep their distance?

I stuck a Post-It on the box: Don’t just gawk at it, read the story. Then I dragged the pedestal beside a bench so visitors can read in comfort. Please, it’s supposed to get smeared, dog-eared, crumpled. The ink and paper are just the medium, it’s the words that matter.

The most perfect love story ever written: no one prattling about love or falling into someone else’s arms in phony paroxysms of joy. Pure Chekhov.

A Thousand Times Yes is on view until 24 February at Manila Contemporary, Whitespace, 2314 Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati.