JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Thirty-one years ago we were part of something so extraordinary that it ignited movements for freedom in the rest of the world. We didn’t do it for any families or personalities; we did it for ourselves, to reclaim the dignity and the rights that had been denied us for so long. It was the right thing to do. No one can take that away from us.

At the rally I ran into one of my teachers, and we remarked on the renewed relevance of Yeats.

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Democracy is a work in progress.

Movie: Paterson by Jim Jarmusch

Here is a poem by William Carlos Williams, the guiding spirit of Jim Jarmusch’s movie Paterson.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Williams wrote a very long poem called Paterson, about a city in New Jersey. It starts like this:

Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls
its spent waters forming the outline of his back. He
lies on his right side, head near the thunder
of the waters filling his dreams! Eternally asleep,
his dreams walk about the city where he persists
incognito. Butterflies settle on his stone ear.
Immortal he neither moves nor rouses and is seldom
seen, though he breathes and the subtleties of his machinations
drawing their substance from the noise of the pouring river
animate a thousand automations.

The city is a man and the man is the city, and in the film he is played by Adam Driver. Paterson (no first name given) wakes up at the same time every day next to his wife Laura (Goldshifteh Farahani) and walks to work. Paterson is a bus driver. He listens to the passengers’ conversations but does not join in. He eats his lunch on a bench with a view of Passaic Falls. After his shift he goes home and has dinner with his rather flaky but delightful wife, listens to her latest plans (she wants to be a cupcake mogul and a country singer), then walks their bulldog, Marvin. He stops at the neighborhood bar for a beer. Then he goes home and goes to sleep. The following day his routine starts again, with slight variations.

If I knew I was going to watch a week’s worth of this I might have declined, and I would have regretted it. Nothing much happens in Paterson, and that is the point. Our bus driver (Adam Driver playing a bus driver named Paterson in a movie called Paterson, galaxies away from Girls and Kylo Ren) is a poet, watching and listening. Out of the ordinary, trivial details of daily life he writes poetry. He has a different way of seeing, which Jarmusch lets us experience. (In the morning Laura tells him she dreamed of twins, so everywhere he sees identical pairs.) Overheard tidbits make their way into lines of verse. His questions are mirrored and answered in the outside world.

This silence, solitude, reflection that the wellness industry has appropriated and sold back to us as “mindfulness”, this is where Paterson’s poetry comes from. This is not loneliness, this is creation.

I love this movie. Arrival and Paterson are my two favorite movies of the year because they pay tribute to the power of language.

Book: Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

A noir crime novel and a dark comedy, Eileen reads like a collaboration between Patricia Highsmith (the Ripley novels) and Shirley Jackson (We Have Always Lived In The Castle). Eileen lives in a squalid house with her alcoholic ex-policeman father and works in a boys’ prison. Her hobbies include shoplifting and entertaining fairly chaste fantasies about one of the prison guards, whom she stalks on weekends. Her dream is to get the hell out of there, and her chance arrives in the form of a beautiful psychologist assigned to the prison. A thrilling read.

Drogon is not amused at his human’s constant absence.

Just returned from a week in Korea, the land of K-Pop, Koreanovelas, kimchi and general kookiness, where the toilets have settings that never occurred to me and everything is good for you (They’re not just stairs, they’re the Stairs of Longevity leading to the Gift Shop of Good Fortune).

The travel show Trippies premieres on CNN Philippines next month.

Thanks to Solana Perez for the photos.

Art Fair Philippines opened today, 16 February, and is on until Sunday, 19 February at the 5th, 6th, 7th floors and roof deck of The Link Carpark (across from Landmark) in Ayala Center, Makati. It’s open from 10am to 9pm. Entrance fee: Php250, Php50 for students with valid IDs, and Free to Makati students with valid IDs.

Damnit I’m in Korea for work so I’m going to miss it this year. Do me a favor: Take photos of your favorite artworks (No flash, please) and send them to saffron.safin@gmail.com so I can post them here.

Mark Haddon’s first book for adults (which children also loved) was The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-time, which by being deliberately affectless (the narrator-protagonist has Asperger’s) reduced us to puddles of tears. The Pier Falls, a collection of stories, employs a similar very clear, pitilessly detailed style to destroy the reader. The title story is a minute-by-minute account of a disaster which kills dozens of holiday-goers. We look on in horror and fascination, and in the seconds that remain of these strangers’ lives we understand that they are just like us. Another story, The Island, retells the myth of Ariadne, the Minoan princess who helps Theseus to slay the minotaur, only to be abandoned by the hero on the island of Naxos. (The story of Ariadne really bothered me when I came upon it as a child in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: How can a supposedly noble savior turn out to be an ungrateful asshole? As I grew older I learned the answer: Humans are like that.) Haddon’s version brings us face to face with Ariadne’s terrible loneliness. Unsought solitude is the curse shared by the characters in this collection, and while I would not recommend it to anyone in search of a cheerful diversion, I prescribe it to readers who are feeling glum, disheartened, depressed. (And, of course, fans of excellent writing.) You think you have it bad? Read this.

So that’s the unplanned theme of the week: awfulness and compassion. I direct you to Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, which feels like a fishbone in your heart that you can’t dislodge. Casey Affleck stars as Lee, a handyman who has endured unspeakable tragedy and cannot forgive himself. We see this silent, angry, broken person and somehow feel affection for him. For Chrissakes, Lee, come on. His brother (the ever-dependable Kyle Chandler) offers him the possibility of a new life, and his ex-wife and nephew (Michelle Williams and Lucas Hedges, both wonderful) want him to take it, but he’s locked up so deep inside himself that no light can get in. The amazing thing about Manchester by the Sea is that for all its bleakness it’s also funny. During the most awful moments there are bursts of humor that bring up the absurdity of being human. (“It’s not a good disease,” says the attending physician. “What’s a good disease?” “Poison ivy.”) Watch it.

After one Saturday afternoon of discussions, readings, rough drafts and outlines, the ten participants in our just-concluded Writing Boot Camp got to work on their stories. This last weekend, nine read their stories to the class.

The more I do these workshops, the more I realize that there is no shortage of writing talent out there—they just need a push, a few practical suggestions, and some assurance that they are not alone and that there is a point to putting in the work. Few things can match the satisfaction of having produced a story exactly as you imagined it.

These nine stories (and hopefully another one) will join the ten from our previous Writing Boot Camp (October 2016) in a planned anthology to be published this year.

The Other Girl by Ilsa Malsi. We all have someone like her: the classmate or contemporary we constantly measure ourselves against, whose triumphs we regard as silent rebukes, whom we wish in our darkest heart of hearts will fail.

Origin Story by Chuck Smith. The unflinching, painful, and hilarious tale of a boy whose life has been defined by a rumor: everyone thinks he’s the son of a dead 1980s bold star.

As It Was In The Beginning by Anne Tamondong. A current take on an old story: the deal with the devil.

In the Faculty Center by Will Liangco. The students in a Creative Writing class are intrigued, scandalized, and revolted when it appears that their classmate, a zealous feminist, has embarked on an affair with their greasy, moustache-massaging, altogether unattractive professor. What is the truth?

The Lizard by James Fajarito. A freshman at a seminary, ostracized when he is revealed to be gay, gains the respect of his judgmental classmates.

That Song by Rex Monteverde . As a child Brenda discovers that she can see ghosts, and she is taught to abide by the first Rule of the Gift: Never let the ghosts know that you can see them.

Salvador by Vicky Marquez. On a trip to Bahia in Brazil, a Filipina just out of college strikes up a friendship with a European boy, but does not realize its significance until years have passed.

Silver Belles by Gilda Guillermo. A lawyer becomes fixated on the dance number that her law school class will perform at its 25th alumni homecoming. When circumstances prevent her from attending the homecoming, she starts plotting her revenge.

The Favorite Tita by Tina Vitug. When their sister is killed in an accident, two sisters with contrasting personalities and values find themselves embroiled in a custody fight for their two nieces.

The next Writing Boot Camp will be held in May. For inquiries, email saffron.safin@gmail.com.