JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Update: Saffy has recovered fully and is eating twice as much as she used to.

Saffy in her carrier

I’ve just read this inspiring investigative report on the Online Cat-Industrial Complex, and I’m thinking of starting a new career as a feline interpreter. Having lived with cats for 19 years, I have figured out what their facial expressions, sounds, tail positions, ear angles, kneading, poop placement and other nonverbal cues mean.
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For schedules and details, visit the TPAM 2018 site.

I was in Japan for three days to meet with our team for the World Domination Project, and to inspect the venues for our shows on February 16 and 17. For weeks I had been wracking my brains, unable to complete the script to my satisfaction, but when I landed in Japan everything clicked into place.

The official title for the presentation, courtesy of our director Raya Martin, is Exporting Positive Disposition Since 1417: A Theory of World Domination. Max-Philip Aschenbrenner is our dramaturg, Yoshiro Hatori our producer, and Giancarlo Abrahan and I are writing and performing. (Along with Pepe Diokno that’s three 30-something filmmakers I am working with, and they’re fantastic. So now when people disparage millennials, I feel compelled to defend them.)
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I love traditional hand-made fabrics because they’re beautiful, distinctive, and locally-produced, and because there’s little probability that you will run into someone wearing or carrying the exact same thing. Over the years I’ve come to know the Ilokano textiles called inabel through the BLB—I have a whole bunch of abel blankets, and tote bags that are so sturdy, I also use them as cat carriers.

Last year I was introduced to textiles from Maguindanao. They’re very colorful, with intricate patterns and motifs. In the picture above, Saffy is sitting on a batik malong (You can wear it over your jeans if you’re bored with your wardrobe), next to a pair of zippered pouches made of bunga sama.

Find out more about the textiles and crafts of Mindanao at Mataid Mindanao. “Mataid” means beautiful.

Reine

I’ve just reread Reine Melvin’s short story collection, A Normal Life, and was floored all over again. The writing is exquisite, the stories intense: she fillets her characters with a very fine blade. Most of the stories happen in the Philippines in the late 80s, and the revolutions and coups that were occurring at the time are not nearly as emotional as what her fictional people go through.

A Normal Life is now available at the Ateneo Press bookstore and at Loyola Bookshop. Call (02) 441 0854 to order copies. The book will also be available at mall bookstores, but why wait.
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100 Books, 2018 edition
(authors listed in alphabetical order)
The Oresteia, Aeschylus
Without Feathers, Woody Allen
Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
The Collected Poems of W.H. Auden
Persuasion, Jane Austen
SPQR, Mary Beard
Stalingrad, Antony Beevor
HHhH, Laurent Binet
The Decameron, Boccacio
Any Human Heart, William Boyd
Possession, A.S. Byatt
The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino
The Outsider, Albert Camus
Burning Your Boats, The Collected Short Stories, Angela Carter
Love in a Fallen City, Eileen Chang
Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
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