JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

The police general of Metro Manila, who arrests all who violate quarantine and social distancing rules—including street vendors who need to earn money so they can eat, and volunteers who feed the hungry—was caught having a birthday party. To most of us “birthday party” qualifies as a mass gathering and is therefore banned, but it’s okay because it wasn’t really a birthday party. It was a traditional mañanita with many well-wishers, food, and drink. Spontaneous feasting as opposed to partying, and certainly not “deliberate partying”. The guests just happened to congregate at random in the same area, and the spread suddenly appeared out of nowhere. People are so suspicious.
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The online book club discussion for kids went well, though the moderator was often flustered. I didn’t prepare a system for controlling the flow of the conversation: I was expecting long pauses as people collected their thoughts. In most Q&As with adults, getting people to speak is like squeezing whisky out of a rock.
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When this pandemic is over and we have settled into our new and hopefully improved (kinder, more equal or at least less ridiculously unequal, and less destructive to the planet) world, will I miss this strange, quiet period? Will this confinement seem like an idyll?

Working from home, away from the glamor and the perks of the job, unable to spend the salaries you have traded your freedom for on designer fashions and tchotchkes, breeds disillusionment. You see your job for what it is, and contemplate leaving it for something more…creative. Speaking from the other side of the divide, where you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t expect any sort of financial security, I have to say: Don’t quit your job. In more visceral terms, of course, but these times call for kindness. Let me talk you down from that economic ledge.
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“____ was Here” was translated into Italian for Balikbayan: Racconti filippini contemporanei, edited by Ubaldo Stecconi (Ossigeno, 1999)

Signed copies of The Collected Stories of Jessica Zafra, published by Ateneo University Press, are available here, P350 each. Email your order, full name, delivery address, and mobile number to saffron.safin@gmail.com.

Slept through an earthquake.

The mosquito zapper was delivered yesterday. Whenever a mosquito commits suicide by dive-bombing the blue light, I rejoice.

Today’s book: The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott, a fictionalized account of the hell that Boris Pasternak and his partner Olga Ivinskaya went through during the writing and publication of Dr. Zhivago, and the stories of the women of the CIA who worked to smuggle the banned novel into the Soviet Union. It’s a Cold War thriller about the power of secrets, as told by multiple narrators in different locations and time periods. It is a riveting read, and I would be surprised if it’s not adapted into a TV series.
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If you love books, then on at least ten occasions you have said: “I wish I had time to just lie in bed for a week, reading books.”

I love books, I have lots of books to read, and I have time.

Today I picked up Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey. It’s a good-looking volume that fits perfectly in your hand, same size as Weather by Jenny Offill. There’s even a blurb by Jenny Offill. The difference is that the dust jacket of Topics is smooth and slippery, while Weather’s has a pleasantly rough texture that is easier to hang on to. Which is also how I found their contents.
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