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It turns out that I can live with less: no dining out, no shopping, no hanging out at the mall. A movie a day, three books a week, good writing materials, and cats, to paraphrase Truffaut. And food, of course (I read somewhere that Truffaut did not eat much), and cat supplies. Cleaning products. Skin care. I’m all set to live like a Bronte sister, but without the consumption. (True, if too many of us choose to become low-spending shut-ins for the rest of our lives, that will really hobble the economy, but then capitalism needs an overhaul after this catastrophe.)
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Portents
I wrote this in 1991, an apocalyptic time—the first Iraq War, the Baguio earthquake, the eruption of Mt Pinatubo, daily 12-hour power outages. Little did I know. The story won first prize at the Palanca Awards and got me a publishing deal with Anvil, which was then managed by Karina Bolasco. Karina is still my publisher, this time with Ateneo University Press.

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via GIPHY

I feel like I spent the last two months in an endless cycle of sweeping the floor and washing the dishes.

In quarantine my primary relationship (after the cats) has been with my phone. It kept gloating about our stiflingly close relationship, pointing out my escalating screen time until I turned off that feature. I do not remember my dreams, but I just had a nightmare in which I kissed my phone screen and it cracked.
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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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“____ 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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