/// hunger

"The Northland, with its glaring lights and black shadows, its unearthly joys and abysmal despairs, is present and dominant in every line that Hamsun ever wrote. In that country his best tales and dramas are laid. By that country his heroes are stamped wherever they roam. Out of that country they draw their principal claims to probability. Only in that country do they seem quite at home."

- Introduction to Knut Hamsun's Hunger by Edwin Bjorkman

/// niet vergeten frico eten

Last night. Photo by Shinji Manlangit.

/// pacific!

Played last night at Jolo's car and I was brought back immediately to the thin line between Stockholm and Bilbao 2009. I missed this song, I missed the library.

/// the hammer

Since the first time, I have learned to brace myself ready
For the hammer that will crush my heart into pieces again

That hammer is called uncertainty.

/// tissue

With Kathy and Camille. #pizza2k11

/// home

i think of you and home. dancing around the kitchen.

/// power plant

/// wired

/// do not run i watch you from afar

/// horses

i love you! couches and listening to i break horses on full volume, let's have a drink! then we'll go to tape or vrijdag or de wacht. the fort, our fort and our secret world. yellow lights, the dining table, the cabinet, the big square coffee table. baking in the middle of the night, de wereld draait door, shall we have fries or shall we have chicken rice? a party tonight, and off we ride. you and me and your bicycle. and flying to the north. and swimming swimming swimming in a square sea of smiles and laughter, water parks and the whale ride! eucalyptus rooms where it's just you and me. the crystal blue and you, swimming towards me and then water, and then your lips. i love you.

/// LAKAS2012

IconaPop.NightsLikeThis from chky mnky on Vimeo.

LAKAS2012 Official Soundtrack "Pagbalik ko diyan, di na ko aalis." "Basta titira ako diyan." "Di lang pampamilya, pang-isports pa." "Doctors with borders."

/// swimming love

/// A and M ///

/// ACHIEVE.

NORWAY ACHIEVE.

/// boxed up in pine

 
Champagne bars and winter nights in Söder. I remember. Crisp air, the tunnelbana and apple cider.

/// glacier

"Si Angel, siya yung icon ng mga pangarap na natutupad." - Shine

/// where it wants to be

"Let you soul take you where it wants to be."

/// Tranströmer

Poems come, he has said, when "a strong outer pressure suddenly meets a strong inner pressure." One world without the other will not suffice.

/// do androids dream of electric dogs

"Let's try another." Impossible now to get a meaningful response. "You are watching an old movie on TV, a movie from before the war. It shows a banquet in progress; the entree"- he skipped over the first part of the question- "consists of boiled dog, stuffed with rice."

"Nobody would kill and eat a dog," Luba Luft said. "They're worth a fortune. But I guess it would be an imitation dog: ersatz. Right? But those are made of wires and motors; they can't be eaten."

"Before the war," he grated.

"I wasn't alive before the war."

"But you've seen old movies on TV."

"Was the movie made in the Philippines?"

"Why?"

"Because," Luba Luft said, "they used to eat boiled dog stuffed with rice in the Philippines. I remember reading that."

"But your response," he said. "I want your social, emotional, moral reaction."

"To the movie?" She pondered. "I'd turn it off and watch Buster Friendly."

"Why would you turn it off?"

"Well," she said hotly, "who the hell wants to watch an old movie set in the Philippines? What ever happened in the Philippines except the Bataan Death March, and why would you want to watch that?"

- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

///

Aside from typhoon-beaten images of my country, and almost always being skipped over the international weather report like a country of 94 million doesn't exist, the Philippines is rarely known and rarely shown. But! In pages 88 and 89 of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it was there. Too bad it had to be something sad. For the record, I have never eaten boiled dog.

/// amen

CLEAR EYES.
FULL HEARTS.
CAN'T LOSE.

/// When you strip it all away there is only God

"...Maybe it was the momentum of his hectic life, in addition to my need to keep busy, but my own life began to pick up speed. Thankfully George and I didn't spend much time looking back. I mean, we weren't making scrapbooks. We were steaming ahead. Thirty years of stuffing letters, tapes and film in drawers turned the house into one enormous discombobulated archive. Having an over-developed sense of duty, and the recent deep awareness of my own mortality, I began to organize the remnants and treasures of the life George lived. It seemed so unfair to leave this task to my son and it was important to me that things be in order. It was also an obvious way of staying close to life as I knew it, not being ready to 'move on' -- as they say, a term I have come to detest.

 Half way through the treasure hunt it became even more obvious how rich a life George led. From the bin bag of reel-to-reel tapes I listened to George working out his first song, "Don't Bother Me" and Ravi Shankar giving George his first sitar lesson in 1966.

There were traces of him everywhere; chord sequences and tablatures written out, notes and silly drawings but also deeper reminders, one written on a scrap from the Bel-Air Hotel, "When you strip it all away, there is only God."

 And I have been stripping it away, from the past, as well as streamlining the present. Isn't it what we of a certain age all desire now? To simplify our lives, to get rid of some of the 'stuff' we worked so hard to accumulate so we don't spend the rest of our lives as slaves to our material world? Through work and the process of producing this film I have discovered new skills, broader perspectives, new interests and above all, I cemented old friendships while nurturing new ones. I worked hard at it all and the results pulled me out from under the cool shadow of sadness. I admit I have had a pretty amazing 10 years. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that not in a million years would I have made that trade. I have to thank George for my life with him and oddly enough, for with my life without him."

 - Olivia Harrison, Still Living in the Material World 

/// forever

/// Magneetfestival, Amsterdam. Photo by Jochem. ///