Our goddess of the storm gets an ancient throw knife. We have yet to install it.

Home alone. Angelique at a college retreat and Aubrey at university.

A quiet lunch. Going jalan-jalan in a few. Must visit A. and see if she has any more of the stuff I like.

The Wands must continue pointing to the ground.

The best form of fasting and abstinence is from other people.

Good noon, Cubao!

The sun is an iron radiator.

Now a third through Murder Under the Christmas Tree, which my sister Sylvia gave me. A nice compendium of mysteries set in December, but it is quite jarring to jump from one writer's style to another--I need to rest in between.

Back from jalan-jalan. Went to two frame shops to obtain cost estimates for two items.

Sometimes you have to let something go in order to win.

Contemplation is necessary for the mind, the heart, and the body.

Good morning, Cubao!

The sun wears his golden headdress of healing powers.

One of the contestants in this year's My Kitchen Rules on DIVA is the reincarnation of a Nazi officer who has yet to resolve his karma.

Had he died ten years ago, he would have become as immortal as Bruce Lee.

Had dinner alone because Aubrey was studying for an exam. Aubrey then had dinner alone. Angelique and J. arrived from college later and had dinner together.

Her description of the artist's technique is under fire, because she made everything up. That is not how the artist made his drawings at all.

The secret to a happy existence is to live a simple life while remaining a complex person.

Our family jeweler arrived to deliver Aubrey's pair of exquisite, 14k gold creole earrings. Aubrey didn't like them and showed our family jeweler a cell phone photo of what she wants instead--they're finer, almost invisible, and to be worn high above the ear lobes. She intends to wear them everyday.

The creole earrings are so pretty that I decided to buy them for myself. Am wearing them now. Aubrey will have to wait for her new set to be done and delivered.

Our family jeweler also delivered an ancient weapon for our goddess of the storm.

Sitting inside the small loggia with the antique writing slope on my lap.

Wondering how other people survive when the day is nothing more than a series of annoying expenses.

Kichiro Mayuzumi back from the pet parlor. Had a haircut and his regular, anti-flea treatment.

Angelique now off to college.

Aubrey now back from university.

Caught the second half of White Hot: A Sandra Brown Mystery on DIVA last night. Interesting, but I wonder why writers of TV mysteries, still stuck in the 20th century,  insist on making their stories revolve around romantic relationships when, in real life, every person seriously trying to solve a mystery must SET ASIDE romantic relationships, among other things, in order to get things done.

In every meeting, thoughts from different minds are stitched together as in patchwork. The quality of the thread and the quality of the stitching determine how workable the collective ideas resulting from those thoughts are. 

Bought an electrical thingie and am just so glad it works. 

Lunch with Angelique at home. Aubrey at university.

Now Angelique is taking Kichiro Mayuzumi to the pet parlor.

Happy is the man who was productive and wise in his youth and in his middle age and discovers that he is even more productive and wise in his old age.

Good noon, Cubao!

The sun is the tip of a soldering iron.

You cannot really destroy anyone, because everyone has spirit guides, some of whom will ensure that you will eventually destroy yourself.

Only Paul Dumol and I believe, to this very day, that the best hamburgers we ever had were at Ateneo Grade School's cafeteria in the 1950s. It's been decades, and the concession owner and chefs must be dead by now. The recipe must have been given or approved by an American Jesuit who loved hamburgers. At 66 I've tried ALL kinds of hamburgers in all kinds of establishments, yet I haven't come across the same. That hamburger is hard to describe but, even after all those years, I'll know it when I taste it. It's something I want to do before I die.

Rise, knowing that rising is not a state of rest, and so you will eventually need to come down again.

Always be proud not of what you are but of what you succeed in accomplishing because of what you are.

Everyone's duty is to make life as least stressful as possible, for oneself and for others.

Pretending to know someone you have not met before is like reviewing a movie you have not seen or a book you have not read.

After quite a long wait, Sarah's portrait is finally framed. Gallery Frames ordered a custom frame from Spain, and it seemed to take forever.

Diego undergoes a costume change from Haring Bakal warrior to Ifugao chieftain. I bought everything during the ICOMOS conference on the conservation of the Banawe Rice Terraces that the Embassy co-organized years ago. I bought a lot more and would need two more mannequins, but I feel that I already have one mannequin too many.

Lunch at home with Angelique, Aubrey, and J. Aubrey and J. have no classes today, Aubrey because of the feast day of Saint Dominic of Guzman, J. because of Taft Avenue traffic rerouting due to the ASEAN summit.

Two cups very black, Turkish dark.

Good morning, Cubao!

The clouds are newly sliced, fresh coconuts.

It is the mage who chooses his students and apprentices. It is never the other way around.

The only analogy I can think of is a modern dance or a theater company. It is the artistic director who chooses who become the members of his ensemble.

In the case of the modern dance company, the artistic director chooses members who have a specific "look", as with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

In the case of the theater company, the artistic director chooses members who can fit into "character types" capable of performing roles in a repertoire, as with the Moscow Art Theatre.

I have my own criteria, and I immediately reject "applicants" I do not wish to waste my time, intelligence, and resources on.

Twenty years from now, will you look back and wish that you had spent your time on something else?

After I have finished rearranging a room to my satisfaction, I sit down feeling that there is nothing more that I could ever want or need. To hold on to this feeling I must stay seated exactly where I am and contemplate my surroundings in absolute stillness. Unfortunately this feeling is only momentary, especially when I move on to the next room that needs to be rearranged.

Not everything is worth dying for, but everything is worth living for.

To sleep is to let go sweetly.

Every day is a journey that must be taken two hours at a time.

"Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

--Edith Cavell

Good morning, Cubao!

The scudding clouds are galleons of the gods.

Sunday night and there is nothing on TV. Might as well continue reading N or M?.

Granddaughters back from their shopping spree.

We are having dinner in half an hour.

Aubrey's first day at university begins tomorrow and Angelique will be attending a college retreat.

I am saddened whenever Filipino movie historians ignore the contributions of movie directors they probably consider "ridiculous": the works of Luis Nepomuceno, Pierre Salas, and Joey Gosiengfiao. These were directors who preferred to write their own screenplays and developed cinematic worldviews so unique and so disagreeable to atchay promoters that they are still scoffed at and referred to as Filipino directors who never "made it" to this very day.

Nepomuceno's movies were heavily influenced by advertising, which aims to depict the world as nothing short of perfect. As such, his plots were pat and conveniently constructed. In certain scenes the performers' clothing and props matched the walls of the houses they were in. His actors and actresses were carefully made up and coiffed. Every strand of hair was in place, and all clothes and costumes looked like they'd come straight from the laundry, newly pressed. Even his beggars were smudged with evident artifice. All of this was deliberate, but critics could not comprehend the message: that, watching these movies, the audience should be jolted to the reality that life is NOT like that, and that that was the point of it all.

Salas, on the other hand, was an extreme minimalist in scenery, in casting, in plot, and in dialogue--again, something that critics could not understand, to the point that they perceived his movies as sparse and too low-budgeted for the tickets the audiences were paying for. He was not interested in shooting stories, he was interested in describing situations. His camera lingered not on action and conflict but on his performers' faces and bodies. The critics could not see that his stories stripped life of useless trappings, his message being that everything boils down to relationships--between people who love each other and between people who do not love each other.

Gosiengfiao's serious movies were seen as pretentious, if not foreign in temperament. He is the only Filipino director I know, however, who was obsessed with definitions and re-definitions of women, evident not only in his movies but also in his TV melodramas. Being a man, he trod that sensitive line between depicting women as women and dangerously depicting women as possible men disguised as women.

I wish that we could see the good in every Filipino movie director. I note that society tends to adulate directors who are influenced by the movies they watch rather than the movies they believe they should be making. As a result, their oeuvre becomes inconsistent, if not merely episodic.

Our halls of movie directors are as full of artists as those of France and India are. There will never be directors like Nepomuceno, Salas, and Gosiengfiao again. Each of them was truly one of a kind. But nobody seems to care, especially now that they are gone.

Watched replay of Frozen on HBO while waiting for the granddaughters to come back from jalan-jalan. Stunning visuals and engaging story, albeit in the style of 20th-century melodrama, and I have always felt that the musical numbers are in the wrong place--the songs make the narrative stop rather than advance.

To top it all, this is another commercial deconstruction, reinforcing what Walt Disney is notorious for. The feature is nowhere near Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen", which is all about sexual frigidity, but what can one expect when producers take adult material and sanitize it in the name of entertainment?

If you want to lose weight, pick up an interest in wearing nice clothes. Your psyche will cooperate with you.

Granddaughters on jalan-jalan doing groceries and shopping for school supplies and clothes.

Big box of goodies arrived from my sister Sylvia in Sydney. Lots of nice stuff, including, of course, DVDs.

To me there has always been something pretentious about a person when he says something and follows it up with, "Having said that...".

Love is perfect only in fantasies. If you expect the same perfection in real life, you will end up a loner--unless that is what you actually want.

Good noon, Cubao!

In the morning, the sun shines on pathways that lead to the future. In the afternoon, it shines on pathways that lead to the past.

Always give your loved ones the benefit of the doubt, because that is a great part of unconditional love.

It is extremely painful to a child to be distrusted by his/her own parent. It wounds him/her for life.

It is just as painful to a parent to be distrusted by his/her own child. It wounds the parent, and, although the wound might eventually heal, it will leave a deep scar for life.

Into the second chapter of the new reprint of N or M? that my sister Sylvia gave me. I never grow tired of Agatha Christie. She is such a marvelous storyteller, a shining star that will never fade.

On Saturday evenings the city bears witness to a lot of romance. It is the weekend company of romantic partners that allows one to unwind from work, more than anything else.

After you have calmed your mind and your heart in darkness, you begin to see everything.

Every bedroom is a sanctuary. It is the physical interior of your mind and your heart.

Dinner at home with Aubrey. Angelique and J. are eating out.

Your body is your hardware. Your mind and your emotions are your software; they are easier to fix, correct, upgrade, or replace if necessary.

Your courier is YOUR FACE AND YOUR VOICE. If a recipient is unimpressed with your courier, he will also be unimpressed with you.

All couriers and messengers should be college or post-college graduates and should be given salaries befitting their degrees. You'll be surprised at how society will progress by leaps and bounds once this is so.

2:00 PM family mahjong session.

Using my sister Remi's red set.

Your friends are not necessarily your supporters, and your supporters are not necessarily your friends.

The sky is a crowded highway.

Good noon, Cubao!

Early lunch with Angelique and Aubrey.

Watched tonight's episode of My Haunted House on Lifetime. Both stories ("The Camp", 2010, and "Leviathan", 2008) involved murders in the past. Those "creepy" workmen in "The Camp" were somewhat interesting to me.

Afternoon meeting with K.L.D. I hope I was able to help her.

Feeling drowsy and I think I'll take a nap. Angelique is studying in the dining room.

Later, will commence reading the new edition of N or M? that my sister Sylvia gave me. 

Done reading The Dream Spheres. I think I'll give it to John's son, who is taking up a degree course in Animation, along with some art supplies I no longer want. Just need to get down to overhauling that art supply cabinet.

Lunch at home with Angelique.

Aubrey continues her freshman orientation at university.

Instead of wanting to keep on shopping, consider a long hiatus in which you shop for nothing and instead enjoy everything you already have.

Two cups very black, Italian blend.

Good morning, Cubao!

The sun lord lies in his golden hammock, and the cloud waiters serve him coconut wine.

Dinner at home with Aubrey.

Angelique arrived later and I sat with her while she had dinner.

We need to buy two boxes of Pilot pens containing a dozen each--0.4 for Angelique and 0.3 for Aubrey. They get consumed in no time at all.

Aubrey back from orientation at university, Angelique at college, and I am back from jalan-jalan. Paid our electric and dental bills and, of course, went shopping.

But soon to be poorer by thousands, because Angelique needs to buy two more tomes for her studies.

Do people actually bury treasure, hide it too well for their own good, and intend to die without ever retrieving the treasure and enjoying it within their lifetime? 

Never wake up with problems on your mind. If you do, those problems become the keynote of your day. To dispel them, turn on the TV to an upbeat program, listen to soothing music, or contemplate a piece of art. This is why it is important to have some some original art, rather than junk, in your bedroom. 

Whenever I am watching _The Curse of Oak Island_ I ask myself: If millions of dollars' worth of modern equipment, technology, excavating, and diving today are unable to locate the alleged treasure troves of the Knights Templar, Captain Kidd, and whoever else, how on earth were the original treasure-hoarders able to hide their hoards that deep, with what tools, and with what motive--only to be unable to retrieve the treasure for later use? 

Do not wait and hope for better times. Live fully in the present time and make it the best time it can ever be.

Crime is an index of despair.

There is a sunken galleon beneath the sunken galleon. There is a grave beneath the grave. There is an ancient document beneath the ancient document.

Good morning, Cubao!

The sky is an activity whiteboard.

When exercising, concentrate on your body. Do not allow your mind to wander or focus on a problem unrelated to your exercising. Otherwise your physical effort will have no effect on your body--it will be like pouring coffee on the table instead of into the coffee cup.

The same is true of eating.

Can you think of other activities in which this is applicable?

Our greatest sin is making this world the worst place to live in for our children and grandchildren. That is why hell exists here and now, not in the afterlife.

Dinner at home with Aubrey. We gave some chocolate cake to the security guard on duty and to M.'s cafe staff.

One-hour business meeting with M.

Later, Angelique and J. arrived from college and had dinner at home.

It rained hard afterward.

I've observed that when students sign up to a mage for mentoring, they leave the mage after five years, believing that they already know everything they should ever know--and, in some cases, even believing that they know more than their mentor does--when the reality is that it takes a lifetime to learn everything from a single mage, and that the mage himself is in the complex and continuous process of discovery.

Gave away another bag of stuff to needy neighbors.

Two cups very black, Italian blend.

Be kind and generous to your own family a hundred times more than you are kind and generous to other people.

Among other things, it is part of your karma.

The sky is hung with plastic sacs of spare rain.

Everything she touches turns to dust, because the gods and goddesses have abandoned her.

The producers, director, and writer of _The Twins_ should have known that identical twins do not have the same fingerprints. That should have made them change their story line.

Tuned in to _The Twin_ on DIVA but went ahead and had a bedtime snack and did other things. I sit down to such shows only when the characters begin screaming and getting killed.

There are times when things get worse before they get much worse, especially when nobody really cares to do anything about them.

The July leaf falls off my planner.

Five more months to go in 2017.

Tornadoes

The sun is a yellow circle in a child's crayon drawing.

I drifted off to sleep with the AC on. The cold gradually built up inside my room until, in my dreams, I was in a freezing rainstorm. I rose briefly at dawn, shivering, to turn off the AC and open my south-facing window. The heat outside sang, and the darkness was that of tropical summer.

Wasn't it only days ago when I was wearing sweaters in the streets?

Two cups very black, Turkish dark.

Good day, Cubao!

Woke up at noon, and only because the alarm started beeping.

Aubrey at university.

Lunch at home with Angelique.