House of Memory

Widespread electric power outages, comfortably called brownout rather than blackout here in Manila (or perhaps in other places as well) had never been, even once, an inconvenience to the eyes of a small child. As for me, it was the freedom. One of the acmes, if not the acme, of our childhood memories.  Brownout— with such a lavish stress in B and R while the rest of the letters delivered, seemingly, in an almost easy and negligible manner— was once to me a cherished occurrence and an invitingly comfortable interruption. And whenever I picture out our experience during brownout in retrospection, I always recall our world shutting off and we could see nothing but a spooky sight of jet-black emptiness mottled with white flashlights. Then, our street would materialize into a candle-lit pavement instinct then with passionate breaths. Through my eyes, there was a familiar twinkle of candles dancing among the absences of light. Mosquitoes would rise to clamor, leaping playfully its weight in

I finished watching One Spring Night three days ago. And earlier today, while having my breakfast with a cup of coffee, I remembered it again. One Spring Night Official Trailer I started watching this series maybe around late November last year. However, after some time, midway through it, I decided to stop. I could not really tell exactly how long did I took the break, not until during last Christmas Eve when I resumed watching its next three episodes…only for me to stop once again. Weirdly enough, I did not feel like it’s been ages whenever I continue watching it again from where I left it off the last time; however, it does not always mean that I jump at it right away. Sometimes, I have to re-watch the whole thing from the beginning until I could finally take it in and recall what’s going on in the current episode. With One Spring Night , I was having an inner conflict with my conscience. I was not sure if I would push through it because I did not have the energy to finish the w

[WARNING: A LONG AND DRAMATIC POST] A pretty reasonable estimate seems to me that if you have seen me strolling in a public place wearing this eyeglasses, there's at least a higher chance I am in the mood of not seeing the world in a blurry perspective. That is why, I guess, I was sentimental last Thursday. It was a typical day, the likes when I am in my usual tendency of not looking forward to anything any longer because life for awhile has become steadily somber to me. That day, I was doing my usual click and tap routine in my work, but due to that unwelcome phenomenon which is called "poor connection", my stormy temperament accidentally broke the frame of my eyeglasses when I took it off. I mumbled out a barely conscious DAMMIT WHY IT HAS TO BE TODAY? as I was trying not to let the horror overcome me at another ghastly view of the lens that has just popped out on its frame. I can still feel the tears sitting on the corner of my eyes. This eyeglasses has seen me off to

Think about this.  Have you ever been in that moment-- constantly, when you feel belittled by this disturbing idea that you are just a mere speck of sheer opportunities in a world that is so gigantic? Perhaps, you have been there when it seems like you are just... too small, so little to be worth consideration. As if you are just something embossed as lightly as possible with nothing but life. The Death of the Moth, a timeless literary composition of Virginia Woolf written in 1942, plunges into the consequential aspects of two opposing and competing forces of existence-- life and death. This is probably Woolf's attempt to somehow give semblance of order to the ever chaotic concomitance of life with death, as both are presently beyond most of our capabilities to understand. Right in the beginning, Woolf has succinctly specified which moths in particular are used as a metaphor of human mortality. " Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths... " The present s

INTRODUCTION The short story, "Dawn Breaking" is the literary text under study. This is included on Macario Pineda's anthology Love in the Rice Field and Other Short Stories which is retold in English by Soledad Reyes. This is an interesting story about a dying soldier whose last moments are spent in reminiscences of his past. The impression that one draws from the close reading of the text is the narrative technique that the author employs to set the thematic interpretation of the story. If we examine this in terms of formalist approach we see the story dramatizes through the formal features of the text-- plot, structure, and narrative which details the situation the soldier finds himself in and his actual condition. Hence, these literary elements in "Dawn Breaking" can provide us a fertile and challenging ground for a formalist analysis. In order to examine Pineda's "Dawn Breaking" from a formalist viewpoint, an overview of Formalism should prov

Rose-colored Boy I bet that everybody has probably mastered the art of fake happiness. The world, as by people perceive,  only admits a lapse of happiness and nothing else beyond. We keep chasing an illusion that we've been made to believe is really out there: Happiness.  Happiness has never been a strange idea for anyone. When we are asked about our ideas of what happiness is, we tend to overplay it with some little triumphs of rhetoric. We cling on the idea that happiness is the concept of what is perfect in the complexities of human emotion. And the passage of three years doesn't cost me that much to lose track of what happened in one of the normal days in my high school. It was my English teacher who had this lavish obsession at her own jest. But a snap of her tale on that day was already enough to get the attention of this student sitting on the last seat of the last row. It seems that she launched an arrow straight on my spot and have made my repressing yawns turned into