There is a running joke in my family that if I were a composer, I’d be Mozart. Even as an inside joke, there isn’t actually anything funny about it but we laugh like it is the most hilarious thing we ever made up. The reason behind it is that I always had to play Mozart because my hands weren’t big enough to play Beethoven. I couldn’t reach the chords without double-hitting notes and I definitely couldn’t play them with the power and energy that they demanded.
(more…)Author: Kazandra Pangilinan
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Monday
Just like that, it’s Monday again. It’s funny how that happens, every single week, and each time it takes me by surprise. At least there’s no longer a dread associated with it. There’s no longer any feeling of panic, or urge to stop time, or at least, slow it down. Now, there is a calmness that comes with Monday. A sigh of relief that here we are again, we made it. There is a comfort in this routine I’ve built for myself; there is safety in the regularity. I wake up in the same bed, I look out the same window, I read, I drink tea, I work, I write, I eat dinner, I go to bed. And then I do it all again the next day.
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Missing Pointless Things
I’ve decided that I miss talking to people about pointless things. I miss hearing their boring stories about what they didn’t do on the weekend. I miss being told their opinion of a restaurant they went to last night even though I never asked. I miss hearing about their kid’s birthday party, and about how the bus was late again, and about the new pair of shoes they bought on sale.
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“Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?”
There is something very heartbreaking about looking at a foreign landscape through a dirty bus window and hearing Carole King ask “doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?” Anybody is me. I am the anybody who doesn’t stay in one place.
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We Need Spring
It is a new month, a fresh start, another beginning. Everybody needs a clean slate every now and again. Thank God we get one every every 30 days or so. There is nothing more inspiring than a blank page. Or perhaps, there is nothing more depressing. It depends, I suppose, on the type of mood you’re in.
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No Salsa, but Something More
I keep wanting to write a post about tv shows I watched recently that made me cry (spoiler alert: all of them) but when it comes down to the moment of setting pen to paper, I can’t bring myself to do it. This time it’s because I have a headache and I don’t have the energy to be emotional right now, but I think it’s also because I am a little bit frightened about knowingly putting myself through the ordeal of feeling things intensely. I guess that’s why they say facing your feelings takes courage.
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The People who Hurt You
The absolute two worst things in life are hurting other people and being hurt by other people. Both change you in their own way, shattering some innate innocence that lives inside you. When you hurt other people, you think badly of yourself. And when other people hurt you, you may also think badly of yourself but you may also think badly about humanity.
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How Things Are Supposed to Feel
Next Monday will be March which I bet many people are excited about. Maybe you are one of them. I have no strong feelings either way. In the past, I may have been wistful that February was already over because that’s how I always felt when things came to their natural end. I’d probably think I can’t believe the year is going so fast as if I hadn’t done or seen or accomplished anything thus far.
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One of those Nights
It’s one of those nights where it’s not even 9:30 and I keep yawning. A part of me thinks I should go to bed early and another part of me thinks I’d like to stay up all night and sit at my desk, writing and drinking whisky just like Francoise does in She Came to Stay. That’s how you’d find me when the sun came up in the morning: with sleep in my eyes and tousled hair, tired but satisfied.
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Things I Learned Growing Up 