07 August 2020

Those Storytellers

Woohooo another update here, and all within the same month! I wasn't intending to write another post today but then 2 of my favorite persons in this world, my close friends Debs and Tin, were excited after seeing that I updated this blog. I'm touched (and bored, honestly) so I figured another post would be good. I still can't say for certain if my uncharacteristic consistency for the past week will last but until then, let's see just how many topics I can exhaust in my attempt to compensate for my almost 2yr long absence. Today, let's talk about how original the plots of Japanese Anime are. I am so impressed by the creativity in their concepts. I especially love how well they marry traditional beliefs and modern circumstances. They're a superb bunch of storytellers, something that I can only ever aspire to be. 

Blazer and shorts set: from a local store in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | Inner top: Topshop | Shoes: Adidas NMD | Bag: Goyard St Louis

Among my favorite animated movies is the Japanese film 'Your Name'. The protagonists, teenage boy Taki who's living in busy Tokyo and Mitsuha, the teenager who's tired of her slow rural life in fictional Itomori, were bound by an unexplainable yearning for someone whom they have no recollection of. They just feel an extreme loss for something that they feel they've lost although they have nothing to account for this feeling. At the beginning of the film, we see that they have been swapping bodies intermittently and without warning. Upon waking up, their memories of the day prior would seem distant, if not completely erased, just as how our dreams are usually forgotten once we've woken up. After regular occurrences of days when they couldn't recall what happened, they thought of a way to leave notes for each other to somehow have clues of what's happening to them. Soon, they have gotten to know snippets or two about each other which naturally raised their curiosity about the other. Mitsuha was the first to muster up courage to go see the other. She searched for Taki in Tokyo only to be disappointed because he didn't recognize her. They separated with Mitsuha's hair ribbon being left in the possession of Taki. The day came when Taki became aware that they've stopped swapping bodies and all the notes that Mitsuha has left in his phone have disappeared. This time, he mustered up the courage to travel to Itomori to look for her. 


But what Taki found in Itomori surprised both him and  me, of course. The town was completely wiped out, as a result of a comet that hit it 3yrs ago. The catastrophe killed all of the residents in the area, including Mitsuha. It turned out that time is non-linear, as many academics have hypothesized. The lives of Mitsuha and Taki were happening simultaneously, despite the 3yr difference in their timeline. Spoiler alert: they eventually had their happy ending. Taki drank the kuchikamizake, an alcoholic drink that includes human saliva among its ingredients, which was made by Mitsuha. This action connected the two once more and fortunately, through this, they have saved the town of Itomori from its supposed extinction. Yup, I know. I have downplayed much of the plots of the film but this is my abridged version based on how I understood it. To this day, I don't know how the swapping began. Was it because Mitsuha prayed to the gods? I just know that the red ribbon symbolized the invisible string that connected them to one another, irrespective of time and place. 
The film deals with various concepts that I am highly fascinated with including time, fate, and fleetingness of dreams and memories. The film was a brave attempt to explore all of these vague concepts that are individually, already difficult to comprehend, so as a whole, they're much more difficult to wrap one's mind around. I think that life has too many circumstances that cannot be explained by everyday pragmatism so when something offers us an alternative explanation, we are left wondering. Not that I don't believe that they are real. If anything, I think that when a concept offers a probable explanation, then it must be considered to be true until proven false. Anyway. I can't help but feel that somehow Taylor Swift has watched either this film or another Anime while writing her new song "Invisible String". The parallelism cannot be denied. And for that matter, my love for her new album cannot also be denied.
These photos were taken in the bustling and hustling Tokyo last May 2018. As can be seen in my several attempts to cross the busy Shibuya crossing, it is an almost impossible feat to leisurely have your photos taken of there. I am sorry to the people whom I inconvenienced with my sudden stops hahahaha This trip is among the best and most memorable travels I've been to. It's been filled with crazy antics, random dancing and singing in the public, and too much 'Oh no, why did we do that' troves of embarrassing materials that could last for years to come. It's also during this trip that I danced to the tune of Your Name's Nandemonaiya (the soundtrack of the film deserves accolades too) while in transit from Tokyo to Osaka. Crazy memories always make for the best stories. 

04 August 2020

“Give Me Needy Emotional Whining Bullshit. Flash. Give Me Self-Absorbed Egocentric Twaddle. Christ."

“But if you tell folks you're a college student, folks are so impressed. You can be a student in anything and not have to know anything. Just say toxicology or marine biokinesis, and the person you're talking to will change the subject to himself. If this doesn't work, mention the neural synapses of embryonic pigeons.”

A couple of posts ago (to be exact, years ago), I mentioned that I’ve found myself in a reading rut. It’s still true to this day but on the upside of this ordeal, this means that I’ve plenty of unread books sitting on various tables at home, waiting for me to give them their due attention. I’ve realized that more than anything in this world, the most difficult thing to attain is motivation. Where can one buy the will to follow through her plans? Oh well. Aside from indulging in the numerous series that I’m catching up on, this quarantine has somehow forced me to pick up a few books to read. I have finished 3 books in total since the nationwide lockdown in Metro Manila began last 16 Mar 2020. It's not my usual number pre-reading rut but still, this is better than my 2019 count of 0. Today, I'm going to talk about Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters. 
 
“Give me lust, baby.
Flash.
Give me malice.
Flash.
Give me detached existentialist ennui.
Flash.
Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.
Flash.”


I bought the book in 2017, just a couple of weeks after I've finished my first Palahniuk novel (which I talked about HERE). I was thirsty for more of the distinct Palahniuk brand of black humor but alas. I couldn't finish the novel for some reason. I even brought it to some of the trips that I’ve been to hoping that with nothing else to do while waiting for my flight, I’ll just get to it but this mentality didn’t work. It was only this Apr 2020 that I finally sat down and read it. It took me less than a day to complete it. More than its interesting cover, the way it was written was even more interesting. Truly, Palahniuk is a master wordsmith. His writing style is a character on its own and sets him apart from all the other authors who have mesmerized me as well. More than the plot, I highly recommend this novel if only for the way it was written. 

“No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should have been paying attention. Well get used to that feeling. That’s how your whole life will feel like someday.”

As he has said, this story isn't an “and then, and then, and then” type. It’s more along “jump to page”. Be forewarned that the narrator is unreliable. It's only within the last 10 pages or so that her confusion which led to unreliability would be revealed to have had a reason. To summarize, the book is about a very beautiful young woman whose looks and built are enough to send insecure girls such as myself to surgeons in hopes that we can look like her. She works as a model and so even in mundane life scenarios, she hears prompts such as “Give me attention. Flash. Give me adoration. Flash. Give me a break. Flash.” Until one day, she meets an unfortunate accident which cost her her entire jaw. From a walking goddess whom everybody seems to pave the way for, she turns to a creature who inspires pity out of those who'll look at her. Her face became so pitiful that people pretended that she no longer exists just so they won't have to resort to pretending that they feel sorry for her when in truth, they recoil at the distorted figure in front of them. 


“It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.”

Because the heroine lost her jaw, even her speech became garbled which added to her distortion. Enter the misfits who took her under their wing. Together, they navigated through their issues and dreams and disappointments while going on adventures with the goal of chasing what they each believe would give them happiness. Our heroine received guidance from the Queen Supreme who imparts to her wisdom that helped her accept who she has become. Included in their many adventures are lessons on how to accept the past as a mere story which happened but does not necessarily mean must continue nor affect the future, on how a new life can begin from complete destruction, on how at any point in one's life it is possible to undergo transformation, on how we are all just an echo of something that has already been done before, and on how manipulative possessing beauty can be. 

“Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.”


“Just each of us being me, me, me first. The murderer, the victim, the witness each of us thinks our role is the lead. Probably that goes for anybody in the world.”

These 2 sets of photos were taken 1 year apart. I've just thought that April usually is a busy month for me in terms of going out and meeting up with friends; and believe me, I am such a homebody that it requires mental conditioning before I agree to leaving the confines of my home. I rarely agree to an on-the-spot meetup. Anyway. April of this year has been the quietest April in my last 5 years, although it's during this year's April that I finally read this novel so there's that for semblance of accomplishment. In Apr 2018, I joined some friends in their trip to Seoul, South Korea because I was in need of a break from work. The last 2 photos were from that trip. Fast forward to Apr 2019 when my parents decided that our summer 2019 family trip would be in Seoul. The first 2 photos were taken then. Not that I think this would be a regular happenstance in my annual plans but I just thought that it would be cohesive to have the same color palette in both trips thus the pink tops. Also, it was during the 2018 trip that I bought the coat which I wore when I returned in 2019. How's that for coming full circle?
 
“Parents are like God because you wanna know they're out there, and you want them to think well of you, but you really only call when you need something.”

As had been the case in the first Palahniuk novel that I've read, I've come to appreciate this novel's take on religion too. He compared God to our earthly parents, and his comparisons have merits. 

“Your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. Then puberty makes you Satan, just because you want something better.”


Science, history, and our personal experiences have proven that the world is kinder to those whom it deems beautiful. There is power that goes along with it. This is a given, I suppose. Meanwhile, the book also affirms that society is cruel to those whom it deems ugly. Whether it's been done unknowingly or otherwise, we create certain expectations that only those who meet them are allowed to be part of our circle. We judge others based on several measurements, be it according to their beauty, their intellectual capability, their social circles, their social status, their socio-economic prowess, their educational attainment, even their taste in pets, and so on. The media has fed us an image of what is good and what is bad, what would constitute success and what would constitute failure. We have all become sponges who are ready to accept without processing information just because it's been drilled into our minds. In general, I don't believe that there's anything bad in having certain biases. Perhaps we all have an innate radar that goes off when we meet someone whom we unconsciously believe threatens what we have come to regard as the standard. Sometimes our prejudices are stemmed from our self-preservation. Then again, more often than not, we hold what we believe are their weaknesses against others because we would rather go for convenience, or what is readily accepted by the majority, rather than go out our way in knowing more about them. See, it's easier to judge others than to understand them. 

“In the way our world is, everybody shoulder to shoulder, people knowing everything about you at first glance, a good veil is your tinted limousine window. The unlisted number for your face. Behind a good veil, you could be anyone.”

The book is also  about us creating multiple veils of our real selves in order to satisfy the expectations of society. We are all so scared to be ostracized that we would rather have these layers of persona who may or may not reflect who we truly are. If there's anything that the book has made me do, it's to re-evaluate myself. I've come to realize that I should listen to the novel when it said, "sometimes the best way to deal with shit is not to hold yourself as such a precious little prize.It'll take a long time before I can shed all my veils but until then, let's see where life would take me. Maybe this is why I have been subconsciously evading the novels that I've bought over the past 2yrs. They're causing too much introspection! Hahahaha I think that I have been successful in not giving away too much spoilers about the novel. I urge you, read it. It is a good jumpstart to Palahniuk's works (aside from his well-known Fight Club). 
 
 "Give me pity. 
Flash.
Give me another chance.
Flash."

April 2019 outfit
Pink Coat: from a shop in Dongdaemun, South Korea | Pants: Levi's | Shoes: New Balance | Red top: Terranova | Bag: Gucci Guccissima

April 2018 outfit
Sweater: Banana Republic | Pants: Levi's | Shoes: Calvin Klein | Bag: Givenchy Pandora 
 
“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.”

02 August 2020

“What would you grab, if you had to pack up your life in only minutes?”

Let me precede this entry with saying that during these past months where we have been in quarantine due to the growing cases of covid-afflicted patients, I have done nothing but watch all the shows that I've always wanted to but couldn't because life has always gotten in the way. And then the nationwide quarantine came. I now have all the time in the world to just laze in front of the TV and absorb as much random information as I can from the shows that have fascinated me for years now. I'd like to believe that I'm a mentally stable person who just happens to be overly fascinated with crime scene investigations. I've been teased so many times by my brothers and a few close friends because sometimes, I can't stop my verbal vomit of how forensic science has conclusively solved a murder investigation. And it's true, my Netflix account is used primarily to watch the 20-minute episodes of Forensic Files. It makes me feel safe knowing that the technology of today is no longer as unreliable as it used to be. I'm relieved to know that a criminal, no matter how organized and attentive to detail he is, can no longer commit the so-called perfect crime. It is while watching this show that I encountered the story of an archbishop who turned out to be a Nazi sympathizer in his past. 

“Good people are good people; religion has nothing to do with it.”


Last Feb 2019, one of my closest friends and I embarked on a 3wk Eurotrip. Despite consistently having a European country in my bucketlist of countries to visit before I turn so and so, it's only been last year that I finally had the chance to go. Since most of the intellectual figures whom I heavily obsessed on at one point in my life came from Europe, I've always thought that there's something in the European waters that have either produced or inspired brilliance to spring forth. Not to mention that Europe as a whole seems to have an abundance of natural beauty. 

Dress: Calvin Klein | Boots: from a department store in US | Bag: Prada | Sunglasses: Ray-Ban | Heattech used as Inner top: Uniqlo | Earrings: borrowed from my friend Tatiana

In the first paragraph, I was referring to Valerian Trifa, who served as Archbishop of Detroit. He entered USA under the false pretenses that he was a Romanian victim of the Holocaust. He was granted the US citizenship and worked his way up the ranks in the Church. Other Romanian refugees who sought asylum in the US identified him as a member of the Iron Guard and was responsible for the death of hundreds of Jews in Romania, all in the service of the Fuhrer. Despite his initial denial of his past, he was eventually stripped off of his US citizenship and he was asked to leave the US after living there for more than 40yrs. Forensic scientists proved that the Archbishop's penmanship matched positively to the penmanship of the person whom he was accused of being. His official church documents were compared to the penmanship found on a postcard which was signed by a vacationing Iron Guard member in Germany, that was dated in the 1940s. Moreover, the same postcard bore his thumbprint (which was only identified in the 1980s because that's when technology finally caught up). He died at the age of 72yrs old, in a city in Portugal, the only country that accepted him after learning of his past. 

“It’s a little convenient, isn’t it, to say that the reason you did something horrible was because someone else told you to. That doesn’t make it any less wrong. No matter how many people are telling you to jump off a bridge, you always have the option to turn around and walk away.”

Perhaps the first time that I ever became aware of the existence of the US' Office of Special Investigations was when I read Jodi Picoult's The Storyteller in 2013 (all the quotes in this post, including the title that I've used are lifted from this but I will write my thoughts on the book extensively in a separate post). Imagine my interest in learning that so many of the SS officers fled to the US under false pretenses to escape the consequences of the horrible crime that they've committed during WWII. A lot of them have successfully escaped for various reasons but perhaps among the biggest was, their conviction heavily relied on the accounts of the survivors. I won't pretend that I know about physiological changes so I'm assuming that it would be difficult to assume how one person would look like when you add 30 - 40 yrs to his age. How difficult it must be to identify a 70yr old everyday guy to be the same person who tortured you decades ago. 


“Power isn't about doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.”

I think that people like Trifa, or John Demjanjuk (the SS guard who also made a life in the US after his stint in the concentration camps but was later on tried in Israel for his war crimes), thought that they deserve a second chance. Maybe they thought that they were just pawns in the chess game. In the case of Trifa particularly, perhaps he thought that he can atone for his participation in the murder of hundreds of Jews by serving the Church in the latter part of his life. He was a Nazi sympathizer in his youth only to become a man of the Church in his adulthood. But the question is, are their crimes pardonable to begin with? What about the lives of the millions of those who suffered just because they happened to believe in a different Being?  Who can judge if the repentance of people like Trifa is enough to compensate for the millions of lives that they've disregarded? Can their form of repentance ever be enough?


“It's easy to say you will do what's right and shun what's wrong, but when you get close enough to any given situation, you realize that there is no black or white. There are gradations of gray.”

In light with everything that's happening worldwide, I just wish that humankind would learn from the past. Discrimination is rampant; it always has been. We've known that it's what caused the greatest atrocities committed against humanity yet we cannot fully reject it. How come people only know better after committing the crime? As an answer to whether the crimes committed during the Holocaust is pardonable or not, I personally agree that regardless of the age, those who have participated must not have the right to enjoy the remaining years of their life in freedom. There are some sins that cannot be forgiven. They might be 'mere pawns' as they have limited their role to be, but it was a role nonetheless. If there won't be any roles, then there wouldn't have been murders. It's a system that requires the thinkers or the heads and the hands or the pawns who would act on what the former has decided on. I think that punishing them is not a retribution because after all, the dead will not return to life, but rather, it's a message to all those who would dare commit such a crime again. It's a message that says, we will all be accountable for our own actions, no matter how big or how small we think them to be. At the end of the day, we get to choose the person who we are going to be. 


“There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.”

These photos were taken in Ljubljana, Slovenia last 15 Feb 2019. (I couldn't imagine going on this trip with anyone else but you, Tats! Thank you for joining me despite the less than 2wks notice)
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