Before the year ends I will write about the sad girl who was afraid of the night sky and its ominous vastness and its incalculable depth and her hopeless minuteness below it. But her mother had died and she was living she had told the sad girl about the story of beautiful fairies and how they were the stars and that the stars twinkle because of fairy dust. And so every night, the sad girl sat under the pitch-black heavens and lost herself in its overwhelming nothingness because she believed that her mother was in there somewhere, a new star being born. Every day, too, she lost herself in the labyrinths of the library to read about the night sky and stars and fairies and her mother. I do not know how to write this story yet or how to end it yet and I do not know if it is about hope or hopelessness or if I can write it at all. But I know that I want to try and that I must try for if I do not write I will be very sad and it is not right to start a year that way.

And one more

Starry Night

When I woke up in the middle of the night and looked out my window I found that the sky was filled with stars. It was beautiful and it made me sad. I always remember too quickly that beautiful things are but temporal and that they do not know why they are. This is why I cannot bear beauty, most of all.

Clarise takes up watercolor again

She is a bit rusty, but this is a start. :)

Six things

For homeroom this morning, I gave my students paper Christmas trees. On them they wrote people, things, and events, which moved their lives this year. Often, my students wrote their section's name, the graduation picture-taking which promptly moved them to nostalgia, a recent trip to Batangas with friends, and anonymous special someones. It was beautiful, seeing my class start their week with gratitude. As they worked on their Christmas trees, I made my own list in my head. I had six things, more or less:

1. My mother
2. Finishing first in my MA classes
3. Getting published in an academic journal
4. My class, Oxford
5. Writing about my father
6. Meeting- forgive the Haruki Murakami reference- the 100% perfect boy for me

My kids

I cannot believe that I get to spend my every day with such wonderful people. It is the best blessing, this job. 

At the funeral

You go to old places to cover them with new memories because you no longer want to be held captive. And so you bury them, these ghosts from the past, and hope that the fresh dirt is strong and thick and will hold fort against stories and feelings that long to pummel themselves back to the surface of the earth and into existence.

Batangas sojourn

And so we went to Pico de Loro in Batangas and lay on the beach and listened to his music and read about MFK Fisher's adventures in Provence and learned how to skip stones. 

It was the best time.

Wild Man Blues

What do you know. "Wild Man Blues," that elusive documentary that chronicled Woody Allen's jazz tour and life with Sun Yi, is on YouTube.

Woody Allen Sunday

Yesterday I watched four Woody Allen movies, one after another-- "Hollywood Ending," "Whatever Works," "The Purple Rose of Cairo," and "Scenes from a Mall." You see, Cholo got me copies of all Woody Allen movies from the 1956 "What's New Pussycat?" to the 2011 "Midnight in Paris." I intend to hold a retrospective.

Also, a photo of my adorable class during their batch dinner:

They are especially proud of their class salute, which, while very cute, is something they are sure to regret when they are much older. :)

How to Throw Yourself A Pity Party

ALAS, the omniscient Emily Post has neglected a matter of great import in her long volumes on etiquette—the pity party. While dear Ms. Post has written extensively on the various forms of social gathering, she appears to have forgotten about this particular sort, and so for so many years, the nature and rules of the pity party have been terribly ambiguous. The task of this writer is to remedy this pickle so that despondent people all over the world may exercise their right to indulge in self-pity properly and systematically and in a manner that will make Ms. Post proud.

The first order of business in the creation of the pity party etiquette is, of course, a definition of terms. The pity party, it should be noted, is not an affair that is held to comfort the woebegone. Contrary to popular belief, its objective is to encourage not feelings of hope and happiness but an inundation of sadness and tears. The logic behind the pity party is simple—before the dejected may, as the hopelessly used and reused adage goes, pick himself up and brush himself off, he must first wallow in the sheer wretchedness of his situation. The universe, after all, has treated him so poorly and uncivilly. He deserves a good weep before he tries again.

A pity party, when executed properly, may be just what the doctor ordered. Its quality plays a vital role in the mournful’s recovery process. A topnotch pity party may significantly speed up the recovery process and render the person in tip-top condition after a mere good night’s sleep. A thoughtlessly put together affair, on the other hand, may cause a lag in the healing time or worse, aggravate matters. It goes without saying, of course, that the effort devoted to the preparation of a pity party should be directly proportional to the gravity of the source of distress. The party for a petty squabble with a friend requires a slightly less grand preparation than, say, the sudden news of one’s termination from work. In the same way, a failed date will require a less elaborate party than a breakup with a longtime beau would.

The pity party, as opposed to other forms of parties, is a solitary affair. Guests are highly discouraged for it is important that the depressed person is submerged in his forlornness and company will only cheer him up. As Ms. Post would know, however, the commandments of etiquette are not utterly stringent; there are a few exceptions to the rule. A pity party may be organized for a group of people provided that all participants are down in the dumps. This is an important rule in the matter of pity parties—emotionally stable people should be denied entrance to the vicinity, lest they spread unwarranted cheer. The group, too, should be composed of at most three people to decrease the chances of the soiree being transformed into a jovial and chatty affair. Maintaining the solemnity of the group pity party is indeed an onerous challenge for human conversations have the unfortunate tendency to, no matter the calamity, wander to happy things. In order to ensure that such a savage incident does not ensue, it is crucial that the participants partake in a noble tradition, the group pity party ritual—throughout the duration of the affair, they are to take turns sharing sad life stories, with the degree of catastrophe and tragedy escalating at every round.

The ingredients of the pity party may vary according to the distressed person in question. Holly Golightly, for one, that darling but melancholic heroine from the classic Hollywood film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) shoos away mean reds with trips to her beloved Tiffany’s while less sophisticated people, like Woody Allen’s hopelessly awkward character in “Play it Again, Sam” (1974) for instance, attempt to drown their sorrows in copious amounts of alcohol. Different people wallow in different ways. While the pity party is most of all unique to the person, however, there are several things that may be considered essentials. E.B. White, in his infallible writing manual “The Elements of Style,” famously declared that in order to achieve style, one must begin by affecting none. Before the pity party organizer is able to create an event that is personal and unique and truly his, he must learn the fundamentals, first and foremost.

A pity party first of all needs proper rain. The writer pertains here not to a drizzle but to an honest to goodness downpour, for the world should mirror the belligerence and despair of the afflicted person’s heart and soul. The ideal pity party rain is turbulent, like the one seen in the 2005 film version of “Pride and Prejudice,” when the judgmental heroine Elizabeth Bennet decides to angrily reject Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal. Her words are especially searing because he has been furtively in love with her for quite a while, and the rain reflects her anger and his pain. Sometimes, too, it is sad rain, like the one that falls in the final scene of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” when Holly Golightly runs to a dark alley to search for the nameless cat that she has so loved but driven away, that does the trick. The sad rain is ideal for he who parties to mourn the loss of a loved one or a breakup. It pours copiously but softly and steadily. It is lethargic yet persistent, like the tired heart of the aggrieved.

It is terribly unfortunate because no matter how much the person in distress tries to assiduously follow the pity party etiquette, things sometimes do not go according to plan. The absence of rain is a quandary that is most often experienced in the preparation of pity parties. The person who is well versed in the custom of social gatherings, however, knows that this may be quickly remedied. In the absence of rain, he turns off all lights in the party venue save for a dim lamp. The trick is to concoct a glum atmosphere.

When the matter of the atmosphere has been settled, the party organizer must next acquire a proper blanket. Here, the proper blanket must be qualified. It is warm and fuzzy and made of fleece or some other snuggly material. Ideally, the pity party blanket is a cartoon character-decorated security blanket from the distressed person’s childhood and is hopelessly dilapidated and pungent. If possible, too, it is to be used in conjunction with a plush toy like a giant teddy bear. The purpose of the blanket, however, must not be confused. Its aim is to comfort the distressed person, yes, but it must most of all make him glaringly aware that the said comfort is being provided by an inanimate entity.

The distressed person, swathed and drowning in a fuzzy blanket and curled up in his bed, preferably in a fetal position, is to subject himself to a musical treat—the pity party playlist. A collection of songs characterized by melancholia and doom, it is played on loop for at least an hour while he sulks in bed, wondering how and why things went wrong. Songs included in this playlist are usually those with ominous titles like “Lonelily,” “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” “We Are Nowhere and It’s Now,” “Though I Know She Lies,” “Nothing Compares to You,” “Helplessness Blues” and “You Could Be Happy.” The quintessential sad song, “All By Myself,” it goes without saying, should be in every pity party playlist.

A good pity party host is someone who creates the playlist way before the calamity and always has it at the ready either as a burned CD or in an iPod. That it is immediately available to the distressed person is of utmost importance because the person in distress should not be bothered with fumbling through CDs and iTunes while on the verge of tears. A good host also understands that the playlist is a work in progress. When after three or five songs, he is bawling hysterically like an infant, he knows that he has done his job. In case the desired effect is not produced, a good host diligently and lovingly reconstructs the playlist. The ideal host, on the other hand, he who approximates Ms. Post’s savvy for entertaining, goes the extra mile. He creates a special playlist for every sort of calamity he may or may not chance upon—a breakup, the loss of a loved one, termination from work, or a fight with a friend, among other lugubrious affairs.

On certain occasions, the distressed person is not musical and instead better responds to visual stimuli. In such cases he may, in place of the pity party playlist, delight in a heartbreaking movie. The movie’s purpose, as in that of the playlist, is to reduce the individual to a ball of tears. In case of a divorce, the perfect pity party movie would be the newly separated person’s wedding video. There are a number of commercial films, however, that while not as personal are just as sad and will do just fine. These movies include, of course, romantic films like the classic tearjerker “Casablanca” (1943), the tragic French musical starring Catherine Deneuve “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964) and “Titanic” (1997), to those that portray man’s uncertain place in society like “Philadelphia” (1993) and “I Am Sam” (2001), among others. Soon to join this library are “The Great Gatsby” (2013), which is an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel about the ultimately unrequited love between the brooding Jay Gatsby and socialite Daisy Buchanan, and the adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” (2013), which has for its main character one of the most tragic heroines in literary history. Because pity party movies cut across various genres and explore various kinds of sadness, no matter the distressed person’s predicament, there is most certainly an appropriate film.

The pity party movie, it is important to note, is not necessarily one with a tragic ending. Movies with blissful endings, like “An Affair to Remember” (1956) may be considered acceptable so long as the characters’ journey to happiness is long and tortuous. The ideal movie for such an affair, of course, is one that is personal and close to the distressed person’s heart. This writer, for one, has acquired the habit of popping “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” into the DVD player every time she is down the dumps because she can especially relate to Holly Golightly’s mean reds, which are a type of sadness that is more profound and scathing than the blues, and to her feelings of forlornness. The ideal pity party movie is one that the distress person finds sentimental and true.

Any respectable host would know that a party is never complete without refreshments. The pity party food is also known as comfort food and is characterized by extremely high sugar or carbohydrate content. Most of all, however, it is something that the distressed person associates with his childhood or his mother’s cooking. While comfort food outwardly consoles the individual, its primary purpose is actually to summon a reminiscence of happy memories so that the distressed person may become even more conscious that his life has significantly deteriorated.

The nature of the pity party food is wholly dependent on the individual and his personal history. It could be a warm bowl of soup that his mother used to make when he was a child, or an apple pie like the one an ex-girlfriend used to bake. The quintessential comfort food, however, is ice cream—that dessert which contains not only a towering level of sugar but also an abundance of childhood memories. This writer especially recommends Ben and Jerry’s Half-Baked ice cream. The sinful concoction of “chocolate and vanilla ice creams mixed with fudge brownies and gobs of chocolate chip cookie dough” simply spells childhood.

An important rule when it comes to comfort food is that the serving should be enormous. A good host knows that ice cream should be served at least by the pint, and a chocolate cake in its entirety. To do otherwise is terribly rude and improper.

The final ingredient of the pity party is liquor. Here, the host must not be confused. While it is imperative that comfort food is generously supplied, liquor, on the other hand, should be served in moderation. The host should think of it as the party’s caviar, a delicacy that is consumed abstemiously and most often as a garnish. To serve it in abundance would be vulgar and in poor taste. A glass or two of liquor, after all, will sufficiently lower the distressed person’s inhibitions that he will find it easy to submit to the temptation to cry his eyes out, while too much liquor might only induce unwarranted and irrational feelings of euphoria. The purpose of the pity party, the host must always remember, is to drown him in self-pity. For this reason, too, hard liquor is discouraged in pity parties. The ideal beverage is filmmaker Sofia Coppola’s brand of bubbly champagne, made in the Coppolas’ ancestral vineyard. That it comes in a lovely packaging, a hot pink can from which the distressed person will drink with a pale pink bendy straw, does not hurt at all.

An excellent pity party, one that would make Ms. Post smile in approval, faithfully follows all the rules put forth by the “Etiquette for the Sorry Soiree.” When executed properly, the individual should emerge from the fete sufficiently cried out and will soon be ready to take on the world again. A final word of caution to the host, however—beware of pity party crashers for they can dampen the solemnity of even the most carefully planned of affairs. The writer pertains here, of course, to those uncivilized individuals who attempt to make the distressed person feel better by cracking a joke or taking him out to a nice lunch or encouraging him to stop sulking and start doing something about his problem. The good pity party host makes sure that to them his doors are always closed.

Three Shows

We watched three shows last week and enjoyed each one immensely.

Last Thursday we caught the 7pm showing of Dulaang UP's production of Anton Chekov's "The Seagull" with my AP English students, whose ambivalent reviews of the play were all at the same time silly and profound.

And then on Saturday night, I attended my first concert ever, which featured Foster the People. The music was delightful but I enjoyed observing the ecstatic spectators most of all, especially the one I had to my left.

Finally, last Sunday, we watched Seth McFarlane's "Ted," which, for all its frivolity and crudeness, is in truth the best movie I have seen in a while.

In writing class

Our writing class met one last time last night. Our instructor is Mr. Ruel de Vera, a prolific writer who has a number of books and awards under his belt but teaches the weekly class like it is the most important thing in the world.

And so last night was our last night, and while every week he spoke with ebullience and nostalgia, last night his speech was even more impassioned. He was saying his farewell, perhaps. He talked about each student and the student's writing and about how it affected him. He looked forward to reading the student's every paper, he said, and to learning about what it says about the person. I remember thinking, that while I admire him immensely as a writer, I look up to him as a teacher, most of all. I hope to be as invested in my every student, and to be as confident in what he can do and interested in the stories he has to say.

Towards the end of the class he said that I was the best writer in the group, and when he said it I was close to tears. After the class he talked to me and encouraged me to continue writing and to make sure I look for opportunities to write.

That was the best thing that I have heard in a while. :)

For the love of the movies

This afternoon I finally sat down with my copy of "Cinema Year by Year," that colossal book I acquired five years ago when I hoped to make a film expert out of myself. Let's see if this prepares me for my Graduate Studies in Cinema final exam next week. Oh please, oh please.

Five cafes in Katipunan

ERNEST Hemingway opens his memoir of 1920s Paris, “A Moveable Feast,” with a scathing description of Café des Amateurs. The evilly run café, he said, advertised aperitifs with strange names, had female rummies for customers and smelled of sweat and drunkenness. He called it the cesspool of the rue Mouffetard because like the street’s cesspool it was unpleasant and ill smelling. Unlike the street’s cesspool that was emptied each night, however, it had customers who were constant in their malodor and inebriation.

And then there’s that good café on the Place St.-Michel. The good café on the Place St.-Michel was warm and clean and friendly, and there Hemingway used to go to write. The waiter brought him familiar drinks like the café au lait and glass after glass of rum St. James, which warmed him while he wrote. He sat across girls whose beauty inspired him and his prose but which did not pressure him to make conversation and instead respected his solitude and let him alone. And then the waiter brought him, when he was finally done with writing, carafes of crisp white wine and succulent oysters that tasted of the sea in celebration of his prolificacy. Hemingway does not name the café anywhere in the book, and perhaps this is because he wanted it to remain private and quiet and truly his.

Hemingway’s preoccupation with finding a place where he can be a habitué, that secret café where he can linger with his writing and thoughts, is evident all throughout his memoir. He talks about afternoons spent in Closerie de Lilas with his young son Bumby, who behaved like an adult and sat beside him, mostly quietly, except to comment on the matters of the universe. He talks passionately, too, about how he came to abhor a café he once so loved when, one day while he was there to work, the most odious man he knew came to engage him in conversation.

What’s interesting is that Hemingway’s obsession and patience with finding a café where he could write was actually gratuitous. In fact, he rented the attic of an apartment building and used it as his office. He used it well, yes, for he wrote almost everyday, but he wrote almost everyday in cafés, too. Perhaps he saw the value of working in a café—a place that was, all at once, public and private, quiet and busy, and comfortable and uncomfortable.

Such was my goal when I moved to Katipunan a while back. I longed for a place where I could linger with my reading and work and my studio apartment was simply too quiet, too comfortable, and housed too many distractions. In a good café I find that I am all at once alone and in public. I am among strangers but solitary in my private little nook. While I cannot do most of the things that I do when I’m alone like sleeping or singing off-key, I can engage in more socially acceptable and less obtrusive activities like working and reading. And because my laptop and books are my only companions, I am forced to give them my full attention. Such is the beauty of working out of the house.


And so perhaps with Hemingway’s ardor but not his capacities for poetic insight, I proceeded to scour Katipunan for that good café. Like the one Hemingway loved on the Place St.-Michel, the good café I had in mind was warm and clean and friendly. The lighting was warm but not too bright, the place squeaky-clean but not smelling of disinfectant, and the staff cordial but not intrusive. It had electrical sockets for my laptop and offered free wi-fi. Its tables were big enough for my food, laptop, and books, and just high enough so that I could work comfortably. The chairs, on the other hand, were cozy but not sleep inducing. It had clean restrooms, of course, and offered free parking. In the background, beautiful music played—jazz, perhaps, and not too loudly for I would be working or reading my book. I loved the versatility of my café’s menu, most of all. It served everything from breakfast, lunch and tea to dinner for a reasonable price because it wanted me to linger.

I first went to the Starbucks branch at the Petron gasoline station beside Loyola Grand Villas, and for a while I was content. It was spacious enough so that the tables were not too close to one another that I am forced to eavesdrop on my neighbors’ conversations, but neither was it too big that even as I was refreshing my drink at the counter, I found that I could still easily watch over my table and things. For a while it was my café, and I came to love everything about it. The menu was quite versatile and had pastries, sandwiches, salads, and the occasional pasta. For a coffee shop, too, it had a lot of non-coffee options. I was never a coffee drinker myself and so I especially enjoyed their selection of sparkling juice, hot chocolate, and teas. For a little more than three hundred pesos, I had a drink and a pastry and was happy. The music was alright for most of the year when it played lounge music and bossa nova, but wonderful at Christmastime when they played carols while I sipped my peppermint drink and nibbled on gingerbread.

The Starbucks branch that I used to frequent had a lot of imperfections, yes, like the wi-fi service that I had to buy for a hundred pesos an hour and the absence of an in-house washroom, but the café’s friendly staff made up for them all. The moment they saw me fumbling with my laptop charger, they directed me to the socket. They decreased the air conditioning’s temperature when I looked cold. They looked over my things while I ran to the washroom outside. They let me sample new drinks when they saw that my glass was already empty.

I loved the staff, most of all, because their relationship with me seemed personal. It was not that the baristas were always happy to lend assistance and knew my name and inquired about my life and work. It was that whenever I answered their questions, they remembered. I especially loved it, too, that every time I would enter and leave the Starbucks branch that I used to frequent, the guard always greeted me with a smile, the kind that one saved for friends. I grew to treasure my familiarity with him so much that when a different guard received me into the doors one day and for weeks after that, I felt genuinely sad because I knew that I lost a fellow.

It was when the romantic relationship I had with someone ended that I stopped frequenting that Starbucks branch. I was with someone new and whenever he would meet me in the café, I saw the friendly staff talk and wonder about what happened to me and why it ended and about the new person with whom I shared my table. Perhaps, the staff and I had become too familiar. And so I ventured elsewhere.

The moment I stepped inside Bo’s Coffee, that two-story café across Miriam College, I knew that I was in for disappointment. The menu was decent enough, and in fact offered pastries and beverages similar to Starbucks’ for a lower price. Empty tables and available electricity sockets abound, too. These things, however, did not compensate for the dinginess and coldness of the place. The lights were too dim that I had trouble reading my book. The café looked weathered and the walls could use a fresh coat of paint. The floors were dirty and the air smelled musty, like antique furniture in need of dusting. When I went to the counter and the barista took my order like the waitress of a fast food restaurant would, I found myself missing the friendly staff in Starbucks, and terribly. On the tables were signs reminding the customer not to linger so as to give way to others. They did not have to put up those signs—that was already very obvious.

I never went to Bo’s Coffee again. Instead I walked over, just several meters from there, to Xocolat. True to its name, almost everything on its menu is designed around chocolate. I had the grilled chicken pasta with chocolate shavings for two hundred pesos and it was delicious. The place, I found, used to be a 1970s house and when it was turned into a café some years ago, much of its architectural features were retained. Such was Xocolat’s charm. It was a coffee shop, but it was most of all a home. Choosing whether to sit outside in the garden under the colorful lanterns or in the living room by the bookshelf was immensely difficult—every spot looked homey. I found, however, that this hominess was also its weakness. The café looked and felt so much like a home that I found myself just propping my feet up and not working. The baristas, too, were inordinately comfortable and tended to talk about their personal affairs loudly. I could not blame them. I stayed for the chocolate and the free wi-fi, but I barely got any work done.

It was difficult, finding a replacement for the Starbucks branch that I had grown so accustomed to, but still I plodded on. I went to The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf next, at the fairly new commercial complex, Regis Place. Everything in The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf was an invitation to linger. They served everything from breakfast bagels to pastries to pasta dishes and offered all sorts of coffee and fruit juices and teas. The music was mostly pleasant and not too loud so that I could still hear myself think. The washroom was spic and span. The booths were comfortable and functional—each was well lit, the chairs’ cushions were not too soft and just right, and the tables were spacious enough for all my things. Electric sockets were positioned strategically throughout the café. On the counter was a sign offering the customer laptop locks to ensure that their belongings were safe. Perhaps they anticipated that I was going to stay for the day.

And so I did. I went to the café early in the morning and first had the breakfast bagel with a cup of coffee. At twelve I had the tomato and herb pasta and a glass of pink guava juice. At two I had a slice of New York cheesecake and before I left for my class at four, I bought a revel bar to go. The trouble was not that they weren’t delicious for they were, and truly. I found, too, at the end of the day, that I had so much work done. The trouble was that, at the end of the day, I had spent so much, too. I had lavished a little less than a thousand pesos on food. When, on top of that, I also had to pay for wi-fi and parking, I doubted that I could afford to be the café’s habitué. On special occasions, perhaps.

I entered my final stop, Seattle’s Best-Kenny Rogers, and knew right away that I would linger. The beauty of the place was its sense of detachment—it let me alone. In its vastness, two spacious floors peppered with around forty tables, I found priceless solitude. I ordered my food, a choice between Seattle’s Best’s coffee and pastries and Kenny Rogers’ healthy and affordable roasted chicken meals, grabbed a seat by the bay window right beside the electrical socket and, in a moment, was in my very own microcosm. The place became oblivious to me, and me to it. The place did not mind that the colorful paintings that lined its walls were ignored—it knew that its purpose was to be unobtrusive. The waiters, too, left me alone because they knew that my desire was to be invisible. I read my book happily.

Every once in a while, I looked around. The man in the corner nook tapped away on his laptop blissfully, and was grinning wildly once in a while and laughing to himself like no one was looking. At another table, a group of teenage girls talked loudly of their secrets and of high school gossip, and no one seemed to hear. I scribbled away in my journal vigorously as I did when I was younger and had the bedroom all to myself. I felt truly alone, and for five hours I basked in this thought.

The problem with Seattle’s Best-Kenny Rogers, Katipunan was that the moment I stepped out of the doors and into the parking lot, I found that I had frittered away a total of one hundred and fifty pesos on parking fees. My first two hours of stay were free, but for every succeeding hour I was charged fifty. Sadly, the establishment was not as economical as it purported to be. I was happy and content all the same, for I knew that this problem may be easily remedied. The next time I go to Seattle’s Best-Kenny Rogers, I will go on foot. It will be worth the hike, for now at least.


In the same way that Hemingway keeps the name of the warm and clean and friendly café in the Place St.-Michel from his readers, when I do find that good café in Katipunan, that place that needs no compromise and where everything is just perfect, I will keep it to myself. Celebrated philosopher Jean Paul Sartre would understand that this is not simply a matter of being selfish. Decades after Hemingway’s Paris, Sartre and his lady friend, Simone de Beauvoir became habitués of the Café Flore, where for hours they wrote and talked about existentialism while nursing their cups of black coffee and cigarettes. When they became immensely famous, the café became famous, too, and soon it was swamped by throngs of adoring fans that the eccentric couple had to flee the café that had been their home for so long and never return. A café is good, most of all, because it is a secret.

Scenes from a lazy morning

Respite

Happiness

Lately, the things that make me happy:

1. My advisory class, who are the sweetest kids in the world

2. My seatmates in the faculty room, Karen and Jenessa

 3. Jenessa's table strewn with makeup

 4. The fact that we are going to Paris

 5. Writing on my Paris journal, finally

 6. Tea for two

 7. Getting work done