masarap

…means ‘delicious’ in Tagalog, and has become my new favorite word. This post will be kept short and sweet, since today we’re embarking on a journey from Puerto Galera to Boracay (apparently one of the most beautiful beaches in the world). So far, our time in the Philippines has been excellent – waterfalls and warm water and young filipino kids who smile curiously and ayama (crab) and fresh pineapples for dessert and San Miguel beer. Anna and I have decided to make short video-blogs of our trip, so as soon as they’re uploaded the’ll be here. i hope there’s something making you feel alive these days.

myxomop

baby, this one’s for you.

[audio:http://structuredmoments.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/faux_hoax-friends_pocket-mix.mp3]

to all my prototype people

I’ve always loved “Prototype” by Outkast, and the idea that there exist people who just seem to be built for you. These are probably people you’ll never be together with because of circumstance or time or life or all the other boxes that the world puts around feelings. You can know a prototype person your whole life, so it’s different than, for example, someone you have a fling with but can’t forget. A prototype person can just be there, breathing the same air as you, and you’ll just understand that they are perfect, even though you will never know what their lips taste like.  Knowing that they exist, I think, is more important than being with them. Because the idea that things can be so perfects and so good then becomes a standard to which you compare existing relationships, and it helps you weed out the ones that are less than. Ideally, anyways. I suppose that the majority of people still go for ‘less than’, which is probably not entirely a bad thing. But it’s still important to have prototype people, and I like this comparison more than the idea of “the one”, although I admit that the idea of the prototype can be just as deceptive. Maybe it’s all a lie, and with time people who we thought were our prototypes just become the people we are with. And then they become the people we leave. And sometimes they become the people we can’t stand.  And really, maybe the idea that someone goes so well with you just means that you don’t know them well enough yet. I don’t want that to be my truth, though. I can count my prototype people on one hand, and I’d like to keep believing in them.

[audio:http://structuredmoments.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/outkast_prototype_speedmix2.mp3]

I could only find a remix of this song, but it’s actually not bad, so enjoy.

just close your eyes and listen

“Friend. I hardly have any of the answers.”

this is my cowgirl.

let’s assume a can opener

Dear Economics,

I love you but right now you seem like the most ridiculous discipline of all. You assume that people make rational choices without any consideration of the ways in which these are constrained. I would like to let you know about choice. I first learned about it in a Women’s Studies course I once took – I expected to learn about “women” (as an analytical category) and what I learned about was choice. I learned that the choices we make are only as good as the frameworks within which we make them. And then, as life went on, I began to question choice even more. It seems to me that “maximizing utility”, the way you would want it to be, is rarely what people make decisions based on. Instead, it’s a mix of obligations and responsibilities and growing up and knowing how to act that make up choice. It’s not rational, it’s life. It’s what happens when you hope for the best and get what you least expected. It’s wedding rings and promotions and sickness and alcohol. It’s the yesterdays and expectations of tomorrow and the realities of today. But happiness? That’s rarely a factor. Not for most people, anyways. I hope you figure something out to fix yourself. Can’t you see we’re crumbling?

-Anya

the emperor of time

“It’s funny, because people think it’s Matty that stops me fitting in. But Matty’s not so bad. Hard work, but… it’s the way Matty makes me feel that stops me fitting in. You get the weight of everything wrong. You have to guess all the time whether things are heavy or light, especially the things inside you, and you get it wrong, and it puts people off. I’m tired of it.”

-p. 196

“One is not born a woman, one becomes one”

-Simone de Beauvoir

Today, of all days, and I’m not sure why, but I felt it. I felt the weight of inadequacy and questioning of self. When somebody truly makes you question your position it is a testament to that person, and today was a testament to you. It was a memoir of what could have been and what never was. It was the lightness of the touch and the weight of our past combined into a molotov cocktail of my desire and your smile. And then my glance, casual but firm, unto that weight on your finger that tells me it signifies so much. It is the phone call and my silence and your voice and, again, ice cream. Me having to refrain from asking whether there’s a reason to be. It was the bench and the sunlight and me finding so much inspiration in you. It was your answer that sent chills down my spine and made me scared that I could never be what someone like you is looking for. That telling me so casually as I stared unto the sidewalk was deliberate (even though it could never be new), so that you could weigh my reaction for yourself, and so that I could wonder whether you’re wondering the same thing. Whether it’s a test of time or of my weakness, I’m not sure. Today felt like it was both. Asking what five times five feels like is hard. I can’t feel that weight, it’s lost. Five, because I thought it would be enough and I was wrong.

	Swan Lake – A Hand At Dusk
	Found at skreemr.com

(sorry for the ugly embedding. the file was too big to upload, but the song is too perfect to not share.)

so close I can almost taste it

Thank you to the people who make leaving Vancouver so difficult each time. I am taking off with a heart full of love.

[audio:http://structuredmoments.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/7920087.mp3]

(photography by stuart gibson)

sometimes choice is an odd variable

“I felt terrible the next morning, mostly because I’d gone to bed without anything to eat, although I’m not sure that the Es and the Breezers and the blow didn’t help. I felt low, too. I had that terrible feeling you get when you realize you got stuck with who you are, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I mean, you can make characters up, like I did when I became like a Jane Austen-y person on New Year’s Eve, and that gives you some time off. But it’s impossible to keep it going for long, and then you’re back to being sick outside of some dodgy club and offering to fight people. My dad wonders why I chose to be like this, but the truth is, you have no choice, and that’s what makes you feel like killing yourself. When I try to think of a life that doesn’t involve being sick outside a dodgy club, I can’t manage it; I picture nothing at all. This is I; this is my voice, this is my body, this is my life. Jess Crichton, this is your life, and here are some people from Nantwich to talk about you.

I once asked Dad what he’d do if he wasn’t working in politics, and he said he’d be working in politics, and what he meant, I think, is that wherever he was in the world, whatever job he was doing, he’d still find a way back, in the way that cats are supposed to be able to find a way back when they move house. He’d be on the local council, or he’d give out pamphlets, or something. Anything that was a part of that world, he’d do. He was a little sad when he said it; he told me it was, in the end, a failure of imagination.

And that’s me: I suffer from a failure of imagination. I could do what I wanted, every day of my life, and what I want to do, apparently, is to get whalloped out of my head and pick fights. Telling me I can do anything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and then telling the water it can go anywhere it wants. Try it, and see what happens.”

p. 208-9

——

“A long time ago, I worked with an alcoholic – someone who must remain nameless because will almost certainly have heard of him. And he told me that the first time he failed on at attempt to quit the booze was the most terrifying day of his life. He’d always thought that he could stop drinking if he ever got round to it, so he had a choice stashed away in a sock drawer somewhere at the back off his head. But when he found out that he had to drink, that the choice has never really been there… Well, he wanted to do away with himself, if I may temporarily confuse the issues.”

p. 235

(both passages are from Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down)

sometimes nights feel like this

notches in your spine