Slip of the Pen

Subtitled: So, Now He’s Blogging About Books, Great. A Good Way to Delay Writing Something Meaningful, Eh Corsair?

Books, how can you not live without them when you’re a writer? Inanimate objects with animated universes within, infinities chronicled with infinitesimal dots and finite chapters. They fuel your desire, they inspire, they demoralize, they hone your vocabulary, they humble your vocabulary, they kick your ass, they make you kiss the author’s ass. Basically, they do a lot of things, none of which are negligible.

Maybe that’s the reason I’ve been having difficulties writing regularly the past year or so. I’ve been an ingrate to the hobby that laid the foundations for my love of writing (which began quite late — just early college). So now I’m making amends by promising to buy more books, blog (’boast’ would be more appropriate, hey, humans love to) about them, and to actually read them from now-glossy cover to soon-wretched cover. (Obvious use and abuse makes you look like a genius.)

After my last book-buying binge (which was one-third a fiasco), me, Ia, and my wallet took a dive into Fully Booked at SM North Edsa’s The Block. Only the first two surfaced; the wallet was sucked in whole by the cash register. Curse Fully Booked. Curse its expansive floor scheme and impressive array of books. Curse its addicting diversity. And I’m beginning to sound like a blog advert here.

And so this month’s trifecta of Corsarius-graced books consist of:

The Wit

Many readers of Stephen King are wont to describe him as being gifted with wit. Lots and lots of it. (more…)

[First fiction piece I wrote on the moleskine. A few lines in, it turned out to be far from serious. Pseudo-sarcastic?]

Nothing was working. He had tried having sex before writing. He had tried eating chocolates to put him in the mood. He had tried watching soap operas to put him in the mood. Neither sweets nor salty tears worked. He had tried sharpening pencils, as Hemingway was supposedly wont to do, even though he did his writing with a laptop computer.

Still, the words didn’t come…but the ideas did. Hell, he had a ton of ideas dumped upon him every hour by his muse perched on the ceiling of his room. He had ideas for poetry, plays, fantasy, mystery, horror, sagas, novelettes, flash fiction. He was absolutely sure that his ideas were inimitable, that they were guaranteed bestsellers and prizewinners — once they were actually put into words, stanzas, chapters. The problem was his muse didn’t want to be bothered with a menial task such as “word-mongering”, as she had put it in her harsh whispers to him. He had to do it on his own.

Then his muse, exasperated by the impotency of her master, hinted to him in a fit of anger, “You’re not a writer, you’re a typer!” With this, he shunned the keyboard for true pen and paper. He managed to satisfy his muse with a few works, but he soon proved inconsistent. The ink from his pen would come in sputters rather than in flows, and his stamina would falter after a few minutes of writing. His muse began to complain again, causing him to scramble for a solution — this and that combination of ballpoint pen, ruled paper, pencil, Post-it note, fountain pen, tissue paper — all to no avail.

The muse reached her breaking point. “What, are you only good for quickies?” Then came the ultimatum. “If you can’t give me the satisfaction I need, I’ll find someone else who will. Even if it’s a girl.”

(more…)

Nestlé Milo wasn’t being original when they first aired the “Great Things Come From Small Beginniiiings” TV ad here in the Philippines. But the phrase stuck, the image of kid athletes transforming into grown-up supermen stuck, the product stuck in the minds of the consumers. So, mission accomplished.

If you think about it, Sic parvis magna merely states the obvious…which is, “Men don’t know the obvious, and it takes some wise guy to concoct some wise line for them to be wisely reminded.”

“And preferably in Latin.”

With that in mind, I wanted to write something brutally terse for the first page of my new Moleskine. What I came up with on December 26 was far from a “lit piece”.

All the inaugural page declares is Phillip Kimpo / Ang Korsaryo, written in both Alibata and the Latin alphabet.

Was the European moleskine meant to dance with the Alibata script? No, and that made my “first page” all the more mystical memorable for me. (Of course, you know that this is just an excuse for such hasty work).

In any case, once I got over the hump, the writings on the black notebook (sounds dramatic!) came like a deluge. Deluge, as in four works in the span of two weeks. Anyway, I’ll be posting some of my “Made on Moleskine” pieces here from time to time. I do hope that in my case, something great will actually sprout from the small!

Don’t forget to check out the new Moleskine page.

A piece I wrote on December 25, 2006 but was unable to post here due to this blog’s migration.

Yesterday E. Rodriguez Avenue was strewn with dismembered cats. Ortigas wasn’t better off either — the road was strewn with little kids waiting to be dismembered.

Cats squashed by speeding cars in a desperate dash towards the other side of the road — new garbage pickings might await, why not go for it? Beggar kids run over by wayward trucks in a desperate pitch for a few coins — those coins are the greener pasture, why not go for it?

Our streets are filled with dead cats and near-dead children. Near-dead, in many facets of the word.

On any other day they would’ve been an ordinary sight in the metropolis. They blend in so perfectly with all the debauchery in the surroundings, from the eyesore billboards to the disheartening headlines of peddled tabloids, from the speeding, swerving, law-intolerant buses to the million little pieces of trash mesmerizingly dancing with the cars’ exhaust, from tarpaulins graced with the dishonorable faces honorable feces of our politicians to the kotong cops with “Satan” sewn on their name patches. (Not to mention the smog that pitifully attempts to hide this grisly theater behind a black curtain that, by the way, also tries to smother the audience during the show.)

But to see dead cats and near-dead kids on Christmas day?

It is a not-so-gentle reminder to myself and to whoever is reading this that we are mightily fortunate, whatever our daily ‘troubles’ are.

I’m guessing you don’t want to hear cliché pontifications such as “You’ve probably eaten a full meal at least once this day”, or “Just by understanding this text written in a foreign tongue, you’re already enjoying a luxury”. Me neither. But I hope you’d give me a bit of understanding when I (must) say this:

This is your Christmas, Philippines. I hope you’re not being too merry about it.

Welcome to blog.corsarius.net, the new home of my very first blog, Slip of the Pen. While my two-year Blogspot space was serviceable, nothing beats having your blog hosted on your own domain and powered by Wordpress.

This transfer comes after Slip of the Pen (and me, as a blogger) turned two years old last December 29. Please update your links to this blog, and feel free to browse through the old posts, which are now categorized (at last!).

Special thanks goes to Ia, who helped me (that’s an understatement) port my Blogger “Minima” theme to WP.

That said, on to another year of writing literature!