Ven has written about this twice already and although I’ve featured musicals in a number of recent posts, this one deserves a mention as well (just because I’ve been listening to it over and over for days now after watching a presentation by talented college kids). The Last Five Years is a contemporary musical that has particular appeal to young people because of its pop sensibility and romantic theme [which is rather misleading because it is actually about the loss of love]. The most curious thing about the story is that it unfolds nonlinearly. In this one-act show, the two actors sing soliloquies - The girl (Cathy) opens with a heartbreak, having just separated with the boy (Jamie), while the boy sings a song full of promises, having just met the girl of his dreams. By the end of the show, Cathy is head-over-heels in love while Jamie is contemplating why their marriage broke. They have only one duet, which happens when the timeline of their respective stories meet. Confusing? Buy the CD. I hope our local theater groups will find time to present this again to the Filipino public soon.
Let’s make a case of She Said, He Said as a preview:
Cathy:
Jamie:
And then some more
Cathy:
Jamie:
That’s love versus career for you
Cathy:
Jamie:
For some reasons, I’m predominantly on Cathy’s side. But what their story imparts is the bittersweet realization that sometimes, love ends. Just like that.
Here's something from Fencesitter. Initially, I thought 10 is a big number for my 2007. But then I told myself, "Wow, that's too sad." I don't want to end the year bitter and forlorn, so I made up a list. Don't confuse my verb there.
1. Family. My stronghold and my reason for everything. No need to say more.
2. Friends. I used to be a BFF kind of girl. Now I'm content to know that I have people around who will probably look for me had I suddenly gone missing for days. It's actually not half as bad as it sounds. I do love my friends. We may be different in more ways than I can count on my fingers, but they sure make life a lot easier to deal with.
3. Work. Despite a number of changes and a persistent threat of doom looming over our heads, work's still good. I've always thought I'm lucky to have found my job. I still believe I'm lucky to be keeping it while I can.
4. Badminton. My stress reliever. There's no better way to release bodily tension that to smash a hapless shuttle and run around the court for hours. This year has been a good year in that I enjoyed the sport a lot more than when I was just beginning to learn two years ago. And meeting new court buddies is not too bad either.
5. Tennis. Just to fulfill a childhood dream, I willed myself to go to the courts alone and look for a trainor. I managed to learn the basics, and that's enough to make me happy. No more tennis training for me. Playing both tennis and badminton isn't smart, really (contrasting footwork, wrist action vs arm swing, etc.).
6. Ipod. I've had my green 4 Gb Ipod mini for two years now and I can still count on it to get me through a boring day at work. It's already obsolete, even before the start of this year, but I'll never trade my playlists for another's.
7. New apartment. After almost seven years of staying with officemates and friends, I finally managed to find a place of my own. Well, I share it with my sister, but it's still a big difference.
8. Internet. I cannot call myself a computer geek but I surprise myself sometimes with the wealth of things I manage to acquire online. Shhhh with the downloads and the online stalking of "interesting" people.
9. Puerto Galera trip. My only out-of-town trip this year. I had a case of food poisoning the night before we're supposed to return to Manila so this will go down as one of the most memorable trips of my life (I literally had to drag my bags and my feet due to weakness from dehydration). But I'm still thankful about it because I had fun anyway.
10. Office bookcase. This year, a club at our office opened bookcases for borrowing reading materials, and I must say their selection is topnotch. Sure saved me a lot of $$$.
Now, let's spread the love and ask what are on the lists of Onyxx, Ven, Maeryn, TPS, and Karmee.
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix youColdplay (Fix You)
How time flies. December 06 still feels just yesterday, and now we're on the verge of another new year. Which means … nothing, I guess; I really don't know what it means for me. I'm still tired and scared. And that's not something I want to write about, at least not now.
Yesterday, I told a friend about this dream I had weeks before. I was with a group of people riding what we call a banca (small fisherman's boat) when we realized we left someone onshore. So we turned around to retrieve whoever it was who wouldn't fit into the loaded boat anyway. On the way back, I saw two whirlpools, side by side. They were so close to our vessel that it was not possible we were not sucked into those powerful currents. Well, in dreams anything is possible. After that, and after several other unrelated dream snippets, I found myself standing on the shore, looking out to the peaceful ocean. I remember it was not quite dusk, but the sun's not shining brightly anymore. Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw a piece of land come up from the middle of the sea, a tree grew into it, and before long trees and bushes and weeds came up like crazy, covering the sea starting from the farthest reach of my eyes to right where I was standing, until what's in front of me is no longer ocean but a deep forest so dark that I cannot even see the sun anymore.
After telling that story, I went home dead tired and sleepy (not from talking but from spending an entire day in a badminton court). So it's probably not surprising that I fell into a very deep sleep and went through another dream. This time it's more familiar. I was back in my hometown, walking the streets that I don't even bother to visit these past few years. I didn't see myself in the dream but I suppose I am my present self because it felt like I have the same memories as I have now. But the pavements were different and the streets were wider, like they were when I was a child. Even the people were much, much younger. And so it was that I was mindlessly walking when I chanced upon a still figure. She was stretched like she slipped from something but was suspended in midair before she fell to the ground. It was as if time stopped and I'm the only one moving about. Realizing that the person is a relative, I touched her hand as if to wake her up, and she did. Together, we ran to our house (which isn't even our house anymore) and found everyone else unmoving like she was. We touched them one by one, until everyone's woken up and everything's back to normal, at least dreamwise.
Now, I don't want anyone to interpret these dreams for me. I'm too gullible that you might scare me for real. I can produce a litany of psychobabble out of these, but of course I'm not going to.
The truth is, I don't fear dreams anymore like I do when I was younger. I dream a lot, even as a child. That is to say, I remember most of my dreams (because experts say we all dream all the time; some of us just don't remember them when we wake up). There was a span of time in my recent years that I can't remember dreaming of anything, which had me more concerned because I was generally depressed those times. So I had this conclusion that dreaming is actually good for my mental health. Yeah, that's funny. But I do feel good waking up from dreams such as the ones I told here. I feel like they help me understand myself better. Which is not to say I'm a better and happier person the morning after. They just remind me of where I am broken and what needs to be fixed. It's just too bad they don't tell how.
