“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
TS Eliot
I came across a delightfully provocative article in the A.V. Club earlier today entitled A Meaning to an End, where the author, Noel Murray, discusses how important it is to consider how television series end. Murray makes the observation that:
At its best, TV can be as moving and artful as the best movies or the finest novels, but at the end of the day it's still an episodic medium that parcels out its pleasures, and that withholding is as much a part of TV art as performance or plotting.
I will not discuss Murray's keen insight into the medium of television. Rather, I would like to celebrate a recently concluded television show which, over the course of several years, has brought much joy to the Borra household. Au revoir, Scrubs! In lieu of flights of angels speeding you to your rest, let me commemorate your passing by posting a snippet of how elegantly you ended. Enjoy!
It's been a difficult day. In between waiting for news regarding the release date of my machine readable passport and dozing off due to my medicines, I haven't been able to function at peak effectivity. Since I have all this weird, oddly-timed bursts of energy, I've decided to share an author and series that I've been enjoying lately.
The fantasy novel The Lies of Locke Lamora is what happens when you take the finest heist elements of Steven Soderbergh's Oceans movies and marry them with a richly imagined, Renaissance-inspired universe that unfolds with all the swashbuckling economy of Steven Brust's Khaavren Romances.
The novel is a delightful romp, and hints at a fully-realized world just raring to be explored by discerning readers. Sadly, the book is not widely available at the usual booksellers in the Philippines, so you might have to request them to order it for you. Still, it's worth the wait, if ever. It's clever, funny, well-plotted and the execution is a marvel of narrative efficiency rarely seen in fantasy novels, which normally tend towards the overblown and meandering.
A long, long time ago, miracles would happen at around 5:17 am. Despite the heavy carousing of the night before, miraculously, I would be crawling into my bed, dreaming of next weekend's gimmick.
Nowadays, miracles still happen at around 5:17 am. Only this time, it happened almost, ala Whitney Houston, all at once. Lucia, of course, is no stranger to the wee hours of the morning. In fact, in the Borra household, she practically invented the late-night, early-morning gimmick. Manuel and Juan, however, normally wake up a little later, a serendipitously scheduled awakening that allows their parents time to gently nudge them into the different activities that will help them get fed and ready for the day's activities.
Not today though. Miracles happen at around 5:17 am. And today, they all came crawling into our bed.
In an interview with the A.V. Club, Roberto Benigni enthused about his current project, TuttoDante, a one-man show about Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy. Interestingly enough, despite the fact that he never thought that his show would have an audience other than Dante scholars and 3rd year UA&P students taking Medieval Literature, he found himself playing to audiences of up to 10,000 people. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
Because Dante Alighieri has the most glorious imagination of modern poetry. So it’s talking about us, it’s concerning us. Everything in it conveys sentiment, emotions. He is really the greatest poet ever. So I am really very proud to present the shining pearl of Italian culture around the world. And also because Dante sometimes is very difficult and incomprehensible. But we need to talk sometimes about incomprehensible things. It’s very healthy...
...You don’t need also to understand Italian or to know Italian, because when Dante’s writing, when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony. And it is very modern and ancient at the same time. It’s like a cross between Beethoven and Jimi Hendrix. Bach and Janis Joplin. It’s jazz, Duke Ellington, everybody, Wagner. It’s music.
The idea that The Divine Comedy is one of the finest examples of the ability of poesy to transcend simple apprehension is nothing new. My good friend, Paul Dumol, insists as much whenever he teaches Dante. But Benigni's wonderfully stilted exclamation "...when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony" is worth reading through the entire interview.
Worship Central may have come and gone, but Worship Central Manila is just taking off. After a year of relative inactivity (a period of reflection that, in hindsight, normally accompanies moments of grace) Worship Central Manila is, if not absolutely ready, then absolutely willing to renew the heart of worship in the Philippines.
Thus, it is with great pleasure that I introduce the National Coordinator for Worship Central in the Philippines, my good friend, and the i-Tim Hughes of the Philippines, Magoo del Mundo. Bro, we have quite a lot of work ahead of us, but the Lord couldn't have picked a fatter, er, finer man for the job.
During one of the teachings of Serviam Catholic Charismatic, Tita Bai spoke very movingly about the need to worship God in fitting ways. At times, this involves silence and reverence. At times this means breaking out into joyful, or even almost deliriously exuberant expressions of praise.
My good friends and avid Alpha enthusiasts, Tim Hughes and Worship Central, are visiting Manila for one night only on May 21. Their worship team will include my good friends, and survivors of Worship Central Mindanao, Magoo del Mundo, and Peewee Vivas.
Last week, we hosted the Healing Mass of Father Nelson Osorio at Megatent. This week, we're hosting healing of a different sort: through praise and worship. And so, I would like to invite one and all to come and be blessed. Let His praises ring!
My brother-in-law Bodie and I are heading to the British Embassy tomorrow to apply for our UK visas so we can attend International Week 2009 at Holy Trinity Brompton. As many of my longtime readers know, I have been involved with the Alpha Course for quite some time now, and thanks largely to the tireless work of our Lord's laborers, we have made tremendous gains in the Philippines.
Recently, Dr. Benie A. Sy gleefully recounted to me over the phone Archbishop Antonio Ledesma's moving meditation on the need for reevangelization and dialogue amongst Christians in Mindanao. I had not finished luxuriating in this very positive development when Pastor Grace Santos called me to express her joy at the way the Alpha Course has brought many people to know Christ in her church. She had just visited Benie in Mindanao, and reaffirmed her commitment to our Lord's work through the Alpha Course.
It's almost enough to make me want to celebrate with a cold one. From the looks of things, I'll be happily recreating the picture above (taken in 2007) with friends in London this year.
I won't even throw in my two cents worth regarding the sad state of affairs that all booklovers are afflicted with in the Philippines following the comments made by Finance Undersecretary Espele Sales. My good friend Jayvee Fernandez, whose two cents are sadly devalued in a culture that, increasingly, refuses to read, has already penned an eloquent riposte to the distinguished undersecretary.
Rather, I am asking all who labor under some affliction or the other to come to the Megatent tomorrow for Father Nelson Osorio's Healing Mass. Admission, much like the promise of healing in one way or the other, is absolutely free.
Allow me to begin by saying that my musical tastes, while occasionally eclectic, are really rather pedestrian: three chords, a couple of verses, a chorus and a bridge. More sophisticated fare is really wasted on me. But the choir Libera is so good that even a musical barbarian such as myself cannot help but be moved by their craft and their boyish passion.
This first clip is really for the cognoscenti.
This second clip, while plagued by substandard sound quality, is for the classically, but not whimsically, challenged.
Thanks, Tito Bobby for introducing me to the good stuff. As for my loyal readers, enjoy!
As many of you know, one of the delightful little rituals I love greeting the day with is reading a sonnet to my little princess, Lucia. I love seeing the twinkle in her eye when I rouse myself from my slumber and exclaim "Sonnet-ry!"
Today, we read Sonnet LXXVI, which I am reproducing in its entirety below:
Why is my verse so barren of new pride, So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth and where they did proceed? O, know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument; So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent: For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.
As is common to any sincere, if not entirely rational, attempt to understand the sonnet, there are many interpretations. However, I choose to read it as a celebration of constancy, which reaches its fulfillment in the sonnet Tina and I chose to celebrate our union with:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Thus, I look forward to tomorrow, where once again, Lucia and I can enjoy our "Sonnet-ry!"
Now that I've seen the season and possibly series finale of Chuck, let me digress just a bit on the sheer awesome fun I had watching the show. Most of the people who follow my blog are, perhaps painfully, aware of my tendency to engage in deathly serious reflection on life, the universe, and everything. However, as most people who know me can attest, I'm not a deathly serious person. I'm just serious about squeezing as much fun and meaning out of life as possible. Why waste time on rubbish when one can also sift flowers from the rubble?
And so, Chuck. I won't even try to describe the joyful abandon to which I surrendered, fully, to the season finale. I won't even try to describe the impending heartache which greets the series' possible demise. What I will try to do is bring a smile to your face by showing what is possibly one of the funniest action musical montages in recent memory. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Jeffster!
Just in case you have a heart, please save Chuck from cancellation. And for those who have been cruelly deprived of access to the season finale, here's a spoiler-rich summary from our friends at the A.V. Club.
My dad and I had a great old time watching Manny Pacquiao demolish Ricky Hatton yesterday at BMW Libis. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I had my point and shoot camera ready, the fight was over so quickly that I didn't have any time to take any pictures. Upon reflection, the brevity of the fight magnified the beauty of the experience of watching it live: for five glorious minutes, every single Filipino in the world was united in a victory as complete, as invigorating, and as joyful as anything else the Filipino people has experienced in recent memory.
And because I am fond of beating figures of speech to death...
The joyful conquest of Manny Pacquiao is much like this photo of Manuel and myself. Manuel is notoriously hard to photograph. He's the strongest-willed of all my children, and his reticence is legendary in the Borra household. Manuel will do as Manuel darn well pleases. So this picture, despite the paucity of aesthetic qualities to recommend it, is as much a victory as I can expect when it comes to pictures with my second-born.
"Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live...Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small."
I celebrate life. Do you?
