Chasing Dreams

I’m moving back to Caloocan in about *counting the days in my head* two weeks (wow, time flies!), and with the construction of my new room happening this week, I had to pick a color to paint my walls with. Why thank you, Carrie Bradshaw, for having such a fabulous (fictional) apartment for inspiration. Yesterday, I finally chose my color swatches, deciding on a color that’s familiar and comfortable, not to mention I love: Blue.

Check out these photos of Carrie’s renovated apartment in Sex and the City 2. (Segue: do writers in New York City really earn so much that they’re capable of keeping a pad as snazzy as this one?)

My love affair with blue.

Growing up with two brothers, my juvenile interests leaned towards boy stuff — watching PBA, collecting basketball cards, playing roller blades, engaging at pusoy dos marathons with my brothers, wearing lose shirts and baggy pants, and preferring non-feminine colors like black and blue. I was 16 years old when, taking over my Lola’s room in the second floor of our house in Caloocan, I decided that I wanted to paint the room blue. To be overly redundant, I asked my Mom to buy me blue curtains and blue bed sheets and pillow cases. Turning 18 years old, my parents threw a debut party for me, and it didn’t take me a minute to decide my color motif. Perhaps the only blue thing that I wasn’t crazy about in college were UP’s blue books, lol, can I just say that those little exam booklets were the bane of my college existence??!

Blue books aside, it came to a point when blue, to me, became a safe zone, hence, when I started moving out of life’s little comfort zones, I started exploring a bit on my color preference too. Pink, brown, red, green, purple — my color dateline, in that order, representing eras of my life. Invite me for coffee and I’ll share my color story with you. ;)

And now it’s blue again.

You know how it feels like when you’re back with an old love affair after exploring and testing other options, realizing that he is still the love of your life, maybe you didn’t even stop loving him after all? Forgive me for the tacky illustration, but that’s how blue is like to me. Home, puppy love turned love-of-my-life, the color that I want to wake up to in the morning, surround me the whole day, the last thing I see before I close my eyes. I’ve seen all the other colors, but it all comes back to blue. I can’t wait to see how my blue room is going to look (and feel) like.

I’m getting to know a whole new version of myself lately.

That version of me who welcomes the idea of settling down, who chooses the warmth of the familiar over the thrill of taking risks, who prefers being surrounded by family rather than party-loving friends, who labels things according to whether they’re temporary or eternal and chooses only those which will last.

Choosing blue, somehow, feels like a representation of all that.

And and and.. I’m doing that thing again where I over-analyze on trivial things like color preferences and being all melancholy again about getting old(er) and wondering again about things like, if they say quarter-life ends at 27, does this mean I’m, at this point in time, having mid-life crisis?

What’s my point again?

I forgot.

Oh, and thanks, Carrie Bradshaw.

I like watching movies, often by myself, sometimes in the company of friends. See I’m not that autistic! Like the other night, I watched Sex and the City 2 with Joni and Maemae (don’t you just love repeating one-syllable names twice?), and okay, I confess I already saw SATC2 by myself last week but thought I’d watch it again because I like watching movies more than once like that.

Photograph taken one October day at Universal Studios (LA), 2008.

Anywayy, J, M, and I — we love talking and analyzing movies (and TV series) whenever we get together, among other things. We can dissect Lake House to no end and still have more to discuss the next chance we get. Sometimes, we would talk about fictional characters as if they’re our friends, and contemplate about their fictional lives with a passion. And that’s just the thing with movies. They move us, wimmen (maybe not all, forgive me for generalizing), into feeling as if we’re somehow involved, making us analyze our own lives in comparison.

But what really makes me sad (or frustrated) about watching movies is the element of time.

In movies, 20 years is something that can be jammed into a 4-minute video montage ala music video. (Think Ellie & Carl’s life together, my most favorite 4 minutes in the history of Pixar). In movies, you only have to endure 2 hours to know what’s going to come out of a story. Letters sent back and forth over a period of three years while trying to keep a long distance affair (ala Dear John) are made to look endurable. Ten years in Carrie Bradshaw’s life becomes a mere 2-minute narration.

In movies, it’s easy to just insert a blank screen with the words “after [so-and-so number of] years”, and conveniently leave out those years off the story altogether. But truth is, that transition, that part which gets cut off from the movie, is the most agonizing of all.

I kinda feel like I’m in that part of my life right now — that blank screen. I know I’m heading towards my “somewhere, someday,” but waiting and working for it is soo agonizing that I sometimes wish I have a golden thread so I can skip through parts, or, just like the movies, pull out that transitional blank screen. Except that this is real life, and one life can’t be all defining moments happening one after another, it has to have the long monotonous moments in between too. I mean, sure I don’t want to skip through 10 years of my life and miss out on actually living it. It’s really just the transitions that make me anxious and impatient.

And this, my friends, is what I mean by Hollywood’s way of making me over analyze things. And frankly, I’m quite not sure yet if that’s a good thing or not.

Also, I blame this to the hormones, poor defenseless hormones. And the coffee.

In no order:

1. Awakened my long forgotten childhood crush on Joseph Gordon Levitt, the then-little boy who made me believe in Angels (in the Outfield), and made me wish I was Larisa Oleynik in 10 Things I Hate About You.

2. Made me doubt my gender, at least for 2 hours, especially whenever Zooey Deschanel looked straight at me the camera through her long eyelashes, or sang a song (*to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die*), or smiled, or laughed.

3. Left me hanging on my seat until the credits ended, partly because I wanted to see the titles of the songs that were used in the movie, mostly because the entire 2 hours made me feel like I needed extra 15 minutes to absorb what just happened there.

4. Made me download The Smiths,

5. the entire (500) Days of Summer OST,

6. a (500) Days of Summer wallpaper,

7. and Ringo Star’s Octopus’ Garden.

8. Prompted me to schedule a trip to the mall as soon as it opens tomorrow later to finally get a bed frame and Christmas lights to put up in my bedroom. I don’t know why I’ve put that one off this long.

9. Made me want to sit in a crowded park and scream words I don’t dare say in front of our Pastor. And my Mom.

10. Made me want to watch it alone. No, wait. Done that.

11. Made me google photos of Zooey’s pretty dresses, skirts, vests and jackets. (And think about when to go dress-shopping again.) ♥

12. Made me miss riding buses and trains.

13. Made me want to laugh like no one’s watching and say with confidence, “Who cares, I’m happy.”

14. Inspired me to appreciate beauty in random places (like old buildings and empty park benches and cheesy greeting cards).

15. Inspired me to be like Summer, who knew when to give all or reserve some for herself, who had the courage to decide when to step back or take the leap, who knew when the answer was “no” or when it was time to say “yes”.

16. Made me want to be someone‘s Summer, to feel how it’s like to be someone’s obsession again.

17. Inspired me to be like Tom, who loved like he’s not scared of getting his heart broken, who found strength to get out of whatever rut he’s in to find (and fight for) what made him happy, who had the courage to love, to get hurt, to feel.

18. Made me accept the grim reality that I’m uncool (because watching romantic comedies are, to me, life-altering experiences), a masochist (because I enjoy movies that end with broken hearts), and a closet romantic (because movies like this *points to the photo* make me like this *points to myself*), rolled into one misunderstood human being.

It’s quite a relief to blurt these things out. You know.

I’ve been doing a Grey’s Anatomy marathon for the past week, watching episode after episode of GA drama round-a-clock (yes, even while I work). I was hoping to finish all 5 seasons before Season 6 pilots today, tomorrow in the US, September 24.

Watching T.R. Knight in the previous seasons made me feel both sad and sentimental, knowing he won’t be in Season 6 anymore. Especially since they *killed* George’s character in the story, unlike the other former GA characters — Preston Burke, Erica Hahn — who just left the hospital but not died. Shonda Rhimes has given George a grand exit, something that comes with finality, no possible comebacks in the future, no resurrecting the dead (I’m pretty sure they won’t do another Denny Duquette).

Which is sad, because I’ve always loved George, and losing one of the original “interns” in the show is just.. tragic.

Tomorrow on Grey’s Anatomy Season 6′s 2-hour pilot episode, George O’Malley’s burial:

Christina Yang (Sandra Oh), Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl), Alex Karev (Justin Chambers)

Alex and Izzie

Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo)

Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey)

Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd)

Richard Webber (James Pickens, Jr.) and Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh)

Amanda, the girl George sacrificed his life for (Shannon Lucio)

*Weird that I couldn’t find Chandra Wilson in any of these spoiler photos.

Looks like this one’s going to be one sad story.

I know it’s crazy to be mourning over a fictional character, but if you’ve been following a TV series and wasting bandwidth over downloads for the past 5 years, it just doesn’t feel right to not be sentimental over fictional deaths, and to not feel like you know them, and to not miss their clumsiness, and loyalty, and laughter, as if they’re real people.

George O’Malley’s death aside, I thought Season 5 was Grey’s Anatomy’s best season so far, and it would be interesting to find out how Shonda Rhimes and the GA writers would follow through, with Izzie Stevens’ continuous battle with cancer, and Alex Karev (the jerk who’s been sleeping around and once transmitted syphilis to a bunch of people) now being married, and Derek & Meredith together forever at last, and Christina Yang’s new relationship with Owen Hunt, and Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan, etc, etc.

I’m excited to find out what’s next.

I missed the Book Fair this year by several minutes (okay, an hour!), arriving at the Mall of Asia at 9PM when the fair closes at 8PM. Thanks to my reliable booklover of a friend, Ivy, who tipped us that Fully Booked was not part of the Fair this year, so they’re holding their own big sale in their own stores. So yay for me, I still had my bookgasm satisfied at Fully Booked.

Four books (all old titles) for barely P100 each. I was happy with my buys. I would’ve gotten more but I didn’t want to waste all night with Ivy and R following me around. LOL.

Now I’ve never really been one to have her nose in a book all the time, but I’ve been trying to get back to the habit lately for the sake of online-offline life balance. And how can you read books and not think of being a writer, right? The more I read books, the more I come face to face with my frustrations as a writer. And that’s just the case with me lately.

I’ve always wanted to be a *real* writer. I feel like a fraud, claiming that I am a writer at one point in my life when every single day for the past 5 years I struggle being one, groping for words and getting my tenses confused all the time, thinking of other career options I could pay my bills with but couldn’t find any.

In my frustration, I had this really short and sweet conversation with R in the car on the way back from MOA:

Me: I want to be a writer!
R: But you are a writer! You write! In your blog!
Me: *rolling my eyes* But that’s just a blog! I write yucky posts!
R: Then write a.. yucky book.

I’ve always thought R was a genius. In all fairness to him, he was driving at that time.

*Sigh*

The frustration continues.