Reading list (and nagmumuni-muni)

"Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, frightened flesh. Maybe I will find in yage what I was looking for in junk and weed and coke. Yage may be the final fix."

Finished reading the dryly written but ironically transgressive and personal Junky by William S. Burroughs. As a person always asking why?, I was looking hard -- perhaps too hard -- to find that moment in the first person narrative where a confession takes place, a semblance of an explanation from Bill himself about why he allowed his life take the course that it did. I never got it. At least not directly. Reflecting on it now, the story of this one life in what was the world then was testimony enough.

"Self-deluding, vain, narcissistic, self-obsessed, and yet curiously perceptive about the sickness of the world if not his own malaise, Burroughs both offered up and was compelled to provide his psyche as a form of petri dish, within which were cultured the obsessive and compulsive viruses of modernity." -Will Self

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The tips of five Mongol pencils standing tall in a container on my desk aren't sharp at all, rounded in fact, like the tips of overused crayons. The pencils lean against three inverted pens and two upright ones and a highlighter gagged by a bright orange cap. Somewhere a writing pad has curled up edges but nothing written on it. Drafts of what we'll call poetry for now pile up; comments on them written days ago, quality the epitome of questionable.

I came up with a short story concept the other night, wrote a rough outline of part of it, which filled up a good four to five pieces of scratch paper. But I can't seem to get myself to start writing it. It's weird, new for me -- but I kind of feel fearful of starting. If I do, I'm afraid I'll rush to the end, which I'm known to do, and the story will fall flat -- as is the fate of most of my stories. Then I'll delay major revisions for months, which is standard for me, by which time I'd probably lose the feel for my characters -- if at all I ever had it -- and the desire to finish will be the size of a tear drop.

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In brighter news, we're back, motherfuckers!

We're finally releasing KATIPUNAN's September-October issue online, but hard copies are still for sale; just leave a message, email, or text.

Check out the issue here.

The usual promotional hype I write will come in the coming days. It's our Art Issue, so click, read online, download, buy, support!

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"How pure, Platero, and how lovely this wayside flower is! All the herds pass by it -- bulls, goats, colts, men -- and it, so tender and weak, remains erect, mauve, and delicate on its lonely bank, uncontaminated by any impurity.

"Every day, when at the foot of the hill, we take the shortcut, you've seen it at its green post. Now, it has a little bird beside it, which flies away -- why? -- as we approach; at other times, it's filled, like a small glass, with the bright rain from a summer cloud; now, it allows a bee to pilfer it, or it accepts the fickle adornment of butterflies.

"This flower will only live a few days, Platero, though the memory of it may be everlasting. Its life will be like one day of your spring, like one spring in my life....What wouldn't I give the fall, Platero, in exchange for this divine flower, so that it might daily be a simple, unending example for our life?" -L: The Wayside Flower, Platero y yo by Juan Ramon Jimenez (thank you, Ma'am Marj)