A Song for You - Michael Buble

But we're alone now
and I'm singing this song for you

1.
I found this outside my window the other day. It would have been nice to share the view, to have another set of eyes seeing the spectacle of a pink sunset, but what was there to say? Any word would have trivialized the instant into a mere Wow, which is never sufficient; when was it ever?

2.
I was in the company of books, nine books to be specific, but books that I actually liked. It was a big haul and just having it stacked on my table by the window was comforting enough, even though they have yet to be read. There is a quiet kind of affirmation one feels when surrounded by possibilities - the possibilities of new books, new stories, new people. Possibilities of cozying up in a corner with just one train of thought, possibilities of conversations about a line that jumped at him because it made a wrestling reference, which you never realized yourself.

3.
It was like getting drunk in the beauty of being alone, of finally seeing a picture of what it's like to have only yourself, of realizing that you are beautiful and exquisite despite people getting tired of you or not believing in you, of looking at a pink sunset and finding yourself in it.

4.
I found this outside my window the other day, and it's like the sun telling me: it's going to be okay, and for the first time in a long time, I believed it.

I think my feelings for law school can be summed up in this one line from People vs. Genosa, which is ironically, from a subject that is not exactly on my list of favorites right now (thanks to a former prof who hates my guts-- but that's for another post altogether):

More graphically, the battered woman syndrome is characterized by the so-called “cycle of violence,” which has three phases: (1) the tension-building phase; (2) the acute battering incident; and (3) the tranquil, loving (or, at least, nonviolent) phase.

Oh god, I am in an abusive relationship with law school. And yes, despite this kind of treatment, I am deluding myself into staying, because jesuschrist I just want to be loved back.


__

Labels: law school

I'm sure those numbers won't stay that way for long, but one thing I learned in law school is that even the little victories matter. A good recit is a good recit. Oh, small joys. Woohoo.

:)


ETA:

Geraldez vs Kenstar Travel. aka EuroTrip from Hell. Lesson learned: always double check your travel agencies. It was so funny that it was actually kind of sad. I will forever owe my decent recit in Oblicon to their ridiculous defense.

__

Labels: law school

The four of them wanted to see light. Atop the observatory, they were looking up at the stars, half-asleep and half-drunk, but fully expectant of every bit of dust and light that might shoot its way across the sky. They were lying down on the floor and talking, the kind of talk that was aware of how this wasn't the kind of talk they normally do, the kind of talk that was meant only to make sounds to keep each other awake and to keep each other warm. But it wasn't at all gibberish. It was the kind of talk that sang, it was the kind of talk that led to song. They were singing of Stars (or at least two of them were) while waiting for stars, while waiting for something significant, while waiting for a cosmic event that will set things in motion. Wasn't this how it always began? With a bright light and a wish? They were doing nothing else really, other than just look up, but somehow lying there, with friends, in a campus that wasn't theirs, in a night that wasn't even supposed to happen, meant something. The anticipation weighed just as much, if not more, and they knew it. They knew it in the way they clinked their shot glasses, in the way they nibbled on the chips, the way they traversed foreign territory just shy of midnight.

The meteor came - in fact, it wasn't even just a meteor - it was a fireball. It ripped through the black sky quickly, gracefully, almost as if it was ashamed of having ruined the perfect stillness of the sky. It was enough to keep them in awe, in a momentary state of shock. But it was only for a while, only in that instant that it was traversing the blackness across them. After it was gone, they went back to talking, about pasts, about futures, about song. About each other. About things that didn't matter, things that did. They found the light, yes. But it wasn't in the meteor.


__

Labels: bullets

So it begins again.

It's back to the battlefield that is law school once more for me.

The beginnings of new semesters usually elicit feelings of excitement, but the whole debacle of last semester kind of ruined it all for me. While I'm still thrilled about the idea of buying new pens and filling up new notebooks, there;s this undeniable feeling of dread that this semester is just going to be as tiring and demanding as the previous one, if not more. There is still also this fear, that perhaps there is something in me that I have lost permanently after having experienced such emotional and mental exhaustion. Sure, I don't doubt that I am going to be okay again eventually, and the idea of recovery is becoming clearer in my head now. But at the back of my mind, I think a part of me has embraced the pessimism that found its way into my system some time back. I was never like this. I was never the kind of girl that gave up on anything before I even got the chance to start it. I was never the type to push people away, just because I'm terrified. Yet, I also don't think it's something I can turn off just like that after everything that's happened - it's the natural consequence of it all, I guess.

I feel like for the first time though, I really am welcoming this new semester as a different person. I am seeing things with new eyes this time - perhaps no longer with colored glasses, but not with completely shattered ones either. It is overwhelming, for many reasons, but mostly just because there is this expectation that I know better now, that I can make better choices now, given all that has happened. In theory, I suppose that's right. But I'm still scared. I have to admit that.

At this point I'm already tired of saying it. And I'm sure people are tired of hearing it too. But it's there, the fear. I can't make it go away just yet. But I'm trying. Every day I wake up, every single time I get myself off the bed, that's me trying.

I won't promise myself anything big this semester. I don't need bold declarations of "I'm going to rock this sem!" or "This is going to be my semester, watch out!" Nothing about that false kind of confidence comforts me now - in fact, it only makes me feel the gaping hole between appearances and actual feelings. So when people ask me what's the game plan, I just shrug and say, "Let's see." Because other than the fact that that's all there is to it, I also don't know what's there for me. I am not looking forward to anything. I have no idea if I can survive ObliCon, I'm not even sure if I deserve to be in Crim 2 (our Crim 1 grades aren't out still), I can't tell if I'm ready to let people in again... I really do not know.

All I know is that I have this semester. And all that I want it to be is a blank page - not a continuation of the past, not an entirely different chapter either. Just a blank page.

As far as new beginnings go, I think I'm okay with that.

we keep ending it with a comma, as if we were merely catching breath, as if we have been speaking too much in the last two and a half years and we just needed a break, we did, i now understand, we really did; you did, you thought you did; but what i never realized was i did too, because i kept talking and talking and talking, as if merely rambling out words were enough to justify a conversation; but we both knew what it was, wasn't it? it was no longer just about my day because you asked, it was about your day because i didn't ask and we had nothing else to talk about, so you put a period on it finally, just to end the conversation, and i didn't like the silence, because it drove me crazy, it brought me to the point where i couldn't wash my own dishes, and i refused to sleep on my own bed, and i stopped wearing the pink jacket you gave me, i stopped being me for a while, and it wasn't beautiful at all; but there is an exquisite kind of pain, the kind that makes your eyes sparkle over the joy one finds in little things, the kind that makes one grateful for oreos and donuts and people saying one has nice legs - things that no longer come from you because you put a period on us, and we stopped talking - and i found comfort in that silence, but i refused to accept it, i pushed it all away, because you made a sound again, the sound of a phone ringing in the middle of a night, unanswered with a hello at first, but eventually welcomed with much relief, like a lost pen being found, and we tried to hold on to the sound of our cries and laughs and moving hands, as if trying to make up for the silence of the last four months, as if trying to deny feelings of loss or betrayal or pain, as if pretending knowing about the pill didn't hurt, things that kept looking us back in the eye when we tried brushing them off - so we put a comma, we put a comma because we never want it to end, because it sounds right, but there are other sentences to be written, other stories to be told, and commas only clutter things, like this, because can anything ever make sense in run-ons?

Labels: bullets

I don't think I have mentioned in this blog how in love I am with Junot Diaz. I was supposed to write a blog entry about his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao after I read it, because it was that rich and compelling, but precisely for those reasons, I never got around to doing so. I never knew how to begin explaining Junot Diaz, and quite frankly, up to now, I don't think I can do him justice.

Drown is Diaz's collection of short stories, and a precursor to Oscar Wao, in more ways than one. The strength of Diaz's prose lies in his cultural background and how well he incorporates his being Dominicano into every bit of his fiction, from the characters to the language. But the characters he creates are almost never alien, and somehow even in their "otherness" they are actually quite "universal." They speak so naturally, they react so casually, that you can almost hear them right there outside your window, fighting over a lover or anticipating a fiesta. It's even more fascinating when you realize how similar their culture is to ours - you can say it's because of our shared Spanish-colonized histories - that you almost forget you're reading fiction of the Dominican Republic, not the Philippines. Almost.




Disclaimer: I picked up this book because (1) I've been seeing this for the longest time but never got around to buying it because I keep seeing other books on top of my "priority" list, and (2) it was hardbound and had illustrations for every chapter, making it really thick because it used glossy paper, which makes the entire thing really pretty to look at, but (3) it was only Php 480! Four-hundred eighty pesos for a hardbound, illustrated book.  How can you not pick up this book for that reason alone? [Well, of course, that wasn't my only reason, but that's for another blog post altogether.]

What you see is what you get in Why We Broke Up: a long love letter about why two young people broke up. Minerva is returning a box to her ex-boyfriend Ed - a box full of things that reminded her of him, of them. It's unconventional in its conventionality, because while you somehow get an idea of what's coming (i.e. their break-up), it always manages to surprise you. For a YA novel, it certainly is one of those that strike a quiet balance between innocence and maturity. While it does explore the thrills and inconveniences of a first love, what resonates more is the fruition of falling in love with a person who is your complete opposite - which speaks to everyone, I believe, regardless of age.

(A little trivia: Daniel Handler is a writer more popularly known for his pen name, Lemony Snicket. Yep.)




Fine, it is another one of those books that just jumped out at me simply for its title. (Hey, I'm guilty of judging a book by its title sometimes. Sue me.) This book could not have come to me at a more opportune time. I guess if this list were a mix tape, Essays In Love would be my anthem.

Alain de Botton weaves together philosophy and fiction in this story about two strangers falling in love and eventually falling apart. But of course, it's more than just that - it's always more than that. This is one of those books where the story itself is only secondary to the author's prose, which relies heavily on his philosophical dissection of love and all its intricacies: from the initial meeting, the reluctance, the appearances we keep, the politics in bed, etc. I particularly liked how each paragraph is "numbered," as if each of them are bullets popping out of the narrator's head in succession, stream-of-consciousness-style. If our over-analyzing (especially when it comes to our beloved) were to be written down on paper, this is how it would look like.

More than anything, it's the questions that he asks, and not the story he tells, that lets this book leave its mark on you. If there is one thing that I can bravely and undoubtedly pin the word love on right now, it's this book. It's that beautiful.



Ah, yes. The book that came a semester too late. I promised myself I'll lay off on the law books this break, but I saw this book and it just had me at "Landmark Cases in the Supreme Court" -- I had to get it.

It is only one of the many nonfiction books by known journalist Marites Vitug about the legal system in the Philippines. Her other book, Hour Before Dawn, was bonus reading for our Consti law class (which has been undeniably one of my most challenging subjects), as such, I was already aware of how well Vitug renders legal jargon to smooth, effortless exposition. Upon reading this book, however, I immediately felt a sense of regret of the Why only now? variety. Alas, here was a book that presented some of the landmark cases we discussed in class - in well-crafted prose! "Why didn't I find this book sooner!?" was all I could hear myself say.

It was a thrill to see the cases we read in class presented in a different context other than as explained in the ponentias. Whereas the cases themselves only deal with the actual controversies pertaining to legal disputes, this book presents the entire situation - what really went on before, during, and after the trials, who the people labelled as "petitioner" and "respondents" were, when it all occurred, and why it all had to happen. One of the things that can make reading a case difficult (especially for those outside the study of law) is that they are so technical, the story gets lost in the process. While, of course, the narrative is not of primary importance here, for someone like me, I find it important in my understanding of the case - which is why having all these characters and details fleshed out by Vitug in a manner that the ponentes failed to do so helped enrich my understanding of these landmark cases.

I can only hope all the other cases we read in class are written like this. #CWmajorproblems

Labels: books

A Song for You - Michael Buble

But we're alone now
and I'm singing this song for you

1.
I found this outside my window the other day. It would have been nice to share the view, to have another set of eyes seeing the spectacle of a pink sunset, but what was there to say? Any word would have trivialized the instant into a mere Wow, which is never sufficient; when was it ever?

2.
I was in the company of books, nine books to be specific, but books that I actually liked. It was a big haul and just having it stacked on my table by the window was comforting enough, even though they have yet to be read. There is a quiet kind of affirmation one feels when surrounded by possibilities - the possibilities of new books, new stories, new people. Possibilities of cozying up in a corner with just one train of thought, possibilities of conversations about a line that jumped at him because it made a wrestling reference, which you never realized yourself.

3.
It was like getting drunk in the beauty of being alone, of finally seeing a picture of what it's like to have only yourself, of realizing that you are beautiful and exquisite despite people getting tired of you or not believing in you, of looking at a pink sunset and finding yourself in it.

4.
I found this outside my window the other day, and it's like the sun telling me: it's going to be okay, and for the first time in a long time, I believed it.

I think my feelings for law school can be summed up in this one line from People vs. Genosa, which is ironically, from a subject that is not exactly on my list of favorites right now (thanks to a former prof who hates my guts-- but that's for another post altogether):

More graphically, the battered woman syndrome is characterized by the so-called “cycle of violence,” which has three phases: (1) the tension-building phase; (2) the acute battering incident; and (3) the tranquil, loving (or, at least, nonviolent) phase.

Oh god, I am in an abusive relationship with law school. And yes, despite this kind of treatment, I am deluding myself into staying, because jesuschrist I just want to be loved back.


__

Labels: law school

I'm sure those numbers won't stay that way for long, but one thing I learned in law school is that even the little victories matter. A good recit is a good recit. Oh, small joys. Woohoo.

:)


ETA:

Geraldez vs Kenstar Travel. aka EuroTrip from Hell. Lesson learned: always double check your travel agencies. It was so funny that it was actually kind of sad. I will forever owe my decent recit in Oblicon to their ridiculous defense.

__

Labels: law school

The four of them wanted to see light. Atop the observatory, they were looking up at the stars, half-asleep and half-drunk, but fully expectant of every bit of dust and light that might shoot its way across the sky. They were lying down on the floor and talking, the kind of talk that was aware of how this wasn't the kind of talk they normally do, the kind of talk that was meant only to make sounds to keep each other awake and to keep each other warm. But it wasn't at all gibberish. It was the kind of talk that sang, it was the kind of talk that led to song. They were singing of Stars (or at least two of them were) while waiting for stars, while waiting for something significant, while waiting for a cosmic event that will set things in motion. Wasn't this how it always began? With a bright light and a wish? They were doing nothing else really, other than just look up, but somehow lying there, with friends, in a campus that wasn't theirs, in a night that wasn't even supposed to happen, meant something. The anticipation weighed just as much, if not more, and they knew it. They knew it in the way they clinked their shot glasses, in the way they nibbled on the chips, the way they traversed foreign territory just shy of midnight.

The meteor came - in fact, it wasn't even just a meteor - it was a fireball. It ripped through the black sky quickly, gracefully, almost as if it was ashamed of having ruined the perfect stillness of the sky. It was enough to keep them in awe, in a momentary state of shock. But it was only for a while, only in that instant that it was traversing the blackness across them. After it was gone, they went back to talking, about pasts, about futures, about song. About each other. About things that didn't matter, things that did. They found the light, yes. But it wasn't in the meteor.


__

Labels: bullets

So it begins again.

It's back to the battlefield that is law school once more for me.

The beginnings of new semesters usually elicit feelings of excitement, but the whole debacle of last semester kind of ruined it all for me. While I'm still thrilled about the idea of buying new pens and filling up new notebooks, there;s this undeniable feeling of dread that this semester is just going to be as tiring and demanding as the previous one, if not more. There is still also this fear, that perhaps there is something in me that I have lost permanently after having experienced such emotional and mental exhaustion. Sure, I don't doubt that I am going to be okay again eventually, and the idea of recovery is becoming clearer in my head now. But at the back of my mind, I think a part of me has embraced the pessimism that found its way into my system some time back. I was never like this. I was never the kind of girl that gave up on anything before I even got the chance to start it. I was never the type to push people away, just because I'm terrified. Yet, I also don't think it's something I can turn off just like that after everything that's happened - it's the natural consequence of it all, I guess.

I feel like for the first time though, I really am welcoming this new semester as a different person. I am seeing things with new eyes this time - perhaps no longer with colored glasses, but not with completely shattered ones either. It is overwhelming, for many reasons, but mostly just because there is this expectation that I know better now, that I can make better choices now, given all that has happened. In theory, I suppose that's right. But I'm still scared. I have to admit that.

At this point I'm already tired of saying it. And I'm sure people are tired of hearing it too. But it's there, the fear. I can't make it go away just yet. But I'm trying. Every day I wake up, every single time I get myself off the bed, that's me trying.

I won't promise myself anything big this semester. I don't need bold declarations of "I'm going to rock this sem!" or "This is going to be my semester, watch out!" Nothing about that false kind of confidence comforts me now - in fact, it only makes me feel the gaping hole between appearances and actual feelings. So when people ask me what's the game plan, I just shrug and say, "Let's see." Because other than the fact that that's all there is to it, I also don't know what's there for me. I am not looking forward to anything. I have no idea if I can survive ObliCon, I'm not even sure if I deserve to be in Crim 2 (our Crim 1 grades aren't out still), I can't tell if I'm ready to let people in again... I really do not know.

All I know is that I have this semester. And all that I want it to be is a blank page - not a continuation of the past, not an entirely different chapter either. Just a blank page.

As far as new beginnings go, I think I'm okay with that.

we keep ending it with a comma, as if we were merely catching breath, as if we have been speaking too much in the last two and a half years and we just needed a break, we did, i now understand, we really did; you did, you thought you did; but what i never realized was i did too, because i kept talking and talking and talking, as if merely rambling out words were enough to justify a conversation; but we both knew what it was, wasn't it? it was no longer just about my day because you asked, it was about your day because i didn't ask and we had nothing else to talk about, so you put a period on it finally, just to end the conversation, and i didn't like the silence, because it drove me crazy, it brought me to the point where i couldn't wash my own dishes, and i refused to sleep on my own bed, and i stopped wearing the pink jacket you gave me, i stopped being me for a while, and it wasn't beautiful at all; but there is an exquisite kind of pain, the kind that makes your eyes sparkle over the joy one finds in little things, the kind that makes one grateful for oreos and donuts and people saying one has nice legs - things that no longer come from you because you put a period on us, and we stopped talking - and i found comfort in that silence, but i refused to accept it, i pushed it all away, because you made a sound again, the sound of a phone ringing in the middle of a night, unanswered with a hello at first, but eventually welcomed with much relief, like a lost pen being found, and we tried to hold on to the sound of our cries and laughs and moving hands, as if trying to make up for the silence of the last four months, as if trying to deny feelings of loss or betrayal or pain, as if pretending knowing about the pill didn't hurt, things that kept looking us back in the eye when we tried brushing them off - so we put a comma, we put a comma because we never want it to end, because it sounds right, but there are other sentences to be written, other stories to be told, and commas only clutter things, like this, because can anything ever make sense in run-ons?

Labels: bullets

I don't think I have mentioned in this blog how in love I am with Junot Diaz. I was supposed to write a blog entry about his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao after I read it, because it was that rich and compelling, but precisely for those reasons, I never got around to doing so. I never knew how to begin explaining Junot Diaz, and quite frankly, up to now, I don't think I can do him justice.

Drown is Diaz's collection of short stories, and a precursor to Oscar Wao, in more ways than one. The strength of Diaz's prose lies in his cultural background and how well he incorporates his being Dominicano into every bit of his fiction, from the characters to the language. But the characters he creates are almost never alien, and somehow even in their "otherness" they are actually quite "universal." They speak so naturally, they react so casually, that you can almost hear them right there outside your window, fighting over a lover or anticipating a fiesta. It's even more fascinating when you realize how similar their culture is to ours - you can say it's because of our shared Spanish-colonized histories - that you almost forget you're reading fiction of the Dominican Republic, not the Philippines. Almost.




Disclaimer: I picked up this book because (1) I've been seeing this for the longest time but never got around to buying it because I keep seeing other books on top of my "priority" list, and (2) it was hardbound and had illustrations for every chapter, making it really thick because it used glossy paper, which makes the entire thing really pretty to look at, but (3) it was only Php 480! Four-hundred eighty pesos for a hardbound, illustrated book.  How can you not pick up this book for that reason alone? [Well, of course, that wasn't my only reason, but that's for another blog post altogether.]

What you see is what you get in Why We Broke Up: a long love letter about why two young people broke up. Minerva is returning a box to her ex-boyfriend Ed - a box full of things that reminded her of him, of them. It's unconventional in its conventionality, because while you somehow get an idea of what's coming (i.e. their break-up), it always manages to surprise you. For a YA novel, it certainly is one of those that strike a quiet balance between innocence and maturity. While it does explore the thrills and inconveniences of a first love, what resonates more is the fruition of falling in love with a person who is your complete opposite - which speaks to everyone, I believe, regardless of age.

(A little trivia: Daniel Handler is a writer more popularly known for his pen name, Lemony Snicket. Yep.)




Fine, it is another one of those books that just jumped out at me simply for its title. (Hey, I'm guilty of judging a book by its title sometimes. Sue me.) This book could not have come to me at a more opportune time. I guess if this list were a mix tape, Essays In Love would be my anthem.

Alain de Botton weaves together philosophy and fiction in this story about two strangers falling in love and eventually falling apart. But of course, it's more than just that - it's always more than that. This is one of those books where the story itself is only secondary to the author's prose, which relies heavily on his philosophical dissection of love and all its intricacies: from the initial meeting, the reluctance, the appearances we keep, the politics in bed, etc. I particularly liked how each paragraph is "numbered," as if each of them are bullets popping out of the narrator's head in succession, stream-of-consciousness-style. If our over-analyzing (especially when it comes to our beloved) were to be written down on paper, this is how it would look like.

More than anything, it's the questions that he asks, and not the story he tells, that lets this book leave its mark on you. If there is one thing that I can bravely and undoubtedly pin the word love on right now, it's this book. It's that beautiful.



Ah, yes. The book that came a semester too late. I promised myself I'll lay off on the law books this break, but I saw this book and it just had me at "Landmark Cases in the Supreme Court" -- I had to get it.

It is only one of the many nonfiction books by known journalist Marites Vitug about the legal system in the Philippines. Her other book, Hour Before Dawn, was bonus reading for our Consti law class (which has been undeniably one of my most challenging subjects), as such, I was already aware of how well Vitug renders legal jargon to smooth, effortless exposition. Upon reading this book, however, I immediately felt a sense of regret of the Why only now? variety. Alas, here was a book that presented some of the landmark cases we discussed in class - in well-crafted prose! "Why didn't I find this book sooner!?" was all I could hear myself say.

It was a thrill to see the cases we read in class presented in a different context other than as explained in the ponentias. Whereas the cases themselves only deal with the actual controversies pertaining to legal disputes, this book presents the entire situation - what really went on before, during, and after the trials, who the people labelled as "petitioner" and "respondents" were, when it all occurred, and why it all had to happen. One of the things that can make reading a case difficult (especially for those outside the study of law) is that they are so technical, the story gets lost in the process. While, of course, the narrative is not of primary importance here, for someone like me, I find it important in my understanding of the case - which is why having all these characters and details fleshed out by Vitug in a manner that the ponentes failed to do so helped enrich my understanding of these landmark cases.

I can only hope all the other cases we read in class are written like this. #CWmajorproblems

Labels: books

Hello, I'm Karla Bernardo. If you Google my name, you will find the Wikipedia entry of a Canadian serial-killer (and trust me, you do not want to read about that - but I'm sure you will because now you're curious), which is why I suggest you type Bombastarr instead so you can stalk me better.

I spent eight-and-a-half years of my life in the University of the Philippines, where I graduated with degrees in Creative Writing and Juris Doctor. It is also where I learned how to speak a bit of Italian, got a taste of the best tapsilog, and took striptease for PE.

I love telling stories, as much as I enjoy finding them.

<center><font style="color: #ffffff;">____</font>Want <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/09096636074047764491">more</a>?</center><br>

Featured Works

Stargirl (Cover story for Nadine Lustre, Scout, January-February 2017)
Surreal / So Real (at Scout)
Ode to a Great Love's 17-year-old Self (Love.Life, Philippine Daily Inquirer)
Postcard from Diliman (Youngblood, Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Writer for Philippine Law Register
A Call to Arms (January 2017)
Expecting the Expected (March 2016)

Former Writer for Stache Magazine
The Hero's Journey (June 2013)
The 8 People You Become In Your Youth (June 2013)
The Best Bad Idea That Is Argo (April 2013)
Mike Ross Remembers Everything You Don't (August 2012)
Style Between the Riffs (August 2012)
Book Lovers Never Sleep Alone (June 2012)
A Spectrum of Change (December 2011)
Digital Art (October 2011)
Elements of Style (June 2011)
In Her White Dress (All-Art April 2011 issue)

Morning After Pill (Fervore: Literary Folio 2013, UP Portia Sorority)
How To Make a Blueberry Cheesecake (Kalas: Kalasag Literary Folio 2011, UP College of Arts and Letters)
January 14th (100: The Hundreds Project, UP Writer's Club)

An Ode to The Pillow Book (at New-Slang)
Introductions (at TeenInk)
One by One (at TeenInk)

   

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Endgame
Standout Songs: "Overkill" on Scrubs
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Conflict resolution
Book frustrations

This Is How It Doesn't Start

this is how it doesn't start, in eleven parts

Labels

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Got a comment, question, violent reaction, love letter, or random piece of information you want to share with me? Just fire away. I don't bite.

(I changed my form and went back to Freedback because Ask.fm's being a bitch, requiring people to sign up for accounts before asking questions. Because I love you guys, I tweaked my ask box a bit, so that the questions will now go directly to my e-mail, but I'll be posting the answers still on my Ask.fm for convenience. TL;DR - I'll still be getting your questions so no worries. You're still free to harass me / send me your love.)

Answers

Most Frequently Asked Question

Are you a pornstar?
No, I am not a pornstar, stripper, or your friendly neighborhood call girl. It's just a fancy pseudonym with a long history, and two R's. Rawr.

Bombastarr is my personal blog and my little corner in the Internet since 2005. Yes, I started writing here when I was 13 years old (aka when I was very angsty, hormonal, and always gushing at the littlest things) -- ergo, you'd have to forgive me if you come across an old post that reeks of immaturity and slightly unpolished grammar. I did a lot of growing up here, and from the looks of it, there's still a lot of growing up to do, so I don't think I'll be leaving this place any time soon.

The domain, Bombastarr.com, was purchased on June 2014 and launched on July 2014, on the blog's ninth year (and fifth month, to be exact).

It's crazy to think that this blog is now thirteen years old, because (1) that seems like an eternity in internet years, and (2) that means if my blog were a kid, it's a teenager! That's insane.

Here's to more tales, explosive and otherwise.

If you've been living under a rock and think I'm a threat to world peace or an object of covetousness, sorry to disappoint you, folks: it's just a fancy pseudonym.

As in most things, it started in high school. It began as a joke between me and a couple of friends during our freshman year. We were practicing for a field demonstration dance which involved the use of shawls, and being the crazy-always-trying-to-be-funny person that I was (or I always attempted to be) I started doing poses with the garment. Someone started taking my picture using my phone, and one shot looked like I was posing for those B-list movies (or should it be R-list, as in R-rated?) of the vegetable-nomenclature variety. #IKYWIM. Hence, the word, "Bombastarr." Yes, very cheeky, I know, but for a 13-year-old, it was quirky enough to figure as a username. That was 2005, right around the time I trying to decide on a URL for a new blog. It's been a lot of years since, and what started as a joke became something I've eventually embraced as an identity.

Despite the many other chances I've gotten to permanently move (to Multiply, Livejournal, Tumblr, Wordpress; to a bigger platform where I can earn or use the blog as a venue for commerce), I've come to realize that Bombastarr is something I can never truly leave behind. It is a place I've grown to appreciate and love because it is a place I can call my own. It's a venue for my rants, my views, my writing. It is home, and it is who I am.

Bombastarr is a glimpse of my life: the thoughts, ideas, and stories that shape it into what it is, and what it will still become. This journal has been with me for all my crazy, often embarrassing adventures, but I'm sure there will be more anecdotes and feelings and people to write about. Which is something I'm really looking forward to. After all, you know what they say about the greatest stories - sometimes, there's still a lot that's left unwritten.

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