In a moment of weakness after a hearing, I visited a bookstore and grabbed something new to read. I know, I know, just a few posts ago I was lamenting about how many unread books I still have (which is precisely why I've decided to skip the Big Bad Wolf sale this year), and how I should let go of some of them.

In my defense I've been doing pretty well on my reading goals so far, work load and tendency-to-fall-asleep-once-my-head-hits-any-pillow-at-home notwithstanding. I've also managed to squeeze in short reading breaks in the morning. So, yeah, I think the way to reward myself for getting almost half way through my books - is to get another book. (I am a hopeless cause.)

In any case, this book I'm going to talk about is just a short one anyway. It's one of those small Penguin Classics that feature classic writers' most seminal works in small doses. I got something from Michel de Montaigne, father of the modern essay.

(An aside: I loved my non-fiction lit class back in college, interestingly under poet Conchitina Cruz. It was a pre-requisite to our non-fiction writing classes, and it was pretty solid. Our syllabus spanned from Robert Burton to David Sedaris, from Sei Shonagon (a favorite) to Jessica Zafra. It was without a doubt what convinced me to pursue creative non-fic as one of my tracks. Anyway, at the heart of that class was, of course, Michel de Montaigne's works.)

So. "How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing."

How do we? The only thing that came to mind at this was grief, because it was always in moments relating to death that I've wept my saddest tears and let out the loudest of guffaws. (Exhibit A.) I'm no stranger to this feeling. At this point, it has practically become a defense mechanism, one that has enabled me to trudge through the hopelessness of having lost six family members in the last decade or so. But it always escapes me how. Or why.

An understanding of the complexity of conflicting emotions helps us to avoid trivial interpretations of men and their grief. Often, life forces us to label things. Because of how fast-paced and busy the world has grown, we need compartments to keep track of things as they unfold. This is work, so I must act serious. And this pertains to career, so I must only either be motivated or tired. If A, then A1. If not A, then B. It's as if life expects us to only react a certain way - and take it against us when we feel emotions that are not warranted of a situation.

The other night, while I was on my way home from dinner with high school friends and stuck in traffic, "Betcha By Golly Wow" came on. My aunt, who passed away in 2015, used to sing this song a lot in the car. Any time we'd go anywhere, somehow, this song would always play on whatever station she's listening to. "Are you a genie in disguise? Full of wonder and surprise??" I'd ask her, in disbelief, because it's as if her presence summons the opening riffs of that song. After she died, I could no longer hear this song the same way. Automatically, my eyes would well up and I knew, it'd be her saying hello. So when this song started playing as I was driving somewhere along EDSA, between Ayala and Magallanes, it dawned on me how things have turned out: I'm now the one in the driver's seat. I'm now the one tapping my fingers on the wheel as I sing along to the beat. I'm now the one dramatically leaving longing glances on the side mirrors while mouthing "Order rainbows in your favorite shade / To show I love you, thinking of you" as I evade the motorcycles and shift lanes. And she's nowhere to be found.

So I laugh. I laugh at the insanity and inanity of it all. There she used to be, being all dramatic while driving. Then she died. And now here I am, being all dramatic while driving. Except that her histrionics were manufactured to make me laugh. Mine was to remember her... and to be reminded that she is no longer there. I cry, because it reminds me of her, and then I laugh, because it reminds me of her.

The lesson to learn from all this, is of course, to not tear up while driving. Try to talk to your sleepy, heartbroken high school classmates in the backseat to distract yourself.

But also, as Montaigne writes, the truth is that our thoughts and feelings dart undetectably from one place to the next.

"The sun, they say, does not shed its light in one continuous flow but ceaselessly darts fresh rays so thickly at us, one after another, that we cannot perceive any gap between them. So, too, our soul darts its arrows separately but imperceptibly."

Various moments in our life require something definite from us: anger, sadness, jealousy, joy, relief, delight - all mutually exclusive of each other. But what of the moments that overwhelm us completely with varying degrees of all these?

When you see your friends rallying you on as you hurdle the four grueling weeks of the Bar, you feel quivers of joy at seeing so many of them sharing in your triumph, devoted to your success. A smile spreads across your face at this thought. And then, all of a sudden, your thoughts turn to all the others who are were not so fortunate; and now it's as if you feel ashamed of your glee, and want to honor their sadness by restraining it. In that moment, technically, nothing has changed - you still passed  - but your mind contemplates the matter in a different light and sees it from another aspect.

The same goes for seeing old pictures of ourselves. On the one hand, you can't help but marvel at how cute you were. (I was incredibly adorable as a kid, by the way. Yeah, I said it. Haha!) But at the same time, you also immediately feel a sense of wistfulness at time now lost. At how things have changed. At how nothing can ever make you go back to simpler times, to the way things were. The shift in emotion is so sudden, that it escapes us. In an instant, there is happiness and sadness. And an incomprehensible confusion at how it all feels.

Everything has many angles, many different sheens. No emotion should be mutually exclusive. I think there is much to be learned in allowing ourselves to feel many things at the same time, because it attests to the complexity of human nature. No one is all good, no one is all bad. When we acknowledge the wide range of emotions we feel all at the same time, we act more out of compassion rather than impulse. Because we don't restrict ourselves to just one feeling at a time, we give ourselves space to contemplate, to reflect, to think about what it means to have emotions influence our logic. Growth, after all, does not stem from only one mental state - it is the culmination of how our mind has processed all our feelings, all our hurt, all our joys.

We are allowed to feel different shades of sadness, guilt, anger, love, relief, happiness. This is what makes us human. And this is what makes us unique.

When we laugh and cry at the same things, it doesn't make us broken. It actually makes us whole.

It's almost George Harrison's birthday soon, and in honor of my favorite Beatle, let me share something about one of my favorite songs.

Worthy of note that George is, to no one's surprise, a Pisces. It's no secret how intensely and passionately water signs are attracted to each other. But somehow, I still find myself quite enthralled any time I find myself crossing paths with a Pisces. Once or twice a beloved, often a friend, other times a singer (or a song), but almost never an enemy. As if anyone - or anything - created between the nineteenth of February to the twentieth of March always carries with them a some fragment of the universe's language that fits so perfectly into the messy narrative that is my life.

Or maybe I'm just overreacting, the way all believers of the zodiac often do.

But I digress.

So George. He who wrote two of the greatest Beatles songs in my opinion. I've wept a few dozen times to the sweeping guitar solos of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in the course of my twenty-seven years. It's powerful, and compelling, and speaks of a wistful longing for something unrealized: peace, calm, universal contentment. It's a song whose lament addresses nobody and everybody at the same time.

On the other hand, despite being one of my most played songs on any music platform, I can remember crying over "Something" only once - and it was over the smallest, most inconsequential of things.

I was washing my hair one night, after a long day of school. With my Spotify on random, I carefully placed my iPad by the edge of the sink and before getting into the shower. The songs playing were all familiar; I don't like listening to new songs while taking a bath because I can't whisper along (okay fine, sing along; of course I take advantage of toilet acoustics like any other normal vocal-talent-deprived individual). So "Something" played and I welcomed the opening riffs like a lover's expected arrival.

And then suddenly, while reaching for the shower head, I felt my right foot slip and found myself scrambling for balance while grasping at the walls. My elbows hit the pail in front of me, and I ended up in a kneeling position. With water still running down my face, it dawned on me that I could've gotten seriously injured. Or died. One moment I was elongating my "O's", crooning along to "Something in the way she wooooos me," - and the next, I was sprawled on the floor, almost another statistic to freak accident mortality rates.

I immediately peeped through my shower curtain and looked at the door. It wasn't locked - like usual, because I never lock my bathroom door for exactly this precise reason. And yet, and yet, I was suddenly caught in this cocoon of terror. What if no one found me? What if I pressed the lock by mistake? Running water would have made my corpse decompose terribly.

And then, almost instantly, true to Scorpio-sun form, I found myself in a fit of laughter. Partly because a few months before that, I had just undergone a major operation, and was told that I almost lost my life. To have survived all that, only to perish by slipping inside the bathroom would have been the greatest - if not most ironic, comedic, almost-Shakespearean - tragedy of them all. But also, partly because, it's George Harrison. To die to a Beatles song is the stuff awards-show-circuits indie films are made of. But to slip into a coma to a George Harrison song - he of the mystic arts, psychedelic meditation, and sitar sublimation - what a way to go. It would have led me straight to the gates of nirvana, with Krishna welcoming me with open arms as I ride my chariot, with sitars playing in the background. "Something in the way she moves..." What a glorious entrance, ain't it?

This isn't a public service announcement discouraging you from listening to the Beatles while taking a bath. (Although it can be partly about reminding people to buy bath mats for the shower!) This is, however, my small way of sending out my birthday wish to the man who has either pushed me to the brink of almost another ending, or has pulled me through yet another near resurrection.

Either way, I am glad. Thank you for your music, George, but you know I'm most grateful for this song. It's taken me to the most bizarre of places: sadness, fear, thankfulness, contentment. "Something" has this something that will always carry me through. Any time I'm placed in a situation that makes me feel unsure, I listen to this and it puts things back in perspective. I am reminded that someone looks and thinks of me this way: that I am a creature worth embracing, worth loving, worth not leaving. There are the people in my life who love me, yes. Of course. And then there's George. Pisces, prophet, perpetual and ever-effervescent in his devotion to all that is divine.

I'll walk down the aisle, I'll run through the fields, I'll chase all my dreams with this song playing in the background. Happiest birthday, George. You know I believe and how.

A nugget of wisdom that was imparted to us in law school, but something I only truly understood in practice: lawyering is a profession of conflicts.

In a moment of weakness after a hearing, I visited a bookstore and grabbed something new to read. I know, I know, just a few posts ago I was lamenting about how many unread books I still have (which is precisely why I've decided to skip the Big Bad Wolf sale this year), and how I should let go of some of them.

In my defense I've been doing pretty well on my reading goals so far, work load and tendency-to-fall-asleep-once-my-head-hits-any-pillow-at-home notwithstanding. I've also managed to squeeze in short reading breaks in the morning. So, yeah, I think the way to reward myself for getting almost half way through my books - is to get another book. (I am a hopeless cause.)

In any case, this book I'm going to talk about is just a short one anyway. It's one of those small Penguin Classics that feature classic writers' most seminal works in small doses. I got something from Michel de Montaigne, father of the modern essay.

(An aside: I loved my non-fiction lit class back in college, interestingly under poet Conchitina Cruz. It was a pre-requisite to our non-fiction writing classes, and it was pretty solid. Our syllabus spanned from Robert Burton to David Sedaris, from Sei Shonagon (a favorite) to Jessica Zafra. It was without a doubt what convinced me to pursue creative non-fic as one of my tracks. Anyway, at the heart of that class was, of course, Michel de Montaigne's works.)

So. "How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing."

How do we? The only thing that came to mind at this was grief, because it was always in moments relating to death that I've wept my saddest tears and let out the loudest of guffaws. (Exhibit A.) I'm no stranger to this feeling. At this point, it has practically become a defense mechanism, one that has enabled me to trudge through the hopelessness of having lost six family members in the last decade or so. But it always escapes me how. Or why.

An understanding of the complexity of conflicting emotions helps us to avoid trivial interpretations of men and their grief. Often, life forces us to label things. Because of how fast-paced and busy the world has grown, we need compartments to keep track of things as they unfold. This is work, so I must act serious. And this pertains to career, so I must only either be motivated or tired. If A, then A1. If not A, then B. It's as if life expects us to only react a certain way - and take it against us when we feel emotions that are not warranted of a situation.

The other night, while I was on my way home from dinner with high school friends and stuck in traffic, "Betcha By Golly Wow" came on. My aunt, who passed away in 2015, used to sing this song a lot in the car. Any time we'd go anywhere, somehow, this song would always play on whatever station she's listening to. "Are you a genie in disguise? Full of wonder and surprise??" I'd ask her, in disbelief, because it's as if her presence summons the opening riffs of that song. After she died, I could no longer hear this song the same way. Automatically, my eyes would well up and I knew, it'd be her saying hello. So when this song started playing as I was driving somewhere along EDSA, between Ayala and Magallanes, it dawned on me how things have turned out: I'm now the one in the driver's seat. I'm now the one tapping my fingers on the wheel as I sing along to the beat. I'm now the one dramatically leaving longing glances on the side mirrors while mouthing "Order rainbows in your favorite shade / To show I love you, thinking of you" as I evade the motorcycles and shift lanes. And she's nowhere to be found.

So I laugh. I laugh at the insanity and inanity of it all. There she used to be, being all dramatic while driving. Then she died. And now here I am, being all dramatic while driving. Except that her histrionics were manufactured to make me laugh. Mine was to remember her... and to be reminded that she is no longer there. I cry, because it reminds me of her, and then I laugh, because it reminds me of her.

The lesson to learn from all this, is of course, to not tear up while driving. Try to talk to your sleepy, heartbroken high school classmates in the backseat to distract yourself.

But also, as Montaigne writes, the truth is that our thoughts and feelings dart undetectably from one place to the next.

"The sun, they say, does not shed its light in one continuous flow but ceaselessly darts fresh rays so thickly at us, one after another, that we cannot perceive any gap between them. So, too, our soul darts its arrows separately but imperceptibly."

Various moments in our life require something definite from us: anger, sadness, jealousy, joy, relief, delight - all mutually exclusive of each other. But what of the moments that overwhelm us completely with varying degrees of all these?

When you see your friends rallying you on as you hurdle the four grueling weeks of the Bar, you feel quivers of joy at seeing so many of them sharing in your triumph, devoted to your success. A smile spreads across your face at this thought. And then, all of a sudden, your thoughts turn to all the others who are were not so fortunate; and now it's as if you feel ashamed of your glee, and want to honor their sadness by restraining it. In that moment, technically, nothing has changed - you still passed  - but your mind contemplates the matter in a different light and sees it from another aspect.

The same goes for seeing old pictures of ourselves. On the one hand, you can't help but marvel at how cute you were. (I was incredibly adorable as a kid, by the way. Yeah, I said it. Haha!) But at the same time, you also immediately feel a sense of wistfulness at time now lost. At how things have changed. At how nothing can ever make you go back to simpler times, to the way things were. The shift in emotion is so sudden, that it escapes us. In an instant, there is happiness and sadness. And an incomprehensible confusion at how it all feels.

Everything has many angles, many different sheens. No emotion should be mutually exclusive. I think there is much to be learned in allowing ourselves to feel many things at the same time, because it attests to the complexity of human nature. No one is all good, no one is all bad. When we acknowledge the wide range of emotions we feel all at the same time, we act more out of compassion rather than impulse. Because we don't restrict ourselves to just one feeling at a time, we give ourselves space to contemplate, to reflect, to think about what it means to have emotions influence our logic. Growth, after all, does not stem from only one mental state - it is the culmination of how our mind has processed all our feelings, all our hurt, all our joys.

We are allowed to feel different shades of sadness, guilt, anger, love, relief, happiness. This is what makes us human. And this is what makes us unique.

When we laugh and cry at the same things, it doesn't make us broken. It actually makes us whole.

It's almost George Harrison's birthday soon, and in honor of my favorite Beatle, let me share something about one of my favorite songs.

Worthy of note that George is, to no one's surprise, a Pisces. It's no secret how intensely and passionately water signs are attracted to each other. But somehow, I still find myself quite enthralled any time I find myself crossing paths with a Pisces. Once or twice a beloved, often a friend, other times a singer (or a song), but almost never an enemy. As if anyone - or anything - created between the nineteenth of February to the twentieth of March always carries with them a some fragment of the universe's language that fits so perfectly into the messy narrative that is my life.

Or maybe I'm just overreacting, the way all believers of the zodiac often do.

But I digress.

So George. He who wrote two of the greatest Beatles songs in my opinion. I've wept a few dozen times to the sweeping guitar solos of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in the course of my twenty-seven years. It's powerful, and compelling, and speaks of a wistful longing for something unrealized: peace, calm, universal contentment. It's a song whose lament addresses nobody and everybody at the same time.

On the other hand, despite being one of my most played songs on any music platform, I can remember crying over "Something" only once - and it was over the smallest, most inconsequential of things.

I was washing my hair one night, after a long day of school. With my Spotify on random, I carefully placed my iPad by the edge of the sink and before getting into the shower. The songs playing were all familiar; I don't like listening to new songs while taking a bath because I can't whisper along (okay fine, sing along; of course I take advantage of toilet acoustics like any other normal vocal-talent-deprived individual). So "Something" played and I welcomed the opening riffs like a lover's expected arrival.

And then suddenly, while reaching for the shower head, I felt my right foot slip and found myself scrambling for balance while grasping at the walls. My elbows hit the pail in front of me, and I ended up in a kneeling position. With water still running down my face, it dawned on me that I could've gotten seriously injured. Or died. One moment I was elongating my "O's", crooning along to "Something in the way she wooooos me," - and the next, I was sprawled on the floor, almost another statistic to freak accident mortality rates.

I immediately peeped through my shower curtain and looked at the door. It wasn't locked - like usual, because I never lock my bathroom door for exactly this precise reason. And yet, and yet, I was suddenly caught in this cocoon of terror. What if no one found me? What if I pressed the lock by mistake? Running water would have made my corpse decompose terribly.

And then, almost instantly, true to Scorpio-sun form, I found myself in a fit of laughter. Partly because a few months before that, I had just undergone a major operation, and was told that I almost lost my life. To have survived all that, only to perish by slipping inside the bathroom would have been the greatest - if not most ironic, comedic, almost-Shakespearean - tragedy of them all. But also, partly because, it's George Harrison. To die to a Beatles song is the stuff awards-show-circuits indie films are made of. But to slip into a coma to a George Harrison song - he of the mystic arts, psychedelic meditation, and sitar sublimation - what a way to go. It would have led me straight to the gates of nirvana, with Krishna welcoming me with open arms as I ride my chariot, with sitars playing in the background. "Something in the way she moves..." What a glorious entrance, ain't it?

This isn't a public service announcement discouraging you from listening to the Beatles while taking a bath. (Although it can be partly about reminding people to buy bath mats for the shower!) This is, however, my small way of sending out my birthday wish to the man who has either pushed me to the brink of almost another ending, or has pulled me through yet another near resurrection.

Either way, I am glad. Thank you for your music, George, but you know I'm most grateful for this song. It's taken me to the most bizarre of places: sadness, fear, thankfulness, contentment. "Something" has this something that will always carry me through. Any time I'm placed in a situation that makes me feel unsure, I listen to this and it puts things back in perspective. I am reminded that someone looks and thinks of me this way: that I am a creature worth embracing, worth loving, worth not leaving. There are the people in my life who love me, yes. Of course. And then there's George. Pisces, prophet, perpetual and ever-effervescent in his devotion to all that is divine.

I'll walk down the aisle, I'll run through the fields, I'll chase all my dreams with this song playing in the background. Happiest birthday, George. You know I believe and how.

A nugget of wisdom that was imparted to us in law school, but something I only truly understood in practice: lawyering is a profession of conflicts.

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.

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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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Something
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This Is How It Doesn't Start

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

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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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