When there’s a restlessness in us that allows us to feel at home only while looking at possibilities beyond the horizon Photos by the author SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND A moment of contemplation in Delft, the Netherlands I used to think I’d end up in New York. Paris was wishful thinking. Still,...
I was born too late to watch Joan Crawford and Bette Davis rule Hollywood, with popcorn No one has verified it, but when Joan Crawford, shining star of Hollywood’s Golden Age, died in 1977, her archenemy Bette Davis, just as legendary a leading lady on the American silver screen, was quoted to...
I’ll have what F. Scott Fitzgerald was having, if it involved copious amounts of champagne A MILLIONAIRE'S DRINK Leonardo de Caprio as Jay Gatsby in the film adaptation of the book The Great Gatsby If life were fiction, I’d want it to be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby , if only...
I think I died and went to heaven—Margot Robbie BEACH PLEASE Robbie Margot swimming in the azure waters of Palawan A year before the 2016 release of her DC movie Suicide Squad , Australian star Margot Robbie posted a snap of herself basking in emerald waters on Instagram and captioned it: “I...
I’d be in... Venice in 1962 THE NYMPET'S ALL GROWN UP Sue Lyon, who played Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, sunning herself on a gondola under the Venetian sky, circa 1962 And catch a glimpse of Sue Lyon sunning herself on a gondola, all grown up after having caught world attention for playing Lolita...
IT’S ALWAYS A GOOD TIME Andy Warhol (leftmost) and Diana Vreeland (second to the right) in Studio 54 I’m not exactly in the mood to baby-sit my inner child, but it’s Christmas Eve and on the tree the little stars are a-twinkle and at its feet the gifts demand I recall how I used to have my...
Prompted by wanderlust and inspired by a memorable all-Filipino birthday and thanksgiving dinner at The Maynila Ballroom of The Manila Hotel FINDING FILIPINO The Eiffel tower Fresh Spring Roll of Heart of Palm Traditional Lumpia Sauce Chimichurri Sauce In Paris, I walk the length of Lafayette,...
Zombies are the perfect metaphor for human greed, our tendency to devour everything in our path because we want more, more, more and we can’t help ourselves IN DUE CORPSE Movie poster of Filipino zombie film Block Z by Mikhail Red I don’t know why I am obsessed with zombies. I’m not a zombie...
SHY AWAY The loneliness of Gen Z is perceived as a result of the decline in physical interactions with neighbors, co-workers, and friends Before I gave up trying to understand why a lot of today’s kids behave the way they do, I was thinking that maybe unlike my generation, in whose time shyness...
There might be formulas, techniques, or tricks in writing. But every time you buckle down to write, you start from zero BLEED WORDS Leonid Pasternak's 19th century painting The Throes of Creation It’s a complicated thing, writing is. All you need is the truth, but it’s hard to do. No matter how...
DOUBLE EXPOSURE World-renowned writer Sylvia Plath known for credited advancing the genre of confessional poetry How does one write? People ask me. Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe it’s as simple as putting words together, one after the other, but I think that devalues the work of many exceptional...
I often refrain from joining the conversation when they’re ranting about social media. I mean it’s so, like, 2009, over 10 years ago. I must have first joined Facebook in the mid-2000s and, by 2010, I might have had enough time trying to decide exactly what I felt about Mark Zuckerberg’s...
