Old money, like the five-peso bill that was released en masse after the February Revolution. I think it's more of the incompatibility of Downy with anything Made in China. Or that the jacket is more suitable to winter, ergo, a lesser trip to the laundry.

Ok ba sa segue, winter? I'll be going somewhere below zero degrees, alone. I laughed at David Sedaris' self-deprecation but it's nipped quite early knowing you're the one who introduced me to him. Your and my absence glorified, and we'll have to wait till March.

I feel so Neruda lately, and Residence on Earth is on my wishlist. Some Rilke and Lorca too. If I find something from Heights by some Ateneo folks, then everything's complete, at least for the moment. If last year I hunched that someday I will get Published, this year I boldly declare that I can dwell in Poetry once again.

I made some, too. Poets sing about the grief, like I did for Loneliness and Leaving, lately.

I think I should take Spanish, the deeper one, to understand what goes on inside Senor Pablo's head and why he's popular with today's youth. And Gabriel Garcia Marquez too. Who knows what will I reveal if I read Memoria de mis putas tristes from cover to cover than the (slightly overpriced) Grossman-translated Memories of My Melancholy Whores which I devoured in one sitting?

People who've read say it's like Lolita, but I've never read Nabokov and this is also the first time that I take interest in young-women relationships (stories, that is; in true life, I'm always the young initiate). If you're horse-hung and single and this eve you will turn ninety, what gift do you give yourself? Add to that, you only knew love as paid love and not what it ought to be (but I digress, since I don't believe in luuurve at this moment). I don't have anything against aged, oldschool thinking and the tried and tested answer was always, get a whore. But this time there was novelty: a fourteen year old virgin. What happened next is a series of profundity which one can't avoid: at last you got what you always wanted when you were a horny teener, what would you do with it? Prudence dictates staring at it is the best thing, the touch kept at a minimum, because at that age, you should have learned so much, and your EQ is already short of shooting through the roof. Something inside me stirred that if I should reach that age given the conditions I am in, hmmm well-hung and single and old--I don't know, I really don't know.

Which led me into a moment of introspection: this year I will be turning into my third decade, what present should I give myself? Getting something which I pined during childhood doesn't excite me anymore. Too little too late. At this age I still fear getting old, and the intellectual wealth that I will be accumulating does not diminish it, but the sensation of shrinking inside my body, sense by sense and bone by bone intensifies it. Therefore, it should be something that reminds me that I still have a body.

A piercing somewhere, perhaps.

(I don't know now what this has to do with the jacket, like Chekhov's shotgun, but this is not a short story anyway. I'm trying to write in a nonlinear fashion, and all I managed were dots and dashes in somebody else's telegram.)

To February 4.

So you'll have more time to go to the movies, ogle at Starstruck finalists and hunt for arthouse films in Quiapo.

Ay, January na pala?

Ay?

Horoscopes seem to be self-fulfilling. It's like saying you want this or that for Christmas and you actually get that as your holiday gift. I wished for a Tefal pan and I got one. Talk about will power.

This January the boss should have recognized my skills and reward me for it, and that I should be serious in my work. Therefore the absence in the blogosphere. Therefore the limited internet time during office hours. And soon, more overtime work (therefore more money for a Europe sidetrip). I don't know, it just wore on me. This year I should get a transfer, a promotion or even a new job.

And what I unconsciously do is remind myself to finish my resume intended for a career change which is at some points, geographic and dramatic.

Then there was this tabloid warning that those of us born in the year of the Dragon should avoid anonymous sex because we are prone to STD this year.

But wait, it's the Chinese zodiac isn't it? And Chinese New Year's Eve falls on the 29th of January.

Dragons, you have 10 days to go before the bug catches you!

No horoscope told me that I'll be a cartoon this year. Wait, this is not a cartoon. This is a portrait.