Bottled ※ Brain

Nanay celebrated her birthday last night with her high school class. The dinner was at Uncle Puli's house in Banga.  A poster named her Dra. Shirley Cathedral, with the "h," a common mistake that happens to all my family members.  Happy birthday, mother dear! We praise God for your life! 

Thomas Mallon writes about nostalgia in the November 2023 issue of The New Yorker . As he concludes, he writes (emphasis mine): Nostalgia goes even deeper than that, so deep that one wonders if it isn’t a neurological condition, something fundamental and immune to the vagaries of history. As people begin living beyond their Biblical allotment of seventy years, they experience the first exaggerated panics over forgetting a name or a date, which is usually remedied by a Google search. But then comes the growing realization that short-term memory has nothing like the staying power of the long-term variety. Mentally, the seven ages of man speed up their full-circling, until the past’s sovereignty over the present is complete. The further along one gets, the more one understands that the past is indeed another country, and that, moreover, it is home. Long-term memory’s domination of short may be a hardwired consolation that nature and biology have mercifully installed in us.  Nostalgia...

One of my favorite blogs is owned by the writer and professor, Alan Jacobs. As a teacher myself, I learn so much from him. On the first day of his Christian Renaissance of the Twentieth Century course, he played for his students "a few minutes of the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. " He writes: So one of the things I am doing in this class, and will be trying in other classes, is to get my students to spend five minutes listening to music. I forbid digital devices in my classes, so they just have their books and notebooks in front of them — they can of course be distracted from the music, but it’s not automatic, not easy. If listening is the path of least resistance, then maybe they’ll listen. I’ve started with five minutes, but I hope to work our way up to longer pieces. My dream — and alas, it is but a dream — is, one Holy Week, to sit together with my students and listen to the single 70-minute movement that is Arvo Pärt’s Passio. This fascinates me...

Spotted at a hospital parking lot, Koronadal, South Cotabato.

After a late lunch, my cousin Hannah and I saw our Marbel neighbors, Uncle Ephraim and Auntie Eden, having a date in Gensan. They insisted we join them, but said we said, "Bag-o lang gid kami tapos kaon." Uncle Ephraim was in an accident that needed some stitches a few days ago, but other than that, his brain was clear of traumatic injuries. He was well enough to travel to Gensan to have a belated Valentine's date with his wife.  I listened to Dr. Russell Moore's podcast interview with Seth Kaplan who said: “When I go to any place, whether it’s a neighborhood or country, the thing I’m most interested in finding out is how well people are treating each other on so many levels.” Growing up in a quiet neighborhood is one of my life's great blessings. Our neighbors are, well, neighborly . When we were kids, Auntie Elsie and Uncle Boy would invite us in their home to play with their family computer. Auntie Norma would make us polvoron and see that we were properly f...

Taken by Nanay on her trip to Antique with high school friends.

My copies—printed copies—of The New Yorker arrive at the most unpredictable times, usually a few months late. Last year, the magazine's marketing campaign captured my attention. I'd be given a few months of free subscription plus a free tote bag, the email said—a foretaste of the riches of the magazine's years of exemplary journalism and short stories—after which I would be charged an annual fee. By the time the free subscription ended, I had only received three copies, all of them arriving together at once through the ever-reliable PhilPost. At which point I forgot to discontinue the free subscription, and PayPal had already charged me for a year. The tardiness of their arrival does not, in any way, diminish my enjoyment of them. It is like observing the night sky from a rural farm: the light you're seeing is many light-years away, from stars so far out in the galaxies that had emitted such visual energies from before you were born.  The magazines are stacked—I would n...

All of my sedan's scratches and bumps trace their origins in parking lots.  The first damage was sustained in a hospital parking lot in 2021, when I eased the car into an open space. Having only driven my car for less than a week, my mind was calibrating and learning the critical concept of clearance, that practiced instinct of whether the Honda Civic would fit nicely in a space. The scratch on my car's right underside (after years of driving, I still haven't figured out a car's anatomy) I continue to attribute to my fault entirely, though I could make the argument that it could be due to poor architecture. I went home defeated. There's no feeling like scratching a brand new car and realizing it is damaged goods. My brother Sean, the more deft driver, said, "Kagamay ah! Tinguba lang ang pagpakay-o. Magasgasan pa na liwat." He then laughed, dismissing my complaint as a regular phenomenon of driving. The second was in a mall. We were parked nicely on the fir...

Feb 11, 2024, 6 am Morning rain. The neighborhood looks gloomy. Even Paul, who is normally excited to begin his walk, looks sleepy, as if he'd had an all-nighter. In the corner of the living room, I read my Bible. My reading guide takes me to Exodus, where Moses receives the instructions from God. Moses, once an unwilling servant, is transformed by his meeting with God, Who speaks to him as a friend. The people rebel and sacrifice to idols. The passages display the supreme holiness of God and the wickedness of man. It also highlights the lovingkindness of God. God wants His people separate from the world. To distinguish them from the pagan peoples of the other lands, God instructs them through Moses to observe feasts and celebrations. The instructions are detailed. Feasts will force them to remember, as they are prone to forget. My other reading takes me to Philippians, written by the great apostle Paul who is, scholars believe, in prison. Philippians is a joyful letter. One can ...

Aimless wandering in the mall brought me to National Bookstore. I headed to the corner of damaged books that would probably never find a home where they would be read and enjoyed. There I saw Jonathan Safran Foer's Here I Am in tatters. The front cover was partly ripped apart, but the pages smelled good. I got it for Php 151, on 80% discount. It's excellent writing about a Jewish-American family that's breaking apart, but in a super funny way. This came out many years after the author's last novel, which was also brilliant. This guy could write! My tsundoku is growing. Worse (but not really), the number of books I have started but haven't finished is increasing. There's Manu Avenida's short story collection, Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries , Stephen King's Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three , Henry David Thoreau's The Journal (NYRB edition), Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass , and Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies . I ho...

I usually meet with my research advisees on Friday nights, via Zoom, while wearing pajamas. Two groups asked me to advise them in their clinical research topics. They're wonderful. These meetings last for no more than 30 minutes. Much of the work happens in Google Docs, where I make suggestions for line edits. They approve my suggestions, address my comments, and, hopefully give me some pushbacks, too. Ellaine's group sent me a strong first draft of their research proposal, which delighted me. The group has been hard at work. I can confirm it because there are always new edits in the live document.  During the Zoom session, I'd ask a group member to summarize the key points of these meetings, since it's easy to lose track of the edits that had been agreed upon. Nurhana, of Group 4, emailed me an update recently, and I was pleasantly surprised that my photo was included. Nakapangbalay na and ready to hit the hay after the Zoom call.  If I don't show up in parties, t...