About that Wislawa Szymborska line (i.e., 27th birthday)
*November 6, 2020 A few weeks before November 6, the poem Possibilities by Wislawa Szymborska came to me like a directive: “I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries/ that can be celebrated every day […] I prefer not to ask how much longer and when./ I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility/ that existence has its…
July 2020 Book Review: Dying, time travelling, animals talking, creepy exchanges
As far as my series of book review is concerned, I left you on March 2020 when I talked about books written by women. I guarantee you that your Kindle junkie is still tap-tapping that rectangle thing. However, I got caught up with old stuff, new stuff, sharp stuff that had beaten the hell out…
I works at freelance podcaster
Hello reader, This weekend I joined in an activity which is totally new and intimidating to me. Jade Mark shared to me the plan he has been brewing with David Jayson about creating a podcast where we’d talk about millennial trends and angst. I know I’d hide myself in any public speaking activities, being aware that…
The day the Anti Terror Law takes effect
July 18, 2020 | Mindanao, Philippines Dear reader, As of writing, this marks the first day that Anti-Terror Law takes effect in the Philippines. Such a noble intention to curb terrorism in this country, but what you may have learned from the era of post-truth is to not fall into the bait of promising titles…
Book review on March 2020: Women, women, women
Apologies for the two-month delay of this blog post. March had been a terrible month as it was the onset of the community quarantine; April was more terrible with weeks of self-imposed internet disconnection; May is a month when I’m struggling to stabilize everything that had happened to me and to the world, and I’m…
Disposing of/holding on
I was first introduced to Marie Kondo last year when I once received messages of friends asking me to adopt the wacky socks they do not want to use anymore. Marie Kondo has become a household name, so phenomenal that she has become more of a verb than a figure. To ‘Marie Kondo,’ as how…
Book review: Tales on love for February 2020
I am coming back from where we left off: a quick review of the books I have read in February. I pored over four books about love—one fiction and three nonfiction. The following were Enigma variations by André Aciman, Unrequited by Lisa Phillips, Modern romance by Aziz Ansari, and Modern love by Daniel Jones (ed.).…
COVID-19: 10 things in mind
How are you? This is really a silly question to ask, considering the proliferation of the pandemic that has changed our lives forever. But this is coming from a place of concern, because inasmuch as I expect that your answers would most likely be depressing, sad, terrible, being asked this question is something that would…
A love letter
To whom it may concern: If you fall under the category of the brokenhearted, the depressed, the friendzoned, the ghostee, the abused, the stuck, the invisible, the solitary, the incomplete, the waitlisted, or the abandoned, I am giving this letter to you. So February 14 excludes you from those who will celebrate this day with…
BOOK REVIEW: January 2020
Alright, 2019’s the shit. But if there is anything to brag about that year, then I would claim it to be the Year of Voracious Reading Because What Is Happening To Kloyde, To The World But Then My Reads Are Funny, Cathartic, Full Of Heart. The only thing I regret in that section of my…
Your January 10, 2020; my December 31, 2019
In my head, today marks my New Year’s Eve. It’s still December 31, 2019 in my calendar. I kid you not. I believe that time is relative and a social construct. I have two situations to exemplify. A. March 11, 2018. The day we had to fly out of Washington DC, it was daylight savings…
Zine for sale: Running for HIV/AIDS and other essays
Shoutout to everyone especially the mental health advocates and HIV advocates! I am selling one of my zines ‘Running for HIV/AIDS and other essays’ for 100 PHP. This will be sold either online (bulk orders only!) and during the #BLTX9 on December 13 (Zero82 Lokal Bar, Davao City, 6 pm to 12 midnight) and December…
Dear diary, and other musings
Dear diary, I’m not sure when you’d be tired listening to the things I carry and to my intrusive thoughts. A lot of people have quit because I am a liability, and I am glad you are neither a people nor a ghost. Well, you really have no choice. And worry not, you won’t read…
Note to self – 26th birthday
6 November 2019 🥰🥳🙏🍕 First of all, there is no happy birthday in the context of failures in the government, scary health issues in the nation, and the Mindanao quake, to which my twin Kleent agreed. I am slipping away virtually, conserving my energy to things that matter, like writing and teaching. No grand party,…
Are the K-12 kids alright? Like really?
Case A: I have a friend in HUMSS or Humanities and Social Sciences, who always whines about her projects in creative writing. The requirements from the course make her both inadequate and worn out. Responding to her complaints, I occasionally pretend to be a heartless clown by saying creative writing at her age – like spelling…
Book Duke appreciation tweets: A book haul
Come to Book Duke’s Facebook page! Also, I wrote an earlier post about my Book Duke book haul. Don’t miss laughing at it! Books I bought: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace Another Country – James Baldwin Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone – James Baldwin Black Orchid – Neil…
Hello students, goodbye
Legit: teachers take the last sessions seriously. It’s the time we wax nostalgic, as if breaking up with a relationship, or retiring after eons, or folding our tents after an unforgettable summer camp. The thing that most students do not know is this: we care about you and we kind of wish that we have…
Teaching martial law period literature in the era of post-truth
Pressing are the current times when students are led to believe the “convenient truths” on the President Marcos debate. Despite substantial studies proving the oppression during the Martial Law period, the students’ emotions are won over by apologists whose tweaked narratives renounce common sense. In the age of devaluing reason and glorifying propaganda, literature teachers should…
Unwrapping my book loot from Book Duke
The book package arrived earlier than I expected. The last time Mx. Book Duke and I arranged our payments and delivery was on Sunday afternoon, when Mx. informed me the books were shipped already. I expected to wait for a minimum of three business days, but the shipping option is really here to up the…
What a wasted run it was.
I stopped at 7.65 kilometer, which was not my gig. I am a 10-21k runner. It was damn scary too. Ever since 2k, I had always felt the blisters growing between my big and index toes, both left and right. Thought it’s something I can tolerate until I get to my running goal, which was…
Happy 20th birthday, Interpreter of Maladies!
I encountered Jhumpa Lahiri’s cadence in graduate school when we’re asked to read the beginning short story “A Temporary Matter” in the light of postmodernist criticism. I forgot how I answered that examination on comparative literature. What I remembered was sweat excreting on my palms. I guess reading under pressure is not a wonderful reading…
The course of true love, and mental health too
In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lysander said this realist take on love to Hermia, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” I do not know why I remembered this quotation while thinking of mental health. I did not have any idea, but perhaps subconsciously, I was: flexing that I have read…
I’m a good person
Trigger Warning: suicide, depression, anxiety, and strong language May 7, 2019. I was crying going home, but the driver hadn’t noticed it. I wiped my tears and sucked all of my feelings up so my parents wouldn’t notice a whiff of my emotion. I went straight to my room, pumped up a random playlist, and…
Debunking mental health stigma*
I contend that mental health at large is widely misunderstood. I haven’t remembered talking about depression until I got to college when we studied Shakespeare. That was fourth year; 2013. Fairly recent. I had to crawl to know what Hamlet said when he recited, ‘To be or not to be.’ Then again, the topic was…
The situation is a lot more nuanced than that: A meditation on mental health through Crazy ex-girlfriend*
Good morning to the freshies, to Dr. Wilter Friales, to the NSTP facilitators, and to the paid laughers and clappers I scattered around this gymnasium. This is such a wonderful day, essentially for me. It’s not every day that I get asked to speak of mental health, the thing I am passionate with and striving…
Maligayang #BuwanNgMgaAkdangPinoy. Also, #EndRapeCulture.
The month of August marks the #BuwanNgMgaAkdangPinoy or Month of Filipino Works, an online campaign spearheaded by the award-winning novelist and poet Edgar Calabia Samar. It’s my time to snoop around his Twitter account and the hashtag to discover promising literature and celebrate the virtue of creation in spite of the unspeakable clownery of Philippine…
Anxiety attack on a sacred time
So apropos: As of writing I am listening to tracks of Björk, starting with Human Behavior (*If you ever get close to a human, and human behavior/ Be ready, be ready to get confused and me and my here after/ There’s definitely, definitely, definitely no logic to human behavior/ But yet so, yet so irresistible…
Books on faith terrify me—until Anne Lamott (or a bookworm stanning 4 Anne Lamott books in one week after reading 1 book last month)
Some books cast a repelling effect on me especially when they start waxing fundamentalism. Their audacity to assure me of a successful life through a handful of Bible verses and telling me ‘it’s all in the mind’ unwittingly implies that my feelings of emptiness are invalid. When a writer refuses to descend from his/her ivory…
A list of things running in my mind while running that I should try to avoid (but I still fail every freaking time)*. I should
stop thinking I am going to be Usain Bolt. It’s never going to happen at least now, tomorrow, or next week. avoid comparing myself to myself. If I won, I beat myself. In every breathing pattern I try to compose to get a faster run, I fish my phone on my tiny zipper pocket and…
I nearly pass out on my afternoon run
Distance: 10.25 kilometers Duration: 01:12:00 Playlist: Carly Rae Jepsen, The Chainsmokers, and Haim Never have I felt this way, except for one panic attack I had on the road months ago. I wouldn’t count that as such, because I was walking, listening to an Eckhart Tolle audiobook. My running app notifies I won’t hit sub…
Running for HIV/AIDS
This week opens up for the annual T’nalak Festival in South Cotabato where I am based right now. The office I work in started to get too loud with all the booming playlist on the street and the tourists idling by. It’s harder to get a tricycle anywhere, and the days will be freaking inconvenient…
Keeping a Journal
Joan Didion has written about how notebooks are essential in keeping memories. Twitter and Facebook and Instagram ruined our memories, making us all-too dependent for affirmation and hype, that the only memories we stick are those with the best filters, that the principles that win are those which are retweeted the most, and liked the…
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Kloyde A. Caday 