jelly roll

Back to ballet. It's not as bad as I expected. My dad has put a condition on our going back and it still remains to be seen what happens to that, but it's okay so far. I wish the condition stays. It would really sadden me if this were my last week of dancing ballet professionally. Looking back, I know why my old career didn't take off: it was I didn't stick around long enough. I had promised myself that this time, I was going to stick around. At least for a few years. I'm praying I'll get that chance.

My dad does have a point about the system sucking. But we can't really fight the system - it will always suck this badly. If ever what we're doing now will make a difference, that difference will only kick in after our time, for the next generation. We've also got a bad economy to deal with. But they really should learn how to prioritize; more importantly how to plan the season's repertoire so that they can produce the ballet within their means. But the system sucks and my dad is only trying to protect us from that.

This strangely reminds me of my lovelife. My guy/ballet company doesn't prioritize me and yet I stay with him/the company because there's nobody/nothing I'd rather be with/doing. People advise me that the smart thing to do is leave but there's too much heartache even with the thought of leaving. There's a lot of heartache involved, but only because I care so much.

Best thing about today: the dancing.

Worst thing: I have a small roll of fat around my belly. I know it's probably just that I'm bloated because I'm ovulating, but it really sucks. Especially when I was happily skin and bones just a few weeks ago.

Mama Joel said it didn't matter if I had gained weight, any of it will be hidden behind the kimono anyway. The problem with those kimonos was some of them were made specifically small and won't close if you have breasts (which was the problem my sister and I encountered for the photo shoot). Mama Joel laughed when I explained this to him and said, "Good luck pala."

I'm taking the good luck to cross over to everything in general. At this point, I really need it.

"you know me, I take everything so seriously..."

Do you ever feel that sometimes your emotions are just so strong that you can't do anything about them, you just wait to explode? I've spent this entire weekend keeping my emotions in check.

It's strange though, who you turn to at the depths of despair. I got very nice, very comforting words from Caloy; I swear, this man always knows what to say to me, all the time. And it was touching that he knew how important ballet was to me. The thing was, this made me realize that because he's thinking this, it means he's also thinking this is where my world is and I would never leave it for, well, him. So while waiting in dread that I would have to make such a decision soon, I shouldn't have been because he was thinking he didn't want me to make such a decision at all.

Am I making sense? You'll have to forgive me. I'm so overwhelmed about the goings-on in my life that I'm trying to distract myself with things that don't make sense and Angel Corella escapism. I may blog about it all someday. Or not.

the angel girl

Before falling in love with Angel Corella, I had already been obsessed with angels. But subliminally; I wasn't really aware that it was a collective thing. I was just thinking about it because I'm extremely pleased with Angel's name, though it didn't at all contribute to my liking him. It made me think we were such a match because my name was an angel's name, Joel means "God is willing." That made me think I had always liked the name Angel for guys.

That made me think of how I always wanted to write a story with a boy named Angel in it, and he had to be cool because his name was cool. It's like, if you're a guy and your name is Angel, you have to be cool. Like three of my favorite fictional characters, the vampire with a soul from Buffy, the blue winged X-man and Tobey Maguire's character in The Cider House Rules. I would have written that story earlier but I kept changing the guy's name from Angel to something else because the character wasn't cool enough. I finally had a cool enough Angel in a story I wrote entitled "Compromise," which is in a Quill folio and made people go "Whoa!" Well, they said.

I was thinking, I had always wanted to have wings, I had always wanted to fly. I had always loved paintings and drawings of angels - muscular angels, not wee cherubs. I was always "Feh!" over Ben Affleck until he spread his angel wings in Dogma.

I came across this story in Simona Vinci's In Every Sense Like Love entitled Angel Girl. I was so excited to read it and, while waiting impatiently for the angel girl, only then thought "There I go with my obsession with angels again." It turns out to be a horrible story about this surgeon who meets this girl who started out normal until she sprouted angel wings. She was so horrified, she tried to kill herself, tried to cut her wings off, tried so many other things. The brother of the girl pleads with the surgeon to make her back into what she was and he cuts off her wings. And she's like "Finally!" and she dies. Ew.

It made me think, if I sprouted Angel wings, I'd be the happiest angel in the world. And then, I remembered that Lala once drew this picture with a naked girl in it - she had angel wings, wild hair, a star for a face and no body hair on either pits or pubes. I remember when she gave it to me, she said, "This is you." I remember feeling so pleased - I now realize why. Even if I didn't have actual wings, other people saw them anyway.

I flipped the book to close, holding my finger to mark the next story that I was going to read (which I decided would be a long time coming), and pulling out the bookmark to place it in the right spot. Lala gave me that bookmark for my birthday: it was a picture of the ocean with a pretty pattern drawn on it with white paint and a sketch of... Then my heart stopped. And I realize, it's the same girl that she drew years ago, except she's holding a different pose and she's dressed. She's got a star on her face, wild hair and angel wings.

I wonder if Lala kept track of these things, or it was some strange subconscious coincidence. Either way, it was nice to discover. After reading such a horrible story on my newfound favorite entity.

achieving perspective

I may never dance Juliet and even if I do, the importance of dancing Juliet has definitely diminished (what with my supposed Romeo making strange career changes). Seemingly connected, my new crush on Angel has also sorta diminished. Not because of what Erica said to me about him that somebody said to her. It's a more idyllic thing. It's like I was reeled in because of R&J and what it stood for, etc. I wanted to dance Juliet because of the range of emotion she portrays. And I would have loved to dance with that ill-fated Romeo (no, not Angel), it would have been very realistically emotional. Watching Angel do Romeo stood for that because he is like Angel in many ways - their dancing, their approaches to their roles, their boyishness, their slightly stocky at times built. And so, my crush on Angel happened. By extension. So when what it stood for disappoints you, the crush sort of goes away as well.

But I love this photo. If how I feel about Romeo and Juliet can be encapsulated in one image, it would be exactly this.

This was used as publicity posters in New York buses (or subways? eep, I forget) for the 2000 ABT May - July season. It's supposed to be Romeo and Juliet at the crypt, one about to die, one about to awaken. Which is strange because unlike Pazik's choreography (which is what my company does), Macmillan's crypt scene does not have Romeo and Juliet lying together at any time, except when they're both dead. And Romeo is never shirtless at any point in the ballet.

Not that I'm complaining. Aaah, such a pretty man.



Hey! The actual poster can be viewed on Angel's website (which is en Espagnol, haaaaay, what a turn on). When you get there, just click on Galeria on the menu and scroll down for Portadas. In the poster, you get to see a nippy! Shempre it got me all hot and bothered, how embarassing.

all I needed was a little black raincloud and I'd be getting some honey

How opportune. While at the MRT today, a gust of wind nearly carried me off. I had to hide behind a pillar. While it's not quite the breeze I expected, it certainly was not funny. Not to me, at least.