I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. The impulse to write has always been as primal—as inevitable—to me as the impulse to breathe. Below is an index of some of the things I’ve written through the years, and occasionally, updates about the goings-on in my life.
The following is from a draft written in 2015 or thereabouts, inspired, if memory serves me right, by the opening scene of Pasternak's Dr Zhivago. In the...
1 I'm in the second year of my masters (whew!) and I'm currently taking a seminar course where my professor asked me to present at the end...
The stream runs quietly through the valley, my face red From the wine hides behind the shadow of a mulberry tree. The afternoon sun is gentle, unlike...
Quand il miaule, on l’entend à peine
ἥκω Διὸς παῖς ... λοχευθεῖσ᾽ ἀστραπηφόρῳ πυρί Eur., The Bacchae
1 Last week while reading Hungerford for my algebra class I got stuck on a theorem in an early section on groups where he proves that a...
1 I can’t remember the last time I spent Sunday morning on a sunny chair over some coffee and oranges, cracking the pastry slowly, as if careful...
The fluorescent light at the end of the walkway cutting through the Enterprise Center was blinking eerily when I got to it last night. I had to...
In his eight-century treatise De Causa Humanis, Deodatus of Trebizond, philosopher and Cabbalist, tells of a lie as old as human consciousness: that all men die but...
I wake up every day feeling I’m one step closer to ruin, wondering if this might be the day I fall down the abyss at last, the...
Should I call you brother, child or friend? I knew of you only when you died. Before that you were just a name, my life a catalogue...
L’enfer, c’est les autres. Or so I thought. The previous months, however, locked up in a box while the world around me breathed its last breath, has...
After Ezra K. Although this is not a post about ghost shoez.
I had dreams of becoming a monk when I was younger. I fancied myself equal to the task, too, even if I barely understood what monastery life...
Le vent se lève, &c.
Escreveu estas linhas nos seus últimos sete dias aqui no mundo. Ninguém sabe se ele morreu, e o seu pai dizem a quem quer escutar, que «ele...
Ele é fadista: nasceu na Madeira, cresceu e envelheceu no Porto, tinha também, de acordo com o que diziam os relatórios desse tempo, os olhos de Deus....
Karásek is one of the main figures in Czech modernist poetry, particular the Czech Decadent movement of the early twentieth century. Below is a Tagalog translation, rather...
How she disturbed us, Touching her little breasts with her white little Hands that smelled of perfumed water, a queasy Reverence made almost nostalgic by the heat...
1 Everything is sacred The heat was the first thing one remembered. The manycolored buildings fading silently in the dusk, the shirtless bigbellied men roaming the streets,...
“How does it feel?” cries Bob Dylan. At 20, of course you don’t know the answer—you don’t care about the answer (this is more important). Maybe that...
1 Lula Carry me home in an oxcart Crying mad “Is there more, is there more?” Tolling the bells resolutely Waiting for people who won’t come anymore—...
This is a translation of the poem Земля хотя и не родная by Anna Akhmatova. The original poem can be found here.
Leafing through my notebooks from three or four years back, I feel a certain vertigo in recognising in their pages the self I once was, and which...
La muerte de Carlos Gómez Álava en 1988 le mereció un breve obituario en la Revista Catalana de Literatura Extranjera, que resultó ser una enumeración innecesaria de...
It’s the year-end, the season for gifts and top ten lists. I figured I’ll make a top ten list myself, but since I don’t have the time...
A Note on the Translation. ‘Scent of Apples’ is a short story by the Filipino writer Bienvenido Santos. You can read the original story in English here....
While wasting away my weekend on Youtube I came across the wonderful little song “No te vayas de Zamboanga” (Don’t Leave Zamboanga) and was intrigued. The description...
What follows is not a review but an attempt to answer a question. Abbas Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry was first released in 1997 and won the...
Upon the very steps of Temple Hall, a fellow of outlandish appearance, and most indelicately attired,1 was engaged in proclaiming the imminent dissolution of the world. It...
Here is an account of the terrible fate that befell María San Nicolás de Montany’s brothers during the years 19— to 19—, retrieved from the parenthetical announcements...
The Monkey King is the ageless Sun Wokong. Unlike the West who saw the personification (viz. concretisation or de-abstraction or whatever) of evil in serpents, dragons, or...
1 Because his face was always somber, they had always mistaken him for a catholic. The boys would line up at the gate after school simply for...
Translated from the Chinese by Bai Ho-shen, with help from Catherine So.
Pars I Three taps on the door. The shuffling, as it is, of distant mercuries in powder. Smoke: outside. His secretary, the Oxonian Mary, who until now...
He was waiting for me on the porch of my grandmother’s house, humming disconsolate bars from the Girl from Ipanema, staring with his silent, glaucous eyes, with...
The toughs of one world were first chronicled in their epic glory by Borges. The toughs of another Borges only saw glimpses of, glimpses which he shared...
Nietzsche in Section 40 of Beyond Good and Evil talks of masks: 40. Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure...