Romeo + Juliet

Who doesn't love the bittersweet love story of literature's  most famous couple, Romeo & Juliet? Well I for one do. I've read the original play, watched three of the made movies, some over and over. I've come to know and have memorized scenes and lines by heart. Usually, I'm all about happy endings, still, I do love a great tragedy. "For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo." I love best how Baz Luhrmann has retold it in his 1996 masterpiece, Romeo + Juliet. The contemporary setting and the original dialogue amazingly went well together. I found the classic story much richer and profound through that film. That movie will always be my favorite Romeo and Juliet. So I'm posting here the lines of my (everyone's) favorite part from Act II Scene II.

ROMEO 

    But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? 

    It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. 

    Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, 

    Who is already sick and pale with grief, 

    That thou her maid art far more fair than she: 

    Be not her maid, since she is envious; 

    Her vestal livery is but sick and green 

    And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. 

    It is my lady, O, it is my love! 

    O, that she knew she were! 

JULIET 

    Ay me! 

ROMEO 

    She speaks: 

    O, speak again, bright angel!

JULIET 

    O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? 

    Deny thy father and refuse thy name; 

    Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, 

    And I'll no longer be a Capulet. 

ROMEO 

    [Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this? 

JULIET 

    'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; 

    Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. 

    What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, 

    Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part 

    Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! 

    What's in a name? that which we call a rose 

    By any other name would smell as sweet; 

    So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, 

    Retain that dear perfection which he owes 

    Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, 

    And for that name which is no part of thee 

    Take all myself. 

ROMEO 

    I take thee at thy word: 

JULIET 

    Art thou not Romeo and a Montague? 

ROMEO 

    Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike. 

JULIET 

    How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? 

    The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, 

    And the place death, considering who thou art, 

    If any of my kinsmen find thee here. 

ROMEO 

    With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls; 

    For stony limits cannot hold love out, 

    And what love can do that dares love attempt; 

    Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me. 

JULIET 

    If they do see thee, they will murder thee. 

ROMEO 

    I have night's cloak to hide me from their sight; 

    And but thou love me, let them find me here: 

    My life were better ended by their hate, 

    Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love. 

JULIET 

    Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, 

    Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek 

    For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night 

    Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny 

    What I have spoke: but farewell compliment! 

    Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say 'Ay,' 

    And I will take thy word: yet if thou swear'st, 

    Thou mayst prove false; O gentle Romeo, 

    If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully: 

ROMEO 

    Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear 

    That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops-- 

JULIET 

    O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, 

    That monthly changes in her circled orb, 

    Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. 

ROMEO 

    What shall I swear by? 

JULIET 

    Do not swear at all; 

    Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, 

    Which is the god of my idolatry, 

    And I'll believe thee. 

ROMEO 

    If my heart's dear love-- 

JULIET 

    Well, do not swear: although I joy in thee, 

    I have no joy of this contract to-night: 

    It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; 

    Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be 

    Ere one can say 'It lightens.' Sweet, good night! 

    This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, 

    May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. 

    Good night, good night!

ROMEO 

    O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? 

JULIET 

    What satisfaction canst thou have to-night? 

ROMEO 

    The exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine. 

JULIET 

    I gave thee mine before thou didst request it!

    Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed. 

    If that thy bent of love be honourable, 

    Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow, 

    By one that I'll procure to come to thee, 

    Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite; 

    And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay 

    And follow thee my lord throughout the world. 

Nurse 

    [Within] Juliet! 

JULIET 

    By and by I come.--But if thou mean'st not well, 

    I do beseech thee-- 

Nurse 

    [Within] Juliet! 

JULIET 

    By and by, I come:-- 

    To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief: 

    To-morrow will I send. 

ROMEO 

    So thrive my soul-- 

JULIET 

   A thousand times good night! 

ROMEO 

    A thousand times the worse, to want thy light. 

    Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books, 

    But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. 

JULIET 

    Romeo! 

    At what o'clock shall I send to thee? 

ROMEO 

    At the hour of nine. 

JULIET 

    I will not fail: 'tis twenty years till then.

    Good night, good night! parting is such 

    sweet sorrow, 

    That I shall say good night till it be morrow. 

*the young Leonardo diCaprio & Claire Danes brought so much sweetness to these classic words. so love!

Waking Life~

One of the most beautifully written movie for me is 'Before Sunset'. I absolutely love that movie, watched it over and over again. Most people find it boring since it's just the two of them talking and walking and talking... but for someone like me - a hopeless romantic, undeniably a sentimental fool and a lover of words - it just perfect and wonderful, and most unforgettable. So when I heard this song, they always play it at my favorite cafe, I knew it sounded familiar. The song was not really a song. It's a bit like Baz Luhrmann's 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), there's two people talking along with the music. Their conversation was dreamy and wonderful. I knew it sounded familiar because the two people were Jesse and Celine, but it was not from Before Sunset, but from another movie from the same director, Waking Life. I tried to find that song that's not really a song but I couldn't. But I did find this, it's their conversation....


Jessie: I keep thinking about something you said.
Celine: Something I said?
Yeah. About how you often feel like you're observing your life from the perspective of an old woman about to die. You remember that?
Yeah. I still feel that way sometimes. Like I'm looking back on my life. Like my waking life is her memories.
Exactly. I heard that Tim Leary said as he was dying that he was looking forward to the moment when his body was dead but his brain was still alive. You know how they say that there's still six to twelve minutes of brain activity after everything else is shutdown. And a second of dream consciousness, right, well, that's infinitely longer than a waking second. You know what I'm saying?
Oh, yeah, definitely. For example, I wake up and it's 10:12, and then I go back to sleep and I have those long, intricate, beautiful dreams that seem to last for hours, and then I wake up and it's ... 10:13.
Yeah, exactly. So then six to twelve minutes of brain activity, I mean, that could be your whole life. I mean, you are that woman looking back over everything.
Okay, so what if I am? Then what would you be in all that?
Whatever I am right now. I mean, yeah, maybe I only exist in your mind. I'm still just as real as anything else.
Yeah. I've been thinking also about something you said.
What's that?
Just about reincarnation and where all the new souls come from over time. Everybody always say that they've been the reincarnation of Cleopatra or Alexander the Great. I always want to tell them they were probably some dumb fuck like everybody else. I mean, it's impossible. Think about it. The world population has doubled in the past 40 years, right? So if you really believe in that ego thing of one eternal soul, then you have only 50% chance of your soul being over 40. And for it to be over 150 years old, then it's only one out of six.
Right, so what are you saying? That reincarnation doesn't exist, or that we're all young souls like where half of us are first round humans?
No, no. What I'm trying to say is that somehow I believe reincarnation is just a - a poetic expression of what collective memory really is. There was this article by this biochemist that I read not long ago, and he was talking about how when a member of our species is born, it has a billion years of memory to draw on. And this is where we inherit our instincts.
I like that. It's like there's this whole telepathic thing going on that we're all a part of, whether we're conscious of it or not. That would explain why there are all these, you know, seemingly spontaneous, worldwide, innovative leaps in science, in the arts. You know, like the same results poppin' up everywhere, y'know, independent of each other. Some guy on a computer, he figures something out, and then almost simultaneously a bunch of other people all over the world figure out the same thing. They did this study. They isolated a group of people over time, and they monitored their abilities at crossword puzzles, right, in relation to the general population. And they secretly gave them a day-old crossword, one that had already been answered by thousands of other people, right. And their scores went up dramatically, like 20 percent. So it's like once the answers are out there, people can pick up on 'em. It's like we're all telepathically sharing our experiences.


It's beautiful don't you think? I dream of conversations like these...well, someday. ♥

One Love, One Lifetime

*i read this first back in high school, when i was young and stupid about love. i'm much the same still, only less stupid (i hope so.) but i digress. way back when, i loved this article with all my young romantic heart. i even adapted it to Filipino and in my own love story. it didn't turn out well as you might have guessed. and now i'm revisiting it. wondering if it'll have the same effect on me...


by Quickmelt
(as published in PDI's YoungBlood section, circa 1990s)

In the sixteenth summer of my life I fell in love for the first time. Naturally, I had no idea what I was getting into. Youth, for all its freshness and vigor, does not have the wisdom of past experience. And so it was that I was very ill-equipped when Cupid's arrows first struck. I still had fairy-tale notions of love: Boy likes girl, girl likes boy, boy and girl pledge undying love for each other, and they live happily ever after. I only had to find my Prince Charming, and everything would be smooth sailing. I was young and invincible. No sadness could touch me, especially in the arena of romance.

To young people finding themselves drawn to someone for the first time, everthing is wonderful and new. I once read that love is like God's finger on your shoulders. Every beautiful thing in the world feels like it was made solely for your enjoyment, like a gift chosen with only you in mind. Perhaps the greatest of all these gifts is the sound of your heart catching in your throat at the sight of a boy smiling at you as though you, too, were a gift he cannot quite thank God enough for.

When I look back at the days when I was all giddy with that first discovery of love, I find that the grass was greener, the air was fresher and even the sun was kinder, not sending its rays down to punish my back on sweltering afternoons, like it does now, but bathing me in its radiance so that I had the morning sunshine in my smile. The splendor of creation, the marvel of life — I had never tasted them more fully than when I had a heart grateful for the first touch of love. It felt like I had the whole world in my hands, the power to do whatever I pleased, in my own sweet time as soon as I had finished attending to greater things at hand, such as the business of love. My prince had come on his white charger, to rescue me from my ordinary, solitary existence. Suddenly, I had someone to hold my hand. It was bliss. It was ecstasy. I was madly, deeply, truly in love.

I thought my happiness was without end. I thought that since we had naturally gravitated toward each other, it would be a simple thing to get together and be sweethearts until our hearts gave out in our golden years. Of natural causes, not of exhaustion, like I don't feel like loving you anymore. Of a coronary disease, maybe, not some mysterious happenstance, like where is the love we used to know?

Where did it go? I don't know. Maybe it was too beautiful to last. Maybe the deities who bestowed this wondrous gift on me decided they could not extend their generosity any further. Maybe it wasn't love at all. Maybe it was merely a sweet but insignificant friendship, that in my romantic delusion I had exaggerated into a grand love affair. Years of sleepless nights, countless tears and endless soul searching have given me no answers.

But if it wasn't love, what could it possibly have been? What was it that made me feel his presence like no other, day after day, month after month, year after year? He would walk into a room and my attention would immediately be riveted to him, like an oarsman in the dead of night fixing his eyes on a lighthouse miles and miles away. I would see him come out of a building, and my eyes would light up like incandescent bulbs. He would smile at me and I'd melt, quicker than you can say quickmelt. He would grant me the privilege of his company, and like a kitten I would purr contentedly in my master's lap. I would see him over the weekend, and no amount of stress could ruin my happiness for two weeks thereafter. He would talk to me for a while, and I'd panic for lack of something appropriate to say, and my tongue would fall back in my throat and stay there for the rest of the conversation almost asphyxiating me. He would narrate some anecdote, and I could recite it from memory many months after everyone else had forgotten it. He would crack one of his numerous jokes and I'd laugh like a hyena, loving the sound of his voice, more than the sound of my own laughter. He would open his mouth to say something, and I would hear the loveliest music and feel my face glow with intense satisfaction, like when my father used to take me to the supermarket to pick as many Dole pineapple juice off the shelves as I cared.

Even to this day, when I have successfully convinced myself and unsuccessfully convinced my friends that I have fallen out of love with him, I cannot help but cast one last glance in his direction every time he says goodbye and starts to walk away to an existence entirely separate from my own. I keep my eyes on him until the last hair on his head is out of sight, trying to preserve every detail of his appearance in my memory until the time I will see him again.

I loved his smile most of all. It must have been the same smile Noah had upon seeing the rainbow after the Great Flood. Swirling masses of dark clouds and slowly, one by one, little fingers of light coalesce to reveal a brilliant arc of colored light in the sky. I remember how he used to smile at me when we'd pass each other in the school corridors. Reflexively I'd smile back, grinning like silly, my meager dimples stretched up to my ears, my face dangerously close to splitting. He'd give me that dazzling smile of his and everything would stop just like that. It was as if the world had ceased to exist; it was only me and him: his glistening retainers the vertiginous dance of my heart. When they said money can't buy happiness, they must have meant the happiness that comes with first love.

He gave me the greatest happiness as well as the greatest sadness of my young life. The times when he made me feel most loved will always be like commemorative gold coins in mint condition in my mind. When you hear your heart beat in unison with another even for the most fleeting moment, that's one moment you will never forget.

I fell apart when it finally became clear that we weren't getting anywhere, at least not together and that our great love affair was only being carried on in my imagination. Love is a woman's existence, and mine became totally disordered. I could not sleep. I could not eat. I could not study. I could not do anything but think of him. I cannot imagine it now, but there was a time when my every thought was of him. I would be praying and I'd think of him, and then I'd pray, "Please God, I love him. Please let him love me again." I would be eating, and then I'd recall some meal we had taken together in some restaurant I cannot enter now without him beside me again. I would be studying, and I'd remember mechanically doing my homework. I would be sleeping, and if I so much as dreamt of his shadow, I'd be sleepless for days afterwards. I would be looking at the stars in the sky, and then I'd recite that childhood rhyme: Starlight, star bright/ first, second, third, ad infinitum star I saw tonight, please grant me his love anew. I would be living my life in the present, then I'd think of him and suddenly I'd want to live the past all over again. Once I nearly tore off the tuning knob from the radio, switching stations because one song kept on playing on the airwaves, telling this is your story, when I was desperately trying to put a semblance of normality in my life (and trying to cram for my finals).

Two years down the line, I discovered tennis and took out my frustration on the hapless, fuzzy, yellow balls. In no time at all, I had an excellent serve, but alas, I could not master the groundstrokes.

I pined for him until I could pine no longer. I kept my life empty for the longest time so that he could freely re-enter anytime he wished. Now I realize that this was a great disservice to myself. In my great, tragic love for this person I had forgotten to love myself and became a victim of my own neglect. Buth then in the anguished lives the young lead, they need drama commensurate to their hormonal levels, and my drama was wasting away for a boy I had lost, I guess, to college education.

Through it all I loved him very much. I love him so much that, as the cliche goes, I could not deny him his happiness. If he was happier with someone else, so be it. If he was happier with me as only a friend, so be it. Though it sometimes felt like I had a wound in my heart, it didn't matter, I loved him anyway. After a while, it didn't matter that he didn't love me in return, I loved him anyway. When he'd wonder if there was a girl out there for him, I could scarcely stop myself from screaming, "Here I am, you doofus, no need to go far." When he did ask me for any favors to my inconvenience, I would whine inside but my brain would be in a frenzy cancelling appointments so I could be at his beck and call. I loved him so much I felt it was such a massive injustice, tyranny even, that I could not have him, when I was probably the one who loved him most, after his mother. I would never let any harm come to him. Touch a hair on his head and I'd metamorphose into the Incredible Hulk and kill you.

Call it stupidity, call it insanity, call it obsession, call it infatuation, call it whatever you want, it was love, sweet bittersweet love. With love, as with faith, if you believe that's justification enough, no explanation is necessary. If you do not, no explanation is possible. When you are blessed enough to love, it will change you in so many ways you can never be the same again.

Love means different things to different people, different things at different times. LIke everything, it changes. It waxes and wanes like the moon.

In all my years of loving one boy with all the love my heart could hold, I learned that no matter where I went, no matter what I did, no matter who I was with, there was only one person for me, no matter if he long ago ceased to feel the same way. It was not his fault that I was so unhappy for so long, it was simply my misfortune, my cross to carry. In spite of everything, I am a better person, and I will forever be indebted to him for teaching me how it is to love. Never mind that his teaching was done mostly in absentia. I madly, deeply, truly loved him. I hope never to dishonor that love by engaging in cheap flings with whoever catches my fancy at the moment.

To me love is not a conquest, much less one conquest after another. Conquest denotes subjugation, a submission to a more powerful will. You do not make a person submit to your will and mold him as you see fit to make him more lovable in your eyes. You love him for what he is. You do not gloss over his imperfections, you learn to live with his flaws. You do not brag to your friends that he is yours for the taking, there is no place for braggadocio in love. You wait instead anxiously for the next time he tells you he loves you, no matter if it may never happen and in the meantime the uncertainty is making you miserable. You do not lead him on with empty displays of affection. You do not boost his ego with false praises, only to give him the ultimate put-down by taking him for a fool. You find yourself speechless with admiration and fear that the slightest touch will betray the depth of your emotion. You do not cry foul when you see that the course of love has not gone according to your fervent wishes. You do not bawl at him, "How dare you tell me you love me, take my heart, and then disappear from my life." You do not demand the return of glorious days long past. You do not blame him for your shattered illusions and waylaid dreams and least of all for your broken heart. Even in the lowest troughs of self-pity and despair, you cannot bring youself to cause him the slightest grief. You would rather die than give him the slightest hint that he has anything to do with your unhappiness. Love bears all– maybe not always with a smile that's big enough for all the world to see, but just one that's brave enough to tell him it's okay, you'll live so he doesn't have to feel bad.

It is never easy to lay open the door to your heart, because love and rejection get in the same way. Love is not for the faint-hearted. I loved once, and years later I am still reeling from it. Having survived one heartbreak has not lessened my fear of going through another. Thus I envy people who can plunge headlong into relationships after but just some tentative attempts at getting to know another person. I envy people who can meet strangers and shortly afterward declare that they were meant for each other. I envy those who are not afraid to go after their happiness and damn the consequences. I envy people who can go from conquest to conquest without feeling diminished by it.

I can never be like them. I don't think like them. Once you've tasted manna from heaven, why bother with bread from the baker? Nothing compares with it.

Until God sends me my angel on earth to love and to cherish forever, I will be content to be alone. I have learned to swallow my loneliness like a bitter pill, hoping that my good behavior will make fate smile at me and say, "Here is the one for you. Live happily ever after, your name is written on his heart."

One love, one lifetime — that is my hope. Not one conquest after another. As Sting says, that's not the shape of my heart.


#


*sigh*

TIME Magazine’s 100 Best All-Time Novels

being the dedicated bookworm that i am, i was delighted to see this list. especially to find my two most beloved book included. of course i'm talking about the books written by the two greatest author of all-time, BFFs JRR Tolkien & CS Lewis. who else? anyway, i've only read few in this list (those in bold). some i want to read (those italicized). most i haven't even heard of. so i guess i'm not that much of a bookworm. but hopefully, before i die i'd be able to read all of these great books. then maybe, i'll just make a list of my own. haha.

so here's the list, in alphabetical order. i've got it from here:
http://tinyurl.com/time100books

The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow

All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren

American Pastoral
Philip Roth

An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser

Animal Farm
George Orwell

Appointment in Samarra
John O'Hara

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume

The Assistant
Bernard Malamud

At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien

Atonement
Ian McEwan

Beloved
Toni Morrison

The Berlin Stories
Christopher Isherwood

The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler

The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh

The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder

Call It Sleep
Henry Roth

Catch-22
Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess

The Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron

The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon

A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell

The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West

Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather

A Death in the Family
James Agee

The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen

Deliverance
James Dickey

Dog Soldiers
Robert Stone

Falconer
John Cheever

The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles

The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing

Go Tell it on the Mountain
James Baldwin

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers

The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene

Herzog
Saul Bellow

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson


A House for Mr. Biswas
V.S. Naipaul

I, Claudius
Robert Graves

Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace

Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison

Light in August
William Faulkner

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
C.S. LEWIS

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov

Lord of the Flies
William Golding

THE LORD OF THE RINGS
J.R.R. TOLKIEN

Loving
Henry Green

Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis

The Man Who Loved Children
Christina Stead

Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie

Money
Martin Amis

The Moviegoer
Walker Percy

Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf

Naked Lunch
William Burroughs

Native Son
Richard Wright

Neuromancer
William Gibson

Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro

1984
George Orwell

On the Road
Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey

The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski

Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov

A Passage to India
E.M. Forster

Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion

Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth

Possession
A.S. Byatt

The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark

Rabbit, Run
John Updike

Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow

The Recognitions
William Gaddis

Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett

Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates

The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles

Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut

Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson

The Sot-Weed Factor
John Barth

The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

The Sportswriter
Richard Ford

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
John le Carre

The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston

Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee

To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf

Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller

Ubik
Philip K. Dick

Under the Net
Iris Murdoch

Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry

Watchmen
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

White Noise
Don DeLillo

White Teeth
Zadie Smith

Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys

*if you've read some of the titles here, share with me what's the books about...

cheers to books, to the people who write them, to us who read them, and to people who makes list like this! :)