Windhill Journal

After a long, long hiatus from blogging, I’m unsure where to start. Should I start with the mixed duffel bag of books I’ve read of the last four months? Maybe I’ll write about finding a new exercise routine, through dance workouts and swimming. Maybe I’ll discuss tossing away, cold-turkey, a ten-year cannabis habit to the wayside. I’m feeling rusty, but I’ve got to re-develop the writing muscles, so instead of taking myself too seriously, I’ll treat the Windhill Journal as my writer’s gym. If I can maintain discipline in going to an actual gym five times a week, I can bust out a blog post or two like I used to. Easy.

That said, here’s a comprehensive list of the books I’ve enjoyed over the last eight months:

• Frank Herbert’s Dune works (Dune, Messiah, Children, God-Emperor, Heretics, and Chapterhouse)
• Cebu by Filipino-American writer Peter Bacho
• The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
• Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance)
• Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by American humorist David Sedaris
• New Teeth by Simon Rich, a humorist for The New Yorker
• Calculating God by Canadian sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer
• Jaws by American author and marine activist Peter Benchley
• A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by British novelist Marina Lewycka
• Noli Me Tangere by Filipino writer Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines
• The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey & co-writer Michaela Angela Davis
• Blind Owl by Iranian writer Sadeq Hedayat
• The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic by Filipino writer and journalist Nick Joaquin
• Circe by American novelist Madeline Miller
• Mort by English fantasy author and satirist Terry Pratchett
• The Ritual by English horror novelist Adam Nevill
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, American novelist

At first glance, I’d like to recognize my own variety in reading material – it’s a variety of wild species, struggling to be free of the muck in my mind. Eventually, this kaleidoscope of works will reach the bottom of that pit, and fertilize the earth underneath, hopefully sprouting out some good writing in the end. Somehow, I’d love to pen a short story or two I don’t revile, and send those off to literary journals or magazines. We’ll worry about that particular dream in 2024.

Not on the list but must be mentioned is Jorge Luis Borges’ anthology of writings, Labyrinths, which is shaping up to be one of those really important works in my library. I’d have to thank Clifford Lee Sargent at Better Than Food for this glowing recommendation. Chris Via, of Leaf by Leaf, says Borges is almost unreviewable on his channel, due to his personal awe of and reverence to the writing. At first reading, to me Borges felt too ethereal, too immaterial, too complex a universe for me to simply dive into. Since then, I’ve been savoring Labyrinths over the course of a few months, reading one or two stories every few weeks. It feels like the correct way to digest Borges. They say you can’t rush greatness; I want to be savoring Borges for awhile. Off the top of my head, “The House of Asterion” and “The Immortal” are two personal favorites, what are some of yours?

On another note, Filipino literature is holding a large portion of my mental space; Jose Rizal, Nick Joaquin and F. Sionil Jose’s stories stand out in this year’s selection. I’m wanting to delve more into the Philippines’ writing, particularly because my motherland really kicked up their revolution against Western colonialism via a novelist’s nationalist, semi-fictional ideas. Because Rizal was educated in Madrid, Noli Me Tangere (and it’s sequel El Filibusterismo, a wonderfully bourgeoisie novel title) was originally published in the Spanish language; a contextual necessity for the intended target market but arguably reductive based on the autonomist content. But as they say, write for your audience; Rizal’s works have gone on to become classic Philippine literature, so at this point, the language debate is moot. Any other great suggestions for Filipino literature in English (translations are fine, since reading Tagalog short circuits my comprehension) would be appreciated.

Lastly, science fiction painted large swaths in my year’s reading menu; notable works being Frank Herbert’s six Dune books and Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. Reading the Dune series might be my proudest reading achievement this year, but I enjoyed Vandermeer’s iteration on biological sci-fi and cosmic horror immensely. To transport myself into the intimate dread of the mystifying Area X, I curated a playlist out of Nobuo Uematsu’s Final Fantasy VII Original Soundtrack. Parallels can be drawn between both works, with their themes of environmentalism, government, and the mutation of the persona. Uematsu was the optional gold tinge in a great literary experience, letting me osmose finer details that were in conversation with the videogame. For the interested, check out the playlist below:

• “Desert Wasteland”
• “Listen to the Cries of the Planet”
• “The North Cave”
• “From the Edge of Despair”
• “Make Reactor”
• “Who…Are You?”
• “Who…Am I?”
• “Anxiety”
• “Shinra, Inc.”
• “Forested Temple”
• “The Nightmare Begins”
• “Mining Town”
• “On That Day, Five Years Ago…”
• “In Search of the Man in Black”
• “Those Chosen By the Planet”
• “Trail of Blood”
• “Infiltrating Shinra”

Anyway, I won’t end the blogpost with additional reading; it’s part of my practice in not being so serious with all this writing. Expect a little bit of an overhaul of the Windhill Journal, its content, formatting and indexing, by next year. TTFN.

(retroactively categorized to mixtapes)