Would you date Junot Díaz? Take a look at his online dating profile
He really did say ‘Plátano’ for ethnicity, for the record.
By ANGIE ROMERO & ROMINA PUGA
The Pulitzer Prize-winner with the potty mouth known as Junot Díaz is releasing his new collection of short stories next week, and we couldn’t be more excited. As its title would suggest, This is How You Lose Her is all about loving and losing. Hard.
“Yes, I had been waiting for the Lord … but for Him to come through for me with a job, a plan, anything that came up, just something more than waiting on the Lord. “Waiting on the Lord” can become cliché quite quickly, but I began to finally see what my grandpa meant--“When you pray, pray to know Christ.” I had an agenda each time I prayed. My prayers did not reveal a satisfaction in God but a dissatisfaction with Him. I knew I could trust Him, but I prayed as though my plans were wiser and better than His. I prayed as though I did not trust Him.”
—Larissa Peters
Spoken word artist Advocate of Wordz has a thing for food and sex
Who you calling a poet?
It’s not that Advocate of Wordz had a lack of material to work with. For years, the Bronx-bred writer/performer (whose real name is Erik Maldonado) has been putting his feelings down on paper.
To Read When Emptiness Fills You
Your need is universal. Someone wants someone and that someone probably wants someone else too. It is okay to feel tired. It is okay to want to pour all your love to another person’s hand because you have too much left in your pocket. Someday, someone will read you right, look you straight in your eyes and before you even say a word, that person will say, “I know.” Someday, all those films will make sense. You will finally understand that their plots have been made with one person in mind. You will find him. Or he will find you. In the end, you’ll get to the day when all the pavements will be filled with lights and there will be no room left for hesitation. One day, you will know. You will kiss someone and they will smile and tell you that you taste like forever and you, trust me, you will tear up because his mouth will taste like the ocean you once dreamt of drowning in. He will collect your tears, put it in a mason jar to let you know that he keeps every possible part of you. Believe. Believe that this waiting is for something that is beyond any of the heartbreaks you’ve counted on your fingers, that one day all their names will fade like a washed-out newspaper and someone will stand out like a neon light. Trust that someday, someone will make you believe that you are enough, that you don’t need to act cold and distant and loneliness is a subject you have graduated from because he holds you together and he keeps you warm and he lets you be. Imagine how beautiful that is. He lets you be so you become.
Peony in Love
by Lisa See
“When people are alive, they love. When they die, they keep loving.” This book is as gentle as a flower yet as intricate as Chinese embroidery.
In seventeenth-century China , in an elaborate villa on the shores of Hangzhou’s West Lake, Peony lives a sheltered life. One night, during a theatrical performance in her family’s garden, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man and is immediately overcome with emotion. So begins Peony’s unforgettable journey of love and destiny, desire and sorrow, the living world and the afterworld. Eventually expelled from all she’s known, Peony is in thrust into a realm where hungry ghosts wander the earth, written words have the power to hurt and kill, and dreams are as vivid as waking life.
Lisa See’s novel, based on actual historical events, evokes vividly another time and place—where three generations of women become enmeshed in a dramatic story, uncover past secrets and tragedies, and learn that love can transcend death. Peony in Love will make you ache in heart and mind for young Peony and all the women of the world who want to be heard.
I think this whole day led to a revelation of what kind of person I want to be. Call it my New Year’s resolution(s). It’s a rough outline, but I think God’s putting this idea in my head. My apologies if this sounds poorly written, but I’m literally meditating on this as I type. I want to be:
- someone with creative pursuits with the mind that He has provided
- to be able to provide for my beloved family that He had graciously put me in
- not identified with the life of a sinner, but at least one of a devout Christian. Though we find ways to inevitably sin, let my heart start to break more for what breaks His. To stop justifying everything just because I come up with a few lazy excuses.
- Shine His light across nations because I love Him as He loves me
- to not fall down before the feet of those who trespass against me
- to be able to talk about Him even more instead of just saying “I can do it”
- able to find time and more opportunities to do QT
- knowledgeable in the scripture and His Word.
Let this identity, my confidence, and my will be strong, and my faith concrete.
Book Boyfriends
I’m starting to get overly-hooked with the idea of having books as alternative for boyfriends. Or, should I restate my thoughts as, being ecstatic with the fact that I’m falling in love with fictional characters. :) Lol! I’m fixated with this novel called Easy by Tammara Webber, wherein the guy protagonist is not the typical- fiction guy we’ve always known.Lucas is a bad-ass boy with tattooed arms and lip ring, but don’t be deceived by his facade, because there’s a lot more to dig about him, aside from his hot bod and smoldering gray-blue eyes. Ugh. I’ve never been attracted with bad boys, but with Lucas’, it’s a different thing. Haha!
So, Goodreads have this genre called Book Boyfriends, and most of the novels I’ve read so far since the start of 2013 belonged to this genre. Should you check it out yourself and start to get hooked with it too! Can’t wait to make a review about my latest read though. :)
If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
“I love her for her smile — her look — her way
Of speaking gently — for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and Certes’ brought
A sense of pleasant case on such a day,” —
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee — and love, so wrought
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry —
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and those thy love thereby
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Though mayst love on, through love’s eternity
Poem by: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, circa 1850
Today I woke up and thought that happiness is not nearly as easy as being a choice than it is a decision. I’ve figured it is not that simple, that you can’t tell someone to “be happy” because it’s the only way to be, because you want it so you choose it. I’ve figured that what I need to decide on is to survive, to live each and every day. I am not striving for happiness. It is not my end prize. It is more fleeting than pain if I think about it. I want to feel every emotion there is but be able to say at the end of the day that it is after all a good life. I want to finish it feeling I’ve done enough, that I need the hurt and the burden to make me stronger. I don’t want to “be happy.” I want to get hurt, be anxious, be sad, be excited, get emotional, go on adventures, feel exhilarated, be alone and not alone, joyous and morose. And then every day I’ll choose to stay. Only by then I could say that I have lived a full life with a stronger head and a resilient heart.
