Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 60

I had a pain in my knee so I went to a chiropractor.

I’ve had a pain in my right knee for several weeks. I strained it because I thought I was invincible. Like many people, I figured the pain would go away eventually, but after a couple of months I became concerned. Walking is my main physical exercise—taking long walks jogs the brain so it produces stories, […]

How fiction molds us, changes our beliefs, and promotes a deep morality

The Limited Edition Game of Thrones Moleskines have arrived at National Bookstores. No one joined our Summarize GoT for Newbies contest, so they’re all ours. Even the ones with lined pages, which we will use because we love the direwolves. The pocket-size notebook with Summer and Bran (unlined), Php1160. Hodor. We learn about honor and […]

Kitty, a short story for people who think they’re cats

Drogon says: Why, Chloe Sevigny, why didn’t you cast me in your film adaptation of Kitty? Kitty by Paul Bowles KITTY LIVED IN a medium-sized house with a big garden around it. She loved some things, like picnics and going to the circus, and she hated other things, like school and going to the dentist’s. […]

How a shut-in became Marcel Proust. If you’ve been trying to write a novel for years, this is a comforting read.

“It All Comes Together” How did Marcel Proust become a great writer? By Roland Barthes What is at play in this change is, as I see it, the following: all Proust’s writings preceding A la recherche are, to some degree, fragmentary and short—short stories, articles, scraps of texts. One has the impression that the ingredients […]

Better Call Saul Season 2: Jimmy tries to think inside the box, kicks through the box.

Jimmy is a master of the shortcut, the quick fix, thinking outside the box. The problem is that the law, by definition, is a box. Resourcefulness and inventiveness, the qualities that make him a good lawyer, are the same qualities that can get him disbarred. But Jimmy gives the legal profession a serious try, actually […]

Motto

X-Men: Apocalypse is expressionism, with mutants

What else can you do with the superhero movie? The Russo Brothers made a 1970s-style conspiracy thriller (Captain America: Winter Soldier), then an excellent fight movie that was really about friendship (Captain America: Civil War). (And friendship is worth fighting for, even more than money or power.) Bryan Singer has made a movie that recalls […]

Now What? (Or, It’s culture, stupid.)

Rigodon, an art installation by Leo Abaya showing the presidents of the Philippines as players on a chessboard. The people have spoken. Democracy has won. Why, then, have you fallen into this deep funk? It is not simply that your candidates lost. In truth you were not that attached to them, but the options were […]

“There is a brief time, between waking and sleep, when reality begins to warp.”

Spread from Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book There is a brief time, between waking and sleep, when reality begins to warp. Rigid conscious thought starts to dissolve into the gently lapping waves of early stage dreaming and the world becomes a little more hallucinatory, your thoughts a little more untethered. Known as the hypnagogic state, it […]

Courtship and the Market: Sexual freelancing in the gig economy

A FRIEND of mine complains about how many of the men she meets on Tinder use corporate language to chat her up. First, they “reach out.” Then, after spending the night together, they “follow up.” This kind of flirting is banal, but it makes sense. We constantly use economic metaphors to describe romantic and sexual […]