Author: Dominic Dayta
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Quarantine Journals: The Unbearable Silence of Quarantine
The original deadline for the first instituted lockdown has passed, and when I’m writing this we are already on the second day of extended quarantine. And yet mass testing has only started – or is about to start – for several cities around the country. The quarantine may have bought us some time, but we’ve…
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Quarantine Journals: Thinking About Trolls
Who has a troll farm? I’m not pointing fingers. But the global consensus seems to be that they do exist, and they’re making significant waves politically in a world that’s becoming increasingly dependent on the internet. It’s only a matter of time before the concept enters our lexicon. The troll farms have come, and it…
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Quarantine Journals: Reading Albert Camus’s “The Plague” (Part 2)
Some dispatches from quarantine: it appears that countries around the world have taken note of China’s draconian measures towards containing the virus from its hotspot in Wuhan. Borders are closing. Communities are locked down. This quarantine has made hermits of us all. Unless, of course, we’re talking about the Philippines, whose politicians have so far…
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Quarantine Journals: Reading Albert Camus’s “The Plague”
With Manila entering a rather militaristic community quarantine, I find my Saturday morning suddenly freed up. Naturally my first instinct is to pick up a book from my personal library and while away the hours perched on the bed with a hot cup of coffee. And to think we’re supposed to be in a state…
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(Re-)Reading: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
(Featured image: Murakami collage via 99designs.) I call it the Murakami reset: everytime my reading habit starts to slip (which since I moved from being college boy to corporate slave has become quite frequent) I do a cold reboot by reading something by Murakami (Haruki – though, I’m also a big fan of the other…
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Of Human Designs
The previous year ended in what can only be accurately called a turbulence. I spent the last quarter, from October to December, moving from one place to next, mostly up north, so much that I doubt I got to sleep in my own bed for any longer than half a week. Towards the end of…
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Reading on Planes, Confrontations with White Men
Lately I’ve come to appreciate the calm joy of reading aboard a flight. More-so when I realize that until July of last year I had hardly even stepped inside a plane in my life (technically a lie, as my mother has told me I’d flown before, though that was at an age early enough for…
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In the Mood for a Rewatch
I’ve had the main theme to Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love (2000) stuck in my head for about a week now. The music just pops up, and goes on playing in repeat for hours, until some other thought or activity interrupts. Unfortunately the music lends itself very well to repetition: a rhythmic…
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Borgesian Flowcharts, Girls in Ticket Booths
A friend of mine recently (just last week, actually) questioned whether it was at all proper for me to be featuring queer characters center-stage in my fiction when I’m a hundred-eighty-degree straight myself. Those who’ve been around during my early starts at publishing know that my very first published story, How My Brother Leon Brought…
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READING: Disappearing Asian Wives
Book review of Wang Ting-Kuo’s “My Enemy’s Cherry Tree”. Asian writers seem to have an obsession with disappearing wives.
Dominic Dayta 