Millard, Madeon, and Malocclusions

Yesterday was my first day of summer and I present to you a follow-up of what has happened this March. Woo! By the way, the nouns making up my long and all-telling title do not relate to each other. I was just trying to bring in all the M's and I think I have failed. But it kind of does sum up my March 2013.

I was meant to publish this yesterday but it struck midnight and I was still typing like a madman, headphones on my head and reminiscing for the sake of blogging.

Warning: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children spoilers (avoidable if you skip the first part).

I. Millard

Last March 2 National Bookstore brought Tahereh Mafi to Manila for a book signing. And, guess what, I adored her! I met her! All the cute excitement and confectionery congeniality she displays on Twitter, Tumblr, etc. just blow up in an overwhelming flurry when you see/meet her in person. She was more than nice to listen to and I felt like she was both high-fiving and teasing each of us fans every time she would mention Chapter 62 from her Shatter Me trilogy's second book, Unravel Me. She was indubitably so beautiful and she has the warmest voice ever (but I already knew that). It was mind-blowing, and it still is, to stand right in front of her as she signed my copies. I didn't know if I was saying things right.

And Ransom Riggs went with.

Wow. And I mean wow... so I was so shocked and surprised as much as other people in the crowd were because he was there Ransom Riggs Miss Peregrine author is here woahwhattawhat (to support Tahereh no doubt). I was freaking out by the time he had settled in the room, facing the stage at first then beckoned to sit beside Tahereh under our scrutiny. 

To be frank, I was slightly angry at the host for inviting Ransom onstage. Although it was delightful and expected, I had a few moments when I was acting suspicious because I wanted to stay on the point and refer to the name of the event itself, pointing out that the book signing was Tahereh's and hers only. (Ransom was going to have his own event the following day, anyway.) But after a few minutes of introductions and questions about Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, I liked that he came onstage. There was a lukewarm touch to his wit and, well, presence. He also kept pushing the limelight back to Tahereh, and it made me happy to see how good friends they really were, forgetting the evidence of it online and seeing it with my own eyes. They both made jokes and the crowd got tangled up in them. Tahereh mentioned Harry Potter and manuscripts and eyelashes and coffee and different perceptions of beauty and Ransom went along with it with jeepneys and photography and have I said that it made me happy. Because it really did.

Both of them gave excellent advice to writers, too. Lots of Keep reading!s and I wanted to hug Ransom for "When I'm not reading a book, I can feel myself getting dumber." BECAUSE ISN'T THAT WHAT WE ALL FEEL SOMETIMES/ALWAYS. We feel you, sir Ransom, sir. Now shall I glomp you? (I'm gradually re-reading Perks because I love it and I don't want to feel dumb.) Tahereh signed my copy of Shatter Me and Unravel Me with Sharpie Read Ons and I can kiss her autograph if I want to. I told her I loved her prose and she told me I was so sweet and I wanted to be like, "Aw shucks, naw, you are!" but my lips were frozen on my face unless I forced them to move if she would like to add anything else. 

She and Ransom vocalized their admiration for my Audrey Hepburn T-shirt and I died and ascended to Geek Heaven. (Admittedly and sadly, I have never seen any of Audrey Hepburn's films, but I feel an affinity for her charm through photos and I am privileged to blame the influence of Sky Sailing's Sailboats/Adam Young and Glee's Kurt Hummel.)

To get to the point, here you go, this is Millard Nullings

FROM THE COLLECTION OF ROBERT JACKSON

and he is a peculiar, forever invisible and has always been. He uses logic quite a handful of times (I've been sensing a pattern, yeah), he keeps a record of everything on the island, and if you can't see him at all, well, he's nude.

Me: Let me love you, Nullings. Pls.

Ransom signed my Miss Peregrine copy and my thoughts went out on auto-pilot. I was shaking and I could feel warmth constricting my throat, and I have proof (that I will not provide!!!) that I looked just heavenly with the shiniest forehead on Earth. But, explain to me, how could I not quiver on the spot and flush when Ransom Riggs aka skillful photographer/great great great author (who has already sold more than a million copies of Miss Peregrine) was sitting in front of me, looking up at me babbling like I was giving me a diatribe (I hope I didn't give him a violent vibe.), and listening to each and every one of my words? I had just quickly chatted with the radiant Tahereh Mafi when I was swept to Ransom's side of the table and fumbled for things like sense and recollection of the mind and the mind itself. 

It went good. 

I told him how I reacted when Millard was shot, how I loved Run Rabbit Run (he informed me that it's actually a real song, much to my chagrin and amazement), and that was it. He said he forgot he even wrote the part when Emma started asking Millard questions to keep him conscious, and I think I nodded (or died).

After letting papa take a photo of us shortly after he signed, I hopped off the stage and didn't really care that I didn't get a photo with Tahereh or that I didn't do the Nerdfighter sign with Ransom. I was on the verge of weeping until finally I was crying on the way out of Glorietta 1's NBS because I sneaked a peek at what Ransom wrote as a dedication and here is a photo of it:

To either assure or scare you, I am still wailing on the inside. I knew he was listening to me the whole time, but the proof, the sight of it, makes me feel unbearably conscious that I feel less worthless. I know I'm just a reader, just a fan, but I hope he knows even just an inkling of how things like this mean to me. Because? It means the world to me.

II. Madeon

I googled Hugo Leclercq among the last days of February and given up to liking his music enough to reblog photos of him last February 28. I know it sounds like I want to know when I happen to like an artist - the date and even how and why - and I'm here to affirm that that's how I really am usually. A blog I follow had reblogged a photoset of him, his head looking down at these electronic beautiful things in one panel and, frankly, I was struck with how the shot reminded me of Adam Young in his early years of producing Owl City and being Owl City. Curiosity made me putty and threw open a new tab; I checked Wikipedia and was like, Okay. I get it. but I didn't get it. So young, a French musician, electronic dance music. So I'm demanding, "Give me your musiiiiic."

I listen to this

and I melt right through the goddamn floor.

Why is it so good; it's like honey on pancakes but sizzling and white, scintillating scintillating the sea is chanting, with the waves catching me and latching onto my wings, acerbic depth of lachrymose days of labor and admonition reflecting feathers of cream and porcelain, skin gold and sweatsweatsweat dripping onto hands of grime and a tongue of forewarning. It's so good it's too good; I'm kissing the salt in the water and threads of jagged rocks are scraping my sides, yawning around my body, blood blood blood the taste of a jump from the highest cliff.

But, if you want the truth from me, music is ineffable.

not the photo, but very similar ©

I'm trying really hard to interpret my emotions and what I had to deal with after listening to a piece of heaven and hell combined and duplicated. The fact that the track is called Icarus doesn't alleviate me from this kind of stress. You know, this stress - you find something, someone notable, remarkable, laudable, wondrous in possibly more than one aspect, and it's sucking on you, drilling into your pores, and hijacking your whole being. Your whole perspective of now. And maybe not everything changes, but many other things do.

He is so animated live and everything is blowing out in smatterings of candle wax and peacock feathers - across the walls, against your heart, and maybe my life is a show of sentiment and a cycle of ongoing amusement and paralysis.

I want to laugh at myself because I could have known about Madeon sooner. I can't judge the past so much because I couldn't have gotten to the future, the present, without it. Do you get that? Right now I just want to support him (he's been dreaming since he was 11, if I'm remembering right!) and listen to what he has to say about his launchpads and about anything really. It's almost pathetic but I'm here to translate my feelings into miles of words, am I not?

It's scary how much you get into something that you get interested in someone, too. I'm in love with art and passion, and I will never get too much of it and touch/hear/see all of it, so when they're there, I'm... here.

(And it isn't a sad thing. Never.) 

Hugo is yet another musician I'll be looking out for. Clubs permitting 18+ people only will not stop me!!!!!! I have the Internet!!!!!! (But yeah.)

I enthusiastically suggest you see this before leaving.

III. Malocclusions

First of all, I neither have an overbite nor an underbite. We'll get to the reason why later.

Secondly, this is what happened yesterday, March 16, the first day of summer 2013. 

Papa, my brother Adam, and I were all pretty stoked to start summer with a splash in the pool, having it all to ourselves. I was already seeing it as I danced around the foyer an hour before we departed home on our bikes. I don't usually swim but this time I was going to, definitely planning to, especially since there won't be much people; I get really shy when there's a number of them. So we pedaled off toward the village's club house (aka le pool) and everything was dandy.

Until I unfortunately landed on my face in the middle of the sunny Saturday ride.

No.

Literally.

I've taken photographic evidence but I don't have that at the moment, and we're already getting to the "climax" of this post so I'm recording this in words, okay.

So I was following papa's lead through the winding path of one of the many parks of the village. My brother didn't follow and so ended up on the actual sidewalk. Nothing wrong with that, but I was taking glances back at him to see if he was doing good and if he can make it through in between those bushes and that parked truck. I glanced some more until at one particular look I abruptly swung my head to the path in front of me before I was violently hurled to the ground by what you call distraction, gravity, and stupidity.

My bike's (its/his name is Quentin, by the way) front tire hit a root for a nearby electricity post and the impact sent me crushing onto the ground I didn't know I was so in love with just yet. For a vivid moment I thought, Omg what can I do to avoid this before the very last second???? but I saw what I was dealing with - which was inevitably falling and badly getting hurt - and, I don't know, lost all hope.

I am not Taylor Swift, or any of her past boyfriends, and I'm only making this reference because I thought it would be funny and I know that part of the lyrics enough because of my classmates; I think Quentin was so done with me and all my "Omg I'm going swimming!!!!!" and felt bad because I was only using him to get to this new guy Swimming Pool, thus the flinging me off his seat like an ant and leaving me on the ground to smooch on the dirty cement instead. 

I didn't ask for a hard first kiss. [chokes at own failure of a joke]

I received a bruised upper lip, but it's doing fine if you ask me. It didn't slice open or anything that gory. My nose is still one big rock and my nostrils still flare when I ask them to. My forehead is still bedazzled with-- everything is okey-dokey. Except for one thing.

One of my front teeth.

When my body slammed into the ground and my mouth collided with it, it might have been too eager because my upper right central incisor got cut into half. Fortunately, the remaining half stuck to my gums (wow thanks). We never got to know if I swallowed the other half or it fell into the depths of Tartarus right after it escaped, but I'll presume it stalked off to find other now homeless and beheaded teeth to commiserate with. I still couldn't believe it happened when I started lamenting because about everything inside my mouth felt like they had been shattered into shards in an instant when I met the ground. Either my gum or my tooth bled for quite a while and I cried for maybe fifteen minutes. I got a few scrapes on my right knee but they're nothing compared to a broken tooth. In that moment, I felt very... finite. Hah. I was cursing the world through my tears and shaking my fist (in my head), groaning (again, in my head), I was ugly enough. Whyyyyyy!!!?

oH MY GOd this is my life. (Thanks.)

Then we went home and I cried some more and changed into more comfortable clothes. We headed to the mall around lunchtime to get my tooth X-rayed for a dentist appointment at five in the afternoon. In the middle of getting teeth X-rayed, having lunch, and seeing the dentist, I took advantage of my lisp to feel like Daffy Duck, listened to papa share memories of his summers, and burned CDs. All was good.

And the dentist appointment wasn't as bad as "dentist appointment" sounds. There were tsk's and thinking out loud and (on my part) staring at the walls with heightened interest. The decision was that I get a dental filling to replace the missing half of my front tooth. Getting to the light in my face and the drill in my mouth, my first thought when the drill was turned on was, Ooh Daft Punk. I would have danced if it were not for me being the patient. I stared pensively at one frame on the wall that wasn't entirely blocked by the dentist and his equipment. It read "Malocclusions" and started off with Normal. I liked that I didn't have to talk much since I had my mouth open and immobile the majority of the time I was in the clinic. After that, I thought of baby dog Asami and rejoiced knowing that the title for this post would be perfect and personal and I would frown at it later on.