What goes around...

Whitney remembered

Photo from Time.com

Whitney Houston has influenced so much the music industry that younger generations of singers unblushingly copy her. Like Charice Pempengco.

Her sudden death the day before the Grammys keeled the music industry and left everyone grasping for explanations. She was just joining the Grammy parties in Hollywood and supposed to be part of the Grammy Awards show for her comeback in the industry.

But well, that is life. 

Whitney has been known for substance abuse and had been in and out of rehab. Her time has come.

My remembrance of Whitney was this video when she was just out for her major television appearance, fresh and with a bright future ahead. She was singing Home, one of my favorites. This was in 1985 when we just graduated high school.

Whitney, wherever you are, I hope your soul has found peace. Thank you for bringing good music to mankind. We will miss you dear.

More reading: Whitney Houston's death hits her native New Jersey hard

On Death, Without Exaggeration

On the first day of February, a Nobel Prize winner for Literature died. Her name may not be familiar among us Filipinos but her death was an "irreparable loss in Poland's culture," according to Poland's Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski.

Wislawa Szymborska has been described as the Mozart of Poetry and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. Here is a moving poem by her that I read from The Spy in the Sandwich.

Photo from here.

On Death, Without Exaggeration

By Wislawa Szymborska

It can't take a joke,

find a star, make a bridge.

It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,

building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,

it has the final word,

which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done

that are part of its trade:

dig a grave,

make a coffin,

clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,

it does the job awkwardly,

without system or skill.

As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,

but look at its countless defeats,

missed blows,

and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough

to swat a fly from the air.

Many are the caterpillars

that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,

tentacles, fins, tracheae,

nuptial plumage, and winter fur

show that it has fallen behind

with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help

and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat

is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.

Babies' skeletons grow.

Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves

and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent

is himself living proof

that it's not.

There's no life

that couldn't be immortal

if only for a moment.

Death

always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob

of the invisible door.

As far as you've come

can't be undone.