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In the final and longest story in the compendium, “Extant”, a character plays a video game called Calvary X. A Borgesian story of multiple doors and forking paths. The number of possible combinations of doors is 360 x 359 x 358. A blend of supernatural, obsession, and mystery. Reminds me of the films of Kurosawa Kiyoshi.

“Tungkol sa Nawawalang Isla ng Sangkabayagan” (About the Lost Island of Manosphere): Not sure how to translate that last word in the title. “Patriarchy”? “Manhood”? “World of Men”? “Men-kind”? It literally means “kingdom of testicles”.
A group of military men defended a palace from egg-throwers. There’s a wordplay in the story about bayag (manhood) and bayan (nationhood). A fabulous fable on toxic masculinity.

“Pagkatapos Nito” (After This):

Earlier, “Summertime” by Sarah Vaughan. Now, “Cry Me a River” by Julie London. The theme songs of the compendium are dope.

In “Tala” (Star): What happens when a fortune teller falls in love and, while searching for answers and the object of love, spontaneously combusts?

Story 9 of 13: “Silid II” (Room 2) is the sequel of “Silid I” (Room 1). Understatement of the year.

"Seismometer" is surprisingly absent from the book's table of contents. But did I just read the story? Did we just have an earthquake? In 1999, we were all waiting intently for the apocalypse that we felt disappointed when it didn't arrive.

It's the last of four-story translation sampler from the book. The sampler is a work of art (see image below):

https://www.instagram.com/everythings...

"[S]he had no need for happiness. ... Happiness – what would I even do with it, is it spare change I can put in my pockets, is it stain I can wipe off my face, is it a song I can hum?" (tr. Soleil David).

"Mandelbrot Set" is the story of a woman encountering a stranger, a double or a "repetition" of her husband. Life, she finds, is not as tidy as the mathematically perfect pattern of embroidery in a tablecloth.

Story 6 out of 13, "Pares-Pares" (Pairs) is told in brief snatches. The details create an adulterous atmosphere.

In "Bugtong" (Riddle): What riddle is it where the answer is the human heart?

Another surreal (love) story.

In "Aparador" (Cabinet): A third-person narrator meditates on the existence of a cabinet, among other objects.

"Is it enough to be a thing, to persist ... ? ... When the owner arrives, once the key opens the lock, all of these turn into fiction."

Is it just me, or is this story a comment on capitalism and materialism?

From "Tongue" (tr. Soleil David): Along with the vomitus was the bile from her guts, but also she threw up diamonds and pearls, their heft tinkling and pinging against the restaurant's tiled floor. ... and all around her the rush and stampede ... where it wasn't just her co-workers who dropped to their knees and scrambled ...

Surreal imagery in "Salita" (Speech): the violin, like two cats exchanging opinions about the sharpness of their claws.

From “Room 1” (tr. Soleil David):

“I need your most effective lock, so that even I couldn’t get out, and if I lost my keys there would be no way to get back in.”

Later:

I can’t open it, I can’t.

“he seemed to have externalized a small part of his own mind, as the [AI] program … appeared to be endowed with the vestiges of a personality of sorts, … a life of its own, something that arose less from the fact that it could play the game by deciding its own moves than because of its many flaws and quirks, the incomprehensible mistakes it made, and its tendency to stall, as if it were lost in deepest thought …”

“This otherworldly capacity to see into the heart of things, or—if viewed from its opposing angle—this characteristic shortsightedness, which allowed him to think in nothing but fundamentals, was not merely the key to his particular genius but also the explanation for his almost childlike moral blindness.” (p. 83)

Perhaps it is in your eyes, when my face leans into yours, that I read these impossible landscapes, these unreal tediums, these feelings that inhabit the shadows of my weariness and the caves of my disquiet. … How do I know that you’re not a part of me, … the real and essential part? And how do I know it’s not … I who am your dream instead of you being mine?

- from “Our Lady of Silence”

I know no pleasure like that of books, and I read very little. Books are introductions to dreams, and no introductions are necessary for one who freely and naturally enters into conversation with them.

- from Text 417

‘I can imagine, with an almost carnal vividness, that I might be the character of a novel, moving within the reality constructed by a complex narrative, in the long waves of its style.’

- from Text 285

how can something be both paradoxical and oxymoronic

Picking this up again. But I don't remember where I left off reading this book. I will have to restart from the beginning.