I write slowly, and to accommodate the way my brain enjoys writing, I juggle stories to keep sane. The past month, I've been trying to finish a short story collection tentatively titled What Survived the Flood. When I began to write and revise the stories included in it, the southwest monsoon (habagat) hadn't yet drowned most of Luzon, and I thought I was writing primarily from memory, remembering Ondoy's destructive three weeks in 2009.

Attention is also sustained effort with little reward guaranteed at the end, and only the relief of a pause or a break. But when my attention finally catches on something, I protect the connection as much as I can.

After each viewing of the Lord of the Rings extended editions, I exited the cinema feeling more myself than I had felt in years: excited to think about the stories and the unwritten or underwritten chapters that were only hinted about in the legendarium. It was the first time for a few friends to view the extended editions in their entirety -- and for some, it was their first time viewing…