Good Morning, Sunshine

Woke up this morning and realized I need to find new geometries of desire, refreshing cartographies of fantasies. The ache in my back is miraculously gone, as if it never tormented me for a day or two, to begin with. What a normal, healthy body can alter the sky's hue, tweak worlds of possibilities, cajole the mind to take flight, unfettered by physical limits and man-made rules.

Thought about a novel I have been wanting to read to compliment this gem of a book about dogs that Ver gifted me (thanks, Ver!), engrossed me while staying horizontal to give my archaic back a rest. I realized I have not actually finished A. Huxley's "Brave New World" and I can't find my copy. Figured it might be a good dessert after Orwell's "1984." I vaguely remember the blurb about people indulging in sex and drugs but never falling in love - so decadent and attractive. So anti-intellectual. So me. Got to find the book.

A few weeks ago, had this conversation about labels and identities and stereotypes. A friend talked about his various advocacies - I am pro-this, pro-that. Told him, I wanted to preserve my mildly militant spirit and would stick to the 'anti' prefix rather than 'pro', just for the heck of it. So I declared, I am anti-intellectual/ism.

Facing the world isn't exactly my strongest suit, getting out of bed hurriedly, not my favorite occupation. But I get my stride after a quick reflection/prayer/whatever. Today, this poem spoke to me. Entitled "Being Boring" by Wendy Cope. Here's the last verse:

I don't go to parties.

Well, what are they for,

If you don't need to find a new lover?

You drink and you listen and drink a bit more

And you take the next day to recover.

Someone to stay home with was all my desire

And, now that I've found a safe mooring,

I've just one ambition in life: I aspire

To go on and on being boring.

Dancing to the Music

"This is fact not fiction/for the first time/in years" - DCFC, "Lack of Color"

I am not quite sure if it's my bulging eyes complaining or my tummy. Yes, I threw in the towel after months of tenacious stonewalling the more tenacious badgering of friends to join FB. This isn't exactly news - me and conformity.

Because I am a wimp, my fisherman's cap is in the ring of this Info-era's "word-community" where everybody tries to be Socratic in their dialogue and Sarte in their meta-philosopy. Even the 'inside jokes' I observed, are meta-jokes. Nostalgia galore. Buckets of inanity - me, gamely joining the pack. Typical, so typical.

Barely a week into it, it's like going to a circus, a grotesque one, and I bump into friendly creatures who in their best intentions, try to elevate the literary degradation of this social network to at least, Grade 6.

Truth to tell, I prefer the laidback spirit of FS, my original social network, where most of my transactions are still performed. With FB, it's more intense - the pressure to throw in your bits of prose. I tell myself, no one is poking a gun and forcing you to respond to revelatory testaments and outrageous pronunciamentos. Yeah, I shall not be engulfed into this time-sucking endeavor. There's Kafka, Proust, Mann, beckoning to be read in the luxury of a daytime bed than being strapped into the PC reading what so and so ate for breakfast or know their emotional hoo-ha.

Is the world becoming friendly - people loosening up, more open to declare what used to be guarded as private? Is this public display of emotions sincere or artificial, just like those detritus of reality TV jammed on us or Dr. Phil or Oprah, Lord have merci?

This onslaught of private sentiments finding their forum in social networks - is this the new face of fascism? The horrors, the horrors. And sadly, I am one of its eager participants. Shame, shame, shame.

(doodles from www.nougart.net)

Tenure Fight

Politics within academic institutions is usually fierce, savage, and parochial. Tenure of a faculty is hotly contested, political lines are drawn. One has to contend with the so-called administrative mindset - authority figures of simple intelligence who think and behave operationally, self-bound by the parameters of their power, shackled by the fascism of tribal animosities.

Details of Prof. Raymundo's case versus UP's Thought Police can be accessed from http://www.bulatlat.com/, among other websites. It is insinuated that her left-leaning politics does not score rapturously with some of her colleagues. Why, the logic escapes me.

I don't know Prof. Raymundo personally but I have seen her interview on TV once. Her plight is not removed from my own experiental context. To be a woman. To stand up for something.

I remember being questioned "what does it mean to be a woman?" Well, Marxist-feminists would be quick to posit that to be a woman is to be oppressed. And in a globablized capitalist system, to be a woman is to be twice oppressed. Personally, I am of the fervent belief that gender, per se, cannot be relied on as a basic unit of analysis since it is embedded in a broader power relations.

Make no mistake about this:I am not stereotyping women as hapless victims. That's not what I am saying. Grrrlll Power, yeah! Commodified by the mainstream media, rightly or wrongly, this drumbeating to celebrate women power has made concrete headways. What I am actually saying is that women have a rich revolutionary heritage - in the struggles for national independence and anti-imperialism, their participation cannot be discounted.

Prof. Raymundo is a magnificent testament to that. Unfortunately, UP's Thought Police, basking in the archaic glory of being the center of intellectual ferment, decrees her ilk has no room. So unfortunate.

(photo taken from www.bulatlat.com)

The Sea rises

"Miss Arruba," my monicker as a kid - sea-shampooed hair, sunbaked arms and scalp, the playing ground of a battallion of kuto.

On weekends, our landlords who were way into their 60s tagged us along with their grandchildren to their resthouse in White Beach. Social barrier was an alien concept.

The sea was a get-away, an unjealous friend you visited on weekends who embraced you with a spirited welcome, a worthy destination that always revived your spirit.

A while back, I went to the beach and found myself alone. It was midweek, is everyone employed except me? There was noise around the swimming pool area. I counted a few people taking dips.

The ocean is out there, just a few footsteps away. Some people take long roadtrips to get to the nearest beach and here you are, in the swimming pool. I don't get it. I am surely feeling my age. I don't understand young people sometimes.

You go to a beach resort and prefer the artificiality of a pool, chlorined water and all to the natural beauty of the ocean. Someone is missing the point and darn hell, it sure isn't me.

Game 7 splash

Victory, success, these are dangerous things to get heady about but I will savor this championship more than all the blood-diamonds in the world and will predictably regret ever writing this line tomorrow.

Throughout the championship series, SMB did not display its full champ-mettle until Game 7. I thought they played a bit shaken and stirred. Who wouldn't be? You have to give it to the Ginebra constituency, they certainly know how to express their partisanship. The roar of the crowd had a way of erasing SMB's competitive advantage and it was kind of infuriating at times to watch SMB getting sloppy and rattled. You sort of wanted to sponsor a ganja-fest just to be able to say "Relax. Here, puff some magic."

SMB's worst enemy is itself. Over the years, its game-culture has always been typified by class and finesse. I have no quibbles with that. But it has to harness its 'killer instinct' too. This is where SMB is weak. It cannot sniff blood and thrive on the aroma.

Tonight was different - tons of emotions and pride. SMB, most of the time, was able to seal spaces and forced Ginebra to take poor-percentage shots and baited to over-commit on Washington. Tough luck.

So, put this victory on my tab. I only resumed watching the PBA this conference. For SMB fans who were in a drought for 4 years, cheers!

Money Can't buy me Love

Today marks the anniversary of my resignation from work, which concretely translates to a year without earning a penny, becoming a bona fide lumpenproletariat in anyone's book.

This is not to parade my "suffering." I mean, woe to me! This is suffering? Tell that to the Palestininans. Try telling that to those in refugee camps.

There is dignity in destitution, I pep-talk. Money cannot buy happiness, I heard a rich kid's confession. Well, try giving part of your wealth to me and I shall show you delirium. Delirium, my friend. Not just plain, simple happiness.

A recent study conducted in Israel postulated that money can actually buy happiness and rarely will I agree to what Israel proclaims but to a certain degree, I agree. Money will afford me some of my guilty pleasures - body massage, CDs, DVDs, books, concert tickets, that dream farmhouse, an in-house chef, somebody on the payroll to read me bedtime stories, among other things. These are more than enough to make me deliriously happy.

In celebration of a failed economic system that glorifies money, let me post a stanza of John Updike's poem entitled, you guess it right, "Money":

It is freedom in action:
when you give a twenty-buck bill to the cabbie,
you don't tell him how to spend it.
He can blow it on coke, for all you care.
All you care about is your change.
No wonder the ex-Communists are dizzy.
In the old Soviet Union there was nothing to buy, nothing to spend.
It was freedom of a kind, but not our kind.
We need money, the dull electric thrill
when the automatic teller spits out the disposable receipt.
("Money" by John Updike, from Americana and Other Poems. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.)

(illustrations from www.exploding dog.com)

Writing in PigstyLE

It's not your fashionable moleskine but the self-adorned journal serves as a repository of idiotic rants and raves, some aimless ramblings, what-not. Scribblings not suitable for blogging. In his lunacy, the French dramatist A. Artaud is immortalized by this brilliant brush-off which I swallow with more than just a grain of salt: "All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes in their minds are pigs."

Ouch! Guilty as charged. Born in the Year of the Pig, I am a pig in Artaud's view. A pig twice over. Oink, oink.

Good thing Artaud didn't live in the era of writers and their piggy banks. What could he have said about writers and their fat writing contracts, sequels, tie-in movies, reading tours, etc.?

Could this be the real cause of the swine flu - horrendous writing, lousy bloging, and the whole shebang? Hence, I shall go back to my notebook of old.

Or I could start making money as a talkbacker for Israel, heaven defend! Israel's Foreign Ministry has earmarked roughly $150T to organize its internet warfare squad and shall privilege those with background in Political Science, Communications, and Law to post pro-Israel responses on various websites. The demise of dignity - how pathetic for Israel and those who will be joining this evil project. You cannot shroud the truth with your logistics. Most of all, you cannot buy respect.

It's easy to say Israel is a pig, ala Artaud but in respect to this lovable animal, I will not. There is no animal comparable to Israel, such an uncalled for insult to God's creatures, big and small. Israel is just, well, being Israel.

Neruda's Birthday

To strangers asking about my age, I sometimes share this trivia: 2 sublime events marked the year 1971 - my birth and Pablo Neruda being rewarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Seriously, Neruda made me understand that being a poet is not about wordcraft or making poems but a way to live - something started in my soul/fever or forgotten wings/and I made my own way/deciphering that fire. (Poetry) He armed me with the strongest excuse why I cannot write one decent poem despite my purest intention. With foolish pride, I declared to anyone who cared to listen that I may not be a poet in the literal sense of the term but I strive to be a poet by the way I interact with life. Can you hear this, Pablo?

In the beginning, I took him quite literally. I saw poetry everywhere - of cable wires hanging next to telephone wires I can glimpse from the front-window, of my mother's duster hanging beside my old shorts in the clothesline, of snobbish cats sitting repose in our backyard. Yes, there is poetry and there is poetry. And anyone who is nourished by poetry will surely relate to this joyous invitation Neruda extends generously because - I, infinitesimal being/drunk with the great starry void/likeness, image of mystery/felt myself a pure partof the abyss/I wheeled with the stars /my heart broke loose on the wind. Oh what freedom, what joy!

Today, in 1904, this beautiful human being to whom I owe a part of my freedom and joy was born. Picking a favorite among his obra is more difficult than an Algebra equation but in his honor, let me post "I Like for you to be Still." I am not sure I understand this poem in the context by which it has to be understood but I like the word "melancholy". So there.

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would’ve died
One word then,
One smile is enough
And I’m happy;
Happy that it’s not true

Alone Again, Naturally

"Take a sad song and make it better"
- Beatles, "Hey Jude"

A movie's final sequence convincingly portrays the protagonist conquering all odds and you leave the theater feeling triumphant over the victory of good versus evil. But you won't pay to watch the same movie again. Same with novels. Once you put them down, you don't find yourself reopening the pages. But with songs, the experience is intense to the point of being spiritual - soul, heart, and senses in one swoop and you find yourself repeatedly consuming the same songs whose representation have not diminished by time.

Two years ago, in the month of July, a 'debasement tape' of sorts to honor a friend's bleeding heart was carelessly prepared. 7 songs consisted that list:

1. Circle (Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians) - Being alone is the best way to be/When I'm by myself/ it's the best way to be/Everything is temporary anyways.

2. Fortress around your heart (Sting) - If I built this fortress/around your heart/encircled you in trenches/and barbed wire.

3. Fact and Fiction (Kristen Hall) – I’m weighing the fact and fiction/Diluting the truth with diction/and empty promises.

4. Fake Plastic Trees (Radiohead) – If I could be/who you wanted/all the time.

5. God Only Knows (The Beachboys) – If you should ever leave me/life would still go on/believe me/the world would show nothing to me/so what good/would living do me.

6. World Before Columbus (Suzanne Vega) – If your love/were taken from me/all the trees freeze/in the cold ground

7. Half A World Away (REM) – This could be the saddest dusk/I’ve ever seen…My hands are tied/my heart aches/I’m half a world away.

An updated list is in order, I decree. Senti.

1. I Eat Dinner (Rufus Wainwright) - No more candlelight/no more romance

2. Hand on your Heart (Jose Gonzales) - It's one thing to fall in love/but another to make it last/You know it's one thing to say you love me/but another to mean it from the heart.

3. To The End (Blur) - You and I collapsed in love/And it looks like/we might have made it.

4. Shattered Like (Rivermaya) - Have you been drinking/have you been messing up your life/as you did mine/not long ago

5. Clever as You (Sheila and the Insects) - I could have loved you more/but my heart/is not as clever as you.

6. Disarm (Smashing Pumpkins) - The bitterness of one who's left alone

7. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (Postal Service) - And I am finally seeing/why I was the one/worth leaving.

8. One More try (Kuh Ledesma) -It really is quite tough/when love is not enough

9. Fragments of Forever (Nonoy Zuniga) - Now we're left with nothing more/thank God, there's still worth living for/than fragments of forever/we saved along the way

10. Country Feedback (REM) - You wear me out, you wear me out.

I'm tired of this. Get a life - memo to self.

Notes on Insanity

"When I find my peace of mind,
I"m gonna give you some of my good time"
- Red Hot Chilli Peppers, "Soul to Squeeze"

The infamous insanity journal, sheltering dark, furious thoughts, reflecting a frail fettle. Before I burn it or use as a tissue-substitute.

Writing some of those thoughts seemed fairly innocuous, most of the time. At times, you felt unsafe but at the end of the day, it was more perilous not writing them. Like the case of someone hitting the roof and wanting to punch walls. It's not helping your case or doing you any good but it was more harmful not to vent it out.

Writing is a form of prayer. I think Kafka beat me to this proclamation but I am no Kafka. No one is. No one will ever be. I used to maintain a notebook of personal prayers. Obviously, the presumption is that God is literate and does not only read in Arabic.

That notebook of prayers is just hiding somewhere in my mother's house. I am not too keen on revisiting, with the apprehension that I may no longer recognize the "I".

My struggle is not so much a question of faith as it is a debate with the Catholic Church and its pronunciamentos. The Ignatian Spirituality practiced by Jesuits is pretty clear on critical awareness, not blind faith. I take comfort from it.

Organized prayer is a struggle. As I shared in an earlier blog, my prayer life is characterized by departures and returns and with an adorable dog as a prayer-partner, we owe it to the good Lord to demonstrate variety somehow - a hymn today, a poem the next day, a clap exercise the day after next, till we run out of ideas. It's like giving a birthday card to a dear friend - shall I give a personalized one or should I just trust Hallmark to get my message across?

So I talk to my personal Jesus - You may not be pleased with what I am doing, substituting organized prayer with reading or writing or affectionate talks with Georgelablab or whatever it is I'm appropriating as expressions of workship. This is me reaching out with the purest intentions because yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory.

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

The mother of Baan's classmate whose older sister happens to be a classmate too at HIC, was recently diagnosed with cancer. Hear this: the medication costs 20 grand/day and will run for a year. Jesus of Nazareth, good Lord! My math falters.

In T. Wilder's "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," a national tragedy befalls on Lima, Peru in 1714 when the said bridge collapsed, claiming the lives of 5 individuals. A Franciscan from northern Italy by the name of Brother Juniper, in a state of beleaguered grace, set out to make sense of this woeful event. Was it a sheer act of God? What was the common denominator among the 5 victims? Why were they chosen? Was it some sort of natural selection?

The bridge was built by the Incas in the 1600s at the time when brazen bidding practices were still unheard of. It was not of inferior quality and was in fact, a national landmark. Was the accident orchestrated by God? And why on that fateful day in July?

Every person who wanted me to imbibe their optimistic thoughts regarding my own battle with cancer were unanimous in declaring God's deliberate hand in my situation. They all enthused, "it's God's blessing." I try to carry this with me as I give formal and informal testimonials of this blessing disguised in tragedy.

Wilder employs a more accusatory tone, evoking agnostic insight, "to the gods, we are like flies boys kill on a summer day...that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed by the finger of God.'" (p.7)

This goes beyond simple faith, a faith demanding total submission, an absolute surrender of the value of human action, even free will. Who in his right mind would choose to be stricken with cancer? What God in His right frame of mind would brush His finger on ugly cancer cells and give them to His children?

When I was at the hospital, the Wise One shared V. Woolf's insightful description of illness -"how astonishing when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed." Indeed. You travel without roadmaps, for long stretches with no end in sight. Your senses are twice alive - life, all of a sudden, becomes more urgent and yet time, becomes irrelevant. The tic-tac changes, an hour is a day, a week is a month and no one except you, keeps pace - the reckoning of one's mortality renders both freedom and repression.

There is solitude amidst the neighbor's loud radio, loudly thinking that this may be your last chance to hear that overplayed pop song but silently wishing you can endure all of these just to stay a litle longer on this planet. There are legitimate reasons to die but there are more excuses to live.

Yes, Virginia. You gain perspective. You find reaons to be grateful. You learn humility and grace of Hemingway's definition. You sanctify love and love what isn't beautiful and safe.

This is what I pray for my classmate's mother - sanctify love. Wilder's final sentence grips it firmly, "there is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." (p117)

Ai, gugma. So ancient but never out of fashion.

Beat It

Obviously, a CSI fan emailed me this. For all the money media reportage squeezed from the dignity of a dead celebrity, tongues will not cease wagging. Bring CSI to settle the matter and put all speculations to rest.

As the illustration suggests, MJ's heart could no longer take a beating one day more. When the heart gives up, in real life and in movies, a sense of dread and emptiness and an absence of purpose prevails.

Rest easy, all our dead brothers.

****************************

Another message, this time an SMS from Fordy pricked a funny bone. I wasn't able to save it, so from memory, let me reconstruct it in Waray. The original text was incidentally in Tagalog.

Nanay: Upay-upaya gad it im katre.
Anak: Para ano? Magugubot man la gihap iton. Baga ka la hin nahigugma, tapos, masasakitan la.
Nanay: Char! Nag-emote an hubya.

Allusions. Hints and allegations. The state of our shared bed is a constant issue between my sister and I. My side gives an impression that it could have been slept in by an elephant and a cow and novels are my bedfellows so you can just imagine the chaos.

Lastly, my being "hubya". In my defense, I say that I was just born tired. As if I had a choice in the matter. As I said, I was born tired. So beat it.

May Saysay ang Buhay

In V. Frankl’s “Man and His Search for Meaning,” there’s an account of a father encouraging his 6-year old daughter to thank the Lord for curing her of measles. The daughter responded, “but wasn’t it God who gave me measles in the first place?”

At various points in my life, Frankl, proponent of the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, silvered a few disconsolate nights and pulled me from the gulch of desolation. In psychology, there are 3 major conceptions of man’s primary motivational force: Freudian’s psychoanalysis centers on pleasure: Adlerian psychology emphasizes power; and Frankl’s logotherapy focuses on man’s groping for life’s meaning.

Informed by Nietzche’s existentialist thought, “he who has a WHY to live can bear with any HOW,” VF’s patented couch session style was to floor patients with the standard question: Why do you not commit suicide?

Why indeed, if we feel life is forbidding, stifling, why do we insist on surviving anyway? Variations of this trick question have helped me deal with self-doubts and self-hurt as well as counsel a few friends to slay their own demons, enthusing that the more devils we kill, the more we form angels.

Existentialists argue that surely, if there is a purpose for life, there ought to be a meaning for everything trapped with it – suffering, dying, etc. but is there truly a meaning, an ordered sense to the randomness of this world?

Existentialism is quite simple. The challenge it tosses for each of us is to seek that purpose and life will be superfine in a non-metaphorical sense - contentedly inhaling all the shit on this earth and calmly enduring all indignities.

A quasi-bible, I keep revisiting the pages highlighted in green marks (a folly of youth) whenever I need a rope to hang on to, staving off despair with philosophical oomph. After losing my mother rather unexpectedly, Frankl gave me a different perspective on my suffering mode that makes me less unsettled. There is meaning to our suffering, he reassures.

A week ago, I hinted parting with the book, thinking it has already served its purpose and another friend might be needing it more. Baan expressed her mild protestations. Only then did I discover – she too, leans on Frankl for enlightenment and drinks from his cup. Tough luck.

Our taste in literature differs. She, of the no-nonsense type buries her nose on medical journals, books on spirituality and psychology while my bedtime leisure is usually spent in fiction-land. Henceforth, the stuff we commonly savor are celebrated: Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s “Gift from the Sea,” the Anais Nin diaries, “Tuesdays with Morrie,” and YES magazine, to mention a few.

YES magazine may not lead us towards our purpose in life which could be quite an elusive pursuit to most of us really, but Jean Paul Sartre sways us to invent our own essence. Frankl, however, argues that our essence is not invented by us but by a Higher Being. Our only sweat is to unravel that essence.

As a whole, I cannot claim to fully internalize my 'essence' but parts of my anatomy, I know what they are for. For instance, my hands – they were made to make one man happy, ahoi!; my tongue for some gastro-carnal delight and moody lashings, my clavicle for that blatant body cue for mating and so on and so forth. Ole!

Frankl’s faith in humanity is nothing short of colossal. I think eminent writers/thinkers are those that bare the madness of the world, swerve our attention to the “unbearable lightness of being,” conceal their skepticism poorly and yet in the end, feed our soul with hope and pull us inches closer to this Supreme Being, this Central Force most of us conformingly label God.

Like that 6-year old finding irony in a God that allows unspeakable suffering yet at the same time, heals and comforts, I, too, quibble with His impotence, His indifference, His contradiction but relieved I am not in His shoes. Because according to G. Bataille “being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evil is unimaginable unless God willed them,” an obvious paraphrase of Epicurus lambasting that if this God cannot control evil because He cannot, He is impotent but if He can actually prevent evil and is just unwilling, He is malevolent.

Oh, to be culpable for everything – our misfortunes, our sorrow, our grief, our turmoil. To be ignored most of the time when everything is peachy. But I am exercising free will here, a gift some people consider overrated. I choose to be buddies with this God, maybe not the Abrahamic God or Job’s, but my God still, and share some occasional banters and healthy tirades.

Wenger Wings it Good

If it is not snobbery oozing from Arsene Wenger's patrician nose, I will not take a bath for a week.

Slamming down the lucrative sheets of Real Madrid and a chance to remove himself from the gloom of England to relocate to Spain where the sky is in perfect blue (just my wild imagination, I have never been to these places obviously), he rationalizes that Real Madrid leans towards football-spectacle. Ouch! Again, if this is not snobbery coming out from the pores of his skin, I will starve myself for a week.

The Wenger further elucidates, "football has another dimension: the success of building a team with style, a know-how, a club's own game-culture." Again, if this is not snobbery...but no more sacrifice on my part.

Hats off for standing up for a football philosophy slowly eroded by nouveau-financiers with their mountain of wealth to spare and nothing else. I respect Wenger for being old school and yes, classy.

Matud Nila...Usahay...

"And while we speak of many things
Fools and kings, this he said to me:
The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return"
Jose Feliciano, "Nature Boy"

The cruelty of unrequited love, of loving from a distance with no chances of growth and expansion, of loving in anonymity without the hope of transforming love into diverse landscapes and complexion, of not going through the see-saw motion of losing steam and rebuilding it, forlorn of the precious experience of hurting and getting hurt and imploring for forgiveness and second chances.

This is self-contradiction. I swore not to dispense love-advice but unrequited love is something I could write a lousy novel about, if I had the gumption or develop a theory on, if I had the mental appetite.

Comforting a dear friend's sadness, for lack of terms, over let's just say, a boat that never sailed, I challenged her to make a list of those melancholic love songs that drive some people to slash their wrists or jump from a ravine but bring fuego into our otherwise, prosaic, sheltered lives. Fuego, my word for that particular day, as I was contemplating of switching allegiance to Spain, Viva conquistadores!, for the World Cup. But that is still a quite distant future, back to the present.

What in the devil would making a playlist accomplish? Nothing. But the thing I badly wanted to say seemed inappropriate, given that everything was raw and it was wiser to drown every sad molecule in booze.

On this unutterably dull morning, when sober thoughts will likely invite warm reception, let me just say what I wanted to say then: unrequited love is the most arrestingly profound kind of love. Love of country, for instance. How can a man-concocted concept like country or nation love in return? Yet many profess to love their country.

Unrequited love is the most liberating, uncomplicated love there is. Why is reciprocity so important? We don't need validation for love, do we? Just love, period. For the heck of it. I mean, just because the person I am offering my love to rejects it or is lukewarm to it does not mean my love is not valid or real. I have phantom-husbands, without the benefit of acquaintance, for Christ's sake, and that has bode me well - no room for disenchantments.

Seriously, I don't expect this young friend to agree with me. At a certain age, love is a strong possibility. Beyond a certain point, the point where I am now, is an acceptance of its limits, of its finiteness, of its expiration. Love does have its giddy moments but what if you realize it has lasted long enough of its sensible duration?

Using the boat earlier as a metaphor, I would prefer not to set sail rather than find myself in the middle of a godless ocean, losing compass with no anchorage in sight. Dreadful. Cowardly, I know. And this world does not reward cowards.

Seriously (for the 2nd time), never lose faith in love. Ignore the cynics. They were born to be ignored anyway. And rue the day when I start quoting Miley Cyrus - "it's the climb" Jack and Jill went up the hill, you know the story. Tra-la-la...Yeah, Miley-smiley! It's not the view on top, it's the fucking climb that matters. Not with Thom Yorke, I bet.

As for the playlist, I texted this friend that I was playing Sarah in the wee hours in her honor, particularly "Fumbling towards Ecstacy" - I won't fear love/And if I feel rage/I won't deny it/I won't fear love.

But that's feminazi chic. My favorite love song as a child is hands-down, Perry Como's "I Want to Give" - I beg of you to listen to my heart/I never felt like this before/So I'm asking you not to close the door/For I can tame the wind/and smooth the waters/If you'll just let me.

If the Anointed One does not let you, that's his frigging problem. He might as well climb Mt. Everest with Miley, for all we care. Kun nadiri, pirita. Kun diri madara ha sabot, rabot.

Rest easy, mi amigo.

(doodles from www.nougart.net)

MAG-gaga

In my reading basket are latest issues of the New Yorker - convenient, friendly bathroom buddies to flex those rectal muscles, thanks to J’s recent US trip. Got the anniversary issue (Feb) featuring a grand tribute to John Updike, courtesy of D. The generosity of friends overwhelms, bless them a hundred fold.

Another mag I want to latch on is the August issue of Vanity Fair hitting America’s newsstand this month with the late Heath Ledger on its cover but there’s a sneak preview in VF’s website, that should do it for me. I can’t always get what I crave, can I? It’s sheer decadence for a proletariat like me.

Ledger’s revelatory performance in Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” showcased genuine talent in a stream of mediocrity in that age-group, save for Ryan Gosling, who else? His passing forces us to wonder what emphatic, sensitive, intelligent performances were yet to unfold. In the old blog (1.23.08), to mark his passing, I wrote: At 28, he has taken us to places of danger and discomfort and by treading on these grounds, we somehow managed to regain our humanity.

I hardly consider myself a devout Ledger fan but there was a flicker of River Phoenix in him. A river of tears I spilled for River’s own unutterably sad curtain call and baduy that I am, my very first email address was dyndyn.rios, obviously for ex-husband #3 Marcelo Rios but partially, it was a corny, flaky, and supply the other adjectives, tribute to the finest actor of his generation, River Phoenix. “Rio” means river in Espanyol if my vague recall of Spanish class isn't betraying me.

The Sun will come out

The internet server (starts with the letter G) was down for a week and for a brief moment, there was this sense of disorientation of some rituals unperformed. What does it matter really if one is not hooked with the so-called "knowledge community" of today's world? Fat deal.

"Patience, patience, patience is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea." (p17, "Gift from the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh)

Just wait, wait for life to take its course, without the benefit of this technology that in certain ways, promotes domestication or as KM predicting the evolution of capitalism in terms of "annihilation of space by time" has forged an increasing intimacy and God forbid, dependence, on its dominant power and allure.

I can't be psycho, a week without an internet connection. I cannot fill the hours with yoga routines because it's not physically possible yet. The erratic climate dampens any craving for the beach. If there's any margin of profit this forced break allowed, I was able to catch CNN's Talk Asia's sitdown with the ethereal Annie Lennox. I would have missed it because its schedule falls right on my email time. Thank heavens for Annie.