tailwagging

Riding on the back of Beasts

2009-09-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

What's wrong with this photo? A friend emailed this earlier and her theory is that this military officer might just had his toenails pedicured. Or athlete's foot? Hernia?

This is not an issue of feudal relations but bothersome, all the same.

Jesus walked on the water and turned water into wine.

This officer enjoyed a piggie ride on the back of a working man.

No Mystery (Part 2)

2009-09-08T19:28:00.000-07:00

A postscript to the importance or non-significance of mystery in a relationship from Jonathan Carroll's latest book. If I'm not mistaken, the title is "Ghost in Love":

The first great real intimacy between two people begins when secrets are told. The time you stole the money from the candy drive when you were a boy scout. The time you slept with your brother-in-law after their marriage dissolved. The lie you told your boss that changed everything and burned every bridge you had at the time. The secret about your parents you thought you would never, ever tell anyone.

But suddenly you do—to your new partner. No matter what happens to you two after that, they know these things now. You can never take them back. They have the goods on you and you on them. At that point your life together shifts on its axis permanently. You have begun to let them into your soul and often we don't even know ourselves what the result of *that* will be."

(Illustration from www.explodingdog.com)

Cannavaro still can

2009-09-08T19:09:00.000-07:00

Canna! Casa Lippi scored a crucial victory against Bulgaria. 3 goals, tigol. Forza Azzurri!

After that heartbreaking loss from Ireland and the brutal punch of Brazil, people easily dismissed Italy's chances to defend the World Cup.

I am still not thinking of victory. One match at a time. What is more important is that Canna is playing and slowly getting back to form. Never mind his stint with Real Madrid. Playing for the national flag is different.

Cannavaro, one of heaven's factory's best walking this earth.

Catalano!!!

2009-09-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

"I know a dirty word - hello, hello"....Jared Leto is walking on sunshine. White out. Jared is beautifully strutting on a sunshiny morning. What a sweet distraction to the dull ache on my left leg.

And I was imploring - is my near end, O Lord? This pain is nothing to what you suffered for our redemption but let it go away, give me some relief, and some cussing.

I will take emotional pain any day. With emotional pain, you can rationalize your way around it. Even argue with it. Box it in its proper perspective. Shelve it and do things to keep your mind off it but with physical pain, there is no escape. You cannot focus, sleep is a hard commodity to bargain, and you are pratically rendered unproductive and useless....just feeling rotten in one miserable corner, in my own corner of the sky where cats don't fit on the window sill.

No pain, no gain, some quarters say. Well, you can have them all. Just let me be a happy loser.

WeeeeeeeD

2009-09-05T05:56:00.000-07:00

Ganja in a funkier package, yay! Leaves a bad taste, these corporate jocks who prefer designer drugs actually conceptualizing, glued to their story boards, hatching up plans to market this sacred herb. Dread and trepidation.

But if this is a necessary step to make it more accessible and acceptable, who am I to disapprove? An alternative painkiller, it should be available in our suking tindahan soon. Make it faster than soon.

Mar Shifts Gears

2009-09-02T19:45:00.000-07:00

"Fruits of a good tree," that's how Jovito Salonga, the best president this country never had, described Mar Roxas and Noynoy Aquino.

Mar Roxas is being lauded for the supreme sacrifice of withdrawing from the presidential race and giving way to Noynoy, the reluctant Noynoy, to become the Liberal party's standard-bearer. An act of statemanship, everybody seems to be in accord.

I truly believe there's no spin here, no gimmickry at all. It is but pragmatic to ride on the coattails of the Cory magic while it lasts. But to overstate Mar Roxas' supposed sacrifice is a bit off. I mean, sure it must be painful to give up something you have worked and spent millions for but one can also look at it in a different angle.

His numbers were not going up despite the barrage of infomercials. "Ramdam ko kayo," he assures but the case is "Di niya tayo nararamdaman." Not in very encouraging figures so we can also say, Mar is in fact cutting his losses this early. Early on, talks of an Escudero team-up was rife, Escudero being quite popular in some surveys but that seemed to fizzle out. Noynoy is a more viable tandem, let's see how this plays out after Noynoy's spiritual retreat.

Rafacious

2009-09-02T19:09:00.000-07:00

A new haircut. The arms, still to kill for. Rafa!!! He is futbol's loss and tennis' gain - the ruggedness, the tenacity, the boyish imperfections. Charming.

The Fed and Rafa represent two schools of thought. People who root for them are profiled and said to belong to a different spectrum. Since Rios left, I lost interest so I am not in the thick of things.

Maybe it's like Barcelona and Real Madrid. Barca is perceived to be progressive and run a more scientific game geared towards victory while Real Madrid, despite its stable of talent is pereived to rely more on divine providence to win.

Whatever it is, I look at these athletes as fascinating machines.

George and Vicky

2009-09-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

Milan Kundera: "Dogs are links to paradise. They don't know evil or jealous or discontent. To sit on a hillside with a dog on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where nothing was not boring, it was peace."

Our Georgelablab, no one makes me worry more when he's not eating well or have some sort of fever. With him, all defenses are down Sometimes, I think I am unfair by not sparing him my own kitchen sink drama but he seems to get it. He revels when he's told that he's God's gift to us and that Jesus loves him. He actually smiles at the declaration. Of late, his favorite song to sleep to is "Con te Partiro." When I stop playing the song after 6 repetitions, he would stand up and silently beg. What's in this song?

Speaking of dogs, I couldn't help but admire Vicky Morales several notches higher, with the dogged persistence she demonstrated covering the Liberal Party press conference at Club Filipino last night. Mar Roxas was admonishing "Vicky, masasagasaan ka" quite a number of times but relentless to get the soundbites, Vicky showed everyone that passion still rules a seasoned journalist like her. No let up. It was very humbling - an awarded broadcaster of her stature who has certainly paid her dues showing us how willing she was to lose her poise to get the news.

Nabokov's Old Soundbites Still Bite

2009-08-31T22:28:00.000-07:00

For some chinwag, nobody does it with aplomb than Nabokov. In a 1965 Playboy interview, his charitable comments on fellow Russian Dostoevsky and novelists Hemingway and Conrad is one for summit negotiations.

Q: Dostoevski, who dealt with themes accepted by most readers as universal in both scope and significance, is considered one of the world's great authors. Yet you have described him as "a cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. "Why?

Nabokov: Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevski as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous, farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment-- by this reader anyway.

A slapdash comedian? Several chapters of Crime and Punishment and I do believe that the punishment in the title is more of a caveat. Sorry.

Q: Is it true that you have called Hemingway and Conrad"writers of books for boys"?

Nabokov: That's exactly what they are. Hemingway is certainly the better of the two; he has at least a voice of his own and is responsible for that delightful, highly artistic short story,"The Killers." And the description of the iridescent fish and rhythmic urination in his famous fish story is superb. But I cannot abide Conrad's souvenir-shop style, bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches. In neither of those two writers can I find anything that I would care to have written myself. In mentality and emotion, they are hopelessly juvenile,and the same can be said of some other beloved authors, the pets of the common room, the consolation and support of graduate students, such as-- but some are still alive, and I hate to hurt living old boys while the dead ones are not yet buried.

Souvenir-shop style? Pets of the common room? I cannot smirk at such snobbery.

Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," from relative academic obscurity was embraced by the academic brigade when the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe blasted Conrad as a "bloody racist." Then came the discourses and the dissertations.

I wonder who the other "beloved authors" are and the dead ones not yet buried Nabokov is alluding to. Oh, writers and their catfights, so delectable on a humid day.

(Caricature from The New Yorker)

Hanging with a jerk

2009-08-31T19:18:00.000-07:00

In a perfect example of synchronicity, my favorite musicians and novelists usually espouse the same socio-political views that I cherish, fanning delusions that you are what you read or listen to and that to a certain degree, belief in the remote possibility that these cultural heroes of our youth could be our drinking buddies. After all, the recipe of friendship is almost complete - same-mindedness, shared trepidations of a world gone awry, harboring the same misgivings...

As I grew older, I became less and less convinced that an artist ought to be evaluated primarily for his political views. I've mentioned before I've been poked for reading works of known anti-Communists but would you throw out Dostoevsky, for instance, for being a defender of the patriarchal authority of the Tsar? How many writers have conjured images of women that are despicable, shall we boycott them? If we choose to read writers substantially for their politics, we will be shortchanging ourselves.

My first hard lesson was nothing short of traumatic. This musician was a favorite since college, I wrote a paper heralding his contribution to music. In short, he was in my altar of unabashed adoration. Later, I found out that he was a wife-beater. A wife-beater? How could someone capable of writing such profound thoughts be a monster? It was difficult to reconcile but reality bites. What was I to do? Throw away his CDs and declare him as a bad artist?

The artist does have a covenant to preserve the integrity of his work, continue to sharpen his craft either by reworking his themes, push boundaries, and discover new frontiers. How he treats his dogs is of secondary importance, but God forbid, no to animal cruelty. I mean, what do I care if my cultural heroes are misogynist, miserable bastards? Their body of work speak for themselves, never mind how they behave in private.

Rilke whose poems have been my prayers is another example. In a biography written by Ralph Freedman, he was described as: an anti-Semite, a coward, a psychic vampire, a crybaby. He was a son who refused to go to his dying father's bedside, a husband who exploited and abandoned his wife, a father who almost never saw his daughter and who even stole from a special fund for her education to pay for his first-class hotel rooms. He was a seducer of other men's wives, a pampered intellectual gigolo, and a virtual parody of the soulful artiste who deems himself superior to ordinary people because he is so tenderly sensitive, a delicate blossom easily punished by a passing breeze or sudden frost.

Clearly, Rilke was not a nice man. He was a con artist. And this jerk wrote this:

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willingto be dazzled--
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing--
that the light is everything... And I do.

Some non-jerks could not illuminate such as this. So I will take Rilke, jerk and all, any day of the week. Now, jerk off.

Running on Empty

2009-08-28T18:44:00.000-07:00

Run, baby, run" - Sheryl Crow

Do men sprint faster than women? Anatomically, they have 2 yoyos swinging loosely and a distended rod to boot, a heavier package to carry around, if you ask me, so why do women breaking speed records subjected to gender speculations? As if it were improbable for females to race in Flash Gordon quickness.

There was Nancy Navalta of recent years. And the latest woman on the stake is South African athlete Caster Semenya. Or is it her family name, evoking masculine visceral representation? Semen, indeed, is a male thing.

Here we go again, back in the first paragraph, being pulled by the inanity of medieval ideas as if Madonna did not make us dance to "I made it through the wildnerness." It's been more than 7 hours and 15 days and yet it feels we have not actually move forward. Kabudlay, oi.

Women are already in the literature on positive politics of peace and being evaluated as a workable ethical model for corrective citizenship and yet, road blocks continue to delay the journey. I remember being asked in either a class report or was it a forum, how the experience of motherhood as distinctively female experience dictate how women engage themselves as political beings.

First of all, I don't subscribe to the notion that as mothers, women care for the world and the future more passionately than men. I don't believe that women crave for peace more than men. Perhaps, there is in our socialization a different perspective being molded but as a whole, I don't see civic participation as a function of gender.

Citizenship, as a masculinized concept, is intimately linked with patriotism. Sadly, patriotism in most cultures, is measured in military defense terms - how one gallantly takes a bullet for one's tribe/community/country and in the enduring age of imperialism, being in the forefront of expansionist projects camouflaged as pursuits of national interest. In short, citizenship is defined along the lines of glorifying the male warrior.

While men are born to run down enemies of the state and run political affairs, women are considered unpatriotic because they burn their bras or run naked protesting against wars of aggression, inadvertently getting in the way of men's preoccupation.Where do women camp out? Mostly they are at the forefront of peace and environmental movements, microfinance, solidarity-building endeavors. Some explain than since women are less exposed to violence or are not instruments of violence, they tend to have a different worldview from men. I beg to differ. Women across socio-economic cleavages get slaps, lashes, and whips for breakfast, and mind you, this is not of the kinky variety. How people readily assume women are less exposed to violence should get married and experience for themselves how it is to cohabit with males and their sharp instruments.

It is false to assume that women are remotely located in the radius of violence simply because they are not in combat gear and raining down bombs on some strange land and annihilating culture. Come on, women are collateral damges in any form of militarization, whether as a source of comfort to soldiers or are the ones massacred and raped. Perhaps, because of these experiences of war and violence that women tend to develop aversion to them and yearn for peace or are more open to dialogues of peace.

But as I said earlier, gender can be a booby trap. To accept the idea that nurturing is a woman's turf is to fall prey to the same socially-constructed binary categories of males vs. females, animus-anima, yin-yang. The machines of war march forward not because boys will be boys. Gender is not in the equation, not by a far shot. That's silly, as if war were some esoteric idea that is hard to explain. It's that simple:war is real, not metaphorical; war is physical, not metaphysical. To some, war is a neccesity to survive as an economy. War has become both a means and an end.

Meanwhile, there's a continuous revolutionizing of the means of production, the pressure of profit, the development of the production forces amidst repressive relations of power - gelling up to fuel more wars.

Yes, we are running, racing, speeding.....towards destruction.

No Mystery

2009-08-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

"Cause you're working, building a mystery" Sarah Maclachlan

Mystery. Once the veil of mystery is stripped off, trust me, a relationship is on the doldrums. Next stop, splitsville. That's a friend speaking her mind, not me.

How in God's country can one sustain "mystery" in, say, a 3-year relationship, I silently wonder. Replicating a chameleon isn't exactly an enchanting prospect for me. What in the hell for? It's like being in a relationship with a schizo, no thanks.

Maybe I don't get it. Most of the time, I don't get it anyway. But here's my take: from the get-go, I want no mask. Layers to be peeled off, yes. No holding back, all cards on the table. Warts, zits, and all.

Mystery is so contrived, pa-epek and overrated. What possible mystery can one preserve - that you're an alien from Mars? That one grows fangs every time the moon is in full bloom?

Understanding and acceptance - how can they hold a candle in a relationship cloathed in mystery? I agree with Lucretius. The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love. Isn't it the case of celebrities we like, we prepare a dossier of them, in our intent to know them in a deeper sense? Of course, it does not follow that just because you live with a person or spend time with him that you can already read the palm of his hand or that he can no longer spring a surprise. But the second-guessing is not deliberate.

I want boring and predictable, a comfortable knowledge that I can even predict the shirt my partner is going to wear on a particuar ocassion, the part of a film which he finds funny, a quotation that will rock his boat, what he's going to say in a repartee, what he is not saying, finish his sentences.

Even with friends, I would like to think I can order food for them or choose songs at videoke and there's no mystery involved anymore. Precisely you can do this because you somehow know them. Just recently, a dear friend dropped by and played some Dave Matthews in his guitar. I told him that if Baan were around, she would surely request for "Crash". True enough, when Baan got home and caught us jamming, she asked R, "can you play Crash?" R and I looked at each other and shared a secret smile, in unspoken agreement that I somehow know my sister. Maupay it feeling.

Polluting Politics

2009-08-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

The medley of cover-ups that exposes more non-truths rather than conceal them, infuriates even more. It's not so much the callousness of the present leadership to munch and nibble to their gastronomic excesses but the deliberate manueverings to mislead. If this government cannot even be honest and transparent on its frivolous 'trivialities', what honesty can we expect from its other squanderings?

This administration slaps politics a bad name, a very bad name. Politics as conceived by Aristotle, is the "highest art," the "rarest of human activities". At the core of politics is the fundamental preoccupation as to what is the best way for people to live, both as an individual and as a collective. The "highest good," that is, the full potential of man for happiness and the best quality of life, can only be achieved outside the household. In effect, Aristotle paid homage to the polis as the vehicle and venue for the fruition of the highest good. Consequently, the marriage of politics and ethics is virtually solidified as the organization of society was paralleled with summoning what values, rules, and ideas must each person embody.

The Renaissance broke this bond with the ascendancy of Machiavelli's political realism of conquest and power and more importantly, the perpetuation of that power - 'the end justifies the means'. The Prince, to wield power, must be amoral, cunning, possessing astuteness to discern when to behave like a fox or a lion.

Today, several generations from Aristotle, politics is practiced in its crudest, most crass form, thanks to politicians like GMA.

Proust Way

2009-08-18T19:17:00.000-07:00

We'll say there are two kinds of novelists: the snail and the swallow. The
swallow is quick, agile, and able to speed across long, tireless stretches.
Nothing a swallow does goes wrong; mistaken turns are instantly corrected, bad
weather is put to good use, and poor judgment can be tweaked just enough to look
like a flash of genius. In the implacable assembly line of prose, nothing is
ever wasted or thrown away. By contrast, the snail is slow, deliberate, fussy,
cramped. Swallows travel and seek out the world; the snail burrows into itself.
The swallow acts; the snail retracts, guesses, speculates. A swallow chugs life
down the way whales take in water, plankton and all, while the snail ingests
choice bits down a multichambered spiral, where its appetite, like its vision,
is eternally whorled. Balzac, Dickens, and Fielding are swallows, even
Tolstoy. (Marcel Proust, "Swann's Way")
I'm not too sure I get Proust's drift but I like his typology, simplistic maybe, but clearly makes the distinctive comparison. Some writers choose the trendier nihilistic outlook of the world and at a certain age, these are the writers we gravitate to, mirroring our own mugging despair and disenchantment. At the end of the day, we feel more dazed and confused, emptyhanded in our little excursions.

sense overload

2009-08-12T18:48:00.000-07:00

A room of one's own. The room in my mind. A room I would like to have, given the chance. Small, private, with everything of great value within an arm's reach - CDs, DVDs, books, whew! This is so-called life.

Behind this door is another universe, an encounter with the incalculable, a world where disenchantments are regulated and conditioned.

The present world, the world outside can be shut out. In a contrived environment, the world left behind can be recaptured by imitations and repetitive recollections, not born out of despair but of convenient necessity.

Nothing is worthless. Everything has value, even silence. Specially silence, sublime silence. Words and speech, they take a backseat. They have a different destiny.

And Emily Dickinson's ghost hovers. And it's my mother's birthday today. She would have been 64.

Poems for "Bigo" (not Big O, if you get my drift)

2009-08-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

I came across Anne Carson’s “The Beauty of the Husband” weeks ago – And so why did I love him from early girlhood to late middle age/And the divorce decree came in the mail?/Beauty, no great secret/ Not ashamed to say I loved him for his beauty/As I would again if he came near/Beauty convinces/You know beauty makes sex possible/Beauty makes sex, sex/

This made me reflect on damage, er, marriage, what’s the spelling? Or how is it spelled? – these were the running jokes in college. My friend Godo even had a wisecrack “Marriage? You must be tired of living.”

I can count by my left hand the number of times I’ve attended a wedding in the last 5 years. I guess my friends prefer to live in sin or are mostly gay and can’t get married or are mostly dry-eyed spinsters like me. Oftentimes, I jest that the prime benefit of marriage is the sex becoming legal but not necessarily better.

As the poem suggests, will love transcend the loss of beauty? Will sex and sex alone keep the marital bed burning? Carole King sang “Will you still love me tomorrow?” which is a far realistic love song than say, “I love you more today than yesterday but not as much as tomorrow” which is a bit spaced-out talking about the future on certain terms – pure baloney.

All the jadedness aside, it sure takes a lot of balls to decide to get married and remain married. I used to say that I could not imagine myself organizing my life around a single person but Georgelablab, this abandoned pup looking so lost and earnest outside the dorm, wormed his doggie charm into my heart and I found my life literally revolving around a dog and I was not even raised to be a dog-lover. This is not to compare a dog to a husband but in terms of affections and commitment involved, it’s almost on the same plane.

What makes marriages tick? There are formulas and there are formulae. Most people are convinced it’s having a dynamic communication. From where I sit, it’s more of self-sacrifice – staying faithful, forgiving shortcomings, putting yourself in the shoes of the other, agreeing to disagree, humbling oneself, all these demand sacrifice. Not unless one is prepared to go the distance should the idea of marriage be even entertained.

Fidelity-this will spawn volumes and volumes of treatise and I remember a bittersweet poem I read in college – I went downtown tonight/to the capital under the clear moon/I came home: what did I see?/Four legs under my quilt/Used to be two of them were mine/but what about the other two?/ Tonight, I’m sure of this/the other two are not mine. (“Song,” Cho Yong)

Poetry isn’t exactly the most popular artform but its power isn’t exactly diminished. I’ve started posting poems I like at FS and the reactions I receive are unexpectedly tremendous. Poetry has an audience contrary to some notions that it has no effect on people, specially the younger set. This poem was well-received so I am reposting it here.

My Husband Discovers Poetry (Diane Lockward, from Eve's Red Dress,Wind Publications)

Because my husband would not read my poems,

I wrote one about how I did not love him.

In lines of strict iambic pentameter,

I detailed his coldness, his lack of humor.

It felt good to do this.
Stanza by stanza, I grew bolder and bolder.

Towards the end, struck by inspiration,

I wrote about my old boyfriend,

a boy I had not loved enough to marry

but who could make me laugh and laugh.

I wrote about a night years after we parted

when my husband's coldness drove me from the house

and back to my old boyfriend.

I even included the name of a seedy motel

well-known for hosting quickies.

I have a talent for verisimilitude.
In sensuous images, I described

how my boyfriend and I stripped off our clothes,

got into bed, and kissed and kissed,

then spent half the night telling jokes,

many of them about my husband.

I left the ending deliberately ambiguous,

then hid the poem awayin an old trunk in the basement.
You know how this story ends,

how my husband one day loses something,

goes into the basement,

and rummages through the old trunk,

how he uncovers the hidden poemand sits down to read it.

But do you hear the strange sounds

that floated up the stairs that day,

the sounds of an animal, its paw caught

in one of those traps with teeth of steel?

Do you see the wounded creature

at the bottom of the stairs,

his shoulders hunched over and shaking,

fist in his mouth and choking back sobs?

It was my husband paying tribute to my art.

(graphics by www.slowpokecomics.com)

Binukbok Questionnaire

2009-08-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

1. What author do you own the most books by? Salinger, Anita Brookner and May Sarton, I almost have all their novels, I think.

2. What book do you own the most copies of? Art of War and Bhaggavad-gita, got two of both.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Not really. My prepositions are weak and uncertain. Prepositions still confuse me sometimes.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? My love is no secret. I think I fall a bit in love with particular characters to be truly engaged, then I totally forget about them. My heart is fickle and promiscuous.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life? Something on spirituality.

6. Favorite book as a ten year old? The Hardy Boys series.

7. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year? There’s always redemption at the end no matter how weak a book is. This is more of a self-indulgence for me so I don’t get upset or have self-loathing, I try to find crumbs I can cart away before I close a book forever.

8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year? I have not actually read for almost a year because of an illness. Maybe, the essays on fishing, I forgot the title.

9. If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be? The Jungle so they would also have bouts of rage and depression as I had. It's a punishing novel, I have to say.

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? None that I can think of at the moment.

11. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read? Those authored by French post-modernists, damn.

12. What is your favorite devotional book? The Psalms and Rilke

13. What is your favorite play? Brecht’s Mother Courage

14. Poem? Epitaph for the Western Intelligentsia, mostly because of the last line "We bark like dogs and learn to wag our tails"

15. Essay? Anything about literary criticism and critical theory usually interest me.

16. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? No Comment. Ask the critics.

17. What is your desert island book? A book on humor and poetry. Maybe, some Woody Allen's.

18. And...what are you reading right now? Finishing “Tale of Two,” a book about Lucille, an adorable dog.

Defrosting in Proust

2009-08-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, VF ran this Proust Questionnaire, not at all credited to Marcel Proust but believed to be character-revealing. Hmm...I'm trying my hand on it. See how it works.

What is your current state of mind?
Brimming with hope. A little nostalgic and sentimental

What is your greatest fear?
When I was young and full of shit, the prospect of becoming irrelevant. But that was pure humbug. Later, the thought of outliving my loved ones and sure enough, God’s warped sense of humor made sure I dealt with it gallantly. I am fully orphaned and dealing with cancer. Now, it’s losing my memory, my humanity, my resolve to sanctify life and love.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Romantic optimism about people and life in general, oftentimes neglectful that it has its limits.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Lack of compassion; absence of integrity; not having a mind of their own; too much self-importance.

Which living person do you most admire?
Is Jesus dead? This is tough. Abbas Kiarostami whose films are amalgams of poetry and philosophy .

Which living person do you most despise?
My wrath is reserved for oppressors and exploiters, people wrapped in hate and greed and only love themselves.

On what occasion do you lie?
Every occasion. I’m a lousy liar, I need years of practice before I can lie with a straight face and credible conviction.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Life itself and its attendant trappings. Life has not been exactly easy but I strive to celebrate it. I am grateful, despite and inspite of its imperfections and intricacies.

When and where were you happiest?
Inhaling the rarefied air, in the company of family and friends whom I consider family.

Which talent would you most like to have?
Music - crafting it, playing it or understanding the human condition in the context by which it has to be interpreted.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I wish I had more ambition and focus.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would it be?
I’ve blogged about this quite recently. I wish to be a polygot, a physicist and a superb dancer, I wrote. In addition, I wish to swim and drink like a fish in the next life. Have a fat bank account, perhaps? And Good Lord, not to have cancer. If I were to choose one disease, it would be nymphomania.

What is your favorite occupation?
Not to have one? Be in development work, work at the grassroots. Maybe teach again. I don’t know.

Who are your favorite writers?
I am a fan of my friends’ writings. Some Continental authors, a few Anglo-Saxon.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Would Logan of “Veronica Mars” or Tony Soprano qualify? Phoebe in “Catcher in the Rye”; Atticus Finch

Who are your heroes in real life?
People who are governed by compassion, moral courage, and integrity.

What are your favorite names?
I like the name Rodrigo.

What is your greatest regret?
That I have been more self-absorbed at times.

How would you like to die?
By the ocean with the whisper of the waves beckoning me home or by the forest and birds are singing.

What is your motto?
Love is the strongest drug? It’s got to be from Goethe – “What is the path? There is no path. On into the unknown.”

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Preserving my humor and sanity or at least, a semblance of it. Let me bring to the dinner-table Ralph W. Emerson “to laugh often and much/to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children/to earn the appreciation of honest critics/and endure the betrayal of false friends/to appreciate beauty/to find the best in others/to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition/to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived/this is to have succeeded.

Woke up Again this Morning

2009-08-07T17:32:00.000-07:00

Posted a poem I liked in college (Damn, I forgot the poet's name) and became some sort of a morning prayer for a while in FB but my senses may have not yet been fully awake, I realized I skipped some of the parts and there's no way of editing so I'm reposting it here.

Here's how you get out of bed:

You get out of bed like this - one foot at a time, one leg at a time, one life at a time, then you're up. But that's only the beginning.

Then you have to drag your whole godforsaken body out from the dead of the living into the light of the world.

Fuck it! I think I'll crawl under the covers and stay where I am.

Which does't mean I don't know how to get out of bed.

It's just like what I said - one foot at a time, one leg at a time, one life at a time. Then you're up. But that's only the beginning.

(doodle from www.stereotypist.livejournal.com)

The President's Choice

2009-08-06T19:32:00.000-07:00

"The President's prerogative, " a haughty defense for the uproar and indignation caused by the latest list of persons to be conferred the prestigious title of National Artist. This chilled my frail bone and brought back hazy memories of "Dean's prerogative" everytime administrative decisions were met with outrage in UPTC where I was employed years ago.

This so-called prerogative of the highest authority, I can understand the how of it - how it's often used, in more brazen ways than one, and how gratifying it must be but the why of it, I should be enlightened. Is this part of the Social Contract where we entrust the "common good" to the sovereign? Is the sovereign capable of deciding for the common good, all the time? Is the Leviathan infallible and who is to police his thoughts and actions?

If the president chooses to use this power of having the prerogative, what is the point in installing a democratic exercise or a semblance of democratic process through a selection committee when in the end, the recommendations of the committee carry no substantive weight? It's a waste of resources. Might as well go by gut-feel.

The GMA administration is particularly notorious for bypassing the Committe on Apointments in some of its controversial appointees in the past so this is not particularly shocking - GMA soiling her hands, yet once again, in the area of culture and the arts. Naglilinamiri na gud la, nga kagwang.

I force myself to look at GMA on TV and not puke and I see a woman who is not only so at home with power but is so smug about it. She has flabbergasted me several times by her propensity to give tongue-lashings to government officials deemed inefficient with the cameras panning on her infuriated expression. Some landlords treat their slaves better. People with lesser virtue would curb their tongue and try to act properly even on pretense, but this woman who has been raised in wealth, had a president for a father, and a crook for a husband? shows no qualms parading to the world what her power provides and how she intends using it.

Some smartass texted GMA's fitting epitaph: Here lies.....and I find myself not disagreeing.

(photo courtesy of www.weheartit.com)

"The Book is Binukbok" (Emman Lacaba)

2009-08-03T19:21:00.000-07:00

While I am about to embark on a McEwan exploration, a long time coming really, here's the Booker Prize contenders this year. Not a single book in the list made it to my reading achievements, so far. (woe to me!)

1. The Children's Book, AS Byatt (Chatto and Windus)

2. Summertime, JM Coetzee (Harvill Secker)

3. The Quickening Maze, Adam Foulds (Jonathan Cape)

4. How to paint a dead man, Sarah Hall (Faber)

5. The Wilderness, Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape)

6. Me Cheeta, James Lever (Fourth Estate)

7. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)

8. The Glass Room, Simon Mawer (Little, Brown)

9. Not Untrue & Not Unkind, Ed O'Loughlin (Penguin - Ireland)

10.Heliopolis, James Scudamore (Harvill Secker)

11. Brooklyn, Colm Toibin (Viking)

12. Love and Summer, William Trevor (Viking)

13. The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters (Virago)

Will Coetzee get his third? It's too much but that would be a treasured feather on the prized cap of a novelist who writes in studied restraint and whose sparse prose is devoid of sentimentality. Well, at least, the Coetzee of old. The numerical trend suggests something - his first came in 1983, then 14 years later in 1997, he scored his second with 'Disgrace'. Well, it's only 12 years from winning his last but it's 2009, he seems to be darn lucky on odd numbers.

Speaking of novels, how many have I started and not finished? Quite a few, just quite a few. One of the things I loathe about myself is the inability to let go, such a pussy. By page 8, one more less, gets a sense that this is a lousy novel - yawn, yawn and the best idea is to throw it and find something worthwhile. But since I am rather committed to it and harbor notions that who knows, by page 72, there will be an epiphany of sorts. Or a beautifully crafted sentence you wished you had written, an unexpected twist, a funny line that reminds you of someone, a phrase evoking memories, an anecdote so close to home. I end up feeling empty and detesting myself more for being kiss-ass to throw a novel away. It's a huge character flaw I have had major battles with - knowing and deciding to give up.

I wish I could wean myself from fiction a little bit. I have friends who I see happier chewing on the fat, so to speak, nourishing their souls with the fattier tissues of political economy, biographies, history, philosophy and I envy them. While here I am, still in fictionland. Some have even become condescending or maybe this is just paranoia on my part but you feel a prejudice-vibe. Somebody asked "what pleasure do you derive from fiction?" I could recite a litany but that would sound defensive.

Yes, I agree that after being familiar with a particular genre, the genre somehow loses its suspense. You can somehow predict the nuances or read into them but as a reader, there's comfort in the thought that you are actually capable of entrusting your imagination to a writer you hardly know. It's the masterful stroke of a writer to let you experience the agony of action until the last page, regardless if you know from the very start how stories usually end.

Fiction to me, feeds that archetypal vulnerability of monkeys swinging from tree to tree, demonstrating faith in their peers to catch them, no matter what. Story plots are trite, contrived, tired, rehashed but so is life. Life finds comfort in patterns and rituals, it's not really an exciting rollercoaster ride but even rollercoasters for the sake of debate, also follow certain patterns, don't they?

Fiction may not offer something new, in the strictest sense of the term. What is more important is having that attitude that you may have heard this already, done this, read about this, knew about this and yet there is something that you can cart away that either sustains or reaffirms your spirit.

And this is not me being defensive, guffaws. To that friend who asked what pleasure I derive from fiction, allow me to drag an ally in John Gardner whose books on crafting fiction are considered major references. He competenly defends "to write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that 1 out of a hundred people who read one's work may be dying, or have some loved one dying....to write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs.....to write as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged, to live on."

Thank you, Mr. Gardner. And to those who have lost their stomach for fiction, maybe you're reading the bad ones.

Farewell, President!

2009-08-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

Somber - the national mood, a deluge of nostalgia for the gilded time in history when we felt as a people, we were more formidable than the sum of our parts; that with a clear vision, we could rise above ourselves. The aftermath - the tide swayed, giving room for man-made catastrophe to impose its way. But that’s not my story.

Tears found freedom to leak and flow as I watched the tributes for Pres. Aquino over the weekend. Most affecting was witnessing Teddy Boy Locsin’s uncontrollable display of grief. Used to have this huge crush on him and hearing him say that just by being in Pres. Cory’s presence made him feel noble made my heart constrict to a 30th degree.

Memory rush - my mother discussing national politics at the dinner table. Sophomore year, I wrote my first political manifesto supporting Cory’s call for civil disobedience which my mother typed in her office's rustic typewriter. If not for Cory, the political bug wouldn't have sucked my blood. Yes, she taught me the value of affirmative action. She opened my eyes to what extent political activism could achieve. Before I encountered Bell Hook, I already felt how to be changed by ideas was pure pleasure.

My bouts of crying I try to rationalize. Maybe I was crying for that highschool sophomore draped in youthful optimism and harboring romantic ideas of liberty. Where has she gone? Maybe, the crying was more a feeling of yearning for a generation that shed blood for freedom and stood proud, that era where political actions bore positive fruits. I remember feeling weary, drained, fatigued, following the national headlines but nevertheless hopeful and celebratory of the general tempo of those times. Now, national politics just make me nauseous. The leadership, plagued by questions of legitimacy and charges of corruption does not inspire pride.

For Pres. Cory, this poem by Goethe, one of my life-coaches:

SILENCE
Over all the hilltops
Silence,
Among all the treetops
You feel hardly
A breath moving.
The birds fall silent in the woods.
Simply wait! Soon
You too will be silent.

Good Morning, Sunshine

2009-07-29T20:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-07-21T18:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-07-17T20:04:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-07-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-07-09T18:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-09T17:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-07-07T01:03:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-07-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Love in Chains

2009-06-29T19:07:00.000-07:00

Earlier I checked the writer's almanac - Jean Jacques Rousseau was born yesterday 3 centuries ago. Rousseau ushered in the Age of Romanticism and the irony was not lost on me - my friend L whom I could not prod to take the leap of faith for one reason or another, crushing her romantic efferverscence and R's Social Contract declaration of "man being born free but everywhere, is in chains" and realizing in this situation, I was part of the chain-gang. Touche.

No chants of Liberte for a friend but over in Iran, some liberties are being compromised, some chants muted. Four national football players wearing green badges during an international match were allegedly booted out, the fate of 2 others, undetermined.

One cannot take a pulse of Iran's political climate without a full grasp of its history and culture so I will not sink my crooked teeth into it. It just occured to me that the first foreigner I met was Nabee, an Iranian student who temporarily lived obliquely across our residencia in Santan St. My father was chummy with him but I never understood their conversations.

An early riser as a kid, I would go to Mano Titing's as a pre-breakfast ritual. Mano Titing, bless him, stood as a surrogate grandfather as my biological ones were in Bohol, was convincing me forever to study archery with him as a teacher but his household stock of Tagalog comics kept me glued to the sofa.

Once I was done with the morning's chitchat, I would go next door to watch Nabee perform his routine in a pole vault he installed in his backyard, back on those pre-gated days when it was easy to trespass on other people's property. A silent spectator, my presence didn't make him self-conscious at all. We would exchange pleasantries after he's through with his regimen as I struggled with my English.

I wonder where he is now or if he is still alive. Could he be joining the demos? In honor of this childhood memory, I am posting some favorite verses of "The Sound of Water's Footsteps," one of the longest poems I ever encountered by Sohrab Sepehri, whose birthday falls a day after mine, as if the connection matters. He is a notable Persian painter and poet whose work is considered 'New Poetry.'

I joined the party of the World:
I visited the field of grief,
The garden of mysticism,
The lighted veranda of knowledge.
I climbed up the stairs of religion.
To the end of the alleyway of doubt,
To the cool air of independence,
To the wet night of compassion.
I went to meet someone on the other end of love.
I walked, I walked toward a woman,
Toward the light of pleasure,
Toward the silence of desire,
Toward the sound of the wing of loneliness.

I saw people. I saw cities.
I saw fields, mountains.
I saw water, I saw earth.
I saw Light and Darkness.
And I saw the foliage in Light,
and I saw the foliage in Darkness.
And I saw humanity in Light,
and I saw humanity in Darkness.

No matter where I am,
Sky is mine.
The window, thought, air, love, earth is mine.

Let us go to the seashore,
Spread the net on the water,
Catch freshness out of the water.
Pick up a pebble from the ground
And feel the weight of being.

(doodles from www.xkcd.com)

A Whale of Love

2009-06-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

L is in a gunk of a conundrum. An old flame is reigniting the embers of a love frowned upon by the old folks. "A date is under wraps," her text read. "What shall I do?" Certainly, I cannot unwrap it, can I?

"Keep your nose on the grindstone," I advised. "Focus on your studies, get enough rest," I added, sounding granny as usual.

Can love be put in deferment for other priorities? The rational self shouts yes! But what could be a bigger priority than love? What's eating my bravado, my bold pronunciamento that there are degrees for burn but not for gugma? The phoniness reeks but sometimes, phoniness is the best policy, that much I can convey.

Haay, "how long, how must I sing this song?" - don't come to me for love advice, not until whales start swinging from tree to tree and chimpanzees frolic in the ocean. Have this scientific fact tattooed: Dyndyn, a denizen of Santan Street, is a love-idiot.

Speaking of whales, let me post this poem, my Sunday prayer which I find uplifting, a vessel of hope, transcending all the indignities this world sometimes brings forth.

Things to do in the Belly of a Whale

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days. Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals. Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices. Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review each of your life's ten million choices. Endure moments of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you. Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart. Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope, where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all the things you did and could have done. Remember treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

("Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale" by Dan Albergotti from The Boatloads.© BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008).

Files for the Next Life

2009-06-27T11:24:00.000-07:00

After journeying from one reader to another, this Sting autobio I could not afford to buy when it came out is finally in my bookshelf, thanks to Regiedor's charity. RP who has read it swears it's a superbly written book - not a phrase wasted, not a word carelessly placed. If Sting were a tailor, RP analogizes, his work wouldn't show a thread hanging loose. But Sting is no tailor, he's ex-husband #1.

An old interview flashed back with his sardonic humor in total display, poking fun at people undergoing hypnosis. After snapping out of neverland, he noted that everybody usually claims to be part of the Russian tsar family or some noble lineage in their past lives. How come, he dared, nobody confesses to be a louse in Rasputin's beard or a door knob in some Victorian castle. I am not sure if this anecdote is in this book, I am just in Chapter 2.

Past life. A topic of a recent conversation is the exact opposite: reincarnation. How shall you design the next life?

(1) Since I am a fetishist in this current life, I want to be a physicist in the next. I've said this a thousand and one times - gifted with ample intelligence, I would have majored in Physics, not PolSci.

(2) To be a monogamist polygot and be able to freely converse with cabdrivers in their native tongue and read T. Mann and other non-English writers in their original texts. For the monogamist part, to be able to clasp hands and stare intently at a Beloved in whatever terrain, frontier, hill we are perched on.

This is where my imagination falters - the crucial meeting of paths, the conjucture by which one comprehends that kismet is neither an hour early or an hour delayed. Wong Kar-Wai's "In the Mood for Love," is one of the most sensuous, languorous movies that compounded my inarticulateness on the where-and-when conjectures of love in full bloom.

There's a paragraph, however, in Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" that I jotted down in an old journal that describes this spellbinding moment of recognition which shall be sharply instructive I suppose, in the next life: "It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of reassurance that you may come across 4 or 5 times in life. It concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you, that at your best, you hoped to convey."

If that human being is already in your life, give thanks for this precious gift. The rest of us are enticed to look towards the horizon of an afterlife.

(3) Be a great ballerina or just to be able to dance, period.

Is this too much to hope for?

Doggie Love (1)

2009-06-27T03:26:00.000-07:00

Got this email from Doc Retchi and no matter how trite and inelegant the prose, dogs make me kinda sappy. Here it goes:

If a dog was a teacher, you would learn things like: When you're happy, dance around and wag your tail. Delight in the simple joy of a long walk. Be loyal. Never pretend to be something you are not. When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by, and nuzzle them gently.

Salamuch, Dukie! Arf to your Rambo.

Of Animal Farms & Fake names & Namesakes

2009-06-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

Today, somebody pointed out, is G. Orwell's birthday whose "Animal Farm" was a must-read within the activist circle way back because of its anti-Stalinist tone. I later found out the CIA bought the rights to this book and produced a movie it gave for free to stir up anti-communist sentiments. Hell, even communists were critical of Stalin, not only the CIA. And that George Orwell is actually a pseudonym, hmm. Should we give credence to writers doing 'critical' treatises and not signing their real names?

In "Veronica Mars," my favorite character Logan (trembles!!) made a reference to Orwell's 1984 as the only book he ever read. Big brother, I miss Logan's wits. I ripped his "how many vowels?" to a Grade IV boy I met a week ago in a law office.

Friendly with young boys, I initiated, "let me guess your name." The boy stared at me suspiciously. "How many vowels,?" I asked. The boy made an elaborate gesture of counting with his fingers. "What's the first letter?" He warmed up a little and says "S". "The last letter?" pressing for more clue. "N," the boy exclaimed excitedly.

Aha! "Satan!" And the boy pulled his hair, jerking his head with tremendous vigor and grated his teeth and screamed "My name is not Satan. I am Sir Albert Einstein!" It was my turn to pull the little hair atop my stubborn head.

Sir Albert Einstein, what a name to live up to. I think I would be kinder to my own child and name him/her Pokwang and risk eternal damnation. But the boy I made friends with was a genius like his namesake, the mere fact that he was only 7 years old yet already in Grade IV.

Making conversation, I asked "who's your favorite teacher?" Without as much as a wink, he tells me it's Ma'am Cortez "from the rootword courtesy". I had to put my funky-smelling socks on my gaping mouth.

Sensing a friend in me, he offered to let me hear his version of a French song by Celine Dion. WTF! Just what I deserved. And a few other Celine Dion's, God have mercy. To stop his impromtu performance, after about 4 songs I have only heard for the first time that day, I told him as a way of discouragement that not one of the songs was familiar to me and wasn't I in for another treat? Getting friendlier each second, he prodded me to listen to a very popular Celine Dion song which he was so damn sure I must know or at least have heard of. And so the boy belted "I am your lady and you are my man." Goodness, gracious! And did I say he sang it with much gusto?

Abadaw, another fairy in my life. A fairy-magnet, I am. Bless this fairy of an Einstein or an Einstein of a fairy, this boy warmed my heart so.

The Man in the Mirror is Dead

2009-06-26T15:44:00.000-07:00

"When someone in the dark reaches out to you,
And touches off the spark that comes shining through
It tells you never be afraid" Michael Jackson, "Someone in the Dark"

Grade VI pupils have not heard of bulimia or anorexia but self-imposed starvation and sheer madness bought me my first 2 cassete tapes: Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Gary V's first album, the latter once touted by showbiz kibitzers as the "Michael Jackson of the Philippines."

Then Prince came a-strutting - dirtier, much more flamboyant, and did I already say dirtier? This artist who sang that the color of rain was purple and opened my eyes that doves, like humans, also cried relegated "Thriller" into the dustbin. Then those boys from Birmingham, DuranDuran gripped my uterus (labia, behave) and I took a peek of The Dawn's JB Leonor's drumming stool (again, labia, behave) and discovered ideas could be enveloped, so bye-bye Michael.

What totally ruined what could have been an MJ fandom was mixed tape, the rage during my days of quiet content. A classmate named Edgar Ben was wooing a girl named Michelle so he briefed me about his genius of a plan. Side A was a repetition of the Beatles' "Michelle" and Side B was, you guess it right, "Ben" of MJ. And as the song went, "You've got a friend in me," MJ lost a fan but the trick worked wonders - B earned a wife in M many years later. Whew! Mixed tapes, Rob Gordon, you rock!

Anyhow, celebrity deaths, why do they affect us? I was probably one of the last to know about this recent cause of grief among music fans because I went downtown so early in the day without checking the news. A text from Mamon-bebe whom I didn't consider an MJ fan before or is he? kept me abreast, outscooping BBC where I normally get my first hand. Kudos!

Teacher-Stalker

2009-06-25T07:28:00.000-07:00

Still on the subject of students becoming teachers, my cousin Carlyl’s favorite teacher is RV, incidentally a student in a History or introductory PolSci class, I can’t be certain anymore.

C started freshman last year and one time he visited me at RTR Hospital. Too weak to even speak, I managed to wrangle this tidbit. Almost leaping from the hospital bed in mild excitement, “I know that guy – dusky, knowing smile, a carpet of chest hair?” Poor cousin with his perplexed expression, “ambot lang, Te.”

RV, a self-confessed stalker, bwahaha, is an excellent writer. More than the chest hair, I remember the writing (don’t worry, I’m not set out to commodify you). Here’s proof:

“I am saddled with sadness at your state but at the same time am glad to have known a great mentor like you. Yours is a life well-lived for you have embellished the lives of so many hungry minds.”

Pastilan, this fellow wants me dead. Or just too efficient perhaps? He has written an eulogy for me in advance. Wow!

Another shot: “Relishing my college years isn’t complete without remembering how good you taught us. That only inspires me to craft the same level of standard in my students.”

Salamuch R for this thoughtful note. This made me smile. I am happy and proud that my cousin appreciates your passion and integrity. Good taste runs in the family, doesn’t it?

I don’t have a penny so let me loan from Douglas Coupland, once It-boy/author of “Generation X”: “There are 3 things you can’t fake: erections, competence, and creativity.”

Be guided accordingly, as your favorite ROTC instructor might express it.

The Itch to Teach

2009-06-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

“Titser, genius ka kaya?
Bukod sa lesson plan, may thesis pang ginagawa?” Inang Laya, “Titser”

In her youth, my mother slugged it out teaching abakada to 7-year old kids at a public school in Tamboan, a barrio in Carmen, Bohol. Some of her students remember me as the fat brat who tagged along garbed in outfuckingrageous outfits. Argh! My kid-photos are a constant butt of fashion-catastrophe jokes in the family. Picture this: Fatso in a skimpy dress displaying those boxer arms and a worm-plagued belly. Completing the fashion disaster was a pair of white boots adorned with red feathers. Where’s the marching band, get the drift?

That’s my beef with grunge, it came 2 decades too late. Anyway, up to this day, I am referred to as “anak ni Ma’am” even if my mother abandoned teaching for a government hacking job.

When an opportunity to teach formally presented itself, I initially nixed the idea – I didn’t have the personality, my lifestyle was far from scholarly, and a thousand and one legit reasons. As they say, the rest is history. A more powerful philosophy outweighed the thousand reasons. What philosophy, bitch? “Obey first before you complain.” Of coursefuckingnot. Me, a fascist?

Emerson, the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, raised the cup of consolation, dispelling the bowl of reservation (oi, na-rhyme): “Let us bravely breast the winds; ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”

Formal teaching was indeed, a new world. Teaching human rights modules to peasants was not exactly the same as standing in a classroom of young people who were made to believe they were crème of the crop, pastilan. All this elitist indoctrination of being the so-called “chosen few,” correct or otherwise, steered a motivation to animate what was otherwise dull, flat, torpid subjects.

Years later when I was back to my NGO roots, a dear mentor Sir D in one of his epic-letters, offered a fount of wisdom in dealing with students that was very reaffirming.

I quote: “Must exude a cultivated air but no pedantry, humor but no flatulence. Most of all, integrity and passion. Both must be present; lacking these two, all the erudition and the elegant diction in the world avail us nothing.”

Then paraphrasing the Psalmist, the letter continued, “a clean heart and a renewed spirit, this is what we must try to have.”

Bereft of such elegance, let this letter stand as guidepost to former students who have become teachers themselves. Been needling RP who’s teaching Philosophy these days to let me sit in but he adamantly refuses.

Hey, I can take no for an answer but I am not resting my case yet. Maybe, I should camp outside RP’s classroom with my old handy thermos filled with kape and home-made egg sandwiches. Fun, fun, fun.

One More Burger Spoiled

2009-06-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

Emotionally exhausted from the 2 OTs of Game 4 between SMB and the Burger Kings earlier. By the skin of my crooked teeth, SMB grabbed a commanding 3-1 lead. This is moot and academic but I feel a bit crushed for Game 2, it was winnable but in the end....I mean, this series could have been over already tonight, a sweet sweep.

But you cannot take an excellent tactician out of Yeng Guaio, incidentally the current coach of the national team. He's an opponent who warrants respect and his boys are playing damn well. SMB is just getting the breaks, the gods are just smiling on us.

Was I being prophetic or what? That whiner Pennisi was ejected in the 2nd quarter, for second motion (according to the refs) and for yakking most wives would lose gas on (according to moi). It was bound to happen, the writings on the wall were GradeI-readable. Pennisi ended up sweating it out in the dugout, impotent to help his team (which happens to be my team, grrr!!) or was it a blessing in disguise? You can't be a frigging drama queen on court and gain respect as a player. Another career is waiting on the wings for DQs and whiners. Not on my team, please.

I should have castrated this Pennisi when SMB came to town last month, hmp.

Rain and BahRANi

2009-06-24T00:57:00.000-07:00

"Why does it always rain on me?
Is it because I lied when I was 17?" Travis, "Why does it Always Rain on Me?"

A big fan of rain as long as my rain-boots are on. The sprinklers up there in the azure skies have been turned off. Looking out from the bedroom window, no trace of dampness is evident, as if the torrential downpour was nothing but a teaser of a B-movie. Why do dramatic movies resort to rain effects on the 98th minute?

Speaking of movies, not watched one in a great while. Gae reminded me J. Taylor's "Across the Universe" is playing on HBO this month, one of the last movies I saw before getting sick last year. A DVD courtesy of the friendly pirates of Carriedo is tucked somewhere but the soundtrack more than satisfies.

There's a bunch of new cinema-houses in TC courtesy of a new mall. It's pandemonium I heard - people whom you've inferred have gone fugitive or underwent sex-change surgeries or have been abducted by UFOs or have simply bumped you off their orbits, make mysterious appearances for unplanned reunions. A mall, for crying out loud. This commercial bait can truly startle the dead from their grave.

Except for those European film festivals sponsored by various embassies that I hardly missed when I was still in das kapital (read: in the Manila), I have expunged moviehouses from the itinerary. Ultimately, film-watching is a solitary experience regardless of the throng shrieking or hollering or whatever it finds fit as reactions inside the theater.

Yet even as it is a solitary, private ritual, I believe films have to be celebrated and digested in multiple ways, giving birth to manifold interpretations. It is the conversation or should I risk using the term deconstruction, that ensues, which lends films their enduring power.

Maybe this is the reason I'm not too keen on movies lately. There's no one to pull the curtains off with. Joms, the person constituting 95% of my film appreciation isn't around to squeeze those juices. Hope he's got Bahrani's "Goodbye, Solo" by now. If there's one film that will easily drag my lazy carcass from the menagerie of Santan Street to the bigger menagerie of say, Robinson's Mall, it's Bahrani's 3rd outing. Old folks say 3's a charm. I am excited to what he's got on his sleeves this time, this fellow Kiarostami-worshipper.

While I was Sleeping.....

2009-06-22T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Ayatollah Khamenei addressed the multitude in Iran. Did anyone miss Cardinal Sin? Images of Bishop Tutu flashed. In the 21st century, there is no indication that the fusion of religion and politics is suffering recession, its collapse not forthcoming, I'm afraid.

In sports, Shahid Afridi’s Pakistan wrestled the ICC World20 trophy from Sri Lanka.

A separatist mutiny over at Formula One against perceived inconsistencies of FIA rulings, the last straw being the 60M expense cap set, seen by many to lead to further deterioration on the quality of the races. I once asked a priest-friend whose driving speed matches a Grand prix winner, if it’s the man or the machine that spells the difference in racing. He said it’s both the skill of the racer and the superiority of the machine. Whatever it is, it is better - cars than horses.

Now for the heartbreaking – Italy bowed out of the Confederations Cup, courtesy of the 3-nil massacre of Kaka’s Brazil. This stings. It was Cannavaro’s 126th cap and he got trashed for not being mentally adroit. When one allows an opponent to score 3 goals – not just one, not just two, but “tigol,” you gotta make your main defender culpable somehow. Even with Brazil’s arsenal, sure, the team’s barrage of talent is a cause of envy but 3 goals is too much of a poor defense from Team Italia.

This news bleeds. I am upset for the Azzurris. Playing for the Confederations Cup is a good tune-up as any for the World Cup. Maybe, it’s the huge philosophical shift to play more fluid, progressive football in Serie A, crushing the impression that Italian football is snore-inducing. Cantennacio is forsaken for a high-octane, high-scoring brand of football associated with South America, particularly Brazil. Even Canna relinquishes the dominance of defense but is hopeful that “in 5-6 years, defense will make a comeback”. By that time, he will not be part of Forza Italia. Sad.

Still with football, the Philippine national football team (yes, we have one) is currently quarantined in Singapore due to this swine flu hullabaloo. I texted Yaye he should feel relieved his son Kewell is still too young to be part of the team. Otherwise, he would have gone berserk with worry by now.

Hmm…if I were quarantined (God forbid), I wish it would be with Real Madrid, er, make it Juventus. Canna is returning to his former team, Ole!

Queen of Pain

2009-06-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

“Antonio knows that pleasure
Is a child of pain” - Michael Franks, “Antonio’s Song”

Over the stern disapproval of my oncologist, I’ve been booking sessions with a chiropractor since April. It’s an astral experience, perhaps nearly similar to childbirth.

The chiropractor explains that my lymphatic channel is obstructed resulting to 2 major drawbacks. First, toxins are not flashed out, forcing them to linger in my frail body. Second, which is more glaring, the brain’s signals to the body are garbled or not picked up in their proper context. This is the reason why my body, before this chiropractor’s hands were allowed to press nerve-endings here and there, could not recognize pain.

Gee, eureka moment for me, lending clarity to constant ribbings of being “manhid.” That's why I am not ticklish at all. My body just blocked any form of sensation, mostly pain. Amazingly, the body unilaterally decided it’s pain that it shouldn’t recognize, not any other emotion. What if it were joy or love or fear and loathing in Vegas? And Sarah is wailing “And I fear, I have nothing to give. I have so much to lose here in this lonely place..”

Yes, my eyes on the ball here, I was rambling about the body unable to comprehend pain.

While fellow cancer patients exhausted their S2 prescription, that’s the yellow prescription regulating hard drugs such as painkillers, here I was strutting like a favored child of heaven, devoid of discomfort, not needing the aid of a druggist.

Now that my central nervous system is being repaired by the chiropractor and physical pain has made a resurgence in my material world, every philosophical canon, every Zen incantation, lose their insight. It’s unproductive to wax philosophy when pain marches centerstage.

My sister, in a magnanimous gesture of sympathy, asked “want something for the pain?” “Weed, just weed,” I implored. “Get it yourself,” she retorted.

What option did I have but to settle with something that rhymes with weed – read!!! But pain bars you from digesting new information so I ended up re-reading Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” over my 'painful' weekend in honor of my yellowish, crooked ones. Seriously.

But mostly, sleep. Sleep, the sleep of the innocent, is the best antidote to pain. The pain can go a-throbbing but you’re in wonderland, thank heavens, where it is not welcome.

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

On another note, the discovery of anaesthesia is considered not just a eureka moment, but a social revolution of sorts. It revealed cracks in the institutional church’s position that pain came with being Christians; that as Christians, there was no option but to endure it.

This mea culpa attitude was overthrown in this crucial shift in the mindset regarding pain. It was only in 1957 thru Pope Pious XII that the Church relaxed its anti-anaesthesia stance, thank you very much. Yes, pain is essential to our existence but if we can avoid it, why not?

Weed, give me my weed. Ai, mistake. Erase, erase.

Wage, decent wage for the working class!!

Let's Wine, not Whine

2009-06-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

Haven’t watched NBA games since Rodman retired his 91 (if there’s an emergency, who do you call?) jersey. Wait, Garnett when he was with the Timberwolves, was in my radar for a split-second but nah, Rodman is irreplaceable. I have just started watching PBA games again this year, off and on. This I have to say, nothing beats the fun and chaos of “kanto” basketball, the basketball I grew up watching as a kid through this “liga-liga.”

Some of my fondest memories with Dantoy is getting fried in open air in our sleeping clothes, munching on icedrop or icecandy, doing what I enjoy: heckling at basketball players who didn’t know us from Adam.

Game 3 between my favorite SMB and the Burger Kings earlier was quite brusque and physical, Game 4 makes me a bit nervous. That Pennisi is a whiner, my pet peeve. I can take a selfish, uncerebral player any day, but a whiner? On my team, at that? With his heft and attitude, Pennisi is hardly a finesse player. He should learn playing rough but tough. Engage in all the trash-talking you want but never lose composure. I would not recommend trashtalking as a weapon but if you have to engage in it, do it to gain advantage, not to lose your form. Whiners, they have no room in professional sports.

I miss Rodman on such moments, his calculated antics, all the reverse psychology in his bag of tricks people found infuriating like openly applauding a good play by an opponent, reaching out to an opponent kissing the floor after being defeated in jockeying, taunting Alonzo Mourning to get dirtier, tapping Malone or Kemp on the shoulder every time they missed their free throws, chuckling everytime he was being elbowed and the referees wouldn’t blow their whistle. The man loved playing basketball, he took everything in good stride and a truck of humor.

I miss those unknown players from the barrios who played with their hearts and unwittingly provided us clean entertainment and valuable lessons in life, those players whose poverty cannot be concealed with their lanky bodies and their badly beaten footwear. We often witnessed how one pair of sneakers was passed from one player to another, one time a left pair just bursting out of exhaustion in the court and the crowd roared in laughter and awe. Magical moments in amateur basketball that fill your heart with I don’t know, what’s the word besides joy?

Game 4 is on Wednesday. It should be physical, let the referees reign supreme. The players should just focus on their gameplan. Enough of the whining. It's not attractive.

Pop Goes the World

2009-06-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

“May the light of this flickering candle
Illuminate the night the way your spirit
Illuminates my soul” - Barbara Streisand, “Papa, Can you hear Me?”

To E, first-time father of Elijah and Ezekiel, this day exalts you. Stop fretting about being tentative, fatherhood is an instinctive, reflexive vocation. Those self-help books with their hard-and-fast rules can go rot, every child is unique and an individual.

It's natural you intend to illuminate your children's trail, be the beacon of light ala-Reagan. This early, you’re already thinking what books and movies they should be exposed to, don't you want them to be babies forever, freeze them in their innocent stage?

I may not be a great help in this department but let me toss a suggestion or two. For movies, "The Royal Tenenbaums," those twins in their ubiquitous Adidas tracksuit were simply adorable. "Simon Birch" for the universal message of love, "Little Rascals" for Alfa-alfa's romanticism, "Goodbye, Lenin," a showcase of the great lengths a child is willing to go for a parent. Once they are old enough, they should be schooled in Iranian cinema, there's nothing like it. Kiarostami is a great teacher, I have written odes about him in the past so I won't start now. Of course, you would argue for Italian neo-realism or the French new wave or the glorious era of Pinoy cinema, fine with me.

We didn't have any of these while growing up and we didn't turn out that bad, did we? I had Charlie Chaplin, the 3 Stooges, those old LVN and Sampaguita-produced movies, Jackie Chan and Nino Muhlach starrers, and a little of Sesame Street with Big Bird and company.

For books, how about Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"? All those survivor-tales of Auschwitz for a balance of good and evil and Hemingway. Definitely, Hemingway. Your children are boys, they should read macho stuff before they are introduced to the Arundhati Roys of this world. I do remember your beautifully-crafted review of "The God of Small Things."

Surprised? That's me, I don't remember major headlines but I remember the coldness of the beer in a particular pub, a shirt one wore to a gig, a dinner you prepared when you were still staying in Ocampo, near Singalong, all these small things.

It is in this spirit that I salute you, so enamored of fatherhood. It's gorgeous.

Love will tear us apart

2009-06-17T19:22:00.000-07:00

Been going out for coffee lately, feeling like a mermaid stepping on land for the first time.

When I opened the novel I have not touched for 2 days, the pages stared back with hostility.

The exciting stories of T from her Uganda exploits, of icky sensations on the brink of, shall I pronounce it - love, more than compensate.

Yes, Lester Burnham (played by the Kevin Spacey in Sam Mendes' "American Beauty"), you are never more correct in exhorting that we can't be mad because there's too much beauty in the world.

Maybe, I'm just sleepy from all the coffee but yeah, there is no guarantee that by staying furious, the problem takes flight on its own. "Development work" disenchants as it inspires but if you abandon it, what's the tradeoff? In the midst of it, love stumbles, comes knocking.

There are times when we are half-convinced we don't belong. Our choices may not be commonplace but let us not allow ourselves to be exiled. Those who could not live with our choices, they should be the ones to take a hike.

Baudelaire in "The Painter of Modern Life" sheds light:"to see the world, to be at the center of the world yet to remain hidden from the world - such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define."

T, just follow the dictates of your heart. Fuck Batailee, love is not the most distant possibility. It's within your reach, just an inch away. Move closer. Jump and hold still.

Heart over Mind

2009-06-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

“Someday, when someone else’s arms are around us
When time has put some distance between us
The years will kindly show
How mem’ries come and go
They ebb and flow, like the tides” - Barbara Streisand, “Places That belong to You”

Neuroscientists at the University of Sheffield posit that “the part of the brain practicing empathy is not the same part that assesses forgivability of an offense.” What does this imply?

All our ethical values shaped by philosophy and religion might be less influential as we have previously assumed. With this finding, it appears that the brain decodes by itself and makes its own neurological distinctions. Interesting.

Does this in any way explain why we can eventually forgive people who schooled us in betrayal, infidelity, and fraud yet we can’t go past the persons who didn’t reciprocate our affections, those who played dead to our overtures?

A classmate F is friends with all his now-Insignificant Others but is scornful of any mention of J, the girl who didn’t give him the time of day, fancying somebody else. What’s one honest snub to a string of insincere compliments and exhausting placations of a jealous heart he was subjected to by his numerous girlfriends? Isn’t forgiveness proportional to the severity of an offense? I can’t understand why it’s easier to deal with an ex playing footsie with another guy than extending a handshake to someone who doesn’t fit in the category of either past or future whatever.

Are some people easier to forgive than others? Is it because of who and what they represented at one point in our lives? Me thinks people we genuinely like can do nothing wrong – their abrasiveness, I call candor; their atrocity, I call mischief.

Take the case of Joey de Leon, my favorite rascal, whose Barbie and Starzan series are considered by my HS male classmates the pinnacle of Pinoy movie craftsmanship. Long before that, the Escalera brothers’ musical antics were my nursery tunes, courtesy of our neighbor’s extensive vinyl collection. So when JDL takes potshots at “Wowowee,” for example, there’s nothing to forgive because golly-goo, he’s the man.

We are tolerant and forgiving of people we don’t dislike. El Duque once berated me for carrying a Vaclav Havel book around, his contempt palpable, “You’re reading him? He’s anti-communist.” Another friend reproaches my Coetzee-fascination, “I don’t believe you admire someone who never spoke out against apartheid.”

In a different circumstance, these unsavory remarks might have been met with a combative repartee but since they’re not mouthed by people you dislike, everything is placed under the rug, Matutina-style.

Maximum or minimum tolerance is a capricious practice, depending on the like-dislike factor, I guess. In Philippine showbiz, I can exercise maximum tolerance to Lolit Solis but zero-nil-zilch for Annabelle Rama. What’s the equalizer?

Neuroscientists might be wrong, after all. It’s not the brain that decodes and rules, it’s the heart. More likely, you can bet my pwet.

Gabriel's Choice

2009-06-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

I’m certain, 80%, that I would make an awful TV/radio host - questions smacked in gross blunder. Either they would be overwrought in their zeal or torturous in their inanity.

Raising questions are tougher than answering them, I surmise. Now that I’m just home trying to be healthy again, I have the opportunity to watch talk shows and this I realized, good interviews are largely handiworks of good interviewers more than interviewees.

Robert Smith of The Cure once grouched over tiresome questions “What’s your favorite drink?” and the likes, constantly tossed at him. A music journalist seeking reprieve asked him what question did he want to address. The Cure frontman, with no trace of irony, recommended, “Why are you so scarily good?” Nice one.

Creative artists, I suspect, bemoan to describe their creative process, not only because it spoils the magic or disrupts the intimacy but I bet, even they themselves, cannot fully articulate how a spur of an idea grows arms and legs and wings.

Who’s that director who said that once he knows how his film is going to end before he even begins shooting, he sees no point doing it or words to that effect? Haay! The name is just in my mindyard, buried in oblivion. I hate it when I forget tidbits, just frigging hate it, argh!

Anyway, journalists and talk show hosts are fond of cornering artists to disclose their favorite song or album or novel or film among the artists’ body of work. That’s pretty toxic.

It came as a mild shock that in the latest biography, Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life, a product of 17 years of research by one Gerald Martin, the Colombian author of stupefying, spectacular sentences confessed that his best novel is “The Autumn of the Patriarch” released in 1975.

I don’t know which surprised me – that he was actually able to pick a favorite because I sort of expected him to demur like most artists or that of all clever things to tell, he had to select a novel which this non-fan hasn’t read. That’s not hip, Gabriel.

Somewhere in our small house, two novels are buried in a cobweb of dust. Sure, safe choices for a non-fan: “100 Years of Solitude” and “Love in The Time of Cholera”. I read “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” at Powerbooks (yippee!) without paying a single cent.

Memo to self: scour friends’ libraries because you can’t afford to buy books.

Martin, the author of the latest biography, suggests that “The Autumn….” is loosely based on Fidel Castro with whom Marquez shares in his own words, an “intellectual friendship” with, something Marquez is heavily criticized for by fellow writers. Without reading the book yet, I risk disagreeing. Marquez is such a passionate, partisan individual, the fact that he can actually pick a favorite among his novels needs no greater testament. He is super-loyal to Fidel and I fairly remember an article of his spirited defense of Pres. Clinton at the time of the Lewinsky brouhaha, fanning the hypocrisy of the conservative right. I think, more than any other written work, that write-up is my most admired. I don’t think he is capable of painting a caricature of a friend with whom he shares a tight connection with.

Mario Vargas Llosa with whom Marquez had a quibble with and a public fistfight in 1975(something to do with a lover, so goes the speculation) which led to that black-eyed photo of Marquez circulated about 2 years ago branded the latter as “Castro’s lackey.”

Novelists, we gasp at their lack of inventiveness in name-calling.

Thank You for the Music

2009-06-15T17:55:00.000-07:00

“Thank you providence, thank you frailty
Thank you clarity, thank you consequence,
Thank you silence” - Alanis Morisette, “Thank You”

A gig was cooked up by college friends Jigolo and Gae, along with their friends from the Taclo-BAND scene to help me transition to the wellness track.

Over at FB, this plan stewed. Since I don’t have an FB account, I was clueless until the last minute. I admit to having reservations at first – people might think I was making a business of my illness although I squashed the thought at once. Just because I can be malicious at times (ehem!) doesn’t mean everyone is. I apologize, gracious Lord, for thinking badly of my fellow.

Over that, it’s the squeaky feeling of being fussed at, that nagging thought that I don’t deserve this attention. I am immensely grateful and humbled by this unexpectedly pleasant effort. I feel the love, my heart flies.

The generosity, thoughfulness, and kindness of friends and relatives since I got sick are just in full tank. Just thinking about it leaks some liquid round my eyes. Tissue, please.

Guilt sometimes creeps at being a bum on the road to health but a religious friend enlightens that crises are vehicles for people to demonstrate their goodness. By helping someone in need, people are actually reaffirmed. That thought makes me feel a bit lighter.

It’s reaffirming too that music is the vehicle by which all this display of generosity and talent gestated. If I had a say, I would have suggested macho dancers gyrating in libidinal abandon (are you reading this, Jigolo?), elephant and hurricane wouldn’t prevent me from attending the gig.

I heard that Morrissey and Duran tunes were played, a fitting tribute to the days of our innocence. When Jigs dropped by our place on the day of the gig, he caught me playing songs from “Hatful of Hollow” rather loudly – The Smiths-mode, so time-warped. Spank me.

Again, a whale of thanks. Me and my family confer all the sacred blessings in this universe to all of you. Salamuch from the bottom, top, lateral of my promiscuous heart.

Advice to the Young at Heart

2009-06-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

“Batang-bata ka pa at marami ka pang kailangang intindihin sa mundo” - Apo Hiking Society, “Batang-Bata"

Some of my batchmates are already parents to college freshmen, wow. Where did I waste my time, hmm? To my unborn children, these tips whose usefulness you reserve judgment on for later:

01. Never fear ideas. Suspect people who do but always be respectful of contrary ideas.

02. Walk unafraid. Do not strive for balance, welcome tensions and doubts.

03. Always be on the side of justice. Be uncompromising in your principles but never be dogmatic.

04. Don’t belabor too much on getting answers instantly. There is more beauty in the question.

05. Share what you have without expecting something in return.

06. Show courtesy especially to those who don’t deserve it.

07. Read, read till you go blind. No minute is ever wasted with a book as a companion. Reading is the cheapest way to travel – it’s like going to another country or learning a new language.

08. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” says Dylan Thomas. U2 seconds the motion, “Kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight.” Be warned however, that those who strive to see the light must endure the pain of burning.

09. Celebrate life. Don’t devalue life with your indifference and lack of concern.

10. Love, love without quarters; love with no ifs and buts. Waray karag-sukli, waray karag-bawi, waray karag-basul.

Ring-a-ring, A-roses

2009-06-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

With this ring
I frolic with the harlot
Trapped in this self-righteous fortress

With this ring
I can ignore the pregnant stare
Directed at my growing belly

With this ring
I come home empty

With this ring
I don’t feel a thing

60 Poems

2009-06-13T18:36:00.000-07:00

“It was easier to meet a genuine Communist than someone who read poetry” (Charles Simic in a 1998 Cortland Review interview)

Stored in my phone inbox is DD’s New Year message: May you be “delighted by the size of the unimaginable/the great nowhere, the everlasting nothing/pure and serene doggedness/for the hell of it….and love” – words of Poet Laureate, Charles Simic.

Whenever I need a fix, this Simic gem makes the grade in restoring the lordship of congruity amidst the discomfiture and commotion of life. Poetry is endowed with that talisman, but not all poets wave the wand of a sorcerer.

Simic’s poems have been described by reverent critics as “incandescent, incantory, and otherwordly.” I made acquaintance with just a few of his wordcraft, I’m not sure what period these critics are describing, a younger Simic, perhaps? Because the poems I developed affinity with are downright simple and mundane, resonant of W. Auden although the comparison warrants some judiciousness, apologies to a few friends who worship Auden like no other. Here’s a sample:

“You give the appearance of listening
To my thoughts, o trees” (Evening Walk)

“Old men have bad dreams
So they sleep little” (Graveyard Schoolchildren)

And this brave poem that I cannot, regretfully, use as a prayer-poem:

“Boss of all bosses of the universe
Mr. know-it-all, wheeler-dealer, wire-puller….
Doesn’t it give you the creeps
To hear them begging you on their knees” (To the One Upstairs)

Paging anyone who has a relative, a friend, a lover, an ex-lover, a neighbor who has Simic’s book of poetry, may I borrow even for just a day or two?

Yes, he’s a google away but I’m old school. I do not go for reading poetry or any novel, for that matter, in a computer screen. It takes away the intimacy. If there’s a word or phrase leaping with ebullience, I have this uncured habit of rubbing my fingers on it as if to sooth and absorb something in a trance. Or placing a book on my chest, hugging it for a while when the emotion is too much to bear.

E-books, they’re downloadable and free but they don’t give me the fix. It’s too, what’s the word – impersonal.

Nukes in the News

2009-06-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

Media is drudging up apprehensions of a nuclear arms race in Asia as an outcome of N. Korea’s nuclear drills. Are we back to 1982 once more?

Since the dissolution of the USSR, spin doctors have had a real challenge on their hands – how to maintain a propaganda war of polarization to justify US aggression-mode. For years, its propaganda machine deceived us into believing the USSR was a superpower posing danger to the world. When the Iron Curtain was unveiled, we discovered the magnitude of its poverty and the daunting task of reconstruction and rehabilitation those countries needed.

For the US as a lone superpower there ever was/is, it’s an imperative to manufacture enemies like playthings. It has to invent an adversary equally fearful and strong. Otherwise, it shall be completely exposed as a bully.

It’s peanuts to demonize NK. There’s no love lost here. NK is a police-state with a deplorable human rights record. Images of soldiers marching crisply reminiscent of Stalin’s Russia magnify the country’s diabolical representation to the world at large.

NK is at the cusp of economic death, very similar to Japan’s situation before it went to war in the 1940s. Japan was choked off from its access to oil, among other things, pushing it to a “tipping point,” to borrow the buzzword of Philippine civil society denizens.

The economic blockade and international isolation imposed on NK has reached a “tipping point” – it is in dire straits and only its fascistic practices are able to contain a civil unrest. Its nuclear drills are acts of desperation to seize the world’s attention. It’s not a display of might for what real might does it have?

In analogy, NK is a madman taking his own son hostage because he lost his job and could no longer feed his children. Will the SWAT shoot him or work for an amicable negotiation?

Insanity, It Seemed

2009-06-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

“Do you have the time
To listen to me whine?” - Green Day, “Basketcase”

2008 was rather a bastard of a year – cancer made a splashing comeback to my otherwise sprightly existence and more likely, this dabbed napalm on my mother’s heart that pronounced her dead one regular day in October.

For a while, the world screeched to a halt – there’s a panic of the senses, terror at a dreary future, paranoia about being the crux to the dimming of spark of everyone in your magic circle. The mountain of guilt perched on my shoulder is what Ben Okri calls “unfinished weeping,” my own Calvary of sadness that seeks but never finds settlement, a home to rest - forces me to be tough beyond my wildest imagination.

I kicked my mother to her grave, depriving my siblings the comfort of her presence. It’s a bitter pill and no matter how I rebuff myself that I am not God, that I am just a slave to this Supreme Being, this guilt-trip won’t reach its shore for a while.

No one needs to understand my point, I just had to let it out. Finally, I had the guts to revisit what I call my “insanity journal,” recorded at a time my morale needed babysitting. Being sick and physically weak alters one’s sense of self and my scribbling a good part of last year was astonishingly dark and lonely, gibberish at most times. I could hardly decipher my handwriting as I was too weak to even write.

I leafed through my older journals. The writing was gibberish still as if feverishly drunk but those notebooks were adorned with comic strips, lyrics, poems, cut-outs of horoscope and war pictures, cards, snapshots of my favorite musicians and players, drawings done by cousins and friends, concert tickets, what-have-you. Colors screamed from the pages.

The “insanity journal” however is a sad documentation. I cringed just reading the entries on the anniversary of my long confinement. Here’s what I am talking about:

Entry 1: Sleep is a commodity I cannot buy. How could it be elusive?

Entry 2: A symphony of dog barks from several blocks away provides me company.

Entry 3: I am staring at nothing in particular. I just want to close my eyes. My thoughts stray but not too far.

Entry 4: Plan for the day: fold dried clothes.

Entry 5: It’s about to rain. I hear the roaring thunder. I love the sound of raindrops.

Entry 6: A week without mishap, just the general feeling of harmony, of being in harmony with the world. I wish for a kinder world – less cruel and brutal for our chidren. It’s still raining.

Entry 7: Georgelablab is terrified of thunder, hides under the sofa and only comes out when it’s all quite.

Entry 8: I feel weak today, not been eating very well. Terrible taste buds.

Entry 9: Two days wedded to the bed – nagging cough. Just spend the hours coughing, terrible.

Entry 10: Today’s a Friday. It means we’ll be complete for lunch tomorrow.

Reading these entries again tempts me to pick a match and set the “insanity journal” on fire. If only I could disavow ever writing this crap and drink some liquid-poison.

Bastard of a writing, sonofabitch.

Wood Hath Hope

2009-06-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

Stooping down as if to say everything amounts to nothing – my towering height, my dependable force, wisdom brought by years of interacting with the elements: earth, water, wind, and fire.

Arms reaching to the heavens as if to say “we are nothing” amidst the barbarism of humans who do not respect the fact that we were here first.

Lovers carve their names on our bodies - they desecrate us with the emptiness of their promises. Capitalists break our arms for profit.

Protect us, God of Creation, whose wisdom for giving us life cannot be questioned. Bless us, God of History who always sides with the oppressed and exploited.

Honesty is Such a Lonely Word

2009-06-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

“Denial, but hey, who’s on trial?” - Interpol, “Evil”

A blizzard of denials: The Palace has nothing to do with the frenzied move for Con-Ass. The Palace has nothing to do with questionable mining activities and the recent abduction of Bayan Muna activists. The Palace had nothing to do with the stealthy whisking away of Daniel Smith, smashing protocols and making the DOJ look stupid.

If the GMA administration distances itself from all of these, washing its hands off these, having nothing to do with any of these, then what the frigging hell can this administration admit to doing? As it claims, nothing.

In recent history, 6 buses are razed to the ground, a Globe cellsite is bombed, a cop is taken as POW (prisoner of war), an oppressive landlord is slain, and just several days ago, a certain Evelyn Pitao, sister of an NPA commander in Southern Mindanao was sentenced by the Merardo Arce Command for her “blood debts,” selling information to the military being one of the major crimes.

The New People’s Army (NPA), in principle and practice, issues an official statement owning these acts, risking alienation and censure from the public. That’s a lot of balls.

What a difference in posturing. Sure, this sounds biased coming from me but whether or not you have an iota of sympathy to the revolutionary cause is out of the question. The naked truth screams: denial is not their thing. My respect soars.

Up until college, summers were spent in Carmen, Bohol. My grandparents could not afford books but they made up for it by regaling us with their recollection of the Japanese occupation, several variations of “The Lion and the Monkey,” fables of the spirit-world, and modern tales of “Tawo nga walay mga Tsinelas” (folks without slippers), referring to the NPAs.

Oh, the tales about rebels were more ludicrous than the ghost-stories – that they had supernatural power, that their bodies were bullet-proof protected by amulets, that they could be at 3 places at the same time, that they were shape-shifters and could transform on caprice, to a dog or a pig. Intriguingly fascinating.

The old folks repeatedly assured that these rebels only hurt bad people. Hence, there was nothing to fear.

When I was 11-12, a politician in my mother’s home-barrio was gunned down in broad daylight and the locals were not outraged as I expected. Instead, they blamed the politician for not heeding to the 3 warnings issued by the rebels.

Strange but when someone was killed, even the local police anticipated for the NPA’s official statement before they launched into an investigation of their own. If the NPA owned up to a killing, the case was closed. That’s how its honesty and credibility were appreciated on the ground, even by the cops.

Now, can we dare GMA to show some tinge of honesty? Show some balls, nga di-puga.

The Coconut Nut

2009-06-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

Rocking with the pulse of the wind because everthing belongs to the wind, after all. Leaves bend not of their own whim. The roots detach from the earth to another world. The fruit leaves its nest because it is TIME.

What remains is a fog of a memory but even that cannot be trusted because like corks of wine bottles, the fit loosens with TIME.

Mad World

2009-06-11T18:11:00.000-07:00

"This earth belongs to the mad" (Dr. Fischelson, a character in Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Spinoza of Market St.")

There’s a disturbing article at www.anti-war.com quoting Israel’s Minister Yossi Peled vowing to take a more aggressive role to undermine the Democratic Party and force Pres. Obama to take a more pro-Israel stance. This came in the wake of Jon Voight’s, better-known as Angelina Jolie’s dad, public attack on Pres. Obama being a “false prophet.” This was followed by TV guestings at Murdoch’s loony lair assailing the US president’s “inexperience and naivety” and branding him a “weakling.”

What leaves me cold about these attacks is that they are personal, image-driven, race-toned jabs, departing from substantive issues. Of late, there’s a spate of wacko white supremacist adventures, you gotta seriously fear for Obama’s life.

A roll-call of usual suspects: First, the military-industrial complex – as long as Obama doesn’t pull out in any of the wars the US is engaged in, this sector is generally happy. Obama scored 2 major plus-points by not making public those controversial torture photos and just today, showing some fangs and claws on North Korea.

Second, the bureaucratic capitalists, the draconian money-politics clique – with the bailouts and the stimulus package, their butts are saved. They have every reason to be grateful.

This leaves us to the extreme right-wingers and their propensity for “isolated acts of violence.”

“Isolated acts of violence,” my sorry ass. Media language is biased. If it were suicide-bombers, it would be reported as “orchestrated, deliberate, acts of violence.” If the perpetrator is a pro-gun, anti-abortion WASP, it’s an “isolated act of violence.”

Two can play this bias-game. Sus, Ginoo.

The Sky is a Landfill

2009-06-10T18:49:00.000-07:00

A Jeff Buckley bio-pic in the offing, I just read in an entertainment website. Two names are being tossed: James Franco and "Twilight" star Robert Pattinson to play him. Even if I find James Franco beautiful, I will have no moral baggage ripping his throat out if he screws up. Oopps, this is not an open endorsement for him to ink the deal or am I that easy.... to read?

As an adorer, shall I compose chants of resistance with my naked voice? Shall I organize the army to storm the gates of Hollywood, pointedly criticizing the thematic conceit of these producers that they can serve justice to the memory of a gifted artist in full benediction?

There is nothing that would enthrall me than for people to create sequels after sequels of Buckley, stubbornly refusing to let his legacy die but a bio-pic? I have to lend some misgivings. Isn't "Amazing Grace" enough? Must some people continue to make money out of his short and brutish life?

"Opened Once," is ringing in my head: "I am a railroad track abandoned, with the sunset forgetting that I ever happened, that I ever happened." It's my "Hello, Pain hymn" as I am fond of setting a musical score to my personal mythologies. I have a soundtrack for almost anything - a soundtrack for doing laundry, a soundtrack for scrubbing floors, a sountrack to get a spiritual lift, and so on. Anything to get me going.

I cannot imagine anyone singing with so much consecration the haunting lines "Just like the ocean, always in love with the moon...We fly right over the minds of so many in pain. We are the smile of the light that brings them rain. In the half-light where we both stand, in the half-light, you saw me as I am." (Opened Once)

Frak! These rebellious tears so early in the day.

The Boy with a Thorn on his Side

2009-06-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

"I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does" The Smiths, "How Soon is Now?"

In college, straight from the boisterous loose-ends of a PolSci class, Literature hour beckoned. Two buzzwords I learned: “stream of consciousness” and “tragic flaw.”

Traipsing between the two fields enabled me to experience a slight paradigm shift in character-treatment. In PolSci, no political actor is sui generis. There is a remarkable absence of personal autonomy and the focal point is how events and outcomes are swayed by a much-looming political synergy. In other words, the individual is rendered insignificant.

In fact, in the big picture, there is no individual as a unit, as an entity, as a reality. Super-villains are not persons but institutions, a prevailing belief and value system, a powerful economic minority. The theoretical language of the Left harps on collective action and class struggle – always persons in the plural.

In Lit, the individual is an imposing figure, not a product of myth. The individual is so much alive, charting his own path, building his own legend, conquering history. It was such a breath of fresh air.

Peeking into “stream of consciousness,” my limited grasp of dialectics proved to be a reliable guidepost. KM provides one of the plausible explanations of consciousness-formation: “It’s not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, rather, it’s their social existence that determines their consciousness.” It was quite a smooth ride.

However, when the professor started discussing “tragic flaw,” I plummeted into the pits of ignorance. Before that, I considered flaws endearing, even cute, but never tragic. The people I think the world of are highly flawed human beings and without anyone sermoning me on this valuable point, I have always embraced flaws more than semblances of perfection.

I go to a house with no clutter, nothing is out of place, not a speck of dust is evident, so Lysol-clean and I get dizzy. I enter a house stinking of cat-shit and dog-urine and I find it cozy and welcoming. (It’s our house I’m describing, actually).

So upon encountering the concept of “tragic flaw” for the first time, I was dumbfounded. For one, my familiarization with Greek tragedy was/is limited, my knowledge of Shakespeare was/is anemic. You hazard a guess – too much greed? Loving too much? Loving too little? Being born poor? Being impotent? The prof would vigorously nod his head in feigned annoyance. Who was exasperating who?

The elusive answers? The prof volunteered that the tragic flaw of Oedipus Rex was his obsession of the truth, his wanting to know everything. Hamlet’s was his failure to forget, his belief that everything fits and means something.

Ho-hum. What about falling in love with their mothers? I just don’t get the whole concept. What was Samson’s tragic flaw if not Delilah? What was John the Baptist if not Salome? What was Judas’? Christ’s?

At 17, “tragic flaw” was a canonical idea I wished to repudiate because my answers would always fall short and the mighty prof always had the last word. Why were we not simply told that “tragic flaw” is attendant to our mortality, our powerlessness, that it’s because we are not God?

Obviously, “tragic flaw” is a normative, not a descriptive concept. Wanting to know everything is a tragic flaw? Unable to forget is a tragic flaw? Sounds like a recipe concocted by the Washington consensus.

Normative rules are determined by power relations, here we go again (ho-hum) but convince me otherwise. Those with power dictate what is right and legal, are you blind? Those with power besiege the weak with fanciful ideas that “knowing and not forgetting” is a tragic flaw, God forbid. That’s exactly the fear of oppressive and evil imperialists – the political awakening of the powerless.

Ignorance and amnesia, that’s what exploiters and oppressors would want to inflict on the oppressed using all legal means, the educational system, in this instance. Make no mistake about this: education is empowering and subversive in itself, for as long as it encourages critical thinking and dialogue.

Going back to “tragic flaw,” I reflect on my own. Wishing happiness on everyone, that’s one among a thousand. First, it’s just not possible. Second, it’s just not fair. People who cause so much distress and misery shouldn’t have any right to be happy for a duration, if I were to decree.

No, we’re not talking about imperialists this time. I mean, the adorable boy who promised you the moon, the lovable boy who promised to buy the stars for you, Petra.

Cuba Goodwill

2009-06-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

"The flames you stirred...

Raise a glass, make a toast

A toast in your honor" Tori Amos, "Toast"

Despite US’ desperate efforts to block the move and some compromises surrendered to placate Pentagon, the Organization of American States (OAS) finally lifted the 4-decade isolation imposed on Cuba by the Washington consensus, consequently isolating the US as the only country left on earth belligerently refusing diplomatic ties with Havana. About time, I say with vehemence. Cuba has been penalized so much and for what?

The failed campaign of the US against Latin America opening its arms to a long-lost brother is not lost on Fidel Castro. The OAS resolution is not something Cubans were begging and fighting for. In fact, Fidel lambasted OAS time and again for being a puppet to American interests and downplayed this historical vindication of sorts, poetic justice, if I may say.

It’s fait accompli, a mere formality. Several years before, Cuba’s steadfast “medical diplomacy” caused wreckage to its grotesque image deliberately conjured by the US and steadily converted prejudice and suspicion to respect and admiration of its spirit-cousins in Latin America and elsewhere.

Through Operacion Milagro, around 1.6 million people have restored their vision. At present, 24,000 foreigners are studying medicine in Cuba for free and Cuba sends thousands of medical practitioners to respond to disasters and help in capability-building efforts in the sphere of healthcare.

Maybe my soul is Black and Cuban because in my previous incarnation, yo era un Cubano. This is what I shall scribble on my notebooks, this is the story I shall share to my phantom grandchildren: This is not about the US thawing its animosity towards Cuba. This is not about US getting soft on Cuba.

Let’s give credit where it’s due. This is a result of Cuba’s confidence-building measures finally bearing fruit. This is Cuba’s much-deserved reward for its magnanimity towards the world that slammed its doors because Big Brother threatened not to give lollipops to anyone making friends with Fidel. This is Fidel’s fulfilled prophecy of “history will absolve me” echoed by Honduras President Zelaya.

No lie will remain unexposed forever or as music’s legitimate 3rd World superstar Bob Marley reggaed, “you can’t fool all the people all the time.” The incurably romantic in me clings to the idea that it’s the US slipping down, decreasing its clout, losing face in Latin America.

Realpolitik however, stares me in the eye: this is still a victory of capital. Of course, everybody is set to rake in huge profits if they establish economic relations with Cuba. Capital has more to lose if Cuba continues to be frozen in isolation. This is not lost on the US as its economic nemesis China and Brazil have the upperhand at the moment, reaping benefits from their Cuban tryst.

Let’s not get shocked if the US, in the next months, wrestles that economic advantage. Been there, done that.

Round and Round It Goes

2009-06-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

“We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round” Joni Mitchell, “Circle Game”

Blogging encourages lazy writing which suits me fine. My writing could not be anything but sloppy-lazy.

There was a time when circumstances forced the writing to be rather serious and purposive. Being part of a political organization in college provided discipline and impetus to write manifestos and burador under time-pressure. For the uninitiated, a burador is a working draft on specific topics calendared for discussions. There was colossal pressure to craft substantive, coherent, and comprehensible arguments because as a leftist organization, attacks came from all quarters. At the very least, we had to be sensible.

First, there was a perception that we were trouble-rousers. Teachers warned their students not to join. A fraternity which shall be unnamed dissuaded its recruits to even go near our “tambayan.” Students whom we wished to recruit were either apathetic or wary, can’t blame them. We were not exactly exemplars for academic excellence, a big deal for most students, but we strived to be riveting in our discourse. Most students didn’t want to cavort with us but at least, we pushed them away from their safe zones.

When I became a teacher myself, I could tell them apart – the activist and the regular student. Exercising prudent objectivity, let me just say that students who were politically involved may not have been the most academically-gifted but their sublime intelligence radiated and was more pronounced inside the classroom – they were surer of themselves, selfless and engaging in discourse, less morally enthusiastic, unafraid of discordant voices. They enlivened the class and kept me on my toes and to a certain extent, vivified their classmates.

I don’t know, maybe those students mirrored a younger, cockier version of myself. Maybe you have to be a college instructor to appreciate the value of such minds. There is nothing more that could drive instructors to contemplate suicide than to be confined in a quasi-deaf-and-mute class because the students are too timid or docile or indifferent.

In college, fresh from the boondocks of HIC and dogged by naivety, fascinating people were a throng in the activist circle – females who blew smoke heavier than a chimney who I might have described when I was still sugar-and-shit as “girls with unbridled passion who threw away their chastity belts in bold defiance” but now that I’m all-shit (minus the sugar), let me reconstruct it this way: women whose spirit was not of this world. Yet I never felt alien in their company.

The guys, some of them, have to be constantly reminded of hygiene but their journals had heartfelt scrawling of bittersweet poetry. Their articulations of an alternate universe could make a giddy girl’s panty wet, ooppps! How come I never got fatally attracted to any of them? Tsk….

It was a great time to get your bearings. I mean, the general idea of college is to enter adulthood and whether you are involved in any form of activism or not is not for me to pass judgment. The savagely romantic idea of being persecuted, pigeonholed, and misunderstood made the whole college experience enriching for me, I guess.

Those were starving days, oh boy. But no one can accuse us of being malnourished in philosophy. We mentored one another – a lot of book-swapping, exchange of musical heroes, sharing of writing concepts, criticizing one another’s works-in-progress, endorsements of Buddhism and existentialism.

The friendship I cultivated from that wellspring is quite special. Time and space set us apart. Some pursued their revolutionary calling. Some became boringly conservative like myself. Some joined the Establishment and defend the status quo.

At the end of the day, the cause never leaves you, truth be told. You may turn your back from it but like some ensnaring pain or stubborn virus, it never goes away.

You can call me Betty

2009-06-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

“Mr. Beerbelly, Beerbelly…
With some roly-poly bat-faced girl” Paul Simon, “You Can Call me Al”

If my brother eggs me again about talent, I now come prepared: Name-calling, isn’t that daft?

This “talent” comes in 2 forms, the literal and the literary. For the literal, terms of endearment are coined. For example, with PolSci students, Dexter is Yummy, self-explanatory; Fernando is Tatang for being earnest, grim, and determined; Edson is Supsup or being the 1st Supremo of the revitalized Politikons, a title I subtly pushed to be adopted. Me and subtlety, a perfect match.

Then an Accounting student was re-baptized “X” for his disdain of x-rated movies and when asked how many x-rated movies he has viewed – none! Assailed him for disliking something he hasn’t tasted. A fine boy, X.

Among the Management majors, Miguel became SS, for sex symbol, again, self-explanatory. Ryan Bel was BF for “big fella”. For days, nobody called him BF except moi and then I noticed everyone was calling him BF and I felt quite smug that the name stuck only to find out BF now stood for “big fig.” My bad, my bad. Didn’t consider that students are much more inventive than their teachers.

Years later, bumped into BF in the vicinity of Pasong Tamo. He didn’t seem to mind still being called BF despite his major downsizing. Now I wonder what my students called me behind my back – the Ugly One?

Now the more important aspect of name-calling is something PolSci grooms you for. Prof ES, for instance, would say “that pineapple-faced, what’s-his-name,” referring to Noriega, Panama’s former (p)resident-tyrant. “Those Bible-hating Commies” or “that sour-faced founder of the CCP” and the list goes on and when cornered, Prof ES would douse off with her much-cherished mantra “Everything is a state of mind just like a doughnut. If there’s no hole in the middle, it’s no longer a doughnut.” Huh?!

PolSci opens you to a lot of frustrations or as A. Camus in “The Stranger” perfectly captures, “I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.” The malevolence of humans, the powerlessness of politics, the futility of action – all these provoked a violence in our language, I guess. I have yet to meet a PolSci major who isn’t a good cusser.

You cannot run amuck with a bayonet, you’re forced to express your violence in cussing and name-calling. In tacit agreement, the classroom climate did not discourage. We were not gagged or reprimanded for irresponsibly saying “our baog nga congressman” or “our adik nga senador” or “that premature ejaculator councilor”. Slanderous, slanderous! The anarchy in language was healthy, I think, because now that I’m much older, I take conscious pain curbing my language.

In the activist circle, not a day passed without a difference of viewpoints. Looking back, it wasn’t really imagination that won arguments or debate points but boldness in name-calling.

If I wanted to wrap and nail a touchy discussion to my favor, I would begin attacking, “Waso ka man” or “Padla man it nga ideya, maski lurong mariwa” or any line of this tone.

If they don’t work, I use my last card – “Piyos ka man.” For whatever reason, it’s an effective shut-up line, I don’t know. Maybe, because men feel emasculated by such remark or they simply don’t have a rebuttal for that. What in God’s country is a female counterpart of “piyos”?

“Piyos,” the most effective name-calling there is.

Bye, Bye, Love! Hello, loneliness!

2009-06-05T23:59:00.000-07:00

“Hold on, hold on to yourself,
This is gonna hurt like hell….
Oh God, the man I love is leaving” - Sarah Mclachlan, “Hold On”

“He’s not our kind,” my curt statement regarding a prospective get-to-know ritual a friend was about to stage with somebody I knew peripherally from college. Nipped in the bud, don’t lay the blame on me.

Let me get this straight: it’s not in condescension, more of a class identity. As a lowlife, when I say “he’s not one of us,” I mean the fellow is filthy rich, leads a life of leisure, unfamiliar with public transport, draped in designer wear and narcotized in designer drugs, eats take-outs or in fine restos, besotted with expensive gadgets, what-have-you.

Never do I get in the way of my friends’ objects of desire. Just peering from the wings, I blow a bagful of optimistic thoughts to the friendly wind. When things don’t jive, I partake in the mourning.

Break-ups are usually messy but I have learned a hard lesson not to be drawn in any tug-of-war. A cardinal rule among friends: Never ever say a truthful criticism regarding their exes, not even for the sake of loyalty. Never state the obvious that leaving their Significant Others is a good decision than any. Never participate in any bashing, it will surely haunt you round the bend.

Oh, I’ve made costly mistakes in this regard because of my propensity to be insensitively trivial than be analytically serious. In the roundtable, other friends would soberly talk about divergence in aspirations, conflict of passion, intellectual divide, artistic differences, being the nails to the coffin, so to speak, or a 3rd party which they would glamorize as “cessation of attraction,” my sagging butt, as the cause of relationship meltdowns.

Then here I go butting in about the uncomfortable hissing sound a certain Beloved makes while sipping soup; the way he picks his nose in public; having small ears or a narrow forehead indicating something fundamental, I keep them guessing what; the lengthy pause before he says something he thinks is pseudo-profound; his fervent defense of the Establishment; his preference of jazz over rock music and when asked how he likes Thelonious Monk, his greatest jazz artist we find out is Kenny G; his dislike of pop music and his love, take note, love not like, of classical music and his favorite is the prolific pianist Richard Clayderman.

And bummer, there’s a reconciliation because love sucks. I mean, because love is lovelier the second fucking time around and all your common friends remember are the trivial points you pointed out, not their in-depth analysis. And you’re screwed, big time! What ugly face shall I wear to extend a handshake to a friend’s ex who has been re-categorized as a current squeeze?Frak!

Why can’t people cut clean? Why can’t they stand their ground and break up and mean it?

As for post-amorous love friendships, it’s half-foot out of the door as I see it, specially if it’s forged almost immediately. You kinda suspect that these people are still carrying torches, nurturing illusions of reconciliation, refusing to move on.

I’m not saying you can’t be friends with your exes, I don’t believe in burning bridges, just effigies. But you gotta allow little fits of rage before coming to terms. Get real angry, murder your Beloved in your head, get past it, and forgive.

So when somebody tells me they’ve just broken up expecting some sympathy, my curt statement “that’s life” is as trivial as I could get.

Gimme. Gimme some Lovin"

2009-06-04T20:01:00.000-07:00

“That until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting vision to be pursued but never attained. Now everywhere is war. …War in the east, war in the west, war up north, war down south. War, war, rumors of war” (Bob Marley, “War”)

It was not great-balls-of-fire, the Cairo speech of Pres. Obama but as I was reading the transcript, he gained a dash of sympathy for his desire to “remake this world” but at what expense, whose expense, it’s a gray area to me.

He had the audacity to warn Iran of its nuclear mischief and Palestine for its violent adventures but stood firm on “US unbreakable bond with Israel, bound by historical and cultural ties.” He identified anti-Semitism as the root of the Jews’ tragic history and appealed to both camps, Israel and Palestine, to respect each other’s aspiration of establishing a nation.

At this point, allow me to quote the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano who wrote “Operation Unpunished Lead” as a tribute to his Jewish friends killed by Latin American dictatorship-regimes and who himself is in the deathlist because of his political activism:

“Hunting the Jews was always a European custom but since half a century, that historical debt is being paid for by the Palestinians who are also Semites but who never were, nor are, anti-Semites. They are paying, in blood money, the price of others.

In Gaza, 3 of every 10 collateral damages are children. Dangerous people in charge of enormous manipulative media invite us to think that each Israeli life is worth as much as a hundred Palestinian lives.

And as always, always the same: in Gaza, a hundred for one. For each hundred Palestinians killed, one Israeli.”

Hubris, this talk of “remaking the world,” after all, it’s US foreign policies that fucked this world, by and large. It’s tragic that the Arab quagmire cannot be solved by the Arabs but needs the meddling hands of the US. Oh, how disdainful are we of meddlesome old folks putting a wedge on star-crossed lovers whom we are heavily cheering for, not that Israel and Palestine are star-crossed lovers but a more concrete analogy eludes me at this point. Just a bit there, with a little deviation in visualization.

There is a strong belief that an Israel-Palestine settlement is a function of American political will. In realpolitik, that means an overhaul of US foreign policy. A halt to US acquiescence to Israel’s expansionist activities and its general bullishness is a big step. But Israel has expressed that it won’t yield to US demands, there goes your favorite brat.

Fiction has overtaken us on this. Fiction introduced us to Faust who sold his soul to the Devil, of Midas and his obsession with gold, of Dr. Frankenstein creating a vicious monster. Let’s go back to our libraries and revisit how these stories ended.

Spit it out

2009-06-03T20:10:00.000-07:00

Americans who are not fond of Pres. Obama dubbed his Mideast visit as an “apology tour,” principally aimed at taking potshots at the Bush regime and putting the Republicans in a very unflattering light. Speculations are rife as to how the leader of the most powerful nation in the planet will articulate America’s commitment to repair its blemished reputation in the non-Western community.

I don’t want to jump the gun here but as far as speeches go, the Notre Dame speech which was far from gallant, for instance, Pres. Obama’s conceptual language is teeming with moral ambiguities or as we say in PolSci, it’s the malady of the legalese and the legal juggernaut – the employment of theory and play obfuscation. It’s a whimsical style of saying nothing by saying a lot, to the point of emptiness, mastered by high-calibre lawyers, the US president being one of them.

For example, in that Notre Dame speech, Pres. Obama opined: “The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm.” On surface, we may find this agreeable but it’s a dangerous statement after deep reflection.

A soldier will rambunctiously push for martial rule to supposedly protect national security while a lawyer will defend the Bill of Rights and rule out martial rule as unconstitutional or without raison d’ etre. In Obama’s unsolomonic wisdom, both are right.

At the height of the oust-Erap campaign, I was invited to a forum and one of the resource persons used the biblical ploy “no one can cast the first stone” because we are all sinners. On the surface, there’s nothing disagreeable to the statement but it’s very dangerous to subscribe to this trap.

At the end of the day, since no one is blameless, we all forfeit the right to blame. No one is guiltless, therefore no one can point a finger at the guilty party. That’s dangerous when your statements blanket and exonerate everyone.

It’s not even for the sake of journalistic objectivity, as if it exists, but as someone dealing and processing facts, it has to be clear to you – who is the victim? Who is the perpetrator? It’s not that simple, I must concede, but we can’t all be victims, for Christ’s sake. People must have the moral courage to evaluate that a particular deed is wrong and someone has to pay the price. How can you make things right if you don’t acknowledge that a wrong was committed? You cannot push for peace unless justice is served and you start the process by assessing without opaqueness and ambivalence what injustice was committed and who made it possible.

My expectations of the much-anticipated Egypt speech are realistic. Judging from Pres. Obama’s previous rhetoric, it will be lacking in backbone. It will be wordy and verbose but will keep us pondering if the White House employs the same speechwriters, regardless of regime-changes.

Will Pres. Obama crack a whip on Israel, its most favored nation? Let’s listen for some surprises. Otherwise, we shall continue congratulating the man for being great at language games.

Lola Dading and Bin Laden

2009-06-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

In a twist of genius, Bin Laden released an audio PA addressed to the Arab world on the eve of Pres. Obama’s much-hyped speech in Egypt. He’s basically cautioning his flock, okey, you can have your boy-crush on Obama but let’s not be naïve here, he’s wearing the same suit as his predecessor. The man, he’s pretty old school - an audio message in this day and age? This is one for the books.

In the early 80s, at the peak of the petro-dollar boom, OFWs in the Middleast would send dozens of taped messages to their loved ones back home. That was all the rage.

Fast track to the early 90s - this became a private joke between me and an HS classmate who migrated to Canada. For a while, we exchanged correspondence with intense frequency and one time, he asked if his letters bored me to tears so he would just send cassette tapes of his message instead. “Just imagine I am in Saudi instead of Ontario,” he advised.

Then nasty, we would poke lame fun at Black hip-hop stalwarts with their blinding bling-bling, just copying Pinoy Saudi-fashion. Back then, understatement was a foreign idea. I remember a neighbor who had huge, and I mean huge, gold rings in practically all his fingers, so huge, it could choke you to death. And an attention-grabbing necklace that could whip the life out of the wearer by its sheer weight.

And the raging street humor at that time was “Lupig ka han ak Lolo” where the famous Johnny Pusong and his friends would play an uproarious game of upraise as to whose Lolo was more smartass.

And in a slight variation, I say “lupig ka han ak Lola.” Lola Dading, my paternal grandmother, was a woman who embodied her own sovereignty. She smoked and revved up with the boys. One summer when I was in Grade 2 or 3, she pulled me to her side, “there’s something I want to show you” as if it was King Arthur’s Holy Grail or some mystical power she was about to bequeath.

To her glee and my disappointment, she made me listen to her own recordings of my baby-talk when I was barely 2 years old. She purportedly preserved that for her son, who was away in India to study so he won’t feel so alienated not witnessing some firsts of his first-born. I wonder where those tapes are. Maybe me and Bin Laden could swap.

The latest Bin Laden tape may be a stroke of genius but the man has nothing on my Lola.

Hey Mickey!

2009-06-02T19:44:00.000-07:00

Who would (dis)grace my spirited morning as I checked my mail? The picture of presidential son Mikey Arroyo and Speaker Nograles during the Con-Ass deliberations last night at the Lower House splattered all over. I can take obscenity, I am no prude, but at 9 goddamn morning? What a jumpstart!

I remember an interview of Fatima Bhutto, writer-poet in http://www.guardian.co.uk/ 2-3 years ago about birthright politics, the core of dynasty-politics plaguing most “new nations.” No matter how tarnished, family names still pack a lot of weight in this country.

It must be agonizingly cumbersome to carry an illustrious lineage and poke out like a sore thumb – to be a Math-moron in a family of number-wizards; to be lowbrow in a clan of culturati; to be an honest wage-earner in a tribe of crooks. To go against the grain because destiny awaits. Can you hear this, Mikey?

Incidentally, FB (not fuck buddy, how many times shall I be repeating myself?) also sheds light on Pakistan, a war I hardly understand as so with other wars because Boy George keeps ringing in my ears “war, war is stupid and people are stupid and love means nothing…” Oh, that word again, love. It keeps hounding me.

Bhutto essays: Since 2001, Pakistan has been a country in decline. We suffer a suicide-bombing rate that surpasses Iraq's. The billions of dollars we have received have not made Pakistan safer, they haven't made our neighbors safer, and they've done nothing in the way of eradicating terror. The Taliban and their ilk, on the other hand, are able to seat themselves in towns and villages across Pakistan without much difficulty largely because they do not come empty-handed. In a country that has a literacy rate of around 30 percent, the Islamists set up madrassas and educate local children for free. In districts where government hospitals are not fit for animals, they set up medical camps—in fact, they’ve been doing medical relief work since the 2005 earthquake hit Northern Pakistan. Where there is no electricity, because the local government officials have placed their friends and relatives in charge of local electrical plants, the Islamists bring generators. In short, they fill a vacuum that the state, through political negligence and gross graft, has created.

Do you hear this, Mikey, if a government ignores the needs of its people, what happens?

Nothing happens, sad to say. This is the Philippines, dearie. Another groundhog day.

Futurama

2009-06-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

Got this email which should make us phallic-eager for 2010:

2007 - Chinese year of the Chicken - Bird Flu Pandemic devastates parts of Asia
2008 - Chinese year of the Horse - Equine Influenza decimates Australian racing
2009 - Chinese year of the Pig - Swine Flu Pandemic kills hundreds of pigs/humans around the globe.
2010 - Chinese year of the Cock - what could possibly go wrong?

What could possibly go wrong, indeed? Cocks, in their distended shapes, falling from the skies and piling up in our backyard. A rainstorm of cocks painfully hitting our umbrellas causing holes here and there, touching our oh-translucent skin. An avalanche of cocks burying you in cock-fantastic sand. Cock galore, bring it on.

Haay, what cock-bullshit.

The Doctor is not In

2009-06-01T19:33:00.000-07:00

The headline read: Kansas doctor performing abortion shot dead in church!

Chilling, that Dr. Tiller was assassinated inside the Temple of God. Fascinating, that this doctor extreme right-wingers have constantly attacked over the years, was a conscientious member of the Reformation Lutheran Church. Until his violent death, he served as an usher and his wife sings in the choir.

Imagine him to be your father. It’s the first day of class and the moody teacher, as the first order of the day, summons you to share something about yourself. You reluctantly stand up, facing your expectant classmates, and you solemnly declare “Well, my father kills babies for a living.”

As a daughter, my last wish is for one courageous woman, just one, to speak up how her life was redirected and not laid to waste because of my father’s unusual profession.

The closest to an abortionist I encountered was Michael Caine’s Dr. Larch in “Cider House Rules.” In college, I had my John Irving phase so when his novels were translated into movies, I wasn’t far behind on his trail. Dr. Larch is one of the most sympathetically captivating fictional characters that wrenched my gut – how he tended those orphans and bid them “goodnight, you kings of New England” each day. He owned my heart and never for a second did I think that this man was a monster.

The existence of “abortionists” cannot be oversimplified by the logic of supply and demand. With or without them, women will continue imperiling their lives performing self-abortions.

In principle, I subscribe to the idea that what a woman subjects her womb to is a State question in so far as providing safety nets and legal protection. After all, the whole rationale of the State is advancing the quality of life of every individual.

But more than permitting women to have a choice, I would crusade for a comprehensive sex education program. Empower individuals by squashing their squeamishness about sex, allaying their fears that every sexual act may lead to pregnancy and early responsibilities. If there were no unintended pregnancies, abortion is out of the equation.

These fanatical anti-abortion groups that bomb and vandalize reproductive health centers must realize that it’s not the Dr. Tillers of this world who decide on performing abortions. It’s women, in their own volition, who willingly submit themselves to the procedure. This world is not short of rapists who brutalize unwilling victims and military torturers who extract information from unwilling political prisoners. Go after them. Chop their dicks, whatever, and make a soup.

No matter which side of the fence you sit on, Dr. Tiller’s brutal death diminishes humanity – the hypocrisy of persecuting a human being for “murdering babies’ by murdering him. Is this the biblical justice right-wingers love to harp on, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?

Sad, this headline is.

The Prayer of Rilke

2009-05-31T17:51:00.000-07:00

My prayer life has always been characterized by departures and returns. Each abandonment different from the others, each homecoming sweeter than the last. This constant battle of staying and leaving eventually strengthens the bond with my personal Jesus. Finding ways to make Him smile, I stumbled into this Rainer Maria Rilke poem which is my current favorite prayer:

Oh, tell us, poet, what you do? I praise.

But those dark, deadly, devastating ways, how do you bear them, suffer them? I praise.

And then the Nameless, beyond guess or gaze, how can you call it, conjure it? I praise.

And whence your right, in every kind of maze, in every mask, to remain true? I praise.

And that the mildest and the wildest ways know you like star and storm? Because I praise.

Choosing Life

2009-05-31T17:37:00.000-07:00

"Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always". Rainer Maria Rilke

The human body is a cash cow. All professions, whether in sports or in the flesh trade, capitalize on a healthy body which an ugly and treacherous enemy called cancer trashes and assaults.

After 6 years in remission, I was officially told a year ago today that my cancer returned. Lovers, when they desert you, it’s almost always for good. Not cancer. After its hostile take-over, it can’t seem to find its way to the door no matter how much it’s unwelcomed and condemned. Like some insanely romantic people, it has no pride. You can’t help but detest it for being clingy and needy.

Maybe it’s denial or a key to my defense mechanism that I hardly read medical journals/articles regarding cancer. It’s so anti-Maoist, Mao’s cardinal principle being “know your enemy.” Theoretically, I embrace it not only because knowledge is empowering but it’s damn logical.

But with cancer, I can’t seem to dig its literature and I don’t have the urbane manners to extend my acquaintance. I can’t be charitable to the anarchy it has waged on my body. I mean, I didn’t invite this interloper, why would I even bother to be on speaking terms?

Oh, it’s just me and my irrational mindgames. In these mindgames, cancer is an imperialist shit, the Goliath to my David and if I were to explain it in political jargon, I would begin by saying that cancer cells are comparable to Mao’s Red Army. They attack under the radar in a protracted war whose terms they dictate. Forget about Israel’s elite army. On the ground, guerillas are still the most ingenious and scrappiest fighters in the world.

Cancer cells behave like guerillas. They invade terrains undetected. Exercising patience, they gather strength in numbers and this could take years to manifest. Before you know it, they’ve reached Stage 4, a stalemate, and you’re forced to acknowledge their upperhand and negotiate a peace settlement.

The government’s army, at one point, mimicked guerilla tactics in its counter-insurgency plan but like most copycats, they’ve been shoved into oblivion. Engaging in guerilla tactics will not necessarily transform government soldiers into guerillas because a guerilla’s biggest weapon is not his rifle. It’s his clear political vision and appetite to not just “interpret the world but to transform it.” (KM)

So if there are cancer cells raiding your body for nourishment, it doesn’t do any harm to learn a lesson or two from Mao, one of the best strategists who walked this earth. Fighting cancer is like fighting a revolution.

It all starts with the humility that the enemy is a tough one and you need all the support you can assemble at all fronts.

You organize your armies and categorize your first-line-of-defense, your second unit, and so forth. You strengthen your armies by eating right and maintaining a positive disposition.

You create situations but never force them. If an ambush or a siege is not possible, save it for another day. With cancer, there are days that you feel weak and weaker still. You sit it out – sleep, extend your resting periods, read leisurely, savor the solitude.

As a war of attrition, what is important is rebuilding your strength, reclaiming what was lost, and moving forward. Mao’s revolution is about winning the hearts and the minds of the masses, not their bodies. To a certain extent, cancer may conquer the body but not the mind and the heart. It weakens the body, not the spirit.

Shit, I need another cup of coffee.

Pilosopong Tasyo

2009-05-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

"The absurd enlightens me on this point: there is no future"
Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus"

It is a gross mistake to assume that the working man is no philosopher. In my books, the working man makes an excellent philosopher.

Philosophies are not confined in books. Philosophy is out there – growing on trees, sprouting in rice paddies, germinating in sardines-factories.

It is to be mourned that in the directory of philosophers, not a single Filipino is registered. This is an anomaly in a country where everybody seems to have an opinion. We are not in the map – 70 million opinion-makers, zero philosopher, and too many lawyers. How did this happen?

As a Filipino, I feel handicapped not being able to quote or paraphrase a Filipino thinker/philosopher. Try quoting Jose Rizal in a PolSci class, chances are, you’ll get a smirk or a sneer from your professor. Quote an obscure Continental thinker, your professor stares at you with glazed eyes.

It was quite frustrating to major in a philosophy-heavy course like PolSci, borrowing ideas from everyone except from your own kind. There’s the competing Frankfurt and Chicago schools of thought. The French have post-structuralism, post-modernism, anything with the post-prefix. The Italians have Machiavelli and Gramsci who are not necessarily sweet bedfellows despite their shared nationality. The Latin Americans have liberation theology and their dependency theories. Africa has its post-colonial studies.

Where’s the Philippines? Some stalwarts of the Philippine Left are internationally –known but their works are not taught in schools. The so-called “Asian Way,” essentially Confucian, is alien to us.

It’s not really a pressing problem needing solution - the fact that there is no universally recognized Filipino thinker. So what? It does not mean we don’t have the intellectual capacity for scholarship and intelligent theorizing. We just have to nurture our scholars a few hugs and kisses more.

But what kind of environment is provided for serious scholarship? Assess our universities, learning institutions where we are supposed to lead the “life of the mind”. Start from the kind of shepherding we get from our teachers. Excuse me, there is hardly any for a number of reasons.

One, the teacher lacks commitment or is simply lazy. Second, in order to hold on to his/her job, the teacher needs to do some research work, therefore, dividing his attention between instruction and research. On one hand, you’re still learning the ropes of teaching and groping for your teaching style. On the other, you have to dabble in theory-testing and theory-refutations, the bedrock of research. You end up, what?

The bigger question is: Does the nature of academic research in the country even push the frontiers of theory-building?

I don’t move around academic circles basically because I am a bum, so I don’t know. As a student, I have been to only 2 professorial lectures because as I said, I am a bum. So I don’t know.

But I have heard stories of dishonest research practices, of researches bereft of integrity. A professor-friend chides about research papers “discovering the obvious,” declaring what the frogs in our backyard already know from their previous incarnations.

There goes the future of philosophy in this country – down in the well with the frogs.

Croak, croak, croak.

Pwet-ry

2009-05-29T18:21:00.000-07:00

“Poetry is what you find
in the dirt, in the corner
overheard on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there”
Elizabeth Alexander

In Grade II, a teacher made an error in choosing me to represent the class in an oral declamation contest. The piece was entitled “The Owl and the Pussycat”. I was such a pussy, I lost. But that defeat didn’t scar me to be scared of poetry.

I can’t exactly remember when I made a sanctuary out of poetry. My imaginary shrink didn’t recommend it, it just found me somehow.

In college, the activist circle would organize the traditional “Bladed Verses,” a poetry-reading interspersed with musical production every September to commemorate Martial Law. My dear friend Joma took the helm of poem-selection, script-writing, directing, name it. I was just there because I could not be anywhere else.

Years later, Mana Vangie who hoists the banner of decency and moral principle in UPTC and I were tasked to organize a poetry-reading we called “Revolt against (Hy)Men.” We still banked on J's support.

Most of the time, I cannot fully understand poetry. Maybe that’s part and parcel the charm it holds for me. I keep on returning to it in the hope of nourishing a hunger. Momentarily nourished, I saunter off with a spring in my steps to perform tasks ensuring my survival. Then after a while, I don’t know if it’s me feeling homesick for its comfort or it’s poetry beckoning me to reconcile with myself but I just end up savoring something that leaves me hungrier everytime.

When the mood strikes, I sometimes dabble into it for what I pass off as poetry. I am not any good at writing poems so I find contentment just reading them. People like Sir Dave, my Lit-professor who can recite poems from the top of their heads and insert them in casual conversations – they rock this world.

I have no particular favorite poet. I have a few sentimental favorites. I am a fan of my friends’ and friends of friends’ poetry. I’m like a kid on Christmas when somebody shares a poem.

Once I had a PolSci student who gifted me her set of poetry, complete with a heartfelt dedication. Tears welled in my eyes. I felt so cherished and humbled. Shout-out to Uwan!

What does it take for us proletariat to have our imagined charmed life pulse into reality amidst abject poverty, the allure of self-pity, and the sweet promise of suicide?

Poetry, brother. It is the oxygen by which we breath and the glimmering ray of hope for a better world that never comes.

Barcelona, Raising the Bar Higher

2009-05-28T17:43:00.000-07:00

When I’m toothless and in gradual state of decomposition, I shall recollect over a cup of ginger ale when jurisprudence elected to follow the footprints of the mighty dinosaurs into antiquity rather than walk in the shadow of light.

The law, in the case of gay marriage, is not an ally but savagely romantic that I am, I will say this like an automated robot: love is still the highest law. In the last second, love shall be triumphant.

Whew! And on the 10th and 70th minute, victory was in the lap of Barcelona, Ole! If it wasn’t Arsenal, the trophy should go to Barcelona, I wrote in the old blog. I will claim this triumph in behalf of what humanity lost in the suicide attacks, in the California ruling, and in the picketlines of farmers demanding genuine agrarian reform violently dispersed by water cannons.

Football is a commanding metaphor for life. You can’t bank on your 4-4-2 formation as if it were a choreographed dance that never shifts tempo. One day, your gameplan is a goldmine; the next, a dismal flop.

My friend T who plays FB (fullback, not fuck-buddy, wanker) ironically swears that football is won in midfield. Hmm, would Arsenal have enjoyed a dissimilar fate against ManU if say, Henry still wore the Emirates jersey? The talented Frenchman was hardly a factor in Rome.

It’s easy to say that the contest begins and ends in midfield. After all, you don’t win if you can’t score. Defense specialists like Cannavaro rock my world but in football, strikers are much heralded than defenders. So with life – the aggression of strikers, those who are on the prowl have the world for a price. The conquistadores claim and name territories, these architects of history. They write their own legends and we, the conquered, are just born to exalt them. As the cliché goes – no guts, you know the rest.

Obviously, I am not a player so to get my friend’s goat, I contradict by saying football is won by coaches, not players. Ravers think DJs are gods, excuse me. Lippi and Capello and Mourinho and Wenger, they are demi-gods.

Football’s major charm to me is that it’s a game of precision that demands flexibility. The strategizing, the proper adjustments, the timely reactions emanate from coaching. The players can provide the heart but the head, it’s got to be the coaching unit. Of course, when your players don’t suit up or play unmotivated, a coach can only do so much. Even God doesn’t have that much success in motivation – there are more sinners than saints, after all.

In life, we are the players. Who are our coaches? I pay homage to my own but it’s quite a kilometric list and unless somebody challenges me to come up with my Top5, why would I give myself a headache?

Play That Ugly Drug Music

2009-05-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

"Play that ugly drug music" Elvis Costello, "13 Steps Lead Down"

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" (Nick Hornby, “High Fidelity”)

John Cusack, one of my favorite actors for sentimental reasons, admits to being a “music snob” and considers himself cliquey when it comes to music, reminiscent of Rob Gordon, the character he portrayed with such aplomb in one of my favorite movies, High Fidelity.

I was quite amused by his unabashed confession because I have encountered his kind in this lifetime – people who judge people by the music they prefer or listen to. I also fall into this tendency sometimes but not to judge people but to determine if a guy is a skirt-chaser or a crotch-grabber.

I am not insular when it comes to music. I am the exact opposite. I pimp my favorites, as a matter of fact. I used to burn CDs for people with unaccustomed diligence just so I could impinge on them my revered musicians. I am rather unsuccessful on this account.

I wish people listened to the late Jeff Buckley more than they listen to American Idol alumni. I wish REM and Blur were more appreciated. I wish people stumble into Simon and Garfunkel or Jim Croce before they graduate from college. I wish that instead of numerous cloning of Elvis Presley, people are introduced to Elvis Costello.

Yet at the end of the day, it is our own musical journey anyway. You get to pick your drinking buddies. One important rule everyone must follow, I must insist: Pump up the volume!!

Doobie Brothers

2009-05-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

I don't normally retreat from a challenge so to R who's curious as to what my top 3 songs on ganja:

1. Panalo (Color it Red) - "Sindihan na yan! At uuubo." Forces you to remember your first puff-the-magic-dragon.

2. Burn One Down (Ben Harper) - "herb the gift from the earth, and what's from the earth is of the greatest worth". Go organic. And as Raul Julia's druglord character in "Tequila Sunrise" bravely predicted, "grass is the future."

3. Legalize It (Peter Tosh) - "good for tuberculosis....goats love to play with it." No argument, no argument.

We Want to Multiply

2009-05-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

"We want to multiply, are you gonna do it?" (Powerstation)

(Warning: If you’re a Management major, don’t read this. Do something worthwhile with your life. Go on a hunger strike for the release of political prisoners. Make posters to legalize ganja).

After a semester in the kibbutz of Political Science, a former student decided to defect to the Management camp. By this time, I already earned a reputation of labeling these handful of defectors as traitors.

Before her departure, this student needed my signature. She got more. Hmm…what is dandy about young people is that they can’t detect pontifications when they see one. Or they just have the manners not to put a kibosh on the pontifications of older people (that's me).

Amazingly, this student fairly remembers my monologue on that slow, sultry afternoon. I said something like “This is an act of betrayal. On the day of reckoning, you know how traitors are dealt with.” And I go Argh! Sounded like Gen. Palparan, my favorite butcher. Maybe, I should apply as his speechwriter now that he' s in Congress. A dandy idea, hmm.

Allow me to explain why I was reduced to pontificating even if I wasn’t the Pontiff.

If that student shifted from PolSci to Physics (which I would have done if I were intelligent enough), Ole! But to choose Management over PolSci, you got to be kidding.

I asked a whole block of Management students why they were drawn to it. My questions were out of plain ignorance, be warned. From the arrogant: What is there to study in Management? Who are your philosophers? To the literally absurd: What is to be managed? Can anything be managed? Are your lives so mismanaged, you actually need to spend 4 years to study Management? Do you think your lives will be more well-managed than the rest of us? Somebody shoot me, please.

So when this traitor who has become a close friend confides about her love-bug, I gloat in morbid glee. Payback time, isn’t revenge sweet? License to go pontifical and when I am in that gay mood, hell could just freeze.

This is the diagnosis, I offered: Your problem started when you took flight from Political Science. Honestly, there is no correlation but as I said, I was in the mood to gloat. Look how Management ruined you, I continued: You have become anal, a control freak, “sigurista nga diri asya,” not besotted with philosophy, lacking appreciation of the intangibles and immeasurables, thinks “food for the soul” is something prepared in the kitchen.

Whew, that’s cold. That’s just Antarctica-cold.

Her fundamentalist religious views quarrel with her forbidden love. A woman is not supposed to love another woman. That’s tough. Even Political Science has no solution to that.

But at least, PolSci as a discipline, encourages you to free your mind and to make a stand. Conformism is denounced as individuality is celebrated. It’s intellectually promiscuous and morally ambiguous so there are no absolutely wrong answers as there are no right ones. This is where the discipline’s strength and weakness rest.

It’s not easy (however possible) for me to imagine my Management students transforming into Rimbauds and Sapphos. There is a certain rigidity and deficiency in philosophy in that course, I surmise. After all, it’s modern compared to the old tradition of Aristotle and Plato and all our forebears, a discipline fuelled by the requirements and needs of capitalism. Oh, boy.

What we become, how our worldviews are shaped, how we attack the challenges hurled by life owe so much to the course we chose. If I majored in Management, I would surely view the world from a different lens, be a different character.

As I snapped out of it, I realized that I did not abate a bit the emotional turmoil that student was going through. No one is listening. How many times have I said don’t come to me for love advice? Chances are, I would say the most inappropriate things, tell incongruent anecdotes, and disconnect the dots. How in the frak did I correlate her problem to her shifting majors?

Me and my titi-eories. Wait till you hear my dick-tionary. Sexual repression, go burn.

This Charming Man

2009-05-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

3 days ago, the Moz celebrated his birthday. When I declare that Manchester is home of the world's finest musicians, he isn't far from my mind. I don't blame him for my mopiness but how punch-happy and upbeat would I have become if The Smiths didn't bust my eardrums some summers ago.

He's no longer my drinking buddy but I relish the memory of his brave advice "Shoplifters of the World, Unite." Naughty capitalist, this big mouth is. But a capitalist you just can't hate.

Wise Up

2009-05-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

"You're sure there's a cure
And you have finally found it
You think, one drink will sink you till you're underground
But it's not going to stop, it's not going to stop, it's not going to stop
Till you wise up" (Aimee Mann, "Wise Up")

Facebook (FB) is banned in Iran. More than an issue of censorship, how damning is this serpentine mandatory move in the curtailment of civil and political rights?

Using the forces of production rationale – who are into FB (not fuck buddy, dummy)? Are they using it as a political tool/vehicle? How engaged are they in the transformative power of technology? Do they even believe in its transformative potential?

Once these questions are dealt with squarely, our realization might be that this is a fight we can forego or shelve for another day or if you have ample energy, go ahead but don’t stake your neck for it. This is the Iranian government, take note.

This is a lesson I paid dearly for – choosing my battles and choosing them well. In my youth, I was a bit uncompromising – every indignation had to be indemnified, big or small. It was not about winning but making a point, registering your voice, standing up because you could not live with yourself if you didn’t.

Come to think of it, did I ever score a win in my political battles? I suffered losses more than my frail ego could take. That’s the whole beauty of the struggle – steadfastly believing in romance and having faith, even as you are licking your wounds.

Faith is an orientation of the spirit much different from simple, doe-eyed optimism. It is a conviction that something makes perfect sense regardless if your action succeeds.

The principle also applies to love. To me, it isn’t about the object of affection or how that object responds to it. I will not even negotiate because love is a human function no different from bathing or brushing my crooked teeth. There’s no need to overthink or hammer your brain for excuses, just love for the heck of it. Regardless of how it turns out.

Same with technology. I have no delusions in its transformative appeal. It all boils down to power relations – who owns it? Yes, there are millions signed up in FB, in FS (I am there), in Twitter or whatever is the current rage but there are more who don’t have access – no education, no electricity, wars, poverty, name it.

In the real sense, who is the disconnected?

In the early days of blogging, some were agog about this cheap technology crystallizing the world into one global village. All bets are off. It isn’t as neat as it sounds – technology is ruled by the same power relations we contend with everyday. More glaringly, the multitudes, the masses are still out there, not in cyberspace. So for whom are we blogging?

Blogging is for megalomaniacs, some argue. It is unabashed exhibitionism without a sense of purpose. Amen, I have no counter-arguments. In fact, let me add one thing: blogging is the new narcissism, bebe.

I blog because this is an arena open to me. I will take every crumb of chance to reach out, to connect. I try not to shout my political persuasions but even as I am skeptical that cyberspace is not the turf of the powerless, I will not concede this battlefield by default. I don’t expect to cash in political gains because my aim ain’t high but it’s true. Yes Mr. Costello, my aim is true.

Blogging as I often say, is an expression of worship and with a few friends partaking, there is some kind of fellowship going on. That puts a smile to this ugly face.

I am the last person to take myself seriously or to expect to be taken seriously. People who do should produce scholarly journals or teach or do some research or go into serious organizing. These people are to be lauded.

As to Iran’s president, is he to be lauded? He’s not my drinking buddy but for the sake of lame argument, let’s just pretend he’s like a parent regulating what his children should be watching on TV and the internet. What a crock.

Anyway, I am not in FB so this isn’t my fight, haha.

B-List

2009-05-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

Hollywood released its annual list of Beautiful People last month. Deppster topped the list, no violent objection there. However, many of my beautiful ones were ignored. Hollywood is not looking hard enough.

01. Benicio del Toro – If that scandalous elevator incident years back involving Scarlett is to be believed. Muy delicioso. His remarkable performance in "Traffic" surely caused traffic in my aorta and arteries and valve and veins.

02. Daniel Craig – He is beautiful in the tradition of Viggo Mortensen and Val Kilmer, only if Viggo was not too chiseled and Kilmer didn’t pout as much. Craigster assembles his wares way too perfectly. I thought Lawrence Fishburn had the sexiest walk until Craigster in "LayerCake" – just a hint of swagger but a normal gait by all accounts. In "Enduring Love", he was the target of stalking by a man gradually descending towards madness. I mean, if middle-aged males snap out of their sanity over him, how much more the other demographics?

03. Jared Leto – You could drown in those devouring eyes. He wears horrible eye make-up for his band 30 seconds to Mars and still manages to be Edward Scissorhands-beautiful.

04. Justin Theroux – David Lynch saw something in him before everybody did. I am just glad I caught on.

05. James Franco – Playing James Dean, he offered a complex and emphatic performance. He can be dark and broody but when he turns on that goofy smile, he can light up the whole of Africa – a solution to our energy problem.

06. Mads Mikkelsen – Watch “After the Wedding” and “Prague” and you’ll know what I mean. The baby factories don’t produce beautiful men like Mads these days.

Mulled over including John Cusack but he is more cool than beautiful, like Tim Robbins. You imagine hanging out with them, raiding their ref for beer, and puking on their bathroom and they won’t call the sheriff.

Adel, A Good Deal

2009-05-24T23:31:00.000-07:00

The bright spot in the sex video scandal involving local celebrities is, eng-eng!!, not some senator’s impassioned speech and name-calling.

It’s the sobering demeanor of Adel Tamano, spokesperson of the “Genuine Opposition” and counsel of one of the beleaguered victims. He transports you back to highschool when people exercised leniency when you screamed your lungs out everytime the acolyte in your parish church crossed your path.

His calmness and intelligence lend class to this otherwise sordid affair. Give me sordid any day of the week if it means him blazing the TV screen.

Drinking Through our Sorrow

2009-05-24T23:15:00.000-07:00

(This re-post is for Regiedor who pimped to his imaginary friends that it's all authentic, organic, and sexy without being scandalous here. Most of all, for being savagely loyal).

“Drinking in order to feel
Thinking, reinventing the wheel”
-Elbow, “Picky Bugger”

As much as I heed on endorsements of strangers to listen to or watch this crap, I did not keel over Dave Matthews’ stupendous rant over George Bataille’s “Story of the Eye” several years ago. Describing his near-dementia while reading the book: “You have to stop every once in a while and have a cold shower, drink a couple shots of whiskey or masturbate,” I avoided Bataille at all cost. Until now, he remains a blind date that I never got to meet.

The cold shower, I have no problem with. The masturbation, in deference to my mother who’s gone to the Other Side, I will be non-committal about. But the drinking part – what perverse power does this writer wield to drive his reader to uncork a bottle? Not that I need and excuse to drink but I am a cheap drunk – a few swig and I will admit to anything.

Ideas and words have tremendous, immeasurable impact. My insensitivity at times, my penchant for flippant statements offend some people which is never really my intention. On my part, I need to learn circumspection and believe me, you can’t fault me for trying. I wish I were friends with Bataille, got a question for him. Does he even care how people take his words and ideas? He seems to be a kick-ass fellow, someone you want to be on your team.

I am not quite sure if it was he who said: “Your unhappy philosopher needs a drink like your working man needs soap”. I find this oddly funny on several counts. First, is the generalization that philosophers are a miserable lot. Second, the hope they harbor that philosophy would bring sobriety and contentment into their lives. Third, the sharp observation that the working man gets dirty, he needs to wash up. And lastly, the accepted truth that it’s the philosopher that needs a drink more than the working man.

The philosopher in his isolated lighthouse cooks up prescription after prescription how the working man ought to think and live his life. The philosopher is intoxicated on his own abstractions, his rootlessness, his state of exile.

To the philosopher, the revolution can be reduced to words and ideas. To the pragmatic working man, the revolution is a way of life. “To live is to struggle and to struggle is to be among men.”

The working man does not need the philosopher as much as the philosopher needs him as a subject, as an inspiration for his ideas. No matter how the philosopher exhorts that the revolution is now, “the only revolutions that are worth anything are the ones that we discover ourselves, within ourselves, and for ourselves.” (V. Havel)

So the philosopher can forget about his prescriptions. The working man will find his own.

In the meantime, I shall find me a working man who is a closet philosopher. When he comes to my senses, I shall invite him in the manner that Dave Matthews seduces - “Crash into me.”

Oh, boy.

Death March

2009-05-24T03:57:00.000-07:00

“I want to vanish,
This is my fondest wish” (Elvis Costello, “I want to vanish”)

There’s a funeral wake next door. My childhood friend’s mother, all of 81, performs yet another biological imperative. Frequenting the hospital in the last 2 months, her organs shut down one by one, signing off cell after cell.

There is nothing certain in this life except death, probably the only lesson in Biology that endures. Everything that breathes, hops, and gallops runs into fatigue and ultimately stops, terminates, ends. This is the tyranny of nature without the tiniest, slimmest window of escape for its stewards.

I feast on gangster movies where the sanctity of life is an outrage. To paraphrase the infamous Oliver North of the equally infamous Contra-scandal, I would stand on my head or get a lobotomy just to be part of Tony Soprano’s crew, my favorite fictional Mafioso. I can’t keep tabs on the casualties in Scorsese’s or Tarantino’s violence-fest.

Death has somehow become a gargantuan fiction that when it does happen, specially to someone close or someone you know, this most ancient and natural biological destiny still manages to astound, affect, numb.

I lost my own mother 7 months ago so the faint scent of death still teases. Of course, you try to be philosophical and courageous about it but as my friend Ali perceptively says, “no one is too old to lose a parent.”

Sad but true.

The Gospel according to Rushdie

2009-05-24T03:32:00.000-07:00

“To die for boys –
O, what a beauty”
-Gay National Liberation Front

Last Wednesday, my dear friends R and T dropped by for dinner and coffee. Terribly missing them after almost 2 months of absence, I was supernaturally consumed in ecstasy (I am practicing to be a porno writer, hence, the term).

Thoughtless that I am, I accosted R before he could spoon up food if he’s reunited with his ex. A brief mental sparring followed and it went like this:

R: What makes you think that?
Me: Just a hunch.
R: A hunch? What gave you the idea?
Me: I don’t know. So are you? (R gives me the funny look) Are you back together? (I persist)
R: Well, not really. Sort of.

I did not pursue thinking that R did not welcome my interrogation so talk shifted to other matters, T’s children and their antics, among others. Later, much later, R opened up.

I was happy that R finally became comfortable sharing his present situation with us. I felt bad about the break-up months ago and I was really worried about him because he is the type to keep his grief private.

The way I see the situation is a bit hazy but one thing is quite clear: there are no demands and expectations. Well, this is the dimension of a relationship deprived of me, so bear with me if I could not fully understand the concept of a no-demand/no-expectation thingy.

So what constitutes a relationship then? At the very least, I want to be treated with respect. Isn’t that a kind of expectation already? But hey, I am not defending any position here. What do I know about romantic love?

If R says that such a relationship is possible, then I believe him. “Kung saan ka maligaya, hindi ako malulungkot,” I reassured.

Why do we continue loving a supposed ex, inspite and despite of? Is this what people call unconditional love, a love without borders and frontiers? J says it might be a case of having diffulties getting over people who treat us badly. Then that would make us masochists.

I feel I need to apologize to R for burdening him with questions like – Don’t you ever ask your ex what you are doing or what it is you’re having or where is this, whatever it is, is headed to? He guarantees that at least, he is totally aware of what he’s getting into. I take comfort in that. More importantly, he’s obviously happy. I take more comfort in that.

So for you, my friend, I chose this Salman Rushdie quote because it has trappings of Maoist thought, a fitting tribute to our shared history:

“In love, one advances by retreating. The first approach, the deflection of anxieties, the arousal of interest, the feint of departure, the slow inexorable return – the leisurely inward spiral of desire”.

Certainly you cannot rob Rushdie of his breathtaking eloquence. In another’s incapable hands, this love-mantra would read and sound like Sun Tzu’s “Art Of War,” a book I have read quite a few times I have forgotten what it says.

But as your friend of long standing, I do declare without modesty that I summed it up better than the Rushdies of this world.

So let me say this again (hope you read this): You are in deep, baho shit.
A variation: You are in deep, baho, igit.
Another variation: You are in deep, baho, bugrit.

If this isn't affection, I don't know what is.

Crossing the Line

2009-05-23T02:38:00.000-07:00

Is he or isn’t he going to file for divorce? This isn’t the first time my phantom drinking buddy, Sean Penn, has vacillated over his decision to finally crumple his marriage contract to the equally bold and luminous actress, Robin Wright-Penn and throw it to the bin.

As to those drooling over him, prematurely rejoicing that finally he can make honest women out of you – there will be no Thanksgiving or Christmas together and the honeymoon in Maldives or is it Galapagos that you booked in advance? Call your travel agent and replace them with tickets for the World Cup in South Africa.

I wonder what my favorite comedians over at Fox News are ranting this time. Are they going to fete him for upholding rock-solid family values by not pushing through a messy divorce?

When news of this present divorce broke out, those funny guys had a heyday speculating on the reason(s) – “Oh, he’s a worthless piece of (bleep) for not acknowledging his wife in his acceptance speech at the Oscars”

Granting that his acceptance speech was unorthodox, the man, well, is. I think it was a smart move to grab that chance, when million of viewers, in rapt attention were listening, to articulate his advocacy against hatred of marginalized people. The right-wingers only heard “gay rights,” something they are virulently against with but if they listened closely, Sean Penn’s speech was about tada-ding! LOVE. “Gugma, kun ha Binisaya”

Love for the heck of it, as I always say.

And it was a sprightly speech – “You commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” That brought a hearty chuckle.

For those who expected him to enumerate a litany of thanksgiving, just check Milk’s credits. One thing I know, it was the powerful vision of Gus Van Sant that galvanized the movie. And my sagging butt, he can thank his wife properly in private, in a manner that he has mastered.

What do we care about the intimate lives of celebrities anyway? At least with Sean Penn, he was persecuted for not thanking his wife in public, with the cameras on, when it was a call of propriety to do so, or at least feeding people’s conventional expectations.

The current local headline is about celebrities exhibiting in public what is supposed to be a private matter, which isn’t a call of propriety but at least, feed people’s prurient expectations.

Sex, lies, and videotape.

Dr. Love

2009-05-23T02:34:00.000-07:00

Somebody asked me for love-advice. Why a few people think I have 2-cents in my pocket bewilders.

The specific question: How does one hold on to his/her Significant Other?

My non-specific answer: Go back to Aesop’s Fables.

In Aesop’s Fables, the Wind and the Sun made a wager as to who between them can force a man to take off his coat. The Wind blew hard and the man clung to his coat. The Sun shone and the man took off his coat to enjoy the freedom of the elements.

I think the person who asked for my advice expected a 5-step strategy or a 10-guideline sort of thing. And all I could come up with was an old college lesson.

So I tried to elaborate – it is our prerogative to behave like the Wind or the Sun, whatever floats our boat. And all I got was seconds of dead air.

Now you know I am the last person one should ask for love-advice.

Notes From Above-ground

2009-05-22T05:40:00.001-07:00

"Push your old numbers, and let your house ring
Until I wake your ghost" Kristin Hersh, "Your Ghost"

In this exquisite suburbia called V&G Subdivision where I spent part of my joyous childhood and all of my reckless youth, one constant fixture in the neighborhood was Mano Steve, the friendly mailman.

In bustling Santan Street, across rows of familiar houses, heaps of dog-shit, rowdy cats engaging in carnal pleasure, and neighbors in serious discussion of masiao results, Mano Steve would linger at our gate for small talk and a glass of water. Even if there was no letter to deliver, he would drop by.

His famous greeting was “Nobody cares.” That was his punchline each time there was no letter to hand over. Hell, he said it all the time to me, almost crushing my romanticism. He’s long retired and I don’t know the current mailman. The ones delivering various bills have various faces and they’re always on a rush.

Well, Mano Steve, somebody bothers to care. Got this email from my loyal roommate at Ipil. Before those spies browse through my mails, let me just make their lives sweeter by spilling the beans, “ighuwad it monggo,” so to speak:

Got back from a four-day hike in Elgon, one of the highest mountains in East Africa last Sunday. It was tedious, adventurous (especially with the rainy season!!) and brilliant! My goodness! to describe beauty is ineffable! Was lost for words. There were a lot of times I was awed and mesmerized on what was surrounding me, moments I wish I could be immortal to experience these little wonders.

Unlike my Brit friends who had the Union Jack with them, didn't have anything with me (pen or paper) to prove I was conquering the top for you. You were in my heart as I was ascending. I was climbing Elgon for my friend who is a true heroine.

love you lots,
me xx

Thanks for the heartfelt tribute, Turabsoy. It’s all engraved here in my promiscuous heart. Next time, you don’t need to punish yourself that hard. Just send me a postcard from Costa Rica.

Palparan & Football

2009-05-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

Just done re-reading Dave Eggers’ “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” because I vaguely remember that the primary characters, Dave and Toph, were fully orphaned. Now that I am on the same boat, I wanted to check if I could form a kinship.

Picking AHWOSG again reminded me of Eggers’ account of his gym teacher launching into a tirade against communism and rationalizing why soccer never became popular in the US. According to this jock, soccer is a game that communists favor and not an American invention like basketball and baseball. Furthermore, he says that Americans should suspect a game introduced by Germans and Italians and does not employ hands. I find the account hilariously pathetic. Look Ma, no hands.

Yup, it is widely perceived that the US government played a crucial role in killing the sport in America. And if you survey past World Cup winners – Uruguay, Galeano’s home-country and the first to win it, has 2; Italy and Brazil have 4 a piece; Germany has 3. The World Cup is dominated by countries where the Communist Party enjoys recognition and support.

Come to think of it, soccer is intensely played in the townships of Africa, in the shanty-towns of Brazil, and even in refugee camps in the Middle East. It is played by the poorest of the poor and in some cultures, children play to momentarily escape the misery of poverty. In my hometown of Tacloban, streetchildren do rugby. Not the sport, dummy. That sticky solvent that momentarily solves problems. Kuno.

When I was working with a human rights organization (Task Force Detainees of the Philippines), I had the privilege of going around Samar, helping out in para-legal training and in some remote villages, the locals played football. At that time, I didn’t wonder how the locals learned about soccer (no TV and no soccer on TV then), much more play it with joyous abandon.

With Eggers’ account, I connected the dots. Maybe, those frigging soccer-loving Communists that Gen. Palparan loves to hate introduced soccer aside from Marxist-Lenin Maoist Thought to these farm communities. It is not hard to imagine a cadre squeezing in soccer games as breaks from discussions of feudalism and bureaucratic-capitalism which are oftentimes monotonous. Take my word for it.

This elementary logic is quite comical (for more comic relief, go to Fox News): Communists love football and if you love football, you must be a Communist.

Would I die of shock if I learned that Palparan actually plays football?

Emyat and Football

2009-05-22T05:09:00.000-07:00

“I am an Arsenal fan first. Football, second.”
Nick Hornby, “Fever Pitch”

As a nominal fan of football, it’s inscrutable, the amount of football I am absorbing at the moment. The devil of it, I don’t even like the Premiership. This simply means one thing: TV is so intolerably ghastly, the sports channel has become enticingly appealing or that I have so much time in my hands, 90 minutes swift by, unfelt.

Normally, I don’t watch football on TV except when I have trouble getting sleep or I am reading deep into the dark hours and I can’t play loud music (as music should be played) in noble consideration of souls at rest. The din of football as a background enables me to concentrate on readings that would normally shove me into stupor.

When my mother was alive, she would often sneak up on me, “Why are you still not in bed?” Then a follow-up question: “What are you watching?” probably suspecting porno.

“Football,” I would indulgently answer. Knowing her, I anticipate her next question: “What do you get from it?” With my mother, it’s all about the bottomline and cost-benefit. So I would turn to cliché – “It’s food for the soul.”

It always worked – “food for the soul” is something my mother considered legit probably because it’s unquantifiable, therefore, not within her realm.

Maybe I am consuming football more than what is healthy in the hope of my mother’s apparition. This time, I would change the scenario – I would put down the book I am reading and invite her to sit with me for a while as I convince her how football’s metaphors have instructed me about life in general and how this game has made me understand the horrors of capitalism and the awful truth of globalization.

Knowing my mother, she would be more amused than dazzled. Tell me, how many children can amuse their mothers with pompous talks on globalization? I truly miss her. For all our friendly disagreements, I have no doubt that she understood me, truly understood me in a way mothers rarely do. Tell me, am I lucky or am I lucky?

Yes, we are talking about football.

Soccer as we called it then was very popular in highschool. My dear friend Tox would talk about 4-1 formation and I would space out. At that time, Diego Maradona was the only player I heard about. I was not interested in soccer per se as much as watching my male friends, my homeboys play and cheering them on.

In college, I continued watching my batchmates from the field. Football on TV was unheard of and now that it has invaded all our waking hours, I can still say that I prefer watching my highschool or college batchmates play in the school grounds. Well, except for Italy or Real Madrid, as long as Cannavaro is asserting his claim to the kingdom.

Cannavaro, hay! If I had the savvy, I would create a website for him. A sports-commentator summed it up: “If ManU pays Rio Ferdinand 120,000 pounds a week, Cannavaro is worth at least a million a day.”

Football became a curiosity when a player that committed a costly error during a World Cup game was fatally shot when he got home (Colombia, I think). What is this game that fuels fanaticism and snatches out the monsters in humans?

Then a coach in one of the South American teams tried to explain: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. It is more than that.”

Goosebumps! Shivers down my spine! It took me a while to “grasp” that cryptic remark

A sportswriter warns: “Intellectuals should embrace football for its art, not for its soul.” Not in agreement here. More than rudiments and techniques and strategies and skills, football is a mirror and a celebration of life. Besides, if one were to embrace football, one has to embrace its metaphors and mysteries, its beauty and squalor.

I don’t play football (which makes me a fake by some standards) unless you count kicking ball with Georgelablab, the uber-askal (who says uber in this day and age except the Germans?) but I have had conversations with young men whom you could categorize as football players when I was a paid employee at UPTC and we were not exactly on the same paragraph.

To them, football was about great athleticism and mental agility, in short, the art of it. On the other hand, I talked of magical moments, of gods descending to play with mortals, of my own spiritual dilemmas pacified by football. Those kids must have thought: “Our teacher is nuts.” In complete agreement here.

That sportswriter could be right. Intellectuals should stick with the art of football, not its soul. But I am no intellectual.

I am a partisan at heart. So when I rant about globalization using football references and parallelism, you know where I am coming from.

P.S. Nick Hornby has a new book out (Slam) and the right-wing claims it is pro-abortion. Hay, these right-wingers - They don’t fail to humor me on a humid day.

Miracle Drug

2009-05-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

“Of science and the human heart, there is no limit….
I’ve had enough of romantic love
I’d give it up, yeah, I’d give it up
For a miracle, miracle drug” (U2, Miracle Drug)

Mong-bebe, my former live-in partner, nah, dormate at Ipil - technically, we lived under one roof and I just get a kick introducing male dormates as “live-in” partners. Beat me.

He YMed several links yesterday regarding swine flu after reading the entry here. The links, when I opened them, were sites of pharmaceuticals. Baxter sparked my attention because this is the maker of a very expensive vial injected to me during my long confinement in June last year. The vial was supposed to remedy my albumin deficiency.

Is Baxter evil? The very sound of it smells evil. Well, we just have to be in consensus that pharmaceuticals, by their very nature, don’t earn cookie points in heaven.

That is really an ungracious thing to say for someone whose life was made less stricken because of drugs – nausea suppressants and anti-depressants. Going through 8-cycles of chemo last year, Plasil, a very tiny pill, didn’t make me puke. On my early days of confinement, a capsule called Zoloft which serves as a depression-buster put me to sleep. Zoloft is also a painkiller, I believe, like morphine.

I have an ugly relationship with painkillers not because I am a masochist. In my experience, painkillers are nightmare-inducing and they make me upbeat. Upbeat, that’s not me.

My oncologist in collusion with the psychiatrist stonewalled that popping shiny happy pills before depression gobbled me up was an awesome idea. Depression, my clit.

Depression among cancer patients is such a cliché. Certainly I am not jumping around in euphoria to have what a religious leader says as “God’s blessing in disguise” and in a moment of rarity, I am in complete agreement. A fair warning though: never tell a person newly diagnosed with cancer that having it is God’s blessing in disguise. That person might just become an atheist.

Here’s my take. The good Lord orchestrates our lives around mysteriously logical patterns and we should not even contemplate dismantling or thwarting those patterns but instead learn what the playwright Ariel Dorfman described as “a trembling state of humanity called recognition.” This divine grace Dorfman prefers to call recognition keeps depression at bay, not Zoloft or Prozac.

My sister reproached me for being rude to the psychiatrist. Until now, she picks on my impoliteness and I wrack my head which part was I reprehensible. Sketchy but I recall taunting the psychiatrist not to catalogue people into easy, neat categories. Is that being mean?

In fairness to me (hmp!), I gagged myself in recognition of her discipline. Psychiatry is about diagnosing what’s wrong in people and to be able to do that, you need to lump them into types. In fairness to the psychiatrist, we saw each other on Christmas and she showed no signs of harboring a grudge. Bless her.

So what do I do with my mean streak today? Mong planted the idea – attack the giant pharmaceuticals!!! With great pleasure.

It can be argued that by their very nature, the last thing pharmaceuticals pray for is a healthy population. Granted that we are all healthy, they still make money persuading us to buy their products to remain healthy. Always a win-win situation. Now, imagine the profits they are bound to gain in the event of a pandemic? Don’t, it’s just bowel-staggering.

The current media reportage of this flu the WHO insists is of pandemic magnitude is a bit sensationalized which will only advance corporate interests and militaristic political agenda as I have mentioned in an earlier blog.

The majority of deaths related to swine flu are actually due to lack of proper medical attention, poor nutrition, poor sanitary conditions. Long and short of it: poverty. It’s not the flu, per se.

I am in no position to contest the WHO’s assertions. A flu is a flu. The breakthroughs in medicine and technology have been spectacular enough to suspect this atmosphere of panic created by WHO’s pronouncements over a disease that’s not quite life-threatening. This is not the 18th century. Medical science has reached a point where it can play god and perform mind-boggling acts. Why do they want us to be afraid? Why do they want us to be alarmed?

Unless there’s something they are not telling us.

Tatay kong di kalbo

2009-05-21T03:06:00.000-07:00

Every summer until college, my cousins and I were shipped off to our grandparents in Bohol. There were no telephones at that time but we would receive my mother’s typewritten letters signed “Mama Memie” every 2 weeks or so. Whose mother sends her children typewritten letters anyway?

That summer of 1981, no typewritten letter arrived but a telegram came saying “Papa is critical. Love, Mama.”

I asked an older relative what “critical” meant. She told me she did not even finish highschool, she had no idea. So I asked for a dictionary, there was none in my Lola Dading’s house.

As I waited for explanation, that confusing telegram was being passed from one relative to another, eliciting solemn and sullen expressions. When I pressed for answers, they would rearrange their faces and studiously swerved from my curiosity.

Two lessons learned: (1) Adults could not be trusted (2) “Critical” is a bad word.

Four days later, I saw my father inside a dark brown casket. My grandparents were so devastated while my mother put up a brave front. But not brave enough to deliver the eulogy. So I did, coached by one of my father’s closest friends.

From then on, I would compose eulogies for my father in my mind. Some wrote themselves in my journal.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to travel this earth ably accompanied by a father. It’s been 28 years this month since we lost him. I will always carry the weight of nothingness, I guess and as Marius mourned for his comrades in “Les Miserables”: There’s a grief that can’t be spoken and the pain goes on an on. Empty chairs and empty tables…”

Oi, kitchen-sink drama.

The feeling of emptiness does me a lot of good, actually. It forces me to set my sight on what I actually have which isn’t much but I am grateful. Plus, I try to live by Goethe’s code and I think everybody should:

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture everyday of his life in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful implanted in the human soul.”