Riding on the back of Beasts

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.

sense overload

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.

Dancing to the Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(doodles from www.nougart.net)

The Sea rises

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

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

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

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

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

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

Money Can't buy me Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

(illustrations from www.exploding dog.com)

MAG-gaga

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

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

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

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

You can call me Betty

“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.

Futurama

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

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.

Wise Up

"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.

Passage to India

Speaking of rites of passage, I am ashamed to admit that I have this ritual with new people I meet. I have sworn that I don’t choose friends (because they choose me, harhar) which is not exactly a lie but I had a moment of reflection last night as I decided to miss “Totoy Bato” (the best in local TVlandia right now, ehem) and I realized that I discriminate more than I care to admit. Boo to me!

I had this nasty habit before. When someone asked something, a favor or a question, I would say, “What’s the password?” It did not mean anything because I always relented anyway but now that I psychoanalyze, that nasty habit acquires a sub-text.

Maybe there’s a secret handshake with me, after all but because I am a lowlife, I tend to develop instant affinity, balancing this urge to discriminate. For instance when I meet someone whose major is Political Science, the solidarity is automatic. It’s the notion of shared experience - of the same dead philosophers haunting us, of common confusion and delight over Marx, of the same questions grappled at one time or another.

You want discrimination? Well, hear this: This very witty friend in college would not make friends with a popular batchmate simply because that batchmate wore acid-washed denim. I understood the sentiment but I did not necessarily share it. I was actually friends with that batchmate who had a preference for acid-washed denim. My discrimination happens not to border on fashion.

Music is usually my yardstick, perhaps because it is my drug of choice. I mean, you don’t do my drug and I don’t dig yours, what’s the point in us being friends? Well, that’s not exactly true. I have friends who do not conceal their derision over my musical taste or lack of it, my late mother being on top of that list.

Some people may find it childish – judging people by their musical preferences. Well, they don’t get it. It’s not really about music. To me, it’s more of worldview and don’t let me expound on that. I have been out of school too long, the discourse has abandoned me.

If it’s not music or films or fashion-sense, I don’t exactly know the rite of passage or more aptly, the right of passage I subject people to. I just know that there is. When I am asked about a certain person, I tend to simplify things or maybe I am just too lazy to illuminate, so I just say he’s one of ours or she’s one of us. That’s how vampires do it, I suppose.

I remember asking my class how people strike them or what they admire in people and the usual answers I got were beauty, intelligence, power, authority, and expertise on a particular field. Then somebody turned the table on me, “Ikaw, what do you admire in a person?” My answer: compassion and humor.

So maybe that’s my password, passport, right of passage, whatever. I would like to believe the people I consider friends have plenty of both.

Days of Lost Innocence

Several summers ago, my brother underwent circumcision, the so-called rite of passage for boys like him. It was not an experience of pleasure as I remember him having a shark of a tantrum, probably from both agony and shame. And the constant cruel teasing he got from us, insensitive brats.

For women, what is our rite of passage? Is it as Joy (or how does she spell her Jhoi?) Barrio’s poem suggests – first blood at menstruation, first blood of hymens breaking, first blood at childbirth?

All this bloodbath freaks me out.

I would like to enjoy my sovereignty and define milestones in my prosaic life as rites of passage. To some, it is the sad realization that they had been had, by their very own parents at that, and choicelessly accepting that Santa Claus is a wanker. Evil, evil parents.

To me, it was the sad realization that for all my mastery at evasions, I cannot escape adulthood. And largely, it meant stripping off my Pollyana tendencies and seeing the world as it is – incomprehensible, inconsistent, and complex at times but once you go on all your fours, it is not as execrable as you first thought.

Once our innocence is shattered (not in the tradition of vestal virgins but of the Santa-Claus-is-dead variety, dummy) as Eve experienced in Eden, many pathways present themselves, promising of a fruitful journey. In my case, losing my innocence meant learning judgment which is both a bad and a good thing. I am tempted to say circumspection but that would be untruthful. Circumspection is still a personal aspiration for me. Judgment is to some extent, a way of life.

Before I learned how to judge, there were no stomach-clenching lousy movies or bad books or uninspired music. Everything was good and palatable. How I wish I could go back to those times – less complicated. Happier, I think.

Now I feel an odd sense of sadness when I hear what to my taste, is bad music. When great musicians dish out not-so-great work, the sadness is more palpable. I guess the feeling can be compared when you are at a crossroad and you realize that you have outgrown your lover and there’s nothing more rational to do but to desert him.

But with music, I am less critical. Maybe because it is my drug of choice, I am not in any analytical mood when I am listening.

When critics dissed Chris Cornell’s latest electronica outing, I felt a bit hurt for the guy. These critics barely out of their diapers, have they listened to Soundgarden? Or Audioslave (I have not)? It was not easy to fill in Zach de la Rocha’s shoes with his Marxist soundbites but Cornell valiantly took up the cudgel.

Books are a different case altogether. They take so much from the environment – water, trees and they contribute to pollution. So I feel that my indignation over a book that is such a waste is justified.

Flip and I had this conversation a long time ago I wonder if he remembers. I told him of my mild dismay that when somebody asked me of what I considered life-altering books, the ones I cited were books I read when I was way much younger, leading to an impression that I have stopped reading at a certain age, not that I have a problem with that.

The way I see it I told Flip - I was very impressionable when I started reading fiction. I was immersed in the theme and the plot and the subtext. Everything I consumed was mind-blowing.

As I put on age, I was no longer as fascinated with the story itself but as to how it is told and re-told. In the course of this new demand, less and lesser books became stellar. No, I did not become more demanding or skeptical as Flip suggested. In fact, my needs have become more simple. Regardless of plot and how ridiculous it may be, it is the elegance of the language, the aptness and precision of the descriptions that keep me engaged. I do not care about the writer’s clarity of vision or the symmetry of events or let me just say, they are secondary considerations.

Good fiction rarely comes my way like orgasm for some women (well, not this woman) so when they come, I cry and scream in utter pleasure. In the argot of football as I am still very much into that stream of consciousness, it’s comparable to a lone goal after a series of nil-nil draws.

As for movies, I have become more genre-oriented and director-conscious so the process of elimination is easier. It’s not healthy. In music and in films, I really strive to be genre-agnostic, swear to God. God has not granted me that grace yet.

So there. As for rites of passage go, I can still think of a few but losing my innocence is enough banality for now.

Mother Courage (apologies to Bertolt Brecht)

The priest’s homily last Sunday was about being a good shepherd, mostly addressing the parent-parishioners. The spinster-parishioner, that’s me, felt a bit left-out because the monsignor offered no fat to chew on for my tribe.

It’s a grisly challenge for these so-called men of God, I surmise. In the pulpit, in front of a motley crowd, who do they speak to? Who do they choose as an audience?

But I am unfazed. If some priests inadvertently exclude my kind and refuse to communicate to me, there is ga-glug!! – self-reflection.

It’s quite a labor, really. But when life tosses a chance to replace slacker ennui with scary silent moments for big-time introspection, you just have to take them. Gives you more reason not to kill yourself.

So I talk to my alter-ego – how’s your good shepherding?

Well, mostly I am in the company of wolves so I don’t do much shepherding. My younger brother grew up with our grandparents. My youngest sister raised herself on her own devices. In short, they have become decent human beings because I was not their shepherd.

The closest I got to shepherding was when I tried my hands at teaching. I am far from a roaring success. In fact, I need to apologize to my students whose lives I wasn’t able to change for the better. I will always be proud of their achievements but the credit is entirely theirs.

I only learned about J.M Coetzee’s existence after I left teaching. His remarkable lesson “those who come to teach learn nothing” gains more meaning as I seek reaffirmation through my reflection.

I insisted not to be called “Ma’am” and I addressed my students as “classmates” because in essence, I, too, was a student like them, who had plenty of room to learn as I kept cheering that learning is not supposed to be an ordeal but fun.

Making efforts to repudiate the “banking concept of education,” the dichotomy of teacher-student became blurred. With the teacher’s table demystified, I only wish true learning was ushered in. It’s not for me to say how much or little my classmates learned from me but I definitely learned a lot from them.

If they hated being in my class, it does not diminish my victory because I learned something. I learned something because I made a decision to learn something, no matter what. What I store in my “baul” of learning cannot be taken away from me.

Just as the good Lord gave us the greatest gift of “free will,” I tried to be a good shepherd by giving my classmates freedom to think and learn. Of course, they were very much aware of my politics. I owed them that honesty, where I was coming from but I say this without blushing, no one can accuse me of tyrannically imposing my will on them. Besides, if I had to impose my will on anyone, it would have to be on Marcelo Rios or Jose Maurinho or those beautiful men in the “Tudors” or those vampires in “True Blood’.

My victory as a good shepherd wasn’t to create robots or mini-me’s. Whether those kids decided on becoming sheep or lambs or wolves, that’s out of my hands. What is important is they make informed choices. They may think of the world antithetically from mine or have a strong opposing opinion, it's less important. What matters is they have an opinion.

Apathy is the worst outcome of any form of shepherding. Love and moral courage and integrity, they are its best.

Belated Happy Mother’s Day to the best shepherd in the whole wide world – mothers!! Our own, our friends’, our phantom mothers, and the mothers in our fantasies.

Welcome Rotunda to me!!!

As if there’s any excuse for blogging but just a whale of explanation.

J. G. Ballard whom I have not shook hands with since I am not besotted with science fiction lamented about novelists not paying their dues. He defended his craft by advising young writers to harness their pens in short stories before moving into meta-narratives.

I am appropriating his advice in this decision to blog outside the sanctuary of friends and wade right into the swamps of strangers. Off and on, I have been blogging in this network called Friendster for almost 3 years. Let’s just say I am the fabled frog-in-the-well bitten by curiosity as to what’s beyond my orbit.

Not to be misconstrued as arrogance, I have expressed without demur, that the writing is the easiest part. It’s the vulnerability of blogging, of sauntering off to unfamiliar grounds that require guts.

I am not saying I am more ballsy now. I just reached an age when I’m past caring how nameless, faceless individuals will take my rubbish.

Meanwhile, I shall be importing some entries from the old blog (as old as May 2005) to bridge my old bivouac and my new camping site. I will endeavor to be a less ornery camper but if I am shown less kindness here, then I can always go back to my mother’s womb.