Hanging with a jerk

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.

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

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)

Woke up Again this Morning

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)

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)

Neruda's Birthday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love in Chains

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)

60 Poems

“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.

Pwet-ry

“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.