The Great Paranoiac

Black Vibes

2011-03-26T10:26:00.000+08:00

Author's note: I was initially going to write about other topics, but I thought this was too timely to pass up. I'm back!
When I first heard Justin Bieber sing, I thought to myself, "This has got to be the most ridiculous teenybopper singer ever." The asinine, repetitive lyrics, the lisping tunes, the Bieber hairdo, and the legions of rabid (and equally ridiculous) fangirls attested to that well enough. However much his talent may have been in question, his popularity certainly was not. Here in the Philippines, everyone knows who Justin Bieber is, and everyone has probably sung santches of his songs, myself included. The most remarkable thing about Justin Bieber is the insidious invasion of his songs into the collective subconscious. He provokes Last Song Syndrome much better than Willie Revillame ever did in his heyday, and that is saying something ("Boom Tarat Tarat" anyone?). If ever he decides to quit his day job of teenybopper singing sensation, he should pursue the career of a mass hypnotist, in which he will most likely be a tremendous success. (A scary thought has occurred to me. Maybe he's already doing that now. Maybe Justin Bieber is smarter than any of us thought.)
Anyway, why all this preamble? Two words: Rebecca Black. If before I thought that no one could top Justin Bieber in sheer...absurdity, I now readily admit that I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Dubbed "the new Justin Bieber", Rebecca Black has already made the following headlines:Rebecca Black must be saying right now, “Eat this!” – Friday set to make $1 Million Dollars; Rebecca Black “Friday” Worst Singer, Song and Video in the World?;Rebecca Black Will Donate to Japan Profit from her Ridiculous Song “Friday”. (Titles from the websites Chizmizan With Chuva, Pinoy Ambisyoso, and Showbiz Renegade, respectively, which are also my sources for the other information to follow.)
And no, you cannot expect castigations aimed at her from any of the "revered and reviled" of the music industry. Simon Cowell, that paragon of vitriol, found Rebecca's vocals excellent. Charmed, I'm sure. Lady Gaga, that luminary of out-and-out fabulosity and eccentricity, called her performance "genius". Rolling Stone Rob Sheffield said that she "should be proud of what she's achieved."
What exactly has she achieved? Even I cannot sufficiently express the effect her music has on the senses, not to mention the mind. Is it a matter of being so bad it's good? Judge for yourself by visiting this link:www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0.
Rebecca, on her part, has the charitable spirit so crucial to lasting power in show business. In the midst of all the hullabaloo about her video, she worried that it stole the show from the recent horrid events in Japan and decided to donate her video's profits to the victims of the catastophe. She herself admits:“I think I have talent on some level,” and “I don’t think I’m the worst singer, I don’t think I’m the best singer".
So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. For my part, I think that she is handling herself and her career well, all things considered. Let's just not bring up the issue of talent. How will we then measure the extent of her success? By the number of times you find her song playing in your head, and the millions of hits her video receives on Youtube.

Good Intentions

2010-01-01T20:22:00.002+08:00

One of my favorite sayings is that oft-quoted piece of advice/impertinence/genius, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."It started out as a line from Samuel Johnson, "Hell is paved with good intentions." Due to the meddling of some editor, it was changed into its present from, which is also its more popular version: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." It has so far traversed the tides of time that it is now a lyric in a song by Justin Timberlake and Madonna, a bit of pop culture for you, dear (nonexistent) reader.
You might wonder why I so highly favor and value this axiom(which, I am certain, is the right word for it, as our friend Wikipedia says, "In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proved or demonstrated but considered to be either self-evident, or subject to necessary decision. Therefore, its truth is taken for granted, and serves as a starting point for deducing and inferring other (theory dependent) truths"). In which case I will elaborate; suppose we start from more orthodox views and then proceed to more eclectic conjectures, that might make it more organized.
The Bible says that we are tainted with original sin courtesy of our forefathers ever since the fall of man. Because of that, we are destined for hell without divine redemption, in which case we either choose to sin or eschew it. If we decide to be virtuous all our lives, we will still be urged by our original sin to fall off the heavenward bandwagon, which will make us repent, which means, in short, that however much we intend to be righteous, a very big majority will still end up in hell.

"13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

Matthew 7:13-14, KJV

(A bit of the New Testament for you;thought you might be interested.)

That is the more standard explanation of the text, but I would like to make a few additional interpretations:
First, it's a long, arduous process, paving your way into hell.
Second, despite our best intentions and preparations, we still fail to succeed, which makes it easier for us to give up and say, "F*** it."
Third, just because you mean well doesn't mean you're doing the right thing.
Fourth, a good upbringing does not guarantee that a child will turn out well.
Fifth, the four abovementioned interpretations seem to apply to me.
I could tell you of countless instances in my life (and four instances which occurred today) which just seemed to resound with the verity of the axiom. However, I will leave it to you to discover the truth of the matter for yourself; rest assured, I have proven it, and it has proven me. In the babel of New Year's Resolutions that abound, I implore you to remember that "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Pave away, and a good year to you.

To Kill a Frog

2009-09-05T23:34:00.005+08:00

This piece is dedicated to all the frogs and toads I've had the pleasure of killing, Blanche in particular, the first anuran I've ever named.

You listen in apprehension and suppressed excitement as you professor tells you the particulars of pithing. Hold the head down, find the depression, pierce it with the needle at a right angle, destroy the brain, destroy the spinal cord. Sounds easy enough. In a corner of the malodorous sink you hear the shuffling of frogs and toads inside a sack. Your gloved hands, itching with impatience and smelling of acrid latex, lay out your tools for the gory task ahead.
As you retrieve your toad from the depths of the sack, it begins flailing its limbs like a newborn baby. As you cup the toad's side in your palm along with a pair of its limbs, it struggles to escape, twitching its free leg, gulping nervously for breath, its throat bulging under your thumb.

The anxious toad blinks up at you, well aware of its fate. All of a sudden it spatters urine all over the dissecting table, which seeps into the grimy grout and floods the dissecting pan. You are grateful that you are wearing a lab gown, or else you would be wearing eau de crapaud for the rest of the day.

At long last, your professor begins to demonstrate the pithing process with her tiny toad. Your toad frantically tries to avoid the probe and flinches as you hold down its warty head; as the needle enters the skull through the spine, it writhes in agony, contracting inward, and releases frothy white poison from glands in its head. Blood, thick, dark, viscous, drips out of the cavity in the head. When the brain and spinal cord are destroyed,the toad's legs go limp, but its eyes remain open, watchful in the toad's uneasy coma. The toad, vulnerable and defenseless, lies prone on the dissecting pan, yielding to your scalpel and ready for sacrifice.

You begin skinning the toad by slitting the skin on its belly, which hangs open in two flaps, the insides of which are expanses of ghostly white membrane interspersed with branching capillaries. The pale skin of the belly is vastly different from the rest of the skin on the toad's body: it hangs loosely from the body, hatched all over with fine creases and lightly striped with green, unlike the warty skin on the head, back, and limbs reminiscent of murky marshes. Next, you cut around the legs and arms and pull the raw limbs out of their "gloves" and "stockings", an oddly satisfying thing to do. As you peel the toad, it exudes a slimy stench that belongs neither to fish nor fowl, imbued with the sweetish smell of blood. The more you expose the toad's body, the more you realize how much it resembles a man as you view its muscles through the iridescence of membrane, from the powerful leg muscles to the muscles of the abdomen.

There will be more occasions in which you will kill a frog. You will see its lungs balloon out of its chest, moist and pink and incredibly filmy and delicate; you will cut off its head above the eyes while it is still alive; you will sever its heart from it, still beating and suffused with blood. You will peel, preserve, and dissect more frogs until you are sick of them, the astringent vapor of formalin assailing your nose and eyes all the while. But at the moment there is something else that holds your attention, something you will always remember even in the killing of other frogs. You contemplate the toad's dead eyes, eyes that retain so much life in them. It is this you will remember as you stare into the unblinking eyes, now no longer obscured by the translucent eyelid, now rendered perfectly lucid: fathomless pools of obsidian ringed with gold, mute in life yet so eloquent in death.

Para sa Buwan ng Wika

2009-08-23T17:27:00.009+08:00

Noong panahon ko sa high school bilang punong patnugot sa aming school paper, hindi pinahintulot ng pamunuan ng aming paaralan ang paglathala ng aking kauna-unahang editorial. Ito'y dahil sa ipinataw na English speaking policy ng eskwelahan sa aming mga estudyante. Ayon sa tagapamahala mula sa administrasyon, labag daw ang aking editorial sa mga adhikain at patakaran ng paaralan, na siyang salungat sa tunay na pakay ng isang editorial. Ang katuwiran ko naman, hindi nakasalalay sa akin ang tungkuling iyon bilang isang malayang mamahayag, sapagkat ang aking mga pananaw ay hindi sumasalamin sa mga pananaw ng administrasyon. Ni hindi man lamang nila ako binigyan ng abiso tungkol sa editorial na nais nilang mabasa. Sa katunayan, ako mismo ay lumabag sa mga pinahahayag ng aking editorial sapagkat isinulat ko ito sa wikang Ingles, hindi sa wikang Pilipino. Ito'y dahil wikang Ingles ang opisyal na ginagamit ng paaralan, at dahil na rin kulang ang aking kakayahan sa wikang Pilipino upang maisulat ang nasasabing akda. Marami pang mga bagay kung saan maraming mga diprensya sa pagitan ko at sa mga kinauukulan, at maging sa kapwa kong mga estudyante sa staff, ngunit ang pagtutuunan ko ng pansin ngayon ay ang naumsiyaming paglathala ng kauna-unahan kong editorial. Ito'y isang pangyayari na hindi katanggap-tanggap sa akin, at sa aking palagay ang editorial na iyon ay propesiya na nagkatotoo ngunit hindi napakinabangan dahil hindi ito pinansin. (Hanggang ngayo'y isinisisi ko ang kakulangan ko ng kaalaman, katahasan, kabihasaan sa pagsusulat, pagintindi, at pagbigkas sa lengguwaheng Pilipino sa aking paaralan, dala ng pagmamaliit nila dito bilang isang lengguwahe. Tinatanaw ko na rin ang insidenteng iyon bilang napakahalaga para sa akin bilang manunulat, dahil higit sa kahit ano pa mang pagpuri, ang pagtanggi na iyon sa aking editorial ay ang nagmulat sa akin sa hindi-matatakasang katotohanan na nakapalibot sa kahit anong uri ng akda. Marami ang hindi sasangayon sa akda mo at marami ang babalewalain ito, bagamat tama at makatotohanan ang nilalaman nito, at maaring dulot iyon ng takot mawalan ng kapangyarihan, mariin na pagsunod sa dogma, o maging ang mismong kakiputan ng kanilang pag-iisip. Natuto rin akong ipaglaban ang mga akda ko, at marahil iyon na rin ay dahilan kung kaya't mas higit kong kinikilatis at pinaninindigan ang mga sinusulat ko, dahil labag sa kalooban ko na basta-bastahin na lamang ito ng ibang tao. At ngayon, mahigit-kumulang tatlong taon mula noong una ko itong sinulat, mailalathala na ngayon ang aking kauna-unahang (ipinagbawal) na editorial.

I Love My Own(?), My Native Land

English has had a large following and a lasting prevalence in the country over the past few decades. However, the recent deterioration of English proficiency raises a question as to its continuance in the Philippines. National statistics show that students who failed annual screening tests in English averaged 20 percent below the passing mark.

This is ominous news, considering the wealth of acclaimed authors in the country who write in English. The proliferation of signs written with poor grammar, alongside essays by high school students using stilted, elementary language cannot be ignored. The blame lies in different directions: the educational system, the government, and our society as a whole.

Out of 53,000 public school teachers who took the 2004 Dep-Ed English assessment exam, only 10,070 passed. The incompetence of teachers is detrimental not only to the students' understanding of English, but also to their comprehension of lessons in other subjects. This problem can only be expected to worsen in the long run. The government has not done its share either by relegating the Filipino subject to the backseat of the educational system. Whatever happened to having a national language? Without a steady foundation in the mother tongue, students will either find English difficult to learn or will altogether forsake Filipino, as they will have nothing with which to familiarize their knowledge of English. Indeed, there are but a few who can still read, write, and translate Tagalog, not to mention other dialects, with the necessary fluency and delicacy for linguistic nuances.

English has been full instituted into our way of life: we are required to speak it in school, we read it on billboards, and we hear it on the radio. English is also now widely employed by the church, and since the American occupation has been the language in which our laws are written. In the present social hierarchy, moreover, people are judged and assigned to their respective positions based on their aptitude in English. Filipino has now been cast aside as commonplace and is treated as nothing more than an accidental language. By embracing the foreign, we have failed to appreciate the good that remains in having our own language, our own identity.

Proficiency in English, along with the knowledge that it gives, is profitable and opens a wide range of opportunities for those who learn it. The real mistake lies in assuming that English, along with foreign customs and ideas, is far better than language and tradition inherently Filipino.

English cannot substitute for our national language; it is merely a tool we use in communicating with the rest of the world. It is high time we stop toadying to what is not ours; let us instead reconcile our hearts and minds to what is rightfully our own, while respecting the value of that which others have imparted to us.

Author's note: This editorial is in essence the same as the original. I took pains to edit only when necessary, and refrained from altering the tone of the original. The statistics shown are old, but I believe that they reflect the current situation.

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Lexical Vexations

2009-08-12T20:45:00.008+08:00

1. To newscasters and pedagogues: Please take the time to research the pronunciation and articulation of foreign words. Say "Chang-tze-i" instead of "Zaang-zee-yee", and substitute "Wun-chia-pao" for "Wen-ja-baw"( When you say it like that, you sound as though you're about to say "jabar"). My ears are bleeding in indignation.
2. For crying out loud, say "try to" instead of "try and".
3. Repeat the phrase "at the end of the day" one more time, and I will do my damnedest to make sure your day ends badly.
4.I wonder why Canadians say "ewt", as in, "check this ewt". Really.
5. Come to think of it, the Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis are even stranger for saying "Aurstralee-yer" and "Drarwring board".
6. DJs. Don't think that you're superior to us just because you're conyitos and conyitas who can put on those phony American accents. Do not be fatuous. Your grammar is execrable.
7. Humanities classmate whose name I don't know: Stop saying "fil-lings" when you mean to say "FEElings".
8. Humanities prof whose classes I can't stand: Stop substituting "z" for "s" and punctuating your sentences with your favorite phrase, "I don't know". You sound more like a drone than ever, and in case you haven't noticed, we're quite aware that you're incompetent. And by the way, "talked about" is for children. "Discussed" would be less childish.
9. Grocery checkout signs should read, "12 items or fewer", not "12 items or less". Similarly, Starbucks napkins should read "Fewer napkins, more planet". (BUT THEN AGAIN (hahaha), Stabucks is in cahoots with the conyos. No surprises there.)
10.Inserting the word "why" after the word "reason" is superfluous. The reason is enough in itself, and saying "the reason why I" makes you sound more inane than you already are.

Why I Write

2009-08-05T21:16:00.006+08:00

I disapproved of blogs at the time when blogs were a fad, not a norm, failing to see anything in publicly publishing your work except humiliation. I believed then, as I do now, that displaying one's dirty laundry is uncalled for in blogs, as it very often incriminates others. I also believe that writing a blog warrants a certain amount of gall. Far too many bloggers have gall in excess, I'm afraid. Just look at all those blogs whose entries defy description and can only be interpreted symbolically by a mental image of your favorite analgesic. I had no wish to embarrass myself so publicly, after wincing countless times at myriad grammatical errors and various other indiscretions.

However, I have since then appreciated the value of a blog as a medium by which to broadcast one's thoughts with virtually no expense or censorship, and also as a way of making sense of all the thoughts crammed in my head that would otherwise expire, unused and bodiless in the sphere of existence that is the abode of abandoned ideas. My blog has become a form of catharsis for my ever-moody, ever-neurotic self, and quite luckily only a few people know about it. I want to keep the thoughts in this blog hidden from the people who think they know me. I use a pseudonym because, were I to use my real name, other people's preconception of me would distort my words. I do not want to change my words to please other people, and at the same time I want to write with relative freedom. Let the random reader stumble upon this blog, but seldom will I let my classmates, friends, or relatives read this, or let them know that I have written these words. I am reticent to show them these thoughts, because I do not know what they will make of it, and I do not want to come to blows with any of them, physical or otherwise. The fact that I am a private sort of person is one of the other reasons I want my identity to remain unknown; it is also the reason I reveal so little of my personal life in this blog. I think its anonymity reflects the alienation and disillusion that compels me to write, and I want it to remain that way. To quote Joan Didion, from whom I borrowed this title, "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want to what I fear." I write, simply, because.

Kontrabida

2009-08-05T20:33:00.004+08:00

Para sa akin, mas maraming lamang sa pagiging kontrabida; ano na nga ba ang pakikipagsapalaran kung walang kontrabida? Ang mga kontrabida ay ang mga bumubuhay ng kwento--sila ay mga iconoklastikong tauhan na nagsusumikap pabagsakin ang nakagawiang pamamaraan ng pamumuhay, ang status quo. Sila ang mga taong kinalimutan at itinakwil na ng lipunan-- ang mga tinuturing kasuklam-suklam dulot ng samu't-saring dahilan. Ngunit sila ri'y kahanga-hanga dahil pinili nilang hamakin ang tadhanang kumitil ng kanilang mga pangarap, pinili nilang umahon sa pasyang pinataw sa kanila ng tadhana na siyang lulugmok sa kanila patungong kamatayan kung ito'y kanilang sinundan. Pinili nilang mabuhay sa gitna ng pagkamuhi at kalungkutan. Kung tutuusin, ang bida ay katha lamang ng mga taong tumatangkilik rito-- ang mga taong nakikinabang sa kanya. Maaaring ang isang bida ay nagbibida-bidahan lamang, at wala naman palang tunay na kakayahan. Siguro ang naghihiwalay lamang sa mga bida at kontrabida ay ang paghanga ng lipunan at ang pagkamuhi nito.

Maaring pinili ko na rin maging kontrabida dahil alam ko na noon pa na hindi rin tumatagal ang pagiging bida; at kung gayon, bakit pa ba ako magaaksaya ng panahon na magpakabida, kung pagiging kontrabida rin ang hahantungan ko? Nais nating maging mga bida, ngunit hindi natin maikakaila na likas na sa atin ang pagtitiwalag sa kabaitan. Hindi tayo mga santong kahoy na mananatiling mapayapa sa gitna ng unos ng buhay, at hindi natin maaring pangarapin na tayo'y gagawa lamang ng mabuti sa ating kapwa. Sa hindi maipaliwanag na dahilan, tayo ang nagiging kontrabida, sa ayaw o sa gusto natin.

Kanya-kanya tayo ng kontrabida sa ating mga buhay-buhay. Mayroong mga iba na nalimutan na natin, mula pa sa pagkabata; mayroong laging nakaabang, na biglang sumusulpot mula sa madidilim na sulok; mayroon na rin tayong napabagsak at nalupig. Ngunit sa buong buhay ng isang tao, mayroon isang kontrabida na hindi lulubay sa kanya, at iyon ay ang sarili niya. Hindi nga ba't isang malaking hamon ang pagsupil sa mga tukso na inaalay sa atin nga ating mga isipan? Hindi nga ba't nag-aalinlangan tayo sa araw-araw kung ano nga ba ang daan na dapat tahakin, hindi ba tayo nanganganib dahil sa pag-aalinlangan na ito? Hindi ba tayo nagiging hadlang sa ating mga mithiin? Hindi ba tayo ang mga kontrabida sa sarili nating mga buhay, na humahadlang sa pagtanghal ng mga eksena sa maikling dula? Hindi nga ba tayo ang mismong sanhi ng ating kasawian?

Ang mga Dasal ng Mapagsumpaing Pabasa/ The Passion of the Damned

2009-04-11T17:03:00.001+08:00

Dahil na nga Cuaresma at marami ang nabuburo sa kainipan at maging sa alingasaw ng mainit na panahon, naisipan kong ipamahagi sa inyo ang mga dasal na akda ni Marcelo H. Del Pilar. Babala: hindi dapat basahin ng mga taong walang kamuwang-muwang sa ibig sabihin mga salitang “satire” at “irony”. Kung kayo’y mga dugong-bughaw na kabilang sa aristokrasya ng mga makikitid ang pananaw, maaaring huwag na ninyong basahin. Sa mga deboto de sanctimonyo: ang mga ito ay hindi patungkol sa Diyos, kundi sa mga nagsusupumilit maging diyos-diyosan sa kanilang mga kapwa.

Pagsisisi
Panginoon kong Fraile, Diyos na hindi totoo at labis nang pagkatuo gumaga at sumalakay sa akin: pinagsisihan kong masakit sa tanang loobang dilang pag-asa ko sa iyo, ikaw nga ang berdugo ko. Panginoon ko at kaaway ko na inihihibik kong lalo sa lahat, nagtitika akong matibay na matibay na dina muling mabubuyo sa iyo: at lalayuan ko na at pangingilagan ang balanang makababakla ng loob ko sa pag-asa sa inyo, makalilibat ng dating sakit ng mga bulsa ko,at nagtitika akong maglalathala ng dilang pagkadaya ko umaasa akong babambuhin ka rin, alang-alang sa mahal na panyion at sa pangangalakal mo ng Cruz, sa pagulol sa akin. Siya nawa.

Ang Amain Namin
Amain namin sumasaconvento ka, sumpain ang ngalan mo, malayo sa amin ang kasakiman mo, kitlin ang leeg mo dito sa lupa para nang sa langit. Saulan mo kami ngayon ng aming kaning iyong pagungal para nang pagpapatawa mo kung kami’y nakwakwartahan; at huwag mo kaming ipahintulot sa iyong manukso at iyadya mo kami sa masama mong dila.

Ang Aba Po Santa Barya
Aba po Santa Baryang Hari, inagaw ng Fraile, ikaw ang kabuhayan at katamisan. Aba bunga ng aming pawis, ikaw ang pinagpaguran naming pinapanaw ng taong Anak ni Eva, ikaw nga ang ipinagbubuntong hininga namin sa aming pagtangis namin dito sa bayang pinakahapis-hapis. Ay aba pinakahanap-hanap namin para sa aming mga anak, ilingon mo sa amin ang cara-y-cruz mo man lamang at saka bago matapos ang pagpanaw mo sa amin iparinig mo sa amin ang iyong kalasing. Santa Barya ina ng deretsos, malakas at maalam, matunog na ginto kami ipanalangin mong huwag magpatuloy sa amin ang mga banta ng Fraile. Amen.

Ang mga Utos ng Fraile
Ang mga utos ng Fraile ay sampu: Ang nauna: Samabahin mo ang Fraile na lalo sa lahat. Ang ikalawa: Huwag kang magpapahamak manuba ng ngalang deretsos. Ang ikatlo: Mangilin sa Fraile linggo man at fiesta. Ang ikaapat: Isangla mo ang katawan mo sa pagpapalibing sa ama’t ina. Ang ikalima: Huwag kang mamamatay kung wala pang salaping panlibing. Ang ikaanim: Huwag kang makiapid sa kanyang asawa. Ang ikapito: Huwag kang makinakaw. Ang ikawalo: Huwag mo siyang pagbintangan, kahit na masinungalingan. Ang ikasiyam: Huwag mong ipagkait ang iyong asawa. Ang ikapulo: Huwag mong itanggi ang iyong ari*. Itong sampung utos ng Fraile dalawa ang kinauuwian. Ang isa: Sambahin mo ang Fraile lalo sa lahat. Ang ikalawa: Ihain mo naman sa kanya ang puri mo’t kayamanan. Siya nawa.
*Ari- ari-arian, etc.

Nakapanlulumong isipin na hanggang sa kasalukyan ay mahalaga at naaangkop ang mga katagang nakasaad sa mga dasal na ito sa ating lipunan. Kakatwa talaga ang pananaw ni Del Pilar dahil nasasakupan nito ang hinaharap ng mahigit sa isang siglo. Siguro nga totoo talaga na ang mga b__ ay hindi namamatay, sila’y nagpapalit lamang ng anyo. Nananalamin ang mga dasal na ito sa ating mga naunsiyaming pangarap, at sa kasaysayan ng bansa, at wari’y minumungkahi: Ganito kami noon, ganyan pa rin ba kayo ngayon? Sadyang kalunas-lunas ang ating kalagayan na wala na akong ibang babanggitin, ngunit kung inyong mamarapatin lamang ay punan ninyo sa inyong mga isipan ang mga maaring ipalit sa pangngalang “Fraile”. Maligayang Pagbangon ng Poong Hesukristo, at para sa mga nagsipuntahan sa lalawigan, maligayang (?) pagbabalik sa buhay metro.

Disjointed dreaming

2009-02-17T22:26:00.004+08:00

Just the other day I overheard three girls talking about dreams. One of them told the other that zinc deficiency can cause people to forget their dreams, and may even hinder people from dreaming. When I opened my email inbox that day, a message my friend had forwarded caught my eye. One sentence read, " Did you know that the more you dream, the higher your IQ?" I thought to myself, "Bloody marvelous. The reason I've had trouble dreaming is due to a dearth of zinc in my diet... But wait. Am I supposed to be stupid because I rarely dream?"And off I went, babbling to myself.

The thing is, I used to think that an absence of dreams was a good thing. Most of my dreams are not the transcendental type that make people euphoric upon waking. My dreams are usually nothing short of terrifying. I dream of dystopic settings, amputated limbs, serial killers, weirdly intelligent crocodiles, and odious monsters. At other times I dream surreal dreams in which impossible things happen which cannot be reconciled to any nascent reality in my consciousness.

However, recent events have made me realize that dreams are important and, although they should sometimes be taken with a grain of salt, their value in showing people the subconscious self should never be discounted. Dreams reveal to us the things we refuse to acknowledge while awake; they show us different perspectives that we would never have thought of in a mundane frame of mind. They also give new insights to who we are, and who we might become presently. Occasionally, for some people, they are prophetic.

I really regret the loss of all those forgotten dreams, never to be retrieved, never to be reconciled with the dreamer, never to be written down, never to be spoken about. There is something about dreams that makes their existence so fragile, like that of mirages that rise and fade in the mind's eye; one never knows if they are material, if one ever saw them at all, or if they were merely a shimmer of light in the intensely arid desert. Sometimes, waking up from a bad dream gives more validity to existence than a dreamless slumber, and the horror of a dream is offset by the inexplicable feeling of being alive. In the end, I will try to keep my dreams intact, if only to alleviate the numbness I get from not dreaming, if only to remove myself from the commonplace demands and drudgeries of the world, if only to make myself a place in a world far removed from what I know.

But please have mercy and don't make me dream of the Brurats Show.

Cerebrity!

2009-02-14T17:41:00.006+08:00

Well, as of today I have officially joined the ranks of cerebrities. For those of you who are not yet in on the arcane definition of cerebrity, here's a word from the loony lexicon:

Cerebrity (noun): 1)An ordinary person who becomes famous for a short while due to aberrant behavior or unusual accomplishments, gets high on fame, and invariably topples from stardom in less than 15 seconds;

2) An ordinary person who believes himself or herself to be famous because of all his or her many acquaintances;

3)A person who becomes known by dint of praise or calumny from a person having some degree of renown;

4) A bona fide celebrity ( think superstar) gone insane and on the rampage (think Michael Jackson);

5) An old, aging, bygone celebrity who still thinks that she or he (often enough, it's usually a she) is still famous and venerated; this type will do anything and everything to attract attention, get gigs, or sign autographs.

I happen to fit in the third category. It seems that our school paper has ordered a fatwa against me, written up in the (in)famous flame column for all the world to read. It narrates that I had been so high-and-mighty as to criticize the various parts of their beloved paper and further brands me as a "desperada", and also flagrantly insinuates that I am not in my sound mind, referring to me as a "kuleleng". I know they can't be referring to anyone but me, it's so obvious. I don't deny the fact that I criticized the paper, in public; nor do I impose my views on anyone. I must say that I already had an inkling of suspicion about this. What surprises me is that they waited so long to do it. The incident is already a few months old; it's stale as Tutankhamen's ointment in the news world. It's such a stagy piece of yellow journalism, it's so cheap. However, I believe they included it in the most recent issue because they've just started an anti-opposition campaign. There was one column in which they were castigating a letter to the editor regarding the idiotic "Vote YES" business over a certain office in the university, and it seems that the right to freedom of speech is being violated by one of its alleged guardians. There is nothing more disgusting than an institution excoriating a single individual because of just criticism. It is unprofessional, undignified, immature, ludicrous, and even pitiable. It is like Hitler and the Gestapo all over again. How funny can it get? A paper that pretends to champion freedom of speech yet seeks to suppress the vociferations of anyone who finds fault with it! A paper full of knaves who twist one's words to make a trap for fools! A paper staffed with people full of their own self-glorification, not deigning to admit their faults, their biases, their inadequacies! A paper that forces upon its readers a narrow-minded point of view, with no regard for their free will and intellect! O Judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason!

It is so paltry an act to hurl petty insults at people of whom the public has no knowledge . One of the lessons in The Art of War is the principle of inscrutability, of veiling one's weaknesses. The paper has gone against it entirely by acknowledging the presence of people who disagree with it and making it public. The paper is staffed (and stuffed) with inept peacocks who showcase their errors to the world without any apology. If they are as competent as they say they are, why do they need to harp on the people whose views differ from their own? If they are really convinced of the worth of their newspaper, why do they need the approval of each bystander to affirm its value, and why do they need to blatantly humiliate the people who notice the errors they have committed themselves? By pointing out people who find fault with their work, they only prove their inanity and bigotry to the rest of the world. An exemplary writer, be he journalist, novelist, poet, or blogger, must always consider that his views may not be acceptable to all his readers, and that reaffirmation of the value of his work can come from him alone. He cannot force an idea into an unwilling reader's mind, nor can he tell people to recant any criticism they might have made against him. In short, he must take things realistically and dispassionately, at least in public.

I write this post, not only because I wish to proclaim the injustice of my accusers, but because I want to show where I stand, and what I stand for. Of that, the reader is the judge. My last words are these: an institution which upholds the highest virtues in human existence, truth, justice, reason, rectitude, and dignity, would not abase itself in the mud of controversy, nor would it exalt itself by vilifying others. An institution which declares its allegiance to truth, moreover, cannot sow the seeds of dissent and deception and stay true to its innate purpose.

Hair

2009-01-31T23:12:00.008+08:00

When we look look back in time, we will invariably find that there has always been a great to-do about hair, whether in religion, fashion, and, more recently, in politics. Clumps of hair were enclosed in the walls of Romanian churches because it was believed that the magical powers of hair could ward off evil. As popularized in movies and books, people have kept locks of hair to remember their loved ones by.Every period, country, and profession has a distinctive coiffure, be it the pompadour of the courtesan, the wareshinobu of the maiko, or the chignon of the prima ballerina. Hair has raised issues small and great: to powder or not to powder, to don a wig or a fro, to wear hair curled or straight, to shave or to wax-- what is that quality of hair that so preoccupies us about it,despite its vestigial function?

Hair, for many of us, is not merely an appendage; it is a status symbol, an affirmation or renunciation of one's identity, a yardstick by which one can measure self-esteem, a means by which one can feel good about oneself. We often go to the greatest lengths of bother just so our hair will be fashionable and presentable. We have often been intrigued by the faddish shampoos, conditioners, treatments, and serums that promise to rejuvenate, restore, strengthen, straighten and smooth hair. But what for? To what end? When one considers the expense and effort we generate in order to make hair decorative, one has to wonder if it were not better to forgo hair altogether.

Hair loss is viewed in our culture as nothing short of tragic. People comment about women who have lost hair in such an offensive fashion : "Sayang, ang ganda niya dati." I cannot reconcile myself with the way people deal with other people who really don't need to hear their inconsiderate views. It is as if a woman is only an object and, upon losing her hair, she ceases to be an object of femininity and becomes a symbol of decay. I commiserate with cancer patients who have lost their hair but, at the same time, cannot help feeling slightly envious. They are no longer obliged to abide by the standards of beauty, because their illness has given them an excuse. They are no longer bound by the ritual of hair; they only need to tie a scarf over their heads. However, losing hair is traumatic for them, because it emphasizes their mortality and their impending death. Thus, their bald heads become testaments to their suffering and their tenacity to live.

For the rest of womankind, baldness is not an option. Many people are scared of losing hair because of their vanity. Others (including myself) are simply too scared to shave their heads, for fear that they would be ridiculed, disowned, or dubbed as Buddhist nuns or punks.

But think about the time, money, energy,not to mention the hundreds of liters of water you could save every year if you had a bald head. You would have, on average, an hour of free time added to your day. You would only need a hat of a scarf to cover your head; you would feel cooler in hot weather, because most of our body heat escapes through the head. You would no longer agonize over a bad haircut or atrocious dye job for weeks. You would not have to feel guilty about tipping the hairdresser. The environment would certainly be less polluted if you went bald. There would be fewer algae outbreaks, fewer instances of fish floating belly-up in the streams, and fewer forests cut down. Maybe, when people realize how overrated hair is, they'll decide to stop feeling so sorry for themselves, and resolve their personality issues. When people don't feel the need to criticize a movie star's hair, makeup and wardrobe on the the red carpet, improvement might be possible.

Imagine a world full of egg-headed people going about their business, happy, self-assured, and responsible, who care more about their fellow man than their supply of hair accoutrements;
a world wherein differences are reconciled, and people who don't prescribe to the current rituals and norms of hair are not punished nor discriminated against...

I seem to have lost you at the words "egg-headed".

Ah, well.

Miss Havisham Speaks

2008-12-18T20:00:00.005+08:00

A Married State

Katherine Philips

A married state affords but little ease
The best of husbands are so hard to please.
This in wives’ careful faces you may spell
Though they dissemble their misfortunes well.
A virgin state is crowned with much content;
It’s always happy as it’s innocent.
No blustering husbands to create your fears;
No pangs of childbirth to extort your tears;
No children’s cries for to offend your ears;
Few worldly crosses to distract your prayers:
Thus are you freed from all the cares that do
Attend on matrimony and a husband too.
Therefore Madam, be advised by me
Turn, turn apostate to love’s levity,
Suppress wild nature if she dare rebel,
There’s no such thing as leading apes in hell [M1] .[i]

Every wedding I happen to attend strengthens my resolve never to marry. I believe that if the practice of wedding were totally abolished, there would infinitely be less waste and less expense in the world, and people would all be a great deal happier: people would no longer lie about their whereabouts or placate spouses with bribes, wives would no longer have to nag their lazy-ass husbands (who tease them about their figures, the potbellied bastards) to leave that frigging basketball game, children would quarrel less about whom their parents love more because, heck, they won’t know the identities of their parents. (How very Huxley.) People would be more independent because they would realize the impermanence and tenuousness of our relationships with other people.

I have never believed that marriage is a ceremony of lofty ideals and romantic, rosy dreams fulfilled. It is often a bloody business form start to finish. While I glory in bloodshed, I’d rather not parcel out my blood to the leeches. There's already enough trouble in the world, thank you very much.

Marriage is a delusion. It is not the peak people climb to arrive at happiness. It is not at all sacred; nothing but selfishness urges people to marry. People only marry for money, for companionship, for children. Though people may argue that this last is the object of selfless sacrifice, they are quite wrong. People want to have children so that they will not be left alone when they're old and decrepit. They have children so they can rest securely in the knowledge that the wealth they've accumulated won't go to strangers: ridiculous but true. People moralize and use their children's guilt to prevent being thrown out in the cold. However, I pity all those unfortunate parents, including my own. Raising children is a thankless job; it is a duty that holds no security, whose only sure return is pain and anger. It drains people's resources-- pecuniary, mental, and physical--and leaves them vulnerable to others who wish to destroy them. Marriage, and all its messy addenda and byproducts, I denounce for ever. Far better and happier fate it is to live in solitude, to be free to spend money in any way one wishes, to go anywhere one leads oneself, and to be untroubled by the fate of other souls yoked to yours. I may be a coward, but at least I am wise enough to know where I stand. Marriage will not solve problems, but increase them threefold; love is never enough, will never be enough. There is only so much to us, to our ceremonies, our fragile existence.The restless scrambling and searching, the endless self-immolation and self-laceration people commit in the name of finding love, are all meaningless. The only reprieve we will know from our common loneliness can only come from ourselves, by our own achievement, by our own realization, by our own redemption.

[i] This was allegedly the fate of spinsters.

[M1]

Orbiting

2008-11-29T17:16:00.006+08:00

The title of this post is taken from a short story by Bharati Mukherjee. In it, the main character's lover, an Afghan immigrant to America, tells her family about "orbiting" various international airports after fleeing his country. I won't tell you how the story ends; read it for yourself. I decided to use the word because I thought it very apt. If you think about it, all we do in life is orbit around certain goals, certain beliefs, and certain people. We change our path of orbit every now and then, we have our personal equivalents of the sun and the moon, we experience "perihelion", "perigee", "aphelion", "apogee"; some of us "revolve" faster than others, and we all have a "dark side". (It is amusing to think that whatever we point to in nature has characteristics that can be attributed to us. So much for the debunking of myths and the anthropocentric theory. They still have some relevance. )

I came up with this theory of orbiting because I recently felt that I was at loose ends. I am orbiting right now between doubt and certainty, between reading my books and reading chem notes, between the past and the future. I do not know why things bother me this way. They just do on such a regular basis; my cycle of orbits are already so convoluted I am bewildered by every little thing. So much has happened since I last wrote, and I feel more than ever that I am a lonely sphere of rock floating away into space; not even a planet, I am dwarfed by the vast expanse of weightlessness, the imposing pull of others' gravitational fields. I am not depressed, but there is an indefinable thing that eludes me. What is it, and what is my life? To that, I know not the answer any more than you do.

A Play of Passion

2008-11-04T19:59:00.002+08:00

As old Walter Raleigh said, our life is a play of passion. By "passion" he meant suffering, as in "a Passion play", a play that re-enacts the sufferings of Christ. Passion, if you consider its root "pathos", means suffering, and is not really the emotional and physical rapture we associate it with today. Perhaps it is true that life is really about suffering, and all other things are trivial compared to what we must suffer. Perhaps our successes are only marginal triumphs before the inevitable fact of death. To suffer is to live, and to live is to suffer. From the moment we are born, we are under the shadow of agony-- our mothers experience it through childbirth, and so do we. We cry out at the difficulty of having to go out into a new world, of having to leave the comfort of our mothers' wombs. Our mothers are pained by each new act of disobedience, of treachery, or else they leave us to ourselves in order to cope with their own private sorrows. There is really no such thing as absolute gratification in life. If so, one might question the need to achieve status, to accumulate wealth, to gain knowledge-- if all they do is increase our suffering with every loss. Indeed, to be wise is to suffer, to feel grief, as it is said in Ecclesiastes that the house of the wise is the house of mourning. And with each gain, with each loss, we become more aware of the inherent grief of our existence; death is not merely physical death, it is also made up of the small slow deaths that grip us while we are corporeally alive. Yet there is hope for us: in the Passion of Christ, he rises again after being crucified and entombed. We have hope in the word timshel, "Thou mayest", that we can defeat the clutches of death that so readily grasp us; we have hope in the salvation we gain by the sacrifice of Christ.

Another self

2008-10-05T16:18:00.003+08:00

I invariably experience an uncanny feeling whenever I read my previous writings-- emails, journal entries, poems, and essays. I do not quite know how to define the odd feeling, much less explain it. Suffice it to say that the experience is akin to being haunted by ghosts-- in my case, the ghosts of memory, of childhood, of innocence, of perished emotions. And it too provokes a sense of regret, regret at what could have been and regret that what must be must be. At times there is amazement and even consternation ("I wrote this?! What bloody crap!") which is what I feel when I read the poems of my early adolescence; their rhymes that once seemed ingenious now seem inadequate and contrived; their veiled romanticism seems hollow. It seems plausible that I once believed those things which I wrote in my slightly unruly hand, but their author is now far removed from me. In a sense, I envy her, her ability to write, and her pride in her work. I remember that she had aspirations of winning awards. She was not entirely convinced of the failures of the writers she admired, not having any basis of failure nor any experience of utter rejection. Now, however, the possibility of failure is very real to me (Math 17) and I no longer have time to write, even though I still find time to read. I read, perhaps not only to escape the monotony of my life and the drudgery of academics and duties, but also to find out how writers write. I envy that other self, who wrote poems during class and hid her work whenever the teachers came near, who declaimed poems with vim and imperiousness (with character, she would say), who hid her contempt from her sanctimonious teachers, all the while nodding yes while a dagger glinted in the darkness of her rebellious heart. I miss that other self; I want her back. While I still pretend complicity in order to avoid conflict, I cannot deny that the most important thing-- the will to write-- is slowly ebbing from me. My consciousness is fatigued, my perspective jaded. I wish for that other self to return and refresh my identity. I am myself, but somehow I do not feel like myself. I rarely dream, and waking is hateful to me; I am plagued with doubts I cannot assuage nor resolve. I feel old. And although that other self was naive and too confident of herself, I wish her back. She still returns on occasion, but it would be better if she returned to share this shell with this other self, and yet many other selves, and many others to come. For in truth, there will always nag at the edge of consciousness other selves, of which you will always be uncertain. You cannot know too much about these other selves; their loves, their rages, their dreams will be different from yours. They will be part of you, and you part of them, yet in your separateness you will remain immiscible in one another. And each will take turns in arising from disuse or long sleep, and die when they have outlived their object to be. They are the dreams you relinquished, the children of your impulses, the product of your perceptions, the silent witnesses to your deceptions and victories. I wonder at these my other selves, and perhaps, that is why the feeling is so uncanny-- that of the past awakening, of memories unfolding, resurrecting themselves despite their death by my volition; that glimpse of another self, the life of another hour taking shape in another. I mourn my blight, I mourn myself through these, my other selves.

Ang mga dakilang sugarol

2008-09-30T21:46:00.004+08:00

Nagsimula ang lahat noong isang linggo. Kami ni C-- ay nagkaroon ng pagnanasang maglaro ng baraha. Kulang na lang na magpunta kami sa National Bookstore para lang makahanap ng baraha. ADIK! Eh 'yun pala hindi lang kami, pati sina T--, M-- at A-- rin. Grabe. Halos kada libreng oras namin sa eskwelahan, maliban sa oras ng pagkain at pagbisita sa palikuran, eh ginugol namin sa paglalaro ng baraha. Ayaw naming magpaawat! Ewan ko ba kung anong espiritu ang sumapi sa amin... eh lalo na ngayong araw na ito, wala kaming Nat Sci at nagayos lang kami ng grado sa Histo. Nahilo na ako sa kakalaro. Pero masaya. At buti nama'y hindi ako laging talunan. Hehehe. Nangalawang na rin kasi ang kakayanan ko sa sugal, kung maaaring tawaging sugal ang ginagawa namin. Wala naman kaming ipinupustang pera. Kaya nga nagtaka ako nang sitahin kami sa aming paglalaro noong gwardyang sadyang mahaba ang mukha, mabilis manita ng estudyante, at pawang laging sinusundan ang klase namin sa pagroronda. 'Yung medyo kalbo ang pagkagupit sa buhok. Ngunit kami, ang mga dakilang sugarol, ay nagumpisa muli ng aming paglalaro ng pusoi dos nang tumalikod siya. Ang katwiran namin, totoo ngang labag sa patakaran ng pamantasan ang pagsugal. pero hindi nga namang mababansagang pagsugal ang ginagawa namin, tulad nga ng napaliwanag ko. At hindi naman si manong gwardya ang pinakamataas na maykapangyarihan upang kami'y pagbawalan. Eh mismong mga guro eh tumitingin lamang sa aming paglaro at hindi man lang umimik. Kaya nga mayroon na kaming bansag sa aming grupo na unti-unting lumalaki-- ang pamagat ng pahayag na ito--"Ang mga Dakilang Sugarol." Mantakin mo nga naman, sadyang nalulong na kami sa paglalaro. Balak ko na ngang hindi na dalhin ang mga baraha, ngunit ito ri'y pampalipas-oras. Nakatutulong sa pag-pawi ng pagkabagot. Pero naisip ko na rin na maiigi nang bawasan ang passamba sa diyos ng papel. Kung tutuusin kakatwa ang kapalaran ng tao: halos lahat ng mahahalagang karanasan o pangangailangan, may piraso ng papel na katumbas. Pera, classcard, diploma, baraha, libro-- lahat ng mga ito'y gawa lamang sa papel, walang halaga bagkus sa binigay na halaga ng gobyerno, ng paaralan, ng may-akda at kalakalan, at ng mismong tao na nakikinabang sa mga bagay na ito. Masyado tayong nakasalalay sa papel; at kahit ano pang sabihin ng nakararami, ang paggamit ng papel ay hindi agad mapapalitan ng makabagong teknolohiya ng computer. Magmula nang maimbento ang papel noong sinaunang panahon sa Tsina, samu't saring yari, kapal, kulay, at gamit ng papel ay natuklasan at sinusuri ng sangkatauhan. Akalain mong nanggagaling lamang ang papel sa kahoy na tinadtad ng pino, na galing sa mga puno ng mga kagubatang ating kinakalbo. Kung hindi tayo mag-iingat, marahil na kapag naglaon ay mawawalan tayo ng isa sa ating pinakamahalaga ngunit kalimita'y binabalewala na kagamitan... ang papel. At iyon na ang magbabadya ng panibagong kabanata sa kasaysayan ng sangkatauhan. At sa huli, ang maitatanong tungkol sa atin ng ating mga apo ay, "Ano nga bang ginawa ng mga tao nang malaman nila na ang papel, isa sa pinakamahalagang bahagi ng kanilang pamumuhay, ay tuluyang nawala?" Sana, hindi naman natin maikwento na sinubasta natin ang mga pira-pirasong papel na natira sa pagaari natin, o kaya'y nabaliw tayo't kumain ng papel, o kaya'y naluluong tayo sa pagsugal para sa perang nawala na sa kakilanlan. Sana'y makasagot tayo na ginawa natin ang tama, na nakahanap tayo ng mainam na kapalit para sa papel. Sana nga. Kung hindi pa tayo patay pagdating ng panahon na iyon.

Poetic Injustice

2008-09-20T14:46:00.005+08:00

(The following account is quite vitriolic. But hey, isn't the blog entitled I Sound My Monstrous Yawp? I think it's only right for me to air my opinions, as the issue concerns me very much.)

If you ride on the Light Rail Transit, you will notice the "Berso sa Metro" posters. These posters have poems printed in the original Spanish and in Tagalog. On the other side of the aisle there is another poster, an advertisement from the Instituto Cervantes. It's more likely that people will pay more attention to the Instituto posters, because they're more conspicuous, and the font on the "Berso" posters are small enough that you have to squint to read the poems. I hate this ad campaign. For one thing, they only got the idea from the New York subway. Then, too, they're encouraging colonial mentality by ignoring our own poets. It would be somewhat justified were they to post the poems of, say, Lorca, or any of the great Spanish poets, but the only author of note featured is Pablo Neruda. And why Spanish? We've had enough of that language for three hundred-odd years. Why not German, so that Filipinos can read Schiller (translated into Tagalog) and think about things a little more profoundly? Why not Chinese, so that the Tang poets can gain a wider audience in the Philippines? Better yet, why not advocate our National Artists? Even in the tiniest details of our existence, the government shows just what a pack of cringing toadies it is. We are not yet free. If we were, there would be poems about nationalism, or some such theme relevant to us, instead of sentimental Spanish poetry about sampaguitas. I'm not against freedom of expression, nor am I against foreign poetry, which I avidly read; the monopoly of the Spanish Instituto, however, shows the pervasive disparity in our country, and makes us underrepresented on our own turf. When you consider the burden of oppression and its long existence, isn't it time to throw it off and sever all ties with it?

Random Ramblings

2008-09-03T21:30:00.008+08:00

Well, it's uncanny the way intuition works. There are times when I feel I could make a living as a fortune-teller, or at least predict events in my life, or win at cards or dice just by this weird feeling; a mix of apprehension and elation, it vivifies the moments of life and lets you recover them when you need to. The end has come; The Poisonwood Bible is resting(both figuratively and literally) on my shelf at the moment. What do you know, Adah and I are more alike than I imagined at first. She became a doctor(!), decided not to marry(!) and learned to speak and walk normally. So it all went well for her in the end. Ruth May died, because she wouldn't take her malaria pills. Leah and Anatole got married and had children, with Leah leaving her father's shadow behind; Orleanna worked for a relief organization, and Rachel married thrice and finally set up a hotel at the border of Zaire. Oh, and Nathan went mad and got burned in a tower, as described in the last verse of the Apocrypha. (What an oddity, a right-wing Baptist preacher who advocated the Apocrypha. That's Life for you.) So the family saga ends. The thing is, "I do not want to discuss it" is the phrase that comes to mind, so I won't. (I recently disovered that I like a lot of the novels on the Oprah's Book Club List. Gave me quite a shock, when I viewed the list for the first time. I own six of the books and read two others that I've borrowed. I had no idea.)
***
I don't know if you've noticed that some of the most delicious food items and condiments are brown--or at least with a brownish tinge. Adobo, bagoong, chocolate, patis, dark vinegar, coffee, black(?) tea, beef, soy sauce, sesame oil, chico, cooking wine( sherry, xiao xing), spice mixes, natto, beans, kalamay, tamarinds, lechon, gula melaka, muscovado, etc. (My love of salty food will be the death of my kidneys someday; I can't help it though. I love patis,soy sauce, adobo and bagoong!) Brown is such a fabulous shade, even though that means it can camouflage any discrepancies in the food. But most of the brown ingredients bring out the best dimensions of food. For instance, just this night I made a paste out of tamarinds and paired that with the tilapia we were having for dinner. The result: yummy with double knobs. I usually don't like the fishy taste of tilapia, but the combination worked due to the refreshing sourness of the tamnarinds paired with the sweetness of the fish. And speaking of fish: just found the heartiest fish head stew in a small restaurant in Binondo. I just devoured half of the food set on the table.The waiters were probably a-gossiping, but they can stuff themselves for all I care. The bastards. I was hungry; Binondo usually makes people hungry and that's why it's chock-full of food establishments.

What I don't get is the scarcity of Filipino food in other countries, which contributes to Filipino homesickness; other cultures are so well-represented. It's a pity because Filipino culture is nothing if not 60% food. You give food to guests, you bring food from trips as pasalubong, you take home food from festivities, you make special food for birthdays and holidays. The food in our culture has such an influence on us: it shapes our memories and consciousness of our diversity. We should really be more proud of it instead of taking all this fandangled French way of cooking too seriously. Desosser, rechauffer, flambe-- all very well and good; you can cook for all these exacting palates, you are established as a chef, but what have you to show for your country? Another form of colonial triumph. I know that for Filipino food to succeed abroad it needs to be certified safe to eat so that you won't go out of business, because some people are so finicky and lily-livered when it comes to food. They'll eat escargot and raw oysters, but not kare-kare. Really, though, when it all unravels, overeating is what kills you, not the food. We should aim to minimize this effacement of our culture by keeping our food traditions intact. It's such a waste to relinquish so willingly a part of our culture so vital to us, so representative of us as Filipinos, so distinctive from any other kind of cuisine. Perhaps the way to our hearts is through our stomachs, after all.

Revelation

2008-08-28T22:08:00.004+08:00

I've just begun reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favourite authors, and I had this eureka moment as I read it. You might think it unnecessary, but I believe that one should find a literary character to relate to in the span of one's life. You see, by relating to that character and by listening to the character's "voice", you gain a new perspective on life. There results a reaffirmation of your identity as a person, which enables you to envisage your future self after being influenced by the character. Of course, you must expect changes, because you should never be static as a person. Your choices will invariably differ as another part of your life gives up the ghost.

For years I devoured books, smelled their pages new and musty, heard the crack of the spines, fingered peeling bindings, and hunted them all over the stores---yet this quest to find a kindred spirit in the world of books failed me. My early heroes were not like me. Anne Shirley, Jo March, Miss Havisham, Edmond Dantes, Jean Valjean-- these were characters whom I appreciated and admired, but I did not relate to them completely. There was, in our correlation as character and reader, a gap that was far too large for mending. We would perhaps be friends, but we would always be incongruous together; I never thought I would find that elusive personage. However, upon reading The Poisonwood Bible I finally found her. Adah, the twin who thought much but rarely spoke; the one who saw through her sisters and parents, who never fit in anywhere, who had a damaged brain but still functioned, who made palindromes her mantras, who rebelled against blind obedience to her father and the God who she felt had abandoned her. She is very much like me, although we are not exactly the same. She is equally the person I am, the person I want to become, and the person I want to leave behind. Never have I been so engrossed in a character. She compels me. We are shattered shards of the same mirror, and I feel that with little effort I can make her real. Because of her, I am pressed more than ever to know how the story ends; when that time comes I hope that I, too, will know how to deal with myself, how to conquer the demons, how to drag my right foot behind my left, how to shout without saying a word. After discovering her, the unbidden surprise in a book, I believe more than ever in the magic of books; and my faith in them is affirmed as it has been time and again.

Back from wall-clinging

2008-08-24T17:37:00.003+08:00

I've just gotten back from wall-climbing with the FPF class, and I'm glad that my arms are loosening up. The whole thing was fun, though tiring, and there were mishaps--people dangling from ropes like rag dolls, my failed attempts, that sort of thing. Thankfully, we all got through in fairly good shape. The fake rocks reminded me of Salvador Dali. All the while I was wall-climbing I felt my incapacity very acutely, I felt my mortality. My feet were shaking so badly. I was so nervous I thought I'd fall there and then. They never tell you that your forearms will be the first to tire. Mine got so stiff they felt like a cadaver's. But I had a go again and I succeeded in reaching the top. I'm wary of the hype but even though you already know the way it works you still buy into it. At least I did. As soon as I was halfway down I was elated and telling anyone who would tolerate me that I had climbed up to the top. I felt positively euphoric. I guess some things are beyond reckoning. But it taught me a lot of things, and I would recommend it to people who want to feel a little more invincible than they do in everyday life.

Helluo librorum

2008-08-17T19:02:00.004+08:00

I've just finished rearranging my books for the umpteenth time, and decided to count them. I found out that I had more than a hundred books. I really do the rearranging because my frequent reading invariably mixes up the books, and also because I am striving for some semblance of order in my life. (Naks naman!) Hmm. To tell you honestly though, I rarely spend more than half of my monthly allowance on books, because of Booksale. But I really am a sort of escapist when it comes to books. I actually have gone so far to make a hypothesis that I would have credited were I someone who believed in reincarnation: I may have been African in a past life. Why is this, you ask? Well, I enjoy reading the works of African-American or African authors, such as Chinua Achebe, Alice Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lewis de Soto, Laurens van der Post, Wole Soyinka, etc. I only realized that now, and it's quite weird. I can't help it though, they are so much fun to read, so earthy, so realistic, so deep. But if I really want to wipe my head-slate clean I read something else. Hemingway's short stories are good. I used to borrow The First Forty-nine Stories all the time when I was in high school, and my favorite Hemingway novel among those I've read so far is The Sun Also Rises. I don't know what there is about reading Papa Ernest(Yes, I call him that in my head, because he was so handsome. Ay, nababading na ako!) that has a soothing effect on me. Hindi ba dapat nakakabangag siyang basahin dahil ang daming misterio sa mga kaugnayan sa kwento niya? But he tells stories simply, so you don't have to over-analyze. Pero pagdating sa nobela niya ibang kwento na yan. But for all his faults, magaling siya. Pero hindi siya ang paborito kong manunulat. Wala pa akong nahahanap na paborito. Pero siguro hindi na rin dapat maghanap ng paboritong manunulat, kung hindi magbasa na lamang at timbangin ang kanilang sinasabi sa timbangan ng puso at utak. Humahanga ako sa mga manunulat na hindi kumita ng maraming pera ngunit hindi tumigil sa paglikha ng kanilang sining. Sila ang mga tunay na dakila, na hindi nasilaw ng pilak at hindi natakot sa anumang sasabihin o gagawin laban sa kanila. Sila ang nagsikap na manatiling buhay ang ating kasaysayan at katauhan bilang mga Pilipino. Sana'y sila rin ay mabuhay sa ating mga isipan, sa ating pagbasa sa kanilang mga akda, at sa ating pagsulat ng ating mga karanasan.

Vignettes

2008-08-14T17:14:00.005+08:00

Yesterday I was with my friends at the Rob, killing time before the Nat Sci exam. We were on our way back to U.P. and decided to take the lift to save time. When the lift went down to the second floor, a group of floozies came in. Mga tuta at yung amo nilang banyaga. The lift suddenly began to beep in overload agony. The foreign man refused to budge, even though he was obviously obese and the lift was obviously straining under the combined weight of their party. The fat man began to ask the fag among the floozies ( Sorry, couldn't resist. Nothing personal.) questions in a language I could not understand. It may have been French, it may have been Russian. Who knows. He obviously did not want to get separated from the floozies, although they seemed quite willing to leave him. The stupid man stood there like a goose until finally one of the floozies got off and told the others to do the same. When the lift closed, the lady standing beside me said, "Ano ba naman yun, ang laki-laki na nga eh ayaw pang umalis. Mamaya sasampalin yun ng kasama niya." I said in reply," Oo nga po eh, tumutunog na nga yung elevator ayaw pang bumaba. " When we got off, my friends and I could not help laughing, although N--- told me there was a floozy still left on the elevator. Oh well, that floozy can tattle all she wants, we'll probably never meet again, as C--- said.
*****
I enjoyed reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and I got curious about Mr. Blackstone, the geezer who wrote Commentaries. However, I was disillusioned as to this man's judiciousness when I saw one of his quotes on ThinkExist : "The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband." The quote had a rating of three stars(!) which means that there are many masochists in this world still. It reminds me of the injustice of Flagrante Delicto, of the rule of thumb, of the many crimes committed against womanhood. It is even more unfortunate that even though we have been enlightened, we still stoop under the yoke of "tradition". If that is so I spit upon tradition, on the bondage it has imposed on everyone, its delusions, its fallacies. The mind must not be a sponge; it must be a sieve, to sift out what is irrelevant and to keep what is important. We Filipinas have experienced enough suffering through our docility, our compliance. It is time we defy this constriction imposed by dead nameless misogynists; we need to rise from our long sleep. We must rebel against submission merely because the one in authority has his superiority declared not in deeds, but in the mere fact of his being a man. There is really nothing new in this. In the same way that apartheid and segregation emphasized the schism of races within a race, so is discrimination against women. Women are part of the human race; without them it would have perished long ago. We are not inferiors but equals. Until prisons are demolished, until bridges are built to effect reparation, there will be no real hope for the race of men; for as long as these obstacles continue to exist in our minds, we will remain as we have always been-- always doubtful, always suspicious, always severed even though we should be one.

Olympics and ordure

2008-08-11T22:48:00.004+08:00

I've been watching the Olympics recently( who hasn't?), and though I missed the opening ceremonies for the most part, I know for a fact that the Chinese delivered (they always do, because of the issue of "losing face"). And I am proud of their accomplishments as a nation, for all the upward mobility, the evolution of their state into a capitalist economy, the way they have pulled everything off so well. And of course there is the China-Tibet controversy. While I admit that there is a whole bloody lot of discrepancies to be sorted out, especially those regarding China's human-rights violations (which, by the way, have existed as part of their civilization throughout the millenia), I also think that other countries (the powers that be, or so they think) have been full of duplicity in their dealings, as well. We, the innocent masses, have no real, absolute idea of their under-handed negotiations, and the United States is a fine example of the oppressed becoming oppressors, and of absolute power corrupting absolutely. But I have digressed, I have rambled. So do let me start over again.

Well, as I've said, I've been watching the Olympics and the athletes are really hungry for success. Some have been playing dirty, such as Angola and Germany, and others have played fairly, such as the female weightlifters (no steroids). However, all this grand display of wits, brawn, strength, camaraderie, calumny, and drama come from one enterprising Baron (or Count, I forget which title he claimed), whose name I have forgotten. If you subscribe to Reader's Digest, try to look into the issue with the article about the myths of the Olympics. Anyway, I agree with the ideology of the Olympics and disagree with its reality. It is really nothing more than a chance to show off, to be famous, to earn recognition so you can turn heads and make commercials. Every time there is an Olympic celebration, boodles of moolah are spent to beautify the damn city where it's to be held. So THE WORLD has seen your capital in all its synthetic glory. What then is to be done to ameliorate the present conditions? How can you find more moolah to replace what you've just spent in a vain effort to cater to the needs of foreigners who don't give a damn for the country anyway? Does the spirit of being "One world, One dream" present itself as reality? Or is it a dream deferred?

For instance, there was great rejoicing during the Berlin Olympics during the Nazi occupation. ("Heil, Hitler!") The whole who's who of Europe came to see the event. However, athletes who were of Negro or Native American ancestry were ignored by the Aryan-loving Fuhrer, who was himself an AUSTRIAN JEW. It may then be concluded that the heroism (?) of athletes, the sacrifices made by the welcoming committee, the untold hours spent by laborers in building edifices, belie the inherent hypocrisy and selfish nature of the Olympics. It is quite humorous that the human race is too cowardly to openly acknowledge that everything is a stunt, and that it needs a sporting event every four years to generate income, to unite people under the delusion of unity. We keep this farce up until the last of the banners has been taken down. We remember for a while, then we forget. We are the people, the mob, the crowd, the mass. We are the Iks, who defecate on others' doorsteps. Let us accept this fact. Only then can we say that we are one world working toward one dream.

Acrostics!

2008-08-06T16:14:00.005+08:00

Since no one ever reads this blog, I'm sure no one will mind my saying that I used to hate acrostics: sappy, campy, cheap, what have you-- I didn't want anything to do with them. Perhaps this was due to the use of acrostics by former teachers to create things truly horrendous and grade school. I can't remember any of them now, but the trauma remains. However, after scanning a book in the library about poetry, I realized they are quite fun after all, when written in a whimsical, satirical, or creative fashion. For instance, the author/compiler of the book, a Mr. Ron Padget, used the letters of his name to create a poem with humor like that of Caroll's "Jabberwocky". I can't remember the poem exactly, but it spoke of a "delicious God" and provisions for the termites. I thought that it was just so much fun, too good to pass up. If you're ever bored with nothing to do think of any word or phrase, like "Tantalus", or "Xanthosis", or let's say "Fourth Avenue Cafe". Make that into an acrostic poem and you'll have something to laugh at. I found that it's better to finish an acrostic poem in less than 3 minutes, because the spontaneity with which you wrote it makes it ring truer. Of course it depends on how long the acrostic is. Earlier, while waiting, I found time to write a few acrostic poems. I'll show you some.(Then again, there's no one to show this to. Oh, well. Let me be. >=)) )

Kalashnikov*

Kites
Alight on branches,
Laughingly
Alert,
Scanning the
Horizon
Nearby
In
Kite hopes
Of
Victuals

(*A kalashnikov was a kind of gun used by the Russians.)

In Honor of Ron Padget

Ripopee* of
Obnoxious
Naughty
Perverse
Animalistic
Delightful
Gorgeous
Endearing
Tots

(*Ripopee is a Cajun word for a "gang of obnoxious children", according to Rebecca Wells in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood. See? You get to use words you normally wouldn't use in normal life! What a mind-opener acrostics can be!)

On Bella Akhmadulina

Your
Eve
Vacated that
Garden of
Eden,
Now
Your desolate
Your silent
Emporium of
Vast wonders
Teasingly
Ubiquitous
Sinfully
Hellish--
Eden
Now looks like
Kiev
On death row.

(This poem is referring to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, one of my favorite poets, and the poetess Bella Akhmadulina, his first wife. Thank providence I was able to think of Kiev, or I would have been stuck. As it is, it fits in very nicely.)

Hey, Daddy...

2008-08-02T12:05:00.005+08:00

I've often noticed this schism in society, that just because you're a girl, there are immediate assumptions about you. There is always an underlying pretension that you have to put up with in public, even though you condemn it in private. Below is Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy", one of my favorite poems because it is personal while being a poem that celebrates the freedom of women from patriachal bonds. It is an odd mix of droll melancholy and wild vengeance which culminates in the last line, a succinct utterance of separation: "Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I'm through."

Daddy
by: Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that,no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

Collage

2008-07-30T20:08:00.005+08:00

I needed to make a collage for the screening of THE ORG. That done, I showed it to some people, who, friends though they were, could not seem to believe that it. was. my. work. What is up with that? Though I never stood out as the artiste, I have enough gumption to appreciate (and, I hope, create) art. Should I show it here? Later on, maybe. If someone really wants to see it. As with many things, the scanned version looks quite better than the original. I don't know why that is. Well, I just thought I'd provide you kids with a collage of a different kind, one you would style by yourselves. I saw all the following this morning:

1) The squatters' area by the rails completely demolished, a desolate sea of concrete, old wood, and scrap metal, with some men and children milling about.
2) Men carting off wood and metal to be sold to junkyards.
3) Children being walked to school by fussy grandmothers and harrassed mothers.
4) An old man selling candies, the veins in his thin legs standing out against the skin.

And this is what I heard:

1) The rail people were leaving because they could no longer make a living. They'd sold heaps of scrap to the junkyards before their evictions,thus making the junkyard owners short of cash; unsurprisingly, the Chinese junkyard owner was the only one who didn't get any of the scrap. Slow business. Eh kesyo daw barat.
2) A Japanese fighter plane and another airplane collided, due to the lack of radar on the fighter plane.

Well, can you picture that? A little slice of the Philippines for anyone who wants it. We only live, after all, in these little moments of clarity, these little slivers of consciousness.

Buried alive in books

2008-07-27T18:49:00.006+08:00

Looking around at my room yesterday, it dawned on me just how compulsive I am when it comes to buying books. When I went to the MOA branch of Booksale, I went gaga over a nearly pristine copy of The Lost World, now reserved for Barney. I also found--can you believe my luck?-- a copy of Cold Sassy Tree and Leaving Cold Sassy, 40 pesos and 35 pesos respectively. When you consider that the copy of Leaving Cold Sassy for sale at the RP Booksale branch is 140 pesos, that's cheap. Two for half the price of one. Tapos nakahanap pa ako ng libro ni David Davidar, The House of Blue Mangoes. (As usual, meron na namang comment dun si Abraham Verghese. Bakit ba ang dami na niyang mga comment sa libro? Sikat na kasi dahil sa My Own Country. Grabe ang ganda ng libro na yun. Ayoko yung kasunod, yung The Tennis Partner. Dull. Kaya ko kinuha si David Davidar kasi nakakatuwa yung pangalan niya, parang si William Carlos Williams. At saka nakita ko yung pangalan niya dun sa article tungkol kay Shobha De. At saka 45 pesos lang yung libro, parang brand new. Dalawa pa yung dust jacket.)

Anyway, nung nalagay ko na yung mga libro sa kwarto ko, naisip ko lang na nabuhay na ako sa librong galing sa Booksale. Kasi naman yung mga nakikita mo sa National Bookstore nakakasuya, yung mga sinulat ni Paolo Coelho pinuno na yung mga shelf, o kaya yung mga nobelang ginawang pelikula, o kaya yung mga libro ni Nicholas Sparks na sobrang senti napaulit-ulit lang ang tema, o kaya yung mga libro ni Stephenie Meyer,o kaya yung mga chick lit na ewan mo ba kung paano napalathala. Ang binibili ko lang sa National yung mga classic. Sa Booksale naman, ang kailangan mo pasensya, tiyaga at saka tibay ng tuhod at mata. May sikreto dun kung paano mo makukuha yung mga libro na limang piso lang ang presyo. Syempre kailangan rin alam mo na kung ano yung klase ng libro na hinahanap mo. Ako ang gusto ko yung mga vintage, yung mga mahirap hanapin sa ibang bookstore. Maigi kasi yun kasi pag nakabili ka nun at mura pa, unique yung library mo. Sa totoo lang, mura na yung mahal na libro sa Booksale (ie. 100 pesos pataas) kasi 1/3 lang ng presyo sa National. Pero yung mga kaibigan ko, maaarte rin sila sa libro kaya wala silang librong biling-Booksale. Eh sa akin naman, kung luma na talaga yung libro wala ka nang magagawa doon. Mas importante pa rin yung nilalaman nun kaysa sa pabalat kaya ingatan mo na lang. Kailangan lang talaga matalas ang mata mo. Tulad nung Biyernes, nakakita ako ng apat na kopya ng The Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood. Iba-iba yung presyo. May isa 40 pesos, yung isa 140 pesos. Kamusta naman.

Sa Booksale mo na rin mahahasa ang tinatawag na "gut feeling". Tulad nga nung Cold Sassy Tree at Leaving Cold Sassy. May libro kasi na laging lilitaw at lilitaw sa Booksale, kagaya ng Yaya Sisterhood. Pero yung mga academic books, at yung mga anthology, kailangan bilhin na kaagad, kasi mahirap mahanap ulit. Ganun lang talaga ang pagbili ng libro. Sa lahat ng bookstore, yung Booksale ang paborito ko. Sa dami ng libro kong nabili doon, dapat may Loyalty Award na ako. Pero hindi ko kailangan ng discount card, kasi meron pa ring libro na limang piso ang presyo. Nabubuhayan ako ng loob tuwing nakakakita ng librong ganun kamura. Ganun lang dapat ang libro-- abot kamay ng tao, hindi sobrang mahal na manghihinayang ka at hindi puro papel na mahal ang binayaran mo at alaws na pagdating mo sa kwento. Recycling na rin yun, para sa kalikasan. Walang binatbat yung Books for Less. May nabili akong libro sa Booksale na 85 pesos, doon ang halaga 225 pesos. Mas maganda pa yung kalagayan nung libro na mula sa Booksale. Kaya saludo ako sa Booksale. Kahit na mas mura pa yung libro sa 100 pesos nung binili mo, pwede yun maging 100,000 pesos kapag namatay ka na. Ang mga libro ko ang pamana ko pag namatay ako. O kaya kung wala akong mapagbibigyan, ilalagay ko sa archive. Mabuhay ka magpakailanman, Booksale, at magpatuloy ka sa iyong pagbenta ng murang libro.

Cat got your tongue?

2008-07-23T19:35:00.004+08:00

Charlie and I seem to have a slight disagreement when it comes to education. I don't know whether it was drowsiness, or old age, but she said something that didn't make sense, which is surprising because she usually makes sense of things. Did that make sense?

It began when we started talking about education. She said she would reinforce the use of English as a medium of instruction. I said, no, Filipino should be reinstated. She asked what for. Well, look at me, I said. Look at my friends. We hardly know what the Tagalog term is for this or that English term. My friends have a hard time using Filipino prefixes and suffixes. Most of the tme they don't get it right. Still, she said that was because we don't have enough knowledge of English; that was why we had a hard time. That really got my goat. Aren't we supposed to learn Filipino well before learning English? I mean, a thorough knowledge of it should at least be established before going on to another language, so you can have a basis. (And all this time I thought she supported my stand on this. I wrote an editorial about that and she said I was right. Ah, the forgetfulness of parents. But she did support me when our insipid, doddering supervisor refused to have it published, claiming that it contradicted school policy. Of course the editorial is worth nothing now; the statistics are already old, and an editorial has to be timely. But Charlie's a good sort, and there are things about parents that you have to forgive every now and then.) Anyway, back to the marrow: I finally said that since the Philippines is already lagging behind other countries, maybe we should teach children Chinese. Mandarin, that is.

The idea is much more practical than it is improbable. People might say that it would be costly, difficult, that children would not tolerate it. Yet it is actually feasible in the Philippines, due to the number of overseas Chinese living here. It would also be profitable for us and would contribute to the commercial and diplomatic relations between our country and China. It would also increase the IQ of schoolchildren, not only because Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn but also because it is also one of the richest and most distinguished. Perhaps in the possible controversy(akin to that of the ZTE scandal?) that would ensue people would stop arguing about sex education and how it should be taught in schools.

The problem that pervades this issue is that it would lead to a blurring of class distinctions. The Chinese would not support this idea. Why is that? Three words: Language is power. The Chinese want to keep an edge over Filipinos ( this is a product of history, the discrimination against the Chinese and their retaliation); they are also jealously protective of their traditions. The fact that the Filipinos are not entirely respectful of an ancient culture is one reason. The Chinese have always been mocked in Philippine entertainment and literature. ( For those among you who would like to refute this, read El Filibusterismo and Noli Me Tangere, or try to remember those Shaolin Kid movies. ) Now, however, they have Filipinos at their mercy after prospering in businesses and other ventures. The reality is, people will not let go of what they feel is rightfully theirs; this tendency will be clearer and stronger in the case of the Chinese; it is their power, their sense of superiority, that they will not be able to relinquish. This exclusivity varies from person to person, but generally, the Chinese look down on Filipinos; some people have even been disowned because they married Filipinos and disregarded purity of blood. As one who has studied some part of Chinese language and culture and mingled with the Filipino-Chinese and Filipinos, this concerns me. I for one have witnessed the supercilious treatment of the Chinese towards Filipinos (and vice versa) and the kindness of Chinsese and Filipinos towards each other. As a person of mixed blood and heritage, I feel the tension of the conflict acutely. There are some things that are unspeakable, and some things are needlessly said, but unless we start saying what needs to be said we cannot hope to ease the bitterness.We are the product of history and society, but we can change what we have been made to become. When one considers all the time that the Chinese and Filipinos have spent together in the span of centuries, it seems that it is hight time that we try to coexist without discrimination and see people as they are before judging them by the mere fact of their race.

Lecture ni Lola

2008-07-21T17:00:00.009+08:00

You might call me an old-fashioned woss after reading this, but that's fine by me. Kahit nga nanay ko sinasabi manang ako eh, kayo pa kaya. Kung iisipin mo totoo naman. Favorite character ko sa Great Expectations si Miss Havisham, ang mga binabasa kong libro yung tipong iniiwasan ng mga kaibigan ko, nagiging hyper ako pag yapak ko sa Booksale, etc. etc. Nahihiya pa nga ako para sa mga pregnant teenager kahit na sila hindi nahihiya sa kalagayan nila. Call me medieval, but I believe their condition warrants a sense of shame. If not for infidelity( to their parents? to themselves?), for being so stupid enough to make a slip. I mean, if you go gallivanting about with a guy, you have to acknowledge the possibility of getting pregnant, don't you? Tinuring pang mas matalino ang babae, pero pag nabola lang ng lalake at nabilog na ang ulo, papayag na. Bakit ba ang babae, kahit "liberated", nagpapaalila pa rin? Para saan pa yung edukasyon?

When you go to the mall, try counting the number of pregnant women you see in two hours. Thursday we went to the Rob, Charlie, Charlie, Bibbs and Libby, the loony gang reunited. I think I saw about 10?12? preganant women that day. Maraming babaeng nagpapaloko. Tulad nung mga dancer sa Wowowee... Dati na palang may Pocahontas dancers sa Pinas, nung 70's pa. Napanood ko sa pelikula ni Walter Navarro at Hilda Koronel. Kamusta naman yun??? Kaya hindi na tayo umuunlad. Hay nako. Sa tingin ko may pinagaralan yung iba doon, pero nagpapaka-bimbo na lang para may ikabuhay. Kawawa rin.

Tapos ang daming babae na pumapayag maging quirida at panakip-butas. Yung iba nagtapos pa ng college yan. Come on! Kaya nga kayo nagaral at pinag-aral para naman magkaroon kayo ng pagpapahalaga sa sarili. Kung gusto ninyong maging doormat eh di sana hindi na kayo nag-abalang mag-aral kung iyon din ang kahihinatnan ninyo. Tulad nga ng sabi ni George Bernard Shaw sa dulang Pygmalion, maghanap ka ng lalaking may makapal na labi para halikan ka at makapal na bota para sipain ka. Eh di solb ka na dun, battered ka na nga, priprituhain ka pa sa sarili mong mantika. Sagot mo pa lagi yung bill.

Ang sa akin lang, sana magisip ng maigi ang mga kababaihan diyan. MAGISIP kahit saglit,dahil kapag nagawa mo na yung mga ayaw mong gawin, malamang mapapasubo ka na gawin ulit. Kasi naman nahalo na sa systema ng Pilipino yung mga telenobela; yung mga tauhan doon tinutularan. Si Jose Mariano, Diego, Salvador, Marimar, Rubi, Daniella-- sila ang mga nasubaybayan ng mga tao tuwing hapon. Kapag nakita mo naman kung paano maglampungan, hay nako! Kahit na sinasabing "Parental Guidance is recommended", may sumusunod ba? Yung mga nanay, tiyahin, ate, at yaya , hindi man lang ginagabayan yung kasamang bata. Yung bata lumalaki na may paniniwalang tama yung mga nakikita kasi engganyong-engganyo ang mga kasama niya. Sa tingin ko isa na ang telenobela sa dahilan kung bakit mahinhindutin ang mga Pinay at mahihilig ang mga Pinoy. May "other factors" pa pero malaki na rin ang pinsalang dulot ng lecheng telenobela. Kaya kasalanan na rin ng mga nanay na nagrereklamo tungkol sa mga teenager nilang buntis. Pangongonsinte lang naman talaga yan eh, at saka yung nasagap ng bata mula sa telenobela, at sa mga nakakasuyang pelikula na laging kumikita ng malaki sa takilya pero nagbabawas ng karunungan.

Kung ganun talagang lokong-loko na tayo. May karapatan tayong manood ng pelikula na may katuturan, hindi yung mga rom-com na alam na nating kung paano magtatapos. Sayang ang perang pinaghirapan mo. Dati hindi naman tayo ganito. Ngayon madalang na may nagbabasa ng gawa nina Genoveva Edroza-Matute, Nick Joaquin, Amado V. Hernandez, Lualhati Bautista, F.Sionil Jose, at iba pang mga mahuhusay na manunulat na nagpapakita sa kanilang mga akda ng buhay ng mga Pilipino, sa Pilipinas man o sa ibang bansa. Sama-sama yung mga mahihirap,yung mayayaman, yung middle class-- hindi tulad sa mga popular na nobelang romansa na mga may kaya ang mga tauhan at nagliliwaliw ang mga ito sa kawalan ng direksyon sa buhay. Tuwing nakikita ko ang mga tinatangkilik ng Pinoy ngayon, nanghihinayang ako, sapagkat pinapahiwatig nito na unti-unting nagiging bobo( paumanhin na lang pero totoo, sorry na rin, Bob Ong) ang mga Pinoy. Sana naman hindi magpatuloy ang ating pagiwas sa isyu at ang ating pagtanggap sa mga programmang ihinahain sa atin ng mga network. Ang telebisyon, ang dyaryo, ang magazine, ang mga billboard ay may malaking epekto rin sa sambayanan. Sana naman ay isipin natin kung ang ating napapanood, nababasa, at nakikita sa araw-araw ay nananalamin sa atin. Wala ring saysay ang paggawa ng mga organisasyon para sa ikauunlad ng tao kung hindi simulan sa ugat. Magtanong. Magpahayag. Magboycott ng show. Hindi na dapat dumami ang kamangmangan ng Pinoy at ang luho ng mga executives. Sa labanan, ang utak ang unang tinatamaan. Huwag hayaang pasukin ang utak mo. Huwag kang magpaloko.

Review: Silence of the Lambs

2008-02-24T11:40:00.007+08:00

I know that some people can't bear the unbelievable goriness of the Hannibal Lecter movies, but I have to say I totally loved watching this one. Anthony Hopkins is really superb, and so is Jodie Foster. But Hopkins really knows the ropes, he can play almost anyone, I think. It's interesting that they showed the contrast between Dr. Chilton and Hannibal; Hannibal, the allegedly "insane" doctor, is far more astute than the pompous Dr. Chilton, the little attention-grabbing SOB. And Jodie Foster had reason to be famous after that movie-- she did the whole cop-with a relationship with a psycho-really well. The only thing I didn't like about the movie was the props-- obviously fake and they really took some of the scare away. And the blood looked like cranberry syrup, not like red wine reduction. Potassium thiacyanide and ferric nitrate!!! The blood was bright red, not burgundy. My favorite scene was the elevator scene, where all the cops are running around like fools only to find out Hannibal's escaped. This is a killer movie. If you haven't watched it yet, you should. Rating: 4 stars (because of the props and the blood.)

The fear of flying roaches

2008-02-14T20:54:00.001+08:00

I know that people are leery of having roaches next to them, and with good reason. Diseases aside, I have an adverse reaction to any crawling roach I see, and that makes me want to kill it. However, flying roaches have the higher rating on my creep chart. The trouble with them is that you never know what they'll do next. Worse still, you'd hardly be able to control the direction of their flight, and they just might decide to land on you. It's really difficult to turn your head all over the place when a roach is on the ceiling, ready to fall onto your foamy hair. I've never had a peaceful time in the loo with a roach around-- especially an active one. The worst situation, though, would be one wherein a roach is roaming round the room and you've fallen asleep with a bag of food nearby. The result would be a painful sore or a swollen eye, useful for meriting taunts, jeers, and concerned inquiries. Whatever purpose they were intended for, coackroaches are agents of evil, embarrassment, and illness; but an elusive , freely locomoting roach is the worst specimen.