crookedstair

Parang pag-ibig.

2010-02-23T15:05:00.000+08:00

Failing and Flying

Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

"Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven. (c) Alfred A. Knopf, 2005 . Reprinted without permission, The Writers Almanac.

Ngyar.

2010-02-01T06:32:00.004+08:00

Woman's (G)lib

When he slows it

down, drives deep

I feel

Every ridge
More
And more
Than that catalog

of notches--his, mine,
Another's in another time--

The girl falls
In love again
And again.

For this and no other.

2010-01-13T03:43:00.003+08:00

Or, A Draft Campaign Speech for Any of the Next Possible Philippine Presidents, Provided He Who Takes it Up, Makes it Happen;

And If No One Does, Then: If I were President, Because You All Refused To Do Your Jobs, goddammit

Strangely enough, when I began writing this speech, I could not stop thinking about the word ad hoc. I had always thought this word meant temporary, hastily put together for one purpose or another. I had imagined this meaning on to the word because of how we have always created, and treated, the numerous ad hoc committees to deal with and try to solve single parts of our multifarious problems.

Imagine my surprise, when upon closer inspection, I discover that, from the Latin, ad hoc literally means for this, toward this and no other. And it is for this and no other that I am more than willing to work and work hard in the next six years, as you leader and servant, as your next president: I am Filipino.

If not us, then who else?

And these are the things we need to do, that I will initiate, not in June, but starting right now:

(1) I will not only fight, but eradicate, corruption. I will punish those who have and will use the country's resources to their own ends, past present future. I will punish those who have used their power to abuse others. I will punish and punish heftily, that everyone will unlearn this habit. And I will eradicate it, by not making it easy, by not allowing it to be part of our everyday, by refusing to think it our culture. I will expedite government transactions and services, without shortcuts or short-cutting any one, and build a government that is not only happy to serve her people, but knows what an important job it is. I will get rid of all unnecessary procedures and payments, and make sure that everyone who approaches a government office gets served and served well, without having to be passed on to another office, or another person, or on to oblivion.

It is not only that we currently have corrupt officials in our government, but that we have a government that officially encourages corruption. I will speed things up that no one will have to pay extra to get what they deserve, when they need it. And I will pay our public servants well that they will not need you to pay them any more than what is fair and just.

Our current government only makes one thing easy: It makes it easy for us to leave the country. And though I will not refuse anyone who is not a criminal this choice, I will do better and make them want to stay.

(2) I will make Filipinos want to stay in the Philippines. I will do this not only by giving them jobs, but decent jobs worthy of their education and skills and inclination. I will make it worthy of their time. I will not give them "pwede na yan" jobs, just because the family needs to eat, or the eldest is about to start college, or God knows, because they need baon for elementary school tomorrow. And if and when they want to stay, I will give them every reason and opportunity to do so.

(3) I will give the best of the Philippines to the Filipinos, and not to the foreigners. I will ensure that the country and its people cater to the Philippines and to the Filipino. I will ensure that if Boracay is the best beach there is, or Sagada the best mountain getaway, then Filipinos can afford to enjoy them if they are so inclined, to their taste and financial capability. The hotel and department stores and all commercial establishments will serve both the local and the foreigner, the native and the foreign. The flight attendants will be kind and efficient to both the domestic helper coming home and the business man from Hong Kong.

I will make us proud to be Filipinos here and around the world, and I will make the world proud of the Filipino. And I will do this without wanting or pretending to be America, or insisting on America, or asking what America, or any other country, thinks.

And so that the Philippines, in turn, can giver her best to her people, (4) I will pass the Reproductive Health Bill. I will pass this bill because we need to control our population, and so much of our problems are rooted in this one problem. And we need to ensure that our natural resources are enough to support our people, now and in the future.

And I refuse to enter into any pro- or anti-life debates regarding this. I will not allow abortion during my rule, and this bill does not allow it either. What it does instead, is give the woman control over her body, the option to refuse her husband or lover sex, and provides her the option not to get pregnant should she wish to have sex. Neither does the bill judge her for it. Because what this bill ultimately wants, not just for women but for every single Filipino, is a chance at a fair and equitable share to our country's natural resources, a beginning of a life of quality.

And to be able to continue to that life of quality, (5) I will provide them with quality health care whether they can afford it or not. I will ensure that PhilHealth works to the advantage of both rich and poor, and is used in both public or private hospitals. I assure the poorest of the poor universal coverage. I will ensure too that our social security systems, whether public or private, work for everyone, that our premiums will result to returns when we need them.

(6) I will provide free and quality basic education, and ensure sources of scholarships and study-now-pay-later schemes for college and post-graduate degrees. I will ensure quality education is available to all Filipinos, whatever their economic class, and that information is available to them, and that it is waiting for them and not the other way around.

To do this I will pay the teachers well, and make sure they deserve it. I will ensure that history books teach them more than just dates and places, the science books the correct and updated science, that they learn to read well, and learn to love to read.

I will incent multinationals to train our workers and make them into world-class assets, in order to build on a high-value economy here that rests on its high-value workforce.

(7) I will make this country rich by making our farmers rich, by providing them with the help and support they need, whether it be science or subsidy, or protection from the storm, or from world markets. I will make it their option if they want to own their own land, or if land is not enough, the option to work as a collective. I will support their cooperatives, and watch the corporations that employ them.

(8) I will encourage green growth, not only because we need to cut down on greenhouse gases, but because we need to be energy-independent. Nor will I allow the first world to influence our decisions regarding our energy sources, because while climate change is a global problem, excessive green house gas emissions is not. Instead, I will promote energy efficiency, and natural resources management, because my priority is our development, and the quality of life of our people. I will build on the examples of some of our excellent local government units, who have done excellent comprehensive land-use planning, disaster management, community development, and self-sufficiency outside of Metro Manila.

And I encourage this because (9) I want to move development to other parts of the country, not just in the capital. I will decongest Metro Manila by moving development to the other regions, ensure that most opportunities available in the capital are available elsewhere. And I will spend on the necessary efficient infrastructure that will allow all this.

Lastly, I will do all this without sacrificing what makes us Filipino--whether it be in terms of culture or customs, beliefs, religion, region or tribe. If utang na loob is inherent to us, then I will encourage it because we need to help each other, not because help needs to be repaid. If ningas cugon describes our short-lived passions all too well, then we will do everything to fan the fire. If we have forgotten our Bayanihan culture, then we will teach it to ourselves and our kids again.

And if we need to do more, when have we ever turned our backs when it is family that asks and needs? We just need to widen our circles a little bit, and slowly widen the scope and capacity of who and how we love.

Let the next six years be temporal and not temporary, our responses to our problems urgent and not hasty, and if it be necessary that the next government act like an ad hoc committee, so be it. If I be judged by these promises, and measured by their fulfillment, bring it on. This is the call, and I will answer, and be answerable.

Through no choice of ours, we were born into this country. And for whatever reason or lack of choice, have remained her citizens. Who else will answer for us? We are the Philippines, we are Filipino. For this. No other.

Because it's another year. New. Again.

2010-01-12T21:35:00.003+08:00

Guinea Pig

Julie Cadwallader-Staub

As if your cancer weren't enough,
the guinea pig is dying.
The kids brought him to me
wrapped in a bath towel
‘Do something, Mom.
Save his life.'

I'm a good mom.
I took time from work,
drove him to the vet,
paid $77.00 for his antibiotics.

Now, after the kids rush off to school,
you and I sit on the bed.
I hold the guinea pig, since he bites.
You fill the syringe.
We administer the foul smelling medicine,
hoping the little fellow will live.

admitting to each other:
if he doesn't,
it'll be good practice.

"Guinea Pig" by Julie Cadwallader-Staub. Reprinted without permission from The Writers Almanac.

***

Looking at Pictures to Be Put Away

Gary Snyder

Who was this girl
In her white night gown
Clutching a pair of jeans

On a foggy redwood deck.
She looks up at me tender,
Calm, surprised,

What will we remember
Bodied thick with food and lovers
After twenty years.

"Looking at Pictures to Be Put Away" by Gary Snyder, from The Back Country. (c) New Directions, 1957. Reprinted without permission from The Writers Almanac.

***

One Night

Jeremy Voigt

The car crossed two lanes of traffic
and a grass median before plowing
head-on into me, killing my wife,
unborn child, and myself. Before
I died I touched the shoulder
of a policeman, felt the sure strength
of his muscles, heard the only word
he spoke, "Jesus," and I smiled
because I stopped believing in him
long ago. He mistook my smile
for something positive and not listless
irony, and I tried to correct him,
but my throat stopped. Red lights.
Blue lights. Star's gases. I walked home.
My wife wandered off into a river
to give birth. I began calling my friends:
"We are all dead," I said into the phone.
I let them cry or exalt in turn, taking
note. I didn't know it would be this
simple. I slipped into a midnight robe,
poked holes in a black sheet, tore
into a loaf of bread. Wandered off
yeast-heavy neither rising nor falling.

"One Night" by Jeremy Voigt, from Neither Rising nor Falling. (c) Finishing line Press, 2009. Reprinted without permission from The Writers Almanac.

Haay.

2009-12-26T11:03:00.001+08:00

December
Gary Johnson

A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here--and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels singing overhead? Hark.

"December" by Gary Johnson. Used without permission from The Writers Almanac.

To whom it may concern: this is (not exactly) fiction.

2009-12-25T05:36:00.002+08:00

Dear All,

Merry Christmas to all of you, and to those you love!

First off, let me apologize for the lengthy silence from me and my family. I know you have all wanted to hear from us, especially about my Mom’s condition over the past few months.

Looking back on my previous letters to all of you, I realize that it has been more than six months since I last wrote. Again, I am sorry if this silence has led you to worry unnecessarily about my mom and her well-being. It has not been an easy going, but let me assure you now that Mommy is doing fine, and that she is at home, where we take turns taking care of her, together with a trusted nurse that stays with her on most nights.

I do feel a bit sad to tell you though, that my mom’s condition has hardly improved since she got out of the hospital last May. She is still bed-ridden and mostly unresponsive; although we still use the blink-once-for-yes scheme, and sometimes, it does seem like we do understand each other. As to her range of movements, there have been some improvements—she is often able to lift her head by herself, to spit, for example, or to help us when we move her about the bed, or during her rehab exercises. Some spastic movements are more pronounced as well—the curling of her hands to fists, and of her arms towards her chest, has been extended to her legs as well, although these movements are primarily involuntary.

Since the initial hospitalization, we have been back to the hospital twice. Once in ----- for 10 days because of an obstruction in her bowels: A simple colonoscopy was performed on her, and an extended stay required to balance her nutritional needs. The second was last week, and involved routine procedures to change her tracheal tube, a laryngoscopy to check her nasal passages and her vocal chords, and the last procedure was simply to transfer her feeding tube from her nose to a peg directly connected to her stomach. The last procedure was necessary to avoid the danger of choking, as well as to prevent possible infections through the old route.

I am sorry if this quick summary comes as a blow to all of you; please remember that all these happened in a span of more or less seven months. And though there definitely some stressful times for Mommy and for us, we have all been so much better ever since we’ve brought her home from that initial two-month hospital stay.

We have been... gifted, I suppose is the apt word this season, with just enough resources not to take anything for granted, and loving family and friends who are always willing to step up and help whenever we find ourselves lacking, or lost, or losing to despair. I say this because we have been quite successful (what an odd word to use in this context!), I think in the little adjustments and re-adjustments--the tailored and tapered accommodations necessary in a life so changed!—that it can become normal again.

Hah. Who would’ve thought I can say this, and all in my family believe it, seven months after what has passed? But I think, primarily, it is the relief of having her home again, and stable, and with us every day, that lends us, too, a certain strength and a more-than-enough semblance of normalcy which allows us to carry on with the necessary tasks, for her, and for ourselves. Our mom is home, and with us—perhaps this might be the beginning of all we begin to need, that the fulfilment of the rest becomes easier after this.

Am I making sense? Hehe. I feel selfish now, and not a little bit embarrassed, taking all of that time away in silence, and now, taking all of your time on these musings. But really, everything is as perfect as it can be in our world right now: It is 5:00 AM (perhaps why the philosophy! Sorry!), and I am on the last legs of my shift (and all of us halfway through) taking care of our mom (the 24^thand today), my sisters and our Dad asleep in preparation for the next shift; the nurse home with her family as the maid soon will be too. Everything and everyone where they should be this Christmas.

And this family now, which with all your help and support and prayers and well-wishes throughout this year and even previously, is still, at its core, the same family. For this alone, silence or no, we will be forever grateful.

I hope and pray that this Christmas morning finds you and your family complete too, at the core, or in the heart, where it matters most.

Our love to you in this most generous of seasons,

Andrea -----, with my Family

2009-11-25T05:59:00.000+08:00

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Blood and more blood

2009-11-08T16:30:00.006+08:00

The Thumb
Peter Schneider

In a nanosecond David lost his thumb,
the one his mother painted
with pine pitch when he was four
to keep him from forever sucking it.
Unable to distinguish human flesh
the McCormick silo filler
sliced it off--
nail, bone, knuckle--
and blew it skyward
an ounce of humanity
in a thousand tons of silage.

Taken by surprise
David suppressed the truth.
Before the rush of blood
he held up the stump
saw the clean cut
grey bone marrow visible
and thrust it in his mouth
where the memory
of childhood security lay.
Then he swore,
tears rushing to his eyes, and ran
holding the stump with his good hand
blood oozing between his fingers.

Joe, a huge bulk of a man
and a constant neighbor,
jumped from his wagon
caught David like a child
held him to his chest
not intimidated by blood
or the tears of a grown man.

"The Thumb" by Peter Schneider, from Line Fence. (c) Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2006. Reposted from The Writers Almanac.

***

Because November is the weird boy of months.

2009-11-01T15:59:00.003+08:00

How Many Nights
Galway Kinnell

How many nights
have I lain in terror,
O Creator Spirit, maker of night and day,

only to walk out
the next morning over the frozen world,
hearing under the creaking snow
faint, peaceful breaths...
snake,
bear, earthworm, ant...

and above me
a wild crow crying 'yaw, yaw, yaw'
from a branch nothing cried from ever in my life.

***
Driving Nails
Gary L. Lark

I learned to walk stud walls
setting rafters when I was six.
I straightened nails for my father
to re-drive, piecing a home together
after work or on weekends.

We were called Okies by some
when we moved to the valley,
putting up our tar-papered shack.
Two years later a house was rising
to face them across the pasture.

The only plans were sketched
on a six inch pad, but all the corners
were true. The septic tank hole
was dug with pick and shovel.
Lumber carted home from the mill.

The only time help came
was when we poured the foundation.
Guys from the mill rode springing planks
to deliver tons of wet concrete by wheelbarrow,
tamped down with shovel handles.

My father beveled the molding,
drilled and set each piece of hardwood flooring,
not a nail would show. I crawled insulation
into tight places above the ceiling
and helped with rolled roofing.

Nobody mentioned our low rank
when my mother joined the garden club.

"How Many Nights" by Galway Kinnell, from Three Books. (c) Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
"Driving Nails" by Gary Lark, from Getting By. (c) Logan House, 2009.
Both reposted from The Writer's Almanac, without permission.

Erasures

2009-10-09T12:59:00.002+08:00

Erasures
Sharon Bryan

My best lover ever
is dead. And

the second best.
Nothing to do

with me, it was years
since I'd seen them.

Still, they took
something with them

no one else knows
about me, and if I

know it, I know
only half, like every

other line of a poem.

"Erasures" by Sharon Bryan, from Sharp Stars. (c) BOA Editions, 2009. From The Writer's Almanac.

Reflection is not always a mirroring.

2009-10-03T21:38:00.000+08:00

Harvest
Louise Gluck

It's autumn in the market--
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They're beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oilcloth--

Inside, they're gone. Black, moldy--
you can't take a bite without anxiety.
Here and there, among the tainted ones, a fruit
still perfect, picked before decay set in.

Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants.
Pumpkins, a lot of pumpkins.
Gourds, ropes of dried chilies, braids of garlic.
The artisans weave dead flowers into wreaths;
they tie bits of colored yarn around dried lavender.
And people go on for a while buying these things
as though they thought the farmers would see to it
that things went back to normal:
the vines would go back to bearing new peas;
the first small lettuces, so fragile, so delicate, would begin
to poke out of the dirt.

Instead, it gets dark early.
And the rains get heavier; they carry
the weight of dead leaves.

At dusk, now, an atmosphere of threat, of foreboding.
And people feel this themselves; they give a name to the season,
harvest, to put a better face on these things.

The gourds are rotting on the ground, the sweet blue grapes are finished.
A few roots, maybe, but the ground's so hard the farmers think
it isn't worth the effort to dig them out. For what?
To stand in the marketplace under a thin umbrella, in the rain, in the cold,
no customers anymore?

And then the frost comes; there's no more question of harvest.
The snow begins; the pretense of life ends.
The earth is white now; the fields shine when the moon rises.

I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.

What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.

"Harvest" by Louise Gluck from A Village Life. (c) Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009. From The writer's Almanac.

For the sake of my hair, let me say this.

2009-09-22T23:17:00.005+08:00

The radio on my cab going to Ortigas today was on DZXL 558, with one of the Tulfo brothers hosting. The topic of conversation was HB 5043, or the Reproductive Health Bill. His guests were Cong. Defensor, who is for the RH Bill, an archbishop and a representative from the Buhay Party-List, who were against it.

Here is what I remember of what they said:

Cong. Defensor only elaborated on the provisions of the bill, mainly government funding for population control programs, including contraceptives and prophylactics. He emphasized that the bill is still anti-abortion, despite its call for government-funded family planning methods.

The Archbishop (I didn't get his name, a very telling miss on my part) argued quite sensibly, I think, and "not as a Catholic," he said, for the risk of bloodying the hands of some unwitting user of a possibly abortive drug. Do we really want someone unknowingly committing the sin of abortion, he asked. Would we want such a burden on someone's shoulders?

The Buhay party-list rep echoed the point of the Archbishop, with less sense and wit.

These three were not simultaneous guests in the program, but were interviewed consecutively. After these phone-ins, Tulfo summarized the entire thing by saying that overpopulation is not a problem, because people are assets. See how our millions of OFWs save our economy with their remittances, he said. Look at China's population, he said, there's a whole lot more of them, and they're doing fine.

What is wrong with this picture? Wait, let me rephrase. Where do I start, with all that is wrong in this picture? And I am not even going to touch Tulfo's smirking remarks with a ten-foot pole.

So let me avoid tearing out my hair. This is my problem: Where is the woman's voice in all this?

Why were the guest all men? And with Tulfo leading the pack, sounding very smug and TNL, agreeing enthusiastically with his last two guests, while being lukewarm and not at all encouraging with the first, there was not a single female voice, nor a single statement for the female in that discussion.

Why this is important to me, is obvious, if you will simply dismiss me as a feminist. But consider my basic point, that the whole contraception issue should be a woman's decision. This is not a feminist statement, it is biological. If your reproductive system can't house a baby, then sorry, your inputs here are peripheral.

So again: Where is the woman's voice in all this?

This is what I am trying to say: The fact of pregnancy, and the question of abortion, is a female problem, by virtue of our biology. And if we choose to keep our reproductive organs, then we have to be given the right to decide what goes on, and what goes in there. Be it the consent to sex, the decision to avoid pregnancy, the fact of pregnancy, and the trial of letting it go. Sure, the last decision may be affected by what a guy has to say ("I'll marry you" more often than not standing for "I want the baby"), but it is the woman and her body who will go through the pregnancy--all nine months of it. Is it too much to ask that the decision be hers?

And for all the arguments and discussions and posters (See Notes below) on the RH Bill, has there been any on the basis of biology? And its lopsided possibilities, its general inevitability?

As an environmental science major, let me say that overpopulation is a problem. Put that with poverty, the inequitable distribution and access to wealth and resources, then you have the root of all our major environmental problems all over the world. Not to mention the general "history of inequity" of this country.

As someone who finished college--hell, high school even--let me say that education is a major factor in the decision-making that women go through before they consider sex and what they do about it and its consequences when the deed is done.

As someone who is not Catholic, let me say that I appreciate, and find beautiful, the collective act of looking after our souls.

But as a woman, let me say this: I am my body, too. Let me.

***
NOTES:

1. Click here for the full text of HB 5043. Here's another.
2. Oist, believe me, this is the most serious I've been tackling this issue. And I have to say, the most I've enjoyed is retelling the anti-RH Bill posters all over Iloilo City around December last year: No to HB 5043: No to abortion. Yes to life. No to free sex. (Yes to prostitution?)
3. Seriously, though, my point is not for or against the Bill. That's your decision.
4. What can I say? When the talk's of sex and the body, I get fired up.
5. "I am woman, hear me roar."

Games people play.

2009-09-21T01:34:00.005+08:00

I. 20 Questions

1. Name the number. Number all the names.
2. Right or wrong?
3. Wrong, and write.

***
4. Boxers vs. briefs?
5. Briefer and briefer.
6. Briefed.

***
7. Let's play catch-up!
8. Catch up! The game began long ago.
9. Catch up? The game began long ago...
10. Catch, v.: To save?
11. Catch, n.: A trap.

***
11. Draw a straw.
12. Luck of the draw.
13. Thirteen.

***
14. And so it goes.
15. So how goes it?
16. ...
17. I drew the same blank, baby.

***
18. Neither here nor there.
19. Look elsewhere?
20. Time's up.

The perfect is forgotten.

2009-09-15T05:25:00.007+08:00

I never take afternoon naps, and I never sleep in the middle of a book.

Or I would have said that, before I did both at the same time, quite some time ago.

You had just left the house for work, and I picked up the book to pretend I didn't mind the alone. It was a good book, too, but far too close to home to sit well.

Or far too close to leaving, I should say. I was leaving.

So it seemed the perfect time to do what one doesn't usually do, so close to leaving. Fall in love, live in one house, go to work. Read books, take naps.

I didn't actually mean to take a nap. That was self defense. The book was on to something I would've appreciated not knowing at that time.

***
We had a schedule, you remember? You'd wake up at around 9, work on your thesis. I'd sleep til an hour later. Then we'd have coffee, and a bit of breakfast if you felt hungry enough to cook. Then you'd go back to work, and I would pretend to start packing my things. Then it was off to lunch, mostly at the school cafeteria, after which you'd be off to work. And so would I.

But I didn't have work that day, did I? Or perhaps I told you I didn't, hoping you wouldn't too. The weeks had trickled down to days--hours really--and I didn't feel like following the same schedule with so little time left. We had taken it for granted, all those weeks, and I wanted to tell you, Fuck the schedule.

But then you'd come home around 6, like you always did. And we'd have dinner and drinks with friends at that bar--what was it called again? No matter. We'd come home, make love, sleep. We couldn't fuck the schedule, we were too busy perfecting it.

How could we forget?

***
When I said I was pretending to pack my things, I really was packing my things. I would work at the kitchen table, near the window where I could smoke. Near the window that we never closed, despite the weather slowly turning to winter. I was typing up all the stuff I'd written in scattered notebooks across the two years, putting them in little files in my laptop.

Paper packs really tight, and heavy.

Computer files, on the other hand, weighed nothing. This is scientific fact. A laptop with as much free space as a clean slate weighed exactly the same as the same laptop packed to overflowing.

The same couldn't be said for my suitcase.

***
I couldn't carry everything home with me, as it was.

Most especially the book, since it was yours. So I was determined to finish it before I had to leave. I was lying in bed, that same afternoon I didn't mean to take a nap, just right after you gave me a kiss goodbye. I had opened it up to the last chapter, I think. I finished that book, I'm sure now, because I remember that last sentence. Then I fell asleep.

***
Or I forced myself to sleep. In any case, I remember waking up, thinking you'd come home. I thought I saw you at the bedroom door.

I got up and went down the stairs, but you weren't there. I was dreaming, godammit. I was dreaming and now I was awake, 2 long hours more to wait. I went to the kitchen and shove the 2 burners open, it was cold. It was 4PM, and only October, and it was friggin' cold. Colder I think for it being only summer a few weeks ago.

I sat down at the kitchen table for a cigarette, and that's when I notice it: The window was closed.

***
All this was quite some time ago. But sometimes, that window bothers me. Did you close it, or did I?

I had forgotten all this, to tell the truth. But I still have all those files in my laptop, and its memory, by God, far, far better than mine.

Is writing. Is.

2009-09-15T00:38:00.002+08:00

-Where is it?

-Here.

-Really? Where? I can't see it.

-It's just here.

-Is it sleeping?

-Maybe. C'mon! Wouldn't be answering if it were sleeping.

-Right. Maybe.

-You get some sleep.

-Right. Maybe.

In The Night Orchard

2009-09-01T15:24:00.000+08:00

In The Night Orchard
R. T. Smith

I know, because Paul has told me
a hundred times, that the deer
gliding tonight through tangleweed
and trashwood, then bounding across
Mount Atlas Road, are after his pears.

And who could blame them?
On the threshold of autumn, the Asian
imports, more amazing than any Seckle
or indigenous apple, start to ripen.
Then a passing crow will peck one open.

That's when the whitetails who bed
and gather beyond Matson's pasture
will catch the scent and begin to stir.
It's a dry time, and they go slowly mad
for sweetness. No fence can stop them.

The farmers like Paul will admit
it starts in hunger, but how suddenly
need goes to frenzy and sheer plunder.
When the blush-gold windfalls are gone
and the low boughs are stripped

of anything resembling bounty, bucks
will rise on their hind legs and clamber
up the trunks. Last week Cecil Emore
found one strangled in a fork,
his twisted antlers tangled as if

some hunter had hung him there
to cure. We all remember what it's like,
this driven season, this delirium
for something not yet given a name,
but the world turns us practical, tames

us to yearn for milder pleasures.
For Augustine, it was actual pears
that brought him out of the shadows
and over a wall, for Eve, the secret
inside what we now say was an apple.

Others have given up safety for less,
and I wonder, catching an eight-point
buck outlined on the ridge amid spruce,
if it's this moonstruck nature that renders
the ruminants beautiful, or if we stalk

them out of envy, not for the grace
of their gliding, but for the unadorned
instinct that draws them after dark
into trespass and the need to ruin
the sweetest thing they've ever known.

"In The Night Orchard" by R. T. Smith, from Brightwood. (c) Louisiana State University Press, 2004.

Moving Day

2009-08-24T15:32:00.001+08:00

Moving Day
Ron Koertge

While sitting home one night, I hear burglars fiddling
with the lock. This is what I've been waiting for!

I run around to the back and open the door, invite
them in, and pour some drinks. I tell them to relax,
and I help them off with shoes and masks.

In a little while we are fast friends, and after a dozen
toasts to J. Edgar Hoover, they begin to carry things out.
I point to the hidden silver, hold the door as they
wrestle with the bed, and generally make myself useful.

When they get the truck loaded and come back inside
for one last brandy, I get the drop on them. Using Spike's
gun, I shoot them both and imprint Blackie's
prints on the handle.

Then I get in the van and drive away,
a happy man.

"Moving Day" by Ron Koertge, from Making Love to Roget's Wife: Poems New and Selected. (c) University of Arkansas Press, 1997.

Skinny-Dipping After Work at the Drive-In

2009-08-24T15:30:00.000+08:00

Skinny-Dipping After Work at the Drive-In
Debra Nystrom

No moon; the pickup's headlights stare
across the river from the bluff above, where
fields of sunflower heads turn away,
waiting for dawn. It's cold, yelps Amy,
and Brian calls where are you
but she screams no, get away, so
he and Tommy laugh, dive under for
her legs again. In March I skated over
this same place, past Farm Island, leaving
my track lines in the snow hard to imagine
now, and even then the water must
have moved like this beneath me, erasing
bodies' outlines, as if everything touched
everything all the time.

"Skinny-Dipping After Work at the Drive-In", by Debra Nystrom from Bad River Road. (c) Sarabande Books, 2009.

Straightpins

2009-08-24T15:27:00.000+08:00

Straightpins
Jo McDougall

Growing up in a small town,
we didn't notice
the background figures of our lives,
gray men, gnarled women,
dropping from us silently
like straightpins to a dressmaker's floor.
The old did not die
but simply vanished
like discs of snow on our tongues.
We knew nothing then of nothingness
or pain or loss--
our days filled with open fields,
football,
turtles and cows.

One day we noticed
Death has a musty breath,
that some we loved
died dreadfully,
that dying
sometimes takes time.
Now, standing in a supermarket line
or easing out of a parking lot,
we realize
we've become the hazy backgrounds
of younger lives.
How long has it been,
we ask no one in particular,
since we've seen a turtle
or a cow?

"Straightpins" by Jo McDougall, from Satisfied with Havoc. (c) Autumn House Press, 2004.

Occupation

2009-08-24T15:25:00.001+08:00

Occupation
Eliza Griswold

The prostitutes in Kabul tap their feet
beneath their faded burqas in the heat.

For bread or fifteen cents, they'll take a man to bed--
their husbands dead, their seven kids unfed--

and thanks to occupation, rents have risen twentyfold,
their chickens, pots and carpets have been sold.

Two years ago, the Talibs favored boys and left the girls alone.
A woman then was worth her weight in stone.

"Occupation" by Eliza Griswold, from Wideawake Field. (c) Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

Miracle of Bubbles

2009-07-25T14:58:00.000+08:00

Miracle of Bubbles
by Barbara Goldberg

A woman drives to the video store
to rent a movie. It is Saturday night,
she is thinking of nothing in particular,
perhaps of how later she will pop popcorn
or hold hands with her husband and pretend
they are still in high school. On the way home
a plane drops from the sky, the wing shearing
her roof of her car, killing her instantly.
Here is a death, it could happen to any of us.
Her husband will struggle the rest of his days
to give shape to an event that does not mean
to be understood. Since memory cannot operate
without plot, he chooses the romantic -- how young
she was, her lovely waist, or the ironic -- if only
she had lost her keys, stopped for pizza.

At the precise moment the plane spiraled
out of control, he was lathering shampoo
into his daughter's hair, blond and fine
as cornsilk, in love with his life, his
daughter, the earth (for "cornsilk" is how
he thought of her hair), in love with the miracle
of bubbles, how they rise in a slow dance,
swell and shimmer in the steamy air, then
dissolve as though they never were.

"The Miracle of Bubbles" by Barbara Goldberg, from Cautionary Tales. (c) Dryad Press, 1990.

Re-hash. Ho hum.

2009-07-15T02:03:00.005+08:00

So this is how it's done, I watch her
aaaaaaaaaaIf the wounds dry up, the words die with them.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--Stephen King, The Body

She sleeps with her mouth open,
and I would watch her
like she has something to say
I wait for it

But she never does, she's not one to talk now
in her sleep or awake

I have tried to decipher
these silences like overcast skies
or her bright talk once--
the sudden movement of clouds
to let the sun through, or thunder

Her moods not like the weather:
thunderstorms made her happy
or at least I think so
watching her

Pressed against the windows now
mouth again open
again silent

So this is how it's done, I watch her
The fog of her breath on the glass
appear, disappear in rhythm
like catch and release--
a heart at goodbye.

#
A re-hash of one part of a three-part poem I wrote last year. Kept the title and the epigraph(?), despite retaining only one-third of the original. The other two were blah, and needed work.

And I need sleep.

Confessions

2009-07-13T03:30:00.002+08:00

Ari ay:

(Isa ka Pag-ako)

Ari ay: Kabudlay magsulat.

Masugod sa wala, kag matapos

Man sa wala—Walay pulos

Ining pagpa-utwas. Luwas

Ipakita nga wala

Unod akon dughan,

Kubos akong dila.

Ara ay. May guinahambal

Inang mga tinaga.

Ining babayi, may guinahandum

Nga indi matapna.

Pamati bala.

Ang mga tinaga may buot silingon.

Ining babayi, ay! Salabayon.

***

Here:

(A Confession)

Here: It is difficult to write.

To begin with nothing, and end

With nothing—Worthless,

This utterance. Revealed

Only my heart, my mouth,

Their emptiness.

There. Those words

Are telling.

This girl, she dreams,

But nothing.

Hear this:

The words have meaning.

The girl—bah!—

Romanticizing.

The cockroach in my bathroom

2009-06-30T00:05:00.004+08:00

The cockroach in my bathroom

And I play a game. He is afoot
when I'm barefoot, racing
along walls, climbing
onto the sink. He slinks
out of sight when I might
have my slippers, or my
shoes on. Once I
tried to kill him with the mop,
but that was a flop, it was too
soft. Tried to flush him down
the drain, tried to drown him,
but I found out he could swim.

So I bide the day we meet
and I have shoes on my feet.
Meanwhile, my bathroom is his
when I'm not there
I don't think of him either.

***
Bow.

THE CLOSING PARTY!

2009-06-23T13:00:00.001+08:00

THE CLOSING PARTY! WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM

June 24 / bar opens 6PM

Featuring JED ESCUETA’S Unknown A.D. with live performances by

The Beauty of Doubt / Granada / Todas / Republika de Lata / Pink Cow / Einstein Chakras

Sometimes, we never really realize that those feverish delirious bouts of spontaneity could ever reach their plateau. Perhaps the temptation to be divine and immortal are to blame. Or even the comfortable proximity of weekly debaucheries which keep us hopeful despite the throngs of the ordinary workforce, to whom we also belong, forcibly incorporated to compromise play in exchange of those seemingly safe Friday night outs. It is hard to imagine how we have managed to take over the reigns of Friday in exchange for our anarchic Wednesday-hump-day love affairs. And as far as love affairs (the same way little get away adventures) are concerned, we all know that they too eventually reach that unbearable lightness. Some get married and the others move on to other adventures.

What started out as spur of the moment let's do this out of boredom affair has grown into much loved and awaited weekly gathering. A million thanks to all of you: doers, talkers, voyeurs and hangers-on alike. Not to mention those newly initiated virgins who also made our sober nights interesting. It's almost hard to believe that it's over–but it is, we are approaching the end. Not with sorrow, regret, melancholia, sentimental cheesy songs nor relief but with a party! What else?!

So join us as we close Jed Escueta's Mama Don't Take My Kodachrome Away with his final project Unknown A.D., an arduous photo documentation of the all around Pinoy punk degenerate and underground scene accumulated over the years. And yes to bid Wednesdays-m-Love a final adieu. To all of you who have patiently followed it and to some of you who have never made it. Nevertheless, we will agree that the ride was indisputably a big one for the books. So we all better be there!!! Catch the live performances of The Beauty of Doubt, Granada, Todas, Republika de Lata, Pink Cow and Einstein Chakras. This is your last chance to make it. Never say die for tomorrow we drink!

The WOP Residency Progran is suported by Arts Network Asia. www.artsnetworkasia.org http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone/Fax 7941628 Mobile 0926 6635606

greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

Word of the day.

2009-06-02T16:42:00.003+08:00

New-brainer. n. [noo-breyner]. Something particularly difficult to accomplish, it requires a new brain, esp. one undamaged by alcohol abuse. Antonym: no-brainer.

Happy albeit rainy Mondays, despite the song.

2009-06-01T14:00:00.001+08:00

Featured readers for the 54th, advent-of-the-monsoon edition of the bi-weekly Happy Mondays Poetry Nights @ mag:net cafe Katipunan TONIGHT, June 1, @mag:net cafe Katipunan are as follows:

1. Totel De Jesus
2. Waps San Diego
3. JC Casimiro
4. Larry Ypil
5. Pocholo Goitia
6. Hussein Macarambon
7. Petra Magno
8. Mikael Co
9. Keith Cortez
10. Ramil Gulle
11. Mia Tijam

12. Jonar Sabilano

13. Allan Pastrana

14. Angelo Suarez
15. Emman Nobleza

(hosted by Drey Teran)

*plus other regular and surprise guest readers.

*readings start promptly at 7:30 pm followed by the Open Mic sessions @ 930pm-10pm.

*for those interested in reading during the open mic, we will leave a sign-up sheet with Rogel, the bar tender of mag:net cafe. please feel free to sign up and read your work. :)

10pm onwards, Happy Mondays BayawAcoustikZoundz featuring:

1. Jonar Sabilano
2. Waps San Diego

3. Roberto Nicolas

FREE ADMISSION the whole evening. Kitakits po tayo. :)

photo above courtesy of rlv.zcache.com

Nicolas Pichay and Khavn dela Cruz at Green Papaya 5/27

2009-05-26T12:39:00.002+08:00

PAPAYAPOST

WWW.GREENPAPAYAARTPROJECTS.ORG

HTTP://PAPAYAPOST.BLOGSPOT.COM

WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM, MAY 27 / BAR OPENS 6PM

JED ESCUETA’S FORGOTTEN NUTS TURN INTO TREES runs until May 30, PIRATE SATELLITE of NU 107 spins for the evening

ANDREA TERAN’S MONTHLY PERIOD READING features NICOLAS PICHAY and KHAVN DE LA CRUZ IN CONVERSATION

DAVID GRIGGS’ NEW YORK LONDON PARIS ROME MANILA CITY JAIL runs until May 30

Those ready to fill-in the blank notecards lying on top of the table have gathered enough dust to stand for years of memory accumulation. Along with the phone call missed, deadline that has passed, and unsent postcards. Perpetual motion covers up the little god-like details sitting in the feverish bed of habit and comfortable metaphors. Is there indeed no time to stop and smell the flowers? Or the freshly pressed morning coffee waiting in the kitchen? Like the mythical hunter occupied with capturing the horizon to take back home, time is a slippery animal to conquer yet also a nomad equally fascinated with predictable monotony. And its faithful followers determined to outrun it, only to be disappointed perhaps or mesmerized by the prey. Frozen, stuck in a moment but oblivious to its eventual end.

End is far from near but we hear it approaching as Jed Escueta approaches the second half of his residency his photo installation Forgotten Nuts Turn Into Trees is still up for those who have failed to catch it the previous week. And because we like quiet evenings that mutate into crazy evening gatherings, Pirate Satellite of NU 107 joins us to spin the evening away. If you thought that was all, there’s more! Andrea Teran’s Monthly Period Reading returns all dressed up, prim and proper. Then maybe not. Tomorrow catch filmmaker-maverick-indie-man-of-the-world artist Khavn de la Cruz and award winning playwright Nicolas Pichay in conversation with each other as they wrestle the world of narrative, drama, cinema or even each other. See you, see you its another Wednesday to be in love!

The Wednesdays Open Platform residency is supported by Arts Network Asia www.artsnetworkasia.org

David Griggs's residency and exhibition is supported by Asialink and The Australian Embassy in the Philippines

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone 0926 6635606

greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org

www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

What we don't talk about when we talk about writing.

2009-05-16T04:54:00.005+08:00

(Apologies to Raymond Carver, for paraphrasing his title.)

There are many things we don't talk about, when we talk about something; whether because we agree not to, or disagree and therefore don't.

I was once asked in a survey-of-sorts, "What do people not talk enough about?" And I had answered: the female, and how her biology does her in. I, at that time, was dealing with my own body and its little failures, specifically, and with feminism and its own failures, generally. Another person would have a completely different answer, I'm sure. (One male, at least, might think that all females talk about are their bodies.) But my point is, there are a multitude of things we don't talk about. There are things we dislike to talk about. There are some things we are embarrassed about. There are things we don't know. There are things we don't know we don't know. There are things we fear.

So we choose our battles, right? Yes. We arm ourselves with as much information as we can, and we talk about what is important to us, we fight for our positions; we say what we want to say.

This is not the case when we write.

Oh, there have been many talks on this. How the written work is like a child you let go into the world or something. How the author is dead. Formalism. The workshop setup. The inevitable. My own favorite is Resil Mojares' take on the written work as "artifact". Where the author is not just dead, but a million years ago. Artifact you happened to because you were looking, or you stumbled upon it. And working with what is in front of you because there might be nothing else, or digging further when you want it to tell you something. Or imagining the rest, because that's all it affords you.

I wrote a bad prayer-poem some time ago, where I remember hoping for "my life its own story, and my poems a life of their own." Despite the many failures of that particular work, this is my fervent hope, still. The word artifact, in itself, already contains this hope, this prayer, as in its original Latin arte factum, it means "made with skill." This is all the talk we are afforded when we write: Here is something I made with all the skills I possess. That's it . We cannot plead to its readers, Be kind, nor can we simply instruct it to get up on its feet once it has been trodded on. We have to gather the words, put them back together. Learn what we have to, hope for the best. Here is something I made with all the skills I possess. Over and over. Again and again.

There is another side to that hope, too: That once I let a piece of writing go, that I let it go absolutely. The letting go of a child analogy is perhaps too kind; it is rather a disowning. That poem or story, once let go, has no more to do with you except for the byline. That's all your relation to that work: that name. "The I is a dramatic I," according to Sterling Brown, and Adrienne Rich adds that "so, unless otherwise indicated, is the You." I is not I, and You is not You. Simple enough, yes? And yes, we talk about this. And in the disowning, there is no pleading or instructing You have nothing more to do with me, You are alone now. We know this.

Not enough, I say. Not enough like we talk about the author, not enough like we insist the I has to be Her, no other way. Not enough like we like our dose of chismis, of intriga. We know this, too.

I once read a poem about sex to group of writers where, after I had finished, some people started to chant, "Non-fiction! Non-fiction!" They were not clamoring for a non-fiction piece. At least, not in the way that indicated how they would've preferred the latter to my poetry. They were wanting more, along the lines of stories on sex, provided of course, that it was no longer "disguised" into poetry, or fiction. As if this is what we do: take apart, tear, mince up events in our lives sufficiently for "anonimity" and throw them together in a buket, like so much fodder. For the pigs. And these are the writers, I think to myself.

So yes, we talk about our works, our poetics, what we write about. We talk about why we write. There are a lot of things we talk about, when we talk about writing. Isn't it time we let our writing talk for itself?

the merry month of may

2009-05-11T23:14:00.007+08:00

not for my neighbor, obviously. i'm speculating she or he recently broke up with someone. how do i know?

here's her/his soundtrack of late:

week 1: some Usher breakup song, from the album Confessions
week 2: How am I supposed to live without you? Michael Bolton
week 3: Just Once James Ingram

there's definitely a movement here: guilt, depression, regret. 2000s, 1990s, 1980s. my own movement has been this: amusement, pity (really now, Michael "the mullet" Bolton?!), and now, murder.

and i know it would be rather generous of me to try and understand her/his pain. but what about mine? going on week 4 now, and it's currently back to the same Usher song, the one where he screams, "Noooooo-oh-ooooh. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no." over and over and over. (and so close too: i might have been forgiving if s/he hit the 70s. lots of good songs, the 70s.) and really, night after night after night now: her/his pain is literally mine.

i bet we're both asking the same question even: when will it stop???

if ever he hits the 70s (well, '69, actually), here's what i would suggest. for both our sakes:

Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away

--Gimme Shelter, The Rolling Stones

Once more with feeling: The world is just awesome!

2009-04-30T09:16:00.004+08:00

Yes, yes, I am late, but I don't have TV (most of the time). I have been immersing myself in all the geek channels, and I've just discovered this:

I love, love, love Discovery Channel's "The world is just awesome" campaign. Brings out the E(nvitonmental) S(cience) major in me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but it's true! Deal with it. Hahaha.

"I love egyptian kings."

"I love the whole world!"

I love Bear Grylls.

I love Mike Rowe.

I love the Mythbusters.

I love Nat Geo, too.

I hate Animal Planet.

I wish I had cable TV.

I used to say, especially after I began to explore writing and the arts and (a little bit) regretting my science background, that BS stood for two things. I don't believe that now. After all, if science isn't the antithesis of bullshit, I don't know what is.

Sing it with me, "I love the whole world!" Boom de ya ya. Boom de ya ya.

A Letter Home

2009-04-28T04:32:00.002+08:00

These paper walls

Someone had told me, was because Japan was prone

To earthquakes, and people had to deal

With shattering, the fall.

And how apt, I think now

These white sheets, the raised fibers

Like scars, the learned lessons.

The green of the tatami like leaves on the floor,

Except always fresh.

The whisper of sliding doors—

You remember. We couldn’t sleep once, Mang Jun going crazy, yelling at his TV. I knelt at the window to peek through the curtains but all I could see was a shifting blue light.

Our leaving like a sigh leaving

Our tired bodies before sleep.

Sometimes I dream about who lives now

In our old house. Here, spring to autumn

Everything is a-falling—

Sometimes I dream of how that light would flicker on his face, becoming green, yellow, blue. He is quiet then, in my dream, but the light shifts his expressions: pain, loneliness, the sigh, the anger.

Dead flowers, dead leaves.

Or how it could be empty

Light and shadow walking through its walls

All the silences between.

Those walls! I suddenly remember

The white-wash, the concrete cold and silent.

Those walls our country understands;

Sturdy like anything

That carries weight.

Response

2009-04-14T11:35:00.007+08:00

Perhaps because I have been unknowingly baptized into the Catholic faith recently*, these are all about response. Mine, anyway.

Light, or years later
aaaaaaaEs en corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-- Pablo Neruda

Forgetting is only so long, Pablo
as it takes to forget.

Yet, if I regret my silence then
would you, that last sad poem?
and if this should have kept us
nights begrudging the stars their company,
the wind its infidelity--

What now, but certainty
of love and lament, their brevity,
and the fact of distance
between sight and star?
(Look now, how cold they are.)

Let the wind blow where it can feed
Time will take only the time it needs.

That Secret
aaaaaaaHow do they do it, those who make love
aaaaaaawith out love?
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--Sharon Olds

Sex I've had, and more often good
But love I've held at arms' length.
My elbows unlock, I wish they would
That I might hold and be held if it meant
Even better sex, like the stories could
Tell--that is, if truth were their bent.
But older now, I can only conclude
These books, they've lied to us women.

Still a drink or two, of wine, I think
Will get me, at least, to your bed.
There's no need for the dance, or romance--
Some sheila (Or was it Sharon?)
Claimed the chase as pure religion--
Sex without love: I take what I can get
So don't worry about my rep.
That secret's out, and shouldn't be kept.

-----------------------------------------------------------
*
I was at Easter Mass, for the first time, last Sunday. I had no idea there would be a renewal of the the baptismal vows. Honestly, it felt like a mass wedding, with everyone saying I do all at the same time. And who was to know that the girl on the third pew has never (and I mean never) been baptized in the Catholic faith? in any faith for that matter? Well, that secret's out now.

I could've walked away, I know. But welcome is welcome. And it felt right, on both sides. I just feel silly, thinking all the people in the Church that day were my, well, kinakapatid or something. Haha.

And perhaps because the only place the holy water hit was my left hand, I can stop feeling guilty about wanting to write, and write about, all these things. Poetry, after all, is not a luxury, as another Lorde once said.

Weight without gravity

2009-04-02T02:28:00.011+08:00

aaa1
There is no weight without gravity.
But matter and weight have come
To mean the same things:

What keeps our feet on the ground, what pulls
At clouds to return to sea, why we fear
The fall.

We have assigned them, too
To other things: meaning
and burden.

Weight no longer belongs to the body.

aaa2
My mother's weight keeps her pinned
To this hospital bed, chained
By our fears, by all she has to fight.

She is her body now more than ever.
The pressure of her hand in mine
A collection of mere molecules--

Matter acted upon by gravity.
And I waver at the edge of You and
This is not you, I tell her.

The weight of our worry pulls the water from her eyes.

aaa3
I do not fear the words dead, weight.
The part of my mother I wait to waken
Weighs nothing and means all.

Iwa Wilwayco at GP 3/25

2009-03-23T13:11:00.003+08:00

ERRATUM: Tomorrow's WOP Writers in Conversation will feature Norman Wilwayco, interviewed by Mikael de Lara Co.

MONTHLY PERIOD: WRITERS IN CONVERSATION

NORMAN WILWAYCO AND JUN CRUZ REYES

MARCH 25, 2009, BAR OPENS 7PM

Current WOP resident MARTHA ATIENZA takes a back seat as she gives way to ANDREA TÉRAN’S Monthly Period: Writers in Conversation featuring activist from the gutter NORMAN WILWAYCO and venerable Pilipino novelist/academe JUN CRUZ REYES.

Norman Wilwayco delivers drugs, sex, (more sex,) and rock-and-roll, as he and fellow multi-awarded writer Jun Cruz Reyes dissect the Palanca-award winning novel Mondomanila in yet another edition of Monthly Period: Writers in Conversation. The conversation will also focus on Wilwayco’s writing genius after taking the revolutionary road and eventually bagging the grand prize for his recent novel Gerilya in the 2008 Palanca Awards. Risking hosting chores during this volatile and mind-crashing evening is WOP program director Donna Miranda.

Norman Wilwayco, aside from being a multiple Palanca award winner plays bass for a rock and roll band, writes for Filmless Films, and designs websites (Radioactive Sago Project.) He used to write for the popular television show Batibot and has contributed articles to Liwayway, Manila Times and Inquirer. Jun Cruz Reyes, multi-awarded writer and outstanding faculty, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature of the UP-Diliman College of Arts and letters. He won the First Prize in the 1998 National Centennial Literary Contest for his novelEtsa-Puwera, and the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle in 2000.

I want a fight.

2009-03-07T16:46:00.004+08:00

Why the hell not, and why not here?

So I have this thing, this medical thing which leads to a series of events, both now past, and future. One of those now past events is me getting a healthcare plan which approximately cost me 14k for the year. Versus yet-unforeseen costs, this is good, right? Harsh buzzing sound. No.

Because these healthcare people live for the fine print. They positively live on those shitty things. So now, I discover that my healthcare won't be covering my whole medical thing. Because of a technicality, where my diagnosis came two weeks early. Can you believe this? Healthcare is a matter of convenience now? And theirs alone, at that.

Now I want my money back. Now, I want a fight. Now, I want to say, if you're not going to give me my money's worth, then don't get my money. If you want to just get money from healthy people so you won't have to shell out a dime, then fucking do every single fucking test there is and tell them they're not eligible, then don't get their money. But you don't. And you want to know what I know why this is? Because you can see your sales plummeting, don't you? Well boo and two fucking hoos.

Now let me tell you: Bullshit. This how-things-are-done, shrug-them-off-and smile approach is bullshit. And that thing's bound to piss someone off. And it will lead to a fight. And I will fight. Because these things shouldn't go on uncontested. Because, corny as it fucking sounds, this is true: they get away with it because we do nothing.

And I will do something. And it's not just me. THIS, you can take to the fucking bank.

Magda-drama ako. You've been warned.

2009-03-05T23:18:00.009+08:00

The sun was just setting, but bright enough still; the summer to sear your eyes, the blue bluer not for Ateneo, but because it was a clear, clear day and the gold of the setting sun made everything brighter, somehow, fresher: like the stark contrast of sudden light in darkness. One thing was clear to me: I don't belong there anymore. I was no longer student, teacher, of the academe. Of that place. And I miss it.

Watching L.'s class go through powerpoint reports, performing in front of their classmates and teacher and me, or giggling inappropriately to combat stage fright, or picking up where the partner trailed off because one knows the answer, I envied them. The students, the teacher, the ID that was still valid and that said, I am a part of this.

I don't miss being a student--the deadlines, the pressure of March, the exams--, and I don't (for now) want to be a teacher again. But I walked from the Library up to the CTC building, and I am a stranger to the place. I quickened my steps because I didn't want to meet anybody and have them ask why I was there. I saw a Librarian I had dealings with many times as a student, he was going down the steps perhaps to the smocket (I've seen him there, too), and he didn't recognize me. I worried a guard would stop me and ask for an ID. I missed the place, and it wasn't mine anymore. I have my memories of it, but it had none of me.

I left Ateneo--or the academe for that matter--because I wanted... What? Experience, I guess, and truth, and reality. But as my meeting earlier in the day illustrated, the real world deals mostly in denial, and non-responsibility, and questions that are not the point. At a certain part in that afternoon, I looked out the window, and saw the steel beams on the SEC C 3rd floor afire in reddish gold from the sun. I stole out the room for a quick minute to see if I could catch it set, but I was blocked by trees and concrete. I rushed out of the room to catch a sun that sets on the same bay everyday where I work, the same sun that sets in fiery red-gold, right in the middle of my street when I'm walking home on the weekends. What made me think this one, today, would be different?

In the middle of the class, L. handed me a copy of the poems of his student the physics major, and they were brilliant. Quiet, but firm, gritty, but not brittle; a little awkward, but plenty certain. Certain of his world, and the world before him.

I imagine he doesn't question his place, or the sun for that matter. Instead, he says, Let there be, and it is.

TONIGHT at Green Papaya FEB25

2009-02-25T13:44:00.007+08:00

CONNECTING URBAN SPACES / WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM

ARTS NETWORK ASIA (ANA) INTERPHASE

MEDIA ARTS MANILA (MAM) FIELD TRIP

FEBRUARY 25, BAR OPENS 7PM, ANA RECEPTION AT 8PM, MAM FIELD TRIP AT 9PM

Surely it has been said many times over that nothing lasts forever. No matter how strongly we delay such encounter, it is also at the same time inevitable. But endings are nothing but mere temporal constraints, fluid at the same time malleable. The means to transgress the boundaries will persist but not to be approached without caution. Mark Salvatus caps off his two month W.O.P residency, delivering a state-of-the-metro sorts for his last presentation. And because we like things to be auspiciously arranged according to the arbitrary arrangement of planetary constellation, be prepared for a hearty evening of talks, presentations, food, booze and sound as Arts Network Asia (ANA) throws a little reception for the evening. Lastly, Media Arts Manila (MAM) pays us a little visit with an excursion of field recordings and soundscapes of corporeal and imagined environments. So do pay us a visit, there is much in store for everyone in the family.

FIELD TRIP

field recordings and soundscapes of corporeal and imagined environments

February 25 (Wed) 9PM

FREE ADMISSION

The M.A.M. tour bus stops over at the Green Papaya Art Projects and ushers us through an acoustic safari of feral atmospheric fauna.

Featured artists present their original phonographs, creating immersive environments through the manipulation and playback of captured ambient sounds.

autoceremony, Blend:er, Grnd Ctrl, Mark Laccay, Mannet Villariba serves us their own brand of improvised acoustic ecology.

Improvised video by Edsel Abesames and Tad Ermitaño.

Presented by Media Arts Manila (http://mediaartsmanila.blogspot.com/) in cooperation with Green Papaya Art Projects, supported by Globe.

Green Papaya Art Projects

41B T. Gener St. (corner Kamuning Road), Quezon City

Phone 0926 6635606 0918 9457387

Because it is finished.

2009-02-25T12:45:00.004+08:00

Letter to a Mother

Let me tell you
I had dreamt of it too
Once my belly rounding with child
The O of surprise, pleasure
I had imagined too
That clutch of protest
Pain, the beginning
The tearing the leaving the gone

I have lost them
The right to the words
You have your father’s eyes
You take after me
And I shall no longer speak for you
You will say these things
I love you to the last
Because

Yours will be the voice
They hear before
And after all else
Your lips to move
The song the story
The kiss to silence.

So give me leave
To tell the first story
Because this is how it has always begun

Once there was a child.

A dog's life.

2009-02-22T20:49:00.004+08:00

My dad, having a penchant for ugly, literal names, called him Pudyot. Which in Hiligaynon, means to pick up, or sometimes, too, a small quantity. Somewhat like how pinch is in English. We've had a dog named Gansal, for example, for being too noisy; and a Gringo--that one, I remember, had an unusual reddish coat, and was with us right after the real Gringo was in hiding after the '89 coup.

We--my siblings and I--would bemoan these names. They were uncool, uncouth; never mind that these dogs were askals one and all. If we were lucky enough to get first dibs to name a new dog, we would christen them with English names, a little revenge against our father. We had Happy for a long time, due to a silly smile we thought we saw on her face the moment we held her, and a Sabrina, a beautiful dog with a shiny black coat. These names were all failures, by the way: Happy was one mean bitch, literally; and Sabrina--named after the teenage witch--didn't have any magic powers, and was the sweetest of dogs, not the hag Happy was.

But Pudyot was different. Someone had thrown a litter of puppies on an empty lot near our house, and just left them to die. All the neighbors took one puppy and brought it home. It was my mom--the same woman who hated pets, or at least keeping and feeding animals who won't feed you in turn--who surprised us all by telling my dad to get us one of the pups (provided it was male) as well. It was like the whole neighborhood, shocked by such cruelty, decided to band together and pick up these dogs. But after a few days, all but our Pudyot had died.

Pudyot was one weird dog. The first few days we had him, he was so starved he would eat banana peels, and garbage. The only time we ever let him out, he came back reeking to the high heavens of decaying matter. My mom blew her top, and everyone waited with bated breath what she would do. We watched her and waited with the puppy in the front yard for her verdict. We were ready to throw ourselves in front of the dog (our noses covered, of course), and save him a second time as she marched out the front door, muttering about filthy animals. She stomped past where we were huddled, and locked the gate: Pudyot was not to be allowed out of the house where he could go through the dump again. We were so grateful, we volunteered to give him a bath ourselves.

Pudyot grew up to be a small ugly dog, with no talent whatsoever. He looked like a Corgi with a short coat, and his ears grew outward instead of up, like Yoda's. Whenever we'd come home, he'd run to the gate quivering like a horse before a race, and wait for our cautioned "No!" before he'd jump all over us. He couldn't distinguish dogs from goats--he fought with the first and humped the second. We could never teach him to play fetch: whatever you threw at him he would chase, and bring back, but he would clamp it in his mouth and make snarling noises if you attempted to get it back for another round.

But we loved him anyway. He saved my mom's chickens from snakes and rats. He offered himself as a footstool whenever we'd be sitting outside, or he'd put his paws on the seat next to you, and just lay his head on your lap. He offered us tiny gifts of fallen leaves in his mouth whenever we'd come home. But just like the game of fetch, he won't actually give it. It was as if he loved picking up things, but couldn't let go. For the first time, we all felt our dad had hit pay dirt. Pudjie, as my sisters and I call him, our little puppy boy, lived his name.

Today, around 8:00 PM, Pudyot got out through the gate while we were taking out the garbage. He crossed the highway near our house and got hit by a car. He would've been five years old in April. My dad picked him up, and brought him home, for the last time.

The finish

2009-02-18T00:31:00.005+08:00

is good. Like tired at the end of the day, and not at the start of it. I have been both, tired and finished, but it is the day's turn now. Now, I am ready to let it sleep, and willing that it wait and let me, tomorrow.

To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue. (Proverbs 16:1)

Isn't it lovely?

Coup de grace.

2009-02-15T22:35:00.005+08:00

I might have lost my mind, but let me try, okay? Here goes:

The problem with language is its communal logic. Language abides by rules that are first, and last, universal. I mean unbreakable. Shared, strong as links on a chain. First of course are the rules of spelling then grammar, and meaning--these are the initial links. Spelling must be agreed upon, vocabulary shared, then sentence structures. These are the first agreements to be formed for any communication to come through.

If it happens that these rules are broken, they are broken for a purpose, say, heightened, tightened meaning, flair. And thus the figures of speech. And it happens too that the breaking of the rules leads to a shared meaning, like an agreement or a contract. Then comes the idiom, the cliche. Like mending chain links, fences, sewing a tear on the net, embroidery. But whatever happens, in language, one must agree to agree. This is the fast rule.

You see, I was thinking earlier about sculpture. Or how I imagine sculpting to be. So I take this invisible clay in my hands and I think, I want it to say, "Bear". And the success of my sculpture lies in the agreement of what a bear looks like, which should pass the judgment of those who have seen an actual bear. Or if I had made something that that looked like a weight, then perhaps the viewer will go, "Ah, bear as in verb." But if I had made something that did not in any way resemble both bears, then I imagine my viewers will reject my "Bear".

But see, this is why I am not a sculptor. (For all I know, sculpting is not how I imagine it to be.) My clay is not clay, it is words. And unfortunately for me, language has a communal logic.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

Incoherent in Manila

2009-02-10T01:06:00.003+08:00

I've just been to Cebu for a writers workshop, two days of non-stop words--spoken and written--, and in two languages (three, no, four! if you count me speaking in Tagalog and Hiligaynon with a Bisaya accent).

I left in the middle of a busy week at work--wala ko labot! But now I might be paying for it. Now, all my words condensed into powerpoint presentation syntax, mere hints really of full paragraphs of cause-and-effects, whys, and consequences.

Not that there is any regret. L. will attest to the single sentence that made it all worth it. Ask him to testify. Ask me to ask him to testify.

Do you understand? It doesn't matter. Love na ito.

Un/fortunate that I love both writing and my work and there is only time for one at a time. Haay.

She said it: Why I love poetry

2009-01-31T23:57:00.004+08:00

Poetry
by Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
aaaaaaall this fiddle.
aaaReading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
aaaaaadiscovers in
aaait after all, a place for the genuine.
aaaaaaHands that can grasp, eyes
aaaaaathat can dilate, hair that can rise
aaaaaaaaaif it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
aaaaaathey are
aaauseful. When they become so derivative as to become
aaaaaaunintelligible,
aaathe same thing may be said for all of us, that we
aaaaaado not admire what
aaaaaawe cannot understand: the bat
aaaaaaaaaholding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
aaaaaawolf under
aaaa tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
aaaaaathat feels a flea, the base-
aaaball fan, the statistician--
aaaaaanor is it valid
aaaaaaaaato discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make
aaaaaaa distinction
aaahowever: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
aaaaaaresult is not poetry,
aaanor till the poets among us can be
aaaaaa"literalists of
aaaaaathe imagination"--above
aaaaaaaaainsolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
aaaaaashall we have
aaait. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
aaathe raw material of poetry in
aaaaaaall its rawness and
aaaaaathat which is on the other hand
aaaaaaaaagenuine, you are interested in poetry.

Green Papaya this Wednesday

2009-01-27T12:06:00.003+08:00

PAPAYAPOST
WWW.GREENPAPAYAARTPROJECTS.ORG
HTTP://PAPAYAPOST.BLOGSPOT.COM

OKS-NA-OX
Wednesdays Open Platform celebrates the year of the OX with MARK SALVATUS’ URBAN PLAN, and ANDREA TERAN’S MONTHLY PERIOD READINGS with guest Neo-Urban Planners KRISTOFFER ARDEÑA (photo installation), JAY PACENA (video), MANNET VILLARIBA (video ), and WESLEY VALENZUELA (poster installation), and Writers in Conversation with MABI DAVID and MARK CAYANAN.

Feeble attempts to conjecture cosmic collisions and astrological fluctuations should be shamelessly dismissed as purely superstitious. In no way can the backward movement of Mercury towards the sun affect interpersonal communication, business, travel and the like. Delays and introspection are of course, caused by more sinister emergent events such as a freak road accident, broken alarm clocks, crowded commuter trains, engine trouble, a new US president, police raid or even the partial eclipse of the sun.

Still the only thing that can derail utopian visions of urban life can come from lack of inspiration or sleep, perhaps. So come over this Wednesday as we continue to sketch the cities we love most as Mark Salvatus invites Kristoffer Ardeña, Jay Pacena, Mannet Villariba and Wesley Valenzuela for another weekly affair. And because nothing is ever enough, Andrea Teran's Monthly Period Readings comes back after a two-month hiatus (thanks to that overdrawn holiday back in 2008) hosting Writers in Conversation between Mabi David and Mark Cayanan. As usual we expect you to beat that midweek hump, see you on Wednesday.

http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com
www.artsnetworkasia.org

The audacity of hope, indeed.

2009-01-21T01:36:00.008+08:00

Prayer

That I would like to believe again.
That I would believe again. And hope
To live in pursuit and protection of that faith.

As seamless as speech moves
From the simple to the poetic, and poems
From the lyric to the declaration,
My thoughts from Your work to my work—
Let me now move.

If mine is to be the unnamed, unheard, unread—
Let it not matter. I believe,
And let that be its own virtue, its own reward.

My life its own story, my poems a life of their own.
This is all I ask, and all
I will give.

When I believed her.

2009-01-20T22:10:00.003+08:00

At a Bach Concert
Adrienne Rich, 1951

Coming by evening through the wintry city
We said that art is out of love with life.
Here we approach a love that is not pity.

This antique discipline, tenderly severe,
Renews belief in love yet masters feeling.
Asking of us a grace in what we bear.

Form is the ultimate gift that love can offer--
The vital union of necessity
With all that we desire, all that we suffer.

A too-compassionate art is half an art.
Only such proud restraining purity
Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart.

***
Behind the Motel
Adrienne Rich, 2004

A man lies under a car half bare
a child plays bullfight with a torn cloth
hemlocks grieve in wraps of mist
a woman talks on the phone, looks in a mirror
fiddling with the metal pull of a drawer

She has seen her world wiped clean, the cloth
that wiped it disintegrate in mist
or dying breath on the skin of a mirror
She has felt her life close like a drawer
has awoken somewhere else, bare

He feels his skin as if it were mist
as if his face would show in no mirror
He needs some bolts he left in a vanished drawer
crawls out into the hemlocked world with his bare
hands, wipes his wrench on an oil-soaked cloth

stares at the woman talking into a mirror
who has shut the phone into the drawer
while over and over with a torn cloth
at the edge of hemlocks behind the bare
motel a child taunts a horned beast made from mist

*****
Haay.

A moment of silence.

2009-01-05T23:30:00.001+08:00

Prayer
by Francisco Arcellana

CLOSE all open things, Lord.
Open all closed things.

All those who have long received, let them give.
All those who have long given, let them receive.
All those too long apart, let them come together.
All those too long together, sunder them.

Let the wise be fools for once, Lord,
And let the fools speak their minds.
Affirm the long-denied, Lord.
Fulfill the unfulfilled.

One more day

2008-12-19T10:28:00.003+08:00

until home.

i am swamped with leftover work, and chores, and last-minute shopping, and goodbyes to friends. But oh, by this time tomorrow i swear not to swear at how difficult it is to get a cab, the traffic, the lines at the airport, how much longer the wait.

i talked to my dad yesterday and he said he had cleaned our old room for us, my sisters and me. he was tired but happy he said. i know i said. i know exactly.

l. was worried about how weird the cats were acting a few days ago. a sign of an earthquake we were wondering. but he is home now. so are d. and w. i am just doing every to-do left in my list, checking the boxes, counting the hours.

Facts versus Romance, v.2

2008-12-11T03:12:00.010+08:00

It was my first writers workshop. I had just come back from Japan six months back, putting an end to things yet unfinished, this another fit and start, another island. Everyone knew everyone else, either from school, or a previous workshop. And they quoted poetry to make their point, they chorused at all the famous lines by the famous poets. I knew them by name, the poets and the fellows. I didn't know the rules. It was like being the new girl at school again I thought.

I was arrogant of course. That's survival. If this didn't work out, it would be just another start: tried on for size but did not fit, one of many. I was beginning to think myself a quitter--or forever the scientist. This another experiment to find out yes or no.

***

"Yes, it is," the light seemed to say on the balcony seven floors up the building where I used to live. It was white now, that single CFL bulb. It was yellow seven years ago and incandescent; I had begun to write in my journal again, all the while thinking about being seven floors up and how quick the fall.

I stood across the street staring at that balcony for some time. I had been walking home, it was midnight. I could see it, midnight in another time: The little black table, its surface pocked with rust, the grey pages of the journal, the green cloth of the folding chair that cupped my butt like a chute but was hell on my back. My left hand cramping trying to write as fast as I could think, my right hand holding a cigarette. The smoke rising then curling and curling unto itself. Funny but whenever I'd look down from that balcony then, (a morbid anticipation of the possible out-of-body experience sure to follow,) I would always see shards of red clay and soil held together by thin yellow roots like hair, the green plant. Why is it still green I had always wondered. Where's the body?

I crossed the street and looked down on that spot now and, though I felt foolish, swept my foot over nothing on the floor. A quick swipe like trying to look for something in the sand.

***

"Because there are so many things I want to say but can't. Or won't," this my nervous answer to the question why I write.

He was a fellow of the same workshop some nine years ago, and has been coming back to the island every year since. I imagine him throwing the question at a newbie every year and every time, catching her by surprise. He had the look of a professor despite being my age. It was the eyeglasses, magnifying patience more than his curiosity. At my reply he nods a meaningless nod, teacher-speak for That's not the right answer.

It was the first Friday of three, our first real night off where we could pretend to be on vacation, a week of the work over. We--fellows, facilitators, visitors--were at a bar a block from the hotel. It was dingy under the murky sky, incandescent bulbs hung like Christmas lights overhead, like fake stars. I look at them trying to think.

"What is your problematic," he tried again, and ruins my concentration. I try to spell the word in my head, still looking up. Is it with a -c or –que if it’s a noun?

*****

To be continued...

Four reasons: Mine but not mine.

2008-12-09T20:19:00.005+08:00

1. From Caye, from The Descent of Man, by T.C. Boyle

Orlando sets and checks lobster traps. All the men on the island set and check lobster traps. The traps are made of wooden strips, shaped like Quonset huts, a conical entranceway at one end. Bait is unnecessary. The lobster, scouting the margins of the reef, the sea chanting over him, will prowl around this trap until he finds the conical entranceway. He will scrabble into the trap, delighted, secure from attack. The lobster psyche takes solace in holes. When the traps are hauled the law requires fishermen to release any lobster whose tails is smaller than three inches, a seeding measure. The fishermen do not release the lobsters whose tails are smaller than three inches--nor do they take them to the market. Instead they twist off the heads, make a welter of the sweet curled tails, black against the frayed and blanched floorboards of their boats, carry the bloodless white meat home to their pots. Orlando tells me that the lobster catch is smaller this season than it was a year ago, and that a year ago it was smaller than the preceding season. I nod my head. Like the point of a cone I say.

2. From Hurricane, by Bob Dylan

Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much
It's my work, he'd say, and I do it for pay
And when it's over I'd just as soon go on my way
Up to some paradise
Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice
And ride a horse along a trail
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man into a mouse

All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance
The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed

Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder one, guess who testified?
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fools hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell
That's the story of the Hurricane,
But it wont be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he's done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

3. Pacemaker by W.D. Snodgrass

aaaaaaaaaaI
"One Snodgrass, two Snodgrass, three Snodgrass, four . . .
aaaaaaI took my own rollcall when I counted the seconds;
"One two three, Two two three, Three . . .," the drum score
aaaaaaShowed only long rests to the tympani's entrance.

"Oh-oh-oh leff; leff; lef-toh-righ-toh-leff,"
aaaaaaThe sergeant cadenced us footsore recruits;
The heart, poor drummer, gone lame, deaf,
aaaaaaThen AWOL, gets frogmarched to the noose.

aaaaaaaaaaII
Old coots, at the Veterans', might catch breath
aaaaaaIf their cheeks got slapped by a nurse's aide,
Then come back to life; just so, at their birth,
aaaaaaYoung rumps had been tendered warm accolades.

This kick-ass rude attitude, smart-assed insult,
aaaaaaThe acid-fueled book review just might shock
Us back to the brawl like smelling salts
aaaaaaMight sting the lulled heart up off its blocks.

aaaaaaaaaIII
I thought I'd always favor rubato
aaaOr syncopation, scorning fixed rhythms;
aaaaaaThought my old heartthrobs could stand up to stress;
Believed one's bloodpump should skip a few beats
aaaIf it fell into company with sleek young women;
aaaaaaBelieved my own bruit could beat with the best.

Wrong again, Snodgrass! This new gold gadget,
aaaSnug as the watch on my wife's warm wrist,
aaaaaaDrives my pulsetempo near twice its old pace--
Go, nonstop watch! Go, clockwork rabbit,
aaaKeeping this lame old dog synchronized,
aaaaaaSteady, sparked up, still in the race.

4. Epigraph I saw on the last chapter of a romance novel, which was really an epitaph on the monument of some Italian invalid:

I was well; I would be better; I am here.

Moon over you.

2008-12-04T00:01:00.004+08:00

Now showing in the Philippine night sky: A smiling face formed by the rare alignment of planets Venus and Jupiter and directly below it, the crescent moon. -- From the Inquirer, 03/12/08

Look at that waning moon
Smiling in her demise
Stars in her eyes
The little loon.

Has she always been
A woman, that lunatic?
Is that look automatic--
Eyes too bright and not too keen?

Faced with a great smile
Or a shiny bauble
Her brain starts to wobble,
Then collapses. Without guile

Then, without a single thought?
Tomorrow with the sun
The face is barren and dun
And with many disasters, pocked.

Then again the sun is always he
who tells the tale, and never she.

Yesterday

2008-12-03T23:05:00.005+08:00

Fall and break yourself
Walk away and leave the shards
But do not forget

(Apologies to Larry, for trying to copy)

When in doubt, waste time.

2008-12-02T13:55:00.003+08:00

1. If I were a doll, the accessories packaged with me would be:
A library and rec room with a big stereo. No ice cream maker and ice cream parlor for this Barbie! Wait...

2. I have a fear of:
Big, hairy... spiders.

3. What type of food do you eat at your grandparents house:
Uga or dried fish, lots and lots of fruits, tubo!

4. What did you weigh when you were born?
Less than what I'd like to lose now, probably.

5. What would you do if you were stranded on an island with the person you hate most?
How big is the island? I'll vote him off the island. Rape, murder, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away...

6. What would you do if you found out you had been cheated on?
Cheat on him too, with someone better-looking, and better in bed.

7. Do you stalk anyone on myspace?
Nope, I like to google google. I like to... Google!

8. I find the thought of childbirth:
Painful.

9. Next door to my house was:
Pen Medina. Seriously. I almost fell down the little canal leading to the house once, becase he was staring at me and I didn't want to look away first. He smiled.

10. My feet are:
Sooo ugly. Especially with the Polish/Indonesian-flag toenail. I really have to go to the salon.

11. My preferred style of jeans are:
Comfortable.

12. Why is your #1 your #1?
Because I always look out for it.

13. Know how to cook?
If I feel like it.

14. I am annoyed by:
Stupidity and insincerity and impoliteness.

15. What is the worst way you were dumped?
Over the phone. Because I cheated on him. According to him.

16. What sea creature scares you?
Jelly fish. Yes, from experience.

17. What color hair do most of the people you are around have?
Black. I would have said so when I was in Japan, too. But apparently, the Japanese are born with blond hair, that turn blue, or green, or purple (yes! purple) when they (especially the women) grow old.

18. What object have you broken most recently?
Hmmm. I sat on my glasses recently, but I guess they're unbreakable.

19 . Name one of the Spice Girls.
Britney Spears.

20. What was the last thing to make you cry?
The remaining balance in my bank account.

21. What are the stems on wine glasses for?
To hold with three fingers while your pinky is in the air.

22. My favorite shoes are:
Chucks.

23. Can you use chopsticks?
For anything other than eating? Nope.

24. Do you prefer beaches or forests?
Water trumps earth everyday.

25. What serial killer do you find most disturbing?
What serial killer won't you find disturbing? Okay... I'm getting bored na.

26. Who knows a secret or two about you?
Anybody who's willing to buy me drinks and keep them coming.

27. Have you ever burned yourself?
Who hasn't?

28. Who is probably talking a load of crap about you right now?
The me who's so bored she's doing this survey.

29. Where is your sister right now?
Which one? But probably both in school.

30. Do you believe that love lasts forever?
Not as long as this survey. Has it been a thousand years, darling?

31. What are you listening to?
Fiona Apple. Paper bag.

32 . What do you smell like?
What the fuck? Like freshly laundered linens. A meadow. The reddest rose. Vanilla ice cream. What the fuck?

34. Does anyone regularly tell you they love you?
God.

35. What's the most confusing thing for you?
That people think I look Indian. Would you stop it already?

36. Do you have any bad habits?
Why? What have you heard?

37. Did you ever wanted to be a teacher?
I have been a teacher.

38. What is your favorite color?
Okay. I quit.

39. Is there something that you're waiting for?
This.

I tag anyone who has the time.

Woman as woman

2008-11-30T04:17:00.004+08:00

Courage is the everyday word for it, but I really prefer valor. It connotes more a willingness, a determination, a battle, rather than just the luck-of-the-draw reaction to circumstance, to everyday.

I remember when I was younger, having a resentment of the most valiant picture of woman as mother. Why the mother? I asked. Never leader, president, soldier, worker, thinker. This is the 21st century and haven't we any gone further than being different from man because of a collection of reproductive organs? Biology, yes, renders the woman inferior every time, all the time: the monthly periods, the dysmenorrhea that renders one invalid, the risk of pregnancy, the question of abortion, career vs. family. Of these things, man has been spared.

And though I am not naive enough now to discount the un-feeling girl, the in-different woman--the one who will, without question, without second thought discount marriage, homemaking, the one who will say yes without hesitation to abortion--perhaps it is our biggest achievement to be able to carry life within us, to bear the weight and the pain, and to live with them always: the pain and the weight of creation, the nurturing, letting go.

Perhaps the ultimate feminism lies in motherhood, despite decades of fight. This might be our single claim to valor: that we choose to face the consequence, become aware of it, and deal with it to the best of our abilities, all the while knowing that we have no choice but to let go. Perhaps this is why all the stories begin like this: Once there was a child.

For my friend Ina, the most valiant of women.

Dear Diary,

2008-11-27T01:30:00.004+08:00

I saw Carlo today. Hahaha. You remember that commercial? Hahaha. Hotdogs, of all possible things. Galing nga eh, cos I had a hotdog sandwich din for dinner. Fits, diba? Tapos, tapos, I really did see a Carlo today! Galeeeng! Parang deus ex-machina. But anyway, that's not what I want to talk about.

Haaay, Diary, I am so tired. My legs are so heavy, they're logs. Hahaha, get it? Legs = logs? Hahaha. Oh my, I really have to stop explaining jokes. Writers are told you never explain the joke, but really, sometimes, that's the funniest part for me. Explanations are so funny. Sometimes I don't even listen to the explanations themselves. It's just sooo funny to ask for the explanation. You get what I mean? Of course you get it. You know me better than any other person. And you know that my secret ambition is to be a writer. A funny writer pa, that's my dream, diba?

But speaking of feet, today is such a "Murphy's Law" day. I mean, I'm tired, my legs are logs na nga (Hahaha, sometimes I kill myself! I'm sooo funny! Hahaha), and I take off my socks ready to crash on my bed, only to accidentally tear a toenail in the process. Clear hati pa! As in, in half! Murphy's talaga! No, no, it didn't hurt, but it's just so ugly now. Sooo ugly. I was planning pa naman to have my nails done this weekend. You know that the red polish is already chipping, so I really planned to have a mani-pedi this weekend. And now, this. Hati in the center. My big toe now looks like the flag of Poland. Or is it Indonesia? (Note to self: Google which flag it is.) So now, kahit magpa-mani-pedi pa ako, it's still gonna be ugly. I wonder if I can have the manicurista put fake nails on my big toe para to cover it up?

(Gosh! I sound so insecure and vain! I never want others to think that of me, no! That's why I wore yellow today. I read kasi in a fwd email na people daw who wear yellow know they're beautiful. So I want people to know that I'm beautiful, kahit, to be honest, I'm really insecure about my looks. But diba, like I always say, if I cannot be honest here with you, kanino pa? Diba, Diary?)

But, again, that's not what I want to talk about. (God, I really have to focus my writing. Remember what Mr. dela Cruz said? Topic sentence.) So, anyway, I went to the Green Papaya reading. It was Yol and Margie , and the host (some Indian-looking girl, I didn't get her name 'cuz she forgot to introduce herself, she just introduced Yol and Margie) said she chose the two daw for humor. And ang galeeeng, Diary, kasi they were so funny! Margie and Yol, so funny talaga, it was hilarious. What Margie read, "Yaya", it was so excellent. Especially her voice pa. And buti na lang she read it in that tone, kasi when I first read it on paper, by myself, I didn't get it that it was supposed to be funny. Akala ko actually sad sya eh. Akala ko super serious, like with class symbolism, and reflection on society kinda thing. But now I know it's supposed to be funny lang pala.

Si Yol din, funny din sya! Grabeeeh, buti na lang I was sitting on the floor, otherwise I would have fallen off my chair laughing. Hahaha! Yung binasa ni Yol, funny din! Like he was talking about dapat nagsusulat sya for his thesis, pero instead nagbo-blog sya. Tapos funny yung blog entry nya. Ateneo jokes pa lahat!!! I so get it, all his jokes, feel na feel ko na Atenista kami. Hahaha! Galeeeng! Sana walang taga-Lasalle sa audience, kasi baka na-OP sila, diba? Kawawa naman kasi di nila gets yung Ateneo jokes... Tapos akala ko pa when he was reading about giving blow jobs, akala ko sa kanya yun! Pero kay Margie pala yun! Na-shock nga ako 'cuz I thought hundi sya bading, tapos I thought, "Bading pala sya?" (kasi nga blow jobs yung topic, tapos lalake sya, diba?), tapos only to find out later on na kay Margie pala yun. So hindi sya bading.

Anyway, great, great, educational night. There were writers pa in the group, tapos medyo over my head na yung pinag-uusapan nila, pero great pa rin that entire night. Sorry lang nga ako kasi they were kinda lecturing na, tapos this guy Carlo (intelligent, well-articulated guy!) who was really asking good questions (kahit hindi na sya masyado nakikinig sa answers, pero intelligent kasi sya, Diary eh! Galing-galing ng guy na yun.) kinda shut-up na after the writers started talking. Especially si Indian-girl-host, parang, di ko talaga gets what she was trying to say pero her tone of voice was like she wanted Carlo to shut-up na. Kasi she wanted Yol and Margie to talk, so I guess I really can't blame her. Pero parang epal lang. Just because you're the host, doesn't mean you have the right to shut people up no! Some people talaga, no manners whatsoever.

Another bad trip is they kept talking about tone. Gets ko yung point ni Carlo talaga. All writing come from personal experience, and richer sya pag ganyan. But sabi nung iba dun, not necessarily daw. Tone daw can be achieved depende sa choice of words chorva-chorva. Pero hello! Tone of voice nga eh. Duh?! Voice!!! As in the sound that comes out of your throat when you talk? Kaya nga ang galing ni Margie magbasa. Mas na-understand ko yung work nya dahil sya talaga nagbasa. Personal experience talaga, that's what matters. Kaya nga ako nagsusulat dito sa journal, diba? To practice telling people about my stories. And it can be as simple as, "What happened to you today?", sabi nga ni Sir dela Cruz. I wish you were there, Diary.

Anyway, to get back to my point: I really did see a Carlo today! So winner, no? It circles around lang talaga, like a coiled cobra, head to tail! And that commercial was so funny pa, to boot. I want to write like that!

Haay, this is so long na. I'm so sleepy na Diary. I'll sleep na, ha? Thanks for always listening to me! See you tomorrow!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaGoodnight,
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaRhissa

Miyerkules na sa Green Papaya!

2008-11-24T23:24:00.003+08:00

WHO'S THAT GIRL? Green Papaya Wednesday-i'm-N-love monthly poetry readings
Wednesday (siyempre!), 26 November, 8PM.

We're featuring Marguerite de Leon and Yol Jamendang in conversation (conversion din pwede!). Anything and everything under the sun, nothing is sacred blah blah blah, including yayas, phone sex, Bayani Fernando, kahit pa Johnsons No Tears Baby Shampoo. And if all else fails, hubaran na!

Ang Green Papaya ay nasa 41 T. Gener corner Kamuning Road, sa QC. P30 = beer! Woohoo!

Music it is.

2008-11-23T01:42:00.003+08:00

One can really fool herself into thinking that symbols become the fact. Perhaps it's only the start, but nothing is never better. Not silence but music, someone told me. And the tune that's playing now, is not here to stay. Not lovely yet, but it's there.

Poet congratulates herself on a job well done

And shivers as the last
Syllables vibrate on the roof
Of her mouth

Somebody has yet to wrap
His tongue around her words
Make a present of it

For someone else.

#at

Now THIS is how it's done.

2008-11-14T04:30:00.003+08:00

SILENCE

So this is how it’s done: I watch her

2008-11-09T23:04:00.008+08:00

“If those wounds dry up, the words die with them.”
— Stephen King

So this is how it’s done: I watch her
fingers clutch at the scissors, bloody
from the one long slice to open up the fish,
the many pluckings to get rid of the bones.

She is quick and it looks painless
but then again
the fish won’t feel it,

The blood has long drained and the stains
on her hands, on the blades
could have come from any number,
any source--

I imagine it would take her as long to finish
this one, as it would me
to fork up a slice of the same fish—
to chew hesitantly, my tongue still
feeling around for the bones
she might have left behind,
to catch them with my teeth
push them out between my lips
and catch them with my fingers,

Wipe them on the side of my plate
before they could catch at my throat--

I pay her the extra ten to do this
I can afford it
and I don’t have the time.

***

No really, I don't have the time.
My watch says it's 9:47
too early for sleep, but too late for the coffee
I want, especially. At the back of my mind,
I have to wake up at 4:30.

Playing 'round and 'round my head
Please call me baby
but I have left my phone

At the house I couldn't stand
it anymore, so I took a walk.
I wished to God it would rain
but it never does, not like in the movies

or in the songs. It does in this one, because
We do crazy things when we're wounded, he sings
and I would've liked to cry
but I could never do that
in public, especially.
Except when it doesn't mean anything
and I would like it to mean

something. Like the one time
on the road and everyone's phone rang
except mine
other people looking for other people
and I wished to God for a phone call
even the one I didn't want

because I wanted to cry
and I wanted it to mean something
to be able to say,
So this is how it feels like
I wanted a witness.

Not others' but mine
captured like in the movies,
or in the songs. Not life
like taking a walk, buying that coffee
then coming home
to wait--It is one in the morning now--
to sleep.

***

She sleeps with her mouth open,
and I watch her
like she has something to say
I wait for it

But she never does, she's not one to talk
in her sleep or awake,
even then she is quiet

I have tried to decipher
the silences like overcast skies
or her bright talk when she does
the sudden movement of clouds
to let the sun through

Her moods not like the weather:
thunderstorms make her happy
or at least I think so
watching her

Pressed against the windows
mouth again open--
the fog of her breath on the glass
appear, disappear in rhythm
like the catch
and release of a heart.

Would you have a better tomorrow?

2008-10-22T01:12:00.000+08:00

Because free web-based email is, in my opinion, required to leak *some* spam email into your inbox (and vice versa, so you're forced to check your spam), I have a beef with how they deal with email adverts. (By the way, is spam made of pork? or does it fall under a whole different "meat" category?)

You might share some of this. Here is my current top 5:

5. Free Dell laptop. I already have a free Dell laptop. Whom I love. But, question: How come they never offer a free Mac?

4. Viagra. I don't need it, and I am not interested in any man (off the top of my head, anyway) who needs it yet. (Hmmm, wait. Let me think that over...)

3. Porn. Do I really need to see what Paris, Miley, and other stars have done over the weekend, and with a weiner, or a dog, or with an entire football team? No. I've had a discussion with friends over the whole [Put name of school here] sex scandal enterprise, complete with "visual aids" (for discussion purposes, of course), and they all cater to men.

2. 40s Christian dating. I have nothing against dating. Most of the time, I have nothing against Christians, either. But 40s? C'mon! That's just fucking insulting. The only reason it falls to number two is (1) I've only received it once, and (2) a day later and ever since, I only got spam for 30s Christian dating. I always, and I do mean always, appreciate people who do their research. Which leads me to the next:

1. Penis enlargement. Last I checked, hey! I don't have one! And last I heard, you don't just "magically grow" one. But what galls me is that they can't even be bothered with market research. I am woman, hear me roar. And no, I am not interested in any man who needs it either. (Hmm, wait. (Ha!) This last statement can be construed 1.5 times over. Just like the ad claim.)

But. There have been a few gems, and luckily, this one was sent to my inbox:

Dear sir/Madam:

Please allow us to disturb your precious time! We are the Chinese biggest foreign trade wholesaler. the company mainly sells, the digital cameras, mobile, the LCD TV,PSP,Xbox, the Laptops Notebooks, the Digital Video, Mp4, GPS,Electronics toy,and so on.If you want to products, we can sell you our products. If you have time,please visit our website, Please look our products.We will give you a satisfying answer. we hope we can set up a good and long cooperation relationship with you.
this is our website; <http://www.zgdsyw.com>
MSN: zgdsyw18@hotmail.com
Mail: zgdsyw@zgdsyw.com
Thank you for reading our the message, Would you have a better tomorrow!
Cheers!

It sure beats "Live long and prosper", doesn't it?

Thank you for reading my the post. Would you have a better tomorrow, I say to you.

Little blog of horrors

2008-10-01T17:01:00.003+08:00

Something I saw in an old blog which I never finished (the post, the blog is way, way over). Sounds familiar? But I don't know why I never clicked on [Publish this post], because having seen it again, it amused me no end. (Na-amuse sa sariling sinulat? Winner. Kaya nga "shameless self-promotion" eh.) And made me think about my idea of making an(other) anonymous-kuno, unlinked blog where I could... never mind. Here it is:

"So. I have a problem.

This blog was set up for various reasons: shameless self-promotion, posterity, etc, etc--and so I don't always run to my friends when I feel like ranting--but basically I wanted this to be a place where I can be honest and just be myself.

But I realize, there is no bigger bullshit than to just "be yourself." Just! Look how easy, Just be yourself! (Remember this tag line? It was popularized by the clothing store geared towards the ever impressionable, peer-pressure-able teen crowd.) We all have alternate egos, and you're a liar if you say any different. In my case, there's Drey-with-her-family, Drey-at-work, Drey-all-by-herself, Drey-with-friends, Drey-with-people-she-has-just-met. Perhaps there might even be a Drey-with-a-cute-guy alterego. And though we pretty much get along, it kinda gets crowded if I introduce every Drey to whomever I meet every time. Or if I attempt to mix-and-mingle with the whole gamut of categories. So.

What's the problem again? Who are you talking to? Which Drey?"

Nyahahahahaha.

Now I want to meet all of them Dreys I was talking about. Like an out-of-body experience where I observe all these little selves (Is this an Oliver Sacks essay, "Selves"? Someone else?) in action while spirit-Drey is floating overhead, arms akimbo, wearing an amused little smile. Occasional mutters of "What a crock of shit!" "Winner ang posturing!" and "Booola!" floating around in thought bubbles. All done with indulgent patience, like I imagine on my Mom's face when I told her I'd give her my first pay check as a little tribute. (She was kind enough not to laugh and blurt out a sarcastic "Right!" to my face.)

Hahaha. Tangina. Looking over old blog posts is (weird and a little too self-serving, yes) like listening to your family recount stories of past bloopers you don't even remember.

As a matter of fact, my mom actually scoffed at the offer, adding, "Tapos ano? Hingi ka ng allowance?"

Winner. Yun lang. Winner.

Octo-pussy.

2008-10-01T02:40:00.004+08:00

Why is it that when I'm rushing head-on towards a deadline, I find it so conducive to blog? I remember sneaking out of Japanese class to write, and now this. Someone had mentioned maybe it's a stand-up thing, you know, that that's the attraction of writing for me--the getting away from what I really have to do.

Not that this is a masterpiece. But. There are many reasons for this post:

1. The weather held long enough for the championship bonfire--But having rained before the whole thing left Bel field muddy. Some conversations:

Over the phone with A: Drey, you remember 2002? Your flip flops got sucked into the mud and you lost one of them?

I don't remember exactly, but apparently everybody does.

At the Bel field, meeting up with friends: Hey, you remember in 2002 when I lost my...
Unanimous response: We all know the story, Drey! We were laughing about it on the way here.

6-year improvement: My feet might've been caked in mud now, but I left with two pairs of slippers. Woo-hoo.

2. It's birthday month, and I'm turning 28.

Random birthday conversation #1
Him: Hey did you know a lot of people kill themselves when their age is divisible by 7?
Me: Knowledge is power, so it says. Not necessarily helpful, but powerful. Thanks. Really, thanks.

Random birthday conversation #2
Him: Ma'am, what's your birthdate?
Me: October --, 1980
Him: Ay, ako 1982.

New saying: Unnecessary knowledge is annoying.

3. I am redefining the six-degrees-of-separation theory by the number of returned results in Google. Example, you search for Nonoy Baclao, and this blog shows up at#3! Close kami, or what?

4. I just wanted to remind you my birthday's coming up soon. If you don't know when it is, then hindi tayo close.

5. This is not getting my work done. But it's a lot more fun.

6. May iban gid ya nga sugilanon, kung sa tuod-tuod lang. Pero indi diri. Hagara ko bala, inom ta. Kay i-istroya ko guid sa imo.

When the talk is of bonfires, then

2008-09-27T21:30:00.004+08:00

"Please be prepared for the possibility of rainfall"

is the most important thing to mention. But, here and now, it's just necessary fine print. Like anything can dampen our spirits now.

Work Break #1

2008-09-22T02:45:00.002+08:00

Anticipating no sleep for work is like asking to be distracted, to be taken away--

I am in the middle of an Excel worksheet, work I usually like, work that can usually consume my focus so completely, I forget where and when I am, like I am alone in the world and I don't mind it. I am in the middle of numbers and figures and I realize I am interpreting data that probably no one else has before, and I think to myself--If I write this up into a report perhaps I can submit it for publication, instead of condensing it into a presentation for the purposes of my work. And I think about it: I've done the research, I have the data, if I can analyze these into bullet points, then surely I can stretch it out, can't I? And I can submit it to a journal and should it get published, surely I can add that to my resume?

But this is not what I want to write.

Every hour or so into this work, I take a little break. Maybe light a cigarette, or drink my coffee-gone-cold, or get a glass of water. But always, I open this book I've decided to re-read for the nth time, read a chapter or so. And every time I say to myself, this is how I want to write. This is what I want to sound like when I write. And this tone now, this one I employ--too earnest, pleading, whiney even--this is not that tone.

I remember once I was on vacation in San Joaquin with some friends. We woke up at dawn to go to the beach, where the waves were like stone walls rolling towards the shore. I wanted to go for a swim, but everything that morning was hard: the light was a stone grey like slate, the wind cold, the beach full of rocks. And the barreling waves that despite all that want, that earnestness earned me nothing: I ended up sprawled, wet, defeated on the shore.

I think back to my favorite authors now, characters even, and I realize they are all men, macho men at that. And this is what I want to sound like? I am aghast, but this is true: Stripped of drama, pleading, hurt. Or at least, stripped of the wallowing such that everything becomes fact. This happened because of that. Consequence. A to B in a straight line, and detours may pretty it up a bit, but here. This is where you end up. Start to finish uncomplicated. If I follow this procedure precisely and I can predict the result. Like science.

And look at me now: Whether I took the time to write this, or decided to sleep the rest of the morning before Monday officially starts, or finished the book, the result is the same. I will have to deliver a presentation at 5pm tomorrow. And I will deliver it because I have to, and I know myself well enough that I will. Whether or not I will be proud of my work will obviously vary directly with the amount of time I have spent on it. But that is my story from now until then. A to B, and nowhere else to go.

No, I am not talking about fate, or destiny or karma. And no, this is not making me sad, or angry. This, I realize, is why I've always loved science. That precision and straight-forwardness. The following of rules the order of the day, guiltless. And not having to look for anything else, even escape.

There I was. Now I am here. And my break is over.

i heart nonoy.

2008-09-21T21:15:00.003+08:00

Ha! I'm not supposed to have time for this, given a presentation due tomorrow which I have yet to start--but, let me just repeat this: I love Nonoy Baclao.

And that block on meierhoffer at the end of the fourth, with ra-ra-rasputin ending up on the floor and Nonoy stepping over to growl over him... Yaaah. Help me, I'm melting.

Anyway. Here's a proposition: Nonoy, can I be your girlfriend for two weeks? I swear two weeks is all I'm asking for. Kahit post-season pa. My sister blocked this proposal with a mocking "He has a girlfirend, no?" but I'm like, so? Given for example, you've been together two years, what's two weeks? 14 out of 365, two out of 52, 1/2 out of 12. Surely this is not too much to ask?

You don't even have to introduce me to anyone, let alone your friends, or parents.

But of course, I'm being silly. And untruthful.

Fact is we plan to have a huge banner at game two: Pakasli ko, Noy!

If ever I've said anything remotely sarcastic in the past about proposals over the big screen during basketball games, I take it all back now.

Because I was stupid

2008-08-25T11:36:00.002+08:00

someone is now the new owner of a lovely N93i. Knock yourself out, bitch.

Point is, I will need to get another phone, not to mention another freaking number. So yes, I am currently out of service area, cannot be reached, unnattended, etc, etc, etfuckingc.

Have a nice day, everyone.

The you'll-never-see-in-Cosmo Quiz

2008-08-12T16:04:00.003+08:00

What is your geekoid factor?

1. My hair is ______
(A) Short and well-combed.
(B) Longer than acceptable.
(C) Necessary to keep my brain warm.

2. Glasses or Contacts?
(A) Contacts! Definitely more flattering.
(B) Glasses. No fuss, no muss.
(C) Glasses. They don't make contacts in my grade.

3. I don't leave home without __________
(A) My cell phone.
(B) My laptop.
(C) My TI-92.

4. Binary code is ________
(A) Something I will never use.
(B) The law that makes bigamy illegal.
(C) My mother-tongue.

5. Do you enjoy alcohol?
(A) Yes, once in a while.
(B) Yes, everyday.
(C) Yes, I like to disinfect every so often.

6. Boxers or briefs?
(A) Boxers. I like to move it move it.
(B) Briefs. Tightie-whities for the family jewels.
(C) Depends on my mom. She still dresses me.

Star Trek or Star Mall? Just how geeky are you? Check the comments section for analysis!

Zero is a perfect circle

2008-08-12T01:41:00.003+08:00

Because we fear being by ourselves
Yes became the language of love
And so we walk around wounded
Veterans of the splitting
That occurred in some philosopher’s head
Await the only answer but
Forgo the question and the quest

connect the dots.

2008-08-05T17:13:00.005+08:00

It's nearing 5:30 and I am still in the office. This is not bad, as I arrived past 10. But my brain, like the PICC aircon, automatically shuts down at 5. Below, 5 proofs of purchase.

*****
Random Question

F: 11 + 16?
A: 21.
F: Hindi kaya.
A: Ay. 17!

*****
Random Thought

You know how the phrase "blood drained between ___ legs" means so much different when you change the pronoun? Disgusting, yes. But I do have a point:

1: His brain stopped working as blood drained between his legs.
2: Her brain stopped working as blood drained between her legs.

*****
Random conversation in another time

F: Pero alam mo, if I could travel anywhere in the world, I'd go to Athens. Ikaw?
A: Prague na siguro.
F: Siyeeet...

*****
Random Chismis

P: Huy, nakita ko si J____ sa Gateway nung weekend.
A: Ows? So near my house!
P: May ka-date nga eh.
A: Ako yu--
P: Lalake.

*****
Random Phonecall

A: Hello, may I speak with the secretary of Senator ________?
S: Ay, sorry, wala siya dito ngayon.
A: Okay. Ano po yung pangalan nung secretary? Para siya na lang po ang hahanapin ko next time.
S: Ah, hindi ko alam eh. Basta hindi ako yun.

*****

Yun lang po. Bow.

Empty Chair

2008-07-22T10:55:00.003+08:00

This is how you can be stupid sometimes:

Sitting in a café, and the chair next to you is empty.

A stranger approaches you and your empty chair. He smiles, makes small talk, and you shoot the crap around for a while. You laugh; he gestures enthusiastically; you make it as if you’ve known each other for a gazillion years. Now, he laughs at some thing you say and you think, he’s actually pretty cute.

Finally, the moment you’ve been dreading comes. You almost see it in slow motion: He lays his hand on the back of your empty chair, asks if he could sit down and join you for a while. He smiles again—he is one good-looking asshole.

You feel the apology arrange itself on your face. You say that you’re waiting for a... friend, and that he is coming anytime soon.

The stranger removes his hand, a slow and controlled maneuver—not unlike how you made sure to enunciate the “he” that’s supposed to arrive soon. Now, he takes a step or two backwards. He says this has been good, that he really has to go anyway. That it was really nice talking with you, though.

You say the same thing, maybe with a little regret. There's nothing left, so you force a wave and he walks away.

You pay attention to your coffee now, maybe light another cigarette. You stay another hour or so, smoking, watching people go by.

And the chair remains empty right until the moment you get up to leave.

Death becomes her

2008-07-22T10:28:00.005+08:00

Every story has a beginning. This one, too. But how to begin with death? And why?

As a kid I loved the game show. How the answers were asked and the questions were the answers. What is jeopardy?

*****

I am writing this a month after I had turned 27. I am fascinated with November: How, in temperate countries the cold really begins to take hold, the leaves already falling, and everywhere almost a dead grey. Here, the weather remains the same: a series of sunny days or a week of typhoon rains or thick oppressive clouds that refuse to fall. Nobody really notices the weather. It’s the same day after day after day, until it changes. A different sameness.

Here November, too, is a month of death. Not that of the newly dead, or the dead that grow back with spring. Here, the old dead whose names have been said over and over in prayers, whose souls wear thin as nothing remains of them but scars on whitewashed stone—they are the dead we celebrate. The dead who can never come back.

I began this journal two weeks ago, on a morning I found myself with no sleep, awake at dawn, walking to church. It was a Saturday, the mass was for the dead. The priest kept on asking for prayers for our dear departed, our faithful dead, our dear, our departed, our dead. So I prayed for my brother, two grandmothers, a grandfather I had never met. The homily was on Jesus raising a dead man, and it told how all who witnessed feared Jesus; how later they praised him. Hosanna, hosanna on high.

Everybody prayed for their own dead. And nobody noticed the dead woman in the corner, kneeling, then standing; listening, then singing the hymns. And nobody feared what they did not know they witnessed.

Myself, I hadn’t noticed when I died. I was alive for a long time. I could have been dead for a long time. It was the same day after day after day. Until it changed into a different sameness.

==========================================================

A little something I had started working on late last year. And after the (uncalled-for!) remarks by L. and D. that I might actually be a closet fictionist, the monster is half-way out of hibernation. Let = sleeping = dogs = lie?

The trouble with torture

2008-07-17T13:29:00.002+08:00

is that it comes in entirely too many forms. And definitions change from one person to another.

Today, at the office, it came in the form of the "all-new" Journey with Pinoy Pineda on vocals (not that you can tell, he apparently is very good at karaoke), especially "Open Arms," played on loop. Three times now, since the past hour.

Good luck to my sanity, may it enjoy its travels elsewhere. I sincerely hope to see it back by the end of the day, when the last strains of "Don't Stop Believing" fade into the oblivion of the has-beens, that "highway run into the midnight sun" while "wheels go round and round..." Whatever.

Apparently, you can say L-S-S many, many times over, and without your toungue tripping.

*****
If I were more of an opportunist, I'd be charging a rental fee for my headphones, and by the fucking minute. I'd be rich, with my co-workers offering to pay twice the going rate for a 10-minute relief. But self-preservation comes first.

*****
It comes first, but obviously not fast enough.

The trouble with doors

2008-07-13T20:57:00.007+08:00

is they need knobs. These need not be locked, but can be locked. Which will then need keys.

The trouble with keys is they need to be carried about. Which means they can be left behind, or locked inside, or lost.

The trouble with keys left behind is you have to make sure someone's already home before you are.

The trouble with keys locked inside is you need to know how to pick locks, or break knobs, or break down doors. Or have someone do these things for you.

aaaaa The trouble with picking locks is that it's suspect. More so if aaaaa you have someone do it for you.

aaaaa The trouble with breaking knobs is you will need new ones. aaaaa With new keys.

aaaaa The trouble with breaking down doors is you end up with no aaaaa door. But then you will not need knobs. Nor keys.

The trouble with keys locked inside the rooms is you end up feeling stupid.

The trouble with keys lost is that doors have knobs. Which can be locked. Which will then need keys.

Free speech? Thank you very much!

2008-07-03T19:47:00.005+08:00

[Test? Mic test. Go na tayo? Okay. Eherm.]

*****

Distinguished guests: all of you who need to be mentioned by name and title and affiliation, and of course, in proper order of importance; ladies and gentlemen, friends, Romans, etc... Good day.

[I am honored to be delivering this speech in front of you (or at least, my speech writer says so) blah blah blah blah...]

Working where I work now, the concept of "free speech" has changed dramatically. No, I am not talking about not being able to speak freely, nor about its consequences or possible abuses...

Where I work, "free speech" means exactly that: getting a speech for free. Or in my particular case, writing a speech for someone else, for free.

I am not a speech writer, ladies and gentlemen. I cannot pretend to write a speech especially when I will not be the one to deliver it, and at the very least, when I am not knowledgeable of the tone my speaker has, or wants to have. If I am not aware of her tone, how will I know what words to use? If I do not know the extent of her vocabulary, how will I know she will be able to pronounce, much less recognize, say, "minutiae" (which I myself learned to pronounce properly only recently) or whatever-the-fuck? (By the way, can I use fuck with this audience?)

Most of all, I hate other people putting words in my mouth, and I expect other people do, too.

But, there comes a time when one has risen to unimaginable heights of power that one can no longer be concerned with speaking for oneself. Power, they say, begets responsibility. However, I have learned that to whom great power is given, whom is free to give others all the responsibility.

Since I am not one of those in the heights of power--And let me tell you now, I suffer from vertigo, and earlier today had to change my shoes from 4-inch stilettos to 2-inch boots--I get all the responsibility. Well, maybe not all, as there are a lot of rungs in the ladder between where I stand at 5'5" (and then only in 2-inch boots, mind you), and the "unimaginable" level. Nevertheless, 'di ba? (Sorry, Romans, "'di ba" simply means "isn't it so".)

So. As my foresight in changing shoes shows, I, at least, have saved myself the disgrace of falling flat on my face. That doesn't mean, though, that should the higher-ups discover this blog, I won't be condemned to the depths of hell. Or, at the very least, fired. (Hmmm, I wonder if "fired" didn't originate from thoughts of jobless hell...)

Thank you very much, for your attention; for allowing me to express my opinion (and it really is mine. All mine. Muahahaha.) on this matter, and in this small gathering. Again, have a good day y'all!

*****

[Heard offstage: "PAKSHET! What do you mean Romans don't speak English?!]

Word association = Yay!

2008-06-26T13:40:00.004+08:00

Word association = Oops.

I wanted to do a [Yay! / Oops.] thing here, but as usual, working with html [thumb].

*****
We had great fun last night at GP's goodbye gig at Maginhawa. We hope to open the new site at Kamuning with the Wednesdays poetry reading, too. Vince Serrano by Mabi David in July!

Kudos to Gelo, and Ricci for the great great conversations. Who'd have thought bad-ass Gelo used to be a ________ in high school?!? Ha! If you were there last night, you'd be privy to this best-kept secret too. Bleh. Word association clue? Rhyme and reason.

Anyway. Thank you, thank you, Gelo and Ricci. Last night was definitely in my [High Fidelity]. Or, will stay in my top five once we've had more than four of these featured readings. But seriously, it was fantastic.

Kudos too, to Donna and Peewee, for the great space at Maginhawa. We look forward to Kamuning!!!

*****

Okay this is it for now. [Einstein] not working.

Wednesdays-I'm-N-lalalalaLOVE

2008-05-27T12:43:00.004+08:00

Wednesdays I’m-n-love
MONTHLY PERIOD POETRY READINGS AND OPEN MIC FEATURING JOEL TOLEDO IN CONVERSATION WITH MIKAEL CO WITH CHOLO GOITA, CALOY PIOCOS, DINO MANRIQUE, MIA TIJAM, HUSSEIN MACARAMBON, HOSTED BY ANDREA TERÁN

URBAN INTERVENTIONS AND STREET ACTIONS ARTIST PRESENTATION MARK SALVATUS / PILIPINAS STREET PLAN

MARCH 28 /WEDNESDAY, BAR OPENS 7 PM
GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS, for updates please check http://papayapost.blogspot.com/

Descends the hourly downpour, reclaiming the tropical landscape maybe. Putting aside soaring oil prices, impending rice shortage, plight of migrant workers in the Middle East alongside GMA's P11 million growth this year, brighter prospects are yet in our horizon. Cheers to our beloved colleagues – knock outs at the recent auction at Borubodur, Singapore! Perhaps signaling the much needed facelift to Philippine contemporary art practice. A stronger shot in the arm is the much anticipated National Art Gallery's New Contemporary Art Projects exhibit Room 307: Inkling Gutfeel and Hunch on May 30 at National Museum. Yes, work hard and party harder.

After an intimate yet raucous closing party of Gina Osterloh's Shooting Blanks last Wednesday, Green Papaya was temporarily transported beyond the cinematic frames of Khavn de la Cruz's short films with Tonight I Will Love You Forever video installation curated by Norberto Roldan last Saturday. It's Wednesday once again and to cap off our monthly wait is our Monthly Period Readings with featured reader Joel Toledo in conversation with Mikael Co on the various shades and meaning of 'bayaw' and 'wasak.' Back to back with Mark Salvatus presentation on urban interventions and street actions of Pilipinas Street Plan. Meanwhile, a last shout out for W.O.P Residency which closes on May 30. Send out your proposals and as usual the moment is now.

Moving a house.

2008-05-16T11:59:00.002+08:00

Sit on the floor and pack all your things into a big box, and you start thinking about how you never seem to have enough money for the right things. But more than enough for the wrong ones.

Don't even get me started on time.

Lin-tech.

2008-05-09T13:55:00.002+08:00

I don't have to be at the office most fridays. We have a rotation system, and mostly, I only have to go every three fridays or so. Which is good, yes?

Not if you actually have a lot of work to do. So what's stopping me from voluntarily going on Fridays, right? Right. Like you would. Besides, think about the distance between Pasay and Quezon City. And the fact that I have to commute. (Insert recent pickpocket incident here, too. But I've been playing that card too much already, I think.) And the fact that it's hot and humid. Right. We understand each other now.

So I get a call at 9 AM, someone's asking me to send a fax. No problem. I have the letter ready, I have a fax software thingy in my laptop, and my mobile can act as a modem, right? Wrong. Like, totally Vrong. Or at least I don't know how to do it.

If technology is supposed to make my life easier, someone hired a really good ad agency. Goddamit. I have been at this for hours. Only to find that I can send a fax through an analog connection, but not digital. Digital! Is there something wrong with this, or is it just me?

I mean, opposable thumbs were a turning point in evolution. Look at humans, monkeys, pandas. One group is struggling sending faxes through mobile phones, another can be found using tools in the jungle (and in zoos), the last is endangered. See how far we've come?

Poooo-tech.

I take it back. God is everywhere.

2008-05-07T00:23:00.005+08:00

Even at a Juan dela Cruz Band benefit concert. Right smack in the middle as a matter of fact--when the audience was asked to praise the lord. All with "all-together-now!" and "once-more-with-feeling!" enthusiasm. Lord, I miss the days of backmasking rumors and mullet-haired, mustachioed rockstars.

*****
And, yes, Karma too. This time in the hustle-bustle of the LRT 1-MRT connection. I may not be in a wheel chair now (knock-on-wood), but lost my wallet to a pickpocket. I was broke to begin with. Now I'm freakin' vroke. Yes, with a V. For Very.

*****
But it's not all bad news. Chingbee and Mark had an excellent show at Green Papaya. I can't help but say show. There was talk of poetry, yes. But we tackled infidelity too. And needs. And dealing with dismissive comments. Even footnotes. Chingbee got interviewed twice. And I heard there were Manila Times/Standard people taking down notes. Or maybe they were just there for the free beer. Yep, two cases. Free. Vree.

*****
(test. test-mic. one-two.) "Eheheerm. I would like to thank my parents, my sisters, my friends, but most of all "the one who created everything" (cf. Mike Hanopol) for the love and support. They was the most important person in my life. Last but not least, I would like to thank Green Papaya for giving me a spot on the Wednesdays-I'm-N-Love WOP, for the free beer during the readings (also when I'm broke and have to commute), the excellent venue, and for the residency. I thank you. Bowwoohoo!" Transcript of my thank-you speech in my head. I did the victory dance last Wednesday. I love GP, Donna and Peewee, and Joaquin. Kahit "friends lang" kami. Vlove. Salamat!!!

What was that? Oops, too late. Nagpa-inom na ako nung Mierkules. Vleh.

Karma is everywhere.

2008-04-24T23:06:00.002+08:00

A friend who had just moved into a new apartment had told me he suspects that his new neighbors used to live in Molave, that dorm in UP where he too, used to stay. "Why is that a problem?" I asked. He clarified that they were the same group who had held prayer meetings in college and that they would pester everyone to join them then, complete with the guilt trip. So now, being pretty sure they were the same guys, he hides in his room like a paranoid conspiracy theorist whenever they're out and about the hallway. I told him, "But God is everywhere. He can see you hiding. [Put Twilight Zone music here.]"

Now I take it back. It's not God, for all her/his omniscience. It's Karma that's everywhere.

I am currently being punished for all the bad things I have said about anyone at any given point (hence my theory that Karma is everywhere). But mostly it might be because of things I have said of a certain writer who might or might not have an extra chromosome which can lead to certain facial features wrongly described as those common to a race of people living in the Asiatic regions, specifically based on a country north of China, bordering Russia. Gets?

(Am I safe?)

Anyway, so yeah, I'm being punished. Because now, my prayers have been answered and now I don't have to deal directly with that person. Instead, I am now saddled with an egotistical, no-manners, fifty-something writer who is an old maid.

Ah shit. There goes my karma again.

Since that's shot, can I just say: I am mad at people who feel like they have to keep certain agenda secret, and thus use people to achieve their goals without full disclosure. Note to you-of-that-kind: I have a fucking brain. And (gasp!) it works without a hitch more often than not. As a matter of fact, it's been studied that the brain improves when it is constantly engaged. So, let me use it once in a while, huh? Let me worry about what it can and cannot handle.

Ay potah. If you see me in a wheelchair next week, say it with me: Karma is everywhere.

Bow.

P.S. A friend once told me she met this old woman at a cafe who had told her that it is good karma to plant trees. I will be starting a garden soon. Seed donations gratefully accepted.

Wednesday-I'm-N-Love

2008-04-23T10:47:00.005+08:00

So we started the featured readings at Green Papaya last March. Too bad I was too friggin' busy to post the details. We featured the poetry of Mookie Katigbak, interviewed by Daryll Delgado. And it was grrreatt! Thanks Larry for the original idea!

Now it's April, and we're having another run. April 30 will focus on Chingbee Cruz, to be interviewed by Mark Cayanan. And since I'm not that ngarag this month, I've invited other people too. Rearders are: Hussein Macarambon, Mikael Co, Ramil Gulle, Peachy Paderna, Mia Tijam, Jay Bordon, Anina Abola, and Angelo Suarez.

If you want read, let me know. We're looking at a jam-packed night, but the more the manier. So let's eat, drink, read poetry. For the morrow is Labor Day. Woohoo.

*****
By the way, GP is at 124A Maginhawa Street, Teacher's Village East. Right beside St. Vincent School. A little after the big BayanTel building on Maginhawa corner Malingap, if you're coming from Sikatuna. After 4 months, I've finally learned exactly how to get there. Heehee.

There was a map sent to me once. See if I can get a hold of it again and post it here.

*****
PS. GP accepting applications to the Wednesdays open platform (WOP) residency program! Asteeeg.

Deets at http://papayapost.blogspot.com/.

*****

Spurs versus Suns, 81-72 at the end of 3. Too-doo-doo-doo...

summer schmummer bummer

2008-04-13T22:56:00.003+08:00

My first non-academe work has taught me the importance of summer vacation. And how going to the beach when temperatures reach the high 30s should be a basic human right.

I currently work in Pasay, near Manila Bay. Every time I see the (dirty) ocean, I think, "So close, yet so far away..."

*****
The 'rents were here Wednesday til late evening today. I love my mom and dad, but thank god they're now back in Iloilo. Whew.

But! I have kuwento. It's funny.

Before I went to college, my dad had sat me down to talk to me about sex. Or the not having of sex. He started with "No boyfriends for now, okay?" then proceeded to "Well, I understand you might meet someone. If you decide to enter into a relationship, no sex!" which metamorphosed into "But sex is good. And sometimes making out can lead to the point-of-no-return. So make sure you're protected!" which in turn confused the hell out of me. I told him, "Dad, you just moved from "no boyfriend" to "practice safe sex" in 5 minutes. Give me a bottom line!"

To which he replied threateningly, "Don't come home pregnant!" So I thought, "Hmmm, so I can actually get knocked up. Just don't go home."

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

*****
But here's the real kuwento. During my parent's stay here, my dad asked me, "So when can we expect a grandkid?" I pointed to my sister, the one who has a boyfriend (and regular sex, more to the point), "Why not ask her?"

My dad, in his incredible logic tells me, "But you're the first-born. You should be first."

Which I had to clarify. "You just want grandchildren, right? Not necessarily a son-in-law, right?"

And my dad goes, "Yeah, just grandkids. You don't have to get married to get pregnant, do you?"

*****
I take it back. My parents are the coolest parents in the whole wide world! They're mad I drink, they're mad I smoke, but obviously I can have all the sex I want. Woohoo.

The end of something...

2008-03-30T23:33:00.002+08:00

March is finally over! and I've never looked forward to anything more.

One more day at my old job, and finally I can focus on the new one. Yup, you heard it right, today is the 31st, my supposed last day on the job. But no, I have to go to work tomorrow morning. Did you know that pro bono is Latin for "big idiot"?

*****

Lots of news, not all of them good. Give me time to sort it out in my head.

*****

This new job that I have requires a writer. Which is not me. I am on the technical part, which means I do the research. Which is not bad. The writer on my panel is an asshole. He is condescending, arrogant, and bull-headed. He thinks he is the smartest person in the whole world. I think he looks like he has down syndrome.

I don't know about you, but I would actually rather have trisomy 21 than look like I have it when I don't.

And yes, this is the meanest thing I have said in public. (You should listen to the voice inside my head. Which is me. Which is worse than public me. Which is bad.)

And although it would be nicer of me to temper this mean comment by saying nice things about people with trisomy 21, I'd rather not. There are good people, and there are bad people. Smart people, stupid people, arrogant people, humble people, ad infinitum. And all these people can either have 46 or 47 chromosomes. Which is not their virtue, and not their fault either. We have no control over our genes, but we have control over our attitudes.

So I guess I'm saying, if you have to be a chauvinistic, condescending, arrogant asshole (which is completely your choice, by the way), you better be... I don't know. Is there a saving grace to this?

Ang labo. Basta. Die, creature! Die!

*****

God, who needs a drink?

The beginning of something...

2008-03-21T16:40:00.003+08:00

Birth

I.
First night in -----
and the tail-end of winter.
My breath has become
a continuous stream of white
smoke and vapor combined.

II.
Is this how everything is begun?
An expulsion of breath
solidified into a word?

In the beginning was the Word
And gases swirled into this ground I walk on.

III.
And how to begin now
to tell a story long past--
When memory is silent
and only imagination
swirling inside my head.

IV.
Sometimes I run, my feet pounding
on the ground like a heart
throwing my feet on the air
only to pull it down again

as if I could run forever.
And if I did, won't I be back
where I started?

V.
And maybe my life began
with a kiss, then an expulsion
then a breath, a cry.

Theirs, too, who came before me.

Meanwhile, the earth moves
around and around the sun.
Who am I to talk of beginnings?

Oil hits $110 a barrel...

2008-03-14T00:20:00.002+08:00

and I'm too busy to react.

Working two jobs is like... uhm, well, working two jobs. And I just have to survive March.

In other news, I found a biography on Matthew Arnold's "poetic life" at Booksale a couple of days ago. He quit poetry for duty is the gist, and I guess I bought it because I was scared how easy I could imagine myself in his shoes... Drama, no?

Anyway, I also realized that because of this blog, I no longer maintain a journal. And that's fucked up because what I write here is never 100% true. And if I don't write just for myself, where is that truth--my truth, anyway, going to end up?

Weird, weird, weird. Drama, drama, drama.

So if you don't hear so much from me from here, let's hope I'm writing somewhere else, something truer.

Bow.

This is not a poetry reading

2008-02-25T20:57:00.006+08:00

this is not a koreanobela: a film trilogy
ACCENTUATION video screening by Jane Jin Kaisen

readings and open mic hosted by Andrea Terán with Mookie Katigbak, Mark Cayanan, Anina Abola, Mikael Co, Mia Tijam, Kash Avena, Adam David, Larry Ypil and more

FEBRUARY 27
/WEDNESDAY, BAR OPENS 8 PM, SCREENING BEGINS 9 PM
GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS for updates please go to http://papayapost.blogspot.com/
124A Maginhawa Street, Teachers Village East, Diliman, Quezon City

This Is Not a Koreanobela: A Film Trilogy
The second edition continues this Wednesday featuring the video work of Jane Jin Kaisen.
Accentuation is a multi-layered experimental short film built up around thirteen chapters of the novel Journey from Holmen’s Canal to the Eastern Part of Amager by the Danish poet and fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen. The structure of the novel is interweaved with the story of an international adoptee’s journey and reunion with her birth family in South Korea. Accentuation complicates notions of history, memory, and belonging as a non-chronological and fractured process of negotiation. Accentuation extends beyond the personal by implying how international adoption as a phenomenon is also part of South Korea’s patriarchy and painful decolonization and modernization process, while on the other hand, it was fostered by Western Orientalism and cultural hegemony.
Jane Jin Kaisen works with film, video, performance, text, and photography. Born in South Korea (1980), adopted to Denmark and educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, she is currently a Fulbright scholar at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. She is also a co-founder of Grassroots Cinema Center for Women of Asia, co-founder of the collective Chamber of Public Secrets, broadcasting independent news on tv.-tv, a non-profit TV station in Denmark and an organizer of Made In Video International Festival of Video Journalism in Copenhagen.

Readings and open mic
Andrea Terán returns this month (and every last Wednesday of the month hereon) with her platoon of bloody, razor-edged, biting, but honeyed night readers in their shining bullet-proof armors. Poetry readings and open mics will never be the same again, at least along the Maginhawa strip of Teachers Village East, with this sweet beer guzzling bunch of award-winning poets and writers: Mookie Katigbak, Mark Cayanan, Anina Abola, Mikael Co, Mia Tijam, Kash Avena, Adam David, and Larry Ypil.

And while Wednesdays I’m-n-love/Open Platform principal conspirator and resident fascist Donna Miranda is on a world-tour-of-sort with her of course not this is a bathtub
at Brunnentrasse in Berlin, QC still rocks, GMA is rocked, and politicians suck! Here’s a bottoms-up to your performance, Donna!

What the...?

2008-02-22T09:25:00.002+08:00

This is what's wrong:

You like teams, and you like maybe some players from other teams. You hate some teams, and most probably only for a single player in that team. And then a weird trade happens, and it's all blown to bits.

And guys, maybe this half-assed analysis will seem silly and (gasp!) just-like-a-girl to you, but guess what? I am a girl (gasp!). Deal with it.

I love Pau Gasol. I hate the Lakers. Bad trade for me, good trade for Gasol.

I don't care about Shaq. I love the Suns. But I love Steve Kerr more. Go Steve Kerr.

I never liked Jason Kidd. I hate the Mavericks. Go for it, Kidd.

But the worst, the worst of the worst is Kurt Thomas to San Antonio. I hate Thomas. I love, love, love the Spurs! I mean sure, Francisco Elson was a wash. Brent Barry is injured, but he shoots threes! Can Thomas do that?

You know who I suddenly miss? Nazr Mohammad. And is he still with the Knicks? Well, good luck to him.

Okay, I'll shut up now. The last time I ran my mouth about basketball, I lost 500 bucks on a bet.

Did I tell you you're wonder-foil?

2008-02-10T19:12:00.000+08:00

1
It started with L. and a poem addressed to a woman on a photograph, which was really a love poem to the man who took the photograph. It was the 1^st of February; we were on the train to Malate, on a mission to reclaim it after a fling-turned-something-else turned nothing-else. But February is not the month of love, nor is it for lovers. What it really is, is the month of the foil.

Valentine’s day—which we don’t celebrate by reliving St. Valentine’s works and deeds (whatever those may be)—brings to mind another sainted character. Walk around a mall nowadays and you will see the real star of the show. That “Oops, I did it again” finger-on-the-lips smile, and who could miss those “Hit me baby, one more time” arrows? And whatever disguise he might have assumed in your own love story—that ‘bridge’ in high school, the shared confidante/messenger in your barkada, the co-worker who fixes you up with a friend—Cupid gets all the credit.

Yes, playing cupid is a blameless job. See, if indeed the just-pierced lovers don’t fall happily ever after, it is never Cupid’s fault. He not attentive, she too needy, they bad for each other; nobody even sings “Stupid Cupid” when their hearts are arrowed in two. Oh, but imagine if it does work out: Eternal gratitude—which may or may not include the couple’s firstborn—, or a sure spot on the wedding entourage, a shot at smugness.

True, Cupid is most effective when he fades into the background—especially when the music starts to swell and words like serendipity (see how effective?) and meant-for-each-other hang in the air like so much bunting—and isn’t that what characterizes the perfect foil? Why else the pain and humiliation in those instances of the ‘bridge’ betraying the lover, falling for the friend, sleeping with the secretary? Let the foil remain a foil, and let the audience love him or her all the more for it.

...

In my Essay class in college, our final exam consisted of first, reading half of an essay then writing its second half. A kind of Choose Your Own Adventure, except there was only one correct ending, which you will arrive at if you recognize the tone of the speaker in the given part of the essay (or are lucky enough to have read it somewhere and remembered), argue the original author’s point correctly, and reach the same conclusion. My answer to that very difficult exam began with a But.

...

But. There is a point to this story, a point I wanted to make when I started to write it. I’m not sure if I want to make it anymore, short of hiding behind Hiligaynon again. But if there has to be an explanation, let it be this story:

When Paul Simon—a Mickey Mantle fan—was asked why he used Joe DiMaggio in the song Mrs. Robinson, he answered “It’s all about syllables. It’s all about how many beats there are.”

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t really explain anything. But there you go. Ho ho ho.

And that, my friends, is all. For now.

2
I find myself fascinated with the possibilities of words. Right now, a play on kuwenta and kuwento—from the Spanish contar, to count (and maybe account?) and to tell (or recount), respectively. And in Filipino, flavored still with the connotation of value on one hand, and small talk on the other. Because I am worried about value, and an accounting for possible effects later on, for example, I am worried that sometimes a story is not just a story. Kuwentong walang kuwenta. Don’t you believe it.

3
A new poem. And, allow me to sing it for you: “You may be right. I may be crazy.”

Vertigo

Half-deaf, one ear
Im-paired
I make no claims on music.
Was it Beethoven’s joy
That he couldn’t hear it
But in his head
Where it began to play?
But waking up today
World spinning spinning spinning
I think of Van Gogh’s
Swirling swirling swirling stars—
Product of vertigo
I’m sure
He cut off his ear for
He wouldn’t hear of it.

Now leveled by fear
Not wanting to risk sense
Both eyes, the good ear
I only
Write it, write it, write it!

4
vertigo = head over heels? sometimes i fear i am insufferable.

I am currently on cerebral oxygenators. For my vertigo, yes. But can you believe it? Suddenly, I cannot stop writing. And cannot sleep. I am not sure if the pills stopped the spinning, or allowed me to catch up.

(Suddenly, too, it’s all mahangin, airhead, insufferable. What a crock of shit.)

So I’m taking L.’s advice: Hoy, get a hold of yourself! And if, lately, you’ve seen me hugging myself, and squinting my eyes in concentration, that’s it. Hahaha.

5
Apologies to Adam Ant, and his wonderful song, Wonderful.

Night at Sea

2008-02-05T11:17:00.000+08:00

They had been surrounded
by water and a strange language
all day, they thought they understood
only each other. Looking out the darkness
sky and sea indistinct but for the stars
dropping hints on the water--he pointed out Mars
impossibly close to Venus, and she said
Maybe they're not who we think they are.
Once inside, they found themselves
making love, not knowing who started it
only that there were needs
and rarely any answers.
Tomorrow the men will talk
around them, despairing of last night's
catch, as if because they took to sea
they deserved its secrets.
Meanwhile, they will catch each other
looking away, away from the sea,
its constant rocking.

A Post-Mortem, sort of

2008-01-31T19:17:00.000+08:00

I meant to text this message to everyone, but I'm a cheapskate. A lazy cheapskate. But, here it is:

The reading at Green Papaya last night was great. I'm no shutterbug and my phone is cheap-without-camera-a-snatcher-will-not-steal--so I cannot provide any evidence, your honor. But I had a fucking great time. And I think everybody had a fucking great time. So thank you, thank you to all who came, who saw, who read, who clapped, who laughed, and who cried. Hahaha.

Ngyar. Just spreading the love.

Three by Me

2008-01-27T23:36:00.000+08:00

1
Hola! Inviting everyone to the poetry reading at Green Papaya on Wednesday, 30 January at 8PM. This reading is part of Green Papaya's Wednesdays-I'm-n-Love Open Platform. Readers are:

1. Mikael Co

2. Adam David

3. Mia Tijam

4. Conchitina Cruz

5. Joel Toledo

6. Angelo Suarez
7. Hussein Macarambon

8. Kash Avena

9. Corin Arenas

... and others, I hope. Haha. We're trying out a themed reading this time, and because it's (still) January, it'll be on new year's resolutions. Haha. Anyway, please come. Open mic readers most welcome, themed or otherwise.

2
Couple of weeks ago, my mom was here in Manila and we had dinner with my dad's half sister, and his half-brother and his wife. It was fun getting to know them, and more importantly, hearing stories about the grandfather I never met. It was amazing to get a picture of this man, whose surname I still carry, from people I hardly know--when my dad himself has so little of his own stories to tell. My grandfather, it turns out, was an hacienda administrator, a job which allowed him to travel--and have different families--all over the country. He had--as far as we know, anyway--a total of 11 children, the youngest only 6 or 8 years older than I am. And with my dad being the youngest of his first three children, my grandfather actually has grandchildren older than the youngest of his children. Haha. Amazing, I tell you.

3
That surname I carry, by the way, has been recently changed to Peram, as I've told in a different post. Thing is, my youngest sister--the one who looks completely different from me--had food delivered from McDo last night. The food came with the receipt addressed to an S. Peram. Whew! And here I was, starting to think I was living with a complete stranger.

*****
Bonus
A quiz:

The stories in this blog are:
(a) true
(b) false
(c) somewhere in between
(d) can be used against the author

"Finally the tables are starting to turn. Talkin' about a revolution." Bow

Three by Heaney

2008-01-13T21:06:00.000+08:00

Blackberry Picking
for Philip Hosbaum

Late August, given heavy rains and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then the red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre
But when the batch was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once of the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.

Personal Helicon
for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

The Peninsula

When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all around the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks, so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you’re in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog,

And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--Poems by Seamus Heaney

*****
Wednesdays-I'm-n-Love. Poetry reading at Green Papaya on Wednesday, January 30th, around 8PM. Calling everybody who'd like to read--I don't want to limit the people I invite to the ones in my phonebook! Please text me if you want to read, or use the comments section. I will think up a list of readers, too. Sorry, I'm still on vacation mode (read: tamad). But let me know if you're interested!

*****
Anyway, tatlong kuwento.

1 So I went home to Iloilo for vacation. And to a talking-to courtesy of the parents--which I deserved, but for some parts. I will not talk of the deserved part--too embarrassing, I think, and circles back to the undeserved anger, anyway. My dad asked me why, after all these years--27 of them, I think he meant--did I just realize I wanted to pursue writing? What could I say? I could blame Pisay and its contract (and reduce the number of years of culpability by 12), or I could blame him for talking physics to me when I was a kid. But 27 seems like a good age as any to stop blaming outside forces for my choices. Still, it sucks to realize how much you still want parental approval--defiant 27 or otherwise--and realize you might never get it back.

2 My sister recently received her chem GRE results, with a whopping 97th percentile score. She also attended a chemistry conference complete with Nobel laureates a week ago. I, on the other hand, recently bought 5 poetry books at amazing prices, just firmly decided to get my MA in Creative Writing, and replaced a leaking faucet in my apartment with my own lil hands (plus a wrench, teflon tape, and a lot of swearing, but so what). Does she want to exchange places with me? I don't think so. Thing is, neither do I. Isn't it enough to know that?

3 My other sister, I recently grounded. So no partying for her until end of the semester. Who am I to impose this? And to think I took all precautions to avoid being a mom before I was ready. Turns out I didn't have to.

*****
So now what?

Nights out in the school yard

2008-01-02T01:39:00.000+08:00

Well, sure I wanted to write more, but I just couldn’t—Reminds me of that idiot on The Simpsons Movie, complete with hick accent—“I cain’t. I simply cain’t.”

Besides, A. and I spent a couple of days on the beach, a little break away from the families between Christmas and New Year, which should be a requirement during the holidays. So I’m still sane, and tan to boot. Woohoo.

But. I hate it that I left off 2007 in such a silent, so-much drama note, when it really didn’t deserve it. The year ended well, despite… stuff. And as I’ve been telling myself lately, maybe the secret to having a good year is making it a good year. Versus, well, you know, waiting for it to happen.

So I’m really tempted to write down some resolutions. This new-year thing just calls for it, no? But, really, what would you care? And believe me, I’m an expert at starting something and not finishing it. So maybe it’s better not to present you with proof of something I’ll quit sooner or later.

But see, see? This is what I’ve been telling myself to quit. This pretending everything’s funny, fine, honky dory all the time. I’ve been playing this role too long, and now I can’t seem to shake it off. I am not a suffering artist. I am not suffering, period. I am not as cool as I’d like you to think I am. Matter of fact, I may not even be cool at all. I look awful in eyeglasses, and even though I’m comfortably wearing a pair now, I’ll probably never go out in public wearing them. And when Jonny Lang comes into the second stanza of his “Midnight Train” duet with Buddy Guy with that rough voice of his—I get the shivers, literally. God. I want to write, and I want it more than anything right now, but I can easily imagine some things too, that I’d gladly give it up for. See?

And it still bothers me that time renders everything relative. This might all be bullshit 10 years from now. Or in 6 months. Or tomorrow. So what does it all matter?

Which kinda nicely circles back to my initial point about making a good year.

I guess those are just some of the things I needed to get out of my system. Off the top of my head.

Okay, enough—to early in the morning and too early in the year, and I’m in Iloilo, which I found out recently is the City of Love. It’s too much, for my here and now. Look me up when I get back to QC, inom tayo.

Anyway, here’s a great song that doesn’t have to mean anything. (Since M. beat me to “The Origin of Love”. Hehe) Just to round everything up.

Found Out About You
Gin Blossoms

All last summer in case you don’t recall
I was yours and you were mine forget it all
Is there a line that I could write
Sad enough to make you cry
All the lines you wrote to me were lies
The months roll past the love that you struck dead
Did you love me only in my head?
Things you said and did to me
Seemed to come so easily
The love I thought I’d won you give for free
Whispers at the bus stop
I heard about nights out in the school yard
I found out about you
Rumors follow everywhere you go
Like when you left and I was last to know
You’re famous now and there’s no doubt
In all the places you hang out
They know your name and know what you’re about
Whispers at the bus stop
I heard about nights out in the school yard
I found out about you
Street lights blink on through the car window
I get the time too often on AM radio
You know its all I think about
I write your name drive past your house
Your boyfriends over I watch your light go out
Whispers at the bus stop
I heard about nights out in the school yard
I found out about you

I thought I could write it down, turns out

2007-12-09T14:47:00.000+08:00

I can't.

Ask me again, when things are funny.

Or enough time has passed, I can make them funny.

You know that's how I tell my stories.

That's the crutch too. That there's always a next time.

That we never really get that desperate, urgent need for anything to happen now, now, now.

And that the poem below is actually an excuse to pretend I've said all I wanted to say.

It's sad and I'm sad. But I'll never admit it.

Because I like the Ben Folds song.

2007-12-07T22:57:00.000+08:00

Smoke

The way a cigarette calls forth
the wet from porcelain:
Heat draws its opposite.

The way I look to see you
blink, break that connection. My gaze
then downward slips
to ponder your lips a and how
difficult to begin
a kiss uninvited.

For now, there are other
exchanges. Stories told through
other people, the dance of look
and look away,
aaaaaaaaaaa this poem
drawing a nod, a smile, silence. Com
miseration--exactly what we want
least from each other.

A younger me once wrote
to another: Lives change, but
stories remain the same.
And I mean this too: a What
is it that you're trying to tell me?

for now our stories too, have changed.

As if this tiny table between us--
the hands on it occupied, the toes
under it almost touching--is an excuse
to pretend a longer history
between us: a love, commitment
perhaps, that I might find this long-
winding attempt
aaaaaaaaaaaa reasonable.

A wet spot now on the ashtray, droplets
gather round the smoldering tip.
Inappropriate responses like smoke
swirling, then
aaaaaaaaaa flowing out of our mouths.

Green Papaya and other raw...

2007-12-05T11:16:00.000+08:00

Is papaya a fruit or a vegetable?

Am hosting a poetry reading at Green Papaya later, December 5, at 8pm. Green Papaya is on Maginahawa Street, UP Village East, near the corner of Maginhawa and Malingap Streets.

Come as you are. With 2-3 poems, better.

Here are the readers:

1. Joel Toledo
2. Pancho Villanueva
3. Khavn dela Cruz
4. Mookie Katigbak
5. Mikael Co
6. Anina Abola
7. Marguerite de Leon

Open mic readers most welcome. See you later guys!

This is my first time to host by myself, and unlike many other firsts, I am determined that this be utterly painless. Bow.

Choo... choo...

2007-11-18T01:13:00.000+08:00

There's something about trains:

The Build Up
Kings of Convenience

The build up lasted for days
lasted for weeks, lasted too long
our hero withdrew, when there was two
he could not choose one, so there was none

worn into the vaguely announced

the spinning top made a sound like a train across the valley
fading, oh so quiet but constant 'til it passed
over the ridge into the distances
written on your ticket to remind you where to stop
and when to get off

*****
And because I've been repeating my stories lately, here's a new re-hash.

Love Poem

Where the word complete is a couple
fingers hooked on each other;
where science can be manipulated

not to contradict romance: Love
is exclusive territory. Where
magnets and opposite poles

and iron filings like a mob ready to
separate from sand and sway
in the right direction, to prove

a magnetic field of two halves.

Today at the train station, two
lovers said goodbye over their cell
phones across the rails. He was going south,

she north. And even for that moment when the train
ripped the air between them,
a connection as good as technology can provide

was had. The rest of us stepped aboard
where we stood, watching the windows
unmoved by the pull of

lights racing the other direction.

*****

There's something about a steam engine, too. Bow.