Facts versus Romance

Case in point: I want to be a good woman. But my immediate wants are just bad, bad, bad.

*****

Next, a song:

Science Vs. Romance
Rilo Kiley

I used to think if I could realize I'd die
then I would be a lot nicer
used to believe in a lot more
now I just see straight ahead

That's not to say I don't have good times
but as for my days
I spend them waiting

Crash sites keep me up at night
impact division it splits in two
directly underneath you

As for those things
that act as markers in your life
but in between
you can't remember
and so it seems
that you've grown up and over me
and these silly things
I like to dwell on

Test sites keep me up at night
chainlink and meters
I talk to you
it's cold out there
but I'm telling you
I'm lonely too

Facts versus romance
you go and call yourself the boss
but we're not robots inside a grid

Text versus romance
you go and add it all you want
still we're not robots inside a grid

Zeroes and ones

*****

I remember having this awful English teacher before--Let's say his name is Bernadette--He made a joke about how mathematicians are insisting that math is the universal language, and that we might as well do without the comlicated, uh, compiclated, grr, com-plicated (there you go!) study of English. Bernadette, for the class' entertainment, even acted out two Martians (presumably) telling jokes in binary code:

Martian 1: 10110010001. 010000001011?
Martian 0: 00111001?
Martian 1: 00101. 111001001001!!!

Get it? 111001001001!!! Hahahahahahahahaha! Ha-ha-haaaay.

*****

I've been trying to write these four stories into poems lately--a writing project, if you will--one of which became Stone Turtle. Except that I'm supposed to be writing a sonnet and a villanelle for my Poetry writing class! Ha! Maybe then I can finally show my poetry to my Dad, and then he won't have to ask why my poems don't rhyme... Ayayay.

Anyway, here it is

The Fall

That lake-mirror
should show the monkey
a rippling moon--
aaaaaadrowning twin

And that he should
fall for it--
aaaaaaheadlong
aaahead-
aaaaafirst into
aaamere-water
aamere
aaaaaaaaawater

aaaaaaO,
but that he would
save what is
aaaaaaaathere
aaaaa((not there))

i have been a stranger in a strange land.

Most of you who's been around me the last couple of weeks know this. But listen anyway.

There's this girl at the office, (No guys, this is not that kind of story. No girl-on-girl action happening here. At least not until after the coming weekend.) and we're not friends or anything, just the usual hi-hello when we meet through the little hallway leading to her cubicle and my office. (Ha, that sounds I'm the boss of her of something, which is not true, but it sounds good. My "office" is a tiny room filled chest-high with papers, and I cannot even enjoy one good swivel on my chair without bumping into a desk, a filing cabinet and the computer table.)

Enough asides. There's this girl. We are not friends. We don't talk. We smile, nod, say hi, etc. One day, we caught each other at the rest room, (get your minds outta the gutter!) and smile to each other on the mirror. The out of nowhere, and of what context, I have no idea, she asks me:

Are you Filipino at all?

[Significant pause here.]

It took me a while to realize I was holding my breath, and to let it out, then whoosh out a very breathy "yes!". Actually it sounded more like a "huh-yeesss...???" Because all I could think about that moment was, "Oh, she so cannot think this is my natural hair color..."

Don't get me wrong. I've been through this all my life. I've been Indian, Arab (and therefore terrorist), Portuguese, Turk, and the topper, Japanese(!) at one time or another. My best friend in high school, so unconvinced of my having no Arab ancestry, even invented a whole history where my ancestors in my father's side in Spain lived in Granada during the years of the invasion of the moors and someone must have fallen in love with someone from the other side, got married and begot mongrels, and thus my looks. But yes, I've been through this so many times that more often than not, I recognize a certain look on people's faces they get just before they ask me that particular question.

Case in point: I was talking to this old lady once, you know, things-under-the-sun conversation. Then she gets this awkward, speculative look on her face before she starts with the usual, "Can I ask you a question?" And I just get it. I say, "Let me guess. 'Are you Indian?' No. No, I'm not." And I just smile a bit to take the sting out of my impatience. I've had this conversation so many times that, as you can see, I can hold both sides of it by myself.

So what was wrong with that question? Why was I so out-of-whack? Well, it could be I was just having a bad day--it sounded so like the go-to-your-own-corner-geek playground tortures of my elementary days--but then I was mulling it over and mulling over it and mulling over it and it comes to me. Of all the this conversations I've had, all my life--Including the one that went like this:

Japanese DOM: Firipinjin desu ka?
So Mistakenly Happy Me: Hai! Hai! Sou desu.
DOM: Sou ka. Ee, Omise ha?--

this is the first time I've been asked if I'm Filipino AT ALL. I mean really. AT fucking ALL??? Really! What gives?

(Quick English Lesson. The use of "at all" in a sentence: (a) "If you were thinking at all, you wouldn't have said that." (b) "Do you have any manners at all?" (c) "I didn't like that at all!")

But see, I don't have a stupid pretentious highfallutin accent. I don't have the Tagalog accent either, because fuck it, I am not Tagalog. I have semi-red, semi-blond (I can't say orange. I won't.) hair now, but Hell-o! The roots are so showing and I need another trip to the salon soon, except that I'm broke, so how much more obvious can it be that my hair color came from a bottle? I didn't grow up in the States, only to return and become a pop idol, much to my regret (Another story for another day). So what is it? Whaaaaaaat?

If you figure it out. Let me know. At all. Duh.

*****

Here's a funny story.

When I was 15 or 16, my mom asked me to pay our phone bill at the local Iloilo PLDT office. This was my first time to do it, so I was a bit insecure about what to do. When I got there, I went to the end of the first line I saw, which took forever to get to the counter. Unsure and impatient to get it over with, I asked a lady beside me if this was the line for paying bills. Nothing wrong with that, right? Wrong. Whenever I'm in this weird situation where I'm insecure or a little lost (or spitting mad), I usually speak in English. Don't ask me why. So anyway, there I was, Indian looking Ilonggo little girl, asking this Ilonggo woman in English, if I was on the right line. The poor woman took one look at me and started sputtering, "Ah, no, no. This line, no. See that woman over there? Yellow dress? Woman yellow, go, go. There," then sighed in relief. I was so mortified, I forced myself to speak in English the whole awful transaction, because God forbid if that old lady found out I could speak Ilonggo. She would have blistered me with the best swear words anywhere in this country--cursing me, my mother, my father and their genitals, for having had the gall to have sex and create such an arrogant moron.

*****

Hmmm. Are you Filipino at all? Did she have a point, after all? Ay, lilinti-an.

Quickie

Do you have the time?


10
Once, in the now-defunct Sanctum, I leafed through a book of birthdays. Seems I shared mine with Alfred Nobel and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. If that wasn't a sign, I don't know what is.

9
Tonight I am sitting two feet away from a man hanging by his fingertips on the wrong side of the railing, cleaning glass. He made my tummy jump and quiver. I don't know which I wanted more: grab and hold on to him, or push him off, then puke on his mangled corpse a few feet down.

8
A secret: One dream job is to be a window cleaner of a skyscraper, scaffolding and all. Or, or!--the coolest thing I've ever seen--hanging from a harness.

7
I prefer this to re-writing an awful poem: getting off on these short bursts of... what? what is it, exactly?

6
That man has now climbed over the rail and into the safe side, once again on solid ground--his hands free to do whatever he wants. Oh, how I detest him now.

5
In science, there is no such thing as cold: only temperatures not in equilibrium, heat moving the direction of least resistance.

4
"I could be having sex back there. And what better way to exorcise rejection demons than to sleep with the person who rejected you?"
aaaaaaaaaaaa-- Rob Gordon in High Fidelity

3
See how my lips wrap around this cigarette, how my eyes close in pleasure, how the tip glows a bright red, like something swollen, ready to burst.

2
The girls in the next table are relishing a loud argument. How, exactly, do you say it? ANdrea, or anDREa? Who gives a fuck? I tell you, I won't remember your name either.

1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm beautiful when I'm angry. Wanna fuck?


It's a yes or no, honey. Not life or death.

New Year Blues

In a U-Haul North of Damascus
David Bottoms

1
Lord, what are the sins
I have tried to leave behind me? The bad checks,
the workless days, the scotch bottles thrown across the fence
and into the woods, the cruelty of silence,
the cruelty of lies, the jealousy,
the indifference?

What are these on the scale of sin
or failure
that they should follow me through the streets of Columbus,
the moon-streaked fields between Benevolence
and Cuthbert where dwarfed cotton sparkles like pearls
on the shoulders of the road. What are these
that they should find me half-lost,
sick and sleepless
behind the wheel of this U-Haul truck parked in a field on Georgia 45
a few miles north of Damascus,
some makeshift rest stop for eighteen wheelers
where the long white arms of oak slap across trailers
and headlights glare all night through a wall of pines?

2
What was I thinking Lord?
That for once I'd be in the driver's seat, a firm grip on direction?

So the jon boat muscled up the ramp,
the Johnson outboard, the bent frame of the wrecked Harley
chained for so long to the back fence,
the scarred desk, the bookcases and books,
the mattress and box springs,
a broken turntable, a Pioneer amp, a pair
of three-way speakers, everything mine
I intended to keep. Everything else abandon.

But on the road from one state
to another, what is left behind nags back through the distance,
a last word rising to a scream, a salad bowl
shattering against a kitchen cabinet, china barbs
spiking my heel, blood trailed across the cream linoleum
like the bedsheet that morning long ago
just before I watched the future miscarried.

Jesus, could the irony be
that suffering forms a stronger bond than love?

3
Now the sun
streaks the windshield with yellow and orange, heavy beads
of light drawing highways in the dew-cover.
I roll down the window and breathe the pine-air,
the after-scent of rain, and the far-off smell
of asphalt and diesel fumes.

But mostly pine and rain
as through the world really could be clean again.

Somewhere behind me,
miles behind me on a two-lane that streaks across
west Georgia, light is falling
through the windows of my half-empty house.
Lord, why am I thinking about all this? And why should I care
so long after everything has fallen
to pain that the woman sleeping there should be sleeping alone?
Could I be just another sinner who needs to be blinded
before he can see? Lord, is it possible to fall
toward grace? Could I be moved
to believe in new beginnings? Could I be moved?

Am I rough enough?

The littlest stuff has been making me pretty happy lately. And why not? It's the season for it. Listening to a lot of The Stones lately, probably why I've been feeling particularly Jumpin'-Jack-Flash-y. For example, the first time I heard this song again:

Well you bit my lip and drew first blood
And warmed my cold, cold heart
And your wrote your name right on my back
Boy your nails were sharp

Don't stop
Honey don't stop

I couldn't stop laughing. And not I-just-swallowed-four-razors-and-I'm-crazy laughing. But really, the nice, I'm-getting-what-I-want-for-Christmas delighted, giddy laughing. Then again, I've been on painkillers these last few days, so what do I know?

Speaking of which, for the second year in a row now, I've found myself sick this Christmas. It was vertigo last year, and this time, I was down with tonsilitis--or whatever infection it was that caused my tonsils to swell, made it painful to swallow or even open my mouth, and therefore caused me to miss the true meaning of the season--food. I know I've been wanting to lose weight, but really? Really?

As to the cause of the throat-infection thing, I have no idea. Everybody else in my family came down with the flu. (Hmmm.... delicious food that's hard to swallow? Or tasteless food that goes down easy? Now I have to ask: Did anybody in my family enjoy Christmas dinner?)

Anyway, to avoid any possibility of a re-run next Christmas, I've decided that some stuff, you just don't put in your mouth.

Speaking of vertigo (Were we? Aherm, now we are, I say), somebody I recently met, upon learning that I suffered from vertigo introduced me to a poem of same name.

*****
Vertigo
iiiiiiJorie Graham

Then they came to the edge of the cliff and looked down.
Below, a real world flowed in its parts, green, green.
The two elements touched—rock, air.
She thought of where the mind opened out
into the sheer drop of its intelligence,
the updrafting pastures of the vertical in which a bird now rose,
blue body the blue wind was knifing upward
faster than it could naturally rise,
up into the downdraft until it was frozen until she could see them
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiat last
the stages of flight, broken down, broken free,
each wingflap folding, each splay of the feather-sets flattening
for entry. . . .Parts she thought, free parts, watching the laws
at work, through which desire must course
seeking an ending, seeking a shape. Until the laws of flight and fall
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiincreased.
Until they made, all of an instant, a bird, a blue
enchantment of properties no longer
knowable. What is it to understand, she let fly,
leaning outward from the edge now that the others had gone down.
How close can the two worlds get, the movement from one to the other
being death? She tried to remember from the other life
the passage of the rising notes off the violin
into the air, thin air, chopping their way in,
wanting to live forever—marrying, marrying—yet still free of the
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiorchestral swelling
which would at any moment pick them up, in-
corporate. How is it one soul wants to be owned
by a single other
in its entirety?—
What is it sucks one down, offering itself, only itself, for
ever? She saw the cattle below
moving in a shape which was exactly their hunger.
She saw—could they be men?—the plot. She leaned.How does one enter
a story? Where the cliff and air pressed the end of each other,
everything else in the world—woods, fields, stream, start of another
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidarker
woods—appeared as kinds of
falling. She listened for the wind again. What was it in there
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiishe could hear
that has nothing to do with telling the truth?
What was it that was not her listening?
She leaned out. What is it pulls at one, she wondered,
what? That it has no shape but point of view?
That it cannot move to hold us?
Oh it has vibrancy, she thought, this emptiness, this intake just
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiprior to
the start of a story, the mind trying to fasten
and fasten, the mind feeling it like a sickness this wanting
to snag, catch hold, begin, the mind crawling out to the edge of the cliff
and feeling the body as if for the first time—how it cannot
follow, cannot love.

*****
Think about it. Would he have mentioned it to me if I had a different kind of allergy? Hey, listen to this:

Him: You're allergic to cheese?!
Me: Yeah, I have this allergy called vertigo...
Him: Vertigo? No Kidding? Vertigo? You know this poet, Jorie Graham? She has a poem with that same title! It's about this woman who looks down a cliff and she sees cows... Nevermind, I'll lend you the book.
Me: Really? Wow! Thanks!

Now imagine this:

Him: You're allergic to pollen?!
Me: Yeah, I have this allergy, a bit like hay fever...
Him: Bummer!
Me: Yeah.

Some things, you just got to be thankful for, sometimes.

*****
What else? Oh, Oh! In a couple of days, it will be a year since I first published in this blog!!! Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, haaaap--- My new blog is turning one! Woohoo!

Now, if only I can keep from... Shhh. Nevermind.

Ahem. New year's coming up! I wonder what's in store for me.

*****
"I'll never be your beast of burden
My back is broad but it's a-hurting
All I want is for you to make love to me."
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiRolling Stones, Beast of Burden

*****
Happy holidays to all, and to all a good night.

Like a fool, I'm clapping: A Christmas Story

Dear [Put your name here],

When Charles Dickens wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness," ad infinitum, he must have just had a day like mine.

It started out Thursday night. I had just finished a new poem, and having been in a drought for a long time, I was quite happy with what I had. Incidentally, that new poem was an apology, and admission-of-envy of sorts--a reply, really--to two previous poems I had written which reeked of feminism. I am quite at a loss how to explain this about-face, except that I must be older than I really am. Who has ever heard of someone "mellowing" at 26, 27 even?

(So in short, you won't be seeing that poem anytime soon, as I am still ambivalent about what it wants to say, and if it says what I wanted it to say, or if, like a traitor, it took me into a totally different direction than when I set out to write it, and now... I am confused. In shorter: I won't be showing it to you, or anyone else, anytime soon.)

Anyway, I felt good, and on my way home from the cafe, I decided to write in my blog. Upon getting home, however, I was pissed to realize that I had left my trusty laptop/sidekick Charlie at the office, my usual laziness getting in the way of any productivity whatsoever. And as if that wasn't enough, I got into an inane argument with my sister regarding my old, not-quite-that-memorable calculus book. Suffice it to say, my skippy-happy mood evaporated like rubbing alcohol.

The next day, I woke up early to a replay of that argument inside my head. I went about my early morning errands irate, not in the least looking forward to going to work in the afternoon. But as I was smoking on the way to the office, guess who I would meet, begging for a cigarette, but the Angel Gabriel disguised as a friend? The angel began his "Behold! I bring good tidings of great joy!" spiel, and I sat dumbfounded for a second, jaws limp with disbelief--as I imagine Joseph, and no, not Mary, might have looked.

Okay, enough with the Christmas metaphor. Here's the "tidings of great joy" as it would have appeared in a mangled telegram:

Two poems published stop How to be Cold & Turnabout stop Next to Krip Yuson's Rejection stop Seriously stop Laughing

And so it was, that I was walking around campus with my feet a few feet above the ground.

Until of course, my floating foot snagged on an uncooperative, unchivalrous step on the stairs on the way to my apartment, and brought me back--quite unglamourously--to earth. Still, some scars I find awfully difficult to mind.


iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiKwek-kwek and other mysteries,
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii[Put anyone else's name here]

If you're happy and you know it...

Go away.

Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's PMS (Laugh, and you're dead), who knows? And really, who cares? But I'm in one of those moods.

We had Galera plans for the long weekend. She needed to get away, I just wanted to hear the ocean again. The whole two weeks before this super typhoon was perfect beach weather--blue skies, hot sun, zero humidity. Even the stars were surprisingly visible at night, even if I woke up to smog hovering at the distance every morning. I refused to go for a dip in the pool. Seemed like settling for second best.

Now, it's just clouds roiling and winds trying to lock me in the apartment. It's not raining yet, but everywhere the smell of it, the signs, the threat, threat, threat.

Oh, fuck it. I'm in a bad mood and the skies, biology, even the absence of saltwater and surf have nothing to do with it. And I've nothing but time on my hands.

Who needs a drink?

*****

Pat yourself in the back.

Despite all the drama, everything seems to be moving along well. I'm currently enrolled in two very interesting classes, a Poetry writing seminar, and a Medieval Lit class. I've just realized that I would be happy to spend my whole life reading other people's poetry, but then again, that might be the coward me talking.

I've been running, too. In the mornings, for 20 to 40 minutes 3 - 5 times a week. Isn't that great? This is my 5th week at it, I think, and boy does it feel good. Sure there are mishaps: Runner Nearly Run Over By Crazy Woman Driver. Side Stitch and Blisters Almost Cause Death. Dead iPod Cost Teran Race. Et cetera, et cetera.

(I plan to quit smoking by the New Year, too. But, shh. I'm not sure I can do it yet. So, no promises. Yet.)

Oh, and headlines caused by reading The Shipping News. Woman Dies of Envy at 26 (or 27).

*****

Ask again.

Are you sure we're not at the beach? Listen.

Morning Sea

Let me stop here. Let me, too, look at nature awhile.
The brilliant blue of the morning sea, of the cloudless sky,
the shore yellow; all lovely,
all bathed in light

Let me stand here. And let me pretend I see all this
(I actually did see it for a minute when I first stopped)
and not my usual day-dreams here too,
my memories, those sensual images.

Constantine P. Cavafy

*****

Clap your hands, you fool.