Saturday, February 26, 2005

12:32 AM | The Luce Sometimes Rises

I like the songs of Lito Camo and his ilk. Unlike the very vocal minority of people who have somehow missed out on the whole spirit of irony and the humorous rewards of pun, double entendre, and other poetic ka-ek-ekan, I can appreciate the subtle and sometimes in-your-face implications of these songs.

"Bulaklak," at once familiar and playful, never fails to tickle our fancy, despite the sometime public protestations about "pornographic message." But when you hear the recent radio hit "Basketball" these days, it strikes you: no matter the skimpy get-up of the singers, the songs are nonetheless hummable, often unforgettable.

Novelty songs have their place in the pop cultural banquet and, like the music of Yoyoy Villame, Camo's music may, in time, gain a kind of respectability -- perhaps even be dissected by cultural pundits for its sometime impact on what Rolando Tolentino has called the Filipino's "sexualized culture."

In the long run, however, one seeks ultimately for meatier music. Something that transcends the banal, and makes us see that message matters even more than the instant gratification of pop favorites.

That is why it is always refreshing when you get to hear Joey Ayala perform live. His rhythm, his distinctive sound -- at once tribal and postmodern -- gets you going, and then, by the end of the performance, you are surprised to know that you have learned something substantial about life, too.



It is exactly that kind of musing that keeps you grounded even after the last notes have been played in Ayala's one-night concert, the aptly titled Kwentuhan, Kantahan, Kalikasan, Atbp., at the Luce Auditorium last February 19.

Heart is key to the concert's success, and more so the tidbits of surprising trivia and what-not you gain from hearing the musician rack his head and comb over his years of experience, to give us something to think about.

We learn, for example, showbiz tsismis, about Lea Salonga and Aga Muhlach in Sana Maulit Muli. Or about biodiversity. Or about the fandanggo set to rock music. Or about Chinese pirates in the Philippines early in the last century. Or how the Assumptionista colegiala accent really originated from the Visayan twang of yayas transplanted in rich households in Manila. Or about the sights and taste of Camiguin Island, or how eagles sound when they are mating. Or about power relations. Or about dialectic materialism, "Whatever that means," Ayala intoned.

Eric Caruncho has written of Ayala as a true music revolutionary, having incorporated into his sound indigenous elements, especially in the use of folk instruments, like the T'boli lute hegalong, and the Maranao kulintang. He is somebody who "creates music that plumbs the depths of the Filipino spirit, radiating a rare authenticity and making such epithets as 'ethnic,' 'alternative,' and even 'folk'."

But what I like most about Joey Ayala are the stories that he tells in giving us his repertoire. In an age where a typical song has no meaning anymore, it is refreshing to listen to music that talks about us, and our world. It is gentle didacticism, with heart -- and, on the side, sliced green mango dipped in spicy vinegar and oyap.

There were his signature songs, including "Walang Hanggang Paalam" and the iconic "Karaniwang Tao," as well as the crowd-pleasing "Maglakad" and "Tabi Po." In "Agila," he talks about the environment through the metaphor of the Philippine eagle. "When we no longer see eagles flying, that means there are no more forests to sustain them," Ayala informs us, before he segues to the song.

"Organik" is a kind of novelty song, rendered in colegiala speak, this one focusing on our identities, on "sari-saring buhay," on biodiversity. In "Batangbakal," his first Manila song, a man in the middle of traffic finds laughter and sadness in the lives of the batang bakal. Here, he talks about street children and the effect of the environment on the artist, and plays around with his main metaphor, which at once presents us with rich ambiguities of meaning -- the image of metal coins, or the street children themselves toughened by life. This is punctuated with a knowing estimation of the country's plight, as indicated by the refrain, "Ang kapal naman ng trapik na ito."

"Classroom 101," a song written in anger, has its roots from Ayala's visit to Marawi, and from his conversation with a teacher from that place who teaches in a classroom with bulletproof doors. In "Mindanao," he turns hopeful, and makes a kind of invitation to visit the beleaguered island. "If I sing about peace often enough," he said, "maybe it will come true." In "Little Brown Man," he tells us it is no joke to live in America, as most of us dream of doing. "She doesn't like our kind," he sings.

In "Kung Kaya Mong Isipin," Ayala hits his stride, and gives us perhaps the very theme of his life of music. He sings, and we learn: "Kung kaya mong isipin / kaya mong gawin / Isa-isang hakbang lang, ikaw'y mararating / Tulad ng puno na galing sa binhi / Ang mga dakilang gawa'y mula sa guniguni."

For the supposed Cultural Center of the South, the Luce Auditorium -- once the premier venue for top, no-nonsense, and groundbreaking cultural acts from around the country, and even from around the world -- Joey Ayala's concert may be the sign of better things still coming for a city growing alarmingly accustomed to ho-hum cultural fares, reined in by a disastrously conservative (nay, quasi-religious, like the Taliban's) climate. True artistry, especially one that has something significant to say about the way we live now, will prevail. And that gives us much hope, at least culturally.

On March 3, the British actress Linda Marlowe, courtesy of the generous and far-seeing souls in Silliman University's Cultural Affairs Committee and the good folks over at the British Council, comes to town with the latest of her acting showcases, this time in No Fear.



Here, Marlowe portrays a 100-year old circus artist looking back at her many careers, while performing a high-wire act on a trapeze.

Now that is definitely something to see.

|

---

12:32 AM | The Luce Sometimes Rises

I like the songs of Lito Camo and his ilk. Unlike the very vocal minority of people who have somehow missed out on the whole spirit of irony and the humorous rewards of pun, double entendre, and other poetic ka-ek-ekan, I can appreciate the subtle and sometimes in-your-face implications of these songs.

"Bulaklak," at once familiar and playful, never fails to tickle our fancy, despite the sometime public protestations about "pornographic message." But when you hear the recent radio hit "Basketball" these days, it strikes you: no matter the skimpy get-up of the singers, the songs are nonetheless hummable, often unforgettable.

Novelty songs have their place in the pop cultural banquet and, like the music of Yoyoy Villame, Camo's music may, in time, gain a kind of respectability -- perhaps even be dissected by cultural pundits for its sometime impact on what Rolando Tolentino has called the Filipino's "sexualized culture."

In the long run, however, one seeks ultimately for meatier music. Something that transcends the banal, and makes us see that message matters even more than the instant gratification of pop favorites.

That is why it is always refreshing when you get to hear Joey Ayala perform live. His rhythm, his distinctive sound -- at once tribal and postmodern -- gets you going, and then, by the end of the performance, you are surprised to know that you have learned something substantial about life, too.



It is exactly that kind of musing that keeps you grounded even after the last notes have been played in Ayala's one-night concert, the aptly titled Kwentuhan, Kantahan, Kalikasan, Atbp., at the Luce Auditorium last February 19.

Heart is key to the concert's success, and more so the tidbits of surprising trivia and what-not you gain from hearing the musician rack his head and comb over his years of experience, to give us something to think about.

We learn, for example, showbiz tsismis, about Lea Salonga and Aga Muhlach in Sana Maulit Muli. Or about biodiversity. Or about the fandanggo set to rock music. Or about Chinese pirates in the Philippines early in the last century. Or how the Assumptionista colegiala accent really originated from the Visayan twang of yayas transplanted in rich households in Manila. Or about the sights and taste of Camiguin Island, or how eagles sound when they are mating. Or about power relations. Or about dialectic materialism, "Whatever that means," Ayala intoned.

Eric Caruncho has written of Ayala as a true music revolutionary, having incorporated into his sound indigenous elements, especially in the use of folk instruments, like the T'boli lute hegalong, and the Maranao kulintang. He is somebody who "creates music that plumbs the depths of the Filipino spirit, radiating a rare authenticity and making such epithets as 'ethnic,' 'alternative,' and even 'folk'."

But what I like most about Joey Ayala are the stories that he tells in giving us his repertoire. In an age where a typical song has no meaning anymore, it is refreshing to listen to music that talks about us, and our world. It is gentle didacticism, with heart -- and, on the side, sliced green mango dipped in spicy vinegar and oyap.

There were his signature songs, including "Walang Hanggang Paalam" and the iconic "Karaniwang Tao," as well as the crowd-pleasing "Maglakad" and "Tabi Po." In "Agila," he talks about the environment through the metaphor of the Philippine eagle. "When we no longer see eagles flying, that means there are no more forests to sustain them," Ayala informs us, before he segues to the song.

"Organik" is a kind of novelty song, rendered in colegiala speak, this one focusing on our identities, on "sari-saring buhay," on biodiversity. In "Batangbakal," his first Manila song, a man in the middle of traffic finds laughter and sadness in the lives of the batang bakal. Here, he talks about street children and the effect of the environment on the artist, and plays around with his main metaphor, which at once presents us with rich ambiguities of meaning -- the image of metal coins, or the street children themselves toughened by life. This is punctuated with a knowing estimation of the country's plight, as indicated by the refrain, "Ang kapal naman ng trapik na ito."

"Classroom 101," a song written in anger, has its roots from Ayala's visit to Marawi, and from his conversation with a teacher from that place who teaches in a classroom with bulletproof doors. In "Mindanao," he turns hopeful, and makes a kind of invitation to visit the beleaguered island. "If I sing about peace often enough," he said, "maybe it will come true." In "Little Brown Man," he tells us it is no joke to live in America, as most of us dream of doing. "She doesn't like our kind," he sings.

In "Kung Kaya Mong Isipin," Ayala hits his stride, and gives us perhaps the very theme of his life of music. He sings, and we learn: "Kung kaya mong isipin / kaya mong gawin / Isa-isang hakbang lang, ikaw'y mararating / Tulad ng puno na galing sa binhi / Ang mga dakilang gawa'y mula sa guniguni."

For the supposed Cultural Center of the South, the Luce Auditorium -- once the premier venue for top, no-nonsense, and groundbreaking cultural acts from around the country, and even from around the world -- Joey Ayala's concert may be the sign of better things still coming for a city growing alarmingly accustomed to ho-hum cultural fares, reined in by a disastrously conservative (nay, quasi-religious, like the Taliban's) climate. True artistry, especially one that has something significant to say about the way we live now, will prevail. And that gives us much hope, at least culturally.

On March 3, the British actress Linda Marlowe, courtesy of the generous and far-seeing souls in Silliman University's Cultural Affairs Committee and the good folks over at the British Council, comes to town with the latest of her acting showcases, this time in No Fear.



Here, Marlowe portrays a 100-year old circus artist looking back at her many careers, while performing a high-wire act on a trapeze.

Now that is definitely something to see.

|

---

12:32 AM | The Luce Sometimes Rises

I like the songs of Lito Camo and his ilk. Unlike the very vocal minority of people who have somehow missed out on the whole spirit of irony and the humorous rewards of pun, double entendre, and other poetic ka-ek-ekan, I can appreciate the subtle and sometimes in-your-face implications of these songs.

"Bulaklak," at once familiar and playful, never fails to tickle our fancy, despite the sometime public protestations about "pornographic message." But when you hear the recent radio hit "Basketball" these days, it strikes you: no matter the skimpy get-up of the singers, the songs are nonetheless hummable, often unforgettable.

Novelty songs have their place in the pop cultural banquet and, like the music of Yoyoy Villame, Camo's music may, in time, gain a kind of respectability -- perhaps even be dissected by cultural pundits for its sometime impact on what Rolando Tolentino has called the Filipino's "sexualized culture."

In the long run, however, one seeks ultimately for meatier music. Something that transcends the banal, and makes us see that message matters even more than the instant gratification of pop favorites.

That is why it is always refreshing when you get to hear Joey Ayala perform live. His rhythm, his distinctive sound -- at once tribal and postmodern -- gets you going, and then, by the end of the performance, you are surprised to know that you have learned something substantial about life, too.



It is exactly that kind of musing that keeps you grounded even after the last notes have been played in Ayala's one-night concert, the aptly titled Kwentuhan, Kantahan, Kalikasan, Atbp., at the Luce Auditorium last February 19.

Heart is key to the concert's success, and more so the tidbits of surprising trivia and what-not you gain from hearing the musician rack his head and comb over his years of experience, to give us something to think about.

We learn, for example, showbiz tsismis, about Lea Salonga and Aga Muhlach in Sana Maulit Muli. Or about biodiversity. Or about the fandanggo set to rock music. Or about Chinese pirates in the Philippines early in the last century. Or how the Assumptionista colegiala accent really originated from the Visayan twang of yayas transplanted in rich households in Manila. Or about the sights and taste of Camiguin Island, or how eagles sound when they are mating. Or about power relations. Or about dialectic materialism, "Whatever that means," Ayala intoned.

Eric Caruncho has written of Ayala as a true music revolutionary, having incorporated into his sound indigenous elements, especially in the use of folk instruments, like the T'boli lute hegalong, and the Maranao kulintang. He is somebody who "creates music that plumbs the depths of the Filipino spirit, radiating a rare authenticity and making such epithets as 'ethnic,' 'alternative,' and even 'folk'."

But what I like most about Joey Ayala are the stories that he tells in giving us his repertoire. In an age where a typical song has no meaning anymore, it is refreshing to listen to music that talks about us, and our world. It is gentle didacticism, with heart -- and, on the side, sliced green mango dipped in spicy vinegar and oyap.

There were his signature songs, including "Walang Hanggang Paalam" and the iconic "Karaniwang Tao," as well as the crowd-pleasing "Maglakad" and "Tabi Po." In "Agila," he talks about the environment through the metaphor of the Philippine eagle. "When we no longer see eagles flying, that means there are no more forests to sustain them," Ayala informs us, before he segues to the song.

"Organik" is a kind of novelty song, rendered in colegiala speak, this one focusing on our identities, on "sari-saring buhay," on biodiversity. In "Batangbakal," his first Manila song, a man in the middle of traffic finds laughter and sadness in the lives of the batang bakal. Here, he talks about street children and the effect of the environment on the artist, and plays around with his main metaphor, which at once presents us with rich ambiguities of meaning -- the image of metal coins, or the street children themselves toughened by life. This is punctuated with a knowing estimation of the country's plight, as indicated by the refrain, "Ang kapal naman ng trapik na ito."

"Classroom 101," a song written in anger, has its roots from Ayala's visit to Marawi, and from his conversation with a teacher from that place who teaches in a classroom with bulletproof doors. In "Mindanao," he turns hopeful, and makes a kind of invitation to visit the beleaguered island. "If I sing about peace often enough," he said, "maybe it will come true." In "Little Brown Man," he tells us it is no joke to live in America, as most of us dream of doing. "She doesn't like our kind," he sings.

In "Kung Kaya Mong Isipin," Ayala hits his stride, and gives us perhaps the very theme of his life of music. He sings, and we learn: "Kung kaya mong isipin / kaya mong gawin / Isa-isang hakbang lang, ikaw'y mararating / Tulad ng puno na galing sa binhi / Ang mga dakilang gawa'y mula sa guniguni."

For the supposed Cultural Center of the South, the Luce Auditorium -- once the premier venue for top, no-nonsense, and groundbreaking cultural acts from around the country, and even from around the world -- Joey Ayala's concert may be the sign of better things still coming for a city growing alarmingly accustomed to ho-hum cultural fares, reined in by a disastrously conservative (nay, quasi-religious, like the Taliban's) climate. True artistry, especially one that has something significant to say about the way we live now, will prevail. And that gives us much hope, at least culturally.

On March 3, the British actress Linda Marlowe, courtesy of the generous and far-seeing souls in Silliman University's Cultural Affairs Committee and the good folks over at the British Council, comes to town with the latest of her acting showcases, this time in No Fear.



Here, Marlowe portrays a 100-year old circus artist looking back at her many careers, while performing a high-wire act on a trapeze.

Now that is definitely something to see.

|

---

Friday, February 25, 2005

11:14 PM | Stumbling on Casocots

So, okay, my surname's not exactly common. I used to be ashamed of it. Casocot. The whole thing sounds made up. Father used to tell us they coined this strange family name because the Murillos -- our supposed old family name -- were being hunted down by the Japanese kempetai during World War II. As to what offense or guerilla honor, I have no idea. Father was fond of tall tales.

Casocot. It sounds dirty sometimes, and when foreigners do try to pronounce it, they say "Casket" instead. Like "death" itself. Even the great poet Eileen Tabios once called me Ian Rosales Scott. Because, well, there's just no spelling it correctly, especially the first time around.

Kasukut. Casukot. Kasokot. I can go on, and on.

Just now, I tried Googling the whole damn surname, to see if I could get anything beyond returns with my name in them.

I did get some.

But who the heck is Danilo Casocot Brucal? Rodel Castor Casocot? Jesebelle Casocot? Maria Ruena Casocot? Sirelo Casocot? Florencio T. Casocot? Nestor Malalis Casocot? Are they relations?

Worst of all, who is Flordeles Casocot?



And why does she have an online dating profile for a site usually reserved for mail-order brides desperately looking for white, dirty, old men? And why does she look like an overly Block & Whitened tsimay? And does the same blood course through our veins? Oh. My. God.

I feel particularly nasty today, if you've noticed. Hehehehe.

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11:14 PM | Stumbling on Casocots

So, okay, my surname's not exactly common. I used to be ashamed of it. Casocot. The whole thing sounds made up. Father used to tell us they coined this strange family name because the Murillos -- our supposed old family name -- were being hunted down by the Japanese kempetai during World War II. As to what offense or guerilla honor, I have no idea. Father was fond of tall tales.

Casocot. It sounds dirty sometimes, and when foreigners do try to pronounce it, they say "Casket" instead. Like "death" itself. Even the great poet Eileen Tabios once called me Ian Rosales Scott. Because, well, there's just no spelling it correctly, especially the first time around.

Kasukut. Casukot. Kasokot. I can go on, and on.

Just now, I tried Googling the whole damn surname, to see if I could get anything beyond returns with my name in them.

I did get some.

But who the heck is Danilo Casocot Brucal? Rodel Castor Casocot? Jesebelle Casocot? Maria Ruena Casocot? Sirelo Casocot? Florencio T. Casocot? Nestor Malalis Casocot? Are they relations?

Worst of all, who is Flordeles Casocot?



And why does she have an online dating profile for a site usually reserved for mail-order brides desperately looking for white, dirty, old men? And why does she look like an overly Block & Whitened tsimay? And does the same blood course through our veins? Oh. My. God.

I feel particularly nasty today, if you've noticed. Hehehehe.

|

---

11:14 PM | Stumbling on Casocots

So, okay, my surname's not exactly common. I used to be ashamed of it. Casocot. The whole thing sounds made up. Father used to tell us they coined this strange family name because the Murillos -- our supposed old family name -- were being hunted down by the Japanese kempetai during World War II. As to what offense or guerilla honor, I have no idea. Father was fond of tall tales.

Casocot. It sounds dirty sometimes, and when foreigners do try to pronounce it, they say "Casket" instead. Like "death" itself. Even the great poet Eileen Tabios once called me Ian Rosales Scott. Because, well, there's just no spelling it correctly, especially the first time around.

Kasukut. Casukot. Kasokot. I can go on, and on.

Just now, I tried Googling the whole damn surname, to see if I could get anything beyond returns with my name in them.

I did get some.

But who the heck is Danilo Casocot Brucal? Rodel Castor Casocot? Jesebelle Casocot? Maria Ruena Casocot? Sirelo Casocot? Florencio T. Casocot? Nestor Malalis Casocot? Are they relations?

Worst of all, who is Flordeles Casocot?



And why does she have an online dating profile for a site usually reserved for mail-order brides desperately looking for white, dirty, old men? And why does she look like an overly Block & Whitened tsimay? And does the same blood course through our veins? Oh. My. God.

I feel particularly nasty today, if you've noticed. Hehehehe.

|

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5:27 PM | For Someone Wearing a Skirt, He Sure Says Some Awfully Funny Things

As a lapsed Protestant but full-time Christian and humanist, I considered it a point of pride that I looked up to this man as a towering symbol of spirituality, muscular intellect, and integrity. He was a man usually unfazed of tiring traditions, ready to embrace necessary change to reflect the spirit of the times. He wasn't like that primitive Pope who once forced Galileo to recant his astronomical sacrilege. I considered him a good man.

Not anymore. (Click that to find out.)

There are no words to explain why, and I will let my good friend, and extraordinary logophile, Dyames to say the things I want to say, but can't:

Poor us. With the Vatican's hateful opinion of homosexuals everywhere, we have officially been lowered to the level of the banal, the perverse, and the debauched. To say that we are evil is to justify the Larami killing and a host of others before it. To tag us as un-Christian is to animalize faith. If there was anyone in the world who should bestow sympathy on us, it should be the Pope himself. After all, he personifies God and embodies his soul. Is bigotry of God's? It's of the devil's.

No truer words, James. And thanks for that, despite the sad implications it brings. Here's more.

|

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5:27 PM | For Someone Wearing a Skirt, He Sure Says Some Awfully Funny Things

As a lapsed Protestant but full-time Christian and humanist, I considered it a point of pride that I looked up to this man as a towering symbol of spirituality, muscular intellect, and integrity. He was a man usually unfazed of tiring traditions, ready to embrace necessary change to reflect the spirit of the times. He wasn't like that primitive Pope who once forced Galileo to recant his astronomical sacrilege. I considered him a good man.

Not anymore. (Click that to find out.)

There are no words to explain why, and I will let my good friend, and extraordinary logophile, Dyames to say the things I want to say, but can't:

Poor us. With the Vatican's hateful opinion of homosexuals everywhere, we have officially been lowered to the level of the banal, the perverse, and the debauched. To say that we are evil is to justify the Larami killing and a host of others before it. To tag us as un-Christian is to animalize faith. If there was anyone in the world who should bestow sympathy on us, it should be the Pope himself. After all, he personifies God and embodies his soul. Is bigotry of God's? It's of the devil's.

No truer words, James. And thanks for that, despite the sad implications it brings. Here's more.

|

---

5:27 PM | For Someone Wearing a Skirt, He Sure Says Some Awfully Funny Things

As a lapsed Protestant but full-time Christian and humanist, I considered it a point of pride that I looked up to this man as a towering symbol of spirituality, muscular intellect, and integrity. He was a man usually unfazed of tiring traditions, ready to embrace necessary change to reflect the spirit of the times. He wasn't like that primitive Pope who once forced Galileo to recant his astronomical sacrilege. I considered him a good man.

Not anymore. (Click that to find out.)

There are no words to explain why, and I will let my good friend, and extraordinary logophile, Dyames to say the things I want to say, but can't:

Poor us. With the Vatican's hateful opinion of homosexuals everywhere, we have officially been lowered to the level of the banal, the perverse, and the debauched. To say that we are evil is to justify the Larami killing and a host of others before it. To tag us as un-Christian is to animalize faith. If there was anyone in the world who should bestow sympathy on us, it should be the Pope himself. After all, he personifies God and embodies his soul. Is bigotry of God's? It's of the devil's.

No truer words, James. And thanks for that, despite the sad implications it brings. Here's more.

|

---

3:45 PM | Distraction for a Friday Holiday

Wet Men.

'Nuff said. (Not exactly work safe, but who cares?)

[link courtesy of cooking contessa]

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3:45 PM | Distraction for a Friday Holiday

Wet Men.

'Nuff said. (Not exactly work safe, but who cares?)

[link courtesy of cooking contessa]

|

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3:45 PM | Distraction for a Friday Holiday

Wet Men.

'Nuff said. (Not exactly work safe, but who cares?)

[link courtesy of cooking contessa]

|

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2:56 PM | Penance

There's no denying this anymore. I admit it now. I read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. (Yay!) I secretly bought a copy through Amazon.com a few months ago, read the whole thing in one night, and absolutely loathed its literary ineptness, but was in guilty awe of its power for cheap thrills. (Admit it, it is a page-turner.)



Now I feel like there's asphalt on my skin that refuses to go away. I am so ashamed. Punish me. Pleeeaassee.

|

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2:56 PM | Penance

There's no denying this anymore. I admit it now. I read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. (Yay!) I secretly bought a copy through Amazon.com a few months ago, read the whole thing in one night, and absolutely loathed its literary ineptness, but was in guilty awe of its power for cheap thrills. (Admit it, it is a page-turner.)



Now I feel like there's asphalt on my skin that refuses to go away. I am so ashamed. Punish me. Pleeeaassee.

|

---

2:56 PM | Penance

There's no denying this anymore. I admit it now. I read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. (Yay!) I secretly bought a copy through Amazon.com a few months ago, read the whole thing in one night, and absolutely loathed its literary ineptness, but was in guilty awe of its power for cheap thrills. (Admit it, it is a page-turner.)



Now I feel like there's asphalt on my skin that refuses to go away. I am so ashamed. Punish me. Pleeeaassee.

|

---

2:29 PM | Ranting, Because I Can, Dammit

Fucking shit! I'm trying to concentrate and be meditative while I'm psyching myself to write something for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in this God-forsaken Internet cafe, and now there's this super panget guy accompanying his girlfriend in the very next chair, invading my private space! What the fuck? Get away from my bubble, you toad!



But, on the other hand, this is such a wonderful,sunny day...

|

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2:29 PM | Ranting, Because I Can, Dammit

Fucking shit! I'm trying to concentrate and be meditative while I'm psyching myself to write something for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in this God-forsaken Internet cafe, and now there's this super panget guy accompanying his girlfriend in the very next chair, invading my private space! What the fuck? Get away from my bubble, you toad!



But, on the other hand, this is such a wonderful,sunny day...

|

---

2:29 PM | Ranting, Because I Can, Dammit

Fucking shit! I'm trying to concentrate and be meditative while I'm psyching myself to write something for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in this God-forsaken Internet cafe, and now there's this super panget guy accompanying his girlfriend in the very next chair, invading my private space! What the fuck? Get away from my bubble, you toad!



But, on the other hand, this is such a wonderful,sunny day...

|

---

Thursday, February 24, 2005

4:28 PM | From Sideways

The other year, the critical darling of the movie set had been Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, which had left me surprisingly cold despite the warm praises it garnered. Last year, the same thing happened, this time with Michael Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which had most of my friends raving ecstatically, while I couldn't help but tell myself, "This movie could need some better lighting design." Did that make me a cinematically shallow man? But I had enjoyed Gondry's quirky Human Nature, and I get tickled by Charles Kauffman's brilliant screenplays for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. (Maybe I was just hoping Spike Jonze had first dibs on this one as well?)

Which brings me to Alexander Payne's Sideways. All its universal praise had me rattled. Will I, too, hate this movie? Payne had been a remarkable storyteller so far in his short career. Election was brilliant but neglected, and About Schmidt was wonderful, and funny. Will that magic stretch on to Sideways, now nominated for Oscar's Best Picture award?

It took me days to put that DVD on my player, and press play. Today, I finally did it.

And I am most impressed.

Sideways is subtle and wonderful filmmaking. There is no Hollywood bombast here, just a richness full of that often forgotten ingredients of absorbing story, and complex and very human characters. The movie reminds me that the reason I love most of my favorite stories is because of their resonant metaphors. The metaphor here is obviously wine, our bedraggled Miles (the wonderful Paul Giamatti) clearly a bottle of fine Pinot (also my favorite wine), and the happy-go-lucky and irresponsible Jack (charmingly played by Thomas Haden Church) is the Cabernet.

Here's the scene that everyone is raving about...




EXT. STEPHANIE'S PORCH

MAYA
Wow, this is really starting to open up. What do you think?

MILES
My palate's kind of shot, but from what I can tell, I'd dub it pretty damn good.

MAYA
Can I ask you a personal question?

MILES
(Bracing himself) Sure.

MAYA
Why are you so into Pinot? It's like a thing with you?

Miles laughs at first, then smiles wistfully at the question. He searches for the answer in his glass and begins slowly.

MILES
I don't know. It's a hard grape to grow. As you know. It's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's not a survivor like Cabernet that can grow anywhere and thrive even when neglected. Pinot needs constant care and attention and in fact can only grow in specific little tucked-away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing growers can do it really, can tap into Pinot's most fragile, delicate qualities. Only when someone has taken the time to truly understand its potential can Pinot be coaxed into its fullest expression. And when that happens, its flavors are the most haunting and brilliant and subtle and thrilling and ancient on the planet.

Maya has found this answer revealing and moving.

MILES (CONT'D)
I mean, Cabernets can be powerful and exciting, but they seem prosaic to me for some reason by comparison. How about you?

MAYA
What about me?

MILES
I don't know. Why are you into wine?

MAYA
I suppose I got really into wine originally through my ex-husband. He had a big, kind of show-off cellar. But then I found out that I have a really sharp palate, and the more I drank, the more I liked what it made me think about.

MILES
Yeah? Like what?

MAYA
Like what a fraud he was.

Miles laughs.

MAYA
No, but I do like to think about the life of wine, how it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing, how the sun was shining that summer or if it rained... what the weather was like. I think about all those people who tended and picked the grapes, and if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I love how wine continues to evolve, how every time I open a bottle its going to taste different than if I had opened it on any other day. Because a bottle of wine is actually alive -- it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks -- like your '61 -- and begins its steady, inevitable decline. And it tastes so fucking good.

Now it is Miles' turn to be swept away. Maya's face tells us the moment is right, but Miles remains frozen. He needs another sign, and Maya is bold enough to offer it: she reaches out and places one hand atop his.

MILES
(suppressing his panic) But I like a lot of wines besides Pinot, too. Lately I've really been into Rieslings. Do you like Rieslings? Rieslings?

She nods, a Mona Lisa smile on her lips. Come on, Miles. Finally --

MILES (CONT'D)
(pointing) Bathroom over there?

MAYA
Yeah.

Miles gets up and walks out. Maya sighs and gets an American Spirit out of her purse.

See the movie. It will remind you why we love personal movies in the very first place.

|

---

4:28 PM | From Sideways

The other year, the critical darling of the movie set had been Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, which had left me surprisingly cold despite the warm praises it garnered. Last year, the same thing happened, this time with Michael Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which had most of my friends raving ecstatically, while I couldn't help but tell myself, "This movie could need some better lighting design." Did that make me a cinematically shallow man? But I had enjoyed Gondry's quirky Human Nature, and I get tickled by Charles Kauffman's brilliant screenplays for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. (Maybe I was just hoping Spike Jonze had first dibs on this one as well?)

Which brings me to Alexander Payne's Sideways. All its universal praise had me rattled. Will I, too, hate this movie? Payne had been a remarkable storyteller so far in his short career. Election was brilliant but neglected, and About Schmidt was wonderful, and funny. Will that magic stretch on to Sideways, now nominated for Oscar's Best Picture award?

It took me days to put that DVD on my player, and press play. Today, I finally did it.

And I am most impressed.

Sideways is subtle and wonderful filmmaking. There is no Hollywood bombast here, just a richness full of that often forgotten ingredients of absorbing story, and complex and very human characters. The movie reminds me that the reason I love most of my favorite stories is because of their resonant metaphors. The metaphor here is obviously wine, our bedraggled Miles (the wonderful Paul Giamatti) clearly a bottle of fine Pinot (also my favorite wine), and the happy-go-lucky and irresponsible Jack (charmingly played by Thomas Haden Church) is the Cabernet.

Here's the scene that everyone is raving about...




EXT. STEPHANIE'S PORCH

MAYA
Wow, this is really starting to open up. What do you think?

MILES
My palate's kind of shot, but from what I can tell, I'd dub it pretty damn good.

MAYA
Can I ask you a personal question?

MILES
(Bracing himself) Sure.

MAYA
Why are you so into Pinot? It's like a thing with you?

Miles laughs at first, then smiles wistfully at the question. He searches for the answer in his glass and begins slowly.

MILES
I don't know. It's a hard grape to grow. As you know. It's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's not a survivor like Cabernet that can grow anywhere and thrive even when neglected. Pinot needs constant care and attention and in fact can only grow in specific little tucked-away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing growers can do it really, can tap into Pinot's most fragile, delicate qualities. Only when someone has taken the time to truly understand its potential can Pinot be coaxed into its fullest expression. And when that happens, its flavors are the most haunting and brilliant and subtle and thrilling and ancient on the planet.

Maya has found this answer revealing and moving.

MILES (CONT'D)
I mean, Cabernets can be powerful and exciting, but they seem prosaic to me for some reason by comparison. How about you?

MAYA
What about me?

MILES
I don't know. Why are you into wine?

MAYA
I suppose I got really into wine originally through my ex-husband. He had a big, kind of show-off cellar. But then I found out that I have a really sharp palate, and the more I drank, the more I liked what it made me think about.

MILES
Yeah? Like what?

MAYA
Like what a fraud he was.

Miles laughs.

MAYA
No, but I do like to think about the life of wine, how it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing, how the sun was shining that summer or if it rained... what the weather was like. I think about all those people who tended and picked the grapes, and if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I love how wine continues to evolve, how every time I open a bottle its going to taste different than if I had opened it on any other day. Because a bottle of wine is actually alive -- it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks -- like your '61 -- and begins its steady, inevitable decline. And it tastes so fucking good.

Now it is Miles' turn to be swept away. Maya's face tells us the moment is right, but Miles remains frozen. He needs another sign, and Maya is bold enough to offer it: she reaches out and places one hand atop his.

MILES
(suppressing his panic) But I like a lot of wines besides Pinot, too. Lately I've really been into Rieslings. Do you like Rieslings? Rieslings?

She nods, a Mona Lisa smile on her lips. Come on, Miles. Finally --

MILES (CONT'D)
(pointing) Bathroom over there?

MAYA
Yeah.

Miles gets up and walks out. Maya sighs and gets an American Spirit out of her purse.

See the movie. It will remind you why we love personal movies in the very first place.

|

---

4:28 PM | From Sideways

The other year, the critical darling of the movie set had been Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, which had left me surprisingly cold despite the warm praises it garnered. Last year, the same thing happened, this time with Michael Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which had most of my friends raving ecstatically, while I couldn't help but tell myself, "This movie could need some better lighting design." Did that make me a cinematically shallow man? But I had enjoyed Gondry's quirky Human Nature, and I get tickled by Charles Kauffman's brilliant screenplays for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. (Maybe I was just hoping Spike Jonze had first dibs on this one as well?)

Which brings me to Alexander Payne's Sideways. All its universal praise had me rattled. Will I, too, hate this movie? Payne had been a remarkable storyteller so far in his short career. Election was brilliant but neglected, and About Schmidt was wonderful, and funny. Will that magic stretch on to Sideways, now nominated for Oscar's Best Picture award?

It took me days to put that DVD on my player, and press play. Today, I finally did it.

And I am most impressed.

Sideways is subtle and wonderful filmmaking. There is no Hollywood bombast here, just a richness full of that often forgotten ingredients of absorbing story, and complex and very human characters. The movie reminds me that the reason I love most of my favorite stories is because of their resonant metaphors. The metaphor here is obviously wine, our bedraggled Miles (the wonderful Paul Giamatti) clearly a bottle of fine Pinot (also my favorite wine), and the happy-go-lucky and irresponsible Jack (charmingly played by Thomas Haden Church) is the Cabernet.

Here's the scene that everyone is raving about...




EXT. STEPHANIE'S PORCH

MAYA
Wow, this is really starting to open up. What do you think?

MILES
My palate's kind of shot, but from what I can tell, I'd dub it pretty damn good.

MAYA
Can I ask you a personal question?

MILES
(Bracing himself) Sure.

MAYA
Why are you so into Pinot? It's like a thing with you?

Miles laughs at first, then smiles wistfully at the question. He searches for the answer in his glass and begins slowly.

MILES
I don't know. It's a hard grape to grow. As you know. It's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's not a survivor like Cabernet that can grow anywhere and thrive even when neglected. Pinot needs constant care and attention and in fact can only grow in specific little tucked-away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing growers can do it really, can tap into Pinot's most fragile, delicate qualities. Only when someone has taken the time to truly understand its potential can Pinot be coaxed into its fullest expression. And when that happens, its flavors are the most haunting and brilliant and subtle and thrilling and ancient on the planet.

Maya has found this answer revealing and moving.

MILES (CONT'D)
I mean, Cabernets can be powerful and exciting, but they seem prosaic to me for some reason by comparison. How about you?

MAYA
What about me?

MILES
I don't know. Why are you into wine?

MAYA
I suppose I got really into wine originally through my ex-husband. He had a big, kind of show-off cellar. But then I found out that I have a really sharp palate, and the more I drank, the more I liked what it made me think about.

MILES
Yeah? Like what?

MAYA
Like what a fraud he was.

Miles laughs.

MAYA
No, but I do like to think about the life of wine, how it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing, how the sun was shining that summer or if it rained... what the weather was like. I think about all those people who tended and picked the grapes, and if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I love how wine continues to evolve, how every time I open a bottle its going to taste different than if I had opened it on any other day. Because a bottle of wine is actually alive -- it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks -- like your '61 -- and begins its steady, inevitable decline. And it tastes so fucking good.

Now it is Miles' turn to be swept away. Maya's face tells us the moment is right, but Miles remains frozen. He needs another sign, and Maya is bold enough to offer it: she reaches out and places one hand atop his.

MILES
(suppressing his panic) But I like a lot of wines besides Pinot, too. Lately I've really been into Rieslings. Do you like Rieslings? Rieslings?

She nods, a Mona Lisa smile on her lips. Come on, Miles. Finally --

MILES (CONT'D)
(pointing) Bathroom over there?

MAYA
Yeah.

Miles gets up and walks out. Maya sighs and gets an American Spirit out of her purse.

See the movie. It will remind you why we love personal movies in the very first place.

|

---

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

10:58 PM | Give It to Me, Billy Boy

[swiped from kokak's livejournal, because i could not help it]



Not just the richest. Noooo. Most positively, also the sexiest man alive, circa 1983.

|

---

10:58 PM | Give It to Me, Billy Boy

[swiped from kokak's livejournal, because i could not help it]



Not just the richest. Noooo. Most positively, also the sexiest man alive, circa 1983.

|

---

10:58 PM | Give It to Me, Billy Boy

[swiped from kokak's livejournal, because i could not help it]



Not just the richest. Noooo. Most positively, also the sexiest man alive, circa 1983.

|

---

4:51 PM | Rocking the Oscar

Did anyone see Chris Rock on Jay Leno kanina? The Oscar host this year was talking about the Oscar hype, and boy, was he a laugh riot. (Thank God for ETC.)



Some gems from that episode:

On previously saying only gay men watch the Oscars:

"I did not say that. I said only gay people watch the Tonys." But later: "I really don't know any straight men who aren't in show business that have ever watched the Oscars."

On awards shows' significance:

"The awards don't really affect anybody's lives in the crowd. Meanwhile, the Nobel Peace Prize, there's no one there. Nobody cares what the scientists are wearing. What are you wearing Professor Allen? 'Pants!'"

On acceptance speeches:

"Don't thank God. God's busy working on the tsunami, so leave him alone."

Now, let February 28 come, and let Chris Rock rock. This should be the funniest, most insultingly marvelous Oscar in years.

|

---

4:51 PM | Rocking the Oscar

Did anyone see Chris Rock on Jay Leno kanina? The Oscar host this year was talking about the Oscar hype, and boy, was he a laugh riot. (Thank God for ETC.)



Some gems from that episode:

On previously saying only gay men watch the Oscars:

"I did not say that. I said only gay people watch the Tonys." But later: "I really don't know any straight men who aren't in show business that have ever watched the Oscars."

On awards shows' significance:

"The awards don't really affect anybody's lives in the crowd. Meanwhile, the Nobel Peace Prize, there's no one there. Nobody cares what the scientists are wearing. What are you wearing Professor Allen? 'Pants!'"

On acceptance speeches:

"Don't thank God. God's busy working on the tsunami, so leave him alone."

Now, let February 28 come, and let Chris Rock rock. This should be the funniest, most insultingly marvelous Oscar in years.

|

---

4:51 PM | Rocking the Oscar

Did anyone see Chris Rock on Jay Leno kanina? The Oscar host this year was talking about the Oscar hype, and boy, was he a laugh riot. (Thank God for ETC.)



Some gems from that episode:

On previously saying only gay men watch the Oscars:

"I did not say that. I said only gay people watch the Tonys." But later: "I really don't know any straight men who aren't in show business that have ever watched the Oscars."

On awards shows' significance:

"The awards don't really affect anybody's lives in the crowd. Meanwhile, the Nobel Peace Prize, there's no one there. Nobody cares what the scientists are wearing. What are you wearing Professor Allen? 'Pants!'"

On acceptance speeches:

"Don't thank God. God's busy working on the tsunami, so leave him alone."

Now, let February 28 come, and let Chris Rock rock. This should be the funniest, most insultingly marvelous Oscar in years.

|

---

11:19 AM | Speling. Spilling. Speleng. Espeling. No, no, no. Spelling. There you go.

Steve Hendrix is a reporter for The Washington Post, and he can't spell.

Let's take one example: itinerary.

Iteneriary is one of the dozens of words that bring me to a complete standstill. I can be typing along at a brisk pace when my brain feeds a word like itenirary down to my flying fingers, and they freeze over the keyboard like mummified buzzard claws.

Itinerary. I-T ... E? ... I? Pretty sure it's I. N is easy. Another E? or is it A? ... R ... Two Rs? A? A-R-Y. Itinerrary.

I once spell-checked a 2,000-word article I had written for the Post's Travel section and found I had spelled itinerary four ways, none of them correctly.

Read the rest of the funny stuff here.

[via bookslut]

|

---

11:19 AM | Speling. Spilling. Speleng. Espeling. No, no, no. Spelling. There you go.

Steve Hendrix is a reporter for The Washington Post, and he can't spell.

Let's take one example: itinerary.

Iteneriary is one of the dozens of words that bring me to a complete standstill. I can be typing along at a brisk pace when my brain feeds a word like itenirary down to my flying fingers, and they freeze over the keyboard like mummified buzzard claws.

Itinerary. I-T ... E? ... I? Pretty sure it's I. N is easy. Another E? or is it A? ... R ... Two Rs? A? A-R-Y. Itinerrary.

I once spell-checked a 2,000-word article I had written for the Post's Travel section and found I had spelled itinerary four ways, none of them correctly.

Read the rest of the funny stuff here.

[via bookslut]

|

---

11:19 AM | Speling. Spilling. Speleng. Espeling. No, no, no. Spelling. There you go.

Steve Hendrix is a reporter for The Washington Post, and he can't spell.

Let's take one example: itinerary.

Iteneriary is one of the dozens of words that bring me to a complete standstill. I can be typing along at a brisk pace when my brain feeds a word like itenirary down to my flying fingers, and they freeze over the keyboard like mummified buzzard claws.

Itinerary. I-T ... E? ... I? Pretty sure it's I. N is easy. Another E? or is it A? ... R ... Two Rs? A? A-R-Y. Itinerrary.

I once spell-checked a 2,000-word article I had written for the Post's Travel section and found I had spelled itinerary four ways, none of them correctly.

Read the rest of the funny stuff here.

[via bookslut]

|

---

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

11:02 PM | Manhunt That

It's the second to the last episode of Bravo's Manhunt, and coming head to head, it's Jon -- the archetypal Tarzan hetero -- and Rob -- the quintessential city slicker gayboy. Up for grabs, the title of most gorgeous male model in America.* (Really.)

So, okay. The show's sooooo fucking lame (it makes Tyra Banks' infinitely better America's Next Top Model look like it's a show made of gold), and boring... so why do we keep tuning in at 10 o'clock every Tuesday ba?

(As if anyone needed to ask that question.)

*Jon eventually won.

|

---

11:02 PM | Manhunt That

It's the second to the last episode of Bravo's Manhunt, and coming head to head, it's Jon -- the archetypal Tarzan hetero -- and Rob -- the quintessential city slicker gayboy. Up for grabs, the title of most gorgeous male model in America.* (Really.)

So, okay. The show's sooooo fucking lame (it makes Tyra Banks' infinitely better America's Next Top Model look like it's a show made of gold), and boring... so why do we keep tuning in at 10 o'clock every Tuesday ba?

(As if anyone needed to ask that question.)

*Jon eventually won.

|

---

11:02 PM | Manhunt That

It's the second to the last episode of Bravo's Manhunt, and coming head to head, it's Jon -- the archetypal Tarzan hetero -- and Rob -- the quintessential city slicker gayboy. Up for grabs, the title of most gorgeous male model in America.* (Really.)

So, okay. The show's sooooo fucking lame (it makes Tyra Banks' infinitely better America's Next Top Model look like it's a show made of gold), and boring... so why do we keep tuning in at 10 o'clock every Tuesday ba?

(As if anyone needed to ask that question.)

*Jon eventually won.

|

---

Monday, February 21, 2005

10:41 AM | Room of Spirits

Honestly, I've been remiss with my Philippine Daily Inquirer duties. So, last weekend, I decided to begin churning out the articles expected of me. Here's for this Monday's Lifestyle Section issue.

Click here if you want the real thing.


The pleasant surprise may be that, hidden somewhere in a Mexican restaurant called CocoAmigos -- located along the northern stretch of Dumaguete City's famous Boulevard -- is an adobe-brown dining room, which is increasingly becoming the most important space for art in this city down south, in Negros Oriental.

Here, a kind of wakening is stirring what had always been a vibrant -- although surprisingly low-key -- community of artists. The city had always boasted of artists of impressive rank, with equally impressive voices: Kitty Taniguchi and her Babylonic female abandon, for example, and daughter Maria Taniguchi's prophetic reach. There's the surreal worlds of Jutze Pamate and Raszceljan Salvarita which border on Pinoy Magritte. There's Paul Pfeiffer, whose installations won for him America's prestigious Whitney Prize sometime in 2001.

In their wake come two more names in Dumaguete art that may command considerable attention in the years to come. In an exhibit aptly called "Waves of Worship," artists Susan Canoy and Sharon Dadang-Rafols have finally come into their own, their artistic voices full-bodied in an exhibit that celebrates spirituality in manifestations of outward worship, or inward angst.

Susan Canoy's work -- composed mostly of acrylic paintings on antique narra wood -- is a marked departure from the diwata and sirena motifs that had always characterized her early paintings, not always done successfully. But in these new works, she has achieved that ambitious reach to people her canvass with folkloric elements, and render them with intensity and meaning.



This time around, she takes on the celebrative nature of Filipino religiosity -- the saints' days and festivals of our collective spiritual identity -- and mounts them in the form of calendar dials, each canvass reminiscent of those typical framed installations of kris swords and ancient shields that used to grace many Filipino homes. Set on black tablets, stylized wood panels -- accented on the sides with decorative metal door handles that seem to suggest a welcome to varieties of rituals -- are rendered with scenes from the Catholic festivals of saints, all done in Amorsolo charm, the acrylic finish marking a vibrant quality.

"This worship of Saints," Canoy says, "is celebrated to ask for more bounty and harvest and a good life." For that, she devotes one work to each month of the year, a dial in the center indicating the various festivities set in that month, then highlighting the one celebration that defines the days.

For January, there is "Inahan sa Kanunayng Panabang," the top showing a scene of a young man playing guitar in the middle of a vast rice field, and the bottom with vintas in the horizon. For October, she celebrates the Oriental Negrense Buglasan tradition in "Pagsaulog," with Dumaguete's Boulevard rendered in festive colors on the top, and the provincial capitol on the bottom in an energy of people dancing to the Buglasan beat. The other works evoke the other months: "Viva Senyor," "Semana Santa," "Flores de Mayo," and so on.

But while Canoy's works celebrate the visible and often theatrical rites to commemorate our everyday spirituality, Sharon Dadang-Rafols' works suggest a more introspective tone of worship, maybe even internal struggles of faith.

Hers is a work of miniature tension. The paintings -- or a set of small ones presented mostly as triptychs -- are outer expressions of inner peace and inner rage, canvasses of white with strokes of color, foreboding, and meditation, set against a backdrop of blackness. They are almost like Rorschach ink blot tests, and sometimes what is hidden in the chaos of color are startling forms that resemble phantom faces (done to the most haunting degree in the "Entreaty" triptych), throbbing veins, and palimpsests of forbidden landscapes.

"My work," Dadang-Rafols says, "is much in line with meditation through colors and wave of colors. Simple lines and integration of colors create subjects of imagination that makes the viewer meditate, or simply gaze. Perhaps the blending of the hues captures the eye to a deeper meaning of the almost photographic wash of colors."

Her "Zen Series" is a simple exercise of Chinese water color ink on paper, in a kind of pulled string effect that reaches beyond that. They provide windows. To what? To inner wildness, and to eventual calm? "Vision" and "Gamut" are portraits, perhaps, of the recesses of our inner anatomies, at once organic and ominous. "My Prayer," on the other hand, is a tornado of red and sunsets of green, obliquely revealing a haunting woman's face. "Our Kibbutz" is a set of five panels that approximate a rough sequence of waves and blots simulating fireworks and lava lamps, to end, like the other painting, to a portrait of sorts of a smudged-up woman. "The Works" is a splatter of red simulating palm trees in a nuclear sunset, a theme which bleeds to "Breathe," which shows a stark landscape of the shadows of barren trees and ruined buildings, all shrouded in purple decadence.

Two women with singular views on viewing the numinous, reflecting our individual responses to the ethereal, the ritualistic, and the meditative.

In that adobe room in that restaurant, the spirits loom, bursting out of the canvasses and finally into our lives.

(The exhibit runs until February 24, in CocoAmigos, Rizal Boulevard, Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental.)

|

---

10:41 AM | Room of Spirits

Honestly, I've been remiss with my Philippine Daily Inquirer duties. So, last weekend, I decided to begin churning out the articles expected of me. Here's for this Monday's Lifestyle Section issue.

Click here if you want the real thing.


The pleasant surprise may be that, hidden somewhere in a Mexican restaurant called CocoAmigos -- located along the northern stretch of Dumaguete City's famous Boulevard -- is an adobe-brown dining room, which is increasingly becoming the most important space for art in this city down south, in Negros Oriental.

Here, a kind of wakening is stirring what had always been a vibrant -- although surprisingly low-key -- community of artists. The city had always boasted of artists of impressive rank, with equally impressive voices: Kitty Taniguchi and her Babylonic female abandon, for example, and daughter Maria Taniguchi's prophetic reach. There's the surreal worlds of Jutze Pamate and Raszceljan Salvarita which border on Pinoy Magritte. There's Paul Pfeiffer, whose installations won for him America's prestigious Whitney Prize sometime in 2001.

In their wake come two more names in Dumaguete art that may command considerable attention in the years to come. In an exhibit aptly called "Waves of Worship," artists Susan Canoy and Sharon Dadang-Rafols have finally come into their own, their artistic voices full-bodied in an exhibit that celebrates spirituality in manifestations of outward worship, or inward angst.

Susan Canoy's work -- composed mostly of acrylic paintings on antique narra wood -- is a marked departure from the diwata and sirena motifs that had always characterized her early paintings, not always done successfully. But in these new works, she has achieved that ambitious reach to people her canvass with folkloric elements, and render them with intensity and meaning.



This time around, she takes on the celebrative nature of Filipino religiosity -- the saints' days and festivals of our collective spiritual identity -- and mounts them in the form of calendar dials, each canvass reminiscent of those typical framed installations of kris swords and ancient shields that used to grace many Filipino homes. Set on black tablets, stylized wood panels -- accented on the sides with decorative metal door handles that seem to suggest a welcome to varieties of rituals -- are rendered with scenes from the Catholic festivals of saints, all done in Amorsolo charm, the acrylic finish marking a vibrant quality.

"This worship of Saints," Canoy says, "is celebrated to ask for more bounty and harvest and a good life." For that, she devotes one work to each month of the year, a dial in the center indicating the various festivities set in that month, then highlighting the one celebration that defines the days.

For January, there is "Inahan sa Kanunayng Panabang," the top showing a scene of a young man playing guitar in the middle of a vast rice field, and the bottom with vintas in the horizon. For October, she celebrates the Oriental Negrense Buglasan tradition in "Pagsaulog," with Dumaguete's Boulevard rendered in festive colors on the top, and the provincial capitol on the bottom in an energy of people dancing to the Buglasan beat. The other works evoke the other months: "Viva Senyor," "Semana Santa," "Flores de Mayo," and so on.

But while Canoy's works celebrate the visible and often theatrical rites to commemorate our everyday spirituality, Sharon Dadang-Rafols' works suggest a more introspective tone of worship, maybe even internal struggles of faith.

Hers is a work of miniature tension. The paintings -- or a set of small ones presented mostly as triptychs -- are outer expressions of inner peace and inner rage, canvasses of white with strokes of color, foreboding, and meditation, set against a backdrop of blackness. They are almost like Rorschach ink blot tests, and sometimes what is hidden in the chaos of color are startling forms that resemble phantom faces (done to the most haunting degree in the "Entreaty" triptych), throbbing veins, and palimpsests of forbidden landscapes.

"My work," Dadang-Rafols says, "is much in line with meditation through colors and wave of colors. Simple lines and integration of colors create subjects of imagination that makes the viewer meditate, or simply gaze. Perhaps the blending of the hues captures the eye to a deeper meaning of the almost photographic wash of colors."

Her "Zen Series" is a simple exercise of Chinese water color ink on paper, in a kind of pulled string effect that reaches beyond that. They provide windows. To what? To inner wildness, and to eventual calm? "Vision" and "Gamut" are portraits, perhaps, of the recesses of our inner anatomies, at once organic and ominous. "My Prayer," on the other hand, is a tornado of red and sunsets of green, obliquely revealing a haunting woman's face. "Our Kibbutz" is a set of five panels that approximate a rough sequence of waves and blots simulating fireworks and lava lamps, to end, like the other painting, to a portrait of sorts of a smudged-up woman. "The Works" is a splatter of red simulating palm trees in a nuclear sunset, a theme which bleeds to "Breathe," which shows a stark landscape of the shadows of barren trees and ruined buildings, all shrouded in purple decadence.

Two women with singular views on viewing the numinous, reflecting our individual responses to the ethereal, the ritualistic, and the meditative.

In that adobe room in that restaurant, the spirits loom, bursting out of the canvasses and finally into our lives.

(The exhibit runs until February 24, in CocoAmigos, Rizal Boulevard, Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental.)

|

---

10:41 AM | Room of Spirits

Honestly, I've been remiss with my Philippine Daily Inquirer duties. So, last weekend, I decided to begin churning out the articles expected of me. Here's for this Monday's Lifestyle Section issue.

Click here if you want the real thing.


The pleasant surprise may be that, hidden somewhere in a Mexican restaurant called CocoAmigos -- located along the northern stretch of Dumaguete City's famous Boulevard -- is an adobe-brown dining room, which is increasingly becoming the most important space for art in this city down south, in Negros Oriental.

Here, a kind of wakening is stirring what had always been a vibrant -- although surprisingly low-key -- community of artists. The city had always boasted of artists of impressive rank, with equally impressive voices: Kitty Taniguchi and her Babylonic female abandon, for example, and daughter Maria Taniguchi's prophetic reach. There's the surreal worlds of Jutze Pamate and Raszceljan Salvarita which border on Pinoy Magritte. There's Paul Pfeiffer, whose installations won for him America's prestigious Whitney Prize sometime in 2001.

In their wake come two more names in Dumaguete art that may command considerable attention in the years to come. In an exhibit aptly called "Waves of Worship," artists Susan Canoy and Sharon Dadang-Rafols have finally come into their own, their artistic voices full-bodied in an exhibit that celebrates spirituality in manifestations of outward worship, or inward angst.

Susan Canoy's work -- composed mostly of acrylic paintings on antique narra wood -- is a marked departure from the diwata and sirena motifs that had always characterized her early paintings, not always done successfully. But in these new works, she has achieved that ambitious reach to people her canvass with folkloric elements, and render them with intensity and meaning.



This time around, she takes on the celebrative nature of Filipino religiosity -- the saints' days and festivals of our collective spiritual identity -- and mounts them in the form of calendar dials, each canvass reminiscent of those typical framed installations of kris swords and ancient shields that used to grace many Filipino homes. Set on black tablets, stylized wood panels -- accented on the sides with decorative metal door handles that seem to suggest a welcome to varieties of rituals -- are rendered with scenes from the Catholic festivals of saints, all done in Amorsolo charm, the acrylic finish marking a vibrant quality.

"This worship of Saints," Canoy says, "is celebrated to ask for more bounty and harvest and a good life." For that, she devotes one work to each month of the year, a dial in the center indicating the various festivities set in that month, then highlighting the one celebration that defines the days.

For January, there is "Inahan sa Kanunayng Panabang," the top showing a scene of a young man playing guitar in the middle of a vast rice field, and the bottom with vintas in the horizon. For October, she celebrates the Oriental Negrense Buglasan tradition in "Pagsaulog," with Dumaguete's Boulevard rendered in festive colors on the top, and the provincial capitol on the bottom in an energy of people dancing to the Buglasan beat. The other works evoke the other months: "Viva Senyor," "Semana Santa," "Flores de Mayo," and so on.

But while Canoy's works celebrate the visible and often theatrical rites to commemorate our everyday spirituality, Sharon Dadang-Rafols' works suggest a more introspective tone of worship, maybe even internal struggles of faith.

Hers is a work of miniature tension. The paintings -- or a set of small ones presented mostly as triptychs -- are outer expressions of inner peace and inner rage, canvasses of white with strokes of color, foreboding, and meditation, set against a backdrop of blackness. They are almost like Rorschach ink blot tests, and sometimes what is hidden in the chaos of color are startling forms that resemble phantom faces (done to the most haunting degree in the "Entreaty" triptych), throbbing veins, and palimpsests of forbidden landscapes.

"My work," Dadang-Rafols says, "is much in line with meditation through colors and wave of colors. Simple lines and integration of colors create subjects of imagination that makes the viewer meditate, or simply gaze. Perhaps the blending of the hues captures the eye to a deeper meaning of the almost photographic wash of colors."

Her "Zen Series" is a simple exercise of Chinese water color ink on paper, in a kind of pulled string effect that reaches beyond that. They provide windows. To what? To inner wildness, and to eventual calm? "Vision" and "Gamut" are portraits, perhaps, of the recesses of our inner anatomies, at once organic and ominous. "My Prayer," on the other hand, is a tornado of red and sunsets of green, obliquely revealing a haunting woman's face. "Our Kibbutz" is a set of five panels that approximate a rough sequence of waves and blots simulating fireworks and lava lamps, to end, like the other painting, to a portrait of sorts of a smudged-up woman. "The Works" is a splatter of red simulating palm trees in a nuclear sunset, a theme which bleeds to "Breathe," which shows a stark landscape of the shadows of barren trees and ruined buildings, all shrouded in purple decadence.

Two women with singular views on viewing the numinous, reflecting our individual responses to the ethereal, the ritualistic, and the meditative.

In that adobe room in that restaurant, the spirits loom, bursting out of the canvasses and finally into our lives.

(The exhibit runs until February 24, in CocoAmigos, Rizal Boulevard, Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental.)

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10:30 AM | Here's the Call

I'm tired of complaining that things do not happen in Dumaguete. There's a famous witticism about journalism that goes, "If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody was there to report it, did the tree really fall?"

Exactly.

I think it must be the same about life in general. If you complain too much about how things around you disappoint, and yet you do nothing to rectify anything, are you really just putting your foot where your mouth is?

So, in the next months, I will report on things that do happen in this city. There are exhibits and an art festival that are mushrooming all over. Joey Ayala came over for the weekend and gave us a night to remember. And a British actress is coming to town soon, courtesy of the good folks at the British Council, to give us a one-woman act about a 100-year old circus performer narrating her myriad lives while performing the trapeze. (That I gotta see.) Perhaps reporting on such will awaken people to the fact that they indeed have something to crow about living in the perfect doldrums we call our town.

|

---

10:30 AM | Here's the Call

I'm tired of complaining that things do not happen in Dumaguete. There's a famous witticism about journalism that goes, "If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody was there to report it, did the tree really fall?"

Exactly.

I think it must be the same about life in general. If you complain too much about how things around you disappoint, and yet you do nothing to rectify anything, are you really just putting your foot where your mouth is?

So, in the next months, I will report on things that do happen in this city. There are exhibits and an art festival that are mushrooming all over. Joey Ayala came over for the weekend and gave us a night to remember. And a British actress is coming to town soon, courtesy of the good folks at the British Council, to give us a one-woman act about a 100-year old circus performer narrating her myriad lives while performing the trapeze. (That I gotta see.) Perhaps reporting on such will awaken people to the fact that they indeed have something to crow about living in the perfect doldrums we call our town.

|

---

10:30 AM | Here's the Call

I'm tired of complaining that things do not happen in Dumaguete. There's a famous witticism about journalism that goes, "If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody was there to report it, did the tree really fall?"

Exactly.

I think it must be the same about life in general. If you complain too much about how things around you disappoint, and yet you do nothing to rectify anything, are you really just putting your foot where your mouth is?

So, in the next months, I will report on things that do happen in this city. There are exhibits and an art festival that are mushrooming all over. Joey Ayala came over for the weekend and gave us a night to remember. And a British actress is coming to town soon, courtesy of the good folks at the British Council, to give us a one-woman act about a 100-year old circus performer narrating her myriad lives while performing the trapeze. (That I gotta see.) Perhaps reporting on such will awaken people to the fact that they indeed have something to crow about living in the perfect doldrums we call our town.

|

---

Saturday, February 19, 2005

9:22 AM | Big Words for Dummies

Resty Odon is wondering about writers and big words. And how he hates it when people use big words just to impress. I happen to agree, but I also think that all these considerations are largely... well, relative. (There goes a big word!) Take yesterday, for example. Some marmoset in my class complained I use big words she can't understand daw. Words like "delicatessen." Or "symbiotic." Or "introvert." Or "conformity." Or, the worst: "opinion."

Eh? Those are big words? You asinine, anserous imbecile! (The marmoset, not Resty.)

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---

9:22 AM | Big Words for Dummies

Resty Odon is wondering about writers and big words. And how he hates it when people use big words just to impress. I happen to agree, but I also think that all these considerations are largely... well, relative. (There goes a big word!) Take yesterday, for example. Some marmoset in my class complained I use big words she can't understand daw. Words like "delicatessen." Or "symbiotic." Or "introvert." Or "conformity." Or, the worst: "opinion."

Eh? Those are big words? You asinine, anserous imbecile! (The marmoset, not Resty.)

|

---

9:22 AM | Big Words for Dummies

Resty Odon is wondering about writers and big words. And how he hates it when people use big words just to impress. I happen to agree, but I also think that all these considerations are largely... well, relative. (There goes a big word!) Take yesterday, for example. Some marmoset in my class complained I use big words she can't understand daw. Words like "delicatessen." Or "symbiotic." Or "introvert." Or "conformity." Or, the worst: "opinion."

Eh? Those are big words? You asinine, anserous imbecile! (The marmoset, not Resty.)

|

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Friday, February 18, 2005

11:43 PM | How Stressed Are You?

The pictures below have been used to test the level of stress a person can handle. The slower the pictures move, the better your ability of handling stress is.









Alleged criminals see them spinning around madly, while senior citizens and kids see them still.

(So, are you a criminal?)

[emailed in by susan lara]

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---

11:43 PM | How Stressed Are You?

The pictures below have been used to test the level of stress a person can handle. The slower the pictures move, the better your ability of handling stress is.









Alleged criminals see them spinning around madly, while senior citizens and kids see them still.

(So, are you a criminal?)

[emailed in by susan lara]

|

---

11:43 PM | How Stressed Are You?

The pictures below have been used to test the level of stress a person can handle. The slower the pictures move, the better your ability of handling stress is.









Alleged criminals see them spinning around madly, while senior citizens and kids see them still.

(So, are you a criminal?)

[emailed in by susan lara]

|

---

3:01 AM | Welcome to LJ-land

I have an LJ, and this is my newly uploaded icon...



And nobody knows where it is. Bwahahahaha!

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3:01 AM | Welcome to LJ-land

I have an LJ, and this is my newly uploaded icon...



And nobody knows where it is. Bwahahahaha!

|

---

3:01 AM | Welcome to LJ-land

I have an LJ, and this is my newly uploaded icon...



And nobody knows where it is. Bwahahahaha!

|

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Thursday, February 17, 2005

3:32 PM | Is That a Banana in Your Pocket...

...or are you just happy to see me?

More sexy fruits in Art Connection's Erotische Fruchte website.

[emailed in by clee]

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3:32 PM | Is That a Banana in Your Pocket...

...or are you just happy to see me?

More sexy fruits in Art Connection's Erotische Fruchte website.

[emailed in by clee]

|

---

3:32 PM | Is That a Banana in Your Pocket...

...or are you just happy to see me?

More sexy fruits in Art Connection's Erotische Fruchte website.

[emailed in by clee]

|

---

Monday, February 14, 2005

12:01 AM | Reflections on an Empire of Passion

"Your lonely nights have just begun
When you love someone."
-BRYAN ADAMS, "When You Love Someone"

I shall start, perhaps, by admitting that in order to write this post -- and perhaps also to prepare myself for the coming onslaught of things red, heart-shaped, and Valentine -- I popped into my VHS player my original copy of Oshima Nagisa's controversial In the Realm of the Senses. And Barbra Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces. I reasoned that this was to get my bearings on the notion that love exists the ways love songs insist it does. After all, the questions remain: do we sing love songs because we have fallen in love, or do we fall in love because we sing love songs?

Somehow, in my quick survey, I'm tied to extremes of possibilities. There's fluff, and there's painful catharsis. Both also happen to be true -- or at least, that's how my heart tells me. Here's Barbra Streisand's, on one hand, in a scene where she lectures to Columbia University students -- hence also to us -- and she says that "when we think of falling in love, we imagine Puccini playing in our heads," which is, of course, a great lie we all gladly believe in. So why do we do this? Why do we insist in our search for romantic love when in fact it is a modern invention? "Because, we know that while it lasts," she says, "it feels f***ing great." I paused the scene, and I agreed.

But there is also this: Oshima's obsessive lovers in what may be the truest depiction of a devouring kind of love in modern cinema -- so accurate that it is, in fact, pornographic in its explicitness and truth: love and death as the only possible twins, devouring and madness as the only just recourse to the tremblings we submit ourselves to when we fall for someone else. I finish the Oshima's movie with shocked trepidation, but also with awe.

This is how I begin my Valentine.

Sometime ago, before I finally met someone to share my life with, it once amazed me that I could barely remember the last time I had a Valentine date. There were snatches of memory -- giving roses, for example, to somebody you're playing the romance tango with, or having a Valentine dinner with your old high school barkada in Santa Monica -- but almost always these recollections are trapped in the haze of college life, all things past and five years old. There were days when people came up to me to ask, "So who's the special someone in your life right now?" the way my mother asked "When are you getting married?" and I'd get taken aback, reflected a bit on my age -- past 25 years yet not in my 30s just yet (I was clinging to my late 20's like a leech) -- only to say, in a kind of bemused excuse, that I was much too young to even think of settling down, and that I had no time for such things; that I was too much consumed with work to bother with trivial pursuits. Love, for one thing (or so I thought then). I'd always thought that another person was so much of an investment of time, of feelings. For a long time, I had no heart for such considerations. My heart had been broken too many times to survive another assault. (Only to find out in the end that the heart was capable of a thousand regenerations-and given the right person popping into your life to make you glow).

I wax romantic now, and the hair at the back of my neck stand.

That is why I tell a friend, once, that this must be the case when one is a child of the 90s. We lived far too fast in our late teens and early twenties, that when it comes to love and other intimate things, we've become much too philosophical, old in our perspectives even. Our conversations drip with the casual detachment of one who has seen so much of things, have imbibed in them with passion, that by the end of the long youthful experiment, there is only a wistfulness to consider: "I used to do that...," we say, in an amused way, or "I used to do this..." Not jaded, no -- only careful, and perhaps expectant of higher things than the easy temptations of romance. We've gone beyond Harlequin paperbacks and Meg Ryan movies and Hershey's Kisses and picnics and beaches and phone calls and dinner dates. As Samantha Jones aptly puts it in our bible Sex and the City, "We want more."

So what do I know of love? I know for sure that it isn't chocolate, or red rose on a stem. I've been through the passion part in my younger days: that phase full of quickening days that surround you with excruciating wanting for someone else -- those eyes, those lips, that drowning smell. I've been familiar with the exquisite tortures of longing, bordering on the obsessive. It is a willful torture that begins at the nape and spreads to the points of your breasts, and ends as a burning in your crotch -- all of headiness that transports you to another world. My friend, the UST writer Gerald Feljandro Ramos writes about the madness for the other year's Sands and Coral: "We say I love you and the universe shifts organization around those three words we use to name possession: planets stop revolving around suns, moons reign supreme, sky becomes wider, and the space between is always filled with light, you and I become no more the persons we have been. We begin to have contempt for separation and learn to love disclosing ourselves to each other, to feel no shame or alarm in disrobing when imperfections, the whole lot of sagging, rotund, aging bodies, the disproportionate hands, stump-like legs, little obliquities of habit and habitus that reveal themselves in the most mundane occasions replace each tesseract of the ideal other we have formed in our mind."

Oh, I remember passion too well. I know it now. But, in those old, lonely days, I missed it.

I think of the above, and I cannot help but wonder: Is that love? "No, it is infatuation," my best friend Kristyn once so easily dismissed -- but that was during a time when she had been hell-bent on pursuing the single life. Last year, she got married to an Australian -- a chap named Justin -- and I remember that there were signs I was getting jealous. Perhaps because I am slowly finding out that my contemporaries' detached stance, cultivated after our years of collegiate bohemia, was also a phase just like the first one: afterwards, when we've all tasted the banal repercussions of living fast, there is indeed an urge to settle down, to get away from the rigors of hopping from one prospect to the next, from playing the bedroom roulette. And not only she: Beth as well, to an Englishman; and my Finnish mermaid, Kaija, had gotten herself hitched to a writer. I remember Kaija's promise and mine: we were on top of the Tokyo municipal building overlooking the whole city, and we remembered that An Affair to Remember cliche:

"How about it, ten years from now, we'll both meet at the top of the Empire State Building?" I said.

"On Valentine's Day?" she asked, smiling.

"No, today, on our last day together." It was June 26, 1997 and I was about to go home to the Philippines after a year in Japan.

We agreed.

Sometimes I wonder if I still should go to New York on our June 26th appointment. The deadline approaches like a kiss searching for lips. I suppose Beth and Kristyn and Danny and Kaija and Anis -- all of them bound by wedded bliss -- are only fulfilling the requisition of the greatest archetype: Plato's search for the half of our incomplete self, the way Renee Zellwegger and Tom Cruise declared, "You complete me," in Jerry Maguire. My friend, the Atenean poet Vincenz Serrano puts it more succinctly in his poem "Getting the Message": "A kiss is complete/ only in another's mouth and tongue, like how/ a writer needs a listener for the words/ to be whole..."

Ah, a kiss.

So here's to all for Valentines. It's a little sad for some -- but boy, do we somehow love its sadness. In the end, the only realization is this: even if only remembered, and even if buried in nonchalance, we're all suckers for that one passionate glance. That kiss. That touch.

|

---

12:01 AM | Reflections on an Empire of Passion

"Your lonely nights have just begun
When you love someone."
-BRYAN ADAMS, "When You Love Someone"

I shall start, perhaps, by admitting that in order to write this post -- and perhaps also to prepare myself for the coming onslaught of things red, heart-shaped, and Valentine -- I popped into my VHS player my original copy of Oshima Nagisa's controversial In the Realm of the Senses. And Barbra Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces. I reasoned that this was to get my bearings on the notion that love exists the ways love songs insist it does. After all, the questions remain: do we sing love songs because we have fallen in love, or do we fall in love because we sing love songs?

Somehow, in my quick survey, I'm tied to extremes of possibilities. There's fluff, and there's painful catharsis. Both also happen to be true -- or at least, that's how my heart tells me. Here's Barbra Streisand's, on one hand, in a scene where she lectures to Columbia University students -- hence also to us -- and she says that "when we think of falling in love, we imagine Puccini playing in our heads," which is, of course, a great lie we all gladly believe in. So why do we do this? Why do we insist in our search for romantic love when in fact it is a modern invention? "Because, we know that while it lasts," she says, "it feels f***ing great." I paused the scene, and I agreed.

But there is also this: Oshima's obsessive lovers in what may be the truest depiction of a devouring kind of love in modern cinema -- so accurate that it is, in fact, pornographic in its explicitness and truth: love and death as the only possible twins, devouring and madness as the only just recourse to the tremblings we submit ourselves to when we fall for someone else. I finish the Oshima's movie with shocked trepidation, but also with awe.

This is how I begin my Valentine.

Sometime ago, before I finally met someone to share my life with, it once amazed me that I could barely remember the last time I had a Valentine date. There were snatches of memory -- giving roses, for example, to somebody you're playing the romance tango with, or having a Valentine dinner with your old high school barkada in Santa Monica -- but almost always these recollections are trapped in the haze of college life, all things past and five years old. There were days when people came up to me to ask, "So who's the special someone in your life right now?" the way my mother asked "When are you getting married?" and I'd get taken aback, reflected a bit on my age -- past 25 years yet not in my 30s just yet (I was clinging to my late 20's like a leech) -- only to say, in a kind of bemused excuse, that I was much too young to even think of settling down, and that I had no time for such things; that I was too much consumed with work to bother with trivial pursuits. Love, for one thing (or so I thought then). I'd always thought that another person was so much of an investment of time, of feelings. For a long time, I had no heart for such considerations. My heart had been broken too many times to survive another assault. (Only to find out in the end that the heart was capable of a thousand regenerations-and given the right person popping into your life to make you glow).

I wax romantic now, and the hair at the back of my neck stand.

That is why I tell a friend, once, that this must be the case when one is a child of the 90s. We lived far too fast in our late teens and early twenties, that when it comes to love and other intimate things, we've become much too philosophical, old in our perspectives even. Our conversations drip with the casual detachment of one who has seen so much of things, have imbibed in them with passion, that by the end of the long youthful experiment, there is only a wistfulness to consider: "I used to do that...," we say, in an amused way, or "I used to do this..." Not jaded, no -- only careful, and perhaps expectant of higher things than the easy temptations of romance. We've gone beyond Harlequin paperbacks and Meg Ryan movies and Hershey's Kisses and picnics and beaches and phone calls and dinner dates. As Samantha Jones aptly puts it in our bible Sex and the City, "We want more."

So what do I know of love? I know for sure that it isn't chocolate, or red rose on a stem. I've been through the passion part in my younger days: that phase full of quickening days that surround you with excruciating wanting for someone else -- those eyes, those lips, that drowning smell. I've been familiar with the exquisite tortures of longing, bordering on the obsessive. It is a willful torture that begins at the nape and spreads to the points of your breasts, and ends as a burning in your crotch -- all of headiness that transports you to another world. My friend, the UST writer Gerald Feljandro Ramos writes about the madness for the other year's Sands and Coral: "We say I love you and the universe shifts organization around those three words we use to name possession: planets stop revolving around suns, moons reign supreme, sky becomes wider, and the space between is always filled with light, you and I become no more the persons we have been. We begin to have contempt for separation and learn to love disclosing ourselves to each other, to feel no shame or alarm in disrobing when imperfections, the whole lot of sagging, rotund, aging bodies, the disproportionate hands, stump-like legs, little obliquities of habit and habitus that reveal themselves in the most mundane occasions replace each tesseract of the ideal other we have formed in our mind."

Oh, I remember passion too well. I know it now. But, in those old, lonely days, I missed it.

I think of the above, and I cannot help but wonder: Is that love? "No, it is infatuation," my best friend Kristyn once so easily dismissed -- but that was during a time when she had been hell-bent on pursuing the single life. Last year, she got married to an Australian -- a chap named Justin -- and I remember that there were signs I was getting jealous. Perhaps because I am slowly finding out that my contemporaries' detached stance, cultivated after our years of collegiate bohemia, was also a phase just like the first one: afterwards, when we've all tasted the banal repercussions of living fast, there is indeed an urge to settle down, to get away from the rigors of hopping from one prospect to the next, from playing the bedroom roulette. And not only she: Beth as well, to an Englishman; and my Finnish mermaid, Kaija, had gotten herself hitched to a writer. I remember Kaija's promise and mine: we were on top of the Tokyo municipal building overlooking the whole city, and we remembered that An Affair to Remember cliche:

"How about it, ten years from now, we'll both meet at the top of the Empire State Building?" I said.

"On Valentine's Day?" she asked, smiling.

"No, today, on our last day together." It was June 26, 1997 and I was about to go home to the Philippines after a year in Japan.

We agreed.

Sometimes I wonder if I still should go to New York on our June 26th appointment. The deadline approaches like a kiss searching for lips. I suppose Beth and Kristyn and Danny and Kaija and Anis -- all of them bound by wedded bliss -- are only fulfilling the requisition of the greatest archetype: Plato's search for the half of our incomplete self, the way Renee Zellwegger and Tom Cruise declared, "You complete me," in Jerry Maguire. My friend, the Atenean poet Vincenz Serrano puts it more succinctly in his poem "Getting the Message": "A kiss is complete/ only in another's mouth and tongue, like how/ a writer needs a listener for the words/ to be whole..."

Ah, a kiss.

So here's to all for Valentines. It's a little sad for some -- but boy, do we somehow love its sadness. In the end, the only realization is this: even if only remembered, and even if buried in nonchalance, we're all suckers for that one passionate glance. That kiss. That touch.

|

---

12:01 AM | Reflections on an Empire of Passion

"Your lonely nights have just begun
When you love someone."
-BRYAN ADAMS, "When You Love Someone"

I shall start, perhaps, by admitting that in order to write this post -- and perhaps also to prepare myself for the coming onslaught of things red, heart-shaped, and Valentine -- I popped into my VHS player my original copy of Oshima Nagisa's controversial In the Realm of the Senses. And Barbra Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces. I reasoned that this was to get my bearings on the notion that love exists the ways love songs insist it does. After all, the questions remain: do we sing love songs because we have fallen in love, or do we fall in love because we sing love songs?

Somehow, in my quick survey, I'm tied to extremes of possibilities. There's fluff, and there's painful catharsis. Both also happen to be true -- or at least, that's how my heart tells me. Here's Barbra Streisand's, on one hand, in a scene where she lectures to Columbia University students -- hence also to us -- and she says that "when we think of falling in love, we imagine Puccini playing in our heads," which is, of course, a great lie we all gladly believe in. So why do we do this? Why do we insist in our search for romantic love when in fact it is a modern invention? "Because, we know that while it lasts," she says, "it feels f***ing great." I paused the scene, and I agreed.

But there is also this: Oshima's obsessive lovers in what may be the truest depiction of a devouring kind of love in modern cinema -- so accurate that it is, in fact, pornographic in its explicitness and truth: love and death as the only possible twins, devouring and madness as the only just recourse to the tremblings we submit ourselves to when we fall for someone else. I finish the Oshima's movie with shocked trepidation, but also with awe.

This is how I begin my Valentine.

Sometime ago, before I finally met someone to share my life with, it once amazed me that I could barely remember the last time I had a Valentine date. There were snatches of memory -- giving roses, for example, to somebody you're playing the romance tango with, or having a Valentine dinner with your old high school barkada in Santa Monica -- but almost always these recollections are trapped in the haze of college life, all things past and five years old. There were days when people came up to me to ask, "So who's the special someone in your life right now?" the way my mother asked "When are you getting married?" and I'd get taken aback, reflected a bit on my age -- past 25 years yet not in my 30s just yet (I was clinging to my late 20's like a leech) -- only to say, in a kind of bemused excuse, that I was much too young to even think of settling down, and that I had no time for such things; that I was too much consumed with work to bother with trivial pursuits. Love, for one thing (or so I thought then). I'd always thought that another person was so much of an investment of time, of feelings. For a long time, I had no heart for such considerations. My heart had been broken too many times to survive another assault. (Only to find out in the end that the heart was capable of a thousand regenerations-and given the right person popping into your life to make you glow).

I wax romantic now, and the hair at the back of my neck stand.

That is why I tell a friend, once, that this must be the case when one is a child of the 90s. We lived far too fast in our late teens and early twenties, that when it comes to love and other intimate things, we've become much too philosophical, old in our perspectives even. Our conversations drip with the casual detachment of one who has seen so much of things, have imbibed in them with passion, that by the end of the long youthful experiment, there is only a wistfulness to consider: "I used to do that...," we say, in an amused way, or "I used to do this..." Not jaded, no -- only careful, and perhaps expectant of higher things than the easy temptations of romance. We've gone beyond Harlequin paperbacks and Meg Ryan movies and Hershey's Kisses and picnics and beaches and phone calls and dinner dates. As Samantha Jones aptly puts it in our bible Sex and the City, "We want more."

So what do I know of love? I know for sure that it isn't chocolate, or red rose on a stem. I've been through the passion part in my younger days: that phase full of quickening days that surround you with excruciating wanting for someone else -- those eyes, those lips, that drowning smell. I've been familiar with the exquisite tortures of longing, bordering on the obsessive. It is a willful torture that begins at the nape and spreads to the points of your breasts, and ends as a burning in your crotch -- all of headiness that transports you to another world. My friend, the UST writer Gerald Feljandro Ramos writes about the madness for the other year's Sands and Coral: "We say I love you and the universe shifts organization around those three words we use to name possession: planets stop revolving around suns, moons reign supreme, sky becomes wider, and the space between is always filled with light, you and I become no more the persons we have been. We begin to have contempt for separation and learn to love disclosing ourselves to each other, to feel no shame or alarm in disrobing when imperfections, the whole lot of sagging, rotund, aging bodies, the disproportionate hands, stump-like legs, little obliquities of habit and habitus that reveal themselves in the most mundane occasions replace each tesseract of the ideal other we have formed in our mind."

Oh, I remember passion too well. I know it now. But, in those old, lonely days, I missed it.

I think of the above, and I cannot help but wonder: Is that love? "No, it is infatuation," my best friend Kristyn once so easily dismissed -- but that was during a time when she had been hell-bent on pursuing the single life. Last year, she got married to an Australian -- a chap named Justin -- and I remember that there were signs I was getting jealous. Perhaps because I am slowly finding out that my contemporaries' detached stance, cultivated after our years of collegiate bohemia, was also a phase just like the first one: afterwards, when we've all tasted the banal repercussions of living fast, there is indeed an urge to settle down, to get away from the rigors of hopping from one prospect to the next, from playing the bedroom roulette. And not only she: Beth as well, to an Englishman; and my Finnish mermaid, Kaija, had gotten herself hitched to a writer. I remember Kaija's promise and mine: we were on top of the Tokyo municipal building overlooking the whole city, and we remembered that An Affair to Remember cliche:

"How about it, ten years from now, we'll both meet at the top of the Empire State Building?" I said.

"On Valentine's Day?" she asked, smiling.

"No, today, on our last day together." It was June 26, 1997 and I was about to go home to the Philippines after a year in Japan.

We agreed.

Sometimes I wonder if I still should go to New York on our June 26th appointment. The deadline approaches like a kiss searching for lips. I suppose Beth and Kristyn and Danny and Kaija and Anis -- all of them bound by wedded bliss -- are only fulfilling the requisition of the greatest archetype: Plato's search for the half of our incomplete self, the way Renee Zellwegger and Tom Cruise declared, "You complete me," in Jerry Maguire. My friend, the Atenean poet Vincenz Serrano puts it more succinctly in his poem "Getting the Message": "A kiss is complete/ only in another's mouth and tongue, like how/ a writer needs a listener for the words/ to be whole..."

Ah, a kiss.

So here's to all for Valentines. It's a little sad for some -- but boy, do we somehow love its sadness. In the end, the only realization is this: even if only remembered, and even if buried in nonchalance, we're all suckers for that one passionate glance. That kiss. That touch.

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Sunday, February 13, 2005

2:33 PM | Arthur Miller, 89

"The author of Death of a Salesman, a landmark of 20th-century drama," writes Marilyn Berger in the New York Times, "Mr. Miller grappled with the weightiest matters of social conscience in his plays... [H]is reputation rests on a handful of his best-known plays, the dramas of guilt and betrayal and redemption that continue to be revived frequently at theaters all over the world. These dramas of social conscience were drawn from life and informed by the Great Depression, the event that he believed had had a more profound impact on the nation than any other in American history, except possibly the Civil War. 'In play after play,' the drama critic Mel Gussow wrote..., 'he holds man responsible for his and for his neighbor's actions.'"

An excerpt from Death of a Salesman:

I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.

1949

Read the rest of the New York Times obituary here.

|

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2:33 PM | Arthur Miller, 89

"The author of Death of a Salesman, a landmark of 20th-century drama," writes Marilyn Berger in the New York Times, "Mr. Miller grappled with the weightiest matters of social conscience in his plays... [H]is reputation rests on a handful of his best-known plays, the dramas of guilt and betrayal and redemption that continue to be revived frequently at theaters all over the world. These dramas of social conscience were drawn from life and informed by the Great Depression, the event that he believed had had a more profound impact on the nation than any other in American history, except possibly the Civil War. 'In play after play,' the drama critic Mel Gussow wrote..., 'he holds man responsible for his and for his neighbor's actions.'"

An excerpt from Death of a Salesman:

I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.

1949

Read the rest of the New York Times obituary here.

|

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2:33 PM | Arthur Miller, 89

"The author of Death of a Salesman, a landmark of 20th-century drama," writes Marilyn Berger in the New York Times, "Mr. Miller grappled with the weightiest matters of social conscience in his plays... [H]is reputation rests on a handful of his best-known plays, the dramas of guilt and betrayal and redemption that continue to be revived frequently at theaters all over the world. These dramas of social conscience were drawn from life and informed by the Great Depression, the event that he believed had had a more profound impact on the nation than any other in American history, except possibly the Civil War. 'In play after play,' the drama critic Mel Gussow wrote..., 'he holds man responsible for his and for his neighbor's actions.'"

An excerpt from Death of a Salesman:

I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.

1949

Read the rest of the New York Times obituary here.

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2:01 PM | Perfect Quote to Begin the Week

"Right-wingers are just scared little boys afraid of change. But if you like missionary sex for the rest of your life after daily church, go for it!"
--Jason Michaels

Ahahahahahaha! Brilliant!

[which, of course, make me really think about getting an LJ]

|

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2:01 PM | Perfect Quote to Begin the Week

"Right-wingers are just scared little boys afraid of change. But if you like missionary sex for the rest of your life after daily church, go for it!"
--Jason Michaels

Ahahahahahaha! Brilliant!

[which, of course, make me really think about getting an LJ]

|

---

2:01 PM | Perfect Quote to Begin the Week

"Right-wingers are just scared little boys afraid of change. But if you like missionary sex for the rest of your life after daily church, go for it!"
--Jason Michaels

Ahahahahahaha! Brilliant!

[which, of course, make me really think about getting an LJ]

|

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Saturday, February 12, 2005

12:34 AM | Something Pre-Valentine

In this passage from Brian Morton's wonderful Starting Out in the Evening, Leonard Schiller, an aging, failed novelist goes to Paris to keep a promise he made with his wife that they visit the spot -- the Eiffel tower -- where they first met, forty years later. In the interim, however, she died, and he alone goes to complete the appointment:

There was nothing, of course. She hadn't made the journey. But even so, it seemed to him that the air where he sat was charged, alive. He had been looking forward to this appointment so deeply, for so long, that the spot itself seemed to have been affected by his longing. It was hard to understand how the tourists bustling around him could fail to notice that there was something different about this patch of space: that it was charged, that it was saturated with love....

It seemed right that they had arranged to meet at this spot, near this monument, this huge and beautiful cliche. It seemed right because of what they had discovered about it many years ago: when you were in this city, you could never lose it. You could be wandering around through narrow winding streets in some unfamiliar district, utterly disoriented, and suddenly, when you turned a corner, you'd see it in the distance, glittering in the smokeless air. You could never lose it. It was always near. Exactly like you, my love. Exactly like you.

What romantic literary passage did you take to heart this Valentine's Day?

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12:34 AM | Something Pre-Valentine

In this passage from Brian Morton's wonderful Starting Out in the Evening, Leonard Schiller, an aging, failed novelist goes to Paris to keep a promise he made with his wife that they visit the spot -- the Eiffel tower -- where they first met, forty years later. In the interim, however, she died, and he alone goes to complete the appointment:

There was nothing, of course. She hadn't made the journey. But even so, it seemed to him that the air where he sat was charged, alive. He had been looking forward to this appointment so deeply, for so long, that the spot itself seemed to have been affected by his longing. It was hard to understand how the tourists bustling around him could fail to notice that there was something different about this patch of space: that it was charged, that it was saturated with love....

It seemed right that they had arranged to meet at this spot, near this monument, this huge and beautiful cliche. It seemed right because of what they had discovered about it many years ago: when you were in this city, you could never lose it. You could be wandering around through narrow winding streets in some unfamiliar district, utterly disoriented, and suddenly, when you turned a corner, you'd see it in the distance, glittering in the smokeless air. You could never lose it. It was always near. Exactly like you, my love. Exactly like you.

What romantic literary passage did you take to heart this Valentine's Day?

|

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12:34 AM | Something Pre-Valentine

In this passage from Brian Morton's wonderful Starting Out in the Evening, Leonard Schiller, an aging, failed novelist goes to Paris to keep a promise he made with his wife that they visit the spot -- the Eiffel tower -- where they first met, forty years later. In the interim, however, she died, and he alone goes to complete the appointment:

There was nothing, of course. She hadn't made the journey. But even so, it seemed to him that the air where he sat was charged, alive. He had been looking forward to this appointment so deeply, for so long, that the spot itself seemed to have been affected by his longing. It was hard to understand how the tourists bustling around him could fail to notice that there was something different about this patch of space: that it was charged, that it was saturated with love....

It seemed right that they had arranged to meet at this spot, near this monument, this huge and beautiful cliche. It seemed right because of what they had discovered about it many years ago: when you were in this city, you could never lose it. You could be wandering around through narrow winding streets in some unfamiliar district, utterly disoriented, and suddenly, when you turned a corner, you'd see it in the distance, glittering in the smokeless air. You could never lose it. It was always near. Exactly like you, my love. Exactly like you.

What romantic literary passage did you take to heart this Valentine's Day?

|

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Friday, February 11, 2005

1:29 AM | Thou Shalt Be Able to Introduce Semen Into the Uterus of Thy Wife With Suction Cups and Other Rules of Etiquette According to the Ayatollah Khomeini

These are excerpts from A Clarification of Questions by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, published in 1985 by the Westview Press. Khomeini's treatise sets out his position on 3,000 questions of everyday life. And what positions these are!

2,631. It is loathsome to eat the meat of a horse, a mule, or a donkey if someone has had coitus with the animal.



2,637. Several things are loathsome (abominable) when eating. First, eating while satiated. Second, excessive eating (it has been said that the God of the World dislikes a full stomach more than anything else). Third, looking at other people's faces while they are eating. Fourth, eating hot food. Fifth, blowing at what one is eating or drinking. Sixth, waiting for something else after the bread has been put on the tablecloth. Seventh, cutting bread with a knife. Eighth, putting bread under a container of food. Ninth, cleaning the meat stuck to a bone so that nothing remains on it. Tenth, peeling fruit.

And, of course...

2,874. It is not unlawful to introduce a man's semen into the uterus of his wife with devices such as suction cups.

More from the Harper's Magazine website.



[via bookslut]

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1:29 AM | Thou Shalt Be Able to Introduce Semen Into the Uterus of Thy Wife With Suction Cups and Other Rules of Etiquette According to the Ayatollah Khomeini

These are excerpts from A Clarification of Questions by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, published in 1985 by the Westview Press. Khomeini's treatise sets out his position on 3,000 questions of everyday life. And what positions these are!

2,631. It is loathsome to eat the meat of a horse, a mule, or a donkey if someone has had coitus with the animal.



2,637. Several things are loathsome (abominable) when eating. First, eating while satiated. Second, excessive eating (it has been said that the God of the World dislikes a full stomach more than anything else). Third, looking at other people's faces while they are eating. Fourth, eating hot food. Fifth, blowing at what one is eating or drinking. Sixth, waiting for something else after the bread has been put on the tablecloth. Seventh, cutting bread with a knife. Eighth, putting bread under a container of food. Ninth, cleaning the meat stuck to a bone so that nothing remains on it. Tenth, peeling fruit.

And, of course...

2,874. It is not unlawful to introduce a man's semen into the uterus of his wife with devices such as suction cups.

More from the Harper's Magazine website.



[via bookslut]

|

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1:29 AM | Thou Shalt Be Able to Introduce Semen Into the Uterus of Thy Wife With Suction Cups and Other Rules of Etiquette According to the Ayatollah Khomeini

These are excerpts from A Clarification of Questions by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, published in 1985 by the Westview Press. Khomeini's treatise sets out his position on 3,000 questions of everyday life. And what positions these are!

2,631. It is loathsome to eat the meat of a horse, a mule, or a donkey if someone has had coitus with the animal.



2,637. Several things are loathsome (abominable) when eating. First, eating while satiated. Second, excessive eating (it has been said that the God of the World dislikes a full stomach more than anything else). Third, looking at other people's faces while they are eating. Fourth, eating hot food. Fifth, blowing at what one is eating or drinking. Sixth, waiting for something else after the bread has been put on the tablecloth. Seventh, cutting bread with a knife. Eighth, putting bread under a container of food. Ninth, cleaning the meat stuck to a bone so that nothing remains on it. Tenth, peeling fruit.

And, of course...

2,874. It is not unlawful to introduce a man's semen into the uterus of his wife with devices such as suction cups.

More from the Harper's Magazine website.



[via bookslut]

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Wednesday, February 09, 2005

4:47 PM | Simple Math

What makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?



Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:



If:



A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z



is represented as:



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.



Then:



H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K



8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%



and



K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E



11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%



But,



A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E



1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%



And,



B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T



2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%



AND, look how far ass-kissing will take you.



A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G



1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%



So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Hard Work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the Bull**** and

**** kissing that will put you over the top.



[emailed in by margie udarbe]



And everybody says, amen.

|

---

4:47 PM | Simple Math

What makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?



Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:



If:



A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z



is represented as:



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.



Then:



H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K



8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%



and



K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E



11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%



But,



A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E



1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%



And,



B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T



2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%



AND, look how far ass-kissing will take you.



A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G



1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%



So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Hard Work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the Bull**** and

**** kissing that will put you over the top.



[emailed in by margie udarbe]



And everybody says, amen.

|

---

4:47 PM | Simple Math

What makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?



Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:



If:



A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z



is represented as:



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.



Then:



H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K



8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%



and



K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E



11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%



But,



A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E



1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%



And,



B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T



2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%



AND, look how far ass-kissing will take you.



A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G



1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%



So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Hard Work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the Bull**** and

**** kissing that will put you over the top.



[emailed in by margie udarbe]



And everybody says, amen.

|

---

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

11:44 PM | Rants are Everything

The beautiful Kokak has a lovely rant in her new LJ about, among other things, diseases, obesity, and the new culture of mass self-esteem. Here's an excerpt:

Do you know what the number one health risk in America is? OBESITY. They say we're in the middle of an obesity epidemic. An epidemic like it is polio. Like we'll be telling our grandkids about it one day.



The Great Obesity Epidemic of 2004.



"How'd you get through it grandpa?"



"Oh, it was horrible Johnny, there was cheesecake and pork chops everywhere."

Oh, wonderful. More here.



[on another note, should I get an LJ?]

|

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11:44 PM | Rants are Everything

The beautiful Kokak has a lovely rant in her new LJ about, among other things, diseases, obesity, and the new culture of mass self-esteem. Here's an excerpt:

Do you know what the number one health risk in America is? OBESITY. They say we're in the middle of an obesity epidemic. An epidemic like it is polio. Like we'll be telling our grandkids about it one day.



The Great Obesity Epidemic of 2004.



"How'd you get through it grandpa?"



"Oh, it was horrible Johnny, there was cheesecake and pork chops everywhere."

Oh, wonderful. More here.



[on another note, should I get an LJ?]

|

---

11:44 PM | Rants are Everything

The beautiful Kokak has a lovely rant in her new LJ about, among other things, diseases, obesity, and the new culture of mass self-esteem. Here's an excerpt:

Do you know what the number one health risk in America is? OBESITY. They say we're in the middle of an obesity epidemic. An epidemic like it is polio. Like we'll be telling our grandkids about it one day.



The Great Obesity Epidemic of 2004.



"How'd you get through it grandpa?"



"Oh, it was horrible Johnny, there was cheesecake and pork chops everywhere."

Oh, wonderful. More here.



[on another note, should I get an LJ?]

|

---

1:37 PM | Underground, Baby

A gay wedding in the NPA? See it to believe it:





Here's the news story from the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

...[U]nder a romantic drizzle in a muddy clearing in Compostela Valley province in Mindanao, Ka Andres and Ka Jose exchanged vows in a heavily guarded ceremony before local villagers, friends from the city and their comrades in arms.



They are considered the first homosexual couple in the New People's Army who were wed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).



During the "wedding," sponsors draped a sequined CPP flag around the couple's shoulders. The flag was held in place by a long, beaded cord which also went around the couple and the sponsors -- symbolizing that their marriage would be made stronger with the help of comrades and the masses.



Andres held a bullet, as did Jose and each other's hands. The bullets represented their "commitment in the armed struggle."

More here.



[emailed in by clee andro]

|

---

1:37 PM | Underground, Baby

A gay wedding in the NPA? See it to believe it:





Here's the news story from the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

...[U]nder a romantic drizzle in a muddy clearing in Compostela Valley province in Mindanao, Ka Andres and Ka Jose exchanged vows in a heavily guarded ceremony before local villagers, friends from the city and their comrades in arms.



They are considered the first homosexual couple in the New People's Army who were wed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).



During the "wedding," sponsors draped a sequined CPP flag around the couple's shoulders. The flag was held in place by a long, beaded cord which also went around the couple and the sponsors -- symbolizing that their marriage would be made stronger with the help of comrades and the masses.



Andres held a bullet, as did Jose and each other's hands. The bullets represented their "commitment in the armed struggle."

More here.



[emailed in by clee andro]

|

---

1:37 PM | Underground, Baby

A gay wedding in the NPA? See it to believe it:





Here's the news story from the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

...[U]nder a romantic drizzle in a muddy clearing in Compostela Valley province in Mindanao, Ka Andres and Ka Jose exchanged vows in a heavily guarded ceremony before local villagers, friends from the city and their comrades in arms.



They are considered the first homosexual couple in the New People's Army who were wed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).



During the "wedding," sponsors draped a sequined CPP flag around the couple's shoulders. The flag was held in place by a long, beaded cord which also went around the couple and the sponsors -- symbolizing that their marriage would be made stronger with the help of comrades and the masses.



Andres held a bullet, as did Jose and each other's hands. The bullets represented their "commitment in the armed struggle."

More here.



[emailed in by clee andro]

|

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1:12 PM | What the Hey?!

Ryan has an LJ? Whoa. (But why pink? And why idiocy?) No wonder he has calmed down of late. No lengthy comments from him anymore. All that energy now being channeled into that LJ of his. Which is good. I've always told him to create his own blog. He needed one, and I was right. So, Ryan, welcome into the blogging world -- and make it a consistent habit. You'll be amazed how it can help you personally in the long run.

|

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1:12 PM | What the Hey?!

Ryan has an LJ? Whoa. (But why pink? And why idiocy?) No wonder he has calmed down of late. No lengthy comments from him anymore. All that energy now being channeled into that LJ of his. Which is good. I've always told him to create his own blog. He needed one, and I was right. So, Ryan, welcome into the blogging world -- and make it a consistent habit. You'll be amazed how it can help you personally in the long run.

|

---

1:12 PM | What the Hey?!

Ryan has an LJ? Whoa. (But why pink? And why idiocy?) No wonder he has calmed down of late. No lengthy comments from him anymore. All that energy now being channeled into that LJ of his. Which is good. I've always told him to create his own blog. He needed one, and I was right. So, Ryan, welcome into the blogging world -- and make it a consistent habit. You'll be amazed how it can help you personally in the long run.

|

---

Sunday, February 06, 2005

9:59 PM | Holy Hair!

Meet Jan Crouch, the scariest woman on TV...





What's in that hair? It's completely riveting, to tell you frankly. Watch her weep and pray for you in TBN. (And watch out for the dandruff!)

|

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9:59 PM | Holy Hair!

Meet Jan Crouch, the scariest woman on TV...





What's in that hair? It's completely riveting, to tell you frankly. Watch her weep and pray for you in TBN. (And watch out for the dandruff!)

|

---

9:59 PM | Holy Hair!

Meet Jan Crouch, the scariest woman on TV...





What's in that hair? It's completely riveting, to tell you frankly. Watch her weep and pray for you in TBN. (And watch out for the dandruff!)

|

---

Saturday, February 05, 2005

4:35 PM | Whoops!

Talk about being absent-minded. If you've noticed that something's a little different about the blog design, it's because the template's back to the original. Why? Earlier, I wanted to change the template of my archive page, which looked bland. So I copy-pasted something down, but instead of pasting the code on my Archive template, I pasted it on the Main Blog template instead. And without even thinking twice, clicked the Publish button. Which, of course, meant that everything I'd tweaked to make the How to Live page look the way it did evaporated into thin cyber-air.



Luckily, I had the original, untweaked code stored in my Test Page blog (the blogspot where I get my first glimpse of all new designs).



But I have no heart to do the retweaking just now. Maybe tomorrow. Sigh.



UPDATE: Finally, I've retweaked the whole blogspot. Can't remember my new links though. So for those who were in the list recently but are now gone, my apologies.

|

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4:35 PM | Whoops!

Talk about being absent-minded. If you've noticed that something's a little different about the blog design, it's because the template's back to the original. Why? Earlier, I wanted to change the template of my archive page, which looked bland. So I copy-pasted something down, but instead of pasting the code on my Archive template, I pasted it on the Main Blog template instead. And without even thinking twice, clicked the Publish button. Which, of course, meant that everything I'd tweaked to make the How to Live page look the way it did evaporated into thin cyber-air.



Luckily, I had the original, untweaked code stored in my Test Page blog (the blogspot where I get my first glimpse of all new designs).



But I have no heart to do the retweaking just now. Maybe tomorrow. Sigh.



UPDATE: Finally, I've retweaked the whole blogspot. Can't remember my new links though. So for those who were in the list recently but are now gone, my apologies.

|

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4:35 PM | Whoops!

Talk about being absent-minded. If you've noticed that something's a little different about the blog design, it's because the template's back to the original. Why? Earlier, I wanted to change the template of my archive page, which looked bland. So I copy-pasted something down, but instead of pasting the code on my Archive template, I pasted it on the Main Blog template instead. And without even thinking twice, clicked the Publish button. Which, of course, meant that everything I'd tweaked to make the How to Live page look the way it did evaporated into thin cyber-air.



Luckily, I had the original, untweaked code stored in my Test Page blog (the blogspot where I get my first glimpse of all new designs).



But I have no heart to do the retweaking just now. Maybe tomorrow. Sigh.



UPDATE: Finally, I've retweaked the whole blogspot. Can't remember my new links though. So for those who were in the list recently but are now gone, my apologies.

|

---

Friday, February 04, 2005

10:42 PM | Some Nice Reading for a Romantic Night*

Lyudmilla Ignatenko, wife of deceased fireman Vasily Ignatenko:



We were newlyweds. We still walked around holding hands, even if we were just going to the store. I would say to him, "I love you." But I didn't know then how much. I had no idea... We lived in the dormitory of the fire station where he worked. I always knew what was happening -- where he was, how he was.



One night I heard a noise. I looked out the window. He saw me. "Close the window and go back to sleep. There's a fire at the reactor. I'll be back soon."



I didn't see the explosion itself. Just the flames. Everything was radiant. The whole sky. A tall flame. And smoke. The heat was awful. And he still hadn't come back.



They went off just as they were, in their shirtsleeves. No one told them. They had been called for a fire, that was it.



Seven o'clock in the morning. At seven I was told he was in the hospital. I ran over there, but the police had already encircled it, and they weren't letting anyone through. Only ambulances. The policemen shouted: "The ambulances are radioactive, stay away!" I started looking for a friend, she was a doctor at that hospital.



I grabbed her white coat when she came out of an ambulance. "Get me inside!" "I can't. He's bad. They all are." I held onto her. "Just to see him!" "All right," she said. "Come with me. Just for fifteen or twenty minutes."



I saw him. He was all swollen and puffed up. You could barely see his eyes.



"He needs milk. Lots of milk," my friend said. "They should drink at least three liters each."



"But he doesn't like milk."



"He'll drink it now."



Many of the doctors and nurses in that hospital, and especially the orderlies‚ would get sick themselves and die. But we didn't know that then.



At ten, the cameraman Shishenok died. He was the first.



I said to my husband, "Vasenka, what should I do?" "Get out of here! Go! You have our child." I was pregnant. But how could I leave him? He was saying to me: "Go! Leave! Save the baby." "First I need to bring you some milk, then we'll decide what to do." My friend Tanya Kibenok came running in -- her husband was in the same room. Her father was with her, he had a car. We got in and drove to the nearest village. We bought a bunch of three-liter bottles, six, so there was enough for everyone. But they started throwing up terribly from the milk.



They kept passing out, they got put on iv. The doctors kept telling them they'd been poisoned by gas, for some reason. No one said anything about radiation.



I couldn't get into the hospital that evening. There was a sea of people. I stood under his window, he came over and yelled something to me. It was so desperate! Someone in the crowd heard him -- they were being taken to Moscow that night. All the wives got together in one group. We decided we'd go with them. "Let us go with our husbands! You have no right!" We punched and we clawed. The soldiers -- there were already soldiers -- they pushed us back. Then the doctor came out and said they were flying to Moscow, but we needed to bring them their clothing. The clothes they'd worn at the station had been burned. The buses had stopped running already and we ran across the city. We came running back with the bags, but the plane was already gone. They tricked us. So that we wouldn't be there yelling and crying.



Later in the day I started throwing up. I was six months pregnant, but I had to get to Moscow.



In Moscow we asked the first police officer we saw, Where did they put the Chernobyl firemen? And he told us, which was a surprise; everyone had scared us into thinking it was top secret. "Hospital number 6. At the Shchukinskaya stop."



It was a special hospital, for radiology, and you couldn't get in without a pass. I gave some money to the woman at the door, and she said: "Go ahead." Then I had to ask someone else, beg.



Finally I was sitting in the office of the head radiologist, Angelina Vasilyevna Guskova. Right away she asked: "Do you have kids?"



What should I tell her? I can see already I need to hide that I'm pregnant. They won't let me see him! It's good I'm thin, you can't really tell anything.



"Yes," I say.



"How many?"



I'm thinking, I need to tell her two. If it's just one, she won't let me in.



"A boy and a girl."



"So you don't need to have any more. All right, listen: His central nervous system is completely compromised, his skull is completely compromised."



Okay, I'm thinking, so he'll be a little fidgety.



"And listen: If you start crying, I'll kick you out right away. No hugging or kissing. Don't even get near him. You have half an hour."



But I knew already that I wasn't leaving. If I leave, then it'll be with him. I swore to myself!



I come in, they're sitting on the bed, playing cards and laughing.



"Vasya!" they call out.



He turns around: "Oh, well, now it's over! She's found me even here!"



He looks so funny, he's got pajamas on for a size 48, and he's a size 52. The sleeves are too short, the pants are too short. But his face isn't swollen anymore. They were given some sort of fluid.



I say: "Where'd you run off to?"



He wants to hug me.



The doctor won't let him. "Sit, sit," she says. "No hugging in here."



We turned it into a joke somehow. And then everyone came over, from the other rooms too, everyone from Pripyat. There were twenty-eight of them on the plane.



I wanted to be with him alone, if only for a minute. The guys felt it, and each of them thought of some excuse, and they all went out into the hall. Then I hugged him and I kissed him. He moved away.



"Don't sit near me. Take a chair."



"That's just silliness," I said, waving it away.



The next day when I came, they were lying by themselves, each in his own room. They were banned from going in the hallway, from talking to each other. They knocked on the walls with their knuckles. Dash-dot, dash-dot. The doctors explained that everyone's body reacts differently to radiation, and what one person can handle, another can't. They even measured the radiation of the walls where they had them. To the right, the left, and the floor beneath. They moved out all the sick people from the floor below and the floor above. There was no one left in the place.



He started to change -- every day I met a brand-new person. The burns started to come to the surface. In his mouth, on his tongue, his cheeks -- at first there were little lesions, and then they grew. It came off in layers—as white film... the color of his face... his body... blue... red... gray-brown. And it's all so very mine! It's impossible to describe! It's impossible to write down! Or even to get over. The only thing that saved me was that it happened so fast; there wasn't any time to think, there wasn't any time to cry.



Fourteen days. In fourteen days a person dies.



It was the ninth of May. He always used to say to me: "You have no idea how beautiful Moscow is! Especially on V-Day, when they set off the fireworks. I want you to see it."



I was sitting with him in the room, he opened his eyes.



"Is it day or night?"



"It's nine at night."



"Open the window! They're going to set off the fireworks!"



I opened the window. We were on the eighth floor, and the whole city was there before us! There was a bouquet of fire exploding in the air.



"Look at that!" I said.



"I told you I'd show you Moscow. And I told you I'd always give you flowers on holidays..."



I looked over, and he was getting three carnations from under his pillow. He had given the nurse money, and she had bought them.



I ran over and kissed him.



"My love! My only one!"



He started growling. "What did the doctors tell you? No hugging me. And no kissing!"



He got so bad that I couldn't leave him even for a second. He was calling me constantly: "Lusya, where are you? Lusenka!" He called and called. The other biochambers, where our boys were, were being tended to by soldiers because the orderlies on staff refused, they demanded protective clothing. The soldiers carried the sanitary vessels. They wiped the floors down, changed the bedding. They did everything. Where did they get those soldiers? We didn't ask. But he -- he -- every day I would hear: Dead. Dead. Tischura is dead. Titenok is dead. Dead.



He was producing stool twenty-five to thirty times a day. With blood and mucus. His skin started cracking on his arms and legs. He became covered with boils. When he turned his head, there'd be a clump of hair left on the pillow. I tried joking: "It's convenient, you don't need a comb." Soon they cut all their hair. I did it for him myself. I wanted to do everything for him myself. If it had been physically possible I would have stayed with him twenty-four hours a day. I couldn't spare a minute. [Long silence.]



There's a fragment of some conversation, I'm remembering it. Someone saying: "You have to understand: This is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning. You're not suicidal. Get a hold of yourself." And I was like someone who'd lost her mind: "But I love him! I love him!" He's sleeping, and I'm whispering: "I love you!" Walking in the hospital courtyard, "I love you." Carrying his sanitary tray, "I love you."



One night, everything was quiet. We were all alone. He looked at me very, very carefully and suddenly he said:



"I want to see our child so much. How is he?"



"What are we going to name him?"



"You'll decide that yourself."



"Why myself, when there's two of us?"



"In that case, if it's a boy, he should be Vasya, and if it's a girl, Natasha."



I was like a blind person. I couldn't even feel the little pounding underneath my heart. Even though I was six months in. I thought that my little one was inside me, that he was protected.



And then -- the last thing. I remember it in flashes, all broken up. I was sitting on my little chair next to him at night. At eight.



I said: "Vasenka, I'm going to go for a little walk." He opened his eyes and closed them, letting me go. I had just walked to the hotel, gone up to my room, lain down on the floor -- I couldn't lie on the bed; everything hurt too much -- when the cleaning lady started knocking on the door. "Go! Run to him! He's calling for you like mad!"



Right away I called the nurse's post. "How is he?" "He died fifteen minutes ago." What? I was there all night. I was gone for three hours! I ran down the stairs. He was still in his biochamber, they hadn't taken him away yet. I didn't leave him anymore after that. I escorted him all the way to the cemetery. Although the thing I remember isn't the grave, it's the plastic bag. That bag.



At the morgue they said, "Want to see what we'll dress him in?" I did! They dressed him up in formal wear, with his service cap. They couldn't get shoes on him because his feet had swelled up. They had to cut up the formal wear, too, because they couldn't get it on him, there wasn't a whole body to put it on. The last two days in the hospital -- pieces of his lungs, of his liver, were coming out of his mouth. He was choking on his internal organs. I'd wrap my hand in a bandage and put it in his mouth, take out all that stuff. It's impossible to talk about. It's impossible to write about. And even to live through. They couldn't get a single pair of shoes to fit him. They buried him barefoot.



Everyone came -- his parents, my parents. They bought black handkerchiefs in Moscow. The Emergency Commission met with us. They told everyone the same thing: It's impossible for us to give you the bodies of your husbands, your sons, they are very radioactive and will be buried in a Moscow cemetery in a special way. In sealed zinc caskets, under cement tiles. And you need to sign this document here.



If anyone got indignant and wanted to take the coffin back home, they were told that the dead were now, you know, heroes, and that they no longer belonged to their families. They were heroes of the state. They belonged to the state.



Right away they bought us plane tickets back home. For the next day. At home I fell asleep. I walked into the place and just fell onto the bed. I slept for three days. An ambulance came. "No," said the doctor, "she'll wake up. It's just a terrible sleep."



I was twenty-three.



Two months later I went back to Moscow. From the train station straight to the cemetery. To him! And at the cemetery



I started going into labor. Just as I started talking to him -- they called the ambulance. It was two weeks before I was due.



They showed her to me -- a girl. "Natashenka," I called out. "Your father named you Natashenka." She looked healthy. Arms, legs. But she had cirrhosis of the liver. Her liver had twenty-eight roentgens. Congenital heart disease. Four hours later they told me she was dead. And again: "We won't give her to you." "What do you mean you won't give her to me? It's me who won't give her to you!"



[She is silent for a long time.]



In Kiev they gave me an apartment. It was in a large building where they put everyone from the atomic station. It's a big apartment, with two rooms, the kind Vasya and I had dreamed of.



[She stands up, goes over to the window.]



There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called -- Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don't leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In a minute. They just drop -- someone will be walking, he falls, goes to sleep. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them.



But I was telling you about love. About my love...



From Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich



[more from The Paris Review]



*Because, really, it is all about love conquering all for Vasily and Lyudmilla. This is in memory of all the victims of Chernobyl, for whom that terrible night was not at all romantic.

|

---

10:42 PM | Some Nice Reading for a Romantic Night*

Lyudmilla Ignatenko, wife of deceased fireman Vasily Ignatenko:



We were newlyweds. We still walked around holding hands, even if we were just going to the store. I would say to him, "I love you." But I didn't know then how much. I had no idea... We lived in the dormitory of the fire station where he worked. I always knew what was happening -- where he was, how he was.



One night I heard a noise. I looked out the window. He saw me. "Close the window and go back to sleep. There's a fire at the reactor. I'll be back soon."



I didn't see the explosion itself. Just the flames. Everything was radiant. The whole sky. A tall flame. And smoke. The heat was awful. And he still hadn't come back.



They went off just as they were, in their shirtsleeves. No one told them. They had been called for a fire, that was it.



Seven o'clock in the morning. At seven I was told he was in the hospital. I ran over there, but the police had already encircled it, and they weren't letting anyone through. Only ambulances. The policemen shouted: "The ambulances are radioactive, stay away!" I started looking for a friend, she was a doctor at that hospital.



I grabbed her white coat when she came out of an ambulance. "Get me inside!" "I can't. He's bad. They all are." I held onto her. "Just to see him!" "All right," she said. "Come with me. Just for fifteen or twenty minutes."



I saw him. He was all swollen and puffed up. You could barely see his eyes.



"He needs milk. Lots of milk," my friend said. "They should drink at least three liters each."



"But he doesn't like milk."



"He'll drink it now."



Many of the doctors and nurses in that hospital, and especially the orderlies‚ would get sick themselves and die. But we didn't know that then.



At ten, the cameraman Shishenok died. He was the first.



I said to my husband, "Vasenka, what should I do?" "Get out of here! Go! You have our child." I was pregnant. But how could I leave him? He was saying to me: "Go! Leave! Save the baby." "First I need to bring you some milk, then we'll decide what to do." My friend Tanya Kibenok came running in -- her husband was in the same room. Her father was with her, he had a car. We got in and drove to the nearest village. We bought a bunch of three-liter bottles, six, so there was enough for everyone. But they started throwing up terribly from the milk.



They kept passing out, they got put on iv. The doctors kept telling them they'd been poisoned by gas, for some reason. No one said anything about radiation.



I couldn't get into the hospital that evening. There was a sea of people. I stood under his window, he came over and yelled something to me. It was so desperate! Someone in the crowd heard him -- they were being taken to Moscow that night. All the wives got together in one group. We decided we'd go with them. "Let us go with our husbands! You have no right!" We punched and we clawed. The soldiers -- there were already soldiers -- they pushed us back. Then the doctor came out and said they were flying to Moscow, but we needed to bring them their clothing. The clothes they'd worn at the station had been burned. The buses had stopped running already and we ran across the city. We came running back with the bags, but the plane was already gone. They tricked us. So that we wouldn't be there yelling and crying.



Later in the day I started throwing up. I was six months pregnant, but I had to get to Moscow.



In Moscow we asked the first police officer we saw, Where did they put the Chernobyl firemen? And he told us, which was a surprise; everyone had scared us into thinking it was top secret. "Hospital number 6. At the Shchukinskaya stop."



It was a special hospital, for radiology, and you couldn't get in without a pass. I gave some money to the woman at the door, and she said: "Go ahead." Then I had to ask someone else, beg.



Finally I was sitting in the office of the head radiologist, Angelina Vasilyevna Guskova. Right away she asked: "Do you have kids?"



What should I tell her? I can see already I need to hide that I'm pregnant. They won't let me see him! It's good I'm thin, you can't really tell anything.



"Yes," I say.



"How many?"



I'm thinking, I need to tell her two. If it's just one, she won't let me in.



"A boy and a girl."



"So you don't need to have any more. All right, listen: His central nervous system is completely compromised, his skull is completely compromised."



Okay, I'm thinking, so he'll be a little fidgety.



"And listen: If you start crying, I'll kick you out right away. No hugging or kissing. Don't even get near him. You have half an hour."



But I knew already that I wasn't leaving. If I leave, then it'll be with him. I swore to myself!



I come in, they're sitting on the bed, playing cards and laughing.



"Vasya!" they call out.



He turns around: "Oh, well, now it's over! She's found me even here!"



He looks so funny, he's got pajamas on for a size 48, and he's a size 52. The sleeves are too short, the pants are too short. But his face isn't swollen anymore. They were given some sort of fluid.



I say: "Where'd you run off to?"



He wants to hug me.



The doctor won't let him. "Sit, sit," she says. "No hugging in here."



We turned it into a joke somehow. And then everyone came over, from the other rooms too, everyone from Pripyat. There were twenty-eight of them on the plane.



I wanted to be with him alone, if only for a minute. The guys felt it, and each of them thought of some excuse, and they all went out into the hall. Then I hugged him and I kissed him. He moved away.



"Don't sit near me. Take a chair."



"That's just silliness," I said, waving it away.



The next day when I came, they were lying by themselves, each in his own room. They were banned from going in the hallway, from talking to each other. They knocked on the walls with their knuckles. Dash-dot, dash-dot. The doctors explained that everyone's body reacts differently to radiation, and what one person can handle, another can't. They even measured the radiation of the walls where they had them. To the right, the left, and the floor beneath. They moved out all the sick people from the floor below and the floor above. There was no one left in the place.



He started to change -- every day I met a brand-new person. The burns started to come to the surface. In his mouth, on his tongue, his cheeks -- at first there were little lesions, and then they grew. It came off in layers—as white film... the color of his face... his body... blue... red... gray-brown. And it's all so very mine! It's impossible to describe! It's impossible to write down! Or even to get over. The only thing that saved me was that it happened so fast; there wasn't any time to think, there wasn't any time to cry.



Fourteen days. In fourteen days a person dies.



It was the ninth of May. He always used to say to me: "You have no idea how beautiful Moscow is! Especially on V-Day, when they set off the fireworks. I want you to see it."



I was sitting with him in the room, he opened his eyes.



"Is it day or night?"



"It's nine at night."



"Open the window! They're going to set off the fireworks!"



I opened the window. We were on the eighth floor, and the whole city was there before us! There was a bouquet of fire exploding in the air.



"Look at that!" I said.



"I told you I'd show you Moscow. And I told you I'd always give you flowers on holidays..."



I looked over, and he was getting three carnations from under his pillow. He had given the nurse money, and she had bought them.



I ran over and kissed him.



"My love! My only one!"



He started growling. "What did the doctors tell you? No hugging me. And no kissing!"



He got so bad that I couldn't leave him even for a second. He was calling me constantly: "Lusya, where are you? Lusenka!" He called and called. The other biochambers, where our boys were, were being tended to by soldiers because the orderlies on staff refused, they demanded protective clothing. The soldiers carried the sanitary vessels. They wiped the floors down, changed the bedding. They did everything. Where did they get those soldiers? We didn't ask. But he -- he -- every day I would hear: Dead. Dead. Tischura is dead. Titenok is dead. Dead.



He was producing stool twenty-five to thirty times a day. With blood and mucus. His skin started cracking on his arms and legs. He became covered with boils. When he turned his head, there'd be a clump of hair left on the pillow. I tried joking: "It's convenient, you don't need a comb." Soon they cut all their hair. I did it for him myself. I wanted to do everything for him myself. If it had been physically possible I would have stayed with him twenty-four hours a day. I couldn't spare a minute. [Long silence.]



There's a fragment of some conversation, I'm remembering it. Someone saying: "You have to understand: This is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning. You're not suicidal. Get a hold of yourself." And I was like someone who'd lost her mind: "But I love him! I love him!" He's sleeping, and I'm whispering: "I love you!" Walking in the hospital courtyard, "I love you." Carrying his sanitary tray, "I love you."



One night, everything was quiet. We were all alone. He looked at me very, very carefully and suddenly he said:



"I want to see our child so much. How is he?"



"What are we going to name him?"



"You'll decide that yourself."



"Why myself, when there's two of us?"



"In that case, if it's a boy, he should be Vasya, and if it's a girl, Natasha."



I was like a blind person. I couldn't even feel the little pounding underneath my heart. Even though I was six months in. I thought that my little one was inside me, that he was protected.



And then -- the last thing. I remember it in flashes, all broken up. I was sitting on my little chair next to him at night. At eight.



I said: "Vasenka, I'm going to go for a little walk." He opened his eyes and closed them, letting me go. I had just walked to the hotel, gone up to my room, lain down on the floor -- I couldn't lie on the bed; everything hurt too much -- when the cleaning lady started knocking on the door. "Go! Run to him! He's calling for you like mad!"



Right away I called the nurse's post. "How is he?" "He died fifteen minutes ago." What? I was there all night. I was gone for three hours! I ran down the stairs. He was still in his biochamber, they hadn't taken him away yet. I didn't leave him anymore after that. I escorted him all the way to the cemetery. Although the thing I remember isn't the grave, it's the plastic bag. That bag.



At the morgue they said, "Want to see what we'll dress him in?" I did! They dressed him up in formal wear, with his service cap. They couldn't get shoes on him because his feet had swelled up. They had to cut up the formal wear, too, because they couldn't get it on him, there wasn't a whole body to put it on. The last two days in the hospital -- pieces of his lungs, of his liver, were coming out of his mouth. He was choking on his internal organs. I'd wrap my hand in a bandage and put it in his mouth, take out all that stuff. It's impossible to talk about. It's impossible to write about. And even to live through. They couldn't get a single pair of shoes to fit him. They buried him barefoot.



Everyone came -- his parents, my parents. They bought black handkerchiefs in Moscow. The Emergency Commission met with us. They told everyone the same thing: It's impossible for us to give you the bodies of your husbands, your sons, they are very radioactive and will be buried in a Moscow cemetery in a special way. In sealed zinc caskets, under cement tiles. And you need to sign this document here.



If anyone got indignant and wanted to take the coffin back home, they were told that the dead were now, you know, heroes, and that they no longer belonged to their families. They were heroes of the state. They belonged to the state.



Right away they bought us plane tickets back home. For the next day. At home I fell asleep. I walked into the place and just fell onto the bed. I slept for three days. An ambulance came. "No," said the doctor, "she'll wake up. It's just a terrible sleep."



I was twenty-three.



Two months later I went back to Moscow. From the train station straight to the cemetery. To him! And at the cemetery



I started going into labor. Just as I started talking to him -- they called the ambulance. It was two weeks before I was due.



They showed her to me -- a girl. "Natashenka," I called out. "Your father named you Natashenka." She looked healthy. Arms, legs. But she had cirrhosis of the liver. Her liver had twenty-eight roentgens. Congenital heart disease. Four hours later they told me she was dead. And again: "We won't give her to you." "What do you mean you won't give her to me? It's me who won't give her to you!"



[She is silent for a long time.]



In Kiev they gave me an apartment. It was in a large building where they put everyone from the atomic station. It's a big apartment, with two rooms, the kind Vasya and I had dreamed of.



[She stands up, goes over to the window.]



There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called -- Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don't leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In a minute. They just drop -- someone will be walking, he falls, goes to sleep. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them.



But I was telling you about love. About my love...



From Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich



[more from The Paris Review]



*Because, really, it is all about love conquering all for Vasily and Lyudmilla. This is in memory of all the victims of Chernobyl, for whom that terrible night was not at all romantic.

|

---

10:42 PM | Some Nice Reading for a Romantic Night*

Lyudmilla Ignatenko, wife of deceased fireman Vasily Ignatenko:



We were newlyweds. We still walked around holding hands, even if we were just going to the store. I would say to him, "I love you." But I didn't know then how much. I had no idea... We lived in the dormitory of the fire station where he worked. I always knew what was happening -- where he was, how he was.



One night I heard a noise. I looked out the window. He saw me. "Close the window and go back to sleep. There's a fire at the reactor. I'll be back soon."



I didn't see the explosion itself. Just the flames. Everything was radiant. The whole sky. A tall flame. And smoke. The heat was awful. And he still hadn't come back.



They went off just as they were, in their shirtsleeves. No one told them. They had been called for a fire, that was it.



Seven o'clock in the morning. At seven I was told he was in the hospital. I ran over there, but the police had already encircled it, and they weren't letting anyone through. Only ambulances. The policemen shouted: "The ambulances are radioactive, stay away!" I started looking for a friend, she was a doctor at that hospital.



I grabbed her white coat when she came out of an ambulance. "Get me inside!" "I can't. He's bad. They all are." I held onto her. "Just to see him!" "All right," she said. "Come with me. Just for fifteen or twenty minutes."



I saw him. He was all swollen and puffed up. You could barely see his eyes.



"He needs milk. Lots of milk," my friend said. "They should drink at least three liters each."



"But he doesn't like milk."



"He'll drink it now."



Many of the doctors and nurses in that hospital, and especially the orderlies‚ would get sick themselves and die. But we didn't know that then.



At ten, the cameraman Shishenok died. He was the first.



I said to my husband, "Vasenka, what should I do?" "Get out of here! Go! You have our child." I was pregnant. But how could I leave him? He was saying to me: "Go! Leave! Save the baby." "First I need to bring you some milk, then we'll decide what to do." My friend Tanya Kibenok came running in -- her husband was in the same room. Her father was with her, he had a car. We got in and drove to the nearest village. We bought a bunch of three-liter bottles, six, so there was enough for everyone. But they started throwing up terribly from the milk.



They kept passing out, they got put on iv. The doctors kept telling them they'd been poisoned by gas, for some reason. No one said anything about radiation.



I couldn't get into the hospital that evening. There was a sea of people. I stood under his window, he came over and yelled something to me. It was so desperate! Someone in the crowd heard him -- they were being taken to Moscow that night. All the wives got together in one group. We decided we'd go with them. "Let us go with our husbands! You have no right!" We punched and we clawed. The soldiers -- there were already soldiers -- they pushed us back. Then the doctor came out and said they were flying to Moscow, but we needed to bring them their clothing. The clothes they'd worn at the station had been burned. The buses had stopped running already and we ran across the city. We came running back with the bags, but the plane was already gone. They tricked us. So that we wouldn't be there yelling and crying.



Later in the day I started throwing up. I was six months pregnant, but I had to get to Moscow.



In Moscow we asked the first police officer we saw, Where did they put the Chernobyl firemen? And he told us, which was a surprise; everyone had scared us into thinking it was top secret. "Hospital number 6. At the Shchukinskaya stop."



It was a special hospital, for radiology, and you couldn't get in without a pass. I gave some money to the woman at the door, and she said: "Go ahead." Then I had to ask someone else, beg.



Finally I was sitting in the office of the head radiologist, Angelina Vasilyevna Guskova. Right away she asked: "Do you have kids?"



What should I tell her? I can see already I need to hide that I'm pregnant. They won't let me see him! It's good I'm thin, you can't really tell anything.



"Yes," I say.



"How many?"



I'm thinking, I need to tell her two. If it's just one, she won't let me in.



"A boy and a girl."



"So you don't need to have any more. All right, listen: His central nervous system is completely compromised, his skull is completely compromised."



Okay, I'm thinking, so he'll be a little fidgety.



"And listen: If you start crying, I'll kick you out right away. No hugging or kissing. Don't even get near him. You have half an hour."



But I knew already that I wasn't leaving. If I leave, then it'll be with him. I swore to myself!



I come in, they're sitting on the bed, playing cards and laughing.



"Vasya!" they call out.



He turns around: "Oh, well, now it's over! She's found me even here!"



He looks so funny, he's got pajamas on for a size 48, and he's a size 52. The sleeves are too short, the pants are too short. But his face isn't swollen anymore. They were given some sort of fluid.



I say: "Where'd you run off to?"



He wants to hug me.



The doctor won't let him. "Sit, sit," she says. "No hugging in here."



We turned it into a joke somehow. And then everyone came over, from the other rooms too, everyone from Pripyat. There were twenty-eight of them on the plane.



I wanted to be with him alone, if only for a minute. The guys felt it, and each of them thought of some excuse, and they all went out into the hall. Then I hugged him and I kissed him. He moved away.



"Don't sit near me. Take a chair."



"That's just silliness," I said, waving it away.



The next day when I came, they were lying by themselves, each in his own room. They were banned from going in the hallway, from talking to each other. They knocked on the walls with their knuckles. Dash-dot, dash-dot. The doctors explained that everyone's body reacts differently to radiation, and what one person can handle, another can't. They even measured the radiation of the walls where they had them. To the right, the left, and the floor beneath. They moved out all the sick people from the floor below and the floor above. There was no one left in the place.



He started to change -- every day I met a brand-new person. The burns started to come to the surface. In his mouth, on his tongue, his cheeks -- at first there were little lesions, and then they grew. It came off in layers—as white film... the color of his face... his body... blue... red... gray-brown. And it's all so very mine! It's impossible to describe! It's impossible to write down! Or even to get over. The only thing that saved me was that it happened so fast; there wasn't any time to think, there wasn't any time to cry.



Fourteen days. In fourteen days a person dies.



It was the ninth of May. He always used to say to me: "You have no idea how beautiful Moscow is! Especially on V-Day, when they set off the fireworks. I want you to see it."



I was sitting with him in the room, he opened his eyes.



"Is it day or night?"



"It's nine at night."



"Open the window! They're going to set off the fireworks!"



I opened the window. We were on the eighth floor, and the whole city was there before us! There was a bouquet of fire exploding in the air.



"Look at that!" I said.



"I told you I'd show you Moscow. And I told you I'd always give you flowers on holidays..."



I looked over, and he was getting three carnations from under his pillow. He had given the nurse money, and she had bought them.



I ran over and kissed him.



"My love! My only one!"



He started growling. "What did the doctors tell you? No hugging me. And no kissing!"



He got so bad that I couldn't leave him even for a second. He was calling me constantly: "Lusya, where are you? Lusenka!" He called and called. The other biochambers, where our boys were, were being tended to by soldiers because the orderlies on staff refused, they demanded protective clothing. The soldiers carried the sanitary vessels. They wiped the floors down, changed the bedding. They did everything. Where did they get those soldiers? We didn't ask. But he -- he -- every day I would hear: Dead. Dead. Tischura is dead. Titenok is dead. Dead.



He was producing stool twenty-five to thirty times a day. With blood and mucus. His skin started cracking on his arms and legs. He became covered with boils. When he turned his head, there'd be a clump of hair left on the pillow. I tried joking: "It's convenient, you don't need a comb." Soon they cut all their hair. I did it for him myself. I wanted to do everything for him myself. If it had been physically possible I would have stayed with him twenty-four hours a day. I couldn't spare a minute. [Long silence.]



There's a fragment of some conversation, I'm remembering it. Someone saying: "You have to understand: This is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning. You're not suicidal. Get a hold of yourself." And I was like someone who'd lost her mind: "But I love him! I love him!" He's sleeping, and I'm whispering: "I love you!" Walking in the hospital courtyard, "I love you." Carrying his sanitary tray, "I love you."



One night, everything was quiet. We were all alone. He looked at me very, very carefully and suddenly he said:



"I want to see our child so much. How is he?"



"What are we going to name him?"



"You'll decide that yourself."



"Why myself, when there's two of us?"



"In that case, if it's a boy, he should be Vasya, and if it's a girl, Natasha."



I was like a blind person. I couldn't even feel the little pounding underneath my heart. Even though I was six months in. I thought that my little one was inside me, that he was protected.



And then -- the last thing. I remember it in flashes, all broken up. I was sitting on my little chair next to him at night. At eight.



I said: "Vasenka, I'm going to go for a little walk." He opened his eyes and closed them, letting me go. I had just walked to the hotel, gone up to my room, lain down on the floor -- I couldn't lie on the bed; everything hurt too much -- when the cleaning lady started knocking on the door. "Go! Run to him! He's calling for you like mad!"



Right away I called the nurse's post. "How is he?" "He died fifteen minutes ago." What? I was there all night. I was gone for three hours! I ran down the stairs. He was still in his biochamber, they hadn't taken him away yet. I didn't leave him anymore after that. I escorted him all the way to the cemetery. Although the thing I remember isn't the grave, it's the plastic bag. That bag.



At the morgue they said, "Want to see what we'll dress him in?" I did! They dressed him up in formal wear, with his service cap. They couldn't get shoes on him because his feet had swelled up. They had to cut up the formal wear, too, because they couldn't get it on him, there wasn't a whole body to put it on. The last two days in the hospital -- pieces of his lungs, of his liver, were coming out of his mouth. He was choking on his internal organs. I'd wrap my hand in a bandage and put it in his mouth, take out all that stuff. It's impossible to talk about. It's impossible to write about. And even to live through. They couldn't get a single pair of shoes to fit him. They buried him barefoot.



Everyone came -- his parents, my parents. They bought black handkerchiefs in Moscow. The Emergency Commission met with us. They told everyone the same thing: It's impossible for us to give you the bodies of your husbands, your sons, they are very radioactive and will be buried in a Moscow cemetery in a special way. In sealed zinc caskets, under cement tiles. And you need to sign this document here.



If anyone got indignant and wanted to take the coffin back home, they were told that the dead were now, you know, heroes, and that they no longer belonged to their families. They were heroes of the state. They belonged to the state.



Right away they bought us plane tickets back home. For the next day. At home I fell asleep. I walked into the place and just fell onto the bed. I slept for three days. An ambulance came. "No," said the doctor, "she'll wake up. It's just a terrible sleep."



I was twenty-three.



Two months later I went back to Moscow. From the train station straight to the cemetery. To him! And at the cemetery



I started going into labor. Just as I started talking to him -- they called the ambulance. It was two weeks before I was due.



They showed her to me -- a girl. "Natashenka," I called out. "Your father named you Natashenka." She looked healthy. Arms, legs. But she had cirrhosis of the liver. Her liver had twenty-eight roentgens. Congenital heart disease. Four hours later they told me she was dead. And again: "We won't give her to you." "What do you mean you won't give her to me? It's me who won't give her to you!"



[She is silent for a long time.]



In Kiev they gave me an apartment. It was in a large building where they put everyone from the atomic station. It's a big apartment, with two rooms, the kind Vasya and I had dreamed of.



[She stands up, goes over to the window.]



There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called -- Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don't leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In a minute. They just drop -- someone will be walking, he falls, goes to sleep. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them.



But I was telling you about love. About my love...



From Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich



[more from The Paris Review]



*Because, really, it is all about love conquering all for Vasily and Lyudmilla. This is in memory of all the victims of Chernobyl, for whom that terrible night was not at all romantic.

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Wednesday, February 02, 2005

3:27 AM | The Beached One

Tara, a former student of mine, has photos of the beached whale shark.





There are more here.

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3:27 AM | The Beached One

Tara, a former student of mine, has photos of the beached whale shark.





There are more here.

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3:27 AM | The Beached One

Tara, a former student of mine, has photos of the beached whale shark.





There are more here.

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3:13 AM | Clean Slate

3:30 a.m. Just finished cleaning the pad. Needed to make a fresh, clean start. I've felt clutter in my life of late, and I needed cleansing, both physically and emotionally. Cleaning the pad has always been a worthy catalyst. Yesterday, I texted Mom: "Please pray. This is my week to finish unfinished things." (God has a peculiar way of always answering my Mom's prayers.) That takes care of the spiritual side of things. Why do I clean my pad at this time? I don't know. I've always been a night cleaner. I like the quiet. I like the fact that while I sweep my place clean, everyone else is asleep. It's like owning the world for a while. And the quiet gets me thinking, too. Cleaning has always been more than cleaning for me: it is a meditation.

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3:13 AM | Clean Slate

3:30 a.m. Just finished cleaning the pad. Needed to make a fresh, clean start. I've felt clutter in my life of late, and I needed cleansing, both physically and emotionally. Cleaning the pad has always been a worthy catalyst. Yesterday, I texted Mom: "Please pray. This is my week to finish unfinished things." (God has a peculiar way of always answering my Mom's prayers.) That takes care of the spiritual side of things. Why do I clean my pad at this time? I don't know. I've always been a night cleaner. I like the quiet. I like the fact that while I sweep my place clean, everyone else is asleep. It's like owning the world for a while. And the quiet gets me thinking, too. Cleaning has always been more than cleaning for me: it is a meditation.

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3:13 AM | Clean Slate

3:30 a.m. Just finished cleaning the pad. Needed to make a fresh, clean start. I've felt clutter in my life of late, and I needed cleansing, both physically and emotionally. Cleaning the pad has always been a worthy catalyst. Yesterday, I texted Mom: "Please pray. This is my week to finish unfinished things." (God has a peculiar way of always answering my Mom's prayers.) That takes care of the spiritual side of things. Why do I clean my pad at this time? I don't know. I've always been a night cleaner. I like the quiet. I like the fact that while I sweep my place clean, everyone else is asleep. It's like owning the world for a while. And the quiet gets me thinking, too. Cleaning has always been more than cleaning for me: it is a meditation.

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