The Spy in the Sandwich

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

11:24 PM | James's Stick Comes to Me. (It's Not What You Think, Pervert.)

Why do they call this passing the stick?

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. What book do you want to be?

But baby, I don't want to burn. Okay, if I feel suicidal, I'd be the last copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, so this book would be lost forever. I just heard it is a current bestseller in Turkey, which saddens me about the way things are. It's a wonderful world, but sometimes it's fucked up. It's a good thing I have Julia Glass's wonderful Three Junes on my bedside table to keep me company.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

I had a crush on a headless male mannequin in a Penshoppe show window once. He had the most perfect washboard abs! As for someone more literary... Tom Sawyer. It was a childhood fling.

The last book you bought is...

The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag. The day after she died. And Michael Ondatje's The English Patient and A.S. Byatt's Possession, when I was on a Booker Prize binge. But I am forcing myself to no longer buy books, to stay away from bookstores, at least for a while. My library is groaning from under all that weight, and I still have a lot to catch up in my reading list. And I could use some of the money to buy me some new DVDs.

Five books you would take to a deserted island...

For something close to my heart: The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt. For something artsy literary: Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. For something spiritual: The Holy Bible-really. For something to occupy the rest of my days: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, to see what the fuss is all about. And for something all pop and sugary, but makes me think of a cerebral Indiana Jones meeting The Da Vinci Code: Katherine Neville's eternally entertaining The Eight.

What are you currently reading?

Oh, God. Here we go... Maria Fres-Felix's Making Straight Circles -- brilliant wit, unassuming prose that surprises. Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage -- something I can't seem to finish. I don't get her at al. Doris Lessing's Under My Skin -- but I stopped when I saw an interview of her on BBC where she said Africa was so much better colonized by white people. Kapal! Alice Sebold's Lovely Bones -- to find out why this caused such a stir. Donna Tartt's The Little Friend -- which is a lovely disappointment after The Secret History. Haruki Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes -- it was too close to my Tokyo memories, and thus repelled me at first, but it's slowly growing on me. Andrea Barret's Servants of the Map -- because Tim loves her. Jeanette Winterson's Art and Lies and Written on the Body -- because I want to read some sapphic fiction for a change. Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay -- because he is a master storyteller. Ian McEwan's Atonement -- because we share the same name. Jose Montero y Vidal's Cuentos Filipinos -- because I want to see how we lived, in microscopic detail, under the Spanish. Susan Sontag's On Photography -- which is in constant recycle. Anonymous's The Bride Stripped Bare -- because my best friend told me I should read it. Sue Miller's While I Was Gone. Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil -- for research on style. Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- before they release the movie. The 2004 Best American Short Stories -- for tips. And Jonathan Franken's The Corrections -- because I bought it hardbound, and I told Ma'am Susan (Lara) I will finish it, by hook or by crook. There are a hundred more, depending on my mood. Depending on my time.

Who are you going to pass this stick to and why?

Myrza Sison, because I want to know what lovely people read. Timothy Montes, to see what my writing mentor is up to, reading-wise. Susan Lara, to get a glimpse of a great fictionist at work. Gelo Suarez, just to catch up. Kit Kwe, because I love her to bits. Naya Valdellon, because she is my Cheshire Cat. Paolo Manalo, because he is midwife to most of my stories.

[because james passed this on to me]

11:24 PM | James's Stick Comes to Me. (It's Not What You Think, Pervert.)

11:06 AM | Something Short to Share With Everybody While I'm Gone

Nada has a formed a twisted fascination with midgets.

No one knows why. (Except for Jason Michaels.)

11:06 AM | Something Short to Share With Everybody While I'm Gone

Nada has a formed a twisted fascination with midgets.

No one knows why. (Except for Jason Michaels.)

11:06 AM | Something Short to Share With Everybody While I'm Gone

Nada has a formed a twisted fascination with midgets.

No one knows why. (Except for Jason Michaels.)

Sunday, March 27, 2005

12:02 AM | Resurrection

When I want to ponder on the nature of God, I often cannot help but recall the stories of Gregorio Brillantes. He is perhaps one of our best short story writers -- even the greatest of them all, as poet-critic Gemino Abad once confided to me one summer night in Dumaguete, while talking shop and drinking beer in Cafe Memento. "But if not the best," he qualified, "then he is certainly my personal favorite."

For one trained as a New Critic, that is hardly surprising of Sir Jimmy, considering that the stories by Brillantes are replete with the Formalist gems of metaphor, tension, epiphany. Most of Brillantes's tales are about seeking answers to age-old questions regarding our place in the universe, regarding our search for an Almighty that will define our lives for us.

For him, the search is often futile and ripe with existential angst -- but I find that sort of narrative voice as a kind of comfort, perhaps because I am naturally suspicious of cut-and-dried, dogmatic spirituality. The best spirituality for me is one fraught with struggles and gray areas. My writing teacher, Timothy Montes, once gave me the perfect metaphor to describe such: that biblical image of Jacob wrestling with the Angel. "To know God," Tim said, "is to struggle in the pursuit of knowing."

Born in Tarlac in 1932, Brillantes has written three collections of stories -- The Distance to Andromeda in 1960, The Apollo Centennial: Nostalgias, Predicaments, and Celebrations in 1981, and On a Clear Day in November, Shortly Before the Millenium: Stories for a Quarter Century in 2000. Note the very images that run through those titles: space and an expanse of nothingness and distance, and the reach for some divine yet far away goal.

One story which I think reflect his religious themes well is "Faith, Love, Time, and Dr. Lazaro," a classic I revisit once in a while with my Philippine literature classes, because it constantly provides me with new meanings embedded within the text, and gives me insight about my own Christian faith.

In this story, Brillantes confronts the most important questions or mysteries of our lives as Christians: Does God exist? If so, what is the nature of God? I remember Tim telling me that Brillantes succeeds in telling a compelling story because he never preaches nor subverts. That he allows the reader to experience, rather than solve, the problem of God's presence or absence.

The story is deceptively simple: an aging medical doctor and his young son are called in the middle of the night to minister to a poor family, whose newborn baby has a terminal case of tetanus. The journey towards the family's home, however, seems to take on a different level when it also becomes a spiritual journey, most especially for Dr. Lazaro, whose beliefs and disbelief about God, faith, love, and time seem to haunt him with a pressurized intensity -- and all because he sees a wide chasm between him and Ben, his son, in terms of how they see life: he has lost so much faith in God and life, while Ben -- intent on becoming a priest -- seems so infuriatingly fresh and positive.

At this point of the story, I make my students try to understand the characters better by using the device of opposites to appreciate their subtleties: That while Dr. Lazaro is scientific, cold, and rational, Ben is spiritual, warm and intimate, and delicately emotional. While Dr. Lazaro is a figure of disbelief and doubt, Ben promises belief and faith. While Dr. Lazaro is old, pessimistic, and bitter, Ben is young, optimistic, and hopeful. That while Dr. Lazaro seems mechanical and "dead," Ben is human and "alive". That while Ben is the car's driver, his father seems content about being the passenger. If one can't get the metaphorical undertones, especially the last one, I don't know what will.

It is especially interesting to note how we are introduced, in the beginning of the story, to the character of Dr. Lazaro. Brillantes writes:

From the upstairs veranda, Dr. Lazaro had a view of stars, the country darkness, the lights on the distant highway at the edge of town. The phonograph in the sala played Chopin -- like a vast sorrow controlled, made familiar, he had been wont to think. But as he sat there, his lean frame in the habitual slack repose he took after supper, and stared at the plains of night that had evoked gentle images and even a kind of peace (in the end, sweet invincible oblivion), Dr. Lazaro remembered nothing, his mind lay untouched by any conscious thought, he was scarcely aware of the April heat; the pattern of music fell around him and dissolved swiftly, uncomprehended. It was as though indifference were an infection that had entered his blood; it was everywhere in his body. In the scattered light from the sala his angular face had a dusty, wasted quality; only his eyes contained life. He could have remained there all evening, unmoving, and buried, as it were, in a strange half-sleep, had his wife not come to tell him he was wanted on the phone.

The emphases are mine. From that description alone, we get the sense that this man is, for a lack of a more apt term, a virtual "zombie." But why has Dr. Lazaro become like this? Well, he has lost faith in God. How so? Because of unfulfilled dreams, and the growing humdrumness of his life. Once a doctor of promise, he has instead "wasted" a life in a far-flung town, tending to common people who cannot even pay him, except in kind (like farm chicken, or bananas).

But he has also lost his faith because he has been a witness to countless, seemingly random deaths: there is a patient with cancer, whose racking pain even morphine can't assuage anymore; there is the baby who is now dying from tetanus; but most of all, there was his eldest son who, we later learn, committed suicide. From the latter, the Lazaro family "died" to each other as well: it made the doctor focus mechanically on his job, just to forget the pain, and his wife became more immersed in religion than in family.

For Dr. Lazaro, what kind of God would allow pain? What kind of God would kill a baby? What kind of God would take away a son? Is there really a God? (Many of my students invariably answer that perhaps God allowed this to happen to test their faith. I happen to believe this as well, but I pose for them another gray area: "That may be true, but tell that to a dying man in excruciating pain, or to a father who has tragically lost his child. Sir, you are in pain because God is testing your faith. Seems cruel, isn't it?")

These questions are compounded by the images and symbols that are replete throughout the story -- that of loss, distance, emptiness, and dark ominousness: "a view of the stars," "the country darkness," "the lights on the distant highway at the edge of town," a "humming of wires, as though darkness had added to the distance between the house in town and the station beyond the summer fields," "the long journey to Nambalan," "the sleeping town, the desolate streets, the plaza empty in the moonlight."

And being the quintessential Formalist narrative, the story contains several symbolism understood best through close-reading.

There is, for one, the realization that Dr. Lazaro represents a kind of "living dead." Besides the zombie-characteristic invoked in the first paragraph, his name easily evokes the Biblical "dead man brought to life": Lazarus. There is also the parallels of the baby and Dr. Lazaro -- that while the baby has actual tetanus, Dr. Lazarus, on the other hand, has tetanus of the soul: "It was as though indifference were an infection that had entered his blood; it was everywhere in his body." He needs new life, we soon realize, and he needs to be resurrected from the dead. In a sense, his journey to Nambalan with his son becomes a journey in a quest for redemption: he has to save the body, to save an idea of himself and his place in the world.

But there is also that other metaphor: of God as a futile God. As a doctor, Dr. Lazaro "heals," which is very God-like, if you think about it. In one scene, Esteban, the baby's bewildered father, calls the doctor over the phone -- like the prayer of a desperate man to God. The distance between Esteban and Dr. Lazaro, through the humming of the phone wires and the resulting bad connection, is a good metaphor for the distance between God and man. Can we call God? What if all we get is a busy signal? the story seems to say. But finally, Dr. Lazaro cannot heal the sick baby, who eventually dies -- and we are left with this unsettling question: what does this say about the Great Healer?

And yet, by the end of the story, it is spirituality that saves. As the defeated Dr. Lazaro leaves the dead baby on the mat, he sees his son Ben -- the hopeful priest-to-be -- go to the baby's side, to give it the final sacrament of Extreme Unction. And he finally sees his darkness, and his son's saving light.

Dr. Lazaro epiphany also becomes ours, but his quickly ends with abortive fear. In what is one of the most famous endings in Philippine literature, we read:

With unaccustomed tenderness he placed a hand on Ben's shoulder as they turned the cement-walled house. They had gone on a trip; they had come home safely together. He felt closer to the boy than he had ever been in years.

"Sorry for keeping you up this late," Dr. Lazaro said.

"It's all right, Pa."

"Some night, huh, Ben? What you did back in the barrio -- ," there was just the slightest patronage in his tone -- "your mother will love to hear about it."

He shook the boy beside him gently. "Revered Father Ben Lazaro..." The impulse of uncertain humor -- it was part of the comradeship. He cackled drowsily: "Father Lazaro, what must I do to gain eternal life?"

As he slid the door open on the vault of darkness, the familiar depths of the house, it came to Dr. Lazaro faintly in the late night that for certain things, like love, there was only so much time. But the glimmer was lost instantly, buried in the mist of indifference and sleep rising now in his brain.

Which may be the saddest of all epiphanies. That given the chance to have resurrection, to see the salvation's light, so many of us -- like Dr. Lazaro -- quickly turn away, strangely "comfortable" in the sad, wallowing darkness of disbelief.

12:02 AM | Resurrection

From the upstairs veranda, Dr. Lazaro had a view of stars, the country darkness, the lights on the distant highway at the edge of town. The phonograph in the sala played Chopin -- like a vast sorrow controlled, made familiar, he had been wont to think. But as he sat there, his lean frame in the habitual slack repose he took after supper, and stared at the plains of night that had evoked gentle images and even a kind of peace (in the end, sweet invincible oblivion), Dr. Lazaro remembered nothing, his mind lay untouched by any conscious thought, he was scarcely aware of the April heat; the pattern of music fell around him and dissolved swiftly, uncomprehended. It was as though indifference were an infection that had entered his blood; it was everywhere in his body. In the scattered light from the sala his angular face had a dusty, wasted quality; only his eyes contained life. He could have remained there all evening, unmoving, and buried, as it were, in a strange half-sleep, had his wife not come to tell him he was wanted on the phone.

With unaccustomed tenderness he placed a hand on Ben's shoulder as they turned the cement-walled house. They had gone on a trip; they had come home safely together. He felt closer to the boy than he had ever been in years.

"Sorry for keeping you up this late," Dr. Lazaro said.

"It's all right, Pa."

"Some night, huh, Ben? What you did back in the barrio -- ," there was just the slightest patronage in his tone -- "your mother will love to hear about it."

He shook the boy beside him gently. "Revered Father Ben Lazaro..." The impulse of uncertain humor -- it was part of the comradeship. He cackled drowsily: "Father Lazaro, what must I do to gain eternal life?"

As he slid the door open on the vault of darkness, the familiar depths of the house, it came to Dr. Lazaro faintly in the late night that for certain things, like love, there was only so much time. But the glimmer was lost instantly, buried in the mist of indifference and sleep rising now in his brain.

12:02 AM | Resurrection

From the upstairs veranda, Dr. Lazaro had a view of stars, the country darkness, the lights on the distant highway at the edge of town. The phonograph in the sala played Chopin -- like a vast sorrow controlled, made familiar, he had been wont to think. But as he sat there, his lean frame in the habitual slack repose he took after supper, and stared at the plains of night that had evoked gentle images and even a kind of peace (in the end, sweet invincible oblivion), Dr. Lazaro remembered nothing, his mind lay untouched by any conscious thought, he was scarcely aware of the April heat; the pattern of music fell around him and dissolved swiftly, uncomprehended. It was as though indifference were an infection that had entered his blood; it was everywhere in his body. In the scattered light from the sala his angular face had a dusty, wasted quality; only his eyes contained life. He could have remained there all evening, unmoving, and buried, as it were, in a strange half-sleep, had his wife not come to tell him he was wanted on the phone.

With unaccustomed tenderness he placed a hand on Ben's shoulder as they turned the cement-walled house. They had gone on a trip; they had come home safely together. He felt closer to the boy than he had ever been in years.

"Sorry for keeping you up this late," Dr. Lazaro said.

"It's all right, Pa."

"Some night, huh, Ben? What you did back in the barrio -- ," there was just the slightest patronage in his tone -- "your mother will love to hear about it."

He shook the boy beside him gently. "Revered Father Ben Lazaro..." The impulse of uncertain humor -- it was part of the comradeship. He cackled drowsily: "Father Lazaro, what must I do to gain eternal life?"

As he slid the door open on the vault of darkness, the familiar depths of the house, it came to Dr. Lazaro faintly in the late night that for certain things, like love, there was only so much time. But the glimmer was lost instantly, buried in the mist of indifference and sleep rising now in his brain.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

7:28 PM | Moon of Change

I was riding home on a pedicab from gym. It was past dusk, and the city was a beehive of people rushing home from work, or doing their shopping or dining. My pedicab passed by the Dumaguete Boulevard, and as usual, my mind was somewhere else, exhausted.

And then there it was, off the dark horizon which was the sea: a great big ball of yellowness. A strange, almost frightening, yellow moon.

Which immediately reminded me of Angela Manalang Gloria's oft-anthologized poem -- a personal favorite, because it was one of the first poetic attempts by Filipino writers in English to break free from one tradition, which was romanticism.

For me, this poem signals what may be the first signs of growth in our poetic literature. All changes for me -- good or bad -- is growth, and anyone can readily see that from Maramag and the Subidos, to Villa and Gloria, to Tiempo and Angeles, to Dumdum and Amper, to Evasco and Gamalinda, and now to Manalo and Suarez. I realize that the intermittent stages of change is often fraught with criticism from purists and (dare I say it?) formalists, but I guess all that discourse is part of any evolving literature.

In this particular poem, Gloria still maintains some of the romantic traditions of her peers, down to the use of natural imagery. But here, she employs a twist: no longer are the moon and stars and the "fragrance of lilies, rose-released musk" (from Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido's "Sonnet to a Gardener II") mere wallpaper to evoke romatic atmosphere; they now actually take on some deeper dimension, sometimes even psychological. Like the yellow moon here, which the persona professes to be "afraid of." And gone are the strict cadence, the artifice, the blatant imititativeness, the archaic words. This was finally liberating free verse!

Yellow Moon
By Angela Manalang Gloria

I stand at my window and listen;
Only the plaintive murmur of a swarm of cicadas.
I stand on the wet grass and ponder,
And turn to the east and behold you,
Great yellow moon.
Why do you frighten me so,
You captive of the coconut glade?
I have seen you before,
Have flirted with you so many a night.

When my heart, ever throbbing, never listless,
Had pined for the moonlight to calm it.
But you were a dainty whiteness
That kissed my brow then.
A gentle, pale flutter
That touched my aching breast.

You are a lonely yellow moon now.
You are ghastly, spectral tonight,
Alone
Behind your prison bars of coconut trees.
That is why
I do not dare take you into my hand
And press you against my cheek
To feel how cold you are.

I am afraid of you, yellow moon.

There you go. Now, I'm off to a weekend of work. No vacation for me. I want all my grades done come Monday, so I can go off into the moonrise somewhere, probably Siquijor.

7:28 PM | Moon of Change

Yellow Moon
By Angela Manalang Gloria

I stand at my window and listen;
Only the plaintive murmur of a swarm of cicadas.
I stand on the wet grass and ponder,
And turn to the east and behold you,
Great yellow moon.
Why do you frighten me so,
You captive of the coconut glade?
I have seen you before,
Have flirted with you so many a night.

When my heart, ever throbbing, never listless,
Had pined for the moonlight to calm it.
But you were a dainty whiteness
That kissed my brow then.
A gentle, pale flutter
That touched my aching breast.

You are a lonely yellow moon now.
You are ghastly, spectral tonight,
Alone
Behind your prison bars of coconut trees.
That is why
I do not dare take you into my hand
And press you against my cheek
To feel how cold you are.

I am afraid of you, yellow moon.

There you go. Now, I'm off to a weekend of work. No vacation for me. I want all my grades done come Monday, so I can go off into the moonrise somewhere, probably Siquijor.

7:28 PM | Moon of Change

Yellow Moon
By Angela Manalang Gloria

I stand at my window and listen;
Only the plaintive murmur of a swarm of cicadas.
I stand on the wet grass and ponder,
And turn to the east and behold you,
Great yellow moon.
Why do you frighten me so,
You captive of the coconut glade?
I have seen you before,
Have flirted with you so many a night.

When my heart, ever throbbing, never listless,
Had pined for the moonlight to calm it.
But you were a dainty whiteness
That kissed my brow then.
A gentle, pale flutter
That touched my aching breast.

You are a lonely yellow moon now.
You are ghastly, spectral tonight,
Alone
Behind your prison bars of coconut trees.
That is why
I do not dare take you into my hand
And press you against my cheek
To feel how cold you are.

I am afraid of you, yellow moon.

There you go. Now, I'm off to a weekend of work. No vacation for me. I want all my grades done come Monday, so I can go off into the moonrise somewhere, probably Siquijor.

Friday, March 25, 2005

12:55 PM | So You Want to Be a Caregiver?

I have friends who pay good money to enroll in Caregiver School. Some come from rich families. Others are professionals, and quite well-educated. One is a U.P. graduate. I know several who are known for being sosyal. I have one very good friend who makes very good money teaching other people how to be a caregiver. The one thing I have gleaned from these friends and acquaintances is this: it's not about caring or giving at all; it's about getting out of a certain hell-hole. (You have to be naive to think otherwise.) Sometimes, we even sell our souls to the Devil just to be able to get out of here. This is an excerpt from a writer-friend's blog, the URL of which I don't think I can tell everybody. Here, my friend gets a call from someone who had just come back to the country:

We met up in a Tomas Morato cafe and there he told me all the horror stories of being a caregiver, and of not lasting the six-month trial period. "I cleaned shit from strangers' butts. Old people with their poo smell and their old people smell. The Americans and Canadians won't do it, that's why we Filipinos do it. I'm a college graduate and there I was cleaning the asses of these people I didn't know and who didn't know me." One time my dear friend wiped some old man's ass clean and was ready to put on adult diapers. When he came back to the ass, the old man had defecated again, kept defecating the whole day. "It was the first time I understood the phrase, 'the runs.'"

He said that among their caregiving ranks in Canada were former public school teachers who got sick and tired of waiting for their delayed promotions and salary adjustments, who had their master's degrees and were in the middle of their postgraduate studies, but gave it all up to be like himself, washing the poo of old people and then washing the smell of poo from their hands.

"But I'm still lucky," he said. "One of my kasama when I worked as a service crew wrote to me. He's based in the United States now. To get his green card, he paid a permanent resident $5,000 to marry him. The fee's usually $10,000, but he found a kababayan, someone from his province...you'll never guess who."

His grade school teacher.

We are in such deep shit.

12:55 PM | So You Want to Be a Caregiver?

We met up in a Tomas Morato cafe and there he told me all the horror stories of being a caregiver, and of not lasting the six-month trial period. "I cleaned shit from strangers' butts. Old people with their poo smell and their old people smell. The Americans and Canadians won't do it, that's why we Filipinos do it. I'm a college graduate and there I was cleaning the asses of these people I didn't know and who didn't know me." One time my dear friend wiped some old man's ass clean and was ready to put on adult diapers. When he came back to the ass, the old man had defecated again, kept defecating the whole day. "It was the first time I understood the phrase, 'the runs.'"

He said that among their caregiving ranks in Canada were former public school teachers who got sick and tired of waiting for their delayed promotions and salary adjustments, who had their master's degrees and were in the middle of their postgraduate studies, but gave it all up to be like himself, washing the poo of old people and then washing the smell of poo from their hands.

"But I'm still lucky," he said. "One of my kasama when I worked as a service crew wrote to me. He's based in the United States now. To get his green card, he paid a permanent resident $5,000 to marry him. The fee's usually $10,000, but he found a kababayan, someone from his province...you'll never guess who."

His grade school teacher.

We are in such deep shit.

12:55 PM | So You Want to Be a Caregiver?

We met up in a Tomas Morato cafe and there he told me all the horror stories of being a caregiver, and of not lasting the six-month trial period. "I cleaned shit from strangers' butts. Old people with their poo smell and their old people smell. The Americans and Canadians won't do it, that's why we Filipinos do it. I'm a college graduate and there I was cleaning the asses of these people I didn't know and who didn't know me." One time my dear friend wiped some old man's ass clean and was ready to put on adult diapers. When he came back to the ass, the old man had defecated again, kept defecating the whole day. "It was the first time I understood the phrase, 'the runs.'"

He said that among their caregiving ranks in Canada were former public school teachers who got sick and tired of waiting for their delayed promotions and salary adjustments, who had their master's degrees and were in the middle of their postgraduate studies, but gave it all up to be like himself, washing the poo of old people and then washing the smell of poo from their hands.

"But I'm still lucky," he said. "One of my kasama when I worked as a service crew wrote to me. He's based in the United States now. To get his green card, he paid a permanent resident $5,000 to marry him. The fee's usually $10,000, but he found a kababayan, someone from his province...you'll never guess who."

His grade school teacher.

We are in such deep shit.

12:21 AM | American Idol?

Bubu,

You know I love you so much, and I only have the deepest respect for you. But frankly, my dearest, Mikalah Gordon is so ... yabag.

Don't get me wrong: I love her assertive, can-do personality. And she is blissfully bubbly. But the way she sang Barbra Streisand last week and Diana Krall this week was a test of sheer willpower: her voice was shrill and agonizing, and I had to keep my hands from covering my ears.

That said, I remain,

Your baby.

12:21 AM | American Idol?

Bubu,

You know I love you so much, and I only have the deepest respect for you. But frankly, my dearest, Mikalah Gordon is so ... yabag.

12:21 AM | American Idol?

Bubu,

You know I love you so much, and I only have the deepest respect for you. But frankly, my dearest, Mikalah Gordon is so ... yabag.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

11:50 AM | A Simple Life

I never read the Youngblood section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer anymore. It had its heyday so many years ago, when it was still young, and sent a thunderbolt through my generation of writers: imagine, an Op-Ed column by you in the nation's biggest newspaper! We took the bait: it was supposed to showcase all our concerns and opinions on current issues as young people. I wrote about two articles for this section, and my friend Marge about five. One of my favorite articles was Chris Anthony Ferrer's Musings on a Stone, which I still teach in my Essay Writing class as an example of inspired writing.

Then, the section began to become predictable. All those angst-ridden articles about crushes, about lost loves, about unemployment, about fathers... Blah blah blah. It took its toll.

But this recent article by Kitchie Canlas -- a 25-year old instructor, for almost five years now, at a state college in Pampanga -- caught my attention. Maybe because it hit close to home. It's about well-meaning young teachers in a time fraught with so much financial difficulty. After reading it, I understand for sure why it is that almost half the enrollment now in my own university invariably are Nursing hopefuls.

Is there any hope for a country when even teachers have to feel the pinch?

I was just watching the first part of "TV Patrol" minutes ago. Two news items got my attention and made me turn on my computer and write this stuff. The first one was the alleged corruption attending the purchase of equipment for the Light Rail Transit. The other one was the planned strike of a transport group that was demanding another increase in fares.

I asked myself why there is so much corruption in the government and why so many transport groups want to increase their fare. And it led me to think of my life, which is a living testimony to how hard life is today.

I am an instructor at a state college in Pampanga. My net income every month is P9,000. This may be reduced by P188 next month because I availed myself of the P5,000 cash advance offered by the Government Service Insurance System (through the e-card). Every month, there are deductions in my pay for tax, PhilHealth, policy loan, emergency loan, and life and retirement insurance.

I take a tricycle to school, which costs me P25 one way. After work in the afternoon, I hitch a ride in my colleague's van, which saves me an equal amount.

I eat packed lunch. I spend about P50 for my snacks in the morning and afternoon.

I go to the same school for my graduate education every Saturday. However, I spend more on this day because I can't get a free ride going home and I buy snacks and lunch from the canteen. In my three classes, I spend money for photocopying the readings, especially when I am the reporter for a certain topic.

In my work, I usually make handouts to facilitate the teaching-learning process. For these, I spend approximately P200 monthly. There are times when I give quizzes or exams and some of my students don't pay for their photocopying bills simply for lack of money.

I have just downgraded my Smart postpaid plan to P500 from the previous P800 so that starting next month my monthly phone bills will be approximately P700 (because most of the time, there are other charges on top of the plan).

I stay with my parents and so my meals are basically free. To help them out, I pay the monthly electricity and water bills which add up to about P1,800, thanks to the ever-increasing purchased power adjustment. I do not give money to my parents regularly though I do so to my unemployed sister.

Almost every month, there are additional deductions from my salary for death aid, help for a sick colleague, etc. Another strain on the pocket is buying gifts for friends who celebrate their birthdays and contribution to friend's relatives who die.

I rarely buy things for myself and I do not buy expensive things. Twice a month, I usually buy a pocketbook for P35 in Angeles City. Going to Angeles and back costs P52. The last time I bought a shirt at a "tiangge" [flea market], it cost me only P50. I do not eat at expensive restaurants; I normally spend only P80 for my dinner when I eat out.

I cannot itemize all my other expenses, but from my experience, I can safely say that I am living a simple and comfortable life. Despite this, I am one of so many people who count the days before receiving the next salary. I get mad whenever there is a delay in payment. There have been many times when the money in my coin purse (I do not use a wallet) was not even enough to pay the tricycle fare to school. And there have been times when I had to ask or borrow money from my mother.

Whenever I find myself in such situations, I wonder how some of my colleagues cope when they have babies who regularly need to be fed costly milk. How about the others who have children who go to school? How about those who live in apartments on which they have to pay rental? How about those who earn less than I do? And how about those who do not even have jobs?

And then I begin again to wonder, like I did when I heard those two news items on TV, why there is so much corruption in the government and why many transport groups want to increase the fare. I think and I realize that the continuous increases in prices of oil and other basic commodities led these groups to plan a strike. And I begin to wonder if this is also the reason there is so much corruption in government.

Ordinary government employees like me need to eat and have basic commodities, just like the President and other high-ranking officials and politicians. However, if I compare the way I live my life with the way they do, there's a very big difference.

I try my best to make my students learn because that is my foremost responsibility as a teacher, but I feel sad and disappointed whenever I see this very big difference in the way I live (which may be the same as how these public transport drivers live) and the way these prominent personalities live. Which makes me wonder why additional burdens are being laid on our shoulders through the imposition of new taxes when teachers are the most honest taxpayers in this country.

Anyway, I can still smile because my conscience is clear. I do my job well and there's my family to fall back on whenever my salary is delayed.

Posted 00:58am (Mla time) Mar 24, 2005
Inquirer News Service

There you go. The original article can be found here.

11:50 AM | A Simple Life

I was just watching the first part of "TV Patrol" minutes ago. Two news items got my attention and made me turn on my computer and write this stuff. The first one was the alleged corruption attending the purchase of equipment for the Light Rail Transit. The other one was the planned strike of a transport group that was demanding another increase in fares.

I asked myself why there is so much corruption in the government and why so many transport groups want to increase their fare. And it led me to think of my life, which is a living testimony to how hard life is today.

I am an instructor at a state college in Pampanga. My net income every month is P9,000. This may be reduced by P188 next month because I availed myself of the P5,000 cash advance offered by the Government Service Insurance System (through the e-card). Every month, there are deductions in my pay for tax, PhilHealth, policy loan, emergency loan, and life and retirement insurance.

I take a tricycle to school, which costs me P25 one way. After work in the afternoon, I hitch a ride in my colleague's van, which saves me an equal amount.

I eat packed lunch. I spend about P50 for my snacks in the morning and afternoon.

I go to the same school for my graduate education every Saturday. However, I spend more on this day because I can't get a free ride going home and I buy snacks and lunch from the canteen. In my three classes, I spend money for photocopying the readings, especially when I am the reporter for a certain topic.

In my work, I usually make handouts to facilitate the teaching-learning process. For these, I spend approximately P200 monthly. There are times when I give quizzes or exams and some of my students don't pay for their photocopying bills simply for lack of money.

I have just downgraded my Smart postpaid plan to P500 from the previous P800 so that starting next month my monthly phone bills will be approximately P700 (because most of the time, there are other charges on top of the plan).

I stay with my parents and so my meals are basically free. To help them out, I pay the monthly electricity and water bills which add up to about P1,800, thanks to the ever-increasing purchased power adjustment. I do not give money to my parents regularly though I do so to my unemployed sister.

Almost every month, there are additional deductions from my salary for death aid, help for a sick colleague, etc. Another strain on the pocket is buying gifts for friends who celebrate their birthdays and contribution to friend's relatives who die.

I rarely buy things for myself and I do not buy expensive things. Twice a month, I usually buy a pocketbook for P35 in Angeles City. Going to Angeles and back costs P52. The last time I bought a shirt at a "tiangge" [flea market], it cost me only P50. I do not eat at expensive restaurants; I normally spend only P80 for my dinner when I eat out.

I cannot itemize all my other expenses, but from my experience, I can safely say that I am living a simple and comfortable life. Despite this, I am one of so many people who count the days before receiving the next salary. I get mad whenever there is a delay in payment. There have been many times when the money in my coin purse (I do not use a wallet) was not even enough to pay the tricycle fare to school. And there have been times when I had to ask or borrow money from my mother.

Whenever I find myself in such situations, I wonder how some of my colleagues cope when they have babies who regularly need to be fed costly milk. How about the others who have children who go to school? How about those who live in apartments on which they have to pay rental? How about those who earn less than I do? And how about those who do not even have jobs?

And then I begin again to wonder, like I did when I heard those two news items on TV, why there is so much corruption in the government and why many transport groups want to increase the fare. I think and I realize that the continuous increases in prices of oil and other basic commodities led these groups to plan a strike. And I begin to wonder if this is also the reason there is so much corruption in government.

Ordinary government employees like me need to eat and have basic commodities, just like the President and other high-ranking officials and politicians. However, if I compare the way I live my life with the way they do, there's a very big difference.

I try my best to make my students learn because that is my foremost responsibility as a teacher, but I feel sad and disappointed whenever I see this very big difference in the way I live (which may be the same as how these public transport drivers live) and the way these prominent personalities live. Which makes me wonder why additional burdens are being laid on our shoulders through the imposition of new taxes when teachers are the most honest taxpayers in this country.

Anyway, I can still smile because my conscience is clear. I do my job well and there's my family to fall back on whenever my salary is delayed.

Posted 00:58am (Mla time) Mar 24, 2005
Inquirer News Service

There you go. The original article can be found here.

11:50 AM | A Simple Life

I was just watching the first part of "TV Patrol" minutes ago. Two news items got my attention and made me turn on my computer and write this stuff. The first one was the alleged corruption attending the purchase of equipment for the Light Rail Transit. The other one was the planned strike of a transport group that was demanding another increase in fares.

I asked myself why there is so much corruption in the government and why so many transport groups want to increase their fare. And it led me to think of my life, which is a living testimony to how hard life is today.

I am an instructor at a state college in Pampanga. My net income every month is P9,000. This may be reduced by P188 next month because I availed myself of the P5,000 cash advance offered by the Government Service Insurance System (through the e-card). Every month, there are deductions in my pay for tax, PhilHealth, policy loan, emergency loan, and life and retirement insurance.

I take a tricycle to school, which costs me P25 one way. After work in the afternoon, I hitch a ride in my colleague's van, which saves me an equal amount.

I eat packed lunch. I spend about P50 for my snacks in the morning and afternoon.

I go to the same school for my graduate education every Saturday. However, I spend more on this day because I can't get a free ride going home and I buy snacks and lunch from the canteen. In my three classes, I spend money for photocopying the readings, especially when I am the reporter for a certain topic.

In my work, I usually make handouts to facilitate the teaching-learning process. For these, I spend approximately P200 monthly. There are times when I give quizzes or exams and some of my students don't pay for their photocopying bills simply for lack of money.

I have just downgraded my Smart postpaid plan to P500 from the previous P800 so that starting next month my monthly phone bills will be approximately P700 (because most of the time, there are other charges on top of the plan).

I stay with my parents and so my meals are basically free. To help them out, I pay the monthly electricity and water bills which add up to about P1,800, thanks to the ever-increasing purchased power adjustment. I do not give money to my parents regularly though I do so to my unemployed sister.

Almost every month, there are additional deductions from my salary for death aid, help for a sick colleague, etc. Another strain on the pocket is buying gifts for friends who celebrate their birthdays and contribution to friend's relatives who die.

I rarely buy things for myself and I do not buy expensive things. Twice a month, I usually buy a pocketbook for P35 in Angeles City. Going to Angeles and back costs P52. The last time I bought a shirt at a "tiangge" [flea market], it cost me only P50. I do not eat at expensive restaurants; I normally spend only P80 for my dinner when I eat out.

I cannot itemize all my other expenses, but from my experience, I can safely say that I am living a simple and comfortable life. Despite this, I am one of so many people who count the days before receiving the next salary. I get mad whenever there is a delay in payment. There have been many times when the money in my coin purse (I do not use a wallet) was not even enough to pay the tricycle fare to school. And there have been times when I had to ask or borrow money from my mother.

Whenever I find myself in such situations, I wonder how some of my colleagues cope when they have babies who regularly need to be fed costly milk. How about the others who have children who go to school? How about those who live in apartments on which they have to pay rental? How about those who earn less than I do? And how about those who do not even have jobs?

And then I begin again to wonder, like I did when I heard those two news items on TV, why there is so much corruption in the government and why many transport groups want to increase the fare. I think and I realize that the continuous increases in prices of oil and other basic commodities led these groups to plan a strike. And I begin to wonder if this is also the reason there is so much corruption in government.

Ordinary government employees like me need to eat and have basic commodities, just like the President and other high-ranking officials and politicians. However, if I compare the way I live my life with the way they do, there's a very big difference.

I try my best to make my students learn because that is my foremost responsibility as a teacher, but I feel sad and disappointed whenever I see this very big difference in the way I live (which may be the same as how these public transport drivers live) and the way these prominent personalities live. Which makes me wonder why additional burdens are being laid on our shoulders through the imposition of new taxes when teachers are the most honest taxpayers in this country.

Anyway, I can still smile because my conscience is clear. I do my job well and there's my family to fall back on whenever my salary is delayed.

Posted 00:58am (Mla time) Mar 24, 2005
Inquirer News Service

There you go. The original article can be found here.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

5:36 PM | Why Women Rock

Moments, Merely has some answers for you.

5:36 PM | Why Women Rock

Moments, Merely has some answers for you.

5:36 PM | Why Women Rock

Moments, Merely has some answers for you.

10:52 AM | Cuaresma!

I'm very sacrilegious.

Elsewhere.

Not in Blogger. Noooooo.

In the meantime, I really think I should be getting back to fiction writing right about ... now. Happy Holy Week everybody! Don't get too much sun, and record that Pasyon, if you can. That one you will hear may be the last of that kind of oral literature.

And seriously now, Pink Idiocy, who loses faith because of blogging? It's like saying you lose weight because you smelled a flower.

10:52 AM | Cuaresma!

And seriously now, Pink Idiocy, who loses faith because of blogging? It's like saying you lose weight because you smelled a flower.

10:52 AM | Cuaresma!

And seriously now, Pink Idiocy, who loses faith because of blogging? It's like saying you lose weight because you smelled a flower.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

5:09 PM | Dead Links Are Bad Headaches

[emailed in by andronymous]

5:09 PM | Dead Links Are Bad Headaches

[emailed in by andronymous]

5:09 PM | Dead Links Are Bad Headaches

[emailed in by andronymous]

Saturday, March 19, 2005

1:25 AM | Welcome to Real Life

If you want a nice, sugarcoated message about the reality of your Graduation Day, do not read further. Bromides never worked for me.

There is a moment sometime during the end days of March that leaves anyone -- especially jobless 21-year olds who mistake aimless sniggering with profundity -- breathless with the anxiety of having to do absolutely... nothing. These are the doldrums, complete with dog day afternoons that stretch and continue one after the other, not yet quite the summer but already bearing the likeness of the season: dryness and dust, eternal sunshine, heat, and perspiring nights. School's over. For the most part, there are only a few options to choose from: planning a summer getaway somewhere (in particular, for the Holy Week ahead), or resigning to the reality of having to hog the couch and becoming its potato, and knowing, by heart, the TV schedule for the next two months.

For college graduates, it is perhaps a little bit more terrifying. Real life is about to begin -- and after the lechon, the handshakes and congratulations, and the not-yet-dry ink spelling your name on the diploma, there is that slowly sickening realization in the pits of your stomach that your four (or five) years of having the perfect excuse to party are finally over, and there is just no sidestepping the notion of demanding responsibility suddenly falling onto your hands. You're an adult now, and by God, people actually expect you to have a job.

A job.

In a time of war and utter restlessness. Where the future holds a nurse's cap, and nothing else.

"I hate the realities of March. Caesar was murdered in March," my friend Aivy texted me. "Nothing good ever happens in March."

Last Sunday:

"What are you going to do now?" I asked another friend (and former student), Jun, who had just graduated. We were still in our semi-formal wear. And we were in that delicate balance of celebration and sobriety in Mamia's, right after some school's commencement ceremonies. As usual, Dumaguete's restaurants were like beehives of hearty congratulations mixed with silver clinking against china. Food was everywhere.

"I don't know," Jun finally said, "maybe I'll just bum around for a while."

I told him, in that wizened voice survivors adopt, that all I really knew was this: the first six post-graduation months are scary. Not to sink the feelings of the guy, but to arm him with knowledge of the usual things. After all, one shouldn't be a champion of false send-offs, but rather of guarded hopefulness -- not cynicism, but a general assessment of the way things really are.

Until now I still thank, from my heart, my dentist friend Dr. Patrick Chua who had given the advice I go back to now and again after my own graduation: "Just do things slowly but certainly. It can be very hard in the beginning. It takes an average of five years to create a semblance of a career," Patrick said. "Always try to do what you love best. But sometimes you find yourself doing things you never thought you'd be doing. Get this, though: sometimes the way to your dreams is finding another."

He didn't say those all at once, of course. I gathered the thoughts from our sometime conquests of the nocturnal life, over beer, over Vienna coffee, over Rosante pizza, over paella. His words grew on me.

I vaguely recollected my own graduation party six years ago. I had barely gotten out of my toga when it was suggested that perhaps it was time that I lived on my own. (My family always had an independent streak. But I take it as a point of pride that after the day I graduated, I never even asked my family for a single centavo.)

I remember the lump of fear and uncertainty in my throat. Responsibility felt so heavy, my shoulders sagged. There were questions racing through my mind, all of them unanswered. How shall I live on my own? How does one start paying utility bills? Or rent? Where do I get a damn job? For the next six months, jobless and losing hope and anxious of feeling so much like a stranger in the family home, I stretched the P60 in my wallet forever and made penny-pinching an art.

When I got my first job with peanuts for pay, I grabbed it like it was a glass of water being dangled in front of a desert wanderer. Yet that was also when I started learning about how life worked: that there are actually people out there who believe in you even if you don't, that people do help other people just because they feel like doing it, that somehow, when you're about just convinced there is still something deeper to sink to in the quagmire when your life's bottoming out, miracles happen.

(Dear God, but I'm beginning to sound like a piece of bromide myself.)

But there is a manual through life, actually. We learn -- if we remember the literature our English teachers in college taught us in the classroom -- that life is all about the fulfillment of an archetype: the journey, or the making, of the hero -- so much like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars becoming a Jedi, or Harry Potter becoming a wizard, or a young Juan de la Cruz becoming a successful young man.

The journey goes this way: We all come from the "womb," from the "cave," from a comfort zone in a stretch of innocence. Call it Luke Skywalker as a young boy in Tatoine, call it Frodo in the Shire blissfully ignorant of destiny, call it Dumaguete, call it childhood, call it Mother, call it the family home.

Then we get the hint of crisis, the first portal to our call to adulthood, the first glimpse into a world beyond our innocence: C.S. Lewis called it Narnia behind the wardrobe, Lewis Carroll's Alice called it the rabbit hole into Wonderland, J.K. Rowling called it Platform 9 1/2 into the Hogwarts Express.

The hero, us, then ventures, fearfully but resolutely from the comfort zone, to travel through the "dark forest" -- call it encountering Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter getting a lightning scar on his forehead, call it Jesus being tempted during 40 days and 40 nights in the desert, call it the vexations of high school life, or call it battling adolescent zits and hormones.

Along the way, the hero encounters strange beings while training to become the young knight -- call it becoming a Jedi, call it carrying The One Ring to be destroyed in the fires of Mordor, call it surviving college, call it a writer's workshop, call it the agonies of first love.

Then there is the final battle, the final test -- call it acing the final (or the board) exams, call it the Bar, call it penetrating the maze to blow up the Death Star, call it Oedipally killing the father a la Darth Vader, call it submitting a story to the Palanca Awards.

And then the hero finally emerges victorious -- scarred, but triumphant. Cinderella gets her Prince, Aragorn becomes king, we become lawyers, teachers, doctors, CEOs, fathers, mothers.

This, for me, becomes a source of great comfort.

We all follow our myths. Myths are truths -- they are the paradigms of our hidden lives coded into our stories to make sense of the varieties (and vagaries) of human experience. Almost all of us still live through the process of journeying to become the hero; almost all of us still face our battles, our inner demons.

There are days, though, when we waver from the quest, when the going gets too tough, so it is always helpful to be reminded of the ultimate prize that can be won in the little game called persistence.

My mother, bless her, just sent me a card that said she missed me, and reprimanded me for not calling her for some time now. I'm taking the independence thing a little too seriously, she said. The card she sent says, in part, "When you are going through a difficult time, you may wonder if you're making the right choices. You may wonder about how things will turn out if you take a different road...," in the end, when you follow your heart to the dogged end, the hero suddenly becomes you.

Happy Graduation Day to all you students out there. It's a tough life, but really, that's how diamonds get made. (Oh, great, a bromide again.)

1:25 AM | Welcome to Real Life

12:45 AM | Karma*

Let me tell you why I have such vitriol against religion lately. It's the blind dogma most of all, but there are so many other reasons, many of them historical, psychological, and sociological. But mainly it's the people who parade "religiosity" around like a halo above their head. I suppose the halos are there to mark them as something holier-than-thou. I don't mind if they want to be that way, but once they become so narrow-minded and step on my foot, hello baby.

Which is why I am going to tell you about this girl. Let's call her Cara de Achay. She's a graduating college student, a professed Christian, and sometime last year, she filed a case to remove or suspend a friend of mine, a teacher from one of the Colleges, from her teaching post.

The charges were various, one of them being "incompetency," which was a piece of crock. The teacher is brilliant, and hardworking, and possesses one of the rare socio-civic spirit in academia. That she is not "conventional" may be true, but who wants that?

The main complaint in the charge was, of course, "immorality." (Don’t let me explain why.) Of course it didn't help that her boyfriend, a teacher from another college, seemed to be egging her on. He had found the Lord, you see, and I even remember two years ago, he was trying to persuade me to join Logos, that missionary ship. He was the reason why we almost couldn't hold The Vagina Monologues for the past four years. He'd been badmouthing us, and he belonged to a body who decided on the holding of such things. I've been also hearing rumors from students that his classes were no longer about his subject. Fifty percent of his teaching time daw was supposedly being spent on proselytizing his students. Which is fine, if you are teaching Religion. But a **** **** class?

But I remember, most of all, my friend's anguish. She was crying so hard, and she was having nightmares. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat. But I was so proud of her because she went on with her life, despite the fact that she felt shattered.

The case was dismissed for lack of merit.

(It was also last year that another religious buang berated me in public for failing her daughter in Research Writing. She alluded that perhaps I was "kindlier" towards the boys in my class because I was gay. Gisapot jud ko. I wanted to shout at her, "Ma'am, I failed your daughter because she plagiarized her paper! And my being gay has nothing to do with anything!")

See why I hate these hypocrites so much, XP? Pink Idiocy? Personal history. I'm soooooooo tired of vipers like these. You know, those who use God's name to pursue their own perverted existence.

And I grew up practically a pastor's boy.

...

Today, I heard that Cara de Achay is pregnant. The boyfriend-teacher's the culprit. And that she is in danger, health-wise, because of the baby. Accordingly, she can't carry it to term, or else she might die.

So for this religious girl, a double dilemma of "immoral" proportions, at least for her: revelations of premarital sex, and now the specter of abortion. Yesterday, straight from the check-up, she came to speak to a student gathering, and declared that she just came from the hospital, because she had a demon inside her.

Psychotic, no? Reminds me of the mother in Carrie, the Sissy Spacek version, where Piper Laurie embodied for me an extreme form of Christian moralism that bordered on the monstrous.

For a "Christian," Cara de Achay is not a very good witness, after all.

But why is it that it is always girls like these who end up in trouble? The pure, religious ones? I had a college classmate whose parents were so strict and religious. She was shocked when I told her about how people have sex. She always thought that one got pregnant from kissing. She didn't even know about what penises and vaginas do to each other. Which was why I wasn't surprised that a week or so after that, I found out she was pregnant. (Maybe she was thinking, "Hey, my boyfriend is not kissing me, so I won't get pregnant. But what's that thing he's poking inside my coochie snorcher? Ano ba yan? Ano ba? Annooooo baaaaa... Ummmm...")

She never finished college.

As for Cara de Achay, three words: karma ka 'day.

*This will be the last of posts like this. I figured I've said enough. I've exhausted all the pain from within me. This is enough.

12:45 AM | Karma*

Friday, March 18, 2005

12:30 PM | Froggie's Surprise

My body is aching from gym. But this made me laugh:

[swiped from the elephant is still missing]

12:30 PM | Froggie's Surprise

My body is aching from gym. But this made me laugh:

[swiped from the elephant is still missing]

12:30 PM | Froggie's Surprise

My body is aching from gym. But this made me laugh:

[swiped from the elephant is still missing]

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Monday, March 14, 2005

1:47 AM | Santa Santita in the New York Times

The film critic Ned Martel reviews Laurice Guillen's Santa Santita, now retitled -- are you ready for this? -- Magdalena, the Unholy Saint (ew! ew!) in his article "Young Lovers and Miracles." It's a slightly glowing review, better than the last year's Crying Ladies in the same paper:

As two young lovers open their hearts to each other in a poor district of Manila, they keep the darker sides of their souls hidden. Malen, short for Magdalena, is the daughter of a devout intercessor, a priestly surrogate who offers auxiliary prayers for paying sufferers. Behind her mother's back, the young girl sells religious badges as a means of meeting men. Mike is a suave Filipino Jean-Paul Belmondo, who offers wealthy tourists rides for hire as well as other services.

Soon Malen adopts her mother's vocation, out of necessity if not belief. The other intercessors snipe at the comely newcomer. "This is blasphemy," says one of Malen's new colleagues, who is aware of the tension between mother and daughter. "She is defiling prayer." But then some of those who pay Malen to pray find that their needs are met, their problems solved. A child with a hole in its heart is suddenly healed, and no one is more stunned than Malen. One woman, a doubter of Malen's virtue, asks the movie's central question: "How can a good saint enter a harlot's body?"

The shadowy love story is wearyingly eventful, packed with death by illness, road rage and a broken heart. Mystical Roman Catholic imagery pervades the opening and a later dream sequence, when the feverish Malen endures visions of stigmata on her hands and feet. In scenes that feel like biblical allusions, she lays her hands on the feet first of her wily boyfriend and then of a blessed nun. Still, neither act of kindness seems quite analogous to the simple cleansing of Jesus' feet by Mary Magdalene, the original prostitute-turned-saint.

The actress and director Laurice Guillen, who won international notice for her direction of the 1981 film Salome, here leads two gifted actors, Angelica Panganiban and Jericho Rosales, through the gloomy Quiapo district of Manila. Early on, the narrative is quite skeptical of the intercessors. These women come off as latter-day indulgence peddlers who scold the young girl for any steps she takes toward self-discovery. Priests prove to be blind to miracles and consumed by their own appetites. Then, when Malen's special gifts emerge, she feels guilty about her new powers and determined to use them to win a man, a ploy akin to her selling of the badges.

The aim of the filmmaker seems unclear, with Magdalena at first celebrated for her humanness and then exalted for her sudden saintliness. Magdalena relies on the magical-realism aspects of religious devotion, even though it began as a story more firmly, and admirably, rooted in a gritty reality.

Read it here, if you want.

1:47 AM | Santa Santita in the New York Times

As two young lovers open their hearts to each other in a poor district of Manila, they keep the darker sides of their souls hidden. Malen, short for Magdalena, is the daughter of a devout intercessor, a priestly surrogate who offers auxiliary prayers for paying sufferers. Behind her mother's back, the young girl sells religious badges as a means of meeting men. Mike is a suave Filipino Jean-Paul Belmondo, who offers wealthy tourists rides for hire as well as other services.

Soon Malen adopts her mother's vocation, out of necessity if not belief. The other intercessors snipe at the comely newcomer. "This is blasphemy," says one of Malen's new colleagues, who is aware of the tension between mother and daughter. "She is defiling prayer." But then some of those who pay Malen to pray find that their needs are met, their problems solved. A child with a hole in its heart is suddenly healed, and no one is more stunned than Malen. One woman, a doubter of Malen's virtue, asks the movie's central question: "How can a good saint enter a harlot's body?"

The shadowy love story is wearyingly eventful, packed with death by illness, road rage and a broken heart. Mystical Roman Catholic imagery pervades the opening and a later dream sequence, when the feverish Malen endures visions of stigmata on her hands and feet. In scenes that feel like biblical allusions, she lays her hands on the feet first of her wily boyfriend and then of a blessed nun. Still, neither act of kindness seems quite analogous to the simple cleansing of Jesus' feet by Mary Magdalene, the original prostitute-turned-saint.

The actress and director Laurice Guillen, who won international notice for her direction of the 1981 film Salome, here leads two gifted actors, Angelica Panganiban and Jericho Rosales, through the gloomy Quiapo district of Manila. Early on, the narrative is quite skeptical of the intercessors. These women come off as latter-day indulgence peddlers who scold the young girl for any steps she takes toward self-discovery. Priests prove to be blind to miracles and consumed by their own appetites. Then, when Malen's special gifts emerge, she feels guilty about her new powers and determined to use them to win a man, a ploy akin to her selling of the badges.

The aim of the filmmaker seems unclear, with Magdalena at first celebrated for her humanness and then exalted for her sudden saintliness. Magdalena relies on the magical-realism aspects of religious devotion, even though it began as a story more firmly, and admirably, rooted in a gritty reality.

Read it here, if you want.

1:47 AM | Santa Santita in the New York Times

As two young lovers open their hearts to each other in a poor district of Manila, they keep the darker sides of their souls hidden. Malen, short for Magdalena, is the daughter of a devout intercessor, a priestly surrogate who offers auxiliary prayers for paying sufferers. Behind her mother's back, the young girl sells religious badges as a means of meeting men. Mike is a suave Filipino Jean-Paul Belmondo, who offers wealthy tourists rides for hire as well as other services.

Soon Malen adopts her mother's vocation, out of necessity if not belief. The other intercessors snipe at the comely newcomer. "This is blasphemy," says one of Malen's new colleagues, who is aware of the tension between mother and daughter. "She is defiling prayer." But then some of those who pay Malen to pray find that their needs are met, their problems solved. A child with a hole in its heart is suddenly healed, and no one is more stunned than Malen. One woman, a doubter of Malen's virtue, asks the movie's central question: "How can a good saint enter a harlot's body?"

The shadowy love story is wearyingly eventful, packed with death by illness, road rage and a broken heart. Mystical Roman Catholic imagery pervades the opening and a later dream sequence, when the feverish Malen endures visions of stigmata on her hands and feet. In scenes that feel like biblical allusions, she lays her hands on the feet first of her wily boyfriend and then of a blessed nun. Still, neither act of kindness seems quite analogous to the simple cleansing of Jesus' feet by Mary Magdalene, the original prostitute-turned-saint.

The actress and director Laurice Guillen, who won international notice for her direction of the 1981 film Salome, here leads two gifted actors, Angelica Panganiban and Jericho Rosales, through the gloomy Quiapo district of Manila. Early on, the narrative is quite skeptical of the intercessors. These women come off as latter-day indulgence peddlers who scold the young girl for any steps she takes toward self-discovery. Priests prove to be blind to miracles and consumed by their own appetites. Then, when Malen's special gifts emerge, she feels guilty about her new powers and determined to use them to win a man, a ploy akin to her selling of the badges.

The aim of the filmmaker seems unclear, with Magdalena at first celebrated for her humanness and then exalted for her sudden saintliness. Magdalena relies on the magical-realism aspects of religious devotion, even though it began as a story more firmly, and admirably, rooted in a gritty reality.

Read it here, if you want.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

1:38 AM | Oh, Dear

Dominique C. pala has been holding "blog workshops" in Dumaguete -- and he's been showing this site as an example of a "popular blog" (wushu!), along with Nikki's and Dean's and others. No wonder I've been feeling like someone's been watching me closely lately.

All I really want to know right now is how the participants' faces looked like when they saw Michael de Mesa's peepee. I bet they were titillated.

On second thought, I should really be watching what I post. This blog should reflect the real me: virtuous, pure as lily, the paragon of chastity.

1:38 AM | Oh, Dear

1:38 AM | Oh, Dear

Saturday, March 12, 2005

6:07 PM | Report From the Vulva Front

I don't want to toot my own horn...

Ehem, but of course I do!

The Vagina Monologues last night was an astounding success. I am so glad.

Now, let me get some much-needed sleep. Goodnight, everyone! See you week after next. Final examinations are looming in the near distance.

6:07 PM | Report From the Vulva Front

Thursday, March 10, 2005

11:57 PM | Down With Religion!*

Because it breeds utter ignorance, and leads to utter poverty. (XP wouldn't like this post at all.) Conrado de Quiros writes about why that is, so beautifully and forcefully, in today's issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Here, he explains why we should take a stand against the Church's adamant opposition in this country regarding birth control, divorce, homosexuality, and even abortion. And then he writes about Spain which, after the dictator Franco's death, shaked the yoke of the Catholic Church (with all the bishops up in arms), and managed to enter the modern world because of that bravery and fortitude. An excerpt:

I remember in this respect something a Spanish friend told me last year after seeing the staunch opposition of the local bishops to divorce, family planning, and their other favorite anathemas. Maybe, he suggested, I should look at what happened in Spain after Francisco Franco, the strongman who ruled that country for several decades. The change, he said, has been breathtaking. In but three decades after Franco's death, the Catholic Church, which has ruled Spain with as much iron fist as Franco himself did, lost much of its power and influence on the country. "This was a country that could not even contemplate divorce then. To do so was to be branded a heretic by the Church, if not a subversive by the government. And now we've had the first same-sex marriage in Europe, even well ahead of Sweden."

I have looked at bit at what had happened to that country after the dictatorship, and have been astounded by the changes. Not least in the arts. Almost overnight, the movies in particular experienced a renaissance, Pedro Almodovar being at the forefront of it. Almodovar's themes reflect it. In All About My Mother, a single mother who loses her son in an accident searches for her lost husband to tell him about it, and goes through a spiritual and social journey. She rediscovers her acting talent, which liberates her completely, along with discovering that her husband has long liberated himself also by undergoing a sex change and embracing his/her preferred gender.

Read more.

Think about this: If the Christian religion and values indeed are the key to success, the countries of Latin America and the Philippines should be the richest countries in the world by now. Instead, they are all overrun by disease, calamities, poverty, and corruption. (So much for Christianity being our core value.)Even Italy, with Rome and the Vatican in its very heart, is more modern and prosperous than we are. A Catholic country like Spain, it defied the Church stances on "moral issues" like divorce and birth control. Both countries are now modern, efficient, and well-educated. And we, half-way around the world, continue to kowtow before Vatican. Nakakainis talaga.

Ironic, no?

*But keep the faith. Both are totally different. One is all man-made dogma, the other is personal honest-to-goodness relationship with God, sans all those rituals.

11:57 PM | Down With Religion!*

I remember in this respect something a Spanish friend told me last year after seeing the staunch opposition of the local bishops to divorce, family planning, and their other favorite anathemas. Maybe, he suggested, I should look at what happened in Spain after Francisco Franco, the strongman who ruled that country for several decades. The change, he said, has been breathtaking. In but three decades after Franco's death, the Catholic Church, which has ruled Spain with as much iron fist as Franco himself did, lost much of its power and influence on the country. "This was a country that could not even contemplate divorce then. To do so was to be branded a heretic by the Church, if not a subversive by the government. And now we've had the first same-sex marriage in Europe, even well ahead of Sweden."

I have looked at bit at what had happened to that country after the dictatorship, and have been astounded by the changes. Not least in the arts. Almost overnight, the movies in particular experienced a renaissance, Pedro Almodovar being at the forefront of it. Almodovar's themes reflect it. In All About My Mother, a single mother who loses her son in an accident searches for her lost husband to tell him about it, and goes through a spiritual and social journey. She rediscovers her acting talent, which liberates her completely, along with discovering that her husband has long liberated himself also by undergoing a sex change and embracing his/her preferred gender.

11:57 PM | Down With Religion!*

I remember in this respect something a Spanish friend told me last year after seeing the staunch opposition of the local bishops to divorce, family planning, and their other favorite anathemas. Maybe, he suggested, I should look at what happened in Spain after Francisco Franco, the strongman who ruled that country for several decades. The change, he said, has been breathtaking. In but three decades after Franco's death, the Catholic Church, which has ruled Spain with as much iron fist as Franco himself did, lost much of its power and influence on the country. "This was a country that could not even contemplate divorce then. To do so was to be branded a heretic by the Church, if not a subversive by the government. And now we've had the first same-sex marriage in Europe, even well ahead of Sweden."

I have looked at bit at what had happened to that country after the dictatorship, and have been astounded by the changes. Not least in the arts. Almost overnight, the movies in particular experienced a renaissance, Pedro Almodovar being at the forefront of it. Almodovar's themes reflect it. In All About My Mother, a single mother who loses her son in an accident searches for her lost husband to tell him about it, and goes through a spiritual and social journey. She rediscovers her acting talent, which liberates her completely, along with discovering that her husband has long liberated himself also by undergoing a sex change and embracing his/her preferred gender.

7:54 PM | Pigs

Several things I learned, co-directing The Vagina Monologues with the glorious and indefatigable Laurie Raymundo this year, and being virtually one of the few male members of the TVM production family.

First, that one has to have fortitude of steel to shield oneself from unbelievable narrow-mindedness of so many people in a supposed "intelligent community." Second, that women's concerns are, ultimately, humanity's concerns. Third, that Margie makes great pot roast. And last, that miracles -- like the making of a controversial play -- take time to create. It's like a birthing process, really.

There is gestation, and then there is the long painful process of getting the baby out of the womb, and into the light. There were rehearsal nights when everything ran as smooth as velvet. Others were a bit more testy, and took a kind of imagination, that of the quintessential juggler's. We lost several cast members -- law students most of them -- to the dictates of schedule and other unforeseen circumstances. A nun tells another one of our original cast members to drop out, or else... Prospects were bogged down by a curiously malicious bureaucracy -- despite the fact that we have been staging TVM in Silliman for the past four years...

And then there are the various behind-the-scenes mud-throwing by supposed "intellectuals" and "professionals" in the city. One cast member, a young college student, was accosted by a female teacher in her department's office, and in front of other teachers and students, was berated for being part of a "vulgar show." The teacher reportedly said, "Madayon jud diay 'nang inyong Vagina Monologues? … That kind of play shouldn't be staged in a Christian institution such as this… Even the title itself is so pangit!"

Another one, in a separate occasion, jested in a poorly informed manner: "Vagina, vagina na pud mu? Penis na pud..."

But TVM's Dumaguete producer Bing Valbuena (who is also one of Silliman's most dynamic young faculty) and her visit to solicit support from one of Dumaguete's top socio-civic and "truth-valuing" group (which will remain unnamed), takes the cake.

In front of such a macho, rich-boy club, she started off explaining what VDay was all about, and how it was born. She explained that Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues, had interviewed over 200 women about their experiences as women, and so on. Nobody really listened. The Big Boys were jocular, and talked among themselves.

And then a well-known doctor raised his hand, and from his seat, said, "You mentioned that this Vagina Monologues will be performed by local women…" And then he started smiling, and asked, "Were these women raped?" Right after that, he laughed, and said, "Joke lang."

Giggles, giggles all around.

Some even gave gestures of approval.

Unbelievable.

More giggles all around.

Bing left, and promised never even to receive any monetary support that group may give. No matter what.

When Ensler first began VDay, she set an optimistic deadline for the campaign to stop violence against women and children. The deadline date? 2005, this year. Now, the question we must ask ourselves is this: Do women and children still fall victims to patriarchy's not-so-secret bloody machinations? It happens they still do. That is why VDay is important.

Here is one statistics to jolt everyone: an average of five women -- your mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends -- are raped every month in Negros Oriental alone. Sexual harassment abounds, although it is heavily cloaked in a culture of silence and shame. And the most damning evidence of all? The proliferation of homemade "sex scandal" videos for sale in our pirates' stalls -- most notably, the Dumaguete Sex Scandal brouhaha two years ago -- featuring hapless women victimized for prurient purpose and profit.

TVM is supposed to be a vehicle for the outcry against all of these. So why the mud-slinging? Are we supposed to do nothing? To the female teacher then who has complained about the "vulgarity" of TVM: Do you really know what you're talking about?

In the long run, however, there have been positive changes. Those who have seen or have taken part in the show -- women and girls for the most part -- have gone away feeling more empowered in their womanhood. For my female students, they learned no longer to be ashamed about their own femininity. The men, too, have learned to respect the role of women in their lives.

In the first year of Silliman's TVM, we had a cast member who had been abused sexually as a child. She pleaded to join the cast that year, to work out her personal demons. At first, it was hard: all that abuse had coalesced to form a very hard shell around her. But by the end of that performance, she said she had broken free. That TVM helped her get over her trauma.

That is the kind of miracle we hope to instill in everybody with this year's version of TVM. Nothing vulgar about that.

7:54 PM | Pigs

5:28 PM | Why You Shouldn't Post Your Pictures sa Internet

Because...

5:28 PM | Why You Shouldn't Post Your Pictures sa Internet

Because...

5:28 PM | Why You Shouldn't Post Your Pictures sa Internet

Because...

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

11:55 PM | The Ten-Year Old 'Fuck You'

Perfect sign of the times. I am growing old, and so are a significant number of you blog-trippers. Alanis Morisette is now rereleasing an unplugged, newer version of Jagged Little Pill, the album that -- together with all of Pearl Jam and Nirvana and R.E.M., and Green Day's Dookie -- defined my growing up years in the 90s.

Let's say that again. It's been ten years.

Nothing 'Ironic' here. Just plain, 'Head Over Feet' truth.

11:55 PM | The Ten-Year Old 'Fuck You'

11:55 PM | The Ten-Year Old 'Fuck You'

5:03 PM | Nostalgia Trip 'To. Game & Watch, Anyone?

If you feel a certain giddiness coming from deep inside you from the mention of that name, you obviously come from a certain time warp like I do. The glorious 1980's childhood.

Let's say it again. Game & Watch.

Oh my God.

Playstation doesn't even compare, nor all your vintage Gameboys. Joy personified was Game & Watch. Wanna play Mario Bros. again? Or Octopus? Or Turtle? Or Donkey Kong? Or Egg? Or Popeye? Or Quest? (And don't those names sound so delicious?) Click here to download a Game & Watch simulator for your PC.

And reminisce the good ol' times.

[thank you, click mo mukha mo]

5:03 PM | Nostalgia Trip 'To. Game & Watch, Anyone?

5:03 PM | Nostalgia Trip 'To. Game & Watch, Anyone?

2:30 AM | The Confessions

This is every bibliophile-with-a-life's deepest, darkest secret.

Read that, and consider my own list, growing like a disease on my bedside table. Jonathan Franken's The Corrections. Alice Munro's Hateship Friendship Courtship Loveship Marriage. Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover. Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune. Doris Lessing's Under My Skin. Andrea Barret's Servants of the Map. Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body and Art and Lies. Nicola Griffith's Slow Burn. Wallace Stegner's All the Little Live Things. Ian McEwan's Atonement. Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Cavalier and Klay. Julia Glass's Three Junes. A.S. Byatt's Possession.

Can't seem to finish them. Really.

C'mon. Share with me and the world your literary pain.

[via bookslut]

2:30 AM | The Confessions

2:15 AM | Cold

It has been raining for the past two days now. This is, for the most part, quite unusual for Dumaguete, which has always been given to a stormless existence, to sunny days, a city untouched by ravages of rain. We've all become strangers to the sudden cold days and the splatter of rain against the walls and the windows. I love the fact that everyday now I have to go out with a jacket and a warm shirt, and always with an umbrella -- which is a ritual so much like the things we do for fall. Joanna, yesterday, said the weather reminded her of an English day, and she is right

Life is a rainy day. On some given instances -- when the rain stops, for example, and there is only the ample cool and wondrously grey couds to hide the sun, the air kisses the skin, and calls for warmer clothes, and makes the grass greener than usual -- I adore it. This is my type of day. I have no uses for sun. For a moment, I forget this is tropical country.

Then the rain intrudes again. I have just managed to escape the bed and its prolonged invitations for sleep. I grope for my red pen: there are so many papers to check for tomorrow's school day.

Yesterday, Mark followed me around like this sweet puppy. Which I like. How fast we get used to sleeping touching somebody else's skin! This weather gets him down, however, and I can't help not smiling for a while. I want to be Clown for him, and he pretends to smile JUST to make me smile, which is sweet -- but... Then again it was also the sadness in his eyes I fell in love with. I love people with sad eyes. They look at you with such yearning...

2:15 AM | Cold

1:19 AM | Completely Not Work Safe

This is vintage Michael de Mesa, the veteran Filipino actor. Taken during the glorious bomba days. (Does anybody miss the 1970s?)

I know you want to see... more.

[from bubu's blog]

1:19 AM | Completely Not Work Safe

This is vintage Michael de Mesa, the veteran Filipino actor. Taken during the glorious bomba days. (Does anybody miss the 1970s?)

I know you want to see... more.

[from bubu's blog]

1:19 AM | Completely Not Work Safe

This is vintage Michael de Mesa, the veteran Filipino actor. Taken during the glorious bomba days. (Does anybody miss the 1970s?)

I know you want to see... more.

[from bubu's blog]

Sunday, March 06, 2005

9:02 PM | And Then Some

1.

Jade is right. Anna Quindlen's essay about Christo's The Gates for Newsweek is wonderful. (She has always been a favorite. I love her breezy style, her effortless charm without going too far to become cheesy.) I wished I could be there in Central Park, too, soaking up all that "Hara Krishna" orange. (Maybe I could do that to the Dumaguete City Hall. You know, cover the whole thing with tarpaulin -- and then locking it up that way forever. Clueless Perdices wouldn't be able to get in. Harharhar!)

2.

A very old white man on a bicycle and tank tops is getting famous around Dumaguete for speeding around town, and yelling, "Hallloooo youuuuuuu!" to everybody on the road. He should be declared an official tourist attraction.

3.

Nerve.com has declared that Eon McKai is the New Pornographer. Grant Stoddard reports that "McKai's debut, Art School Sluts (2004), is perhaps the only porn film to be inspired by Daniel Clowes. With her numerous tattoos and jet-black shag cut, the film's breakout starlet (named, appropriately, Brooklyn) and her male counterpart, the gangly James Deen, look as comfortable having sex on tape as they would strap-hanging her way back to Williamsburg. The rest of the movie isn't flawless — the storyline doesn't exactly improve on porn's reputation for narrative, and when it comes to male talent, McKai relied too heavily on the San Fernando sausage factory -- but it marks a moment." Oh, I bet you wanna see what that looks like. Don't you.

4.

Bubu has a new camera phone. He's been taking pictures of everything. And I mean, everything. Hehehe.

5.

For what it's worth, I love Million Dollar Baby. It was really the best of the whole lot. And deserved its Oscar win. But I still say, Martin Scorsese was robbed!

6.

And people, people... Kristyn is okay. She's just... "readjusting." Plus she saw Cher the other night, and is still hyperventilating. She reportedly called Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez "them bitches." Bwahahaha! When the Village People came on, she called me up long-distance to make me listen to "Y.M.C.A." Unfortunately, my phone was off. (She didn't know that, though. In the din, she couldn't hear the busy signal.) Where was I? I was watching Linda Marlowe, dammit. Hehehe.

7.

Hey. Nerve indeed seems cool again. Here's an excerpt from Adam Boyle's "29 Thoughts on the Apparent Sexiness of Oscar Night 2005":

20. Isn't it crazy that Hilary Swank has won two Oscars? To me, she'll always be Carly, Steve's girlfriend on 90210.

21. I mean, isn't Jennie Garth sitting at home saying, "Where's my Million Dollar Baby, bee-atch?"

Am in stitches!

8.

It even has a Sex in Film quiz! Take it.

I scored a hundred percent. (I've seen too many movies, apparently.)

9.

And because people have been asking. Who's my American Idol?

Mario Vazquez, of course. Because he's cocky and talented, that's why.

9:02 PM | And Then Some

20. Isn't it crazy that Hilary Swank has won two Oscars? To me, she'll always be Carly, Steve's girlfriend on 90210.

21. I mean, isn't Jennie Garth sitting at home saying, "Where's my Million Dollar Baby, bee-atch?"

Am in stitches!

8.

It even has a Sex in Film quiz! Take it.

I scored a hundred percent. (I've seen too many movies, apparently.)

9.

And because people have been asking. Who's my American Idol?

Mario Vazquez, of course. Because he's cocky and talented, that's why.

9:02 PM | And Then Some

20. Isn't it crazy that Hilary Swank has won two Oscars? To me, she'll always be Carly, Steve's girlfriend on 90210.

21. I mean, isn't Jennie Garth sitting at home saying, "Where's my Million Dollar Baby, bee-atch?"

Am in stitches!

8.

It even has a Sex in Film quiz! Take it.

I scored a hundred percent. (I've seen too many movies, apparently.)

9.

And because people have been asking. Who's my American Idol?

Mario Vazquez, of course. Because he's cocky and talented, that's why.

8:24 PM | Junior Confusion

Bibeth Orteza emails everyone:Please answer, anyone? JFK Sr. was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. JFK Jr. was John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. FPJ was Fernando Poe Jr. He was never Fernando "Ronnie" Poe Jr., for Ronnie was his real name Ronald Allan's nickname. When he used Ronnie, he was simply Ronnie Poe. Why is there a Robert "Dodot" Jaworski Jr., when his dad is not Robert "Dodot" Jaworski, but Robert "Sonny" Jaworski? The father is not Ramon "Bong" Revilla Sr., why is the son Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr.? There are no answers, are there...

8:24 PM | Junior Confusion

8:02 PM | Dumaguete Does 'Vagina,' One Last Time

Dumaguete may be, in the words of playwright Eve Ensler, the most "vagina-friendly" city in the Philippines. On March 11, and for the fourth year in a row -- and in what may be its last staging -- it will see the benefit performance of Ensler's groundbreaking play, and in turn, help smash some stereotypes about the place of women in Philippine society. And raise awareness and funds for local organizations working to end violence against women and girls.

It hasn't always been easy for the people behind the show.

When people first hear about The Vagina Monologues, they immediately think of several things. First, that it must necessarily be obscene and virtually pornographic -- after all, it has the word "vagina" in the title. Second, that it is controversial. And third, that it cannot be appropriate -- and the usual complaint that comes with that reason is this: "It may be worthwhile, but I don't think our community is ready for it."

Which is sad, because ultimately, TVM is none of the above, two out of three. Yes, it is controversial -- but that is a given, considering the taboo over the subject matter: the vagina -- "a body part that thirty years after the sexual revolution people are still embarrassed about naming aloud."

Nobody talks about the vagina, and renowned critic and feminist Gloria Steinem, in her introduction to Ensler's book, rightly put it when she referred to that culture of stultifying silence by calling herself as a relic of the "Down There Generation." In soft parlance, the best way we refer to it is through strange euphemisms like "flower." Since language is primarily expression of oneself, this culture of silence is by virtue an imprisonment of identity, a socially-approved denigration of a gender, and a culturally constructed shaming of the natural.

It is neither obscene nor pornographic. What it is about really is women's -- and humanity's -- liberation from machinations of discreet evil that can produce, for one, such accepted practices as vaginal mutilation in the form of clitoral circumcision that is tolerated and practiced widely in many societies in the world. What Ensler does in TVM is to present voices of women's oppression, and does it through the one thing that symbolizes and unites them -- the vagina, and talks about the symbolic persecution of their gender -- the silencing of discourse about the vagina.

It is frank, it is enlightening, it is explicit, and it is occasionally erotic, but it is never pornographic. Unless, of course, one finds the sketch of a Somalian woman being raped in a camp ("... they took turns for seven days... smelling like feces and smoked meat, they left their dirty sperm inside me...”), or a traumatic tale of vaginal circumcision vaguely sexually arousing.

It is not inappropriate, but it is necessarily discomforting. Yet that happens when a community -- especially one that is, by choice, closed off from enlightening discourse in the name of misplaced conservatism (Resty's favorite phrase) -- encounters something that has been culturally submerged and swept aside for "decency." But there is nothing indecent about a play that only seeks to instruct and to educate, and to placate long-held notions of female oppression.

When plans were being discussed to import The New Voice Company's local production in Dumaguete City in 2000, the initial reaction was a mixture of excitement, titillation, amusement, and hesitation. The organizers -- led by Silliman University's Bing Valbuena -- faced brickbats by moralizers who deemed the whole enterprise "a parade of porn." For the last three years, and every year in commemoration of Woman's Month, they seem to have weathered the criticisms and the hindrances.

Those who were hesitant were invariably people who turned out to not have heard of the play or of Ensler before -- or were sadly uncomprehending in the prison of their literalness. "Vagina," they read, and immediately think of the ugly and the gross. They were hesitant, even horrified, over the word 'vagina' in the title. "Can't you just change the word in the title? Like 'The V Monologues' or something?" they would suggest.

"They did not comprehend that the word 'vagina' was the sum and substance of the play. To change the title was also essentially running counter to the message of the play," Ms. Valbuena said.

Does Dumaguete City deserve to see The Vagina Monologues again, in commemoration of V-Day? "Without doubt, it does, if it is an academic community that thrives on liberation, and on respect of women," says Ms. Valbuena. "To admire Ensler's efforts may be the true reflection of all we long to be as a community: transparent, intelligent, respectful, enlightened, always surging forward to the pursuit of understanding what makes all of us human."

(The benefit performance of The Vagina Monologues, directed by Laurie Raymundo and Ian Rosales Casocot, will be on 11 March 2005, at the Luce Auditorium. Tickets are available at the Silliman University Student Government Office, the SU Psychology Department, the SU Peace Resource Center, Sted’s, and the Lautner Ads and Services Officer.)

8:02 PM | Dumaguete Does 'Vagina,' One Last Time

7:42 PM | Woman on Top, Without Safety Nets

Get a load of this. I saw Linda Marlowe perform Thursday night, one of the best performances I've ever seen, diminished only by the hugeness and lesser magic of the Luce Auditorium. Earlier that day, we had fun over lunch, too, chatting about her work and then some.

In No Fear, British actress Linda Marlowe's one-woman whirlwind act about a life in full-blast color, everything culminates into a high-wire trapeze routine -- which may be the perfect metaphor for the story of a woman who has been through the edges of everything. Will her act end on a high note? Or will she fall? And where is the safety net to catch her if she does?

Never mind the worries. The show, after all, is about confronting the worst of your fears and declaring war on them -- especially if you are a woman on the verge. Earlier that morning, talking with Ms. Marlowe in a hotel lobby facing the sea off the Dumaguete Boulevard, she goes straight to what may be the very definition of daring existence: "There are no safety nets in my life."

In fact, when London's The Financial Times reviewed her work in No Fear, the critic was moved by that last piece of symbolism, even by an unforeseen accident that punctuated that performance: "At the climax of the [show] I saw, Marlowe fell off the trapeze swing. She immediately assured us that she was unhurt, climbed back on and completed the act: a perfect metaphor for her life."

That life is enshrined in that powerful performance, brought in for Filipino audiences in time for Women's Month this March by the British Council, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee. The solo act, showcased for the past week on theater stages in Cebu, in Manila, and the Luce Auditorium in Dumaguete City, has been well-received -- and may even be seen as crossing the boundaries of humor, pathos, cultural references, and British accents.

No Fear follows two of Marlowe's widely-acclaimed solo shows -- Berkoff's Women and an adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Diatribe of Love -- and has been variously described as "one woman's Amazonian adventures as a daring divorcee, raunchy rock-chick, undercover operator, manic mother, and professional free spirit, as she looks back from the viewpoint of the world's oldest circus artist performing a high-wire act on the eve of her 100th birthday."

In other words, it is all about her, sans the birthday bit. And that may well be the most interesting part of the play -- its strong, often relentlessly autobiographical elements. Ms. Marlowe says, "I have some very good friends and colleagues who work with me -- writers and directors -- and they all tell me that my life has been so colorful. So why don't I make it as one of my one-woman shows? Of course, I thought that would be boring. So then we decided to make the theme of the show about the fearful situations in my life, about the things that gave me fear. There is a scene, for example, about my giving birth to my sons, and how fearful I was that if I would leave their cot any minute, they wouldn't breathe anymore."

There are the other anecdotes spliced into the performance that explore, in length, a life of adventure and occasional fear. There is, for instance, her one-time occupation as a drug mule, when she had to cross the Atlantic with contraband sewn into her jacket. "I was just a bold girl. I was an actress," she said, "and I wanted to do adventurous things. And when somebody told me 'You have to carry this to America,' I said, 'Oh yes.' It was only marijuana. There must have been an easier way to earn $500, but I did it to put my child through school. But of course, part of it was really the thrill."

It hasn't always been easy, putting one's life on display as a theatrical piece for hundreds of people to see, the fact that people become privy to one's adventures and misadventures. For Ms. Marlowe, it becomes so much more bearable, because "it has been made theatrical, so I just pretend that I am playing a part."

Most reviews of her work always seem to put a focus on her "unique physical style" and "heightened characterization." The show, all of its 70 minutes, seems to be the epitome of a physical actor's work, something which she is proud of owning up to: "I was, after all, a dancer first. Physical acting for me is more life-enforcing, I think. I use my body to explore different characters."

In her next solo show, she takes that body language even further, this time playing different characters in Mortal Ladies Possessed, which is adapted from several short stories by Tennessee Williams, and thus making known that she has a penchant for playing characters who are always on the edge of rage and passion: "That is all incorporated into my own emotional states. I like playing damaged women, vulnerable women. Gentle, very courageous people. It's quite interesting to play these kinds of women because they seem to show aspects of my own personality."

In the music, mime, and monologue of No Fear, she finds that in the substance of her own life. Beyond that, Ms. Marlowe hopes her story will resonate to all women everywhere. "It's a message to women," Ms. Marlowe says, "and even men. It's about a woman as she goes through four decade of her life, in a time where certain things just weren't allowed for her."

The trick, it seems, is to push the envelope of convention, taking care not to notice too much that there are no safety nets in real life, but going at it just the same.

7:42 PM | Woman on Top, Without Safety Nets

7:42 PM | Woman on Top, Without Safety Nets

Saturday, March 05, 2005

12:05 PM | How political conditions affect the making of great art...

This brings to mind Orson Welles's famous ad lib in The Third Man, that the Borgias' reign of bloodshed gave rise to the Renaissance, while five centuries of democracy in Switzerland produced the cuckoo clock.

Makes you think, doesn't it.

[from the new york times]

12:05 PM | How political conditions affect the making of great art...

Friday, March 04, 2005

2:08 PM | How to Pass Time Wedged Between a Busy Schedule Without Killing Yourself*

* Or, Links Emailed In By the Sage Poet.

1. Tell me how you drive, and I'll tell you what an idiot you are.

2. As for as I know, Russell Crowe is an ablutophobe.

3. How to talk dirty.

4. How many people I know "shop," three to four times a day.

5. How the slot machine of chance can tell you who you are.

Which brings me to this question: What do you do all day, Clee?

2:08 PM | How to Pass Time Wedged Between a Busy Schedule Without Killing Yourself*

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

6:17 PM | Several Things, Just to Point Out to You Good Folks I'm Still Alive

1.

If a teacher begins tackling and grading all these freaking papers in time for final exam week, and gets deluged by atrocious grammar, will he wilt and become a croaking frog?

2.

From Jimmy-boy's blog, whose URL I cannot reveal under pain of death: "How many Leos does it take to change a light bulb? A dozen. One to change the bulb, and eleven to applaud." Bwahahaha! This is totally me.

3.

I am addicted to Downelink. Friendster doesn't even compare.

4.

The backlash against conservative prudishness (whose ridiculous complaints are edging on lethal) now grows. God, it's about time. Doesn't anybody remember why the '60s sexual and social revolution even happened in the first place? The '50s were freaking boring and antiseptic!

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Tuesday, March 29, 2005

11:24 PM | James's Stick Comes to Me. (It's Not What You Think, Pervert.)

11:24 PM | James's Stick Comes to Me. (It's Not What You Think, Pervert.)

11:24 PM | James's Stick Comes to Me. (It's Not What You Think, Pervert.)

11:06 AM | Something Short to Share With Everybody While I'm Gone

11:06 AM | Something Short to Share With Everybody While I'm Gone

11:06 AM | Something Short to Share With Everybody While I'm Gone

Sunday, March 27, 2005

12:02 AM | Resurrection

12:02 AM | Resurrection

12:02 AM | Resurrection

Saturday, March 26, 2005

7:28 PM | Moon of Change

7:28 PM | Moon of Change

7:28 PM | Moon of Change

Friday, March 25, 2005

12:55 PM | So You Want to Be a Caregiver?

12:55 PM | So You Want to Be a Caregiver?

12:55 PM | So You Want to Be a Caregiver?

12:21 AM | American Idol?

12:21 AM | American Idol?

12:21 AM | American Idol?

Thursday, March 24, 2005

11:50 AM | A Simple Life

11:50 AM | A Simple Life

11:50 AM | A Simple Life

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

5:36 PM | Why Women Rock

5:36 PM | Why Women Rock

5:36 PM | Why Women Rock

10:52 AM | Cuaresma!

10:52 AM | Cuaresma!

10:52 AM | Cuaresma!

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

5:09 PM | Dead Links Are Bad Headaches

5:09 PM | Dead Links Are Bad Headaches

5:09 PM | Dead Links Are Bad Headaches

Saturday, March 19, 2005

1:25 AM | Welcome to Real Life

1:25 AM | Welcome to Real Life

1:25 AM | Welcome to Real Life

12:45 AM | Karma*

12:45 AM | Karma*

12:45 AM | Karma*

Friday, March 18, 2005

12:30 PM | Froggie's Surprise

12:30 PM | Froggie's Surprise

12:30 PM | Froggie's Surprise

Thursday, March 17, 2005

6:08 PM | Pikon

6:08 PM | Pikon

6:08 PM | Pikon

Monday, March 14, 2005

1:47 AM | Santa Santita in the New York Times

1:47 AM | Santa Santita in the New York Times

1:47 AM | Santa Santita in the New York Times

Sunday, March 13, 2005

1:38 AM | Oh, Dear

1:38 AM | Oh, Dear

1:38 AM | Oh, Dear

Saturday, March 12, 2005

6:07 PM | Report From the Vulva Front

6:07 PM | Report From the Vulva Front

6:07 PM | Report From the Vulva Front

Thursday, March 10, 2005

11:57 PM | Down With Religion!*

11:57 PM | Down With Religion!*

11:57 PM | Down With Religion!*

7:54 PM | Pigs

7:54 PM | Pigs