Saturday, October 25, 2003
Now I've seen
everything. Real (and very cute)
Roman Catholic priests --
as calendar pin-up models.
Makes you want to go and be a seminarian, eh?
According to Piero Pazzi, the photographer: "I know the priests are handsome, but what’s wrong with that? If I was doing a cat calendar I couldn’t show old moggies with no teeth."
Uh-huh.For orders, click on the above link for the website.
{Note: The pictures from the website can't be swiped, so you have to click on the above link. Don't ask me why these things happen....}
[via
elephant still missing]
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Thursday, October 23, 2003
Writer-friends! Here's a poem by ____________. Needs workshopping
daw. Please be honest as possible (you can even be like Rolando Tinio if you want!) and post your comments below...
Pixelordshatterwire realities
bygone from my canvas
these burlap of soon-to-be's
spreadheaven in your eyes,
awaiting the next level,
but never a gaussian blur
to gloss a heavy burden
hope inserted like opacity sliders
let us make new paths
our thick strokes to success
success is a complete montage
of planned images in the mind
live your power,
believe and see
see the end results!
things change
because they do
are you a futile
changing-spot leopard?
i'm no leopard
be not!
i just change.
and i go with its
wild tide.
success is a complete montage
of planned images in the mind
can you picture it now?
live your powers
and see the end without even
trying to believe at first.
ebb with might
for the only flowing
of sensibilities
is felt to those
who are strong and brave
for life can never be a dull moment
even if we prefer it to be!
What do you think?
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Oh, this is soooo good. I can't pass up posting this recent
senate floor remarks by Sen. Ted Kennedy. Excertps:
Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie.
Nearly six months have elapsed since President Bush flew out to the aircraft carrier and declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. Today, we all know all too well that the war is not over; the war goes on; the mission is not accomplished. An unnecessary war, based on unreliable and inaccurate intelligence, has not brought an end to danger. Instead, it has brought new dangers, imposed new costs, and taken more and more American lives each week.
We all agree that Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant, and his brutal regime was an affront to basic human decency. But Iraq was not a breeding ground for terrorism. Our invasion has made it one.
The trumped up reasons for going to war have collapsed. All the Administration's rationalizations as we prepared to go to war now stand revealed as "double-talk." The American people were told Saddam Hussein was building nuclear weapons. He was not. We were told he had stockpiles of other weapons of mass destruction. He did not. We were told he was involved in 9/11. He was not. We were told Iraq was attracting terrorists from Al Qaeda. It was not. We were told our soldiers would be viewed as liberators. They are not. We were told Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction. It cannot. We were told the war would make America safer. It has not.
Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie.
Read the rest
here.
[link forwarded by
E. San Juan]
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Excuse me?
Me? Envious?
Eherm. I don't think so.
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I just took KK's
test from Oprah's Dr. Phil. According to my 45 points, this is me...
Others see you as fresh, lively, charming, amusing, practical, and always interesting; someone who's constantly in the center of attention, but sufficiently well-balanced not to let it go to their head. They also see you as kind, considerate, and understanding; someone who'll always cheer them up and help them out.
But, of course.
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This is why I love Art Spiegelman's
Maus -- the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize.
The first time I read it, it blew my mind and changed my conception of literature forever. (The same way I am in awe of the emotional charge of the Japanese anime
Grave of the Fireflies...) (Scott McCloud and Neil Gaiman only came to the picture much later...)
Philip Pullman, the author of the
His Dark Materials series,
ponders about the book in
The Guardian...
[via
bookslut]
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Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Para sa Binatang Nakasabay sa Loob ng LRTNi Raymund Magno GarlitosIpinagkakanulo tayo ng asiwang panahon
Sa loob ng hurnong ito na may gulong
At tumatakbong mataas na mataas pa sa lupa
At mga kabahayan ng kalakhang Maynila.
Prenteng-prente ako sa pagkakaupo.
Ikaw naman, kunsumido sa paglambitin
Sa estribo. Pagod na pagod rin ang alikabok
Sa hangin, at dama ko ang paglapot
Ng iyong pawis na parang sukong-suko
Sa walang kasing-bagsik na Lunes.
Narinig mo ba ang hinaing ni Manang
Na walang sawang nakakapit sa bakal?
“Aru, Diyos ko, para akong piniprito!”
At sabay tayong mapapatawa kahit dinudumog tayo
Ng init ng bawat pagsusumiksik.
Panaka-naka ang bugso ng lamig
Na dumadapo sa mga balikat natin.
Nilililok ng pawis ang katawan mong
Nahahagingan ng kamisetang manipis.
Humihingal ang bawat balahibo
Sa iyong dibdib at braso.
Umaalsa ang bawat kalamnan sa hita
Na parang naghahanap-ginhawa.
Doon, sa kalugod-lugod mong pagod,
Ko mapapansing ikaw pala’y guwapo.
Napapansin ko ring di mo sinasagot
Ang bawat taimtim na paglunok ko ng laway.
Sumisigid ang init at lamig sa mga matang
Di ko matantiya kong ika’y natutuwa
O nababastusan sa bawat dighay ko ng init.
Habang ako, atubili sa pagpaypay
Ng abaniko, ay walang imik.
Nang humantong sa Monumento,
Naglaho kang parang pawis na hinigop
Ng panyo kong bagong bili.
Kanina pa ako dapat bumaba sa Buendia
Mula sa hurnong ito na de-gulong
At tumatakbong mataas na mataas pa sa lupa.
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Just planed in from Manila VERY EARLY this morning, and I know this has got to be the weirdest -- and shortest -- trip I've ever had. Flew in to Manila just yesterday morning in the haze of rain that's been afflicting Dumaguete of late. My trusty friend Eric met me at the airport, and good thing too since I couldn't have managed the tricky route from airport to Malate.
After a brief rest, I just went around Robinson's, bought some books (
Noelle Quintos de Jesus's
Fast Food Fiction and
J. Neil C. Garcia's
Performing the Self: Occasional Prose), had terrible ice tea in San Francisco Coffeeshop, had lunch in this quaintest carinderia with Allen and his Ian (a Manila boy who was sporting a snow cap), and then it was preparation time for the
Catholic Mass Media Awards. The invitation said to go to Ateneo's Lee Irwin Theater in Quezon City (
Malate to Quezon City!!!) by 5 p.m. Our cab was dexterious, though, and we wheezed and weaved through the traffic in 45 minutes flat. Which was all for naught because the show (which was taped for a
TV program for RPN 9) started at around 7 p.m.
Grrrr. Donita Rose is a cutie. TJ Manotoc, too.
Hehehe. Sat a few feet away from Jaimee Rivera and Korina Sanchez. My
column lost to goddamn
Nestor U. Torre in the Best Entertainment Column category.
Grrrr. And I had my acceptance speech prepared
pa naman!
Hehehe. I would have said:
Wow. This is totally unexpected. I didn't know one could write about a small city's cultural life, and still land in the CMMA! But I would like to thank first the CMMA for recognizing talent, and to my editor in the Visayan Daily Star Allen del Carmen for taking a chance on me. This one's for family, and for my friends, especially Mark, for the inspiration. And this one's for God whose blessings I am utterly grateful for. Thank you very much, and good evening.
O, cute di ba? Hay naku, next year
na lang.It was such a boring show. TV taping
kasi, at ang dami mali and gaffes. Halfway throughout, we thought of going out na lang. Eric and I met
Naya Valdellon,
Allan Pastrana, and
Darryl Delgado in Starbucks just along Katipunan, and later sa 70's Bistro along Anonas,
Mark Cayanan and
Vincent Coscolluela joined us for a night of Beatles songs. Got a bit drunk, went back to my hotel around 2 a.m., woke up at 3 :30 a.m. for the ride to the airport. My flight home was 5:30 a.m.
kasi.
The female flight attendants in Air Philippines are stupid. There, I've said it. Next time, I'm flying Cebu Pacific.
Landed 7:30. Dumaguete from above looked soooo misty and green. Beautiful. The tricycle driver tried to extort P50 for the ride home. I told him I worked for the mayor and could report him, then threw my P5 at him. Went staight to bed. Woke up at 3 p.m.
Jesus.By the way, my website is mentioned in this month's issue of
FHM magazine. Repeat after me:
FHM magazine. Why, why, why?
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Monday, October 20, 2003
Goddamn. Rutger van den Hoven, my ol' Dutch buddy, Pia Guanio, and even freaking Claudine Barreto are in Friendster!
I also noticed this in Friendster: people who are worth their shit DO READ. And watch a lot of movies. And do not apologize for liking the
very jologness of pop culture. (
Eat Bulaga!) And travel extensively. To
live, it seems,
is to
move. And it shows in the quirky, brilliant, rich lives they lead.
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New poem from my favorite pixie-poet
Mark Anthony Cayanan....
Against Before you was myself,
before being a lost reason
behind a photograph, or a few
erased words in a poem’s
draft, or a moment,
or a somewhere of moments
formerly inhabited, even
habitable: the cold
as a comfortable
abode—
Where I am now
is near you. Or much closer,
against you, against being
more than it often is:
your wingspread of sky
encroaching mine, and then
talon to talon, beak breaking
beak, and then the plumage
of plummet.
What I mean
is shadow to surface:
on you, I rest, or am: the dark
as defined by the wall, without
which this shape will go on
sinking, releasing itself,
sinking into—
Hostility
and dependence—one
for the other, one as the other:
how this opposition is my form
of “touching”
—Don’t you know
it’s not a matter of choice,
love? It is survival.
....
Mark, I'm saving this in my blog for a while because my inbox is so full. When I'm back from Manila, I'll....
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Love Letter, Part OneThe beginning of a letter in my head I’ve heard from somewhere else, I don’t remember where, yet it bears your face: “Do you know how much in love with you I am? I have fallen in love with you without taking a single step.” I carry a mounting elation that borders on a certain sadness, close to tears as it seems: to have seen your face yesterday while I was walking home was enough of heaven—and enough of dangerously longing dreams that tell me I must touch your face, soon, or crumble in my silence. What is it of you that captures? Your eyes, perhaps, but they tell me nothing, except that you do not really see me yet, but I see you, and I can only dream of running my fingers through your hair, and touch your face, gently, the way the moon touches the night waves.
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MonthsaryFor M.What I would give
For the kiss to be new again,
That same trembling that colored
That night, that bed—
Would fade as the yellow roses
You gave three nights later did.
Today, we speak volumes of
Tomorrows but always, now,
With the knowing smiles that we
Live only for moments, these stubborn
Minutes of utter conviction in an
us,
—and love, that dainty,
dreadful thing, is nothing
More than you and I, trapped
In a shell, praising naked skin,
But knowing nothing more
Except this denial of days and nights
So slow they become old, and nothing.
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I remember
this story made me cry a long, long time ago.
Wanggo just
had to do it and make me remember it. "The tree in the story, that's me. That's exactly who I am," Wanggo says. Me, too! So, anyway, here it is...
The Giving TreeBy Shel Silverstein There was once a great apple tree and a little boy. They would spend hours and hours together. The boy would play in the tree's branches, sleep at her roots and eat of her apples. And the tree loved the boy.
One day, the boy came to the tree. The tree was delighted and beckoned, "Come and play!" But the boy was no longer a boy; he was now a young man, and he was interested in making a living, but he didn't know how.
"Here," the tree said, "take my apples and sell them." The young man did just that, and the tree was happy.
Years passed, and the tree was lonely without the young man. One day, he returned, and the tree was delighted, but he was now interested in settling down. He wanted to build a house.
"Here," the tree said, "Cut off my branches and build your house." The young man did just that, and the tree was happy.
Years passed, and the tree still missed her friend. One day, the man returned, and the tree was again overjoyed. But the man was now older and tired of life; he wanted to get away from it all.
"Here," the tree offered, "Cut me down. Make for yourself a boat, and sail the world in it." The man did just that, and the tree was happy.
Many years passed, seasons came and went, and the tree was very lonely. She missed her friend, and she often thought about the old days, when they had such fun. Finally, she saw her friend coming over the hill, and she was delighted.
But the boy was now an old man, no longer able to play or make money or to sail away. And he was tired.
"Here, my friend," the tree said, "I still have a pretty good stump left. Won't you sit and rest?" The old man did that, and the tree was happy.
Sob.
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Sunday, October 19, 2003
"It has often struck me as peculiar that there are so few words for love. The term is forced to span such a large area of emotion. For me, there's such a distinct difference between 'to love' someone and 'to be in love' with them. Be in no doubt that 'I'm in love' with you. It's not infatuation or lust, it's a profound longing to be with you."
--Isabella to Matthew, in Nick Bantocks's
The Gryphon[from
sundialgirl]
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Saturday, October 18, 2003
Life, for the meantime, is a rainy day. It shifts like the clouds, dark one moment, gentle the next. On some given instances—when the rain stops, for example, and there is only the ample cool that hides the sun, kisses the skin, calls for warmer clothes, and makes the grass greener than usual—I adore it. This is my type of day, since I really have no uses for sun. Autumn is the life, and for a moment, it makes me forget this is tropical country. But then the rain intrudes again. I have just managed to escape the bed and its prolonged invitations for sleep. It was already way past noon and the antibiotics I am taking was making me hungry for the nth time since late last night. I hate antibiotics. There are no clear-cut schedules to govern what to do on a Saturday, so I have been following my feet. M. follows me around like a sweet puppy, which I like. How fast we get used to sleeping touching somebody else’s skin! How long has it been since we got together? More than a month, and although we have our moments of the cutest rancor, I’m convinced I am in love, and him with me. Sometimes, I catch myself staring into his beautiful face, and I wonder, what did I do to deserve this? We met when I lectured on feature writing in his school—and within two weeks, we were texting each other like mad. Love happens that way, I guess: like a bus that runs you down from nowhere, when you least expect it. 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…. Here I am in Scooby’s, wanting to write something, an email, whatever. In his seat, M. marks time watching his cellphone. He plays bowling or sky-diving, and he smiles just a bit sometimes. It should be sad. His yellow shirt is sad. The computer is not helping, either. I’m assigned to PC #28, which used to be my favorite PC, but somebody has tampered with its monitor settings and the color are awash in strange hues, and all the desktop elements have become these giants. Icons the size of a dwarf’s head. There is no other computer for me to use. It’s the semestral break, and the place has been hijacked by young people with knowing to do for a rainy day except chat, play games, email, surf, flirt online with fat videofreaks, blog, or get stoned on friendster.com…. New computer. PC #34. What am I doing here? Except for M., somehow I feel my life’s a bit empty. Coffee doesn’t even help anymore. Something’s missing. YET: I have a good job (although I could use a raise), great opportunities, considerable writing recognition (I was just nominated for a Catholic Mass Media Award, got chosen for the NCCA’s UBOD New Writers Series, won two Palancas, got my first book nominated for a National Book Award…), great friends, great family, great love, great sex.... BUT. There is one big but in my life. I just don’t know what it is.
Please, anybody, give me a clue on what's going on.
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Scrutinizing the Stone SistersWhat’s the deal with the monument to the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres? Perhaps to answer that question, it is best to deal with the bigger context, and start from there.
A great monument to people of rank, or of substance, must have the power to awe—a tenuous translation of that relationship, almost an aesthetic, between viewer and art object, which is more or less metaphorical for what that person represents in his or her life. American democracy, for example, blasts its importance and earnestness onto the bald rocks of Mount Rushmore, etching the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. It says “grandeur” on those granite faces, and perhaps that is also the way we must somehow feel—the way it is as well for us, beholding the trench-coated giant monument (of an otherwise dwarfish) Jose Rizal in Luneta, or the bronze importance of Dr. David Hibbard in front of the CAP Building, or the immaculate sorrow of the marble Pieta in St. Peter’s Square, or the concrete hideousness and dictatorial testament to self-importance that
was Marcos’s bust which once jutted out of a mountainside in Benguet province, and which Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon has called “a monument of hate.” So much hate stemming from the symbolic that it was summarily bombed in December last year. Any worthwhile monument is not just a silent work that begs to be treated cursorily. It necessarily provokes reaction.
The medium, after all, is the message.
And there is also the story a monument tells.
For this article, we go to the Boulevard some time on one lazy afternoon—to peek at the work in progress, timed for completion just before the beginning of the centennial celebration of the founding of St. Paul’s in the Philippines (
yes, the first Paulinian institution in the country was founded in Dumaguete—a Catholic answer to the Protestant Silliman University). The work is draped in tarpaulin, like a wrapped secret.
“Why this spot?” I asked Mark, viewing the monument’s place in what may the heart of the Rizal Boulevard. In front of us, the Tañon Strait looked placid for an October day. There were people milling about the promenade in search of a life, and hawkers, too, of various trades, and sometimes joggers rushed past in search of sweat, while tricycles rambled away to make their Dumaguete day.
“This is the spot where they landed,” Mark told me. Although there are still debates about the authenticity of the claim, he continued.
We looked at the cement statues (in a white coat of paint then when we first visited).
Seven nuns on a boat, in various poses of queer reflection. One is pointing—
at something. One is praying the rosary. A few of the sisters just sit, as if waiting for divine answers to an alien destiny. What was immediately striking were the individual characteristics of their faces—and no mean feat here: the makers of the statue were certainly going for the facsimile of their very faces. All austere and proud and… nun-
ny. Nobody looked like Julie Andrews, or the Flying Nun.
“There’s Sister Josephine,” Mark said, pointing at one sister. She has an oblong face.
“There’s Sister Marthe de St. Paul,” Mark continued. She looks like Bette Davis with a dash of Mickey Rooney. “And there’s Mother Marie Micheau, the Mother Superior.”
Or not. “I’m not really sure, maybe she died early,” Mark smiled and scratched his head.
They came in 1904 on a boat straight from Hong Kong. It was in response to a request by Archbishop Father James Rooker (of Iloilo, and the former Diocese of Dumaguete), who was reportedly alarmed to know that the only school in Dumaguete was run by…
Protestants. In one of his trips to Hong Kong, he saw some Paulinian nuns with their curly wimple (which was actually designed by the Christian Dior) and pointedly asked them whether they could perhaps establish a school in the Philippines. They said yes. And soon arrived in Dumaguete’s shores and promptly set up shop in what is now the premises beside the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria. The original school burned down, however—and the sisters were forced to decamp to what is now the present location of St. Paul.
“What does this monument tell you?” I asked Mark again. And what does this mean to a typical Paulinian?
He gave his silence a consideration.
He thinks like that. “I am,” he began, “very proud of being a Paulinian, and this monument reminds me of all the things the first seven sisters had to go through in order for me, and many others, to get an education.” Which was as well. This was a guy who’s been with St. Paul since kindergarten, and now goes to its college hoping to become a marketing executive.
Perhaps that is how we must look at the monument itself: as a kind of history lesson to remind us of all those who came to our shores (Catholics
or Presbyterians), to give Dumaguete the intellectual vibrance it boasts of being a “University Town.” That is enough reason for awe: seven sisters out to sea sailing from a faraway place. One must admit that notion contains a very romantic idea—an adventure with a humanist appeal. The statue deserves its place then in the Boulevard—
“But if only they didn’t have to
paint it,” Mark and I, however, agreed. Which made the whole thing somehow tacky. And perhaps this is enough of an aesthetic criticism, which this article was meant to be in the first place.
“It reminds me of those unfortunate painted figures in front of the Capitol
na lang,” Mark said, pouting a bit.
“Yup,
sayang no? It was already great when it was just white,” I said.
“Oh well,” Mark said.
“
Oh well,” I nodded.
And that was that.
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Friday, October 17, 2003
I have to follow-up a dreadful blog on dreadful Bush with beautiful poetry. Call it cleansing. Call it exorcism. (But I swear I'm not going to blog about Dubya again. He just irritates me so much....)
This one's an email from dear Naya, who's infectious about her new poetic find
Silvia Curbelo...
Kailangan ko lang i-share. May bago akong paboritong makata (flavor of
the month daw ang dating) --
si Silvia Curbelo. She's Cuban, American,
and fantastic! Available
pa ang libro nya (
The Secret History of Water)
sa Aeon Books. :)
Mabuhay ang tula sa panahong lubog ang lahat sa trabaho.
Naya FOR ALL THE GOODBYES By Silvia Curbelo In a room not unlike this one
someone is always leaving someone else.
Someone blows out a candle.
Someone has finished the wine.
The single glove laid open
on the windowsill tells only
half the story. Try to imagine
the hundred metaphors for flight,
for endings, a door finally closing
and what is left behind--
the robe with its torn lining,
a scarf, cufflinks, an old shoe.
A man's abandoned overcoat
brings to mind train stations,
suitcases, footsteps
vanishing down the hall.
There is no mistaking
the closet door left ajar,
the empty hangers
like the thin shoulders
of loss, of distance.
If you have loved
someone like that
you have imagined his hands
opening other doors, unbuttoning
his shirt in other rooms.
Even as the buttons fall away
there is no turning back.
A dropped shoe is an island.
A scarf will break your heart.
JANIS JOPLIN By Silvia Curbelo There is a song like a light
coming on too fast, the eyes
blink back the static of the road
and in the distance you can almost see
the clean, sweet glow of electric guitars.
Call it the music of the rest of our lives,
a stranger's face peering through
a window, except that face is yours,
and mine. Music like backtalk,
like wind across your heart,
cigarette smoke and bourbon.
Music our mothers must have held
softly between damp sheets,
before taxes, before layoffs,
before the first door closing.
Not piano lessons, not a hymn
or a prayer, or a soft voice
singing you to sleep, but a song
like a green light on summer evenings
after a ball game, after rain,
when the fields finally let themselves go,
and we'd drive past the Westinghouse plant,
past Vail and Arcadia. Music
of never going back.
I'm talking about car radios,
about backseats and hope,
and the jukebox at Pokey's
where the local boys tried
their new luck on anyone
and the real history of the world
was going doan, nickels and
dimes, the music floating
at the far end of a first kiss--
the first light of the body
that isn't love but is stronger than love,
because it must not end,
because it never lasts.
Thanks Naya!
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Tomorrow, we welcome
Mr. President of Liars.
News excerpt from
The Olympian:
WASHINGTON -- Letters from hometown soldiers describing their successes rebuilding Iraq have been appearing in newspapers across the country as U.S. public opinion on the mission sours.
And all the letters are the same.
And now
we're giving the Master Clown of All the red carpet treatment.
Jeez.
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Thursday, October 16, 2003
I mean, really,
C. sounds so sad in his LJ. Hasn't he gotten over the post-collegiate angst yet? I love you, C. but what's this? ...
You miss the comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with the same people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe they weren't so great after all.
I mean,
we are your college people.
Oh, well.
Hey, maybe he just needs a dose of....
Friendster!
Hyukhyukhyuk!
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Bernice Roldan has provided me the perfect quotation to describe
Check Test Papers Week:
"What fresh hell is this?"
-- Dorothy Parker
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