Direct attacks on the imagination

(a reply to/an echo of Chingbee's post. See: http://curiouscouch.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/we-tell-ourselves-stories-in-order-to-live/)

I have been to Mindanao several times. There are many Mindanaos. Many different kinds. I have been to a few of them. First, as a young dancer on tour with a dance company about 15 years ago, next as a fellow for the UP writers workshop almost a decade ago, and then several more times as a journalist and for NGO-related activities which always get me into close contact/require me to work with community organizers, lawyers, and media practitioners. In my most recent trip, I literally skirted the Mindanao which is now marked in our collective consciousness with backhoes, and shallow mass graves, and the image of a hundred gun-toting, crazed paramilitary men triumphantly leaving a very bloody scene, ready to resume their normal lives, after killing some 60 innocent unarmed men and women, on that beautiful Monday afternoon.

It is a sickening sight. You'd be totally without imagination not to be affected by it. It doesn't matter if you have never been to Mindanao, or know no one in Mindanao, or know little about Mindanao. The kind of calculated display of power, the very efficient application of a very specific kind of violence; the scale of it, the magnitude of it... The utter impunity with which it was carried out. This is hard not to imagine; rather, hard for our imagination to not be attacked in some way, to be tickled, at the very least. It is harder not to imagine that we have also, somehow, been attacked in a very deep and painful, and embarrassing, and disgusting way. My struggle since last week has been precisely this: against imagination.

I have been forwarded, but have no intention of checking the list of those who have been massacred. Not now, not soon, anyway. A week's worth of report writing has to be rushed in a day-and-a-half's time. A very dear friend, a very important person in my obscure little life just died. A bright light went out and created a permanent darkness in my little corner. This one will take some getting used to, a process that cannot be rushed. And yet I am able to cook, and eat, and shop, and watch movies, and drink with friends, drink with my sister, feed the dog, feed the household composed of my husband and myself, and entertain the occasional droppers by in our apartment. I even managed to start writing a 3-story cycle. I finished 2, and could not go on from there, however. My imagination finally abandoned me. Or, maybe, I need to write a different story altogether. Or, I need to write differently.

My friend, Chingbee, writes in her blog that "Given we artists are allegedly known for our imagination, then it would certainly be a failure on many counts if we are unable to imagine the Maguindanao Massacre as a direct affront to us, unable to imagine the means by which we can combat the seductions of silence and complacency and forgetfulness, unable to imagine the methods with which to address each other and cure our ignorance and ensure that life does not go on unmarked, unresponsive to, and unchanged by this most sickening of all the sickening events we have been through under this regime." She suggests that the story is the arena on which we must act, or fight. Just as the government has been shamelessly twisting the facts and exploiting the power of rhetoric to confound the public, so must we wrestle from them the words and the images, the characters and their motivations, the plots and the resolutions.

We must protect our truths, our stories. And, perhaps, we must tell [only] the stories that need telling in these difficult times.

husbands and wives

Rain in Singapore today. Wet streaks across windows. Water pearls form on glass panes. Tops of buildings tower over trees, and melt in the milky haze.

The girls are still in bed, cowering under thick white sheets. Clothes, shoes, boxes of spices, bangles and beads, plastic and paper bags are strewn all over the carpeted floor. Steaming cups of coffee rest on window ledges.

I brewed the coffee. I hope the coffee aroma permeates their dreams, and eventually takes them out of their sleep. The girls continue to ignore it. I am almost done with my second cup.

We pooled our funds and got what passes for a suite in this tiny hotel. It is bright and airy. We are surrounded by windows. Windows look out into other people’s windows. This city-state is big on windows.

Everything here seems fabricated though. The chaos of street festivals, markets, shops, food stalls, have a disconcerting awareness in and of themselves. The non-Asians are easily fooled. Come to Mindanao, I want to tell them. Come to Quiapo. Come to Samar.

At the concert last night, my mind flew, and I missed out on some important pieces. I always need music to think. I did not know I needed to think of anything in particular last night. I will tell you later what I thought about.

I never quite just listen. I do not know how to just listen. I mean, I have very keen ears, they prick up when there’s a rupture in the harmony. But I cannot imagine this: sitting through a musical performance focused solely on the act on stage. My kind of music is that which takes me out of the act, out of the moment, makes the mind fly and expand. Makes my heart stop completely, as in an attack.

At certain parts of the performance, I was enrapt with the musicians backing up the main act. I realize I still have a fascination for second voices, and back-up musicians. Must be from all those years of singing first, and never learning second voice as a kid. When I sing without my siblings I cannot hear myself.

This is why I feel sorry sometimes for marrying you. I wanted so much to keep you as a backup vocal. You were my second voice. Now we sound alike. Does this make you make you mad when I say this?

We girls are here because our husbands make us sad. This is our collective secret, the general belief. The rationale for the shopping bags and the wine. Nobody here knows that I am happy. Even if I am married. Nobody would believe. It remains my part of the secret’s dirtier little secret. I am careful not to sound smug. You remain my biggest, most shameful, forbidden love.