reply to dyndyn's rage

i accidentally came across an article on the Burgos disappearance in the Philippines Free Press last week. grabe. this leadership has absolutely no sense of respect, no redemption, no remorse. the actions of those who carry out the orders are but pale reflections of those who gave them out. that totally incredible tale they spun-- about how members of the community actually stole the plates of an impounded car parked in the miltary camp, and attached it to that other car used to abduct Burgos, in order to frame the military-- is just too much! they don't even have the brains and the conscience, to come up with a feasible, sound story. pusa.

author/article spotlight:

here's an essay on a mother by a son who was also her fan, colleague, and critic. the essay is insightful and informative, to say the least. what's most remarkable about it is that it is written in a way that is restrained, unsentimental and yet vulnerable at the same time. susan sontag fans will be glad. but will also want more, more, more on this extraordinary thinker and writer. check it out: "Remembering Susan Sontag" by David Rieff(http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2007/winter/rieff-remembering-sontag)

***

i did not know that david rieff was susan sontag's son. i had come across some of his so-called "travel essays", but which were actually more about public policy, identity and migration. i remember he offered curious perspectives. he sounded a bit like robert hughes (of the "shock of the new" fame): very white, very male, in a sense, but extremely engaging and always sensitive. i guess we have susan sontag to thank for these other traits. if not for the mother, the son would have just been very white, very male.

the dynasties are crumbling

everywhere, but in tacloban. how very, very sad. someday, i am going to process my thoughts and feelings (aww!) about the elections, and write about it. and it will be heartbreaking to no one, unforgettable only to me, and beautiful only to god. =)

***

i am looking at early 90's photos of my dance troupe, recently posted on the web. and i am trying to reconcile the image of the thin, wiry girl with the wide smile, with this other one at the keyboard. the feeling is strange. everyone in the photograph is strange. indeed, people are strange when you're a stranger. someday, i am going to process my thoughts... wait a minute, didn't i just type this same line minutes ago?

would it be considered lying

if you raised your hand in answer to the question: "do you know how it feels to be limbless?"

author/book spotlight

"Winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the City of Vancouver Book Award, and a Regional Finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book

Longing, familiarity, and hope suffuse these stories as they mine the charged territory of relationships – subtly weaving in conflicts between generations and cultures. Madeleine Thien’s characters in some way want to make amends, to understand the events that have shaped their lives. A young woman searches back in time for the pivotal moment when her family lost faith in itself. Two sisters keep a vigil outside their former house, hoping their long-absent mother will appear one last time. A wife helps her husband grieve for the woman he has loved since childhood. A daughter remembers the simple ritual she once shared with her father and the moment when her unconditional love for him was called into question. Compassionate and revealing, delicate and wise, these stories chart the uneven progress of love and lay bare the heartbreaking truths at the core of our closest bonds." (www.mcclelland.com)

the blurb does the book a great disservice. trust me, the book's so much less fuzzy and so much more astig than it's made to sound.

it's been so long since i've been pleasured by (yes, pleasured!) by a found book. most of the books i now admit to be favorites were "found", and my memory of how i "found" these books astonishes me, sometimes. when i recall the act, the circumstances that led, the forces that conspired to, my having "found" them, the memories become as powerful as the books themselves.

i found this book in a bargain books stall located in the basement of sm-cubao. h.w. and i were there to look for an outdoor tent, for our family cemetery lot in tacloban. my siblings had this idea of holding a picnic at the memorial park on mother's day, hence the tent. but this book is what we found instead. along with another cool find, a very interesting memoir written by j.d. salinger's daughter. (i didn't know i had a sister!) in a sense, the books we found, and the decision to get them instead of the family tent we were supposed to buy, did not stray from the day's theme.

i have another new curse

last year it was tuta as in tutang ina, now it's pusa! as in pusang ina!, or ay, pusa!, or pusa nga yawa! it's a very satisfying four-letter curse, very versatile, good, forceful impact if used appropriately. you get away with not saying bad words in front of the children, but let off steam in an equally satisfying manner. try it! you'll see... =)

it all starts with one

and will never ever end with just that one bottle. arrgh!!! don't get me wrong. i love lightning parties, and all that they entail and result to. love 'em! i just hate myself for not being astig enough to go on hiding under the blanket with H.W. all day the following day, for not being astig enough to say fuck that i don't need to go to work today, i deserve to sleep all day... because we ended up drinking just a sigh before sunrise. hahay. the things we can't help from doing, the help we can't ask for, or give. hahaaaay. i rambled in class for a total of fifteen minutes this morning, before S. took over for her demo. buti na lang. mind was mush and pulp bits. in my head all i could hear of myself was "ok, what do you think? and you, what do you think? you agree? aha. hmmm. what about you? poetry, slurp, slurp, speaker, tone, slurp, slurp, zzzzz..." i was soooo relieved to give way to S.

i know i say this all the time, but... i will never, ever, EVER, work the day after a good drinking session. just ruins the experience.

***

woke up from a most-needed nap, recalling lingering bits and pieces of the conversation i had with H.W. and L. last night. it was about that particular sense of loss - mingaw - which has no relief, no logic, no beginning, no end, no weight, no height, no shape, but takes up a lot of space. and is the only matter that makes everything else cease to matter. a matter of absence that is so present, and permanent. and you know how it is when you wake up to dusk just settling in. and the thoughts you have upon waking, they just totally set the darkness of the tone for the rest of the day. mamingaw!!!

jet lag

is something i never have to deal with after a trip abroad. not that there's a significant time difference between the phils and the few places i go to. not that i travel a lot. in fact, i've only been to one place with that much of a time diff compared to ours. it's just that i've always wondered what it is all about, exactly. i am a bit fascinated with it. okay, not just a bit, a lot. i've been preoccupied with time differences and relativity lately. actually, for a long time already. it's something that takes up half of my consciousness, most - no, all - of the time. if i allow myself to dwell in it, god knows what i'll come up with. and it's not even a creative preoccupation. it's just... well, crazy, sometimes. i get really, really drawn to and into what might be called tiny cracks into the past. my past. distant and recent past alike. i dream about it. i dream myself into it. it makes me dizzy sometimes. and it occurs anywhere and anytime it wants to. i had an episode last tuesday in tacloban. was in bo's coffee club with a friend, we were waiting for my brothers to pick us up, and next thing i knew i was stuck in it, in this little crack, and i couldn't breathe. my friend offered me a cigarette. after a puff, i had to go to the toilet to throw up, and splash water on my face.

but, back to jet lag. i kind of know what the feeling is, actually. it is, i think, similar to the affliction that always paralyzes me after a trip home. happens without fail. i arrive in manila, or wherever, and i am disoriented. i either go on like a manic patient for a whole day without sleep and then promptly pass out without warning, or else i sort of black out the minute i am off the plane, such that everything else i do after deplaning is a blur. one very simple, logical explanation for this is that i am never able to sleep on the night before i leave home. even back in college. even as far back as high school when my sister and i were still active in the dance company, and we would go on these tours and such. sleep was simply impossible, and i have long stopped trying to have some, or even a little of it the night before a scheduled trip. so, i take the trip the next day and after that the hours, days, months, years meld into each other and i just float. on rare occasions, i allow myself to sink.

still another explanation is that i leave a huge part of me at home i every time i leave it. and it takes an equally huge effort to recover.

i sometimes think i have been grieving for a loooong time, even way before the deaths happened.

i won! i won!

in a race against my other selves.

so, last night's wine and beer with Ch, Ad, J(b), R, J(g), and A was actually a celebration of a feat only i knew about.

saya lang.

***

and god, am i relieved the holy week is over! another feat there.

***

someday, when i grow up, i am going to write about "what i learned" from the workshop. and it will break hearts, mine being the first one.

checking papers in the wilder east

last night i met a burmese guy in his mid-fifties who looks like noriega, is called noriega (but later revealed that his other name is frank, but that he'll have to kill me now that he told me his name), and who owns a way cool bar called noriega. but the bar is free of the stuff the original noriega is notorious for. it is located near the patpong district, but noriega the man was able to turn noriega the bar into the kind of place where it is perfectly normal and safe for a woman to sit at the bar alone, and enjoy her drink without being picked up or being suspected of wanting to be picked up. but then again, with all the heavenly bodies just within one's reach, who would be interested in normal people? but it's totally cool that there is such a place as noriega's for tourists who just want a quiet drink. i never got to try it though - having a quiet drink alone - because i was with a mixed-race, mixed-gender, mixed-profession, 80's music-loving, chain-smoking bunch of thirty-somethings.

we also went to a place called cheap charlie's, where it was really cheap, but the man tending the bar was not named charlie. bad trip. apart from selling really cheaply-priced drinks, cheap charlie's is also famous for its location: right in the middle of a street, atop a thin curve of uneven concrete. and there is a sign which says: attention, do not step back, keep off the street when a car passes. or something like that. kakatuwa.

i can't wait to be back here with husband weng, and with bayaw friends (kung matutuloy sila) next month.

okay. back to checking.

Tagged by Joel

1. One book that changed your life. Thornton Wilder's Theophilus North which I read some fifteen years ago, and probably did not fully understand, but which also probably ruined me for life. It's an older, wittier, sadder, funnier, more tense (because older) Catcher in the Rye kind of story. I recently rediscovered the beloved old copy in our Tacloban home when I was there for the holidays. The book is as old I am. This year marks its 30th anniversary. And the character, Theophilus, is 30 years old.
2. One book you have read more than once. All the Nabokovs.
3. One book you would want on a desert island. Any thick paperback I can turn into edible pulp or sanitary wipe.
4. One book that made you laugh. My cousin's.
5. One book that made you cry. Lacan's Ecrits. Too difficult. Heartbreaking.
6. One book you wish had been written. Lacan in poetry.
7. One book you wish had never been written. Can't think of any.
8. One book you are currently reading. Children Playing Before The Statue of Hercules. An anthology of short stories edited by David Sedaris.
9. One book you have been meaning to read. Purgatorio.

I am tagging Dyndyn, Jet, Maryanne

sometimes it's nice to be away

but it's always good to be back. = )

travel, for me, no matter how near or far, is always a surreal experience. it makes me dizzy thinking about time, and space, and shifts in the universe. and then when the language factor comes in, the experience gets even headier.

makes me sad how we have to speak the white man's language in order to communicate with our own neighbors.

makes me sadder how much of what we know about ourselves and our neighboring countries are based on hollywood images.

oh well.

there are days that don't count

and there are days that do.

yesterday counts.

of all the days, it had to be yesterday when the taxi we (larry and i) were in had to conk out in the middle of a highway leading to a place totally unfamiliar to both of us. we were strangers in a strange town. but no one panicked. no one hyperventilated.

"ano'ng problema, manong?"
"di ko alam e"
"wala ba'ng gas, manong?"
"meron"
"makina?"
"hindi e"
"baterya?"
"ewan"
"Baka nga gas..."
"siguro"

and then manong got off his seat, walked over to the front, opened the hood, tinkered with the engine a bit, went back to his seat, turned the ignition, and the vehicle sputtered back to life. no explanations.

***

it was a day of wandering very cautiously, like timid out-of-towners, in a mall which could have been any other but the mall we (l and i) were supposed to be in. the concern was valid. between the two of us who forget our bags in places where we drink or smoke, mistaking one mall for another is highly probable.

***

it was a day of drinks, and catching up, reconnecting, relishing funny stories, expressing genuine concern over the not so funny ones, with very good friends (emmily and her husband, dan, and then with allan). lovely people all.

***

it was a day of following beer with more wine and some whiskey at home. and then of unabashed singing of songs we (larry, jet and i) unknowingly or secretly memorized. husband weng secretly laughing at us. we became even more immodest as the day wore on and the alcohol kicked. gospel, standards, cebuano kundiman, streisand broadway tunes, you name it. nothing was spared. even our goodbyes were sung.

****

yesterday was a day that counts.

all i know is that

i can't write. not that i really have to. well, maybe i do. and maybe that's why i'm not doing it. if i do ever get to write, i will write about the following:

1. desaparecidos and time machines
2. headless bodies and explosive sex
3. trains and second-hand shops along aurora where country music is the only kind of music that gets played
4. spanish colonial land titles gathering dust in some obscure antique shop in kamuning
5. the history of jose mari chan songs
6. imelda swimming in the huge olympic size swimming pool right behind the sto. nino shrine facing the leyte national high school
7. more stories about floods and drowning and big, empty houses
8. me wringing the neck of the person who told me to write about it so i will feel better

***

i can't stop drinking. this, i really have to do. try to do. but, these days, i'm only happy when i'm drunk. truly. i will try to cut it down to three times a week.

***

i couldn't keep myself from laughing when students in an intensive english language class i'm handling asked me if i was filipino, because i looked either nepalese or mexican. russian, i said. oh, they said. are you serious, i said. yes, i am, one said. very good, i said. lesson in asking yes-no questions over, i added.

***

i can't imagine 2007. it scares me. too many important changes happening. too many important people gone.

***

i can't afford to let another term pass without having finished my thesis. i have been drilling myself too long on what it is i'm writing about. i don't make sense anymore.

the other list

of things i need to do to keep me sane, should include this one:

Regulatory Architecture for Microfinance in Asia


and these:

> have wine in the afternooon (also in the evening, and late at night)
> ruminate on laughter and lacan (with larry, hehe... hmmm, too many L's there)
> have longer weekends
> dance
> sing
> hang out at antique collectors' shops
> take long walks along morato on early sunday mornings
> call home
> listen to my one year old nephew try to pronounce my name, mumble it, yell it over and over in different ways and manners as though with that one mispronounced name he is able to tell me his joys and woes at home
> print out my thesis and promptly forget about it
> watch ultra violent, heart-pounding action films with strong narratives and daniel craig in them

The list keeps getting longer.

Apart from looking at Christmas lights and lanterns, hearing Christmas songs, and going to the Sacred Heart Church in Kamuning and the Mount Carmel church in New Manila, et.al., today I just discovered a few more on the virtual/mental list of “things I can no longer do because they terrify me, make my heart race, make me cry; make me feel paralyzed, suck the air out of my lungs”:

> Send packages through, or even set foot on, any LBC branch – because there is no longer any need to send meds by LBC every week, like I used to when she was on a break from radiation and therapy
> Ride the LRT2 alone –because everything about it- the smell of steel and plastic, the look on passengers’ faces – and everything it passes - the decrepit manila streets, misshapen houses, and impassive malls remain unchanged; because I rode it almost everyday for almost a year, and it always took me to the Leveriza station where I would get off and, from there, take a cab to the hosp, and be with her there where she was always mom and I was always child, even if I was mothering her most of the time. So precious and empowering were those moments that I ceased to mind rejoining the world the following day
> Listen to the song “Across the Universe” and most Beatles songs – because when it gets to the “nothing’s gonna change my world part” you know that the speaker is trying very hard to convince himself, but it’s all a dream, and it won’t last


mental note: there has got be a list of things i need to do to keep me sane.

My sisters and I, at the hospital just hours before my mom passed away. Everyone was around to say good night. We were just preparing her for sleep.

My mom, on our last family vacation in Mactan.

thanks to everyone

who condoled with us; visited, lingered, stayed up late; sent flowers, sympathies, prayers; offered masses, food, cash; shared stories, laughter, poetry and songs.

deeply, deeply appreciated.

how quickly the world shifts

i wonder where all my happy projections disappeared to?

just happy to note that

1. thesis is moving on, i'm finishing three chapters before the month ends (woohoo! sorry na lang sa mga nacriticize. what can i do? i have to sound like a real cl major)
2. classes are going well, i'm putting together midterm grades, recording scores diligently (is the pagpapanggap becoming real? omigadz!)
3. i saw jamie foxx's behind! (in miami vice. galeng! ng movie, i mean)
4. my sister's coming home! and with her baby, too! (and we'll go shopping and drinking and swimming and dancing and talking, talking, talking. i'm also anticipating little fights once in a while. )
5. the whole family will be here again! (i'm moving my desk and a whole shelf of books to our shoes and smoking area, to make way for unfurled sofa beds. not very happy about this bit. pero sige na la...)
6. the whole family will be in tacloban, barugo, and possibly cebu again! ( i can just imagine the chaos)
6. i think i can finish another story next week (pero over na, i won't force it)
7. i think i can actually finish 2 bottle s of 13.5% proof wine and still attend classes the next day (although i don't really have to)
8. there are only 6 weeks to go before vacation!!! husband weng and i are going home to tacloban, and will spend weeks at the beach!!! (i'm planning to read a minimum of ten non-theory books while at it)
9. there are only 6 weeks to go before my big three-oh! (i've always loved this age. been looking forward to it for thirty years)
10. i'm sure there are other happy things to note, i just can't think of anything any more right now. hard enough coming up with a list of ten. =)