like being in a loop

that's how it has been these last couple of days. totally non-linear. and in a not very entertaining way. in fact, in the worst ways possible; random and intrusive. yes, a loop. not a link. a link has two different ends. this one that i am in, and the ones that keep intruding, seem to belong to a viciously closed curve, whose initial and final points, god forbid, but i know they do, coincide in a fixed point. i do not know which threatens more, getting to that point where everything coincides, or being subject to the dizzying shifts within the curve.

a character in a martha grimes novella who likes to watch people get on and off trains says that memory, by nature, is painful. i know it was written in a less trite manner, and probably in relation to movements through time and space. but i also know that things are bad when only the trite phrase stands out against a pagefull of beautiful lines.

so then, there are things that just have to be done to make things better. distractions are welcomed. instant celebrations of friends who won the palanca are held in the small apartment. about three foreign language films are viewed per day with the husband. cheesy folk songs are sung with friends, on the veranda, at four in the morning, while the storm prepares to rage at us. every word on writing tarantino says during his short talk is relished (because it is refreshing to hear somebody so unabashedly declare himself a serious writer, no matter if his writing is not taken seriously). and, whenever possible, the most elaborate, time-consuming meals are prepared, never mind if they're consumed within only a tenth of the length of time it took to prepare them. these things just have to be done.

yesterday was a day spent

on the train!

enough said.

***

i managed to read an entire theory book on the romantic-fantastic while i tried to ignore people getting on and off the train. rather, as i tried to not pay attention to them trying very hard to ignore me.

i also managed to exorcise some demons, my personal issues with this particular railway train line. not quite a breakthrough. but something, quite something. you know how you sometimes don't want to see yourself through it because of the break that it involves? i am at that point, exactly.

then i met up with L at cubao, since the original plan - to meet each other in one of the station platforms - turned out to be not as simple as it sounded, after all. like me, he sort of tortured himself all afternoon as a way to pleasure. (haha. sorry, am i projecting?) his mode of punishment was to obsessively go through an entire floor of tall, wide shelves of books for hours. and then to lug around a heavy load of books the rest of the afternoon. we got A. to join us despite her apprehensions about the uncanniness of us being in cubao at the exact time she was planning to be there.

well, we confirmed her worst fear: that the night would end with husband weng putting away empty bottles of wine, and her and L walking the short distance to their own homes from our place, just slightly more inebriated than planned.

***
i have just been told by my thesis adviser that my manuscript reads like creative non fic. i remember my fic being called theory-laden, and also being mistaken by adam as creative non fic. obviously, i have issues with genre and differences. i wonder if it's too late to care. i only know i'm too lazy to care.

what's bad is corny

is what sir butch told me one time. kakatawa. true e. the worst thing anyone could ever say about your work is that it's corny. so much less of a worry when people don't understand your works right away, or even when they contest certain turns of phrases here and there, complain about the lack or profusion of complex expressions of thought. as long as they don't call it corny, then there's still reason to plod on. this thought crossed my mind again last night at kublai's, while we were talking about MG's latest works, which are never corny. difficult, yes. opaque, sometimes. dangerous, often. interesting and playful, always.

corny is bad. what's bad is corny. thank goodness, i've never heard this said of my own efforts. perhaps it's been said, i just never heard it. no matter. they've been called many other things. some potentially hurtful, mostly harmless.

my real life though thrives in the corny and the camp. my family is corny. my parents have a theme song. we have a family theme song. we put on musical productions, video presentations. and i love it that we are corny that way. i used to be embarrassed about it, until i realized that the excessive corniness in real life is actually wonderful. they have a way of marking events, occasions, moments that memory would otherwise have a difficulty grasping. corny is deadly only on the page. otherwise, it aids in making memory come alive, especially when there is a lack of shameless laughter, or crying; when everyone's always trying to be cool about things. i love the real, the lived, so much more than the written now. so i'm fine with corny already.

here are the lyrics to some of those songs we have claimed as our own. (all of them were popularized by frank sinatra. now i know. obviously, my father's to blame.)

"Day by Day"
(Stordahl/Weston/Cahn)

Day by day Im falling more in love with you
And day by day my love seems to grow
There isnt any end to my devotion
Its deeper dear by far than any ocean

I find that day by day youre making all my dreams come true
And (so) come what may I want you to know
Im (that I am) yours alone, and Im in love (in love) to stay
As we go through the years day by day

(I said, day by day)
(as we go through the years day by day)


"The Best Things In Life Are Free"
Georger Olsen

(Charted in 1927 by George Olsen at #3 and by Frank Black at #16
Charted in 1948 by Dinah Shore at #18 and by Jo Stafford at #21
Also charted as a duet by Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson in 1992 at #10
Words and Music by B.G.DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson)

The moon belongs to ev'ryone
The best things in life are free
The stars belong to ev'ryone
They gleam there for you and me

The flowers in spring
The robins that sing
The sunbeams that shine
They're yours, they're mine

And love can come to ev'ryone
The best things in life are free


"Here's that rainy day"

I should have saved
Those leftover dreams
Funny
But here's that rainy day
Here's that rainy day
They told me about
And I laughed at the thought
That it might turn out this way
Where is that worn out wish
That I threw aside
After it brought my love so near
Funny how love becomes
A cold rainy day
Funny
That rainy day is here
It's funny
How love becomes
A cold rainy day
Funny
That rainy day is here

revised: Non-creative flash fiction

Conversation

Stepping out of the compound, we shiver, and then cringe, as we hear the rusty gates complain. “It’s Sssibeeria,” you say. A whiff of your brandy voice descends to, bounces off the slope of Matahimik Street.

“The ice is melting there, the death of ice,” you add, smacking your lips, inhaling deeply. The empty bottles in the bag you’re carrying rattle and jangle as they knock against each other and hit the side of your thigh. You are swaying. The ground under our feet is heaving like a tentative wave.

It makes me think: Surely that swaying moon, smug with the knowledge of melting, knows about this, this death of ice. I don’t know why I think that thought though. I don’t know now why I had thought it would be a good idea to get drunk— and not just drink, but get drunk— with you tonight. I don’t know why we got married. I thought we had agreed to be married to ourselves, and date each other on the side. I thought we were going to travel the world, help the poor, write novels. I don’t know why we both ended up as teachers. I don’t know why I am starting to hate hearing, listening to, pronouncing words.

“The streets are clean, well-lighted,” I say instead, laughing a little at the lame attempt at allusion.

“What?” you ask.

“Oh, nothing.”

“I wass stalking about Sibeeria, I mean talkings abouts Siberia--”

Yes, yes, I hear you, as I hear the seas sigh. Something in me is going to give, finally.
I think about the glass of ice swamped with soda and brandy. And I know why I think that thought. I think this, too: What I’d like to do right now is to grope in the shadows for your hand.
I feel there’s something wrong here. Left alone in the cold our fingers might go blind!

Meanwhile, you continue, “But then again, it’s after midnight…” Again, I think: It is in quiet hours that hands learn to master the spaces and the lengths, the curves and the coarse lines of fates. And we will ask ourselves much later, years and years from now. I, still lonely, drunk, by then much older, woman. You, still brooding over matters, still teacher, husband, man.

What the hell has Siberia got to do with us?
What the hell has Siberia got to do with us?

“Well, I’ve read that sssome eleven people…”

Oh my god, you’re still at it. Some eleven people have what? Turned away from the cold to seek the warmth of hell? As in this conversation, perhaps, the molten syllables will make their way smoothly down to settle in the memory of my throat.

And why the hell am I thinking in extended metaphors?

“But since we’re in the tropics…” You go on, and on, and on.

I wish you’d stop.

I take my clammy hand out of my pocket and reach for yours. It encounter’s glass, steel,
bottles of beer, and withdraws from the contact.

“Oh, oh, and you know? The waves?” You nudge me with your left elbow, and the bottles in the bag rattle again.

I face you. And then I tell you: “Yeah, I know, I hear they, too, mourn the deaths and desperately try to freeze in mid crash.” And then I dash down the street.

“What? Hey, where are you going?”

I stop at the nearest lamppost, lean heavily against it, and puke. Finally. You reach me, breathing short, heavy breaths. Your face is red. Your eyes are alive likie they have never been before. You seem to me magnified by some strange force. I look away, to the direction of the 7-11. The brightness of the store softly illuminates the entire block. I think of Alfon’s short story, the one which has beautiful, vulnerable children in them. The story has nothing to do with us. We do not have children. Else we would not be drinking like this. Almost every other night.

“You okay?”

“Yes. I’m good for four more. And then no more.”

You join the bag of bottles in your right hand with the other one in your left. The bottles clatter and jangle like mad. And then it’s quiet again. You extend your right hand. I take it. We walk down Matahimik Street.

tomorrow will be

exactly nine months since the big quiet shutdown.

it's not so much that the past keeps intruding, really. it is that there is this door and i keep opening it, i am the one who keeps intruding. because i just can't help it.



***

was talking with friends ruby and easy last night about the big three-oh. and how it does things to you. to your heart, mainly. softens you up, somewhat? creates new fears and anxieties, maybe? i think at some point we three agreed that in the end it is all good and exciting, really. 'cept that mine, when it happened, just came and went. am all the better for it, i guess. a much bigger thing extending beyond myself happened. no, actually signalled the end of a life, of the world, of things ever happening. in a manner of speaking. in many manners of speaking. so, i never actually turned. 30 just came by and left in a huff.

photos fr the last party

we gave. there should have been more, i could have at least taken one shot of each group, if i didn't do a k.t. and disappear for almost an hour. fun yung party because everyone got drunk. isn't that the main objective all the time?

here:

i know i promised to wring the neck

of the person who will give me such an advice. but k, who happens to amuse me no matter what he does, gave the advice. and it was given so nochalantly, so meaninglessly, that i have no choice but to take it. once again, i was amused by people's capacity for cliche. and that's enough for me to get by these days. so here it is.

****

i have only dreamt two memorable dreams since we moved in to this tiny apt (na nagpapanggap na townhouse). both of them had to do with my mother. in the first one, i don't see her but i know she is inside the house, or the room. and the rest of the dream is too personal for this space. but just so i won't forget, and just so i can say i took the advice, the dream had people in them, lots of people. it had some screaming. a lot of anger. and certain lines that would put the sappiest soap operas to shame. in the other dream, she is about to say something, or she has asked me to say something to someone, and then i saw this wound in her forehead, and it started to spread into blue-black vines across her face. when i wake up, i am all sweat and panic and feeling like i was supposed to be somewhere, do something. and then i realize it was all a dream. and i want to go back into it.

there has got to be a cure for this

malady, this aversion to speech, she thinks. she knows she has written of this here before, perhaps many times already. is she fascinated with it? is she secretly entranced by it? i have read somewhere that the way people deal with intrusive thoughts, fixations, is to naturally develop another one in the belief that this new neurosis will somehow mask the effects of the first ones. don't we see this all the time in each other? the more we protect ourselves and each other, from our selves and other people, the more suspect we and our intentions are. the more she talks and converses and comes up with quips and funny remarks the more her stomach turns. the bile rises. i see it happening all the time.

i suspect that this stems somewhat from her protracted thesis work. she knows she should let it go already, but here she is, tweaking and cutting and restructuring again. it will never end, if it were only up to her. thank goodness there are such things as advisers, and penalties, and tuition fee increases, otherwise... otherwise! but she hates what she has done thus far, and yet cannot let it go. she hates the fact that it is meaningless and useless. full of words. she balks at the lines she's strung together, packed into pretentious stand-alone paragraphs. she wants to hang the person who thought up those arrogant, flimsy, inconclusive findings. she wants to shoot those who produced the worst of them books, which she had to read and reread and apply herself to. she wants to gather all the words, tie them up real tight, and then, and then violently pull them apart.

i suspect that this stems not just from the thesis work. i suspect that this is borne of those moments she felt most inutile, words were most inutile. when there were only images and no words. when there were words but no meaning. when her body should have been acting without thinking, and then the thinking just had to come along, comanding the body to move, the face to break into a human smile, the eyes to flicker once in a while. the commands were always packaged in words.

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.