poetry

Returning to an old addiction after three years of hiatus can be exhilarating, to say the least. Like a freshly detoxified drug junkie going back to sniffing cocaine, or like the president of Alcoholics Anonymous, who, after having shunned the liquid for a decade, suddenly finds comfort in quaffing glasses of brandy again, I am back to my old habit.

My addiction.

My elixir.

My home.

There is much to be said. But to start in the beginning is to go against the tide. I won’t go back. Let it all ebb in. I’ve tasted pain in the past year. And it left an agonizing aftertaste. I won’t dare stride back there again, especially nine months ago, when, bursting into a posh hospital room, I saw hordes of doctors and nurses still trying to revive my dead father. And then, two months after that, my aunt, my father’s only sibling, passed away, too. I had barely stashed away my mourning clothes when I found myself wearing them again.

Whatever haze these events have left hovering above me is still there. But life, as it is wont to do, will not stop and shed a tear for anyone. It prods on. And I, too, found myself prodding on. Laboring.

Walking in the dense woods the other day, amid heavy foliage nourished by the first few rays of the summer sun, I felt so alive. Thankful to be so, actually. I knew it wouldn’t last long so I had to cherish it. Be grateful for the air you breathe, my father used to say. There is poetry in everything. There is beauty wedged somewhere between the cracks of dusty cobblestones.

Last Sunday, for instance, I saw a fiftyish man dance with a backhoe to the lyricism of La Callas’s arias within the courtyard of a renaissance palace. The night sky was still bright with a sun that was so reluctant to set. And it was drizzling lightly. Gathered around in our umbrellas and plastic ponchos, we witnessed how the giant, normally uncouth backhoe seemed to have developed its own emotions as it interacted gracefully with the human dancer. That was sheer poetry.

There is poetry in my life, somewhere. And that is what I intend to bring out yet again. Three years of silence has not exactly dried up my inkwell. No amount of detoxification or rehabilitation will keep me away from my addiction. Would that nothing make me kick the habit again.

My name is Slim Whale. And I am a blogger.

eavesdropping

I am in the front seat, beside the driver of a passenger jeep. To my left sits the driver's friend holding fliers of luxury condominiums. He eats peanuts from a tiny paper bag while admiring his acne scars in the side view mirror.

“Pare, don't you know that peanut is food for the brain?” he bellows in Tagalog to the driver. Without looking at him, the driver replies, “But you don't have a brain!”

The jeep turns right and a famous beer factory comes in full view. Cases of beer are being loaded into huge trucks parked within its premises. Acne Scar guy, again, shouts to the driver:
“Pare, look at those trucks! They're brimming with beer! Anak ng puta (Son of a whore), I'd love to have just one of those!”
“Oh, you're such a bore when you're drunk. You're always catatonic,” the driver says, making his best impression of Acne Scar guy's catatonic state. “I'm better than you when I'm drunk. I'm always happy.” Me too, I think. I mean, come on, what the heck is alcohol for if not to bring happiness to humankind? The gods created it to palliate the sufferings of the people.

I need a drink right away, I say to myself. It is obvious that Acne Scar guy also needs one. When the jeep speeds past a chain of shanties, vulcanizing shops, beauty parlors, and gas stations, he looks around and faces the driver again.
“Pare, there are always drinking sprees on this street, no?”
“We'll have ours, too, when Oktoberfest arrives. We will go to Ever,” the driver says.
“But that's not where they celebrate Oktoberfest!”
“Oh yes, stupid! It's celebrated everywhere, as long as you have beer.”

We stop at an intersection. Further ahead, the road rises up into a wide fly-over. Three girls wearing shorts approach the driver and thrust the sampaguita (fragrant Philippine flower) garlands they are selling. One of them, the eldest, who must be around fourteen years old, is wearing eyeliner and eyeshadow. The two younger girls, who are unbelievably pretty, resemble each other; sisters, no doubt. The girl with make-up smiles and holds out her empty hand without saying anything. The driver hands her some coins, payment for the garlands he has taken the other day.

“Buy this one too,” she demands.
“I've got no more dough,” the driver replies.
“You don't have to pay today. You can pay tomorrow, same arrangement.”
“No,” he is stern. He notices the youngest of the girls, who coyly holds up her flowers to him. “This girl's beautiful. Come here, pretty little thing!”
The girl approaches and automatically hands him a garland. The driver takes it and pays for it.
“Oh but take mine, too,” the girl with make-up says.
“No, I can only buy one today,” with that, the driver steps on the gas and the vehicle speeds up. I notice that the two pretty girls are barefoot as they walk away.
“Pare, those girls' mom must be very gorgeous, no?” I am relieved that Acne Scar guy hints at a desire for the mother, not for the kids.

The jeep traverses the flyover. Traffic is getting heavier. Acne Scar guy suddenly croaks out a line from some cheesy song. His voice is hoarse but loud and clear.
“You have a good singing voice, so full and rich,” the driver comments.
“Oh yes, pare! Wait till you hear me belt out 'Skylight Pigeon,'” and he shouts the first few bars of the song, as if sarcasm were a compliment. A minuscule piece of chewed peanut darts out of his mouth and lands on my right arm. I discreetly wipe it on my pants so as not to embarrass the singer. He notices it anyway. And he is not embarrassed.

I get off under a steel overpass painted in searing pink. The jeep zooms away, billows of smoke trailing behind it. I head toward the sidewalk, ruminating over the romance of public transportation in this country.

let's beat street kids to death, they're not human!

I was reading John Bayley to while away the time as I queued for my ticket at the train station. He was talking about his boredom as a bourgeois kid in a golf course somewhere in Littlestone, England in the 1930s. His hobby was to collect used golf balls and bury them in the sand like crocodile's eggs.

This childhood nostalgia was cut short when I heard a commotion. A few paces from where I was standing, a security guard lifted a long cane and brandished it in the air. A boy, a street kid, wearing a soiled, oversize blue shirt and a pair of blackened shorts, cowered on the ground beside him, refusing to stand up. I thought the guard merely wanted to scare him off the train station's premises because beggars weren't allowed there, but he grabbed his scrawny arm to make him stand and whacked him hard on the butt. The child pretended it didn't hurt. Not a sound came from him but the impact sent him sprawling on the floor. He covered his behind with his grimy hands.

The guard forcefully dragged him away and sent the cane whirring down again. I'm not sure which body part it hit because I turned away and looked at the violent scene again just in time to see the boy grimace in pain. Still, not a sound came from him. His face was again stern and resolute, the grimace having faded as soon as it appeared. The people who were impatiently queuing for their train tickets craned their necks to get a better look. Some women gasped. But most of them surveyed the incident with curiosity, if not with indifference.

The guard dragged the boy toward the stairs, beat him some more, this time more vigorously, and hurled him down the steps. The boy, of course, did not fall as he got hold of the railing and clung there like a cat under attack. The guard turned away and walked proudly back to the station. I heard some unintelligible cuss words from the boy and then something flew and hit the guard's nape. From afar, it just looked like an empty plastic bottle of water or something lighter. Infuriated, the guard turned and ran toward the stairs again, his stick and his truncheon ready to attack.

They exchanged curses and threats. He, no doubt, hit him again with his two weapons because I saw both his cane and his club rising and falling from behind the low concrete walls of the stairwell.

Having beaten down his enemy, the guard hurriedly went back to his post. He had the air of a soldier who had just done something patriotic for his country. Apparently, the boy wasn't ready to surrender. He ran up the stairs again and shouted in Tagalog: “You son of a whore! You can only do such things because you're a guard! You wait and see!” And he let loose more Tagalog expletives.

I got my ticket and walked with big strides toward the turnstiles. I had seen and heard more than I should. I stowed Bayley's book inside my bag, suddenly losing interest in reading about the travails of rich, English school boys.

the blender within

When words come out bland, I let my mind wander in some hard to reach corner of my being, hoping that it would find some gleaming phrases there. All it finds, however, are pieces of scrap metal strewn on the musty floor, rusting away but refusing to be thrown into the garbage bin. Some memories can be adamant like leeches. Or are they indeed memories? Or mere wads of thoughts that got stuck there after I have put off a major cleanup again for the umpteenth time? Cleaning up is a nasty business. How can I defragment a soul that frowns upon categorization? Everything is so mixed up in there I'm starting to think it has some sort of blender that eternally grinds down everything—memories, thoughts, ideas, emotions—to a mush, unrecognizable in its gooey viscosity. Now if you could find some words in that mess, lucky you. I can't. My mind should wander elsewhere.

dead face

I’ve been tossing and turning in bed and it’s already half past fucking four. Sunday mornings ought to be hazy and glittery as the hangover of the previous night starts to kick in. But no, I’m here, in my room, totally sober, trying to figure out ways on how I could doze off after counting three thousand, eight hundred sixty-four and a half sheep. I tried reading Harper Lee’s Pulitzer award winning novel but the letters just swam on the page like a bowl of dyslexic alphabet soup. So I got up to stare at my face in the mirror. I got scared with what I saw. Except for my shifty eyes under my bushy unibrow, I looked dead. This is how I would probably look inside my coffin—parched lips, dry skin, and glassy eyes (assuming that the mortician forgot to forcefully close my eyelids). I tried making faces but they all seemed as dull and lifeless as Jennifer Lopez’s acting. Now that’s really bad. Maybe I can become a Hollywood actor and contribute to the betterment of the human race by starring in B movies with plots only morons would applaud. That’s a good thought. But it doesn’t fare better than counting stupid sheep. Maybe I should try banging my head against the wall. But where’s the fun in that? If it were, say, my neighbor’s head, I would relish the experience, maybe even consider it divine. Or am I just envious of my cocaine-sniffing neighbor who is snoring his innards out while I’m still wide-awake, my face getting puffier every minute and looking more like a drug junkie than he ever could? And is the sky brightening up now or is it the hallucinatory effect of lack of sleep? I have to get back to bed. Now.

allow me to undress you

I won first place in the French poetry writing contest of the Alliance Française de Manille last summer. It was in celebration of the Printemps des Poetes (Spring of Poets), an annual international event held in French-speaking countries around world. I don't know exactly why they brought the event here when we're clearly not a francophone country. The only French thing that is popular among the masses here is the French fries. And it's not even French. It's merely an American abomination.

In a simple but elegant event at the lobby of Alliance Française in Makati, I read my poem in front of foreign dignitaries in their designer coats and ties, artists in their faded jeans and shirts, and writers/university professors in their boring plaid shirts and slacks. And of course, my supportive friends were there, too: Michelle, Dax, Dionne, Joven, Jera, Bianco, Oliver, and Riva (thanks so much for coming, I hope you enjoyed the wine). Two long buffet tables held food prepared by the embassies of France, Egypt, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Cambodia. Wine was overflowing at the bar and the air was thick with snatches of conversation in various languages.

Among those who read their poems were Gérard Chesnel, the French Ambassador to the Philippines; Virgilio S. Almario, National Artist for Literature; Gilles Vigneault, Secretary for Immigration at the Canadian Embassy; Geminio H. Abad, professor emeritus and fictionist at the University of the Philippines; Cesare A.X. Syjuco, multi-awarded multimedia artist; Alfred 'Krip' Yuson, writer and Palanca hall of fame awardee; Virginia R. Morena, playwright; Jaroslav Ludva, Czech Ambassador; Vim Nadera, UP professor and renowned performance poet; and Adrian Cristobal, a distinguished writer.

The program was opened by a kundiman (lyric Filipino love song sung in the classical style) duet by two opera singers. The woman, dressed in a splendid sequined Filipino gown, slowly descended from a long staircase while singing Minamahal Kita (I love you) in a milky soprano voice. The tenor waited onstage, singing his lines in response to the maiden's yearning. Such drama and pageantry can only be pulled off by the French.

In between songs, dances, and gulps of red wine, we read our poems. I have actually written this poem for Anouk, a blogger who interviewed me in this blog a long time ago. She asked me to write a four-line verse in French to woo her. Since the theme of the competition was Lettera Amorosa (Love Letters), I decided to submit it. I just added more lines. It luckily won. Because of my limited knowledge of the language, I tried to keep the poem simple so it sounded kind of amateurish. But what the heck, here it is. A rough English translation follows:

Permets-moi de te deshabiller

Je n’écris pas comme un écrivain très doué,
cueillant des mots lumineux au vent
et les échelonnant pour créer des poèmes
qui vivront après ma mort

Je ne pense pas comme un philosophe
dont âme vole avec les oiseaux perdus
et plonge dans la profondeur de l'océan,
en chassant la vérité qui n'éxiste plus

Je ne sais que je vis dans mon monde,
seule et isolé,
créant mes vérités, dechirant ma foi, bricolant mon idéologie

Mon cerveau raconte n’importe quoi.
Mes mots ne blessent que le vent mourant
Mais je peux te déshabiller et lire ton âme.

Allow me to me undress you

I don't write like a gifted poet,
plucking luminous words from the air
and stringing them to create poems
that will live long after my death

I don't think like a philosopher
whose soul flies with lost birds
and plunges into the depths of the ocean,
chasing a truth that no longer exists.

I only know how to live in my world,
alone and isolated,
creating my truths, destroying my faith, and making up my own ideology
My mind speaks nonsense
My words scathe nothing but the dying wind
But I can undress you and read your soul.

summary

My friend, Riva, showed me her old planner at her condo during one of her parties. Stapled on its pages were show tickets, bus tickets, fliers, and other pieces of paper that trigger memories of her studies in London.

“Don't you find it strange that your life can be summarized by a small planner?” I asked her.
She said she wouldn't exactly put it that way. These pieces of paper represented memories. These were imprints of her past.

Why indeed did I not see it that way? I myself had been going crazy trying to leave imprints of my mad existence in small notebooks, on my laptop, and later on, in this blog. Hell, I even keep the ticket of my first visit to Fort Santiago way back in gradeschool. Have I, in my mad rush to get on with the drudgery of work, forgotten to leave some pieces of myself behind?

One look at this blog will tell you how much I've neglected my chronicling duties. This blog was almost on the verge of nonexistence. Oblivion does seem comforting at times, especially when intrusion into one's privacy has already gnawed away portions of one's personal space. But I have learned to thrive here. I have loved offering myself naked to the gods and demons and all the other boring creatures in between. I have stripped my clothes off in this blog, both figuratively and literally, to expose my soul. You have, so far, been seeing me in all my nakedness, excess hair and all. The sublime and the hideous have all been mixed up here like jello and mud, each enhancing the flavor of the other.

Will I stop summarzing my life within these pages? I don't think so. Not while my alcohol-marinated dendrytes are still functioning. Not while I still find cathartic pleasure (or masturbatory delight, if you will) in exhuming my thoughts and laying them down on paper. Not when so many events, both forgettable and blissful, are taking me into a cycle of ennui and excitement, turning, whirling, rolling my consciousness into the mildly sour folds of transcendence.

I am back.

kinky omens, procrastination, and bathroom deodorizer

Seen from my bedroom window, the overcast sky seems less ominous. It does not foretell disasters. It merely hints at kinky omens. The fragrance of a garishly colored candle on my bed stand reminds me of bathroom deodorizer. It also reminds me to head off to the bathroom and take a shower before I run late for work today. Traffic will probably be bad and street urchins will have a grand time dousing windshields with soaped water in exchange for a few coins. Vendors will have a brisk sale of umbrellas that won’t open after the third use. Expletives and cusswords will come flying like bees as motorists try to outdo each other in owning the road. And I, well, I will be saddled with thoughts of things I should’ve done but didn’t do. The allure of procrastination and the beauty of regret that hounds it. The office party I missed last Friday has nothing to do with this. Nor the LF anniversary party last Saturday, where, after having psyched myself to down at least a dozen beers, I ended up finishing only half a bottle because I had LBM. Having LBM at a party is a disaster worse than the Great Deluge. Worse, indeed, than how doomsayers interpret the overcast sky outside my window right now. But I’ll have a worse fate if I don’t prepare to go to work now. The road will be swarming with procrastinators rushing to get to their offices today. And believe me, it will not be a good sight.

It’s great to be back.

stacked up packages, part 2

My dog Dorothy

That's me, horsing around with my niece and nephew while waiting for Christmas dinner

Clouds flirting with each other outside my bedroom window

stacked up packages

It might not be the best time to relieve one's mind of piss, or of scum, or of dirt baggage accumulated through years of somnolence. I've always spoken of memories as packages neatly tied by paper strings and nicely stacked up in some dingy part of my brain. They're always there but I'm not so sure which box contains which memory. Fine dust only adds to the confusion. I sneeze if I so much as finger through its raspy surfaces. These memory packages, whatever they contain, still feel luscious on my skin, though. Luscious and confusing. Like ketchup in your orange juice. I do not know how to regard them sometimes. They are no longer part of the soul that birthed them. Stacked up boxes take on a life of its own, as they are wont to do.

Tonight might not be the right time to relieve my brain of memories. The second month of the year is only halfway through. It's not right to bring all the boxes out and clean them one by one like children who have just mucked about in the park. Rituals follow the caprices of the moon. No maddened lunar voice has told me to do the 'memory-cleaning' ritual yet.

Why would I want to claw at mounds of memories, both rancid and creamy, when I am quite busy creating one at the moment? I have my hands full. This moment is the life. That cheap white wine gulped from huge coffee mugs is the life. The now. Like getting lost in a labyrinth of slimy alleys, in the midst of illegal aliens with awful accents selling imitation goods, for which my friend and I haggled unsuccessfully. Like connecting with an old friend and checking out chicks at the other table in a crowded fast food joint, even as we pluck old remembrances from the air like ripe mangoes. Like horsing around with nephews and nieces while waiting for Christmas dinner to get cooked. Like goofing around with my dog, Dorothy, who incessantly runs around my feet or clambers up my lap to have her belly scratched. Like swapping stories with my aging mother while the late afternoon sun heaves forgotten mantras. Like hearing the crisp click of the door knob against the jamb of my new room. Like bringing individually wrapped pieces of cheap milk chocolate to the canteen, pretending they are orgasm-inducing Swiss chocolate. Like playing the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata at high noon, my fingers straining to breathe life to boring delicatissimo passages even as my mind yearns to play the third movement in the distant, possibly unrealizable future. Like touching your face while you are curled up in bed, breathing out the song of your dream, a sad song, really, that reminds me of your imminent departure for the States. Will you remember me when you're already there? Will the same memories we have so beautifully created here tide you over the way they would my soul?

Irrelevant questions.

In an irrelevant world, it is almost blasphemous to ask irrelevant questions like these. Memories do not always provide consolation to the weary, nor succor to the lost. They merely sit quietly in that forgotten corner, smug and comfortable with their nice paper strings and dusty surfaces.

I, too, sit in front of my window at the end of the day, contemplating on the gathering cirrus clouds as they flirt with each other in dizzying oranges, pinks, purples, and yellows. I untie the paper string and open a package and smile at what I see. I had been so busy creating memories that I didn't notice I had been happy during that time. It's funny that I don't notice that. Only when I look back can I say that I had been happy. Truly happy.

And I only have flirty, garish clouds with me now to witness that happiness.

the fish bowl will be broken someday

Tagged by Randell.

Here are the rules of this tag.

1. Delve into your blog archive.

2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).

3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).

4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. Ponder it for meaning, subtext or hidden agendas.

5. Tag five people to do the same.

Here's the fifth line of my 23rd post:

"The water was pristine; the falls was splendid"

Water. My favorite element. My world. My life. Even the name of this blog involves a great deal of water. Fish in a Bowl. Water delicately framed by glass to form an artificial world where a fish can be viewed as it swims stupidly around. Although bound and restrained by glass walls, that water is nevertheless pristine. It smells of grass blades that daintily hold dew drops on its edges, swaying with the wind but never letting go of their crystal wards. Diamonds on green knives. It speaks of fruity metaphors trapped in velvet-lined boxes, ready to be opened for adoration. It calls to mind the sanctity of holy water held by stone angels in front of cathedrals, seducing the pious to dip his filthy fingers into it to signal the start of repetitive prayers and agonized wailings as gods in their garish satin and gold vestments idly watch. Absolution or damnation. It mimics the sensuous trickling of sweat beads that navigate the contours of breasts swollen with desire. Lust and love. It is the spit that a child leaves on grandma’s cheek after a long, wet, goodbye kiss. Possibly the last kiss grandma would ever get before she dies. Sweetness and death.

Imagine the water suddenly bursting free from the confines of the bowl and cascading out to freedom. Imagine a thousand fish bowls suddenly giving in to the pressure of the little bodies of water they held prisoners for years. Imagine them all pouring wildly out. Gushing. Roaring. Ravishing anything that blocks their way. An army of fish-bowl waters charging in full speed toward unseen enemies. Powerful. Strong. Torrential. That is my falls. A falls is nothing but an outpouring of a desire to be free. It draws its power from years of shackles and prison bars, of suppressed anger and stunted dreams, of yearnings razed even before it started to blossom. When pristine water finally finds the guts to break its fish bowl, only then can it become a falls, potent and splendid. And it will no longer smell of dew on grass blades or sweat on fiery skin. It will smell of rivers gone berserk and oceans devouring the hapless.

If you found any sense in this shit, consider yourself tagged.

defragmentation

When so many thoughts are tussling in my head and I can’t even begin to decipher what each of them really means, I sit and pause and reflect like a monk with a shaved head. It might be futile to find meaning in the universe and ponder on some feel-good Coelhoen conspiracy shit that only Oprah would excitedly jump up and down for. Neither do I feel like waxing philosophical about my existence. I’ve long abandoned ontological and metaphysical inquiries on sober days. I reserve them for drinking sprees, when the mind is made more brilliant by alcohol and the tongue finds eloquence in sisig. Hell, everybody thinks he’s Nietzsche when drunk. I sit and reflect just to make sense of what my neurons are trying to say, lulling my body to catatonia in between defragmenting my brain cells and discarding unused memories that are caked with three feet of dust and grime in one of the dank crevices of my brain. I have no need of memories and thoughts that resurrect rancid blood and stale semen. I need some change, dynamic change.

Having been reminded of mortality, I snatched a floating thought about epitaphs, specifically my epitaph. How do I want people to remember me when I’m gone? For someone who lives his life regardless of what others may say, I find such a thought irrelevant. So, yeah, I guess I will just discard that one. Mad thought. Who the hell cares about what they’d write on my tombstone? They can engrave moron or butthead there for all I care. I will have had more important things to attend to by that time, like thinking about what species of worms I will allow into my body to hasten my decomposition. I should just think of happy corpse thoughts. Cadaver business. Putrefaction catalysts.

I might not even be buried at all. I’m seriously toying with the idea of donating my body to science. I mean, what’s the point of having a grand send-off complete with elegant hearse and shit when you’ll just end up a pile of stinking, decaying biological waste? I might as well find good use for my body when I’m dead. Just imagine how titillating it is to be stripped naked, ogled at, and tinkered with by medical students in some sterilized laboratory. Oh, yes, that’s good, slice me with a scalpel, yeah, spank me with surgical stainless steel tools, fuck my left ventricle with a spatula, vacuum my blood and cut up my liver, oh, watch my blood squirt, yeah. It’s like a cadaver’s total sexual fantasy. Even in death, it’s nice to be the center of some mad, bloody orgy. Now that’s a happy corpse thought. I’d adopt that. Proceed to next thought.

During my initiation rites into some Society years ago, I was given a brooch engraved with the group’s insignia and three Greek letters representing the Society’s name. I was also made to recite our motto in Greek and then in English—“Let the love of learning rule humanity.” After my stint in the real world—which sucks big time, by the way—I feel I’ve betrayed that motto.

Coming in and out of graduate school, changing courses but never finishing any, and getting Incompletes in major MA subjects don’t exactly embody some noble motto on learning. After imploring my college dean to take me back in after a year of Absence Without Leave (AWOL), I stayed for one dull semester and then went AWOL again. I don’t know how else I would beg for them to readmit me. I’ve run out of sappy stories and pathetic histrionics.

Just recently, at the office, I signified interest in this eLearning scholarship on trade matters and international economy. Just a few hours of online discussions and research per week for one whole year and I’d get a handsome certificate of completion. I don’t know if I could sustain interest in a topic as remote to me as the South Pole. But that’s better than pickling my brain. Or is it? Hell, I don’t know. But what the heck, I’d still go through it if only to know how much self-inflicted torture I am capable of enduring.

I’m still studying German and French but find them utterly useless in my life right now. Unless I decide to move to Europe in the near future, which seems like a swell thought. Unrealistic, but swell. I got rejected in the MA scholarship I applied for in the Netherlands because my office favored an older, more qualified employee. There goes my ‘learning rules humanity’ motto. But, come to think of it, isn’t what I’ve been doing—reading books on my own, living life with a keen eye, drawing wisdom from the people I meet—aren’t they all part of learning? Is it obligatory that I go back to school and slave away under the rigors of academic convention? Can I not learn boxed-in archaic knowledge on my own and engage in intellectual masturbation with the Internet? Or is it just the voice of a failure that is me sour-graping because I wasn’t able to achieve what society thinks I should’ve achieved at this point? Maybe. Maybe not. Bad thought. Discard.

What’s a school junkie to do now but wait for god’s spare weed to fall off like manna from heaven? Which brings me back to my good old college days. I should’ve tried smoking weed back in college, when my friends rolled out woven mats on a grassy patch of land beside the Faculty Center and started puffing their way to nirvana in broad daylight. But I guess that’s just not my thing. I can get a natural high on other less destructive vices and become a demigod in my own delusions. A demigod that tries so hard to inch back to Olympus after having been evicted unceremoniously.

What if gods and deities did not drown with the sinking of Atlantis? What if they survived Vesuvius’ eruption in ancient Pompeii? What if they still thrive in some virtual Olympus, still fighting and hurling lightnings and lusting and feasting with grand passions of Herculean proportions? What if they still hold sway over everything we do and we just don’t know it? What if I am indeed a demigod and I am unconsciously controlling the destiny of lesser beings? What if we are all lesser creatures being manipulated by a god or gods? Some crappy version of the Matrix? What if gods exist and are actually walking among us, silently taking down notes like Quality Control Engineers intending to improve on their next batch of creations? Mad thought. But plausible.

One can’t discount the possibility of the impossible. If the President can conjure votes out of thin air and still sincerely believe that she has the mandate of the people, then why can’t we believe that there may be things we haven’t grasped yet? Or at least, give it a thought. Things that reason frowns upon but intuition favors. Things that are not part of our realm of experience but are nevertheless extant. I’m not about to propose that we wholeheartedly embrace theism like a bunch of idiotic fundamentalist maniacs. Far from it. I’m driving at something deeper, something more profound than the existence of supernatural beings. Something like the concept of parallel universes, of bent time, of warped realities, of a whole new system of physics and metaphysics. Jostein Gardner’s insinuation that this whole universe and everything that happens in it are just in somebody else’s brain may not be too far-fetched. We have, after all, invented religions and other myths positing similar concepts. Or, are these concepts just offshoots of our failure to comprehend what we perceive? Attempts to make sense of the baffling mysteries this world is so pregnant with? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’m drunk. These thoughts are labeled ‘for drinking sprees’ only. Defragment. Hell, maybe I am really drunk. I am Nietzsche. I am Foucault. I am Kant. Or Cunt. Whatever. Please pass the sisig.

Defragmentation done. Would you like to clean up your Temporary Internet Folder now?

Yeah, fuck off, Einstein. Or come and drink with me. Or, yeah, whatever.

sisig

open up my brain and lick my dendrites

When blogging is already as ancient as Glenn Close and nobody writes anymore because everyone has found nobler things to do like staying up late at night to watch re-runs of Britney Spears’ concerts; when people already think that nothing’s wrong with canonizing George W. Bush; when all teachers are catatonic and all students shove cocaine suppositories up their asses for breakfast; when mothers contemplate on drowning their infants for having a mole on the left cheek instead of on the right; when the neighborhood cat fornicates with a paralyzed armadillo; when all computer systems in the world crash and everyone thinks it’s god punishing the perverts; when Bill Gates becomes a beggar; when Michael Jackson turns black again and starts jacking off over Captain Hook instead of Peter Pan; when the Philippines is already a superpower and makes the entire planet its empire and imposes Corruption as a universal diplomatic policy; when I write stupid, senseless sentences such as these (and nauseating alliterative phrases like that), you would know that I’m bored.

I need some serious brain surgery.

what we know

I painted this back in 2001. It hangs inside my office cubicle but nobody takes notice of it. I entitled it What We Know, to symbolize the little piece of knowledge humans have against the vastness of uncharted and possibly unknowable information, realities, and truths in the universe. It’s my stand against absolutism, my critique against those who have a predilection to generalize, to peddle absolute truths without knowing that what they actually see is just a fraction of an infinite sky; their knowledge as tiny as a quark against a heaving, evolving mammoth organism. We merely see things through this tiny window, and perhaps it is not humanly possible to see more than that, not in one lifetime, not even in one millennium.

When I showed this to my French teacher during our bring-a-picture-and-describe-it day in French class way, way back, he asked in French why I chose to paint a gothic window like those found in churches. I said I had no particular reason for choosing it. He then posited another explanation. The window, he said, can represent the Church or organized religion that blocks reality/truth and allows only a portion of it to be seen by the people. I never thought of it that way before. I must say his interpretation holds water.

What do you see?

i touched my chest again

Memories and friends grow on your skin like a sweeping bas-relief. I have mine cleanly carved on my chest. I might not see it as often as I want to but it’s just there, silently waiting. Erica made me caress my chest again. Painful and sweet. Remembrance squishes me to a pulp and resurrects who I was years ago, back when my job hasn’t forged prison bars yet; when I used to swish into the dialectics of life and art; when I used to get drunk with the craziness that only theater people can elegantly get away with. It was both cerebral and visceral. Thanks, Erica, for bringing back the memories. Yes, we can start weeping again.

"Bound Faith"

Model: Erica

Photographed by Nelz Agustin

plastic creatures

Boredom. Shrek and the dragon are on my desk. Plastic beings on particleboard terrain. I am their god, omniscient and wrathful. I tried placing them really close to each other once to see if they would fuck. They never did. Stupid, frigid, plastic creatures. Even my divine will is subservient to theirs. They desire—oh they do—passionately. And why should I forbid them to?

A few inches from where they stand is the desk’s edge from where they could fall off and lose one of their plastic limbs. And their omniscient god might not be there to pick them up as he is busy obeying the whims of a higher god who, in turn is busy kissing the ass of an even higher god who is probably filing her nails up in her posh office at the topmost floor. The hierarchy of ass-kissing can be confusing like mutant coffee blends. If Shrek and the dragon knew that I don’t give a hoot about them, can their plastic neurons still convince their plastic hearts that I am full of love and compassion? Would they think less of me if they knew that I also have less magnanimous gods to serve? Would they revolt if they found out that I tried to initiate a mating season for them, without their knowledge? But I love both of them, like a master loves his slaves.

It is a god’s prerogative to dispense love like that, as much as it is a tyrant’s entitlement to warp history, defiling the sacred and valorizing the iniquitous. I, too, am a plastic creature in a bigger particleboard terrain. But I do know what my gods have done and are doing. And I will not fall for some cheaply engineered trick to mate with another plastic creature. I live my life guided by my passions, consciously avoiding the edge of the desk lest I plummet down the abyss, knowing fully well that my gods will do nothing but stare and mutter “oh there goes another one.” I wish I didn’t know.

Ignorance can sometimes conjure wonders. Bliss, as they say, comes with it. And solace, too. Ignorance makes you look forward to a glowing future, however nebulous, however implausible. Ignorance, like faith, promises troves of dreams fluffier than your pillows. But once you believe, you get shackled to the whims of the gods. Then they pull the strings and start the puppet show to the shrieks of a rowdy mob demanding carnal entertainment. You get used to the charade and start believing that the show’s thin plot is your life.

Jester’s hats.

Luscious Frills.

Painted smiles.

Satin dominoes.

On the other hand, those who are cognizant of the grim truth have grown morose and brooding, but unshackled. Free to obey the dictates of their hearts. Free from the grip of hollow institutions. For they know that institutions stand for nothing but the interests of their founders. Beliefs are spread not necessarily because of the noble goals they preach. So they trod on with scabby feet, nursing their troubles with reason. That can be hard. That is why some vainly wish they could cling again to the solace that empty rituals bring.

I am part of that pack now. I am way past the point of no return. There are times when I do miss being in the comfort zone of a puppet show in which every scene is contrived and sure. But I cannot stand having shackles on my feet and hands. My outlook is a lot clearer now, grim and raw, yes, but clearer. Life can be grim and raw, too. At times, I even think that the abyss at the edge of the desk holds things more concrete than fluffy dreams. I will get there. In time.

And then the plastic creatures on my desk will rejoice at the loss of their omniscient and wrathful god.

orgasmic

Bows glided in fury. Masses of red locks wildly thrashed. Black gowns creased and rumpled over quivering legs excited by cleanly executed trills. And Poulenc did cartwheels onstage.

Oboes pedaled up in silky restraint. Young, white, feminine muscles on bare arms contracted with every agonized pianissimo. Eyelashes flitted like flies escaping the swat. And Prokofiev limped gaily with one leg.

Flabby cheeks shook jelly-like with passion. Worn-out leather shoes traced the rhythm on the carpeted floor. The uncontrolled tittering of a half-Japanese, half-French violinist infected the crowd with mirth. And Debussy jacked off in front of us.

“She must have had jutes, that girl,” my seatmate, a classmate in German class, was referring to the giggling half-Japanese performer. Maybe I had jutes, too. I could feel it. Either that or the wine I had gulped in the lobby was now tickling my brain cells. And my limp body was surfing the air thick with the wailing of strings.

One more number and I was already one of those animals in Saint-Saëns’ Le Carnaval des Animaux, jumping about in ecstasy, cavorting to the bassoon’s gossips.

The French performers had requested that the aircon be turned off. It’s bad for the instruments, they claimed. The Francisco Santiago Hall of PCI Bank was, therefore, a bit warm that night. Add to that the heat generated by the young musicians whose passion seared the walls, and of course, the hot, heavy breathing of the guy seated on my left, who was already seeing talking cellos and walking clarinets in his dreams.

The zest of the performers was contagious. It was clearly their life. And they were living every note of it. Every flick of the bow, every dizzying cadenza, every squirting glissando was relished. They were enjoying the whole experience, and so was I.

Fingers stabbed the ivory keys. Applause attacked the ceiling like drugged bats. Seats clinked and creaked as the audience rose for an ovation. And I had an orgasm.

to the stage

It’s good to be worlds away from moronic Hollywood crap once in a while. Last weekend I was back to my old love, the theater.

Friday night, I sprinted to the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ (CCP) Little Theater to watch the ballet recital of my nine-year-old niece, Shekanyah Grace. I played the doting uncle to a proudly beaming little niece in a stiff tutu.

Entitled Vive la Danse, the two-night show featured French children’s songs and folk tunes, to which girls (and two boys) danced excitedly. The performance was faulty, what with a riot of shaky arabesques and uncertain pliés. But amateurish recitals are not watched for the performers’ virtuosity. You go there to cheer for a relative or a friend, which was exactly what some members of the audience did, rather overenthusiastically. They hysterically shouted “Bravo” or “That’s my daughter!” or “My daughter is there!” or “We love you Opalyn!” everytime their daughters went onstage. One guy, in an attempt to be funny, even shouted “My daughter’s not there!”

I almost screeched “Who the fuck cares? Go grab your freaking daughters and get the hell out of this theater!” Maybe there should have been a lecture on theater etiquette before the show. If Bobby Garcia were there, he would’ve thrown a tantrum.

I see some promise in Shekanyah’s performance. Although she still dances rather carelessly at times and she still has some pockets of baby fat, she already has the grace and the limberness of a ballerina. She was, in fact, one of the two students who got Distinction when their ballet class was evaluated by an Australian ballet school a few months ago. That means she’ll be flying to Sydney sometime soon for a ballet scholarship. I’m so proud of her.

What bothered me, though, was the speech of their head ballet teacher. Before the recital started, she came out in a micro-mini, showing off her long legs in distractingly white stockings, and sat on a black bench onstage. Reading from a black folder, she said she had asked the Lord to give her her own ballet company because she wouldn’t want her “girls” to be swallowed up by mainstream ballet groups that would make them wear sexy costumes, dance sensual dances, and star in “Dracula, the Ballet.” Then, she led a prayer so that she and her “girls” would be in the right artistic path, or something like that.

If all ballerinas had this mindset, I guess we’d end up with nothing but the ballet version of “The Passion of the Christ.” And then the line between art and religious propaganda would forever be blurred.

Saturday night, I was in RCBC Theater in Makati for Actor’s Actor Inc.’s Once on This Island. After seeing the first scene, I knew that it was going to be a great show. Some familiar theater stalwarts were in the cast and they hinted at a promise of a great performance.

There was Menchu Lauchengo-Yulo (who gave a sensitive portrayal of Ellen in the Manila run of Miss Saigon and who was such a hilarious witch in Trumpets’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), Michael De Mesa (a fine film actor who played Collins with depth in Rent, although his singing leaves much to be desired), Bituin Escalante (her Mimi in Rent was one of the most memorable; who wouldn’t be enthralled with her huge voice?), Bodjie Pascua (any theater person who doesn’t know this veteran thespian must seriously think of changing careers now) Jett Pangan, May Bayot, and other familiar talents with unbelievably soulful voices.

Surprisingly, Jeffrey Hidalgo was part of the cast (unless it was just some guy who looked like him; I didn’t get to buy a souvenir program so I have no way of checking). It wasn’t hard to notice him among the talented cast members. He stuck out like a wad of booger on a glass tabletop. His accent was distracting and he was too boringly plain to essay the role of a handsome and appealing French mulatto. His character came out flat, drab, and uninspiring. His pop singing style, albeit not lacking in control (in fairness to him, he has improved a lot since his That’s Entertainment days), was ill-suited for the character, making one think what on earth Ti Moune found so lovable about him. Whatever German Moreno taught him in his now-defunct inane teen show did not prepare him for the legitimate stage.

(Little bit of trivia: he was in the same ROTC battalion as I was back in college. I remember we used to snicker derisively whenever he would ask permission from our commander to go home early. We thought, since it was a Saturday, he still had to prepare for some Vegas-style, Bellastar-type production number in Saturday Entertainment. The price you have to pay for being one of Kuya Germs’ boys, or gels.)

But Jeffrey was a minor distraction. The fire of the rest of the cast was enough to salvage the show. All throughout the musical, they swung from character to character; did some SM work; became human props; and supported each other on a minimalist stage draped with native bamboo Venetian blinds. The energy never waned, which riveted the audience. The singing was restrained and controlled. Despite the wild dancing and thrashing onstage, their voices, amazingly, still sounded clear, tireless, and powerful.

Still humming the last line of the last number (…that’s why we tell the story…), I came home refreshed that night. I think I would make veering away from idiotic Hollywood rubbish a habit from now on.

my pigsty

Not so long ago, feeling all the angst, passions, yearnings, and idealism of a gung-ho, non-conforming, agnostic, defy-all-institutions dreamer was very much acceptable and would not be seen as a fleeting juvenile fixation.

Now, it is regarded, at best, as a dangerous idiosyncrasy that must be tamed, if not totally suppressed. There are just so many rules to consider. You suddenly get knocked off by a massive wall of restrictions. And however hard you try to turn the other way, you just can’t. You’re forced to face it, or rot.

And then, like a cowering animal, you slowly crawl on all fours into the silky folds of conformity, abrading your palms and knees with its nauseating softness and mind-numbing mediocrity.

Everyone looks alike. Everyone speaks the same language. Dissent is gunned down. Individualism is seen as a deviance. Unorthodoxy gets quarantined along with leprosy.

Your wings are clipped to give way to boring feet bound in tight shoes whose leather was the result of murdering poor cattle. You are instructed to follow to the letter a manual of decorum and ethics that wrings the last drop of humanity from your dehydrated body. You are forced to melt your ego and re-forge it into something that is in keeping with their image.

And when you’ve emerged as your new self, dressed, as you are, in a fine suit, you hardly recognize your reflection. You wonder if there is still a soul inside that breathes the same fire that had tempered your psyche ages ago. But no, it is no longer there. In its place is a cold mist that feeds on pragmatism.

Is there a way out of all these? Perhaps you could try flying despite your clipped wings and heavy leather shoes. But you doubt your powers now, because flying requires more than tons of steely drive and determination, most especially in your sorry state. They have mangled you so much that your primal strength would only permit you calculated, delicate movements within the confines of their pigsty.

You think of other ways to escape but find yourself wanting the necessary creativity to execute them; creativity being one of the first things that they had siphoned out of your system. What would you do? How would you prod on?

Don’t ask me. I don’t know the answer. As soon as I get out of my own pigsty, I’ll tell you what to do.

wife's checklist

A Wife’s Checklist

If you find the door ajar when you come home tonight,
Don’t kick the dog,
Check the fridge, your dinner’s waiting for you;
Heat it up, and please, wash the dishes after eating
I won’t be there to clean after you.

I left your fresh socks up in our bedroom,
The rest of your clothes are still in the laundry;
Pick them up after dinner
Oh, and please empty the trash can as you go,
It’s been breeding roaches and mice the last time I checked.

Rent is due next week,
You’ll find the money on your desk
Use the change to buy a carton of milk for Tom-tom
He’s been feasting on coke and rootbeer lately,
You know that’s not good for his health.

The plumber’s coming over tomorrow morning
To fix the leaking faucet in the kitchen sink.
Keep on eye on him,
Never fully trust a stranger even if he looks harmless
Scoundrels come in many shapes and sizes.

You don’t need to talk to Tom-tom
To explain everything
I already did it for you.
Besides, you wouldn’t know what to say
He understands me more than your leather belt.

You need not trouble yourself with the legalities
I hired two topnotch lawyers to take care of that
The annulment papers would be delivered to you next week
You don’t have to read them
I just need your signature.