After almost two years, I met him again three afternoons ago. I just finished with my writing class when I saw him waiting for something or somebody outside the library. He seemed not to have changed a bit. He was wearing the same black plastic rimmed eye glasses I remember he has been wearing six years ago when I first met him at UP.
He was then a senior BS Bio student; I was at that time a confused BS Bio freshman who was about to quit college because of another Math 17 (Algebra and Trigonometry) exam of which I already failed twice in a row. Instead of studying and doing practice tests, I was at the library that time reading the Diary of Franz Kafka edited by Max Brod. He approached me and asked about the multi-colored tubao I was wearing around my neck. He pointed out, at our first meeting, how I was so desperate in differentiating myself from the rest of the crowd by donning that dreadful piece of fabric like a noose. His nerve intimidated me. However, it did not occur to me to question why he was wearing a hat made from nipa grass which also looked funny on him. I saw him around the campus indifferently walking as if it was but natural to wear that strange-looking hat. And there he was, commenting on my tubao which I must admit, imbued on me a character of a jokester.
For me then, he was the most radical, the weirdest, and the most original student at UP. He set the highest bar on how far one can get in order to separate oneself from the brain-deadening crowd. He introduced me to the philosophies of Marx without him being a Marxist; to the value of a revolution that will change the entire Filipino mindset, but mind you, this revolution is mired with ironies as, according to him, the only necessary participant in this revolution is himself.
He is three years my senior but finished his bachelor’s degree in 2009 after changing his thesis several times, from the behavior of drones during mating, to some experiments on mud crab, and finally settling with something which he dubbed as groundbreaking—salinity tolerance of the larval stage of two species of crabs.
And three afternoons, after not having seen each other for almost two years, instead of the perfunctory questions about what adventures each has gone through during those years, we opted to forgo this part and decided to dive head on and tackle issues of import. We had a very long unplanned, almost meandering conversation about my angst and but mostly about his compulsion, no obsession, in transforming this world into a place for intellectuals. It has always been how he wanted it to become.
He’s considering the ‘public clamor’ for him to run for the highest office in the land; after all he is qualified, he said. He was so fiery while delivering his speeches. I felt like an insignificant mortal walking beside the next president of the country. Only to realize rather late that he’s only 27.
He ran for Barangay Captain in his hometown of Bugasong, Antique. Not counting the votes he got from himself (of course), his parent, and two siblings, he got two additional votes, which gave him seven votes, out of the 470 total population of his barangay. He did not view this defeat a failure. In fact he was happy because had he won in that election, he wouldn’t have finished university. Aside from being the most radical, the weirdest, and the most original, he’s also the most disposed to take the most favorable view of things. A true-blue optimist.
We walked under the intense afternoon sun to my favorite place famous for its batchoy and coconut water, where my best friend and I used to frequent during college. Unfortunately, it closed a year ago and in its place now stands a furniture shop. So in lieu, I invited him to drink softdrinks at OMPs, a local bar that faces the university entrance. But a bottle of cold Redhorse beer was more tempting than anything. He only gave me a smile when I asked the woman at the counter to pour the contents into plastic bags and asked for plastic straws.
Nothing beats a carefree afternoon spent conversing with an old friend, walking our way to an undetermined direction, and drinking cold beer in plastic bags and sipped the alcoholic content using plastic straws. This while the sun is radiating heat in full glory overhead.
Rodelo’s one of those few people I’ve met who has remained faithful to his identity, who has held on to what he has believed when he was younger, who has truly gone against the current of general hysteria and calming boredom.
Making me so envious, because I can never be like him.
I have a high regard for rock artists. This does not mean that I am a fan of rock stars. They are altogether different entities. I do not really care much about the headbanging ‘rock stars’ whose egos are as vulnerable as their shaken brains after a performance. But fledgling rock artists are a completely different story and a category in itself of artists who need more than anything, respect and a concert environment where they can perform for themselves without the exacting demands of rock fans on coolness and rebelliousness, where they can bang their heads out in the name of their music.
Rock artists begin their exploration of the possibilities of their art in the universities. The university plays a crucial role in ensuring that these artists are given the opportunities to pave their way to redefine rock music and to free it from the banalities of mainstream rock that has less to do with music than with personalities whose excessive use of eyebrow pencils keeps the eyebrow pencil industry afloat, whose leather pants constrict their testicles to a debilitating effect in the event they decide to have their own progeny, and whose view of the world is limited within the enclosures of a jam packed stadium. The university, however, has been found wanting in this task of encouraging the flourishing of rock music as most rock concerts in the universities are organized by students. Although it is not my object to denigrate the capability of students to organize but in most cases, and in all the concerts I’ve attended at the University of the Philippines Visayas spearheaded by overeager students clubs and organization, all these rock concerts turned out to be dead serious failure.
Below are the DOs when organizing a rock concert bound to be a flop:
1. Let lousy freshmen or sophomore students host the program. You’ll never know when they will commit stupid blunders such as forgetting the name of the band that performed 27 seconds ago and then wanting to sound cool like social climbing kolehiyalas would go on saying “You’ve just heard from the Jesus Cradle Rock….uhm…whatever.” You just do not know how this ‘whatever’ will forever scar the rock artists, forcing them to recoil back to their dark rooms with satanic pictures pasted on the walls. And the world will never hear from them again as they’ve all decided that being a wrist-slitting emo is more cool.
2. Be late; be excruciatingly late. Begin the concert two hours from the set time; bore the audience until they reach a level of exasperation that whatever pleadings made by the rock artists to change the world, end hunger and poverty, save the environment, or make love not war will be met by nothing but empty beer cans thrown at them. The organizers, meanwhile, are spared from ire of audience, who felt sacked and cheated after a long wait only to hear an unfamiliar and incomprehensible alternative rock piece composed by some unknown.
3. Choose a proportionately huge venue; the rule: the size of the place should directly proportional to the organizers’ perception of themselves and their perceived ability to gather a crowd. A venue similar to the size of Woodstock is the minimum. This will allow a glaring contrast between the venue’s vast expanse and the almost desolate area for the audience. Now this one is a classic epitome of minimalism, a philosophy espoused by some of our rock artists who think ahead of their time.
4. There’s no point in vigorously marketing the concert. In the age of Facebook, Twitter, webgroups, and send-to-many text messages, traditional marketing efforts are just a waste of time and money. But keeping some semblance and being a bit faithful to these vestiges of the old times, rock concert organizers may resort to hastily made banners declaring their intention to stage a concert. Tarpaulins are rather expensive and too bourgeois, so to heighten the effect of a concert existing solely for art’s sake, use those cheap looking banners made from recycled rice sacks. Voila! Art juxtaposed with social equitability and a hint of Marxist commentary.
5. The first-time hosts should strive to be as tasteless as possible–they can run about the stage, take pictures of themselves using cameras of their phones, and make pathetic remarks such as ‘whatever’ whenever a name of a band escapes them. In the event of an inevitable flop, the host may be requested to announce to the audience to text their friends to come to the venue as the concert is for free. A form of desperation in its ultimate form in as far as lack of taste is concerned.
6. Invite half of the entire police force of the city. This way, aside from ensuring public safety, they can inadvertently contribute to the size of the crowd. Furthermore, who knows, one of them may spot a silent observer like this blogger, and basing on how he looks, single him out to be the likeliest to make fun of the concert and write about how it flopped.
…I will suddenly feel as if I’m no longer really there but watching from the sidelines. I’ll begin to daydream. If I’m feeling pessimistic, I think only about how bored I am. Either way, a voice inside urges me to go back to the room and sit down at the table.
I have no idea how most people answer such voices, but my manner of response turns people like me into writers. My guess is that it turns us more typically into writers of prose and of fiction than of verse. Here, then, is a bit more insight into the properties of the medicine I must make sure to take every day. We can see now that its active ingredients are boredom, real life, and the life of the imagination.
(Orhan Pamuk, The Implied Author, Other Colors Essays and a Story, Vintage. New York: 2007)
Classes have just started and, except for my class in Introduction to Journalism with so few students enrolled I could hear myself breathing while I am giving lectures, I can almost feel I’m indeed back to a setting where I think I am at my best—the academe.
I’ve been away from the university for a year and a half, and it’s not easy to come back when a lot of things have changed, gone, and been replaced. Now I know how students who after a decade of hiatus come back to continue their studies feel, only that in my case I am teaching. But the underlying realities, and difficulties, about dealing with change remain static. For somebody whose life is in a constant flux, confronting change is nothing new to me. I write because my tolerance for boredom is nearly nil. I realized that saying this places me in a very embarrassing position that forces me to admit that I am bored, forever under the spell of unbearable ennui. That’s why I cannot give up writing.
And although life in the academe is not as exciting, as defined in the more bacchanalian sense, compared to life outside, the realities we create inside its intellectual atmosphere is still as real as all other realities we can think of. These realities are as worthy of being documented.
But if before, during my insouciant existence in Manila, I could just write about anything my mind cared to write and post them in this blog site, disregarding any rule of decency and propriety, this time I decide to change the course a bit not only in the manner the posts are written but also the subjects of my short essays, commentaries, and opinions. This is not because of the want to come out wearing the same color of feathers as my colleagues. Only the desire to share my thoughts, this time more distilled; and it is hoped, more mature.
I once accompanied my friend, Chi Le, to one of the many ‘street bookstores’ in Hanoi. And there I was amazed at my first site of books, piled on top of each other beside a busy highway, by the world’s greatest writers: Borges, Sinclair Lewis, Camus, Flaubert, Hemingway, Buck in Tieng Viet, Vietnam’s national language.
Although most Vietnamese college students do not read and write in English, this does not mean, however, that they are deprived of the chance to read these classics of world Literature. In fact, having these books in their language places them at an advantage because the burden brought by mentally translating every word and phrase has already been eliminated allowing them to proceed in doing something of even greater importance, and that is seeing themselves and their experiences in the context of these works.
Most Vietnamese students are knowledgeable about these great authors and their works only that they learned about them in their native language. It is worth noting, nonetheless, that most of these works that are considered canons were originally written in a different language, not in English, as these are mostly English translations.
In the Philippines, things are totally different. Most Filipinos look down on works written in Filipino or any regional language. No one is interested in translating these works to Filipino because reading them in English is more ‘convenient’, some are even skeptical that Filipino has enough stock of words in vocabulary to accurately capture the thoughts in the original work. Some would even declare that English is easier to read and understand than Filipino
But who do we fool? Our students’ English proficiency is on a rapid decline. The ubiquity of BPO companies in the country is giving us a skewed perception of the general condition of the use of English in the country. Granting that we’re able to mimic the American twang or the British nonchalance when speaking, we’re missing the point if majority of the population is living in the darkness of assumed literacy.
And from this something got through me. This blog Salìn, a Filipino word that means ‘translated’ is the product of this desire to make these works more accessible to the reading public. As an initial public offering, I am posting here my translation of an article written by my favorite essayist Umberto Eco. In the mean time, as I am yet to develop fluidity in style and faithfulness to the originals, I shall begin translating shorter articles by Eco from his brief anthology of essays called “How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays” and will eventually try doing more ambitious translation projects.
http://raconteurist.bravejournal.com
From where I am seated I could see the bluish gray mountains of Davao giving way to orange slits that are this day’s first lights of dawn. I’m at the international airport of this southern city waiting for my 6:30 flight to Iloilo City.
I thought that last night was going to be a blast, but it was nothing but a boring one spent watching cable reruns while eating bland food in a seedy motel some three kilometers from SM City. Using a mall to orient one’s self is nothing odd for most Filipinos as almost all major cities boast their own SM mall. And for a city one is not quite familiar with, like Davao City, I am left at the mercy of a department store to find myself in the greater scheme of existence.
I’ll be in my favorite city in the world an hour from now.
There is something explicitly funny, if not implicitly fishy, in the way we Filipinos think.
An ABS-CBN reporter praised people falling in line in front of different COMELEC offices in Manila until the wee hours of the evening catching special registrations scheduled by the Commission without mentioning that these people were there because they procrastinated, ignoring the almost one year given to them to register to vote for May.
http://wagnalang.wordpress.com
Chiz Escudero, one of the front liners in this presidential election is brandishing change and non-traditional politicking, but his ads are flagrantly traditional showing him in the time-tested and trite politician’s handshake with sampaguita garlands on his neck and bodyguards that keep a safe distance between him and the affectation of the public. There was, however, no mention of his platform of government, only a very broad, undefined clamor for change which only he probably knows what type, made even murkier by his lengthy, monotonous, and overly empathic statements. Change what? Lemme ask.
Filipino congressmen, 20 or more of them in the Lower House, are going to Las Vegas to watch Manny Pacquiao’s fight against Miguel Cotto on November 15. This is despite criticisms from some people in their league and the public. Still these 20 or so gutless politicians are pursuing their plans, unmindful of the negative public opinion. After all, this so called ‘public opinion’ has long been dismissed as a vestige of the golden age of Philippine politics, unnecessary and purposeless; this concept has long lost is power to influence the actions of our politicians. And it will not matter now, on November 15, or any time soon.
Moreover, to most Filipino politicians, there’s no better political ad than being seen, even for a split-second, beside Pacquiao after he knocked Cotto unconscious.
ABS-CBN’s Parol (Christmas lantern) ni Bro was just lighted. Now, it must inspire a different kind of hope in somebody who is crestfallen after a tiring day at work, riding a non air-conditioned bus plying EDSA-Kamuning flyover, and to see from a distance this giant hybrid lantern supposedly meant to symbolize the infant Christ. Something which he knows is nothing but another commercial posing.
Noynoy Aquino’s poll ad, which started airing last week, is another talk-of-the-town. For the first time, I saw Noynoy Aquino confident about himself, so sure that he’ll have May 2010. He’s never been like this before. He was an under-accomplished son of two heroes, whose only bill made to a law is changing the status of an obscure street in Tarlac, his home province, to a national highway.
Unable to prove himself, he unsuccessfully attempted to embrace the shadows that are bigger than he is. Caught by circumstance, he reluctantly accepted the challenge to lead a wounded country, thinking that having heroes for both parents is enough to bring change. In the desperation of the Filipino people for change, they are willing to literally try anyone, even an untried son of heroes.
And being one of them, this blogger, a Filipino himself, writes these queer thoughts about topics whose subjects are these odd island people.
The moon outside is simply stunning. I hope everyone is seeing it from my window.
I’ve never seen Luna as big, as beautiful, as bright as I am seeing it now. Good night everyone.
“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.”
-George Carlin
To listen to love songs during late night programming when all cheesy and gut wrenching songs with romantic melodies and lyrics are playing is the worst advice one can give to somebody recovering from a recent breakup.
But tonight, just before all the FM radio stations in General Santos City sign off, I am doing something I would proscribe anyone from doing, with or without of late parting with his/her lover. But I cannot help it, I am doing my sister’s Math project, which she requested me to do last week. I procrastinated until this afternoon when she demanded me to do it with added stipulation that I have to be done with it tonight or she’ll have nothing to submit later this morning to her teacher, and that it will cost her her grades for this grading period. Being a brother ridden with biting guilt that I have not helped my sister with any of her assignments since she started schooling, I humbly acquiesce.
Example is this one below:
8. Of the apples inside the barrel that will be sent to Tampakan for Christmas, 1/13 are green, 2/4 are red Fuji variety, and 7/65 are sour yellow, the remaining apples are native ones grown in Kalsangi (a local farm in Polomolok, South Cotabato famous for its golf course and fine weather). What part of the apples in the barrel are native variety from Kalsangi?
Let me know if you know the answer.
I have no choice but to hear the songs coming from an old stereo to my left, since silence is a harsher company.
So here I am being drowned by Barry Manilow’s bromidic sermons about love, gasping in Air Supply’s heinous high notes, and helplessly manslaughtered by Engelbert Humperdinck 70s classic, while wracking my head to provide answers to the fraction word problems I wrote myself.
In general, love songs are meant to be confusing. The poetry, or prose, that makes up the so called lyrics is nothing but a gibberish that is arranged in such a way that it sounds intelligible to somebody whose judgment is clouded by a recent heartache or a newly found love. Every line is sprinkled with randomly chosen meaningless abstraction such as the word love (the most overused), memories, the only one, alone, you, heart, waiting, remember, now and then, tomorrow, sun, song I sing, all my life, day without you, and other ludicrous ideas that exist anywhere but in reality.
They all have silly notions that forever can be through, there can be bluer than blue, about a moonriver (a foolish idea) wider than a mile that can be crossed in style someday, somebody whose only want is to grow old with somebody, leaving on a jetplane to someday come back with her wedding ring, or saying ‘I’m yours’ while spending precious time doing an entirely dopey thing of checking one’s tongue in the mirror.
And it would be too much if I still have to comment on the melody. They all sound the same, with some little variations here and there, and whose only purpose is to make anyone of their unsuspecting victims to be out of touch with what’s real.
See, I almost forgot about my sister’s assignment. I have to continue writing now, while ‘Unchained Melody’ envelops my room with an eerie feeling of dread.
Today is the 1st of November, All Saints’ Day.
People in the Philippines remember their dead relatives on this day instead of the more appropriate day, tomorrow, the 2nd of November, All Souls’ Day. But no one is dictating people from this island what’s proper or not. They’ll do what please them and follow the traditions they’ve acquired from their parents, and hope to pass this on to their children.
My parents left our house early this morning to go to the cemetery where my uncle, grandfather, and great grandmother were buried. According to my mother, they cleaned the area and paid somebody to repaint their gravestones. A fact she said in a rather ironic tone to emphasize the money they could have saved had I waken up earlier and gone with them to the cemetery. I pretended not to care, and mentioned sarcastically the importance of having at least eight hours of sleep each day.
Good thing they transferred the bodies to this private cemetery several years ago from the municipal graveyard. If not, then aside from cleaning the grave, they would also have to find the grave and sort them from other identical graves, or worse would have to make do with somebody else’s grave to light candles for as most graves disappear for no reason.
This afternoon, my father asked me to grate coconuts he would use for the different delicacies made from sticky rice for the evening. This is the first time I spent November 1st with my family after six years. The different practices they were doing strike me as something curious; this after a long time of just doing them without asking why I was doing them.
Earlier this evening, my mother started putting small portions of the delicacies my father cooked into small plates, then took her seldom-used glasses and poured beer, Coke, and water inside. My youngest sister plucked four branches of red santan from my mother’s ornamental flower garden, and together with the food, placed them on top of the old sewing machine. I was even more shocked when my father left few cigarette sticks beside the plates of ‘food for the dead’, as he referred them. He added that the souls of our dead relatives will visit us this evening to partake the food we offered them. I could not believe my father unknowingly conspired with my mother. But he seemed not to care that I reacted quite vehemently.
She then complained why I did not want to join her for the prayer, and related with nostalgia how I used to accompany her during prayers for the dead when I was younger. I said ‘no’ and continued writing.
After her prayers, she returned to the living room and continued watching TV. “Ma, can I eat those (pointing to the food on top of the sewing machine) after midnight?”
“No,” she gravely replied.
There are some stories
“I could not decide whether to pull over or to go on. I politely told the driver of a Jaro-CPU jeepney that I was getting off, and ran after that familiar face. Only to learn that he was not alone; he was not unhappy like I thought; and that in his universe that early evening, I was a mere accident. And accident I was.”
There are some stories that are not meant to be told, that are better off if they remain hidden in the repository of the dead.
Modernist writing focuses on the individual and the conflict between him and the social constructs where he is a member of. In modernist fiction the struggle for personal autonomy can be continued only through opposition to existing social institutions and conventions. This struggle necessarily involves individual alienation and often ends with mental dissolution (Waugh, 1984:10). But as is always the case, the power structures of contemporary society are more mystifying and complex than what is apparent leaving modernist thoughts at a lost for explanation. This leaves me with no other option but to tread the dangerous and unpredictable waters of postmodernism and metafiction. Here I find a solution by looking inwards to my medium of expression—language.
The story started with the writer just arriving from a convention with the deities of Anini-y. He was riding a Jaro-CPU jeepney on his way to the gym last night, when he saw a familiar face sullenly walking, he conjectured to be, alone on Iznart Street. During the few seconds between seeing that familiar face and the decision to politely tell the driver that he was getting off, a torrent of past events flooded him, though he’s all too aware that he has become an insignificant quantum in the memory of that familiar face, like how the owner of the face is in the writer’s life. But he felt, for reasons he couldn’t explain, that the ties that used to strongly attach him with the familiar face has been dissolved by the acrid feelings each has caused the other. The writer causing the most pain but ended up being the more bitter.
And there are some stories such as this one that escape understanding 1) because they are tasteless, 2) because they are boring, 3) because they are about a banality of an individual; stories that do not seem to contribute anything substantial and profound to mankind’s brief history.
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