We call each other by name.
By song, by touch.
By any peculiarity we disguise ourselves with.
Yet in this crafted hour
I call you by that which you don't recognize.
And so when you hear my voice
You will hear it a stranger does, detached,
Ephemeral as a distant echo that glides unto valleys
And at once is gone.
There will be days when even my face,
Familiar as a well-loved toy,
Will cease to exist.
And in its place, only a vague countenance
Of colors and brush strokes,
Only bits and pieces of letters
That must have once resembled notes
Written haphazardly
On walls, tabletops.
It will be like waking up from a dream
and realizing that even the waking up
Was unreal.
I glide in front of you
Like a feather.
16 December 2012
14 December 2012
Free Reading To the Public
Sometimes when I am in the toilet in early morning while still half asleep, I have the most splendid visions. Here's one of them: Put up my own library. My library will be huge and it's going to have 6-tiered bookshelves, one shelf for each genre. And when I say genre, it has to be very specific as in, "Historical fiction taking place between 1810-1850" or "Novels that have been adapted into movies starring Brad Pitt". Or not.
Or maybe I could just collect used books from the neighbors and display them on the sidewalk for anybody who's interested in a free read. I'll set up 2 tables and a few plastic chairs beside the makeshift shelves and put up a sign that says "free reading to the public". The only problem with this idea, though, is that it won't be an original. Somebody in our neighborhood (in Manila) already beat me to it, and I don't have the space anyway. And so now, this person is reaping all the fame and glory as I see local TV crew set up cameras in front of his house while he is being rehearsed for an interview (will write about this in a separate entry). Why haven't I thought of this sooner?
Anyhow, the point here is that books are always a good thing. They must be made public, and shared. So it came as a pleasant surprise today when Sir Joseff of La Belle Aurore lent me his personal copy of the Duino Elegies (from one of my favorite poets, Rilke!). It didn't matter that we only met for the first time today, and I probably looked creepy with my smeared eyeliner after rubbing at my eyes and forgetting that I had eyeliner on (I only confirmed this an hour later at a mall's comfort room which could only mean that I unknowingly freaked out more people at the mall and during the jeepney ride to the mall). But anyway, the kind gesture was lovely, I can't wait to devour the elegies, and I can hardly wait either for the other book that somebody else has promised me. :-p
A merry, nerdy, bookish Christmas to us all. :)
20 November 2012
Martyr's Lament
Real. Damn. Tired. I am not here typing these words, I am the words and the motion of typing and yes I will make sure to look into it tomorrow so kindly please just dissolve into the wall and let me type and imagine all types of things I would say if I only could say what was in my head for the longest time without feeling ashamed or guilty about saying something that I should should not say, at least out loud, and without having that remorse that everything I say today will probably not mean a thing tomorrow. And when I think about these things, I remember something that someone told me a long time ago which is never put off doing tomorrow what you can do today, or did someone really tell me that or was it just a dream or was it just the collective creed of a hundred plagiarist writers who call themselves anonymous, but either way it leads me to thinking further on that if we never put off doing everything if we can do them today, then sooner or later we will run out of time and the universe sure as heaven and earth will not give us another hour on top of the twenty-four hours given us to do everything we need to do and everything does not even include the time spent on necessary non-essentials like sleeping and crapping, and when we do run out time we can only wish that we can go out and pawn our stuff to buy a day like Justin Timberlake did, but then the truth hits us and we realize that it's a quarter past a half past twelve and oh the words are spilling out of my fingertips like there's absolutely no tomorrow.
30 October 2012
Tatay Manuel
I don't know how to react to this. Just this evening, as my officemate Dan and I were walking along Ayala Avenue to catch a bus ride home, we saw this old man who was just standing in the middle of the sidewalk, clutching his knees with his head bowed down. I thought nothing of it and we just passed him by. But Dan kept looking back at him and when I turned to look as well, I saw that the old man has not moved at all. He seemed to be in pain so we retraced our steps and ask him if he was okay. The old man told us that his leg was hurting him. He pulled up his left pant leg, and we saw a bandage wound around his left ankle. A result of diabetes, he said. When I asked him why he was walking alone at that time of the night, he said that he came to see his former work mates (he once worked as a construction worker) who were currently in Makati Avenue to ask them if they could lend him two thousand pesos. The money was supposed to be a down payment to a funeral parlor, so he could redeem the body of his 12-year old son and give him a proper burial. His son died from food poisoning after having eaten food he picked up randomly from the trash.
His work mates were not able to lend him money and so he decided to just go back home to Cavite. Since he did not have any fare money with him, he was planning to walk all the way to Walter Mart (which was two rides away from Ayala) where the FX shuttles are, and somehow beg one of the drivers there to let him ride for free. How did you get here in Makati in the first place? I asked him. Turned out he was able to hitch a ride on a truck that was transporting vegetables from Cavite to Guadalupe. From Guadalupe, he walked all the way to Makati Ave.
He really was a pitiful sight, an old man in his 60's or 70's walking alone in the streets of Makati at that late hour. And since leaving him there seemed like a criminal thing to do, we offered to accompany him to Walter Mart and pay for his fare. During the bus ride, we learned that his name was Manual Ibanez Sr. and that he was a widower with two children aged 14 and 10, apart from his 12-year old son who just died. They were children from his second marriage, which accounted for their young age. His son was already 8 days at the funeral home and he was told that he should pay the bill and get the body already, else it will start to rot and smell. Being poor and unemployed, he went to seek the help of various local government officials but was turned down. He even went to the ABS-CBN and GMA Kapuso Foundations, but learned that help would be granted only after his story was aired in TV and donations came in. By the time the funds would be available, his son's body would already have started to rapidly decompose. His last resort was to seek the help of his former work mates which, likewise, did not turn out to be successful. On top of this dilemma, Tatay Manuel was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer and all he wanted was to take his children with him to his hometown in Tacloban, Leyte, so he could die there in peace, and have his relatives take care of his children. He seemed like an educated man because he was able to utter phrases in fluent English while he was narrating his life story. He never asked us for money or pleaded that we help him out with anything.
Dan took his cellphone number and details of where he lived and the name of the funeral parlor where his son was laid. We gave him a little extra cash so he can pay for the FX ride to Cavite and maybe buy some food for himself and his kids when he gets home. I don't know, call me naive but there's just something about old people that moves me. Surely old men won't resort to lying. They're wise souls, aren't they? His story seemed genuine to me.
After we got off at the Pasong Tamo-Buendia crossing, we flagged down a jeepney going to Walter Mart for Tatay Manuel and bid goodbye to him. Dan and I can only look at each other and shake our heads in dismay at that sad encounter.
But then something came up. After arriving home, Dan texted me that Tatay Manuel's story was on the internet. He forwarded me a link to a Facebook page and I saw this:
Note that this Facebook post was made last October 2011. I googled some more and even found one dating back to 2010.
Like what I said earlier in this post, I don't know how to react to this. Should I be enraged because I was scammed and "victimized" by this old man? I cannot bring myself to say "Beware This Man" because in the first place, he never asked us for help, and if we gave him some money, we did it out of our own free will. He never should have made up those stories, yes, he was at fault with that, but can we really blame him for what he did? What with the neglect our government is showing to the poor in this country? Tatay Manuel probably deserved that money more than I did. I would have probably just spent it on greasy, unhealthy food or on a fancy item at the mall that I don't need. I do not regret being scammed.
27 October 2012
The 2nd Law: Isolated System
Another track from Muse's newest album, The 2nd Law. The album title is inspired by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that if no energy enters or exits the system during an exchange, the potential energy of state will always be less than that of its original state.
"In an isolated system entropy can only increase"
My new addiction. :)
"In an isolated system entropy can only increase"
My new addiction. :)
26 October 2012
Madness
Come to me
Just in a dream
Come on and rescue me
Yes I know, I can be wrong
Maybe I'm too headstrong
Our love is madness
21 October 2012
Three Ways To Die
1
New Year’s Eve. The
food is laid out on the table, everyone is in festive mode. Beth is sitting out
on the balcony, watching her brothers set up giant sparklers on the sidewalk.
She strokes her swelling belly. Being pregnant at sixteen is not easy, but she’s
determined to keep her child. She thinks of New Year’s resolutions to write in
her journal later on—go to college, make up for lost time with my parents, be a
good mom—while several meters away, a
stray bullet fired from a drunk policeman’s gun is hurtling its way to her
head.
“This is a hold-up,” the man hissed in Tamara’s ear while he
presses a gun to her neck. “Give me your wallet and your cellphone.” Tamara
wildly looks around for help. There is nobody else in sight.
“Please don’t kill me,” Tamara pleads. With shaking hands,
she reaches inside her bag and hands over her valuables. The man releases his
grip on her and manages a smirk. “By the way, this is a toy gun,” he mocks
before running away. In her rage, Tamara runs across the street to chase him. A
speeding truck hits her before she can scream.
The plot in the cemetery is ready. It’s a lovely patch with
wildflowers and Jun has already made an advance payment to the caretaker who
will be doing the grave maintenance. He has already bought the pine-wood coffin,
made reservations at the funeral parlour, estimated the number of guests who
will be coming. What he needs to do now is complete the list of songs to be
played at the wake. Jun has lung cancer. His doctors have given him only three
more months to live.
He ponders for a while then downloads Led Zeppelin’s
Stairway to Heaven from iTunes.
14 October 2012
If I Could Buy More Time To Be A Poet
If I could buy more time to be a poet, I would
Take you somewhere we can be alone
In an abandoned castle perhaps where our stories once lived.
I'll read my verses and you will listen
And not understand a thing but we'll hear the walls shake
And the ground will feel like water under our feet.
You will lean over for a kiss when it is over
And I will give up my lips like giving up my pride
Knowing that words are currents that must flow through skin
Before they can enter the mind.
And one day you will realize how the words
That did not make any sense to you
Were actually the prayers that you have left
Unuttered, folded away in a secret place
That even I cannot reach.
13 October 2012
Paul Auster's Oracle Night
This is not a book review. If it is, I would have to dissect, analyze and piece together the three stories within this novel which is a torturous thing for me to do at this moment. Oracle night is a story within a story within a story. It is the story of Lemuel Flagg, a British Lieutenant of World War I, of Nick Bowen, an editor at a New York publishing house who made The Great Escape of his life, and of Sidney Orr, the writer who created Nick Bowen from the pages of a mysterious Portuguese notebook and whose life takes on a bewildering turn after doing so.
I loved the Nick Bowen episode. Mostly because of his larger-than-life decisions, and also because his story didn't have an ending and nobody knows what happened to him. He might as well have died, but nobody knows for sure, not even Sidney, who created him. His story is a prime example of starting over a new chapter of one's life, but not in a warm, fuzzy, feel-good way. After having had a near brush with death, Bowen decides that a new life has been given to him and immediately leaves for a new city without going home to pack his things or even telling his wife about it. He checks in at a hotel, phones a woman he has met once and declares his love for her, and goes out to shop for clothes only to find out that his ATM and credit cards have been cancelled. With only a small amount of cash in his pockets, he skips out on the hotel bill and goes looking for the only person he knows in Kansas City--Ed Victory, the taxi driver who drove him to the hotel.
His bad luck doesn't there. Ed Victory hires him as a telephone book sorter in the dubiously named Bureau of Historical Preservation, and through a bizarre twist of events, Bowen ends up being locked up alone in full darkness in an underground bomb shelter. Sidney Orr has no idea how to get him out of that desperate situation, and so he leaves the story unfinished. Pretty frustrating, if you ask me.
Nick Bowen and Sidney Orr are interchangeable characters. They both make a living in the writing/publishing industry, they almost have identical wives, identical dilemmas. As I was reading through the novel, I get the weird feeling that their stories are beginning to merge. Sidney Orr's friend pops up in the Nick Bowen story and I have to go back several pages to make sure that he really is Orr's friend, and not a new character in the Bowen story.
Oracle Night is not the story of Nick Bowen, though. It is mostly Sidney Orr's story and of how the written can mysteriously foretell the events in the life of the writer. Although, technically, Oracle Night is the story of Lemuel Flagg. I know I'm not making any sense here, so might be better if you just find out for yourself. :)
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