Kapihan sa Kanto

Ayoko na munang mag-ingles. Nabubugnot ako sa ingles. Napupuruhan ako sa ingles.

Pero wag ka, kakatapos ko lang ng isang nobela na sinulat sa ingles (kaya di naman ako completely turn off sa ingles; eh wala akong magagawa, nasanay akong mas mabilis magsulat/magbasa sa ingles). Well, a Welsh kind of english that is, kasi Welsh ang setting at yung intonation eh hinuli talaga sa pagkakasulat. Ang galing. If you ever come across it, basahin ninyo, How Green Was My Valley (Richard Llewellyn). Isinapelikula nung unang panahon sa Hollywood at nanalo ng best picture sa Oscars. Ang ganda ng libro, ibang klase ang imagery at napaka-3D ng mga tao. Sa mundo ngayon ng 2D na tao, 2D na storya, 2D na buhay, ampakasarap makabasa ng ganun.

Anyway, basta. Ayoko nga [muna] mag-ingles.

And I thought I was headed for Cagayan de Oro!

Well, doon nga nag-landing ang eroplano kasi nandon ang airport. Pagkasundo sa kin nina Tito Skip -- first stop: Jollibee. Para sa inyong mga nagtataka, gusto ko lang i-share na ganun din ang lasa ng Jollibee sa Cagayan de Oro, kaya di niyo na kelangan tikman pa. Biyahe puntang Iligan. Picture-picture along the way. Hunting kami ng mga street children, at kamangha-mangha pero wala sila sa street! Medyo nahirapan kaming mai-spot-an ang mga batang kalye pero nakahanap din kami ng mangilan-ngilan. Pagkatapos ng paikot-ikot sa mga highway na di ko kilala, kung saan ang tanging view ay dagat, puno, dagat, puno, at paisa-isang maliliit na bahay, nakarating din kami.

Sa Misamis Oriental pala 'yung pupuntahan ko, sa tuktok ng bundok, paakyat sa bente minutos na rough road kung saan andun ang Christian's Haven, na sa sobrang alog at kalabog ng biyahe ay akala mo sa gubat ka na makakarating, at baka nga sa mga puno naka-bahay ang mga batang kalye na inampon at pinag-aaral ng ministry na 'to, pero pagdating doon ang ganda pala! Semento ang dalawang palapag na dorm. May basketball court sa gitna ng mga puno ng niyog. Katapat 'yung bahay nina Tito Skip at Tita Lynda, may aircon pa at 5.1 surround ang sound system. O ha!

Pag tumayo ka sa gitna ng malawak na lupa ng Christian's Haven at umikot-ikot, mahihilo ka. Kahit saan ka naman umikot-ikot, mahihilo ka. Pero hindi 'yun ang punto -- ang punto, puro puno sa paligid ng Christian's Haven! Parang... Haven in the Gubat.

Pero siyempre di pa ganun ka-developed 'yung lugar. In the meantime, kodakan muna kami ng mga bata.

Heto ang ilan sa mga photos.

Tita Nenette

Stef stumbled upon this passage while reading "The Lost City of Mars" by Ray Bradbury, and I stumbled upon it on Stef's blog:

Don't you feel as if you stood on the threshold of a giant blast-furnace kitchen and inside somewhere, all comfortably warm, vast hands, flour-gloved, smelling of wondrous tripes and miraculous viscera, bloodied and proud of blood, somewhere God cooks out the dinnertime of Life? In that cauldron sun, a brew to make the flowering forth of life on Venus, in that bath a stew broth of bones and nervous heart to run in the animals on planets ten billion light years gone. And isn't God content in His fabulous workings in the great kitchen Universe, where He has menu'd out a history of feasts, famines, deaths and reburgeonings for a billion billion years? And if God be content, would He not hum under His breath? Feel your bones. Aren't the marrows teeming with that hum? For that matter, God not only hums, He sings in the elements. He dances in molecules. Eternal celebration swarms us.

And how she felt is how I feel, except I'm not at McDonald's.

Took photos today.

Current mood: penitent, sheepish. Like the kid who was caught stealing the neighbor's My Little Pony or swanky Barbie doll clothes, I didn't mean it naman, eh. Pramis.

Current mood: remorseful, contrite. Like the kid who returned the neighbor's My Little Pony and Barbie doll clothes wishing she had never taken them in the first place -- sayang, di ko rin pala malalaro!

Current mood: anxious, antsy. Like the kid who waits for the tempest of the slipper, wanting to both delay it and get it over with, in varying degrees.

wistful, so sorry, needful.

Blogging is my cop-out from the real world where sentences must cohere into a paragraph, where paragraphs must round the bend and come full circle into a denoument, after rising and falling somewhere after the attention step.

Blogging is my refuge from the deluge of real things that require too much attention in a world of commitments, responsibilities, and living things.

Blogging happens when something else needs to be done, and had to be finished yesterday.

Here are some portions of a beautiful song, which you mustn't leave without reading whole, and eventually listening to it. Towards the end of it, Lauryn Hill's voice breaks at the words "wonderful" and "merciful," over and over, half-crying-half-singing, performer onstage before a crowd, solitary soul before God; it's a song I imagine any of us would sing, any of us who, like her in this song, know what grace truly means.

I Gotta Find Peace of Mind
Lauryn Hill

All that I've known is gone, all I was building on
I wanna walk with you, how do I talk to you
Touch my mouth with your hands, touch my mouth with your hands
Oh I wanna understand, the meaning of your embrace

Please come free my mind, please come meet my mind
Can you see my mind, oh
Won't you come free my mind?
Oh I know it's possible

You're my peace of mind, that old me is left behind
You're my peace of mind, you're my peace of mind

What a joy it is to be alive
To get another chance, yeah
Everyday's another chance
To get it right this time
Everyday's another chance
Oh what a merciful, merciful, merciful God
Oh what a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful God

I don't care what anybody says -- Christmas is already here.

I felt it in the air this morning, and again when I stepped out for Ice Monster in the afternoon, and yet again when I left the office just as dusk was beginning to cloak the city.

I've had that sneaking suspicion that Christmas has been slinking into Metro Manila for a while now. It was just the little things: a familiar tinsel-garnished tree popping out of nowhere in the mall, a random tune at the jeepney that sounds like bells and laughter, that smell of melted butter and steaming purple at the palengke...

I thought I'd keep my conspiracy theory to myself until it drove me half-crazy. But now I think it's time everyone knew the truth: while all of us unwitting citizens of the metropolis may have been too busy with life in general to sniff the bibingka along the streets or glimpse the tinfoil stars being sold to car drivers at traffic stops, Christmas has invaded our midst.

Now I don't think there's any cause for alarm, let's just all stay calm and take this in stride. This happens to us every year. Let's sit down, take a deep breath, and try not to rush our Christmas shopping. That's the important thing. After that, the rest is a piece of cake.

I'm going to Cagayan de Oro tomorrow to take photos of the street children who have found a home in a Christian organization's efforts to embrace them.

So now I have to pack some stuff and write a couple of farewell letters, to be opened in case I die in a plane crash.

The truth is, I'm no anthropologist and I can't be scientific about my observations on Philippine culture. But I am opinionated. So.

Now about Nyoy Volante and the Mannos: I heard their version of Al Jarreau's Spain earlier today and it wasn't bad at all. Actually, their version of Apo Hiking Society's Panalangin is interestingly original, too.

Like everybody else, I take pleasure in looking down on the lot of artists that have sprung from the womb of Jam 88.3 with guitar in hand and wimpy voice intact. Oh you know, the likes of Paolo Santos and Jimmy Bondoc. Yes, I know you hate them, too... while storing a couple dozen downloaded mp3s of them in your computer, or belting out that heart-wrenching we just have to say our love was true but has now become a lie in the car when the song comes on, or looking up the lyrics of some of the songs you've heard them play because you realized, oh yeah that's the song I've always liked but completely forgot about till now!, only to say to everyone else that you absolutely love the original version better and that theirs is an utter sacrilege. Still, it can be proved that you downloaded both versions.

After a while, being mean to them gets stale. Whether you admit it or not, their brand of music isn't so foreign to us, neither is it a genre we don't like. The acoustic style of Paolo Santos and Nyoy Volante reminds me of the harana: a guy picking up a guitar and strumming it to the tune of some lovelorn song with a foolish grin on his face. Even the trio of MYMP and other such unplugged bands sounds close to home for me: a couple of people hanging out, singing to pass the time -- that sort of thing can be found anywhere from your high school's hallways to your college tambayan to the nearest karaoke place. Let's face it, in our country, the guitar is the most accessible instrument (next to the videoke). The guitar is everywhere, the guitar can be really cheap, and the tabs for it, in the form of the favorite song hits, are everywhere. In high school, practically every guy in class could hold a guitar's body and wring its neck to squeeze out some bleeding Side A song to show off to the girls.

So the antagonism of the Paolo Santos genre is really quite unfounded. We keep hating him for it even though it's actually a genre that does not belong to him: it was already there when he stumbled into it out of, perhaps, necessity. Who knows why Paolo Santos chose the acoustic sound to define and stereotype himself with? Maybe nobody took him into their band, and nobody joined the one he was starting up. Then, nobody probably wanted to do back-up vocals for someone who didn't look like he should be at the front of the stage. So the only one to give him a break was a radio station, which made sense to everyone when he became a hit and the TV stations tried to present him to the audience and sustain his presence on the audio-visual medium... to no avail.

Hence, the one-man acoustic style.

As for us, the discriminating music lovers: why would we boycott such a music that is actually very understandable for us as a society? Probably because these guys with guitars are too ugly to be so popular, maybe it's the voice, maybe it's just not right when one of them practically plagiarizes John Mayer's Your Body is a Wonderland.

Or maybe we just can't admit that the favorite hobby of the tambays of our generation is actually that one stroke of genius we hadn't thought about first -- and now they're a hit? I mean, who would've thought that something so simple and so musical-talent-not-required would be up there in the limelight, downloadable and sing-alongable on the car radio, while we who are such incredibly talented human beings with an opinion for everything including them are still at the bottom of the pile -- downloading and singing along.

Salamat, Jacinth at Joshua! Sila'y aming kinapanayam ni Ate Carmen Vargas sa Family Matters sa 702 DZAS kaninang umaga, at nakakatuwa talaga ang experiences nila bilang mga kabataang misyonero: si Jacinth sa IVCF, at si Joshua naman sa CCC.

Heto ang ilan sa mga piling kataga ng ating munting misyonero...
Joshua: Bagong gising palang kasi ako eh.

At di pahuhuli sa kalaliman ang ating munting misyonera...
Jacinth: Binabati ko po ang The Band at ang Extra Joss CG!

Tunay na nakaka-inspire! Mga tubong CBC 'yan ;) Mabuhay! :)

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

If your interest is piqued by a poem that is ended with such a flourish as this, read the entire thing; penned by one of the more stimulating people I can think of at the moment.

(REUTERS) -- Ethel categorically denies having said "Wait a minute, kapeng mainit." In a press statement, she says:

"Sinabi ko ba yung wait a minute kapeng mainit?! Hindi ko ma-remember..."

She insists, instead, that her words of wisdom are "Better late than pregnant" and "What are friends are for," and the inspired "Blessing in the sky."

That's it for now. In the immortal words of Ethel, "See you later crocodile."

Love 20 cents the First Quarter Mile
Kenneth Fearing

All right. I may have lied to you and about you, and made a
few pronouncements a bit too sweeping, perhaps, and
possibly forgotten to tag the bases here or there,
And damned your extravagance, and maligned your tastes,
and libeled your relatives, and slandered a few of your
friends, O. K. ,
Nevertheless, come back.

Come home. I will agree to forget the statements that you
issued so copiously to the neighbors and the press,
And you will forget that figment of your imagination, the
blonde from Detroit;
I will agree that your lady friend who lives above us is not
crazy, bats, nutty as they come, but on the contrary rather
bright,
And you will concede that poor old Steinberg is neither a
drunk, nor a swindler, but simply a guy, on the eccentric
side, trying to get along.
(Are you listening, you bitch, and have you got this straight?)

Because I forgive you, yes, for everything. I forgive you for
being beautiful and generous and wise,
I forgive you, to put it simply, for being alive, and pardon
you, in short, for being you.

Because tonight you are in my hair and eyes,
And every street light that our taxi passes shows me you
again, still you,
And because tonight all other nights are black, all other hours
are cold and far away, and now, this minute, the stars are
very near and bright.

Come back. We will have a celebration to end all celebrations.
We will invite the undertaker who lives beneath us, and a
couple of boys from the office, and some other friends.
And Steinberg, who is off the wagon, and that
insane woman who lives upstairs, and a few reporters, if
anything should break.

I'll be on 702 DZAS this Friday (October 15), 9:30-11am, my once-a-month-youth-co-host stint for the radio show Family Matters at Far East Broadcasting Company.

To listen online, click here :) Ate Carmen and I will be talking about my missions exposure trip to Zamboanga some months ago, so it's all about our brothers and sisters who are persecuted for their faith.

This was the semester that I discovered Nick Joaquin. Believe it or not, I've had a copy of his The Woman with Two Navels since high school, only to find out when I read it again recently that I've retained nothing but fragments of the elaborate imagery of Connie Escobar's cinematic flight to suicidal heights.

Here's a profile on Nick that basically lists down the 101 reasons why we should worship him: The Trouble with Nick , written by my professor in Creative Non-fiction, Marra PL. Lanot. If you ask me, I prefer what little snippet I've read from Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas' memoirs of the man. Lanot's profile reads as though she was watching the man on TV, imperturbable in her fandom. I was a little disappointed, actually, because our finals for her class is a profile article, and I was hoping to get some tips and yes, corny as it sounds, inspiration from her own work. Well, I did gather some pointers: pointers on what to avoid in a profile article.

Here's a little something from Nick, his acceptance speech upon receiving the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication in 1996. Here's another interesting essay with one of the most interesting opening paragraphs I've read in a while, A Heritage of Smallness. But don't bother clicking the link, because it doesn't work. If you do find that essay somewhere else on the net or in an anthology, you won't be wasting your time if you read it.

At any rate, I suggest Candido's Apocalypse for a Nick Joaquin appetizer. This gothic short story stamps itself in your mind long after you've read it, the images are grotesque but the truth is clear. The truth according to Nick, that is.

And of course there's Summer Solstice, which you've probably seen on the silver screen starring Rica Peralejo, or on stage at the UP Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero theater, complete with several samplers of random nudity. It's a little weird reading his work at first, as if his world is an uneasy place to be, but his characters are vibrant, you won't forget them easily once you've made their acquaintance; and notice his women, how they have been handcrafted around his males. It's an interesting world, Nick's.

Basically just wanted to introduce you
to the wonderful world
of the Vigan vase,
the unbreakable vase
that survives the inferno
of the Ilocos potter's oven,
and emerges,

originally Pinoy,
and fabulously beautiful.

In the land of MindBlock, where the Overdue Article reigns supreme, I flounder around in search of the Ibong Adarna to unlock my, well, secret writing prowess! Yes indeed.

So, here and now, overdue, but mercifully extended, the chopping block held off for a few more hours. Still nothing but some unpromising diddle-dawdling in front of an opened Word Document awaiting the stroke of my keyboard as an opened ribcage awaits a surgeon's scalpel on the operating table. Still nothing.

It's time for The Outline.

I rarely resort to this; I've come to like my writing leading me wherever it is it wants to go, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph. But maybe in the land of MindBlock, it's not such a cool idea because a sentence doesn't follow another sentence, and when it does, the paragraph they make just reeks. And together, they volt in to become... the all-powerful Overdue Article! It really is slightly creepy.

Finally -- now, about to embark on my journey for the elusive Ibong Adarna again. A six-page article, for crying out loud! Voltes V never had this much trouble, and he had to cut up some monsters V-style. Well, there were five of them volted into one; I don't have anyone volting in with me. Well, anyway.

The Outline, here I come!

For all those who have been died on. For all those cats, I mean. And remember: no jumping, purring at first.

Cat in an Empty Apartment
Wislawa Szymborska
(Nobel-prize winning poet from Poland)

Dying--you wouldn't do that to a cat.
For what is a cat to do
in an empty apartment?
Climb up the walls?
Brush up against the furniture?
Nothing here seems changed,
and yet something has changed.
Nothing has been moved,
and yet there's more room.
And in the evenings the lamp is not on.
One hears footsteps on the stairs,
but they're not the same.
Neither is the hand
that puts a fish on the plate.

Something here isn't starting
at its usual time.
Something here isn't happening
as it should.
Somebody has been here and has been,
and then has suddenly disappeared
and now is stubbornly absent.

All the closets have been scanned
and all the shelves run through.
Slipping under the carpet and checking came to nothing.
The rule has even been broken and all the papers scattered.
What else is there to do?
Sleep and wait.

Just let him come back,
let him show up.
Then he'll find out
that you don't do that to a cat.
Going toward him
faking reluctance,
slowly,
on very offended paws.
And no jumping, purring at first.

Meet Molly,
my pusakal from the streets of Caloocan,
raised in grime by the loving hands
of my Jewel kids at church.

Ethel, who has known me longer than anyone except Micah and Ashley and Mayee, would be proud of me for using one of her favorite isms in life for this blog:

Wait a minute, kapeng mainit.

When Ethel throws me this line, she's already on her way to doing whatever it is she needs to do in that space of eternity that I've been asked to wait. I would normally grunt, but I've known her since Kinder 2, when she appeared like an apparition one day in our class, with pigtailed braids and blinding white skin, and asked me in the playground for my name, and got snubbed for it, no less. So I just wait; never mind, it doesn't take too long anyway.

Sometimes, what I would have loved to ask is: wait for what?

For Jason Mraz, it's for my rocket to come. For Bob Marley, it's for your love, in vain of course. For me right now, it's for my article to form itself into organized paragraphs in my cloudy brain. For this blog, it's for the rest of life to unfold, bit by bit, at every turn of the corner.

So I just wait; never mind, it doesn't take too long anyway.