"Hello, Mr. Spock"

Some of the things I've been getting a kick out of recently

• the similarities between programming and linguistics lexicon
• cryptic crosswords as penalty
• Dr. Uhura's profession and, well, Spock
• conversations about faith, the Bible, Christianity which are as easy as they're complex (if you think this part is corny, you can quietly exit the page, no judgment)

:)

Happy birthday, AiyoRach!

Tambay w/ my favorite chick at our favorite Pasig Starbucks

MNL Corporate Woman celebrates another year. Now, I've never known anyone who worked as hard, looked as cute, and drank as much Starbucks Frappe! But the thing about her is, she's always crazyfun even while she has her eyes on the prize -- and she's got her loved ones' backs, always, making sure to share each and every blessing. We're all oh-so-lucky to have her, yes? YES! 

Happy birthday, AiyoRach! I wuv you!

Manila where my monsters hid

After reading (Tita) Angela Stuart-Santiago's commentary on Dan Brown's quip in his latest book about Manila being the "gates of hell" (a logical choice, given the Catholic church's anti-RH stance and the oligarchy that the Philippine government is, as the post says), I remembered how as a kid I would tag along with my Papa to his office in Zacateros, one of the narrow streets that crossed Ongpin. We took the jeepney from Roosevelt to Sta. Cruz, got off at Avenida, and crisscrossed our way through the bakeries, hardwares, electronic stores, etc. until we reached his office. As a 5-year-old, seeing diced hopias made in front of you was a treat you tire of less easily than the diced hopias. Let's not even talk about the smell of chestnuts found everywhere in those streets-- holygee, the taste of chestnuts won't hold a candle to their smell! Then there's the incomprehensible chatter that was probably a mix of Hokkien, Tagalog, Bisaya; told me early on that the world city I inhabited could not be a quiet (or peaceful) one. There were shop keepers (some who my Dad knew), coffee shops (including one which he frequented), noodle houses (wonderful). There were also beggars at the foot of the LRT and barkers in the perimeter of Sta. Cruz church; early exposure to the fact that while Papa and I did not enjoy many luxuries ("middle class" would be pushing it), there were families, men, children with fates worse than us.

There were also the batang kalye (streetkids) of Zacateros who were my age and who became a sort of barkada. When I was still allowed to play with them, these kids took me to their haunts, streets alleys narrower than that where Papa's office stood, and showed me alleys cracks on the wall where they lived. Oh, I remember trying my first smoke somewhere in Ongpin, my Zacateros barkada and I saw a lit cigarette on the street, picked it up and took turns puffing. I was so proud of myself that afternoon, I hurriedly ran back to Papa and told him what I just did. After that I was only permitted to wave at them. Eventually in shame when they’ll come around to “pick me up” and I wasn’t permitted to go anymore, I just hid at the back part of the office. Now in writing, I kind of wish that my 5 year-old self recognized that what was novel to me was everyday life for them.

Early exposure to middle class guilt and the warfare that exists in the everyday, salamat Manila.

Eventually all those afternoons I insisted on tagging along because I was Papa's buntot and suffered from serious separation anxiety when I'm not with him was soon no longer. One day I just refused to go because I had started having recurring dreams of Sta. Cruz, getting lost in its streets, taken by "bad people" like those in the movies, etc. etc. 

Some 15+ years later and the nostalgia that happened to old Manila by way of food tours and heritage walks and the city morphed into a "cultural adventure". I spent one birthday doing that, out of nostalgia “for a part of Manila I grew up.”

When peering through the lens of culture, it’s so easy to edit the picture. Manila offers those dumplings you cannot have elsewhere in the city, sniff chestnuts oh-so-easily, and have the best bowl of noodles, but also in Manila is where the warfare of the streets is ever alive, persists, persisted, a continuing sad tragic backdrop.

I wonder what the duo Mayor Erap/ VM Isko has planned. Having come from the streets themselves, let's see?

I remember showing Zacateros to Turtle and Elephant a few years ago; I was hoping one of the Zacateros kids will recognize me, give my shoulder a tap and say "kalaro kita dati." No such luck. Middle class peeps, tough is our luck, but luck is tougher for most of these Manila electorate.  

Busy April

Approaching the middle of the month and school/work/rakets have been piling up! Not complaining, not complaining (oh but I sometimes do. I just pray that even when I do complain, I remember to be thankful).

Before I list the highlights, here are 2 poems, for those "different wells within your heart" (Hafiz) and to, this time, loving with all of your intelligence (A. Rich).



Splittings (Adrienne Rich)

1.
My body opens over San Francisco like the day-
light raining down     each pore crying the change of light
I am not with her     I have been waking off and on
all night to that pain     not simply absence but
the presence of the past     destructive
to living here and now     Yet if I could instruct
myself, if we could learn to learn from pain
even as it grasps us     if the mind, the mind that lives
in this body could refuse     to let itself be crushed
in that grasp     it would loosen     Pain would have to stand
off from me and listen     its dark breath still on me
but the mind could begin to speak to pain
and pain would have to answer:

                                                       We are older now
we have met before     these are my hands before your eyes
my figure blotting out     all that is not mine
I am the pain of division     creator of divisions
it is I who blot your lover from you
and not the time-zones nor the miles
It is not separation calls me forth     but I
who am separation     And remember
I have no existence     apart from you

2.
I believe I am choosing something new
not to suffer uselessly     yet still to feel
Does the infant memorize the body of the mother
and create her in absence?     or simply cry
primordial loneliness?     does the bed of the stream
once diverted     mourning     remember wetness?
But we, we live so much in these
configurations of the past     I choose
to separate her     from my past we have not shared
I choose not to suffer uselessly
to detect primordial pain as it stalks toward me
flashing its bleak torch in my eyes     blotting out
her particular being     the details of her love
I will not be divided     from her or from myself
by myths of separation
while her mind and body in Manhattan are more with me
than the smell of eucalyptus coolly burning     on these hills

3.
The world tells me I am its creature
I am raked by eyes     brushed by hands
I want to crawl into her for refuge     lay my head
in the space     between her breast and shoulder
abnegating power for love
as women have done     or hiding
from power in her love     like a man
I refuse these givens     the splitting
between love and action     I am choosing
not to suffer uselessly     and not to use her
I choose to love     this time     for once
with all my intelligence

---


Some Fill with Each Good Rain (Hafiz)

There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.

In one well
You have just a few precious cups of water,

That “love” is literally something of yourself,
It can grow as slow as a diamond
If it is lost.

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,

Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife

Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

There are different wells within us.
Some fill with each good rain,

Others are far, far too deep
For that.

Kristel.

Events that transpired in the Philippines last March was somewhat taxing, soul-wise. There were the events in Lahad Datu, there was the tragic suicide of a UP Manila student. The last one hit pretty hard. If there's one thing the Kristel Tejada tragedy reminded me is this: that activism is still relevant and very necessary. And that we in our middle class chairs owe it to the Kristel Tejadas in the Philippines, of the University of the Philippines, to speak out and guard against unfair administrative policies.  

What Dr. Seuss said:

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not.” (The Lorax) 

Caring is tiring, yes, but if we want things to change there's no other recourse.

cupboard inventory

Love is a grilled cheese sandwich, layered with different kinds of cheeses and butter. It's an exotic Mexican burger (with a name you already forgot) given a Pinoy twist (with pandesal) stuffed with chorizo and beans, an ingredient bought and cooked the first time. There I guess, love makes you dare. 

But also, love is planning the week's meal, a somewhat elaborate go/grow/glow breakfast, that surprise dinner you may/ may not botch up. Love is scrambled eggs, fritata, canned tuna, caramel popcorn. Love is never getting tired of  rinsing rice, at least thrice, and sticking to that 1:2 rice & water ratio.

The aspirational academic article

Certain researchers even when it's academic articles they're writing can impress. Reading such article now. The points are well-organized and the laying down of concepts equally superbly structured. It doesn't try to drown with information. Instead, it builds up its case, piling one clearly stated idea on top of another, and then revealing, at the perfect moment, the argument driven at or connecting the concept on hand to a theory, like a knot, yes, but more accurately like a firm ribbon.

That it keeps the discussion meaty proves that "critical" can be engaging.

Yep, "academic" or "serious" writing doesn't have to be insufferable, filled to the coffers (rhymes with coffin!) with gobbledygookterms.

One day, one day, I shall conquer this Everest. (Everest! Serious kasi eh.)

Roti, kopi, & a spot under the shade

Had a dream this morning that I was back in Ilo-ilo, this time as a student of UP Miagao. I woke up, annoyed and not really wanting to get out of bed. I wanted to sleep the whole day away. I wanted my self back in familiar QC. Just like the last week of August/ first few weeks of September 2012, I craved so much for home, surrounded by my friends, family, and boyfriend. I didn't want to be a foreigner passing through, I wanted a permanent (wonderful) job, I wanted weekends with said people above. 

But there were errands to run. And no, unlike August/ September of last year, this country is not completely foreign anymore. 

Yesterday, Ysa posted this verse, Matthew 7: 7-8,

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."



So rather than seriously give in to the strong urge to run back home, I've decided to just storm heaven's gate with some seriously loud knocking and asking, to find the motivation to push through with whatever's left of my course, to receive the courage to once again embrace the unfamiliar and the fortitude to be away. 

Rather than dream Monday off, I finished my errand and, on a whim, got on the train to see the Petronas Towers. Took out some MYR6 (Php75) and bought a kopi-roti (coffee bun) and kopi (coffee) set from RotiBoy (you should try it, fellow stranger). Found an empty bench in the park behind the towers with a full view of the dazzling twin buildings to tell myself you're in Kuala Lumpur now. Be present where you are. 

While the Petronas doesn't really do anything for me, that park with its tourists, benches, fountains, wading pool, and trees has feels like a refuge I can hide in, a safe place in this city filled with unfamiliarity. I made a pact with myself to visit it more often in my last 4 months here. And yes, the pact also includes just taking in whatever life/ the heavens decide to throw my way.

Sitting in the bench in that park, praying, I've come to realize that the Lord has my back, as He always does.  I, an earthly daughter, am welcome to come to Him, to run to Him. There are lessons to be learned in the coming months. There's a blessing hidden in being on my own, such as learning how to be more balanced and how to manage my time well. The blues are within, nagging at me. But then on the outside are the fountains flirting from across my bench and I just have to see that it's a wonderful warm day to be out and that it's good to be here. The facts are that the roti and kopi combo was a knockout, the sky is clear, friends from Manila/family/boyfriend are virtually present and though it appears I'm alone, it isn't like that really. Game face on once again, Malaysia.

Valdrada, the city reflected

Valdrada's inhabitants know that each of their actions is, at once, that action and its mirror-image, which possesses the special dignity of images, and this awareness prevents them from succumbing for a single moment to chance and forgetfulness.
(...)
At times, the mirror increases a thing's value, at times denies it. Not everything that seems valuable above the mirror maintains its force when mirrored. The twin cities are not equal, because nothing that exists or happens in Valdrada is symmetrical: every face and gesture is answered, from the mirror, by a face and gesture inverted, point by point. The two Valdradas live for each other, their eyes interlocked; but there is no love between them. 

"Cities and  Eyes," Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

The Perks of Being a Wallflower and my manic pixie (younger) self

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is such a good barkada film. I want to be friends with everyone Charlie made friends with, i.e. "trip" with Mary Elizabeth, talk about boys on random dates with Patrick, go to gigs with Sam.

The movie reminded me of Almost Famous, perhaps because they were both coming-of-age films and music played a crucial role in the re-shaping of the main characters' lives. I saw Almost Famous when I was younger though, i.e. I had just begun college, so I empathized greatly with the coming-of-age-feel of the movie: I was looking for my own heroines and manic Pixie girl Pennylane became, for quite sometime, the epitome of free spirit I had wanted to be. She was a proud groupie. She loved bravely. Plus, I was also trying to "discover" 60s-70s rock music and hippie culture then and Almost Famous was shown when the hippie era was relatively unexplored and not too cool yet (it was the pre-hipster period).

Manic Pixie Girl no more
Watching TPoBaW 12 years after Almost Famous provided an unanticipated evaluation of what happened to the projects Music/Hippie-ness & Manic Pixie-girl-slash-groupie I began when I was 18 and just starting college:
1) The music were ones I already like and have heard of (that's also thanks to the more contemporary playlist) 
2) I'd rather be manic Pixie-girl Sam (played magnificently by Emma Watson)'s ate and friend than her.

It's like seeing Paul Rudd play the teacher: an affirmation that I'm a lot older now, haha. I still love Pennylane's character, would hug her were we to meet in the fictional world and tell her how I did learn to love stupidly and bravely at the same time and take on life somewhat like she had, but I have other heroines now. And I think if I tell her this, she would say she understands where I'm coming from and tell me she knows what I mean. Then we would exchange knowing looks and trade stories about those trips we took, sometimes intentionally, other times because we had no choice, that forced us to stare at ourselves long and hard while asking "What the fuck is wrong with you?" and then learning to forgive and accept who & how we are, and then getting on the bus/ the route/ the journey again, stumbling/learning/struggling/practicing this notion of self-love, and then have a silly laugh and say, "Those manic pixie girl days were fun times, right?"

I know that had my Pennylane-adoring me met Sam earlier, she would probably feel like she found a new bestfriend. To her I'd say Sam is right, things are gonna be better or at least, it could be better if you allow it to. Then I'd tell her to be excited. Knowing the younger me, she'd probably get so anxious and a little scared. I'd tell her it's going to be real, affecting, and world-&-self-changing but oh-so-worth the ride, she should stand up, embrace the uncertainty, and wave her hands in the cold air like Sam does in that tunnel scene.