They're Playing Our Song

As I type the Mass in support of Rodolfo Lozada on the La Salle Greenhills campus is breaking up peacefully. The difference is that they're... they're playing Bayan Ko.

I guess this won't explain the chills running down my spine to my younger readers as I listen to it. That song's gotta be what-- twenty, thirty years old? Point is they were playing that song when the people had simply had enough of Marcos's repressive government. That bit of theme music helped rally millions of people around Cory Aquino. They were playing that song when the tanks were stopped by people lugging flowers and rosaries at Camps Crame and Aguinaldo.

Sure, Gramps, you're telling me, they're playing a song nobody really sings anymore. What's that gonna do?

In '86, dearest, it did plenty. The fact that they're playing it now means that we're that much closer to the tipping point.

Everyone please stay safe. Times of great bullsh!t are also times of great opportunity. I pray that whatever happens we don't squander ours.

The More or Less Manifesto

ZERO

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

---

After All It's Done To You, Why?

The long procession of women whose names have now become horribly interchangeable; the long nights wasted writing poetry or making art when making money would have brought more respect, more favors. The ugly sensation of having to adjust over and over again to a new set of arms, new smells, new colors, over a period of months, your nerve endings perpetually raw and screaming for contact. To be told you are in some fundamental way inadequate and inconvenient. To walk nights in not-space while the world swirled happily around you.

After all this, why indeed? Why do I still believe in it?

Why do I simply refuse to take comfort in the arms of the usual misanthropy and cynicism that is expected of nerds who should not have been given a shot at inconveniencing the rest of us (i.e. existence)?

I've tried to answer this in my long and boring ruminations.

Actually as I write my hands are shaking. I'm in no mood for long boring ruminations so I'll give you the short form.

Beyond the sexual dimension and the expectations that go with it, there is no functional difference between the love between mates and the love between friends. Most human interaction fosters love. Eros works his insidious magic whenever any two human beings come together, to share a task, to share a space, to share a life. He doesn't always succeed but regardless of the tools he uses -- a common goal, a shared schedule, the fact that you're siblings, sex-- he works constantly to bring people together.

I am more sure of this than I am of God. Eros is in fact my one direct non-Biblical (therefore acceptable) proof (I'm sorry I proceed from a position of doubt) that God exists and gives a ding dong diddley about his idiot creations.

All your questions of worth and why cease to matter when love takes root. Love empowers, love ennobles, even when it wounds. As many times as I've seen love fail because of someone's inner weakness, ill fortune, or bonehead decisions, I have also seen it flourish and sustain because people chose to make it work.

This is the reason I still believe in it so badly despite the bullshit it's put me through.

This is who I am, and I know of no other way to be.



Happy Valentine's everyone.

Don't Be

1

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

Or not.

---

I'll dispense with the metaphors as much as I can, just for today.

Don't Be My Friend

Because I can only count my normal friends with my fingers. If you want a simple, happy life uncomplicated by the burden of complex people then you seriously don't want to join my co-fraternity of misfits who include--

1. someone who has to put on an evil face over her pretty one, to make all the unpopular decisions, to take the brunt of everyone else's displeasure to shield her corporate bosses. She lives with the loss of friends who may never truly understand her. As much as she may want to be free to give her heart to someone, she is as married to her company as much as anyone else can be married to a partner.

2. someone who always has to take the moral high ground. You'd think he was the damned Pope the way he pontificates from his perch. But there's more to him than his near-unbending Chinese rigidity. I've seen his compassion. Part of his rigor comes from his desire to make the world a better place.

3. someone who takes principle so seriously that she'll puts too much stock in her word. It can't be broken, even under circumstances that scream "this is crazy." Even if her heart, the very core of her, screams against it. (No, dearest, this is not you).

4. someone who routinely stabs men (metaphorically) in the chest, the likely latest one being me. It's a scorpion's nature to sting, but it's testament to how much she can care about another person that she took so long to do it. I've seen that caring side of her, and I've always believed in it. Even when I called her an idiot, and even when everyone else was calling me an idiot for loving her.

5. someone who partially equates self esteem with the bedchamber. I can't pretend to be able to fully help her with this dysfunction-- I don't have the training and I certainly cannot be the surrogate she needs. But I've seen her at her strongest-- self possessed, capable, loving, earning more in a day than I could in a month's honest work.

6. a father who's had to plumb the depths of sleaze to feed and clothe his kids. An artist/inventor who's had to apply his genius to morally problematic causes. Love takes people on strange pathays and his has been stranger than most.

Conventional wisdom dictates that I chuck them all, because they can supposedly drag me down, despite the things within them that I find worth loving, redeeming staying around for. I've said this before: we are all such broken toys.

You're asking why I'm airing this and every other bit of dirty linen hanging on clotheslines in my head, knowing as I do that it can and probably will sabotage any chance of our being friends (or of any Human Resources Department looking at me favorably, hahaa!). You see, I know humans like the back of my hand. I'm hoping that in your case I'm reading you wrong.

Dark Places

2

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

The stuff will be mostly mine. If the piece isn't mine I'll say so. If you're going to copy and paste this at least please tell people I made it.

---

The places that I walk are often the same places everyone else inhabits. It's just that I seem to slip into a kind of parallel dimension where I can see everyone as they go about their business-- couples holding hands and contemplating each other, friends and officemates cheerfully making the first of their eager legs home. I could stand haloed in moonlight, or bathed in the artificial yellow of the city and they would never notice, never see me. That is, until I broke the spell, announced myself-- and then the party would be over for someone.

In the old days that would have been a welcome thing. Some of my talents lie somewhat in stealth, and there was a period in my life where I did make shadowing people and casing places a quasi-hobby. No, I had no assassin-wannabe aspirations but it was cool to play at being Batman, or eponymously, The Shadow.

None of that today, though.

Whenever I find myself slipping into that twilight subspace It's often against my will. I want to be seen, to be noticed, to interact. But I know humans like I know the back of my hand and the survival instinct takes over. The gates open, and I'm in, guts turned inside out and knees quivering in the bargain.

I become an unwilling member of the storied denizens of the night. I cruise with vampires and ghostly women dressed in white. Amorphous incorporeal things harrass me.

I follow people who swim in their spaces like so many happy fish. In my not-space I am hyper-aware of every nuance, every gesture. The little details more than anything really. Sense perception is diminished so that every other sense compensates for the loss of fidelity. From my not-space I observe in slow motion the fall of a woman's hair as she tosses her head from side to side, walking with her peculiar somewhat bow-legged gait. I observe a friendly kiss goodbye between her and a friend. A man and a woman: I notice the body language that atempts to hide the closeness that is already there, patent, for everyone with eyes, to gawk at.

From my not-space I know. And the knowledge brings bitter consolation.

+†+

I don't own this space. I only found it. The way was open to me when my heart first broke long ago.

+†+

I often find myself sharing it with vagrants, beggars, prostitutes and children selling flowers in the dead of the night. I know this because they can see me, as lost and sometimes as lonely as the rest of them. They reach out to me with arms covered in grime or sores, a pleading (or sometimes predatory) look in their eyes.

Comfort me. Need me. Feed me. Love me.

They take me back to realspace when they do this, as I suddenly have the power to banish them to not-space with their humanity savaged by just so much. It's hard, to acknowledge them as human beings and tell them I can't help them.

In the end we vanish into our not-space, becoming observers of a world that would rather forget us.

Somebody get me this book. Please.

I found it on Amazon.

On the author's website:

"DON'T LET THE PRESIDENT HAVE THE LAST LAUGH! Danielle Crittenden's hilarious collection of imaginary online correspondence between the POTUS and his "buddy list" is now available in a dead tree edition by Simon Spotlight Entertainment. You'll find THE PRESIDENT'S SECRET IMs at Amazon and bookstores across the country."


Online, George "Dubya" is kickass43. He spends a lot of time on his computer talking everything from US foreign policy to his situation at home with the world's bigshots. Including ben16 (Pope Benedict XVI) and sxybritguy10 (Tony Blair). Hilarious fun.

Bill Clinton, true to form, is ladeezman42.

Postscript to a F....

We've dismantled the Diliman shop. Part of the gradual tying of loose ends that has characterized my activities in the last quarter of last year. I saw the results of Project Yearbook and amazingly they came out well. Someone at the press managed to convince my clients that it was a boneheaded idea to change formats from letter-sized to legal-sized pages when the original layout (painstakingly done in blood and sweat by yours truly) had presupposed an 8.5x11 inches page size. The laid out pages looked good in spite of the start-stop horrors my client had me inflict on the poor project. I'm almost tempted to regret not adding my name to it.

Almost.

Now, as the last of these infernal strings are tied up nice and neat, I can look forward to the activities that will mark my ... moving on (words so easy to dish out when you address the apparent source of your inconvenience) ...to other more profitable ventures.

Ecce Homo

5

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

If you're going to copy and paste this at least please tell people I wrote it.

---

Ecce Homo

If you proceed from a position of faith, then "knowing your own worth" is a good enough basis of a healthy self esteem. The problem arises when you attempt to be totally objective about what you are worth. You must proceed from a position of distrust. You cannot trust your own assessment of worth until--

a) there is a standard to measure it against; and
b) you meet, or better yet, surpass those standards.

Sometimes I don't know what's worse.

The first makes you delusional; complacent, if serene, until you meet someone or something better, faster, stronger than you. Especially something that threatens to make you obsolete.

The second will never let you sleep.You are constantly and ruthlessly examining yourself for flaws and consistently finding them. There must be no question about your place in the Universe, your utility to your society and fellow man. Else, why do you even exist?

Quo Vadis, Veritas?

In a world where everyone can theoretically do what you do, think what you think, earn what you earn or more-- in a world where you are, in short, replaceable as employee, father, husband, lover, son-- in a world like that you have no real place.

God himself does not provide comfort within his abstract love of humanity, at least initially-- if he loves everyone equally then there is absolutely no difference between you and the depraved rapist who should be given the chair. You can't even trust the healing afforded by an abiding faith in the Christ-- how can you really truly tell if it's not another delusion? Another lie, another social palliative applied like band-aid to distract you from attempting to truly answer the questions of "What is my worth? Why am I here?"

The relentless search for the truth of your worth demands that you do not accept palliatives.

Those who take this second path path will most likely come to the same initial conclusions I have. That there is no meaning; that you exist to die; that your worth is a transient thing, dependent solely on chance and whether or not you picked the right skills and credentials and connections and bible study groups in your formative years.

Ecce Eros, Veritas; Ecce Homo

Absurdly enough, it's simple, naked love that answers the ontological and teleological questions of worth and meaning, by rendering those questions meaningless. Not the abstract love of a distant Watchmaker who "loves everyone equally." It's the love a Creator expresses personally through human agents-- friends, parents, someone you can share a well-lit bench with. Ridiculous as it sounds, the human psyche is apparently built that way.

I've thus come to accept that some palliatives are necessary if you still want to be a part of the human race. Acting out of faith is after all better, less stressful, than acting out of doubt.

I know what I'm worth. But I'll sleep better if key people can bring themselves to remember it.

True to Form

I got shanghaied into playing a bit part in a webcast. The same way I regularly got shangahied into playing creepy old geezers, or creepy young dudes in plays and video productions.

At least I'm acting again...

Requiem for Porky

I'll say I never saw it coming. Though considering how my government's been jumping at every sound, I should have. I really feel sorry for him. I saw the news footage and ex House Speaker and former GMA Ally Jose de Venecia looks like-- dare I say it? --crap.

But I guess what goes around comes around. Jose de Venecia was the consummate political wheeler and dealer. The baron of brokers and the king of compromise. And I will admit that I hated this guy for his continuing efforts to reanimate the rotting corpse of charter change long after ex-President Fidel Ramos had given it up for, well, dead. There were other reasons that involved keeping Arroyo super-glued to the presidential chair long after she should have been impeached.

Now that he's been fired on account of his son's feud with the First Gentleman, he's opened up the metaphorical bathroom to let the stink out, calling for a "moral revolution." Conrado de Quiros is right when he says that de Venecia is the last person you'd expect such calls from; that if de Venecia did something right, it's that he just proved how little the current administration values loyalty and the people it claims to serve.

Rina Jimenez David writes that we may see in the fall of the wheeler-n'-dealer, the possible rise of a statesman. My knee-jerk reaction is to be skeptical-- I know humans enough that if you give them the opportunity to do something stupid, enough of them will. You can yell your head off about how they're running the planet or their relationships into the ground, and all they'll see is a locust-lunching wild man man clad in camel hair (you) with nothing to offer them but sound and drama.

But the Universe is full of surprises and just when you think something's graven in stone, something shifts... So maybe there's redemption for Porky yet.

The clouds massing outside the Fandom Cafe where I'm writing this now, the "defrocking" of Porky himself and the resurrection of the ZTE issue -- these I take as proof that whatever it is that's keeping this magic-realist country interesting is at it again.

I'm smelling a change in the air. I'm praying all of us can meet it with courage, equanimity, resilience, resourcefulness, and-- as this is Kafkaed after all--

humor.

De.motion

Well I'm back to being a commuter and it feels... different. I'm going to miss the mobility afforded by a motor vehicle. It made a lot of things easier and more complicated at the same time. Of course I know this situation is only temporary. As soon as new money comes in and I'm clear of a few more finacial obligations I'm getting my license renewed. There will be more money to use for making the lives of the people I care about a little easier. Aaaaaand I'm gonna get my blue RAV 4 yet.

I am Salmon

And I used to be such a tuna guy. Wait, I still am.

There's something more appealing to me about the color, texture, consistency of maguro (tuna) sashimi than the salmon variety. The best tuna and salmon sashimi melt in your mouth, releasing unique flavors ably complemented by the right amount of wasabi and soy sauce. The difference is that--

a) Salmon doesn't have tuna's somewhat iron-bloody aftertaste (the taste of salmon sashimi can be described as somewhat sweet, creamy); and
b) Salmon melts in the mouth better

Given a choice, I'd always go for tuna, even if only for reasons of price and availability. Tuna can pretty much be found swimming our oceans without making a salmon's trips to fresh water streams for purposes of spawning. And cheap tuna can be just that-- cheap. Salmon is more prized, therefore harder to find or get to, and therefore more expensive.

But you're asking Why am I Salmon? Reasons exist beyond a pun on the movie I am Sam (good movie starring Sean Penn, do check it out. Incidentally the pun was also a conscious choice).

As I'm a creature of metaphor, nuance, meme and pop culture references, you can be sure that this post is not simply about fish.

A salmon's life is apparently more complex than his tuna counterpart: he's born in a fresh water river or stream, migrates to a big ocean and then feels an irresistible desire to return to the stream of his birth.

I am Sam. And I am Salmon.

date of expiry

My license expires in five days. I'll need cash to defray the costs of renewing the thing. While I scramble for coinage I am also thankful, since it's served me very very well.

Again, Jen

People outgrow you.

There will always come a time when students-- if they are diligent, if they learn from you at all-- will not need you to hold their hands and walk them through life's (or in her case English's) rough patches. When you encounter anyone as bright as her, as apt to pick up what you know... well, a part of you doesn't want it to end. Even if you know it must and that you have to let her go when she can learn nothing else from you.

What's nice is that long long after you've done with mentoring someone who resonates with you, he'll still fondly refer to you as "Teacher" or "Sir." Even if, by now, you're nothing of the kind to this person. Happily you can both progress as "friends" if the teacher-student bond is still strong long after it's become obsolete.

* * *

I had wanted to say more here, but I'll keep this short and easy to read. There are always other posts.

What did you just say?

フィリピンの大統領は「我々はEDSA IIを忘れます」と言いました。アロヨ大統領はMENTAL( 異常 )ですか！？　もしEDSA IIにならなかった、アロヨさんはフィリピンの大統領にならなかった。

I have some relative freedom to diss the government every time I think it makes a monumentally stupid decision. This is only made possible mostly by two things:

1. a constitution that guarantees my right to speak freely
2. my relative political anonymity.

When my government says we should forget the very thing that put it into power--EDSA II-- then it can go hang.

To say she's betrayed her principles and our nation's dreams is already moot.

I'm not mad enough to tell everyone else to mount another relatively bloodless uprising, no. The lesson of EDSA is primarily that we should not allow things to get so bad that we have to mount another EDSA.

Bottom line: We can't afford to forget.

It blossoms in all sorts of places...

This morning (well, yesterday morning now) on the jeepney ride home I saw a couple leaning ever so gently-snugly against each other, two hands linked, free arms resting softly on a knee or waist. I didn't want to rock their cocoon -- love's myopia renders everyone and everything else invisible-- so I moved. So that they'd have more personal space.

My seatmate was, like myself, falling asleep but valiantly keeping her head from connecting with my shoulder. Had I not been too tired to speak, I would have told her to go ahead, take a load off. Let the rest of her body deal with her health issues.

I silently wished them happiness.

Project Yearbook Post Mortems

My life --indeed any human being's life-- can be described as a series of (sometimes bonehead) decisions and remorseful post-mortems after the fact. As another phase of this life comes to a close I'm feeling the need to make the requisite summations and evaluations.

Project Yearbook is almost practically done. So.

So. What have I learned?

Not much. They say one is doomed to repeat sitting through the lesson if it isn't learned properly. My lessons involve things like valuing the worth of your work by properly pricing it.

Everybody wants to get "a little something extra" for his money and it's only natural that people will haggle. Even if you're already bending over backward to give them something good. To expect others not to haggle right off the bat because you don't, is futile. You have to make that clear.

I can't price myself worth jack because I'm always thinking about the other guy. Because I'm in love with this person, or because the client is "family." It's not that favors shouldn't be done for the people you care about or out of simple human decency (a shock to some of you, I know). But if this is the rule and not the exception then I shouldn't be in business-- I should be a priest or a UN volunteer. In East Timor.

Nobody else gives a rat's @ss that you're risking your life and your investment when you take your equipment on the road or spend late nights on a project whose profit can be measured in peanuts. Nobody wants to understand the technical difficulties you're mired in-- it's too daunting and it's exhausting simply trying to explain why you need to shift file formats, or why you need the damned dummy last year and whythehellarewemakingthedummyjustnow?

Nobody gives half a damn. So you should.

This will be among the hardest lessons for me to learn. I can only say I've learned it after I can tell certain people "No" and not feel so bad that I wasn't able to help.

Chop.Shop

With the imminent completion of project yearbook I will soon find myself ...free. Simply. Free. There will still be a few loose ends to tie up, a few places to revisit but... freedom never tasted so good. I haven't felt her skin so near that the warmth of it and the smell of her are making me cross-eyed. I can almost taste her lips.

I'm leaving the Diliman shop, people, at the end of the month. I waited until project yearbook was finished to do this. I've waited so long.

Flush the "Right Thing"

Why does doing "the right thing" have the most appeal and the worst consequences?

I left my old place of work in protest against how my friend was fired. In a place where there's little in the way of clear-cut policy, a lot of stuff gets excused or shoved under the table and easily forgotten-- like the man's contributions, in part. Or the fact that some of the bases for the charges against him were the same stopgap measures he took on his quest to help the company out-- measures that the policy makers approved of at that time. But if it wasn't written down, then it didn't happen.

When you fire the one and only winner of the [Mr Helpful] award, there's something very very very wrong. Even if he was being muley in the end.

Higher admin did give me an explanation-- not that I asked for one, and not as if it was legally obligated to do so to me, but it was a gesture I greatly appreciated. It didn't change my decision, but it made leaving harder. I waited a full month between my decision to leave and my actual leavetaking-- there were loose ends to tie up and covenants I had to uphold.

It'll come as a surprise to some of you but I do have some honor.

There were other reasons for leaving the job of course. I was living with my friend and I did not want to drive a spike between him and his wife, who I love dearly. (She quit the job the same day he was fired.) I was also hitching my wagon to someone else's shooting star-- someone's dream that was going in the same direction mine was. I could have held my ground and stayed but I wasn't prepped for the difficulties that decision would have entailed... or so I thought.

Direct consequences--
It's been difficult to finance the insurance policy I took out some days before my friend was fired. This took longer to happen, but I also lost a girlfriend-- probably the sweetest most loving one since I was engaged to my ex-wife.

In my Universe, Personal trumps everything. This is probably why I still have friends and probably why I'll likely never ever be rich.

It's Your Sunshine, Sir. Spread It Where You Will

Some of my friends are uncomfortable with the idea of intercession, so please bear with me here. I'm holding up my end of a bargain I made long ago. This is part of it.

I still have a roof over my head; I still have some friends; something good came out of all those hours seemingly wasted looking for God in sacred places.

Two people I'd like to thank, and this has been due them for some time now. Thank you Jude, friend of Jesus. And most of all thank you, Jesus.

It's usually after I get grateful and profuse that I get news that makes me want to take all that back and yell "I've been gypped!" But for whatever's it's worth later in the week, I truly am thankful.

Fringer's Work Report (Jan 03 2008)

Status: Strung Out

I guess this would fall under my "bad day" posts. Though it's really more of a "long day" post, when you think of it. What's bad is that as I type, this day's not really over yet.

Got a project I would sooooo much like to dump but my perverse sense of honor is keeping me from dropping it like so much unwanted airport luggage. There will be no profit in this. Meanwhile my other projects are moving at a glacial pace.

I need to cram stuff into a disc (actually two discs) and I'm waiting for a friend to hand me disc #2 so I can fill it and take it to my client.

* * *

By the way, a friend's artwork looks a damn sight better now that it's framed. Not that it didn't look good on its own, mind you. I just hope I have the strength to take it to the client who commissioned it tomorrow, where it's supposed to go.

Meantime I have to wait a few days for my own work to get properly framed and ready for delivery. I'm hoping I can get the framers to do this a little quicker.

I want to sleep. I want to bother some friends. I want to eateateat.

In other news my deviantArt site has, as of 10:00 p.m. tonight, been hit 4000 times. Not that it's really a big deal, but I like celebrating the little things.

Alright. Back to work.