Merry Christmush

Today is not merry-sunshine-how-bright-you-are-now day. There are no puppies, doves and cotton candies in the sky. Instead it is dark and gloomy. I look outside; it is drizzling. The dour morning conjured a dingy indistinct landscape of the city slippery, wet and moist. I wish I am in Wuthering Heights. But I am not Heathcliff and I long for my Catherine Earnshaw.

I see silver bells glistening, poinsettias blooming. I hear Christmas songs playing on the airwaves.

Is it me or just the chemical reaction induced by the so called Pavlov’s Classical conditioning? It is Christmas and I feel nostalgic.

Ok, maybe I just miss someone. It is one of those days I feel a gush of creative expression. I want to create something. I could throw colors on a canvass but I am not a painter. I could play the violin and make dogs howl but…I came out with this lousy poem…


Once gain, here I am longing… wanting…
I know the universe will arrange itself
Circumstances will conspire
The gods will connive
To contract and distort time and distance
To unite two souls put asunder.

That is why here I am longing… wanting…
I feel you in every droplets of water in my shower
I feel you as I hold my teacup every morning.
I feel you as I put on my rubber slippers
I feel you behind my curtains rustling.
I am longing…wanting…
Painstakingly begging Waiting for every sign
from break of dawn
Till the vesper bell rings.
That one day you materialize even in my dreams
But each passing day, yearning is tormenting,
bitter sweet

I am longing...wanting
But I take refuge in my heart,
Where at its deepest core it has magical ability
To keep ethereal moments past.


I know… I know I am not a poet. Stop laughing now. Merry Christmas.

Wrath of Beelzebub

“Wake up, you idiot! Do you know what time is it?”

Mama screamed as if whole neighborhood has been razed by fire and I was the only cretin left behind. No, she is not miles away from me trying to get my attention. In fact she is just beside my bed thinking I was feigning sleep and just too lazy to get up. This is her normal way of expressing herself: shouting. Imagine if she is upset. I am used to her megaphone voice but I was jolted from a really deep sleep. I slept late that night because I vowed to finish the thick and dark The Brothers Karamazov; plus I had recurring nightmares of Grushenka. I was terribly annoyed that I could shove my pillow into her mouth for disturbing my slumber but I could not do it because well, she is my mother and we suppose to loooove and respect our dear mothers.

For as long as I can remember, my mother wakes up before sunrise regardless of the time she slept that night. To wake before the sun is up or we will be left behind was her constant reminder. This is one thing she always pound on us which we ignored with delight. We found it senseless to wake up so early on weekends. We attribute this obsession to her being raised during the famine where they had to work hard and pine for relief coming from the government in order to survive.


I have always been afraid of my mother more than my father. In the world of male chauvinism and women discrimination, she was never the submissive and the martyr type. Looking back, I could not imagine how she managed to raise seven little devils. She has balls the size of Jupiter. She is so much involved in us to the point of controlling our lives. In her own words: I know better. She hardly pinched or whipped but her mouth was her most potent weapon. If the invectives she spews could kill, maybe she should have been indicted for genocide together with Milosevic. My father, the seven of us her children, our neighbors, my fathers’ relatives, drivers, sales ladies are the unsuspecting objects of her daily wrath.

“Hey, get up, lazy boy. Get your ass off to the table, or you’ll be eating my goddamned fist for breakfast”.

I play dead. I did not move and I tried to doze off for a few more minutes.

“If I come up again and you didn’t fix your bed yet. We all know what will happen,” She warned.

She moved out of my room. I heard her going downstairs. It was followed by the incessant whistling of the kettle, the clangs of the utensils and our radio in full volume. I know she does this on purpose. She has a singular talent of annoying people and she does it with great panache. She never stops until you yield.

The arias of discordant noises were killing me softly. I dragged my carcass out of my magnet bed and crawled downstairs or ill be the object of Beelzebub’s wrath again. I gobble a pandesal then leisurely swill my coffee.

“Move you ass off. Go fetch water. Take a bath or well be late for the first mass,’ she growled.

Its Sunday and it its time for that a-family-that-prays-together-stays-together thing. I hate Sundays. I never liked mass. One, I could not handle the torture of boring sermon. Two, I want to slither away from my mother's long cherished religion.

“I won’t go to mass,” I drawled

“Say that again?”

She puffed a cloud of smoke. She crushed her half-finished cigarette into the ashtray with her long manicured fingernails. I saw smoke coming from her nostrils.

“You heard me.”

I cowered behind the table, anticipating 1000 lashes.

I know this is not the proper time to discuss but I figured I am no longer a young boy who should be told to do the do the proper thing. I thought its time I should stand up for my own convictions.

I was 18 then, young and intoxicated with a great dose of philosophy of Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, Feuerback and I wanted to declare with sheer arrogance my personal angst, my profound understanding of life and the world. If they do not understand me, it does not matter. I was then a member of an underground organization who believes in an alternative view of life. We spent most of our time discussing Jacques Derrida and Bertrand Russell and humanistic philosophy. Often we shock people with our Weltanschauung. We look down upon those who do not share our views as the docile herd- unfeeling and unthinking. We loathe with passion the unfeeling… the unthinking.


“I do not have any religion. I am an atheist.”


“A… what?” her thin penciled eyebrows went to orbit.

She was probably thinking I was using metaphor. But the thought of that soft sweet fruit having numerous black seeds confused her.

“I do not believe in God any more!”

I wanted to quote Nietzsche: “The death of god is the birth of a superman; the new enlightened man who would trample upon the feeble Christian values.” Not believing in God will bring about a newer and higher phase of human history. The superman will be the highest form of human evolution.

Or Jean Paul Sartre: Man is the creator for his essence alone. Without god he will rely on his strengths, he will work his ass off. He will not depend on some divine intervention. Religion is the biggest impediment for man to achieve his own potential. It makes man docile and weak.

Or Ludwig Feuerback: Religion is an instrument of established power to perpetuate its influence by permanently incapacitating those who fight against it. It is a form of social control.

Long pause and then…

“Ayeeeeee!”

My mother shouted in a way that could wake up the dead. Then she fainted.

Dear Pareng Jomar

(An open letter to my childhood friend Pareng Jomar who is now an architect in Singapore)

I know this letter is long overdue. My apologies for not responding to your letter immediately. I had been perpetually caved in my mousehole since I enrolled in law school. It’s been a long time since I visited home; so I do not have news. I only decided to go home after constant cajoling and coaxing of Mama. I gathered it would be the perfect place to relax after the tedious and heart rending preparation for the bar exam. So there.

There isn’t really much change since you left seven years ago.

The roads leading to town is repaired and concretized. No longer you’ll be choked with the swirling dust or annoyed with the rattling stones and deep potholes when you get home. It's now the perfect time to buy a new car.

I am saddened though by the demolition of our make-shift hut near the road at Aling Loting where we usually jam together and discuss our dreams over a plate of fried grasshoppers and beetles. A waiting shed was built there named after the mayor in big and neon letters. In fact, every waiting shed on the street is named after him. Aling Adeng no longer sells there; she flew to Hongkong to become a maid. I really miss her betamax (coagulated chicken blood), helmet (chicken head) adidas (chicken feet) or IUD (chicken innards), our favorite pulutan.


Remember Aling Nita’s nipa where we used to play tong its? It was transformed into a ten-room palace. Her lesbian daughter, worked as a care giver in the States. She must have been earning a lot of dollars because she engaged herself in an unbridled house construction. All Her siblings wanted to live there. They did not get along well so they tried to kill each other.

Don Imo, the despicable land lord who tried to cheat us with our wage when we worked in their farm died of a terrible affliction. Obscure cancer cells grew from his crotch into a considerable amount until he could no longer get up. All his properties went to hospitalization bills. His lowly tenant whose son is a seaman bought his land. Talk about Karma. Rumor has it that it was Aling Sima, the Witch through a magical spell killed him because he refused to let her borrow a ganta of rice when she begged from him. The same Mangkukulam whom your mother thought was responsible for your uncle Turo’s death although the doctor said he had acute Tuberculosis.

Aling Dalena never retired from whoring despite several assaults on her person by the wives of the husband whom he stole including their income. In fact some of the women who envy her new lips tick, other cosmetics, necklace and cell phone became whores also and made it their career. Based on the description of my mother- orange-dyed hair, unusually fair face fairer than rest of her body- I think we have over ten whores here already. Maybe their guilt compelled them to clean themselves through assiduous application of astringent on their face, (or is it Chin chun zu?) to remove the grime and filth they feel. I hate to tell you but get ready for this: Nene you childhood sweetheart became a whore too.

Our sari-sari store still stands. We still supply the basic needs of the neighborhood from sardines to nails for coffin. Our best seller tuyo is no longer patronized because as one mother claimed: Napaparami kain mga bata ng kanin. Sa hirap ng buhay ngayon kailangan maghipit ng sinturon. The whole Soriano clan from the great grand mother to her great grand daughter has been our loyal costumers. They still buy armed with various sizes of bottles: the mayonnaise bottle was for two-peso Bagoong, the Tanduay Rhum bottle for five-peso lard, the gin bottle for one-peso soy sauce or vinegar. Mama who should sell a bulb of garlic for three pesos divides it into cloves for a peso to fit the buying capacity of our neighbors.

I could no longer find the large mango tree of Aling Iling where we used to climb- the mango tree was a mute witness to our rich childhood. I was told that it was uprooted by the bulldozer to make way for a road to reach the heart of the farmland courtesy of a congressman during the campaign period. After the election however, it was abandoned unfinished.

How could I forget? Under that mango we, little rascals organized by 12- year old Rey, a scheming gay boy, pledged allegiance together. It was where we hatched plans to attack the rival group from a nearby neighborhood. It is where we conspired crimes masterminded by Rey: to steal ripe mangoes of Aling Iling, coconuts of Mang Berting, the young corns of Don Imo. Once, we were caught stealing the large steel kettle of an old man thinking that it would cost much when weighed in the junkshop. Father whipped me to shreds and I was made to kneel over mongo seeds. Under that mango tree, Mang Kuset split our foreskins to make us men while we chew the guava buds.

Etched in that mango tree was your side kick Bong’s declaration of an unrequited love of a gal not of the same status: I heart Sharon (with a heart pierced with an arrow). Because of that heart break he never went back to school.He became a bonafide tambay. He spent the rest of his life swilling cheap wines. Only later I found out he was murdered, hacked with a bolo by a stranger in our neighborhood because of a petty altercation.

Under that mango tree, we played hide and seek under a full moon or role playing the TV soap Yagit. Nene was Joselyn, Ingga was Elisa tony was Tom Tom, Yolly was the villainess Dona Claudia. You, because you are manly and menacing are the tulisan Mang Damaso who would kidnap Jocelyn and the rest of the Batang Yagit. Our child play turned out to be the sexual awakening of the some of the girls. And the naughty you, lost your virginity at age of 12.


Our infamous multi-purpose building where we used to play basketball still stands. It’s still called multi-purpose because during week days, it serves as a school for kindergartens, during weekends it becomes a basket ball court. At night since it is not well lighted, strange things happen. People say that it was infested by spirits, moaning spirit that is. We both know that there are no ghosts in there but the Barangay chairman molesting young boys for 20 pesos. Occasionally, during holidays and fiestas it becomes a dancing hall for fundraising projects. You were always excited for you can dance a lady of your type for 5 pesos. Barrio ladies were then coy and modest -the abaniko fanning ladies who cover mouth with their hanky when they smile and who just flutter their eyelashes when you talk to them.

I am sure you miss swimming in the river. The Cagayan River was our playground. We swam, dived, built sand castles. We bathed our carabaos after grazing, wash our clothes, scrape charcoaled kettles and pots, rubbed our tar tared teeth with the sand. We peeked at young girls’ breasts and mounds.

The river’s imposing beauty was abandoned and forsaken by our barrio folks. Nobody swam and washed there except for few farmers. It has eroded hectares of land including ours. It has claimed many lives. I was told that beneath the river resides a beautiful but avenging mermaid Zirena who has claimed the lives or pretty girls and handsome boys. The former to be her slaves while the latter to become her husband. For five years in row, at least a life had been sacrificed.

They are very serious in their effort stop Zirena. They, mostly mothers even lobbied to the local legislators to enact ordinance outlawing swimming in the river. They organized a full-force team that would capture the Zirena and jail her. Although I just grumbled since every effort is futile to make them realize their prizewinning idiocy, I imagined it’s kind of amusing to put to jail a nude and scaled Dyesebel in a bath tub.

This year, the mermaid will be out again looking for the next victim, they warned. She’s waiting for the right timing. I never thought they were that frigging serious until Mama alerted the whole neighborhood armed with bolos and spears to fetch me upon learning that I went alone swimming in the river. My mother almost fainted. I assured her that the mermaid will never take because I am not handsome. Unless of course she likes scruffy looking guys… er, the likes of Brad Pitt.

I can go on and on like Pigafetta chronicling every change here but my fingers are getting numb… unless of course you buy me a laptop. I heard it’s a lot cheaper there.


Hasta la vista,
lante

Marooned in Recto Station*

It was 6:00 when I reached Recto station. The rain began to pour and the wind was portentous. Suddenly I found myself in a different world I never knew existed before: so cinematic reminiscent of Tim Burton gothic movies. I took my MP3 and Pearl Jam underscored:

“The ocean is full for everyone is crying. The sorrow gets bigger and the sorrow is denied. The full moon is looking for a friend in high tide.”

The cold dusk seeped through my spine. Neon lights barely perceptible in a night shrouded with a dark mantle. From my view, I could see the outline of the building like a giant monolith, mournful in the gloomy sky.

Lightning crashed.

I saw shadows darting across the opaque and rickety metals and walls darkened by soot and dirt. I shouted but no one paid attention. Nobody seemed to care I existed.

Yonder, I saw the spires of the San Sebastian church, the cross of the Quiapo church stabbed the sky. The protruding iron bars of under constructed flyover, and the dangling shards and barbed wire of dilapidated buildings violently slashed the rotten street.

Rain poured harder. The street bled. Clogged canals coughed and spurted gore. Manholes sputtered roaches and rodents hunting for the cadaver. And then, from the decaying Avenida came out Magdalenas like swarms of maggots. I smelled the stench of moist decaying flesh. Human cannibals lustily came like new terrorists.

The earth shook as thunder roared like furious beast. And then silence: I hear the beggar serenades in a song, doleful like vesper bells. I dropped a coin into his empty Mc Donald’s cup.

Just then the train came and I hurried home.

I was home finally. I returned to my mousehole were I sought comfort with my pillows, blanket and my own illusions and make believes.

I envy the unfeeling and the unthinking.

"The feeling we can’t leave behind. The meaning we can’t leave behind. Our innocence lost in one time. We are different behind the eyes. There is no need to hide."

_______
*written sometime ago

The Road to Tantalus

The jeep crawled itself like a lazy slug to the station.

Perennially haunted by the idea that whenever I miss first the train and the sliding door closes before me, one possibility of life which might be instrumental to my destiny would be lost forever - yes, the movie Sliding Doors- I squeezed into the already bulging train and disappeared from the sliding door.

Then, I found myself in a throng of corporate slaves. They were sleek in their wrinkle-free designer suits and shoes. They reeked of Ralph Lauren fragrances, shimmered in their designer watches and latest gadgets. I felt like I was Patrick Bateman in the movie American Psycho.

In a flash, I passed the same route again. The train like the scheming serpent in the Genesis passed through the road between Ortigas and Ayala. I gawked and I lustily reached through the billboards like giant trees virtually laden with all my dreams in life: shop-all-you-can Citibank credit card, Ferrari, house and lot in a posh village, signature wardrobes, savvy watches and mobiles, designer pharmaceuticals endorsed by flawless models, picture perfect family dining in Pancake House, “Live your dreams” promise of an insurance company, Vicky Belo's guarantee of perfect body.

Borgy Manotoc, KC Concepcion, Kris Aquino, Gretchen Barretto and Paris Hilton were inviting and enticing everyone in their gleaming paradiso.

But I was the helpless Tantalus. Their branches moved away from me. They eluded my every reach.

Past Taft Avenue, the serpent train shed its skin, metamorphosed into a giant maggot: the LRT train. Then it nipped through the rotten street of Manila. This time I found myself in a different class of people; I smelled the stench of the pawis of the proletariat worming their way to the factories.

I was one of them. I am one of those faceless thousands who plod through life with anonymity, resignation and retarded ambition.

Aaargh!

I thought it was one of those simple twists of faith but I figured I am being singled out for a terrible retribution for some previous misdeeds.

I became a teacher.

My friend Troy who is in the human resources in a company that runs those computers schools that abound in the streets of Metro Manila summoned me to fill a teaching vacancy. Apparently his boss had been heckling him to provide a teacher. He did not have a pool of applicants, so he called me up; his last desperate resort.

You see, I do not claim mastery of the English language. Sure, I have ample English units. Sure, I was an editor in our school paper during my high school days and tutored Korean students back in college. But I don’t think those will qualify me to teach English to college students.

What the heck. I have been bumming around for like months already and I needed bucks. I was lusting for an ipod, so I accepted the offer.

The following morning, I made a power point presentation on Subject- Verb Agreement before the school administration. As luck would have it, I was hired. I did not know it would be the start of my hellish life (insert horror soundtrack here). I was not forewarned.

Whoever said that teaching is a noble profession, I want to strangle him and ask him: What were you thinking! Were you even thinking!?

Teaching English is like- to borrow a line from one comedian- walking in a tight rope while eating a live chicken and doing Sisa’s mad scene at the same time (Parang tumutulay sa alambre habang kumakain ng buhay na manok at sumisigaw ng “Crispin! Basilio! Nasaan ang mga anak ko!”)

I did not know where to start. My students’ knowledge of the English language can be summed up in two words: What’s up! and cool. Ok, three words. Constructing sentence is a daunting task like finding a needle in a heap of hay. Students do not know the difference between is and are. One time a student gave a sentence, and he drawled: The dog is bark (sic). I thought it was hilarious but he was not even trying to be funny. For a moment, I wanted to get my two barreled gun and shoot him. But I composed my self and explained the proper form of the verb.

There are too much clutter and self-expression in the class room. Students can ask and the most stupid things ever imagined. They can even unabashedly bare their Id when prompted. A girl once shrieked until her tonsils burst just because, well, she just wanted to do it.

They come in school in their gothic outfits complete with make up and bling-blings like rejects from Adam’s Family Values or Tim Burton movies or in their tattered jeans and advocacy shirts in Swastika symbols, Hashish, Mao, Che Guevara, Bob Marley or (gasp!) porn star. Do they know what those icons mean? Senseless coolness.

Their crazy ringing tones annoy the hell out of me that I wanted to shove their cell phones into their mouth to relieve myself. They have extremely ambidextrous hands that they can text using both hands with their long manicured fingers. Their toes even. Still, others are oblivious of what is happening in the class room. They hang their bored heads in their seats with earphones plugged in their eardrums.

There are times that I would explode with seething rage and would run amuck or I am tempted to hurl myself into the speeding train at EDSA. There are times were I have to resist from slamming someonelse’s face into the concrete wall.

I wanted to give up. I am not Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie Dangerous Minds. I am more like Uma Thurman in the movie Kill bill, prone to gutting and dismembering.

I can see the headlines now:TEACHER ON A KILLING SPREE INSIDE THE CLASROOM.

Dura Lex..Pyrex

The law is harsh and sets its ways but it is the law—dura lex sed lex - and yet jurisprudence has wittingly proved it to be breakable to favor some powerful class- dura lex, pyrex (I stole that term somewhere).

A couple of months ago, I met my friend Dedalus, who I learned returned to law school, during an annual fair in my former school. I asked him how was he faring along this time in law school.

“I quit,” he croaked.

I nearly choked with the squid ball I was munching and before I could utter my line: “Again? For crying out loud?” He declaimed, “See those walls?” pointing to the Malcolm Hall where the College of Law is, “There is nothing in there.” I replied: “Duh. Like, have you been overdosed lately with those dark and disturbing books of Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky?" mimicking the cono twang which he loathe with passion. "How many orgasms have you reached today?", I spurted.

Intellectual orgasms, that is. That is his favorite past time. He's always in deep thought, always in trance.You ask simple question like, how are you? and he quotes from Schopenhauer or lines from Nietzche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. Dedalus shrugged, in deep and philosophical mood he launched: “The law is merely a legitimizing principle for the imposition of the wants of the ruling class over the rest of the subject citizens. For example, when capitalists, landlords and wealthy individuals are in power it is no surprise that laws both confirm and support their interests from those of others”.

“No wonder some of our laws are anti-labor and anti-land reform”, I drawled.

“You?” he asked.

Inspired by his social dialectics, I said: “Oh well, the study of law consists of four to five Sisyphean years. Consider: Everyday I was forced to memorize books of legislations and jurisprudence and regurgitated it in class before Ptolemy, Ad nauseum.”

“Perhaps law schools should welcome rigorous dialectical discussions on the basis of legality of laws rather than dismiss such inquiry as moot and academic.” He said.

The following morning, I read in the papers that the president issued proclamation 1017 placing the entire country under a state of emergency, all in an effort to gag media and curtail protests against her administration.

Dedalus just proved his point.

When I entered law school, I had grand dreams. I aspired to become Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, or Jan Schlictmann in A Civil Action championing the cause of my clients. Today, I was reduced to the raving Schizophrenic Ally Mc Beal.

i blog therefore i am

For quite a long time I have been sucked up in my own shithole, wallowing. I blame law school.

Now, I blog, therefore I exist. I exist at least in this alternate world called Blogosphere. Hey, I won’t expect that someone out there would dare read this blog and acknowledge my sordid existence. This is more like a self-affirmation. The blogosphere is more colossal than the already unfathomable universe. Go figure.

To steal an idea from Nietzsche: The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and I with it, a grain of dust. Or, to again steal a metaphor from one crazy philosopher, I am just a bubble in this massive vat of blogosphere soup. Simply put, wala silang pakialam!

So I blog under the veil of Sisyphusnatiphus. If you’ve been living under a rock and do not understand the reference, the Sisyphus of Greek mythology was cursed to roll a boulder up to the peak of a mountain for all eternity. As punishment for his audacity, he was sentenced to be blinded and to perpetually roll a giant boulder up a mountain to the peak, only to have it inevitably roll back down the mountain into the valley. In his essay, Albert Camus presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent working and working . He develops the idea of the "absurd man," the man who is periodically conscious of the ultimate futility of life.

If you think that I share this view of life or as Camus would say in French Weltanchuung, go get a rock hit and your head three times.

I am more of a twisted Sisyphus. If you understand Filipino idiom, you get what I mean. Ok, just imagine what your mom would say after sporting the new hip haircut or a Marilyn Manson outfit. Everybody: Anak anong nangyari sa yo? Para kang natipus!

So there. In this blog I will write all about my favorite topic: ME. All my self-inflicted tortures and punishment.

I think it was the great Truman Capote who once said: Writing is a gift from God that comes with a whip… and that whip is used mainly to flagellate oneself. Occassionally though, I will use whip on others—my friends and some people I know.

Until then. I still have a boulder to roll..