Say Hello to Good Times

(This is the second time I’m writing this blog entry. I had finished an almost 1200-word one but Safari quit and thus, goodbye!)

I've been out of school for over a month now, three if you count the summer months when I did nothing but click the Refresh button in my Gmail over and over. It's been days since I last read a book, and I seriously think I have lost all ability for critical thinking that's worthy of migration into even a college term paper. The most criticism/commentary that I have done recently is over the ailing state of Philippine TV, focusing on the new Mexican-cum-Pinoy telenovela, Rosalinda, which stars this drop-dead gorgeous girl who can't act and Geoff Eigenman, who garbles up all his dialogue, and who, like Gerald Anderson, has only one expression when acting.

Some other musings on Rosalinda: Why does Roderick Paulate's apparently sellout flower shop carry such a lousy (and gay!) name, Flower Power? How does a muchacha like Rosalinda afford to wear a sundress to work everyday? And, as my friend KC says, bakit sa SEAOIL lang nagpapa-gas si Fernando Jose ng BMW niya???

Another topic of interest that stirs every bit of available emotion in me is the traffic in Bacoor, Cavite--which has pretty much become a way of life since I was a shabby high school student (seven years ago, my gaa!!!) who commuted to Manila everyday. But this is still brain activity kept at a minimum, with only my mother or some close friends (via Facebook chat) to hear me out, and that doesn't quite amount to the level of intellectualizing I am missing out on because I am not in class.

Oh, how I miss the classroom setup! I miss the discussions, discourses and digressions--how often we would end up talking about un-poetry or un-Lit things in a Chingbee Cruz/Ruth Pison class! I miss the pile of readings, even--now I know how important it is to be following a list, and respecting a canon no matter how much criticism from the avant-garde sector it gets. I feel so old and useless spending my days bumming around like this, without an apparent plan, without a to-do/to-accomplish list. It's like being a fresh grad who's still looking for herself and hating every moment she spends at her current job, except that I'm no fresh grad, and I have no job. God knows I haven't been bringing in much money to the family these past months, I subside on my stipend from the previous semester, and that's not much.

I haven't also been this hungry for trivia since I was a kid in a Wikipedia- and Encarta-free world. Last week, my mother and I were packing up some of the things I'd left at the condo I used to live in with five other people this past year. Most of those things were books. When I went to the bedroom area, which was a mess (ours is a studio unit but we've managed to cram six bedspaces here), I saw my roommate Ate Dianne's newly-bought nerdy magazines. And like a dog that hasn't had a meal for three days, I excitedly ran to the bundle of back issue Mental Floss (an amusing title, really) and Psychology Today covers that were lying on her bed. This is the stuff we live for, me and Ate Dianne! All the information is probably available in more comprehensive outlines/reports online, but it's better reading them as tidbits in geeky mags like these. And there's nothing quite like the feel of paper in one's hands! (Boo to Kindle, then, haha.)

I remember, too, how joyed I was when as a little girl, the Colliers people finally delivered my new 24-volume encyclopedia set. Imagine all those big books (starting with an interesting entry on a curious mammal, the 'aardvark')--and not a sibling to share them with! (Hahaha) I used to love looking at pictures of historic buildings, the museums, especially, and was pretty sure to end up in Architecture, then. We probably still have somewhere around the house lurking the first floor plans I ever drew as a kid. Aha, so where did that dream go? Gone, when my interests traveled to other fields. And when soon after, the internet came, giving me no more reason to hit the old shelves and pay homage to the encyclopedia.

I wonder when a Filipino publisher will come out with geeky magazines like those mentioned above. Vibal Publishing has WikiZine, although I feel it still isn't the kind of publication one would be fond of and would feel attached to. (Maybe because they distribute for free? Haha) Their information is still mostly from grade school and high school history books & almanacs, which I don't think we have in abundance apart from the textbook kind. Probably a good way to come up with such new breed publications, and at least for the first few issues to guarantee a readership, is to not overload on cultural and geographic information, as is most commonly done, which only makes readers feel inadequate as once-upon-a-time students in Sibika classes. Wouldn't it be more interesting if we could have translated in layman's terms all those studies conducted by the SWS and the PSSC? I would even love it more if I could peek in the pages of academicians' groundbreaking lab papers and doctoral dissertations!

A few factoids I have learned, and actually remember from today's trivia wallowing:
 
* From PDI: The journey of Victoria Beckham's boobies: from 34As to 34Ds, to 34DDs, and then now back to 34Bs.

* From Church today, a part of our pastor's sermon: The word 'sincere' comes from the Latin words, sine and cera, which means 'without wax'. Apparently, hoodlums of yesterday used to cover cracks in their pottery with wax, and the sellers with genuine products would put up 'sine cera' signs to ensure the quality of their earthenware.


In a few weeks, I am entering a new phase of my life--as if doing college all over again, in the US. I realized, upon joining the Facebook group of incoming students (class of 2013) at American University, that I'm now batchmates with the babies of 1991! People in the same Facebook group have been adding me up as friends, and they're all a year younger than I am. I don't know how I should feel--empowered or old. In school here, I have always been the youngest in my classes, except in 3rd year high school when my bessie Lourdes came in the picture and stole my throne. (She is a 1991 baby.)

Apart from the apprehensions re: age (even though I'm a year older, I'm probably still very easy to bully and play pranks on!), it also scares me thinking about how I would perform in class once there. Will I excel as the token Asian kid? Or will I get tongue-tied all the time and choke on my English? Furthermore, will I be intimidated by the lifestyles of my cheerleader- and jock- dormmates?

Ah, only time can tell.

I actually have a lot of other concerns--my things aren't packed yet, and I still can't get my last vaccination because my flu from weeks ago still persists in the form of cough, and many other petty things. But to close, I'm gonna say that I wish my Feeling Bobo stage ends soon, and that my brain activity will resume in high levels when classes start in D.C. on the 24th. Pray for me, guys. This is my first journey out of the Philippines, the longest I'm going to be without my mother, and everyone knows I'm the biggest baby in the world. (I still sleep in my parents' bed and demand that they cuddle me! Ha-ha!) Pray that I come home with a smile and victory in my face, and not as a girl in a box (!!!), and definitely not kilograms heavier! 

So I’m gonna skip that part, coz we’re all not in high school anymore and are able to draw arguments from the pros and cons of each side on our own, right? Moving on...

For the first time in a long time, I woke up yesterday morning not making logging on to Gmail my first activity of the day. I was woken up by the postman’s fervent hollering of my mother’s name, and was immediately informed by my aunt that a letter had just arrived for me. It was a wonderful letter from my international pen friend, Ankita, and I read it over breakfast. I say a wonderful letter because it has all the qualities of a wonderful conversation: long, informative, expressive, allows for a slight delay in response (you know how letters are), and graced by a very, very pleasant and fitting diction. It’s been a long time since Ankita and I first found out about each other’s interest in letter writing (I am not ashamed to say that I had once been desperate enough to want to have pen pals that I joined countless mailing groups in Yahoo that promoted the activity), but only now has the exchange been completed—her beautifully written nine-page introduction of herself is actually a response to a first one I had written. Last year. (So I was the eager-beaver. No hard feelings about it. Really.)

My mother had had pen friends too, so therefore it is obvious that my own interest has long been coded in her genes. As an OFW in Saudi Arabia she corresponded with family in the Philippines, pen friends and her ‘adopted’ parents in the U.S., and her best friend who lives in Germany. (My father, whom she met in Saudi, she also sent letters to, while he, in turn, sent voice tapes—a gesture that would later be my first means of knowing my father. Such an amazing specimen, the voice, though only second to the wonder of discovery, and naming, and langue, and how do you think we started learning to form and associate words after we were all born?) Until now it is a wonder going through my mother’s things and finding the remnants of these correspondences: soiled and dampened envelopes with papers inside that are unyielding to age, still mightily penned, old address books, our co-owned stamp album and of course, the pictures; that even though I am almost sure of catching asthma or TB each time I open bags and boxes of them, I am elated, thinking that writing, and letters, as in this case, are the best and most practical ways of time-travelling. (Not that there are many ways but there’s another upcoming hilarious yet downright stupid Will Ferrell movie about a time travel machine, so you might think there are plenty of options.) I hear my mother speak through these letters—a much younger, healthier, daughter-less her, and it is priceless.

It is because of this sentimental amazement that I then wonder, if my letters with my own pen friend, Ankita, will make it to an archive of sorts in the future. Or, if along with the many childish letters I have exchanged on quite a regular basis with my grade school and high school chums, they will be appreciated and marvelled upon by a future son or daughter who will stumble upon them in an old, dusty supersized toolbox, aka Ang Baul in the attic of a future house. The first person I ever wrote letters to was my cousin/Ninang, Ate Bam. She wrote me until I was in first year high school, would even slip me an occasional $20 bill, but the correspondence stopped and was reduced to a few lines every few months, when free, fast and efficient email came into the picture, as well as the sprouting of an internet cafe in our subdivision. Soon enough, Friendster conquered the Philippines and some parts of the world, and made it a bit smaller, and unsurprisingly, more vain. The rest, as they say, is history.

Before sending out our letters as real snail mail (the post still gets places painfully slow!), Ankita and I have had a great exchange of basic information and day-to-day tales (feelings about boys and failing exams). I wonder too, if those letters will live on forever through e-mail, and if, as an aged grandmother with arthritis padlocked to a La-Z Boy Rocking Chair Edition, I would remember they even existed. Or if I would even bother to check out my 2598th page out of 3000 in Gmail to read them again, to replenish my good old cerebellum. Or, am I getting ahead of myself and not thinking that a) if I get hit by a bus now and after three days of mind-boggling surgery by hottestneurosurgeonintheworld Dr. Derek Shepard, aka McDreamy,  and be diagnosed with amnesia, or b) I just vanish from the face of the earth without an heir to my Password, these are forever forgotten, forever lost?


On the side, I wonder how life is for the generation of children who were born shortly or long after their households and other houses in their communities started owning Microsoft computers, or Nokias, or the precious Blackberry. I, for one, have been born before there was ever a phone line installed in our house, and received a Best in Computer award in my new school in 2nd grade, without having to own one, my first virtual activity with a Windows95 being a Peter Pan role-playing game. Do the children of today think in these kinds of terms: that cell phones and iPhones and iPods and digital cameras are naturally-annexed devices that make humans function? In the same way that I am sometimes infuriated by the sheer slowness of my mother’s mouse clicking, double-clicking and dragging, is there room in the future for said Children of Today to be shaking their heads in disgust at my (our) generation’s incapacity to produce 900,000words per minute, or to hate us just because we locate supernovas the old fashioned way with ultramagneticspace-o-matic sonars and not with Google Maps?

There is room for that, yes. Of course, this can still be unlearned through spontaneous education and a tolerance to painful imagination of life without Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and America (!), but I can say that at this point in my life (legal but afraid of hitting the big 2 and O)—supposedly educated in a science high school and owner of a few bourgeois, non-masa gadgets, I still don’t have the imagination to fathom how frequency waves work and how people in the 50s depended on transistor radios for their lives! The children of the Y2K bug are going to hate me when I’m an uncontrollably fat, middle-aged spinster who is jobless and wanting to apply as a typist or whatever at the onset of TheReal (as in Really, Really True, Prime Minister Mikee Arroyo Is Telling The Truth) Philippine Financial Crisis—the worst Depression to ever hit the Happiest People of Asia (according to Readers Digest) who are also suffering from post-traumatic archipelago-wide island auctioning, because all those lambda, gamma, beta carotene things—I don’t understand them. I have forgone my chance, since I took the UPCAT, to discover where they are, what they are there for. I have sealed my fate of not being able to contribute to the pool of knowledge that is the world while making money, because I have chosen the path to enlightenment, the Real, One-ness, Oscar Wilde, Marx and The Next American Essay.

I chose to write letters.


Returning to earlier points: why am I being so sentimental about the Lost Art of Letter-writing, and obsessed about the measures that could ensure the possibility of the Infallible Immortality of My Letters to Ankita et al.? Do I have a deep-seated, secret aversion to technology and how it makes us want to dream more and more about defying gravity and reaching for the stars, and therefore we invent quick, often unsentimental means of communication that soon enough become lackluster when some new phenomenon like Plerker, or Twurk comes up? Is this aversion further rooted in my consciousness of my existence as a middle-class, state university student in a Third World country? A Third World country, which still has some of its citizens living in the most primitive of ways, without email or an alphabet—and are doing just fine!

In the somewhat deep recesses of my mind, I have a memory of having asked my teacher in 2nd grade C.L.V.E. why God had to create man even if He knew what little past the World had and predated what future Adam and Eve are to bring to it. Is the world maybe just maybe better off without technology (therefore, money, the prospect of holidays and retirement travel, knowledge of Antarctica, the Jonas brothers)? Or is technology just as inevitable as breathing, as inevitable as T.S. Eliot says criticism is?

Of course it is! Everything that comes after the prelapsarian stage (aka The Fall of Man), is a technology in relation to the nothingness that preceded it.

Ah, I can only imagine then what’s next for letter-writing! (And all communication, for that matter.) What does Science Fiction say about it? Is Amazon going to dominate the world with the glare-less, micro-duced, Kindle Pro 5.0? Or is Apple soon going to come out with an iPhone that prints letters—handwritten onscreen and saved as jpegs, Polaroid-style?


In the meantime, I start writing my letter to Ankita. Like all good essays, and blog entries, I am supposed to end with a couple epiphany-suggestive or inspirational lines. I suppose I would, it is a blessing to want to end on a light, positive note/synopsis, that:

1)    I shall write to a friend, regardless of the instantaneous, prompt and economic mailing services that is afforded to me by my already FREE membership in Facebook;

2)    I will stop prophesising pessimistically about the future of the internet and e-mail cache, and incidentally, the future of all my online accounts if I do not leave a will; and

3)    I will be glad of the few, precious, penned things that come my way in envelopes and do more travel than a flock of seagulls, because in the end (oh my God, this is so like a freshman essay already), what’s gonna matter is that memory, that I had a smile on my face (yeah, right, throw in the key words!) when I sat down during breakfast, to read, and to marvel at the beauty of words, and all the shiznit that make the talking, and the listening, even if only through letters, possible.

For some reason, I have been very hesitant to click the POST button in Multiply these past months. At this moment I even run the risk of hovering the mouse pointer on the Big Red X for fear of not being able to deliver well what I want to say, and for fear of my own self-awareness, that since choosing Multiply as my service provider, I have a network of readers--some of whom if I don't say some relationship-wrecking things about, then I will not keep interested, in me, my stuff--the evidence of which will be screaming at me every time I log in and see that no one has cared to comment, and few have bothered to view at all. Thankfully, it is because of this very self-awareness that now upon browsing my own blog (after giving it a complete overhaul in pink with a little frosting), I notice how I have recently been speaking (blogging) with the tone of a vey anxious person, someone mad at the world, who thinks it hopeless and its people worthless--which I am not, but which I admit to having feigned because of reasons aforementioned. See, I have even portrayed Angelina Jolie in despicable words, twice!, that cloud all her achievements as mom extraordinaire, champion advocate and a really great actress. Not that I think she would care, but simply put, like in CNF-speak, I am trying to pull a mid-90s Jessica Zafra, or, in Politics and Current Events, a Chiz Escudero.

I am tempted right now to write a critique--of the dangers of online publishing, of the vanity that comes with the spawning of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, good old Friendster, and of the self-censorship that one has to subject herself to before finally hitting PUBLISH (of course any responsible person should, hence disclaimers like this), but I won't, because I have had enough of scholarly things (for now). Instead, I will write randomly about how I feel, the things I want to do, the things I want to have at this moment, etc.; and try not to care that these days 1) people keep up by the second and think in What Are You Doing Right Now formats, 2) what you write is spoiled goods if it's not What You Are Really Doing Right Now, but some ruminations about things past, and that 3) Tagging people (which is possible in Multiply, but something that I don't utilize) is the most effective way of fetching comments, of feeling loved.

Pardon the self-indulgence and autobiographical digression that are to follow. If you are irritated, you may stop reading now.


1. Looking down at my feet now, I really want to get a Foot Spa. The person who does my nails, let's call her AM, is about my mother's age. I have been going to her house since I was little, on the few occasions that my nails needed prepping up (e.g. piano recitals, church performances, birthdays), paying a measly P20 because I was a child, and had smaller hands. (Talk about student discounts!) The price had gone up over the years, and now it's P30 per service, still an undeserved rate for someone with such soft hands and a chatty mouth that never bores you with the latest neighborhood gossip. The most that I paid for a foot spa was P450 (plus 80 or so for the pedi!) at Azta Salon in Katipunan, a service I had had to get to avail of a free protein treatment (priced at P600) which really did my hair nothing I could be very happy about. Since then I've been getting my foot treatments at Reyes Haircutters, which comes with free pedicure at P199. I told AM about this, hoping I would get good girl points for later adding, "Naku, ang sakit sakit nga po gumawa ng mga nasa parlor. Magtatanggal lang ng cuticle dinudugo na yung paa ko. Hindi man lang po katulad ninyo." However, when I came to her place next, I was almost sure her daughter was glaring at me when she said, "Ang mura ng singil ni mama, ano?"

It didn't just feel shocking because said daughter was a much older person I had also known growing up, but because as a grown up, the nail service I was availing was no longer charity for cute kids, but real customer service! And that in some way I was giving this family a living, although I was doing it very cheaply. It also put me in a very awkward position, knowing that while I had advanced quite dramatically in the ladder these past years (this is no pagyayabang, just in comparison to them), they have remained the same. I know that there is an immense field of possibilities for me in the future, but this will always be the place and neighborhood I would feel most at home in, so I hope that I will be blessed with the value of humility and gratitude. As I used to say in Sir Dalisay's class: "It's a really hard position being the small town girl who comes home on weekends from the University, changed, filled with lots of new ideas, yet always being dismissed by familiar figures in a Kung anu-anong iniisip mo or Mga Komunista kasi kayo sa school niyo manner."

Bottomline: Must remember to tip when I go to AM's place next to have my toes painted Pussy Red. (Akala ko talaga na-mis-pronounce lang ni AM ang Fuzzy Red, Pussy Red pala talaga yung shade na yun.)


2. Tomorrow, I will bring my own music to the gym. As some of my Facebook contacts already know from my News Feed, I go to the gym now. I have even bought two new sets of workout apparel (which I am really reserving for my trip, though) in the past week. The gym I go to is peopled by muscled men with great tattoos and is filled with music from 90.7, which plays Banana (the Tagalized version of Akon's I Wanna Make Love...) every hour. Apparently, this singer sells juicy and nutritious bananas, na ang bumibili ay pila-pila. Right.

I am keeping tabs on my day-to-day experiences in the gym and am hoping to produce a great nonfiction piece from it. A few days ago a kababata introduced himself to me there. Apparently I hadn't changed much in face and size (!!!) over the years that I am very recognizable to people I forget even existed. I was glad though, coz I talk to no one else at the gym except my trainors. Must try hand at cracking jokes real soon. And also tennis, ice skating and biking. Oh, how I would love to own a bike when school starts!


3. I want to start a mailing list for me and my cousins. Heck, even the whole family can join in too, especially now that my mom is a noob netizen! I have been more or less an outsider in family circles, the overweight pamangkin who's just never bida enough. Thankfully, as a grownup, I am now past that stage of wanting to get back at people who have done me wrong in the past, even relatives, yes, (it really isn't worth it), so I'm planning to setup a Google group for me and my cousins, especially now that people are going global (yay!) and there's only two of us (among the first degree cousins) who have Benosa listed as a surname!

 
4. Contrary to what is written above, I want to sign up for a Twitter account. But I fear getting addicted to it, as Bianca Consunji shares her own craze in Inquirer. And I already have enough to keep me busy! My main chat protocol is now Facebook, and it's almost the first thing I check when I am online. I am also thinking about deleting my Friendster account very soon but some friends have not yet migrated to Facebook and Multiply, hence it is my only means to stay connected.


5. I want to take photos. I've been putting off sending my Sony DSC-T2 camera to the dealer to avail of its warranty for months now. After a few months of use it started vibrating, as I later found out was common of touchscreen models due to inability to focus. I had tried contacting the seller before but she wasn't responding. I bought the camera on eBay and just met up with one of her employees, so I've never really been to her shop at Robinsons Pioneer. One thing that's preventing me from storming in there is that my mother lost the receipt, along with her stolen wallet. What does consumer rights say about this? Will my warranty be honored even without proof?

Although on another hand, I'd like my camera to be The Vibrating Pink Camera. It's a good point for conversation and having to ask the picture-taker to shake it when it vibrates during photo ops, is a fun thing to do. In addition, I like things with personality. Being already pink is just not enough.


6. I use a lot of parentheses, and dashes. I wonder what that could be a metaphor for.

A few days ago, a very important person who could very well be a life coach (my own, really in that mere 2-hour conversation) asked me what I wanted to do in life over dinner. I admit I was a bit half-hearted when I gave him my answer. I didn't know if I could do 'finding stories' well, or if it was a very generic answer, a very commonplace dream especially for people in the Humanities. Some 62 hours later I still don't know, but I do think now that there are parentheses only I can fill, only I can fill a certain way, and dashes I could do a very good job of sticking up midsen-tence. Mid-sentence.

Must sleep now and find more metaphors.



Signing off at 4:23 AM

...when I can get coffee from the store downstairs, and not get something that tastes like my morning breath
...when coffee has an actual effect on me, and I can write a little (even entries in my personal calendar count!) and read a lot (even if only online, through the NYT website and my favorite blogs)
...when I get to talk with friends, even if again, only online, and they have wonderful news, and similarly interesting takes on my updates
...when my friends actually go online at a time previously inconvenient for them but that which I am accustomed to
...when I am bursting with thoughts to write, and have actually taken the effort of beginning to write opening paragraphs--though of course, it would take many more pleasant nights for me to actually work on them, or even just go back to the notes I have saved in my cell's 'Drafts' folder
...when I finally stop worrying about being awkward at the past two dinner functions because I, the lowly, overweight, nearsighted undergrad, have decided that I can become the very power men and women I am right now still too scared of striking meaningful conversations with, primarily for fear of not generating too much meaning
...when I am so hyped up and high that I become too optimistic on the prospect of meeting someone interesting (romantic and otherwise, accepted) if I go downstairs again, right at this moment, to pick up something trivial and unimportant from the store, like for example, a P35.25 nail cutter.

Hello, stranger!

I'll be in Baguio for six days next week. Don't ask me what for, or I'll be giving you boring reasons. Any ideas where I might go to kill the bore? I've already been to all the right postcard-perfect places before (PMA, the strawberry farm, the cathedral, the Havaianas store near it, the ukay shops, etc.) when me & my mum went up there last November (pretend backpackers that we are), so I'm open to any explorable suggestions you might have in your memories there somewhere, such as:

1) hole-in-the-wall eateries, cafes (restos are out of budget)
2) hole-in-the-wall bookshops, art galleries (yeah, right), just about anywhere I can find drunk poets stripping, reading meters off their knockoff Moleskines
3) basically anything hole-in-the-wall
4) weed farms, if you know any
5) that ghost town Bob Ong talked about in his black book (it was that book right?)
6) I was just joking about the weed

Please, make suggestions. Or else I'll be spending my nights in a darkened hotel room just watching medical and supernatural freaks on DVD.

Oh, summer, summer, starting so late in the month... AYLAVEEET!

Hello thesis year! Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhahahahahahaha. Thank you Lord for a wonderful school year! I sure learned a lot ^.^

I had told someone in the past that I am out to search for my purpose, the reason of all life and existence in the world, why one has to live then die in the end. But lately I have found myself so incapable of the task, because I have such little mind to comprehend the complexities of the principle that makes the universe go round, or sideways if you wish. One author says that the biggest purpose in life is to be understood, but if that is so, then that’s living one’s life for someone else. Another says that it is to satisfy oneself, and only that.  Some people do live that way, especially in the pool of artists, but elsewhere, I’d say existence is nothing if not in relation to one that perceives it.

My neighbor died recently of heart failure, in a foreign land, far from his family, relatives and tennis buddies. He must’ve died alone, save for whoever found him and called to bring home the bad news. It took two weeks for the box to arrive in the country, extending the grief of the deceased’s loved ones, probably the same as how I felt during the last two deaths in our family—unbelieving, unable to grasp the meaning of ‘death’ until it was right in front of me, not screaming, only dead.

I was only able to visit the night before he was buried, the last night, the most crowded, a prelude to the tearful day that was to follow at the cemetery. It was a Friday and I wanted to stay long, to watch people, to observe the ones I knew, to immerse myself into the reality that death is real, and that it can happen to me, or to anyone close to me. As I entered, my eyes searched the room for the wife of the deceased. She was looking at me all the same, trying to enforce a smile on her lips that only curved downward. I flung my arms around her, and she did the same—only this time she was not the authoritative figure that used to scold me and her son (we were playmates as children), but a woman both pale and frail, seeking support from me to hold her and not let go, to pat her back and help her breathe in and out, at least not until she was done crying. I kissed her in the cheeks and told her it was alright, although I know it’s not; and in my head I was asking why it had to be death that would bring me to this gesture of affection. I remember all the years I spent growing up and in high school, simply taking her and her husband’s hands, saying Mano po when I met them in the street, when in fact, I used to run around in their home and play with their son, and bring them my mother’s puto on Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I was a frequent guest there for lunch and in my mother’s countless collections of my childhood memorabilia, their family was in every photo album. Why, I even have a framed photograph as Miss Peñafrancia with their son beside me in our old padyak.

But time had changed things. No longer was a street crossing only eight meters, it became miles long and eight years old. I grew up, my playmate grew up, we grew farther apart over the long stretch of months and years, puberty and life. Our parents grew older, more sickly by the hour, but we didn’t know about that, we were all too busy to go beyond a Hi, Hello to ask how they are doing. And now it has come down to this. I am getting older and expected to be more responsible for my actions because death is standing by so close, to the people I know and to me.

It is in these situations that again, I ask what the purpose of life is. Every day I spend away from my family (on weekdays, that is), is a trial I endure with prayers, tears and endless pondering: what if? My parents are old and I am their only remaining joy in this life. Is a successful career and a good record in the academe a worthy bargain for the company of people you love? Is it worth a thousand memories you can keep coming back to, like a good book, many years later? Have I lived enough to say that I can die now, that I’ve found that my purpose in life is to die happy?

I saw my playmate, my childhood friend at the wake that night. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to look his way, to check whether tears ran down his cheeks when the crowd sang Hindi kita Malilimutan. What must his father have been to him, when both of us had been left to the care of our mothers while the men worked themselves to death in Saudi Arabia? Was it really worth spending that much time away? I heard that he hasn’t shed one tear. I hate that I was too overcome by pride and shyness to even say my condolences; he didn’t look my way either.

I wonder how people rebound after a period like this in their lives—when relatives move back to their homes in the province, and people expect the bereaved to move on as well. On weekends, as I sit by my desk at night, looking out the window and staring at the house opposite ours, I see only dark and hear the dogs howling outside. The houses here are just a ring away, yet it feels like they are miles apart.

Is a love story over when one of the lovers die? Is there a God? Where is fulfillment found—in family, career or being able to rear a child? Surely an answer won’t come anytime soon. Many great men have died looking for them, but maybe as they look down on me now, knowing all the answers to these questions, they are telling me to live life first, and aim for being happy at every moment for I know not when death would come to claim the life out of me—whatever definition I may have for it.


*A piece I wrote many months ago. For Tito Mar.

Eksena sa Astrovision

Papasok si Pia dala-dala ang shoulder bag na gawa sa katsa na naglalaman ng filecase, laptop, mga libro, atbp. Babati ng 'Good Evening Ma'am' ang lahat ng mga naka-unipormeng salespersons.

Titingin-tingin si Pia ng mga old movies at sa Magic Sing na nakadisplay sa may baggage counter. Mapupunta siya sa section ng mga half-priced DVDs.

Ate: Ma'am meron kaming sale. Buy 1, Take 1 na lang at P275. Ayan o merong Shrek 2, High School Musical.

Pia: Ah, sige.

Ate: Marami kaming bago Ma'am!

Pia: Naghahanap kasi ako ng German movies eh.

Ate: German ho?

Pia: Oo.

Ate: Ay wala kaming German Ma'am. Meron lang kami ACTION saka FOREIGN movies.

Pia: Ano?

Ate: Foreign movies lang ho Ma'am. Saka ACTION.

Katahimikan.

Magpapasalamat si Pia at aalis. Bago yun, kukuha muna siya ng pamphlet ng Magic Sing.

Ugh. Our sick consumerist standards and consciousness.

A bookmark, a train card, a greeting card in French, a member card for BookCrossing.com, Ex Libris tags--these are some of the things I'd found between the pages of the used books I've bought in the past. It's always a joy to find little tokens from the previous owners, they make the books seem more real, as if they had personalities of their own--which is why I dig going to used books stores more than the bigger superbookstores in malls. (Plus, books here are downright cheaper!)

Last December when I went to Bicol, the first thing on my To-Do-List was to check all existing Booksale branches in the province. There being only a few malls, and all of them being in Legaspi, Albay (where I was staying), the task was an easy thing to do. I found really great ones there, but as usual, I haven't gotten around to reading them yet. This afternoon I was able to go back to those books since I was cataloging my collection on this amazing software called Libra (something like an offline version of Shelfari). Among them was Daphne Kalotay's Calamity and Other Stories. Now, I didn't know who Kalotay was before finding this book with an image of a cupcake on the cover, but I bought it anyway since these days I'm more likely to buy short story or essay collections than novels. So when I checked out the pages today imagine my surprise at finding this:

Yes, a message from the author herself! Found in this part of the world! Found in that far-flung province of the Philippines! Thank you, Claudia, whoever you are! This made the idea of a weekend spent reading a book (only in bits though), more exciting.


Anyway, I just want to share my latest book finds this afternoon, from my favorite Booksale branch which I hadn't visited in two weeks:
1. Macbeth-P115
It's not just any copy of Macbeth, but a glorified Arden Shakespeare Edition--the kind we take pains in photocopying down at the CAL Library for our Eng23 (Shakespeare) class. Two weeks ago my classmate Drew brought an Arden edition of Henry IV Part I and said he bought it for only P50 at some National Bookstore branch. Imagine my dismay that after I had photocopied the whole book that afternoon, I also found a whole lot (20 or so books) of the same Arden edition at the NBS in Crossing Department Store for only P75. P75 for a book in the Reserve Section! I let it go, didn't let that book leave a hole in my pocket (even if it's only P75!) and instead TRIED to focus on more important things like the who-said-what-to-whom-in-what-play-and-situation-and-how-significant-are-these-lines midterm exam we had the following week which I failed anyway.

2. The Hours by Michael Cunningham-P75
I loved the movie, and Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, so I'm hoping this would be a great read too.

3. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink-P75
Now a Kate Winslet movie, The Reader is a novel about the lives of two people in postwar-Germany.

4. The Quality of Life Report by Meghan Daum-P20
Originally priced at P40, this New York Times Notable Book is about a New York TV reporter living temporarily in the Midwest, trying to cover the goings-on there for a New York audience. Unfortunately, she falls in love with this man and okay, I have to read it first. (Gaa, how many times did I say New York there?)

5. A lovely leather journal in black-P170
I've had really great notebook/journal finds from Booksale. I'm stocking up for a lifetime of writing, but am still looking for that perfect pen to write on them with.

Now I just have to wait till March ends before I can read all these things. I swear, this time I'm gonna finish all that are on my unread list. (Of course hyperactive volunteer addict me is going to fail at this like all the past summers.)

Happy reading to all those with new books and to those with heaps of school-related readings!

Question to all: How about you guys, what interesting things have you found inserted in your books?

Yes, it's possible. And no, this is not about Valentines Day or whatnot.

I am just really very exhausted. These past few days life has all been about readings, research, administrative work, and many other things that have turned my eye bags into eye-ttache cases. (Yeah right, I'm lame in comedy) I have no time for movies, books outside the curriculum, not even time to write my international pen friends!

After three years of getting myself into this hole, it's only now that I realize that my course is probably one of the hardest in UP. Of course! How else do you expect us to make alternate worlds in words when we don't know how a real one works? Diba?

Gaaa. Really, we have all the problems in the world!

Yes, seatmate. That's my official name from now on.

After three months of fighting tooth and nail to understand texts in literary criticism and to raise my hand for recitation amid a sea of quiet, empty faces (sure, except for two or three of them), SHE STILL DOESN'T KNOW MY NAME. This morning she said, "Why are you guys sitting so rigidly, so ordered? Actually you know what, I only noticed that now looking at the distance between Merry and... and her seatmate." *

Something wrong with the configurations of my face? Do my eyes and nose switch often? The first few times it happened like this:

She (looking at my index class card): "Oh, is this you? It doesn't look like you in the picture."
She (while I was reporting): "What's your name again?"
She (while I was raising my hand): You, you, you!
She (while I was raising my hand): *raises head and brows in inverted nodding motions*

Well ma'am, my whole name is thirty-six letters long, but, as an added value offer, you can call me in just three! We good? Alright, see you Wednesday.

*Still fresh from this morning's really early morning class.

I am so sorry about what I wrote in nonfiction class, but dude I'm telling you, I'M NOT TAKING THEM BACK. Really, you think you're scaring me by making an appearance in my dreams? No Sir, no matter what gayuma you concoct with your pink hands trying to woo and make me and my readers forget about your transgressions, I WILL NOT RETRACT! I am happy about my piece and it was a high-time I got there reading my classmates' comments and suggestions.

Vengeance is mine! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

So tell me. What is it about books that scares boys off? When you see a stack of books does your brain relegate it to the 'girl-o-sphere of activities'? Or do you think it pointless, and that there are better things to do with one's eyes and hands? (like you know, surf for internet porn) And similarly, is there a part of you that still wishes somehow that you had been raised a reader as a child, and not the online gamer that you are now?

Of course I know some boys who read, better than me at it actually, but these are the ones who are part of my literary world, writers I admire or people taking writing classes with me--which sometimes can also mean that most of them are gay. Last Christmas I was in Bicol, spending most of the time reading, and I had boy cousins telling me they've never finished one book in their lives. So now, I wanna know about the other 75% of the male population that's outside my circle, why do books turn you off? What kind of content are you looking for in books if not the serious, literary type, then?

BUT if I'm wrong and they don't turn you off, if you have read anything at all even once in your life, and enjoyed it, please tell me what these books are.