Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Some Fine Lessons

Lesson No. 1 -- A college degree, even if he/she earned a masteral, does not equate a person into an educated one. Formal education only teaches a specific field, nothing more. And sometimes, one's understanding of the world that can be compared with the wisdom of a mystic/sage, to this person is almost nil.

Lesson No. 2 -- Being put in the position of a leader does not guarantee a leadership quality whose main goal is to understand and bring out the best in every member of his group. A shallow understanding of leadership is forming a clique in the group (when this is the goal of the leader he/she obviously is afraid to stand alone on the top, fearful of relative height, of being misunderstood. The tool he/she uses to get the job or the goal right is through PR and camaraderie, which unfortunately has the downside of hesitating to get his/her members hurt or bruised. But, unknown to him/her, the function of letting the members of the group get bruised and beaten, is making them tough in pursuit of excellence.

Lesson No. 3 -- People always treat everything personally. And when you treat everything personally, you learn to hold grudge, blur the capacity for objective judgment.

Lesson No. 4 -- Those who avoid threshing out misunderstanding through talks, open communication are usually those who are afraid to expand their understanding.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Vignettes

What else could we do then? Laugh our stupid laugh at our own stupidity. Mike had you by playing with your paranoia. “There’s cops outside!” Lights and the tube quickly turned off to shut down the universe. You felt for the cold floor, scrawling like a marine, ordering panickly Mike to do the same who then at that time was grinning, trying not to squiek a guffaw as you peer endlessly and moved furtively in the dark, through the stairs onto the second landing. The rest of the group had a good laugh when we heard the story, story that we really didn’t understand then. We didn’t know better. We were playing with your battered soul.

*
We had just inhaled the rolling white universe, when you stood up, firm or was there that perennial smirk in your lips. Trouble, we knew. Let it go. “Just let it pass,” Eric tried to calm you down. But, as I said, you were firm. You walked out of the gate into the darkness. Eric, Mike and I stared at each other. You madman. Mad that you probably would have wanted to die. “Stop him!” someone from us yelled. What did you do then? As you approached the dark small wooden bridge into the squatter area, seeing Balbon, you tapped him from behind. The moment he turned his face, your fist greeted him. He staggered for balance, as you, smirking that madman smirk, turned around for the kick, your foot landed on his guts. He thrown against the empty water containers in the corner, and the women started yelling, calling the tanods. There is no such thing as the wrath of man with talisman running in his blood, you thought. But you failed to think that Balbon had an evil twin, lurking in the darkness, and quickly the shadow bearhugged you. Drat! You could not move, as Balbon gained his footing, and shadow dancing in the dark, aiming for straights and hooks and uppercuts. Trying to parry and wiggle yourself free, the three of you had the curacha dance. Swirling, gravity pulled the shadow and you on the ground, and you saw (yes, you said you smirk this time) the creek a foot from you and you planned to maneuvered by a quick veer to the right, when Kapowwww!!! A kick broke your ribs and sending you, rolling in a quick plummet down the mud of the creek. Caked by shit and putrid soil, you saw above, a toilet bowl hanging in the air against the sky, then a woman’s voice crying loud: Wag! Maawa kayo! The pang of Death suddenly opened its maw on you and you said you knew that you would not die, that the bowl would not be thrown at you, or if ever, what was your arm doing, solid, firm and hard as a steel you bragged, drat! that smirk again.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Intro: I Wish You were Here, You Crazy Diamond

It was more than a decade ago, penniless and tipsy under the shadow of a close store, facing the barrenness of the grassy field under the starlit sky, when you said that you can smell mysticism blowing in the winds, that good God! you can smell its rose-smell tingling the spine on your back; us, not knowing if you’re up again in your smart-ass intelligent talk, or probably the bottles of Red Horse, splayed on the gutter and on the street, had too much an effect on you that you’re imagination and the poet in you was talking, trying to create and impress ripples in our inebriated minds. You said, like a hint of what your soul would then take on as its journey, that you can tell heaven and hell. “You’re just drunk,” Mike said. But, you didn’t take it seriously. “We’re going to be a great band,” you prophesied, “we’re going to conquer the world; Pinoy-style music from the pits of my soul.” So, we let you go on with your dribble-talk, not taking any fancy thoughts about it since we knew anyway that you knew what you are yakking about, the leader of our band, our composer of metaphysical songs, our sleek lead guitarist, the older among us, the one who had read more books than us.

We stood nearer to the sun, its obliterating electric sunshine melting our faces. “Tingnan mo kung okay yung tunog,” you asked Eric. “Okay, okay.” Stoned and calm as a deep ocean wave, we faced the maw of hell as it broke loose and pushed on the surface the carcass of junkies megadeath. There was no blacker or as black as that that stood in front of us. Then, you said you saw white gold started flying in the air, its velocity and altitude the perfect parabola of what you had been imagining and seeing in your dreams, the perfect rainbow color, for they all landed on the stage soundless as they hit the wooden floor, violet-hue flowers. “Putang-ina nyo!” You turned around and walked away cool and grinning, still strumming your Fender.

“Pa-byahe ka pa,” you ordered, “katorse na lang.” You were an insatiable beast. “Tang-ina, pahinga naman tayo,” Mike would say. Days were turning more and more into gray color. Drat! I could not even see the blue beyond the clouds, or really couldn’t I since we were probably holed for days in your house, eating nothing, playing our new songs, your new songs, your new eulogies to the universe as you put them. Ivy wanted to go home already. But you did not want her to.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Time for Real Writing

As another issue of The Edge magazine is in the works now -- the job becoming more and more easier as we get accustomed to deadlines and preparations for the line-up of articles -- I cannot help but feel relieved. As those who have followed the struggle we had to hurdle when coming up with the premiere issue, this time it is almost like a walk in the breeze (though there are still one article, the main cover story, that I still have to cover much less make a final appointment as politicians and their press people are prone to be treated as if you cannot catch them to talk to them, always delaying their approval for the coverage.)

Though, there is a relative success in my professional work as writer slash editor slash art director, I'm being bugged by my inability to write short stories or any story for that matter that can metamorphosized later on into a book form or the like, like being included in an anthology.

Bereft of time to think, to look at the sky, or even at the ceiling, and even to read fiction books to recall the cadence and form of how to write fiction, my artistic juice would not flow like it used to. Just a simple gibberish sound in my head is totally absent.

Yet, probably, sometimes, somehow, I will find time to write something. Or rewrite, wall-to-wall, old stories I wrote a long time ago. It is just time. It is just time that I need. Probably silence to hear again the pulse and flow of my artistic juice.

Drat! There will be time for this artistic goal I'm sure. I just have to be patience in waiting for it. And once I find it, I will grab it by the horn and shit do everything I can do in that limited time.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Remember when you were young,
You shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes,
Like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

You were caught on the crossfire
Of childhood and stardom,
Blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter,
Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon,
You cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night,
And exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome
With random precision,
Rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions,
Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

Like your buddies/friends who have seen you shine you crazy diamond, my admiration and somehow close affiliation with you in the mystical blowing of fate; as Jim Morrisson classic song Break on to the Otherside you have successful done it. Hey you, Syd! Enjoy, suffer, fear and learn from it. May your soul learn the psychedelic reality.