Stones Along the Path of My Journey

I know already where the story will end. Or how shall I put it, where the dream will end. I have heard, seen and read countless of the same fate that same dreamers have suffered. All of them had to face the first barrier set along their path and they all succumbed to raise their hands and call it quits. Some accepted the fate of their dreams as nothing as the passing fancy of an adolescent fling with the language and call it not for them to pursue to the hilt. While some, as they go on with their lives defeated by the call of reason to be practical in their actions, still think from time to time as the winds of inspiration touch their skin how would they have fared if they continued dreaming and continued in spite of the practical challenges. Yet, a few with the stomach of steel and guts of stone, persisted; though some of these few proved to be mediocre, a handful have survived the litmus test and able to realize their visions they have seen when they were younger.

These thoughts entered my mind while I dug my head in the effort to fulfill the responsibilities called by my job. I know the importance of having a job. What comes along with it is the easy life of being able to fulfill the necessities to live a practical, decent existence. You have the chance to eat out, go anywhere you please and have the opportunity, ironically, the books that you need to grow as a dreamer.

Yet, reluctance starts to gnaw in my guts and stomach, experiencing a queasy, dreadful feeling that I am straying from the purpose as to the reason why I started trying to learn how to write at all as I perform the duties of my work.

This case is simple so it seems. But definitely, the answer is already firmly etched in my soul. I forgot that this thing have been anticipated well ahead before I ventured in my writerly journey.

Temporary Closed

Due to some personal reasons, this blog is temporarily closed for the meantime.

Waiting

For the meantime, there is nothing else for me to do but wait. I wouldn’t call it laziness or plain procrastination. I hate to call it that way. I’m on a search like a predator for my right and true writing voice. And the best way to do that is searching by not searching.

I will just take my time feeling, seeing, observing, and, yes, waiting for the time when I can finally write everything that I learned. I can afford this since time is still on my side.

There’s no need to rush things up. Right now, what I’m building up is the foundation of the things that I will write. There’s no need to rush and write crappy stories and ride on the bandwagon of what is trendy today in the local literary scene.

Yes, I’m gonna watch the sprouting young creatives force themselves in in the local scene. I will just be content waiting for my rightful time to come.

I’m near of calling myself a writer – the real writer I mean. What I am waiting is what I’m gonna write about and how I’m gonna write it.

One day, I’m gonna wake up and would start pounding on my keyboard and really write.

What I can glimpse at, as of now, of what I would write soon are stories that will uplift and keep the spirit of my readers up; stories that will make them feel no pain but understanding; stories that will make the dust of stars in their veins pumping and make them realize that they are sons of God, precious cargo without doubt.

Story No. 1

Ignacio Marquez was a man of quiet, calm temperament that when he noticed that his vision was becoming blurred, the first thing he thought of was he was tired from work and needed a rest. With blurring vision, he looked up from the book he was reading to the wall clock on the wall to see what time it was already. Yet, he could not read the hands of the clock. There was a slow progressing dimness around him. Then like the certainty of the coming of the night, everything around him was enveloped in full, dense darkness: the gray ceiling where the fan was, the portrait of his family on the wall, the window through which he could see the street outside went black.

He groped through the darkness fearing he just went blind but he could not remember any previous instance when he had a problem with his vision. He did not even wear glasses even if he was reading. He walked on the floor barefooted but what he felt was a strange softness of the earth. Turning his head around in search for light, he saw a flicker somewhere before him: a tiny point of white light. The ground was rough on his soles still he strode forward.

He knew he was somewhere else already. Where was he before? In his room, sitting on the bed reading the evening paper as he listened to the stereo blaring Yanni’s Aria. The day had been long and he was beat up dealing with numbers on the spreadsheet balancing a book.

As he reached out for the light, he had difficulty breathing. He could not breathe; he was choking on the air that he was inhaling. He was being poisoned by the strange nature he had found himself. He was on the verge of passing out and thought he was already dying. There was already heaviness on his limbs and fear was starting to get a strong grip on him; strong enough for him to defecate in his pants. While his hair stood on its ends.

The thin light shone brighter; bringing into light a rainforest where he stood at the center. The smell of the richness of the ground carpeted by dead leaves wafted through his now extra-sensitive nostrils.

He found himself crouching on the earth with all his limbs on the earth. He tried to walk but he noticed that he was walking with four feet. He had no arms. He roamed around the forest, moving in full gait.

What can you feel?

I feel strange. I feel like I’m a prehistoric cat, a panther maybe. I’m tired and beaten up and my tongue is drooling with saliva. I can feel the rich foliage of the rainforest; I can even hear the succession of thunder in the heavens and see the blast of lightning hitting one of the hundred-year old trees before me, splitting it with force of fire. I feel surrounded. There are a thousand enemies surrounding me, hooting as they lurk behind the trees. I am their prey. Any moment they will feast on my flesh and innards, toss my bones to the ground like a useless trophy. I know it will happen soon. But I’m ready for them since it seems I have known them already. Yet, I’m running away from them; they are too many for me to fight against with. I can hear their hoots and the grinding of their teeth, flashing white for my precious flesh. I feel sleepy but I cannot afford to sleep and rest.

Now I feel I can’t move. Roots are beginning to grow on my paws, digging within the earth. I’m stuck. My agile slender body metamorphoses into a tender soft stalk. I’m a plant now. A plant. I can breathe in the pure universe: oxygen. And fear has subsided now. There are no more enemies, no more predators hunting and running after me. I’m safe.

On the tip of the roots that slithered deep into the ground, I can sense a weak stream of water running along within. I’m hugging the earth and I can hear the brooks and streams and rivers streaming down toward the sea. And the soft winds caress my leaves as I sway with it.

Are you afraid?

Nope. I can sense everything around me fading into something; a marsh of clear water with a muddy bottom. I’m already swimming under it, free and without fear. I’m with a school of small fish heading for the river. Everything it seems is marsh and river. There is no land. It is the beginning of the world.

I can feel oneness with everything. I’m the prehistoric rock, boulder, sand and earth.

A flash of light come whirling with me; fast and even becoming faster. I’m being hurled in the void of space.

Then what?

Then time is advancing. Fast. The sun, earth and the planets are forming.

Give me a pen.

Here.

Here is where I am.

It’s a circle with a dot at the center.

Yes.

The dot is you.

Yes.

You are at the center of everything.

Yes.

Can you remember your name?

I have no name.

Do you know where you are now?

No.

To be continued….

This is a new story I’m trying to work on; the first this year. Evidently, there is still that propensity to tell stories in an inward perspective, brought probably by my long years of writing journals which are all about my thoughts and experiences. I have been noticing that there is always an inclination to write stories that only deal with an individual. Nevertheless, I hope this one will be written until its last word so finish the story. The struggle is still on and I am in my lab still scheming and dreaming and working on my text.

Another Miss

I recently had an interview with an editor looking for a staff-writer/associate editor. The text that I received a week prior to the interview proper was promising. The text message that was sent to me told me to visit a certain site in the Internet and study it. The site is all about hardware a techno geek would drool over having his hands on. The site deals about the latest computer processors, laptops, mobile phones, mp3 players, gaming rigs, and even the not-so exciting projectors.

It was my first time to get a schedule for a job interview with a gap of a week after the sought announcement. And the text message instructed me to study. Yes, to study. I said to myself that this prospective employer is different since it was like a college professor ordering me to cram for what seemed to be a Final Exam.

Without an Internet access and cash strapped, I went back and forth at Netopia to copy paste the site’s new articles, laptop reviews, and everything that I thought important for the exam (prospective employers usually say it is an interview but that comes after the exam and a week at least of waiting).

Indeed I learned about the ongoing trend in personal computing merging with home entertainment; HDTV, that’s High Definition TV for you, as the coming craze for us techno consumers; Intel’s Centrino Processor evolves into a more efficient Core 2 Duo, and, like every military intelligent operations, they have codenames. Carmel for Centrino I think and the latter Banias, if my memory serves me right.

It was only unfortunate that the 10-item first-part exam wanted a more deep knowledge of IT, something that only a special few knows like an esoteric teachings. But I’m getting ahead of my story.

There is nothing more exciting to review and get abreast of than music other than the fast-pace, bullet-speed (at the speed rate of 18 months at the average) continuous evolution of Information Technology. There is always something new coming out: faster, better, and sleeker. If music critics are always being dumped by bad albums and sample music from upcoming bands which make them frown at their reviews, I can only think that that is rare to happen in the IT industry. In IT industry, there is only one direction it is heading: innovation and perfection. It is like a sound heavy-laden with riffs that keep on getting perfected and rearrange to the benefit of tranced listeners.

When it finally got to the day that I got drilled by questions by the editor, everything suddenly came crushing down on me. I am left behind by the times. The first question thrown at me was whether I know how to assemble a PC. Good God! I know but never did it alone. I looked like a wet chicken who didn’t know anything about computers. My mouth dried, I hardly could speak and lost the confidence to say my piece in style.

But I yakked all the way till the end of the interview about what little do I know about computers. I don’t know if the editor was still listening in awe or in frustration.

In the end, the exams was shoved toward me and told to take them home. A disaster. I know.

But boy, how did I studied for that interview.

You know the end of the story of course.

A Young Creative Passed Away

I rarely read my links in my blog due to the reason that I don’t have the means: no internet access in my home computer.

But recently, I visited the blogsite of Dean Alfar, dated July 9. There’s a bad news. A young poet by the name of Ana Neri just passed away.

No, I don’t personally know Ana Neri, nor heard of her name until I read Dean’s post. Yet, in this young creative heart of mine, there is something that bleeds for the passing of this young creative person.

I know in the first place how they (the creative people) dream of making it big in the literary scene in this country and probably internationally. On how they aim of someday publishing a book with their name on its cover and between its covers all they learned from this world, sharing their one dime of wisdom to ardent readers of theirs.

It is sad. I am sad. Even though I didn’t hear of Ana Neri before, I know it is a lost for everyone of us. Here we are on a race and practicing our craft or trying to plan to write someday our masterpieces, yet when someone among us creative people bite the dust it’s a lost through and through for the community of writers and poets. And for the whole humanity who think and feel.

I might have no rights to say this, but Ana Neri how I wish you have stayed a little longer.

See you at the crossroad.

Searching for the Enlightened One

I watched over on the National Geographic their presentation At the Edge of the Earth (pardon if I failed to remember the program’s title) the life of buddhists somewhere in Tibet. I was only able catch part of the program but the effect on me was tremendous. And for somebody who can boldly say that I am not a Christian and does not have a religion, converting to Tibetian Buddism for me is enticing.

Fortunately, my youngest sister too has an interest in this philosophy cum religion. So on this day, we planned to take a ‘pilgrim’, as she described it while we were on a pedicab on the way to a Buddist temple.

Armed with nothing but the knowledge that Buddist temples are located somewhere in Manila, somewhere near Chinatown, we headed to for the city smirking over our silly plan.

The question was how would we explain our unexpected visit to the temple? In what way would we talk to the Buddist monks if we were already before them? Are we going to pretend as students (I’ve graduated a more than a decade ago and only my sister is the student) researching over their religion? Or are we going to be straightforward that we have plan to convert or to dig deeper into their religion.

Honestly speaking we didn’t know what to do that made us laugh even more. All we want was to know, and we were dead serious about it, is what Buddism is all about and luckily follow the footpath towards enlightenment.

For good luck, I brought a copy of Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreement. After having a quick lunch, we started our ‘pilgrim’.

We alighted at the Carriedo Station of LRT, and on the way down, passing stalls selling DVDs, a rare find of Bob Marley’s concerts made me buy it in an instant, but that is another story.

My rule in looking for a place I don’t know where is to ask people until I reach my goal. This is easy to do if you have enough dough in your pocket because it means using transportation and you need money for that. And this is exactly the style that we employed in our short ‘pilgrim’.

When we reached Sta. Cruz in Manila, the goal was to know where Chinatown is. When we entered Chinatown, it seemed we were transported into a different, alien place we could not describe. Ever corner was all stores of different wares.
A number of questions where we could find a temple or a congregation of buddist led us to enter alleys until we found somebody who directed us to take a pedicab, going past Tutuban, at Narra St. where he said buddist monks resides.

Now, this is the sad part of the story. When we reached the Buddist temple in Narra St. of Manila, we were ‘shooed away’ as student researchers by the administrator of the church. The Chinese man whom we talked to was surprised when I approached him. He seemed to have seen a ghost. I assumed that he was fearful of a pure-bred Filipino. He said he would be busy for the rest of the day making white-lies that he still had to attend to something.

So what happened in our short piligrim in searching for the Enlightened One: NOTHING.

I would also like to use this post as a call for people who know about Buddism to please inform me where to go and search the footpath of the Enlightened One.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Several wounds in my feet that would not heal soon. A red flag was raised. I am growing old and complication in health is popping up. I could be diabetic. I thought of the last several months that I had been splurging in sodas. It could have triggered a family health problem with sugar in the body.

I have to check my sugar level. But before that, I have to take in antibiotics for the wounds. If ever I have had my sugar level checked and the result is positive, then there would rise another problem. The question now is whether I would have to maintain and keep my body healthy by insulin.

Then I realized that I am growing old. It is expected that my body, like a machine would succumb in its wear and tear, is starting to fail.

Well growing old is not a problem. But the problem that I see is money. Dough. I should have had a health insurance just for the sake of minimizing health related expenses.

And I see all this concern with money with the fact that I am growing old but I still have no regular job.

Drat! Life is tough.

But it is only tiny matter compared with what is within me (I think I heard this before in a commercial). I can take it.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

This story could have been started with the cliché opening phrase of happening once upon a time. Anyway, what is the difference from the old times and now? Nothing so it seems. Everything that is happening now happened before. Same old story, same old pain, same suffering, same joy and same celebration of life.

This story is about an old man. He lives in his prefab row-house alone. In the neighborhood, he is known as a good carpenter because of his relative knowledge in building houses and in repairing it.

We can say that he is a good grumpy old man. Yes, he is sociable to some extent but many a people among his neighborhood do not like him for his grumpiness. He is known for his false principle that most of the time gets him into a heated argument. So this old man does not have an intimate, close friend.

Alone and without a wife, he lives in his cold house staring at the ceiling for lizards as his neighbors describe his nights.

I am only talking about this because I saw the old man the other day loitering, sitting on a bench in the small mall near us. When our eyes met, there was that embarrassed look in his eyes. Liked a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he reasoned out that he should have had gone to the city. I said bye to him and asked if he wanted to go back to our place alone. He said no. That he would still stay there.

I just went away feeling his intense boredom about life.

If I Were a Superhero

If you are a superhero what would you be and what powers would you have?

This was one of the supposed essays I should have had answered the previous week when I applied as a web content writer. But listlessness or out of carelessness, I thought I should have only given the question a 100-word essay.

If I would be a superhero what power should I have? The question is tough and silly on the second thought given the fact that I’m already past the age of Christ.

What powers should I have, I would prefer having the power and knowledge of the underlying ‘realities’ of our world. I don’t know if this is the product of reading Castaneda but somehow it has something to do with it.

If I have this power, I could manipulate the world, the physical world. I can bend spoon like a Buddhist monk. I can hop over the deck of buildings with ease – no, without a web, but by sheer force of what I know about the universe and its design. I can easily learn kung fu, aikido, taekwando, and karate in seconds. I can manoeuvre any vehicle that I want.

If these descriptions are coming to you with some familiarity, yes, they all come from the trilogy Matrix. When I watched this movie, it struck and spellbound me. I was slouching at the back seat of my older brother’s car staring blankly at the moonless sky. What if this universe is not the real universe that there is? Possible.

Anyway, what I was thinking then when I was answering the question was to be the Neo; the One.

Yet, on the second thought, who I could come close to the characters in the Matrix is Morpheus.

You’ll learn it when I smile.

All Talk

I recall the days when I discerned that all I wanted in life is to be a writer. A sophomore in a well-known university and surrounded by peers who had the same vision and hope for themselves outside the campus, we talked after classes in the soccer field digging Hemingway and Gabo. We yakked also all about the books that we had just read and if we understood them well. The discussion would last until the guards in blue would shoo us to go home because it was already late in the night.

Those were the days. I was surrounded by peers who write when they reached home while what I seemed to do then was to yak about wanting to be a writer. I finished my college days still not knowing how to write. I remember that we were known to be good writers but probably that was true for my peers. But not for me because I could not even get myself write past the first sentence. English language is a hard boulder to chip and I was getting nowhere understanding it.

I remember this remote past for what I seem to do right now is rest on my laureates of getting published by some magazines and winning some writing prizes. Everyone in the neighbourhood knows that I write, that I am a writer.
But if only they knew that I no longer write as much as I used to do then. Nor read for that matter. I’m getting in the full cycle of being a talker rather than being a true writer.

I still have to write that first story that would be published with my byline, something which is due for more than a decade already. The sad part is that there is still no material for me to work on so that promise to myself is still far from reality.

Right now, a lot of things, practical responsibilities have been making me busy. I’m on the look out for a good writing job which is hard to come by. And while it is making me busy, I’m getting lazy trying to write.

But everybody is still calling me a writer. Something that is not true right now because I’m more of a talker.

Been Had

I’ve been had.

In searching for a job the familiar, most used words by the screener/interviewer to the helpless reject is the promise of giving them a ring: Hintayin mo na lang ang tawag namin next week.

Now, to the uninitiated and tyro in the art of job hunting, this promise means a hopeful positive one. The job hunter, unscathed and never been beaten out there in the employment market, succumbs to the apple of temptation of waiting for the call thinking that the interviewer meant what he had said.

The week is long and before the job hunter knew it, he will discover that there will be no call. He has been given the words of appeasement and he bit on it. This is why those veterans in job hunting knew the moment they step out of the prospective employer’s office if they have been axed or if there is something to hope for. So they will ask the tyro: Anong sabi ‘yo?

Tyro: Tatawagan na lang daw ako.

The Veteran: Wag mo na asahan yan.

In the long time of experience in the hardship of job hunting, this ‘exit’ words by the interviewer is the most dreaded words I anticipate. It has been used for a very long time and it has been this way since I ever remember.

But in my recent experience, it seems this ‘exit’ words has been given a strain more potent than ever before that a veteran will surely bite on off guard, without knowing he is being had by the wily screener/interviewer.

Nevertheless, I take the responsibility of being rejected because of the things I yakked during the interview and by losing my nerves that kept me stuttering. Who in his right mind will say he has plans to publish a book someday. The logic is awry considering I’m already past the age of Christ and not connected with they academe and what more this plan is almost impossible in our country.

Going back to the subject of this post, the new strain of ‘exit’ words used to me by the screener/interviewer is definitely a deft one.

I was told to set a time the following week for an interview with the manager of the department which the vacancy falls under. I was even told to wear proper business attire when I show up. Just wait for the call in the middle of week (this drat! I failed to anticipate a negative aspect of the interview).

I waited patiently and with eagerness for a week only to realize that I have been had.

Underground Election Gift-giving

Several nights before the election, a neighbor known for her affiliation with the local candidates talked us over the prospect of being commissioned to be poll watchers. Together with another neighbor, who stood as one of the coordinators, counted every registered voter in our house. They say all of us would be fielded as poll watchers come election day. Good news considering that we needed money.

Beside us, several neighbors were also promised to be poll watchers.

The pay and the responsibilities were five hundred at the end of the day and all we had to do was stay at the polling place to watch over flying-voters. Come counting time, our responsibilities would be over and an easy cash of Ninoy would be ready for our wallets.

Actually, there is nothing new about this. Me being a poll watcher. I have been a PPCRV watcher before. But the only difference now is the lure of the pay and earning a quick cash which was mostly welcome.

Hour before the election proper I was asked to go to our coordinator. I was expecting a long day in the precinct and a lot of fun mingling with voters. I thought what would happen was the usual giving off of final instruction for our candidates. But instead I was handed two small envelopes and copies of sample ballots with the suggestive instruction that I knew what to do. Inside the small envelopes was two hundred peso bills. Small money but cash nevertheless.

I innocently assumed that the money was an installment pay for the work ahead of us.

I asked, “What precinct would we guard?”

“No,” the coordinator said. “There was a change of plan.”

“Oh,” I said to myself, smiling devilishly.

I have been a voter for a long time and have heard of vote buying. But this is the only time when I was confronted by the actual practice.

What am I to do? I asked myself. Give back the money and say a litany of election ethics that we should follow and get on to talk that this is the reason why nothing is happening in our poor country?

No. I kept the money.

When we were herded off to the polling place, I threw the sample ballots bearing the names of the candidates who obviously were behind this vote buying practice.

I chose the candidates that I felt worthy of my effort to drag myself at the polling place, which was like a trek to the mountain. I filled only the slots for the national election: the senatorial slots and the congressional. The local positions I just dashed off with long hypen to signify that I didn’t have any prospective candidates for the positions.

On the second thought, I might as well have had put coach Flip Saunders’ name for the mayoralty candidate and the rest of the line-up of the Detroit Pistons for the remaining positions.

How the Game was Played

I mentioned in my previous post that I had not got the opportunity to catch live the Game 3 of the Pistons vs the Bulls. All I got was the incomplete information from my cousin telling me that the Pistons won the game therefore setting the series in a comfortable 3-0 lead of the series.

Well, I was able to catch the reply of the game at Start Sports and see for myself how the Pistons dismantled the young, spunky Chicago Bulls.

The first half was a low-scoring game for the Pistons, perennially missing their shots and bungling their seemed perfect offensive plays.

The Pistons was having a taste of their own bitter medicine what with the aggressive defense of the Bulls. The Bulls looked like hungry pack of wolves ready to eat alive the Pistons. Bull’s Luol Deng, Ben Wallace and Ben Gordon leaded their team in overlording the boards and defense, and shooting above par compared with the Pistons who seemed could not get their acts together.

The first half finished off with the Bulls having a comfortable, almost a sure-win lead of 19 points against the Pistons. The Pistons looked beaten-up and a no-match in the United Arena of the Bulls; the statue of flying Michael Jordan stood outside the stadium as if to imply that the Bulls is on the rampage again and now on the rebound and ready to move toward the Eastern Finals, then the Finals proper to earn another ring.

The Pistons in my imagination were fidgeting in their locker room, panicking and being berated by coach Flip Saunders for their bad game. The fans of the Pistons in front of their tubes all over the world were pulling their hair in disbelief on how come their team feared badly at the court let the young, fast and seemed hungrier Bulls made a rampage in the court at their expense.

The second half started. I watched with doubts whether what my cousin said to me was true: that the Pistons won Game 3.

I could not see any trace of panic from the players of the Pistons yet could still see the lunging horns of the Bulls ready for the kill.

Several minutes after the start of the second half, the Pistons was able to chip out the lead of the Bulls by four, making the homecourt team’s lead down to 15.

That was when I saw the aura of the Pistons – the leading team in the NBA today and if you would agree with their players’ statements ought to be the NBA Champions for four seasons. The Pistons’ aura and gait on the basketball court told of mental toughness and sure composure. There was no tinge of an expected panic in their faces. They are the Pistons and they learned in their long years of battle in the court that a 19-point deficit is no reason to lose heart or panicky about.

Pistons captain ball Chauncey Billups orchestrated the well-maneuvered comeback of his team with toughness of spirit used of shutting down their opponents with surgical military precision. They started making shots, making stops and chipping eventually the lead of the Bulls.

On the other hand, the Bulls, as characteristics of a young ballteam, began to fumble, tremble because they realized that the Pistons was advancing through their defense and that they were in trouble with this veteran team.

At the end of Game 3, the Pistons marked their 3-0 lead in this second-round playoffs of the Eastern Conference.

The Game could have been a blow-out game against the Pistons. But resiliency, composure and mental toughness made them overturn the tide to win Game 3 and post a 3-0 lead which as mathematical statistics proves is a sure win scenario for them.

Now, I don’t know if there’s a game as I write this between these two teams, but even if my cable provider doesn’t air it, I anticipate the Pistons moving up to the Eastern Conference Finals.

It's 3-0 in Favor of the Pistons

I haven't seen the Game 3 of the Pistons vs Bulls because I got to attend some business in Navotas. To find about the result, I have to rely on the story by my cousin Peng and learn about how the Pistons fared in the homecourt of the bulls.

Many predicted that the Bulls would bounce off from their two-streak losing games against the Pistons since the game would be held in their homecourt.

But no (yeah!) the Pistons, as I described them, is really a well-oiled machine that can beat any team by their choking defense and well-executed offensive plays.

It's seems it would be a sweep again for my Detroit team this time.

Walang Nagbago

It is always been my philosophy to look at the world with a half-full of glass of water rather looking at it as half-empty. This is the foundation of me being an inveterate optimist. Optimists they say see the opportunity in ever difficulties, while the pessimists are those who see the difficulties in ever opportunity – a well said adage.

I have written about this issue on my first – and hope not to be the last – column in the now defunct The Edge magazine.

I have seen individual’s faith to see the world in this positive light faltered and totally been destroyed. I see them as old grumpy old people always bemoaning the state of everything in this land in a total mess and the lack of good people to turn it around.

Ever time you talk to them, they are those who never cease to pick on the government’s shortcomings in making this nation a better one, making jobs for the unemployed. What’s more is that they fail to appreciate the talents of every individual making a name for himself because of hardwork and a little help from some people.

If you would talk to these kind of people and listen to their pessimistic view of the world, it is better if you just keep your distance from them since listening to them can only hypnotize you to think the way they do.

To think, they are the mediocre type of people and much worse they are those who are a failure to themselves. So what they are doing to the younger generation is passing their personal frustration through negative opinions and comments about everything. Misery loves company so they say, and basically these people are in misery and could not contain it so they pass it on every person they mingle with.

What do they people don’t know or fail to know is that the world, from the time they are born didn’t chance a little bit. Life is still hard. Making a living is still a struggle in a day to day basis. But this is not a reason to think that life is not beautiful.

They forget the times when they are young and everything was coming their way. They don’t remember their childhood years when the world is a happy place to live in because they are having fun playing and winning. The lost they suffered they endured like dust shaken off their shoulders and continue seeing the world as a happy place.

No, they no longer remember that.

In the years that would follow, their innate optimism is rocked and beaten with how hard life is to live in the adult world. Thus, they forget what they learned when they are young and what the world had taught them. They are eaten up by their own failures, which they should have, like children, shake like dust off their shoulders so they could walk through life with a happy face and composure.
Yes, they forget this valuable lesson.

They forget that life is really tough but not tough to beat with a positive outlook in life. Nothing has changed as I said. It is only how you look at the world that has changed.

"Walang nagbago," as the lyrics of one of the songs of Eraserheads say.

If you want to spare yourself from this subtle misery of being pessimistic, you better take a second look at the world and probably by then, you can see and choose to see the world in a half-full glass than half-empty.

The Pistons Pummeled Once Again the Bulls

It’s 2-0 in favor of the Pistons against the Bulls.

As coach/commentator Doug Collins says the Pistons is like a well-oiled machine functioning perfectly. The Pistons throughout their Game 2 game against the Bulls is a perfect team offensively and defensively speaking.

You cannot see any flaws in them and you wonder whether there is any other team out there that can match their composure and military precision plays. The Pistons’ players are perfectly skilled worker in the court.

Oh, can’t wait to see the series end up in 4-0 in favor of the Pistons being a fan of this team.

The Pistons Beating the Bulls in Game 1

I have been anticipating for days the confrontation of the Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls in the second round of the playoffs in the NBA after their successful campaigns in the first round. The Pistons pummeled the Orlando Magic 4-0 while the Bulls made an amateur team, the 2006 Champions, Miami Heat by beating them also 4-0.

Chauncey Billups and the rest of his gang still showed how they can dismantle a hopeful team against their way to get another ring with military precision. And their fist victim to have a run for a ring was the Orlando Magic, an 8th seeded team in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Meanwhile, the young Chicago Bulls showed spunk and speed when they stopped the reigning Champion Heat and making Shaquile O’neal a has-been in the painted area. They swarmed with tight defense the plays of the Heat. Ever attempt by the group of O’neal in the painted area was faced with double team and even triple team; this making for the Heat a hell of a hard time penetrating.

What I have been anticipating when these two tough teams meet in the second round of the playoffs was a swing tight game. I even considered it the Finals already since there seems no team in the West that can match their intensity while playing in the court, both offensively and defensively.

But when the first game of their best-of-seven series was played I was proven wrong.

The Pistons beat up the the Bulls in a blow-out game that could have shamed Pistons’ former teammate Ben Wallace, who plays as the defensive man for the Bulls. Bulls’ guard Ben Gordon was a no-show also. He was ineffective offensively.

Pistons was just all over the place trapping the Bulls and intimidating their shots. To say, the Pistons broke the horns of the Bulls. Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace were just in their best form.

The Bulls just lost their composure and speed and spunk of a young team when confronted with the mastery defensive team play of the Pistons.

For now the Pistons lead the series 1-0. Will it be 4-0 for the Pistons against Bulls?

Well, we’ll see how far this will go as the series continues.

View from the Mountaintop

For several years I have been maintaining this blogsite. During all those times most of what I have posted here are either rants on how I wish I could be a writer plus my inability to rise to the occasion. If there are some flashes of wisdom or subject worthy to be written, I could only count them by my fingers.

The point I’m driving at is that I still have to write about life, what I know and think about life; what for heaven’s and my spirit’s sake did I learn in this huge jungle of a classroom called real world.

To the intellectually challenged people, those whose philosophy about life begins and ends on how to make their wallets thicker, they whose lives are run by practical reason, I usually say to them – half for the reason on how narrow they think and half for my propensity to play the mystic – that I have sat like a buddha on a mountaintop watching the world below.

What then did I see and learn while I was on the mountaintop?

I would want to start with our use of word, this basic and necessary communication tool to interact with the people around us. Yet, on the second thought, what I want to relay with the readers is all written in the book of Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements.

If one would read this book, everything that I learned on how we use our words is summed up here. It also summarizes in a general way the life that I have long been observing in homes, communities and work places.

It seems everybody is casting poison spells through words to their love ones, neighbours and co-workers. Most of the times he does it without knowing that he is doing it. An angry person can just flares up and say the most insidious words against anyone around him. For us this behaviour is normal.

And what would be more normal than the act of back-biting against anyone. I have long observed that if one could not get on the person that has slighted him or someone he envies, he would recourse his anger to get even by attacking the person through words he spreads around their community or work places.

This back-biting tells more of the person doing it. First it betrays his feeling of inferiority, envy and anger. But by trying to back-bite someone, he gets the illusion that he is impeccable and way above the person he is attacking. He feels superior.

This kind of behaviour is long considered normal in our world, or the real world as some would say. And I would not want to wash my hands and tell that I have sometime, one way or another, have used my words through this kind of behaviour.

Anyway, unfair and unhealthy as it is, I would say this usually is what is happening around us.

Short Kerouac Yakking

I really have nothing to say or write as I decided that I would go to the nearest net cafe at our place. Yet, there is just something in me that keeps on saying, whispering, prodding me on that I should write something, anything: just write.

I need to pound on the keyboar and feel again that ryhthmn made by the sound of it.

Drat! I have to write something, I keep on telling myself.

What is there really to write about? I used to pluck subject after subject out of the thin air and could make out at least 500 words about it. But now there is nothing. Nothing really.

What I am doing now is taking the easy way out, trodding a familiar path used and mastered: writing a morning journal (even if it is already noon and lunch time) or probably what should I call pure Kerouac yakking, talkfest in front of the computer; me and the computer (or the probable readers of this entry) alone. One on one.

I'm writing this with The Game featuring 50 Cents rapping Hate it or Love it in the background and the sound of the these little tods playing computer games.

Sonofabitch! There's really nothing to write about. My head is like a tabula rasa with nothing in it but blank whiteness. Nada. Nada. Nada.

There is nothing happening in my mind of what to write about.

What is keeping me from stopping pounding the keyboard is the pure intention to make this blog entry as long as it will take. I have to keep on pounding the keyboard, really pound the keyboard as fast as I could even without saying anything. Just yak.

And yak I stop now.

I Wish

Nowadays when I cannot write nor read, when doing this basics is difficult as if chipping a great boulder along my path toward my personal legend (owws, using that term learned and heard from somebody special) I wish that one day I will suddenly wake up with true knowledge on how to write and a subject for a novel.

I wish, as if waking from a deep slumber and unproductivity that I can really write, write as if I really know the craft. I wish that like magic everything that I have dreamt of throughout these years will come to reality. I will know the proper and correct grammar in my text or rather the kind of loosening of one’s writing tongue that I can just yak/pound on my computer and write as if there’s no tomorrow trying to finish a good, well-planned writing project.

This times is tough. All I can do is what Jack Kerouac says about writing: stick with it with the energy of a benny addict.

And I’m sticking with it with all my spiritual energy, hoping and praying to the gods that one day that I would wake up with everything I need to write will be there.

Tough wish, eh. Yes, indeed.

But as the Rolling Stones says: time is on my side.

Good well power words, something that you cannot get in the streets.

No computer. No money. No honey.

Language Lessons

Recently, a task was given to me as a prerequisite in getting employed as a freelance writer for a not-too-small publishing house. The task at hand was to write three chapters of what to be a novel in the long run. The project was a romance pulp fiction – the kind stereotypically known as the pocketbook maids and helpers read. Not that there is something wrong with it except that the language that I would employ is Pilipino.

For a stubborn writer like me who sticks with the strength of a benny addict to the English language as his preferred vehicle of expression, this was an alien, almost unimaginable, task that I would venture in. I never in my whole writing career wrote in Pilipino. Nor I have secretly dreamt of getting a career in writing in Pilipino. But I needed the extra money so I thought why not give it a try.

Gauging by the writing style expected of the job, I estimated that I could easily whip up, not just three chapters, but the whole novel in a week. That was how confidence I was regarding the matter.

Another underlying purpose as to why I wanted to try my hands in the project was to loosen up my stiff tongue in telling a story. With the casual, formulatic style needed to accomplish the work, I deemed it a good venue to practice making my writing stamina stronger.

But unknown to me, there were lessons, valuable lessons, that I would learn while carried out the task.

First, I was able to connect with the Pilipino language, as if finally finding my true self, my own language, my own voice. Writing in Pilipino is so natural for me it seems I was just merely chatting with a neighbor, telling him a story about matters of the heart.

I have been writing for more than a decade in English and never did I automatically, on the first try, felt at ease with the language the same way I experienced writing in Pilipino. God knows what a backbreaking labor I had undergone just to acquire this relative proficiency in the English language.

I can still recall those desperate, almost hopeless, days when I would scout a corner in our old house to set up a table with my papers and pen and get on toiling for long hours trying to write a decent, simple sentence in English. Those days were difficult and hard – I usually ended up mentally exhausted and sleepy.

This lesson was followed up with a clearer perspective regarding both languages and the inherent tendency of Filipino writers when he uses either of the two.

Probably this tendency is best summed up by the late Rolando Tinio when he described his relationship with the two languages. It went something like this: “When I write in English, I tend to be flowery. But when I write in Pilipino, I write simple and true.”

The late writer could not say it better than that.

When I scanned my electronic copy of some parts of the short fictions that were recently published by a new literary magazine and I could not help but notice the glaring similarity on how those featured writers used the English language in telling their stories.

They all used big, heavy words and their sentences are almost a forest of flowery sentences that can only reek of hyterical artificiality. If by any chance these fictions will be read by natural-born speakers of the language, I don’t blame them if they all throw-up because of the stories’ excessive wordiness.

With these new insights, I appreciate once again my native tongue and at the same time looking at the English language as no different animal altogether.

Barely Writing

I barely write nowadays. Anything you can see in this blog that is posted for the last several months are only the product of my fervent desire to stay in shape. And all of them I wrote during those moments of desperation when I was in need of something to say just to avoid drowning in the state of inability to think. Thus they tend to be gibberish than saying something meaningful at all.

I can only attribute this sparse writing output on my deficiency to continuously read. I say my writing output is proportionate on how voraciously I read. The more I read, the tendency is that I can write more. But lately, I barely read at all.

There is even not one book that I totally consumed this past year (oh, okay, there’s Stainless Longganisa, but it’s really not to be counted at all). Right now, there is a slew of books that is begging for my attention and waiting to be read in its entirety: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, which I dream of pulling out of it a novel someday; Jerry Oppenheimer’s Front Row, about the story of Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and which was the prize I received from Read Magazine for contributing an essay; Ernest Hemingway’s Across the River and Into the Trees; and Nick Joaquin’s Culture and History and The Woman Who Had Two Navels – the latter a re-reading after more than a decade of having read it during my college days.

With only this short list of books waiting for me to be read, I cannot help but realize how far I have gone sterile in stimulating my mind. And I cannot be surprised at all if I find myself not writing lately. What even gets my goad over my obvious wanton laziness is to read in another blogger’s site a long list of books he had read which I ever imagined I could read in a year; and it explains why his high writing output and adept use of the English language.

We can say then that reading is like fuel to cars which is writing. If one stops reading, it is inevitable that one cannot continually write. One will agonize on finding that he seems not to know how to write. And I’m experiencing it now.

We Are All Alone

We are all alone. Who was the sage who said that we are born alone and alone we will die? We may also add to that that we are going to live our lives alone until our last breath. This stark bit of wisdom is hard to accept but it never fails to ring a bell to those who have stumbled consciously on this reality.

During our formative years, we are deluded that we are never alone. Our parents are always there beside us, plus we are constantly surrounded by other relatives and friends. In school, besides developing the notion that we are immortal, we believe that we would enjoy till eternity the companionship of our classmates and best buddies. We have the faith that the bond that we have formed with our college friends will deliver us from separation.

It will be too late and seems to soon for us to realize that there is an end with our friendship with our classmates. Right after graduation, we know now that each one of us has to take different path in life. Even if we stay in touch with them once they are in the real world, the connection thins out especially if they got into marriage already. They pass on the get-togethers and informal reunions then, finally, they just disappear out of the circulation.

The idea that we are alone will only dawn on us after several stints in various jobs. When we go to our first jobs and if asked one of the reasons why we want the job, we may answer that we want to meet new friends. Like a habit we have formed in our schooldays, we are deluded that this job will be our last and the co-workers we befriended here will be there beside us forever. But unlike in school, our tenure in this job depends on many factors and it is not unexpected that we may lose it any day. And when we lose our job we lose also our friends there. We are no longer part of the organization and we will find ourselves alone. Friends in the work place come and go as we transfer to different organizations, and there are there mainly to give us an itinerant companionship.

There may come the time when we will also get married and find our partner in life. The hope of making the relationship last until both of you grow old is intense and grave. Probably, if separation or annulment is avoided, you’ll reach the autumn season of your lives together. But somehow, as it is inevitable, one may go first in going back to the Creator. And the one who is left behind will find that he is all alone after all.

Can we say then that the one who past away first never lived alone? Does the fact that he or she died beside his/her partner mean so? On the contrary, the dead person at the hour of his death gets the illumination of his circumstances that he has been alone all the time as manifested by his departure; he was born alone and will die alone.

We are all alone.

Mental Calisthenics and Looking Back

Mental Calisthenics

Waking up late in the morning to the shouts inside the house between my parents who both manned the store at the front of the house, asking each other what was the price of a certain items were, I opened my eyes resolute that the day ahead is the day in which I have to start working on my writing. There was nothing left for me to do, and it seemed the task had been waiting for me ever since I began my self-imposed exile from real work.

I have to write, I said to myself. I have to do some mental calisthenics, flex my writing muscles. And what I had in mind then was the 15-page requirement a student of Creative Writing has to finish before the end of the semester. Indeed I will never be a writer, with a book to boost, if I cannot even pull that simple feat.

I have to write. Write again like I used to do without bothering anything about the world outside since my last refuge and salvation is with writing. Yeah, I will write. I will write those things that I saw and heard and felt and those things that I learned.

There is no other way.

Looking Back

When I started out this personal blog a couple of years ago, my agenda, like the usual blogger out there, was to utilize this free space in the vast universe of the Internet as a venue where I could post my peripatetic musings about life. Of course I cannot deny that I intended also to use this blog to hone my writing skill with the aim of perfecting the art of essay writing.

With excited, controlled pounding of my heart, I tried to set a goal of writing at least an essay in a week, pretending that I have a column here in the net which I need to maintain. (To think, I just have to mimic what I normally do for almost a decade in which I maintain a personal journal in my computer which unluckily had been deleted by an unscrupulous hacker.) The only question that hung in the air was whether I could stick and beat my imagined deadline.

And the answer to that, after all this time, is that I fall short. My postings are like erratic downpour in a summer season. Though I can blame that to the demise of my computer – which is now like a chop-chop vehicle with its memory chips, video card and harddisk dismantled from the CPU. With nothing to write with, my mindset of delivering to my own expectation has gone wayward.

Nevertheless, the aim of using this free space as a venue for honing my writing skill does not change. Right now, I’ve begun, like an old boxer, training for the task ahead. Anyway, as long as blogging is free and my postings are safe in the virtual world of the net, then I will write and post them here.

About an-essay-in-a-week thing, I’m still trying to gather my momentum then I’ll go ahead performing the task.

Bday

Lil Feather said that the sad thing today is the evidence that I’m growing old. (Yup, today my dear friends is my birthday though I don’t mean the date when I post this, but the date when I wrote this). I’m growing old indeed still without nothing to prove to the people around me and also to myself. This is the sad, hard fact of my more than 30 years of existence.

This morning, I woke up earlier than the usual, with the bad collective recollection of the years that had gone by. Drat! I said to myself, I haven’t done what I was suppose to do these past years and here I am rotting in my parents house. And this followed by the sutble pain in the stomach and sudden urgency to do something or else I will be in dire straits until my old age – and it is coming sooner than I expect it to be.

Then while channel-surfing I caught on the cable the 1997 NBA Finals between the Bulls and the Jazz. I could not imagine that it was almost a decade since that momentous time. I recalled how time flies by when then a document analyst and was having a fast, easy-go-lucky kind of life never bothering about the future. Arg! The year 2006 was a non-existent time for me and either as a goal for whatever undertaking I had then. Then suddenly, it stirred me that I was seeing this year as a gauge of what I have done so far.

And so far, nothing it seems.

Thinking about it, there are small achievements nevetheless that i have done. Like being published by a national paper and a magazine; working as a writer for an online magazine and two publication houses though for short period only and able to pose as a columnist once.

Then like a thunder of hope, I realise that it is not true that I have not done anything. My long-time dream of writing for a magazine and being a columnist, even just for a single issue, has come true. That is already a feat for a 21-year old then who could not write a decent sentence.

I have gone a long way so it seems.

The only trouble with my struggle is that I cannot take off completely but it is obvious that I can do something as a writer. Yes, I cannot take off completely. But, mother of all hopes, I am getting there slow it may be. I know I will get there.

Probably, this guilt of having done nothing is caused by the my relative absence of work for sometime now. And, probably, it is.

On Reading Stainless Longganisa

Usually the moment I open my eyes when I wake up every morning, my head is swimming in the murky, deathlike impression of another long day. I guess this feeling goes along with the realization that I don’t have a job and days inevitably are going nowhere mfor me. Add to that my passion for serious readings that makes my face worn-down as I wake up because of some memory of last night’s failure to decipher those difficult text by my favorite writers.

Then one day, like a grace showering on me, I wake up with a sunny and bright impression of the day without a trace of grudge against the world. I even afford to smile and grin from time to time feeling no heavy burden on my shoulders as if suddenly freed from long years of imprisonment. Life is beautiful and what a blessing it is to read and write and dream and be whatever you want to be; and yes, what a blessing it is to be able to read and live.

This quick turn from my usually stern outlook about life is the byproduct on reading Bob Ong’s Stainless Longganisa.

I long have known Bob Ong by my perennial visits to the bookstore but have never tried opening one of his books, which usually stare at me from the bookstore shelves of the Filipiniana section. I am never fond of novelty books, which gauging by the way his books are marketed are one — though his Ang Paboritong Libro ni Hudas stirs the interest of the serious reader in me.

It just happens that my one of my sisters bought Stainless Longganisa and the book aroused my curiosity of what kind of a writer really is Bob Ong since my sisters kept on flashing their pearly white teeth and making that strange upward curve on their lips while reading the book.

As I find out, Stainless Longganisa mainly tells in casual Filipino text the experiences and philosophy of Bob Ong as a local writer – but don’t be misled by the word ‘philosophy’ as a hint that this book is a heavy read. It is one light read that is hard to resist to put the book down without reaching the last page. Another thing is the book is an intelligent read with mischievous and constant fooling around by Bob Ong.

The grim clouds in my head vanishes the moment I start reading the book. For one, this book is a sort of an inspirational book for the regular guy who dreams of becoming whatever he want himself to be. Written in subjective anecdotal tone, replete with jokes, Bob Ong never misses his mark in stating that his readers are important, beautiful Filipinos.

Good book and a good pick in giving as gift this coming Christmas to those close to you who are starting to learn loving a book.

Blisters in the Sun

Blisters in The Sun is the first punk hits that I learned how to pluck in my guitar. I post this video to share this upbeat song by the band Violent Femmes.

An Evening Shower in the Rain

On September 28 the storm Millenyo whipped the National Capital Region with strong winds and heavy rain. Halfway through the day, people working in the city were ordered to go home. On their way home, and days later, we would hear how they’d seen billboards along the length of EDSA were blown down and electric posts put to the ground by the merciless storm winds.

As the storm progressed on that day, our place in Cavite promptly revert to the Dark Ages, literally, as electricity was shut down. Gauging by the force of the storm, I anticipated a complete black-out in our place for at least a week, or two at the most basing from the past storms that debilitated the electric service in our place.

The problem when there is no electricity in our place is that it means there is also no water for us. The centralized water pump that gives service to us relies heavily on electricity as there is no generator to give power to it to pump water from the ground and thus supplies us with water for our domestic needs: for washing our clothes and utensils in the kitchen and bathroom. It also means we will have no means to do basic health hygiene like taking a bath.

The next day, like a joke from heaven, the sky cleared up. The day presented a hot, sunny one that kept us sweating inside our houses where the electric fans didn’t work. (Yes, after only a day of a passing strong storm, the electricity had still not returned.) The whole neighborhood was a packed of oily herd on the brim of doing a rain dance to wash away the collected dirt in our bodies.

Then evening came. I retired inside the adjacent house that we had and tried to spend the slow dark hours reading under a candle light. I heard a soft rain pelted on the tin roof. Before I noticed it and firmly sank into my consciousness busy with my readings, the rain that started minutes ago intensify into a heavy downpour sans the lash of strong winds. It was just pure rainwater from heaven pouring on the earth.

I heard my mother outside in the rain trying to fill every container we had with rain in frenzy. And when I went out to help her out, bringing an umbrella with me to protect me from getting wet, I scanned the street outside. Some of my neighbors were in reverie taking a shower in the rain; the teenagers running to and fro with pails and bringing water to their house. There was no doubt that I had to throw away my umbrella and partake with the blessing of heaven soaking the earth with rainwater.

I put away the umbrella and let myself got drench. And good God! The rain was pouring heavily to my heart’s delight. I ambled in the street bonding with my neighbors as we find roof gutters gushing with bitingly cold rainwater. I trained my eyes at the street and I could barely see the end of the street because of the downpour. It was like New Year’s day with the rainwater as the firecracker smoke and with the same celebratory mood.

For once, for at least an hour and a half, I became a boy again gleefully taking a bath in the rain. And to add to the experience, I was doing it – for the first time – during the night.

Untitled

“Lucia, would you please do me the favor of pulling off the curtains,” Gabino Santiago rasped on his bed. “I want to see the outside.”
An ordered tangle of sensory cables and tubes connected to the pulsating machine, which gave readings in numbers, ran all over his body.
“I’ve been expecting to do that as I have been doing for months, old Santiago,” the nurse said. She put his breakfast of oatmeal, glass of milk and a piece of banana on the movable table before him and walked toward the window and pulled the curtain. The weak natural light from outside washed into the room.
“A favor for you, my love,” the nurse said in a tender, teasing tone.
He heard how lovingly the nurse called him ‘my love’, but it did not matter a bit to him. All he wanted was to see the outside. He pushed a button beside the steel railing and his bed adjusted propping him halfway up. He looked beyond the glass window, over the spacious green lawn, at the line of old mango trees that hid by its rich foliage a creek, then past the shrubbery knoll to the jagged outline of the city. Soon the sun would rise over those glass and steel buildings and perennial light crafts zooming in and around the labyrinthine streets of the city.
“Eat your breakfast now, my love.”
He continued staring at the view outside, not hearing anymore what the nurse was saying to him, until the blue sky turned lighter and lighter and he stared at it wantonly knowing that he was visually feasting on something beautiful beyond description, at something he would never forget.
He could have done watching the sunrise by closing his still sleepy eyes by automatically switching on the nanochip in his brain and recall the same, familiar view. But why settle for something artificial when you can have the natural fresher one, he thought.
He squinted from time to time as if to absorb the invisible spirit of the view. He knew this experience would never be orphaned, forgotten memory. He would always remember it the way he experienced it the first time.
Everybody in the world remembers everything now, he thought, smiling bitterly.
Anyway, the version of his nanochip memory was the still reliable Super MemSoft III that could store fifty more years of experience, if he ever reached that length. His wife had the latest PulseSoft version 6.0 which had the capability to tap it onto televisions and share her visual experiences in hologram media.
He winced when he thought about the fact.
In split seconds the atomic circuitry in his memory chip calculated that it was almost five decades ago, or to be more precise 48 years, three months, seven days and 16 hours since the 27th of December of the year 2252. He was a century-and-a-half years old then, and around the globe during that time China suffered a death toll of two thousand who perished when a meteor hit their controlled colony in Mars; the Philippines signed a ten-year agreement with Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia on a space venture to explore Pluto; an earthquake with 7.5 intensity in the Richter scale hit Brazil that virtually severed the country into half as the ground opened a maw of twelve meters wide and several miles long with half a kilometer deep in the gash.
It was during this time when an inexplicable obsession to recall something in his childhood forced him to consult a memory nanochip specialist.
Dr. Artemio Baltazar, who sat at the other end of the table, shook his head with stoic, industrial coldness in his mien which could be interpreted as a lack of interest in Gabino’s trouble.
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” the doctor said, leaning on the backrest of his black leather swivel chair as if announcing a terminal verdict on the case.
“Do you mean there’s no way to retrieve it?” Gabino asked, refusing to comprehend what he had just heard.
“The problem is that the experience occurred prior to the implant,” the doctor said rocking gently on his chair, then added, “You must understand that the chip’s function is not to absorb and interpret your pre-implant experience. It just does not work that way.
“There’s still no technology capable of decoding an already imprinted memory in your brain cells. Our science is still too young to pull that kind of thing.”
“There must be a way, somehow.” Gabino mumbled feebly.
“Have you tried the old science of regression? Practitioners of this ancient method are now rare. But I bet you can find one. As they fondly say: The soul remembers.”
Gabino strayed off his sight from the doctor, on toward the wall where wooden plaques of scientific achievements by the doctor hung, and composing mentally the right words to express his sad, frustrated thoughts.

To be continued…..

Bye my Lil Feather :-(

There has been a long period of time when I did not write nor read because I could not. It was during those times when I asked do I still what it takes to be a writer. There is nothing I wanted in this world but to be a writer and nothing but a writer. And when those times hit me, my world suddenly lost its color and I could not even find any purpose in my life.

Nevertheless, here I am again, trying to write inspite of my semi-cerebral paralysis.

Assessment of Pending Works and Blackhole

Assessing my work at hand under the rate that I am doing it, it seems it will take a decade before I can finish them into something that can occupy some space in bookstore shelves.

Here's a run-down of my projects:

1. Short Fictions: 1.) An untitled short story about a nightmare and love is already on its first rough draft. Its status is shelved until I find the right time to polish it and improve the storytelling style. 2.) The Adventure of the Man They Called Mariano Torres is an old story that I rewrote wall-to-wall in long hand and waiting to be transferred into the word processor.
2. Novel: 1.) The Gulag Experience. I have been thinking of imitating Ignacio Padilla on writing about a foreign country from my own, veering away from the usual local subject or theme, and writing it with a history as a backdrop. But it seems Alexandr Solzhenitsyn have exploited that subject. 2.) Wasteland (Tentative Title). My whole being has been revving up to write this just finished research I did and plunged into for more than four years. But my mind is not yet ready for it is still recuperating from too much use/abuse of using an "articifial force" when writing. I still have to get used writing again in my normal state. I have the story in my head already and it is only time before I can it - I hope soon. And also practicing to get my wind back.

* * * * *

"Me a black hole and everything is being sucked by my strong gravitational force. Can you believe that? And is the comeuppance coming soon?" Thyrone Slothrop talking to the Kenosha Kid.

To my Brother Syd

How I wish I can say you're here now, brother Syd, because everything has just began. The psychedelic colors that you've wished and experimented before, though for me its the marvelous architectural formation of the novel, is just starting to get form.

The niggers in my dick and monkeys are all off my back now -- an almost three years of subtle planning and scheming with a help of a friend. I took the risks, didn't I? I tried to force the condition (again) through articifial means, but unlike you, I have learned how to swim and avoid getting drowned, which you, fortunately did.

My brother Syd, we are dreamers -- dream chasers -- and on how far my journey will take me to fulfill my own, may the soul of the universe Sila stand by my side and guide me with her words: Sila ersinarsinivdluge.

A Trace of A Planned Stealth Writing

The place is already a ghost town, and now finally the story will be told. Don't know it I can or how long I can give it a try to get a crack at it. Drat! Can't write without the "it."

Nevertheless, this song is apt to get the muse going while I acclimatize myself to the lower ground.

Lose Youself by Eminem

On Basketball and the Local Scene

It has been said and repeated often: there is no sports in the Philippines that is closest to the hearts of the Filipino than basketball. We may lack in physical speed and height to be competitive internationally in the game, but we compensate this with an avidity as shown by the proliferation of makeshift basketball courts in almost every streets and fields all over the country – a sign of how fanatics we are really about the game.

We have our own professional basketball league: the PBA, which spawned cagers like Jaworski, Samboy Lim, Dondon Ampalayo, Alvin Patrimonio and lately Fil-Ams players like Eric Menk, Asi Taulava, Mark Caguiao and Danny Sigle. It is only sad to confess that for years now I stopped following the league.

During my childhood, I would sit beside my uncles, who drank beer, while glued on the TV set entertained by the exciting plays brought by the local cagers and imports (Billy Ray Bates coming in my rusting memory.) Now, my excitement of the old days for the PBA has waned ever since NBA penetrated my basketball geography. Blame it on Michael Jordan who paved the way for the NBA to turn into a global sports entertainment with his graceful aerial repertoire of dunks and jump shots. Blame it too on those people behind the telecast of NBA games, especially the Finals, to the local tube. Lately, the games in the whole season are already available via cable.

Though I one factor my appetite for patronizing the local league waned was the observable slowness in how our cagers move and execute plays in the court. When you just have watched an NBA game, especially the Finals, then switched later to watch the local league, you can spot right on this matter and the difference in the quality of the game.

Another thing that started to turn me off from the local basketball league is the numerous championship tournaments played in a year (there is three tournaments I think in a year.) When this is the case it becomes tiring to see repeatedly a handful of teams vying for championship that is happening every three months. It diminishes the gravity and importance of the title to think that anyway a team can take a shot again at it come next tournament.

Yet, there is an unflinching hope in my heart that someday, somehow, we can produce local cagers that can slug/shoot it out with the foreign ones, and eventually make the list of the NBA roster.

A short glimpse lately, on how our local cagers move the ball on the court, I observed improvement, especially in the terms of speed. Right now, there is no 6’6” who can move and leap like a regular NBA forward, still there is no telling that there will be no Filipino cagers that be of this mold.

On Writing

How I wish I can easily weave stories. There are those writers who tell how surprised they are when rereading their works that probably some alien entity had got in the process of the writing that they can't believe that they were able to write some parts of it. Me, how I wish that these entities really exist. Even a doubleganger would do. It would sit before my writing table and scribble good, publishable stories while I sleep in my bed dreaming of penetrating the literary scene, even just the local.

I used to practice writing, on the goal of someday (when?) I can say I'm ready to write those stories running in my head, by keeping a journal. Unfortunately, the journal, which spanned more than a decade and sadly lost and deleted in my old PC by a hacker, can be summed up as mere whinings about my inability to write.

Now that I avoid staring at a blank paper, still sleepy and in need of a nicotine fix early in the morning, fearful of being bashed again by the reality of failing to write anything, I recall a college classmate who said something about writing stories that it sounded so easy anybody who is literate can do it.

"'Tol, magkukwento ka lang."

How I wish it is that easy.

On Stealth Writing and Some Concerns

A relative long silence broke in this blog, interspersed with sporadic short posting that meant nothing but gibberish talk pointing at nothing.

I mentioned about the process of stealth writing: the process of hiding and keeping to oneself what he is writing at the moment. This is far from the so-called “guerrilla writing” where the writer does his work anytime he sees an opportunity. Well, stealth writing poses as a silent bomber, a kind of a puzzle or anticipation-maker for the reader what the writer is working on.

Don’t show a rough draft of your piece to anyone. Never. This is a lesson Gabo learned when he was establishing himself as a story teller, unencumbered with the expectation of his growing followers. The act has nothing to do with the readers. The beneficiary of this contained humbleness and secrecy is the writer himself.

Letting the readers, even one, get a glimpse of what the writer is pursuing somehow, and probably for sure most of the time as experienced, get the inspiration to write blow like a bubble. When somebody a rough draft, prior on finishing the piece, especially if the writer is wrestling with himself the jumbled storyline thrown at him, the story get stuck up, or worst never reach the culmination of being finished.

I would say the catharsis, the inner driving force of the writer, is vented too early. Some steam has escaped and the momentum to go on is lost, if not forever.

Straying from this discourse, though not totally out of line, I tried to keep my mouth shut from telegraphing the projects that I had been trying to finish last April. But sad to say, out of the three major projects that I had set, only one was able to beat the deadline of submission. (I mentioned in the previous post that it was mainly because of lack of internet access/PC brought by financial difficulties.)

Nevertheless, rummaging without reason inside my room this afternoon, I found old stories I had written four years ago. It was a surprise for me. I never thought that I had written a number of stories then and now is ready-made material to be my new projects. Of course, a wall-to-wall rewrite is needed to polish it and apply whatever lesson have I learned so far since writing them.

Furthermore, there are several new stories, essays crowding and vying for my attention like bees buzzing in my ears and mostly the thoughts try to stir me during the wee hours of the morning when household rules forbid me to turn on the lights.

Anyway, I’m still in the process of holding myself from writing essays and journals and the likes. Whenever I feel the urge to write those kinds of stuff, I bury myself in my bed and try to sleep off the inspiration. The time for practicing is over. I have to control myself now on taking head on the task which in the first place is the reason why I’m writing.

Some Developments

The deadline for submission of entries in this year Palanca Awards is over several days ago. Now, of course, everybody in the literary community knows it already so the first statement of this post is sort redundant and of no use.

Anyway, I just mentioned it since for weeks, or months? this is only one of the times when I got to sit before a PC, with an internet access, and post something in this blog of mine.

My target for this year's Palanca is two short stories of different genre, but unfortunately (because of financial and internet access) I had no choice but to miss finishing those pieces.

Though I still have an ace in my sleeve in terms of writing contest. I've submitted an essay to a contest sponsored by Newsbreak and World Bank. Hopefully before this month ends, finalists will be given a note if they have made it to this first time held essay contest.

The Laughing Buddha

During the simmering heat of Holy Week, giving in to my excesses and indulging in small-time gambling like a Jew waiting for Christ to take his last breath on the cross, the idea of receiving Blessing and Grace in the duration of the Holiday was far from my mind. Anyway, when was the time that I expected such blessing to bestowed on me? Memory fails to recall an instance.

On the cable, I caught a psychic talked about the benevolence, blissful Lenten Season it would become. He explained about the occurrence of a fullmoon on Holy Thursday for the reason; witching hour that will bestow Grace and Blessing not just for those gifted in paranormal talents but also for the rest of the humanity.

If I would follow the pronouncement of that psychic, there was indeed some lessons/wisdom learned/given to me.

Nighttime, during Easter, the mind cluttered with small concerns and boredom, my channel-surfing landed me watching with curious fascination an Indian woman talking calmly about life. (As of this writing, memory fail to recall what she had beautifully said. But the next guess, an old causasian woman, an American and also a writer, who obviously belonged to the same spiritual organization of the previous guess, gave the stirring piece of wisdom that unexpectedly, came to feed my soul and spirit.

The sentences that came out from her lips were spoken as a matter of fact wisdom. The lesson learned cannot be attained without a journey. Nevertheless, the journey, no doubt, can only make you tough.

And the telltale signs of reaching the wisdom she was saying is when... A question: Have you heard about the Laughing Buddha?

if any one of you are a bit curious as of why the silence in this blog for sometimes... it's because i'm practising a kind of writing. if there's such a thing as guerilla writing... then mine is a stealth writing... (details of what i have been busy with during this long silence will be told in the future post, if i still feel like writing about them.)

flying over clouds....

Remembering Now: The Story

The last deal which made his mind writhed in silent agony over how to make the best of three number pairs had had an overwhelming unbearable weight on his shoulders – considering his bet was what remained of his hundred pesos – that when he got home and upon entering the front door the first urge for him to do was slump on the sofa. Laying his body on it, his back felt strained and fatigued, and wearily stared his eyes at the ceiling.

He had lost before. More in fact. More than a hundred pesos. Though surprisingly, this time had a similar bitter pang of losing several thousands. Or, perhaps, even more.

“There’s still a next time,” he tried to console himself.

He felt the stereo’s remote dig behind his ribs. He groped for it and turned the stereo. All the time exhaling with bass moan, unloading the pressure within him and trying to slow down the adrenalin left in his veins.

“Turn the sounds low, Ignacio,” a female voice commanded from inside a room and added, “You took so long. Just put the milk on the table.”

He turned the volume low. Just enough for the music from the radio station wafted smoothly through the air.

A love song seeped through the speakers. The song made popular years ago by a female artist whom Ignacio could not recall the name. He could not also recall whether he was in his puberty or late in his teens when the song first hit the airwaves. The song was a sad one, but he was clueless why it was so since he was not particular on listening to the lyrics. He just knew the song was a sad one based on the melody.

The volume and the song fit perfectly well. There lingered a grace of ethereal fluid of nostalgia in the air. The soft wisp of cool, music-laden air brought tingling in his skin. He began the pressure within him disappeared. His limbs relaxed. As if he was hypnotized. Though, there stayed deep weariness in him. His eyes squinted sleepily.

He looked at his arm, hand, then the fingers. He softly scanned his prostrate body on the sofa, down further at the couch next to it. Then he moved his eyes toward the barren crass white-painted wall of the house.

He felt an odd nostalgia. It was as if he had been here, in this position, in this same time and place feeling the same experience. It was as if he had already gone to an unspecific time in the future where he was at peace. He was there now as he was now here, on this sofa he was laying on. He was looking back enigmatically at this present time. Like thrown back through time, he was experiencing and feeling a past, a memory: the mood, the atmosphere, the soft touch of air. His present experience seen not from the state of Now but of the future.

Then the feeling snapped like a cut rope. It was gone.

The music stopped.

“Where is the milk?” asked the woman clutching a baby.
“Uh?”
“Where’s the damned milk?”
“Oh, I forgot. I’ll go buy it now, hon,” he said.

Ignacio pulled himself up, dazed, and strode for the door. Once outside, he brushed his hair using his hand, wondering what it was he had remembered a while ago.

Drat! I've Just Been Published by Read Magazine

This news is just fresh from reading my e-mails. My "article" Sentimental Yakking has just been published by Read Magazine. As a gift, besides being featured by this magazine I admire because it is published by Powerbooks (my pseudo-private own library where I read for free countless of books, especially of Jack Kerouac and Italo Calvino), I will receive the book Front Row by Anna Wintour and a complimentary copy of the issue.

Wow!! It's just like winning an award. And that persistent urging in my head to continue writing because you have what it takes to write is never been louder than before.

Yipeeeee!!!

YuriGligoric will run immediately to the nearest Powerbook branch and gonna ogle seeing my "article" hugging a space of the Read magazine.

Eulogy for Saint Caloy

The last time I heard about the indefatigable freelance photographer Carlos Sanchez was several years ago. He was featured on prime-time news and an anchorman slash reporter held a microphone before him, getting a statement from him. Caloy sat on a hospital bed, thinner as a skeleton that he was and strands of his unkempt long hair stuck on his gaunt countenance. He spoke at the microphone in low gnarl voice, making a plea for financial help from his colleagues in the media. He was battling tuberculosis, which by then seemed at its advance stage.

But this was not the worse that Caloy had to deal with. It was being forced physically from doing what he loved best: capturing through the lens of his camera the political and crime drama unfolding everyday in the metropolis. Inspite of being confined on his hospital bed, he passionately expressed his impatience to get back to work, to bolt out, to rush to where another scoop is happening in the city, click the shutter of his reliable camera and produce, once again, the next day’s front-page photo.

That was the last time that I heard of him, until a couple of days ago when somebody informed me that he would and could never again use his camera. His camera had retired, finally. Because Caloy Sanchez had passed away already several years ago (he probably succumbed to TB).

I got a close-up look at the man when I did my practicum at WPD. Quickly, an impression formed in my young mind, something that I could not name then but only now. Though my arrogant practicum handler seemed to see differently since he would diss in passing Caloy, as if here a pesky beggar, a useless dreg in the press corps loitering in the corridors of the WPD. Well, Caloy indeed looked like a beggar with his disheveled hair, unshaved face, and with an outfit of soiled, worn-out clothes.

He would usually sit quietly on the floor, unmindful of everybody, just starring with his saintly stare at nothingness. His style of sitting showed his idiosyncrasy and rarity as a media man; he sat on the floor as if he were about to shit – this is the squat that became his trademark.

Though, whenever I would look at him, I knew that his dedication and passion toward his work, his vocation, was of a saintly embodiment of personal integrity, which I can compare and comparable with that of Haydee Yorac.

This saintly infectious persona he exuded – I spotted it right away and could not help myself grin with the view – when it would manifest on how the guys in my group would sit Caloy-style on the corridors of WPD, stare at nothingness, unmindful of those god-damned ordinary, no-good cops passing by, as if silently saying in cool, haughtiness: Damn, we’re gonna grow up like Saint Caloy.

Caloy had a collage of photos showing him, camera dangling around his neck, in black blazers, side by side with top political honchos whom he had chanced to cover and meet. These were displayed right next at the door of the office of the press corps. Caloy, like a boy who had met the big boys populating the highest strata of political stratosphere, was proud in his achievement of meeting and recording in photos the political hotshots he met.

But I think, it should be the other way around. These top politicos should be the one who should feel proud of having their photos taken and meeting the saintly hoodlum-looking Caloy.

The impression of saint Caloy which I could only name now: another damned crazy diamond who knew how to swim.

Wherever you are now, Saint Caloy, saludo ko sa yo, ‘tol! A well done job; and finally, your camera can have its much needed rest.

Rest in Peace, Saint Caloy.

Found It

After a long time of not-searching yet searching, I already found I have been preparing for since I started writing. Probably it will take me two years just to make a draft of the project. But it is already definite. It hit like a thunderbolt, and hit me really hard.