Romancing the lion

The lights are out. This is not the first time  our house has sit dim-lit in this corner while the rest of the households held darkness hostage to the flourescent glow.

The electric fans are out, too, probably happy that they are given an hour off mechanical labour. A cardboard makes a good makeshift fan.

The issue is not global warming but like the ice caps that collapse because they can no longer stand the heat, my weeklong confinement in the dark teaches me lessons like the ones a fed-up lover does. You go about your day, come home, sleep and wake up- almost unsurprised- to the realisation that your electric service company has decided to put an end to its ordeal.

You had it coming.

And so you start to live with inconvenient truths. Truths like food leftovers decompose in the fridge, that they stink, and that they stink bad. Pandora’s Box would surely make a bad refrigerator brand.

I live in a corner unreached by civilisation but at least, I can expect my electric bill to go down this cut-off. 

Let there be light.

It was an epiphany when I stumbled over the phrase today…for two reasons- one, I just realized that the meaning it conveys is timeless, and two, The Technologian Student Press is one of the best places I have ever been.

Today, I am reminded that a disregard of direction is not courage or confidence. The paths we take are supposed to be perpendicular to the stars.  

Poor song, it seems to me now that I was projecting my little sadness to it when I asked The Miming why said song is sad. Alliteration is unintended.

It is an early Saturday morning, and I initially told her that I am sad today. I didn’t know why, or probably, I was too tired to find out why. No, probability is uncalled for- I know why, and I’ll get some whipping from my good friends if I tell them so or if they get to read this entry. They had been having a hard time exorcising the demons in my head.

I used to have demons in my room at night- desire, despair, desire but that is a different song, I’m turning a whiter shade of pale again.

And I said it is depressing though I don’t have a vivid picture in mind of what it depicts. It must be the melody. It makes me want to dance- arms thrown onto some shoulders, that I bet are looking anorexic, as if to resign from my daily fight with indulgence, pulling a neck closer to a lipping. Anorexia, I figured, must be the reason why those shoulders have always been hidden in those jackets. There must be some romance left in those bones if it penetrates through the flesh.

As I write this paragraph, I am eating pancit canton. It’s past 6 pm- still a Saturday. I just woke up from a ten-hour sleep. Crying is very benevolent, sometimes, even more benevolent than my good sisters when I ask them to give me a massage in order for me to sleep. I sneaked into my bedroom, and slept, with Crying this morning. I’m alone in the house today, and I will be the entire summer so I expect it to be one wet season.

I have to take a bath now. I need to go to the office.

So I went, and I’m back at home.

It is already Sunday, 4 am, and I lie awake in this bed, poking this little keyboard, on this screen, of this handheld. There’s no music in the background. I have just stumbled over what Spinoza says in Ethics- affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam. ”Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”

I feel better now.

My two whipher friends, The Miming and The Barla, are in an all-out war against the demons, and they are launching a massive campaign to pull me out of the quagmire that I am surreptitiously wallowing into.

It is like I have drunk a philter. The wisdom of the world must be the antidote. But the world is replete of different versions of what wisdom is or of which is the wiser thing to do. Let’s talk wisdom the next time. I will sleep now.

So I slept, and I woke up, and I went out with The Whiphers, and I had some fun which I should blog about in my next entry- if Work won’t envy me-and-Fun-getting-happy.

It is now Monday. It is 2 am, and I’m trying to sleep again. Annie Lennox is in the background. No, Crying isn’t around. I’ll see if somebody else knocks on my door to sleep over.

A week has passed, and it’s Saturday again.

It’s now past 1 am on a Sunday, and I’m in the office pantry, poking on the same handheld, listening to the same song.

I think now that one of the greatest glories of a man’s life is being able to transcend its ordeals- to love intensely, to hurt constructively, to suffer graciously and to live willingly.

I am seduced to dance to life- come, let’s undress our souls. 

Happy Sunday!

tell it to this famished fire

there is still a fountain beneath those parted lips

i have dug with mine before

the youth in you

that tongue- tamed and sometimes wild

endured our beating- the lashing

in the fountain

we played master and slave

deep into the crevasse

there is that water-in-the-well

i once drank it all down

like an arid desert, i preyed

we sketched our souls through these lips

and your mouth i crave

lest old age devour our youth

i paint the days

                       –little lioness; 14october06, 8:33 pm

Erap deserves more.

For the first after a long time, I like what I read about him in the paper today. I have long been complaining why the media can’t keep away from giving him the publicity he has always lavishly enjoyed but I think he deserves more these days if only to peeve him for being asked questions like- exactly like this: “was it not hypocritical of him to presume to lead the fight against corruption, accusing President Macapagal-Arroyo of such crimes when he himself was convicted of plunder?” 

I applaud, and I thank Agence France Presse (AFP) reporter Mynardo Macaraig for the straightforward question.

One can say that his argument is commonplace but why is it that, as Estrada lamented- as if we have forgotten his bastardisation of the presidential office and insult to the gullibility of the people- “nobody had ever asked him such a question in media interviews, not since he walked out of ‘rest house’ detention following his pardon.” My sentiments, exactly. And I think that it is more of a big slap to the media’s face.

It is blatant, he still lives like some god who is invulnerable even to an arrow shot right into his Achilles’ heel. He has a badly calloused shame. Or that he has deceived himself into thinking that everyone in this country, just like him, has lost his moral imperatives, anyway, so it’s okay to keep up with his fooling around.  

“I believe I am innocent. I explained it to him that people have already acquitted me and not the Sandiganbayan justices,” he said.   

I will never have baby Yana read the dictionary that he uses- the one that says acquittal is synonymous to pardon. I am also inclined to believe that somewhere a dictionary says innocence is synonymous to arrogance. 

In the event that “the opposition fails to come to an agreement (on a common candidate),” then he will run, again, for President in 2010.  

Before, being critical of what he says or do was more like wrestling with a ghost. With his most recent annoyance, however, I think that the media can do us a huge favor. It should either be we annoy him to death with the seriousness of our intention to question his credibility (or to validate his incredibility) or we boycott him.    

If the reason why television networks still the cover the affairs of Estrada is because of public clamor, then we rightfully deserve the mockery that we are faced with. But the news I watched on TV last Christmas Day showing Erap playing with his grandchildren and his son, for example, was a deliberate one casted by the media upon the public.  

It is a sad fact that part of the populace still worships Estrada but his messianic movie roles are not really the ones to blame. He deserves a boycott but what the papers and the television tell us is something else- as if nothing happened.   

I was frustrated with the footage as much as I was sometime in November when he was in Sunday Inquirer’s banner being the guest honor in the opening of a Greenhills mall just about a week or two after he was released from prison- if I remember it correctly.  

In the off-chance that the media sees our plight in the context of forgiving and forgetting, then, indeed, it has become instrumental in idiotising the masses.  

This is not to say that the mainstream media is useless. While I think that Web logs are excellent alternatives to searing commentaries and critical thought, I believe that the press remains indispensable and relevant to our times.  

We need to beat the crap out of Erap- exorcise the demon that causes his ego to bloat and scrape off that metaphorical calluse that makes him act like a god.    

It takes two to tango, people always say. Erap can’t dance alone. Let’s stop playing the music that makes him groove.    

You are a brat, and you get what you want. Not that it’s bad- I would want for you to get me if you want.

You didn’t need to petition the courts to have my name changed. And so you enjoy your privilege to call me Scardy Cat.

You taunted me once bitten, once hurt- how sweet.

I am convinced that you are an excellent teacher but don’t attempt at elementary Science. You were alternately calling me Scardy Cat and Chicken Shit as if the cat hatched from an egg like the chicken has.

If a cat copulates with and, eventually, impregnates a chicken, what would it bear- a kitten or a chick? Don’t ask me which came first between the chicken and the egg. I have to deprive you of every opportunity to articulate The Word. Try saying “Ginkgo Biloba” instead. It sounds nicer, doesn’t it? It is like you are some scholar.

Well, yes, you are an intellectual and a leftist- like Jacopo Belbo in Foucault’s Pendulum. But don’t get me wrong for saying that- I don’t adore you because you become less and less fascinated with people when they do. You seem to be always after somebody who can perpetually fight you.

I always want to pick a fight with you.

I was gritting my teeth before I left our rendezvous until when I trudged into the back of the PUJ because you were telling me that I would bring my chicken torment home. Then you basked in orchestrated triumph. Defeat blinded my eyes when I started writing this. But, no, you can’t win over me so let me continue to write merrily.

At the risk of being misunderstood by our spectators, you unhesitatingly called me The Word but I think that is only because we have a telegraphic Thesaurus. You know that from Shit, I can extract shinola.

Very sweet, indeed. You send hidden messages- like Morse Code.

You are loud, and I love that. You were screaming your lungs out in a hypocritically happy Sunday morning to tell the world that this woman’s a chicken shit.

All that is true but only because I don’t tell you upfront that I have warmed up with you. Is that all you want to know?

A rhetorical question, of course. I know you will tell me you don’t need to because you already know. But, yes, you make me adore you. I hate stating the obvious, too, so let me cut the crap.

There was a time when I was almost inclined to believe you are a member of some cult, spying on me- you would suddenly ask me what I was doing aside from thinking of you.

How sweet.

But you are a smoker so you must be smokey sweet. I have to have you chew a candy, somebody told me. I was once asked if I’m willing to lick an ash tray and I had to say yes since I like you- but, perhaps, only because you have told me you like me. It must be some kind of oral fixation.

My hopes committed suicide a day before your Multiple Personality Disorder attacked. The attempt failed but it died, anyway.

Then later on you made me realise you are another scardy cat.

You told me you are scared to bite, scared to hurt- cheap shot, but how sweet.

Sweet like candy to my soul.

Sweet you rock and sweet you roll.

And the word busy was made flesh- I have, finally, finished my work assignment after a long overdue. I planned to treat myself to a book after the oppressively endless procrastination I have indulged myself into.  

So I went to the office last Saturday but only to do the dirty job– my least-favorite sin– most team leads do before the clock unforgivingly strikes twelve on a Sunday, Bloody Sunday. I wallowed in a guilt-trip but for no more than a minute. No, that isn’t the treat yet- of course. 

I found myself in a dim-lit corner outside McDonald’s down the building; my head, fornicating with the Autobiography of a Whip. The Barla would be happy to know that I was down to twenty-eight pages before the end of a journey of a thousand orgasms. She might want to kiss the same butt she has tongue-lashed for not finishing the book on time. She had been giving me piercing looks as if to scare the lust off me. 

I finished the book at home and voila, I have returned it to the library yesterday to clear The Barla’s name. She was supposed to return it two Mondays ago. 

If the book were a compact disc, it would have been scratched from rewinds and fast-forwards. It is ”very graphic” as The Barla warned me- yes, warned, as if she were my mother telling me to stay away from boys, and more importantly, their toys. 

The first few case histories were very arresting but I lost momentum in the introduction of the cults. But at least, I had been advancing fairly at midnight on Saturday until around five in the morning. Our repressed-to-deprived coffee-and-conversation pal who had the nerve to call me starved won’t believe me if I say it is because of historical and cultural allusions.  

I like History, believe me.  

See, I had to borrow it again right after returning because I want to take down notes and do further research. More importantly, though, I’d like to kiss and make up with the battered book as few pages had already been torn. I’ve got to fix it just to make sure that the proliferation of the whip specie goes a long, long, way.  

If there’s anything you can get from it sans the inevitable arousals, it is that flagellation is disturbing and at a certain degree, infectiously depressing. But as the author opined, there is nothing about man that should be held in contempt and disrepute or something to that effect. 

I highly recommend the book. I am sure that the peeping toms in you will take on a new dimension or, probably, perversion.  

Who knows?

Antonio Trillanes IV is two-faced. For a moment, he worships the Constitution by invoking his “mandate as protector of the people” and, later on, offends the same constitution by “making the step of removing Gloria Arroyo from the presidency.” 

I am disgusted with the Arroyo administration. The events that have transpired in the past months, and the past three years, are disturbing they are, to me, national nightmares but it is no less disturbing how notoriously involved the military has become in Politics.  

The dangers of the latter are evident- let’s look at Burma.   

I cannot find a term more emphatic than arrogance in describing how it deliberately, and repeatedly, sticks its nose into the affairs of the people. Not to mention, the contempt Trillanes and general Lim have shown of the civilian court.  

Brig. General Danilo Lim is confusing me. He said “she (Arroyo) stole the presidency from President Joseph Estrada through unconstitutional and deceitful means.”  What I know is that we- the people and the military- have conspired to drive Erap away from Malacañang. I wonder whom he was serving when the military top brass withdrew its support from then President Estrada.  

I have read that he is a reputable figure in the military and I am not in the position to refute that but I cannot seem to understand how he could call Arroyo’s presidency illegitimate in the context of Estrada’s plight.            

I believe in the young and brave whose hearts burn for the country- Trillanes must be one of them. I believe in the principled- the Magdalo group must be one of them- held captive but still have their ideals intact.  

With this recent event, a reminder of expensive coups in the past, however, I have wondered if the young and the brave and the principled are self-driven or pulled, blindly or not, by the string.  

The election of Trillanes to the Senate is a loud protest of the people against Arroyo, they say. I agree. He was an unmistakably refreshing figure- a stark contrast to the futile ones whose faces have been superimposed in every paper and television sets- of unreserved, perhaps, genuine, opposition.   

There is something utterly wrong if he interprets his victory as an approval of mutinous acts in the past. The Arroyo administration is morally bankrupt but mutinous soldiers are immoral just the same.  

It was disheartening that eleven million people voted for Trillanes because it was, to this writer, out of desperation. It is not easy to understand how we could have elected a ‘rebel’ but I have slowly started to see it as a means of the people to continuously look for an alternative contrary to what is perceived as mere apathy. 

Alternatives are experimental and we do not always end up with the first.  

If there’s a lesson the people must have learned, I would say it is that we always find this country in the same quagmire of scandals no matter how many times soldiers stage a coup and no matter how many presidents we remove from office by taking our grievances out into the parliament of the streets. 

We have always been the primary casualties- we pay the price, and more often than not, it is an expensive one.  

It is depressing to the pit how far we have tolerated and embraced a culture of rebellion. Unless that breaks down, we can never be united.

There is truth to writing. It hides in the powers of metaphors but it is naked, nonetheless. It awakens the dragon- sleeping in the dungeons of the past, sometimes, the princess that you were- kissed, and cajoled, in the towers of a, now, deserted castle.

I wanted to write that I want to hibernate but, hide, where? It is tempting to get lost in the word hibernate.

Volcanic emotions erupt and try to mock my libertarian sensibilities. They tell me that I am in the same mudflow where I was, some sort of, aeons ago. They sell the drama, and I try hard to be apathetic as if the heart is no impulsive buyer.

But there is truth to the music playing in the background and I am lured to buy it. Sarah Mclachlan claims innocence though I would not know if she was acquitted but I hope…I hope she made it- whatever that means.