Tired...

Good grief, I'm tired. My sleeping patterns have been erratic lately. Usually get to sleep around 6am and then wake up around 11:30am. The other day, I tried to take a power nap before doing some work but had a dream that I ran a marathon. So I woke up even more tired. Geez. I just want to lie in bed with a Calvin and Hobbes and eat a bag of Poore's Brothers salt and vinegar chips. Or Kettle-cooked chips. Or marshmallow popcorn.

still more

One of the posters in the forum I'm engaged in asked the few of us who are still standing up for Nicole, "who and what are we fighting for?" My reply.

I’ll just speak for myself. But I’m “fighting” against our dangerous tendency to uncritically assume whatever is presented to us which makes us so predictable and easy to manipulate. Especially knowing that we have a government that is famed for its duplicity in maintaining and pursuing its self-interests and self-preservation even if it means trampling on individual rights.
The “recantation” which has triggered this backlash has already been shown to be dubious and not even a recantation. Yet, from a lazy reading of it or by depending on media’s interpretation of it, people justify their condemnation of Nicole. I still don’t understand why people are condemning her.
This brings us to the issue of women and rape. And it’s frightening to see what kind of notions and attitudes are emerging, mostly following a trend that women must have done something to deserve being raped or it’s not rape if the woman wasn’t acting properly. I think that’s worth fighting against. Like I said, I don’t understand how we can condemn her in this culture that we’ve created, at least not without condemning ourselves in the process too.
And on people thinking she sold out. We call her a hypocrite but how many people have already left and how many want to leave this country? Why do they want to leave this country? We call her a “prostitute” and a “whore” but what are the conditions in this country that have reduced our women to that? And if ever, who are we to judge these women for trying to survive in these conditions that are stacked against them?
it seems to me that the irony is that another country (even the one of one's abuser) would be more preferable and more of a safe haven than one's own country. ok, people have been very vocal about what they think that says about Nicole. but what about what it says about us? or are we happy to just let Nicole be the villain and exonerate ourselves for letting this kind of culture persist that makes not just Nicole but so many others want to leave the country?
and since it was an exchange, what about the issue of who offered the US visa? why aren't they being crucified or even being considered? i think the US is the only one that can give a US visa. Now why would they want to give a US visa to some girl who's accused one of their boys of rape and got him jailed? why aren't their motives being considered? isn't that the more worrying aspect? or is our venom only reserved for one of our own, the easiest target?

my intention is not to stop people from crucifyng her, but to at least get people to ask why this is their reaction. so when your last nail is pounded, then can we ask these questions?

And to the lady who labels Nicole a prostitute for being too weak to stand up against the US, I think that sends a dangerous message. First of all, she did stand up. And she was villified for it from many camps. it seems to say to our women and future rape victims, if you can't handle being a symbol of the country and stand up against the world's most powerful country, then you're just a little whore.

yes, people did support her. but people also used her for their own agenda and people also maligned her from day one. i don't blame her for wanting to take her destiny into her own hands.

time out

I'm detoxifying from the last few days. Just took a day for myself to wander around Cubao, checked out the books and other knick knacks. Scouted around for a bicycle.

Chelsea's ear got better, then it got worse. The doc says it's nothing to really worry about though.

Trying to think of a thesis proposal for the Lithis requirement. Got pissed off trying to log in to register online for next term.

Haven't really checked the forums and other blogs where I'm engaged in a lonely battle, but feel a little more vindicated after reading Conrado De Quiros's article on the topic. Some snippets.

"I don’t know that I can bring myself to judge Nicole too harshly. Of course I hear the cries of anger and dismay from a public that feels raw and shortchanged. Of course I hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth of the people who took up the cudgels for her, defending her as much in the court of public opinion as in the court of law, when the other side took care to depict her as a woman who did not need coercing to part with her virtue, or whatever else she had left to part with. Of course I hear the lamentations and vituperations of the women’s groups that refused to stop until they roused this country, its mind too numb to reel from yet another iniquity and wanting only to fall into the embrace of sleep, into wakefulness—like the prince in Ibong Adarna by rubbing calamansi on wound.

By why should Nicole choose the heroic path, or just the honorable one, when there is nothing in this country to support that choice? Everywhere there is corruption, rottenness, cheating, lying, stealing, murder, rape, looking out for oneself, dog versus dog, every man, or woman, for himself/herself, the devil take the hindmost. Of course there is the example set by people like Jun Lozada who have taken the honorable and heroic path amid the greatest adversity. But that example also says that there is a steep price to pay for it. That example shows that in this country the wicked are rewarded plentifully and the good are punished harshly. Why should Nicole, who has endured the burdens of the world, want to endure more?

Of course she had responsibilities, having become the symbol of purloined honor, or national debasement, but she has an example there too. No one has more responsibilities than the person currently occupying Malacañang, and shirking them—no, scuttling them—has not harmed her, it has benefited her. A society has a right to expect decent choices from its citizens only when it can enforce decency. A society has the right to expect moral choices from its citizens only when it can enforce morality. A society has the right to expect its citizens to routinely do the right thing only when it can routinely reward the right thing and punish the wrong one. That is not true here. The opposite is true here."

why i'm afraid

i'm supposed to be studying for my comprehensive exam this saturday but i've just been so bothered by the Nicole issue. there are two things that frighten me most. First is our tendency towards uncritical assumption and the vicious impulsiveness it triggers. Second is what the reactions to the situation are revealing about our culture's attitudes towards rape and women.

through media's limited vocabulary and sensationalizing tendencies, Nicole's affidavit was headlined as a "recantation" or a "reversal". Mr. Conde has shown that upon close reading (or perhaps just even a simple reading of the text), the affidavit actually never says the rape didn't happen. i've already talked about how worrying it is that people have simply taken the affidavit at face value without considering whether it was done under duress or as part of a political deal between Malacanang and the U.S. to effect Smith's release and consequently scurry the contentious VFA under the rug. this is a government famed for its duplicity in maintaining its self-interests and self-preservation. i know i may be accused of conspiracy theories here but i think better a conspiracy theorist who asks questions than a pavlovian dog who is so easily manipulated. Nicole has been cast as the villain. And only Nicole. The woman upon whom was thrust this burden of being the symbol of Phiippine sovereignty and of rape victims. Now, because of a lazy reading of the affidavit, we say, "Yeah, she deserved whatever she got."

It's mind-boggling to think how people are so quick to crucify Nicole for "giving up" or wanting to/accepting a chance to leave a country that believes that it's okay to rape women for whatever reason.

The reactions have been really frightening, driven by backwards notions of rape, fueled by a macho society for whom there is only one image of a "proper Filipina". A drunk woman deserves to be raped. A woman of loose morals deserves to be raped. I was reading in another forum a thread on "Nicole has damaged the image of the Filipina." What? How? With or without Nicole, it seems that many Filipinos already have such low regard for women.

“That whore deserved it.” By that logic can we assume that if a woman drinks a little and wears a mini-skirt, it is alright to rape her? Let’s go to a bar right now and wait for the women to get drunk. Then you can point out the women that deserve to be raped. Can we assume then that it is only through the graciousness of men that we escape the punishment of rape which otherwise would be justifiably meted out? It’s alright then for a man to rape any woman if she is not conducting herself “properly”? this may be simplistic but i tend to think that someone who thinks any woman deserves to be rape, probably has the potential to be a rapist. Or at least stand by nodding in approval. but it's not any more simplistic or barbaric as equating a mini-skirt and a drunk woman to a green light for rape. And because this seems to be the attitude of so many of us, it’s fucking scary.

Back to Nicole

Back to the Nicole issue. Two articles.

Deconstructing Nicole's Affidavit
By Carlos H. Conde

Nicole’s statement was not a “recantation” or a reversal of what she said during the trial. The media, of course, quickly concluded that, because this does not seem to fit with the earlier narrative, it must be a reversal.

But nowhere in the document did Nicole say that she was not raped. In fact, she even said, “I did not immediately tell my boyfriend that I was raped by Daniel Smith. All I said was that something bad happened to me.” She said she was too drunk and, as such, she “can’t help but entertain doubts on whether the sequence of events in Subic last November of 2005 really occurred the way the court found them to have happened.” She had doubts about the “sequence of events,” not on whether Smith had sex with or raped her.

She also said: “My conscience continues to bother me realizing that I may have in fact been so friendly and intimate with Daniel Smith at the Neptune Club that he was led to believe that I was amenable to having sex or that we simply just got carried away.”

These passages do not change the fact that 1) Smith had sex with her inside the van, 2) that she was too drunk to know, let alone control, what was happening and 3) that having sex with a very drunk person, as Katrina Legarda put it on ANC this afternoon, is never consensual. “Having sex with a drunk woman is rape. It’s like necrophilia,” Legarda said.

Indeed, Nicole’s narration of events based on her affidavit may even bolster her claim that she was too inebriated that night and Smith and his friends took advantage of her condition. Whether she found Smith attractive, whether they became touchy-feely with each other — this is all beside the point, which is that she was too drunk to know what was happening, too weak to control her faculties or rein in her impulses.

So what was the point of the affidavit?

Reading and rereading Nicole’s it, I am convinced that, more than anything else, it was meant to depict Smith in a benign light, that he was not the monster that this case has made him out to be. It also depicted US servicemen as a friendly bunch — “We treated them as family,” Nicole said, whose own family lived inside a military camp in Zamboanga where they interacted with US troops on a regular basis.

Without a doubt, the point of the affidavit was to influence the justices of the Court of Appeals. They could use the “recantation” angle to paint Nicole as a liar. But they will conclude from reading Nicole’s statement that Smith and company were not monsters, that they did not set out to the Neptune Club looking for prey, that they were just a rowdy group of middle-class American boys out to have some fun, that this was all a misunderstanding.

A misunderstanding that, because of Smith’s conviction, has dire implications for the United States. The United States will never yield control of its forces to the authority of other governments, judicial or otherwise. That would be anathema to their geo-political ambitions and interests. Thus, Washington will never allow a “mere understanding” between drunk and horny people to mess things up by setting a precedent that can threaten the way America deals with other countries.

The Court of Appeals will look at Nicole’s affidavit, as well as the fact that she is now in the US for good, as an affirmation of the notion that she is getting on with her life and that this had been a mistake, a bad night for Nicole and the servicemen, who are not monsters after all, according to Nicole herself. They will think that the cost of upholding a conviction — the cost to Smith and to the interests of the Philippines and the United States — is too high a price for both nations to pay for a night of wild partying that went awry.

Which is why the Court of Appeals will overturn Smith’s conviction, and the Supreme Court ruling ordering the Americans to remand Smith to Philippine custody will be rendered moot, and everything will be honky-dory.

Which is why the United States will keep doing what it is doing.
http://www.pinoypress.net/2009/03/18/deconstructing-nicoles-affidavit/

Nicole is Not the Enemy
By Inday Espina-Varona

It was, in the parlance of negotiators, a lose-lose situation. Nicole, the woman raped by American serviceman Daniel Smith, the woman whose face the Inquirer bared cruelly on its front pages today, knew what awaited her.

And she was right. The insults, the slurs, the indignation rained as heavy as they did when PR hacks hired for the defense of Smith (and the government he serves) tried to justify a crime by painting Nicole as a woman of loose morals.

That Nicole practically damns herself the same way now does not excuse the stone throwing.

A woman of loose morals can be raped. Indeed, a woman seen by society as one with loose morals is most vulnerable to rape. A society that fumes at a woman’s attempt to live by her own rules will turn its eyes away and close its ears when men decide to impose the most humiliating punishment they can on this singular, defiant woman.

There’s a line in the Green Mile. To paraphrase: people who think themselves enlightened can perpetrate the most horrific deeds. By commission they do this; likewise, by omission.

Like many friends, I, too, would like to see a lopsided, onerous treaty provided rescinded. A country may open its doors to troops of a military ally if it helps build up its own defense capabilities; what makes the VFA unjust are the provisions clearly skewed towards the bigger power. Until the VFA treats erring American troops like erring Filipino troops, it remains unacceptable. (One might point out that too many erring Filipino soldiers have walked away scot-free but we can’t have everything and just a slight evening out of the field is enough for me.)

But yearning for a noble goal – abolition of an onerous treaty – does not mean it is right for us to drag Nicole through the mud once more. There is no more self-serving, selfish comment than to wail we’ve been had because Nicole issued an affidavit virtually clearing Smith.

So she crumbled. So she groveled before might and the power of the American dream. So what? A close reading of the affidavit shows she doesn’t say the rape NEVER happened. She just spouts what the defense wants her to say.

Many raped women have crumbled in the face of much, much less – say, the tears of an apologetic husband or boyfriend, or the pleas of a family tired of braving the sneers and leers, or just the mounting bills of a legal battle; or maybe just the pleas of one man’s mother, and/or the promise of marriage to make an “honest” woman of her — with all the subtext of she-was-asking-for-it.

We in the media and people’s organizations know of tortured folk recanting on earlier testimony. It doesn’t make them allies of evil men; it simply means there were factors heavy enough to crush determination and courage.

Was it naïve of Nicole to expect aid from the Philippine government? Maybe. But many Filipinos do expect government or government officials to help them. Why are there long lines of supplicants at the gates of mayors and congressmen and governors?

Besides, it’s not just the government. People’s orgs and NGOs – even the media – are there to succor the afflicted. But our attention spans are also as short as the public’s. We are not evil; we just have other, “more important” things to attend to.

How many times have we in media done a round of mea culpa when discussing human rights? We admit we cannot always keep the lights shining on one particular case – and that often starts the slide to defeat. That does not make us in the media bad; we know the many reasons for this situation. If we can accept this, why cannot we accept the loneliness and bewilderment of the violated, their impatience and their hopelessness?

Likewise, I have been around these circles of aid-givers enough to know that there is some residual middle-class desire to expect people we help to be docile and grateful, when in truth the task of working for justice does not guarantee good manners and right conduct among those we seek to aid.

Oh yes, there are many do-gooders who can barely mask their pinched noses as they go about giving aid, and there are those whose faces turn red and mouths turn down when they are met with less than obsequious thanks in their tours of duty or because the people they help just can’t be bothered by the higher isms of the day. That’s not to denigrate aid givers as evil; just to make them out as truly human, the same way the people they serve, Nicole included, are just as human.

The truth is, Nicole has walked a long, long way in this ordeal; longer than most women who have suffered rape.

Just a little over a week ago, I had to double check some documents from the Bacolod police because they initially seemed exaggeratedly negative. Of 36 cases of acts of lasciviousness report last year, only six were filed with the fiscal. Of 943 cases of violence against women, only 13 were filed in court. Of 26 rape cases, only six were filed. In the case minors, the ratio was nine of 34 rape cases ending up in court.

Nicole, at least, braved cross-examination and the harsh glare of the media spotlight, including the baring of her real identity name.

She mustered the strength for this because many of us supported her – whether because rape alone was enough to stir us to outrage or because she was a vehicle to reach a higher goal.

And now she has crumbled. Why are we so irate? How many friends do we know who voluntarily joined this or that cause but dropped out after sometime? Do we sneer and call them traitors? Don’t we even share meals with those who now serve the government, no matter if the thought of this government makes us puke?

How many on Facebook were once firm believers in this or that cause? Nobody pressured us to join those causes, right? Did we face a mob when we decided to leave?

Well, Nicole never volunteered for the cause. She had to be raped to join it. She never asked to be poster girl for nationalists; she was made one by virtue of rape.

There are a million and one reasons for despair and hopelessness. A noble cause cannot always hold one above the waters. Nor will a lynching make our cause more right.

Nicole is not the enemy. Let’s not treat her like one.
http://www.pinoypress.net/2009/03/19/nicole-is-not-the-enemy/

Chelsea

Sarah warned me it would be dangerous to try and engage in some intelligent debate at the forums but I didn't listen. Now I have a hell of a headache. Which is funny, because really what I wanted to write about before this whole Nicole thing came out of the woodwork was my dog.

I took Chelsea to the vet yesterday and just as I came out of the gate, two kids passed by walking a little chihuahua (i guess there's really no such thing as a big chihuahua though). "Hey, it's Chelsea!" the little boy yelled out and they came over to the front of the house.

I love it that people in the neighborhood know Chels. When we used to live on a different street in the same village, a lady actually rang the doorbell to ask for Chelsea once. No kidding. One time Chelsoid wandered the village after someone left the gate open and was picked up by the patrolling guards. they brought her to the pound at the association and when we called to ask if they had seen a golden retriever, they asked, "Sobrang mabait ba sya?" Yah, that's our dog.

Anyway, the kids came over and the girl started telling me about how Chelsea apparently has a crush on her dog. And they introduced me to their three-month old chihuahua, Bolt. I really enjoyed that. Thanks guys.

Holy Fuck Reaction part 2

The immediate aftermath of Nicole's supposed recantation has been quite passionate and as expected, quick to villify her. I've seen forums where her real name has been revealed and pictures of her plastered with captions of "hypocrite, slut, prostitute", etc.

As I've mentioned before, what worries me most is this uncritical assumption of the recantation which I don't think can be taken at face value. One knee-jerk reaction I've heard is "sabi ko nga ba, Daniel Smith is so gwapo, he doesn't need to rape anyone." That also worries me. It's disturbing to see the emergence of latent prejudices against rape and women. A good looking guy can't be guilty of rape. A condom equates to consent. A drunk woman is asking for it. While the recantation (whether done voluntarily or under duress) has implications for rape victims and woman in general, so do our responses. and so far our responses are disturbing in what they are revealing about our culture's attitudes towards women.

I don't think we can just take the recantation at face value and paint Nicole as the villain without examining the conditions that have made this situation possible. these include (to my mind) a government which values political considerations over individual rights, a culture with such backward notions about rape and women, and a country where a U.S. visa can be used as a bargaining tool. and i think the immediate villification of Nicole based on a document that i think is dangerous to take at face value is misguided and probably displays our own ignorance of our complicity in letting these conditions persist.

taking things at face value meantime is also precisely what makes us so easily manipulated.

Holy Fuck reaction

While it will be easy to villify Nicole now, I still want to give her the benefit of the doubt. As having been a possible rape victim. I think it would be naive to take the recantation at face value and its uncritical assumption is dangerous, especially knowing how political manuevering in this country can so easily turn black into white, night into day. But as Barbs pointed out, the recantation now raises a question mark over future testimonies of rape victims which is disturbing. However, I think it has to be considered whether the recantation was done under duress, threats, out of resignation or voluntarily. I don't believe Nicole ever intended on being a poster child for rape victims or the rallying point for Philippine sovereignty and I think any judgment on her character would be hasty without closer scrutiny of the workings behind the recantation. I tend to think that Malcanang's hands are all over this. Secretary of Injustice Gonzales questions why Nicole just didn't go to Italy if she sincerely resented the U.S. I don't think the U.S. can issue a visa to Italy in return for Smith's release. If she was paid off, is she the only one whose motives we should doubt?

I think there are three possibilities. One, the rape happened and disillusioned with the possibility of real justice being meted out, Nicole took a deal (perhaps an expedited U.S. immigrant's visa) and recanted. Two, the rape didn't happen and Nicole is just one messed up girl. Or three, the rape happened but Nicole has been banished by Malacanang and the recantation is just the product of legal experts and spin doctors.

We're devolving into conspiracy theories here. I think I need to let this all sink in first. But it's sickening when the manipulation of justice and the trampling of a country's interests or a victim's rights are so blatantly played out. It becomes like a bad familiar play where the audience knows the lines and what will happen next... Everything can just be covered up with some carefully worded statements, ignored questions or by taking flight. But what does that say about us? Hopefully some of us are not too cynical or resigned to let it just blow over until the next performance and the next performance and the next...

Or perhaps I'm the naive one.

Holy Fuck.

This shit is getting too predictable. I guess you're free to go Mr. Smith.

‘Nicole’ recants
By Norman BordadoraPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst
MANILA, Philippines—The Filipino woman who accused an American Marine of raping her late in 2005 and testified about her ordeal in court has recanted.

The sworn statement issued by "Nicole" on March 12 comes more than two years after the Makati Regional Trial Court convicted Lance Corporal Daniel Smith of raping her.

Nicole said she expected her motives to be questioned but maintained she was bothered by her conscience

“I expect many sectors to question my motives in executing this statement more than three years after the incident. However…I can’t help but entertain doubts on whether the sequence of events in Subic last November of 2005 really occurred the way the court found them to have happened,” Nicole said in her affidavit.

“My conscience continues to bother me realizing that I may have in fact been so friendly and intimate with Daniel Smith at the Neptune Club that he was led to believe that I was amenable to having sex or that we simply just got carried away,” she said.

“I would rather risk public outrage than do nothing to help the court in ensuring that justice is served,” she added.

Nicole said she practically grew up interacting with American servicemen in Zamboanga City “who treated me and my family very well.”

She also questioned her decorum when she met Smith at the Neptune Club at the Subic Freeport, saying she was so drunk she may have lost her inhibitions and did more than just dance with the Marine.

Nicole also raised doubts that Smith raped her inside a van at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone and suggested that she may have welcomed the Marine’s sexual advances.

“I told the court that Daniel Smith kissed my lips and neck and held my breast inside the van. Recalling my testimony, I ask myself how I could have remembered this if witnesses told the court that I passed out and looked unconscious,” Nicole said.

“How could I have resisted his advances given this condition? Daniel Smith and I were alone on the third row of the van which had limited space and I do not recall anyone inside the van who held my hand or any part of my body,” she added.

Nicole said all she could remember was the “very loud music and shouting inside the van.”

“With the events at the Neptune Club in mind, I keep on asking myself, if Daniel Smith wanted to rape me why would he carry me out of the Neptune Club using the main entrance in full view of the security guard and the other customers?”

“Why would Daniel Smith and his companions bring me to the seawall of Alaba pier and casually leave this area that was well-lighted and with many people roaming around? If they believed that I was raped, would they have not dumped me instead in a dimly lit area…to avoid detection?”

Nicole said with the amount of alcohol she had consumed that night and only a slice of pizza to eat, she may have lost her inhibitions and enjoyed Smith’s company.

“I had no opportunity to deny in court that I kissed Daniel Smith but, with the amount of alcoholic mixed drinks I took, my low tolerance level for alcohol and with a slice of pizza all night, it dawned upon me that I may have possibly lost my inhibitions, became so intimate with Daniel Smith and did more that just [dance and talk] with him like everyone else on the dance floor,” Nicole said.

“Looking back, I would not have agreed to talk with Daniel Smith and dance with him no less that three times if I did not enjoy his company or was at least attracted to him since I met him for the very first time on the dance floor of Neptune Club,” she added.

SIGH

Some unprocessed reactions on a development in the Subic rape case. Apparently, "Nicole" has been granted a visa to the U.S. or has already been in the U.S. for a week. The news comes on the heels of Obama's personal phone call to GMA regarding the VFA. It's disturbing news on many levels. Because Barbs can't relate the news to food, I'm going to have a crack at this.

From a distance, I see the development as a reflection of so many ills plaguing Philippine society, stemming from a colonial history and tangled in current neo-colonial trappings. It also reflects the grim situation of the judicial process in the country as well as the unabated diasporic phenomenon in response to a hopeless homeland.

Here we have a U.S. soldier who forced himself on a young Filipina. Daniel Smith was convicted but continues to defy a Supreme Court order that would have him detained at a Philippine facility instead of the U.S. Embassy. Now "Nicole" has fired her lawyers and many suspect that the young woman was pressured into leaving for the U.S. Perhaps though it was her own decision. After all, how many Filipinos wait years for that prized visa? Perhaps it is part of a deal between the U.S. and Malacanang to broker Smith's eventual release. Maybe it's GMA's way of currying favor with Obama. Who knows. But it all smells fishy. And it's sad. And infuriating.

"Nicole and her family are tired of the case and they do not want anymore to be bothered by it because there is no justice in the Philippines," a statement from one of the dismissed counsel said.

Many people came to the aid of "Nicole" when news broke out that a Filipina had been raped by visiting U.S. servicemen and once again the controversial VFA came to the fore. For four years, people fought for justice and clamoured for Philippine sovereignty over the matter, is it too much to expect that one's government protect its own in one's own country and uphold its rights and interests? It seems however that political manueverings, disillusionment of the possibility of any substantial justice and perhaps the lure of greener pastures (even those of one's abusers) prevail...

There's still not too much information regarding the details of Nicole's disappearance - whether it was a voluntary or opportunistic flight or one of exile and banishment so that things can quiet down either for her family or for Malacanang. We'll have to wait and see. Smith may have been convicted and Nicole may understandably want to move on from that night but the rape of the country continues.

no title

I remember now where I found my Jean Genet. Was in a street in Baguio. God bless Baguio. Also recently found a biography of Georgia O'Keefe in Bangkal. Yay Bangkal.

lousy tear ducts...

I've gotten teary-eyed twice in the last few hours. First from watching Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel's performance of Defying Gravity during the 2004 Tony Awards and second, after reading an article about Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's revolutionary plan to protect its low wage earners from layoffs.

I knew I was going to have difficulty from the beginning when Glinda tells Elphaba, "Don't be afraid." And Elphaba replies with a voice trembling from newfound courage, "I'm not. It's the wizard who should be afraid... of me." It almost looks like Idina is about to cry herself. Damn. Then I really lost it when Elphaba flies above the stage, looking down at the throng who've misunderstood all her good intentions (hey wait a minute...) and maligned her... Damn. Damn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejGLmx7ZH0c

Meanwhile, on a more realistic plane... so the president and ceo of Beth Israel has come up with a new plan to save low wage earners from the fate of so many other workers today. Making rounds of the hospital, he noticed that it was the people bringing food to the patients and pushing their wheelchairs that were really in effect practicing a type of medicine that all the prescribed drugs couldn't achieve. They were talking to the patients and offering them some comfort and humanity. In a meeting with hospital staff, he broached the idea that in order to protect these people (mostly immigrants), those earning more would have to make some sacrifices. He had hardly finished his sentence when his audience, the hospital staff who would have to forego bonuses and take pay cuts, began applauding his idea. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/12/a_head_with_a_heart/

I don't know. I think I can keep my emotions fairly under control but I do get teary-eyed over random things. A friend likes telling the story about how I yawned pretty much through a sentimental weepy love movie but started crying during a computer-geek thriller when the main character confronts the evil IT mogul, declaring that "knowledge belongs to the world." I don't want to name the movies specifically. That would just further implicate me in my dorkhood.

save the artist, save the world 1

As Once The Winged Energy of Delight
As once the winged energy of delight
Carried you over childhood’s dark abysses
Now beyond your own life built the great
Arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
In passing through the harshest danger:
But only in a bright and purely granted
Achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
Relationship is not too hard for us:
The pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
And being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
Until they span the chasm between two
Contradictions... For the god wants to know himself in you.
Rilke

I first read this poem for one of Dr. Marge Evasco’s literature classes. It has remained one of my favourites and fortifies me somehow when I feel like submitting to the cold metal cogs that turn this world.

“For the god wants to know himself in you.” I love that line. If there is something that I believe we have in common with God or however you want to describe the “master of the universe”, it is that we are also creators. It is sad to see creative pursuits relegated to the dark and mouldy sidelines in favour of technology and money. John Steinbeck once said that he wrote to try to remind people of their humanity. I think that’s what artists do, and I think that’s why we have to treasure those people who try to open us to new ways of seeing, imagining and being. The people who watch and observe and for whom the truth is sacred. The people who try to remind us that life in this world is terrifying, absurd, ugly, beautiful. People whose work slaps us in the face and then comforts us. People who create worlds out of whispers and colours and lines.
I can’t believe that some divine power would create us just to work 9 to 5 and to make as much money as possible.

Kicking My Ass

My first blog post-creative-non-fiction requirement and all I can think of is how my dog knows whether something is edible or not. Damn.

Sadly, I've always known that I needed a kick in the ass to start writing. Otherwise, I'm liable to just let words and ideas float in my head and justify my apprehension of actual writing with the "I'm still processing" spiel. The blog-writing requirement was a nice gentle kick in the rump to get me started. To at least develop the habit of disciplined writing. Hopefully I can keep it going, or at least kick my own ass from now on.

The Conversion: A Murder Story

J. Neil Garcia’s poem The Conversion is the account of a murder. It speaks of the sad details of the killing of a little girl by a group of men who commit the deed in the name of love and the little boy who tried to protect her but lost. The perpetuators’ justification lay in the fact that the little girl lived inside the boy; an unnatural spirit/being of which the boy must be exorcised and saved.

Garcia begins the poem in a straightforward fashion, describing the circumstances in which the offense was executed. “It happened in a metal drum.” The economy of the first line is powerful in its restraint, painting only a picture of a functional cylinder of rusted metal and initially keeping the horrific function that the enclosure will host at bay.

Before detailing the act itself, Garcia, through the persona of the grown man recounting the story, tells us of the careful preparations (the premeditation) that the men in the family undertook, bestowing upon the crime the aura of occasion like a baptism or a confirmation. It is an event that must take precedence over banal affairs as washing clothes, dishes, or faces. These can wait. The salvation of a boy is at stake. “The water had been saved just for it, that day.” Like the stench emanating from the neglected pile of soiled laundry, “that day” will leave a permanent stain on the persona, even as he has purportedly been cleansed.

More than an occasion however, the incident also becomes a spectacle, exposed to the curious eyes of neighbours and onlookers. That the men do nothing to conceal the event and even enter the scene “booming”, hints that what they plan to do is also in their own interest – to showcase and prove their own masculinity in its violent but “righteous” imposition on a weaker party.

The persona as a boy though, while innocent, is not naive. He understands his father’s and uncles’ intentions and that contrary to the older males’ justifications, he is not to be the object of their rescue. Instead, he is to be their sacrifice. Hiding “in the deepest corner” of his dead mother’s cabinet, whose scents and softness offers him safety and refuge, the reader discerns the lonely and vulnerable condition of the child. He has no ally to protect him from an impending attack.

The boy is captured and dragged to the waiting metal drum where he is viciously dunked over and over again. “Girl or Boy” the Father shouts, a demand for a choice to be made but whose correct answer, the only acceptable answer has already been determined. The boy is defiant at first, speaking his self, even as water curls under his nose. But he knows that the brutal onslaught will not end until he conforms and with each submerging, the girl inside sinks “deeper in the churning void.” He must renounce his self, banish the girl and emerge from that drum, reborn as a full blooded male.

The boy does convert and he learns how a man must act and feel. “I got my wife pregnant,” the persona now boasts, telling not of love but of an achievement. “Our four children, all boys are the joy of my manhood, my proof.” They are his testimony of his heterosexuality. He also learns that “A woman needs some talking sense into,” just as his father and uncles “talked sense” into him with the help of a metal drum. Purportedly, his conversion is his redemption and now, everything he does with the force of his newfound masculinity is vindicated, just like his Father’s deed.

But Garcia’s poem is also a ghost story. The image of the drowned girl that he was then helpless to defend and save continues to haunt the man. “I should feel sorry but I drown myself in gin before I can.” Through another variety of liquid, the persona deadens himself – his denial of the girl within him making him as hollow as the now empty drum, a ghost of a man.

on and on to the break of dawn...

some are great and some are few
others lie while some tell the truth
some say poems and some do sing
others sing through their guitar strings

Francis Magalona died today, succumbing to leukemia after 44 youthful years. His death won't trigger world-wide tremors and while I have not shed a tear, I do feel the loss. It feels a little awkward to write this for some reason. Maybe because pop culture and entertainment seems far removed from the realm of ideas and other lofty notions. But I do think Francis M had a significant role in modern Philippine culture and arts.

Despite all his "yes-yes-yo-ing" to the break of dawn in his early career, Francis M was a proud Filipino musician who expressed his nationalism through his music, making it "hip" to be proud to be Pinoy. His album Yo! was actually the first album I ever bought and I remember memorising Mga Kabababayan Ko and playing it as a soundtrack to my daydreams of one day playing for the women's national basketball team.

While that was the only Francis M album I purchased, I heard how he matured through his future songs that were played on the radio, becoming more mellow and reflective but still loving Filipinos so intently and wanting Filipinos to love themselves as well, embracing differences in Kaleidescope World.

It's truly a loss to the entertainment industry. The loss of an artist who used his popularity to promote pride in one's self and culture particularly among the youth.

And Cold Summer Nights was a damn good song too. I don't care what anybody says.

Peace, Francis M. Thank you for the music.

sketch of a girl and her brother

This is one of my latest sketches. Latest in the sense that although it was done three months ago, I haven't yet completed another. It's one of my favorites. My first with two profiles. It's taken from a picture in a book of portraits by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. I think the girl is the older sister of the young boy. They are waiting at a train station with just a shawl to cover them both. The girl has a look of tiredness an resignation. Her lips are slightly scowling or poutin, but more of a natural effect of probably a long wait. Her eyes are even too tired to blink. The boy on the other hand has wide eyes and an innocent mouth. They are looking in different directions. The boy looks as if he wants to be somewhere else and can't understand why he can't be there.

The Team

I'm quite amazed at my nephews and nieces. They all have their own distinct personalities but are very much a cohesive unit. Benito is a character, charmingly naughty and fearless. His best friend is Javier, his little brother. They both always have the same haircut. Javier is more introspective though. Taken to quiet moods. His questions are surprisingly insightful. Tikya is the oldest. The Ate. She's very responsible, always in a good mood and reliable. Although she is only 10 years old, she helps cook their lunches and watches over the younger ones. Ching Ching is painfully shy. But the older children rally around her. "Don't be shy Ching Ching, that's your lola," Benito says in a singsong voice as we ride in the car. "She just doesn't know you yet," he adds. All six years old of him, brimming with wisdom and diplomacy. The youngest, Lucky, was born on 8//08/2008 at 8:08 am. Hence his nickname. He's quite a big baby with a full head of hair. He has old soul eyes and laughs easily.

On Aneurysms and Book Bins

Oscar Campomanes and E. San Juan Jr. are this close to giving me an aneurysm. While their focus on Filipinos writing in english concern me and their ideas will be indispensable to my own studies and process as I try to express and reconciliate my own predicament/privilege as a Filipino writing in english, I'm really having difficulty deciphering their meanings.

Thankfully though, I have some rewards waiting with my latest finds at the buy one take one bin at Chapters and Pages. For 200 bucks, I got The Handbook of Non-Violence by Robert Seeley which includes Aldous Huxley's An Encyclopedia of Pacifism, Ismail Kadare's The Concert, Picasso My Grandfather by Marina Picasso and uh... Pipe Dreams, A Surfer's Journey by Kelly Slater.

I like that Chapters and Pages at Market2. That's also where I got my art books of Alice Neel and David Hockney. But I think my best finds have been Andre Gide's The Immoralist and Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal somewhere in Cubao. I'm not sure if it was in the Booksale there, the thrift shops or the surplus shop where books are scattered among football helmets and old bowling balls.

I have a small library of different versions of classics. I found an old edition of the Hobbit when the Lord of the Rings trilogy films were introducing a younger, hipper generation to Tolkien with an anxious looking Elijah Wood or defiant, smoldering Viggo Mortensen on their covers. I remembered my brother then. How he loved those books growing up and how I texted him when I found more expensive versions without those movie covers. "KICK ASS! GIMME! GIMME! GIMME!" was his text back.

I don't know how many versions of 30peso Shakespeares, Thomas Hardys and Jane Austens I have weighing my shelves down. I just feel I have to rescue those books whenever I see them unceremoniously dumped together with pocketbook romances and action thrillers.

Admittedly, among my shelves also sit books that I have not gotten around to reading yet. I don't worry about it though. I'm a big believer in impulse buying when it comes to books. I think there's a reason why you're drawn to a particular book. I think actually, the book calls you. It knows something that you don't. Something that you don't even know you don't know. But one day, when you're ready, you'll open its pages.

Monday Morning on Taft

On Taft this morning. A straggler with saliva dripping from his mouth walked shakily down the middle of the avenue, oblivious to charging vehicles. On the back of a truck, two workers eyed him with amusement. At a red light, a jeepney slowed down next to him with two young ladies in the passenger seat. The straggler, about mid 40s and wearing an oversized torn short over wispy shorts, approached them. I could not hear what was said. The driver of the jeep leaned over, trying to scare the straggler away. But the man continued to shout, his lips exploding in saliva which would then stretch in long strands to his bare feet. The ladies giggled among themselves and tried to lean away from the man. When the light turned green and the vehicles moved on like a curtain revealing a stage, I saw on the sidewalk a heavyset man holding a holster striking another younger straggler who jumped to avoid the blow and ran down the street.

Can't Think of a Title

It's been about a month and a half since I entered the MFA program. I'm still a little dissatisfied with my writing but it is good to be back in an environment that cares about words. Slowly, I think I'm returning to the fold, getting my bearings again, although I still catch myself falling into template writing for an imagined audience instead of for myself sometimes.

For several years, I vacillated on pursuing an MFA. Although in the back of my mind, I knew that I would eventually follow this trail (wherever it may lead) I kept its reality at a distance and instead explored different routes. I think I was afraid. It seemed dangerous to pursue it at the first instance. What if I learned that I had no business trying to string together words or that I had nothing original or interesting to say? Where would I go from there?

Instead, I stayed in the realm of safe writing where I could still be among words. But dead words that couldn't talk back and were cold to the touch. Like components of a machine. No wonder I balked at calling myself a writer. I think I was more of mechanic; a technician who knew where each part belonged.

But I think that a writer's task is more like a lion tamer's. It requires mastery, courage and a healthy dose of insanity because you know that you are dealing with living things infinitely more powerful than yourself, things that can eat you alive. If you succeed in directing its movements, it's not because you've imposed your will on it but more through a rare moment of harmony. I imagine that lion tamers and real writers both end their feats incredulous that they've escaped with their lives.

I'm still a little afraid, but at least I'm in the lion's den.