November 2000

Review of Related Literature. In the tradition of the “Review of Related Literature” in a thesis, I would like to do one (or maybe two) paragraph summaries of the non-school, purely-for-leisure books that I’ve been reading for the past two months. Most of these books have been borrowed from the library or provided for by my friends. Most of these are books my limited pocket couldn't afford.
The Tao of Philosophy by Allan Watts. As one would easily surmise, here is another Westener doing the Wisdom of the East routine. I have not read or heard of everything, but Allan Watts tells me nothing I have not heard of before (e.g., the human preoccupation with the “I” or ego, the Anthropomorphic nature of God, the inadequacy of language, or Nature’s domination in the course of all events.) I am more than thankful, however, that he reminded me of these things in a pleasant fashion. Sometimes I think so much of the future, or of what I’ll be doing next, to the point that I forget what I am doing. He reminded me and mde ask, how could I forget to live the now?
The language of Watts could be read quite effortlessly. With a Zen-inspired form, the effect becomes a soothing and yet mindful one.
There are a lot of clever ideas. Watts sees Epistemology as an effort to think thought, and therefore it is an effort to bite one’s own teeth. Also, he puts Nature in a beautiful oxymoron in saying that: “Nature is ordered anarchy.”
This book is a new acquisition from the library. I believe I was the first one who read the copy. It felt like de-virginizing someone. I read the first half of it before going to a party. The next day I read the second half in the wee hours of the morning, while listening to the Chill Out Project, with the lamp on and drinking green fucking tea.
Queer by William S. Burroughs. This actually qualifies not only as a beat-group book, but also as purely gay literature. It’s good to read gay literature when even M. accuses me of being homophobic sometimes. The story-line is simple: an American who is a withdrawing addict with really short-circuited sex drives lives in Mexico, exploring bars to scout for gays and splurges his money. Later on, he takes off to the South Americas with his pseudo-boyfriend to the South Americas in search of a mental telepathy-inducing drug called Yage.
Burroughs’ language is nothing but fantastic: very beat-group, very fifties, very very witty, with occasional Mexican and American cuss words. It's humorous, but always comes with a glint of loss and sadness. The events that transpire ride on the typical American-in-Mexico-during-the-forties stereotype, events of which are completely degrading to a country like Mexico. But perhaps it does happen.
I think like William Burroughs better than Jack Kerouac, and I’m putting another Burroughs, “Naked Lunch,” as a priority in my reading list. This time, I’ll buy myself the book. I read “Queer” in the room upstairs while listening to Café del Mar, Craig David, Moby, Joe, the Starubucks New York Jazz album, etc. (all pirated copies obtained from UM) with the newly-bought winner lamp on. I remember it was a Friday night so I made with reading more conducive by drinking around five beers and crunching some nagaraya nuts. I felt so fucking happy I even danced a little.
Listen up! Spoken Word Poetry. Spoken Word Poetry is an advancing form of poetry popular among poetry reading sessions in clubs and bars. The book features this, and it is not a coincidence that most of the authors are non-Caucasian and therefore marginalized. The language that runs in this poetry has its unique musicality that matches the colors and cultures of the authors. Some of the rhyme schemes would do for hip-hop. The content are as expected, the revolt of the black people against white oppression which sometimes sounds redundant. But perhaps it should never sound redundant until people start to really digest the point. I like it best though, if they write about Coltrane and Davis and it starts “raining rhythm.”
The author I like best in the book happens to be an Asian-American named Ava Chin. Her sensibility as her writer is close to me because it sounds Filipino. Her sad ironies deliver, and it usually is a reflection real-life event. I like her language --- rich but not too heavy, sarcastic, and very delicious. We kiss, we part, finger wide,/faculties open, folding our papers/our precious books like lost dreams and intangible mantras/scluicing the last of the coffee across our teeth/counting the streetlight to the station/praying to the subway gods at 2nd Avenue./Angry when they do not come.
The Postcard by Jacques Derrida. Nothing could be more clever than the idea of writing people in postcards with a thirteenth century portrait of Plato behind a Socrates who is writing. I only read the first hundred pages or so of this book, and it is supposed to be about postcards violating philosophy’s desire to communicate eternal truths independent of time and space. This is what is supposed to be represented or reversed, whichever, by the thirteenth century portrait. One would see this in the book, but even more, the book is also a love story exchanged in postcards. Derrida could be such a romantic, “I recognize that I love you by this --- that you leave in me a wound I do not want to replace.”
Flying Over Kansas by Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas A book lent to me, (and eventually given) to me by A___ when he had our first real conversation at the Gokongwei smoking area. The language of the book fits well with the mold of New Criticism, a theory that seems to run with the bloodline of the Tiempo-Torrevillas gene pool. The language employed is so rich and delicious which makes reading so pleasant an experience. It's like swimming an entire Pacific of beautiful words and ideas without drowning.
Even Torrevilla’s fourteen year old daughter gets a grasp of this language. Rowena asked Rima on what color she might want to paint her room, so as to stamp more of herself on the room. Rima replies, “the blue was perfect; at night the floors and walls seemed to blend together so that she was floating on sleep itself.” One could only wonder how it is when Rima’s own words would unfurl themselves into full blossom at her own time.
Aside from personal essays in the book, it also has critical essays and lectures Torrevillas delivered that could be very helpful in reading literature, criticism, and seeing what probably is absent, but is actually present all along.
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. In the course of my reading this book, and I am still reading it, I have read nine or ten books already. This book, it seems to me, is a happy experience I do not want to end.


Some recent movies:
100 girls. (Watched with D.N. after going to the gym on a Monday.) Basic plot: goody-goody type college dude is stuck in the elevator of a girl’s dorm. He’s stuck in there with a girl whose face he doesn’t see. The girl and the guy bangs in the elevator. For the rest of the movie, the guy embarks on a quest to find this “mystery girl/cosmetic beauty,” whom he lost his virginity to. He musters up all his “cerebral energy” and devises ways to find the girl: but his ways simply equate to doing all that is conceivably stupid. Conceivably stupid = pretending to be a maintenance man, putting up an ad, looking up the match for the panties the girl left, dressing up as girl, and going to Women’s studies class. In the process, he meets around 100 girls, and gets to play hero or catalyst for some of them. Of course, he finds the girl, eventually.
You can't really expect much from the script. While the script and the screenplay does level up to the rather low wavelength expected in such movies, it had nothing new, nothing fascinating and nothing clever to say at all. Although not absolutely “nothing,” perhaps. Moreover, it had grossly objectified women: mothers, women’s studies teachers, women and their vanity, women in their self-pity, women beaten up by their boyfriends. There good of it, however, is a detailed exposition of sexuality what could be sexual stereotypes with most of them as cliches: e.g., the room mate, who is too preoccupied with size of his penis.
The main character makes these long-monologues, which are terrifically annoying. The director has flashback effects that are equally annoying. The movie was not funny, although it made me laugh for around three times in two hours. The educational sex scene was the only good scene.

Road Trip. (Seen with cousin and older brother at Glorietta 4.) This is one of the films where
I got a genuine laugh trip. I genuinely laughed until my jaws fell. I would include this in my top 10 best comedy category (the #1 of which is the legendary Tito, Vic, and Joey’s “Ma’am, May I Go Out?”). The humor, however, is often more funny when the punchline hits the peculiar sexual conduct of the characters. It is a film about college students and young people, like what is should perceived and what will likely to transpire after "American Pie." The good of the film is that it does not contain those intolerably mushy lines, and the look-at-me-look-at-me, fashion conscious, I-I-I vanity and apathetic attitude of the youth.
The film delivers a line that should perhaps define college life: it is the window of opportunity for us to do the craziest things, i.e., scoring for sex, and everyday, the opportunities are getting smaller. This gives me more reason to delay graduation.

Late Saturday afternoon. Listening to the usual playlist and some 98.7, I muse on my thesis and get to accomplish my thesis structure. I pass the decisive motion to the honorable judge, I am not going out tonight. I, the plaintiff, am awarded the 500 bucks I am going to save for not going out. Soon enough, I’ll be able to buy the hardcover Nietzsche volume at A Different Bookstore. Besides, I still have a party hangover from a friend's sister's party. Tonight, I am going to cook myself spaghetti, and I'll buy fried chicken or pork barbecue. Before that, I’m going to beat the meat, with the kind assistance of adult films starring the pearls of the Orient. I am also looking forward to the HBO Saturday night movie. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of sleep, pancakes, and some cyber___. What is even more pathetic are their strange-sounding names: e.g., diwata (who claims to be a geologist taking her Ph.D) and Smermaid (who likes bondage.)

Confessions getting truer and truer by the minute.

College is indeed, the window of opportunity to do both the craziest and the most intelligent things. And I believe I have accomplished the latter as much as I did the former, the way the Appollinian balances the Dionysian.
I went to the Sophia/Lit Circle party. Most of the philosophy professors were there, and I got the chance to toast beer and tequila with them once again. It's flavored with conversations on the chaos theory, Nietzsche, Feminism, garnished with genuinely good laughs, cigarettes and genuinely intelligent notions raised. In the end most people confessed to being perverts. Some people objected to being perverts. Some of them confessed to being lesbian or bisexual. Professors get to dance with students --- yes, I’ve seen them in action. Jim Morrison and Santana hung their music in the spirited air.
The booze was overflowing and I reveled in drunken euphoria. The most important realization of the night is that these parties give me more excuses to remain in College, where all’s swell and so well (except for Stat101).