Selfishness to Selflessness

Regaining Weight

I’ve been regaining weight and I’m regaining a sense of who I was when I was obese. Strangely enough, it’s easier to be confident when your mind and heart is clogged with butter from bagels. The saturated fat does the talking for you.

On other parts of my life, I feel the lightness of being, the longing for repetition.

Worries, Errands, Bills, and other forms of Whining

I forgive who I once was, the emotionally immature who documented my useless ranting. I ask forgiveness from my wife, who years before (and maybe occasionally), had to endure all that I was.

From Selfishness to Selflessness

If I ended now, I would have been a good story to tell. I know. I know because I long to repeat every moment of my life.

Family is a blissful selflessness.

The Highest Highs

I.'s laughter. Mouth opening and eyes chinked in a smile. I. falling asleep on my shoulders. The nasal high of sniffing his scalp. Hearing him say the first few words of his life: mama, dada, banana, fish (he must’ve have read JD Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish in a previous life). Having family. Having my own family. Having I. Having D.

Having these highs and wanting almost nothing more.

(Pictures by D.)

2012

Let's not hurry and let's not worry about end of the world. Trust in the beautiful process of the universe. We will persist. We will perish. It will be sorrowful. It will be joyful. It never really ends.

Love all around in 2012.

Hemingways

In those days there was no money to buy books. I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 rue de l'Odeon. On a cold windwept street, this was a warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window, and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living.
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, p.35

Whether it was chaos, repetition, or a pre-destined natural order I am thankful that the world brought me to a moment when a mint-condition copy of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast fell on my hands. I am thankful for having bought it in a glorious bargain from a second-hand bookstore, and how it brought me back to an even more glorious time.

Around the time he was writing The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald cruised in a Rolls Royce with his Zelda and hung out in Paris cafes getting black-out-drunk with “expatriate luminaries” like Hemingway. Gertrude Stein invites people over for tea at her 27 rue de Fleurus apartment. James Joyce, Ezra Pound can be spotted at Shakespeare and Co., the bookstore of Sylvia Beach.

Hemingway wrote his work in the nearby Closerie des Lilas, ordering café au lait or café crème or beer or wine. He wrote this posthumously published book in Cuba, and he still had Paris in him. I will not be foolish to even attempt to say anything scholarly about this book, so I account for how I take it with me when I can barely remember. I thought autobiographical books like these give you the right to judge the author’s character and reinforces your own. He revealed his complexities, compassion, weaknesses, brilliance and gentlemanliness without self-praise, pretension or the malady of blogs and biographies nowadays – sissiness and whining.

There's a recent Woody Allen called "Midnight in Paris" that took several references from this book. Salvador Dali was also in appearance. We never became expatriate luminaries (maybe except for H.) but a few High/Grade School friends urged me to see that Woody Allen film. I am glad we stay in touch in one way or another. And thanks to the advanced methods of piracy, I've seen the movie a few months before, probably even before it was released in other countries I told my friends: "All-star cast:Hemingway, TS Eliot, Fitzgerald et al. Most of who you read in high school to find out how to get girls. Paris in the 20s is our Manila in the late 90s. A moveable feast."

A Musical Plurality

I am going to generalize and say that nobody ever understood what the hell "indie" meant.

How many times have we repeated that the internet created this new space? I have to stop asking and enjoy the plurality by plucking out the music deliberately from this big, beautiful field of budding flowers.

In the advent of sharing links for downloading torrents, CDs may have been obsolete, too. So rarely do we burn them. There are always new ways of consuming media.

In the year 2011, I am three decades old but I listened to, for example, 20-somethings from France who called their group “Teenagers.” The music is sardonic, not always witty, but mostly libidinal and funny in a sex-typed humor. I’d like to think it’s an algorithmic result of my tastes that I ended up listening to the Bombay Bicycle Club or the Perishers – which did sound like music for organic soy, high Omega-3 tofu-eating crowd or College folk who look at the rain or autumn leaves on their windows while studying in some Boston campus.

I hear some of the latest pop from our maid and try to produce a balance it out by coercing her to listen to classical music whenever she’s nannying little I.

In this plurality, there are always the things I like. My late-nineties alternative/grunge nostalgia just won’t give in to amnesia. It all boils down to the final 30GB you saved on your iPod.

I remember a tweet from a November evening while listening to Jazz with my 17-month old son. It’s old, but it never sounds like a broken record. The tweet goes: Coltrane & Davis sounds better in warm white light, in a late November evening breeze where I can’t tell what’s random from what’s precise.

If I were 19 and read Italo Calvino's The Baron in the Trees

I have been more ambitious in dreaming about other topics which crossed my mind before. I thought of doing something on the demarcation between Philosophy and Literature, which will of course be post-structuralist, post-colonial, post-modernist and even deconstructive in discussion. When does a “text” become Philosophy, and when does it become Literature? This demarcation, this dividing of the line, will of course give birth to a web of implications and complications such as the politics of speech over writing. I planned to apply it on a certain text, something existential by Camus or Sartre, or even Nietzsche. I’m looking at Nausea, The Stranger or Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Well, I’ve decided to abandon this idea because I couldn’t handle it, of course. I am not too proud of my little intellect.

Yours truly, July 2000

What blabber! Now that I take myself less seriously, I laugh.

I was 19 when I wrote that bit. Whether what I wrote was stupid or brilliant, I could hardly tell and quite frankly, should hardly care. Perhaps it's a relief that nowadays my list of worries no longer include the demarcation between Philosophy and Literature. If I entered into a conversation about it now, I'll have very little to contribute. But relievingly, I would feel more eloquent about my silence.

If I were still 19, I would have read books differently that how I would now. Nowadays, I take a more recreational approach. I'm happy enough to figure out what it makes me think, not even what it is trying to say - I enjoy reading without falling into the trap of false profundity. But I don't think I miss out on the key points - if I do, I can be redeemed by Google or Wikipedia. Other than the knowledge in web-based sources, I am also only a thesis shy of a Master's Degree in Philosophy - from an overpriced University.

If I were still 19, I would would go an exposition about the book I've recently read - Italo Calvino's "The Baron in the Trees." I'd go on saying - this work is described as Philosophical Fiction, the kind that both tells a story and outlines a philosophical treatise. The Utopian Concepts that run on the philosophy side surface easily enough. The story makes itself believable with historical conjunctions to milestones such as the French Revolution, ornamented with a level of detail devoted to the botany of trees. The real and the imaginative exists in this gentle juxtaposition which makes for the simple and therefore masterful storytelling.

At Thirty, I am a loving husband, and devoted father to a charming 1-year old. I picked up the book not as assignment, or something I want my friends to see me reading, but because I saw it like a glittering gem among the bargains in BookSale. I go to coffee shops, not with the intention of reading, but to keep myself from getting sleepy while driving. When I get home, I read while my little I. sleeps, until I myself fall asleep. Somewhere between the time we sleep, I tell him about the book I was reading. This 12-year old boy climbed a tree and never descended. Up in the trees, he fell in love, became a baron, wrote, and shaped societies. I couldn't stop reading it, like I didn't believe that this idea of Utopia in the trees would have been impossible.

Society is a Wall

“There are enough social commentators with low-level brain power now. Why should I add my high-level snarl?”
- from "The Big Pot Game", in Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski.

Because these are tales of the ordinary, Bukowski only makes it seem easy. Not all storytellers succeed in putting a high entertainment value along with philosophical depth via a distinctive literary style in the triumph of drunks, exhausted workers, slackers, race-horse gamblers, rapists, robbers or so-called "degenrates." There is an effortless, out-of-this-world and unsociable genius this makes this collection distinguish itself. They say it's called "transgressive fiction." It's a compelling fiction that sees society as a wall that we need to leap over. This is how green the grass is on the other side.

He sometimes spoke in the tone of a spiritual incarnate of Carlos Castaneda (Don Juan: A Yaqui Way to Knowledge) and Robert Prisig (Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). I've only read two of his works (The first being Post Office), but my personal take is that while Bukowski's work is not Beat Literature, it beats the hell out of the Beat Literature of Kerouac and Burroughs. And I say that because it has a lot less of a pretentious appeal.

Bukowski had that knowing, that maturity, that freedom in his willingness to be unembarrassed. His is a drunkenness that deserved following. Like his characers,I'd like to see him finally get the Nobel Prize.

The truth that the text reveals is that he got drunk and saw through drunkenness. This is an enlightenment that cannot be blurred by the bevy. What’s between the lines is a counter-punch to alcohol. Each time he gets knocked out, the writing is a beautiful bounce back. The insights remain sharp and relevant up until now.

All the other drunk or high writers never wrote like him because they barely saw through the drunkenness. If anyone else wrote this, it may have just come out as annoying.


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At some point in life drinking has brought me to many low points. My confidence builds, and it oversizes inevitably to arrogance, and it leads me to the eventual regret.

I look at my face and the lines have gone deep. There are wrinkles in my eyebrows and my hair has begun the protracted process of thinning out. While I am growing the ambitious goals of lessening my drinking, I’ve also grown the natural humility after these thirty years, and drinking since my teens. I still drink as though I have not picked up anything after these years, six bottles on an empty stomach, or mixing dark/clear liquor, outpacing myself. And all that arrogant talk.

So maybe I’ll get drink alone, and in secret. Alone do we battle the devils that are bottled up inside us. Alone should we drink.

So from now on.

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And it was true. The workers were hardly human. Their eyes were glazed, stricken, insane. They laughed at anything and mocked each other continually. Their insides were stamped out. They had been murdered.
p.88, The Stupid Christs

We are putting a lot of priests’ robes on some of these revolutionaries and some of them are very sick fellows bothered with acne, deserted from by their wives…
p.131, A Quiet Conversation Piece

’Hell I worked hard all my life!’ (they think this is virtue, but it only proves a man is a damned fool.)
p. 223, The Big Pot Game

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My "best" picks:


Animal Crackers in my Soup
My Stay in the Poet’s Cottage
Would you Suggest Writing as a Career?
The Great Zen Wedding
Rape! Rape!
A Quiet Conversation Piece
The Big Pot Game
Purple As an Iris
A .45 to Pay the Rent

The Good and The Greed

A few months ago in this not-so-quaint global village, the remains of oil-rich Libya’s four-decade ruler is displayed in a grocery’s onion and vegetable compartment. Before his end, he begged mercy for his life, and he was killed with his son (one among many of his family who got killed by NATO airstrikes). Weeks ago, he commanded his loyalists to fight to the death. He was an eccentric fashion icon, and more importantly he overthrew a monarchy in his younger days as a revolutionary.

The wind has blown us to a season of Arab Springs. In the West, there is a new ideological space being created in the Occupy Movements. That space will be there, even if the Corporations try to crush them or respond by censoring social media or the internet.

Our own country, hungry for a share of righteousness, stops our 9-year President and incumbent Congresswoman from leaving the country to face charges of plunder, electoral fraud, extrajudicial killings, among others. She was in a wheelchair, face covered in a surgical mask, her neck & back supported by an iron brace, looking stripped of leftover dignity. She didn’t get to leave in the many flights she booked that day. After bouts of TROs and Warrants, the drama leads to a Hospital Arrest and a new national soap opera begins in the history of a forgetful country. Her mug shots should be in the front pages of dailies as of this writing. She was the same president who succeeded a preceding president who got pardoned on a plunder case.

Tired, middle-class workers like me will open these pages in Starbucks branches that’s peppered all over the city. Every cup of coffee earns a sticker. They are collecting these stickers, spending their hard-earned two grand on coffee to get a journal that’s supposed to represent their prestige. This is under the guise, of course, of making a charitable donation through a very small portion of the earnings. The earnings should have belonged to those who worked for it in the first place: the third-world farmers who grew the beans, the supply-chain laborers who transported it, and the contractual servers who took the orders and put them in red cups.

If you go to the counter clutching a book, the barista will ask you about the book you’re reading. So much goodness turns into so much greed in this little global village. I show the Barista my book. He mispronounces Bukowski. And then upsells for pastry. Somewhere in the world, a low-level manager tasks his team to gather observations and feedback. He draws some charts, writes his analysis and recommendations. Behind that feigned interest in my book was a module, a script that’s supposed to make me feel engaged as a consumer. It’s supposed to make me feel good and return to this store, or any other branch. There’s another manager who oversees this practice as a standard is set to all stores. That is even taken to another level, because satisfaction is not only measured by desire to return to the store, but to have me recommend and promote the store to my friends. Superficial Corporate politeness will eat out what’s left of genuine human interest and sincerity.

There’s good, and there’s greed. I imagine, looking out to the bay, drinking imported Arabica coffee thinking about the world and its leaders and its springs and movements. How peaceful the water can look, as excrement underneath it mixes in and invisibly seeps.

Running Against

300 or so runners. That's the number of runners who, back in 2008, gave a flying fuck about the Nike 10k Human Race. It was my first, and so far worst 10k at 1:08 in an official race. It's the one that sculpted my backbone, the one that reinforced my metaphorical outlook of running. In the 2008 run, registration was free.

8,000. That's the limit of registered runners allowed to join the 2011 Nike We Run Manila.

Registration fees are up to PHP1,300 per participant. I arrived almost an hour early, but this orange dri-fit tee-clad crowd was so thick I only got to cross the starting line 3 minutes after the gun start. This choking-hot afternoon race was not the race to earn your best 10k PR. But yes, with the running bug gone viral in the city a lot of people are a lot faster.

Nike is one of the corporations we love to hate. The swoosh is part of one of the logos in that 1% Occupy Wall Street is struggling against. Nike must make gazillions selling cheaply manufactured shoes at expensive price tags and exploit laborers in the process. Needless to say, they invest heavily in branding, advertising and marketing and I must be an idiot for buying the idea and slipping comfortably in invented fictions such as "Hit the road, not the wall" or terminologies such as "Dynamic Support" or "Lunar Glide." I even felt like it was designed for me.



It's immature to admit I don't like it. The 1% is positioned towards increasing their profits, influence and marketing capabilities. Nike also sold ideas and ideologies that they put on their shoes and shirts. They were good and we bought them. We enrich the 1% and keep ourselves to the 99% And yes, that is something I should run against. At the same time, I won't fool myself and say that I'll protest on buying a good product.

Besides, I've got ideas of my own that were born of out my running. To run along is what's important.

Thinking of my own immaturity, I've hit a lot of walls and no longer think of what I am running away from, but what I am running for. And never to forget what I am running against.

I still wear them, but I also struggle to keep my Nike shoes and shirts off. As one of their ads say, Running is always a beginning.

LiveStrong Run (10k) 2011

Imagine a World Without Cancer.

The weather was inclement the night before, and the 4am assembly time was too ridiculously early. A diligent-enough runner would have to wake up at least 2am to get ready, eat a little, stretch, drive to the race venue across town. All the hopes made the weather clear and I arrived a few minutes before assembly time. A couple of runners clad in the same yellow singlet were sitting by the gutters. This was the Fort at 4am. Around the corner, a group of young, mestizo teenagers were still huddled around a set of car loudspeakers thumping dance music. The race organizers, on the other hand, had just begun setting up their starting arch and lining up their orange cones.

By assembly time, they moved everyone to the other side of arch, the announcer pleading clumsily, "We run to that direction." It was already past the supposed gun start. There was no fancy ceremonial launch, except for everybody chanting something like "1, 2, 3... go" with the guy who held the microphone.

Despite the catchy campaign materials and the profound relevance of its cause - this was the smallest, most barely-organized race I've ever ran. It's also been a while since I've ran the Fort-McKinley route and I've always found the uphill roads a little cumbersome. Not to the merit of our race organizers, parts of the running path (particularly around the cemetery) were literally pitch-black and zero-visibility at past 4am. Maybe it actually helped quicken my pace. If I didn't run fast enough to follow the guy ahead of me I would have been led off-track. The roads weren't entirely closed, so there were also vehicles along the route that increased the perils in this run.

But it's not like I'm not used to that, because I've ran alone in similar avenues or highways. Hydration was also bad, sure, but I know that all I really need was at least 1 quick and decent gulp for a 10k. And ulitmately: more than half of the registration fee was paid for my wife's company, and she paid for the rest. That's on top of all the encouragement and inspiration she gives to my running. I was really after the slick-looking singlet that said Imagine the World Without Cancer. I was running for that idea.

I remember what I was running for, and in organized racers - what others were running for. People had this stuck at the back of those slick-looking singlets:







However bad the route was or how poor hydration and runner-safety is, I managed its longest distance 10k category in a good-enough 55 minutes. They seemed to hand me all that I needed at that time: a banana, a bottle of water. This button was a welcome bonus.


The morning was beautiful and the strangely good cosmic vibes reverberated. Imagine a world without cancer.

What I ran for was an idea. The remembrance of seeing all those names in the stickers at the backs of runners I chased or passed. However this race was organized, these runners I finished with all look seriously proud.

What I Ran For at the Rizal Run

Sesquicentennial what?

I prepared an all-OPM play list that lets me begin in a controlled pace: Up Dharma Down and Taken by Cars. Then the play list lines up local rock superlatives like Franco and Wolfgang to blast through my brains during a run that honors the 150th of National Hero Jose Rizal. Dragging songs to the new play list, my blood pumped and endorphins started to ooze with the distortion and guitar riffs. It will be a perfectly flat race route, and the starting line is walking-distance from my house so I will enjoy a home-court advantage in Roxas Boulevard. I've had several servings of spectacular sunsets here, many of them while running along baywalk.

The 16k distance is a step below from the 21k races I’ve previously joined, but its good preparation for my next shot at my sub-2 hour 21k goal this November. While I’m not in serious training, I’m in a good enough condition to finish 16k in 1.5 hours. I just had every reason to run my first organized of the year.

There’s been a great deal of grinding pressure at work with a launch of a new account and client visits so I could use some pavement-pounding to run these worries away to oblivion, at least for a while. And before the run begins, the yearning is just as thrilling.

It also develops before going into full blast, like how molecules begin to boil in a kettle. That’s how excitement built up in the 16k coral in front of the landmark Rizal Monument. On the way to the starting line, you hear the snare drums from a University Cheering squad. Before gun time, the National Anthem is sang, the National Historical Commissioner speaks, and everybody goes for a last- minute muscle stretch. This is a relatively-simpler organized run, as there weren’t any fireworks or fancy laser-light shows at the starting line, but it had enough good fuel to rev up the runners.

I run alone, but sometimes you get sentimental about sharing this happiness. It’s similar to how you wish someone else read a good book you’ve read. I thought of my brother who works overseas, in Bahrain. He also runs, and I would have loved to run this race with him.

Pink and blue 5.30 am skies, the proximity of the sea, boulevards that are closed for your convenience, and an equally excited crowd reminded me of why runners give up Saturday night-outs to wake up for a Sunday morning run. Having run mostly on afternoons, I almost forgot how good the early-mornings feel.


I executed a conservative game plan. I didn’t push or try to pass other runners, but made sure I ran between a 5’30 to 5’45 per km pace. With that, I finished within a minute of my 1:30 goal. Towards the end, I felt like I had so much strength left. . I was sprinting towards the finish line and I was probably running a 4’00/km pace towards that stretch. I should’ve ran more with what they call “pure guts” and worked harder. I realized, this time I was enjoying myself more than working hard on a race.

At the finish line, an usher in Filipiniana costume puts a medal around my neck.

I never bother to line up for those loot bags. I walked towards the Rizal Monument and did my post-run stretch. It's a symbolic bow, this stretch. And this one, for Rizal, in front of guarded monument. We've read your work, put your face in coins and t-shirts, and now we've ran for you. Happy Birthday!

After the stretch, I went home immediately.

I’ll be in time for breakfast with my wife and kid. I’ll get some chocolate milk at a convenience score. I read from somewhere that it’s an awesome drink to mend these muscles. Man, I’m still high and giddy. It’s still a long road ahead and I plan on enjoying myself.

Goings On About Town

Manila may have one of the world's worst sewerage systems, shanties that sprout like mushrooms, potholes on main roads and you'd normally get mugged or robbed here, but it's never bereft of culture and art that courts controversy. It's not exactly squeaky-clean like Singapore, but despite the corruption in government there's a freedom of expression that Death itself couldn't gag. Not a lot of people supress their opinions.

As a bonus, cigarettes and alcohol aren't as badly taxed relative to other Asian countries. Books aren't taxed at all. It's not New York, of course, but ultimately this is just where my soul thrives. This is where I was born and where I was raised. Represent!

I was registering for a 16k run commemorating our National Hero and right by the counter there are a few flyers on what's happening culture-wise. There was an Independent Film Festival (Cinemalaya) a few weeks back, an International Silent Film Festival, a Jazz Festival at the Cultural Center, the controversial "Kulo" Art Exhibit, a Beethoven Piano Sonata Concert, to name a few.

The town may be shabby, but you will not have a "culture point" deficiency. And it isn't just the museums, heritage sites, world-class musicians and artists, bootleg DVDs of "art house" films or our inclinations to poetry and literature. There's always something going on in this town. Out here everyone's (or everyone pretends to be) a writer, photographer or foodie. And even this third-world city has its hipsters. Even our Senators call a special hearing about an art exhibit and imagine themselves to be art experts.


Self-promotion is shameless so I'm going to self-deprecate and say, even a home-office-family-oriented person like me gets to have an article on a respectable Music+Culture magazine. It must have made a mark, because it also gets to be on the band's facebook status even after a year from when it was written.

I would have wanted to experience and perhaps write (for myself) about the goings-on about this town. Sponsored by the Goethe Institute, the 6th International Silent Film Festival was on a few weeks back. Razorback performs a live score to the screening of L'Iferno (1911, Guiseppe de Liguoro) and I went as far as a mental outline. In my mind, I can hear them paying a toned-down version of "Diwata" breaking the silence of the movie as the demons of Dante's Inferno flicker in the history of cinema's first few attempts to have special effects.

I imagine the crowd. I'll judge them by appearances and by the snippets of conversation I 'll overhear. I'll assume that they are unpleasantly eccentric, I'll assume they are kindred spirits. I'll assume they are true patrons of art, I'll assume there are hipsters and pseduo-intellectuals amongst the crowd. They are all in this town.

Except that I didn't get to be in the festival. But I'd still like to think that whatever lifestyle you are on, you should never be on a culture point deficiency. Maybe one of my lunch breaks count. It was one of those busy days, and you get stressed out and hungry, but there was nothing close to edible in the pantry. So I decided to head out for lunch. In my world, lunch can happen between 4am - 6am. I drove out to the Subway at the gas station and got a Subway Melt with an upgrade to large calorie-free Drink and calorie-full Lay's Potato Chips. I ate it by the table they had outdoors, and lashed out E.M. Forster's Howard's End from my bag. I fed myself with a full chapter in a slumbering city. This may not count as a culture point, but it couldn't have just happened anywhere.

Around this time, the runners are already out in the streets. Pink light cracks through the sky as I drive back to the stressful hell of an office, and I say you've got to love this town.

Recovery

One of the many drawbacks of our time is that while doctors discover many cures, statistics reveal that more and more people are suffering from new illnesses. On schedule for vaccines and boosters, Mighty Mighty had chicken pox vaccine shots 10-14 days ago. Part of the side-effects was fever. He caught an interesting strain that ran up to almost five days on and off, with cough and colds. He ate little and dropped in wieght.

Parents will perhaps think they are more informed and equipped now, because we have a ready accessibility to practical knowledge, we can send text messages to our pediatrician, and we even have our little ones on health insurance. Parents respond to these things with either paranoia or confidence. I had a more bookish approach as I was ready to take him to the hospital anytime if it goes the distance. D. was more instinctive, and maybe she intunited that sticking him on IV and medical observation isn't what's needed now. I'd always trust her guts over mine, and I'm glad she's always right. She takes these nautral, preventive measures. She has a knack for getting these clean solutions.

D. took a leave for a few days to nurse him, to literally hold him all this time. On that fifth day she went back to work. I already arrived from the night shift and an hour or two after D. left for the office, the little one was still crying. I remember telling him, "Get well and we'll go out this weekend."

He took his time to hush. We tried the tricks. It turns out what he wanted was to wear his pinstiped baseball cap that had "Little Slugger" logo. He wanted to go outdoors and get some fresh air.

We went out and had some sunshine. He hushed and I could have sworn I saw rainbows.

The rest of the day went. I fed him bananas, avocados and the soup D. made. We were behind on some bills because we haven't gone out the past couple of days, followed by National holidays, so I went out briefly and lined up to pay the electric.

He was napping when I got home. I couldn't sleep yet. I've got just enough energy for an easy errand. I decided to brush and wax my shoes.

I may have been weary, but to parahprase Nietzsche, I no longer walk on worn soles.

An Endearing Ordinariness

7pm Dinner with D. & Mighty Mighty. Mango-Arugula-Cashew salad: a house classic.



10pm Drive to Manila Office

11pm The day's first office meeting

1130pm Depart for Cainta Office via office shuttle

12am Cultivating the culture of this pointless productivity at work

8am Yogurt or Soy Drink at the Grocery

830am FX to Ayala

930am Taxi back to Manila Office

10am more work

11am Drive home

1130am Wash up and snack

12nn Reading to mighty mighty

1am Feeding I. (Misua and Mangoes)

230pm Waiting for I's afternoon nap while listening to classical music

3pm 2 cans of beer and chips, and this dramatic status update:

I will not say "I am tired" before I go to sleep. I will be thankful for the opportunity to persevere, to persist, to be worthy of the littlest joys. We only go around once. Hi-Ho.

The following morning, I stop by a coffeeshop because I'm falling asleep driving.

Compartmentalized

Around a week ago, Standard and Poor's gave the United States a credit downgrade, the first for the US in 70 years. Hard times must be up ahead, even for the Yanks. Hi-Ho.

Randy David, a Filipino columnist tells his story about the "Humbling of America." A humble America will have a trickle effect on ours and many other nations. We export to America, and other countries we export to use the raw materials we export to them, to export to America.

Among the many things that compound this problem, he writes, "They are shocked to learn that their country’s biggest single foreign creditor is China, forgetting that long before the recession, American consumption was already being funded by Chinese savings. They are traumatized by the thought that someday US companies would be owned and run by Chinese bosses."

Also around, a week ago, I was reading an easy read in the best possible way (which is reading by the beach, during a vacation), Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick or Lonesome No More. In this novel, the Chinese had closed their Embassy in Washington, as they no longer needed anything or had anything to do with the United States. They had also compartmentalized themselves, becoming so tiny to the point of invisibility. In the process, they save their resources because of the minimal requirements of things small. They have also experimented with the with gravity through an an expedition of the lost secrets of the Incas. The Chinese also had colonies in Mars. They were creating millions and millions of geniuses.

The China piece isn't what the novel is about, but that's probably what's most relevant at this point. The prevailing notion nowadays is how hard it is to find anything that's not made in China.

There's a Picasso quote that goes, "art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." Hi-Ho.

***

"I spoke of American loneliness... It was a shame, I said, that I had not come along earlier in American history with my simple and workable anti-loneliness plan. I said that all the damaging excesses of Americans in the past were validated by loneliness rather than a fondness for sin."

***

Aside from ending some of my paragraphs with "So it goes," I'd like to think that Vonnegut has some influence on me. He clearly executed that wry sense of humor that worked on dismantling a xenophobic American culture and their megalomania with both a down-to-earth and out-of-this-world sci-fi approach.

Slapstick, he said in the prologue, was also the closest he had to an autobiography. That was my favorite part: the prologue. It often spoke of love for a sibling.

***

And yeah, in a world that centers on consumption, I've go to keep myself debt free, and save before spending.

For the last time, Hi-Ho.

Gentle People

July 30 - Aug 2 Dumaguete, Negros Occidental

Originally planned either as a family vacation or the out-of-town get-together during H.'s return, this trip was conceived out of long-drawn exchanges in social networking sites. We had to arrive in a place with some "character" and a level of friendliness for travellers with infants. By "character" we automatically avoided the"party"scene. We were a big group, with most our friends-for-life along with us. I thought dealing with each other's idiosyncrasies had always been character enough, given our history of high-school/college drunkenness and the rest of the vicissitudes in our coming-of-age. We still fondly reminisce and crassly put, I never fail to acknowledge (to myself) what an idiot I was. 

While most of our crowd still had pretty interesting profiles with a global activist/UCLA PhD candidate, art critic, indie film director, indie film critic, researcher, jeweler, Vice President or loving moms and dads, it all blends in pretty evenly when we spend the night playing 20-peso buy-in poker with stones and rocks collected from the beach as poker chips. We were, after all, in the "City of Gentle People."

The weather was also on our side. A typhoon and forming weather systems left the city just the day before our departure. The storm didn't choose to unburden intself on our trip. The nights weren't fully stitched with stars, and as L. puts it, we didn't see a fiery sunset, but there was some sunshine.


We went a round the city a bit before heading off to the resort. I thought I had an impression of the inspiration that seeps into the writers who often this place for the Dumaguete Workshop. There are towering acasia trees, along with the open sea's imposing presence and a slow, serene pace that settled like a balm.

Because reading by the beach is probably the best way to read and we didn't have a lot of plans other than lazing and lounging around all day, everybody brought their literature. S. had Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, M. had Gladwell's What The Dog Saw, A. had contemporary German Literature, and P. had his readings and answered NY Times Crosswords all day.I brought Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick (Lonesome No More), but I also craved for a local read. Aside from the sea and the scenery, I speculate that one of other reasons why there are good writers in this part of the country is because there's a lot of striking contrasts on affluence and poverty concetrated here, the divide greatly defined by who owns the the sugar plantations. That affluence and poverty, history of feudalism, oppression, is always great raw material for stories and characters.

An underwater photo from S. & his A.'s time well-spent on the sea floor.

Along with snorkeling to see these promising live corals, fresh sea-food, kayaking, family-time, long conversations, a lot of lazing around, bottles of wine, rum, and over 3,000 bucks worth of booze we managed to have all the character we asked for.

I am thankful enough that while doing our partenting duties on a beach trip that needed a plane ride, we managed to find the time to read, get drunk or just lie on our own sea-view room's outdoor jacuzzi that bubbled with a cranberry scent.

Our little one, together with her little friend P., were also excellent travelling companions.

We couldn't have all done it withot the gift breastfeeding.

The Library at Midnight

Antulang Beach Resort, Negros Occidental

It was almost 12am and this library was still open, practically begging you to borrow the things between covers that were tucked between the shelves. Judging from their polite tone, mestiza looks and that recognizable well-off accent, the librarians were probably the resort owners' offspring. These books must have been from their personal collection.

"We brought our own" we said nicely, and we probably had different tastes in literature. We ought to say that the presence of the library itself gave the resort an added appeal. It cultivated the reading culture.

We started to notice that among the many signs, the resort also posted quotes from E.M. Forster.

The staff in the resort was friendly and accomodating. The food isn't excellent, the coffee is terrible but we didn't demand something generic like Starbucks. We brought our own drinks and T. made mojitos the way it should be made.

And short walk away from the infinity pool, they had a library.

Fiction that Happens

LESS THAN ZERO by Bret Easton Ellis was reviewed 16 years ago by Michiko Kakutani in the NY Times article, Books of the Times; The Young and Ugly. The most critical pieces of the book were precisely taken into account, and I happen to make the mistake of running into this excellent review to stall my own thoughts. Anything I'd say about the book (and perhaps what most people would say) subsequent to Kakutani, would seem like crap.

Now, the beauty of writing is that we are entitled to read our own crap. Nothing stops us.


In the lovingly-arranged, neatly-tailored, clean-living constitution of my family life, I craved for a novel that smacked me with, as Kakutani puts it - "a narrative, told in fast-paced, video-like clips, devolves into a litany of predictable scenes involving sex, drugs and rock-and-roll..." I need to absorb some virtual amounts of nihilism, disaffection, and general bad-assness. So when I read this novel, it's as though I craved and ordered for a triple-patty cheeseburger with bacon and gobbled with the pleasure of getting exactly what I wanted and more.

The casual nihilism of this book is needless-to-say disturbing. At the same time (at least to me) - it delivered that soothing, literary effect of reading something abominable being said with perfect nonchalance. It surprised me with a convincing authenticity that needn't even be detailed. The story told seemingly as-is, and with the genuine first-person voice, the minimalist approach demonstrates it's own powerful effectivity.

The book's been described as a grim sociological report or a disturbing reality that's been written. Disturbingly and quite selfishly, I enjoyed reading about insanely-rich fucked-up kids from LA, even if all this is just true. Beyond stereotypes, it read like fiction that happened.

Mr. Ellis wrote this when he was nineteen, and at some point I think that's really where the raw, underdeveloped talent peaks. This novel may be criticized for a lack of forceful imaginative transactions or literary grandiose, but if you pick up a book like this - you only need moderate imaginative transactions. On the better end, this novel isn't just pretending, and neither it is superficial. It's a good hit, and as good hits go you save another line for later.

----

On the State of Book Buying

Priced $15 back in 1985, I got a good, worthy hit even if bought this for over 625 PHP. It's one of the few titles I'd still buy from overpriced bookstores like PowerBooks. Most of my books nowadays are priced between 100-200 PHP. Big thanks to BookSale, and the proliferation of ebooks/new media that dropped the price of things strapped in covers. Phenomenally, Profligate Book-Buying has ended. But yeah, 625 PHP was worth every page.

The PowerBooks (MOA branch) I bought it from closed down a few weeks after.

I am One, One I am: Thanks and Wishes.

Thank you to the small people and the big people who brought themselves to us today and shared our happiness in celebrating little Mighty Mighty's milestone.

Thank you to the universe for drawing us to this vortex of optimism. Thank you for spinning us in such a happy twirl during the past 365 days. Thank you for giving us the strength to spend our days with just short hours of sleep, and revealing how wonderful it is to be awake and reawakened.

Thank you for the love all around from our parents, our brothers, sisters, relatives, friends, the wocket in our pocket, the nink in the sink, the zlock behind the clock, the geeling in the ceiling , the jertain in the curtain, as well as the bellar, gellar, nellar, and zellar in the cellar!

Mommy covered everything, but since being one only comes once in a lifetime, I have another wish or two. Forgive me because I'm about to get preachy. These things come with the package of being a Daddy. See, the world is an awesome, awesome place, and among the many, many sounds he'll hear, thing's he'll see, and knowledge he will again, we wish he finds humility. We wish that he realizes early on, that you are wisest when you are humblest.

With too many people who'd grown with unremitting mediocrity, we wish that you spell the difference between dull conformity and true righteousness. As your Dr. Seuss says, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." So Speak for the Trees, and consider a person a person no matter how small.

And yes, we wish that you'd grow up as a gentleman. Honor your word: say what you mean, mean what you say, say it politely, live through your afflictions as graciously as you celebrate your wins, help the physically challenged up the stairs open doors for the ladies, don't kiss and tell, and don't go breaking girls' hearts.

Lastly, just don't watch too much TV. And that is that.

Ten Times To I.

To love, to be loved

To pray, pray, pray

To live curious and discover that the world is as awesome as it can be

To care an awful lot for our planet

To seek and pursue what is meaningful and true

To respect small people, to respect big people

To think left, to think right, to think low and to think high

To stay in the healthy shape you are in

To be the youest, you!

To say please, to say thank you!

Drafted this as D.'s "thank you" and "wish" speech during I.'s Dr. Seuss themed first birthday party. Certain lines were borrowed from Arundathi Roy (first line) NatGeo and Discovery Channel slogans (third line) and a lot of paraphrasing from various Dr. Seuss books.

Dibble Dibble Dibble Dopp

We open the window in the playroom and listen to something out of Explosions in the Sky. Rain falls in big, fat drops against the tin roofs. The city is covered in mist and is mystified. The little one listens attentively as I try to explain rain in the narratives of science, myth, music and poetry. We describe some pleasant smells that could accompany the rain.

It was another difficult night at work, capped by a long commute and I thought of when I can rest. It's stressful and pointless to even form a sentence to dwell on my exhaustion. As though the rain washed me clean of weariness, I'd rather not sleep and tell you,

(i do not know what is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody not even the rain, has such small hands.
-e.e. Cummings

On The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (Currently Reading)

One afternoon, she emitted an irresistible hiccup, blushed slightly (in your blood, which spreads its flames across your face, the cosmos makes it laughter). p.75

There are two different cerebral networks: the implicit (automatic actions such as body functions or driving skills) and the explicit (semantic and episodic memory). Semantic memory is a public-access memory, our knowledge of history and our remembrance of what we’ve read. Episodic memory stores events with an emotional attachment (what your name is, who your wife is, where and how you were raised, your passions, your soul).

The protagonist suffers a form of amnesia that only made his semantic memory function. Possessing knowledge of history and the world but not of himself, parroting beautiful lines verbatim out of the myriad literature he’s read, he sets out to resurrect his soul.

That’s me simplifying (probably in the ugliest possible way) the basic plot of the novel. Pushing it further to bad taste, I’d go on in saying that this is the Bourne Identity of Antiquarians (the protagonist being an antique book-dealer).

It’s been fascinating; how your mind can be so embellished with so much poetry and knowledge without so much remembering when you were born or who were the women whom you’ve made love to. Eco's style and execution makes this fascinating effect possible as he attacks with a whole stable of masterfully-chosen quotations and references. The illustrations are rich, but it doesn't leave you thoughtless. A hundred pages into the book, I was ready to concede that this was one of the best reads of my life.

Somewhere in his search for his soul, something in my own memory awakens. Inevitably relating myself to what I'm reading, I'm thrown back - cushioned with tender, delightful remembrance: to the long hours in the DLSU library. I rummage through my own attic of memory. I am reading, drunk with the moldy smell of so many pages my nose dove in between. I discovered and made so much of myself based off on what I've read and my experiencince of reading. And the book is still so pleasurably doing that now.

Even on a more universal level, our identity is interwoven not only with the facts but also with fictions made about the historical and aesthetic progression of this world.

It must be why we keep reading.

Trip Advisory

We've only had a beach trip or two, but we've probably travelled the farthest this year.

Because this year’s was an inner journey. We saw something of us, discovered and developed a new shape of us. We saw you grow so beautifully as though in each day – we landed on a wonder of the world we’ve never seen before. You’d expect me to throw a cliché or two, and say that you leaned like the Tower of Pisa, and eventually stood beautifully like the Eiffel.

Here with you now, is the best place we’ve ever been. Love all around.

Short Takes on Three Movies

The Adjustment Bureau. Spoon-feeding narrative utterly lacking in believability. Even Disney's Tangled seemed more realistic. It must be the directorial execution and a dialogue that terribly explains itself.

The Green Hornet has a more charming sense of humor than Spiderman. Kato, quite the character, asked if he knows/has been to Shanghai. He goes, "I love Japan!" The violence and special-effects action scenes are inevitable, but it's neither overly done or dumbed down.

Hereafter. This approach felt like "Death Actually" that takes after "Love Actually." But seriously and sincerely, this is another clean, classic, Clint Eastwood. Never formulaic, his touch is easily recognizable as he gently, thoughtfully revelaed the stregnths and flaws of his characters. The whole film was lovely to look at in its balance of movement, transition, music and color. Perhaps I have too much respect for the old geezer.

This Once Perhaps

Jairus Jason would have been Twenty-eight today, and I’d be on my thirtieth 360-degree spin the world over in a few hours a time. He was born on April 23, 1983 and he died on the same day, the eve of my second birthday.

For many years, I’ve been writing for me, which made everything I wrote excusable, self-serving and therefore in vain. So when I write around this time, I didn’t write as myself. I wrote my life, with you living it. Openly and unnoticeably since as I started writing as you, I’ve been ritually whispering my life into a hollow but I choose not to cover it with mud. All this is a just another grain of sand in nearly innumerable grains of sand, but this way it might have been less vain and it would have mattered more. 

And yes, I wrote life as-is and honestly, as I know you wouldn’t have been perfect either, my brother. 

This is the concept of both our eternal recurrence. To no longer waste away in selfish vanity. This is for both of us, and not just for both of us, but for our brothers. How you would have loved Kuya Ogie and Lloyd. How you would loved our Parents. How you would have loved our family, children, relatives. How I loved Dyaneh with a love that is certain, with a love that knows no bounds.  How you would have loved Juan Iñigo.

We live our lives not just as our own.

Happy Birthday, my brother.

Until My Own End

Rest in Peace, Atty. C. Though I can never take your special place in her heart, until my own end I will love your daughter and all that she loves.

First Summer

The beach was only 3++ hours away from Manila. Quiet and uncrowded, it was near enough to be far away from it all. I imagined what D. was like when she first came here many years back, her tan still fresh from Surat Thani in Thailand. Nowadays I can barely imagine her smoking or even partying the way we used to. Nowadays, she takes her entire family (husband, son, sisters, brothers nieces and nephews) with her to the beach.

Some things remain the same, she says. The resort is still playing chillout music, and the relaxing effect has not been diluted. I didn't know how our little one would behave around this environment and this is going to be the farthest he is from home, so I wasn't really expecting to chillout all day. But we did. If he were at the so-called terrible two I can imagine there would have been a lot of chasing. Instead, D. had a massage, I had a drink and a little while to read, the little one's toes met the sand, we walked the shoreline during sunset and he napped in my shoulder in one of those beachfront villas.



After a few bottles, I even took a dip. I lied on my back and let the tides sway me. In all the resolutely floating aimlessly, Universe, you've made me so happy in all that's changed and all that remained. Let me be a good father and husband. Sway me some more and let me snatch the joy in all that is and all that will be.

A Pair of Haikus From Our First Summer

Before he turned One,
Little I.'s toes met the sand.
Friends, naturally.

***

The waves washed their hands.
He laughed. Waves kept gently crashing.
And again he laughed

Plenty

Nowadays, our home is plenty of joys.

I. is already mumbling syllables and manages to stand straight with a hand or two on the crib rails. He wobbles and falls, and there’s the occasional bump or two but that’s really the world he is in now. A little portion of pearly tooth is starting to surface in his gums. He likes the sound of crumbling paper. He likes looking at the pages of Dr. Seuss books we read with him. And he can already figure out some of the sorting toys.

Science will probably have accurate measurements of how babies grow in a month-over-month period and it will prove its predictions on how babies behave. Biology would bluntly say that this is how it goes: they would develop motor skills, start eating solids, increase in length, size, so on.

So we speak of the unquantifiable and the intangible: the untold fickleness of what babies do, the complete abandon of shitting in diapers, wailing if they want something, the purity of instincts playing at the top of their game. Science and biology give you all the precision and explanation, but what you’ll see, flatly, are these cute sets of miniscule miracles. You know what is you see, you know what to expect, yet you gasp and remain amazed. Everyday is a renewed fascination as though everything was unintelligible. Everyday is a dream that is happening.

I also got D. an oven for our second anniversary and it’s as though baking is as natural to her as breathing. Our home smelled like a little bakery that used unsalted French butter. It is as though the summer afternoon’s humid air is making love with the gases of baking chocolate-chip cookies or mozzarella-filled muffins and we are driven crazy with a smell-version of voyeurism. And then finally you taste it: all freshly, lovingly baked, solely and soulfully for you.





It must be a sign of getting happier that I gained ten pounds since I got married.

Our house is plenty of joys but we have to be honest about not getting enough sleep that of course make us snap sometimes. So far, we have been fortunate with how easy it has been to vanquish the anger that rises out of exhaustion. It is true that parenthood is a city of sleeplessness. But why sleep on it, now that we already know that it is?

There’s an Eggstone song that goes, “I’ll do my sleeping when I’m dead.” I'm humming now: ta ta ta ta ta ta.

I'm Feeling Clever Over the Office Blues

We're as perky as cheerleaders in our (sometimes feigned) excitement as we welcome employees in the New Hire Orientation! A few days before hitting the production floor, managers and supervisors describe the work measurement and targets. The leadership team also inspires the newbies about the story of how they grew and worked their way up the ladder, where they've been assigned, their shining moments, and how much they love the people in the company.

My spill is something like:

"I started in the industry as an agent back in 2001. I remember the first call I took and I probably felt just like you: butterflies in my stomach, jittery and urging myself to come out of my nutshell. To be honest, I was scared out of my wits when I took that first call. In the ten years between my first call and where we are now the landscape of this industry has changed. There's better training, a lot more industry-experience, stronger leadership, knowledge and process orientation, and as we are doing now - everyone is here to support you when you take that first call. You are better equipped and should not at all be afraid."

I go on about being deployed to several sites including Bacoor, Cebu & Kuala Lumpur and flaunting (quite truthfully) the merits and achievements of the Quality Staff. And yes, how this is a great company that values hard work and nurtures a culture of meritocracy with solid social responsibility, global diversity and publicly-traded stocks on its way up.

Once in a while, the repressed pseudo-intellectual-smarty-pants side of me shakes me up and urges me to tweak the spill a little bit and go with something clever-sounding:

"Have you ever read George Orwell's Animal Farm? You're in the Animal Farm. Welcome! And nah, given the genius qualification of our hires you probably haven't read that yet and if you did, you'll jump out of here as soon as you start realizing you're treated like one of the sheep. By the way, my story is - I used to be something like Boxer the horse, and a few years later I became something of Squealer the pig. And look, I'm standing on two feet."

On the Rewards of Daddying & Being a Husband

Yours is Mine.

Sincerest Semi Business Related Correspondences

Two Specialists Tie the Knot

First off, Congratulations to you and Best Wishes to C,! I am genuinely happy to hear that you too are tying the knot and having a family of your own now. I feel that that the world is sometimes short of goodness, and I know that you two will help spread it.

Thank you for the earnestness of your words, A. When I met you, I remember how my sense of righteousness and integrity deepened. You've parted us with a lot of wisdom that we still uphold until now.

I wanted to tell you too that maybe there is one area I didn't highlight when I told you about "packaging." The only thing that makes it work, aside from the given strategic approach, is honest-to-goodness sincerity. It is the inherent belief that people can be compelled to do what is right.

Are you already thinking of having a baby? With the high level of organization from both you, I'm sure you have it all planned out. Being a father has allowed me to rediscover myself in different ways. For instance, I learned to ask the universe to keep me at my humblest, because it is probably at my humblest that I am a my wisest. Needless to say, having a child is a joy that amounts to winning the lottery, or probably even more.

Please stay in touch. I hope there are more people like you and C. to influence this world and let some more goodness seep in.

A Specialist's Goodbye Later

We’ve achieved a lot of good numbers and created a lot of value through the years but you’ve probably gained the wisdom we left unsaid after all our tracking, analysis, and quantifying. This wisdom is: there’s more than what you can count. The sense of fulfillment you have given us is genuine and immeasurable. If I have earned your trust and respect, then I am truly accomplished.

Too bad your last message did not have any grammatical errors. I could have enjoyed a good catch. Nice touch on your other goodbye later. I’ll definitely be in touch. Let’s exchange notes and enjoy some good laughs. I’m a little more personal on this one.

Selling Cancer Bracelets

There's genuine empathy and a shared sense of strength and hope in efforts such as these. It’s a concrete way to conquer the absurdity brought upon us, as we remember the brevity of life. You may have felt the same with a friend or a loved one or if ever you've been around someone with cancer. When Science meets our fervent hoping, it just makes perfect sense to ask for more help, to not be alone and silent, and to demand better cures and treatments.

I've often tried to avoid dwelling on clichés. But since I’m indulging myself, I think this is a good chance to be part of something greater than us.

So let me know if you’re interested in getting a bracelet.