Love Does Not Remain The Same

During wedding anniversaries, we are obliged with online displays of affection. In our 7-year honeymoon, I reveled with what I thought a husband should be: to perceive what my wife desires, to earn her respect and trust everyday, to lavish her with affection. I am fortunate to be at the receiving end of this love from your incorruptible heart.

As we speak of marriage, I am using my freedom to stand for marriage equality. I stand with everyone in the LGBT community in their legal and human right to marry who they choose as partners. Love does that, my D. says, it breaks walls, and it transforms us into becoming the best version of ourselves.

I love you, my D. Thank you for making me deserve your love.

Breaking Up with Whisky

I drink it alone. At first, because, D. has a child in her womb, and second, because I usually would prefer drinking by myself. It rekindles the familiar aloneness. I toast to being solitary knowing that when I will wake up in bed with the family I love.

Drinking alone also means I get to read or watch my programs, instead of obliging uninteresting conversations where I end up blabbering something stupid. So I read at least two JM Coetzee short novels so far this year, and enjoyed them both in evenings with whisky.

I enjoy whisky better than wine because while they both speak the truth, whisky says so straightforwardly and powerfully. You taste the aged malt, the barley and their dozen years of imponderable waiting in oak barrels. The flavor cracks itself open against solid, clinking ice. It's an appreciation of history and craftsmanship and you feel it in your face, instantly and slightly contorting, hitting that nerve that needs hitting. Gold gushes down your throat and you exhale with effusive satisfaction, like you don't need anything else. Except maybe for a bag of savory hot peanuts.

After two or thee quick double shots, my limbs soften and my get a bit too misty for reading. The bottle plays me with its coquetry, I'm tempted to maybe have another one until I let myself be caressed into sleep. It fills the empty spot just enough, enough to make sure there'll be another one for a different night.

So before the nights become too many and too often, I decide it's time for a temporary break-up. You've flirted with me too often, and too often have I fallen. Tonight, and at least 99 other nights, I will not have any of you.

In my heart, and upon my liver, I swear we will spend these nights again.

Due to My Late Musical Blooming

For someone who claims to understand Schopenhauer's line - music is the highest form of aesthetic contemplation, I am ashamed to confess this innocence. While it is my fortune to live in a generation not too far apart, I only discovered and appreciated Led Zeppelin in my early-to-mid thirties, about the same time I hatched a fascination for Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. This evening, I'm reading a back issue of Rolling Stone (a magazine I'm reading only for the first time in my life) and am especially embarrassed that I didn't have a clue who Pete Seeger was. Not that it was bad, but perhaps I did listen to too much chillout, grunge, alternative, jazz. The award for most-played song in our iTunes goes to Humpty Dumpty (546 times) succeeded by the second placer Incy Wincy Spider (489 times).

I've had the pleasure of listening to the up and coming local indie bands, but I don't widen my circles enough to be in music festivals with overpriced tickets or frequent local clubs with overpriced beer.

But why should I be so glum? Music is a wand that brings both magic and meaning to our lives without the aid of logic or explanation. The time and place when you open that portal of discovery is less relevant. Music, no matter where or when, elevates us anyway.

Music is an experience that tends to lift us to higher planes. In line with that, we are launching the kids off to an early start. 546 repeats of Humpty Dumpty should suffice, so a few days ago, I got little I. to sing the chorus of Bowie's Starman. Let the children lose it, let the children use it, let all the children boogie, yeah! When he was younger, I considered it a parental accomplishment that he can sing lines from Yellow Submarine.

It is also through music that we had one of our most tender moments so far, V. You must have been hearing all the music in the house, but we found time to take the wireless speakers and set it close to your mother's tummy. While your mother carries you and feeds life into you, I love you the way I know how. I made you a playlist. Here are the first songs you've ever listened to:

Spiegel Im Spiegel, Arvo Part
Piano Concerto in F Minor, JS Bach
Nuvole Bianche, Ludovico Einaudi

I'll be honest and I'll say that this world of ours can be often terrible - there's capitalism, apartheid, to name a few terrible things. But I also can't wait for you to come hear this world. In your first years, I'll rock and dance with you to Explosions in the Sky, Yo-Yo Ma, the classics. We'll take care of the apartheid and capitalism later on. 

For now I can boast that I am the first man to make you a playlist, and I will be the first man to dance with you. Beat that, future boyfriends.

Three from this Year

Look Who's Back
by Timur Vermes

In freshman Philosophy class, our professor described what would have been the reaction of the Greek Gods (Zeus, et. al) if they saw the image of who we worshiped these days. Jesus Christ is crucified, bloody, crowned with thorns, a powerless figure of pity. Zeus would have reacted, "Is that your God?" I chuckled. Timur Vermes works on the same premise in this book. Hitler wakes up in present-day Berlin and thinks that the lady in the park scooping her dog's poo is a lunatic. It's funny all throughout, and it's not lacking in historical insight. The truth is, the death toll on this "war on terror" led by America and its Allies almost makes Hitler's war a laughing matter.

Revolution
by Russell Brand

Brand himself concedes that this book is a line-up of ideas of other thinkers/experts such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Joseph Campbell, Che Guevara, Fawzi Ibrahim. He also builds upon concepts from the East, from Feminism and Socialism. He tells his own tale of addiction and poverty. He delves into details but he won't bore you. It's sometimes shocking and often entertaining, without compromising the efficacy of the heavy ideas he is introducing - some of the most urgent and relevant in our time. I take this comedian very seriously. I think it helps that I read the electronic version along with the audio version. I had 37 pages worth of annotations, the most in everything I read this year.

The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway

I'm still catching up on what I should have read at an earlier part of my life. Hemingway makes machismo sound so romantic. "Now you are getting confused in the head, he thought. You must keep your head clear. Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man." I still love him.

Women and December

On a wet December afternoon, the rain falls on the roofs like so many knocks to the heart. Clad in cardigans, hooded jackets, we were off to see the seventh installment of Star Wars - The Force Awakens. I.'s school sponsored a premier and we thought that a communal experience with his schoolmates was called for. Unlike Episodes 1-3 which heavily leveraged on the new available technology and eye-popping special effects, this new one goes back to touching what was wonderfully familiar: telling stories, exploring characters, along with rekindling a nostalgia.

What struck us the most was the appearance of a new, mysterious young heroine from a planet called Jakku. Rey is strong-willed and charming with an English accent, like a teenage, dolled-up version of Kiera Knightley. She seemed to embody the empowered women of this generation.

A few days forward and the sun begins to shine again this December. And like a ray of hope entering this country, the Philippines through Pia Wurtzbach, bags a Miss Universe crown. To our lot, that's like winning the world cup. But who can really tell that this is a country where the most beautiful women dwell?

A few days later, while D. beats the Christmas shopping rush, I hang out with I. in a coffee shop. I re-read Shakespeare's Macbeth and while I no longer attempt deconstructive or post-colonial readings of texts, I do find something new, or a different view of what I first perceived. The famous quote in Act V, for example:

Life is but a walking shadow, a poor playerthat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury  

Signifying nothing. 

I always thought that this an advocacy of nihilism, but looking at the context these were really the words of a man drunk with overconfidence. When he said those lines, his wife just died, and his castle is about to be attacked. My attention was caught by Lady Macbeth - how she really was the woman behind the man, who gave him the mean streak that things called for.

I remember a line from Martin Scorsese's Casino: "I've decided to complicate my life." That's what Robert de Niro's character said when he decided to marry Sharon Stone's character.

Another few days ago, I found out that I will have another woman in my life.

We first saw her through a sonogram. She bounced around in her mother's belly, looking like she was doing some yoga poses, and she kept on moving as though she was telling us that she will not only be beautiful, but also complicated, brave, sometimes inscrutable and yes, exciting, peering through this promise of enlightenment.

Women are more complicated, and truly more powerful than men. One day she will be a woman, serenaded with music, men wooing about, maybe even with poetry dripping from their tongues.

You're only on your way to this world, but it already feels complicated as it is beautiful. And it also feels affirmatively complete.  It as if the rain has cleared, or a wound has healed and the warmest room in our hearts, with all of our love - eagerly awaits.

The Eternal Recurrence Of Chris

About a month ago, an officemate of mine passed away in a road accident. Like most days, he chose to bike to work that day and was hit by a car he was waiting on the lane to cross. It was between 7-8 am, and he was about a kilometer away from the office when he passed.

I did not know Chris, and I wager he was a far better man than I am.  We do share several stark similarities. Both of us have been in the same company for 10 years, we both have a 5-year old who likes Spiderman, and we both have a baby on the way.

The way people are – we should not just be pointlessly disconnected. The grief is real, and even those who did not know him will be able to relate, sympathize or even drive change. His death has started a stir in the city for more share-the-road advocates, eye-openers for drivers to become more mindful of bikers.

I’ve been wanting to bike to the office for some time. It’s a laughable 5km distance and I have to ride the car alone with no one to carpool with. But true enough, our roads, the world-record-breaking traffic and raging drivers are not ready for bicycles. And I’ve been moved, thinking that nothing will ever happen if we just leave things as how they are now if we literally just burn more fuel into the system.

And so I got myself a helmet, borrowed my brother’s bike, and set myself pedaling to work on some days. I also added cycling to my cross-training. It’s just a start.

My eyes opened not only to a driver’s mindfulness, but to the serenity and hidden stories, sounds, and smells of a city that I often take for granted when I drive past through it the air-conditioned enclosing of a car. Now I can really pause for a few minutes to see the sunset. And every time, I also honor Chris.

Now let’s get this company to incentivize employees who bike to work, and have them start installing showers.