The Fruitful Basket

“Then there was a pageant of men that I saw in the sky, as the clouds formed their images, holding each others arms as an image of an angel appeared out of nowhere in order to reach out for them and led them towards a direction that pointed upward.”

Among the most beautiful and most delightful symbols that I have seen from the sky was the scene of men holding each others hands, as if they are brothers to each other, not letting go of another, while a man with a span of wings on his back appeared out of nowhere in order to extend his hand, and in order to lead them towards a place full of hope and promise.

My brothers and sisters, there is no far greater purpose in life than to seek the oneness of all men, as we are all created equal, no matter how we were created differently. Nothing far more heroic in the eyes of men and mostly in the eyes of Our Lord, than to seek the fellowship of other men, although these men may be of different race or creed. Nothing is greater than a love to one who differs from us, for they differ not of their own intentions, but merely the intentions of nature and circumstances. For the Arab is man of the dessert while the Asian is mostly of the plains.

And yet to this mission, nothing could be far more daunting, for while we seek the peace among ourselves we are continuously haunted by our unpeace. We see with every eye and we hear with every ear how we wear many shades of skins and how we speak in many tongues, we are not blind to this. We are never blind also as to how the differences in us give rise to conflicts and arguments, and even to bloodshed that in one man’s hands lies the blood of his brother.

Far too difficult this task may be and yet we do not take heed to the weaker side of our minds and hearts. We shall strive to seek peace amongst us no matter how the storms may shatter our resolve, for it is the will of the Lord God Almighty, that we seek now the Brotherhood of Man.

We must fill the basket with apples and oranges; and then we still have to fill it with peaches and mangoes; and then further, we still have to load it with mangosteens and bananas. And we shall carry this basket no matter how we realize that our load had become heavier. We must strive harder, for sooner than we know, we shall reap our rewards in the end, and savor the basket full of fruits of many kinds.

We are like the river that threads many paths and yet to end merely in the same ocean. We all must thread the same path in the name of Our Lord God, for whomsoever conflicts with his brother, also conflicts with Him.

For He is like the Father who has many children and does not in any manner leave any child to suffer the weather, out in the coldness of the night. And He whispers gently to the ears of the older and wealthier children in order to persuade them to seek out their poorer and suffering siblings, for He suffers also when one of His children suffers.

He is the Father who suffers the wounds of His children.

How blinded have we become by our prejudice? How we take others aside for lack of knowledge that all men are seen as equal in the eyes of God. He did not deem it that He shall favor some and disfavor others, for He is the God of All Men.

Could you honestly believe in your hearts that He had allowed many other men to be borne only for them to lose salvation, just because they have not come to the folds of Christianity or Islam? There are just too many of them that we could never be blind.

Have you actually expect the china man to speak the white man’s tongue? Shall the African drink wine on his daily table when he grows root crops to drink some other beverage?

Shall you ask why the Jew did not become a Moslem when all his life he was tended and made to learn his own scriptures? Could you blame anyone? Blame is never in the side of the Lord.

We may imbibe a Hindu to seek your own creed, by teaching him all the books that may be at hand and yet you could go for a thousand days and a thousand nights and you would soon find out that you were only made to imbibe a few of them, if ever there would be learners of your kind of faith. It would take a millennium for you then to imbibe most of them, a task nearly impossible.

In so long that any one remains in the righteous path, to follow the basic teachings of the major faiths—-Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism—-then there would be no more argument for every religion seeks the righteous path, seeks the goodness in every man.

For a Moslem is blameless if he professes to Allah, the Most Merciful and the Most Omnipotent because mainly, he had been thought by his forefathers in the learned ways of Islam, until he had embraced genuinely the faith of his forefathers?

In so as the Christian, he remain blameless in the eyes of other men, for mostly he has learned in the way of Jesus Christ even from birth, and even until death comes to him.

And so is with the Jew, for he was born a Jew in the first place and learned mostly the teachings of Abraham and Moses. How could blame be upon him?

For faith can be bared to its simplest form and that is, in order for man to pursue the goodness of our hearts and to dispel wickedness. What is evil is the grave things that men do-fornication, adultery, murder, thievery, the wantonness of the tongues, the propensity to conflict, selfishness and apathy to the plight of the unfortunate. These are the things we must take issue and not the differences of our faith.

We must seek the unity in our faith rather than make war with the differences, for it is like upon seeing the rose then hating upon the thorns rather than being enamored by the beautiful red petals.

For a man may be rich in faith and yet in the confines of his own home, he is wicked and evil in his heart, faith then is of no essence to him.

Yet a man you see on the street may be of another faith aside from your own, and yet he is kind in his heart and light towards his other fellow men—-his faith is of the greatest essence to him and to the whole world.

It is foolish now to believe that we could all be harbored in the same singular faith. Let be what could be let be. In so long as Evil does not reign in this world, then live and let live.

It is childish and at times foolish if we should expect the china man to speak the white tongue from his birth. We knock on empty doors if we should seek that in the end, men should speak the same tongue and believe in the same creed. Without our differences, existence in this world would be insufferable for its monotony. The world would not turn and revolve.

Our differences allow people to roam and explore the unknown, to be interested in the other. Men traveled in the past to find things different from what they have. They road the waves and braved the great ocean waves in order to find porcelains and spices in some faraway land. If spices were all abound, we would have not reached these level of understanding amongst people of different nations for men would not have traveled in the past. It was differences that brought men of different race closer together in the past and until now.

Prejudice put a seed of viciousness in our hearts that often we are led to hate and violence towards other men whose only pain was to be born different from us. To seek prejudice is to plant a seed of conflict, to seek the weapons of war, instead of fellowship.

We see the thorns and not the flower.

We must now realize that the Lord had intended it that we are born different. Our differences are for a purpose, even our differences in faith. If all religion seeks the path of righteousness, then there shall be no point of dispute.

Let not prejudice put you at risk of the Judgment Day for whomsoever conflicts with his brother, conflicts also with Him, Our Lord God Almighty.

There shall be no argument as which is the greatest of faith for even if we debate for a thousand days and thousand nights, no one could ever claim the truest faith with irrefutable evidence. The words would not end and the arguments would not cease. Let be what should let be and live so that others may live.

For righteousness is never the monopoly of any faith. In so long as we are all righteous and prayerful to the Lord God, we shall be rewarded with our peace in the Hereafter.

For those who shall make peace shall be called the Children of God.

 

From my collection of essays: "The Voyage" 

The Meaning of Life

( A repost from April 13, 2007: A favorite for me… )

I was walking the downtown streets some days ago, feeling a little bit restless for reasons unknown to me specifically, at least to the one or those that I could not pinpoint to with reasonable certainty. Perhaps this is one sort of a malady that I have read about once before in some old decrepit medical book stacked in my mother-in-laws deteriorating wooden cabinets, those that were partly eaten by termites, looking so fragile that a simple disturbance on it would let spew a handful of mashed-up and grounded wooden particles—-which I find to be so repulsive knowing that they were the end results of some crawlers’ eating frenzy.

This malady is sometimes called depression or anxiety problems (they go by many names depending on the author of the medical book I read) and once in a while I retreat into this state and like water, I just have to let go of it for I could not rein it in my hands—-no matter what.

I passed by the new barbershop just in front of the old Ever theater—one that had seen better days—-and I thought I might get my hair done. I stared at a glass partition from a nearby store and had an inkling that my hair wasn’t as disheveled as I thought it was. I even saw it to be fitting to me despite the general rugged look and I had thought then that moviestars have lengthy hairs even if they were males, having that blown away look. I was a little worried that if one sports a blown away and rugged crown of hair and at the same time not being a moviestar, one might be easily taken for a madman walking the streets at high noon. But that sidewalk mirror was good to me and I felt that my uncut hair would be fit for a star. Some mirrors are good to me ; mostly they are not—-especially those in my bedroom.

So I passed with having a quick haircut that day and hoped that the blown away look would be fitting enough for me for quite a number of days more. I then strolled farther down the city sidewalks and came towards a crevice full of DVD stalls and I felt a little blown away after seeing so many titles available and on a dirt cheap prices at that, considering that for 80 bucks, one can get a DVD disc that contains 8 to 12 movies in it, and most of them were blockbusters and of very recent release. Some of them were not even shown yet here in local theaters. That’s how tempting it was for movie aficionados like me. I could not say now that I haven’t had scored myself some pirated items before (I had been smoking a brand of cigarette smuggled from Hongkong when I was in college) and of course, it would be unthinkable for me to not have seen a pirated movie before. I had of course.

But while I was glancing on stacks and stacks of DVD disks, my mind was swinging between the forthrightness of not buying a pirated item and having a devilish pleasure on filling my hunger for movies at throwaway prices. I could always remember that video clip that goes with every movie I rent from video stores and the loud, thundering reminder that says: “You Don’t Steal A Car! You Don’t Steal A House! You Don’t Steal A Movie!”, and somehow my inner conscience is disturbed by such that whenever that clip goes in every movie I rent, I wanted to shout at whoever that guy behind the thundering voice and belch, “Stop It! I Heard You. You Don’t Have To Remind Me That All The Time. You’re Not My Mother!”

My inner conscience had gotten the better of me that time so I just slowly walk away from stacks and stacks of salacious movies and guilty pleasures. I then remember that a new Video City branch had opened just a block away and I headed immediately towards it. The moment I had gazed through the available movie titles, I felt an immediate surge of gleefulness inside me since I hadn’t expected that the new video store could offer such voluminous number of titles, especially of recent ones. The video store where I usually get my dose of movies is so miserably lacking in inventory that I guess I won’t be visiting it from now on, except perhaps in some momentary lapse of reason in the future.

I felt like a child lost in a sea of movie titles and I almost picked up every disk that had caught my eye, until I reached the “Drama” section and there in front of me was a copy of Wong Kar Wai’s “2046” and I was excited to high heavens. It had been much talked about in the net world about how good it was and for a long time, I was trying to get my hand on a copy of it, and for a while there I thought I wouldn’t be able to see it for it would be unthinkable that it’d be exhibited in local theaters considering that it was released about three years ago. And I haven’t had seen any trace of it in every video rental store I went before.

I had anticipated this movie ever since I have grown a special fondness for oriental art films, especially those of the legendary filmmaker Zhang Zimou, whose film “Farewell To My Concubine” was so wonderfully entertaining and had primarily introduced me to other notable movies from China or Hongkong. Before that, ever since I was in high school, I had been delighted by the magic of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpieces like “Ran” and “Dreams”.

And so “2046” was about a writer who had become so engrossed about his own written piece that he saw himself being dragged into it, and feeling the pains and longings of the characters he had made himself. “2046” was a work about a train that once in a while travels towards the year “2046” and no one who goes there ever came back, except for one, the male protagonists. It is said that those who journey towards this strange destination are those who are longing for love, perhaps a kind that could not be found here at present, for how come they have to travel towards a point of no return just looking for it? What love is there out there that some have risk even their own mortal existence just to gain it? It was written by the writer that nobody actually knows how long for one to get to “2046”, for some it would be faster, but sometimes, to those unlucky travelers, it might take so long that they would start to lose their senses and sanity while inside the rain, having nothing to do except sit down and wait for the arrival time, one that is not definite and without any sign of coming. The main male protagonist in the novel had such kind of journey, one that was so lenthgy and seemingly unending that he fell in love with an android, an artificial human being stewarding the train.

The writer had his own life in the movie “2046”, a life lived sometime in the 1960’s where according to him “he just found himself to be in”. He earn his meals by writing columns and kung-fu stories for local dailies and billeted himself in a room with a door number that states “2046”. That was where he had sourced the title for his novel, a number which in his own mind had taken his fancy and unusual interest.

Along the way, he met a wife of another man named Bai Ling, who had runned away from her husband for having another woman and had rented a room just across his own. They slowly fell for each other and started a torrid affair filled with nights of passion and unhindered bliss. Until one day the woman asked him if ever he wanted to stick it out with him. But the writer wouldn’t agree to be exclusive to one single woman and stressed that he was seeing other women while he was having an affair with her. Bai Ling was furious and ended their relationship with tears flooding from her eyes and agitation painted all over her face.

They both started seeing other people and whenever they passed each other in public gatherings, they both pretend not to know each other and according to the writer, it was difficult to pretend and not notice her. It was clear that it was more difficult for Bai Ling to pretend and it showed so much in the utter sadness that found harbor in her teary eyes.

Six years later, the writer was in a relationship with a woman that had a similar name to a woman he had an affair so many years ago. It wasn’t Bai Ling, but another one who had resembled Bai Ling’s general appearance, a circumstance that had led me to ponder whether or not Bai Ling and Su Lizhen was one and the same person. The new woman eventually left the writer for some undeclared reason for she said, “she just have to go away”.

And inside a car—-drunken and weary—-the writer finally realized that he is starting to lose ‘the meaning of life’. He was thinking to himself and thought that six years ago, he had a chance to find the meaning of lifewhen the beautiful Bai Ling offered herself to be his long time partner. But he had other ideas and now regretted it.

He met Bai Ling for one more time but the feeling was never the same aagain and it had seemed that in the end, he had entirely lose grasp on what in his mind was “the meaning of life”.

The movie “2046” eventually ignited in me the question about life and its meaning. I try to see myself in the writer’s own predicaments and evaluate if I had what he call as “the meaning of life”. Have I lost it? Or I am living it? Or perhaps, the meaning is just not clear at all.

One way or another, we all are trapped within the world we now dwell, sometimes embroiled in raucous routine everyday conducts, sometimes just swaying to where the wind blows, and often forgetting that at the end of the day, we might not be able to entirely grasp the so-called “meaning of life”. What’s in store for me when I grow old? Where am I heading? Am I happy or am I miserable?

Am I that sort of individual who would jump into a train and head to “2046”?

These are just questions and I hope that this momentary bout with depression would vanish like thin air. And then I’ll have in my full grasp the so-called “meaning of life” by then. Whatever that means.

from my blog : "The Citizen On Mars" 

The Classification of Persons

What’s my classification? I often have thoughts about myself – whether am I a rich man or a poor man. Am I of wealth or not? Of religion or of apostasy, holder of knowledge or merely bestowed by empty notions of a monotonous mind? Of race and ethnical considerations, among kindred spirits and brethrens, within circle of affiliations and aggrupations, these also become further considerations to this particular questioning.

There is a universe of wandering, as I thread upon these thoughts, lost in detail and exactness for these premises does not become susceptible to ubiquitous deduction, merely by intuition and perception.

There is that notion I’ve learned just recently that persons often interact in terms of actions and inactions, in gestures and signage, more intensely at times than with the spoken word.  This is Symbolic Interactionism at its keenest, as ushered in by social philosophers Talcott Parson and Herbert Blumer, a primal social concept that I’ve learned from my attendance to doctoral classes in most recent days.

In the principle of symbolism, persons act towards things in terms of how they ascribe thoughts and meaning to these specific things, as if upon organisms relating merely in action and reaction, but not in conversation.

The first instance that I have come upon this specific premise of human action, I have exhibited immediate reversion to such, not being able to fathom the very idea that humans could be assimilated with beast and organisms even merely as to the manner of social interaction and communication. I regretted this concept in fact, and have decided to set it aside.

But on the second and third instances, relinquishing a more focus thought on symbolism as a principle in human interaction, I have come to fully appreciate its main intention and direction of thought.

I have realized thereupon (upon daily observations and examinations of how persons relate and converse between and among each other) that indeed, we are full of gestures and signage that relays the manner in which we have thoughts on certain objects, events and persons.

My observations did not in fact end on such notions of symbolism, for I have reckoned that upon these premises, I could build upon further theory and principles on some notions of human interaction and social orientation. I have thought that the social theory of symbolic interaction can serve as a vigorous anchor for the philosophical determination of the classification of persons, for I have come upon this thoughtful undertaking so very lately, for what classification am I as a person.

Let us not be in denial, for I am of awareness that I am not merely alone in these thoughts, for there would be myriads out there that have come upon this particular questioning of the self.

I am lost sometimes about myself; this is not to be an understatement. And I am like a wanderer lost in a vast wilderness at times when it comes to this specific thought, not knowing what direction to follow or thread upon.

There are times that I feel that I could be so evil in person that is engrossed with evil thoughts; so strong these thoughts that I retreat from the outside world just examining and weighing the things that I have become or could become. I fully regret these thoughts of course, and this specific orientation of the mind and self. For a person should be full of goodwill at most times, of good thoughts and intentions. We should all be that way, that’s the most ideal state of persons, keen to relate and decent in words and actions.

But often, this is the hardest thing to do.

At most times, I can believe that I am mostly of good intentions. I could not help but forward this notion to the others that I often interact with.

To this vacillating ideas of my person have thence come forth this particular notion that one could determine one’s classification of the self  through the manner of social interaction, in the way that Symbolic Interactionism have proposed the ways of persons to be.

That is, in positive gestures and signage, one could determine the aggrupations and association of the self. In negativity, one could determine the non-classification of person—- as simple as that.

But of course, this particular social concept of mine is still of nascent roots. It needs further study.

From my blog "THE CITIZEN ON MARS" 

 

The Beast and Other Stories

In my senior years in law school, an old friend, Aziz Mustafa called me up and inquired if I needed a job. The offer was like that of Marlon Brando’s, it was hard to refuse. Working for a foreign-funded institution is like a baptism of fire, threading another dimension of existence. My hands were so full I choke on paperwork virtually. There is this braggadocio in me that always get me into the prying pan. I never learned it seemed. Serving the second half of my presidency, tackling the end years of my law school, and eating up paper at work—all of them almost at the same time—stretched me up like a rubber band in order to clip bundles and bundles of papers. I was always up and about, always on the run it seemed. If I find myself sitting in a corner at that time, that would have been a minor miracle. Even at home, I would take work and finish it there because there was a time that regular office time could not accommodate them. There was madness in activity, so much activity it seemed that you could imagine me like a crazy wheel rolling and rolling until nothing is there to roll for. My nerves were full but it did not snapped because somehow, I felt at ease with furious activity that inactivity was then a hellish idea. I bet when the juices gets going, work becomes more and more palatable.

The money was so good that I stayed in my job even if I had consequently has to take the bar examinations to gain my lawyering license. And besides I was married already then.

I did not last in my work. There was a parting that was both hurtful but at the same time relieving. For almost two years, office work had gotten so flat that with more personnel coming, the load got lighter and lighter until there is nothing more to do except watch for the clock’s small hand to approach five o’ clock. And the days grew longer that we always joke around that somehow there must be some fantasy company we could work in that every day was salary day. At the beginning of the day, we wished it were already twilight. At the beginning of the month, we would wish it were nearly halfway through. At least not all of us felt that way. Or perhaps some were just not as honest about being disturbed of the almost fatal routinariness of day jobs, especially government clerical jobs.

But work is work and a job is a job. Without it, there is no sense that you find yourself suddenly idle and not earning the usual things. Besides, who could go against that unwritten rule where it seems that humans were created merely for the purpose of growing up until you could work and then die? There were times when I was too uncomfortably busy that I used to daydream how my world could be so wonderful if I could spend every day of my life just sitting around in front of my computer and make that proverbial "great Filipino novel" and watch over my kids when I am not scribbling anything. Alas, writing a novel was so much easier to imagine than do. It was like putting up a rocket ship or assembling a nuclear bomb. I tried to make some upstarts but nothing came about not until years later.

Delusion I had hoped then could propel me towards success in literature. I had believed that my intellect was adequate to harbor such ambition, sadly, intellect and grammatical skills were not enough to get me going towards endless and lonely nights by myself, writing and imagining, the sort fiction demands. I had fully realized then that there is more to me that writing demands, something ethereal and incorporeal, one that could not be seen; some call it inspiration and it was inspiration that I lacked then.

I tried giving life to an otherworldly tale of two-lovers separated by time. I called it "Black Sea, Dark Night", the way old writers thought of fancy but concise titles like "My Brother, The Executioner" of F.Sionil Jose or "The Joy Luck Club" of Amy Tan. More of it, it was a title that came to my mind whenever I pondered upon the darkness of depression. I had learned so well that writing from the heart is the sole highway towards affective writing and I could not be genuine I would not find no parallel in my life to the things I write. It was about Peter, an adolescent struggling with the same depression problems I had who suddenly saw a creature of the night, a vision of an old man with a decrepit hat. The spirit would talk to him and proposed that he do some favor for a task only he could do. Peter would not know how to tackle this quandary at first for no one would believe his tales, when almost everyone he knows he had this mental or behavioral problems; until someone did and the story goes on and on until the final journey into the spirit world and back and the final task accomplished to appeased the spirit. What task was this did not materialized in the story, I could not even invent one until now that it is such of essence that a spirit would go to the extent of contacting a half-deranged boy. Although the tale would take me into the ancient warrior days of Zamboanga, towards the colonial days of Spanish Conquistadors, it stopped when the tribal chieftain was about to declare war upon the much stronger Spanish soldiers and I left it at that. Until now, Black Sea, dark Night is still yearning for its ending but you would learn later on why It remains eating dust somewhere in one of my attaché cases.

Stephen King might have invaded the crevices of my veins that I had this inclination to write about the things that feeds our fears. There is something delicious in testing the limits of our nerves. The more we fear the more we scurry for the mysterious. Like eating pepper; the more it stings the more we crave.

I remember that before there was "Black Sea, Dark Night", I had this short story, again with a fancy title. I called it "The Southbound City of Iceberg", a tale of an imaginary beast lounging beneath the city under ways, in sewages and giant canals, pulling down each victim one after another, one by one that as the disappearances became more frequent, the "beast" would go on a very lengthy guilt-trip. What if men finally knew about his existence? And although it was merely a beast it had the proper intelligence to regulate its mayhem. It ended just that way, although every possible circumstances was scrutinized by the "beast", to the worse where mankind would pour all its resources, the fighter planes of America, the satellites of China, the tanks of Great Britain—all at once coming to the city of Zamboanga hunting for its own mischief and blasting it towards perdition, turning into pulp or pulverized like crisp biscuits.

The "beast" would stare upward the sky and got disturbed by the moving starlights that it did not suspected at once to be man-made, until later on it surmised that men had invented eyes in the sky in order to hunt it. It had surmised that before, man had no such equipments to search for misfits of nature now it has meteor-like gadgets to roam the sky as searchlights. The "beast" was an ancient creature that slumbered for thousand of years, only to wake up to a cacophony of downtown lights, rock music, honking jitneys and television. The world was never the same it had determined. Even at night, the streets were brimming with clarity making its haunting all the more difficult.

And yet, despite this difficulty, the thirst for flesh and blood was overpowering that day in and day out, it would peer from the dark crevices of the street, in some isolated nook or corner of the city, finding out if it could be lucky at any time, that someone had drunken too much or got too much honked by drugs in the head, to walk alone by some abandoned alleyways, and then go for the kill. It could get luckier it thought, if some lovers who lacked patience would abuse the darkness of bushes and wayward trees, to do the unthinkable, where the beast could go for a double kill.

As days went by, newspapers started to report these mysterious disappearances and so the "beast" finally went into the guilt tripping I mentioned earlier. Men are now more sensitive to this untoward incidence, that every crime has its record and every sin has its public board. The "beast" hated the modern man all the more. It had delusions of murdering the city inhabitants all at once, wrecking havoc like a crazy evil god, flooding the ground with flood. Luckily for the city, it inhibited itself. Thanks to the things it sees on television. Those weapons of the modern man were so different than those it had seen before—those spears and daggers—even those catapults were no matches.

It ended when it decided not to devour as much in order that it would not be indicted by man that in my fantastic mind, the "beast" is still out there, pulling down its victim one by one.

The "beast" story was somewhat lyrical and honest. It was then the first and only tale that I had completed. It was flowing since it was all about my struggle against "Satan", that beast of a menace that keeps pulling down young men and women, leading them into some dirty and stinking abysses of life, and never to get out again.

I simply lost my manuscript that was why it did not go all the way to the papers.

But material things are not to be fret up, especially when these things could be created. If I lost it, I thought I would just make another one then. A better one, it must be.

This better one did not materialize and the tale of that doggone "beast" is like a lost child whom I wish to be reunited in the future.

Oh, I lied about completing just a single work. Remember the dream of the pond? The moment I woke up from that dream, I could not stop the itch to write and document it for I had no such other dream that could be so vivid at that. I remember so well the caking red clay to where the dancing old woman floated above. Even the color of the dewy water was stained like rust in my mind that every time I think about it, I could feel the sharp and crispy coolness it brought my skin. I documented every moment, every emotion and every color of the environment. The sky was red, bleeding towards horizon and the air was heavy and so still, and that my breathing was the only sound I heard most of the time. In fact there was that conversations with the other two men present that I forgot to mention. As I came out from the water, I remember being a little aghast at the interferences of the men who looked like me.

"Why don’t you leave me alone", I almost shouted at their faces.

"You could not go deeper. You would not be able to come out", one of them said, with a worried look in his face that tells some grave worry or concern.

I looked at them and hissed and I almost sneered. What could have gotten in their heads that they burden themselves the issue of my well-being? These were very particular dialogues and emotions that I have captured in writing "The Pond" then. I remember how surreal was the world that I painted in that story, responsibly truthful to the happenstance in my dream of the pond.

Then perhaps by now we recognize that my dreams, my memories and my fiction had a heavy thread on them; all are surreal. Perhaps, we could add my life to that.

(An excerpt from my unfinished semi-autobiography "A Prophet’s Life") 

The Chaotic Structure of World Relations

Definitely, chaos is an instance gravely unbeneficial at any given fact or situation. This is most true in the principles and normative values regulating, or self-regulating world relations.

If we do not want conflicts and disintegrations to perpetuate within our own personal lives—- or in our community in general – then as much more that we would not opt for chaos in the relations among states and nations.

Basically, the interaction between and among states—- especially at the beginning of the era where nation had begun to evolve into instituted states (from the prior institutions of kingdoms and empires that had mostly vague territorial and political frameworks) sometime in the 16^th century—- is mostly confined in an environment of chaos.

When we say chaos in international relations, it refers technically to the lack of formal organizational and hierarchical structure among nations, that sheer might and strength becomes the limited characteristics for estimation as to what nation should exert its influence over and against other lesser states. Of course, this form of strength should primordially be in the nature of military force, and then political influence.

This lack of structure had been deemed by political theorists to be the sole basis why in the early stages of human civilization, nations and territories are often in violent and head-on collisions with each other, showing and exerting each other’s strength and resolve almost at every turn, that sad to say, only war and confrontation could resolve a certain status quo. And since power is often fluctuating, nations had been embroiled in repetitive war in those early ages of human civilization.

This despite that international organization such as the United Nations nowadays provides a certain form of arrangement among states; still, this does not strictly refers to a hierarchal form of organization as nations remain co-equal with each other, and no nation or nations holds formalized power over all other nations. It remains to this day therefore that world relations are chaotic in nature, this despite the existence of the United Nations.

For instance, in the time immediately prior to World War I, a form of uncertainty had arose as to what nation state has the most strength in the European region, a fragile balance of power had permeated, and alliances were formed as a result of this insecurity, that eventually, when these states started to question each other’s resolve much more intensely, war broke out among them, eventually and steadily developing into a global war.

The only solution – which is at times dangerous proposition – is the presence of a singular state that could exert enormous power and influence above most, if not all states in the world. This situation becomes the so-called hegemony in international relations.

This hegemonic structure is provided today by the powerfulness and heraldic power of the United States of America that as a singular entity, it wields so much power and political influence over all other nations that its grasp is nearly empiric in nature.

While radical minded individuals resent this situation, where America often involves itself in every conflict and confrontation in almost every nook and cranny of the world, this had become somehow a positive value for today’s world peace and stability.

For instance, in the developing events that had brought China and the Philippines to a head on collision over a piece of island in the South China Sea (or West Philippine Sea), over the disputed Scarborough Shoal, some tactical moves by the United States, specifically the docking of attack submarine USS North Carolina in a port near Scarborough; such move was seen to be in the context of attempting to pacify the tense situation brimming between the two Asian nations. 

Without the veiled intervention of America, any escalation in the Scarborough issue would sway so much in China’s favor. That it would not be too surprising to realize how China becomes too eager to put up a fight against the Philippines over the disputed piece of land protruding over the seas just west of the latter’s territory.

However, with the existence of a mutual defense treaty between the United States and the Philippines, China could not be so forceful or profligate in engaging the Philippines to a full-blown military confrontation. Otherwise, it would be inviting America into the whole conflict—- Which would not be in its own interest for certain.

Somehow, we as a nation, becomes ultimately benefitted from this hegemonic structure being perpetuated by America as the lone superpower in existence today. Despite that it is often vilified as an international bully by many political critics.

THE SAUTEED UPO AND PLAGIARISM IN OUR MIDST

(This is an old post from 2005, in The Daily Prophet) 

Yesterday, my stomach cringed a bit trying to put morsels of fried herring into my mouth. The day before, I just gobbled pieces of chicken meat and swallowed it just in order to put some heaviness in my tummies. I felt I was just flooded by too much fish and meat in the past days that I could possibly go haywire in the head when I see another dish of fish and chicken. So I said what’s enough should be enough. Last night, I swore before the evening stars that I shall eat vegetables by tomorrow come high or deep water. 

I went scouring for vegetable recipes in the internet and since I knew a few blogsites offering these kinds of postings, I went to them immediately. It was in Ting Aling’s site that I found the apple of my palate, of all blogsites in the world. Right before my eyes was the how-to-cook presentation of Guinisang Upo and my heart was palpitating a bit and was strained, worrying that I may become the dreaded plagiarists that the local blogosphere was talking about. The million-dollar question was whether or not to cook Ting Aling’s vegetable brew or not? More than one question were whirling in my head and my hands trembled like I was a thief. This dilemma—this doubtfulness—has never haunted me ever before, not even when I was into downloading music many months ago (which I have stopped already, to say in clarification). 

I wanted to ask for the permission of Ms. Ting-Aling but I decided against it for it may take a lifetime to wait for her responses and besides, I would like to settle the question all by myself. I wanted to settle these questions on my own account and perspiration and analyze every matter of the issue like a judge about to pen his decision and worrying so darnest if there would be grave abuse of discretion. 

I asked myself then, should Ting-Aling wish her readers to cook her suggestions when she posted these kinds of entries. If not, then why would she bother to put them in public view? What’s the use of her writings if she doesn’t want us to partake of its benefits? Maybe, it’s up for sale but I haven’t noticed anything that says “Download this for 95 Cents” button, which could bring us to the question of whether to “Open File From Its Source” or “Save to Disk”. I tried saving the web page of Ms. Ting Aling but the right-click was disabled so I reckoned she is protecting her works. I may warn her that despite the Java Script denying the right-click mode, one could still have her recipe by saving the web page as a text file. 

And so I made a version of Ting Aling’s Guinisang Upo that is cooked daily by many Filipino households, the way our Moms and helpers do it. I must clarify that what I meant by “a version” is not exactly that of hers but one we are used to see everyday of our lives. And so this morning I said to the wife that I would be the one to cook today’s staple. I traipse along the sidewalks of Lustre St. and examine where I could find the freshest and crispiest upo. To cook this everyday Filipino meal we should need the following: 

Half a Kilo Upo (which would be about half of a fairly sized one.) 

300 grams Corned Beef 

2 cloves Garlic 

2 pieces Onions 

3 pieces Shiny red tomatoes (Make sure they are red.) 

1 ounce Peppercorns 

1 pinch Rock Salt 

1 quart Cooking Oil 

1 Table Spoon Soy Sauce 

Cut the upo into thin slices, not too thin but about one-fourth inch in thickness. 

In a saucepan, cooked the corned beef until its brown and supple. Do not overcooked it to avoid drying it up and count only about 120 seconds before you drain it and set it aside for the meantime. In cooking, one needs to know how to count even without a timer in hand. I wonder how dreadful life it is for those who couldn’t count pass 20. There would be no cooking in their lives. So educate yourselves in numbers to make your lives more sublime. If you do not know how to count pass 20, I could not see how you could be able to cook simple meals like instant noodles. The packages always say, “cook for two and half minutes” which is exactly 150 seconds. That is a lot of seconds to count. 

In a separate pan, put enough cooking oil to a boil and sauté garlic, onions and tomatoes all at once until the tomatoes become tender in the eyes. After that, pour on the halfly cooked corned beef and count about two minutes before you pour the minced upo into the whole mixture. After a while, pinched in the salt and season with pepper and a few drops of soy sauce. Cover the pan and simmer for about ten minutes. Again, please do not overcook it for the vegetable may become soggy and the taste would be affected in a negative way.

Before noon, I ate the meal ahead of the rest and found out that at times, we can always get what we wanted if only we try our darnest and that I could get satisfaction contrary to what Mick Jagger was lamenting about for nearly four decades now. 

After my meal, I went to the computer upstairs and wrote this posting. I wondered if I had become “The Plagiarist” many bloggers fear. I hope not. 

KUNG HEI FAT CHOY to our Chinese brothers and sisters

The Universal Jesus

(Repost from  4-14-2006)

In these days of Lent, I share the occasion with our Christian brothers and sisters, as I likewise bring myself before the solemnity of faith, in the manner that I see fit. In this connection, let me present to you an article that I have read some years ago in an issue of Newsweek Magazine. It was titled “The Other Jesus” and was written by Kenneth L. Woodward in the March 27, 2000 issue of the said magazine. I have been a voracious reader of many periodicals in the past—-both local and international—-and of all the articles that I have read, this one turned out to be the most memorable for me and the one that I have especially kept not only because it was about faith and religion (which magazines like Newsweek and Time rarely venture into), but mainly because it was a very informative and insightful piece of writing. There is something about this article that I could not point to, which is the reason why I always go back to it every now and then, every time I go rummaging through old issues of magazines and newspapers. I don’t know why I always do these things. Delving into old papers and documents had become an annual ritual for me that without doing it even for once, my year is not complete. I like the feeling of going through old things that I have piled in boxes and huge envelopes because they almost always remind me of past things that endear to me, that I could go all day excavating through old books and photographs and the dust coming from them gives such a unique and amorous scent. This year, at this particular point in time, when the kids are mostly home for the school break and summer provides a lot of empty hours for empty pleasures, I went backtracking again, through piles of old magazines and found this one magazine that contained the article that became my favorite of all time.

Due to copyright restrictions, I won’t be able to present here the verbatim content of the article “The Other Jesus” but I am giving you the synopsis, as best as I could. The online archives section of the Newsweek Magazine have this article stacked but it isn’t free. If you have online subscription to it, you’ll have free access to past issues.

In Catholicism, Jesus Christ is revered as the Son of God, the most recognized member of the trinity and He is the Redeemer of Mankind. In Pope John Paul’s own words, “Christ is absolutely original and absolutely unique…” The Gospel Christ is the most well-known personage of the Messiah and many of us had learn to know Him as the man who was born of a virgin, who healed the sick and made the blind see; One who brought back to life a man who had already gone dead; who once walked on water and calmed the storms in the sea; and who gave His life to humanity in order that the sins of the world may be taken away.

But Jesus Christ is by Himself a universal icon that is also accepted and embraced by many other religions of the world.

For instance, Jesus Christ is one of the most revered prophets in Islam and His name is mentioned in the Quran in the most respectful of manner. Moslems fully believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary through a miraculous birth under a palm tree and that he had already spoken words when he was still an infant to the effect that He was indeed sent by God. What was a little unusual is that when there came a time that many doubted the birth of Jesus by a virgin, many Moslem scholars came to the front in order to defend and affirm this miraculous birth. If in the Gospels Jesus Christ was crucified and died on the cross, to resurrect three days later, the Quran on the one hand declared that He did not die at all and was in fact saved by Allah before He was crucified and was ascended directly to heaven. Moslems of all sects believe that Jesus Christ is the one prophet that will come back when the end of the world becomes near and will defeat the anti-Christ. To them, among all prophets and messengers, only He and Mary were untouched by Satan.

In Bhuddism, many Zen practitioners see both Jesus and Buddha as brethrens in their quest to spread the teaching of “universal love”. Parallels in their lives are reiterated as they were similarly born in a miraculous manner to chaste women, and both left home for the wilderness and were tempted by a Satan figure. Like Jesus, Buddha also work wonders and preached compassion, selflessness and altruism and had challenged the religious establishments pertaining to his time. A Russian anthropologist had once postulated that Jesus had one time in His life paid a visit to a Buddhist seminary in Bhuttan and His short sojourn there was even recorded in one of the documents written by monks there. These “findings” has gone largely unconfirmed of course, but this was clearly an attempt to inculcate the person of Jesus Christ into the context of Buddhism.

In Hinduism, Jesus takes the form of a legendary shaman that once journeyed to India and learned the ways of attaining god-consciousness. Many Hindus are drawn to the figure of Jesus as an image of compassion and non-violence—virtues that are taught in Hinduism. For them, Christ-consciousness, Krishna-consciousness, and God-consciousness are one and the same thing. If Jesus Christ had propagated the singular teaching of “Love thy neighbors”, Hindu philosophy adheres to the notion that says, “You and I are the same things.”

Jesus Christ as a revered icon is a more complicated affair in Judaism because for one, Christ had challenged its very norms and principles when He was here on Earth. For generations, the teachers of Judaism had tried to isolate Jesus Christ as a trivial revolutionary that spoke of heresy and religious rebelliousness and had caution every Jew to distance from Him. But in time, many reformists in Judaism had started to accept Jesus as an “admirable teacher” and one who personifies the sufferings and redemption of the Jewish people, through many struggles like the Holocaust and statelessness. And besides, Jesus Christ was a Jew Himself and that fact is undeniable by itself and therefore, Judaism remain to have a claim on His greatness.

This is the “Universal Jesus”; a figure that transcends not only geographical partitions but also penetrates the restrictions brought about by the differences of faiths in this world. He may not be seen in the same exact breath by every religion in this world, but a closer examination shows that He had become so revered by many that not only Christianity has a claim on Him, but also Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and even Judaism. All great religions of the world embrace Him as a religious icon, one way or another, in their own respective ways.

 

In the Middle of Nowhere

It was a huge disappointment to find out that although dried fish processing was rampant in our island hometown, there was just too much buyers of the goods that I could not possibly penetrate the cartel in so short a time. Traders from as far up north in Pagadian City, about five hundred miles from Zamboanga, would come and negotiate with the local fishermen and cornered the market there. I was advised that seizing a sufficient amount of the goods would entail some patience and a lengthened stay in the islands. This was an untenable idea for me. The urban man in me would be so hard pressed to slide into the virtual desolation of rural life, to be "the man called Friday" and away from the honking noise and pollution of the city. While the serenity of the islands provided me a great breather, it was imaginable for me then to succumb into general silence of a rural environment. There would be just too much silence that it would border the deafening.

The wide and miles and miles of stretch virginal beaches consoled my frustrations and led my mind away from the profits that I nearly counted already and yet the ones that would not be obtaining, at least not with that trip. We took small boats and scoured the nearby islands. The breezy seascape had regained my trust in nature, quelling every suspicion that nature has finally and absolutely lost its battle against the industrial advancement of humanity.

There was this over-stretched patched of sand in the middle of two islands that really caught my amazement. It was not of course very unlikely that such natural accumulation of sand would concur in an area full of shores in the first place; but have you heard of a beach in the middle of the sea? One could not help but surmised that Atlantis might have been similarly situated as that particular beach, once rising to the surface before it got sunk into the pit of the ocean.

I walked almost the length of the half-mile patch of the whitest of sand and wondered why nothing grows except some marine plants attached like mildews to rocky corals. I picked some shells and stones and felt somewhat mesmerized that there were sea stones that were embroidered with the most perfect shape of a star. My cousin King told me that they sell well with Japanese tourist, the ones they make into beads. My eyes squinted to examine the stones more forcefully and I almost concluded that God must have some industrial factories up there that stones like those could be sculptured with some design that only machines could afford. The perfect symmetries were there and the lines were straight.

I stared upward and the sky was clear of any cloud and it was the kind of place where you could view the entire sky from one end, towards another, at any angle you gained sight. Funny that I felt reassured that in that place, I would not hear the sound of radios, nor the cacophonic slur of television, neither the honks of cars and motorcycles. There was no smell but the salty fragrance of the sea and I was assured that any fumes or dusty accumulations of factories would never ting the air. No matter how trivial was such realization but I could not help appreciating the newfound belief that despite of everything, there is still a place where the hands of urban life, with its many gadgets and equipments and convoluted industrial mazes, could not reach.

From "A Prophet’s Life". Read more 

The Fruitful Basket

“Then there was a pageant of men that I saw in the sky, as the clouds formed their images, holding each others arms as an image of an angel appeared out of nowhere in order to reach out for them and led them towards a direction that pointed upward.”

Among the most beautiful and most delightful symbols that I have seen from the sky was the scene of men holding each others hands, as if they are brothers to each other, not letting go of another, while a man with a span of wings on his back appeared out of nowhere in order to extend his hand, and in order to lead them towards a place full of hope and promise.

My brothers and sisters, there is no far greater purpose in life than to seek the oneness of all men, as we are all created equal, no matter how we were created differently. Nothing far more heroic in the eyes of men and mostly in the eyes of Our Lord, than to seek the fellowship of other men, although these men may be of different race or creed. Nothing is greater than a love to one who differs from us, for they differ not of their own intentions, but merely the intentions of nature and circumstances. For the Arab is man of the dessert while the Asian is mostly of the plains.

And yet to this mission, nothing could be far more daunting, for while we seek the peace among ourselves we are continuously haunted by our unpeace. We see with every eye and we hear with every ear how we wear many shades of skins and how we speak in many tongues, we are not blind to this. We are never blind also as to how the differences in us give rise to conflicts and arguments, and even to bloodshed that in one man’s hands lies the blood of his brother.

Far too difficult this task may be and yet we do not take heed to the weaker side of our minds and hearts. We shall strive to seek peace amongst us no matter how the storms may shatter our resolve, for it is the will of the Lord God Almighty, that we seek now the Brotherhood of Man.

We must fill the basket with apples and oranges; and then we still have to fill it with peaches and mangoes; and then further, we still have to load it with mangosteens and bananas. And we shall carry this basket no matter how we realize that our load had become heavier. We must strive harder, for sooner than we know, we shall reap our rewards in the end, and savor the basket full of fruits of many kinds.

We are like the river that threads many paths and yet to end merely in the same ocean. We all must thread the same path in the name of Our Lord God, for whomsoever conflicts with his brother, also conflicts with Him.

For He is like the Father who has many children and does not in any manner leave any child to suffer the weather, out in the coldness of the night. And He whispers gently to the ears of the older and wealthier children in order to persuade them to seek out their poorer and suffering siblings, for He suffers also when one of His children suffers.

He is the Father who suffers the wounds of His children.

How blinded have we become by our prejudice? How we take others aside for lack of knowledge that all men are seen as equal in the eyes of God. He did not deem it that He shall favor some and disfavor others, for He is the God of All Men.

Could you honestly believe in your hearts that He had allowed many other men to be borne only for them to lose salvation, just because they have not come to the folds of Christianity or Islam? There are just too many of them that we could never be blind.

Have you actually expect the china man to speak the white man’s tongue? Shall the African drink wine on his daily table when he grows root crops to drink some other beverage?

Shall you ask why the Jew did not become a Moslem when all his life he was tended and made to learn his own scriptures? Could you blame anyone? Blame is never in the side of the Lord.

We may imbibe a Hindu to seek your own creed, by teaching him all the books that may be at hand and yet you could go for a thousand days and a thousand nights and you would soon find out that you were only made to imbibe a few of them, if ever there would be learners of your kind of faith. It would take a millennium for you then to imbibe most of them, a task nearly impossible.

In so long that any one remains in the righteous path, to follow the basic teachings of the major faiths—-Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism—-then there would be no more argument for every religion seeks the righteous path, seeks the goodness in every man.

For a Moslem is blameless if he professes to Allah, the Most Merciful and the Most Omnipotent because mainly, he had been thought by his forefathers in the learned ways of Islam, until he had embraced genuinely the faith of his forefathers?

In so as the Christian, he remain blameless in the eyes of other men, for mostly he has learned in the way of Jesus Christ even from birth, and even until death comes to him.

And so is with the Jew, for he was born a Jew in the first place and learned mostly the teachings of Abraham and Moses. How could blame be upon him?

For faith can be bared to its simplest form and that is, in order for man to pursue the goodness of our hearts and to dispel wickedness. What is evil is the grave things that men do-fornication, adultery, murder, thievery, the wantonness of the tongues, the propensity to conflict, selfishness and apathy to the plight of the unfortunate. These are the things we must take issue and not the differences of our faith.

We must seek the unity in our faith rather than make war with the differences, for it is like upon seeing the rose then hating upon the thorns rather than being enamored by the beautiful red petals.

For a man may be rich in faith and yet in the confines of his own home, he is wicked and evil in his heart, faith then is of no essence to him.

Yet a man you see on the street may be of another faith aside from your own, and yet he is kind in his heart and light towards his other fellow men—-his faith is of the greatest essence to him and to the whole world.

It is foolish now to believe that we could all be harbored in the same singular faith. Let be what could be let be. In so long as Evil does not reign in this world, then live and let live.

It is childish and at times foolish if we should expect the china man to speak the white tongue from his birth. We knock on empty doors if we should seek that in the end, men should speak the same tongue and believe in the same creed. Without our differences, existence in this world would be insufferable for its monotony. The world would not turn and revolve.

Our differences allow people to roam and explore the unknown, to be interested in the other. Men traveled in the past to find things different from what they have. They road the waves and braved the great ocean waves in order to find porcelains and spices in some faraway land. If spices were all abound, we would have not reached these level of understanding amongst people of different nations for men would not have traveled in the past. It was differences that brought men of different race closer together in the past and until now.

Prejudice put a seed of viciousness in our hearts that often we are led to hate and violence towards other men whose only pain was to be born different from us. To seek prejudice is to plant a seed of conflict, to seek the weapons of war, instead of fellowship.

We see the thorns and not the flower.

We must now realize that the Lord had intended it that we are born different. Our differences are for a purpose, even our differences in faith. If all religion seeks the path of righteousness, then there shall be no point of dispute.

Let not prejudice put you at risk of the Judgment Day for whomsoever conflicts with his brother, conflicts also with Him, Our Lord God Almighty.

There shall be no argument as which is the greatest of faith for even if we debate for a thousand days and thousand nights, no one could ever claim the truest faith with irrefutable evidence. The words would not end and the arguments would not cease. Let be what should let be and live so that others may live.

For righteousness is never the monopoly of any faith. In so long as we are all righteous and prayerful to the Lord God, we shall be rewarded with our peace in the Hereafter.

For those who shall make peace shall be called the Children of God.

 

From my collection of essays: "The Voyage" 

The Meaning of Life

( A repost from April 13, 2007: A favorite for me… )

I was walking the downtown streets some days ago, feeling a little bit restless for reasons unknown to me specifically, at least to the one or those that I could not pinpoint to with reasonable certainty. Perhaps this is one sort of a malady that I have read about once before in some old decrepit medical book stacked in my mother-in-laws deteriorating wooden cabinets, those that were partly eaten by termites, looking so fragile that a simple disturbance on it would let spew a handful of mashed-up and grounded wooden particles—-which I find to be so repulsive knowing that they were the end results of some crawlers’ eating frenzy.

This malady is sometimes called depression or anxiety problems (they go by many names depending on the author of the medical book I read) and once in a while I retreat into this state and like water, I just have to let go of it for I could not rein it in my hands—-no matter what.

I passed by the new barbershop just in front of the old Ever theater—one that had seen better days—-and I thought I might get my hair done. I stared at a glass partition from a nearby store and had an inkling that my hair wasn’t as disheveled as I thought it was. I even saw it to be fitting to me despite the general rugged look and I had thought then that moviestars have lengthy hairs even if they were males, having that blown away look. I was a little worried that if one sports a blown away and rugged crown of hair and at the same time not being a moviestar, one might be easily taken for a madman walking the streets at high noon. But that sidewalk mirror was good to me and I felt that my uncut hair would be fit for a star. Some mirrors are good to me ; mostly they are not—-especially those in my bedroom.

So I passed with having a quick haircut that day and hoped that the blown away look would be fitting enough for me for quite a number of days more. I then strolled farther down the city sidewalks and came towards a crevice full of DVD stalls and I felt a little blown away after seeing so many titles available and on a dirt cheap prices at that, considering that for 80 bucks, one can get a DVD disc that contains 8 to 12 movies in it, and most of them were blockbusters and of very recent release. Some of them were not even shown yet here in local theaters. That’s how tempting it was for movie aficionados like me. I could not say now that I haven’t had scored myself some pirated items before (I had been smoking a brand of cigarette smuggled from Hongkong when I was in college) and of course, it would be unthinkable for me to not have seen a pirated movie before. I had of course.

But while I was glancing on stacks and stacks of DVD disks, my mind was swinging between the forthrightness of not buying a pirated item and having a devilish pleasure on filling my hunger for movies at throwaway prices. I could always remember that video clip that goes with every movie I rent from video stores and the loud, thundering reminder that says: “You Don’t Steal A Car! You Don’t Steal A House! You Don’t Steal A Movie!”, and somehow my inner conscience is disturbed by such that whenever that clip goes in every movie I rent, I wanted to shout at whoever that guy behind the thundering voice and belch, “Stop It! I Heard You. You Don’t Have To Remind Me That All The Time. You’re Not My Mother!”

My inner conscience had gotten the better of me that time so I just slowly walk away from stacks and stacks of salacious movies and guilty pleasures. I then remember that a new Video City branch had opened just a block away and I headed immediately towards it. The moment I had gazed through the available movie titles, I felt an immediate surge of gleefulness inside me since I hadn’t expected that the new video store could offer such voluminous number of titles, especially of recent ones. The video store where I usually get my dose of movies is so miserably lacking in inventory that I guess I won’t be visiting it from now on, except perhaps in some momentary lapse of reason in the future.

I felt like a child lost in a sea of movie titles and I almost picked up every disk that had caught my eye, until I reached the “Drama” section and there in front of me was a copy of Wong Kar Wai’s “2046” and I was excited to high heavens. It had been much talked about in the net world about how good it was and for a long time, I was trying to get my hand on a copy of it, and for a while there I thought I wouldn’t be able to see it for it would be unthinkable that it’d be exhibited in local theaters considering that it was released about three years ago. And I haven’t had seen any trace of it in every video rental store I went before.

I had anticipated this movie ever since I have grown a special fondness for oriental art films, especially those of the legendary filmmaker Zhang Zimou, whose film “Farewell To My Concubine” was so wonderfully entertaining and had primarily introduced me to other notable movies from China or Hongkong. Before that, ever since I was in high school, I had been delighted by the magic of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpieces like “Ran” and “Dreams”.

And so “2046” was about a writer who had become so engrossed about his own written piece that he saw himself being dragged into it, and feeling the pains and longings of the characters he had made himself. “2046” was a work about a train that once in a while travels towards the year “2046” and no one who goes there ever came back, except for one, the male protagonists. It is said that those who journey towards this strange destination are those who are longing for love, perhaps a kind that could not be found here at present, for how come they have to travel towards a point of no return just looking for it? What love is there out there that some have risk even their own mortal existence just to gain it? It was written by the writer that nobody actually knows how long for one to get to “2046”, for some it would be faster, but sometimes, to those unlucky travelers, it might take so long that they would start to lose their senses and sanity while inside the rain, having nothing to do except sit down and wait for the arrival time, one that is not definite and without any sign of coming. The main male protagonist in the novel had such kind of journey, one that was so lenthgy and seemingly unending that he fell in love with an android, an artificial human being stewarding the train.

The writer had his own life in the movie “2046”, a life lived sometime in the 1960’s where according to him “he just found himself to be in”. He earn his meals by writing columns and kung-fu stories for local dailies and billeted himself in a room with a door number that states “2046”. That was where he had sourced the title for his novel, a number which in his own mind had taken his fancy and unusual interest.

Along the way, he met a wife of another man named Bai Ling, who had runned away from her husband for having another woman and had rented a room just across his own. They slowly fell for each other and started a torrid affair filled with nights of passion and unhindered bliss. Until one day the woman asked him if ever he wanted to stick it out with him. But the writer wouldn’t agree to be exclusive to one single woman and stressed that he was seeing other women while he was having an affair with her. Bai Ling was furious and ended their relationship with tears flooding from her eyes and agitation painted all over her face.

They both started seeing other people and whenever they passed each other in public gatherings, they both pretend not to know each other and according to the writer, it was difficult to pretend and not notice her. It was clear that it was more difficult for Bai Ling to pretend and it showed so much in the utter sadness that found harbor in her teary eyes.

Six years later, the writer was in a relationship with a woman that had a similar name to a woman he had an affair so many years ago. It wasn’t Bai Ling, but another one who had resembled Bai Ling’s general appearance, a circumstance that had led me to ponder whether or not Bai Ling and Su Lizhen was one and the same person. The new woman eventually left the writer for some undeclared reason for she said, “she just have to go away”.

And inside a car—-drunken and weary—-the writer finally realized that he is starting to lose ‘the meaning of life’. He was thinking to himself and thought that six years ago, he had a chance to find the meaning of lifewhen the beautiful Bai Ling offered herself to be his long time partner. But he had other ideas and now regretted it.

He met Bai Ling for one more time but the feeling was never the same aagain and it had seemed that in the end, he had entirely lose grasp on what in his mind was “the meaning of life”.

The movie “2046” eventually ignited in me the question about life and its meaning. I try to see myself in the writer’s own predicaments and evaluate if I had what he call as “the meaning of life”. Have I lost it? Or I am living it? Or perhaps, the meaning is just not clear at all.

One way or another, we all are trapped within the world we now dwell, sometimes embroiled in raucous routine everyday conducts, sometimes just swaying to where the wind blows, and often forgetting that at the end of the day, we might not be able to entirely grasp the so-called “meaning of life”. What’s in store for me when I grow old? Where am I heading? Am I happy or am I miserable?

Am I that sort of individual who would jump into a train and head to “2046”?

These are just questions and I hope that this momentary bout with depression would vanish like thin air. And then I’ll have in my full grasp the so-called “meaning of life” by then. Whatever that means.

from my blog : "The Citizen On Mars" 

The Classification of Persons

What’s my classification? I often have thoughts about myself – whether am I a rich man or a poor man. Am I of wealth or not? Of religion or of apostasy, holder of knowledge or merely bestowed by empty notions of a monotonous mind? Of race and ethnical considerations, among kindred spirits and brethrens, within circle of affiliations and aggrupations, these also become further considerations to this particular questioning.

There is a universe of wandering, as I thread upon these thoughts, lost in detail and exactness for these premises does not become susceptible to ubiquitous deduction, merely by intuition and perception.

There is that notion I’ve learned just recently that persons often interact in terms of actions and inactions, in gestures and signage, more intensely at times than with the spoken word.  This is Symbolic Interactionism at its keenest, as ushered in by social philosophers Talcott Parson and Herbert Blumer, a primal social concept that I’ve learned from my attendance to doctoral classes in most recent days.

In the principle of symbolism, persons act towards things in terms of how they ascribe thoughts and meaning to these specific things, as if upon organisms relating merely in action and reaction, but not in conversation.

The first instance that I have come upon this specific premise of human action, I have exhibited immediate reversion to such, not being able to fathom the very idea that humans could be assimilated with beast and organisms even merely as to the manner of social interaction and communication. I regretted this concept in fact, and have decided to set it aside.

But on the second and third instances, relinquishing a more focus thought on symbolism as a principle in human interaction, I have come to fully appreciate its main intention and direction of thought.

I have realized thereupon (upon daily observations and examinations of how persons relate and converse between and among each other) that indeed, we are full of gestures and signage that relays the manner in which we have thoughts on certain objects, events and persons.

My observations did not in fact end on such notions of symbolism, for I have reckoned that upon these premises, I could build upon further theory and principles on some notions of human interaction and social orientation. I have thought that the social theory of symbolic interaction can serve as a vigorous anchor for the philosophical determination of the classification of persons, for I have come upon this thoughtful undertaking so very lately, for what classification am I as a person.

Let us not be in denial, for I am of awareness that I am not merely alone in these thoughts, for there would be myriads out there that have come upon this particular questioning of the self.

I am lost sometimes about myself; this is not to be an understatement. And I am like a wanderer lost in a vast wilderness at times when it comes to this specific thought, not knowing what direction to follow or thread upon.

There are times that I feel that I could be so evil in person that is engrossed with evil thoughts; so strong these thoughts that I retreat from the outside world just examining and weighing the things that I have become or could become. I fully regret these thoughts of course, and this specific orientation of the mind and self. For a person should be full of goodwill at most times, of good thoughts and intentions. We should all be that way, that’s the most ideal state of persons, keen to relate and decent in words and actions.

But often, this is the hardest thing to do.

At most times, I can believe that I am mostly of good intentions. I could not help but forward this notion to the others that I often interact with.

To this vacillating ideas of my person have thence come forth this particular notion that one could determine one’s classification of the self  through the manner of social interaction, in the way that Symbolic Interactionism have proposed the ways of persons to be.

That is, in positive gestures and signage, one could determine the aggrupations and association of the self. In negativity, one could determine the non-classification of person—- as simple as that.

But of course, this particular social concept of mine is still of nascent roots. It needs further study.

From my blog "THE CITIZEN ON MARS" 

 

The Beast and Other Stories

In my senior years in law school, an old friend, Aziz Mustafa called me up and inquired if I needed a job. The offer was like that of Marlon Brando’s, it was hard to refuse. Working for a foreign-funded institution is like a baptism of fire, threading another dimension of existence. My hands were so full I choke on paperwork virtually. There is this braggadocio in me that always get me into the prying pan. I never learned it seemed. Serving the second half of my presidency, tackling the end years of my law school, and eating up paper at work—all of them almost at the same time—stretched me up like a rubber band in order to clip bundles and bundles of papers. I was always up and about, always on the run it seemed. If I find myself sitting in a corner at that time, that would have been a minor miracle. Even at home, I would take work and finish it there because there was a time that regular office time could not accommodate them. There was madness in activity, so much activity it seemed that you could imagine me like a crazy wheel rolling and rolling until nothing is there to roll for. My nerves were full but it did not snapped because somehow, I felt at ease with furious activity that inactivity was then a hellish idea. I bet when the juices gets going, work becomes more and more palatable.

The money was so good that I stayed in my job even if I had consequently has to take the bar examinations to gain my lawyering license. And besides I was married already then.

I did not last in my work. There was a parting that was both hurtful but at the same time relieving. For almost two years, office work had gotten so flat that with more personnel coming, the load got lighter and lighter until there is nothing more to do except watch for the clock’s small hand to approach five o’ clock. And the days grew longer that we always joke around that somehow there must be some fantasy company we could work in that every day was salary day. At the beginning of the day, we wished it were already twilight. At the beginning of the month, we would wish it were nearly halfway through. At least not all of us felt that way. Or perhaps some were just not as honest about being disturbed of the almost fatal routinariness of day jobs, especially government clerical jobs.

But work is work and a job is a job. Without it, there is no sense that you find yourself suddenly idle and not earning the usual things. Besides, who could go against that unwritten rule where it seems that humans were created merely for the purpose of growing up until you could work and then die? There were times when I was too uncomfortably busy that I used to daydream how my world could be so wonderful if I could spend every day of my life just sitting around in front of my computer and make that proverbial "great Filipino novel" and watch over my kids when I am not scribbling anything. Alas, writing a novel was so much easier to imagine than do. It was like putting up a rocket ship or assembling a nuclear bomb. I tried to make some upstarts but nothing came about not until years later.

Delusion I had hoped then could propel me towards success in literature. I had believed that my intellect was adequate to harbor such ambition, sadly, intellect and grammatical skills were not enough to get me going towards endless and lonely nights by myself, writing and imagining, the sort fiction demands. I had fully realized then that there is more to me that writing demands, something ethereal and incorporeal, one that could not be seen; some call it inspiration and it was inspiration that I lacked then.

I tried giving life to an otherworldly tale of two-lovers separated by time. I called it "Black Sea, Dark Night", the way old writers thought of fancy but concise titles like "My Brother, The Executioner" of F.Sionil Jose or "The Joy Luck Club" of Amy Tan. More of it, it was a title that came to my mind whenever I pondered upon the darkness of depression. I had learned so well that writing from the heart is the sole highway towards affective writing and I could not be genuine I would not find no parallel in my life to the things I write. It was about Peter, an adolescent struggling with the same depression problems I had who suddenly saw a creature of the night, a vision of an old man with a decrepit hat. The spirit would talk to him and proposed that he do some favor for a task only he could do. Peter would not know how to tackle this quandary at first for no one would believe his tales, when almost everyone he knows he had this mental or behavioral problems; until someone did and the story goes on and on until the final journey into the spirit world and back and the final task accomplished to appeased the spirit. What task was this did not materialized in the story, I could not even invent one until now that it is such of essence that a spirit would go to the extent of contacting a half-deranged boy. Although the tale would take me into the ancient warrior days of Zamboanga, towards the colonial days of Spanish Conquistadors, it stopped when the tribal chieftain was about to declare war upon the much stronger Spanish soldiers and I left it at that. Until now, Black Sea, dark Night is still yearning for its ending but you would learn later on why It remains eating dust somewhere in one of my attaché cases.

Stephen King might have invaded the crevices of my veins that I had this inclination to write about the things that feeds our fears. There is something delicious in testing the limits of our nerves. The more we fear the more we scurry for the mysterious. Like eating pepper; the more it stings the more we crave.

I remember that before there was "Black Sea, Dark Night", I had this short story, again with a fancy title. I called it "The Southbound City of Iceberg", a tale of an imaginary beast lounging beneath the city under ways, in sewages and giant canals, pulling down each victim one after another, one by one that as the disappearances became more frequent, the "beast" would go on a very lengthy guilt-trip. What if men finally knew about his existence? And although it was merely a beast it had the proper intelligence to regulate its mayhem. It ended just that way, although every possible circumstances was scrutinized by the "beast", to the worse where mankind would pour all its resources, the fighter planes of America, the satellites of China, the tanks of Great Britain—all at once coming to the city of Zamboanga hunting for its own mischief and blasting it towards perdition, turning into pulp or pulverized like crisp biscuits.

The "beast" would stare upward the sky and got disturbed by the moving starlights that it did not suspected at once to be man-made, until later on it surmised that men had invented eyes in the sky in order to hunt it. It had surmised that before, man had no such equipments to search for misfits of nature now it has meteor-like gadgets to roam the sky as searchlights. The "beast" was an ancient creature that slumbered for thousand of years, only to wake up to a cacophony of downtown lights, rock music, honking jitneys and television. The world was never the same it had determined. Even at night, the streets were brimming with clarity making its haunting all the more difficult.

And yet, despite this difficulty, the thirst for flesh and blood was overpowering that day in and day out, it would peer from the dark crevices of the street, in some isolated nook or corner of the city, finding out if it could be lucky at any time, that someone had drunken too much or got too much honked by drugs in the head, to walk alone by some abandoned alleyways, and then go for the kill. It could get luckier it thought, if some lovers who lacked patience would abuse the darkness of bushes and wayward trees, to do the unthinkable, where the beast could go for a double kill.

As days went by, newspapers started to report these mysterious disappearances and so the "beast" finally went into the guilt tripping I mentioned earlier. Men are now more sensitive to this untoward incidence, that every crime has its record and every sin has its public board. The "beast" hated the modern man all the more. It had delusions of murdering the city inhabitants all at once, wrecking havoc like a crazy evil god, flooding the ground with flood. Luckily for the city, it inhibited itself. Thanks to the things it sees on television. Those weapons of the modern man were so different than those it had seen before—those spears and daggers—even those catapults were no matches.

It ended when it decided not to devour as much in order that it would not be indicted by man that in my fantastic mind, the "beast" is still out there, pulling down its victim one by one.

The "beast" story was somewhat lyrical and honest. It was then the first and only tale that I had completed. It was flowing since it was all about my struggle against "Satan", that beast of a menace that keeps pulling down young men and women, leading them into some dirty and stinking abysses of life, and never to get out again.

I simply lost my manuscript that was why it did not go all the way to the papers.

But material things are not to be fret up, especially when these things could be created. If I lost it, I thought I would just make another one then. A better one, it must be.

This better one did not materialize and the tale of that doggone "beast" is like a lost child whom I wish to be reunited in the future.

Oh, I lied about completing just a single work. Remember the dream of the pond? The moment I woke up from that dream, I could not stop the itch to write and document it for I had no such other dream that could be so vivid at that. I remember so well the caking red clay to where the dancing old woman floated above. Even the color of the dewy water was stained like rust in my mind that every time I think about it, I could feel the sharp and crispy coolness it brought my skin. I documented every moment, every emotion and every color of the environment. The sky was red, bleeding towards horizon and the air was heavy and so still, and that my breathing was the only sound I heard most of the time. In fact there was that conversations with the other two men present that I forgot to mention. As I came out from the water, I remember being a little aghast at the interferences of the men who looked like me.

"Why don’t you leave me alone", I almost shouted at their faces.

"You could not go deeper. You would not be able to come out", one of them said, with a worried look in his face that tells some grave worry or concern.

I looked at them and hissed and I almost sneered. What could have gotten in their heads that they burden themselves the issue of my well-being? These were very particular dialogues and emotions that I have captured in writing "The Pond" then. I remember how surreal was the world that I painted in that story, responsibly truthful to the happenstance in my dream of the pond.

Then perhaps by now we recognize that my dreams, my memories and my fiction had a heavy thread on them; all are surreal. Perhaps, we could add my life to that.

(An excerpt from my unfinished semi-autobiography "A Prophet’s Life")