Romancing the lion

6:30 am;June 3, 2008 

babaye…ikid paglakat

tipakadto sa purtahan

hinay-hinaya pagtrangka

iton nga waray aringasa

ayaw paragaaka

kay maabat an kawatan

nga maninira ka na-

uuwaton ka na liwat

ikapira ka na nasalisihan?

diri ka la gihapon nagmamaan

diri mapaid an kawatan

san imo kakurian

trangkahi pati an luyo

para waray gud maagian

ayaw pag-abrihi bisan manuktok

iluba gad, ayaw pagpadara

kun guintatagayan ka pa naman

sin istorya nga matam-is ura-ura

kay kadali mo gad mahubog-

makaturog ka na liwat

kumita ka sa imo atubangan

guintaplong ka, pagmata

manguyngoy ka na liwat?

husto na, panrangka!

3:30 am; June 4, 2008

The pro-Arroyo tag is overrated. It has deceived several people- that includes the president, of course- into thinking that Cebuanos fail, or refuse, to see the excesses of the current administration. The wide margin of votes that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo got over her most bitter rival in the 2004 elections is overrated just the same. “How could they bring me down?” she asked rhetorically as if her victory in Cebu has made her indispensable, and the people who voted for her, apologists. I am compelled to think that the mandate Cebu has accorded her has been prostituted.

While the streets of Metro Manila- in the heights of Jun Lozada’s testimonies- had been flooded with warm bodies protesting the above-said excesses, Cebu seemed to have remained unstirred, with very-little-to-no political noise. And so it has been dubbed, from the words of Lozada, himself, an Archdiocese of Malacañang.

I think that some intricacies have to be considered or we wallow in the superficial manifestations of the people’s sentiments like rallies or demonstrations. That is not to say that the demonstrations that have sparked in the last four months are not substantial. In this age of moral bankruptcy, it is imperative that the people get heard and we can hardly be emphatic, nowadays, without taking our grievances to the streets given that the government corrupts every institution that serves as a venue for demanding accountability.

Public dissent in Cebu, however, does not manifest in every means that of Metro Manila does. Rallies are very unpopular here. What is apparent to an observer who is not in Cebu is the disposition of its top politicians, the church- or the head of the church- and the media. They try to speak, and act, in behalf of the people but often, they fail- deliberately or not.

I am convinced that the general sentiment of the Cebuano people over the NBN-ZTE scandal, for example, is disgust. Our politicians, however, continue to proclaim allegiance to the president but I don’t think that it is because the people who voted for Arroyo do not call for accountability and do not see her culpability. I think that we are highly misrepresented.

The cab I was riding on my way to work some time last month was tuned into a local AM radio program, and I was fascinated with the comments sent, thru SMS, by the listeners on the issue of household rice hoarding which they conscientiously lambasted as a big stupidity. This government, they suggested, and I agree, is as thick-faced as to blame the people for the current crisis. One of these days, they said, the same government will accuse us of corruption- of stealing our own, taxpayers’ money. I think that the message of its sarcasm borders on the truth that anything is possible with the government that we have- anyone, and anything, is a potential scapegoat. That explains why the Lozada noise was suppressed by the rice crisis, and why Meralco takeover is cooking. I understand that these two issues deserve the people’s attention but see how nice and dirty the administration plays?

Very little has been said about Cebuanos who feel and think the same way that I do. This is not to claim that I think differently. My point is that I get dismayed with the lack and oftentimes, the absence of mobilisation in the local media. The perceived indifference is one, a failure of the media to get into the bottom of the people’s sentiment and rouse the people from stupor even as necessary; two, a failure of the local government to liberate itself from the shadow of the President and three, the obsession of some Cebuanos to be called “different,” specifically, being different from Metro Manila. I noticed how some people would deliberately ignore issues that call for collective action- Northern Imperialism is overrated.      

I am glad that the third factor I proposed invited some friends to speak out. I was told by one that it’s a matter of efficacy- what can a rally in Cebu do to oust Arroyo? Pretty much nothing- just a potential investor who changes his mind about putting up his business in the city. Another friend told me over coffee that, yes, we are naturally regionalistic but that it is just a matter of preserving the momentum our economy has gained in the last five years- are we willing to sacrifice all these?

Being in the BPO industry, I can come from a call center boom perspective. Honestly, I think that outsourcing will still be with us in the next ten years regardless of whose administration we have. I want to think that the economic growth in the past months is not a cancer but a cure. When I come to juxtapose the value of the peso and the pinch of inflation, I start to think again. The abuses of the administration is a very expensive price to pay so I wonder if we can ever concretise what it is that we are sacrificing our moral imperatives for. I gloat, and gleefully, at that, when I scan the paper and see the peso plunging from 40 to 41 or 41 to 42. No, that I have dollars to exchange for pesos but that I see the foreign exchange as the administration’s talisman- like nothing can touch it as long as the peso is strong.

I still beg to disagree, with all due respect, that another People Power revolution is the next bold step to make. I was in Fuente Circle along with the hundreds of students who protested against the suppression of truth in not opening the “second envelope” in the height of former President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment. I was there and I cheered (aged 19 and oblivious to the dangers of the game) as the names of the generals withdrawing support from the government were being announced. How far have we gone after that? Ours is a vicious cycle- the president we install after the revolution owes the military (and only the military) the debt of gratitude. The same president would only want to keep the military to stay in office. Much has been said about the excesses of the military in Arroyo’s presidency, I am tired of it- a president surely knows whose loyalty he should keep.

This article is not an attempt to justify the perceived indifference.  This is an attempt to give voice to the Cebuanos who have given Arroyo a chance but have been disillusioned– the taxi driver who tells me he has always tuned into the NBN-ZTE hearings and believes the truth Neri is hiding is right under our nose, the newspaper vendor who insists it is the president’s husband who is screwing up her office and the officemate who can’t explain how the prices of even non-petroleum products and less-processed foods rocket– I am one of them. 

Manuel Quezon III proposed in his column some time last month a viable option which I think, too, will be a more effective way of organizing a collective thought and action. Perhaps, I can only speak for myself or perhaps, too, I speak for many as, like Ani difranco, I stand up and shout “impeachment.”

The lights are out. This is not the first time  our house has sit dim-lit in this corner while the rest of the households held darkness hostage to the flourescent glow.

The electric fans are out, too, probably happy that they are given an hour off mechanical labour. A cardboard makes a good makeshift fan.

The issue is not global warming but like the ice caps that collapse because they can no longer stand the heat, my weeklong confinement in the dark teaches me lessons like the ones a fed-up lover does. You go about your day, come home, sleep and wake up- almost unsurprised- to the realisation that your electric service company has decided to put an end to its ordeal.

You had it coming.

And so you start to live with inconvenient truths. Truths like food leftovers decompose in the fridge, that they stink, and that they stink bad. Pandora’s Box would surely make a bad refrigerator brand.

I live in a corner unreached by civilisation but at least, I can expect my electric bill to go down this cut-off. 

Let there be light.

It was an epiphany when I stumbled over the phrase today…for two reasons- one, I just realized that the meaning it conveys is timeless, and two, The Technologian Student Press is one of the best places I have ever been.

Today, I am reminded that a disregard of direction is not courage or confidence. The paths we take are supposed to be perpendicular to the stars.  

Poor song, it seems to me now that I was projecting my little sadness to it when I asked The Miming why said song is sad. Alliteration is unintended.

It is an early Saturday morning, and I initially told her that I am sad today. I didn’t know why, or probably, I was too tired to find out why. No, probability is uncalled for- I know why, and I’ll get some whipping from my good friends if I tell them so or if they get to read this entry. They had been having a hard time exorcising the demons in my head.

I used to have demons in my room at night- desire, despair, desire but that is a different song, I’m turning a whiter shade of pale again.

And I said it is depressing though I don’t have a vivid picture in mind of what it depicts. It must be the melody. It makes me want to dance- arms thrown onto some shoulders, that I bet are looking anorexic, as if to resign from my daily fight with indulgence, pulling a neck closer to a lipping. Anorexia, I figured, must be the reason why those shoulders have always been hidden in those jackets. There must be some romance left in those bones if it penetrates through the flesh.

As I write this paragraph, I am eating pancit canton. It’s past 6 pm- still a Saturday. I just woke up from a ten-hour sleep. Crying is very benevolent, sometimes, even more benevolent than my good sisters when I ask them to give me a massage in order for me to sleep. I sneaked into my bedroom, and slept, with Crying this morning. I’m alone in the house today, and I will be the entire summer so I expect it to be one wet season.

I have to take a bath now. I need to go to the office.

So I went, and I’m back at home.

It is already Sunday, 4 am, and I lie awake in this bed, poking this little keyboard, on this screen, of this handheld. There’s no music in the background. I have just stumbled over what Spinoza says in Ethics- affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam. ”Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”

I feel better now.

My two whipher friends, The Miming and The Barla, are in an all-out war against the demons, and they are launching a massive campaign to pull me out of the quagmire that I am surreptitiously wallowing into.

It is like I have drunk a philter. The wisdom of the world must be the antidote. But the world is replete of different versions of what wisdom is or of which is the wiser thing to do. Let’s talk wisdom the next time. I will sleep now.

So I slept, and I woke up, and I went out with The Whiphers, and I had some fun which I should blog about in my next entry- if Work won’t envy me-and-Fun-getting-happy.

It is now Monday. It is 2 am, and I’m trying to sleep again. Annie Lennox is in the background. No, Crying isn’t around. I’ll see if somebody else knocks on my door to sleep over.

A week has passed, and it’s Saturday again.

It’s now past 1 am on a Sunday, and I’m in the office pantry, poking on the same handheld, listening to the same song.

I think now that one of the greatest glories of a man’s life is being able to transcend its ordeals- to love intensely, to hurt constructively, to suffer graciously and to live willingly.

I am seduced to dance to life- come, let’s undress our souls. 

Happy Sunday!

tell it to this famished fire

there is still a fountain beneath those parted lips

i have dug with mine before

the youth in you

that tongue- tamed and sometimes wild

endured our beating- the lashing

in the fountain

we played master and slave

deep into the crevasse

there is that water-in-the-well

i once drank it all down

like an arid desert, i preyed

we sketched our souls through these lips

and your mouth i crave

lest old age devour our youth

i paint the days

                       –little lioness; 14october06, 8:33 pm

Erap deserves more.

For the first after a long time, I like what I read about him in the paper today. I have long been complaining why the media can’t keep away from giving him the publicity he has always lavishly enjoyed but I think he deserves more these days if only to peeve him for being asked questions like- exactly like this: “was it not hypocritical of him to presume to lead the fight against corruption, accusing President Macapagal-Arroyo of such crimes when he himself was convicted of plunder?” 

I applaud, and I thank Agence France Presse (AFP) reporter Mynardo Macaraig for the straightforward question.

One can say that his argument is commonplace but why is it that, as Estrada lamented- as if we have forgotten his bastardisation of the presidential office and insult to the gullibility of the people- “nobody had ever asked him such a question in media interviews, not since he walked out of ‘rest house’ detention following his pardon.” My sentiments, exactly. And I think that it is more of a big slap to the media’s face.

It is blatant, he still lives like some god who is invulnerable even to an arrow shot right into his Achilles’ heel. He has a badly calloused shame. Or that he has deceived himself into thinking that everyone in this country, just like him, has lost his moral imperatives, anyway, so it’s okay to keep up with his fooling around.  

“I believe I am innocent. I explained it to him that people have already acquitted me and not the Sandiganbayan justices,” he said.   

I will never have baby Yana read the dictionary that he uses- the one that says acquittal is synonymous to pardon. I am also inclined to believe that somewhere a dictionary says innocence is synonymous to arrogance. 

In the event that “the opposition fails to come to an agreement (on a common candidate),” then he will run, again, for President in 2010.  

Before, being critical of what he says or do was more like wrestling with a ghost. With his most recent annoyance, however, I think that the media can do us a huge favor. It should either be we annoy him to death with the seriousness of our intention to question his credibility (or to validate his incredibility) or we boycott him.    

If the reason why television networks still the cover the affairs of Estrada is because of public clamor, then we rightfully deserve the mockery that we are faced with. But the news I watched on TV last Christmas Day showing Erap playing with his grandchildren and his son, for example, was a deliberate one casted by the media upon the public.  

It is a sad fact that part of the populace still worships Estrada but his messianic movie roles are not really the ones to blame. He deserves a boycott but what the papers and the television tell us is something else- as if nothing happened.   

I was frustrated with the footage as much as I was sometime in November when he was in Sunday Inquirer’s banner being the guest honor in the opening of a Greenhills mall just about a week or two after he was released from prison- if I remember it correctly.  

In the off-chance that the media sees our plight in the context of forgiving and forgetting, then, indeed, it has become instrumental in idiotising the masses.  

This is not to say that the mainstream media is useless. While I think that Web logs are excellent alternatives to searing commentaries and critical thought, I believe that the press remains indispensable and relevant to our times.  

We need to beat the crap out of Erap- exorcise the demon that causes his ego to bloat and scrape off that metaphorical calluse that makes him act like a god.    

It takes two to tango, people always say. Erap can’t dance alone. Let’s stop playing the music that makes him groove.    

You are a brat, and you get what you want. Not that it’s bad- I would want for you to get me if you want.

You didn’t need to petition the courts to have my name changed. And so you enjoy your privilege to call me Scardy Cat.

You taunted me once bitten, once hurt- how sweet.

I am convinced that you are an excellent teacher but don’t attempt at elementary Science. You were alternately calling me Scardy Cat and Chicken Shit as if the cat hatched from an egg like the chicken has.

If a cat copulates with and, eventually, impregnates a chicken, what would it bear- a kitten or a chick? Don’t ask me which came first between the chicken and the egg. I have to deprive you of every opportunity to articulate The Word. Try saying “Ginkgo Biloba” instead. It sounds nicer, doesn’t it? It is like you are some scholar.

Well, yes, you are an intellectual and a leftist- like Jacopo Belbo in Foucault’s Pendulum. But don’t get me wrong for saying that- I don’t adore you because you become less and less fascinated with people when they do. You seem to be always after somebody who can perpetually fight you.

I always want to pick a fight with you.

I was gritting my teeth before I left our rendezvous until when I trudged into the back of the PUJ because you were telling me that I would bring my chicken torment home. Then you basked in orchestrated triumph. Defeat blinded my eyes when I started writing this. But, no, you can’t win over me so let me continue to write merrily.

At the risk of being misunderstood by our spectators, you unhesitatingly called me The Word but I think that is only because we have a telegraphic Thesaurus. You know that from Shit, I can extract shinola.

Very sweet, indeed. You send hidden messages- like Morse Code.

You are loud, and I love that. You were screaming your lungs out in a hypocritically happy Sunday morning to tell the world that this woman’s a chicken shit.

All that is true but only because I don’t tell you upfront that I have warmed up with you. Is that all you want to know?

A rhetorical question, of course. I know you will tell me you don’t need to because you already know. But, yes, you make me adore you. I hate stating the obvious, too, so let me cut the crap.

There was a time when I was almost inclined to believe you are a member of some cult, spying on me- you would suddenly ask me what I was doing aside from thinking of you.

How sweet.

But you are a smoker so you must be smokey sweet. I have to have you chew a candy, somebody told me. I was once asked if I’m willing to lick an ash tray and I had to say yes since I like you- but, perhaps, only because you have told me you like me. It must be some kind of oral fixation.

My hopes committed suicide a day before your Multiple Personality Disorder attacked. The attempt failed but it died, anyway.

Then later on you made me realise you are another scardy cat.

You told me you are scared to bite, scared to hurt- cheap shot, but how sweet.

Sweet like candy to my soul.

Sweet you rock and sweet you roll.

And the word busy was made flesh- I have, finally, finished my work assignment after a long overdue. I planned to treat myself to a book after the oppressively endless procrastination I have indulged myself into.  

So I went to the office last Saturday but only to do the dirty job– my least-favorite sin– most team leads do before the clock unforgivingly strikes twelve on a Sunday, Bloody Sunday. I wallowed in a guilt-trip but for no more than a minute. No, that isn’t the treat yet- of course. 

I found myself in a dim-lit corner outside McDonald’s down the building; my head, fornicating with the Autobiography of a Whip. The Barla would be happy to know that I was down to twenty-eight pages before the end of a journey of a thousand orgasms. She might want to kiss the same butt she has tongue-lashed for not finishing the book on time. She had been giving me piercing looks as if to scare the lust off me. 

I finished the book at home and voila, I have returned it to the library yesterday to clear The Barla’s name. She was supposed to return it two Mondays ago. 

If the book were a compact disc, it would have been scratched from rewinds and fast-forwards. It is ”very graphic” as The Barla warned me- yes, warned, as if she were my mother telling me to stay away from boys, and more importantly, their toys. 

The first few case histories were very arresting but I lost momentum in the introduction of the cults. But at least, I had been advancing fairly at midnight on Saturday until around five in the morning. Our repressed-to-deprived coffee-and-conversation pal who had the nerve to call me starved won’t believe me if I say it is because of historical and cultural allusions.  

I like History, believe me.  

See, I had to borrow it again right after returning because I want to take down notes and do further research. More importantly, though, I’d like to kiss and make up with the battered book as few pages had already been torn. I’ve got to fix it just to make sure that the proliferation of the whip specie goes a long, long, way.  

If there’s anything you can get from it sans the inevitable arousals, it is that flagellation is disturbing and at a certain degree, infectiously depressing. But as the author opined, there is nothing about man that should be held in contempt and disrepute or something to that effect. 

I highly recommend the book. I am sure that the peeping toms in you will take on a new dimension or, probably, perversion.  

Who knows?