The Wily Filipino

Mmmm.

First night: steamed crab with garlic powder; fried kapong fish; big bottle of Singha at the seafood restaurant across the street in Pratunam Market.

Second day: loti (roti?) -- spun sugar, like cotton candy, but crunchy, wrapped in a thin pandan-flavored flour pancake.

Second day: smoked catfish, minced and refried, with fish sauce, mint, peanuts and onions at a floating restaurant in Ayutthaya.

Scenes from a Wedding.

Happy and Clarissa, grinning from ear to ear at the communion. Christ The King Church, filled to the brim with white flowers. "Ngayon at Kailanman." Dad's standup act: "Basta huwag kang sasabunatan." "Get out your handkerchiefs." The two easy chairs during the banquet pictorial. The bride doing tequila shots. The groom doing vodka doubles. 50 Cent's "In da Club." A maya bird looking for a red rose.

Later.

You're going to see the blog layout look all compressed within the next few days, as I won't be posting for a little while -- Madeline and I are taking off for a much-needed vacation from our vacation =), and leaving the little tyke with her grandparents. They say if we're going to spend all that time worrying about our daughter then we might as well stay at home -- but we're worried anyway, because it's going to be the longest she's been away from us. Not even overnight.

Pictures from Happy's wedding will be online -- more about that later -- and so will pictures from the vacation.

Bangkok and Siem Reap, here we come!

Hey, I Got Published Again!

Back when I was in sixth grade at the North Davis Elementary School in Davis, California -- my folks were on sabbatical -- I wrote a poem called "Life." There was little about the poem -- I should really say "poem" -- that I remember, except for the ponderous ending ("Life is like / a long trip.") and one sentence ("The river was / a ribbon of moon."). Hey, it was sixth grade.

Then I didn't think about poetry again for another 22 years or so, except for a detour through Eliot and Cummings in high school. But in the past few months I started plunging into it again, and the immersion has been life-changing, like learning a new language.

Then I started actually making them up just about a couple of weeks ago (see my "Hey, I Got Published!" post from a week back) -- specifically, in Eileen Tabios's hay(na)ku form.

Indeed, I still have a couple about Madeline here, which I'm suddenly emboldened to post:

Your
eyes Your
lips and Your

Purple
kissed bruise
on: right knee.

And I've been thinking as well of organizing those dream couplets into some sort of series, like:

A tangle of horseflies.
The inadequacy of grass.

Peripheries of mollusk.
Inflection of sea.

Sheaves of punches.
The grammar of bees.

Then the best kick in the pants, as it were, was the following message from Eileen the other day:

Congrats to the winners:

Top Three Chosen By Judge Barbara Jane Reyes:

Tom Beckett
Jon Pineda
Dennis Somera

Other masterful hay(na)ku poets reveal themselves to be Stephen Kirbach, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Luis Cabalquinto, Kenneth Tanemura, Terri Leigh Relf, Kasey Mohammad, Benito "Sunny" Vergara, Bill Freind, Shirlie Mae Mamaril, Clayton Couch, Michael Snider, Michael Helsem and Rosanne Virata.

Please check the June 20, 2003 post at http://winepoetics.blogspot.com/ for more details.

Thanks to all participants; your words are a blessing,
Eileen

And in the company of real poets too!

All in all, I think, a nice beginning to things.

Scenes from Los Banos, Part Seven.

1. Izzy isn't sleeping very well. The last three nights she's been waking up around 9:30, wanting to be held, yelling for her mommy. The moment we try to put her in our bed - which never works anyway - she starts squirming and playing with the pillows and kicking us. This continues until around midnight when we finally leave her in her crib and she's too exhausted to cry out. All this clinginess is not a good sign, especially since Madeline and I are leaving her with her lolo and lola (we're going to Bangkok and Siem Reap next week).

2. Tension is mounting as Happy's wedding day draws near. My mother and I have fallen into our old "conversational" rut, mumbling sarcastic comments under our breath. Peck, counterpeck.

3. Last night Clarissa's parents threw a party for us and what seemed like a zillion other friends and relatives. We picked up Tawee and Kalaya (Happy's sponsors, flying in from Bangkok) from the airport, then headed over to Megamall to buy Tawee a barong (and got caught in the rain), then over to Clarissa's. Great food -- the chef, waiters, and bartenders were apparently pirated from some other restaurant and paid under the table. Saw some old acquaintances (bridesmaids of Clarissa), relatives and so on; the entourage also had a big briefing session, with lots of jargon I simply wasn't familiar with (cord? arras? Was I supposed to have the ring on me, or grab it from the ringbearer?).

4. The flowers are going way over budget. My dad blames my brother, my brother blames the florist and my dad. The white roses (and glass vases) on each table -- all 28 of them -- are quite beautiful though. (The cost of the flowers alone -- $1500 -- is for me, in the US, pretty darn steep, and unimaginable in the Philippines.)

5. I'm angry when I brush my teeth. The bristles are worn down almost to the roots before I throw the toothbrush away. Sometimes I've even snapped the brush in the act of brushing, stabbing the roof of my mouth with the splintered plastic stub.

Lo-Fi.

I'm currently reading Nick Hornby's Songbook, which I received for Father's Day (thanks Madeline!). I'm enjoying it immensely -- he brings out certain essential truths in pop music appreciation that I had never really thought about, and he validates my love for Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" -- but I can't help but feel a little disappointed. For starters, it's a little intellectually dishonest: rather than walking the reader through what he likes about each song, Hornby uses the song as an opportunity to pontificate about the disposability of pop, or how certain bands "are of no use to him anymore," or emotion in music vs. what he would probably characterize as "intellectualism."

Read the Dylan-as-poet essay for an example: after telling the reader that he owns over twenty Dylan CDs, and knows perhaps too much about Dylan's biography, he writes:

I'm not responsible for my intimacy with the Life of Bob...That's the fault of all sorts of other people: friends, music writers, university professors... He's hard to avoid -- mostly because his status as a major poet allows one to like him without inducing the feelings of intellectual insecurity that usually accompany devotion to a pop star.

I suppose I resent that. In my book, either you're in or you're out, and if you're in, then get in properly, and find as big a place in your heart for the stupid stuff... as for the stuff that you can pass off as poetry. Obviously I wouldn't ask you to find as big a place in your head for "Mmmm Bop," [sic, Nick: I believe it's "Mmm Bop," with three "M's"] but then, that's partly the trouble: the best music connects to the soul, not the brain, and I worry that all this Dylan-devotion is somehow anti-music -- that it tells us the heart doesn't count, and only the head matters.

Hornby's voice is always engaging, and always reads as if he's speaking directly to you, but there's a real looseness to this book, as if (like me) he simply sat down and started writing blog entries. (I loved High Fidelity, but in About a Boy everyone speaks in the same voice; in the latter case the movie was actually an improvement, if only for the presence of Rachel Weisz.)

There's a whiff of the suspicious about it, primarily because the book is really about what each song means to him personally. There's certainly nothing wrong with this -- his little personal takes are great -- though in the end there is little one comes away with once one finds out that he was going through an X phase when he was listening to Y band, and so on. (There's a somewhat similar valorization of emotion in Edward Hirsch's How to Read a Poem, a post on which I've been meaning to write, but just can't get to. But Hirsch does, after all, prefer the lyric poets.) As music criticism it falls flat, but that's not Hornby's point.

In his essay on Suicide and Teenage Fanclub, Hornby makes some salient points about not needing to be terrified by art anymore -- as a 40-year old parent living in these times, for starters, he doesn't need to experience terror vicariously through music.

It is important that we are occasionally... depressed by books, challenged by films, shocked by paintings, maybe even disturbed by music. But do they have to do all these things all the time? Can't we let them console, uplift, inspire, move, cheer? Please? Just every now and then, when we've had a really shitty day?

I see his point, as the father of a 22-month old daughter, but it's no reason -- not the only reason -- to prefer Teenage Fanclub over Suicide. I guess what I'm looking for is a deeper intellectual engagement of some sort, and not just because the Teenage Fanclub song is "more likeable. It's got a tune and everything, and on the whole I prefer songs with tunes." (I can sing along to "Ghost Rider" and "The Concept," thank you very much.)

It is indeed true that my enjoyment of the musicians on the right -- Hermann Nitsch and Merzbow, stuck in my CD player at home -- is rather different from my enjoyment of Missy Elliott's "Work It." But is it really? Am I not moved in the same way? Am I not equally transported by Eddie Van Halen's solo on "Dreams" as I am with Emil Gilels playing the first movement of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto or Yoko Ono screaming her head off on "Why?"

Well, maybe not. Maybe Hornby's right after all. As much as I love Fushitsusha, Keiji Haino is completely unlistenable as I'm driving in my car; it becomes undifferentiated guitar glop, which is different from, say, howling maelstroms of noise, controlled by a writhing Japanese shaman, plunging into bottomless chasms. (I thought you Forced Exposure types might like that last description.) And the Swans are great, but hearing the thud and clang and all that screaming in your car doesn't do anything for me. Give me early ska any day and I'd bet you the drive would be fantastic.

Scenes from Los Banos, Part 6.

1. The other night I took Happy out for his bachelor party. He wanted something small and sedate, i.e., nothing involving naked women. (All of us were, in any case, either married or engaged, and were more in the mood to eat.) So I took him and his friends out, as per his request, to Kamayan sa Bay, and feasted on sisig (chopped-up pig cheeks, stir-fried with onions, and served on a sizzling hot plate), grilled eggplant, pork spareribs, tuna belly, and a couple of catfish. (Plus two beers and six Cokes, the bill came to about $20. Yeah, I sound like a cheap bastard.)

2. Now I have less than a week to figure out a best man's toast. (None of you readers are suggesting anything!) Happy started getting really upset when, after a couple of beers, I started joking about slipping up and mentioning ex-girlfriends' names. He looked at me darkly and said he'd kill me after the banquet.

3. With the monsoon rain crashing down, we all drove over to Flat Rocks, a pool hall and bar located where the old, bankrupt Agrix supermarket used to be. (It's named after these big flat rocks in Molawin Creek -- a popular outdoor drinking spot up Mt. Makiling,) 50 Cent's "In the Club" was playing just as we entered. Happy and Gee played nineball; Moly smoked his Marlboro Lights; I sat and drank my Red Horse (the rotgut of Filipino beers). I knew Happy would lose badly when he asked Gee "Are you any good at pool?" and Gee answered, "We'll see."

4. Then we all went home and I broke out the Stoli from the freezer. The bottle of vodka was given to my mom back in the mid-'70s by her "Russian boyfriend." (There's a long story here about my mom and a Russian spy, but I'll spare you the details. I am not making this up.) In any case, my dad (who knows little about alcohol) claimed the vodka should still be fine. "It's unopened," he pointed out. We stared at the rusty cap for a few seconds, then cracked it open, and poured it into shot glasses. I'm still alive.

5. I hate really hot weather. I love Madeline in hot weather though.

Mood Music.

The other day I had to return those badly copied bootleg VCDs and demand my money back. I replaced them, after much searching, with a couple of other bootleg CDs: one party hip-hop compilation (terrible, but I'll write about this later) and another CD called Starbucks N.Y.C. New York Jazz.

In the last decade or so there's been a revival of an interesting genre of music -- though it's not necessarily a genre, but more of a mood. It's not strictly Bachelor Pad or Exotica in the standard sense -- it's not Esquivel or Kenyon Hopkins or anything that can be properly called swanky -- but a feeling of sophistication is certainly involved, as well as an alcoholic beverage of one's choice. (Imagine these records coming with a stamp on the cover: For the Discerning, Sophisticated Listener and you know what I mean.) If anything, the period evokes the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s, a time when both Stan Getz and, say, Roger Nichols could be heard on the radio. (I've always claimed 1968-72 were the best years for music, period, but I digress.)

I blame the revival of this aforementioned swanky, sophisticated mood on the fantastic Spanish record label Siesta, who veers more closely to the soft-pop side of things. (Their twee-pop division, including Girlfrendo and Death by Chocolate, is equally stellar.) The Free Design, for instance, is both name-checked by Stereolab and appears on the soundtrack to the musically hippest show on TV, "The Gilmore Girls."

But the styles differ as well. The music can be arch (Mike Flowers Pops), utterly sincere (Lisa Ono), or studiously bland -- or all three at once. Indeed, I think a musical line can be drawn around such disparate musicians and songwriters such as Burt Bacharach, Astrud Gilberto, Margo Guryan, Paul Williams, Michael Franks, Seawind, pre-Idlewild Everything But The Girl, The Style Council, and -- well, this odd CD I hold in my hands.

The poorly Photoshopped cover of Starbucks N.Y.C. New York Jazz has the Starbucks logo superimposed on a couple of jazz musicians, in turn superimposed on a city skyline that looks nothing like New York. In any case, it's the inside that counts: it's just about as pitch-perfect an encapsulation of that mood that I've heard, with the exception of the compilations that come out from Siesta. What's more, its illuminating detours into jazz and soul and rock make it an even better buy, tracing that bossa / cocktail / soft pop / late night mood down diverse avenues. (If I were to compare it to Philippine radio stations, it would be like a combination of CityLite 88.3, the Mellow Touch (circa 1976), and a dash of NU 107 thrown in.)

It begins appropriately with the Mike Flowers Pops cover of "Call Me," featured on the Austin Powers soundtrack, and goes on from there. There are real gems here: a drum-and-bass lounge version of Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out," Elvis Costello singing "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" (an obvious lie, since he's engaged to Diana Krall), a Spanish-language version of Swing Out Sister's "You on My Mind," Ryo Kawasaki singing "Agua de Beber," the vocal version of Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good," Malo's "Suavecito," David Bowie's chilly "Volare," from the Absolute Beginners soundtrack (though he should have listened to Alex Chilton to hear a fantastic, sloppy cover of the song.) And, like any proper homemade compilation, there's the touch of authenticity by the inclusion of some stinkers: Robbie Dupree's "Make It Easy On Yourself" (leave that one to Scott Walker next time), Sting's "How Insensitive," and a funk version of "Walk On By" by the terminally unfunky Christopher Cross (granted, though, he won a Grammy for a Bacharach song, so...).

I've Googled the title and its contents, and I've come up with no answers -- no tracklist, no discography, no playlist for a radio station. (CDDB recognized it, though, with the CD's typos intact.) I don't know how these bootleggers operate, but it's nice to think that someone -- with swanky, sophisticated, discerning musical taste -- burned some homemade mix CD and foisted it on an unsuspecting Filipino public. I'm glad I found it.

Hey, I Got Published!

Samples of my (eek!) poems from Eileen Tabios's Hay(na)ku contest, here and here.

Eating, Shopping and Laughing. Oh, and Massages.

I was mindlessly flipping channels on TV one afternoon -- my folks have the coolest cable service, with the Cartoon Network ("Courage, the Cowardly Dog" and "Samurai Jack" are great), the Discovery Channel, and stations from France, Italy, Spain, Hongkong, mainland China, and best of all: India, with '70s Bollywood films showing in the afternoon -- and I was totally taken aback when I chanced upon a talk show called "Straight Talk."

There, I was treated to the disgusting spectacle of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos's daughter, Imee Marcos-Manotoc, "interviewing" her own son, Borgy Marcos-Manotoc. All throughout adoring viewers would text them inane questions and comments via cell phone (which Imee would dutifully read), like:

- You two look so cute together!
- Borgy, you're so intelligent.* You're as smart as your grandfather!
- Are you going to run for senator?
- What's your favorite song?
- I hope you go into politics like your grandfather some day.
- Borgy, what is your favorite dish?
- Are you two close?
- More power to you!
- Borgy, will you be hosting your own talk show?
- Borgy, you're so handsome!

Jesus Christ! Why are these fucking criminals in the country in the first place? They should have been mobbed and sent back, to put it mildly, the minute they stepped onto the tarmac of Ninoy Aquino International Airport! The fact that these people are elected governors (Bongbong is governor of Ilocos Norte) and congresswomen (both Imee and Imelda are/were reps of Ilocos Norte and Leyte, respectively) is abhorrent enough -- but at least it's comprehensible, for political and monetary favors can be dispensed. But to make them celebrities -- objects of adulation for whose fans the only reward is to bask in their dubious (vain)glories -- simply boggles the mind.

Some of you might argue that Borgy** had nothing to do with the depredations of his grandparents. As Agent Scully once said, "Sure. Fine. Whatever." As far as I'm concerned, the $27,000 in yearly tuition fees he pays to the University of San Diego*** is blood money, both literally and figuratively: money pillaged from the coffers of the nation, blood exacted from the disappeared and from victims of torture.****

Let's take his mom*****, for instance: What about the $4.5 million she owes to Archimedes Trajano's family -- the kid her bodyguards tortured for at least 36 hours before he died? And Borgy himself -- how does the victim of a "bar brawl" with him end up being treated for cigarette burns on his back?

I'll end my rant with a snippet of dialogue from the show (some words are paraphrased, but most of the quotes are verbatim):

Imee: A question for Borgy. What did you learn na wholesome family values?
Borgy: Did I learn any wholesome family values?
[Imee laughs.]
Borgy: Laughing.
Imee: Tawanan. Iyon ang family bond natin, eh, puro tawanan.
Borgy: Eating, shopping and laughing.
Imee: That's right.
Borgy: Oh, and massages.
Imee: Oh yeah. We love massages.

Why?
Why are they still free to be on talk shows?
Why are they still free to be governors and congresswomen?
Why are they still free to cavort on beaches?
Why are they still free to get massages and eat and shop?
And why are they still laughing?

----------------
*My mom tells me that Borgy was on the Philippine edition of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" and almost won a million pesos for charity. "So people started saying," she recalled, "that he is as smart as his grandfather." I guess that's what passes for intelligence these days. I've never known why people still call the deposed dictator "intelligent." Why dignify a thief and killer?
**Okay, he's cute, he apparently reads Kierkegaard, and he had the good taste to go out with MTV VJ Sarah Meier. Meier, on the other hand, had the bad taste to associate with him.
***Probably couldn't get into UCSD.
****Folks have commented on my Imelda Marcos page -- see links on the right -- and said that it was funny, but it does not solve anything. They're quite right. But for me personally, it's better to make a laughingstock of Imelda -- to laugh helplessly -- than to wring my hands in despair at the sheer helplessness of it all.
*****Dang, girl! With all the money your parents stole, you'd think you'd be able to get a nose and chin job that didn't look so cheap-ass.******
******Okay, I'm being mean and insulting and petty. I honestly don't care. Could I be sued for libel if I called him Prince Ferdinand the Turd -- I mean, Third?

Scenes from Los Banos, Part 5.

1. I realize I've turned into the classic, loathed stereotype of the whiny balikbayan: complaining constantly about the heat, the humidity, the traffic. (I'm even more appalled because I study the damn subject.)

2. Ate three balut eggs in one sitting the other day. Yum. (The fourth I had to discard because the duck was a little older, and the beak made a disgusting little snap when I bit into it.)

3. May Starbucks na doon. [Translation: there's already a Starbucks there.] This is something one hears from balikbayans returning to the United States, often accompanied by that the economic situation in the Philippines is improving, or "Umaasenso na ang Pilipinas." (It is indeed true that there are at least four Starbucks shops between Alabang and Susana Heights alone.)

The recent explosion of malls (and Starbucks) in Manila does not mean a thing, of course; it only means there are more places for people to window-shop. (My friend and former classmate Lotta has a great essay, which I read quite a while back -- so my memory probably fails me -- where she argues that the malls function to prop up civil society, as spaces that provide the illusion of democraticization. Or something like that. But the SM Megamall, to take one example, still reinforces those class distinctions: the proles are free to jostle each other for space on the first floor by Jollibee and the discount clothing stores, while on the top floors (where the expensive boutiques are), the air conditioners actually work, the tisoys shop, and the chauffeurs wait by the entrance to the parking lot.)

"May Starbucks na doon" is distantly related to something I often hear as well, "Nasa Amerika na siya" [Translation: s/he's already in America now] -- with that na ("already") signalling a kind of teleology to Filipino immigration to the United States -- and so I spend a little chunk of my dissertation exploring that na.

4. Most people think that Filipino popular culture is completely in thrall to American pop culture. And yes, one can turn on Philippine radio and hear almost nothing but American Top 40 pop dreck (nothing but Nelly, Nelly, Nelly and more Nelly, with some Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey thrown in) or feel trapped in a '70s time warp (I don't think one can even hear Randy Vanwarmer's "Just When I Needed You Most" on U.S. oldies radio stations anymore). But this is false on a couple of levels: global mass culture has, in any case, almost always been centered in the West; and two, the Philippines still obviously takes its cues as well from the rest of Asia. (Walk into any good-sized mall and most of the stores you will see are branches of HK/Taiwan/Singapore originals.) Case in point: the biggest, drop-everything-you're-doing show on TV right now is a "chinovela" -- a soap imported from Taiwan called "Meteor Garden." Dubbed in Tagalog, it stars one-half of a female singing duo and all four members of a boy band named F4. Their songs (in Mandarin, I think) are played all over the marketplaces here, and their posters are all over store and bus windows.

5. The ringtone on my dad's Nokia cell phone is Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On," for some inexplicable reason.

Lapdog Alert!

Former Friend Of Bill-turned-Friend Of George Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is beginning to reap the dubious rewards of heading the most willing country among the coalition of the willing. After that state dinner (about which I've gone on and on in these pages), President Macapagal-Arroyo, who has long expressed no interest in running for re-election, is supposedly thinking about changing her mind:

According to the highly placed source, Bush urged Ms Macapagal at the close of her recent official state visit to the United States to reconsider her announcement on Dec. 30 last year that she would not seek a full six-year term in the 2004 election.

"You know what [were] Bush's parting words to her? 'Madame President, women and politicians are entitled to change their minds,'" the source said.

(Sen. Raul Roco wryly observed that the last time he checked, Bush was not an overseas Filipino voter.)

Presumably our Cowboy in the White House needs someone like her on his side to fight the Eastern Front of his war on terrorism, and the only way to assure that stability would be to keep her in that position.

Already the propaganda machine is well into gear for this next phase, as veteran hack director Cirio Santiago's latest film, Operation Balikatan (starring Rey Malonzo, Eddie Garcia, and a bunch of unknown white guys) is a war movie supposedly in the tradition of Black Hawk Down. It's already being criticized by activist groups as part of a shameless psy-ops campaign orchestrated in favor of the US troops (despite the American diplomats' public show of wariness about the film). (To his credit, he produced and directed some of my favorite B-movies of the early '70s, an entry about which I'm planning to write.)

Meanwhile -- the animal metaphors are piling up, so I apologize for any sexist connotations -- our lapdog has also turned into a parrot:

Referring to the first day of strikes launched by the United States and its allies against Iraq, the President said: "March 20 signified a major blow to the power of the United Nations." ... "Unless its security mandate is updated, the United Nations will continue to limp forward, tasked to do much peacekeeping but too feeble or hand-tied to be effective at peacemaking, Ms Macapagal said.

Them's fighting words, and will no doubt jeopardize the Philippines's supposedly shoo-in bid for entry into the U.N. Security Council next year. But more important, it reiterates, in even stronger terms, the Bush Administration's insulting disregard for international law, and is a bad sign of things to come for the Macapagal-Arroyo administration as well.

Ugh.

As posted on the Zorn list:

To me, I think punk should be right wing. That's how I see it. The left wing is trying to destroy America by giving handouts to everyone and making everyone dependent on them. They only care about the voter base. They don't really care about anything else. They don't care about anyone. If they can get illegal aliens to become able to vote by motor registration, they will. They're illegal aliens! They don't even belong in the country, let alone voting. It's just to keep their base of voters. Is it best for America? It's not best for America.

- Johnny Ramone, from a 1999 interview.

Scenes from Los Banos, Part 4.

1. It's hot. The pillows radiate heat.

2. It's been threatening to rain for over three days now: sunshine in the morning, dark clouds and terrible humidity in the afternoon, and then -- nothing. More of the same at night.

3. You get what you pay for. The bootleg VCDs were almost unwatchable -- and, in a couple of cases, just about impossible. I didn't have very high expectations for X2, so I could deal with the audience laughter. (Thankfully, Madeline knew all the mutants' powers, so she could fill me in on what was going on.) Gangs of New York was clearly shot from a duffel bag by some guy sitting in the left aisle of the left side of the theater. So Close, a Hong Kong film, had its English subtitles cut off at the bottom. And while watching The Pianist, the CD lens kept slipping a few "grooves" back, as it were, so a pixelled "flashback" from a few scenes before would suddenly pop up. At times it would provide an interesting narrative counterpoint to the images playing on screen -- as if Adrien Brody's interior thoughts would appear, Kirlian camera-like, onto the film -- but I'm sure Polanski wouldn't have wanted it that way. =)

4. I have a week and a half to come up with a best-man toast. For suggestions, please write comments below.

5. Tom Tykwer's Heaven was a delight. (It was a clear copy, what we didn't expect was that the English subtitles would be obscured by the Chinese and Indonesian subtitles superimposed on top of them! Fortunately Madeline knows Mandarin, my Bahasa Indonesia is passable but extremely rusty, and we both know a smattering of tourist Italian, so it worked out fine.) Cate Blanchett, as a mysterious saboteur -- one of the esteemed members of my Pale and Haunted Pantheon, though not up there with Julianne Moore, but now above Judy Davis -- was very good in the beginning, as was Giovanni Ribisi as the carabinieri / interpreter who falls for Blanchett. With a Kieslowski screenplay and gorgeous photography to boot -- it's Italy, after all.

My only real quibble -- okay, there were major plot holes, but this is a parable -- is how lately a few films have been flirting with the vague idea of spirituality and the "metaphysical" with rather shallow intellectual engagement. Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves is a good case in point; it sends you out of the theater thinking you've just witnessed a semi-religious experience and then... what? (There must also be a whole slew of recent films coming out of Europe on the same subject, but I haven't had the time to read subtitles (Philistine!), so I will point to three recent American films: the vacuous Signs, by M. Night Shyamalan, Steven Spielberg's much-misunderstood A.I., which I chose to read more as a twisted Oedipal fable, and the excellent The Pledge, by Sean Penn, in which Jack Nicholson actually plays someone other than himself.)

6. Coming soon: lapdog alert, and the repercussions of the Philippines being the most willing of the coalition of the willing.

Unpacking My Mother's Library, Part 2.

Jose Garcia Villa's Doveglion book is particularly special to me, because it marks the inclusion of my uncle Ernesto Manalo's poem "Parable" (tucked almost all the way in the back of the book as one of two poems in the "Prose Poems" section).

I never met my Uncle Nesto. He committed suicide, well before I was born, at the age of 26 after a long, scarring bout with (as he put it) "the state called psychotic depression." He had an enormous talent; elsewhere Villa called him "one of the most important Filipino postwar writers." In the preface to his posthumous Selected Poems (1962), he writes:

I believe that poems are always products of neuro-pathological states, that is, a neurosis. If this is not true of other poets, it is certainly true with me, because I have been undergoing psychiatric treatment since I was twenty (the age when I started writing poetry)...

And that is why I have been led to believe that the melancholy... is a natural component not only of my poetry but of all kinds of poetry. I think it is in the nature of the poet to have his melancholy as a form of concentration. It is in his melancholy that he reigns supreme, and through which he controls his art. If there should be order in the poem, it is the melancholy in the poet that gives this order...

...I believe that the poem while being a direct product of the poet's neurosis is not a symptom of this disease; on the other hand, I think the poem is the outward sign of the poet's strength -- the poem is the point of departure from the illness.

And he concludes: "I present the poems in this book as poems, not as testimonies to an illness."

Here's Uncle Nesto's "Parable" in full, which still breaks my mom's heart everytime she reads it.

And I wanted them all around me and I gathered them:
My brother (my keeper) my wife, my mother and my father.
My father said: I will stand by and watch over you.
My wife slept beside me.
My brother watched over me with the scientific mind.
And my mother was my spiritual keeper.
And I said: You who thus watch over me will get no reward
But that I shall sleep peaceful.
And they said: We shall watch over you and expect no reward
But that you shall sleep peacefully.

Unpacking My Mother's Library, Part 1.

Managed to unearth some real gems: among others, the New Directions hardcover edition of Jose Garcia Villa's Volume Two (1949), and Villa's A Doveglion Book of Philippine Poetry (1962). (She's letting me bring them to SF.)

The latter book has the usual, much-anthologized suspects -- Virgie Moreno's chilling "Order for Masks," Nick Joaquin's weary "The Innocence of Solomon," Alejandrino Hufana's "Poro Point" -- and a few surprises (to me): an experimentation in form by Carlos Bulosan, artist David Medalla's "Envoi" (reminiscent of Yoko Ono's Instruction Paintings), and Romeo Solina's oddly affecting meditation on the "open and closed parentheses" of the rosary ("dead seedbead"), entitled "GOD, theo, dios" (excerpted here, coming towards the conclusion):

GOD, theo, dios turn
from words and sound and words and sound
to holy unstillable silence within-without

Archly, Villa provides his introduction:

A BOOK WITHOUT AN INTRODUCTION

Being, simply, an selection by the
editor of what he regards as
the best poems in English
written by Filipinos

Not to say that there isn't one unifying theme: there are indeed Villa-esque touches here and there, from Jose Lansang, Jr.'s "Sonnet" (where [chuckle] he rhymes "Phoenix," "genetrix," "unmix," and "matrix"), and the ending of Gemino Abad's fine "To Caliban:"

Rise, Caliban, and rage,
And pure, burst, Eyes.

Add a couple of commas and stir! =)

(When she was a teenager, my starstruck mom met Villa a few times, when he was hanging out at my uncle Armando Manalo's house -- the first time, she said, he brought wife and kids; the second time, when she had dinner with him, he had "a very good looking boy toy in tow." Apparently my mother has a photo of herself with Villa, who was sporting a lock of hair dyed green -- quite scandalous in those days! I asked her if Villa had any words of wisdom, but all she could remember was his handsome young partner.)

Conversation.

I thought some of you might be interested in the running conversation between me and Eileen regarding a couple of lines I posted earlier. (Think of it is a dialogue between a student of anthropology and a poet.)

Eileen wrote "Ooooooh. Very nice" -- to which I wrote:

I'm glad you like it, Eileen -- but why? I mean, it's pretty raw (it came to me just as I was about to fall asleep, or just after I woke up -- can't remember), so there's no fiddling with fricatives or messing around with mutes. =)

Although now that I look at it, there's a clear link between "horse" and "grass" -- ahh, I still don't know how poetry works...

And then Eileen wrote:

Tangling with mutes? I love that slip if you meant to say "muse".

First drafts are supposed to be raw; editing (if any) can always come later but the first draft is when rawness -- non-censorship -- should be encouraged to help facilitate what the poem's gonna be.

My best poems just "come to me." I often think the poet's job is to just get out of the poem's way.

Why do I like it? I suppose because so much is expressed *between* the words, though the words are very effective for their imagery. What you've done is encouraged the reader to make the link between the two lines, so it's the reader that breathes the couplet into life. (I, for one, find this among the most difficult challenges in poetry -- perhaps from also writing frequently in prose that requires explications.)

In this kind of poem, regardless of your intent, you *trusted* the reader and, by doing so, created a relationship between poem and reader without you* interfering between that unmediated engagement.

(*this could relate to the poet's ego/personality)

--------

Dream poems are great -- partly for getting personality and self-consciousness out of the way. Relatedly, I drink for the same effect (see: my drinking is really a technical strategy because at least drinking allows me to be awake instead of being physically asleep, thus unable to write).

But don't lissen to me, Sunny. I'm drunk. It's the price of my job as.....the poet known as Ms. WinePoetics!

[Okay, I'ma actually drinking a cuppa java as I write this...]

My rambling response:

You're awesome, Eileen. Thanks for your extended commentary.

Later on I did think about altering "inadequacy" -- one syllable too many, I think -- but I liked this connotation of an inability to do something: to cover the earth? To untangle the horseflies? Not sure.

You write: "In this kind of poem, regardless of your intent, you *trusted* the reader..." The phrase "regardless of your intent" jumped out: the crotchety materialist in me raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. But then, as an anthropologist, I do *my* readings of everyday life in the same way, both heeding individual intentionality and being careful to situate people's behavior in the overarching social context, "regardless of [their] intent." (We cultural anthropologists like to think that we foreground our interpretive inadequacies anyhow.)

You also write about your best poems "coming to you." These lines -- can't say they're poems, really -- only come to me at the point when I'm about to fall asleep.

I've often wondered about how one theorizes creativity; I suppose the folks from the Society of the Anthropology of Consciousness would know this better. That post I promised earlier on Hirsch and Oliver and sleeping with poets [chuckle] -- unfortunately, I left my Hirsch book at home -- was going to be about the creation of poetry and the ineffable, and how this feeds into the "mystique" of the poet. This form of cultural capital may then be coupled with a parallel accumulation of sexual charisma -- but then the latter is probably squarely in the eye of this beholder anyhow. =)

So Eileen writes:

There's a difference -- or there *can* be a difference -- between writing a poem (which I thought what you were doing with that couplet) and reading a poem. The latter involves (more) looking *at* the poem. I don't know that one can look at a poem from the outside while you're in the process of writing it. I think the poet needs to become (in that moment) the poem itself. Later, you can look *at* it in the same way you might read someone else's work. Which is to say, perhaps the usefulness of an anthropological perspective has certain limitations when *be-ing* the poet/poem because one can't be separate from the work (though such perspective obviously can be useful in other ways, as your own brief reads of poems on this blog has shown).

[Of course, I don't know what I'm talking about. That's partly the challenge of Poetry -- the more one practices it, the less one knows it....at least from my standpoint.]

"Being the poem itself" -- whew! I can see being in the poem better; there's a suggestion of a poetic space, or better, interiority that both poet and reader can inhabit (and conversely, move inside and outside of).

Off-tangent note: since metaphor isn't something that's necessarily culturally universal, I wonder how other cultures conceive of creativity, or, at least, its associated images. (I suspect there are tons of anthropological work done on this already, but it's not my field.) Lightning bolts? Possession? Muses or higher powers? When I was writing my book I thought of it as "flow" -- I wrote most of the manuscript in a summer, in longhand, on unlined sheets of paper, index cards strewn all around me -- and words seemed to flow from some peanut-sized organ in my head into my pen and onto paper. (This was, however, aided by semi-monastic discipline by day and illicit activity by night.)

Back to That Dinner.

This isn't exactly about Bush's state dinner with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, but about Bush's welcome speech:

The Philippines was the first democracy in Asia and has a proud tradition of democratic values, love of family and faith in God. President Arroyo, you are carrying this tradition forward, and I`m proud to call you friend… Mabuhay!

Dean Jorge Bocobo, whose blog I really enjoy reading but with whom I mostly disagree, rightly points out the change in Bush's rhetoric:

I was dumbstruck reading the transcript. These bold words, are history being revised... No U.S. president since William McKinley -- not Roosevelt or Kennedy or Reagan or Clinton -- has ever proclaimed the simple truth in those 8 words: “The Philippines was the first democracy in Asia…” Pres. Bush's words contradict the history of Philippine-American relations as taught in America (except in hundreds of Asian studies departments) and written up in history books (unless they've read the words of Teodoro Agoncillo, Renato Constantino, or U.P.'s Dean Armando Malay).

He writes further:

[The Treaty of Paris] made inevitable America's first and only colonial war of conquest against an insurrection that was also our war to defend the infant Philippine republic...

The Filipinos would lose that war, but America would give the Philippines everything Spain never did: schools, government, science, Hollywood. Still a century of nationalist resentment seethes in many intellectuals, pundits and local elites. Now, for the first time an American President seems to agree with them. I see the end of a great untruth because George W. Bush is a straight talking Texas cowboy.

I suppose I'm one of those "seething pundits" then -- who, as Bocobo eloquently writes, "never emerged from the black hole of resentment." (Do I qualify as a "seething intellectual?")

Yes, I'm seething: the joys of schools and Hollywood aside (for which we should be eternally grateful to the United States of America, forever and ever, Amen), Bush's statement reads to me as precisely signaling the very elision of that same war (not an "insurrection," by the way) the Filipino-American war that sought to destroy that same "first democracy in Asia." The simplistic recognition of a change in date -- finally, an American President realizes our independence day is not on July 4! -- is little reason to applaud. This is only hypocrisy of the basest sort, especially since Bush is financing -- no, wait: directly plunging into -- yet another war against those crazy Moros.

There's more (the permalink might be broken, but it's from May 29, with a mirror here) adulation concerning the "partnership" between the U.S. and its major non-NATO ally, but you can read that for yourself. (And you can read my earlier entries if you click on the "this damned war" category in the boxes on the right.)

Blogging and Mangoes (or, Scenes from Los Banos, Part 3.)

1. Grrrr.

2. "The problem with the two of you is that you're too tense." I answered, "I wonder why." (Pot. Kettle. Black.)

3. No, the real problem is that any slight deviation from what she wants is considered by her as an explicit criticism of what she is and does. The merest suggestion that we buy or feed Izzy something else is enough to drive her into a mini-fit.

She: I bought her banana yogurt. Why haven't you tried it yet?
Me: I'm feeding her usual cereal.
She: Well, she's not eating it. What about the banana yogurt?
Me: She's eaten this cereal for over a year.
She: She's probably tired of it. You would get tired of eating the same thing too.
Me: Yes, but I'm not a baby. Babies like consistency.
She: Fine, have it your way.

She [after Izzy tries to remove her plastic bib with a trough at the bottom to catch falling food]: She probably wants a soft bib.
Me: No, she just doesn't want the bib.
She: The plastic bib's too hot, and doesn't let any air through.
Me: But it keeps the food from falling onto your floor.
She [to Izzy, in a goo-goo voice]: They think they know what's best for you, don't you?

The side comments! The mumbles as she walks away! The constant suggestions about what we're doing wrong!

4. Madeline and I are cooking tonight -- not because we don't like her cooking (I think it's yummy), but mainly because Izzy's been eating nothing but rice and garbanzo beans and macaroni, and probably misses her carrots and potatoes. (I bet someone's just wishing for the meal to fail.)

5. I miss our dog Shelby. But there's no way she'll be allowed to walk on my mom's endangered hardwood floors. There's no way she'd be able to survive the heat and humidity either. And if she happens to accidentally wander outside the gate, she wouldn't be able to survive my neighbors' dinner cutlery either.

6. Six more weeks to go.

7. Lots of desserty things in the Philippines are too sweet. I have a sweet tooth, but even I thought the yogurt (which my mom bought) that we were feeding Izzy was way too sweet. But in this case I'm just as tense and defensive as well:

Me: The yogurt's too sweet.
She: Why, have you tasted it? [Translation: How dare you criticize me?]
Me: Yes. Why would I say it was sweet if I hadn't tasted it yet?
She: I just thought you already knew.
Me: Now why would I already know?
She: Fine, have it your way.

8. It's extremely hot and humid. And the air is completely still.

9. Issa, who's seven years old, is just about one of the most precocious and smartest children I know.

Izzy [pointing to something]: Batsi?
Issa: What is she saying?
Me: I don't know.
Issa: Is it English?
Me: Maybe.
Issa: Is it Tagalog?
Me: I don't think so.
Issa: Hmm. Maybe it's French.

We later figured out Izzy was asking "What's this?"

10. It's really all about control. After writing a letter to one of my advisers I walked out to the kitchen and discovered that Izzy's clothes had been changed (from tank top and shorts to a different tank top and a skirt) for no apparent reason. ("They looked too hot," my mom said.)

11. In a way, blogging is a nice temporary substitute for therapy.

12. Mangoes, too.

Dream Couplet #3.

A tangle of horseflies,
The inadequacy of grass.

Scenes from Los Banos, Part 2.

More rambling: Los Banos is a college town in the provinces, but it is quite different from the college town in the United States. A good amount of the population, perhaps more than in any other small town in the Philippines, have advanced degrees. There is also a sizable number of international students and expat employees, so there is more non-Filipino / non-Chinese cuisine -- Thai, Indian, Japanese, Middle Eastern -- than most other locations outside of Manila. It isn't cosmopolitan in the same sense as Manila -- and certainly nowhere near as shiny (the better to conceal the grime) -- but I really don't know the latter city very well.

This reminds me of how we drove into Valleverde (it's somewhere off Ortigas, in Quezon City) yesterday to get Izzy, Joy (my sister) and Issa fitted for their bridesmaid and flower girl dresses. (Joy looked smashing, by the way, though frighteningly skinny -- her waistline is only a little smaller than her age; Izzy was absolutely darling in a floor-length dress.) It's a gated community, like some parts of Metro Manila, and it was clear that many people who live in Manila would never have the opportunity to go through its gates. (Some of the easiest shortcuts, to ease traffic congestion on the main highways, would be to cut through these gated subdivisions, but you have to surrender your driver's license -- or rather, your driver would have to surrender his license -- to the security guards at the gate before you can go in.) Add to this the expensive, alternate flyovers that cost more and allow the middle class to drive over the jeepneys and squatter areas, and one can see how the middle class and upper middle class could eat and drive and shop and live in Manila without having to deal with the poor at all, except for the ones who wash their Z3s. (And yes, there was an actual BMW Z3 parked in the designer's driveway. But no, Clarissa's parents are paying for the dresses.)

But back to Los Banos: I passed by Olivares Mall, a somewhat dingy mall in LB in the more heavily-trafficked part of town, across from the gasoline stations. There is nothing much in it: ugly clothes shops with little turnover, an appliance store, a sporting goods place, a record store. But the real reason to go to Olivares -- which, apparently, you can find in most malls in the Philippines -- are the stalls with pirated DVDs, VCDs, CDs full of mp3s, and software.

In one stall one could buy an entire Adobe suite -- Pagemaker, Photoshop, Premiere, Acrobat, you name it -- for a little less than 8 dollars. Or 50 programs, all cracked (or if not, serial numbers were helpfully provided) for CD burning or mp3 creation or anything else music-related. Windows XP Professional? That'll be 8 dollars as well, and you get some change back.

It's sometimes mind-boggling what they have: 4 dollars will get you the complete works of the Beatles, minus the Yellow Submarine album. Or, on two CDs, the complete works of Bob Dylan (minus any bootlegs, or The Basement Tapes, or Biograph).

Most surprising of all were the sheer newness of the DVDs: piled up for way less than the price of a rental (crystal clear too, and apparently region-free) in several stalls were Secretary, Anger Management, Talk To Her, Identity, The Ring (and Ringu and Ringu 2) and the real shocker, The Matrix Reloaded. For 2 dollars each. (VCDs were a buck, but the quality wouldn't be as good.) So I ended up taking home pristine copies of The Jungle Book, Chicago and The Hour [sic] (the latter had "Property of Miramax" running underneath the widescreen bar every now and then). (The funniest DVD was entitled Lord of the Rings 3, which had Frodo and the gang on the cover Photoshopped with Tom Cruise and Mia Sara from Ridley Scott's Legend.)

While one may be tempted to characterize this as Third World capitalist ingenuity, I certainly can't approve of all this piracy: it's still a ridiculous amount of money that isn't going to Renee Zellweger or, to put it in better perspective, some poor Eastern European software designer whose demo program was cracked and being resold in the Philippines.