Proof...

...that my unconscious is a compulsive punner: I had a dream the other night where the sutil boy was supposed to marry me. I walked down the aisle of a rickety wooden church and he turned out to be the PRIEST with a moustache á la Mr. Pringles and he insisted, "But I AM marrying you."(Cue canned laughter.)

* * * * *

So nag-inuman na naman kami nung Monday. After Alex's despedida (where we had barbecue and two kinds of pasta, not to mention red wine), Vince, Allan, Elmo, BJ P., and I ended up at Trellis, a stone's throw away from where I met up with a spectral presence recently.

Whenever I go out with these guys, I get reminded of that Stephen Dunn poem I love so much, where he goes: "everyone has brought / his fierce privacy with him / and is ready to share it." As for WHY we feel the need to go drinking every single week, none of us has problematized it yet (and why must I assume the reason is more than the usual need for camaraderie?).

What I learned:

1) Teachers in desperate need of alcohol will drive in the worst weather for a "silungan" substitute.

2) Strong Ice is the "lady's drink" in this group. hehe.

3) I'm not the only one who saves the plastic cats that come with the Gato Negro (or Blanco) wine bottles.

4) Metal ashtrays can double as spittoons.

5) There are people who can kill cacti.

6) From Indi, who joined us: B is going to Toronto for his Ph.D. Wow. Has it really been two years since my first black plastic cat?

* * * * *

I blundered into the living room Tuesday morning and got attracted by a mini-headline (the more accurate term escapes me right now) on the upper right-hand corner of the Inquirer's front page: Saddam takes up gardening, poetry in jail. Fascinating.

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein spends his time in prison gardening, writing poetry and snacking on American muffins and cookies, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported Monday.

The paper said the "intriguing glimpse of the former dictator's daily routine as he awaits trial on charges of war crimes and genocide was given ... by Iraq's human rights minister, Bakhtiar Amin, who visited Saddam in dentention on Saturday."

"One of the poems is about George Bush, but I had no time to read it," he told the Guardian, without making it clear whether he was referring to the incumbent US president, or his father.

Irony of ironies. I for one wouldn't mind getting my hands on that Bush poem. With any luck, it'll be more amusing than the papers I have yet to check on my desk.

Rainy Days

Last Friday's crazy, hour-long downpour left countless commuters stranded or stuck in traffic. Wanting to avoid that fate, after having had our fill of chili con carne and salsa at the Faculty Lounge, Elmo, Allan and I trekked over to Cantina for beer and...more salsa and chips. Katipunan looked almost pretty from the overpass; I had never seen the road so full of vehicles, yet so still. The restaurants were spilling over with people who also wanted to postpone the long commute.

We sat near the wall with two paintings of forlorn women looking away from a pile/bowl of humongous chili peppers. And we drank until midnight, talking about constipated writers, the fear of turning into cliches, and, strangely enough, God. Oh, and we tried to ask the waitress why one of the avocados painted on the other wall was colored black. She snubbed us, like a teacher in mid-lecture who refuses to get interrupted by the sipsip who asks irrelevant questions.

* * * * *
Hours earlier, I stormed out of one class. Several students were absent probably due to an accounting exam later that afternoon, and two groups that were supposed to report had missing members who had their missing projects.

By that time, the rain could be called torrential. Water was accumulating in the CTC corridor, and the only other person there was a maintenance man wielding a long brush, pushing the liquid into the tiny drainage holes to prevent flooding.

* * * * *
I heard "Dreams" over the radio again tonight, for the fourth time in two weeks---the Corrs' diluted version, not the Fleetwood Mac original. It's the weather, I have to tell myself, it's not a timely warning from the world. "Thunder only happens when it's raining."

I've also been listening to the CD compilation Allan made for me, struck by how he arranged the songs in a thematic arc, a journey, from preoccupation with death and heartache to joy and hope. Perfect chick music for rainy nights. My favorite tracks:

1. "Rosemary," by Suzanne Vega. Makes me think of the Greek island in Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart. Her clear voice and steady guitars make this song so...trustworthy. "How I wanted to break in / to that room beneath your skin / but all that would have to wait /...I had come meet you / with a question in my footsteps / I was going up the hillside / and the journey just begun."

2. "The Last Time I Saw Richard," by Joni Mitchell. When she croons, "When you gonna realize they're only pretty lies," puddles form in my eyes.

3. "Polaroids," by Shawn Colvin. I love how tough and tender she can be, given this song's repetitive, lulling melody. "But I am too young to die / Too old for a lullaby / Too tired for life on the ledge."

4. "Unravel," by Bjork. I could float in her charming and intentional vocal hesitations, forgetting that the song has words that are just as haunting. "While you are away / My heart comes undone / Slowly unravels / In a ball of yarn / The devil collects it / With a grin."

5. "Perfect World," by Liz Phair. My theme song of the moment! Her voice and lyrics are so playful and earnest at the same time. "I know I was born to lead a double life / ...I wanna be cool, TALL, vulnerable and luscious." Mwahaha.

One of my oldest dreams is to write good songs. I wish I can still do this someday---maybe write the lyrics and let someone else take care of the music. Let's add that to the grand list of Things to Do Before I Die, Whenever That May Be.

* * * * *
So I finally watched EJ's copy of Adaptation, and ended up laughing in the living room at 1 a.m., and loving it. There's that passage in Orlean's book that I had to write down, possibly because I have yet to learn it:

"There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go, I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size."

Incongruities

Images in my mind and e-mail minutes ago: sticks of chicken isaw and barbecue dipped in orange vinegar, avocado ice cream dripping down a sugar cone, a red car, a mango tree, and rain. Innocence and hunger blurring into one another, like raindrops on a misted windshield.

Beside me, in the department's computer area, Charlie was watching a video clip of the supposed Iraqi terrorists beheading Nick Berg. The actual beheading happened literally at the last minute of the 5:37 clip. It wasn't just one swift chop, as I had expected. It was more like the struggle of a carpenter's apprentice to saw off a plank with a jackknife. Except a plank has no grimace, no blood and bone, no hair by which to grasp and raise to the camera. It was numbing. People are kinder to chickens they slaughter for eating.

"There is nothing one man will not do to another," wrote Carolyn Forché in The Country Between Us. It's a chilling and malleable generalization, stripped of moral trappings. We could add: "under extreme conditions," "given particular socio-political contexts," or even "though the end doesn't (shouldn't?) justify the means." But we suspect the emendations are unnecessary. It's the sentence's single preposition that dehumanizes, and the double negatives that make it sinister.

Rewriting a sentence won't change facts, or attitudes. Not instantly. What can daydreaming, accidental spectators do to bear responsibility? Will writing ever be enough? History always rushes in to fill spaces between computers, memories, minds.

And yet another poetry quiz

I'm the limerick, mired in muck. I refuse to be bored or get stuck. I like to offend, But not, in the end, As much as to thwart expectations. What Poetry Form Are You?

(Or if you were not a Limerick, you would be Blank Verse)

I am, of course, none other than blank verse. I don't know where I'm going, yes, quite right; And when I get there (if I ever do) I might not recognise it. So? Your point? Why should I have a destination set? I'm relatively happy as I am, And wouldn't want to be forever aimed Towards some future path or special goal. It's not to do with laziness, as such. It's just that on the whole I'd rather not Be bothered - so I drift contentedly; An underrated way of life, I find. What Poetry Form Are You?

Heart Lines

Went to Silungan last Friday with Vince, Elmo, Allan, BJ Patino, EJ, and Kai, who read our palms. In between teasing other people about their "simian" lines and suggestive girdles of Venus, she said the lines on my palms are fainter and more web-like than most. My lifeline, apparently, is short and shaky---which doesn't necessarily mean I won't live long, just that sometimes my drive for life wanes. And my heart line almost zigzags and is chained---representing complications in matters of the heart until (or even IF) I settle down. Hmm. Friends have also reached the same conclusions from lines in my poems.

* * * * *
I think it was at Cantina, over enchiladas and San Mig Light, where a writer I respect assessed my poetry and psychoanalyzed me in the process. One of the things I remember him saying was that tone is what carries readers through my work, where I strive towards wholeness. But that the all-knowing tone prevents urgency; the poem becomes merely a retelling (after the fact) instead of a process of discovery. He said I have a strong tendency to idealize/romanticize, that my love poems may be too concerned with defining a nonexistent "we," that the "I" persona often seems amorphous and too open to possibilities. Ta-daan. 
 
* * * * *
Vlad translated my "Vase of Flowers" into Filipino and read it out loud at Conspiracy two weeks ago. Wala, natutuwa lang ako that it's been given new shape and life. That poem was very dear to me at one point.

* * * * *
I am glad I have a handful of friends who know me so well they can read between the lines. When I texted Egay out of the blue to say "Mababatukan mo siguro ako," he guessed why correctly, even after days of non-communication.

* * * * *
Years after the fact, my old wish has finally been granted: a good beer-lubricated conversation with one of my "spectral presences". I felt safe enough the other night, knowing my romanticized idea of the person already had little power over me. I have, I think, managed to live with my what-ifs and countless could-have-beens. But as always, it was curiosity that drove me to go. I also felt I owed it to the person I once was to fish for answers to questions long asked and forgotten. And answers were given, though the questions had mutated.

We have become two of a kind, flawed in inversely proportional ways. The best thing about the conversation was the discovery that the haunting had not been one-sided all this time. Among other things, I felt vindicated.

* * * * *
I am currently in love with the strong statements in Gluck's 20-part poem, "Prism." The fourteenth part goes:

The assignment was to fall in love.
The author was female.
The ego had to be called the soul.

The action took place in the body.
Stars represented everything else: dreams, the mind, etc.

The beloved was identified
with the self in a narcissistic projection.
The mind was a sub-plot. It went nattering on.

Time was experienced
less as narrative than ritual.
What was repeated had weight.

Certain endings were tragic, thus acceptable.
Everything else was failure.

     
 

Overdue Back to School Entry

I don't teach on Thursdays, but today I went to school to do library work for my Methods of Lit Research MA class, only to discover that I had left my ID at home. Fantastic. So I put on my most purposeful teacherly face and breezed past the lib guards. And spent most of the afternoon poring over tomes in the reference section for answers to such questions as:

1) Who were the members of "the tribe of Ben" and what are their poems like?
2) In how many poems does Emily Dickinson use the words mourn, mourned, mourner, mourners, and mournful?
3) Suppose you were writing a novel set in the Philippines during the early 1900s and wanted to mention the banks operating then. Where would you find the information? What were those banks?

Imagine 27 other similarly delightful questions (and yes, there is sarcasm in this clause), whose answers are due on Saturday. Seriously, though, there is something fascinating about digging up all this obscure artifactual information; knowing that the answer exists somewhere in the recesses of the lib is comforting.

* * * * *

I've been enjoying hanging out with certain people from the department lately, looking forward to our weekly dinner/drinking session. We've been to Cantina, Chiggy's, and Silungan; wonder where we'll go next? Finally realized it's no fun being hermetic in the workplace. Besides, listening to new friends discuss lit crit over beer (after making corny lit jokes) might help me to overcome my fear of theory.

Vince and I were supposed to check papers over coffee at Dunkin Donuts yesterday, but ended up quoting Gamalinda poems from memory and talking about fatal flaws, "spectral presences" and what Baryon used to call archive fever: the compulsion to write down text messages and save e-mails and memorialize moments. He also said something about theory demanding rigorous thinking from us, giving us ideas and vocabularies to help frame the world. That's it, I thought. My thinking can hardly be described as rigorous. That has got to be learned.

* * * * *

When Ali guest-lectured in one of Lawrence's Philo 101 classes three weeks ago, I sat in. It was good pretending to be his student again; this time, I looked at how he taught as well as what he said, and still enjoyed his freewheeling storytelling style. He strayed from the primary text to give contemporary parables that connect philosophy with real life. And the students' silence was an interested kind of silence. They were listening. Intently.

The lecture was on Marcel's "Broken World"---or more precisely, it took Marcel's "Broken World" as a jumping-off point. How to live in a broken world where easy one-line answers trivialize our personal and political problems. He said there are ways of living that can face and withstand the riot of the world. There are friendships that flourish despite gaps, that are even nourished by them. But finding a way to live with the paradox of brokenness and wholeness is highly individual. I suppose it's less like tightrope-walking and more like ice skating, where we negotiate with the ice and with ourselves without looking at the figures inevitably scratched by our blades.

* * * * *

Connecting the Dots

When I was younger we would get both the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Manila Bulletin every day. I loved the Sunday issues of Bulletin better because there'd be a full page of comics and games for children: hidden word games, spot-the-differences-between-two-pictures games, crossword puzzles, mazes, and yes, connect the dots---which were no-brainers, because it was too easy to guess from the outline what the image would turn out to be. Besides, the dots were precisely numbered to make sure anyone would get the real image at the end: a sketchy cartoony figure all edges and angles, with no contours, no depth, no mystery.

Now if there were no numbers, no one plotted image, just a smattering of dots like random stars on the night sky's page, as if a child had taken a toothbrush and flicked the toothpaste-dipped bristles across black paper, then that would be more interesting. If we are free to make our own images and patterns from what we're given, as I believe we are, the danger is that we'd end up with formless mishmashes worse than some abstract art or kindergarten kids' finger paintings. Or we'd see clever little constellations and ignore the extraneous dots surrounding them, deluding our myopic selves into thinking those forms were predetermined.

(Insert appropriate transitional statement here. Hmm. Hmm. A transitional grunt or sigh will do.)

So I am beginning another blog now, triggered by the observation that there is nothing neat about my life, but that there are (for lack of a better encapsulating term) dots I need to connect, or reconnect, as the case may be, in order to make things whole. If wholeness is indeed my goal.

If the above explanation sounds forced or trite, then maybe it is. I wanted a new blogskin; I found one I liked; I wanted to explain why I like it. But then any small thing can be fodder for self-examination, as some of the better narcissists (i.e. bloggers) know.

* * *

This poem, Strand's most popular and anthologized, seems timely. I have Cos to thank for showing me this last 2001.

Keeping Things Whole
Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

* * *