One-Liners

Two Mondays ago, during yet another drinking/salsa session at Cantina, Allan gripped his San Mig Light and asked: "Hindi nga, how do you get your students to really think?"

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What's more bizarre than belated teasing from friends is a belated question asked over the phone by the father of a good friend who could-have-been: "Siyanga pala, boyfriend mo ba ang anak ko?"

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Corny insight (if you can even call it that) during one of my cornier moments: Amorphous still contains the word Amor.

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Last Wednesday, I was asked to give a talk to three Ateneo high school classes on writing poetry (for their Literacy Month campaign) and I started it by saying, "So, this is what it feels like to be standing in front of a hundred boys in an all boys' high school..."

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My token/payment for the said talk was a book---of Morning and Evening Prayers---which is now sadly gathering dust on my department desk.

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A wonderful phrase from one smart student's memoir: "my life as an uncomplicated carousel"---unfortunately I have no idea if it's original, this being one of the students who plagiarized months ago.

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Not all groups enjoy the same drinking games. (Joel, hindi bumenta ang "musical chairs" sa mga kasama ko nung Nox Librorum!)

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Best Birthday Greeting Winners

Funniest: "Hababirdie to you, hababirdie to you! Hababirdie, hababirdie...Hababirdie to you!! May ur increasing # of years be directly proportional 2 the # of ur orgasms!"

Truest: "happy birthday naya. lovely year ahead, tho last one wasnt 2 bad, was it? palanca and growin in2 schoolmarming--ayos"

Truest, with a wink-wink nudge-nudge tone: "hapi bertday po. alam ko gcing ka naman ngaun at inaasahan mo na rn ang txt ko pero may hinihintay ka pang ibang text."

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So I am now 23---which was A's age when we first met (looking back, he must have been crazy to get involved with an immature 17-year-old!) and B's age when we walked down the firetree flower-carpeted road before he left---but I still feel as uncertain as when I was 18.

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After reading Maita's recent blog entry where she talks about theory and grand narratives, I was reminded of this quote someone had sent me years ago from Murakami's Underground (a quote I used for my writing class this sem):

"If you lose your ego, you lose the thread of that narrative you call your Self. Humans, however, can't live very long without some sense of a continuing story. Such stories go beyond the limited rational system (or systematic rationality) with which you surround yourself; they are crucial keys to sharing time-experience with others.

Now a narrative is a story, not logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. It is a dream you keep having, whether you realize it or not. Just as surely as you breathe, you go on ceaselessly dreaming your story. And in these stories you wear two faces. You are simultaneously subject and object. You are the whole and you are the part. You are real and you are shadow. "Storyteller" and at the same time "character". It is through such multilayering roles in our stories that we heal the loneliness of being an isolated individual in the world."

It is essential that we question (and perhaps revise) the dominant narratives, and that we "write" our own individual narratives, not have them told for us by blindly going with the flow of what we're born into (family, school, religion, politics, etc). Otherwise, we lose our sense of selves, we become one-dimensional characters and instruments in other people's stories---which is just another way of saying we become abused, uncritical, ignorant, and unimaginative, in the worst sense of the word. Or worse: uncritical, ignorant, unimaginative abusers.

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I watched Afterlife (thank you, Jo!) last night, after hours of checking papers at Sweet Inspirations, and fell asleep thinking, I just want to be part of someone else's happiness.