unwell

i am back where i started.

a few months ago i was in the same hospital room sitting on a sofa which doubles as a makeshift bed. taking care of a sick partner. routinely questioned awkwardly of my relation with the patient by medical staff.

friends say its my karma. when they're feeling generous they tone that down to a role i was born to play.

 they say: i am mother theresa tending the sick. i am florence nightingale bringing comfort to the infirm. i am juliet binoche-character in the 'english patient'. (i'm partial to the last one since it makes me a french actress that made it to hollywood which, let's face it, better than a saint or a glorified nurse.)

 

i don't mind. really i don't.

born into a family with siblings with epilepsy and another one with cerebral palsy and autism plus a chain-smoking father with alcohol problems, i am no stranger to people being unwell. it has surrounded me all my life. no wonder my earliest memories include depressive moments of pondering on death as a toddler. i suppose i that made me weird.

everytime someone close gets sick, i feel irrational guilt. why not me?

and when i touch them i say a quiet prayer (and i don't even pray), please take it away. give it to me. i am stronger.

i guess i'm back to where i started even before the time i endured keeping a relationship alive with a man who keeps on getting sick because he drank too much. even after he has left, back to the wife he told me he has divorced, i am back.

i wonder if i have been a virus or some bacteria in a previous life to justify this payback.

this is a new man in my life. and now he's not well and i'm back to the hospital. thinking if i should succumb to thinking the more things change the more they stay the same.

but somehow things are different. now i have to deal with a more demanding patient and i actually like it. and when he says he will try to be well, i actually believe it.

am sick of being scared by my own ghosts. thing is, from the outside, i am healthier than ever. my infirmities are not manifest. maybe somebody needs to 'english patient' me to unravel the bandages that hide the damages.

eclipsed by reason

is there a reason why we choose the people we love?

jp were bored last wednesday so we decided to watch a movie. upon arrival at gateway, we noticed that gone is the usual silent, brooding and cruisy gay crowd and in its place are masses of teeny boppers and baby boomers, single ladies and partnered ones with their irate boyfriends and husbands suffering some sort of mania that is eclipse.

what is a nosy boy to do? of course, we bought tickets to find out what the hullabaloo is all about. after lining up for what felt like for ever, we got tickets to watch it after two days (!).

so came friday, armed with blankies and an open mind that this may actually turn out to be a decent movie and is more than just our dirty-old-men need to see muscular boys running around half naked, i settled down to my lazy boy chair and watched.



two hours after, i am nursing a beer thinking about the movie. not so much about it (since jp and i agreed that the best part was the lazy boy chairs in the platinum cinema), but the questions it raised in my mind.

one question in my mind is related to one of the most common themes in many romantic stories – being put in a situation where you have to choose between two people you love. (bella had to choose between pattinson’s edward and lautner’s jacob. tough choice but with such delicious options, how can she complain? the bitch!)

as the story goes, the decision was ruled by something akin to consistency theory: that is, making decisions in order to try to achieve a maximum practical level of consistency in our world. when bella explained her decision to edward (and i am paraphrasing here), she said it was because she always felt like an outcast with humans (that causes some dissonance) and her experiences with the bloodsuckers lead her to believe that this is where she belonged. thus, being ‘turned’ will result in consistency of her identity and comfort zones.

i thought that while this was such a ‘practical’ approach to deciding on who to love, it was rather unbelievable. because, seriously, in real life – do we even try to reason out the decisions we make when it comes to love? and if we make our decision on love practical, does it still qualify as love? will it be love if it is ruled by reason or worse, convenience?

my take is: when it comes to love decisions, we decide what we decide. we can intellectualise it all we want but in the end, it's like finding reason in deciding between a vampire and a werewolf: unreal and unnecessary.

one song, glory?

tell me, did you want to be a rock star?

like millions of boys (and girls) before and after me, i wanted to be a rock star once. ok maybe not a rock star of the led zep, ac/dc, aerosmith genre. more dylan, amos & difranco. you know, the singer-songwriter vibe.

i was thinking of this erstwhile fantasy because because last friday, my former band had a reunion gig of sorts in a place where it all started.



here’s the back-story:

i was working in an NGO that was exploring various ways to educate and campaign on issues and one path that was explored was through music. they hired a staff known for his musical abilities to be a musical director (although his ‘official’ title was ‘popular educator’) and bought a complete set of instruments and sound system for a band. one night, they gathered all those who fancy themselves musical and got them to do their stuff with the instruments. fancying myself as a back-up singer, i tried backing somebody in U2’s ‘with or without you’. the musical director took the mic away from the lead singer and gave it to me. he then declared i was the vocalist of the band.

we had a good run, our band. we performed in big places like PICC (for the former president erap) and quirino grandstand (on one earth day). unexpected places like on top of a moving truck (on a campaign against constitutional change) or in an inhabited island (for a environmental youth group in el nido). in expected places like basketball courts (in bulacan) and artists’ watering holes (in quezon city). in far flung areas like a farming barrio (in nueva ecija) or in a mountain (in ifugao).

there were memorable performances that can measure up to any audition tape in american idol. once, while performing in a townhall in kidapawan, all the speakers started burning (literally) and conked out. i went down to the audience, asked the band to continue playing (using their own amps) and asked everybody to sing chapman’s ‘baby can i hold you tonight’ with me. (think bette midler in 'for the boys' candlelight ps. i love you' scene. diva, against the odds-like.)

some say i had stage presence. one evidence of this is on one performance in a beach in albay, a fisherman came up the stage gave me a flower and kissed me on the cheek. the band (all straight boys by the way) stopped unbelieving. i motioned for them to continue playing and threw the flower back to the audience. ok, (for those old enough) it was reminiscent of b-list singers getting leis from paid audiences in 70s noontime variety shows. but the band didn't let me live it down for more than a year.

in our heyday we were approached by every major recording company of the time – sony, bmg, wea – you name it. while the band accepted offers to talk (for the free beers) not one was seriously pursued for the fear of selling-out. losing integrity.

time passed.

i left the NGO to join government and had not time for the band anymore. one by one, they also left. the band had various incarnations and renaming. until it was too difficult to keep it going.

in the pre-departure briefing on my way to volunteer in rural Africa, we had an exercise in listing down who are we leaving behind that we will miss. the band ranked third to the family and bestfriends’ first and second.

last friday, i was reminded again how much i miss them.

whenever people tell me i should be doing something related to the arts, i smile. i wish i did. but i have been doing this NGO/development stuff for 20 years. this is what i am really good at as opposed to something i can potentially be good at. after all, how many of us turned out to be the person we wanted to be when we were growing up?

in my time in the band, i wrote one song. i performed it once. we never recorded it. i can’t even remember the melody nor all the lyrics now.

so much for the singer-songwriter fantasy. or to borrow from ‘rent’:

‘find
one song
a song about love
glory
from the soul of a young man, a young man’

i’ve grown old.

new loon

‘because it doesn't make sense for you to love me. i'm nothing... human. nothing’

so goes another hollywood movie line to shake the very core of our beliefs.

jp and i watched new moon because everybody else did (so much for personal integrity). the prospect of buff half-naked boys prancing around the jungle, acting like drooling dogs, made succumbing to pop-culture peer pressure a little easier.
truth be told, it wasn’t half bad.

i’ve always had low expectations for books having movie tie-ins. it’s just usually just a tad better than their gaming counterparts.

but i digress.

i came home after the movie with an inexplicable urge to sort that line out in my mind.

make sense. what makes sense? 1+1 = 2. that makes sense, and then very little else do.

even more so when it comes to love. true, some studies linking love to a feeling of elation produced by a combination of hormones released by specific parts of the brain to ensure progeny makes sense. but to reduce all that drama to something hormonal is too lose all the romantic and spiritual significance we assign to it. so i was thinking, do we want love to make sense, anyway?

personally, i don't think love can make sense even if i want it to. however, i believe i have to make sense even if my feelings don't.

and going back to the movie: for instance - this thing about edward and jacob. sure, i am not averse to the odd threeway when it is called for. but to expect it to happen with a werewolf and a vampire? what was she thinking?

oh right, even vampires cannot read her mind. (could it be because there's nothing there?)

as the consistently divine dakota fanning playing jane said, 'this may hurt just a little.'

it might be just the green envious me talking, so

bite me.

wikus and the theory of emptiness

j, my man of the moon, alerted me to the movie district 9. he said the trailer looked cool. i was intrigued (j downloads movies like a maniac so he has somewhat a film opinion credence), but had to check the reviews before i spent my hard earned money to yet another CGI fest devoid of insight and heart.


rotten tomatoes, with their coterie of snotty film critics gave district 9 an 89%. and while there were raving reviews, i noticed that most stopped short and just gave the premise. an alien ship ‘landed’ (this in itself is a weird concept because the extra-terrestrial vessel stopped and just hovered in the air) on top of johannesburg and humans set up a place for them to stay called – district 9, and what ensues are problems emanating from the human-alien interaction. further, the consensus was 'technically brilliant and emotionally wrenching'.

a critically-acclaimed alien movie set in the city where i lived for 5 years – i guess my watching it was a shoo-in.

so after a real shitty day at work me, jp and my blogfriend id headed off to gayteway. after watching, the 3 of us agreed that it was a brilliant film. those who know us would say this is rare.

the erstwhile mr. scheez once asked me if i can review a movie. i said many bloggers are already doing this and i can’t see what i can possibly contribute. truth be told, i hate spoilers.

still i’d like to talk about the protagonist of the movie, wikus - an unlikely anti-hero. he was white (which in south africa, given its history is, in itself, enough to make you an antagonist), tacky, cheesy and, well – a jerk. so much so that many reviews said that the movie was marred by its unlikeable lead character. however, after all the trials and tribulations his character arc is one of the most compelling and believable reel transformations i’ve seen for some time. so much so that i bought the whole idea of he who relished incinerating alien embryos will risk his life and go between bullets and missiles and their target to save an alien father and son.

this got me to thinking about the whole question of real life heroes and villains. good people and bad people. are they a product of what is inherently virtuous or evil in their character? or are they just objects playing into the circumstances that they find themselves in?

the theory of emptiness contends (and i quote the dalai lama himself here) that any belief in an objective reality grounded in the assumption of intrinsic, independent existence is untenable. all things and events whether material, mental or abstract, are devoid of objective independent existence. everything is composed of dependently related events of continuously interacting phenomena with no fixed immutable essence, which are in themselves in constantly changing dynamic relations. things and events are ‘empty’ in that they do not possess any immutable essence, intrinsic reality or absolute being that affords independence. (what?)

if i haven’t lost you yet what i think this means is that if this is true, then there are no heroes or villains just heroic or villainous events that cause people to act and react a certain way or the other.

this, of course, leads to the question, who or what, then decides which of us gets to be put to one event that builds our character or leads us to damnation?

all my life i have fancied myself a good person. a good son, a devoted lover, a hardworking employee and a loyal friend. this thinking humbles me into reflecting that maybe it’s so because i have been fortunate to have had a loving mother, a committed lover, a host of interesting jobs and many, many steadfast friends.


and then there are times when i can be a vindictive, cruel, unkind bitch many gay guys can only hope (and quite often dream) to be. and i can allude to many hateful persons, circumstances or events that has made me, in a number of instances, somebody worthy of unimaginable self-loathing.

and here’s the mindfuck. following the (lack of) logic of the theory of emptiness people, cirumstances and or events that affected me are, in themselves, not innately good or bad. to think so will assume an intrinsic reality, which does not exist. my mind reels just trying to write this.

so what begets what? does anything beget anything? who knows? does it really matter?

here’s my take. wikus got it rough. i’m just glad i don’t have to interact with creatures from another world, and just look at those in my immediate vicinity in order to recognise my dues to those who have caused me to be me: hero and villain both.

love three-logy

id and i were rummaging through storage boxes last night for my copy of the watchmen which she wanted to borrow when i stumbled into this piece i have written decades ago – back when i was still (gasp!) straight. it’s the story of what happened between me, mon and lisa (not their real names) who after all the history, evolved to become two of my closest friends. anyway, this is nostalgia...



i always thought that maintaining a relationship between two people was tough. when i found myself in a three-way set-up, i knew that i was in deep shit.

it all started harmless enough. three friends whose bond was built by common interests. in the beginning all encounters were determined by the fact that we belonged to the same student organisation. back then, lisa and mon never struck me as relationship material. i particularly detested mon. he called me his nemesis.

the nerve.

yet between the three of us, the best idea, plan or endeavour always resulted. with a lot of fuss maybe. but we always felt it was worth it.

for years thee intimacy was deepened by shared experiences – joy, sorrow, and yes, even heartbreaks. for some reason we broke up with our most serious relationships (till then) almost at the same time. we were thankful we were on the same boat. loveless creatures whose consolation was the comforting shoulder of friends.

then the plot thickened. mon started flirting with the idea of courting lisa who, in turn, was too preoccupied with this huge crush on me to notice. i was dating a lot of people and was too busy to care. not an unusual situation and definitely tenable had we kept it to ourselves.

we did not.

it was a night we were marking our formal departure from the organisation where we met and became friends. in drunken camaraderie, we played truth or dare. before we knew it, the cat was out of the bag.

mon proposed to lisa. lisa proposed to me. i was ill-prepared, i was eyeing another girl outside of our small circle. i rejected lisa’s proposal. she cried hard. she cried on mon’s shoulders.

they started dating exclusively and eventually went steady. i went steady with another girl. anyone would have thought this was where the end credits roll for a totally Hollywood-esque ending. and they lived happily ever after.

not.

in less than a year they broke up. it was not long before i also broke up with my girl.

suddenly, we found the joy of each other’s company again. we had wholesome, social dates that were never meant to be complicated. like lost friends, we found we had a lot of catching up to do. we were basking at the maturity the time and distance have lent us. the affection increased with the regularity of these dates. we were never happier.

the closeness started canceling out people outside our unlikely trio. no one else got it. it was just the three of us that really understood.


at one point we watched the movie threesome. it dawned on us that we were starting to act like the confused characters of the movie. while the movie was enlightening, it also scared the living daylights out of us. we were getting too close. the situation was getting more complicated than we wanted it to be.

we tried to define what was between us in a vain effort to clear the air and found ourselves facing a blank wall. call it recklessness of youth, curiosity or just plain stupidity, we carried on. throwing caution to the wind, we continued seeing each other, always pushing the limit of what was acceptable in each rendezvous.

it would be hard to imagine for anyone who hasn’t been refused by a motel how embarrassing a three-way semi-relationship can be. it is trifle superfluous to enumerate similar situations that constantly reminded us our being together can never be. suffice to say, mon’s mother catching us in our underwear, sleeping in his bed, arms around each other – took the cake.

as lara flynn boyle said in the movie, this is not normal.



there was never a conscious decision to quit but we drifted apart a few months after. we were all busy with our work and i was assigned to work in camiguin for a few months. we tried to maintain a facade of normal abnormalcy and tried to see each other when we can. each one was considered the closest friend of the other, after all.

life went on.

one night i was in manila, they came and picked me up from my office to have dinner. i was struck how the same time and distance that once drew us closer at that point set us apart. tactlessly, i remarked on how pathetic the once meaningful ‘friendship’ has been reduced to a series of uncomfortable silences. they looked at me with equal parts of anger and hurt but they knew what i was talking about.

we recognised that we had a relationship. and we decided it was time for it to end.

this is one break up i will always remember. up to that point we were grappling on an appropriate manner to regard what was between us. it was apparent that none of us knew the rules in this game. we all winged in the best of our ability what was acceptable and what was foul. in the end we all lost by default.

looking back, i wonder what would have happened had we been living in a society where mores are not as defined. i flinch at the idea of how good it was, how it felt so right and how hopelessly doomed. it’s a society where things that don’t fall under standard definition are wrong. we were wrong.

but i refuse to stop at that. i don’t want to vindicate ourselves by passing the buck to the ills of society. with the benefit of hindsight, society’s standards weren’t the biggest stumbling blocks. i realise it was our own fear of the unknown that made us give up. the stakes were too high and gambling on emotions at a high risk of losing did not seem a serious and sane option.

in the end, there was nothing but bitter resignation. in the tradition of our generation, we raged against the dying of the light but we found our anger wanting. all i can hope for is that we can melt the chilling drifts, emerge from the darkness and find our way to the warmth of our friendship, that surely must still be there.

maybe someday.

finding kiel

A counterpoint to Lyka's 'A Time to Kiel'.

This morning: I woke up on the first day of my 39th year, I got off the bed, kissed JP off to work, shitted, shaved and showered. Naked, I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Creases in my face. A certain roundedness in my stomach. A giving-in on the firmness of the ass. The ravages of the years.



“This is you at 39 – live with it.”

I packed my bags and went to work.

In the office, I try to finish the Nth project proposal of the last 5 months. My thoughts meandered and I pondered how my life has changed in a year.

A year ago today, I had a high-paying, high-profile job. I was respected by the people I worked with. I lived with a man who loved me and dogs that adored me. I lived in a house with a sitting room that opened up to a courtyard garden and a patio with a view of the city. I was surrounded by interesting people. And while I consider only a small fraction of them as friends, they all show up to my parties.

I felt lost. I needed to go home.

So I moved back to the Philippines.

After a dabbling with the idea of freelancing, I committed to a new job for a year – nowhere as high-paying or as high-profile – and I am still in the process of earning the respect of my new colleagues. There’s loads of travel which I don’t like but my boss is willing to negotiate. In this job, I haven’t found a need to stop myself from saying what I think for fear of some foreign superior’s disapproval.

Sometime after the move JP broke up with me twice saying I might be better off without him. I broke down in pieces each time but I managed to find some parts of me strong enough to assure him this were not so.

Now I live in a hotel with JP. We left the dogs in Africa with his kids. We are still waiting for his business deals to become final before moving our new apartment. It will be modest by comparison, but I look forward to my mother bringing my sister-in-law’s adobo every week. And I’m starting a monthly poker night with my brothers.

I also re-connected with my gang. That group which is more family (that you chose as opposed to that you were born with) than friends. We don’t see each other often but each get together is blog-worthy. I help organised two 40th birthday parties and we are now planning our Christmas holiday in Baguio – kids and all. I reconnected with id, a close friend I used to work with and we took ball room dancing for a while and try to have blog brainstorming once a week.

I started a blog. Made blog friends. Won the titi twice in a row. The last one made me think and so now I write this post.

My life is not perfect. I made decisions that may not make sense to anybody else but me. But they are mine. I have a feeling that I found my place and in the process I have been found. Being with people I love and who loves me I am reminded of Nicole Kidman playing Virginia Woolf’s suicide letter to Edward in the movie “The Hours”:

”To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.”



illustration in this post by Ismail Fatah Al Turk

holding on to love in transit

this post is inspired by g’s uncertainties.

i used to love travelling. why? well it's like an foolproof guarantee that i'll be reminded that somebody hates to see me leave or happy to see me come home.

remember ‘love actually’? the prime minister played by hugh grant (!) narrates at the beginning of the film,



"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gateat Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspision love actually is all around"

that's all very well until manila traffic became prohibitive that i clearly discourage anybody from taking or picking me up from the airport. lately though, more arduous than manila traffic is that i’ve been travelling so much, that the romance of the airport scene lost its novelty. now it's more 'see yah' *wave* than 'i hate to see you go' *hug* *hug* *tighter hug* *kiss*.

don’t get me wrong. in the light of the financial crisis, i’m thankful to have a job. any job. and i realise that people who wish they travel more for work might feel, “we’re supposed to feel sorry for you?”

i get it. g and i are divas.

but let me show you what i mean before proceeding. pics with proposed captions in parenthesis follows:

this is me in Beijing airport... (fierce)



...me against the snowy peaks near Bishkek (cold)



...me in Istanbul airport (jet-lagged)



...and finally me in Geneva airport (lost in yonkers)



don’t i just look increasingly constipated in these pictures? and i was taking my own pictures, how pathetic is that?

worse, my personal trainer tells me last week that i gained body fat percentage (from 14 to 16%) the last time i took a long trip that made me miss my sessions. i tell you, i can move mountains to get the job done but turning fat for any job is just not worth it!

i hate it.

sorry, i was being frivolous.

seriously though, what i am worried about is that jp and i are starting to fight more and more, almost in direct proportion to the increase in the time i spend away from him to do these trips. and while i might concede that vanity is capricious, my relationship is simply a non-negotiable.

maybe i don’t hate traveling. maybe i simply hate that it takes me away from the person i love.

on tuesday, i’m leaving for Doha and be gone for 9 days. i’m hoping jp won’t have a meeting that morning so he can take me to the airport this time. just before he waves i'll *hug* *hug* *tighter hug* *kiss*.

man of the moon

“i don’t think i can be your boyfriend. but that does not mean i don’t love you.”

so said tong to mew in the last scenes of the movie ‘love of siam’.

last wednesday jp and i met in gay-teway to catch the last day of cinemanila. we wanted to catch this movie. i’ll leave the reviewing to the critics. let me just say, it proved to be a good move since it was a beautiful film.



after the movie, jp and i had dinner (he had a craving for sisig) and i told him that the line above caused me to pause because this was almost exactly the same line my now good friend j said to me when i proposed to him years ago.

why did i propose to him? the story is quite simple. we were student activists together. we became friends. we spent time together. we started being physical. not in a sexual way. just in a slightly more- -than-buddies way. i was gullible. i fell for him. i proposed the same day he committed to a relationship to a girl.

on the night i proposed, he asked me, “why now?”

i answered, “you’re with m (this girl), would it have mattered?”

he paused and quietly said, “it might have. i don’t know.” and we were silent for a long time.

but that was years ago. his girl m is now closer to me than j is. actually since then, i became their marriage counsellor. m runs to me whenever they have difficulties and so does j. they both have acted as life rafts, keeping me afloat in the many times i feel like i’m sinking. we also have celebrated life’s little victories. we are witnesses to each others’ lives.

to tell you the truth, it was m who told me that j still loves me up to now. in one drinking session with m’s lesbian friends, someone commented that it seems hard to believe that men – being what they are - can love each other. to which j replied, ‘it is not hard to believe. i love kiel. and he loves me.’ or something to that effect. the details are not clear because i was a little uncomfortable listening to a wife, telling me her husband acknowledges his love for me in front of her friends. no matter how close we are. seriously.

the happy thing is we belong to a group of friends (that includes gibo) – a gang - who are more family than friends. being a group that verges on intellectual snobbery, we joke all the time that j is only intelligent when there’s a full moon.

he may not be intelligent. but j has taught me a very important thing:

that love is not always as it is cut out to be. and because it breaks out of the mould, it doesn’t make it less of a love.

tomorrow, j is celebrating his birthday. jp and i are going.

and since i realise i don’t appreciate him enough. this post is just to thank him for the person that he is. for his friendship. for his love.

my deepest gratitude, my man of the moon.

i'm not holly

inspired by the zen bitch’s ‘love me for what i am’. read the post below for an explanation on these series of 'reaction posts'.




“i’m not holly. i’m not lulu mae, either. i don’t know who i am. i’m like cat here. we’re a couple of no-name slobs. we belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us. we don’t even belong to each other.”

so said audrey hepburn, playing holly golightly in breakfast at tiffanys.

i used to own a vhs tape of this film which is my all time favourite. and this scene, where she says these lines, i used to play over and over till the tape got all grainy and shit. but she spoke my truth, ms. hepburn:

i belong to nobody and nobody belongs to me.

this was not a statement of defeat. it was not a statement that is a perverted mutation of my communist penchant for resenting private property. it was merely a statement of how i understand human nature. and for the longest time, to believe otherwise (in the context of a relationship) was like watching a movie. it’s all about suspension of disbelief.

because i never believed, nobody else did. so it came to pass that i became an emotional slut. an ex i bumped to the other day said “you are ex with everybody.”

but you know what? growing old, maturing – well, things change.

now i want somebody to belong me almost as much as i want to belong to somebody.

my experience in the considerable array of relationships i had is that it all entails a level of compromising your individuality. and i mean this in the most positive way although i have been known to depreciate it the other way around.

now i am in a relationship that has lasted longer that i can suspend my disbelief for.

but at the end of the day, i lay my tired body in bed, my man puts his strong arms around me and scratches my back, i inhale his sweet breath and i tell myself, "i'm sure glad it's not the no-name cat."




still, i grapple with asserting my own sense of 'self' in this relationship that has been going on for 7 years. i realise that many of the so-called compromises are things that i’m starting to tire of and thinking about giving up on in the first place.

being consumed by work, free ‘love’ (like not believing in monogamy- ergo sleeping around), incessant partying to name a few – was soooo me. they were things that once defined me – made me a wild thing who cannot be caged . these are things that had a place in my personal history but does not have the same value to me now as they used to.

i’m thinking to a certain extent, outside of the requisite chemistry - it is all a matter of timing, too. a long term relationship finds you when you are ready to compromise. that’s why i keep on arguing with gibo on his phenomenal ISO standards on his relationships.

so i ask - is this selling out? relationships are hard work. but it should be. there are 2 unique individuals negotiating a common path. there will be bumps for sure. and as i constantly complain about it –

i bought a dvd of the film to replace the tired old vhs. now i play the scene but the lines that follows, spoken by george peppard playing ‘fred’ gains more resonance of things past...

“you know what’s wrong with you ms. whoever-you-are? you’re chicken. you’ve got no guts. you’re afraid to stick out your chin and say,’ok, life’s a fact’. people do fall in love. people do belong to each other. because that’s the only chance anybody has for real happiness. you call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing. and you are terrified someone is gonna stick you into a cage. well baby, you’re already in that cage – you built it yourself... because no matter where you run you just end up running into yourself.”

here’s the scene, if you’ve got the time (and the bandwidth), watch it to appreciate what i am talking about :



the conclusion: i’m not holly. i am a wild thing tamed. but i am still looking for my cat.

praise the red lantern

A not-so-short distraction before we go on to our regular programming. I just have to share this with you guys or I am going to burst.

'In Raise the Red Lantern, the red lantern, an invented icon here (and one accused of being a fake cultural signifier used merely for sensational purposes), is the film's central symbol and most important metaphor. The colour red is a symbol of sexuality and eroticism, but no longer of passion. More importantly, it turns out to be associated with patriarchal and political power. To get the lantern lit refers to the victory of one woman over all the others, but at the same time it still represents failure for all the women because the woman who gains the lit lantern must be totally exposed, under the red light, before the gaze and under the control of the man.' - from elliemok

OK. I have to admit this post may have very little to do with the movie. I thought I would put some counter consciousness to all that anti-East (particularly China) sentiment right now. I love babies as much as the next guy, but hey, I'm currently loving my Asian roots more. So can you pleaaaase just cut me some slack? I can almost hear my friend Chevon say -

"You ching-chong-china man!"

Last Sunday I had to fly to Ulaan Bataar in Mongolia via Hong Kong and Beijing. HK was uneventful as usual (sorry Kiks and Jericho!), but Beijing, my god, Beijing Airport was f-ing awesome.

I'm not like Gibo who's good at cameras so let me just show you some pics i stole from the web.







Apparently, it is the world’s largest and most advanced airport building - not only technologically, but also in terms of passenger experience, operational efficiency and sustainability – Beijing Airport is welcoming and uplifting. A symbol of place, its soaring aerodynamic roof and dragon-like form celebrates the thrill of flight and evokes traditional Chinese colours and symbols.

Whatever it is they aimed to do, they achieved it! Sold. It's like one gargantuan functional art. The pics just don't do it justice.

Funny thing is, I had an overnight lay-over in Beijing and was hoping to spend the night in that fantastic building. (Just maybe find a nice, comfy lounge chair somewhere - which was there in abundance!) But no! The ground staff ushered me to immigration and they told me to get out (OK, maybe the experience was not that perfect.)

So there was I, first time in mainland China, looking for a hotel in the middle of the night. Thankfully, the tourist desk was very helpful. I was shuttled into a hotel in no time. Driving to the hotel... Beijing was foreign, mysterious. And that got me thinking about the red lantern, my favourite Chinese film. (Finally, the connection is made)

Nobody can speak English in the hotel. The bellhop (with the help of sign language) offered to get me a girl to massage me and god-knows-what-else.

I was Scarlet Johhansen and Bill Murray rolled in one jet-lagged package.

I called my friend Stav. (He's the only one I can reach. My friends must not like me as much as I thought they do.) I shared with him my Sofia Coppola-esque predicament. He told me he is about to test his monitoring and evaluation instruments for home-based care services for PLWAs. Frustrated, I took a walk and went to a bar.

***

Fast forward to tonight when we were treated by the host organisation to a show of the Mongolian National Song and Dance Academic Ensemble. It was like being transported to another world!

Mariah has nothing on this throat singers, I tell you. Men and women can sing by vibrating their throat eliciting this sound that has low and high notes. It's like they're their own one person choir. Ugh. I'm bungling up the description. (Suffice to say, in my late night, slightly obscene chat with Jericho tonight, we wondered if they can sing like that - imagine what their blowjobs must be like.)

Here's a pic I got from the internet (it costs 4 dollars per pic to take and I'd much rather buy a CD for JP.) But the guy who sang tonight was wayyyy hotter.



To the fashionistas, I know Asian style was sooo last year (or was it the year before that?), but I'm going retro.

I realised, I love JP and will probably be a potato queen for the rest of my life. But in my next life, I'm cumming back to my Asian roots. I promise to be a good and faithful rice queen!

I am no woman but I am totally exposed, under the red light, before the gaze and under the control of the man.

Praise the red lantern.

a ‘thank you girl’ trapped in ‘ms. congeniality’s body

something has been bugging me. so let me get this straight in my head:

in july 28, the president, in her state of the nation address, reaffirmed her commitment to restore peace in southern philippines. she proved this by secretly forging an agreement with the islamic liberation front to set up bangsamoro judicial entity.

contrary to its supposed intention, fighting broke out in mindanao soon after the country’s highest court suspended the draft agreement, finding it unconstitutional.

thereafter, the palace uses this situation as a testament that federalism is the only way to peace and consequently, there is a need for charter change.

in the meantime, blood was let, lives were lost and homes were burned.

is it just me or is it too much to ask: if we are going to be fooled, can it be with a measure of subtlety?

seriously.

but more to the point, how much do the masses of filipinos have to pay in order for the people in power to stay where they are?

this has been on my mind recently. not just because coming back to manila tickled my activist bone. not because gloria-bashing is so in vogue its kitsch. but because i am volunteering my time for a research.

(huh?)

to explain: the research is on the cultural politics of women and peace, looking at mindanao as a site of everyday contestation. (don’t worry, i will not bore you with a lecture on cultural politics. that requires a separate post – and something that will probably not find its way in this blogsite.)


last week in the course discussing the review of related literature, a member of the research team pointed out that the resulting violence from conflict exploits and oppresses women (more so than in peace time).

i know that as aspiring beauty queens we are all supposed to be for world peace. but after pondering this point i asked, ‘so is it our position that social transformation is possible without violence?’

in a roomful of smart people steeped in studies on peace, nobody had an answer.

i have spent the last seven years of my life in a country which is hailed as the shining example of peaceful transformation to democracy. but i was there long enough to know that while racism may be made illegal, the violence continues.

and you know what? it’s the women who suffers most. countless men who don’t have anymore big battles to fight remain disenfranchised. so they turn their anger towards their own homes, to those who are close to them, to those who cannot defend themselves.

in the not-so-distant past our country also gained worldwide recognition because of a so-called peaceful democratic revolution. but after we have given our flowers to soldiers standing on tanks, after we have tired of the yellow ribbons, after we have stopped seeing apparitions of the holy mother atop mass mobilisations, who even remembers what went down there?

come to think of it, wasn’t it another ‘revolution’ on the same fateful street that put this president into power?

those revolutions were all so wonderfully peaceful. hey, look where it got us.

which gets me to the question, when is violence justifiable? when is it necessary?

but then again, is war the answer? if we know that those who are going to be killed aren’t those who decide in the seats of power, will it ultimately be just? why should the dispossessed fill the front-lines of a war caused by the rich?

i’m so full of questions recently that i am my own demented quiz show.

barring insanity, this i tell you. (warning: fantasy sequence imminent) if all these questions were posed to me by a judge from hell in the beauty contest to end all beauty contests, this will be my answer:

“i may not be radical enough to incite rebellion nor valiant enough to kill and prove the strength of my conviction, but i cannot accept this title if it means i have to blindly subscribe to… world peace!”

(audience is dead silent thinking, “ag, shame. she’s pretty but the nerves got her speaking nonsense” and claps hesitantly because of the ‘applause’ idiot board)

holding back the tears, knowing full well i lost my shot at the crown, in a shaky but vaguely self-righteous voice i will whispher, “thank you... bitch.”

claiming ever after

‘cindi-fucking-rella!’, exclaimed laura san giacomo playing kit de luca in pretty woman. we all laughed because we understood. when asked who we know gets his or her happy ending, it seems profanity is not only called for, it’s hilarious.

lately, i have given this issue much thought. not only because i realised i have found the one i’d want to share ever after with. ironically, because there were numerous occasions in recent past i felt i have lost him.



so boo-fucking-hoo, poor little old me. right? (i don’t know about you but not having my happy ending, rather than just questioning who has, is a better excuse for vulgarity.) you’re probably thinking, we all go through the up’s and down’s of relationships. what can i possibly add to the discussion that sappy love songs we tirelessly sing in karaoke’s have not overdone and turned into cliché?

frankly, nothing.

except that it’s mine. and since i’m the one feeling the blues everyone else is excluded. it’s extremely isolating. and against reason, i feel like i’ve been broken like no other person has been broken before.



when considering my latest relationship angst, my friend g in his unique brand of wisdom told me, ‘snowhite had to swallow a poisoned apple and die. ariel had to lose her voice. fiona had to turn into an ogre. all these for a happy ending. even in fairy tales, they did some hard work. who do you think you are that you expect real life should be any easier?’

for the butch men who can’t relate, let me translate my friend’s astuteness. snowhite’s prince had to accept that his beloved was cohabitating with seven cute little men before him. prince eric almost married the sea witch. shrek had to fight a dragon. but perhaps closer to real life, belle’s prince had to turn into a beast before finding his humanity. clearly, no matter what side of the gender fence you relate to, the road to happiness is paved in hell.

last night my friend id reminded me of desiderata. you know, strive to be happy. in our unspoken agreement, it was clear that what desiderata did not explain is that ‘striving’ is actually going through the sham, drudgery and broken dreams.

despite all these, here i am again. hoping that somehow things will turn out right.

don’t get me wrong. i know that richard gere will never climb up my fire exit (especially when the house i live in doesn’t have one) with his umbrella and a bunch of flowers, pledging his love. but it doesn’t have to be richard gere. i never really found him all that attractive. after all, i’m not a prostitute who looks like julia roberts (despite my intermittent, not-so-secret wish to be so). still, i’ve always believed that if i believe, someday i’ll have my fairy tale.

and like my heartache, this faith in happy endings is mine.

quick, give me that poison apple.