Ka Gustin

My neighbor Ka Agustin is now in his 90’s. He is still physically strong for his age his eyesight is still good and he can still drink hard liquor. But the amazing thing is, he broke many of my belief about aging. One is about hygiene. My mother made it her career to instill in my daughter the value of daily baths. I would hear her homiletics every morning—my siblings and I grew up under her system, and I knew that my daughter would greatly benefit from her unorthodox method of motivations—on the benefits of daily baths. My wife works and I study, so my mother was my daughter’s unpaid sitter. But what does it had to do with Ka Agustin? Well, the old man never takes a bath. He had been our neighbor for almost twenty years now, and come rainy days or summer days I have never actually seen the man wet. He wore the same clothes over and over again and this made me think that he was immutable. All his contemporaries are all dead now, and maybe this is one of the reasons why he drinks a lot today. I don’t know, but I think when a person has lived so long and saw all his contemporaries dying one by one, he realizes that longevity can be lonely. He’s still alive, reclusive, and spends his days just sitting under the talisay tree with that distant look in his eyes, clapping his hands now and then. He seldom speaks. Sometimes he smiles and claps his hands to who knows what rhythm; maybe, with his age, time just stood still somewhere in his memory and he just kept on reliving them. Who knows? The human mind is a universe in itself.

(I wrote this doodle a year ago. Mang Gustin suffered a stroke and is now bedridden.)

Chuang Tzu’s Butterfly and Matrix

According to Chuang Tzu there was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly, and then when he woke, he wondered whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

Who cares if the man thinks he’s a butterfly thinking he’s a man. In the Philippines there’s a man who thinks he’s the Son of God thinking he’s a man in Davao thinking he’s the Son of God thinking he’s a man in Davao…

This is all about embodiment. Chuang Tzu’s story tells how we, at one point in our life we question the experiences of our body. How do we know that everything we experience is real? That everything is not a dream? How do we know reality? Idealism and all that stuff… Chuang Tzu’s story about the butterfly is expressed in the movie Matrix.

Of course Chuang Tzu is paraphrased in Matrix but basically on the basics, Chuang Tzu is alive and kicking there: “There was a man who thinks he was a computer program, and then he woke, he wondered whether he was a computer program dreaming he was a man only to find out that he’s a movie about a computer program who thinks he’s a man, and then when he woke, only to find out that he’s a sequel to a movie about a man who thinks he was a computer program, and then he woke, he wondered whether he was a computer program dreaming he was a man only to find out that he’s another sequel movie about…. Until he woke to find out that he’s a computer game being played by a man who thinks he’s a computer program thinking he’s a man playing a man playing a computer program...

Reality, reality sometimes it’s crazy when you think about it. Just think about it…Or better yet, don’t bother to think about it. Just have fun for calabaza’s sake.

School Be Cool

My daughter is excited about school and she’s already asking me about buying her school stuffs.

I am not excited about school. This is my senior year in college and, oh, how I wished I could feel the magic of going back to school just like the magic I felt when I was my daughter’s age. The erasers that smells like chewing gums, the notebooks, the brand new bags featuring the hottest cartoon characters, the brand new shoes, uniforms, new classmates, new crushes etc. The magic where’s the magic? Now when I’m in school all I feel is envy. My classmates are young and watching them falling in love, secretly checking out their crushes, talking about reproductive health, and all those things that only teenagers talk about is very painful. Yes, painful is the word…

Heavens, I’m even older than most of the instructors.

The I and the Thou

(Nothing to do with Martin Buber’s “The I and the Thou”)

The “I” becomes the sigh
If the message is purely from the “I”
There’s nothing wrong with the perspective of the “I”
As long as it is not the staple all the while

The preacher who uses the “I”
Should understand that there are the thou
The thou are the thou who don’t care about the “I”
Because too much “I” give the thou the sigh
How it is wished that the preacher would leave the safety of the “I”
And instead proceed to the relevant spiritual needs of the thou

Stories of the ‘I” must run out
And if this happened what would be left are conflicting accounts
That if measured would a thousand years amount
Now, no preacher can live as long as a mount
So the “I” stories are nothing more than recounts
Of tall stories of long discounts

The preacher whose staple is the “I’
Should instead prepare hard
For there are more realistic and powerful and edifying
Illustrations for messages
Than the trite and long overused “I”

(Even the Lord Jesus
Seldom used stories from His the “I”.
Jesus use fables and stories exclusive of His “I”!)

The “I’ should think of the thou
For thou has need that the I” will never be able to give
For the “I” is the worst source of edification
For the thou.
And if this continues, the “I” should realize
That the “I” is preaching to the “I”

_______________________

“No preacher would (or should) deliberately judge the credibility of his message by the credulity of his audience.”—Msgr. Ronald Knox

Feuerbach’s Feeling

“Feeling is the organ of the divine”

“If feeling is the essential instrumentality or organ of religion, then God’ nature is nothing other than an expression of the nature of feeling. The divine essence, which is comprehended by feeling, is actually nothing other than the essence of feeling, enraptured and delighted with itself—nothing but self-intoxicated, self contented feeling.”

Consciousness of God is human self consciousness; knowledge of God is human self knowledge. By the God you know the human, and conversely by the human, you know the God. The two are one. What God is to a person that too is the spirit, the soul; and what the spirit, the soul are to a person, that is the God. God is the revealed and explicit inner self of a human being…The historical progress of religion consists therefore in this: that what an earlier religion took to be objective, is later recognized to be something human. What was earlier religion is later taken to be idolatry: humans are seen to have adored their own nature. Humans objectified themselves but failed to recognize themselves as this object. The later religion takes this step; every advance in religion is therefore a deepening in self knowledge.

Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity

________

God created man, man created God—mirror image. One may disagree with what old Ludwig Feuerbach is saying but nothing could be a better proof for the existence of God than his thesis. Knowledge of the self is knowledge of God. I don’t know what feeling here is, but it’s true that what is important is that one has a feeling of or for God because then one can say there is God. But, as the death of theology people say, what if the feeling is gone? Does it matter whether there is God if there is no feeling of God? Of course this is not possible because the negation of a feeling of something must necessitate the existence of something that one has to negate his feeling about. I don’t know, but Anselm’s ontological proof is difficult to refute.

Post-election Urinalysis

As usual, as the norm is, no one lost in the last Philippine election held dismay…err…rather this month of May. Election protests are flooding in even before the final votes are counted. There are petitions for transfer of canvassing, staying of counting, rechecking of election returns and whatever legal and extralegal and illegal tactics to delay the inevitable. Accusations of cheating, magic, miracles and hypnotism are being thrown left and right while the citizens watched as the winning and the winner politicians that diligently wooed them for forty-five days is now starting to evaporate like deodorized fart—they can’t even catch a waft of the cologne of these politicians’ chauffeurs. How they have changed; how they haven’t changed.

Teachers were ambushed and some were killed trying to defend the ballot boxes and what do they get? The president visiting them for what? The president’s presence merely adds insult to the pains and the losses. Hello Garci!

A schoolroom was burned and teachers and children were injured. Hello Garci!

Complaints were filed against losing candidates who didn’t pay their election volunteers like poll watchers, sample ballot givers and others. The losing candidates reasoning? They were volunteers so they were not obligated to pay these volunteers. I don’t know why my countrymen and countrywomen never got used to his kind of shameless exploitation of the poor. I have been a volunteer poll watcher twice and all of them are with losing candidates and in all of them what I got was half the amount promised. After that, I just stopped volunteering even if the amount was doubled. Imagine the hardships of volunteers guarding the candidates votes some of them are hurt and there are even cases where some are murdered and yet these shameless… (I propose conducting imprecatory payer vigils for these politicians).

Father Panlillio, a Catholic priest, won the gubernatorial election in Pampanga. And already two Barangay Captains whose barangay supported Panlillio received threats and one was even shot at injuring the Barangay Captain’s wife and nephew. Pampanga is the President of the Republic of the Philippine’s home province. A place tainted with that illegal numbers game called jueteng. It’s amazing how the wife of the biggest jueteng lord in Pampanga was elected a representative and now ran for the gubernatorial race in the province. Unfortunately for her and for the other candidate, a Lapid, the son of a former senator of the Republic of the Philippines famous for his Zorro clone movies and for hiring English interpreters in the senate, they lost. Shows that Pampanga is sick of money and of actor’s son.

The gubernatorial result in Pampanga is one of positive things that somehow gave microscopic optimism for the Filipinos this past election. I saw how the Kapampangans really fought for Panlillio; they even conducted prayer vigils for their priest-candidate for free! Father Panlillio won and this proved that, if the Filipinos really want change they can achieve it. I just hope that the Father Panlillio will survive.

Suspended Catholic priest and governor-elect Eddie Panlilio (centre) is hugged by his campaign volunteers after he was proclaimed the new governor of Pampanga province, north of Manila, late on Friday. Panlilio, a Roman Catholic priest, won a tight election race to become governor of President Gloria Arroyo's northern Philippines home province, beating Arroyo's two bickering allies.

Now there are four Arroyos in the government: Her Machiavellian Excellency Gloria, Her Excellency’s Wizard Brother in law Miguel “Iggy Pop” Arroyo, Her Excellency’s sons Mickey and Datu Arroyo. Cong Dadong Arroyo, Her Excellency’s father, the great former Philippine president known for his humility and nationalism and ethics must be weeping in his grave. A family of…hmmm…hey where’s Snow White!

Her Excellency’s husband, the First Gentleman was operated on for heart by-pass. It was rumored that the original plan was for a heart transplant unfortunately it proved to be very, very difficult to find a heart that will match and can pump the First Gentleman’s kind of blood.

In the senatorial election, Trillanes’ performance is a revelation. Although he is not the first mutineer to be elected, that is if her Machiavellian Excellency’s operatives will be prevented from operating the magic yellow voting machine. His is a different case altogether. His mutiny is not that big and action packed like Honasan’s whose exploits is Chuck Norris stuff. No, Trillanes’ mutiny is more of a Dennis Trillo stuff, the looks and the uniforms, lots of talking, the reading of letters, suave, good looks, matinee idol things. Buts still he is doing well in the election and in this trend, that is unless some mathematical operations is instigated against Trillanes votes, he will be the third military man in the senate now, together with Honasan and Lacson. What does this tell us? This three, if ever they would be in the senate, could send shiver down someone’s hemorrhoid.

Even if Trillanes lose he is already vindicated.

It seems that despite what Chairman Abalos did to Alan Peter Cayetano, Cayetano is still bound for the senate. Chairman Abalos’ allowed the candidacy of a certain Joselito Cayetano who should not only have been declared as a nuisance candidate but should have also been declared as a candidate for nuisance. Why? It’s obvious that Chairman Abalos thought that he could dilute Cayetano’s votes but it seems that Abalos, with the prospect of having Alan Cayetano plus the three military hard-donkeys in the senate, failed. Let’s watch and see how Abalos’s magic will rebound on him.

My gulay a Ping, an Honasan, a Trillanes in the senate…mistah stuff and all those hazings in the PMA…

I admire Kiko Pangilinan. He’s one guy who proved that political machine is no match for a superstar wife. Anyway, he’s very competent and politically clean. A good combination, Kiko and Sharon.

Prospero Pichay whose catchphrase is “Pichay! itanim sa Senado” (A play on Pechay a vegetable—Vegetable! plant in the Senate), as of the last counting is trailing behind. The vegetable is bound for the rabbits. What’s up Doc? The catch phrase is stupid anyway.

Richard Gomez and Cesar Montano learned a very expensive lesson. The days of actor-candidates are now over. They should have stayed in the local politics like running for Barangay Captains or Councilor or Kagawad etc.

The election is over. We have billions of pesos worth of foreign debt in the form of rotting automated counting machines and we are still using our fingers, taking weeks, people dying, children being victimized, yet here is the Chairman smiling congratulating the police for a generally peaceful election, yet and yet…

Chairman Abalos deserves a whack on his two prunes (or are they raisins) for a job well bungled. Ouuuuchhhh…that is if they’re still attached, the prunes (or the raisin) I mean.

Negative Theology

Negative theology is the theology that describes God for what God is not. The principle is simple enough: God is beyond human understanding and human experience that is difficult and may even be impossible to understand the nature of God positively, one can only chip away what God is not. The champion of this system of theology is Dionysus of Aeropagite (c. 5th Century) whose mystical writings were accepted by the church in the fifth century. Maximus the Confessor wrote a commentary on Dionysus’ theological approach: “The two names of Being and non Being ought both to be applied to God, although neither of them really suits God…God possesses an existence that is completely inaccessible and beyond all affirmation and negation…For ignorance about God on the part of those who are wise in divine things is not a lack of learning, but a knowledge that knows by silence that God is unknown.” (Placher, 95) (A trace of influence on Tillich’s ontology there.)

Ever wonder how we sometimes claim divine prerogatives like in prayers, “we already claimed that you oh God have answered our request in the name of Jesus” and then the opposite happened. Funny but true how we sometimes think that we know so much about God that we can lay claim on God’s prerogatives—blasphemy if you ask me, blasphemy.

A good dose of negative theology will bring us back to the understanding that there are things we cannot claim from God, even in prayers, especially in prayers; and that there is a chasm that divides us from God that cannot be bridged by the intellect and even by Faith for God is God. Unknowable but revealed, transcendent but immanent, etcetera….

Pinarap

I cannot forget this TV ad of a chubby little boy dipping a piece of barbecue in lemon and soy sauce condiment and after tasting the food, he shouted “pinarap”; while his chubby mother smiles holding a bottle of Marca Pina soy sauce. The boy is maybe my age or a little older than me because that ad was a TV staple during my elementary and pre-school days, around the late 70’s and early eighties, and that ad was aired unchanged until well into the year 2000. In the 90’s and the 2000 the ad can only be viewed in the minor TV channels usually the government owned and controlled ones. Maybe it’s the cost, the ad was unchanged and watching it shown in faded color, complete with the ant march and the hissing audio one may be inclined to buy Marca Pina out of pity. But it brings back a lot of memories: the style of the kitchen where the ad was shot is reminiscent of how my aunts’ and our old house’ kitchen looked like when I was a kid. Now they are all renovated, rebuilt is more like it. The design on the plates and saucers shows how beautiful the chinas in those days were, the dress the chubby mother wore, the hairstyle, the dining table and the chair…

One day, a few years or months ago (my sense of time is not functioning properly), while I was channel surfing I saw this ad showing a middle-aged father preparing food for his son. The man is shown putting the food on the table and then the son tried his father’s cooking, but first he dipped his food in a lemon and soy sauce condiment, tasted the food and then the boy shouted “Pinarap!” The father winked and a small TV window popped at the bottom part of the TV showing an old ad featuring a chubby little boy dipping his food in soy sauce, tasting the food and then shouting “Pinarap.” My ole sentimental heart is choking my neck.

I was waiting for it to be shown again, I saw it once or twice, but I was never able to see it again. With ads like that…yes, Marca Pina soy sauce, buy it.

Comparing the old ad with the new ad showed how fast things changes: Microwave ovens, smaller ref, smaller, sterile kitchen; smaller dining table, and it’s now the father who’s in the kitchen preparing food for his son.

The times they are always a changing.

Pocketbooks

You know how it is with Filipinos; they make specific brand names into generic names. For example toothpaste, Filipinos would buy a Colgate from a store or grocery and the cahier would often ask, “What brand of Colgate?” The reply would be Close Up or Crest or some local brand like Hapee. Or they would buy Coke and specify Pepsi.

The same with paperbacks, paperbacks would always be pocketbooks for the Filipinos.

I saw this TV magazine program featuring the reading habits of my country…err…person. They found out that Filipinos are reading more today than in the last few years. This is because of the growth of popular literature romance written by local authors. These pocketbooks are mostly the Cinderella type novelette. A girl was interviewed on how she find the novels, and one replied that she now can’t get into a relationship because no one qualifies for her ideal man; her ideal man are men portrayed in the Cinderella type pocketbooks that she reads all the time. Talk about escape literature.

Filipino love romance comics and according to literature experts these local Cinderella romance pocketbooks is comparable to the earlier Komiks romance series that Filipinos loved to read.

Local Filipino comics (Komiks) are now extinct; they used to be the primary literature for the common Filipino.

The search for Filipino Philosophy

Is there a Filipino Philosophy? I read an essay titled “Doing Philosophy in the Philippines” by Dr. Afredo P. Co and his answer to this question can be summarized this way: Since the Philippines is a melting pot of cultures brought about by invasions, missionaries, trade etc. the Philippines has no distinctive and native philosophy to speak of. He goes on to say that the Philippines is a Spanish creation and an amalgam of east, west, north, south, Christian, pagan, Malayan, Muslim etc. cultures. “Ours is the identity of the new age—ambivalent, polymorphous, processual, always becoming.” According to Dr. Co, philosophy as a formal discourse is a Spanish import. Dr. Co is writing with a postmodern perspective. (His essay is part of an essay collection titled “Two Filipino Thomasian --from the University of Stro. Thomas and not Aquinas--Philosophers on Postmodernism.”)

I don’t know if I’m (an old college student) qualified to challenge a professional philosopher’s essay but since Dr. Co is not reading this blog, I’ll try with the knowledge that my arguments can be destroyed by the touch of his (or anyone’s’) pinky.

First what is the measure of a thing before it can be called a philosophy? Is it formalism? A system? Because if the search for the Filipino philosophy is the search for a philosophy patterned after the Graeo-Roman-Jewish-English-German etc. system of Philosophy then the wrong instrument is being used. What one will find is a Graeco-Roman etc. philosophy because there’s a template, a fingerprint already at hand to act as a reference to whatever is being searched, hence to fail to measure up to that reference meant failure in identification. What tool must we use in searching for Filipino Philosophy? That is the first question in the exploration for the search for Filipino Philosophy. I think the western philosophical tools are inadequate or inappropriate for this task. Then what is? I don’t know but I think this is where Filipino thinkers must start.

One may ask, is there such philosophy without a system or a structure? This is one of the tasks of the philosopher also—to find and formulate a system or order from an existing, albeit primitive philosophy or potential philosophy. They criticize, deconstruct, reconstruct whatever it is that they do to philosophies in order to make it “presentable.”

Second, whether we like it or not, philosophy, to be recognized as a philosophy must have a founder, a champion, an innovator. It must have a thinker to attach it to. But Filipino’s has no recorded sage in the level of Plato, Confucius etc. But is that requisite for a philosophy to exist? We have no champion in philosophy because we have not searched all the individual cultures in the Philippines with diligence because if this is done, in their epics, in their poems, in their songs, in their myths there is and will always be champion of wisdoms. Mythical these people maybe but then again most philosophers especially Asians are mythical, or mystical. It must also be understood that some Asians philosophies became “recognized philosophies” because they are in part became political creatures in the form of governmental ethics.

Dr. Co has mentioned that there’s no such thing as native Filipino culture because there’s no culture to speak of in the first place; it was destroyed by foreign intrusion etc. I agree but that does not mean the Filipino’s lost all of it. We are an archipelago and the diversity of languages is a testament that there are survivors. I think what Dr. Co is thinking when he that we have no national language he may be referring to the death of the Alabata, the ancient Filipino alphabet. But as present history proves and the modern Filipino, the national language, is proving a national language is still in the process of being created because there exist a regionalistic mentality among the Filipinos. Yes, Filipino, the national language, is being taught and being used but there are still more Cebuano speakers than the Tagalog based Filipino.

Third, there’s this tendency to think of philosophy as abstracts and not practical. Hence what is considered articulation is verbal conceptual articulation. But it is that necessarily so. A practical people with practical language will have practical philosophy. A highly abstract people like the Greeks will have abstract philosophy. An organic people like the Chinese will have an organic philosophy. What is the measure then? Environment is a factor.

Fourth, is we tend to think of a Filipino Philosophy as a unified Filipino Philosophy. If I follow Dr. Co’s argument that the culture is preserved in its language it follows that since the Philippines has hundreds of languages then the search must be for Filipino Philosophies and not for the Filipino philosophy. Leonardo N. Mercado in his book “Applied Filipino Philosophy” tried to do a comparative study of Filipino philosophy by comparing local languages like his exploration of the word beauty ( aesthetics) and according to Dr. Co “Mercado is still on the level of comparing them but he has not established what can be categorically claimed as the Filipino Philosophy.” I think that Dr. Co is (not) forgetting that the Philippines is a country of many nations. There’s no “the Filipino Philosophy” there is “ Filipino Philosophies.”

Fifth, what is meant by formal philosophical discourse? Logical? Dialectical? Empirical? Pragmatic? Etc. Do we have to apply these things in search of Filipino Philosophy/ies?

Dr. Co’s concluding statement is I think fatalist. “As I said, you not need not worry any longer about the search for a Filipino philosophy, for when you philosophize with excellence, your articulation is bound to be recognized here and elsewhere, now or later. And since you are a Filipino philosophizing, then that philosophy of yours becomes Filipino.”

I don’t think a people can survive without culture, without philosophy. Tribes have ethics that must require sophisticated discourses and articulation, no matter how primitive they seemed to the highly abstract western philosophy, but they must for how can they survive? The search for Filipino Philosophies is a worthy enterprise. Although Dr. Co does not discourage this endeavor, it seems that he has already made up his mind as to what Filipino philosophy should be and is all about—skills in articulation, articulating other philosophies.

I have one suggestion, Why not start the explorations of Filipino Philosophies by exploring Filipino cuisine. I’m not joking. Mercado tried by exploring the Filipino’s sense of time, why not try, again, Pinoy cuisine.

It’s not a matter of nationalism or patriotism, but I think there is or there are native Filipino Philosophies to speak of. I can feel it because we Filipino have values and practices, an ethos and an ego that is uniquely ours. If there’s smoke there must be fire! There’s discourse in there, and definitely there’s Philosophy in there. It’s just that in the search we must invent the tools —that is, if we have to.

A Tribute to Yoyoy Villame (1938-2007)

My late father once told me that only a genius could write a song like Buchikik. I asked my father why, and he told me that even the Chinese and Germans couldn’t understand that song and yet many Pinoys loved it. In fact, it ruled the AM wavelength for a long, long time. My father said that when I was still in grade school. The days when our alarm clock was the Barangay San Juan Elementary School Unit 1 playing Yoyoy’s “Mag exercise Tayo Tuwing Umaga.”

Yoyoy was considered as the king of Filipino novelty songs, and I think that title does injustice to the genius of the man. It seems to imply that humor is a sort of a novelty, something that is cheap, not fit for the mainstream, an alternative, something that should not be taken seriously. I love humor. The fact is humor is the most difficult genre of any art to do whether it is in writing, painting, cartooning, sculpture, singing etc.

Yoyoy’s music, though humorous, is surprisingly wide in its field of exploration. I learn most of my Philippine history and geography from the song “Philippine geography”, one of his earliest hits. Who says that history and geography is boring? Why not try Yoyoy’s approach. How about weaponry? Why, Yoyoy’s “Granada” enumerates all the arsenal the Philippine army has from rifles to granada to bayoneta to bomba, a good mnemonic tool for ROTC cadets. Language? Yoyoy’s tongue twister "Si Filemon" when sang using all the vowels of the alphabet will cure any lisping as well as Demosthenes method of chewing stones while orating at the sea. I mean, Yoyoy was a genius. How about fables in music? Why, his “Hayop na Kumbo” is an Orwellian piece of literature by itself. If that’s is not convincing enough to show how talented the man was, in experimental psychology, literature and linguistics Yoyoy’s “Buchikik” is a dissertation material in itself. What was he saying? What kind of metaphysical thoughts did he want to express that he had to invent a language of his own? What kind of linguistic structural method did he use? To think that that song was inspired by the native pounded rice delicacy called buchi. I gotta to hand it to him.

It is time that we recognize his contribution to Philippine music. I hope congress will enact law recognizing Yoyoy as a national artist for music. I’m serious. Consider his influence among local bands. ERaserheads, Yano, Itchyworms, Parokya ni Edgar etc. they may or may not admit it but one can hear a Yoyoy in there. He was well respected; he was well known. His musicality was beyond question.

Consider our crop of national artist in music and I would say that some of them had their claim to that title through musical elitism. And unless one wants to write dissertations about Philippine music, then will their names only crop up. In the daily life of the Filipinos what are these national artists? Game show trivia is what they are—abstracts. Yoyoy deserves to be there as a true Filipino musician who made us laugh. Sometimes that’s all that matters—laughter. Think, just think of how many people Yoyoy made happy and then compare this achievement with our national artists achievements--avant gardes, cultural, innovations, nationalism, what atre they but words.

-

Is Yoyoy’s music a novelty? It’s an injustice to the genius of the man. As far as I’m concerned the man’s music is profound and wide. But the most important thing is, despite his image as a naïve probinsyano Yoyoy’s philosophy in music and life is so simple and yet so powerful—laughter. I love the man, and now he’s dead.

-

The man was also an outstanding Christian.

Read CBN's article about yoyoy click here http://www.cbnasia.org/700club/yoyoy.htm

Classical Guitar, Bach and those musical baby mobiles

I have been making use of my three to two weeks vacation left before my boring college life begins again by trying to learn Classical guitar. As they say, it’s never too late to learn anything new. I am now on my second piece, although I haven’t really mastered Bach’s “Bouree in E Minor” I’ll just let practice polish it off. That’s what I usually do; let the daily playing do the polishing and not the hourly practicing. I compared the computers rendition of the piece with the one in the CD and the difference is big. It’s the human factor—the interpretation of the players and I can’t expect that from a computer. That means I had to buy CDs (pirated) of classical guitars in order to hear the pieces played by the masters.

Dream on, George, dream on.

Bach’s second piece is “Minuet”. I don’t have any idea why the master gave titles like this. I mean, why not name his opus after plants or people or animals or cakes or experiences or constellations instead of “Minuet”, “Bouree”, “Allegrettos”, “Andantinos” and “Preludes” etc. Anyway, I be forgiven because me is an ignoramus in classical music. I played “Minuet” on the computer and something hit me on the head, “I know that tune, I just can’t place it, but I’m very, very familiar with the tune.” Then finally I remember that that is the melody played by the musical mobile that I bought for my daughter when she was still a baby. Why is that? Why is it that classical music are the music in those toys? It must be a testament to the power of that kind of music: innocent, lilting, calming, and (some say) brain stimulating.

I am no classical music guy. I grew up listening to Imelda Papin, Tito, Vic and Joey, Trini Lopez, Johnny Mathis, Freddie Aguilar etc. Then in my youth there’s Tears for Fears, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Eraserheads, True Faith, Razorback, Clapton, Hendrix etc. My exposure to classical music is limited to music boxes, baby toys, Arthurian Movies, Metro Goldwyn Meyers epic movies, Robinhood etc. The music is too abstract for me, there’s no lyrics to identify the melodies with hence it’s difficult to understand. (In the 90’s The Youth, a local band, put lyrics to Fur Elise (this music was used by garbage trucks in Makati City) and turned the classical piece into a rock pro-environment song. And since then people of my generation have identified that melody with garbage. “Tapon, tapon, tapon, nyo, basura nyo, itapon nyo/ Tapon, tapon, tapon, nyo, basura nyo, itapon nyo/ Ang babantot nyo, ang bantot nyo, ang bantot nyoooooooo…..Tapon, tapon, tapon, tapon, tapon nyo, basura nyo, itapon nyooooooooooo…la la la la, la la, la la…) So what in the name of Raiza Sativa Linn. am I doing trying to learn it…classical guitar music? Hmmmmm…

Maybe it’s time I read about Bach and get to know him in…errr….spirit.

Know what? I will show this stuff to my guitar playing friends. “Hey, look and listen to this…” Then I’ll show them my new finger moves. The pinky is going to the right; while the ring finger is going to the left, while the middle finger is going up, the pointer going down and the thumb pressing the top string. Ha, ha, ha, ha can you do that. And maybe they’ll get interested in the genre.

I don’t know, it must be that I’m into my second childhood now…

I always thought that classical music is for the elite but here I am a galunggong eater, former gin bulag drinker, fishball lover, kwek kwek connoisseur , and a Hanford brief wearing guy appreciating it, well not all of it. Maybe it’s all about the music.

Acquired taste, maybe.

(My PC is possessed by an evil entity. When I’m typing, it is also typing. I plan on calling our pastor to pray over it and exorcise the malignant presence in there, but I’m having second thoughts. Maybe I’ll just reformat the harddisk.)

I can't think of a title

We were discussing predestination ands freewill at Sunday school and one of the students ask a question about predestination and freewill. If you’re not chosen then how about the unchosen? How about freewill? How can there be freewill if there’s predestination? I saw Hegel looking at me and winking, “Dialectics! They are running in circles. Blame old Aristotle and his syllogism. Tell them about dialectics so that they will be able to get out of these absurd discussions.” I had no choice but to give my views. “See here, you can’t get out of this predestination and freewill if you think of them as canceling each other out. The Bible teaches the two facts, but the Bible also does not teach that they are opposing facts! The problem is our reasoning. Let’s try this: Predestination is divine prerogative and freewill is human prerogative. How can divine and human prerogatives merge? They can’t. What will happen is a higher idea or truth will come out and that higher truth and idea is already happened! It’s the Christ, the synthesis of the divine and the human—salvation.” I can be passionate when I’m discussing and then I looked at my audience, it struck me that I was speaking German—too abstract. I am sorry.

Crazy…how Bible cross referencing sometimes creates more trouble and confusion. Add the limitation of the “either-or” way of thinking and what you have is a disaster. A faith so hard to maintain, especially for enquiring mind, that other just abandon it for the lack of coherence. How can a system of faith be coherent if it justifies itself strictly by the authority of an imperfect book (imperfect in a sense that they are not the original autographs) sometimes disregarding revelations in experiences and nature?

That’s why there are efforts to make Christian Theology an “answering theology” (Tillich) lest it lost its relevance.

I read essays discussing Bultmann’s demythologizing efforts and now I understand his efforts. According to Bultmann, you can remove all the myths in the Bible and find that there’s still the Kerygma or the message. In fact the mythologies in the Bible are language, a tool (Wittgenstein) to understand God and that tool is now deficient. Wittgenstein talked about the ladder being thrown out once the top is reached and a new ladder is necessary—this is it, throw the old ladder. The mythologies in the Bible cannot be taken literally but must be understood in a linguistic way. I was shocked ( a non theologs) when I first heard about Bultmann’s program but then I asked myself, is my faith grounded on mythical biblical stories or is it grounded on the message? The message is the core of the bible.

Even the word God is problematic. I once read that one of the reasons why the missionary efforts in China failed is because missionaries did not allow the use of the local transliteration for God thinking that it would be blasphemous. How the Chinese could understand God then? The word God has no meaning, according to Tillich, unless we understood God as the ground of our being. The term God is a convention that, unfortunately limits rather represents God. When Tillich speaks of understanding God he has these words to say “Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional you learned about God, perhaps even the word itself.”

I mean, if one cannot get past the absurd circular discussions of doctrines one must be willing to discard it for a higher understanding of the experience of God. The Bible should lead us to God but if it becomes a stumbling block, a whirlpool where instead of finding harmony in it, one finds a never ending cycle of repetitions and circular arguments, its time to look for other compliments for erudition—other people’s experience and understanding of God.

Pac the Pacman

As of the latest unofficail count Manny "The Pacman" Pacquaio who is running for a congressional in Gen Santos City is way, way behind his opponent Darlene Custodio. I think it's time Manny realize that he's been had. No kababayan in their right mind will elect him to congress because his kababayan know what will happen to their champion--he'll die there.

The election returns shows that the Filipinos have waken up to the fact that popularity is not an asset in politics. As of the latest count, actors and comedians are not doing well. This is good. Although there are actors who made it in the local politics arena, that's fine at least they can handle that, at the national level it's another story. People are tired of actors and I think the actors deserve the contempt of the people for the way they have manipulated them.

If actors can present credentials like Herbert Bautista, then that's another story.

Classical Guitar

A few years ago one of my former guitar students ( not that kind of student) gave me a photo copied collection of classical guitar pieces. (I taught him how to play the guitar and a few philosophy of Jimi Hendrix on spontaneity in playing the instrument, and he did well. Although he did not become a professional guitarist, his garage band played opening acts for some major local bands here.)

The problem is I can’t read notes. Well, I can read notes but at such a slow and uncoordinated way that I can say that technically I’m musically “illiterate”. Although during my out-of-college days my sister enrolled me to a music studio to learn guitar. But the notation the instructor use was tablature; tablature shows finger placement and accents but it is not like the standard musical notation where a person who can read notes can just sit down and play the piece because everything is in there, in tablature there’s only string numbers and fret numbers.

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During the days that I was learning guitar in the studio, I was already developing the ability to play melodies by ear. So, I began to think then, “Why read notes when I can just listen to records and then look for the notes by plucking the strings and comparing the pitch, easier than staring at a musical piece.” And that’s how I played the guitar since then. It came to the level that I don’t buy chordbooks anymore because I can make “apa” (or grope) for the chords and even learn how to copy a few simple guitar riffs and solos by simply listening, although in the process I destroyed a lot of tape players because of the frequent playbacks.

There’s guitar playing for fun like rock and pop and there’s guitar playing for the heart and mind. A few decades ago after seeing local classical Lester Demetillo performing at the now defunct Concert at the Park, I saw another aspect of guitar playing that caught my heart—classical guitar. There’s something in classical guitars that’s so pristine and simple. There’s no electronic device or guitar effects, no tricks, no showmanship just ecstasy from the players. There’s exactness of notes, no room for ad liberation and spontaneity.

I want to play classical guitar.

Unfortunately a classical guitar lesson is expensive. Anyway, I just hid the book and hope that one day when I find the time and the resources to take classical guitar lessons and read notes, I will.

Last year I saw my brother in law a church music professor using computer software and I inquired what the program was. I bought the program and when I found that it was too complicated for me, I just let it lying inside the harddisk collecting viruses and worms. Anyway, last week I was exploring my PC when I rediscovered the program and after a few trials I was able to encode a few pieces from the classical guitar collection, and when I played it back, I was surprised at the music, I never though that all those dots and strange symbols can be translated to such beautiful, lilting simple but difficult to play in the guitar music. I was literally taken back to the 16 century. I closed my eyes and said to myself that I will learn this kind of music even if it takes me twenty years!

I found my classical guitar teacher and it costs me eighty pesos.

I am now trying to perfect Bach’s “Bouree in E minor.” Now all I need is the discipline to practice.

My daughter is interested in guitar….maybe…maybe….she can be what I hoped I was to be, a good guitarist.

But first things first, I must have a guitar of my own.

Season for Circumcision

Summer is circumcision season in the Philippines. Boys talk in hushed silence of the when when the when will be mutilated--the right of passage to manhood. There will be a lot of skirt wearing boys this summer; lots of tomatoes too. Ha, the stories, the stories.

I was circumcised together with my cousins in a sterile clinic, anesthetized, painless and without any thrill—no stories to tell. Pffftttttt.

I envy my friends talked about the psychological preparations and the will power and the courage and the stories of cowardice and the stories of bravery of swallowed guava leaves of bleeding…while I had nothing; the only scary part of my “penal” ordeal was the anesthesia injection and after that, well, it felt nothing, nothing. For consolation, at least (I hope I never will be afflicted), I got a primer of how impotence felt like (or not felt like).

It’s amazing if one imagine the risks traditional circumcision brings. The candidates are submerged in dirty water (a river or a carabao pool) for minutes. Then there’s no antiseptic just chewed guava leaves. No sterilization, just a shave (barber), bolo (farmer) or a chisel (carpenter) wiped clean with a rug operation after operations. It is amazing how no one, that is as far as I know, died of tetanus or infection. (Imagine having tetanus--lockjaw of the...errr...tweet tweet.) Some even healed faster than the medically and surgically circumcised, like me; to think that I got all these capsules to drink and all these wash to disinfect my well pampered tweet tweet.

Anyway, according to my friends this is how the traditional ritual of circumcision is done. First, the candidates would spend half an hour bathing in a river or a carabao pool in order to soften the foreskin. While bathing, they would chew guava leaves. Then the surgeon, often a barber, sometimes a farmer, or a carpenter, would call all the candidates to line up single file with their pants down. He would check if the candidates’ foreskins are already loose from the tweet tweet. This is done by pulling the foreskin all the way down to tweet tweet’s base. If the foreskin went down all the way, then the patient is ready for the ritual. But if the foreskin is not loose enough, it is forced that sometimes it bleeds.

After checking the looseness of the foreskin, the surgeon often a barber, sometimes a farmer, or a carpenter would then ask the candidates to insert their foreskins to the tapered end of an L shaped guava branch that was fixed to the ground. When the foreskin is inserted, the surgeon would then ask the candidate to look up. He would then tap the foreskin with his finger to numb the skin, and many times candidates shout a shout of pain thinking that that was already the shave (barber), or the bolo (farmer), or the chisel (carpenter) cutting through the foreskin. Others, during this tapping part, swallow the guava their chewing not so much because of the pain but because of surprise. Others simply lost consciousness, while others just grab their pants and run like Andres Bonifacio being chased by the Spanish guardia civil. Many times candidates never got passed the tapping part. Those who lost consciousness and those who ran away will never lose the stigma of their experience and will be the laughing stock of the whole neighborhood; they will be made fun of during drinking sessions, during funeral wakes when funny stories are needed to waken the mourners, and every summer when it is the season for the ritual—their names will be mention long after their dead. Of course they can do nothing but take the heckling like a grown up man.

When the tapping part is done, the surgeon often a barber, sometimes a farmer, or a carpenter would then lay the blade of the shave (barber), or bolo (farmer), or chisel (carpenter) then tap it with a piece of wood or a hammer (carpenter) dividing the foreskin. Then the surgeon would then ask the candidates to spit the guava leaves that will act as the antiseptic for the operation, then the foreskin was divided exposing the bald tweet tweet. The candidates would then bring out a piece of cloth, traditionally called “baru-baruan” (baby clothes), to bandage the newly born baby…err….newly exposed tweet tweet.

Now, that’s fun.

What's German for circumcission? It's Slizenhutten.

Election

Election is not erection is not erection
Erection is not election not election
Election and erection and election
Watch the Sex Bomb Dancer’s gyrations

Erection and election, there’s connection
Angelica Jones is running in the election
Barbara Milano won the election
Watch the dancer’s gyrations

The age of giving sardines is long past
Long past is the age of giving of sardines
To woe the electorate
Electorate is being wooed
Not by sardines now
Now, not by sardines
But by gyration

Once the candidates stimulated the electorate
The electorate was stimulated
The vote was secured
Because the electorate enjoyed the gyration

Election is erection is gyration
There’s an old new way to manipulate
The mind for the election
It’s through gyration
Hence, through gyration there’s election

Watch the gyrations…watch the gyrations…
There’s stimulation
There’s erection
There’s election

The people needs more than sardines
They need opium—erections for election.

Watch the beautiful young dancer’s gyrations…
Wooing for the election through temptation...
Securing the election through gyration—erection.

Walk Talk

I was on my brother’s motorbike on my way home from my walking when I saw this young man in dirty clothes carrying what looks like a baby. When I got near him, it was a baby wrapped in dirty clothing. I looked at him and he looked back at me intensely. Maybe that’s how I looked at him, intensely; that’s why he looked back at me intensely too. Well, anyway I looked at him that way because of the baby he was carrying. I don’t know…

One afternoon my daughter and I picked up my wife from work on my brother’s bike. We then went for our afternoon walk. My daughter got thirsty so what I did was to ride the bike to buy water from store. I was traveling 60 kmh on the highway when I felt something hot on my neck. I stopped; I realized that a kite’s string was on my neck, choking me. The speed of my travel made the string sharp like a knife cutting through the skin of my neck. Now I had a small scar on my neck like someone tried to slash it.
The kids flying the kite on the other side of the highway looked at me with me concern, I felt my face grew hot with anger but the wind cooled it. Anyway, it’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the strings of the kite is not an ordinary strings, it’s the kind of string they use to stitch shoes.

There was one time when I picked up my wife from work and then we took our afternoon walk. People were looking at her because she was wearing a high heeled leather shoes. I saw how uncomfortable she was so what I did was to lend her my flip flops. People were looking at me because I was walking barefoot. Today, whenever I pick her up from work for our afternoon walk, I make sure that I have her rubber shoes in my brother’s bike’s utility box.

Techno-Campaign and waiting sheds

I am surprised when I opened my e-mail because there was a notice in my Friendster notifying me that I had a new friend. “Well, someone finally noticed my cyber-sex appeal” I said to myself. But I was surprised to find that my new Friendster is a local politician campaigning for the councillorship of the little India of the Philippines, the Municipality of Cainta. (When the British occupied the Philippines in the 1700’s they brought along their Indian Sepoy foot soldiers. These Sepoys settled in Cainta and became part of the community. They married the locals and their dark skinned, tall and high bridged nosed descendants now reside in the interior of the town called “Baryo”. Hence, Cainta became synonymous with tall handsome and beautiful dark skinned people, the descendants of Indian Sepoys.)

I approved of this kind of campaigning. Why? Saves a lot of paper! I think it’s time the COMELEC think about the environment and start thinking of a creative way to make election campaigning paperless. Imagine how many trees are felled to make these leaflets and posters. The sad thing, nobody reads this leaflets and posters. Why not just hire barkers and post them 50 meters apart shouting the candidates’ names and credentials—saves trees and provides employment for the neighborhood gossips too. See, the advantage, ha, ha, ha.

The Philippines is the text capitol of the word. Why not put texting into good use? Why not ask the cell phone service provider to allow campaigning through texting? Better yet, why can’t we vote through texting. If we can elect Pinoy Pop Superstars and Starstruck Survivors why can’t we elect presidents through text?

Or why not turn the election for the President of the Republic of the Philippines into the “American Idol” or “Starstruck” format?! “Dream, Believe, and Die you rabbits!” Much better than the comedy going on now.

We make the candidates dance, sing, fight wars, do street sweeping, clean blocked drainage, vacuum septic tanks, sell sampaguitas on the street, eat day old chicks, swim in Pasig River naked, rummage through garbage dumps for food…all those reality thing contestant do for a million bucks on TV. Then we cast votes through text on who captured our hearts to become the president of the Republic of the Philippines. Saves money and at the same time earns money too. And most of all saves us from the trouble of listening to all those subliminally migraine inducing jingles and vomitable slogans fit for encouraging the mating of hermaphrodite earthworms for use in manufacturing hotdogs and fishballs.

There are a lot of public infrastructure constructions and maintenance jobs in progress now. Although this is not allowed because it favors the incumbent candidates, somehow they find ways circumnavigating the prohibition. I have a suggestion to the COMELEC that will make their life, and our life, the citizens, easier; why not extend the campaign period; why not make it a 5,000 day campaign period and then ban all construction projects during the 5,000 day campaign period. I’m sure we will see all these waiting sheds will popping up like mushroom everywhere. A little conversion here and there and we can turn this waiting shed into cute, little cottages for the homeless. He, see, the advantage, ha, ha, ha. I was on my way to the mountainous, NPA infested barangay Daraitan, Tanay, Rizal when I noticed that the road to the mountain community has a lot of beautiful waiting sheds. I did a rough estimation and the figure was staggering! The waiting shed per population ratio there is three waiting sheds per five people!!!! Now isn’t that for the records. (Nah, I'm exaggerating.)

A Rose is a rose is a rose.

Now listen. Can’t you see that when the language was new—as it was with Chaucer and Homer—the poet could use the name of a thing and the thing was really there. He could say ‘O moon’, ‘O sea’, ‘O love’, and the moon and the sea and love was really there. And can’t you see that after hundreds of years had gone by and thousands of poems had been written, he could call on those words and find that they were just worn out literary words. The excitingness of pure being had withdrawn from them; they were just stale literary words. Now the poet has to work in the excitingness of pure being; he has got to get back that intensity into the language. We all know that it’s hard to write poetry in a late age; and we know that you have to put some strangeness, as something unexpected, into the structure of the sentence in order to bring back vitality to the noun. Now it’s not enough to be bizarre; the strangeness in the sentence structure has to come from the poetic gift, too. That’s why it’s doubly hard to be a poet in a late age. Now you all have seen poems about roses and you know in your bones that the rose is not there. All those songs that sopranos sings as encores about ‘I have a garden! Oh, what a garden!’ Now I don’t want to put too much emphasis on that line, because it’s just one line in a longer poem. But I notice that you all know it; you make fun of it, but you know it. Now listen! I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don’t go around saying ‘…is a…is a…is a…’ Yes, I’m no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for hundreds of years.

Gertrude Stein

Writings and Lectures

1909-1945

Instant Noodles and Time Paradoxes* (Fiction)

He was in his laboratory trying to fix the glitch in the chrono-computer of his project: a time machine. “There is the problem of the time-paradox-neutralizer,” he told himself. “I need to find the right frequency in the time warp-drive.” Tired after three days of non-stop laboratory work, he went home. He was about to open the door, when he heard a soft moan. Intrigued, he slowly turned the doorknob, peeped, and nearly had a heart attack at what he saw; his best friend was passionately kissing his wife.

Blood rushed into his head. His first instinct was to run back to the laboratory, get his gun, and then shoot his best friend. But the logical and the calculating part of his brain stopped him. Slowly, he left house, went back to his laboratory, and poured out all his anger to his work. He went home to his wife every now and then pretending that everything was normal. “It was my fault. I was so busy that I forgot about her. I will win her back when I am finished with this project,” he said to himself.

Three months later. He finally solved the glitch in the chrono-computer. “Pastoroni’s theory of time-converse-inverse was correct. The is-was-before-after paradox will not affect the chrono-probability!” he shouted at his engineers and technicians, who had no idea of what he was talking and shouting about. He was so elated that he rushed back to his house (obviously forgetting what his wife has done because of the excitement) to tell his wife of his success.

He was turning the doorknob when he heard a familiar moan. Stunned, he slowly opened the door, peeped inside, and saw his best friend, now naked, on the couch and on top of his wife. This time, there was no flash of rage, just the cold feeling of hate. He went back to his deserted laboratory got his gun and went inside the time machine. “ I will not go to prison for killing that worthless piece of dung!” he calmly told himself. “ I will use my time machine, go back to back to the past, my college days, then shoot that snake Jake, and then return to the present.” He thought. “And no detectives or FBIs will be able to figure what happened--the perfect murder.”

1985 April 30, 12 noon, twenty years ago, Jake is practicing football. He walked in front of Jake and shot him point blank in the face. He was still smiling when he alighted from the time machine. He returned the gun to his drawers, wiped the splattering of blood from his clothes, and rushed back to his house. “Jake won’t exist now. I made sure of that twenty years ago,” he laughed to himself. He was about to open the door when he heard that moan again. He peeped inside, was more annoyed than angry, when he found the same exact situation as before. This time his anger was replaced by perplexity. “What went wrong?” he asked himself. “Maybe the incident is too small to affect the time.”

1985 July 5, 3pm during the university’s the school’s championship game. He walked into the middle of the arena took out his pistol, shot Jake in the face, then shot the coach, and then shot the entire football team. He went back to the present and found his wife and best friend in the same exact situation as before. Now, he was really angry and really, really perplexed. “Maybe the personalities are too insignificant to affect the flux of time.”

Fuming mad, he went back to July 5, 1985, shot Jake. He then popped up in the White House and shot the President. Then he materialized in the UN Head quarters shot the Secretary General. This time he made sure that the time flow would change for he also massacred the entire UN delegates. He was tired when he returned to the present. “This time traveling and killing business is exhausting,” he said. He slowly went back to his house; sure that everything has changed. He was about to turn the doorknob when he heard that moan again. This time he was so enraged that he ran back to his laboratory, reloaded the gun, ran back to his house, went through the door, pointed the gun in Jake’s temple and fired. He was surprised, after the smoke cleared that Jake was still alive, still pumping. Puzzled, he sat down on the sofa. He caught a glimpse of the door and saw that it was locked from the inside. He looked at Jake and his wife when the realization came to him that he went through the door and that he was invisible to them. He began to recollect and reflect on all the things he did, and his mind tried its best to figure what went wrong. “I altered events in past, then why is it that the present reality did not change?”

“You did altered time and you did change reality,” a voice said. “But the thing is, you altered your own time and you changed your own reality,” the voice added. “You see, time is like an instant noodles intertwined yet individual. We all experience time in our own different ways, and we all see reality in our own different perspective. So when you altered time and reality you altered your own time and reality. And now your time and your reality exist outside their reality; severed from the soup of interrelated experiences. You are now a ghost my dear friend.” He stood up looked at where the voice was coming from, and was not surprised to see Albert Einstein talking to him.

* Adapted frump a short story I read ten-fifteen years ago titled ‘The man who killed Mohammed” I forgot the name of the author and the title of the anthology.

What no more? Or the problem with examinations and tests is that they became the means and the ends of education, not learning.

A few weeks from now will be enrollment day, and I remembered something that I think is interesting because it is unforgettable. I was thinking of money for my and my daughter’s down payment for our tuition when this classroom occurrence popped in my head. I don’t know, but I think my mind have developed this defense mechanism against money migraine by distracting my attention from the actual and immediate problem of money by intercepting my thinking…it’s like watching a TV program: I see this ant march come raining down the TV screen and then a new image appears superimposing the program I’m watching before, then the superimposed image overwhelms the former and then before I know it, I’m watching another program. My mind sometimes worked like that when it comes to problems, it tries to divert my attention. Sometimes it work, but most of the time it doesn’t, doesn’t matter anyway.

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Anyway, the classroom incident went like this. Right after our midterm examination, the instructor did a post examination review. He read the questions and then randomly asked us to answer orally. The instructor was shocked, dumfounded, and aghast to find that the class was not answering not because the class was a class for the deaf and the mute but because the class didn’t know what the instructor was talking about. So the instructor blurted out in exasperation “What? After the exams, no more?” I can’t forget the expression on the guy’s face; he was half irritated and half constipated and wholly pissed off. I was expecting him to bash his head on the whiteboard or to jump off the third floor of the campus building, but he did no such thing; he just looked at the class with disbelief. The only thing missing was Rod Serling standing at the corner saying, “You are entering another dimension…of sights and sounds…You’ve just crossed over into a land where fantasy becomes reality and nothing is quite as it seems…welcome to--the Twilight Zone.” The scene was surreal.

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Anyhows, the instructor just looked at the class with utter disbelief. He was quiet, but I know in his head he was calling on all the power of darkness to descend upon his students to provide them sentience, malignant as they maybe. “How on earth can these living organisms in my class pass their exam without them being conscious of it?” The instructor must be wondering and wandering.

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Most of classmates are hardworking and honest. It is inspiring at the same time troubling to see my classmates walking, talking, and mumbling, zombie like, like they were casting some spells or like they were possessed by an unknown spirit, or like they were half mad half insane memorizing their lectures verbatim ad literatim. Imagine doing this for a nine subject examinations. They can’t process information; they just stuff their heads with the lecturers. They were not reviewing, my classmates were not reviewing,--they were memorizing. They were memorizing letters, characters--words. They were relearning their pre-school skills—copying and writing. After bursting their heads of all those terms and memorized principles and what have you, they all felt like a constipated horse relieved of all those undigested artificial hay. No need to remember those horrendous terms and memorized principles so, they just let go of them stuffed terms and memorized principles inside their heads like a dam breaking loose. “Off you go all useless information’s. I’ve already regurgitated you in the exam booklets! Off you go! Off you go never to comeback. The feeling of freedom is like a person who was suffering from diarrhea for three days but denied access to a toilet and suddenly was allowed to siot on the throne. Off you go…..prrrrrrttttttttttt…blam, blam, blam empty and relieved, empty and relieved, at last! And now the instructor was forcing them to relive the horrendous experience! No way, Jose (not dela Paz, of course)!
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My caramba! Dare we grade students based on this kind of examinations? My gulay and vegetable, in the name of all the okra in the world living and dead…It’s a cycle of nonsense.
Vomit is what these examinations are, vomit. A regurgitation of undigested blah, blah, blah, blah…this is not learning…no wonder why the Philippines haven’t produce any polymath since Dr. Jose Rizal…this is insane…abominable snowman…a ….yeti…a circumcision gone wrong…err…
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I’m just bitter because I don’t do well with objective examinations, he,he,he. In fact, I don’t do well in any kind of examinations bwa, ha, ha,ha!
Hate memorizing, hate memorizing, hate memorizing….
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Why can’t they just do head x-ray…
Or blood tests…
Or Urinalysis, fecalysis, dialysis…
Or why not do a lobotomy on all the Doctors of Education Kuno!
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O my gulay, vacation is almost over…

The Phenomenology of Chocnut

The idea of craving, of wanting, never ending wanting, that drives one to craze; this is an experience that goes beyond the normal norm of thinking. It goes beyond the thinking for in itself what is engaged is that primal desire to fulfill what is wanted. It goes beyond reason yet it also satisfies reason in a way that can only be called gratifying. This is it, the sense of wonderment at the power of the sense to satisfy what it needs to satisfy, an act of action in which the acting is done through the process of the self eneveloping itself within the form of the shape of the mind extracting in itself the essence of the thinking of that craving, with the difference of the action being acted upon by the process of the mind through the organ of sense of taste within the oral cavity. The process can only be called a fulfillment of the satisfaction within the level of the physical but within itself, by itself, though the will of the mind, in the process of thinking and that physical craving, what is in essence being accomplished is the fulfillment of the need but not only the need, for if we only call it need then it will not transcend the physical, but as stated the need goes beyond the physical, it is the synthesis of the physical and the mental; the combination of the ego and id but it also transcends this for what is being provided is a satisfaction that transcends description. This intellectual as well as physical, but also can be called a psychological as well as metaphysical activity of a being, but not the being in itself as Tillich describes it, but the being in the form of the organs of the physique of the mechanical function of the human person, the itself, it can only be called the existing itself but with it transcends the itself because it must also be an essence in itself, hence, it is not only the being in essence and existence but also the man who wanted a chocnut.

Diabetic na ata ako kakaain ng Chocnut.

Developum ante diabeticus meticulos consumus et choconatus.

Meditation: The Mystery of Time

Mankind has always realized that there is something fearful about the flux of time, a riddle which we cannot solve, and the solution which we cannot stand. We came from the past which is no more; we go into the future which is not yet; ours is the present. The past is ours only in so far as we have still the present; and the future is ours only in so far as we have it already present. We possess the past by memory, and the future by anticipation. But what is the nature of present itself? If we look at it closely, we must say: it is a point without extension, the point in which the future becomes the past; when we say to ourselves, “This is the present,” the moment has already been swallowed by the past. The present disappears the very instant we grasp it. The present cannot be caught; it is always gone. So it seems we have nothing real—neither the past nor the future, nor even the present. Therefore there is a dreaming character about our existence, which the psalmist indicates, and which the religious visionaries have described in so many ways.

…There is another element…mystery, which makes us look into the future; for time does not return, nor repeat itself: it runs forward; it is always unique; it ever creates the new. There is within it a drive toward an end, unknown, never to be reached in time itself, always intended and ever fleeing. Time runs toward the future eternal. This is the greatest mysteries of time. It is the mystery of which the prophets, Christ, and the apostles have spoken. The eternal is the solution of the riddle of time. Time does not drive toward an endless self-repetition, nor to an empty return to its beginning. Time is not meaningless. It has a hidden meaning--salvation. It has a hidden goal--the Kingdom of God. It brings about a hidden reality--the new creation. The infinite significance of every moment of time is this: in it we decide, and are decided about, with respect to our eternal future.

Paul Tillich

The Shaking of the Foundations

My Caramba. Tillich says it all.

No Approved Therapeutic Value

I miss Manny “The Pacman” Pacquaio. Before the 45 day election campaign started, Manny is omnipresent on Philippine TV. He can be seen endorsing wide array of products from cornbeefs to microphones but since he ran for congress, the airing of the ads were suspended in compliance with COMELEC regulation on media exposure.

One of the products endorsed by Manny is Datu Puti vinegar. Manny’s wife is shown in the TV ad cooking a paksiw na Bangus (milkfish cooked in vinegar) while Manny Pacquiao is doing a one hand pull ups while his children clung to his body while smiling and telling that “Datu Puti vinegar is good for health because it may help in iron absorption”. Then Manny kisses his wife, and then they all eat the paksiw na bangus with gusto, all smiling that acidic smile.

While watching this ad, I heard a faint voice, “Boss, boss don’t believe Manny, vinegars are acids, it corrodes iron how much more human tissues. Yes, theoretically vinegar may help in better absorption of iron because it breaks down iron into rust. But boss, you’re stomach is already swimming in acids and putting in more acids in there, you’re stomach will end up absorbing each other.”

Of course I don’t pay much attention to little voices. I’m not one of those…I mean I don’t believe in those little voices….Yes, I hear voices in my head but they are the committee in my head responsible for my thought…”Boss, boss, are you listening to me…’ the voice interrupted me again. I was a little uneasy because the committee in my head usually becomes active only when I’m thinking, or reading, or typing and not when I’m watching a Pacquiao commercial. “See boss, take my personal experiences. Vinegar is not only corrosive but they are also ablative, it peels me off slowly…” This caught my attention, because here is someone or something telling me on first hand experience the bad effect of vinegar on him. “Boss this is a ploy, propaganda. Vinegars cause hyperacidity and ulcers. So, don’t go around buying chicharon and dipping it in vinegars and then drinking the vinegar… don’t do it boss.” I looked around for the source of the voice, then my rear end itched…it was then that I realized that it was my anal hemorrhoid talking.

“Don’t hurt me boss…you know that I bleed…boss don’t believe that Manny…vinegar is not good for you!!!!!!!!!!!”

Sci-Fi and King Arthur

I just finished reading Alan Dean Foster’s “Life Form”. It’s a sci-fi novel about a group of scientist that landed on a terran planet, Xica. Here they found exotic life forms. But their greatest discovery was that of a humanoid being with human like intelligence. The scientists were surprised at the humanoids sophistication; they were also intrigued at the humanoids ceremonial wars. On further investigations they met an old man who called himself “Old Conc” who really was an old general on the level of Alexander the Great who suddenly disappeared on earth. They were surprised that the humanoid were Old Conc’s creations. The humanoids were anthromorphs (changelings). Old Cons found them and taught them how to morph (change) into humanoid form. He didn’t make them looked too human because Old Conc hated earth, that’s why he left it in the first place. Then tragedy struck the expedition and only few of the scientists survived. Old Conc gave the survivor a choice: leave the planet or help the humanoids in their hunger for knowledge. They chose to remain and play God.
This is one of the dominant themes in Sci-Fi novels: Man as gods or aliens as god (or the god).

I am holding Malory’s “ Le Morte D’Arthur”, and I’m thinking if I’ll be able to read the thing. I hate old English. (I mean, I don’t even like the King James Bible because the language is archaic.) But when I opened the pages I found that this Morte D’Arthur is written in modern English. It was a retelling by Keith Baines and I think I’m going to enjoy this Morte D’Arhur. This will be the fourth King Arthur book that I read. The first was Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex and the second was T.H. White’s the Once and Future King. I love T.H. White’s king Arthur especially since the story was told humorously and in reverse—the story started from the future. And the third Arthurian book I read was Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. All of them are wonderful read.

I hope I will enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed the rest.

Family Planning

We are against abortion yet we eat a lot of fetus and babies.

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(Below: Fried one day old chicks that Filipinos eat with gusto. Above: Fried...hmmm...Let your imagination run wild! )

The Philippines is one of the last countries that take the Roman Catholic Church’s edict against artificial family planning seriously. Although this is the official R.C.’s stand, enlightened countries have since then considered this teaching as archaic as the Church’s teaching about limbo (glad to hear that limbo has officially been abandoned by the R.C. in its cannon of traditional teachings). Even some priests and R.C church leader especially those who are working among the poor see the folly of the edict against artificial birth control method.

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In the Philippines the official stand of the R.C. is to ban the use of artificial method because it is anti-life. I saw a TV program featuring Chinese Catholics talking about how life is important to the Chinese. According to one of the guests, the Chinese counts conception as the start of their birthday. This meant that when a baby is born they are already a year old. This is how important life is to the Chinese. And this coincides or is in consonance with the church’s teachings on the sanctity of life. Why is it that I am not convinced with this intercultural parallelism? This belief is good. But ask any Chinese from the mainland to the islands to the ex-pats if this belief on conception as already the birthday justifies wanton, rampant, irresponsible, libido driven, pornography inspired, gin and alcohol powered and rampant sex as a catharsis for whatever pressure the…blah, blah, blah, population explosion. The Chinese are the epitome of family planning, artificial, natural and even abortional! China is the champion of the one child policy. If they were as pro lifers as this TV guest said they are, the Chinese would have revolted but they didn’t, why? Because they saw the utility and the benefit of the policy and now they are reaping its reward.

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Right perspective is what is needed here. If the R.C. recognize natural birth control as morally and theologically acceptable what’s barring them from accepting artificial method? If it’s a question of intention there’s no difference between the artificial and the natural method of family planning! I have nothing against the Roman Catholics. I consider them Christians and brothers in Christ; it’s just that their interpretation of the order to multiply and to subdue the earth must now be viewed in the light that the earth has already been subdued and is now dying and it is now time for repairing and maintaining the sustainability of the planet.

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This Noahnine order is/was one of theological justification for the exploitation and the destruction of nature especially among the protestant nations. Now theologians are seeing the point of pantheism (God is everything) and panenetheism (God is in everything) and why this view is not only theologically viable and morally tenable but it is now a theological necessity in order for people of the planet to realize that in destroying nature they are destroying creation and part of the creator the same way a part of the sculptor is destroyed when one of his/her sculptor is destroyed.

Creation may not be God, God may not be in everything but the relationship between creator and creature is real that they cannot be separated essentially.

Now, how does this translate to population explosion? Uncontrolled population is now the major cause of stress on the planet. I saw Al Gore’s "Global Warming" and even if what he is saying is only a tenth of the truth, it is still worrisome.

Hey, we got to do something!