Thursday, August 31, 2006

thus spake sam(antha). three unrelated thoughts all in the same entry because that’s how i think—unrelatedly… and i know that’s not a word.

1. i almost choked on my chelo when i was asked who my favorite philosopher was. small talk, in my world, consists of questions like “what is your favorite color?” or “who is your favorite Care Bear?”

but asking about philosophers? the question is loaded because, inevitably, your answer reveals much about your character and the principles by which you live your life. a philosopher becomes a “favorite” because his ideas resonate with your own, or verbalize truths that you’ve always held on to without categorically stating them. i mean, saying “Nietzsche, ‘cause i really dig facial hair” just doesn’t cut it. i’m sure that if that question came up when i was in college, i’d have an answer. but now? the best i could do was mumble something like “that dude, the one who wrote something with a guy named Zagreus in it. and um, i also like Sartre.”

i can’t say i know chapter and verse about these guys. i like them for sentences, fragments of thoughts that are taken out of context. i found a doodle notebook i had in college, and i know exactly why i like Camus (the dude who wrote A Happy Death – the story with a guy named Zagreus in it) and Sartre. turns out, they’re both existentialists. anyway, in the said notebook this sentence was boxed: “man is a useless passion.” and below it was the explanation: life is a bitch and then you die.
the boxed sentence is from Sartre, of course, he of “man is doomed to be free” fame. the whole life is absurd thing appeals to me. if man is the butt of a cosmic joke, i’m dying to know what the punchline is (great play on words, yes?).

but what i really liked about Sartre was this passage from The Look (again from my doodle notebook, everything i’ll be quoting here was scrawled in it by me, circa 2003-04):
“The total enslavement of the beloved kills the love of the lover. The end is surpassed; if the beloved is transformed into an automaton, the lover finds himself alone. Thus, the lover does not desire to possess the beloved as one possesses a thing. He demands a special type of appropriation. He wants to possess freedom as freedom.”
pretty good. Ayn Rand and Helene Cixous have similar takes, i think. but we’re talking about philosophers, not people who have really nice thoughts that appeal to me.

anyway, on to Camus and his character Zagreus who said:
“You know, a man always judges himself by the balance he can strike between the needs of his body and the demands of his mind.”

“I believe in so much… I’d accept even worse – blind, dumb, anything, as long as I feel in my belly that dark fire that is me, me alive. The only thing that would occur to me would be to thank life for letting me burn on.”

“A body always has the ideal it deserves. That ideal of a stone – if I may say so, you’d have to have a demigod’s body to sustain it.”

“Happiness, too, is a long patience.”

all from A Happy Death.

who else? Thoreau and Emerson are mainstays on my night table, both from the transcendentalist school. what that is, i have no clue. all i know is, they had noble thoughts that pandered to my egoism. take whatever floats your boat.

2. moe, my younger brother, bought a second-hand car (honda civic, hatchback) this week. i, on the other hand, recently got the truck a set of side mirrors because one of them fell off like a loose tooth. the marcelo siblings are moving up in the world, folks.

few days later, pa gave the truck a bath and all the dirt that was holding it together disappeared. sue may be clean, but he’s falling apart. he’s going to retire soon.

3. i write in english. i think i also think in english. but once, pa caught me saying “bone of the mango.” a mango doesn’t have bones, it has seeds. but “buto” translates to both bone and seed in english. i guess that time, i was thinking in tagalog, filipino? i was also thinking in that tongue on aug. 15, 2004, i was in church when this came to me… buti na lang may papel at lapis ako.
Tagalog ang Salita ng Halimaw.

sa bawat isa sa 'tin, may halimaw na pilit nating nilalabanan.
isang nakasisikdong berdugo na may umuusok na ilong-
senyales ng mga uling ng mapusok na damdamin na kanyang taglay.

harapin mo siya sa dilim, sa kasukdulan ng kanyang kalakasan,
ito ang sasabihin niya:

tangina, ang simple ng buhay.
pinapakomplikado mo pa!
gusto mo siya, gusto ka ba niya?
paano niya malalaman kung hindi mo ipapalabas sa hawla ang iyong nadarama?
palagablabin mo ang mga baga nang makita mo kung hanggang saan mo
makakaya at kung tatanggapin niya ang init ng iyong pagnanasa.

mahirap ang ginagawa mo ngayon.
unti-unti kang nagpapasunog,
unti-unting kinakain ng mga maliliit na apoy ang iyong kaluluwa nang
hindi sumisiklab ang katawan mo.

sabay magiging lulanan ka ng lamig na iniiwan ng kanilang saglit na buhay.

kung mamamatay ka rin lang, tangina, sulitin mo na!
pasabugin mo sarili mo sa isang makulay na kamatayan
na yayanig sa buong pagkatao mo!

ito ang hatol ng halimaw.

i probably misused a bunch of words, mangled some sentences… but hey, the halimaw spoke to me in tagalog, so there.

Monday, August 28, 2006

just playing around, is all.

i was taking a bath when i was momentarily possessed by the spirit of miguel pinero. maybe it has something to do with my current fascination with causes. this was quite fun to make. there's a beat, find it.

*ehem ehem*

i want to vituperate and polemicize
and exasperate the masterminds
i want to criticize and analyze
like ann coulter does the new york times
i want to hibernate and rejuvenate,
then come up for air and celebrate
in these dead words that never spell out "I"

("I!")

i take a gustatory delight
in inflammatory stories
that leave in their wake
several shattered categories

my music's been pigeon-holed
crammed into an ill-fitting mold
this is the ego breaking free
i'm raising my fist in the air
commiserating with the enemy
and masturbating with language whores
who mix and match their metaphors
with similar ease and care

i refuse to calcify and stultify my speech
i want to play with big words,
use fricking slang, and bastardize
the language of the thinking man

enough of the insidious Mr. Darth Sidious,
whose every appellation must be glorified:
Emperor of the Galactic Empire,
Leader of the Imperial Senate,
and Dark Lord of the Sith...
wait, hold on, which of those should be capitalized?
fuck, man, even my e-dash-mail's been Strunk and White-ified
stop right there, remember you've gotta italicize

i want to vituperate and polemicize
and exasperate the masterminds
i want to criticize and analyze
like ann coulter does the new york times
i want to hibernate and rejuvenate,
then come up for air and celebrate
in these dead words that never spell out "I"

("I!")

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

because i love me.

i used to be my own cause. i think i've gotten tired of me. maybe this is just a phase. if so, i can always go back to practicing my version of hedonic calculus.

risa's pieces.

A cause is an individual dream writ large—
in blood and in big block letters.

If blood makes you squeamish, you have the other human secretions Churchill kept blathering about at your disposal.

(you don’t have to tell me that “toil” isn’t a secretion. Toil is synonymous to work, which in physics is equal to force times distance. If you ask me, though, work is… work. It’s not a cause.)

I don’t have a cause, but I do have dreams.
A year ago, dreams were welcome strangers capable of exquisite torture:
violent sleep
[24I05]

dreams can fuck with you
with 30-second spots
of love and sex with your never-can-be's
in full color and sense-surround sound

censors are dead in your sleep
and you are both audience and actor
in this sequence so real
that reality is rendered pale

praying to god for a rerun,
a reprise,
a sequel
seems blasphemous
and you close your eyes again
fearing the dreamless sleep of the bored

Three years ago, I was already resigned to the ephemeral nature of dreams:

beside you is accepting what dreams are—
fragile things that shift and vanish
at the slightest movement—
and dreaming all the same
though we are never still, even in sleep

(excerpt from an untitled piece written [22XI03])

And seven years ago, I discovered that dreams require good lighting and inspire bad writing:

Dreams Look Better When You're Drunk
[10/20/99]

dreams look better at night, under the gentle light of the moon and the stars (or the yellow light in the green swing in the garden).
dreams look better when you've had a drink or two, and you're loose and happy and free.
dreams look better when you're drunk on life and laughter
and you're with fellow dreamers who believe.
dreams look better when all you have to do is talk about them,
and the people you're with listen, (dreams look better when you share them with your sibs under the yellow light in the green swing in the garden, with a beer and a smoke [he puffs away while i inhale second hand smoke])

but when night turns into day, and the harsh sunlight beats down on you,
the dream doesn't look like so grand anymore... a mirage?
is that what it was?
a hangover, all you're left with is a headache and a fleeting memory of something beautiful...
something about the moon and the stars in the sky.
you stay in your bed and try to recapture the moment when you thought you had the answers, when life was going to be ok.
you shake your head and think "dreams look better at night, because at night, you can't see the flaws."

Point: these aren’t dreams that explode into causes. My dreams implode soundlessly. I need a cause so I can quit dreaming and start making some noise.

(I was supposed to write something totally new. I've already started, but it’ll have to wait. I blame Risa and the indigenous people for this entry.)

Sunday, August 06, 2006

"deploy"? who the heck uses "deploy" in everyday talk?

when your tagline is "the computer is personal again." using "deploy" in your copy kinda ruins it, even if the word is printed in a font size that's barely readable. i mean, c'mon! who uses "deploy" in ordinary person-to-person talk? not me.

enough of this rant, i'm deploying my ass outta here.

crap.

i recently got crap-colored chucks to go with my crap-colored room and my crap life.
llmarcelo [at] gmail [dot] com