Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Twilight

Much has happened but I was simply out of synch that I did not find to jot this down in my blog. My morality was tested when two kids barely on their teens, who had been doing chores for my tatay, were caught stealing money from my tatay. My kumpare and I trapped them and they confessed – my friends were pleading with me to jail these kids – to teach them a lesson, what more the father of one of the kids was blazing with arrogance when he stormed the barangay hall – where the kids where brought – and demanded where did his son got his black eye. In the scuffle someone punched his son. But I thought they were kids, and kids are known to test the limits without minding the consequences. So I decided that they just render community service – by cleaning the barangay hall for free for a week. If that would make me a Jose Laurel (remember the Nalundasan case where Justice Laurel pitied the young Marcos and let him go, only to wrought havoc in our country for a quarter of century years later), I left that to the wheels of history. But I gave them a chance, and did not bother to ask that the money stolen be returned to my father, since the kids’ families are mired in poverty. I was not able to follow up if they fulfill the community service since I began to be pre-occupied with my wife who became sick and later diagnosed to be pregnant. And she began bleeding last week, and the OB advised her to take a bed rest to avoid miscarriage. I spent Christmas with her in our house, she still bed rest. My honest and solemn wish is to make them both healthy, and I will even barter my own for them. While at this, what’s more commercial than holidays – where the capitalist system roars mightily? Brands and consumerism at their best. It stinks, and my kid is being eaten by this system – I know, but I am not resigned.

Ah, being a father to a new tot really excites me. The not-a-believer-in-planning and love to dare the world of spontaneity is now worried for the kid’s future – with all the lies and perversions he/she will inherit in this society so lulled into injustice, it became immune and apathetic.

As the old year bids goodbye, a reexamination of the past year is beckoning. 2005 is a good year, materially. There were little money issues, we were able to live above water. Salaries were raised. Spiritually, that’s another story. Work – and maj hong – really interfere with my education, I feel so empty – is this a case of mid-life crisis. Aside from family, I can’t find any meaning to my existence. I wish I get out of this viscous cycle by 2006, but now I even question what path should I need to take. As I age, I become more confused, more fearful, more unsure. The fire that I keep on stoking that brings the rebelliousness of youth; my desire for being at the other side of the establishment has been slowly fading. Dylan Thomas, I might fail you. Instead of raging against the dying of the light, I watch the flame slowly dissipate in the sea of darkness. But as in the Boy Who Cried Wolf, I myself is getting immune to my rumblings, to my whining, as I can’t really devise my own exit plan. As I have written a couple of weeks back, I am the someone looking for the lost key in the dead of the night in a lamppost rather than to the actual place that I may had accidentally dropped it, since the lamppost offers light, while the place where I dropped it is a sea of blackness. Better to be blinded by the light than struggle to find el dorado?

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Dear Garci; Dear GMA

i'm sick and tired of hearing
things
from uptight-short sighted-
narrow minded hypocritics
all i want is the truth
just give me some truth
i've had enough of reading
things
by nuerotic-pyschotic-
pig headed politicians
all i want is the truth
just give me some truth
no short haired-yellow bellied
son of tricky dicky
is gonna mother hubbard
soft soap me
with just a pocketful of hope
money for dope
money for rope
i'm sick to death of seeing
things
from tight lipped-
condescending -mommies little
chauvinists
all i want is the truth
just give me some truth
i've had enough of watching
scenes
of schizophrenic - ego - centric
- paranoic - prima - donnas
all i want is the truth
just give me some truth




you can shine you're shoes
and wear a suit
you can comb your hair
and look quite cute
you can hide your face
behind a smile
one thing you can't hide
is when you're crippled inside
you wear a mask
and paint your face
you can call yourself
the human race
you can wear a collar
and a tie
but the one thing you
can't hide is when you're
crippled inside
well now you know that your
cat has nine lives babe
nine loves to itself
but you only got one
and a dog life ain't no fun
mamma take a look outside.
you can go to church
and sing a hymn
judge me by the color
of my skin
you can live a lie until you die
one thing you can't hide
is when you're crippled inside.


- John Lennon

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Remembering John Lennon

Life is what is happening when you're planning what do with it.

You may say i'm a dreamer, but am not the only one.

They fed you with religion and sex and tv
And you think you're so clever so classless and free

I just believe in me, and that's reality

Instant karma's gonna get you

love is real, real is love.

how do u sleep at night?

Monday, December 05, 2005

CHOICES

Life is but a cobweb of choices. My friend once quipped we are what we chose to be. Or take it from Ally MacBeal -- I am a victim of my decisions. Ah, after 31 years of exitence the existential dilemma is far from softening. On the contrary, the dilemma presses deeper, as if a wound being rubbed by a handful of salt. On one hand, there is practicality, on the other idealism. You have a Richard Gordon saying you cannot eat sovereignity (during the US Bases debate of the early 90's) and you have Sandwich screaming for Food for the Soul. You have success measured in terms of how society defines it, and you have success that satisfies your inner self, your piece of mind, your happiness. You have contentment through extending relatively financial stability for your family by providing the basic needs and, where possible, the whims of commercialism, you have contentment by exemplifying silmplenes in life. You have to be a slave for money or a master for yourself. YOU HAVE TO BE, But how? YOU HAVE TO BE, but at what cost. Life is but a single travel, you do not have the luxury of going back to things that have gone past. The main characte in Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being rued about this. If life can be rearranged in such a fashion that we deem it to be, if we have time capsule so we can prevent bad decisions......

Ahh but when one is so accustomed to his relatively routine life, can change peep though the hardened layers of apathy? When one is in his "comfort" shell with friends and collegues, can brevity beamed though the dark alley of fear? When one is thrust to the grim reality of being the sole breadwinner of a family, can idealism survive the onslaught of practicality?