Achieving Happiness

This is positively the last time I’m going to try hold a photo-op shoot with four-legged animals.

This morning Anakpawis, Bayan Muna and Bantay impeachment led a political  gimmick at the UP Academic Oval to dramatize their stand that the impeachment complaint hearings in Congress are going to the dogs.

So we brought with us members of the said specie.

Puppies and adult dogs playing, romping, growling and mugging in front of the cameras of the tv stations and the newsprint media. They totally upstaged everyone, including Ka Bel who was no match for the cute puppy he hugged close to him. The one-month old puppy was white all over with oatmeal spots, and he had a laminated dog tag around his neck which bore the logo of Bantay Impeachment and the words "We Want Arroyo Out! Oust! Oust! Oust!"

The last words, when spoken, are supposed to sound like barks (’Arf! Arf! Arf!’)

It was fun but very exhausting. The shoot took only an hour, but like I said to Jo who was there with her dog friend Satchmo, watching and feeling the constant energy of the dogs and the puppies moving and running around had the effect of draining one’s own.

At the end of the shoot, the five puppies (cuddly, unbearably cute, darling little puppies) were plastered. They stretched out on the cold sidewalk near the grass and with their tiny tummies pressed against the pavement, they slept. Their pudgy legs kicked out feebly as they dreamed running dreams.

The media people has a hard time keeping their hands off the dogs and the puppies. One photographer even wante to know if there was any chance we were selling the puppies (we weren’t).The puppies don’t have names yet, but the dogs who were there apart from Satchmo were Polabear, Wesley, Snorlax and a whippet-thin half-grown dog whose name I forget.

Satchmo was dignified, Polabear anxious (it was her puppies the media were oggling), Snorlax hyperactive and leaping all over the place like a deranged firework, and Wesley calm and watchful.

A teenager with two big  full-grown German Shepherds walked by and we gave the boy two dog tags. The Shepherds’ names were Sola and Rocky. Their coats were a beautiful reddish brown, and their tongues were so huge!

All in all, it was a fun morning. I really want to go back to sleep, though. I got up at 6am and rushed to UP for this, and I miss my bed.

11:30am  Flexing my synapses…there!

Right now only banalities come to mind. How extreme is this — politics on one side, silliness on the other.

Okay, so maybe not silliness, but they’re certainly not things that would hog the front page.

My husband keeps hoarding books. It’s like a disease with him. He’s like that demented house-elf Kreecher in Harry Potter. Kreecher keeps stowing away mementos and soveiners (did I spell that right? heck, I bet I didn’t) of the Black family, a clan of pure-blood wizards who favor Voldemort and his dark campaign to cleanse the magical world of half-bloods and those of Muggle-descent.

But my husband is not demented. He’s just an overly enthusiastic reader. For the last three weeks our conversations have been punctuated with exclamations and praises for Isaac Asimov and his contributions to science-fiction and literature in general.

Right now I’m thinking of apples and mangoes and strawberries and that wire-basket of rambutan I finished off last night (yep, I feel a little ill. That was a lot rambutan, man).

Then it’s back to work. 

******

The next day. 1:09 PM

The national govenrment will serve noodles to school children.

What about the parents? The children go hungry because their parents are without the means to buy food for sufficient meals.

How can one not HATE this government that keeps projecting itself as a caring and compassionate institution when it truth it’s doing its darnest to make sure that the people are kept starving and destitute? A shocking 80% of next year’s budget will be automatically appropriated yet again for foreign debt servicing!!!

Noodles?! Aaaaaargh!

Hindi na talaga ako nasanay. Nagigimbal pa rin ako.

Oo, hindi naman ako talaga nagtaka na gagawin ng bulok, magnanakaw at berdugong gobyerno ni Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ang lahat mamamatay lang ang impeachment complaint na isinampa laban kay Arroyo.

Pero hindi ko talaga maunawaan kung bakit may mga ganyang klaseng nilalang. Parang demonyong nagkatawang-tao. (Mga diktador, pasista, mga ganid na kapitalista, mga despotikong panginoong may-lupa. Mga kampon ng kadiliman na dapat ilantad sa liwanag at puksain!)

Beyond politics, I mean beyond being president, what sort of person is this woman?! Holy crap. The entire nation is in an uproar over her various crimes against the people (ranging from serious to downright atrocious. The human rights violations alone constitute crimes against humanity; and the daily grinding poverty of Filipinos because of the devastating impact of the privatization, deregulation and liberalization policies on their livelihood and general welfare is unforgivable, equal to blood debts!) yet freaking hell, this woman still has the gall to say that she is a leader worthy of a second chance.

That she is doing her best for this country and that the instability of the economy is because of the protests. That none of the accusations and charges levelled against her are true.

Hindi tutoo ang napalaking bilang — 400, bilangin isa-isa!– ng mga pinaslang na manggagawa, magsasaka, akibistang masa, human rights worker, progresibong abogado, kaparian? Hindi tutoo na kuba na sa kahirapan ang mamamayan sa pagpasan ng bigat ng nagtataasang presyo ng bilihin at iba’-ibang buwis (VAT, road user’s tax) na hindi naman napupunta sa mga batayang serbisyong panlipunan? Hindi tutoo na sa bawat araw ay nadadagdagan ang unemployment rate, na lumalaki ang bilang ng kabataang nagda-drop-out mula sa eskwela, na milyon-milyon ang walang sariling bahay at mga squatter sa sariling bayan, na  hindi mapigilan ang paglaganap ng kamatayan dala ng mga sakit na kung tuuusin ay napakadaling gamutin (tuberkulosis, pneumonia, tigdas)?

Wala pa man ang impeachment complaint, hindi pa man sumambulat ang isyu ng "Hello, Garci?" tapes ay matining na ang panawagan ng taumbayan para sa kanyang pagpapatalsik mula sa poder. Hindi pa man nalalantad ang kawalanghiyaan niya sa pandaraya noong halalan ng Mayo 2004, matibay na ang batayan ng mamamayan para isigaw na bumaba na sya mula sa Malacanang!

She allowed the return of US troops and their illegal participation in counter-insurgency operations wherein the real victims were innocent civilians, non-combatants, Muslim Filipinos unjustly branded as terrorists.

She made unpricipled compromises with Danding Cojuangco, the Marcoses regarding the settlement of the coco-levy and the ill-gotten wealth accumulaed by the Marcos dictatorship — billions of pesos that rightfully belong to the coconut farmers and their families; the survivors of martial law and the heirs of the victims of torture, forced disappearance and summary execution.

She signed into law almost 500 executive orders that rendered thousands of government employees jobless; cut the budgets of agencies that directly facilitated the delivery of public services; transferred control and ownership of utilities to the private sector. These are all serious acts of abuse of authority; not to mention acts of destruction against the welfare of millions of Filipinos.

In the face of all this, the woman tosses her head and says "I’m not guilty."

Ang kapal talaga ng mukha! Garapalan kung magsinungaling! Wala ba syang dangal?! I am reminded of a line from one of Gary Granada’s songs- "Kung ayaw mo na sa akin, ayaw ko na rin sa iyo."

Utang na loob, Gloria — ayaw na namin sa ‘yo!

This afternoon at the rally commemorating the 109th anniversary of the Sigaw sa Pugadlawin which signalled the start of the 1896 Revolution led by the great proletarian leader Andres Bonifacio, people kept asking me if I were pregnant yet.

I guess it’s normal for Filipinos (hum, as if I weren’ tFilipino myself. I am, but I guess my values are more European. Liberal almost to the point of well, geting into arguments regarding, say, couples living together without going through marriage ceremonies etc. I think ‘live-in’ arrangements should not be villified. wala lang. that’s a different blog altogether) to ask that sort of question.

As if after one get’s married, it’s immediately expected that one (the woman) will start having children.

Anyways, I kep saying no no no. Not yet . Jeez. We still have a presidency to overthrow and a new transition council to put up. I don’t want my baby to be born during these turbulent times…

Kaso nga, extending the explanation would mean that I, my husband and I, would never have kids.

Ang sakit kasing isipin na magluluwal ka ng bagong buhay sa isang napaka-bulok na lipunan. Really. I mean holy gee, I panic over my dogs getting sick. What more if it were my baby?  I am such a neurotic and a paranoiac. Am so lucky that the man I married is nothing near being like that.

Anyways. I have nothing but disgust and loathing for this government and the system it represents. Killer  of dreams, destroyer  of futures. While 1-2 percent of this nation’s population party at night and shop, wine, dine and travel in luxury during the day, the rest of the people are forced to suffer dehumanizing poverty and grievous want.

Bukas, pagpasok na naman sa opisina, pagbukas ng dyaryo, tatambad na naman sa akin ang mga pinakabagong ulat ng iba’-ibang anyo ng karahasan at pagsasamantala laban sa masa; ang walang puknat na pagnanakaw ng mga dayuhang korporasyon at mga lokal nilang kasosyong malalaking negosyante; ang patuloy na pagkatuta ng rehimeng Arroyo sa Estados Unidos at mga dikta nito.

Si Gloria pa rin ang presidente. Boses pa rin nya ang maririnig sa radyo at mukha pa rin nya ang makikita sa mga ulat sa telebisyon. Patatagalin pa ba siya hanggang 2010?!!!

Nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to how low this government will sink and how vicious it can be when it comes to violating the economic and political rights of the Filipino people.

Hindi nga ako nagugulat, pero lagi at lagi, masusuklam at magagalit; maiiyak at maghihinagpis. Walang paraan upang masanay sa ganitong kalakaran.   

August 17, 2005

C. de Oro academics rant over education budget cut, join calls for Arroyo’s ouster By Maricel Casino-Rivera, The Mindanao Goldstar Daily, Volume 16 No. 41, goldstardaily.t35.com

A GROUP of academics from major colleges and universities in Cagayan de Oro yesterday joined militant youth groups in calling for the ouster of the embattled President Arroyo as the Lower House resumed deliberations on the impeachment complaints.

This came even as a handful of students gathered in front of the Jesuit-run Xavier University, braving the heat at noon-time, to pursue their call for Arroyo’s resignation.

Academics who call themselves the Educators’ Caucus, an informal gathering of teachers and other education workers coming from private and public education institutions in the city, said they were dismayed over the sorry state of the country’s education system.

The group includes academics from Xavier, Mindanao Polytechnic State College (MPSC), Liceo de Cagayan University, Capitol University and Cagayan de Oro College. The group said the government budget for education significantly decreased from 17 percent in 2002 to 14.9 percent this year.

In a statement, the organized academics said the government also reduced the education department’s budget for maintenance and other operating expenses and services. In 2004, they said there was an overwhelming lack of public teachers.

"The lack of budget for education led to massive contractualization of teachers, low quality of education due to increased number of working hours and number of class size and the decreased income for the teachers," their statement said. Kim Gargar, MPSC Physics department chairperson, said the Educators’ Caucus is a venue for discussions on issues that concern the education sector and promotes and forms the broadest unity among their ranks for their legitimate democratic rights and interests.

"We believe that as members of the academic community, educators are at am important vantage point to observe, analyze and help solve the problems besetting the country," said Gargar. Gargar said the group is also fully supporting the impeachment process. The Caucus’ members have shown concern over reports that Malacanang was bent on using the alleged ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses to influence the outcome of the impeachment hearings. The Presidential Commission on Good Governance (PCGG) is finalizing details on the auction of the jewelry owned by former First Lady Imelda Marcos by the end of this year with an estimated value of US$10 million.

Gargar said it was time for Arroyo to go because the evidence–the "Hello Garci tapes"–clearly show that "she cheated and betrayed public trust to usurp power". "The tapes [are] the last straw. From the first day she assumed office, her credibility has been questioned. The President has lost moral ascendancy, legal mandate and credibility to stay in power," said Gargar. #

When I was in college, I was a member of the UP Karate Association. Our sensei — or teacher — was shihan (synonymous with teacher, or master) Jerome. He was a tall, well-built man who was on the quiet side. He was friendly but firm. He wasn’t a perfectionist, but he demanded that his students — us UPKA members who kicked and punched and leaped and jumped like sweating lizards in white gis within a red dojo)– perform the exercises or kata  with a little more than plain dexterity. I think he wanted us to be graceful. Not surprising, what with karate-do a sport of grace, not unlike ballet.

So there I was trying to control my breathing, steadying my legs (which in the beginning hurt like heck from having to bend and squat halfway for 15-20 minutes at a stretch every hour), focusing what physical force I had in my fists and aiming at invisible opponents. I learned how to place well-aimed blows; how to make the proper fist (thumbs tucked under the other fingers to secure them from being broken upon impact with a hard object like, say, someone’s skull); how to make the air whistle with kicks swiftly delivered then retracted; how to pivot, with my center of gravity nearer to the ground and my body below hitting range. I learned to slow-breathe, focus and meditate.

It was exhilarating. Sensei Jerome was a great teacher. He hardly spoke, but he communicated volumes with a nod of his head, a gesture of his steady hands, or by executing an absolutely perfect, graceful yet very powerful movement such as blocking a blow with his arm.

Now, a decade later, I have a different sensei. I’m not studying karate anymore (I wish I was, though. I miss it, my body misses the light and weightlessness of feeling), but I’m studying something more difficult and demanding than karate.

My sensei’s name is Rafael Baylosis. He used to be the secretary general of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) before he was imprisoned by the Marcos dictatorship until he was released in 1995. Now, as a strictly legal, above-ground civilian, he is the vice-chairman of Anakpawis National Political Party and a consultant  on socio-economic concerns in the peace negotiations between the National Democratic Front (NDF) and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP).

I’ve had the honor of working with and learning from Ka Raffy since 1998 when I was still in the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) labor center as propaganda officer, and he was the Political affairs secretary. It was from him that I learned to get up at 6am and be ready to begin writing 15 minutes later (he was always my wake-up call. Used to bug the hell out of me).

He taught me how to be consistent with my work habits (and I try to imitate and adopt his own work ethic — constancy, timeliness, economic but determined movements, sharp awareness of developments. I still lack patience and cool-headedness, though. I’m still trying to overcome my tendency to become quite the monster when confronted with upsetting things) and how to recognize, analyze and then resolve political contradictions in concepts and ideas.

He taught me to push the limits of what I used to believe as the limits to my abilities and skills.

But apart from these, I learned and still learn from Ka Raffy how to live with integrity. I know this sounds stilted, but this is the only way I can describe this.

Rafael Baylosis is a great father, a loving husband, a supportive comrade, an intellectual and a dreamer. He has, since he became an activist at 18 in UP Diliman, a friend and comrade of the likes of then 21- year old Jose Ma. Sison and other veterans of the First Quarter Storm and the Diliman Commune,  lived plainly and simply; but always his actions and thoughts have been profoundly in service to a cause greater to himself.

After presiding over important campaign or consultation meetings, he washes the dishes after meal times in the Anakpawis headquarters and cleans the conference room.He always ask after the health of Kasamas, or how they’re doing in their respective line of work. He makes silly and corny jokes that people often laugh at, not so much because the jokes themselves are funny, but because they are amused at Ka Raffy’s boyishness.

He is a calm and confident leader in rallies and demonstrations, a fiery public speaker, a well-read ideologue, a lover of music, and a great cook (well, they say he is — I’m too finicky an eater to actually try his more complicated Ilocano dishes made up of, well, various vegetables. I’m not crazy for vegetables).

Ka Raffy is capable of compelling such fierce loyalty, because to put it plainly, he is such a good person and worthy of the highest respect. Approachable and light-hearted, young activists like myself can always rely on Ka Raffy to give comforting but well-grounded advice. While an understanding and tolerant person, he is strict when it comes to the core activist principles and their application to work and living. 

I am no end humbled and awed at how such an  evolved human being, a well-known and highly-respected individual in the Kilusan sees it fit to trust me with his confidence and guide me through my political work and growth as an activist.

Though right now (and often in the last seven years) I give him headaches because of my stubborn nature, it is one of my life’s highest ambitions to make Ka Raffy proud of me, because I am so proud and honored to say that what I am today and what I am capable of doing and achieving for the Kilusan is largely because of his influence. He is my Jedi master, and I hope never to be like Anakin Skywalker but to be as Obiwan Kenobi.  He trains and teaches by example, and this, I think, is the best way to teach. He, along with Crispin ‘Ka Bel’ Beltran are the biggest political and personal influences in my life. From them I learn not only how to be activist, but to be, hopefully, a good person.

Often, to be worthy  of one’s teachers, to be a good person are the highest  and best things one should hope to be.

Actually, there is no story. It’s just a title. My friend Mike and I were talking about lay-outs and kerning and fonts and character spacing, and I thought ‘one-font story’ sounds like a cool title for something.

Anyways.

There are so many things to write about and I don’t know where to begin! I hoard ideas for stories the way some species of rodents hoard nuts (Chip and Dale and their walnut capers versus Donald Duck come readily to mind); but it’s hard to write because they, the stories, can be construed as  barely disguised tales about myself and the people I am friends with, the people I share my daily travels in politics with. Sayang.

But I do  have such interesting friends!

Take Mike, for instance (forgive me, pare). I want to describe the way he tilts his head when asking a question, just so, a little to the left, and follows it up with a remark that sends whoever it is he’s talking to either laugh or be scandalized. He is a music fiend and he takes such an interest in quirky things, common things made unusual because of the fragility and importance they are treated with by those who appreciate them. He is a fan of Neil Gaiman and of Bob Dylan. He wears black Converses and he slouches like Frankenstein’s monster, and though 31, he looks 25 and acts 15. He carries his passions easily, but he has a deep well of sympathy for concepts and ideas that run deep (the movement, fatherhood, death and how it should never go hand-in-hand with youth). He doesn’t smoke, he has a twisted sense of humor, and he likes blueberry shake.

Or my friend Tonyo, neat freak extraordinaire, nicotine addict, closet mushy person. When he walks, it is as if he is expecting someone to block his path and he is prepared to use force if necessary to remove the obstacle. His grief is often unexpressed because he is always swift to use the past tense. Acceptance and forgetting seem to be his watchwords.

I like describing people.It’s a good way to warm yourself up before you embark on the journey through the hole in the paper.

I would like to describe the man I married, and for my description to be unmushy and objective. I tell him it’s nothing personal– I’m just practicing my skills at description, at narration, at characterization. But for all these explanations, he still gets a little queasy, disturbed. An intensely private person, my husband; ironic really, considering how public he lives his life as a professor and adviser of student groups. He takes such a warm and sincere interest in the welfare of his students and co-faculty. He loves to read — science fiction in particularly. This is not surprising given his math and science background, and he wishes he had time to write his own SF stories set in a mala-kolonyal at mala-pyudal na lipunan.

When my husband laughs, his eyes turns into little chinks, and his entire body is carried along with the rythm of his laugh. It sounds a little like Ernie’s laugh — Ernie of Sesame Street. Like a little boy tickled pink; or a man remembering something from his childhood and he laughs from the memory of something that once made him amazed, wide-eyed.

will continue this later

I am so grateful the movement is here to explain the world to me — to clarify why things are the way things are, why there is such inequality and  why it is not necessary to grieve over the anguish and suffering of billions because there are answers and means and ways to puncture holes in the seeming hopelessness in the lives of these same billions. What the world means is narrated to me by the movement.

I often think of myself as a fraud. It’s been more than a decade since I became tibak — when I was 17 and a college junior. Since then I have learned so much, seen and experienced so many things that have influenced me and the way I see the world, but they way I view myself is essentially, at the core of it all, unchanged.

It’s hard to reconcile the quiet I want for me and mine, the solitude I am comfortable with with the demands of a life in the movement. As that line from Adrienne Rich’s poem goes (The Roofwalkers) "A life I didn’t choose/chose me…" I have the most simple of demands for myself– a quiet corner where I can think and write and create; a patch of sun and warmth underneath the shade of some generous tree; the luxury of listening to the music my father taught me to love; the leisure of learning about things I would probably never see with my own eyes: the deepest reaches of oceans, the contents of the Louvre, the journey of Emperor penguins through the arctic.

But the again I comfronted by the harshness of life in this society I was born in. The way workers kill themselves laboring 12 hours straight in return for wages never ever commensurate to their efforts, much less equal to the share they  deserve as creators of the wealth. The way the urban poor — the street vendors, mendicants are sometimes forced to forego their dignity just so they won’t have to forego their family’s meager meals.

A grandmother in a tattered shift dress, too big for her, yellowed with age and weather lays down a plastic rice sack on the grimy pavement. Carefully, with arthritic fingers she pulls out wizened vegetables from a basket: a bunch of carrots, a head of lettuce, a sprinkling of red chillies, a small, hard pumpkin. It is starting to rain. She has no umbrella. She looks up at the sky and mutters a prayer to the gods that the rain stops so she doesn’t have to move her make-shift market space. Her browned and lined face is tired, her hair dull and gray. The vegetables look sad. Who would buy them? What nutrients could they possibly contain? The garden from which they have been harvested must have been a lonely patch of earth, but it is now what will give this old woman the means to buy food.

A young father barely 30 but looks 40 carries his tiny daughter in his arms. He is in a hurry. The soles of his rubber shoes have all but disappeared. A frayed backpack that has its zippers unravelling because of the contents that will not be contained is strapped to his back. He lines up at the counter, pulls out out his wallet. Counts out a few bills, many coins. The little girl cries, her father shushes her gently. He takes out a prescription, smooths it out from its crumpledness almost-torn state. The drugstore attendant doesn’t take immediate notice.  When she does, it is to say the money counted out is not enough. It can buy only four tablets of the needed 12. 

I am compelled to write. I have no other means by which I can express this pain I feel, this sudden falling from within. I cannot continually grieve for others because it will consume me, and I have to keep myself intact. It is probably in my genetic make-up to be so emotional (the way my husband frequently, regretfully points out), but this propensity is further…influenced and encouraged by the Sight the movement has given me and others like me. The gift of seeing people and their suffering, the gift to see beyond this towards a future where economics and politics will not be the cause of pain, but will be concepts that will be studied, bearing blueprints that will result in genuine development for the majority, true societal evolution and cultural maturity.

How does one run away from awareness and knowledge? It would be akin to attempting to escape one’s shadow.

I have other problems: my television is on the blink; there’s a flood in the bathroom as the roof leaks when it rains; I am angry with author Peter Carey yet again for writing a novel that will never give its charcters rest and happiness.

Outside my door, the world waits, and it’s sometimes hard to see the beauty in it for all the suffering. The lies of this goverment and the…evil..system it represents. Would that I could speak and write of the world only in the most neutral and impersonal, objective and cold scientific/economic terms! How does one describe a massacre of farmworkers using words that do not cut and maim the heart of the writer, or that of the reader of these same words? What images devoid of feeling can one utilize to analyze the impact of tax measures, budget cuts for social services,military operations, community demolitions, political repression on people’s lives?

A life I didn’t choose chose me.

It is Saturday night, and my heart is restless.There is no 100% comfort in anything, even in the embrace of the people I love most and who love me best. Always, always one remembers the world, and is reminded in little and big ways that justice is still something to work for, struggle towards.

The movement is my dictionary.

I.Am. Exhausted. First day of the Committee on Justice deliberations on the impeachment complaint against Mistress of Misery and Queen of the Damned Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo here in Congress. Everyone (the staff of the progressive party-lists) has been running around like a bunch of headless chickens. The PPLs…tried… to launch "Bantay Impeachment" and it was, to my estimation, a middling success (it was chaos, pure and unadulterated chaos, and the activity was decided upon only YESTERDAY),but a success all the same. The food was served (Impeachpie and impeachie-pichie), the tarp arrived a tad late but at least it got there, and the media clicked and shot footage of our lawmakers eating the said impeachie foods.

Oh well. Enough of that.

Actually this piece is about my kids — my staff in Anakpawis Rep. Crispin Beltran’s office. They’re barely adults, what with them just a few weeks older than 22. There’s Tin (my dependable lieutenant, Number One as nautical linggo goes and like Capt. Jean-Luc Picard of the USStarship Enterprise calls Lt.Com. William Riker), Lyn (looney songbird who frequents urban poor communities and does everything to stop demolitions short of flinging herself in front of bulldozers), and Ken (he’s new here, but it’s like he’s been here forever. He has a weird sense of humor and that makes him feel rights at home in this nuthouse of an office).

The other staff are Ka Ofel, Ka Bucks and the ever-reliable security peeps and the folks doing project work. But I’ll focus on the legis staff, which is what Tin, Lyn and Ken are.

They’re so energetic it’s like they’re living advertisements for the Energizer company. They laugh and giggle and trade crazy stories while they work, and it’s unbelievable that they actually get the work done and quite well at that. Come mealtimes, they raid each other’s plates. They write like fiends (I think they’re all OC when it comes to their writing. Lyn one time wrote a briefing paper on the infamous Department of Housing bill, and the briefer was longer than the bill. Well maybe not really longer, but it was a regular thesis/dissertation on the urban housing situation in th Philippines.), and after a long and exhausting day attending committee hearings (trailing after Ka Bel, making notes and occasional doodles on their notepads), answering phonecalls, emails, requests for assistance from members of the sectors that fall under our office’s jurisdiction), they’re still hyperactive come nighttime.

They attend every rally like it’s their first, and they’re chatter like magpies even as they march down the streets of Ayala carrying streamers.

Last night Ken didn’t sleep till 2am because he put stickers on 100 pieces of candy for the photo-op this morning. Still, he was the first to arrive at the office - chipper and cracking (stupid but hilarious) jokes.

Tin is a rock. She is seldom fazed.When I’m panicking, I turn to her and she tries to calm me down and she goes on ahead and tries to fix whatever needs fixing even as I hyperventilate and want to fall in a dead faint. Like this morning when the tarp for Bantay Impeachment was still finished at the shop, she kept calming me down and assuring me that it will get here on time. It didn’t, but thanks to her I didn’t fall to pieces.

These kids are great. (Sorry if this sounds feudal or condescending. But with me this is actually a term of endearment) These kids are amazing. Really, they are. I am so honored to be working with them. They’re so…genuinely activist. They have strong initiative, they’re creative, they’re happy people, and they love their work. When I’m out of the office I hardly worry knowing that Tin can take over at a moment’s notice.

I wish I had money to treat them all to Yellow Cab.

Bwahahahar, this is great for me because I’m thinking of going on leave in October.hahahaha!

It’s still a rainy day, and I feel so..comfortable. I wonder if this is how frogs in the Brazillian rainforests feel when it’s 6 am and there’ s dew on all the leaves and there’s a slight but constant drizzle. I love this weather, I absolutely thrive on it! My whole existence is focused on enjoying this weather, my entire being awake and happy. The only thing that top this and push me over the edge of bliss is if my husband were here with me and he’d be singing Sandara Park’s "Walang sabit." Hahahaha!

I feel sane for a change. Stark, raving calm. And happy.

It’s Saturday, and I don’t have to go the office and go through the stomach-churning process of monitoring political developments (am a sure-fire candidate for ulcers, heck). It’s my day off and I intend to enjoy it! I’ve grown more mature now, and I don’t feel as guilty as I used to when I was younger whenever i took a break.

I can watch DVDs, eat everything in the fridge, read the new Cathy and Doonesbury books my sister bought, paint, blog, gossip with Nova, argue with Edre (who tells me I have to throw a party for him if he gets arrested because the JASIG has been lifted. jerk), clean the house (but there’s no removing all the dog hair. It’s everywhere), cook pesto and wait for my husband to finish his physics research group meet so I can hear him deny that he misses me and say that he’s so relieved that he’s a thousand miles from me and multiplying trinomials or computing arcs or whatever headachy things he does for fun.

It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

Ka Bel has taken to cultivating aloe vera plants.He says it’s calming. Of course he gets dirt under his fingernails and sometimes when he gets to the office we tease him about it (we tell him to wash the dishrags in the bathroom and scrub the sink so the soap will eat away at the dirt that refuses to budge from under his nails).

What i really want to get Ka Bel to do would be to go up to Baguio or La Union. He hasn’t fully recovered from his baby stroke, but he’s so FREAKING STUBBORN that he insisted to return immediately back to work.We had to beg the doctors to threaten him and to issue an ultimatum that if he doesn’t get at least 7 hours of sleep every night, he’s gonna drop dead, no more debates.

I don’t think the threats are working. But Ka Bel is at least being less…assertive about where he wants to go, what he wants to do, and most importantly what he wants to EAT.

Hmm. Parang nawala ang calm ko just writing about this. Kasi it’s
not an easy job, being the boss of  Ka Bel (hahaha.) He’s so stubborn!!! And we love him so much we’re practically a fan club.

So where is this entry going? Nowhere. I was thinking I’d write a review of Peter Carey’s Illywacker, but I need to finish it first. (read Peter Carey. Highly recommended author. )

Oh well. Am off to enjoy the froggy weather!

I minored in creative writing in college, and in all the workshop classes i attended, i’ve heard the same problem echoed over and over again: what if the readers think the story is about me?!

It’s funny, but a decade later, now that I’ve had the benefit of hindsight and the lessons of years of  new experiences (some ecstatic, others steeped in misery - the memory of these experiences all bring melancholia as it it always the case for all things remembered - the gray area between forgetting and recollection, the silver-fine line between happiness and the blues), i realize, heck, who gives a damn if the reader does think the story is about me?!

When I first started writing short fiction I was in highschool (legitimate stories, ha — not short essay-y pieces about a fictional dog that chased a star up a tree or a fictional girl who wanted to be a mermaid) i suppose most of the stories I wrote were essentially eased out from some fragment of myself. How I breathe and how I feel, my reactions to the world and how I react when the world speaks back to me.

Or I wrote how I felt about people who entered (and then left, or left then came back, but I was already a different person when they returned) my life and what traces of themselves I kept with me.

Now that I’m pushing 30 (alas yes, but the essential me is stuck at 21 — like that song by the cranberries, a torch song to my youth and the fireceness of my interior musings), i have stories within me, and some, when they get written at last, will still echo some of what i’ve gone through or felt; but most will be imagined and dreamed.

On this rainy day, when the weather is disagreeable to most but is most pleasurable to one such as myself, I am grateful for everything that has happened to me, despite the pain, despite the anguish some of these experiences have brought. I guess this is something i can be thankful for, than i am capable of remembering  and still feeling even ghosts of emotions pasts, but be intellectually detached. I can describe and weave and paint the images and reflections of these ideas and feelings, and while they are still mine, my own,  i can transform them into fiction.

My take on the world as i know it.

The other night I was listening to a sad song - a ballad of regret and wistfulness, and suddenly a story came to me, eager to be written. I knew it was a story that was also going to be sad, just like the song that inspired it; and I knew that it would be, inevitably, about love (it’s always, always about love, isn’t it? Love for someone, something, the unreachable, the unknowable, the brilliant blazing ambition to be better and to be part of something greater than one’s self).

I told my husband this, that i was going to write a love story; and not surprisingly, he asked, teasingly, whether it was going to be about him.

No, I told him, i can’t write happy love stories, and ours is one - so I can’t write it (so far i’ve written 4 love stories, and all of them had conclusions that did not include bliss or fulfillment). I told him, when you read it, don’t think it’s about you or that it has anything do with us.

He laughed, "Tignan na lang natin pag tapos na.’

One of the lessons I learned from my creative writing classes (and the two national workshops I’ve gone to — Sillliman, and the UP National) is that it’s inevitable writers will dip into their own store of experiences when they begin the process of creation. The shape, texture and color of the stories will always bear the imprint of something important (at differing degrees, whether mental or emotional, visceral or mere fascination) to the writer.

I like learning about myself through fiction — mine and others’ infinitely better writers than myself. Fear not the views of the reader. Dare to bear your soul and to lay open your heart and guts. All the pain and sorrow, the suffering experienced directly or vicariously, on one’s own or by the hand and cruelty of thers, they’re all fuel for the fire.
The reader, well, he or she can dream and think and feel on his or her own. #