Thursday, May 22, 2008

synecdoche

there was this girl
this really fucked up girl

she put her mind into a box
stuck a handle on the thing
cranked it and, hey presto,
it started chugging.

she put her hands to labor
to create a certain form;
re-ball, re-mold, re-ball, re-mold
a swan, maybe an ashtray.

her feet walked the miles
between then and now
across never, again and always
among other extremes.

she let her heart float like a bubble
upwards until high
where it silently burst
into a thousand words.

she stands at the close,
watching thoughts as they fall
unshaped.


gabby's art material comes in handy at 5:17am

Thursday, May 15, 2008

outgrownup

There are things you just have to outgrow: shoes, socks, bicycles, beds, toys, blankets, nursery songs. Hairstyles, books, outfits, shampoo, tv shows, pop music. Hobbies, diaries, dreams of ruling the world, dreams. The girlhood crush on Daddy eventually fades and infatuation flits toward the school bully or the classroom nerd, or the teacher--and later, the professor, the colleague, the CEO, the rebel without a cause, and so on.

You look back on who you were, and you are either nostalgic or appalled to realize how different you are now. How much you've grown. I just happened to be looking through old CVs and application letters that I still have on file from, god, eight or nine years ago. How embarassingly stupid I was. Today, I'd never hire that then me. The horrible graduation photo (which was what everyone did in Manila, how gauche). The references to obscure achievements that nobody would be able to relate to. The use of the words "fervently hope". Gaaaaah.

But I understand that me. That was the me who had, at the age of 10, thought that getting a job in the world (or anything that I would ever want career-wise) was all about some sort of kismet. Careers were about fate, romance and falling in love. Someone would come across me and my life crammed on a page, and think, "she's perfect" in this particular and unique way, like a soulmate finds his or her kindred spirit. Yeah, I think kindred spirit captures it. I had this idea that people were matched to their jobs by some alchemical ether in the universe. Unhappy people and accountants were just those that gave up on the search for true love.

Well, now I know better.

The same goes for school. I'm particularly obsessed with grad school. Getting my PhD. And for anyone who's applied to US grad schools, you know what I'm talking about. The Statement of Purpose. What an ominous, daunting name for an essay. Millions upon millions of Statements of Purpose, churned out by the machine that is the American University Application System. In 800 words, tell us your raison d'être. The first time round, I laid my bloody heart, guts and pancreas on the table. And asked them to pick me. Choose me. Love me. They politely declined.

On a tangent thought: when I was 22, an older friend, maybe 10 years older than I was, told me over coffee, I would realize that there are friends that I will need to cut loose. If people have no use for you, he reasoned tautologically, then you don't need them. I thought that his cynicism was absurd. However, by the time I cut him loose I was a number of years younger than he was that day at some Starbucks (bleah) in Makati. You outgrow people too. Then again, there are the people you never get over.

The day I realized I had finally come of age, or rather that I was finally an adult like my mom and people on that TV show thirtysomething, was the day I had to deal with a pitbull of an insurance agent. Taxes, insurance, mortgage, loans, preschool, all the trappings of bureaucratized social organization. Trappings.

At a climate change conference, someone said "the world of the future is not open to limitless choices; the choices we have left to define the world are very narrow".

Gabby told me the other day that when he grows up, he'll be a strong gorilla. I suppose that's one option I'll let him mull over for the time being.

Me, I'm all outgrownup.


Gaaaaah.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

traveling without a camera, living without writing

New year resolution in the middle of May: five-minute blogging. Because I haven't been writing enough, haven't really been thinking at all.

Maybe because there's too much to do, too much flying around. I'm actually pretty happy these days. The San-Francisco-and-other-parts-of-California-trip was great! Jr and I both had our things to do, people to see-- and didn't actually honeymoon all that much. But we had a great time. Futurescope-wise, an amazingly productive trip. I just need to keep that momentum going.

It's my last day in Tokyo. I'm with Natalia to visit Anjeli. It's been a lot of fun--with a huge sense of being exactly as we have always been and will always be. But just in a different city. Oh, and getting older so we have only been able to pull off one one-nighter club at a place called Womb which was pretty awesome. Good drum n bass. And, oh the eye candy!

The Japan of my imagination has been filtered by Yukio Mishima, Hayao Miyazaki and Akira Kurosawa. I have been walking around the city half-hoping for a sudden world shift, waiting for the buses to turn into enormous cats and the people to get cute and furry. Instead, there are the eclecticly-dressed crowd of Shibuya, the cosplay Lolitas around the Meiji shrine and the well-heeled drabness of Ruppongi. My impression of Tokyo has radically changed from the hotel rooms and conference halls from 2005. I'm sure if I ever travel back this way and spend even more time, it will change again.

Guided by no plan and only by instinct, we've blundered our way through cafés and restos, funky boutiques and shopping districts. We've torn at our hair and beat at our breasts outside great clubs that have prospered for years but seemingly closed down especially for us. We found great bars at random in unlikely places. We've lounged on crumpled pages of The Japan Times in the park, talking about life and sustaining each other with a lot of tea and sympathy.

The best part was our fearless forecasting about five years from now. Natalia will be in Indonesia or somewhere in Southeast Asia, running her own NGO. Working on community projects with kids. She'll have three beautiful kids of her own. We've plotted out how S's amazing bar business will bust and boom. They may live apart for the first year or so because Natalia's career will take her out of Singapore, but S will think, fuck it, pack up and go to be with her.

Anjeli will be a famous artist/designer/theater person in Berlin, after a torrid but painful affair with a musician in New York. She'll be alone for a while, until she meets Hans in a bookstore. Hans is a housing contractor, ship-builder or plumber, and a self-taught philosopher as well. He will be possibly divorced with a kid; but will definitely be a lot older and they will fall in love deeply but at a sedate, unhurried pace.

With me, there was nothing much left to imagination. Grad school, US, Junior, Gabby. Anjeli tried to sneak in a little girl. I was surprised at how pleased I was at the fixedness of it all. Maybe I have finally settled down.


Each monkey is a placeholder until either Nat or Anjeli uploads photos from their camera!