My Half of an Online Conversation about "Umaga ng Ika-​​13 ng Hunyo 2010, Labindalawang Oras Bago Ka Tuluyang Burahin ng Humaharurot na Trak sa Pagtawid Mo sa Meralco Avenue"

D– This is something Chris made available online in honor of Cesar's memory. Thought you might be interested to watch it.

M–

D– I was unfortunate not to know Cesar as much as either of you did, but Christian's piece left me with all kinds of warm. I think, as a literature teacher, most word-based expressions leave me quite cold, even the "literary" ones (especially those I myself have written). I'm grateful for anything that throbs with heart and has been tended with skill.

The part I liked was the idea of the droning background sound as Cesar's laughter synthetically stretched out to 12 minutes. In lesser hands, such an idea would blossom into nothing more than morbid. But because it was rendered the way it was, I read it as the operating principle of the art, an analogue to how human memory works when it tries its damnedest (through song, poetry, Taj Mahals, etc.) to capture the final moments of a friend or beloved.

It's Eurydice enough for me.

M–

D– It's stasis, as you pointed out. Stasis as paralysis, I think (with that Beckett biting the tail), but perhaps also as an ideal. A way of keeping a loss intact.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this one, M–. The laughter lines were mentioned at around the beginning. Four minutes into the clip, if I remember right. Hope you catch it. A line will ask about the sound, and another line will reply.

M–

A Dream of Ethnography

The dream was fluent last week. A catalonan invited me up to the mountain (2). I was audience (3) to his art. Maybe I was the only one in front of him, for there were points in the dream when it felt this way. We sat cross-legged. It was a cave, I'm sure, but I remember the sun overhead.

His concept was to deliver the summary of his homeland through a whole experience. That is, he did not merely show things (8) or chant songs. He fed me (10) from two pockets carved from the soil before him: one contained a fluid, the other rice. These were tasteless, and I remember mulling on the tastelessness while he proceeded with the performance. He used his bare hands to feed me. Many other scenes came after that, but I must keep at least two of these paragraphs.

There, hidden.

The horror show was not over. The purging was painful. I gave birth to a flaming orb (26).

Notes:
2–A role played by someone I know. But C– was no catalonan in truth.
3–The word 'audience' does not fit. 'Participant', maybe, but the word has been worn thin by corporations and anthropologists the world over.
8–A moving tattoo, for one.
10–Was this the only dream where I don't wake up the moment before I eat?
26–Red, with a faded gold cross wrapped around it. Maybe my father still keeps that little Sto. Niño with a missing hand.

The First Adventure of Black Clay and Violet Clay

We gave Neneng a block of clay around three weeks ago. It's 180 grams of pure violet. We used to give her multi-colored sets, clay fingers of green, red, cobalt, and yellow. While I loved to see my daughter's manipulations, I grew tired of watching these brilliant colors merge into a singular mud.

We had a set of instructions for the violet clay: Always with an adult. Wash your hands right after. Don't mix it up with other clay. Play it on a spread of carton to keep it from hair, dust, and crumbs. Also, don't divide the block into pieces too small. The wind might scatter the pieces. Your sister might eat them.

My wife bought a block for me as well. I unwrapped it a few days ago. Neneng was excited to see the black clay in action. Earlier tonight, she asked for a piece of the black to throw into her project, but I said it would ruin her favorite color. Instead, I handed her an old SIM card for slicing.

She was well into her work when I began mine. I rolled some slices into black limbs. I wanted to capture an unforgettable CCTV scene: a student, a split second from falling to the ground. Neneng wanted to know what I was doing. What did it look like, I asked. A boy, she said. She told me to give it a pair of eyes. Okay, anak.

She then flattened a round piece and handed me the disc. Pancake 'to. Kakainin po ng boy.

I attempted a double of the fallen boy, the same basic figure, but it was to stand upright and carry a knife. But the weight was off, and it kept toppling over. Neneng thought my two figures were exercising. Push-ups, but she didn't have the word for it so she went down on the floor to demonstrate. Yes, I said, almost shouting. I did not teach her the word "push-ups," and I said in no uncertain terms that she was to return to her seat.

Was the threat registered? Did she hear the "or else" that was hiding there? If so, then she did not let on. Nothing could disturb her work. She cut a wedge off her block, gave it to my murderer,and smiled at me. Ito naman cheese na para sa isa.

The Wednesday Plan

Since Monday afternoon, I have been fidgeting regarding my HUM 1 (AH) lesson for today. I considered scrapping the plans already laid for the remaining four meetings, but I also thought that some of my students might be, consciously or not, riding on the established rhythm of the course and might grow upset (maybe without knowing why) if I changed horses right at the river's edge.

I also wished that they'd stop classes just like they did after Milenyo when we were weeks shy of closing the semester. But this was not an Act of God, was it, and if you think it through, a measure like that could amount to a criminal precedent.

The longer I thought about the lesson, the more I noticed a curious development. The old questions had begun wearing an odd gravity: What is the activity for the day, and why? How dare we grade something as animal as literature? Can the large class lecture mode teach poetry best? How completely can powerpoint slides kill spontaneity? What have I been doing, stepping all over the greatest job in the world? And, will they stay awake?

Were my subject of the Math, Science, and Technology cluster perhaps a minute of silence would suffice – but what am I saying here? That this is not force majeure? That a minute could ever be enough?

On Monday, I tried writing poems while checking 300 journals. Over lunch, I was composing on a sandwich wrapper. I sent two poems to my editor at dawn yesterday. I said on the cover letter that "I think I've been writing these poems because I don't know what words to say about these killings when I stand in front of my students." Maybe this should be the least of my anxieties. Perhaps it is, well of course it is, and I am blowing it up to deny the proximity of the gravest fear.

At 1am today, I finally decided on an approach, and I hope I pull it off. This image will form the navel of the hour:

Here goes nothing.

Returns of the Day

Sir G and I were discussing philosophers at the Indignation Rally. No one discusses indignation at an indignation rally. Death is but a passing topic in a wake. It is recurrent, yes, but it is seldom discussed at length.

So I asked Sir G. Is there a philosopher who uses anecdotal information in their treatises? We sampled those we could think of: maybe Sartre, or the later Wittgenstein? Or Rousseau? Rousseau! But Rousseau was no philosopher. Okay. So the answer is No? The answer is Of Course Not.

We talked about the traumatic lives of the philosophers. Most of these lives were full of suffering. Nietzsche, of course, and Spinoza. I admitted that I was more enthralled by the biographies of philosophers rather than those of writers. Reading a writer's life is redundant. Reading a writer's life ruins the fiction. But the philosophers! You want to hear their stories because they try so hard to turn their backs on them.

The father of Ms. Cebanico was onstage. Such grace, Sir G and I agreed. I could not take my eyes off the man. I said to Sir G, what if we were there, standing in his stead?

We talked about a possible lack in Filipino philosophy and an equally possible lack in trauma and a definite lack of 'angst' in the Filipino. Because there was always the Bathala in Bahala Na, he said. And where others saw a glass half empty, we Pinoys saw a glass half full.

A lovely, terrible night for essentialism, but what else were we to say? You do not think at a time like this.

Nido, Take 1

Mommy, what's siksik?
Not your mommy, Bimbi.
Mommy, what's sulit?
Definitely not your daddy.

The Bra

by Sharon Olds

It happened, with me, on the left side, first,
I would look down, and the soft skin of the
nipple had become like a blister, as if it had been
lifted by slow puffs of breath
from underneath. It took weeks, months,
a year. And those white harnesses,
like contagion masks for conjoined twins
--if you saw a strap showing, on someone
you knew well enough, you could whisper, in her ear,
It's Snowing Up North. There were bowers to walk through
home from school, trellis arches
like aboveground tunnels, froths of leaves--
that spring, no one was in them, except,
sometimes, a glimpse of police. They found
her body in the summer, the girl in our class
missing since winter, in the paper they printed
the word in French, brassiere, I felt a little
glad she had still been wearing it,
as if a covering, of any
kind, could be a hopeless dignity.
But now they are saying that her bra was buried
in the basement of his house--when she was pulled down into
the ground, she was naked. For the moment I am almost half
glad they tore him apart with Actaeon
electric savaging. In the photo,
the shoulder straps seem to be making
wavering O's, and the sorrow's cups
are O's, and the bands around to the hook
and eye in the back make a broken O.
It looks like something taken down
to the bones--God's apron--God eviscerated--
its plain, cotton ribbons rubbed
with earth. When he said, In as much as ye have
done it unto one of the least
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto
me, he meant girls--or if he'd known better
he would have meant girls.