To make government transparent

Interesting set of events today, which got me to think about 'transparency.' If the problem is that there are thieves operating in shadows who betray the core tenets of our social contract, then the solution is to remove objects which cast said shadows. To make transparent means to see everything, to the extent that this is possible. To make transparent means to install mechanisms of surveillance with which to see. To render something completely visible means to install said mechanisms at all angles, from all vantage points. This means a continuous and sustained act of looking. Are we ready for that which we wish to usher?

The palace mouthpieces keep urging us to 'be vigilant', to be on constant look-out. They urge us to do our duty and work to keep them in check. Now that everyone is angry enough that they are raring to plunge into the public sphere, that space of appearances to see and be seen, the palace is pulling the reins. Is this too much vigilance?

Civility

A man gave up his seat for me in the sardine-packed MRT today. By the looks of his scuffed shoes and badly patched-up trousers, a day worker. Bodies were jostling to and fro as the train went from station to station. On the third stop from the one where I boarded, the day worker stood up and said 'ma'am.' He looked at the man seated next to him and whispered 'nakakahiya.' The other man also stood up and gave up his seat to the nearest woman. I wonder what prompted the act of seat-giving. was I looking schoolmarm-ey today with my hair in a bun? Did my look evoke childhood memories of his teacher from the barrio - good, warm memories which prompted a show of generosity/gallantry? If so why did he say 'nakakahiya?' Was he ashamed of the fact that a woman stands while he - an able-bodied man is seated? If not gendered sensibilities, was it a matter of class? My schoolmarm bun to his blue collar?

Caffeine

There is the heavy drone of the AC labouring to keep the heat out. The sounds bounce off of the cement walls and glass windows in a way that oddly enough complements the humming bass of the AC. To me it is more than ambient noise that must be tolerated when one pays homage to our churches of consumption. I wonder what these sounds mean to others? What is it about noise that we value so much? My mom belongs to that generation (and class?) of Filipinos who seem to associate noise with gaiety, and with gaiety - well-being. Silence or lack of noise makes my mom uncomfortable. Noise means happiness.

----

We take for granted the structures which hold the shell of our bodies, and within them our diwa, our malay. Being away from home allows me to see anew these same everyday structures/strictures.I see class everywhere. Even more so in these conspicuous spaces of consumption. It is most apparent in the manner of speech. Today I went into two coffee shops. This morning it was Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. This afternoon it is Caffe Bene. Both times the ladies behind the counter who took my order addressed me in English even when I spoke to them in Filipino. Now I wonder if this is standard policy. Will the speaking of Filipino somehow break the fantasy of luxe which they carefully conjure the moment I step through their doors? Will it somehow remind me that the space out there - public space - is not like the privileged private space in here, the price of which is probably included in my
coffee cup? Class. I see it in Singapore of course. But right here, right now in Manila I am reminded that we need not be of different skin colour or nationality for there to be deep inequality.

Pledge

I am going to stop procrastinating about not writing and just write. Whatever drivel comes will come. At least there is something to work on, something to cultivate, something to shape and mould into a semblance of something. I pledge to become a diarist once more. To write and chronicle, to put ideas to paper. So I start tonight.

I wonder if there is something about getting older that tempers the urge to purge on paper? Is it because life has become less urgent? Life is no longer a series of novelties and excitement? Is it because body and soul have learned not to keep looking forward to what lies beyond the curvature of time, and to savour the present, to count the precious seconds of now? I don't know. Perhaps it is that. It could have also been a mini burn-out. This past year was tough on my brain. If it were a muscle mine would have been fit enough to join a decathlon. I felt no urge to write the mundane. And no urge to write the not-academic substantial. So there was no middle ground. Perhaps I had learned to associate putting fingers to keyboard with hardship and chore. Writing was no longer a refuge, a pleasure, an unburdening. Writing was work. Thinking was work. Well, I have some precious weeks to not write/think as work. I am taking back this practice from the deep, dark corner of dissertating and bringing it out to the love and light of keyboard licks and clicks, of putting words to the voice in my head.

An Allegory of Good/Evil

What is good? What is evil? In Chris Nolan's Batman, what separates one from the other are convictions which fluctuate as characters plod on with life. Villains and heroes are either side of the same coin. In the last installment of the trilogy, Nolan's message is clear. There is evil in all of us, even when we are good.

If we must continually battle with these warring tendencies, then what separates Batman from Bane? Both fight for a cause. Batman's heroism and Bane's anarchism both warrant a belief in humanity's capacity for redemption. Both have sacrificed their lives for their ideologies. Both teeter on that precarious divide between rule and order. Both act in the name of justice. So how is Batman different from Bane?

The answer, I think, is that he isn't. What separates the two are contingencies - differences in matter of degrees. Perhaps Bane has experienced just that bit more of pain and despair in his life. By accident he has met such and such people who have influenced him in this or that way. The film's surprise at the end highlights the similarities even more. Bane is Batman, in substance and in form.

If we acknowledge that there is in us both good and evil, that we are capable of both care and harm, then I think we would be more far more forgiving of others and of ourselves. An intolerance of this duality leads to impossible expectations. Idealism is cynicism's twin.

Calm

Its 12h24am. I feel a need to quickly jot down these thoughts. Some things must be recorded. Being far away makes it easy to forget why I went away in the first place. Tonight I took the remote from my mom's easy grip as she lay asleep on the couch. It is for her that I went away. It is for her that I must make sure I do the best I can to succeed, to make her proud, to be able care for her in her old age. Some battles seem easier to win - big, wild, abstract fights in one's head. But seeing my mom older, less competent, more fragile can sometimes cause me the deepest of panics. She lays there tonight, her inert form at peace with her circumstance. It must be so very lonely. I must hurry. Her rescue is my salvation, her happiness a test of my mettle. Courage Sparky, Courage.

Fear of Writing

I developed something which one might well call fear of writing. Wait. Let me google if there's a word for it...Ha. Graphophobia. How elegant-sounding.

Let me be informal here. Let me just let the words flow out from my fingers. If I make grammatical mistakes, I apologise to my future self if I happen to read it some time in the future. I think it is a case of having too many other voices in my head. This is why dissertating does to you. It means letting all these other scholars get into your head and having them speak to each other. It is the immense reading requirement I have been subjected to this past year and half. Letting others in, figuring out what they say, letting them speak to one another. Hardly any space for me and my voice. Is it any wonder I haven't been able to write?

Second is I have lost confidence that I have anything real to say, any real original thought to contribute. Another thing about dissertating is this - swimming into the sea of what all other people have written in the past, and figuring out where you fit, where you can fill a void. So you think you've stumbled on to something super original and that you have these hallucinations of being the first to figure something out. Well, you do the lit review and you see that others have written in, on and around your topic. Your 'original' thought could not have been completely original...these other people were reading the same stuff you were reading. Its not impossible others will be similarly inclined to write about what you want to write about.

So yes, I am suffering from graphophobia. I must get out of this funk. I think the first thing to do is to start listening to my own voice again. When I let the others come in, I probably shouldn't let them do all the talking. I have to join in.

Wounds

Some wounds never heal, the ones underneath our skin. They linger and fester years after they were first inflicted. Eight years ago this month my father died in a car accident. But really the idea of my father died years before that. I carry with me still the pain of his betrayal. I was nineteen. Today it manifests in ways I could never have imagined back then. They continue to haunt me, to dog me, to colour my relationships. Perhaps it was because he died before any resolution between us was made. I didn't have a chance to make peace with my him or to forgive.

Eight years later, I am still angry and the feeling of betrayal is a wound that never gets a chance to heal. One little flick and there it bleeds again. I never did reconcile my superhero image of him with the reality of his being human. That process I was able to negotiate carefully with my mother as I grew older. In adulthood I came to know her and forgave her for being human. My two images of her, the one that has significantly influenced me in shaping who I am, that ideal of her, remains carefully preserved along with the 'real' her. These two have found harmony in my head, the sacred and the profane. And my father? He never got a chance for redemption. For us, his children, he had no explanations. He sinned just because he could. And so in my head men sin just because they can.

Sleep, Rest

Been back on the red dot for almost a week now, and I have found it difficult to revert back to 'work' mode. I am house-sitting the Super's house and it is lovely to have all this space to myself - free to cook, roam, smoke and enjoy the quiet. As usual there is the never-ending construction work on campus, but tomorrow I shall try and see if I can work in the office.

I can't wait for the semester to begin, this little bit of downtime is driving me nuts. I still owe the Super a ten-page summary of where I'm at with my proposal...but I can't quite muster the will-power to get the brain juices flowing again. The past school year has been pretty hardcore and all my faculties have been pushed to the limit. Z says I shouldn't be too hard on myself and to take advantage of the time for R&R. I dunno. I'm a bit of a puritan when it comes to these things. If I'm not having a difficult time with anything, with work, then I feel I am not really doing anything worthwhile.

Going home to Manila next month. It would be good to see old friends and family.

Friday Eve

For the first time in a while, it is quiet in my head. For the first time in a while, I have the quiet to write. So here it is. In a few days I shall celebrate another birthday. Broke. As always. And a few days after that I fly off to the city that gave give birth to Critical Theory. Not a bad way to celebrate a birthday broke.

It's been a year almost, since I landed my ass on this island. My first impressions stand. But there are things to like, even admire. Class here is not that big of an issue. Not in the way it does in the Philippines. Race is what divides people though. And religion.

There is a numbness-inducing continuity in things. Time here flows, in the way that yesterday flows seemelessly into today. Nothing disturbs the tick of the clock and everyone does as the should just so. Singapore has tamed time in the way the Philippines has not.

This business of higher higher higher education is difficult. I have learned to read a thousand pages per week on average. After a point it becomes addicting. You keep reading and you can't stop. The writing part is more difficult though. I thought it ridiculous when one of the professors said her aim was to write five hundred a day. I thought naively at the time, what a low output. But 500 words a day is a miracle on days when the muses don't come knocking.

I have fallen in love and we are broken up for the nth time. This loving business gets really ugly the older one gets. But I am enjoying my space tonight, free of thoughts other than these. I am downloading Hanna. It promises to be good.

Once more, with feeling

Here I thought I was going to start this leg in my life's journey by immediately beginning to write a seminal piece, an innovative, brilliant contribution to humankind's collection of knowledge. Was I dead wrong. Here I am finding myself reviewing everything I have come to know in over a decade of scholarship. And then I find I have to recalibrate and reorient myself. Where to position my guns? To whom must I aim? I am told I must engage an audience. Why do I need to kowtow to the dominant scholars? To gain legitimacy? To write something publishable? All my critical, rebellious instincts are primed to flee.

Comings and goings

Eight days. Leaving in eight days. I haven't packed. I haven't been obsessing about travel details. I remember what it was like before I left for Oz over three years ago - excited, nervous, ecstatic. Now I feel strangely calm. Like my trip isn't going to take me to live in another country for the next four years. But Singapore is close, so maybe my subconscious figured it would be like a trip to Davao or something. I don't have a place to stay yet, and for the first week I'll be slumming at a student hostel. But I'm not panicking. I guess age brings chill.

Farewell My Concubine

Last Friday I met a couple of Japanese filmmakers at a conference. They were here only for the weekeend. Questions. They asked if the food we were having for lunch was 'Filipino.' I said no. Green salad, some bit of chicken with mushrooms and lapu-lapu lathered in cream. No, I said. Not Filipino.

Where does one go to eat authentic Filipino food? I struggled to think of good restaurants. There was Abe. I didn't think Barrio Fiesta served edible food anymore. There was Kanin Club. And...what else?

Where does one go to purchase pirated DVDs? Well. Our collection is quite extensive. I boasted of having seen titles from as far as the Czech Republic.You go to this place in Makati, or this place in Ortigas. Oh and Quiapo of course. You wouldn't find it difficult, the DVDs will come to you.

And where does one go to see "interesting" places? I figured filmmakers might like Cubao X. Mogwai was there. Maybe they had something good screening. But no, they'd already gone there the night before. I blame the heat on the roof deck where we shared a lunch table. I couldn't think of an "interesting" place in all of the city. Well what about the music scene? Where do musicians go to play? There were some places in Makati, but no, I explained, I don't go out anymore. I felt not a bit of shame. I have known you far too long and familiarity has bred ambivalence. My fascination, my appetite for the novelties you offer has waned. No longer a stream of endless possibilities. No longer the malleable paradise of my imaginings. For now.

Two years has been too long. And while you will always be home, like my mother will always be my mother, in you I fear I cannot fully self-articulate. The familiar, the known, the old structures and ways of being all combine to dampen, to repress, to hold back. My city of twelve million has me in a choke-hold. As I roam the planes of your belly and feel the beat of your very heart, I feel to want to cleave unto you again I must away.

In two months, I shall leave again. And in the leaving, the loving.

Resurrections

I have not seen my father in seven years. And yet I remember every feature, every crease on his face, every mole. I remember the timbre of his voice, slightly nasal, not unlike mine. This quiet week, my unconscious unearthed snippets of memories. A Sunday morning when I was very small, looking up at spiders on the wall. His fingers as they caressed piano keys and sang with me Beatles. My father praising his alien daughter, so wise for someone so young. How do the dead look when they’re up in heaven? Do they eat? Do they look as they did when they died? Gunshot wound, cancer-wracked, diseased? Do they wear clothes? I was ten or eleven. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now, that look on my father’s face. My father of humble truths sat in awe of a little being he helped create.

Where is my father now? Is he in heaven if there is such? He could not be in hell, could he? While wholly imperfect, my father was not a bad man. He lived. And in his quest to be happy, he lied. But little sins seem unimportant. Now all I want, all I have really, are memories of how my father was good.

2010

The future has arrived. Now is 'when I grow up.' I wish somebody had said one should not wish to be something when one grows up. It implies an end point, a finish line. Well, here I am. And I am finding the race hasn't even really begun. A sound advice I would give my child one day, just be. Live, be present. The future will unfold as it will.

I went over my old posts to compile a 'best of' list and laughed my head off at some of the things I've written. How I love being the drama queen. The star of my tragicomedies. Much of it is anxiety I think. Always anxious about the future. What did I learn in 2009? To let go. I have mixed feelings about this though. I am losing some of my urgency. This must happen now. I have to do this now. Urgency makes one feel every little thing is important. And now? Not everything is important. I am losing the immediate. I wonder what will replace it.

Time is slower these days. The seconds ticking by without reason. I feel ambiguous, for the first time uncaring. The future has arrived and I am feeling blah.

Posts of the Decade

The 21st century hasn't been kind to many of us. My blog isn't quite a decade old yet, but since everyone is doing lists for everything, here are my top posts of the decade. These were chosen not because they were particularly well-written but because they stood for the things I've learned.

2003

Maligayang Pasko ...in which I deal with my father's passing.

2004

Of Deaths and Wakes ...in which I deal with a few more deaths.
Puppy Love ...in which I feel sympathy from a non-human being.
I Heart Manila ...in which I unearth good in all the dirt.
Of Postmodern Sex ...in which I give up on cybersex.

2005

Worthless Filipino ...in which I learn all about public finance.
Transitions to Adulthood ...in which I realise my own mortality.
Baptism of Fire ...in which I feel genuine outrage.
Driving While Female ...in which I celebrate womanhood in a naughty way.

2006

Dialektik ...in which I write philosophy in poetry.
In a Wowowee State of Mind ...in which my brows hit the roof at another blogger's condescension.
Communists are dead ...in which I bemoan the lack of some serious scholarship of Marx.
On Bilingualism ...in which I show off my skillful tongue.
Justice Cruz just doesn't know when to quit ...in which I enjoy the first newspaper columnists smackdown of my lifetime.
Social (Cyber)spaces ...in which I come to fully appreciate the power of the world wide web.
Rape, Hypermasculinity and Philippine-American Relations ...in which I write my first gendered politics post.

2007

I love America, I hate America ...in which I fully understand the extent of our Americanisation.
In Manila ...in which I miss Frenetic Manila.
Peeling Boredom ...in which the Philippines transforms into paradise.
The Philippines as Open Pussy Country ...in which I feel for the first time what its like to be the 'Other.'
Excising Cinderella, Maria Clara and Inang Maria ...in which I first realise the import of the femininity of motherland.
Freudian Sleep ...in which I realise I am my parents' daughter.
Putting on the Other's Shoe ...in which I learn empathy is what makes us human...which makes Malu Fernandez bovine.

2008

Our (Post)modern Revolution and the Tyranny of the Apolitical ...in which I call on the blind to see.
In Defense of the Public ...in which I see the importance of public spaces.
Are We Poor Because We're Lazy? ...in which Gramsci mediates between Hegel and Marx.
Deconstructing Celine Lopez' Book Report ...in which I realise Philippine 'elites' are losers.
In Defense of the Truly Talented and the Merit of Merit ...in which I bemoan the state of our culture.
Seduction ...in which I realise my brain was in danger of draining.
Pieces ...in which my body and soul were cleaved apart.
De-Everything ...in which I re-learn the skills needed to survive in Manila.
Meaning ...in which I cope with a student's suicide.
I am Harvey Dent ...in which I don my superhero cape.
The Depoliticisation of the Filipino and the Marketisation of Everything ...in which the postmodern has truly arrived in the Philippines.

2009

The Authenticity of Mar Roxas ...in which I am severely underwhelmed by an otherwise okay politico.
Myth-making in a time of Fragmentation ....in which I realise the power of myths.
Fruits of her Labour ...in which I was I help usher in a cultural revolution.
Order, Politesse ...in which I spit on the well-behaved.
Doomed to Leisure ...in which the soul of Jean Baudrillard inhabits my shell of a body.
Blogging at Pulitika ...in which I fight for the right to speak regardless.
A Hope-full Encounter with Bernard Bernardo ....in which I see hope in the young.
Tendre ...in which I have my heart broken.
Beaten Black and Blue ...in which I witness carnage.
The Yellow-toothed Woman and the Book Blockade ...in which I do not champion books.
Roses and Other things that Wither in the Night ...in which I see the ghosts of Malate.
Castrated by Vacuous Argument for the Sake of Vacuous Argument ...in which the rabid democrat in meet is let loose.
Clarity from the Left ....in which I still bemoan the lack of serious scholarship on Marx.
Unpacking Choice and Reproductive Rights ...in which I learn to hate the clergy.

In a Benign0 State of Mind

Cynicism is a function of alienation. When one no longer considers oneself part of a something, when one no longer has or no longer cares to have a stake in a system, then one can afford to be cynical. In the cold embrace of cynicism one is insulated from dashed hopes and impossible expectations. Cynicism is the complete and utter destruction of hope. Viewed this way, it is frightfully easy to see that idealism and cynicism are end points of the same trajectory.

The best idealists make the worst cynics. Pragmatists, those who see the world in shades of gray, probably have plenty more room to accommodate failure, inconsistencies and illogic. Pragmatists order the world by taking the good and the bad to incorporate into her worldview. Idealists aim for the normative – what should be. An exercise of idealism then is ordering the world based on what does not yet exist. It is placing faith in the cusp of what could be, in the glimmer of something in the horizon, in the intangibles. Idealism can often be a fruitless exercise, a constant anticipation, a breathless waiting for signs of what one desires to come in fruition.

I returned to the Philippines a year and a half ago full of hope, my mind filled with notions of right and justice. I had not been gone that long, but I was far away enough to have forgotten what it was like, the chaos and the madness. In my mind’s eye, home was a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued. And there I was, her gallant knight. Not all believe themselves to be heroic. It takes a certain kind of conceit and delusion to believe that what one does matters in the larger scheme of things.

Since my return I made a conscious decision to climb down from my ivory tower. Ensconced in the private spaces we inhabit, we can afford to tune out the undesirable public. What we all possess in our private spaces – our families and friends, work – we have in our immediate control. The public – that jungle of common rules, common values and common spaces - are owned by no one and everyone. Here it isn’t easily discernible who are responsible, where our interests lie, what we have at stake and what we can and cannot control. Because the rules that dictate the public are arbitrary and because enforcement itself is arbitrary, it is easy to feel helpless. In such a system it often seems it is each person for herself.

A year and a half ago, I climbed down my ivory tower, afraid of the ugliness that I would see. Called to duty, the knight errant wanted to come to the rescue anyway. And here I am, a year and a half later. I have not quite earned my battle spurs. All I have are a few scrapes. I have had but a glimpse of what teems underneath our public skin. I am at once amazed and disgusted. This is my country. This is my people. This is me.

With one eye to the horizon, I ask myself these days whether these exercises in fruitlessness truly matters. Or that they work in bringing the normative in fruition. I am but a gnat, cowed by the mountain. Perhaps it is me who needs rescuing.

Pregnant Expectations

Humidity never goes well with smoking. I glance over my shoulder at the other smokers, taking a break from their commute to and from somewhere. I take a quick puff and exhale. The smoke disappears in front of my face. I wonder why I bother, as I inhale the smoke of the passing cars below anyway. The volume on EDSA says it is a busy Saturday.

I take a look at the little girl from whom I bought my cigarette. A pink t-shirt and blue jogging pants. She looks seven or eight, but probably older. She would be inches taller had she been born in a family who didn’t work her on weekends. Her eyes have no business looking so tired early in the day, early in her life. I gave her ten pesos for my reds and a mint candy. I moved over to the smoker’s corner when she said “Ate may sukli.” I shook my head. I see her sister and somebody who looks like their father come over. He, a slight man in a flowery button-down. He gestures to somebody sitting on the steps, a woman in her thirties. So, some families spent their Saturdays this way. Selling cigarettes on MRT station walkways.

My friend of fifteen years lost her baby last year. Spotting she said. All her baby was blood. I look across the table and scan her smooth face. She is pregnant again. Three months. I tell her I think it’s a boy. She laughs and tells me I’m mean for saying so. I know I look ugly, she half-laughs, half-exclaims. I reassure her she looks fine. Our meatball pasta finally arrives, a hot and sour dish of delight. Her eyes brighten and I remember the countless times we have gone over this ritual. So many meatball pastas in the last decade and a half. I hardly ever see her these days. Time is a precious commodity, effort and money more so. She is the same as I remember her when we were fourteen, except more blunt and tougher from pummeling through life.

She tells me she quit work for the baby, a difficult decision. She says she got depressed at work because she couldn’t function as quickly or as well as when she wasn’t pregnant. She says it is literally an emotional rollercoaster ride, weeping madly over certain triggers. I sat wondering what it was like to have a human being form in one’s body. Your body, a lifeline to another. I suspect I won’t understand until it happens to me. My friend is happy but her voice and her eyes tell me she is scared shitless. Reproductive health advocates keep saying pregnancy truly puts a woman’s life at risk – always and each time one foot in the grave. We have a sanitized version of what pregnancy entails. Women were built to make babies, it is but natural. Sperm meets egg cell and mother nature takes care of the rest. I look to my friend and see it is a battle that will not be won until her child draws his first breath outside her womb. And then - parenthood.

Everybody had counseled her not to quit so early – her family, her husband, her workmates. She recounts a phone conversation with a common friend. He told her to quit anyway, it was for the baby. He told her she had to convince herself she did everything possible to make she sure did not lose her baby again. It was a decision only she could make. Her body, her well-being. So she quit. I tell her I thought she made the right choice. This motherhood business, what a wonderful, lonely thing.

The Yellow-toothed Woman and the Book Blockade

The sun was four inches above the waters of Manila Bay when we finally made our way to the little gathering of determined individuals who were protesting the Great Book Blockade. Because nothing really happens unless the media covers it, I was glad to see GMA7 sent a news crew to interview the organizers and document participants of the book swap. We arrived when there were only a few dozen books left for the picking. I suppose they went really fast.

People were clicking away at the books and each other when I spotted my friend chatting up a man puffing away at a tobacco. An event like that could only attract nerds, and he was a good sort. After their exchange about tobaccos I quizzed him about why he was at the event. I must confess the government’s book taxing shenanigans never got a rise out of me. There is a point where one is inured to it all, and I always thought that compared to people being made to disappear or denying land justice to farmers, taxes on books merited less of my emotional engagement.



As frenetic as EDSA on a Monday morning, the conversation went all sorts of places pretty quickly. I forget now the details of what we talked about, but I am left with impression of one person who, hopefully, mirrors the many more hiding in the woodworks, raring to fight back against the wrongdoing of those in power. His head was covered in anti-sun gear, a grayish fisherman’s hat and dark lenses on his glasses, every once in a while taking a drag at the prize between his index and middle fingers. From the Bataan Death March to the activism of his folks in the Martial Law era, he painted quick splashes on our historical canvass.

“Did you see who carted away the books first?” I murmured a negative, having come a bit late. He motioned his head to the inhabitants of the Manila Bay area, skin darkened from sleeping underneath the naked sky. To be clear I said, “You mean the Great Unwashed carted most of the books away?” In a conspiratorial way only journalists would ever be able to manage, he murmured an affirmative. “You see, we the so-called enlightened ones like to assume the hoi polloi would never care for books. But right there, before my eyes, was proof that isn’t true.” Indeed. The printed word is a luxury for many. In our little enclaves we tend to forget the great privilege of being able to make sense of letters strung together. What jewels they must be for those whose precious monies must be spent on not starving.

So much of who I am, what I believe and how I perceive the world and my place in it have come from all that I have ever read. Stripped of all that, what would I be?

A tiny woman with yellowed teeth and bulging eyes sidled along me and two friends in conversation. Her cheekbones jutted sharp against skin. I imagine lack of food does that to one’s body. Not a feet from me is a person who has probably lived with chronic hunger all her life. What that must be like, as being unable to read, is again unimaginable. She asked us what the project was about and made appropriate responses about how good it was and for young kids to be able to take advantage of free books. After establishing some rapport, she asked us for five pesos. I normally do not give alms, but I gave her twenty, amazed that she did her begging with a strange kind of dignity. She said her thanks and proceeded carting boxes and trash away.

I glanced over at the thinning crowd at the leftover books sitting on the cement. I imagined what sort of person I would have turned out to be had I not been born in a family that could send me to school, or afford me books to read. Because language carries, as the written word carries, I imagine illiteracy holds one inert, frozen in the immediacy of hunger and thirst, of life and death, of negotiating now and tomorrow.

Beaten Black and Blue

Last night we caught a glimpse of two men locked in a dance of swinging fists. The incandescence of the lampposts shone a spotlight on their tango as all else scurried away. I slowed. Through the sanitized censor of my car window, we witnessed what was probably an ordinary occurrence in Manila’s slums, where the only law that ruled was the law of the strong. I had not seen violence in proximity for quite some time, and the glint of blood was an energizing jolt.

The slighter of the two was swaying unsteadily on his feet, as the bulkier one aimed shots at his body. The bigger man, muscles bulging in his wife-beater, stood sure on his. The one on the receiving end of the blows was not fighting back. Was he drunk I wondered. One, two, three, four blows. I did not hear bone connect with flesh, but my face grimaced in shared pain. Slighter Man did not even attempt to block the flurry of fists coming his way. Some people stood at the sidelines, and other cars slowed to watch in what must’ve been a mix of curiosity and horror.



I looked away a moment to see whether I was about to rear-end the vehicle in front. Next I looked, a ribbon of blood flowed freely from Slighter Man’s nose. Its color was unlike the blood we see in the movies. It was a rich, deep shade of red, not unlike the skin of ripe Australian plums. It caught the orange light from the lamps and glinted a sinister little shine. It spilled now to his lips, down his chin, all the way to his neck. I wondered what Slighter Man thought as he tasted the copper of his blood. Was he being beaten over money? A woman? Some unnamed injustice? Bruised pride?

I honked my horn once, as if this would halt the violence unfolding before my eyes. But the insignificant little noise made by a passing vehicle went unnoticed. Bulkier Man was too intent in his pummeling. As we drove past, more people seemed to slow and notice. But no one came to Slighter Man’s aid. “This is a hard part of town,” said Butch. I made a noise at the back of my throat, as the men shrank in my rearview. A hard part of town indeed - where the rule of law was a luxury. Beat or be beaten. Kill or be killed. Slighter Man was crossing the road to get to the other side, slow and deliberate in his movement, as Bulkier Man gave chase. Their bodies bathed in the headlights of oncoming traffic, marionettes still engaged in a deadly shadow play. And we drove away.