HAPPY BIRTHDAY PO1

Bar hopping. Wish granted for my dear birthday boy! Happy birthday Banako. Please know that despite the odds, I will be here waiting for the better days. We just need our hearts to keep talking so we will not stray and cry unecessarily.

I pray God will keep you, guard you, empower you and give you strength of body, mind and heart, always. More than me and our son, you need Him. It takes only God to make a brave and gentle warrior like you. I love you.

PS: thank you Pungkay, Cat, DitTobel for such a great, HILARIOUS night with us... *emphasis on 'hilarious' courtesy of Cat..

THEATRE PERFORMANCE

(written 10-10-03)

There are times
when I feel like my life
is a theatre piece
where I am stage-managed
like an actor,
and in my struggle to stay whole,
I keep performing
with a desperate determination
to finish my part,
without getting booed.
How pathetic, you'd say.
But don't we all experience this,
in this whole malady of life?
There is the reality of pain, fear,
confusion, injustice, and death.
Sometimes, with all the ugliness
around me,
I can't help feeling
that I have become too ugly
to believe in a God
who makes monsters like me --
devoid of love, of faith, of hope.
It's not the "Me" anymore,
it's the "Long Lost Me".
And how do I salvage myself
from this wreckage?
How do I quit theatre performance,
when all I got is a stage,
not a home?

I SAW SOMETHING IN THE SKY

Try standing at the center of an empty city square. Look up the sky and point a finger as if you saw something. In less than 10 counts you are surely to gather a crowd, all trying to see what you’re looking at.

For me that’s what con-ass is all about. People hear something talking about something and they want to say something about it too. If you are mum about it, like frankly I am, they say you have to know where you stand. “Apathy is useless,” I hear someone say,” we have to unite against it to prevent them from pursuing Cha-Cha. “

Call it apathy. Call it cynicism. Call it mediocrity. I am just done believing our people can stop blaming others for their misfortunes. It’s not that I’m for the present government. I’ve never really fancied any form of leadership in the Philippines. In fact I’ve had my share of protests, taking part in classic political satires, relentlessly believing each president was the wrong one. But come to think of it, even from the time of Makario Sakay and his seemingly seditious activities, to the time of Andres Bonifacio, to Hero Jose Rizal, has something really changed? I was born during Martial Law years. The presidents I grew up with were Marcos, followed by Aquino, then Ramos, Estrada and now Arroyo. Has something really changed?

So what if they pursue constitutional amendment? We didn’t like Martial Law did we? So we cried for democracy. And what did we do with democracy? The powerful few deem it possible to consider another form of government for better change to come about. Of course, like my silly scene at a city square, the majority clamor and the threatening possibility spread like wildfire. We fear that the declaration of Cha-Cha is tantamount to a declaration of war against the people.

Martial Law, Democratic, Semi-Feudalism. Whatever form, whatever style, whoever is up the throne, does it really matter, if the people are the same? Change means nothing if it doesn’t come from the people itself. Cliché but whether we like it or not, it’s true.

Last night I was riding a jeepney. The woman next to me was eating something and right after she just unmindfully threw her trash out of the moving vehicle. I was peeved and shook my head in pure dismay. It’s one of those changes I’m talking about. Discipline. Commonsense. Vigilance. To name a few.

When do we stop talking and start moving? There are always juicy things to talk about. Con-ass is juicy. Halli-Hayden scandal is juicy. Not to mention the infamous Hello Garci tape. Every day we never run out of issues, intrigues, scandals. Once again, think about my silly city square scene. Why else was Edsa I followed by Edsa II and another by failed Edsa III attempt.

I wonder do people really know what they’re fighting for.

ME-TIME

For the first time in my life I made this trip all by myself. Eight hours away from Bacolod. It was way too liberating. I am sharing a few photos for now. Have to catch up with a lot of things at the moment.

"The magnificence
of this supreme search

sustains me in my sufferings.
From these sufferings are born

the many songs of my youth
and I come to realize

that struggles serve to strengthen
the fibers of my soul.

They bring me nearer to beauty,

they bring me closer to God."

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I'm afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,
but don't be fooled,
for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well
as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command
and that I need no one,
but don't believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,
and I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without
and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's really nothing,
and nothing of what's everything,
of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I'm saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,
what I'd like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can't say.

I don't like hiding.
I don't like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings--
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me
the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn
September 1966