The weekend that was not (aka, How to not save a stray cat)

I knew when I got that phone call from my father last Friday that the weekend ahead was going to be rock n roll. Ay nako, it was.

I was getting ready for class when my phone rang. Having read somewhere that the secret to a less stressful life is to not gadgets such as clocks, watches, beepers, cell phones, email and appointment notifications run your life. That is, if you are currently preoccupied with something, especially if it is something you are enjoying such as eating a meal, pampering yourself, talking with a friend; don't be pressured to disrupt these things just because someone unwittingly encroached unto your personal time by sending a forwarded, pa-tweetums SMS.

Anyway, I virtuously ignored the ringing phone until I found a suitable Friday shirt to wear to school; and I gasped the moment I realized who had been trying to call me. Erpatsko_SMART. It rang again, and I answered in a split second.

"BAKIT HINDI MO SINASAGOT TELEPONO MO??"

Argh.

So anyway, I got scolded for that and for something else. Apparently, my Uncle Sonny who is based in Toronto flew in last week but only told the clan (my Aunt's family and my father) of his local presence on that Friday. What we think he did was he went the rounds visiting and hanging out with his friends during that week; and since he's done with that he can now hangout with family. When he was "interrogated" for this he told them that I knew about it all along because he told me about this trip. My father was now demanding why I didn't tell them. I was a bit taken aback by all of this and I was quick to tell them that I knew nothing about him being here. It's true!

Anyway, the whole Saturday the next day saw me and the rest of the clan at my aunt's. I used to dislike going to family reunions, they were the most stressful things. But now that it doesn't happen that often and everyone's older and have kids (the attention is no longer on my generation), I realize that reunions can actually be fun and relatives can actually be endearing.

I still have to tell you about the kitten that I found lying half-dead on the side of the road somewhere on Laguna Blvd. near Metrobank LTI. It was as if I didn't have a choice at that moment, and I instinctively picked it up and placed it inside a plastic bag I had been toting around. It meowed a few times but on the walk home, it was more or less silent. I can tell that it was very weak and sick and cold. I posted a status message asking for help; on twitter too. But no one responded to help; except for one person who, unfortunately, lived 8500 miles away from me.

Here, let me show you how the conversation went.










I tried my best to nurse her back to life but I really think that kitten had lost it's will to live. It looked depressed as hell and I suspect that it once was a house pet (it looked well-kept for a street cat). It probably died more out of sadness than hunger or disease. It had these really big and beautiful pair of green eyes that just stared at me every time I came near her to try to give it something to drink or eat. I couldn't help but get the feeling she was trying to remember me so just in case we meet again in some lifetime, she would recognize me. I stared back at her one time, for several minutes--you know those staring contests you played with friends as kids? It made me think if I was right in prolonging her suffering like that just because I felt guilty about the cruelty of mankind on the rest of life on earth.

She died around 10pm last night; I buried it in my backyard a couple of hours ago. I'm off to work now. Til next time.

Just sharing some music

I made a playlist for a friend who I recently found out also listened to / appreciated some of the kinds of music I am crazy about. My first venture into ska,neo-swing, swingska, then later on jazz and fusion types all started with (believe it or not) PUNK. The first punk bands I really got into were the old school, punkrock/streetpunk/oi/punkska/hc bands like Operation Ivy (which later on went to become Rancid), The Ramones, Stiff Little Fingers, the Clash, Minor Threat, Agnostic Front, SickOfItAll, BlackFlag, UKSubs, MightyMightyBosstones, etc etc etc... I can go on forever.

I made a short playlist (15 minutes lang, enough for a morning's jog) of my choice Operation Ivy, btw. I'll upload that again next if I find enough people who'd be interested (raise your hands please).

But these songs are from two of my fave ska/jazz/swing&whatnot bands. I'll share it with you. Download while it's there (will be taking it down in a few days). Enjoy Skatmondo!!!

Pete

Loose pages from an old journal fell from a storage box this morning, while I was getting my life organized. I came across an excerpt that I took down from a former co-faculty’s “open letter” to the UPLB community during the height of the Chancellor David, et. al. brouhaha. While I wasn’t a big fan of Pete back then, I admit now that he did have a few a couple of one redeeming qualityies. This excerpt from that impassioned open letter makes me forget—if only for a moment’s rest from these chores—his atrocious dorkiness and bouts of depravation.


“If teachers fail to defend themselves in principle and in action aginst any power that robs them of their rights and dignity, what right do they have to teach students of lesser means and privilege that they could likewise defend? If chancellors and chairs could command obedience and concensus by force rather than by reason, then of what use are teachers of Philosophy who cannot prove by example that knowledge of logic and reason is necessary or even a “good” thing? But shadows only thrive where ignorance and fear remain a cave and a prison, and people have no other choice but to be deceived.

I refuse to be deceived.”

—Ulysses Aureus, Instructor of Philosophy, Dept. of Humanities, CAS, UPLB, 2000-2003

extra: I had a major crush on his dad back in my literary grasshopper days in UPDil. I guess Pete got his name from the Joyce novel. Hmm. No comment.

My Childhood Library

One of the highlights of my week was the trip to my old grade school/high school, De La Salle Zobel. Although I have been back there several times since I graduated in--well, I won't tell!--I had really only been back for some specific events that allowed me only enough time to go to one place--the Zobel theater. This would usually be for the Pacquiao fights.

Last Wednesday, however, Prof. Malu, Prof. Neri and I were invited to check out ZoobTV: DLSZ's radio and TV studio. We walked around some parts of the campus, some offices (met the Bro Pres). All throughout the "official business" though, I have been waiting for the right time to ask Mrs. Balgos (the one who entertained us) if I could perhaps go and check out my most memorable hang out during my 13 years in DLSZ: the library.

She said, yes of course. It's still there, where I remember it to be: at the basement of the main building. Malu and Neri obliged and was more than happy to check the library out with me. I really had one mission there. I was eager to see if all the books I have read as a child were still there.

Well, waddya know?!?





Sadly, a lot of the old Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Dana Girls have been discarded because they were so old and destroyed already (according to the current librarian). I couldn't even find Bobsey Twins anymore, and most of the Judy Blume novels. But I was ecstatic to find that some of the books still had their old call cards and two still had my name on them!!! (WOWOOWOW!!!) \m/ astig di ba???!

Assimilation (sacrificial post for my writing class)

Important Note: This is a journal entry from way back 2005, posted merely for my writing class' exercise in methods of exposition and partially because I am delighted with what you guys have been posting so far. The others who still have nothing posted on their blogs...well, we are waiting.




Assimilation
The process of receiving new facts or of responding to new situations in conformity with what is already available to consciousness – (Merriam-Webster, 2009)



Last night sent me on a rollercoaster, or rather, he had me riding an emotional rollercoaster. He said he and I were going to have dinner at their place and I was to meet his mother. Yes, in a declarative tone, like he was delivering the latest traffic update. I went through the emotional stages—albeit, probably not in order—that normal human beings go through went confronted with such predicaments.

Denial (ha? Ano sinabi mo? What mother?); Anger (ang daya mo, sabi mo sa kin April, tapos March, tapos Feb, tapos nextweek…tapos ngayon ngayon na?! Sumosobra ka na!!); Bargaining (please, next week na lang, I’ll just finish the work I have to do and wala talaga ako sa kondisyon ngayon); Self-deprecation (lagi na lang ikaw masusunod, lagi mo na lang ako binu-bully. Kawawa naman ako!); until finally Acceptance (fine, goddamit! Is my hair okay?!)

So I met his mother, and she wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. She’s actually cool: very sprightly, warm, and frank. A bit intimidating especially when she looks at you with a gaze that kind of holds you in your place, but she can whisk all that in a second when she smiles at you. I don’t know her yet, so I can’t make generalizations.

Meeting his other friends, though, got me down. Really down. I don’t know why, because they’re a cool bunch—amazing in fact. But they—all of them including him—just made me realize how much I miss my friends, the kids at the punk gigs, the fellas in the pit. How much comfortable I was with people who sang the same songs, who moved to the same music. Now they seem so…I don’t know, maybe, far and out of reach. I felt strangely out of place. Awkwardly uprooted.

And because I am the kind of person I am, I know I will make no such effort to fit in. Oo, bahala na.



-----oh, I found a photo, too-----




Me and then co-faculty, Charelle, ca. 2005 (around the time I wrote that) taken during a DLSC College faculty get-together bonfire.


Have a great weekend. \m/

old friend

[this is a poem i wrote for the modern day academic...but a good friend of mine, taking up his PhD in some hot shot field of chemistry in some hot shot ivy league school in the US says it's about him. fine fine. maybe, maybe not)

when we were little you would doodle comets and jupiter
in the last pages of your notebook.
i would draw mountains and rivers and rising suns
on the wooden schooldesk.

well, now..of course
i can’t draw blue whales on my students’ exam essays.

but, you can’t draw rockets headed for mars on your case analysis, either.

but i can still make star-trails on the office floor.

you? *sly smile*
what can you still do?

Rainy Days

It's been raining a lot these days; quite a sudden change from those weeks of blazing hot weather and high humidity that seemed to have dragged on and on and on. I have always like the rain and welcomed it: I don't really mind if I get caught in a shower and soaked in a rainstorm; as long as I don't have anything on me that will not survive (i.e., mp4 player, cellphone, fancy clothes, etc.).

Oh, and yesterday, for some forgotten reason, I got around tot telling my friends about a netizen I have met years ago and who I remember (despite my notoriously lo-fi memory) quite well. He is actually one of the most..uh...curious people I've met to date. His interests are varied (and some people might have trouble coming to terms with this) and, as I understand it, there might be a lot of people who will find this simply incomprehensible.

Ok, let me quote a few lines from his MySpace account:

"My name now is Tydyn Rain St. Clair, a name I quite like, but that does not hint at the multidimensional complexity of my being, invisible to the objective eye.......
....I live my life by new paradigms in all areas of life. I've always felt different from just about everyone I've ever met, and compounding that I've also always questioned and challenged the assumptions, beliefs, conditioning, patterns, and programming of the society in which I matured (and those globally). In doing so, I've come to hold a radically different perspective on just about everything. In the past, this caused me to alienate myself from everyone around me, which, of course, left me feeling intensely unfulfilled, frustrated, and isolated. Now, however, I revel in my eccentricity and difference, and wear it like a badge of honor."
I've been training in the immensely multifaceted and multidimensional Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira (Grupo Axé Capoeira) since April of 2005. It challenges me and pushes me to my limits like nothing else...I want to express excellence in all aspects of capoeira and become an amazing capoeirista.
I want to travel and live worldwide restoring tropical forests, working with my beloved bamboos, and learning languages through cultural assimilation.

I heal, liberate, and empower women, especially in the domains of relationship dynamics, body-freedom, and sexuality, through my role as a Healing Transformational Catalyst. Practices which I have been drawn to combine and utilize for this purpose are polyamory, naturism/nudism, sacred sexuality/tantra/erotic spirituality, ethical sluthood/sacred (or deep) swinging, integral transformative practice/integral life practice, conscious reality creation, global nomadism/citizenship, and capoeira."

My friend Tydyn also calls himself EROS REBORN in honor of his lifelong mission. So, feel welcome to check his Myspace out.


Allright, that's all for now, kids. Hope to read your journals soon.

\m/