Birthday greetings to Macy-chan!

Rush coloring job for Macy-chan.

No Apologies

There was an incident a couple of days ago that woke me up a bit from my often ordinary and uneventful existence. Few things of late have jolted me out of my quiet plodding along. But I digress. It was early in the morning, around half past eight. The application week for an organization I’m a member of was beginning that day. Two members and I were carrying a rented plastic table and two chairs to a spot in front of the Mathematics building, which was rather far away. I was confident, however, of my capacity to carry two mono bloc chairs on my own. I’m athletic enough. So anyway, we were carrying the plastic furniture down the hall when a stranger, a guy, approached us, specifically yours truly. He offered to help me with the chairs I was carrying.

I refused. I said, “No I can do it.”

To be honest, I was quite bothered by it. My orgmates have been teasing me on having an admirer ever since I told them I had no idea who that person was. But it isn’t the question of an admirer that bothers me. The situation, in my view, illustrates a very important issue. When I try to recall that morning and play that scene over and over in my head, I can’t help but notice how defensive I sounded with that curt response. Having discussed briefly discourse analysis in one of the courses I took last semester, I should know that what I said was a perfect example of a face threatening act. Instead of politely refusing the offer, I went ahead and probably hurt that guy’s pride and ego, his ‘face’, so to speak.

I think about it and I should have said something less direct like, “Thanks, but I can manage,” which would accomplish and put across the same intention. It was characteristic of me to feel sorry for the whole incident, as though I had acted unkindly towards that person who had offered his assistance. I began to think of scenarios where I could apologize for my social blunder.

Things would have been much easier if I had just accepted the offer in the first place. But I couldn’t do that, and I’m glad that even in a situation where I was caught surprised by something unexpected and without precedent, I acted out of my own beliefs and resisted passively accepting and consenting to a seemingly trivial norm of a guy offering a girl to carry things for her.

Then I thought, why should I feel apologetic about it at all? How valid is a norm that demands a girl to be apologetic of her own capacity and strength? Why should I be sorry for being capable? Why should I be sorry for intimidating a man’s ego? How oppressive can such a norm get!

My reasons are simple. Why allow someone to carry things for you, when you yourself can? If I allow a person to carry things for me, isn’t something expected of me in return? What could it be? Should I now feel that I owe that person something? Should I now think that this person is kind and good? If a guy courts a girl and he carries her things for her, should she now think him a gentleman?

If a stranger offers a girl assistance one early morning, what should the girl feel or think towards this person if she allows him to? What does the stranger accomplish? It is supposed to make a good impression. But what for? They are strangers after all. I believe that even without an overt agenda, a stranger still gets something from a girl’s complicity with the norm. It’s called feeling good about oneself. The stranger feels that he has done something good upon society’s standards, and perhaps unconsciously, affirms to himself the unspoken (but nevertheless existing) belief that males are stronger than girls, that it is the male’s duty to protect and assist the far more fragile female, that the male is indeed, in this sense, superior. Isn’t this what a male ultimately gets out of this norm?

What do females get out of this, then, aside from having been freed from carrying a certain load? One thing is certain. This norm, this form of propriety and politeness in society, this man-must-help-a-girl-with-her-things norm obligates a female to submit to the man, to allow him to do things for her, to allow him to take the active role while she remains passive and empty handed, to allow man to carry the burden for her, and in return she will begin to feel that she owes him something, that based on this norm a man is determined good, that he is indeed superior. This norm teaches females to be nothing but submissive!

So when I think about it, it is only normal that with that direct refusal I uttered that day, came with it a tone of defensiveness that I could not contain in my surprise. I remember feeling quite possessive of those two mono bloc chairs. I saw this person, this stranger, approach and try to take away these things from me, offering so nicely and politely to wrest them from my hands. My mind couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t sane to do so, why would he want to? It just wasn’t sane.

Why should a guy feel that it is obligation, as dictated by propriety, to help a girl carry things? If for example a girl passes by and is overburdened by something heavy and a guy is simply sitting around, I do not think he should feel responsible and offer her his help. I wouldn’t think him a bad person if he ignored her. After all, he does not know her, and neither has she asked his assistance.

Suppose a guy was carrying something and a girl whom he did not know came along and asked to assist him, what would a guy feel? Would he feel that his masculinity has been offended? Why is it not normal for a girl to approach and assist a guy, and normal for a guy to approach a girl and assist her, even if she were a total stranger?

Of course, I won’t deny that in general, males have more muscular strength compared to most females, but I don’t think it’s fair to obligate males, by way of social norm, to assist all females they encounter who seem to be in need of assistance. More importantly, it is not a fair treatment of women because it underestimates their capacity and from the outset renders them weak.

I am female and if I am capable of doing something, especially merely carrying something, then I wouldn’t exempt myself from doing it and pass on the opportunity to prove my capacity and assert my independence and self-reliance. I hope that stranger whoever he was understands my reasons, or if he doesn’t, that he would someday come to understand that girl whom he thought quite rude and ungrateful. I am not guilty, and I offer no apologies.

Pagtulog

dilim ang kulambo sa lilim ng puno
at mga dahong kakulay ng balat
ang kumot sa may ugat, sa sahig ng gubat
sa ibabaw langit na kahariang pinag-aagawan
ng samu’t-saring mga kulay,
na sa tuwing pagsapit ng gabi’y nasasakamay
sa prinsipe ng mga anino ang langit
na siyang silong at bubong
na siyang tahanan rin ng kislap at bituin,
at hangaring marating ng libo’t libong kulisap,
marahil rin bilangguan ng buwan
na pinag-uungol ng mangingibig na hayop ng gabi
at sa paglaon at paglipas ng mga oras
lahat di’y mananahimik
nang sa gayo’y sa kagubatang aming
tahanan, kami’y magsihimbing
sa paghehele ng maarugang hangin.

ukol sa lupa

isinulat ni Bughaw Langit para
sa mga kawani at kinauukulan
.
.
sa lupa ko maiuugat ang lahat
doon nagmula ang kagutumang nanlilisik sa mata
nitong batang ako’y pinagdurukot sa bulsa
ng piso, singko ate, basta’t mapaglalamanan ‘king sikmura
.
sa lupa nakaugat, sa pagkamkam at pag-angking sapilitan,
noon at noon pa, sa yugto ng mga bapor at galyon,
ng frailocracia’t korporasyon,
ng mga gringo at kanilang asimilisasyon
.
at ngayo’y patuloy ang kawalan ng lingap
gayong sabi’y nasasaatin, sa wakas!, ang soberanya,
gayong nakasulat na sa dugo ang paglaya
.
sino ang makakadinig, sabihin mo, sagutin mo
ang ungol ng mga magsasaka at manggagawang bukid
na nakatali pa rin sa taniman ni Ser, ng don
at sa siklo ng ’sang latang sardinas:
utang ang kinakain,
liban lang at naibugaw si Neneng, aalilain,
sa bayan, sa mansyon ni Don Manuel, gagahasain.
.
ang sabi niya, ang bungol ng mga malamlam na mata
Alipin! Kami’y nananatiling alipin!
kaya’t ano ang aking magagawa? singko, pisong limos
at mabubulsa na ang konsensiya, malulunok,
ibabaon sa limot yaong magsasakang hinagibis
ng bala sa hacienda, pinagtatadtad ng goon,
ng military at pulisya?

.

kalimutan ko man
bumabalik sa bangungot, Alipin!
Kami pa ri’y inaalipin! Maawa naman,
o diyos ko, maawa naman kayo,
lupa lang ang hinihiling, kapiranggit
lang ng kayamanang inyong sinamsam,
kung tutuusin.

.

.

isinulat rin ito sa rekwes ng aking ina para sa periodiko ng kanilang opisina, na hindi tinanggap at nilimbag sapagka’t kontrobersiyal daw, masyadong pula. bakit ganoon? sinulat ko naman ito nang walang bahid na kulay, at kung meron man, siguro ang nasasaisip ko noon ay ang malalim na bughaw ng langit, na sumisimbolo sa isang malawak bagamat malayong kalayaan.

kaya’t dito ko na lang ito ipo-post (ipagpaumanhin ninyo ang kakulangan ng aking kasanayan sa wikang Filipino, kahiya-hiya ito). sayang nga lang at hindi ito mababasa ng mga taong nais ko sanang maiparating ang mensahe ng tula.

Another Narrative of Disenchantment

All this talk of death and dying, of suicide by the age of 35, of letting things go and not forming attachments…I think what these all boil down to is how greatly dissatisfied I am with life. There are moments when I am filled with such an overwhelming fear that if I stay too long in between the empty transitions of one task and another, my tears will catch up with me and I’d end up howling for my pathetic state, for the sadness that threatens to choke me, consumes me, steals from me any lasting happiness. The sadness, the discontent, the disenchantment, the helplessness, the seeming pointlessness of everything and all endeavors in the universe have become deadweight that I carry around with me wherever I go.

I have said it often enough after all, reality falls short. It always does. I wish I didn’t have such utopian conceptions of the world. It pains me to see that growing up often means letting go of idealism, of learning to swallow and forgive the things you once thought were unforgivable. And perhaps what I can’t accept the most is how I can survive living this compromise. Why can’t I just die pure? Living like this, growing up like this and coming into society, I am revolted at how I can stand being soiled.

A Quest for Meaning

Like amateur weavers we seek patterns of meaning in the fragments of our awareness as though reality and our lives were a mere train of thought needing an outline. We believe in the importance of the search, assuming that the truth that would finally give our existence some coherence lies somewhere beneath the rubble of brokenness and destruction. Desperate as we are, and fearful of the possible insanity that daily hammers at our consciousness, we fail to notice in our rapt and obsessive search, that the patterns we find were half-wished into existence, and to a great degree distorted by our desires, or perhaps, not so much mutated as simplified translations of our hopes and the more manageable of our despair.

We fail to see that there is no meaning because for the sake of our sanity there has to be. Just as our bodies are the primary timepieces of our lives–time happens to us, and only to us–while the natural world looks upon us with the indifference of the eternal, reality almost scoffs at our sense-seeking. With equal indifference it hurls joy after tribulation, tribulation after joy with the attitude of utter randomness, and yet whether for good or ill we exclaim eureka! the pattern! and claim to see order in a world that is ruled only by undirected action, accidents, and chaos.

The Hands

the searching, feeling hands that grope in darkness
for a little learning to map out the terrain and estimate
distance within that

black

room, that black  everything!

those hands could only touch their own arms and begin
to chart a course to the breasts they shared, and cheeks,
and neck, and nose, and finally meet fingertip brushing against
fingertip as the hands touched the hollow of their eyes.

one hand ran to attest the presence of soft lips, while
the other began a descent down from the navel and was
caught stalled by the divergence of two healthy robust legs.
the other, speedily descended to assist, and both ran down
their smooth extermities to the teetering edge of their toes.

the hands then clasped themselves and were raised gently
by their arms, set upon a lap of folded thighs that assumed
a posture for waiting. the hands sat patiently with the legs
folded beneath the haunch

and they stayed there awhile like that.

Seeing

I look often at the sky
    and think, straight out of a painting!

I look at a painting,
    gasp:
straight out of the sky!

Firefly

A child saw beyond
    the reeds the likeness of stars
       Man, some little dot.

Dorm Mate

There are times when I wish I had this room all to myself that I may weep when I wish to or laugh silly at nothing in particular. But I have gotten used to the person sleeping across on the other bed, finding comfort in her presence filling up the empty space. Had the air been so free, I would have choked.