pangarap cong maging pintor

Painter’s Room

A four-post bed here, a 1986 stereo there,
This room will stay the same, father says.

The smell of oil paints and egg yolk will also remain,
It goes the same for the patches of colors on the floor.

His brushes and palettes will need not to be burned.
His paintings will all go to the family heirloom.

With hair in burnt-brown curls and eyes askew,
That portrait alone will hang on the wall.

His smile, together with his shoes and plastic fruits, will
Forever echo a sigh: silent, unmoving and still.

Tonight, mother will secretly gather the photos from its frames
And will read the unsent letters hidden inside pillowcases.

She will empty the glass jars filled with murky waters
And will bleach unused canvasses white for keepsake.

Can I have his guitar and CD collections, Papa?
No, father says, everything will stay the same.

This room will be untouched, un-trespassed.
This room will stay the same, father says.

Except for the heap of laundry on corner unwashed
And your brother that still hangs alone by the door.

let’s sing a song

The Royal Song

I write songs on this white shiny
bowl, sitting like a king
on his ceramic throne,
gathering distant inspiration
from muses locked up
within walls of roof tins
and stain-old plywood.

Up in the ceiling of cobwebs
in this comfort outpost,
a bulb hangs and glares
in a yellow-dull stare,
solitary and rusting,
lighting the darkness of
this kingdom of cold, mossy tiles,
illuminating subjects
of born silence:
a soap dish, shampoo sachets,
and the living sound of water
dripping endlessly down the drain.

I scribble words to describe
the rat stealing glances on
my unpolished toenails
while a black little spider,
shining in the dark,
moving in a polygonal dance,
weaves another house of silk,
adding another lot to its estate of dust.

Standing up to wash my past,
I gather the muses of the ripples
and of the undaunted scents.
I flush the world and there goes another song,
singing its way down the cesspool
where all my works they say should belong.
I leave my position and kingdom
to live a life of an ordinary man.

Tomorrow night, my throne will sing
and I shall reign again.

monologue

6:35 AM 4/24/2007

The Boob Tube Monologue

My little brother returned home two days ago from Diliman for the vacation. Now, he sits beside me while I navigate the channels to check what television networks have in store for the summer.

Not a minute passes that David says, “I don’t like that they call our generation the Generation Y.”

I turn to look at David. Only eighteen years of age, a year younger than me, and having to spend two of those years in that university and look what he thinks the world is doing to him.

“It’s a slap to our face that we are named so because we have a predecessor that was labeled Generation X. It’s that structuralism thing. You are named this because you are after that. Blah…blah…blah…”

Click. One of those Latin American soap operas in which the lady in heavy make-up walks to a guy in grey moustache. The blue-eyed lady says something in a Filipina voice but her lips are saying something else.

“They say we are always irritated because we’re still with the subgroup MTV Generation, always ranting, always impatient. Another Slap. How could they name us with something we can’t associate?”

Click. The screen is filled with dancing lights and fast beat as The Pussycat Dolls rip their cloths off stretch their legs into infinity.

“MTV is not what it used to be during the 80’s and the 90’s. What we have now is the remains of what MTV used to be: shit in its purest essence.”

Click. An ordinary-looking stove is being advertised for ten times the actual cost. Endorsers say it doesn’t smoke and doesn’t heat up to burn human skin. In short, it doesn’t cook.

“Every other era is a shit from the other. Modernism was the shit of 19th century industrialization. Commercialism was modernism’s shit. Commercialism has many shits but MTV is its well-known known shit, just a channel of trash and advertisements.”

Click. Foreign news says that India will sue a Hollywood actor for kissing one of its beauty queens in front of its audience. The reporter says that the three lawyers who are pursuing the case said what the actor showed was a sign of disrespect to the Indian people.

“Advertisement to lousy boy band, pop princess, rock stars, their fifteen-minute-trend fashion, their beauty, their youthful energy and sex.”

Click. Different foreign news shows the face of the Korean boy who went into a shooting rampage in Virginia. The picture of the boy with his hands raised with a hammer is shown side by side with a Korean movie poster with the actor holding a hammer in the same position.

“There’s no music on that channel anymore, only sex. What’s worse is every other network is also saying that their putting what they usually place on TV: the usual forensic drama, emergency room drama, classroom drama, teenage love melodrama, and noontime game shows.”

Click. An advertisement of Chinese pills shows before and after pictures of a woman’s belly.

“But what the viewers don’t know is that every show is subliminally inserted with the word sex. The only show that they are not putting sex into is the ‘Find the Hidden Mickey Show’.”

Click. An actor-running-for-the-senate is holding a cellular phone while he blabs on the glory of piso communication.

“There. That I can associate. A cell phone. Texting. Call us the TXT Generation and we will embrace the label with open arms and open legs. But please, not with MTV or those lousy TV shows, and especially not with sex.”

Click. A well-known TV personality gave birth.

“One last thing, they’ve added a spank to TV, they successfully injected reality to TV. With reality, they can successfully glorify sex. Might as well they call our generation the Sex Generation.”

Click. News about the latest political killing.

“Why are you so quiet?”

Click. An advertisement for another actor running for the senate.

“Have you seen the new video of My Chemical Romance? Can you get any cornier?

Click. A prisoner running for mayor.

Click. Boxing superstar running for congress.

Click. God running for councilor.

Click.

“Why did you turn it off?”

Static.

I turn a knob, not looking at David. “I wonder what they’re playing on the radio.”

boob tube talks

Boob Tube Talks

The boy in black-and-white Mickey Mouse cap
sits on the lap of modern-day luxury
drooling over his potato chips and the sounds of MTV,
waiting for the Pussycat Dolls to rip their
cloths off and stretch their legs into infinity.

The boob tube spits images in living colors twenty-
four hours a day from the depths of outer space
as it glares and blares and stares back to the boy,
hypnotizing with its blinking digital clock,
counting seconds backward to the beginning of time.

Fifty years ago, the Beatles invades the land of white
America and the rest of the black tongue-tied globe,
wearing nothing but bob cuts and the British insignia for blitzkrieg,
flooding the world with their music like an endless rain into a paper cup
while singing their immortality like constellations across the universe.

Fast beats swirl in ranging patterns, old and new
like hormones on carousels, on Japanese Ferris wheels
plunging to the recesses of the boy’s ears
where his drums lay rotten gold, down and dusted,
smelling old and wasted from the spoils of a long-forgotten note,
fifty years dead before his birth and twelve
years living on his short existence on this planet Earth.

An old taste lingers between his teeth as his
tongue reaches another depth and he figures out
what lost essence did the potato chips has disguised and
the stench of modern-day musicality has washed away.

The boy wipes off the drool that now smears white dry
on his cheek as he wishes to have been born on the Sixties,
where in Manila, they spit the Beatles out of their brown country.

The boy turns off the TV and checks what’s new on his MP3.

erap and the suzaku warriors

4/2/2007 1:07:59 AM

Erap and the Suzaku Warriors

The impeachment episode of the former President Joseph Estrada brought the nation to its thinking feet. At that time, even the most uneducated man could go on talking about constitutional chuvanes, political chorvas, economic cheverlyn and all that big words without really sounding stupid. Of course, one could not really hear what each side has to say. The objective of every discussion in every household was how to press one’s opinion onto others even if it takes stepping on the other party’s principles.

We, the children of that time, felt the heat of the moment pervading through the television screen as we watch lawyers object to irrelevant and immaterial questions, audience shatter moments with colloquy and senators dance in front of the mob’s anger. But we couldn’t yet fully comprehend what was happening to our country. Needless to say, we, the children of that time couldn’t care less of what was happening to the world. We were watching the impeachment proceeding because we were waiting for it to end. We were watching because we couldn’t wait to go back watching our favorite shows.

Because of the Impeachment, one thing stuck to my innocent mind: GMA network stopped airing the Japanese animated series Fushigi Yuugi. And because of that, I felt as if my lifeline, my escape from the reality of a crumbling nation, was cut off. What Marcos did to Voltes V three decades ago, they were doing again to Fushigi Yuugi during the Impeachment.

I heard the many reasons why GMA stopped showing Fushigi Yuugi. The most obvious reason was that the network didn’t have much air time to compensate what airing the impeachment proceeding has taken. I couldn’t blame the network for that. The Impeachment was an important national matter and the networks were just doing their job to let the people know what was happening. Even though it really didn’t matter, I blamed the senators, lawyers and the President for doing such crappy jobs running the country. They could have been effective leaders and saved the Philippines all the trouble.

What was nerve-wracking was that even after the Impeachment and the ousting of President Estrada from his post, GMA didn’t return Fushigi Yuugi to the air. My generation, like the generation of Voltes V, was too young and dumb to react and protest to anything.

Later, after forgetting what has happened during the Impeachment and finally getting on with life without Fushigi Yuugi, I heard the other reason why GMA has stopped airing the animated series was that Fushigi Yuugi was beginning to show violent and sexual contents that were not suitable to its young patrons during the time when it should have continued airing. The network could have simply cut those parts off but it would come out futile because some important conversations and events took place while the characters were slashing each other’s limbs and licking each other’s faces. I thought why would a commercial network tell us what is brutal and sexual? And when did an imperialist-thinking institution, like the media, care for the corruption of the youth’s mind when it didn’t do so much as eradicating its corruption to the thinking of its nation and its adult viewers?

A friend asked why such passions for an animé that was nothing but melodrama and full of corny scenes. I asked him, “What would you do if Dragon Ball and Ghost Fighter were suddenly cut off in the height of their conflicts?”

“I never really liked Dragon Ball,” he said. “The fight scenes were always too long and it seemed to never end. But Ghost Fighter? Probably, I’d feel bad but I won’t mope like you do.”

“How about Gundam Wing?” I asked.

“Whoa,” he stopped short. “That is different. Gundam doesn’t have…”

I really can’t blame him for having such sentiment. At the time, little boys’ entertainment was not wholly from Japanese cartoons. Boys back then went for computer games, Final Fantasy, Counter Strike and anything that has robots and guns like Gundam Wing. Girls, and “soft-hearted” boys, on the other hand, went for Japanese animation series, which have female characters that have colorful hairdos and legs longer than their bodies. What were guns to the boys were big sparkling eyes to the girls.

A while ago, I have just finished the last episode of Fushigi Yuugi. I felt blessed because in the present generation, when you miss an episode of your favorite television show, you go click YouTube.com or go buy the whole season in a pirated DVD. The Voltes V generation didn’t have that luxury. It took them decades to find out what happened at the ending. But in my part, it only took me six years to know what happened at the final episode of Fushigi Yuugi.

And so, after six years of being dormant in my heart, the fire of the beast-god Suzaku flared once more. It reached to the heavens to be called by its Priestess and her Seven Celestial Warriors, bound to protect her and the southern nation of Konan from the evil forces of the eastern nation Kotou, which was also protected by another beast-god called Seiryu. The Priestess must collect the Shinzaho of the northern beast-god Genbu and the western beast-god Byokko in order to defeat and seal the war beast-god Seiryu. I lost count of the times I clapped and mumbled “char” every time Hotohori would draw his holy sword or Tasuki would go chibi, fighting stupid things over Tamahome.

Watching the whole episode now made me realize that Fushigi Yuugi was really a crap. Hearing the dialogues, even in the English-dubbed version was really revolting. The “Universe of the Four Gods” was in great turmoil but all there was to be worried about is how the love of the Priestess Miaka and her warrior Tamahome could be consummated despite their duties.

But regardless of the awkwardness of some situations, Fushigi Yuugi has some qualities worth of a literary critic’s attention. Fushigi Yuugi showed the importance of literature on how it elevates its readers to other worlds. The story revolves around two Japanese middle school students who were taken into the world of a book called “The Universe of the Four Gods” and played the characters themselves.

I agree that animations nowadays are more complicated and have more ambiguous characters. But I wish there’ll be something exciting that will happen to the nation. Because the more chaotic our country, the more people want to escape reality. With this, only real good entertainment appears on TV. Then the government will ax it for teaching children violence and sex, swaying the nation from the real problem. The children of each generation will then revolt. This is when they learn the true lessons of watching animated series.