Only Lyrically

I ate tinolang isda -

learned what adto ta means, along with kopaw, pastilan, and ambot -

met three other Jennifers -

got “single traveling girl” discounts from kind-hearted boat owners -

rode a boat with her name on it (the kopaw boat owner was married to a Jennifer) -

and visited the White Island, twice, for the sunset and the sunrise -

Ah, yes, finally I was able to do that – along with drawing piko boxes on the sand with a chalk-shaped coral, and skipping within the lines, picking up my flat coral pato.

It was heartbreaking to leave. So I’ll just go back. I already promised my humble, plain cottage on the shore that I would.

Now off to… wait, somebody’s playing Skyline Pigeon on the radio. Am I supposed to contemplate about this too? I’m not even supposed to pour out everything here.

I could wait until the song is through -

there.

Hard November. Good November. Thank you.

.

I have committed, when I started this blog, that there would be at least one post every month.

During the past couple of months, I have been intending to blog about the following:

1. the NIN Manila concert last August

2. a review of Years of Refusal

3. a review of Abnormally Attracted to Sin

4. the Korean film festival at the Shangri-La

5. the Italian film festival at the Shangri-La

6. the John Hughes film festival at the Shangri-La, and

7. me dreaming three days ago of my father in a wheelchair, accompanying me to a review assignment of some hotel supposedly next to the Shangri-La.

Obviously, I haven’t been able to do any.

I was able to do a couple of cartwheels over at Michipooh’s place, though, when I first got to visit and see where she lives, even spending the night over. The great house had a lobby, which was around six times the size of my place. I had more than enough room for a little run, to build up speed for better springing. When I woke up, my legs felt a tad bit painfully stretched. I need more practice. I need to be visiting more lobbies.

I’d love to write an entry called The Tao Of Michipooh.

But first, more music reviews – which was what this blog was supposed to be about - my repository of music pieces until I get my work put out in the music mags.

I hope November would nag me more to listen and write. At least before the air is invaded by Christmas songs. God bless them Christmas songs!

Mrs. Mark Hawley has a version of The Little Drummer Boy, too. And she’s finally made a Christmas album. Must be on the look out for that. Must write about that!

But this is really what I’ve been waiting for -

- and the music of course -

- Mr. Jonze is right, right! Music cues importance. And you do know you’re in the zone when you just feel like a kid. Maybe not knowing whether to howl ahoooooooooo, or do cartwheels.

Despite all the debate, with one of the wild things being called Carol, the film could not go wrong.

One of mine shall be named Caroline.

.

included my mother – she who hardly has any patience for and dozes off at any movie shown on TV. It was September 11 – the festival’s opening night, and her birthday. Yes, she shares her birthday with a dead, brilliant dictator, and with the 9/11 attacks, but she’s pretty past her own tragic phases, God bless her.

My invitation so impressed her – Shang-ri La, a European film! Her daughter has indeed come a long way from arguing with bag inspectors at flood-plagued SM Manila Cinemas, those men of power who come short of tearing apart pages of her books whenever they’d dig their sticks into her terrorist backpack.

Eventually mother must have thought that she’s been ripped off. She had to stand up in line for a ticket for at least an hour, had to eat her birthday dinner in less than thirty minutes because her daughter (who neither paid for the dinner nor for the free movie) was hurrying her up, then stand in line again before entering the theatre for another half hour.

In front of her in the line are a young couple, perhaps in their twenties, who smooched all throughout the wait. Behind her was an elderly woman alone who seemed to have found a new best friend in the person of another twenty-something girl who came in her lonesome too – the elderly woman hardly gave the girl, who hardly opened her mouth, a moment of peace – the woman was relating to the girl her entire job history in weirdly accented English.

I didn’t feel like reflecting about my job history to the person who found me my ten-year-and-just-recently-ended career as a civil servant. But I was cold, terribly cold. So I asked my mother to hold me tight while we stood there in line. And I kissed her as many times as the smooching couple did before us, pouting our lips playfully for every kiss, grunting at every bear hug.

Then I told her she’d be reading subtitles, to which she emphatically said Ha?!

I pouted my lips at her yet again for another kiss.

.

mothership – an iron cloud that can hang low for twenty years

aliens – any type of species that looks malnourished

malnourished – what is ill-fed or unhealthy based on human standards, and can be a ground for isolation, segregation, and discrimination

slum – where malnourishment, not the malnourished, is nurtured

eviction – the act of transporting malnourishment from one place to another

weapon – any implement that could help carry out an eviction (e.g. mothership)

angel – a bride

home – some place where an angel can keep flowers

flower – what a malnourished creates to pass the time

.

A few days ago, I wrote somewhere in some corner of this cold, queer, and ghostly cyber realm that perhaps, if God could only step out of His busy schedule, He would pull me by my ear, and point me to a corner, and yell the words: “wait on Me!”

I thought about it when I was directed to Psalm 27:14 (KJV) – “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”

Then I realized that actually, He has always pointed me to a corner, and everytime He does, the ear pinch gets harder, and His yelling more furious.

Perhaps it is my appointed corner which I should embrace. In time, He’ll open His arms and ask me to join the banquet. I bet I have a seat there somewhere.

I hope He’d have lots of wine. I’ve been really thirsty.

.

Tomorrow, August 29, 2009, a significant part of my future will be decided. I will face a panel of experts, the toughest readers in the country, who will ask me: why do you write? Why poetry? How did you begin to write? Why this project? For who? Of what significance will this project be in the literature of the land? What would this contribute?

I will be measured for my answers. Should the answers satisfy, I will be given the go to embark on the project. Then hopefully that project would someday comfort and delight readers the way I have been comforted and delighted by poetry over and over again.

I am quite scared, though. I feel like that robot kid in A.I., I would just want to keep muttering “keep me safe keep me safe” like he did.

My Lord, keep me safe. Psalm 23. Jeremiah 33:3. Jeremiah 29:11. I need all the strength I could muster.

Even in my worst phases of doubt, I have always been taken care of. What more if I could just raise it all up and surrender to whatever He has laid out for me? He has always laid out goodness for me. Goodness. Mercy. Love.

I have always loved poems. I have always been thankful of Sextons, and Dickinsons, and Parkers for their ability and courage to reach out with the strength and beauty of their works. And I will always want to have that feeling of bliss, of rapture, though usually just momentary, every time I write the last line of a newborn verse, and hold out the sheet, and read aloud the lines. I believe not even the most powerful forces could ever take that right away from me. I shall always have it.

Even still, please do mutter a little prayer for me. Every little bit would help. Thank you, stranger.

Another old timer. Been tugging at my skirt lately.

Turf

When I said I can sign away my limbs

As a means to indemnify,

All I meant was that I can keep still

And within what is left, be confined.

Not that I scheme to appeal for Mercy

To parry for me the blade in mid-air –

In the first place, no place is mine to relinquish.

I really have nothing but roaming to waive.

From most of this expanse, I should then disappear.

Then, should Patience still see the need to calm down

Its son, the one I struck, that one who says the wind

Could cripple him – he fears – should it follow him around,

Let Patience teach the bastard how not to breathe

This air we have no choice but to share.

I can sign away my limbs, but can he forgive?

He must, to skip hell and not meet me there.               

- Jennifer Balboa

  Manila

 (I believe a slightly different version appeared in Manila Bulletin’s Panorama, April 2, 2006. No big deal, some commas just morphed into dashes here.)

.

“Three be the things I shall have ’til I die:

Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.”

 - from Inventory by Dorothy Parker

Dear Me,

It has been brought to my attention that you have been recently plagued by a cloud of frustration, apparently due to your current financial situation. I understand that you have been longing to leave your island of Luzon, cross the sea, and go to Camiguin for your 31st – only, you going there would have to mean that you cannot go to school for a whole term, because you would have to use your tuition money for fare. You cannot afford to sacrifice that. You know you need your master’s pronto. You know you have no choice but to remain still for a while, with whatever you have at the moment -

which is more than enough. I have taken the liberty to list them down for you, some thirty valuables you have been enjoying for the past year, your good 30th, in case you have forgotten, and God knows how you can be forgetful sometimes. They may be numbered, but not according to rank, and they are so numbered only for purposes of taking track of them while they are being enumerated. I am confident, though, that these 30 surely are the top of your 30th year list.

Please, feel free to refer to this list everytime the tail of ingratitude whips you:

1. everyday

2. your little home, at the moment

3. your new, peace-loving neighbors

4. your generous landlord

5. your noble job which lets you help save the Earth

6. your cool co-workers

7. pretty Ortigas

8. gritty Quiapo

9. asianTraveler

10. homey Paete

11. the Caramoan islands, wedded to the Pacific

12. your first flight, weeeee!

13. the day of the Eraserheads concert last March when you met Bleepster and Mang Jose’s other friends (oh, and  Sunswirlies’ bro, Nolan, again!)

14. your thesis adviser

15. the library at La Salle, one of the best libraries in this country

16. everything else in La Salle, including the nourishing drinking fountains, the pristine CRs, the twin popsies at the canteen, the Chapel of The Pearl of Great Price, the coffee shop, the covered walkways…

17. Mrs. Lykes, who is like a mother to you

18. Sunswirlies, from whom you learn so much all the time

19. Michipooh, the younger sister you never had, and she’ll be turning 30 soon, too!

20. The Baptist, for all his help and kindness

21. Mang Jose, for his kindness, and for being your friend

22. music

23. poetry

24. movies

25. Mother

26. Brother

27. Mrs. Calda, your favorite cousin

28. your health

29. Nine Inch Nail’s gig here on August 5

30. and all the other goodness coming

You have a few more days left before your 31st. Cheer up! You may be racing towards the best years, for all you know. And you don’t have to have the sock in the eye, like your flapper idol did.  Only that “thing with feathers, that perches in the soul”, eh?

Now off you go. Go!

Love,

Me

.

Here now at mudra’s. Will sleep over here to wake up at 2 a.m. to meet another deadline. And my utol took pity enough to pause from his punk songs and electric guitar-playing to allow me to watch this:

The Dance

(Barbie Almalbis, from Music From The Buffet Table)

Would you be interested in dancing with me?
And maybe tell me all your dreams
Talk to me like you would in your sleep
Don’t censor anything
Cause I wanna hear everything
There’s no innocence left to spoil
You can swear she’s not a little boy
We’ll fly tonight so far away
Where they will never find us
Use your wings and I will run fast
Cause that’s what I do when i’m not afraid
We’ve got it made up in our heads
We don’t have to wait for anyone or anything
Go anywhere we desire
So close your eyes become blind
From the world listen instead to the girl
She’ll tell you why she chose to fly
And you’re left behind
Just like me alone and free
We can smile when we’ve filled the void
And treated the burn
But until then I believe
We’re gonna have to learn
To discard any disguise we’re using
Yes it’s so hard and it’s never amusing

Good old nineties. Good thing I saw it. And good for Barbie for being a mom already.

“Matagal na,” my brother just said. I may have been the last to know then.

My brother agrees that it’s a marvelous song. Did I spell marvelous right?

“Tama,” my mother just said.

Time to rest the weary head.