There is a distance that cannot be walked, there is a peace that cannot be named.
Here, she unwraps them for the young girl that has been given to her care for all of the afternoon. She points out the remnants of her project, a work in progress.
Sometimes, she says to the little girl on her lap, there are some conversations that you will not want to have. She pauses, although the little girl is reaching for the mess of matte paper and shiny photographs before them. She does not want the girl to misunderstand.
Not because you do not want to talk, but because you’re not sure if there’s much of yourself that you can give away. To help people, I mean.
She lifts the little girl, who squirms, and kisses her on the cheek before setting her down again. For no reason that she can tell, she reaches for one of the stuffed dogs and hands it to the girl. But why?
For after all, she wants the girl to remember this afternoon of someone else’s memories, like a looping conundrum with no resurrection, until the child finds why leaves fall, or even that leaves falling can bring no desired emotion whatsoever, no matter how poets ponder them.
She tries not to look at the clock–it is a trial that counts–the little girl will get picked up soon, they ought to enjoy the few, pristine moments together (there are snacks on the counter and music in the background, things the little girl has a deeper understanding of for all that her mind is distinctly recording each second precisely: the snag of her shirt, the tug of hair caught between fingers, the faces of strangers on photographs; for these are the things she will remember in the split-second before womanhood).
Remember that something exists before you do: that there is a primal stutter before every speech. Before you think, or inscribe yourself, a space has been carved out for you. It is shaped like a comb, like the moon at crescent—a smile.
It is not that she does not want to do it (having heard how therapeutic it is), but that her imagination beats her to it. The project has its wingspan in front of her, complete with all the materials: the thick string, the wooden clothespins, the photographs (she and her mother, or her mother and her mother before her; he and his cousins, his father and him), the pieces of poetry she had written behind notebooks, or on her old report cards (especially the bad ones), the pressed, wilted, moth-gentle petals of an old sampaguita off a young vendor whom they said was simply part of a syndicate. It was going to be her visual love letter, a time off from graduate school and the kitchen, friends who wanted time with her, the part of herself that wanted only a manicure or a haircut, the look in his eyes that said “I know you even before you speak,” when all she wanted was to strip this heavy household of words. The project would draw the eye in, let visitors know she was more than she seemed, remind them again of the joy in togetherness she didn’t know could ebb into, not lack of passion, but rather a flexibility: an acceptance of the sight of a discarded sock or the lack of dinner, whereas before they went at each other for hours and hours, convinced that life had to be everything, pictures and ancestry and flowers and wood and yarn, thick, thick string that looked frayed but was sturdy, every little thing, every little thing, or nothing at all.
And after the long day: the neighbors whispering behind their hands, over the broken glass of the firewall (to keep thieves out, you know), See how the husband only pecks her on the cheeks whereas before he’d hold her and they’d scream and giggle like teenagers, the small brown birds never now swooping for the breadcrumbs she didn’t have time to throw, It’s so easy to see they’ve been arguing, the silence says it all!, the debt of her father and her father’s father, and the bank calling, “Why, Ma’m, we’ve a new credit card program you’d be perfect for!”, and her professor from grad school sending her an email, where old technology met new: a scanned page of her story, encircled, embattled, underlined, crossed out, proof that so many of her words needed conversion, being merely, her mentor said, subterfuge. But he of the eloquence, never addressed what she said, neither in the space between them in bed or the backyard where, one Sunday she looked up from their homemade gin pomelo and said Perhaps the santol tree needs to be cut down, and he said, No, leave it, we need the shade, even when, in her life, she’d never been as vibrant, nor as confident: being so completely bronzed.
In order to hold procrastination at bay, one must, well, do. I thought about starting this review long hand, while I have no time to really focus on a laptop or computer screen when there are handouts to think about, but no: what I want to say is easily available in my mind, about Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance. I don’t know if it’s taboo to read this right after The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – only that I would not recommend these two one after the other.
One and the other
Of course, blatant comparisons are also supposed to be a no-no when writing reviews; let the work stand for itself, is the likely rule. But I refuse, if only because Dance Dance Dance, I feel, strips away what is usually the given (and therefore practically expected) premises of Murakami’s novels, such that they also serve to suspend disbelief. The ability of his protagonists, to put on hold the search for economic stability, in favor of searching for what will fill their frenetic unease, has always attracted me because I believe that it is what many of us would opt for, if we did not believe that even our physical (read: financial struggles) are also somehow integral to our concept of self.
In Dance Dance Dance, all these things (the search for an existential answer, the momentary leave from the day job, the inner turmoil, the unexplainable need to follow one’s guts although nothing else in the plot prior seems to dictate its necessity), are present, but the chronicle of actually telling it is garbled. Many times I wondered if the novel was really meant to start this way, in medias res, and if so, then why?
I rolled over in bed, stared at the ceiling, and let out a deep sigh. Oh, give in, I thought. But the idea of giving in didn’t take hold. It’s out of your hands, kid. Whatever you may be thinking, you can’t resist. The story’s already decided (Murakami 6)
Here, too, Murakami’s protagonist searches for someone he believes is crying out for him. We are told — as we can assume strikes a similar note in his other novels — that something is incomplete in the protagonist’s life, that there is something he missed when he previously underwent a self-imposed hermitage. These, undoubtedly, are the things that make Murakami’s characters endearing, particularly to me; this is why it was a surprise, even to me, that the protagonist in Dance Dance Dance disappoints.
Yes, I remind myself even now. All of Murakami’s characters dance to a tune that is understood only by the reader seeking refuge from a mega-capitalist world and the characters themselves. But Dance Dance Dance‘s protagonist reads more like a pale reckoning of the other two protagonists I’ve encountered in Murakami — of indeed, all his other complex characters. When I think of this particular nameless protagonist, I realize that I agree with many of his principles on capitalism, and the apparent self-defeating value of “popular” industry.
And with not one speck of ambition, not one iota of expectation. My only concern was to do things systematically, from one end to the other. I sometimes wonder if this might not prove to be the bane of my life. After wasting so much pulp and ink myself, who was I to complain about waste? We live in an advanced capitalist society, after all. Waste is the name of the game, its greatest virtue. Politicians call it ‘refinements in domestic consumption.’ I call it meaningless waste. A difference of opinion. Which doesn’t change the way we live (Murakami 12).
The real problem though, is that as the novel progresses the protagonist becomes the horrific, transparent character one might pride herself or himself on hearing about but only encountering (with luck) once in a blue moon. There’s not much excitement in the plot, because no matter what moral dilemma presents itself, Murakami’s character is able to untangle the knots in the situation. The journey to clarity is not as fraught with pathos as would be needed to captivate the reader’s attention. Whether it’s rearing a child, treating women with grace, or confronting instances that only vaguely resemble the paranormal, the protagonist becomes a straightforward book of morals, minus, at least, the condescension.
Ah, but there is the matter of a redeeming quality (sold separately most of the time, as it is not a requirement).
There is still something that at least attempts to be a ballast to the protagonist’s transparency, and probably because of Murakami’s material, it should come as no surprise that it lies in fear of losing one’s anchor. So while the protagonist’s consciousness holds no surprise (perhaps like the mega-capitalist world the novel accepts and bewails), there is still a breath of fresh air at the end of the novel, but it is so faint, it comes only as a sense of relief, instead of catharsis.
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The rest (to be read, or if already read, to digest, digest, digest):
A question of time (from L – R): Skyworld Volume 1 by Mervin Ignacio and Ian Sta. Maria, The Collapse of What Separates Us by Vincenz Serrano, Love and Other Lemons by Katrina Stuart Santiago, Gun Dealers’ Daughter by Gina Apostol, and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy not included because it was too big
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To end, imagine yourself in the Dolphin Hotel, disoriented by your return to the real world:
To keep your balance in a moving train
you must stand parallel to the doors,
feet wide apart,
one hand outstretched to a safety handle; you must love
movement. Do not fight the force–
and should other bodies attempt to displace you
(like checkerboard or chess), you must stand ground, else crush
the bodies seated in front of you
And lest you forget yourself, there is that face on the pane
imposing itself on the city, reflection and perception both.
To think of what should be done always pales in the face of what you’ve actually done.
Random, but relevant thoughts: a child’s sense of achievement is only ever honed; how it is planted, how borne out of the myriad potentialities (dust and bone!, dust and bone!), to me is lost.
It is easy to think of routine. Here, I will enumerate it for you. I think of the past weeks that were bliss. Waking up, eating breakfast, the easy schedule composed (whom to read, in what order, whom to contact, what questions to ask, what needs to be updated).
That–nevermind what they tell you–is a sense of achievement, too.
Preoccupation also connotes precedence. (Pre)occupy your thoughts with the imaginary accounts (pocket, errands, words, due dates, opportunities). “Occupy” proceeds from occupare: ob for “toward” and cupare, akin to capare to “seize.” So that at the thought of disturbance, what has (pre)occupied may lay claim to what is threatened and say, “You cannot have it; this time is already ours.”
From here I announce preoccupations with Self: not self-centeredness, not selfishness, but the insistence that your space matters, must be cultivated and seized. So to busy ourselves with something, also means to occupy space, conquer it: from the Middle English that tells us to possess something, occupien.
(Pre)occupation means when presented with another choice, there is also a jolt: when enjoyed routine which has been proven essential and productive is disrupted not by a negative, but by another possibility, the larger space is fractured momentarily, to create a smaller, younger, riper space.
The question then, becomes not one of escape from opportunity, but of maintaining preoccupations, without discarding the opportune.
–
Occupy: according to the wonders of free etymology, already above.
Otherwise: this Other, as mine, without the wise (copyright 2012): to realize the question, also already above.
They told me to cut the meat into lean pieces, and to abhor the rich excess of fat and oil, that I may suck only at the juices that have truly embedded themselves into every slice, and therefore that I may better savor happiness in every bite:
In my bedroom I tear my books to their barest pages so that I can read only the most heartfelt lines. In the kitchen with knife and scissors, I trim my dresses into ribbons. In the bathroom I cut my hair to shreds. In the pause before bed I deconstruct a picture of us
(I keep your hand because it is the one part of you my sensibility misses; the rest I throw away).
At night I lengthen my hours awake to guard against too much sleep. In the car I listen to a modicum of combination salads–a snippet of Bach, a melody from a commercial, a bridge from a pop star. In the dining room I think of the meals we shared together and cut my serving into half. In my heart I tell myself that I must put down this pen: this string of extravagance, as of this minute, seems too much, seems overdone, seems to be enough.
–
1.) “By ‘void’ I mean that which has no beginning and no end. It expressly deals with that which cannot be seen. By knowing things that exist you can know that which does not exist.”
2.) “In order to achieve enlightenment without trying, you have to forget everything you know, and just be.”
3.) “It’s the perfect distillation of any art: reducing everything to its essence; its most perfect form.”
the little girl knows her bedtime by the utterance
of words from the other side of the wall, when her mother
faces the duet congregation and gestures about
noah and the ark; when she passes tongue
over numbers and psalms,
then her father becomes the quiet
sacrifices voices for the words of god
before their goodnight
there from her side, she thinks how early
it is still, the time god chooses to preach
and though the walls are thin
the holy words are muffled
as if in a dream
while when scripture wanes the prayers
are picked up, or when there are longer
pauses between passages, she stops
thinking perhaps it is finally for sleep
but the pages so thin like flammable
moth wings, preserved,
serve no fairy tale
and it is only when her heart
is content; when her eyes are sore
that she makes her own sign
of the cross, no matter
finished, their prayers
long, before her.
–
Something completely experimental (more so than others, anyway); a nearly sad attempt to revive a poem I’d written around two years ago and almost forgotten, had not a few sheets of yellow pad been found.
Also, how the writing has waned; therefore thinking about excuses for stories again, or perhaps something more tight, more compact.
Last year, February 25 marked, for myself and a couple of friends, not just a non-working holiday to commemorate the first EDSA Revolution, but a long weekend trip to Cebu.
Tomorrow, February 25, 2012, I will most likely spend the Saturday at home. As it turns out, the movie a friend and I wanted to see won’t be out until May, and in any case the car will be unavailable tomorrow. But this isn’t just the realization that this year’s EDSA I anniversary will be a chill Saturday, but the confession that to even think about the EDSA I anniversary is a site of struggle for many people in my generation.
The “Relativity” of Time and Space
By “my generation”, I mean people who, early-perched as the world is on the beginnings of 2012, find themselves in their early twenties, in their first jobs; some are perhaps traveling the world for the first time, or learning what it’s like to truly run out of money when one has too much month at the end of one’s salary. I mean men and women who missed EDSA I by a smidgen of one to three years. It’s a margin not far enough to go through elementary and high school without teachers showing us what was then considered good-quality videos commemorating the First Quarter Storm or the iconic, heads-crowding-the-way-out-of-the-plane scene leading to a man lying dead on a tarmac: audio-visual orchestras reaching their climax in a sea of yellow ribbons and people standing up to military tanks. Still, ours is a margin of distance that isn’t quite near enough the actual chain of events for us to have a firsthand experience of what Martial Law was really like.
For someone of my generation to remember EDSA I is to come face-to-face with an area of struggle. In my experience, I missed EDSA I by two years, can remember only what history books tell me of the first Aquino administration, and witnessed what it was like to stand with schoolmates under gray skies as Cory Aquino’s coffin passed us by. The last, evidenced here by a photograph, presents best that irony of attending a sorrowful event, being overwhelmed by it, and yet being able to take pictures with such smiles, such silent insistence that this is a memory also of fun and spending time with friends.
At the Anda Circle, on the day of Former President Cory Aquino’s funeral
Just last year, I had the chance to interview Mr. Val Rodriguez[1], Former President Aquino’s official photographer, and he told me stories of how she had always treated her staff like family. But more importantly, he asked me kindly how old I was, the same way a grandfather who is prone to forgetting would ask a grandchild the same question–in order to contextualize his story better to someone whose knowledge of the former President may be nothing but hearsay.
But I’m not here to defend why not everyone my age would be able to say anything (substantial or otherwise) about EDSA I except perhaps to fulfill an academic requirement. Neither am I here to attempt to prove that not all of us are stricken with apathy when it comes to the same matter.
Rather, this is a realistic admission that what separates us from the actual event is precisely also the same that would link us to the past. It is something which is simple, but not simplistic; something that touches on realistic (rather than skeptical) questions, and just a few minutes of listening.
Things We Don’t Know
My thoughts behind this post can be found in a noisy college cafeteria, where heat and noise and food-smoke and student-sweat mingle enough to raise a voice from the grave because hey, this smells like teen spirit. I’m sitting at a table with a blockmate and a professor[2] we both respect, and for one reason or another we end up talking about history; a President here and there, the US of A link, and eventually, the Marcos Regime.
And there we were, my blockmate and I, and we felt candid enough, believed ourselves critical and “unbiased, looking-only-for-the-truth” enough, to ask him, “But sir, despite all the things that Marcos did, isn’t it admirable, what he did for the country’s economy?”
My teacher does not lash out on us for being so innocent. He does not bombard us with questions to test how serious we are in our statement. Instead, he keeps his hold on the bottle of juice before him, elbow of the same hand on the table and his other forearm kissing the surface of the wood. I know it seems weird to describe it as such, but he makes what I can only describe as a sad, but wise sound of assent: one that, if it must be typed, would probably be spelled something like, “Mm.” And then he proceeds to say, in the same tone of wise resignation peppered with a deep sadness devoid of resentment:
“Hindi niyo kasi naiiintindihan kung paano mabuhay noon; yung hindi mo alam kung bukas, buhay ka pa.” (Because you do not know what it is like to live each day in fear, not knowing whether today will be your last)
As always, the medium of print does not, will not ever, give justice to the way such heavy words were said. I could wax poetic here about this old man and how I know him to laugh even when he is serious; how he can strike colorful language borne out of fear from students when he says Get a Sheet of Paper, We’re having a Quiz. But I don’t want to because I don’t believe I can do justice to the way he had accepted the distance between my generation and EDSA I, and all the ways it could color our vision.
Here and Now
During the last few days, a call to different activities c/o of the youth in order to commemorate the 26th anniversary of EDSA I has been advertised by one of the country’s big networks (three guesses who–at nararapat lang naman dahil tatlo lang naman ang lokal na networks na talagang binibigyang papansin; marahil tama lang ding sabihin na ang sagot ay hindi iyong network na may mini-serye kung saan bumibida si David Archuleta, at hindi rin ito ang network kung saan nanggaling ang susunod na video). I’ve no doubt that schools in various places in the country continue to hammer into their students’ heads what an important event EDSA I was and is. Even now, countless teachers are perhaps inspiring students to write essays, make multimedia presentations, or stage plays featuring key figures in the event.
Still…I don’t know. But I feel that even though these are all well and good (particularly for those who are much younger than I am), I think my generation also forgets that remembering something can be as simple as looking around and realizing that we don’t ask enough about it. I myself am guilty of this.
One time, I remember being in the car with my father. Again I’m not sure how, but the conversation turned to Martial Law, and my father began talking about a priest he knew in those old days. The guy was one of the number of people who disappeared without warning. If I remember the story correctly, even search parties after the Marcos Regime had not been able to locate him, and truth be told, I don’t think my father thinks of him often, except on rare, random moments when the same spell of silence that fell on my professor in that stuffy cafeteria falls on him and he remembers that he hasn’t seen or heard from the guy in forever…and that for all he knows, he’s been long dead.
This generation–my generation–missed EDSA I by what can perhaps be described by the entire concept of Time and Space as only mere seconds. But my generation also forgets that precisely because of this context we are surrounded by people who experienced the events leading up to it: mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and professors and parents of friends and oh, you understand what I mean.
Let’s make PowerPoint presentations and attend network-affiliated events yes, well and good, but let’s not forget that this anniversary is also a story, and if only we’d take just five minutes of our time to ask about it from the actual people around us who experienced it firsthand, or to look up stories on the Internet, or to recall just how much our elementary teachers scolded us for not paying enough attention to an event they themselves witnessed–then I think that makes for a better, more heartfelt way to remember something we never knew. It’s a little unfair, I know. It’s not our fault we missed out. But to not concede to the politics of remembering and its subsequent importance would be a greater fault, I think. And this one enough to shame us.
Remembrance vs. (Non-)Recurrence
Oh, don’t get me wrong. A couple years back I hated the just-under-the-surface insistence that yet another EDSA should take place. If anything, instead of a belief in peaceful resistance or freedom of speech I think the great “Power of EDSA” paradigm is a sign of fickle democracy than anything. And to think that any revolution has now reached a conclusion would be more than mediocre.
So why do I think we should still remember EDSA I?
Because people disappeared. And they died. And those who lived through it all, they lived for a great part, in fear. Today, I go to the mall and eat out with friends and come home as late as two in the morning and if ever I have to follow a curfew, it’s a parental rather than government rule.
Because today my fears have to do with my so-called career path, my eyesight, and my finances. Valid concerns, all, but I’d be damn stupid if I didn’t admit that compared to the fear of not knowing if by tomorrow I’ll have disappeared in order to be tortured or killed, these fears are absolutely nothing.
The yellow ribbon I had tied on my arm on the day of Former President Aquino’s funeral, now practically obscured by beads and whatnot
A few minutes of remembering, of listening to stories. Compared to the hours I spend leisurely going through Facebook and Tumblr and WordPress and YouTube and typing away on Microsoft Word or getting lost in a novel–really, it’s a small price to pay.
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[1] In case it is not clear, this links to an article composed not by myself but by Chiko Ruiz, with James Mananghaya, for the Philippine Star
[2] Roses are red / Violets are blue / Max Pulan is awesome, but his classes will kill you
