Cosmological Constant

Her mother used to plan their meals on index cards, pinned on the refrigerator door, charted into boxes constructed from black ink and rulers: Monday breakfast, Monday lunch, Monday dinner; Tuesday breakfast, Tuesday lunch, Tuesday dinner; Wednesday and so on. It made her believe, for a time, that they had access to an endless supply of food and that everything could be planned. Every vegetable, spice, and sauce could be neatly categorized to form a box on a date on a week, for years.

At night, her mother assured her: There is nothing to fear.

Thereafter whenever she was scared she comforted herself with compiling a list of things she wrote down on her notebook:

Sour cream, white cheese, a Dell laptop, a Japanese song, the neighbor’s laundry, magnets, buttons, silverware, baskets, colors, feelings, my life, the world, the Milky Way, endless spiral…

…

One day in school someone asked their Physics professor about space and things they had no real answer for. They passed around an article, exchanged opinions, wondered at the mathematical equations that only made sense with words.

For several nights after, she clutched her thin blanket around herself, thinking to herself:

The universe is expanding, and to herself, she noted:

Wind, songs, typewriters, keys, sounds, doorsteps, blue doors, beige doors, yellow-silled windows, grills, red, rust, metal, alchemy, e-mails, screens, glares, eyes, statistics, corners, midpoints, entries, exits, diffusion, anxiety, context, space, space, space!

…

In the morning, twenty years-old, she began to see her mother no longer planned their meals. What was there, what could be mixed together, thrown together with salt, was served. It was not a lack of love but a failing of the senses, dulled over the years, straining their smiles, convincing their heartstrings that dying and living were but emotions.

She went, she lived, she rejoiced, notebook discarded, perhaps destroyed. One night, in the future, her daughter will ask her if she can have mamon for breakfast tomorrow, and her smile will sag, remembering rulers, black lines, neat little boxes, expansion: the universe.

Life, alive, tags, names, cartoons, rejection, failure, stunted, railway, murder, telephones, vocabulary, boredom, judgment, gossip, commitment, roofs, doors, and walls, walls, walls.

Form(s) of Ecstasy

Coming out of an illness these days is like coming out of an uneasy sleep; the kind where you were sure you dozed off in the midst of noise, which you were only ever able to effectively block out with some meds and the insistence of your body on enough, enough.

The actual awakening, per se, is not so much a barrage of things you don’t want to hear, not because they are irrelevant but because they are less than comprehensive: cue the Facebook posts about the latest corporate massacre of trees in the summer capital; cue the SM-as-evil graphics;

cue the endless outpouring of criticism/metacriticism/anti-criticism parading as metacriticism in the form of status updates, x number of shares, and convenient, takeaway comments, for an article about the status quo that you’ve heard of and experienced.

It’s a slower process than it sounds.

In the interim, while hacking your throat out and trying not to forget the antibiotics to combat your infection, you ask yourself why you were so concerned in the first place; why you bother about how your country makes you feel, at all, when most of the day–which you spend, anyway, these days, toiling in front of an old laptop for the usual peso-per-word rate–you don’t experience the grand heat of such hatred anyway (But of course there’s the knowledge that the bigger picture is only ever thus because of its instances: in the way your elders tell you there are outfits that shouldn’t be worn in the event of using public transportation; in the way narrow back alleys and groups of men should be avoided; in the danger of cat calls and good morning greetings that are anything but because their eyes say more than their mouths do. So you attempt to articulate, because you feel it is the little you can do).

Then, thankfully, P posts something that makes sense. Maybe it isn’t the best kind of criticism, lacks that lauded university flair (no heavy school-of-thought name dropping, here!), but good god, it’s still more fair (the informed kind, mind) than the news you see on TV or the angry Facebook outbursts

(There’s also this: calls to boycott SM? I’m sorry, did we suddenly and with ease just magick ourselves from the specific confines of our third world country? Have we re-eimagined into sheer nonexistent delusion the convenience that the said establishment brings, og perhaps not immediately to the middle class to which I belong, but rather to the masses? But then again there’s the more sound suggestion: not to boycott it, but merely to avoid it; patronize the competition whenever possible and go to SM only as a last resort.

Please. I’ll be the first to tell you that even having read Indolent Indio, followed the story on TV and radio, and attempted to compartmentalize this issue aside from whatever personal biases I may have gathered against the great Henry Sy empire, I would still rather those trees stayed put, period. I would rather we invested in more sustainable means of construction and forestry. I would rather we didn’t need an SM in every effing city.

But my next move would be to tell you that frankly, it’s a mall culture, baby. Bobby Chinn has noted it, but if you missed that you need only to walk around a mall or two to note the many passersby without a clear destination in mind, the clumps of people sitting around busying themselves with their cellular phones without any particular urgency.

And this stasis goes on, mind you. I witnessed it myself, having had to wait for an appointment and having nowhere else to go. It’s not a matter of passing the few spare minutes but of literally wasting away in a mall, waiting for something I obviously couldn’t name for them.

Boycott? Avoid? I can try, but when push comes to shove and I need a place where I can pay my bills or today’s price of gas (the bulk of which, no matter how much I may try to shoulder, still largely falls on my elderly parents) says it is more convenient to go to where they insist We’ve Got It All for You rather than somewhere else, I can’t say I’ll put up much resistance).

But hey, it’s all in a day’s work, isn’t it? Because to live is to come to terms with life and its forms of irony.

And all the better when it’s the third world, Philippine kind of irony.

In the slow awakening of still recovering, you will learn that James Templeton needs the Internet to give him a conscience, because he’s been “stealing from a 23-year-old freelance designer from a third world country.” And your guts scream that this is wrong. It is wrong.

How do you know? Because you have principle. Then you back up slowly and think of how much of what you know as principle was shaped by your alma mater, and how that education has limits (Ironically, and therefore in keeping with an observation, for an article that discusses a Western take on the matter, there’s this, found first by M and thereafter shared with G).

But you also know that “to go beyond” means “to construct the specific limits which your Jesuit, Filipino, and yet still tongue-in-cheek ahistorical education gives you.”

Oh, you wish the answers wouldn’t come so easily, but they do. You know it, because you do gush about Harry (and to a great extent Katniss and Jonathan Strange and Chrestomanci, all):

but you can gush local, too!:

And it sounds like such a privileged state, doesn’t it. But because it is privileged, it is questionable, as such:

Where then, if you stand so proudly thus, are the rest of “you”? Why do you have to go to such lengths to describe what this is? Why do so few of your peers understand the politics of publishing (You are flattered by their insistence that you should come up with your own book, admit it; but you are even more immensely fearful of the fact that even the thought of it already tastes of backlash and the already um no thanks, I’d rather not), when their very own book-buying preferences and the structure of your friendly neighborhood bookstore dictates it?

The answer is in believed normalcy, in the status quo. In an uneasy peace, built on the premise that we should agree to see what is wrong as simply what is–cue the sight of endless shanties covered up by MMDA insistence on Metro Gwapo, cue the reality of children selling sampaguita held up on strings perceived as nostalgic cultural icon instead of something that ought to move us into no pun intended action–this is where we are and where many voices will insist we stay.

And you ask me why I am stressed? Or why I seem a little “nega”?

My dear, writing and talking about these things don’t constitute being a cesspool of negative energy. It means simply to be alive and accept the fact that I am an intellectual. I am this intellectual, born and bred not by mere institutions but by my milieu, by friends and teachers who became friends, by book-buying habits, by mistakes I made as an employee and now as whatever it is you would deem to call me.

(Puwede rin namang sabihin na ‘di tulad ng iba, tila hindi naman malupit ang naranasan  ko. When it comes down to it, I don’t have the industry coming at me with claws and fangs but a small but steady stream of comments made in passing. Ang pagsusulat ko dito ay hindi rin naman upang subukin na makihalo sa isang hot na isyu o para lamang mapag-usapan tulad ng kilala kong nasabihan na, tulad ng natukoy ko na, ng mga mas marahas pang mga salita. This isn’t a case of misrecognition or projection, either, as I cannot help if I feel some empathetic solidarity with those who have experienced so much worse, without mistaking myself for them.

Besides, I have asked myself if the very fact that what I experienced would amount to a collection of passing remarks only, would make these instances acceptable. And after some thought, the answer I received was “No.” And it continues to be “No” as I type this).

And isn’t it ironic, now? So you thought I was going to stop at getting good grades. I am reminded of my brother, when, in my teenage years he kept lashing out against people who call themselves “critics.” Anong klaseng trabaho yun, he would say, sisiraan mo lang ang gawa ng iba. So we know that not only is there a deep misunderstanding of what criticism actually is; the other ugly head of the problem is that critics are boxed separately from intellectuals, and too, critics are seen as nothing but–oh no wait, I repeat myself.

Destructive? Noisy? Negative? Did you think we were coming to inspire ideological peace? Non-violence as a way of life, always. But harmony in criticism? Ah, my dear, you make me laugh.

–

I suppose I wrote this because I was seriously considering shutting this blog down.  Which wouldn’t be a catastrophe, mind you. I have no delusions about academic credibility, and better writer-critics have said similar in sleeker styles than mine.

But then stopping this would have meant to stop reading the people I read online; would have meant to stop talking to certain friends at all because largely what holds us together are the things we know better than to be silent about. And I would fool myself into thinking I am okay with this. But if I think the field needs anything but ideological/critical peace, what right have I to fake a conscience that is at peace with silence?

And well then, thank god for meds*. I think.

_

*Edit to add: or perhaps for the after-the-stasis feeling they inevitably lead to later on.

Death, or Endless Charm*

*Nothing that will count as spoilers for The High Cost of Living. Unless you’re a purist.

There is, obviously, something about Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg’s version of Death. An anthropomorphic personification of her name–just like the rest of the Endless, their version of death is decidedly in-your-face goth, so it is easy why any teenage girl (even boy, but as I am not one, I cannot posit how valid that is) would be drawn to her–or at least, I know that at age fifteen, I was. Besides, she’s full of catchy sayings that you can go around quoting to friends without them being overly worried about your mental health–well, not immediately anyhow.

But these are all easy reasons to point out. Here’s another one: Death as a woman  presents a more caring view of one’s demise (vis-a-vis the image of Mother Nature, or even of Mother Earth, and versus the image of a too-often conceived male hooded figure with scythe in tow, just for effect). It’s a complete subversion, although Death of the Endless does indulge to show people what they think she should look like, skulls and blood and fascinating morbidity and all, when provoked. For proof, just take the time to read the manga re-telling of Season of Mists by Jill Thompson, entitled Death: At Death’s Door.

Maybe it’s something about the early twenties, I think, this new appreciation for Death. Free from any faux-fascination with goth culture (my friends will know what I am talking about), new to the actual lived concept of “yuppie,” and having shunned certain opportunities for others while wondering why the fuck the cab drivers are so picky with destinations these days, I’ve found that the character of Death created by Gaiman and Dringenberg is enticing because she’s simple–and by simple, I mean refreshing.

Case in point, I finally downloaded a copy of Death: The High Cost of Living two nights ago, and was pleasantly surprised at all the (re)new(ed) reasons to love the character. The premise for this specific spin-off? Let me quote:

“Every day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality: and this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after.” Death: The High Cost of Living, Chapter 3, page 3

So that in itself is a hell of a premise. More significantly, if you’re familiar with The Sandman, you’ll know that the reason Death is such a welcome little ray of sunlight is because in many ways she’s Dream’s foil character. Dark, compelling, and magical though Dream is, it is only when Death pops up that readers realize how deep inside Dream’s self-centered and indulgent psyche they’ve been drawn. So Death marches along and reminds us to be silly, even if she has to conjure the spirit of Mary Poppins, as she does in The Sound of Her Wings.

But in High Cost of Living, I fell in love with the idea of Death again when I realized how charmingly she simplifies life–and it pays us all to remember that to simplify something doesn’t necessarily mean to reduce it.

Because, I think, in your twenties, you have this immense capacity to go past Sexton’s teenage angst; and yet you have that voice in your head that insists on making you believe that indeed you are jaded, and you can go head-to-head with any senile old (wo)man who would wrestle that title from you.

Still, regardless: you haven’t yet shaken off the optimism that is one part childhood naivete and just your so-far supply of realist views. And if you’re lucky enough, this is enough to convince you that kindness goes a long way–not that it eliminates the bumps on the road, but that it makes the being jostled and juggled around more fun, filling spaces with laughter and the tired smile at your fellow-passenger, because you both know how tired you both are.

And that’s who “Didi” is in The High Cost of Living. She’s the girl who can strike up a conversation and, without any ulterior motives, score a free hotdog, cab ride, and entry to The Undercut. She’s the one who will insist on accountability (the faintest trace of the immortal Death in her though Didi herself has but the smallest trace of understanding), but graciously accepts what others have to offer her with a ready smile and thanks.

At the close, she’s Death of the Endless, but she is so very much all the good things we hope for–and grant me this, do experience–that in truth she behaves more like life.

—

In retrospect, I think of all the other things this entry could be, and I think that it could be the one that tells of how both gratifying and infuriating it can be to see a mighty character you admire suddenly become confused and uncertain of what she should do. In another sense this could review how a simple plot is a subtle and no-nonsense almost-criticism of how, in contrast, deliciously complicated the rest of The Sandman graphic novels can be–at the same time that it can be posited how the unanswered questions about its characters such as Mad Hettie and the Eremite leave much to be desired–in a bad way.

But this is also: to note how this is an entry that stands to stall in the meanwhile, as I think of what it is about Ligaya Victorio Reyes’ short stories in Leopoldo Y. Yabes’ Philippine Short Stories, 1941-1949, that makes my heart expand and shrivel in a vast spectrum of emotions.

And, of course, to posit that had this entry been written much early on in my life, it would be blind to the faults of the narrative because it would mainly be squealing over Gaiman’s spectacular storytelling. Which leads me to think again, how much more reading I need to do of local fantasy–noting, too, how my love for Nikki Alfar’s “The Stranded Star,” Michael A.R. Co’s “The God Equation,” and F.H. Batacan’s “The Gyutou” continue to persist.