if the art of losing isn’t hard to master, consider waking up to disaster.
more importantly, consider the probability that what you fear the most probably has very little to do with sympathy. if, at the moment that the unimaginable occurs, retreat to sorrow. if they want to tell the world, let them. and if you must follow suit, learn, at least, to be invisible.
(Ibig-sabihin: posible palang salamin ang marinig sa diskurso ng pagsusulat; maaari palang ibang saloobin ang naisusulat at pagsasarili ang nangyayari. Hindi lahat ng bagay na kailangang mangyari, kailangan mangyari ngayon)
Natsuo Kirino’s Out: now this is what suspension of disbelief should be. Do not offer readers a variety of choices when faced with the textual violence of a body cut up and placed inside forty plastic bags. Accept that there are two paths. One can read on, and follow Masako. Or one can, despite continuing to read, reject the idea that without compulsion, four women can be bound by one gruesome act that has little to do, inherently, with three of them.
(Clue: dugo at pera)
a funny story, though probably not uncommon: you know a friend with whom you can converse about each other’s pain without making the conversation a matter of either/or (i.e., either we only talk about me, or we only talk about you). the sound of “and” always infiltrates the discussion.
Minsan na raw niyang sinabihan ang isa: Wag kang iiyak, wag kang iiyak; ikaw ang aalis, wag kang iiyak! Kasi nga naman, wala raw karapatang umiyak ang mismong lilisan.
(Clue: mahirap ipaglaban ang katarungan kung hindi mo sigurado kung sila o sarili ang ipinaglalaban mo sa bansang ito. Tandaan: baka naman kung sila ang iniisip mo, kailangan mo ring i-lugar ang sarili mo. Tanong: saan ka lulugar? There is no goatherd at luncheon, stupid; you are the goatherd; you must not finish your meal)
Natsuo Kirino’s Out: for days when I had the time, I devoured the novel, but stopped more than halfway through. Functionality means: you must pace your pleasure. Functionality means: you are your own Masako, learn to conceal someone else’s murder.
how to speak of the insufferable; how to speak of things one cannot manage to endure; how to write if there is no metaphor; how to speak of “alone” if there is no point of register:
First, the admission that tragedy is difficult to discuss—more so when we are removed from the tragedy. As mere spectators, it is understandable why on some level our empathy seems suspect. Which is why, before I write anything else, we must acknowledge the limitations of language. We must admit that even our native tongue cannot plumb the depths of loss and trauma that the victims of super typhoon Yolanda (internationally named Haiyan) feel.
There is a limit to how much we can communicate using words, when the incomprehensible happens to the poorest of the poor, the weakest of the weak. There is a darkness that words cannot help or hope to communicate, and if we cannot speak it, then we must at least acknowledge it, full stop.
On Urgency
That being said, tragedy also calls us to action. Silence is sometimes a sign of respect and the acknowledgement of the powerlessness of speech, but it is not an endorsement of fence-sitting. I have held much in the last couple of days, but that in itself is nothing special. I do not need to recount here the outpouring of emotion that have been flooding the Internet and the news, the streets and countless office cubicles.
But I have waited long enough, and as such, this is a response to many events that have taken place since November 8, 2013, as well as to the many words that were thrown from one end of the world to the other, on social media and off.
My friends: there is no reason to believe that there is no space for saying what we feel about the government. An excellent argument has already been made about criticism, and for that reason I will no longer re-state it. But what I rage against is the belief that concrete action and critical thought are mutually exclusive of one another. Must I keep silent about the blatant lies that I see, while I extend my help? Is it physically impossible to provide aid while analyzing the loopholes of this tricky situation?
Ah, but no. Easy enough to enumerate what one has done in order to defend oneself, and I will not use my writing to list what actions I have done to help the victims.
I only know that it is possible to think critically, urge others to follow suit, and do concrete action where words fail us. And where we think it is not possible there is only one imperative: we must carve out space for both critical words and actions.
But what of the question of timing?
My friends, we are fooling ourselves if we believe thatthere is a right time for criticism. Here’s a timeline: on November 8, super typhoon Yolanda struck the Visayas. On November 8 and 9, following the events, media reported instances of looting in Leyte. From November 11 to 12, the process of identifying the dead commenced. Also on November 11, there was an outcry for the national government to oversee matters in Tacloban. It was only then, three days after Yolanda, that President Benigno Aquino III declared a national state of calamity.
In the unfolding of the tragedy, by November 12, at least 27 countries had pledged to give aid to the Philippines. As late as November 14-15, urgent calls for help in areas such as Lipayran Island (via Aaron John Mendoyos’ Facebook account on the 14th), and Marabut, Samar (on the 15th), were being sent out. Meanwhile, the person responsible for estimating a 10,000 casualty due to Yolanda, also the man who, as some have pointed out, was responsible for helping attract the attention of both local and international networks, chief superintendent Elmer Soria, was relieved from his post. As of today, the method for disposing the dead has been debated about, the death toll has been questioned, and news about the continued delay of relief, from people close to me who have volunteered in different operations, remind us of the substance of this tragedy.
So my question is: when is the right time to be critical?
How will I know the time has come? Must I wait for Malacañang to build an LED billboard along Edsa to declare that it is now open to receive criticism? Shall I wait for the death toll to be finalized? Shall I wait, day by day, as U.S. forensics dig out body after body, speaking of the possibility of people clinging to life under the rubble, while DILG Secretary Mar Roxas tells me that searching for survivors is not a priority?
No, my friends. There is no right time to be critical. I do not have to wait for another crude shot of a dead child or a sick infant to haunt my television screen. I do not have to wait for another shout out on social media for a loved one who is still missing. I do not have to hear about how the relief operations in the Philippines is “one of Asia’s biggest humanitarian efforts”. Now is the right time to be critical, don’t let anyone fool you into thinking otherwise.
The System and Its Privilege(s)
What’s more, to the argument that the President, Vice-President, DILG secretary or whosoever, cannot be criticized because not everyone in the government is responsible for the red tape that has been delaying relief: that is pure, unadulterated foolishness, my friends, because it is not the smallest people, the most hard working, low-ranking government employee that we call shame upon when we shed light on the ineptitude of this administration.
Rather, it is the system which we condemn, that same system which point blank will argue that the bodies lying on the ground are not the same bodies day after day after day, the same one that will insist that looting for food and water is a crime, even when the looters are faced with the dilemma of stealing or letting their children, their old parents, die from starvation. It is this system which lets another country lead the operations, and the same which insists that the local government units step up—this, after blaming the death and the delay on the same local government units.
But if there is point blank denial from above, what puzzles me more is the privileged anger of individual government employees on social media. Rage against misinformation, yes. Post links which clarify contested issues officially, of course. But this rudeness, this audacity to imply that every single person who wishes for more efficient relief, who questions the actions of the government—its strategies, and the speed at which it implements its relief operations—to suggest that every single person who has done this on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and various personal blogs, is an incompetent, irresponsible citizen, whose complaints only rise out of the sheer desire to join the bandwagon, is unacceptable, ignorant, and ultimately, rude.
Let me be clear that I know they exist: those people who will not bother to learn first what they are talking about (the rumors about the volunteers from Lufthansa, the chaos about the rumored taxes on donations). But to insist that this is the rule and not the exception is to use the double edge of the sword, the same one that, from the other side, says all government employees are corrupt to the core.
The wrong goes both ways, you see.
Moreover, I am puzzled at such graceless rage because it is tells us that a small but significant amount of the educated in government will stoop down and, instead of appease the people, stoke the fires of resentment, by insisting that these people are wrong and deserve to be shamed on social media. Tell me, as a government employee, one who is privileged to express yourself and the ideologies of your superiors, through official websites and announcements and press conferences, what do you stand to gain by targeting, one by one, every Facebook and Twitter post so that you may rub it in the faces of these people that they don’t know what they’re talking about?
Granted social media is public trench warfare, but there is something distasteful in this humiliation, shrouded in the name of informing others, and I tell you, it does nothing for your cause.
I do not deny the possibility of healthy dialogue with someone who works for the government. In fact it is only in having been able to participate in such a conversation that I am able to demand this of everyone—government employee or not. The capacity for logical and humane communication should not be bound by the nature of one’s work.
The Long Shadow of Debt
But there is one other thing that bothers me about this situation. For in relying on so much foreign aid, in failing in so many ways to provide for our own people, we put ourselves in a greater debt than anything that can be counted in currency. Imperialism has long arms and an even longer memory, and I fear what, politically, our archipelago will have to support in the actions of other countries (or perhaps just the one, should you understand what I mean) in the years to come.
And still I ask myself:
“Would you risk losing the help they are offering to your fellow Filipinos, in order to avoid falling into indebtedness?”
I cannot put my answer into words, but I am certain that the answer is not yes.
And Finally, to People Who Insist that This is Not War.
I am sorry, but it is too late.
This has been war for the longest time, my friends. Ever since the first colonizer stepped foot in the Philippines in 1521, growing in range and ideology until the purchase of our country in the Treaty of Paris, exploding in blood in the World War II, and now, at this very moment, seeping so quietly that identifying it is like catching smoke with your hands, this war has been living it out in you and me.
That you refuse to see it as such is not just flat out denial. It is a reduction of all that has been happening since this nation became a colony, and then an imperial outpost, since our revolution faded, unfinished. It is a lie on which one can continually feed, in order to convince oneself that only a limited number of people can help, and that the ultimate human capacity to love, is limited only to a small circle of people—those unwilling to participate in both critical language and action. It is akin to spitting on the face of the dead in the aftermath of the storm, for it is an unwillingness to ensure that the likes of this disaster will not happen again. It is not a desire for a simple life, but a simplistic one.
For in that line of thought, it is not a life of peace that is being sought after, but a death darker and more real than those suffered by the casualties of any natural phenomenon, and from which, if one persists, there can be no salvation.
Having chosen a teaching job of sorts, one that capitalizes on language, and taking on freelance writing jobs here and there (positions which, on paper sound fantastic, but both of which I do not disdain), I know, now more than I ever did as a middle class daughter growing up, or as a college student struggling with theory, that nuance defines words with more strength, vigor, and vicissitude than any dictionary can.
My relationship with the word “privilege”, my understanding of it, the way it rolls around in my mind and my tongue everyday, encompasses anything I’d ever learned about what it means to be bound by socio-economic position. Searched anywhere on the Internet from Google to Tumblr to The New Yorker or The Huffington Post, “privilege” will bring you, I can guess, perhaps everything from social commentary to personal rants that shed light to where the deepest, and most accepted forms of racism, have become the norm–all because of “privilege”.
But it is a word that does not deserve quotation marks. Because, as with all else that I have had to digest recently, I learned that words don’t mean anything until you start to see how they apply to you, and as a twenty-something, slowly tittering-on-the-edge of middle class Filipina with five and a half days of work and not enough freelance stints, I can pretty much write, with as much confidence as I can muster, that more than the concept or reality of the word, identifying and living with certain privileges, consist of the following:
The realization that ambitions are not a matter of simply go-getting then putting them up on your CV as fast as you can. But, more importantly, ambition and non-negotiables are entirely different. What we strive to achieve, how these goals are inherently related to what those closest to us expect of us, are not always necessary for survival. But what I need to keep breathing, after a grueling day at work, what I keep for myself, away from people’s eyes–and yes, to a great extent, the glare of the computer–is too private, too sensitive, to even keep in the same compartment as ambition.
The bitter disappointment at the disparity between what you tell yourself are necessities (the once-in-a-while splurge, the occasional lipstick, that one special book), and their de facto relationship to the system of mass production, the pressure to take photos and upload them, which often we bring unto ourselves as often as we simply want to share our happiness, with no clear delineation between.
The all too real question and subsequent, hard-hitting [self-]criticism that the abundance of sharing news and information on social networking sites too, is marred not just with the typical dangers of accessibility or audience gullibility, but also with the fact and stink of the bandwagon, of the startling but true need to prove oneself capable, sympathetic, involved.
And the question arises: when the need to prove yourself to an online audience tips the scale, where, then, do you find your Self?
The confusing haze of the price of education–yours and those of others, and what it means when credentials require that very thing you cannot wash from yourself (I, having gone to particular schools, even with the struggle that most students of the same institution did or do not have to deal with–and to think! That there are those who did and do suffer much more), that privilege which paints you but which also reminds you:
These are the opportunities you have been born into, and they are windows of opportunities as well as a sealed room with no doors, shut-in windows, smooth ceilings, reminding you precisely of the privileges you are not allowed to enjoy.
And that communication with people, too, is powered by privilege, not merely of having the economic means, but the ability to step out from that very privilege, and reach out to those who have been silent, because they long to be treasured, cared for, and told, that they are worth the identification and consequent stepping out from one’s own privilege so that the floodgates may open and the words that are found may say:
That some people would protest and use comedy, or say, “Pikon lang kayo,” is worthy of rage, because that flimsy excuse justifies the trivialization of human pain. It allows for the belittling of harassment, trauma, and the fundamental violation of a human person.
If we can laugh about rape, then we can laugh about all kinds of abuse, too. It also allows us to poke fun at many other kinds of human suffering: child abuse, poverty, genocide. Because after all, if we can laugh about rape, then sky’s the limit, isn’t it!
But, you may say, it’s all in the context. Obviously, in a sexual harassment course, or a self-defense 101 class, laughing about the possibility of rape would be inhumane. Unthinkable. But you know, if you’re at a comedy bar or watching a sitcom, obviously, the context has changed: you’re allowed to laugh because that’s the whole point of the show!
Wrong.
The context may have changed for you, because you have shifted to the neutral side. You are now neither a student or an employee learning about the dangers or possibilities of rape. Upon witnessing a rape joke and laughing at it (and in defending it), you have made the conscious decision to identify yourself as passive: neither the joker nor the one being joked about. In other words, you are neither the actual rapist (in the joke and outside of it), nor the victim (in the joke or outside of it).
In fact, you have consciously and mistakenly made the decision that the people around you (particular but not limited to women), could not possibly, logically, be offended by a joke!
In fact, so certain are you about this assumption, that you have, in one stroke, also assumed that every single person around you (again particular but not limited to women), have never encountered a dark alley, a lewd stare, an unwelcome invitation, a not-so-accidental brush against the skin from a stranger – or even worse, the act of rape itself.
What should be glaringly clear right now is that rape victims don’t go around with a badge saying they were raped,thus necessitating a culture of sensitivity, not one of denial, passivity, or plain asshole ideology that context changes personal experience, or neutralizes trauma.
And in a third world country where the middle and upper classes are outnumbered by the sheer number of the masses, to justify rape jokes is to justify the fact that a substantial number of Filipinas who are exposed to the daily possibility of rape – or have already been raped – do not even have the economic and educational means to either protect themselves or seek justice.
There is no neutral ground when it comes to rape.
The belief that a comedy performance erases pain after rape is a delusion.
But, you may protest, what about satire? Doesn’t that poke fun into serious social problems such as corruption and economic problems? Isn’t joking about rape also hitting hard on rapists?
The answer is no.
Satire is dark humor which often uses caricature or quotes to enhance the crassness of a human condition. It often displays the norm in contrast with what should be in order to expose the irony of difficulties brought about by the problematic situation (i.e., corruption).
Rape jokes, on the other hand, capitalize on the notion that being raped might actually be funny.
They suggest that the possibility of being tied up, pressed against a wall, or pinned on the floor, while your attacker gets what he wants from your body, completely disregarding your concept of self-worth, while threatening to kill you, is well, funny! And it’s not just funny because it’s funny, it’s funny because well, you’re at a comedy performance and a comedian’s speaking so hell yeah, why shouldn’t you laugh?
So if you can laugh at the possibility of your friends and family (whether male or female but particularly the latter) being raped, tell that to their faces.
Put a face to rape victims and laugh.
This is rape culture at its best: when it tells you that the woman is at fault for being raped because she wore that short skirt; when it tells you that rape is justified because she was out late; when it tells you that any woman who flirts wants to get raped; when it tells young girls to be careful but never teaches men the value of sexual consent.
Men should be offended when someone claims that women should prevent rape by not wearing certain things or not going certain places or not acting in a certain way. That line of thinking presumes that you are incapable of control. That you are so base and uncivilized that it takes extraordinary effort for you to walk down the street without raping someone. That you require a certain dress code be maintained, that certain behaviors be employed so that maybe today, just maybe, you won’t rape someone.
It presumes that your natural state is rapist (original source unknown)
Rape culture is at its best when it teaches silence.
And your laughter – that cacophonous complicity, that insistence that people just can’t take a joke – is the worst silence of all.
But that doesn’t seem to matter a lot these days, especially once I set foot inside any kind of store that sells skin-related products.
Yesterday, after we went out for a small family get-together, I asked to be dropped off at a department store. It wasn’t late yet, but since it was a Sunday night and my eleven month-old nephew was getting restless, I had to rush while the car went around the building, waiting for me to finish.
Now I generally stick to certain facial products once I’ve discerned that I am, as we call it in our mother tongue, “hiyang” to these. Other than excessive oil, I don’t have an urgent skin concern, and acne only bothers me when I’m stressed, approaching the time of the month, or (and this is most often the reason), sleep-deprived.
In fact, the last is the reason that my face has only started to recover from a new deluge of small pimples on my chin and a few on my right cheek. Thankfully, a friend recommended a BB cream from a certain well-known brand –one which is infamous for its whitening products. Hearing its name, I balked, but my friend assured me that they have a BB cream that isn’t meant to whiten skin, and that the formulation of their product is of the highest quality.
Eager to cater to both my skin care concerns (read: the first being skin-care pertaining to the ritual of washing, toning, and moisturizing and the second being blemish-control), I walked into the store last night with the recommended item already added to my usual mental list of toiletry must-have’s.
However, once I got to the shelf where the recommended product under this brand was displayed, I was a little confused because there were only two variations of the product: one for anti-aging and one for whitening, which annoyed me because I was interested in either; I thought, didn’t they have one that was just BB cream, full-stop?
I looked at the other variation. It said it was for whitening. Then again, I argued with myself, I’m not exactly morena (a point on which, I am sure, patrons of whitening products would be eager to point out that “Hindi ka naman maitim kaya ang dali para sa’yo na sabihing mali ang magpaputi,” thereby with one stone diminishing the entire principle upon which the pro-woman and anti-imperialist sentiment is founded). In fact, in my family, I have the lightest skin tone and have often had to tell people that I am neither Japanese, Chinese, nor Korean — so what difference would it make if I used one tube of this product?
So in the end, I settled for the whitening variant. However, once I got home and examined the tube, I was dismayed with myself — and simultaneously, might I add, with the whole system itself — because the product promised to work its whitening magic from the inside out, and it was this promise, with its biological implications, that really irked me. I was annoyed with myself for being so caught up in making sure that my family wouldn’t have to wait too long for me, that I didn’t pick the other variant, as that now seemed the perfect choice
Still, when it comes down to it, I don’t really want that one, either. I mean, can’t a woman have all the other healthy-skin benefits associated with the brand without the promise of whiter skin or the call to the new fountain of youth?
Truth be told, it’s this kind of system that irritates me, for it is an ingenious and insidious marketing decision both, to assume that consumers will only want either of the two — anti-aging or whitening. Of course, as with many things these days, it’s a numbers game, and a vicious cycle, too. If more consumers seem to demand certain effects X and Y from a particular Brand A, why then of course Brand A complies, and via advertising, creates more demand.
More importantly, what offends me about the politics of it, is that it leaves you and me with little choice between what skin-care products we can buy. I dream of the day when I can once again walk into a store and not have to painstakingly go through every product lining the shelf in search for something that isn’t trying to convince me to become brighter, whiter, and therefore, it implies, better.
Where did this idea come from, I wonder, that every skin-related product for women has to have a whitening effect — to the point that even our “intimate areas” need to be given the same attention?
And not only women, but men, are being subjected to this whitening phenomenon! To what end? I don’t know. Right now, pressed for money (I have a strict budget for what I am allowed to spend on toiletries and makeup), I’ve already decided to use the BB cream I bought (and yes, in case you are curious, sans whatever whitening effect it promises to give my already light skin, it does go on as smoothly as promised and is better than other creams I’ve tried). I cannot wait until it runs out, however, so that I can start patronizing the other variant indefinitely — or, that is, until (yes, critical thinking and hope are not mutually exclusive, it seems) a third option (neither anti-aging or whitening) becomes available.
—
One may wonder why I didn’t mention the brand name (although it is glaringly obvious). To which I will only say: but that is besides the point.
Hindi lamang galit ang nararamdaman ko, kundi panririndi sa mga taong hindi kaya — o ‘di kaya’y ayaw aminin — na ang hangad nila ay hindi ang pakinggan ang kabilang panig (na hilig nilang tawagin na “the other side,” na giit nila ay may punto rin at nararapat lamang aralin sapagkat mas mabibigyan ng balanse at epektibong sagot ang problema), kundi ang itago ang kanilang pinanggagalingan:
isang buhay na may paghihirap, oo, ngunit isang buhay na walang kinalaman sa sakit ng sikmura sapagkat walang makakain, sa hinanaing ng pamilya sapagkat nawalan ng trabaho ang magulang, o ang katotohanan na isang realidad ang kinabukasang hindi naglalaman ng isang pagtatapos mula sa kolehiyo.
Ikinahihiya ko ang mga taong sinasabi na ang kahirapan ay masyadong simple at hindi kaya ipaliwanag kung bakit nagpakamatay ang isang tao. Ang kahihiyang ito ay dulot ng kaalaman na “Ah, hindi mo gets sapagkat hindi mo rin ma-gets na ang kahirapan mismo ay hindi simple. Ito ay naglalaman ng mga pag-aalala na babalot sa’yo mula paggising mo (May pampamasahe ba ako ngayon? Kaya ko bang lakarin kung wala akong pera pang-jeep or bus? Ano ang maaari kong suotin ngayon na presentable, kahit kalumaan? Magkano kaya ang maiiwan kong pera sa aking magulang habang wala ako sa bahay, para kung sakaling may kailanganin sila habang ako’y wala, may magamit sila? Saan kaya ako makaka-gamit ng Internet para magawa ang pagsusuri na kailangan ko na tapusin? Yung utang ko, at yung utang ng tatay ko, mababawasan ko kaya sa makalawa? Kung magkasakit ako, kahit hindi yung nakamamatay, kahit ubo o sipon man lang, kaya ko bang bumili ng gamot? Kahit yung generic lang?) hanggang sa iyong pagtulog, sapagkat sa kinaumagahan, ay uulitin mo lang ang mga tanong na ito.”
Dahil oo, ganyan ang kahirapan. Hindi ito iisang bagay lang kundi marami. At sapakgat ang lahat ng mga alalahanin ng kahirapan ay wala sa isang vacuum (Saan tayo umaasa ng pera kundi sa trabaho, na pinatatakbo ng mga institusyon? Sino ang gumagawa ng mga batas para mapatakbo ang mga instutusyon na ito kundi ang mga taga-pamahalaan, na may sariling sistema? Sino ang nagturo sa atin ng mga konseptong ginagamit natin araw-araw kundi ang mga guro, na nagtatrabaho sa dahilang sila ay sakop ng ideolohiya ng edukasyon?) nililinlang natin ang ating sarili kung sasabihin natin na walang kinalaman ang sistema ng mga institusyon, at mas malalang panlilinlang ang sabihin na walang maitutulong sa mga naghihirap at naghirap, tulad ni Kristel, ang pagbabago ng sistema.
Higit sa lahat, nandidiri ako sa pag-iisip na tinutukoy ko dahil ipinapakita nito na hindi ang buhay na nawala ang inaalala nito, kundi ang pa-importanteng solipsismo ng burgis.
I’ll start this (non)review by saying that I want to write about Gina Apostol’s Gun Dealers’ Daughter, but as I have not yet gathered my thoughts into coherence about it, I’ll delay (once again!) and talk about a more recent read, even if it’s likely considered a “classic” in the canon these days.
When I think of Soledad’s Sister by Butch Dalisay, I think of a school bag slung over my shoulder, a list of books to read for the semester, the hustle outside the glass doors — out into the sunshine, the busy street — so analogous is it with my university days. But there’s a kind of freedom in reading a book everyone tells you is canon, reading it because you can, and because you know every curriculum has its limits.
Ah, but precisely: this novel is premised on what the reader doesn’t know.
Para lang maiba: Jose “Butch” Dalisay’s Soledad’s Sister in sepia
A coffin arrives in Manila, you are told, and from the get-go it’s a disaster veiled in what looks to be orderly logistics. But what captivates in the novel is not the mystery that the dead body has been mislabeled Aurora V. Cabahug’s — who is, in fact, Soledad’s sister, alive and well — but the language in which the author deftly describes the crudeness of life, which outlines not vulgarity, but rather simplicity. It is not that life is reduced to physical needs, but rather that life is defined by the concrete and the puddles and the karaoke bar as much as the inner turmoil of never understanding a family member.
When the crate arrived, Al had just finished his supper of fish in black bean sauce, two cups of rice, a glass of watery coffee, and a banana, taken in the outdoor stall just beyond the airport fence. One of the new helpers, a girl from Ozamis, has blushed when he mentioned something about a Sunday walk at the Luneta, and how relaxing and cheap it was to spend the night on the grass, like many couples did. I’ll give her a week, he thought, picking the fish out of his teeth—or was it the gummy young banana—as he strode through the gate toward the cargo warehouse (Dalisay 6-7).
In reading novels, we are told that suspension of disbelief is a must. What they don’t tell you, but which you suspect anyway, is that suspension is always more difficult when the setting is your own. When a novel shuttles between Manila, Hong Kong, and Jeddah, but pivots in its attempt to solve mystery in the small town of Paez, talking about the construction of a village named after a mayor’s wife and then a play between Bagumbayan and “bayani,” the multiplication of its phases, its cheap architecture, and even when the narrative winds its way to nineties EDSA, nothing of it is romanticized.
Interestingly, the novel is easily mistaken for the hundred-odd takes into the lives of the OFW: the plight, the struggles, the families left behind, the bodies shipped back in boxes, neither luggage nor package. And while its mystery looks to be how Soledad, taking the name of her sister Aurora, met her demise, the tragedy is in the unnamed space the latter occupies, that ever-fragile, long-winded pause between thinking up a goal and achieving it, stuck as one is in a pale imitation of success (in the case of Aurora, or Rory, a cabaret-cum-bar complete with a DJ, karaoke, and GROs.
It was a little past six <…> indeed he Flame Tree was home to a good many of these gentlemen, for whom dinner was achieved by ordering several platefuls of diced pig’s cheeks or tuna sashimi, washed down with a few cases of San Miguel. Rory got a kick out of pretending before newcomers that she was just one of the girls, and a particularly hardworking one at that. Her name was on the bill outside the bar, but it was a tiny sign that had become more than shopworn over the past three months. Few people made the connection between the routinary “Tonite’s Queen of Song Ms. Rory Cabahug” of the white plastic letters (with the broken right leg in the second ‘A’), punched into velvet backing like a funeral announcement, and the slim, pale woman who left her guests feeling that she had known them all their lives but that they would never know her with the same unnerving confidence (Dalisay 37-38).
These little tragedies are what make the story tangible, hold the disbelief at bay. The entire novel is told not only in different places, from different points of view, but from different points in time, all without taking leave of the present timeline, where Rory Cabahug and her less-than-a-white-knight policeman Walter G. Zamora fetch a body, lose it, and discover, with the reader, that what is at stake is more than the act of reclaiming a body, a name, but blood ties, relocation, identity.
In the end, the novel (re)turns to what it has only apparently promised you from its first word: Soledad in the name of Aurora, well and alive, just before death. But more a glimpse into a narrative than an actual narrative itself, she disappears, elusive. After all the details, after the suspension of disbelief, the unraveling of character pasts and segues into car theft and various petty crimes in the metro, the novel shows, incidentally, not just a mystery, but becomes a mystery in itself.
Now if only I, as reader, could reconcile myself to and appreciate this path.
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Gun Dealers’ Daughter next, I promise. That’s a whole other Soledad.
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.
[2] Because seriously, this is no time for intimations of competition, UAAP-wise or no.
And an aside: while we’re at it, let’s be clear that cybersex, hacking, cyber-squatting, forgery, and fraud, ought to be illegal. The libel clause, however, is another matter altogether.
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It’s a wonder what people can talk about during a one-hour lunch break; and how all else, it is a double-edged sword.
Bayo has announced that it’s most recent ad campaign isn’t over yet.
Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power, that is not easy. – Aristotle
It’s strange, I think, because what I want to see in people these days is not mere anger–not what many would easily (and, without batting an eyelash) call being negative. What I want to see, is a thorough understanding of what makes them complex and why, when this complexity is simplified or glorified just when particular hybrid celebrities are on the rise, the instance becomes not mere advertising, but an attempt to follow a trend without question, and worse, an attempt to make profit on the concept of hybridity which is admittedly something that not many of us completely understand, or even bother to question at all.
Let me say this, at least, about the continuing Bayo ads: what disturbs me is not so much the ads themselves–not anymore–but the reaction that people have had to it. I feel that whereas Filipinos find it convenient to feel proud about the next international star, we are slow to anger where the questions of identity and nation are provided a reductionist answer.
At the same time, I’m perpetually astonished and disturbed by the ease in which people point out that there is no one of pure Filipino blood anymore, not because this sentiment has more than a grain of truth in it, but because it is used as an excuse not to be insulted. The fact that the copy is badly written is valid, but it is not the point here: grammar and its awkward wording can be forgiven, truly, I think. The greater question is why the copy seems so uncertain of itself; about why it feels the need to downplay what it’s really implying: “This is just all about MIXING and MATCHING…Call it biased but the mixing and matching of different nationalities with Filipino blood is almost a sure formula for someone beautiful and world class.”
People may say: “It’s just an advertisement! Get over it!” They’ll tell you, “You’re the one being unhelpful because you’re not supporting a Filipino brand.” They’ll insist that “You’re going against your own blood.” They will insist on the goodness of the intention–which may still be there; there is no reason to say otherwise. The problem is that when you emphasize the possible goodness of the intention, you tend to forget the actual failure of execution.
By all means, we should support Filipino brands. By all means, this is not to downplay the importance of the advertising industry. This is not even to encourage people to shun those who write copies or help companies with their branding (if so, then I should really just write a self-deprecating piece on all the copies I’ve produced since 2010, concluding with what a “sell out” I am). This is, in fact, to emphasize that advertising is a significant factor in our lives. And precisely because it affects everything–reading preferences, fashion, hygiene, family values, Internet downloads–then all the more should we learn to question its premises, scrutinize its meaning, root out where it went wrong from the depths of an apology that points its finger back to us and calls us too sensitive.
Don’t be fooled by people telling you it doesn’t matter.
It is your right to feel insulted. It is your right to feel belittled whether or not you are of mixed race or not (because you should not have to labor under the delusion that this ad does not discriminate against hybrids; in fact it reduces their identity in the same stroke which implies that blood is a product that can be improved). It is your right to find out, for yourself, what makes you special (no matter your heritage) and how you can then use that to the advantage of the third world country that you live in.
Make no mistake about it, it is the same right that will allow you to ask, how can Bayo hope to turn this around with its next two phases? It’s the same that will let us ask, how will changing the notion of percentage to local diversity and character traits make the campaign any better–or any different at all? It is a rage that is our birth right, one that cannot be measured by numbers. The fact, I think, that the campaign will continue, on a not altogether different premise but with only a few changes in words, tells us how much the outrage against the initial phase went misunderstood: simply flew over people’s heads.
So I urge you, open your eyes and claim this right to anger. Use it, not to inflict harm on others just as unquestioningly, but to question, ultimately, yourself, and the world around you. Allow yourself to see past celebrations of identity, to point out the struggle that is there, without completely diminishing the value of such celebrations. It’s not easy, and I know because I fail at it, too. But to not even try means to flatline, and I shudder to think that so many of us would be so willing to do that.
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Here’s Anthony Bourdain now, because I suspect he has a better-nuanced (note: not a “better-in-all-senses-of-the-word” type) understanding of [post]colonialism, and the kind of hybrid culture it gives birth to, than a lot of us care to admit, and because the irony of his being a white, straight male is not lost on me:
Writing Like a Hell Kitten 