One Art

I remember how, after seeing Notre Dame in Paris for the first time, loneliness arrived without any warning. I was alone, my Algerian companion was either shopping or plotting with her comrades their own revolution, when I decided to go around the city, to visit sites that I initially thought to be too touristy. My first stop, Notre Dame, astonished me. A middle-aged lady from New Jersey said to me that she wouldn’t mind getting married there, to let the weight of the church become the symbol of her vow.

It was right at that moment that loneliness stepped forward and looked at me. Notre Dame became a summary of my losses, an alienating monument that evoked a desperate and frantic attempt to connect with former lovers, with people I’ve been with, with those who were close to me. Anything, anyone, just to deny that I am truly alone. It was Notre Dame at first, then Eiffel, Mont Mart, Arc de Triomphe: each one offering a testimony of sadness, each one telling me that the heart grows heavy before it breaks.

Which brings me to the point of this entry. Where I am right now is far from Paris, but tonight, everything – the ordinariness of cabs parked in the streets, the stray dogs scouting for a quick meal, the beggars – they are all saying that the heart grows heavy before it breaks.

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

— Elizabeth Bishop

Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden

Stumbled upon this poem, and fell in love with it again. I was moved by its honesty, by the resonance of its metaphors for loss. I wonder what kind of grief – its dimension and depth – that provoked the creation of this work. Indulge.

Funeral Blues
W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

 

To love a coconut tree

[here’s a short piece i wrote in 2005. i was left behind in our cottage in busy and overcrowded Puerto Galera, enjoying a strange moment of solitude. that was the last time i went to the notorious White Beach during the long Holy Week break, when the entire gay crowd in Malate goes to Puerto Galera.]

It’s best to do it at dusk. Grab a bottle of beer, cold or warm, it doesn’t really matter because it’s the devotion that counts. Let it enthrall you with its sway, its fronds dancing away a faithful desire to fly. Before the day ends, it giggles ruthlessly, like a boy who, after all the side glances and the furtive smiles, stands up slowly to take his leave.

Today, the one that caught my attention stands solitary in the horizon. It is unmindful of the crowd, ignoring even the careful fondness that i have slowly but earnestly nurtured. Lest misunderstood, I have no agenda or ulterior motives: I just wish to be mesmerized by its obsession with the wind. I would like to stay this way until the evening sky reveals its gems. I would like to stare at it until the madness raging inside my head becomes summer bubbles and float away with the wind.

 

The politics of outing

I thought no one noticed it, but Bandila, the late-night news of ABS-CBN, had a segment last night about how Senators grilled Jun Lozada, the star witness of the opposition on the NBN controversy (If you are not familiar with the NBN controversy, read these articles first). Bandila’s story said that even Lozada’s pagkalalaki (manhood/maleness) was questioned during the hearing.

It was Sen. Jamby Madrigal who opened the topic. He asked Lozada, a close friend of former NEDA Sec. Romulo Neri and a consultant of NEDA on the controversial project, if his relationship with Neri is intimate. If, to be precise, it is as intimate as the ones he allegedly has with two men, whom Madrigal has the chutzpah to name, one of them is allegedly Neri’s boyfriend. (Read Neri’s reaction here.) Nothing new about what Madrigal asked, and the story has been circulating in the political grapevine and in the halls of Congress ever since Neri’s name has been involved in the NBN scandal. But Madrigal’s motive must be questioned.

Heath Ledger is in hell

Heath Ledger, that fag-enabling pervert, is dead. That sordid, tacky bucket of slime seasoned with vomit known as ‘Brokeback Mountain’ mocked God, and He hates fags. Heath Ledger is dead and he is now in hell. Or so the Westboro Baptist Church, a US-based church known for its ‘God Hates Fags’ campaign, would like us to believe. Immediately after Ledger’s death, they announced that they would picket his funeral to drive home their point.

Rainbow Conversations

The most controversial part came from the questions raised by Prof. Gary Dowsett of Latrobe University in Melbourne. To sum up the presentations and discussions during the Rainbow Conversations, a human rights conference held from January 28-31, 2008 in conjunction with the first Asia-Pacific Outgames, Prof. Dowsett asked why words like activism and oppression were conspicuously absent in the language that we use. We resorted, instead, to words like advocacy, which implies working within the system to push for reforms, and homophobia, a psychosocial attitude, a type of fear.

And if we indeed learned anything from the Rainbow Conversations, a gathering of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) from Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Singapore, India and the Philippines to talk about the situation of LGBTIQ individuals and communities in the region and the struggle for equality, it is this: we are not facing a mere phobia, we are facing oppression, a systematic exclusion of LGBTIQs and their persecution. And we can’t afford to be mere advocates working within the system, we have to be activists resisting the status quo and imagining a different world.

Filipinos abroad

You don’t know what it means to be Filipino until you’ve met Filipinos abroad. Our sense of hospitality is amplified abroad: we cook improvised sinigang, with lemons replacing tamarind, to feed fellow Filipinos, even if they are virtually strangers. We once met a Filipina in a northernmost part of Sweden, and she invited some of us to do our laundry in her home. We don’t let go easily of our faith as well. We troop to and fill up Catholic churches abroad not only to fulfill religious obligations but also to satisfy our desire to gossip.

Airports are fascinating laboratories of our diasporic quirks. In a short lay over in Brisbane, and due to the airport’s frustratingly disorganized state, I met a Filipina mother who, with tons of bags and two kids, was also struggling to find the Qantas flight to Melbourne. It turned out that we have to transfer to the domestic airport, which was about a few minutes away by train from the international airport. Taking the train, however, meant that we might miss our flight, so we decided to get a cab instead. I helped her with her luggage while checking in, and she paid for the cab. Nifty. But it turned out that she didn’t have enough Australian dollars, and I hadn’t had my money changed yet, so she gave the driver an additional 500 pesos. He politely refused, and took whatever Ozzie money she had.

The meeting was still pretty charming at that point, and her kids – one was five years old, the other was three – were really cute. Then she became seriously inquisitive, a term that only Filipinos could ever justify. Indians are argumentative, but inquisitiveness is a patented Filipino trait.

“May asawa ka na?” she asked. Brutal, straight to the point.

Fear of flying

I’m in the airport, waiting for my flight, and i wish to tell you a little secret: I am seriously scared shit of flying. My palms get wet, soaking the pages of the book that I pretend to read, every time the plane takes off or lands. I try not to sleep, and when I do fall asleep, I panic every time the flight attendant wakes me up for refreshment. Air pockets bring me to the edge. Flying makes me think about life after death, and whether or not I would need a jacket in transition.

So, maybe to calm myself a little bit, I thought I’d just think about death head on, morbid thoughts be damned. If there’s life after death, I swear to visit all of my good friends and share with them personally my discovery. I won’t be the butterfly hovering about – that’s too gay and I am/was already gay – or that mysterious and surprising scent of flowers while you’re preparing to sleep. I will just lie next to you and whisper your name, your complete name to be precise, so that you’d know that it’s me and not a relative or a regular hada.

I want to be cremated. Don’t hold a wake, but a little solidarity dinner is fine. A film showing is good, too, since I really would like to watch Amelie again. Find that bastard who borrowed my VCD of Amelie and retrieve my copy and I promise I won’t visit you. I’ll just send you an SMS next Christmas just to remind you how much I miss you. All of my stuffs are to go to my family. Stacks of unused condoms in the drawer can no longer be used, not even as decors for the solidarity dinner, since they just remind me of how cold my previous nights were.

Ooppss. Time to board. Whatever happens I promise to finish this entry. See you all!

Remembering EDSA II

Today, we are commemorating the seventh year of EDSA Dos. The GMA administration wants us to forget EDSA Dos, but how can that be possible? I was there. I will always remember EDSA Dos for what it truly is: a moment of indignation and unity, of a sense of honor among ordinary Filipinos.

The GMA administration finds it easy to forget about EDSA because it wasn’t theirs in the first place. How can you foget something whose soul is already in your heart?

Porn in the mail

A year ago, a friend living in the US sent a small box of downloaded gay porn videos. He sent it via post, also known as snail mail, so it arrived two months later. As a security precaution, he labeled it “Family photos.”