My Narcotics

The way art operates promises an end to a sense of being randomly ignored and humiliated just on the basis of what money we have been able to make. Art is a mechanism for appreciation, which is particularly adept at the close study of the ways in which an individual might be deserving of tenderness, sympathy and admiration – and yet neglected by the prestigious world.

- Excerpt from the essay, "Why We Look Down On People Who Don't Earn Very Much," from The Book of Life

1)

Lately I've been reminded why I've taken to art, music, and literature for comfort and perspective on so many things that I cannot seem to accept or understand. Taking pleasure and solace in paintings, songs, and books isn't just about escaping reality. These are some of the things we do in order to stay in a world that's indifferent to our humanity.

2)
Surrounding ourselves with art and having a creative form of expression gives voice and meaning to our otherwise insignificant existence. It is my belief that if we can live beautifully, even for just a brief part of our lives, then maybe, just maybe, life isn't such a waste of time. Existence, as we all know, is too damn short. By reading, we hope to live many lives and try to reach a higher knowledge of what it means to be human. What art gives us is the space to think for ourselves. Here, we might even find purpose for what it is we ought to do with our limited lives. 

3)

With all the suffering on this planet, I cannot imagine a world without beauty, even amidst destruction and confusion. It isn't a wonder why one never gets tired of beauty. In fact, we seek it everywhere we go, no matter how old we get.

What makes art and literature beautiful goes beyond form, technique, or aesthetics. It is content and particularity that draws us to the beauty of creative work, telling us " Here I am with you. I am sharing this to you. I know you've known this too." Creative expression is the beauty of connection, of having made sense to someone an experience, emotion, and dream they thought nobody could ever have words, images, or music for.

3) The Elevator Song

This moving music is a masterpiece that captures what it means to be insignificant in a vast universe. The world spins on, with or without us. It tells us important things are made meaningful only because we make them meaningful. In less than four minutes, this instrumental piece demonstrates the struggle to make every note count to create complex harmony, tension, and rousing beauty. Personally, I believe this music captures what it’s like to live a brief yet remarkable existence.

Ash Ode

When I saw you ahead I ran two blocks
shouting your name then realizing it wasn’t
you but some alarmed pretender, I went on
running, shouting now into the sky,
continuing your fame and luster. Since I've
been incinerated, I've oft returned to this thought,
that all things loved are pursued and never caught,
even as you slept beside me you were flying off.
At least what's never had can’t be lost, the sieve
of self stuck with just some larger chunks, jawbone,
wedding ring, a single repeated dream,
a lullaby in every elegy, descriptions
of the sea written in the desert, your broken
umbrella, me claiming I could fix it.

--Dean Young

Homecoming

Two of my old friends came back after a long time of being away from the city. I really missed having conversations with genuine people, so it was such a wonderful blessing to spend time with them this weekend. When you find friends that you can truly connect with, don’t let their friendship fade away. You can never replace priceless gifts.

----

Dear Z and K,

For the first time in years, I’ve come to realize that struggles and sacrifices in life don’t just happen in vain. Wasn’t it just yesterday our lives were riddled with so much uncertainty and frustration? It surprises me how the years have piled up. Though it may have taken a while, I believe we’re right on track. We’ve started to become better people.

It feels like a homecoming, one that makes us grateful for all the light and dark places of our pasts. Strangely, even our unfortunate experiences are making sense. I only needed enough time to make out the good changes that were in store for us. It makes me wonder now why I was so afraid. But having fear made me see my weaknesses, too. Nothing has been perfect, yet I am still very thankful.

It astonishes me to see how much we’ve grown. Things truly did turn out for the best despite how lost we were. Unlike our broken pasts, I know we won’t break as easily now.  Today, we are stronger and wiser.

I've learned looking back doesn’t always have to be sad or painful. That allowing enough time to pass by helps you accept things as they are. Now I know what they mean when they say "time heals wounds." I've been wronged and I've hurt other people. Through time, I was able to forgive others, and more importantly, my self.

I am very happy you’re becoming the best individuals you can be. It’s rare to find good friends like you, so I am honored to be a part of your lives. Please know that though we may not see each other often, I will always be here for you.

Description

A bird with a cry like a cell phone says something
to a bird that sounds like a manual typewriter.

 Out of sight in the woods, the creek trickles
 its ongoing sentence; from treble to baritone,

 from dependent clause to interrogative.

The trees rustle over the house: they are excited
to be entering the poem

in the late afternoon, when the clouds are creamy and massive
as if to illustrate contentment.

And maybe a wind will pluck pff the last dead leaves;
and a cold rain will splash

dainty white petals from the crab apple tree
down to the ground,

the pink and the ground mingled there,
like two different messages scribbled over each other.

In all of this place must be
reserved for human suffering:

the sick and unloved, the chemically confused
the ones who believed desperately in insight;
the ones addicted to change.

How our thoughts clawed and pummeled the walls.
How we tried but could not find our way out.

In the wake of our effort, how we rested.
How description was the sign of our acceptance.


 -- Tony Hoagland

When the Clock Struck 9,

How do I describe a floating when it has gone before I saw it from within. What is left is
a feeling of having had. Did you inhabit a spacious room filled with despair? We breathe
then move to the next obliging bird that has not slept for a century. What has it seen? It must be ashamed of mankind, but I doubt such creature was not envious of our sins. Birds may fly, but they will never be luminously delirious and alone like me. I give words to my isolation. I refuse
to speak when I desire. Inevitably, I breathe, yet I choose my death. On most nights when I suffer from an excess of self, my inner shadow complains and makes an attempt to murder my outer self. I fail to make her understand that we were never apart. The fastest way to kill one another is to kill yourself. There is no other way. You always write it yourself.

You Occupy a Vast Room in My Mind

"Do you think happiness lasts?"

You asked this during our very first conversation. I was with K at mag:net waiting for someone else when we randomly hung out. You sounded as if your life depended on it. 

Eight years later, I still remember what I said: It's a feeling. It's not meant to last. My younger self tried to reason that happiness cannot be trusted. Then you asked if it was worth pursuing, knowing that it would fade out. 

But before I could say anything, my friend arrived and I left you without much of a goodbye. Unceremonious, I know. That's how many of my conversations were marked back then. For that, I'm truly sorry.

Still, how I wish I told you: Yes, your happiness is worth pursuing. Only, I wasn't sure of this then. I could have been more encouraging, but you didn't hear the answers you needed from me. Besides, I wasn't bold enough to chase my dreams. I had no clue what would make me happy. 

You wanted to live intensely. I wasn't sure if I still wanted to live. 

Today, I think you understand this matter better than I ever will. I don't even have to say it now because that's exactly what you're doing. Through it all, I hope you know I'll just be here for you.

Maybe in a day or so I'll remind you we had this conversation, though I'm quite sure you will not remember. (You're too shy to admit you were lost back then. Also, your memory has become ten times more selective than mine.) 

For what's it's worth, I want you to know that conversation helped me somehow. Since then, I made it a point not to take happier times for granted. More importantly, just like you, I didn't want to be afraid of life and the future anymore.

So, thank you. 

I don't know why I wanted to write about this. Perhaps I should have more faith in random things. 

Parable

First divesting ourselves of worldly goods, as St. Francis teaches,
in order that our souls not be distracted
by gain and loss, and in order also
that our bodies be free to move
easily at the mountain passes, we had then to discuss
whither or where we might travel, with the second question being
should we have a purpose, against which
many of us argued fiercely that such purpose
corresponded to worldly goods, meaning a limitation or constriction,
whereas others said it was by this word we were consecrated
pilgrims rather than wanderers: in our minds, the word translated as
a dream, a something-sought, so that by concentrating we might see it
glimmering among the stones, and not
pass blindly by; each
further issue we debated equally fully, the arguments going back and forth,
so that we grew, some said, less flexible and more resigned,
like soldiers in a useless war. And snow fell upon us, and wind blew,
which in time abated — where the snow had been, many flowers appeared,
and where the stars had shone, the sun rose over the tree line
so that we had shadows again; many times this happened.
Also rain, also flooding sometimes, also avalanches, in which
some of us were lost, and periodically we would seem
to have achieved an agreement; our canteens
hoisted upon our shoulders, but always that moment passed, so
(after many years) we were still at that first stage, still
preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;
we could see this in one another; we had changed although
we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling
from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed
in a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purpose
believed this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free
in order to encounter truth, felt it had been revealed.


 -- Louise Glück

Historical Fiction in Letters

August is the month of the Filipino language (Buwan ng Wika) and I stumbled upon this beautiful letter written in Tagalog. I haven't read anything this poignant in Tagalog in a long while, much less write anything truly substantial. But I do hope to read more beautiful works of literature in my local tongue.

Knowing it's fictional doesn't diminish the message's power. I believe it has shed light into so many possibilities when we think of our national heroes' personal lives. So please, read it for yourself.

---

1897 Mayo 1

Mahal kong Oryang,

Mali ka. Hindi kita nakasalubong upang sa dulo ng kalsada, ako ay liliko sa kanan at ikaw sa kaliwa. Sapagkat saan man tayo dalhin ng ating pakikibaka, ikaw lang ang aking itatangi at makailang ulit na ihaharap sa pulang bandila. Hindi tayo nagpalitan ng mga kwento upang sa pinakahuling tuldok ng pangungusap, ang karugtong ay alingawngaw ng katahimikan. Walang pagod kitang aawitan ng imnong pambayan, Oryang.

Hindi kailanman ako mauubusan ng salita upang maialay sa iyo bilang mga tula. Maging ang bulong at buntung-hininga’y magpapahayag ng pagsinta sa tulad mong umiibig din sa bansa. Hindi tayo sabay na tumawa, nagkatinginan, at tumawa pa nang mas malakas, upang sa paghupa ng halakhak ay may butil ng luha na mamimintana sa ating mga mata. Loobin man ng Maykapal na pansamantala tayong magkawalay, tandaan mong ang halakhak at sigaw ng ating mga kasamahan ay sa akin rin. Hindi ka dapat masabik sa akin sapagkat ako’y mananatili sa iyong piling. Hindi kita niyakap nang ilang ulit upang sa pagkalas ng mga braso ko sayo ay maramdaman mong iniiwan kita.

Habambuhay akong magiging tapat sa ating panata, Oryang. Kapara ng binitawan kong sumpa sa ngalan ng bayan, tayo’y mananatiling katipun, kawal, at bayani ng ating pagmamahalan. Hindi tayo bumuo ng mga alaala sa umaga, tanghali, at gabi upang sa muli mong paggising ay maisip mong hindi tayo nagkasama sa pakikidigma. Hindi ko man hawak ang bukas, nais kong tanganan mo ang aking pangako na ilang ulit kong pipiliing mabuhay at pumanaw upang patunayan sa iyong mali ka. At kung magkataong ako’y paharapin sa ating anak na si Andres, buo ang loob kong haharap sa kanya at sasabihin ko sa kanyang mali ka. Hindi ako bumati sa simula upang sa huli ay magpaalam.

Ikaw ang aking bayan,

Andres



Ibinigay ni Julio Nakpil ang liham na ito kay Oryang ilang gabi makalipas ang pagpaslang kay Andres sa Maragondon.

---

Isang kathang pangkasaysayan ni G. Eljay Castro Deldoc mula sa "MAGHIMAGSIK: Mga Tula, Sulatin at Larawan ng Pakikibaka ni Andres Bonifacio at ng Kabataang Makabayan" isang aklat pampanitikan ng CEGP at Anakbayan para sa ika-150 kaarawan ni Gat Andres Bonifacio



*This post was taken from League of Filipino Students - UP Diliman Facebook page.

Lately

                                                                 "Homesickness"
                                                             René Magritte, 1940


1) I constantly had to remind myself that this is not my life. My eight hour job cannot define me. My brain dead mornings should not keep me from watching the sunrise. The three hours I spend working overtime cannot eat what is left of my existence. This is not my real life.


2) Four days ago, I wanted to disappear forever. Yesterday I no longer felt like leaving. I wonder if it's because I am content or simply too tired to go anywhere.


3) I believe in equilibrium, in the notion of stability, and it's illusions. It is a comforting kind of lie.


4) Truth scolds the ignorant. Some of us have never recovered.


5) I honestly just live to read. Perhaps even sometimes write.


6) What do you want out of life?


7) Save room for people, places, and events. Trust me. You'll never want to run out of things to look forward to.


8) I miss sleeping at night.


9) I don' know which is worse: The failure to forget a painful moment, or the failure to recall what it was that made you feel alive.


10) Now and then, I have to remind myself I am afraid to die.


11) This life is excruciatingly long and short at the same time.


13) Tell me why you're tired.


14) There is no way we're born to wait for weekends, buy shit to pretend it makes us happy, pay bills, and die.


15) And the city insists on defining me.


16) "Cruel is the gospel that sets us all free and takes you away from me." - Prefab Sprout


17) I stopped watching or reading the news.


18) Does your happiness outweigh your misery? Out of five instances, how often?


19) I will never get tired of finding beauty where it shouldn't be.


20) Don't go out too long without music.


21) What are you waiting for?

Notes on Indifference

I recently had the pleasure of reading Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell last weekend. Published in 1933, the book chronicles the author’s unfortunate descent into the throes of poverty in the early 1900s. After reading it, I could actually understand where Orwell got his inspiration for writing Animal Farm.

Orwell had no choice but to become a plongeur (dishwasher/janitor) in seedy Paris brasseries after months of not finding work. “It’s modern day slavery,” he would say. As if his troubles were not enough, he found himself homeless and once again unemployed when he came to London. For a month he lived the life of a “tramp,” the equivalent of a “taong grasa” or beggar in our society, existing on meal tickets and mercy from government houses or “London spikes.”

Reading about European poverty and famine is strange to me. Perhaps it’s because I never really thought Western civilizations could be that “poor” (I believe you have to see poverty from my side of the planet for you to understand what I mean).  Nevertheless, I still thought their system of dealing with homeless vagrants has become the world’s model for treating people who have fallen into the poverty line.

The idea that you become less than human once you cannot afford basic necessities disturbs me. You become a pest; people ignore you or see you as a burden in society. Foul and unproductive creatures like you are segregated from the public. No one can be bothered to care. You can no longer socialize and it’s terrifying to lose all self-respect. People blame you for being poor.  

(Condescending attitudes towards the poor are all too familiar. Why is this still happening?  Do people even bother to understand? I detest how our individual worth is constantly being measured by our purchasing power. Sure, you have to work hard. Orwell had a streak of bad luck, yet he got out of his rut. But what about the uneducated? Those who lost the birth lottery? Is it really their fault if they are born poor, if they cannot change their status? These are just some of the many things I had to ponder on while going through every chapter. The idea that it’s a person’s fault if he is poor is in itself a ploy to keep one from being simple.)

Plongeur's Life

A homeless man asleep on newspapers in Paris (circa 1935)

Upon reading Down and Out, I began to have profound respect for people who live a hand-to-mouth existence. At the same time, I appreciate knowing that kind people can still exist among the poor, and that there are those, though few, who are able to cultivate intellectual and moral lives despite their harsh dispositions.

The book also reminded me of my graduate school sociology class. My professor began that semester with the history of capitalism and the end of slavery. She then moved on to issues concerning minimum wage work, sweatshops and domestic employment, undocumented immigrants, and unsustainable business models. Our class problematized how civilizations were built on the sweat of billions of minimum wage workers.

Because everything affects everything else, we have to start seeing life on this planet in its entirety. That means making life better from the very bottom up, not just up. A change must occur to address the very root of the problem. And unless people in influential positions actually care about the common man, progress is only for the middle-class and the privileged.

On a more personal note, I realized how important it is to keep our inner lives alive. This goes for all of us, not just for people struggling with poverty. It’s so easy to lose ourselves in need and greed when all we ever think about is our place in society. We have to realize we are more than our desires, needs, and what others see.

--

There is a lot to learn from the past. I find the following chapter very relevant when it comes to 1) workers rights, 2) how we utilize our skills, and 3) how society’s elite fails to sympathize with the working class and the poor. I would have quoted lines, but the entire essay just has to be read in its full form.

Chapter XXII

Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933

By George Orwell

     For what they are worth I want to give my opinions about the life of a Paris PLONGEUR. When one comes to think of it, it is strange that thousands of people in a great modem city should spend their waking hours swabbing dishes in hot dens underground. The question I am raising is why this life goes on—what purpose it serves, and who wants it to continue, and why I am not taking the merely rebellious, FAINEANT attitude. I am trying to consider the social significance of a PLONGEUR’S life.

     I think one should start by saying that a PLONGEUR is one of the slaves of the modem world. Not that there is any need to whine over him, for he is better off than many manual workers, but still, he is no freer than if he were bought and sold. His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack. He is cut off from marriage, or, if he marries, his wife must work too. Except by a lucky chance, he has no escape from this life, save into prison. At this moment there are men with university degrees scrubbing dishes in Paris for ten or fifteen hours a day. One cannot say that it is mere idleness on their part, for an idle man cannot be a PLONGEUR; they have simply been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible. If PLONGEURS thought at all, they would long ago have formed a union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.

     The question is, why does this slavery continue? People have a way of taking it for granted that all work is done for a sound purpose. They see somebody else doing a disagreeable job, and think that they have solved things by saying that the job is necessary. Coal-mining, for example, is hard work, but it is necessary—we must have coal. Working in the sewers is unpleasant, but somebody must work in the sewers. And similarly with a PLONGEUR’S work. Some people must feed in restaurants, and so other people must swab dishes for eighty hours a week. It is the work of civilization, therefore unquestionable. This point is worth considering.

     Is a PLONGEUR’S work really necessary to civilization? We have a feeling that it must be ‘honest’ work, because it is hard and disagreeable, and we have made a sort of fetish of manual work. We see a man cutting down a tree, and we make sure that he is filling a social need, just because he uses his muscles; it does not occur to us that he may only be cutting down a beautiful tree to make room for a hideous statue. I believe it is the same with a PLONGEUR. He earns his bread in the sweat of his brow, but it does not follow that he is doing anything useful; he may be only supplying a luxury which, very often, is not a luxury.

     As an example of what I mean by luxuries which are not luxuries, take an extreme case, such as one hardly sees in Europe. Take an Indian rickshaw puller, or a gharry pony. In any Far Eastern town there are rickshaw pullers by the hundred, black wretches weighing eight stone, clad in loin-cloths. Some of them are diseased; some of them are fifty years old. For miles on end they trot in the sun or rain, head down, dragging at the shafts, with the sweat dripping from their grey moustaches. When they go too slowly the passenger calls them BAHINCHUT. They earn thirty or forty rupees a month, and cough their lungs out after a few years. The gharry ponies are gaunt, vicious things that have been sold cheap as having a few years’ work left in them. Their master looks on the whip as a substitute for food. Their work expresses itself in a sort of equation—whip plus food equals energy; generally it is about sixty per cent whip and forty per cent food. Sometimes their necks are encircled by one vast sore, so that they drag all day on raw flesh. It is still possible to make them work, however; it is just a question of thrashing them so hard that the pain behind outweighs the pain in front. After a few years even the whip loses its virtue, and the pony goes to the knacker. These are instances of unnecessary work, for there is no real need for gharries and rickshaws; they only exist because Orientals consider it vulgar to walk. They are luxuries, and, as anyone who has ridden in them knows, very poor luxuries. They afford a small amount of convenience, which cannot possibly balance the suffering of the men and animals.

     Similarly with the PLONGEUR. He is a king compared with a rickshaw puller or a gharry pony, but his case is analogous. He is the slave of a hotel or a restaurant, and his slavery is more or less useless. For, after all, where is the REAL need of big hotels and smart restaurants? They are supposed to provide luxury, but in reality they provide only a cheap, shoddy imitation of it. Nearly everyone hates hotels. Some restaurants are better than others, but it is impossible to get as good a meal in a restaurant as one can get, for the same expense, in a private house. No doubt hotels and restaurants must exist, but there is no need that they should enslave hundreds of people. What makes the work in them is not the essentials; it is the shams that are supposed to represent luxury. Smartness, as it is called, means, in effect, merely that the staff work more and the customers pay more; no one benefits except the proprietor, who will presently buy himself a striped villa at Deauville. Essentially, a ‘smart’ hotel is a place where a hundred people toil like devils in order that two hundred may pay through the nose for things they do not really want. If the nonsense were cut out of hotels and restaurants, and the work done with simple efficiency, PLONGEURS might work six or eight hours a day instead often or fifteen.

     Suppose it is granted that a PLONGEUR’S work is more or less useless. Then the question follows, Why does anyone want him to go on working? I am trying to go beyond the immediate economic cause, and to consider what pleasure it can give anyone to think of men swabbing dishes for life. For there is no doubt that people—comfortably situated people—do find a pleasure in such thoughts. A slave, Marcus Gato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.

     I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this:

     ‘We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a, cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.’

     This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance of it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. Foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.

     Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the. average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon’s poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line ‘NE PAIN NE VOYENT QU’AUX FENESTRES’ by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man’s experience.

     From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. ‘Anything,’ he thinks, ‘any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.’ He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and—in the shape of rich men—is its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as ‘smart’ hotels.

     To sum up. A PLONGEUR is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him. I say this of the PLONGEUR because it is his case I have been considering; it would apply equally to numberless other types of worker. These are only my own ideas about the basic facts of a PLONGEUR’S life, made without reference to immediate economic questions, and no doubt largely platitudes. I present them as a sample of the thoughts that are put into one’s head by working in an hotel.

Though I cannot fly, I'm not content to crawl.

"If I am only here to watch you 
as you suffer, I will let you down.

The answers we find 
are never what we had in mind,
so we make it up as we go along.

You don't talk of dreams 
and I won't mention tomorrow.
We won't make those promises 
that we can't keep--

I will never leave you, 
I will not let you down."

Back To the Places Where It All Began

Spaces


1.

In this room I was born. And I knew I was in the wrong place: the world. I knew pain was to come. I knew it by the persistence of the blade that cut me out. I knew it as every baby born to the world knows it: I came here to die.

2.

Somewhere a beautiful woman in a story I do not understand is crying. If I strain hard enough I will hear a song in the background. She is holding a letter. She is in love with Peter. I am in love with her.

3.

Stand on the floor where it’s marked X. I am standing by your side where it’s marked Y. We are a shoulder’s length apart. I’m so close you can almost smell the perfume. If I step ten paces away from you, there could be a garden between us, or a table and some chairs. If I step another 20 paces there could be a house between us. If I continue to walk away from you in this way, tramping through walls and hovering above water, in 80,150,320 steps I will bump into you. I can never get away from you, and will you remember me? Distance brings us closer. There is no distance.

4.

In 1961 I was in Berlin. It was a dusty Sunday in August. In the radio news was out that Ulbricht had convinced Khrushchev to build a wall around West Berlin. I remember it precisely: By midnight East German troops had sealed off the zonal boundary with barbed wire. The streets along which the barrier ran had been torn up. I lived in that street. It was the day after my birthday. I remember the dust covering the sky. I remember being scared. Father had not returned from the other side. The Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse had orders to shoot anyone who would attempt to defect. Father had not returned.

5.

Happiness is simple.
Sadness forks into many roads.

6.

Before the time of Christ, Aristotle believed that the earth was the center of the universe because he needed a stationary reference point against which to measure all other motions: a rock falling, a star reeling through the sky, his heart beating against his chest like a club. He needed to believe in certainty, in absolute space. Without it, the world would not be known absolutely. Without it, the world cannot be known.

Twenty centuries later Hendrik Lorentz needed to believe that every single molecule in the universe must move through a stationary material called the aether, as every human being in his various turnings must move through God. Scientists looked everywhere for proof of this aether. And everywhere they found nothing.

7.

I have sometimes been accused of being a bore. I beg to differ: people laugh at my jokes, and I’m handsome. I would like now to talk more about myself: I don’t like going to airports and hospitals. They make me uneasy. In both cases, somebody is always going to leave. I was born in 1983, and have never been to Berlin. But I have a memory of being in Berlin in 1961. I have a memory of something that never happened.

I would like to elaborate on myself, but you will understand if I talk instead about the sky in Berlin in 1961: it was covered with dust. There were no birds. There was no sky.

8.

Memory is brutal because precise.

9.

She said: give me more space. I said: don’t you love me anymore? She said: give me more space. I said: why? Did I do something wrong? Is there something wrong? Is there someone else? When did you stop loving me? In what precise moment? In what room? What city?

I held her tight as one who’s about to lose his own life holds on. Then she said: give me more space. I said: no.

10.

I have only one purpose: to live intensely.

11.

I wish I never met you
and I wish you never left.

You taste like a river in June.

12.

I’m going to say something important. Look at my face. Ignore my eyes. Just listen to me. But listen only to the timbre of my voice, not to what I am saying. They are different. They are two different rooms. The first is an exhibition of despair, the second only an explanation.

The first is all you have to listen to. So listen carefully because I cannot repeat myself:

“Everything/ one suspects to be true/ is true.”

13.

In 1879 a boy is born in Germany. At age five he’d throw a chair at his violin teacher and chase him out. In time he would develop the capacity to withdraw instantaneously from a crowd into loneliness. At twenty-six he would publish his theory of relativity in Annalen der Physik. He looks crazy, but he is certain: there is no aether, no absolute space.

14.

Sometimes they thought it was the words.
What they wanted to say could not be said.

They fixed the TV, vacuumed the rug,
dusted the furniture, looked out the window.

Sometimes she would purposefully lose hold of
a plate and it would smash to the floor.

Then they would have something to say,
only to begin to say it then stop.

15.

Look at this box. It is empty except for a diary, a book, and this picture in my hand. Now look at this picture. It weighs nothing and occupies almost zero space. I can slip it in anywhere and it will fit: inside the diary, under the box, through a crack on the wall. If I tear it several times, it will occupy a different volume, many and various. It mutates, you see. If I burn it, it will smoke into the air. It will take up a whole expanse.

16.

How many more times
are you going to let the world
hurt you?

17.

My father is an incorrigible storyteller. He would tell the same stories in different ways. I wouldn’t know which ones to believe. So I believed all of them. “There is no story that is not true,” said Uchendu.

Father would point at the TV. He would repeat lines, rehearse the beginnings and ends, explicate with his hands the elaborate twists and turns of every road.

He said: “I am dying.”

I said: “But aren’t all of us dying.”

18.

And I thought the world
was about this leaving,
not about anybody’s leaving
but about this leaving.
The next day it was the same.

19.

A beautiful woman walks into a room. The room is dark. There are no windows. There is one light bulb but any time now it will go off. I pretend not to notice and look away, my heart beating against my chest like a club. If I strain hard enough I will hear a song in the background. What other forms of happiness are there than this?

20.

In 1989 the Berlin wall falls down.

21.

I believe in love only when it rains.

22.

To appreciate the value of land, one need only look into a painting: so much beauty. Buying land means buying the layers of beauty directly above it. It means buying the sky above it. And the birds above it, the clouds, the gods.

In truth you are buying a corner of the universe. You are saying: this is my room. You are saying: I live here. Here I exist.

23.

Your sadness is immaterial. You did
not come into the world to be happy.

~

You came to suffer/survive.

24.

How many words have you spoken in your life?
How many did you mean?
How many did you understand?

25.

Somebody picks up a phone. He dials a number. His voice travels a thousand miles into another country. On the other end somebody picks up and hears the voice. Who is this?– This is me. The phone is hung up. The voice travels back a thousand miles.

Elsewhere somebody picks up a phone and before he could dial forgets the number.

26.

Sometimes wars are waged because there are too many people in too few rooms.

27.

Memory is incomplete–lost.
The world is incomplete–vanishing.

Nothing more happens. You open your eyes and it’s over.

Memory is brutal.
Memory is precise.

28.

In the next room people I do not know are talking with hushed voices. Their secret slips out the window like a cat. It is raining, and I press my ear to the wall. I imagine that one of them is smoking a cigarette. I imagine that one of them is covering his mouth in surprise.

29.

When my aunt died the doctors said the fat clogged her arteries. Every week she visited the hospital, and every week the vein on her wrist had to be ripped out so a catheter could be stuck into her body to suck out her blood. You could see the plasma pass through a filter and then back to the body. If you put your ear to her wrist you would hear her heart.

Before my uncle died the heart attacks were so excruciating he said he’d prefer to just die. They transported him to the hospital, and on the way to the emergency room his heart gave. Mother said my uncle ate too much pork and drank too much beer. She wonders if he’s going to be happy in heaven.

30.

In some house in some province in some country in some novel there is a story of a man a father a child a lover who dies because of too much sadness.

31.

Nobody thought that what was wrong was the love.

32.

She said: give me more space.


-- Arkaye Kierulf

Sleeping with One Eye Open

"The dream has gone but the baby is real
Oh, did a good thing
She could have been a poet
Or she could have been a fool
Oh, did a bad thing

And I'm not happy
And I'm not sad."

Quiet Evening

You take my hand; then we’re alone
in the life-threatening forest. Almost immediately

we’re in a house; Noah’s
grown and moved away; the clematis after ten years
suddenly flowers white.

More than anything in the world
I love these evenings when we’re together,
the quiet evenings in summer, the sky still light at this hour.

So Penelope took the hand of Odysseus,
not to hold him back but to impress
this peace on his memory:

from this point on, the silence through which you move
is my voice pursuing you.


-- Louise Glück

Graced: A movie sequence

"You and I 
step into the light
I'm so graced 
That I have this."  

Blindsided

I've been listening to Bon Iver's Blindsided on loop, a track from Justin Vernon's solo debut album For Emma, Forever Ago (2007). Save for Skinny Love, I hadn't bothered to listen to the entire album until now. I guess I wasn't in the mood to wallow in this type of sad bastard music when I first heard Bon Iver in 2010. I was simply not ready for it.

I thought perhaps one has to reach a level of maturity before the pleasure of listening to gloomy music becomes anything more than a masochistic habit. Despite this realization, I knew sadness was a kind of drug. I used it many times to refuse reality without the intent of ever releasing myself from its stupor. It reminded me of lost years; sadness not in knowing I had lost an irretrievable part of my life, but that I did not want to forget whatever it was I had--and yet, already I was slowly forgetting.

Slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory;
speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

- Milan Kundera, "Slowness"

Memory is a fragile thing. Sadness and the tendency to sulk in it is an effort to slow down the passage of time. To play things in repeat is the illusion we give ourselves when we cannot see beyond loss.

The experience of listening to Bon Iver reminded me of the Japanese concepts of wabi, which is finding beauty in sadness, and mono no aware, which is the Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence or "transience of things." Some days I'd just sit here thinking what a great thing it is to feel so small and yet so alive simply by understanding these facts of life.

**Bon Iver means Good Winter in French (Bon Hiver - H in the French language is silent)

For Justin Vernon, the kind of loss he had to go through inexorably produced the melancholic dirge that is For Emma, Forever Ago:

"Following his break-up with his girlfriend at the time, as well as the break-up of his previous band DeYarmond Edison, Justin Vernon, suffering from mononucleosis, secluded himself in a cabin in Medford, Wisconsin for three months planning to "hibernate." Three months of solitude resulted in the creation of For Emma, Forever Ago. "All of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt that had been stockpiled over the course of the past six years, was suddenly purged into the form of song."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Emma,_Forever_Ago)

--

As life would have it, I had the pleasure of sharing the music of Bon Iver to A. He isn't an audiophile like me, but we tend to have similar taste in music. He asked me if "Emma" ever returned to Justin after making such beautiful music for her. A. recalled a friend of ours who had a nine year relationship. The girl broke up with him one day. Gone, just like that. Our friend made a film for this woman, it was shown in many continents, it won praises. And yet--

Why do women do that?

What?

Leave, just like that.

I don't know. 

Would you come back if anyone made you 
something like this?--


I leave things the way they are. Emma could be reminded, but she chose to move on. Justin had to move on in the only way he could.

The Snowmass Cycle

for Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Kurt Brown


1.   RETREAT

The sailor dreamt of loss,
but it was I who dreamt the sailor.
I was landlocked, sea-poor.
The sailor dreamt of a woman
who stared at the sea, then tired
of it, advertised her freedom.
She said to her friend: I want
all the fire one can have
without being consumed by it.
Clearly, I dreamt the woman too.
I was surrounded by mountains
suddenly green after a long winter,
a chosen uprootedness, soul shake-up,
every day a lesson about the vastness
between ecstasy and repose.
I drank coffee called Black Forest
at the local cafe. I took long walks
and tried to love the earth
and hate its desecrations.
All the Golden Retrievers wore red
bandannas on those muttless streets.
All the birches, I think, were aspens.
I do not often remember my dreams,
or dream of dreamers in them.
To be without some of the things
you want, a wise man said,
is an indispensable part of happiness.



2.   MOUNTAIN, SKY

I’ve been paying attention
to the sky again.
I’ve seen a ravine up there,
and a narrow, black gorge.
Not to worry, I tell myself,
about tricks the mind plays,
as long as you know they’re tricks.

If the rich are casually cruel
perhaps it’s because
they can stare at the sky
and never see an indictment
in the shape of clouds.

The frown, for example,
in a thunderhead. The fist.

That big mountain
I’ve been looking at—
I love how it borrows purple
from the filtered light,
sometimes red.

Like any of us
it’s all of its appearances.

It’s good that the rich
have to die,
a peasant saying goes,
otherwise they’d live forever.

Here in this rented house,
high up, I understand.
I’m one of the rich
for a while. The earth feels
mine and the air I breathe
is rarefied, if thin.

Dusk now is making its last claim.
I love the confluence
of dark mountain, dark sky.
Soon I won’t know the beginning
from the end.



3.   HIM

Those empty celebrations of the half-believer
along for the ride.
Those secret words repeated in mirrors—
someone’s personal fog.
A man’s heart ransomed for comfort
or a few extra bucks, his soul in rags.

I have been him and him and him.

Was it nobility or senility
when my old grandmother tried to drown
artificial flowers in the bathtub?

Can only saints carry the load
without talking about the burden?

I want to lean into life,
catch the faintest perfume.

In every boy child an old man is dying.
By middle age
he begins to stink, complain.

I want to have gifts for him
when we finally meet.
I want him to go out like an ancient
Egyptian, surrounded
by what is his, desiring nothing.



4.   DELINEATION AT DUSK

A lost hour, and that animal lassitude
after a vanished afternoon.
Outside: joggers, cyclists.
Motion, the great purifier, is theirs.
If this were Europe someone in a tower
might be ringing a bell.
People hearing it would know
similar truths, might even know
exactly who they are.
It’s getting near drinking time.
It’s getting near getting near;
a person alone conjures rules
or can liquefy, fall apart.
That woman with the bouffant—
chewing gum, waiting for the bus—
someone thinks she’s beautiful.
It’s beautiful someone does.
The sky’s murmuring, the storm
that calls you up,
makes promises, never comes.
Somewhere else, no doubt,
a happy man slicing a tomato,
a woman with a measuring cup.
Somewhere else: the foreclosure
of a feeling or a promise,
followed by silence or shouts.
Here, the slow dance of contingency,
an afternoon connected to an evening
by a slender wish. Sometimes absence
makes the heart grow sluggish
and desire only one person, or one thing.
I am closing the curtains.
I am helping the night.



5.   SOLITUDE

A few days ago I stopped looking
at the photographs
clustered on the wall, nudes,
which had become dull to me,
like a tourist’s collection of smooth rocks.

I turned away from the view
and conjured a plague of starlings.
Oh how they darkened the landscape.

Surely such beauty had been waiting for its elegy.
I felt like crushing a rhododendron.

Now and again I feel the astonishment
of being alive like this, in this body,
the ventricles and the small bones
in the hand, the intricacies of digestion ....

When the radio said parents in California
gave birth to another child
so that their older child might have
a bone-marrow transplant and live,

I found myself weeping
for such complicated beauty.
How wonderful the radio
and its distant, human voices.

The rain now is quite without consequence
coming down.

I suppose I’ve come to the limits
of my paltry resources, this hankering
for people and for massive disturbance,
then high pressure,
the sequence that’s been promised for days.

I will long to be alone
when my friends arrive.



6.   THE BODY WIDENS

The body widens, and people are welcomed
into it, many at a time. This must be
what happens when we learn to be generous
when we’re not in love, or otherwise charmed.
I’ve been examining yesterday’s ashes. I’ve visited
my own candleless altar. Little by little,
the old selfish parts of me are loosening.
I have a plan for becoming lean: to use
all my fat in service of expansion. Have women
always known this? Loveliness and fear
when they open and let in and give away?
The mountains here pierce the sky,
and the sky, bountiful, closes in around them.



7.   A NEW MOUTH

Give me a new mouth; I want to talk.
I’ve been watching the spider mend its web.
I think I’ve learned something
about architecture from a swallow.
Excuse me while I separate the nettles
from the flowers, while I put my nose
to the black moist smell of earth
and come up smiling. Somewhere in the world
is the secret name
for God, many-lettered, unpronounceable.
             There’s a speakable grace
in the fields and even in the cities.
The grapes ripen, someone refuses to become
a machine. And yet I want to talk
about the worn-out husks of men and women
returning from the factories,
the venereal streets, the bruise history
passes down to its forlorn children.
    I need a new mouth to acknowledge
that piety will keep us small, imprisoned,
that it’s all right to be ridiculous
and sway first to the left, then to the right,
in order to find our balance.
                                  I’ve been watching
an evening star quiver. I’ve been trying
to identify the word before its utterance.
Give me a new mouth and I’ll be
a guardian against forgetfulness.
I’ve noticed the wind doesn’t discriminate
between sycamore and cypress.
I want to find the cool, precise language
for how passion gives rise to passion.



8.   STRANGER

The wind gone. I can hear my breathing.
I can hear the lateness of the hour
by what isn’t moving.

Woodrun Slope. Snowmass Village.
These are winter names, and it’s summer.
The water from the mountains
rushes down man-made gullies.

Serious phantoms with their black tears
are out tonight.
I’m close—my other delusion goes—
to the heart of things.

A young man with a young man’s itch
would rise and go out prowling.

Tomorrow I’ll choose a mountain
that’s a hill, take the slowest horse
at the Lazy-7, slow and old,
sure to know its trail.

I knew a man who said he could dominate
solitude. In other ways, too,
he was a fool.

Once I wanted to be
one of those fabulous strangers
who appear and disappear.
Now I arrive only by invitation,
stay long enough to earn my fare.

Outside my window, clouds from the west
erasing the stars.
A coyote howling its singular news.

At whatever pace,
isn’t there an imperative to live?

Before a person dies he should experience
the double fire,
of what he wants and shouldn’t have.


-- Stephen Dunn

The Bank Heist Theme

Feel Good. Always.

Against Drowning

2013

*Quoted lyrics from Lykke Li, “Love out of Lust” 
2011 album "Wounded Rhymes" Atlantic Records

I can take bullets to the heart

Tove Lo on loop. My friend says she's that wasted girlfriend you can always count on. You can tell her everything and she will never judge you. 

I'm not a fan of Hunger Games (I haven't even watched the films to be honest), this video just happens to play the best version of this song online.


   

Love it when I'm play-pretending 
When I can take bullets to the heart 
Fucking up my happy ending 
But I can take bullets to the heart..

Burning Books

This is not about Bradbury’s novel, but it does have a great deal to do with governing institutions and how their powers dictate whose books are read by the world or left to rot in drawers. 

If he were to will it, A. would rather have books by brilliant writers—who perished before they were widely appreciated—burned to never be read by the public again. He believes publishers and everyone today do not deserve to read such great works of literature. The way he sees it, our society continues to propagate the same system that rejects poets and novelists that create important and revolutionary books. 

Think about it, every century has a roster of maligned geniuses way ahead of their time. A. finds it hypocritical and pretentious that the "same" institutions, critics, writers, academics, publishers (publishers most especially) even have the gall to laud these dead writers today. Not everyone forgets how all they ever did was reject and throw scathing remarks at these writers when they were alive.

One such extreme case is that of novelist John Kennedy Toole, the author of “A Confederacy of Dunces” (which I've yet to read). Toole approached many publishers to accept his manuscript yet none of them could understand his brand of tragicomedy. As history had it, presses didn’t bother to give him a chance. When frustration and depression finally took its toll on the young writer, Toole committed suicide in 1969 (he was 32). Upon learning this, A.’s exact words were “How could the world do that?—He died thinking he was a horrible writer.”

Struck by grief, Toole’s mother continued to submit his manuscript to various publishers. With the help of his friend writer Walker Percy, “A Confederacy of Dunces” was finally published in 1980, almost twenty years after Toole’s death. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and is now revered as one of the most a canonical works of modern literature about the Southern United States.

http://www.jktoole.com

http://thebooklion.files.wordpress.com

Another case: Herman Melville's popular classic “Moby-Dick” (also another book I’ve yet to enjoy) was not well-received when it was first published in 1851. It gone out of print by the time Melville passed away in 1891. Nevertheless, today it is considered a brilliant classic and one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century.

--

Yes, it’s possible to be a writer and not be read in your lifetime. I can go on and on about writers who didn’t enjoy much recognition for their masterpieces. Try to find “The Monk” by British novelist and dramatist Matthew Gregory Lewis and you’ll marvel at one of the finest gothic novels written in the English language. If you’ve ever come across works by Chinese poet Li-Po (also known as Li  Bai, some say he’s arguably more brilliant than Tu Fu, but unlike Tu Fu, he wasn’t popular when he was alive), French poet Charles Baudelaire, and American poet Emily Dickenson (who probably just published 3 poems in her life), then you stumbled upon treasures that humanity almost shunned and never found. 

We devour one book after another and yet we don’t know how much suffering some of these writers had to endure while they were alive. 

A. maintains that none of us deserve to know of such beauty; if the world truly wanted to help its writers, it should reward them while they are living. In an ideal world, institutions should help keep artists from going poor and hungry. Perhaps in another universe there must be a Xanadu where artists can stay true to their craft without being neglected and shunned by society. But at the same time, somewhere in my heart I know one cannot produce great art by staying in a “place of comfort." It is the fate of artists and writers to understand human suffering well enough to create art.

Drinking Alone by Moonlight by Li Bai

A. said to me, “Do you agree? If I were to have it, society should burn these books! We don’t deserve them.”

He, WE, feel strongly about this issue, though I took the opposite position: I said no.

I understood how A. felt. As writers, we scoff at the idea of powerful institutions that publish minor works over books that have the potential to stand the test of time. If it were to happen to him, A. would choose to keep his book to himself—this is how he shows defiance, this is his way of rejecting the world that continues to drive true writers and artists mad.

“But that wouldn’t be right,” I said to him. “I would however keep them away from the publishers who rejected them. It's wrong how they continue to earn more just by reprinting their works.”

--

It’s not this generation’s fault many authors were not read when they were alive. The existence of beautiful books by neglected writers are a testament to the injustice that pervades the publishing and writing enterprise (I say this exactly because I believe it mustn’t be driven exclusively by capitalism).

If more people read these books, whether they write masterpieces or not, their lives will be richer for it. It is also my hope that a good reader may be inspired to continue writing important literary work. Who knows, perhaps some of them can even change the goddamn system. It’s a long shot, but it has to start somewhere.

Mindfulness

Tonight's reminder 💌🙏 Very timely words of wisdom, indeed. #chinesefortunecards thanks, Arnie!

To the Dead

What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll

see each other again,--

. . . and again reach the VEIN

in which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed.

There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--

. . . for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,

once we'd been battered by the gorilla

we searched the walls, the intricately carved
impenetrable paneling

for a button, lever, latch

that unlocks a secret door that
reveals at last the secret chambers,

CORRIDORS within WALLS,

(the disenthralling, necessary, dreamed structure
beneath the structure we see,)

that is the HOUSE within the HOUSE . . .

There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--

. . . there were (for example) months when I seemed only
to displease, frustrate,

disappoint you--; then, something triggered

a drunk lasting for days, and as you
slowly and shakily sobered up,

sick, throbbing with remorse and self-loathing,

insight like ashes: clung
to; useless; hated . . .

This was the viewing of the power of the waters

while the waters were asleep:--
secrets, histories of loves, betrayals, double-binds

not fit (you thought) for the light of day . . .

There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--

. . . for, there at times at night, still we
inhabit the secret place together . . .

Is this wisdom, or self-pity?--

The love I've known is the love of
two people staring

not at each other, but in the same direction.

-- Frank Bidart

Sing 'cause you don't know how to say it

There's been a lot of talk of love
But that don't amount to nothing
You can evoke the stars above
But that doesn't make it something

And the only way to last
And the only way to live it
Is to hold on when you get love,
And let go when you give it, give it.

If I'm frightened, if I'm high
It's my weakness please forgive it
At least I hold on when I get love,
And I let go when I give it.

At the World's End

Tonight I laid my head on his chest listening to his constant heart. He strokes my hair to sleep yet I remain wakeful. I hold him as he holds me in his dreams.

In a few hours the sun, glinting windows, heat--on a new day I will be the first person in his life.

If the world had ended, we were exactly where we needed to be.

Exposures

I came across an article on Time Magazine about photographer Melissa Spitz. Her work involved making her mother the main subject of her photographs. I’m sure photographing parents or family members and elevating their portraits into art isn’t unheard of, but what makes Spitz’s work a bit different has drawn mixed opinions and reactions from people who have learned about her objective.

According to Time, Spitz has spent the last six years documenting her mentally ill mother through photography. She explains in the interview: “There are people who think I exploited my mom, and think that I’m doing something wrong, and then there’re people who think I’m doing something very important.”

Now, I think some people don’t really mind becoming public subjects as long as they agree with the kind of representation artists render. In Spitz case, her mother asked to be photographed until she told her to go all out with her life. She even admitted to feeling bad about it at first, but it eventually helped them bond again even with her mother's condition.

Those who think Spitz is taking advantage of her mother to “put up another art show” may be too quick to judge. I believe much of art’s content is greatly affected by what concerns the artist. The work can later on possess transformative powers for the audience as well as the artist who created it. Spitz states in the same interview: “[T]he work was a conversation that was not only me watching her but also an echo of how I feel about living and dealing with her.” Spitz isn’t just putting up strange photographs in the guise of raising awareness for mental patients. What’s it like, really? By doing this, she attempts to demonstrate how it is to be patient and strong for a family member struck with mental illness.

I think what society criticizes is the unapologetic exhibition of the private life, more so when a person is ill or disadvantaged because it is largely seen as a helpless person who did not have a say in the matter, who’s just another subject for media consumption until the next interesting and unusual thing comes along. A person may be offended when they’re photographed or captured in a video because 1) they don’t have control over how they are represented 2) because someone has invaded their privacy 3) along with a number of other privacy and public space issues (because of the arbitrary some-things-are-just-inappropriate-for-the-viewing public).

People sympathize with the notion that someone might be stealing moments from a person’s most vulnerable disposition to be later looked at closely by the public. Those who "exploit" do this to grab people’s attentions, and perhaps to even make some money (though I doubt Spitz is making any real money out of this project). While I understand this point, I would like to maintain my openness to art and whatever form it might take. I also believe a closer look is exactly what it demands.

--

I’m quite a reserved individual myself. For someone attempting to write and publish, I have almost zero exposure. I understand the need for privacy and value my personal space. For a while I even thought this fear of exposing myself has kept me from writing about subjects that mattered to me. Because in the age of Facebook, Instagram, Viber, not to mention annoying aunts, uncles, and acquaintances that always manage to tell me what I should and should not believe, sometimes I just don’t want to have an opinion anymore (such is the adult experience, you realize some of the people you’ve known can be quite imposing). To add to that, I admit I’m almost always afraid of being wrong 90% of the time. It can really kill critical thinking and sound thinking in general.

The air of indifference surrounding these social (media) interactions just drove me further into silence. They have a tendency to seem like announcements; nobody listens really, many of them don't feel like real conversations. As a result, I made my online accounts private, used pseudonyms, logged in less, and only added friends I felt safe to interact with.

Writing provides me with a space for myself. It’s tough to keep that space from being infected by the world outside (distractions are everywhere). I try to write because it keeps me focused enough to think for myself. If it’s one thing I’ve been struggling with, it has always been balancing how much of myself I can expose and retain from my work. I’ve been told to disclose more, that I’ve too much restraint. I still keep asking: up to what point should I reveal of myself?

When I write, it’s strangely with the thought that I wish to somehow disappear in my work. I guess what I’ve been looking for isn’t myself but something beyond myself. All this time all I might be hoping for is to see through the world beyond mine and what I already know.

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I worked for a television show when I was a young graduate a few years ago. In one of my assignments, I booked an interview with a female fashion photographer named Sarah Black. I recall it was for an episode which featured various Filipino women in the art, fashion, business and entertainment industry. My producer couldn’t make it for some reason so I ended up conducting the interview myself.

I was with our cameraman kuya Randy, who apparently won an award for shooting a documentary that I did not know of at the time. I was the production newbie, and in those days, co-workers hardly told me anything about the job. I had to know things for myself.

When it came to shoot stand-ups, which are basically action shots of the subject, kuya Randy wanted to take as much footage as possible. He probably takes over three hours of footage for each segment with only ten to thirteen minutes edited into the show. Anyway, that’s how shooting usually works (at least from my brief stint in local TV). The truth is people behind the camera never have enough beautiful subjects and satisfying angles, shots, lighting, and time. They breathe all these elements. Taking a shot is like a reflex action to them. They can’t miss that moment.

When kuya Randy motioned to shoot more stand-ups, Sarah Black began feeling uncomfortable. She asked if it was necessary for him to take so many shots at various angles doing different things at certain positions. I found this to be quite odd knowing she was a photographer. But I quickly sensed she was too familiar with this routine, that when the lenses were turned on her, she felt the urge to hide. That was the thing, she agreed to be interviewed, but suddenly felt self-conscious when the camera pried on her. We moved from shooting a professional interview to suddenly taking parts of her that she didn’t consent to.

I could empathize with Miss Black’s unease, I actually even felt embarrassed because it was as if we betrayed her trust. It didn’t take long before I told kuya Randy to stop filming. I would have allowed the shoot to continue if Miss Sarah showed signs of openness, but she kept her cover. I reasoned we had interviewed Miss Black before so we could just use the old footage in the archives. I let the reticent photographer fly out but not without double takes of her hazel-gray eyes and long raven hair.

On the way back to our office, kuya Randy schooled me on how to never stop a shoot even if the subject was starting to feel uneasy. After x number of years in the field, he said that looking closer and longer is one way to show how beautiful something is. He explained that their vulnerability made them more real. He then talked about how he shot a documentary about a disabled child. I won't go into further detail, but he believed the documentary won an award because people were moved by the child's loathsome condition. Kuya Randy's exact words were naaawa sila sa bata. 

I personally sneer at the business of poorly manipulating people's emotions. At the same time, I learned that invasion of privacy constitutes the quest for truth. I'm sure the said documentary raised awareness. I just really hope more people and institutions helped the child after the story was aired. Was it a form of exploitation by the media? Were they merely being a good journalistic team? I have mixed feelings about this, it obviously isn't my cup of tea.

Being disrespectfully invasive wasn't the way I wanted to do my job. I still didn’t agree with kuya Randy, I maintained my position even when the producer gave me hell for it in the next couple of days. 

I value my personal space just as much as I respect another's. I thought there was no way I could uphold this while working with local media (I don't know how other journalists do it, but it requires careful handling). Right then, I knew I’d pack up in search for a new job a few months later. I wasn't cut out to have a career in Philippine Media. And I don't believe it's necessary to reveal more, especially under tawdry lights you couldn’t control.