Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World, by Jane Hirschfield

If the gods bring you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.

Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.

Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.

Treat it as you yourself
would be treated,
brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.

And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant--

Stroke the white throat,
the heavy, trembling dewlaps
you'd come to believe were yours,
and plunge in the knife.

Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling.
That you came to love it, that was the gift.

Let the envious gods take back what they can.

--------------
This poem, found here.

Poets Brenda Shaughnessy and Craig Morgan Teicher talk about their marriage, parenthood, and their son

Those who know a bit of my life will know why this interview is meaningful to me. And it comes at the right time too--as one of my present teachers has been encouraging? insisting? that I "break my heart until it opens" (those, being Rumi's words, not my teacher's--but you get the picture).

Thanks to Andrew Ty for tweeting about the interview.

Kindness,

because there is so little of it in the world--or at least, so little of it that I used to see;

though other people would rather you were unkind, think this is the price of art, or excellence.

Say what you will. I reject the proposition that this is an end-sum game.

This weekend

...was full of stressful things, including a close family member rushed to the hospital; a couple of blown fuses at home; and grade school examinations (to be honest, one of my least favorite chores is to tutor S for these tests). Worse, I caught a cold some time between tearful Thursday and fidgety Friday. I took the morning off on Friday to do the things I used to do before I decided to attend graduate school (mainly, follow poetry links on the interwebs). And just like that, I think I have thought my way out of certain craft questions about, well, poems--the ones I tend to like, and why I like them (and of course, corollary to this, why I don't prefer other works). At least I now have a working language of what seems to work for me.

Now to gather the requisite colors for the proverbial paint box.

As they say, chos.

Mothers' day, last year

Salagdoong Beach, Maria, Siquijor; where I was the only mother in the party, and even then, just barely--the child, being safely back home in the faraway city, a plane-ride away. The relief of being in the sea and not looking out and watching over someone else; and the guilt, yes, the crushing guilt of being elsewhere, and other. 

Books for breakfast

My Hollywood, by Mona Simpson

---------
I thought Claire was tedious, petty, and so completely boring. But playing this character off Lola (yes, 'lola', in Filipino, 'grandmother'--not Low-lah, though the non-Filipino characters would have pronounced it that way) made for an interesting and poignant (toward the end) book. I appreciate that it was, at all, written.

I did have trouble with time shifts, especially in the first half or so--but maybe this was because the point was to make Claire seem sort of unhinged by everything?

In spite of running the text through 'Elma Dayrit' (to whom the book is dedicated) and 'Denise Cruz', the diction of Lola and the other Fil-Ams was pretty uneven in parts--early on, Lola actually waxes poetic (too obviously the author's hand), when in parts, she sounded like a Chinese amah. Also, Lola was supposedly from a really well educated family (which lost its money some-when) but her grammar and syntax (particularly in the beginning of "Lola" chapters) indicated someone from a less affluent background (but by the middle of the chapter, the diction changes yet again, supported by words, grammar, and syntax that are more mainstream, less "immigrant". Even as someone thinks that "the greatest innovation" of this novel is Lola's "invented...patois" (here--except for this, I agree with most of the points in this review) I agree with this other reviewer that this "invention" comes off as patronizing. (Note to would-be authors: Doing a Junot Diaz is a tough challenge--particularly if you're drawing up a character who is not of your own ethnicity. Attempt at your own risk.)

Is it unfair to demand this type of authenticity? It feels like this is a minor quibble. Because the feel of the rest of the text--the sense of relationship between employer and employee, the interior lives of Claire and Lola, these do feel authentic, and by the last third of the text, I find myself weeping in parts. I do have a feeling that Simpson had done the best research she could, and was ultimately truthful. It seemed to me that the project was one that aimed to create connections and understanding between two cultures (one, if you read this as an American novel) and I think it succeeded.

I wonder what Oscar Campomanes thinks/would think about this novel. ;)

Other reviews that put this novel squarely in the category of "nanny fiction"--yes, apparently it's pretty big over there-- here and here.

There's a preview on Scribd. Dead-tree version available at Powerbooks Megamall.

So this is what's left after cutting out all the things that matter to me

The engine broke down yesterday morning and wept copious tears, in public, yes, at the place where the little one attended (now used to attend) swimming lessons. (I don't know how other mothers manage the 'hood.) And so S & I repaired to the mall for noodles (food) and some shopping--not pointless shopping, mind you, but shopping for a rashguard for mommy and a swimming-noodle and kickboard for the little one. For I had made my mind up to make up for the morning's storm in a teacup by finding a pool that would let us in, dammit, even if we haven't really learned to swim yet, after 10 days (well, 9--we took a day off). 


The pool shared by Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn are closed to the public and are for the exclusive use of guests. To the credit of the Holiday Inn's front desk, the staff actually began an internet search for the nearest pool open to the public. The pool at the Renaissance Convention Center (formerly the Marikina Hotel) is being leased by the Bert Lozada Swim School and is therefore closed to the public even as the swim classes haven't started, and the BLSS presence there today was a single lady under a tent by the pool under the hot, hot sun. (The Convention Center administrative office shooed us away and toward that woman, when we had asked whether or not we could use the pool.) The Marikina Sports Center Swimming Pool, we were told, is closed on Mondays, but we saw seven people horsing around in the water. The water did not appear very clean. A man who insinuated he was one of the lifeguards said that they had already cleaned the pool--but had not yet added the 'gamot'. We ended up at another facility in the place where our woes began. We had been under the impression that said facility was open only on holidays and weekends--but this, we were told, was not the case. It was open everyday in the summer, for anyone willing to shell out a certain amount of cash (not big; the cost of swimming at the Marikina Sports Center)--for so long as there were no swim classes being held at said facility. And so we had our little swim, and will be back, rashguard, noodle, and all.

Books for Breakfast

The Matisse Stories, by A.S. Byatt
--------------------------------------------

As much about anger as they are about art. And all realist, too. Thank you, A.S. Byatt.

(NYT Review, circa 1995, here.)

--------------------------------------------

Hasn't been an easy summer. Very, very, hot.

Maybe I am just worried about the annual echocardiogram scheduled this weekend. Wish us luck.

This afternoon

The little one finally caught on and does bubbles well. After 4 days of swimming lessons. Important skill, as it helps her keep warm and prevents her from turning blue in the water after the 30 min. mark.

Must remember this. There are bad days, and there are good days. This is one of the good ones.

Days turned wordless by

...rot and renewal, grief and wonder.

On our way to an organic farm with the Good Food Community (see previous post), I received the news that Sr. Teresita Canivel, MIC, had passed on April Fool's Day, at 2:02 am. 

"So typical of her," my former English teacher Ms. Teresita Sia said, "To leave without a fuss." She spent only two days in the ICU, which cost P22,000 a night. "Her body had long given up, but it was her will power that kept her going." She probably thought it was time to go instead of hang around at such great cost to the school she loved so much, the school she had tirelessly solicited funds for (and did so much more besides, but it would be pointless to enumerate each, as one need only see the school today and know every part of it was touched by her goodness). 

When I last saw her, she was worrying about DepEd's K-12 plans, because she was afraid it might require more classrooms for the school. "Where will I build them," she asked, "On my head?" She was reading through a sheaf of papers on K-12. The school seems to have sorted all that out already--which is probably why she thought it was a good time to go. The body had given up long ago;  only the spirit kept going. 

Past 80, and a survivor of breast cancer, Sr. Tere was like a mother to me. She always made me feel loved and accepted, no matter how different we saw things. When I was with her, I always felt understood. And I suppose I wasn't the only one that felt that way. This last year, we joked with each other all the time. I made her laugh, and this made both of us feel good. She had a great sense of humor. Which is probably why she also thought it made sense to leave on April Fool's Day. 

Marking time

...by putting it down, here, that today (yesterday, already, maybe) I attended my last class of the semester. If all goes well (I have four stories to revise within the next 2 weeks), I'd have completed 12 units out of 24 units of course work, and will be able to move to proposing and working on the thesis (6 units) by second semester, 2012.

At the end of the semester, I am still sure of this: Going back to school was one of the best decisions I've made in life, so far.

Seeing

So.

The draft of the poetics essay has been written, and comments obtained, mainly from someone I respect very, very much.  And he identified the thing that made me increasingly uncomfortable while I was completing the draft (even though I didn't mention it): That is: To write as I do now is a good thing, but it has remained insular. If I truly believe that writing helps me escape from my ego, I haven't really been able to escape it completely, or even very well.

I think this is partly due to the fact I didn't have the skill to write about the other, or about things that matter. But, as it turns out, it is also because I doubt I can be able to write persuasively from an other's point of view. This would be a failure in imagination, wouldn't it? And the reason behind this failure to imagine is a decision not to attempt to find a way of re-imagining one's reality (which is all in one's head).

The classes in psychological realism in fiction have helped me move beyond the place where I started writing (which is the concern of a particular mind). And this entire experience of studying creative writing might actually help me engage with society instead of continually failing to do so.

It's funny how writing continually reveals to me the weaknesses in my own thinking and behavior, and pushes me toward confronting them, once and for all.

Disjointed thoughts over breakfast

Yesterday, we took up Graham Greene's The Basement. Chary Lucero confessed that it had been the story that had pulled her back to write something after 20 years of silence. All those 20 years spent raising children.

During this period of silence, NVM Gonzales had pulled her aside one day and asked, "Why aren't you writing?" And she said, "I can't seem to write like you anymore." NVM said, "There's only one NVM Gonzales."

It was obvious she treasured that encounter, because NVM was, in his own way, telling her, "There's only one of you, Chary Lucero."

The punchline, as she took it was: "Write like yourself."

But it also meant, "You'll never write like me, NVM Gonzales."

*
The more I think about it, the more I realize that many "established writers"where I come from go through a period of silence. Yesterday, Chary Lucero's confession; a few weeks back, Butch Dalisay's (before writing the noir story he shared with our class, he said he'd been silent for 10 years or so.) Maybe many established writers around the world go through that too (ex. Louise Gluck; George Oppen).

But I wonder whether people here stop writing not only because they are busy raising money or children, but because establishment has elevated the activity of writing into a kind of high art that only a rare breed of individuals can practice--simply because these are the people who have proven themselves worthy of practicing this art. That the only kind of writing that's acceptable--that's literature--is to write "like NVM".

So that those who can't seem to write like NVM simply give up. And raise money or children or plant camote instead.

Good for Chary Lucero that NVM was able to tell her what he did.

But what about the others who aren't so lucky?

*

"It's the natural law of attrition." -- That's what my supervisor at the law firm said, when I mentioned that some new graduates were worried about the firm's high turnover rate.  The unspoken assumption being that the ones who remained were the best (the smartest, the most competent, the most hardworking) and most deserving--the ones who bail out weren't worthy of remaining in the firm, or making partner.

But see, the ones who do remain are not necessarily the best or most deserving--only the ones who were perceived to serve the firm's interests best. Some of the really good lawyers opted out, unable to take the internal politics, the law firm "culture" that demanded face time in addition to office hours, that deified the woman lawyer who goes to office even as she is already in labor (true story; held up as a model to be emulated).

Every associate serves the firm's interest by making money for the firm. Where I used to work, each associate was required to turn in at least 7.5 billable hours of work everyday (I usually turned in 4 or 5 hours more than that)--which doesn't seem like much, but is, when you factor in the time one needed to waste to instruct your secretary or the messenger, chit-chat with office mates over lunch, or with a lonely law-firm partner in need of comfort, or attend one of those  endless non-billable meetings you were required to attend for "professional development"--things you needed to do to build friends and allies within the firm. And you needed those allies. Otherwise, it would take you 13 instead of 6 years to make partner. If you ever got to be partner at all. (Some who stay on never do.)

*
But what purpose does it serve to facilitate such attrition when writing is concerned? To make it seem that everyone ought to write like NVM Gonzales, or not write at all? Whose interest does it serve to get rid of the beginners who seem like so much dead weight?

I suppose nature has its own wisdom, and one simply follows the natural law. Let only the fittest survive.

But what if the old law office is neither efficient nor effective?  What to do with voices that do not fit, but require guidance, nevertheless?

What if the establishment churns out brilliant writers, who then stop writing, silenced by the establishment's demands, and their own interior discomfort with the system?

The assumption that those who stop writing are weak and never were meant to write in the first place might just be as flawed.

*

What do you want from me? the teacher asks the troublesome student, What?

*
From where I stand, most students seem to be interested in figuring out his or her (writing) intentions. What am I trying to say? Am I saying it effectively?  There will always be something in canon that resembles their latent desire, their hidden intention--but they do not realize it yet.

And so I wonder whether it is the best way to browbeat young writers into believing they cannot write literature--I suspect many of them are not thinking about themselves as writers-of-literature. Most likely, they are only thinking of learning how to do something they love (or read and enjoy). Some are more advanced or ambitious than others. But I believe this (learning how to write, because they love writing) is the starting point.

*
But I suppose, if you are already in a graduate studies program for creative writing, you ought to be concerned about writing literature. The school is the cradle of establishment, after all.

That, or you're interested in subverting establishment, and are on some strange quest to know it intimately first (know its weaknesses, etc. etc.). But there is always a risk that before you can even do this, you'll be eaten alive by the very monster you are trying to subvert. Besides, it's too much effort, requires too much time. Who has the time or energy to wage a guerilla war? Why even do that? We are all already dying. Better to spend the rest of our days making the stuff we believe in, creating the things we love.

*

A guerilla war. It's pointless when your starting point is love--love for literature, love for creating through the written word. It saddens me when pedagogy couches even the act of writing, the vocation of writing, the craft of writing, in terms of war--in the language of natural law.

Thoughts for breakfast

Woke up thinking that I haven't started writing poetry yet, that everything that had gone before, everything that I had written thus far (and especially of late) are only finger exercises: How does one cut a line? What does one do with metaphor? How does one manipulate syntax? Voice? Play with a multitude of voices? With points of view?

And I felt this a beautiful, liberating thing: The thought that I had never before written poetry, the feeling that it is possible that the true poems will come, and that they are coming soon (hopefully; parang sine).

I suppose I always knew this, which is why I am putting myself through school at this stage in my life--school, being, not an institution, but the time and space to listen and read and think, to consider the thoughts of those who have gone before you, and those with whom you find yourself on this, well, journey.

Likewise, I think I now see how much more can be demanded from fiction, and what needs to be done to create not just stories, but great stories--none of which I have been able to do as yet. (Hopefully, I persevere and learn enough to do just that one day.)

And that, too, is a wonderful realization. 

To be at the beginning, and knowing this. To be at the beginning and finally getting a view of what you're up against. 

To be ready, at last, to begin, without ever having stop the writing that has been and is already taking place.

In other words: I am such a nerd.

The mean reds

Only the third day of January, and here they are, lurking where you least expect it.

Having realized one is not doing what one is interested in doing; that one has been doing what one is not interested in doing.

Having realized one has wasted one's time, when there is so little time left to waste.

Oh well. Must keep moving forward.

And once again, begin.

The Cryptic Album (and in the end, it's all about why I want to go back to school)

Side A
1. Down with some kind of illness (a kind of flu it seems), and you wonder why your health is suffering, when you've downshifted. But let's face it: Just because you've said no to relatively big bucks and are doing work for charity, mostly, does not mean you aren't under stress. There are deadlines to meet and toxic people to deal with.

2. You've been losing sleep, beating story deadlines amid everything else. Who knew fiction could be hazardous to your health?

3. Yes, there are a number of things that have made you sad these past few days. Just because you have to weather them doesn't mean they don't cause you stress.

4. The weather's been horrible.

Side B
1. Lately I've been spending time with my daughter at her school. She's become a bit bigger now, and isn't as sick as she used to be. When I fetched her today, I saw a few high school girls resting after basketball practice, so beautiful in their languid youthfulness. And for a little while I entertained the thought that my daughter would become like these beautiful creatures one day, one day soon.

2. I did not have the luxury of imagining that, all those years since the day she was born. But now, I wonder if it is good, this new ability to imagine, this pleasure, this hope.

3. One of the things that has saddened me these past few days relates to thinking and doing. Or at least the discourse proceeds as though these things were binary opposites and mutually exclusive from each other. I've been turning over, in my mind: What is the response that ought to be given by someone who finds this issue important? I find I don't have the words yet,the considered opinion to say anything more than (at this point): Thought is important; indeed, one must always think about what one does and does not do, and why. And the funny thing is: I cannot separate the act-of-doing from the act-of-thinking.

(I recognize this is probably because of my particular background and history. And that I might be using words (i.e., "thinking") and categories that mean other things in other contexts (or the context in which the term is used in a particular discourse.  I hate that communication risks miscommunication. But it is what it is.)

4. The reason why I intend to go back to school (now that I can put myself and my daughter through school) is that I want the time and psychic space to think about the things that interest, and are important to me. I wonder whether there are new ways to see and talk about establishment, which, truth to tell, intimidated my younger self. There are questions about nation and the self, and the act of doing-that-thing-that-is-the-subject-of-this-discourse, and how they all can come together and help us all imagine a collective future that is different from the stock images that hold us in thrall.

For example: DAMASO!

Isn't there a better way of imagining/thinking about THAT issue?

And maybe I am changing the course of my life partly because I feel that the field where I was (still am) operates on the basis of precedent--what has gone before; things are more rigid there, even when one deals in "reform".  The field has gifted me with plenty, including, I must say, the discipline to think things through (and to edit well, once comments are given).

But I want to work more closely with imagination and thought; to become better skilled at thinking, and (hopefully) the act of imaginative writing. Not that there's any assurance that the world will become a better place because of these attempts. I'm not that great a thinker to begin with, anyhow. ("You're a fuzzy thinker," my labor law professor once told me. Yes, "fuzzy", not "fussy"; Or, as my writing teacher told me, "nagsusulat-kutob"--the writing's intuitive, rather than clean and logical; and I've always wondered whether that, to this particular teacher, was a good thing.)

5. But what matters is what one does to fulfill the project one is given. And one's project is not necessarily another's. There was a beautiful story that was taken up during the first LitCritters' session I'd attended, and it pretty much describes how I see the situation:

"As you see I do not, as I see, you disdain. It is big enough."

6. There's more to say, but I'm afraid I speak from a different context, one that relates to the concerns of a certain age, and, well, having a child (which changes the way you see life completely, I now realize). For the most part, I've been an outsider. And an outsider's opinion rarely matters anyway.

7.  I hope I get well soon. I don't like it much when I ramble.

Changing my life with a wave of [my] hand

So.

A slew of people are leaving for further studies abroad. Today, in particular, a beloved teacher flew off to New York. Tomorrow, a friend from last summer leaves for Baltimore.

Today I turned in an application for grad school. Although I'm not leaving the country, the application is the first formal step away from life as I know it.

The entrance exam takes place on my birthday.

Wish me luck.