I remember walking the streets of Manila one early morning so many years ago, heading towards my preferred destination that day when I chanced upon a sight that I thought only existed in movies and in the news broadcast that we see on television.

In a parked utility vehicle were two children of about two or three years old, perhaps brothers, playing giddily after waking up, as children always do when they wake up together with their siblings from night sleep. I had questions again in mind similar to the ones I had when was in the jitney with the old man wearing unpaired slippers. This questioning mind runs always in times like these.

Was it their vehicle that they were using as a roof in the coldest of the night? I examined the clothes they were wearing and they were dirty and tattered and the things upon them were likewise. They could not have possibly owned that costly vehicle.

Why would they sleep on the streets? Are their parents with them? I looked around and I could not see any older person around. I looked further and I could see a woman in tattered clothes also, about fifty years old in age, walking towards my direction and I proceeded to go about my concern. It was so early in the morning that the streets were not yet filled with people going about their daily chores and duties. As I walked away from the children, my mind was still heavy with questions. Why would they really sleep in the streets? The answer was of course very obvious--they do not have the proper roof on their heads. They are so poor that they could not afford to have a respectable shelter, so foolish of me then not to see this fact so quickly.

Deeper went my thoughts that I reckoned it is not merely the absence or presence of money that we ask why there are still people living in the streets. Why are they asserting themselves in urban areas when there are so many rural lands to settle and where there would be enough soil to grow food from and water is ever flowing in streams, and there would be natural materials to build a house made of natural resources, like that of thatches?

I could say that a house can be made of things that are made of wood and/or thatches and if money is more than substantial, you could build a house from concrete and steel, a more pleasant one.

Or you could build a house completely on thatches. There are materials that grow from the ground, the abacas and coconut leaves grow from the soil and this Earth has them in abundance. Soil is not like gold or platinum, minerals that are so rare to find. They are so common that in every step we make, there is soil. Where did all the soil go if there are people who could not grow their own food and harvest the materials to build a house? When there is soil to till, even if it comes in lesser mass, no one could go hungry. As the Chinese adage says, “I have one mouth to feed and two hands to feed it”.

Perhaps, many lands today (the arable and accessible lands) have become the dominion of some and not of the masses like they were centuries ago. We may castigate the poor for asserting themselves in urban areas—in languid and filthy slums, where jobs are scarce and life is too difficult-- just like the people living in the streets. But where would they go if all the lands were already of dominion of some merely, where a single person or family owns sometimes thousands and thousands of acres of arable land. Where there are those who call themselves farmers does not even have a farm of their own. The children I have witnessed sleeping in the streets were creatures of urban life that perhaps they would ask themselves “To where would we go if we leave the streets?”

In the days of old, in the era of many ancient tribes--of the American Indians, the Neanderthals and the Maoris--where the concept of land and plants and animals comes all as God-given, put there by the Creator for all to live by so that no one would die of hunger --- men hunted in packs. There was the hunting leader and there were the rest of the packs. They moved as one and reaped the fruits of their pursuits as one. They approach the prey like a pack of wolves or a herd of lion. They also plant in great coordination that they have developed an agrarian scheme that is so systematic that many scientists believe to this day that many of these ancient people had attained a high level of civilization during their times.

The Indians of Old America hunted in groups, to lead a herd of bulls towards a cliff, in order to harvest the most amount of red meat. And the bounty is brought to their camps where colourful tepees decorated the broad wind-swept grasslands, and aromatic smell of burning herbs emanated throughout the prairie lands that they had dominated once before. Their women, their children and their olds would welcome them with great merriment and celebration and paeans of songs and dances would grace the night in order to honour the cunningness and virility of their men--the hunters of the clan. Most of the old men who wait for them were hunters before but have retired due to weakness of body.

While they hunt in packs, the old members of their clans, the women, the children and the sick could still be able to eat despite their inabilities. The weakest members of the clan are being carried at the back of their more virile brothers. They hunt in packs so no one is abandoned and left to die on in an environment that were at times unkind and punishing.

And yet we say at times that we live today in the zenith of human civilization --- as men today are already able to conquer space and developed human-like machines. And yet we say at times that the Indians and other ancient tribes that have roamed this Earth before us were backward and uncivilized. Who is truly the more civilized is a question we should ponder upon now.

What if water is already the dominion of the few? Would there be people living without water just as they live without land of their own? What if air would become the dominion of a few fortunate men?

The children sleeping on the streets drew heavily upon my thoughts that instead of proceeding with my own concerns, I took some time to pass by a bakery and fished ten pesos out of my pocket and bought six pieces of tasty bread. They were not so tasty but at a cheaper price, the bread came in larger sizes. It was the hunger of the children that was primordial to my mind in that situation and not their taste for good food.

I proceeded to the vehicle and slipped the bread into it while the two children looked back at me with the usual astonishment one finds in the face of children as they stared at a stranger who just came suddenly out of nowhere. If they were glad or not was not among the questions I had asked that morning; even after I had been able to slip the bread into the parked vehicle. It was enough for me to be rest assured that their hunger was satiated that morning.

It is no secret and certainly not a mystery to you anymore that the ten pesos meant so little to me. I am not rich but if I lose ten pesos or if they fell out my pocket, I would not mind them so much. I would look for it but would not despair so much if my search fails. But to the children who I found living in the streets, they meant the food on their breakfast table. I know how poor people are. I have been so poor before that the pangs of hunger have battered me before. I know their kind of hunger and I am familiar with the specie of hunger the poorest of the poor suffers. They ate on breakfast and sometimes their hunger is satiated until afternoon that my ten pesos would have been half of their daily need for food.

What is the worth of ten pesos to me? They meant my half pack of menthol cigarettes, my jitney fare for that day, my twelve-ounce soda, or a stick of chewing gums. But to the children and to the old woman, it was their food on the table.

Such is the worth of my coins.

( From my unfinished book "The Night of Angels" )

In the news today is the COMELEC’s decision to allow former President Joseph Estrada to seek re-election this coming May 2010 election, aiming to regain the highest seat in the land, which he had to vacate under duress as a repercussion of the EDSA II revolution in January of 2001.

Common opinion --- and that of public knowledge --- initially believed him to be patently ineligible to run once again for the highest position due to the highly ubiquitous constitutional prohibition for elected Presidents to remain in office after serving one full-term of six years.
That’s how we understood it and were aware of especially that such specific constitutional ban was devised and given effect in order that the dynastic rule of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, one that had thrown the entire nation in great despair and disarray, would not materialize ever again.

But upon closer examination, Section 4 of Article VII of the 1987 Philippine Constitution specifies:

The President and the Vice-President shall be elected by direct vote of the people for a term of six years which shall begin at noon on the thirtieth day of June next following the day of the election and shall end at noon of the same date, six years thereafter. The President shall not be eligible for any re-election. No person who has succeeded as President and has served as such for more than four years shall be qualified for election to the same office at any time.

Note that the specific prohibition is for a sitting President to seek “re-election” where upon swift interpretation of the terminology, it would be merely be a bar for an incumbent President to seek re-election for another six-year term immediately right after his or her term, and that he or she remains not absolutely precluded from seeking the office once again, for he or she may still do so while not anymore an incumbent (such as the present case of former President Estrada), probably after six years from the last day of his/her service as the highest executive of the land, granting that the president after him/her serves the full term.

Now, it merely boils down to interpretation of terminology, and indeed in our election culture and tradition, the term “re-elect” most often refers to candidates who are running as incumbents, such as those we often see on campaign posters that states boldly “Re-elect Mayor This and That”, “Re-elect Councilor this and that”, etc..

Therefore, despite that the intention of the aforementioned constitutional prohibition, which is to entirely dispel dynastic rule at the highest order, there would still be that one remaining method left in which a sitting Presidents may return to office, after six years of another presidency (which could be by a puppet candidate he or she had merely instated, allowed to win using the ever-vaunted government machinery).

At a young age of 40, any natural-born Filipino citizen, able to read and write and a registered voter can vie for the highest position, and if he or she wins, he or she could still have many runs at it and serve more than six years in office, despite the constitutional bar of serving two successive terms. In this manner, presidential dynastic rule may still not be entirely prevented.

This one method in fact had been often used by many legislators who had already stretched-out their three-term limits, by having close relatives hold positions for them for one term, in order to return after and start a fresh run on the three-term allowance. For one, this kind of situation could easily lead to circumvention of the law.

I wonder if upon closer examination, where we could be allowed to examine the records of interpolations, the transcripts of deliberation when Section 4 was especially debated upon by the framers of the 1987 Constitution and then taking into consideration the very grave political trauma this nation had endured under a tumultuous and dark 20-year reign of one former President, we could find a deviating idea away from the COMELEC decision discussed herein.

Have the framers of the 1987 Constitution intended it that any President may only sit and serve one single term and then absolutely none after that?
Or otherwise.

This is a short play about the very dramatic and often tumultuous events that led to the founding of the Majapahit Empire.

I have written this for the celebration of the the very first Asian Studies Week of our college slated next week. It is to be demonstrated in Bahasa Melayu, with translation by the narrator.

The Mongols of the Great Kublai Khan became part of this historic event, bringing more drama and color to the play.

(From Wikipedia)
Majapahit was an archipelagic empire based on the island of Java from 1293 to around 1500. Majapahit reached its peak of glory during the era of Hayam Wuruk, whose reign from 1350 to 1389 marked by influence, including trade empires, which extended through Maritime Southeast Asia.

After defeating Srivijaya in Sumatra in 1290, Singhasari became the most powerful kingdom in the area. Kublai Khan, the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and the Emperor of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, challenged Singhasari by sending emissaries demanding tribute. Kertanegara, the last ruler of Singhasari, refused to pay the tribute. In 1293, Kublai Khan sent a massive expedition of 1,000 ships to Java.

By that time, Jayakatwang, the Adipati (Duke) of Kediri, a vassal state of Singhasari, had usurped and killed Kertanagara. After being pardoned by Jayakatwang with the aid of Madura's regent, Arya Wiraraja; Raden Wijaya, Kertanegara's son-in-law, was given the land of Tarik timberland. He then opened that vast timberland and built a new village there. The village was named Majapahit, which was taken from a fruit name that had bitter taste in that timberland (maja is the fruit name and pahit means bitter). When Mongolian Yuan army sent by Kublai Khan arrived, Wijaya allied himself with the army to fight against Jayakatwang. Once Jayakatwang was destroyed, Raden Wijaya forced his allies to withdraw from Java by launching a surprise attack.[10] Yuan's army had to withdraw in confusion as they were in hostile territory. It was also their last chance to catch the monsoon winds home; otherwise, they would have had to wait for another six months on a hostile island.

In AD 1293, Raden Wijaya founded a stronghold with the capital Majapahit. The exact date used as the birth of the Majapahit kingdom is the day of his coronation, the 15th of Kartika month in the year 1215 using the Javanese çaka calendar, which equates to November 10, 1293. During his coronation he was given formal name Kertarajasa Jayawardhana.

ACT ONE

(A troop of Mongolian warriors just arrived in Sisanghari, seeking tribute in favor of Kublai Khan. About ten men is about to approach the group of King Kertanagara to demand tribute.)

OGEDEI: I am Ogedei, loyal warrior of the Great Kublai Khan, we come here to your kingdom to demand tributes for our great leader.

KERTANAGARA: I am aware now of your purpose for coming here, but I as the leader of the Sisanghari Kingdom, will not submit to your proposals and we shall not pay tribute to you!

RADEN WIJAYA: Yes, you hear the king, my father in law, we shall not become your vassals!

OGEDEI: We have stated our demands and warnings, the Great Kublai Khan will surely be angry and he will send 1,000 ships to punish you. I shall return.

(The Mongolian troops went away disappointed)

ACT TWO

(Meanwhile, Jakatwang was not in agreement with Kertanagara and planned to overthrow him.)

JAKATWANG: I am Jakatwang. I have my own men, For we are not satisfied with your rule, I have come to fight you!

KERTANAGARA: In that case, be prepared to take arms and fight me!

RADEN WIJAYA: You certainly have evil motives.

JAKATWANG: We will fight to the end!

(Jakatwang and his men attacked and killed Kertanagara while Raden Wijaya was able to escape. Raden Wijaya fled to a village named Majapahit, after a bitter fruit found there.)

ACT THREE

(Raden Wijaya arrived at Majapahit and founded the Kingdom of Majapahit there.)

RADEN WIJAYA: What unusual fruit is this?

ARYA WIRAJAY: It is called Majapahit your honor.

RADEN WIJAYA: I shall call my new kingdom, Majapahit! And I shall avenge the death of Kertanagara!

(Raden stood up and shouted this declaration.)

The group of Mongolian warriors arrived at the stage.

OGEDEI: We have come back with 1000 ships and ten thousand men. We have come back to subdue the Kingdom of Sisanghari!

RADEN WIJAYA: Kertanagara is dead. But I will help you fight Jakatwang in Sisanghari for he has killed my beloved father-in-law and he is now my enemy.

OGEDEI: If that’s the case, we shall vanquish him together and you shall lead us to him.

ACT FOUR

Act Four consists of fighting merely as the Mongolian warriors and Raden Wijaya warriors have combined to attack Jakatwang. Jakatwang was killed in the fight as the Mongols and Raden Wijaya came out victorious.

OGEDEI: Now we have subdued and defeated Jakatwang, the Kingdom of Sisanghari is now our vassal kingdom and shall pay tribute to our great leader Kublai Khan.

RADEN WIJAYA: No, you are mistaken. I have planned to become ruler of all Majapahit and Sisanghari and in fact I have planned this ambush of your warriors.

(Raden Wijaya and his warriors then attacked the Mongols and many Mongols were killed and the rest fled away.)

RADEN WIJAYA: I am now the great ruler of Sisanghari and Majapahit kingdom, and I shall then establish the great Majapahit Empire to rule over many lands and over many kingdoms!

END OF PLAY!

The beginning of 2010 bodes so well to the regional group ASEAN or Association of Southeast Asian Countries as six of its members began zero-tariff trading on January 1, 2010.

Under a scheme that began as far back as 1993, ASEAN countries agreed to have tariffs reduced to 5% by 2010 and ultimately down to zero by 2015 under the Common Effective Preferential Tariffs for ASEAN Free Trade Area (CEPT-AFTA) guidelines. At this rate, the grand ambition of having a single market and eventually a unified economy for ASEAN is just about on the right track, bringing forth to reality the grand ambition set forth when ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was initiated in 2002.

This tariff-free trading opens up myriads of opportunities for those who make business and should bring in more vigor to intra-ASEAN trade. Sourcing of cheaper raw materials should be far more flexible now. Goods could flow from one member-country to another without the usual restraints, increasing trade activities exponentially. Thus could redound to wide employment creation as a result of increased production and higher profitability.

ASEAN boast of a huge market that could easily rival that of China and India with a population of more than half-a-billion and with a workforce deemed to be equally if not more skilled and knowledgeable. With the danger of financial ballooning and industrial peaking looming over China and India, ASEAN could be the next preferred haven for foreign direct investments from abroad, offering a location that is far richer in natural resources and labor.

However, full economic integration for ASEAN encounters very difficult obstacles ahead as the economic disparity of its members is too patent for comfort where member countries like Singapore and Malaysia are far too advanced from those striving economies of Laos and Myanmar.

To make matters more complicated, political issues is one remaining thorn in the side of ASEAN economic ambitions as Myanmar continues to be adamant in introducing structural reform in government, as well as in the communist states of Vietnam and Laos.

A unitary currency is therefore unthinkable at this point, at least not within the decade or two.
European Union had almost flawlessly integrated itself in 1993 because of the non-issue of economic disparity and political divergence among its members. But for ASEAN, these are issues that remain unresolved and off-putting.

Yet, despite of this, hope should remain for ASEAN as long as it keeps on moving, albeit in slow and calculated steps.

Dying was a matter of darkness. Death is all of darkness, just like sleeping. When we sleep, we close our eyes and slip into darkness and unconsciousness sets in. Such was dying. Darkness was like a tunnel, like being caught in the body of a huge cannon.

My body floated towards higher ground like a speeding rocket coming out of the dark tunnel. I had a feeling similar to skateboarding and of being carried in a Ferris Wheel, lifting my entire soul into a maze and into a circle. At the end of the tunnel, I appeared so suddenly into the open air that made my skin tremble a bit. And lo and behold, I found everything to be brighter than any sunlight that I have experienced before. Above me was pale blue sky, a kind of hue that was so sweet to my eyes and below me were clouds thick as foam. I felt a sudden gush of joy that my heart flew and skipped a bit.

In the air was the spine-tingling sound of strings possibly that of a clarion or a banjo guitar and my eyes swelled with tears as I felt an overpowering out pour of divine happiness. I floated and floated, letting the wind control my body, leading me towards the thicker clouds that lies ahead. Within the clouds appeared angels with curly blond hairs and faces that one imagines the biblical David have. So handsome and so pure in white raiment and wings so white as they flutter through the clouds. They seemed to be full of jest, disappearing suddenly and appearing at the other ends of the walls of clouds. As I hovered through the clouds, I could see a figure that took to be the shape of a white castle, as I go nearer, I affirmed that they were really castles afloat the clouds, my first sight of a castle with high turrets and towers; years before I saw an illustration of such in children's books. Before I could reach the castle, I suddenly woke up and found myself atop the table in the living room of my Uncle Mameng's apartment, the eldest child of my grandfather who we were living with, and I could see my bloated stomach as I regained vision slowly and slowly.

Initially, my vision was dull and could only appreciate the sight immediately in front of me until I regained full view. I could see my father worriedly scurrying near me but with a great sigh of relief in his face while the others smiled. I heard the man whose name I could not really remember now, living next door, saying to my grandfather, "See, I told you he would be alright". And then I still remembered my grandfather's face with tears on his face. That was the only time that I saw him cried and never ever again.

It was a fever so high that almost took my life in my infancy. I had frequent fever attacks then that often, my grandfather would perform a sort of ritual with a blade in one hand and a candle on the other, reciting Arabic prayers in order to cure me of my fever. Of the many times that I remember him doing such ceremony is how I reckoned how in my early years, I was often afflicted with high fever.

I felt so harassed by the heat every time during those bouts that my head was aflame and my skin was torching. In such infantile consciousness, I always remembered how my body was burning with extreme temperature that my consciousness would somehow separate from my own body. When my body became numb and isolated, the burning sensations were not as disturbing anymore.

My grandfather was a busy man that he had to be concerned with my frequent fever attacks while at the same time lulling my grandmother away from her recurrent malady.

Once I had asked my grandfather about my grandmother's weakness and general immobility. He told me that it was indeed because of a disease that afflicted her and that she would not be able to speak so well anymore. What I really wanted to asked him was why she would scream at times into the midnight that everyone in the house would be awaken. What kind of disease would let one scream into the night was the thing I wanted to inquire upon. But as a toddler, I bet there are things that we do not even know how to ask, when vocabulary would not be enough to elucidate our inquiry. Everytime she was attacked by such "disease", Uncle Mameng and the servants would come and help my grandfather calmed her down, to reassure her that everything was all right. She was always murmuring about some person she was afraid of; a one she calls "the jinn".

"There are no jinns. You are just imagining" my grandpa always assured her while she would lay there wide-eyed and trembling. From the looked on her eyes, pity was the natural thing I could feel for her. She was like a child afraid of something.

"I have checked the whole house and there was no Jinn around" my uncle would add to further reassure her.

At times the attacked on her nocturnal sleep would be so serious enough that in the stillness of the dawn, we would packed the necessities and head for the hospital, staying there for nearly a week every time.

At such a young age, my grandmother's predicament affected me so much that I had always hoped then that I was already grown up and be able to help her, wishing earnestly to appease her. Those dreams of flying had made me somehow distant from her, a little bit wary of her and somewhat disturbed that the winged old woman in my dreams somehow looked like her. And yet, I felt so much for her. Besides those were merely dreams.

Once I decided to investigate the cause or causes of the "weakness" of my grandmother. I was relatively confident that I would find some answers however tender my mind at that time. It was in the apartment's bathroom with its yellow darkened light and perpetual wet floor that she had pointed to be the place where she had seen the "jinn". The bathroom had malfunctioning equipment that always had that pungent smell typical of aging lavatories, full of slime and fungi stuck to walls and corners giving it a dark green shadow all over, from the floor to the ceiling. What augments the general dimness was the decision of the household to put a bulb of the weakest power that even at daytime, I would always feel like it was already midnight whenever I enter it. There was desperation written all over it that anyone who went into the toilet would realize immediately that it was a place where the smell would remain even if best efforts to clean it up would be undertaken.

As I relieved myself, I tried to stay longer when the apartment was quiet and everyone was either asleep in the afternoon or were out for work. I examined the ceilings for some clue and stared at the walls for holes and cavities to where the jinn might be hiding. When I convinced myself at that time that there would be no such signs of the unknown being, I stepped back and headed for the door. As I turned my head, suddenly I saw in the corner of my left eye a huge shadow of a man that goes from the floor towards the ceiling, the shape of its head folding into the surface of the ceiling. The hairs at the back of my head stood up and I felt my skin trembled. Despite such apparent terror however, I gathered all of my strength to focus my stare into the wall but the shadow was not there anymore. I went quickly outside and found the afternoon very still as usual.

I went to the garden in the front yard where I usually enjoyed my solitariness when the sun was readying to fall towards sunset and played in the gardens, picking some leaves and mangling some stems. My cousins would be asleep in that hour of the afternoon while I did not developed such habit, allowing me so much time alone to play with whatever my mind could think of. As I put some stones into holes that I have previously dug in the ground, I pondered upon the shadow in the toilet. Was it the shadow of the "jinn"? It was a huge being I thought and the image of the shadow was vivid enough that I was able to surmise that it wore a g-string garment on its body and had a strip of clothe wrapped around its head while its hair was shoulder length, like an ancient warrior. He must have held spears and knives but such things did not appear to me.

I kept on digging holes and putting stones and coins into them and then covering back the holes, ironing out the surface to look as if the soil were never disturbed. Such was the kind of solitary games I played. I have reckoned then so early in my life, when I dug up the stones and coins the day after, that plants and trees could grow from the ground and flowers multiply too; but stones and money would not.

I had perhaps had a very strong desire to tell my grandfather about the shadow but somehow I did not had enough inclination to put them into words while my grandmother kept wailing in the middle of the night every now and then. Then after a while, her predicament eased towards serenity that she just stared and sat in her rocking chair until she died in the hospital one day while I was looking after her. My Aunt Julpa cried first and asked me what have I done that she died. Of course, I did not know what to say but her asking was etched so much into my mind that every now and then I would ask myself if indeed I had done something to hasten her death. But as I child that I was then, the disturbance of Aunt Julpa's inquiry just faded into memory till now that I earnestly attempt to recollect those events so far into my childhood.

( This an excerpt from my unfinished semi-autobiography "A PROPHET'S LIFE" )

( A repost from April 13, 2007 )

I was walking the downtown streets some days ago, feeling a little bit restless for reasons unknown to me specifically, at least to the one or those that I could not pinpoint to with reasonable certainty. Perhaps this is one sort of a malady that I have read about once before in some old decrepit medical book stacked in my mother-in-laws deteriorating wooden cabinets, those that were partly eaten by termites, looking so fragile that a simple disturbance on it would let spew a handful of mashed-up and grounded wooden particles---which I find to be so repulsive knowing that they were the end results of some crawlers’ eating frenzy.

This malady is sometimes called depression or anxiety problems (they go by many names depending on the author of the medical book I read) and once in a while I retreat into this state and like water, I just have to let go of it for I could not rein it in my hands---no matter what.

I passed by the new barbershop just in front of the old Ever theater—one that had seen better days---and I thought I might get my hair done. I stared at a glass partition from a nearby store and had an inkling that my hair wasn’t as disheveled as I thought it was. I even saw it to be fitting to me despite the general rugged look and I had thought then that moviestars have lengthy hairs even if they were males, having that blown away look. I was a little worried that if one sports a blown away and rugged crown of hair and at the same time not being a moviestar, one might be easily taken for a madman walking the streets at high noon. But that sidewalk mirror was good to me and I felt that my uncut hair would be fit for a star. Some mirrors are good to me ; mostly they are not---especially those in my bedroom.

So I passed with having a quick haircut that day and hoped that the blown away look would be fitting enough for me for quite a number of days more. I then strolled farther down the city sidewalks and came towards a crevice full of DVD stalls and I felt a little blown away after seeing so many titles available and on a dirt cheap prices at that, considering that for 80 bucks, one can get a DVD disc that contains 8 to 12 movies in it, and most of them were blockbusters and of very recent release. Some of them were not even shown yet here in local theaters. That’s how tempting it was for movie aficionados like me. I could not say now that I haven’t had scored myself some pirated items before (I had been smoking a brand of cigarette smuggled from Hongkong when I was in college) and of course, it would be unthinkable for me to not have seen a pirated movie before. I had of course.

But while I was glancing on stacks and stacks of DVD disks, my mind was swinging between the forthrightness of not buying a pirated item and having a devilish pleasure on filling my hunger for movies at throwaway prices. I could always remember that video clip that goes with every movie I rent from video stores and the loud, thundering reminder that says: “You Don’t Steal A Car! You Don’t Steal A House! You Don’t Steal A Movie!”, and somehow my inner conscience is disturbed by such that whenever that clip goes in every movie I rent, I wanted to shout at whoever that guy behind the thundering voice and belch, “Stop It! I Heard You. You Don’t Have To Remind Me That All The Time. You’re Not My Mother!”

My inner conscience had gotten the better of me that time so I just slowly walk away from stacks and stacks of salacious movies and guilty pleasures. I then remember that a new Video City branch had opened just a block away and I headed immediately towards it. The moment I had gazed through the available movie titles, I felt an immediate surge of gleefulness inside me since I hadn't expected that the new video store could offer such voluminous number of titles, especially of recent ones. The video store where I usually get my dose of movies is so miserably lacking in inventory that I guess I won’t be visiting it from now on, except perhaps in some momentary lapse of reason in the future.

I felt like a child lost in a sea of movie titles and I almost picked up every disk that had caught my eye, until I reached the “Drama” section and there in front of me was a copy of Wong Kar Wai’s “2046” and I was excited to high heavens. It had been much talked about in the net world about how good it was and for a long time, I was trying to get my hand on a copy of it, and for a while there I thought I wouldn’t be able to see it for it would be unthinkable that it'd be exhibited in local theaters considering that it was released about three years ago. And I haven’t had seen any trace of it in every video rental store I went before.

I had anticipated this movie ever since I have grown a special fondness for oriental art films, especially those of the legendary filmmaker Zhang Zimou, whose film “Farewell To My Concubine” was so wonderfully entertaining and had primarily introduced me to other notable movies from China or Hongkong. Before that, ever since I was in high school, I had been delighted by the magic of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpieces like “Ran” and “Dreams”.

And so “2046” was about a writer who had become so engrossed about his own written piece that he saw himself being dragged into it, and feeling the pains and longings of the characters he had made himself. “2046” was a work about a train that once in a while travels towards the year “2046” and no one who goes there ever came back, except for one, the male protagonists. It is said that those who journey towards this strange destination are those who are longing for love, perhaps a kind that could not be found here at present, for how come they have to travel towards a point of no return just looking for it? What love is there out there that some have risk even their own mortal existence just to gain it? It was written by the writer that nobody actually knows how long for one to get to “2046”, for some it would be faster, but sometimes, to those unlucky travelers, it might take so long that they would start to lose their senses and sanity while inside the rain, having nothing to do except sit down and wait for the arrival time, one that is not definite and without any sign of coming. The main male protagonist in the novel had such kind of journey, one that was so lenthgy and seemingly unending that he fell in love with an android, an artificial human being stewarding the train.

The writer had his own life in the movie “2046”, a life lived sometime in the 1960’s where according to him “he just found himself to be in”. He earn his meals by writing columns and kung-fu stories for local dailies and billeted himself in a room with a door number that states “2046”. That was where he had sourced the title for his novel, a number which in his own mind had taken his fancy and unusual interest.

Along the way, he met a wife of another man named Bai Ling, who had runned away from her husband for having another woman and had rented a room just across his own. They slowly fell for each other and started a torrid affair filled with nights of passion and unhindered bliss. Until one day the woman asked him if ever he wanted to stick it out with him. But the writer wouldn’t agree to be exclusive to one single woman and stressed that he was seeing other women while he was having an affair with her. Bai Ling was furious and ended their relationship with tears flooding from her eyes and agitation painted all over her face.

They both started seeing other people and whenever they passed each other in public gatherings, they both pretend not to know each other and according to the writer, it was difficult to pretend and not notice her. It was clear that it was more difficult for Bai Ling to pretend and it showed so much in the utter sadness that found harbor in her teary eyes.

Six years later, the writer was in a relationship with a woman that had a similar name to a woman he had an affair so many years ago. It wasn’t Bai Ling, but another one who had resembled Bai Ling's general appearance, a circumstance that had led me to ponder whether or not Bai Ling and Su Lizhen was one and the same person. The new woman eventually left the writer for some undeclared reason for she said, “she just have to go away”.

And inside a car---drunken and weary---the writer finally realized that he is starting to lose 'the meaning of life'. He was thinking to himself and thought that six years ago, he had a chance to find the meaning of life when the beautiful Bai Ling offered herself to be his long time partner. But he had other ideas and now regretted it.

He met Bai Ling for one more time but the feeling was never the same aagain and it had seemed that in the end, he had entirely lose grasp on what in his mind was “the meaning of life”.

The movie “2046” eventually ignited in me the question about life and its meaning. I try to see myself in the writer’s own predicaments and evaluate if I had what he call as “the meaning of life”. Have I lost it? Or I am living it? Or perhaps, the meaning is just not clear at all.

One way or another, we all are trapped within the world we now dwell, sometimes embroiled in raucous routine everyday conducts, sometimes just swaying to where the wind blows, and often forgetting that at the end of the day, we might not be able to entirely grasp the so-called “meaning of life”. What’s in store for me when I grow old? Where am I heading? Am I happy or am I miserable?

Am I that sort of individual who would jump into a train and head to “2046”?

These are just questions and I hope that this momentary bout with depression would vanish like thin air. And then I’ll have in my full grasp the so-called “meaning of life” by then. Whatever that means.

( A repost from May 19, 2007)

It’s both startling and astonishing how the weather behaves strangely nowadays. In the initial days of March, when summer was supposed to be ushered in gradually, the rains came pouring in, like an unexpected visitor whom one does not know exactly how to receive---had it came for a bountiful afternoon chatter over bristling cups of coffee or had just got to stop by due to a vital intent?

And now while May slowly loses its days to another month, the rains are hard to come by and the temperature rises even when night falls so deep into midnight, when it is supposed to be cool and breezy outside, and of course in the living room.

Strange weather, really.

So the ground are so dry nowadays that some afternoons ago I decided to weed out the backyard with unwanted growths, having no troubles whatsoever with muddy soil that get stuck in the slippers I wear. I had once popped the idea of landscaping the whole area with Bermuda grasses to my wife---about a week ago--- but even I had scoffed when she mentioned to me that it would cost nearly ten thousand bucks to have it done by gardeners from the plant store across the highway. What do you actually call these establishments that sells plants and flowers in pots. I actually have no idea as of this moment.

So for now, the bermudas or carabao grasses would have to wait and I’ve got to contend myself of laboring towards manually eliminating the weeds for now (which can actually grow towards knee level when left unattended for so long) and my oh my, it was so painstaking an activity that my muscles ache all night long after that, and when I woke up the next morning, I could barely walk.

When I was scything the weeds, I had discovered that frogs were ensconced tightly in some nooks and corners of the waterless ground. I noticed this sight immediately for it was certainly a bit of an aberration to see frogs while water is so absent in an area. Frogs means water or rain. And rain means tadpoles and croaking reverberations in the night.

I then wonder how these amphibians can keep up with the arid surroundings even when I know that usually they soak themselves in cool water almost all the time. To be sure, it must have meant that frogs have developed adaptation schemes to combat queer weather situation and atypical habitats. Now perhaps there comes the answer to the momentary query of where do frogs goes when the rains haven’t come for a long, long time. They hide themselves in darkened nooks and crevices in the ground, behind and under mossy stones and shady plants, over misty soil where sunrays could not dry up thoroughly.

This reminds me of an episode of one of my favorite television show when I was a kid, Life On Earth. One unforgettable discussion there was this very strange looking fresh-water fish who can survive for months and months to come even when the ground become so dry that the soil is caked all throughout, like in a span of desert that is so cruel to any shrubbery.

I remember how the host Mr. David Attenborough---he with the effervently musky voice--had dug about a couple of feet into the dry ground and grabbed a morsel of mud formation which he then dropped into a huge basin full of water. And then lo and behold, the pack of solidified mud started to move and slowly a funny looking fish swam away like it was just another day in the river.

It was so amazing how a water creature could survive for so long without water, breathing dry air and being stuck in cakes of mud like a frozen caveman; in order to wait for the rain to finally come and when the water rises again, the strange fish wiggles away into the world where it usually thrive on, and start another cycle in its life span.

Could you imagine a fish surviving out of the water for far too long, like half a year at a time? I couldn’t. But I remember that there was one fish that could actually do that. Therefore presenting an exception to that famous euphemism of being a “fish out of a water”, like I am so miserable now that I am like a fish out of the water.

Amazing survivability this fish has. And also those frogs in our backyard.

Frogs V.2

( A repost from May 28, 2007)

I have some thoughts that I haven’t had elaborated in my earlier post entitled “Frogs” and I can’t seem to get still without scratching this itch, these questions left in my mind. In that previous post, I have pondered on how frogs and other water-loving creatures survived when rains does not fall for a lengthy period of time; this upon observing that frogs actually deposit themselves in shady areas like spongy crevices underneath fairly size stones and behind leafy plants located in areas where the sun could not penetrate that much.

I see them frogs laying still and unmoving even if I make some hushing noise, apparently determined to hibernate as they read the climate so well---no rains, therefore we stand still. Amazing tenacity they have for to stand still is to perish where to us humans, we need to move to survive, we could not stand still or else we fail to survive. But frogs could stand still and still survive. In this manner, they could be a better specie---than we humans.

Now I kept thinking that the frogs I see on our backyard while the rains haven’t come are exactly of no use to me that despite the fact that they aren’t what we could consider as pest---like locusts ravaging the ricefields or mosquitoes rummaging on our blood---I had thought of getting rid of them completely, hauling them one by one from the shady places they hide themselves and throw them out of the fence.

Yet I felt that I could be completely unfair to them since they aren’t really a pest in the purest sense except that I do not like them leaping and creeping around the pathways when I am navigating the areas in the backyard. Their dark and slimy skin seems to be an odd sight to me.

I had pondered if in fact frogs are really of use to us human beings. They couldn’t be foodstuff except for some specie plying cleaner locations like ricefields and natural ponds. They can’t also be pets for only stranger individuals had kept frogs as pets; like the ones I saw on Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!

Although I know for a fact that they eat or lick mosquitoes in through their all-too-lengthy tongues and one can say they could help control or regulate widespread mosquito infestations in our environment. But why do we need them when we can just hie off to the nearby grocery store and buy Baygon insect spray or we can just light up a mosquito repellent that we can buy in the sari-sari store across the street. Maybe in the ancient days when the Germans hadn’t yet invented Baygon, that could have been the time that we needed lots of frogs in our surroundings.

But now, I wonder why they are here, croaking at rainy nights and serenading songs that we ain’t really pond of.

In our elementary days, we are given basic scientific lessons on the web of life. I remember that so well including those charts that exhibits different food groups that we need to consume in order to live a healthy and well-rounded lives; you know those rhythmic annotations that says “ang itlog ay pampabilog ng mukha”, “and gulay ay pampakinis ng kutis”, such and such thing.

And in the web of life, we are taught that every creature is of importance to nature and to earth’s existence, that trees could help strengthen the soil and thus prevent erosion, snakes could help minimize rat infestations in the fields, plants spew much-needed oxygen into the air, birds and butterflies can spread seeds for them to grow in a more widespread manner, anteaters help plow the ground in order that seeds could easily grow, fishes give food and nutrients to mankind, and mankind….and mankind….oh by the way, I forgot how mankind could be beneficial to nature; I hope someone could remind me.

And so that’s how the web of life goes; and intermingling process of creatures that could be helpful to each other and to nature in general; that could be conceptualized also in that lesson we are taught as “food chains”---frogs eating mosquitoes, snakes eating frogs, eagles eating snakes, man eating eagles…such and such thing. I wonder how eagles really taste. Must have been just like chicken.

Now let’s go back to frogs—despite that they could help minimize mosquito infestations, we all know by now that Baygon could be better regulators. Have frogs lost their importance in this world? Are they the vestiges of an old and obsolete web of life, that now we have a new form or web?

Snglguy had once stated that frogs are good barometers of our environment. But what if man could one day invent highly-advanced equipment that could monitor our environment with razor-sharp accuracy, like missile guided Tomahawks that George Bush have? Then, frogs would simply lose every bit of reason to be croaking ugly night songs when the rain comes. Maybe modernity have started to creep into the web of life as we know it, that machines and equipments is starting to dictate another form of system in this world we call Earth that just like in the movies we see, machines could one day rule the world.

It is a scary thought sometimes. But it is just a thought.