Photo from PCIJ.
Entries for August, 2009
Of Truth, Honor and Delicadeza or How to Bake Your Cake and Eat It, Too
By Elmar Beltran Ingles, NCCA Commissioner for Cultural Dissemination
“The leak did it. Whoever leaked the results of the deliberations is a criminal.“
This was the observation of a government agency official who sits as ex-officio member of the NCCA Board. His statement was concurred to by another cultural agency ex-officio Board member who was attending the meeting for the first time.
The occasion was the July 31 regular meeting of the NCCA Board of Commissioners. The statements were made in response to the expression of anger and disappointment aired by Commissioner Ricardo De Ungria, of the Subcommission on the Arts, on the manner by which Malacanang decided, confirmed and announced the results of the 2009 National Artist Awards. Commissioner de Ungria was merely conveying the initial reactions of artists and cultural workers to the presidential proclamation.
As an elected sitting NCCA Commissioner and Board Member, I would have just let the remarks pass as the confidentiality of the results was really agreed upon by the joint panel of CCP and NCCA after the May 6 deliberations. I was not guilty of the insinuations because I never spoke about the results until my own Subcommission on Cultural Dissemination met in mid-June, way past the expected date of announcement on June 12. But the next statement from Department of Education Undersecretary and NCCA Chairman Vilma Labrador was something I could not let pass. She said that we should respect the President as she was within her legal bounds to do whatever she pleases with the Awards – or words to that effect.
While the Chair was extolling the virtues of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the wise words of a truly extra-ordinary woman leader - President Corazon Aquino, she of unquestionable integrity - kept bugging me. “We do everything not only according to the law but we do what is right and honest.” True enough, it was only during the Cory presidency when the awards process was truly respected without intervention from Malacanang,
To my mind, if GMA is really that virtuous, respectable and legal as her appointed minions want us to believe, why did the Hello Garci, Jocjoc Bolante, and NBN-ZTE scandals came about? Why should we be bothered by the breach of silence and confidentiality pact when the final result was the exact reversal of truth despite the leak? Nasaan ang lohika, katotohanan at hustisya sa pangangatuwirang mas mahalaga ang tiwala (trust) kaysa pagiging lantad (transparency)?
I felt I was being taken for a ride destined to bring me away from the truth and integrity of my sworn duties. And I was being led away by the very leaders entrusted – make that forced upon us – to protect the sanctity of the Filipino soul and creative expressions.
So I took the floor and minced no words. I related to everyone present how my mobile phone died twice on me because it could no longer manage the 516 angry text messages I received the day before the meeting. I questioned the need for the Malacanang Honors Committee which was said to have advised the President on this matter. I pressed to know who they are, what their qualifications are, and if they are, indeed, honorable. The last question was premised on the simple fact that they omitted the eminent musicologist and composer Dr. Ramon Santos from the list who, I said, I personally consider as the most qualified and brilliant in the list of final nominees and even after it was manipulated. I went on to state that we are not here to be compelled to respect GMA. That while most of us – particularly the presidential appointees to the Board – serve at the pleasure of the President, our loyalty and service should be dedicated to the Filipino people and the arts and culture sector, and that we should disabuse ourselves of the notion of political patronage.
I also personally appealed on record to the NCCA Executive Director, being concurrently the Presidential Adviser for Culture, to do her job of advising the president on the divisiveness of the presidential decision to alter the decision of the real experts in the arts and culture sector. I concluded that the president is NOT an expert on arts and culture and that she should stick to matters where she is supposed to excel i.e., the national economy etc.
I said all that with voice quivering and butterflies in my stomach – but in no uncertain terms. All I got from the Chair and her co-factotums from government were icy stares. I could almost hear their thoughts: “the nerve of this boy to lecture us on public service!” And, boy, that was exactly how she referred to me at NCCA!
But I stood my ground. I knew I hit sensitive nerves. I was daring them to contradict what I said but all I got were perfunctory words to the effect that the points raised will be considered part of the legislative agenda to review the policies on the National Artist Award. The Chair even assured the Executive Director of the Board’s support to her victory. “You deserve it.”
Case closed, at least as far as they were concerned. They got what they wanted. Never mind that ABS-CBN was waiting outside for the Chair's statement - which was passed off as the NCCA official statement. They must be congratulating themselves on how the joke was on the rest of us. The NCCA Secretariat would later tell us how they were compelled to be present at a meeting a day before the Board Meeting to congratulate the Executive Director. Congratulatory tarpaulin banners were immediately posted at the NCCA building’s façade and lobby to express the greetings to Mrs. Alvarez “from your NCCA Family and Chairman Vilma Labrador.”
Commissioner de Ungria has wisely said that the arts sector should desist from participating in future selection processes until a clearer rules of engagement is set. He feels we are just being used to justify and legitimize the selection of the SNAGs, or the Singit National Artists ni Gloria. Bakit ka nga naman mag-aabalang igalang ang proseso kung mas mamamayani ang mga letters of appeals mula raw sa mga ambassadors at iba pang functionaries na nag-endorse kay Cecile Guidote Alvarez at sa tatlo pang SNAGs? Mas pinaniniwalaan pala ng Pangulo ang mga nasa posisyong di naman mga alagad ng sining - at mas ignorante pa keysa sa kanya sa larangan ng sining - kabilang ang mga matrona, pulitiko at iba pang kwestyonable ang kaalaman sa sining. At ang masaklap, ito pa ang ipagtatanggol na desisyon ng pamunuan ng NCCA kaysa mahigit na isang taong proseso ng pagpili na nilahukan ng ;pinagsama-samang henyo ng mahigit isang daang alagad ng sining at manggagawang pangkultura sa buong bansa.
I am blogging on this incident not to humiliate certain personalities. (I believe they can do a better job at it.) I am prompted by my sworn duty as an NCCA Committee Member and elected Commissioner to uphold the sector’s interest and protect the honor and integrity of Filipino artists and cultural workers who were primarily responsible for institutionalizing the concept of people power in the bureaucracy. As the sweetest flower of the 1986 EDSA Revolution, the NCCA must be protected from the withering effect of forces not true to our interests and ideals.
***
Kung galit sa nangyaring "lokohan" sa pagpili ngayong taon ng mga Pambansang Alagad ng Sining, dumalo ka sa programa para dito.
May pasok na uli bukas.
Ilang araw na lang, matatapos na ang 10-day period ng national mourning for Tita Cory.
Pero, ano na?
We still have a lot of things to do. There are a lot of things ahead of us.
What we will do about these?
***
My Kuyatot, with the rest of Hands On Manila members, volunteered to help at Tita Cory's funeral. Kainggit!
Sabi nga sa patalastas ng Coffeemate:
Inspirasyon.
At ang sabi naman sa patalastas ng Nescafe:
Kahit ilan mang bagyo, malalim ang kapit mo dito.
Pero hindi ko naman sinasabing I ♥ Gelo, ha.
*Galing sa Friendster niya ung pic.
Dahil biglang umulan, napatingin ako sa may gawing bintana. Natanaw ko si bald and muscled kapitbahay, doing his stuff (doing some stretching exercise, sa may balkon ng bahay nila). Buong-buo ang bawat noodles!
Ako: Paano kaya name-maintain niyan ang lifestyle niya? Mukhang hindi naman siya nagwo-work. Feeling ko, binubuhay siya ni GF.
Kuya: Ang alam ko, call center agent yan.
Ako: Ha? Call center agent? E bakit hindi ko siya nakikitang pumapasok sa work? Umaga, tanghali, gabi, nakikita ko kaya yan, pagala-gala ang mga muscles sa may kanto.
Kuya: Ewan ko, si Danny lang naman ang nagsabi. Galing daw yan ng Guam.
Ako: Danny jan sa parlor? Ah... Kaya pala mukhang taga-Guam.
Kuya: Ano naman ung mukhang taga-Guam?
Ako: Mukhang surfer.
Kuya: Ah. Mayabang nga lang daw, sabi din ni Danny. Me attitude, feeling din.
Ako: In fernes, namamayagpag na nga ang muscles niya, bald pa siya. Plus the big tattoos!
Kuya: In fernes.
Ako: In fernes. Live-in siguro sila ng GF niya. Madalas kaya sila maglambutsingan jan sa balkon nila.
Kuya: Tsaka kapitbahay niya si Jayson.
Ako: Sino naman ung Jayson?
Kuya: Ung me syotang bading. Nakuwento din ni Danny.
Ako: Sino ung Jayson?
Kuya: Ung dati ding syota ni Boy.
Ako: Sino namang Boy?
Kuya: Si Boy, ung dati sa lugar natin.
Ako: Si Mang Boy Bangkay?
Kuya: Gaga! Hindi un! Ung parlorista.
Ako: Sus! Alam mo namang wala ako masyadong kakilalang bading sa may atin. Kilala ko lang sina Ute at Marlon, na pareho ngayong nagpapanggap na bisexual. Knowing you naman, rampadora ka na nung 90's pa sa may atin.
Kuya: Gaga! Basta, ung jowang bading nung Jayson, taga-Meralco daw. Jan sa may malapit sa Memorial.
Ako: Ah. Parang naaalala ko na ung Jayson. Pagala-gala din ung muscles nun e. Tsaka kapal ng funda nung bagets na un.
Kuya: Un nga.
Ako: E me GF din un e. Nakita ko sila sa supermarket dati.
Kuya: Ah.
Pumasok na sa loob ng bahay nila si bald and muscled guy.
Bakit bigla kaming inulan ni Kuya?
Waaah! Inggit ako sa mga manonood ng concert ni Lady Gaga mamaya! Waaah!
Gusto ko pa naman na bonggang-bonggang magsayaw ng Just Dance at Poker Face.Or mag-mega-emote sa kantang Paparazzi.
May hindi pa ba nakakikilala kay Lady Gaga? Click lang dito.
Mula ang larawan dito.
I saw these videos over at Ivan About Town blog.
Ang Maynila ngayon ay isa ng "testament to failure." How I wish the old Manila be brought back to the present.
How life was once glorious! Sayang, we were not able to maintain the grandeur of our capital city. Sayang talaga.
I hope we'll do everything just to bring these images back to life. Sana, sana.
Balikan ang kuwento
tungkol sa bulaklak, sa halik,
sa koronang tinik. Ang pag-ulan
ng mga talulot ng rosas isang umaga
ng pagdarasal. Ang halik
na gumising sa pandama.
Ang koronang ipinasuot
sa nobisyang sinasabing
hangal.
Buksan ang mga mata.
Hayun ang mga estrelya!
Dahil lubhang abala si Kuyatot sa mga gawain sa opisina, ako ang naitalagang mag-asikaso ng mga papremyo namin bukas sa Kanlungan ni Maria.
Dadalaw kasi ang tatlong Galing Mo Kid! students mula sa Nuevo de Pebrero Elementary School sa Kanlungan. Bahagi ito ng kanilang Leadership lessons sa Galing Mo Kid! program ng Hands On Manila.
Maglalaro kami bukas ng Pinoy Henyo. Ang isang bata, may partner na lolo or lola mula sa Kanlungan. Kung may oras pa, magkakaroon din ng bingo sessions. Malamang ung punuan ng bingo card.
Naisip ko rin, bilang pasasalamat sa pagdalaw ng mga bata, ay bibigyan ko sila ng mumunting regalo: mga libro. Ito ung mga libro kong binabalak ko na rin naman i-donate. I'll be giving away nine books, tit-tatlo isang bata.
Mega-eklat lang ung ribbon. Blue, kasi nagiging favorite color ko ito uli. Sayang, hindi ko pa ginawang yellow ribbon.
Sana maging memorable ang pagdalaw ng mga bata bukas sa Kanlungan ni Maria. Titiyakin namin un.
***
Bukas din pala ang celebration ng birthday ni Ms. Avic, at ni Lola Pina. Happy birthday sa inyong dalawa!
Ansaya naman nito! Hehe! Ayon sa blog ni Chuvaness:
Last August 8, 300 dancers congregated at Mall of Asia to dance for Jollibee—twice—at 1:30 pm and at 4:30 pm. Conceptualized by Stratworks six months ago, the dance was choreographed by Whiplash and directed by Mark Reyes.
Sisimulan ko ang entry na ito sa ganito: ???!!%$&*^#@!$^&*!!!!!!
2 hours ako sa biyahe pa-MRT mula sa house, na usually e 1 oras lang pag Sabado/weekend. Ang salarin, napakatinding traffic sa may Potrero-Monumento area. Totoo pala ang reklamo ng sister ko last week, na late siya palagi sa work due to this traffic.
At hindi ko nalaman ang dahilan, dahil borlog na borlog ang lola ninyo sa bus kanina. Ang aga ko kasi nagising para sa paghahanda sa lakad na ito, e late na ako natulog. Ang ending, late pa rin ako sa pagdating sa Kanlungan ni Maria.
Biro nga ni Ms. Avic: "Ikaw ang most-waited person ngayon ha!" Meaning: "Ikaw ang the late Rhodge."
Kaasar talaga!
***
Eniwey, naabutan kong nagbi-bingo royale ang mga lola at lola, pati ang mga volunteer. Pahinga lang ng konti, tapos tinapos na ni Kuyatot ang pagbi-bingo para maglaro naman ang mga bata from Galing Mo Kid! School ng Pinoy Henyo.
Nakakatuwa, kasi mukhang naging mas makulit ang mga lolo at lola kesa sa mga bata. Nandyan ung kahit hindi kasali e nagbibigay ng clues ang isang lolo, o nung sinabi na mismo ng isang lola ang pinapahulaang salita kasi "crush niya" ang contestant na lolo. Kaloka! Humihirit pa ang mga matatanda! Hehe!
Mga retrato mula kay Ate Fe
After ng nakakwindang na game, konting salo-salo courtesy of Ms. Avic. Nakasama din namin ang ilang seminarista na regular na nagbo-volunteer work sa Kanlungan. Nakilala ko si Dennis, who shared his seminarian life and its highs and lows. May new volunteers din na kasama si Michelle. Sina Ate Bing at Ate Lulu, mabuti at nakahabol sa kasiyahan.
Tuwang-tuwa ako kasi nasiyahan ang mga GMK kid na bumisita sa Kanlungan. Natuwa din sila sa handog kong mga librong alam kong mapapakinabangan nila.
Pagkaalis from Kanlungan ni Maria, lunch time naman sa Jollibee. Waah! Napasubo akong ilibre ang mga bata (pati ang teacher nila). Sabagay, share your blessings naman daw, sabi ni Kuyatot.
Ininterview pa nila si Kuyatot pagkatapos kumain. Si Kuyatot naman, istrikto-istriktuhan pa sa mga bata. Nagseryoso bigla. Hehe.
Nagdidilim na kaya nagmadali na kaming umuwi. Isinakay lang namin ung mga bata, pati si teacher, sa FX na pa-Megamall. Kami naman, kasama sina volunteers Rose at Fe, at biyaheng pa-Cubao naman.
***
Pagdating sa Cubao, tambay moments lang kami ni Kuyatot sa may McDo: kulitan, tawanan, habang hinihintay ang pagbuhos ng ulan.
Hay, I feel like I am a bad parent.
Kanina ko lang nalaman na mayroong mga garapata si Luna. To think na nasa loob lang siya ng bahay namin, at never namin pinapalabas.
Regular naman siya kung paliguan. Saan ba nakukuha ang mga garapata na iyan?
We'll be consulting the vet kung anung magandang shampoo na instant pamatay sa mga garapata.
Nakakaawa tuloy si bebe Luna. Hay.
May nahanap akong solusyon dito: Frontline Spot-On. Need this badly.
Mula sa Wikipedia:
Ang buhawi, alimpuyo, tornado, o ipu-ipo ay isang biyolente, mapanganib, at umiikot na kolumna ng hangin na dumarapo o sumasayad kapwa sa kalatagan ng lupa ng daigdig at ng isang ulap na kumulonimbus, o sa hindi kadalasang pagkakataon, sa paanan ng isang ulap na kumulus. Dumarating ang mga buhawi sa maraming mga sukat at laki ngunit karaniwang nasa anyo ng isang nakikitang embudo ng kondensasyon, na humihipo ang makipot na dulo sa lupa ng mundo, at kalimitang napapalibutan ng ulap o usok ng mga pinagguhuan o mga nawasak at mga alikabok.
Nagulat ako sa napanood kong balita na nagka-ipu-ipo sa Balagtas, Bulacan. Pamilyar sa akin ang mga lugar na ipinakita sa news flash. Sa lugar na iyon ang sakayan papuntang Pandi, sa bahay namin. Nag-aaya pa naman si Mommy nung Sabado na magpunta kami doon. Ang uwi na namin tiyak, Linggo ng hapon. E sa mga oras na ganun naganap ang ipu-ipo. Mabuti na lang talaga at hindi kami tumuloy.
Iba na talaga ang panahon. Ang prediction ko, in five to 10 years time, makararanas na tayo ng mga ipu-ipo na kagaya ng sa US. Ung malaking-malaking ipu-ipo na talaga, mapangwasak ng malubha sa buhay at mga ari-arian. Nakakatakot, pero ito ang totoo.
What to do during a tornado:
If you are in a structure (e.g. residence, small building, school, nursing home, hospital, factory, shopping center, high-rise building):
1. Go to a pre-designated shelter area such as a safe room, basement, storm cellar, or the lowest building level.
2. If there is no basement, go to the center of an interior room on the lowest level (closet, interior hallway) away from corners, windows, doors, and outside walls. Put as many walls as possible between you and the outside.
3. Get under a sturdy table and use your arms to protect your head and neck.
4. Do not open windows.
If you are in a vehicle, trailer, or mobile home:
1. Get out immediately and go to the lowest floor of a sturdy, nearby building or a storm shelter. Mobile homes, even if tied down, offer little protection from tornadoes.
If you are outside with no shelter:
1. Lie flat in a nearby ditch or depression and cover your head with your hands. Be aware of the potential for flooding.
2. Do not get under an overpass or bridge. You are safer in a low, flat location.
3. Never try to outrun a tornado in urban or congested areas in a car or truck. Instead, leave the vehicle immediately for safe shelter.
4. Watch out for flying debris. Flying debris from tornadoes causes most fatalities and injuries.
Lagi tayong maging handa. Always be safe.
This time, ang sabi nila ay na-realign ang antenna.
"Ginalaw nyo po ba, Sir?"
"Imposible un, Miss. Kasi nasa bubungan ung antenna e. Posible na nagalaw ng hangin nung nag-uulan last week."
"Gagawan ko po ng report itong issue ninyo, then someone will call you to verify the schedule of tech visit."
Hay. SmartBro problem. Na naman.
Ngayong gabi, manalig kahit ang Diyos ay dilang apoy lamang, mapanukso sa balat.
*
Sapagkat para sa isang naghihintay, may kinakailangang magbalik, kahit pa sa anyo ng mabining ulan.
*
Sinisisi ng makata ang sarili sa pagkabigong makita muli ang daan patungo sa Templo ng Isang Libo't Isang Buddha.
Happy birthday, Ate Tina. You know I do cherish those moments. Bawal na ang matampuhin.
***
I will file the myPLDT DSL application form later. Finally.
Is myPLDT DSL better than other ISPs? I want to hear your comments.
Properly filled-up application form: check.
Complete requirements: check.
But my application was turned down by PLDT. They have just verified that my area is non-serviceable. No existing port/s for DSL connection. No plan to put up ports in the near future.
E is for effort. So I will be using SmartBro pa rin. Until the next connection problem. Hay.
Our Ms. Philippines didn't make it to the top 15.
Panalo for me ang national costume ni Ms. China!
Who'll win the new crown? We're rooting for Ms. South Africa!
P.S. Miss Venezuela won the crown! And the new crown just fell from her head, gumulong-gulong pa yata. Haha!
*Ms. Philippines's photo from here. Other photos from the Miss Universe website.
Nosebleed. Grabe.
Pero maayos palang mag-lecture si Angelo Suarez. Kahit ilang beses siyang nagpaumanhin na hindi siya masyadong handa, at di siya "pormal" kung mag-lecture.
Para simulan ang kaniyang lecture, nagpanood siya ng isang Sponge Bob Square Pants episode, na "nagpakilig" daw sa kaniya pagkatapos niyang mapanood. Then he started his discussion of the works of people (poets and non-poets) who "explored" poetry/the written word beyond the (printed) page.
Ang naisip ko: endless possibilities. Andami pa palang maaaring gawin sa panulaang Filipino.
At nakakapagod pala siyang tignan kapag nagle-lecture. Lagi kasing nakapaling sa kaliwa ung ulo niya:
Finally, I was able to asked for his autograph. I presented to him my copy of The Nymph of MTV. Tinanong ko siya kung hindi ba niya nami-miss ung mga tula niya sa koleksyong iyon. Sabi niya, hindi raw.
Sayang, kasi gusto ko sana na mabasa siya uli sa ganung klaseng proyekto.
Xam presented to him the Pinoypoets gift:
After dinner, tambay moments naman ang ilang miyembro ng Pinoypoets sa isang coffee shop:
Paul Allan Martinez surely knows his dolls. In this interview, he shows what passion really is. You can visit his Multiply site at http://www.pamparte.multiply.com.
Rhodge: Kailan ka nag-start na magseryosong mangolekta ng mga doll?
Paul Allan Martinez: Nung nag-work na ako three years ago, kasi afford ko na bumili.
Rhodge: Ano ang first doll na nabili mo?
Paul Allan Martinez: Naku di ko sure, pero ang first ko nabili sa E-bay was Jude Deveraux gift set. Super crush ko kasi yung lalaki dun, I even repainted one na kamukha nung Ken kasi akala ko di na ako magkakaroon ng ganun. Sold-out na kasi.
Rhodge: Magkano mo naman nabili ung Jude Deveraux gift set?
Paul Allan Martinez: 2500 pesos, pero second hand na siya. Happy nga ako kasi worth it. Mahirap na maghanap ng ganun giftset. High school student tayo nun when I first saw the doll sa mall.
Rhodge: Currently, ilan na ang nasa doll collection mo?
Paul Allan Martinez: Yung collector's edition nasa 53 na sila. But I also have yung what they call "Playline." Sa Playline I have around 100+. Yung mga doll na yun ang ginagamit ko when I repaint dolls. Mas mura kasi sila.
Rhodge: Ano ang difference ng Playline sa ibang klase ng dolls na meron ka?
Paul Allan Martinez: Actually, I'm pertaining to Barbie dolls. Kasi I also have yung BJD, si Faith. Well, Playline dolls are yung mga doll na usual na makikita mo sa toy section, usually in pink boxes. Relatively sila yung cheaper dolls ranging from 299.75 pesos to 1000 pesos. Collector's edition naman, mas expensive na type, and now may different label pa sila, like Pink/Silver/Gold edition, each with a corresponding number of items sold worldwide. Silver ediiton is 25,000 pieces lang ang ginawa worldwide.
Rhodge: Pero bukod sa Barbie dolls, ano pang brand ng dolls ang meron ka?
Paul Allan Martinez: Well, meron ibinigay sa akin yung friend ko na Charlie's Angels dolls pero di ko sure ang manufacturer eh. Most of my dolls kasi are from Mattel. Yung si faith na BJD (Ball-Jointed Doll) was from Domuya. Singapore ang location nun.
Rhodge: Ano naman ung Ball-Jointed Doll?
Paul Allan Martinez: Resin dolls. To give you an idea, have you watched the movie Doll Master? Yung mga doll dun puro BJD. Kaya siya tinawag na ganun kasi yung mga joint niya literally may mga balls to allow movement. Very posable kasi ng mga BJD eh.
Rhodge: Hindi ka naman nalilito sa 100+ dolls mo? Do each doll has a name?
Paul Allan Martinez: No, I don't like to give names to my dolls. Kaya hindi ako nalilito kasi I remember kung ano ang mga pangalan nila sa kani-kanilang box. For example, yung isa kong favorite Midge doll (bestfriend ni Barbie), pero dahil Wedding Day Midge yung nasa box niya, I call her that way.
Rhodge: Sa kanilang lahat, ano ang pinaka-favorite mo?
Paul Allan Martinez: Si Faith. Actually, di na ako naglalaro ng mga Barbie doll lately kasi when you have a BJD para ka nang may anak. They are very expensive, saka malaki sila. Imagine my Faith is 60 cm so pag nananahi ako ng gown, she would consume two to five yards ng tela.
Rhodge: How much pala ang isang BJD?
Paul Allan Martinez: Super mahal. Her price was 18,000 pesos when I bought her. Sale pa yun ha. Luka-luka talaga ako when it comes to dolls. Well, she really made me happy nung nagkaroon ako ng problema sa family. I felt that one of the reasons why I made it nung nangyari ang problema ko lately was because I was looking forward to having her.
Rhodge: Wow! 18,000 pesos!
Paul Allan Martinez: Korek, and she was discounted pa kasi originally mga 28,000 pesos siya eh. Super-bankrupt ako when I bought her.
Rhodge: Sabi mo nga, parang you have a baby na nung nagka-BJD doll ka.
Paul Allan Martinez: Well, korek, parang nanganak na rin ako nun kasi ganun din ang range ng mga gastos ng nanganganak. Bongga kamahal, 'no! Actually dito sa bahay isa lang ang pinagsabihan ko ng price ng BJD ko, lagot ako pag nalaman nila nanay, hehe.
Rhodge: Kahit ako nagulat sa price.
Paul Allan Martinez: Hahaha!
Rhodge: You also ventured into making the dresses of the dolls.
Paul Allan Martinez: Di pa formal, pero years ago, gumagawa na talaga ako ng mga dress, even gowns, for dolls. Soon, I'm planning to sell my one-of-a-kind (OOAK) dolls sa Internet kasi na-realize ko, sayang ang talent ko. Kailangan maging income-generating, in a way.
Rhodge: So balak mo magbenta ng doll's dresses sa Internet?
Paul Allan Martinez: Not only doll dresses but the full doll. Since kaya ko na rin mag-ayos ng buhok, tumahi ng gown, and mag-repaint ng doll features, I'll make my own dolls to be sold sa E-bay. Actually I am making my very first dress na ipasusuot ko sa aking first "for sale" na doll, but hindi ko pa ito natatapos.
Rhodge: May brandname ka na ba for those dolls you'll sell?
Paul Allan Martinez: Barbie collectors call it OOAK. It is when you do your "own doll". Wala naman brandname. Since marami nga akong mga Playline dolls, I'm changing their faces to look more sophisticated, giving them more character para for them to look like collector's edition dolls.
Rhodge: You might as well make a brandname for those.
Paul Allan Martinez: I'll think about it. Actually, kaya ako gumawa ng Multiply because of that plan. Arte' couture yung plan kong i-pangalan sa aking mga ginagawang dress for the dolls.
Rhodge: Is it hard to make dresses for dolls? Mas mabusisi ba?
Paul Allan Martinez: Medyo mahirap. Before kasi, wala akong ginagamit na pattern, so ibig sabihin once na gumawa ako ng isang dress/gown, di ko na uli iyon mauulit. Lately, natutuhan ko na gumamit ng pattern to make dress-making a lot easier. Mas maarte na rin ako sa fitting and sa design kasi I was influenced by a friend na na-meet ko rin because of Barbie dolls. Super-galing nitong friend ko na ito.
Rhodge: Paano ka nagco-conceptualize for a dress?
Paul Allan Martinez: Concept? Well, di naman ako masyado mahilig sa mga concept doll. More on the conservative type ako. But if you're pertaining sa mga inspirations ko when making clothes, mga beauty pageant. Pag nakapanood ako ng mga beauty contest tapos nakakita ako ng magandang design, ayun, gagawa ako ng version ko. Also, I love old Hollywood glamour.
Rhodge: So with the Miss Universe pageant that was aired kahapon, may nagustuhan kang gown?
Paul Allan Martinez: Na-inspire ako to make a gown similar to Miss Kosovo's. Super love ko yung gown niya. It reminded me of Audrey Hepburn. Love ko yung pagka-simple nung gown, and her hair was super fabulous. I also like Miss Venezuela's hair kaya isa rin iyon sa mga pag-aaralan kong i-ayos sa mga gagawing kong dolls.
Rhodge: Saan ka kumukuha ng materials for repainting a doll's face? Even the hair, napapalitan mo ba?
Paul Allan Martinez: Sa repainting, sa National Book Store ako bumibili ng mga painting paraphernalias like acrylic paints and Chinese brushes. For the hair, sa E-bay and second-hand stores na napupuntahan ko. Yes, pwede mong kalbuhin yung mga Barbie doll at palitan yung hair. Matagal nga lang na proseso pero worth it.
Rhodge: Saan ka natutong mag-repaint ng face ng doll?
Paul Allan Martinez: It started nung nakabili ako ng Barbie Bazaar na magazine. It featured an article on repainting vintage Barbie dolls. I took note of the materials needed tapos bumili ako. Then the rest is history.
Rhodge: Is it easy? How do you "picture out" the "new face?"
Paul Allan Martinez: It's not easy. Nasira ko nga yung first ever kong Barbie doll kasi ang panget ng pagkaka-repaint ko sa kanya. Marami pa akong kapalpakan na nagawa pero since naging familiar na ako sa face ni Barbie medyo mabilis na ako mag-repaint ngayon. Before, gumagaya lang talaga ako ng mga mukha nung mga doll na gusto ko pero di ko naman kayang bilhin kasi super mahal. Eventually, sa exposure ko na rin siguro sa mga iba't ibang mga doll sa Internet, I've combined everything so doon nakagagawa na ako ng mga new face.
Rhodge: What is your dream doll?
Paul Allan Martinez: Dream doll? Naku, dapat dream dolls! Sa Barbie, it would be Zac Posen gift set kasi super gwapo nung Ken dun. Sa male BJD, I want Luo Strongman of Iplehouse kasi super ganda ng katawan at super gwapo. Kung naging tao lang yun, siya na ang dream guy ko. Sa female BJD, it would be Hazy ng Elfdoll kasi she is so pretty at mukha siyang totoong tao. Ang common denominator ng mga ito, puro sila mahal kaya dapat lang silang tawaging "dream doll."
Rhodge: Magkano itong mga dream doll mo?
Paul Allan Martinez: Zac Posen, nung nilabas siya it was sold for 300 dollars. Its price escalates through the years kasi nga limited edition lng siya. Si Luo Strongman, sold out na rin pero price niya was 1,020 dollars. Si Hazy, the standard edition is 550 dollars and yung limited edition niya is priced at 790 dollars. Ngayon ko lang narealize na bukod sa mahal sila puro sold out pa!
Rhodge: Naku, hard-to-find na ang mga dream doll mo.
Paul Allan Martinez: Yup, super hard to find. But in the future, sana may mag-post sa E-bay. Siyempre sana may pera na rin ako nun. Especially Hazy and Luo. Alam mo ba, I still believe dun sa nabasa ko na if you like something, isulat mo sa papel then believe na magkakaroon ka nun. Most of the dolls that i have in my collection are impossible na rin na makita sa market pero imagine, almost lahat ng isinulat ko na gusto kong dolls, nakuha ko.
Rhodge: Wow! Ano ang advice na maibibigay mo sa mga nagsisimula pa lang sa doll collecting?
Paul Allan Martinez: Mag-ipon! Kailangan palagi kang may pera para once na may available na doll na gusto mo, mabibili mo. Kailangan din ng tiyaga at connection. Minsan kasi ang hirap hanapin nung mga dolls na gusto natin pero once you know other doll collectors, may posibility na may maire-refer silang other doll collector who stopped collecting and are now selling their dolls. Ganun kasi yung story ng iba kong Barbie dolls. Some of them, I have adopted from fellow collectors!
Rhodge: Maraming salamat sa time mo.
Paul Allan Martinez: Salamat din!
Why I Write
I
I write because I would like to live forever. The fact of my future death offends me. Part of this derives from my sense of my own insignificance in the universe. My life and death are a barely momentary flicker. I would like to become more than that. That the people and things I love will die wounds me as well. I seek to immortalize the world I have found and made for myself, even knowing that I won't be there to witness that immortality, mine or my work's, that by definition I will never know whether my endeavor has been successful. But when has impossibility ever deterred anyone from a cherished goal? As the brilliant poet and teacher Alvin Feinman once said to me, "Poetry is always close kin to the impossible, isn't it?"
My aim is to rescue some portion of the drowned and drowning, including always myself. For a long time my poetry emerged from and was fueled by an impulse to rescue my mother from her own death and from the wreckage of her life, out of which I emerged, in both senses of the word. That wreckage made me who I am, but also I escaped that wreckage, which she, by dying, did not. So I had a certain survivor guilt toward the person who both made my escape possible and represented that from which I had escaped. Many of the poems in my first book, Some Are Drowning, centered around an absent, speechless other, an inaccessible beloved who frequently stood in for my mother, though she's an explicit presence in very few of my poems. But her absence was always palpable, a ghostly presence haunting the text. My poems were an attempt to speak to her, to get her to speak back to me, and above all to redeem her suffering: that is, to redeem her life. "Danger invites/rescue—I call it loving," as James Tate wrote in his early poem "Rescue." That project is over, not completed but abandoned (as Paul Valéry said all poems are), but the attempt to rescue my mother through poetry was a major motivation for many years.
The possibility of suffering being redeemed by art, being made meaningful and thus real (as opposed to merely actual, something that happens to exist, happens to occur), is still vital to me. Art reminds us of the uniqueness, particularity, and intrinsic value of things, including ourselves. I sometimes have little sense of myself as existing in the world in any significant way outside of my poetry. That's where my real life is, the only life that's actually mine. So there's also the wish to rescue myself from my own quotidian existence, which is me but is at the same time not me at all. I am its, but it's not mine. For most of us most of the time, life is a succession of empty moments. You're born, you go through x experiences, you die, and then you're gone. No one always burns with Pater's hard, gem-like flame. There's a certain emptiness to existence that I look to poetry, my own poetry and the poetry of others, to fulfill or transcend. I have a strong sense of things going out of existence at every second, fading away at the very moment of their coming into bloom: in the midst of life we are in death, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it.
In that sense everyone is drowning, everything is drowning, every moment of living is a moment of drowning. I have a strong sense of the fragility of the things we shore up against the ruin which is life: the fragility of natural beauty but also of artistic beauty, which is meant to arrest death but embodies death in that very arrest. Goethe's Faust is damned when he says, "Oh moment, stay." At last he finds a moment he longs to preserve, but the moment dissipates when it's halted. The moment is defined by its transience; to fix it is to kill it. Theodor Adorno points out the paradox that "Art works ... kill what they objectify, tearing it away from its context of immediacy and real life. They survive because they bring death" (193). Art is a simulacrum of life that embodies and operates by means of death. The aesthetic impulse is the enemy of the lived moment: it attempts both to preserve and to transcend that moment, to be as deeply in the moment as possible and also to rise beyond it. "Wanting to immortalize the transitory—life—art in fact kills it" (194). This is the inescapable aporia of art, that its creation is a form of destruction. "One has to be downright naive to think that art can restore to the world the fragrance it has lost, according to a line by Baudelaire" (59). Art itself is so vulnerable, to time, to indifference, especially in a society like ours that cares nothing for the potentials art offers, that if anything seeks to repress them in the name of profit or proper order. I have an intense desire to rescue these things that have touched me and place them somewhere for safekeeping, which is both impossible and utterly necessary.
What we take out of life is the luminous moment, which can be a bare branch against a morning sky so overcast it's in whiteface, seen through a window that warps the view because the glass has begun to melt with age. Or it can be the face of a beautiful man seen in passing on a crowded street, because beauty is always passing, and you see it but it doesn't see you. It's the promise that beauty is possible and the threat that it's only momentary: if someone doesn't write it down it's gone. The moment vanishes without a trace and then the person who experiences that moment vanishes and then there's nothing. Except perhaps the poem, which can't change anything. As Auden wrote, poetry makes nothing happen, which also implies the possibility of making "nothing" an event rather than a mere vacancy. Poetry rescues nothing and no one, but it embodies that helpless, necessary will to rescue, which is a kind of love, my love for the world and the things and people in the world.
In a graduate contemporary poetry class I took some twenty years ago, a fellow student complained that a poem we were reading was "Just trying to immortalize this scene." I found it an odd objection, since I thought that's what poems were supposed to do. One is deluded if one believes that one can actually preserve the world in words, but one is just playing games if one doesn't try.
The world cannot be saved, in any of the several senses of the word. To save the world would be to stop it, to fix it in place and time, to drain it of what makes it world: motion, flux, action. As Yeats wrote in "Easter 1916," "Minute by minute they change;/ .... The stone's in the midst of all." Poet and critic Allen Grossman is not the first to observe that poetry is a deathly activity, removing things from the obliterating stream of meaningless event that is also the embodied vitality of the world and of time's action in and upon the world, which creates and destroys in the same motion. The stream of time is both life and that which wears life down to nothing. "Poetry is the perpetual evidence, the sadly perpetual evidence, of the incompleteness of the motive which gives rise to it" (Grossman 71).
But elements of the world can be and have been saved. Thus the history of art. Each artwork that has endured through time is a piece of the world that has survived, and carries with it other pieces of a world, of worlds, otherwise gone. That we are able today to admire the sculpture of Praxiteles, to gaze upon a Rembrandt painting, to read of Keats's fears that he shall cease to be, is evidence that something does remain, something can be carried over, rescued from oblivion. The artwork is evidence of its own survival. Allen Grossman writes: "My most fundamental impulses are toward recovery, the securing once again of selfhood in something that lies invulnerably beyond history, something which promises enormous, inhuman felicity" (41). I would add that, for me, the impulse is not just for the conservation of personhood, but of worldhood. I seek to save the sensuous appearances, the particulate worldness of the world.
II
I write not to be bored. I hate being bored, and I don't want to bore others. Unlike Zelda Fitzgerald, I can't say that I'm never bored because I'm never boring. I am often bored, and undoubtedly I am sometimes boring. But I try not to be boring in poems, and in turn I don't want poems to bore me. Poems should be interesting, should engage and hold the interest. The most basic level of interest is the sensual, the aural, the texture and feel of words and phrases: the poem in the ear, the poem in the mouth. Helen Vendler has called the poem a musical composition scored for the human voice. The poem is a palpable sensuous entity or it is nothing.
What is it that I seek when I read a poem, when I write a poem? Above all, I desire an experience, a mode of experience available to me only through poetry. "The reading of a poem should be an experience [like experiencing an act]. Its writing must be all the more so," as Wallace Stevens reminds us (905, 909). A true poetic experience is worth more than a thousand oppositional critiques, most of which tend to be rather predictable in any case.
My interest can be defined by at least part of Charles Reznikoff's characterization of his poetry: "images clear but the meaning not stated but suggested by the objective details and the music of the verse." As a reader, I look for such clarity of image and phrase, for a rhythmic pulse and a rich verbal texture, for a sense of shape and coherence even in the midst of apparent fracture. As a writer, I try to provide these things. But an overall "meaning" or "interpretation" isn't the first or the main thing I seek, as either reader or writer. "A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have one" (Stevens 914). Attend to the senses and sense will often attend to itself.
I respond to urgency, to a sense of felt necessity, to passion. The word passion derives from the Greek for "suffering, experience, emotion." The word itself summons up the poem as an experience undergone by the writer and the reader alike. Passion is not just a passion for my lover or for botany or for history, but a passion for words, a passionate struggle to try to create verbal experience that would be as real as the rest of the world. Stevens insisted that "In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all" (902). Like any object of love, that also means that the poem will resist its creator, just as the world resists us. The struggle such passion entails is both joyous and painful. As Stevens also famously wrote, "Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully" (910). Of course, that presumes both an intelligence to be resisted and an intelligence that resists. The poet, the poem, and the reader must all be as intelligent as possible.
I desire variety in my poems and the poems of others because the expansion of my poetic territories is the expansion of my world. The poem expands the world as I find it, it makes more world available to me. Works of art are (or should be) like people: no person is new, but every person is unique. To encounter a work of art is to enter into a new relationship, with the work and with the world to which it is an addition.
If art really is some kind of compensation or restitution for what we lack in our lives, and I believe that among many other things it is, it can be so only by providing something different from what we already have, not merely by reflecting or reflecting upon those lives and those myriad lacks.
I want to write good poems (and I still believe that there is such a thing, that aesthetic judgment is not merely an ideological mystification), but not the same good poems that I've already written. I'd like to do what I haven't done before. This has proven to be an impediment to my poetic reputation: I don't have a trademark style that I repeat from book to book, I haven't commodified myself and my work into a brand. Critic Vernon Shetley describes the contemporary American poetry world "where each poet seems compelled to enhance his or her brand recognition with an easily recognizable gimmick" (79). A reader too often knows exactly what he or she is getting, whether from a "mainstream" poet or an "avant-garde" one. Philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto concurs that 'There is an overwhelming tendency in America to brand artists, so that the well informed can identify an example of an artist's work in a single act of instant recognition" (33). Not to so brand or trademark one's work puts one at a distinct disadvantage in what is too often a literary marketplace.
To attempt something new and fail is much more interesting than to attempt something that's already been done and fail. I don't want to write something just because I know I can, just to reaffirm what I already know. Of course, to say that I don't want to do the same thing twice is to assume that I've done something in the first place. I not only don't know what I can do, I don't know what I've done. How could one, not having access to the vantage point of posterity? With every poem I'm trying to do something that I can't achieve, to get somewhere I'll never get. If I were able to do it, if I were able to get there, I'd have no reason to continue writing. As Allen Grossman suggests, poetry aims at the end of poetry, which is unattainable (the ends of poetry are the end of poetry). Thus poetry continues, despite the frequent reports of its death.
I would like my poetry to bring into existence something which did not previously exist, including in my mind or my intention. I want to surprise myself, to do something I didn't plan to do or even that's not immediately recognizable to me as something I did. (Though poet Donald Morrill, on a panel we were both on about difficulty in poetry, reminded me that not all surprises are good.) For the writer as well as for the reader, poetry should shake one out of one's habitual ways of seeing and thinking, conceiving and perceiving. As Hemingway said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the writer "should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed." The goal is to achieve the higher level of "mastery" that permits the medium to do things of its own accord, out of its own internal logic, in which the writer participates but which the writer doesn't determine.
I think of the poem the way that I think of a painting or a sculpture: a new entity in the world, not just a comment on the world. While meaning is hardly insignificant, it's not what defines the poem as a poem. I seek out the specificity of the poem as an event in language ("language as the material of poetry, not its mere medium or instrument," in Stevens's formulation), and not a recounting or re-enactment of an extra-linguistic event, though of course such events enter into poems. The poem is not hermetically sealed off from the world, but encounters and engages the world as an independent element.
The forms that these things which have not previously existed, these events that have not previously occurred, take are not predetermined. If one is sufficiently lucky and open to possibility, they can be found, they will happen, in the villanelle as well as in the most self-consciously avant-garde poem. Among others, Karen Volkman demonstrates the continuing vitality of the sonnet as a field of exploration and experimentation. As Wallace Stevens points out in his "Materia Poetica," "All poetry is experimental poetry" (918). To maintain and expand the formal capacities of the medium is also to conserve and preserve those capacities. In Susan Stewart's words, "the disappearance of any aesthetic form from human memory is a disaster not unlike the extinction of a species, since a realm of possible actions is now precluded and not necessarily provided with a compensatory analogue."
As many poets have done, I look back, to the High Modernists and to the poets of the English Renaissance, to move forward. Eliot looked back to the English Metaphysical poets and the Jacobean dramatists, Pound looked back to Sappho and Catullus and to the Provençal troubadours, Stevens looked back to what critic M.H. Abrams calls the major Romantic lyric, and Paul Celan looked back to medieval German mysticism and the Hebrew Bible. Louis Zukofsky's anti-capitalist "A 9" is modeled after Guido Cavalcanti's canzone "Donna Mi Prega" (a poem highly recommended by Pound in his ABC of Reading).
Thus I prefer words like distinctive, different, or unique to a word like new, with all its connotations of novelty and fashion, of doing the not-yet-done for its own sake. Or perhaps, even better, the word original, which means both "of the first instance" and "of the origin, of the source." To be original is at once to do what has not previously been done, to produce something which did not exist before, and to draw on the beginnings of one's practice, to move forward by casting back.
I don't write a poem and ask, "Is this new?" I ask, "Is this individual, distinctive, unique?" Of course, for a poem to be completely unique, for it to have no relationship to anything that's come before, would be for it not to be a poem at all. As would be the case for the completely new poem.
Forms, styles, modes, and genres don't have intrinsic meanings or values. A self-consciously avant-garde poem can be as rote as the most bland pseudo-autobiographical anecdote, if its writing is not approached in a true spirit of adventuring into possibility. Simply to seek the new for its own sake is a shallow and pointless affair, like chasing after the latest fashions. As the New Wave group Talk Talk sang, mocking such a dedicated follower of fashion, "She'll wear anything you can't recognize." And too often, of course, one does recognize it.
One is always setting out in search of the new, as Baudelaire wrote, seeking out what does not yet exist. But I would rather write a good poem than a new poem. And many of the varieties of "the new" currently on offer seem rather shopworn and aged. Rimbaud wrote that it is necessary to be absolutely modern (il faut être absolument moderne). As if in response, Wallace Stevens wrote that "One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be" (912).
Stevens also wrote that "Newness (not novelty) may be the highest individual value in poetry. Even in the meretricious sense of newness a new poem has value" (914). Too many poets confuse novelty with genuine newness. "The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover" (Stevens 919). This is a fault shared by too much of the contemporary American poetic avant-garde: it is filled with entirely too many accordion-playing clams.
III
Any artistic medium calls forth a self and a world which exist specifically in their relationship to that medium, a self which did not exist prior to that engagement. As Yeats wrote, the self who writes is not the self who sits down to dinner or reads the evening paper. Contrary to Mikhail Bakhtin's assertion that the lyric is monologic (as opposed to the novel's "dialogized heteroglossia"), the lyric problematizes and decenters the univocal speaking subject. The self in the most determinedly confessional poem is still a mask, a construct. In his essay "The Metaphysical Poets," Eliot writes that "When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes" (1975: 64). Eliot's statement needs to be amended to acknowledge that such a perfectly receptive state (for it is receptivity and attention of which he is writing) is always an asymptote, striven for but never achieved, and that the poet's mundane experience as an ordinary individual is no less chaotic, irregular, and fragmentary than anyone else's. As Eliot points out in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," "It is not in his personal emotions . . . that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting" (43). The difference is what one makes of those fragments of experience, what and what kind of order, however tenuous and contingent, one brings to the chaos of quotidian life.
I would like each poem of mine to be as close to perfection as possible, and I think that good poems are much more rare than some believe them to be. I would also like my work to be more than just an accumulation of good poems, difficult as even a single good poem is to achieve. I would like the whole to add up to more than the sum of its parts. Eliot said that this is one test of a major poet (his example was George Herbert): "a major poet is one the whole of whose work we ought to read, in order fully to appreciate any part of it" (1957: 44). Each individual part illuminates and is illuminated by both every other part and the corpus as a whole. To produce such a body of work is one of my goals as a writer.
Obviously one can't predict this about one's own work or about the work of one's contemporaries. But in his late poems 'The Planet on the Table" and "As You Leave the Room," Wallace Stevens was able to look back on his life's work and know that he had accomplished something that mattered: "his poems, although makings of his self,/Were no less makings of the sun." And Pound could look back at The Cantos, his failed epic, and realize that, though he had tried to write paradise, he could not make it cohere.
I won't live to know whether my work has outlived me. But one can't predict the future in general, and this doesn't prevent us from making decisions that influence, change, and often determine that future. The future isn't wholly unknowable, and the future doesn't just happen: in large part we make it. This works no differently in poetry than in any other field of endeavor. There is no guarantee that one will reach any of one's goals in this life. But not to struggle toward those goals is to guarantee that they won't be attained. I choose, in the words of Tennyson's Ulysses, 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
IV
And never to forget beauty, however strange or difficult.
***
Works Cited
Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. Christian Lenhardt. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
Danto, Arthur C. "Surface Appeal." The Nation 284, no. 4 (January 29, 2007).
Eliot, T. S. On Poetry and Poets. New York: Farrar Strauss and Cudahy, 1957.
Eliot, T. S. Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot. Ed. Frank Kermode. San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1975.
Grossman, Allen. The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Shetley, Vernon. "America's Big Heart." Metre 10 (Autumn 2001).
Stevens, Wallace. Collected Poetry and Prose. New York: Library of America, 1997.
Stewart, Susan. "The State of Cultural Theory and the Future of Literary Form." Profession 93. Ed. Phyllis Franklin. New York: Modern Language Association, 1993.
*The essay is from "Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry," published by the University of Michigan Press.
Kim Bum (born Kim Sang Bum on July 7, 1989) is a South Korean actor who has appeared in numerous Korean television series and dramas such as High Kick! and East of Eden. He is best known for playing the role of So Yi Jung in the popular Korean drama Boys Over Flowers.
Saw the LBM version on Lokomoko High. Syet, Black Eyed Peas pala ang kumanta nun. Ang galing ng ginawa nila para sa kantang ito! Progressive ung growth nila since their Monkey Business album.
This song is produced by David Guetta. If you saw the recent Miss Universe pageant, siya ung kasamang DJ ni Kelly Rowland.
Here's the instrumental of the song:
I can definitely feel the dum dum dum beat in the beginning of the song, seems to invite everyone to leave behind their insecurities and dance the night away.
Here's the official video:
This really perked me up during this sad, sad day...
*I'm mesmerized with their new album, THE E.N.D. Nahigitan talaga nila ang mga sarili nila. Definitely, this is not the end of the Black Eyed Peas.
"Sayaw ka na... Ang ganda mong dalaga...
Sayaw ka na... Gusto kitang kasama..."
- "Mare"
Astig ka, apl.de.ap.!
Kythe duty nung Sabado ng umaga sa AFP Medical Center. Dahil bago ako, ipinakilala ako ni Ms. Aida (ang coordinator) sa mga batang nandun sa pediatric ward. Ito ung mga batang me cancer, or heart deficiencies. Katulad na lamang ni Kuya Kim, na 10 years nang nakikipagbuno sa kaniyang cancer. Kakatapos lang daw ng kaniyang chemo session nung linggong iyon, at kasalukuyan siyang nagpapahinga bago gawin ang susunod na procedure. Punong-puno ng mga pus-like wounds sa kaniyang katawan, ang iba ay naglalakihan dahil puno ng tubig. Resulta daw iyon ng bagong gamot na ginamit sa kaniyang chemo session.
Nakilala ko din si Trixie, na may congenital heart disease. Kasalukuyan siyang nagbabasa ng Tinker Bell's story nung napuntahan namin siya sa kaniyang higaan. Nagprisinta si Kuyatot na siya na lang ang magbabasa ng kuwento para sa bata, with matching explanations.
Naupo naman ako sa tabi ni Chinchin, isang batang 4-years old pero bibong-bibong nagsasagot sa aking mga tanong. Ibinida ng nanay niya na magaling sumayaw ang bata. Katunayan nga daw, puro butas na daw ang mga panty ng bata dahil sa kaka-split nito pag sumasayaw.
Nung araw na iyon, may mga bisita ang mga bata bukod sa amin. May inihandang party ang Triskelion Alumni of UST para sa kanila. Natuwa ang mga bata sa story-telling activity at coloring activity na inihanda ng grupo. May give-aways pa para sa kanila! Nag-donate din ang grupo sa pediatric section ng isang personal ref.
***
Sa Heart Center naman kami ni Kuyatot nung hapon, para samahan ang ilang kaibigan (Inay Cecille, Leo, Emgy) na magdo-donate ng dugo para kay Baby Kurt. Nakilala namin ang mga magulang ng bata. Ikwinento sa amin ni Ate Audrey (mama ni Kurt) kung paano makipaglaban ang bata sa kaniyang karamdaman. Sinabi mismo sa kaniya ng duktor na fighter ang anak niya.
Dalawa ang nakuha naming donors para sa araw na iyon, si Inay Cecille at si Leo, na parehong kasama namin ni Kuyatot sa Hands On Manila. Kaya lang, kakatapos lang ng menstruation period ni Inay Cecille kaya hindi pa siya pwede mag-donate ng dugo. Si Leo lang ang nakalusot sa screening, na expected naman kasi regular donor siya ng Red Cross. Babalik na lang daw si Inay Cecille next week para makapag-donate ng dugo, siguro naman daw ay pupuwede na siya that time.
After sa Heart Center, nag-dinner ang aming grupo sa Trinoma. Nilagnat si Kuyatot kasi nilibre niya kami. Haha! Ikot-ikot lang kami sa mall, nakakita ng celebrities (Noynoy Aquino, who looked much older in person; sina JC Tiuseco at Maxene Magalona [sila na ba?], kasama si Rich Asuncion), at nagkulitan tungkol sa prospective lovelife ni Emgy. Tapos, uwian na.
***
Sunday morning, attend naman kami ng binyag ni baby Migel Han. Biyaheng pa-Calumpit, Bulacan naman kami. Nakakatuwa kasi nakita ko na naman sina Ate Virgie at Ate Clarissa, mga close friend ni Kuyatot. Siyempre, inatupag rin namin ang nakahandang food. Waah, the lechon came from Cebu! Kaya pala ibang lasa. Hehe.
Pagod man at antok, kering-keri lang kasi kasama ko naman si Kuyatot. Dun pa lang, solved na ako. Hehe.
***
Holiday pala bukas! Hay, hindi pa ako nakapaghulog ng contribution ko sa World Vision! Waah!