Happy New Year!

ni Jona Branzuela Bering


Sa mga Chinese
kinahanglang daghang lingin
aron daghang grasya
ang musod sa bag-ong tuig.
Payts na tingali ni ako:
lingin ang mga kalimutaw
sa akong walo ka mga anak,
nagsiga kay wap-ay panihapon
karong usa nalang ka oras
ang nagbitay una maputol
ang gininhawa niining tuiga.
lingin ang bola nga napunitan
ni Dado didto sa basurahan
kilid sa banko nga daghag tawng
isig withdraw. Lingin akong
handuraw nga nagsigeg tuyok
sa palibot bisag naay putos
nga Jollibee o Mcdo. Lingin sad
ang mga tiyan sa akong
mga anak nga klarong gibitok.
Lingin sad ang tiles dire
sa skywalk sa Robinsons.
Ako sad, lingin ang tiyan,
sa pagpaabot sad sa ikasiyam.

Balak:::Kasina

Sa atong paghisgot-hisgot
sa nagkalayong hulagway
sa Sangi, nahimatmat nako

ang imong pagkabata—

napatik pa sa imong utok
ang tinagik, kasikas
sa batang Sangi—mokaratil
og dagan kon magdanga-danga na
si Fe, ug dayong pwesto

sa buslotong bungbong, ug didto
nasinati ninyo ang inagulo
sa babayng gidungguan.
Ug kato pong nakadaog ka

sa karera og traynta. Mora ka

og Ginoo kadiyot, nanglibre
og Noguts sa imong mga classmates.
Katong si Poltox a.k.a. Tarzan,
sa gikaingon mo pa, pinakadato
kay naay iyang kaugalingong
kalibotan pagkahumag suyop
sa pinutos nga iyang gihuptan.

Gipangutana nimo siya kon

asa diin diay siya gikan: Sa Saudi,

ug dayon padung sa London

ang iyang biyahe. Hayahay kaayo ka

kay kini ang imong playground:

su'd sa purtahan ni Nang Budlat,

lusot sa bintana ni Noy Mamuso,

ambak sa pantawan ni Tay Hubak,

tago sa CR ni Nang WayKaligo.

Ug karon nga ang itlog ni Poltox,
wa'y kalainan sa usa ka bandera
nga giwara-wara taliwala sa dalan,
nakapangutana ko kanimo:
Unsay dagway ni Poltox niadtong
dili pa niya mapalit ang kalibotan?

Blog:::Ukay-ukay

Ay sa wakas, nakit-an na nako ang planner nga di kaayo mahal (pero mahalan ra gihapon ko) sa tantong ukay-ukay sa natio, niya naabot sa Starbucks (niya di diay to baligya, kinahanglang naay sticker-ek-ek)siya sa Fully Book. Sa Fully Book naa unta to niya—Php500!—kamahal gyod sa waraswaras nga nawng ni Frida Kahlo! Php75 ra man gani ang akong palit sa libro niya! Wa sila kudjapi! Naay girlashog gamay nga Php755!—para planner lang! nayabag sila!

Pagbalik nako sa Natio, uy salamat nakit-an nako akon gusto nga tagPhp300 ra (naglisod ug tyoe sa ra.) Nashock ang clerk kay ningpalit kog planner nga magstandby ra man ko sa Natio magfree-reading ug mangablig libro nga giputos pag plastic cover. Psst. Yawg saba.

Niya ganiha, naay advertisement akong planner sa Dos!
In-ani diay akong planner, featuring the La Mesa Dam/Ecopark:

*******************

Dugay-dugay nako wa kasuwat ug balak—gitapol ang mga tudlo sa akong utok—wa nangwitik. Gitapul. Niya murag di man gyod ni angay paundayunan kay makayabag man diay ni. Maong suwat nasad ko. Cheating pa gyod kay dugay ra ni nasave sa cellphone, two months ago, i guess, niya karon lang naukayan:

Ang Pagpangayhay sa Kinabuhi

ni Jona Branzuela Bering


ilahi ang dikolor.
ilahi sad ang puti.
ang kanang nangadunot o
nagisi na ba kaha,
hala, ilabay na na
kay nagsamuk-samok ra na
sa kahapsay sa imong hinayhay.
iwit ra man gani ka.
Wa nalang unta to nimo labhi.

************

Oy, akong wishlist checklist naa nay nacheckan:

• planner
• A case for 2x3 Mp4\
• bag (from Maam Cor, next year palang ni madawat! thanks maam! Happy New Year! hahaha)

Ang wap-a, niya bisag makatampo ka:

• Libro ni F. Sionil Jose, Jose Garcia Villa, and St. Nick Joaquin (daghan kag choices sa Powerbooks. Didto suok-suok gamay, naglaray si Sionil Jose ngadto.
• Painting Materials (mahal ang acrylic paints? og kanang brushes?)
• Happiness (bisag makatampo ka ani?)

*********

Ipha ang section breaks, di parehas no?

Daan pa lagi ko.

Crashing to a New Crush:::Nam Le

"Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice"
Nam Le


My father arrived on a rainy morning. I was dreaming about a poem, the dull thluck thluck of a typewriter's keys punching out the letters. It was a good poem — perhaps the best I'd ever written. When I woke up, he was standing outside my bedroom door, smiling ambiguously. He wore black trousers and a wet, wrinkled parachute jacket that looked like it had just been pulled out of a washing machine. Framed by the bedroom doorway, he appeared even smaller, gaunter, than I remembered. Still groggy with dream, I lifted my face toward the alarm clock.

"What time is it?"

"Hello, Son," he said in Vietnamese. "I knocked for a long time. Then the door just opened."

The fields are glass, I thought. Then tum-ti-ti, a dactyl, end line, then the words excuse and alloy in the line after. Come on, I thought.

"It's raining heavily," he said.

I frowned. The clock read 11:44. "I thought you weren't coming until this afternoon." It felt strange, after all this time, to be speaking Vietnamese again.

"They changed my flight in Los Angeles."

"Why didn't you ring?"

"I tried," he said equably. "No answer."

I twisted over the side of the bed and cracked open the window. The sound of rain filled the room — rain fell on the streets, on the roofs, on the tin shed across the parking lot like the distant detonations of firecrackers. Everything smelled of wet leaves.

"I turn the ringer off when I sleep," I said. "Sorry."

He continued smiling at me, significantly, as if waiting for an announcement.

"I was dreaming."

He used to wake me, when I was young, by standing over me and smacking my cheeks lightly. I hated it — the wetness, the sourness of his hands.

"Come on," he said, picking up a large Adidas duffel and a rolled bundle that looked like a sleeping bag. "A day lived, a sea of knowledge earned." He had a habit of speaking in Vietnamese proverbs. I had long since learned to ignore it.

I threw on a T-shirt and stretched my neck in front of the lone window. Through the rain, the sky was as gray and striated as graphite. The fields are glass ... Like a shape in smoke, the poem blurred, then dissolved into this new, cold, strange reality: a windblown, rain-strafed parking lot; a dark room almost entirely taken up by my bed; the small body of my father dripping water onto hardwood floors.

I went to him, my legs goose-pimpled underneath my pajamas. He watched with pleasant indifference as my hand reached for his, shook it, then relieved his other hand of the bags. "You must be exhausted," I said.

He had flown from Sydney, Australia. Thirty-three hours all up — transiting in Auckland, Los Angeles, and Denver — before touching down in Iowa. I hadn't seen him in three years.

"You'll sleep in my room."

"Very fancy," he said, as he led me through my own apartment. "You even have a piano." He gave me an almost rueful smile. "I knew you'd never really quit." Something moved behind his face and I found myself back on a heightened stool with my fingers chasing the metronome, ahead and behind, trying to shut out the tutor's repeated sighing, his heavy brass ruler. I realized I was massaging my knuckles. My father patted the futon in my living room. "I'll sleep here."

"You'll sleep in my room, Ba." I watched him warily as he surveyed our surroundings, messy with books, papers, dirty plates, teacups, clothes — I'd intended to tidy up before going to the airport. "I work in this room anyway, and I work at night." As he moved into the kitchen, I grabbed the three-quarters-full bottle of Johnnie Walker from the second shelf of my bookcase and stashed it under the desk. I looked around. The desktop was gritty with cigarette ash. I threw some magazines over the roughest spots, then flipped one of them over because its cover bore a picture of Chairman Mao. I quickly gathered up the cigarette packs and sleeping pills and incense burners and dumped them all on a high shelf, behind my Kafka Vintage Classics.

At the kitchen swing door I remembered the photo of Linda beside the printer. Her glamour shot, I called it: hair windswept and eyes squinty, smiling at something out of frame. One of her ex-boyfriends had taken it at Lake MacBride. She looked happy. I snatched it and turned it facedown, covering it with scrap paper. As I walked into the kitchen I thought, for a moment, that I'd left the fire escape open. I could hear rainwater gushing along gutters, down through the pipes. Then I saw my father at the sink, sleeves rolled up, sponge in hand, washing the month-old crusted mound of dishes. The smell was awful. "Ba," I frowned, "you don't need to do that."

His hands, hard and leathery, moved deftly in the sink.

"Ba," I said, halfheartedly.

"I'm almost finished." He looked up and smiled. "Have you eaten? Do you want me to make some lunch?"

"Thoi," I said, suddenly irritated. "You're exhausted. I'll go out and get us something."

I went back through the living room into my bedroom, picking up clothes and rubbish along the way.

"You don't have to worry about me," he called out. "You just do what you always do."

The truth was, he'd come at the worst possible time. I was in my last year at the Iowa Writers' Workshop; it was late November, and my final story for the semester was due in three days. I had a backlog of papers to grade and a heap of fellowship and job applications to draft and submit. It was no wonder I was drinking so much.

I'd told Linda only the previous night that he was coming. We were at her place. Her body was slippery with sweat and hard to hold. Her body smelled of her clothes. She turned me over, my face kissing the bedsheets, and then she was chopping my back with the edges of her hands. Higher. Out a bit more. She had trouble keeping a steady rhythm. "Softer," I told her. Moments later, I started laughing.

"What?"

The sheets were damp beneath my pressed face.

"What?"

"Softer," I said, "not slower."

She slapped my back with the meat of her palms, hard — once, twice. I couldn't stop laughing. I squirmed over and caught her by the wrists. Hunched forward, she was blushing and beautiful. Her hair fell over her face; beneath its ash-blond hem all I could see were her open lips. She pressed down, into me, her shoulders kinking the long, lean curve from the back of her neck to the small of her back. "Stop it!" her lips said. She wrested her hands free. Her fingers beneath my waistband, violent, the scratch of her nails down my thighs, knees, ankles. I pointed my foot like a ballet dancer.

Afterward, I told her my father didn't know about her. She said nothing. "We just don't talk about that kind of stuff," I explained. She looked like an actress who looked like my girlfriend. Staring at her face made me tired. I'd begun to feel this way more often around her. "He's only here for three days." Somewhere out of sight, a group of college boys hooted and yelled.

"I thought you didn't talk to him at all."

"He's my father."

"What's he want?"

I rolled toward her, onto my elbow. I tried to remember how much I'd told her about him. We'd been lying on the bed, the wind loud in the room — I remember that — and we were both tipsy. Ours could have been any two voices in the darkness. "It's only three days," I said.

The look on her face was strange, shut down. She considered me a long time. Then she got up and pulled on her clothes. "Just make sure you get your story done," she said.

I drank before I came here too. I drank when I was a student at university, and then when I was a lawyer — in my previous life, as they say. There was a subterranean bar in a hotel next to my work, and every night I would wander down and slump on a barstool and pretend I didn't want the bartender to make small talk. He was only a bit older than me, and I came to envy his ease, his confidence that any given situation was merely temporary. I left exorbitant tips. After a while I was treated to battered shrimps and shepherd's pies on the house. My parents had already split by then, my father moving to Sydney, my mother into a government flat.

That's all I've ever done, traffic in words. Sometimes I still think about word counts the way a general must think about casualties. I'd been in Iowa more than a year — days passed in weeks, then months, more than a year of days — and I'd written only three and a half stories. About seventeen thousand words. When I was working at the law firm, I would have written that many words in a couple of weeks. And they would have been useful to someone.

Deadlines came, exhausting, and I forced myself up to meet them. Then, in the great spans of time between, I fell back to my vacant screen and my slowly sludging mind. I tried everything — writing in longhand, writing in my bed, in my bathtub. As this last deadline approached, I remembered a friend claiming he'd broken his writer's block by switching to a typewriter. You're free to write, he told me, once you know you can't delete what you've written. I bought an electric Smith Corona at an antique shop. It buzzed like a tropical aquarium when I plugged it in. It looked good on my desk. For inspiration, I read absurdly formal Victorian poetry and drank Scotch neat. How hard could it be? Things happened in this world all the time. All I had to do was record them. In the sky, two swarms of swallows converged, pulled apart, interwove again like veils drifting at crosscurrents. In line at the supermarket, a black woman leaned forward and kissed the handle of her shopping cart, her skin dark and glossy like the polished wood of a piano.

The week prior to my father's arrival, a friend chastised me for my persistent defeatism.

"Writer's block?" Under the streetlights, vapors of bourbon puffed out of his mouth. "How can you have writer's block? Just write a story about Vietnam."

We had just come from a party following a reading by the workshop's most recent success, a Chinese woman trying to immigrate to America who had written a book of short stories about Chinese characters in stages of immigration to America. The stories were subtle and good. The gossip was that she'd been offered a substantial six-figure contract for a two-book deal. It was meant to be an unspoken rule that such things were left unspoken. Of course, it was all anyone talked about.

"It's hot," a writing instructor told me at a bar. "Ethnic literature's hot. And important too."

A couple of visiting literary agents took a similar view: "There's a lot of polished writing around," one of them said. "You have to ask yourself, what makes me stand out?" She tagteamed to her colleague, who answered slowly as though intoning a mantra, 'Your background and life experience.'

Other friends were more forthright: "I'm sick of ethnic lit," one said. "It's full of descriptions of exotic food." Or: "You can't tell if the language is spare because the author intended it that way, or because he didn't have the vocab."

I was told about a friend of a friend, a Harvard graduate from Washington, D.C., who had posed in traditional Nigerian garb for his book-jacket photo. I pictured myself standing in a rice paddy, wearing a straw conical hat. Then I pictured my father in the same field, wearing his threadbare fatigues, young and hard-eyed.

"It's a license to bore," my friend said. We were drunk and walking our bikes because both of us, separately, had punctured our tires on the way to the party.

"The characters are always flat, generic. As long as a Chinese writer writes about Chinese people, or a Peruvian writer about Peruvians, or a Russian writer about Russians ..." he said, as though reciting children's doggerel, then stopped, losing his train of thought. His mouth turned up into a doubtful grin. I could tell he was angry about something.

"Look," I said, pointing at a floodlit porch ahead of us. "Those guys have guns."

"As long as there's an interesting image or metaphor once in every this much text" — he held out his thumb and forefinger to indicate half a page, his bike wobbling all over the sidewalk. I nodded to him, and then I nodded to one of the guys on the porch, who nodded back. The other guy waved us through with his faux-wood air rifle. A car with its headlights on was idling in the driveway, and girls' voices emerged from inside, squealing, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

"Faulkner, you know," my friend said over the squeals, "he said we should write about the old verities. Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." A sudden sharp crack behind us, like the striking of a giant typewriter hammer, followed by some muffled shrieks. "I know I'm a bad person for saying this," my friend said, "but that's why I don't mind your work, Nam. Because you could just write about Vietnamese boat people all the time. Like in your third story."

He must have thought my head was bowed in modesty, but in fact I was figuring out whether I'd just been shot in the back of the thigh. I'd felt a distinct sting. The pellet might have ricocheted off something.

"You could totally exploit the Vietnamese thing. But instead, you choose to write about lesbian vampires and Colombian assassins, and Hiroshima orphans — and New York painters with hemorrhoids."

For a dreamlike moment I was taken aback. Cataloged like that, under the bourbon stink of his breath, my stories sank into unflattering relief. My leg was still stinging. I imagined sticking my hand down the back of my jeans, bringing it to my face under a streetlight, and finding it gory, blood-spattered. I imagined turning around, advancing wordlessly up the porch steps, and drop-kicking the two kids. I would tell my story into a microphone from a hospital bed. I would compose my story in a county cell. I would kill one of them, maybe accidentally, and never talk about it, ever, to anyone. There was no hole in my jeans.

"I'm probably a bad person," my friend said, stumbling beside his bike a few steps in front of me.

If you ask me why I came to Iowa, I would say that Iowa is beautiful in the way that any place is beautiful: if you treat it as the answer to a question you're asking yourself every day, just by being there.

That afternoon, as I was leaving the apartment for Linda's, my father called out my name from the bedroom. I stopped outside the closed door. He was meant to be napping. "Where are you going?" his voice said.

"For a walk," I replied.

"I'll walk with you."

It always struck me how everything seemed larger in scale on Summit Street: the double-storied houses, their smooth lawns sloping down to the sidewalks like golf greens; elm trees with high, thick branches — the sort of branches from which I imagined fathers suspending long-roped swings for daughters in white dresses. The leaves, once golden and red, were turning brown, dark orange. The rain had stopped. I don't know why, but we walked in the middle of the road, dark asphalt gleaming beneath the slick, pasted leaves like the back of a whale.

I asked him, "What do you want to do while you're here?"

His face was pale and fixed in a smile. "Don't worry about me," he said. "I can just meditate. Or read."

"There's a coffee shop downtown," I said. "And a Japanese restaurant." It sounded pathetic. It occurred to me that I knew nothing about what my father did all day. He kept smiling, looking at the ground moving in front of his feet.

"I have to write," I said.

"You write."

And I could no longer read his smile. He had perfected it during our separation. It was a setting of the lips, sly, almost imperceptible, which I would probably have taken for a sign of senility but for the keenness of his eyes.

"There's an art museum across the river," I said

"Ah, take me there."

"The museum?"

"No," he said, looking sideways at me. "The river."

We turned back to Burlington Street and walked down the hill to the river. He stopped halfway across the bridge. The water below looked cold and black, slowing in sections as it succumbed to the temperature. Behind us six lanes of cars skidded back and forth across the wet grit of the road, the sound like the shredding of wind.

"Have you heard from your mother?" He stood upright before the railing, his head strangely small above the puffy down jacket I had lent him.

"Every now and then."

He lapsed into formal Vietnamese: "How is the mother of Nam?"

"She is good," I said — too loudly — trying to make myself heard over the groans and clanks of a passing truck. He was nodding. Behind him, the east bank of the river glowed wanly in the afternoon light. "Come on," I said. We crossed the bridge and walked to a nearby Dairy Queen. When I came out, two coffees in my hands, my father had gone down to the river's edge. Next to him, a bundled-up, bearded figure stooped over a burning gasoline drum. Never had I seen anything like it in Iowa City.


...excerpt...

Memory Lane::: Ang Kantang "Don't Cry Joni"

Nag-atubang ra ko ato sa abuhan sa bay namo nga kusog ang evolution—sinugdanan kwarto niya maayong pagkuso-kuso ni Bagyong Nakalimot-Na-Ko nahimong kusina sa pagbalik ug barog, niya ning-rotate ang utok sa akong papa kay sige man sag rotate ang baba ni Mama maong nahimong balik ug kwarto—nag-atubang ra kos abuhan. Niya ilawum sa abuhan daghan tae ni Rene—ang among binuhing kanding nga murag irog batasan, di pwede sa gawas ibutang kay mo-aw-aw—ay momee diay. Murag naglung-ag man tingali tus Inday niya ningtukar dayun ang

Joni was the girl who lived next door
I've known her, I guess, ten years or more

sa among dibateryang gamayng radyo. Nagtan-aw rako sa abuhan niya moyukog motan-aw sa tae ni Rene.

Jimmy, please say you'll wait for me
I'll grow up someday you'll see
Saving all my kisses just for you
Signed with love forever true

Dugaya maluto sa kan-on oy. Gutom na. Ningsayaw-sayaw nas sa akong tiyan ang akong mga binuhi. Sigeg tukmol-tukmol sa bungbong sa akong tina-i. Ningtan-aw kos sa kaldero. Diba naay love story ang kaldero ug ang sung-agan? Ang tubig ug ang bugas nga gikan sa uma ni Papa nga sigeg kasuko nako kay ako pinakapulpol sa tanang managsuon. Di jud ko moapil ug guna. Si Inday kay kugihan man, maoy sigeg apil ug guna kon way klase. Ako? Da kapilag ikyas. Kadako sa Tubod ug ang iyang kabungtoran nga maoy sanktwaryo nako kon moikyas, mangluod. Tanang suok sa kabungtoran sa tubod naadto na nako. Ako bayay rena sa Kabungtoran sa Tubod. Naay koy paboritong bungtod kay gwapa kaayo siya sa tanan.Nalove-at-many-times-before-i-notice-her ko niya. Siya ang pinakahabog, ang pinakarogante nakong nakit-an samtang nagpa-atbang. Didto kos uma ni Papa sa libaong kay nangawat kog mani kay nadunggan nakong pwede na makaon. Ningnaog kos sa libaong ni Papa niya lakaw niya gikatkat nako ang bungtod hangtod sa pinakataas. Kita nako ang lapad nga Tanon Street. Nakita pa gani nako ang pantalan sa Tabuelan o Balamban ba to! Basta nakakitag kog barko nga nagdunggo sa pantalan! Kita nako ang among dagat! Ang dagat ni Papa! Ug promise, lingin kaayo ang adlaw nga hapit na mosawp. Lingin kaayo.

I packed my clothes and I caught a plane
I had to see Joni, I had to explain
How my heart was filled with her memory
And ask my Joni if she'd marry me

Ningnaog kos bungtod kay hapit na nig gabii niya ningtaligsik pa gyod. Pag-abot nakos amo kay gikasab-an ko kay wako nagkaws. Lagi layo kaayog tubig sa amo. Pwerteng kapoyag kaws, kapoyg matag sayo para maligo, kapoyng bumba sa bug-at nga puso. Niya saka balik sa bungtod para mag-adam sa eskwela. Naa jud koy ribbon sa una paggrade-one. Most Late. ug Most Industrious. Ang-ang moguna kunohay ko kon magpa-atbang akong maestra. O diba kaha, iya kong gihimong Most Industrious kay padad-on man dayog manok, niya daghan man kaayo mig manok sa amoa. Atik sad tong maestraha. Sige lang kog snack atog pisteg inatay.

Jimmy, Jimmy please don't cry
You'll forget me by and by
It's been five years since you've been gone
And Jimmy, I married your best friend John.

Naa diay istorya rong kantaha?
Tragic man diay ang Joni Joni no?
Luoy si Jimmy.
Luto nang kan-on?

Quoting:::Don DeLillo,

"A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable."
—Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

Movie Ranting:::Burn After Reading, and I Was Not Burned

Sometimes the name of the directors are deceptive. It is funny. Indeed. Just funny. And it was the unlikely character of Brad Pitt, the dimwit, who offered the just-funny cracks every now and then. What is he doing in the film anyway? Any no-name actor could actually have it. And even though they swear they are not entertaining commercialism—that they are just another low-budget directors—they're heading toward it—inevitably. Tilda and George (first-name basis o!), I could understand since they were paired up in Michael Clayton. And the bald presence of John Malkovich one shouldn't question, and Frances MacDormand—afterall she is the wife of the older.

The film has no central force, which perhaps, ironically, made it as its central force—its dispelling force.

And though critics said that the zooming in and zooming out of the google earth, respectively used in the opening and closing part of the film now become a cinematic cliche, was my favorite. When it comes to cinematography, of course, they have the angles. But isn't it plagiarizing their own work when in fact, those angles had been previously framed in their not-so-old films?

Anyway, I still love the tandem of this two-head director. Hope, it will last.

Movie:::Burn After Reading and I as not

Sometimes the name of the directors are deceptive. It is funny. Indeed. Just funny. And it was the unlikely character of Brad Pitt, the dimwit, who offered the just-funny cracks every now and then. What is he doing in the film anyway? Any no-name actor could actually have it. And even though they swear they are not entertaining commercialism—that they are just another low-budget directors—they're heading toward it—inevitable. Tilda and George (first-name basis o!), I could understand since they were paired up in Michael Clayton. And the bald presence of John Malkovich one shouldn't question, and Frances MacDormand—afterall she is the wife of the older.

The film has no central force, which perhaps, ironically, made it as the central force—its dispelling force.

Silly:::A No Dream-On Christmas Wishlist

Really, they will not remain as wishes since, in the first place, they are not. They are just disguised as one for me not to spoil the yuletide air. These are the following I'll be needing to go through the year of the ox (suddenly jumping to new-year air).

1. Planner
I was about to buy one at National Bookstore, but I found the products too monotonous for my taste. It seems the planners have the bold boring written all over their pages, which I'll try to escape in 2009. So I prefer the one that is given as tokens by companies. Last year, I got Matwood. I need a planner that has colors, trees, plants, or furniture, or pots, glasses.


2. A case for 2x3 Mp4 (a fake one).
A self-gift for the year-end that has about to come. I found phone's FM radios are not enough anymore. They are songs that I want to hear all over again, again, and again (gusto kong matutong magdrive, buksan mo ang iyong mata, di mo ba nakikita). E-heads is crowding my head now. And there is no station that offers poetry readings. (Ow, there are some. Some AM stations offer once-a-week reading.)

3. F. Sionil Jose, Jose Garcia Villa, and St. Nick Joaquin
I have not read FSJ yet. I had read some Doveglion and St. Nick, but I can't consider it as close-reading since it was just some required college readings. St. Nick was my professor's, and Villa was an extension of Paz's (another professor's requirement forgot the name of the author already, was it the author of Dead Stars?). Villa was once a student of Paz (If i'm not mistaken.) I read her students' works—Villa, was there names Angela and Eleanor? I have to read them.

4. Painting Materials
Brushes, paints, colors, they make me awake. I have to hold, brush them again.

5. Big Native Bag (18x36)
I need big bags since I carry my whole room around. I bring books, two or three of them, yet I will not read—just love the feeling that they are with me. Right now, I got Krip Yuson's The World on Paradise (essays on writers and writing) Dumdum's Third World Opera, and Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis (just bought it at E-mall Booksale for 30, and the book is dedicated to Paul Auster, who is one of my favorite living writers).

6. Happiness

Quoting:::Richel Dorotan

"Writers can appreciate the value of money
once it's converted to beer."

Last Night:::Smiley Night

Had you seen this last night?
the Moon, Jupiter, and Venus.
Could not see mythology there.
What i see is a
smiling night.
Nothing else.

Quoting:::Patti Smith

But there's a danger in loving somebody too much,
and it's sad when you know it's your heart you can't trust.
There's a reason why people don't stay where they are.
Baby, sometimes, love just ain't enough.


—"Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough"

Sunday:::One-Day Weekend

Hang out for a while at Book Sale SM and got these two books—Iron John (nonfiction) by Robert Bly and Free Enterprise by the Jamaican Michelle Cliff and reserved The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen (nonfiction, kinsay interesado?)

"Biologists once thought that herons and geese created their puzzling ritual dances for fertility or survival reasons, that they were, in the word we use about ourselves, practical. But biologists in recent years, after extensive observations of herons, deer, geese, peacocks, and so on, have concluded that some ritual dances have no particular value for survival-they amount to display. Display embodies beauty and expressivenesses often united with a zany grace. Human beings tend to display at the front end; we emphasize the beauty in the face, and the face becomes emotionally expressive. Deer, however, display at both ends: white-tailed deer show beauty in the facial area and in the anal area with their gorgeous tails. Heron dances, peacock strutting, stag processions can all be considered as artistic or superfluous displays.

Longing is expressed, beauty, high spirits. The energies that are caught there, held in a formal moment, activate something in other birds or animals watching. So the displays are activating dances. The events are meant to be seen."

"We all know how history comes down to us, which stories, which versions tend to be passed on. What my great-grandfather told me, what he carved into this bone, was the heroic version, the one he wanted to become history. But the real story is not as colorful, not as tidy; it never is."


Around six, on my way to Turtles, it was close—sakay jeep—naog Colon. And nakapalit ug DBD DBD—tulo wan handrid.


Seven films in one by the Japanese American filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa, including Ran, Dreams, Rashomon, Madadayo, and Red Beard.

Niya kay wap-a man ko kakita sa film, ang kut nga akong ibutang kay sa kang Akira mismo, dili sa iyang film kay mao ra may makit-an sa Internet. Sa iyaha ni gikang ang

"In a mad world, only the mad are sane."

Nakakita sad kog Capote, nangita gani kog laing copy kay naay garas, niya las kapi naman diay ni, ingon si Kuya Muslim. Gikuha nalang nako, nangalimuyo sa pirated sad nga DBD player sa akong Uncle nga kan-on intawn siya. Si Capote gud, ang likod sa nobelang In Cold Blood nga gihimong salida, niya dakong hit. Nakahinumdom naka? Naa koy kopya sa novel, gihuwaman nako ni Maam Moling, adviser namo sa school pub, niya wan-a nako giuli, kuyog sa Ulysses ni Joyce. Yawg saba ha.

"On the night of November 14th, two men broke into a quiet farmhouse in Kansas and murdered an entire family. Why did they do that? Two worlds exist in this country: the quiet conservative life, and and the life of those two men—the underbelly, the criminally violent. Those two worlds converged that bloody night."

Niya ang last kay pil-gud mobies—seben-in-wan—bahin sa mga iro kay hilig man tawn tag iro ani. Niya pagtesting di man mopley. Balik ko ni Kuya Muslim, niya kakitag kog The Godfather 1,2,3 in one. Mao akong gikuha.

"I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but I taught her never to dishonor her family. She found a boyfriend; not an Italian. She went to the movies with him; she stayed out late. I didn't protest."

Bonus kay nindot kaayo ang resolution, wa gikuha gikan sa sinehan. Ayos! Bisag makauli kog Tuburan aron magmaraton kay Thanksgiving karon Byernes sa Amerika. Way trabaho. Tan-awon lang kon makauli ba o mantineran lang to nako ang DBD player sa akong uyoan. Tan-aw kag apil? Adto nalang Colon o, ukay ngadto tulo wan handrid ra baya. Kon dili mopley, okey ra na kay naay silay waranti "no pley, return sud sa duha kasemana" Tarungag pili ha.

Dream:::Sagada

before i hit the big 3-0,
i have to see and listen to
the fogness of your fog, to


your hanging coffins,
to your wild horses, to your falls,
your streams, to your streets,


to your wild horses, to your language,
to your dreamy sun and morning,
to your wild horses, to your trees,
to your branches, to your leaves,
to your wild horses.

Idea:::Bottle

Battling the bottle of emptiness
or bottling the battle for certainty
either way, a bottle will be broken.

Quoting:::Maria Victoria Beltran

Memories are not good, they bring back a lot of memories.

yawyaw:::lower down your volume

Please don't let me hear you sing "I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane" while riding a jeepney.

Balak:::Nobyembre

ni Jona Branzuela Bering

Pila nalang kalakang
og hingpit nakong mogawas
sa imong nataran. Dinhi
daghang nahitabo:
nautingkay ang nagkaanam
nagkalawos nga kahiubos,
nabungkag ang tinapok
nga kagahapong angay
na untang sunogon, ug nakawt
ang tinaguang pagmahay.

Poem:::Silence

Jona Branzuela Bering

let us watch silence
like a jar—an aquarium
with a goldfish, or like a candlewick,
flickering, just beside
the aquarium, or like the corner
table where the aquarium
sits and the candle stands,
or like the two chairs, trapping
the table, where space is
not part of the equation, or
silent and cold like the floor
where the table and the chair
are placed, or like the two of us,
sitting in the chair, staring
at the goldfish, at the candle,
at the silence that wraps itself around us.



*insights are needed*

Silly Moments:::Words

Words, they connect us, but are they strong enough?

*maoy mode*

Reflection:::If ife has no backspace

the wick bnrown dox humno over the lkaxy fog
the wuick bnrown fox jumps ocer the lazxy fogf
the qwuick nbrown fox jumps over the laxy dofg
the qyick broiwn dfoc jumps over the lazy dof
trhe wuick brown dox jumps over the laxy dogf
the quick borwn docx jmps over the lazy dof
the wuuicj brown fox humps over hel lazy dof
the quick feoqn fox numps over the laxzy dof
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dofg
thew wuick brown fox jumps ovetr hte alzy dof

yawyawsako:karong adlawa

pagnaog nako sa shuttle, i swear, paghangad nako sa langit, nakit-an nako ang buwan nga gisud sa bituon. it is a cloud forming a star nga gitrap ang buwan sa tunga. kayasa, i just thought, naa gyod diay miracle! kamabaw ni jona :) another miracle: gikan ko sa SM kay naglaruylaroy sa natio, booksale and powerbooks (napandol pa gani ko padong sa powerbooks. atay. ) kay nangita ko sa Salmon ni Eco (nga wa gyod nako nakit-an! gisud-an na tingali to sa uban!) niya lakaw gikan sa sm padong sa st. joseph church kay adto ko sakay ug jeep. milagro gyod kay way jeep ang pikas lane. niya abot dayon ang ambulance nga murag nakiglumba ni kamatayan. sa pag-agi gyod sa ambulance sa akong atubangan, bantang gyod ko kaayo sa church. death, life, and hope were there at the "very place" of the moment. Miracle! pagsakay nako, sa first block palang sa may bilyaran. nagbangga ang awto og motor. ingon ang drayber, sala sa kotse kay ningkalit og liko. mao ba? para nako, way sad-an. way sa ang panahon, way sa ang drayber, mas labaw ng way sa kotse. wa sa ang motor. way sa sad ang Ginoo. way sa ang tanan. it is just miracle! ganihang buntag, it's a miracle nga wa ko nalate nga wa man ko kasakay sa shuttle. bisag nagtaxi pako padung sa Caltex dapit sa natio fuente wa jud ko kabot. haruhay pa kaayo ko nakigtabi kang manong nga parehas nako nagbagulbol kay nasuya sa U.S. election. may alamag to si manong—while i used obama crossed the difference of colors, he used racial discrimation. kahibaw pa siya nga kaniadto di pwede ang mga blacks sa restaurant sa mga puti. ana pako niya pagnaog, nice talking to you, kya. niya, i thought naa pay shuttle. niya wa man. nag-uwan pa gyod. taxi nasad. and it's a miracle. naabot ko sa office—8:59AM.

Ranting:::Hoping There Is a McCain and a Clinton Here in Pinas

Mr. McCain said he was ready to help Mr. Obama work through difficult times.

“This is a historic election, and I recognize the significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight,” Mr. McCain said, adding, “We both realize that we have come a long way from the injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation.”

Mrs. Clinton urged her supporters to campaign for Obama when she was defeated by Obama in the voters' survey.

Why don't we have these people here?

And why do their election polls end in just a day and no major nuances afterward?
















Barack Obama: The 44th U.S. President

Quoting:::Michael Clayton

The lami introduction:

Arthur Edens: Michael. Dear Michael. Of course it's you, who else could they send, who else could be trusted? I... I know it's a long way and you're ready to go to work... all I'm saying is wait, just wait, just-just-just... please hear me out because this is not an episode, relapse, fuck-up, it's... I'm begging you Michael. I'm begging you. Try and make believe this is not just madness because this is not just madness. Two weeks ago I came out of the building, okay, I'm running across Sixth Avenue, there's a car waiting, I got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport and I'm dictating. There's this, this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we're standing in the middle of the street, the light's changed, there's this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and I... I-I freeze, I can't move, and I'm suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I'm covered with some sort of film. It's in my hair, my face... it's like a glaze... like a... a coating, and... at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic - embryonic - fluid. I'm drenched in afterbirth, I've-I've breached the chrysalis, I've been reborn. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I'm thinking no-no-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death. And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I... I... I... I realized Michael, that I had emerged not from the doors of Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the... the-the-the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the stain of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe that I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time. And Michael, the time is now.

The lami conversation:
Michael Clayton: You are the senior litigating partner of one of the largest, most respected law firms in the world. You are a legend.
Arthur Edens: I'm an accomplice!
Michael Clayton: You're a manic-depressive!
Arthur Edens: I am Shiva, the god of death.


The lami solo:
Michael Clayton: There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple. The smaller the mess the easier it is for me to clean up.

Quoting:::The Hours

Laura Brown: It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.









Virginia Woolf: Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.





Clarissa Vaughn: I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.









Virginia Woolf: You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.















Richard Brown: But I still have to face the hours, don't I? I mean, the hours after the party, and the hours after that...

Family

They suffocate me.

november syndrome

i lost my coin purse. and it destroyed my kalag-kalag.

fine, my jeans were torn and so was i.

Mayra!:::Pikat nimo Abdullah Gul, ingon ni Orhan Pamuk

Real Headline: Turkish Novelist, at Event Honoring His Country, Says Government Abuses Writers

Orhan Pamuk [my crush], the Turkish novelist and Nobel Prize laureate, forcefully denounced the Turkish government for its treatment of writers, speaking at the opening ceremony of the Frankfurt Book Fair on Tuesday evening as the president of Turkey sat listening.

Every year, a nation is chosen to be guest of honor at the fair, an annual ritual of the international publishing industry, and this year it is Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of publishers, editors, agents and authors are gathered here from 100 countries to talk about books and negotiate deals in what has become the most important annual event on the book-publishing calendar.

At Tuesday's opening ceremony in a packed auditorium, Mr. Pamuk spoke quietly but intensely as Abdullah Gul, the president of Turkey, sat in the audience. ''A century of banning and burning books, of throwing writers into prison or killing them or branding them as traitors and sending them into exile, and continuously denigrating them in the press -- none of this has enriched Turkish literature,'' Mr. Pamuk said. ''It has only made it poorer.''

Mr. Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, was the subject of criminal charges of ''insulting Turkishness'' after giving a 2005 interview to a magazine in which he condemned the genocide against Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I and the killing of Kurds by Turkey in the 1980s. The charges were dropped, but many nationalists have not forgiven Mr. Pamuk.

''The state's habit of penalizing writers and their books is still very much alive,'' Mr. Pamuk said in his speech. ''Article 301 of the Turkish penal code continues to be used to silence and suppress many other writers, in the same way it was used against me; there are at this moment hundreds of writers and journalists being prosecuted and found guilty under this article.''

When he was working on his latest novel, ''Museum of Innocence,'' Mr. Pamuk said, he used YouTube to research Turkish films and songs. Now, he said, YouTube and many other domestic and international Web sites are blocked in Turkey ''for political reasons.''

President Gul, who spoke immediately after Mr. Pamuk, said Turkey was ''really proud'' of Mr. Pamuk's Nobel Prize and the fact that Turkish literature was being recognized more generally as well as at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

He did not address Mr. Pamuk's criticisms directly, but said that ''today I can state with happiness that in Turkey, thanks to political and economic reforms that have gradually and more intensively been integrated,'' his nation was moving closer to fulfilling the conditions necessary to join the European Union.

''Although we have not been fully successful and there is a lot yet to be done,'' Mr. Gul said, ''if we compare it to the situation before, we can say that in Turkey there has indeed been a positive development.''

Nana Sad:::Nyor Botsoy's Kabuang

Bahin sa Kabahong

…makiglumbaanay sad ko sa panahon
sa pagtilap sa akoa pong’ kabahong.
-- Jona B. Bering

Day, kana bang imong gilugpit-lugpitan
Ang gihisgotan mong imohang kabahong?
Ay! Kaanindot sa imong pananglitan!
Day, kana bang imong gilugpit-lugpitan—
Nga tigpamaba sa tandogon mong dughan—
Parat-parat aslom-aslom morag tahong?
Day, kana bang imong gilugpit-lugpitan
Ang gihisgotan mong imohang kabahong?


-- VICENTE VIVENCIO BANDILLO
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Balak:::Lubong

ni Jona Branzuela Bering

This is a college poem, and November 1 is few steps away, might as well post it again. :)


Pinaagi sa nangunot nga mga kamot
Gikuykoy ang tig-ang yuta
Sa Carreta. Bisan ang mga taligsik
Gikan sa mga mata nga kaniadto
Nagdahom nga imong lingi-on,
Nga inanayng' gilukipan sa salbahis
Nga katarata wa nakapahumok
Sa nagbagtok nga yuta, gitunob-

tunoban sa nangaging

panahon.

Nabangag, ingog kadako sa kumo.
Ang taligsik nahimong dagkong
Lugas sa pagdawat nga ikaw
Dili gayod maangkon.
Kulitigon nako ang imong ngalan
(Gamit ang kutsilyo nga gibaid
Sa mga panghupaw ug pangagho)
Nga natagik sa kasingkasing
Ug maampingong is'od sa bangag
Sama sa paglaylay sa duyan aron
Makatog sa hingpit. Dayon tabunan

Sa nakuykoy nga tipaka
Sa kalibotan.

Tudsokan og kandila, mangaliya,
Nga ang imong ngalan dili
Mogawas sa lubnganan
Aron dili kagon ang malinawon
Nakong dughan.

Balak::: Sa Banang Gikabahong

Sa Banang Gikabahong

ni Jona Branzuela Bering

It was forbidden in her marriage to open up her husband's wounds and look at them unless he asked to.
—David Gutterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

yamat ra, nganong bulikaton man gyod
na nakong imong samad aron lang gyod
makakita ko sa hapit na nga gipang-od
nga unod tungod sakadugay, kahibaw ko
nga bisag unsaon pa na nakog bukiki,
di gyod nako makit-an ang ngan sa nagtimbas
niini, bisag hunaran pana nakog hagunoy
kada-adlaw di na gyod na maayo kay lagi
ang hagunoy para ra sa bag-ong samad
o garas pero ang imoha agi gyod sa tigbas,
bisag moadto pa ko ni Nong Ingko aron
patuthuan ka kay bisag gisudlan na nagdautang
espirito, bisag magpanobena pa ko sa tanang
santos nga giludhan sa imong inahan, pero
ayaw kog basula nga dugay ko naabot,
nga wa teka naabting bag-o pa ka nasamdan
kay nagdanga-danga pa lang ko, nakahibaw
nako nga makiglumbaanay kosa panahon
sa pagtilap sa akoa sang kabahong.

Balak:::Kalipay

kalipay

ni Jona Branzuela Bering


nagtiniil nga naglakaw sa hilapad
nga luna nga gibanigan sa ginam nga carabao grass
paminawa ang paglubong sa imong mga tunob
ang yamog nga dala sa kadlawn sa kalipay
nihalok sa imong kubalong lapalapa
ang udlot sa carabao grass ninggitik sa imong kiting
ning-uk-ok, ningyugbo, pero nitoyhakawg balik
human nanamilit ang imong mga tiil
nahigam, nipaspas og lakang, apan naigking—
porteng pagkataop sa tunok sa makahiya
ang kubal wa intawn kapugong niini
porteng pitia sa kahikurat nga naa diay
nagtagong tunok sa naghakyad nga kahumok
===============================
futile attempt nonetheless :)

Quoting::: Albert Camus

''I am too much in love with my lies and hypocrisies not to confess them fervently.''

Faigao at 25::: The Mad Way

PANELISTS

Dr. ERLINDA K. ALBURO, date taster

Dr. RESIL B. MOJARES, prof.reader

ADONIS DURADO, graphologist

JANUAR YAP, security guard

FELLOWS

(POETRY)

JONA BRANZUELA BERING, chikkadora
Books | Chess | Leftover Vows | Yaya sa Bisperas sa Kalag-Kalag

BOBBY CABANGON, marathon scribbler
Sakristan | Mapun-an Man ang mga Letra | Obertaym

SHAINE CARREON, cybersec
Love Affair | Para kang _____ | Sa library

PETE ZAESAR GALULA, hearing impaired specialist
Cross-Stitch | Payag | Driving Lessons

MADDIE LLACER, accidental writer
Temptation | Date from Dubai | (EYE) am | Just Between Cousins

MARSIUS VALDEHUZA, philosophist/animal husbandry
ang iro sa kilid sa balay | banagbanag
pahimangno sa mga ulod nga mukaon nako | Ang Pagsawp

CINDY VELASQUEZ, hardcore balakera
Tinagidyot nga Panultihon ni Inday | Unsaon Pagkaon sa Impyerno? | Amarillo

(SHORT STORY)

EFMER E. AGUSTIN, seamless weaver
Sa Nagsanga-sanga'ng Dalan

JUDE GITAMONDOC, kinky songster
The Squirrel Who Fell In Love with a Feather

DENIS JUDILLA, chemical stalker
A Tale of Twin Sisters

RHODORA MAGAN, Bb. Pilipinas contingent
The Abode

NEILE GENICA MIJARES, heartbreaker
The Mongrel

LILIA TIO, historianne
Lena

MARIA ELEANOR ELAPE VALEROS, TF undercover agent
Mata sa Bagyo

25th Cornelio Faigao Memorial Writers' Workshop
October 17-19, 2008 | USC Retreat House, Cebu

for the original post. kindly click here.

p.s. Mads, gikawat nako. lami ning imong gibuhat :)