On 28 October 2009, Wednesday at 0430 PM, chunky Cubao curator Adam David
promises to gesture figure 1 at location figure 2 for approximately ten seconds
before returning to his battered bookish bedsit. Feel free to document the event.

Time
1634 hours


Location
Cubao home


Props/Supplements
none


Fantasy/Intercourse
Bedroom, pre-dawn. Brief fellatio and attempt at vaginal
intercourse underlit by PC monitor. I sat on the edge of the bed
as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) squat-knelt on the carpeted
floor and proceeded to firmly suckle on my penis. Upon achieving
erection, subject proceeded to sit on penis, allowing vaginal
insertion from posterior. Numerous tries achieved no desirable
results. Erection lost after approx. 8 secs. Efforts to regain
erection orally merely led to failure and shame.


Quality/Longevity of Erection
Semi-erect to limp / Approx 2 mins


Quality/Longevity/Amount of Ejaculation/Ejaculate
N/A


Remarks
Traditional scenario ineffective at first try. Introduce
variation tomorrow: supplement with audio/video?

A plate of two-cheese & tomato omelette. Seven and a half hotdogs. Three lumpia. One salami sandwich. Six salami. A bowl of munggo. Half a tilapia with mayonnaise. One small dried fish. A plate of pork steak. A plate of blood pudding. Two tortillas. One quarter pounder with cheese. One serving of french fries. One plate of fish fillet with lemon & butter sauce. A bowl of beef caldereta. A bowl of crispy pata. A bowl of chicken curry. A third of an omelette.


Two plates of lasagna. Half a bowl of tomato spaghetti. A plate of garlic & labuyo spaghetti. A spoonful of baked ziti with meat sauce. A bowl of tuna & tomato spaghetti.


Six and a half bowls of steamed rice. A bowl of fried rice. Two bowls of poorman's nasi goreng. A bowl of chicken & vegetable paella.


Three bites of sambos. One slice of butter rum cake. Some biscuits. Four slivers of Orange Swits. One glass of mais con hielo. Two bowls of banana, nuts & raisins yogurt. A glass of vanilla ice cream & chocolate cereal. Two spoons of corn with butter & cheese. One tuna empanada. One chicken empanada. One sweet cheese empanada.


Thirty-four bottles and sixteen glasses of water. One glass of Coke. One glass of raspberry iced tea. Two cups of brewed coffee with vanilla ice cream & cinnamon. Two glasses of Eight O'Clock. Two bottles of beer. One bottle of C2 Apple.




This was week two.

On 24 October 2009, Saturday at 0730 AM, chunky Cubao curator Adam David
promises to gesture figure 1 at location figure 2 for approximately ten seconds
before returning to his solemn solitary slumber. Feel free to document the event.

Landslide

a pudding


Crush cocoa cornflakes to desired finery. Put cornflakes in bowl and stir with eggs and
condensed milk til thick. Submerge wedges of refrigerated chocolate into batter. Nuts,
berries, and dried fruits are optional. Steam in a stove top steamer. Refrigerate after
steaming. While cooling pudding, slice a few apples. Immerse slices in water mixed with
sugar for a few minutes. Fry some slices in butter til brown or until fluids caramelise.
Boil some slices in sugar water til it comes to a syrup. Pour desired amount over pudding,
and top pudding with fried apple slices. Set aside some syrup in fridge for later use.

I've decided to note everything I eat and drink, and to do this daily, for a year, and call it poetry. This is week two.




One bowl of corned beef. Two bowls of chicken adobo. A bowl of pork-&-beans. A bowl of toge. A quarter of a tuna omelette. Half a pizza. One piece of pork katsudon. A cup of red eggs and tomatoes. A bowl of pork sinigang. A bowl of corn soup. Two pieces of daing. A bowl of kangkong soup. Half a cheese-mushroom omelette. Four hotdogs. Half a chicken adobo. Half a bowl of chili corned beef. A slice of quiche. Half a two-cheese & tomato omelette. Two slices of pastrami. One chicken fajita burger.


Half a Tupperware of spaghetti tinapa. A cup of noodles. Half a bowl of red eggs & tomatoes spaghetti. A bowl of lasagna.


Eight and a half bowls of steamed rice.


Two spoons of homemade ube. Five fried banana slices. Seventeen pieces of a variety of pastries. Two oatmeal cookies. A handful of cocoa cereal. A packet of pretzels. Half a pack of Cheese Rings. Half a pack of Tempura. Two raisin cinnamon pancakes. A handful of fried pears. A tortilla. One cup of blueberry yogurt.


Eighteen bottles and eight glasses of water. One glass of iced coffee. One glass of tropical fruitshake. Half a liter of Coke. One glass of lemonade.




This was week one.

I first saw this seven years ago, as part of a DVD magazine DVD freebie. It took me up until now to finally get the idea to look this up in YouTube. I dedicate this to Vlad, who claims he doesn't remember watching this with me, with whom I've been wanting to do something like this; and Gelo, whose more brilliant bits in DISSONANT UMBRELLAS reminded me of this, and also someone who maybe wants to do something like this.

I suppose it's merely coincidence that the nominees in Poetry are all in various degrees associated with PLAC, and that the prescreening committee for Poetry is also PLAC. Also merely coincidence that of the four nominees, three were critically reviewed here, here, and here, one review written by the author of the one major book of 2008 that has generated and is still generating much critical and creative thought, that one major book relegated to Design, where every book passed to the NBA is, apparently, automatically nominated. All merely coincidence.


I suppose in this situation, it's far far far better to be nominated for the unintentional effect, compared to what could have been - what already is - quite a joke.


for Gelo

I've decided to note everything I eat and drink, and to do this daily, for a year, and call it poetry. This is week one.




One sandwich grilled on a pan. Six cheesesticks. Four corned beef sticks. Four pieces of garlic longganisa. Half a loaf of dried bread. Half a torso of fried chicken. Six hotdogs. One dozen kikiam. Three fish patties. One beef pares. Two tinapa. Eight slices of eggplant crisps. A large and small bowl of pork stew. Two omelette sandwiches. Two pancakes with vanilla ice cream. One sausage. A plate of tokwa sisig. A bowl of broiled beef. Half a fist of kimchi. Six slices of Spam. One loaf of bread.


A packet of instant noodles. Half a bowl of sopas. A bowl of macaroni soup. A bowl of Thai rice noodles. A plate of tinapa pasta. A plate of spaghetti & meatballs. A plate and a bowl of spaghetti & tomatoes.


Nine bowls and a cup of steamed rice. A bowl of fried rice.


Three chocolate chip cookies. Eight pieces of nachos. Eight french fries. Two oatmeal cookies. A bag of puto & kutsinta. Six pieces of ChocNut. A handful of peanuts.


One small bottle of Sparkle. One small bottle of orange Tropicana. One cup of hot chocolate. One glass of red lemonade. Half a liter and five glasses of Coke. Six bottles of beer. Twenty-one bottles, eight glasses, and three cups of water.

Language - the art of arranging language - insists on thinking, writing, and above all, publishing. Books are assembled. Books are arranged. It hardly matters. What counts is that it is nothing more than its sign. A benign tyranny, for want of any referent. This seems to me significant.


The term signifies a way, that is, the right way par excellance, brooking no further argument, however ephemeral, originating in the fancies of an often corrupt taste that seeks to satisfy vanity and caprices, institutions, ideas, customs of an unfailingly stable kind, superficial, admired almost universally, which turn into a form of suffering, or even torment. Let us take this problem frontally.


The possibility of new systems in writing spurs continual development. Giving words power beyond that of signifiers signified imbues language with poetry that offers no actual meaning, deliberate objects on the page or in the landscape. Name, shape, style, history, form/design, mystical significance as a whole is understood to be a representation of resurgent systems of metaphors, analogues, associations - a methodology of interpretation.


Calculus, Geometry - Analysis - is a very long story that essentially bears out Reason's hegemony whose influence not only survived but also reached new heights with Church-like doctrine/dogma, and part of the dismissal of an abstract view, of things not actually proved, an infinity of points.


Once we're up and about and using our words, it's almost impossible to think about what they really mean.


Granted, this response is, strictly speaking, philosophical rather than mathematical. This analysis dodges representation, continuity, class, or something close to that. Once we're up and about and using our words, it's almost impossible to think about what they mean. Observe, please, that this is really incoherent, composed of instants under which interpretation can be solved with a simple formula, grandly breathtakingly wrong.


Grammatical text and syntax generate works whose language ultimately contain all-too-recognisable poetic lyric procedure, traditional models of oral performance. What other possibilities might one envision for work with language emerging out of poetry, alongside other forms - sculpture, video, architecture - with language as performance, of poetry as art?


Do absolute nonsense poetry - absolute nonsense, non-words, invented words, ersatz words - that make music out of language, the poetic palpability of words themselves, as things palpable, tactile, that we feel when we speak, when we write, when we hear and read them ... that is the real subject of poetry. When there are words printed on bricks, turn them into the floor. Words are different from sentences. To write poetry, the sentence is not the dominant form. The word is the dominant form.


The craftsman distinguishes superior quality at the risk of being taxed with elitism. The crucial words aren't "Do you like it?" but "You must," as in "It's a must."


Craft follows art. Conduct an experiment: investigate how the work would change with varying degrees of freedom. Exciting? Challenging? Naive? Purposely avoid direct reflection, straightforwardness, a closed system requiring no mental participation. Meaning might not be easily recognised - in general, ambiguous - and, much more importantly, it might be more romantic in French, it might be more touching in song, but it should be achievable, as an outcome of this thinking, with the blurring borders between art and the restrictive confrontation of art. Look around. Decide what to do. Create. Art follows craft.


Try to define what comes to mind. The inscribed image formed shall never be that image exactly.


Never repeat a formula/system/manner developed earlier. "Versatility" more than "Trademark." Be arbitrary and nuanced, free from hardly any structure, albeit only symbolically, that define the four horizons of work - the world, history, language, and fiction - work in abstract terms.


Produce work. Discovery proves sometimes reassuring, sometimes uncomfortable, unfinished, unsayable. Follow a tentative itinerary point by point, the "why," the "how."


This modification proved that certain works had no authors, or else had several authors, uniformly bound, classified neither too deep or too far apart, the trace of the road travelled - it lies beyond writing, a "why" to which I can only reply by writing. When I cease from writing, the image becomes visible, inexorably complete. The inscribed image formed shall never be that image exactly.





All words are resultant erasures of various texts: David Foster Wallace's Everything and More, Georges Perec's Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Stefan Sagmeister's Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, and the latest volume of Roland.

Luis Katigbak eMailed, reminding me of "Renegade Eyeballs," the first story in his debut collection Happy Endings, suggesting a reason why Ser Butch kept misremembering this story as Katigbak's, as "Eyeballs" features a scenario similar to the scenario in my own story, further compounded by the fact that "Eyeballs" is the story that got Katigbak into his first Baguio workshop when he was eighteen years old. Virtually the same scenario all around.


Another detail I forgot to mention in the earlier post: my story was written during my initial phase of writing - within my first six months, this story being one of my first ten (and part of a triptych, even) - what in my head I call "My Luis Katigbak Phase." As the link above suggests, Katigbak's book is a towering influence to any young campus writer seeking a literary voice to write with, and I was still within spitting distance of Happy Endings when I wrote that story.


I was passing through multiple writing phases around that time, the "Luis Katigbak Phase" being the first. Two more phases around my first year were "My Stuart David Phase" that dictated the writing of "Fifteen Photographs," (among other things [my major writing influences seem to be primarily Scots: Eddie Campbell, Stuart David, and Stuart Murdoch]) and "My Yasunari Kawabata Phase," whose gravitas helped shape what turned into "My Richard Brautigan Phase," which dictated the next few years of my writing. Most of these stories can be read in this book. I'd like to think that my current writing output is not only miles away from these initial phases but also a sum total of all these phases and also now very much my own. That's all I can ever ask for.


Thanks to Luis for eMailing. This blog's comments section is inexplicably still problematic even after my repeated efforts to repair it. For now, any and all comments should be sent via eMail.

What follows is one of the two stories that got me into my first Baguio workshop back when I was nineteen years old. I wrote it in thirty minutes, back when I could still do that sort of thing and call the end result a story. It got me into my first workshop where it was received rather well, although my other story got the better comments. This one earned a mal mot from Carlos Aureus which went "This is the reason why a lot of kids today don't read books." The two stories earned me a lot of friendships still relevant today.


Ser Butch Dalisay has always misremembered this story as written by Luis Katigbak, which I only found out during a breakfast on my second Baguio workshop - five years after my first - where one of the Filipino-language fellows asked Ser Butch about the potentials of flash fiction, the de/compression of time in narrative, etc etc, and Ser Butch then proceeded to talk about a story he said was Katigbak's, and went on to summarise the story you are now about to read. After the summary, I told Ser Butch that that was actually one of my stories, and he replied with "Ah, sa'yo pala yun."


This story also had the pleasure of having its title sung by Ser Ricky De Ungria when it became apparent that only two people among the assembled knew what the title meant, and where it was from. Ma'am Jing Hidalgo - whose marginal comments pepper my copy of the manuscript - called this story "speculative fiction," because of the quite literally speculative nature of the piece. Ser Butch called my other story - "Fifteen Photographs" - as an example of what he called the New Biography, ie "creative nonfiction." And Vlad reminded me: Ser Jimmy Abad complained about the story's lack of carnal detail, saying "I want to see them faacking!!!" and then quickly embarassedly apologising to Ma'am Jing for being so uncharacteristically vulgar. Such is the power of Story.


I thought I had lost this manuscript to the storm. I found it bunched up with all my friends' bound theses I helped out on. Rereading it, I felt this rush of hopefulness I remember I used to feel way back then whenever I sat down and typed out and finished stuff in less than an hour. That youthful optimism has turned into youthful assurance. Lord knows what that will turn into in three years' time.


I typed this story out in my brother's PC, and with that PC being my brother's, it enjoyed frequent reformattings every time a new OS or update of said OS would come along - which would be every other week - so this story was promptly lost as quickly as I typed it out, and has just now been retyped for your enjoyment. It felt funny retyping something I hadn't read in more than half a decade. Funny, stumbling and falling on my old patter and rhythm. It's all very uneven, very chunky and apologetic and self-conscious (and self-consciously pa-cool). It's all very very young. The urge to correct and shorten and rephrase was very hard to suppress, but it does us well to leave our naked baby photos unflatteringly unPhotoshopped, if only for comparison of penis size's sake. Look at my mole! See how I've grown.




o0o




In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Honey



Ever since I was old enough to commute alone, I’ve been having this fantasy play out in my head every time I ride a jeepney. It doesn’t matter if there’re only three of us inside the jeep, or if there’re twenty of us. As long as there’s a female among the passengers, my mind would automatically go into fantasy mode.


The fantasy mostly plays out during the day, as I can see the female passengers better when the sun is up. The thing about my fantasy, I need a female Partner to make it work. So, the first thing I do is look for a suitable (and unsuspecting) Partner among the passengers inside the jeep. Not the sort of Partner that you need several bottles of beer in you before you even look at her. By suitable, I mean good-looking. I have high standards, you see. That’s how my fantasy starts. More often than not, though, I don’t get to see the ending, as usually, the jeep gets to my street before the fantasy plays itself out.


The event in my fantasy almost always happens when we’re speeding through P Tuazon. Sometimes (only sometimes), it happens when we’re crawling about the place when there’s a traffic jam in front of the Araneta Center. Wherever we might be, whatever speed we might be doing, the fantasy’ll always be the same.



It’s a B-movie type, post-apocalyptic scenario fantasy: I’d see the flash-effect through the gaps between the passengers’ heads, and our jeep would do several tumbles across the ground. Sometimes the sonic boom would toss the vehicle up in the air, like an empty paper bag. We’d fly about and hit other vehicles (JolliBlu delivery vans, Antipolo jeeps, Indians in scooters), and then we’d suddenly drop out of the sky. Our jeep would end up lying on its side (mostly, it’ll be lying on my side of the jeep). I’d end up with some scratches here and there, the knees of my jeans torn. My Partner would be in my arms (as she was tossed towards me as the jeep tumbled), unconscious, but pretty much unharmed. I’d look around the jeep, at the other passengers, even check the pulses of the ones near me, but they’d all be dead.


I’d crawl out of the jeep and would be greeted by a dead Cubao. Sometimes Cubao would be a barren, desolate place, like the recent photos of the Titanic, all algae-covered and corroding. Sometimes (and this is the creepier version, I think), Cubao would still be there, looking very much as it did before the event, but it’d be as bloody quiet as an orgy of mimes. I’d be shouting out for people, see if there were other survivors, but my voice would just echo off unanswered. I’d go back to our jeep and wake up my Partner, and then I’d explain to her what had happened, where we were, and what we’d need to do.



The years would go by: I would drag out all the dead bodies from our jeep (and from the neighbouring vehicles and buildings, too) and stack them all up at the Edsa underpass in front of Farmer’s Plaza. My Partner would go to the nearest Rustan’s supermarket and fill up dozens of shopping carts with grocery (mostly food and cleaning products). Our clothes would be a varied selection of New Age brouhaha from EarthLife in COD, commercial-branded stuff from SM, and house clothes from the bangketa strip beside the National Bookstore SuperBranch. We would make homely places out of Ali Mall and ShoeMart, furnish them with living room and bedroom sets from Ideal Home and SOGO, pick out carpets from SM’s fifth floor selection, and finally get that Sony Vega and Philips DVD entertainment combo I’ve always wanted from the appliance stores.



I would win my Partner’s heart with flowers from Farmer’s Market, munchkins from Dunkin Donuts, and teddy bears from the Blue Magic outlet in Ali Mall. I’d ask for her hand in marriage, and she’d say “Yes!”, probably more out of her survival instincts than my wooing. We would get married in the in-door chapel beside the videogame arcade in Ali Mall, and have out honeymoon inside the Araneta Coliseum, live-out our exhibitionist fantasies by doing it in the middle of the arena and pretending it was Standing Room Only inside the Coliseum.


We’d have six kids: three boys (Bethelehem, Nidum, and Simon) and three girls (Babylon, Michael, and Milou). We’d raise them with a steady diet of Happy Meals , root beer floats, stuffed-crust pizzas, and go-kart races in Fiesta Carnival. And way up in the fourth floor of National Bookstore’s SuperBranch, we would educate them on the World and on Life, on the concept of God, and on the highs and lows of Love according to Victoria Holt and the SVH twins. I’d read (and re-read) them the entire Tintin collection, and when I’m finished with that, they’d say “More, Father, more, please!!” and then I’d laugh and say “Tomorrow, children. The night has already spread its dark wings over Cubao. Come, I’ll walk you to SM, as it’s time to sleep…”



And time would pass, and the children would grow into adults. “With adulthood comes independence,” I would tell them. “Yeah, I remember when I was your age, I was already making a suitable home for your Mother and I … it’s about time you did the same.” And I would give them detailed maps of Metro Manila. In the maps, I would point out several possible cradles of survivors (if there are any), and the possible perils they might find: “Two kilometres from here, there is a place called Ortigas Center. It is a large place, easily three times larger than Cubao,” I would say. “You will first encounter a building with a big red R on its side. Take care when you pass by this place, especially if you decide to camp in it for a night or two, for in my childhood, I remember rumours of a carnivorous snakeman living in the bowels of that building…” They would nod and kiss the back of my hand and I would give them my blessings. “Go forth and multiply,” I would tell them. And with that, they would go seek their fortunes in lands elsewhere.



And time would pass again, my Wife and I would grow old and grey and crooked. We’d both be in our deathbed, staring up at the Ali Mall skylight, and she’d ask me “Our life in Cubao … was it good? Was it rich? Was it everything you imagined?”


I would turn to her and say “Yes, my Love. Everything I had imagined.” And I would be the only one to get the joke, and die a happy man.



I still have this fantasy in my head, everytime I commute in jeeps. The names of the children change from time to time, but all in all, it’s pretty much the same thing.