I've been chasing deadlines for a few weeks now, and unfortunately, the performance is rather poor. I'm fixing my schedule as I try to work on being more healthy - had a check-up a month ago and some things turned up, things I need to fix - as I try to work on a few creative stuff, topped off by being inspired to thresh out a plan about doing a workshop on hypertext for this coming Summer of 2010 to light a few fires and maybe stoke my very own hardly-burning hearth, and in lieu of new stuff from me are a few hypertexts from fave poet-novelist-teacher-scholar Edgar Samar's Filipino-language creative writing classes in Ateneo, compilations of variations interpolated from my own interpolation of several compilations of variations (haha).
For all my disparaging jokes about Ateneo, that institution has continually showed me an appreciation of my genius my very own alma mater interruptus rarely has for me, and for that Ateneo has my undying love of a million sloppy kisses to its Jesuit jowl. That said: I'll still make fun of you!
Please read through the two portfolios, here and here. Apparently, these things are what happens when you're having fun with writing.
A bonus: this is what Samar has to say about the El Bimbo Variations. Ayuz!
is now online.
And we're still accepting any new work pertinent to the subject, whatever the media, ie, poetry, prose, komix, film, photography, podcast, song, etc etc etc. More details on submission guidelines in the link. Please repost everywhere. Salamat.
High Chair marks down the prices of its books for a two-week book sale starting February 15. Regular full-length titles will be sold at P100 and chapbooks at P50. Only 20 copies per title will be sold. The sale also excludes its 2009 titles. For inquiries on how to get the books, please email mabidavid at yahoo dot com, call or text +639174137393, or visit Prof. Conchitina Cruz's room at the UP Faculty Center at UP Diliman. Last day of the sale is on February 28, 2010. Feel free to forward this notice to interested parties.
Available titles at P100 only
Parang by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles
Hindi Man Lang Nakita by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles
Ilahas by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles
Alunsina's Wrist by Kristine Domingo
Kundi Akala by Allan Popa
Available titles at P50 only
Seem by Jose Perez Beduya
Disappear by Conchitina Cruz
Unto Thee by Mabi David
How Sound Becomes a Name by Marc Gaba
Agaw-Liwanag by Bomen Guillermo
Samsara by Allan Popa
Mula by Rosmon Tuazon
Adam David & I for a while now have been reeling over the surplus of unimaginative renga being produced of late, our dissatisfaction stemming mainly from the disregard of formal possibility the contemporary renga makes available. A recent example, however, opened an interesting vista for form - the SMS renga - but we thought this vista should further be explored to even make sense being entered.
The project
Put together an SMS work that exhausts Globe's Unlitxt promo.
The formal constraint
One after another, Adam & I are to text each other a line as fast as we can, whose length approaches but does not exceed the number of characters a single text message affords. The lines should also be consistently acronymic, the initial letters spelling out UNLITXT.
The Unlitxt promo comes in 3 editions--Unlitxt20 (1 day), Unlitxt40 (2 days), Unlitxt80 (5 days)--& w/ every edition of the promo must come 1 canto. Every canto must be composed w/in--& strictly w/in--the time allotted by the concerned edition of the Unlitxt promo: canto 1 in a day, canto 2 in 2 days, canto 3 in 5 days. The 1st canto snowballs into the 2nd, & the 2nd canto snowballs into the 3rd, that is, all the lines of the 1st canto must be present thence rearranged & augmented in the 2nd, & all the lines of the 2nd must be present thence rearranged & augmented in the 3rd, subtly anagramming the initial letters of lines from 1 canto to another.
Given the mildly Surrealist trajectory of the text & the collaborative nature of the renga, Adam & I have titled the project
UNLITXTQUISITE CORPSE
Because the work is still in progress, we present to you for now UNLITXTQUISITE CORPSE's 1st canto.
Unlitxt20
Urgent messages whose urgency is softened by technique, by form: umbrellas
opened late at the end of a light drizzle, unnecessary & wrinkled like foreskin.
Nata de coco from your brimming cup of gummy pearls enriched w/ uranium
& cobalt-60 now on the table gathering ants & flies & longing looks
from choosy beggars;
Latex of muck on their fingers they finger their noses, each nostril a cunt that hides
moist pearls that unfurl wet & sticky gray, gummy gum gum little Gamera
In his shell, retreating, like my penis retracting its proud uninhibited innuendoes
& impositions of positioning your end's O over my end's I, oh, you & I could
Tarnish each other's teats w/ tar & tartar, rifled Tartars rifling rat-tat-tat at this
or that ratty tweener's two tattoos, her cervix a goose gliding on the ruse
Xanthic xyloid xiphoid, as it were, that perplexing perturbing protuberance,
that Wednesday wigwam where we kneel. Guard sees you garishly crawling
on your knees
Tired like sausages skinned in Vigan, limp like the cocks of faggots in Vigan.
Fanged goats, be gone! Big guns are in, your disease is gout, the wheelchair
Unused, traded for a harelip, the crutch for an electric guitar, the girl for a Pentium 4
as true men are wont to do, won't do work nobody won't do, as true men
Never lactate after giving birth. Shirtless, a man punches his wife while his wife
cooks: such are their obligations to each other. But to God, their obligation
Lords over everything, like lahar pouring downriver sweeping houses, calves, trucks,
food, your topless father tumblingly fornicating w/ the pull & swell & roll
Inherent in tumbling fornication. He porks like a fork, stainless, a cock made in
China charging yellowly toward multiple entry visas
To opulent bone voyage vistas I'm thankful to have gone w/ the wind beneath
my wings, the tale between my legs, whining & deigning & feigning
ignorance like her
Xocerisms, childlike despite the veins. Despite the vain attempts at finishing college,
he found education to be as much a collage as Villa's cut-up texts
Turning them two poems: “Nothing quite like death like a horse’s skull / Or maybe
like a fluttering butter / Fly in Cubao / Is actually a wrapper of Halls Lemon
Unnecessarily sweet / Instead of sour like your armpits / Moist & soft like the mouth
of an infant / Giving me a blowjob.” What kind of slob would write such
Nasty words? Certainly not an Atenista, an Atenista wouldn’t write about blowjobs,
or maybe he would, but not as the blowjobee, instead the blowjobber as that’s
Lovingly the shade of their pathos, blue like their balls, always giving but never
at the receiving end of pleasure unless pleasure were grace, men for others
Impotent & befuddled lactating udders of a creep you sonorously notice, blew
like a peacock’s tailfeather to your gallbladder or spleen they had to take out
Tragically instead of dine in. Day in & out we scout for the white dregs of priests,
cum-stains on concrete, the road paved w/ semen & good intentions. Melons
X-rayed & xeroxed litter the streets, pasted on lampposts & corners & walls,
a new slang neologized for a distinctly 21st Century postcapitalist malaise that we
Turn static in the annals of the dictionary. Anal go the dicks of visionary communists
whose belief in the base crumbles under the weight of the superstructure
Under the science of Newton’s apple pi, rather, rhyme shifts from foot to foot
& mouth this ease w/ w/c we find our utter anxieties on urban beauty past compare.
Nookie be the hook of playing hooky in the nook where crooks croon the lyrics
that fill physics books thru the jukebox all boxing mystics miss w/ every hiss
Looking jizzed by bookies fluent in accountanese where Y is never answered
only implied w/ dry heaves, ho, I need some companionship, shit baby,
gimme a blowjob
In lieu of blow. Jab to the brain: w/c the hemisphere w/ penguins, w/c the helm
w/ spear-carrying Aetas on a train, harvesting grains off the rails, their nails
Tearing down stereotypes by tearing up diplomas & pissing on strawberries
that they export to Manila in styro snugness this lumad smugness caught
on miniDV, oh,
X-rated they are, not because they’re merely g-stringed but because they’re Aetas—
& what good are our natives if we can’t be ashamed of them? Niggers unite!
They have nothing to lose but their claims to their lands & properties & cultural
heritage & the native oral tradition is alive & well, oh baby, gimme a blowjob!
Uncouth haphazard roughshod slapdash violent blowjob! Extraterrestrial blowjob!
A job for every finger, a job for every elbow, a job for every knee: Blowjob!
Needledick bastard askin to get a headbobbin load off only gets some gigglin
from the dribblin bitch w/ the curlin bob w/ the hoover hoosegow
louse-lined mouth
Limp tongue lean lazy tongue lateral laryngeal lather a lavish lay the tongue
a languid lasso lengthening leaving lesions licentious little licks lilt & lift
It illicitly, inspiring incessantly impolite inchoate insistences indicating illustrious
indulging in indecent impulses: “Ingest it! It is immense! I’m imbuing!
Teeth to testicles we tease & teeter on tightrope, tough tusk taut, timber throbbing
toward throat, thrill tilts & thumps to threshold of tickle: titanic tip!
Xanadu! Shangri-La! Valhalla! Albion! Babylon!” bad-breathed bandido babbles,
butt bumpin-buckin bossanova beats before blowin bulbous balls’ buko juice,
Terrible tattered texticulations! Tangible torrents of turgid thought! Turkeys tumble
in tunnels of turmoil: turbo turbine turbid text! Tyranny of type! O text!
What follows is my response to two things: 1) my godmother/semi-aunt/person-who-bought-me-my-first-GIJOE Baba Balce's poll question #1 of the year about my top five love songs ever, and 2) my good friend-for-almost-a-decade-now Vlad Gonzales' book A-Side/B-Side (in stores now).
In no order whatsoever:
"Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye" by Leonard Cohen
A love letter written post-breakup, with enough distance between the two that "I" remembers "you" fondly, the memories' details, ie, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, rendered with enough sweetness that it almost sounds like "I" is still in love with "you," despite the past tense of the first line. Maybe "I" still is. Is the title talking about "I?" Is the title talking about "you?" Who broke up with whom? That is not the important thing, the song declares. Instead: what is important is "I" loved "you." And: this has happened before; this will happen again.
"Seeing Other People" by Belle & Sebastian
About a Love that started out as light and carefree and took a turn towards being far more serious than what the two bargained for, and now it feels like it has run its course, or at least, that's how it feels like for the two, and now they're both trying to convince themselves and each other that their decision to "cool off" is good for their relationship when it really very rarely is. "Is it puppy love? Do I even love you love you? Maybe I need to sleep with guys/girls other than you to see if I really do. But they don't kiss me like you do." This is the transcript of their dialogue.
"Baka Naman" by Stonefree
The strange phenomenon of Love at First Sight as processed through Zeno's Arrow Paradox, ie, the more you think about it, the farther it'll get. I fell in love with this song as I was halfway up a mountain in my late teens, back when I was in love with being in love and not being loved back. The less articulate version is Teeth's "Prinsesa," it's more articulate the Eraserheads' "Torpedo." You know what I'm talking about.
"Lakas Tama" by Siakol
When Love is as its messiest and most inarticulate and all you wanna do is just smoke some prime grass and fuck each other's brains out in the living room floor, or rather "My cock is a fake black Strat from Raon. The feedback is a shower of cunts. Fuck. You." Such is love.
"Love is the Drug" by Roxy Music
The reason why Sex on Drugs is so great is that both simulate/stimulate the production of oxytocin that stimulate/simulate feelings of Love. "What is Love?" The song answers the question with a smirk and a steady bassline beat thrumming in your tummy making you bob your head up and down tap your feet on the floor if not dance an outrightly shamelessly shameful series of spastic spasms as the lights all over go red and green and yellow and the chorus is gloriously raining shimmering golden confetti as you sing at the top of your lungs. You'll feel like a million bucks. You'll feel like you don't give a fuck. My name is Adam and I'm an addict. It's cool. I feel alive. I'm an addict. Love and Drugs and Roxy Music. I love you. I love you. T'ain't no big t'ing. Love is / Love is.
Ang silahis ay nabakla sa silahis.
Ang bakla ay nabakla ng bakla.
Ang paagang ng tandang ang paaga sa aking pagpapaaga - ang maagang pagbunga ng paaga.
Sir, the answer is very simple. The forces coming from the iterate glances of the upperclassmen are so powerful that the circulation of the corpuscles of the dumbguards upon which the stare is applied is integrated. This result is the gyrostatic effect on paradoxical interior of the legs thus double timing ensues. This develops as vulnerable machine in the body of the degraded mammal due to action of rectilinear eyes.
teach cadets usage
of proper english
Sir, my wife is in the jungle before the enemy
She protects me in the drill ground
She cares for me, we are partners
She and I together are smart
To verify the right shoulder, left shoulder
She takes it all in stride, I make her shiny
In return, she protects me from DR and
Prying eyes of the Tac-O
So, therefore, my sweet and loving M-14
I won't change it for any other Sir!
AFP handout to
teach cadets usage
of proper english
the Archives of Oblique Strategies
the Words of Oblique Strategies
