Chase the Rain
You wouldn’t think something like rain would have a distinct boundary, but once, when we were driving along the Service road one cloudy (but dry) day, I looked ahead and saw that part of the road was wet, and that—yes, it was raining. In a few seconds we had crossed the boundary and raindrops tinkled on the car’s roof and windshield. Comical representations of rain—you know, those little dark stormclouds hovering over the head of some dour, unlucky ‘toon—spring to mind.
When clouds move, rain follows. There was a character in Douglas Adams' So Long and Thanks for All the Fish that was followed by the rain all his life; wherever he went, any time of the day, it was raining. It turned out he was a Rain God.
In cartoons and in stories, rain chases us, because the thought is supposed to be funny, especially given the fact that we’re not supposed to like rain. A sensible person, in the English idiom, is someone who “gets in out of the rain”, thus a character’s comic annoyance when the rain follows.
Consequently, the opposite is never considered, being much too absurd. The idea of a role reversal always is fun, though; what if it was you who chased the rain instead, always following storms and clouds and the tinkling raindrops?
People chase the rain, in a way, when they burst out of their homes to dance in the rain. I’ve done that all of once in my life, and that was very, very long ago. And we catch the rain our mouths and hands, which are spread wide open in anticipation.
It rains practically every day here during rainy season, and I chased the rain only once in my life. This will be something I will regret, surely, but tomrrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will pass and the number will remain the same.
What reason is there for me to chase the rain, anyway? During the rainy season, people get runny noses and pneumonia and walk home in floods, wet and cold and utterly miserable. Why would any sane person subject herself to that?
[Perhaps to remain sane.]
Anyway, rain or not, here’s to greeting everything with our hands and mouths spread open in anticipation instead of slinking underneath overhangs and trees. Cheers!
Nostalgia (part V)
I saw a copy of "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" strewn on the tambayan table today; it was a not-so-old-looking paperback with an orange cover. It made me sad, in a way, because I remembered my old beat-up copy of the book. Mine had a blue cover and showed Mrs. Frisby riding Jeremy across the sky, depicted in ink and flat colors.
That copy I saw in the tambayan and partly reread that afternoon belonged to a friend who was taking a Children's Lit class. Honestly, when she told me that, I felt an undeniable twinge of envy. I love children's books. If I had a class that required me to read children's books all throughout the sem, I'm pretty sure my average would go up [albeit the increase would be, for all intents and purposes, insignificant].
The other books that were in her required reasing list included The Little Prince [a classic, of course], The BFG by Roald Dahl, and even Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The aforementioned books, along with Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, were the only ones I had read in her list and thus the only ones I remembered.
I am personally not overly fond of Harry Potter but I understand why it was included in the course. On the other hand, I was overjoyed to see The BFG included, because Roald Dahl is one of my favorite authors [contrary to popular opinion, he wasn't just a children's writer; read one of his short stories for confirmation. I recommend "Skin" and "Genesis and Catastrophe"].
The encounter brought back memories of all the books I had read as a child and as a pseudo-child [which is an adult who still likes reading warped fairytales and playing with yoyos]. If I were to teach a children's lit course, I would include something by Madeline L'Engle and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Maybe I'd also choose one of those Pollyanna-type novels with "inspiring" plots. Perhaps even something from popular literature [admit it, you read The Hardy Boys too (nope, was never a big Nancy Drew fan)].
One of my dreams, truth be told, is to have a library of children's books when I have a house of my own.
I regret that I will probably never see the majority of books I had read again, mostly due to my inefficient, shameful memory. Most likely I will never remember the title of the series of fairytales I stole from my cousin, from which the only thing I remember is the ending:
They lived happily, of course, and the king and queen ruled justly and wisely, but many years after they died the nation once again fell to wickedness and decadence, and the good rulers were forgotten. Such an ending is echoed by Stardust, a novel not-quite-for-children written by Neil Gaiman. In the end, the king dies and leaves his queen alone to sit atop cold mountains and look up at stars with sad eyes.
The immensity of a childhood fills you up to the brim, but when you've spent only a few years in this world, you're too caught up in swimming in this sea of games and laughter and thoughts to see and appreciate what, in just a few more years, you will have to lose.
Let's move on to a different type of nostalgia now, shall we?
I saw the rules for the Accoustic Jammeng'g' competition earlier this evening. The theme was, quite simply:
90's,
The first thought that came into my mind was: my God, was the 90's that long ago that already it's being made into a theme?
And then: awww, the 90's.
Grade School, as well as half of High School, was in the 90's. Our generation's culture--our music, our humor, our language, our ideology--was largely determined by this decade. The whole OPM boom we have now owes a lot to giants such as The Eraserheads. And although uncountable bands keep cropping up nowadays, the sound will never be the same.
I used to watch Tropang Trumpo, telenovelas such as Mara Clara, and--the perennial favorite--Home Along da Riles. Those days it was still commonplace for a student to reply the title of a local production when asked what her favorite show was (my answer was Home Along da Riles, thank you very much). Then again, maybe that was just us.
The 90's are over. Long live the 90's.
I write quite often about nostalgia (try to find the four previous nostalgic posts), and I'm still fixated on the letter V, hence the title of this post. Ha.
If I experienced childhood, grade school, and high school nostalgia, today I experienced college nostalgia as well, despite the fact that I'm still in college. Tonight, while helping a friend look for an old short story in an old, now-unused yahoogroup, I took to reading the old messages.
Looking back on yout past plans and aspirations as a group and realizing you lost them through the course of time makes this set of nostalgic reminiscence far more poignant, even though most of the said dreams we had were mere trifles. Such nostalgia would seem silly to most people, just as childhood seems silly. But for the nostalgic, the silliness translates to a longing (yes, and as said before, according to Milan Kundera, suffering) that is heightened by the fact that:
These memories are special only to you, and when you forget, no one else will remember.
Echo
Well, it’s been almost a month, so I thought it was about time for another long-ish post. Unlike the previous one, though, it’s hardly going to be coherent
Let’s start with something I have done relatively rarely in my college life: publish a poem for public viewing. Because,
What you don’t know is—
I want a secret.
I want a word, whispered to myself
And a soft smile
Maybe even a laugh, thrown to the wind
That no one will understand.
I want to see their puzzled faces,
Musing on my
unknown.
I want to stare off into space and
Think thoughts no one ever thought I’d
I want to hide my sandwich and scream
at the ants crawling on my sundress
and run into the building and disappear
for three days and come back to the world with amber
sap all over my hands and hair
dripping into pools at my feet reflecting
my eyeslits as they widen
and glisten with newfound wonder at all the things to be known
and found.
You look at me with that twitch at your mouth
helpless to know what,
exactly,
exactly.
I tilt my head, the amber still dripping,
To look in your eyes and share with you a secret smile
and have you know everything
and laugh with you
our voices disappearing
into the night sky,
This night that keeps secrets so well.
That was brought to you c/o one whacked-out night. Subject to personal interpretation (mine, that is).
V is such a curious letter. In several pieces of literature, it has been made into the symbol for the enigmatic, unattainable, and indefinable as much as the letter X has been transformed into the symbol for the unknown. It’s ironic that both letters are non-existent in the original Filipino alphabet. What does that say about us, I wonder?
This current fascination I have for the letter V springs from a graphic novel I read recently—“V for Vendetta”, written by Alan Moore. I think I have a thing for novels political plots, especially those that revolve around totalitarianism (what can I say? George Orwell is the best). I suppose V may not have the most original plot: England falls into fascism after almost being destroyed by nuclear warfare—but I like the way characters interact. The main character, V, is particularly interesting; despite his extreme single-mindedness and apparent cruelty, he still exists as someone very human.
A little spoiler-filled background on our (anti) hero: On the surface, V is a vigilante (unsurprisingly, the letter V appears throughout the novel quite often) fighting against England’s fascist government, headed by Adam Susan. V acts more like a terrorist than a vigilante though, and I suppose that would be a more accurate description; he blows monuments and structures indiscriminately and without regard for innocent lives, and even wears a Guy Fawkes mask (Fawkes, as I recently learned, was a 17th century terrorist). He espouses the ideals of anarchy and pursues his goals almost single-mindedly. Just to teach his protégé, Evey, the meaning of true freedom, he misleads and tortures her, with Evey believing that everything was being perpetrated by the government. V, at times, is unflinchingly cruel, especially when carrying out his “vendetta”.
V, however, is so much more than a vigilante or a terrorist or a murderer. He is a man, yes, albeit somewhat superhuman due to an experiment the government carried out on him when he was in a concentration camp. Despite his being able to break free and starting a whole new shadow life, I believe the experiments—whether chemically or psychologically—changed (dare I say broke?) something essential in him. The main part of his vendetta is against the former staff of the said camp. Yet V transcends petty revenge; his pseudo-conversation with Lady Justice is both telling and intriguing. But what I found most poignant about the character was his recognition that a person such as himself—someone whom he characterized as essentially a destroyer—had no place in the new society. In the end, a train filled with explosives serves as his grave, and Evey takes his place as society’s symbol for truth and freedom.
At this point, the discussion could branch off into so many places, such as a deeper, more in-depth discussion of V for Vendetta, I will not go there now. I advise you to read the graphic novel (and “From Hell” as well, if you have the chance … hell, anything by Alan Moore).
Instead, my mind wanders and wonders about frivolities, such as the different instances where the letter “V” appears in recent history. Most prominent is Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, entitled—surprise, surprise—“V”. This is a huge novel, oftentimes hard to grasp, but from what I gathered, V is another potent symbol, this time of something unknowable or unattainable. V appears in a myriad of forms in the novel, but we never really find out what she really is, probably because what she really is as a concept does not exist. We cannot really know.
On an even more frivolous note, V is the assumed name of the hooker (or is it stripper? I can’t really remember) in the movie Milk Money. Again, V has that enigmatic sheen.
I really wonder sometimes whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that V doesn’t exist in the original Filipino alphabet.
Suddenly I’m normal.
I’m active in my organizations and doing well in my academic work. I go out regularly on excursions, hang out around school and elsewhere, and even find the time to read a good book or seven. I even have a love life. I watch TV, listen to the radio, talk to my friends, laugh, gripe, tease, and dip my prying fingers into the latest intrigue, of which I am, for once, part of.
This has never happened to me before. Suddenly I’m wonderfully, surprisingly, irritatingly, nauseatingly normal.
My brain, briefly baffled by this turn of events, thinks at first that it must be a portent of things to come, one of the signs of the End of All Things. Then it, too, is engulfed by the utter ordinariness of the situation, and it realizes that no, the End is not near, lest it be simply the End of My Life as I’ve Known It. I am—and a shudder runs through my entire being as I realize this—growing up.
And I sound like one of those pompous idiots who dramatize everything, don’t I? What most people—those who’ve been “normal” all their lives—don’t realize is, realizing that you’ve become your average Maria is quite unsettling, especially for someone who has tried so hard to maintain a façade of uniqueness, for one who espouses the principles of self-expression and individuality. The God was the Individual, the Key Word: “extraordinary.”
Suddenly those labels seem so hollow. It’s a bit of a letdown when you realize that, all this time, you were never really that different. Then you get used to it, and suddenly you’re happy with the way things are, which is: normal. Just like it’s always been.
The following nonsensical piece was something I wrote some time ago. Now the lights and the toilet really are fixed, but cable is non-existent and due to some weird going-ons at PLDT, we have no phone. Again. Ah well.
The place I have always known as home has leaky faucets and a broken fuse. The lights don’t turn on in half of the house. The telephone line’s disconnected (yeah, no internet). The toilet doesn’t flush properly. The fridge is empty. And the TV’s only use is for watching pirated DVDs (yeah, no cable either).
I spend my time outside, usually. Me and my mom, we buy food and just take it home to eat a lot. And we don’t eat lousy Chinese takeout or greasy American fastfood; we eat good food, like the roast chicken over at Rustan’s, or Paksiw over at Milky Way. And we eat out a lot, too, usually at Dulcinea but sometimes over at a fancy resto in Greenbelt. When she’s with her friends they like eating at not-very-well-known-but-extremely-good restaurants like Segundo Piso and Café Juanita, and I like tagging along, for the food. I just eat and stuff myself while they gossip and chat about their good old days
When we’re at home, I watch DVDs. I’m not sure what she does; we don’t talk much, at home. She gives me water, prepares dinner sometimes, and disappears, probably to do her pottery, most likely to sleep. And I sit in front of the TV, glazed like a doughnut and equally inanimate.
===
I’m not home, right now. Mom’s getting the lights fixed, and the phone as well. The toilet was fixed a few weeks ago. Maybe she’ll even have cable installed. She told me not to go home yet, while the house is being fixed.
When I go over there, the first thing I’m going to do is sit on a chair, draw my legs up to my chest, turn the TV on, and watch a DVD, my eyes glazed like a sugar doughnut.
I’m tired, really. And I should be studying.
Anyway, one last parting shot:
"Nothing's a pretty good hand."
