Xn3cTs

I loved the Matrix and Moulin Rouge, despite their being hyped. On the other hand, I did watch Lord of the Rings 1 & 2, but stayed away from 3. Tried reading book 1, but just managed a few paragraphs, and then stopped… (Well, perhaps someday…)

Did “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” have that much hype? I love that novel, have read it twice, and think of it as the kind/type of novel I’d love to write if I ever get the chance of writing one. (Haven’t seen the film adaptation with Daniel Day-Lewis…)

As for “The Da Vinci Code,” if you find a copy lying around, it’s worth reading din naman. For one thing, I do subscribe to the recuperation/rehabilitation of the “sacred feminine.”

One other reason why I stayed away from Dan Brown’s novel is that I’ve read Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” and from what I had heard about “The Da Vinci Code,” it seemed to me to be a “Foucault’s Pendulum”-wanna-be.

I’m currently re-reading Eco’s novel. (I read it years ago, mistakenly thinking that it’d help me write a paper on Michel Foucault. Wala palang connect. Ibang Foucault ‘to… Or, meron din, if one looks at the obsession for power and techniques of power…)

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Let Me Go.
(To all the girls I’ve loved before, will have loved in the future, have been presently loving)
by Michael Ian Lomongo

Let me go.
Letlet…
Mimi…
Let me go.
Letty…
Amy…
Mi amiga…
Let me go.
Mei-li… Gong-li… Agogo…
Let me go.

Amigas, dejadme que me vaya.

Michelle… Mabel…
Let me go.
Son les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble,
Tres bien ensemble:
Let me go.
Yeah.
Let me be.
Words of wisdom:
Let it be.
January, 2005

“2046.”

If you fell in love with Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) — who, along with Zhang Ziyi, was in Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” — in Wong Kar Wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” you shouldn’t miss this wonderful masterpiece of a sequel!

If you haven’t seen “In the Mood for Love,” you’d still appreciate the great film that is “2046″ (just like some people must have seen “Before Sunset” without seeing “Before Sunrise”). But I think the weight of our empathy with the travails of Mr. Chow stems from having known what he has gone through in the previous film.

It’s now a toss-up between Claude I-forgot-this-french-canadian’s-surname’s “Leolo” and Wong Kar Wai’s “2046″ as my favorite movie of all time.

Incidentally, doesn’t Tony Leung bear an uncanny resemblance to the late R.J. Leyran?

—

Non Sequitur (A Reflection on Wong Kar Wai’s “2046″ and “In the Mood for Love”)
by Michael Ian Lomongo

(For the late R.J. Leyran, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Tony Leung)

—

I do think that “2046″ is a very worthy sequel to “In the Mood for Love.” At first, it doesn’t appear to be that way. The only connection with the latter film seemed to be that it was the same Mr. Chow (the erstwhile writer of martial arts stories but moved on to writing sci-fi…) and his adventures in love and loving after the ill-fated affair with Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung).

After seeing “2046,” I’ve reached these conclusions:

2046 is the number of the room that Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan stayed in the night she didn’t want to go home. This scene wasn’t shown in both films but Mr. Chow mentioned it in “2046.”

Mrs. Chan probably separated with her husband. The child she was with when she moved to the apartment that used to be occupied by her landlady was the fruit of that one night tryst with Mr. Chow. She went back with the vain of hope of somehow meeting up with Mr. Chow again. When she called up the office of Mr. Chow when he was in Singapore, it was because she was with child. But she couldn’t bear to speak because she didn’t want to be a “bother” to Mr. Chow.

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Menos Tu Vientre by Miguel Hernandez

(translation by Ian Lomongo)

Kundi sa’yong sinapupunan,
lahat ay pawang kaguluhan.
Kundi sa’yong sinapupunan,
bukas na dagling lumilisan,
baog at ‘di-mabanaagang
kupas na kahapon ang tanan.
Kundi sa’yong sinapupunan,
lahat-lahat ‘di mawarian.
Kundi sa’yong sinapupunan,
lahat kawalang-katiyakan,
lahat doon sa kalayuan,
abong walang sandaigdigan.
Kundi sa’yong sinapupunan,
lahat pusikit na karimlan.
Kundi sa’yong sinapupunan,
(na) kaliwanagan, kaibuturan.

I love Jeanette Winterson!

It’s true, and every lover knows this deep in his/her heart to be true: when one loves, one becomes a stalker of sorts…

With the regretful sigh and the little blush of a lover,
ian

—

The Lover’s Passion
by Rumi

A lover knows only humility
He has no choice
He steals into your alley at night
He has no choice
He longs to kiss every lock of your hair
Don’t fret
He has no choice
In his frenzied love for you
He longs to break the chains
Of his imprisonment
He has no choice
—

It was easy for me to get in, the door was unlocked. I felt like a thief with a bagful of stolen glances. It’s odd being in someone else’s room when they’re not there. Especially when you love them. Every object carries a different significance. Why did she buy that? What does she especially like? Why does she sit in this chair and not that one? The room becomes a code that you have only a few minutes to crack. When she returns, she will command your attention, and besides it’s rude to stare. And yet I want to pull out the drawers and run my fingers under the dusty rims of the pictures. In the waste basket perhaps, in the larder, I will find a clue to you, I will be able to unravel you, pull you between my fingers and stretch out each thread to know the measure of you.

- Jeanette Winterson, “Written on the Body”

“He remembered his sadness well, but he could no longer remember what had made him so sad. It was that way with everything: even sadness passed, even pain and despair, as well as the joys. Everything passed, faded, lost its depth, its value, and finally there came a time when one could no longer remember what had pained one so. Pains, too, wilted and faded… Yes, doubtless this pain, this bitter need would also grow old and tired. It too would be forgotten. Nothing had permanence, and he regretted that, too.”

- Herman Hesse, “Narcissus and Goldmund”

—

Am continuing my reflections on the possibility of a “Nietzschean Buddhism”…

Would like to sit again…

I’ve found something valuable in my practice. Hey, I may have not changed much but I detect a glimmer of hope… the possibility of overcoming deeply-ingrained bad habits of old. I’m no superman but like him, “I’m just out to find a better part of me.”

I came to Vipassana as a pantheist with Nietzschean leanings. I had strayed away from the Catholic Christian Church in the mid-1990’s. It was meeting Nietzsche (through his books, of course) that brought about my “conversion.” I found quite a number of my very deepest feelings and thoughts verbalized by this “madman.”

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Drugs and alcohol can open up a spiritual experience. But, as Bhagavan Das pointed out, it’s a dark (tamasic) path and the danger is in being eaten up or swallowed by the substance, instead of the other way around.

I haven’t taken hallucinogens. (I’d like to, someday, with reformed drug addict Rudy as a “guide.” To make sure I don’t harm myself or another…)

I think my first experience of “psychedelia” was Sesame Street. (”1,2,3,4,5…6,7,8,9,10…11,12… doodoodoodoo…,” among others…) My parents were not hippies. They listened to Bread, middle-of-the-road stuff…

But I had a cool uncle and aunt. My Uncle Boyet brought me to an open-field rock concert when I was maybe 6… where I think I first heard Pepe Smith. This uncle would show me his psychedelic paintings and taught me my first cool words: “Hayuup!” “Haneeeep!”

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I remember this film I saw in one of the French Spring Film Festivals, “Chance or Coincidence” about an “eventologist” (or someething) whose “other” job is to find connections/meanings in the chance occurences of life. I don’t remember the details of the story, it’s a love story (I think). I liked it, and also this Nat King Cole song in it, with the words “For all we know/care…?” Ala lang, baka lang alam n’yo. Am being whimsical here. It might have some meaning in the greater scheme of things. Hehehe.

Was also fascinated by “Sliders” (the TV series with Jerry O’Connell?) and “Sliding Doors” (with Gwyneth Paltrow).

In the TV series (based on a scientific theory, the “many-possible worlds” theory), the character played by Jerry, with his friends and professor (John Rhys-Davies), travel through a wormhole that leads to a parallel universe. Same time, different world. In some episodes, they even get to meet their alter-egos.

The movie “Sliding Doors” is premised on this one triviality: whether Gwyneth’s character is able to get on the subway on her way home or not. And the two parallel lives of Gwyneth play themselves out, each radically different from the other — all because of missing/not-missing a train ride. The movie however makes this intriguing, though perhaps unwarranted, conceit. The two Gwyneths (almost meet physically in an elevator) become “reconciled” during this scene by having only one singular experience, implying that the events which would follow from now on would be the same, even if they diverged earlier. Perhaps her inner reconciliation brought about the reconciliation of two divergent worlds? Perhaps she is owned by a destiny that’s greater than all the numerous happenstance of her life?

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Some people say that Christianity has been misunderstood. It looks to me more like it is Christianity which has misunderstood! The world, perhaps even Christ!

I’m not associating Christ with Christianity. When Nietzsche wrote “Der Anti-Christ” (usually translated as “The Anti-Christ”), his polemics was directed more to Paul and Christendom/Christianity, (a note in the translation says that it is probably more fitting to translate it as “The Anti-Christian.”) The same with Kierkegaard, his beef was with Christendom (the bureaucracy of Christianity). Christianity, as we know it today, is according to biblical scholarship, largely the work of Paul the Apostle.

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The Heart of the Vegetarian Matter
(In Honor of the Flesh We Eat)
by Michael Ian Lomongo

On the 10th day of our Vipassana course in 2003, some of my meditation friends were discussing the idea of non-killing (even of insects), whether we’d continue the practice after the course. I said I’d probably do, but I’d try to keep in mind to always say to the insect/s “I’m sorry but I have to kill you.” (And then, someone pointed out that some American Indian tribes used to have this practice of “talking” to the animal they’re killing for food.)

Circa 1997, I used to regularly attend these monthly Full-Moon celebrations with SUFI-ISIS at either Samat Rd. or Biak-na-Bato (basta somewhere near Quezon Blvd.). They’d have someone who’d give a talk/lecture (on spirituality, various paths and techniques), afterwards there’d be meditation, and then meals!!! Woohoo! (They’ve got it all covered… food for the mind, soul, body!)

And one of the things that really struck me during one of the talks was this anecdote that the speaker shared. A group of monks was billeted in a hotel and they made sure that everything was taken care of (their accomodation, their special needs, like the purely vegetarian meal that they must have, etc.). Came mealtime, and imagine the monks’ chagrin when they found themselves being served meat! Agitated, they called for the hotel-manager and started really scolding and berating the incompetence of the hotel staff.

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