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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Tags: Da Vinci Code, Daniel Day-Lewis, Foucault's Pendulum, Indiana Jones, Jason Alexander, Jeanette Winterson, Lara Croft, Literary Criticism, Lord of the Rings, Michel Foucault, Milan Kundera, Mystery, Philosophy, Rosicrucians, Sacred Feminine, Seinfeld, Templar Knights, The Grail, The Passion, The Unbearable Lightness, Umberto Eco, Written on the Body
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A poem by Rumi:

Because I Cannot Sleep

Because I cannot sleep
I make music at night.
I am troubled by the one whose face has the color of spring flowers.
I have neither sleep nor patience,
neither a good reputation nor disgrace.

A thousand robes of wisdom are gone.
All my good manners have run a thousand miles away.

The heart and the mind are left angry with each other.
The stars and the moon are envious of each other.
Because of this alienation the physical universe is getting tighter and tighter.

The moon says, “How long will I remain suspended without a sun?”
Without Love’s jewel inside of me, let the bazaar of my existence be destroyed stone by stone.

O Love, You who have been called by a thousand names,
You who know how to pour the wine into the chalice of the body,
You who give culture to a thousand cultures,
You who are faceless but have a thousand faces.
O Love, You who shape the faces of Turks, Europeans, and Zanzibaris, give me a glass from Your bottle, or a handful of bheng from your branch.

Remove the cork once more.
Then we’ll see a thousand chiefs prostrate, and a circle of ecstatic troubadours will play.
The the addict will be freed of craving and will be resurrected, and stand in awe till Judgment Day.

(translation by Kabir Helminski and Lail Fouladvend)

Tags: Kabir Helminski, Lail Fourladvend, Poem, Rumi, Translation
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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.

Tags: Miguel Hernandez, Poetry, Translation
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Ano nga ba ang isang tula?

Isang marikit na kasinungalingang binihisan. Isang katotohanang ipinararamdam lamang. Tanging sa pagpaparamdam lamang nito hindi nagiging kasinungalingan ang katotohanan. Isang katotohanang ’singhalaga at ’sintago ng miniminang yaman.

Sino nga ba ang nakakakita na, sa katotohanan, kulay-asin ang dagat?

Walang sinuman. Gayunpaman, nagpaparanas ito, wumawagayway, ipinapakita at sinasalamin ng mga binuo nitong bula ang kulay ng gasuklay na buwan. Nasa kanyang hiwaga ang higit niyang kagandahan.

Hindi maaaring tumambad sa atin ang tula nang hubad. Mga buto ng tula lamang ang taglay ng mga tulang hubad. At ano nga ba’ng mas papangit pa sa mga pawang kalansay lamang?

Ingatan, mga manunula, ang diwa ng tula: isang espinghe. Hayaan n’yong matuto silang bakbakin ito tulad ng balat ng kahoy… Ay, tulad ng dalandan! kaylinamnam ng itinatago nito sa loob ng kanyang mala-planetang kabilugan!

Ingatan ang inyong sarili, mga manunula, laban sa mga bungang walang-balat, mga dagat na walang-alat.

Kailangang umubra ang tula gaya ng sa banal na misa.

Kailan kaya darating ang manunula na hawak sa kanyang mga daliri ang tula gaya ng paring tangan-tangan ang ostiya at nagsasabing: “Ito ang Diyos!” at maniniwala tayo?

- Miguel Hernandez, spanish poet, 1910-1942 (Tagalog translation by Ron Capinding)

Tags: Add new tag, Miguel Hernandez, Poetry, Translation
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Do you believe in love at first sight?

I do.

Saw this little book “The Alphabet of Grace” by Frederick Buechner in the bargain bin of NBS, bought it (for P50), and fell in love with it. Lent it to someone who, of course, lost it. And then, after some time, I serendipitously found and bought a new one (for P300). It’s about the spiritual experience of, in his own words, “a part-time novelist, Christian, pig.” What caught my attention: the title. What I loved in it: a very human, semi-mystical approach to spirituality.

Am thinking of translating it to Tagalog someday. I tried, and never got past the introduction. Will have to find time, someday.

—

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Mwahahahaha! Just had to let the cosmic laughter resonate, no, reverberate in my body…

Everything is grace! Even when shit happens… Divine piss, holy shit!

I have always been wary of spirituality/religiosity that denied/denigrated the body. Non summus angeli! (We’re no angels!)

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Tags: Authenticity, Books, Buddhism, Illusion, Masks, Movies, Philosophy, spirituality
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“… Listen to Me in the truth of your soul. Listen to Me in the feelings of your heart. Listen to Me in the quiet of your mind.

“Hear Me, everywhere. Whenever you have a question, simply know that I have answered it already. Then open your eyes to your world. My response could be in an article already published. In the sermon already written and about to be delivered. In the movie now being made. In the song just yesterday composed. In the words about to be said by a loved one. In the heart of a new friend about to be made.

“My Truth is in the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the crack of the thunder, the tap of the rain.

“It is the feel of the earth, the fragrance of the lily, the warmth of the sun, the pull of the moon.

“My Truth – and your surest help in time of need – is as awesome as the night sky, and as simply, incontrovertibly, trustful as a baby’s gurgle.

“It is as loud as a pounding heartbeat – and as quiet as a breath taken in unity with Me.

“I will not leave you, I cannot leave you, for you are My creation and My product, My daughter and My son, My purpose and My… ‘Self.’”

—

The above quotation is from the last portion of Neale Donald Walsch’s “Conversations with God, Book 1.” I’m quoting it at length because I think it gives a general idea of what pantheism is all about.

Pantheism is, simply put, the belief that God is everything, or conversely, that everything is God. Of course, some philosophers have pointed out that pantheism is virtually an atheism. To believe that everything is God is to make the idea of “God” profane. If God is immanent (to the universe) and not transcendent, then why use the word “God” at all? The very notion of “God,” they argue, presupposes the idea of “transcendence.” Pantheism, insofar as it denies the transcendence of God, is virtually an atheism.

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Tags: Books, Conversations with God, Hegel, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality, Translation, Writing
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A reaction on

Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

Posted in autografitti@yahoogroups.com, August 5, 2003.

—

I can understand the dislike that Sontag has for hermeneuts and their penchant for reducing a work of art into its purported meaning, especially when such meaning is made to appear as esoteric and accessible only to initiates. I’m inclined to think that this is the same dislike that we have for so-called experts, academicians, philosophers, and intellectuals. These personages are supposed to illumine life but most of the time they only succeed in clouding and cluttering it with hot air, pollution and garbage.It is interesting to note that Michel Foucault argued for an “ars erotica” vis-a-vis the “scientia sexualis” in Volume I of The History of Sexuality. Of course, he was not talking about an “erotics of art” but an “art of erotics.” But he, like Sontag, is wary too of hermeneutics and its promise of getting into the “depth of things.” (The truth/meaning of things.)

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Tags: Art, Education, Foucault, Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Life, Nietzsche, Philosopyhy, Sontag, Translation, Writing
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the sequel to “reading with/and understanding”

from autograffiti@yahoogroups.com, may13, 2003

—

Is the concern for a reader/interpreter’s having the “right attitude” tantamount to a so-called “primacy of the reader”?

I don’t think so.

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Tags: Alterity, Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Meaning, Objectivity, Perspective, Philosophy, Prejudice, Reading, Subjectivity, Text, truth, Understanding
Posted in Art, Education, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Translation, Writing | 2 Comments »

a post in autograffiti, may 9, 2003

I once gave a remark:

“Read and read, until you understand.”

Rather harsh?

But it wasn’t meant to be a slight on anyone’s intelligence. Understanding (a text) is not necessarily premised on one’s intelligence. Tama ba ‘yon?

My point is that you need more than intelligence to be able to read and understand. You need a sympathetic ear, a willingness to “hear” what the other has to “say.” More than intelligence, you have to have the right attitude for a better understanding.

Hermeneuts like Schleiermacher (a hermeneut is one who specializes in the philosophy of understanding/interpretation) began with the presumption that there is always the possibility of MIS-understanding. That is why there is a need for hermeneutics (the art of interpretation).

Gadamer, following Heidegger, turned this around and said that we always already understand. All of us come from a fore-knowledge/fore-understanding of things which become the very basis of any future understanding. In other words, we all have biases and prejudices which determine the way we look at and understand anything in the world.

But lest we say, “Ah, we don’t need to make the effort to understand, anyway we always already understand,” Gadamer didn’t stop there, one’s “prejudices” (literally “pre-judgments”) is corrected by hearkening/listening to the otherness of the text.

That’s why the injunction “to read and read until one understands” is meant for all of us, especially when difficulty in understanding comes.

Reading and understanding is always meant to be a dialogue, a dialectic, a to-and-fro motion between the familiarity of our own assumptions and the strangeness of the otherness of the text.

It is definitely not masturbation.

best regards,

ian

next: the primacy of the text

Tags: Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Philosophy, Prejudices, Reading, Understanding, Writing
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