Xn3cTs

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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reposting… Showing uli: Feb. 6,7,8.13,14,15 8pm, Feb. 7,8,14,15 3pm, Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino (CCP Little Theater)

—

Winner! Ang Lola Mo! (Ang Kagila-gilalas na Sugo na si Zsazsa Zaturnnah)
ni Michael Ian Lomongo

Ano pa ba’ng masasabi ko sa “Zsazsa Zaturnnah ze Muzikal” ng Tanghalang Pilipino kundi pawang papuri?

Gustung-gusto ko ang musika at ang mga nagsiganap; punung-puno sila ng puso. Jologs na produksyon, low-tech. Walang kagila-gilalas sa mga “special effect” nito. Ngunit kamangha-mangha at nag-uumapaw sa puso, imahinasyon, at pagkamalikhain ang buong produksyon. Pasasalamat at papuri sa may-akda (Carlo Vergara), tagapagsalin sa dula (Chris Martinez), direktor (Chris Millado), kompositor (Vince de Jesus), at sa mga aktor (Eula Valdes, Arnold Reyes, Lauren Novero, Kalila Aguilos, Wilma Doesnt, Vincent de Jesus, Tuxqs Rutaquio, Ricci Chan, Joey Paras, Nar Cabico, et al.).

Nakakaaliw panoorin. Hindi sayang ang panahon at perang gugugulin mo sa panonood nito. Ngunit sa pagtatapos ng tawanan ay ang paghahanap ng kahulugan. Kung kaya pagtutuunan ko ng pansin ang isang tanong na sa palagay ko’y ibinabato sa atin ng kwento ni Zsazsa Zaturnnah:

Paano ba maging isang superhero o kaya’y bayani?

Saan nagmumula ang mga pangyayari upang ang isang tao ay maging bayani? Likas ba ito sa kalooban ng isang tao, o aksidenteng lumalabas ayon sa mga pagkakataon? Galing sa loob o sa labas? Basal (native) ba ito o dayuhan?

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reposting… november, 2003.

best regards,

ian

—

Nietzsche, Hume and the Buddha

When I first heard of Nietzsche, it was in association with Hitler and the Nazis. I simply dismissed him as a rabid, power-hungry maniac who probably had an unhappy childhood. A classmate in college wrote a paper on this Nietzsche guy and I was silently chuckling on the thought that a comic book idea (“superman”) can be the subject of a scholarly paper.

But when I did get to read him (years later), I was simply won over by this crazy guy! He says provocative things that, when thought about, actually make sense. He’s probably among the few philosophers who doesn’t come across as an insipid intellectual. He’s got style, lots of it. He doesn’t say things just for effect (although sometimes it feels like that). He’s an artist, an artist-philosopher. He’s very passionate and his sincerity comes across. He also has a weird sense of humor. Indeed, he writes with his blood. Indeed, he’s a dynamite.

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Tags: Art, Buddha, Buddhism, Hume, Love, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Power, religion, spirituality, Writing
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Para Mama, Para Nga!!!
(isang monologo para sa bagong taon)

alay sa mga bwakanang files ko na nabura noong bisperas ng bwakanang bagong taon…

ni Body Dancer

Sampung taon na ang nakararaan ng una akong mag-odisyon para maging scholar ng Tanghalang Pilipino Actors’ Company. Mula sa mahigit limampung ininterbyu bago mag-odisyon, naiwan kaming kulang-kulang 20. Tatlong araw yung odisyon. Bawa’t araw, nababawasan kami. Matira matibay. Survival of the fittest. Darwinian natural selection. Selecta. Choose your own adventure.

Umabot ako sa pangatlong araw.

But ultimately failed to make the grade.

Almost made it. But didn’t.

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Tags: Art, Life, Love, monologue, Music, songs
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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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For Sharon (And All the Many Brave People in the World)

I stood
Like a statue
Unmoving, unseeing
Not speaking, not wanting
To break
The fragile silence that
Engulfed us like
A wall oppressing,
Suffocating, separating
Me… from you.

But I was dying to live!
And breathe, and see
The many things I haven’t seen
And move, and do
The many things I haven’t done.
How I longed to look at you
(Take a long and good look at you.)
To speak, and be, with you.
Oh how I yearned to touch,
Feel, and love you.

But then again, as always,
I was afraid
Of you, and me,
And the many things
I haven’t seen and done
(And of I-don’t-but-God-knows-what-else).
And then again, as always,
I had to hide
And be content
To peek from inside.

Suddenly, brave as an angel
Come down from heaven, you
Freed me from the chains
I myself forged
And wound around me.
You looked at, talked with, me
And with a smile, shattered
The walls of timidity and fear
That imprisoned and prevented
Me from loving you.

And then, I could breathe, though gasping
And so, I could see, though squinting
And more, I could move, though trembling
And yes, I could speak, though stammering
And now, I could feel, though numbing
At last, I could love, though wanting.

Err… This is to say
“Thank you”
For “I love you“?

Tags: Life, Love, Poetry, Writing
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From “The Book of Lights” by Chaim Potok:

“From the age of fifteen until the age of twenty-one he lived in the apartment world of his aunt’s whispery talking and his uncle’s coughs and brooding silence, and he did not know which was more frightening. For a while after his cousin’s death he thought his family had somehow been singled out for a special curse. But he talked to friends and found that throughout the neighborhood ran a twisting river of random events: parents died in slow or sudden ways, children were killed, relatives slipped young from life. The world seemed a strangely terrifying place when you really thought about it. He tried not to think about it too often.

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Tags: , Art, Books, Chaim Potok, religion, Writing
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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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* Off the top of my head, here is a random list of films I’ve seen and liked/loved:

1 Leolo (probably my all-time favorite; a Canadian film in French)
2 Splash (with Tom Hanks and Daryll Hannah, with a beautiful song – One Fine Day or Love
Came for Me? – by Lee Holdridge and Marvin Hamlisch)
3 Insiang, Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, and Ora Pro Nobis (Lino Brocka)
4 Kakabakaba ka ba? (Mike de Leon?)
5 Alapaap (Tata Esteban)
6 Groundhog Day (with Bill Murray)
7 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar)
8 Carlito’s Way (with Al Pacino, and the beautiful Penelope Ann Miller)
9 Santa Sangre (Axwl Jodorowsky)
10 The Girl on the Bridge (a French film in black and white)
11 Immortal Beloved
… and many others…

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Tags: Literature, Movies, Pantheism, Philosophy, spirituality
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