Vita Brevis (Life is Short)

“Was I nothing more than a woman’s body to you? You know that is not true. And how can you distinguish between body and soul? Isn’t that bungling God’s work of creation? …When you clawed me with your sharp caresses, you were also tearing at my soul”.

-Floria, in her letter to St. Augustine, denying his confession that what they shared was merely lust

Jostein Gaarder’s Vita Brevis was based on letters he found in a second-hand bookstore. The letters were written by Floria Aemilia to a certain Aurel as she called St. Augustine, by that time a prominent Bishop. In her pained writings, she attacked the Church’s dogma about celibacy for the religious as an affront to the gifts of God, the gift to love and be loved. She agonized over St. Augustine’s confessions that his life of fornication included his life with her. She cried that her love kept him faithful and that they were living in happiness until the theologians decided that he should marry “abstinence”. She laughed at his invitation to abandon life’s pleasures in order to live a holy life. This, she maintained, could both be accomplished without wasting the beautiful world that God has given humankind.

“On the other side of the bridge we passed some vendors, and I stopped to look at a beautiful cameo. Then you bought it for me, and now, now I sit with it in my hand. I clasp it, tightly. So God will have to forgive me for holding on to the ‘physical’….But life is short and I know so little. What if there is no heaven above us, Aurel, imagine that this life is what we were created for!”

Fascinated by the lives of saints, I liked this ‘other’ side of a story. St. Augustine’s life is one of those drilled into Catholic girls’ minds during my schooldays. If they weren’t dead already, I’d like to throw this book at one of the nuns at St. Paul and ask them first, if it was really humanly possible to renounce all sensual feelings (apparently St. Augustine was ready to renounce the sense of smell), as was propagated during St. Augustine’s time, and not be considered ‘retarded’ today. And second, if the letters were to be believed that Augustine did in fact love only one woman and stayed with her albeit unmarried, that the Church may have been responsible for ripping a family apart (they had one son); and that this may have been the cause of tremendous trauma St. Augustine suffered during his “formation” (described by religious books as terrible bouts with the devil).

Floria cleverly cited Augustine’s wish to have all Songs of David removed from the Church. She correctly pointed the contradiction because the Songs extol everyone to laugh, sing, and dance in praise of God. Living in those times she was brave to reject the Church based on her criticisms to St. Augustine’s confessions. She claimed she already has her God who created her and he comes with no theologians who judge her happiness.

In Floria’s description of their life together, I wondered whether St. Augustine’s experience had been exaggerated by the Church to once more stress the sinfulness of sensual pleasure. Some confessions of St. Augustine quoted (translated) in the book, about the many women he took to bed, was questioned by Floria as perhaps mere boasting like of a young man among his friends. Floria thinks this may have been done to emphasize a misplaced guilt in the man. After all, wouldn’t she know whether he’s really experienced with women or not?

Towards the end of the book Floria unwittingly predicted a reality that was to claim thousands of women’s lives by the hand of the Church, when, upon meeting her (and sinning) again, Augustus beat her up and sent her away without seeing her son.

“I shiver, for I fear the day will come when women like me will be done away with by the men of the universal church. And why will they be done with, your Grace? Because they remind you that you have denied your own soul and gifts. And for whom? For a God, you all say, for him who created a heaven above you and also an earth which actually holds women who bring you into the world”.

Centuries later, the Catholic Church began the Inquisition, which tortured and killed millions of women throughout the Christian world.

Sex and the City, the Movie

What struck me most was Samantha’s confession to Smith that she loves him but she loves herself more. This was after her disillusionment with the domestic life she had with “the one”. It grabbed me in its bold difference from the rest of Samantha’s friends’ dreams. She wanted to be with herself more than with the one she loves. This is honesty rarely heard of in my part of the globe. Indeed this is often considered selfish, foolish, and ‘whorish’ of her if she had been Asian. Yet I feel many women feel this way about their relationships. Even when they have the one perfect person, the life they shape with one another takes away from who they are. For majority of women I know, marriage IS shedding who you are. It is living for another forever. And if one loses oneself in the process this is considered a ‘necessary sacrifice’. No wonder so many married women grow bitter, insecure and judgmental towards others during the course of their married life. Somewhere in the back of their minds they remember what life was before the “sacrifice” yet are too ashamed to claim some of that life back.

Too often women had to see how marriage almost never changes anything for the husband, while it completely overturns the world of the wife. Indeed why should the husband go home immediately after work to a house he has been living in for twenty, thirty years? The furniture and spaces surely have not changed. Keeping house is almost automatically the responsibility of the wife. Except for the occasional chores, or during social functions or to watch the game, or indeed when there is an appointment with the wife in bed, what else is there in the house that needed getting home early to?

“I changed who I was for you”, said an angry Miranda to Steve. In order for them to get back together she had to forgive herself and her husband for that. I think this message makes the movie. It doesn’t pretend to predict a ‘happy ever after’ for the girls. It only provides glimpses of happiness from the choices that they make.

Again on the Iskolar ng Bayan

Manila Standard

Friday, June 6, 2008

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=business6_june6_2008

Voyage

By Maya Baltazar Herrera

This week, I went to a meeting at the UP School of Economics and I came away with renewed belief in the value of the UP experience.

If you speak to anyone from UP—student, professor, alumnus—you will get no Latin slogans or apologies about how the school teaches values in spite of its outward materialism. This is not a student population that thinks about basketball games or memorizes school songs. This is not a school that chooses one statement to drill into the minds of its students.

This is not, of course, to say that UP does not care about values. It is that UP, in its own inimitable way, believes that values cannot be force-fed. The statue of the naked man that guards the entrance to the campus in Diliman best represents UP’s approach to all education and the respect for students that is the center of its educational philosophy. All who come to this university, regardless of origin, bring themselves naked, carrying nothing but their thirst; like the proverbial empty teacup, making an offering of self, waiting to be filled.

Adults

For many students from private schools, the first lesson that is learned here is that this is a school for adult education. There are no children here, and that is why no parents are allowed either at freshman orientation or during enlistment.

The spirit of the oblation lies not in a mother or a father offering up his child to the world, it is that of the newly adult, freely offering of his self.

I remember quite vividly that moment that drove home how different the UP education continues to be. It was my daughter’s first semester in university and she had invited a group of her high school friends to our house. One of them asked a classmate whether she had gotten her parents permission form approved for that weekend’s outreach activity. From the UP population around the table came the mock horrified responses of: “Permission?” and “Outreach?”

I thought about it and realized that all of these students were, in fact, legally adults. I thought it interesting that only the UP students appeared to appreciate this fact.

Even more interesting was the “outreach” comment. I think back to my own university years and the last three years that my daughter has been in UP and am certain there is no lack of civic activity. There are medical missions, house-building projects, tree planting, community work and barrio work and so on. I realize now that the reaction was not to the activity as much as it was to the use of the word.

One of the most important differences of the UP campus from all the other campuses my children considered going to is that this campus has no walls. Many parents fear this. They are afraid their precious children will not be protected from the ills of society in a campus that is so open to the rest of the world.

But UP is open to the world in more ways than just not having the physical walls.

Community

Being in UP means much more than being a student. This campus is enmeshed in a community. This community is made up not only of the transient population of students who go home each night. It includes the many, many students who lay their heads on dorm pillows each night, enduring time away from families in the firm belief that this campus will bring them closer to their dreams. This community includes the families of faculty and employees who live on campus. It also includes the many people who work not for the university, but nevertheless work on campus. This community includes the lady who remembers the brand of cigarette you smoke and automatically hands it to you in the morning. It includes the gentleman who remembers you like pepper on your egg sandwich or the one who knows you will dip your fish balls into two of his sauces, who patiently waits for you to eat your three sticks before being paid. It includes the woman who saw all her children through college by selling peanuts every day on campus.

To a UP student, the daily heartbeat of the school is never far away from the realities of the country. The word outreach suggests that civic activity is something outside of the normal, something you do once in a while. It must be immensely difficult to think of community as a thing apart when your campus experience brings you face to face with all of the world’s realities every day.

Character

All of this probably explains that unmistakable sense of self that you will find from students who come from this campus.

Here is a campus where all have the same opportunities to learn. But, also, here is a campus that will give all the same opportunities to fail. There are no guidance counselors who will chase after you because you have been skipping classes. The attitude this university takes is that you must take the initiative—for learning, for seeking help, for realizing you need help.

That is not to say that no help exists. But it is help that is not forced upon you.

This is a university rich in both introspection and conversation. On this campus, the student is constantly exposed to people—faculty, administrators, community members, other students—who care deeply and passionately about the world. The conversations are almost never purely cerebral. A single graph can provoke comments about government policy and its effects on people.

As a result, UP is home to a student population that looks at the world and cares. It is easy to see pictures of protesting students and dismiss it as radicalism. But there are few campuses in this country where students go beyond a passing curiosity about what is happening in the world beyond their own lives. There are even fewer universities where students not only care but also actually believe they have a responsibility to make a difference—not in some hazy future—today.

And that, I believe, is what truly forges character. Character is not molded by speeches or long classes in ethics or theology. Character grows from within. It begins by being handed the keys to your own self and being told you are in charge; you now have power over yourself and your own actions—and with that power, you take on responsibilities.

Each student in this university goes through his own unique voyage of discovery. On this voyage, as he decides what he cares about, what he will fight for and what he will sacrifice, he crafts his own personal values. That is what education is truly about.

Readers can e-mail Maya at integrations_manila@yahoo.com. Or visit her site at http://www.mayaherrera.com.

About your blog

Got to read your blog. My reaction was one of
surprise because I assumed all along that you knew I
was gay (Totoo nga yata ang kasabihan na 'maraming
namamatay sa akala). But I did not feel like I was
obliged to announce it to everyone, though. And no, I
was not trying to cover this up by being 'macho' or
something. J and other friends in Bangkok know
about it.

T is deeply in love with someone else, and she
knows who I have fallen for. What you saw between us
is really just a closeness between two friends,
nothing more.

I was taken aback by your blog, and by the strong
emotions that were reflected in it, so I did not
contact you at once after I read about it. I was also
going through some emotional stuff myself because I
was then about to leave Bangkok, which has been a great
experience for me. What I will miss most are the
friendships I have made, including yours. I hope this
will not be damaged because of this obvious
misunderstanding.

Hope you are feeling a bit okay now. Please email
back.

Regards, R

Regular Coke

10 May 2008

I often wondered each time I go to the gym why the Coke fridge is the first thing one sees displayed in the reception lobby. More than Coke monopolizing the gym market, I now have another answer.

Last night had been especially difficult for sleeping. I did not have a half-second of unconsciousness at all. As I rode the taxi home last night I knew this was to be expected after a particularly devastating disappointment. I organized a farewell karaoke party for a friend who was ending a research study after several months in Bangkok. What was supposed to be a chance for me to get more ‘up close and personal’ with this guy whom I’ve been attracted to for some time now, turned out to be quite a shocking turn of events because the man actually brought along a girl who was obviously crazy about him and came dressed nicely as if to indulge his last moments in the city. I met the girl weeks earlier when the man had coerced me into going to Sunday mass with him where apparently she also goes for Church services. Needless to say she completely ignored me after the polite introductions were done.

The fact that my friends suspected he might be gay made me furious with myself for not letting go right away and so ended up being slapped in the face with this awkwardness. For me the thousand dollar questions remained unanswered for life: “is he truly gay trying to cover it up by bringing along a smitten friend, or is he someone on his way to saying goodbye to Bangkok in the classic macho fashion?” As usual I vowed not to let it affect me but ended up tossing and turning in bed, growing more furious as I battled to nod off till the early dawn.

Last night I casually snubbed a last minute invitation by this friend to continue the party in Khao San road by saying I had an early morning gym session. The sleeplessness therefore added to my tension because I knew I can’t be able to do a decent workout if I did not get any sleep. It wasn’t my first late night party with gym the next morning.

It took my trainor two seconds’ glance at my face to know I will die that morning. He quickly adjusted the exercises by not adding the usual heavy weights. In the midst of a particularly sweat-drenched running exercise I kind of spilled my night’s torture. This was after he began telling me how his day started with a feeling of wanting to kill someone. “Me too!” I exclaimed. One thing about my expensive young hot trainor is that he quickly and unmistakably recognizes attraction and destruction in women. “Is it work? That’s why you had no sleep?” was the initial polite inquiry that gave options of one, answering gracefully like Aubrey Hepburn or two, bawling like Kathy Bates. He was clearly prepared for both.

“It wasn’t work, it was some asshole”, and then the dramatic misstep that made me loose a little footing. Realizing I was genuinely weak and not just trying to get out of a difficult exercise, he let me stop and rest. He urged me to entertain myself, relax and not to bother with it anymore. Because not many men are comfortable advising women about men, I felt grateful for this show of concern about my emotional well-being. But this meant that the session must end if I am to make it through the rest of the day. As I was signing out he bought me my first regular Coke drink in over five years. He said it’s an emergency energy booster as I clearly needed more sugar than usual. “And next time don’t come to work-out if you’ve had no sleep” he advised. I thought he was quite sweet to get me that Coke to renew my flagging strength. I didn’t reply that for a really shitty emotional state, the exercise somewhat helped my body to release the happy hormones.

So before showering I popped that Coke as if to save my life. My fatigue got me quite concerned as even my appetite was not working despite the workout and the fact that it was nearing lunch time. And sure enough, like an athlete who starved his body of carbohydrates several days before competition, then takes it in full measure to maximize its effects, the sugar and caffeine kicked in like a new drug. Hell, I even bought new training shoes to complement the energy boost.

And so I learned an important tip for that day. If I haven’t learned anything else this would be good enough for now.

Surin Island Underwater Paradise

It takes a ten-hour bus ride to get to the Muslim-dominated province of Pha-nga. From here a large ferry takes one on a two-hour trip towards the island. Passengers are then transferred to smaller boats to reach the island itself, as big boats are not allowed near it lest they damage the corals. Koh Surin, a national park and sanctuary, sits south of the marine border of Thailand and Burma. Being on the Andaman sea it was one of the sites of the tragic tsunami that hit the country a few years back.

Additional trips to the Mogen sea gypsies community for selected toursists provide an opportunity to witness how the Thais have integrated them into society by giving them family names, a school, and some small business interaction with tourists. Several Mogen houses lined the beach if only to illustrate their way of life at sea. We were told the majority have moved inland since the tsunami.

The tour and dive guides are apparently all volunteers who were provided free food and transportation but without pay. I saw them picking up trash on the beach before everyone else awakes in the morning. They served food to the tourists. Many of them wore"Save Koh Surin" shirts that were not available in the souvenir shop. It makes perfect sense to have this kind of programme with travel agents, where young volunteers get to go along with tourists and educate them about the environment and life on the island while enjoying the trip at the same time. It's one of the more successful ecological tours I've known (the other one being the whaleshark diving trip in Donsol, Philippines) and I felt quite proud to take in more than the beautiful sights. I felt equally responsible for saving Koh Surin.

IF-- Cannes Palme D'Or 1969

IF Midnight Cowboy won the Best Picture of the Oscars in my birth year, IF, by Director Lindsay Anderson is celebrated as the winner of the Cannes’ Palme D’Or of that same year. The film stars Malcolm McDowell before his Clockwork Orange fame. BBC Scotland’s feature of the film quoted British officialdom’s disdain of the film as “vulgar”. Actually if we show this to teenagers of today I’m sure many would find the narrative slow, the acting stiff and the dialogues dry, owing to a generation of films that followed, about teenage decadence that made the theme passe. To imagine how it scandalized British society of that era, I just recall my days at an exclusive girls Catholic College run by nuns. It really does create rebels.

Reel.com reviewed it thus:
Shot both in color and black and white, If …. is naturalistic and fantastical, as well as horrifying and comic, as it expresses the trio's experience of this arbitrary world. While a strong thread of homoeroticism runs through the film as the whips obsess over pretty Bobby (Rupert Webster) (though it is Wallace who captures the boy's attention with a slyly seductive gymnastics routine), But the strongest thread is violence, the soul-crushing routine violence, the hazings, bullying, and punishments (Mick and his friends are whipped, not for anything they do, but for their attitude) that make up campus life and the surreal war games the cadet corps play. Under these conditions, it should come as no surprise when Mick begins behaving in the manner that he looks when the movie begins, as a fellow student puts it, like "Guy Fawkes back from the dead."

A parallel was made of this film and the riots of May 1968 in Paris while another recalled a more recent Columbine College shooting similarity in the United States.

For my own shallow observation, having learned only through American school standards and thus utterly ignorant of the British boarding school system, the film blasted me to only one familiar setting: Hogwarts! There was the so-called Headmaster; there was the Head of House; professors in long black gowns, and even the gothic school architecture. Then there were the three misfits with their nemesis teacher and schoolmates. I won't be surprised if J.K. Rowling said IF was one of the inspirations for her famous series.

Photo by http://www.reel.com/

My Mulberry (tea) Nights

UP Naming Mahal

2008 marks the centennial anniversary of the University of the Philippines. This was where it all began for me. This was where I turned into who I am. The site that determined the path of my life. For many UP students this is where their eyes were opened to many realities, and many never looked back.

One of the earliest education in the university is about the UP Oblation, the statue which symbolizes selfless dedication to the people, without need for anything else but the search for knowledge in order to "serve the people". More than fifteen years since I finished my university studies I still strive to remain faithful to the ideals of the Oblation. It remains as my guide and my beacon.

The UP Hymn is memorized by every "iskolar ng bayan" but the meaning is only taken to heart by a few. It is the song that binds me to the reasons I am here.

UP Naming Mahal

U.P. naming mahal, pamantasang hirang

Ang tinig namin, sana'y iyong dinggin

Malayong lupain, amin mang marating

Di rin magbabago ang damdamin

Di rin magbabago ang damdamin

Luntian at pula, sagisag magpakailanman

Ating ipagdiwang, bulwagan ng dangal

Humayo't itanghal, giting at tapang

Mabuhay ang pag-asa ng bayan

Mabuhay ang pag-asa ng bayan.

Incredible India

From the food, the saris, transportation, music, and shopping. Whether it was 40+ degrees or not, the people and the places felt very warm and exciting.

Incredible indeed!

Read the Book before watching the Film!

"I had a wife. Her name is Hailey. She's gone. And so am I."

I enjoyed reading this book: laughing at the life that the main character is forced to lead after such a horrible loss, identifying with some of the torturous emotions that tore the man to pieces, understanding the viscious need to be left alone and knowing the difficulties of "getting back out there".

It's an explanation of how men generally deal with misery. It's something I'm sure none of my male friends would have shared with me. So it's good to know how they feel and the tendencies they take when they are in this phase. It's a great eye opener about real men also needing to cry.

I recommend it to my dearest friends.