hemingway

What I've been doing, it seems, with blog theme after blog theme, and tweak after tweak, is skinning. The ads were the first to go. I'd like to re-read my blog, to remember my attempts at sustained moments of thought, remembrance, lucidity, or lack thereof. But page elements get in the way - the author profile right beside the first post, one column is to eager to list the post categories (as though a reader who just got here is going to pick from that), and the background is plain white - like tons of other blogs and sites out there. This is a reading blog - for crying out loud - the posts should be lined up like pictures on a menu, ready to entice.

The theme prior to this one was no less impressive - one column of off-white with grey and black serif fonts, of the faded typeset variety, - looking like a page from an old newspaper that got rain-soaked, forgotten, dried up in time, and rediscovered.

The theme, now, it's just white and grey on sheer black. Easy on the eye and no links list on a side column to subconsciously baggage you with. It's not polished, yet, as some pruning needs to be done. But I'm relieved with this. Like a gardener at the end of the day, finally having patted the earth, the seeds grounded firmly under.

The categories are way below, which you'll find after - not before - you've scanned the four entries on the parent page - this page. I clicked on fiction in English and spent hours getting back into the grove and the absurdity of my own writing. It's like finding an old shoebox and gasping at the old toys still tucked in, unfound until now.

But the shark tips got me chuckling. It's good to be back. This blog theme, by they way, is called Hemingway.

Omit needless words

I write for other people. That's how I get paid, and the more I do it, the more it leans on me - like clothes you wear that tandem well, but you begin to tire of - that my sentences, they're long enough to try your patience. Just like that: a mouthful. Each and every time. Someone needs to clip his thoughts. Or take a lot more time clipping his sentences.

One column to rule them all

Information Architecture, so the web wide world says, is the art of finding out what you want your site to do, and then keep doing that one thing and that one thing only.

Sheet of paper. One column. Prop your feet up. Sip that coffee. The world can fend for itself.

Cleaning the attic

One Anne Rice biographer said of Rice as being in constant pychological evolution. It was written years before Rice converted to Catholicism, and that biographer would not have raised an eyebrow when, in recent years, Rice excommunicated herself from the Vatican corporation. She's not a Catholic anymore, in the same way a self-disciplined driver discontinues her membership from a motorists organization, but still adheres to the principles of defensive driving, taking care of your car, preparing for long trips, and being socially respectful to everyone on the road.

Rice, for as long as I've silently worshipped her vampire-lore-reinvigoration novel, "The Interview with the Vampire," had always been an atheist. What am I driving at? Blogging is a box I've kept stale for years now, not knowing what new items to throw in. I'm going to take this slow, and sift through my blog items (posts) of way back up to the latest, to see how depressing my online writing evolution has become, acting as my own detached biographer.

Climb every mountain

I'm not Catholic, but it makes sense why the "Board of Directors" of that church would want to prevent the Philippine poor from having unrestricted access to pregnancy prevention programs. If, and these are "ifs," if the middle class, well-to-do, and educated Catholics tend to switch religions, or (practice their faith in private and) avoid giving abuloy to Catholic churches (or require their services - kasal, mass, blessing, etc.), then that's revenue loss right there. Bad for business.

Another "if" - if the consistent abuloy revenue comes from the poor (who multiply like rabbits because they're economically barred from access to contraceptives), then it makes sense to oppose moves (like the RH bill) that would stop the poor population from ballooning. As long as there are poor Catholics, the revenue continues.

Corporations, we have to remind ourselves of this, have to protect their mind share. Faith in business. Business in faith.

I will be hated for articulating the above, but it has to be said.

I'm home

There's something nice and warm about donuts hiding deep down in a crumpled paper bag of love. Shove them down a plastic sando bag that survives the whims of an indifferent rain, and they won't be the same. Paper means risk - you could put the bag down on a damp table and the contents might drop through the tear. (If you soak us do we not go limp?) Hence the love. My wife bought us donuts last night - only two - there's only two of us. And I brought home the crumpled paper bag - I must have done most of the crumpling - and fixed us coffee while I wondered if the donuts got bored on the taxi ride home at 5 in the morning. The sun had not risen and our other cat (we have two) hadn't come yet when we divided the first donut - more of a cupcake, really - between us. What is it about the sound of crumpling paper bags that allure me? A gift that takes time to open up. The sound of something coming out - a surprise. The possibility that the donuts smashed against each other, with only me to blame, on the way home. Coffee, donuts, all that crumpling, and the hmm of this goes so well with coffee. Makes me feel loved, hugs me in a way that makes me say.... (read the title.)

basics

"I never thought I'd be so happy as a cat."

- Mao, contract killer trapped in the body of a cat, to Hei, another contract killer, from Season 1 of "Darker Than Black."

undrying the spell

You can't deny there are dry spells, droughts in a writer's life. I'm countering that. Here's something I'm working on.


Tangerine

I had to clench my eyes shut, like a fist, out of annoyance, close it long enough to see small white dots, disbelieving the film rolling from my right, and spreading around. I had to have been in a film. Or a dream. Unless streets could empty out rush hour crowds and turn pavements and buildings orange in a blink. A deep orange. I managed a small squint, a peek. Still orange. Still an empty street. Horns blowing and people elbowing to get ahead of you, the scent of car-jeep-bus-and-truck exhausts, the scene of after-work exhaustion, all suddenly not here.

I have an eye problem. That's one hypothesis among many. That explains why all is orange. Or I'm in another locale, swiftly removed from Ayala avenue on a six pm of a Friday night, and shot here, where there are no people, and, pinching my self, jumping up and down, to work up a sweat, slapping my cheek and offering the other, I don't seem to be waking up. I don't do drugs, I don't remember being drugged, maybe I am drugged.

I am hallucinating. Wide-eyed wonder! A traffic cop is adjusting his trousers to the sway of his belly, from across this street, grunting. Finally I hear sounds other than my breath, grunts, and foot falls. He hands me a ticket.

"Why?" His moustache moves. I've been standing still too long, everyone else had moved on, he said.

"Where's everyone else?" I ask, loudly, but I don't get an echo.

That's just it, he says. They've all moved on. And I shouldn't be here.

"Where's here?"

Where do you think?

"You trying to be funny, sir?"

No, 'where' do you think? That's where you are. And it's not right to stay there. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to take you for processing.

I pull away and run.

tightening the tale

I have a week to soak in comments and firm up my short story, which I had expected the class to crease their foreheads about and accuse me: what the fuck is this? Somehow I pulled through. My head-game scare story scared them.

I'd love to get slapped with a shining grade in this PhD subject.

Here's how it starts out. Bright and sunny. Such a nice day. But there's a doppelganger in the house.

When Did I lose the Knife?

by Irwin Allen B. Rivera

I CAN TELL, WITHOUT opening my eyes, that chirping birds mean half past nine in the morning. Into my comforter I cocoon myself some more, into the small sea of softness and the scent of fabric conditioner. I want to drift off till noon, when the birds are gone and all that pervades me is the empty house, still as a pond in a retirement home, and just as quiet. It's the Christmas break anyway, and with December this cold, I find no motive to swim out of bed, and fall, voluntarily, on the wooden floor, with a thud that would send Jeff, my housemate, mumbling about me over breakfast in three words: oversleeping lazy bastard.

But the birds won't go away, and Jeff isn't here to annoy me. Neither is the reason why the birds, on a December morning with nothing, supposedly, to do, irk me. Inside my cocoon I cover my ears, willing the birds to vanish by reason of my not hearing them. 'Bullshit,' I hear Jeff say in my head, with the same venom he reserves for when I sometimes think out loud. Maybe he's right. I bolt up, suddenly, still hugging a bundle of my foamy blanket. The world, despite what my professor says, is still there, here, even when I don't want to hear it.

The same premise holds for small square yellow post-its on a tact-board above my study table, a sock-throw from my bed. Four large strikingly yellow ones scream in red ink: Paper on Personal identity for Professor Perez due in two days. 'Fuck it,' Jeff says again in my head. 'Just get it over with.'

I don't want to hear it, Jeff. Get out of my head. Take the world with you.

JEFF DID LEAVE, YESTERDAY. But I go through the motions anyway. I crawl to the other side of the bed, away from the morning light, closer to the small clock under the lampshade, fail to reach it, and fall on the floor with a thud, still cocooned in the comforter. Verified: it's only 9:35 am. Jeff would be done showering by now. The shuffling I would hear downstairs would be him in the kitchen. And if I open the bedroom door a crack, I'd hear the whish of something being fried, the scent of brewed coffee, and the complaint of some guy about me using his shampoo again. Some kids were raised well.

Except that when I thud on the floor, there is a humming nothingness in the house. And I suddenly find the chirping of the birds eerie. Slowly, I peel off the comforter, bundle it up and throw it on the bed. I open the bedroom door a crack and hear a squeak that must have been always there, unnoticed, by me. No shuffling and no scents of morning breakfast joy.

In my shorts, I descend the stairs a deserted man. Mrs. Adoring's pots hang unmoving in the kitchen. The stove is as clean as Jeff left it. I smell Domex on the kitchen tiles. And, inspecting the shower room, I can't find Jeff's shampoo.

But I still have that paper to write.

the sudden clue sleeps

Ma'am Jing threw me a clue in class. I caught it in midair, like an afterthought. I shot my mind's hand up, absentmindedly, and cupped it. It's like when you're pushing your grocery cart down the isle, mentally squinting (what is it again that I need?) and you notice you've been holding something you picked up from the other isle: ahh! this is it! A clue. I hate my own writing, the clue said, because I listen for flight. For lyricism. Something I only mold in moments of downward plight. Or fleeting out-the-window gazes. Not a mood in the everyday. But if I hummed a metaphor and a rhythm for every articulation, I'm thinking I'd trip. Getting up, dusting my knees, I'd mumble and go for blunt and pedestrian. Like pulling out a branch from the mud, because I could shoo a stray dog away with it, just as I could with a sleek 9 iron golf club. The shame of the mundane! (When I read recent journals I etched in fatigue, I squirm at how wayward and pointless they sound.) 

To talk always in poetry. How else must I talk to myself so I'd listen? (Note to self: you're not even a poet.)

-----

A classmate, naturally I didn't ask for his name, because I thought I knew, and the way we talked, it's as if he knew that I knew, anyway, I've dropped hints in our talk that I'd show him my on going sudden novel. Sudden novel. I'm still reveling in the sound of that. Sudden. Novel. That's not a short story. It's got chapters. Maybe even an epilogue. A sequence of parts that long is not ordinarily sudden. It is not. But it is. Each chapter, composed of smaller scenes (episodes), are written like sudden fiction. Smallish, self-aware of a time limit, and they end in the moment following the moment they started. Put them all together and loop some scenes and symbols, and that's a sudden novel. But will it work? I'd have to put the chapters side by side and let another pair of ears listen to the short burst, for his mouth to sip the teaspoons of scenes. Since I'm inflicting this on him, I should know his name. 

-----

Turns out one of the short stories Ma'am Jing assigned is a chapter of a novel. Sly devil old woman. Fooled me into thinking we were into short short fiction (the other name of sudden fiction), not that I complained. If a chapter is that full and yet so short, how would the entire novel taste like? Anyway, what's important is that I skittered into class unprepared to talk about my assigned story. I could talk, yes, but it would have no shape. A chaos of rambles. Good thing she upped her chin in someone else's direction. The guillotine fell not on me. So I'm uploading my more refined, thought about, talk, to our eGroup, over the Christmas vacation. 

-----

One of the stories assigned is written like prose poetry. How can people write like that? (Translation: what the fuck? this is so great! i can't write like that even if i trained for a lifetime.) 

-----

One should stock up on sleep before running off, blinking silly, out of the house after a sudden toothbrush, so early in the morning. I had to catch the train to class two cities away. That's probably why I couldn't think straight about the story assigned to me. I had only read it twice, with no notes etched down. Just some confident private mumbles. But at the time those mumbles, my mumbles, about the story, seemed brilliant. Therefore I was brilliant. Sadly, no greatness survives when you articulate those mumbles. I hereby promise to sleep the night before. 

when the fog clears

I'm not even sure I want a cake. But my wife insists, and I think she's right (I'd probably want something to see that sets the theme), so I'm hovering over images of nothing but chocolate in my head, and the memory of my not wanting something so sweet. Maybe something with some filling inside, something that, when I rub my eyes in the wee hours of dawn, when the refrigerator fog clears, pokes me awake (a discovery): hey there's a cake here--I'm digging in. Over and over. Because it's not so sweet. And there's some filling inside. The last thing you want is to keep seeing cake and keep being reminded there's cake and whose birthday cake is it again, and that oh, there's cake, you want some cake?

Ayokong maumay.

And please, no two candles stabbed into the cake spelling out my age. We almost always eventually have to pull them out of the cake. Because the cake won't fit in the ref with the candles jutting out. And we're sure we'd see the candles later, in the same drawer where we keep the kitchen stuff, like old knives, barbeque sticks, plastic forks and spoons, electrical tape, and an unused can opener. Someone but someone on someday will slide open that drawer and see a 3 and 2 with wicks burned long ago and holler, huy, birthday ni Yayen, eto o, look: proof.

But that's in the foreseeable future, far and away from here, which is now, and now is the time for a cake. My cake. Darling, you buy. You choose. You know me better than any other psycho with thinning hair.

I'm gonna go grab the cat and hose him in the bathroom. It's my birthday after all.

almost a week

The thing about completely freelancing at home? Even after you've marked your work hours, your mind is never really away from it. I'm ronin. Again. But I don't even see it as work anymore. It's been six days since I quit my affiliate marketing manager post in Makati. Never felt better. Wish I quit earlier.

I'm just resting a bit before I go back to cleaning manuscripts to submit to clients whose names I can't be sure are even real. But they do pay. And they're polite in their emails. And they like my writing. if only I had the patience to copyedit for them for long hours. I don't have a proofreader's eyes. But I am retraining myself. I get paid extra for that. I just don't want to edit my own blog entries. That would be depressing.

Been cleaning up wedding jewellery articles for some British websites since this morning. This one article I migrained through, its title had nothing to do with the first paragraph, and the rest of the article had nothing to do with anything else preceding it. Wow.

This is who I am now.

a long overdue requiem

My art historian former boss, the eternal-bachelor graphic artist, my funny-chubby managing editor, and even the short and nimble utility guy--the people in my previous writing life--showed off, to me and Anne, their posh new office, and that they could elbow me some room in it ("We could compress and give you space right here," said Denes the graphic guy, pointing over Yam the fun-chub managing ed, showing that the continuous desk held only three people, but could in fact take in four; and one could probably squeeze in between Denes' iMac and Yam's PC: good luck to me, Yam isn't exactly small). Anne and I were visiting.

My former boss, the director of now three culture-and-media-related offices in my acacia-tree populated Diliman alma mater (he used to command just one) was blunt as usual: "So, are you coming back?" I buried my "No" in an awkward laugh.

Anne had to get used, again, to the open-air and thick and fresh air of the campus. Makati fed us only thin air. We moved out of our apartment near UP last December, bringing our cat, taking with me few memories of a savored writing life I can't reclaim. I'm different now. But no one among the smiling faces in the new cozy office can tell.

It's like coming home for the holidays. You see your old room, smell the scents of childhood, touch the old trees, listen to the old people, taste Grandma's cooking, and be reminded of the singular fact that you don't live there anymore.

You watch the old Saturday morning cartoons and catch yourself silly, still enjoying them / and you catch yourself silly, amused that you enjoy them when they're rather lame. You're divided. It's like your holding the hand of a four-year old watching a TV show outside a store's display window. The little kid tugs at you, this won't take long, can we stay a bit longer? The taller you gives in, all right, just a bit, but we have to go later, I have important stuff to do. And you do.

I quit my alma mater's PR office almost two years ago, and I've been churning out copy under unrecommended writing conditions: under an old aircon that could have thudded on my head anytime (during nightshift in anonymous Ortigas building), during daytime in our previous apartment, where neighboring kids yelled at their mothers for yelling at them first, and now, as a species-of-marketing manager where I'm more of a spammer than writer. A pen for hire has seen better times.

One must makes the monies. One yearns to write again. One wants to look out the window and sigh. The kid tugs at you again, and you have to tell him, breaking his heart, but knowing that he'll live through this, because you did...

You can never come home again.

pam got the cat's tongue

The cat is noisy. Pam talks to the cat. 

Pam: "Gusto mo ng pansin?"

Cat: "Meow."

Pam: "Ano tingin mo sa 'kin, kuhanan ng pagkain?"

Cat: "Meow."

Pam: "Maganda 'ko di ba?"

Silence. 

if you can write, then you can earn on the side

Can you discuss your points on paper, research its background, its pros and cons, and then credibly advise answers? If you can, we have a writing gig for you.

We're a team of writers taking on SEO writing jobs. SEO is search engine optimization; it's a process that lets Google and Yahoo find websites easier, through the use of keywords. SEO writing, which is what we do, involves generating short, readable, researched, no-fluff essays--stuffed with keywords--for an online audience.

There is no byline. Can you handle that?

We write on just about anything--from solar power and sleep, to hormones and home decor, to web design and whale watching, to depression and dog potty training, to infidelity and investment marketing. As for research, the World Wide Web is our oyster.

Can you avoid fluff and juvenile blog phrases and buzz words?

We write only content relevant to the assigned topic and keywords. We can't be doing that if we're busy writing about ourselves and our angst and that there's so much life ahead of us. Oh please.

Can you steer clear of self-indulgent blogwriting?

Online reading is slower than reading on print. Also, our eyes tend to scan and jump from tempting phrase to annoying banner ad to intriguing picture. So we keep our readers interested using only what's available to us: words. We pace the content, we don't waste words, we don't mislead.

Can you sustain reader's interest, from the title to the first paragraph to the last word?

If your idea of essay writing is stiff and ponderous academic prose, or the opinionated angry newspaper column, you'll be wanting to change your ways. We can't even begin to think about starting to care about you and your navel. We do care about your writing skill, though. Enough to pay for it.

Can you rise above the juvenile need to copy online content?

Plagiarized content will not be paid for. If your articles snag a plagiarism hit on online plagiarism checkers, then you need to rewrite them. The longer this plagiarism reduction takes, the longer it takes for you get paid. Speaking of getting paid....

P80 per 400-550 word articles. P100 for 700-word articles. Writing tips will be provided when you pass the SEO test. Payment is via BPI, BDO and Pay Pal only.

Can you do this?

If you think you can, please email work.at.home.writing@gmail.com with the subject line: "Please send me the SEO test."

If you think you can't, that's ok. You're bound to have a friend who's both articulate in English, and who can sustain her thoughts on paper. Please pass this on to her.

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If you have time to surf, write testimonials, and blog about your day, then you have time to earn on the side.
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Yours truly,

Work@Home Team
work.at.home.writing@gmail.com

Iron Man

It was a relief, finally, to watch a hero-origin movie whose actors, and the script they danced to, allowed you to forget the film's preposterous plot: a weapons-making billionaire builds a suit of armor and redeems himself through it. But with a solid cast and clever dialogue, and an action scene that relied (thank God) on Robert Downey Jr. fighting partially armored, and fumbling, we have a movie that trumps the origin stories of other hero movies (so far).

Though a Batman fan, I have gotten tired of the overly serious trauma-as-vigilante-catalyst angle. People get bullet-holed in front of their kids, we know that, we see it on YouTube, read about it in the papers. Statistically, at least one of those parentless kids is bound to be both smart and an heir. I'm just not so sure if he'd turn out to be dark as the Bat.

Similarly, I doubt if billionaire scientists will build weapons to suit themselves with, but "Iron Man" takes this premise without taking it too seriously, and that's the pure joy you get from watching Iron Man: you are never truly asked to push your threshold for disbelief. What is so morality-heavy about flying around with super weapons? 40-something Stark did. Stark's desire to redeem himself was really something thrown in for convenience, something you could forgive. Like trauma. He'll get over it. And that's ok, Tony is Tony.

Meanwhile you watch him fly and fumble and finally realize he actually likes his secretary.

(By the way, if you've seen the film, did you notice that there was always dialogue happening even in the midst of so much fighting? That's the beauty of the film. The CG was there for the polish, not as the backbone.)

Cheers.

you can't drag it with you all your life

I used to have a room made for daydreaming. Mornings were a golden brown glow, six a.m. light dampened by thin bamboo drapes over windows. Windows left half-open, and through them cold air filled in, like a slow fog, nowhere to go, and so it stood still. I would pull my blanket up, covering me whole, through those cool golden mornings, cocooning myself deep in white, white laundered so many times Mother said she'd have to cut them in large squares, fold them into rags, and what good rags they'd be, she said. I said no.

It had, that blanket, so common a design you could walk into any public market, grab a blanket from any stall that sold them, choose the white with wide-apart blue stripes, and flowers here and there, and you'd have my blanket.

But not that blanket. That one, remembered too much. It knew of a time when windows where half-open, and one could cocoon oneself in one's dreams. All morning.

With no one saying no.

Long, even beats

I'm exhaling loudly through my nose again. Slow, even long breaths, filling my lungs with air and helping not in the least. I'm that pissed. I'm trying, like I promised my therapist, to be aware of how I appear to other people. My dropped down shoulders rising to every inhale, my feet planted firmly and wide apart, my hands wanting to claw at something, my eyes in slits.

I blink and imagine wide open fields, like my therapist said, sunny all around, not a soul in sight. But the image in my head is a Gilbert from accounting choking into purple, the twin thumbs of mine digging into his adam's apple. But that's self-indulgent. I blink again and shake the scene out of my head.

Mark from marketing walks past me and I smile. He throws me a nod. I give back a shrug and that's the end of that. Socializing without words in corridors. Mark was probably sent to check up on me, how many veins on my skin-head skull is popping; he waits crack, as he administratively holds my section's new budget proposal hostage.

I've decided it's two-for-one month. Mark is joining Gilbert at the back of an anonymous van. The one I haven't used in a year. Because I thought this year would be a good one.

I exhale, relieved this time, the kind of exhale an pest exterminator gives out after examinining a house falling to termites. It'll take a lot of work but it can be done. It will, be done.

I walk to the end of the corridor smiling. Mike sees me again and his foreheard wrinkles up in a question. I throw him a nod and a smile. He's getting what's coming.

And oh am I coming. Am I coming.

disquiet

He sits in front of me, from across the table, like a wax statue: his back straight, unmoving; his gnarled hands cupped over a walking stick pointed at the wooden floor. His eyes straight into mine. He doesn't need rigor mortis to lock his limbs in that pose. His pride will do him in, and as the first-born, I should inherit everything (but he has to die first).

But as the only de la Casta to be cut off (cast off?), I'd get nothing from the old man. Father closed his banks, shut down his factories, and shook other gnarled hands, for the last time, fifteen years ago. I was fifteen.

Business, I always thought, appeared in Alejandro's mind as a means to buy respect. To my two uncles, father's brothers, business legitimated loud nights drinking with the governors, the mayors, the head of police, and actors who brandish guns. Business was, to the other de la Castas, a given. A wallet to open up in public, to draw in envious eyes, to waste and wine.

So when Emerito and Pablo de la Casta stabbed their eldest brother, and left him for dead, mother's heart stopped, right here, on the spot Alejandro's walking stick points at. Like an epitaph.

Father stomps his stick once. It is enough. I raise my eyes, from the floor, to meet his. Is it settled, then? his eyes ask. Father is, always has been, too soft.

There is so much for which he should not forgive me. His brothers. My mother. And soon my own brothers.

Yet he is here. In the house he used to call his home, now my own.

I stare back a long time. Steel against unyielding wood. Steel doesn't blink, doesn't creak. Finally, Alejandro sighs, from across the table. He is amused that I am amused that he is amused.

The man who taught me to trust in others, but plan ahead anyway, leans on his walking stick, as he limps away. He knows that I know that I'd do it anyway. His coming here was his way of giving me a stiff hug. The kind gentlemen of old times gave their sons.

The door closes behind him and I am left alone in the house that raised me.