a walker in the city

When you silently curse your neighbors for the noise they make, normal innocent racket like screaming at a four year old for merely existing, or the full-blast noontime shows they watch, you wonder what you did right when tranquil mornings arrive. Like this one. I wave the bed covers aside and notice tranquility: beams of sunlight light the wooden floor with stripes, filtered by Venetian blinds. Not a child is screaming. Not a single radio in earshot. No television sets are blaring. What could I have done to deserve a moment like this one. I jump out of bed and switch on my PC. Whatever comes to mind, write whatever comes to mind. Lifelike and at the quick.

I am leaning on the ledge of my open window, on the second floor of this suddenly quiet apartment, seeing a portion of a neighbor's rooftop across me that's brown and grey with rust and age and neglect. One part is collecting water, the upturned sheet of galvanized iron and its through is a water pocket, a puddle of rainwater on the roof. I stick my head out further and look for tomcats prowling. I see one. Coming over here. Too far out to be in range of a pellet gun, even if I had one.

These tomcats are as big as my neighbor's little dachshund and they dent roofs when they land on them and they pull down my laundry and scare my domesticated cats into hiding in the closet. But it's too early in the morning to hate them, and I put away the thought of buying a long-ranged pellet gun with which to hurt those four-legged freeloaders. Delayed gratification.

I'm going to add new parts to my memoir, the one due in class in two or three weeks. I am thankful for mornings like this. The quiet ties together memories and thoughts and such, and make my writing easier.

Look, it's taking shape nicely:

"When Mother and I pushed the boxes deeper into the back of the truck, a neighbor asked if we were leaving that apartment, the one that looked down on the road, with its second floor roof as pointed and quiet and still as that of a church's. Mother said yes as I carried more boxes piled on the sidewalk into the lipat-bahay truck. Neighborly small talk was rare for us, and Mother wiped her hands on her shapeless flowery duster's sides and chatted, with a wrinkled old man with sideburns; a break from moving the contents of our lives into yet another anonymous vehicle. We were used to this. All this moving from home to home. Though none of them felt like home. But this house, I never wanted to leave this house, this two-floored oddly-placed dwelling on the elbow of nowhere."

I'm going downstairs to fix me some coffee, and then I'm going to continue writing, while the quiet lasts.

the last bite

Jeremy saw past the daze in her eyes and stared at her pale and seawater-wrinkled fingers. A day and a half on a sinking lifeboat with Martin and no signs of rescue. At least the night and its endless darkness was over. She hated the dark.

Wonder just where this lazy current is taking them. Her wristwatch said half past three in the afternoon. Nothing to do but endure the boredom and hold out an inverted mineral water bottle, with its bottom knifed out, to catch in raindrops. Seawater dehydrates you more. So she and Martin split the accumulated drinking water evenly, and took turns holding it up. Hunger, dehydration, exhaustion, hopelessness, a shark. Jeremy wondered which would kill her first.

Above them, they sky was cloudy-bright, the kind of sky she looks at from her hammock on her apartment's terrace. She misses home, and her long afternoon siestas. "Tell me again," she wanted to ask Martin, "how your boat leaked to death on the way back to the harbor?" But she didn't Martin felt bad enough as it is. His plan to seduce her on his boat didn't work. And now it's life and death. How romantic.

A shark, Jeremy whispered to her self, to rock her back into reality. A shark would kill them. At least, she wished a shark would come. It if didn't come, at least it's something to think about. Better than the endless nothing she is enduring. Better than the thought of Martin raping her on an already sinking lifeboat.

Soon, night would come. So many things could happen. A shark might attack. Or the lifeboat might give out. Or a shark might come while the boat is collapsing. Or a shark might come while Martin is trying to rape her while the boat is sinking. How convenient, Jeremy thought.

She remembered a paraphrase of Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Right, definitely, I'm sure, a shark would come.

Their lifeboat was a lung slowly deflating, a boat exhaling air; they took turns sticking their fingers into a hole on the boat's side; they kept checking themselves for open wounds that would lure in a shark.

They hardly talked. Martin said they should keep quiet, to conserve their strength, so they could scream and wave at a passing boat or airplane for however long it took to get noticed, to get rescued. But what if Martin got tired of conserving his strength, and wanted to spend it all on her?

The sound of motor in the sky. A plane. Martin screamed, forgot the hole and waved both arms. Jeremy blinked and joined the noise barrage. The hole hissed and hissed. The plane was gone. There was more water inside the lifeboat. The boat had gotten limp. The water bottle was nowhere in sight.

That's the second plane that missed them. Jeremy blinked at the coming darkness. So again, where is that shark, she asked herself.

Something in the water moved. Probably nothing. Probably the hunger and desperation setting in. A fin. Out of the water so suddenly. Twenty feet away. Coming to them, fast. Something surely is hungry. They are not the only desperate creatures at sea.

She pointed to the fin and Martin's voice was almost a silent screech, "We're dead." His throat must hurt from all that screaming.

"I'm not bleeding. Are you bleeding?"

"No," Martin said. "We have a flair gun, with one flair chambered."

"Save it. We can do this."

"Do what?"

"Sharks are sensitive not only to scent but to sound."

The fin swam closer. Fifteen feet.

"We yell it away? Are you nuts, Jeremy?"

"Do you trust me?"

"Just tell me what to do."

Ten feet away.

"Get you fingers out of the hole and pound the boat, open palm, and don't stop screaming."

"You're nuts, we'd hasten the deflation--"

Five feet.

"Do it!"

They do. They scream. The hole hisses air. The fin slows down.

"Don't stop, keep pounding, keep screaming, Martin!"

Martin barely blinked as he screamed. His throat was in pain. The shark turned to circle the lifeboat and Jeremy turned to face it, screaming and pounding. Their voice, in tandem, might just be enough.

The sun setting when the fin turned around and vanished in the silent waters. Jeremy plugged the hole with her fingers. But it was of no use. When the sun had set, more than half of the lifeboat was submerged. Both of them clung to the floating part, exhausted. Their throats hurt.

No sound rippled the sea. The blanket of darkness came. Jeremy hated the dark. No, she was afraid of it. Instead of her phobia killing her, there was another way. She bit her lip until it bled.

mission impossible 3

My friends and I have a joke about Tom Cruise's recent movie. We dub it Mission Impossible 3, subtitled "This time, it just can't be done." Then, we hum the movie theme happily (duhn duhn duhn duhn duhn, dah duuuuuuhn!) and we have a good laugh. The producers, director, and scriptwriters of this film. Who do they think they were kidding?

Impossible Missions Force (IMF) Agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has almost settled down to a life away from the dangers of his job. On the night of his engagement party, he is hauled back into active duty from semi-retirement (IMF agent training) when his former student (Keri Russell) is taken prisoner by a black marketer. Russell dies. Villain kidnaps Hunt's fiancé. He is forced to steal against his agency. The mole surfaces. Hunt kills everyone that matters. End of story.

Why Hunt would retire in the first place was never explained credibly in the film. When he teams up with Ving Raimes, with whom he worked in the first two M:I films, the wind blows through Hunt's hair and he is all smiles: he doesn't look like he has aged at all. A quiet life and that much self-assurance doesn't seem to match. Besides, do you remember a Tom Cruise film wherein Cruise, as the protagonist, actually faced a problem he seemed incapable of solving? Me neither. Cruise can't seem to accept that he can't act. Instead, parts are made for him.

So much for a credible conflict wherein Hunt will face and emerge hurt but triumphant. You sort of get the feeling that Hunt will come out of all this alive, good-looking, smiling, and with his woman. Oh my God, that's exactly how the film ends.

Far fetched scenarios, gadgetry every time, duhn duhn duhn score now and again, a bountiful of explosions, face masks and voice perfectly mimicked, well-coordinated team movements, a villain designed just bad enough but not character-deep so that Hunt remains on top of your waning attention span.

Pretty soon this will be in HBO. Not worth the ticket. If you notice that the pop corn tastes bad during the film, it's not the pop corn, or you, that's a little off. It's the film.

It's just, impossible. (Dah duuuuuuhn!)

x-men 3

Police officers in the lead car in a convoy of black vehicles see a cloaked figure down the road. The figure facing the convoy does not move. The convoy does not slow down. The old man in the middle of the road raises his hand, points it toward the first car. The car is lifted off the ground. The man clenches his raised open palm. The car is crushed. He flicks his upheld arm toward his right. The floating, crushed car is tossed aside like a broken toy. The second car is disposed of in the same manner. The 10-wheeler behind the two front cars, whose freight car contains prisoners, is now visible. The truck will run the lone figure over in seconds. He flicks his hand upward. The freight car is unhinged from the truck. It will skid on the asphalt road until its momentum runs out. The truck surges ahead. The old man raises his other hand and the truck somersaults toward and above him, as though it tripped on an unseen obstacle. It crashes behind him. There are no survivors. The car behind the convoy and its occupants are crushed just as easily. Magneto, now joined by his henchmen, walks toward the back of the truck where locks and hinges burst away from the thick metal door. At the far end of the truck, Mystique, the Master of Magnetism's right hand, stands waiting, now liberated from her captors.

I would not have been able to describe the above scene as tightly if director Brett Ratner had not assembled the entire film as seamlessly, something I did not expect. The previous film (Xmen 2) had one too many mutants. You can't develop character when almost every mutant is allotted some airtime. The first film seemed too focused on Logan (Wolverine), who Xavier had to tame and who Scott Summers (Cyclops) had to keep away from his willing-to-flirt girlfriend Jean Grey.

To me, the first two films felt obligatory, with characters introduced, even if they had little to do with the story's narrative, and scenes where mutants demonstrated their powers were inserted throughout the films. The action felt stale. You are just glad the film is over.

Understandably, the stage simply had to be set so Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Eric (Magneto) could trade dramatically delivered dialogue, with Xavier espousing the Uncle Ben principle ("With great powers come great responsibility") and Eric paraphrasing Nietzsche's Superman principle (it is a disservice to themselves for Homo Sapiens Superior to curb their powers according to the dictates of mediocre human leaders).

Xmen 3 has no such obligatory feel. With the primary Xavier-Eric conflict and hate/fear toward mutants already established, the third instalment to the mutant franchise explores two interwoven plots. The first is Xavier's delicate gamble: under his care all along was a class 5 mutant more powerful than Magneto and himself--Jean Grey (What if she goes wild?). The second concerns the consequences when a "cure" is mandated by the US Government to be injected on all mutants. The cure claims to lay permanently dormant the genes responsible for mutants' powers and appearances (Would all mutants want a normal life?).

Director Brett Ratner made me forget I had a tumbler-full of cheesed popcorn, until the movie's end credits rolled up the screen.

In a flashback ten years from the film's present, Xavier and Eric, then friends, is talking a young Jean Grey into studying at Xavier's school.

"Oh, Charles, I like this one," Eric said as both men and Jean sat in the Grey family's living room; jut outside the window, several feet from the ground were all the cars in eyesweep. Jean was showing off. "I doubt it," she arrogantly said when told she was not the only one with powers.

Flashforward. Jean's traumatic near-death experience in Xmen 2, when she sacrificed herself to save the Blackbird (the Xmen's plane), had broken the psychic restraints Xavier had used to shackle Jean's desire-filled other personality, Phoenix. Phoenix killed Scott, nearly seduced Logan, and with Magneto watching and unable to stop her, she lifted Xavier from his wheelchair and disintegrated him.

Thrilled with his potential new weapon, Magneto brings the wayward Jean to his secret camp, where she is wooed into coming with Magneto's recruited army of mutants to Alcatraz Island, where the facilities for producing the mutant cure was found, and to help destroy the forces that aim to make mutantdom as mediocre as everyone else.

I am relieved that this time, Jean's telekinesis (the ability to move objects with one's mind) has been promoted--from being merely able to lift and shove people and objects aside, to dismantling and shredding and disintegrating matter (and people), and lifting the silvery ashes upward, in a grand demonstration of conceit and power.

And then there is Sir Ian McKellen's incarnation of Magneto, who majestically wields his powers and elegantly dodges Xavier's rhetoric on the need for all mutants to be good. I have a soft spot for villains whose words sting and linger and wound, and whose mere intent can kill a multitude.

I will not mind a fourth instalment.

quarantine

Nothing like cold air pulled in by hard rain to shake my fever-induced headache away. Pulled in. I am inhaling it, with my head half in and half outside the bedroom window. Rain sounds different when they fall on galvanized iron roofs, than when they fall on empty concrete streets. And from the open window, I only see rooftops and hear the tin-can thumping of rain and the now and again distant rumbling of thunder. I thought maybe with all this atmosphere I keep writing about, I am better of as a poet, and not as the freelancer I am now. Deadlines almost always erupt in me as fever. And I have to open the window myself, just so I can breathe.

flight of stares

At some point, staring at the wet laundry on the clothesline swing from side to side brings me to a boat scene, some twenty-five years ago, when seawater, instead of a midmorning wind, lulled me into catatonia.

To a four-year old, getting lost on a long stretch of shore, with same-looking cottages everywhere, is a twilight zone. When you are dwarfed by your relatives, they being thrice your height, a foreigner trying to help, he four times your size, is a behemoth bending down to devour you. The harsh German accent on his English was probably a clue. Where are my parents? he asked. Tired of crying and walking, I turned and walked away, pretending to be more annoyed than scared. He and I were after the same thing after all: my parents. He asked me to come back, as others did, Bicolano accent in their Tagalog, and I ignored them all. At some point, the shore would end. I would find my parents. My parents would find me. Or hunger would deprive me of power, just as my toy robots stop marching when the batteries run out. But I had no expectations. I kept walking.

I remember riding a small fishing boat, one with frames of bamboo for balance, on both sides; the hum of its motor a distant drone, the voices of an uncle and the boat owner behind me. I squinted at the lazy sun muffled behind a carpet of cottony clouds, and I kept to myself. Maybe it was my reward for wandering back to my family's cottage, after nearly three hours of walking.

The motor is turned off. We began to drift. The sea, when you're so far away from shore, is not as postcard-still as it looks from the cottage. It tilts, like a slow prelude to a tidal wave that never really comes. And our boat is gently shoved and rocked and left alone. Thin beams of sunlight escaped the clouds and struck the sea, like a xylophone, and tiny mirrors bounce off the water like music, and like music they fade, as sunlight is curtained once more by cumulonimbus clouds. I should get lost more often, if this much quiet is the prize.

Now, twenty-five years later, I stare at wet clothes. The Encyclopaedia Britannica on my PC spreads out the entry I am looking for: "Catatonia." To a near-thirty wanderer, there comes a point when the wandering has to stop, something should dampen this imaginative wanderlust. I think it was Socrates who said that to be free of attachments is to see Beauty pure and immortal. If only Beauty could pay my immortal bills, to which I am always attached.

I close the window, silencing the scene of clothes and boat rides, and continue reading. One day I will find a cure for my catatonia, and on that day I will cease to be myself; I will be completely practical, consistently cheerful, with all my anti-social genes replaced by happier ones.

the promise of rain

The brown-rusted patches of a distant rooftop is getting unevenly brown, just as I sit on a window ledge, rubbing my afternoon sleepy eyes. The gray areas are getting grayer. Then, I hear confirmation: a faint tin can thumping. It's beginning to rain.

I am waiting for the thumping to get louder, and to spread to nearby rooftops, but with the storm having already passed, the wind that shook the acacia and guava trees free of dead leaves has become a weak but cold gale. I miss the storm, and the gray-dark horizon and sluggishness it brings.

Beside me is one of those windows of old childhood. Old wooden frame with small glass panes framed inside, with the whole thing swinging side to side, routinely shoved by the wind, and hanging on old and squeaky hinges. A stagnant Sunday afternoon. The remnant of a storm.

I have to hold out my hand, to stop the window from swinging at me, as a cold moist wind shoves it. The gray rooftop farther away has stopped darkening. Raindrops have stopped coming down. I feel betrayed.

I stare out, past the rooftops, into the grayish horizon, willing darkness to come, holding the wind and sky to a promise of rain.

according to color

A bulge rises from the sheets of paper on the floor. The first time it happened, I nearly squashed it. I thought maybe it was a mouse (but then I have nine cats, which cannot co-exist with mice). Now, the sight of a bulge suddenly moving is, well, normal. This one moves in sudden spurts, then wiggles itself free from the pile of papers I've been sorting through all day. A whiskered kitten emerges from the rubble. Blinking, it meows at me, probably wondering why I had again forgotten that I had thrown the previous semester's worth of scratch papers on the floor, disregarding the sleeping cats, which were on the floor first. But this afternoon only one cat had slept upstairs, in the bedroom, where I am compiling my portfolio of previously written and previously published works. Switching jobs means bonding with a domestic side of you you had forgotten you had before: your unemployed housecleaning side.

The kitten walks on the pile of papers on my left, leans on it, and the pile tumbles down. My other cats climb up the stairs and enter the room to see what the racket is all about. Now, there are six cats whose paws are trampling on my stuff on the floor. I grab one and put her on my right. I grab another, and another, and sort them according to fur color.

This could take a while. Unlike the sheets of papers, cats stand up and move about after I sort them.

a biography of whiskers

he surest sign that the bedroom is a mess is a fluffy balled up cat sleeping on all those sheets of papers on the floor. There. He shivered in his sleep. Maybe he's fighting off a tomcat in his dream. One paw is covering his eyes, like a drunkard with a hangover denying the morning after. How am I going to clean this up if I keep staring at him? There! He shifted, exposing his fluffy belly. As I scratch it his whiskers twitch, and then he stretches to his full length, kicking away the previous semester's stacks of photocopies. I used to spend nights writing with only him, Bolabola, sleeping on my books, for company. Now, new cats add to the roster. Behind me, snug-comfy on the beanbag that Bolabola used to completely own, are two more cats, not really cats, just a bit older than kittens: Bangus and Lasing, two new whiskers who sleep in the room at night, on mornings, at noon.

I'm going to have to ask the two beanbag cats to leave me the room, nicely, so I can start cleaning up. But how to convince them to do that when their elder brother is stretching in the center of the room, and I am tolerating it?

kryptonite

Mosquitoes buzzing in my ear more so that usual: I think it's going to rain. At 4 am I am making a bet with myself that, with the summer dawn this humid, I'm better off going downstairs, making coffee, and pretending it's almost morning. I get up from bed and walk slowly, barefoot; if I take big steps, I might step on a kitten. Anne and I have three. I look at the open window behind me, awaiting a slight cool breeze that never comes, and see silhouettes of the six other cats we own, all sleeping on the cool roof, just barely lit by lampposts farther afield. The cats know the cool spots. Right now, this room is not one of them.

If I tell you that work has seeped into me, draining me of life, that I constantly failed to be alive when it was time to blog, that wouldn't be completely true. The neighborhood my house is nestled in has gotten noisier. Prep school age kids scream at every opportunity. Their parent, singular, screams at them and leave them crying whenever possible. The house just slightly around the corner gets band-practiced every other afternoon. The same song. They never get better.

Where have those long quiet nights gone off to?

I used to have Saturday mornings when bird chirps chirped me awake, as I waited for my wife to come home. She works nightshifts. I write during the red eye moments of the day, when everyone is dead asleep. I still try to. But with my moods drained by coping with the noise, I always end up making hand seals, cursing the neighbors and wishing my hexes actually worked, instead of just my middle finger sticking out toward the direction of pointless racket.

Sometimes I wish I had lived in a dead town. I may still do. So many people to kill, just to get some quiet.

how to survive a shark attack, tip #6

Divers, boating accident survivors, and surfers call it a given to find themselves being encircled by a shark. However, they call it the height of misfortune to be encircled by two sharks.

This time you have a harpoon, and only one shot. There are two sharks. Here is how you can make that one shot count.

Make sure both sharks are swimming toward you and that they are near each other. Aim for the nose of one shark. Watch the harpooned shark squirm and writhe and bleed.

Sharks include in their diet seals, dolphins, and other sharks. The unhurt shark might feed on the wounded and forget about you, leaving you free to swim away.

The prudent shark will try to secure immediate gain: it will feed on its dead companion. The more selfish shark will try to maximize overall gain: you first, then the dead shark.

Keep aiming that empty harpoon at the shark, fully knowing you are now up against a selfish gambler.

You now only have one chance to survive: steel yourself, act cocky, extend you aura of unwavering confidence until the shark feels it and decides to be prudent.

But remember, the prudent shark will try to secure immediate gain. Since you are nearer to it than the dead shark it neglected, you ARE the immediate gain.

how to survive a shark attack, tip #5

Accounts from commercial divers point out that sharks are aware of eye contact. This explains why sharks tend to attack more from the blindside, when the victim has little chance to react defensively, than from upfront.

Divers expecting sharks are often carrying a rod or a harpoon. You have neither. But you can fool that shark into thinking you are carrying either.

Here is what you do. Make sure you are facing that shark. Stretch your right arm out and point it toward the shark. Hold your right forearm with you left hand, making sure the shark sees your left arm bent at the elbow. Point all your right hand's fingers at the shark, so that your hand's pointed tip mimics the shape of a harpoon ready to be launched.

As the shark continues to encircle you, make sure you continue to face it. If it changes direction, continue to “aim” your “harpoon” at it.

Three possibilities now emerge.

First, the shark, familiar with divers and their rods and harpoons, will flee. Second, the shark, unfamiliar with divers and their weapons, will continue to encircle you until it loses interest. Third, the shark, unfamiliar with divers and their weapons, will interpret your posture as prelude to a preemptive strike, and will lunge at you mercilessly.

Do not wish for the third possibility.

how to survive a shark attack, tip #4

Most sharks that attack people are of the "bite-and-run" type; preferring to swim close to their target, bite, and then swim away. The logic behind this is that most sharks avoid the desperate retaliation of a wounded animal. Seals bitten by sharks have been recorded to bite back.

Most bite-and-run types are smaller than the Great White Shark, whose one bite could kill you, given its massive jaws and the size of its serrated teeth. The Great White has been recorded to reach lengths of about 20 feet, which, along with its massive bulk, is like a small pointed gray submarine that bites.

Look closely at that shark that is encircling you.

Is Great?

Is it White?

Stay calm and be eaten slowly. Panic and be eaten quickly.

You decide.

the last bout

Brandon Kowalski slowly pulled the white blanket toward himself, revealing his feet. He pulled some more and saw his bandaged right leg. Stitches lay underneath, he knew. He winced as he expected pain to shoot from the right side of his torso, where a thick pad kept in place by bandages covered more stitches. But there was no pain. His wince uncurled his 33-year-old angular face into wide-eyed wonder. "Morphine," he whispered in his mind.

He remembers punching sand-paperish skin while some 80 yards from the shore. "It" pulled away, leaving bleeding holes on his right leg. Brandon tried to hold on to his surfboard, which was now broken in two. The first bite had punctured his lungs with its upper jaw's teeth, the lower jaw's force cushioned by the surfboard. Brandon barely had time to curse. Wincing in pain, with internal bleeding setting in, he scissored his legs to keep afloat, and to look around: where is it? where is it now?

It came from his left side, his blindside, biting into his left arm. The waves separated surfer from surfboard as the six-footer repeatedly punched the twelve-foot shark's nose. It pulled away again. Adrenaline had dampened the wound-pains. He was trying again to scissor, to prepare for round four, but he had lost too much blood. The green-glistening water around him was now a murky crimson.

The humming of motor boats was getting near. With his head above-water, Brandon passed out. He did not see the shark fin rise some ten feet behind him. He did not hear the whish of the harpoon from the fishing boat that came to his rescue. He was unconscious as strong-armed fishermen, pulling him aboard, grunted under the strain of his dead weight. His bleeding bulk was on deck when the fishermen hauled onto the boat the other bleeding bulk from the sea.

Now, pain-numbed but awake, Brandon touched his left arm, where he had no feeling, and which he could not move. A knock on the door. His manager, Phil, took off his hat and stepped inside Room 312. Brandon closed his eyes and suddenly felt thirsty.

"From the fans," Phil said, gesturing to the flowers inside the room that Brandon had just noticed. Phil's alcoholic 58 year-old face wore the color of a dead man who rose from the morgue because he had a bet going down, and he wanted to know if he had won.

Phil walked to the table beside the bed. He picked up a ball of wet cotton and touched the bandaged man's lips with it. Due to massive blood loss and internal wounds, Brandon was still not allowed to drink large amounts of water. So he sucked on cotton.

Brandon's manager put the cotton on the tray and wiped his hands on his crumpled coat. His lips and lungs ached for a cigarette.

"How bad is it?" Brandon whispered.

"Your days in the ring," Phil said while cupping his pockets for his second pack, "are over."

how to survive a shark attack, tip #3

Jaws" and succeeding shark movies have always depicted the Great White Shark as behaving like a bully, showing its fin above-water for panic effect, biting a victim and dragging him away while he screams and waves to his friends, and ramming small boats until they capsize.

This "bully" behavior is based on isolated accounts. Great White Sharks have been known to be playfully malicious with their prey, but they munch them slowly, and they tend to encircle their victims a lot, unlike their adrenaline-filled counterparts in the movies. Therein lies your chance to escape. There is a self-defense tip wherein you use your fingers on the attacker's eyes. It works against sharks, too. So, when a Great White lunges at your torso, take big gulps of air before you are forcibly submerged. The pain will be excruciating, as your hips and ribs are crushed. Persevere, squint underwater, find one of the shark's eyes. Now, make a fist, but stick out your thumb. Thumb that angry fish's eye repeatedly, with all your strength. The shark will either be annoyed and spit you out, bloodied and mangled and all, or it will hasten the crushing motion of its jaws.

Two possibilities now emerge. If you've been spat out, the shark will either be annoyed and will come at you again, this time making sure to chew its food well and quick, or it will be seriously hurt and will swim away. If you have some, long nails really help.

If the shark spat you out and then swam away, leaving you bleeding, you may still be able to swim to the surface and wave for help, thus increasing your chances of survival. However, pray that help comes quickly, for that blood trail you left will attract other sharks. And you will not survive a feeding frenzy, long nails or no.

However, if the shark spat you out and intends to come at you again, this is what will happen. You either have a moment before you are mangled for the last time, or the shark will swim around you, like a villain who has underestimated his prey and intends to take no more chances.

In the latter case, remember to look brave, until you black out--either due to your spine being crushed, or due to lack of oxygen. Go back to that fist with your thumb sticking out. This time, pull back your thumb and stick out your middle finger. Watch the shark coming at you. Face it. Show it that finger.

Watch the shark hesitate for a moment. You have gained its respect.

comforting prose

When my head's not swirling due to deadlines and the slight fever they trigger, Kerima Polotan keeps me company:

"Sunday comes like a benediction. All week long, life is a rush and a nightmare; you kill yourself trying to beat the alarm clock, to make the deadline, to get to the corner before the traffic jam; or, if you don't have to go anywhere, you hurry everyone out of the house; children to school, husband to work, maid to market, only to prepare for that mad hour when they come rushing back home so you can stuff them with supper and put them to sleep to renew strength for that sprint our of the house the following day. But Sunday lifts the pressure suddenly and one of its little luxuries is to let the alarm clock ring and ring and ring while you turn around and burrow into your pillow for some more sleep."

Kerima Polotan, "The Joys of Sunday,"
Adventures in a Forgotten Country
(UP Press, 1999, p. 117)

Her prose seems to come right out of nowhere, and now that it's here, you don't want to it go away. But it's gone, whatever it is, and you struggle to read and reread to get more of that magic you think belongs to the words, and it does, as much as it belongs, too, to the spaces between them, and somehow, you think, you want to document life like that: so mundane, so familiar, with a sense of things passing, never being what they used to, except maybe in memory.

"I bought our bread there from a woman who must have been born old, or it was probably just the flour on her hair and face she never completely washed off. A bakery affects me the way a jewelry store affects other women, I guess--I stand there surrounded by trays of cakes and rolls, inhaling deeply, and I cannot quite make out exactly how I feel, as I am distracted by doors opening in my mind through which darts this little girl with her wild curls and her dark knees, clambering up a stool to point with a dirty wet coin at her favorite bun."

"This Way to the Museum" (Polotan, 1999, p. 131)

I want to just catalogue life like that, in its slow, inching crawl to wherever it's headed, never worrying about plot, everything just a swirl of what I see and hear and touch and what's out there, moving and shouting and standing still, dying, resentful, happy, obscene, naive, benign and evil--all at the same time.

So yeah. Nice book.

sticks and stones

The Mako shark is pound per pound the strongest shark there is. Although never reaching the length of the Great White, the Mako is the faster swimmer, and has a reputation of violently tugging at fishermen's hooks until either the line broke or the fisherman fell overboard. A small fishing boat, one story went, was attacked by the Mako they were trying to catch. It jumped right out of the water and into the boat, sending two of the three fishermen into the water. The shark landed on deck as the remaining fisherman's mind swiveled between panic and panic: to jump into the water, where there might be other sharks, or stay on deck and evade a wriggling 12-foot predator drowning in air, wildly trashing about, and rocking the boat.

Rescuers who came to the hysterical radio for help arrived five minutes later to find a silvery gray-blue corpse on deck. It had been dead a full three minutes, yet its tail continued to spasm and its jaws still twitched.

A report filed by the Coast Guard medic who talked to the fishermen who fell overboard said, "James Mathiessen, 34, truck driver by profession, was reported to have yelled in two directions, at the shark on deck, and in the direction of his friends in the water, at other sharks that might come by. John McMahon, 39, high school Physics teacher, and Mark Conneway, 32, car rental shop attendant, said that Mathiessen had yelled more at the shark that was never more than a foot away from him. He cursed it to the ends of the seas with all the insults he knew in his heart to be improper."

"We're thinking there's a correlation," Conneway said, with the dead shark fish-hooked and raised for display at the dock, where an awed audience stood. "James is undeniably more articulate than either of us [Mark]. I think that is what killed the shark and kept other sharks at bay."

"Our boat," McMahon, the other fisherman said, "is not a big one. If a Mako could jump right in and rock that boat hard, as it did, it could also flip itself overboard. But the more James screamed at it the less it struggled. It just writhed and withered and died.”

"I think," Mathiessen said, "I latched into every bad memory in my life and lashed it all on that thing, over and over. I feel lighter, somehow."

”We’re seriously thinking,” said Coast Guard Captain Harold Smith, “to require all fishing boats venturing the waters during shark-hunting season to have at least one very angry, very articulate person on board.”

how to survive a shark attack, tip #2

Two pieces of reliable info have been gathered on sharks: first, they can smell your intentions; second, they rarely die from dynamite fishing. Once you are in the water, do not thrash about wildly; for they will know that you want to flee. Stay calm. Research has shown that since sharks do not hunt or move about in schools, and because they are migratory, they are rarely blown to death by dynamite fishermen. Therefore, while you are calm underwater and a shark is nearby, having a stick of dynamite is not so useless. Here is what you do. Stay calm, do not trash about wildly. When the shark gets near, hold out your arm toward the creature and display that dynamite. The shark will either recognize the explosive and flee, or will suddenly bite your calm arm.

it's not fare

One evening last December, I climbed up a jeepney filled with Koreans; all of them male, excitedly murmuring in Korean, and occupying both sides of the jeepney. One side would take pictures of the other side, and the other side would repeat the gesture. I had to look away or the digital cameras' flashes would hurt my eyes. I've had a long day and a late night at the office.

They looked at me. I looked at them. Three of them took my picture and I squinted, but I smiled. I pulled out my jeepney fare and leaned over the guy nearest me, so that the guy farther away could take my fare and hand it to the driver. It is a custom when riding jeepneys in the Philippines.

The Korean beside me took my fare, put it in his shirt pocket, handed me his camera, and the entire Korean delegate suddenly faced me and became one big smile.

I took their picture, using camera after camera after camera, digitally freezing the all-out smiles of men who all look the same to me.

My fare never reached the driver.

how to survive a shark attack, tip #1

Sharks often mistake humans swimming underwater to be seals or large fish or both. When you see a shark swimming toward you, place your arms parallel on your sides, and swim in a dolphin-like motion. The shark will hesitate and think you are a seal or a dolphin looking like a human, or a human swimming like a seal or a dolphin. Sharks rarely attack dolphins, almost always attacks a seal or a large fish, and sometimes attacks a human. Confusion is your best bet. Remember to swim away, like a dolphin, and to swim like hell. The point is to make the shark think you are a seal looking like a human moving like a dolphin who clings to dear life.

sleep shaving

I don't think I've awakened from a morning shave agreeing with the razor. I'm bleeding again. You walk down the stairs almost every morning feeling stubbles under your chin. It is like Velcro. I live with a porcupine under my chin, an animal that needs constant pruning now and again, and when you prune on mornings that you are half awake, you don't notice the nicks you incur under the blade. Not until you are splashing water and looking at the razor under the downrushing tap water. Blood. Yours. Again. And then you are fully awake. Good morning.

barking mad

A dog is wailing outside my office. Its high-pitched long barks and intermittent moaning is bothering me. Whoever is pulling its chains must have tugged suddenly--I just heard the dog choke a little, its moaning interrupted, only to resume with defiant vigor, as though insulted.

My office is adjacent to a vet clinic, where that complaining dog is probably being hauled to. It sounded indignant in the beginning, but just now, desperate, as though it was screaming its innocence, "You're making a mistake!" it seems to say, "I'm not really sick! I don't need to be brought here! No, no, this is wrong!"

Since I can't hear the owner verbally scold the dog, I'm thinking maybe the dog is sick.

"No, no, this is wrong!"

Or delusional.

Or maybe I am again attributing meaning, where there is none.

requiem

I had dropped my pen near my right foot and was on my way to picking it up when I heard this rrrip. Half-squatting, with my right arm near the pen, I stopped and froze. Skin on my right knee peeked through the faded blue of the pair of jeans that I love. I closed my eyes: five years? Has it been that long?

We, all of us, are dealt in life a hand of cards: we either play it well or fold at the slightest bluff. We, some of us at least, are given clothes to wear, and still we choose to buy that single pair of jeans, and we wear it to death.

We stand here today to remember, nay, to celebrate the life of an apparel that has served its high and noble purpose well. Like an actor in a play dealt only with a minor role, it has nonetheless played its role to the teeth.

Old pair of blue, you have borne life well.

tesifying for my tisay friends

Bakel

Meet Bakel (pronounced Vhak-lah!). In her boyfriend's tunnel-vision of love, she epitomizes the sole gigil-incentive of life: she is composed of so much such that he can't stop pinching and grabbing her. Like a tisay stuffed toy, she tries to defy his cuteness-induced adrenalin, and she screams over and over:ano bah? tama na. naiinis na ko. But her grumbling complaints fail to reach his love-muffled hearing, and so she remains stuffed. When Bakel is not asleep, she tries to stand for some kinda truth and for the uncurtailed freedom of taste along Ayala corner Buendia Avenue.

Rochelle

You will find Rochelle simply stunning. You won't be able to help it, when you witness her bare white arms: "Wow, legs!" you scream appreciatively, within a ten-feet blast radius, making everyone turn and look at the spectacle. Like a flash of light, her right arm slams into your innocent world, and the world suddenly becomes fuzzy, spins to a daze, and you are simply stunned. On her less violent days, when her arms are hidden, you can't put a finger on why she's beautiful. Maybe she just is, in a quiet sort of way. Or maybe, just maybe, you are rightfully afraid that your world will end when you tell her the wrong thing. Mind that blast radius.

in my mind

In front of my PC, I stood up amidst the noise in my office, and like Christian Bale in Equilibrium, wrist-flicked guns into both hands, and fired adeptly--my aim and footwork masterly synchronized; my assessment of each co worker's location led by memory and peripheral vision: to my right tumbles the old admin officer; to my left the managing editor twists, falls from her chair. I step back, face left, arms spread-eagled but aimed. I squeeze both triggers at once: headshot to the assistant admin girl; the photographer chokes on his own blood. Two quick steps forward, right hand aims left, left aims right: the research writer gets it through his spine; lethal chest wounds for the webmaster. Pivot 160 degrees, lunge, skid, thumb both guns to automatic fire, spray the entrance door till both clips run empty. I flick both wrists: used up cartridges clang on the floor. Both guns re-thumbed back to semi-auto. The entrance door creaks slightly ajar; through the opening falls the nonliving office driver, and the utility man.

My gut twitches: someone is watching. Wrists flick on their own: fresh clips snap into place. Through the open blinds, the food vendor stares into dead-slit eyes: mine. He bolts for it; I run the length of my tunnel-shaped office, cocking both guns, firing at the window, at the running figure. His body thuds on the gravel outside. Pivot, quick eye sweep, instantaneous threat-assessment. The youngest office journalist screams, for the last time, into the dead telephone: my left gun blowing the unit away, my right triggering at her. Twist, adjust aim, fire, lean back, make sure, fire again, kick a chair out of the way, right hand firing straight in front, left hand into the back.

Then, I stood still, listening for movement; stance firm, feet spread apart, ready for anything.

The layout artist bleeds, unmoving, facedown on his scanner. The copy editor, headset on and pen in hand, has corrected her final manuscript, blood-smeared as it is. Sprawled on newspapers, both student assistants, usually early for their classes, won't make it this time. Or ever.

Behind me, the air-conditioner hums--suddenly the only sound in this tunnel of corpses. Soon, a mental tightness in me loosens up. Relieved, I retract both guns back into their wrist-sheaths. I walk back to my PC.

In this dead quiet, I can listen to myself think. I can finally write something decent.

you bad girl you

At McDonald's, I leaned closer to Anne to scold her. She had just returned from having our cups refilled with coffee.

"See that?" I pointed to a sign on the wall above her head. It said: Do not leave your valuables unattended.

"Don't you ever leave me again," I said in mock seriousness, waving my finger at her in the way you reprimand a child.

She laughed like a teenager, reached across the table and tweaked my nose hard.

(Ouch.) ",

pam

"So few of us left," said the Fading Light, a title the Queen took since the decline of our powers. She was beside the mound, the last traces of mound magic leaving her, like ripples we could all feel. No more murmuring winds lifted the dried leaves. None of us could come and go at the speed of thought anymore. We had almost lost every ounce of Faerie light we had. Our skins refused to be translucent, but with our remaining magic we remained undeniably stunning. Like the Queen standing before me, her sadness beautiful.

All our preternatural allies have either abandoned us or have been massacred by the humans. The time of the Faerie had passed. We are now refugees in our own home, which is wherever humans had not yet been to. We have been on the run for so long there was no time to mourn.

Today marks the third score of my watch over little Pamela, who is sleeping in my arms. She had been under my care since her phalanx of guards died protecting her. It was also the third score of our race's dwindling in number. Humans had been occupying more and more of our homelands, too soon for us to cope with, too many of them to deal with. We disdained their affection for contraptions, which they were using to annihilate us. For some reason, our powers affected them no more.

Before, with the mound's help, even little Pamela could hex dozens of men in yellow hats, with pick-axes and jackhammers, to walk away, their memories dishelved. And then the humans started using their metallic animals on us. One such creature killed Pamela's guards. I pulled her out of the way of a hulking animal that pushed aside all that lay in its path. The human that tamed it rode on its back, encased in glass. Pamela's guards were overrun, mistaken for little tribal men.

Faeries age slowly, and with the loss of the mound, I can only hope little Pamela also forgets her roots. For with no magic to protect her, she will have to rely on sheer muscle and cunning. Memories about a race humans disbelieve in will be of no help to her. The Fading Light, the last living guardian who shoulders Pamela's destiny, had decided for the child to age amongst humans.

The remaining handful of Faerie did not wish to be assimilated by the humans and chose to wither away; their memories of the mound and of our festive ages together in tact. We realized we had all lived a full life, except for the child under my care.

The Queen and I decided to give our remaining essences to Pamela, aware that with her new life with humans, she would lose the grandeur and grace inherent in all Faerie. A small price to pay for our race to survive, albeit changed.

"Only one of us left," said the Fading Light, and I nodded. With the last of our powers, we put a spell on Pamela, so that a kind heart within three hundred paces will be drawn to her, and will raise her as if she was her own.

The ceremonial essence transfer was next. After this, little Pamela will wake up completely human, with no Faerie left in her--except for the Queen's short temper and my unbending will.

When Pamela opens her eyes, all of her kind, save for her, will have withered away. All good things come to pass, even for Faerie.

-Final journal entry of Orphelia Ironhide, Shield-Nanny
to Pamela, niece-goddess of the Fading Light

natasha is gone

Natasha broke down this morning. Her neck snapped as I tried to use her. It's been a year and she couldn't take the weight of it anymore. Natasha is the tabo in my bathroom. Just like Bertha is my dish cabinet, Epipania my office PC, and Fred my harddisk that crashed two years ago.

the point

The problem with Sundays is that Mondays come right after them, forcing you to optimize being irresponsible and care-free and restful and take as many deep breaths as possible out of the office and just not think about work and consequences during Friday nights. That way, waking up on Saturdays is an event in itself: double hangovers, where'd I put my things, I'm just glad the week is over, and you get to reflect about your work which isn't so bad as long as you're not in the office, and the workweek is rotten only because you're a vegetable 24 by 7, and suddenly a jolt—tonight is all I have because tomorrow is the last day before everything begins again.

Damn you, workweek, sumpain ka even. You hear? The Sisyphean loop of things. The suffocating nearness of it all.

I object to peace of mind and fun and mental renewal with a consume until tag on it. It's not right nah-uh not right. The peace of laundry-day Sunday is not too far from the peace enjoyed by a man to be hanged in the next half hour.

I want longer weekends. You hear? I want them stretched. I want the end of fun deadline extended, moved away, far away, as far as I can throw it, out the window even. And while you're at it, wash my other teddy bear. It's beginning to go dark brown on me again.

At least I get to see my wife sleep on weekends, curled up in a blanket, pristine and ageless. If there are hints of wrinkles on her, it's not her fault. I put them there.

shades of brown

My coffee cup at home, a small unevenly browned one, I brought to the office to replace the one I use there, which was not as brown and whose circumference was bigger. That means the coffee to sugar to hot water ratio I follow at home and the one in the office are different. So I don't always get that 'sipa' I want out of each cup. To standardize, I did what I did, because I have another mug just like it, also at home.

My small coffee jar at home, a thoroughly green one, I left there. It comes with a small spoon, smaller than a teaspoon, which, when heaped with coffee--that heap mixed with two heaps of sugar and hot water near the brim--concocted the exact caffeine 'sipa' that logs me out of afternoon stupor and early morning daze.

Such a small cup. Form a C with your right hand, open it up a little, and that's the cup's circumference. It's height is just three-fourths the length of my hand. So much for so little.

When I was an undergrad, morning cups of coffee defined the house hierarchy. On the breakfast table, where I fixed the family coffee, colors said who was who: pink was my mom, blue was my stepdad, and I was yellow. I remember abandoning my assigned cup; my brother had poured something on it, turning it to the color of shit.

And the shit that I take from morning till night has significantly darkened with time. Deep, uneven dark brown.

go girl!

I keep getting pats on the back by email and by tagboard from friends who've read my blog: they think I'm a girl. Then, some of them who've read my entries that more than hint of my heterosexuality, they gasp and tag and comment back: syet, lalaki ka pala. I want to apologize to them—I'm not a girl—as if I let them down or deceived them or challenged the assumption that writing this girly could not possibly belong to a guy.

But I never saw my writing as girly, but simply writing.

Remember Ally Mcbeal? I keep telling friends I took male sensitivity classes, which softened up my grip-view on the world. But that's not true, I've always viewed the world this softly. Still, to be talked to as if I need to prove something called manhood: that, contrary to surface reading, I really am another hormonally poisoned brute, insensitive to the nuances of words said and the depth underneath them, evasive and elusive on commitment, lousy with house chores.

I'm still partly these things. Pero, sige, whenever I get another Go Girl! I will return the gesture with Thanks, pare, wahoooo!

I mean, how else do I prove I'm a guy?

and i cringe

When I try to recall what undergraduate life was like, it is almost as if another person lived it, and not the current me.

On a large rug on the second-floor of my family's apartment, one of our many transient dwellings, photocopies of readings in six different subjects lay around me. I'm pillowed on my hands clasped behind my head, seeing nothing but white ceiling, ignoring the muffled voices of my family in the other room. At almost nine in the morning, Mom is dressing up my two younger brothers to take them to Grandma's house, where they can play till Mom fetches them after five.

Yes, Mom, I'm leaving for school after I finish typing my term paper.

I lock the door behind them, fix myself a cup of coffee, and go back upstairs, to my room, to continue staring at the ceiling. I brush aside some papers with my foot, to make a larger space to lie down on, and fight the drowse-inducing cadence of very faraway sounds.

I'm a philosophy major asking the ceiling why I am academically required to try and find the central algorhythm of all knowledge. I don't even have a girlfriend.

How did I manage to wake up and sleep feeling all important, all throughout junior and senior years, as if my thoughts, which were restated echoes of dead white male Anglo-Saxon thinkers, rippled forth and changed the core of things? Back then, I couldn't even fry an egg without piercing the yolk.

bear-stabs

I have memories of the rain in me. Of rain-washed blood and stabs of iron and light. In the middle of a night-storm, biting a small longnose pliers, my uncle, that shirtless moron of a bear, climbed up the lamp post beside our gate to fix the fuse: the entire looban had fallen into darkness.

He monkeyed himself up past the metal spokes of the gate, looked down at me once, his face a shadow: the only light source being the post he held onto. I wiggled my fluffy slippers-warmed toes: should I call for help, or watch further?

Spears of rain soaked my uncle's teddy bear pajamas, everything in eye-sweep simplified in shades of grey: his grip slipped and I lost time. A thud when he hit the ground or a thud when he hit the metal spokes? He bled on the ground, in the rain, leaning on one elbow, his free hand on the center of his chest as he smiled at me: I waved back.

"Tumama lang 'yung pwet ko!" he yelled in the light-circle; the lamp post shone directly over him. I lost more time. Did he hit the spokes chest first, then pulled himself up?

The bear got on his feet and looked up, at the height from which he fell, and then looked around for his pliers. My aunt came rushing past me, screaming what was that thud and panicked herself into more screams as she rushed out to my grinning uncle.

"Ang tanga-tanga mo!" my aunt shrieked between sobs and wiped her unshirted bear's chest of blood, of which there wasn't much, with the rain washing it down. Then more sobs and "Wala 'yon, sweethart." And then I remember getting up the next morning, still with my fluffy slippers on: the storm had stopped, the ground was clean, and the spears had stopped coming down from the sky.

A bear with so many bandages on his chest lay on the couch, sleeping.

rain-soaked brain

The scattered patches of puddles along the road infront of my office are now one. The rain and the narrow gutter-drain gave them wholeness and direction. I'm looking at the sluggish rapids through the blinds I pulled up: leaves, twigs and candy wrappers in transit.

Tis the glum season to admit defeat: I rest my forehead on the wet-opaque window: everything within eyesight--the trees, the slippery sidewalk, the lifeless road, the distant grass--has this dampened grey-brown aura of hibernating slowness.

I wonder who took my umbrella.

how to write a friendster testimonial

Feel particularly witty. Click "Add a Testimonial." Skim previous entries. Decide you can do better. How to proceed. Wiggle your fingers over the keyboard. Grin with determination . . . plunge in.

"I've known him since..." Fuss over your beginning. Too many nostalgic templates floating around. Decide to avoid that. "When we were kids, Martin climbed a tall acacia and couldn't get down. He hollered 'Mama' till his voice got husky. We laughed at him till his mom came running, blaming us for what happened." There. Concise, a touch of drama, explaining you've known him from way back. Decide that he forgave you for not helping out back then. Wonder how he'll thank you for recounting the old days.

"The only Alcoholics Anonymous member I know with a rap sheet longer than her arm." Synopsis, punched it right where it counts. Smile proud. Continue with best wishes template: "She gets better every two months, sobering up and then plunging down again into the bottle. Her consistency is a thing of beauty." Perfect.

"This gal, mhann, tops the list of coolness kids in school. She is goodtimes personified." This is exactly how you know her, you decide: in a mindless-fun wavelength. Apt would be the surfer-dude template...always useful for people you don't really know, don't care to know better, and don't really intend on offending. It's like a neutral arms' length pat on the back.

"Lovely, full of energy, bouncy, talkative..." Will this do? you ask yourself. It's non-committal, an unimaginative grocery list of adjectives, the first impressions off your mind when you think of this person. Maybe another adjective will do. Decide to be a miser. You hope she'll be flattered and then write you a testi that beats what you did for her. Always works, you remember. People think you are either sincere or pulling their chains. Either way, they remember your effort.

"Terry is the man! He can do overtime like a camel! Nice going on that promotion and the anvil of feather award!" Perfect for a guy who thinks he's important. Keep up the exclamation points and the cheerleader attitude. He'll testi you back with empty praises, that's the only bad side to this. An empty pat on the back deserves another.

"I don't know this guy well..." A lot of bull, you press backspace to erase it. If you don't know the person well, why write a testimonial? You decide to be honest and qualify things: "From the week-long workshop, where I got to know Dexter, he kept biting his nails, kept spitting between long sentences, and stayed too long in the toilet. Nice guy though."

"He jumped back, barely evading the bloodied knife. His opponent pressed on, withdrew the weapon, and lunged at him with a stab aimed at the neck." Hah! Action-packed. Who wouldn't approve of this on his testi page? Even though none of the events happened. You continue with the neat story. "He ducked below the thrust and stabbed upward, piercing the enemy's throat. Someone will choke on his own blood tonight." You decide you should get paid for this. It's publishable escapist testi-writing.

"Superb craftsmanship, astounding character-build up. Gregory packs a wallop on every page." You mimic the back-of-the-book cover write up. It's always funny. People are after all books to be read and reviewed.

pinoy detective fiction

Smaller and Smaller Circles by FH Batacan
Published by the University of the Philippines Press, 2003.

The body count had reached six before the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) sought the services of two Jesuit priests: forensic anthropologist Gus Saenz, to examine the victims' corpses, C.S.I. style; and clinical psychologist Jerome Lucero, to build the killer's profile to hasten the manhunt.

Six teenage boys found dead at the Payatas area had their faces, genitals and internal organs removed. In Saenz's comfy hi-tech lab in Ateneo, the evidence point to the same knife used on the victims, each of whom died on the first Saturday of the month.

The tidy knife job and corpse dumping suggest meticulousness and skill. The consistent date of death, a ritual; something with which to start the month right.

A serial killer is on the prowl, which the NBI can't begin to admit, and can't fathom how to track down.

This is because, Batacan writes, "Little attention is paid to determining patterns: a missing persons' physical type or age, the geographical area in which he or she disappeared or reappeared, the condition in which he or she has been found."

This leads to the prevalent myth that there are no serial killers in the country, even though serial killing, she writes, "is not a solely Western phenomenon...and that the inadequacy and sloppiness of local police methods and intelligence techniques stand in the way of its detection."

In short, no one is watching, except, in this case, two men of the cloth "with no staff, limited resources and often, no official authority, performing the kind of investigative work that very few people in the country--and civilians at that--are capable of doing."

This is an excerpt from my review of Smaller and Smaller Circles. It's an unexpected good-enough read. For a teaser review, click here and here. Try to read the teasers first, because mine gives everything away: judgmental synopsis and all.

The development, or the chase (which is painstakingly slow), is seen through the lives of the characters: the sleuths (two Jesuit priests--recall Umberto Echo's 'In the Name of the Rose'), the victims' mothers, the reporter hot on the serial-murder-scoop and her adopted father/segment producer); the National Bureau of Investigation agent; and of course that of the killer himself (who is from UP Manila--could this be a hint that the freedom to improve is the self-same freedom to degenerate?).

Two things slow down the story's pace. One is the telling of the characters' back stories. Another is the series of lectures on forensic investigation: how date of death is approximated, inferences on weapon type and killer profile based on depth of cuts, manner of mutilation, and so on. Remember, this was written some five years before C.S.I. made it here through cable TV. The book's concept was original at the time; probably why it won the grand prize in the Palanca awards.

Don't expect tense dark alley chases or gun-point drama. The priests are not deputized to make arrests, they carry no guns, and they are relying on their own resources (forensic equipment, air fare, unofficial intelligence sources, etc.--good thing they're Ateneans, they can afford it). One subtle message in the book is that professional forensic-detective work leading to an arrest, in this country, is nearly a miracle. Probably why priests are the detectives--they are morally untainted, at least compared to cops; and they answer to a higher morality, at least as far as their image goes. The ending, where the killer is bullet-holed, and one of the priests offers himself as a killer-negotiator (and nearly gets martyred), is a comforting closure. Justice was not to be served by human courts (a tainted extension of the police), but by heaven. The killer's psyche was too damaged by teenage trauma to do otherwise--his shrewdness evolved out of an inability to cope with the pain. This is his salvation.

The pace of the investigation felt realistic. The book detailed the causes of delay--the NBI investigator wanted to hog media attention; and there was no national database of committed crimes and missing persons, where one could compare and cross-reference cases, and see patterns. This accumulates into: if this is how slow justice comes, we need a miracle; hence the priestly interference. It was as if God was forced to do something.

ahmed

Ah•Med //(pronunced ä-'med, written abbrev. 'Mhedz') noun. 1. A periodioc hermit of a myth whose reclusive moods remain uncatalogued. 2. Name of Arabic origin: 'Ahmed' means 'praise.' Therefore, to mention his name is to praise him. Don't. 3. In Krus na Ligas mythology, the right pinky finger, and therefore keeper of all peripheral powers of the omniboogyman. 4. Ahmed is known for his shiny look long hair, and for his habit of knifing the universe with a crisp, hand-lip coordinated Finger: his right arm would jut out from under, his middle-finger-guided hand in a sharp upward stab; at the same time he'd hiss, "**CK **U!" Goodness is in the man, somewhere.

rhea

Rhea is watching her friends in the water. She's sitting on a papag, a bed assembled from bamboo, like the cottages to her left, where Espy and the others are drinking. Yesterday, when the jeepney they sardined into got near the shoreline, the wind picked up a coolness, a sweet scent that meant they were nearing the edge of the island. That was the point, of course, of coming to this place. To see the beach and then maybe decide to wade in it. But then there was the trek to the campsite that Espy's boondog watched over. It felt like ascending a mountain to Rhea, who had been raised to think that the terrains of Bacolod and Manila defined the world. And then there were the makeshift cooking and eating utensils and lavatories (which was anywhere far from human eyes), and it was an hourly struggle to remain antiseptic. Because the bathroom hadn't been invented yet on a hill that high. And she even managed to sleep in a tent with Espy and Rona. How was that possible? Never mind. Coming down from the hill was a different story, and strained almost a new set of muscles, which Rhea didn't expect. Her only exercise in the office was straining with the mouse and pressing her floor on the elevator panel. Of course, her vocal chords were in order. But you can't ask your voice box or your tongue to go downhill for you. Rhea remembered her cramping legs during her slow walk to the beach, when Ayen said she walked like those cheap wind-up little robots, and she was too tired to hit him with her bag. And now that the hill and campsite and boondog were behind her, she stares at the inviting beach below. But it's nice up here, she thought, with the air blowing not too hard and not too hot. But it would take effort to shower, even though the shower room was only six paces to her right. And after she showers, she'll have to walk all the way down to where Pam and Rona are doing synchronized swimming. There, she'll get wet again. This time by semi-salty water. And then she'll have to wash her hair, again. There was an odd logic to all this. You come up a hill to go down. You shower to get wet so you can get wet afterwards, in the sea. Weird. I think I'll just stay up here, she thought. This is the second time she went to Batangas, the second time she stayed away from the sea. Better that my friends think I just didn't feel like sea-dipping again, she thought. She couldn't risk them finding out that, when sea water touches her, she turns into a crab.