Manny Pacquiao Defeats Oscar de la Hoya

3:07 pm
Sunday, 7 December 2008

As I write Manny Pacquiao has just won the historical fight against Golden Boy Oscar de la Hoya (based on GMA-7’s delayed telecast). The Filipino people love boxing for its evocative combination of brawn and brilliance. For a state that has consigned most of its people to a life of unemployment, penury, crime and tambay, boksing, like billiards and bowling to a lesser extent, provides salvation. We love Manny for embodying the hope that even in the direst of times, unity is possible in watching and adoring the sports that offers temporary catharsis of all our miseries. This hope stems from the collective bond we continually build in mustering our strength and defeating the most formidable of enemies.

We watch and feel dismay once again that our public officials are with Manny, contaminating a much-beloved sport and national hero with partisan patronage. What is Noli de Castro doing in MGM?! Don’t our officials have important things to do that they have freed their time of everything else – our welfare – and watch Manny defeat a fellow from a fellow former Spanish colony?! It is just fitting that they bet their political stamina, the circulation of gimmickry and opportunistic chances, the love of money (and thus the root of all their evils), the people’s money, in Las Vegas. Vegas is the surplus and the place where in the kernel of deception, hopeful and hopeless people stake their claims for a better life. Activists of the 60s and 70s had termed it bureaucrat capitalism. Manny’s bout is one manifestation of its practice. And it was true then as it is truest now: they are using public offices to enrich their political—because—economic lives. The host is interviewing him now and is asking of his political calling. We plead that Manny will not fall into GMA’s trap. Many believe that such combination of sports show business and trapo politics is natural in Filipino political culture. We struggle against this reality. Indeed Manny’s congressional defeat in the 2007 elections sets off from the same discernment of the people: a life gloriously lived in boxing must be rewarded by refusal of him to be injected into a system that wages war against the skills, talents, achievements and critical intelligence of the masses.

Manny’s life is a testament to the many challenges we face. The dream of education which he now slowly realizes, a better future for his family, the everyday life that battles gambling, ostentatious display of wealth and self-annihilating pamamadron, are conditions we share. The ever-present danger that from the peak of success arrived at in a short time, one will stumble down to Navarrete-type of wretchedness, looms large in Manny’s horizon.

We most admire in Manny the discipline, that determination to carry out to the very end the fight that one so brilliantly launched, his resilience, and the humility that all these accomplishments are para sa ating lahat, the shoulders of the people on which he sits, and the hindsight that all his struggles are ours and will come to the best of ends.
Manny has indeed made history and he will do more of it. Just remember that the souls of the victorious trapos linger and loiter. And they have not ceased to be victorious. They will never accept defeat.

berso sa metro, atbp.

sa biyaheng recto-anonas nitong sabado...

matagal-tagal ko na ring napapansin ang berso sa metro sa lrt line 2 (santolan-recto) kung saan ako bumibiyahe tuwing papunta ng ermita. Minsan may pagbabasa pa ng tula na pinapatugtog sa public sound system. Para sa akin, positibo ang pagpapalaganap ng panitikan at sining sa pinakamaraming mamamayan; mas mainam kung ito ay may layuning magmulat at magpakilos upang baguhin sa ikabubuti ang ating kondisyon. Ang maganda sa berso sa metro, sa sandaling pagbiyahe ng tren nakakapagbasa kahit paano ng mga tula ang mga tao. Hamon pa kasing maging malaganap na libangan ang pagbabasa sa ating bansa. Isang hakbang na ito kahit paano. Kung may magustuhang tula ang mga bumibiyahe eh 'di babasahin na din nila ang iba pang mga tula sa tren, babasahin ang mga likhang-panitikan na inihahandog sa kanila, saka na yung sila mismo ang aktibong maghahanap nito sa mga magasin, diyaryo, internet, at libro. Pinakamahusay ay ang paglikha mismo nila batay sa kanilang mga karanasan.

kinopya ko ang isang tula:

Pagtawanan mo ang gabi,
ang araw, ang buwan,
pagtawanan mo ang mga liku-likong
landas sa isla,
pagtawanan mo ang torpeng
lalaking ito na nagmamahal sa iyo,
nguni't kapag bubuksan ko
at isasara ang aking mga mata,
kapag ako ay umalis,
kapag ako ay muling bumalik
ipagkait mo na sa akin ang tinapay,
ang hangin, ang liwanag at ang tagsibol,
huwag lamang ang iyong ngiti
dahil ito'y aking ikasasawi.

naks!

***

may kaklase akong iraqi sa español. sa maigsing kamustahan sa klase tinanong ko kung bakit kahit na atrasadong bansa eh sa pilipinas pa nila naisipang mag-aral. may mga nakakasabay din ako sa tren na mga galing sa middle east. at sa grocery eh may nakita pang mga naka-unipormeng c.e.u. sabi niya eh dahil mahusay daw ang ating educational system at kilala bilang conscientious workers ang mga pilipinong nagtatrabaho sa ibang bansa (ang asawa niya ay doktor at sila ay nagtatrabaho sa amerika, nagpunta lang sa pilipinas para mag-aral ulit). nakakatuwa ang pananaw na ito.

alam nating bagsak ang philippine educational system kung pagbabatayan ang kolonyal na oryentasyon ng ating edukasyon. kolonyal dahil sa pagprayoritisa sa wikang inggles laban sa mga lokal na wika, kolonyal dahil sa pagyurak sa mga karapatan at mithiin ng mga pilipinong maging isang ganap na independiyenteng bansa batay sa mga nilalamang aralin nito, at kolonyal din dahil nakatuon sa pangangailangan ng dayuhan at global na merkado ang mga kursong inilalako. kasama na dito ang mapanupil at komersiyalisadong edukasyon. sa mga international tests at surveys on education mababa ang nakukuha ng pilipinas kaya nakapagtataka ang trend ng international students ngayon. malaking dahilan din siyempre ang kamurahan--bagama't siguradong dolyar ang ibinabayad nila--kumpara sa mga eskuwelahan ng mga mauunlad na bansa.

nararapat gawin dito ay ibuhos sa scholarships ng mga pribadong eskuwelahan ang kanilang mga tubo. higit na dapat na kung anuman ang kikitain ng ating pamahalaan sa visa at tuition ng foreign students ay ilaan sa mga Pilipino para makapag-aral ang lahat. maganda ding simulan ang malalimang pagpapalitan ng kaalaman sa kasaysayan at kultura at sa magkaugnay na kalagayan ng iba't ibang bansa sa antas ng mga mag-aaral. para lumampas sa nosyon ng cultural exchange at turismo. ang mga koreanong nandito sa pinas ay pumupunta hindi na lamang para mag-aral ng inggles kundi para mag-aral ng lahat ng antas ng edukasyon, bumili ng mga bahay at ari-arian at mamalagi na dito. darating ang araw na pag-aari na nila ang marami sa ating mga lupain at industriya, na pinapayagan sa cha-cha. pero ano naman ang nalalaman natin sa kanila at nila sa atin maliban sa mga nakokomentuhan na gaya ng pagkain at videoke?!

***

sa grocery...

may isang mamimili na mukhang maalwan ang buhay. binabati niya ang mga makakasalubong: 'good afternoon!', 'merry christmas!', 'kahit na krisis eh maghahanda pa rin, ano?'. akala ko ay binabati niya ang mga kakilalang nakikita. may mamang naglalagay ng mga paninda sa estante, na malaon ay nagkomentong: 'iba talaga ang ugali kapag mayaman ka'! O 'ang sarap talaga ng buhay kapag mayaman ka'!)

lunes
ika-24 ng nobyembre 2008
10:35 ng gabi

two days

Consider this: you enter an election booth, nobody’s inside that unit except you, and then you cast your vote. You are making a decision for your nation—and the world’s future.

Or this: you join an organization of your sector, class or interest, study the issues, launch activities that will enable more and more people to know your cause, press for legislative and governmental actions, unite with the rest of society, and struggle for change.

For much of modern history, and indeed of recent history, the concept of democracy has been singularly confined to the former. Voting in capitalist democracies is conferred sacredness, a citizen’s communion with an omnipotent and omniscient being that is the government, which is said to define one’s well-being as well as the rest of society. Now for Americans, it is also an act of confession, where the choice is considered a repentance and then atonement for one’s previous electoral sins.

It is only two days (Philippine time) before the U.S. electorate chooses its president in an election that has been characterized as the most active, most participatory, most expensive, and most observed, internationally. It is interesting how the coming U.S. election is considered by the media as most definitive in changing the conditions of hundreds of millions of needy Americans. Yes, there are differences between Republicans (the conservative, the right) and Democrats (the liberals, the left) but people on both sides compromise on many issues to have a centrist view on many economic, political and social issues. Republicans are free market and deregulation advocates and they are being blamed for the current financial crisis as Bush’s term paved way for a lot of marketers to profit from share price increases and money borrowings. But the Democrats who push for more regulation like their European counterparts just want to repair the system; they lobby for reforms in order to maintain the long-term interests of capitalism. Now they are being criticized for advancing socialism. The grave financial and consequent economic crisis has raised talks of capitalism’s downfall yet what the current governments in the biggest economies of today are doing is sort of a Keynesian management of the twenty-first century. It also enables some sliver of radicalism from the opposition. Obama’s “spread the wealth” call is however antithetical to “American” hard work and keeping one’s wealth his and his alone. Fighting for his ambitions, he has continually veered from left to center in order to please the moderate and anti-radical Americans. He disowned his former pastor, who’s the head of a militant black church, and also recently disowned a 70s anti-Vietnam War terrorist (this one resorted to bombings!). I remember his comment which echoes some leftist thinking on religion and militarist attitude – that desperate Americans cling to their guns and religion. Comparing the Republicans and the Democrats in the Clinton campaign of the early nineties, Joan Didion quotes a political scientist who says: “The last thing the Democratic Party has wanted to do is declare that there is a possibility for class struggle. The Republicans, however, are perfectly happy to declare class struggle all the time. They are always waging a one-sided class war against the constituency the Democrats nominally represent. In this sense, the Republicans are the only real political party in the United States. They stand for ideology and interest, not compromise.” [“Eyes on the Prize,” in Political Fictions, pages 148-149] The constituents, history and popular opinion have it, are labor, women and minorities.

[[[the image is from the New York Times, 31 october 2008]]]

2:24 am
tuesday, 4 november 2008

para sa mahal na araw ng mga patay

kung hanggang tula lang ako
richard r. gappi

Puting lapida itong pintong papel.
Tuwing dadalaw ka, nagkakapangalan
ang pangungulila, nahahawi
ang mga agiw na napagkit sa mga ukit.
Tila umiingit na bisagra ang mga salita
kapag pinatutuloy ang mga ito;
sumisilip naman ang matalas na sinag,
tila balaraw na nilalaslas ang dilim
na nakalupasay sa sahig.
Minsan, nagmumulto ang puntod.
Pinangangatog ang tuhod.
Ngunit muli akong ipapanatag
ng katotohanang nakapinid na
ang ngiti ng lugod,
nakahimlay na ang damdaming
nagpatibok sa puson.
Sa ganitong tagpo, lalong
lumalawak ang giwang ng pinto.
Sapagkat sa bawat katok ng mga salita
nauulinigan ko ang iyong
mga impit na halinghing at bulong;
sa bawat tulos ko ng taludtod,
pumapatak sa diwa ang malalapot na gunita;
at kapag naitundos ko ang imahen,
nakukuyom ko kahit
ang balangkas ng iyong anino.
Kaya unawain ako
kung ito lang ang kayang gawin.
Sapagkat tula lang ang naaangkin.
At dito ka lang nagiging akin.

11:54 ng gabi
ika-25 ng oktubre, 2008

English Movies You Should Not Translate in Filipino/Tagalog

Nabasa ko ito sa isang forwarded email ni Roland Tolentino:

Black Hawk Down: Ibong Maitim sa Ibaba
Dead Man's Chest: Dodo ng Taong Patay
I Know What You Did Last Summer: Uyyy...Aminin!
Love, Actually: Sa Totoo Lang, Pag-ibig
Million Dollar Baby: 50 Milyong Pisong Sanggol (depende sa exchange rate)
The Blair Witch Project: Ang Proyekto ng Bruhang si Blair
Mary Poppins: Si Mariang May Putok
Snakes on a Plane: Nag-ahasan sa Ere
The Postman Always Rings Twice: Ang Kartero Kapag Dumutdot Laging Dalawang Beses
Sum of All Fears: Takot Mo, Takot Ko, Takot Nating Lahat
Swordfish: Talakitok
Pretty Woman: Ganda ng Lola Mo
Robin Hood, Men in Tights: Si Robin Hood at ang Mga Felix Bakat
Four Weddings and a Funeral: Kahit Apat na Beses Ka Pang Magpakasal, Mamamatay Ka Rin!
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Ako, Ikaw, Kayong Lahat
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Adik si Harry, Tumira ng Shabu
Click: Isang Pindot Ka Lang
Brokeback Mountain: May Nawasak sa Likod ng Bundok ng Tralala; Bumigay sa Bundok
The Day of the Dead: Undas
Waterworld: Pista ng San Juan
There's Something About Mary: May Kuwan sa Ano ni Maria
Employee of the Month: Ang Sipsip
Resident Evil: Ang Biyenan
Kill Bill: Kilitiin sa Bilbil
The Grudge: Lintik Lang ang Walang Ganti
Nightmare Before Christmas: Binangungot sa Noche Buena
Never Been Kissed: Pangit Kasi
Gone in 60 Seconds: 1 Round Lang, Tulog
The Fast and the Furious: Ang Bitin, Galit
Too Fast, Too Furious: Kapag Sobrang Bitin, Sobrang Galit
Dude, Where's My Car?: Dong, Anong Level Ulit Tayo Nag-park?
Beauty and the Beast: Ang Asawa Ko at ang Nanay Niya
The Lord of the Rings: Ang Alahero
Die Hard: Hindi Mamatay-matay
Die Hard, with a Vengeance: Hindi na Mamatay-matay, Naghiganti Pa
Lost in Space: Mga Taong Naligaw sa Kalawakan
Paycheck: Sweldo
What Lies Beneath: Ang Pagsisinungaling sa Ilalim
Superman, the Return: Si Superman Bumalik, Naiwanan ang Brief
Cinderella Man: Bading si Cinderella
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Nagtrabaho si Charlie sa Goya
Blade Runner: Magnanakaw ng Labaha
Schindler's List: May Mga Utang kay Schindler
Men in Black: Mga Lalaking Namatayan
X-Men, the Last Stand: Mga Dating Lalaki, Huling Tinayuan
Wedding Crashers: Mga Bwiset sa Kasal
The Day After Tomorrow: Sa Makalawa
Three Men and a Baby: Ang Tatlong Yayo
Catch Me If You Can: Habulin Mo 'ko!
A Bug's Life: Ang Buhay ng Isang Surot
Die Another Day: Mamatay Ka Ulit Bukas
The Rock: Ang Shabu
Jaws: Panga
Back to the Future: Sa Likod ng Hinaharap
In the Line of Fire: Tumulay Ka sa Alambreng May Apoy
Saturday Night Fever: Sabado ng Gabi, May Trangkaso
Stepmom: Tapakan Si Inang
Brother Bear: Kuya Oso
Police Academy: Paaralan ng mga Buwaya
The English Patient: Ang Pasyenteng Inglesera
Man on Fire: Ang Nasusunog na Mama
The Horse Whisperer: Ang Tsismoso ng mga Kabayo
Dante's Peak: Ang Bumbunan ni Dante
Legends of the Fall: Ang Kasaysayan ng mga Lampa
The Forgotten: Ewan

2:52 ng hapon
Miyerkules, 24 ng setyembre 2008

Wall Street, Bolivia, atbp.

23 september 2008

Slept for twelve hours today. Have been sleeping for four hours at the most Mondays and Thursdays since the start of the sem owing to a 7 am class on those days. Thing is that I read and write at night and that having early morning works doesn’t work for me. I can’t do so in the afternoon after my classes so I just devote the time to other office/paper works.
***
It’s been a week since the financial crisis’ peak at New York City. Because the financial and economic system is now more interlocked than ever before, what happens there (or anywhere) has global ramifications. It sent panic not only to the businessmen here but also ordinary people who work or are connected to banks and financial institutions. Poor people who have some savings are now anxious about what will happen next.

The US government’s bailout of AIG helped to calm the atmosphere; though we don’t know the extent of stability it would continue to offer. Now the news is that Bush will release 700 billion US$ to revive their ailing economy. Free market advocates do not like the long-term implications of this move. I just watched at CNN a US legislator’s comment that nationalization of the economy is inherently un-American. Others will say that it is anti-American (i.e., anti-capitalist, anti-profit, anti-freedom?) Many argue that only the government can do something that will reassure market forces and will pave way for the latter’s continued growth. I think that in the same way that the government de facto manages the economy by providing all the advantages for capitalist expansion, a free market in fact accorded by the government’s “non-intervention,” it can—and must—regulate private corporations and organize the economy in a manner that will protect the public. This suggestion concerns a capitalist edict to which our own Philippine economy subscribes to. The wicked thing about this bailout is that it may just help the companies and its workers and the people who have some interests in it as depositors, creditors, etc. while those responsible for its failures will be let off the hook. Government aid must be accompanied by a thorough investigation of those speculators and managers who led us to this mess to begin with, and a restructuring of a system that encourages private accumulation over a generalized condition of beneficence and equality. I’m sorry that I am neither an economist nor a political scientist so this is just a basic proposal.
***
Quite the same government-people vs private greed relation is happening in America’s destitute backyard. Bolivia’s poor is demanding an equal share of income from their more affluent compatriots. The same news program I just watched shows the nation’s elite in an expo show partying while the wretched of the earth are protesting for a socialization of earnings from their country’s wealthy region. We hear their comprador bourgeoisie class appealing for national unity (this same sector is fighting for a secession from their leftist government), the poor articulating the same unity achievable through a redistribution of government income. Evo Morales’ challenge for a richer and more just Bolivia is pushing towards a violent confrontation. When governments such as his lead social revolution—meaning it comes from above—the outcome will be decided by the people themselves who must realize a government working for their needs and desires. Despite countless efforts to topple its leaders both from outside and from within, Cuba’s government stays because the people are not alienated from its ruling. States are after all the arena where one class imposes its rule over all the rest. We might see a renewed reddening of Latin America.
***
Have to study hard in my Spanish lessons. I was passing through it easily in the lower levels. Now that the verb tenses and predications are becoming more difficult, I mix up the verb usages. Unlike my classmates who can converse adequately in Español, each time my teacher asks me, people have to supply the answers so that I can cope with the discussion. My goal’s to have a reading knowledge of the subject so I can pursue my interest in Hispanic literature and history. But it is easier to learn the language by listening well to conversations. More Spanish TV programs, films and music then.
***
One student asked my position on the reproductive health bill. I didn’t say my stand because the paper I require in my Communication 1 class is not yet submitted. I explained to the class that I, like many teachers, do not grade student work based on our own take on the matter but on their own discussion of the subject. This is of course at the level of theory but we can ensure fairness by examining well the sides (not only two) to an issue and criticizing the opposition to each side based on a common subject. You cannot simply raise morality and spirituality against economics and lifestyle without presenting where the two presumably opposing sides meet and contend. By the way El Shaddai’s Bro. Mike Velarde is threatening to run in the 2010 presidential elections in case the bill is approved. At least the Iglesia ni Cristo is approving of the bill’s merits.
***
The activist institution to which I belong, the Amado V. Hernandez Resource Center, conducted a poetry workshop with the Advan (makers of casual shoes) company’s workers last September 13. They are currently on strike to fight for wage increase and prosecution of sexual harassment against the manager. We in the center decided that workshops be held in urban poor worker’s communities so that Amado Hernandez’s poetry and militant labor struggle will be sustained. In the past almost all of the participants in literary workshops and not surprisingly the winners in the Gawad Ka Amado are students and professionals, those who have considerable resources, specially time, for literary activities. Poet Richard Gappi led the workshop and the outcome was good. The workers themselves presented their poem through a dramatic presentation on the night itself. The most humorous part was the practice for the presentation as participants realize the seriousness of their efforts and had become the center of attention that night. Surely the reality of just writing the poem and then transforming into dramatic actions so that what you have just written is transmitted audio-visually to a wide audience made them feel profoundly different. People realize that collective action is greatly achieved by means of artistic work that pulls the senses and the mind. Poet Axel Pinpin of the recently released from prison Tagaytay 5 read his poem.

8:06 am
tuesday, 23 september 2008

merry christmas!

merry christmas! maaga ang pasko sa pinas. nang sandaling manood ako kanina ng early morning shows christmas na agad ang tema nila, na agad mapapansin sa mga dekorasyon at awitin. nang kumain naman ako sa goldilocks ng sm city manila (masarap ang laing nila) eh christmas songs na rin ang pinapatugtog. pagsapit ng setyembre, sa pagsisimula ng –ber months, tinitimbrehan tayo na kailangan nang magsaya – sa pamamagitan ng paggasta; o, sa pagsasara ng taon, sa pag-aasam na matatapos na rin ang pagtawid natin sa alambre ng pakikibakang mabuhay, ay hinihikayat tayong panahon na para magpiyesta. ang kapanganakan ni hesus ay pagsisimula ng ating kaligtasan pero halos lahat tayo ay umiiwas sa pasanin ng hindi mabilang na gastusin na pinakamatindi kapag ganitong okasyon.

naalala ko lang na nitong sabado eh pumunta ako sa bahay ng isang kaibigan, isang kaklase noong grade school days. madalas kaming magkita-kita pero mga isang buwan na ring lingo-linggo kaming nasa kanila upang makatipid. magdadala lang ng pagkain at film marathon na. hiniling akong maging ninong ng pamangkin niya at bahagi nitong ‘kulturang pinoy’ na hindi natin matakasan eh ang hindi pagtanggi sa ganyang mga imbitasyon. naging malapit na rin naman kaming magkakaibigan sa pamilya nila, at itong babaeng kaibigan ko’y one of the boys na noon pa. paano ba ito? dumarami na ang inaanak ko? hirap na nga akong madalaw sila, makamusta at makapagbigay man lamang ng kaunti eh paano pa kaya ang esensiya ng pagiging pangalawang magulang sa mga inaanak?!

***

sa gitna ng pagsisimula ng kasiyahang obligasyon tuwing pasko eh pumanaw na si mang pandoy. ang juan de la cruz noong dekada nobenta na kinasangkapan sa pagtakbo sa halalang pampangulo namatay na naghihirap pa rin, wala ni isa man sa kanyang mga anak ang nakapagtapos ng pag-aaral. tingin ko naman aalwan ang pamumuhay ni mang pandoy kung tuwiran siyang inempleyo ng mga ganid nating pulitiko, trophy kumbaga (karpintero, alalay, alipin, goon? bagman? fixer?); ‘yon nga lang ang kalakaran eh sikaping ipakitang uunlad si mang pandoy sa normal na kayod upang mabuhay – pantasyang pinauunlad ang pinas. umiinog nang parang hilo ang mundo, ibinabalik tayo sa nakaraan, at parang nauulit ang lahat. malala pa sa dati. hindi siguro koinsidental ang naputol na reunion concert ng eheads, kontemporaryo sa kasikatan ni mang pandoy (beatles ng pinas!) at wala na sigurong hihigit pa sa pagpapahiwatig ng nararamdaman ng kabataang nasa lunduyan ng pag-ibig, angas, hinanakit, hindi lubusang pagkamakasarili, pighati at pag-asa na bubuti din ang lahat. masyado kasing napagod si ely, inunawa nang marami ang pagkamatay ng ina pero walang simpatiya sa kung siya lang ang tutuusin, durugista kasi! pero umaasam tayong magkakaroon muli ng concert at sana’y sa susunod na issue eh ligaya na! ito (dapat) ay para sa mga masa...

***
may masama ding balita ngayong gabi lang: tumaas ang suweldo ni gma! ito ang kukumpleto sa lahat! eh ni wala pa nga ang 10% salary increase kaming peyups employees dahil pinagtatalunan pa kung sa pagpasa ng bagong charter noong mayo ay makakasama kami sa pay hike ng government employees na nagsimula nitong hulyo. (siyangapala, nagiging pribado na ang UP) kahit napakarami namin at iisa lang siya, hindi pa rin makatarungan ito. taliwas sa rason na pag-agapay din sa mataas na bilihin ang pagtaas ng suweldo ng mga opisyales ng gobyerno, at sa pangangatwiran pang mapipigilan ng mataas-taas na sahod ang korupsyon, mali ang pagtanggi ng makatwirang sahod para sa gumagawa habang pinapataba naman yaong mga nangangapital na sa puwesto sa gobyerno. sa pantay na pagtaas nga lang ng sahod eh tagibang na agad sa mahirap ang sistema dahil sa porsiyentuhang pagtaas eh higit na lumalaki ang mga sahod ng malaki na ang kita, paano pa kaya kung makaisang-panig lang ang wage increase.

11:08 ng gabi
lunes, 1 setyembre 2008

Loss

Loss
by Ko Un

There's a trail uphill that leads somewhere.
After reading just a few lines written in an old dead tongue.
I have to head for that hill
wearing canvass shoes made from a grey satchel.
Somewhere a lost object is in a hurry to be found.

There's a trail uphill that leads somewhere.
The text on the next page of a book is waiting
and someone is listening there, having brought a dead tongue to life.
With the crunch of dead leaves underfoot
and the sunlight lingering on my worn clothes,
I sense that my heart is growing several times wider.

That object must be somewhere inside.
An unfamiliar grasshopper jumps, startled by a sneeze
provoked by the spicy odour of dry grass or fodder.
The first day is colder than the thirty-first,
yet the lost object is still nowhere around.

There's a trail uphill that leads somewhere.
At home, some elder's first death anniversary awaits.
Behind me someone is pestering my heart,
saying: there, there, or there,
but to me it's full of reconciliation; there's nothing there.
Ultimately, I suppose, that lost object will likewise be named in a dead tongue.

- Copied from Brick, a literay journal, number 78, winter 2006, page 29
10:35 pm
sunday, 31 august 2008

Naglalakad ako kaninang tanghali mula Kalaw patungong Quiapo sa may gilid ng SM City Manila at nakitang nagkukumpulan ang mga empleyado at/o aplikante. Tanyag na mall na itinatambad ang kanilang mga magagandang produkto’t salespersons ngunit heto’t wari’y mga langaw sa gilid ng daan. Tensiyonado sila’t umaasam ng trabahong magbibigay ng kakarampot na sahod mula sa dambuhalang kumpanyang kumikita ng bilyon-bilyon kada taon. Kapag bumibiyahe mapapansin ang sandamukal na mga patalastas na humihimok na magkonsumo, pakiwari bang kaya nating gumasta at kalakhan ng mamamaya’y (lalo na sa kalunsuran) mga propesyonal at may mga espesyal na pangangailangan. Ngunit higit na marami ang mga manggagawa at mala-manggagawa dito sa lunsod. Itinatago, tinatakpan, isinasantabi at ikinahihiya nga lamang sila. Kapag nasa MRT mga papuntang opisina na nangangailangan ng kakayahang dulot ng pormal na pag-aaral ang makakasalamuha. Marami ay mga estudyante. O kaya ay mallers. Pero nasaan ang mga manggagawa? Sila yaong mga nagbu-bus: na hindi aircon. Sa pagkain naman sa mga fastfood o may kamahalang mga restaurant napapansin ba sila? Ibig kong sabihi’y naiisip pa ba ng mga kumakain na ang service crew ay obrero din, kumikita ng minimum wage at hindi sapat kahit dalawa o tatlo pa kayo sa pamilyang ganito? Sa Makati at iba pang may mga high-rise sila ay nasa mga sulok, basement, ilalim, madidilim at masisikip na lugar: doon sila kumakain dahil nandoon ang mga murang karinderya de-tulak na tindahang nabigyan ng special permit o di kaya’y tinatarget na hulihin at kotongan. Ngayong marami ang construction projects ng malls at condominium, pati na exclusive subdivisions at leisure areas ay pulu-pulutong na pumapasok, kumakain, natutulog sa semento, nagyoyosi at umuuwi ang mga construction workers na palaging pinagdidiskitahang pagkakitaan ang kanilang mga kita. Naiisip ko lang ito, sa araw-araw na paglalakbay, maya’t mayang pagmumuni.

***

It’s been three weeks since the start of classes and I still have to fully adjust to a heavy teaching load this sem. Well, I only have two preparations now; but four of the five classes I’m currently handling is Communication One. Which means that their writing skills developed from word-building unto the discourse of the essay depend on me: in the first semester of their first year in the university celebrating its first one hundred years (because it looks forward to hundreds of years more. Hundreds of years of what?!)

I asked my students to write a thousand-word essay on any topic. Top theme is the adjustment from high school to college life. Their ‘new’ life is more of a fine-tuning from being the best and the brightest of months before to mingling with the best and the brightest of their generation. That this is the underlying thesis of the oft-described difficult college life gives the impression that they have internalized UP’s ang galing mo! motto. Magaling saan?! From a conservative position, isn’t this the vocation of the premier university, to be magaling? This stops short of the claim of being the best – pinakamagaling or pinakamahusay. Ngunit para saan? Para kanino? When you see UP graduates populating prestigious and leadership positions in the government, mass media, business sector and even non-government organizations, it is just being loyal to its mandate to prepare the leaders of tomorrow. It is a radically different problem what kind of tomorrow students now are on the order of inheriting. Also, what do we make of our university when you see that an overwhelming majority inhabits call centers or migrate to have a better life? Not a university for the Philippines, my isko! What about those who lead graft and corruption, corrupting lives as they graft their names onto our labors, our blood and sweat, our history? So you see, it’s not the question of being the best when this best is applicable to so many fields and issues that we cannot sift the UP in them except for, well, being a product of UP.

***

There is simply injustice in spending much money on centennial celebrations and disposing a small amount on the welfare of its employees. All the bombast will fade and sooner teachers and non-academic personnel will literally fade out as dispensable workforce once the celebration turns into a reflection on our difficult conditions.

***

Watched last week the i witness feature on three freshmen. How are their lives, what do they feel upon passing the upcat, their parents’ hopes and dreams, their friends and classmates’ reactions, and owing to the tv program’s mediation of their lives and the Filipino people’s, society’s take on their being iskolar ng bayan. The lesson inserted was “hindi hadlang ang kahirapan sa may talino at tiyaga.” We know that poverty is indeed an obstacle, but it is the perseverance to surmount difficulties on the part of the many that make them successful. But this moral lesson was fantastically rendered by the coverage on the young people’s first few days: on how chaotic life in manila is; the competition on the hearts and minds of freshies being fought by the left (activists) and the right (the rayadillo, rotc/nstp/cwts); how many students were shocked at the freshmen orientation program protest rally knocked together despite repressive measures (so as not to frighten the kids and their parents, so as to have a well-mannered welcome exercise, so as not to intimidate the officials…so as to present a ‘dynamically’ safe and wonderful university of the philippines!); on how one was surprised that there are truly students who own their cars; on how one can encounter a mad man by the name of Zorro who thus exemplifies how in UP the right to express and speak even when you are insane is held sacred (scared!); on how one can strike a balance in the preparation for the nation’s leadership; on how rich and poor students alike are brought together by intellectuality (that of course denigrates the poor because only the freedom from economic necessity enables one to be a scholar indeed); on how one freshie, coming from Palo, Leyte where Douglas McArthur landed to save the colony, proclaimed “I shall return!” These are sights and sounds beautifully presented by the special features show making a composite impression of the university as, without a doubt, offering the best experiences for its students. Surely, millions of our countrymen’s desire to have one of their sons or daughters or kin be a UP student was propelled to the greatest heights this centennial year of our lord u.p. officials, malacañang and the neoliberal order.

1:16 am
sunday, 6 july 2008

Barack!

Wednesday night saw me exhilarated upon learning from CNN that Barack Obama has just claimed victory. Now the presumptive Democratic nominee is campaigning to capture the White House from the Bush regime, arguably the most unpopular US president. I know that Barack and Hillary are both traditional establishment candidates in the sense that they represent the status quo in American politics, the same economic elites who had been dominating the superpower's political order for a long time. Though being racial and sexual subalterns these two show to us the sharp battles where the achievements of the civil rights and feminist campaigns of the past decade have entered the mainstream and are seized by the doxa. Remember how the fiery rhetoric and spiritual practices of the militant black church has been rebuked by Obama in his severance of ties with Rev. Wright and church exit, auguring an appeasement of the conservative disposition of a safe and state-supportive Christianity. Unfortunately for the rest of the world and the non-Christians as well as Americans who think differently, the Christian Right is determined more than ever to impose its self-righteous perception. Note: they are linked with big business, the oil corporations, are anti-Arabs and anti-Islamic, hideous of their anti-Semitic bent and are militantly opposed to democratic, patriotic and progressive interests.

Yet there is this powerful sense that Obama has tapped the veins of discontent with the way things have been going for so long in US and global politics that offers him as the solution, even a messiah. His rhetoric and charisma enjoin many to partake of his cause. Let us forcefully challenge that he bring into fruition his progressive calls such as the end of foreign occupation. Warning: he has just issued his support for Jewish security in a program of a most influential pro-Israel lobby group. Hope and dream then, however limited the possibility of positive change there is come November.

Image from www.barackobama.com/photos/

3:27 am
Friday, 6 june 2008

Crispin Beltran

I woke up yesterday morning and thought that Crispin Beltran was still alive twenty-four hours before. For many, again, the worst feeling: regret. Had he been indisposed to fix his daughter’s house’s roof, he wouldn’t have suffered from heart arrest and fallen. He would still be enjoying the domestication of the rainy season with his family, taking rest for the coming parliamentary fights for a higher worker’s wage. My dad, who used to resist my activist advocacy, admires the old man. He called me upon watching television news of the labor leader’s death.

Some commented that he shouldn’t have climbed up that roof. Many wondered why a congressman had to work on house repair himself. TV viewers saw his daughter’s house; we too had watched his poor house in Batasan, Quezon City whenever features of his simple living are catapulted for mass media consumption. Pinakita lamang ng pangyayari ang payak na katotohanang hindi nagpayaman si Ka Bel. Still others were disappointed that he didn’t die facing the bullets of this fascist government. Ka Bel himself idealized that he wanted to die in the heat of the struggle. It is not how one died that is the crucible of biographical judgment. It is how one lived fighting for the rights of the oppressed that is ultimately important. The last moment of our ‘heroes’ – Rizal and Ninoy, Bonifacio and Rolando Olalia – that turned them into ‘martyrs’ is just the icing on the cake, that flash of visual-aural drama which will soon be monumentalized in plentiful narratives of nation-building, identity-formation, community-creation…the never-ending revolution.

With a touch of starstruck hysteria, I remembered the time when I had a close encounter with him. I went to the Batasang Pambansa for a youth and student protest on education issues linked to workers’ rights. I rode a tricycle and there was Ka Bel who ‘tripped’ with me at the back of the driver’s seat toward the dirty House (of Representatives). He was not yet a congressman then. This was the man I had read as one of the progressive movement’s leaders who were imprisoned by Marcos, escaped from prison and joined the armed revolution of the peasants in the countryside. Veterans of the labor movement also intimated the painful moment when the Kilusang Mayo Uno formally and publicly divided itself. The 1993 Labor Day mobilization saw the ranks of KMU depleted with the overwhelming majority rejecting its rectification of economistic campaigns attached to political prostitution and military adventurism. This I learned years ago, in integration programs with urban poor communities and workers' picket lines. Ka Bel was among the many who persevered in realigning the worker’s movement with the general people’s campaign for justice, freedom, independence and democracy. He did not sell the workers' wage and benefits campaign. He was a genuine labor leader, not a labor dealer. Slowly and surely many rejoined the national democratic movement and earned victories for the people’s rights and welfare. One after another, brutal regimes are being toppled with the seeds of fundamental change planted for the future. Crispin Beltran linked our struggle here in the Philippines with the anti-imperialist struggles of people the world over. He firmly cemented the basic alliance of his ranks—the workers—with the peasants in the people’s democratic revolution. It is his abiding belief that this country will never progress without feudalism being ended definitively. He fiercely campaigned, inside the parliament and on the streets, against bureaucrat capitalism. We now observe with caution, akin to Walter Benjamin’s admonition of the historic-theological battle against Evil that “even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.” Ka Bel lived ‘til the end leading and fighting for the coming times when there will be no more exploitation and oppression.

Patay na si Kasamang Crispin Beltran. Mabuhay si Ka Bel! Mabuhay ang kilusang paggawa! Mabuhay ang sambayanang Pilipino! Mabuhay ang pambansa demokratikong pakikibaka!

Image from http://www.arkibongbayan.org/2006-03March17-KaBelProfile/pix2
/cb_PIC_copy.jpg


10:53 pm
thursday, 22 may 2008

hurriedly wrote and submitted an updated curriculum vitae this afternoon. our college in the university of the philippines, manila is calling for promotion. i rummaged through my memory and emails to pick things that would help in that government peon's wish of getting promoted...for what?...for a few hundred pesos i think! what have i done in the three years since i started teaching? now dude, remember even the little things that you do will be pondered on as points for an individual teacher's assessment. so i wrote: that i headed the poster-making contest in one department week celebration when we were enslaved to produce some cultural activity to match our deparment's name; that i served as one of the judges in a student short filmmaking contest; that i participated in a college orientation and semester planning in puerto galera; that i uttered a poem in a poetry-reading program; that i served as a reactor to a peasant youth group's forum on cuba and the philippines. i was tempted to include that i danced (yeah!!!) in the "not compulsary but damn you newcomers if you don't join and are not embarassed onstage" contests held every semester. not that i belittle these efforts but it seems that these are the only matters majority of the faculty can officially claim as creditable toil in the university. we are overworked and underpaid! how can we write so-called intellectual stuff when we are burdened by too many subject preparations to make, too many students to discuss with, instruct/educate, too many papers too check and too many grudges to mention! from insipid administrators to neurotic colleagues to grimy padre faura-taft-ermita. to top it all...we get salaries that compete with our rich students' snack and gimik allowance! modesty aside, i had written essays and in fact was able to get that refereed publication well before finishing my master's thesis but definitely we could do more if...--->>> we are paid like at least 20,000 pesos man! and teach 9 units with just 25 students at the most. you know, the objective condition of scholarship is free time. pierre bourdieu points this out with the meaning of schole, leisure or free time; meaning that we can only read a lot, think a lot more and write a little when we have the freedom from economic necessity; the usual wise is to finish the necessary work, find some 'raket' especially for those who have kids to feed and humanize.

3:49 am
friday, 16 may 2008

Saw CNN's recent report on disaster relief in China. The Red Army sings songs saying there's no hardship they can't overcome before distributing provisions for the residents of earthquake-torn areas. Inheritors of Mao's army are taunted by the global media for the ritual and the poor view the practice with derision as, clearly, their chance of overcoming the catastrophe is delayed by the poor soldiers' singing. This is what the people's liberation army had turned into: mere singers of the poor's despair, chanting pretend hopes for the people. But not absolutely true for in many places observers see and the villagers feel the army taking sincere efforts to work it all out. In one area the local communist party secretary's weeping was interrupted by an emergency call. He fled to the scene of relief operations. He lost his wife, kids and relatives in the calamity and is now intent to save as many lives as possible. A poignant occasion. Until when can we see such debris of 'revolutionary attitude' in today's China?
***
GMA's now offering rewards to defeat the New People's Army - PDI, 14 may. Bounty for the greedy military officials who would counterfeit results of the counter-insurgency campaign. More military violations to come for rebel soldiers, their families and friends, me, they, and you who oppose this government. It's the capitalist competitive trick: laborers and subalterns excel and do everything to claim that prize.

1:49 am
thursday, 15 may 2008

!

So excited to see the third season of House. A friend had just returned my copies of the third and fourth seasons so I'm just about to watch it. I bought Manix Abrera's fantastic Kikomachine 3 and Kikomachine 4. From teasing students on the pages of the Philippine Collegian the comic strip has now gone on to become a national bestseller, entertaining mostly angsty fans. I will read this together with Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, the American journalist's account of workers living the life of poverty in the world's richest country.

3:56 am
saturday, 10 may 2008

Gelacio Guillermo on Eugene Gloria

Hi people! I have read this at bulatlat.com a few days ago. The article is nationalist writer Gelacio Guillermo's reaction to a poem about him written by Eugene Gloria close to a decade ago.

Reply to Eugene Gloria

In this open letter, noted poet and literary scholar Gelacio Guillermo responds to a poem addressed to him by a U.S-based writer and professor named Eugene Gloria. Their “exchange,” among other things, tackles issues related to Philippine society and culture. Below his open letter is Gloria’s poem.

BY GELACIO GUILLERMO
CULTURE
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VIII, No. 13, May 4-10, 2008

Dear Eugene,

I came to read your poem “To Gellacio Guillermo in Iowa City.” (Literary Review, 22 March 2000) only this month when a poet-friend e-mailed me a copy. Despite the mis-spelling proceeding from mispronunciation of foreign names so typical among North Americans, I thought I was being referred to in the poem and would like to take issue with you on the question of the poet’s responsibility when he takes on the life history of a dead or living person as subject for creative work.

The trajectory of the poem runs along this line: ‘Gellacio’ goes to the “mountains” >> ‘Gellacio’ “renounce[s] the revolution” >> ‘Gellacio’ sweats it out under the “Iowa sun” (as a field hand?) >> ‘Gellacio’ as manservant to a devout wealthy matron.

For a poem this short, the time span is indeed long, extending down to the present (note the change in tenses). Only two facts about Gelacio need concern us here: first, he was a UP (University of the Philippines) working student from 1957 to 1964, for an AB degree in English; and second, he was handed a fellowship (he did not apply) at the International Writing Program in Iowa University from October 1970 to April 1971 and returned to the Philippines to resume teaching at the U.P. He kept to his post up to Sept. 21, 1972, when he decided to quit upon the declaration of martial law by Marcos.

Given these lackluster facts, the speaking persona insinuates that as a student I went to the “mountains,” meaning that I had joined the CPP-NPA (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army) forces in the guerrilla fronts. Now, in the early sixties, this idea did not yet exist, and when it did during the late sixties onward, there was enough movement work to keep me in Manila, at the same time trying to help my family survive the most difficult years of martial rule. In short, I was not our dear Eman Lacaba.

As to renouncing the revolution, nothing could be more preposterous, although for some former revolutionaries who did/do renounce it, this betrayal can be rewarding (they are given government posts, for one) or dangerous especially to those who engage in counter-insurgency activities. Gelacio during his activist years may not have been an efficient movement worker or may have caused problems to his collectives, but he had never, nor will he ever, renounce something which he holds to be the best that is happening in our country today. Without this revolution the Filipino people have nothing to live, work and fight for to transform society. This is the dream (as Lenin uses the word) for a new people’s history.

No, Gelacio did not dream “of corn and the language of Iowa.” My country has enough corn (have you tried Cornix from Vigan?) and enough of the English language (or a species of the world’s scores of Englishes) for bureaucrats to pen anti-people executive orders and for OFWs, the regime’s main export of warm bodies and source of revenue to keep the economy afloat, to follow orders from their bosses. If I had dreamt of a foreign country or city, it was Paris for too much reading (in English!) of the Symbolist poets of the 19th century in the poetry class of Virgie Moreno who turned us all into poseurs this side of the Pasig River. Yes, I’d been to the Louvre. Did you know that Arthur Rimbaud was a propagandist of the Paris Commune?

The reference to the indigenous groups herded like cattle at the 1904 St. Louis Exhibition betrays the continuing fascination of Americans for the exotic, and worse, their nonchalance regarding the fate of peoples subjected to imperialist policies of their government. Gelacio is clear enough about his anti-imperialist stand in his poetry to have evoked such a romanticized image of an early injustice against our fellow country women and men and children. By the way, there were no Manobos, much less a breechclout-wearing Manobo prince, in that menagerie concocted by American hubris. The “brindled skin” has a far earlier provenance: the black slaves during those centuries of slave trading were assessed, like livestock in the market, according to their animal strength and the gloss of their hide. “Brindled” originates from the late ME “brended,” a variety of “branded.” Vestiges of racist arrogance of the West die hard.

The speaking persona says she reads ‘Gellacio’ “in English.” If she were indeed ‘Gellacio’s’ classmate and that was a long time ago, she can now try reading Gelacio in Filipino because that is the true language of a Filipino poet.

‘Gellacio’/Gelacio can never be her or anybody’s manservant.

And, yes, there is no truth to what this illegitimate President Gloria here said last month in Hong Kong, that the Filipino people are “the most pro-American people, more pro-American than the Americans themselves.” That’s what she is, a Bush bitch.

You’re American. Speak for us in a true way.

The point in all this belaboring is, what drove you to write a poem like this, a direct address/statemental verse that’s neither fish nor fowl? That speaking persona (I am named; why isn’t she?) turns an actually existing person (see Poezie Centrum) into a creature of her sacerdotal, manorial, white supremacist fancies. You and I hardly know each other although it’s now so easy to Google/Yahoo! through the Internet to find out how we are faring in our respective literary endeavors. I did ask my son to access entries under your name from his computer since I don’t have one myself, nor do I maintain an e-mail address. I occasionally use any of the computers in the house like a typewriter mainly for encoding purposes. If you care to reply, you may use aliceguillermo@yahoo.com.

My best wishes to you and Karen.

Gelacio Guillermo

------o0o------

To Gellacio Guillermo in Iowa City.

Source: The Literary Review
Publication Date: 22-MAR-00

My window is serenaded by crickets.
I try to sleep through the sawing
of their cellos’ sad music.
Forgive me, I want none of it.

You were in the mountains when my father’s soldiers
strolled into our classroom to escort me out
of the campus. The army had infiltrated
our cause to pluck from our ranks their own.

You left before my father retired as a full colonel,
before the nuns knelt in front of the dictator’s tanks
before the Maneros and the Alsa Masa
scooped out and ate the brains of the dissident priest.

And when you renounced the revolution
and dreamed of corn and the language of Iowa,
I came back to the Church, and then left again.
Found true rebellion in marrying

a man who spoke Hebrew and wanted to take me
to Tel Aviv. Gellacio,
I am reading you in English.
Your brindled skin is sweating Iowa sun,

your hair in a tight chignon,
you, barefoot and G-stringed like a Manobo
prince in St. Louis one hundred years ago.
I want the Church to beg me back,

long for the faint tinkle of the hand bell
before the Elevation,
the monstrance gold as unhusked grain
drying on the asphalt road.

I want to believe that sentences
can hold bread in baskets, and multiply.
Let the salvaged, naked as drowned cattle,
find their way to my house.

Ring the bell and call them in, Gelacio.
Anything but this music,
all silence and this nothing music.

-- Eugene Gloria

2:17 am
friday, 9 may 2008

Approved!

The University of the Philippines' new charter is now approved. Fellow teachers and students have been thinking of what kind of new UP we will now have and serve. Teachers feel that with the exemption from the salary standardization law, we'll at least have a decent wage soon, with the possibility of a hefty pay later. Problem is that the university and the national government is not dealing with the issue of a just and living wage for its 'educators'. By circumventing the rule of standardized pay that it itself set out for public employees, UP and the Arroyo administration cut off the university employees from the rest of the poorly paid workers, effecting: (1) a kind of a labor aristocracy - the professors from the now national university are a cut above the rest (this is savored by those who want to separate themselves from the 'mediocre' and 'unintelligent' teachers from other state-funded institutions; consider this: oblation not humbly, nakedly serving the people but simply looking up, up and away from the people; this is elitist, (2) the admission that government pay is a pittance and the way out is to be exempted, struggle you must to free yourself from their chains! and (3) the maximization of earning money so that a fraction would be apportioned to your workers - this paves way for commercialization that shouldn't be the business of a public office. Dapat makisama ang mga guro ng bayan sa pagkamit ng tamang sahod kasama ng mga empleyado ng pamahalaan at mga manggagawa ng pribadong sektor. Ang ginhawa ng iilan (kumpara sa kalakhan) ay kalugian ng nakararami.

We are now entering a new stage in the history of the university and education in this country. Pundits say that if we have to compete globally, we have to follow the standards set by those who excel. Looking at various university rankings (Times Higher Education Supplement, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's academic ranking, Newsweek, etc.) one sees that the common denominator is the size of the university's endowment, the richest are the 'best'. Certainly, more money that is used well (apportioned equally in the democratic sense, invested profitably in the market sense) translates to better facilities and the hiring of excellent professors. Painful truth is that public universities that do not offer themselves up to the free market lose in this game. Observe how the good European public universities of old lose out. America's private universities are tops because they can: buy out 'star' teachers to the detriment of the rest who struggle to teach, study and research but are in the margins of the academic field; acquire huge lands and build more facilities; attract international students that they want and; invest a part of their endowment in business ventures. It's cyclical! Wealth and prestige translate to more wealth and prestige and the synonymous tag of being best.

This is the reason why public universities must increase their tuition. The state cannot sustain the education that its own people need. What more, state/public/government institutions are being paired against private ones because they are in a level playing field. Public funding may now also go to private schools for research and development, as is the norm in highly-industrialized countries. So you see, government play a serious role here. They are not soft and weak and irrelevant; on the contrary, they decide whether public and general good will be determined by the public themselves. They pave way for the development of the private sector, and also privatize public institutions. For the government to be pro-people and democratic, it must subsidize its social service well and enough.

UP, and soon PUP and the rest of the state colleges and universities must now utilize profitably its assets - its land, its facilities, its teachers, its students and its research output. Those who are all out for earning money and those who still have that social democratic and or welfare advocacy oppose the stand of the many progressive organizations and groups opposing commercialization. Truth is: we can only commercizalize, sell, gain profit, trade our resources and creative and intellectual output only with a pre-determined bargain: this is that our labor will only be exploited to produce capital that will in the end be appropriated (expropriated) out of the public good. Why is it that the products of human ingenuity, and in this case, time, intellect and labor-intensive research are not available to many? Think of medicine, health operation, inventions that will solve perennial agricultural troubles, prevent environmental disaster, solve hunger. Because they have a huge price! And they are out of reach of those who need them most. I may sound rhetorical here but I believe that before we get deluded by calls for wealth creation, we must answer the fundamental question of equality: for whom?

3:55 am
thursday, 1 may 2008

China's Three Gorges Dam

Watched this past weekend Discovery Channel's feature on the world's largest dam being constructed in the Yangtze River. Everything now is about China (toys and all overproduced stuff sent out to flood the world market and thus bring down less competitive or more expensive economies, Olympics, Tibet and the Dalai Lama) and the channel's presentation of the multifaceted character of the power generation project adds a more extensive look on that nation's economic growth. The Three Gorges Dam would supply a tenth of China's inceasing energy demand and would also be the answer to the need for clean energy. Being the largest producer and consumer of coal China is suffering from unhealthy air condition, acid rain falling all over the country and the threat of unbreathable air come Olympics. The whole world marvels at China's rapid capitalist expansion, with its people experiencing a profound change in their very being in and of course their outlook of this world. Bad thing is that the damming of the powerful Yangtze river has wrought destruction on its surrounding with heightening floods now burying villages and towns. Thousands of families now evacuate to higher places and millions move to farther and more developed cities as their residences are being submerged by the water held back by the dam. One city builds a wall to protect itself from the flood and many of its cultural heritage already submerged in the river waters. And one feels sadness as one villager paints his neighborhood which, they are certain, will be lost in the coming weeks and months. Others have suffered the same. One old man visit his village before it gets out his sight.

Surprisingly, ruins of ancient civilization are being discovered in the construction areas. Artifacts found are not from the same period in history and upon being unearthed, revealed more artifacts of earlier times beneath them: each new civilization built on top of the older ones! Viewing China then on a linear historical timeline graphs a forward march in terms of its economic development (veering away from its socialist undertaking that uplifted the lives of hundreds of millions) and a further reach backward to the expanses of its history as more relics of the past are being discovered and studied. Discovery shows one museum overflowing with found objects and a newer, bigger one being constructed to house more artifacts. Salvaging pieces of history struggles against the forces of their surrounding (that they themselves had caused) as the dam nears its completion. It is telling that as the government builds modern industrial projects such as the three gorges dam, it also builds museums, both testaments to the heights of the world's oldest civilization that is China. Both embody civilization and its dialectical feature of barbarism - the barbarity of neglecting historical and cultural 'treasures' and the barbarity of dislocation and uprooting that the poor Chinese have to suffer from. It is not only that things fall apart (Yeats and Achebe) and all that is solid melts into air (Marx and Berman) but that their entire cosmos is in danger of being sucked up to oblivion.

10:40 pm
Monday, 28 april 2008

Rabbit Republic

PDI had a report last week showing a Philippine population of 88.57 millions as of 1 August 2007. Currently, we are now the 12th most populous country in the world, based on a quick look at international survey reports on the web. Pinas is second to Indonesia's 232, 998, 000 (wikipedia; the southeast asian list gives a Philippine pop of 90m) and larger than Vietnam which has been historically more populated. This runs disproportionate to the world's (only) 42nd largest economy, though the traditional tally of gross domestic product does not reveal how the people really enjoy the benefits of their country's--their very own, to be exact--product and services output. We all feel it: the increasingly heavier traffic, noise, pollution and the more pressing concerns of mothers and children's health and the kind of future each one is going to give to the next generation.

I remember the Fibonnacci sequence lesson in math that shows rabbit population doubling with each pair. This is akin to the rapid growth of our population that eats up on fast depleting resources. A ballooning population does not mean that 'malilibog ang mga Pilipino' (it is a given!), it only shows that the government fails to manage its population! Yes, we need to address graft and corruption; yes, the problems of government inefficiency and inutility. But these are all tied up to the nation's population management program that largely concerns reproductive health. Up to now, the national administration only supports natural family planning method that is proven to be ineffective. The most seriously burdened by this problem are the poor, the overwhelming majority! Uuwi sa bahay ang lalake o ang mag-asawa, magtatalik, tapos magbubuntis ang babae kahit hindi na nila ito gusto at kita namang hindi na kaya. This happens because modern methods are not provided to those who need it most. Local government units are left to administer their respective constituents' needs; that is, promote the artifical and more effective methods with themselves parrying the Catholic Church's opposition. I think that the proposal to adopt the rhythm method is hypocritical on the part of the religious for it then allows sex without human reproduction, only that the biological limit--perceived to be natural and the religious/spiritual--is utilized. It is just the same - sex without babies. Sino'ng niloloko?! Only that this is just a myth, according to doctors, reason why our population now mimics the rabbit pack. The Playboy image should use the Philippine map instead on its succeeding releases.

They say that the nation's middle class is expanding, but only in terms of numbers because other government studies show that this class is gradually shrinking in proportion in the national total. Good news: the middle class now plan their families better than before, starting with limiting the number of kids. Bad news: the poor now rapidly increases its numbers faster than the rest of the classes and greater than the national total population increase. Visit the urban poor areas and you see that babies are born almost every day. They also abound with teenage moms and dads.

2:20 am
23 april 2008

Across the Universe

Just watched Across the Universe. Jen and I bought the musical a month ago when we went with Glen and Camille to the sultanate of quiapo to eat that quintessential halal chicken (we ate in the new eateries that don't have those chicks anymore) and bought DVDs afterward. The moview is awesome! I guess one is always under the shadow of the Beatles's wings even in watching the film four decades after the presumptive context. It will take time to think over the politics of its aesthetics as it just seems to have made the social and cultural temper of the times as a kind of set in the staging of emotional Beatlemania. But man, the visuals are astounding! One sees the paper mache higantes used during the anti-war protest that turn into carnival figures when the youngsters went into the haven of spiritual retreat. Particularly moving is Let It Be where Lucy learns of her first boyfriend's death juxtaposed with the murder of a black child singing the song amidst the riot. I Want You shows Max Corrigan's drafted into the war akin to an assembly-line manufacturing of youth into soldiers of war. Later on this would be defaced in Strawberry Fields as Jude's attempt to draw still life falls apart, strawberries marvelously transfigured to bombs pelting Vietnam. And there is direct irony here in that one understands that the specialized art of making still life runs contrary to the anarchic turn of events in the East and at home. And the soldiers do look menacing as they also look eerie in dancing the draftees into war with their masked faces. The boys then, in a kind of fantasy, bring liberty's statue to the tropics. Still another good singing is the chaos/fight scene (running all throughout the film) in Revolution where Jude mocks Lucy's involvement in a 'radical' group as he staves off any extra-personal/individual commitment. Come to think of it: the bastard leaves England to meet his father and got sucked up in America's quandary that paves way for the film's eventual unfolding. The story will remain in my mind for days.

5:17 am
16 April 2008

rap...takatak...wowowee!

Sa biyahe patungong Timog Katagalugan: palabas ang Wowowee.

Paminsan-minsan lang akong nakakapanood ng lunchtime tv program. At kung manonood ay paborito ko ang Eat Bulaga!. Patok pa rin kasi ang mga hirit ni Joey de Leon. Magagaling magpadaloy ng programa ang hosts. At nando'n din si Michael V, na medyo tahimik. Kalabisan para sa akin ang wowowee: sobrang ingay, sobrang likot, sobrang iyakan at tawanan at nakakapanggalit ang kanilang pag-alipusta sa masa para lamang makakuha ng atensyon. Pero hindi lamang sa mga mahihirap at sinasabing mga walang-pinag-aralan malakas humatak ang palabas na ito; maraming mga mayayaman at may mga naabot din naman sa buhay, gaya ng mga Pinoy abroad, na masugid na tagapanood ng show ni Willie Revillame.

Contestants nang tanghaling makapanood ako ang mga takatak (cigarette vendor) boys. Bahagi na ng programa ang pag-alam sa background ng mga kalahok; dito nga lamang eh medyo itinutuloy ang pagtatanong sa mga personal na trobol nila. Kailangang madrama...hindi ka lang dukha...dinudusta pa...'yong isang bata tinanong tungkol sa mga magulang - patay na pala ang nanay niya, ang dahilan: iniwan sila ng tatay, nagkasakit ang nanay at namatay... 'yong isa naman sinabing tinanong kung taga-saan siya, sumagot na taga-Tondo at kupal pang humirit na maraming tsismoso sa kanila...at ang isa eh hiniling na magpakita naman ang magulang na namatay na, kausapin daw siya, sabihin ang dahilan kung bakit sila nilisan. Magkasalimbayan ang extreme comedy at drama sa wowowee. Matatawa ka sa witty na hirit ng player at maiiyak din sa tila wala nang hihigit pang kaapihan na dinaranas nila. Sa talent part, kakanta at sasayaw ang contestant na paraan na rin upang ibsan ang mga hinanakit sa mismong sandali ng kasikatang inilalaan sa kanila.

Sa wowowee nga lamang, pinalalabnaw ang nabubuo nang emosyon ng mga tagapakinig at tagapanood. Ang mass medium ng telebisyon ay may kapangyarihang kumalap ng simpatiya, na maaaring tumungo sa pagbuwag ng pagitan 'natin' at 'nila'. Na sana'y hindi lamang pagbibigay ng donasyon ng audience/mayayaman at naaawang Pinoy ang maisasagawa. Ito kasi ay konsolasyon lamang: na ang mga nagbibigay ay ituturing na mabuti pa ang kanilang kalagayan pagkatapos malaman ang abang kalagayan ng iba at dahil dito'y makararamdam ng pagpapala dahil pinagpapala nila ang iba. Kasama sa pagbalong ng luha ang katiyakang ayos naman pala ang lahat...tuloy ang palabas.

Ang tiyak: kumita ang mga taong nasa likod ng palabas. Itong kalagayang madala sa nakalulungkot na kuwentong ibinabahagi ng mass media ay dulot ng kagyat na ugnay ng ating karanasan din ng pighati at kahirapan. Sa pagitan ng contestant at madla, wala tayong pinagkaiba. Sa isang banda'y maaaring pinanonood lamang natin ang ating mga sarili. Malaking negosyo ito! Pagkatapos umiyak, sasayaw at kakanta si Willie, kikita nang malaki, at mambababae. Alalahaning may apektibong dimensiyon ang pasismo. At siguro'y metodolohiya nito ang pagkudlit sa napakalambot na kaibuturan ng ating puso (at budhi?) upang pakilusin tayo sa iisang tungo. 'yon nga lang, ang tunguhin bang ito'y mag-iimbestiga sa malalim na dahilan ng pagdanas ng karukhaan? 'yon bang mag-iisa sa watak-watak na karanasan ng pagkadusta? O iha-hyper ang ating emosyon (galit! lungkot! awa!) para lamang sa lubos na kaluwalhatian ng mga kapitalista?

Wowowee, sino'ng hindi mawiwili?!

2 Abril 2008

EDSA 1986

May photography exhibit sa Riverbanks Marikina na hinabol ko ang last day kanina. Hindi naman masyado nakakapanghinayang dahil nakita ko na ang photos sa ilang mga publikasyon. Tinatanggal na ng mga manggagawa ang photos nang dumating ako. Palaging napapanahon ang mga eksibit na katulad nito, right timing sa isang lipunang madalas may pinaaalis sa poder. Ang kapansin-pansin ay ang focus sa mga lider ng bansa -- mula kay Macoy, Enrile, Ramos at Ver hanggang kina Cory, Erap at ngayo'y pinapatalsik na si GMA -- pagbibigay-kahulugan sa people power sa pamamagitan ng pag-aalis mismo sa taumbayan ng kanilang kapangyarihan. Habang ginagamit ang liwanag ng sining at teknolohiya ng potograpiya upang maliwanagan tayo sa mga makasaysayang usapin, kasabay namang pinalalabo ang papel ng mamamayan sa pagbabagong panlipunan. Anino o suporta lamang ang mga tao sa pag-aaway ng mga nasa puwesto; hindi sila ang gumagawa ng desisyon bagkus ay pinapakilos lamang batay sa ilang mga interes na sinasabing lantay na repleksyon din ng kanilang mithiin. At dahil sa 'official photo exhibit' ito ng Spirit of EDSA Foundation at EDSA Power Commission, makikita ang katotohanang ang opisyal na kasaysayan ng EDSA ay ang tema ng naturang mga gawa ng potograpong si Sonny Camarillo: 'kung walang labanan at walang bangayan, uunlad na ang bayan'. Sa mga litrato ng EDSA, pagsumikapan nating makagawa ng naratolohiya ng pag-aalsa. Mga litratong magsasakasaysayan ng pagkilos para angkinin ang kapangyarihang kamtin ang pag-unlad at kaakibat na makataong pamumuhay. Kapangyarihan itong tayo ang magpapasya at magsasakatuparan ng walang katapusang rebolusyong papatid sa normal na daloy ng ating madilim na kasaysayan.

9 Marso 2008

More Images from 'Maus'

Images from 'Maus'

Of Mice and Murder: Art Spiegelman's 'Maus'

Of Mice and Murder: Art Spiegelman’s Maus
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Pantheon Books of New York
Volume 1: My Father Bleeds History © 1986 and Volume 2: And Here My Troubles Began © 1991

Around mid-January I read with great absorption Art Spiegelman’s Maus. (Thanks to colleague Chong Ardivilla who lent his copies!) These are comic books comprising two volumes on the plight of the Jews in Nazi Europe. For quite a long time now I have been preoccupied with Jewish history. It is difficult to depict the viciousness that they went through; much more explain the specific ideological and political underpinnings of their oppression. Many who are concerned with the past and its representation take the Holocaust as the historical subject par excellence. There are scores of documents and millions had witnessed the genocidal campaign. Yet how can such a phenomenon be narrated and re-presented to the present generation when the suffering is said to be ‘unspeakable’ and ‘unexplainable’? This is compounded by the realization that a lot of those who witnessed were accomplices to the crime, ‘Hitler’s willing executioners’ according to Daniel Goldhagen. The Jews’ dogged persistence to survive bears out man’s constitution of bare life.

Maus is the story of Polish Jews who survived Nazi persecution. Vladek the survivor tells his family’s story to his son Artie, also the cartoonist (but not quite) Spiegelman. Artie/Art visits his father and conducts an interview for the comic book project that he is making. Oral history is rendered visual through comics.

Comic Representation and Suffering

The first problem a project such as Spiegelman’s encounters, and this is where conscious and erudite readers (as opposed to the mass) initially react to, is the representation of a serious and complex phenomenon as the Holocaust in a usually funny and flippant art form that is the comics. Here, drawings and text convolute to offer the reader an ‘honest-to-goodness storytelling’ of what happened to particular people during the most destructive war of recent history. I think a ‘high’ and complex history as that of the Holocaust rendered by an art form historically considered ‘low’ is sure to encounter disapproval. But the brilliance of Maus is precisely this: it struggles to tell a harrowing story (‘an epic story told in tiny pictures’ – new york times) in a form that reaches people who are averse to harrowing experiences. Comics and cartoons are usually for entertainment, almost exclusively tied to fun and leisure. It comes out of this challenge resolutely and critically affective.

It is indeed comic to see people imaged in animal forms: the Jews are mice, the Germans are cats, and the Poles are pigs and the others equally amusing (Americans as dogs, the French as frogs, Swedes as reindeers and the gypsy as a moth). Particular attention is given to the mice characterization. A Nazi-era German newspaper article given as an epigraph of Maus’s second volume refers to Mickey Mouse as the “most miserable ideal ever revealed” connected to the “Jewish brutalization of the [German] people.” The disease-carrying filthy vermin embodies the Jew, mankind’s plague according to Nazi anti-Semitism. A Jew is also a mouse in a sense that it is able to sneak out and steal food and fall prey to the carnivorous cats. Yet recall that the mouse type has always been used to lampoon people and criticize society. Remember Disney. Remember our Ikabod, Nonoy Marcelo’s naughty rat.

Another cool idea is the use of mask every time the characters assume another race’s identity. Whenever they are compelled to hide their Jewish identity, Vladek and his fellows wear Pole (pig) or German (cat) masks or even mouse masks. One perplexing example is the part when the cartoonist Artie is being interviewed on the success of Maus I, he and the people around him wear masks. Does the well-conditioned set-up of an interview reveal the artificiality of their identities? Are they pressured to perform racial categories as people see it fit? Why does this happen during the media interview, when the demands of commerce all the more inflect the reception of a very traumatic experience? (vol 2, 41-46) On page 41 of the second volume, one sees Artie atop so many dead bodies, his current success and predicament literally resting on the deaths of his fellow Jews. This is the burden of his history.

Maus is centered on Vladek’s survival but in each turn we set our eyes on sufferings from the people who have made the Jews’ extermination an unbreakable part of the campaign for European domination. In The War of the World, British historian Niall Ferguson pithily points out that one shocking atrocity of the Holocaust is that the Jews suffered from the hands of the very people who they grew up with, lived as neighbors, attended school and played with. It was as if the war ignited the hatred seething beneath the surface all along. Early in the story the Polish governess of Vladek’s household protested on the comment that Poles don’t need to be incited for anti-Semitism (37), later on this same governess rejected the Spiegelmans when they were looking for a place to stay (136). Spiegelman’s narrative art does not present Jewish condition in terms of the traditional rising and fall actions, with the climax at the middle; he imparts it to us in a fitful manner. We first learn of horror as an impending event, just round the corner, when Vladek relates the first time he saw the swastika (32) and hears stories of Jewish suffering in Germany, the pogroms, how they are forced to ‘sell’ their business and are insulted in public and how whole towns push them out (33). These are merely rumors that eventually befall their lives as unbelievably real as the renascent German nation conquers the east. People are licensed to kill Jews in the Reich, many were marched to the forest and there they were killed (61) and we also watched, as in movies, how creative the abuses were by making them sing, laughing at them (65). There was massive Aryan takeover of Jewish businesses (76) and they were relocated, with the spaces they vacated used by non-Jews for free (82); some, like those who engaged in the black market, were hanged in public to set example (83). Vladek’s wealthy friend Mandelbaum singularly exhibits the disparity from pre-war Jewish life as ‘but now, in Auschwitz, Mandelbaum was a mess’ with his uniform clothes and shoes too big for him and the beatings received from lost utensils (II: 29) Vladek also shares his observation of how one reacts like a dog when being shot – ‘how amazing it is that a human being reacts the same like this neighbor’s dog’ (II: 82) One feels sorrow combined with horror as the terror of punishment is revealed in the cut-out images of the chimney (II: 69, 25) and the details—discussed as though on a field trip to a heritage site—of gas chambers, the ovens (II: 70-71). Two graphic renditions of Vladek’s predicament were crafted creatively by Spiegelman, both dealing with directions, of how to move across space that rapidly encloses upon them: one night when going out to meet his friend, he sees Jews being beaten and he is confused whether to walk slowly or to run, whatever he does he will be attacked – he is shown standing on the star of David; past surviving in a bunker, Vladek and his wife Anja return to their town Sosnowiec only to ask, in a swastika-shaped road, ‘but where to go?!’ (125).

Racial Caricatures

Through Artie’s depiction of his father the reader’s pity on the Jewish condition is disturbed by Vladek’s attitude, the latter being the ‘racist caricature of a miserly old Jew’ (131). Similar to the old people of today who were hardened by war, Vladek saves on almost everything. He picks up the telephone wires he sees on the street (116), he saves the matches (II: 20) and gets tissues from and cheats on entering the hotel and the most embarrassing thing is when he returns groceries and buys out a refund by telling his sad condition (II: 89-90). Vladek gets to like his first wife Anja because she comes from a rich family and is always neat and clean with her stuff. He disapproves of Anja’s relation with a communist and insists that his wife must go her way (29). Oftentimes his second wife Mala, also a Jew survivor, is unfairly compared with Anja. In the concentration camp he is also averse to his Russian communist Jew supervisor. And to present the complicated character of racial tolerance, Vladek refuses to let a black guy hitch on their car, arguing that the colored man is a thief (II: 98-99). This merits the comment from Artie’s wife that Vladek’s behavior is similar to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. When Germany was destroyed, Vladek and his friend are ‘happy’ to see Germans suffering – ‘let the Germans have a little what they did to the Jews’ (II: 130). The common portrayal of Germans as systematic and orderly is also evident in Maus. They account their prisoners very well (59) and they want everything neat and in good order, even the details of straw beds (II: 67). Again, from War of the World the incredible thing about Nazism, the paradigmatic modern political system of our time, is that it was a democratically elected regime using the most scientific methods in carrying out its criminal program. The Frankfurt School would criticize this Hitlerian legacy as an inextricable component of Enlightenment, sort of a pessimistic stance of a civilization gone wild because barbaric at its core and leads on to degeneracy and destruction.

Bleeding History: Reflexivity, Historical Consciousness

This must never happen again! To me the most perspicacious aspect of Spiegelman’s attempt to tell the tale of his father’s survival is his reflexive mode. He even discusses his wife Francoise’s image, whether she should be a frog by virtue of being a French, but is drawn as a mouse because she converted, to please Vladek (II: 12-13). Vladek had initially remarked that his life would take many books to draw, to tell (12) and when the story progresses he cautioned Artie that his relation with Lucia, his flirtatious and not rich girlfriend, should not be included in the book – ‘it has nothing to do with Hitler, with the Holocaust!...and isn’t so proper, so respectful’ (23). Artie said that it would make ‘everything more real – more human’ but relented to his father’s request. One can grasp here that the problems of choice, selection, inclusion and exclusion in a historical reconstruction are the problems of history itself. In raising the universality of the Jewish question in the Third Reich, even those who suffered the most want to cut down the anti-Semitism issue to the ‘proper and respectful’ matters of Hitler and the Holocaust. Granted that Vladek’s ‘unserious’ relation with Lucia does not concern the theme and subject of the tale, his insistence on his own view of things makes the story a black and white issue of the good guys versus them the evil ones. The survivor’s tale is in danger of being a co-conspirator to/collaborator of an oppressive victor’s history. One does not cease to be triumphant because the other’s defeat is his sustenance. Nazism was defeated but the racist ideology it embodies still lives, not less in its own victims who, today, many of them, use their suffering to exact the same violence on hapless Palestines and Arabs. And they are being used by Christians who are themselves as much anti-Jew as they are anti-Arab and anti-Muslim.

Though the events happened in central and eastern Europe, the tale is told from the peace and quiet of America, where many survivors immigrated after the war. This is the reason why children of survivors, and other people who approach the Jewish predicament with a historical and/or artistic intent, now learn and understand Holocaust helped by perspective (distance). Artie struggles to be fair, perhaps reflective of the post-war (he was born in 1948) democratic campaigns in the US and elsewhere in the world and butts in question to make his father’s account more complete and consistent. Some Poles hid Jews at their own risk. One time he clarifies by citing historical research that there was an orchestra playing music while the prisoners were being marched, his father does not remember this (II: 54). Another, he asks why the Jews did not resist, his father responded by saying that then they were starving and frightened and unbelieving of what’s happening and that ‘the Jews lived always with hope’ (II: 73). On page 82 of the first volume, he checks his dad’s telling by maintaining that it must be chronological or else ‘I’ll never get it straight’. When he and his father are arguing about serious things, they decide to affirm forgetting, like the case of Vladek’s prejudice against the blacks (II: 100). He grapples with the difficulty of presenting their reality as comics: ‘so much has to be left out or distorted’ (II: 16). When pressed about his intention, he answers that he doesn’t want to reduce the work to a message and/yet later on says that people should have guilt; then he becomes smaller and smaller and ends up as a child (II: 42), probably as a way of showing how he shrinks from the responsibility of such a tremendous artistic and historical task. Artie talks with his psychiatrist Pavel and they wear mouse masks, here patently assuming a ‘Jewish’ identity under pressure and he intimates his father’s guilt of surviving (many survivors, not only of Holocaust, but also civilians who suffered from anti-terror campaigns committed suicide), his accomplishment as lesser than surviving (II: 43-46). Foregrounding the pain of telling the truth about oppression, he quotes Samuel Beckett: ‘every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness’ (II: 45). Vladek, in a later passage, notes that ‘nobody can understand Auschwitz’ (II: 64). Many have declared that the Holocaust is unrepresentable, that Auschwitz is the zero degree of silence and the dead-end of storytelling and history, yet we must struggle that such suffering must be re-presented. Only through an account of the crime in ‘all’ its dimensions can we arrive at not only a just punishment for the perpetrators but a defining judgment on history.

In a deeply sad evocation of Artie’s psychological problem, a case history titled Prisoner on the Hell Planet (100-103) was inserted in the first volume. This is a comic book Artie made on his mother’s suicide. With a strict and thick delineation of black and white colors and characters emanating like shadows, this particular work (which appeared in ‘an obscure underground comic book’, reflecting the repressed underside of history in the comics market system) punctuates, through an intensely personal approach, the tensions of Jewish collective memory and the private realm of forgetting. Artie blames himself for his mother’s fate. We see him being approached by his mother for the last time, asking for the confirmation of his love and later on Artie is seen in a prison/sanatorium accusing his mother of murdering (psychologically? emotionally?) him by committing the perfect crime (of suicide).

Maus symbolically moves violently against this murder and death. In some ways Vladek did not survive, Artie rants when his father’s returning Mala’s groceries (II: 90). Volume 1 ends with Artie calling Vladek a ‘murderer’ for burning his mother’s records. This we happen to know was a false claim, his father thought he lost it (II: 113). Volume 2 ends with Vladek bidding goodbye to Artie and calls him Richieu! (II: 136), his first son with Anja who died in the war. Tired from talking of their stories, Vladek resurrects Richieu and transposes the living memory of his dead son on to the still living, historically conscious and death-indebted Artie, Art Spiegelman.

To bleed history is to loose by taking out what is in you that carries life. From the vermin that carries death and disease, Art Spiegelman’s Maus is a supreme creative effort to circulate this life – from the father to the son, from one generation to the next, from the survivor to the challenger, from the Jew to non-Jews. On and on until the next catastrophe boils our blood and discharges our emancipatory intervention in history.

8 February 2008