As a tot she was

Surrounded by fishbowl silence

She had no horns

No wings, no tail

Just a smile nobody

Noticed while adults

Talked at mealtime.

She did not ask

What worth she had—

Who am it or

What is I.

When guests arrived

She gulped down food

Slipped out of her chair

And floated into her room

Like a buble and

Burst behind closed doors.

Now she’s an actress

In search of a script.

Sometimes she freaks out

Tired of her horns

Wings, tails, tired

Of bowing, smiling

For no one. Guests come

And do not wonder

Who she is or

Is she an it

A doormat, an empty chair

A wallflower or décor.

She still remembers to

Sneak out like a bubble

Float into her room and

Burst behind closed doors.

She is protected

By her fishbowl silence.

Written by Marra PL. Lanot. This poem can be found in her book, Witch’s Dance at iba pang tula sa Filipino at Español. The cover features a glorious portrait of a naked woman set aflame, or emerging from the fire, the heat rising upwards, fanning her thick hair, charring her back. Her arms are spread wide like wings. She’s a phoenix. I wish to be a phoenix.

This is one of the first poems I read in college while I was killing time in the old library, having failed at making fast friends with anyone and marveling at the variety of books, Alcott’s Little Women—the standard of acceptable literature in a Catholic school for girls run by nuns—nowhere in sight.

It seems fitting that I found this book, this poem, again in a book sale in the Social Sciences building’s foyer. I bought it for P35, but it’s certainly worth more than that.

College as one of the many books of my life. I’m almost at the last page.

1. “Catastrophe and the Cure” | Explosions in the Sky

My new favorite song.

2. “The Chain” | Ingrid Michaelson

So glide away and so be healed and promise not to promise anymore.

3. “Children of December” | The Slip

I hold every person I meet like a treasure. I defend the ones I love to whatever the end is. And that’s why I take it to you through the music ’cause when the music’s connected, it’s like everyone’s protected.

For everyone who was and will be born during the Christmas season.

4. “The Church of Hot Addiction” | Cobra Starship

Just let me ask you: Hey, have you heard of my religion? It’s called the Church of Hot Addiction. And we believe God has lust for everything.

5. “Expensive Tastes” | Cold War Kids

I refuse to take that job. Just because I’m poor don’t mean I can’t be a snob.

I don’t know how high the percentage rate of actual employment via handing company representatives a summary of all my work in college (real and slightly exaggerated in shameless honesty) and asking them if they shoulder a fraction of the tuition for an MBA. While I doubt the fair’s efficacy employment-wise, I don’t question its usefulness and convenience. Although it’s a testament to how Ateneo is so keen on chopping my baby carrots for me, mashing them until they feel silky on the tongue, and feeding me like the pampered middle class Filipino that I am, I must admit that I appreciate the powers at work that make job searching easier, even at the expense of physically learning the harder lessons of life post-graduation, I suppose. Hey, if you’re hungry, why slap the hand that wants to feed you without foxy ulterior motives? And even if there are foxy ulterior motives, they were already accounted for in my tuition.

At first I thought it was all very exciting, but after a bit of research and reflection, I now find myself stuck in a gray area. I made a list of the companies I’m interested to apply for. Sometimes I see potential, so I feel as though my life has some semblance of conflict-less direction, but life isn’t that peachy, is it? As someone who has survived several rounds of theology Jesuit-style over the years and actively pursued a minor in development management, handing my credentials to companies like Coca-Cola Bottlers Inc. and KFC-Mister Donut seems like a betrayal of everything substantial I learned from Ateneo. Of the Other, of vocation, of the marginalized, of structural sin, of dominant rationalities, of careerism, of tao para sa kapwa, of magis. Where does all of this fit in a career selling variations of the Double Down, pushing for more shelf space for purple Diet Coke, or promoting rubbery donuts that taste like sweet cardboard? After all that rousing, life-changing, perspective-shifting, and wounding education, do I really want to spend decades of my life selling sugar water and fast food?

I thought going corporate regardless of the product was all I wanted. To be financially independent and to maintain, at the very least, my comfortable lifestyle right now fueled my bigger life choices. Nearly three years ago, I decided to put my mouth where the money is. Now, I’m not so sure if the money is enough of an incentive to keep going at the rate I plan to go. I can tell right now, however, that it will never be enough to make me feel as if I truly lived my life. I know I still want the money, though, but something bigger, something deeper is brewing here. Like a storm. Like a tempest.

Most of my morning yesterday saw my whole existence and essence agreeing with something that Bobby Guev said: “Gusto kong maniwala na masarap maging Atenista dahil masakit maging Atenista.” And that was it. Powerful. That is both the problem and the reward of being an Atenean today. That encapsulated everything I felt, thought of, believed in, and loved in Ateneo as an Atenean. It isn’t just a place where I would spend four years of my life mixing irrelevant lessons with relevant ones. It isn’t just a name that will get its graduates to the top of the recruitment pile. It has become a thorn at my side, disrupting all my plans, changing the way I saw the world, wounding me into yearning to become more. It was a thorn I gladly welcomed, a thorn I don’t want to make another decision without. How do I marry capitalism with development? Profit with meaning? Earning progressively with living for what’s compassionate, what’s good, and what’s just?

In a few years, if I end up as a pliant hypocrite in charge of calculating the returns of offering seasonal discounts if a consumer buys three two-liter bottles of some fizzy drink devoid of any and all nutritional value, I’ll remember this journal entry and my Atenean education and open myself to all the shame of what I reduced myself to, what I allowed myself to become. Fried chicken and soft drinks will not become the stuff of my vocation. I will never forget the disorientation and enlightenment this wound has inflicted.

I don’t have any of the answers I need yet, even though I feel like I should. I don’t know where I’ll end up in a few months or what I’ll be doing, but I am sure of one thing out of all the confusion: Nasaktan ako. Nasasaktan pa rin ako ngayon. Habangbuhay ako masasaktan. And it is sublime. It is necessary. It is life-giving.

Where do I go from here?

It physically pains me to roam around Fully Booked, Powerbooks, National Bookstore, or any commercial bookstore because I have a habit of grabbing things I like, walking around with them for an inordinate amount of time while I calculate the figures my mother will see on my credit card bill, simultaneously padding my main argument that books are investments, knowledge is power, yadda yadda yadda, which are all winning arguments! For someone who has little to no upper body strength and absolutely no authority over any mathematical problem, I spend an incredible amount of energy and time frequently cradling ten pounds on one arm (usually the right) and crunching numbers inside well-lit, very enticing bookstores. This whole exercise is equal parts exhausting and devastating when I discover that I have five books in hand that I absolutely want, but I would have to shell out three or four big ones to get them.

The little bookworm in me cries each time. However, fear and trembling are suspended because the literature gods have found ways to bless bibliophiles with milk and honey a plenty. We just have to look for this bounty. And now we find ourselves here. Where do we start?

1. “In time of trouble…read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.”

That’s what Joan Didion said in her book, The Year of Magical Thinking. Powerful words to live by. Might be even good enough to immortalize as a tattoo.

The first step is to keep a list of books you want, which gives you an idea of what to look out for when buying books on the cheap. A wishlist of classic classics, modern classics, award-winning novels, books of poems, coffee table books, thrillers, foreign language dictionaries, compilations, and even hot-off-the-press books in case you have a stroke of luck. Doing a bit research and constantly updating yourself on good literature or whatever you like to read is like bringing your book to school like a good student. Knowing what you’re looking for helps you spot the good finds quickly. Consequently, you also know what’s not on your list, so you can devote more time to checking those out. It also saves you from spending seven hours lurking around like a vulture at a bookstore or a sale that sells used books, terrifying the little children.

2. Dig for treasure!

My mother and I both like to dig, but we dig in different locations. Her site is the department store, and mine is wherever there are secondhand books to be found. Digging through mountains of secondhand books is an inevitability as well as a skill when buying books on the cheap. Most secondhand book sales don’t give much premium to organization, so the books aren’t arranged alphabetically by title or by author. Some sellers would bunch books belonging to a certain category together such as self-help, coffee table books, fiction, or business, but most of the time, they just arbitrarily pile books up anywhere and everywhere. Digging, therefore, is a must.

Digging in this sense doesn’t refer to flinging the books you don’t want anywhere and disrupting the semblance of order in secondhand bookstores. One must learn how to arrange unwanted finds in neat hills (piles) or slide them conveniently to one side where they won’t bother anyone. This is also a lesson in not giving up. Just because you didn’t find anything interesting in the first five piles you dig through doesn’t mean you won’t find anything to tickle your fancy. It’s out there. You just have to rub on a little elbow grease.

It also might be good for you to bring a small bag, preferably transparent, to carry your haul around if you find a lot. If anyone asks, kindly explain that you’re an expert on buying books on the cheap, and you know carrying ten books around for half an hour does a service of disproportion for your arms.

3. Fluff your wallet.

All the secondhand book sales I’ve come across don’t accept credit cards, debit cards, cheques, IOUs, or your secondhand books (maybe other sellers). Cash is their medium of trade, so make sure to bring a lot of bills of varying denominations, particularly the smaller ones. The sellers might not have enough change for your P1,000 bill if you’re just buying a book worth P75.

Buying books on the cheap is also a good way of channeling all the P1 and P5 coins you collected over months into good investments.

4. Keep your friend close and your booksellers closer. 

In Filipino, we have a term for loyal buyers and sellers; we call them suki. You commonly hear this term in public markets where locals buy local, but loyal consumers can be found anywhere. Being all chummy and friendly with one or perhaps five local secondhand booksellers can work to one’s advantage. Sellers can usually put people on their suki list and contact you when new stocks arrive, reserve you copies, or locate a particularly elusive book you’re looking for through the amazing secondhand bookseller network. As with any relationship that involves deals, befriending secondhand booksellers opens the floodgates to a very beautiful word: discounts. Even when you’re not buying in bulk and especially when you’re buying in bulk.

Plus, booksellers are great people. They can help you navigate through their stocks and, more often than not, they’ve read quite a few novels being in the business, so they can give very good recommendations.

5. Bring friends to the watering hole.

A bit of generosity can go a long way for book lovers. Plus, it’s historically dangerous for one person to have all the power and knowledge, so share the wealth! That’s how we make the world a better place.

A lot of people don’t like to share the good, hidden spots they find to anyone, so the stocks can be kept fresh, generally undisturbed, and ripe for their picking. We can be selfish, selfish people when it comes to good literature at a cheap price. But that doesn’t mean we can’t bring our closest friends to our suki places, especially if they have their own secret spots. You see, with so few good finds in so few places, if you help brothas out, they just might help you, too. It’s also very gratifying to convert people who used to buy exclusively from posh bookstores. It’s like feeding cheap, equally ffective crack to junkies. It can get very hilarious. Win-win!

And that’s how you do it. Word.

Now, the question worth a million bucks (to me, at least): *pretends to have Jay Leno’s CHIN* What was 2011 like for you, Kay?

2011 was…

A very awkward year, to be honest. It happened in a fashion that  I disturbingly describe as some sort of second puberty. Show me a person who had an immaculately pristine and absolutely banging time during their formative teenage years, I dare you. This blog entry’s title basically says it all. In a nutshell, I felt like I was partially unconscious for the first half of the year. The other half, well, I didn’t sleep as much, but I ate too many burgers, burned too much midnight oil, counted more pimples on my face, let go of more scathing word vomit than I wanted to, and went on this lone wolf campaign (mainly due to stress, feeling left out, and a desire to experience more of what college has to offer) that tore down a few friendship bridges. It’s really only now, this very moment, that I feel like I can see how I’m going to blossom and get wings like a butterfly or a moth next year.

The events that transpired in 2011 made me feel like a late bloomer again. Formative, sure, maybe, but it wasn’t all fun and free flowing vodka cocktails.

2011: The unbearably nauseating dip of a rollercoaster. Stocks on a downward spiral. Bond yields spreading. A lumpier body that doesn’t feel like mine anymore.  The relentless struggle against senioritis. The year people like Kim Jong-il, Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs (and Dennis Ritchie for those who care), confidence in the euro, and my independence from a thesaurus all died. An unbearable confusion about my final choice of career and post-graduate studies that almost landed me in a guidance counselor’s office. Lost contact with a few friends. Ran into a bit of humiliating trouble in this incredibly arid and desolate expanse of land called What Used To Be My Love Life.

However, despite the wasted time, blank moments, uncomfortable spaces, and prickly loss in 2011, a few things stood out for me: My Problem of God in Existentialist Literature class, where I was made to feel like I had a brain the size of a chicken nugget at the mercy of Graham Greene, Camus, Dostoyevsky, Shusaku Endo, Elie Wiesel, Kafka, Nietzsche, and Sartre. An A paper on novelty as a valid criterion of Kuhn’s scientific revolutions. My birthday when I ended up crying on my father’s belly at the end of the day. Being able to listen to “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” by Stars and wearing a particular necklace again. International business conferences at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business. Acquaintances that became people I can trust and have a good time with. Meeting new people. Getting into more development projects that make me feel like I’m doing something good for the world. Making people give me props because of my pseudo-knowledge of stocks and financial commentary.

I suppose we’re all bound to have a worse year once in a while. How else would we know what a good year feels like? I did learn a thing or two from everything that happened and didn’t happen in 2011. Or maybe I simply re-learned a few things I already know.

• Family is forever. Regardless of those who doubt if we should use “forever” because it reeks of Twilight allusions.
• If one must drink, be merry in front of people you trust. Like family and your high school friends. Tequila can be wonderful.
• Keep your enemies away because life isn’t just like Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Why would you want to keep your enemies close on a regular basis? Are you some kind of masochist?
• As a corollary, keep true friends really, really close. Friends ask the hard questions. Friends tell you what’s going on even if it hurts. Friends are “Yes!” and “NO WAY.” guys. Friends miss you when you go away and tug on your sleeve to let the good times roll.
• I’ve become really good at cramming. Not just short, one-page papers, but major papers that make up 30% of my final grade. I know this isn’t an ideal lesson to learn, but it’s an arguably useful one. Grace under pressure.
• I’m always going to think in a development context. This changed me.
• The Philippine tax system is a frustrating piece of work. We can all abide by it like obedient citizens or we can be part of the structural change that doesn’t make a government that institutionalizes corruption, patronage politics, and oligarchies a black hole of hard-earned tax-payer income and savings without anything to show for it.
• As another corollary, I won’t pull a Mandy-Moore-in-A-Walk-To-Remember moment here and say we don’t need a reason to be angry with God, but I will say that we have a landfill of reasons to be angry with our government. This deserves a separate entry.
• Quoting one of my friends, “You gotta risk it to get the biscuit.” I can do a lot of things and be good at them. I’m smart. I’m logical (thanks to my philosophy minor). I’m highly skilled. I can be golden.
• It’s never to late to patch things up. Forgiveness is very humbling, very rewarding.
• Lastly, the people I loved the most, who I thought loved me or once used to, hurt me the most. I suppose that rings true in most cases. And it’s all right to take more time than expected to recover if needed. As long as it comes from me, from within, accompanied by that feeling of breathing clean air again. As long as I understand completely and sensibly why I’m motivated to move on. I never did like being rushed, but the occasional wake-up call is appreciated. I wanted to be okay. I’ve finally started to be.

A Twitter hashtag reads #2011in3words. My three words: Happier days ahead…

Don’t stop belieeeeving (Journey style)! Lambs become lions. Don’t inhale food. Rock red lips. Just say “Yes.” Big, juicy meat. Agent of development. Love is family.  Awesome Jesuit education. Ganda ka, girl. Go lang, go.

Divisible by 3. Allowed in this case. Happy New Year, Kay. Cheers.

• >:D<

The seals were not acting in a uniform way. They wrestled. They barked, they leapt on each other. Some would dive into the water and others would appear, shooting from the ocean as if falling from holes in the sky. It annoyed me, exasperated me, all their movements, without sense, all their bumping into each other, their flesh rubbing and undulating, all their noise. I expected these animals to be orderly. Their bodies were sensical, their cells and veins were mathematical. Was not everything, on a cellular level, well-maintained, logical and unimproveable, like a honeycomb? At some point, though, up the developmental ladder the order is lost and there is this, the bouncing and barking, everything foul.

An excerpt from “Quiet” in How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers.

How can the world allow all this? Allow these people to live so long? To travel all these miles south, to a place so different but still so comfortable, and in that place, meet again? To allow them to be naked together for the first time? What would their parents think? What would their friends think? Would anyone object? Who would plan for them? How many times in life can we make decisions that are important but will not hurt anyone? Are we obligated—maybe we are—to say yes to any choice when no one will be hurt? We use the word hurt when talking about things like this because when these things go wrong it can feel as if you were hit in the sternum by a huge animal that’s run for miles just to strike you.

An excerpt from “The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water” from How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers.

Pillar rubbed lotion on Hand’s back and he did hers. Look at him, she thought. His face is strong. What would a man do, she wondered, without a chin! The skin on his back was taut and smooth. His neck aquiline, if that were possible. There was, she felt, a world full of beautiful future leaders, each with a thousand fulfillable promises, in Hand’s neck.

An excerpt from “The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water” from How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers.

A study shows that what you eat depends on what your sex is and who you’re with. When no men are around women tend to eat more than if men were around. When women are with men they choose food that have low calories as well as in general eat a lot less.

The study also shows that if women are with a large group of women they will eat even more. So, what about men? The study showed that men ate the same amount of calories and were not affected by the size or gender dynamics of the group.

There you go. A bunch of intellectuals actually took the time and effort to prove that women really do eat less when we’re around men.

I couldn’t access their actual study. Detour: If we’re all advocating for knowledge, education, and higher learning, why do we always have to pay for academic papers and ridiculously expensive books? And pay in dollars or euros too. I’m a university senior in the Philippines. I don’t have that kind of cash for every article from a scientific journal I think I’ll fancy reading or using as a source for my term paper. Shouldn’t this literature, or at least the majority of it, be available to everyone, especially students? This world is so capitalistic and ironic. Take the fact that we have to pay more for organic food than the processed kind. Practically ridiculous. Maybe this is why the next generation of children are have more illiterates and poverty is still a pain in the world’s ass.

Anyway.

Back to women eating less in front of men. Why?

Speaking very casually as a Filipino woman, I think I should answer this in context first. Take, for example, the typical Filipino family gathering. The men usually group together with San Miguel beer bottles in hand and several packs of cigarettes to talk about business opportunities, the many methods to make more of their hair grow, politics, and a long list of other topics menfolk usually debate on. They would casually rub their round bellies, belch, and say they’re gaining weight, but body image isn’t a big issue with Filipino men. To them, I think, the more important thing is to be healthy. Low blood pressure, not being prone to diabetes, no heart congestion, and exercise to keep them limber.

The women, on the other hand, comment on the celebrities seen and written about on lifestyle magazines, bargain shopping, recipes, and the love lives of…well, anyone. At some point (and this will always be brought up), the issue of weight and body image comes up. Many Filipinos are often crass and unashamed to point out if one of their family members is gaining weight or has gained weight considerably. “Anak, tumataba ka. (Child, you’re getting fat.)” an aunt would say in a sympathetic tone as if it’ll hurt less. But it doesn’t. Others would follow with “Baka mahirapan kang makahanap ng boyfriend. (You might find it hard to get a boyfriend.)” or they would go on to tell stories of other fat girls they know or their girlfriends know. Like balm to a burn, they would offer all sorts of remedies, medication, and techniques to lose weight from herbal teas, surgery, a questionable exercise contraption, and diets that would consist of eating only one or two things, steamed bananas and steamed sweet potatoes. To be part of a culture whose food history has been richly influenced by the Spanish, the Chinese, and the Americans, I cannot even conceive of how TERRIBLY EXCRUCIATING a life lived on steamed fruits and tubers alone would be. CANNOT EVEN CONCEIVE OF IT!

So the chubby Filipino child who has become the victim of her or his aunts’ scrutiny would probably try to eat less at that family gathering regardless of gender dynamics. Less bread, less noodles, less meat, and less dessert. It’s almost humiliating to do otherwise.

But that’s within the family. What about dating and the prospect of procreation or marriage?

In any culture, especially more modern ones, gender dynamics is incredibly interesting when you put two strangers in front of or beside each other and witness them go about their date, particularly the first one. I think the most obvious reason why women eat less in front of men is because we don’t want to seem like we’re hogs, and we haven’t been fed anything tasty or fatty in three weeks. It is admittedly harder to attract men if I scare them off with the fact that I can eat a family-sized, all-meat pizza by myself in one sitting (and I really can). 

Additionally, I’m not sure if a lot of women take the time to consider this, but men can feel emasculated because of the silliest reasons. Girlfriends having better aim at target practice, wives being able to fix the leak in the water pipes faster, sisters who are more into WWE, and whatnot. I don’t mean to belittle that feeling of emasculation because it’s tied to self-esteem, but perhaps women being able to eat more is a thing to consider. Imagine if the Travel Channel’s Man v. Food has a complementary show called Women v. Food, and Adam Richman’s wife is the host. I wonder how dinner on a Saturday night would be like at the Richman home.

Or could it be that many women are appalled by the amount and quality of food men eat? I could eat a Whopper Jr. from Burger King and be full. My brother can eat the Classic Steakhouse Burger and half of my mom’s Whopper Jr. because she can’t finish it. That’s a lot of meat that would make a meek woman pass out. Maybe women just happen to eat less than men, not by choice, but by the fact that men just tend to eat more.

But what would it mean for a woman to choose to eat less in front of a man, especially if they’re on a date or some other event where social graces are particularly observed? It could mean absolutely nothing, or it could mean something when you pair it up with that classic nugget of wisdom people always seem to give: “Be yourself.” If I were to be myself on a date, I’d wear a really loose dress, order three or four of the tastiest things I can find on the menu, share them with my date, order two or three of the most decadent desserts on the menu, and share them again. On weekends, I’d order three pizzas, and I swear I’d eat up eating one (eight slices) before 6 PM. It has happened before.

Eating is a very communal, very human activity. We don’t only eat to nourish our physical bodies, but we eat because we want to take a bite out of life. If I eat a crouton in front of a man instead of the whole salad I want to eat, wouldn’t I be just putting up an act? I suppose it depends on the reason for eating less in front of men. Perhaps eating more would signal to the man that he’d have to earn more to keep feeding his woman, but I’m sure that’s not what men think of when they see their dates wolfing down two fish tacos in fifteen minutes, right? Right?

Meeting a woman who has an incredibly healthy appetite should be attractive. To not be afraid to eat heartily in Binondo or Tagaytay is a wonderful thing! In Barbra Streisands’s The Mirror Has Two Faces, her character said:

It’s such a relief: eating in front of a man and not worry whether he’s gonna get frightened or not.

Men, we womenfolk don’t want to horrify you with our appetites. We just love food as much as you do. The important thing isn’t the amount of food consumed, but the quality, the company the food is eaten with, and I suppose the courage to ask for more, share, and to allow food to tell other people about ourselves.