Like A Rolling Stone by Pasckie Pascua

The History and Story of Traveling Bonfires, sort of...

2009-06-22T02:47:00.000-07:00

Rock Journeys and Sublime Madnesses

[1] Waiting for Winter

The TRAVELING BONFIRES is the continually evolving brainchild of Pasckie Pascua—journeyman journalist/editor, poet, and events organizer/producer.
The Bonfires’ seminal brainstorm took root in a mining town in the ragged Cordillera mountains, far north of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon—where Pascua spent a considerable amount of his childhood.
“Bonfire nights were like Disneyland rides, but you don’t see neons up there—instead, we danced with fireflies under a bothered sky adorned with uneasy stars. For some reason, in a child’s world, those were the only moments of fun and frolic. And the people up there, tribal kids and folks, they’re family, real family to me. I didn’t even know that our playground was actually a river of mining refuse or cyanide wastes,” Pascua wrote in his semi-autobiographical novel, “Waiting for Winter.”
In early 80s, Pascua climbed up the hills again—this time, as news correspondent for a Manila-based newspaper and a UK-based news dispatch, and community organizer (teaching grassroots media). It was also the time of ceasefire (or peace) negotiations between the government and Communist insurgents.
“At a time when bombs and gunfire from all fronts—government troops, Communist rebels, paramilitary combatants—coexisted with thunderstorms and cold, cold nights of fearsome dark, bonfires were comfort zones. Bonfires got people together. We shared songs, poetry, funny stories and gags, and food. It was random, very spontaneous. Come one, come all.” Pasckie rambled on in “My Life as a Greyhound.”
From late 80s to early 90s, Pascua organized and produced “gigs” in urban areas, especially in Manila, under the Playwrights Mobile. The group advocated issues ie, human rights, streetchildren’s causes, women issues, workers, peasants, youth, environment, peace—all the while maintaining a “humane/concerned citizen” persona than ideological/radical stance.
Those shows were anchored by a band called Duane’s Poetry—which Pascua and friend, Rolly Melegrito—formed. At that juncture, Playwrights Mobile was renamed Traveling Bonfires, and has made the rounds of the capital city’s major rock clubs and poetry reading venues, as well as campuses.
Meanwhile, Pascua maintained that his organization wasn’t “political, but humanitarian” although he was very visible in activist gatherings that were sympathetic to Left-wing causes.

WHEN PASCUA moved to New York City in the summer of 1998, he brought with him the spirit and vision of Traveling Bonfires. That was also the time that The Bonfires saw a physical semblance of “organizational clarity.”
Pascua went on to recruit the nucleus of the Traveling Bonfires (and the publication, The Indie-NY) in 2000-2001. The first staff was composed mainly of young, newly-grad intellectuals from Cornell Univ, Harvard, New York Univ, and Columbia Univ, with “a mix of streetbred New Yorkers and young Filipino writers, artists and musicians who grew up in the Philippines.” In this group were the few Filipinos (and Fil-Ams) that Pascua maintained as close friends through the years, to date: Ruben Austria, Jason Baquilod, Gino Inocentes, Dinna Daproza-Rich, and Renrick Pascual.
“Pasckie wasn’t very comfortable within and around the Filipino community here in the US,” observes The Bonfires’ associate producer and Pasckie’s longest-serving assistant and friend Marta Osborne, a native of West Virginia’s backwoods whom Pasckie met in Asheville in 2003. “He always told me that he misses his friends in Manila, but not most of his kababayans here—that’s except when he talks about Ruben and the few others. I can even tell you who these friends are.”
In 2000, The Bonfires' mother organization, The Philippine Independent Communication, Inc. (The Indie) was formed—that was right after he severed ties with the Left-wing Philippine Forum (he was the organization’s volunteer grant writer and events organizer). The organization was officially established in New York City and registered as a nonprofit organization in Albany NY on that same year.
Speculations and accusations—mostly hurled against him—spread following his departure from the organization. His feelings could be summed up, in a way, in a song, “Looking for my Comrades,” that he wrote with Duane’s Poetry a few months before he left Manila for New York.

“I’m leaving my suitcase
Bursting with books of different shapes
But I have to unload excess baggages
They have become heavy to carry—
I’m leaving this shattered city
With my guitar and poetry
Going to start anew, but before I go—
I’ll pass by the café
Where my friends used to gather
Before there was a revolution
We’re on passionate discussion—
My friends are all gone now
They are all gone now.”

“As far as I know, Pasckie joined Philippine Forum as a friend, not as bonafide member of the organized Left,” ex-girlfriend Greer Kupka wrote in her blog, “Bonfire Grrl of Westchester Ghetto” in 2007. “Pasckie wasn’t part of the political or ideological war when he formed The Bonfires. I never thought that this guy was an ideologue although he can rant and rave all that Engels and Mao shit all night, man. The dude is a journalist and a poet—that’s all.”
(Kupka’s father once covered Manila as an Associated Press correspondent in late 70s. She also visited Cebu City and parts of Manila as part of her college thesis in 2006, as a cultural anthropology student at UC in Berkeley.)
In a way, Pascua admitted those observations of him, especially in his marathon radio interviews with Indie founding member Jason Baquilod in his “Pinoy Radyo” shows in Elizabeth, New Jersey in and around 2003.
“It wasn’t a good parting. It’s like spirit-brothers going on different, opposite directions because presumably formidable forces like political ideologies got in the way,” Pascua reminisced in a radio interview in Asheville, North Carolina in 2005, right after he was given community citation as a “Peace Warrior” by the Western North Carolina Peace Coalition for his work with “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park” and publication of The Indie.
“Technically, the first incarnation, in the US that is, of Traveling Bonfires, happened in New York—The Indie’s writers were all, or mostly, musicians,” added Kupka, herself a bassist for a Brooklyn-based blues band called The Jenny Fubar Band. Hence, The Bonfires—as a loose group of poets, musicians, and performers—functioned or existed as the advocacy/fundraise subproject of The Indie.
The group actively moved around NYC from 2000 until the latter part of 2002. Apart from publishing the fortnightly The Philippine Independent (later renamed The New York City Indie Rockzine; finally, The Indie), the organization also conducted weekly discussions with like-minded Filipino youth organizations in New York, organized film showings—aside from the usual poetry readings and rock concerts.
However, funding said projects was already the main bottleneck. The main source of the organization’s funding mainly came from the membership’s individual contributions and the small amount that it earns through the “benefit gigs” and concerts. So to complement media work and subsequently raise fund to sustain its existence, The Bonfires continually produced and organized ensemble, multi-band concerts in Manhattan—including gigs and shows (mostly collaborations with other organizations) in the Lower East Side, especially at the famed punk dive CBGB, Bowery Ballroom, Acme Underground, The Knitting Factory, C-Note, and in campuses like Queens College and Columbia University—until 2001.

LOOKING BACK, the “American mainland brainstorm” came into being when Pascua attended a national gathering of Filipino-American students in Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1999—as a volunteer staff for Philippine Forum.
After a week-long assimilation in the conference, he came up with a theoretical premise for ethnic minority/community organizing: The need to consolidate the growing population of ethnic Filipino youths in the US into a unified collective that addresses relevant sociocultural issues in the mainland and in the Philippines. At that time, he was also a Correspondent (arts/culture) for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the largest daily newspaper in the Philippines; and was co-editing a mainstream Filipino newspaper in Manhattan, the Headline Philippines.
The Bonfires and The Indie’s main objective or vision/mission revolves around consolidation of the huge but largely fragmented Filipino-American community in metropolitan New York and North Jersey. Central focus was the youth sector (35 and downwards). Among others, it also helped provide educational resources and opening up venues to assist progressive Filipino-American community and cultural workers in expanding and deepening their cultural and historical knowledge and analytical perspective of the sociopolitical-cultural situation in the Philippines.
Moreover, the organization sponsored (and co-sponsored) and/or initiated events and productions that offer a diverse array of cultural expressions through music, poetry, and film. The Bonfires and The Indie sponsored film showings on Philippine situationers in various campuses, in example, the US premier of “Batas Militar,” a documentary about the military rule under the late Ferdinand Marcos, at Columbia University’s Barnard College.
As a publication, The Indie started out as a youth-based community tabloid-styled newsmagazine. Main focus of readership was the young Filipino population in both US coasts, emanating from New York City.

FOLLOWING the unfortunate event that shook New York City in Sept 11, 2001, Pascua relocated the Traveling Bonfires to western North Carolina, using the mountain “artists/free spirit” city of Asheville, as base of operation. The sorry situation in NY and NJ cast a dark cloud of uncertainty on most of the membership; some lost day jobs, some moved to other states. More importantly, the emotional and economic chaos at that time cast a huge shadow of doubt concerning The Bonfires’ future in the Big Apple.
In North Carolina, Pascua reformatted The Bonfires/The Indie as a community arts/culture organization and publication, catering not only to Filipinos and other ethnic groupings in America, but more importantly, it now serves a wider “all-peoples” readership/audience.
From 2001 to 2007, The Bonfires built and sustained persistent but consistent activity in Asheville, and neighboring towns and cities. The organization relentlessly booked local, struggling acts and bands in Asheville’s diverse, actively artistic/musical community; Bonfires gigs happened at an average of 5 or 6 shows a month, or more.
In 2004, the organization organized and produced an unprecedented 16-weekends spring to end of fall “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park” concerts in downtown Asheville—converging close to a hundred bands, performers, poets from all over NC and from as far as New York City, Boston, and Texas. The program also attracted performers from Haiti, Congo, Japan, and France.
In between, Pascua and Osborne collaborated in publishing two other publications by the latter part of 2006—Wander, (a literary reading) and Blue Sky Asheville, under Loved by the Buffalo Publications.
In Oct 2 2004, a 7-band “Bonfires for Peace” was also held in Baltimore’s sprawling Leakin Park. This spring/summer/fall program carried on until 2007, when Pascua left North Carolina for Southern California.
In the fall of 2008, Pascua—with Osborne and local peace activist Leonard Baric—organized the first “Bonfires for Peace” in the West Coast. Co-sponsored by the Long Beach Peace Network, the event, held at state park of Huntington Beach, had the support of local chapters of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, and ANSWER (Act Now To Stop War & End Racism).
Meanwhile, Pascua—as expected, “resurrected his spirits” in his new neighborhood, 4th street in Long Beach, Los Angeles County. The Bonfires’ two “small-venue gigs”—Vagrant Wind and Wander Women—are mostly held at Viento y Agua Café & Gallery (which, easily exudes the same aura of Asheville coffeeshops). The Indie has also been reborn as Wander.

[2] A LIFE AS GREYHOUND:
Asheville, and elsewhere on the road

AFTER A few months (to almost a year) of hiatus in the backwoods of Weaverville (20 mins north of downtown Asheville) and Wilmington (coastal city, 8 hrs beyond) and quiet interface with Asheville’s aesthetically/artistically-diverse but dominantly white middle class downtown community, plus a number of travels—Pascua finally decided to republish The Indie as a “Western North Carolina rag with choice outlets in major US cities” in July 2002.
The Indie’s relocation to the South was not an impulsive decision. Even during the “relatively quieter” times when Pascua stayed mostly cloistered and secluded in Weaverville, The New York City Indie Rockzine was still being printed (in Asheville) and distributed in a number of outlets in downtown Manhattan. This, while he regularly submitted articles to at least two WNC/Asheville-based magazines, Rapid River and Adventure of the Smokies. He remembered engaging The River’s publisher Dennis Ray in long conversations during those days.
At that same span of time, Pascua kept his usual maddeningly relentless pace. He was flying to and from New York City (and elsewhere) at an average of twice a month—to expand his network in other cities/states, and to co-supervise Traveling Bonfires gigs at the CBGB, among other venues, with bosom buddy Renrick Pascual of the NY/NJ-based Brown Culture. (Pascual is a founding member of The Indie in New York.)
In between all these, Pascua maintained a quiet but focused relationship with his non-Filipino friends in the Upper West Side and Westchester. At that time The Indie/The Bonfires’s “office” was traveling with him via a frantic, nomadic drift—to his brother’s Jersey shore house near Atlantic City, Pascual’s apartment in Heights, Jersey City, an attic perch in a residential house in a Jewish community in Great Neck, Long Island near Nassau, an old barnhouse/cabin in Weaverville NC, “his spirit-family’s treehouse” in Oklahoma or Arizona, and his many “couches and crash pads” on the road.
“In you ask me how Pasckie manages to jump from here to there—across state lines, by car, Greyhound, airplanes, trains—I don’t know,” Pascua’s longtime friend, roommate, and assistant Marta Osborne said. “When he says in his poem, all houses are mine, all couches are mine—you better believe it, that’s true.”
“This man just traveled a day from North Carolina to New York City to watch a one-hour show,” Pascua’s “kindred spirit” friend Ruben Austria told an audience at C-Note in downtown Manhattan before a performance (with family act, Mambola) in the winter of 2005. “He booked this show and he’s here to watch us play. Then, he’ll be riding back to North Carolina on a Greyhound tomorrow. He’s a crazy man!”

A MAJOR surgery in New Jersey (to remove a potentially-deadly lump on his right lung) in Nov of 2000 slowed Pascua down—but only for two weeks. But it was 9/11 that finally stopped him, temporarily that is, from savoring his crazy, almost-impulsive traveling high. The twice-a-month Asheville-NYC-elsewhere flights came to an abrupt stop.
He missed the Sept 11 / World Trade Center tragedy by a day. He attended a Brown Culture/Indie Productions hook-up concert in Hoboken NJ on Sept 8, Saturday. Instead of flying back to North Carolina on Sept 11 (as he previously planned) and stay two more days in NYC to give more time to hang out with friends and bands who flew from Los Angeles and San Francisco to join the concert, he decided to head back to Asheville/Weaverville the following day, Sept 9, “because I was already tired.” He was already in Weaverville—”mapping out his next plane trip to Seattle”—when that tragic Tuesday morning shocked the world.
“I missed the shit by a mouseclick,” he wrote in “My Life as a Greyhound,” referring to an online ticketing service by Priceline.com where he usually booked his flights.
A month or so after 9/11, he gave up Weaverville, took a Greyhound to West Palm Beach, Florida and, for almost a month “ruminated, pondered” his future in America. That was the time, via the internet, when he “rediscovered” Asheville’s downtown community, which he called, at that time, “a more sedate, laid-back small-town East Village in the Appalachians with a potential Big Apple bite.” (Before that, his usual encounters with downtown Asheville was a few occasional coffee time at Malaprop’s Café & Bookshop, while “silently marveling at this wonderful humanity... and white women with voluptuous hips and weird dreadlocks.”)
After about two weeks in West Palm Beach, he took a Greyhound to Asheville (with two-day layover in Columbia, South Carolina), and then deposited himself in cheap motels along Tunnel Road—and started mixing himself up with downtown’s neo-hippie, new ager humanity.
A few weeks after, he shared a trailer home with a local activist, Jason Klein (whom he met at a WNC Peace Coalition meeting) in nearby Fairview town; then he moved to a more secluded retreat up in Candler NC (aptly called Hidden Meadow), about 15-20mins off downtown, and tried to usher business collaboration around The Indie/The Bonfires with his housemates Elizabeth Mason and Jenni Roberts.
At that time, The Indie/Asheville’s “breakin’ cultural barriers” persona was already beginning to take shape—although his potential business partners, traditional, born-and-bred Southern spirits, couldn’t fully grasp his quixotic brainstorm.
“We loved him, we took care of him—whatever he did, we believed in him,” said Mason. “But there were moments when we couldn’t understand his vision… He worked all night, all day—winters, summers. He created many friends in downtown and in other towns here more than I did in my entire life. He never failed to fascinate us, but still—it’s hard to understand what it was he wanted to gain or pursue.”
Pascua, at that point, went deeper downtown and mixed up with Asheville’s “crazy, weird, beautiful souls” and made his presence felt. He read poems in the most widely-attended open mics, volunteered time with nonprofit organizations, attended meetings by activist organizations. The physical reality of The Indie started when he volunteered to help a small group of young downtown activists, led by Ali Morris and few student-leaders at Asheville High, in publishing a ‘zine/newsletter (The Transmitter)—but the ragtag 5x8.5 semi-scrawled/semi-Kinko’s printed/photocopied project fizzled out after only two or three issues.
However, that “bottled passion, aborted kick,” in a way, jumpstarted The Indie’s rebirth in Asheville.

A YEAR OR so before Pascua flew to New York City (in 1998), he co-published, edited and/or guided seven “cutting edge, pulp-oriented” publications in Manila; two of which were under the huge and influential mass-market/publishing empire of the Spanish-Filipino family of Roces-Guerrero.
Pascua begun his journalism career as a 14-year-old cub reporter/proofreader cum “manual folder” (tagatupi ng dyaryo)/translator (English news to Tagalog texts) for a (Quezon) City Hall-distributed newsweekly (The Metropolitan Mail) by Jose Burgos, Sr., and eventually for Burgos’ son, Joe Jr.’s “guerrilla-like, impoverished but defiantly courageous” newspaper called We Forum (later, Malaya/The Free).
The late Jose “Joe” Burgos Jr. was a fiery and daring workhorse who dared challenge the Marcoses’ genocidal twenty-year military rule. (The Roces-Guerrero’s patriarch, Joaquin “Don Chino” Roces, was one of Joe’s most ardent and loyal supporters and mentors.)
Pascua considers Burgos as the man who imbued on him the “gruff wisdom and inner beauty of street-life journalism” and “defiantly stubborn, improvisational publishing”—moving from one spot to the other, ignoring financial difficulties and sociopolitical threats in favor of steely resolve and focused, consistent determination to come out, no matter what.
The Indie’s brief life in New York City wasn’t the “kind of relevant, timely, non-partisan, non-political but socially/humanity-committed effort” that Pascua first envisioned. It wasn’t near Joe Burgos’ newspapering spirit—a belief that Pascua held on, maintaining that Burgos “wasn’t an ideologue, he was a committed newspaperman who served the people.” The Indie was viewed (by a very suspecting mainstream Filipino community in NY, or even in Asheville) as a staunchly political/ideological soundboard, which bothered Pascua.
“At a time when going against the grain meant you are leftist, I was bunched with the rest of my activist friends as Communist, which I am not—and will never be,” he wrote in one of his column pieces for The Indie. “I mean, Jesus Christ went against the current, he was a subversive community organizer. Was he a Communist, as well?”

NEEDLESS TO say, even after the first “official”issue of The Indie in Asheville was published in July of 2002, Pascua was still traveling (mostly by Greyhound and car) to Wilmington where he maintained a relationship until summer of 2004. After a year of continuous publication, The Indie stopped in July 2003, because, among other reasons, the “business hook-up” in Candler did not materialize or continue and he was losing money, small day jobs weren’t enough, financial support was sporadic.
“Checks came through the mail, plane tickets—he just picked them up in airport check-ins. Boxes of care packages came via DHL right on the front door… until one day, he just said, no more help coming. I think they need to see me again… And then he just left,” Jenni Roberts recalled. “Then one day, he emailed saying he’s in Oklahoma or Arizona and he wanted me to call him Rain or a-ga-na, not Pasckie anymore…”
For almost six months (from July 03), Pascua again pondered life and living. He traveled back to his brother’s house in south NJ, “loitered” in friends houses and apartments in Albany NY, Westchester, Manhattan, Philadelphia, Oklahoma, Arizona—until he decided to head back to Asheville in late Sept of that year. He briefly stayed in a friend’s trailer home in Oteen to draw his next plans, and then by October, finally secured a three-room-in-one basement office near Charlotte Street, few blocks from the heart of downtown Asheville.

IN NOVEMBER of 2003, Pascua made two road trips in two weeks—on separate car drives, with Indie contributing writer (now, creative consultant) Matthew Mulder and friend Sarah Benoit—to New York City “to feel the one missing working vibe that’d eventually connect The Indie/The Bonfires’ romantic life in Asheville with the upfront business tact of New York City… aside from attempting to bridge (my) cultures together into one colorless humanity.” It was the first time that he “interfaced, linked up” his “trusted American friends with his trusted Filipino friends”—a silent but calculated attempt at “breakin’ barriers, building bridges” (Mulder suggested the last two words).
He introduced Mulder to Ruben Austria in The Bronx. (Austria, a second-generation Filipino-Irish/American and another Indie founding member, remains as Pascua’s most-admired friend/adviser.) Along with another Indie oldtimer Jason Baquilod (a third generation Pinoy)—Pascua, Mulder, and Renrick Pascual—shared Filipino dinner at a Filipino restaurant in Queens. That was a day or two after Pascua booked (or “maneuvered”) an all-white/Asheville-based rock band, Kerouac or The Radio, in a dominantly 10-band Pinoy rock showcase at the CBGB, produced and organized by Pascual’s Brown Culture.
Kerouac or The Radio’s spot in that concert marked the first time that purely American band was included in a “major Pinoy rock scene event in New York” since a more-organized Filipino-American rock scene started and gained ground in Queens and downtown Manhattan in late 1998 until 9/11. Through the joint efforts of Pascual, Pascua, Baquilod, and longtime Indie/Bonfires supporters Gino Inocentes, Ryan Paayas, and other independent Fil-Am producers and bands in NY and NJ, Pinoy rock scene was hot, active and consistent. All along these, The New York City Indie Rockzine—as well as, Baquilod’s “Pinoy Radyo” shows in Baruch College (later, in Elizabeth, NJ)—assumed the ever-willing role of “underground mouthpiece.”

ALMOST TWO years later, The Bonfires successfully mixed Pinoy and American acts/bands in The Bonfires’ monthly “Vagrant Wind” (renamed from, “breakin’ barriers”) concerts in Baltimore and Washington DC. He also sustained Vagrant Wind shows in Baltimore’s Hampden and Fells Point neighborhoods (with local poet Julie Fisher) and DC’s Adams Morgan community (with Laurie Blair and her organization, Poetry Guerrilla Insurgency). Aside from Fisher, another activist friend, Lacy MacAuley (in Alexandria, Virginia), and the family of veteran newspaperman Tim Wheeler and artist Daniel Stuelpnagel, provided him accommodation and networking support at those times.
In 2005, Pascua introduced Houston-based multiracial act, Kayumanggi, in one of the The Bonfires’ “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park” public concerts in Asheville. Fronted by a Filipino, Kokoy Severino, the band performed songs with Tagalog lyrics, interspersed indigenous Filipino musical instruments (kubing/windpipe, kulintang/brass gong) with electric guitars and drum kit, and had Americans and Mexicans as members. All these breakthroughs clearly served Pascua’s “harmony in diversity” vision.
Slowly but surely, the continued publication of a globally-oriented Indie and the activation/sustainability of a multiracial Traveling Bonfires loom in the horizon. Pascua—who, in the past six or seven years, has maintained and sustained relationships with few, selected American friends (Long Island, Westchester), Filipino-American buddies (uptown Manhattan), Filipino “comadres” and “compadres” (Queens, Jersey City)—never had success hooking up both cultures. His previous attempts were often dismissed by some of his Filipino friends with gnawing indifference and quiet rejection. (“Pasckie, the Pinoy dude who dated only American women”/ “What are you doing in a white community, of all places?”) This, although he always, consistently, passionately reiterate that he “does not do superficial, one-time cocktail-level or party introductions” between and among cultures. Instead, he continually pushed for “a realizable, concrete synergetic relationship” despite the physical or cultural differences.
Hence, in Asheville, Pascua reformatted The Indie as an a ‘zine-oriented rock/pop culture rag that caters not only to Filipinos and other ethnic groupings in America, but more importantly, it now serves a wider “all-peoples’s” readership. As The Indie sailed along with its “open mic” aura—alongside consistent Traveling Bonfires shows in mostly downtown clubs and cafes—support and respect were generated.
Among other reasons, Asheville, North Carolina does not have a huge Filipino community that The Indie could communicate with; hence, its existence in a predominantly white community under the original “for the Filipino community” format proved futile and nonsensical.
Secondly, after the September 11 tragedy, Pascua felt that The Indie should attempt to move out of the community/ethnic exclusivity that most non-American groupings chose to maintain. He felt that his brainstorm should break cultural barriers and share sociopolitical realities with other (ethnic) communities and the American mainstream, at large. Moreover, he believed that a wider perspective/understanding of global issues (ie business monopoly, international terrorism, etc) from the standpoint of other cultural realities all over the world (which commune in America) should be put to the open. Hence, The Indie offers that alternative.
Until Pascua paused The Indie’s publication in Asheville in the fall of 2007, the paper maintained writers and correspondents from various cities in the US—as well as in the Philippines, Italy, France, Wales, and Ireland.
In the fall of 2008, the first “Bonfires for Peace” in the West Coast took place in Huntington Beach. Co-sponsored by the Long Beach Peace Network, the event had the support of local chapters of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, and ANSWER (Act Now To Stop War & End Racism).
The Bonfires’ two “small-venue gigs”—Vagrant Wind and Wander Women—were mostly held at Viento y Agua Café & Gallery, located in Long Beach, where Pascua and Osborne lived from 2007 to summer 2009.

THE BONFIRES officially moved back to Asheville in the last week of August 2009; it currently holds office in the nearby town of Candler. “Vagrant Wind” organized its first “coming home” gig at Firestorm Café in downtown on Oct 31, and starting on Jan 22—returned to Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café with monthly poetry readings. (The Bonfires’ “Vagrant Wind” program started at this Asheville downtown pioneer almost 8 years ago.)
The “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park” resurrects beginning on April 17, 2010—the next set schedules: May 29, June 26, July 17, August 21, and September 18.

PASCKIE PASCUA
From late-70s to early-90s, Pasckie Pascua (born to Roman Catholic parents, as George Alfredo Ravanzo Pascua) was a fulltime member of various respected albeit elite activist/artist/media organizations in Manila—especially during the difficult years of the dictatorship—including the League of Filipino Students (activist student leaders), College Editors Guild of the Philippines, PETA Kalinangan Ensemble (Brechtian/Boal theater), Galian sa Arte at Tula (writers/poets), Concerned Artists of the Philippines, and We Forum/Malaya (an independent newspaper that was very instrumental in ushering the downfall of the Marcos regime).
In 2000, then leading anti-US bases (the late) Filipino Senator (twice presidential aspirant) Raul Roco read Pascua’s poem, “Twenty Million Dollars” before the Philippine Senate to climax a dramatic stand by the country’s nationalist and activist lawmakers against the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between Washington and Manila.
Pascua currently heads the Loved by the Buffalo Publications (publisher of The Indie, Wander, and Blue Sky Asheville). He is currently working on seven books: “Red is the Color of my Night” (poetry), “Waiting for Winter” (novel), “My Life as a Greyhound” (collection of travel prose), plus a cookbook, children’s book (The Babedawgs and The Koolcat), a compilation of his love poems, and a collection of short stories, mostly based on his childhood in northern Luzon in the Philippines and his experiences as a young journalist-editor at the time of the dictatorship.

PERTINENT BACKGROUNDERS/REMINDERS:
[ ] Traveling Bonfires’ “traveling” is written with one “l.” The logo was designed by Justin Gostony.
[ ] Greyhound refers to Greyhound bus, not the dog breed.
[ ] Vagrant Wind and Wander were taken from a Joni Mitchell song, “Urge for Going”—from the line, “I’ll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in.” Vagrant Wind is also the English translation of the Cherokee name of Pasckie’s “surrogate greatgrandfather” in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Wander, the publication’s logo, was designed by Federico Sievert.
[ ] Loved by the Buffalo is taken from a Lakota character in the TV movie, “Into The West.” Loved by the Buffalo’s logo was designed by Matt Mulder.
[ ] Blue Sky Asheville is from Blue Sky God/dess (or Blue Sea Spirit) that Pasckie often refers to as God, and also the living spirit of his departed Mother (from his poem, “My Mother is The Sea”).
[ ] Duane (from Duane’s Poetry) is the name of Pasckie’s only son. In old Irish, Duane means “child of the hill.”
[ ] Pasckie is called Rain or a-ga-na by his native American Indian (Cherokee) friends, not Pasckie. The Pascua Yaqui Indian tribe in southern Arizona calls him Saila (younger brother).

ADDITIONAL READINGS:
[ ] http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2005/0112bonfires.php
[ ] http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2006/1213peacejones.php
[ ] COMING UP: www.travelingbonfires.com

FOR GIG UPDATES:
[ ] http://tbonfiresasheville.blogspot.com/

On the road again

2007-09-09T02:28:00.000-07:00

MANY YEARS before my pubescent raft sailed along Mark Twain’s Mississippi River with my imagined Huck and Tom... long before Jack Kerouac’s mix of decadent romanticism and wanderlust wisdom inadvertently made road journeys as the young and the restless’ ultimate cool, and William Least Heat-Moon’s “Blue Highways: A Journey into America” and Paul Theroux’s “The Great Railway Bazaar” finally ushered my wings out onto the wide, open, free highway... I have always been fascinated and intrigued with travel.
When I was about nine or ten, while serving a “weekend’s reclusion perpetua” (aka “grounded”) in my grandfather’s library, I chanced upon Italian poet Francesco Petrarca’s (or Petrarch) journals of his mighty ascent of the 6,263 ft Mount Ventoux in 1336. The dude who’s often popularly called as the “father of humanism,” states that he went to the mountaintop for the pleasure of seeing the top of the famous height—making allegorical comparisons between climbing the mountain and his own moral progress in life. The accuracy of his account is open to question (particularly the assertion that he was the first to climb a mountain for pleasure)—but then, who cares, right? At that instance, I wasn’t yet a super-pushy hotshot reporter obsessed with facts than fiction – all I cared about was that whatever I read was one of the earliest known records of taking pleasure in travel, of traveling for the sake of travel and writing about it.
So before I was “officially” called Pasckie, I was called Patrarczky, the ascetic traveller with a humanist fixation. Of course, when I entered high school and chess occupied my fancy, my Geometry tutor, Mr Victor The Hugo, “baptized” me as Spassky—not because I was a sort of a “world champ” myself. He reckoned, my meticulously planned acts of mischief was comparable to Mr Boris Spassky’s “middlegame with highly imaginitive yet usually sound and deeply planned play, which could erupt into tactical aggression.” For a time, I was lovin’ it—Spassky. But when the Russian grandmaster (world’s best at that time) was beaten by Bobby Fischer in 1972, I chucked the nickname.
Anyways, I got no choice—I had to revert back to my original Patrarczky Trip “amidst the Mississippi River on my mind” delusion. I was eleven, 2 months, 4 days old—and about 4 ft, 5 inches “tall”—when I embarked on my first official/”historical” road trip – a 250 kilometers or 155.34 miles bus odyssey from the northernmost mountain city of Baguio (where I spent most of my childhood) to the concrete jungle that was Manila. (OK, I was intent on documenting my travel, so I kept a diary.)
I painstakingly saved up a grand total of seventy-five pesos and 15 centavos—from a month’s school snacktime-spending allowance. (That’s less than $2 on present-day conversion, in case you’re wondering.) I was set to go, allright... The money was all safe and secured six inches deep down my khaki Boy Scout shorts pocket. My knapsack was carefully, methodically stuffed with Jack London’s “Call of the Wild,” two or three Mark Twain paperbacks, ripped up pages of the Petrarch piece, a Radiowealth transistor radio, two notepads, pens, few shirts (including my all-time favorite, my oversized “Who do you think you are, Charlie Brown?” blue-green baseball jersey).
Kids like me—especially the sort of “painfully cute” species that easily passes off as either a defanged leprechaun or well-behaved baby babboon—usually gets ignored by the bus conductor. Passengers below 12 years old get free rides as long as they are accompanied by adults, and they could fit their minute anatomies anywhere but the paid seats... (Y’see, I had it all figured out.) I simply buried my cares on my books and notepad—six or seven hours later of almost non-stop travel over scenic but dangerous hillside roads and dusty highways, I hit Big City Bright Lights at 5 in the afternoon. I jumped in a jeepney (10 centavos for single ride), them jumped out two blocks to our ancestral house in a suburban Quezon City subdivision.
When I showed up at the front door, hell broke loose. “Jesusmaryjoseph! Mother-of-Mercy! How did you get here?!” Yup, my Mom had to be rushed to ER due to severe heart palpitation.
That was thirty-eight years ago this month.
What was the trip all about? Well, I was intent on meeting the Honorable Mayor (of Quezon City) and present him a solicitation letter for funding, meant for a summer “little league” baseball tournament that I was organizing with three of my homeys in the mountain. Nobody in the family circle or village council seemed to take me seriously. But I wasn’t very pleased with the organization of last summer’s league that I vowed to do a better job – provided I got enough money. Apparently, my 75 pesos and 15 centavos was grossly off the mark.
To cut this short, I was able to raise the dough. Nah, it wasn’t because the “honorable” City Mayor signed a check or something—far from that (c’mon, you know better). Rank-and-file employees – clerks, secretaries, bookkeepers, janitors, messengers, security guards – of the Municipal Council (who thought that my little adventure was cute) chipped in money until I earned what I needed (and more), 437.45 pesos (roughly $11 in current money).
So where did Patrarczky, and his “taking pleasure in travel, traveling for the sake of travel and writing about it,” go? Well, that “high” didn’t actually leave my system—truth is, when I pored over The Italiano’s Mount Ventoux hike for the sake of hiking, I also questioned the practical validity of such self-indulgent madness. I thought out loud, “What is the point of a journey if I don’t have a mission that’d inspire it?”
At that point of my (childhood) life, I began to silently protest the wide, disturbing discrepancy between the privileged and the underprivileged. Yes, I did relish the many July and August afternoons that I spent amidst foggy, enthralling rice paddies carved out of mountain shoulders of my ‘hood – with my beloved homeys, tribal kids who seemed to be oblivious and unaffected by what’s going on down in the lowlands. With an altitude of roughly 1500 meters (5100 feet), in a greyish idyll of moist tropical pine forest, bedecked with mossy plants and orchids, the mountain region of my past was The Emerald Garden.
But then, “paradise” could be boring sometimes, right? There were days when I ran out of bonfires to build and stoke, and needed some other gig to while away the hubris, you know.
So one day, I invited almost a dozen of my homeys to watch an intramurals little league baseball game in my grade school. We had a great time, indeed—so that, the following day, we started playing our improvised, pick-up World Series—using guava tree branches as bats, and green mangoes as balls. In no time at all, we all wanted to form our own “little” Oakland A’s—and join the coming Little League Baseball Tournament of the Feast of Santa Lucia. But, alas, we needed 50 pesos as registration fee, and approximately 300 pesos more to pay the village tailor to work on uniforms. I was able to convince the Town Parish to donate bats, balls, and gloves; my Uncle Reggie Jocson (that’s his real name, pronounced “hok-son”) who was a City Councillor purchased shoes and caps. So with the 437.45 pesos that I fundraised in Manila, we still got a few dough to spare for snacks after each game.
The only bad news that greeted me when my Dad drove me back to the mountains was that – I had to serve another “weekend’s reclusion perpetua” in my grandfather’s library – as expected punishment for my “mischief.”
“Back to the library!” my Lolo (“grandpa”) hollered. Like an obedient cadet, I was like, “Yes, Lolo!” Truth to tell, I wasn’t about to complain—I was pumped up to redraft my “travel diary,” and read more of Francesco The Renaissance Dude, plus more travel literature and stuff, this time those from the Chinese – which were mostly written in narrative, prose, essay, and diary style. These included works by Fan Chengda, Xu Xiake, and the one piece that blew me apart – the “Record of Stone Bell Mountain” by the noted poet and statesman Su Shi. This “travel essay” presented a philosophical and moral argument as its central purpose.
By Monday morning—which was supposedly the expiration of my “jail-time”—I was still inside the library. Reading, writing, ruminating, planning -- planning my next road trip, especially after I read John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley: In Search of America,” undoubtedly a classic American road book describing the author’s journeys with his dog, Charley.
But it was Gilles le Bouvier, a mid-15th century poet, who sealed my “madness”—he wrote in his “Livre de la description des pays,” the only reason to travel and write: “Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take pleasure, as I have done in times past, in seeing the world and things therein, and also because many wish to know without going there, and others wish to see, go, and travel, I have begun this little book.”
Yes, I was sort of successful in my “mission” to raise money for my ball team, but what I saw while on the road—from my observation of co-travellers with their packed lunches of smoked fish and tomatoes, chickens-on-wicker-cages beside them, to the many faces of beautiful humanity waving across cornfields and rice granaries, young men pedalling on improvised bicycle sidecars, to stories that I overheard while on layovers in terminals and cantinas. These became my “real” mission. Tell the world about what I saw and experienced out there. Not really about the scenery, but mostly about the people.
But first, I had to excise enough courage and confidence that I could take the road and come out of it, in one piece—satisfied and happy—and ready to course my next journey.

PEOPLE AND PLACES… As I hit the road, from town to town, city to city—breathless awe and quiet exhilaration overcame me. The blessed gift of experiencing people and places. When we travel, I discovered at that tender age that I wasn’t simply basking in the wonderment of the physical allure of a certain destination. I was, instead, coming face-to-face with the enticing mystery of life—without really being a part of them, yet I was so close. I could feel the intimacy but yet, I was detached. I could “touch” humanity but it couldn’t touch me. I liked it that way—that’s the only way that I could possibly protect myself from unwanted encroachments.
Sadly though, these days, that gift has since left the human spirit or got lost in the dizzying fray of current-day reasons for being. Even before 9/11 dug the Heartland’s paranoia deeper down the pits of disconnect and alienation, we have already consigned our lives inside the claustrophobic “safety” and ready-to-go convenience of utter subservience to anything push-buttoned, mouse-clicked, and “taken cared of.”
These days, I see the young savoring the inspirational hooks of “The Journal of Albion Moonlight,” Joseph Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness,” Jack Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums,” or even the more socioculturally incisive “India: A Wounded Civilization” by V.S. Naipaul and “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” by Rebecca West – but are so scared, adamant, and suspicious of even climbing up a Greyhound to Savannah, Georgia from Charlotte, NC. In fact, “traveling” outside of the “motor box” frightens them so deeply that walking to a dumpster from their triple-locked units within the periphery of an apartment complex is such a hike that they had to drive 25 meters and 7 strides just to take care of the trash.
Everybody seems to be fascinated and mystified about venturing to the Amazon rainforests, or the pitch-dark confines of a Hindu temple in Madras, or a llama ride to Matagalpa, Nicaragua—but what’d happen in case there’s no Kleenex or condoms or mosquito repellants out in the boondocks of Kashmir, and the only way to traverse the heights of Mount Pulog is to wade through a pesky phalanx of thickes and poison ivys?
We do enjoy “Survivor” while we chomp away breaded KFCs or organic pinto beans in an air-conned abode, all doors screened against bugs – but what about doing a J. Maarten Troost road gig, as what he wrote in “The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific” and “Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu”?
What delight and pleasure are left to share the world (as Gilles le Bouvier exhorts), if all that we could document is how fast we negotiated the stairs to the top of the Statue of Liberty, or how awesome it was to watch Barry Bonds hit his record 761st homerun, or what great “smashing fun” we had at a Fort Lauderdale spring-break beach party?
How come current affinity to convenience and comfort have dissolved the inspiration of the travelogues of famous authors who wrote so beautifully about their experiences on the road – Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh, and François de La Boullaye-Le Gouz, whose “Les voyages et observations du sieur de La Boullaye Le gouz” is considered one of the first true travel books.

MEANTIME, what do the “travel experts” say?
September 11th may not have fundamentally changed the American public’s desire to travel, however, it seems that the terrorist attacks combined with the slow economy has changed the ways in which people travel, from the shift to local destinations to the desire to vacation with family and friends.
“There is a new spirit of unity in all Americans, and a sense of living your life to the fullest,” said Rick Sandler, President of The Insight Group. With their renewed sense of accord, people are finding coping strategies for traveling, such as flying with their entire family or husbands and wives not flying together without the kids. Similarly, in business travel, some employees have limited their business travel to one trip per month, instead of four, according to Sandler.
“The American public is putting more emphasis on family and is going out less since September 11th. When they do go out, people are looking for entertainment that provides comfort,” said Sandler.
In a way, I kinda agree with that.
About four years ago, I booked a young Asheville-based rock band at the famous CBGB in Manhattan’s East Village. These “kids,” fresh out of UNCA, even named their band after a famous “road-writer.” I arranged their crash pad in The Bronx and prepared an after-gig party in a restaurant in Queens. Before I left Asheville—I asked the band that when they get to NY in the late afternoon, they should go and meet up with my co-producer on 51st Av afront Radio City Hall, where they’d be handed flyers to be given out to passers by near Bowery and Bleecker near CBs.
No show. They arrived at the club an hour or less – before they climbed up the stage. Reason? They brought their entire family—Moms, Dads, sisters, brothers, girlfriends, boyfriends, hangers-on—in their first-ever road gig in NYC, and spent most of the day touring the museums. For them, it was a family trip.
I was flabbergasted. I could understand the family closeness, but…

A STUDY by Yeaswich, Pepperdine and Brown (YP&B), showed that among the 18% of travelers who said the terrorist attacks would influence their future travel plans, 59% said they are more likely to vacation closer to home, while 45% are more likely to vacation visiting friends and relatives.
Few months after the aforementioned NYC trek, I heard that they had a blast having a gig in Greensboro, where most of them came from. The distance from Asheville to Greensboro is 172.8 miles, compared with 691.4 miles to The Big Apple. Quite far, I reckoned. Of course, you can quickly negotiate that distance if you take the plane. But apart from the current “hassle” on the check-in board, there’s currently an “airport meltdown” that makes flying a double/triple hassle.
According the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 25 percent of airline arrivals and 21 percent of departures were delayed from January to June of this year. With a growing number of passengers and more small jets crowding the skies, things will only get worse. Well, Congress me be flyers’ last hope, says Time. An estimated $22 billion proposal to replace the radar system with satellite communication could find more direct-routes.
Would that finally coax us to travel more places? Or we are just scared to venture out of the safe confines of our community and the super-secured four walls of our houses? We are actually VERY scared of danger that might be lurking somewhere... so we arm ourselves.
According to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies, the United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world. Americans own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms.

STARTING Sept 15, I will be hitting the road again as part of the Traveling Bonfires’ “Vagrant Wind Road Journeys 07,” which is nicknamed “The Duane Tour.” While this road saga started thirty-eight years ago on a mission to raise fund for my “Bad News Bears,” and later on evolved into a “road advocacy for global peace” and little fundraise drive to help me finance and network The Indie—this particular summer-to-fall trek is moved by my son’s current hospitalization and, ensuing recovery/therapy needs.
So from Patrarczky’s search for “moral progress,” to Spassky’s “deeply planned play” – from the glowing sunflowers along the wide expanse of Central Luzon’s ricefields bathe on summer sun, to the bloodied foothills of the Cordilleras torn by war, to the many wanderlust incarnations that I imbibed and consumed all through these years… I am on the road again in search of answers while I pose more questions.
The wide, disturbing discrepancy between the privileged and the underprivileged that I saw and experienced amidst foggy, enthralling rice paddies carved out of mountain shoulders in the tiny city of Baguio where I grew up—that spirit still guides me as I hit the road again. My mission to fundraise 437.45 pesos in the lowlands so my poor homeys could play ball with the richer kids of my childhood... remains the same. My son had to face death and survive it with shot of medicines that the privileged could only afford. That’s the story that I’d like to write in my journal, and the story that I share while on the road.
To repeat what Gilles le Bouvier wrote, “Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take pleasure, as I have done in times past, in seeing the world and things therein, and also because many wish to know without going there, and others wish to see, go, and travel, I have begun this little book.” There is no other way for me to experience and savor the “moral progress in life” while on the road and after the journey – but to share the world what others haven’t seen or felt or lived through.
Meanwhile, see you when I get there.

DUANE

2007-08-12T01:21:00.000-07:00

ON THE NIGHT of my 47th birthday, July 23rd —my 20-year-old son, Duane, almost lost his life. Injections of five vials of a very expensive antibiotics saved his life – those shots cost a total of $6000 or roughly 258,000 Philippine pesos. A quick research revealed that said antibiotics cost $289 a vial in the US—or $911 more than what it’s worth in Manila.
A deadly virus or bacteria infected Duane’s system a few days before he was rushed to suburban Manila’s Medical City’s ICU. It took the hospital—a leading (hence, most expensive) private hospital back home—two days to detect what was going on. By the time they gave him the first two or three shots, Duane’s lower limb was already paralyzed and he was already near-comatose.
Almost 7,000 miles away, the telephone was my only connection to my son’s breathing. I thought out loud, another year, another life, was gifted me by God on this very day. I was ready to give it away for my son’s life. On that very moment that I waited for word – how would he respond to the injections – I was ready to give up all that is me in favor of my son. I couldn’t wait, I’d like to give my son all the energy, all the love, all the spirit, all the years that I had…
Duane had to live. Nothing mattered, nothing matters.
Twenty-seven years ago, when I was around Duane’s age—while working as a countryside correspondent for a Manila daily and community organizer—I witnessed many similar situations.
The innocent and the weak caught in crossfire of the government’s Communist counter-insurgency operations… the impoverished and the helpless unable to survive the devastation of all imaginable natural disasters – typhoons, floods, earthquakes, landslides, shipwrecks, volcanic eruptions.
Medicines are gold. Doctors and surgeons are gods. Hospitals or ICUs are rooms in heaven. In other words, these are unreachable, unattainable saviors of life. People simply wait for death, consigning their fate to God.
I shed buckets of tears, my heart bled like a wounded river – as the howling of relatives of the dead and the heartbreaking prayers of loved ones of the wounded and sick drowned my many days and nights. I have hoped that I was superhuman, that I could heal the pain and ease the misery – or save lives.
But I wasn’t superhuman. I had to take the pain… and live with it.
How many “Duane situations” happen in many parts of the world – beautiful lives unable to hang on because there is no money to buy the medicine? No money to rush to a hospital? No money to pay doctors? My son’s hospital bill amounted to more than half a million pesos ($15,000), excluding steady supply of medicines and therapy budget as he recovers at home.
Without a phone call from my many relatives in the West Coast--to the hospital--I don’t think my son would have made it. A phone call meant assured $$$$$ to the hospital, assured profit to the local dealer, assured income to the giant pharmaceutical business... That’s what it’s all about. “Antibiotics” is more than gold--it is the one shot of life that saved my son.
Duane is an Economics senior at Jose Rizal University in Manila, a working student, and an active artist, poet and photographer. I have published many of his drawings – and used at least two of his paintings as front page art in the first few issues of The Indie. Each time my birthday comes, he emails me the lyrics of Dan Fogelberg’s song, “Leader of the Band” as a testimony of his admiration and respect to all the “madnesses” that I pursued in my 40+ years of life.
On my 47th birthday last July 23, he wasn’t able to—he was fighting for his life.
Beginning this month, I will take The Indie on the road as well as the undying flame of the Traveling Bonfires to fundraise for my son and tell people that life is dear and important. That health care is utmost, easy access to antibiotics should be the priority of all governments, medical care should be on top of all political agenda.
Let us save lives than waste them.
I will be traveling from Asheville to other North Carolina cities – including Chapel Hill, Durham and Winston-Salem – all the way to Richmond VA, Washington DC, Baltimore and other Maryland towns, then New York City, New Jersey, Delaware, and hopefully, to Philadelphia and Boston. Friends along the road will again join me in poetry readings and rock events and concerts.See you then…

POSTSCRIPT: Bele Chere 2007: Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

2007-08-12T01:18:00.000-07:00

July 28th, the second day of Bele Chere, “the largest free outdoor street festival in the Southeast.” A dark cloud of imminent rain hovered overhead – but it wasn’t the impending downpour that kept me off the effervescent streets of downtown Asheville that time. Rain is a beautiful gift from the sea and the sky, I savor the blessing – and the street is where the subversive quiet of my spirit resides and rests. But what am I doing somewhere south of downtown, roughly 29 minutes and 25.4 miles away?
Technically, I was kinda still within the periphery—at Ingles in Asheville Hwy, Hendersonville. As I lined up towards the cashier, intently examining a Lindsay/Britney pic on Entertainment Weekly, a stranger behind me asked, pensively... “You are Pasckie, right? Why aren’t you in Asheville?”
It didn’t take me a blink to respond, “Uhh, it’s Bele Chere, that’s why.” (Normally, I would wonder out loud—nervously, frantically—when asked or approached by a random dude. A CIA spy, an MIB emissary, an ex’es vengeful BF, an overzealous John Deere salesman, a Snoop Dogg courier? None of the above, I reckoned. But this particular unexpected query cut me like, “Hey, this is my `hood—why are you here? You’re not supposed to be here!”)
“I’m here, in your `hood, because I’m not in Bele Chere.” The dude simply nodded, unsmiling, like a stoic Sitting Bull on US Marine coiffure… “Okay.” (Relieved, I continued examining the Lindsay/Britney pic.)

UMM, BELE CHERE. I used to love that lovable feast of lovable humanity, you know—not just because of the expostulating ocean of psychedelic muses with sexy, healthy hips, puzzling (and puzzled) hairdos, and cute Meg Ryan smiles. It was on my first BC July weekend when I found—and eventually, fell in love—with what I later on called as My Asheville Downtown Menage-a-Trois: Malaprop’s, Pritchard Park, Lexington Avenue.
Oh yeah—I freely wallowed on Bele Chere’s libertine exuberance and radical chic – from the very first summer that I got here. Of course, you can always dispute that—although it doesn’t really matter much these days. My Appalachian guilty pleasure has miserably evolved into nothing more than secondhand guilt…
Oh yes, it could’ve been awesome to be right there at Biltmore Stage on that gloomy-sky Saturday night, shakin’ my skinny little butt to Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band, right? Nah… It didn’t take me 3 seconds to decide to instead spend my last $35.55 at Ingles—on fresh produce, catfish fillet, chicken cuttings, white rice, and 6-pack of Rolling Rock—than scrimmage my acerbic girth and brooding snout downtown. A quiet, cooking gig in Terri The Terra’s humble abode was unmistakably that particular moment in time’s last frontier – it’s sublime, it’s ethereal, it’s transcendent.

“WHY AREN’T you in Asheville?”
Was it a consolation that the random dude easily identified me as a “bonafide” Asheville spirit? For a brown-skinned, black-haired, horribly-accented shortie to be recognized and acquainted with (out of town, at that) as a resident/inhabitant of a predominantly white community in the South of the US of A… that is something. I am really “home.” Dig?
Four summers ago, as I wearily, tearfully strode along Wilmington’s coastline, a heartbroken Corona Lite on hand, “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” by the Bee Gees on my Walkman—a girl (I mean, a 9 year old kid) approached me, “You look sad, you should be home—I know you, you’re from Asheville! It’s Bele Chere, y’know! Me and my Mom saw you read poems at Beanstreets!”
When a random kid reminds you – 331.9 miles away – that your home is Asheville, you should be proud, right? Right! I got a home—and I am not even somewhere near South China Sea or the Pacific Ocean! Afront the waters of Fells Point in Baltimore, amidst Adams Morgan’s militant chic in Washington DC, along Bleecker Street’s incendiary allure in downtown Manhattan – I trumpet and howl my acquired ID as a true-blue Asheville spirit.
“What is your ethnicity, where’re you from?” I am not bothered by these inquisitions anymore. I just say, cool as a pistolero (a-la Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western), “I’m from Asheville. You got a problem with that?” At least, I never got into weird exchanges again, in the mold of, “Where you from?” / “I was born in the Philippines, I am half-Filipino, half-Cherokee…” / “So you are from India! That’s cool! Do you like padthai? You drink a lot of sake, right?” / “No, I don’t, I am sorry. But I throw down bigtime on grits and taters and chase them down with ice-cold Busch.”
You see, for five or six consecutive summers, since some distant wind blew me away from New York City’s plasticine bubbles and crashlanded my undernourished anatomy in the Appalachias, I have always declared that Bele Chere is my weekend birthday party! This fantabulous feast of fun sort of happened exactly on my birthday weekend (July 23)—until the just concluded episode/s. I didn’t mope—what the hell!
The truth is, I did actually wrangle my reluctant self for few hours out there on the first day—July 27th—primarily because I had a visitor (Jeri The Fairy, from Philly) who requested that me and Marta The Nicer join her there. No prob. I always toured my visitors wherever they wanna be, whenever—just part of being a gracious host, you know what I mean? We gotta perform this kind of “hospitality gigs” sometimes, you know. When I was living in Brooklyn, I haphazardly/painstakingly/achingly accompanied obnoxious relatives and irksome sisters-of-ex’es up the Empire State Building in uptown Manhattan and Statue of Liberty near Staten Island – until I couldn’t take it anymore.
But then, I never called or “owned” New York as my “home.” Nobody says, I am a native New Yorker, come on! But Asheville is different. It’s home to me. So I just gotta tour visitors to every nook and cranny, hale and hearty, grime and grace – of my “home.” That’s the way it is. I can’t mistake it, no matter what we say – the Bele Chere Festival is an Asheville tradition for 29 years, according to Jeri The Fairy. Before she flew in to town, she googled WNC and Bele Chere, mind you... (But, heck, she didn’t succeed in coaxing me to sacrifice my $35.55 weekend dinner/cooking budget to finally visit The Biltmore Castle… An intimate dinner with Terri The Terra was it, no second thoughts whatsoever.)

HOW COULD one pass this one up? A humanity of “350,000+ that flock to downtown Asheville each year for three days of Bele Chere.” Six stages provide performances by 80 local and national musical acts. Lots of food, great art and crafts, and many other activities make Bele Chere a fun event for all. Some of the best local and regional artisans showcase their best handcrafted jewelry, pottery, and clothing, along with photography and painting.
Dame LizBeth McQueen, the fantastic 86-year-old matriarch of the first-ever North Carolina clan that I shared a compound with (in Barnardsville Hwy in Weaverville) five years ago would always groan and growl each tailend of winter, “Bele Chere is just few months away, honey! It will be all fun—I can’t wait, Lordy Mother of Mercy!” She did relish and savor the fiesta, I tell you! There she was (on my first Bele Chere in 2000)—a beautiful octogenarian blondie shakin’ her booty to Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way”—hip by hip, sweat to sweat, lowriders and all—with a dozen or so river of turbo-boosted teen-age bodies at Battery Park Stage. Rock `n roll!
Indeed, there was a time when Bele Chere owned up to the PR. Downtown’s number one summer dalliance is oft touted or hyped as “The largest free outdoor street festival in the Southeast.” I have been and seen a lot (of May to October festivals) in all my seven years in North Carolina… But all I can say is Bele Chere still mystifies and intrigues the doubting uninitiated and the unsuspecting stranger. And we in the mountains are always ready to eat it up like a funnel cake chowdown over poboy and Miller Lite. That is not an opinionated guess, that is a documented fact.
Southerners spend about the same amount of money on clothes ($1,507) as they do on entertainment ($1,561). According to a recent study by the US Department of Labor, Southerners spend 5 percent of their budgets for entertainment and another 5 for clothes, jewelry, and shoes. “Entertainment” expenses are things such as fees and admissions (to concerts and festivals), televisions, radios, or sound equipment, and also money spent on pets, toys, and playground equipment.
Moreover, Southerners are spending a little bit more on health care, both in dollars ($1,902) and as a percent (6%) of total spending, than the national average ($1,841 and 5%). (“Health care” includes health insurance, medical services, drugs, and medical supplies.)
Nationally, Americans, including Southerners, allocate about 14 percent of their budget for food, not counting alcohol. These expenditures include food at home and in restaurants. How people decide to spend their food dollars, whether in fast food restaurants, traditional restaurants, supermarkets, health food stores, etc. tends to relate more to their age, family situation, and lifestyle than the part of the country they live in. A single person under age 25 anywhere in the country is likely to spend a bigger portion of his income in restaurants than a married couple with small children.

THIS SUMMER’s Bele Chere did all its best to keep pace with the well-prepared marketing kick. Check this out – “an esteemed jury of their peers selected 45 world-class artists to exhibit at Arts Park.” Music? Rock superstar Kenny Wayne Shepherd, country legend Marty Stuart, 90’s rockers Gin Blossoms, blues artist Shemekia Copeland, and 60’s favorites Lovin’ Spoonful. Hmmm...
More? Urban Challenge, Shoot For A Cure (featuring NBA’s Rashad McCants, sorry LeBron or Kobe cost millions), Drumming Tent (interactive music experience), Scavenger Hunt, Burt’s Bees Mobile Tour, The Ford Experience Tour (“access to some of the most innovative vehicles on the road”), Purina Ultimate Air Dogs (“collection of some of the country’s most impressive dock diving canines”)... Lots and lots more. But why am I “hiding” in Hendersonville’s Lyndhurst Drive, off a “hidden” cross-street to Asheville Hwy called Greater Druid Hills Blvd?
There are a lot to “enjoy” and spend on at this year’s Bele Chere, you know what I’m saying? It has evolved into a some kinda aftermidnight escape route to Wal-Mart or side-trip to an I-95 backwoods Hooters on the way to a lover’s tryst in Richmond VA, or just about a 45-minute, 2-Corona swig at any given summer street fest anywhere, just to kill time. Nothing big deal.
Why is that? Let me tell you a story…

“TURUMBA” is an after-Lent, pre-typhoon season, mid-harvest summer community festival in the south of Manila (capital city of the Philippines). Months before the May Day fiesta, a traditional “working committee” or village council start mapping out or physically preparing for the one-week festivities. Nobody gets paid and seldom legal tender (or cold cash) circulates. Residents assume specific tasks – from construction/design of giant papier maches to carpentry work of theater/concert stages to fundraising trips to bigger cities (for necessary materials that aren’t found in the barrio, and to personally invite popular national personalities).
Days before the feast, villagers come together — farmers donate baskets and carts of fresh produce and fruits, fisherfolk commit their week’s catch, “richer” ranchers give out cows and hogs and chickens, youths start rehearsing musical and dance numbers, others prepare parlor games and pick-up basketball games. A day before the fiesta, an entire ricefield is turned into an open-air kitchen—where everybody cooks on humongous woks via firewood and charcoal. A separate “committee” travels by foot, carabao-pulled carts, or “jeepneys” (PUJs) to send out invitations to neighboring towns and solicit prizes for the games.
There are no concert fees, food is free, village-deputized “tanods” (no guns, just bamboo sticks) keep the peace and order. Warring tribes and battling Communist rebels and government troops declare automatic “cessation of hostilities.” (Most “wars” are ended following a fiesta or Christmas/New Year’s Day ceasefire.) Food, peace, fun, community, laughter, family, friendship. Relatives and barriomates visit from abroad (games prizes come in the form of “imported” Nikes, $50 cash, or an autographed posters of Yao Ming or the Black Eyed Peas)... tourists and visitors savor the harvest convergence, like gifts of God. You can’t get any simpler than that.
All these happen a month or two before raging typhoons batter the barrios and towns again. Misery beats them up – almost six months a year, every year of their lives. But they gather as a community, everybody is proud of their community, everybody thank God... Despite sharing whatever that they could’ve saved for “the rainy days,” they don’t thank no one, except God. “May awa ang Diyos” (God provides). That fatalist wisdom of simplicity, camaraderie and sacrifice make them laugh and dance during summer fiestas, like there’s no more tomorrows – from the advent of 100+ degree heat to the first downpour of incessant rain. That is peace, that is humanity – calm and joy before and after the storm.
There was a time, in a not-so-distant past when I saw the beautiful spirit of “Turumba” in downtown Asheville – Friday Drum Circle, Downtown After Five, Shindig by the Green, Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park, and yes, Bele Chere…
Now the spirit seemed lost, gasping or dying. Even the rain scared us away...

WHY AM I not in my home city—on Bele Chere weekend?
A week before the 3-day spectacle, we held a “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park.” This is my “Turumba.” Me and Marta The Nicer almost literally “panhandled” the $$$ that we paid City Hall so that we may be able to continue holding this 4pm to 10pm “low-key fiesta” in the heart of downtown.
I think we had around 200 or so people (old and young, kids and parents, locals and tourists, dogs and cats) – dancing, smiling, shaking hands, hugging — as we winded up the (4pm to 10pm) concert around 8 or 9pm. The main act N-2-Soul, a local act whose lead singer Jim Barnes works at a Merrimon Avenue store called Cash Converter, donated the PA/sound equipment. The lead guitarist David Tedford rendered free soundperson job. All the bands—and emcee Nancy Rollins—gave their one hour time, free. Food was donated by Mellow Mushroom, bottled water by Ingles. We sold few Bonfires shirts that were donated by Terri The Terra and her sister Renee Rutley. (All these beautiful spirits have been living in WNC for more than 20 years.)
Midway through the concert, Mark Anderson (bassist of bands Hippie Shitzu) walked to a pub across Pritchard Park to use the bathroom. His band played in this club for years with a weekly fee that is 50 percent or lesser than what most clubs pay “visiting acts” these days. His band played free for community residents and tourists via the Bonfires for Peace in the last four years…
Mark, more than anything else, is a native Asheville dude. He was born and raised in this town, he works in this town all his life, he pays his taxes in this county... But he was refused access to the bar’s bathroom because he didn’t want to buy liquor. That’s the rule.
A day after the event, I received a phone call from the City Government’s Parks & Recreation Department saying we may not be able to hold our concerts at the park anymore—because of “noise.” Local businesses and downtown residents are complaining about the noise emanating from Pritchard Park. The person I talked with said that we can probably hold our events if we don’t use amplified music. The “noise” distracts local downtown business and condominium residents.
Does this mean that there will be no more Downtown After Five, Shindig at the Green, or Bele Chere concerts from here on—because of “noise”? Our free concert distracts and bothers local business or new residents—a humble concert by “non-marquee acts” at Pritchard Park—that we painstakingly put up in the last four years?
We organized almost 50 concerts to date, with money that come from our hard-earned salaries and measly tip-box earnings. We pay City Hall for use of the park so we can entertain people for free--when we could have just saved the money to help ensure that we pay our rent on time, or that we could score a few PBRs at a local pub to relax our small-town funk and forget our working class blues…
Mark’s rejected bathroom request exemplifies what has turned into this town we call “home.” Do we belong in this house? I could have just given Mark $5 for a beer, so that he could use the aforementioned bar’s bathroom. But I’m sure he’s not gonna take it—he has refused my offer of gasoline money (from the tip box) so many times in the past, I don’t think he’s gonna take it just so he could use a club’s bathroom. All the bands that played in the park – refused that tip box money, an amount that isn’t even enough to re-earn the $$$ that we pay City Hall.
As of presstime, we are awaiting City Hall’s decision if we can still hold our next Bonfires event on Aug 18. We anxiously await for that almighty decision—to hold our little “feast”—not to sell beers or $25 worth of Chinese-made earrings or $200-antique purchased in the pampas or barrio abroad for 50 pesos and a “diplomatic” smile. We are at Pritchard Park—a beautiful community space that the powers-at-be consigned to a mere slum of vagrancy—because we want to see, experience and share peace, fun, community, laughter, family, and friendship. That’s all the heroes that we could be—for six hours on a Saturday—but we are very proud of that one... Do we have to beg to do all these?
Downtown is always the “life” of a city. Its people—the heart and soul, the heartbeat that makes the community live. A Bele Chere that is enhanced and “jazzed up” by the local powers-that-be that give more premium to market feasibility and sales quota – and whatever whim and wish that the new moneyed denizens of downtown could “suggest” – shoots down the primitive sublimity and ethereal wisdom of any community, such as Asheville.
What did I see in Bele Chere’s first day? Unadulterated, consumerist throwdown. Rain was like acid downpour, chasing humanity away. Like cold, frightened rats, we lumbered under shades, wearied and tired.
“It’s sad that you only saw that this year,” cousin Brigham The Gum emailed me, “I saw that three years ago, my man...” (Brig and wife, Kristi The Krispi, instead, spent their “Bele Chere moolah” on a “quiet” 15th honeymoon in Guadalajara. Smart choice.)

IN CASE you are wondering... No, I am not boycotting Bele Chere as a protest move. This, despite the fact that most of my friends who’ve been here long before I did have already refused to step into this festival years before I did. Meantime, sad – I wasn’t able to catch Dame LizBeth McQueen, the fantastic 86-year-old matriarch of Barnardsville Hwy, during the few hours that I clattered on Haywood St down to Lex Av on Bele Chere’s first day. Maybe she was there, I am not sure. Although a mere snow “drizzle” demobilizes her so easily, rain or storm doesn’t halt my longtime friend’s insatiable appetite for good ole Southern rock spiked with ice-cold apple cider. But who knows…
Despite my frustration, I wish that the City earned good from “the largest free outdoor street festival in the Southeast.” A Parks & Recreation staff (to borrow a Citizen Times report) disclosed that 2,000 were sold for July 28’s jam in a venue that holds 5,600. She also estimated the total festival attendance at 300,000... That Press Release would surely fly whenever an unsuspecting, “new-life seeker” visitor like Jeri The Fairy googles WNC or Asheville before she flies in to town.
Meanwhile, a storeowner at Broadway Avenue complained that said weekend’s profit is their worst sales output—since they moved here almost a year ago. Even the tried-and-tested magic of the vaunted drum circle could only entice a few dozens of curious onlookers on that first BC day – definitely far from the sweaty, exuberant humanity that rocks Pritchard Park on a Friday night.
Was it the rain?
Sometime in distant America—that my Cherokee aunt, Marguerite Rainhawk Chenault and Filipino immigrant-grandfather Juan Carlos Valdez told me—rain means harvest, rain means life. A new promise of plenty, a celebration reborn. I don’t want to blame the rain for the saddest, most alienating Bele Chere that I ever had in all my seven years in Asheville.
But—again, I reiterate—Asheville is my home.
So after spending the rest of my Bele Chere weekend “hiding” in Terri The Terra’s humble abode in Hendersonville’s Lyndhurst Drive, off a “hidden” cross-street to Asheville Hwy called Greater Druid Hills Blvd—I went back to my `hood at Dunwell Avenue in the West side of town.
Few hours after, me and Marta The Nicer drove downtown to drop few, remaining copies of The Indie at Malaprop’s. On our way, I saw Mark Maloy, my Pritchard Park homey, bicycling down Patton Av afront Jack of the Wood, and I think I saw Charlie Thomas walking down Walnut St to Lexington Avenue... Charlie beat me twice playing chess at that same park’s shoulder fence the last time we did a Bonfires show (I shared him a slice of pizza donated by Mellow Mushroom’s Gerry Mahon). Five years ago, on my first Pritchard Park concert, I gave out four boxes of my old and new shirts to the “homeless” for free—in turn, two of them offered me food from the Mission. “We are going to protect you, my man...” one of them assured me.
As we snaked through Merrimon Avenue, I saw Clare Hanrahan chatting with a young man with grayish beard with a “Stop The War” shirt or something, near Greenlife Grocery. And I think I saw George Glass with a beat-up guitar on his shoulder striding towards Musician’s Workshop...
That night, as usual, I had two PBRs at Westville Pub, my neighborhood bar—while I listened to River Guerguerian’s and Stephanie’s Id’s new CDs on my Walkman. An hour or so after, I walked back to my house just a block away. A squirrel scooted out of my front yard tree as my neighbor’s cat greeted me, “What’s up, bro?” Then, the gentle rain fell.
I was home again at last…

The Indie's 5th year anniversary yard bash and birthday party

2007-08-12T01:14:00.000-07:00

We, THE INDIE—and the Traveling Bonfires—observe our fifth birthday in Asheville, North Carolina this month. The celebration—just a quiet, contained but fun gathering—will be on Saturday, July 21, starting around 4:30pm. The place – 61 Dunwell Avenue in West Asheville.
Few years ago, when I first found my then 102-pounder “economy” size body clattering in downtown Asheville, there were still a Beanstreets Thursday open mic, more brave buskers and colorful spontaneous promenaders down Battery Park and Haywood Street, Vincent’s Ear was still packing PBRs like crazy, and Asheville Global Report was both the bible and red book of the disenchanted and displaced, hopeful and hopeless of the Appalachians. Over here in my West Asheville `hood, one Jonah was galloping his space-funk horsetunes while tending his Relaxed Reader bookshop, and thank God, the other Jonah hasn’t sold Fortune Bldg to Wachovia yet.
Hope springs eternal...
But then, most of those beautiful madnesses and hardheaded sublimities that I sort of frenetically aligned my wavelengths with – five, six, seven years ago — are gone now.
But The Indie is still alive.

MIKE HOPPING is still here. I remember that one Starbucks story that he wrote that had to wait six months or so before I could print it—via a resurrected Indie in the winter of 2004—as I battled my then-deadly infatuation over Asheville The Muse. Ah, Mike is still the imposing, respected Word on page one... Matt Mulder is still here. When we drove to New York City one Thanksgiving weekend to try to reconnect the spirit of the madness to where it came from, his firstborn was just few months old. Now, he and Marybeth already have two sons...
Gaither Stewart is still “here” – although he is many many miles away in Rome, Italy. Like a concerned father, he fondled and bruised my ego many times over. Many times over we just went on working together—exchanging emails from across continents from 3am to 3pm, roundabout. Now, we (Mike and me) are publishing and distributing his new novel, “Asheville.” And Gaither is still emailing me stories and articles with almost the same speed as a FedEx care package on calamity time.
The community is still here.
Emoke B’Racz, by way of Malaprop’s generous heart, still saves that little spot for that little Indie rack in there. Rosetta and her Kitchen’s soiled white push-up tent is still the “shade” of the “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park.” Rena Wright is still diligently collecting tips at the shows and networking us. Gerry Mahon of Mellow Mushroom is still signing pizza gifts checks to Marta The Nicer. Chris Malz, Mark Anderson and our Hippie Shitzu homeboys are still always ready-to-go, rock `n roll, sober or smashed, lovestruck or heartbroken—friendship hath no boundaries. Dale and Loretta Hoffman’s spirit and grace still adorn our humble abode. Mark Maloy, my Pritchard Park homey, is still dancing the Bonfires, untiring. Drum DeCirce and Peace Jones are still gigging as ever, one booking at a time.
Ah, Marta The Nicer Osborne! She is still making phone calls... up to this very minute.
Katie Kasben, Stephanie Morgan, Bruce Elmore, Ann Dunn, Cicada Brokaw, Kapila Ushana, Phuncle Sam, Vincenzo’s, Jenny Greer, downtown cops, Lady Passion and Diuvei, Kelly Lee Phipps, Virato, Wally Bowen and MAIN, Kevin Innes, Benjammin, Elizabeth Mason, Jenni Roberts, Carrie Gerstmann, Glenis Redmond, Debra Wells of Instant Karma, Clare Hanrahan, Laura Hope-Gill, Laura Blackley, Paul Clarke, Justin Gostony, Janis Rose, Missy Sumner, Chris “Kri” Johnson & Touch Samadhi, Sarah Benoit, Leyna, Alli Marshall/Mountain Xpress, Kerouac or the Radio, Jim Brown, Robert Kelley, Jim Cox, Walter Dinteman, Linda Brown, Bob Brown and Mollie, Charlie Thomas, Dennis Ray/Rapid River, Margaret Osondu/Sally Mackert, Peace Coalition, Linda Knopp, Alsace Young-Walentine, Tim Pluta/Veterans for Peace, Westville Pub, Dawn Humphrey, West End Bakery, Burgermeister, all the staff of Malaprop’s, all the staff of Kinko’s, Bill Taylor of Iwanna. The list is endless. Feels like Asheville has become my childhood barrio.
Ninety-five or ninety-nine percent of what’s in and around The Indie and the Traveling Bonfires’ abode – body, heart and spirit – are freely, generously given by the community. The Indie is still here because you are still here -- I am still here because you are here.
THANK YOU. Maraming salamat. Muchas gracias. Toksa ake.

SO THIS SATURDAY, July 21, we’d like to invite one and all to come over to our house – 61 Dunwell Avenue in West Asheville (828 505 0476)— and share some cool, peaceful vibes, plus cool Filipino food, bring some food and drinks, as well. Let’s observe and celebrate how stubborn these stubborn dreams could be sometimes...
We are going to place a small mic and amps/speakers somewhere in the yard or living room—read a poem or rant about whatever (as long as it’s funny), sing a song, bring your friends and partners, wives and husbands and relations and kids. (Yes, you can bring pets, as well). We also invited our neighbors – and we are having yard sale, too.
By the way, it’s also my 107th birthday. (No rsvp, just come on over).

"LIVE EARTH": A Concert of Carbon Footprints (or one surrealistic pillow?)

2007-08-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

I HAD a sweet nightmare the other night. Amidst a numbing migraine in between vertigo and hubris, I saw myself forty years ago—zealously quizzing my Aunt Pilar, “What is a surrealistic pillow?” As she danced—swinging, swirling, swishing across the den—as Marty Balin’s spaced-out voice and Grace Slick’s blank growl soared and heaved like a pair of tired, beautiful sorrows wanting to touch ground, copulate and heal each other, she would lazily whisper at my left ear, “I don’t know, my dear…”
“I don’t know, I don’t care.”
Like a spellbound moth—stubbornly, giddily circling around a lamplight of unknowingness before it finally runs out of spark—I untiringly kept on asking questions. Questions that I patiently culled out of LP sleeve covers’ lyric sheets.
“What is a whiter shade of pale?” “Why is the dead grateful?” “Where is the velvet underground?” “How do I get signed up with Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?” “Can you dance the light fandango?” “What is a surrealistic pillow?”
“I don’t know, I don’t care.”

MY AUNT Pilar hasn’t failed to mystify me. It’s certainly not just because of her “lucy with a white rabbit in the sky with diamonds” trance dance—it’s because, despite her “I don’t know, my dear...” caresses and reassurances, she is a very strong and smart woman.
More than anything else, my dear Aunt Pilar is a VERY “involved” woman. The very first real-life human being (apart from Huck and Tom) who imbued in me the beautiful urgency of getting involved with what’s going out there. So when she whispers on my left ear, “I don’t know, my dear...” that actually meant, “I got it all covered, young man!”
Deep inside, as years wafted by, I came to profoundly live with Aunt Pilar’s ethereal spirit and radical pragmatism. “Enjoy your dance but don’t get swept away by the quiet peace... the world is calling you out there. Go out! Protect humanity, young man!”
My Aunt Pilar has long been living in Frankfurt, happily-married to Detlef Moessner, a German veterinarian who was born and raised in Piedmont, South Dakota—who’s a carbon copy of The Stones’ Charlie Watts but who neither played drums nor looked stoic at all. Uncle Detlef (I sometimes call him Detleffard) is a happy man and he shows it. He always laughs like it’s his one-and-only gig, outside a blissful matrimony. He’s such a happy man that whenever he attends to his dog-patients, you could actually hear the canines laughing with his wild Will Farrell jokes. Have you heard pooches and coons and hounds laughing out loud in a kind of “We Will Rock You!” unison? Go to Uncle Detlef’s vet hospital... It rocks!

MEANTIME, back to my Aunt Pilar — I don’t really think that she would remember I even asked those kind of “surrealistic” queries at all when I was a kid, or that, she would even care about Jefferson Airplane anymore. It has been four long decades ago... I guess, Grace Slick has now been retired in some Baton Rouge backwoods, munching crawfish enchilada over Busch Lite belting out a Kelly Clarkson ditty all weekends of her 50/60-something life, who knows—people change with age, you know.
For some—yes, surreal—reason, I ran across my Aunt Pilar in a bizarre dream sequence the other night. She was fuming mad outside London’s Wembley Stadium, where an episode of “Live Earth” worldwide concerts was happening. Among many other reasons, my Aunt Pilar and Uncle Detlef were protesting against DaimlerChrysler, a major sponsor of the lavish environmental-awareness spectacle.
DaimlerChrysler — which was using its low-emissions Smart car brand in the sponsorship — should not sponsor concerts, complained Aunt Pilar. The average level of carbon dioxide emissions from DaimlerChrysler’s fleet was 186 grams per kilometer — well above the automobile industry’s own commitment to cut emissions to 140 grams a kilometer. (The above data wasn’t, of course, flashed in my “nightmare.” But, of course, I gotta tell you that fact.)
Aunt Pilar was a staunch anti-war activist. “”We were creating the rules and making them work,” she would lighten up when reminded of Laurel Canyon, LA in `67. “There was magic all over.” According to a neatly captioned Polaroid photo that I retrieved from a family library in San Fernando Valley, Aunt Pilar was in Los Angeles, outside a club called Pandora’s Box, on Sunset and Crescent, on Nov 12, 1966—when thousands of people showed up to protest a 10pm teen-curfew law. Local business simply got fed up with what they called as “longhaired interlopers” who loved dancing all night, so went the crackdown.
My Aunt was also present during a rock benefit show for a music industry-related organization called, “CAFF: Community Action for Facts and Freedom,” at Valley Music Theater on Feb 23, 1967. The Byrds, the Doors, and Buffalo Springfield all played for this fundraiser—which was fighting the teen curfew.
Aunt Pilar was very active with anti-war street protests and “civil disobedience” activities in Manila, as well. Along with many activist-students from the state-run University of the Philippines and the upper class Ateneo de Manila, she took the streets so many times to help prevent the Philippine government from sending more PHILCAG (Philippine Civic Action Group) troops to Vietnam.
I once queried, “What do you mean by `make love, not war,’ Aunt Pilar?” Well, as usual, she hushed me with, “I don’t know, my dear...”
Although I always saw Aunt Pilar and her “groovy sisters” partying to “Purple Haze” and “Sunshine of Your Love,” flashing those exuberant “Peace Man!” signs—it wasn’t all fun, all the time. Whenever they communed and held vigils on picketlines, they would usually end up ushering their lean bodies, wrapped with multicolored gypsy dresses, along factory driveways to block the oncoming transport of scabs. They would scream, “Down with scabs! Welga! Welga!” Only water canons, tear gas bombs, and truncheons would force them out of the streets. That is, if they were lucky enough not to be thrown in jail—which, of course, happened more often than not.
That was my Aunt Pilar, and that was her kind of activism. “No wonder, we don’t get the war to stop,” she would rant in my dream, “it’s because we only want to party.” She would go on and on, “These days, we just love to dance and get drunk, and talk and lecture, stack up on condoms, and fire off emails on the sides. A slight rain forecast will keep us off the streets!”
In a way, or sure enough, Aunt Pilar was referring to the “Live Earth” magnificence last July 7. The concerts, which was designed to raise awareness about man-made climate change and advocate environmentally friendly living, brought together more than 150 musical acts in eleven locations around the world and was broadcast to a mass global audience through radio, television, and the Internet.

THE UMBRELLA organization for “Live Earth” was “Save Our Selves,” founded by Kevin Wall, and included major partners such as former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, the Alliance for Climate Protection, MSN, and Control Room, the production company which produced the event. Unlike the similar “Live 8” concerts, which were free, “Live Earth” charged admission. The event set a new record for online entertainment by generating more than 9 million streams.
Although Gore has repeatedly voiced his prior stand that he is “not planning to be a candidate again for office,” this blatant display of self-promotion – that started with his narrator’s work with the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” – is simply staggering and almost unprecedented. This makes me point to (on a relatively less grander scale) Cindy Sheehan, who apparently got so tired in front of the camera, so she officially gave up the (anti-war) fight. Now she wants to run for public office and challenge Rep. (and Speaker) Nancy Pelosi.
Is this what all these “activism” amount to? A political career?
Until now, it makes me ask why is it we are not very familiar with that young madman who organized Woodstock in 1969? I know I read about him many years ago—a small-down dude with a big-city attitude but who never made it—but then, he excised enough courage, patience, and diligence to raise money from mostly his rich midtown Manhattan and Long Island-based Jewish buddies to be able to put up the rock event that became the ultimate, unswerving template of all rock festivals with a cause.
Do you know? I know that it was held in Max Yasgur’s 600-acre farm in Bethel NY – because Joni Mitchell and CSN sang it, but I bet you don’t even know who started it all. Does it matter? (We can all talk about a fun weekend at Bonnaroo, Ozzfest, Lollapalooza, or Lilith Fair, but Woodstock will always be up there in heaven, its transcendence remains unequal, unreachable.)
We remember Woodstock for the spirit – no names, no main bill, no chasers in between – just the spirit freely soaked in pristine rain and primitive, selfless love and community. But then, how easy it is to remember Mr Al Gore – the name, the politician, the soundbyte – when we think about “saving the earth.”

ACCORDING to The Observer, the event’s total carbon footprint in the London segment alone, including the artists’ and spectators’ travel and energy consumption, was probably at least 31,500 tonnes, which is more than 3,000 times the average Briton’s annual footprint.
Carbon footprint is a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide or CO2 emitted through the combustion of fossil fuels; in the case of an organization, business or enterprise, as part of their everyday operations; in the case of an individual or household, as part of their daily lives; or a product or commodity in reaching market.
The artists on stage had to fly at least 222,623.63 miles (about 358,278 km) — the equivalent of nearly nine times round the planet — to take part in the event. Wembley bill-topper Madonna — who, fashion magazine Marie-Claire, reported owned a Mercedes Maybach, two Range Rovers, an Audi A8s and a Mini Cooper S — had produced an estimated 440 tonnes of carbon dioxide on her four-month Confessions on a Dancefloor publicity tour.
Meanwhile, The Red Hot Chili Peppers flew in by private jet from Paris and flew out, again by private jet, after the London concert to perform in Denmark, event organizers had admitted, and The Beastie Boys had to be in Montreux the next day. After the appearance of the UK band, Razorlight, at the London Live Earth event, they were ferried to an airport in a large tour bus with police escort where they caught a private jet to an airport in Scotland, from there, they used a helicopter to travel to Balado where they performed at another event.
Meantime, concert-goers at the event’s London leg had left thousands of plastic cups on the floor of Wembley Stadium, although organizers had urged audience members to use the recycling bins provided, the BBC reported.
Oh well, it would probably take a blitzkrieg of tanks standing guard around the venue to ensure that people loyally, obediently dump their cups on designated cups/papers/plastics-only bins. How many people religiously recycle in their houses and then trash out beer-filled styrofoam and plastic cups at a rock festival – just because they were so smashed or having so much fun they didn’t remember?
So much for the “environment-awareness” bit. I don’t believe that people nowadays need to be reminded by an intercontinental rock concert to start recycling either. Why don’t we just start consuming less of these magnificently-toxic rock concerts that profess “saving ourselves” while we also stoke ourselves deep down in a (non-biodegradable) pit of excess and hedonism?
Wanna save the world? Eat ramen noodles and drink tap water sweetened with sweat, then go launch a lifetime-worth of rock concerts in the heart of the Amazon rainforest and/or around the vicinity of every factory in China. Something like that…
(That’s not my Aunt Pilar ranting in my nightmare, that’s me talking in my sleep—migraine and all.)

ROGER DALTREY, who weren’t part of the “Earth” party, said “The last thing the planet needs is a rock concert... the questions and the answers are so huge I don’t know what a rock concert’s ever going to do to help.”
Few years ago, an entire village was swept away – thousands perished – in a very impoverished island town in the south of the Philippines. The obvious culprit – illegal logging. Mountains are raped of trees so that we, mostly in affluent countries and societies, could consume them at a pace that can only be called bizarre and fiendish. I see “environmental activists” hug trees from Bolinas, California to Florence, South Carolina – so they could protect them? – from whom? What does that amount to? Advocacy to save the globe? A crusade to save your summertime shade or community beautification campaign?
Our `hood is not the World. Wembley Stadium or some intentional community in the Shenandoahs aren’t the Earth. Ormoc Island in the Philippines, a Kenyan village in Nairobi, an “untouchables” slum in New Delhi – these are the communities and humanity that need help. With all the money that rock concert titans are throwing away, why don’t they just funnel the resources and energy to where they are most needed?
Gore continued, “This one day, 24 hours long, will not only be a wake-up call for the world but the beginning of a multi-year campaign...” A global campaign like recycling? Again, I repeat, we pay the government recycling fees—while we volunteer to segregate this and that on this and that bin—so that a total of $236 billion is generated from this “awareness.” Then we hand over a measly $60 billion to an AIDS-stricken and starving Africa, then we praise ourselves because we care for the Earth—all cameras clicking. Hallelujah!

NOT TOO LONG ago, a number of “cause-oriented” rock concerts and festivals took Woodstock’s lead. George Harrison spearheaded the two 1971 “Concerts for Bangladesh.” John Cleese and Martin Lewis conceived the Amnesty International-sponsored “Secret Policeman’s Balls” benefit concerts from 1976 to 1981. Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt and John Hall organized the four “No Nukes” concerts in 1979. Four other benefit concerts for Kampuchea was conceived by Paul McCartney and Kurt Waldheim in 1979. Then, there was the 1988 “Free Nelson Mandela Concert” at Wembley Stadium.
The most popular of the post-Woodstock “rock concert series” initiatives was, of course, Bob Geldof’s two “Live Aid” concerts on July 13, 1985 and the eight “Live 8” concerts staged on July 2, 2005. Before that, Amnesty International staged 20 concerts in 1988 called “Human Rights Now! World Tour” - a tour conceived by Jack Healey and Martin Lewis.
What makes these efforts different from “Live Earth” is that – these concerts had a clear-cut humanitarian agenda or program of implementation – other than the fun side of the revelry or the multi-media PR bombast.

AH, I SHOULD quit complaining now... This nightmare the other night is just disturbing.
“What is a surrealistic pillow?” I can still visualize my Aunt Pilar swinging, swirling, swishing across the den—as Jefferson Airplane rockets and weaves along the purple haze of my psychedelic memory.
“I don’t know, my dear…”
“What is a horse with no name?” “Where can we buy an American Pie?” “Can you please take me to Strawberry Fields?” “How do I light a fire?” “Have you seen Proud Mary?” “Where is the dock of the bay?”
“I don’t know, I don’t care.”
The music plays, the dancing continues... but the Earth is bleeding, bleeding so bad. I need Aunt Pilar’s spirit to show me the way to help start or continue the healing. Meantime, let me rest on my “surrealistic pillow” and muse over my sweet nightmare. Tomorrow is another day. I gotta keep on rockin’.

DESAPARECIDO: (The Disappeared)

2007-07-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

Sigurado ako na kung nandito ka, tutulong ka para sa pamilya ni Tito Jonas. Kung mas malapit ka lang, masasagot mo ang mga tanong ko at masasabi mo sa akin kung ano ang pwede kong gawin para kahit papano ay makatulong. [I am sure that if you are here, you will help find Jonas. If you are just here, you will be able to answer my questions and you will tell me what I can possibly do to help them.]
—Letter from Demi Patricia Pascua, 16
(Manila, Philippines to Asheville, North Carolina, 27 June 07)

Desaparecido. The Disappeared.
These days, desaparecido is more geared at what non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch refer to as “forced disappearances.”
A forced disappearance occurs when an organization forces a person to vanish from public view, either by murder or by simple sequestration. The victim is first kidnapped, then illegally detained in concentration camps, often tortured, and finally executed and their corpse hidden.
The term desaparecidos specifically refers to South America’s so-called “Dirty War,” particularly in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, which cooperated together, along with other dictatorships, in Operation Condor. (Operation Condor was a campaign of state terrorism and intelligence operations implemented in 1975 by right-wing dictatorships that dominated the Southern Cone in South America from the 1950s to 1980s, heavily relying on numerous assassinations. This systematic state terrorism aimed both to deter democratic and left-wing influence and ideas disseminated in the region and to control active or potential opposition movements against these governments.)
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which entered into force on July 1, 2002, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, “forced disappearances” qualify as a crime against humanity, which thus cannot be subject to statute of limitation. (A statute of limitations is a statute in a common law legal system that sets forth the maximum period of time, after certain events, that legal proceedings based on those events may be initiated. In civil law systems, similar provisions are usually part of the civil code or criminal code and are often known collectively as “periods of prescription” or “prescriptive periods.”)
The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec 20, 2006, also states that the widespread or systematic practice of enforced disappearances constitutes a crime against humanity. Crucially, it gives victims’ families the right to seek reparations and to demand the truth about the disappearance of their loved ones.

DESAPARECIDOS are a common “reality” in the Philippines, the country of my birth, during the height of the dreaded (Ferdinand and Imelda) Marcos dictatorship in the late-70s up to mid-80s. This swath of terror remained unmitigated and unabated in the 90s—despite the end of Martial Law—continuing to the globally-celebrated “people power” government of Corazon Aquino and later, in the midst of the administrations of Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada, two former close-in allies of the Marcoses.
Up to this date, cases of desaparecidos still hound the Filipino people like bloodied nightmares that refuse to cease or subside.
Hence, the history of the desaparecidos remains a huge blot on the Philippine government’s human rights record. More than 1,600 Filipinos were abducted or disappeared under mysterious circumstances since the Marcos regime, according to a human-rights group that keeps count. Almost always, fingers pointed at the military, which has not kept secret its dislike of left-leaning organizations and individuals.

JONAS JOSEPH “JJ” Burgos, a son of late Filipino press icon Jose “Joe” Burgos, has been missing for almost three months now. JJ is now declared as a desaparecido (the disappeared). Joe was my first-ever editor and most staunch, lionhearted “people’s journalism” guru.
JJ was barely on his late-teens when I last left Manila in the summer of 1998. He was just a kid when me and his Dad’s ragtag staff of cocky, hotshot recruits ran possum with the military regime’s monstrous shadows – dismissing death threats as “chicken shit,” hauling off typewriters and IBM composers onto hidden, pitch-dark lairs as our loved ones prayed nonstop for God’s guiding, protective hand... wading through flashfloods, playing hide-and-seek with some high that kicks up from utter danger, “running between typhoon rains and wind.” That was the apex of my life’s subversive romanticism.
I survived those years—when a number of Joe’s “ragtag staff of cocky, hotshot recruits” didn’t make it at all. Some fled to China or to an East Bloc country to pursue Maoist or Marxist ideals, some escaped to the US and lived as self-exiles...
Some became desaparecidos.

MEANTIME, when Joe opted to retire in a small farmland that he purchased for his wife Editha, a daughter and two sons in the late-80s – we, his small minion of idealistic but fatalistic “alternative media” warriors, continued to fight the protracted war for “truth and justice.”
Apart from my other “rock journeys and sublime madnesses,” I published two biweekly newspapers and then formed the first incarnation to what is now called Traveling Bonfires, towards the end of the eighties. JJ’s older brother, Jose Luis (JL), used to play session bass for my band, Duane’s Poetry, which was the centerpiece of The Bonfires’ road performances. In the mid-90s, I hooked up with Alfredo Roces Guerrero, nephew of Joaquin “Chino” Roces, Joe’s main benefactor and most avid supporter, and edited/co-published seven “pulp” magazines. (The Spanish-Filipino Roces-Guerreros own the biggest and largest mass-market publishing empire in the Philippine Islands, perhaps the only traditionally-rich clan back home that didn’t accede to Ferdinand and Imelda’s fantastic whims and bizarre dictates.)
I chose to stay for few more years in Manila, and started work on a film that would chronicle a turbulent summer in the northern provinces—specifically in a tiny village called Marag Valley where three staffers of a multisectoral fact-finding mission to investigate military atrocities in the region were reported missing (later found dead). I wasn’t able to finish the movie (but I handed over pertinent footages and a boxful of interview cassette tapes to another journalist-filmmaker buddy who later finished the documentary film). Meanwhile, a near-fatal lung ailment demobilized me and had me airlifted to Manila.
But that wasn’t the deepest reason why I decided to “slow down.” My growing disillusionment and disenchantment with what I believed were “liberators of the people,” exacerbated by economic woes that continued to befell the country, finally made me declare, “I gotta take a break.”
I left Manila for New York City on my 38th birthday, almost eight years ago this month. That was the time when the once-vaunted Southeast Asian Tigers were declawed by Western World’s unswerving intervention (otherwise known as “The John Soros Hook” AKA “speculative investments”)—while China’s formidable open-door policy, all in all, rendered the region’s economic life a virtual wasteland. My seven “pulp” magazines, including a prototype of what I later called as The Indie, were all sideswept by that paralyzing economic crunch.
So I set out to an open-ended journey... Weary and tired, frustrated and disillusioned. I knew right there that I was looking for peace. A very personal peace—a quiet within.

JJ IS AN agriculturist who has lived quietly and simply all his life. He is a member of the Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (AMP, Alliance of Farmers of the Philippines) and was active in its farm training program. AMP is an affiliate of the more militant, Kilusan ng Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (KMP). When I was in my late-20s, I edited KMP’s organizational newsletter and news dispatch in between my work as desk editor for a national newspaper, and worked as farmers community organizer in Central Luzon’s (main island) farming villages.
JJ was kidnapped April 28 with two companions at a restaurant on Commonwealth Avenue, Quezon City (a suburb of Manila). Witnesses said they were dragged into a Toyota Revo outside the restaurant. They furnished the police the vehicle’s plate number. Many believed that the abduction was perpetrated by the military. The Armed Forces of the Philippines has denied any involvement in the disappearance of JJ Burgos. The license plate of the Toyota Revo used in the kidnapping, however, was traced to another vehicle that was impounded in the Army’s 56th Infantry Battalion in Norzagaray, a town of Bulacan. The army said the TAB 194 plate was stolen by “trouble-makers” living near the camp.

MYSTERIOUS disappearances of usually individuals with direct or indirect involvement or interaction with activist organizations, or simply “mass-based” sectors (ie farmers, fisherfolk, labor, urban poor, militant students), were “ordinary” occurrences in the Philippines when I was in my 20s/30s. Once a colleague is reported or deemed “missing,” we—more or less—were certain that he/she’s going to surface as a lifeless, decomposing lump of flesh by the riverside or dumpsite later.
I revisited all these gruesome tales and stories of decades-long “summary executions” and “desaparecido” kasama (comrades) in my working-novel, “Waiting for Winter,” and in my piano/violin sonata, “Awit kay Clarita” (Song for Clarita), which was interpreted through a 15-minute dance in a social realist “Art of Resistance” exhibition in SoHo (Manhattan) in the fall of 2000. I also tackled the same subject in a tribal musical, “Dara” (Ilocano/Igorot tribal word for “blood”) that I wrote in 1991 while I was in India, and in an unproduced screenplay, “Dundungoen Canto” (“I’ll Watch Over You”).
Desaparecidos occupy a bloodied room in my heart. I can almost see my own (dear departed) Mother’s agonized face in JJ’s Mother’s grieving, waiting...

THE PHILIPPINES is an eternally impoverished country – with 15 million of its huge population (or 1.5 percent of the people) living on a $1 a day subsistence... There is no visible sign of light across this dark, cold tunnel.
Oceans away and almost ten years ago, the cadaverous stench and torture-chamber cold of memories of the many years of struggle against military oppression still rouse me from sleep. Just like before—when I treaded ricefield foottrails with landless farmers and sailed improvised bancas with small fisherfolk in the barrios, when I scoured citystreets for “people’s news” and then marched “kapit-bisig” (arms clutched together) with the masa (common people) afront soldiers and cops with their firearms drawn—I still feel the surge of blood running up and down my spine, onto my heart and spirit. Day in, day out – no warmth and comfort of America can ever heal the wound. I can feel a moment’s joy but healing will always be my life’s journey.
I survived those years. I “physically” survived those years. But I can never survive the memories—especially that they keep on coming back.
JJ may still be alive... or maybe he has already joined his Dad somewhere in another world. At this moment, his family and friends are grieving. There is no way to make them happy. They want JJ back...
Last week, my youngest brother Alvaro left Manila for Macau to work so that he could somehow help give his sickly wife, and young son and daughter a decent future. His family sent him away with tears but with hope.
These are my people.
Last month, just like many summer Saturdays of the “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park” in the last four years, I saw families – younger mothers and fathers danced with their kids, families enjoying a moment of peace and love – families who may not have the same pain and misery as my people thousands of miles away... But just the same, I feel the quiet joy inside me. My day mattered, my life is worth it. I feel like I never left “home” whenever I see these people dancing out there. I am “home” in my little space in my little park.
Again, the rain threatened to fall and stop the joy on that last Saturday’s “Bonfires for Peace”—just like many times in the last four summers. But again, it didn’t rain. It will never rain... because moments like these keep hearts close together and spirits communicating. In case it rains, we will all dance under God’s blessings – life is here, life is a gift.
My “bonfires” have traveled far from the countrysides of the Philippines to the mountains of North Carolina. But they never failed to lighten things up and gather people together. Even for a moment’s time. It will always be that way.
To JJ Burgos, wherever you are – be brave, keep faith. “Home” is wherever you are. Spirits fly, fires burn, life carries on.
MABUHAY KA!

RAMBLE ON: Flint to Cary, crashing computers, missing e-poems, good ole’ linotypes and Underwood, full-moon fevers... oh my, I am so depressed!

2007-07-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

WHERE'S CARY, North Carolina?” my Bay Area homey Beaver The Fever rang me up at 2:17am on a bright full moon June aftermidnight. “How far is Cary from Asheville? You gotta tell me, man. I am freakin’ out!” I’m quite sure Ms Padgett Lee Feaver III (her real name) was fine, I’ve known this li’l pesky critter – a good friend I call, “a turbo-boosted chipmunk on perpetual imaginary acid trip,” since age 17 not to know better of her irksome nocturnal buggings. “What’s up with Cary? Why would you want to go to Cary?”
“Because I can’t go to Irvine CA or Amherst NY! That’s why!”
Hmmm. “Why not Asheville? I live in Asheville. Don’t you miss me?”
“Nah! Asheville is some contradictory, oblique, crisscrossing juxtaposition of maddeningly bottled inertia! I’ve got enough of your Asheville! I got enough of you, rock star!” (Ah! What arrogance! Didn’t I just say Beaver The Fever is some turbo-boosted chipmunk on perpetual imaginary acid trip? So I forgive her for the acerbic sarcasm. No problemo.)
Uhh. “What do you mean? You prefer Cary over Asheville?”
“What do I mean? Cary is all I want and need right now. Asheville is just like you or my ex, who adores you like you’re a demented alter-ego of Holden Caulfield, or some fantasized nutcase-dreamer. Besides, I am done with all these best-of WNC bugaboo. Damned PR! I just want to get to Cary.”
Oh, man... Do I deserve this wayward missile right now? But what are friends for anyway, right? I just have to understand Ms Feaver III. Just like all of us chronically New World-harassed earthlings, Beaver The Fever wants PEACE. For her, peace is the absence of war—aka violence. “Violence” also translates to an emotionally/mentally-tortured marriage. (THAT is WAR for her, and I can’t blame the poor soul...)
Right now, Padgett lives and works in Flint, Michigan. Yes, Flint – Flint of Michael Moore’s “madness,” beside Bob Seger’s sprawling Metamora ranch – the town that currently ranks as the US’s “most violent” or dangerous city. According to the most recent FBI data, Flint owns 26.0 violent crime per 1,000 people – compared with Cary’s 1.2. (Violent crimes include murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.) Irvine, CA (0.7) and Amherst, NY (1.1) are the two top “least violent cities” in North America.
For some reason, Beaver opted for Cary. I don’t know—maybe Cary means Cary Grant, her everlasting-muse. Bottomline is, she is, as she calls it, “On the verge of doing a Thelma & Louise kamikaze move” right now. Tough, isn’t it? I gotta help her.

I HAVE always considered myself a devout non-believer of Prozac Nation – depression, melancholia, writer’s block, or the “a-lot-of-things-are-goin’-on-in-my-life-right-now” stigma. But then, in the past few weeks, it’s like I’ve been hit by a some kind of gung-ho Scud myself, leaving me sleepless, irksome, difficult, and aloof. Oh yes, there are graspable physical reasons that usher these unmitigated blues and funk (although, many times, I refuse to accept these “excuses” ... “not my culture, not my gig!)
My two work-computers conked out on me twice in three weeks – thereby deleting most of my Indie and Bonfires files, “lovable hate mails,” poetry drafts, three unsaved chapters of my novel-in-process etc etc. My computers have always been objects of magnificent jealousy and insecurity of my past girlfriends – but at this juncture, when my “ancient” PCs gave up, it’s like I lost it all.
Lessons of life, you know—come so bitter and painful, most of the time. The words of my last GF, Lacy Miss Molly, before she dumped me were, “You will realize, one day, that you need me a million times more than your Dell or your iMac!” (Well, I didn’t have an iMac, actually.. but then, she dumped me, just the same, saying Hendrix, her redhead Pekingese Poodle, is 300 times more sensible and sensitive than I really am!)
Anyway, I’m probably “depressed” that I lost most of my files – and here, I am, frantically emailing/calling friends and past GFs (yup, including Beaver The Fever and Lacy Miss Molly) in case they somehow kept some of my work, you know. (Lacy: “Hendrix devoured all your printed poems, m’dear! Poor kid, I mean—Hendrix. He had indigestion all night!”)
Ah, whatever. When computers give up, it’s gone—kaput, vanished, disappeared! But then, I believe in the inherent goodness of the human heart – no matter how people hate each other, there will always be a way to retrieve some shared “gifts” like a cool love poem or a “classic” fiction-on-the-works, right? Well, I never trashed my ex’es’ mementoes and memorabilias– I actually keep them, secure them, in five Office Depot boxes on my basement. (Although Marta The Nicer almost mistook them as “throwable treasures” that we sell in our weekend yard sale fundraisers.)
“Yes, I know you hate me until now, and I sort of remind you of your ex whatever his name is... but did I somehow cc’ed you a long poem that I wrote when I was in Lyons... I think when I was living in Great Neck, Long Island... no, I think when I was in a train to Brussels or Antwerp—remember that one?”
Beaver groaned, “Ah! You never changed! Men don’t change! You don’t even remember where the hell you wrote the silly poem, do you remember who you’re with at that time, or to whom you wrote the freakin’ poem for?”
“That’s why I am asking you! Because I lost the poem or poems...”
“Then, go and fix your freakin’ computer?! I am asking about Cary, North Carolina—and here you are, whinin’ about some poetry!” Then she hung up the phone. Just like before, just like the bad ole days—they just hung up on me... Sometimes I don’t understand women. They call at 2:17am without a warning, bug you out of your deadlines, demand undistracted attention. And then, they hung up. Click!
So here I am still “depressed.” In the past few weeks, I think I’ve only been sleeping for three hours at a time. But then I found out, I am not alone on this wonderful predicament. The Wall Street Journal reported that only 26 percent of adult Americans get eight hours of sleep a night these days, down from 38 percent in 2001.
What’s going on? What’s up with all these funk and blues? PCs that conk out paralyze an entire month of media mobility, cellphone “drop calls” are equal to massive breakdown of communication, missed appointment with the shrink earns you another six months of Zoloft prescription.
Depression... My Key West buddy, Merwin The Merlin, refers to this annoying malady as “a necessary readjustment of Mercury retrograde” due to realignment of Pluto’s pizza delivery on the next curb to Jupiter, or something to that effect. Some full moon fever, you know?
Check this one out – police in Brighton, England, recently announced plans to deploy more beat officers on nights with a full moon. “From my experience,” said Inspector Andy Parr, on full-moon nights “we do seem to get people with, sort of, stranger behavior—more fractious, argumentative.” I recall how I yelled and cussed at this pair of mischievous squirrels jumping up and down my front yard trees – it was a full moon, ha! I actually thought that these annoying pests were the ones responsible for my Charter wireless or Belkin router’s failing signals that midnight. (Are these squirrels working for Homeland Security?)
Come to think of it, do we deserve such stupid stress levels? I believed I was doing something relevant and urgent that evening. I was blogging bigtime, and then—wham! All my 1-million KB worth of spam email messages and blog updates went pfft! What’s going on?
Now you tell me—why there is no large-scale, organized opposition to the war? There are several reasons. But the biggest factor, according to Rex Huppke of the Chicago Tribune, may be the Web, or overdependence to the Internet. Instead of gathering in smoky coffeehouses or in massive rallies on the street, today’s activists fire off mass e-mails or update their blogs. Blogs may reach a lot of people, but they siphon away energy and indignation into angry words, instead of action visible to all. It’s “counterintuitive,” but the vastly improved communication networks of the modern age “may actually be taking a bit of oomph out of political activism.”
Glorious madmen like George Orwell, Alvin Toffler, and Kurt Vonnegut already sent out precautionary warnings before, but we are not listening. I am guilty, as well. There was a time when I actually believed Judas’ exhortations in Jesus Christ Superstar – “Everytime I look at you I don’t understand / Why you let the things you did get so out of hand / You’d have managed better if you’d had it planned / Why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange land? / If you’d come today you would have reached a whole nation / Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.” No. That doesn’t work at all.
Do I have to tell you how 32 (11x17 pagemaker 7.0) pages of the supposedly June 1-15 issue of The Indie – plus maybe 6K kb worth of “other writings and files” – got wasted because a mass communication device like computers crashed on me? Yeah, I can email, text-message, make a cellphone call etc to my ex-GFs and homeys with an objective to retrieve some valuable “words” that I’ve written – but, no dice! (Hendrix, Beaver the Fever’s redhead Pekingese Poodle even ate some of my Neruda-like “poemas.” Lord, have mercy!)
I remember those days of yore—during the early years of my little journalism career, back home in Manila. When my scoop news stories, proletarian verses and Brechtian street plays were neatly typed on Underwood typewriters and pressed-printed on linotypes, stacked up on sturdy molds (then later on IBM Roadrunner composers racked up on galleys). My songs? We simply sang them in front of starry-eyed villagefolk – and voila! They memorize the songs! They even reminded me of missed verses whenever I sang them during barrio fiestas. Cool, isn’t it?
Now, it’s so easy to get depressed. I did not save my volumes and volumes of work on zip disc, CDs, or external what... drives? I did! But when I went to Best Buy to retrieve the poor, pitiful manuscripts, some Borat-looking dude on pink goggles informed me that my iOmega zip disc wasn’t compatible with their machines! Oh, man...

DEPRESSED, DEPRESSED. One morning, as I nervously sifted through my bills, I noticed that I was actually paying recycling fees for many years now. And with those fees, I could have bought myself a cool new MacIntosh or maybe I could have eaten raw chilled oysters at Magnolia’s every Sunday of the week for the last seven years. (I don’t get depressed when I eat oysters, you know...)
Now hear this. A total of 1,643 pounds of trash was generated per person in the US in 2005. (No data yet for 2006.) Some 32 percent of this waste was recycled, a rate that has doubled in the past 15 years. The estimated annual revenue of the US recycling industry is $236 billion.
And how much did the superich G-8 countries pledge to deliver to Africa to fight AIDS, malaria and TB? A “measly” $60 billion. Now, that is something to be stressed or depressed about, right? I am lawfully paying the city government “recycling fees” — whether I recycle or not — and then they keep the money, and they don’t even share a decent fraction to poorer people? Bad!
Not good. That is why we poor humanity is so stressed out these days. But although I am apparently upset and desperate, I am not suicidal. And, Beaver The Fever – after a really nasty divorce – isn’t being suicidal, as well. (“Thelma and Louise kamikaze move” means she’s gonna find herself a Brad Pitt cowboy in Cary NC.)
You see, suicide is so uncool! As for me, I just invoke what my “other-Muse” Cher retorted to Nicolas Cage in “Moonstruck”: “SNAP OUT OF IT!” Yeah, I just take a deep breath, heat some ramen noodles, chow `em, watch “King of the Hill,” and think positive. That’ll work. (Do you know that for every 100,000 Chinese citizens, an average of 23 commit suicide each year? The Chinese number is 50 percent higher than the global average.)
SNAP OUT OF IT! That’s what I’m gonna do with my chronic, pesky little funk and blues these days. But I’m not gonna pop in some multicolored pill or go find a shrink or some Lily Tomlin-lookin’ madam with a Dollar Tree notepad to “heal” me. I’d rather buy either Terri The Terra or Marta The Nicer a slice of Mellow Mushroom mozzarella or mug of Westville Pub PBR – and listen to what they gotta say. That works better. Listen to those who love you, and then things will be just fine. No shrinks for me.
We in the super-affluent First World might blame the fact that there’s only 1.3 psychiatrist/s per 100,000 people in China—so the staggering number of suicides? In the US, it’s 14 per 100,000. (Iceland has the highest ratio, with 25... duh, hello? Live in a world of ice day in and day out, do you expect to be jolly?) Do we really believe that shrinks could un-depress the vaunted Chinese production line? Nah.
The scandalously massive Chinese workforce just have to take some time and chill, y’know—after hours and hours of factory work. These guys invented the CD, you know that? Before the Western Merchant called it “compact disc,” it was called “Chinese Disco.” CD. It’s because during those bygone years, the Chinese have real, cool, unadulterated fun—that they invented discotheque. (Do you know that before the Bee Gees made millions with “Saturday Night Fever,” Barry Gibb went on a secret trip to Beijing to study how to effectively sing “Stayin’ Alive” and “You Should Be Dancing”?)
The Chinese are depressed because they are also bored. Look, they mass-produce all kinds of stuff – push-up bra, birdfeeders, Pablo Picasso paintings, Rolex watches, coffee mugs, vibrators and dildos, DVDs, mug-wheels, all kinds of Cup-a-Noodles, boxer shorts etc etc. You name, they got it—ready to go. They might even mass-produce irksome imps like me, in case there is a market for such merciless pests, you know what I’m saying?
Crazy, crazy world! Indeed!
Oh, man... I am just depressed. So depressed.

Sex is beautiful, sex is a gift, sex is good

2007-07-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

Sex!
Talk about stuff. Import liberalization, objectivist epistemology, cultural imperialism – faulty heating, broken windshields, missing buttons— Daisuke Matsuzaka, Sanjaya Malakar, Don Imus. Talk about stuff—there’s always a lot of stuff to talk about. It’s all stuff, nothing big deal. Life, you know... We just have to talk, speak our minds out.
Talk about sex. Cool stuff to talk about, right?
Sex is a subject that is unfailing as Buffalo NY’s blizzard, unmistakable as krispy kreme cholesterol, and undeniable as sin. Sex is something that we can’t argue, rationalize, intellectualize, idealize, trivialize—although we all try to. We all go back from where we started from. Nobody says, “No, I don’t do sex...” and feel proud of it. Or, “I don’t like sex, it sucks!” Why would you say such a thing?
Sex is beautiful, sex is a gift, sex is good. So let’s talk about it.
I don’t, however, intend to question or validate or debate the where and wherefore of sex. Whether we live up in a West Central Park penthouse or in a trailer park in Murphy, NC – whether we consume precious time musing over capital management at a Wall Street board room or laze around at the backwoods of Bristol, Tennessee, impersonating William Shatner... sex is something that we all share equal right to, equal passion to, equal ruin to. Nobody says “corporate sex” is different from “proletariat sex,” or “sex at The Hamptons” is better than “sex at a Camden, NJ `hood,” or “sex in Amsterdam” is a lot better than “sex in Bangkok.”
Sex is some subject that can be nonsensical and preposterous, frivolous and significant – yet it’s some subject that we can’t refuse or ignore.

ACCORDING to a recent study by the National Survey of Family Growth, men aged 30 to 44 have had a median of six to eight sexual partners in their lifetimes; the women’s median was about four. Surveyed were 12,571 men and women aged 15 to 44, as contracted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
That’s nothing to crow about, I reckon. My friend, simply called Rainbow—who used to be Christine Green, Brown, Black, White, Jones, Smith and Robinson—was married and divorced seven times. I mean, she’s talking about marriages-that-failed – not just sexual partners. “You’re asking me how many men I slept with?” her heavily-shaded pair of virulent eyes speared at me. “You are silly! I am 42 years old, Christsakes!” What my good friend was trying to say, I guess, was that—in case, she married all the men that she slept with since age 15, she must’ve had 517.5 divorces by now.
Nothing to crow about. Sex is part of life and living – whether you are single, divorced, or whatever. And it is also beautiful—sex is a gift, sex is good.
Few weeks ago, I chanced upon this news from Fox TV. Two pairs of high school students engaged in sex during class hours while their teachers were in a meeting. Their classmates stood as lookouts. For these “kids,” sex is good albeit “forbidden.” But high schoolers can also have sex (if they can’t help it), as long as they do it beyond school premises. Besides that, the school system provides for steady supply of condoms.
My friend Rita K barred her 14-year-old daughter, Kristi The Krispi, from venturing downtown because “it’s dangerous there, shady guys and all.” But she generously allowed her “baby’s” 15-year-old boyfriend stay over at night, anytime... “What are you having in there?” she questions them. “No beers, no weed, OK? I don’t allow you kids to even think about them. You are both minors!”
Kristi responds, “We are just having sex, Mom!” Mom was so relieved, “Oh, okay, don’t forget the condom... otherwise just do oral sex.”
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) 2005 findings indicated that oral sex is very much part of the teenage sexual repertoire. According to the survey, more than half of all teenagers aged 15 to 19 have engaged in oral sex - including nearly a quarter of those who have never had intercourse.
Whatever the case, although most “teen-aged” youths don’t consider oral sex as “sex really,” sex (“really” or “not really”) is still good, sex is something that need not be argued or debated. Sex is beautiful.
Meantime, the religious has also “mellowed down” in regards its revered outlook on sexual intimacy. Well, at least for a 41-year-old Florida pastor, Matt Keller, who’s most prominent preaching subject is sex. “Sex is beautiful, my brethren, go and have sex tonight... over and over again! Jesus wants us to have plenty of sex!” Membership to Keller’s flock has grown 30 percent since he started sermonizing on the carnal topic. A website, www.mycrappysexlife.com, serves the purpose.
Nothing to crow about, I guess.

SEXUAL adventurism or sexual ambivalence (I’m at a loss for words here) is also very much a part of the current humanity. Active sexuality among homosexuals and bisexuals—especially between females—has also been an important facet of the same NCHS research. Fourteen percent of women aged 18 to 29 reported at least one sexual experience with another woman, more than twice the proportion of young men who reported having had sex with another man.
Almost 3 percent of men between 15 and 44 and 4 percent of women reported having a sexual experience with a member of the same sex within the past year, and over their lifetimes, 6 percent of men and 11 percent of women reported having such experiences. About 1 percent of men and 3 percent of women said they had had both male and female sexual partners within 12 months.
Nearly 6 percent of all men between 15 and 44 reported having oral sex with another man at some time in their lives, and nearly 4 percent reported having anal sex with another man.
Again, whatever the case, sex is good. Sex is beautiful. Oral sex, anal sex, gay sex, straight sex, whatever sex.
Needless to say, sex is amply marketed in America—a lot more passionately and enthusiastically pitched than political happenings or health concerns.
Popular Hollywood movies like “American Pie” plus a slew of low-grade teen-age films, and multi-awarded TV fares like “Desperate Housewives” and “Sex in the City” articulate the “importance” of sex in human bonding and day-to-day living. Sex isn’t just fun—sex is needed. Magazines and publications from Christian-lifestyles to fashion subjects to sports world to music/recording industry to health readings – dovetail marketing trends and variables on sex.
More sex between spouses mean a deeply spiritually-committed marriage; flimsy, strawberry-scented lingerie lures the hubby off Sunday football in favor of more sex; trimmer abs and bustier bosoms mean stronger sexual charm... Fergie’s cleavage and Christina Aguilera’s nude shots sell more Rolling Stone Magazine ad space, and Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition tops ‘em all... Paris Hilton, J-Lo, The Bachelor, “Who is the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.” It’s all linked to sex, sexuality, sexual intrigue, sexual fascination.
Nothing to crow about. Indeed, sex sells!—especially in the Western world.

A UNIVERSITY of Chicago research, conducted last year, revealed that couples in Western countries are the most sexually satisfied, while countries in the East appear to be less satisfied. Only 49 percent of “foreign” men and 32 percent of women indicated that sex was extremely or very important to their overall life. Most of these are Asians.
Moreover, Asian countries all reported low levels of sexual satisfaction and moderate to low levels of satisfaction with their relationships and the importance of sex. Israeli women placed the highest value on the importance of sex — the lowest score came from women in Taiwan. Among men, Brazil scored the highest and Thailand the lowest. Overall, people in Austria are most satisfied with their sex lives, and Japanese are least satisfied.
However, I believe that not having a lot of sex doesn’t necessarily mean, “dissatisfaction.” The study was conducted coming from the standpoint that sex is needed, an exigency or very basic human want. That doesn’t entirely follow.
My sister Alicia’s husband of almost 15 years is an OFW or Overseas Filipino Worker. A few months following their marriage, Jose—an on-call carpenter who barely managed a high school education—flew to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to work as hospital janitor. Since then, my bro-in-law has worked in Dubai, Saipan, Taiwan, and United Arab Emirates – visiting home for only one and a half months each year. Alicia and Jose have four kids.
I remember, during their early years of marriage, when they were still living in the ancestral house in Manila—they would lock themselves up in their room for days, coming out only to have dinner. I don’t think they were having Novena or saying the Rosary, either.
Alicia and Jose’s case is simply an example of how impoverished cultures view sex. Food on the table, basic education, simple housing, and gut-level health/medical needs occupy significant faculties of the human brain—no much time to discourse sex. Sex is good but sex isn’t really good if there’s no fish for dinner, or sturdy roofs come typhoon season.
In poorer countries where “basic human needs” doesn’t necessarily include assured orgasm or sex-3-times a week, sexual pleasure is numbed or downplayed by economics.

IN MY PERPETUALLY clueless American journey, I always get confused with relationships, friendships, sex and love. Until now—I don’t know what is “going out with,” “seeing someone,” “hanging out with,” “dating someone,” or “sleeping with.” I still don’t have the nerve to follow what I thought was the “real thing” (am I having a relationship or just having sex?)—for fear of being bitch-slapped or sued (for sexual harassment?) or misread as “gay.” Many times, I didn’t even know if I was dumped or I just dumped a girlfriend. “Breaking up” doesn’t necessarily mean that we aren’t hooking up or hanging out anymore—to make out or f—.
I also “slept” with some women friends because they said, it’s okay. So I “SLEPT” with them in their bed... One time, I got into trouble because I responded to a question on the affirmative, whether I “slept” or not with a lady friend that I traveled with in a Greyhound, alone, for 12 hours. I said, “Yes, I slept with her.” What I meant was, we slept side-by-side by our seat, that’s all.
Until now, I remain clueless about a number of American English “double-talk.” Why do we call sex at a swimming pool or backseat of a car for 15 minutes, “sleeping with”? We don’t sleep, you know... and that, why would I be misread for saying “I slept with her” on the same seat while traveling by bus for 12 hours?

AH, AMERICA! We consume excessively... sex is all over from high school to older age that it becomes a necessity. When it becomes too much, we try so hard to snuff it out altogether, that is why it becomes such an issue.
Take this example. Harvard University seniors Sarah Kinsella and Justin Murray decided to fight back against what they see as too much mindless sex at the Ivy League school. They founded a student group called “True Love Revolution” to promote abstinence on campus. The group, created earlier this school year, has more than 90 members on its Facebook.com page and drew about half that many to an ice cream social.
Harvard treats sex — or “hooking up” — so casually that “sometimes I wonder if sex is even a remotely serious thing,” said Kinsella, who is dating Murray.
“Sometimes that voice on campus is so overwhelming that students committed to abstinence almost feel compelled to abandon their convictions,” Murray said. He acknowledged he “slipped up” and had sex earlier in college but said he has returned to abstinence with Kinsella.
Nothing to crow about. Sex is good, sex is beautiful. But why abstain—why simply engage in (or consume?) small, reasonable doses? Sex isn’t sugar, caffeine, or nicotine—or is it for most?
Anyhow, while sex is generally viewed as imperative and a necessity, certain “thinking” patterns figure a lot in people’s decisions how to treat their sexual lives, as well.
Sexual behavior includes a lot more than sex, according to Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. She argues that three primary brain systems have evolved to direct reproductive behavior. One is the sex drive that motivates people to seek partners. Second is a program for romantic attractions that makes people fixate on specific partners. Third is a mechanism for long-term attachment that induces people to stay together long enough to complete their parental duties.
Whatever the case, sex is still the end result... Sex is still a good subject to while away hours with – as I brainstorm what’d be my next heavy topic next issue. So what am I trying to say? Nothing really, I don’t intend to rant against the war or complain about my Charter phone/internet bill this time out. I just want to talk about sex, that’s all.
You have any problem with that?

The “Hoohah” Monologues, state censorship, self-censorship, freedom of speech...

2007-04-04T05:02:00.000-07:00

Hoohah!!! Remember how Al Pacino’s Col. Frank Slade proudly spewed martial chic and gruff sophistication to the word (or was it a cuss) as he swooned and tangoed with fine wine and sweet women in “Scent of a Woman”? No wait, that was, “Whoa!” that he haughtily belted... I stand corrected.
Whatever it was, that movie was pretty cool stuff!
So what about “The Hoohah Monologues”? The first time I heard, “Hoohah!”—Mr Pacino crossed my mind, who else? A one-man gig for Michael Corleone, The Godfather, I thought out loud... No, I’m wrong again.
You must’ve already heard the story by now... A couple of months ago, a modified marquee in a theater in Atlantic Beach, Florida drew some attention. “Hoohah” replaced a word in a famous play after a female motorist complained about finding the previous wording offensive. Some thought “The Hoohah Monologues” was the name of a punk-rock or new wave band, or something – after all, said venue books acts of diverse musical genres. Meantime, I’m sure you’ve known of 80s acts with outrageous monickers, in the mold of Butthole Surfers and Piss Factory, right? Honestly though, I didn’t know what “hoohah” meant until my 9-year-old neighbor Colby The Dolby admitted that it actually meant “vagina,” or what he meekly muttered as, “that thing down there.”
“We got a complaint about this play The Vagina Monologues,” said Bryce Pfanenstiel, of the Atlantic Theater. “We decided we would just use child slang for it. That’s how we decided on Hoohah Monologues.” They did this after a driver who saw it complained to the theater, saying she was upset that her niece saw it.
The woman was reportedly enraged because she was forced to respond to her niece when asked what a vagina is. “I’m offended I had to answer the question!”
Uhh, I wonder... has anybody heard of an off-off Broadway play called, “The Penis Offensive”? It’s certainly not as famous and engaging as Eve Ensler’s Obie Award-winning episodic play, centered on various women’s views about the aforementioned part of their body... but, still, this “Penis” one-acter kind of courageously super-navigated “unexplored” terrains of the male genitalia like you’ve never imagined before. I tell you, it was obnoxiously nauseating!
Anyways... what the hell, right? The pristine beauty of living in the US of A—I dearly, deeply believe—is the fact that human beings are afforded the free will to say “Yes” or “No” to any given stimulus. Refuse or agree, conform or object. Or fence-sit, stay on the middle, it’s okay—that’s also a basic human right... But it’s all about Freedom.
But then, the word “vagina” flickering so proudly on a theater’s billboard, offensive? What about a giant full-color poster of half-naked Giselle Bundchen on super-tiny Victoria’s Secret underwear devouring a prominent spot at Times Square’s tourist belt? That’s a simplification, but—ah, contradictions...

I DON’T REALLY intend to consume my time on such elementary, hypocritical discourse. But I’d like to talk about this thing called “censorship.” It’s a popular notion that censorship is usually, most likely imposed by governmental institutions. That is a given, I guess... but the deeper anomaly rests within our psyche’s workings. We—wittingly and unwittingly—excise ruthless, often wayward, awkward “censorships” upon ourselves by way of acquired racial bias, over-adherence to “political correctness,” ideological/political dogma, and cultural/religious bigotry, that don’t necessarily emanate from State-imposed mores and “moral” statutes.
Censorship is the removal or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body. Typically, censorship is done by governments, religious groups, or the mass media, although other forms of censorship exist. The withholding of official secrets, commercial secrets, intellectual property, and privileged lawyer-client communication is not usually described as censorship when it remains within reasonable bounds. Because of this, the term “censorship” often carries with it a sense of untoward, inappropriate or repressive secrecy.
I mean, do we get it? Official/legal definitions tend to appear more complex than the act itself... We are so consumed with extravagant wordplay and lush vocabulary that human reflex (or common sense) gets lost in the dizzying fray.
Meantime, yes—it’s true that media censorship as imposed by governments remains as the one most incurable poison to freedom of speech. Or, it’s the most “popular” form of censorship. In China or Nepal, for instance, a wrong caption equals a warrant of arrest, and until now, an open tirade or passing ridicule against/of a public official is synonymous to jailtime or death wish.
In Turkmenistan, for example... State television displays a constant, golden profile of President Saparmurat Niyazov at the bottom of the screen. Newscasters begin each broadcast with a pledge that their tongues will shrivel if their reports ever slander the country, the flag, or the president.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the ten most censored media in the world are those in North Korea, Turkmenistan, Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Eritrea, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria, and Belarus. This means that no one can broadcast or publish anything these governments consider to be “immoral” or “harmful,” or that threatens the countries’ “stability” (which usually means the government’s own power base). This is what we usually think of when we hear the word censorship.
Democratic countries, on the other hand, take pride in upholding the principle of freedom of speech. People are free to say and write whatever they wish, with some carefully defined exceptions.
In America, for example, we can always make fun of the President or any public official like it’s simply one insignificant practical joke, no big deal. But that’s not the real deal – the deal is, it’s FREEDOM. Sadly though, we oftentimes push that freedom to the limit because we have the best of it... and we savor it to the hilt. Sacha Baron Cohen AKA Borat makes it hip and cool, Sarah Silverman gets away with it because she’s “acting” vs a super-smashed Mel Gibson off-cam, but Chris Rock is the Master of them all—he makes fun of anything “white” and earns hefty paycheck for it. Who cares! It’s entertaining...
In the Philippines, it’s “different”—at least, when I was a student (during the Marcos years). One time, a student activist berated presidential daughter, Imee, when she spoke before a University of the Philippines crowd. After the event, Imee’s bodyguards simply grabbed the youngster and threw him out of the 9th-floor window of the building. But, of course, that’s just one of so many bizarre stories emanating from the dictatorship’s genocidal years...

IN A MARKET economy, there is another controlling power at work – the power of money. In North America, most mainstream publications depend on two income sources: subscriptions and advertisers. Both influence decisions about content. Readers must find the content relevant, interesting, tasteful, and entertaining, or they will drop their subscriptions. And advertisers will cancel their accounts if they consider the content to undermine or challenge their messages about the products they sell.
Consider the tobacco industry’s enormous advertising power in the US and Canada. According to the American Federal Trade Commission, annual advertising and promotions expenditures for the US tobacco industry in 2000 were over $9.5 billion. The advertising expenditures for Canadian tobacco companies in 2000, on the other hand, were over $19 million. Yet we all know that the tobacco industry’s economic clout goes beyond tobacco products.
Before it was bought out by British America Tobacco in February 2000, Canada’s largest tobacco company, Imperial Tobacco, was owned by Imasco Ltd – the same company that owned Shoppers Drug Mart and Canada Trust. RJR Macdonald, Canada’s second largest tobacco company, is owned and controlled by American-based R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, which also owns Nabisco foods.
Meantime, forty percent of Canada’s third-largest tobacco company, Rothmans, Benson and Hedges Inc., is owned by Philip Morris Tobacco – the largest tobacco company in North America. Philip Morris also owns Kraft Foods, the largest packaged food company in North America. This combination of tobacco and food products includes 91 brands with annual revenues of $100 million each, and 15 brands that generate annual revenues of over $1 billion each.
With these givens staring down like an imposing dark cloud of control, some media institutions easily succumb to “self-censorship.” The logic is simple—without advertising, there is no publication. No publication, no job.
According to a new study by the American Council on Science and Health, popular women’s magazines state that they have a commitment to general health coverage, yet they fail to cover the number one cause of cancer death in women—lung cancer. Women’s magazines continue to publish cigarette ads, but rarely include information on the negative health effects of smoking. Of the 2,414 health-related articles published last year, only 24 articles – less than 1 per cent – addressed the health effects of tobacco. Moreover, the image of female smokers as independent, attractive and lean (or sexy) was portrayed overwhelmingly in the advertisements.
In November 1983, Newsweek ran a 16-page special health supplement written by the American Medical Association. Although the original AMA manuscript included information on tobacco addiction, Newsweek resisted any mention of cigarettes. That issue of Newsweek had 12 full-page cigarette ads. This hasn’t really changed... Most networks seem to propagate health consciousness via talk shows and special features, yet commercials continually run ads by food products that only contribute to the growing rate of obesity, heart failures, respiratory problems, among others, in the country.
“Self-censorship” is also prevalent in writers and artists. Blogs, books, films etc are “censored” or “classified” by the authors out of deference to the sensibilities of others without an authority directly pressuring one to do so. Self-censorship is often practiced by film producers, film directors, publishers, news anchors, musicians, or authors.
Again, I digress...

OVER-ADHERENCE to political-correctness is another example of self-censorship that isn’t just confined to media circles, but to educational institutions, as well. Political correctness makes people stupid, said Elizabeth Kantor of The Boston Globe.
After interviewing 14,000 undergraduates at 50 colleges across the country, researchers from the University of Connecticut have determined that “seniors actually know less about American history and government than entering freshmen.” That’s because they spend four years with professors who no longer teach them English literature, the classics, or any of the other pillars of Western civilization, Kantor claimed. If modern college students study “dead white men” such as Homer, Lincoln, and Shakespeare at all, it’s to expose and condemn their patriarchal oppression, racism, and imperialism, she added.
A new book by University of Pennsylvania professor emerita Phyllis Rackin, for example, attacks “Macbeth” for promoting “the domestication of women.” Not a word about the beauty of Shakespeare’s language, or his “peerless insights into human nature.” Ms Kantor adds that colleges now prefer to give courses in comic books, “queer theory,” pornography, or Erica Jong. These days, we tend to easily reject a reading material, film craft, or musical effort—if they do not conform with our political beliefs or sexual orientation. Forget about good writing... Or, well, “good writing,” I guess, has to be politically-correct. Then, again we have to define what “political-correctness” is.
One other very significant and powerful “self-censorship” is done in historical circles. Until now, the world recognizes a hero that “colonizers” imposed in a “colonized” culture’s mindset. University scholars and history researchers in respected educational institutions recognize, for instance, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo as THE hero in the Philippine-American War. Volumes of documents obtained by the University of the Philippines’ cultural anthropology department contend otherwise.
Aguinaldo, who ordered the execution of revolutionary leader Andres Bonifacio, “represented” the Filipino people in selling (or “ceding”) the islands to the US for a mere $20 million under a Treaty of Peace between the United States and Spain on December 10, 1898. Bonifacio and his brother Procopio were slain by Aguinaldo’s men because they objected to the treaty that were forged following the defeat of Spain by the US in the “mock” Battle of Manila Bay.
I don’t think that “censorship” of historical records will ever be corrected, at all, though. Day after day, the so-called media cover political and cultural upheavals all over the world—and fed to the unsuspecting public like tobacco or paracetamol. Over and over again... After all the hundreds of TV hours that major networks spent on Anna Nicole Smith, we may never know the “truth” behind her untimely death. What we get are the sweetened fillings and deodorized morsels that litter the periphery of her glamourized ruin. Or how one souvenir photograph by Joe Rosenthal—iconized as the Flag Raising at Iwo Jima—could alter or blur valuable pages in World War II history.
Most of the time, it only takes common sense to find out why “censorship” of the truth continues to exist unabated. In my novel, “Waiting for Winter,” I touched several significant events that took place in the Philippines from 1980 to 1992 that I wasn’t able to fully explore because of “state censorship” and my own, admitted “withholding of facts” because these could put the so-called revolutionaries in a bad light. Still, I was called a “revolutionary journalist” by my peers back home.

AH, DAMN, I talk too much, don’t I? I was just going to rant about “Hoohah” when all these just came out of my head. As if you don’t already know about all these that I just babbled about...
Oh well, this is the pleasure of self-publishing, I guess. I can always write and write and write—as long as it’s within the legal boundaries of whatever I am wading on. I don’t even know... I may get a letter from Immigration one of these days for being too “political, radical”? Or my purportedly quiet benefactors may cut their contributions to this madness—because I just printed a “politically-incorrect” story? I don’t know. Freedom in America is still very beautiful and glorious to me—such a gift. This, coming from a survivor of a regime that shoots down, literally, a hardheaded fool who dare question an “official” pronouncement from the hallowed halls of power.
I really don’t know. Tell me if I am pushing my acquired freedom too far. All I know is I am writing, and it’s cool. I am safe... Am I? You see, my subject isn’t even about a vagina.

Xxx

Bad News, Good News

“When a dog bites a man, that is not news... but when a man bites a dog, that is news.” My Journalism 101 professor of three decades ago declared, pushing her eyeglasses up snug the bridge of her ridiculously humungous nose, like she’d just concluded a malevolent oration of “The Gettysburg Address.” Then, as she tried to repeat it, making sure that we, clueless little souls, may not forget, “When a dog bites a man, that is not news... but when a man...” I interrupted, “Madam!” She eyed me with piercing suspicion that burns the flesh like coal, a-la Judge Judy, “What, Mr Pascua?” I cleared my throat and, with a super-confident girth that is only, usually attributed to either Beavis or Butthead, I asked, “What if a man eats a dog, is that news, Madam?” (Well, what do I expect, I got kicked out of the classroom again... what else’s new?)
But, hey, that was the good ole days when NEWS meant Watergate and “Nine Dead in Ohio!” or “One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” The days before supermarket tabloid juice becomes front page banner, before a trio of macho losers fighting over millions that could be squeezed out of the corpse of one Anna Nicole Smith becomes the most “important” news of the month, before countdown of wartime body bags becomes a most numbing prozac pill against a sorry generation of utter disconnect, before news got swallowed and devoured by reality-tv escapism.
News... until now, many years since I kind of hanged up my gloves (or newsroom typewriter?), the mystery behind that insatiable thirst for a story that’s unique, uncommon, weird, shocking, revolting — remains dark and cold, unexplainable and distant. Or, in the context of the present times, ridiculously strange.

LIKE AN obedient soldier who gallantly went to war in pursuit of something that I can’t really define or physicalize, I headed out onto life and living’s open range littered with volatile substances such as society, government, politics, and pop culture – endlessly, tirelessly looking for my almighty scoop. But why? What’s up, what’s behind the story? “Damnit! You don’t justify your story. Just state the facts, that’s it!” My editor would roar from across the hallway as he mercilessly tossed my piece straight down into the dead-cold trashbin. Rejected again, I bit my lips like an orphan urchin who just lost his slice of leftover bread...
“When a man bites a dog...” I kept on repeating—day in, day out—so I may not forget. It evolved to be my little life’s “battle mantra.”
Until one summer’s weekend, in a tribal village up north of Manila, called Ifugao, I found my “man bites dog” story. I covered animist rituals of warriors and hunters who frantically sucked fresh blood oozing from wild canines’ bloody skulls as cure for respiratory ailments. In a way, I wondered out loud, that could pass as a “men biting dogs” story—true to my little hack reporter’s mission’s quest... Alas, though—the most that I could bargain for at the City Desk was page 16 of the Provincial Section, in tiny 8 almost unreadable font types. Ah!
Then one day, during a campaign trail by a wealthy society matron who was running for Governorship of a southern province, I got my front page story. But, ironically, it was a “dog bites man” story—but since it went with a bizarre twist, I thought, it could probably be a “good” piece of news. The “scoop”? A tiny, malnourished dog bit the magnificent butt of a bejeweled prima donna as she strode by a half-flooded barrio, wooing votes like a sequined vulture pecking ice cream icings amidst a mosquito-infested swampland. Her awestruck coterie of umbrella-hoisting alilas (nannies) and armalite-wielding alalays (bodyguards) didn’t see the coming of the irate dog as it lunged at the politica’s massive behind.
NEWS! Dog bites (wo)man. Front page.
And so it became clearer and clearer to me what “news” was all about... Three decades hence, the story remains the same.

THERE IS another angle to the “news” story though...
The surreal contradictions of news-gathering. The hunger for blood—splattered all over creasy note pads... echoes of tormented souls’ voices imprisoned in stacks and stacks of cassette tapes. Without the hellish stench and the gruesome ruin, news was bland... a reporter’s “day in the life.” We wanted more dark, more cold—without these, we were failures, like soldiers ready for war but there were no enemies at all. Boring.
Then somewhere, sometime—I covered the monstrous aftermath of a landslide that killed close to 5,000 villagers in the coastal city of Ormoc in the Philippines in 1991. Dead human flesh, rotting cavaders have caked with mud and rocks... words were insufficient to describe the horror. I had to gulp in two bottles of gin, threw up for almost two hours, before I could muster the energy and courage to file my story. Forget the “drama,” I just had to file a story.
Five thousand impoverished human beings got wasted. Illegal logging was the obvious culprit, hence illegal loggers—but the Governor of the province rejected that “theory.” That “fact” wasn’t going to get to newsroom. That wasn’t news enough to get the newspaper to live longer... That subtle deduction pierced like bullet to the head. “Men can always bite dogs”—but, this time out, we weren’t allowed to report, “Why.” Somehow, within and around the miserable journey of a journalist—a willing witness to life’s doom and dirt—I wanted to be a “superhero” and save humanity from further negotiating life’s road to ruin with just the quiet glory of a newspaper’s weekend edition. I had to fight to deliver that “news” that says “why”? By knowing “why dogs bite men,” we could probably fix the situation and live happily ever after.
Alas, life is no fairytale. I had/have to live with the dark side. Take it or leave it, do it or die.

TWO WEEKS before deadline, a chartered bus bound for Atlanta crashed, killing several high school baseball players from Boston. The aggrieved, tormented faces of the young survivors were flashed on national TV, for several minutes—over and over and over again. But we never get details of the story, “Why? What really happened? Why did the driver take that deadly turn?” We may never know, maybe we know, maybe the reporters knew—it’s just that the network gods don’t see any point in having us know why. Advertising sponsors want three hours more of Anna Nicole Smith’s soap opera... That “news” is sure to save more network hours, more advertising sponsorships—hence the news station lives longer.
There are times when we simply get so tired by what we hear. But then we can’t close our eyes—we live in this world, this is our life’s residential address, there’s no subway ride or American Airlines flight to Uranus or Jupiter yet.
There are people who don’t want to have TV, avoid media, and so they stay up in the perch of their “peaceful world,” musing “What do I see on TV, anyway? It’s all lies, it’s all bad news, it’s all bullshit. I’d like to protect myself from the evils of this world...” So they hide up there or down there and change their names to Starlight Dancer or Ocean Blue and then they utter “peace” and “love” to the wind and the rain, and then declare themselves The Immaculate Souls of Humanity.
But is that what life’s all about? It’s sad that the world is so bad sometimes, but this is our earth and we are living in it—with all its trials and tribulations, lies and stuff. Living a life is our gig, so it follows that we gotta know what’s going on with our little piece of existence to be able to breathe and carry on.
Watching the news is part of my role as a writer, as a human being—I can’t close my eyes and choose my reading materials, I can’t go out there and choose my company and then say, “I gotta write something, this is what I choose to write, only this!” What is there to write? The things that I don’t see or touch, or the spirits that inhabit my tortured soul? Who cares. The world at-large, wounded and wounding (not the “world inside my crude lump of brain tissues”) is the diesel and fire, hurricane and sunshine that make me get up, write, and rock `n roll. With that, I am alive as love and hate, joy and pain.

THE DAILY circulation of the Soviet newspaper Trud exceeded 21,500,000 in 1990, while the Soviet weekly Argumenty i fakty boasted the circulation of 33,500,000 in 1991. Meantime, Japan’s three daily papers —the Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun— have circulations well above 4 million. Germany’s Bild, with a circulation of 4.5 million, was the only other paper in that category. In the UK, The Sun is the top seller, with around 3.2 million copies distributed daily (late-2004).
In India, The Times of India is the largest English newspaper, with 2.14 million copies daily. According to the 2006 National Readership Study, the Dainik Jagran is the most-read, local-language (Hindi) newspaper, with 21.2 million readers. In the U.S., USA Today has a daily circulation of approximately 2 million, making it the most widely distributed paper in America.
Imagine all these volumes and volumes of paper that we writers consume to write our news. Does it matter whether the news is written via the internet or delivered by way of New York Times? If Internet is better, more environmentally-sensitive/politically-correct, then we can start counting the barrels and barrels of oil that we consume so we can have electric power to keep our Dells and IMacs “alive” 24 hours a day... Whatever we do, whatever we use to physicalize whatever we do, we consume them.
I digress...
The internet technology is a body of electronic bits and pieces that should offer a credible, truthful, and honest sets of information—in the same way do newspapers. Web-based publishing vs. traditional publishing, does it really matter?
Everybody seems to be more concerned with profit than news these days. In the past, newspapers have often been owned by so-called press barons, and were used either as a rich man’s toy, or a political tool. More recently in the United States, a greater number of newspapers (and all of the largest ones) are being run by large media corporations such as Gannett (the largest in the United States), The McClatchy Company, Cox, LandMark, Morris Corp., The Tribune Company, etc. Many industry watchers have “concerns” that the growing need for profit growth natural to corporations will have a negative impact on the overall quality of journalism. “Concerns”?
Let’s face it, despite these conjectures, news has become more entertainment, fodder to a numbed human psyche, nothing significant. We still chase the “man bites dog” story but after we’ve splashed that eerie rage in man’s fang burying deep down a “dog’s neck”... it’s all over. We don’t care. It’s entertainment. It’s better than Vicodin or bourbon, at least.

A LONG TIME ago, I dreamed about an Ernest Hemingway who covered the war as journalist and took home shrapnel wounds and morphine needles deep inside his mind, I amused myself with a Hunter S. Thompson who juggled BS and reportage like a stoned sorcerer... I have dreamed of covering Beirut, digging in bat caves in Peru, scrounging through brushes in Myanmar, hiking foothills in Tibet. I have dreamed of invading those seemingly private or forbidden rooms of humanity’s soul—via my pen and notepad. Until the dream got exhausted, and here I am just a beaten man.
A beaten man, still wondering why did the “man bit the dog.” What happened, really.
Ah, news! It seemed simple sometimes... Simple premise, like—what’s going on inside an average family’s house in America? I think we know why funk seeps through the failing winter heating... We have spent a total of $100.60 for every $100of our take-home-pay this past six months almost. That gives us an idea about what’s going on with national debt situation while the trillion-dollar war in Iraq rages. It seemed so easy to ask ourselves why, if only to console us that, yes, there is hope that change is gonna come. At least, we know.
At least we know that the value of annual production of marijuana in the US outclasses the country’s other cash crops. The total value of all the pot grown annually has been calculated to be just less than $36 billion—compared with $23 billion for corn, $18 billion for soybeans, and $12 billion for hay. This raw data gives us an idea how life flows and ebbs these days, these make us question, “Why? How come?” These valuable figments of truths that a grainy shot of Britney Spears’ hoohah at YouTube or Ms Smith’s boob-tube soap only blur and trivialize.
We want to know why a news becomes news—why a bus jumps out of the wrong Exit turn, why debt-ridden youths sign up for war tour of duty, why Nike factory jobs are all flown to Indonesia, why the “dog bit the man.”
Do you know? You tell me... Paris Hilton’s skinny butt has just been bitten by her Chihuahua? I bet, you wanna know more. Come on!

Bad News, Good News

2007-04-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

“When a dog bites a man, that is not news... but when a man bites a dog, that is news.” My Journalism 101 professor of three decades ago declared, pushing her eyeglasses up snug the bridge of her ridiculously humungous nose, like she’d just concluded a malevolent oration of “The Gettysburg Address.” Then, as she tried to repeat it, making sure that we, clueless little souls, may not forget, “When a dog bites a man, that is not news... but when a man...” I interrupted, “Madam!” She eyed me with piercing suspicion that burns the flesh like coal, a-la Judge Judy, “What, Mr Pascua?” I cleared my throat and, with a super-confident girth that is only, usually attributed to either Beavis or Butthead, I asked, “What if a man eats a dog, is that news, Madam?” (Well, what do I expect, I got kicked out of the classroom again... what else’s new?)
But, hey, that was the good ole days when NEWS meant Watergate and “Nine Dead in Ohio!” or “One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” The days before supermarket tabloid juice becomes front page banner, before a trio of macho losers fighting over millions that could be squeezed out of the corpse of one Anna Nicole Smith becomes the most “important” news of the month, before countdown of wartime body bags becomes a most numbing prozac pill against a sorry generation of utter disconnect, before news got swallowed and devoured by reality-tv escapism.
News... until now, many years since I kind of hanged up my gloves (or newsroom typewriter?), the mystery behind that insatiable thirst for a story that’s unique, uncommon, weird, shocking, revolting — remains dark and cold, unexplainable and distant. Or, in the context of the present times, ridiculously strange.

LIKE AN obedient soldier who gallantly went to war in pursuit of something that I can’t really define or physicalize, I headed out onto life and living’s open range littered with volatile substances such as society, government, politics, and pop culture – endlessly, tirelessly looking for my almighty scoop. But why? What’s up, what’s behind the story? “Damnit! You don’t justify your story. Just state the facts, that’s it!” My editor would roar from across the hallway as he mercilessly tossed my piece straight down into the dead-cold trashbin. Rejected again, I bit my lips like an orphan urchin who just lost his slice of leftover bread...
“When a man bites a dog...” I kept on repeating—day in, day out—so I may not forget. It evolved to be my little life’s “battle mantra.”
Until one summer’s weekend, in a tribal village up north of Manila, called Ifugao, I found my “man bites dog” story. I covered animist rituals of warriors and hunters who frantically sucked fresh blood oozing from wild canines’ bloody skulls as cure for respiratory ailments. In a way, I wondered out loud, that could pass as a “men biting dogs” story—true to my little hack reporter’s mission’s quest... Alas, though—the most that I could bargain for at the City Desk was page 16 of the Provincial Section, in tiny 8 almost unreadable font types. Ah!
Then one day, during a campaign trail by a wealthy society matron who was running for Governorship of a southern province, I got my front page story. But, ironically, it was a “dog bites man” story—but since it went with a bizarre twist, I thought, it could probably be a “good” piece of news. The “scoop”? A tiny, malnourished dog bit the magnificent butt of a bejeweled prima donna as she strode by a half-flooded barrio, wooing votes like a sequined vulture pecking ice cream icings amidst a mosquito-infested swampland. Her awestruck coterie of umbrella-hoisting alilas (nannies) and armalite-wielding alalays (bodyguards) didn’t see the coming of the irate dog as it lunged at the politica’s massive behind.
NEWS! Dog bites (wo)man. Front page.
And so it became clearer and clearer to me what “news” was all about... Three decades hence, the story remains the same.

THERE IS another angle to the “news” story though...
The surreal contradictions of news-gathering. The hunger for blood—splattered all over creasy note pads... echoes of tormented souls’ voices imprisoned in stacks and stacks of cassette tapes. Without the hellish stench and the gruesome ruin, news was bland... a reporter’s “day in the life.” We wanted more dark, more cold—without these, we were failures, like soldiers ready for war but there were no enemies at all. Boring.
Then somewhere, sometime—I covered the monstrous aftermath of a landslide that killed close to 5,000 villagers in the coastal city of Ormoc in the Philippines in 1991. Dead human flesh, rotting cavaders have caked with mud and rocks... words were insufficient to describe the horror. I had to gulp in two bottles of gin, threw up for almost two hours, before I could muster the energy and courage to file my story. Forget the “drama,” I just had to file a story.
Five thousand impoverished human beings got wasted. Illegal logging was the obvious culprit, hence illegal loggers—but the Governor of the province rejected that “theory.” That “fact” wasn’t going to get to newsroom. That wasn’t news enough to get the newspaper to live longer... That subtle deduction pierced like bullet to the head. “Men can always bite dogs”—but, this time out, we weren’t allowed to report, “Why.” Somehow, within and around the miserable journey of a journalist—a willing witness to life’s doom and dirt—I wanted to be a “superhero” and save humanity from further negotiating life’s road to ruin with just the quiet glory of a newspaper’s weekend edition. I had to fight to deliver that “news” that says “why”? By knowing “why dogs bite men,” we could probably fix the situation and live happily ever after.
Alas, life is no fairytale. I had/have to live with the dark side. Take it or leave it, do it or die.

TWO WEEKS before deadline, a chartered bus bound for Atlanta crashed, killing several high school baseball players from Boston. The aggrieved, tormented faces of the young survivors were flashed on national TV, for several minutes—over and over and over again. But we never get details of the story, “Why? What really happened? Why did the driver take that deadly turn?” We may never know, maybe we know, maybe the reporters knew—it’s just that the network gods don’t see any point in having us know why. Advertising sponsors want three hours more of Anna Nicole Smith’s soap opera... That “news” is sure to save more network hours, more advertising sponsorships—hence the news station lives longer.
There are times when we simply get so tired by what we hear. But then we can’t close our eyes—we live in this world, this is our life’s residential address, there’s no subway ride or American Airlines flight to Uranus or Jupiter yet.
There are people who don’t want to have TV, avoid media, and so they stay up in the perch of their “peaceful world,” musing “What do I see on TV, anyway? It’s all lies, it’s all bad news, it’s all bullshit. I’d like to protect myself from the evils of this world...” So they hide up there or down there and change their names to Starlight Dancer or Ocean Blue and then they utter “peace” and “love” to the wind and the rain, and then declare themselves The Immaculate Souls of Humanity.
But is that what life’s all about? It’s sad that the world is so bad sometimes, but this is our earth and we are living in it—with all its trials and tribulations, lies and stuff. Living a life is our gig, so it follows that we gotta know what’s going on with our little piece of existence to be able to breathe and carry on.
Watching the news is part of my role as a writer, as a human being—I can’t close my eyes and choose my reading materials, I can’t go out there and choose my company and then say, “I gotta write something, this is what I choose to write, only this!” What is there to write? The things that I don’t see or touch, or the spirits that inhabit my tortured soul? Who cares. The world at-large, wounded and wounding (not the “world inside my crude lump of brain tissues”) is the diesel and fire, hurricane and sunshine that make me get up, write, and rock `n roll. With that, I am alive as love and hate, joy and pain.

THE DAILY circulation of the Soviet newspaper Trud exceeded 21,500,000 in 1990, while the Soviet weekly Argumenty i fakty boasted the circulation of 33,500,000 in 1991. Meantime, Japan’s three daily papers —the Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun— have circulations well above 4 million. Germany’s Bild, with a circulation of 4.5 million, was the only other paper in that category. In the UK, The Sun is the top seller, with around 3.2 million copies distributed daily (late-2004).
In India, The Times of India is the largest English newspaper, with 2.14 million copies daily. According to the 2006 National Readership Study, the Dainik Jagran is the most-read, local-language (Hindi) newspaper, with 21.2 million readers. In the U.S., USA Today has a daily circulation of approximately 2 million, making it the most widely distributed paper in America.
Imagine all these volumes and volumes of paper that we writers consume to write our news. Does it matter whether the news is written via the internet or delivered by way of New York Times? If Internet is better, more environmentally-sensitive/politically-correct, then we can start counting the barrels and barrels of oil that we consume so we can have electric power to keep our Dells and IMacs “alive” 24 hours a day... Whatever we do, whatever we use to physicalize whatever we do, we consume them.
I digress...
The internet technology is a body of electronic bits and pieces that should offer a credible, truthful, and honest sets of information—in the same way do newspapers. Web-based publishing vs. traditional publishing, does it really matter?
Everybody seems to be more concerned with profit than news these days. In the past, newspapers have often been owned by so-called press barons, and were used either as a rich man’s toy, or a political tool. More recently in the United States, a greater number of newspapers (and all of the largest ones) are being run by large media corporations such as Gannett (the largest in the United States), The McClatchy Company, Cox, LandMark, Morris Corp., The Tribune Company, etc. Many industry watchers have “concerns” that the growing need for profit growth natural to corporations will have a negative impact on the overall quality of journalism. “Concerns”?
Let’s face it, despite these conjectures, news has become more entertainment, fodder to a numbed human psyche, nothing significant. We still chase the “man bites dog” story but after we’ve splashed that eerie rage in man’s fang burying deep down a “dog’s neck”... it’s all over. We don’t care. It’s entertainment. It’s better than Vicodin or bourbon, at least.

A LONG TIME ago, I dreamed about an Ernest Hemingway who covered the war as journalist and took home shrapnel wounds and morphine needles deep inside his mind, I amused myself with a Hunter S. Thompson who juggled BS and reportage like a stoned sorcerer... I have dreamed of covering Beirut, digging in bat caves in Peru, scrounging through brushes in Myanmar, hiking foothills in Tibet. I have dreamed of invading those seemingly private or forbidden rooms of humanity’s soul—via my pen and notepad. Until the dream got exhausted, and here I am just a beaten man.
A beaten man, still wondering why did the “man bit the dog.” What happened, really.
Ah, news! It seemed simple sometimes... Simple premise, like—what’s going on inside an average family’s house in America? I think we know why funk seeps through the failing winter heating... We have spent a total of $100.60 for every $100of our take-home-pay this past six months almost. That gives us an idea about what’s going on with national debt situation while the trillion-dollar war in Iraq rages. It seemed so easy to ask ourselves why, if only to console us that, yes, there is hope that change is gonna come. At least, we know.
At least we know that the value of annual production of marijuana in the US outclasses the country’s other cash crops. The total value of all the pot grown annually has been calculated to be just less than $36 billion—compared with $23 billion for corn, $18 billion for soybeans, and $12 billion for hay. This raw data gives us an idea how life flows and ebbs these days, these make us question, “Why? How come?” These valuable figments of truths that a grainy shot of Britney Spears’ hoohah at YouTube or Ms Smith’s boob-tube soap only blur and trivialize.
We want to know why a news becomes news—why a bus jumps out of the wrong Exit turn, why debt-ridden youths sign up for war tour of duty, why Nike factory jobs are all flown to Indonesia, why the “dog bit the man.”
Do you know? You tell me... Paris Hilton’s skinny butt has just been bitten by her Chihuahua? I bet, you wanna know more. Come on!

Peace prevails when food suffices

2007-02-25T01:40:00.000-08:00

AGAIN (with the obligatory “Iron Chef” drumroll) I’d like to evoke my “patron saint of chow,” the honorable, incomparable inventor of ramen noodles... Momofuku Ando. “PEACE PREVAILS WHEN FOOD SUFFICES!” (More drumroll, please... Kampai!)
Indeed, there is no argument, no fight whatsover—when there’s enough food on the table. Everybody shares the blessing, no excuses. I deeply, sincerely believe that when humanity enjoys a nutritious, sumptuous meal, there should be no other unnecessary distraction – let ‘em eat! In the same way that Adolf Hitler’s Waffen-SS Troops (sorry, sorry for the bizarre comparison) respect enemies on a sexual tryst—by not engaging them in combat or shooting them to death until they’re “done”—I also respect those who’re on euphoric state of throwing down at the moment... I don’t mess with them (until they’ve heartily burped and all done). I repeat, let ‘em eat!
When I was kid, my Dad always castigated us – nine kids in the family – whenever we talked or engaged in even itsy-bitsy conversation while at the dining table. He would grumble, “In case you don’t have anything important to say, don’t say them when you’re in fr0nt of your meal! Respect God’s grace.”
I remembered those words so clearly—especially after I read this “weird” news from Rhode Island... The Catholic St Rose of Lima School in RI has recently banned students from talking during lunch after three recent incidents of choking in the cafeteria. They choked while they’re eating—because of that, the school banned kids from talking while having lunch! Uhhh, isn’t that stretching it too far? What are these kids eating anyway? I bet, not Nathan’s hotdogs—otherwise, the school will have to solicit some advice from undisputed hotdog-eating champ, Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi (another Japanese like Ando San). This average-built dude could easily gobble up three dozens of hotdogs without choking at all—smooth dude!
That’s something serious that we have to think about... How come Mr Kobayashi manage to keep a “slim” physique despite being one of the world’s most voracious eaters of junk food? We certainly don’t see a lot of these occurrences, do we?
During the past 20 years, obesity among adults has risen significantly in the US, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Thirty percent of US adults 20 years of age and older—over 60 million people—are obese. This increase is not limited to adults. The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980. Among children and teens aged 6–19 years, 16 percent (over 9 million young people) are considered overweight.
For a time, some states tried to implement certain programs to abet obesity. I believe both North and South Carolina still offer tax exemptions to health-related activities, like gym visitations and Weightwatchers class attendance. Arkansas schools send home obesity report cards to warn parents of overweight kids’ health risks (although that may change because Little Rock is now opposing it).

Something about America that still fascinates or perplexes me is – while more and more people are sinking into a deep well of funk and blues (so many reasons to get depressed really) – the number of obesity also steadily rose to unprecedented heights! My understanding, before I decided to live in the US, was that—sadness, misery and loneliness make people’s appetite for food shot or low. I still feel that way, mind you – when I am pissed or upset, it’s hard for me to enjoy my ramens. It’s also economic – in poorer countries where poverty means grave shortage of food at the table, human beings just swallow their saliva for dinner or they drink more tap water to fill intestines up.
“So that you will get full fast, drink more water!” I always heard that ruthless admonition by parents to their kids in impoverished shanties in Philippine barrios.
But, it’s different here... Last year, one of my Candler homeys, Gwennie Twinkie, got really saddened and disheartened that Katharine McPhee lost out to Taylor Hicks in the last “American Idol” finals that she spent an entire month eating all that she could find in her fridge and pantry. As she ranted and raved and cussed and cursed—afront the boob tube, on her pitiful couch—her gargantuan mouth devoured tons and liters of krispy kremes, marshmallow peeps, mickey dees, little ceasar’s, wonka zoids, cokes, Einstein bros bagels, KFCs, booster juice, haagen-dazs, fast franks, wingstop wings etc etc etc. So, what do you expect—she shot up to 250 from 190 in just four weeks!
Meantime, my cousin Brigham The Gum who visited his in-laws in Sylva recently – and got caught up with the snowstorm scare – spent almost $300 on foodstuff to stock up in case Armageddon happens in the Appalachians. But it didn’t happen... So he and his wife, Laura The Fauna (she looks like Tinkerbell on dreadlocks) got really sad upon realizing that they just “threw away” all this money. So to appease their sorrow, they gobbled up all the food and soda (Banquet frozen chicken, Laura Lynn sweet corn, Sanderson Farms canned ham, bags and bags of Dorritos, Pepsi, 12 kinds of TV dinners, loaves of bread of all shapes, Oreos and Chips Ahoys, Reese bars, M&Ms etc etc). It’s good that they didn’t chow down pounds and pounds of Bounty toilet papers that they bought—although their dog Zsa Zsa swallowed a box of cherry-flavored condoms. Oh, man!
I mean, seriously... when are we going to learn—and do something about our eating habits? I mean, I don’t mean – don’t eat – otherwise, you’ll turn into a Nicole Richie. Just take it easy...
These increasing rates of obesity in the US of A raise concern because of their implications to our health. Being overweight or obese increases the risk of many diseases and health conditions, including hypertension, dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides), type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and respiratory problems, and some cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon).
Although one of the US government’s national health objectives for the year 2010 is to reduce the prevalence of obesity among adults to less than 15 percent, current data indicate that the situation is worsening rather than improving.
But are we listening at all?
Well, you see, I know that many people have reminded or cautioned me a lot about my ramen noodles diet. But, what should I eat? Wendy’s $2.99 burger or baked taters? I mean, the late Mr Ando has said and proven that eating is good, per se—and even though a Cup-a-Noodle could only churn out an iota of nutrient, what the hell? Right? I mean, the Japanese are still the world’s healthiest human beings. There are an approximately 28,000 citizens in Japan who are 100 years or older—up from 1,000 in the early 1980s. And the world’s oldest living person, Yone Minagawa, is 114—a Japanese woman!

I figure, one of the culprits of unhealthiness (or obesity) in most people these days is the over-availability of food choices flashed in front of our gluttonous faces, day in and day out. Food, food, food – more food, more and more food.
In most countries, you don’t have much of a choice. When you say, “sandwich” – that’s usually chicken, ham, egg, cheese... and they’re all prepared, ready-to-go. During my cousin Brigham The Gum’s first day in America, he got really nervous and stressed out—because he found it such an ordeal to buy sandwiches in fastfood stores. One time he strode in a Subway store...
The “sandwich specialist” behind the counter glared at him like an irritated Charles Barkley: “What kind of bread? Rye, wheat, white, blue, brown, Slovak, Polish, what?” / “Jalopino? How much, this much, not much?” / “Ketchup? Spicy, hot, how hot, medium hot, super hot” / “Mustard, little bit, more, less”? / “Olives, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers”?... He didn’t know what to say, what to respond—he wasn’t prepared to be interrogated like that. He just wanted to have a Subway sandwich, for Christsakes! So instead of getting one, he simply whispered to me, “Cousin, can we just get a hotdog?”
I mean, we are so pampered in America. So pampered and so privileged that we are also allowed to do whatever with our food. Like, how about make your frankfurters taste like asparagus, fish fillets look like chicken nuggets, ice cream smell like Busch beer, mozzarella pizza bloat like magic carpet... and, donuts as caffeine-spiked breakfast chow—like Dunkin’ Donut and Starbucks coffee in one! Dr Robert Bohannon, a molecular biologist, recently unveiled the world’s first caffeinated donut. By “microencapsulating” caffeine particles inside the doughnut, Bohannon says, he’s created a “buzzed” doughnut that need not be dunked in coffee. Tada!
Meantime, some people also push humankind’s “food-fancy” to the limit by doing ridiculous spectacles out of it. Recently, high-rolling food lovers flew to Bangkok from Europe, the United States and around Asia for a swashbuckling dinner, which carried a price tag of $25,000 a head, excluding tax and gratuities. Six three-star Michelin chefs from France, Italy and Germany prepared the meal’s 10 courses, each paired with a rare fine wine. Alain Soliveres, the celebrated chef of Paris’s Taillevent restaurant, for instance, was commissioned to prepare two of his signature dishes including the opening course: a creme brulee of foie gras to be washed down with a 1990 Cristal champagne — a bubbly that sells for more than $500 a bottle, but still stands out as one of the cheapest wines on the menu.
Can you beat that? I heard that the proceeds go to charity—for hungry human beings somewhere in the planet. If that’s the objective of such magnificently lavish show of “food insanity,” well—we gotta organize more of that. Summon the Iron Chefs, pronto!

You see, food are simply overflowing in our midst that we are simply having fun modifying, reinventing, rehashing or reinventing them. This happens while more than half of the world’s population remain super-starving.
Ten years ago, the World Food Summit (WFS) in Rome promised to reduce the number of undernourished people by half by 2015. Will that ever happen, when there are more hungry people in the developing countries today – 820 million – than there were in 1996? The total number of undernourished in developing countries in 2015 was projected at 582 million. This would fall 170 million short of the WFO’s target of 412 million. Most of earth’s hungry are concentrated in South Asia and East Asia, with 203 million and 123 million respectively.
The signs and proofs are upon us like a cat’s blank stare. Not many people want to cook anymore, we all run to the nearest restaurant or burger joint. Find a town or city – big or small – in America without a McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Waffle House, IHOP, Burger King, KFC, there’s none.
The latest data says that more than 47 percent of the money Americans spend on food – and astounding $476 billion – are wasted away at restaurants. Hamburgers were the most popular menu item ordered by men at restaurants last year; French fries came in second. For women, French fries ranked first, followed by burgers. Pizza ranked third for both genders.
Clearly, even in a society where people are aware of the need for healthy habits, most consumers still appear to have one major goal when they eat out: indulgence, or overindulgence that is.
And the fast-food joints can’t complain either. Burger King’s breakfast sales jumped 20 percent thanks to its introduction of the Enormous Omelet Sandwich — despite its 730 calories and 47 grams of fat. The new triple-cheese Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza at Pizza Hut was such a success that it took in 20 percent of the chain’s business within four days of its debut. KFC is testing plans to bring back the Kentucky Fried Chicken name (a.k.a. fried foods), along with new menu items linked to its Southern roots.
But then, let’s ditch all these horrendous facts and figures, okay? Food isn’t bad at all... Peace prevails when food suffices. In the Philippines, we eat three meals a day, excluding meriendas at 10am and 4pm, and if you’re awake at midnight—just cook, eat more. Eating is a religious ritual—a devotion, a way of life. We love eating, I love eating, it’s great to eat. If we don’t eat, we die—period.
You see, I am almost sure, 114-year-old Grandma Minagawa – plus 28,000 more Japanese – know how to eat and still be healthy and live past 100. I mean, even my ramen noodle homey, Mr Ando died at age 95. I would love to live till 90, at least – well, unless I spike my Cup-a-Noodle with a Maker’s Mark or a Jose Cuervo. Of course, I will not do that, are you crazy?
Meantime, love good, live good—and eat good food!

The Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous (or, money-money-money)

2007-02-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

“Just walk, don’t ever glance at your left as you cross streets!” My dadaistic roomie of long-ago, Minnie The Ripper, glumly reminded me as I stepped out of the loft to hang out down East Village on a hot spring afternoon in New York City. “When a freakin’ car hit `ya, let ‘em hit, OK? I tell `ya, baby—just like that, get hit by some rich and famous SOB, you’re fine,” she flicked two fingers, like a magician’s castanets, spewing a dope dealer’s gunslinger zeal. “Just like that, baby!” Of course, you know what Minnie The Rip meant, right? You see, it was really difficult not to take the feisty young lady seriously. She seemed unavoidably dead-serious as Rosie O’Donnell after a parking lot brawl, y’know what I mean? You just gotta take ladies of that kind seriously, or else... “And, by the way, go Central Park West,” she added, spitting her Nuyorican twang out like three-day-old gum, “One bump equals three grand, broken neck is, uhh, twelve-grand minimum as long as you get a darn good attorney... Just don’t get killed, man. Be careful not to get hit too bad. No mo’ good s—t in heaven, my man!”
Believe it or not, Minnie The Rip’s Brazilian bro-in-law Paulinho de Souza – in cahoots with a Joe Pantoliano-looking lawyer in Corona, Queens – managed to rack up almost half a million in settlement dough after a series of freak (albeit, scripted) accidents in 1999. Paulinho didn’t care whether he broke this ankle, that jaw, both knees, lost a leg – or whatever – as long as he gets mucho dollares, on a snap of a, well, limb crashing-on-concrete. The color of money, I guess, heals all physiological wounds, whatsoever...
When desperation sets in, crazy shit inhabits one’s brain faculties... You see, there were times when I felt like standing four hours straight a-front Battery Park’s huge condo – waiting for a Weinstein piano to fly out of the penthouse window onto my poor, pitiful head – from an irate wealthy tenant up there. (You know by now that they get pretty pissed with some “voodoo” drumming down Pritchard Park, right?) Then, I’ll sue, then I’ll settle – I am sure, I’ll be able to raise more easy dollars to publish more cheapie newsprint magazines that way? I mean, Paulinho got a cold $5,000 cash after a high roller dude, a scion of a Jewish grocery chain clan in Bayside LI, broke his ribs at a Ceasar’s Palace bar in Atlantic City one July midnight. Just like that! (Don’t ask me how Paulinho pissed the dude off though...)
OK, forget about scums like Paulinho. And, okay, I’m just kidding about doing a vigil-for-an-induced-accident-for-settlement in downtown Asheville... I’m not that Desperate desperate.
Alright now—I don’t intend to consume my two pages this time out talking about the above subject. I didn’t plan to talk about Paulinho de Souza or Minnie The Ripper – although Minnie has already reformed her hustler-ways... she now works a legit job at an uptown Slovak delicatessen, and on weekends, at home, she diligently crafts handmade jewelry that she supplies to gypsies and bellydancers in Pittsburgh and New London CT. Instead I planned to talk/write about The Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous – but whenever thoughts of these bluebloods cross my acerbic brain cells, I can’t help think about everyday people, I mean—the honest souls kind of breed. Most often than not, these ordinary human beings get the tail end of mishaps, “accidents,” and brat-venoms inflicted by the more privileged, more endowed...
Heard about the maid who got it from “supermodel” Naomi Campbell – in the form of a cellphone running berserk onto the nanny’s face? Well, a judge ordered Ms Campbell to pay her erstwhile slave a measly $363.32! (plus two days at an anger management class).
Geez, how much do supermodels earn for few minutes to strut and heave at a sequined runway, anyway? Five figures, more? So, would $300+ and two days of lecture make them behave—and would that be enough to compensate for the maid’s bruised face and person? I don’t think so—but I’d be so willing to offer my ugly face to Ms Campbell’s cellphone for the same amount. (That’s almost an issue’s printing budget of The Indie.) At least, it’s less riskier than Paulinho’s perilous gig, right? (Or, a lot more manageable than a Weinstein piano plummeting down my skull...)

Money is simply maliciously, ferociously overflowing in America that the Rich and Famous can’t seem to figure out how to spend (or throw) them away. What more to buy, what more to spend on... I guess, unmitigated boredom and flabbergasting stupidity set in upon knowing that everything has already been “handled” by financial managers and accounts advisers. Or maybe because their wealth is so unstoppably overflowing off their diamond-studded sleeves, they actually believe that “money changes everything.” They can do anything, everything, under the blue sky—who cares whether it’s unacceptable or nauseating or revolting, or simply not good, or even illegal...
Remember those insane thousands that eccentric ex-basketball star Dennis Rodman paid the NBA in fines as a result of his on-court antics (headbutting a ref, fighting, pushing a photographer etc)? Maybe he got really sick and tired of his sick and tiring off-court stunts (cross-dressing, bar brawls, dating equally notoriously “bad” girls) that the only way to battle hubris is to stay badder and badder. The only “significant” plug, though temporary, to his badness, anyway, is monetary sanctions, plus few days at a slammer. Meantime, let the dollars do the talking.
So while fashion world and sports’ millionaires bombard our impoverished senses with magnificent tantrums that can easily be had or forgiven by an issuance of a check after the fact, Hollywood’s brat packers don’t fail to feed the tabloids for fodder for wholesale wastelessness. Britney Spears and new boyfriend Isaac Cohen recently dropped $40,000 for just one night at Palms hotel in Las Vegas. Ah, $40,000! I believe that almost 97% of my friends only earn below $20,000 (or lower) a year! Not fair!
Many years ago, I thought the rich man/poor man discrepancy was at its widest in societies like India, Nigeria, Mexico, or the Philippines. And since US of A is the bastion of equality (by way of democracy), citizens in this country somehow have more chance to be a bit at par with the rich. Can we park our 70s beat-up Sedan beside P Diddy’s Hummus at a Manhattan parking lot, or maybe position our inherited trailer home a-front a mansion up in The Cliffs, or maybe enjoy a lobster dinner beside Derek Jeter’s table at Smith & Wollensky? I am sure that in the event that a minimum wage-earning dude accidentally hits the sidemirror of Paris Hilton’s BMW, the poor dude gets aggravated assault or reckless endangerment rap. That can never be settled by Ms Campbell’s $363.32 spare change at all.
What is the use of law if the super-endowed makes fun of them? How many celebrities marry after an orgasm, divorce after a fight over who hugs the remote control, reconcile after another orgasm, divorce again following an argument over a toilet seat that wasn’t taken care of?

On another angle... Tell me honestly, are you touched by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s billion-d0llar donation to funding agencies – purportedly for the poor people of the world? Big deal, isn’t it? So the richest human beings have finally agreed to share their astronomical wealth to poor, pitiful humanity?
I’m not impressed. If the world’s richest dudes could easily “share” their billions just like that... why didn’t they just raise the salaries of their employees and workers? Simple. The labor workforce – especially those toiling in sweatshops in faraway communities – should be the first batch of souls who deserve a piece of Gates/Buffett’s magnificently impossible fortune.
This moolah to nonprofit organizations is downright, straight-up PR.
Give the working class their just due, so there’ll be lesser poor on Earth. Mr Gates’ 12-month earnings is easily higher than the annual budget of a dozen or more countries in Africa, we all know that... So if he’ll just make ways to justly pay wages that assure a “decent” living in poor countries where his microchip factories abound, then—there’s not much need for grant foundations to supposedly facilitate aid assistance to the needy anymore.
Or, how about the millionaires who supposedly rendered their time and talent – through live concerts attended by thousands and thousands of taxpaying, paycheck-to-paycheck citizens – to help Hurricane Katrina victims? Who paid for the “aid” money and goods for the displaced families? The people.
The people pay/paid for the tickets, buy CDs, download songs, purchase merchandise etc so the Rich and Famous could “help” those who most need help. But PR makes us believe that the benefit money or relief help came out of these glitterdome gods/goddesses’ willing hearts and hands.
Is it so hard for them to just sign a check, like $5 million or so, the minute that they learned of the calamity, right there right at that moment? They didn’t have to go out of their mansions to be able to help, just a phone call to their assistants—that’s it!
Ah, so they performed for free for the poor – so they should be exalted as Good Souls – or is it plain and simple marketing strategy to sell you more merchandise?

The unrealism of materialism in America has grown so unfathomable and unreachable that we don’t know anymore how to deal with what we have and what we don’t have. For instance, we sometimes love our pets more than our fellow human beings – that we also seem to get confused about what’s a human being and what’s an animal.
Like this one – saddened horseracing fans, sane human beings, sent CDs, flower bouquets, and books to then ailing Barbaro, the “famous” Kentucky Derby winner to cheer her up. Makes me wonder—what’d happen when the time comes when these animals start getting pissed because of this amazing, unrealistic attention heaped on them... sometimes, I believe, they just wanna be left alone to live and enjoy their being animals, not human beings. Who “killed” Barbaro, anyway? We “love” these horses because they entertain us on the racetrack when they should be running in joyful freedom somewhere in the prairie... We love our pet dogs and cats because we fall short of tolerating our fellow human beings and, yes, these animals are such swell playthings and baubles.
A 5 foot, 100 lb pitbull in Portland, Oregon got upset with his owner that he viciously attacked the poor fellow. I guess, the solution of most people when animals act this way is to find them a shrink or maybe take them to Disneyland or buy them an iPod nano.
Oh well, of course, it’s not an “extraordinary” occurrence that a Naomi Campbell exhibits or displays real love and affection to her poodle than to her maid – I know of so many people, ordinary people, who’d rather buy their dogs and cats jewelries and NHL jerseys than share $5 to their poor relatives. I mean, I know of a dude who got jailed because it was uncovered that he was receiving food stamps and all kinds of social security benefit for his coterie of 15 dogs! But then, that’s not a far-fetched reality! A survey came out few years ago that said something like, more than 50% of Americans maintain that owning a pet is part of the US Constitution.
Now, hear this – a Dutch pet-shop owner has recently came up with Kwispelbier, a beef-flavored beer created for dogs. She figured she wanted to have drinks with her Weimaraners after a hunt, so... It cost $2.14 a bottle, by the way. Geez, that’s even a dollar more expensive than my favorite PBR! Not fair!
So expect this at a bar in a not so distant future: “Hey, Mister Doberman, show me your ID. No ID, no Kwispelbier, sorry! Want a soda, instead?”

When people have money, they just gotta spend them. Money, money, money. Some 200 fans of Michael Jackson have reportedly agreed to pay him $3,300 for an hour – to just hang out with him. I mean, if a baseball fan could easily churn out few thousands to purchase a glob of gum that Diamondbacks slugger Luis Gonzalez spat out, then what really is weird these days?
I rant and rave about the Rich and Famous who juggle their moolah like balls of fire, or voided beer cans... but then, we Ordinary People are also guilty of the same oblique extravagance, am I right? I wonder what would Naomi Campbell’s victim do with the $363.32? Ah, don’t tell me she’s so thankful now that she could pay her late Verizon cellphone bill?
Think about this – while we perpetually whine about unpaid cable TV bills and late rent, we also “threw away” close to $5 billion to watch “Spider-Man,” “Shrek,” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” – and the sequels (not including DVD rental). Well, I am guilty—VERY guilty. I treat DVDs, my “other” food. Like we all gulp in gasoline like alcohol, caffeine, or sugar – I chow down movies like ramen noodles!
And, wait up—let me remind one and all. Americans spend $36,000,000 every hour of every day – at Wal-Mart. This year alone, 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at a Wal-Mart store (Earth’s population is approximately 6.5 billion).
Okay, okay. Money changes everything. So the US government is spending approximately $60 billion a year in Iraq – so that we could teach the Iraqi people how to live their own lives.
Oh man, I am so confused forever! When it comes to money, sometimes it’s easier to understand Paulinho and Minnie The Rip.

How do I start my New Year?

2007-01-17T10:21:00.000-08:00

How do I start a brand new year? Let’s see... but, first, let me tell you my story—
I technically “crashlanded” in Western North Carolina – via Asheville Regional Airport in Arden – at the start of the 1999/2000 winter. So 2007 should be my seventh year here in the mountains. This is big deal – because SEVEN is always either my lucky number or misfortune signal. But who cares about the dark side, right? I am still a Madman on a Mission, and in my journey, those who don’t give up, win! Seven is my jersey number, that’s it. I don’t have any plans at hanging it up the ceiling of my grand lunacy yet.
Forget that I didn’t have a superb Christmas season and I wasn’t able to pop a Dom Perignon cork out on New Year’s Eve. But, look at me, I’m still alive and kicking—so let my Seventh Sign’s Sunshine reign! It’s not exactly a brand new life—but it’s always cool to regroup and reenergize as we usher in a brand new year. A brand new gig, alright!
Apart from the obligatory changing of wall calendars and desk planners, responsible first-day-of-the-year emails to my close relatives in the Philippines and the West Coast, plus a week-long pencil-pushing/drafting of my Winter-to-Spring Projects Checklist... I kicked off my 2007 by mooning over NanoNuno, salivating at a CrustaStun, and daydreaming about a pair of Pleo clattering on my bathroom floor.
Uhh, what do I mean by these? Well, aside from rethinking or realigning my philosophical wavelengths and rehashing/reformatting significant tangibles (such as a twice-a-month Indie), I also sort of started to confront my demons, or what I call as First World Demons. Futile consumerism, slothful indifference by way of techno brattiness, and their relative super-guilty pleasures.
NanoNuno, CrustaStun, Pleo. These irksome figments of my techno-intoxications, by the way, cost a grand total of $5,085.00. I don’t really need these electro-baubles, in the same way that I don’t need more hardbound books to purchase online or DVD movies to score 4-for-$20 at Blockbuster or more cheap sunglasses to hang on my kitchen wall... but I’m not saying that I don’t get tempted to buy these stuff and things when I am able to.
I like cool toys... like this newly-issued ultra-compact computer from OQO. Weighing in at only 1lb., this PC is the world’s smallest Windows Vista-capable computer, with a blazing processor to boot. The device is small enough to fit in your hand—and boasts wireless Web access. Or, how about the portable Widget Station? This Web by the Bed plaything from Emtrace lets you access the Internet quickly, check out NBA and NCAA box scores, for example ... by your bedside, before or after making love. Cool, indeed! How much? Forget about it...
Sadly though, right at this very moment, I only have $32.75 nestled like fragments of frozen lizard entrails in my impoverished bank account—after spending $244.24 for 100 gallons of fuel oil, hoping that this temporal heating lasts till end of March...
I actually thought, three months ago, that stocking up on logs and wood would secure me fireplace warmth come winter so I could get me a new laptop. But as soon as the first of autumn’s below 30s temp hit the mountains, and deep into my backside and hipbones, the annoying pain not only frustrated my anticipation of a secondhand MacBook Pro – it also drove me back to my ramen noodle diet for at least two weeks! At least, I could comfort myself by exalting the life of Momofuku Ando, who recently passed away at age 96. Who’s the dude? He invented ramen noodles in 1958, that’s him! Apart from the ever-lovable Cup-a-Noodle, he also gifted humanity with the immortal line, “Peace prevails when food suffices.”
So, as I always exhort – love good, live good, and eat only good food! (But, including ramen noodles...)

What a way to start my 2007, right?
That’s okay though, no big deal... While staring at teardrops of rain hugged my window, overlooking Dunwell Avenue, at least I was able to excise tiny snatches of positive vibes within my funk-weary system to amuse (or entertain) myself. Hence, I wondered out loud, “What would more endowed souls somewhere in America be spending on as the New Year ushers in?”
Well, my front neighbor just bought her wife a Honda Element EX SUV. My Long Island homey, Minnie The Ripper, gifted herself with an Oliso steam iron – a cool gizmo that automatically lifts itself to stand about an inch above the board. (To resume ironing, Minnie emailed, just touch it again, and the legs gently retract!) She bought her twins, Tom and Rom, an iPod nano and iPod shuffle, respectively. Minnie’s kids move and talk like tiny microchip human figures that sometimes I think they actually emanated from inside a Dell. I never met their Dad, by the way... oh well.
Meantime, my 35-year-old nerdie cousin Brigham The Gum (he has this thing about talking while chewing gums) stocked up on PlayStations... especially those kind of soldier-at-war stuff that they advertise on primetime TV, in between NBA games, behind an ultra-mawkish tune by Five for Fighting, I think. Brigham wrote me, “Who cares about Cheerios and Twinkies? I got a dozen Ps2, man!” This cousin of mine is absolutely mental! I wonder if some genetic dislocation or cosmic evolutionary configuration gone nuts sort of made us first-degree cousins... Brigham and Pasckie—weird, isn’t it?

A year ago, I listed 10 stereotype New Year’s Resolutions – this time, I didn’t even bother to think about it. I’ll just do better, that’s all... I’d like to be more practical, realistic, logical, sensible, and smart – although I must admit that, if I have some extra dough (like maybe couple of thousand bucks), I’d also dive down this perfumed shithole of consumerist hedonism.
It would be cool if, for even one year, I quit shopping at Goodwill and Habitat each time I am able to save $35 off my monthly food budget... I’d like to save up some dough so I could score a NanoNuno umbrella. This little fancy thing dries after a quick shake, so you don’t have to park it outside the door on rainy days. The canopy’s nanotech polyester surface is designed to repel water droplets, so they don’t end up on you or your door. It costs $95... my little polka-dot umbrella which I bought at a Family Dollar in Myrtle Beach SC three Julys ago costs $2. It’s still okay but a NanoNuno isn’t bad at all, isn’t it?
For a change, I’d like to add a Pleo as a new member to my “multi-cultural” collection of miniatures and bobbleheads and dolls – which include Chucky, Elvis The Pelvis, Janis Joplin, Harry Potter, Indra, Jessica Simpson Barbie, Kiss Army, monkey-see/monkey-do etc. Pleo, which is modeled after a baby carnarasaurus (a plant-eating dinosaur), aims to be more lifelike. When it walks, its whole body sways. It’s equipped with more than three dozen touch, sound, light and tilt sensors, and it even has moods. Way cool! But, alas, it costs $250 each. You see, I got fifteen ceramic Peter Pan table ornaments via eBay for only $20...
Tough, isn’t it?
Just for kicks, if ever – well, if ever my beloved Blue Sky God/dess drops me few thousands of greenbucks – I’d sure get me a CrustaStun, as a constant reminder of how deep Orwell’s human beings have succumbed deep down life’s catacomb of oblique contradictions.
British barrister Simon Buckhaven devised a kinder way to kill lobsters. Hi CrustaStun electrocutes them with a 110-volt shock, dispatching them in about five seconds, against the two minutes it takes in hot water. Think about gas chamber versus electric chair, versus firing squad, versus guillotine, versus stoning, versus crucifixion... whatever, we still kill, uhh—murder the crustacean. This exterminator, by the way, costs $4,740! You see, I can’t even afford a pound of lobster (around $15 to $20 at Ingles?), why would I bite Mr Buckhaven’s bull? Just because there’s an easier, more humane way to murder a crustacean before we gobble them up or sell them for $65 a plate?
The point is—there will always be cool stuff and things to purchase and consume and throw away in America. As long as I live here, I’ll always be battling enticements and flirtations to buy this and that. I am such a willing victim, sometimes... Look, just because I told myself that I’ll do more kitchen tasks, housework and yard chores this 2007, I convinced a relative to buy me a magic chopper (“safely chops or dices in one motion!) for $9.98; a cordless rechargeable swivel sweeper for $34.98; and, a lantern with TV and AM/FM radio for $49.98 (“keeps you entertained and informed when the electricity goes out”).

Ah, 2007!
How do we really start a “better” year when it’s simply impossible to run away or evade the world unfolding and flashing like naughty, malicious emoticons before our blinded-by-the-light eyes? You want to consume lesser paper products (so we may have trees in the future?)—and then, the mailperson dumps ten pounds of store catalogues, bills reminders, and cartons of pre-ordered merchandise into your front door, almost on a daily basis; you want to keep your body well-taken cared of so you go make a weekly list of organic food staples to purchase—only to realize that your monthly salary isn’t even enough to pay the basic bills (rent, power, heating, water/utilities) and unavoidable expenditures (gasoline allowance, family financial obligations, health/car insurance etc). So you end up, well, stocking up on ramen noodles or the usual “poisonous” chows for the carnivore.
So I guess, I just have to take it easy this time out. Never mind that it’s also almost impossible to take it easy these days...
As the Holiday unwinds, we see Saddam Hussein with a deadly noose around his neck on primetime TV for our kids to ogle about—many, many times a day for almost two weeks! Then, after the news, we remind our 10-year-old son not to surf www.partyhardcore.com because that is a bad thing to do. Sex isn’t good for kids, real-life violence is – so let’s all coax our children to play passionate ice hockey, with arms and fists ready to break a nose or two, and be good, God-fearing citizens. Hang the man on cable TV, google it up—better shots, man!
So how am I suppose to promise myself that I will not rant and rave anymore this year? We wanted something more positive and enlightened on TV but this is what I get one snowy evening – a New York woman made national TV because she just found her long lost high school ring in Florida! If that was indeed news, then I’d rather amuse my synthetic sarcasm with Rosie O and The Donald’s tabloid crap.
But, hey, this one is news — Robert Nuranen just paid a public library in Hancock, Michigan $171,32 in penalty for not returning a copy of the book “Prince of Egypt” for 47 years. I mean, with that money, he could have bought himself two pairs of NanoNuno umbrellas, with spare change more to score The Beatles new “Love” CD plus a huge U-Haul carton of Cup-a-Noodles. “Prince of Egypt”? Why not Erica Jong’s “Fear of Flying” or an Anais Nin diary, for cryin’ out loud...

Crazy!
But the craziest, of course, is this neverending issue of – when are we going to pull out troops in Iraq? From $48 billion in 2003, to $59 billion in 2004, to $81 billion in 2005, to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, war budget has steadily increased as body bags keep on piling. The US government is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional Research Service report found. Annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the $61 billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today’s dollars.
Damn, remember that super pissed-off dude in Florida who bludgeoned his roomie to death because the poor soul didn’t buy new rolls of toilet paper? Maybe the guy didn’t have money, c’mon? I mean, $61 billion to kill and be killed... while the average trailer park resident, minimum wage earner couldn’t even afford a roll of freakin’ toilet paper? Surreal world...
According to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert, the real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought.
So, anyways, this 2007, need I talk more about the war, consumerist limbos, a loudmouth dude named Glenn Beck, highrises on Merrimon Avenue, roaches in my merlot, Charter’s phantasmic billing, or whiny downtown condo primadonnas? Nah, my 2007 will be less stressful. I’ll sure gonna get my Pleo, read more Britney and Lindsay online vs daily dose of “Law & Order,” rout for Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady of the Rockets and Duke’s Alison Bales (she’s my new crush!), throw down more Cup-a-Noodles, watch more slasher movies (“Saw, Part 96?”), eat more clams and oysters at East Buffet, read more sappy poetry at Malaprop’s, drink more Coke and piss off the Immaculate Souls of Asheville forever, and build more Bonfires, baby!
Woo-hoo! 2007 is my Seventh Sign’s Sunshine! Rock ‘n roll!

Writers workshops...

2006-11-07T10:27:00.000-08:00

WRITERS workshops are such interesting little events… quietly exuberant microcosm of human foibles, fancy/fantasy and fascination. Sometimes they kind of bombard the sanity like some sort of literary Normandys and Waterloos; sometimes they nag and irritate like in-laws Inquisition/Torture chambers. They devastate, they pulverize you into crappy smithereens; they tick you off like crazy, they ruin your day, yet you can’t really complain. You keep on coming back for more… But, most of the time, writers workshops are just fun hangout gigs where we could check in our egomaniac trips or check out smart girls who hid erotic fires between seductive cleavages of some oblique but sweet metaphors… You can also survey hot dudes who may be the same exact replica or clone of Lestat The Vampire—mysterious, dangerous but irresistible. Don’t you know that most often than not—writers workshops are disguised as singles convergences or Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club? While the “taken, attached and involved” are busy sipping super-sweet nectars of twogetherness some place more private, the “lonely” seek out writers workshops!
Seriously though, in workshops—we may be able to trip on a cool Dead Poets Society and reap some wisdom along the way, or a publishing agent who’s well-connected somewhere might sit in, that “guest” could be our bridge to fame and fortune. Apart from that, I “accidentally” tripped on a lot of writing/editing side-jobs – including babysitting, dogwalking, housecleaning sidelines — while immersed in writers workshops.
I must say that I learned a lot (of whatever I know about writing) in writers workshops—weekend gatherings and midweek drinking bouts (played up as “workshops”), summer creative writing camps, and literary conventions. For sure, most workshops that I joined in were fun, square room arenas of swashbuckling, duelling egos (masqueraded as “discussion”), unrequited perversions (clothed as “craft” or “art” or “freedom of expression”), super-trashy literary dalliances, and yes indeed, in many instances, I get to discover sparkling gems (that are a lot better and more engaging than what are usually peddled at Barnes & Noble or Borders as “Month’s Bestsellers”).
What’s so cool about writers workshops (at least those that I signed in) is the seductive element of surprise that lurks in there… you don’t know what you’re gonna get.
What I mostly got—during the early years of my own writers workshop saga? Hear these..
“It took me a good 15 precious minutes to ponder rhyme and reason—sanity and insanity—about your little piece of poetic intrusion into this beautiful world of ours. What I’m trying to say is, why don’t you just quit this writing silliness and just wait tables, and be of service to humanity?”
“I’d rather read a Chinatown menu or Wal-Mart catalogue than waste my time over this unrelenting exercise of drab shit stacked up like empty vials of cough syrup clothed with puke sitting beside a stinking downtown commode!”
“My advice – just forget it! Go jump over Verrazzano Bridge, bungee jump down Niagara Falls, eat roaches, wash your grandmother’s apron, buy your girl a wonder bra, whatever—but, please, don’t subject us to this atrocious poetry again, oh please!”
So, how do we deal with those? Well, we have to put up with those amazingly “upfront” comments or suggestions… Although there were moments, as well, when my ascetic patience hit bottom, so I climaxed one writers session too many with a mano-a-mano at a parking lot. (Those were my twentysomething years, I have mellowed considerably.) But then, among these insane piles and heaps of heartaches, bruised egos, and black eyes (c/o the brawl), you’d get one or two good, enticing invite.
“Hmmm, your poetry is very multi-layered, I need to dig deeper, very mysterious… would you have time on Friday night to discuss this? My apartment? Bring more of your poems, I’ll have wine…”

IN ASHEVILLE, I thought I only know of two regular, weekly writers workshops. The Tuesday group (with Robert Kelley) and the Wednesday group that included The Indie’s ever-prolific and diligent senior writer, Mike Hopping.
I was told that there are actually more specialized, exclusive writers groups in the city. Writers groups by astrologers, women-only, non-smokers/non-drinkers, lesbians and gays, Baptists/Catholics, fundamentalists, pagans, Deadheads, Goths (divided between those who dig Danzig and those who don’t), vampires and vampyrs (segregated between those who hang out at Waffle House every aftermidnight and those who simply stay home and chow down grits over diet Mountain Dew and watch “Dawg, The Bounty Hunter”), sadomasochists, Weightwatchers alumni, vegans/vegetarians, white supremacists, Hispanic/Latinos, ex-AA denizens, high schoolers, hip-hop homeboys/girls, anorexics anonymous, Crumb&Pekar Fans Club, divorcees and jilted lovers…
And more – writers workshop by men who were disapproved by their in-laws, women whose husbands are honorary members of Man Law sect, weekend lovers of autumn leaves, haters of dandelions, celebrators of the wind and snow, eaters of beef jerky and pickled pig ears… (believe it or not, there’s one like that).
MANY! Many writers workshops!
This is good, you know. Don’t get me wrong…
When I used to go around Filipino-American communities in the NY-NJ-CT tri-states seven years ago (while editing a mainstream Filipino newspaper), I chanced upon a million Pinoy writers groups denominations. All of these are rooted to the Filipino culture back home… but it seems people don’t simply agree the moment they sit down around a circle and open their mouths. So they form their own splinter, semi-splinter, pseudo-splinter, copy-splinter, splinter-splinter writers workshops.
Some of the list that I gathered – a group for writers with northern background (12 chapters scattered all over and around five New York City boroughs), writers with northern background whose parents are from the south, writers with northern background whose wives/hubbies are from the south, writers with northern background whose kids were born in the Philippines, writers with northern background whose kids were born in the US, writers with northern background who’ve been dumped by their wives/husbands, writers with northern background who are applying for American citizenship, writers with northern background who are undocumented illegals or with expired visas, writers with northern background who are actually from the south but don’t wanna say, writers with northern background who are… whatever.

IN ASHEVILLE, this cornucopia of writers groups certainly add spice and brew to what we all call (and brag) as diversity.
DIVERSITY.
Well, diversity is good if these seemingly “different” people, or humanity with different points-of-view or “madnesses,” decide to coexist as one community and try to work or unite towards a collective end… diversity won’t work if these same groups of people simply create their own cliques and specialized groupings. Why do we drum up “diversity” and celebrate community while at the same time, we segregate ourselves from the heart of the collective?
Many times I observe that the gap that separates between a non-vegan/non-organic carnivore and a healthy-living, non-smoking, non-drinking person is wider than the space that sets apart a Republican from a Democrat… a lesbian group has their own place in the community, is their a Man Law group around here? How about the anarchists vs the moderates, the hippies and the yippies/yuppies, the babyboomers and the confused young?
It’s not like these people are going to co-exist on a daily basis or watch Glen Beck or “Desperate Housewives” on TV, seated on one couch under one roof. It’s just at least, once a week meeting in a public venue, you know…

IN THE LAST few weeks before this deadline, senseless killings and shootings painted our lives red. Is there a war in America? Why do our kids decide to grab that gun to articulate a point? Who are they listening to, what are they thinking?
It seems like we have more time to figure out the good nutrients in a hummus, ruminate over the dark spirits behind an SUV, hail and glorify the peaceful vibes of an unseen god up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, mused over gender sensitivity and political correctness, or debate whether Dan Brown is a heretic or not, or Oprah Winfrey really has right and authority to pick a good book, or does condoms bastardize the sanctity of Kama Sutra… than try to sit down with our children and, for once, listen to what they’re saying.
What do the children or the young want? Maybe they want to join our good-natured, holier-than-thou, “exclusively for adults” writers groups. Maybe they know better than us… maybe they have more beautiful ideas to share.
Maybe one of these kids are working on a novella that’s actually a blueprint to another Columbine tragedy? Or maybe these kids exude promising auras of future literary greats? Do they have to grab a gun again to let us, adults, listen? The writings on the wall scream like a giant cat’s blank stare. What are we gonna do with these signs? Muse, ruminate, discuss, debate, banter, ponder—over them—behind closed doors, closed to/from the outside world? Our doors that secure and protect our exclusive groupings from the others are so tight and sealed that we can no longer hear what’s going on out there, just a good ten yards away.
I wonder what we have been writing lately…

WRITERS WORKSHOPS are a gathering of people, I believe. People, who—besides a writing passion commonality—are also human beings who want to be heard, to connect, to bond. I don’t believe that most struggling writers—or even published ones—are in workshops simply to polish or break in a draft. They are there because they have a truth to share, no matter how risky or dangerous that may be.
We always mouth the words “community” and “diversity” – seemingly, to trumpet a global, no-walls/no-ceilings wisdom. But we seldom have the courage to open our doors to those who knock just because they don’t measure up to the word, “Writers” or “Part of the Group.”
We write about the world we live in, and the people in it—including us. Isn’t it boring to listen to just one “truth” every Monday or Friday or Wednesday night? Unless, we only want to listen to our own voices and cuddle our own stuffed toys of elitism and exclusivity, then it’s maybe cool to just stay locked up.
As for me, I just want to write… Whether you tear my poetry away and flush it down the toilet bowl, or hang it on your bedroom wall, beside a Van Gogh or three red roses. Whatever it is that you do with my little intrusion inside society’s four walls – the important thing is, I have extended my heart’s spirit. Quash it, burn it, step on it, no matter—no one frustrates, rejects, dumps, disappoints the spirit.
That’s the spirit of the writer that I want to hang out with in a writers workshop. I don’t care whether we do it at Waffle House, at Pritchard Park, or inside my humble abode, beside my fireplace, on 61 Dunwell Avenue.
Bring in the poetry, I’ll have wine and tea.

A Day in the Life of Marta The Nicer Osbourne

2006-09-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Marta The Nicer Osbourne was visibly upset, nah—let me correct that. She’s fuming mad. “I don’t understand these people!” Well, that was supposed to be my role, right? I am the indefatigable, unrelenting, unstoppable ranter/raver here—not Marta The Nicer—but that’s okay. Anger, as long as it emanates from an unexpected swig of street wisdom, is called PASSION, as opposed to hatred. And passion is always cool. So, let it rip, baby! Go on—yell, “Ich liebe sie, damnit!” or “A l’enfer avec eux, paix!” whatever works for you. Then, take a deeeeeep breath, look up the gorgeous blue Appalachian sky, and heave, “Ahhhhhhh—I’m OK, no problemo, it’s just another day in the life, let’s continue rockin’!” Remember, when you rock, you roll (not the other way around). So let’s kick the 5-minute hassle away and then, roll the… whatever.
Marta might be having a bad 10-minute-gig that time, but for me—I was cool. In fact, it was one of my most light-assed and easy-flowing, albeit coal-burning summer afternoons of my Asheville existence. Besides, I was just plain-goofy on that particular “buenas tardes” Wed 4pm. I was bringing it on—doing an Axl Rose snake-dance as “Sweet Child O’ Mine” pummeled the car’s CD player… but as I was about to chug in an ice-cold Coke, Marta hissed like a super-pissed copperhead.
“She said we’re hyprocrites! She’s not gonna support our magazines anymore because she said we were spotted one afternoon drinking Coke at Pritchard Park!”
Um, I sort of paused before I gulped my Coca-Cola with my startled mouth agape, “You mean, we should’ve drank Pepsi, instead?” Uh-oh, Guns N’ Roses—rock’s synthetic booze brothers—were puking hedonist riff drills all over me on that very moment, so I should’ve dropped the snake-dance and ushered in the pure Ani DiFranco, instead? Oh man, can’t we take it easy?
Almost all day, 7/24, all we get are bad news, absurd stuff – terror panic in Frankfurt, London and Paris, “liquid” bombs on Avon products, plane crash in Kentucky, Hurricane Ernesto a-brewing, John Mark Karr, Ray Nagin’s “showbiz” mouth, Charter’s perpetually erratic billing, Nancy Grace’s arched eyebrows, Barry Manilow winning an Emmy as show host (duh!)... So how am I supposed to buck the virulent ray of the August sun? In Brattleboro VT, young souls beat the heat by appearing naked in downtown parking lots, while others rode their bicycles or simply strolled the streets in the nude. Should I do that? Nah. Just give me back my COKE, please! Soda is guilty pleasure, OK—but don’t shoot us, we ain’t the enemy.

“Jeez, why can’t we just loosen up a bit... Coke is bad! So let me do the Dew instead, how’s that?”
“No, you know what I mean, you crazy little man!” Marta The Nicer doesn’t get easily ticked off, mind you. Sure, I know what she meant—but I’m not going to ruin my day now.
But, allow me to try to understand... so let the enlightenment begin!
Should we hike the length of Haywood Street to Lex Av to Broadway to Merrimon – all the way to our humble abode in West Asheville – with our non-biodegradable flip-flops to deliver our little, silly non-organic magazines? Or maybe we could have pedaled our beaten lungs away with a “green” bicycle? No, we can’t possibly drive this obnoxious big business assembly-line gizmo (AKA automobile), right? Tsk, how dare we muster the nerve to swallow corporate oil to get us pass I-240? Gimme my recycled magic carpet, please...
No go, sorry.
What makes a quarter-tank of Amoco premium gasoline lesser evil than a can of Coke? Did they grow microchips on their pesticide-free backyards to keep their PCs and laptops beaming like blessings from a vegan, non-corporate paradise? What makes Michael Dell different from Sam Walton, from Warren Buffett, from Bill Gates, from Johnny Coke, from Vinnie Pepsi, from Joe Wachovia, from Jimmy Exxon, whatever/whoever... Is it because it’s easier to junk a 24-pack of Coke than an iMac or iPod, diss an Ingles pork chop vs a Greenlife tofu? Burn $200 cash at Wal-Mart or run up your AmEx at Best Buy – what’s the difference?
The gruesome truth is – almost every little bit of atomic hiccup and sweatshop-processed chuckle that we clothe with winter heating and summer airconditioning in America passed by the lung cavity and drained esophagus of the poor and underprivileged – whether those beaten entrails are owned by an overworked/underpaid buddy in Canton, China or Canton, Ohio or by a tiny village dude in Matagalpa, Nicaragua or by a small suburb homeboy in Flint, Michigan. The largest chunk of this what I call, the other face of humanity, translated via empty stomachs and emaciated limbs—located somewhere unreachable by “American Idol” or FedEx—would easily devour our shampooed poodles, barbecue our spoiled Pekingese cats, and feast on Mission-issued Spams. These earthlings don’t know what CT-scans or flu shots meant – they simply have to live a day, that’s all, and be thankful that they could still smell flowers and bathe in the rain, forget that these were grown on chemicals and contaminated with acid.
That is the planet Earth where they live in. Yup, that’s for real.

Hokey dokey, let’s get real. Don’t we live in America?
Do I need a car, really? Or do I need to poison my lungs with Starbucks hemlock or melted-plastic Pepsi blood to be able to quench my 3-minute thirst? I should not, I know that... but what choice do I have? Throw $2,000 more so I could install my own crystal-clear, no-chemicals H2O brook right on my basement… and hope that I live 50 more years to savor this Fantasy Island nestled somewhere between the four walls of my shop or condo, blessed with fancy neon beams and AC? Hallelujah!
Two-thousand bucks is 100,000 pesos in the Philippines – more than enough reason for my bro-in-law Jojo Fernandez to reconsider renewing a desert job in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia to be with his four tiny angels and self-sacrificing wife in a Central Luzon barrio. If most of us could save two grand each month – for steady supply of pesticide-free leeks and spinach, write checks made out of recycled paper, allot $75 for chiropractors and massage therapists, or save up $120 for Weightwatchers or Brahma-Rockefeller yoga classes, then our next of kin wouldn’t be risking life and limb in Iraq or Afghanistan trying to kill or not be killed.
A soldier’s tour of duty is a job, that’s all. Don’t you know that Lebanon’s basketball coach is “a small town dude with a big city attitude” tax-paying American, and Gary Busey flashed his bucktooth once-twice-thrice too-many in recent Iranian cinema?
My life’s mathematics is simple. It’s very third-world yucky – I eat whatever I could gobble up on and save my money on... OK, you know what me and Marta The Nicer are up to all through these years. I save a lot of dollars by scoring “poison” food and patronizing “evil” products – so I could guarantee that our “rock journeys and sublime madnesses” stay alive. Our “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park” gather a 7-year-old tyke and 70-year-old granny over a 7-minute boogie, and entice drunken hobos and bejeweled tourists to shake their booties, period. That is joy, that is fulfillment – it doesn’t get any better than that. I don’t give a damn whether they gulp in Sprite or inhale Marlboro lights later. I’d like to keep my ambitions simple and reachable, and ensure that I get a good night’s sleep tonight—free of guilt and bum tummy. We ain’t tryin’ to save the world, y’know... we just want to have fun.
So should Marta The Nicer quit delivery of these crazy magazines that get painstakingly printed on non-recycled paper? I wish she simply stops chowing down those deadly Marlboro crap, and I chuck the dirt soda… but why should this be so freakin’ heavy? Why can’t we simply take it easy and enjoy the sweet toxicity of freedom in America? To each his own, enjoy your gig—have the right to dig your own grave or float among/along fluffy organic cloud. Savor the free will to gallivant in and around your own magnificent unrealism, at the same time, dig the cool idiocy of burning your lungs out. That’s the beauty of life that America gifted us, isn’t it so?

But then, I know that you know that we are all “enlightened” and fully informed spirits here. We are very much aware that the other glorious face of “freedom” is out there and that, we can easily enjoy it. That’s the free will to savor the peace and quiet of just having to spend 5 or 6 more hours of unpaid/self-funded community service, no expectations of hours rendered/dollars paid… or the serenity and contentment of just staring at the Blue Ridge Mountain and hope this is 1496 and you are one of The Last of the Mohicans. And then, you declare—”Yeah! I am gonna be crazy and spend my money on something that’s cool and easy. I gotta rock today, bless my soul! I gotta bungee jump down Chimney Rock!”
And what’s that? Of course, you know what I mean...
I still feel the quiet joy of knowing that I have a lot of friends from everywhere who offer me their comfy Jennifer couches, fridge stocked up with Corona, DVD players all-set with my favorite silly horror and comedy flicks, gifts of bracelets and earrings scored at Wal-Mart, and “unhealthy” boiled white rice, and say, “That’s all that I can afford, dude... I’m glad that you’re here. Feel at home!”
Many, many years ago – these wonderful amenities came in the form of creaking bamboo beds, “toxic” coconut gin, duck embryo, goat head’s soup, Peace Corps-issued blanket, World Bank-donated jeepney, red tide messed-up fish... I savored all these “evil, inappropriate, poison” implements on my way to a “bonfire for peace” in barrio plazas and ravaged villages that’ll easily make Pritchard Park look like Madison Square Garden and a Unica sardines taste like a plateful of caviar or Angus beef.
So, okay, we are “hypocrites” because we drink Coke. What’s more hypocritical than have the enlightenment and awareness to know what’s inappropriate and evil and not do anything about it but to exalt one’s self-gratification within the protective comfort of a ConEdison-provided shelter?
I choose to burn my liver with cheap gin or salvaged moonshine with the downtrodden and the outcast, I enjoy eating rattlesnake stew and croc sushi with train-hoppers and Greyhound “losers,” opt to dance with the devil in pursuit of a heavenly madness, and WHY? It’s because that’s all that I could afford, or that’s all that my homeys’ friendships could offer...
More than anything else, these junk and filth make me connect more with the people. I’d rather do something out there, right here right now, than worry whether a corporate hubcap hits my skinny butt as I negotiate a dark street, or a bad food messes up my holy intestines. There’s something out there, out there, that makes us live forever – certainly, not the $65/hr asanas drill or endless meditations or organic cheese or “nice hellos”...

I remember few years ago, when I was editing a Filipino-American newspaper in Manhattan, a towering Barnard College-educated lady adorned with Gucci and Vera Wang, lashed out at me right at the lobby of the Philippine Consulate on Madison Avenue. “Why do you keep on writing these crazy, distorted accusations about your own people, Pasckie? This is New York, this is not Manila—be ashamed to our American benefactors!”
I just looked at him, a-la Robert “Taxi Driver” De Niro or Clint “Outlaw Josey Wales” Eastwood (sans the slim cig and the pistol but with the knockout poncho and a mean glare), and muttered, “Are you talkin’ to me? Are yooooou... talkin’ to me? Why do I write THESE things? It’s because I have 5,000 subscribers who read me, I have a magazine – you don’t. What you have is a Vera Wang and a loud mouth. You can keep them to yourself, nobody cares.”
What’s my point?
Marta The Nicer isn’t Condeleeza Rice, she isn’t even Talullah Greenwood Heep (my neighbor in Dunwell Av). And, do I look like the Filipino-Cherokee grandgrandgrandson of Lamar Hunt? As sis Elton says, “Don’t shoot me, I am only the piano player.”
If these people really do care about corporate sham, environmental bastardization etc etc etc, by all means, march towards I-240 all the way to Washington, DC and fight it out. Or worse, at least, gather your minions, congregate at Pritchard Park or Vance Monument, save extra dough that you’re saving for weed and hummus to pay City Hall for the permit, and say your piece, loud and clear – at least once a month. That’d be cool. I’ll throw my $15 worth of monthly Coke budget in your tip jars.

Twenty years ago, I traveled to Madras, India with two of my high school bestfriends to find peace and quiet. I dabbed turpentine oil all over my hair and pushed it all back up, I chucked my Hanes in favor of the traditional kaupina (y’know, diapers), ate no “dead flesh,” and then I meditated and meditated and meditated and meditated from dusk till dawn – hoping that 1/16th of earth’s population follow my lead and be vegetarians themselves. (I actually believed that that’d happen in year 2000.)
Meantime, in the streets of Manila, farmers and fisherfolk and workers were marching under the punishing midsummer sun towards the presidential palace to fight for food on the table and tiny land space to put up their shanties. Meanwhile, up in the mountains, deadly landslides buried towns as the government’s gung-ho anti-Communist insurgency program bulleted the blue sky... all these while senators and congressmen played golf and escaped Southeast Asian heat and humid with secret rendezvous in Buffalo NY or Brooklyne MA.
How could I ever sleep in peace? How could I enjoy my soya milk and “camote” sprouts, and dance the rhumba with pristine butterflies and frolic on virgin riverbeds in my immaculate neck of the woods? How could I deliver my holy sermons on the mount? How could I liberate my soul and flutter like “jai guru deva om”? My people were starving, weeping, bleeding, dying… I had to go back where the shoutings were coming, where tortured limbs fought over a three-feet wide spot under flyovers, where swollen lips and bum stomachs feasted on soiled sardines and salvaged bread… no Coca Cola, no Toyota Subaru, no “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” no tofu, no Spam, no meditations, no lotus positions.
I had to be with the people… Shouldn’t I worried instead that I may have ruined my kidney with incessant shots of cheap whiskey as temporary relief to soggy spirit? Or that, fish head “kebab” might’ve crushed my liver and gave me Hapa-C? Oh yeah, my old Nikon was made by some wealthy, insensitive, gluttonous tycoon somewhere?
Who gives a damn.
The thing is, do we have to travel to Samar Island in the south of the Philippines, in a Buenos Aires pampas, or in a Zaire village to feel the beating of a wounded humanity? Marta The Nicer came from an unbelievably impoverished town in West Virginia called Welch… just a few hundred miles to a small mining town called Sago. It’s unbelievable that a US town appears exactly like the same dusty, food-to-mouth Mexican sitio or Indonesian hamlet where I’ve spent some time in the past.
Marta The Nicer’s people – as well as my goth homeys in an Oteen trailer park and Barnardsville Highway – go to Wal-Mart and chow down Mickey Dees. These people send their sons and daughters to war so they could be guaranteed a college education, these people work at Starbucks and Wal-Mart and Barnes&Noble so they could pay their bills. These people don’t have enough dough to score a downtown shirt, imported from India or Bangladesh; they can only afford either a secondhand Goodwill Levi’s or Family Dollar pots and pans donated by the rich for tax exemptions.
How do we convince these people, these Americans, to throw their toxic sodas away or boycott Wal-Mart?

They are the people. These are the people who don’t intellectualize whatever zero nutrient they could get from taters and grits, they don’t see television sets as idiot boxes, they see them as devise to amuse a dreary day, they don’t choose between PBR or Busch and the best local brew. They just wanna chill, period.
But if we really want to change the world… by all means, we should go where LIFE is happening for REAL. In places where forests and mountains are stripped naked so we can be continuously supplied with papers to print our gallery posters and matinee show tickets and zines and newspapers, in hellholes where sweatshops inflict torment to kids as young as nine so they could heed a quota for spare change so we can afford and enjoy a couch bed or tennis shoes or winter jackets when we need them…
In those places, we are needed – to stop the pain, to tell the masters of corporate greed to stop it. But how many will venture that kind of “lunacy” – how many of us would send our kids to squatters colonies in Peru or dingy, rat-infested sidetreets in New Delhi so they may understand the world? A cool, awesome “spring break” weekend in Fort Lauderdale sounds safer and more fun, isn’t it so? Okay, don’t forget to remind them kids not to strip naked (at least not afront clandestine handhelds) when smashed as hell, or... uhh, stock up on condoms, please. Yup, who would leave the comforts of the east, west, north and south of America – even for one summer month? Flying to Burma or Laos (plus a month’s chill-time beside white sands) is a lot cheaper than a weekend in Las Vegas or Frisco, so what are we waiting for?
But watch out!
You see, in most of those countries, people eat dogs, cats and rats because they are hungry and starving to death… they don’t dress their pets with baseball jerseys and take them to shrinks or cuddle with them at night. These people don’t have much choices as we do in America… We even have 12 choices for a salad dressing when more than half of the world’s population doesn’t even have clam chowder, Ceasar’s salad, or strawberry mousse to kick off and culminate a sumptuous meal.
While we protest a chopped tree that obstructs traffic as we drive to a vegan eatery, an estimated 20 million people, outside of the First World, are already displaced by problems linked to a damaged environment, ranging from eroded farmland to polluted water supplies. Such upheavals already affected millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa, India and Asia. This deterioration could drive about 50 million people from their homes by 2010.
These are the people that we need to help. So let’s be cool and try to be nice to those people around us – who, despite the comforts of America, still strive hard to try to make a dent and end a day with, “Oh yeah, I served coffee at Starbucks and quenched my thirst with Coke but I delivered a free paper to the community and organized a free show at the park last night… and I am sending money to a poor shoeless Adriana in a poor country this Christmas.”
Marta The Nicer came from a deprived American village but she has the nerve to walk the streets of downtown to hand out her free magazine and share something to those who are comfortably lounging in their galleries and office cubicles. These people who profess to have a clean body and non-corporate tact but couldn’t even stand a day to mingle with the drunken homeless at Pritchard Park, yet they have all the time in the world to engage their dachshunds to a “matured” conversation or meditate atop Mt Mitchell for 6 hours each morning.

Marta The Nicer doesn’t have a cat or a dog—like most in the neighborhood—because after bills and contributions to community projects, she couldn’t even afford a new set of Wal-Mart undergarments. She doesn’t drink Highland Ale because PBR is all that her vices-budget could afford. Most of the time, she could only score few pairs of $3.50 shirts at Goodwill...
She works at Starbucks because it’s the first job that she found that could help pay the bills and she will stay there because she had friends there who loaned her a new car (yup, to deliver more of her free magazines) and donated things for our yard sale so she can help raise money for these little publications that we print on minimum print-run, and the $175 park fee for our next free-for-everyone “Bonfires for Peace” shows.
These friends of hers laugh and cry with her over a silly, sappy Lifetime melodrama or daytime soap. They may care about global world trade but I doubt if they’d debate me over import liberalization or cultural imperialism, who cares? I’m sure, however, that we all dig Owen Wilson and Jack Black and would reinstall digital cable or fly to Orlando and pretend to be rich when we win the lotto. They are the people, and I am happier and more fulfilled when I hang out with these souls, they are my kind of people...
Marta The Nicer Osbourne is my kind of people, my kind of friend.
Marta The Nicer didn’t go to UNCA or Warren Wilson, not even at a community colle. She didn’t know what peace movements were all about until she volunteered to co-organize shows for the Traveling Bonfires. She didn’t even know where Manila was – she thought it was a small town in Wyoming. She didn’t know what this madness that I’m so crazy about until she herself battled homelessness, credit woes, court appearances, ramen noodles indigestion, and bitter critics, and kept on surviving them…
She didn’t know what many of us know. She is “unaware, unenlightened and uneducated,” but what’s the big deal? Marta The Nicer has what, probably 65% of my enlightened, aware, and educated acquaintances don’t have... She has the heart to give it all because she feels it. Simple. Most of time, she gives more than she could – and most of the time, she succeeds – because like the downtrodden, the underprivileged and the outcast, she believes in the power of the stubborn will, the unswerving spirit.
Yes, one afternoon, she drank a can of Coke because she was tired and thirsty. So be it. “Let it in and let it out, dude!” That’s all that I could say to my best buddy. “Now, let’s go kick some butt! We still have to drive to Black Mountain to deliver more Indies. Now, bring in Jacko, play `Billie Jean,’ and turn up the volume. Let’s party!”
So, how’s that? Hypocrisy?

Very, very short stories

2006-04-17T14:05:00.000-07:00

The Shaolin Doghouse, Realla Scham-lately, and “The West Asheville Moon had me at Hello”

“She had you at hello, sweetie,” my ex-girlfriend Audrey’s wry sarcasm—spewing venom on that particular end-of-month bills payment day – was at its most vicious conjecture. More vicious, or certainly a lot more virulent, than the baddest PMS on earth. “You got paid with a smile again?! You never learned! So how are we supposed to pay the rent now? With a wide grin of glory?” (You guessed it right—Audrey kicked me out of our Brooklyn apartment, but only after she arranged me a “Shaolin doghouse” to stay the night… well, uhh— in Chinatown.) “I just called my officemate Go Ling—she said her cousin, Jet Lu, could accommodate you in his restaurant. That’s good—you can bus or wait tables there and get paid with your favorite ramen noodles!”) So like a somber, meek, and obedient Kwai Chiang Caine, I wafted out of the building to the F Train bound for Delancey or Canal—and off I closed another tearful chapter in my perpetually tormented book of vanquished valentines.
Just because I failed to earn the rent money again!
I don’t know anymore. Am I stupid or AM I STUPID? Audrey had been shouldering the rent (and most daily expenditures) for the past four months or so since I quit my East Village ad agency job to concentrate fulltime painting what were supposed to be commissioned work brokered by a Long Island antiques import-export trader, aptly named Realla Scham (no kidding). But after four months of incessant labor and unswerving love for good-ole’ art—punctuated by three weekend trips to Atlantic City and Adirondacks, and a steak dinner at Smith & Wollensky on 3rd Avenue on her account – Ms Scham paid me only half of what we agreed upon.
“I just wanted to help you... Look, after all these generosities that I put myself into—you seem to be accusing me of… www-hattt did’ya say?! —ahh! GET OUT out of my house! Don’t yell at me—nobody yells at me in my own house, GET OUT!!!”

Realla Scham sat on the Board of some Manhattan nonprofit that dealt with maltreated squirrels. At least once, I went with her to St Patrick’s Cathedral—where I witnessed her shed tears like Agnes of God, as she recited the Rosary, down on her knees (though she placed her Fendi gloves on the cold, marble floor as protective padding).
For some reason, I did believe this woman!
As I chaperoned (escorted, bodyguard/ed, accompanied, dated—as Audrey put it) her to Bloomingdale’s one winter’s evening, she goes—while shuffling over a stack of Louis Vuittons, “I can’t imagine… what conscience, what inhumanity, what cruelty—how could Imelda Marcos buy all those crazy shoes!!! One pair could actually feed a family of six for a month?! Poor Filipino children!” So we spent hours and hours—and weekends and weekends of Dom Perignons, chilled Rockefeller oysters, and roast Angus beef – brainstorming/discussing/bullshitting each other how we could save the entire kindergarten population of Panay Island in the south of the Philippines or donate farm implements to impoverished frijoles in Matagalpa, Nicaragua (or something to that effect).
Then one afternoon, she blurted at my startled face, “Honey, my amiga Claudia—a mucha dinera senora – just bought a house in Hartford. I’d like you to work on some paintings… She pays good money, this crazy friend of mine. Now you can buy a new computer, take Audrey to Tavern-at-the-Green, go watch Miss Saigon, I don’t know… Gosh, buy a new coat, please! You look like you just wrestled RuPaul in Central Park lagoon, honeybabe!”
I simply muttered, “I need money to help fund a summer basketball tournament for out-of-school youths in Pandacan in Manila. I promised them some money next month…” Realla wrote me a $400 check right there. “But, first, go to Macy’s—buy your girl a Victoria’s Secret or whatever… then, let’s meet my amiga tomorrow, 2pm, at 49 Grove. Don’t be late!”

Well, I have dealt with—or hanged out with, worked with, collaborated with – a thousand and one Realla Schams in my immaculately clueless little life. For some reason, I strike people like I just emerged from a jumbo jet’s cargo engine—smuggled out of the pampas of Buenos Aires or some Calcutta slum. Always hungry, penniless, down-and-out.
But I didn’t care whatever people prejudged me of. I don’t bother with contracts and paperwork and stuff. I don’t mind weeding grasses with a rusty sickle, shoveling 5ft snow with a wok, foot-massaging obnoxious matrons with varicous veins as huge as a fireman’s hose, proofreading Library of Congress dictionaries, or tutoring septuagerian Koreans how to read-write English – as long as I earn enough money to pay for printing of my tabloids, gas allowance to my soundperson, extra dough for Kinko’s laser-prints, CD-Rs to burn DIY compilations, and Greyhound fares to my next Vagrant Wind stop.
Of course, there were also a number of relatively glamorous “hook-ups” – ie commissioned painting gigs, college lecture sidelines, think-tank/consultancy tasks, and kool kat publicist work—that covered grander projects like band management, club concert bar fines, and short documentary film productions. I however preferred the “right here, right now” deal than the elaborate, 500-meeting sessions program study. I’d like that negotiations run fast, decisions reached quick as a bullet, then “Let’s rock and roll!”
So contrary to what some may think—that I am a complex dude from Saturn, I am not. I am a simple man. Yes, you can have me at hello anytime, and pay my efforts with a smile. I am some uncomplicated mouse who could easily be persuaded by a mere mention of a seafoods dinner or an assured fishing trip to the Catskills or campfire retreat in the Shenandoahs.
You see, I never did work on anything that I didn’t like. I guess, that makes me a some kinda “privileged” individual—I simply throw myself in deep, silent euphoric work trance and forget about what’s going on in the outside world. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess), the outside world means business gain, profit viability, and career opportunism. I am very oblivious and stubbornly indifferent to these things.
So I never quite earned – or consistently earned – the rent money. (Sigh!)

However, while I easily plunge into something that tickles or energizes my spirit on the get go, I also end it just as rapid-fire-fast as I took it. In many occasions, I simply plunged in a supposedly collaborative project without prior consultation – despite the fact that my family has always provided me with both legal and financial consult. I accept or enter a deal based on how I FEEL about it, period – whether I like to do it or not, almost totally ignoring the financial implication or equivalent of that particular deal.
I do believe – although this “belief” resulted in me getting dumped by a succession of girlfriends -- that I don’t need much to live my life. Although I was born and raised comparatively more materially comfortable and cared-for than the average Filipino, I am always very sensitive with the world outside my gilded gates of plenty. The “weird” boy who stole eggs and longaniza sausages from the household fridge to distribute them up in the hills where tribal families of four or five feasted on a can of sardine stewed on cheap noodles and soy – hasn’t really changed.
I don’t know why some people stock up food in their fridge and cupboard while others don’t even have a canister of sugar to sweeten their rice coffee. In America, most people store an awful lot of red meat, fish fillets, and veggies in the freezer—then throw them away after a month. They forget to cook them...
My life has always been spent mostly with the underbelly — up in the hills, in squatters’ colonies, coastal villages, inner city sidestreets, workers picketlines – that I could almost feel the unquenched hunger within, the collective sorrow of those who don’t have enough, wherever I go. Until now, each time I seem to spend US dollars more than I usually do, I instinctively/spontaneously mentally-convert them in pesos, and wonder out loud how many kilos of rice would $21 worth of mozzarella pizza amount to?
That is my life’s reality—that is the truth that I know, the truth that my spirit is accustomed to.
So no matter how many Realla Schams take me to Smith & Wollensky for a $65 dinner plate of “steak that melts on your mouth,” I still worry about what’s up in that dilapidated shanty of emaciated tykes back home. I have chosen to pursue “madnesses” that I am sure won’t make me a wealthy gallery owner, concert producer, or book publisher – so I really feel uncomfortable when I have this money and that other artist, performer, or writer don’t.
I just have to give the money back... Until now, I don’t know how I get around. I’m always like this—I throw myself out there, hop in a speeding train to nowhere, seek my truths, and I simply survive. It’s not that I don’t need money—I do, of course. But I never liked money lounging in any part of my clothing or whatever I’m carrying—I often hand them to whoever I’m working with or I just spend them on anything that I believe is worth some wisdom.

This “madness” moved offices/residences twice in three months…
While I don’t intend to go to the full details – the long, rambling recitation above explains some of the reasons. This latest mishap happened so fast though, compared to the others that lasted, at least, a year or so. But this one wasn’t ignited by my inability to raise rent-money -- it’s far from that.
But let it pass...
Life is such a tricky sidetrip to the “Shaolin doghouse,” am I right? My journey has always been like that. No matter how the rubber honeymoon bounces here and there—all fun and fancy—I always end up with my oodles and oodles of ramens. But that’s the way I like it.
This new abode in West Asheville that we’ve just moved into – is definitely more comfy and peaceful than the Lexington Av cave where we were housed just barely few weeks ago. But that’s not the point here, as ever. For some sweetly weird reason—peace is like a thief in the night. You don’t know when she’s coming and what she’s up to. You know it’s there—but only when you finally lost it. I lost my “peace and quiet” for five months or so, as I frolicked with Ms Scham on First Avenue and Westchester – over Little Italy meriendas and slot machine gigs at Bally’s. I lost that peace-within so many times in my life—and I didn’t even know it. I was so busy gasping for wisdom and self-respect like a boxer who fought for honor first, before the prize. It hurt but I feel freed...
So again, as I tread my highway from hell—pretty much like past episodes of my wearied treks along boulevards of broken dreams and valleys of vanquished valentines—I ask myself, “Am I stupid, or am I STUPID?” I don’t know—but let me remember the past… maybe I can find some consolation from reminiscing this particular episode with my sisters back home in Manila.

“The NPA is home at last!” My sister Alona exuberantly declared in such elated sarcasm and boisterous jest that it roused and threw the entire household in animated disarray. “Whoa! He’s actually here! How’s the revolution up in the Cordilleras, hermano?” Alma, another sis, eagerly darted out of the house to welcome Che Guevara-alias. Okay, okay—it was a family joke.
NPA is New People’s Army—the guerrilla wing of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines’ Maoist/Communist insurgency. NPA is also “No Permanent Address,” and that applies to yours truly. NPA was me – “Always, forever and ever, amen!” Another sister, Alicia, readily agreed. My revolutionista-fashionista “chic” – disheveled, emaciated, ragged, long unkempt hair, lost-boy reticence, snappy reflex — would effortlessly, easily qualify me either or both a Sparrow Unit (urban guerrilla) hitman or a pathetic pauper with nary a cent to score a stick of Marlboro.
With that characteristic impoverished girth, most believed (I reckon), that I could easily sell my soul to the devil for a chilled oyster dinner and a Corona. And, I bet, with that “NPA” dogtag sticking out of my skinny neck, I could easily be swayed to give up my sublime lunacy with a two-room/one-bath dive.
No, sir!
In the winter of 1982, I was reported as missing by my Aunt in New York City when I “disappeared” for five days straight — hanging out with the homeless of Central Park East. On the sixth day, I checked in a motel in North Bergen NJ with the money that I panhandled — to shower and shave. On the seventh day, I strode in an Upper West Side diner where a cousin, Mario, who owed me money, was a cook – and had a $65 beef steak dinner on his account. That night, I snuck in my Aunt’s apartment, left a note (“I am okay”) and then “stole” four sets of blankets from her closet—went back to Central Park, distributed the fluffy Turkish “winter-warmers” to my homeys, and spent the rest of the week with them.
It was one of my little life’s happiest, most peaceful moments. And I didn’t even have to go hop in the F Train to my usual, unmistakable “Shaolin doghouse.”
You see, this white-and-grey West Asheville house where we just transferred isn’t located on either Delancey or Canal, and although there are no courtyards straddled by the downtown streets of my most immediate misfortune, there was an awesome moon the night we moved in.
The following morning, the Spring Sun smiled at me and, oh yes, she had me at hello. Believe it or not.

Help is on the Way

2006-03-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

Cold winter morning, a ghostly cold woke me up. GUINSAUGON, Leyte, Philippines - Rescue workers searched a sea of mud in vain Saturday for survivors of a landslide that killed up to 1,800 people. In November 1991, I was in the nearby Romblon province to cover a similar tragedy – close to 6,000 people were killed in floods and landslides triggered by a tropical storm. A balding, mutilated mountain – bastardized by logging concessions – collapsed in a deadly avalanche of mud and rocks and buried townspeople, almost in a lightning-quick swath of flashflood. DEATH.
That, however, was simply one of the many horrors and agonies that fed my once-insatiable thirst for fastbreaking, “scoop” news for more than 20 years before I finally said, “It’s over… I’m tired, I want my peace.” I touched down at JFK Airport on my 38th birthday, and vowed never to look back again. I was wrong. My spirit never left my home-country, my soul never abandoned my people. I still feel the pain… so fresh, so real, so alive within me.
Like nightmarish déjà vu that keeps on flashing, intermittently… Many moments, while caught in the midst of it all—like a hungry prizefighter trapped in a perfumed muck of youth zeal, seeker’s persistence, and professional devotion – I wanted to complain, I wanted to heap blame, I wanted to scream. But then, first of all, I had to write the story. I had to beat them to the scoop, I had to be the best in my chosen vocation. I had to temporarily freeze my heart and craft words to articulate the numbing stench of rotten flesh, the eerie howl of the grieving, the hellish sight of wasted humanity. No tears usually fell from my wearied eyes, but I clearly felt my heart bleeding profusely, there was no way to stop the pain. My frozen fingers couldn’t move, my mind was blank like spent AK-47 shells. But I had to write the story.
On that November day, as thunderstorm continued to roar, me and dozens of media colleagues roamed puddles and puddles of mud gripped by corpses and cadavers in various states of decomposition and mutilation to double-check our facts. Did the words and photographs that we excised and gathered mean to ease the torment and heal wounds or feed media network vanity? An island away, in a hotel room, few hours hence, I downed my sorrow with a bottle of gin and wept like a child. In the dead of night, I heard a government official rambled on the radio. “ Help is on the way…”

HELP IS ON THE WAY.
I heard the words before—over and over and over again – from dearly anointed Presidents and their trusted spokespersons. Almost five months each year, massive typhoons ravage the islands; each time after the fact, I heard the words — “Help is on the way…”— like a superbly-delivered line from a prepared speech.
A day after the Feb 17 disaster, the same drained, exasperated words cluttered out of current Philippine president Gloria M. Arroyo’s mouth. “Help is on the way... from the sea, land, air.” If she could only summon the gods, with the grandest and most effective official statements, she would. I am very sure. The PR writer should earn a bonus trip to Disneyland next year, plus a Hummer, for a job well done... Just pronounce the right, most appropriate words fitted for the situation. Politicians have mastered the drill. The people have short memory, anyways… throw them USAID sacks of rice and Oxfam sardines, they’ll nurse their wounds via a complete meal, sans chicken noodle soup from the European Union.
Why can’t these “leaders” go sink their holier-than-thou bodies deep down the mud and go tell the dead that, yes, “Help is on the way?” These same hapless ordinary people whose grimy, greasy hands they shook during election carnivals in front of overzealous cameras. How many times did these Harvard and MIT-schooled royalty wash and soak and rinse their hands with imported disinfectants after campaign soirees... because their heathen hands need to be cared for, because they are leaders, because they are kings and queens?
Kings and queens don’t get buried under a landslide, kings and queens don’t grieve. Their tears are made of liquid gold.

I woke up on that same Saturday morning with a barrage of emails from friends and acquaintances from all over, “Pasckie, are your relatives in the Philippines okay? Are they safe?”
My relatives are safe. They are some of the few privileged souls who are able to secure and protect themselves from tragedies of this magnitude. I am one of the few privileged souls coming from a very poor country outside the gilded gates of America who is able to secure myself with a heater, salmon grill dinner, 100+ channel cable TV, warm bed, and dial-911 for emergency.
My heart is so used and abused by these yearly visitations of human misery that I feel that I kind of lost my individual self deep down a sea of collective sorrow. The reason why ramen soup tastes better than steamed lobster in some instances? The reason why written words and “Bonfires for Peace” mean so much? It’s because I know a few more extra dollars and a few more tired bones and sleepless nights mean a little bit of comfort for those who need them. One day, the words and the bonfires will cheer and warm the hearts of those who really really need them. I just have to do it…
I can’t imagine myself whining over a broken sidemirror, unwashed winter boots, uncollected garbage, ice on the streets, or toxicity on my frozen fish. My energy doesn’t come from my bones and veins, it comes from my spirit – just like how we all love to rattle off Gandhi’s immortal rant, “Strength doesn’t come from physical energy. It comes from indomitable will.”
Why are we talking about Mardi Gras’ revival in New Orleans? Why do we worry about the cancellation, postponement or mellowing down of party-time, more than we work ways to help residents in their full recovery? What about West Virginia’s miners, Iraq invasion’s orphans, health benefits of those who can’t afford them? It’s amazing how the average person in the US of A work to death – thereby neglecting faith and family – to pay the bills or save up for the next consumerist bauble, then each time a holiday comes along, we drink and get drugged like there’s no tomorrow. Partytime!
“Party” in other cultures, mean families and friends and neighbors – young and old – converged on a singular dinner table, morning till nighttime. “Party” has evolved to mean, “Get smashed from 10pm to dawn…” If you don’t, then you are so uncool.
Was St Patrick the patron saint of the alcoholics, and did they originally hold Mardis Gras in Rio de Janeiro to party all day, all night or to celebrate the spirits of grain harvest and ample rain? I still wonder, in oblique cluenessness, why is it they call alcoholic beverages as “spirits”?
What will make the First World wake up—how many WTC tragedies, New Orleans calamities – will shake this vaunted continent before we emerge from the stupor?

The magnificently impoverished people in the countrysides, the tearful faces of children who had to wave their fathers and mothers goodbye – sending their beloved to the deserts of Saudi Arabia and kitchen sinks of London and freezing canneries of Alaska so they could secure food on the table, sturdy roofs above heads, and a future...
Should we immigrants come home when what we see when we set foot in our home-country are rows and rows of corpses clothed in mud, rows and rows of GI-sheet shanties sustaining hold of the earth as storm winds shake them, children as young as five selling flowers and cigarette sticks on the streets for measly coins until aftermidnight...
What can we do when they bury a bullet at your back, when they shut your mouth away with an electric leash, when they mute your pen with physical torture... We immigrants fly to America, the bastion of freedom and democracy, and say our piece so the miseries and pain from little countries like ours will be heard, so the gods channel aid in terms of sturdy houses, and health benefits, and more jobs that stop parents to work abroad.

Why do I hate the war. The memories of those places, of those faces—make me cringe at just the mere thought of billions of money spent on bombing villages and killing people, billions of money spent on cutting down trees so they could rev up the economy of those who could build and buy cool houses...
What is “heaven,” what is nirvana, what is everlasting peace, when you can’t do anything anymore to help those who breathe and feel pain and joy, when you can’t do anything anymore to help comfort the downtrodden? How many years do we still have to consume and waste away, how many dead people inspire and urge us to hit the road and make things happen when the truth is—we can’t sacrifice the comfort of the couch, the many conveniences of this life?
“Help is on the way?” What help? Is she going to resurrect the lives of the dead with a box of milk from a Forbes Top 1000 company? Vials and vials of Tylenols from Washington? Plaster band aids to gaping wounds courtesy of billionaires’ spare change?

Who wants to talk about “I am going through a lot of emotional shit lately?” Failing heaters or showers without hot water, or vehicles that conk out, or rental back-accounts, or laptops that suck, or “I cant do that gig because...” or “pass that joint, we deserve to chill a bit.”
As I struggled to finish this column, a gas buildup in a coal mine in San Juan de Sabinas in Mexico triggered a pre-dawn explosion, trapping 65 miners. A day after, five TV news networks alternated in telling—in absurd amusement or silent horror—the story of a man in Florida who bludgeoned his roomie to death over an argument concerning toilet papers. This as bombs continue to pulverize Iraqi villages, as Asheville’s peace activists stage a March 19 rally to help stop the killings – as highly-paid macho men on shiny microphones ogled over Beyonce Knowles’ voluptuous curves as she sang The Star-Spangled Banner at NBA’s All-Star Games in Houston.
Damn, I want to feel that fistful of mud that buried those beautiful people. Just that. That alone makes me want to live longer and longer and longer – because the grime and the dirt are so real, so alive than the temporal glimmer of all the marquees and neons of all the main streets and times squares of my American Daydream. One day The Blue Sky God/dess will help me stop that one landslide, and then the dream will be over. Then it’s peace within me, at last.
Now I gotta start working on the remaining pages of The Indie’s March issue... The weatherperson says temp is 20s. Bundle up, be careful of the impending sleet, stock up on toilet papers.
What the hell.

My New Year's Resolutions... uhh, sort of

2006-01-17T10:33:00.000-08:00

WHEN I WAS five, numero uno on my list of New Year’s Resolutions was, “Find Huckleberry Finn.” My grandma Lola Tinay, a grade school principal, apparently deeply concerned about the development of my mental growth, had to step in and correct me, “My child, seeking make-believe characters are not resolutions. What about, `I’ll water Lola’s roses at 7 every morning, as I’m always told’ or `I will not complain anymore each time Lola asks me to recite the Rosary with her at 6 in the evening’?” To please her, I had to secretly draft two versions of my ten top new year’s resolutions that time... Well, of course, I showed her the version that I was sure, she’d readily approve of. But, you guess it right, I stuck to my “Huck Finn” version – because I knew right there and then that I really meant to pursue those “sweet lunacies,” one way or the other, whatever happens.
So forty years and cross-continental odysseys hence – I’d like to announce to one and all that I valiantly, mercilessly, successfully remained the same. A stubborn, crazy bundle of a dreaming frog still desperately wanting to be a prince, after all these years. More significantly, I’m quite pretty much on target as ever, geared at my life’s resolutions, AKA “rock journeys and sublime madnesses.”
So when Huck declared, “Let’s light out for the territory,” I knew right at that wonderful moment that I was all set to embark on a magnificent journey. Problem was – there was no Mississippi River in the Philippines’ Cordillera Mountains where I grew up. No incessantly flowing, abiding thoroughfares to an ultra-adventurous, super-impertinent raft (pretty much like what homeboys Huck&Tom rode on). Instead, there were, what I called, Creeks of the Macabre and Rivers of the Bizarre – dead tributaries that rendered virtual dumpsites for mining silt. Cyanide wasteland, death valleys. [But that’s another subject for another column piece.]wwwAh, okay! What really comprise my 2006 New Year’s Resolutions? I sincerely, honestly listed seven of them—not necessarily in order.

[1] I will be more entrepreneurial than quixotic.
“Quixotic” is such a Word, right? It’s like Heavy Stuff, you know what I mean? But, as my PBR-drinking soul sistah puts it, “Quick-freakin’-zotick? It’s all bullshit, that’s what it is!” Well, it could mean many cutesy cerebral crap other than “financially-sound,” “economically-viable” or something that consistently pays the bills. This year, I feel I won’t be able to assure myself three packs of shrimp-flavored ramen noodles each day anymore, lest I think dollar-smarter… or, entrepreneurial!
Okay, now, of course you know what “entrepreneurial” means. I don’t like to spew nasty words in the mold of “business-like, professional, practical” so deal with the word, okay? ENTREPRENEURIAL. It sounds French, isn’t it so? Thing is, I can easily rattle off 115 names of acquaintances of mine at this juncture, all wanting to be “entrepreneurial” this year. ALL of them—boldly pronounced, neurotically professed, and hysterically promised themselves and the entire universe that 2006 will be their Money Year! Oh yeah…
As for me, I don’t mean “money,” really—I just want to remind souls and spirits around me that, “Hey, at least you might wanna pay half of my phonebill, after all—we spent four hours and 17.8 minutes every Friday of my spring time aftermidnights listening to your sob stories, when all you wanted from me is to dogsit your compulsive-impulsive chihuahua so you could check out what’s going on at Club Hairspray till dawn. I just realized it’s my damn cellphone!” Or, this year, you certainly wouldn’t expect me to respond to a lovely muse with, “Ah, you had me at hello… okay, just buy me dinner at East Buffet, that’s okay. I can do your laundry this weekend.” I don’t know, this is hard for me, I still don’t like to talk money… but me and Marta The Nicer Osbourne are simply running out of Blue Sky raindance “sublimity gigs” to help pay for basic office operational/administrative bills, so…

[2] I will find myself a girlfriend.
I am VERY serious about this. I actually went to yahoo’s “Desperate Houseboys” chat rooms the other night, frantically fishing for romantic leads – “Hey, wazzup? I live in Asheville, where’re you from? Single or Sad?” (Sad means “Married,” okay? I guess, that line didn’t work—nobody wanted to chat with me.) So instead, I went to Myspace, Friendster, sonicbids, Craigslist, Nutslist, and then, I gallantly posted my “Look at me, I’m hot!” pic, spiced up with some of my Rod McKuen-by way of-Richard Marx love poems. Didn’t work – what I got were 25 “checkoutmycam” invites and a menacingly inquisitive email from a single mom with 5 kids based in Piedmont, South Dakota. (You don’t wanna know…)
Three consecutive New Years ago, my number one New Year Resolution was, “I will never fall in love again” or “I will never have a relationship again!” You see, until now – most of the time, I couldn’t really tell whether I initiated break-ups, or she wasn’t actually a girlfriend (she split with me the moment she discovered that we were dating, y’know), or I was simply unceremoniously dumped without me knowing about it.
Things seemed perfect from the get-go, I mean—I think I’m alright. How many guys you know who’d always cook dinner for his girl, massage her foot, give her gifts in all imaginable “anniversaries and first-times” within the duration of the relationship (like, first time we ate at Waffle House together, stuff like that)… I’m also a guy who immensely enjoys doing the laundry, taking out the garbage, washing dishes… I mean, I am a Kickass Housekeeper. And I also am a poet—but then, I think poets are starting to sound boring these days, eh? I don’t know, check me out – I think I am a super-romantic dude, some crazy but cool dude who’ll readily scribble a love note over mounds of snow outside my beloved’s window, and scream, “Hey, wanna have ice cream at Sweet Heaven?”
But, uh-huh, I am serious. I want a girlfriend this year! Big deal, huh? But, why? Oh well, I don’t know... Do you know? I don’t know anymore. All I know is – deep in the dead of night, my spirit cries out for my Muse, wherever she is. I just have to find someone that I could share my valued baked salmon on Viennese cheese over red wine and Diana Krall aftermidnights over recitations of Neruda’s “Veinte Poemas” over Erik Satie’s weinstein mopings. Mind you, it’s not because jammin’ astrologer Benjamin Bernstein showered me cool hints of awesome romantic moondances by the first half of 2006—it’s because I just want to fall in love again. Period.

[3] I will read more literature.
Right now, I am reading Paul Theroux’s “Dark Star Safari.” I dug what he wrote about the freefalling beauty of taking off and not waiting for people anymore, picking up pesky phones while he cooks, sifting through junk emails – achingly, perpetually being nice. His seminal travelogue, “The Great Railway Bazaar” was easily one of my deepest influences. I’m also reading Robert Ferguson’s biography of Henry Miller, which will eventually lead me to two glorious women who kept me wide-awake past 2am at age 16 (Anais Nin and Erica Jong).
I’m also reading nine different cookbooks—but that don’t count. I browse through cookbooks, food magazines, and wildly consume hours and hours of Food Network TV shows – to keep my spirit consistently linked up with The Blue Sky God/dess’ edible blessings. There are a number of newer hardbounds that I plan to pore over and own but my financial situation at this moment prevents me from doing that so, I figured I’ll just maybe revisit old dudes (that kinda “messed up” my mind when I was younger) at the Pack Library. I’m talking about Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Neruda, Alvin Toffler, Kurt Vonnegut, Rudyard Kipling, Li Po, TS Eliot, JD Salinger, Sylvia Plath etc etc etc – and yup, I’d like to “hang out” again with Huck & Tom and Mark Twain.
Reading doesn’t compete with my atrociously gluttonous film viewings though. Watching films is like writing or cooking to me, they had to be—otherwise I cease.

[4] I will find more time to commune with nature.
Well, I still don’t know where to spend moments to do just that. Salted catfish on campfires, lakeside musings, seaside walks, Saturday nights in the woods. With the right vibe and place, I know I will WRITE again, like I used to. (These days, I basically ramble—that isn’t writing at all.) I will dust the cobwebs of my unfinished novel, start painting (or even, just charcoal-sketching lizards at night), or maybe, I’d get the cosmic push again to waft my fingers over the piano’s breast and then, craft music one more time!
I haven’t really written anything sensible in the past two years or so. My novel, “Waiting for Winter” is still waiting for me, I haven’t written a poem that I really love in about two or three years since I scribbled my “Black Poem…” for a Beanstreets open mic three or four years ago. I haven’t painted in five years, I haven’t written a song or touched piano keys or a guitar’s fretboard in three years (despite having a piano and two acoustic guitars in my room)…
Nature converses with me like a Mother – she doesn’t care whether I’m lazy or just silly. She just stays there, tending to my needs—whether I like it or not. She only means good to me. To rephrase a line in the movie, “Road to Perdition” – “They asked me if she treated me good or bad, I just say she’s my Mom.”

[5] I will cook more.
For me, one of the best macho/cheesy lines in the movies was, “Don’t look at me, I’m only the cook!” (That’d be Steven Seagal in “Under Siege.”)
But seriously, I believe, cooking is like making love. You gotta be in an apt, fired-up, motivated mood before you do it… you have to know the secret spices and condiments without really calculating, measuring or pre-tasting them—it’s all basic instinct, and gut feel, and treated as “first time” all the time … you just dive in and explore—you don’t know when to stop, until you know you got the right blend that mutually tastes good. So you do it again.
No intellectualizing, no over-thinking. It’s all improvisation, creativity, sensitivity, spontaneity. Cooking is making love. Cooking is deep aesthetic/artistic passion, meditative, improvisational/spontaneous, even spiritual.
I learned to cook by intently, religiously watching my other grandmom, Lola Luz, prepared meals for our huge family, three or five times a day when I was a kid. For my grandma, life was all about cooking—best spices, freshest seafoods, healthiest meat, greenest vegetables… invented dish, exotic discoveries. Like art, you gotta be in the right, cool, appropriate vibe and demeanor before you begin to attack the mighty wok.
I’m like a magician when I assault the kitchen. I don’t usually follow recipes or cookbooks… I just look over them for inspiration and motivation, then I try to come up with many tricks. It’s such a trip! Sometimes I put awesome rock ‘n roll names to my dishes, ie “Misty Mountain Hop” (“jumping shrimp on vinegar wine and Thai chili”), “Purple Haze” (“boneless trout stuffed with green papaya, strawberry and chicken garnish and smashed with sake”), and “Time After Time” (any food that I had to repeat eating because I’m broke).
But I like to cook the traditional/kinda primitive way—you know, a-la “Iron Chef,” backyard firewood, lots of smoke. When I was in a band, I always imagined those fog machines like delicious clouds emanatimg from grilled clams and stuffed tilapias—as I pounded the skins (drums, y’know). Whenever I closed my eyes, that meant I was imagining food (not exactly my girlfriend… ah, now you know why I always get dumped).
Cooking in America could be messy though, if not scary. Many times, when I was living with my bro Alberto in the Jersey shore, I had the entire South NJ police force a-front my brother’s house, guns drawn. These retarded alarms kept on blaring each time smoke came out of the damned frying pan! So, one afternoon, I tried to cook at the back porch, instead. But then, Vince The Sicilian saw me and blurted, “Hey! What are you doin’? Didn’t your bro ban you from cooking? Man, did you measure that fire risin’ up your grill? You can’t let smoke come out of that stove, man! Stop that, otherwise I’ll call the National Guard, I’ll call the Corleones! You #@!*F<+j#!!!”
But this time, this year, I really have to cook. I just have to cook, period.

[6] I will call and email my family and relatives more.
Well, I still owe Bellsouth astronomical debt and I haven’t really recovered from my Sprint cell back account but that’s no excuse—I will communicate more with my family, although they’re scattered in Manila, Las Vegas, London, Dubai, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro. That is, if I don’t mix up the time differences – considering that I’m always one day ahead or behind in my daily Eastern Seaboard sundial.
My family and relatives terribly miss me, I terribly miss them. I will not make them worried anymore. There are a whole lot of hazy, blurry areas that I need to clear up with them… No, the Traveling Bonfires isn’t an Appalachian wolf-worshipping cult; Yes, I am still heterosexual male; No, I also eat other food than ramen noodles and I also drink other beverage than PBR and 50-cent green tea; No, I haven’t gotten married! Yes, I still pray; No, I don’t have tattoes; No, I haven’t dyed my hair blonde; No, I didn’t change my name to Dragonfly; Yes, I will visit home soon; YES, I am still George Alfredo Pascua.

[7] I will have a more normal living condition/situation.
I can’t be normal, that is a fact—but at least, I will try my darndest best to be a bit predictable and logical this year. How is that? I’ll start wearing matching socks, keep a wallet to secure bills and my future GF’s pic (ha!), pick my phone up once in a while, minimize my crazy yarn hangings in my place/room, go to the Catholic church at least once a month, try not to hide tears, I will entertain more hangout buddies other than Marta The Nicer Osbourne, play more dance music other than “Samba Pa Ti” by Santana and the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” whenever I’m writing/working, laugh more… okay, I don’t know. I’ll just try to be more “normal” so people around me will not confuse or mistake me for some other strange, odd creature, this time out. I am okay, really.

So anyway, do you think those resolutions will make me a better, happier, less-poorer person this year? No one can tell. This start of year, I throw myself deep down a frenetic sea of madnesses, AKA projects and programs. One thing is sure — I am definitely a “new” Madman this year… but check it out, check us out. I do believe that this year—I may have a clue where to (finally!) find Huckleberry Finn! I saw him the other night right on the corner of Walnut and Carolina Lane, chowing down two slices of mozzarella Mellow Mushroom pizza…
I’m serious.

STREETS, SUBWAYS, SUFFERINGS, SONGS & other STORIES

2005-12-07T05:15:00.000-08:00

Jesus Christ was a peace-loving carpenter’s son, Ani DiFranco was an open mic queen sistah, Joey Ramone took the 7 Train for a Gray’s Papaya...

Meanwhile, more stories… Don Quixote was a jobless madman who brandished whirlwind swords of wisdom and got fed with rainbow’s bread, Karl Marx was a pauper with a proletarian soul that was nourished by a philosopher’s hammer and sickle, Evita Peron was the wounded spirit of the pampas before she declared victory over a fallen icon of political masculinity, Tina Turner ushered the exuberant voice of an angel as her battered heart healed then declared an ethereal triumph over male-induced tribulation, Bono was a plain joe Mr Hewson who grieved then exalted the blues and funk of Irish ghettoes in the name of Christ before he rocked the mansions of gods for spare change for African debt relief…
What is your story? Who are you, where do you belong? What are you doing this Christmastime? What will you be doing in 2006?
Forget about Ms DiFranco’s gazillion of indie spunk, Jack Kerouac’s subversive romanticism hitchhiking between the cracks of a battered Chevy and a persistent resolve, Rosa Parks blurring the blacks and whites of America’s bus lines and color boundaries with a singular declaration of individual might and stubborn nobility… forget about Paul Simon dishwashing down Bleecker Street in between 15-min Bitter End sets and 42nd Ave warmth before he Danced with The Saints of Johannesburg, John Paul George Ringo & Stu throwing up Motown blues and soul behind a Hamburg stripteaser’s incendiary act before immortal beloved’s fame and glory emerged on vinyl, Ray Charles groping in the dark of black isolation before he saw splendor wide and clear via a soulman’s grit and integrity.
Forget about the tales of woes, tears of tribulations—bold stories of beautiful conquests, visions of victory, inspirations and motivations. Let’s break it down to pieces. Let’s fall on our knees and feel the cold, grimy, gruff textures of reality’s mud. Don Quixote’s “Impossible Dream” becomes Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty” becomes Elvis Presley’s weekend truck route from Memphis to Jacksonville – becomes $6.5 an hour at an Office Depot for $15 per 50 CD-R packs for burned copies of a DIY demo.
We are all the same molecules of biological imperfection and un-navigated, oft-ignored spiritual charm. One day soon, that Dream will be there, right on our couch, warm and cool. Meantime, we just have to boogie with our angels and play possum with our devils—and survive a day and night, more blessed than cursed. As Janis Joplin once rambled, “Tomorrow never happens, it’s all the same f——in’ day.” So let’s kick the funk and blues out the door and rock Christmas day, just like it’s one of the many beautiful gifts of humanity that may or may not be there tomorrow… Enjoy the moment, y’all!

Imagine this—what if Jesus Christ is right here, right now—flesh and blood, alive and well? How many hours you think would he render towards traveling up-north to spread good words and peaceful vibes for free, against time served an employer to earn money to support his physical existence and tour budget? Would he even consider hopping in a Greyhound from Asheville to Baltimore when the current round-trip fare already costs $159, and that he might probably be earning $6 an hour as stockroom clerk at Earth Fare or slightly higher as night manager for Waffle House down Tunnel Rd? I presume he doesn’t pay rent, and just shuttles from couch to couch among his twelve other disciples’ (or homeys) dilapidated apartments.
Moreover, I also assume that he didn’t go to UNCA or Warren Wilson because his father Joseph’s carpenter’s take-home salary wasn’t enough to make both ends meet. With all those insane tax deductions and stuff—man, Joe must have been busking around Battery Park with Aaron Gunn, Michael Farr, and the accordion dude to augment income.
His dear Mom Mary might be knitting mufflers and scarves or beading up jewelries and stuff to help Joe pay the rent and a couple of credit card bills that they maxed out in the first six months of their matrimonial bliss. I also assume that Mary had to constantly visit Social Services for food stamp and the Mission for Campbell Soups, Brownstone bagel crisps, and Wabash Heritage dry milk. Like my friends Jason and Cam, and Donald and Daisy—they might have spent hours arguing whether they’d maintain organic food diet or simply compromise on inexpensive ramen noodles, once in a while.
But Jesus Christ, Joe and Mary’s very cool son, had a Dream. JC had a Vision. I reckon, he’s a pretty intense and deeply focused individual who had a plan to be happier in the future while infecting that good vibe with the people out there. I’m sure he’s a pretty nice young man who sincerely believes in The Blue Sky God/dess, prays either in the heart of the forest or on a hilltop among the clouds and wildflowers (not inside a grandiose infrastructure), shares his bread and wine (must be inexpensive like Boone’s Farm Sangria, or if it’s beer, it’s gotta be PBR) with his friends.
He always wore hand-me-down Wal-Mart sandals because he hardly could afford even pairs of Pay Less dress shoes. I don’t think he has extra dollars either to avail himself of Blockbuster DVDs, Best Buy CDs, or Barnes&Noble books, so he frequently makes use of Pack Library privileges—burns CDs and photocopies selected pages in a borrowed book with whatever he could scrimp from busking downtown with his Dad Joe. Of course, he makes it a point to visit open mics – because being at an open mic gives him somehow the spontaneous right to be inside a coffeeshop for three or four hours or more while purchasing only a cup of coffee, with one refill.
More than anything else, JC digs open mics--because he’s able to share his words and music, raw and all, to many friends and strangers without too much effort. Well, just like his other homeys (John, Paul, Matthew, Jude, and the rest of the dudes), they find it hard to compete with acts with awesome Stratocasters and Zildjan drum kits, and more significantly, they don’t usually do KC & The Sunshine Band covers to entertain beer-guzzling tourists who just gotten out of the leash of their over-protective parents or super-clingy spouses. JC & The Disciples opt to keep it low volume and stripped-down acoustic, not because they don’t like electric stuff... it’s just purely economic. No extra dough for those gears.
Yes, Jesus Christ was pretty much an ordinary person.
He didn’t need a lecture about women empowerment for him to stop “decent” people from throwing another stone at Mary Magdalene, the alleged sinner. It’s as simple as this – you don’t throw stones or hurt a human being who’s pretty much like you and me. Or he doesn’t have to be homeless himself for him to invite homeless souls to join his journey to wherever he and his twelve buddies venture to share some cool vibe again… More than anything else, JC didn’t like to fight. Cuss or bitch-slap him ten times a-la Zak Wyde or degrade him like Howard Stern and Sarah Silverman do – he’ll just look you in the eyes, and will probably whisper, “Be cool, man! Peace!” then give you a hug or handshake.
But despite all these perpetual shortage of cash and sheepish demeanor, nothing stopped Jesus Christ from hitting the road – actually he walked – to share the spirit and wisdom of The Blue Sky God/dess in communities that refused to pay attention at an individual’s skin color or wallet situation. I don’t think, he once said, “I can’t go to Jerusalem and do two sets there – right now, I only do paying gigs, man!”
Every time there was a need to hit the road and be closer to people, he simply headed out the door of his employer’s office and didn’t whine, like, “I can’t afford to lose this job, man, how am I suppose to pay the rent? My girlfriend will kick me out!” But, of course, he wasn’t dating, or was he? No, he wasn’t. Otherwise, he should’ve chosen to be a responsible Dad and got himself a more stable job at Wachovia or Clear Channel, thereby cutting the wanderlust trip and refrained from talking, lecturing, sermonizing all day about the good word, for free. Yes, he must’ve received honorarium and transportation allowance, or free lodging and dinners, in those gigs – but he knew he’s not gonna support a family with that quixotic vocation.
But, someone’s gotta do the job, you know—someone’s gotta sacrifice, do nonpaying gigs, and give almost 100 percent of time and energy to do beautiful stuff like what Christ did and accomplished in his mortal lifetime. Passion and sacrament are two noble deeds that Christ pushed to the limit—to wake humanity up.

So you might think that Jesus Christ — the everyday man, the commoner, the ordinary citizen -- was a crazy man, right? I don’t think he was. He knew what he was doing and he was happy, I’m sure, with what he was doing – until the government bigot, the religious fanatic, and the confused mass got pissed with him so they put him away.
Even so, JC was one charismatic, good-natured, peaceful individual who’s more into Mahatma Gandhi’s civil disobedience than to Che Guevara’s armed revolution. But unlike Gandhi, Christ didn’t watch in utter helplessness thousands of human bodies falling down, wasted by British guns. He didn’t choose to wield an armed insurrection or guerrilla warfare, either--like Che. Instead, JC sacrificed himself so there’ll be no bloodshed anymore—Gandhi had to count body bags first before he could prove a point.
Clearly, Christ had a plan, he knew what he’s doing. I mean, how’d he suppose to convince twelve other dudes to follow his vision/mission? He didn’t offer them anything, he simply kept on talking and talking and talking—all day, all night. And then he designated writers in the group to document his life and journey. I mean, these people knew what they’re doing—they weren’t just hitting the road, for the romantic trip of it all, they wanted to change the world and offer humanity a better alternative. All these writers, all these disciples—rendered time and talent, effort and energy, pro bono, I’d like to repeat that.
So how did they survive? I mean, you might get 5 mini beef burgers for $5 at Arby’s or free potato salad for a purchase of two pork chop meals at a Huddle House but we’re talking about twelve mouths here, and not to forget, they also got Mary M with them. Maybe they didn’t drink as much or maybe they started cooking in campfires somewhere in the Shenandoahs or Ozarks so they could maximize whatever they could get at a Mission or whatever they could buy at a Dollar Store (like $1 corned beef and $2 beef stew) from playing in New York’s subways, Boston’s South Side, Frisco’s North Beach, or Asheville’s downtown. They might’ve also washed dishes and bussed tables at Denny’s or Olive Gardens on layovers in exchange for food.
In other words, they suffered and they scrimped and they starved and they mustered the cold, the ridicule, the isolation, the alienation. They knew they had a Mission and that Mission will be attained and achieved, and The Blue Sky God/dess will always provide. They had resolve, they had faith, they had persistence, they had the spirit. In turn, the God/dess’s graces came via the community’s selfless hearts, open doors, and generous dinner tables.
Jesus Christ didn’t choose to be an accountant at First Union, or be a Marine soldier hoping for a pension after losing a leg in war, or a hotshot legal staff to Johnny Cochran, or be the Southeast Asian purchasing manager for Nike. He didn’t even choose to be a family man and thereby struggled to buy a house by the Outer Banks. He chose to be a traveling man of wisdom—like Don Quixote and all the other young men and women who followed the same journey.
Well, Jesus Christ was a bright young man, allright—he could have applied for a Fullbright scholarship and went to Harvard or Oxford and then worked for Donald Trump or some Wall Street outfit. But this man was a simple man of simple deeds and simple dreams. He thought small, did small, but aimed big.
JC knew he’s not going to earn enough money to buy himself an SUV or a knockout PA/sound system for his band – by simply talking and talking and talking and talking endlessly to all kinds of people that they come across on their journey. There’s no money there, in fact, there’s a lot of heartaches and frustrations out there—rowdy coffee patrons chatted boisterously as he read his poetry in an open mic, pro-war advocates cussed at him as they distributed peace flyers in neighborhoods like DuPont Circle in DC or Madison Avenue in NY, and a whole lot of hassles. But all the guy did was respond with a smile and a peace sign. He always restrained his drummer, Jude E, because the dude always wanted to fight. Yup, Jude bro needed anger management, and JC was always there to pacify the hothead’s rage.
The point is, if people like JC and his cool dozen wanted to earn money, why did they choose to do the things that they did? Why did a promising medical student like Mr Ernesto Guevara opted to leave a privileged middle-class comfort in Buenos Aires to take to the mountains of the Sierras in Cuba to be a revolutionary? Why did Mr Kerouac shun permanent relationships, stationary living in Lowell MA, and then periodically traversed the road? It’s because they wanted to do things that they deeply believe in—no chasers in between. And in the case they indeed allowed material/financial glory blur their convictions – and slow down their journey -- I believe they wouldn’t even make it to the first layover.
What was in JC’s mind and spirit? It was the Word of the Christian God. It was pretty much like what Siddhartha or Gandhi pursued. The Spirit of the Almighty. Their calling, day job, persuasion, profession, madness was exactly what their spirits were saying. Go and head out the door. Go get it!
What was in Che Guevara’s resolve, Bob Dylan’s backpack as he headed out of Minnesotta to seek his dream, The Temptations’ hearts as they sought out Berry Gordy in Detroit, Ani DiFranco to turn down all major labels in favor of her indie Righteous Babe Records? It was the Dream that fueled their journey. That individual Dream that manifests into a collective Mission to make the World a better place to live in.

The major frustration of most people or “dream-seekers”– in the present time around current realities – comes from the fact that they expect that this thing about sharing a song to make hearts lighter, spreading out poetry that moves humanity, ushering revolutionary ideas that seek to change existing social discrepancies should be equaled with time spent and dollars paid--right here, right now.
We mouth the ideals and nobilities of Gods and heroes and great souls and famous individuals – deeds and dedications that we vow to emulate and follow – but through time, we have lost the patience to wait, wasted the desire to pursue, forgot the resilience to suffer. Just because we have to earn a few bucks to maintain/sustain a decent, comfortable living? And what is “comfortable” living these days? A cozier sofa bed, a Hummer, Platinum credit cards, 76-channel cable TVs, iPOds, dishwashers, endless supplies of Tylenols, iMacs, fendis and louis vuittons, microwaves, fully-furnished condo units, well-endowed lawns and porches – we even have electric toothbrushes, can openers, woks, grills, blankets, socks, vibrators. If we don’t have most of these, we consider ourselves poor and deprived.
Then we protest and ask why does our government go to war—and subsequently, usher and foment death and injury, misery and pain to humankind? Don’t we know why superpowers invade countries--dating back to Queen Isabella and Alexander The Great’s days? It’s because we need more power, additional resources, fast remedy to our material frivolities and physical whims. And power is oil – the almighty liquid that supply and sustain our unmitigated hunger for comfort and “security.”
What would happen if 6 out of 10 individuals decide not to rely on anything gas/power-induced? What if, say, 75% of America don’t drive a vehicle and opted to cook dinners through firewood three times a week, at least? Imagine, twelve Christ homeboys trekking the Appalachians on foot, or seven hundred joe hills and guthries hitchhiking to glory – imagine the sacrifice? So in the case we follow those leads, then voila! There’s not much energy to sell anymore, not much gasoline to consume, not much oil to grab, no war to wage, no country to invade.
And so we will have a community to enjoy and savor—people will be walking side by side on the streets, people will be smiling at each other on buses and other public transports, people will be smelling each other’s beef stew and mushroom broth from across the fence hence they’d be trading dinners and stuff, people will be seeing each other more frequently than sending emails and cellphone messages.
But do we think these DREAMS will ever happen?
Moreover, what would happen if money doesn’t always play up in the human equation? Then maybe there’ll be no more words like “business” or “commerce” – no market research, distribution contracts, copyrights/royalties/commissions, dot.com downloads. Because we allowed all these to govern our everyday lives, even supposedly instinctive human reflex as immediate rescue to those who most need them has to go through tedious paperwork.
For instance – multi-millionaire rock stars and sport luminaries seem so holy and honorable for performing for the benefit of New Orleans calamity victims, when the truth is, they don’t even have to go out and perform for benefit shows at all to be able to extend help to the needy. I mean, can’t they just sign a check for $5 M or so, that’s it—quick, fast, sure—and order their accountants to go implement and execute that material assistance? Why do they have to, again, entice already-burdened ordinary citizens to pay concert tickets—thus, also promote their CDs and DVDs—so that they’d be able to donate their earnings to the poor? Weird.
Oh yes, whenever we sink deep down funk and misery, we heap blame on just about anything. We blame the Mexicans for “stealing” our jobs, we blame the Chinese and the Bangladeshis because they’re already cool with $2/12hrs day work in their own country around their own realities but we’re not, we blame presidents for continually ushering us to the fires of hell as though the next presidents will do better to save us, we blame our parents for not being responsible enough, we blame our kids for being insensitive with our efforts to keep the family, we blame TV and Marilyn Manson whenever kiddo starts acting weird, we blame McDonald’s for our obesity as though we don’t gobble up on baked taters and breaded chickens whenever we get stressed out for being fat, we blame Wal-Mart for selling us cheap goods and paying third world souls a dime a day as though those simple-living natives care as much as we do, we blame credit card companies for our immense credit woes after we maxed them out. Blahblahblah.
In turn, because we are so darn busy stressing ourselves out and throwing blames at every conceivable, existing element on earth – we forget to enjoy and savor the beauty and glory of life and living. We get scared of a bonfire because it might burn the entire city and cut all the power lines, we get scared of a kiss because it might mean unwanted pregnancy that equals health insurances and stuff, we get scared of the sunshine because it might ruin our immaculate skin thereby another budget for dermatologist visit, we get scared of rendering free concerts because the people might get used to freebies and that’s not good—they gotta pay, we get scared to write more poetry and songs because that’s taking too much of our hours-spent/dollars-paid priority, we get scared about having a kid and so we simply dress up our pet dogs and save them doctor and nanny’s budget because that is cheaper. Yup, we constantly get scared -- so much so that the shrink becomes god and prozac becomes soul food.

Bottomline is, we just gotta start working ways to be happy. We may never pass this way again, you know. Whenever I’m asked why me and Marta The Nicer Osbourne always/stubbornly organize a Bonfires show or two and not getting paid for it, I just say, “It’s fun.” But the “fun” is relegated to the background when people start counting hours rendered, dollars paid—and we start measuring efforts donated with material/financial returns.
I mean, we choose to pursue things that make us happy. People marry, people travel, people climb Mt Everest, people buy thousands of shoes, people convert to Islam, people preach The Holy Bible. People choose to be happy, around any given circumstance and situation. Pacific islanders are happy that they have the ocean to catch fish for food, Eskimos are happy with the warmth of the fire inside an igloo where a family shares dinner, some village tribal souls are cool with fancy dances under a full moon—they don’t need DVDs or iPods. Despite them not having what we have, I don’t think they’re oppressed or deprived—we only say that because we measure their joy and injustice via our own, valued comfort zones. These people in “uncivilized” cultures don’t have any idea about how expensive and valuable a jade stone or a diamond pebble until Kings and Queens used them to highlight and articulate their power and might over the lowly and the poor. For them, these stones were just as beautiful as a kid’s grin or a sunflower.
This Christmas, let us try to see within than without. We all say we are good-natured, peace-loving Christians. So let Jesus Christ, the everyday citizen, reside in our souls and inspire us. This man chose to hit the road and spread the Word of Wisdom—in his human lifetime. He was ridiculed, ostracized, beaten up, crucified. He didn’t stock up hidden profits in Luxembourg or Switzerland, but he left us something to think about and anchor our humanity with. Let’s be cool and not waste his example. Wherever he is at this very moment – in your church, in your basement studio, in your bedroom, in your backyard, at Waffle House or in your favorite cafe reading AGR, at Malaprop’s or Old Europe, or out in the highway whistling “Freebird” – he’s always around watching over us. He’s cool enough to watch over us, mortal whiners and insatiable complainers. We bug JC (who has become The Blue Sky God/dess) with lots of free gifts but we fail to appreciate the simple life and quiet living handed to us the very moment we were born.
Indeed, The God/dess rocked and still rockin’. HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO Y’ALL!

The Spirit of the Bonfire

2005-11-04T22:36:00.000-08:00

On January 14th, 1967, 20,000 hippies, Beats, and Berkeley activists gathered at the Polo Field in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park around the music of, among others, The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. The convergence, largely fueled by Vietnam War protests, was called “Human Be-In” and it signaled the start of the “Summer of Love.” Future Rolling Stone editor Ralph J. Gleason described the event as “an affirmation, not a protest. Acid was everywhere, but there were no bad trips. The sun set, the bands played, and the people glowed.” To that, Timothy Leary exhorted and snorted, “Turn on, tune in and drop out.”
So our fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles—and their friends and acquaintances—with flowers on their hair, swirled as the sun set, while rock music swayed with the wind, and humanity glowed. The trip was so cool – so they continued to get turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. This “love vibe” filled the sweet air, like a freefalling dive to nirvana, this pervaded as Lucy kept on dancing up in the Sky with Diamonds – as young soldiers whose limbs were still warm from the comfort of a loved one’s embrace, and rock stars whose heavenly fingers flashed the peace sign before they cuddled the mic and the fretboard – all of a sudden, dropped dead.
The music was still playing, the sun was still rising and setting, but the beautiful bodies of the beautiful souls were now cold and unmoving – wasted and gone.

I was around six or seven years old at that time. I marveled in awe as my aunt danced to John Fogerty’s “Who’ll Stop The Rain” and I dreamed of a beautiful future upon knowing that wealthy rock celebrities could share exuberant music and ethereal words with the average humanity on a grandiose stage that weren’t built by corporate doleout and political sham but through a primitive love for peace and community—in a beautiful convergence called, “Woodstock.”
Many years later, in my country, humanity—rich and poor, young and old, rock stars and street urchins—gathered with flowers on their hair, their wearied fingers flashed the peace sign, called for peace and community, and end to a twenty-year genocidal dictatorship. The flowers and the music, the peace sign and the words—these melted the human hearts that were once numbed by the evil mind that commanded the fingers that pulled the trigger… and so the tora-tora planes, bazookas, grenade launchers, and AK-47s stopped and crumbled like burnt paper planes and dismantled wooden ships.
Like the Chinese youth who stood alone afront a surging tank in Tiananmen Square, like the Filipino Catholic nun who waved a rose afront a soldier armed with submachinegun… these souls turned on, tuned in, but they didn’t drop out. Instead, they made the tanks and guns drop out—and then they made a beautiful history rife with glorious wisdom and spiritual bravery. In those moments, there was no summer of love, no glow, no rock music, no sunset, no acid. Courage was articulated, peace was achieved.

That is my dream and my reality. A grand dream and impoverished reality that converge and find warmth, shelter, and love in The Traveling Bonfires. Words and music – are my ammunition and firepower – in my fight for peace and community. The bonfire is my rest and refuge, my security and my protection, my rage and my redemption. There are no chasers in between. Nothing in between — no irresponsible excess as the deadly trio of weed, alcohol & acid, and corporate blood, and political/ideological bigotry.
This is the Madness and the Mission.
Since the middle of 1980s to late 1990s—amidst the physical danger of Martial Law and emotional indifference of New York City – that Sublime Madness and Quixotic Mission have always been there with me. Under a virulent summer sun, battering storm, gunshots that snuck in from nowhere, a heart that bled like isolated river – that madness and mission was my God, family, community, and relationship.
Manila, New York City, Asheville. It’s all the same to me. The places, faces, phases change and vary but not the spirit.

In a not-so-distant past, in a weekend musicfest—drummed up as “a benefit for The Traveling Bonfires” – held in another Appalachian town, the spirit of the bonfire was caught in a claustrophobic haze of hedonist excess and burnout high. The entrancing mischief of the electric guitar cavorted with the sweet sound of words but amidst the seductive din and unsuspecting glory of the dark, stupor lurked like a devil on overcoat. It was the kind of chill—a gnawing guilt—that bites deep down the marrow.
But, maybe, I was one of the very few who could see and feel beyond the intoxication-induced fanfare. Indeed, the bonfire was beautiful, voluptuous, immaculate. But it was cold—cold like a stinking cadaver splattered with perfumed cosmetics. (I’m not talking about the weather...) Yet, it could have been a glorious convergence by the idyll—a freefalling marriage of peace and love, a synergetic merger of lyrical moondance and rock ‘n soul abandon.
A young man, dazed and drowsy, mumbled beside me, “I admire your poetry… peace!” Limericks flew around us as the bonfire burned. Then he shook my hands. I felt the kneading sincerity, the bleeding honesty—but why the lethargic vibe, why the burnt, clumsy emotion? Why can’t we savor the motherly warmth of this circle of fire, why can’t we exalt the flawless heartbeat of the drums, why can’t we feel with just our naked hearts and comforting spirits—without aid of some alien, volatile substance?
Deep within me, the bonfire is a sacred shelter with an outstretched soul. But why do we disregard and disrespect freedom’s mystical beauty with drunken, spaced-out bliss?

Despite the awry feeling of isolation and alienation, I tried my best to sustain a sense of reasonable system and organizational sanity in spite of the insensitivity of the incendiary sideshow. I knew my oblique wisdom or square-ness, cluelessness were simply out of sync with the moment’s party—but what could have I done?
It wasn’t my gig, it wasn’t my trip, I was there merely as a “doorperson”—I was told to “Let him in, he’s running this show. Yes, that man is my guest, don’t worry about that.” The pitch was BYOB (bring your own beer), but almost half of the campers/concertgoers purchased their tickets before the fact—so when they got in, with huge backpacks and stuff, you don’t really know whether these souls are underage or whatever. So when the bossman said, “Let them in,” you simply let them in. (Besides, at about 11pm, we were told to simply abandon post—so, should I repeat that I was just the “doorman”?)
But then, I don’t want to wax like some adventurous child’s overprotective Dad here or a stiff Victorian preacher. Let them in—tune in, turn on, and drop whatever. So while inside my freezing tent by the river amidst the dark, the only choice I got was to pray that nothing untoward happens.
Nothing bad—like college kids on IV, or trembling hands on cold cuffs—happened. But, still, I’d like to know why these irresponsible, insensitive dalliances had to go unchecked or unmonitored.
I never got the answers. I won’t get any answers, at all—yet I still wanna know why. Is it because—as we all know from Polo Field to Altamont to Rome (NY) Woodstock – that the Learyian dictum of “tune in, turn on, drop out” is more of the rule than the exemption here? Rock `n roll becomes the staple, convergence becomes the cover, “dropping out” becomes the hidden agenda. Where is the spirit?

Since it’s official inception in Manila in mid-80s – to its incarnation in New York City in 1999, then to its relocation in Asheville in early 2002—The Indie and The Traveling Bonfires have been surviving mostly from continuous outpouring of pro bono creative energies and humble funding/donation from wonderful souls who happen to vibe with the spirit.
From time to time, supposedly like-minded, well-meaning business entities and individual initiatives approach The Traveling Bonfires to be the beneficiary of community fundraise projects. Mostly, these “benefit shows” raise dough above the usual pass-the-hat tips and sale of compilation DIY CDs and hand-scrawled poetry chapbooks.
But unlike the usual “pick-up fundraisers” that we stubbornly do on staggering frequency, relatively bigger events where eccentric philanthropists and “compassionate businesses” produce for our welfare aren’t forged on spontaneous kick or instinctive passion. It’s not just a sort of “Dudes, let’s rock the E Train for three hours tonight so we’d raise enough bread to print the next issue of The Indie,” or something to that effect. It’s a lot more tedious, organized, and “legal” than my “hit-it-anywhere-you-want-it” swagger.
Well, it’s not just because of the fact that in those particular instances, my megalomaniac guerrilla-girth is relegated to the background—in favor of a (usually) more systematic, by-the-books supervisory style of the sponsoring/producing/organizing entity, organization, or individual. More often than not, these “hook-ups” require an anal, thorough, careful adherence to the physical givens of a “civilized existence” AKA paperwork, documentation, contracts, proposals/feasibility studies, disbursements/liquidations, valid signatures (yup, no “Flower” or “Butterfly” over the dotted line, please). Whether I like it or not, I just have to behave and follow the rules.

You see, the moment my burnt skin of soiled banana and boiled white rice crashlanded in the US of A, it was like, every bit of sweat trickling down my slim chest or each block that my immigrant feet negotiate need to be documented, assessed, and taxed. And that, my cash was no good, credit card is the favored legal tender. You see, in my life, I never had a wallet sticking out of my bony ass — to neatly keep bills and cards or girlfriend’s pics. My money is all over my backpack, between book covers, and jeans pockets — or I simply let my super-loyal sidekicks and assistants do the money thing for me, I’m not good at it.
But in America, it’s different, I later found out (this, after maybe a century or so of my family’s love affair with Uncle Sam). When my greatgreatgrandfathers ventured the high seas and sought their fortune in Alaska’s salmon canneries and California’s railroad constructions, they felt belonged and cared for – and, yes, they felt “home” more – when a Cheyenne, Lakota and Cherokee traded smoked trouts and windpipes with their boar-skin boots and rattan hats. They could understand and relate to that beautiful, spontaneous primitivism than the complex rap of the Morse Code or the dizzying array of paperwork needed to be filled up just to get a dinner stub.
Alas and behold—I live in the 21st century! I couldn’t barter my grilled trout for two reams of bond papers at a corner deli anymore, or y’ know, I simply can’t just recite a poem in exchange for a hot, spicy mushroom broth. Isn’t it so absurd to be wasting a neatly-printed, meticulously-crafted bank check — to write a $5 payment for a latex condom at a Target store? Weird.
Living in America is like skinny-dipping at a dimly-lit public pool inside a Wal-Mart on a Friday 5pm with a Gene Simmons make-up, you know what I mean? You seem “private” except that your primal parts and vital statistics are showing right there.

Even before the advent of the dreaded Patriot Act, my family has been really nervous and stressed out with all these “crazy” things that I do. They’ve been diligently paying attorneys’ retainers fees—to simply remind and advise me that “Don’t bet on it, boy, every breath you take in America is being taped,” or “You don’t want to be audited, do you?” Be careful, be careful. Geez, come on – I don’t even jaywalk in downtown Asheville or dye my hair green on a Drum Circle night, or make a pathetic pass at a young woman at The Orange Peel on a Friday night. Am I someone who’s going to break someone’s window, or allow Marta The Nicer Osbourne to illegally park in front of the Federal Building? Gimme a break!
You see, I don’t really believe in being careful CAREFUL, you know what I mean? What I sincerely, deeply believe in is, I need to be smart or, I should just take it easy and let common sense takes its course. I mean, if I beat a red light or jump over a subway turnstile, what do I get? A free strawberry ice cream or $15 gift certificate to Waffle House? It’s like, should I quarrel with an Ingles salesclerk because the poor soul insists that a Koolaid is a water jug or a summer drink, and that’s it? In the same way that—when a piece of 8.5x11 bond paper that says, “For the benefit of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” is used to pitch business sponsorship support or pre-sell concert tickets, well, what must Billy Shears do when the Men In Black start knocking at his door, and start quizzing, “Where’s the bread, dude?”
Common sense, right?

I believe that The Traveling Bonfires’ “legal” involvement in aforementioned “for-the-benefit-of” events start upon submission of our 501c3/nonprofit paperwork to organizers for use in regards sponsorship solicitation letters or media publicity feeds. So, being the main suspect, it’s my responsibility to report to each and everyone what transpired in all those frog and squirrel concerts – whether we lost, we earned, or whatever. I always make it a point to announce – via Indie/Bonfires yahoogroups postings and weblogs updates, apart from individual emails to people concerned – the details about what happened in all Bonfires or Bonfires-related events.
Oh yes, I don’t give out The Indie/The Bonfires’ legal papers or allowed my organization’s name on some poster with a grand pitch such as GLOBAL PEACE – just like that. I am not hooking up a crack deal by a grimy sidestreet over a shot of spiked tomato juice or hustled Marlboro lights, got it?
When it comes to stuff like these, I’ve always been very careful (almost anally/compulsive-impulsive CAREFUL) about my organizational/business dealings. Oh yeah, that’s the time when I define common sense with carefulness… so I make it a point that, at least, I solicit legal consult. That is, in the event that my usual “reliable sources” fail to convince me that, “OK, Pasckie yo, we’re doing it. No problemo, the dude is clean.”
I may rebel against the paper chase, paper moon, or paper trail – and all these “civilized” transactions sealed via inscriptions countersigned by the agreeing parties – but I’m not dumb either to break rules when I know I gotta hit deadend as I make the next turn.
Despite these though, there are still few instances when I simply loosen up and take it easy, and rely on deeply sincere instinctive reflex. I hand out The Indie’s 501c3/nonprofit papers so supporters could use them for whatever it’s worth – sponsor solicitations, media feeds, tax exemptions. That’s all that I could offer in exchange for the wonderful gesture/s to help the “madness.” So I just categorize these seemingly nonchalant moves as “calculated risks.”

Moreover, while I usually cut across as unaffectedly cool, even to the point of being misread as meekly naïve, I am not stupid. The Traveling Bonfires’ name—nonprofit status that translates to formal letters and sponsorship help and tax refunds and exemptions—is a marketing pitch, a legal token, a lawful device, a publicity come-on. Whether that “paperwork” produced one dollar or one million dollars, or two attentive spectators or 100,000 sea of humanity—the name was still used to suit or serve a business entity or individual intent or political advocacy’s benefit.
We don’t hustle a Name, we don’t even buy a Name, or treat it like a black market ticket to a ball game or a hash deal at Washington Square. We RESPECT a Name. Many times, it’s all we got to protect our wisdom and honor.
More than anything else, The Traveling Bonfires’ name is NOT Pasckie Pascua, Marta Osborne, or any one of the names in The Indie’s staff box or Bonfires posters. The Bonfires is the pride and dignity of the many people who freely gave their time and energy and love to The Madness and The Mission. It is my calling and my responsibility to protect that spirit, whether I end up rotting in jail or starving with a pack of ramen noodles.

I built the “bonfire” as a sincere human gesture to gather people together to heal, communicate, merge, live a life rife with beauty and wisdom. The “bonfire” is not about heat in the cold when the alcohol isn’t enough and cover for the deluded mind when the evil substance wouldn’t kick in.
What I saw in that fateful, sad weekend is more of a private party that dances and whirls with “turn on, tune in and drop out” than a peaceful gathering of community souls. An ugly reminder of irresponsible recklessness that killed the music, murdered the vibe, and consigned the spirit to a puddle of vomit.
Why do we scream in protest and accuse the status quo as fascists when the uniformed hurl us to the ground because we had a drink too many and the “highs” went too high? Why do we blame our mothers and fathers each time we take a deadly step on the wild side? Can’t we be responsible to our own demons—don’t unleash it if you can’t control it?
I can’t allow irresponsibility and neglect to ruin a young soul’s dance of peace on another holy night, the spirit of the bonfires will not allow another bloody dollar bill to snuff out the flame’s glorious warmth with a shot of burnout potion number 9. When one body falls down, we shrug it off as collateral damage, unfortunate conjecture? Insurance and pensions gauze up the wounds, right?
Tsk, how much did the “doorman” earn at the gate, “for the benefit of The Traveling Bonfires”? Was it $700, $50 or $10 M? My spirit isn’t for sale, my fear isn’t up for bargain, and my word can only be equaled by a free wind’s whisper, nothing else.
I still do believe that those beautiful people drove few miles to the woods and willingly handed me hard-earned dollar bills at the “gate” to partake of the lovely rock `n soul gathering by the river—no more, no less. I still believe that they won’t venture beyond what their mortal anatomy and lawful discretion would allow if they weren’t coaxed, incited, lured, or offered what they should not. That is why there is system, organization, and “doorpersons”—as much as possible, we won’t let an iota of chaos and mayhem steal the fun and glory away. So, tell me, what is an insurance fee, green/orange hand bands, and concert stubs for? Were we just fooling ourselves?
A breach of trust beyond the paperwork (AKA contract), the bastardization of the word of honor between two supposedly decent individuals beyond presence of physical evidence—are still miserable displays of betrayal and deceit. Even anarchists, rebels, atheists, and the most staunch lawbreakers and nonconformists—even the devil and the angel—follow certain rules and regulations to advance their respective intents. We’re no exceptions.
The fistful of dollars resting on my emaciated jeans pocket beat for those immaculate souls who crave for peace and glory within the misery and pain, wearied bodies that find solace in the healing grace of music and convergence. I am not going to hand that money back to those who thought they haven’t got enough of the party favors—the money goes back to the spirit of the bonfire. Back to the next gathering where the wind and the pigeons and the beautiful people gather and redeem ugly memories of the reckless ghost dance.
I didn’t muster the cold for two consecutive nights and entrusted the stubborn integrity of The Traveling Bonfires to play a game that my own temporal body and wounded soul would not tolerate or accept.

Every event of The Traveling Bonfires is done under legal bounds of the law—whether our PA system growled whimpers or our persistence to string up shows after shows are consigned as laughing matters.
We try our best to be lawful, fair, and legal—given physical limitations and uncooperative circumstances.
Oh yes, I also protest and complain but I make it a point to adhere with what the law says. Otherwise, I will take to the hills, in the same way as a Che Guevarra or Geronimo did—because I already lost belief in what society is saying. But I am still here—I am still paying rent and I am not buying any herb or any substance discreetly—I can still walk freely on the street without fear of being cuffed or interrogated.
Many times, in this town, police cars pass by me. But I never felt the fear anymore—the deadly fear that stalked me many years ago when a vicious dictator’s claw crawled all over my system like a wild centipede with copperhead fang. Somehow, in this town, I feel protected and secured because there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be, anymore.
I have been a fiery, non-compromising activist many years ago. I have experienced many a steely truncheon hitting my weak backbone and tear gas almost rendering my lungs shot. I have experienced torture, both physical and emotional and mental, but still I seek peace. I don’t want to hate anymore, or even be angry. My past suffered so much, the heart profusely bled until the body got immune to the torment.

But it’s not easy to protect one’s inner peace. Somewhere, somehow someone’s going to strike from behind, from the shadows—and all you got to do to defend yourself is be true to yourself. Don’t get fazed, don’t get intimidated, don’t get swayed—remain standing, stay fighting.
Many have questioned, berated, made fun, disrespected, maligned this stubborn journey—just because I am still standing despite the apathy and funk, just because they don’t understand why we do these “crazy” things. I got accosted and accused of many silly, slanderous, ridiculous ways and means – that I am a trust-baby with a hidden, unknown agenda, who’ll take off after my “madness” has grown boring and passe, that my assistant (and past assistants) will not work for me if I don’t sleep with them so I force them to loyally, blindly fulfill obligations, that I am using Americans to free myself up of tax duties, that I pretend to be poor just to look cool, that I am a thief who used people’s “kindness” to keep The Indie and The Traveling Bonfires alive for my own sake.
But then, here I am—I am still standing, and I am still continually giving birth to new projects and programs. I am still here…
Last Oct 29, during the last few hours of the “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park,” amidst the freezing below 35 temp—hungry, tired, cold—common sanity says, it’s time to load out and call it a night. But the last band, Hippie Shitzu, told me they still want to play—because there were still people at the park, dancing and happy, although almost half of the crowd that were left were drunken, ecstatically joyous homeless amigos. (I even had to confront one homeless dude for being uncontrollably rowdy.)
So the band played. I sat there, with Marta, quietly, peacefully—it always felt so great to see people happy with the music and fun that you helped to be shared for free. One of the drunken vagrants approached me and said, “I like this party that you do, man. I am happy! Oh yeah!” Then he took off his shirt and continued running circles like a man possessed.
The band kept on playing. Then, it was 9:50pm, 10 minutes to closing time, we saw two policemen attentively waiting for us to end the show. But then, suddenly, about a dozen youths jumped in and started dancing with the homeless, as the band segued to the last song’s verse. Marta looked at me, I said, “Let them play, it’s okay… people look happy. Let them enjoy. We’ll find money later to pay the fine.” The cops didn’t approach us, thanks a lot. They have been so kind to the spirit…
Then I noticed that we still had a number of Halloween gift bags that we should have given out to children at the park… I saw two young women, maybe 18 year olds, dancing in the dark. I let Marta give them two of the gift bags.
When the music finally stopped, we have already dismantled our tent and all our stuff were all bunched on a bench. Again, we realized we didn’t have a ride back to the office. We were so tired and hungry and cold. Cabs refused to give us a ride.
The day’s soundperson, Mark Anderson, said he’ll give us a ride back to the office. I tried to hand him a post-dated check for providing sound and PA to the show. We just got two ads for The Indie but the checks will only clear in three or four days. Mark refused to accept the check, though. He said he didn’t expect to get paid. So I took out a few dollar bills from my pocket and from the day’s concert tips, and insisted that he take some, at least to cover for his gasoline. He took $10, instead, because I forced him to.
That little episode has always been the poignant staple of many a-Bonfires event and thousands of Indies and Indie-incarnates in the last 20 or 25 years of my life. I know that scene will be repeated again, again and again. I don’t want the bonfire to end just because I couldn’t pay for a PA system or there’s no money anymore to pay the park permit, or there is no vehicle to ferry us from here to there, or I couldn’t get an advertising placement or donor support anymore. The absence of those material/physical givens didn’t stop me from pursuing this “rock journey and sublime madness” for many years now. I don’t see any reason why I have to stop. I am not about to end the bonfire. It is so beautiful… it is a gift that will stay in my heart until I die. And when I am gone, the spirit will fly out of my body to stoke, to start, to enflame another bonfire in the cold, in the dark.

Yes, I am dreamer. I wish I could have stopped the war, or a bullet from hitting its human target—in the same way that I wish that I could have stopped that deadly substance from reaching the fragile hands of a nice, college kid with a beautiful song of love and peace.
But life isn’t simple as a song sung afront a bonfire, or a warm hug amidst the cold. It is, oftentimes, a tragic, challenging juxtaposition of trials and tribulations. But despite that, we persevere, we struggle, we fight to defeat our demons. As long as we live, we fight to protect our honor and our name. We fight to protect our peace.
There were dark, sad moments in my past when I believed that the only way to defend and protect peace is to grab a firearm and wage a violent revolution under the perceived cloak of ideological invincibility. Why can’t we sit down around a bonfire and negotiate, dialogue, discuss? Why can’t we try to follow a certain straight line first on our way to a preferred destiny, before sidetripping via a crooked, jagged line of nonconformity?
Peace, for me, is like a dog that seeks equal space on an open field with wildflowers and grasshoppers. It’s the dog’s right to cavort with the flirty whispers of the wind and the soft comfort of falling rain—just like any living thing. But if some power forcibly takes that right away from the dog, the dog reacts – the dog will fight even to the extent of injury or death.
In other words, peace should defend itself when its spirit is threatened or harmed.

Yes, there were no bad trips on that fun weekend. There was “peace,” it seemed. The sun set, the bands played, and the people glowed. The beautiful people turned on, tuned in… and threw up all night. That’s all I saw. The cuffs didn’t lock, the truncheons didn’t fly, the nightmarish blue-red glare didn’t flash.
I could still hear the blues and the fiddle and the haunting Joni Mitchell tunes. And I could still remember how one young lady swayed and swirled and sweated all night around and within the sweet sound of rock and roll. It was beautiful, it was so beautiful.
Until Lucy played deadly games with the Blue Sky in a god-less night with phantom Diamonds. And as the ghostly Man in Black strode under a naked moon, the cold seeped through the marrow, and then the ethereal words and heavenly music were swallowed by the dark…
We still don’t have a car, we still don’t have enough money for a decent dinner. Each time we are able to earn money—beautiful thoughts of a new Indie issue, a new Bonfires project wake us up at night like the sweet sound of angel symphonies. That’s the trip that I always get high with. The feel of newly-printed Indie, the sight of dancing bodies in a Bonfires show—seem to be more heavenly, more urgent than the promise of comfort of a new vehicle, or a warm couch.
The “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park” (aka “Bonfires for Vampires”) last Oct 29 is our last in Asheville for year 2005. A “Bonfires for Peace in Manila” took place last Oct 14, the first of three Bonfires concerts in Asia this year. More Traveling Bonfires shows and events are still coming up before 2005 says goodbye.
Repeat, this madness, this bonfire—is not about the $$$ rental to Parks&Recreation, or the beautiful rock n roll from the coolest band in town, or the donated tent or PA system, or the $300 or $7 M earned from a weekend benefit bash. It’s not about ramen noodles shared by two, either. It’s not about the drunken, rowdy vagrant or the beautiful young women dancing to Dashvara’s jazz and funk.
It’s more than all of those… things that we can see, hear, taste and touch but still there, out there, elusive and far but beautiful and glorious within us. It’s all about the spirit. The only gift of life that will not die.
I would like to say a prayer to the Vagrant Wind and chant poetry to the Blue Sky God/dess. Toksa Ake.

Disaster country

2005-10-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

DEFINITELY, it was the Mother of all Mother Nature Disasters that I’ve ever willingly dumped my skinny earthling anatomy into. The calamity was so ruthlessly devastating and unforgivingly noncompromising that it drove the once-impregnable US military bases scuttling away from the Pacific Ocean—haphazardly dismantled, temporarily orphaned. Before that, Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base have been comfortably lounging in Pampanga and Zambales provinces for more than a century since America and Spain inked the Treaty of Paris in late 1800s.
That Treaty was the Grand Scheme of all Grand Schemes—an epic brinkman’s move that sealed the fate of the New World in the next one-hundred years or so. For a time, it fortified American might in South China Sea. But, well, with Beijing clamming up on Uncle Sam’s achilles’ heel via a shrewed open-door economic policy that the West greedily bit and adhered to, that peerless fort may have already been history, who knows...
Well, it seems like the vaunted and potent, albeit blindly-subservient Chinese workforce is more than comfy with sweating it out for ten-hour/quarter-salary rotation in white man’s factories — against $7/hr x 8/hrs-day grind in a South Dakota plant, for example — and US/European business is cool and happy with the setup, so who cares, right?
America and Europe will continue to breed individual millionaires/billionaires while the world’s hopeless, hapless citizenry remains trapped in credit card/mortgage and food-to-mouth quicksand. It’s a tragic reality that stares at us like a cat’s blank, cold gaze.
So who says there’s still a war of ideologies and/or political thought--capitalism against communism, come on! What we have in our midst are McDonald’s fat, Nike athlete’s foots, Levi’s made-in-Bangladesh, filthy-rich basketball gods, multilingual iPods. We blur the lines, not towards global harmony but deep, deep down individual human greed. They aren’t looking anymore at how you execute a Maoist practicum at an agrarian countryside, or test a Milton Friedman blueprint on urban poor communities. Times they are a-changin’, indeed!
Chuck Oxford, MIT, or Harvard. The Men-in-Black are more interested with your internet-hacking prowess. Economic espionage via information highway is the World War that is already happening. They might not murder your physical self but they already got your soul.
Uhh, I guess, I’m straying from my chosen subject again... But not really. I’m just trying to lead my musings into something that somehow offers me an explanation why things are what they are these days. Why do world powers, giant business, and mighty governments have grown so grossly insensitive and oblivious to human pain and misery. And why human beings have become easy prey and victims...
But, ooopppsss--let me digress... aha, let me go back to my initial discourse. I was actually rambling about what made the US military bases scoot away from Philippine shores... Sorry.

Okay, Philippine Senators—under ex-President Corazon Aquino—voted against the continued stay of the US military bases in the country in early 90s, but I do sincerely believe, that it was the eruption of Mt Pinatubo volcano that finally did it. When Mother Nature casts her wrath, no international agreements or almighty brinkmanship would matter. When The Sky dictates the course of life, it’s all over...
Oh well, I don’t want to, however, paint these hapless pages with sociopolitico-historical blabbery. My last column—dedicated to the passing of my Mother—was apparently very sad. I wanted to wax comical again, but after two days of insane vomitting due to some food poison or something, it’s simply hard to beat deadline with a clownish girth... And how am I suppose to goof around when few thousands of miles away, down south, people are grieving.

“My God, only in the Philippines?!” A Belgian journalist slumped his beaten gut beside his demobilized jeep’s front wheels; the jeep’s windshield broken and crashed by nonstop downpour of lahar (ashfall). “Volcanic eruption, typhoon and flood, tremors every 15 minutes, blackout!” His aeta (pygmy native) assistant seemed more perplexed and puzzled than scared, though. He simply stared at his boss.
I leaned towards the Belgian dude, “There might be a coup d’etat in Manila this week.” That was July 1991. “I’m more concerned about bombings in the city than this volcano, Sir. Take it easy.”
I don’t know, I’ve never really felt—or intimidated—by some danger posed by nature. It had to happen, I had to believe that when it gets me, it’s because it’s God’s will, and that’s it. It was more frightening for me to confront a wayward bullet from a wayward firearm courtesy of a misdirected, wayward human zeal than a flashflood or tremor. What can we do? We can only possibly deal with natural disasters--cushion its wrath’s devastation--before and after the fact.

In the Philippines, however, it’s an entirely different story... There were many instances, especially during the fantastically nonstop military mutinies under Aquino’s term, that gunfires in the streets seemed like stale firecracker and death threats, practical jokes at the office.
A lifeless, mutilated human torso floating by the Pasig River (Manila’s main tributary) or decomposing in some dumpsite — or Rambo-fanatic cops gunning down petty criminals and hoods on a busy public road, in full view of townspeople on broad daylight, was pretty much like ogling over a Hollywood gangland shoot at Jackson Heights in Queens. It’s like, “Okay, sorry for him... we all gotta deal with our own deadends, you know.” Most of these unfortunate souls are “salvaged,” or summarily-executed by either urban Communist guerrillas, private army/vigilantes, paid and/or exasperated policemen or soldiers.
So you think military take-overs are like what we marvel at in a Miramax movie about some African or Southeast Asian hellhole? Nah, it’s all Hollywood.
“So who got the bazooka shells? Mang Juan’s kid, Boboy? He should, that boy sells a lot of Marlboros to those soldiers, anyways... The boy’s day job.” No kidding, kids as young as nine or ten hustled and scurried around and staved off sniper shots and flailing, continuous AK-47 and Galil rifle volleys like Flushing Meadows ballboys at a US Open—vending cigarette sticks, Halls menthols, and tetra-pak fruit juices to troops from either side of the combat zone. We call them, Uziseros. Whenever a big explosion rocked a Loyalist Army position and/or a RAM (reformist fighter) sniper exchange connected, they exuberantly cheered, “Aha! Fourteen to eight! Awright! Ayos!” and then, they shuffled peso bills unto grimy hands, smeared with zinc dirt and parched by urban poor humid. It’s a day-in-the-life, it’s just a day. They treat the human carnage as simply, urban games. No big deal.
You don’t get scared anymore because your fear-reflexes are already numbed by continually being scared. You get immune to it.
Death? Death wasn’t like nothing, it’s not that — so don’t get me wrong. This is a scared and scarred culture that pays homage to their dear departed like heroes and saints, memorialized in endless tearful and ritualistic Church and cemetery visits, for years and years. It is not easy to forget the dead... but why do my people treat human ire and natural misery in such resigned, nonchalant irony and defiance? I am still trying to figure that out... My people never fail to astonish and puzzle me, until now. But, at least, you get what I’m saying, right?
Maybe, that resignation and defiance--which become human acceptance--are the reasons why we survive the physical hardships and emotional agonies of life and living more than those who have seen comfort, warmth, luxury, assurances, protection from the very day of birth to the last gasp of breath leading to death. What do you do when wars and civil strife happen like seasons, hunger pervade like blue skies over dark nights, and calamities strike like sunsets and sunrises? You simply deal with them, and hope that God makes his/her move. Faith is the only impregnable, peerless, unshattering armour that we have within—without that, there is no food at the table, no roof under our heads, no strength to cushion isolation from loved ones, no shield against a berserk gunfire.

In my country, or in most Asian nations—incessant typhoons (aka tropical hurricane/storm) batter and punish our shores and lands for an average of four months a year. Persistent rains—monsoon or storm downpours—flood both cities and barrios for days and weeks and months. Urban folk and rural villagers are rendered homeless and starving for months; medicines and clothing come sporadically, worsened by government corruption and political insensitivity.
But the Philippines is not Japan, Luxembourg, or New Orleans—this is a third world patch that heavily relies on World Bank and IMF doleout and US Aid and European Union relief help. And it’s not at all surprising to witness the poor being neglected by government rescue agencies so that people have learned to fend for themselves. What we in the First World coax over via reality-TV pill — eg, “Survivor,” are household fares in some Pacific island, like my home-country. The canned goods and stuff that are given out at the Mission and the clam chowder soup and tater salad at a Shelter are like salary-day grocery list and/or fiesta food in a Visayas island barangay (village).
Even during a red tide menace, usually happening following typhoon, when fish and seashells are contaminated by toxic chemicals... people gather these supposedly unedible, deadly fish, mussels, oysters, and shrimps and feast on them. During unmitigated flooding, as strong winds batter the streets, we always dined on beansprouts soup with cheap smoked fish (“tuyo” or “tinapa”), dirty white rice, and tap water. Since calamities happen like four to five months a year, we got used to them—we treated Hurricane Katrinas, Ophelias, and Ritas as days-in-the-life. We have to survive them. They’re part of The Blue Sky--they happen. So we treat them as part of life and living.
You see, how do we advocate organic food, environmental sensitivity, to these miserable souls when they don’t even have enough to buy a four-day-old pork or buy a new wood panel to protect their nipa-hut shanties against the storm? How would they worry about catfood or dog shelter when they don’t even have enough for their human limbs? So when they eat dogmeat, it’s because there’s no money for beef or chicken... We don’t throw fish heads or chicken feet, we boil them on garlic and onions and make tasty broth, and these are already called dinners.
That is the very reason why America is seen and treated as Heaven, Paradise, The Dream, The Great White Hope for us poor foreigners. America is where people want to be... Here, we could translate the joy of not having kids by simply adapting cats and dogs; we could amuse our problematic cash-flow lives with 64 cable TV channels; we could gobble up on all imaginable flavors of ice cream and doughnuts to counter depression; we could drive our vehicles to the next block to throw our trash; we could have sex anytime as long as we aren’t serious and we stock up on condoms so we are continually protected and saved; we could stride in a restaurant and get a job in exchange for dinner; we can call ourselves “homeless” and/or “jobless” and still have Shelters for housing and Missions for dinner...
Everything here is so perfect — roads are paved and guided by well-printed road signs, groceries are awash with countless choices of food, canned goods, condiments and what-nots, forests and woods are still rife and ripe with greeneries and healthy trees, rivers and lakes flash like tourist postcards, techno baubles are all over, computer access can be had at a public library etc etc etc. Here, just a gasp of asthma attack in a small eatery or a gash of suspicious smoke, elicit an EMS ambulance, police cars, and firetrucks. Everybody’s gotta be saved, human lives are so important—whether you are homeless with no ready relative around or an undocumented/illegal alien, you gotta be saved first before you are asked about paperwork. Life is foremost.
In my country, you are only allowed to an ER if you have cash money as deposit or health insurance—never mind, if you’re already holding your severed right arm by your teeth, bloodied and all. “I’m sorry, no downpayment, no admittance... don’t ask me, I’m just an employee!” We don’t have Shelters or Missions or food stamps or welfare or attorneys supplied by the government. It’s a hard life.

So when I read about ordinary American citizens — tax-paying, government-obedient, credit-adhering souls — experience the same pain and misery that my people experience, in this country of ballplaying millionaires and consumerist excess, governed by a superpower that vows to save the entire humanity with a flash of its electronic wand... then why do the New Orleans people have to suffer? How do we justify the $45 billion additional spending for war, the senseless killings of young Americans and “hostile enemies” in a foreignland, the ridiculous spending of $4 grand by one individual to watch a rock concert, the endless CNN rhetorics of saving the lives of the poor and the underprivileged and the so-called “oppressed” outside of America in the name of democracy?
So what is first and foremost in America? We have to admit that America isn’t as vaunted and mighty as before anymore. If we can’t protect our people from the rage of Mother Nature — how can we protect this Heaven, this Paradise, this Great White Hope, this Dream from another 9/11?

There is no respectable government in the country where I came from, I can easily readily say that. In fact, my people are raring to kick the current president out.
But the people remain strong and resilient. We have the community to bail us out from disasters—man-made miseries or natural calamities. A neighbor will easily fix your broken window for a bowl of chicken soup if you lend him your new Elvis Presley cassette. You can easily trade your goathead stew for a grilled chicken with just a hello and a smile. Your friends provide you the best visitor’s room in their house, free of charge, as long as you help in doing the laundry by hand or washing the dishes — no washer/dryers, no dishwashers. They are very poor—they can only eat ice cream during Christmas holidays or visit a moviehouse on their birthdays. They don’t own iPods or iMacs. Their homes have no ACs on virulent summer days, or extra roofings on stormy months. They don’t own not many material wealth—but they have God, family, and community.
Because of these simple gifts of humanity — they are happier than most of us in America. They save and protect themselves as a people, as a community. They don’t need to be saved or protected by governments that couldn’t even save or protect their own.
Yes, everything starts and ends with us, the people. We can’t always blame the government for all our miseries. Example, we can’t always blame the gods-up-there for the gas prices just because we can’t drive anymore to the next block to score a six-pack.
The Blue Sky God/dess has a way at showing us that we need to look within than without. When man-made miseries like wars, or natural calamities like hurricanes strike hard--those who survive are those who could eat crickets and bugs, treat bazooka shells like streaming hard rain, take refuge under a beating storm on coconut leaves as blankets and boiled sweet yam leaves as dinner...
Governments will always have their own gargantuan priorities that dwarf the 24/hr-a day cravings of a family of four, wherever you are--in America or in some impoverished wisp of a nation. Wars can be stopped and government concern can be had--but, alas, not by a human plea or initiative, but as always, through Mother Nature.
So let’s listen not only to The Blue Sky’s great, warm sunshine--but also to its dark, angry storm and hurricane. She has the same message to us all. We don’t need a volcano to hammer that out. I tell you, when that happens, it’s ugly. We are too used to comfort to take Mother Nature’s worst mood.

Mother...

2005-09-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

I CAN STILL remember, so vividly – a distressing and ghastly, but poignant sight… One rain-drenched late September afternoon of my childhood, as I wandered my 5-year-old worth of sensibility at a typhoon-ravaged ricefield from outside my weeping windowpane, many years ago… Claws and talons gallantly hoisted like flaming arrows and spears, a mother hen shields her infant from a tenacious dahongpalay (ricestalk viper). She’s ready to fight to the death—but, no—no deadly fangs or menacing thunderstorm can take her child away, as long as she’s there. I watched in frightened awe as the hen bravely staved off the equally intent ferocity of the snake, and then successfully drove the slithery intruder away. After a few seconds, however, mother fowl shook, fell, and slumped to death. Fatally bitten, bloodied and weak, yet she managed to stand her ground and to protect her little child, to her last breath—till the viper crawled away, blood oozing from its beaten body.
Painfully heart-wrenching, spontaneous, survival instinct. A Mother dies so that a Child lives. I wondered out loud, in perplexed innocence, at that instance—does my own Mother love me that way, too? Will she fight for me, die for me—to protect me from clear and present danger?

MOST OF THE 40+ years of my life, I didn’t really spend with my Mother or with my other four brothers and four sisters. I was always the kid-on-absentia, the incurable loner, deep thinker – always the one who opted to be isolated, physically far but near enough to feel the parental warmth and affection that weren’t necessarily, exclusively directed to me but nevertheless geared toward all of us, collectively, the nine siblings.
Since a child, I always preferred to exist independently from my immediate family—I’d rather travel and live with distant relatives and friends in far-flung barrios, “hideaway” mountain cities, coastal/beachfront villages… Hence, I jumpstarted my journalism career at age 14 so I could always have an excuse to be away. My voracious wanderlust spirit didn’t subside even as I willingly, freely, and deeply immersed myself in my work as years passed by. Yet, I know that I tried my darndest best to spend most summer months and Christmastimes with my Mom and family, either in our ancestral house in Quezon City, a bustling suburb of Manila, or in the many towns and cities that my Dad hustled most of my younger bros/sisters and my Mom—although most times I was somewhere, not home. When I started traveling to the far southern islands of the Philippines, and eventually in other countries—many times, my family didn’t even know where I was. Amazingly though, my Mom always had ways and means to find out.
When the 9/11 tragedy struck New York City, my Mom thought I was stranded in Manhattan, or worse, caught inside World Trade Center—where I was supposed to take the Path Train towards Newark Airport on my way back to North Carolina on that fateful Tuesday morning. It was never my practice to call my family… and at that time, I was (as usual) fighting with my Dad. I didn’t want to communicate…
Whenever she had the chance, my Mom never failed to reassure me that she’s always praying that I’d be safe wherever I choose to be, and I always believed her… Days before 9/11, when she found out from a friend, that I was flying to NYC (from North Carolina) for a gig at CBGB, she prayed so hard for my safety.
Imagine how many nights, how many days, how many years did my Mother pray to God so that I’d be safe, protected, taken cared of… I was always the warrior without a weapon, the madman who discovers purpose in life only when I am healing the wounded, speaking/writing for the downtrodden—and that, I could only satisfy that sublime thirst for life on the dark side if I hit the road. So my Mom was always far away from me, somewhere, praying and praying that God never forsake me.
Deep in my heart, I actually believe—till now—that God or The Blue Sky God/dess is watching over me, all through my triumphs and tribulations, bad deeds and good deeds... as what my Mom told me.
From a very young age, I accepted that, indeed, I was clearly the odd-kid-out in the family. With eight other siblings running around the house, I believed and understood that my parents, especially my Mom, simply didn’t have enough time to pay attention to my rambling inquisitions about life, my grand tales of fantasized adventures, and such and such. My Mom always listened, quietly—although, many times, I insisted that she should listen more to my stories.
My Dad loved cars, electricals, and yardwork – but I chose to spend hours and hours inside the library or in my room, writing my little dreams down on those crazy sheaves of bond papers that my Mom scrounged from everywhere, or I simply fed my small-mind with black&white Christopher Lee-Peter Cushing horrors or Cowboy-Indian movies or Huckelberry Finn stories, almost every night. One persistent wish that lingered in my young mind was that – Mom would, one day, give me more time… just her and me.

MY MOTHER didn’t have a profession or a career, although she managed to get to the freshman year of a Law degree and she once worked as a part-time travel agent and unsuccessfully managed a family business or two. But she was always obediently and attentively watching my Dad, whatever my Dad ventured to frolic on or dabble about. Her life was simply Dad and the kids…
In those years of insecurities and vulnerability, a profound and beautiful sense of tenderness and forgiving humanity continually exuded from my Mom’s heart. She was a martyr, the self-sacrificing Wife and Mother who will always sit there by the porch, patiently waiting for the Husband and the Children, coming home from work and school, with a ready smile and caring touch. She was always there beside us kids, all of us, whenever one is sick… never mind if it’s just a slight summer fever. So much so that having a fever or flu was something that I actually hoped I always had—so that my Mom will surely be there beside me.
I remember those days and nights, when I was a child, when she tenderly wiped my forehead with lukewarm cloth all through the night, waiting for my temp to fizzle down… It was the same attentive, patient Mother who spent days and nights—for more than a month—sitting beside my bed in a Jersey hospital after a surgery in 2000. The same warm hands, the same soft voice. In those moments, I never accepted or allowed visitors. I preferred to have her, all by myself – for, after all these years, finally—I had her to myself.

BUT THEN – despite all these, I never thought my Mother understood my language or spirit or my dreams. But does it matter? All I knew was, like a loving Mother, she supported EVERYTHING that I did. She never protested or even tried to control my decisions—even though, many times, it meant that she had to worry endlessly for the safety of my well-being.
My Mother has always been a Catholic Conservative but she never pushed her religious convictions or even her personal beliefs on anything—she was a follower, she was for something that makes us all kids and my Dad happy, it’s as simple as that.
I remember one day, when my brother Alberto (17-years-old at that time), came home with a drunken prostitute and declared, “She will be living in our house from now on.” My Mom simply said, “Okay, if that’s what you want.” All my sisters vehemently protested but Mom pacified them all by saying, “That makes your brother happy, please understand him. He loves her...” When three of my other brothers got into all kinds of trouble, from drugs to neighborhood brawls, she’s the one who instantly encashed money and bailed them all out, no questions asked. In her old age, there were many instances that she even lied to us about buying her medicines… she kept money all year long so she can readily buy birthday and Christmas gifts for her growing number of grandchildren. After her heart bypass in Philadelphia in early 2002, we tried in vain to convince her to stay more years in the US so she’d get better medical treatment… but she always whined and was constantly sad because she said she couldn’t stand being away that long from her grandchildren in the Philippines.
I remember when the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos’s soldiers raided and padlocked our newspaper office in 1982, and I (against the soldiers’ order) decided to remain inside the building to make sure that no “bad documents” will be planted by the military that could be used against us… my Mother stood vigil outside. I was very young, and I haven’t even had a clear grasp of the danger that I just got into. But she waited and waited outside, with a rosary on her hand… I can remember the tearful sight of my Mom—scared, tired and relieved—when I finally emerged from the building and into her waiting arms…
I never thought my Mother’s incessant tears, and low, meek voice were proofs of defeat or fragility. She is the strongest woman—deep within—that I’ve ever known in my life. It’s primarily because she had the most potent of resolve to love, and commit to it, like it’s all that matters in this life. Without that love that was freely and selflessly given out to us all her children – without that indefatigable, unswerving love for my Father, we don’t have a family at all. We wouldn’t survive the hard times—all nine kids—given all of my Father’s miscues and mishaps.
When my Dad worked in Saudi Arabia for almost ten years, only visiting home one month each year, my Mom stayed faithful to him and responsible with all of us. My other brothers and sisters recall that there was never a day or a span of five or six hours straight that my Mom was away from their sight. She was always present around the kids… she wouldn’t even have a 30-minute afternoon coffee with a male friend.
That strength in my Mom’s beautiful vulnerability and staunch loyalty are the power that melded us all—because it was coming from sincerity and honesty, not from practical reason, but from sheer love and devotion, straight from the heart. For me, that is the Force that should stay within humanity—a love that can’t be swayed or broken or crushed. Love is strong, real love isn’t physical so it can never be broken or destroyed… My Mother had that kind of Love – which makes her an embodiment of true human strength.

MY MOTHER passed away on Aug 6 in a Manila hospital—around 1 or 2pm in Asheville, on a “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park” day. Almost at the same time, last year, she slipped into a coma following an almost fatal stroke… On both occasions, the rain fell all over downtown Asheville like fresh tears from heaven, halting my “beautiful madness.” My brave and courageous Mother survived more than 12 months of physical pain, emotional sacrament, spiritual misery—to assure me that, when she’s finally gone, her strength will envelope my journey and my dream should be, will be realized. That’s what she told my eldest and middle sisters Tess and Alma months before she finally went away.
The Sky wept that day… My Mother knew all through her almost 70 years of life on earth, that nothing will stop me from pursuing what I set to pursue. I was always the odd-kid-out in the family, who opted to “run away” and seek my peace in humanity—in turn, I turned my back on my family. Yes, indeed, it took Divine Intervention, like the benevolent rain, to stop or make me pause from my neverending journey, to tell me, “Please, remember, you have a Mother…”
A Mother will always be—ever be—around to nurture, nurse, heal, reenergize their children, no matter what, in whatever course in life the kids choose to venture… Right or wrong, a Mother stands upright and brave to their children’s choices. My Mother, for once, never questioned why I had to take to the hills and commune with the underprivileged, why I had to leave my people because I believed it’s only in America where my calls for peace and justice will be heard. Even though she couldn’t comprehend what was it in my grandiose lunacy that keeps me going, she always said, “Be careful… I am proud of you.”
When a copy of an article (at the Mountain Xpress) written about me reached her in Manila, it was like I “came home,” my sister Alma told me. My Mom’s brain halted by medication, a tube stuck to her neck, nevertheless her heart was very articulate—she ran her fingers across my photo in the article and pressed the magazine to her chest, and muttered, without words, only her lips moving, “That’s my son… my son.”

MY MOM WAS a Mother more than a parent—her sincerity was more of devotion than responsibility, commitment than a duty. She was more of Wife than a partner—her love was eternal and ethereal than reasonable or effective. She was there, always there, to fulfill an obligation—not because she made an oath to society’s conscience, a-front the watchful eyes of religion, but it’s because she made a vow to a boundless, selfless humanity that gives without necessarily receiving. Blind and upfront even in the face of apathy, defeat, and utter vulnerability… she exorcised enough strength and power from her resilience, stubbornness, and unswerving faith to keep the Family and Marriage alive.
It is hard to pin her down because of her faults and mistakes—that are often judged and written off as stupidity and martyrdom—because her honesty and loyalty towards her choices in life are simply beyond human deduction and “educated” sense of logic. She’s like a freefalling leaf that flies and floats and wafts, depends on how the wind chooses to blow and ebb but patiently and persistently negotiates her choices of destiny with whatever situation is handed down to her… In other words, she’s not a fighter, she is a lover—her armor is her vincibility. Because of that, she survived the turbulence and cruelty of a perpetually threatened motherhood and marriage… it’s all about faith, it’s all about that unflagging belief that life is a gift, not a privilege—some God-given garden of roses that should be nurtured and caressed than watered and sheltered.
Such is a Mother. She is the inspiration, the Muse that makes us believe that Love is still possible and Family still exists. She is the Nurturer of Dreams that makes me believe that even my most quixotic madness has a destination, someone who believes in her child’s madness even though she couldn’t understand it… For, how am I supposed to understand the bond that connects a child to the mother—that was forged right from conception in her womb and carried there for nine long months, then delivered to earth with fresh blood and sweet pain? And when the umbilical cord is cut, that streak of tears running down her face as the baby screams the first cry of life—that is magic, that is love, that is the world. How am I supposed to experience that? It’s beyond me, beyond my limitations as a man…
A song says, “The time between meeting and finally leaving, sometimes is called falling in love…” For my mother, falling in love is eternity, it will only grow and grow, it’s ceaseless, it’ll carry on, on and on. She has fallen in love with Life and it stayed in her heart until the heart’s mortal beating stopped… Because of that, her Spirit will never leave this Life.

ALL OF US, within, is a child, and there will always be a time when the child goes home, looks around for warmth, for peace, for quiet—of a soft touch, a comforting shoulder, a kiss. All these will only happen, will only be possible because there is always a Mother whose hand are always open, whose heart is always ready to welcome us home, waiting… No questions asked, no words are necessary—a Mother will always be there, waiting.
So wherever I am, whenever, whatever happens… I will always be home in my Mother’s spirit. And I will always be taken cared of. I am very sure of that. Although I haven’t had the chance to fully thank her before she left… The Blue Sky God/dess is always there around me to relay my message, to bridge me, to link me up whenever I need to, wherever she may be—and The God/dess will bring me home to her heart and then I’ll let my Mother know that I thank her for letting me live in this world… a beautiful life, a beautiful love.
I’d like to heal within the glory of your love, the wisdom of your memories. Mom, thank you for making me, thank you for giving me the gift of life.

THREE YEARS IN DOWNTOWN ASHEVILLE: "My journey is my crashland"

2005-08-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

My little wanderlust life has always been a sweet aerial malfunction waiting to crashland. Well, in Asheville, I feel that I finally “crashlanded”-although I’m still sort of recuperating, healing, struggling, surviving… The thing is, I stayed and remained. The “crash” kept me still, glued to the ground… But, lest I confuse you again, let me turn back the hands of time…
Prior to the very exact day that I found my perpetually oblivious, spaced-out self at the arrival tube of the regional airport in Arden, I haven’t had the slightest hunch that I’d end up in the Appalachians. I wasn’t even sure where was I, to tell you the truth. “Uh-huh, what the… you are in Nashville?!” That was my ex Annie Triple-X on a winter aftermidnight, in a 9th on 24th Dunkin Donut payphone in Chelsea NY.
“No, I said I’m in Asheville! I think it’s in Tennessee… I’m not really sure.” Just three weeks from a right-lung surgery in New Brunswick NJ, I was still morphine-dazed and Percocet-drugged. (I slept all through the 3hr flight from Newark to Atlanta to... where was I?) “No, you rotten devil?! You are in Nashville. What in the hell you’re in Nashville?! I bought you a Delta Air ticket to Asheville! Asheville, Tennessee, not Nashville, North Carolina… uh, I mean-damn! Aaarrggghhh! Where are you?!”
Ah! I dragged my wearied anatomy outside the airport and hailed a cab. “Where am I exactly?” The horridly humongous driver who looked like a zombie Rob Zombie, peered at me, “You are in Arden.” (By that time, I already knew I was, yes, in Asheville.) “OK, I’d like to go to Best Western in Asheville…” Rob Zombie, still probably shaking some moonshine cloud in his dawn-of-the-dead head, didn’t get what I was saying… “Nashville, why the hell you wanna go to Nashville?” (I thought out loud, screaming within, “I said, ASHEVILLE!”)
Oh well, that somehow explains, in incoherent nutshell, how I temporarily survived my “aerial malfunction” in Asheville. Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s not just the misaligned accent or the bedroom-boy soft-spoken timidity or the half-whisper, half-mumble gibberish that made life kinda agonizing for me in North Carolina.
Truth is, until now, I’m still trying to figure out how I survived here and how I sort of managed to fit myself in, around and beyond downtown. After all these three years of my Appalachian crashland, notwithstanding my consistent presence in major downtown streets (Haywood, Lexington, Broadway, College, Patton), park benches (Pritchard, Vance, City Plaza), coffeeshops (Old Europe, Malaprops, Bearly Edible, Mellow Mushroom, Rosetta’s) - not one wait staff or cashiers could understand what I’m trying to buy, or say.
“No, I mean, Highland Ale, not kale…” / “Yes, I said, that sandwich is to go… but I’m staying.”
And, not one of East Buffet’s ever-hospitable waitresses, born-and-bred Orientals like yours truly, could stand a 15-second chat with me, “Yes, I’d like a Budweiser…” I make it a point to phonetically pronounce the word, to make sure.
“Baa-dhaa-wah-laah-ser?” Mei Ling Foo got it right, I guess. I usually nod, approvingly, you see-but when I head back to my seat, I get a Yuengling. At those particular points in time, my able associates, Jenni The Jello or Marta The Nicer Osbourne, had to step in. “Yes, that’s what he meant. Corona.” Whatever.

My most embarrassing experience-as an immediate outcome of all these ruthless exchanges of misfired accents-happened in one of the “Bonfires for Peace” concerts at Pritchard Park last year. While contemplating my ensuing Nimzo-Indian variation (chess move, y’know) versus a homeless homey as the show unfolds-Dos Equis, a band person, approached me. “What time are we playing, Pasckie?” Lazily pushing my red-shades up snug the bridge of my nose, I muttered, “… at nine until ten… at nine.” Then I sunk my brain back to the board game.
A few hours past... no Dos Equis Band. Then, as we were already loading out, the dude showed up, nervously approached Marta, very upset, “The show’s over? I thought we’re playing at ten?!” To cut this short, what the poor mister actually, or most probably, heard from me was-“… till ten… at night” (not, “till ten… at nine”).
So, by virtue of that goof-up, poor Dos Equis easily became one of the many unfortunate Asheville souls who got caught in my confused state of out-of-sync Appalachian existence. But, then again, that one particular experience was relatively forgivable, as well as forgettable, compared with the more surreal, more bizarre occurrences that make up the exhilaratingly colorful chapters of my North Carolina odyssey.

I have my own share of most-touching, most-poignant day - as well as the most hated, most unforgivable night. Whatever the case-in Asheville-I finally felt and believed that I now belong to the human race. Here, I experienced just about anything, I mean, anything that a regular, average, palpitating earthling could experience in a real community, or real world.
You see, many times-whether it’s the Philippines or America-I feel that I’m a freak, a green-skinned Martian with seven ears sticking out of his nostrils camouflaged as a Pinoy-Cherokee with an unforgiving Bolshevik-Krakovian-Ilocano accent. People around me, including my immediate relatives, treat me like I’m a perilous Ewok that should be fed enough chilled oysters and correctly-boiled Vietnamese rice at a preferred time of the day… I was always a different, strange creature--the outsider, the alien. That immensely bothered me.
So, anyway, why do I say that I suddenly mutated, for good, as a true-blue homo sapien in Asheville?
Well, you might say that my so-called little life in WNC isn’t so big deal-because of the fact that everybody here lives that way. Gosh, man, that’s exactly my point-suddenly, I share the same life, the same problems and hassles, the same mess-ups and goof-ups, the same funk and roll, the same heartaches and heartbreaks, and all that humanity stuff-with the dude next to me! In my life, that is unprecedented.
“So, finally, EARTH LIFE has signed you in!” That’s what my eldest sis, Tess, wrote me last time she emailed from Manila.

In Asheville-I got my own share of disgusting traffic and road hassles. We got flagged down at least thrice, and that’s big deal. In all those instances, my drivers were all females-Paige The Jimmo, Smiley Leslie, Cussin’ Julie -and they all didn’t have a driver’s license. Isn’t that amazing? All three girls drove all over Asheville, and they didn’t even have driver’s license-and they all got caught, and it all happened while they’re with me…
I also experienced falling and getting stupidly stuck on a ditch four times-in Fairview, Candler, Fletcher, West Asheville-again, all female friends (Paige again! Jenni The Jello, Susan The W, and Cussin’ Julie again!) I also got stranded, car broke down and/or lost fuel, in the middle of a winter’s night, four times-in Oteen, Barnardsville, Mars Hill, Fletcher-thrice with Paige (again, yes again!), and once with Awesome Siobhan, a visiting ex from Dublin, only because she was too freakin’ smashed to re-examine whether she’s still in an Irish valley or in a Blue Ridge hilltop… Worst, I also had an almost destructive car crash-along Charlotte St-again, with a female driver, Marta The Nicer Osbourne.
Not that I’m saying that having female car companions is sort of The Mother of All Vehicular Risks… It had nothing to do with that, certainly. It was, probably, because of me, you know.
There was this bizarre hot August day in New Jersey when me and another ex, Mustang Molly, had five(!) car-related misfortunes within a painstaking span of 12 hours!-(a) a ticket for going the wrong turn on a one-way lane in Teaneck, (b) another ticket for exceeding parking-meter time, (c) a broken side-mirror after hitting a mailbox in Secaucus, (d) stuck in the middle of the NJ Garden Parkway, no fuel, (e) another ticket for running a red light in Atlantic City. All in twelve-goodgollymissmolly-hours!
You got it right, almost 75% of my final break-up arias - in the last seven years of my life - all took place inside a car. (Not to mention that a huge piece of a broken window once fell atop the hood of Paige’s-again, again, again, again!-Saab Convertible while we were supposedly peacefully, harmlessly parked in a supposedly peaceful, harmless block in Brevard having strawberry ice creams and enjoying a Shania Twain CD. (That must’ve been the reason, eh?)
Ah, women... Well, despite all these auto lunacies, I do sincerely agree that women saved my life in Asheville. Without them, I’m nothing but a flat tire.

All my most loyal associates are women-Beth, Jenni, Emily, Paige, Marta -- good-natured, warm-spirited angels who came down from some Cracker Barrel Heaven to keep things in proper order and system in my tupsy-turvy life.
You see, I just realized that I have lived in almost all nearby trailer parks south, north, east, and west of downtown Asheville-and most of my roomies or housemates were women.
In Oteen (Rita, Kristi, Missy, Mary, Lindsay), in Weaverville (Beth, Jenni, Laura, Sarah, Jessica, Mary), in Candler (Beth, Jenni, Marie, and Mimi, the bedbug), in Mars Hill (Julie, Heather and Kelly, and their dog, Claire)… by the way, I also lived in Fairview, briefly in Black Mountain, stayed for few weeks in Town Mountain Rd. Of course, I also made quite a number of male hang out buddies here like Agent Mulder, Dale H, Kapila, Justin G, Chris Malz and Da Doo Ron Ron, to name a few - but there’s always a steady presence of women-friends who’d give me a ride, buy me a dinner, loan me $10 to $100, gift me a CD, lend me a Blockbuster account, email me sweet-little-nothings, offer nice words about my poetry, or give me a nice, warm, hearty hug even in the presence of their hubby or boyfriend.
Indeed, I came to understand and respect the average American family’s realities by actually living with them women -- north, south, west and east of Asheville. Without really trying, by just being myself, I am able to freely and willingly plunge or dive in the very heart and soul of small-town America.
Mothers and daughters fight over adolescent freedom, couples contend with the emotional rigors of divorce proceedings, heads-of-family struggle over health benefits and safe heating on winter, credit card and bank woes, evictions and court summons, unwanted pregnancies, tax payments and debts-on-collection, support money headaches… Yup, no big talk about global free market, US foreign policy, or cultural imperialism-it’s all very gut level. I argued, fought, wept, laughed, danced, sang, cooked/ate, slept with, broke up, fought, sweated, worried, stressed out, lived, loved with them, it’s all very bare-bones humanity-right here right now-in Asheville.
Another interesting thing is-it’s also, only, in downtown Asheville (no, not in the East Village in New York City) where I experienced spellbinding, mystifying albeit comically off-balanced conjectures.
One night, after reading a poem or two at Beanstreets, a sneaky dude with a horrible D’Artagnan moustache, approached me, “Hey, I like your poems, man… here-take them, they’re for you!” I thought it was a ten-dollar tip or some acid pill, or something, nah-it was a set of four elastic condoms with matching lubricants. I was flustered but I thought out loud, that was also very concerned, very friendly.
Here’s another one. One night, at Westville Pub, a stunningly gorgeous blonde bought me two Highland Ales from across the bar. Hmm, well, I wouldn’t mind, you know, she’s hot-but the trouble was, she actually thought I was a girl! And she only found that out when we were already in her car! Oh lordy, mother-have-mercy! All I could utter was, “I am sorry… but I am actually a dude!” (We went back to the bar and simply drank the night away.)

Oh yes--I am so honored that a considerable representation of the very colorful, creative and active spirits that comprise the very humanity of Asheville could at least recognize my name or my face, or the projects that I conceived and built here - from avowed downtown personalities like Emoke B’Racz of Malaprop’s and Ann Dunn of Fletcher Dance School to grizzled sociopolitical shamans Jim Brown and Bob Brown to the more controversial energies like Virato and Peter With-The-Sax to peace activists Cicada Brokaw, Lola LaFey, Susan Oehler and Tim Pluta to singer/musician Stephanie Morgan, film/theater artist Katie Kasben, poet Carrie Gerstmann, dancer/choreographer Heather Maloy, bellydancer SamiTe, everyday dude Kima Moore, folk musicians Michael Farr, Matt Lambert, George Glass, Aaron Gunn, Dawn Humphrey and Benjammin, trance DJ Chris “Kri” Johnson, local band guys the Hippie Shitzus and Phuncle Sam, to dedicated/committed entrepreneurs Rosetta of Rosetta’s Kitchen, Mark of Bearly Edible and Roseanne Kiely of Grove Park Market, Jonah Lipsky of Relaxed Reader, and Greg Turner of Westville Pub to (perhaps) three of the few African-American souls in downtown Asheville-Accem Scott, Anderson Davis and CJ Randall to co-publishers/mediapersons Dennis Ray of Rapid River and Paul Clarke of Citizen Times to “poetic astrologer” Kelly Lee Phipps to public access TV/mediaperson Mark Goldstein to women advocacy activist Debbie Metcalf to younger neighborhood shakers/movers like Adam Walsh, Chris Orellana and Crystal Watley, to photographers Patrick Lafebvre, Liza Squire, and Frank Marrero to UNCA “kids” Noah Wilson and Nina Marie Collins to Asheville Police Department’s Chief Bill Hogan and Lt Wade Wood to Greyhound dispatcher Dave to East Buffet’s Lan, the manager…
We have also performed or held events in almost more-than-half of the clubs, cafes, venues in Asheville and Weaverville: Malaprops, Stella Blue, Grey Eagle, Asheville Pizza&Brewing Co., Sweet Heaven, Bearly Edible, Hannah Flannagan’s, West End Bakery, Well Bred, Beanstreets, Club Hairspray, Rosetta’s Kitchen, College Street Pub, Relaxed Reader, Indigenous Teahouse, Tribes, Grove Corner Market, and the dear-departeds Vincent’s Ear, Core Pad, Akumi, and Port City Java-Battery Park, and of course, the unofficial home of the “Bonfires for Peace”-Pritchard Park. We have also booked and/or dealt with many local acts/band, performers, poets and musicians-that the mere act of mentioning them here seemed repetitious.
Many writers, poets and journalists-as well as plain-and-simple Asheville souls-have graced and blessed the pages of The Indie (aside from those mentioned above): From the first interns (Megan, Marie, Susan, Patricia) and past assistants (Jenni, Emily) to writer/contributors Bunk Nesbit, Rena Wright-Daugherty, Vic and Hannah D’Baptista, Nan Kavanaugh, Sarah Benoit, Shane Meador, Paul DeCirce… Erik Pohl, Julie Umanova, Jason Klein, Matthew Mulder, Jon Teeple, Dale Hoffman, Justin Gostony, Mike Hopping. The new friends, comrades, acquaintances, and buddies seem to grow like leaves of grass… and these souls aren’t the obligatory BS Journalism or so-called “professionals” with, like, minimum of 5-year media work experience behind them. They are the average Asheville spirits, the body and soul that you’d see sitting by a park bench on a Saturday afternoon, temporarily unmindful of the synthetic haze threatening to swallow the world around them, peaceful and quiet within.
For someone like me, a self-confessed recluse and loner-who still can’t seem to muster the courage to pick up a ringing phone or entertain an uninvited office guest or sustain a three-minute street conversation - I have made myself sufficiently counted as an existent, living organism in Asheville.

But then, I don’t want to just wallow on the good stuff. Of course, there were also “ordinary” human downsides and setbacks that came my way -- ie, late on rent, disconnected phones, debts on collection, trips to the pawnshop/blood bank/Mission/food stamp agency, $500 worth of APD reprimand (which was overturned), near-fistfight at a Subway store, unpaid personal loans, closed bank accounts, countless eviction notices…
You might not even realize that I also, actually worked “real” jobs in Asheville. I worked as an office assistant at the Flat Iron bldg. I also mowed lawns in Oteen. I took care of kids (uhh, 14-year-old girls, bigger and taller than my 5’3”, 115lb self) in Hendersonville. I raked leaves in Woodfin. I painted fences in Town Mountain Rd, among others.
But, wanna know, what’s my most prominent, unforgettable downside experience?
We were mercilessly kicked out of a club gig even before it actually started. To think that we, all three bands, loaded in a truckload of PA/amps/equipment on our own expense. No, I haven’t forgiven that particular bad break-because, until now, I haven’t actually found one single reason why the lady club owner suddenly wanted us out of her premises, just like that. Not forgiven, not forgotten.

The thing is-these miscues, mistakes, and misfires along with graces, blessings, and gifts-undoubtedly, unmistakably make me a breathing, mumbling inhabitant of US of A. I had my own share of enemies and detractors, friends and supporters, lovers and haters, as well as-an entire Collier’s volume of fascinating, perplexing, heart-wrenching, interesting experiences.
Wherever I go, I am always asked, “Where’re you from?” I always almost automatically, instinctively respond, “I’m from Asheville.” (Before, I go, “I came from the Philippines, I have a Cherokee blood, I used to live in New York City, but I live in Asheville now… blahblahblah.”)
Hence, slowly but surely-I learned to dismantle the racial/cultural barriers that once awkwardly set me apart from the white population of the human species. I always thought that I’m just a “little-brown-islander” and that dude is a “big-white-mainlander,” and that’s it. Don’t bother me, I won’t bother you.
But here, I walk and talk the human walk and talk-not the American way, not the Filipino way, not the Cherokee way. And I never faked or rationalized/justified my reflexes and responses. There were many instances when supposedly “natural” or “ordinary” man-woman interactions, especially in the most intimate areas of private connections, caught me off-balanced, threatened, intimidated, or puzzled. I must admit that I still have to process in my multicultural psychoanalytical mindset the words and phrases-“please, stay for the night,” “I’d like you to hold me,” “I really like you a lot,” “are we friends?” “thank you” (after making love, sharing a dinner, walking/talking), “are we dating or are we just seeing each other,” “you are my hang out buddy…”
In between those seemingly simple, nonchalant words are gestures that may seem incongruent or mismatched or unlikely in my culture. But I have grown comfortable with them without actually, necessarily embracing them.
But every day I am learning… My life has been more like transcendental blessings than financial miseries here. Food brought in, laundry washed, rides volunteered/rendered, cash donated, office peripherals freely given, services and time shared, jokes and laughters… (Most of the things, implements, equipment in the office came from friends... Not to mention, the continuing donations in kind and food to Bonfires projects come from Asheville businesses.)
So the “crashland” wasn’t bad, after all, right?
The moments… That day when The Blue Sky God/dess ushered the rain to stop the Bonfires at Pritchard Park so I could “rest” my spirits as my Mother fought for life in Manila… that afternoon when my Father begged for me to “come home” as he boarded the Greyhound back to Jersey and back to Manila… that night when Beanstreets’ open mic buddies placed a hat in front of me, and dollar bills poured, as I said my supposed “goodbye” on that one sad summer’s evening two years ago… But I am still here. I am still the same, after all these years.
I’ve come a long, long way, indeed -- in a span of a heartbeat - from my neighborhood in Quezon City in Manila to the radical romance of New York City subways to my neck-of-the-wood in Asheville, North Carolina. The “sweet aerial malfunction” becomes my life’s journey. Car crash on a ditch, uncribbed accents and chess matches at the park, condoms for a ten-minute poetry, scrabble games with four women around me, jagermeisters with the Shitzus, weepy midnights over PBRs and cheap Boone’s Farm sangrias with Marta The Nicer Osbourne and Mathilde The Extra-Terrestrial Apparition of 70 Woodfin Place…
Life’s been good, so far, right? Just like what the cool dude said, “Life is a box of chocolates-you don’t know what you’re gonna get”-just like my Asheville “crashland.” I haven’t got a clue what was it that’s in store for me from the very moment I found myself here. But does it matter? Life is always unexpected but, nevertheless, sweet.

The New York Story of Jimmy-baby & Frieda Looks-Like-Abba, or money doesn’t change everything

2005-07-30T04:29:00.000-07:00

WHAT'S BUGGING you, sweetheart, Jimmy-baby? What’s wrong? Are you sick again? You wanna go visit Dr Smith this weekend? Don’t worry, we’ll go take a walk later this afternoon and see if your buddy, Carlos, is also at the park, okay, honey? We’ll sit by West Central Park lagoon, at your favorite spot, and watch the swans glide by, as we wait for your pal, okay, honey babe?” Jimmy-baby was painfully silent, alarmingly morose-he was usually bubbly, cocky, jovial, even hyper. Something must be wrong with him. So, my good Swedish friend, whom I fondly call Frieda Looks-Like-Abba, took him to Dr Smith that Saturday, 7am.
“Jimmy is suffering from what I ascertain as EMSA, otherwise known as `Extreme Melancholia due to severe Separation Anxiety.’ This is serious, Frieda, my dear…” Dr Smith slowly, achingly bobbed his gargoyle head like he just detected a fatal, malignant virus chewing away at Jimmy-baby’s sorrowful system. (The manner in which the tragic, deadly words spilled out of his trembling mouth, it gripped me like he’s actually the one who’s got the ailment, it terrified the hell out of me!) Frieda started sobbing, “Oh my God?! Poor, oh poor Jimmy-baby! I thought it was just a sorta seasonal case of ADDB, uhh, `Attention Deficit Disorder Bitchiness?’ Doctor, please, do everything, anything-I don’t care how much this’ll cost me. Jimmy-baby has to be back to his NCSC again, y’know, `Normal Cool Self Complex?’”
Tearful, heart-broken, and upset, Frieda Looks-Like-Abba hugged Jimmy-baby… at the same instant, she motioned at Soledad, her loyal Peruvian nanny, to write Dr Smith the one-hour consult check, amounting to $750, I think. Then, as Frieda weakly staggered out of Dr Smith’s Upper West Side clinic, Soledad whipped out six twentys and 15 dollars (or $75) off her extra-large, tightly-brassiered breasts, and handed them to me, “Hijo, Pasquito, muchas gracias!”
Hmmm, that’s actually $15 more than I expected. Uhhh, $75 for what, you may ask? Well, that’s my salary for walking Jimmy-baby for two hours that morning… yup, Jimmy-babe is Frieda’s dearly-beloved Saint Bernard, you know, a dog. Dr Smith earned a lot more than me, of course, for an hour’s job of incessantly, meticulously doing a painstaking monologue afront a sullen-looking, visibly bored canine that never responded, or dared bothered to bark back, at his “intelligent” queries at all.
But, then, I understand-the Dog-Doc went to, maybe, Oxford or Princeton to master his lucrative Dr Doolittle profession-and, we all know, nobody goes to one freakin’ Ivy League hole and earn a PhD on dog-walking, right? But there’ll always be some strange dudes who’ll get rewarded with two-grand minimum for engaging a duchshund to an hour of psychoanalysis session. I mean, I can’t even understand why human beings need shrinks! Why would chronically financially-harassed people entrust some yellow pad-scrawling nerdie their lives’ deepest, most kept secrets? For $75 to a hundred bucks an hour, these expensive “experts” tell you this, “From what I could possibly deduce from here, you are suffering from what I call Krswtreaxy Defrkwxs Sydrome, and now you need to take 500 milligrams a day of Grzasstftfrrwejxw, a tablespoon every after dinner of Rweqdasehy, and then try engaging your pet iguana thirty-minutes of intellectual discourse, then see me after two weeks…” And, look here now, my friend Frieda Looks-Like-Abba budgets at least three to four-grand (or even more) a month for Saint Jimmy-baby Bernard’s shrink!?
“Jimmy-baby was barking all night, I knew something was wrong… he never barked that way, there was a some kinda tone of bothered, distant rejection in his barking, you know…” I just attentively nodded my head and pretended to know a thing on the subject of canine behavioral patterns, or something, “Maybe, he needs a sexual partner, don’t you think? Let’s go check out Dog Day NY Chats and find Jimmy-baby a date!”
Whatever. I can go on and on. But that is okay. I don’t think it’s entirely weird to sympathize with Frieda Looks-Like-Abba. She’s fine, she’s pretty normal human being. And you can easily judge me as anti-animal or insensitive to living things, or something to that effect. Yet it still mystifies me why we get so bothered and disturbed whenever a cat that we fondly dress in a Barbie duster starts purring and whining at the “wrong-time of the aftermidnight during Solstice,” or when the goldfish imprisoned in a velvet aquarium looks dejected and refuses to breathe bubbles, or when a pitbull that has been kept alone inside the house for eight hours straight suddenly jumps and attacks a house visitor and bites off the poor stranger’s ears. “What is wrong with my bulldog? He just ate my neighbor’s left arm, for cryin-out-loud?! My doggie must be afflicted with HLD (Hannibal Lecter Disorder).”
Or why it’s so easy to shelve away two hundred bucks to make sure “that Jimmy-baby starts jumping at my Turkish couch at 6am” (or, y’know, just to make sure that the dog is “normal”) while it’s so hard to do away extra $15 for Soledad, the nanny, so she can score a new set of bra that fits her humongous bust size, so that she won’t be commuting on a Path train every Friday night all the way to North Bergen NJ for those $7-for-a-pair-of-5 brassieres?
When I was 5, I recall being grounded for a week - because I set free two pairs of expensive parakeets off their cage at a pet store. I reasoned out, “Birds should be allowed to fly in freedom in the open sky, not kept in a cage!” Because of that, my parents never took me to the zoo again-lest, as my sister Alicia cautioned, “He might set free the lions out of their den!”

THERE'S SO MUCH money to waste away in America, don’t you think? Once upon a time in a not-so distant past, we were already so happy just to own a transistor radio that played all the hit tunes of the year-never mind that the radio also served as our lunch box or book bag. These days, we aren’t contented anymore with Walkmans and boomboxes-we need an iPod. We aren’t happy anymore to own an Underwood typewriter with the coolest pica typefont-we demand a wi-fi enhanced, DVD-equipped, CD-burning iMac. Most surreal and weird of all, while we unstoppably, voraciously feed our insatiable desires with all possible techno-consumerist, material-world baubles and gizmos… we never actually stopped whining, moping, complaining that, oh my, life is soooo hard!
Look at this picture - the US government’s House of Representatives has just considered an additional $45 billion budget spending for Iraq and Afghanistan next year, “to defend democracies there.” This, while low-income heating aid is proposed at a slim $1.8 billion, and community development block grants budget is at a measly $3.7 billion. No wonder the City Government of Asheville charges us, tax-paying public, couple hundreds of dollars rent for use of a public park-so we can organize a free concert to the community that worries no end about health care and housing benefits. Next time, I’m afraid, they’ll be going to charge us $50 a hour for sitting by a roadside bench, waiting for a City Bus that never comes on time, or maybe for enjoying a good day’s sunshine, it’ll be like $15 for an hour of sun on a Saturday.
And yet, people still have so much money to spend. There is a huge, pitiful, bizarre mis-alignment of privileges or awful wealth-distribution discrepancy in this world. While most of my mountain homeys struggle on an $8/hr, 40-hours workweek paycheck to pay their rent, these brothers from California, Ron and Roni Hyde, recently forked out $4,298.99 for two front-row center seats to a Paul McCartney show in Anaheim. And do you know that George Lucas’s annual salary is $290 million? I won’t be shocked anymore if Mr Lucas pays fifteen-grand a day for Chewbaka’s personal make-up crew.

WHAT IS WRONG with the world? Or, as I always say, what is wrong with me? Everything’s allright?
Isn’t that sad? According to a survey, only 4 out of 10 schoolchildren, aged 3 to 12, can identify Jesus Christ’s The Eye image. But a stunning 9.7 out of 10 can easily, readily spot Ronald McDonald from a crowd, and 8 out of 10 fifteen-year-olds could mouth or recite the words of at least five hiphop/rap or rock tunes but only 2 out of ten could sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” in full. It wouldn’t be so surprising that, maybe, a few years from now, kids will be so ostracized and alienated from the very emotional confines of the family abode that they couldn’t even recognize their own workaholic Dads but could actually find real parental bonding from Darth Vader or true friendships from The Incredibles.
There was a time when my own friends’ kids could identify me only when they go over all the Star Wars characters. “Whenever I see R2-D2, I remember you… you are so cool!” But, that’s nothing. This is the scary one -- I didn’t know how to react when my niece Margaux, went, “You are like Yoda! You are so smart! You are sooooo beautiful!” I got so bothered by that, I started to stare at my ugly face on the mirror every morning… do I look like Yoda, really?
You know what’s more bizarre? I showed a 7-year-old kid a drawing of a tuna fish, and asked the tyke to identify it. “Uhhh, what is that? I think that’s a little monster!” I said, it’s a fish, you know what a fish is? This is a fish! The kid stared at me, and then he took a bag out from the fridge, and showed me a fish fillet, and blurted, “This is a fish!” I was about to ask him if he knows what’d a chicken look like, but then, I saw a bag of Mickey Dees chicken nuggets sitting near him, so I simply shut my smart mouth…

LAST MONTH, when I was in New York, Frieda Looks-Like-Abba invited me to check out this incredibly lavish art auction at Phillips, de Pury & Company in Chelsea. How I got there with my brown Goodwill-purchased corduroy coat over an orange mickeymouse shirt, faded Lee with that unmistakable red “Vampire” patch and $15 walking boots scored at a bargain stall down St Marks, I don’t know-Frieda just whisked me in. Oh my! How I quietly amused myself as I marveled at Manhattan’s nouveau riche outbid each other for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s famous streetwise scrawl, “Catharsis.” Some filthy rich dude on the phone bought it for $1.5 million!
I wondered if Mr Basquiat even had enough payphone money to call his girlfriend, long distance, whenever he felt so depressed before he OD’ed to death. I mean, the dude is already dead, hello? Do I sound morbid but how come only dead, beautiful souls get rich-why not when they’re still living? Who’s earning money from Vincent Van Gogh’s work, or even Jim Morrison’s estate, or what about Sylvia Plath’s? Do Delta Airlines or Cathay Pacific pay royalty to the Wright Brothers’ greatgreatgrandchildren?
Ah, how millions of dollars worth of supernatural fame and outrageous fortune could make mortal living things like us seem so different from each other. Go jump up and down, up and down at a public park bench on West Central Park, and you’d surely get hauled off to a paddywagon like a regular loony, especially when wealthy tenants at The Dakota complain--but a Tom Cruise could, anytime, do that “embarrassing” stunt on national primetime TV, and it looks really, “Oh so sweet, so cute!”
And, have you ever get pissed because your hard-earned 50 cents have just been eaten away by a Verizon payphone as you eagerly, nervously call your wife or girlfriend to warn her that you’ll be late for dinner? It’s frustrating, isn’t it? But what if you suddenly forgot to dial the overseas long distance number combination at about 4am while in a hotel room, and couldn’t get through? Would you grab and tear the miserable telephone off the wall and threw the poor thing at a hotel employee’s face, and say, I am sorry, I was just so frustrated, I didn’t mean it, no worry, my lawyer will take care of your broken nose. Of course, you can’t do that-unless you are Russell Crowe. You got it, mate?
And what about this--Houston Rockets’ coach Jeff Van Gundy was fined $100,000 for saying something that irked the NBA head honcho. One hundred grand for saying something stupid, and I can’t even earn extra $250 in one week so I can organize a free concert in my home-city’s downtown-though I never ran out of beautiful words to say to all the gorgeous women and kindhearted men around my little world. Sad.
One Saturday, I tagged along with my friend Renrick to a Filipino-American “wedding gig” in Westchester NY. Again, I was wearing my favorite brown Goodwill-purchased corduroy coat over my $10-for-5 “I Love NY” shirt and my “vampire” jeans. As I marveled at Prada, Gucci, Armani, Lhuillier dancing with these fascinating royal souls in the ballroom-as caviars, Dom Perignons etc etc etc sprawled on white, candlelit tables -I realized how poor I really am. I wondered how much did they pay this resort retreat for the wedding reception, or how much did they pay the wedding band? After all these years, I still can’t help but wonder how Filipino nurses, doctors, and engineers work 14 hours 6 days a week and then blow away thousands of dough on a single day of matrimonial show-off and then divorce after two years? Ah! But maybe they have money to throw away… or maybe they don’t throw them away? Why are marriages and divorces so expensive, anyways...

I AM NOT saying that having so much money isn’t enjoyable. It is. I wish I could easily spend $300 dental exam fee for my favorite Woodfin Place mouse. I wish I can also bankroll $1.2 million to score Jimi Hendrix’s guitar strap when it gets auctioned at Christy’s, I wish I can also pay a nanny more than $35 an hour so she can buy a new pair of Victoria’s Secret. I wish I can readily pay the Parks&Recreation $400 to $1000 in advance so we can reserve Pritchard Park for an entire summer of free “Bonfires for Peace” concerts.
Oh okay, I guess, I gotta stop being such a bitter ass at this juncture. I don’t intend to sound really dark this time out, I am sorry. But despite all these complaints and whinings and mopings, I do enjoy my little blessings. I just get distracted a bit...
It could have been a lot easier if I simply chuck the sentimental crap and boogie with the devil without letup like life is nothing but cheesesticks on Jose Cuervo, right? That tomorrow never happens… it’s all within a day’s partytime, you know what I mean? Why can’t we just treat life like a Friday night discotheque romp of cheap tequila fun, 30minute make-outs, and fleeting, nameless how-are-you hugs. Sometimes I feel so freakin’ corny, so clueless, so square because I’d rather ruminate and muse and dream and believe that, yes, sentimental crap works. I mean, I also get depressed like Jimmy-baby but then, all in all, life is still beautiful. Living is still a blessing. I enjoy hanging out with my wonderful buddies Frieda Looks-Like-Abba or Marta The Nicer Osborne or Lacy The Alexandria Muse or Good Mary Miss Molly, because they’re very sweet and very sensitive and very smart, and they laugh at my very silly jokes. That’s the way they are-they allow me to bitch and mope and complain about life for like three to four hours a night, but we always end up laughing, dancing, and sharing a nice, intimate dinner.
That is why I don’t seem to understand other people-why they seem to hate life, you know. I always say, let it out then let it in, inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale, then rock n roll, baby! Enjoy!

COME ON, who says the world is a picnic? It’s all about life, it’s moving… it’s rollercoaster, but it’s such a joyride, it’s still a gift. The greatest risk in life is not taking one. Life can be stormy but it’s also full of great sun. I mean, I am sure, by now, Jimmy-baby is already out there at West Central Park enjoying the sight of swans gliding by Central Park’s lagoon… and Dr Smith might be out there perfecting how to effectively converse with bedbugs, or something, and that makes him happy. Maybe it’s not really the fat paycheck that spells his joy, but it’s that magical ability to, say, detect a cockroach’s anemia or a poodle’s acute stress that makes his life meaningful to him, who knows?
Money doesn’t change everything, that’s for sure. Because, if money actually changes the world and the creatures in it, then we won’t be having free Bonfires concerts at the park anymore and I won’t be having free Thai massage or free accommodations in my endless Vagrant Wind trips anymore. Then, life becomes so hard. But, even though how much, how often, we all complain that life is so maddeningly difficult, it is still a lot better to be alive and well.
I’m sorry to disappoint the ascetics and the spirituals and the transcendents--but I don’t think I’d enjoy heaven because there’s no PBRs or Doc Chey chicken curry “up” there or Joss Stone live concerts... In the after-life, I don’t think making love would be so pleasurable. More so, Asheville isn’t going to be relocated in nirvana, utopia, or wherever perfect dive there could be. My human flesh is as mortally spontaneous as a cuss word and a sincere “I love you.” My carnal reflexes are as temporary as a 2-hour sexual intimacy by a river boat under an Equinox moon, my earthly joy is as limited as a sweet song sung on an aftermidnight radio. So let’s take it easy. Believe that we are here because it is a wondrous, unexplainable gift from a wondrous, unexplainable (----) you know that I mean? That is called faith--y’know, faith. That’s true--because there are moments in my life when I feel joy, pleasure and ecstasy deep, so deep inside without really knowing why... my brain couldn’t comprehend what my “foolish” heart is saying. That is very cool. When I “waste away” hours and “throw away” dollars putting up concerts and then I see people happily dancing to whatever I came up with, I feel happy, I feel peace within--it’s just that. That’s my “heaven.”
So, okay now, let the rich spend their huge dough on genius shrinks, let those who can afford to score all that Michael Dell and Steven Jobs could sell them (it’s better to purchase a new computer than a gun, you know), let those who earn better, fatter paychecks spend almost four-grand to see an aging Beatle… You see, we can all drive up Mt Mitchell for $5 gas money and watch and flirt at all the beetles and dragonflies and butterflies that freely commune with the greenery-it’s all fun, just the same. It’s not what we have that matters, it’s what we are that really counts.
I repeat, money doesn’t change everything. Yes, it makes us crazier and crazier each day, but money also makes us realize that, when it’s gone-all we got is the gift of humanity-and we can’t waste that one because that’s all we got. It can’t be replenished, recreated, refunded--it’s a one-time thing, no return, no exchange. Yes, indeed, life is beautiful and the only thing in this world that money can’t buy.
So love good, live good, and eat good. You don’t need a shrink to figure that out, or do you?

Oh, we... armchair revolutionaries, couch philosophers

2005-07-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

IT STRUCK me like I just uncovered a radiant cherry from a painfully bland stretch of desert sand. The seductive discovery amused me but it certainly didn’t make me feel elated, relieved, or rewarded. “Ah, Hooters?!” Okay, I admit—this is more acerbic jest than roadside mischief. “Of course, there’s no problemo whatsoever with lovely muses with round, voluptuous hips and flawless Meg Ryan smiles serving you buffalo wings and Corona on a Friday night... but, of course, you know what I mean.” Smiley Riley and Marta The Nicer Osborne knew what I meant—but they couldn’t care less, I guess. We have 514.13 miles of cold concrete to negotiate up ahead—to Baltimore to supervise a “Bonfires for Peace” concert in the Hampden district—on that particular February weekend. As we drove past Tunnel Rd to I-240—a bizarre, lumbering deathly dirge or backward mantra rung persistently through my eardrum... “Super Wal-Mart, Target, high-rise condos, narrowing-of-roads, Hooters, public-parks-for-rent...”
The invasion of corporate concupiscence! We are suddenly helpless, hapless ripples of spent water about to be engulfed by the rapturous high tide of multinational gluttony. Like a songwriting buddy or longtime girlfriend who’s just got sick and tired of my holier-than-thou preachings and dreamy pronouncements of a world of joy and justice, while we remained impoverished in the last three or four years of ramen noodles, frozen Banquet chickens, Boone’s Farm sangrias, and swashbuckling words-of-wisdom... my beloved Asheville has “forsaken” me for the high rollers of tinseltown. She, after all, has to survive, you know... But she’s no longer the beautiful sylph, bedecked with multicolored vigor and zest, sharing cups of herbal tea by Lexington Av or Haywood St, or the bellydancing fairy with flowing, raven hair and talisman fingertips rejoicing “Leaves of Grass” over Ravel down Pritchard Park. The feeling seemed numbed, synthetic, deodorized... So very different—this jilted feeling—from the sweet pain etched within me as bade her my fortnightly goodbyes four years ago as I flew to New York City and back in the first 16 months of my Appalachian adventure.
You see, I don’t have any problem patronizing local brews at a Hooters or partaking of two dozen of white socks at a Wal-Mart each month, I never had a problem with that. I am very much aware of the sweatshop pay, slavery toil in some third-world patch while some first-world gods continue to amass billions via white man’s gift-of-gab and silver-and-gold investment/capital, and I will always rant and rave about it... but I am not going to starve to death a martyred don quixote, anyways, if my $100/month’s winter stipend is only good for couple of extra comforters, sweat pants, and socks at a neighborhood Wal-Mart. No, I can’t afford to waste away extra dollars more to score a fuzzy-warm Kashmir jacket at a downtown indie store, I am sorry... It still requires couple of more realistic dollars to be a true-blue, dogmatic animal rights’ fighter, vegetarian guru, or anti-Waltons warbler.
“I buy $2 popcorns and $5 scarves at Wal-Mart, so what? What I save, I spend them all on telling the whole-wide-world that Wal-Mart sucks, anyways? I don’t get paid by some 8-hr coat-and-tie day job to survive an activist life—and I mean, I am having fun, man!” Some of my detractors say that’s a freakin’ contradiction—consuming Wal-Mart stuff then ditching them... Oh my, I just wish I can also walk miles and miles of muddy footwalks like Mahatma Gandhi because an SUV drive to the next organizational meeting is a contradiction. I remember Judas Escariot castigating Jesus Christ Superstar, “Why did you choose such a backward place and time... in 19th century, there’s mass communication.”
Anyways, Highland Ale or PBR taste the same, whether it’s served at Rosetta’s or Westville Pub in Asheville, or Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas or Planet Hollywood in Atlantic City, isn’t it so? But, tell me, where’d you think I’d buy 12 pairs of white socks for $10—at Malaprop’s or French Broad Coop, for cryin’ out loud? But, then, you see—I don’t think I’d travel all the way from the Pacific islands to the Atlantic seaboard to the Blue Ridge Mountains to ogle at a skimpy-clad Christina Aguilera on bright-orange two-piece holding a tray of spiced pleasantries, or score $5.50 DVDs or Brawny paper towels in America’s number one retail monster. (Of course, you get my drift...)
I love Asheville for what it was four or three years ago—with or without Wal-Mart or Hooters. And, right now, I feel like a poor, pitiful swain on co-dependency relationship.
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Oh my Blue Sky God/dess! Once again, I have become my own pathetic, loud, rabble-rousing, oft-whining “freeze-frame” rebel, a suspended-on-midair liberator of humanity, an armchair revolutionary, couch philosopher. Apparently, that’s all that I can do, given the circumstances.
Remember those college days of yore, youth’s age of reason... plentiful smartass discourses in between classes, vacant hours of mischivous girl-watching by the Arts&Sciences steps—as we pondered Kafka and Engels and Camus and Marx and Mao and Stone (I mean, Sharon). “Now, I know how to save the world from the fangs of hell! It’s all written in between this awesome book! This awesome book is gonna save my soul!” I remember I never forget to end my love letters with either “Revolutionary yours” or “In solidarity and in love.”
We even had specific stylistic gear and garb that fit the anti-fascist fashionista angst. Bloodred-smeared bandannas, worn-out Levi’s or Lee, white shirts blaring with Che poster-boy print, highcut Converse, lots of exotic, ethnicized necklaces and bracelets, and a rattan-woven backpack. We got the look, baby!
Then, couple of more years after graduation—when a zillion of organizational memberships beckoned—those crazy days when one single group decision was debated, argued, committee-deliberated, reassessed, reevaluated, rehashed, restudied before we finally realize them... “Okay, guys, now that we have already agreed to eat Thai salami with cherry-flavored syrup on this Sunday’s student-coalition’s demonstration in front of the City Hall—by votation of 16 to 14, let’s meet again next week to democratically decide if we are, indeed, going to drink Pepsi or Coke, or should that be Diet? Any objections? Now, let’s hear the report of the porta-toilet committee... I heard they have uncovered some cost-cutting remedies.” Oh yeah, we all loved to talk and talk and talk.
So am I being obvious? I never liked meetings, anyways; they’re so counter-productive, so redundant, so annoyingly inquisitive. I’d rather get things done—fast, right here, right now. Surely, I fumbled and goofed and blundered and erred—but then, my commitment to my madness (may that be political, whatsoever) isn’t gonna end till I lose my nonprofit job or pro-bono tour of legal duty, or when I finally break up with my revolutionary girlfriend. I don’t think this “madness” is that shallow or skin-deep. I will continue to trip and fall and commit mistakes—but the thing is, I am not about to stop my quest, so I don’t see any failure coming. The fight is neverending—like the nth round in my life’s championship fight, it’s never over. Wobbly knees and bruised chests aren’t about to stop me—though I don’t call it my “madness” activism, anymore. I call it, having fun, just having fun.

“WHAT DO YOU hope to accomplish in doing all these things?”
I am always asked that question. I could readily, zestfully respond to that question—ten or fifteen years ago. I feel like I have aged many many generations past... I haven’t seen activism in any other country like I have experienced it in the Philippines when I was in my teens until I gave up in the middle of the 90s... got wounded, ostracized, punished, hurt—forcibly made to relax and chill following a lung surgery. But then, as I repeatedly pronounce my weariness and laying-low tact, I seem to contradict my observers when they see me as always untiringly on-the-go, always pushing, not giving up.
Although I can still feel the painful memories of many years under a despotic military regime back home, I felt my bones and mind have already given way to a more sedate, less complicated existence—exactly, the very reason why I am here in a relatively “white” community far away from my own people... I knew that after almost 25 years of unmitigated, uncompromising, no-holds-barred, romantically gung-ho adherence and allegiance to anything against the dictatorship, my day was done. My day was done when I finally saw the collapse of a ruthless government and the departure of the US military bases... I have given my 25 years to the struggle, and even though true freedom and sovereignty from superpower dictate is yet to be realized by my people, I feel I already earned my medals of honor. No one can take those away from me... Time to pass the torch, I need to enjoy my moondance now. I need my peace.
I was a tired warrior at age 38, burned out. But my little endeavors—I knew and I am very proud of it—have contributed significantly to the demise of a genocidal one-man rule. We had a different “sociopolitical/ideological” education back home, it’s just different... activism, militancy, radicalism, non-conformity, anarchy—we didn’t read or hear them from the gilded mouths of heroes, burning recitations that echo like thunders on springtime midnights, or debated every midweek afternoon jousts.
Few years ago, as I witnessed Western North Carolina’s virulent sea of peace-loving souls massed in thousands in such a tiny downtown park, I couldn’t help but relive my past. I wish that the energy spreads through across the oceans, sending out concrete messages against Washington’s vaunted foreign policy... but I need not be cynical anymore. I have seen it sacrificed, waged, accomplished before—it wasn’t easy.
Come March 19 and 20, I know I will again see an angry mass of protesting humanity calling for the end of war... in this beautiful mountain-city that has fast been enveloped by the very world-order and economic might that make war-mongering and global brinkmanship just another day-at-the-office. I feel the excruciating sight of wrathful elegies and mournful pronouncements bouncing back—back and forth—as they meet deadend among four walls of gargantuan corporate structures that continue to mushroom in my midst, faster than the activist community gets to plan out their next public rally...
I can’t say, “Americans should suffer the pain of being a non-American to be able to understand what really is poverty, homelessness, and hunger.” It is not, never, as wily Wall Street economists mouth—ushered by GNP situations and cost-of-living vis-a-vis cost-of-labor-force. It is plain and simple—as food-to-mouth, remedies to a gaping wound, shelter to a 7-year-old child. It’s as basic as that—a Dell microchip assembler in an Asian production-line who’s paid this amount, equal perhaps to a $6.50 wage-earner in Salisbury, NC under US living standards, isn’t going to score paper towels or spring water on salary day, and strawberry sherbet while watching a rented VHS on a Sunday afternoon... the person is going to ensure five kilos of soiled white rice, a dozen of un-fresh, red-eyed fish and chicken entrails for a week’s dinner.
As we fight the mighty, peerless hand that signals war for a grander goal of greed, we should also fight the mightier, more peerless hand that summons and dictates those that signals war and death.

ACTIVISM, for me, isn’t gonna fly unless we get results—otherwise, it’s all a sad freakin’ fad, a cool dalliance that we all cower to because we didn’t get our tax refunds on time, or that we suffered racist or sexist slurs at the workplace, or that, our relationships and marriages have been so nasty and hateful and demeaning that fighting for the rights of the oppressed humanity is our only sure pathway to vindication, revenge, or redemption.
Few years ago—amidst the plasticine sham of Madison Av in NYC, a throng of placard-wielding young Filipino-American activists on Fendi scarves, Prada shirt and Armani dress pants called for justice and freedom back home... These kids are definitely better than those midtown bleached-skinned Manhattan clowns who dye their hairs brown and wear blue contacts to camouflage their true native colors, but then, the question is—why do we really disagree, why do we protest? What’s the use of dissent, of civil disobedience, if society remains what it is?
When we were battling the Marcos dictatorship, we were also fighting nuclear energy intramurals by such giant powers like Westinghouse, artistic freedom and media censorship, big business monopoly in the countrysides, bastardization of our women around the US bases... To be an activist doesn’t simply confine you to fight for peace or against the war, you are also duty-bound, or humanity-bound, to fight for the protection of your community’s well-being — fight for your own business space against the fangs of gentrification, fight for your local musicians’ right to perform in his own town and city, fight for better wages while outsider capitalization clogs the streets, fight for better air and more pleasant sound of mountain living...
Fight for your peace—whether it is anti-war, or anti-Republican, or anti-logging, or anti-women, or anti-Wal-Mart. Peace can never be faked or sugar-coated or turned into a bloodred-smeared bandanna or a hippie, gypsy-donned merry prankster girth. Peace is humanity... it should be protected and guarded also for those who choose not to march in the streets or die in the desert.
Ah, Asheville has become the place where we all, fearless activists and warriors of wisdom, rest up, load up, refuel, then set out again to do battle... never mind, if they own our city, we own the world.

HERE I GO AGAIN. Why can’t I just enjoy the world’s cheapest intoxication, Boone’s Farm sangria while imagining that my would-be girlfriend sings like Eva Cassidy, Joss Stone, or Norah Jones... Life is never easy for me, I guess.
We are again all-set to negotiate 514.13 miles of cold concrete for another road trip to Baltimore and Washington DC as I beat the deadline for The Indie’s March issue. But, you see, I was really serious when I boasted to Marta The Nicer Osbourne and Smiley Riley that I plan to visit Tunnel Rd’s Hooters one of these upcoming summer nights... I always love watching women, beautiful women with flawless, healthy bodies and winning, so-peacefully cheerful smiles...
Life is so beautiful, after all... Asheville, my wounding, hurtful, flirtatious co-dependency relationship in the last four years, has been looking the other way around lately. So need I mope? I don’t think so... You see, uhh, I was told that we will be performing with Rhythm Insurgency, an almost all-women spoken word/drumming ensemble as The Traveling Bonfires makes a stopover show in DC on March 11. I won’t miss Asheville that much I am sure—neither Hooters on Tunnel Rd—no, I won’t.
An activist’s life is always fun. I never got tired of it, never...