May 2005
Last week I climbed the steep stairs of the legendary angkorwat, wearing a pair of comfortable sandals (an inch high, what was I thinking?!) and sleeveless Thai shirt. In my own assessment, I looked like a fashionable gypsy who wandered way too far from “base”. That happened after ten days of smelling saltwater while watching chelsea beat those morons, the pope being buried, rainier dying and the royal family boarding a bus to the reception and practicing my Khmer (i can pass for a khmer if i stay still and not open my mouth).
I have become a football fanatic (i changed my earlier choice of manchester U to chelsea), a well-informed citizen of the world and rediscovered my swimming skills in my spare time to compensate for the increasing number of white hairs and wrinkles due to crazy "development" approaches of a.. a...never mind.
I climbed the steep stairs of angkorwat and was shaking all over when I looked down at how high I climbed. Wow, some fear of heights! My pride prevented me from succumbing to the embarrassing urge of fainting. I would've wanted to faint the town red! hahahah
Being on top is like standing on the precipice of oblivion. The building has this indescribable ‘quietness” - sounds do not echo, whispers are carried away by the Apsara carvings, footsteps are absorbed by the Khmer mantras on the thick, old walls. Maybe I imagine too much things but I get this passive-aggressive feeling within the confines of the angkorwat. It is quiet but not empty. Well, empty but I didn’t get that feeling of nothingness. Proud but unimposing. Serene and yet you feel the turbulent past screaming all over the place. I may have heard the silent screams because i share the same internal turmoil?
It isn’t as disturbing as all other historic places I’ve been. Photographs and films may have stored away its own mind, its own history, it’s own sadness, its own character. Or maybe, it has accepted its fate. Whaaa, its freaky, talking to a beautiful bunch of stones. Maybe I shouldn’t be left alone to wander. I get all self-absorbed (?) and I always feel I am so in-sync with the world that I can be sucked in by the earth and be happy forever. Blame it on the moon.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
10 G Forces
July 2004
1o things i thank the G Friendship for:
1. All the times you listened to my senseless complaints – academic or otherwise and my nonsensical tales of men with bad nails, doctors with nice hands, marriage proposals from psychos
2. For popping in my office so that you can imagine me writing you, for all the dinners, beers, vodka, scotch, and the conversations that range from bizarre love triangles, amusing tales of kabadingan, extremely puzzling tales of stalkers
3. For pulling me around when I can’t swim in PG
4. For putting up with what many people think are my eccentricities
5. For reading my long emails
6. For introducing me to so many wonderful people I’ve never known before(i.e., Murakami, Coetzee, Gramsci, Todaro, and well, even Peou, Aglietta, Wallerstein & Braudel, to name a few)
7. For putting names into my father’s long time unknown ‘friends’- the sensation of being home when I hear jazz which my father plays every Sunday morning for as long as I can remember
8. For watching films that fail to evoke happiness
9. For trusting me enough to share how you feel about many things in life
10. For believing in me when I can’t even trust myself
1o things i thank the G Friendship for:
1. All the times you listened to my senseless complaints – academic or otherwise and my nonsensical tales of men with bad nails, doctors with nice hands, marriage proposals from psychos
2. For popping in my office so that you can imagine me writing you, for all the dinners, beers, vodka, scotch, and the conversations that range from bizarre love triangles, amusing tales of kabadingan, extremely puzzling tales of stalkers
3. For pulling me around when I can’t swim in PG
4. For putting up with what many people think are my eccentricities
5. For reading my long emails
6. For introducing me to so many wonderful people I’ve never known before(i.e., Murakami, Coetzee, Gramsci, Todaro, and well, even Peou, Aglietta, Wallerstein & Braudel, to name a few)
7. For putting names into my father’s long time unknown ‘friends’- the sensation of being home when I hear jazz which my father plays every Sunday morning for as long as I can remember
8. For watching films that fail to evoke happiness
9. For trusting me enough to share how you feel about many things in life
10. For believing in me when I can’t even trust myself
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Carlos-ian Wisdom (From CRC)
Thanks for the lovely photo...when I see pictures like those, I always lament that one of my unfulfilled desires is to photograph LIFE, people, places, things...I am 6 years into retirement and I may yet fulfill this dream...as in second wind...
So, what's in a number? 27? 28? 29? Remember, they only have meanings because society constructed meanings for them...Note how our so-called debutantes at 18 years are "presented" to society in elaborate debut balls...
Do you know the historial antecedent of the debut in Europe ( which we don't share...)? 18 years used to be the time when their women are ready to become wives/mothers and are presented to the eligible males to be chosen... sus, how can you "present' somebody at 18 when they are having sex at 9???
I am re-reading a book now by Levinson titled Seasons in a man's life. It details the psychological, physical and hormonal changes that happen to women/men and how , because of the constructions and strictures of society, they are "expected" to do certain things at certain ages...this is where failed expectations come in, the angsts, the sense of failure, despair...
Why do singers/rockers kill themselves at an early age? I guess it may have something to do with the dog-eat dog life in the entertainment world where you have to sell your soul to be ahead of the game. It is also on account of the ungodly hours that they spend on the road, practising , etc so their body clocks have to be adjusted by drugs...the road from there is a slippery slope to a sense of hopelessness and despair and a sigh away from self destruction...Just a hypothesis...
Will be in US on 17th. Let's have lunch when I get back...
So, what's in a number? 27? 28? 29? Remember, they only have meanings because society constructed meanings for them...Note how our so-called debutantes at 18 years are "presented" to society in elaborate debut balls...
Do you know the historial antecedent of the debut in Europe ( which we don't share...)? 18 years used to be the time when their women are ready to become wives/mothers and are presented to the eligible males to be chosen... sus, how can you "present' somebody at 18 when they are having sex at 9???
I am re-reading a book now by Levinson titled Seasons in a man's life. It details the psychological, physical and hormonal changes that happen to women/men and how , because of the constructions and strictures of society, they are "expected" to do certain things at certain ages...this is where failed expectations come in, the angsts, the sense of failure, despair...
Why do singers/rockers kill themselves at an early age? I guess it may have something to do with the dog-eat dog life in the entertainment world where you have to sell your soul to be ahead of the game. It is also on account of the ungodly hours that they spend on the road, practising , etc so their body clocks have to be adjusted by drugs...the road from there is a slippery slope to a sense of hopelessness and despair and a sigh away from self destruction...Just a hypothesis...
Will be in US on 17th. Let's have lunch when I get back...
Freezing in Beijing
Its 1 am and i just arrived from a long cold walk in Tiananmen Square. Beijing is wonderful at night but is a cold, almost dead and bare country in the morning. This is my last night here and i am now convinced that school is such a hassle. I have to get back to manila tomorrow in time for my exam on friday (yes, i am enroled in the DPA Program in NCPAG). I am thinking of skipping that exam, getting an incomplete and staying here for two days, hah! It would be worth it, am sure. I remember we wanted to wander around Asia together but things changed, eh?
On Finding the "Civil" in Civil Society (Letter to KL)
I have serious problems with CSOs being preoccupied with the Weberian-type bureaucracy, but I'd like to think that the common objectives directed to MPA management, the "sense of belonging" to a single cause and the relative flexibility of their "rules and procedures" qualify them as CSOs. Was it Ostrom's group who wrote that 'conventional' theories are not sufficient to explain the dynamics of managing the commons?
A French technocrat, Aglietta(?) used some of Marx ideas in developing some sort of a regulation theory and compared society to a balloon, the burgeoning middle (representing the middle class) makes it possible to float in the air but widen either the base or the top and it immediately falls down. There's more of us going down to the base.
There's no shortage of brilliant minds interpreting the world in various ways, but only a few are up to the challenge of actually "changing it". The vanguards of the proletariat are now part of the executive that manages the affairs of the bourgeoisie. They're in Congress engaging in self-referential monologues.
You have to see To Live, an interesting perspective of China during the Communist Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, told not in an overly political and dramatic sense. There's no car chase but a lot of chasing counter-revolutionists, you can't tell the difference.
A French technocrat, Aglietta(?) used some of Marx ideas in developing some sort of a regulation theory and compared society to a balloon, the burgeoning middle (representing the middle class) makes it possible to float in the air but widen either the base or the top and it immediately falls down. There's more of us going down to the base.
There's no shortage of brilliant minds interpreting the world in various ways, but only a few are up to the challenge of actually "changing it". The vanguards of the proletariat are now part of the executive that manages the affairs of the bourgeoisie. They're in Congress engaging in self-referential monologues.
You have to see To Live, an interesting perspective of China during the Communist Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, told not in an overly political and dramatic sense. There's no car chase but a lot of chasing counter-revolutionists, you can't tell the difference.
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