The year, tossed about by turmoil and the changing seasons of the heart, is on its last leg, like the rickety, murmuring steamboat approaching shore after a journey down the inscrutable stretch of an impulsive river. Just as a man is cloistered in year-end thoughts, so he must enter the stillness of his brooding soul. “And the stillness of life does not in the least resemble a peace. It is a stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention,” Joseph Conrad’s words (from Heart of Darkness) reverberate in the hollow clasp of his mind. Soon the implacable force moves him into the birth of a new year, with renewed hopes and perfect intentions, with a curiosity of impulses, motives, capabilities, and weaknesses forming the pondering props of a fresh play – and this year he promises to do all the things he sets out to do, unless he is frustrated once more by the excuse of his inexorable physical necessity.
But for now, a Marley’s ghost rattles the exasperating chains of flashing scenes, the what-could-have-been’s: the kindness that he could have shown to strangers or otherwise, the grace he could have granted to those weaker than himself by not judging them, the words of encouragement that he could have spoken to his own children and friends, the courage he could have demonstrated by speaking for the broken and the dispossessed, and the work that he could have done for the Gospel that sits unattended, cobwebbed and unlived. Of course, the mind’s defence is only too eloquent in justifying the many escape routes he has taken instead. “I am tired.” “I have too much to handle.” “I’m not qualified.” “I have given enough.” “Someone better will come along to do the job.” Rebellion has many faces; outright defiance is just one of them; the others are: compliance (“OK, if I have to I will,” but underneath it he is still a rebel), impotence (“I am unable to do it because I don’t have the power” – a kind of false humility), and negligence (“Oh, I forgot.”). He is the new Simon of Cyrene (Lk 23:26) who refuses, although politely, to carry the cross; he is on his way to the country and his burden is many. He just doesn’t remember that carrying each other’s cross is to fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:2). The tragedy is not that he cannot see but that he chooses blindness deliberately, with the brutality of a farmer who only sows weed. He probably thinks nothing of Nelson Algren’s verity, “… the court jester got laughs simply by sniffing the troubled air, implying that the stink of the herring begins in its head. In times like our own, it isn’t surprising to find men and women crowding the night clubs in hope of seeing someone sniff the air. In such times, clowns become witnesses.”
His mind is a sepulchre in the blind whiteness of fog, of memories decayed and imprecise, which play back now and then – actions and deeds, the perfect Kodak moments of the paperback hero dispensing tender mercies along life’s path. Joy, sorrow, fear, valour, rage and desire provide the bewildering luminance of his career, effecting the final illusion that everything is coming up roses. There is no shame in this type of prevarication; after all no one is hurt. Principles are less than chaff in the wind. Today, he is just brooding and soon the tabula rasa that is his mind will greet him with the new year bell. He is ready to board the steamboat bound for next year’s river, and his right to passage, merely this: that he has lived through last year.
At year-end, we gather our thoughts, sort them in the warmth of our mind’s barn, probe them, and make our obligatory resolutions. Next year it must be better. Next year, we must put our name down for this cause or other. Next year, we must help with this or that committee. Next year.
And that man with the sepulchral mind, who is he anyhow? I sometimes think he is me…
(first written, December 1995)
Friday, November 28, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The Grassy Knoll
This time of the year (November), we are reminded once again by a barrage of articles, documentaries, and op-eds of that fateful 1963 day in Dallas, Texas when John F. Kennedy was fatally wounded. Re-examinations of events, places and personalities sure enough surfaced to jolt us once again into our communal mourning. Did Harvey Lee Oswald act alone? Was there only a single bullet or three bullets? What was Jack Ruby’s connection with Oswald? Was there someone else, dubbed the Umbrella Man, on the grassy knoll that fired another shot? Was there a right-wing conspiracy that plotted the President’s death?
Once again, we are watching the presidential motorcade winding down Dealey Plaza through Abraham Zapruder’s Bell and Howell lens. Not surprisingly, we are still shaken by the minute but unmistakable red mist before President Kennedy’s head jerked back and the First Lady in her elegant raspberry-colored pillbox hat and coat crawled onto the back of the top-down Lincoln Continental to reach for the Secret Service agent moving towards her. A narrated tour of the various locations inevitably ensues. We visit the messy 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository where we are shown the bolt-action assassination rifle and the window from which a clear view of Elm Street was evident. We proceed to the Parkland Hospital Trauma room where JFK was pronounced dead. We listen to the interviews of Lee Harvey Oswald who still looks so mild and composed, and to my untrained eye, could stand in for the singer Bobby Darin’s younger brother. We see Oswald snaking through policemen and reporters when we hear the single pistol shot that ends his life. We then join the sombre horse drawn caisson bearing Kennedy’s casket along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Rotunda. We hear the sounds of muffled drums and the clacking of horses’ hooves. This is the state funeral that is forever seared into our collective consciousness.
I remember hearing the news over the car radio as I was being driven to my Manila high school. Like everyone else I talked to that day, we did not think that JFK was really dead, and that the news report was some sick joke perhaps emanating from Russia at the behest of Khrushchev who hated JFK for the Cuban Missile Crisis stand-off, to demoralize us all. That night, I finally believed that it was true after watching Walter Cronkite announce his death. There was a strange certainty and finality to Cronkite’s calm reading of the news flash. The world seemed a little more unfriendly and dangerous that night. I looked for reassurance. I stared out the window and the lone voice of a balut vendor only exacerbated the agonizing sense of alienation I felt.
I am returning to the Grassy Knoll from which I could see the motorcade and perhaps the larger implication of JFK’s death. Somehow, over the years, the Grassy Knoll has become a vantage point for me to see the larger picture of his death. It seemed distrust of government began with his murder and now paranoia over US government cover-up and conspiracy is reaffirmed crisis after crisis. As Kennedy represented the coda of freedom and civil rights, and an almost chivalric quest for world peace that only true democracy can produce, Oswald’s bullet shattered forever the visage of the modern Camelot where the knights of liberalism and truth stood ready to save the world. Finally, the once invincible American style of leadership was seen as fully mortal and finite. I am sure there are more social and political fall-out from his untimely death. As I watched the parade of TV commentators talking about the assassination, I sensed an air of collective guilt hovering silently, but no one dared address this specter.
As with millions of people, I am still baffled by the entire tragedy except for the certainty of the reprising lyrics from Camelot:
Yes, Camelot, my boy!
Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.
Once again, we are watching the presidential motorcade winding down Dealey Plaza through Abraham Zapruder’s Bell and Howell lens. Not surprisingly, we are still shaken by the minute but unmistakable red mist before President Kennedy’s head jerked back and the First Lady in her elegant raspberry-colored pillbox hat and coat crawled onto the back of the top-down Lincoln Continental to reach for the Secret Service agent moving towards her. A narrated tour of the various locations inevitably ensues. We visit the messy 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository where we are shown the bolt-action assassination rifle and the window from which a clear view of Elm Street was evident. We proceed to the Parkland Hospital Trauma room where JFK was pronounced dead. We listen to the interviews of Lee Harvey Oswald who still looks so mild and composed, and to my untrained eye, could stand in for the singer Bobby Darin’s younger brother. We see Oswald snaking through policemen and reporters when we hear the single pistol shot that ends his life. We then join the sombre horse drawn caisson bearing Kennedy’s casket along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Rotunda. We hear the sounds of muffled drums and the clacking of horses’ hooves. This is the state funeral that is forever seared into our collective consciousness.
I remember hearing the news over the car radio as I was being driven to my Manila high school. Like everyone else I talked to that day, we did not think that JFK was really dead, and that the news report was some sick joke perhaps emanating from Russia at the behest of Khrushchev who hated JFK for the Cuban Missile Crisis stand-off, to demoralize us all. That night, I finally believed that it was true after watching Walter Cronkite announce his death. There was a strange certainty and finality to Cronkite’s calm reading of the news flash. The world seemed a little more unfriendly and dangerous that night. I looked for reassurance. I stared out the window and the lone voice of a balut vendor only exacerbated the agonizing sense of alienation I felt.
I am returning to the Grassy Knoll from which I could see the motorcade and perhaps the larger implication of JFK’s death. Somehow, over the years, the Grassy Knoll has become a vantage point for me to see the larger picture of his death. It seemed distrust of government began with his murder and now paranoia over US government cover-up and conspiracy is reaffirmed crisis after crisis. As Kennedy represented the coda of freedom and civil rights, and an almost chivalric quest for world peace that only true democracy can produce, Oswald’s bullet shattered forever the visage of the modern Camelot where the knights of liberalism and truth stood ready to save the world. Finally, the once invincible American style of leadership was seen as fully mortal and finite. I am sure there are more social and political fall-out from his untimely death. As I watched the parade of TV commentators talking about the assassination, I sensed an air of collective guilt hovering silently, but no one dared address this specter.
As with millions of people, I am still baffled by the entire tragedy except for the certainty of the reprising lyrics from Camelot:
Yes, Camelot, my boy!
Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The audacity of parenting
The invasive parenting phenomenon has been around for a while now in North America. You can easily spot this growing species of parents who hover over their children like a Huey on a search and destroy mission, designing their every extracurricular and academic activity and treating each offspring like a Francis Ford Coppola production. They pipe Mozart music into the kids’ bedroom, install nanny-cams to monitor the helpers, attend to their music and language lessons, discuss and analyze ad nauseam their children’s progress with the teachers, complete school/college applications including writing their entrance essays, and stalk their kids everywhere even equipping their kids with GPS-enabled cellphones. According to some scientific studies (Marano, e.g.), there is some “dark dependency, some transfer of the parent’s identity to the child" behind over-parenting. It is difficult to disagree with this observation.
Now that both sons are grown up, with one still going through the ordeal of graduate school, I wonder if I had been such an invasive parent. Although I did not install any nanny-cam (this never entered my mind, but mind you, nanny-cam wasn’t a developed technology then; there was the baby monitor though but it was there to make sure we responded to them the moment they started wailing in their cribs; our baby monitor had the added benefit of picking up sounds from our next door neighbours who might have monitors on the same frequency as ours - and the voices and fights we heard – but that’s another story!) nor did I pipe in Mozart music into their rooms, I did buy them Mozart cd’s and insisted that my wife listened to classical music while she was in the last trimester of pregnancy (this was for her relaxation and rest). Also I admit I enjoyed the frequent parent-teacher conferences in which we poured over the learning outcomes of each subject to make sure our children achieved some modicum of success. Yes, there were the piano, math and language lessons they had to take, but when they outgrew their interest, they dropped the lessons (especially the Chinese lessons that demanded rigorous and repetitive copying of characters; even now it breaks my heart to remember the large cannon-ball size tear-drops one son would pour on the exercise sheets). And no, we did not write entrance essays for them but I did give him a few pointers of what schools are suited for their gifts.
It’s funny how one compares notes with other parents and how easy it is to see the speck in their eyes. In one instance, I felt embarrassed by that tinge of superiority that came over me when I mentioned I was friend with my children in FaceBook. The general rule of course is that the last people our children wanted to be friends with in FaceBook are the parents; it just leads to strong possibility of cyber-stalking; I am the aberration – or so I consoled the other parents.
I suppose time will tell, whether I had been that audacious parent whose control over their children’s lives lead to their subsequent dysfunction. By that time, I suppose I’m willing to spring for the cost of their therapy. Then, again, reading about the lives of great authors and artists gives me the comfort that all of them in one way or another had to deal with one or both controlling parents and that it was through such conflicts they had found their place as artists. In the novel Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy writes "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I am hoping my children came from a happy family. I am also betting that their growth will be exceptional and without difficulty. What are the odds though?
Now that both sons are grown up, with one still going through the ordeal of graduate school, I wonder if I had been such an invasive parent. Although I did not install any nanny-cam (this never entered my mind, but mind you, nanny-cam wasn’t a developed technology then; there was the baby monitor though but it was there to make sure we responded to them the moment they started wailing in their cribs; our baby monitor had the added benefit of picking up sounds from our next door neighbours who might have monitors on the same frequency as ours - and the voices and fights we heard – but that’s another story!) nor did I pipe in Mozart music into their rooms, I did buy them Mozart cd’s and insisted that my wife listened to classical music while she was in the last trimester of pregnancy (this was for her relaxation and rest). Also I admit I enjoyed the frequent parent-teacher conferences in which we poured over the learning outcomes of each subject to make sure our children achieved some modicum of success. Yes, there were the piano, math and language lessons they had to take, but when they outgrew their interest, they dropped the lessons (especially the Chinese lessons that demanded rigorous and repetitive copying of characters; even now it breaks my heart to remember the large cannon-ball size tear-drops one son would pour on the exercise sheets). And no, we did not write entrance essays for them but I did give him a few pointers of what schools are suited for their gifts.
It’s funny how one compares notes with other parents and how easy it is to see the speck in their eyes. In one instance, I felt embarrassed by that tinge of superiority that came over me when I mentioned I was friend with my children in FaceBook. The general rule of course is that the last people our children wanted to be friends with in FaceBook are the parents; it just leads to strong possibility of cyber-stalking; I am the aberration – or so I consoled the other parents.
I suppose time will tell, whether I had been that audacious parent whose control over their children’s lives lead to their subsequent dysfunction. By that time, I suppose I’m willing to spring for the cost of their therapy. Then, again, reading about the lives of great authors and artists gives me the comfort that all of them in one way or another had to deal with one or both controlling parents and that it was through such conflicts they had found their place as artists. In the novel Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy writes "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I am hoping my children came from a happy family. I am also betting that their growth will be exceptional and without difficulty. What are the odds though?
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Country For Old Men
Autumn is certainly a country for old men. The fallen leaves, the chilling wind, and the dark foreboding clouds point us to every tatter in our mortal dress. No more “salmon-falls, or mackerel-crowded seas: Fish, flesh, or fowl, which commend all summer long; nor whatever is begotten, born, and dies, caught in that sensual music,” except the sight of winding stairs towards decay. Unlike Yeats, I don’t long for Byzantium to sing to the lord and ladies of what is passing, or pressing or to come. These days, I feel the gnawing grip of arthritis, and the slow pain in my tattered bones which heralds one ringing truth: an aged man is but a paltry thing. But in my dream, I see the familiar shore of my home country and the hospitable crowd in their chorus of smile and love.
As for me, it took a decade or two to adjust to the Canadian climate, and it might take longer now to revert back to the culture of my youth. Then there is the medical requirement: having been sustained on a regiment of pills for my diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, and other inconveniences, I would think my habitual pilgrimage to a physician would bankrupt me if I were living back in Asia.
After all that is said and done, perhaps I am in the right country – for old men. What remains is still to make new songs. “My songs of old earth's dreamy youth: But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou! For fair are poppies on the brow: Dream, dream, for this is also sooth…” (from The Song of the Happy Shepherd).
As for me, it took a decade or two to adjust to the Canadian climate, and it might take longer now to revert back to the culture of my youth. Then there is the medical requirement: having been sustained on a regiment of pills for my diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, and other inconveniences, I would think my habitual pilgrimage to a physician would bankrupt me if I were living back in Asia.
After all that is said and done, perhaps I am in the right country – for old men. What remains is still to make new songs. “My songs of old earth's dreamy youth: But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou! For fair are poppies on the brow: Dream, dream, for this is also sooth…” (from The Song of the Happy Shepherd).
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