foucault's the use of pleasure: in a nutshell

In The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, Michel Foucault reveals that Greek ethics was about “the relationship with the self and the self that enabled a person to keep from being carried away by the appetites and pleasures, to maintain a mastery and superiority over them, to keep his senses in a state of tranquility, to remain free from interior bondage to the passions, and to achieve a mode of being that could be defined by the full enjoyment of oneself, or the perfect supremacy of oneself over oneself.” This called for discussing four components namely (1) the determination of the ethical substance, (2) the mode of subjection, (3) moral work, and (4) the moral goal. In the Greek épistémè or knowledge, the ethical substance is bodily pleasure (aphrodisia), the mode of subjection was proper use (chrēsis), the moral work involved a struggle for continence (enkrateia), and the moral goal was the freedom generated by self-mastery (sōphrosynē).
The first area of ethics for Foucault is the determination of the ethical substance. The ethical substance is the “material” of one’s moral conduct. It answers the question, “Which is the aspect or the part of myself or my behavior which is concerned with moral conduct?” The ethical substance is the area of people’s lives that is to be morally assessed. In the Greek épistémè, the ethical substance is aphrodisia. Aphrodisia are “the acts, gestures, and contacts that produce a certain form of pleasure.” Aphrodisia are bodily pleasures that are related with specific actions like eating, drinking, and having sex.
For Foucault, aphrodisia are considered both positive and negative. They are positive since they are natural and necessary, i.e. everyone must eat, drink, and reproduce—nature encourages animals to eat, drink, and procreate by making these activities immensely pleasurable. Nonetheless, bodily pleasures also had a negative quality, which required for their delimitation. The main reason for this was that the Greeks deemed aphrodisia as possessing an “inferior character” for they “were common to animals and men,” “mixed with privation and suffering,” and “depended on the body and its necessities.”
However, it was more than the inferior quality of aphrodisia that rendered them the point of ethical concern. Two major problems emerge: the predicament of excessiveness, and the horror of passivity. According to Foucault, excessiveness and passivity in the Greek épistémè are “[f]or a man…the two main forms of immorality.” Because these two problems were the major forms of immorality, and because both were linked to and associated with bodily pleasures, aphrodisia is the ethical substance of Greek ethics. Excessiveness is a “lack of self-restraint with regard to pleasure.” Considering that pleasures obtained in aphrodisiac activity are high, one begins to pursue pleasure beyond one’s natural needs that cause the desire for the activity to begin with. This is the problem of intemperance, which is characterized by gluttony, drunkenness, and nymphomania, all of which are excessive performances of otherwise natural and necessary bodily processes. Foucault asserts that “the primary dividing line laid down by moral judgment in the area of sexual behavior was not prescribed by the nature of the act…but by the activity and its quantitative gradations.”
In the intemperate person, pleasures are pursued regardless of need, which brought strained relations with oneself. The other ethical problem is that one turns passive to pleasures. Aphrodisia have an active and a passive sense. In the sexual form of aphrodisia, there are two roles: the active, penetrating, “masculine” role; and the passive, penetrated, “feminine” role. There is “the one who performs the activity and the one on whom it is performed.” Passivity has two senses that are yet interconnected. First, one can seek after pleasures attained by passive activity, i.e. men who seek the pleasure of being anally penetrated; second, one could fall short of being actively vigilant about one’s bodily needs, and through excessive behavior could become passive to eating, drinking, and having sex (even in its “masculine” role) such that one lives to eat instead of eats to live.
In summary, aphrodisia are natural and necessary, yet dangerous when used incorrectly. Pleasures of the body, while not evil in themselves, lead morally weak people into excess and passivity, making people lose their humanity and behave like animals, which only obey their appetite. Hence, one must make bodily pleasures an ethical concern since aphrodisia are always morally relevant in Greek ethics.
The second component of ethics for Foucault is the mode of subjection. This is taken as “the way in which the individual establishes his relation to the rule and recognizes himself as obliged to put it into practice.” In short, it is the way in which people are incited to recognize their moral obligations. The mode of subjection is the manner one should ethically address the ethical substance. Once the ethical substance is established, what should one do with it and why? In the Greek épistémè, the mode of subjection was proper use of pleasures. This is where the book draws its title. The Greek understanding of the proper use of pleasure is detailed in parts two, three and four of the book: “Dietetics” deals with eating and drinking, “Economics” has to do with sexual relations with women and slaves, and “Erotics” focuses on sexual relations with boys who were fated to grow up to become free men in the polis, respectively. The Greeks did not differentiate these areas. Foucault argues that “[f]ood, wines, and relations with women and boys constituted analogous ethical material; they brought forces into play that were natural, but that always tended to be excessive.”
It is in the first part of the text, nevertheless, that Foucault describes chrēsis in general. According to him, there are three factors to the proper use of pleasures: need, timeliness, and social status. By studying these three aspects, one will come to understand not only how one tackled the ethical substance, but also what motivates one for using pleasures correctly. First, the proper use of pleasure subsisted on need. Since desire emerges from a condition of privation, one’s fulfillment of those desires must correspond to the level of need. The ethical Greek ate only when hungry, and did so only with the amount needed to satisfy that hunger correctly. In effect, the pleasure of eating is properly used. As Foucault asserts, “the objective was not to reduce pleasure to nothing; on the contrary, what was wanted was to maintain it and do so through the need that awakened desire.” Provided that needs vary from person to person, it is the responsibility of each ethical agent to consider the right amount of food, drink, and sex one needed to have, and never exceed those limits. Timeliness, the second factor of the proper use of pleasure, is connected to the general obsession with time that the Greeks have regarding medicine, government, and navigation. Kairos is of the essence in the Greek épistémè, and actions had to be done at the right time. There is a time for everything, and certain pleasures should be experienced only at certain instances. One should eat only at certain times of the day, and certain things should be eaten only during certain seasons. Given that different people have different biorhythms and “internal clocks,” it is the responsibility of each ethical agent to do matters at the right time. Finally, the proper use of pleasure subsisted on one’s status, the role the agent plays in society. How well one has to use pleasure depended on whether one is a man, a woman, a slave, or a child. The rationale for Greek men to use pleasure correctly is that their ethical strength, their masculinity, their potential as an important leader in the polis, all reflected in how they use pleasure. Foucault argues that “[i]t was a generally accepted principle of government that the more one was in the public eye, the more authority one had or wanted to have over others, and the more one sought to make one’s life into a brilliant work whose reputation would spread far and last long—the more necessary it was to adopt and maintain…rigorous standards of…conduct.”
In summary, one’s subjectivity was judged based on how one used pleasures. Those who use pleasure correctly—those who eat, drink, and have sex only as is suited to one’s need, time, and status—were better people, and were thus justified to hold positions of power over those who were ethically weak. This is the reason why men are valued over women and children in this assertion of knowledge: men are able to control themselves in a way that women and children cannot.
The third component of Foucauldian ethics is moral work, which consists of the actions “that one performs on oneself…to attempt to transform oneself into the ethical subject of one’s behavior.” Another word for ethical work is “self-forming activity.” In the Greek épistémè, the moral work is a kind of training, which prepares one to use pleasures correctly. Foucault quotes Xenophon on this instance: “if one does not exercise the soul, one cannot sustain the functions of the soul, so that one will not be able to ‘do what one ought to do nor avoid what one ought to do.’”
The ethical work of the Greeks rested in training the body or developing mastery over one’s own person. Through ethical work, one learned how to “face privations without suffering…[and] reduce every pleasure to nothing more than the elementary satisfaction of needs.” Once one is trained in the art of self-mastery and the proper use of pleasure, one would have the virtues necessitated to participate in the polis. Thus, for the Greeks, moral work “formed part of the paideia [education] of the free man who had a role to play in the city and in dealings with others.”
One has to be master of oneself in order to have the freedom necessary to help run the city and justify the mastery over others. The moral work taught one of continence, which is the capacity to have mastery over oneself in order to avoid improper uses of pleasure. It is the battle that takes place when pleasures are being put to proper use. Self-mastery, Foucault asserts, is “located in the axis of struggle, resistance, and combat…it is self-control…but has to struggle to maintain control.”
Foucault discusses four facets of continence before describing moral work: (1) it is a type of power struggle, (2) the struggle is against forces within oneself, (3) the mastery comes in putting pleasures to use and keeping them under control, and (4) self-mastery relates to domestic and civic life. Foucault understands continence as a kind of power struggle, arguing that “[o]ne could behave ethically only by adopting a combative attitude toward pleasures.” In short, there is a torturous relationship between oneself and one’s pursuit of pleasures. The enemy in this battle is pleasure, “whose origin and finality were natural, but whose potential, by the fact that they had their own energy, was for revolt and excess.” Once again, pleasures are not evil in themselves; the intemperate person abuses pleasures to excess, the incontinent person allows himself to be passive to pleasure, letting appetite overpower reason. The only means to avoid excess and passivity is to engage in a battle against them. Second, this battle is not an outside battle but is a battle with oneself. Foucault says that “[t]his combative relationship…was also an agonistic relationship with oneself. The battle to be fought…the victory to be won, the defeat that one risked suffering…took place between oneself and oneself.” In short, even if pleasures were themselves evil, the fault of intemperance and incontinence fell on the ethical agent. In the end, it is one’s responsibility to use pleasures correctly, so the true battle against pleasures is against ethical weakness, excessiveness, and passivity. Greek ethics is about self-mastery; one must be in a battle with oneself and win.
In summary, one must work hard at self-mastery, struggling against one’s passive pursuits of pleasure and one’s desire to seek pleasures beyond the limits of need, time, and status. Continence is a skill that is learned through practice of restriction. This is part of the preparation for leaders of the polis.
Finally, there is the moral goal of Foucauldian ethics. Foucault says that “an action is only moral in itself, in its singularity; it is also moral in its circumstantial integration…[with] a certain mode of being, a mode of being characteristic of the ethical subject.” In other words, the moral goal is the kind of person that one aspires to be by participating in ethical work. What is the free boy training for when practicing how to use pleasures correctly? The moral goal is the answer to the question, “What do you want to be when you (morally) grow up?” Sōphrosynē is the moral goal of Greek ethics. Although Aristotle holds continence and sōphrosynē as separate from each other, Foucault argues that most Greeks define one in terms of the other. Continence is the battle for sōphrosynē, and sōphrosynē is the kind of mastery exerted over pleasures and appetites. The difference between the two is that enkrateia is “an active form of self-mastery, which enables one to resist and struggle, and to achieve domination in the area of desires and pleasures;” whereas sōphrosynē is “a very general state that ensures that one will do ‘what is fitting as regards both gods and men.’” Sōphrosynē is a state of being, whereas enkrateia is the moral work that leads to this state. In other words, “enkrateia can be regarded as the prerequisite of sōphrosynē, as the form of effort and control that the individual must apply to himself in order to become moderate (sōphrōn).” Most important, sōphrosynē is directly linked to freedom. The sōphrōn is a free man, not only in terms of political citizenship, but also in terms of being free from pleasures: “[t]o be free in relation to pleasures was to be free of their authority; it was not to be their slave.” Freedom is “on equal footing with justice, courage, or prudence; that is, it was a virtue that qualified a man to exercise his mastery over others.” It is the power over oneself that qualifies one to have power over others. Foucault shows the difference between the good ruler and the tyrant as an example of this fact. Tyrants are not masters of themselves, which is why they are bad rulers over others.
In associating the moral goal to the mode of subjection as it describes the ethical substance, freedom is virile. As such, sōphrosynē is a masculine virtue for the Greeks. If submitting to pleasures and being passive to them is an immorality during the Greek épistémè, mastery over pleasures becomes the active, masculine, power necessary in the polis. Foucault says that “[s]elf-mastery was a way of being a man with respect to oneself; that is, a way of commanding what needed commanding, of coercing what was not capable of self-direction, of imposing principles of reason on what was wanting in reason; in short, it was a way of being active in relation to what was by nature passive.” This mastery places husbands over wives, masters over slaves, parents over children, and oneself over one’s appetite.
Finally, there is a relationship between freedom and truth. Foucault says that during the Greek épistémè “one could not practice moderation, without a certain form of knowledge that was at least one of its essential conditions.” Foucault describes three principle forms of the relationship between sōphrosynē and logos: (1) wisdom required moderation, for fear that knowledge will not rule within a person i.e. Plato’s account of the control of the rational part over the irrational parts in Republic; (2) practical wisdom is needed; and (3) being virtuous is needed for self-knowledge, i.e. “Know yourself” goes hand in hand with “Take care of yourself”. In summary, freedom and truth are the results of the battle for enkrateia entered into by the sōphrōn in order to gain mastery over the pursuit of pleasures. In effect, the ethically superior agent correctly uses pleasures. For Foucault, these two points sum up Greek ethics and presents the basic differences between Greek ethics and modern “morality.”
Bibliography:
David, Luis. “Reclaiming Antiquity within the Spaces of Discipinarity: Transgression as Transcendence.” In COMIUCAP 2008 World Congress MANILA. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University, 2008.
Foucault, Michel. “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress.” In The Essential Foucault.
__________. “Technologies of the Self.” In The Essential Foucault.
__________. The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1985.
Lamb, Andrew. “Freedom, the Self, and Ethical Practice According to Michel Foucault.” In International Philosophical Quarterly Vol.XXXV, No.4 Issue No. 140 (December 1995).
Veyne, Paul. “The Final Foucault and His Ethics.” In Critical Inquiry (Autumn 1993). trans. Catherine Porter and Arnold Davidson. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993.

today the drizzle sounds like tolls of death

Today the drizzle sounds like tolls of death,
Exciting nimbus clouds to seize the sun;
Rough-blowing monsoon hurls my place, Gapan,
In full momentum, robbed of Mercy’s breath.
Your moving shadow briefly comes to pass
And, like a child’s, my pained gaze longs for you;
Knowing that I’ve lost my heart anew,
I care no evil for I breathe my last.
Jasmine blossoms lose their hooded selves
Once poked by careless heaps of dismal winds;
Soft rain recedes to give way to a storm,
Ending all hopes to calm my sight that delves.
Phantoms of my loneliness deride like fiends
However I invoke your flesh to form.

conceptualizing and arguing god's existence

St. Thomas Aquinas provided five proofs that God exists. First of these is the means that comes from the idea of motion. Everything that is moved is moved by something. This mover must be different, something else than that which is moved. However, this process cannot go on forever because there will always be the original mover, itself moved by nothing, and this mover is necessarily God. The second proof comes from the nature of efficient cause. There is a chain of causes in our experience, but something’s existence must come first before its cause. Also, the chains of efficient causes have the first cause as the cause of the middle, and these causes of the last causes, so removing the cause removes the effect. It is presupposed that there is some first efficient cause: God. The third proof comes from the nature of the possible and necessary. All things cannot be merely possible or accidents, since eventually nothing would exist. Something must have existed originally for everything else to exist, so that not all things are mere accidents because there is one necessarily existing being. Therefore, there must be something necessarily existing by its own nature, itself as the only cause of other existing things: God. The fourth proof emerges from the degrees found in things. There is always a greater and a less degree found in things. Things are greater or less depending on the degree to which they approach the greatest. Hence, there exists something that is the truest, the best and the greatest being. The cause of the existence, of the goodness and of perfection of things is God. The last proof emerges from the sequence of things that are ultimate part of a grand plan. Things that are beyond understanding operate through the order of some higher authority so they do the action not by chance but by purpose. An intelligent being called God has things arranged according to a plan.
In his arguments, Aquinas demonstrates his confidence in the capacity of human reason to arrive at or explain some knowledge, albeit imperfect, of God. God appeals to humans as some inexplicable being whose mystery inspired many humans to pursue the unlocking of this mystery. In doing so, they used their reason because belief alone cannot suffice an explanation regarding the divine. Skeptical minds need to be convinced with rational explanations, notwithstanding if there are others who have enough faith to require no more elaboration.
Paul Tillich also accepts the necessity of human conceptualizations of God, but he instead emphasizes its limits, thus arriving at the conclusion that religious language is necessarily symbolic. God appeals to humans differently depending on beliefs and cultures, through which appeals they imagine God. No matter how imaginative humans can get regarding God, their humanity will reach certain limitations. This limit requires the language by which religion shapes divine imaginings as symbolic. They must become representations of something else so that their varied notions of God will still manage to meet a universal point. The religious language becomes that unifying factor among the different conceptualizations about God.

ang postkolonyalismo sa palabas

Sa librong Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater History, naipamalas ni Doreen Fernandez na nauugnay sa pagbuo ng identidad ng bansa ang palabas. Sa pamamagitan ng pagsusuri ng katutubong teatro sa lahat ng porma at panahon nito mula pistahan hanggang paaralan, mula bodabil hanggang teatro gerilya, naipakita na higit pa sa pagbibigay-aliw o kasiyahan ang nagawa, nagagawa at magagawa ng mga artista, manunulat at buong produksyon ng palabas. Nagamit ang teatro bilang instrumento ng protesta laban sa mga mananakop sa bisa ng nilalaman nitong mapagpalaya o subersibong adhikain, lantad man ito o gumagamit ng mga simbolong kumakatawan sa inaaliping bayan at sa nagpapahirap na dayuhang mananakop. Naging kasangkapan pa rin ang palabas upang maipamalas ng taumbayan na angkin nila ang teatro sa bisa ng pagtalakay nito sa kanilang kasaysayan at pang-araw-araw na pamumuhay o sa kakayanang bigyang imahinasyon ang buhay ng mga nakaaangat sa lipunan. Salat man sila sa materyal na yaman, hindi ito balakid sa masang higit na bumubuo sa bansa upang hindi makapagtanghal sa mga lansangan at makatotohanang salaminin ang mga pangyayari sa lipunan. Sa mga instrumentalisasyong ito naikikintal ng palabas ang paraan kung paano itinatanghal ng bayan ang kanyang kasaysayan. Samakatuwid, nabubuo ng Pilipinas ang kanyang pagkabansa sa pamamagitan ng palabas dahil lehitimo itong talaang panlipunan at tagpuan ito ng mga hangarin, himagsik, imahinasyon at pagkakakilanlan ng taumbayan.

defending balintawak

The Filipino Katipuneros announced their rebellion against the Spanish colonial government in what is popularly known as “Cry of Balintawak,” a spot northeast of Manila, in August 1896. Katipunan leader Andres Bonifacio led the tearing of the cedula or tax receipts before all members cheered boisterously. Emilio Aguinaldo’s commissioned “Hymn of Balintawak” immortalized such a defining moment of Katipunan as well as of the historic place.
While a monument of the heroes of 1896 was erected in the intersection of EDSA and Andres Bonifacio Drive-North Diversion Road, Apolonio Samson’s house in Kaingin Road between Balintawak and San Francisco del Monte Avenue in Barrio Kangkong is the reputed site of the “Cry.”
Bonifacio gathered the leaders and hundreds of comrades-in-arms in the hills of Balintawak north of Manila and, in a ceremony bursting with emotions, the fighters shredded their residence certificates to symbolize the end of their loyalty to Spain while shouting the battle cry: "Long live Philippine independence!"
Eyewitness accounts point to Balintawak as the renowned reference of the “Cry,” which historians picked up for the books. For instance, Dr. Pio Valenzuela stated before the Olive Court that the Katipunan meetings occurred from Sunday to Tuesday (August 23-25, 1896) at Apolonio Samson’s house in Balintawak.
Specifically, the Cry took place in Balintawak on August 23 in that particular spot. Pugad Lawin as a name only existed after the turn of the century so it is more historically accurate to sustain the original “Cry of Balintawak” rather than resort to the more romantic “Pugad Lawin.”
The events of Katipunan meetings and attacks on August 17-26 1896 occurred closer to Balintawak than to Kalookan, the general area where Pugad Lawin may be found. By tradition, Filipinos referred to the “Cry of Balintawak” since that barrio was a better known reference point than Banlat, where Pugad Lawin (a hawk’s nest on top of a tall sampaloc tree at Gulod, the highest elevated place close to Balintawak) specifically is.

the king who would be teacher

Granted that you have pursued Bachelor of Secondary Education majoring in that nerds’ science considered chickenfeed by Newton, Einstein and the like. Physics, anything else? Who will not be mistaken that beneath the killer looks of a very cute teacher such as you lurks a specialty on the mathematical science of natural matter and measured energy, the mere encounter of which subject speedily kills all anti-Physics students’ grades?
But then, you proceed to practice your noble profession and receive the baptism of fire in your foremost foray into teaching. You enter the class full of naughty guys hurling crumpled papers across the room or against one another and silly-acting girls giggling and shivering at the grand entrance of an adorable new hunk whom they surmise as a transferee, if not a lost student from another section. A visibly infatuated young lady offers you a seat next her: “No thanks,” you decline, “my seat awaits me at the rostrum next to the blackboard.” The whole class falls in a quick smite of paralysis when you authoritatively introduce the subject Physics, thermodynamics, quantum, etc.
Each session for both you and your class is a red-painted day, not because it goes like holiday but because it is red-alert day, as in all of you are in an atmosphere of calamity. You are good in teaching every lesson, okay, but only a quarter of your students seem to understand, most of whom even have the heart to staple “To Sir with Love” notes whenever they pass test papers/requirements. The rest of the girls either stare pointlessly at the velocity and vector formulas you have written on the board, reflect the blankness of their minds courtesy of their un-inked test answer sheets, or vividly discuss during recess yet another (though more of an emotional burden) “Physics”—your fair physique. Several boys, meanwhile, have showed sharper interest in Physical Education and Biology than in your taught subject. Aah, headache!
Your students’ daily maxims include, “A potential energy within is quite kinetic because of Mr. Loyola,” “The density of Sir’s inspiration is directly proportional to the gravity of his specialization,” “If only I were resistant of inertia, I would confirm Sir Karlo’s theory that I enjoy the law of buoyancy.” You want to admit that however you apply centrifugal force on the center of attraction, your equilibrium is disturbed, but because patience and fortitude are expected of you, you remain static. You are a teacher, that’s why.

gender relations in canterbury tales

The Canterbury Tales makes for a good example of a piece of literature which was informed by the gender ideologies of its time. Since patriarchal ideology dominated during the period, it was but expectable that male dominion and the attendant female subordination were the norm and which eventually influenced the literary work and may be reflected from it. Hence, various forms of authority by men and many works of oppression on women were manifested in the tales so far taken in class. These tales and their narrators are proofs of how gender relations were imagined during Geoffrey Chaucer’s milieu.
The patriarchal male as macho is evident in the knight and his tale, in the reeve’s tale, in the man of law and his tale, in the last husband of the wife of Bath and her tale, and in the clerk’s tale. The knight, for instance, possesses ideal qualities that have been socially constructed as male: strong in order to stand the rigors of war, gentlemanly in order to show refinement and chivalry, and brave in order to pursue a career in the military as well as engage in duels. These knightly qualities, which are possessed by the characters in his own tale, eventually found themselves precipitating up to the modern times, causing conflicts among relating genders: men are considered strong only because they have relatively more powerful physiology, men view women as the perpetual damsels in distress for men to rescue, and physical fights present the best means of showing courage. Meanwhile, in the reeve’s tale, the avenging students showed their virility by sleeping with the miller’s daughter and spouse. Using women as objects, these men squished the machismo of the miller in order to show him that the upper hand is always gained by the more macho of the lot. As for the man of law, he subscribes to the idea of the man of honor by keeping his words about telling his tale. A real man, it is socially constructed, does not break his promise under the pains of being called fickle-minded, a trait pejoratively alluded to women. What is more, the man of law does as he preaches, advising the crowd that the laws given to others must also be followed, as real men are inclined to do. In his tale, the Father of Constance decides to marry her off, an instance wherein the male will foists itself on a woman’s and it should not be defied, much less questioned. Meanwhile, the last, much younger husband of the wife of Bath acts out his machismo by beating her up and reading misogynist texts. It may be gleaned from these actions that the wife of Bath’s husband resorts to both physical and psychological violence in order to prove that he rules over her. In her story, these two types of violence figure when the knight rapes a nymph. This use of force against a woman is, of course, a power tripping on a man’s part. Finally, in the clerk’s tale, the marquee chooses a wife from the lower class in order to contain her within his influence, from the time he marries her to the times when he asks her to surrender their children for murder. Other than the prevalence of male will, there is nothing more to explain why it was necessary for the marquee’s wife to submit to her husband’s absurd wishes. These aforementioned examples from The Canterbury Tales are evident of the onslaught of machismo in their many nuances. While these appeared in a literary work, they are nonetheless an unerring record of social truths during Chaucer’s context. It is only disturbing that not much has changed if the predominant machismo of the contemporary times will be compared to its medieval predecessor.
On the other hand, the patriarchal product of the Madonna/whore binary is expressed in these same tales. In the knight’s tale, Emily was once shown asking the Goddess of Beauty to sustain her virginity, which provides an insight into the mind of a woman regarding the degree to which she values her chastity, her attempt at oneness with the ideal woman that’s the Blessed Virgin Mary. Also, she is the object of a vicious rivalry between Palamon and Arcite, a case which shows how men treat women as a territory to be conquered and fought over. Her passivity implies that whoever wins from the battling suitors, the romantic stake that she is does not even have a say on her own fate. In the reeve’s tale, for instance, the miller’s daughter and wife were shown to be passively objectified by the avenging students. The daughter, in particular, was presented in the tale as not having protested while she was being defiled. In which case, she seemed to be waiting for her own deflowering. When she actually cried, it was to manifest her joy at having had a good time with her defiler. Meanwhile, the mother also fell victim as the other student made a sex object out of her. Thinking he was her husband, she was ready to submit herself to the student’s sensual whims. She was being violated and she was unknowing all along. In the man of law’s tale, Constance is for the most part a silent suffering woman who gets married off without so much as a pronouncement on her destiny as a wife. Likewise, in the murderous circumstances in which she figured inextricably, she was expected to show Christian virtues because the male-informed Judeo-Christian religion extols the Virgin Mother for her silent suffering, which Constance must emulate. By extension, whatever suffering a wife undergoes, even if it is caused by the husband, she must fall silent because this womanly virtue will somehow be rewarded. Meanwhile, the wife of Bath is the archetypal slut who uses her body in order to get money from her previous husbands. Her vulgarity is unbecoming of a woman of her rich class, although it should not be lost that she practically commodified her body in order to be wedded to her current socioeconomic status. Also, not in any husband of hers was she ultimately submissive, a fact that shows her defiance of the gender conventions of her time. Her strong personality was not contained even by her batterer of a young husband. While she is already the opposite of the ideal woman, she is not even apologetic about it, making her all the more the wild woman archetype. In her tale, a nymph gets raped, rather ironically, by a supposedly virtuous knight. This is a sample of the reduced treatment of a woman as a person of dignity. What is more, this crime against women takes an ugly turn when in the end, the perpetrator gets a trophy of a wife apart from being granted amnesty from a death sentence. Also, the rapist who is horrified over his hag of a wife is a reflected image of men who objectify women by nurturing a male dream in which women are beautiful and doting. The perfect woman is one that fulfills the male fantasy of the kitchen caretaker as well as bed attendant. Anything less like an undesirable hag is to be dismissed as non-wife material. Finally, in the clerk’s tale, the marquee’s wife is the paragon of submissiveness because she remains obedient to her husband despite his criminal proclamations. Right in the beginning, she does not so much as protest not having to decide her marital fate. She is not supposed to defy the marquee even though the lives of her own children are at risk. In essence, she is an active participant to the slaughter of her very offspring, which case puts her ideal meekness to a fault.
These portrayals of men and women of the English society from which The Canterbury Tales was produced are accurate descriptions of gender relations during that time because the gender ideologies of the period were propagated by such apparatuses as the Church, the State and the home. Being so, the consciousness seemed too natural to be interrogated, especially with the authority invested on the abovementioned apparatuses. There may be departures from these ideologies but that entailed ostracism from the institution whose perpetuated ideology was challenged, so it was likely that the biased setup might have gone unquestioned, especially in consideration of the subject’s marginalized position. For those who dared deviate from the norm, their subversion of the ideology was a telling statement that they attempted to liberate themselves from gender stereotypes and, in effect, were able to celebrate their identity that’s so much different from everybody else because it is their own.

the foucauldian crime and punishment: the manila city jail case

At the Recto Terminal of the Light Rail Transit-2, one can see the Manila City Jail (MCJ) right across the platform. There, amid the mushrooming makeshift shanties along squatted properties, octopus connections of illegally wired electricity cables and motley of printing-based businesses from document forgery to tattooing to second-hand books, the Manila City Jail rises with all its ravaged glory. Parametered by Oroquieta Street, Recto Avenue and Quezon Boulevard, the Manila City Jail is the Old Bilibid Prison constructed by the Spanish government during the 1800’s. It was the Philippines’ national penitentiary until the prewar when the Muntinlupa-based New Bilibid Prison opened its penal doors. Then, the Japanese Occupation of the Open City made the Old Bilibid the house of prisoners of war. When most prisoners were transferred to the New Bilibid, the Old Bilibid complex was entrusted to the city of Manila which turned the Old Bilibid into the Manila City Jail. Its current warden is Jail Supt. Renato Gacutan.
From the LRT-2 vantage point, one may see the rusty gates of the MCJ. The walls encircling the MCJ probably reach 25-30 feet high. Apart from the visible mosque inside, there is the main office in the middle and nine other towers surrounding the MCJ. Guards are loitering outside the middle watchtower, which makes them somewhat visible, while many others are staying within the office. There is a guard walking around the perimeter wall. According to the guard based in LRT-2 Recto Station, prisoners go out every time they get their food and gleaning from the prisoners allowed to talk with one another and wander outside, it must be mealtime. There are also makeshift houses inside the jail called barracks which the prisoners built so their visitors can stay when they visit.
Originally erected to house 1,000 prisoners, the MCJ presently crams about 5,300 inmates on a 1.2-hectare facility, making the quintuple overcapacity rate among the worst over-congestions in the country’s notoriously-conditioned jail facilities. What is worse apart from the building’s decrepitude, the facilities are needing major repairs, the staff are lacking and the huge multitude of prisoners endure standing the whole day because the physics-defying absence of space does not allow inmates to sit or slump on the floor. The 5,300 prisoners of the MCJ are legally classified as detention prisoners, city prisoners and youth offenders. These prisoners, whether undergoing trial or convicted, are mixed heterogeneously in the MCJ. The MCJ has four major compounds containing four groups separated by ethnicity and gender. The males and the females are housed separately, but the juvenile delinquents share houses with the adult prisoners, and so do the mentally ill with the mentally sound as well as the physically sick with the physically healthy, as opposed to the United Nations Standard for Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. All the compounds are segregated from one another by fences and walls and have a main hall and a main dormitory with bare facilities. The women’s dorm may be found on the gate’s left side next to the Medical Infirmary while the men’s are behind the Paralegal Office just beyond the Administration Office, Rehabilitation Office and Operations. Each dormitory is cramped and poorly-lit and –ventilated, which makes it scorching hot for most of the times and malodorous despite scrubbing of strong disinfectants. Hence, inmates are susceptible to tuberculosis and skin diseases like boils, infections and different allergies. While rich inmates have condominiums or spaces separating them from other inmates by wooden walls and less rich ones have apartments which they share with one to three others, poor ones ordinarily sleep on floors with no beddings at all except rice or flour sacks or newspapers and, rarely, pillows and blankets. It is harrowing that inmates go on shifting whenever they sleep on the uncovered floors. Also, these inmates subsist on a 35-peso budget allowance on three-meal food and sanitation apart from the allocation for drinking water, which is scarce due to malfunctioning pipelines. Prison food is usually composed of rice and cheap viands like canned sardines but when donations come during, say, Christmas time, there are canned meat and vegetable stew. The usual food supply, owing to limitations in both number and nutritional value, is rice mixed with sardines prepared from a cauldron. These inmates are scantly removed from the noisy city life with the MCJ’s placement near two shopping malls (Isetann and Odeon) and stores, railway stations, major thoroughfares and a university (Far Eastern University), making it seem oblivious to the idea of tucking criminals away from the hustle and bustle of the society in order to rehabilitate and reform them. However, as this study will testify, this placement of the MCJ in the web of social landmarks is strategic rather than erratic.
The Manila City Jail is a fine example of Michel Foucault’s study of the modern penal system in Discipline and Punish. It may be analyzed to prove that in the milieu of the City of Manila, the Foucauldian concept of punishment exists. True, the key punishments of public execution and corporal punishment as well as the ceremonial torture directed at the criminal’s body during investigations have been reduced to symbols but the MCJ, like any other penal colony, may be considered public spectacles meant to reaffirm the power of the police authority. As such, the reform for punishment from the bodily torture to the publicly displayed theater of a jail is less for the prisoner’s welfare than for the efficient operation of power. The possibility of languishing in the City Jail serves as Manila residents’ hindrance to lawbreaking.
Manila is a far cry from the punitive cities of old where public executions used to be staged. Disciplines proved to be a crucial element in this difference. In MCJ, discipline is used as a pattern of techniques to control its prisoners’ bodily operation. By their imprisonment, the MCJ prisoners have forced, mechanized movements in order to limit their experience of time and space. The duration of their conviction in MCJ serves as their timetable device, their routinary prisoner roll call serves as their military drill device, and their prison exercise is meant to create individuals out of their nameless mass. MCJ prisoners undergo exercise with their attempt to impose progressively complicated activities on their body in order to regulate it. They perform drills and engage in physical training.
Discipline is employed by the prison administrators in order to control the prisoners’ movement and operation constantly. It is via discipline that entire populations are controlled, and is the same technique that works in regulating the populace of Manila. It was revealed that prisoners are so afraid of jail guards because one inmate so much as approached the gate and that inmate got a vigorous blow at the back by the infuriated jail guard.
The MCJ in particular and the City of Manila in general cannot have existed in the absence of the idea of mass regulation of movement and people. The MCJ exemplifies the disciplinary power of hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment and examination, which are instrumentalized by the MCJ’s guards’ and the public’s observation and gaze. Hence, the prisoners as well as the entire city get normalized. Norm is the average standard from the human sciences that measures people and since the MCJ prisoners fall short of the normal sane, law abiding, and obedient citizens, they exist as abnormal for their criminality and deviance. The norm of Manilans may be set against the MCJ prisoners’ deviance in order to assess and control the former’s categories and, in effect, to make the latter conform to normal and decrease the rate at which inescapable, harmful deviance emerges.
The MCJ patterns itself from the panopticon wherein the prisoners are shown to be supervised and regulated with efficiency via the main tower of an office in the center of MCJ. In this prison, the Foucauldian idea of discipline works. Its prisoners are obviously deprived of their freedom to live in the mainstream society of Manila and are being reformed while inside the City Jail. They also undergo the penitentiary wherein their imprisonment gets infused with the hospital by virtue of the process of rehabilitation inside the jail and the workshop by virtue of the process of rendering labor. The penitentiary of the MCJ more than just deprives the prisoners’ freedom by rendering them to work, and by being observed and treated in the prison hospital. Foucauldian concept of prison system incorporates workshop, prison and hospital. Afterwards, they will undergo the delinquent, which is created by the jail to weed out the prisoners’ popular behavior by responding to the modifications in the prisoners’ misconduct. There may be the inherent failure of prisons like the MCJ, but this failure in combination with operation makes the carceral system of MCJ. The carceral system of the MCJ shows its architecture, its controlling mechanisms and its employees. MCJ’s carceral system moves from there to the mainstream Manila society, proven by the network of power in the forms of the transport system, the academe, and the businesses. Its elements are the discipline of the MCJ, the formulation of the logical technique for administering its prisoners, the rise of criminality in the society and the reform strategies. Hence, this system and MCJ itself aim to generate delinquency in the prisoners in order to structure and regulate crime. After becoming a prisoner, the MCJ inmate becomes a delinquent, fashioned out of the operation of the carceral system and the human sciences and severely divided from other popular illegal activities. The MCJ delinquent is integral to the tiny, toughened group of criminals that is associated with the low class. Being defined as abnormal, he is analyzed and regulated by the mechanisms of MCJ. As a delinquent, the MCJ inmate is easier to observe and regulate than the criminal and is obviously separated from the rest of Manila society. The delinquents of MCJ are more manageable than their alternatives of criminals hanging around the city because they are easily identified. They figure as an answer to the dangers of the lower classes, which are too many to be categorized, much less deal with. With how delinquency works in MCJ, the administrators succeed. MCJ’s interspersion in the power network that includes the pedagogical institution of the Far Eastern University among others in the university belt, the transportation institutions of the Light Rail Transit-2 and jeepneys plying in the Recto, Avenida and Quezon Boulevard areas, the commercial institutions of the Isetann Mall and Odeon Mall, the printshops, the Divisoria stalls and the fly-by-night pirates, and the sovereign power of the Malacañang Palace is a societal strategy that establishes MCJ’s real function and underpins itself in the Manila’s modern society. As such, the discourse in which MCJ figures makes the prison central to the idea of punishment since it cannot be abolished, lacking any alternative for MCJ.
It is understandable that MCJ’s institutional origin harks back to the Spanish Colonial period, which was itself informed by the mother colonizer’s exposure to the modern world’s generation of typical institutions and structures, along with the human sciences and regulatory mechanisms like psychology, psychiatry, sociology, criminology and medicine, all of which form a constellation of power which defines and control human behavior through norms and its opposite, deviation. Penality is used by the MCJ as a specific system of investigation and punishment. In this system, the MCJ prisoners, being lawbreakers, are examined and treated. The MCJ’s prison and the supervision and regulation of the convicts are the very basis of Manila district’s system of penality. Meanwhile, the Foucauldian concept of power, the relationship between individuals wherein one influences another’s behavior, may be seen in the MCJ setup. The ones with power in MCJ, the jail personnel, restrict and change the prisoners’ will in order to make these formerly free people do what they would never do otherwise. In the MCJ setup, this is the existing human relationship that is relatively stable and unchangeable. The action of punishment is the established power of the dominant personnel over the prisoners. Since human sciences are being applied in the MCJ, they possess knowledge and power which enable them to control and exclude people. The delinquents of the MCJ are the dominated in the system of power relations within. They suffer exclusion because the power of human sciences being applied in MCJ generates a claim to truth: the prisoners prove to be anomalies to the norm that exists in Manila society by virtue of the socially harmful crimes that they committed.
Considering that such committed crimes are plagues to the modern society of Manila, the MCJ is the institution in which measures are being taken: the jail spaces are partitioned and this large house is closed off from the rest of Manila, with the MCJ personnel constantly inspecting and registering the prisoners. Within MCJ, processes of behavioral quarantine and purification take place, a means for the plague of crime to be met by order aimed at creating a disciplined community. The sets of techniques being applied in MCJ for measuring and observing the prisoners are the disciplinary mechanisms spawned by the fear of criminal acts. One such mechanism is MCJ’s own panopticon, the building whose central tower is the vantage point at which incarcerated prisoners may be viewed. The prisoner’ visibility is a trap since they are seen but cannot communicate with other prisoners, much less their warders. This sense of perpetual visibility created by the panopticon is meant to ensure the operation of MCJ’s power. The prisoners may see the tower but the power of which cannot be verified because they do not know from which point they are being viewed. This laboratory of power wherein experiments function over prisoners is a model of defined power relations between the MCJ personnel and prisoners in their daily interaction within the prison. It is a diagram of power whose operation is idealized because all the prisoners can be controlled but only a few MCJ staff are needed to make the panopticon function. This architectural design is meant to give the staff power over the prisoner’s minds. Hence, there is less risk of tyrannical jaibreak on the part of the prisoners because they can be inspected from atop the tower. Since power emanating from the MCJ panopticon proves efficient, it helps in the development of the economy by making businesses in the Divisoria area possible, it spreads education with the rise of the University Belt, among other social developments. The MCJ panopticon symbolizes the subordination of prisoners’ bodies while needing neither the Manila mayor’s office nor the Malacañang Palace in its midst.
The MCJ’s panopticon symbolizes the manner wherein discipline and punishment operate in modern Manila. By looking at it, one sees the way processes of observation and examination function in this diagram of power. The concept of discipline wherein all prisoners are supervised and analyzed is represented in the MCJ panopticon which makes the supervision and analysis easy to conduct. This building develops out of the necessity for observation of the criminals. Criminal measures within the MCJ are necessary to protect Manila because its panopticon permits power to operate economically owing to its functional, permanent building. In the MCJ community, discipline is based on observation and examination, the methods of coercion that oversee the whole of prison colony. The MCJ Main Office, situated in the center of the complex, oversees the prisoners who, surprisingly, are not punished for chatting with one another while being allowed to flow out for the mealtime, even with the loitering guards in view.
It is not accidental that Manila, a relatively urban society, offers greater opportunities for control and observation than, say, less sophisticated societies in the Philippine countryside. This modern society is assumed to see Manilans as free citizens entitled to make specific demands on the city officials. It may be best understood with the mechanisms (i.e. MCJ) that also regulate and examine Manila citizens. This examination is spread out in the vicinity of the MCJ, itself an examining institution for prisoners. Universities in the U-Belt area, for instance, resemble the MCJ in terms of their examination of the collegiate students who are categorized as individuals and are made to conform to the existing norm in Manila. It must be pointed out that these students spend the formative years of their lives in their universities, hence their normative behavior. This is not to mention that these universities, along with hospitals and factories, look architecturally similar to the observational modern penal instrument that the MCJ is.
This integration of the MCJ into the Manila society of academes, businesses, transport systems and sovereign power is significant because abolishing the prison is unimaginable in consideration of its deep-rooted attachment in society. Granted that prisons get abolished, Manila cannot resort to practical alternatives because punishing the criminals of Manila centers on imprisoning them. The complicated institution of the MCJ is an extension of the mechanisms of supervision and examination operating beyond its walls, i.e. Far Eastern University. In the MCJ, the prisoners’ behaviors get recorded, their mental condition evaluated, and the abnormality studied, not to mention that they are constantly supervised. The MCJ’s foremost aim, it must be remembered, is to wrest away its prisoners’ freedom, with the secondary aims of reforming their characters via exercise, workshop and training. This shows why the MCJ is a penitentiary where the combination of the various operations of workshop engages prisoners with the system of production in order to maximize prison power. This economization of the MCJ prisoners’ functioning redefines them from being prisoners to delinquents. This modification calls for the individuals’ becoming the subjects of knowledge, which is what the penitentiary is also about. They are observed and classified through the particular technical means of criminology, so the MCJ prisoners are entangled in the complex relationship between MCJ’s disciplinary power and the knowledge it spawns.
The MCJ, however, is not quite successful as a penal remedy. It fails at reforming delinquency but the carceral system reorganizes knowledge about crime instead of eliminating it. The concept that MCJ contains its own failure is a decided paradox, then, because the technique was still adopted and the prison remains existent rather than abolished. The MCJ is like a psychiatric institution in marking out and isolating the abnormal or lawbreaking elements of Manila. In performing this, it produces the prisoners that can be regulated for various uses by the state. This is not to say that MCJ only creates crime but that this illegality on the part of the prisoners justifies the existence of the carceral system. The prisoners’ behaviors which violate the law must be controlled through delinquency. Since a delinquent is less illegal compared to a criminal, delinquents in the MCJ may be easily identified and regulated using the similar techniques functioning in the rest of the society, thereby power struggle may be resolved in the form of the wider system of discipline that’s the prison and the carceral system.
The MCJ is a site where the prison, the penitentiary and the carceral system are strung in their respective places. Specifically, the carceral system goes beyond the walls of MCJ in order to link the prison to the rest of Manila by a network of academic, transport, corporate and state power which molds everybody’s life in Manila. Why the strategy of placing MCJ in the midst of this network of power? Foucault’s bathe-and-switch gives the answer. In this manner, the penitentiary was established to rehabilitate the criminals in order to decrease the crime rate. The people, in this case Manilans, do not raise a ruckus out of it by trusting that the advocates of penitentiary will deliver their goals. The failure lies in continued manufacturing of criminals in and outside the jail. Without these outlaws, however, governance will hardly exist. Therefore, it is necessary for this institution to fail because with its remedial techniques, there will be constituency which can impose all kinds of governance. This makes the carceral system powerful. Taken as a whole, the MCJ is thus architecturally structured and strategically operated in order to make the inmates behave in such a way that they will be disciplined and reformed. The MCJ and its relationship with the entire Manila society are indispensable owing to the prison’s close integration to the city. As MCJ proves, the prison is not a forgotten building sitting at the margins of the city. The strategies of power and knowledge actually function in both MCJ and Manila since the mechanism regulating the delinquent likewise controls the citizens. Since crime is a result of civilization, bearing within it a figure and a future, the penitentiary is a manner at which the undesirable may be excluded. The contradiction of the whole lot affirms that crime has the possibility of wielding itself against the civilization that generated it.

home, sick, home

Entering the portal of university life makes perfect sense to me. This advances my best foot in the course of realization of my dream. Beyond that door beckons my earnest childhood aspiration to be somebody, and with this goal, other positive signs in the offing immediately lure my vision: higher educational insights and philosophies, more permanent values and friends, lucrative opportunities left and right, a lifetime partner perhaps.
Meanwhile, it vividly occurs to me that university life is not at all a bed of roses. I consider from the very beginning that eventually, problems will thrive as much as, if not greater than, blessings. While I pass through the main gate of the university, I instantly experience many ordeals which may render myself a big loser if such challenges surmount me. Take that absurd feeling termed homesickness, for instance.
Homesickness is a nasty syndrome in the university that incessantly strikes most of my fellow college freshmen, sometimes even old students, who hail from distant places like Isabela, Aurora, Pampanga, or Tarlac and who decide to live inside or near the campus for the mean time. During their first week (months if worse) or stay either in dormitories or in boarding houses, these newcomers go restless and lonely because of the altered home atmosphere. They have no mother to cook and to do the laundry for them, no father to ask additional allowance from, and no personal room in which to perform private rituals separately. More likely, they never readily receive the warm, loving care or their stranger and often snobbish of quarrelsome roommates. They find their seldom—cleaned surroundings rather unfit for absorbing everyday lessons in school, much more for living. In the long run, all of them get too homesick, prepare to pack their effects up and flee at once to their homes.
In my own case wherein I presently reside several miles away from my hiding place, I have gradually learned to adapt to my totally new environment. Like anyone else, I have considered it difficult at first to fight the urge of returning early to my parents’ arms. I may have not reached the alarming point of wailing and regressing because I miss my family terribly; just the same, I have mused that I solely belong to my former world. What strategies have later helped me beat vulnerability?
I have preoccupied myself in studies. Whenever anxiety sets in, I run my eyes over my previous lessons, try writing, or work on tomorrow’s assignment. Also, I participate actively in class to forget sentimentality a while. I do not attempt to be unfeeling of anything; I only want to cast off the premature arrest of familial missing. After all, studying is all I am here for, so I ready myself for my future through studying hard.
Likewise, I have enriched the social being in me. I have become acquainted with campus figures of all sorts: classmates, dorm mates, friends of my colleagues, professors, student officers, even university officials, all of whom have boosted my morale in one way or another. Breaking free from my shell, I have made friends with good, interesting people who have initially filled the void created by the absence of my kindred love one’s.
I get involved in worthwhile endeavors. If not busy, I promenade with friends inside the campus and enjoy its natural beauty. I also commit myself to recreational activities such as playing indoor games. Frequently, I just read current events articles to broaden my young horizon. Through all these, I have eased myself from enfeebling homesickness.
Finally, I have adjusted gracefully in day-to-day situations. My various traits have mixed well with those of others, withstanding alienation on my part or on theirs. Cite an example: if friends invite me for a stroll to this location or that, I nod sans hesitations, or, if I deem the walk purposeless or I have to attend to other priorities, I decline politely. This way, I will be endeared to them, as they to me, then drawing out the family in my friends.
Once, I came across with the children’s fiction A Little Princess from which I paraphrased the following: it will not take long when a faraway student will grow and be able to reunite with his benefactor. Similarly, I will count a few years, end my temporal stay and come back to my parents. By that time, I shall have thoroughly overcome homesickness, have fully equipped myself for my competitive career and have provided complete meaning to my university life.

through the stomach

I’m spilled between writing a poem and
Fixing dinner.
My organic drive to feed myself
Commands me, with great urgency,
To prepare tinola.
So I dress the chicken,
Cut it into parts,
Sauté garlic, onion and ginger
In a pan.
I slice papaya in dices,
Pick on chili leaves,
Letting the broth boil meanwhile.
But something gets in the way:
You fill my mind,
And I dish out the choicest words
To brew my specialty.
I grab the pen,
Then begin to pitch ingredients
Of the ode in paper.
A little and soon,
I’m through cooking up
This poem
For the spice of my life.
Here I serve,
Have a taste.

modifying the nicene creed

Traditional Wording
I believe in one God,
the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only begotten Son of God,
begotten of his Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light,
very God of very God,
begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father;
by whom all things were made;
who for us men and for our salvation
came down from heaven,
and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost
of the Virgin Mary,
and was made man;
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried;
and the third day he rose again
according to the Scriptures,
and ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;
and he shall come again, with glory,
to judge both the quick and the dead;
whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, and Giver of Life,
who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son];
who with the Father and the Son together
is worshipped and glorified;
who spake by the Prophets.
And I believe one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church;
I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
and I look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. AMEN.

Personal Wording
We believe in one God,
the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only begotten Son of God,
begotten of His Father
God of God, Light of Light,
true God of true God,
begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father;
by Whom all things were made;
Who for us men and for our salvation
came down from heaven,
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit
from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man;
for our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered death and was buried
and the third day He rose again
according to the Scriptures,
and ascended into heaven,
and is seated on the right hand of the Father;
and He shall come again, with glory,
to judge both the living and the dead;
Whose kingdom shall have no end.
And We believe in the Holy Spirit the Lord, and Giver of Life,
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son;
Who with the Father and the Son together
is worshipped and glorified;
who has spoken through the Prophets.
And We acknowledge one holy Catholic Church;
We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
and We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. AMEN.

The Nicene Creed, for starters, is an output of a Catholic congregation purposed at signifying the Church’ faith in God. Being a consolidated product of many unified minds and beliefs, it is already ideal, proven by the scant revision of the original creed in accordance to the needs of the changing times. While it is considerably complete, I find that there is still a room for improvement, hence my personalized version of the creed.
Even as I managed to revise just a few things in the oath of belief in Christ, I also retained most and even borrowed from the original to be inserted in the modern version. The foregoing is a categorical explanation of my personalized creed:
Instead of the word “I,” I used “We” in order to signify the oneness of the pious Catholics in their declaration of belief in God. “I” is too individualistic, while “We” responds to the idea that a gathering of faithful invokes the presence of the Lord. “We” is also a reference to the Church of Christ, that it exists only when they are gathered together.
All the references to the divine were also capitalized not only for grammatical purposes but also for the signification of the great importance of God. Words like “Maker,” “His,” “Whom” and other nouns and pronouns alluding to God are capitalized as a personal sign of reverence to the Lord. God is my Creator, so I treat him with specialty by raising Him notches above ordinary persons or things.
The retention of the word “one” that serves as a reference to God is a sign that I recognize the foremost commandment of having only one God. It fortifies the concept that there is no other God except for the Triune God. The mention of the word “Triune” should not cause a confusion of three being equated to one, however mathematically controversial, because the equation is supposed to call to mind the notion of the divine mystery.
The retention of “heaven and earth” without any addition of concepts like hell, purgatory or limbo is intentional because the first two ideas are reminiscent of the story of Genesis, the first book of the Bible which records God’s true words. The last three concepts are unmentioned because hell is created by God only for the ultimate place of punishment for Satan whereas purgatory and limbo exist outside the Bible.
The repetition of words like “begotten,” “true” and, most especially, “believe” is for emphasis. The stress is to create the idea of importance of these words in relation to the words they appear in context with.
The contrast with which the word “made” appears twice in the creed is to show that God cannot have been made because God has no beginning or end (for the first time the words appears) and to show that instead of having been created, it is God who creates things (in the case of the second time the word appears). The first “made” is also fortified by the description that God is “of one substance with the Father,” that they are one and the same in being Alpha and Omega (the beginning and the end). Apart from the idea that they cannot have been created by some higher God (which makes them the Supreme God), the description shows that God the Father and God the Son are one and the same.
The retention of Jesus Christ’ descent from heaven and incarnation of the Holy Spirit through the Virgin Mary complements the Biblical proofs of God’s great love for the world that this merited the Son’s response of sacrifice of becoming a flesh-and-bone human (via the human medium that’s Mary), as made possible by the third segment of the divine mystery: the Holy Spirit. It is noteworthy that Mary’s representation does not go to the extent of eliciting faith in her because one, she is only a human although an extraordinary one at that for being sinless and, most importantly, she does not share equal footing with the Lord, as some misled Marian fanatics think and practice. This puts Mary in place with holy persons like saints but not in similar rank as God, in accordance to the first commandment.
Te mention of the words “suffered death” after the crucifixion of Jesus under Pontius Pilate goes well with my belief that God has a human side: he not only felt anguish but also experienced death, much like the rest of the humanity. It is also a recognition of the fulfillment of the promise of salvation—that Jesus must die (and eventually rise again after the third day) in order to redeem all of us believers.
The retention of the ideas of Jesus’ ascension and sitting next to God is an investment of faith in the Bible which is the source of God’s truth and an acknowledgment of God the Son’s equality to God the Father, whom Jesus joins to judge humanity on Judgment Day.
The change of “Ghost” to “Spirit” is to lend contemporariness of the term. Retaining the word “ghost” might cause confusion of that word to its synonym “phantom,” whereas “Spirit” is a more acceptable term in our modern context. The retention of the idea of “Spirit” is the acknowledgment of God the Holy Spirit’s equality with God the Father and God the Son. This oneness or equality is further strengthened by the mention of “who with the Father and the Son together/is worshipped and glorified.”
The change of the word “believe” into “acknowledge” which runs along with “one holy Catholic Church” is to set the Lord apart from His earthly body that’s the Church because investing faith in the Church runs the danger of making a deity out of the Church. Since evil uses trickery at all cost in order to lead astray the unwary, even the Catholic Church is not spared from being used to lead the faithful from worshipping God alone. In other words, there is a risk that fanatics might put their belief in the Church instead of putting faith in God. Acknowledgment is a more neutral term, something that can also work in the case of the Virgin Mary who should not be treated as God but should be taken especially as well as the roster of saints.
The little changes I made for both the original and modern versions of the creed point to my recognition of it as already an ideal manifesto of belief in the one true God. I believe that those changes not only provide an insight into my personal faith but also attest to my oneness with the body of Christ with regards to believing God.

a comparative analysis of edmund spenser’s sonnet # 15 and ben jonson’s song: to celia using thematological approach

The Literatures of the English Renaissance and the Seventeenth-Century Period of the Sons of Ben
Historical Context:
The world during the fifteenth century was a witness to a numerous burst of new discoveries and colonization in what was known as the New World. Columbus of Genoa made his maiden voyage of his discovery for Spain in 1492. After four years, the English citizen Cabot reached the North American shoreline. Later still, Amerigo Vespucci got in touch with South America. Open enterprise with Asian Empires like China, India and Persia took roots. The men and women of Europe were throwing away antique rules and experimenting on new things, discrediting long-standing beliefs and concepts in science, philosophy, politics and religion. Around 1530, Copernicus proclaimed his belief of a heliocentric cosmos, whereas Earth is only one of the planets orbiting the sun. Galileo awed the general populace with his discoveries like the telescope. Gunpowder seized its place as a replacement of bow and arrow, and sword and shield. The invention of printing by Germany’s Johann Gutenberg broke fresh grounds for a faster spread of new learning. Ignited by political discontent, the Protestant Reformation swept through Europe at-large, spawning recurrent battles between and religious persecution on European countries whose leaders carried contrasting convictions.
From 1485 to 1625, English life underwent dramatic changes. The feudal systems vanished and overseas commerce transfigured England into a rich, power-wielding nation. The English navy became ranked among the planet’s most formidable military forces and, via exploration and colonization, especially after it vanquished the Spanish Armada, Britain progressed into an enormous, swiftly expanding empire. Also during this period, English religiosity suffered a major facelift. Reluctant to concede to the Pope’s verdict not to permit him to divorce his wife, King Henry VIII sheared the country’s binding tie with the Roman Catholic Church and founded the Church of England, declaring himself the forerunner of the church.
The period that followed (1625-1660) still saw the world in an earnest unrest, foretelling changes that were being borne out of rubble. The victory of the modern scientific atmosphere in the seventeenth century is symbolized by the founding of Royal Society during the period. Various colonies and schools including Harvard University in 1636 were founded. In Japan, all Europeans were expelled in an effort to shut itself from the west. China’s Ming Dynasty culminated in 1644 and in France, many in writing was published, from Corneile’s Le Cid to Descartes’ Principia Philosophicae to Moliere’s The Flying Doctor.
The Seventeenth-Century England, much like the period preceding it, experienced terrible political and religious upheaval. Shortly after assuming the throne in 1625, Charles I struggled for power against the Parliament, whose members fiercely resisted his efforts to weaken Parliament authority. Charles initiated invariable suppression of Puritans. This controversy gave birth to a civil war that commenced in 1642 and suffered temporary monarchial meltdown in 1649. A Puritan Parliament member, Oliver Cromwell, ruled England for nine years before his death in 1658, passing on the leadership to his son Richard, who was rather ineffective, so the monarchy was restored in 1660.
Literary Movements
English Literature of 1484-1625 came in full flower when a cultural movement known as the Renaissance (14th –century Italy-originating revival of Classical Greco-Roman-inspired literary, artistic and intellectual blossoming) swept through the European continent, jumping its way across the channel into England. As a response to Renaissance, Queen Elizabeth I extended active support to education, science, the arts and the humanities. Her encouragement helped to crystallize tremendous number of scholarship and literary activity. With influences from the classical works of ancient Rome and Greece, writers harnessed new literary heights and generated some of the most sterling works Britain has ever produced.
On the other hand, the writers from the period 1625-1660 can be delineated vitally into two divisions: the metaphysical poets and the Sons of Ben. A group comprising John Donne and many of his protégés, the metaphysical poets are renowned for their intellectual verse injected with complicated, intricate, and striking similarities. In opposition, the Sons of Ben, led by the influence Ben Jonson, are popular for their delicate, clever, and elegant poetry. Nevertheless, John Milton, perhaps the most important writer of the period, did not suit either of these divisions. Drawing upon array of literary traditions, Milton composed a plethora of different kinds of masterpieces.
Writers’ Techniques:
The most significant progress of the English Renaissance belonged to the genres of poetry and drama. Shying away from the epics of the Medieval Ages, poets invented a new poetic form, the lyric. Lyrics are short, tightly structured poems in which the speaker wholly centers on conveying his or her thoughts or emotions. Frequently during this period, lyrics were composed in sonnet form, and they often dealt with the subject of love. Sonnets were frequently written in patterns and were quite teeming with vibrant, musical language. Written in meticulously crafted verse, these dramas dig into complex themes and characters, often delving into human nature’s significant insights.
Among the metaphysical poets, the conceit, a specifically striking kind of metaphor, was a famous literary device. Inflamed by ancient Greco-Roman masterpieces, The Sons of Ben depended on classical poetic forms and often used allusions in their works. Milton, meanwhile, made vast utility of metaphors and allusions alike.
Edmund Spenser: The Poet’s Poet
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), the “poet’s poet,” is among Elizabethan times’ greatest poetic geniuses, alongside Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. An imaginative innovator of versed forms, he introduced the Spenserian stanza and the Spenserian sonnet, which powerfully smoldered the poets in his following.
The Faerie Queene, a lengthy romance-epic allegory based on the story of a 12-day celebration in the Queen of the Fairyland’s (Elizabeth I) honor, built Spencer’s dignity as the leading poet among his contemporaries. Commemorative of his wife Elizabeth Boyle, his sonnet sequence Amoretti (meaning “little cupid” or “little love of poems”) is unique in the English Renaissance for alluding to Spenser’s beloved.
Ben Jonson: The Literary Dictator
Ben Jonson (1572-1637), hailed as the literary dictator of the bright circle of dramatists at Saint James’ court, was a poet, dramatist, critic, and a song writer. He was the original English dramatist to publish his play. As an astute lyricist, he was superbly admired by his readers.
A limitlessly energetic and heavily courageous large man whose life story is the perfect tale of rags to riches, Jonson was the prime rival in drama and lyric of his friends William Shakespeare and Jonson Donne. From being a brick layer, he rose to become a classical scholar, an excellent prose stylist, an arbiter of “taste,” and a skillful translator. However, he lived a turbulent life: he was hauled behind bars one time for working on a slanderous and seditious play, almost executed for slaying a fellow actor, and suspected of plotting to kill King James I.
A number of the most brilliant and finest young courtly writers hovered around Jonson and tagged themselves the “Sons” or “Tribe or Ben,” among whom were Robert Herrick and John Suckling. Jonson’s first-hand influence extended beyond these poets to the close of the Seventeenth Century, into the Eighteenth, and in fact, is still making waves nowadays.
A Comparative Analysis of Edmund Spenser’s Sonnet # 15 And Ben Jonson’s Song: To Celia Using Thematological Approach
Below is one of Renaissance-trained Spenser’s many notable sonnets juxtaposed with quasi-poet laureate Jonson’s song for a comparative study:
Sonnet # 15
Edmund Spenser (ca. 1552-1599)
Ye tadefull merchants, that with weary toyle
Do seeke most pretious things to make your gain,
And both the Indias of their treasure spoile,
What needeth you to seek so farre in vaine?
For loe my love doth in her selfe containe
All this world’s riches that may farre be found.
If saphyres, loe her eies be saphyres plaine:
If rubies, loe her lips be rubies found:
If pearles, her teeth be pearles both pure and round.
If yvorie, her forehead yvorie weene;
If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;
If silver, her faire hands and silvery sheene.
But that which fairest is, but few behold:
Her mind adorned with verteus manifold.

Song: To Celia
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine
But might I Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou thereon didst only breathe
And sent it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.

Edmund Spenser’s Sonnet # 15 and Ben Jonson Song: To Celia both imparts the idea that one can find genuine treasure in one’s love. Reasons and textual proofs from the two poems being compared are as follows:
Genuine treasure is not about literal and material wealth, or is an end product of pursuit and the eventual possession of material wealth. Material treasure will soon vanish although one exhausts all his efforts to find and keep it, rendering the travails futile. The first four lines in Spenser’s sonnet mock the pointless (because impermanently rewarding) attempt of merchants to explore the vast richness of the historically-chronicled uncharted Indias: the El Dorado-fabled South American continent of the West and the Indian subcontinent of the East. Deluded that their precious spoils (oxymoronic pun intended) would last them a lifetime, these merchant struggled fierily to seek and hoard them, whereas these would sooner or later vanish in one regretful way or another. Meanwhile, the wine and the Classical Roman chief god Jove’s nectar sup referred to in Jonson’s song’s fourth and seventh lines are well-covered material treasures that, after being sipped empty from a kiss-laced cup and causing temporal ecstasy on the taker’s part, would vaporized as soon as he got over from his hangover, which lasted no more than a day. Wine’s availability is out of the question, but Jove’s nectar sup is one mythical fantasy that is as fictional and as scarce as alchemy’s philosopher’s stone, meaning seeking for it is to no avail. These manifestations of material wealth in the two poems are, ironically, enormously immaterial to the pursuit of the true happiness, and toiling to find and keep these forms of treasure is an exercise in futility.
Non-material treasure such as that epitomized by one’s love is forever, which is to say that the hard work of finding and keeping the love one is largely compensated by the everlasting happiness and gratification brought about by the experience of loving (and being loved in return). The remaining lines of the Spenser’s sonnet (lines 5-14)—a wonderful unrestrained outpouring of Spenser’s innermost passion for the beloved addressee—literally likened the bodily parts of the love to gems of fantastic fabulousness: eyes like sapphires, lips like rubies, teeth like pearls, forehead like ivory, trees like gold, and of silver fairness. More than the analogous comparison, the physical loveliness described by the persona was gloriously capped with many-splendored virtues deep-seated in the love one’s mind. As long as the beloved lived and after she succumbed to earthly death, the beloved’s beauty would persist, because ephemeral as her life was, permanent was the impact her beauty created, a condition which prompted the poet to immortalize her in his rhapsodic sonnet. She was his love already, and becoming his love justified the better state of finding her than finding volatile treasure because she was joy—eliciting summum bonum—the greatest thing in the world. Similarly, the outburst of feeling of love in Jonson’s sonnet pointed to that permanent and satisfactory happiness originating from the beloved Celia: her eyes (line 1) and kiss (line 3) that were equal in proportion to a divine drink (line 8), and the requited symbolic love (line 9-16), all of which non-material treasure enriched the persona’s attitude toward his feelings, so much so that he would not trade his love experience for anything considerably less when juxtaposed to that summum bonum. The real treasure, the returned love which emanated bigger joy than drinks, transcended overtime.
Between material and non-material treasure, the latter is the real treasure since the overwhelming love experience cannot be substituted to artificial happiness offered by volatile riches. Both the poems imply the higher quality of the non-material treasure than material treasure. One may source out all the wealth-envy of the world, but even as he is separated from it in death, it can fade away faster than a blink of an eye. The fruit of all labors throughout a whole worldly passing may disintegrated instantly, and how worse can you label that experience but vain and unrewarding? Bringing the material treasure to the next higher level, godly drink or earthly drink of heavenly magnitude, it is no less futile and non-motivating than keeping jewelry or money, but all the same no more fulfilling than that which can be gotten when non-material treasure like love experienced is concerned.
Love in its truest form, coming from lover or the beloved, is never superficial even as for the life of either, he or she dies and lays forgotten (every so often). The fullness of their love has achieved a footing, be the time as long as their mortality will allow or as brief as a minute; the experience is a non-material treasure that cannot pass for the most prized possession in the universe. The permanence of this richness of lovers’ passion seeks it way to literary pieces or better yet, in human memoirs. Real wealth lends them life.
The poems under study intend to ascertain the truisms of material vs. non-material treasure, symbol vs. non-symbol, and permanence vs. impermanence. Of course, human experience such as love subjected in the lyrics is more significant than material objects with neither life nor emotion.
Thematological Conclusion:
The English Renaissance and the Seventeenth Century period of the Sons of Ben generated what are considered the most splendid love-themed lyric poems of all time. The historical context in which these poems’ writers lived proved that their tumultuous eras became years of world charting, colonization, socio-political and cultural upheavals, rebirth and reformation because the humanity at-large tried hard to discover the truth was the challenge of conventional notions regarding beauty, symbol, faith, permanence, science, philosophy and justice as attested by the literature produced during those inchoate times, the two poems included. While the theme of love in literature is universal one because love is what all good literatures expound, these themes was especially explored during the English Renaissance and the period immediately succeeding it, because the bastion of Western civilization was being reborn, and the rest of the planet was rapidly becoming the exotic place in which to chance upon and uphold the cause of happiness—be it truth, beauty, goodness, or love—that had been elusive to human beings all along.

Bibliography:
Babusci, Roger, et al. Prentice Hall Literature: The English Experience. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, 1989.

Garcia, J. Niel C. “Philippine Gay Literature.” In Filipiniana Reader. Edited by Legasto, Priscelina, P. Quezon City: OASIS, University of the Philippines Open University, 1998.

Hitchcock, Alfred M., Composition and Rhetoric. New York: Henry Hold and Co., 1925.

Ilas, Sara C., et al. A Subtreasury of World Literature. Quezon City: Phoenix Press, 1985.

Pensacola Christian College. Backgrounds to World Literature. Pensacola, Florida: Pensacola Christian College, 1992.

__________.Masterpieces from World Literature. Pensacola, Florida: Pensacola Christian College, 1992.

Ribo, Lourdes M., et al. Language in Literature 3: Anglo-American Synthesis. Quezon City: Vibal Publishing House, 1998.

peggling mode

Indeed, playing the computer game Peggle is an experience not to be missed. At first, there seems to be nothing special with the game that’s just like an upgraded version of the Pinball of my childhood. However, the lively background music, the vivid graphics of the two-dimensional design, and the simplicity of the goal of firing a ball to clear all pegs for the next level are the game’s major attractions. What’s more, when all the orange pegs are hit before all the balls are used up, drum rolls signal the slow descent of the ball into any of the 10,000-to-100,000-point holes and the classical “Ode to Joy” by Beethoven, a rainbow and fireworks burst in the air. The whole spectacle boosted my morale to improve in the succeeding levels within the Nature theme, wherein I got to play as an ancient Egyptian cat, a unicorn and a squirrel. Because the game is so much like Pinball, one does not have to be an expert to play Peggle because one only needs to aim at a strategic direction in order to hit as many pegs as possible, maximizing fired balls’ efficiency in the process. Top the entire effort with the climactic plunge of the ball and there’s no wonder why Peggle can be so addictive!

regurgitations at direk's birthday party

A month has passed since I last saw my gay friends in Guadalupe, so it was a pleasant surprise that despite the hectic schedule of Joni (whose directorial debut was being screened in the landmark Isetann Recto), he agreed to have me visit him and his partner Edwin. I teased him that because of his independent movie’s extended run, an online breaking news should read, “Hugot smashes film records, eclipses Batman sequel,” to which he reacted with a boisterous laughter because in fact, his movie fared better than The Dark Knight owing to Isetann’s many gay patrons and resident gigolos.
Disembarking where the seductive billboard of Joem Bascon was earning all sorts of tantalized ogles, I was stunned when big drops of rain started to pelt my skin. My natural impulse was to scamper, but reaching Joni’s place entailed climbing the dingy footbridge, passing by the broad-chested siopao boy, and running against the human flow coming from the evening mass. Arriving at the Mones compound dripping more like a water-sprung Sadako than a convincing Judy Ann Santos, I bemoaned the price of daring to get wet if only to be hailed most beautiful.
Then, the redeeming value: a call interrupted the reunited gays’ chikahan, and it was an invitation to a birthday party. Direk’s. The prospect of seeing Direk again made my heart perform a jumping jack. Who he is (was?) in my life deserves a separate discussion altogether, so let me go on instead with the details of the celebration.
While still in the cab, Joni, Jobben, Michael and I had to humor ourselves in order to while away the travel time replete with intermittent downpour, street hawkers of all (as in all!) sorts and unwitting male sex objects. Direk’s house is located in the fringe of the metropolis, so coming from the center of civilization, we had a grand time recalling Pinoy films that were long buried under the oppressive heap of oblivion. I mentioned that Kokak had been recently cited by critic Butch Francisco as among the most maligned Pinoy films along with Huwag Mong Buhayin ang Bangkay and Nights of Serafina. Someone recited the filmography of Tina Paner, including Tamis ng Unang Halik and Pepay Pamaypay, in which Tina’s character can elongate her neck ala Loch Ness monster. Michael contributed the transmogrified allusion to the 1989 coup de etat, Tora-Tora! Bang-Bang! However, everyone was overthrown when Joni made a sign language of what seemed like manual crushing of an ice block and uttered the rhetorical question of the Sheryl Cruz-starrer Paano na sa Mundo ni Janet?
The labyrinthine passages of Direk’s borderline village finally ended and I found myself in his place the second time around. Only a few of Direk’s friends were there; we missed Sir Bing Lao by a hairbreadth because he and his companion left ten minutes before. Someone other than Direk acted as host and offered the new arrivals with pizza, fried chicken and pancit, which Direk prepared himself. It looked like that someone was Direk’s partner and judging from his dusky, Atom Araullo-deadringing features, I knew that the contest is so over. While I quietly munched on my garden variety, the partner was demonstrating to Joni how Miss USA slipped again in the recent Miss Universe staging. Since I don’t want to sound like a smartass to the partner, I kept to myself my analysis that the fall was symbolic of the crumbling of the bully superpower. Only when the topic had shifted to Miss Mexico’s answer about women’s balanced lives as ultimate fulfillment did I comment that the reply cost her the crown. Direk said that feminists won’t agree with the also-ran’s answer, which I corroborated by claiming that women’s ultimate fulfillment is mastery over men.
Joni’s lamentation over failing to meet Sir Bing yet again shifted the topic to Serbis, which Direk’s graduate professor wrote. I was teased for having appeared in the movie, earning Joni’s remark that my acting was “pang-Cannes” (Pangga’s “international extra” comment pales compared) so I grew purple in the face. Direk said something to the effect that he read about Serbis in my blog, which flushed me all the more because whoa, he actually visits my blogsite! That made my night.
So they drank while I acted as the resident GRO, we ate (pizza, that is) and sang merrily because it would take another year before Direk would celebrate his birthday again. Direk was seated next to me and, while other friends surrounded us, it’s as if Manuel Arguilla’s isolated world in “Midsummer” was recreated right there and there. Everything would have turned out fine, with Direk sitting beside me and the lovely night seemed long and still, except for the anti-climactic vomiting of Direk’s cat. It threw up, most noticeably, the pancit that’s Direk’s culinary pride. The noodle shreds stank, what with other disgusting things that the feline regurgitated, but it was a relief there were no rodent tails. It became the signal of our group’s departure.
In the highway, another bravura performance jolted us from drowsiness: a small cat lost its basic faculties by crossing the road amidst speeding vehicles. We tried to shoo it back into the sidestreet, which its instinct thankfully picked up. Joni was quick to formulate a philosophical question for the rest of the group to ponder: which cat was the better actress, Direk’s drunken cat or the daredevil cat? My friends fell exhausted once inside the cab, the dawn sky still showed no signs of letting up, but within its ribcage, my heart seemed to bask under the golden sunshine.

to the little one in olongapo

The soft sunshine that had broken
Through the web-stained windows
Marked this return to life.
Phenomenal it was
To watch the eyes
Glisten with tears
Like the moment never transpired
In a hundred years.
The faceless enemy seemed
To swim back
To consciousness
Armed with neither crown nor lantern,
Voiced yet veiled.
Tonight, the blue moon soared
To toss another star
Unbraiding the clouds
As the meteor crawled
God’s head-bound.