Short Walk

Took a walk up the mountain to catch a view of the Alps on the other side. To stand in one country and look at another while thinking of a third where you are and I am not.

Based on one sighting, Italian cats are fat, fluffy, snobbish, and orange.

Olive trees, as it turns out, are small.

Blake was fond of filling spaces in between words with the line of beauty. A tilde for every other vacant space.

Based on two sightings, orange things thrive in Italy.

Took a break in an empty shed and wondered what the balls were for.

Ah.

Didn’t manage to make my way to the top. The wind was too strong I thought a tornado was about to hit. Was less scared of the force than the ridiculous howling, which later on, turned out to be all talk.

Last Line Syndrome

Closure and Composure in Joel Toledo’s Chiaroscuro (UST Press, 2008)

first published in the Philippines Free Press, 11 April 2009

If there is any one hue with which all things in Joel Toledo’s Chiaroscuro are tinged, it is sepia, turning diaphanous all the birds and stones, the trees and seas, the shamans and strangers that reside in the poems, tempering the blinding light and searing heat of star or candle, firefly or lightning, transforming the hurts and losses and sorrows of the past into present occasions for tenderness, prized objects of beauty. What clings to me once I step out of Toledo’s book of poetry is atmosphere, the kind that makes you ache and pine, maybe switch off the gaudy overhead lights and switch on a couple of lamps, maybe play, volume down, a little Kind of Blue. The poems take you to your “private dark” (a Toledo phrase), your own world-weary soul now “observing the late afternoon/in cold sepia colors” (another of his), now slipping into the erratic ever-shifting terrain of memory, retrieving the many innocence-to-experience incidents of childhood (Toledo’s favored subject matters), now brimming with feeling, now touched by the indisputable tint of nostalgia, now simply touched.

There is a hypnotic quality to the work of Toledo which inspires this vulnerability—fostered, it seems, by a voice so consistently hushed and solemn and brooding that everything it touches becomes spiked with emotion, laced with meaning. In “Open Sesame,” the poem that begins the collection, Toledo writes: “And let me tell you now//why wings and doors and flowers really open, why/this wall, once non-negotiable, had let you in.//It is because all things want to open, that often/all you need to do is ask.” And so, in Chiaroscuro, a comet is “wish-heavy” (“We Have Such Solid Measures for Pain”) stars are “kind markers/of the evening” (“Light Years”) a river is “now rushing, gushing,//brimming with newfound love” (“Moisture”), and cobwebs are “dancing to wind music” (“Only Begin”). Images glow in Toledo’s poetic landscape, basking in the light of a sensibility that sides with wonder even in the face of trying times, its relentless attachment to the sublime taking the edge off what might otherwise be painful, even sinister.

Two Postcards

First Day

Salutation. Identification of location, time, and view. Description of bus ride and itinerary. Complaint about the weather. Quibble about the inappropriately cosmopolitan feel of structure from which view is observed. Commentary about architecture leading to remembrances of trips past leading to assessment of current company leading to desire for alcohol and sleep. Alcohol granted, funny detail about alcohol acquisition and current company. Acknowledgment of space constraints, expression of high hopes for coming days, subtle longing for absent company, explicit words of love. Yours—

Last Day

Salutation. Identification of departure time. Reference to image. Disappointment over failure to note down title and artist as well as failure to take photographs. Mention of running joke throughout stay, haha. Recollection of quotable quotes from current company and newly learned Latin words, promise to elaborate upon arrival. Acknowledgment of poor handwriting leading to pun leading to reference to film involving pine trees and ’80s actors. Beginnings of funny anecdote… promise to elaborate upon arrival. Admission of pointlessness of sending postcard bound to be overtaken by its sender. Exclamation used to convey recognition of foolish act. Yours—

The+Curious+Couch

From Edward Gorey’s The Curious Sofa

Alice was eating grapes in the park when Herbert, an extremely well-endowed young man, introduced himself to her.

He invited her to go for a ride in a taxi-cab, on the floor of which they did something Alice had never done before…

From J.G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition

The Acceleration Couch. Half zipping his trousers, Koester lay back against the torn upholstery, one hand still resting on the plump thigh of the sleeping young woman. The debris-filled compartment had not been the most comfortable site. This zombie-like creature had strayed across the concrete runways like a fugitive from her own dreams, forever talking about Talbot as if unconsciously inviting Koester to betray him. Why was she wearing the Jackie Kennedy wig? He sat up, trying to open the rusty door. The students had christened the wreck ‘Dodge 38′, furnishing the rear seat with empty beer bottles and contraceptive wallets. Abruptly the car jolted forward, throwing him across the young woman. As she woke, pulling at her skirt, the sky whirled past the frosted windows. The clanking cable between the rails propelled them on a collision course with a speeding limousine below the camera tower.

From Adventures of a Fat Cat

Spot the potato.

Intellectual Dishonestly*

What follows is my contribution to a virtual roundtable discussion on intellectual dishonesty for the Jan-Feb 2008 issue of the UP Forum.

Q: How does your discipline define intellectual dishonesty?

The most obvious form of intellectual dishonesty is passing off another’s work as one’s own. At its most extreme and absurd, whether committed out of great malice or great ignorance (both of which are anathema to scholarship), and regardless of the true author’s complicity in or unawareness of the deception, intellectual dishonesty takes the form of wholesale plagiarism. In collaborations, it manifests itself in the inclusion as author of one who played no role in producing the work, or the exclusion of one who did. An equally inexcusable permutation of fraud in critical papers, the outcome of sloppy research and writing practices, is the failure to use and document one’s sources properly. One’s research and ideas exist in relation to others’; citations not only give credit where credit is due but also identify the company the author keeps and the conversation of which he or she is part. Proper incorporation of material from other sources into one’s work as well as proper acknowledgment provide readers with the fullest possible access to the conversation, and by functioning as a portal to other sources, one’s work supports and sustains the activity of pursuing knowledge.

When taken in the context of artistic endeavors such as creative writing, intellectual honesty comes with a somewhat different set of questions and terms. The impulse to create is incompatible with plagiarism, which happens when, among other things, one’s mind is turned off, and consequently, one’s imagination is untapped. Plagiarizing another’s creative work indicates the absence of the creative impulse, a clear signal that one should find another field.

In writing, the matter of intellectual honesty may also be read through the lens of originality. Certainly, originality is a tough claim for a writer to make, given the inevitability of influence and the voluminous—to say the least—amount of amazing literature already in existence, but it remains true that every plunge into the blank page is driven by the hope to come out of it with something peculiar and new, something that is not a mere copy or cover version of the literature one admires, not simply a repeat of the work one has done before. In this case, to be intellectually honest is to strive beyond echo, which, when thought of kindly, may be seen as laziness, but when subjected to tougher critique, may also be called cheating.

Cover Update

Final cover of Carljoe Javier’s And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth, for which I did the introduction. Out in May 2009.

I’m still attached to the original cover, but this one’s growing on me. Milflores covers can be, well, disappointing, so it’s quite a relief to see this one–appropriately cute and playful, all in all, likable. At first I found it too busy, but then again, that’s clearly the point. There’s a juvenile-book-report feel to it, what with the visual rundown of Carl’s preoccupations, and then there’s the schizophrenic typography–things I normally instinctively don’t like to see on covers, but this one pulls it off, and quite well; it manages to hold itself together and cohere despite all the action. I’m also happy to see Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman on the cover, just because.

My Funny Friend

I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.

Jean Rhys