I sent to some of my friends a couple of hours after the countdown to 2010:
"Texteth me oh friend of mine.
I lie awake with none to spendeth my passions.
Alas! I call thee to respond
to a request of the humblest nature.
To partonize not nor to be obliged,
let me be subject to your tendrest words,
lightest humours, and wit beyond the irony of my plee.
I await expectin' love."
This is my reply to one of my friends who thought I was drunk:
"Now might be the possibility.
Straight from the lips,
I consumeth liquid intoxication.
Glad and warm I lie,
tongue and soul more loose than a child's
with new found word to its disposal.
Judgement my dearest?"
And hence she replies with parallel form:
"who am I to judge?
Poison is sweet.
Be it so if it bring thy gayness.
What has been the poison of thy choice?"
Apparently I fell asleep and lost poetry...
But now that I lie awake I dreamt of saying...
"Ah! Wine! Thy mirth enlivens my spirit.
From vineyards of rich dirt,
emergest bosoms numerous, full, and virgin.
I suckle at thou nips of thousands of thine
which burst to reveal essence so sweet.
As thy smooth flow soothes my palette
and leaves my body warmly nested as a babe,
I am made vulnerable, but not innocent--
I continue to seek dote nourishment.
My lips redden full to its bloody brim
until my eyes and conscious 'ventually dims.
Alas! Nothing but glee sublime."
I haven't been pretty productive in lyric or in wit these past days, but I sense it getting back. I look forward to producing another wave of philosophy... for now, I hope my poetry contents you... :)
Happy 2010!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Christmas entry
I have been forcing myself to do my schoolwork during my Christmas break. Apparently, I simply refuse to.
It is December 24 of the afternoon and the Christmas eve celebrations are about to come! I really don't know how to feel, but this for sure I know- I owe it to myself to blog. I'm also so sorry for simply posting the papers I submitted for my cultural studies class, if this be any consolation, I'll make this as philosophical and as simple as possible! That was meant to be a pseudo-paradox. HAHAHAHA!
I have been reading Marxism and Existentialism by Walter Odajnyk and this book which simply presents an almost disrespectful argument between the two schools of thought both amuses and brings my mind to spontaneous intellectual orgasms.
I want to quote:
"The unauthentic man finds himself in a situation or falls into one; he solves it only to discover that he is now faced with another situation which also demands solution... The authentic person does not fall into situations but brings himself into them."
I think it is in the time of Christmas to simply believe in this very existentialist notion.
http://rinziiart.deviantart.com/art/Existential-Crab-52002470
Many have said that they do not feel Christmas.
Others gave the reason because it doesn't count anymore since we are always in a state of Advent or "Waiting" lately that we have become victims of waiting. Weariness and longing have become our primal condition.
Some also said that they have been too immersed or too little immersed in Christmas traditions. The cultural heritage of Christmas has seemed to lose its meaning or is emitting the wrong ones.
While for some, they simply don't believe.
Well for Christmas the idea is perhaps the opposite of all these.
In Christmas what Christ says is that He has already come. No need to wait! This is particularly true of our current condition in our world. Most of us are always on the look out of what more we need and what to change. Perhaps, its time to simply count our blessings!
In Christmas, Christ wants us to look beyond cultural heritages. Heritage as a word brings with it a very archaic notion of the need to reify tradition. Well Christ in His birth tries to break it with His coming. A King born in a manger, born of a poor virgin, having shepherds, barnyard animals, and kings from distant lands as witnesses, perhaps we need to always expect the unexpected in Christmas.
Finally, in Christmas, we must abandon our more critical selves. He came for us! though in a very unexpected way...
http://miina-san.deviantart.com/art/Away-in-a-Manger-72784614
We should not always look for what we want perhaps... Indeed, our world is one of desolation, destruction, and decay, but perhaps what we need is to count its consolations, creation, and growth. Perhaps, our eyes must attune to the possibilities more than the lost opportunities. Because in the Infant is that infinite realm of possibility and in His Infancy here on earth, He says to us that this world still has that capacity for natality. We can be anew! Regardless of religious beliefs, whether this comes from Christ Himself or from human reality, though we are by nature dying every moment, every moment is a chance to make anew.
Maybe one very neglected point of the existentialists is that they are a philosophy that places freedom at a premium. Our freedom is always above the situation and despite the situation, we can always choose to turn the situation around through a simple disposition and attitude of an ownership of ourselves. This indeed is a very Christian message: any situation, our broken world, can be an avenue for hope much like how His death in the Cross became our salvation. Amidst brokenness, we are creatures of miracle.
So abandon your doubts at least for a day...
We spend too much on them the remaining 364 days of the year.
To be authentic persons let us throw ourselves upon the world.
In Christmas day, our task is to believe...
http://sora-ko.deviantart.com/art/Naruto-No-Miracle-5189981
It is December 24 of the afternoon and the Christmas eve celebrations are about to come! I really don't know how to feel, but this for sure I know- I owe it to myself to blog. I'm also so sorry for simply posting the papers I submitted for my cultural studies class, if this be any consolation, I'll make this as philosophical and as simple as possible! That was meant to be a pseudo-paradox. HAHAHAHA!
I have been reading Marxism and Existentialism by Walter Odajnyk and this book which simply presents an almost disrespectful argument between the two schools of thought both amuses and brings my mind to spontaneous intellectual orgasms.
I want to quote:
"The unauthentic man finds himself in a situation or falls into one; he solves it only to discover that he is now faced with another situation which also demands solution... The authentic person does not fall into situations but brings himself into them."
I think it is in the time of Christmas to simply believe in this very existentialist notion.
http://rinziiart.deviantart.com/art/Existential-Crab-52002470
Many have said that they do not feel Christmas.
Others gave the reason because it doesn't count anymore since we are always in a state of Advent or "Waiting" lately that we have become victims of waiting. Weariness and longing have become our primal condition.
Some also said that they have been too immersed or too little immersed in Christmas traditions. The cultural heritage of Christmas has seemed to lose its meaning or is emitting the wrong ones.
While for some, they simply don't believe.
Well for Christmas the idea is perhaps the opposite of all these.
In Christmas what Christ says is that He has already come. No need to wait! This is particularly true of our current condition in our world. Most of us are always on the look out of what more we need and what to change. Perhaps, its time to simply count our blessings!
In Christmas, Christ wants us to look beyond cultural heritages. Heritage as a word brings with it a very archaic notion of the need to reify tradition. Well Christ in His birth tries to break it with His coming. A King born in a manger, born of a poor virgin, having shepherds, barnyard animals, and kings from distant lands as witnesses, perhaps we need to always expect the unexpected in Christmas.
Finally, in Christmas, we must abandon our more critical selves. He came for us! though in a very unexpected way...
http://miina-san.deviantart.com/art/Away-in-a-Manger-72784614
We should not always look for what we want perhaps... Indeed, our world is one of desolation, destruction, and decay, but perhaps what we need is to count its consolations, creation, and growth. Perhaps, our eyes must attune to the possibilities more than the lost opportunities. Because in the Infant is that infinite realm of possibility and in His Infancy here on earth, He says to us that this world still has that capacity for natality. We can be anew! Regardless of religious beliefs, whether this comes from Christ Himself or from human reality, though we are by nature dying every moment, every moment is a chance to make anew.
Maybe one very neglected point of the existentialists is that they are a philosophy that places freedom at a premium. Our freedom is always above the situation and despite the situation, we can always choose to turn the situation around through a simple disposition and attitude of an ownership of ourselves. This indeed is a very Christian message: any situation, our broken world, can be an avenue for hope much like how His death in the Cross became our salvation. Amidst brokenness, we are creatures of miracle.
So abandon your doubts at least for a day...
We spend too much on them the remaining 364 days of the year.
To be authentic persons let us throw ourselves upon the world.
In Christmas day, our task is to believe...
http://sora-ko.deviantart.com/art/Naruto-No-Miracle-5189981
Friday, December 18, 2009
since I'm in the hobby of posting my papers... I just finished just this moment and will scurry to school for submission!
One powerful image that Derrida uses to shake Levi-Strauss’ anthropology is the fact that Levi-Strauss uses the notion of the “lesson.” It was said that: “calculated for the purposes of a philosophical demonstration of the relationships between nature and society, ideal society and real society, most often between the other society and our society.” (page 113, “The Violence of the Letter”). By using the notion of “lesson” brings to mind the structure of the school wherein a teacher in hegemony and a claim to truth says what is good and bad, true and false, right and wrong, and all the permutations of the categories of correctness VS error. Although at first, the first “teacher” may be Levi-Strauss and his team while they were at the Nambikwara tribe teaching writing by the very act of giving out pencils and paper, what Levi-Strauss really means is the tribespeople teaching Levi-Strauss and the whole of his anthropology the “nature” of writing and its role in culture. Without any ado Derrida being the postmodernist that he is, demolishes this “lesson” by two grounds: the methodological and the ideological.
A very strong criticism of Derrida to Levi-Strauss is his question of the empiricism in methodology to the brand of anthropology Levi-Strauss made. To sum it up, Derrida attacked the fact that Levi-Strauss systematically affected the data he was collecting and hence the basis of his anthropology through his mere presence as a foreigner and power to incite the “scandal” of the proper name in the Nambikwara tribe. To quote Derrida: “It is the anthropologist who violates a virginal space no accurately connoted by the scene of a game and a game played by little girls… The mere presence of a spectator, then, is a violation.” (page 113, “The Violence of the Letter”). In this, Derrida already says that a grain of salt should be taken to Levi-Strauss’ brand of anthropology and perhaps of all anthropology that engages in the method of ethnography and the travelogue.
Another strong criticism of Derrida to Levi-Strauss is his mention of Levi-Strauss’ subscribing to the ideologies of Rousseau, Marx, and Freud. As a man of science Derrida said that one should be concerned with nature as it is. By saying that Levi-Strauss subscribed to ideology meant that he was less of a scientist and more of a humanist. In this criticism, Derrida invokes the Rousseauist category of “nature” and “culture” with which Levi-Strauss moves around in his anthropological discourse. To say briefly: “The opposition between nature and culture to which I attached much importance at one time… now seems to be of primarily methodological importance.” (page 103. “The Violence of the Letter”), Derrida says in this that the fact that Levi-Strauss built his anthropology on the Rousseauist category of “nature” and “culture” already thins out the science of his anthropology.
Running a risk of being a reflection paper more than a reaction paper, I courageously will pursue this point with the knowledge of this risk. I think all writing takes on this structure which Derrida accuses Levi-Strauss of: that one draws one’s knowing and categories from one’s own conception of “nature” and for Levi-Strauss’ anthropology, his conception of humanity as naturally can be seen in “the savage mind” in his constructing it as the “virginal humanity” with no influence from any “urbanity” which he on the other hand constructs as the polarity of “the savage mind” as the “civilized mind” that has already veered from the “state of nature.” This can be seen in the Rousseauist constructs of “nature” and “culture” which Levi-Strauss subscribes to. It can be seen that though Levi-Strauss says that the Nambikwara tribespeople are still a “culture” he though presents it as a “culture” closer to the “state of nature.” This I believe is a very romantic move. To glorify the state of nature and to present urbanity as “less natural” and so predispose one’s self to attribute goodness and evil respectively is a very violent act. To force upon human and cultural reality theoretical and philosophical categories might in fact confound the knowledge that can be produced in Levi-Strauss’ anthropology.
I believe that writing takes on this same structure and process. By graphically representing one’s thoughts in a medium, the letters in the written document brings with it its own genealogical characteristics and categorical positionality among the plethora of conceptuality from which it emerged. In “sending off” a unit of meaning from what is always from the past in writing, one confounds the knowing of the succeeding generations of “readers” of the letter. Though Levi-Strauss works with a logic of going back to the “roots” of the “cultures” that are closer to the “state of nature,” writing violently projects itself unto the future. In a very powerful sense, writing is always a promise to the present that it will exist. Much like how writing is depicted as “immortalizing” even in the Ancient categories of the Greeks and Romans, Derrida depicts that writing also makes mortal the writer. Much like how Levi-Strauss’ ideological categories died in its encounter with the Nambikwara culture, what a writer sends off in the future necessarily dies in its being taken agrasp as foreign by its readers.
Derrida mentions that writing stems from a “genealogical anxiety,” but I believe that it should be compounded with an attitude of its opposite: an “anxiety for contingency.” That in the violence of the letter and its power to construct all forms of knowing taken after it, one should take into account that the knowing that it affects might actually make the letter mortal and place the boundaries of its life. Every reading is a contingent meaning that in its very potentiality and capacity for the “new interpretation,” the letter is made aware of its archaic nature of simply being a document of culture.
A very strong criticism of Derrida to Levi-Strauss is his question of the empiricism in methodology to the brand of anthropology Levi-Strauss made. To sum it up, Derrida attacked the fact that Levi-Strauss systematically affected the data he was collecting and hence the basis of his anthropology through his mere presence as a foreigner and power to incite the “scandal” of the proper name in the Nambikwara tribe. To quote Derrida: “It is the anthropologist who violates a virginal space no accurately connoted by the scene of a game and a game played by little girls… The mere presence of a spectator, then, is a violation.” (page 113, “The Violence of the Letter”). In this, Derrida already says that a grain of salt should be taken to Levi-Strauss’ brand of anthropology and perhaps of all anthropology that engages in the method of ethnography and the travelogue.
Another strong criticism of Derrida to Levi-Strauss is his mention of Levi-Strauss’ subscribing to the ideologies of Rousseau, Marx, and Freud. As a man of science Derrida said that one should be concerned with nature as it is. By saying that Levi-Strauss subscribed to ideology meant that he was less of a scientist and more of a humanist. In this criticism, Derrida invokes the Rousseauist category of “nature” and “culture” with which Levi-Strauss moves around in his anthropological discourse. To say briefly: “The opposition between nature and culture to which I attached much importance at one time… now seems to be of primarily methodological importance.” (page 103. “The Violence of the Letter”), Derrida says in this that the fact that Levi-Strauss built his anthropology on the Rousseauist category of “nature” and “culture” already thins out the science of his anthropology.
Running a risk of being a reflection paper more than a reaction paper, I courageously will pursue this point with the knowledge of this risk. I think all writing takes on this structure which Derrida accuses Levi-Strauss of: that one draws one’s knowing and categories from one’s own conception of “nature” and for Levi-Strauss’ anthropology, his conception of humanity as naturally can be seen in “the savage mind” in his constructing it as the “virginal humanity” with no influence from any “urbanity” which he on the other hand constructs as the polarity of “the savage mind” as the “civilized mind” that has already veered from the “state of nature.” This can be seen in the Rousseauist constructs of “nature” and “culture” which Levi-Strauss subscribes to. It can be seen that though Levi-Strauss says that the Nambikwara tribespeople are still a “culture” he though presents it as a “culture” closer to the “state of nature.” This I believe is a very romantic move. To glorify the state of nature and to present urbanity as “less natural” and so predispose one’s self to attribute goodness and evil respectively is a very violent act. To force upon human and cultural reality theoretical and philosophical categories might in fact confound the knowledge that can be produced in Levi-Strauss’ anthropology.
I believe that writing takes on this same structure and process. By graphically representing one’s thoughts in a medium, the letters in the written document brings with it its own genealogical characteristics and categorical positionality among the plethora of conceptuality from which it emerged. In “sending off” a unit of meaning from what is always from the past in writing, one confounds the knowing of the succeeding generations of “readers” of the letter. Though Levi-Strauss works with a logic of going back to the “roots” of the “cultures” that are closer to the “state of nature,” writing violently projects itself unto the future. In a very powerful sense, writing is always a promise to the present that it will exist. Much like how writing is depicted as “immortalizing” even in the Ancient categories of the Greeks and Romans, Derrida depicts that writing also makes mortal the writer. Much like how Levi-Strauss’ ideological categories died in its encounter with the Nambikwara culture, what a writer sends off in the future necessarily dies in its being taken agrasp as foreign by its readers.
Derrida mentions that writing stems from a “genealogical anxiety,” but I believe that it should be compounded with an attitude of its opposite: an “anxiety for contingency.” That in the violence of the letter and its power to construct all forms of knowing taken after it, one should take into account that the knowing that it affects might actually make the letter mortal and place the boundaries of its life. Every reading is a contingent meaning that in its very potentiality and capacity for the “new interpretation,” the letter is made aware of its archaic nature of simply being a document of culture.
Just a paper I submitted for my class... I think it's nice :))
In her Chapter 2, “The Linguistic Sign” Julia Kristeva calls into question Principle I of the study of linguistics, “the arbitrariness of the sign”. She says this and I quote: “the ‘arbitrariness” of the sign is, so to speak, normative, absolute, valid, and obligatory for all subjects speaking the same language” (Kristeva, page 14 Language the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics). This calls to mind that the nature of a language is something that exists between “discourse” or “linguistic” communities and consequently binds them through a shared system of consciousness. This shared system of consciousness though emerging from the social, through convening of communities to assign signifiers to signified in language and discourse, is not open to frequent dissenters and has a primary normative quality-- that conformity to tradition is what is considered “good.” Hence Kristeva articulating the qualities of language as such: absolute, valid, and obligatory.
Another point that the arbitrary nature of language posits at is its “unmotivated” character. Kristeva expresses it as follows: “the word ‘arbitrary’ signifies more exactly unmotivated, that is to say, there is no natural or real necessity linking the signifier and the signified” (Kristeva, page 16 Language the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics). In addition to this, Saussure himself or at least those who wrote “Course in Linguistics” express this property of language as well and I quote: “Language is a convention, and the nature of the sign that is agreed upon does not matter” (Saussure, page 10 Course in General Linguistics). This just goes to show that language as a system of signs and the relationships that they build are not important, the fact remains that no matter how perceived inefficient or idiosyncratic a system of signs is, it is still valuable in that it serves its purpose of binding people and creating communities through a shared system of consciousness. I invoke here Kristeva’s mention of Saussure notion that “language is an 'extra-rational' function, which mean that its material offers itself up to practice of differentiation and systematization that do not necessarily fall within the province of the subject’s reason” (Kristeva, page 16 Language the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics). The semiological life of a sign is beyond knowledge since this same semiological life of the sign that is language for a community of speakers, is itself a necessary pre-condition for knowing. To put it simply, before we even begin to be rational, we need to irrationally assume the rationality of a language from which we are obliged to move about.
In this exposition of the arbitrary nature of language, Kristeva makes some reservations in taking it as it is. Kristeva comments that “it is not the relationship between the signifier and signified that is arbitrary… What is arbitrary is the relation between this sign and the reality it names, in other words, the relation between the language symbol and its totality and the real outside it that it symbolizes” (Kristeva, page 16 Language the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics). In this dispute whether Saussure means to say what is arbitrary, Saussure must allow us to fill the gap since as Kristeva said: “his reasoning has found it lacking” (Kristeva, page 16 Language the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics).
I personally adhere to this criticism of Kristeva since Saussure himself said that “what is natural to mankind is not oral speech but the faculty of constructing a language, i.e. a system if distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas” (Saussure, page 10 Course in Linguistics). The usage of the words “arbitrary” and “unmotivated” is contradictory and at the very best paradoxical when juxtaposed with mankind’s natural faculty of constructing language. The fact that Saussure himself believes that it is simply natural to construct language regardless of its form whether in phonetics, writing, gesturality, or etc, there is already the unarbitrariness and motivation in language. Mankind just can’t help but to construct a language. With this image in mind, I bring to light Kristeva’s comment. Every human artifice that we construct for ourselves though emerges from our free willing as creatures simply capable; these artifices in turn construct us. In this sense, I depict language as like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we have created a creature that we need to tame in order for it to serve us.
Another point that the arbitrary nature of language posits at is its “unmotivated” character. Kristeva expresses it as follows: “the word ‘arbitrary’ signifies more exactly unmotivated, that is to say, there is no natural or real necessity linking the signifier and the signified” (Kristeva, page 16 Language the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics). In addition to this, Saussure himself or at least those who wrote “Course in Linguistics” express this property of language as well and I quote: “Language is a convention, and the nature of the sign that is agreed upon does not matter” (Saussure, page 10 Course in General Linguistics). This just goes to show that language as a system of signs and the relationships that they build are not important, the fact remains that no matter how perceived inefficient or idiosyncratic a system of signs is, it is still valuable in that it serves its purpose of binding people and creating communities through a shared system of consciousness. I invoke here Kristeva’s mention of Saussure notion that “language is an 'extra-rational' function, which mean that its material offers itself up to practice of differentiation and systematization that do not necessarily fall within the province of the subject’s reason” (Kristeva, page 16 Language the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics). The semiological life of a sign is beyond knowledge since this same semiological life of the sign that is language for a community of speakers, is itself a necessary pre-condition for knowing. To put it simply, before we even begin to be rational, we need to irrationally assume the rationality of a language from which we are obliged to move about.
In this exposition of the arbitrary nature of language, Kristeva makes some reservations in taking it as it is. Kristeva comments that “it is not the relationship between the signifier and signified that is arbitrary… What is arbitrary is the relation between this sign and the reality it names, in other words, the relation between the language symbol and its totality and the real outside it that it symbolizes” (Kristeva, page 16 Language the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics). In this dispute whether Saussure means to say what is arbitrary, Saussure must allow us to fill the gap since as Kristeva said: “his reasoning has found it lacking” (Kristeva, page 16 Language the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics).
I personally adhere to this criticism of Kristeva since Saussure himself said that “what is natural to mankind is not oral speech but the faculty of constructing a language, i.e. a system if distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas” (Saussure, page 10 Course in Linguistics). The usage of the words “arbitrary” and “unmotivated” is contradictory and at the very best paradoxical when juxtaposed with mankind’s natural faculty of constructing language. The fact that Saussure himself believes that it is simply natural to construct language regardless of its form whether in phonetics, writing, gesturality, or etc, there is already the unarbitrariness and motivation in language. Mankind just can’t help but to construct a language. With this image in mind, I bring to light Kristeva’s comment. Every human artifice that we construct for ourselves though emerges from our free willing as creatures simply capable; these artifices in turn construct us. In this sense, I depict language as like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we have created a creature that we need to tame in order for it to serve us.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Mundo ng Bangketa/ World of the Sidewalk
Sa pagitan ng Philamlife tower
At ng Ayala Avenue,
Maluwag ang espasyo
Para sa katawan kong 29-23-31.
Kasama ko ang aking sanggol
na nasa aking mga braso
Sa tapat ng espasyong
Dating buntis na sinapupunan.
Subo-subo niya ang aking suso,
Pinipiga ito para sa gatas
Tila bampirang sumisipsip
mula sa utong na duguan.
Nang mangawit ang aking bisig
Sa pasaning buhay na ito,
Akin itong pinalaya,
Sa hanging tila puwang na para sa lahat.
Ngunit okupado pala ang hangin,
Bagkos inagaw ng “hangin”
Ang aking bisig, braso, at kamay
Sa paglampas sa mundo ng bangketa.
Mukhang masyadong maliit at masikip
Ang mundo para pa maisip ang mag-unat.
It's the first time I'll post something in my first language Filipino.
I'll attempt a translation here NOW!
Between the Philamlife tower
and Ayala Avenue,
loose is the space
for my body that's 29-23-31.
In the company of my infant
that is on my own shoulders
across the space that
was once my pregnant womb.
mouthing my own breast,
distilling it for milk
as if a vampire that sucks
from a nipple bloodied.
When numb my arms went
with burden of life as this,
I freed it,
In the wind as if a lack that's for all.
But occupied was the air,
Hence took by the "air"
My arm, shoulder, and hand
In going beyond the world of the sidewalk.
Looks like too small and cramped
The world is, even to think of stretching.
- I noticed that when I write in my home language, the meaning seems to be so much more political and less of an attempt for beauty. Probably it's in the nature of English appearing as "universal" to me and Filipino as "particular." Nonetheless, the experiment has confirmed my expectations. Writing in English lacks that element of the "identity" for a Filipino such as myself.
At ng Ayala Avenue,
Maluwag ang espasyo
Para sa katawan kong 29-23-31.
Kasama ko ang aking sanggol
na nasa aking mga braso
Sa tapat ng espasyong
Dating buntis na sinapupunan.
Subo-subo niya ang aking suso,
Pinipiga ito para sa gatas
Tila bampirang sumisipsip
mula sa utong na duguan.
Nang mangawit ang aking bisig
Sa pasaning buhay na ito,
Akin itong pinalaya,
Sa hanging tila puwang na para sa lahat.
Ngunit okupado pala ang hangin,
Bagkos inagaw ng “hangin”
Ang aking bisig, braso, at kamay
Sa paglampas sa mundo ng bangketa.
Mukhang masyadong maliit at masikip
Ang mundo para pa maisip ang mag-unat.
It's the first time I'll post something in my first language Filipino.
I'll attempt a translation here NOW!
Between the Philamlife tower
and Ayala Avenue,
loose is the space
for my body that's 29-23-31.
In the company of my infant
that is on my own shoulders
across the space that
was once my pregnant womb.
mouthing my own breast,
distilling it for milk
as if a vampire that sucks
from a nipple bloodied.
When numb my arms went
with burden of life as this,
I freed it,
In the wind as if a lack that's for all.
But occupied was the air,
Hence took by the "air"
My arm, shoulder, and hand
In going beyond the world of the sidewalk.
Looks like too small and cramped
The world is, even to think of stretching.
- I noticed that when I write in my home language, the meaning seems to be so much more political and less of an attempt for beauty. Probably it's in the nature of English appearing as "universal" to me and Filipino as "particular." Nonetheless, the experiment has confirmed my expectations. Writing in English lacks that element of the "identity" for a Filipino such as myself.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Another entry on love
Love is blind...
http://writevli.deviantart.com/art/Love-is-blind-83380602
NOT!
Whoever said this is in loggerheads with the whole of human experience of love!
*Huh! You want to piece of me!? Believers of love's blindness! huh!?
If then, then it is not love.
Wikipedia defines love as...
"Love is any of a number of emotions related to a sense of strong affection[1] and attachment. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure ("I loved that meal") to intense interpersonal attraction ("I love my husband"). This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.
As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and platonic love[2] to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love.[3] Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts."- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love
eloquent at that wikipedia!
But I would want to go beyond the descriptive exposition of love and will attempt finally in this blog to perform an exegesis.
*WHEW! GOOD LUCK! I use exegesis here not in the traditional textual-hermeneutic or the more limited Biblical sense of it, but in the more semiotic sense of reading anything as a "sign."
http://lullabyoflilly.deviantart.com/art/L-O-V-E-40123171
I shall begin by inverting the argument: "Blind is love" and adding this condition "only to those who don't KNOW it."
In this condition, the notion of "knowing" is not only a cognitive knowledge, but a more holistic knowing that involves the whole being of a person- even those that lie beyond the reaches of the mind and its rational schema. Love is to simply know by beholding despite exhaustive explanation. At the point that you are convinced of any explanation on why love exists then it refuses to lend itself to you.
I divert at this point to a expository narrative.
Have you ever experienced being asked "why" you love a certain person or "why" you love doing something?
And if you sincerely love that person or craft you find yourself at the same time producing so many reasons, but knowing deep inside that these do not really account for the "why" of your love.
Because to ask "why" you love someone or something is the biggest disservice and to try to answer it is to disenfranchise yourself of the authentic experience!
That real object of love in fact is that "unspeakable" aspect of that you love. If you find yourself being satisfied on your own rationalizations of why you love somebody or something, it's bound to lose its current flavor. Sweeter if you're lucky, then if it is so, then you were simply deceiving yourself as opposed to if it turned bitter, then it was bound to happen since you were simply loving the "idea" or "blueprint" of the person or thing you were supposedly "in love" with.
Why is that so?
Because to love is to see beyond what is present- LOVE IS PROPHETIC!
To love is to see the broad horizons the "other" is capable of conquering.
http://mcr-raven.deviantart.com/art/Bring-me-the-Horizon-99432112
If it is anything else, then doubt it.
That in the other's radical otherness, that in one's inability to grasp the raw being of the other, past, present, and beyond- one is only shaken to the core and have nothing to do but to tenderly and deeply care for it.
http://worthyg.deviantart.com/art/Care-113232447
As well, through the overwhelming elusive essence of the other, one sees the "I" as an "other-in-itself". Through the eyes of the other, one sees one's self as a vulnerable kernel of reality: also as an object of tender and deep care.
Love is a paradox that in its very mysterious co-other-ing of lover and loved, the dualities of similarity and complementarity are TRANSCENDED! One can see how a person in love sees the other as like one's self, an other, but still wholly other. Through the prophetic enlightenment to the potential of the other and one's own potential to be other through the other- love becomes a circular motion of expansion.
Does this cycle of expansion ever end?
I shall dwell on the "heart" as a symbol of love...
http://stupid-princess.deviantart.com/art/heart-61068842
Because as I said in the previous blog "the ungraspable" love consists of the two-way opposing functions of the phallic and the yonic. These two are accounted well by the heart. Phallic at the bottom and yonic at the top.
Love in its purest form does not seem to even conceive of an end as analogically portrayed by the heart. The opposite functions within a single "loving unit" do not ever simply get to meet by itself and always seeks the other.
But this would be simplistic.
Because love is not always "attachment," but precisely it sets free. Attachments made by a lover to the loved is made in the light of inciting the other in both parties to expand. A lover can't seem to contain him or herself in desiring to see the possibilities of the other. No essence is asserted unto the other, but it is increasingly set free by the lover regardless of it being in the context of binding or unbinding the lover and the loved.
http://ladybirdm.deviantart.com/art/Love-35009942
finally, to love begins to become a total experience of otherness between two beings. Whether of a person, a thing, or an act, what matters in love is that you precisely are not blind to the reality of the other. Love essentially, if I need to claim to know it is to choose to see the otherness of the other and to act as if it's one's own.
http://writevli.deviantart.com/art/Love-is-blind-83380602
NOT!
Whoever said this is in loggerheads with the whole of human experience of love!
*Huh! You want to piece of me!? Believers of love's blindness! huh!?
If then, then it is not love.
Wikipedia defines love as...
"Love is any of a number of emotions related to a sense of strong affection[1] and attachment. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure ("I loved that meal") to intense interpersonal attraction ("I love my husband"). This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.
As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and platonic love[2] to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love.[3] Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts."- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love
eloquent at that wikipedia!
But I would want to go beyond the descriptive exposition of love and will attempt finally in this blog to perform an exegesis.
*WHEW! GOOD LUCK! I use exegesis here not in the traditional textual-hermeneutic or the more limited Biblical sense of it, but in the more semiotic sense of reading anything as a "sign."
http://lullabyoflilly.deviantart.com/art/L-O-V-E-40123171
I shall begin by inverting the argument: "Blind is love" and adding this condition "only to those who don't KNOW it."
In this condition, the notion of "knowing" is not only a cognitive knowledge, but a more holistic knowing that involves the whole being of a person- even those that lie beyond the reaches of the mind and its rational schema. Love is to simply know by beholding despite exhaustive explanation. At the point that you are convinced of any explanation on why love exists then it refuses to lend itself to you.
I divert at this point to a expository narrative.
Have you ever experienced being asked "why" you love a certain person or "why" you love doing something?
And if you sincerely love that person or craft you find yourself at the same time producing so many reasons, but knowing deep inside that these do not really account for the "why" of your love.
Because to ask "why" you love someone or something is the biggest disservice and to try to answer it is to disenfranchise yourself of the authentic experience!
That real object of love in fact is that "unspeakable" aspect of that you love. If you find yourself being satisfied on your own rationalizations of why you love somebody or something, it's bound to lose its current flavor. Sweeter if you're lucky, then if it is so, then you were simply deceiving yourself as opposed to if it turned bitter, then it was bound to happen since you were simply loving the "idea" or "blueprint" of the person or thing you were supposedly "in love" with.
Why is that so?
Because to love is to see beyond what is present- LOVE IS PROPHETIC!
To love is to see the broad horizons the "other" is capable of conquering.
http://mcr-raven.deviantart.com/art/Bring-me-the-Horizon-99432112
If it is anything else, then doubt it.
That in the other's radical otherness, that in one's inability to grasp the raw being of the other, past, present, and beyond- one is only shaken to the core and have nothing to do but to tenderly and deeply care for it.
http://worthyg.deviantart.com/art/Care-113232447
As well, through the overwhelming elusive essence of the other, one sees the "I" as an "other-in-itself". Through the eyes of the other, one sees one's self as a vulnerable kernel of reality: also as an object of tender and deep care.
Love is a paradox that in its very mysterious co-other-ing of lover and loved, the dualities of similarity and complementarity are TRANSCENDED! One can see how a person in love sees the other as like one's self, an other, but still wholly other. Through the prophetic enlightenment to the potential of the other and one's own potential to be other through the other- love becomes a circular motion of expansion.
Does this cycle of expansion ever end?
I shall dwell on the "heart" as a symbol of love...
http://stupid-princess.deviantart.com/art/heart-61068842
Because as I said in the previous blog "the ungraspable" love consists of the two-way opposing functions of the phallic and the yonic. These two are accounted well by the heart. Phallic at the bottom and yonic at the top.
Love in its purest form does not seem to even conceive of an end as analogically portrayed by the heart. The opposite functions within a single "loving unit" do not ever simply get to meet by itself and always seeks the other.
But this would be simplistic.
Because love is not always "attachment," but precisely it sets free. Attachments made by a lover to the loved is made in the light of inciting the other in both parties to expand. A lover can't seem to contain him or herself in desiring to see the possibilities of the other. No essence is asserted unto the other, but it is increasingly set free by the lover regardless of it being in the context of binding or unbinding the lover and the loved.
http://ladybirdm.deviantart.com/art/Love-35009942
finally, to love begins to become a total experience of otherness between two beings. Whether of a person, a thing, or an act, what matters in love is that you precisely are not blind to the reality of the other. Love essentially, if I need to claim to know it is to choose to see the otherness of the other and to act as if it's one's own.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
absurd eclecticism
Where should I go?
the couch?
my bed?
the bathroom?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is my imagination.
What position should it be?
sitting down?
standing up?
against the wall?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is to bare it all.
How should it be done?
in vertical motion?
through hard pressing?
through random wiggling?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is stimulation.
To whom shall it be with?
Somebody I idolize?
Nobody in particular?
who I happen to fancy?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is an idea.
When shall it be released?
In a flurry of passion?
During the climax?
When all's been said and done?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is to get it over with.
* now, read in reverse!
http://abhorrentillusions.deviantart.com/art/The-Myth-of-Sisyphus-83062572
the couch?
my bed?
the bathroom?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is my imagination.
What position should it be?
sitting down?
standing up?
against the wall?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is to bare it all.
How should it be done?
in vertical motion?
through hard pressing?
through random wiggling?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is stimulation.
To whom shall it be with?
Somebody I idolize?
Nobody in particular?
who I happen to fancy?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is an idea.
When shall it be released?
In a flurry of passion?
During the climax?
When all's been said and done?
it doesn't matter,
all I need is to get it over with.
* now, read in reverse!
http://abhorrentillusions.deviantart.com/art/The-Myth-of-Sisyphus-83062572
abnormal force: a senior's syndrome
The concrete bench was subtly making its presence felt via its hard tactility. Buttocks placed above, the whole mass of my body impinges its weight on the sturdy, steady, stiff, strong, stony...
The dense substance of the concrete bench keeps me connected to the whole system of normal forces, support upon support upon support upon support. Gravity is such a wonder- giving one a notion of ground that one begins to construct what is up and down, high and low, above and beneath- the whole perceptual plethora of the vertical.
I wish that this is the discourse that exists in my mind.
I'm supposed to be filled with awe for structuralist linguistics! A sublime cognitive architecture should occupy my mind now! Rationality of the highest order should organize my thoughts as the schema that the greatest thinkers carefully and scientifically crafted try to penetrate my mind in this vain exercise of reading.
This heavy "book" of borrowed knowledge, skillfully photocopied by acolytes of intellectual piracy, like the concrete bench make its presence upon the skin of my cold lap. Much as well like the subtle heat of the sun which warms my whole body that just came out of a refrigerated space of a conference room makes its presence on me via the realm of temperature. The wind does not make itself less known as it blows my hair and subsequently and antagonistically counters the discourse of heat in my body with a counter-discourse of cool.
Where is the gravity?
That moment!
It's as if my mind is prevented to reach this "high thinking." I just can't seem to understand why!
It's that moment!
Coming from a 3 hour class that discussed the same thing that I am reading in the present, the seeming "physics of thought" that is linguistics, why is it that my mind just refuses to put "gravity" to these ideas? In word, it's tangible presence is undeniable! As I continue...
"My definition of language pre..."
It was dark.
"supposes the exclusi..."
I was with 3 of my friends.
"-on of everything tha..."
I saw him across the pathway.
"-t is outside its"
My vision focused on his facia-
"organism or syste..."
-l expression, it was one of...
"-m-- in a word, o..."
joy and laughter. I was...
"-f everything"
gladdened by empath...
"known a..."
-ic transfer. He noticed my gaze a...
"-s exte..."
-nd smiled at me. I was already smili...
"-rnal li..."
ng so to acknowledge his acknowledgement of my...
"-nguis..."
presence, I touched his shoulders and felt the flesh on its blades...
"-tic..."
beneath his shirt, shaked it to the point that I felt the tenderness of his abdomen...
"-s..."
and let go remembering how those 3 salient seconds forced itself unto my consciousness forever
"."
The dense substance of the concrete bench keeps me connected to the whole system of normal forces, support upon support upon support upon support. Gravity is such a wonder- giving one a notion of ground that one begins to construct what is up and down, high and low, above and beneath- the whole perceptual plethora of the vertical.
I wish that this is the discourse that exists in my mind.
I'm supposed to be filled with awe for structuralist linguistics! A sublime cognitive architecture should occupy my mind now! Rationality of the highest order should organize my thoughts as the schema that the greatest thinkers carefully and scientifically crafted try to penetrate my mind in this vain exercise of reading.
This heavy "book" of borrowed knowledge, skillfully photocopied by acolytes of intellectual piracy, like the concrete bench make its presence upon the skin of my cold lap. Much as well like the subtle heat of the sun which warms my whole body that just came out of a refrigerated space of a conference room makes its presence on me via the realm of temperature. The wind does not make itself less known as it blows my hair and subsequently and antagonistically counters the discourse of heat in my body with a counter-discourse of cool.
Where is the gravity?
That moment!
It's as if my mind is prevented to reach this "high thinking." I just can't seem to understand why!
It's that moment!
Coming from a 3 hour class that discussed the same thing that I am reading in the present, the seeming "physics of thought" that is linguistics, why is it that my mind just refuses to put "gravity" to these ideas? In word, it's tangible presence is undeniable! As I continue...
"My definition of language pre..."
It was dark.
"supposes the exclusi..."
I was with 3 of my friends.
"-on of everything tha..."
I saw him across the pathway.
"-t is outside its"
My vision focused on his facia-
"organism or syste..."
-l expression, it was one of...
"-m-- in a word, o..."
joy and laughter. I was...
"-f everything"
gladdened by empath...
"known a..."
-ic transfer. He noticed my gaze a...
"-s exte..."
-nd smiled at me. I was already smili...
"-rnal li..."
ng so to acknowledge his acknowledgement of my...
"-nguis..."
presence, I touched his shoulders and felt the flesh on its blades...
"-tic..."
beneath his shirt, shaked it to the point that I felt the tenderness of his abdomen...
"-s..."
and let go remembering how those 3 salient seconds forced itself unto my consciousness forever
"."
looking for something to do after school
I have been trying to look for a research scholarship for myself. In using the internet, it goes like this...
1) you'll find so many offers for scholarships
BUT! not on the fields you'd want to study on! (mine is moral and/or political philosophy or social and/or cultural psychology if anyone's interested in giving me the opportunity, PLEASE DO TELL ME!!!!)
2) you'll find your interest eventually
BUT! your nationality or alma mater prevents you to!
*just a comment, what's the point of applying for a post-graduate masters program if you already have a masters degree wherein you got an A- as your average? UGH! I don't get why that prerequisite was even created.
3) you'll finally be able to find the right one!
BUT! it's either already closed or you're not good enough for it!
http://benhaith.deviantart.com/art/Scholar-of-Destruction-100795016
Maybe I just simply need to try harder and to the career counselor I shall go!
The future is always gives such an anxiety that a person faces every time one would choose to be conscious of it. Questions of determinism always abound! What am I meant to do? What is it really I'm really good at? Am I really capable of doing what I want to do? Do I have the resources to pursuit these plans?
One scholarship offer caught my attention and its offer for study of moral and political philosophy had already a determined focus: hard determinism.
It was very very very ironic.
http://blackmage9.deviantart.com/art/Irony-125899141
Determinism which is the idea or notion that one's life is already laid out before him/her regardless of his/her efforts at controlling his/her destiny. Life is then just a matter of revelation and free will are but tracks in the greater railroad of one's one-tracked life. This makes moral-ethical considerations peripheral concerns of the human race and the essential question of meaning is pointed at discerning and eventually accepting one's telos as it inevitably unfolds.
The adjective "hard" when juxtaposed with the word determinism signals a notion of the incompatibility of determinism to reality. To stay at positive articulation: one is free to choose his/her own course in life and moral-ethical considerations are at the core of the human quest. Telos here is dependent on human free willing and the question of meaning is made essential.
To be accepted in that scholarship means that one is predetermined to study hard determinism...
Let's see how that goes!
1) you'll find so many offers for scholarships
BUT! not on the fields you'd want to study on! (mine is moral and/or political philosophy or social and/or cultural psychology if anyone's interested in giving me the opportunity, PLEASE DO TELL ME!!!!)
2) you'll find your interest eventually
BUT! your nationality or alma mater prevents you to!
*just a comment, what's the point of applying for a post-graduate masters program if you already have a masters degree wherein you got an A- as your average? UGH! I don't get why that prerequisite was even created.
3) you'll finally be able to find the right one!
BUT! it's either already closed or you're not good enough for it!
http://benhaith.deviantart.com/art/Scholar-of-Destruction-100795016
Maybe I just simply need to try harder and to the career counselor I shall go!
The future is always gives such an anxiety that a person faces every time one would choose to be conscious of it. Questions of determinism always abound! What am I meant to do? What is it really I'm really good at? Am I really capable of doing what I want to do? Do I have the resources to pursuit these plans?
One scholarship offer caught my attention and its offer for study of moral and political philosophy had already a determined focus: hard determinism.
It was very very very ironic.
http://blackmage9.deviantart.com/art/Irony-125899141
Determinism which is the idea or notion that one's life is already laid out before him/her regardless of his/her efforts at controlling his/her destiny. Life is then just a matter of revelation and free will are but tracks in the greater railroad of one's one-tracked life. This makes moral-ethical considerations peripheral concerns of the human race and the essential question of meaning is pointed at discerning and eventually accepting one's telos as it inevitably unfolds.
The adjective "hard" when juxtaposed with the word determinism signals a notion of the incompatibility of determinism to reality. To stay at positive articulation: one is free to choose his/her own course in life and moral-ethical considerations are at the core of the human quest. Telos here is dependent on human free willing and the question of meaning is made essential.
To be accepted in that scholarship means that one is predetermined to study hard determinism...
Let's see how that goes!
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Welcome back!
Back from a long semi-ascetic, but semi-hedonistic break from writing. I was both too tired and too excited from writing. I've developed a whole set of ideas to write, but as my method supposes, I should not jump into them without something to let it unfold with.
Now, I'm back!
http://rubyd.deviantart.com/art/Welcome-Back-Riku-37202207
After a long day (which for the first time I will narrate!), I went back to do this blog to recollect myself.
It was Saturday and I woke up 9am to study for my 12nn cultural studies: text and textuality class with a reading on the linguistics of Saussure. I ate and went to school to find out that my class has moved its venue and I waited for 10 minutes in the classroom anxious if there would be class at all. It was a very unsettling experience because I spent my whole Friday afternoon reading the same text and woke up to reading that text and spent my ride to school on the train also reading the same text. I wanted to have the class!
Lo and behold a graduate student classmate of mine (I'm an undergraduate by the way) went in to tell that the class' venue was in the lecture room in the Department of English. The class was fine, but I must say that being a psychology major with a self-confessed philosophical orientation to the world, entering the shoes of Saussure and his linguistics and the metaphysics it constructs is too exhausting to take in for a whole 3 hours.
http://danikalsupremacy.deviantart.com/art/Linguist-Shoes-83635224
After that class, I was planning on watching the movie "New Moon" with my friends for some laughs. But no, most of my friends cancelled on me. So I went to a Bookstore to buy some pencils, eat a bowl of soup in a fastfood, and venture into the research library I have never went to in a shabby dormitory/condo complex to look for some resources I and my other friends' research projects. I honestly did not find anything particularly useful, but the experience was very rewarding.
The experience of being alone all this while or at least having no dominant person to relay words with was very peculiar. I'm not a particularly social person, but I've been used to enjoy the company of other people to a point that I've forgotten how to be not with others lately. I'm not particularly private as well, but I honestly admit that alone time procured in me a feeling of restlessness.
What makes being alone an endeavor?
What I can say is something that I draw from Kristeva: that in being alone, we speak to ourselves. Today, I was forced to look into myself. If I am a particularly critical person both in the realm of ideas and people, which I consider myself to be, this critical orientation or attitude if I may say was redirected towards myself. Today, I saw myself in a different light. Not that I claim to have found an Archimedian point to move myself, but I was able to examine myself and objectively at that I believe so. I was faced with my own radical otherness and I was moved from within.
How does this happen?
Through silence...
http://deatharoundtheeyes.deviantart.com/art/Quiet-138170174
Saussure tells us that before we even speak, we have already been spoken and that before we even write, we have already been written. I'm not one to really adhere to this linguistic metaphysics, but as a theory of knowledge, it does make sense.
I didn't particularly aim at examining myself earlier and I just simply let myself be. I did what I wanted to do, nothing predetermined or pre-planned. My thoughts were serene because I did what simply "flowed".
I was spoken by the language of silence.
In the silence of my mind, without that conscious effort to critique my own thought process, I was able to achieve a different form of criticism and of knowing. That of my own. My being was able to express and communicate itself to me without me consciously inducing it.
I found out that I really love research and adored topics concerning humor, sexuality, and politics. That was me.
Silence speaks of us in ways our mind can never do through words.
http://ictenbey.deviantart.com/art/SILENCE-69243859
You should try it out.
Now, I'm back!
http://rubyd.deviantart.com/art/Welcome-Back-Riku-37202207
After a long day (which for the first time I will narrate!), I went back to do this blog to recollect myself.
It was Saturday and I woke up 9am to study for my 12nn cultural studies: text and textuality class with a reading on the linguistics of Saussure. I ate and went to school to find out that my class has moved its venue and I waited for 10 minutes in the classroom anxious if there would be class at all. It was a very unsettling experience because I spent my whole Friday afternoon reading the same text and woke up to reading that text and spent my ride to school on the train also reading the same text. I wanted to have the class!
Lo and behold a graduate student classmate of mine (I'm an undergraduate by the way) went in to tell that the class' venue was in the lecture room in the Department of English. The class was fine, but I must say that being a psychology major with a self-confessed philosophical orientation to the world, entering the shoes of Saussure and his linguistics and the metaphysics it constructs is too exhausting to take in for a whole 3 hours.
http://danikalsupremacy.deviantart.com/art/Linguist-Shoes-83635224
After that class, I was planning on watching the movie "New Moon" with my friends for some laughs. But no, most of my friends cancelled on me. So I went to a Bookstore to buy some pencils, eat a bowl of soup in a fastfood, and venture into the research library I have never went to in a shabby dormitory/condo complex to look for some resources I and my other friends' research projects. I honestly did not find anything particularly useful, but the experience was very rewarding.
The experience of being alone all this while or at least having no dominant person to relay words with was very peculiar. I'm not a particularly social person, but I've been used to enjoy the company of other people to a point that I've forgotten how to be not with others lately. I'm not particularly private as well, but I honestly admit that alone time procured in me a feeling of restlessness.
What makes being alone an endeavor?
What I can say is something that I draw from Kristeva: that in being alone, we speak to ourselves. Today, I was forced to look into myself. If I am a particularly critical person both in the realm of ideas and people, which I consider myself to be, this critical orientation or attitude if I may say was redirected towards myself. Today, I saw myself in a different light. Not that I claim to have found an Archimedian point to move myself, but I was able to examine myself and objectively at that I believe so. I was faced with my own radical otherness and I was moved from within.
How does this happen?
Through silence...
http://deatharoundtheeyes.deviantart.com/art/Quiet-138170174
Saussure tells us that before we even speak, we have already been spoken and that before we even write, we have already been written. I'm not one to really adhere to this linguistic metaphysics, but as a theory of knowledge, it does make sense.
I didn't particularly aim at examining myself earlier and I just simply let myself be. I did what I wanted to do, nothing predetermined or pre-planned. My thoughts were serene because I did what simply "flowed".
I was spoken by the language of silence.
In the silence of my mind, without that conscious effort to critique my own thought process, I was able to achieve a different form of criticism and of knowing. That of my own. My being was able to express and communicate itself to me without me consciously inducing it.
I found out that I really love research and adored topics concerning humor, sexuality, and politics. That was me.
Silence speaks of us in ways our mind can never do through words.
http://ictenbey.deviantart.com/art/SILENCE-69243859
You should try it out.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
foundations of a lesbian didactic
“Vagina...”
I spoke into the open of this over-familiar room. Though the bumpy sound of the word died on all four corners, it seemed as if my mind had a different acoustical structure; the word almost endlessly, tirelessly asserted itself into my consciousness. Echoing, as if trying to make me it a mantra- repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating. How can a hole literally fill my mind?
Ironic.
And I continued...
“And the parts of the vagina ARE...” My voice suddenly got all enthusiastic: “the clitoris, it’s prepuce, the labia minora, the urethral opening, the vestibule, the hymen” and on a hush, I whispered “untorn” and went back to the same lecture-type tone as if pointing at a diagram which was my actual body part through the looking glass of my compact: “and the labia majora and the posterior pourchet.” I took a pause grinning shy of the remotest possibility that anyone heard the outrage I was doing. Nonetheless in a self-defiant way, I powerfully uttered: “AND! Don’t forget the mons pubis!” I laughed both in a tense and a relaxed manner which opposing feelings depended on the way I looked at the situation.
It’s funny how amused I got in this naming exercise, it made me feel that I really understood what it is that I was referring to. And with this thought, another layer of doubt both diverted and deepened my thought process to mentally “verbalize” the classic question of “does a mirror really reflect reality?” which whose inquiry were readily answered with arguments by my active mind. “No, because the mirror inverts an image into its horizontal visual counterpart”- again in a manner as if teaching in front of a supposed now physics then biology or sex education class. The previous argument was semi-countered by- “though the imagination can always invert the image to its supposed ‘real’ form” and again countered- “though again, it’d been a ‘constructed’ thought and hence worthy of an accusation of its ‘untruth’” which was finally demolished by the statement: “did it even matter to see the real thing?”
I wondered and pondered a lot about this and my mind was as if a room full of jury members debating and rebating about the value of the thoughts I were thinking. This and that, due to this and because of that, despite of these and including those, with this in mind or without considering that, my thoughts were just plain messy. Already doubting my sanity due to hunches about this possible schizophrenic episode that has just occurred inside my head, the different sides all simultaneously argued making each others’ statements obsolete because they rendered incomprehensible everything they said to the dominant ego-perspective which served as my representative in the situation. Not that all the other members weren’t me.
Maybe it did matter. Maybe it did not. I don’t know. Again, it depends on the way I’d look at it.
Going back to the vagina, all I see is the outside- the “external vagina” as they’d say. I don’t personally know but they also say that there’s an “internal vagina” wherein or better said as literally in where wonders happen. I fondly call it “the origin of man”- fascinating really.
This seeming little cave that lies between my lower limbs just in front of my anus is where humanity emerged, of course, not without a hearty brew within. It also looks like a little spark of a flame with smoke emerging in contact with its definitions against the air with the flame stemming from high above a wick stemming from the perineum to the end with the lack of a candle in the anus. It can also look like an elongated seashell from where molluscs normally take residence in and keep their vulnerable flesh from probable predation. No matter how I’d look at it at the outside, it’s still the same vagina- the one that has a hole that was evolutionarily supposed to take in a penis and bear children.
From this thought, it seemed fitting to be back at the biology class to again list off.
“From the vagina, we enter into the vulva and the vaginal fornix which connects us to the cervix which narrow opening leads to the uterus, commonly called the womb.”
Now I realize that it was useless to use the compact to view the vagina now because my mind is seemingly looking at the insides of it unless...
“UGH!”
Now, I’m torn...
And it couldn’t be more painful. I couldn’t stress it enough that it was PAINFUL. When the mirror side of the compact slit me apart, I now knew what they meant about gushers. I felt like a surgeon that just performed a great irreversible surgery to the once semi-permeable membrane that was now fully-permeable to anything and everything that would desire to come in and out of it. Though as if that would happen anytime with the knowledge of my current lifestyle of non-permissiveness to penetration; not that I hate men; it’s just that I love women.
All I saw was darkness through a rich frame of crimson.
I need to mention that the compact was initially green and the view or the lack of it made me regret the suffering I went through for the sake of curiosity. As they say, “curiosity killed the pussy,” forgive the wordplay, but mine just got ripped bare.
I remember from something that I have read that bowls, spoons, even plates, or anything that is hollow and can contain substance is associated with the vagina. They call these hollow container things as belonging to the archetype of “yonic” symbols. They say that men fantasize about these hollow objects and wish to fill them up with their “phallus” which in turn are identified from an archetype of elongated or piercing objects that more often than not, can penetrate or supposedly “perfectly” fill “yonic” emptiness. Regardless and I say with power; REGARDLESS of these fantasies, truth be told; just like a bowl is for soup, the vagina is as they say for children. Needless they say; the vagina is a vagina because it is meant to contain something.
This made me connect in my mind why the only part of the female genitalia or all genitalia for that matter that has an acceptable presence in children’s literature is the “womb.” I theorize that it is probably because it is perceived as something beautiful and non-invasive of the special ever-protected faculty of the young- their innocence. Which based on very recent experience is actually really fragile and breaks with the necessity of a seeming rite of passage mainly comprising of agony. Perhaps, it’s the only beautiful thing about genitalia and perhaps about sex- its seeming by-product: babies.
I am reminded of the question that is often asked in beauty pageants: “What is the essence of a woman?” I restrain myself from thinking of the philosophical foundations of the concept of “essence,” but really, is there? I honestly want to know. Some answer beauty, some nurturing, some parental example though one of the most famous answers powerfully posits that pregnancy or bearing children is the “essence of a woman.”
The ability to directly nurture another human being and be literally connected to it through a cord called the umbilical cord. They say that it is the most noble and most beautiful thing whose event most closely fully realizes womanhood. And the ability to bring it out into the world- DIVINE! How beautiful is it to cause someone’s existence into this world? Not that I have total faith in life that it will always be a beautiful thing, but procuring an immense source of potential for this world and be able to be the one that suffers lovingly for its first real breath- what better privilege is there?
All this though ENRAGES me.
How do THEY suppose I fully realize myself?
Does my womanhood depend on my ovaries creating egg cells that are fertilized by sperm whose moment of encounter produce a zygote that connects and attaches itself to my womb to be incubated for 9 months to produce a fetus that in turn turns into a child?
I notice that my heart is beating faster, my skin is producing beads of cold sweat, my right hand without me knowing have made a fist out of itself, and the other hand on the compact- it seemed as if it wanted to crush what I was seeing and what it was vicariously touching through the compact.
I wanted to crush my vagina and rid myself of the burden of my womanhood which the world defines as my ability to bear children. They say that it is a privilege to be a woman and be able to bring someone into this world in a special way, but it didn’t seem like a privilege. It seemed as if that if I declined it, I would be doing the world a sin. I thought it didn’t matter if we didn’t take our privileges, but it did! It seems as if that bearing children is a requirement which my being does want to experience in all its sincerity, but seemingly, it was “unfortunate” that my being is giving me a hard time. Apparently, my soul does not want to be a “woman” if it means having to betray myself and decline my identity.
I am lesbian.
Just saying that seems dirty and the world deems it unbecoming of having a vagina if am one.
I needed to calm down.
I took deep breaths.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
The air couldn’t be thicker when I inhaled and my exhales are even thicker than what I took in.
And I suddenly felt tears trickling down my cheeks.
I dropped the compact. The blood spread across the floor. I wiped my tears though realized too late that I have just smeared it with more liquid- my blood. I felt like a dirty woman, inside and out, bloodied up by my own thoughts though somehow I knew it wasn’t my fault.
It was THEM.
*ps... I'm a guy... :D
I spoke into the open of this over-familiar room. Though the bumpy sound of the word died on all four corners, it seemed as if my mind had a different acoustical structure; the word almost endlessly, tirelessly asserted itself into my consciousness. Echoing, as if trying to make me it a mantra- repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating. How can a hole literally fill my mind?
Ironic.
And I continued...
“And the parts of the vagina ARE...” My voice suddenly got all enthusiastic: “the clitoris, it’s prepuce, the labia minora, the urethral opening, the vestibule, the hymen” and on a hush, I whispered “untorn” and went back to the same lecture-type tone as if pointing at a diagram which was my actual body part through the looking glass of my compact: “and the labia majora and the posterior pourchet.” I took a pause grinning shy of the remotest possibility that anyone heard the outrage I was doing. Nonetheless in a self-defiant way, I powerfully uttered: “AND! Don’t forget the mons pubis!” I laughed both in a tense and a relaxed manner which opposing feelings depended on the way I looked at the situation.
It’s funny how amused I got in this naming exercise, it made me feel that I really understood what it is that I was referring to. And with this thought, another layer of doubt both diverted and deepened my thought process to mentally “verbalize” the classic question of “does a mirror really reflect reality?” which whose inquiry were readily answered with arguments by my active mind. “No, because the mirror inverts an image into its horizontal visual counterpart”- again in a manner as if teaching in front of a supposed now physics then biology or sex education class. The previous argument was semi-countered by- “though the imagination can always invert the image to its supposed ‘real’ form” and again countered- “though again, it’d been a ‘constructed’ thought and hence worthy of an accusation of its ‘untruth’” which was finally demolished by the statement: “did it even matter to see the real thing?”
I wondered and pondered a lot about this and my mind was as if a room full of jury members debating and rebating about the value of the thoughts I were thinking. This and that, due to this and because of that, despite of these and including those, with this in mind or without considering that, my thoughts were just plain messy. Already doubting my sanity due to hunches about this possible schizophrenic episode that has just occurred inside my head, the different sides all simultaneously argued making each others’ statements obsolete because they rendered incomprehensible everything they said to the dominant ego-perspective which served as my representative in the situation. Not that all the other members weren’t me.
Maybe it did matter. Maybe it did not. I don’t know. Again, it depends on the way I’d look at it.
Going back to the vagina, all I see is the outside- the “external vagina” as they’d say. I don’t personally know but they also say that there’s an “internal vagina” wherein or better said as literally in where wonders happen. I fondly call it “the origin of man”- fascinating really.
This seeming little cave that lies between my lower limbs just in front of my anus is where humanity emerged, of course, not without a hearty brew within. It also looks like a little spark of a flame with smoke emerging in contact with its definitions against the air with the flame stemming from high above a wick stemming from the perineum to the end with the lack of a candle in the anus. It can also look like an elongated seashell from where molluscs normally take residence in and keep their vulnerable flesh from probable predation. No matter how I’d look at it at the outside, it’s still the same vagina- the one that has a hole that was evolutionarily supposed to take in a penis and bear children.
From this thought, it seemed fitting to be back at the biology class to again list off.
“From the vagina, we enter into the vulva and the vaginal fornix which connects us to the cervix which narrow opening leads to the uterus, commonly called the womb.”
Now I realize that it was useless to use the compact to view the vagina now because my mind is seemingly looking at the insides of it unless...
“UGH!”
Now, I’m torn...
And it couldn’t be more painful. I couldn’t stress it enough that it was PAINFUL. When the mirror side of the compact slit me apart, I now knew what they meant about gushers. I felt like a surgeon that just performed a great irreversible surgery to the once semi-permeable membrane that was now fully-permeable to anything and everything that would desire to come in and out of it. Though as if that would happen anytime with the knowledge of my current lifestyle of non-permissiveness to penetration; not that I hate men; it’s just that I love women.
All I saw was darkness through a rich frame of crimson.
I need to mention that the compact was initially green and the view or the lack of it made me regret the suffering I went through for the sake of curiosity. As they say, “curiosity killed the pussy,” forgive the wordplay, but mine just got ripped bare.
I remember from something that I have read that bowls, spoons, even plates, or anything that is hollow and can contain substance is associated with the vagina. They call these hollow container things as belonging to the archetype of “yonic” symbols. They say that men fantasize about these hollow objects and wish to fill them up with their “phallus” which in turn are identified from an archetype of elongated or piercing objects that more often than not, can penetrate or supposedly “perfectly” fill “yonic” emptiness. Regardless and I say with power; REGARDLESS of these fantasies, truth be told; just like a bowl is for soup, the vagina is as they say for children. Needless they say; the vagina is a vagina because it is meant to contain something.
This made me connect in my mind why the only part of the female genitalia or all genitalia for that matter that has an acceptable presence in children’s literature is the “womb.” I theorize that it is probably because it is perceived as something beautiful and non-invasive of the special ever-protected faculty of the young- their innocence. Which based on very recent experience is actually really fragile and breaks with the necessity of a seeming rite of passage mainly comprising of agony. Perhaps, it’s the only beautiful thing about genitalia and perhaps about sex- its seeming by-product: babies.
I am reminded of the question that is often asked in beauty pageants: “What is the essence of a woman?” I restrain myself from thinking of the philosophical foundations of the concept of “essence,” but really, is there? I honestly want to know. Some answer beauty, some nurturing, some parental example though one of the most famous answers powerfully posits that pregnancy or bearing children is the “essence of a woman.”
The ability to directly nurture another human being and be literally connected to it through a cord called the umbilical cord. They say that it is the most noble and most beautiful thing whose event most closely fully realizes womanhood. And the ability to bring it out into the world- DIVINE! How beautiful is it to cause someone’s existence into this world? Not that I have total faith in life that it will always be a beautiful thing, but procuring an immense source of potential for this world and be able to be the one that suffers lovingly for its first real breath- what better privilege is there?
All this though ENRAGES me.
How do THEY suppose I fully realize myself?
Does my womanhood depend on my ovaries creating egg cells that are fertilized by sperm whose moment of encounter produce a zygote that connects and attaches itself to my womb to be incubated for 9 months to produce a fetus that in turn turns into a child?
I notice that my heart is beating faster, my skin is producing beads of cold sweat, my right hand without me knowing have made a fist out of itself, and the other hand on the compact- it seemed as if it wanted to crush what I was seeing and what it was vicariously touching through the compact.
I wanted to crush my vagina and rid myself of the burden of my womanhood which the world defines as my ability to bear children. They say that it is a privilege to be a woman and be able to bring someone into this world in a special way, but it didn’t seem like a privilege. It seemed as if that if I declined it, I would be doing the world a sin. I thought it didn’t matter if we didn’t take our privileges, but it did! It seems as if that bearing children is a requirement which my being does want to experience in all its sincerity, but seemingly, it was “unfortunate” that my being is giving me a hard time. Apparently, my soul does not want to be a “woman” if it means having to betray myself and decline my identity.
I am lesbian.
Just saying that seems dirty and the world deems it unbecoming of having a vagina if am one.
I needed to calm down.
I took deep breaths.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
The air couldn’t be thicker when I inhaled and my exhales are even thicker than what I took in.
And I suddenly felt tears trickling down my cheeks.
I dropped the compact. The blood spread across the floor. I wiped my tears though realized too late that I have just smeared it with more liquid- my blood. I felt like a dirty woman, inside and out, bloodied up by my own thoughts though somehow I knew it wasn’t my fault.
It was THEM.
*ps... I'm a guy... :D
taking a break...
I do love writing, but at this point, I don't have much of what I want to say. I am aware that I have a lot that I want to write, but at this point, writing itself doesn't appeal much. I'd go back to you once I've found my way back.
for the meantime, just read what I have written in the past...
for the meantime, just read what I have written in the past...
Friday, November 20, 2009
philosophical aesthetic
http://tigrfire.deviantart.com/art/Mathematics-25714452
Mathematics and (the mathematical) sciences sees the world as "perfect" harmony.
Equations such as 1 + 1 = 2 assert an operational "order" in the world and essentially construct the world as a symmetric reality. Precisely, a universe which follows the rules of unchanging flow.
This is not the aesthetic of philosophy.
I assert that this preoccupation with the "order" of equality of mathematics and the mathematical sciences is a mere re-edification of the "numerical aesthetic." That mathematics simply boils down to an aesthetic of essences.
What then is the aesthetic of philosophy?
http://memo-80.deviantart.com/art/Piano-teacher-101477296
I remember my piano teacher of old. She always picked the more harmonic songs- the entertainer, nocturne in e flat, the hallelujah chorus, the flight of the bumblebee (though this is not particularly harmonic), and etc.
It was the day I became a "musician".
Thanks to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, a song that has a part wherein a "clash" occurs. It always caught my attention and its mystique never seemed to lose its impact on me. It is from this experience of the clash I called myself a philosophical musician as opposed to a mathematical musician. Where 2 musical notes with an asymptotic relationship with each other are played simultaneously, that is philosophical music. I think my teacher seemed to catch up on this odd taste of mine.
*try listening to it! It should sound like the background music when a psycho-killer in movies plunge their knives unto their (normally female) victims.
Because philosophy is in the (philein) love/affiliation of/to (sophia) wisdom- that which is eternal- all philosophy can do to that which it contemplates is to approach it asymptotically. To study what is (essentially) involves an admittance of limitation. All philosophy can do is to "clash" with wisdom and to proclaim our humility in its characteristics of imperfection and particularity.
http://ippus.deviantart.com/art/Naruto-Clash-Affinity-77193720
Musically, when a clash happens, the initial constitution of the note uttered before the clash is strengthened by the emergence of that which is asymptotically beside it. The secondary note that approached the initial note on the other hand, is paradoxically endangered of its own constitution. It's ever shaking character always seeks to dissolve itself unto that it clashes with or turn away from it and pronounce its irresolute character.
In that moment of the ever approaching relationship within the clash, harmonies seems to escape the registry of the "unmusician."
Much like being a philosopher, it is the taste for this "difficult harmony", a harmony that endangers the constitution of one's self only to eventually be subsumed unto wisdom (which is eternal since it came before and will come after us) or we would need to further pronounce our short-handedness and irresolute character with regard to that already identified prepositional note, the eternal. All the philosopher can do is to strengthen the eternal by endangering him/herself in front of it.
And as for the "unphilosophical," don't fret because the philosophical can't even begin to comprehend why they can't reach and far more, how to begin to approach the eternal. The eternal is like a rainbow which when we try to take agrasp, it seems to escape tangibility. All that we hope to achieve is to "fall into place" in harmony within our own capacity to pronounce our resonance, immortalize ourselves in Aristotle's language, only in uncertain relation to the eternal.
What then do we make out of the mathematical?
http://theluckynine.deviantart.com/art/I-heart-Mathematics-30213858
Be prepared to eventually be philosophical!
* By the way, I'm changing my rules! HAHAHAHAHA! I timed this blog because my blogs are getting deeper so I needed to increase the number of words to 700. :D
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Daisy Love
He loves me,
He loves me not.
Separating petals
from the core,
golden and vulnerable.
Slowly stripped off
what beauty
that crowns
the virgin,
the sacred yonic.
Revealing flesh
by flesh,
by flesh.
together with
every scent
by scent,
by scent
until left.
With nothing-
seeking assurance
if anything were
at all real.
He loves me not.
Separating petals
from the core,
golden and vulnerable.
Slowly stripped off
what beauty
that crowns
the virgin,
the sacred yonic.
Revealing flesh
by flesh,
by flesh.
together with
every scent
by scent,
by scent
until left.
With nothing-
seeking assurance
if anything were
at all real.
the ungraspable
*this blog will reach 700 words, but 300 of them come from quotes so I believe it still follows the rules I set for myself. HAHAHAHA!"
How do you capture what love means?
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."- the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 13
This epistle of Paul that he writes oh so poetically represents something that goes beyond Christian truth. I believe that it even goes beyond religious truth and I even lift it to a level of a metaphysics- that love reflects a truth that cuts across particularities and reveals something essential to the human person.
Love has the most powerful capacity to make any person regardless of all status, esteem, age, or wisdom feel like a kid looking through a peephole. Though what's different with love's peephole is that one needs to really plug in one's head to REALLY SEE. Simply "looking" or "glancing" is not enough and it fells dubious in its being worthy of being called "love." Why not? Because love makes the world seem so beautiful and one has but no choice but to DESIRE to be one with the "other". Though the desire is there, you'll never know if you're really "in love." Love is only made a reality in one's own choosing to love more. To go deeper and deeper and deeper into it, there love reveals itself to you.
I speak of the Greeks' "eros" and how passionate it gets. In more contemporary language, the word "eros" evolved into "erotic" in English that depicts sex and serves to just be a potent analogy to love. One is really drawn to plunge into the world of the "other" and at the same time the "other" is allowed to plunge into one's world. Ultimately, a bond is built between the "I" and the "other" and somehow the distinctions start to be irrelevant-- not blur, but become irrelevant.
What I will call the phallic aspect of love which is seen in one's plunge into the world of the other is the actualization of the very hopes of love. That in love, one finds happiness which Aristotle depicts as the "ultimate end" of one's life. That in risking all for love, one finds the confirmation of every article of one's self in its tendering to the other. Love in this sense constructs the other and its world as if it is a receptacle of meaning and as a being exclusive to hope.
Though this plunging is not always one that is joyous. As Sartre so powerfully depicts, "hell is the other."
Neil Gaiman couldn't get it any better:
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
This is the yonic aspect of love. The aspect of love that deprives one of all self-meaning and removes one from all that is worthwhile. Happiness doesn't even seem to be a legitimate word because it ceases to be a reality and becomes only a romantic ideal. With any reality like love, there are just some things one needs to swallow up even if it seems to be such a jagged little pill (quoting Alanis Morisette).
Well, how do you capture what love means?
It's like the union of the phallic and yonic aspects of love. Though they run contrary to each other, they are both necessary to qualify love. As much as sex is both phallic and yonic, so is love. Essentially, love can only occur under that specific condition of eternal irony.
Ultimately, it will form something beautiful and as Paul said: "Love never fails." Because in the end, it's not about who or what you loved, but that you loved at all. To choose to be connected to something beyond one's self will prove a richer and more meaningful experience than just perpetuating one's survival to eventually die. Because...
Love makes immortal.
How do you capture what love means?
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."- the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 13
This epistle of Paul that he writes oh so poetically represents something that goes beyond Christian truth. I believe that it even goes beyond religious truth and I even lift it to a level of a metaphysics- that love reflects a truth that cuts across particularities and reveals something essential to the human person.
Love has the most powerful capacity to make any person regardless of all status, esteem, age, or wisdom feel like a kid looking through a peephole. Though what's different with love's peephole is that one needs to really plug in one's head to REALLY SEE. Simply "looking" or "glancing" is not enough and it fells dubious in its being worthy of being called "love." Why not? Because love makes the world seem so beautiful and one has but no choice but to DESIRE to be one with the "other". Though the desire is there, you'll never know if you're really "in love." Love is only made a reality in one's own choosing to love more. To go deeper and deeper and deeper into it, there love reveals itself to you.
I speak of the Greeks' "eros" and how passionate it gets. In more contemporary language, the word "eros" evolved into "erotic" in English that depicts sex and serves to just be a potent analogy to love. One is really drawn to plunge into the world of the "other" and at the same time the "other" is allowed to plunge into one's world. Ultimately, a bond is built between the "I" and the "other" and somehow the distinctions start to be irrelevant-- not blur, but become irrelevant.
What I will call the phallic aspect of love which is seen in one's plunge into the world of the other is the actualization of the very hopes of love. That in love, one finds happiness which Aristotle depicts as the "ultimate end" of one's life. That in risking all for love, one finds the confirmation of every article of one's self in its tendering to the other. Love in this sense constructs the other and its world as if it is a receptacle of meaning and as a being exclusive to hope.
Though this plunging is not always one that is joyous. As Sartre so powerfully depicts, "hell is the other."
Neil Gaiman couldn't get it any better:
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
This is the yonic aspect of love. The aspect of love that deprives one of all self-meaning and removes one from all that is worthwhile. Happiness doesn't even seem to be a legitimate word because it ceases to be a reality and becomes only a romantic ideal. With any reality like love, there are just some things one needs to swallow up even if it seems to be such a jagged little pill (quoting Alanis Morisette).
Well, how do you capture what love means?
It's like the union of the phallic and yonic aspects of love. Though they run contrary to each other, they are both necessary to qualify love. As much as sex is both phallic and yonic, so is love. Essentially, love can only occur under that specific condition of eternal irony.
Ultimately, it will form something beautiful and as Paul said: "Love never fails." Because in the end, it's not about who or what you loved, but that you loved at all. To choose to be connected to something beyond one's self will prove a richer and more meaningful experience than just perpetuating one's survival to eventually die. Because...
Love makes immortal.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Star
There IS a boy,
larger than life,
who simply wanted to really know
He climbed a tree,
put out his arm
and stretched his whole little body
Wind on his skin,
he saw the trees;
illumined by the moonshine
Stunned by the night
and how it made
the forest as shadow
focused at that
which was pure light
he forgot his hand
quickly he flew
dazed by the stars,
man- nothing new
Monday, November 16, 2009
celestial imperialism
"I want to be an astronaut!"
This statement powerfully sums up what the "modern man" aims to be. The desire to ultimately define the universe as subject to man's willing is so much encapsulated by this desire to conquer the skies. Not only to see it through telescopes or traverse its majestic foreignness, the modern man wants to OWN IT! To leave his flag as if a dog marking his territory.
The discovery of water in the moon simply confirms the possibility of man to inhabit it. Why the need to inhabit the moon? Do we really need to find that it is made of cheese? I am aware of the capacity of rats to deconstruct a trap and attain its cheese, but nonetheless, do you risk your whole life to simply attain that piece of cheese?
You say I'm burdening the event?
How many millions to billions of dollars are spent to fund a single trip to the moon? I am sure that there have been so many trips that needed to fail before this discovery could occur!
Does the end justify the means?
Probably, the end in mind was finding a proper shelter for humanity once the world runs out of its resources.
I wonder what Hannah Arendt will say about this...
But to neglect how many people never got to be persons in the sense that they never experienced the world in which they can participate in the activities which we consider to make us human?
http://irawrites.com/Informationdatafolder/worldinequality.htm
The majority money of the world is spent on military affairs (almost $600B), narcotic drugs ($400B), alcohol ($105B), cigarettes ($50B), computer games ($35B), and pet food ($17B)! These are the top 6 priorities of the world?
Probably this may prove to be more relevant?
The pursuit for that "Archimedian point" to which the moon is providing a possibility of for us to measure what the earth really means for us is relevant only to the point that we get above the dispositions which made us think in the first place to look for an "Archimedian point". Eventually like the earth, the moon will be exhausted of what we consider as "resources". We emerged from the earth and our evolution as a species stems from it essentially and exhausting what from which we emerged might be the worst rebellion we have made against ourselves. Though we can always assert that we can create our artifices of a humane environment in the moon in the event that it can sustain us, ultimately, we are still directed to the basic morality in environmental consciousness and consequently, our accountability to each other.
Sometimes the pursuit of knowledge prevents us to think.
NOW is the time.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
who is Manny Pacquiao?
wikipedia says... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manny_Pacquiao
It is interesting how fast this wikipedia article was edited by the acolytes of Manny-Pacquiao-knowing. With all the hype that accompanies this ground-breaking historical transcendence of boxing that Manny Pacquiao has achieved...
I'm sorry wikipedia, I beg to defer...
Any question of who is itself a philosophical one and essentially impossible to tell from a human perspective.
To answer the ultimate question of "who' is like saying the word "now"; that in its very utterance, it betrays its meaning.
I am now watching the show "Show me the Manny" with which Manny Pacquiao is the main attraction. Apparently, he is not there. How ironic can it get? The show capitalizes and even bases its title in the appearance of Manny and now he's not there!? Instead, he is replaced by a veteran comedian and impersonator, Micheal V as he acts as Manny that was supposedly victimized by an accident that ultimately changes his appearance.
To illustrate the irony a little further, Manny is brown and has a small, but very compact build and Micheal has a semi-Chinese complexion and medium-heavy build. But within the plot, the people in Manny's community eventually had to believe that Micheal was Manny because he exhibited the same behavioral patterns as Manny.
Is behavioral pattern a sufficient answer to "who"?
I guess not because actors wouldn't have a living if it were a sufficient answer. If then it is, then anybody can be an actor and an actress if that is the case. If ever, I could be Manny Pacquiao right now and pretend to be who I really am because writing is also simply a behavioral pattern or Manny Pacquiao could simply be me acting like the "greatest boxer of the world." Simply saying, no human person is reducible to how s/he lives his life; s/he is always something more than s/he reveals...
But how do you know who is Manny Pacquiao?
In one level, language has no capacity to express "who" since all verbs correspond to a definitive representation. To actually express a "who" the closest thing I would use is "is-ing" emphasizing continuity and dynamism. "Being" does not work because the verb "to be" in its most basic form signifies a stable nature while "is" means a movement and when it is transmuted into "is-ing" then the movement moves.
Who is Manny Pacquiao?
Is he THE agent of athletic excellence?
Is he THE representation of the cultural politics of that which is Filipino?
Is he THE take of point of Filipinos to achieve similar if not higher heights?
Is he THE categorical imperative? *maybe this is too much, much like what Kant's philosophy is... HAHAHAHAHA!
He is and is not at the same time!
He's like no one and like everyone!
To answer the "who" is to betray the possibilities of his is-ing and to make Manny a "what."
Let's put a pin on it!
and wait for wikipedia to update us...
Friday, November 13, 2009
the final introduction
I have a dream: to hear 2 beggars talk philosophically.
Maybe such a dream defies the social order of today, but sincerely, this is the dream I have for the world. Secondary to finding out my own philosophy, I aim in this blog like Jean-Paul Sartre to "bring back philosophy to the streets." Though not literally to the streets because people simply don't read blogs in the streets-- I aim to bring philosophy to the "ordinary discourse" and for philosophy to exist in the "discourse of the ordinary."
Basically, what I have done in the past 2 blogs were introductions. Introductions are meant to have a glimpse at what is going to be in the longer course of the revelation of a "text" such as mine. I use "text" here not only to represent it being made up of words (DOY!), but so much so to portray that I assert that my blog is meant to have a "textuality". That my blog is though a philosophical journey wherein I seek to reveal and express my identity, but as well, my blog will be by virtue of me being a human being, be also a social document and a product of phenomenology of life as a subject. BIG TERMS I use, but there you go! Simply speaking that I seek to channel through my consciousness and rhetoric what I am in relation to myself, but at the same time in relation to the "other".
Going back to my dream, what kind of dream is that? The hell are you supposed to achieve that? It seems as if I have set myself up for disappointment and have simply pronounced my demise in the case I take this dream seriously. But nonetheless, I believe otherwise. IT CAN BE DONE!
If there's something I want to be known for or as the Ancient Greeks powerfully captures it in the ancient notion of immortality via one's word, that I brought philosophy to the ordinary person and that philosophy becomes a celebrated member of the ordinary.
How do I intend to do this?
The ultimate question on method. I would be inclined to tell you to wait and see, but with so much desire in my heart, I admit to have a low capacity to "delay gratification" as many emotional intelligence theorists depict, but at the same time attempt to claim my ability to "manage gratification" as I allow you a truly direct experience by only breathing life to my method through praxis without explicitly stating the theoria behind it. Take out your "close reading" lens and lay your surgical gazes on the short excerpts of my philosophical writing as I let me die unto your hands and hopefully let you resurrect my mortality (Take note as I not use immortalize) unto your own receptive and creative faculties...
Maybe such a dream defies the social order of today, but sincerely, this is the dream I have for the world. Secondary to finding out my own philosophy, I aim in this blog like Jean-Paul Sartre to "bring back philosophy to the streets." Though not literally to the streets because people simply don't read blogs in the streets-- I aim to bring philosophy to the "ordinary discourse" and for philosophy to exist in the "discourse of the ordinary."
Basically, what I have done in the past 2 blogs were introductions. Introductions are meant to have a glimpse at what is going to be in the longer course of the revelation of a "text" such as mine. I use "text" here not only to represent it being made up of words (DOY!), but so much so to portray that I assert that my blog is meant to have a "textuality". That my blog is though a philosophical journey wherein I seek to reveal and express my identity, but as well, my blog will be by virtue of me being a human being, be also a social document and a product of phenomenology of life as a subject. BIG TERMS I use, but there you go! Simply speaking that I seek to channel through my consciousness and rhetoric what I am in relation to myself, but at the same time in relation to the "other".
Going back to my dream, what kind of dream is that? The hell are you supposed to achieve that? It seems as if I have set myself up for disappointment and have simply pronounced my demise in the case I take this dream seriously. But nonetheless, I believe otherwise. IT CAN BE DONE!
If there's something I want to be known for or as the Ancient Greeks powerfully captures it in the ancient notion of immortality via one's word, that I brought philosophy to the ordinary person and that philosophy becomes a celebrated member of the ordinary.
How do I intend to do this?
The ultimate question on method. I would be inclined to tell you to wait and see, but with so much desire in my heart, I admit to have a low capacity to "delay gratification" as many emotional intelligence theorists depict, but at the same time attempt to claim my ability to "manage gratification" as I allow you a truly direct experience by only breathing life to my method through praxis without explicitly stating the theoria behind it. Take out your "close reading" lens and lay your surgical gazes on the short excerpts of my philosophical writing as I let me die unto your hands and hopefully let you resurrect my mortality (Take note as I not use immortalize) unto your own receptive and creative faculties...
Thursday, November 12, 2009
A bowl of perspective
Originally I thought of discussing how the movie "Julie and Julia" had something to do with religious experience and apparently I lost time since it needed a more extensive thought process. Hence I simply thought of further describing what I intend to do in this journey towards a "philosophy of my own."
I confess that I dream of becoming an actual published writer and I do this in light of that. With so many things to say I vow to write only less than 500 words per post and come across a philosophical reality each time whose ramifications I will never fully grasp. And this is where the reader comes in: to make me grasp the ramification of my blog to your own reality. As Ego in Ratatouille has said: "serve me a bowl of perspective".
While we are at the theme of food with which I also employed with the last entry, "the first entry," (yes I love word play) I would like to use it again. Dishes are for the most part a combination of ingredients and their identity as pieces of culinary experience stem from the dynamic interaction of the many ingredients put into them. In my own "cooking of my own bowl of perspective" I would not like you, the reader to think of each blog as a dish in its own. Every blog is not intended to be a dynamic interaction of many ingredients that produce a holistic experience of philosophy. Rather, I would like you to treat each blog as an ingredient. That as I write and write and write and write and write, I may finally produce a philosophical experience from which you can partake of as you read and read and read and read and read.
The best image I can leave you is this. My mom just bought rosemary from the supermarket and she has discovered the wondrous possibilities of using just a single ingredient in almost EVERY DISH that she perceives it fitting. As I eat the food she serves, I experience all the possibilities in which rosemary can be used and the experience is both positive and negative. This is how I intend to construct this blog: in light of finding all the possibilities of my philosophy in life as I further get to know it in its continuous unfolding, I desire to express it as it reveals itself to me. Bare with me as I stumble across the possibilities of that which is essential.
I confess that I dream of becoming an actual published writer and I do this in light of that. With so many things to say I vow to write only less than 500 words per post and come across a philosophical reality each time whose ramifications I will never fully grasp. And this is where the reader comes in: to make me grasp the ramification of my blog to your own reality. As Ego in Ratatouille has said: "serve me a bowl of perspective".
While we are at the theme of food with which I also employed with the last entry, "the first entry," (yes I love word play) I would like to use it again. Dishes are for the most part a combination of ingredients and their identity as pieces of culinary experience stem from the dynamic interaction of the many ingredients put into them. In my own "cooking of my own bowl of perspective" I would not like you, the reader to think of each blog as a dish in its own. Every blog is not intended to be a dynamic interaction of many ingredients that produce a holistic experience of philosophy. Rather, I would like you to treat each blog as an ingredient. That as I write and write and write and write and write, I may finally produce a philosophical experience from which you can partake of as you read and read and read and read and read.
The best image I can leave you is this. My mom just bought rosemary from the supermarket and she has discovered the wondrous possibilities of using just a single ingredient in almost EVERY DISH that she perceives it fitting. As I eat the food she serves, I experience all the possibilities in which rosemary can be used and the experience is both positive and negative. This is how I intend to construct this blog: in light of finding all the possibilities of my philosophy in life as I further get to know it in its continuous unfolding, I desire to express it as it reveals itself to me. Bare with me as I stumble across the possibilities of that which is essential.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
first entry
Hey reader!
I would just like to establish the fact that I write for you.
Or do I? Probably not. Because I might only be saying that to impress upon you, the reader a sweet wooing image. Well I might be using this in the spirit of generosity, intellectual charity you might say, but that might only be a secondary effect. Much like how pleasure is supposed to be secondary to fulfilling hunger when eating.
But that is then the question I pose: How come we always attribute motivations that betray the reason why something is really done?
It is in this spirit of inquiry that I write here. More than anything for myself in the search that I find what is distinctly mine and that you may help me in further finding that which is distinctly mine.
What about you, you say?
To be frank, you're just gravy. Nonetheless I encourage you to spice things up as I try to still thaw the meat that I shall bring to the table.
What could you expect out of this?
I'd rather tell you to not expect at all.
I dare you to enter my consciousness and hope to find something you might actually bring with you.
I would just like to establish the fact that I write for you.
Or do I? Probably not. Because I might only be saying that to impress upon you, the reader a sweet wooing image. Well I might be using this in the spirit of generosity, intellectual charity you might say, but that might only be a secondary effect. Much like how pleasure is supposed to be secondary to fulfilling hunger when eating.
But that is then the question I pose: How come we always attribute motivations that betray the reason why something is really done?
It is in this spirit of inquiry that I write here. More than anything for myself in the search that I find what is distinctly mine and that you may help me in further finding that which is distinctly mine.
What about you, you say?
To be frank, you're just gravy. Nonetheless I encourage you to spice things up as I try to still thaw the meat that I shall bring to the table.
What could you expect out of this?
I'd rather tell you to not expect at all.
I dare you to enter my consciousness and hope to find something you might actually bring with you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
