What it means to get tired

If and when I get tired, I believe that I'd rather do something else.

It doesn't always follow that I want to rest or relax, sometimes it's even more relaxing to do a little more work-- as long as it is different I guess. At that moment of decision of changing your pattern of activity from that tiring thing to another, we must find that pivot we call our "hearts". It is just waiting for us to do what comes naturally. 

I wrote something on hope

To hope means to acknowledge the possibility of it all being an illusion and yet having the conviction that this is actually something real.

My friend asked me: Why do we hope? after I posted that message in my ym status.

I answered: the easiest answer is because we just do. But I know you expect something better. We hope because it stems from our insatiable nature to hold on to something that actually means something. It is the by-product of both our nature to doubt which threatens the very nature of faith and and but at the same time necessiates the deepening grip of faith on our very being. Hope is that expectation that there is always something more. Something that makes our very selves make sense, something that makes our lives a little less just because. :D

getting caught up in the details

My mom woke me up and I was reluctant to follow her prodding. I was up all night surfing the net. It was one of those times that I had to say "gmornyt" to my chatmates in yahoo messenger. A 25 degree angle from the shorter arm towards 4 to the longer arm towards 7 reminded me of my need for sleep. With a cyber gesture-- ":-h" that deploys a yellow 2-d face completely armed with eyes, a mouth, and a hand waving-- I found it apt to give one of the most polite ways of saying goodbye in the net. I was able to disconnect and allow myself to dream.

"Aalis na si kuya," my Mom said.

I had to get up. I walked from my bed towards the door- opening it, going through it, and releasing it to let it decide for itself whether it'll close or remain open.

The atmosphere was familiar. It was 8 halfway 9 in the morning and the sun was semi-up. I've just been semi-fired from my writing semi-jobs since it's the semi-scheduled editing period for the research write-ups. All I had were many writing part-time jobs which all added up to full-time writing job that ate up all my time. I had to notice all the details in the world, write about them in the most detailed manner, and expect that the reader got enough of the details. That was all over now. Now, the task was to right the written and all I had to do was wait. Since then, my body clock was downside up. I had to notice that it was actually morning and I was awake. Normally, if it weren't for my brother, it would be otherwise.

My brother was leaving.

It's not like my Father's daily leaving to go play tennis with his pals in his numerous tennis clubs all around the urban vicinity of Metro Manila. Every afternoon, to prevent it from getting lazy, my father dresses up in his athletic wear-- clad with cycling shorts to support the origins of my brothers' and my existence, a semi-dilapidated shirt and 70s type of short shorts to assure the passage of air through his body, and semi-updated rubber shoes to assure the possibility of letting agility or what's left of it come out in game play. It wasn't like that.

My brother's really leaving.

He wouldn't return like my dad for dinner or for TV and sleep which proved to be synonymous for people of semi-age- 50 something, more than halfway 60. Probably, the next time I'll see him is when one of us is already that age.

My mom was hustling and bustling about the house looking for things to do. Anxiously so. Her eyes were welling up, with salty dew that wasn't so subtly drooping.

I remember the time when my brothers were also about to leave.

I came with my parents then to the airport. My elder brother who was much eager to leave to pursue his American dream in Canada was already in the railed zigzags towards the dock while my younger older brother was still officially in the lobby, but about to get lost in the steel. My mom took hold of my brother and held on to more than half of her life. It was emotional, intense to say the least. I did the same. I wasn't one who was known to be sentimental, but I believe it is simply a part of having a soul to be. Mine was only capable of emotional procrastination. I never knew I had those feelings for my brothers. I flared up with them. I was young. I didn't know how to deal with them except through my body. I shook and cried almost the whole time from the arms of my younger older brother from the airport back home. I went well beyond my mom's weeping who was known to weep for the meekest of reasons. I was 15, I had the hormones as an excuse.

I was reminiscing the most salient of details of that part of my adolescence when I remembered that it was making a repeat in the now. Instead of my mom, it was the mommy dog. Instead of me, it was the 3 puppy dogs. Instead of tears, it was cusses of frustration because the dogs couldn't coordinate well with the camera. I don't know why my dad was so intent in achieving for my mom the perfect picture of my brother with the 4 dogs. Somehow I think he wished that he was on that picture. I couldn't blame him.

click!

The picture was taken: my brother, the mommy dog, and the 3 puppy dogs.

"Hindi kita si Mickey!" My mom shouted with her shrill, but forceful voice.

Mickey was the youngest of the dogs and his face wasn't seen in the picture.

My mom maximized her capacity for alertness. She paid attention to everything. She even remembered to give my brother a handkerchief. I don't know why though. My brother is coming from the Philippines and going to Canada. He wouldn't be sweating when he arrives there. My brother took it anyway.

"Ito nalang pala!" My mom interjected while stretching her arms to offer another handkerchief.

"Napunasan ko na ng uhog 'yan." Uttering such a coy remark with the apparent need to mention something about mucus in one of the final face-to-face conversations we'll probably have with him for the next years of our lives. My mother had a very odd way of distracting herself. I didn't see it, but I'm sure my mom brought her own handkerchief. She was probably sort of expecting to procrastinate her feelings again. I picture her again releasing her emotion in the same infantile manner we did before.

As for me, all I had left was a conversation.

"Aalis ka ba?" he asked.

"Mga 3 pa." I answered again in my well-measured manner.

He nodded.

He left so early then and yes, he will leave again. Again, it was too early. I didn't understand how I felt. All I can do was ponder why ask if I was leaving too. Somehow I believe he wanted me to come with him. My answer proved to be indicative of how little I saw into my future. I was one who typically knows exactly what he wanted. I didn't know if I wanted to follow him. What I was sure of is that for the meantime, from 8 halfway 9 until 3, I'll be at home. If this day was a microcosmic metaphor to my life, I didn't know when 3 will actually be.

He said goodbye to me: "Goodbye Timmy!" and I said likewise: "Byebye!"

The mommy dog went under the piano and put her chin on her soft and fluffy feet. My mom was about the house distracting herself with so many details while my dad was already out. I didn't even notice him leaving, but I'm sure he did. Somehow the men in our home simply let themselves out so easily.

My brother went out the door, turned around, and looked through the glass. On my right of the door and his left, he scratched the glass with his index finger muttering "Byebye" to the puppies.

He turned towards the open concrete swaggering away with his bag on his back walking slowly towards his future. To his wife in Canada. Back to the world he wishes to discover most of his life in.

My mom patted my back as she caught up to my brother.

As for me, I stayed home to sort things out.

:-h Kuya!

I just needed to write to feel human again

Hi! Whoever you are who reads. I'm still alive. I've been overworking myself. I don't get where I'm going, but I'm going anyway. HAHAHAHA! I'm going to batangas with my hs friends for a vacation. I forced going despite all the work I needed to accomplish. Anyway... there I go. I hope I get picked for the Sylff fellowship so that I can be a full-time student and pursue being the public intellectual I've been trying to be through this blog. 'til next time I actually have something insightful to say.

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=smile#/dnl0xa

I have returned

I just finished all my academic requirements.

YIPEE!


*http://yoenizme.deviantart.com/art/Graduation-Day-133932059

I've been watching TV ever since.


*http://crimson-miz.deviantart.com/art/Rez-Drone-01-98086617

or playing computer games...


*http://moriartadragonheart.deviantart.com/art/Murloc-Theory-Of-Evolution-124102692

Just yestermornyt...

I played Farm Frenzy 3 American Pie from 10pm to 4am

I've also been reading some of my books...


*http://angelica-minier.deviantart.com/art/books-73204194

Nerdily I read social science journal articles on identity politics.

YES...

I am not ashamed.

Now, I'm watching the Simpson's

Talking to my friend in yahoo messenger


*http://bad-blood.deviantart.com/art/Y-o-l-k-s-for-messengers-81900439

Trying to decide between 3 books:

1) Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich which whose first chapter I have read
2) Marxism and Existentialism which I don't remember up to what I read, it's either the second to the last chapter or the last one
3) or kafka's anthology of his works

At this moment more specifically I'm deciding between getting ice cream just because...


*http://isilian.deviantart.com/art/Kawaii-Charms-Ice-Cream-Bowl-99539901

Also, I'm thinking of doing my resumes so that I can actually get a job...

all this while blogging...

I used to problematize all my classes, my organization in school, and the situation of the world in general...


*http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/art/Entropy-32586942

Problems are problems because they are made into problems.

People just tend to be so good at making problems.

I'm not really sure if what they do actually correspond to addressing them...

Being caught in a decision which I found myself in is not a problem...

It actually means that you have the options...

They become problems if you don't do anything about them.



*http://jessicajayjames.deviantart.com/art/restless-138987503

~ I finally got ice cream and currently continuing watching Fox TV which now shows The Moment of Truth. I decided not to make a poem anymore and simply vow to return to the act of blogging often so as to actually do something about the emptiness of my thoughts.

because...

There is nothing more that I can wish for than my thoughts to matter

I simply can't find time to write anymore, but here is a paper I made 2 hours before my class. HAHAHAHA! it's titled "Authorship as Love for Discourse

Why write?

Before I go into this question, I would like to throw in my own personal bet into the discourse I’m going to set up for myself. Being in a situation wherein I will soon project myself upon a world with which I am not familiar with brings me to a very reflective and consequently self-referential state. With that in mind, I will try to not let it determine my discourse since there is a need to focus on the texts of Foucault and Barthes regarding authorship. I believe that putting my own flavor into such a paper that talks about the author is something formally apt. If I were to create a title for the dream profession I would like to see myself have after a couple of years after my graduation, it would have the title of essayist on Filipino political psychology. I would like to see myself studying the Filipino psyche and how it deals with the particularities of the structures and discourses of the political reality it faces.

Enough of that.

This is the move that Foucault and Barthes would probably say to budding writers such as myself. To interrupt the infusion of personal identity and expression might in a symbolic manner express what they have done in their texts of What is an Author? and The Death of the Author respectively. In a nutshell, they said that preoccupations with the author and the notions of work that derive from a conception of the author as a unified internality from which the text originates from hinder the proper consideration of the proper place of the author and the text within discourse.

It is interesting that Foucault quotes Samuel Beckett in usage of his words “What matter who’s speaking?” (Foucault, 117). By posing this question, he questions the importance of putting an identity behind the speaking subject, or for that matter of the realm of writing, the writing subject. This is echoed by Barthes in his words: “language knows a subject, not a person.” (Barthes, 1467). Both Foucault and Barthes depicts that the notion of author which then presupposes that a text is as if a record of the person of the author with which the discourse available in the text should be projected against. This notion derives from a notion of the author as a point of origin which Foucault and Barthes would want to question. For them, The author is merely a function in and of discourse.

According to Barthes (p. 1468): “(The author) His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them.” No matter what an author writes, what he said will most probably be citing. If any semblance of originality can be achieved, an author can only have this by establishing relationships among other texts-- inter-textuality. This runs contrary to the notion of work which assumes a unity within a certain text on its own anchored on a notion of the author as an expressing person with a defined internality. In a sense, the only unity that a text can assume is the mere physical boundaries of the page/s that is set upon it. If the originality of meaning should be the criterion of unity, then no text should be considered a work. Although it must be mentioned that the text does not lose its integrity via its divorce from a unified creator, but in fact it assumes a stronger and more dynamic integrity since it is now projected upon a framework of authors in the plural rather than an author in the singular. Barthes says it well in this statement: “the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture” (p. 1468).

Although I admit that this could be a digression, I pursue it nonetheless. This notion of the text within an inter-textuality can be compared to the pluralistic philosophy of the human person wherein the identity of a person is not anymore emerging from an “essence” that reveals itself in interaction with others, but built through and within its interaction with others. The integrity of the human person is not within it, but is always constructed in relation with others. This makes a human person in a position in communion with others.

Foucault develops this point as well when he writes: “authors occupy a ‘transdiscursive’ position” (p. 31). It can be seen here that every author is not an originator of discourse, but merely occupies a position in it. This can be likened to Barthes’ notion that a writer is a dictionary that develops his own idiom so to speak with the usage of language. The writer cannot create a dictionary, but at his or her very best, can create a way of constructing language in discourse. This could be seen in Foucault’s terminology that authors are “initiators of discursive practices” (p. 131).

Personally, I do adhere to what Foucault and Barthes said with regards the author, but the violence with which the usage of the word “death” still strikes as lacking in fairness for my own taste. I do adhere to the notion that due to the author as only occupying a transdiscursive position and being able only to initiate discursive practice rather than starting a whole discourse on their own, they do not necessarily die upon writing. Yes, quoting Barthes: “Every text is eternally written here and now.” (p. 1468), but I believe that the author still lives on after his or her text. If they must die, I believe there should be moments of resurrection made available to them.

I believe that although authors are not able to be originators of their own discourse, but they are still inexhaustible agents of discourse. I would want to relate this to Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of history in the Human Condition that history is not a faceless narrative nor built by main heroes and villains, but a multitude of faces within a confluence of dialogue and inter-action that build a historical narrative. In relation to writing, authors are important in their plurality and the multitude of writing subjects are necessary to build a discourse. I go against the structuralists when they say that language lives beyond its speakers. Latin is still alive today not because of its own strength, but because medical doctors chose to use Latin in their medical discourse. Many languages have died due to the death of its agents and though it could be argued that specs of it still exists via sheer transmission in unknown moments of discourse within history, what of it? If it is unavailable to our scrutiny due to its inexistence to our records and hence our consciousness, why bother with it? Let’s just deal with what we can actually study.

Enough of that.

To say it bluntly: language is still human artifice though the admission of its strength must be confessed. I would like to think of writing as a stake-placing on a gambling table of discourse wherein stakes assume a fluid value ruled by the rules of a game. The rules of the game, we can only know with practice and it might come to us to be as arbitrary as a throw of the dice. But as Mallarme’s poem said “A Throw of the Dice Never will Abolish Chance,” if we use discourse to try to create THE DISCOURSE, it will be futile. We use discourse because we love to be in it. If an author aims to create THE DISCOURSE, then I would say to them: a text in discourse never will abolish discourse. Authors should simply be thankful that they get to join discourse and get their 2 cents worth in the table. We should not fool ourselves that in gambling, we aim to win the grand prize, but at best, what we can get from it is the joy of playing the game. We write not to make THE TEXT, but because we love to write.

Intellectual rant about psychology

One of the biggest issues I faced in my senior year as a psychology major is my belief in the value of psychology and how right is it that I’m in a program that predisposes me as a student to believe and commit to the values psychology as a field aim to espouse. This personal struggle was reflected in my initial decision to take myself away from Dr. Teh’s class of parapsychology which I thought was going to be a class on Rogerian counseling and transplant myself in another class. I thought parapsychology will no doubt kill psychology for me since I was coming from an impetus of pragmatism. I’ve always had an issue in the applicability of the concepts taught to us since most of the knowledge brought to us via the discipline of psychology seem to have arisen and sometimes only lay useful to Western contexts. Instead of going for classes that will take on the same attempt to take an in depth plunge on the existing fields of psychology such as counseling psychology or critical thinking, the eclectic approach of the choice I made seemed more appropriate in responding to my internal struggle. It was obvious that from all the choices I had, I chose the class on Philippine and Filipino Psychology. In this, believe I made the right choice. Rest assured, the analysis and reflection on a movie regarding its Sikopil-ness will come, but I have to humor myself in sharing where I am in this struggle of mine. I hope that this does not become my folly, but in hope, it becomes the charm I might earn through this similar to the Filipino tendency to digress as an actual part of revelation.
I’ve surmised that my insatiable bedazzlement with philosophy and literature have always been obstacles to my assimilation of the psychological sensibilities with which I should have internalized by now that I’m a senior psychology major. I’ve decidedly pursued minors in both philosophy and literature and they probably have been more personally rewarding than my experience as a psychology major. As I reflect on why, I came to the conclusion that it was because of the nature of knowing espoused by the two fields. To put it simply, I really don’t believe in empiricism especially in its application in the human and social sciences. I think the admission of the limiting effect of our own categories and methods of knowing have a greater effect than whether or not we try to confirm our knowledge on the basis of parallelism and demonstration in the realm of human and social reality. I think the way psychologists think, we need a humbler outlook on human and social reality. We shouldn’t take our knowledge as truth, but constantly project it upon the framework of a historical dialogue with which truth is not an intrinsic component of our knowledge, but an extrinsic end of it. We need to admit that what we know are mere stolen shots from the bigger picture, that we should know that we know only little, if at all.
Despite this, I do not intend to leave psychology. The topic of the human psyche is still more interesting than the vague concepts of “wisdom” in philosophy and “texts” in literature. I think what I would want to do is to transplant that more humanistic approach of the humanities to psychology and with which I may find myself more satisfied with the knowledge I might contribute. With the focus on the quantitative and experimental sides of psychology in the Ateneo curriculum, I believe there is a tendency to see the psyche as merely a mechanical system that can be unraveled with enough rigorous wielding of the scientific apparatuses of statistics and experimentation. If the natural sciences are having a mystical turn to nature in their theories of quantum mechanics, I believe psychology whose focus is on the self-detemined reality of the human person, is obviously supposed to have this kind of attitude, more of it even. The human psyche needs to be approached as if we psychologists are mystics as we bow to the psyche as it allows itself to be revealed via our primitive instrument of knowing called “psychology.”
Going back to my reflection about my struggle as a psychology major, I believe psychology tends to dampen and thin out the experience of hope and solidarity in its viewing the human person as a predictable entity. I see the value in trying to understand the human psyche in the field of psychology, but I believe it’s doused with a certain kind of arrogance, even of machismo that although it might admit to know only little about the human psyche, it still must acknowledge that what little it knows must be taken with a grain of salt.

a close reading on a Wordsworth poem I submitted for my western literature class

The Romantic Impetus: Uncovering the Romantics’ Subtle Confrontation of the Urbane
Many perceive the Romantic Movement as merely a rant of frustration that ultimately brought its adherents to a hopeless worldview and an escapist philosophy. Those who were considered the bearers of the romantic spirit though it could be said fled to the rural; they can’t be accused of turning a blind eye unto the urbane. In fact, it was this take off unto the rural that the romantics did that can be considered their “revolution” against the urbane which they in their earnestness saw in its bare potentials to strip the human psyche of what it once knew. It is from Wordsworth’s poem Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey that the romantic impetus: the turn to the beauty of nature, the ethics of spontaneity, and the investment of hope on the innocent that the confrontation of the romantics with the urbane ethos can be unpacked.
Lush depictions of nature are very abundant in romantic writers and Wordsworth is not one who is exempt from the use of this theme. Wordsworth’s primary depiction of nature is that of “unremembered pleasures” as seen in line 31 of his poem. His deriving from nature the notions of solitude, quiet, and calm in lines 6-8 highlight the subtlety of the landscape and at the same time, his passionate rendering that dwells on detail makes the imagery as if an intense, yet unhurried blossoming in the mind of his reader. Though it could be said that he depicts nature as meek, suffice to say, that though it is meek, nature is still first and foremost majestic. This is where the very romantic tendency to “romanticize nature” can be seen-- the grandeur depicted in the meekness of nature as a paradox is the only way to express in words broken how nature is beautiful. From the beginning of the poem, this depiction is very evident since the general movement introduced in the poem is that of retrospect and the imagery of this retrospect is that of nature being so beautiful. The mention of the time which contained the duration in which Wordsworth did not go back to nature compounded with the sentimental manner of exposition he uses in his poetry intensifies the longing inherent in the poem. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” as many would say. He takes utter pleasure in beholding nature and at the same time, he feels humbled for only remembering it now.
Also, by the sheer form Wordsworth wrote his poem, it was as if he wanted to bridge the gap between emotion and understanding through expressing his words in seeming immediate emergence or in a style almost similar to thinking aloud. By de-emphasizing an organized flow he aims to reveal how his thoughts develop and how they are inherently connected to his sentiments. The lack of logical order in his writing points to a different kind of order: that of spontaneity. It is also in this way that a sort of “ethics” is presented in his poem. In lines 58-65, it can be seen how Wordsworth is involved in the realm of necessities and the pursuit of survival, but he then goes on in lines 65-72 that he longs for more; the more being his love for nature. Other lines that depicts a different kind of ethics is in lines 103-111 wherein he says that If he stuck his attention with “The still, sad music of humanity” (line 91) then he will lose the anchor of his purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of his heart, and soul of all his moral being. Wordsworth seems to attribute that his heart is slowly pushing his mind to regard nature as not only a source of beauty, but also a source of goodness.
Pushing the point further, like in line 30-34 wherein Wordsworth says that the “best portion of a good man’s life” (line 34) he owes to “unremembered pleasures” that “have no slight or trivial influence” depicting that there is a certain evil inherent in being “influenced.” It could be said that the “influence” Wordsworth means here is that of the urbane as seen in line 131 “the dreary intercourse of daily life” or the drudgery of living an urbane life. The fact that William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth needed to go back to nature and William’s need to “remember” nature means that they are used to urbanity. In here, it can be seen that Wordsworth makes more nuanced the notion of nature as not only physical environment, but as the more philosophical concept of “nature” as the virginal state of originality. Here, Wordsworth depicts nature (physical environment) as natural (virginal state of originality) and (in very Rousseauist categories,) asserts that the “state of nature” of nature is of goodness as opposed to the urbanity he has been used to with the tendency of the urban ethos to see nature as merely an extension of the ego that man can “chasten and subdue” (line 93). It is here where the address to Dorothy can be situated. William creates an ode to innocence in his speaking to Dorothy and hopes that she will preserve in her mind and heart the beauty and goodness of nature in both of its senses. Ultimately, he wishes that Dorothy contain in her the sensibilities of purity despite the influence of the urbane which she will or probably is being slowly initiated into.
It is in the turn to the beauty of nature, the ethics of spontaneity, and the investment of hope on the innocent that the romantics put the impetus of their confrontation with the urbane. Beyond the hopeless worldview and the escapist philosophy, the romantics can be said to be very vigilant to the dangers of the problems we now suffer immensely in our modern age: environmental and identity loss. Though indirect, the romantics can’t be denied of their sublime capacity to remind us of the danger of moving too fast forward and perhaps we can use a little bit of romanticism in our time.

I was debating on putting this in the Limitations of the Study section of our thesis with my groupmates

Finally, the fact that this study is extrinsically motivated by the verity of this being a thesis in partial fulfillment of a bachelor of arts, major in psychology of 3 students of the Ateneo de Manila University is a limitation. Being within an educational system that acculturates the researchers to fear the “cultural nightmare” of academic failure and the value of tenderness for the Filipino nation especially the weaker members of it made into a question of self-esteem might actually be something that must be transcended. Amidst the daunting threat of not being able to graduate, the researchers should commit to let the study unfold its potential above and beyond the scholastic drudgeries of deadlines, academic standards, and supposed scientific, particularly psychological sophistication. Though acknowledging the debt of the researchers to the Ateneo education system specifically to the education the Department of Psychology has bestowed upon us and all other relations that depend on them, the researchers should allot the proper and equitable loyalty to the study and its forthcoming potential for excellence. As Camus would put it, we should let the educational system teach us its merits, but we should let not its absurdities penetrate our conceptions of truth and value- that ultimately it will not convince us that we are stupid and that we are aimless.

isang repleksyon habang nanonood ng Enchanged sa Disney Channel

Ang "x" ay isang uri ng kaalaman at karanasan kung saan kailangang magtaya sa hinding-hindi mo talaga malalaman at mararanasan (structure of religious experience). Sa x, tila a priori ang kabiguan at ang kamangmangan dahil may ibang uri itong katwiran (mga nibel ng pananampalataya at pagtataya- San Agustin). Maitutulad ito sa pagtalon sa dagat sa kung saan hindi mo alam kung makatatawid ka (penomenolohiya- hermeneutikong bilog). Ang tanging sigurado ay mababasa ka't kakailanganin mong lumangoy (existential circle- moment of grace). Sa x, lahat ay maaaring maging makahulugan sapagkat ang lahat ay nakasalalay sa iyong pagtataya (naming God). Tulad ng sa pagtalon sa dagat, maski ang ang iyong tatalunin ay hindi mo alam dahil hindi mo alam kung ano ang dagat at ang abot-tanaw (wounded "word"). Naglalaho sila sa isa't isa at hanggang dito'y kakailanganin pa ring magtaya (trial by ordeal).