I'm the illegal logger / illegal logging company that would cut it down and use it as paper to write on.

. . . in response to the "tree question," posed by a certain Creative Writing mentor during last year's thesis defense/presentation. The question was, "In the tree that is Philippine Literature, which part of this tree would you be?"

I've prepared the statement above as my mock answer, in the case that my batch is confronted with that question ourselves. (Yes, I am aware that an illegal logger / illegal logging company is not, technically, part of any tree -- but I believe there's no rule against saying you're not part of the Tree.)

Other possible answers (not necessarily for me): "I am the dog that does his business around the tree." / "I am the TUBERO, CALL [*telephone number*] sign on the tree." / "I am the tikbalang." / "I am the storm that will fucking UPROOT the tree." / "I am the BAWAL TUMAE DITO sign on the tree." / "I am the wind that rustles the leaves." / "I am the little kitten stuck up in the branches." / "I am the tire swing." / "I am the shadow it casts on the earth." / "I am the mushroom growing from the base of its trunk." / "I am the catterpillar feeding on its leaves." / "I am one of the leaves -- you can't tell us apart, and I am shed off at the slightest breeze."

Feel free to add yours.

listening to The Cure - 4:13 Dream
reading The Next American Essay

Yeah?

19 April 1905

It is a cold morning in November and the first snow has fallen. A man in a long leather coat stands on his fourth-floor balcony on Kramgasse overlooking the Zähringer Fountain and the white street below. To the east, he can see the fragile steeple of St. Vincent's Cathedral, to the west, the curved roof of the Zytgloggeturm. But the man is not looking east or west. He is staring down at a tiny red hat left in the snow below, and he is thinking. Should he go to the woman's house in Fribourg? His hands grip the metal balustrade, let go, grip again. Should he visit her? Should he visit her?

He decides not to see her again. She is manipulative and judgmental, and she could make his life meserable. Perhaps she would not be interested in him anway. So he decides not to see her again. Instead, he keeps to the company of men. He works hard at the pharmaceutical, where he hardly notices the female assistant manager. He goes to the brasserie on Kochergasse in the evenings with his friends and drinks beer, he learns to make fondue. Then, in three years, he meets another woman in a clothing shop in Neuchâtel. She is nice. She makes love to him very very slowly, over a period of months. After a year, she comes to live with him in Berne. They live quietly, take walks together along the Aare, are companions to each other, grow old and contented.

In the second world, the man in the long leather coat decides that he must see the Fribourg woman again. He hardly knows her, she could be manipulative, and her movements hint at volatility, but that way her face softens when she smiles, that laugh, that clever use of words. Yes, he must see her again. He goes to her house in Fribourg, sits on the couch with her, within moments feels his heart pounding, grows weak at the sight of the white of her arms. They make love, loudly and with passion. She persuades him to move to Fribourg. He leaves his job in Berne and begins work at the Fribourg Post Bureau. He burns for his love for her. Every day he comes home at noon. They eat, they make love, they argue, she complains that she needs more money, he pleads with her, she throws pots at him, they make love again, he returns to the Post Bureau. She threatens to leave him, but she does not leave him. He lives for her; and he is happy with his anguish.

In the third world, he also decides that he must see her again. He hardly knows her, she could be manipulative, and her movements hint at volatility, but that smile, that laugh, that clever use of words. Yes, he must see her again. He goes to her house in Fribourg, meets her at the door, has tea with her at her kitchen table. They talk of her work at the library, his job at the pharmaceutical. After an hour, she says that she must leave to help a friend, and she says goodbye to him, they shake hands. He travels the thirty kilometers back to Berne, feels empty during the train ride home, goes to his fourth-floor apartment on Kramgasse, stands on the balcony and stares down at the tiny red hat left in the snow.

These three chains of events all indeed happen, simultaneously. For in this world, time has three dimensions, like space. Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpedicular futures. Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real. At every point of decision, whether to visit a woman in Fribourg or to buy a new coat, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people but with different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.

Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions? Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

From Einstein's Dreams

Yeah?

Really.

It's funny, how when you enter a room they all freeze like they can't quite get their nervous systems to work. Someone tries to give you a smile but fails, terribly. (You can see how much effort went into that one. Small. Act of raising the corner of a lip. It said: Shit, you're here. SHIT, oh, but what can I do? Okay, I'll smile. Smiiile. See?)

Someone else finds the guts to send you a few choice words over text; in person, that someone meeps and scurries to a corner when you so much as say a mean little thing to her face.

The last someone is, meanwhile, too steeped in self-pity to function.

I, of course, parade myself around as the person to be hated. Here, let me draw a target mark on my forehead. Or do you want my neck? Should I put dotted lines over my jugular, or my spleen, or something? What else?

Just remember: I thrive in conflict like bacteria and algae thrive in the Meron pond. Or what's left of it.

See you in a couple of hours.

Yeah?

Yeah?

I don't suppose I'll get excused from my final academic requirements just because I may have brain tumors. I felt two painful lumps on my head, this evening, while shampooing my hair. One, on the area behind my right ear, just below the hairline. The other on the back of my neck, to the upper right, again just below the hairline. (Do tumors hate hair?)

Now my whole thing is, if you get this seriously sick, you might as well get the free time to feel like your life is ending -- rather than wish that it actually is.

(Yes, I choose to be my morbid and defeatist self about something that might actually just be muscle knots in my neck, which I get every once in a while, as a fact. On the other hand, my allergies are eating me alive.)

Yeah?

The HEIGHTS Double Issue Booklaunch
September 19, Friday
4:30pm onwards
Social Sciences Foyer
Ateneo de Manila University


* * *




MUSIKART: An Exhibit of Artworks
on Filipino Music
opens on Wed, September 24
6pm @ BigSky Mind
Broadway Street, New Manila, Quezon City

Yeah?

She quips that she’s 20% lesbian, 30% straight, 40% neuter and 10% undecided. She believes that ten random representatives of the human race are worth a single Macaroni penguin. She has imaginary friends, and her imaginary friends have imaginary friends (sub-imaginary friends?). She took the Enneagram Personality Test and got a triple tie in her results. She would like to scrape the flesh off your face with the edge of her stapler. She has the Evil Overlord Complex. Her ego is a work of art. Her twisted sense of humor one of the prime universal forces. She dreams of supernovas and black holes in the cigarettes she smokes. Stupidity, sTiCkY cApS, shampoo commercials and their jingles, Love Radio, and erratic Internet connectivity are her greatest and most infuriating enemies. You don't want to be added to the list.

1 yeahs