mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

easier said than done/15 years/too little, too late

I seem to be stuck in a time warp.

Andrea Frierson as the Goddess Erzulie, singing "Human Heart" from the musical "Once on This Island"

This particular musical has arrested my imagination. It happens to be a rendition of “The Little Mermaid” complete with the original turning-into-foam ending a la Hans Christian Andersen, with some geopolitics and post-colonialism added into the mix.

There is some kind of poetic justice that this is not a happily-ever-after story.

N played the leading role her senior year in high school while I was a freshman in college, and maybe in some ways, that was the beginning of the end.


It so happened that, like many college freshmen, I found myself sucked into the vortex known as identity politics, and came away with a deeper understanding of where I fit in terms of the inexorable forces of history. It is no accident that my parents landed upon these distant shores. Their homeland has the ambiguous distinction of being one of the few actual colonies of the United States. The Filipino Diaspora was one of the initial symptoms of global capitalism, resulting in an archetypal scenario played and replayed in all the developing countries of the world.

Locked away and freeze dried into this mix is the so-called “colonial mentality”, which this musical somehow gives voice to, interspersed within the over-arching love story, coupled to the fantastic aboriginal mysticism.

The book My Love, My Love upon which “Once on This Island” is based has an entire vivid scene evoking the ritual of trance. It wasn’t until I took a Southeast Asian Studies class that I realized where our culture came from. Until then, it never occurred to me that the Philippines has never existed in a vacuum. It is no accident that Malaysians and Indonesians share many of the same morphological characteristics that my relatives and I do. It is no coincidence that the Malayan tongue and the multifarious tongues of Indonesia have significant similarity to Tagalog, Ilocano, and Cebuano. My ancestors roamed the sometimes tempestuous waves of the Indian Ocean and of the great Pacific, reaching as far west as Madagascar and as far east as Easter Island (and possibly beyond)

And trance was a key part of Southeast Asian cultures. The Islamic tribes of Mindanao in the south of the Philippines have incorporated much of the indigenous animism into their faith, just as the Christian tribes of the Visayas and of Luzon have imbued the Catholic saints with animistic powers. The ritual dance of Singkil made a lot more sense amidst this context. It wasn’t just something pretty and complicated that the Bayanihan Dance Troupe fabricated to wow the audience. There was an entire story hiding in there, telling of Prince Bantugan and Princess Gandinggan. The bamboo poles weren’t just props. They were instruments, to keep time along with the drums and the gongs and the magical kulintang, which were the keys that opened the portal to the trance state, and to the other worlds.


Everything took on a different sheen when I actually went to the Philippines in 1995. Songs from this musical kept playing in my head as I found myself on Borocay, the ultimate tourist trap. On the road from Caticlan to the boat launch, we came across Ati who were getting ready for the upcoming Ati-Atihan, a festival involving trance and ritual, supposedly commemorating the first meeting of the Ati and of the Malay of Borneo. “We Dance” immediately makes me think of the Philippines—with the formation of the Bayanihan Dance Troupe, Filipinos are perhaps known world-wide as dancers. It seems like every Filipino child’s first ambition is to become an actor, a singer, or a dancer, or perhaps all three, and I still wonder about that to this day, and why does no one want to become a bench researcher, or a theoritician, or a social scientist?

It all culminated when my sister adapted the story to the Philippines, with the Pearls of the Orient replacing the French Antilles, and the Spanish (and the Americans) replacing the French, all translated into Tagalog.


Oddly, Bn. somehow found a children’s production of “Once on This Island” in San Jose that one year, and A. came with us. The feminist issues of the Little Mermaid, and the post-colonial issues raised by the adaptation to the French Antilles can generate a lot of discussion. Interestingly, the composers for “Once on This Island”—Lynn Ahearn and Stephen Flaherty—later together penned the score for the non-Disney animated film “Anastasia”. This also, in many ways, marked the beginning of the end (although how does something end when it didn’t ever actually begin?)


But like many of the blog posts over the past few weeks, this is another piece of errata that has somehow followed me all these days, randomly popping up from time to time, and now probably sitting somewhere on my iPod.


I keep imagining that things are a lot more solid than I think they are. I don’t know where this strange certainty comes from. Every now and again, I want to doubt it. But there is something unshakeable, unflappable, about this particular narrative. I hope that I’m right for once, and that this isn’t just some more of the same misleading portentousness that I’ve been feeding myself over the past 15 years from time to time.

And speaking of time, it seems that it is continuously running out. Eventually, my path will be determined by sheer attrition. (Although the 10 of cups popped up twice, promising otherwise.)

When I die all alone, I won’t have anyone to blame but myself.

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

brain on fire

OK, so maybe it was a little counter-productive to only sleep for four hours last night. I felt compelled to finish my blog entry, even though the ending of it was probably too rushed, and a little forced. So it wasn’t until 2 a.m. that I finally surrendered and went to bed. Unfortunately, I had to wake up at 6 a.m. today. (It’s going to be even worse tomorrow.)


I had forgotten about the band Embrace. I remember having a bunch of their tracks, but I guess they fell off my iPod playlist. This is one of my favorite tracks of theirs:

"Ashes" by Embrace

Now watch me rise up and leave all the ashes you made out of me
When you said that we were wrong, life goes on, just look how long I’ve agreed

"Nature's Law" by Embrace

I tried to fight the feeling, the feeling took me down.
I struggled and I lost the day you knocked me out.
Now everything’s got meaning, and meanings bring me down.
I’m watching as a screening of my life plays out.

Every day I fight these feelings.
For your sake I will hide the real thing.
You can run all your life, all mine I will chase….

You should never fight your feelings
when your very bones believe them.
You should never fight your feelings.
You have to follow nature’s law.

I’ll live with never knowing, if knowing’s gonna change.
I’ll stop the feeling growing, I will stay away.
Like a broken record stuck before a song,
a million beginnings, none of them the one.

Every day I fight these feelings.
For your sake I will hide the real thing.
You can run all your life, all mine I will chase….

You should never fight your feelings
when your very bones believe them.
You should never fight your feelings.
You have to follow nature’s law.

I wrote her letters and tried to send them.
In a bottle I placed my hope.
An S.O.S. full of good intentions.
Sinking, will you give it to me? Don’t make me wait.
You build me up, knocked me down,
but I will stand my ground
and guide this light that I’ve found.

You should never fight your feelings
when your very bones believe them.
If you let them show, you’ll keep them.
I know you hurt, but soon you’ll rise again, again, again….

You should never fight your feelings
when your very bones believe them.
You should never fight your feelings.
You have to follow nature’s law.

"Target" by Embrace

Out of sight behind these eyes you’ll stay
Where everything is possible
It’s beautiful

"Out of Nothing" by Embrace

You’re the first and the last time that I’ll ever try
so dry your eyes, I’ll say goodbye, I say goodbye….


This just goes to show that I have to re-sync my iPod to my computer more often than I do. Who knows what other cool songs I’m missing out on?

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

time/chance

15 years: 5,480 sunsets
the days spin by, the hours whirl
blurring into infinity
and I can’t remember where I’ve been
nor all the answers that I figured out
falling out of my hands
scattered wildly like spilled grain
as I was, so I will be
upon this path to nowhere
to anywhere

my heart stands still for a single moment
and I think of her golden tresses
and her radiant smile
around her, there is always sunlight
and for that moment
I am at peace


still the gap yawns
all distances stretch to infinity
half again, then half again of that
as close as I can get still the current sweeps me away the closer I get, the more keen the sharpness of the pain
and the storm rages again in my soul
the violence, the cacophony
overwhelming all reason
into this storm I wander
this madness that I have known

don’t know which way is up or down
water above me
water below me
and there is barely any air to breathe
crashing waves, bursting foam
the raindrops splatter against the tormented sea
my sail runs ragged
rent and sheared

I have come this way before
too many times
and the sunsets pile upon each other
compressing, condensing
gravity crushing all these memories
into an impenetrable singularity
even light cannot escape

I am lost down this familiar road
bewildered and confused
dazed and helpless
as a newborn expelled into the cold, cruel world
squeezed and strangled
smashed, battered, flailing, bawling


it’s never enough
summer, then fall
the Devil’s breath
flames bursting
ash raining from the sky
come fall, then come winter
as the shadows lengthen
and the night reigns
then winter, and spring
and hope thaws from that winter twilight
joy unlooked for
happiness come suddenly

we spin the ever-turning-wheel
again I pass this road
cross this valley
climb this hill
still no closer to the stars
though I grasp and reach in vain


it is, I think, at the last
no matter how I rationalize and dither
my doom to die unfulfilled
cold and alone
unlooked for, not missed
as the days lengthen
and the leaves fall
they will forget what I look like
wonder about that empty space for a spare moment
and shrug

that final winter
with no ensuing spring
that ultimate night
without the promise of dawn

that last silence, without words to follow

alone, alone, the raging sea
my soul drinks deeply
of rain water, and the morning dew
still I thirst
knowing my longing shall never be quenched

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga