More Short Story Ideas

Idea #4: Strange Fact As Basis -

The Jungian Rockstar knows this true story. Sometime ago two babies, twin boys, were brought by their parents to a urologist for circumcision. After the operation, one baby was without foreskin, the other without penis. The botched operation on the one poor baby whose little penis burned to smithereens caused the parents to think of the unthinkable: rather than have their son grow up without a weewee, they decided for him to become a her, with whatever flesh remaining of the protruding flesh converted to clitoris and part of a constructed vagina instead. Medical and psychological advises and support proved overwhelming, all geared towards the idea that gender can be made and suggested. Wherefore that was how it came to be and the boy grew up as a girl, thanks to injected hormones, constructed genitals, and familial suggestions and environmental intimations that affirm his being feminine: dolls as toys, pink as room color, raffles and ribbons and hairclips as accessories. When the 'girl' became an adult she started having behavioral problems, depressing fits, that gave hints of something wrong about her sexuality, until in the end she found out the truth.

Here's my version for a short: two spouses, man and woman, live the married life in a most conservative/traditional way: with the husband believing chauvinism as a quality and propagated the belief that his emotions and sexuality should always be over and above his wife's, who in turn, acquiesced with the dominance of his husband by ensuring her acts to be nothing but passive. And then they found the truth that when they were babies, by some horrible coincidence, they belonged to the other sex.

Idea #5: Blog Comment As Basis -

In one of my previous entries, my good friend Da Jobert (who is, by the way, celebrating his birthday - happy birthday Da Boss - telling his two readers of the ocassion; Da Boss is right about his readership: one is myself, the other is the rest of the world), in response to another comment by a certain p.q., declared an eerie feeling that everyone knows something except himself, alluding the isolation to a superhero who did not know the identities of the other superheroes but in all unfairness knew him and each other.

I can somehow relate this comment to a short story entitled The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of The Animal Kingdom, by Dan Chaon, where the lead character Dennis (harhar, seems very apt) by the end of the story, thought that something seems very wrong with the world and that everyone knows this but him. This thinking was actually predicated by 2 main facts: first, Dennis sometime back gave sperm to a sperm bank; and second, the tenant above him is a single woman with a baby boy (to whom he gave an animal encyclopedia). I, as part of the whole world and not Dennis, somehow know what he doesn't: the baby upstairs is a product of his sperm donation.

The gist of my story, however, should not come close to Chaon's terrific story as it is to Jobert's premise: In an Alliance of Heroes annual convention, Super J (for you know who) found out that the other secret superheroes were actually the supervillains, that everything was just a conspiracy. Scary? This one's actually a comedy.

Idea #6: Stupidity As Basis -

One important aspect in short story writing is 'point of view', or in whose view the story is being told. The most common perspective, as we probably all know, comes from the super narrator - a third person considered omnipresent and all-knowing who knows what is going to happen because she is aware of everything ongoing in every character's mind. In my this short story, all rules break loose and the narrator does not know anything. Being that, the story is actually about nothing, going nowhere, hopefully ending somewhere, someplace the narrator, being stupid, does not even know.

POSTSCRIPT: Ever heard of this guy mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavs? Read somewhere that he is mighty rich not because he sold some great estates or sold some great stocks but because he sold some great idea.

Hopya, mani, popcorn, bili na kayo sir, mam, pssttt, ale, ale, ano hanap nyo? Gusto nyo po ba neto...story idea # psss, psss, psss, bulong, bulong, bulong?

CARRY ON MY WAYWARD COLLECTION...

I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?
- Kabir
The Failure

It's a command, mostly in the military scheme of things, Carry on!, the way Lt. Jimmy Cross resolves to look after his platoon more seriously and dispense all things personal; with these two strong words to his troops - Carry on!- he sees them saddling up and forming into a column to get out of harm's way.

Tim O'Brien's great short story The Things They Carried tells the tale of an officer's personal struggles in the course of the Viet Nam war. In a sense, the two command words also identify with the title; The Things They Carried, after all, tells of the things the combatants carry in warfare: guns, ammos, tents, knapsacks, c-rations, fear, distrust of the white man, et. al or all things slumped in some huge backs and massive shoulders or some small hearts and smaller minds of soldiers - and for which the words Carry on! become part of the things carried, with the full weight of the command seeping its way to the backs and shoulders, hearts and minds, of soldiers so they can hopefully get out of the villages of Than Khe, hopefully out of harm's way, hopefully into safety and survival.

To carry on is to go on, to move forward, which as a term signifies the same driving force that brings a troop leader to remind his men they better keep themselves alive. Outside the arena of war, to carry on also means to live on and pursue the objective. In my case carry on probably measures the same weight as Lt. Cross' order, given the chances my writing is up to against my agent's bullets and any editor's bombs. And in the spirit of comradeship let me share my war and warfare if indeed they were and should be sharable: I have planned for a collection of 12 short stories entitled Tales From the Brown that was scheduled to have been completed (in initial rough draft) 3 years ago. Three years after schedule, all I could show up with are three miserable stories that even my closest friends had generous words for. "A hard read", one said, the vagueness clearer than the other's critique, "Pfffftt".

In my warfare, time is not the enemy. Work and health admittedly get in the way but they are not a veritable Than Khe. Carry On! has no bearing to my plants and trees, ledgers and memos, and any command to instill drive and pursuit should be targetted towards that which I wish, in all irony, to please get in the way. That is nothing else but The Idea.

Last night, I developed a game plan in my mind's war chamber. To Carry On! is to tell myself, by way of critical/creative command, that I have to heighten my sensitivity to everything I watch, see, feel, hear, experience, dream, and remember. The plan started at 9:00 last night, and for everyone's sake, comrades and seekers alike, here are the ideas I gathered. Read, critique, and say, for some noble undertaking... pfffft, which, for all I know, really meant As You Were, or worse, About Face!

Idea #1: TV Show Watched Last Night As Basis -

I rarely watch television and even more rarely do I see stand-up acts in any venue. But last night, Margaret Cho and her 'seriousness' froze me. She mentioned about a politician saying 'What we don't know kills us', like 'if we don't know about AIDS, we will die of AIDS'. Cho upped the ante against ignorance by giving her own personal motto, 'If I don't know it, I don't exist'. Carry on, I told myself, eureka disguising itself in two words, as I thought about some futuristic game show where each wrong answer calls for the disintegration of the contestant's key body organ.

Hmmm, short story, anyone?

Idea #2: Dream Dreamt Last Night As Basis -

Here's the dream: I was walking along a beautiful garden of pines and thick bushes when I decided to settle by the edge of a meandering stream to enjoy the tranquility of its water. I looked all around me, the blue sky, the greens, the lotuses and lilies floating on the stream, and I thought to myself why nature had remained good to us despite the hostile and indifferent attitude we sustained against her. While thinking this, I noticed some broad-leaved plants(probably water lettuce) floating towards my direction. As I was flat on my tummy and with my head inches above the surface of water, I recognized soon that atop the floating plant was a green frog. When the plant hit land forming the edge of the stream where I was, the frog was close enough to me for its damp snout to tip-touch my nose. I was amused by the sight and knew I had the beauty of nature in my hands (or nose for that matter). Suddenly, the frog's eyes grew and it croaked, ko-kak, ko-kak, ko-kak, and just as soon leapt to the water and sliced it with a beautiful plop. I laughed, stood up, and went to a nearby hut. While on my way to the hut, my eyes became watery and my nose got itchy. When I reached the inside of hut, I picked up a thick book in a rack by the door and the book's cover reads The Unabridged Book of Ko-kaks. I turned the pages and looked for the meanings of the 3 ko-kaks the green froggie croaked to me (I have no idea how I was able to distinguish that from the other ko-kaks; they're all ko-kaks) and when I got to that page I turned red with rage. There emblazoned in bold letters the meaning of the 3 croaks: a-choo, a-choo, a-choo!

Short story, anyone?

Idea #3: Article Read This Morning As Basis -

I picked up at the church premises this morning a copy of Sojourner Magazine which has for its cover the essayist and poet Wendell Berry. The cover article is an interview of Berry about his life in the country (All the voices that surrounded me from when I began to hear were all from this place, he said, affirming his legendary attachment to that small town in the Midwest.) One question thrown to him was his opinion on balkanism. He confirmed the presence of this growing tension between locales (most probably, his very own locales or in the adjacent) and opined that "we" (probably referring to them locales) were experiencing warrior civilization despite "our" capability for kindness and generosity. Berry continued to say that the only antidote he saw against this slowly growing tension was "imagination" to be able to fully understand the benefits of compassion, but hinting a pessimist voice with an outlook about the diffult business of being human. I have not heard of the term balkanism before but my guess was that this somewhat politically wrong term was derived from the ethnic tensions traditionally brewing between Balkan states, and if Berry's observation was correct, specifically about imagination serving as an antidote, then his optimist/pessimist view serves as one rich source even for one full length novel.

I can probably create more than one short story about this one...or, must I say first, short story, anyone?

(to be continued...)

MUSIC AS SHOWBIZ,
POETRY AS SHOWBIZ!

The song that I came to sing
remains unsung to this day
- Rabindranath Tagore

If there is no room in poetry for difficulty,
where is difficulty to go?
- Billy Collins

You can fry me in a cauldron or turn me upside down, you may throw me in a dungeon or burn me at the stakes - but no sir, I shall not trade this music and that poetry for your glowing pot of gold. Go ahead and disarm me, cut my hair and gouge my eyes; pry my heart open, or dry my valves into submission - there's no cry of sweet surrender no matter how you try. I won't be the real me if music were dead and poetry were not alive.
- cbs

I was probably conceived under the haunting melody of song and the consistent guidance of rhyme. If your parents were like my dad, a virtuoso in his guitar and harmonica who could have accompanied you in any song of your choice while nightmaring in his sleep, and my mom who in her much younger years had the essence of Callas in her throat and Kipling in her memory (she'll do an aria and cite a stanza at the slightest hint of audience), music and poetry could be your foetal companions, too.

Through my adolescence, music in the house was one of wild abandon. Everyone was a singer, and save for the youngest, played at least one musical instrument (some of which demonstrated a unique aspect of utility: the flute doubled as a backscratcher, the banduria as dog-swiper). My mom's operatic voice helped so much in the laundry (a fabric softener?) and my siblings classical eloquence on the piano paved the way to my love for classical music.

One of the most memorable moments with my family in the Philippines occured during 'brownout nights', where power failure failed to defeat our willpower from singing at our terrace to our hearts' content. I played the guitar, my dad the harmonica, and my mom and siblings tone down the humidity of the air with the coolness of their voices through an array of kundiman and other traditional songs. Sampaguita ng Aming Lahi, ayy, that gave me goosebumps; La Paloma, ayy, yay, yay, yay, that gave me even more goosebumps, I could remember Tatum the doggie joining us in the chorus with the only lyrics she knew, awoooooooooooooo! Folksongs were a favorite, too, and Peter, Paul and Mary's Where Have All The Soldiers Gone was always sung in blended perfection. And when the lights were on again the entire neighborhood shouted in glee, probably because we abated our own nuisance rather than the power coming back.

Still and all, my music is not reactionary nor supercillious nor learned nor intolerant. Right now, I crave for reggae, and there seems to be a political, aside from harmonious, reason for this: reggae is third world music that found acceptance beyond geography and culture.

Did you know that 'I Shot the Sheriff' popularized by Eric Clapton is reggae, and that the 70's British rock group Police is basically a reggae act? Every beat in Roxanne screams Caribbean and you can always see the Jamaican-ness in Sting everytime he croons 'de-doo-doo-doo, de-da-da-da'.

I would like to believe that the greatness of reggae lies in the fact that any song can have a reggae arrangement which beautifies, as well as beatifies, the original melody. Red, Red Wine is a Neil Diamond song, but listen to UB40 turn it into a great reggae anthem. I went to this place called SOB (Sounds of Brazil) and witnessed how a Brazilian reggae band version of Frank Sinatra's Let Me Try Again brought the revellers up and the house down. A month ago, I saw on tv a man and a woman doing an acoustic rendition of Coldplay's Yellow in reggae. That was unforgettable. And finally last night, somebody was doing a cover of Slave to Love (by the former front man of Roxy Music) in reggae, and that, too, was supremely memorable.

And which now leads us to poetry.

Here's my routine: coming from work I would go to a bookstore before heading home, to unstress myself and relieve my brains from the stubborn clinging of office responsibility. I do this with a 15 minute therapy I simply call poetry reading. I pick up a book by any poet, scan the pages for quick look at any poem I will have love at first sight with, and then read that poem aloud.

Believe me, it is effective. The stress falls into place, which place is outside your body (but be careful as the place may be the one beside you who will consider you a loony).

Tell me yourself, say this aloud:

Once intoxicated, one learns the strength of wine,
Once smitten, one learns the power of love;
You cannot write my poems
Just as I cannot dream your dreams.
(Dream of Poetry by Hu Shish)

and this, too -

The whiskey of your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
(My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke)

But the ability to remove stress speaks of the physical only. Poetry, in Seamus Heaney's 1995 Nobel lecture, has the ability to provide intellectual, spiritual and emotional benefits, too -

(Poetry has the) power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values; that our very solitude and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being.

And as if I can't have music and poetry enough, I just got myself a cd that combines both music and poetry. Entitled Neruda, with Luciana Souza on vocals and percussion and Edward Simon on the piano, the cd contains 10 songs that are actually 10 Pablo Neruda poems set to samba music. Track No. 5, Memory, reminds me (as if!) that music is my heart, and poetry is my soul:

I have to remember everything,
keep track of blades of grass, the threads
of untidy event, and
the houses, inch by inch,
the long lines of the railway,
the textured face of pain.

If I should get one rosebush wrong
and confuse night with a hare,
or even if one whole wall
has crumbled in my memory,
I have to make the air again,
steam, the earth, leaves,
hair and bricks as well,
the thorns which pierced me,
the speed of the escape.

Take pity on the poet.

That's all for my showbiz, folks; please don't take pity.