SUMMER 301: ON BURNING THE PERFECT WEDDING CD

Funny how I am writing this on the last day of the wedding month. But that's the real me, a late bloomer (if ever I bloomed at all, which makes me envy Harold Bloom all the time - he was a bloomer since birth), or simply an out and out precocious practicioner of the precarious practice of pocrastination. But I can't resist the idea of doing this post since I heard Stephen Thompson's little feature on NPR's Morning Edition a few weeks ago: he spoke about love songs he compiled and put in a cd for a niece who got married in June of 2005.

Thompson is the music producer of the iconic NPR, which means the girl who got wed two years ago knew what she was doing when she asked an uncle to do a souvenir/giveaway cd for her big day. And it was so much of a blessing that I got to listen to the feature while being stuck in an hour of traffic galore at the stressful nature of Interstate 95. Which seems to be an awesome synchronicity considering that weddings are supposedly stressful too (are they really? Or maybe we should just call Wedding Eve LBM's as Life Before Marriage).

Anyway, Thompson's little feature was awesome, ruminating on the process of selecting the love songs which, by way of the yardstick he put, had to be scratched because they were either angry, or lusty, or spoke of heartbreaks or infidelity. Which makes me think, most of the songs written - I'll play a statistician and put the percentage at 90 - are about love, and more than half of them are about the lonely, miserable, sordid kind. Love is universal but miserable love must be galaxial, and I can so relate to Mr. Thompson's struggle in finding the perfect set of love songs for his beloved niece.

Yet, when the finished product was being handed over to guests at the niece's weddings, Mr. Thompson seemed to have misgivings on the selection - and still hoping that when the recipients drove home next to a sleeping passenger, they will have listened to the cds intently and sobbed audibly under the night sky.

Which makes me think: if my nieces wed (hopefully not in the next few years, please, not yet - they are young and immature including that pretty 18-year old dudette who still picks her nose at the dining table), maybe they should ask their good ole' Uncle c to compile their own wedding cd which, if I made the list today, will come up to something like this:

song/artist

1. (I Wanna) Call It Love - Sondra Lerche
2. Let's Stay Together - Al Green
3. Everytime We Say Goodbye - Sara Gazarek
4. Eso Pido Yo - Marta Gomez
5. You Will Be My Music - Frank Sinatra
6. Under Heaven's Skies - Collective Soul
7. Kapag Sinabi Ko Sa Iyo - Gary Granada
8. Who Can I Turn To - Matt Monroe
9. Whenever, Wherever, Whatever - Maxwell
10. Forevermore - Side A
11. Fire Thief - Hem
12. Para Tu Amor - Juanes
13. Yellow - Coldplay
14. Harvest Moon - Neil Young
15. Something Beautiful - Jars of Clay
16. The First Time Ever I saw Your Face - George Michael
17. All for You - Sister Hazel
18. Nightingales - Sondra Lerche

SUMMER 201: ON TAKING THE BEST ROUTE TO A MAN'S HEART

There is one substantial reason, other than the adhered assumption of their exceptionally amiable and self-effacing personalities, why I constantly visit the blogs of kiwipinay and tonimarikit: they blithely write about their experimentations in food and proudly narrate their achievements in homecookings.

I love to eat. My continuing affinity to all things edible is reared not just by an obligation to eat in order to live but by the higher commitment to live rather happily - and anybody who looks at food above its nourishing quality, like Beth and Toni to me, could be my friend. Food, after all, is a sustaining power that unlike air and water beckons us under our own devices. Not like air, we choose our food intake; not like water, we have a wide selection of food.

Which brings me to Beth and Toni. In this age of empty or shallow or jaundiced blogging, these two ladies write about love, and life, and family, and of course, about food they prepare in their kitchens - in the same simple but effective fashion as Henry David Thoreau's broodings on building a house with his own two hands under tight budget, or Jose Saramago's winsome ruminations on the societal significance of owning a dog. Through their blogs, food are not just food, they are little stories too, or even poetry, or a love note, a fragrant flower in bloom, a kid's laughter.

I remember how Beth salivated us with the simple dish she made from the mullet given by a friend, and there was a story behind that exchange; or how Toni cooled us off with words on the simple concoction of avocado ice candies handed over by a generation before. Reading those posts along with others that contrive alluring images of food magically brought me to some of the greatest moments of my life - the times when I ate with all my heart and tummy aplomb, all the times I came to realize that food should not only be filling, they also have to be fulfilling.

Here's my additional two cents on food: Aside from being about food, meals are also about people. We are what we eat; any indications external like the smoothness of skin, the pinkness of fingernails, or the bounciness of attitude could be attributed to what's historically in the stomach. Likewise, meals are a social event and should thus be treated as opportunities to a lively social interaction, hopefully, with those who share with us the same aesthetic and nutritional value of food.

Or maybe I am just lucky. I remember in high school or in college where, spending some days in the house of a friend or classmate, the mother or the cook would hoist us out of the kitchen everytime we ventured there with our tiny curiosities as if we were the bearers of bad taste, or the stealers of secret recipes. For in my house of childhood onward, the kitchen was the place where emotions were built up. In our abode, everyone was encouraged to cook and everyone was encouraged to eat. Heartily. Joyfully.

And so as I read Beth's and Toni's food posts over and over again and scream, Yummy!, I kept on wanting to ask, short of commenting, can I please, please come and visit your wonderful kitchens?

REMEMBERING THE FUTURE

- My old bud, JR, was at the heart of Cypress National Preserve, watching Phish play in concerto.

- H, my assistant, was with her then boyfriend D in Miami Beach, spending their money and maxing up on their cards, living the self-persuasion that "tomorrow will never come no more".

- My favorite doubles partner in tennis, the Brazilian J who speaks 4 languages, an athletic scholar in college, and a top-brass salesman was at his beloved Rio de Janeiro, running after shapely girls in Copacabana, hoping to get laid before the future comes.

- One of my sisters, with hubby, was partying with Filipino friends some 40 miles away from us. Their kids, certified dorks, were sleeping over with friends, probably watching tv, probably having pillow fights, probably assessing the future of their dorkiness.

- My childhood friend Topee was on the phone. He was an ocean and 13 hours away from the person on the other end of the line who kept on telling him to "stop jerking off and go find a wife!".

- Bunsoy was at the dining table (for where else will you find him?) and slurping on long strands of canton, wishing aloud he was at the Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park in Maine to possess bragging rights for sighting the future ahead of everyone else in America.

- A lot of Cuban teenaged girls were at the American Airlines in Downtown Miami, screaming non-stop while Gloria Estefan kept on referring to them as "mi pueblo".

- My Mom was sleeping on the couch, ignoring the fireworks outside and gently snoring like a baby.

- I was sipping cheap champagne, nibbling on cheap caviar, going over the day's editorial of The New York Times, watching VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Rock N' Roll, talking on the phone to a beloved childhood friend named Topee.

How about you? What were you doing during the birthing moments of Y2K?

SUMMER 101: THE GOOD ART OF SUMMER READING

For a student or schoolteacher, it is easy to understand why summer is a great time to catch up on reading. There's no school and not much thing to do, so why not read, indeed? But there must be something in and about the warm and humid air of summer which lights up the intellectual fuse that was somehow wet and slimy during the rainy season, or even dead in the dead of winter, and clamors for the beauty of the classics. I can guarantee. Some of the books I have strongest attachment to - Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Wright's Native Son, Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - were read in-between schoolyears of college, and I now analyze in retrospect if my enjoyment of the materials were due to their being read out-of-school, up and away from the meddlings and meanderings of literature teachers.

The bookstores are obviously banking into this summery phenomenon; customers are often greeted by huge signs that announce the hot buys of the hot season: Summer Readings, Buy Three Get One Free!

And so I'm up into this fold. I am currently reading three books, each one assigned a specific time of the day to complement the mood, which hopefully could bring me well into the height of summer and asking for more -

Lunchtime - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Pre-Dinner Time - Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Bedtime - A Curtain of Green by Eudora Welty

Of the three, Divisadero engages me the most. Ondaatje never fails to amaze me. He is like the Joni Mitchell of fiction literature and every line, every sentence, is substantially relevant and luminous. His Anil's Ghost (which he autographed for me) continues to haunt me, and his book of poetry, Cinnamon Peeler, proves that great prose and great poetry can very well reside in the pen of a single writer.

And so, on this hot and humid day (or however it is in the manner of your own little skies), what is keeping your literary eye busy?

LANGUAGE DISCOURSE

Seamus Dean, in his intro to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, says that language may regulate reality but is not constitutive of it.

Is this correct? Language IS NOT a part of reality?

LANGUAGE AND TRANSCULTURE - THE AMERICAN SETTING

Here's a story I got from a popular blogger: In an elevator of a building somewhere in the United States, a lone Filipina and a few Americans stood in wait as the elevator brought them down. In one of the middle floors, the elevator stopped and when the door opened, a Filipino was standing by the doorstep. He saw the Filipina and asked, Bababa ba? The Filipina answered, Bababa. A few more floors down and the door opened again, and another Filipina was by the doorstep. He saw the Filipinos and asked, Bababa ba?, to which they answered in chorus, Bababa. One American passenger could not keep his curiosity to himself and asked the others aloud, What the hell kind of a language is that?

The story is funny to me in two ways: first, it shows how quickly one could be publicly dumbstruck by ignorance of a fact; and second, it reveals how the Filipino language could sometimes sound remarkably strange while being at the same time logical and grammatical. Indeed there was something to understand in the amazement of the American, reeling as to how three people could quickly converse perfectly while seemingly borrowing the language of the sheep.
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At a Publix Supermarket's Deli Section one time, I saw a man scream in fury at a hapless saleslady (she looked Cuban to me) because she cannot fully talk to him in English about his order. "This is America!", he said, "Speak English!"

That guy must not only be new in Miami, he must also be new in the world - for America has started to grow tolerant in accepting other languages, and the concept of English-only (as in one high school in, I believe, Texas) will fall in a deep Hispanic ravine.

In Miami-Dade county alone, there are certain cities and areas (Calle Ocho, Hialeah, and certain parts of Homestead) where major stores do businesses only in Spanish. When I came here years ago and I looked at the classified ads, I was surprised by the number of openings that require fluency in Spanish - with a few that says "proficiency in Spanish considered but not required" although, duh, you know it meant the same thing. (Spanish has now grown so big that Miami Herald has its onw Spanish edition - the El Nuevo Herald).

In major airports I had been to, most (if not all) announcements carry a Spanish translation - even if I was surprised one time in Phoenix when I heard an announcement in Tagalog. Again, in South Florida, most (if not all) major businesses have at least one person manning the front desk and/or operator who is fully conversant in Spanish, or there will certainly be no chance at survival.

America is a capitalist country and the only color that runs it is green. In a place where a booming Hispanic market is in the loom, it makes sense for the language to follow where the money leads. There is a vision that by Year 2050, the majority of America's population will be Hispanic. In that case, by that year (if not before), America's official language could very well be Spanish.

Salud!

S

I remember the scene in T2:JD where the cyborg played by Ahnold Schwarzenegger fights a superior cyborg to the finish, and when the smoke clears he is missing more than a limb and presumably more than a screw, and with a metal tongue in cheek declares half-amusingly, I need a vacation.

Right now I am feeling like that spent cyborg myself, consumed by the elements of life collectively bad and base to the bone, and for that reason I may need a vacation, too.

For the premise that I am spent, herein lies the admissible evidence to my exhaustion:

My alarm wakes me up (and possibly the entire complex) at 5:30 am, and coming off my bed I do morning exercises for my 100-yr old back. After 10 minutes of gruffinf and grumbling I will then proceed to water the plants (both in the living room and in the patio), prepare my lunch, fix and eat breakfast, read the newspapaper, check and answer emails, gather my workload, take a shower, dress up, and at exactly 7:00 a.m., rain or shine, I am out the door and on my way to work.

Work is 30 miles from home, and if my conversion is right, is equivalent to 50 kilometers, which if my gueestimate is right, is the distance between Monumento and San Fernando, Pampanga.

The first quarter of that 30 miles is a killer. I need to pass thru 3 school zones, multiple stop signs, and heavy traffic that builds up, doubles up, by the minute. The last three quarters of that trip is fast, but definitely not stress-free, baby, for this is Interstate 95, my man, or The Road The Reckless Drivers Built.

In Miami's I-95, if the car in front of you flashed the right turn signal, you must half-expect him to suddenly turn left. If you drive too slow, even an 80-yr old jackass will give you a birdie. One time, at I-95, I saw a driver with his left leg (it could even be his right leg, for all I know) protruding out of the window and he was cutting and passing and weaving as if he was on a flying trapeze. Many times in the morning I have seen reckless drivers munching their sandwiches and gulping their coffees, women applying makeups while driving 100 mph, but there was one driver who totally left me breathless for the record he established: while driving fast he was also brushing his teeth.

And this is just in the morning.