Write and write

Quick post, since this is a long and busy week and I can't leave my blog stagnant.

Read this in one of those forewords before. It's Stephen King talking about writing. I still think his writing about writing is better than anything else he's ever written. Or maybe because I haven't read Carrie, or whatever best ever thing he's written. (For the record, I have read The Shining, a short story collection called Everything's Eventual, and The Gunslinger.) Peace, Stephen King, you're still cool.

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I am often given the big smiling handshake at parties (which I avoid attending whenever possible) by someone who then, with an air of gleeful conspiracy, will say, 'You know I've always wanted to write.' I used to try to be polite. These days I reply with the same jubilant excitement: 'You know I've always wanted to be a brain surgeon.' They look puzzled. It doesn't matter. There are a lot of puzzled people lately. If you want to write, you write. The only way to learn to write is by writing.
--Stephen King

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Now, back to work.

'Autopilot'

I sometimes amuse myself by adopting new terms for things; I have renamed my cat countless of times (he answers to most of them), used different words to signify "cramming" to make deadline days sound more, er, colorful, and borrowed other people's new terms when I find them amusing enough (hello, superhero duties).

The latest addition to the word bank is what I call 'autopilot,' that is, the state in which one is so tired that all the movements and tasks are done robotically. Now before you think anyone can actually write on autopilot (quite impossible, actually), let me say that I thought up this term while I was walking to the Ayala MRT station from the bus stop at Paseo-Ayala through the pedestrian-friendly walkway-cum-maze in Makati. I was walking methodically, only half-aware of where I was. I was so tired I just let my feet lead the way. I knew I was so out of it when I actually thought I had already passed Glorietta while I was still in Landmark; I got all the malls jumbled up in my head, but I was still walking the right way.

Autopilot can be a dangerous state, especially when crossing the road (best not to let it happen in Cubao, too). And now that I think about it, it's a state you can't ever be in while at work--what slipshod results you'll have to your name!

That day, I was already in SM Makati when my brain sent a signal to the autopilot that maybe I could drop by the Homeworld to check out the list for a wedding I am attending. I took the detour and looked for the desk; but, I had to ask so many sales people where the desk was. I finally ended up on the other side of the mall where a pair of salesladies at a cashier answered me with a harsh "Ano bang registry yan?" and, after I said "Bridal," told me to go to a small empty desk at the corner of Homeworld and get my list there.

Now, I understand it if there are many different desks for other kinds of registries, but shouldn't there be somebody manning them all? What was I to do, talk to the empty chair? They could clearly see from where they were that the desk was empty. I snapped out of autopilot right then. I thought: maybe there's something about my tiredness that showed; no one was taking me seriously! So, I decided to get the list another day, when I'm more bibo.

When you're on autopilot, people can respond to you rudely because they see (or feel?) you're running low and are obviously not in any mood to get indignant or to complain. It's a kind of indifference that makes you vulnerable to getting shortchanged; sometimes, I think it isn't only an individual state because, collectively, people can be functioning on autopilot too (hello, fellow youth).

One can't afford to be on autopilot--as I said, it's a dangerous state. Sure, people get tired, but won't it do you so much good to stop dwelling on how tired you are and forget yourself for a while? There are so many things to be done that there is no time to be apathetic, indifferent and lukewarm...

How will you change the world if you're a zombie?

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Photo above is a poster of The Mechanical Man, an Italian silent (epic, horror) film, which showed here a few months ago. Interesting how the robot enters a party a la Phantom of the Opera, and nobody notices that he's the killer mechanical man...and then he attacks, as expected. That's an example of collective autopilot. Poor people, they didn't know any better.

Beautiful

I found a copy of Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe in the last Fully Booked sale at 80 off. Of course, I bought it; it was one of my favorite story books back when I was that little squirt who thought Nancy Drew was a ghost hunter.

I liked this book a lot because the pictures looked so different from what I was used to; this is a fairy tale--not a Grimm Brothers', but it had the same elements: a good sister, a wicked sister, magic, adventure...handsome prince--the works! What made it so interesting was the fact that it was different.

Growing up reading western books, I was used to seeing beautiful princesses who had long blonde hair and fair skin, blue eyes and red lips. You can just imagine how a book with the word 'beautiful' in the title and a brown face on the cover would have stuck out like a sore thumb among the many typical illustrated fairy tale books on the shelf to a western-beauty-brainwashed kid like me.

I picked up the story and enjoyed it very much--it was mesmerizing to look at the African images; I especially remember how the beggar boy's ear curled at the tip. The story was about two daughters, both beautiful. One wanted to be queen and the other just wanted to serve her father. One day, the king gave a summons to all the unmarried ladies in the land to come and meet him--he was looking for a wife. On the way to the palace (the sisters did not travel together), there were "tests" and the wicked sister failed them while the good sister passed. It's a story about beauty within: kindness, sincerity, charity.

It's interesting also to note that, having a "realistic" art style, the book is not really the type I would have instantly picked off the shelf--I would prefer to get the ones with the cute cartoon-y illustrations because, by experience, they tend to be funnier. But this book I got intrigued with because, besides it being African, I wanted to see if there was an image in it where the daughters really did look beautiful. (You have to excuse this kid.) They weren't conventionally (biased word) pretty but by the time I finished reading, I agreed that they were beautiful. Perhaps that was why the illustrations were more on the realistic side?


In any case, this is a book about real beauty, overlooking skin color, eye color, nose shape, lip thickness, hair texture and lash length. Nowadays, pop culture insists that beauty has only one face--preferably one that went "under the knife." But even kids would know that isn't true, if you gave them the opportunity to think it over. Because no matter how hard a brainwashing the media gives a person, every one, deep down, knows that what makes a person truly beautiful is the virtues that dwell in the heart.

Fraid of change?

When I discovered GK Chesterton, the biggest question in my mind was "Where have you been all my life?" Funny how he was practically invisible all this time; I have never gotten my hands on a copy of any of his books, and perhaps the only glimpse I had of the man before graduating college (!) was when I stumbled upon a quote of his in a Neil Gaiman book, and even then I didn't notice enough to remember the name.

What is really puzzling is I graduated with degree in BA-Creative Writing, which means I'm a specimen most people call an English major, supposedly an expert on anything and everything written in the English language. And here I am all ignorant of the works of one of the greatest English writers (thinkers) of the 20th century.

But wait! Here's an interesting article my friend Ditas came across. (She is primary person I complained to about the lack of Chesterton in the CW curriculum.) Read, read!

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Author calls for end of 'academic embargo' on GK Chesterton
Paul Nowak

Despite having a profound influence on the 20th century, English author G.K. Chesterton has remained virtually unknown to modern readers. This discrepancy may be due to an unwillingness for universities and colleges to include him in literary and history curriculum.

“The academic embargo against recognition of Chesterton’s stature remains in place, for reasons which remain a matter of speculation,” states William Oddie in the introduction to his biography published earlier this year, Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC.

Perhaps it is the effect Chesterton has on college students. In 1909, Mohandas Gandhi read one of Chesterton’s regular columns for the Illustrated London News, and was, according to his biographers, “thunderstruck” by the idea of truly Indian independence. He translated the article, and it became the basis for his book Hind Swaraj.

C.S. Lewis, who read Chesterton while serving in the army, has said that it was Chesterton who first showed him that the Christian world view made sense. J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as other Inklings, were also greatly influenced by Chesterton.

His friends, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, though they did not agree with him upheld him as an important literary figure, both in their own time and for future generations. T.H White, author of The Once and Future King, remarked upon G.K.C.’s death that he had been the greatest living master of the English language.

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Why then has G.K. Chesterton been left out of academia? Perhaps, after seeing what Chesterton’s influence has done to shape the literary and political reality the 20th Century, colleges and universities are wary of that degree of change in the 21st Century.

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Read the whole thing here.

Un-balanced views

I read Arrogance some weeks ago, but haven't gotten round to talking about it until now. This book by Bernard Goldberg talks about the liberal bias in the media and how it is constantly overlooked by the big guns because somehow the liberal ideas are never contested where the news is written. Goldberg talks about journalism in the USA, but I think the liberal bias also happens here in the Philippines. WillyJ points this out in this entry, and I think I've already pointed out a few instances in the past.

People will always have their own opinions--let's give it that. And people will always air them. Opinion pages are full of "what I think is right" and that's ok because it is the opinion page. What is wrong is that these opinions seep out of the opinion pages and go into general news masquerading as balanced views. How? By use of subtle language cues (like using the word "conservative" to label the Church and then forgetting to use "liberal" to label pro-RH bill advocates), or in the medium of radio, acting indignant about anything that isn't liberal--how many times have I heard somebody crack "Make love, not babies" on the radio? Or "We're so overpopulated already!" delivered in a complaining voice and without facts to back it up? Lots. And these words are always spewed from the same two mouths. (Supposedly, this AM station is reputable, but I've been wary of it for a long time now.)

It's like they're imposing that the liberal opinion is the balanced view and the conservative is far out extreme right. It gets really sickening when you're stuck in traffic on a Monday morning and that's all you hear about. How grand to start off your week to that! Sometimes it's best to just listen to a CD and assume there's no news for the day.

Then there is the non-coverage of not-so-liberal events like pro-life marches. Ever read about them? Only in blogs, I suppose! You won't see anything in the media, whether print, TV or radio. And no coverage makes it look like there is no action on that side of the opinion spectrum. And no action = no existence.

And why is it that when it's a conservative opinion, it must always come from a priest or bishop? Aren't ordinary people also part of the Church? Get them to talk too! It's unfair to make it look like all ordinary citizens are for reproductive health and only bishops, priests, and nuns, who have a vow to celibacy, are against contraceptives. There are young moms and dads who say no to being not open to life. Isn't it only fair to go ask them why they think so?

As a reader (listener, watcher) of news, I am, like everybody, prey to these tricks. What I think helps is to keep talking to different people about things that come out in the news. (Or perhaps the big guns in media can do us all a favor and also start talking to more different minded people and considering their opinions as valid arguments too?)

Because truly, it's exposure to different ideas (and knowing where they come from and then discussing them with a level head) that make us open-minded, not the attitude of permissiveness of culture corruption because "it's their life, they can do what they want with it." The latter, obviously, is just plain old apathy.

Even fashion designers notice

...and are turned off by overexposure.


Karl Lagerfeld: "We've seen too much sexually aggressive fashion. Too much is too much. And too much for a long time is worse."

Sunny-ness is contagious

Last Saturday, I had to make my own way to my alma mater because my dad took the car out of town and I had to attend a forum. I decided the fastest way to go was by cab, though I would always have misgivings about taking a taxi alone. Partly it was because I used to have a hard time hearing what the cabbies tell me, and it really creeps me out if they're chatty (the former isn't a problem anymore, but the latter still happens). What really makes me think twice is that taxi drivers often refuse passengers going to UP (or Makati) for reasons such as "traffic," as if traffic isn't already part of the job.

That Saturday morning, I was hoping not many cabbies would reject my proposal to go to UP. The first taxi rejected me after I said, "Sa UP lang." I let it go with mounting panic (yes, it was getting late).

Waiting for another cab, I had a funny idea--I could try to be sunny and see how the driver would react. The next cab stopped for me and I put on a big smile and said, "Good morning! Sa UP lang po ako!" The driver smiled back and said, "Opo, ma'am!" And off to UP I went.

True, not all taxi drivers have the same disposition, and perhaps I just got lucky my sunny-ness turned out to be contagious for this one. But isn't that a lesson! Even when it's someone's job to drive you around (or sweep the floors, clean the toilets, do the laundry, cook the food for you and/or the public), it's no reason to treat them like they don't feel. They're not robots--they need a dose of sunshine too.

In other words, you just aren't pleasant to clients or interviewees or bosses (besides people you're really close to, because, obviously you're pleasant to them already--and if you aren't they'll understand), but to everyone. I may find this a bit hard to do--because I'm not the blatantly cheery type of person--but with random people one meets daily, usually a "Good morning" suffices... you never know how much your two little words can change how someone's day is going!