You could write an entire paper about the psychological constitution of the Filipino messiah complex and how this intersects--apparently without contradiction--with the notion of corruption, the slow, graceful degradation of one's moral character. Because one does degenerate gracefully here. It must be the hothouse weather.
... Imeem.com doesn't have "Experimental Film" by Kaiser Chiefs (the eponymous sixth song) so um. You should get it in iTunes!
Haven't been sleeping much, still. In lieu of more writing and paper sorting, I've also been listening to Bach, notably Glenn Gould's recordings of the Goldberg Variations. I mention this because I have only just remembered Johann Nikolaus Forkel's biography of Bach, specifically his claim that Bach composed the Variations at the request of the insomniac Count Hermann Karl von Keyserlingk. The Count had the young virtuoso Johann Goldberg in his employ and, according to Forkel, he kept Goldberg awake throughout the night playing the harpsichord. Finally, the Count asked Bach to compose a piece of music for Goldberg (who was himself a student of Bach), something to lull him to sleep or, at the very least, enliven his sleepless nights. Thus, the Goldberg Variations.
The story is almost certainly apocryphal, but it's interesting nonetheless (or perhaps because of). I myself cannot vouch for the soporific quality of the Variations since I have been listening to them for several days now and the earliest I have been to bed since then is one in the morning and then I can't sleep for more than four or five hours.
"Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or disadvantage to anyone." - R. Buckminster Fuller
In other news: I'm also concerned about yet another reading list. I'm buried in so much paperwork nowadays I ought to just lock myself up. But. A group of pastors has asked me to conduct an informal year-long literature seminar/reading group for their organization. I'm not a member of their church (or churches), but some of these pastors have been close family friends for years, and I once taught a series of English tutorial classes for adult church members a few years back, so I couldn't say no. This time, the project will focus exclusively on pastors within the province who, aside from their local constituencies, are also active in international missions. We've had several discussions about the nature of pastoral education in the Philippines--especially in the more obscure and poorer churches--and the pastors I talked to are very critical of its shortcomings. Their program is actually a combination of social work, local evangelization, and international missions, with particular focus on training missionaries. However, they don't think that they can reach out to as many people as they want to if they will not attempt to go beyond their admittedly parochial orientation with regard to secular matters. So to address this perceived defect, they decided that one of the first steps they need to take is, quite simply, to broaden/update their education. Most of them are college graduates but given the fact that--save for the bigger and better-funded universities--college education in the Philippines, especially in colleges outside Manila, is not exactly what you would call cosmopolitan, that's not saying a lot.
Anyhow, they can't afford to go to special classes in college (and the community college doesn't offer any such course) so they settled on me, perhaps because seeing me with my nose perpetually buried in a book from childhood on has led them to think that I might actually be something of an expert in haha literary (i.e., reading) matters. Another, more experienced teacher is taking over the 'technical' English class. I would much rather be teaching the use of subjunctives since you have little room--latitude, actually--for mistakes, you just follow what the workbook says. But compiling a reading list? and conducting a literature seminar for pastors? is another matter altogether. I won't deny that the project interests me, but then I've always had a stupid weakness for uh idiosycratic projects. (And I didn't really think of my schedule when I agreed, my mother is going to kill me.)
I've been turning over the concept of the reading list for days. I can always give a diagnostic test so I can relativize the list to the pastors' reading comprehension level in English and so on, but that's just, I dunno, sort of counter-productive? Even given the fact that they've admitted that the only things they actually read in any depth are the Bible and the newspaper, I don't see how they can radically 'update' their literary horizons with a facetious sampling of what might be classified as easy reading material (you know, stuff straight out of high school textbooks). It's not as if their English is bad, only that they've never really tried to cultivate it or to improve their fluency in the language through reading. Besides, they said that they wanted to learn new things so that they'll have a wider range of sources to draw from when confronted with, say, a Sikh who has read Thucydides and Jane Austen.
A few days ago, I found a letter tucked in a box containing old notes and postcards which I had been sorting. It's a letter--written in Tagalog--from my paternal grandfather to my grandmother, written about a year before they were married. It's nothing like The Notebook, don't worry, so I'm not about to start driveling. In fact, it's quite bland, and written in a hurried fashion. Of course I personally find it interesting in light of what I know about my grandparents' relationship.
My grandmother was a public schoolteacher, one of the first to be licensed in the country. Those days teachers were in dire need in rural and far-flung areas. Up until the foundation of the Commonwealth, the educational system in the country had been handled by American educators and bureaucrats. When a corps of Filipino teachers was finally established, they were politically and ideologically primed to look at their profession as a mission. They had a pioneering approach towards teaching. When my grandmother first entered the service, she was assigned to distant Quezon (formerly Aurora) province, first in the bustling market-town of San Pablo, before she gradually made a circuit of the smaller and less prosperous towns like Candelaria, Dolores and Sariaya. She finally ended up in my grandfather's ancestral hometown in the Banahaw foothills. This was where they met.
Unlike Grandmother, my grandfather only had seven years of schooling. His mother died when he was twelve and since then he and his younger brother had lived with various relatives, doing odd chores and making themselves useful. At the time he met my grandmother, Grandfather was the custodian of a coconut plantation which was owned by a wealthy aunt. He would stay alone at night in a ramshackle hut in the plantation grounds and smoke incessantly until dawn in order to keep the mosquitoes and the chill away.
When he wasn't needed in Tagkawayan, he would be in Dolores, handling his aunt's general merchandise store and watching over her two daughters. He worked hard and was considered a reliable and conscientious person by his relatives. However, he had another side to him. At that time, the province was overrun with dancing clubs which provided entertainment and a bit of glamour in provincial gatherings in farms and haciendas. My grandfather was a member of a particularly popular and elite club called "Los Diablos." They had specially printed dance cards and wore exclusive tie pins. According to newspaper and personal accounts, the club seemed to have been much in demand. I have pictures of him from this time and he was quite the dandy. I'm not sure if my grandmother got interested in him because of his dancing skills or because of his overall air of responsibility. In any case, my grandfather has always declared that she was a horrible dancer, so his sentiments are clear on that point.
They had a more or less informal courtship, but before any sort of agreement could be reached, World War II broke out and my grandmother had to return to Laguna. My grandfather stopped dancing and joined the guerillas. He was captured and imprisoned with other insurgents for more than a year. My grandmother stopped teaching and started a small business shipping food items to Manila in order to help her family, bringing the produce herself through boat. After the war, she returned to teaching, but instead of going back to Quezon, she decided to take a masteral degree in the city. All throughout that time, they never tried to communicate with each other.
I don't think they really expected to see each other again. Ten years after they separated, however, both of them--my grandmother was thirty-seven, my grandfather thirty-five--were still unmarried. One day, some time in June, 1950, Grandmother was standing in a curb in Ermita with her younger brother. As they prepared to cross the street, she looked up and saw my grandfather standing on the opposite street. He in his turn was accompanying his aunt on one of her periodic business trips to Manila. Grandfather saw her too. He crossed the street first, guiding his aunt firmly by the elbow. As he stepped up the curb where she stood, he saluted her by name and asked if he might have her home address. He wrote it carefully on a piece of cigarette paper which her brother proferred, bade her goodbye, and went on his way. Two days later, he turned up in her parents' doorstep, carrying a basket of ripe yellow bananas.
I've never asked if they simply picked up where they left off or if they had to start all over again. They did not get married immediately. My grandfather was in the middle of another one of his never-ending stream of miscellaneous jobs. The letter I found was written during this period, I think. I'm not sure what work he was doing at that time, but he and Grandmother were separated again. He might have been in Dolores. What is clear is that they seemed to be writing each other regularly, even daily. The rest of the letter speaks for itself:
10/29/51
Ilay,
Hindi ko na nagawang
sumulat kagabi upang sa araw na ito ay makarating agad sa iyo ang
balita. Ng dumating akoy gabi na. Ikaw na ang bahalang magpapasencia sa
mga pagkukulang ko. Maari pa ba?
Naisip ko kagabi ang sinabi
kong... akoy darating sa linggo at dian na tutulog. Hindi ba't ganoon
ang aking pangako? Oo, nais ko nga sanang ang bawat sabihin koy... lagi
kong matupad, subalit, sa wari ko'y hindi pa maari. Napapahiya pa yata
ako eh. Sa linggo ay gusto kong sumimba muna sa San Pablo. Kung
matutuloy ay baka sakaling abutin ng tanghali doon, kaya kung makasimba
ay sa tanghali pagkalabas ako punta dian. Payag ka ba ng ganoon?
Itinatanong ko muna sa aking "boss" kung maari. Wari ko naman ay hindi
masama iyon. Ang totooy napakatagal ng hindi ako naka-kasimba.
Kanina
ay nakita ko si Severo sakay sa truck. Hindi na dumaan dine. Kung
dumaan ay hindi na sana sa koreo napadala ang sulat na ito. Dumating na
ba dian? Ang akala koy nariyan na, dahil sa wika moy kahapon uuwi at
tuloy na sa pagpasok. Kung nalaman ko agad ay naipagbilin ko sa bata
upang siya na ang magdala ng sulat naito.
Ito na lamang ang maibabalita ko sa iyo, walang wala na eh. Baka sa uli na.
Nito
Ilay,
I
was not able to write last night so that this letter might reach you
today. I arrived home late. I leave it up to you to forgive my
shortcomings. Will you?
I was thinking last night about what I said... that I shall visit you on Sunday and spend the night there. Isn't that what I promised? Yes, I would like it if I could fulfill every single thing I said to you, but, to my mind, it's not possible yet. I believe I might still feel a little embarrassed. This Sunday I should like to go to Mass in San Pablo. If I do go, I'll be there until noon, after which I shall come to you. Will you agree to that? I must ask permission from my "boss" first. I do not think it is a bad thing. The truth is it's been a long time since I've gone to church.
A while ago I saw Severo riding in a truck. He did not pass by here. If he had, I would not have sent this letter through post. Has he arrived there yet? I had thought so, because from what you said he ought to have gone home yesterday and then on to school. If I had known that the boy delayed his journey, I would have entrusted this letter to him.
This is all I have to write at the moment, I am sorry there is nothing else. Pehaps there will be more to say in my next letter.
Nito
...
My grandfather's orthography is quaint and interesting, and the tone of
the letter mimicks his verbal mode of conversation--which in itself
seems to be peculiar to his family and not to a specific geographical
location--almost perfectly. I believe I might still feel a little embarrassed.
I do not have any letters written by my grandmother and I don't think I'll find one. Still, one doesn't know. Grandmother is what one might call a packrat. It must be because she was a teacher--she hoarded old documents as if they were school records that one might reference when needed, but a great deal of her papers was lost when the house which she and Grandfather built when they finally got married was nearly destroyed in a strong typhoon. I was already around ten years old when that happened. I had slept in my grandparents' bedroom and woke up in the morning staring up at a perfectly calm sky. The typhoon was on a lull, but despite its stillness, the sky was gray and ominous. The roof had been blown away. We had to haphazardly move furniture and boxes of old papers to the houses of nearby relatives and never recovered any of them. It took months to rebuild the house and by that time, no one could recall where they left which.
I'm not even sure how this letter found its way in my belongings. I have a sepia photograph of my grandmother when she was a debutante but I took and hid that one deliberately during the typhoon and had kept it with me ever since. My cousins and I all have their wedding picture. This letter, on the other hand, is a complete surprise. It has no historical importance. It's not even in the least bit romantic. I never asked my grandfather if he had written it because I was sure that he had completely forgotten all about it. Still, for that very reason, I am thankful I found it.
I dreamed that I was in a car with President Marcos
and we were driving to Manila from Ilocos to attend a concert at the
Cultural Center of the Philippines. However, because of the torrential
rains, we found ourselves stuck in a flooded highway. Marcos was
barking commands at his aides through a radio and I heard him tell them
to fetch us on a helicopter NOW. I borrowed his cellphone so I could
contact my mother and inform her where I was. She was not pleased.
So it's not enough that I've been dreaming I was married to weird papercut detectives, I should also find myself exchanging opinions about French ballet (and sharing a car!) with dead, power-hungry dictators on the side?
You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
-- Anna Akhmatova, translated by DM Thomas
I emerge from the depths of the Black Hole Also Known as Work to geek out over the release--finally! after years of delay and one cancellation--of the monumental Dictionnaire du monde germanique, a 1000-page encyclopedia covering historical, cultural, artistic, economic, political, sociological, religious and scientific aspects of the German-speaking civilization published by Editions Bayard. Last September 2007. Which just goes to show how out of the loop I am since I've been waiting for this book for ages. I'm not a Germanist but projects of this sort are close to my nerdy little heart.
Under the general editorship of Jacques Le Rider (EPHE Sorbonne), Michel Espagne (Normal Sup) and Élisabeth Décultot (CNRS),
the book features articles written by leading Germanists from
around the world. Originally scheduled to be published by the Presses universitaires de France in 1999, the book was delayed until 2001, then 2002, and finally cancelled. Eventually there was talk that Bayard would publish it in 2005.
2005 came and still no book. Finally, in January 2007
Bayard indicated that it would most likely be released some time in
Fall 2007. Priced at 129 Euros, I don't even want to think about
what the Philippine retail price will end up being. If it does get here at all (most likely not).
Fiche technique
Title: Dictionnaire du monde germanique
Sous la direction de Michel Espagne, Elisabeth Décultot et Jacques Le Rider
Publisher: Éditions Bayard
ISBN-10: 2227476524
ISBN-13: 9782227476523
Publication Date: 27 September 2007
Format: Broché, 24 x 17 cm, 1100 pages
Features: Illustrations en noir et blanc, cartes
Retail Price (France): 129 Euros
What follows is a preliminary partial list of contributors and article titles, pieced together from information found here and there on the web. I have no idea if all of these made it into the final product.
Pierre Monnet (sub-editor of the Mediaeval section of the dictionary)
As time permits, I'll be adding more information to this preview.
A cool introductory tutorial to Ruby. I've been intrigued by Ruby for the longest time since I think that Rails has such great potential as a web applications framework. Of course whether or not we're going to use it for one of our sites is another issue altogether; I'm not being entirely tangential here though (heee).
In other news: It comes a surprise that people are actually reading this blog. Not to be disingenuous or anything, but I've sort of resigned myself to finding some direction content-wise, since when I'm not posting eulogies or pretentious life epiphanies, I am dorking out over dead languages and obscure books and programming syntax, among other things. Have been advised to find a niche since it's apparently one of the tried-and-tested blogging methods nowadays, but surely there's still some space for miscellany in an increasingly balkanized digital space (which remains hospitable nonetheless).
I don't think anybody's blogged about Filipino tapsis before, have they. (I may have a problem).
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