For Katitang: just this [a mega-text report] because Aoux is really doing a PhD dissertation on organized religions and we’ve been fuck-it-without-leave for two years in our (post) graduate studies
Once there was a little boy who was about to grow up. He read a story about lies and said to his teacher, “It made me curl up and cry. Thankfully, no one saw me.”
His teacher asked, “Why did you cry?”
He answered, “Imagined what it must have been like going through (* ) experiences in life. Is there a reason (*) had to experience so much pain? To gain something in return that was worth all that? I need to think.”
His teacher wondered what in which stories he had read (but then again he reads everything though has yet to understand).
His teacher didn’t answer, laughed, thought: There you go, thinking is good because that is a question for your own to answer---
(---and the heart bleeds through the eyes)
-tear--
Lola would take me to the St. Anthony of
Once I had held a Sto. Niño while with her, holding it up, waiting for the Holy Water to touch it, for my skin to feel it, to be blessed. It was only borrowed: I never had my own Sto. Niño.
I had liked watching Lola pray--- closing her eyes to mumble, to respond, to place her palm on her heart as she prayed the Act of Contrition, to kneel, to stand, to sing--- smelling lily and rose and candles.
I did not like going to church with Lola: she would make me drink Bear Brand straight from that small can after.
I did not like drinking milk: it made me vomit but I had to drink the milk because she said it was good.
I was maybe two or three years old.
--tear---
Ever since I could remember, my mother’s brothers would have priests for friends. One of them we called “Father Cutie” and the other Father something else.
They drank, smoked, gambled, and had girlfriends. Once they played darts in our apartment and the dart bounced off which punctured my foot and I stayed away from darts ever since.
In Grade 1, I said to Father Cutie, “You’re not supposed to do those.”
He laughed, “We might be priests but we’re men, too.”
Father Cutie and that other Father would be thrown out of Bicol now and then when the Archbishop would find out that they had become too attached to their girlfriends.
Later on in high school I dated the other Father’s brother. Father, I found out, was finally allowed to return.
I never attended any of the mass he would celebrate.
If you really think about it:
priests are men in holy drag
and throwing barbecue sticks or ice picks on trees is better than playing darts.
---- tear-----
In Grade 2, I was all dressed in white for my Holy Communion--- except that I had a sky blue belt and I was wearing shorts underneath.
No one really said anything about it--- the way no one would say anything when I would wear white shoes instead of black with our Catholic schoolgirl uniform. Sometimes, soccer shoes with white tights instead of socks. There’s always a reason.
My classmate’s mother had fixed my hair, face and dress.
No one in my family was with me: no pictures.
I wanted to wear my black-and-white dress, white on top with sleeves that reached my wrist and black on the bottom that reached my calf--- the neon pink belt dividing the two.
Before communion, we were taught that in confession we’re supposed to say all the sins we’ve done. Forget one and we leave the confessional box still with all our sins plus one, even if God had already forgiven us.
Amen means I believe.
I confessed, walked down that aisle, and married myself to God.
We were never taught what to do about the sins committed against us.
---tear----
In Grade 4, we were required to enact the Holy Mass. I studied it through one of Lola’s prayer books which we took from San Nicolas.
I was the priest: This is my body which will be given up for you…
I still know how to hold a Holy Mass.
I would like to sing it in Latin and as for songs in Latin I can only sing that whole “…adoramus dominei…laudaumus et glorificamus…”
But then again I’ve forgotten my college Latin.
All I remember in Latin is Odi (Hate) and four of the five cases: genitive, nominative, declarative, ablative. And some other Latin words that Sir Gemino Abad would use. When I need something translated from Latin, I would usually ask Sir Carlos Aureus via a text message.
I haven’t done that in years, not since 2002 when I wrote my first what-might-be-erotica (or maybe just a mash note) and the male character turned out to be patterned after him.
Diyos ko po.
----tear-----
When I was in Grade 5 or 6, I went to the 5:00 mass in the
The first kneeling, I knelt and felt a twinge on my back when I stood up.
The last kneeling, I knelt and I couldn’t stand up.
Still, I stood up and walked after.
After, I couldn’t walk anymore.
I was taken to doctors by Dad and Ma, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to walk the way Gnomie couldn’t walk when she was in kindergarten and I was in nursery. She and I both stopped going to school at that time that’s why in age she and I are one year older than our classmates.
But this was different--- I wasn’t sent to cross the road to buy cigarettes and run over by a motorcycle (with a pregnant passenger).
I was playing with cousins outside our apartment in San Roque that morning, before noon, and there she was, just walking--- like a monkey. I ran to her, so happy to see her up and walking, to hold her hand, afraid that she would fall and never get up. She got up from being bed-ridden and walked all alone. (She’s had enough, she said.) We took this bamboo stick and pushed the red plastic handle-grip of a bicycle on the top so that her hand won’t get blistered. That was her cane. She has been angry ever since… until a Saturday in 2001 that a stray dog came home to us, called her “Saturday” and became her pet. Her last pet was when she was in elementary, a cat named “Ribbon”.
Uncle Rene, a family friend-doctor, said that I had slipped disc, a matter of waiting for the stabbing pain that paralyzes movement to pass then one day I will stand up and walk again. No one understood how it happened.
It happened because I carried a pail of water and rode a bicycle uphill before dressing up to go kneeling in Mass with Mama--- maybe--- and I hated kneeling since.
After, I was not allowed to ride a bicycle anymore. Still, I would ride our racer out in the highway until I was in second year high school which Dad had found out, was very angry about, and no more riding the bicycle.
It was scary when speeding buses would pass me by: the bicycle rattled and would be almost sucked in after the bus--- an introduction to slipstream.
When I’m drunk and I drive as far as I can (usually to Tagaytay, once to Subic, another to Quezon province and the last was from
(Drunken laughter, the mumbled oh shit while fastening seatbelts, then later my “Oh relax!” to Joey’s quiet “Beh” when I slipstream.)
The last time I wanted to, Joey had said, “Beh, pakakasalan pa kita.”
And Chinggoy and Sly had teased, “Tang ina bumagal oh!”
I don’t like wearing seatbelts.
-----tear------
In second year high school, I went to confession on a Thursday (for the First Friday Mass) and told my confessor a sin committed against me. Monsignor said that God said it was my fault.
To be forgiven, I had to pray the rosary to the Sorrowful, Joyful, and Glorious mysteries kneeling down and extra Our Fathers and Hail Marys.
My female friends in high school would tease me about it every time we went to confession, wondering what sin I committed to merit always the same punishment.
After, I would pray:
Please bless and take care of Ma and Dad, that they would stay married, be healthy and be happy.
Please bless Manay Ipil so that she would graduate and get a good job.
Please bless Manay Gigi so that she would pass her subjects in UP and that she would get a good job after.
Please bless Manay Embet so that she would always stay healthy, to stop being angry and that she would have good grades so that Ma will stop picking on her and pass UPCAT when it’s time.
Please bless Bomboy so that he would be strong and be a good man.
Please bless Yan-Yan so that she would become a good girl
Please bless Robert, Benny and Jayson so that they will always do well in school and won’t get kicked out and please don’t let them get anyone killed or pregnant. Is it okay if I ask that they find better girls than the ones they are courting?
Please bless Bokayo and Dodong wherever they are.
Please bless Weng, Sha, Mahal, Niña, Jan-Jan, Lynx so that they all get good grades and we stay friends even though we’re all competing against each other.
Please bless and protect all of them so that all their dreams would come true.
I don’t ask anything for myself, God, just take care of them and let them always be loved.
And help us make the world a better place.
I’m really sorry.
I’ll always try to be a good girl.
Amen.
---------tear---------
In fourth year high school, a Holy Minor Seminarian started courting me.
I had said to him, “You’re not supposed to flirt with girls.”
I went along once to watch a movie with my girl friends who were sweet on some of his boy-seminarians to watch over them and he sucked the cheese from Mr. Chips “accidentally” off my fingers. I laughed, horrified and washed my hands immediately after. After the movie, the seminarians bought us beer.
After, the man I wanted to marry picked me up to take me home (when I called him to say that I was feeling dizzy) and delivered a sermon on staying out late and, “You drank beer?! Who were you with anyway?!”
I said, “Seminarians.”
If cursing were an unforgivable sin, the man I wanted to marry would surely go to hell. He would have been a good priest, too, except he really wouldn’t go for the vow of poverty. And I really didn’t want to marry him anyway.
I think that most of those Holy Minor Seminarians didn’t become Holy Major Seminarians.
If you want to find out if someone were or still is a seminarian: they like wearing plain white shirts, jeans and sandals. There’s also a certain vibe to them: gentle, soft, ambivalent, and kinky.
The last ex-seminarian I met in college who became my friend liked licking armpits. I would sit with him and watched for girls’ armpits. Once he had walked me to the female restroom in Palma Hall. When I came out, he said, “You’re going to get me killed.”
I asked, “What? Why?”
He said, “We have a rumble with Sigma Rho.”
I laughed--- we passed by their tambayan in the lobby to reach the restroom. I held his hand and we passed by the lobby again, stopped, and I introduced him to a Sigma Rhoan who was a close acquaintance.
I declared, “There, you know each other now! You can now avoid messing each other’s pretty faces!”
Later on my brother became my ex-seminarian friend’s fraternity brother. He had very specific instructions not to get my brother killed because we (his sisters) will kill him and then kill them all. After that I avoided him: my brother doesn’t like it when his sisters are friends with his “brothers”.
My brother still thinks about becoming a brother ad majorem dei gloriam.
-----------------------tear----------
I believed in God up until I was twenty. Then came the hospitals. Then came that unhappy summer. Then came more of life as Holy Fucking Shit.
I had asked and kept on asking God, “Why go through all that shit? If there’s a purpose then tell me now! Because I need to know now! I need to know why! If you want me to keep on living then tell me why! Not knowing is killing me!”
No one could answer me properly--- not that charming priest who was once my volleyball coach no referee would dare argue with (and was rumored to have girlfriends) nor that nun who became my counselor and told me that I was beautiful when I smiled (and is now dying or dead from cancer).
I has asked God these when Dad had sneaked me out of the hospital on April 1 1999 for a drive. He took me to the Naga City Stadium and there I kept on asking and no one was answering.
After, Dad took me back to the hospital in time for the medications and the nap. We all thought I was getting better. I slept--- dreamt---
God and I were in the stadium
and God was raping me
God was laughing---
I woke up, reached for the drinking glass with my right hand, smashed it against the table, and then a frenzied slashing of my left wrist, crying---
Gnomie was screaming, “Stop! Stop!” as she gripped my hands.
I kept on screaming, “I didn’t want to do it! I didn’t want to do it!”
Blood becomes warmer and thicker when squeezed. Later, as the nurse was pulling out shards from my palm and was bandaging the wrist after prodding it for shards, I kept on saying “ouch” and “no stitches please”.
After, I comforted Gnomie in the bathroom of the suite while we smoked. She said, shaking as she was crying, “Don’t…Don’t…Don’t ever do that again. You will kill me.”
I patted her head and wiped her face.
I helped her out of the bathroom and she helped me get into the bed, waiting for the nurse, doctors and the rest of the family. They gave me an injection and we were waiting for it to take its calming effect--- one hour, two hours, three, then four---
I had slurred, “Maybe you should be giving this to her---” pointing to Gnomie.
The last thing I remembered saying was, “That nurse sucked: the drug isn’t working” then I blacked out. Gnomie never came to hospitals with me again.
The doctors later said, “She said ‘Ouch’? She felt the pain? Good.”
Later that night, Yan-Yan sneaked in from wherever she was hiding, I woke up to her stroking my left wrist, and went back to sleep---
dreaming of stabbing someone in a tricycle---
my hands had no strength----
with her soothing my inner wrist, mumbling to her, “Just this time, this once, I need you to be good.”
I thought that I was the weakest member of the family, weaker than even my baby sister, the weakest child of God.
It’s an unforgivable sin to kill yourself.
April fools: who was fooled.
----------torn, aneurism-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I was 16, an old woman looked at my palm in Koronodal (
At 21, on an August 29, I had laughed when (as a European Languages major) deep into that special philosophical topic Thanatalogy, the professor was saying that dying at the age of 14 was a catastrophe. I wrote: To die at the age of 14 is not a catastrophe, it’s a blessing. To die at the age of 6 was supposed to be a miracle. At 21, there are no miracles…
At 21, God was dead.
See, this is what you study in Theodicy--- the so-called Problem of Good and Evil. The basic question is: If God were all-good, how come bad things happen? How come God lets bad things happen to good people?
We were taught to believe that whatever we do, striving to be good, we are following the path of God. In following that, bad things happen and we don’t understand why because nobody can tell us why except “Only God knows”. You’ve been good (not perfect, but good) so really you feel that you don’t deserve the bad things.
After all, everything is according to God’s plan therefore if something bad happens that means that bad is still part of God’s plan, that God allowed it to happen. I believed that everything happened because God willed it.
I felt betrayed: I loved God and God loved me therefore God should have protected me from the bad world. And I just couldn’t stand to hate God but God had a lot of explaining to do and God wasn’t explaining.
There are several philosophical arguments and each with a hole that allows you to blame God for being shitty therefore disbelieve and say, “See you are not All-That, therefore you are not God, so fuck your omni-blahblah-power.”
There is one argument that doesn’t have a hole: it’s called the Ontological Argument (and its authors
That’s life: you do things (whether or not you know the consequences) because you have this thing called Free Will (or you can call it CHOICE because Free Will can be argued as absurd given that will is never exercised free from any causation) and the bad things may result from that. Or that bad things are just accidents. God has nothing to do with it.
And I said, “WHAT?! THIS IS EVEN MORE FUCKED UP THAN I AM!”
Later, I said, “Well, if God doesn’t have anything to do with it then I don’t need God in my life. God has shitty corny repressive rules anyway.”
If you really understand Philosophy, there are really only two questions one should answer:
Is there a God?
Do I kill mySelf?
Answer “No” to former and the answer is “Yes” to the latter.
Answer “Yes” to former and the answer is “Yes” to the latter.
Answer “Yes” to former and the answer is “No” to the latter.
Answer “No” to former and the answer is “No” to the latter.
It was either kill God or I kill myself. I was killing myself because I couldn’t hate God— even when I couldn’t reconcile God’s being all-good but let’s bad things happen that, oh, wait, people (or aliens ) do bad things to people (or to other aliens) and it seems without a reason and God says “It wasn’t me”.
It did not make sense therefore rendered reality absurd.
In the case of Mary Doria Russell’s Father Emilio Sandoz, he heard music from outer space and chose to go to the planet where it came from because he believed God wanted him to go there. And there he got raped by a male alien poet who wrote a poem/song about it and broadcasted it to the universe hence reached Earth--- the “beautiful song” he heard and that’s why he went to the alien planet to begin with. (Good example on the whole idea of “aesthetic value”.)
It was God’s will that he got raped, Father Emilio Sandoz believed, and his faith felt betrayed.
To survive, sometimes people need to kill what they love the most: that’s the intrinsic Darwinian instinct right there.
To survive and live with yourself, you have to able to take the consequences of your choices, to actually not blame God or anyone and say, “Well, I fucked up, too. See, I chose to go there thinking that I would just get an 8 oz coke and I ended up being shot by the robber and now I’m paralyzed. I chose to go there.”
Or you can accept and say, “Wow, what I think really fucked up my life was an accident then. There’s no bigger reason or purpose. That’s life. Moving on.” (And really, don’t get me started on what David Hume said about things like that.)
God had to die so that I could exist. That felt like I was dying, too: killing God. And it broke my mother’s heart, my telling her and my family in 1999 that I don’t believe in God. I just told her and Dad, everyone goes through this, that maybe someday I will return to God’s grace,
Well, God got killed because God didn’t make sense.
I lived--- to Dad’s teasing me while I drive, “Wait, your Ma’s praying the rosary is okay with you? Baka maistorbo ka, mabangga tayo.” Or to my teasing people, “So what if I go to church? You think I would go up in flames? Happens because it’s a family event anyway. Best place to think.”
I made my own rules (and making your own rules would make you find out that it’s easier to play sheep and/or have a God through his minions telling you what is right and wrong.) It’s called being a Nietzschean Moralist: it’s dangerous fun.
If I could kill God, anyone and anything could be up for killing.
And did people really think that God would save them?
What if God is dead because God killed Himself?
That is what you call Deosuicide: for consequence refer to fourth sentence before this.
---------------------break--------------------
At 21, doctors called people like me a miracle.
At 21, holy people called people like me an aberration or “Satanist”.
At 21, drug addicts called me a cosmic joke.
At 21, I was a breathing pharmacy and would scoff at chemical freaks.
I learned to laugh.
Nowadays, some call me a “national treasure”.
I laugh.
-----------------------torn, laughing-----------------------
Yan-Yan had once teasingly complained when she was in high school at my being bossy, “Who died and made you boss?!”
I said, “God!”
We laughed.
Nowadays I tease her, “Naku, paano pag ginawa sa ‘yo ng mga anak mo ginawa mo kila Ma?”
She would say, “Diyos ko, diyos ko, wag naman
We laugh.
Last time I was with her, I laughed, “Let’s burn that fucking house down when it’s finally empty!”
She laughed, “Yeah!”
We make each other laugh.
------ now, (said) fuck it, live it------
As I had told Eve who had come home last Thursday, “I always spin Lily’s story for you… In that spinning, Lily spins thinking that she would see God’s face and maybe she could then ask for Heaven.”
“And what of the Qu’ran?” her Palestinian husband asked, led by a blink when Eve said Insh’Allah to him and I had laughingly mumbled, “If Allah wills”.
I said, “First reading, scary, violent. Second reading, forgiving, gentle. Different ages in reading. We should all read the Buddhist texts, now that’s even scarier because it’s liberating.” Maybe there’s really something to what Christopher Moore wrote in “Lamb” (The Gospel According To Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal): it’s funny.
And do you know what holy people and unholy philosophers call people who would unbelievably experience (most, if not all) the most painful things in life?
Beloved of God.
On most days I would laugh at that.
On bad days you would see me offering my middle-finger to the sky.
One day I was asked, “What will you do if God appears before you?”
On most days I would laugh and say, “Man, whatever was put in my drink or food or cigarette should be marketed!”
On some days I would snap, “What an absurd question.”
On bad days I would say, “God is corporeal? Do I have a gun or knife with me when I supposedly see God? Because man, I’d like to do some serious damage on that sick motherfucker. No? I’ll do a ghost buster instead. Yeah, there’s something straaaaange, in the neighborhood, who you gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS! ”
One day I was asked, “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll go to Hell?”
On good and bad days I always answer, “Been there already. Interesting weather. Tell me if you’re there please and I’ll give you a guided tour.”
On really good days I would laugh, “Are you kidding me? I’m one of so-called God’s beloved. No way in hell am I going to Hell. You think Job went to Hell?”
Does it even matter?
And the purpose of all the oh-my-god-the-pain is something that most people would only realize if their life spans are multiplied by three. Because then most people really wake up.
I only have this lifetime therefore my consciousness is working at the speed of tachyon to understand everything that has happened. God cannot explain things to me.
(Especially how horrible the present perfect tense is.)
We all have to be able to explain things to ourselves.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, while on his
To Jose Garcia Villa, “Man is the Creator/ God is the created/”
To Frederico Licsi Espino (from fractured memory so absence of correct form) “Madness brings on its own Apocalypse stripped off the mask I heard God’s voice rebuking me in the tones of an implacable judge it was the fallacy of the sense but the unlikely creed compels belief while the terrible Word resounded in my panic-stricken ears, in bed, reciting the Pater Noster but the godhead had grown monstrous, beyond prayers and drugs I could not do anything, vanquished by the fearful theology born out of a paranoid perspective now I pen this poem postlude to a nightmare”
On most books, knowledge (that becomes wisdom if you know how to use it) is what ties you to God.
To Nine Inch Nails, fucking someone like an animal gets you closer to God.
In a joke, God is spelled Dog backwards.
To the Knights Templar, butt-fucking opened their Third Eye then they saw God.
To Nietzsche in “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” the madman in the market said that we killed God (because we saw God and said “Unbelievable! Kill!”)
To Michel Focault, it’s called “fist-fucking” the Order of Things.
To Bob Marley, it’s “
And to James Morrow from “Towing Jehovah” to “Blameless in Abbadon” until “The Eternal Footman”, God killed Himself:
Really:
Literally: God decided to drop dead from Heaven.
[Excuse me, I can’t stop laughing. Ehem: serious face now.]
As to why?
Hell, it seems I know the answer already. This is why I’m such a mean porcupine to some, a smart-ass mouse to some, a loving pussy cat to some, scary bitch to some, funny witch to some, and in some dimensions I am worshipped (which really annoys me because look: I have clay feet and my toenail polish now looks like Rainbow Brite on acid).
Question is: do you know WHY bad things happened to YOU?
[And you really think that what happened to you is “bad”?]
How “bad” is bad?
It’s like: Ikaw nag-eemo dahil wala kang bagong Havaianas…
yun katabi mo walang paa Dude!
Let’s all distinguish the difference between “pigeon shit” and “holy shit”.
It all takes time but the clock is ticking: you don’t have forever.
You really think God has the answer?
You really think God is going to do what should be done in the course of your asking why for you?
Nowadays it’s not chess, it’s Go.
We all play for our souls.
You really think you’re not playing?
There, smoke after your philosophical masturbations or drink and be merry (to play) for right now you can die.
[And somewhere there will be a “non-linear dirges groan” and reading lists piling up.]
3 comments:
Ahahaha! Putang ina. That's more like it, my dear. I love it. Mwah mwah mwah!
You killed God? Hala, pupunta ka ng hell...*Dragnet Theme*
Mia,
I linked your blog na to mine. Have you listened to my podcast. I did the guitarworks there since I used to be in a band.
Will update you kun igwa na naman public readings sa Lolo's. I heard Dr. Ruth Mabanglo is coming with a group of Fulbright grantees next month. Tibaad may poetry reading na iorganisar.
Si Teacher-Writer Conference palan sa July 2-4 sa Naga College Foundation. Write me for more info sa hagbayon(at)gmail(dot)com
-Jason
Post a Comment