Twenty Twigs asked, “Has everything been deleted?”
Sharpening A Porcupine has been obscured from the public for one year and three months now…
I answered, “No. I kept them.”
Twenty Twigs said, “I want to know how you wrote before…”
Before The Land Of Sea And Sky Happened, Before All This Happened, Before The Porcupine Was Deleted From The Web, Before The Virus Of A Walrus That Can Be Found By Mr. Google Cuckoo-Coo-Coo…
I laughed, “It was edgier, hysterical funny, sometimes like the way I write now…”
Before There Was The Creative Nonfiction Hullabaloo In Mercury…
In the beginning, nonfiction space was called Escaping The Hospital Basement and it was kept hidden in the game called Hide In Anonymity While Working After Sick Of Writing College And Recovering From Almost A Psychological Vegetable. It was also known as Guerilla Blogging In 15 Minute Breaks. What Luna(tic) wrote there was mostly unread by the Web unless a member of My Secret Society, but most of it is remembered by one: The Moon Who Sings Shirley, the first one who said I am a fan. It was killed after three months with Death Via The Contamination Of Cruelty Thy Name Is Stupidity.
I almost never wrote again after but there was that need inside me to consciously write nonfiction stories as nonfiction-in-my-head and dispel with the self-deception of fiction to break the Culture of Silence Imposed On Taboo Children And Women That Leads To A Fucked Up Life.
And so the nonfiction space after that was called Sharpening A Porcupine, some of which Twenty Twigs had read who had said, “My god, you write very differently here…” Compared to what was archived in The Evil Green Folio Of Presented Mediocrity In Dimageteh With Potential Into Future Anthology Immortality.
All of what was written in Porcupine Space by Maricchia The Henyong Daga is remembered by one Mike Perez Sometimes In Life who zigzagged on the floor and pissed his pants while reading my “Man’s Dictionary Of Female Terms” and thereon promised To Endeavor Reconstruction Of His Male Brain. Mike Perez Sometimes In Life said before I left for the Land Of Sea And Sky, “I’ll just read everything again and wait until you come back…”
I came back writing Hullabaloo In Mercury out and that space was killed after two years with Death Via The Contamination Of Change Is Upon Necessity/ Prettily By Stephen Dunn Via Walking Light:
Most of us make half-journeys. That is why the Jesus Christs, the Buddhas, the Martin Luther Kings, and the significant poets are often frightening when they enact for us what it means to complete a gesture.
For the faithful, I am grateful and humbled for being read. Though I don’t know yet how to receive expressed admiration for what I have written (because I’m still puzzled over that, my Dear Overwhelming Irish Joyce From The Writers Fiesta) except say “Thank you” for the encouragement--- while being a clown who feels self-consciously naked and wants to run for the clown car and delete virus out the circus door in Agoraphobic Panic Attack. But I’m getting proficient in dealing with expressed objection to what I write.
And so I reveal from the beginning 1 because I was asked, 2 for trip savor, 3 because I want to get to number 4, and 4 because the rest of the Lunatic’s Basement was obscured from the public and archived into the Clown Court Of Mania For Public Respectability And Fail Safety In Privacy:
Friday, May 20, 2005
Tracked by Hannibal Lecter's Pet Student...
Hannibal Lecter's Pet Student: You have a blog? Am I psychic?
Lunatic: I have a blog?? I'm gonna deny that to death. Tangna, psychic ka pala. Dami mo naman talents!
Hannibal Lecter's Pet Student: Cute blog. Fink!
Lunatic: Yeah, fink makes me so peminine!
Hannibal Lecter's Pet Student: Okay yan, mag blog ka. Good therapy. Hayaan mo, di ko pagkakalat. Kunyari di ko binabasa blog mo.
Lunatic: Hahaha! Kunyari di rin ako nagbloblog & di ko binabasa blog mo. Ssshhh, secret society, exciting!
She got to be the Summa Cum Laude In Hannibal Lecter's School Of Therapy because she's the object of his affection/delusion/ilusyon/kombulsyon. Sa tingin ko, pasma lang yun. Never mind Agent Stariray. Kakainin siya ng buhay ng kaibigan ko.
Tick, tock, fuck the bundy clock. I'm tired of being creative today: Can't pull gold out of my ass anymore. Time to leave the box and get some juice. I'll just gather the rest of my selves and nuninuninuni...
posted by Luna @ 7:15 PM 1 comments
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Vanity: The Smoker's Sin
Lunatic: So what's so special about the smoker's facial?
Basement Therapist: Well, it's blah, blah, blah, blah...take off your shirt.
Lunatic: Excuse me?
Basement Therapist: The facial extends to your chest area.
I waited for her to give me a robe or a towel but she just stood there. Apparently, she expected me to just take off my shirt.
Lunatic: I'm not wearing a bra.
Basement Therapist: It's ok. I'll cover you with a towel later.
Lunatic: But...
Fuck it. I shrugged my shoulders and stripped. She did her thing and I did some thinking.
Flashback:
I remember lighting ciggies for my Daddy when I was kid (Phillip and Hope, nasty shit), running to get back to him so that the cherry would still be burning. I didn't know how to puff yet. He didn't offer to teach me. But he offered me a glass of Pale. Ayos.
I was 16, away from home again at some writing competition. As soon as I turned in my piece, I knew that I had lost. Another crown thrown away because I was bored of owning it. I went bowling and after a game, went to the nearby sari-sari store to buy a stick of Marlboro Lights Menthol. Naskandalo si Manang. Manang, the customer is always right. I smoked like the Marlboro Man. Astig ampota. Another girl from my school saw me and I felt like Mary Magdalene. Stubbed the yosi, went back to the dorm, showered thrice, brushed my teeth twice, washed my clothes, kept on muttering "What the fuck was I thinking?" Oh well, what's another stick to notoriety. Smoked a stick in secret every night after.
Freshman year, first sem, didn't smoke for 4 months because I was afraid of running out of breath in swimming and forcing myself to drown rather than be saved by the fat lifeguard. Fugly bastard. After the last session, saw my sister in AS parking lot with her BroadAss friends, gasp, smoking. Skipped Spanish. Couldn't stand the idea of Señorita Soresca sending us out of the room just so she could smoke her More while I was gasping for a whiff of that smoke. (Wonder if the old dragon's dead. If not, she better be). Went to the ladies room, bought a pack from Manang and smoked 20 sticks in one sitting. Nakakahilo.
First OD, 3 years later. Woke up after 2 days. Thinking I was in my room, I patted myself for a stick and lighter. Somebody asked me what I was looking for. Yosi, yosi, yosi. I got my yosi. Some woman was praying the rosary. IV attached to one hand, oxygen tube up my nose, and the oxygen tank beside the bed, I lit the ciggy. Someone gasped. Uh-oh, mother. Did she know that I smoked? Tee-hee, now she does. Do that by the windows, she said. Yes, mommy. Bad yosi, bad.
Nth OD, months later. Smoking in my room. People complained of the smell. They took my beloved lighter and yosi away. No matter, Hannibal Lecter's Pet Student would bring me some. It took a while so I wrecked my room, then myself. Freud's Lackey came running.
Lunatic: Tangna Doc, kung gusto ng mga pangit na nightingales na magyosi, eh di bumili sila! Mga Casper pala ang mga puta!
Freud's Lackey: Which part of the word "hospital" don't you understand? You can't smoke here.
Lunatic: But you want me to be happy. Smoking makes me happy!
Freud's Lackey: Then buzz the pangit nightingale este Nurse and ask her to take you to the basement so you can smoke.
Lunatic: The basement?! Doc naman! Are you crazy?!
Freud's Lackey: Not THAT basement. Happy now?
Lightyears later, Mom told me that smoking is bad for the skin. To hell with cancer and emphysema, it's bad for the skin. Facial anak, facial.
Flasback ends.
Basement Therapist: Done.
Lunatic: Thanks. Can't do anything about the smoking but... look at that skin!
Basement Therapist: Tada!
Lunatic: Wow, Lucy Torres Gomez, is that you?! Done na di ba? I need a smoke.
After three hours (a trim, hair coloring, foot spa, pedicure, manicure, plucking and facial) and 4 160 pesos, I look at myself and wonder why I bother. I'm gonna be shit-faced soon anyway.
If you're a smoker, you gotta try the smoker's facial. Cute yun therapist, malambot yun kamay, mukhang ewok.
posted by Luna @ 10:53 PM 8 comments
Friday, June 17, 2005
Guerilla Thoughts
I saw them with their children and I thought, "How beautiful... That is what I will not have."
I tried not to be saddened but I was. I tried not to look at their faces, the mothers and their children, with so much hunger but I did. I tried not to hug the children so tight but I couldn't stop ruffling their hair or rubbing their backs or touching those cheeks. In the dark, who could tell? A moment of agonized longing, then the mask slips into place. I cease touching and looking at them.
I remember being a child and not wanting to have children at all. How do you protect the embodiment of innocence? By making sure that it never exists in this twisted reality. We are doomed to become our parents and do we want to inflict the same hated things on our own children? It cannot be justified.
When they told me that they had to open me with that impersonal knife, I cried and raged and feared. Open, and live. Remain closed, you may die. I was so young, so young to be rendered almost a husk.
When they opened me and took out the ovary, I felt that loss. I fought them; I fought the stinging unconsciousness that they injected into my spine so that I wouldn't sleep and they couldn't take anything of mine. To be or not to be a mother was no longer my choice. This traitorous body had made it for me.
So I made my own choice and loved broken children who were not really children. They needed to be loved and I gave them my heart and became their mother. I needed to love so they gave their hearts and became my children. Sometimes, we don't know who is the mother and who is the child. But there is that love, complete yet conditional. My firstborn, that wild child, loved me when there was nothing to love and I couldn't love. And she can rage and I could ignore her but there is always that love.
And you think the pain had gone away? For the past seven years, it strangles my womb every month. Every month is a childless birth. Of course, conceiving is not impossible. It's just improbable. I can always dance to Santa Clara at Obando, but what miracle would that do?
How sad that for a man and a woman in love, reality is life without children. I remain a spectator and he sometimes covers my eyes. Sometimes he lets me see. Sometimes, I let myself see when he is holding a child and think, "That is what I cannot give you."
posted by Luna @ 11:16 AM 4 comments
Sunday, July 10, 2005
The Old Man and Lily
Lily returned to that room once more, where time was always late afternoon, a light rain, a sleepy sun, the low moans of saxophone and the smell of cloves and jasmine. Inside, the old man was waiting for her, always waiting for her.
"Señor," Lily said.
"Guapa, " the old man greeted. He bade her to sit down. They didn't speak for a while.
"You've been running away again. Stubborn, stubborn girl," he said.
"I'm afraid to fall in love."
The old man quietly laughed, "No one has made that heart of stone bleed yet? No one has touched that icy body?"
She just looked at him and smiled.
"Ah, young men are fools and all those fawning around you are the most foolish."
She laughed and scoffed, "I do like being loved."
"What do those fools know? What do you know? You want to be seduced, oh so subtly, because you already know too much about men, hmm? You don't want love. You want to be touched and fucked."
"Yes."
"And these fools don't know that?"
She smiled.
"You've found him, haven't you?"
"Yes."
"Does he know what you are? What he will become?"
"No...He already made the mistake of asking me to burn what I wrote."
He laughed, "The fool!"
"I was angry...but I though of giving in to him."
He quit laughing, "You will fall in love, por un tiempo, Guapa. Then you do as you always do for he will make the same mistakes: you leave him, as you've left every man. Don't be afraid."
She shrugged, "He has more to lose. I'm afraid for him."
"As long as he knows the game. Ask him if he wants to play."
"I think I already did..."
"And?"
"I'm waiting."
posted by Luna @ 2:43 PM 4 comments and so much more obscured. And in the Lunatic’s Basement, it is chronicled in “Chronicle Of Illness (From Age 1-26)” that when I was in prep school, I fell from a chair and smashed a drinking glass on my palm, a shard buried and severing a vein on my right-hand middle finger, taken to the doctor for sterilized pinchers and stitches, and prevented Death Via Paralysis And Hemorrhage.
Therefore excused from doing homework while by default steadily giving my teachers a bandaged dirty finger.
Which was fun and I think never properly healed.
What was not there therefore here was I received an unprecedented letter from my Grade Four Then Elder Sister Before Becoming Smoking BroadAss Eggster with “I am sorry” for asking me to get the drinking glasses---I was too small and short to reach them so I had to use the chair--- and with “I love you”… When expressing those three words and two sentences in our restrained and oppressive environment at that time was just not done.
What has changed…
Verb Tense
can be understood as simple imperfect perfect if taught with a timeline
so that this part of speech can be used effectively in sentences
To be able
to articulate the singular simultaneous conditional in time
To Realize The Possibility Of Time In Life
for what you think you know and understood of the Progression of Time is not the beginning nor the meaning nor the end of
Life’s Sentences
For the I
in Plutonium or Uranium is allergic, resistant, beyond, and does not bow to shrinks and simplified shrinking
Especially of Venn Diagrams
so that in this journey, that which has been broken---
the Body, the Heart, the Mind, the Spirit, the Soul
Can be healed and made whole
You feel that
Resonating inside you
I am not Jesus Christ is Buddha is Martin Luther King is Significant Poet
because unlike them I have
A Vagina And Other Extra(ordinar)Y Factors
like writing Philippine Speculative Fiction but I do hope this is
Completing Another Gesture
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