Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa at ang mga Dagta ng Kaimito

Category: Movie Movers

[Movie Poster; from the web. I do not own the copyright.]

"With Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa, Yapan has choreographed a delicious orgy where various art forms mingle with astounding ease."  ~Oggs Cruz.

Ang aandap-andap na lumiliwanag sa madilim at malamig na silid ay ang malabong projection ng indie film na kasali dati sa Cinemalaya ngunit ngayon lang inilabas sa mainstream na sinehan. Tinanong ko kung malabo ba talaga ang movie o malabo lang talaga ang mga mata ko. Ang sabi ng kasama ko ay malabo talaga ang movie. Widescreen kasi ang tabing, at 16:9 ata ang ratio nito; pero ang ni-project na movie ay mukhang 4:3 lang! Kaya tuloy ang mga artista ay parang ang papandak at ang tataba!

Naku, at nagmadali pa kami sa pagpunta rito!

Kani-kanina lang ay pina-uwi kami ng maaga. Madalang na kasi ang pasok ng mga calls, kaya ayon, early log out! Nagalak naman ako kasi maaabutan namin ang next screening.  Unang araw na ipapalabas ito ngayon.

Isa sa mga ayaw ko ay ang sumakay sa mga bus na de-aircon. Nahihilo ako sa baho ng pinaghalong air freshener at CFL. Dahil diyan ay naglakad na lang kami papunta sa MRT. Binilisan man namin ang lakad hanggang sa ang mga hakbang ay parang singbilis ng patak ng ulan; na-late pa rin kami.

And sinehan ay walang katao-tao. Humaba na ang leeg ko sa kakalingon, wala akong nakita. Mga ilang minuto pa lang kaming naupo ay biglang nag-stop ang movie. Tapos bumuwelo ng konti at bigla uling nag-freeze. Masahol pa ata sa mga pirated DVD. Malabo na nga ‘di pa nag pi-play ng husto.

Mahabang minuto na ang lumipas di pa rin naayos. Buti na lang kami lang ang naroon. Maya-maya ay naririnig namin ang mga pagpa-panic ng mga personel. Nakita ko rin na meron din naman palang ibang taong nanonood. Lumingon talaga ako at binilang--wala pang sampu!

Ang sabi ng mga reviews sa blog, ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa daw ay isang napakasarap na orgy ng iba’t ibang putahe ng sining: sayaw, tula, kanta, at pag-arte.

Ni-forward na nila ang movie at kahit papaano’y umusad na ito. Lumabas kaming may paghihinayang sa perang aming ipinambayad. Habang kami’y naglalakad palabas, nakita namin ang poster nito na ibinibidang nanalo ito ng BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC SCORE at BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY sa natapos na Cinemalaya Film Fest 2011

I-click ito kung gusto mong mabasa ang buod at trailer ng pelikula.

Maraming salamat sa pagbasa. Pakidagdag na rin ako sa lupon ninyo sa Google+.

The Three Writers

Category: Letters of Literature

Some random thoughts from an old journal:

According to Ricky Lee, in his book Si Tatang at ang mga Himala ng Ating Panahon, there were three types of writers; and all of them must go to Quiapo.

The first one followed the footsteps of those who’ve gone before him. He reached Quiapo real quick.

The second one deviated from the usual route. He did it his way. Being a nonconformist, he was ridiculed for choosing the road less travelled. He got lost. He was robbed, mobbed and humiliated along the way. He felt weary, angry and hungry. Alone, he suffered tribulations and, like most people, he got discourage. But he gained a new perspective. He had a chance to see what most people don’t. He’d experienced what otherwise he would never had have, had he followed the conventional path. He had proved himself and learned a lot throughout his journey. He arrived at Quiapo and became a better writer than the first.

The third writer, like the second one, made his own trail. He also received the same criticisms ad he wandered around. The difference was that he never reached Quiapo. But he arrived at some place and convinced everyone that it “is” Quiapo. He was a better writer of them all.

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Another Year Gone By

Category: Matters of Minds

2007 at JG Summit

"Seize today, and put as little trust as you can in the morrow "  ~Horace

As Earth rotates on its axis in a period of endless days and nights; my life revolves in circles as a hamster in its cage, going nowhere. That’s how I feel these past few weeks.

If time is a river, and we flow with it; I’ve been drifting along for quite a while.

The last autumn leaves are falling on the other parts of the world, and the million stars are twinkling against the dark November sky as I sit here alone, contemplating about my life and the dreams that fades to black and white.    

 Today marks my first anniversary of working at 24/7. It’s been a year of taking calls, resolving technical issues of people calling from the other side of the globe. I’ve been hooked on the phone for almost five years now. I find myself wondering how to get myself untangled from these fractal intricacies. What every one of us wants is to live our lives on our own terms, unleashing the creative power within as we surf the crests and troughs of the tides of life. What a sad mixture of fate it is to live a routine laid out before us.

As we walk along the every day alleys of life, we may get thrown a shit on the face; yet oftentimes, we may pick up pieces of wisdom as we pace along. And more importantly, we may come across some awesome folks along the way; some of whom may become friends to keep.

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11.1.11

Category: Beauty of Simplicity

"It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal;

each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Most people make New Year Resolutions a week before or after the New Year. I am not one of them; not because I’m not a fan of making New Year Resolutions, but because I am not persuaded that the year starts on January 1. I believe the year starts on the day I was born--November 1. But that’s just me, of course.

We are used to using the conventional calendar, and we probably won’t count the days and months any other way. Though we can’t deviate from traditions, we can always hold on to our convictions and crazy ideas. It’s OK to be different. It’s great to be a non-conformist! It’s cool to be a weirdo.

Last couple of years ago, I started creating a list of goals to accomplish within a year...sort of a credo. Before, the lists were extensive and covered lots of categories; but when I embraced minimalism, I made the list shorter. I called it a Minimalist Manifesto.

I was able to accomplish some but not most of the items on the list. It’s disappointing when almost all your plans did not come true. What I included in that simplified list may not be the ultimate goal of my life. Life is not a To-do check list. These are just Dares to challenge myself, and as the cliché goes: it’s just for fun. (What life is for but to experience leisure? We are here to be happy. We are here to play. The world is a big playground. They say that life is complicated. Not at all! We are created for recreation. And we don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. “All we really need to know, we learned in kindergarten”. How’s that for a dose of clichés!)

Robert James Waller immortalized “There are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads”. In the same manner, there are lists that spring from nowhere, these are some of them:

1. Simplify! “Identify what is important and eliminate anything else”. Be a mnmlst. “The simplest things are often the truest", says Richard Bach.

2. Wander and Wonder! Because I don’t have a sense of direction, I don’t qualify as a traveller. I am a wanderer. A dreamer. Yes, sometimes I travel through dreams. I wonder when can we actually (in a sense of being actual) space-travel and time-travel the entire cosmos. When I say time-travel, I don’t mean going back to the past or moving forward to the future: that would be linear. The idea is to pass through time so that we can easily get from one space to another faster than the time it takes to draw a straight line between two points. But since travelling from Milky Way to Andromeda seems like distant echoes of ancient dreams, I’ll stick to wandering the earthly places in the meantime. (And, yes, some of the friends I met along the way are already exploring the heavenly places; and some are maybe scaling the depths of hell [heaven forbids]). 

I’d like to visit all the “magagandang tanawin sa Pilipinas”; those we’ve read in our Sibika At Kultura books when we were in the Grade 1. I’d like to see the wonders of the world. I’d like to walk the streets outside my country. I’d like to hear the songs the stars and the moon are singing, and kiss the lips of other languages. I’d like to savour the concoction of cultures of the strange foreign lands. I’d like to walk the places as far as eyes can see; because everything the eyes can see is just walking distance (according to one of my friends).

3. Eat, Pray, Love. Thanks to that famous book that was adapted to a movie, these three words now become inseparable.

Eat. I have to eat and eat until I gain 5 more kilos. Pray. Let’s let go of having the illusion that we are in control of our life. “Be water”, just flow. And let’s pray that we may flow fluidly. And when we pray, let’s “pray without ceasing”. Love. Well, as they say the greatest of all is love, so if you desire greatness, that’s self-explanatory.

4. Balance! We always fall. We fall in love. Falling in love with the person who doesn’t share the same feelings can be distressful. It disorients us from our proper equilibrium. We should find our balance. Let me tell you one of my biggest frustrations: I always wanted to learn to ride a bicycle. Every time I tried, I stumbled. I just couldn’t balance myself. A great scientist said that life is like bicycle, in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving forward. That’s the truth in Physics. But does the law of motion also transcend the non-physical aspects? On the other hand, the great ashram tells that you can find your balance through inner peace--meditate. Keep still. Freeze. Don’t move. Hands up. Drop your gun!

5. Think some. Learn some. Learn new skills every quarter. Among them are the following: learn to blog, to swim, to drive, and to dance!

6. Laugh out Loud! Yes, that’s one of my goals this year and in many more years to come. LOL! ROFL! Hahaha! You may be thinking about it as a cryptic for the pursuit of happiness—it is not. Happiness cannot be pursued. In a sense, it is not a destination, so you’ll never arrive at it. It is not an object of possession either. It’s a feeling. You cannot get it, you cannot find it, and you cannot possess it. It’s abstract and concrete at the same time. It’s something that you feel along the way. In a nutshell: we are not to pursue happiness, we should pursue awesomeness instead. Happiness is what you feel when you are awesome, when you are doing things that makes your soul smiles, when you are in circumstances that makes your heart jumps for joy. Happiness is what you feel when you laugh out loud, when you laugh so hard that it makes you cry. LOL.

7. Go forth and be awesome. Let’s be remarkable in everything we do, putting a heart in everything we make.

So those are the seven goals I have for this year. It is said that we are not to set boundaries but horizons. “Do not limit yourself”, a friend once said in a campsite in Mt Batulao. In Calculus, they talk about limits that approaches infinity. Yet we don’t have to have an infinite list, otherwise it will become too overwhelming. They say 7 is a good number so I simplify my list to only seven goals; and I wish to achieve them.

What’s your goal? Do you take time to write them, too? Share them in the comments below. Thanks for reading; I’d greatly appreciate it if you also share it to your friends in Facebook and followers in Twitter.  Please add me to your circle in G+