She was a beautiful woman that was certain. Sometimes her beauty would surprise her, jolt her back to herself, in front of a mirror or with her hands folded neatly upon her lap, the image of a fine crease upon her smooth white brow, or the ghost of a grin, then away it went, this very present gift of fate, her own incommodious beauty, that sometimes she’d bite her pale, oval nails, with their stark white lunulas like crescent moons upon her skin, as though they’ve been bitten off by some animal. Her name is unimportant, what matters is the way she sat on her armchair, a variety of journals strewn artfully upon the beech armoire. She sat with her legs curled beneath her, toes pointing downwards, reticent and unassuming. She barely glanced at the vanity mirror, she’s seen herself countless times before, yes, she’s memorized her own face, blinking, it would disappear for a nanosecond. Once her eyes were open again, she’d feel the impact of time upon the veins in her skin, the marrow of her bones, and she’d feel sullen and dull again, wondering if physical beauty lasted and whether any man would truly love her for what she was and not for what she looked like. There were few men, she was too ethereal to have men lined out their picket fence like bettors betting on a racehorse. Her beauty was her curse. It delivered her to solitude and misunderstanding, ascetism and misanthrope.
Let us name her Sophia, wisdom. She was tall, with a lithe frame, and a sort of Teutonic beauty about her, high cheekbones, elongated torso, she had small breasts and in an act of willful eccentricity she’d wear a dream catcher she bought in some dingy backroom stall just to show to the world that she cared. Sophia will be her name, and that is what we’ll call this haunted stranger, with her deep moss-colored eyes and the pale rosebud complexion of impeccable skin. Some women are born stellar. Sophia was one of them. As a child, her mother, a sewer, would push her into joining beauty pageants, but mostly for the prize money, for Sophia was not from a rich stock. They’d spend an afternoon teaching her that beauty was a prize to be sought, a treasure. She was still young, her mother had sewn a dress for her, a confectionary assemblage of pink and white chiffon that showed off masterfully her length of limb, her depth of gaze, the mysterious depression in her eyes that made one question, what indeed was beauty. Was she merely a creature of fancy? A young Sophia would parade around their home, donning the ghastly pink and white dress, watching it trail behind her like her own shadow. She’d peer cautiously into the mirror and wonder if anybody would love her had she been ugly.
“You look beautiful, we’re sure to win first prize this time,” her mother had said, beaming at her, for she had born this marbled statuette. She’d win the pageant of course, and take home that coveted prize. Her mother would grab the money and go if she had the chance and pleasure herself with drink as she’d sew more and more dresses for more and more pageants and the money would pile higher and higher and Sophia’s self confidence would sink lower and lower until it sank out of reach, into oblivion, beneath the surface of the horizon that no amount of seeing would find her, trembling, an alien in this world of normally beautiful people.
She was a child when she started reading and writing, but she wondered if there would be a career for her in those fields. She believed her beauty was a curse. Too many men leered at her, but her beauty would stand steadfast and strong and no amount of encouragement would push any man into conversing with a goddess, a woman who Vermeer would have painted, a woman whose physical beauty clashed with Blackwood’s, with Sidall’s, with Juel’s. Her mother discovered her diary, a pathetic compilation of sheaves upon sheaves of loose paper, bound together somewhat inexpertly. Sophia would write into it every day, recording the events of her young life, recording every single triviality. In her mother’s rash, overworked hands, her pathetic diary had an ominous quality. Her mother would laugh loudly and slap her beefy hands upon her thigh, reading aloud for everybody to hear the highs and lows of Sophia’s adolescent life. Her mother was seated in the middle of the low wooden table, her fellow sewers and workwomen gathered around her like bees to a hive, a hive about to burst with malice and amusement. Her mother discovered Sophia’s diary beneath the sole white pillow in their shared bedroom, and remembered where it was in case she needed to amuse herself more with her only daughter’s sorrows. She’d read Sophia’s diary aloud to her friends and laugh at each passage, as though life were a triviality.
Sophia loved to read, it compensated for the deep longings she felt to connect with other people. It was not that she was friendless, she wasn’t. She met her friends somewhat regularly, once or twice a week they’d brunch in some café as nameless as she was. She’d pick sullenly the morsels on her plate, moving them around recklessly, as reckless as she sometimes was, given her indecision and caution, move them like ants on a molehill, or the way God did, knowing. But no. She did not know what she was doing, moving uneaten food around her plate, it gave her control. She, in her kindness would save some food inside that white porcelain rim, a rim of the world or exercised authority over everything, and like a naval woman rent the food off the plate and into another woman’s territory, for beautiful as she was, she had no sense of time, of sense itself, that is she was an empty, beautiful woman, with a dark chasm in the order of her orderly living.
Sophia entered beauty pageants when she was young. Did she want to join beauty contests in her adult life, with her mother dead and rotting like a common carcass? Her mother had died of skin cancer when Sophia was twenty one, who was at the prime of her life, full of vigor and energy. She tended to her ailing mother, ignoring rebellious calls from within herself, discouraging her from saving a mother who never behaved like a mother, who was interested more in marketing her daughter like some commodity to earn fast money to ease her selfish self from the tyranny of sewing. Her mother died slowly and painfully, as if it were her last blessing to a child she never loved, as if her slow tortuous death was meant to torture Sophia in turn, in semblance of a curse. Perhaps she was too often exposed to the sun though she worked indoors, or perhaps her skin reflected her prickly personality, red and boiling, sadistic and malign. The skin of her hands and arms wasted away, shriveled. Her mother’s generous throat wrinkled as it aged and her tongue was most definitely a shade of purple. She was often sick in the morning and refused to leave her bed. Sophia’s diary, which had so amused her during the previous years (Sophia never kept the diary to adulthood, concerned about her privacy and moral well-being) didn’t keep her for a day any more and amuse herself by doodling fashion dresses on paper and ordering her only daughter around. Her mother was no beauty; she was a washerwoman in the strictest sense, wide and generously flabby, with loose brown skin and a receding forehead. Whatever vestiges of beauty she possessed soon died with her. She died dragging everybody down with her, she would not suffer alone, and this was slyly the most unselfish thing about her. If she suffered, so must Sophia. If she died, Sophia must die too.
Sophia felt her beauty was a curse. She felt the stares of strangers crawl upon her skin like caterpillars upon green leaves, they snatched her body from within and clamped down on her beating heart and stilled it. Only when alone, with her mother thankfully dead, would she begin to relax. Her friends did not understand her, for they were not beautiful. She hated them secretly for this. They did not undergo the biases she underwent and remained pitifully ugly through time and were unaware of the hurricanes and cyclones that stirred within her pale breast. Were men afraid of them? No. Were they more attractive as partners? Yes. Sophia grew to despise their mediocrity. They were of average height with prominent, dull features and bright smiles. That was all. But they had better luck with men; their beauty was no threat. But Sophia was an unearthly alien.
Was she ever free? Sophia’s favorite book was Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Growing up in their little apartment in the outskirts of the city, had she ever truly earned liberty? Sophia was a quiet child, too tall for her age, which excluded her from many street games. She was an average student, which frustrated her. Had she possessed uncanny intelligence, her doubts and personal fears would have dissolved and what would remain would be a tantalizing inner core of suspended brilliance and mental wanderlust. She possessed ordinary mental powers, but found refuge in books and the diary she had kept as a teenager. In books, she learned to love. She made up for her mediocre brain with reading as many books she could get her hands on. She favored Philosophical books. She could not grasp most of the abstract concepts and worldly ideas but found tremendous pleasure in covering her face with the jackets of any single volume and delighted secretly in the fact that her physical beauty had been concealed for a moment. Books to her were symbols of an elite society she wanted badly to be a part of. In this society were tweedy professors and young mathematicians and beautiful, mysterious women. This world, her inner reality, was the only sure thing she knew. Sophia belonged to this world. In her solitude and in her misery, she fabricated this surreal landscape where everyone was as beautiful as she was and there was no more loneliness.
She had a dream one night. She was running through a forest. Prickly bushes and thorny flowers cut through her skin. Her bare legs were bleeding and she, too, was barefoot. What was she running from, and where was she going? It seemed she, herself, did not know the answer, but she was certain of one thing: that she must go on running, though it pained her and exhausted her and tormented her. She had been running for a while now and she never looked back. (Joanna Carlos)
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Rock Star
Worn out—that’s the impression Leo Morato always gave people who chanced to see him onstage, breathing and rasping into the mic as if the music was sucking all the strength his body possessed. To some people, he’s almost inseparable from the music—it was as if the furious and at times lamenting rhythms had already enslaved him that they found it hard to imagine him without his band, enveloping him in a wall of haunting riffs and bestial drum fills. The Leo without the band—that’s what the women who had watched him wanted to explore, to unmask.
His body is his instrument, as his adoring fans would say. He let the rhythms flow through his body, let them jerk his arms and sway his head each time he roars into the mic, and before long he would have worked up the crowd of spectators who were lucky enough to witness him. His shirtless antics on the stage have turned him into a symbol—a symbol that women rallied around, and the band’s music was pushed to the backstage, as Leo would say. All that the fans kept seeing was Leo brushing off his hair to reveal his striking features, sweat trickling down the contours of his body, the stage lights making every drop shimmer with his every move. The music entered their ears, but nothing else registered other than the lead vocalist thrashing around onstage, a specimen of beauty that made them grow moist with longing. No one paid much attention to Leo’s lyrics filled with anguish from the past, a past that changed his being altogether.
Someone slithered next to Leo in a bar once, an attractive young lady aiming to slither into bed with him. He was timid all throughout their conversation, answering in lines as if he were just reciting fragments from his songs, which bored her after a while and just invited him to come to her place. He refused. Not knowing what else to do, he left the place without another word, leaving his bandmates wondering what the hell was up with him.
He did take someone home with him one other night, though. She sneaked in with the other groupies backstage, and his eyes found her among the throng of young women who had gathered with the hope of beguiling the rock star with their flirtatious glances. He singled her out, ignoring everyone else. It was her bangs that did it, and it was his bandmates’ questioning glances ever since the bar incident that forced him to take her.
They drove to his condo along Recto. There had been no small talk, no foreplay. He just gripped the steering wheel with a determination to look straight ahead, as if he was driving through a derelict part of the countryside in the lateness of the hour. On the other hand, she couldn’t say a thing for the whole trip—she knew the man onstage, not the man who had chosen her and was now driving her to his place.
At his condo, Leo didn’t know what to do with her, so he told her to strip in front of him.
He took a chair and sat in the middle of the room, tense as a kitten, his knees shaking slightly. His shirt lay at the foot of his chair, but he didn’t dare remove his jeans. She did as he asked—she took her clothes off one by one with theatrical grace, her movements singing in tune with the steady hum of the aircon. She used her body well, Leo noted—all her curves moved gracefully as she crawled over to where he sat, tried to unzip his jeans. He slapped her hand away, but she smiled and moved her head to his neck, letting her lips brush against the skin gleaming with sweat.
Leo waited for the feeling to come, but it never came. She was already draped over him like a blanket, groping, smothering him with kisses, but he didn’t feel anything. Instead, images flashed across his head—the man from downstairs, the calloused hands, a ring on one of the fingers, the pleas for help that never came. Those hands were groping, as much as her hands were already slithering down to his flaccid organ while she kissed him furiously. He pushed her away, and she dropped to the floor with a thud.
“You should go now,” he said, which was almost a murmur. His voice was shaking.
He watched her dress, the surprised look still etched on her face, and led her out the door. Through the window, he saw her cross the street and disappear through the night. He wondered if she would tell people about what just happened—I should have taken her number, he thought bitterly.
Colours
It was at that curious age, where the world was still full of wonder, when I first saw her.
The day is bright and charming, and there is an endless sky that leads everywhere and nowhere. It is still, quiet – until a soft pitter-pattering of footsteps approaches and brushes against the warmth of the bleak stone ground. I hear a thud, and a melodious progression of chains signals an emerging figure which quickly cuts through the dullness of what would have been a slow, lazy afternoon.
She is riding her red bike. It is small, simple, with two pairs of ash-coloured wheels and streaks of dusty yellow lining its rugged edges. The fire-engine hue was no longer as striking as it used to be, but that didn’t matter. Not a lot of things did. She loved that trusty old bicycle so long as it always agreed to take her to new places. It never failed her before and she was positive that it never ever will.
Almost immediately, she closes her eyes – tightly, as if presupposing some weirdly fantastic and wondrously bizarre journey that lay ahead – and feels the curl of her lashes tickle the left, and then the right, edges of those hard-earned bags where she surreptitiously and expertly collects each grain of the Sandman’s magic dust each night.
She accelerates. Delighting in the harried clink-clank of her trusty steed, she thinks of the small xylophone in her room with its welcoming tinkle of notes that dance around her private burgundy spaceship carefully parked and positioned in the vicinity of that unpretentious blue planet (her favourite because it’s blue) between Saturn and Neptune, underneath the faint glow of a jade Polaris.
She smiles, so eagerly, upon hearing the clandestine riddles which the ancient wind softly whispers to her; teasing her all the more by blowing tender kisses to the sides of her cheeks, the back of her bare neck and, ever so gently, to each unassuming strand of pallid – almost colourless – hair which adds a peculiarly whimsical contrast to her remarkable skin, a powdery blend of chalk and snow.
Soon, I saw an extraordinary spectacle of sights. An array of endless possibilities; flashes of what is and what is to be – whether it be imagined or not. Through her eyes, the world is neither black nor white: it is every colour that she imagines it to be. She does not know what to call them. But she doesn’t need to because she finds no need for words.
Suddenly, she stops and rushes off to greet a familiar old face. It is the dog, but she doesn’t know that. She only knows the delight she feels by playing with it or touching its soft white fur (same as her own finer-looking ones, only in a yellowish kind of cream). And she loves it just the same.
She leaves. Her attention is short, you see. She is easily distracted by many things because they are all too big and vast. But just as easily, she becomes fascinated by them.
That was how she spent most of her days. And in all those times, I spent it with her. That girl, she plays with me often but she does not who I am.
I have no name. It is our secret. Because the day she gave me one, she disappeared.
The day is bright and charming, and there is an endless sky that leads everywhere and nowhere. It is still, quiet – until a soft pitter-pattering of footsteps approaches and brushes against the warmth of the bleak stone ground. I hear a thud, and a melodious progression of chains signals an emerging figure which quickly cuts through the dullness of what would have been a slow, lazy afternoon.
She is riding her red bike. It is small, simple, with two pairs of ash-coloured wheels and streaks of dusty yellow lining its rugged edges. The fire-engine hue was no longer as striking as it used to be, but that didn’t matter. Not a lot of things did. She loved that trusty old bicycle so long as it always agreed to take her to new places. It never failed her before and she was positive that it never ever will.
Almost immediately, she closes her eyes – tightly, as if presupposing some weirdly fantastic and wondrously bizarre journey that lay ahead – and feels the curl of her lashes tickle the left, and then the right, edges of those hard-earned bags where she surreptitiously and expertly collects each grain of the Sandman’s magic dust each night.
She accelerates. Delighting in the harried clink-clank of her trusty steed, she thinks of the small xylophone in her room with its welcoming tinkle of notes that dance around her private burgundy spaceship carefully parked and positioned in the vicinity of that unpretentious blue planet (her favourite because it’s blue) between Saturn and Neptune, underneath the faint glow of a jade Polaris.
She smiles, so eagerly, upon hearing the clandestine riddles which the ancient wind softly whispers to her; teasing her all the more by blowing tender kisses to the sides of her cheeks, the back of her bare neck and, ever so gently, to each unassuming strand of pallid – almost colourless – hair which adds a peculiarly whimsical contrast to her remarkable skin, a powdery blend of chalk and snow.
Soon, I saw an extraordinary spectacle of sights. An array of endless possibilities; flashes of what is and what is to be – whether it be imagined or not. Through her eyes, the world is neither black nor white: it is every colour that she imagines it to be. She does not know what to call them. But she doesn’t need to because she finds no need for words.
Suddenly, she stops and rushes off to greet a familiar old face. It is the dog, but she doesn’t know that. She only knows the delight she feels by playing with it or touching its soft white fur (same as her own finer-looking ones, only in a yellowish kind of cream). And she loves it just the same.
She leaves. Her attention is short, you see. She is easily distracted by many things because they are all too big and vast. But just as easily, she becomes fascinated by them.
That was how she spent most of her days. And in all those times, I spent it with her. That girl, she plays with me often but she does not who I am.
I have no name. It is our secret. Because the day she gave me one, she disappeared.
The Secret
“Hey
“Uhh…really?” I said, as I nervously nudged the nose bridge of my Betty-La-Fea-like glasses.
“Yeah. I thought you were avoiding me.”
“Avoiding you? Why would I?” I said, trying to force myself to look innocent.
“Remember I promised to take you around my family yacht? Lucky for you, I don’t break my promises.”
“Yeah…lucky.”
“Come, follow me.”
As I passed by the nose-picking-booger-rolling nerds, sex-is-my-favorite-subject jocks, I-know-aliens-exist freaks, I-will-be-a-whore-after-graduation blondes and other creatures that inhabit a high school prom, I remembered what my friend said. He’s the kind of guy who thinks he owns the world. He freakin’ allowed the school to borrow their family yacht for the prom. People like him are never interested in people like you. It’s a fact of life. Nothing can change that. If he is ever being nice to you, it’s not what you think. He has a hidden agenda. Avoid him.
I know that following my friend’s advice should have been clever, but I guess fate would not allow me to be clever. I did try to avoid him, but he was able to track me down anyway.
I let him steer me towards the other end of the yacht. He motioned me to enter a cabin. Like a zombie, I followed his command. The cabin was dark and its walls were made of a black glass-like structure. It seemed eerie. I did not know why he wanted me there. I did not know what he was planning to do. Yet I couldn’t leave.
“Is it okay if I use the bathroom?” I said, as nervousness always brings out the bathroom queen in me.
“Sure, it’s the white door at your right.”
I got some tissue and I realized that my hand was trembling. Stop it,
“Are you okay? You’ve been there for a long time already,” Siyen said, knocking on the bathroom door.
“I’m almost done,” I said, putting the trophy back in its place.
When I went out, it seemed like I was transported to a different room.
“This was my father’s anniversary gift to my mother.”
I was speechless. There were masked butterfly fishes, royal angel fishes, regal tang fishes, moorish idol fishes, stingrays, dolphins, tortoises, and other sea creatures swimming around the cabin walls.
“This is amazing. Are we…are we…underwater?” I asked, feeling a bit foolish.
“There are underwater cameras beneath the yacht which transmutes the images into these walls.”
“Beautiful.”
“Beyond beautiful,” he said, looking beyond my thick black glasses and plunging into my deep blue eyes.
Preso
When the door opens, the first thing that greets him are a pair of prison tattoos and a smile that's this close to a snarl.
Preso flashes in his mind so vividly his knees lock together and he just can't think for a second.
"Who the fuck are you?"
And on most days, he feels like he has a good grasp of spoken language (he usually gets a B in his English and Filipino classes) but today was apparently going to be different, because he makes a sound that's half human and half sheep in reply to the man's question and tries not to tremble too hard that he can't deny it later.
"I-I-I'm Marianne's classmate." He pauses before he adds "Sir."
He gets another once over, a look that goes up one side and goes down the other one, and he's trying not to glance at all the tattoos on the man's body while the purity of his intentions are being weighed, because they're all of things that are looking at him (sometimes, with more than one pair of eyes) like he's digestible through skin contact alone.
The thought almost makes him whimper and he wishes his brain would just shut up.
"Kuya, is that my classmate at the door?"
And if he wasn't in love with her before, then he sure as hell is now, and he would have rushed to her side if he could, but he's still too afraid that the man in front of him hasn't decided he's more useful to him as a human being rather than as adobo, so he just settles for a slow, unthreatening wave of his hand.
"You know this guy, Mar?"
"Yes Kuya, and didn't I tell you this morning that my friend's coming over to tutor me?" She slaps him on the arm, and he'd be kidding himself if he said he wasn't expecting her to maybe hear her fingers break.
A grunt is all the other says in reply, which Marianne takes as a cue to take his hand and lead him inside the house. She doesn't say anything about how his hands are just about as warm as a corpse's, or how he doesn't sit on the chair she leads him too as much as falls into it, but that might be because she's used to this kind of thing.
Her brother follows them soon, and sits on the opposite side of the room with his eyes and the eyes of all his tattoos trained on their (or more specifically, his) every move, as they discuss lines and segments and the significance of starting points.
----*
Marianne is really bad at math, so he finds himself going to her house to tutor her almost every week. He's acclimated to her brother somewhat so that he's not always in a sweaty panic whenever he's in the vicinity. He's still twitchy though, but he's not going to complain about that any time soon because he knows there are worse things in life. Seb (he heard Marianne call her brother by that name a few times) seems to have gotten used to his presence too, because he doesn't watch them like a human gargoyle anymore and instead, goes around doing his own thing, content just to make sure they were actually studying and not fooling around.
He still cracks his knuckles ominously when he's near, still makes sure that Marianne is seated in a position which will make it hard for him to touch her without Seb seeing immediately, but aside from those, everything had sort of settled down to a routine they've all come to expect.
It's not a comfortable one, though.
----*
"What do you think her brother does in his spare time?" One of his friends asks him when he tells them about his weekly experiences tutoring the love of his high school life.
He shrugs.
"I dunno. Robs commuters?"
"Ya think he's a pimp?"
"Nah. He looks kinda stupid to me. Muscles everywhere except where it counts. Bouncer probably, but not pimp."
"GOONZ." Another friend adds, pronouncing it in the slurred, exaggerated cant of the lower class that everybody who hears bursts out laughing.
It's a false kind of bravado and he's old enough to know it's not so different from what his kid brothers say when their pride's are all scraped up and they feel like being hard to deal with. It's fun though, it's so easy, and it makes the fear seated in the back of his mind easier to deal with, so why not right?
----*
It is the week before exams. They're studying parabolas now, and Marianne's so nervous about failing that she's making all sorts of stupid mistakes with the equations. He suggested a break, she agreed to his suggestion, which is how he finds himself on his way to the kitchen to get a glass of water. He almost doesn't notice her brother on the couch, a book propped on his chest and black -framed glasses on his nose, if it wasn't for the snoring that was emanating from his figure.
It was... weird to say the least. The glasses didn't look right amidst all the wild tattoos, and the book looked overwhelmed by the sheer mass of Seb's muscles. He didn't know Seb reads Kierkegaard. Hell, he didn't think Seb had much of an education in anything except Thuggery 101, so seeing him like this was like being smacked upside the head.
"He almost graduated with a degree in English literature, you know."
He almost jumps up out of his skin when Marianne speaks, but she's not paying attention to him at all and is looking at her brother with clear fondness etched on her features. It makes his gut clench something terrible, makes the guilt start to gnaw at his insides like a bad ulcer when he remembers the things he says about Seb.
"My parents were gone most of the time, and Seb practically raised me by himself. He wanted to earn extra money and he thought the gangs could give him that. It was a mistake. He knows it, I know it, everyone knows it. It's not the kind of thing people forgive easily, though..." Both of them fall silent immediately when Seb shifts like he's about to wake up, and the fact that he doesn't makes them both insanely lucky. She doesn't continue where she left off, but he doesn't need her to fill in the blanks for him.
He feels like the biggest dick this side of Manila, and the feeling doesn't go away for days.
----*
Weeks go by, exams stop slugging people over the head, and though he still can't work up the nerve to talk to Seb man-to-man, he's taken to accidentally leaving books at their house. Last time it was Tolstoy. This week it's Asimov. Marianne doesn't seem to notice what he's doing (he's learned the art of subtly was something she had yet to master, along with Algebra) but her brother sometimes gets a thoughtful look on his face when he answers the door before it transforms to the usual scowl.
He knows it's not enough of an apology, but he hopes he's getting there.
----*
Addendum:
If anyone's curious, Seb's whole name is Sebastian, which apparently means 'revered' in Greek.
ETA:
Editted at 9:51 pm. Fixed the inconsistent tenses and spelling mistakes.
Preso flashes in his mind so vividly his knees lock together and he just can't think for a second.
"Who the fuck are you?"
And on most days, he feels like he has a good grasp of spoken language (he usually gets a B in his English and Filipino classes) but today was apparently going to be different, because he makes a sound that's half human and half sheep in reply to the man's question and tries not to tremble too hard that he can't deny it later.
"I-I-I'm Marianne's classmate." He pauses before he adds "Sir."
He gets another once over, a look that goes up one side and goes down the other one, and he's trying not to glance at all the tattoos on the man's body while the purity of his intentions are being weighed, because they're all of things that are looking at him (sometimes, with more than one pair of eyes) like he's digestible through skin contact alone.
The thought almost makes him whimper and he wishes his brain would just shut up.
"Kuya, is that my classmate at the door?"
And if he wasn't in love with her before, then he sure as hell is now, and he would have rushed to her side if he could, but he's still too afraid that the man in front of him hasn't decided he's more useful to him as a human being rather than as adobo, so he just settles for a slow, unthreatening wave of his hand.
"You know this guy, Mar?"
"Yes Kuya, and didn't I tell you this morning that my friend's coming over to tutor me?" She slaps him on the arm, and he'd be kidding himself if he said he wasn't expecting her to maybe hear her fingers break.
A grunt is all the other says in reply, which Marianne takes as a cue to take his hand and lead him inside the house. She doesn't say anything about how his hands are just about as warm as a corpse's, or how he doesn't sit on the chair she leads him too as much as falls into it, but that might be because she's used to this kind of thing.
Her brother follows them soon, and sits on the opposite side of the room with his eyes and the eyes of all his tattoos trained on their (or more specifically, his) every move, as they discuss lines and segments and the significance of starting points.
----*
Marianne is really bad at math, so he finds himself going to her house to tutor her almost every week. He's acclimated to her brother somewhat so that he's not always in a sweaty panic whenever he's in the vicinity. He's still twitchy though, but he's not going to complain about that any time soon because he knows there are worse things in life. Seb (he heard Marianne call her brother by that name a few times) seems to have gotten used to his presence too, because he doesn't watch them like a human gargoyle anymore and instead, goes around doing his own thing, content just to make sure they were actually studying and not fooling around.
He still cracks his knuckles ominously when he's near, still makes sure that Marianne is seated in a position which will make it hard for him to touch her without Seb seeing immediately, but aside from those, everything had sort of settled down to a routine they've all come to expect.
It's not a comfortable one, though.
----*
"What do you think her brother does in his spare time?" One of his friends asks him when he tells them about his weekly experiences tutoring the love of his high school life.
He shrugs.
"I dunno. Robs commuters?"
"Ya think he's a pimp?"
"Nah. He looks kinda stupid to me. Muscles everywhere except where it counts. Bouncer probably, but not pimp."
"GOONZ." Another friend adds, pronouncing it in the slurred, exaggerated cant of the lower class that everybody who hears bursts out laughing.
It's a false kind of bravado and he's old enough to know it's not so different from what his kid brothers say when their pride's are all scraped up and they feel like being hard to deal with. It's fun though, it's so easy, and it makes the fear seated in the back of his mind easier to deal with, so why not right?
----*
It is the week before exams. They're studying parabolas now, and Marianne's so nervous about failing that she's making all sorts of stupid mistakes with the equations. He suggested a break, she agreed to his suggestion, which is how he finds himself on his way to the kitchen to get a glass of water. He almost doesn't notice her brother on the couch, a book propped on his chest and black -framed glasses on his nose, if it wasn't for the snoring that was emanating from his figure.
It was... weird to say the least. The glasses didn't look right amidst all the wild tattoos, and the book looked overwhelmed by the sheer mass of Seb's muscles. He didn't know Seb reads Kierkegaard. Hell, he didn't think Seb had much of an education in anything except Thuggery 101, so seeing him like this was like being smacked upside the head.
"He almost graduated with a degree in English literature, you know."
He almost jumps up out of his skin when Marianne speaks, but she's not paying attention to him at all and is looking at her brother with clear fondness etched on her features. It makes his gut clench something terrible, makes the guilt start to gnaw at his insides like a bad ulcer when he remembers the things he says about Seb.
"My parents were gone most of the time, and Seb practically raised me by himself. He wanted to earn extra money and he thought the gangs could give him that. It was a mistake. He knows it, I know it, everyone knows it. It's not the kind of thing people forgive easily, though..." Both of them fall silent immediately when Seb shifts like he's about to wake up, and the fact that he doesn't makes them both insanely lucky. She doesn't continue where she left off, but he doesn't need her to fill in the blanks for him.
He feels like the biggest dick this side of Manila, and the feeling doesn't go away for days.
----*
Weeks go by, exams stop slugging people over the head, and though he still can't work up the nerve to talk to Seb man-to-man, he's taken to accidentally leaving books at their house. Last time it was Tolstoy. This week it's Asimov. Marianne doesn't seem to notice what he's doing (he's learned the art of subtly was something she had yet to master, along with Algebra) but her brother sometimes gets a thoughtful look on his face when he answers the door before it transforms to the usual scowl.
He knows it's not enough of an apology, but he hopes he's getting there.
----*
Addendum:
If anyone's curious, Seb's whole name is Sebastian, which apparently means 'revered' in Greek.
ETA:
Editted at 9:51 pm. Fixed the inconsistent tenses and spelling mistakes.
Team Captain
His sad eyes are overshadowed by the jacket with “Team Captain” splashed on the back, the only distinguishing title in an otherwise army of eleven faceless warriors all pumped up with adrenaline and steroids. With his tribe dominating the entire aisle of the classroom, the professor does not try to pass through, for fear of getting her skirt hiked up to her waist and her white panties exposed once more. She leafs through the pile of sheets and calls out his name, “Spencer Walters.”
Josh, the offensive guard, grabs the exam paper and yells, “An A? How the hell did you get that, Spence?”
To which he only shrugs and says, “Luck, I guess.”
Those dark, tired eyes go back to the girl sitting in the front row, a girl who’s curtain of hair hides her from the world, as she buries herself in her book. The girl who always has her car’s battery disconnected by half of the football team every lunch period. The one who always travels with a pack of pimply high school kids of the Mathematics team, a calculator in one hand, and a geometry textbook in the other. The one girl who is unreachable, withstanding his nasty remarks about her mismatched clothes that drown her figure, or those red spectacles that cover half of her face.
He looks back at his paper – the A being the fruit of discreetly missing out three practice sessions – smiles, and thinks to himself, “Just three more months until college.”
Josh, the offensive guard, grabs the exam paper and yells, “An A? How the hell did you get that, Spence?”
To which he only shrugs and says, “Luck, I guess.”
Those dark, tired eyes go back to the girl sitting in the front row, a girl who’s curtain of hair hides her from the world, as she buries herself in her book. The girl who always has her car’s battery disconnected by half of the football team every lunch period. The one who always travels with a pack of pimply high school kids of the Mathematics team, a calculator in one hand, and a geometry textbook in the other. The one girl who is unreachable, withstanding his nasty remarks about her mismatched clothes that drown her figure, or those red spectacles that cover half of her face.
He looks back at his paper – the A being the fruit of discreetly missing out three practice sessions – smiles, and thinks to himself, “Just three more months until college.”
Emoticon
Emoticon
by Mari Colinares
“My face is a raisin, no, more like a white, crumpled paper on a garbage can, but that’s just when I laugh. I know this ‘cause one night, I was, like, really bored, so there I was, on my bed, I, like, video-ed myself laughing. It’s genius! I like, tried laughing with different looks. First, you know how my hair cascades down like silk? Yes! Like, my hairstylist said my hairs the best kind. I don’t need the double-Oh-seven bond thing you get for your hair to look like mine. So as I was saying, I took videos of myself laughing from all point of views possible. Front, sides, up, down, all angles! Like,”
It was talk-athon time, a talk-till-you-drop—DEAD—event where Miss-Model-of-Yahoo-Messenger wins every time.
“Like, my nostrils go, like, THIS big,”
As her ten china-doll fingers said “O,” her nose turned into a dragon’s that flared up before spitting fire.
“It was, like, superkaduper fun! You want to try it?”
She was in a teethy-grin-mode, her favorite emoticon. Her gazillion silver bangles studded with rainbows of jewels jiggled and tinkled down her elbows as she clapped loud and sharp. The sound wasn’t clapping, more like, spanking. A smack on the thigh sound, tinkling silver, and a cartoonish voice.
“Let’s try! Omigoshingbananas! I, like, have a joke…”
She was sitting down on the conference room, the confession room, the sleeping room, the making-out room, her home room which is not a room but a bench. A stone bench. Her stone throne. Her throne room. A fountain of words, she went on and on. Her bangles, hula hoops on her wrists, wonderfully served its purpose as a concealer.
“Get it? Like, get it? Get it? Like, get it? Get it?”
Battle scars need to be concealed but they can’t be hidden from curious eyes forever. I stared at the horizontal keloids and sighed.
“I can’t stand being alone. Like, I am tempted to pick up a blade. A razor blade, thin and silver and sharp. And silver. And sharp. And sharp. Then, like, I would, like, slice my skin so deep—just to make sure that whatever it is will be gone with the chunk of flesh I’m about to rip off my arm. So I slice my skin and it stings but it’s kind of a pleasant feeling. Like the feeling of putting lemon juice on a fresh wound. And that’s what I’m doing right after I talk to you. I’ll dig up a chunk of meat and I’m going to put lemon juice—freshly squeezed.” (30)
The landlady
Every morning she would go around the condominium. Up and down the stairs, checking the hallways, the trash bins, the doors and the plants. She wore nothing but her white nightgown; rollers in her hair, a cigarette in her mouth. Her rubber slippers made slapping sounds against the cement floors, like fish being slammed into a wooden table. Always only one cat followed her around, despite the many others that meowed, stalking in and out of her small lobby apartment.
The smaller children laughed at her flabby arms when she walked around trying to fan herself with an abanico paypay. She laughed with them as she chased them, her slippers raised almost threateningly (but she would never catch them anyway, either they were too fast or she was too slow), shouting their baby names and smiling at the same time.
Once a month she would knock on the tenants' doors, shouting "Rent! Rent", her voice loud but not so that the people hated to hear it, and often she was greeted by respectful nods. "Manang, I don't have the rent for this month," Aling Nona said, shaking her head, her eyes on the floor. "Bhoy lost his job, so now we only have enough for food until he finds another job."
"Ay, that's not good," she said, clicking her tongue. "Your husband should be more vigilant. But it cannot be helped. I will wait until next month, but you have to pay."
"I don't know if he will have a job by next month."
"We will just see."
In the mornings she would go check outside of the condominium, still in the nightgown, and chase away the stray black dog that lay in the driveway. This she did without fail, flailing her arms about like a madwoman, the rollers sometimes jumping out of her hair. The night guard would frown and scratch his head in the evenings when an unfamiliar woman would go out and leave some leftovers at the very corner of the building, and, as she left, the stray dog would come back and eat, and would bite the night guard when he came too close.
But the dog never bit the landlady, not matter how loud she screamed.
A/N: Sorry it's very short, I sort of ran out of ideas after this. XD Is it still possible for me to edit it in the near future? ~Margaret Kawsek
Thursday, November 13, 2008
follow-up assignment and weekend reading
1. On "Clara"
- analyze the construction of the two main characters in the story
- in what ways are the characters multi-dimensional?
- point out the inconsistencies, contradictions, imperfections
-point out the discrepancy between what the characters desire, intend, need, as against what they are capable of doing
- take note of the story's beginning. think of other possible middles and ends that could follow a beginning such as that one.
2. On the collection i copied to your flash drives last wednesday:
read all the stories carefully. we will take up only one or two, but read the entire collection all the same. use the list of elements of fiction in the syllabus as a guide to analyzing the manner by which the writers put their stories together.
3. On another note;
we need to talk about scheduling a two or three-hour advance/make-up meeting, not necessarily inside the classroom. it can be in a quiet cafe where we can hold a discussion. we'll just subsidize those among us who may not be willing to spend for a cup of coffee in order to be allowed to use the cafe as discussion space. i shall be out of town on the first week of december to attend a writers' fellowship/conference, hence the need to meet during extra school hours.
please also get to know each other better. get each other's numbers and email addies. come up wuth a block directory. have a copy of each other's schedules, if necessary. all for the sake of class management. =)
***
have a great weekend, everyone!
daryll
- analyze the construction of the two main characters in the story
- in what ways are the characters multi-dimensional?
- point out the inconsistencies, contradictions, imperfections
-point out the discrepancy between what the characters desire, intend, need, as against what they are capable of doing
- take note of the story's beginning. think of other possible middles and ends that could follow a beginning such as that one.
2. On the collection i copied to your flash drives last wednesday:
read all the stories carefully. we will take up only one or two, but read the entire collection all the same. use the list of elements of fiction in the syllabus as a guide to analyzing the manner by which the writers put their stories together.
3. On another note;
we need to talk about scheduling a two or three-hour advance/make-up meeting, not necessarily inside the classroom. it can be in a quiet cafe where we can hold a discussion. we'll just subsidize those among us who may not be willing to spend for a cup of coffee in order to be allowed to use the cafe as discussion space. i shall be out of town on the first week of december to attend a writers' fellowship/conference, hence the need to meet during extra school hours.
please also get to know each other better. get each other's numbers and email addies. come up wuth a block directory. have a copy of each other's schedules, if necessary. all for the sake of class management. =)
***
have a great weekend, everyone!
daryll
reading assignment
last posted: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2008
"Clara" by Roberto Bolano
follow this link please: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/08/04/080804fi_fiction_bolano
(i'll also try to email you a copy of the story)
"Clara" by Roberto Bolano
follow this link please: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/08/04/080804fi_fiction_bolano
(i'll also try to email you a copy of the story)
the syllabus
last posted: Monday, November 10, 2008
Objectives
At the end of this course, students are expected to understand and apply the craft of fiction, and master the development of fiction elements such as character, plot, point of view, description, dialogue, setting, pacing, voice, and theme.
Students will also learn how to provide productive criticism of and insightful feedback on other people’s works, as well as to respond accordingly to readers’ feedback and comment on their own works.
Course Outline, Timeframe
Part I
Introduction/Orientation Week 1 – 2; Nov. 10 - 21
Discussion of basic concepts and principles:
• The different types and forms of fiction.
• Where to find inspiration and ideas.
• The importance of craft.
Elements of Fiction
Discussion and short exercises on:
Character –
• Where to find characters.
• Making characters multi-dimensional through desire, lack, contradictions.
• Creating character profiles.
• Showing vs. Telling, methods for developing characters.
Plot –
• Finding a major dramatic question.
• Shaping a beginning, middle, and end.
• The different short story plots.
• Pros and cons of outlining.
Point of View –
• POV defined.
• Exploration of the many types of POV.
Description, imagery –
• Using the senses.
• Specificity, concreteness.
• Finding the right words.
• Merging description with point of view.
Dialogue –
• The importance of scene.
• Realistic dialogues.
• Quotation marks and tags.
• Characterization through dialogue.
• Subtexts and Dialects.
Setting/Pacing –
• Time. Place. Weather.
• Description of setting.
• Merging character and setting.
• Flashbacks.
Voice –
• Voice defined.
• Exploration of the various types of voice.
• Understanding style—syntax, diction, and paragraph length.
Theme –
• Theme defined.
• Types of theme.
• Weaving theme into a story.
Revision –
• Exploration of the various stages of revision.
Part II
Conceptualization Week 3; Nov 24 – 28
Proposal or pitch for 3 short stories
Sources, method, time-frame
Drafting of short fiction pieces Weeks 4 – 5; Dec. 1 – 12
Submission of first drafts Dec. 15
1st round of workshop sessions Weeks 6 – 10; Jan. 5 – Feb. 6
Presentation, critiquing
Revision
2nd round of workshop sessions Weeks 7 – 11; Feb. 9 – Mar. 13
Presentation, critiquing
Revision
Final submission of story collections Week 12
Course Requirements and Grading System
1. Two short stories of publishable quality: 60%
2. Active participation in workshop process,
class discussion, and other minor activities
such as exercises, short writing activities 40%
Objectives
At the end of this course, students are expected to understand and apply the craft of fiction, and master the development of fiction elements such as character, plot, point of view, description, dialogue, setting, pacing, voice, and theme.
Students will also learn how to provide productive criticism of and insightful feedback on other people’s works, as well as to respond accordingly to readers’ feedback and comment on their own works.
Course Outline, Timeframe
Part I
Introduction/Orientation Week 1 – 2; Nov. 10 - 21
Discussion of basic concepts and principles:
• The different types and forms of fiction.
• Where to find inspiration and ideas.
• The importance of craft.
Elements of Fiction
Discussion and short exercises on:
Character –
• Where to find characters.
• Making characters multi-dimensional through desire, lack, contradictions.
• Creating character profiles.
• Showing vs. Telling, methods for developing characters.
Plot –
• Finding a major dramatic question.
• Shaping a beginning, middle, and end.
• The different short story plots.
• Pros and cons of outlining.
Point of View –
• POV defined.
• Exploration of the many types of POV.
Description, imagery –
• Using the senses.
• Specificity, concreteness.
• Finding the right words.
• Merging description with point of view.
Dialogue –
• The importance of scene.
• Realistic dialogues.
• Quotation marks and tags.
• Characterization through dialogue.
• Subtexts and Dialects.
Setting/Pacing –
• Time. Place. Weather.
• Description of setting.
• Merging character and setting.
• Flashbacks.
Voice –
• Voice defined.
• Exploration of the various types of voice.
• Understanding style—syntax, diction, and paragraph length.
Theme –
• Theme defined.
• Types of theme.
• Weaving theme into a story.
Revision –
• Exploration of the various stages of revision.
Part II
Conceptualization Week 3; Nov 24 – 28
Proposal or pitch for 3 short stories
Sources, method, time-frame
Drafting of short fiction pieces Weeks 4 – 5; Dec. 1 – 12
Submission of first drafts Dec. 15
1st round of workshop sessions Weeks 6 – 10; Jan. 5 – Feb. 6
Presentation, critiquing
Revision
2nd round of workshop sessions Weeks 7 – 11; Feb. 9 – Mar. 13
Presentation, critiquing
Revision
Final submission of story collections Week 12
Course Requirements and Grading System
1. Two short stories of publishable quality: 60%
2. Active participation in workshop process,
class discussion, and other minor activities
such as exercises, short writing activities 40%
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