Friday With Ballpens

July Note: Keeping the dream alive I am keeping my hope with this post. Imagining is some sort of a balm in Gilead.

I don’t know the exact time when my fascination with science, health science in particular, started. As far as anecdotes inform us, some got to specialize on arachnids out of childhood spoiled time gathering spiders at sundowns. Others on magic after a one-time stroll at a carnival. Some on varnishing intricately designed wooden doors and window sills partly due to the outgrown brain conditioning of lacquer thinner (hazardous to health actually) from one’s neighborhood furniture shop, and partly to the array of glossy doors at a posh subdivision – a source of personal accomplishment. I’m sure you also are a stickler to your own source of fascination. But mine is really along personal health that’s closely tied up with our biological givens and anything that still evolves, or diminishes as we grow old, in our body.

It must have started with those white coats that doctors wear, that according to sociologists are not only a symbol of desire to purify whatever biological taint there is, but more suggestively, of power. You see one wearing a white coat with a name stitched in longhand even in malls and the mind reflexively dictates of an ambulating power around, even if the emotional reaction could vary individually depending on personal experience with those power holders. The white coat is power over biological malady what the clerical soutane is over spiritual malaise.

My experience was a mixture of awe and provocation. I see those array of blue and red and black pens on the chest pocket of their coat and a feeling of amazement would envelop me – “Wow! So many ballpens!” I knew Kilometrico if I see one and a Uni if it’s pinned on. But my childhood bafflement stemmed from the practical question of usage and numbers – why so many? The question apparently was flavored with a grade school bias – seldom did I report to school with even a pair of pens. It was either a lone, blue, non-transparent, plastic overall Kilometrico, a see-through Uni, or a white-bodied, big ball-pointed Bic whose ink one can never predict when to run out.

And the provocation? Well, my mother had a recurring ulcer and any hospital time, she could curl up with a monstrous pain that had me running to the nurse’s station. Ulcer patients and their caregivers know how the pain could become a routine episode it becomes less catchy of the staff’s attention. Figure a child almost freaking out to extend help for his mother and what to that child was a seemingly sluggish response from the staff but from a medical point of view is a calm response protocol. The child could only wonder, a little panicky, on top of those ballpens and dangling stethoscopes and leisurely confident cadence on the hospital hallways. “I’ll get to the business of healing someday,” promised the child to himself, believing that ballpens are still important because according to Bluep in his post, writing skill is a career edge.

—————–

Photo credit: kimatangan

This post is supposed to be on CD4+ T cells and cancer. but sometimes, free writing dictates its own rhythm.

Michael Jackson: the many crossovers

There are 3 things boiling in my brain and bones currently: the passage at Luke 8:22, fatherhood, and the demise of a legendary stature in Michael Jackson.

Fo almost a week now, I dwell on this passage from the Desertfisher: ” Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” I know what a lake is, and somehow familiar of how it behaves under a stormy weather. At some point, it was both a wild and tamed creature during my childhood and adolescent years. You can read here. You may ask: “So, what’s left unfamiliar?” There are 2 things in this passage: the going over and the other side.

Just the other day, the news was one plane boarded by tourists headed for the best beach in Asia, Boracay, got into engine trouble. The whole imagined escapade got messed up. Think of discipleship, of trailing the Desertfisher’s track this way. The disciples thought otherwise and so had their lessons in the Boat University in fear and trembling: “Don’t you have faith yet?”

Consider a band of disciples, ordinary, tax-paying folks from the outskirts burdened by the Roman rule. Not hard to imagine, right? There are legion among us – hoping the yoke of living would get lighter each unfolding day. People at the outskirts of the country scurrying for answers to their burden of soul and body, perhaps The Answer. The disciples thought The Answer is unfolding before their eyes everytime they were fed to their fill.

“Alright, you found The Answer in me, it doesn’t matter. Much work to do guys. Let’s go over to the other side of the lake,” said the Desertfisher.

You know what happened with this invitation for a crossover – big squall tossed their boat. Had this happened yesterday, Twitter and CNN would have been our first sources haha.

“I thought we have the Desertfisher around, where is he anyway? asked one desertfish.

“So you think it’s all neat and sanitized guys, as if faith is a formula you only need to memorize? Storm like this – this is sanitizing your faith. We’re getting there. You can blog about this later,” the Desertfisher retorted.

Michael Jackson: the many crossovers

Who doesn’t love the genius in him? Who doesn’t think his personal life was a whole mess? As one writer exclaimed: “What a talent! What a tragedy!” One article that prods me to blog these thoughts was a piece of truth from Andrew Sullivan’s article Thinking About Michael and I quote a couple of sentences:

“There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father.”

Michael had done a lot of crossovers in his life: from one concert stage to the next; from one hit album after another; from one messed-up marriage to the final one; from one media canonization here to one unforgiving derision there; from black to “white”. But of all the crossovers he’d gone through, I pick this up: the crossover of childhood. For instead of being assured of a protective paternal presence like that of the Desertfisher, it was one that exposed him further to the squall, that caused the squall of his tender years. Freud wrote:

“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”

Sullivan seems to make a point: he never recovered from there. Yes, despite the money for all the high profiled therapist he could hire. Did he get to the other side, the healing side I presume? Had someone assured him in his Boat of Fame about faith that needs be sanitized? You can gather all the hints and proofs you want to come up with your own tentative judgment. All I know is that had responsible fatherhood hold his childhood arms, it might have been a different Michael less mourned for a tragic end of the story. Thank you Michael. Rest in peace.

Wasting Time with my Father

We dawdled over the streets and park of Bacolod on Sundays, a father tagging the fragile hands of a 5-year old boy. Together we wasted time watching fellow dads and kids puttering around in their Sunday shirts of flashy neon colors and Voltes V those yesteryears refreshed in me one of Sting’s songs of nostalgia and gratitude:

“The park is full of Sunday fathers,
and melted ice cream.
We tried to do the best we can
within my given time.”

From the park, we plowed our way to the moviehouse, always opting for a Chinese karate film of either Bruce Lee’s or Filipino-Chinese Tsing Tsong Tsai. I marveled at every flying kick, the speed of every fighting action, the shrill tone of Chinese yell of “yah” as each fighter strutted his own style aped after Menacing Monkey, Cautious Cat, Daredevil Dragon, Snappy Snake, or Tenacious Tiger. Long before I’ve known about Chuang-tzi or Confucius, China was pinned into my consciousness as a country not of social diplomats but of sneaky fighters. It was all fun at the theater – one container of a father-son happy tandem.

No doubt it was my father at the peak of his paternal diplomacy and skills. A child need not visit the birthplace of Kung Fu to make a logical sense of the legacy being passed on from one generation to the next. It’s all about feeling the action, relishing every hint of the tricky art of evasion and mastery over a created nemesis. For a child that was me then, it was about the “wow” experience less adulterated by mental scrutiny of my father’s time and more empowered by innocence over every single moment with him. The dictatorship of analysis is a killer of awe, a depriver of enjoyment. Mystic Antony de Melo put it bluntly: “When you hear the bird sings, will you still look for its credentials?” True, every child has the inclination for being inquisitive. But often, not out of the adultlike desire  to connect the dots to a grand theory of something. A child asks more out of awe and less from the desire to dissect an enjoyable experience for the sake of intellectual stimulation.

And so was the time with my father: in every free flow of time with him, I don’t think I logically cared whether he had extra money after the movie or buying a couple of ice cream at the park. I don’t remember asking him whether the ticket price had gone up, or he was required to report on that particular Sunday at the posh hotel he was working for. It was almost all about enjoying the time of 2 birds chirping. So it happened to us on those casual Sundays at the park and the moviehouse – me and my father – wasting time with and for each other. And it was worth a memory to recall to remind me that not all wasted time is useless said Lin Yu T’ang:

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.“

—————

Photo credit: Digger Digger Dogstar

Spelling God, spelling what i believe…

Let me play in one mental game. Think or recall one person you believe is a  non-believer. Think. Recall. Need more time? If you recall one atheist you came across with and cannonball him to fill in the blank simply because he is on the other side of the border of faith, then let me punch in this wager: your backup reasoning is essentially wobbly. Why? Your atheist acquaintance may not necessarily believe in a being with a capital letter, you know, like Superman or Dragon Warrior. But ask him again, probe his public thoughts and it doesn’t take a Hubble space telescope to detect his magnified, enthroned, centralized being – Reason, No-God, Humanism, Facts, or Evolution.

“But wait,” you may tack on, “why capitalize those when even the God of believers only has a small “g” in the atheism circle, and still comes out seemingly persuasive to enjoin others to another believing bandwagon?” Find out from here.

Trivial as this may sound, I sometimes think it’s one of those legacies often unquestioned because it’s as commonplace as our house doorknob: spelling God.

Capitalizing God, capitalizing other gods

Capitalization implies importance, emphasis, centrality, primacy, identity, or even hierarchy of values. We capitalize our names to emphasize our existence, to highlight our identity. Those who do so otherwise like the poet e.e.cummings get the same existential attention I assume.

Let’s humanize our habit of capitalizing G. There is at least a universal habit of capitalizing our real names. What’s the impulse behind? Naming and capitalizing the names carry an existential function – that of singling out a living or non-living being’s uniqueness. Names are important, their capitalized letters only to highlight how important those names are. No doubt, I can write my full name in small letters, a bit deviant an act against social standard. But if I can give a “capitalized treatment” to an ordinary cheap pen in a prose because I want my readers to have a unique mental image of such a writing instrument, then why give an “under-treatment” to the ideas arranger?

It could be equally argued that under-capitalizing names is no big deal, less torrential to alter a person’s inner or outer landscape. There were primitive practices or existing cultures less attentive to capital letters. But just as every stroke in a letter in all alphabets count within its cultural classroom, the universal practice of capitalizing names at least must be charged with meanings practical for humanity – uniqueness, centrality, primacy, identity, significance.

Such centrality, however, could only be stretched up to a certain limit like a rubber band. I may be unique. You may be unique. But both of us know we cannot be the center of all meanings of the universe no matter how ambitious our ego would sometimes dictate us. So what does humanity do? Where do I dig to find that Center? Like a hungry miner, I dig within and out and glance now and then at the shining gold of meaning I name God. The beautiful thing is I am not alone in digging, having glances, and naming God. I don’t think God really bothers to be given a name with a capital letter, and much more, alter with this name the very personality of God as the center of all meanings. We seem to agree as “fellow miners” naming is for the sake of human convenience, self-respect included. If I can write my father’s or mother’s name in capital letters in an angry missive not out of mindless habit but of self-respect as a son, perhaps, the human spirit has a weightier reason for doing so before its Source.

I don’t think God really bothers to be talked about all the time like sex scandals in barber shops or moral canteens. Again, it’s human convenience, respect for the human longing to behold God’s face included. I think what God wants is for me to see more of this luminosity that is ever transforming of the way I make myself and my self-centered desires to become the center of all meanings. Under what environment does the gold of God shine forth? I guess pretty much under those circumstances when I question the names I assign capital letters with – Pleasure, Power, Reason, Success, Prestige, Humanism (you can add more if you want). And here’s one more: Religious Security, which is inclusive not of VAT, but of all creatures who go to church to hide from God, yahooooo!

——————-

Photo credit: ahisgett

Pinoy Applicant at Wal-Mart

I just feel dark and somber these days that both posting and praying are lousily less of a priority. A couple of forwarded jokes from Miel had somehow lightened my corner. Let me share one:

Author of this story is unknown.
A FILIPINO APPLIES FOR A JOB AT WAL-MART.
An office manager was given the task to hire someone to fill a job opening — a greeter. He decided to interview four people: an American, a Russian, an Australian, and a Filipino, named Eleuterio.

He called the four in and asks them only one question. Their answer would decide who gets the job.
As the four sat around the conference table, the interviewer asked,
“What is the fastest thing you know?”

The American, replied, “A THOUGHT. It just pops into your head. There’s no warning that it’s on the way; it’s just there. A THOUGHT is the fastest thing I know.”

“That’s very good!” said the interviewer.

“And now you sir?” he asked the Russian.

“Hmm…. let me see. A Blink! It comes and goes and you don’t know that it ever happened. A BLINK is the fastest thing I know.”

“Excellent!” said the interviewer. “The blink of an eye, that’s a very popular cliché for speed.”

He then turned to the Australian who was contemplating his reply.

“Well, out at my dad’s ranch, on the wall there’s a light switch. When you flip that switch, way out
across the pasture, the light in the barn comes on.
Yep, TURNING ON A LIGHT is the fastest thing I can think of.”

The interviewer was very impressed with the third answer and thought he had found his man. “It’s hard to beat the speed of light” he thought.

Turning to Eleuterio, the fourth and final man, the interviewer posed the same question.

The Pinoy replied, “Apter hering da 3 preybyus ansers, sir, et’s obyus to me dat the pastest thing is Diarrhea.”

“WHAT!?” said the interviewer, stunned by the response. The others were already giggling on their seats…

“Oh, I can expleyn, sir,” said Eleuterio. “You see, sir, da ader day my tummy was peeling bad and so I run so fast to the CR, but before I could THINK, BLINK, or TURN ON DA LIGHT, sir, I had alreydi sh*t in my pants!”

Eleuterio is now the new “Greeter” at Wal-Mart.

DesertFishing’s 30 Most Read Posts

It has been a year-round journey of silence, emptiness, boredom, inner world exploration, negotiation with cultures, and time of typing, at times with others, but mostly with myself and the Sacred that I have no idea how big is. Blogging is only a medium for exploring the bigness of God within and in the culture/s that is more or less familiar to me. The blogosphere is becoming a boundary-less arena of information and interaction. But at the end of the day, silence beckons me to go back to the fundamental question: how did this or that piece of information affect me, form me into a better person, hook me to my deepest desire to let the seed of the Sacred within grow and bear fruit? After one year of blogging, there are actually less tangible statistics to measure the growth especially in an area called spirituality because growth happens in silence, in our sleeping hours, much like the wordless rising of the sun on the east. Those growth are more inward – the joy of sharing, the boldness to get wrong, the weakness of being challenged or ignored, the consolation of being heard, the trembling before evil or fear, the lightness of living, the ecstasy of illumination, the desire to keep growing as a child heading Home. To realize that I am not alone in my desire and that there are the same desires out there curious of their names, this I suspect is why these posts are the most read.

A Grain of Desert Sand
Sunset and Diarrhea
KC Concepcion, Annabelle Rama and Simon’
About DF
Susan Boyle: Some Spiritual Morsels
Fr. Thomas H. Green, SJ: 1932-2009
Tough 10 New Blogs of 2009: Thanks to Re
President Ramon Magsaysay: Isang Pag-aal
CFC-Gawad Kalinga Split: Good News or Ba
Heavy Metal Monk
Marian Shrine Taller than the Statue of
“When I Met You” – Mother Teresa as an A
“Belo Touches My Skin. Who Touches Yours
My Christmas Wish for Tracy Isabel Borre
Among Ed Panlilio and my Hunger for a Po
Susan Boyle: A Counterculture Spirituali
Lenten Series Tips: Power of the Holy Ro
Manny Pacquiao: A Mario Lopez Interview
Want Some Breathless Moments? Pray with
Welcome/Dadjon/Tuloy Po
Bishop Ite Jimenez of Butuan Retires
Lenten Series Tips: Free Cebu Pacific Fl
Class Bibo
Owling on Novels
“Let us go over to the other side of the
Benedictine Bishop Admits He’s Gay
Arnold Clavio Unang Hirit News Blooper
D’ Fisher
How Much Did Manny Pacqiuao Earn from Hi
Pinoy Priest Cooking Show

Tough 10 Emerging Influential Blogs of 2009: Reload

I had blogged about this before that this poor desert tent has been noticed creeping in the blogosphere and is nominated by Reyna Elena. Since then, there have been weather changes in the desert that even Reyna Elena has to make some adjustment with his list. Currently, here’s the official list:

1. Dare to speak out!
2. Dear Bloggery
3. It’s Johnonymous!
4. The Struggling Blogger
5. Chocolateword
6. Desert Fishing
7. Sa labas nang Mandaluyong
8. Barrio Siete
   
9. Extra Super Special Batchoy with Egg
10. Flamindevil

Sulong mga bloggers…

Meanwhile, I have to sift through the maze of available information so I can also come up with my own list. Here they are:

1. Barrio Siete
2. Father Blogger
3. Blurosebluguy
4. Chocolate Word
5. Nortehanon
6. Dear Bloggery
7. Sandi Martin
8. WritingToExhale
9. Dare to Speak Out
10. Emilayskie

Way to go mga kapatid…

This project is made possible through the effort of Ms. Janette Toral and the following sponsors:

Absolute Traders, My Brute Cheats, Business Summaries, Fitness Advantage Club, Events and Corporate Video, Events@Work, Domiguez Marketing Communications, Red Mobile, and Blog4Reviews.com

To God be the glory!

Susan Boyle, NBA, and Freebies: Losses and Gains

Kakaiba ang hatak ng mga awit ng kuliglig-lupa, kalabaw, uwak, agos ng ilog sa Barrio. Imbes na doon muna mamasyal sa Mall of Asia ng mga balita gaya ng PDI o Philstar, agad napadpad sa Barrio Siete ang isdang ito. Agad, isang hampas ng masamang balita – talo daw si Susan Boyle, tinalo ng Diversity na sa pakiwari ko’y ang kanilang pagsasayaw ay kayang kayang gawin din ng mga taga-Ramon Magsaysay High School. Hindi ako masyadong apektado. Sapat na sa akin ang kagaya ni Susan ang mabigyan ng halaga at magkaroon ng 100 million views sa YT. Declaring the winner is just a formality kumbaga (whooo!). Panalo na si Susan Boyle sa mga milyon-milyon nyang taga-hanga. Congratulations to everyone even for this one breakthrough from a spinster.

Heto pa, isa pang talo. Kumain ng alikabok ang koponan nina Lebron James ng Cleveland Cavaliers habang humahabol sa umaatikabo,  mas agresibo at mas kapanteng laro ng Orlando Magic na pinangunahan ng mala-O’Neal na si Dwight Howard. What can I say – James remains one of the best players in the NBA playoff, naging kahanay nya si Jabbar at Jordan in most consecutive games scoring more than 25 points per game. So, it’s the familiar Lakers in the Finals against the Magic who has not been to the championship since 1995. Great games guys!

—————————————————————-

Total pasukan na, hirit ko na rin tong mga freebies. Baka naman akala ng iba si Gabo, lagi na lang si Gabo ang nalalathala. Heto, may freebie galing Adarna House, isang publishing company ng mga aklat. Nangungumbida silang mag-nominate ng mga paaralan mapa day care center, elementary public school, o barangay reading center. Magbibigay sila ng mga quality reading materials every month from June to December this year sa sinumang nominees na kaaya-aya ang mga proposal sa pag-promote ng culture of reading sa kani-kanilang paaralan. Sige, grab natin to. Baka i-nominate ko yung Mabuhay Elementary School, school ng mga kapatid ko. For full information on this project, you can visit their site here.

Sa mga nakaligta sa balitang ito, heto, another freebie from PGMA: “One town, one scholar” program:

“The implementation of the program takes effect this June with 1,500 scholars receiving a grant for a four-year or five-year college degree program including free tuition, transportation and living allowance not exceeding P15,000 per semester for 2009-2010 and every year thereafter.

The scholar, however, must pass the state college or university’s entrance examination.”

Kaya lang, tapos na ang deadline ng application, screening and selection, hehe – March 1 to April 15.

———————————————-

Heto pa, isa pang freebie kung hindi ka nakatira sa East Timor o Denmark:

“Las Piñas Mayor Vergel Aguilar is urging the city’s public high school graduates to avail themselves of the free college education program offered by the city government.

Aguilar said graduates may enroll at the newly established Dr. Filemon C. Aguilar Information Technology Training Institute, where 2,000 full scholarship slots will be made available to qualified students this school year.

Qualified scholars may enroll in courses like web development, graphic design and animation, and networking professional and programming.“

Mga taga-Barrio Siete, wag na munang mag-react. Dadagdagan din daw nila eventually ng social climbing course haha.