tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-211304532024-03-12T22:57:36.652-07:00come leap into this compost heap~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ OUTPOSTS FOR A HOST OF VISITATIONS, INCLUDING SLEEPWALKERS AND STALKERS IN SEARCH OF INVITATIONSMichael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.comBlogger116125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-64074342166269749152008-11-25T15:44:00.000-08:002008-11-25T15:53:38.875-08:00This blog has moved to "Run the Rays" (www.brewingmyke.blogspot.com)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFtxaaxXCLQ4nmDg-Jcw6XexPSxQh1DPq2nktUH2j_nguxp_42ycKOy2qWs2BzAjm3IOsf754Orvpipc0U3qD6LflsXnaCPd4xKdt08aZ-i6sUuBhmS6iWCyb9iqTwjvLwBffpg/s1600-h/2500824003_444f3fe5c5_m.jpeg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272747473350960098" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 234px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 220px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFtxaaxXCLQ4nmDg-Jcw6XexPSxQh1DPq2nktUH2j_nguxp_42ycKOy2qWs2BzAjm3IOsf754Orvpipc0U3qD6LflsXnaCPd4xKdt08aZ-i6sUuBhmS6iWCyb9iqTwjvLwBffpg/s320/2500824003_444f3fe5c5_m.jpeg" border="0" /></a> <strong><span style="font-size:180%;color:#660000;"><em>T</em></span></strong><span style="color:#666600;">he more blogs change, the more they remain... Still here, but I hope we'd see each other more often </span><a href="http://www.brewingmyke.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size:180%;color:#660000;"><strong>there</strong></span></a> <span style="color:#666600;">for my latest posts.</span><br /><div></div><br /><div></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-57308872295074318432008-10-27T10:18:00.000-07:002008-10-27T10:27:21.603-07:00From here to there: Leaping into a sleepwalker's runaway romp to a brighter spot<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxFroX0-DtQ3GiYAH6G0BABNsk6KDA_CpOhI6wmK1nlvr1bBooiwrqrRylNvO2Zb-r6PBZqY0mMb6NkrpVDSLCIyBwTP_ZVCt5LYhqx1PAnAca4L2OEBNRH50hTpyvhRQWmn29QQ/s1600-h/Picture+047.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261886352685291042" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 237px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxFroX0-DtQ3GiYAH6G0BABNsk6KDA_CpOhI6wmK1nlvr1bBooiwrqrRylNvO2Zb-r6PBZqY0mMb6NkrpVDSLCIyBwTP_ZVCt5LYhqx1PAnAca4L2OEBNRH50hTpyvhRQWmn29QQ/s320/Picture+047.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">O</span></strong>nly thing constant, as the cliche attests, is change. And yet it remains the same, dear visitor, as this site forks into another path en route to a brighter spot. Come on in, see you <strong><a href="http://www.brewingmyke.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size:180%;color:#990000;">here</span></a></strong></span><span style="font-size:180%;color:#990000;">.</span></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-38972437472916333162008-05-15T10:18:00.000-07:002008-05-21T13:33:00.106-07:00Because Lapu-Lapu is neither good only as a fish stew nor a lonely statue<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje7S7LFwC2ZJ8aKrl84kkg2fBrBkovkBRCfodLl4i4AJlniJhEcaatNzrJv3DNQE74i-bQJauBoVv3BYOxHTEpCSKaeqgY7ja_iUIgb20oe0o-pKSn7D-83hOm9MktdByYuk6SwA/s1600-h/lapu-lapuBAGSIK.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200657439672370834" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje7S7LFwC2ZJ8aKrl84kkg2fBrBkovkBRCfodLl4i4AJlniJhEcaatNzrJv3DNQE74i-bQJauBoVv3BYOxHTEpCSKaeqgY7ja_iUIgb20oe0o-pKSn7D-83hOm9MktdByYuk6SwA/s320/lapu-lapuBAGSIK.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">Y</span></strong>ou may take any true-blooded Cebuano out of the ground beneath his feet, but there's no taking away the homebound rhythm of his heartbeat. Wherever he may be, regardless how distant his corner under the sky may be and no matter if his mouth reeks and turns sloppy with the staleness of nostalgia in this age of diaspora, his tongue will always be tattooed with the taste of earth.<br /><br />Recenly, I created an online hub--a sort of homecoming spot, a melting pot--for creative writers in Cebuano who've been riding the ripples toward the four winds in search of the so-called greener pastures. In strange lands, the ear keens for familiar voices that may be all we will ever need to hear our inner selves in the face of the goblin called globalization, to reclaim and remind ourselves who we were, to begin with, and who we will always be. To go far in the world, all we really need is to stay rooted, no matter the uncertain loam of elsewhere we've chosen to raise our stakes into.<br /><br />Thus <strong><a href="http://www.balaybalakasoy.blogspot.com/">Kabisdak</a></strong> (<em>Kalihokan sa Bisdak nga Katitikan</em>) is born, out loud with something like a battlecry against the cold-blooded spawn of alienation spelled triple in scarlet letters: KKK (<em>kalaay, kalimot, kamingaw</em>). In the face of distance and displacement, may <strong><a href="http://www.balaybalakasoy.blogspot.com/">Kabisdak</a></strong> be a way as well for us to touch base with the<em> magsusulat</em> who choose to anchor the flight of imagination in the native shore. Our common ground. Our mainland of memory in the globe-embracing ocean of our saying and singing.<br /><br /><em>Na hala, dapiton ko kamo ngadto sa balayan sa </em><strong><a href="http://www.balaybalakasoy.blogspot.com/">Kabisdak</a></strong><em>. Ablihi lang ang ganghaan pinaagi sa pagtuktok-tuplok ning maong luna</em>: </span><a href="http://www.balaybalakasoy.blogspot.com/"><span style="color:#666600;"><strong>www.balaybalakasoy.blogspot.com</strong></span></a> </div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-28654194823263323192008-05-13T09:30:00.000-07:002008-05-13T09:51:44.644-07:00candles for china<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuj09KEV9Vzm3x2OITw4dHFFDKPhS2K0hpCRSrh6F_3iV-1EO5xZ0m2E356aLWim1Y_WCehEpw6yIGP7QC9tVvCQh5Pwv21KawwqIWcgPqpjVhKaXj0tgSjglnsJo_sQPe9cyVRg/s1600-h/candles.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199904458890937938" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuj09KEV9Vzm3x2OITw4dHFFDKPhS2K0hpCRSrh6F_3iV-1EO5xZ0m2E356aLWim1Y_WCehEpw6yIGP7QC9tVvCQh5Pwv21KawwqIWcgPqpjVhKaXj0tgSjglnsJo_sQPe9cyVRg/s320/candles.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#666600;"> <span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>A</strong></span>nd then came the end. Too sudden and mind-boggling to comprehend.</span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">To make a long story no shorter than an epitaph, here's the dispatch: "The toll of the dead and missing soared as rescue workers dug through flattened schools and homes on Tuesday in a desperate attempt to find survivors of China's worst earthquake in three decades. The death toll exceeded 12,000 in Sichuan province alone, and 18,645 were still buried in debris in the city of Mianyang, near the epicenter of Monday's massive, 7.9-magnitude quake."<br /></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">It could happen as well to us, God forbid. What else do we know? </span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">Here's one certainty, according to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing." God bless all the grief-struck in China. And for the rest of us who, under our fragile place under the bell, can't tell for whom it tolls next. </span>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-55513930057908166392008-05-10T00:54:00.000-07:002008-05-10T03:05:05.208-07:00ever again, all about her<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2rINDAech5Q4S075Vo-7wZSvLqCU50meyltCr-bzJ6cGiUDFidSJNV6Trb3NwLTpd8uHJfaUg6hBflUVbf8KqtozY1fUF5oQNQKgNm1cRJpiKC54UiNIHQSmdCG_p6WuVHhUh0w/s1600-h/mother.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5198686421844648834" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 204px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 266px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2rINDAech5Q4S075Vo-7wZSvLqCU50meyltCr-bzJ6cGiUDFidSJNV6Trb3NwLTpd8uHJfaUg6hBflUVbf8KqtozY1fUF5oQNQKgNm1cRJpiKC54UiNIHQSmdCG_p6WuVHhUh0w/s320/mother.jpg" width="226" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#666600;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#666600;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#666600;"><span style="font-size:180%;color:#666600;"><strong>N</strong></span>o contest, us fathers are no match to our kids' mothers. We have no wombs, to begin with, and most of us can only endure the sloppy shape of never-ending pregnancy borne out of all that booze and sloth. No matter if our kids fancy us to be their own Superman, it's often their mothers they run to out of their scraped knees and even when they get circumcised or crazed and dazed about their first monthly period. </span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">Not that I'm complaining. See, I myself confess there's no outgrowing whom I owe the privilege of coming out of her womb. She whose frail frame has absorbed the usual burden, more a matter of choice than necessity every mother worth her milk, birthmark, or wrinkles has become--the stereotype of sacrifice.</span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">My Mama Violeta, veritably nothing out of the ordinary. She who makes any grateful child graceful for simplifying the complicated choreography or stunt of selflessness only because she renders it all--like the lady being sawed inside a magician's box--so easy to see but tough to live up to: tenderness, patience, resilience. (My mother, who finished only grade one, could not read and would only wince at these words, these squiggles of abstractions she steeled me to come to terms with when she inspired me to read, write, read, write as if my life depended on it.)</span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgl4cJNgEFIL7szDuyXu_Dk_SXctVtaQd_Rv86wtEwBz8tzodzl1onD5-ZufGOZrPfqLCrzImqaMSYy-78-mkqXnTsNSVMP6Qc_7jO9Yj5qIhFiOXQzGhWjf8aolqMm6LVFXeGJA/s1600-h/volver.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5198686889996084114" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgl4cJNgEFIL7szDuyXu_Dk_SXctVtaQd_Rv86wtEwBz8tzodzl1onD5-ZufGOZrPfqLCrzImqaMSYy-78-mkqXnTsNSVMP6Qc_7jO9Yj5qIhFiOXQzGhWjf8aolqMm6LVFXeGJA/s320/volver.jpg" border="0" /></a>Hands down, no matter how low we fall, misfortune is not so miserable as long as we have our mothers to call and cry our hearts for when it hurts. Indeed, wretched becomes the world left orphaned or deserted by mothers (or, worse, haunted by the reincarnation of Joan Crawford from <em>Mommie Dearest).</em></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">How far some mothers go for the sake of their children? Spare me some feminist polemics or further bleeding-heart blather. Consider and see, instead, what Pedro Almodovar shows in his feast of a film, </span><a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/movies/03volv.html?ref=movies"><strong><em><span style="color:#990000;">Volver</span></em></strong></a><span style="color:#666600;"><strong><em>.</em></strong> Yes, there's no magic like mother. </span></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-80906316492848623322008-05-06T18:54:00.000-07:002008-05-06T20:08:33.787-07:00Can we hold a candle to the dark wind?<span style="color:#666600;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">S</span></strong>taggering, the blow of statistics after a cyclone scourged Myanmar. Consider what the locals call an unprecedented nightmare: 22,500 dead so far and 41,000 people still missing.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAoxZhY4cQiZgdSf7RQKEY5eCn6dND6n3CJUY42B5f3goG3DyI8Cdhlb3IXbDIa71E_PwUi7wu4Dwo2oMKbefhGUVOTHkC_XmM37anNGDf37RJfQItYjLlPIC_c6AOBVI3mKl-Q/s1600-h/candle.jpg"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197455951706699426" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="362" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAoxZhY4cQiZgdSf7RQKEY5eCn6dND6n3CJUY42B5f3goG3DyI8Cdhlb3IXbDIa71E_PwUi7wu4Dwo2oMKbefhGUVOTHkC_XmM37anNGDf37RJfQItYjLlPIC_c6AOBVI3mKl-Q/s320/candle.jpg" width="285" border="0" /></span></strong></a>Last week, death and destruction also mades headlines as tornadoes whirled through the heartland of America. </span><span style="color:#666600;">Just another dire reminder of our vulnerability against nature as our ravaged planet alerts us once more with its recurrent distressed call. </span><span style="color:#666600;">Are we listening? Doesn't what happened in the <em>Day After Tomorrow</em> ring a bell? If we still think the worst is the stuff of movies only, we're in for some rough reality check. </span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">Hope floats, yes, and may it stay that way a little longer than the glaciers and polar caps in the shiftscape of Antartica.<br /></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">Happy endings? It's up to us, really. Or so dares another documentary in the wake of </span><a href="http://www.an-inconvenient-truth.com/"><strong><span style="color:#666600;"><em><span style="color:#663333;">An</span> <span style="color:#663333;">Incovenient Truth</span></em></span><span style="color:#663333;">.</span></strong></a><span style="color:#666600;"> If what's rendered loud and clear in <em>The 11th Hour</em> are any indication, we have more than enough reason to pray what we see isn't w</span><span style="color:#666600;">hat we now get: </span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"><span style="color:#666600;"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7IBG2V98IBY&hl=" width="425" height="355" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed></span></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="color:#666600;"></span><span style="color:#666600;"></span><span style="color:#666600;"></span>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-76953809184233771062008-05-05T00:21:00.000-07:002008-05-05T00:56:11.020-07:00Bottoms up, or what's outrageously over the top?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJoklklYFXNPKbQKBNfMdwNDWbMzo8ViICX9cRalT2ds_QfpvssDwjONdwSB2d2NFnPhWU23lrMjMjgVMq-bWD6U4LlueVoWQLo_83Ad0TJx3B2sb7juBymZ8l1vC752btqdTGng/s1600-h/toilet.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196794479498475090" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJoklklYFXNPKbQKBNfMdwNDWbMzo8ViICX9cRalT2ds_QfpvssDwjONdwSB2d2NFnPhWU23lrMjMjgVMq-bWD6U4LlueVoWQLo_83Ad0TJx3B2sb7juBymZ8l1vC752btqdTGng/s320/toilet.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div><div><span style="color:#996633;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">S</span></strong>hit hits the fan when fact proves stranger than fiction. No end to the utterly unthinkable, certainly. Hang on, handy as always is the stunt of suspending disbelief.<br /><br />About the lower depths some men often descend into, here's a reprint of my regular column, "<em>So To Speak</em>," published in the op-ed pages of <a href="http://sunstar.com.ph/"><strong>Sun.Star Cebu</strong> </a>(29 April 2008):</span><br /><br /></div><div></div><div><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Loo life</span></strong><br /><br /></div><div><span style="color:#666600;">WHO does not give a rat’s ass and wish devoutly to avoid--simply because it does not sit well with us-- a headache on top of a hemorrhoid?<br /><br />Sweat ourselves shitless. Thus, we do sometimes when confronted, if not confounded, with the manure called human nature. Surreal, how things happen to some people the way they do.<br /><br />Talk about dumping logic into the loo, and hardly anything can be more utterly absurd than the recent report about a 35-year-old woman in Kansas who got stuck in the lavatory for—hold your breath—two years. So much so that some parts of her butt and the backside of her thighs have leached like second skin to the toilet seat. The police who came to rescue her had to carry “the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital,” narrated the news.<br /><br /></span><span style="color:#666600;">One of her neighbors, who had not seen her for the last six years, could only shake his head. “I don’t think anybody can make any sense out of it,” he said. But her boyfriend deemed nothing strange. “It just kind of happened one day; she went in and had been in there a little while, the next time it was a little longer.” Tried to coax her out of hiding and fed and bathed and brought her clothes, he did. Or so he claimed “an otherwise normal relationship, except it all happened in the bathroom.”<br /><br />Vouching for her phobia of being seen in public after she allegedly endured a traumatic childhood, he figured “like it was a safe place for her.”<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7UoIEptXqGDerQjskSWBM9eHIT_XvdPatalzRTs313f1TJSmQuAzqb_3NwwjRhWC5TJiL-lDRSypFhHpwzTXP2Lq_PaYAdk6DHH0vIaT06IiSSFb5MiwJepXJhBk5fqXwdLU1Zg/s1600-h/elephant_on_a_can[1].JPG"><span style="color:#666600;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196794655592134242" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="283" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7UoIEptXqGDerQjskSWBM9eHIT_XvdPatalzRTs313f1TJSmQuAzqb_3NwwjRhWC5TJiL-lDRSypFhHpwzTXP2Lq_PaYAdk6DHH0vIaT06IiSSFb5MiwJepXJhBk5fqXwdLU1Zg/s320/elephant_on_a_can%5B1%5D.JPG" width="320" border="0" /></span></a>Ah, the idea of a comfort room. Now that’s stretching the imagination down the sphincter and doesn’t hold even urine or hogwash for those who live in some 18,000 households in Cebu City. They, reportedly, “don’t have access to sanitary toilet facilities and 11,400 others that don’t have access to safe potable water yet.”<br /><br />That doesn’t sit pretty for those preening bubbly in the mouth about the beauty of living in the so-called “Queen City of the South.” Fact is stranger than fiction when ordure flies in the face of daydream. No less perplexing than a Sphinx’s riddle for the city mayor who can’t figure out why Cebu—ostensibly one of the “Top 10 Asian Cities of the Future”—ended up a laggard and made it only in the bottom spot in a business magazine’s list of 20 “Best Places to Live” in the country.<br /><br />Now that’s hardly the stuff of rocket science when the dispatch comes like a kick in the butt of City Hall officials: “Some had to share toilets with their neighbors. In the mountain barangays, some households do with dug-up holes as their makeshift toilet facility, while some still defecate on old newspapers or plastic bags to be thrown away somewhere.” Less bothersome if only Cebu had as much carefree space as the prairies of Kansas, with more than enough breeze to blow away and wipe out the reek of recklessness.<br /><br />No wonder my nose, now stuffed with allergy against the pollen-filled scent of spring but still runny with a Cebucentric sensibility, gets perennially itchy with infestation of disbelief. The ooze and whiff of outrage. Or shame steeped in intimations of doom. And it’s not only about a woman’s butt wedged too long in the toilet seat, or the YouTube post straight from a surgery room--rowdy with chuckles and celebratory yelps--about a gay man’s rectum jammed with a bottle of perfume. </span></div></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-91700839165477815682008-04-30T01:49:00.000-07:002008-05-02T04:02:20.120-07:00Let there be library<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaHhC7A8GPRgtoRIOM_cuMk-3Ec9ZRdFT5cklF_lS7sVGjkcyZIR4P4pI-TyTljKbMP38aN4v8_o_6RnEYQJdRrG5-UKAUaEryjvwxpVvWz8PCXAWfICxqK0vtbHSlBx6b2oBkOQ/s1600-h/Bookish.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195734060663027010" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaHhC7A8GPRgtoRIOM_cuMk-3Ec9ZRdFT5cklF_lS7sVGjkcyZIR4P4pI-TyTljKbMP38aN4v8_o_6RnEYQJdRrG5-UKAUaEryjvwxpVvWz8PCXAWfICxqK0vtbHSlBx6b2oBkOQ/s320/Bookish.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="color:#666600;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">W</span></strong>here on earth do angels delight to hang out? Not inside cathedrals, no! As shown in my most cherished film, <em>Wings of Desire</em>, nowhere else are angels nearer to heaven than under the roof of a library. How they tarry and eavesdrop where silence hums in chorus with the constellation of words between the covers, hovering around readers.<br /><br />With the recent celebration of the <strong>National Library Week</strong> (April 13-19, 2008), here's a curtsy to retired Maine librarian Glenna Nowell as she piques public curiosity on books.<br /><br />Since 1988, Nowell has been writing to celebrities (presidents, actors, athletes and a couple of United Nations secretaries general) to ask and take note of their favorite page-turners. “I was looking for a hook that would get people to read a book,” explains Nowell, who wishes to steer literate folks toward stuffs beyond the bestsellers.<br /><br />Check out Nowell’s </span><a href="http://www.gpl.lib.me.us/wrw.htm"><span style="color:#666600;"><strong><span style="color:#663300;">Celebrity Reading List</span></strong> </span></a><span style="color:#666600;">over the years and take your cue on “<strong>Who Reads What?</strong>” </span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"><br /></span>~~~ * ~~~<br /><span style="color:#666600;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8iK_CupLT4luDDGx2yJBgjroWL0UMeP-2-5eqC6vWPbNsFD3tC_QPAtTpWf48qbJvHgC_UX1Qrlzd6Ts1VJMT6JQbOiROqtcZPOInQrFXYYw0Csi2RF46rXiv4B7rk9w59IOfWQ/s1600-h/cakepoe.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195731827280033058" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 226px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 278px" height="244" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8iK_CupLT4luDDGx2yJBgjroWL0UMeP-2-5eqC6vWPbNsFD3tC_QPAtTpWf48qbJvHgC_UX1Qrlzd6Ts1VJMT6JQbOiROqtcZPOInQrFXYYw0Csi2RF46rXiv4B7rk9w59IOfWQ/s200/cakepoe.jpg" width="188" border="0" /></a>"S</span></strong>ome books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”<br /></span><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyw0NTzoiEGZ8Om45vURMCI4STaMyiMEVueyoVe65RPmsu4zImzoCzjzhfYoykaEb9nZzbqrkoFK8-KTI5IVMGqJTYWihsYG_2yUh2aHeRkmzpLXCH-ssiqn-mQv2P_FdT-GSGQg/s1600-h/cakepoe.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyw0NTzoiEGZ8Om45vURMCI4STaMyiMEVueyoVe65RPmsu4zImzoCzjzhfYoykaEb9nZzbqrkoFK8-KTI5IVMGqJTYWihsYG_2yUh2aHeRkmzpLXCH-ssiqn-mQv2P_FdT-GSGQg/s1600-h/cakepoe.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"></span></a>True to the words of Sir Francis Bacon, 27 culinary bibliophiles in Topeka, Kansas recently whipped up their imagination as sweetly as literally possible. </span><span style="color:#666600;">The cake of their creativity took the spotlight at the reception and exhibit of the annual <strong>Edible Books Festival</strong> last April 4th at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. Up for grabs were prizes for Best in Show, Most Book-Like, and Most Likely To Be Devoured that were chosen by votes from the exhibit’s audience.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyw0NTzoiEGZ8Om45vURMCI4STaMyiMEVueyoVe65RPmsu4zImzoCzjzhfYoykaEb9nZzbqrkoFK8-KTI5IVMGqJTYWihsYG_2yUh2aHeRkmzpLXCH-ssiqn-mQv2P_FdT-GSGQg/s1600-h/cakepoe.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyw0NTzoiEGZ8Om45vURMCI4STaMyiMEVueyoVe65RPmsu4zImzoCzjzhfYoykaEb9nZzbqrkoFK8-KTI5IVMGqJTYWihsYG_2yUh2aHeRkmzpLXCH-ssiqn-mQv2P_FdT-GSGQg/s1600-h/cakepoe.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"></span></a>While my kids tarried longer in front of the “<em>Cat in the Hat</em>” and <em>“Snowballs</em>” cakes, I slurped over the gothic confection patterned after Edgar Allan Poe’s “<em>The Tell-Tale Heart</em>.”<br /><br />For more pictures of the entries and the winning edible books, check out the photo album in the <strong><a href="http://www.tscpl.org/"><span style="color:#663300;">library’s website</span></a></strong></span><span style="color:#663300;">.</span>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-69857500973740175832008-04-30T00:43:00.000-07:002008-04-30T01:45:16.024-07:00Who in the world are we?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcAS7SHueu33kiuqUXmD-ZJs4o9D0WXMJ4d7yIPkwquyrakCrN7cKmx0HJ38Ub1GILt-rBoqoR7dF2GXfpM8OExZTjdmFk0-4d2yggqLBgQGcaiBS5bBNy7FI-NzmLD2TH3f3CfA/s1600-h/cyberbully.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194954403839718114" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcAS7SHueu33kiuqUXmD-ZJs4o9D0WXMJ4d7yIPkwquyrakCrN7cKmx0HJ38Ub1GILt-rBoqoR7dF2GXfpM8OExZTjdmFk0-4d2yggqLBgQGcaiBS5bBNy7FI-NzmLD2TH3f3CfA/s320/cyberbully.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="color:#996633;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>W</strong></span>e're all alone, avers a song. But now that connectivity is just at the tip of our fingertips in this Age of the Internet, isolation takes a common and ironic turn.<br /><br />Along that line goes the gist of one of my recent columns "<em>So To Speak</em>" in the op-ed page of </span><a href="http://www.sunstar.com.ph/"><span style="color:#996633;"><strong>Sun.Star Cebu</strong> </span></a><span style="color:#996633;">(April 24, 2008). Hereunder is the reprint:</span><br /><br /><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><div></div><div><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Sharing our story</span></strong><br /><br /></div><div><span style="color:#666600;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#666600;">BLOOD boiled up to their eyes. Upset by the ugly comments about them in their classmate's blog, eight high school students in Florida are now facing charges after they reportedly battered the poor young lady and left her almost unrecognizable.<br /><br />Such blind rage, indeed, after they felt belittled in her MySpace page. What an oversight for her as well to have raised an eyebrow, looking for trouble by seeing other people in a bad light. In the netherworld of “nada” where one is degraded or rendered insignificant, invisible.<br /><br />Who wants to be written off into the ignominy of anonymity? Not those who admitted to have Googled themselves at some point in their lives. They comprise almost half of the respondents (47 percent) in a recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that aims "to produce reports that explore the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life."<br /><br />One's sense of self, in this age of Net surfing, can either sink or stay above water. "I Google myself to see what kinds of waves my life is making in the world," affirms travel writer Frank Bures in the latest edition of Poets and Writers Magazine. "Isn't that why writers, artists, and other egomaniacs obsess over the Amazon ranking of their book, the comments on their blogs, the hits on their websites?"<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiF4oQZvuHrEJhMcGV9A2323DxO1ZbMUR2k3HGeOeGPlLrMoCdbwqQBk_2-_NHH7p96aD-vnGUPx1Kna9esIInzfif5tdqp41WdCyMJsuHQqVqrmfMSYHN43-nCF3CGs2x9_YOVw/s1600-h/forgetfulness.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194954884876055282" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiF4oQZvuHrEJhMcGV9A2323DxO1ZbMUR2k3HGeOeGPlLrMoCdbwqQBk_2-_NHH7p96aD-vnGUPx1Kna9esIInzfif5tdqp41WdCyMJsuHQqVqrmfMSYHN43-nCF3CGs2x9_YOVw/s320/forgetfulness.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#666600;">Almost desperate, what seems an emergency to make our presences felt—upending our universal isolation---in the grand scheme of technology. In this digital world, the democracy of bloggers and YouTube uploaders means never having to say sorry. Particularly in a pell-mell attempts at autobiography, a puny and slapdash binge at shaping some moments—no matter how trivial, or utterly devoid of larger-than-life hallmarks of heroism—against the flux called history.<br /><br />Never mind if one can't cast one's words in gold with the touch of a Resil Mojares, who laments the lack of memoirs and autobiographies. "Since people do not leave behind written accounts of their lives, we miss out on a lot of the personal, human details of how larger histories are made," explains Mojares at the book launching of "<em>Shapes of Memory</em>," the biography of Cebuano labor leader and trade unionist Democrito T. Mendoza.<br /><br />Sweat the small stuff, baby. "Little things can lead you to big events…," attests Mendoza, explaining the necessity "to write the details of his life…to encourage young people to face challenges and be ready to risk everything to achieve a better life." For a broad base of contacts, Mendoza might try to open a Multiply account.<br /><br />Uploading himself at YouTube for a wider audience of his inspiring tale, however, might be a strain for him. He won't stand a chance, no matter how noble he is, compared to the almost extra-terrestrial dimensions of human condition shown in the unlimited scope of its videos.<br /><br />It's where one can spot, for instance, a perfume canister stuck into someone's rectum. And how the victim ends up literally the butt of jokes, sprawled in the surgery room as the cameras zoom into the twilight zone of his anatomy. Behold the sharp edges of laughter cutting him to pieces, piercing us who witness into complicity. So much for a shared story. </span></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-22490325690450340622008-04-26T00:16:00.000-07:002008-04-30T01:43:21.783-07:00Give us this day our daily verse<strong><span style="font-size:180%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi81vECmaSPwFkhSrymclPX5UxPe-k_OVK3r23qbECLGLQPGAdW1HlT66vpLuglp_qGgmF21Hh4dG3UE-xHmZKgMHu9-QWW5a3XzhgHCtzlQVw5HbT9nQcWi29AL11ZtqZT-vGG4Q/s1600-h/doggone.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194224781584365810" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 278px" height="467" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi81vECmaSPwFkhSrymclPX5UxPe-k_OVK3r23qbECLGLQPGAdW1HlT66vpLuglp_qGgmF21Hh4dG3UE-xHmZKgMHu9-QWW5a3XzhgHCtzlQVw5HbT9nQcWi29AL11ZtqZT-vGG4Q/s400/doggone.jpg" width="300" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#666600;">R</span></span></strong><span style="color:#666600;">eality bites for those rabid about reading. The news, particulary. The stuff of headlines, the wounds we have to lick, the bloodhound smell of fear and loathing--all the stomach-churning facts never go prosaic.<br /><br /></span><div><span style="color:#666600;">How to deal with a deeper hunger? The French poet Charles Baudelaire replies, tongue in cheek: <strong>"Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry." </strong><br /></span></div><br /><p><span style="color:#666600;">For those in dire need of words as soul food, so to speak, watch and listen to this video inspired by the poem titled "<strong>Eating Poetry</strong>" by Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Strand:</span><span style="color:#336666;"> </span></p><br /><div><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ClzzuHio4WY&hl=" width="425" height="355" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-87593985713688723402008-04-25T22:51:00.000-07:002008-04-30T18:48:04.537-07:00Past food<div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLpnHBSYrNq1R1wsDwuhryk6IH1DYWptla53eWNrXg0wNqY6toG1lzfUZXbfdiAdYKPnrfTx2eYnsH-xSpYcIhXuqNhSPQkEQNx21fgfpjBAXKHUlPzx4iVVsMRZ6lLCBt5UjWjw/s1600-h/Rice1.jpg"><span style="color:#330000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195218892220773202" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 221px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 261px" height="180" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLpnHBSYrNq1R1wsDwuhryk6IH1DYWptla53eWNrXg0wNqY6toG1lzfUZXbfdiAdYKPnrfTx2eYnsH-xSpYcIhXuqNhSPQkEQNx21fgfpjBAXKHUlPzx4iVVsMRZ6lLCBt5UjWjw/s320/Rice1.jpg" width="221" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#330000;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">U</span></strong>nappetizing, what's often up in the air lately. Even the so-called land of plenty is getting jittery, with two major American bulk retailers--Sam's Club and Costco--reportedly "rationing the sale of large bags of rice to consumers amid a growing global food crisis marked by skyrocketing prices and heavy pressure on demand. "<br /><br />Last week, Sam's Club--a chain owned by retail giant Wal-Mart-- announced a "temporary cap," placing a limit of four 20-pound (nine-kilogram) bags per person for imported jasmine, basmati and long grain white rices as a "precautionary step."<br /><br />If America is bracing for some belt-tightening measure, imagine how some people elsewhere in the world are putting up with an empty stomach. As a Cebuano phrase puts it, "</span><span style="color:#330000;"><em>pasmo hasta bitok."<br /></em><br />Hereunder is a reprint of one of my recent column "<em>So To Speak</em>" in the op-ed page of </span><a href="http://www.sunstar.com.ph/"><strong><span style="color:#330000;">Sun.Star Cebu </span></strong></a><span style="color:#330000;">(April 15, 2008):<br /></span><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Wish Upon the Starved</span><br /></strong><br /></div><div><span style="color:#666600;">WHEREVER poverty prevails, America is a finger-licking fantasy. Thus out on their limbs go the dreamers in droves—and not a few would go as far as to swallow swords—to have their fill of the “land of milk and honey.”<br /><br />That sounds like the end of a bedtime story, true. Especially when it goes against the grain of current events where rice, or the lack of it, has become grist for the mill.<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk_bD8zjroZmOuzHZ7-X7wSOQpL8TQUGOVAWBKaiN4RtqDc1g7gf-J-vgqrOdnD0oaVPxf73kmxt2Jp4fIpbpbpoPHRds-o6z7f4uflEeYoIEKNTeU-gGWg_PNet0zhbIg6zMEyw/s1600-h/Food1.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195219111264105314" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 192px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 234px" height="200" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk_bD8zjroZmOuzHZ7-X7wSOQpL8TQUGOVAWBKaiN4RtqDc1g7gf-J-vgqrOdnD0oaVPxf73kmxt2Jp4fIpbpbpoPHRds-o6z7f4uflEeYoIEKNTeU-gGWg_PNet0zhbIg6zMEyw/s200/Food1.jpg" width="186" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#666600;">Toss restless in the dark as empty innards turn. So goes the rabble roused by the nightmare in Haiti, where the prime minister got himself booted out to appease a famished populace protesting against soaring prices of food.<br /><br />Mouthfuls of rage also echo in Egypt and Bangladesh where dissent have turned deadly over the same intestinal issue. A worldwide trend, explain the experts who see “a widening gulf between those who can afford to eat and those who cannot.” It looms over much of the world’s population now reeling under the specter of climate change and escalating fuel prices, according to the United Nations.<br /><br />Simply one plus one—how the transport of food all over the world entails diesel, driving its cost up the stratosphere. Not hard to digest why not only rats are bracing to end up in the sewer, with their bellies up.<br /><br />In the Philippines and other Asian nations, superstition abounds about the deadly outcome of sleeping with a full stomach. Tongues wag hairy about a nocturnal malady allegedly caused by carbohydrates in rice—the common staple in our table—that mysteriously transmogrify into a “<em>batibat.”</em> An overweight witch-like creature in Ilocano folklore, the “<em>batibat</em>” would supposedly immobilize and suffocate the sleeping victim—mostly male—by squatting on his face.<br /><br />Clear as day, what we call “<em>bangungot</em>” or “<em>urom</em><strong>”</strong> has become too real as the rice crisis haunts the country. Will the protest-plagued leadership weather another thumb-biting spell of insecurity?<br /><br />To spare the people from the “gut-wrenching pain of hunger under these very difficult times,” Cebu City Councilor Edgardo Labella has proposed “a resolution for the creation of an anti-hunger task force to expedite the implementation of the government’s hunger mitigation programs.”<br /><br />But where the rule of law is often sidetracked, how far will state initiatives to distribute crop goods to urban areas and metropolis go?<br /><br />Here in America, now in the throes of an economic recession, there’s also a lot to bellyache against the domino effect vis-à-vis the escalating costs of energy, housing, health insurance and grocery items. According to the US Department of Agriculture, 38 million Americans—13.9 million of them children—live in households at risk of hunger.<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjITwdi_Du_aFsapDOrceBX-rxVTCic6YdYrJlICJ3oWI8r26p_0RINQj32zg1iCRV45085pF6C-yjqiHJD_TxhXgBjTvyPvdLUBHnrwSvyeRLgjHd3FL5tYIuKqGEkrVXiz0eQjQ/s1600-h/Food.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195219424796717938" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjITwdi_Du_aFsapDOrceBX-rxVTCic6YdYrJlICJ3oWI8r26p_0RINQj32zg1iCRV45085pF6C-yjqiHJD_TxhXgBjTvyPvdLUBHnrwSvyeRLgjHd3FL5tYIuKqGEkrVXiz0eQjQ/s200/Food.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#666600;">Look how it renders the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), a national nonprofit organization, in full steam “to improve public policies and community partnerships to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the United States.” On behalf of those who need help to stave off starvation—the elderly, the unemployed, low-income workers, the ill, and the homeless—FRAC has been providing information to strengthen federal nutrition programs, like the distribution of food stamps.<br /><br />And so, if it’s any consolation to those yearning to flee from Third World reality, often deemed doggone, hunger is also a persistent stalker here in dreamland. </span></div></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-91158178272382201462008-04-17T22:28:00.000-07:002008-04-18T01:34:52.920-07:00Six years of the rest of our days<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFzah2qM0Ry2-hHAM_SfOf9uQvWiTbNd4dpRaiEWcFgfm2GtJWNQyk9caN1PAmF0WXb2EBGk6ulB7rRisNRxPGylQDHhRXnWm-s8i6valx4ymMVZIH8vpOpDxmAmEzAnQTBw8Glw/s1600-h/Sheila+431.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190499960330389058" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFzah2qM0Ry2-hHAM_SfOf9uQvWiTbNd4dpRaiEWcFgfm2GtJWNQyk9caN1PAmF0WXb2EBGk6ulB7rRisNRxPGylQDHhRXnWm-s8i6valx4ymMVZIH8vpOpDxmAmEzAnQTBw8Glw/s400/Sheila+431.jpg" border="0" /></a> <span style="color:#663300;">THERE'S NO perfect marriage, true. Sex is not always sensational. The piles on the kitchen sink and the trash can often lay more precarious and shudder faster than the tectonic shifts of one's patience. The wedding ring might as well grow fungi around one's dirty finger. Et cetera, et cetera. </span><br /><span style="color:#663300;"></span><br /><span style="color:#663300;">Then again, there's also no adventure more awesome than this: A man and a woman daring to commit themselves into a leap of faith smack into the tightrope of a balancing act, transcending their differences across the uni(que)verse of their individuality. Or through the uncertain spaces--at the edge of solitude--where two people decide <em>contra mundum</em> to belong to no one else other than the separate spheres of each other's evolving selves.</span><br /><br /><span style="color:#663300;">Theologists say we can never be at home until we become one with our God. But finding bliss, a spot under the sun of Divine Providence, is possible in the company we keep because they come to us like a cherished answer to a prayer. Like my Arlaine: wife (nagger, <em>usahay </em>:), mother of my children, lover, friend, conspirator and witness to the weather of my ever-changing sense of becoming a better version of myself each day.<br /><br />Today, in our 6th anniversary as man and wife, I can only gaze at the uncertainty of the future and whatever it takes heaven may come our way with the gratitude and hope of an open heart.<br /><br />For the time being, allow me to hum "Amen" to Luther Vandross as he sings a hymn for "<em>All The Woman I Need.</em>" Thank you, dearest Wawa.</span><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TwNj22HjVo8&hl=" width="425" height="355" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-79130244901067871242008-04-11T14:45:00.000-07:002008-04-30T00:14:31.748-07:00Forked tongues and the lip-smacking Cebuano language<span style="color:#663300;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbXSn8FvTYR0gG_e1G_CjOikooo2nfJjVO0Gi1-Ibkx1JVS4B4uQs_h9p8-MSAz1ZzytTb23oW9se0Tm9v-N1qn88rsLLtNEectzkAc0lfYSz-t5_j6aJ5unojk8nX2-QS_aKkA/s1600-h/cebuano+tongue1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188108462421976546" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbXSn8FvTYR0gG_e1G_CjOikooo2nfJjVO0Gi1-Ibkx1JVS4B4uQs_h9p8-MSAz1ZzytTb23oW9se0Tm9v-N1qn88rsLLtNEectzkAc0lfYSz-t5_j6aJ5unojk8nX2-QS_aKkA/s400/cebuano+tongue1.jpg" border="0" /></a>ON THE MATTER of my mother tongue, there's no ifs and buts. Either I wag it with the earnestness of the dispossesed rabid against the insidious infestation of forgetting, a betrayal against my birthright. Or, be struck mute by the blinding flash and haze of a colonized consciousness.<br /><br />That I also write in English is no less a privilege, yes. Yet it also cast upon this Bisdak dog the added burden of responsibity to be steadfast with the umbilical words of a vernacular on the verge of extinction. Unrelenting, after all, are the inroads of globalization and an unenlightened state policy that spawns negligence, niggardly attention and a culturally decentered outlook of this generation of native speakers.<br /><br /><em>Pastilan intawon, pagka</em>-serious! Maybe because Yoyoy Villame is dead, and Max Surban is no longer as loud as the cat in heat on the roof.<br /><br />Hereunder are variations on the Bisdak theme I wrote for my regular column, "So To Speak," in the op-ed pages of Sun.Star Cebu:<br /></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"><strong>La Vida Local and Being Vocal<br /></strong></span><br /><em>/Sun.Star Cebu, 8 April 2008/<br /></em><br /><span style="color:#666600;">KIDS say the darndest thing, concedes an eponymous American television series several years ago. But what comes out of the mouths of babes does not always disarm adults with amusement. Bile drips and foams as well from their milk-smacking lips.<br /><br />Look, for instance, at a clique of child rockers called the Naked Brothers Band. It might as well be a bomb's detonation, what they revealed at the recent 2008 Kids' Choice Awards over the cable channel Nickelodeon. Simply piercing like shrapnel in bare skin, the lyrics of their latest hit: "And I'm really tired of being treated/ Like a fool./ I don't want to go to school…You always tell me to stop/ To stop comin' around/ I can't even make/Make make no sound…."<br /><br />That struck a cringe-worthy chord, indeed, with the alleged conspiracy of third-grade classmates out "to harm or kill their teacher with a serrated steak knife." Nine pupils at Carter Elementary School in Georgia could be facing "unruly child" charges after they reportedly plotted revenge against their teacher who disciplined a girl for "standing on a chair." Did she say something that reeked of impudence, the tactless assertion of innocence?<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Ezv3vnBrhJFpQ_66AulAwJGLuyJ0jYSVM0EOSrh7ZeonX-ISvDqdd-8pLK-pE2P0cUZYHVZqwpM-0636BQz5pptK_PjoagtP-VD1PtrVrj6_Z6XOR8OTk0ZknmjTuF7sp7HrfA/s1600-h/P2021056_01.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188108750184785394" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Ezv3vnBrhJFpQ_66AulAwJGLuyJ0jYSVM0EOSrh7ZeonX-ISvDqdd-8pLK-pE2P0cUZYHVZqwpM-0636BQz5pptK_PjoagtP-VD1PtrVrj6_Z6XOR8OTk0ZknmjTuF7sp7HrfA/s400/P2021056_01.JPG" border="0" /></a>As a parent, whittling down the tongues of my two boys into timidity would be no better than bearing my neck down the chopboard. Mince no words, and mean it with due respect. Like, well, saying I look like a hobgoblin and hugging me anyway.<br /><br />May they grow up to be outspoken but neither intimidating nor insincere. And, yes, to stay true and rooted—even if their vocabulary branches out to the lush forest of other languages—to their mother tongue.<br /><br />So far, it warms the cockles inside my chest to hear my eldest son Gabriel Ollivan, a minority among his white classmates in preschool, asking ardently, "<em>Unsa'y Binisaya</em>…?" for some things he absorbs from his teacher and his books utterly awash with information and expressions of all things American. Rest assured I do as well when Golli's younger brother Raphael Gandalf, scared of "<em>agta</em>" and <em>"ungo"</em> lurking in the thicket of his two-year-old imagination, easily takes comfort with a bedtime browsing of Mother Goose rhymes no more than the lull of lisping into a medley of native memory about, among others, the "alimango sa suba, gibantog nga dili makuha" and "balay ko sa langit nagasidlak-sidlak luyo sa panganod…." Or the wisdom of "bugsay, bugsay, kiling-kiling dyutay...sa barotong gamay."<br /><br />Rock and bring it on, Bisdak! Thus I have only the best wishes for the brainchild of Cebu Provincial Board (PB) member Victor Maambong who recently sponsored a resolution for the Department of Education to prescribe "Sugbuanong Binisaya as the indispensable bridge language in teaching English and Filipino" in grade and high schools.<br /><br />Noting the dismal results of the national achievement tests and taking the cue of scientific studies, Maambong's resolution avers: "The use of the first language to bridge English and Filipino will facilitate a more efficient cognitive process in the language development of our students…," who, certainly, will find it easier to sway along the tune of Naked Brothers Band's "I Don't Want To Go To School," if they fall in the gap or in the shadow between the idea and the act.<br /><br />Getting a failing grade deserves better, indeed, than the silence of the dumb. Or the stench of cliché while invoking, "Shit," if not the four-letter word. As a matter of fact, they can be more emphatic by exclaiming, "<em>Hinampak!"</em><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Watch Your Mouth</span></strong><br /><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><em>/Sun.Star Cebu, 12 February 2008</em></span>/<br /><br />"HE SAID a bad word." So went the accusation of a little Fil-Am boy whose twang-laced tongue has been irradiated with a smattering of Cebuano words from his constant exposure at playtime with my five-year-old son. "He called me stupid, mom."<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVQn_lOqw4ZC_lMUQF0-1W9m1xQ1RvxnhHN-Sw5ebtahDfLP4Xo31Fe_HbbYrpfz1cxwdmeaYGaIS1WTnCJxHp0FoMIQUmUZs5xJZ9FNh_xqSLFYHrg5cN75nJjR2JdpuEPRCnlA/s1600-h/P2021051.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188109274170795522" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVQn_lOqw4ZC_lMUQF0-1W9m1xQ1RvxnhHN-Sw5ebtahDfLP4Xo31Fe_HbbYrpfz1cxwdmeaYGaIS1WTnCJxHp0FoMIQUmUZs5xJZ9FNh_xqSLFYHrg5cN75nJjR2JdpuEPRCnlA/s400/P2021051.JPG" border="0" /></a>Even if there are times I won't begrudge "stupid" as an apt adjective for me, my wife can swear we never use that word at home, although I'm fond of ejaculating, "<em>Bulay-og baya</em>!," if anything went out of whack. Now, where did my son get the word that whipped his friend into such distress? My disconsolate wife and I learned later that the infestation in my son's vocabulary was the latest he cottoned onto from his American classmates in pre-kindergarten.<br /><br />But what alarmed me, more than the likelihood that I might have spawned a ruffian who would grow up calling a spade a blunt spade, was that he didn't call his friend "<em>amaw</em>." Or, if he were a sharper chip off his old block, he could have stumped even Dennis the Menace with this snarl: <em>"Hungog!"</em><br /><br />What other homegrown words, even the hair-raising ones, would soon be watered down into the milk and honey of American speech?<br /><br /></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">When we flew into the heartland of America nearly a year ago, our baggage bristled with a stack utterly Bisdak—a Cebuano bible, a Jesuit-authored English-Visayan dictionary, booklets from the Cebuano Studies Center featuring a trove of riddles, proverbs, folktales and native songs as well as a slew of CDs (the discography of Yoyoy Villame and Max Surban, three volumes of Visayan Greatest Hits by various artists, Susan Fuentes' "<em>Awitnong Bahandi</em>" album and "Sine<em>-sine"</em> by Missing Filemon.) These, I hoped, would suffice to slam the intrusive clangor of dislocation out the door.<br /><br />But the new culture, with all its colors bleaching into the televised cartoons, has been unrelenting in weaning my two kids away from their mother tongue. Even if my wife and I have made it sacrosanct for our relocated household to be steeped in the stew of our vernacular, not a day passes without my youngest son blurting out, "No way!"<br /><br />Out loud, such obstinacy echoes how I feel about one Cebuano lawmaker whose brainchild in Congress now braces like a bulldozer against the dwindling wilderness of indigenous languages. If Rep. Eduardo R. Gullas (Cebu, 1st district) will have his way with House Bill 305—set to revive English as the mandatory language for teaching in all school levels—superseded becomes the Department of Education order implementing the bilingual teaching policy. Which has stunted the potentials of students to compete in the global economy, according to Gullas. His bill would correct the defects of the current education program where "learning two languages (English and Pilipino) is too much for young Filipino learners, especially the non-Tagalog speaking children." But don't impressionable minds work like a sponge? Or, to begin with, must the bilingual system be thrown with the bathwater because it has been childishly conceived and carried out by a way of teaching slightly better than baby-talk?<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU07orjJ1g0OE3XRihW8SSNQPh6shBg71aYD_p4BeiBCqEclFyOui2g36MKGDiGICheV5YTQ0JjSbJBbkzfGAVZADvDO3K46PK0mKNLJyDPGREn4IayGDolPI8GGlu-L1czWMJuA/s1600-h/cebuano+tongue.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188109527573866002" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU07orjJ1g0OE3XRihW8SSNQPh6shBg71aYD_p4BeiBCqEclFyOui2g36MKGDiGICheV5YTQ0JjSbJBbkzfGAVZADvDO3K46PK0mKNLJyDPGREn4IayGDolPI8GGlu-L1czWMJuA/s400/cebuano+tongue.jpg" border="0" /></a>If the national language — predominantly Tagalog — languishes, where does that leave the rest of the regional languages? Must progress be paid by selling what little remains of oral heritage down the river?<br /><br />First things first, suggests a study recently printed in the Jakarta Post: "Students learn English or acquire a second language more rapidly and effectively if they maintain and develop their proficiency in their mother tongue." Swords, no more than the tongue's artillery of words, are better if they are double-edged.<br /><br />Next time my son said "stupid" I would know for whom it's best suited. And I swear to add an expletive, crispier in Cebuano, for a deadlier effect.<br /><br /></span><span style="color:#666600;"></span>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-5278756624847703522008-04-11T14:21:00.000-07:002008-04-11T14:43:55.729-07:00An earful of angelsFeeling small and separate? Here's a soothing reminder from "Far Away," one of the uplifting songs of the children's choir Libera: "...Whenever I cry/ Far away and anywhere./ You hear me call when shadows fall/ your light of hope showing me the way." <br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IPQKFA3LA8I&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IPQKFA3LA8I&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-69078591540817791122008-04-02T23:54:00.001-07:002008-04-11T14:11:38.973-07:00Ode to the ordinary, an epic of simplicity<strong><span style="color:#660000;">The Radiance of Satyajit Ray's 'The Apu Trilogy' </span></strong><a href="http://mykeobenieta.multiply.com/photos/hi-res/upload/R-IcVAoKCtcAACvsX4U1"></a><br /><div><div><div><div><div><div><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU772Fe42iO34TrBXLpHCL-AvLJBbGX92EArjVHZRlkKG4FkBFLtqn6kmFBD_o2Wd90lC1Du_mjfgvYnFkb8Maq7mKFwzsnQxzDsEhjqDymEg1TKxBfh6P4B0-MOaKnJbyxPMfsQ/s1600-h/Ray.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184913801080706850" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 187px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 343px" height="343" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU772Fe42iO34TrBXLpHCL-AvLJBbGX92EArjVHZRlkKG4FkBFLtqn6kmFBD_o2Wd90lC1Du_mjfgvYnFkb8Maq7mKFwzsnQxzDsEhjqDymEg1TKxBfh6P4B0-MOaKnJbyxPMfsQ/s320/Ray.jpg" width="166" border="0" /></a>THREE is a mystical number, and cinephiles would concur thrice about the best in cinematic history. Francis Ford Copolla's <em>The Godfather</em> series. Krzysztof Kieslowski's poetic reverie on <em>White, Blue</em>, and <em>Red</em>. Peter Jackson's monumental <em>Lord of the Rings</em> saga. All have thunder and lightning all over them, the lush light of grand design, the flourish of an operatic aria. </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhfkVU6MUL9IkvnrRL-CML8DHDelXRvRa2aIDMmG-oD8BJ5VJ8JgtBzWsUJ8zeksmcJqbAAuEAi7F0X7vE6IcRt1xRZACp9svBqkJVPmrLnbkDHeT2MM-cYp7qbqnHwTlvOnLcXw/s1600-h/Ray.jpg"></a>And then there's Satyajit Ray's <em>The Apu Trilogy</em>. Unerring, almost God-like, the way it weaves a spell of beauty through scenes illumined with the randomly familiar, catching the world of its characters in the spider-web rhythms of the ordinary. No larger-than-life gestures here. No highlights of blinding virtuosity. No soaring musical score other than the simple but haunting strain of Ravi Shankar's sitar. </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;">But listen how the great Akira Kurosawa raved: "Not to have seen the cinema of Satyajit Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon... It is the kind of cinema that flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river." </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;">And so, taking Kurosawa's cue, it was with nearly erotic abandon that I went to the screening of Ray's The Apu Trilogy during a retrospective film festival at SM City Cebu several years ago. </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#666600;">Seduced by Ray's evocative rendition of a poor family's life in a small Bengali village in <em>Pather Panchali</em> (Song of the Little Road) and their migration to the holy city of Benares in <em>Aparajito</em> (The Unvanquished), imagine nothing less than coitus interruptus when the projector conked out unceremoniously on <em>Apu Sansar</em> (The World of Apu), the trilogy's last installment. </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-SJhC6DNQCaqLXuRQ38_y1yDeHZeWGoMI1wNfiABDe68WcQRee92qTo1xUeiK_hIgOhLZ16aeUVsr1yANt7aqM2P-Wv7ziiwgvngDm3eExd0dpMSV_ye3mbORb-kn3WjV10Qv-Q/s1600-h/Ray2.jpg"><span style="color:#666600;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184909166810994402" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 198px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 222px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-SJhC6DNQCaqLXuRQ38_y1yDeHZeWGoMI1wNfiABDe68WcQRee92qTo1xUeiK_hIgOhLZ16aeUVsr1yANt7aqM2P-Wv7ziiwgvngDm3eExd0dpMSV_ye3mbORb-kn3WjV10Qv-Q/s320/Ray2.jpg" width="208" border="0" /></span></a>Imagine, therefore, how orgasmic I felt when I got hold of the trilogy's DVD set recently. With almost masturbatory focus, I filled April Fool's Day with a complete viewing of it in one setting. </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;">Truly, the trilogy more than holds a candle to Orson Welles' <em>Citizen Kane</em> as one of the most promethean debuts in the annals of filmmaking. Nothing less than miraculous, indeed, how Ray edifies everyday life in each of the three films, "refusing to divorce beauty from tragedy, rendering the ordinary majestic and discovering insight and ironies in the smallest of moments."<br /></span><span style="color:#660000;"></span></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><span style="color:#660000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#660000;">Hereunder is a review from Roger Ebert (the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize): </span></div><br /><br /><div><span style="color:#330000;">THE great, sad, gentle sweep of "The Apu Trilogy" remains in the mind of the moviegoer as a promise of what film can be. Standing above fashion, it creates a world so convincing that it becomes, for a time, another life we might have lived. The three films, which were made in India by Satyajit Ray between 1950 and 1959, swept the top prizes at Cannes, Venice and London, and created a new cinema for India--whose prolific film industry had traditionally stayed within the narrow confines of swashbuckling musical romances. Never before had one man had such a decisive impact on the films of his culture. </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#330000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJO7MKOmDIcKobH1CPu7fJySWtBUgvsnojbdR0yvV2NA5VFpViMQq4fvNQcsqbGjrZqtWURYAMS1czVO78ofH2D63t0wKnWJGe70biI_VmWMb-TIDCQshyphenhyphenMNkL5IvkTgzhoxGLg/s1600-h/Ray3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184917168335066994" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="228" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJO7MKOmDIcKobH1CPu7fJySWtBUgvsnojbdR0yvV2NA5VFpViMQq4fvNQcsqbGjrZqtWURYAMS1czVO78ofH2D63t0wKnWJGe70biI_VmWMb-TIDCQshyphenhyphenMNkL5IvkTgzhoxGLg/s320/Ray3.jpg" width="313" border="0" /></a>Ray (1921-1992) was a commercial artist in Calcutta with little money and no connections when he determined to adapt a famous serial novel about the birth and young manhood of Apu--born in a rural village, formed in the holy city of Benares, educated in Calcutta, then a wanderer. The legend of the first film is inspiring; how on the first day Ray had never directed a scene, his cameraman had never photographed one, his child actors had not even been tested for their roles--and how that early footage was so impressive it won the meager financing for the rest of the film. Even the music was by a novice, Ravi Shankar, later to be famous. </span><br /><br /><span style="color:#330000;">The trilogy begins with "Pather Panchali," filmed between 1950 and 1954. Here begins the story of Apu when he is a boy, living with his parents, older sister and ancient aunt in the ancestral village to which his father, a priest, has returned despite the misgivings of the practical mother. The second film, "Aparajito" (1956), follows the family to Benares, where the father makes a living from pilgrims who have come to bathe in the holy Ganges. The third film, "The World of Apu" (1959), finds Apu and his mother living with an uncle in the country; the boy does so well in school he wins a scholarship to Calcutta. He is married under extraordinary circumstances, is happy with his young bride, then crushed by the deaths of his mother and his wife. After a period of bitter drifting, he returns at last to take up the responsibility of his son. </span></div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"><div><br /></div></span><span style="color:#330000;"></span><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHvhF12jPQlf_dYcqV3YY82DV_dsLS1qBSwl5haS8vtqYrK797K0zuiARINkXMy_lcK-o3heV8CVFCWOSkVF2y1VXPU7O5OftuKxM496o0fKCm4dyEgc5W88HPrW6WmoqHO0CkPg/s1600-h/Aparajito.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184916330816444242" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 302px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 298px" height="246" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHvhF12jPQlf_dYcqV3YY82DV_dsLS1qBSwl5haS8vtqYrK797K0zuiARINkXMy_lcK-o3heV8CVFCWOSkVF2y1VXPU7O5OftuKxM496o0fKCm4dyEgc5W88HPrW6WmoqHO0CkPg/s320/Aparajito.jpg" width="302" border="0" /></a>This summary scarcely reflects the beauty and mystery of the films, which do not follow the punched-up methods of conventional biography but are told in the spirit of the English title of the first film, "The Song of the Road." The actors who play Apu at various ages from about 6 to 29 have in common a moody, dreamy quality; Apu is not sharp, hard or cynical, but a sincere, naive idealist, motivated more by vague yearnings than concrete plans. He reflects a society that does not place ambition above all, but is philosophical, accepting, optimistic. </span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;">He is his father's child, and in the first two films we see how his father is eternally hopeful that something will turn up--that new plans and ideas will bear fruit. It is the mother who frets about money owed the relatives, about food for the children, about the future. </span><span style="color:#330000;">In her eyes, throughout all three films, we see realism and loneliness, as her husband and then her son cheerfully go away to the big city and leave her waiting and wondering. </span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"><br /></div></span><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;">The most extraordinary passage in the three films comes in the third, when Apu, now a college student, goes with his best friend, Pulu, to attend the wedding of Pulu's cousin. The day has been picked because it is astrologically perfect--but the groom, when he arrives, turns out to be stark mad. The bride's mother sends him away, but then there is an emergency, because Aparna, the bride, will be forever cursed if she does not marry on this day, and so Pulu, in desperation, turns to Apu--and Apu, having left Calcutta to attend a marriage, returns to the city as the husband of the bride. </span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div></div><div></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdooblXndSNpDU5-9JCGuWM7Dy1_tNSbmmkf7pmi6iV-2mMfJ0abIYPn5JertkvFk74D81k2ipqmFLXAKKNqHZrxyGVW_kVAjEAprvdRlXlGbPU4tU-co60GGowwEQrq6DLGzutw/s1600-h/world_of_apu[1].JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184917726680815490" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdooblXndSNpDU5-9JCGuWM7Dy1_tNSbmmkf7pmi6iV-2mMfJ0abIYPn5JertkvFk74D81k2ipqmFLXAKKNqHZrxyGVW_kVAjEAprvdRlXlGbPU4tU-co60GGowwEQrq6DLGzutw/s320/world_of_apu%5B1%5D.JPG" border="0" /></a>Sharmila Tagore, who plays Aparna, was only 14 when she made the film. She projects exquisite shyness and tenderness, and we consider how odd it is to be suddenly married to a stranger. "Can you accept a life of poverty?" asks Apu, who lives in a single room and augments his scholarship with a few rupees earned in a print shop. "Yes," she says simply, not meeting his gaze. She cries when she first arrives in Calcutta, but soon sweetness and love shine out through her eyes. Soumitra Chatterjee, who plays Apu, shares her innocent delight, and when she dies in childbirth it is the end of his innocence and, for a long time, of his hope. </span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHdGjZUbzRRFaAgDdXBKu3cmN6b7T3uP3PEn_y4LlNH-l_zkxHUTAyrGDfjvipQJfWitjDIc9pWtQRRHUJ6qOpc0SC1xrDYGGuiPgz7NILIkOGH3a-g5hh8A9UmpWDavya43TmPw/s1600-h/Ray4.jpg"><span style="color:#330000;"></span></a></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;">The three films were photographed by Subrata Mitra, a still photographer who Ray was convinced could do the job. Starting from scratch, at first with a borrowed 16mm camera, Mitra achieves effects of extraordinary beauty: Forest paths, river vistas, the<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHdGjZUbzRRFaAgDdXBKu3cmN6b7T3uP3PEn_y4LlNH-l_zkxHUTAyrGDfjvipQJfWitjDIc9pWtQRRHUJ6qOpc0SC1xrDYGGuiPgz7NILIkOGH3a-g5hh8A9UmpWDavya43TmPw/s1600-h/Ray4.jpg"><span style="color:#330000;"></span></a> gathering clouds of the monsoon, water bugs skimming lightly over the surface of a pond. There is a fearsome scene as the mother watches over her feverish daughter while the rain and winds buffet the house, and we feel her fear and urgency as the camera dollies again and again across the small, threatened space. And a moment after a death, when the film cuts shockingly to the sudden flight of birds. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></div></span><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;">I heard a distant echo of the earliest days of the filming, perhaps, when Subrata Mitra was honored at the Hawaii Film Festival in the early 1990s, and in accepting a career award he thanked, not Satyajit Ray, but--his camera, and his film. On those first days of shooting it must have been just that simple, the hope of these beginners that their work would bear fruit. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color:#330000;">What we sense all through "The Apu Trilogy" is a different kind of life than we are used to. The film is set in Bengal in the 1920s, when in the rural areas life was traditional and hard. Relationships were formed with those who lived close by; there is much drama over the theft of some apples from an orchard. The sight of a train, roaring at the far end of a field, represents the promise of the city and the future, and trains connect or separate the characters throughout the film, even offering at one low point a means of possible suicide.</span></div><div><br /><span style="color:#330000;"><div><span style="color:#330000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkM59DlbnnGFSC6ZQYrTmFFvetsdfr5NxXbCVpWgTTMM9CNW4xylTqoeJHV13Qm1rdK2WdnNmXis0X60Ot65uVlm5D4ng_NAxSuwqDZGs6q06DMdnw9DzQMTsy-iT5vuXE2ODj7g/s1600-h/Ray5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184916665823893346" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 261px" height="256" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkM59DlbnnGFSC6ZQYrTmFFvetsdfr5NxXbCVpWgTTMM9CNW4xylTqoeJHV13Qm1rdK2WdnNmXis0X60Ot65uVlm5D4ng_NAxSuwqDZGs6q06DMdnw9DzQMTsy-iT5vuXE2ODj7g/s320/Ray5.jpg" width="320" border="0" /></a></span></div>The actors in the films have all been cast from life, to type; Italian neorealism was in vogue in the early 1950s, and Ray would have heard and agreed with the theory that everyone can play one role--himself. The most extraordinary performer in the films is Chunibala Devi, who plays the old aunt, stooped double, deeply wrinkled. She was 80 when shooting began; she had been an actress decades ago, but when Ray sought her out, she was living in a brothel, and thought he had come looking for a girl. When Apu's mother angers at her and tells her to leave, notice the way she appears at the door of another relative, asking, "Can I stay?" She has no home, no possessions except for her clothes and a bowl, but she never seems desperate because she embodies complete acceptance. </span></div><span style="color:#330000;"></span><div></div><div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;">The relationship between Apu and his mother observes truths that must exist in all cultures: how the parent makes sacrifices for years, only to see the child turn aside and move thoughtlessly away into adulthood. The mother has gone to live with a relative, as little better than a servant ("they like my cooking"), and when Apu comes to visit during a school vacation, he sleeps or loses himself in his books, answering her with monosyllables. He seems in a hurry to leave, but has second thoughts at the train station, and returns for one more day. The way the film records his stay, his departure and his return says whatever can be said about lonely parents and heedless children. </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#330000;">I watched "The Apu Trilogy" recently over a period of three nights, and found my thoughts returning to it during the days. It is about a time, place and culture far removed from our own, and yet it connects directly and deeply with our human feelings. It is like a prayer, affirming that this is what the cinema can be, no matter how far in our cynicism we may stray.</span></div></div></div></div></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-1122141907329543772008-03-28T01:27:00.001-07:002008-03-28T01:27:45.692-07:00A season to sing for<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><p><object height='350' width='425'><param value='http://youtube.com/v/7ESHjYat9rk' name='movie'/><embed height='350' width='425' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' src='http://youtube.com/v/7ESHjYat9rk'/></object></p><p>After the infernal interlude with winter, here's an ode to all things bright and abloom.</p></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-41590326931997998672008-03-28T00:26:00.000-07:002008-03-28T00:34:21.547-07:00Buzzing back!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-_jkVMJFRjVz1kWWPzjK1I-SoTvphpoXVFoFAozZuExPS4Kn1N8iapGYxcyAZ48YNf1LDj_P5tpmVSpY8IwVzQ2gj2dEWzNMEJUikFWYwnxkrTl0xENr8eCkv88k8OPsmJqyPtw/s1600-h/PC280985.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5182692040268289730" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-_jkVMJFRjVz1kWWPzjK1I-SoTvphpoXVFoFAozZuExPS4Kn1N8iapGYxcyAZ48YNf1LDj_P5tpmVSpY8IwVzQ2gj2dEWzNMEJUikFWYwnxkrTl0xENr8eCkv88k8OPsmJqyPtw/s320/PC280985.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>I</strong></span>t's been a cold long spell since my last post, I know. Blame it on the snow. </span></div><div><br /><span style="color:#666600;"><em>Bitaw,</em> no other season can be more convenient for being lazy than the woebegone months of winter. Cars getting sidetracked due to the slick, that's no far-fetched metaphor for all things, including blogging, gone off kilter. (Pathetic fallacy, you'd say.)<br /></span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;">But winter did get into my skin (and also into the sewers of my sinus). Now it's no sweat (or snot) to thumb my nose down at my colonial curiosity for snow. <em>Bitaw, maayo ra gyud nang</em> snow<em> sa</em> pictures, particularly when the landscape of ice sprawls like a coating of fondant cake in the distance, away from the icy slick and sludge down the road <em>nga mora gyu'g sampurado nga gisagola'g ginamos</em> in the vehicles' tracks). <em>Inahak kaayo ning snow, way sama. Kaduha nako madakdak</em>. Sometimes, you have to toddle through a foot of frost. <em>Sangpit pud ka sa tanang santos</em> when driving <em>kay lisod kaayo</em> control <em>sa sakyanan, mosayaw la'g kalit ang ligid</em> because the road can get more slippery than a skating rink. Plus it's no joke having to scrape the layers of icy crap from the windshield in the midst of sub-zero temperature when you have to go out for work or run an errand. <em>Mora pud ka'g tubol tan-awon kay motibugol gyud ka</em> with all the strata of jackets and sweaters, <em>paet! Pagkalami ilupad og balik</em> Cebu. </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#666600;">So now that Spring has come, all I can say is, "Good riddance, Winter!" And while skeletal trees now brace to burst its shades of greens along with the birds and gardens get into the rhythm of bees again, this is just to say it's timely more than ever to get back into the groove of blogging.</span></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-80341989040563821992007-10-21T01:12:00.000-07:002007-10-21T01:28:22.619-07:00bookylicious (three days of lust out of the library)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUAFQqoLMFRrwms1NCHw2mAHAkAvQdMxmQUeY69MbcTMDTs-O4GQ3p3TwNxgkH4bwaR7E3eQAAyOFywmgz3RFa7eh7b9pfa_3IKZoKbqX3z39w5gViEocs9LRVqQd69PYgstjZHg/s1600-h/PA120112.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123703897639129810" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUAFQqoLMFRrwms1NCHw2mAHAkAvQdMxmQUeY69MbcTMDTs-O4GQ3p3TwNxgkH4bwaR7E3eQAAyOFywmgz3RFa7eh7b9pfa_3IKZoKbqX3z39w5gViEocs9LRVqQd69PYgstjZHg/s400/PA120112.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#666600;"></span></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#666600;"></span></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#666600;">NOW I KNOW what a libertine would feel in a harem. It was a bibliomaniac's wet dream come true when the public library of Shawnee County and Topeka (capital city of Kansas) hauled out its slightly-used books--hardcover and paperback--to the sprawling space of the Kansas ExpoCentre for its annual three-day book sale last month. Whoopee, indeed, as the books were unbelievably cheap (from as low as 25 cents to three dollars!).<br /><br />Though it was an eye-popping affair taking one's pick from such an orgy of authors, the library's staff and volunteers made the whole shebang in so orderly a manner worthy of a monastery by arranging the books on separate tables according to various genres and classifications. And so despite the throng of readers, it was a breeze to navigate from one book section to another. It was a thrill on the last day of the book sale when all items were for the taking--get all you can--for only three dollars per sack! My wife also had a blast picking up books for our two kids and some health/home therapy manuals.<br /><br />All in all, I spent only $27 for a stash of magazines (Harper's, National Geographic, Audubon, and Scientific American) and an entire bookcase of a hoard listed below:<br /></span><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Novels<br /></span></strong><br />- <em>Paradise</em> (Toni Morrison)<br /><br />- <em>The Blind Assassin</em> (Margaret Atwood)<br /><br />-<em> Elective Affinities</em> (Johann Wolfgang van Goethe)<br /><br />- <em>The Accidental Tourist</em> (Anne Tyler)<br /><br />- <em>Breathing Lessons</em> (Anne Tyler)<br /><br />- <em>Searching for Caleb</em> (Anne Tyler)<br /><br />- <em>The Big Sky</em> (A.B. Guthrie)<br /><br />- <em>A Sport of Nature</em> (Nadine Gordimer)<br /><br />- <em>The Mission Song</em> (John Le Carre)<br /><br />- <em>The Russia House</em> (John Le Carre)<br /><br />- <em>The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love</em> (Oscar Hijuelos)<br /><br />- <em>The Story of Lucy Gault</em> (William Trevor)<br /><br />-<em> Saturday</em> (Ian McEwan)<br /><br />- <em>The Hours</em> (Michael Cunningham)<br /><br />- <em>The Five People You Meet in Heaven</em> (Mitch Albom)<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Short Stories</span></strong><br /><br />- <em>Cathedral </em>(Raymond Carver)<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Poetry/Criticism<br /></span></strong><br />-<em> The Poet's World</em> (Rita Dove)<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Spirituality<br /></span></strong><br />- <em>The Glorious Impossible: Illustrated with Frescoes by Giotto</em> (Madeliene L' Engle)<br /><br />- <em>Finding God in the Garden: Backyard Reflections on Life, Love, and Compost</em> (Rabbi Balfour Brickner)<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Memoir/Biography<br /></span></strong><br />- <em>Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial Life</em> (J.M. Coetzee)<br /><br />- <em>In the Company of Writers: A Life in Publishing</em> (Charles Scribner)<br /><br />- <em>Another Life: A Memoir of Other People</em> (Michael Korda)<br /><br />- <em>Makers of the Modern World: The Lives of Writers, Artists, Scientists, Philosophers, Composers, and Other Creators Who Formed the Pattern of Our Century</em> (Louis Untermeyer, editor)<br /><br />- <em>War Letters: Correspondence From the American Civil War, World War I and II, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Somalia and Bosnia</em> (Andrew Carroll, editor)<br /><br />- <em>Great Biographies: Elizabeth I, Charles Darwin, Martin Luther, Mark Twain, Charles Lindbergh, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Edison, Hans Christian Andersen, P.T. Barnum, Pearl S. Buck, Adolf Hitler, John Quincy and Louisa Adams</em> (Reader's Digest series)<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhMABxI3Rk4Kdd8kckcmLLVUdJ-xYcL_O2ofln4BSiRPeA0BwR_OW-NGSpXyCOnNTUK9ITVC54ZwXHTPviZR1w6epf5t3NZkXLYZAkDNth9ayyF84PLLI02s60foI0bgIHAKWsIg/s1600-h/PA120115.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123702471709987522" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhMABxI3Rk4Kdd8kckcmLLVUdJ-xYcL_O2ofln4BSiRPeA0BwR_OW-NGSpXyCOnNTUK9ITVC54ZwXHTPviZR1w6epf5t3NZkXLYZAkDNth9ayyF84PLLI02s60foI0bgIHAKWsIg/s400/PA120115.JPG" border="0" /></a>Essays/Non-Fiction</span></strong><br /><br />- <em>Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape</em> (Barry Lopez)<br /><br />- <em>A Stay Against Confucion: Essays on Faith and Fiction</em> (Ron Hansen)<br /><br />- <em>A Circle of Quiet</em> (Madeliene L'Engle)<br /><br />- <em>Face To Face: A Reader in the World</em> (Lynne Sharon Schwartz)<br /><br />- <em>Enough's Enough... And Other Rules of Life</em> (Calvin Trillin)<br /><br />- <em>At Large</em> (Ellen Goodman)<br /><br />- <em>The Rising George: America's Master Humorist Takes on Everything from Monomania To Ernest Hemingway</em> (S.J. Perelman)<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;">References</span> </strong>(Current Affairs, Religion, Nature, Food, Photography, etc.)<br /><br />- <em>Fruitcakes & Couch Potatoes and Other Delicious Expressions</em> (Christine Ammer)<br /><br />- <em>The Faith: A History of Christianity</em> (Brian Moynahan)<br /><br />- <em>A World of Ideas: Conversations With Thoughtful Men and Women About Life Today and the Ideas Shaping Our Future</em> (Bill Moyers, editor)<br /><br />- <em>A World of Ideas II: Public Opinions From Private Citizens</em> (Bill Moyers, editor)<br /><br />- <em>Genesis: A Living Conversation</em> (Bill Moyers, editor)<br /><br />- <em>Into the Unknown: The Story of Exploration</em> (The National Geographic Society, editor)<br /><br />- <em>Weird and Wonderful Wildlife</em> (Martin/May/Taylor, editors)<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#660000;">Anthologies<br /></span></strong><br />- <em>Modern American Poets: Their Voices and Visions</em> (Robert Diyanni, editor)<br /><br />- <em>This Is My Best: America's 85 Greatest Living Authors Choose Their Best Work, and Explain Why They Have Selected It</em> (Whit Burnett, editor)<br /><br />- <em>Treasury of Great Humor: Wit, Whimsy, and Satire From the Remote Past to the Present</em> (Louis Untermeyer, editor)<br /><br />- <em>The Heath Introduction To Fiction</em> (4th edition, edited by John Clayton)<br /><br />- <em>The Harper and Row Reader: Liberal Education Through Reading and Writing</em> (Booth/Gregory, editors)<br /><br />- <em>Literature: An Introduction To Reading and Writing</em> (4th edition, edited by Roberts/Jacobs)<br /><br />- <em>Best Newspaper Writing: Winners of the American Society Editors' Competition</em> (Christopher Scanlan, editor)<br /><br />- <em>The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories</em> (with commentaries by William Bennett, editor)<br /><br />- <em>The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Writing, Thinking</em> (5th edition, edited by Michael Meyer)<br /><br />- <em>The Conscious Reader</em> (8th edition)<br /><br />- <em>The Norton Reader</em>: <em>An Anthology of Expository Prose</em> (9th edition, edited by Linda Peterson) </span><br /><br /></div><blockquote></blockquote>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-86167176002928846442007-10-21T00:18:00.000-07:002008-04-30T00:23:36.234-07:00why clowns ought to cry<blockquote id="e225b685"><blockquote id="9877766d"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKEy4xxYggTdNg-vpj7rbAXx8SA4ugqT30MnATx4jqEz6Ps80dBACIn6cR61CuQ-yUD-Z-fT8VDGEW8-AS62y5uNPzKla-cyQiy5hsnE51QggdRM_qJt_E3pc4-t5eKwiYkBr9UA/s1600-h/jokera.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123698404375958178" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKEy4xxYggTdNg-vpj7rbAXx8SA4ugqT30MnATx4jqEz6Ps80dBACIn6cR61CuQ-yUD-Z-fT8VDGEW8-AS62y5uNPzKla-cyQiy5hsnE51QggdRM_qJt_E3pc4-t5eKwiYkBr9UA/s400/jokera.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#666600;">IT'S A WAIL OF A TIME for the usual sob stories that have become the stuff of headlines, and that's enough to know why a clown's job is herculean more than ever. With the Glorietta blast recently reminding us, albeit rudely, of the forthcoming cemetery-centered holiday come November, it has gotten awkward to sustain one's self in a merry mood. But no matter if laughter nowadays is grimly in short supply, sigh, irrepressible remains the weakness to be jolly with a joke. Which reminds me of a sad attempt by a Cebuano congressman for a rib-tickling effect last week.<br /><br />Hereunder is a reprint of my recent column in the op-ed page of </span><a href="http://www.sunstar.com.ph/"><strong><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#666600;">Sun.Star Cebu</span></strong></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#666600;"> (October 16, 2007 issue) about an explosion in the face of a joker-wannabe:</span><br /></span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#660000;"><strong>Grin and grind your teeth</strong></span><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;">WORTHY enough for angels to blow theirs trumpets, those who can make people laugh. Ah, an honest-to-goodness humorist! Isn’t he more companionable than many a columnist, or someone who speaks like faith were something to bleed out of one’s wrist?<br /><br />All right, here’s a confession: What gets me going to wear my Sunday best is the hope of hearing a priest who can drive the sermon home with the tongue-in-cheek grace of a stand-up comic.<br /><br />Heaven, I believe, is when we feel the lightness of suspending disbelief.<br /><br />Hang on, or so Rep. Tony Cuenco tried to pull off such a stunt until he winds up with his tongue now coiling tight around his neck. He went on air for a radio interview, only to somersault and spit out his words with a grin. “I was only cracking a joke,” he averred after admitting he received P200,000 —a “Christmas gift”— from the President. Nope, it was not for him to behave like an acolyte as soon as Congress beats hell’s bells for the President now in the heat of her foes’ allegations of bribery and haunted once more with the horror of impeachment. But, sorry, his avuncular vibe and baritone voice—perfect for beating his breast at the pulpit till holy water comes out of his nostrils—are just too solemn for side-splitting chortle.<br /><br /></span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyrZkrQJbS_HY2zUECsa3bXuyMt4hc2_9oG6AYe_vrCU4mU9kKgRCWvOnTHsfdOFQc4jDebnHJfu9XcLRwh7KLOGjBiGhEwIRZyHxYcgrPhDdR_isNh0iv2hqfJFztVWOQnbkxQ/s1600-h/joker.jpg"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123696536065184386" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyrZkrQJbS_HY2zUECsa3bXuyMt4hc2_9oG6AYe_vrCU4mU9kKgRCWvOnTHsfdOFQc4jDebnHJfu9XcLRwh7KLOGjBiGhEwIRZyHxYcgrPhDdR_isNh0iv2hqfJFztVWOQnbkxQ/s320/joker.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="font-family:georgia;">How to tell a good joke?<br /><br />Beats me, but I guess comedians are better hogging the limelight alone. So I think, if you dare to go on air, better to gag the interviewer and crank up canned laughter while you gnash the microphone with your dentures. And please be down to earth so you’re not far off and thus would hurt less when your face falls flat.<br /><br />It will probably help not to kid one’s self that all it takes to be funny is to swallow and stick one’s tongue out. That’s what makes most politicians such a yawn, no doubt. Then again, the irony is how they become drop-dead laughable when they try utterly hard to be taken seriously. Honesty and its timing is of the essence, too. As when deaf people joke about not being able to hear.<br /><br />In the end, nothing beats the coup de grace of the unexpected. Like the confession of Andy Kaufman, the self-styled “song-and-dance man” that Jim Carey played in the film <em>Man on the Moon</em>: “I’ve never told a joke in my life.” Doesn’t that beat Beelzebub saying he has never been on fire?<br /><br />It’s all about absurdity, and anything else would be the sad spectacle of a clown seeking refuge in reckless slapstick, the grimness of the grotesque. And Nietzsche was not out to pick someone’s funnybone, certainly, when he muttered how “man alone suffer so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”<br /><br />Inventions, however, ought to be original. How wonderfully out of the ordinary, for instance, if a politician would dare swear his armpits out and just admit for a change how badly he wants another pair of hands to clap at his dexterity to accept what power brings under the table. Really, won’t he need to grow more dirty fingers to poke through a crack a joke leaves on his bloody head?</span> </span><br /><br /></blockquote></blockquote>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-59962258525740358262007-10-02T02:55:00.000-07:002007-10-03T14:02:53.253-07:00coming soon: a countdown of must-see movies<div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#666600;">WITH THE FALL SEASON COMES the upsurge of big studios piping up their chances for the Oscar Awards next year. Taking the cue from the early buzz as well as the track record of its creators and sheer star wattage, here are 20 films--a forecast of contenders for the critics' nods--I crave to see before the year ends</span>:</span></span></span><br /></span></span><br /><div><div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP6sVfyTqVcKBtiNoDP5OFMlsCEYW4d94OiKN1PCNp4OAgEk7x9j0RIb7G5iPnQrPOU1usotFjKexM5OEYnWH5Qsehk8gx-iPSovq22OEooHgYyXoHf6TCmOGbPtFxiyHtkmlUZA/s1600-h/FilmLust.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117217054818560978" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 214px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 280px" height="319" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP6sVfyTqVcKBtiNoDP5OFMlsCEYW4d94OiKN1PCNp4OAgEk7x9j0RIb7G5iPnQrPOU1usotFjKexM5OEYnWH5Qsehk8gx-iPSovq22OEooHgYyXoHf6TCmOGbPtFxiyHtkmlUZA/s320/FilmLust.jpg" width="214" border="0" /></a>LUST, CAUTION.</span> <span style="color:#336666;">"An uncompromising and incredibly seductive piece of filmmaking," raves an early review of this Best Picture winner at the recently-concluded Venice Film Festival.<br /><br />After scoring the Best Director trophy at the Academy Awards two years ago, Ang Lee returns with an espionage thriller set in WWII-era Shanghai.<br /><br />Asian cinema icon Tony Leung (star of <em>Happy Together, Hero, In the Mood for Love</em>, etc. ) stars as a powerful political figure in Shanghai who gets embroiled in a passionate game of emotional intrigue with a young woman.<br /></span><br /></div></span><br /><div><br /> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheaFnQjp0r5IuELBsVoFMuEyG2WHiPem8VwAeCiBs8ofQqUyJjvvjsFvP-WB95NcA1U5bbXGkO0V3NJ4s1DnF4N_8kaS-2LYDlYaoG6qH30P0ChZ_1E4xyqSk1p1PDDKQfUcpmgQ/s1600-h/FilmCholera.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116882134313082242" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 205px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 259px" height="299" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheaFnQjp0r5IuELBsVoFMuEyG2WHiPem8VwAeCiBs8ofQqUyJjvvjsFvP-WB95NcA1U5bbXGkO0V3NJ4s1DnF4N_8kaS-2LYDlYaoG6qH30P0ChZ_1E4xyqSk1p1PDDKQfUcpmgQ/s320/FilmCholera.jpg" width="209" border="0" /></a>LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA</span>. <span style="color:#336666;">Though screen versions of literary heavyweights often wind up a dud (consider the ill-fated filmizations of Toni Morrison's <em>Beloved</em>, Isabelle Allende's <em>The House of the Spirits</em>, Frank McCourt's <em>Angela's Ashes</em>, and Annie Proulx's <em>The Shipping News,</em> etc), who can resist a celluloid rendition of one of the masterpieces of Nobel Prize-winning Gabriel Garcia Marquez?<br /></span><br /><span style="color:#336666;">Directed by Mike Newell, this sprawling saga of obsession gathers three of Latin America's acting sensations among its stellar cast: Javier Bardem (<em>Before the Night Falls, The Sea Inside, Mondays in the Sun</em>), Fernanda Montenegro (<em>Central Station</em>), and Catalina Sandino Moreno (<em>Maria Full of Grace</em>). Hopefully this time, Newell will weave a magical exception to the rule of literary-cinematic mismatch.<br /></span><br /><br /></div></span><div><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqnIyF97P1CWPXlCx2BJT5PQNIqttcnqEgV0fpKxV5xl-vELaoRtFS5cvTS0GWgoDzO_Sa3nASZ4u5cdh1XifcYICMKcDT28Pm4RkXiw5m0FuZQbDxF3cSR-6tDrodwXAgwY4b0A/s1600-h/Filmtoseeb.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116882679773928850" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 203px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 226px" height="321" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqnIyF97P1CWPXlCx2BJT5PQNIqttcnqEgV0fpKxV5xl-vELaoRtFS5cvTS0GWgoDzO_Sa3nASZ4u5cdh1XifcYICMKcDT28Pm4RkXiw5m0FuZQbDxF3cSR-6tDrodwXAgwY4b0A/s320/Filmtoseeb.jpg" width="211" border="0" /></a>THE KITE RUNNER</span>. <span style="color:#336666;">Based on novelist Khaled Hosseini's bestselling phenomenon about redemption, this is an epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal againts a barbaric backdrop (the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy up to the atrocities of the Taliban reign).<br /><br />Mark Foster (whose work in <em>Finding Neverland</em> is breathtaking) directs this story of a man who returns to his native Afghanistan to seek redress to a long-standing wrong and rescue the son of a childhood friend.<br /></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><br /> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyVZN5n4ZlxoEMqFBipYNZHFsRzrn2GoNQ9UwkXDH6Q4K_irEcyul5D_JrXkki_q5oqsyZ05rqiuECoHF62HN1EiF4BjBiuxw-qFWGJrSFaboZCvAPV0mfvejF7p9KVoeyLDqgEQ/s1600-h/FilmBlood.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116883306839154082" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 205px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 234px" height="285" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyVZN5n4ZlxoEMqFBipYNZHFsRzrn2GoNQ9UwkXDH6Q4K_irEcyul5D_JrXkki_q5oqsyZ05rqiuECoHF62HN1EiF4BjBiuxw-qFWGJrSFaboZCvAPV0mfvejF7p9KVoeyLDqgEQ/s320/FilmBlood.jpg" width="215" border="0" /></a>THERE WILL BE BLOOD.</span> <span style="color:#336666;">Yet another literary adaptation (from Upton Sinclair’s novel <em>Oil!),</em> it has magnum opus written all over it. To begin with, it blazes with the presence of my favorite actor Daniel Day-Lewis under the helm of the great Paul Thomas Anderson (<em>Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love</em>)<br /><br />A sprawling epic about family, greed, corruption, and the pursuit of the American dream, this film is set in the booming West Coast oil fields at the turn of the 20th century.<br /><br /></div></span><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span><br /><div><br /><br /><br /> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsyeSXQ2if1Pwzfkv7TNSjd5JLDrLPrK6AgCmfRj7YUxJgkZguWsi6BCKsJ41Ih-khCKj3EerOXfCxnkuSpZcoHUbBzHpm0YUMi-cqjJUMVN4Ka4dOunmFsJS2xiDzYqsyAaaiQ/s1600-h/FilmImNot.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117205814889147170" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 206px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 234px" height="321" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsyeSXQ2if1Pwzfkv7TNSjd5JLDrLPrK6AgCmfRj7YUxJgkZguWsi6BCKsJ41Ih-khCKj3EerOXfCxnkuSpZcoHUbBzHpm0YUMi-cqjJUMVN4Ka4dOunmFsJS2xiDzYqsyAaaiQ/s320/FilmImNot.jpg" width="209" border="0" /></a>I'M NOT THERE</span>. <span style="color:#336666;">Described as an "utterly bizarre" biographical film celebrating the genius and the legend of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, this promises to be another cinematic gem from Todd Haynes after his critically acclaimed <em>Far From Heaven</em>.</span></span><span style="color:#336666;"><br /></span><br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#336666;">So far the film has snagged a Special Jury Prize from this year's Venice Film Festival where the splendid Cate Blanchett also won the Best Actress for portraying a male role. Yes, Blanchett is one of the six different characters who embody Dylan's spirit (along with Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, among others), depicting different stages of the artist's life.<br /><br /></span><br /></span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7PY7QLVZBFr2-KiEpg-89Iw0cpa-hjaGFgD3YbRAo9gI0mP0CAAJRHaTjHiydBn4g3s-6fsrBVeHll7ioeSU27qqKKK-dV3hLqcx7UNx_ommf5ADqxymgZUagLupCgMrf6Jnrsw/s1600-h/FilmSweeny.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116884616804179394" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 206px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 245px" height="294" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7PY7QLVZBFr2-KiEpg-89Iw0cpa-hjaGFgD3YbRAo9gI0mP0CAAJRHaTjHiydBn4g3s-6fsrBVeHll7ioeSU27qqKKK-dV3hLqcx7UNx_ommf5ADqxymgZUagLupCgMrf6Jnrsw/s320/FilmSweeny.jpg" width="216" border="0" /></a>SWEENY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET</span>. Brace yourself for genre-bending delight only Tim Burton can whip up: a horror musical straight out of the a Tony Award-winning dazzler showcasing the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim.<br /><br />Featuring the great Johnny Depp in the title role, the story of Sweeney Todd is of a wrongfully imprisoned barber in Victorian England who sets out to seek revenge on the judge who imprisoned him. The plot is foreshadowed in the first lines of the opening number: "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd./His skin was pale and his eye was odd./He shaved the faces of gentlemen/Who never thereafter were heard of again." Helena Bonham Carter also stars.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><div></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiMj2bqXC-W9uZk8y00wjoEHkZP1UJWvLNaHovAIzNSxk2oah5rMpfKTqafCMB_J9voN94eJn1kMZMGQ_AFByZK1ApraW_8mLgT0f75erJVinQrRZEHjqEYoWPDRJwojhITkMPtA/s1600-h/Filmtosee1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116884926041824722" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 203px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 236px" height="268" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiMj2bqXC-W9uZk8y00wjoEHkZP1UJWvLNaHovAIzNSxk2oah5rMpfKTqafCMB_J9voN94eJn1kMZMGQ_AFByZK1ApraW_8mLgT0f75erJVinQrRZEHjqEYoWPDRJwojhITkMPtA/s320/Filmtosee1.jpg" width="215" border="0" /></a>ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE.</span> For her phenomenal performance as Bob Dylan in Todd Hayne's <em>I'm Not There</em>, Cate Blanchett seems poised to compete against herself come award season with an encore of her star-making portrayal in <em>Elizabeth.</em><br /><br />She reunites with Shekar Kapur in this period piece about the queen's crusade to defend her empire while dealing with conspiracies against her rule on top of her heart's vulnerability.<br /><br />Geoffrey Rush also reprises his role while Samantha Morton joins the cast as the scheming Queen Mary of Scotts.<br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><br /><br /> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGLOz9-_xNyN0zBQnuBJh9vz4-whVDgWvjgLnn8lNjALsuMKTQq_a05GObqjBP4ETffBtgYb_8pxiYXYmLjXOg9J-GlxMhjxhvXS-yyc6aX_W8hxRB37cVAhehvnmhb-j-ArZ4Ww/s1600-h/Filmtosee8.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117206506378881842" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 206px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 252px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGLOz9-_xNyN0zBQnuBJh9vz4-whVDgWvjgLnn8lNjALsuMKTQq_a05GObqjBP4ETffBtgYb_8pxiYXYmLjXOg9J-GlxMhjxhvXS-yyc6aX_W8hxRB37cVAhehvnmhb-j-ArZ4Ww/s320/Filmtosee8.jpg" width="206" border="0" /></a>AMERICAN GANGSTER.</span> Expect a masterpiece as the fusion of two of the finest actors in the industry whips a cinematic coup under the deft directorial hand of Scott Ridley.<br /><br />This mob movie set amidst the tumult of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights era is a biopic of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington)</span><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;">, a self-driven fugitive of the segregated South who became a drug kingpin in Harlem. He built his empire by smuggling cheap, high quality heroin in the coffins of soldiers who died in Vietnam. Probing the parallels between Lucas and the cop who ultimately nailed him down, Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), </span><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;">this film tackles how these two disparate men stick to their own personal code of ethics amidst a culture of corruption.<br /><br /></span></div><br /><div><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaZBAIIMq8uZC3OJDCsf7gu5X0s6lHCuELIxemg2lOwGVw2ColaJWWmacJl3Ht-VRpB3cwVjxJfz5CTFDusoo5N63HDz9yVT5B3d7bwC0tEK38OKSsxzud6kKMhr0UpiEW1qJQOw/s1600-h/Filmtoseed.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116887962583703042" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 205px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 236px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaZBAIIMq8uZC3OJDCsf7gu5X0s6lHCuELIxemg2lOwGVw2ColaJWWmacJl3Ht-VRpB3cwVjxJfz5CTFDusoo5N63HDz9yVT5B3d7bwC0tEK38OKSsxzud6kKMhr0UpiEW1qJQOw/s320/Filmtoseed.jpg" width="201" border="0" /></a>ATONEMENT</span>. Out of the haunting novel by Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan, this psychologically incisive adaptation explores the life-changing consequences of a lie.<br /><br />A domestic crisis explodes in the wake of an imaginative 13-year-old girl's accusation of a sexual crime, altering the fates of two lovers and other people in an upper-middle-class country home at the onset of World War II.<br /><br />Finetuning an epic theme on guilt, fear, hope, and redemption, Joe Wright (the director of <em>Pride and Prejudice</em>) orchestrates an ensemble lead by Keira Knightly and James MacAvoy.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYrxhMiEnYPjHDhKe548Gbh0uFK8HinDAK7McqhA__uOVbGKtmTnAJLes_xuJGbfEQTCmtY1WVZQflUdMY2ZypwxETOaNpcOfrHqz9igR_BVAjXJyIYf2wgRJvPffLoSodW49jCQ/s1600-h/Filmtosee5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117203930442767906" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 206px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 231px" height="288" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYrxhMiEnYPjHDhKe548Gbh0uFK8HinDAK7McqhA__uOVbGKtmTnAJLes_xuJGbfEQTCmtY1WVZQflUdMY2ZypwxETOaNpcOfrHqz9igR_BVAjXJyIYf2wgRJvPffLoSodW49jCQ/s320/Filmtosee5.jpg" width="216" border="0" /></a>EASTERN PROMISES</span>. “A mesmerizing power punch,” declares a rave review from The Rolling Stone of this David Cronenberg thriller.<br /><br />Voted as the Best Film at the recently-concluded Toronto Film Festival, it stars Viggo Mortensen as a charismatic and ambitious driver for one of London's Russian mob whose cool existence gets jarred after he got enmeshed with a midwife (Naomi Watts) in the wake of young teenager's death after giving birth. Anna resolves to try to trace the baby's lineage and relatives after she discovered the girl's personal diary whose revelations cast shadows in the two protagonists' lives.<br /><br /><br /></span></div><br /><div> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjLrAS9cgurIvjlQjDUQptk7GqbZpEsE87kq9TTx2zvPomPw8ZiOgjzK49HuWcg23cYAwD1SoHVM7ymp1S6IBoah4vZBJxJy7OLbfVTnTXEqNqrojnZOmI0jdBbEDrJwcfyoiMzQ/s1600-h/Filmtoseee.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117203483766169106" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 206px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 271px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjLrAS9cgurIvjlQjDUQptk7GqbZpEsE87kq9TTx2zvPomPw8ZiOgjzK49HuWcg23cYAwD1SoHVM7ymp1S6IBoah4vZBJxJy7OLbfVTnTXEqNqrojnZOmI0jdBbEDrJwcfyoiMzQ/s320/Filmtoseee.jpg" width="206" border="0" /></a>THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY.</span> For this film, Julian Schnabel (director of the gorgeous <em>After Night Falls</em>) won the Best Director award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. More than enough reason, indeed, to watch out for this mind-over-matter tale about the indomitability of imagination.<br /><br />It zooms in on the real-life plight of Jean-Dominique Bauby (editor of Elle France) who suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body at the age of 43. With only his left eye spared from the paralysis, he used his remaining faculty to write his memoir using a machine that records his blinks.<br /><br />Based on Bauby's book, Schnabel has the epic task of mapping the interior world of a man in the purgatory of a psychological torment: being trapped inside his body while staking out pieces of heaven out of imagined stories from spectacular vistas visited only inside his head.<br /><br /></div><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><div> </div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-H-9fJmhqNJdGmoe6_30j_jz3_GAMJpBuhzngteqgE9gpPrhVLsAv-xbTxwEny5AJxlS_JOL64N8PKgLQsyECHEawzjF8Go3wNc-wkZ6AqWVW1pmwr121iBCPHciABbyUQj8P5g/s1600-h/Filmtosee11.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117207425501883202" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 209px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 242px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-H-9fJmhqNJdGmoe6_30j_jz3_GAMJpBuhzngteqgE9gpPrhVLsAv-xbTxwEny5AJxlS_JOL64N8PKgLQsyECHEawzjF8Go3wNc-wkZ6AqWVW1pmwr121iBCPHciABbyUQj8P5g/s320/Filmtosee11.jpg" width="209" border="0" /></a>ACROSS THE UNIVERSE.</span> A musical fantasia woven out of songs by the Beatles, the gritty world of the hippy counter-culture turns whimsical in the hands of director Julie Taymor (<em>Frida, Titus</em>, and the Broadway hit musical <em>The Lion King</em>).<br /><br />Weaving a love story in the middle of the anti-war protest, mind exploration and rock 'n roll, Taymor's film moves from the dockyards of Liverpool to the creative psychedelia of Greenwich Village, from the riot-torn streets of Detroit to the killing fields of Vietnam. Tumultuous forces tear apart the young lovers Jude (Jim Sturgess) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) until they overcome the odds along with a bunch of friends and musicians all swept up in the maelstorm of a memorable era.<br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitac4OMnmpkW8g4u2H2VB31j-rWILuyxm-_eU95z9KEoMS80swO8JpJjxvbW-0tllBP799HgMlegqzBgUs-C1EPjjtHL2k5iqFOjUj3ZhzjNjmwjwRkk71w3SySH0Qe1c7QSghSg/s1600-h/Filmtosee2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117207717559659346" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 206px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 234px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitac4OMnmpkW8g4u2H2VB31j-rWILuyxm-_eU95z9KEoMS80swO8JpJjxvbW-0tllBP799HgMlegqzBgUs-C1EPjjtHL2k5iqFOjUj3ZhzjNjmwjwRkk71w3SySH0Qe1c7QSghSg/s320/Filmtosee2.jpg" width="206" border="0" /></a>NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN</span>. The Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan) cast their cinematic nets wide and deep into the oceanic complexity of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.<br /><br />Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem lend gravitas to this morality tale of hustling and drug-running in small town America.<br /><br />When a film like this strips down the conventions of American crime drama and broadens its scope to encompass Biblical themes and the stuff of today's headlines, expect a powderkeg matched only by the Coen brothers' creative cool.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB4Uk5qGxfR5bII47sMn209OMndqd3rMv7DR0itT3_rRTjZQuERGWzleDfLihyphenhyphensODP5mnnfioBBWRpojORdWpGdEeKyZNU42uMYE75treVd7Z1wjEmNrfefCfQl4XNO_nVYKXxUw/s1600-h/Filmtosee7.jpg"></a></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB4Uk5qGxfR5bII47sMn209OMndqd3rMv7DR0itT3_rRTjZQuERGWzleDfLihyphenhyphensODP5mnnfioBBWRpojORdWpGdEeKyZNU42uMYE75treVd7Z1wjEmNrfefCfQl4XNO_nVYKXxUw/s1600-h/Filmtosee7.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117208413344361314" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 207px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 239px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB4Uk5qGxfR5bII47sMn209OMndqd3rMv7DR0itT3_rRTjZQuERGWzleDfLihyphenhyphensODP5mnnfioBBWRpojORdWpGdEeKyZNU42uMYE75treVd7Z1wjEmNrfefCfQl4XNO_nVYKXxUw/s320/Filmtosee7.jpg" width="207" border="0" /></a>RENDITION</span>. Indie sensation Gavin Hood (director of <em>Tsotsi</em>, winner of the Best Foreign Film in the 2005 Academy Awards) gets a royal mainstream treatment with an ivory-tower casting: Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, and Jake Gyllenhal, and Alan Arkin.<br /><br />Rendition is the CIA's antiseptic term for its practice of sending captured terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation and torture.<br /><br />Innocence and evil intertwine in this thriller set in the vortex of international terrorism and surveillance. Reality check, indeed, can be no less a spine-tingler in the ways of the reel.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhXlsb4EgtTt2rMr59QmD6KGkuAikmBIDHGR_cEKyJkp2vkfTnVipUrA1vaCZE1wRC7bMCK1ahhMmPZ7R3Zs6KPZ7rlY2sCS4mtD8Kal3rQG_SfTuJ-Lmk2OHx00637QSmiZFjzw/s1600-h/Filmtosee4.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117208748351810418" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 204px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 255px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhXlsb4EgtTt2rMr59QmD6KGkuAikmBIDHGR_cEKyJkp2vkfTnVipUrA1vaCZE1wRC7bMCK1ahhMmPZ7R3Zs6KPZ7rlY2sCS4mtD8Kal3rQG_SfTuJ-Lmk2OHx00637QSmiZFjzw/s320/Filmtosee4.jpg" width="204" border="0" /></a>THE GOLDEN COMPASS.</span> Who's impervious to the honest-to-goodness spell of fantasy? After Tolkien and Peter Jackson loomed gigantic with their tales about hobbits, the film adaptation of first story of Philip Pullman’s award-winning trilogy (<em>His Dark Materials</em>) is set to find again the true north of epic entertainment.<br /><br />Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig lend their larger-than-life presence in an alternative world full of witches where people’s souls manifest themselves as animals and talking bears fight wars. At the film's epicenter is Lyra (played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards), a 12-year-old girl who starts out trying to rescue a friend who’s been kidnapped by a mysterious organization known as the Gobblers - and winds up on a lgendary journey to save the world. Chris Weitz directs.<br /><br /></div><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRMcu0d7db_1M_doespyGSU_87quLFvVj2WHjba4kS_wqlT9wmxDsaiprres5xIqnJyVphvBIVZ_AUMDspzOGQSxGAM2BVYeQam7PpsvKmySGPuAnOG0i8TWKxsUvsl3KKmdoQgg/s1600-h/Filmtosee3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117208881495796610" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 206px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 268px" height="318" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRMcu0d7db_1M_doespyGSU_87quLFvVj2WHjba4kS_wqlT9wmxDsaiprres5xIqnJyVphvBIVZ_AUMDspzOGQSxGAM2BVYeQam7PpsvKmySGPuAnOG0i8TWKxsUvsl3KKmdoQgg/s320/Filmtosee3.jpg" width="210" border="0" /></a>INTO THE WILD</span>. Here's one story Thoreau would have gone the distance for: An idealistic young man literally goes out on a limb in search of a place where untamed authencity exists far from the madding crowd: an American way of life ruled by hypocrisy and materialism.<br /><br />Sean Penn also dares a tightrope act in his debut endeavor as screenwright and director to dramatize the bestselling book by Jon Krakauer about the true story of Christopher McCandless, an over-achieving college student and athlete Christopher McCandless. Turning his back to civilization, he abandoned his family and possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity, and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a medley of characters who helped him find meaning in his life until his death.<br /><br /></div><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEBOu5oDL1b_2g58nnpSyHJ_sXo0shNoIP9bBUX2D7LyAowaRnePBLryrvD4rQUeOJMfM9NckHi9-OYecW5Y731y5h8LmlEMgerkbK5qbmkTNjRglH5FL7x1TbhS47W2uY27yPTw/s1600-h/Filmtosee12.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117209139193834402" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 208px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 230px" height="321" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEBOu5oDL1b_2g58nnpSyHJ_sXo0shNoIP9bBUX2D7LyAowaRnePBLryrvD4rQUeOJMfM9NckHi9-OYecW5Y731y5h8LmlEMgerkbK5qbmkTNjRglH5FL7x1TbhS47W2uY27yPTw/s320/Filmtosee12.jpg" width="208" border="0" /></a>IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH.</span> From the hand who aced the Academy Award for writing and directing Best Picture materials (Million Dollar Baby and Crash), here's one poised for a high-five.<br /><br />Paul Haggis explores the minefield of love and loyalty for family and country against the backdrop of intolerance and the Iraq war. It tells the story of a war veteran (Tommy Lee Jones) and his wife (Susan Sarandon) as they search for their son, a soldier who recently returned from Iraq but has mysteriously gone missing. A police detective (Charlize Theron) helps in the investigation that rears more smoke of inhumanity from the inferno far from the warfront.<br /><br /></div><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIXwnbdTaSLOedhr5FADkFhkmclqIKfKeOIkh4ZD_8MPyFlQxprccsyqlYl-dY0a3vrEjMwNCleWXcIn4RsI2TAzKrU_mhZ_3rUQpb1yW6nKasRT0Z9Qw6h28qoOx_kFR0GwsLHQ/s1600-h/Filmtosee13.jpg"></a></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIXwnbdTaSLOedhr5FADkFhkmclqIKfKeOIkh4ZD_8MPyFlQxprccsyqlYl-dY0a3vrEjMwNCleWXcIn4RsI2TAzKrU_mhZ_3rUQpb1yW6nKasRT0Z9Qw6h28qoOx_kFR0GwsLHQ/s1600-h/Filmtosee13.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117209246568016818" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 209px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 244px" height="325" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIXwnbdTaSLOedhr5FADkFhkmclqIKfKeOIkh4ZD_8MPyFlQxprccsyqlYl-dY0a3vrEjMwNCleWXcIn4RsI2TAzKrU_mhZ_3rUQpb1yW6nKasRT0Z9Qw6h28qoOx_kFR0GwsLHQ/s320/Filmtosee13.jpg" width="209" border="0" /></a>RESERVATION ROAD.</span> It's a bumpy ride down the crossroads of grief and guilt as this film paves the way for exploring moral choices no less hellish than the devil and the deep blue sea.<br /><br />Out of John Burnham Schwartz's novel, Terry George (director of <em>Hotel Rwanda</em>) probes the purgatory of loss and revenge as the fate of two fathers collide in the wake of a fatal car accident.<br /><br />Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo, two of the most gifted actors in American cinema today, unleash thespic fireworks with Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino.<br /><br /><br /></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBhXDPy5BHjZjjyBnaMULCe8ZC1-HDBOCr32cNS0Nm6SdUi5lNJrLkD1q-m1AJQQ_SGb1muK3WC5Smp5BBp8hy_nrrqLvwksTH_YGWoIfxrYxdPeKidp_X4Eq75CJ3YznyL-jUHQ/s1600-h/Filmtosee9.jpg"></a></span></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBhXDPy5BHjZjjyBnaMULCe8ZC1-HDBOCr32cNS0Nm6SdUi5lNJrLkD1q-m1AJQQ_SGb1muK3WC5Smp5BBp8hy_nrrqLvwksTH_YGWoIfxrYxdPeKidp_X4Eq75CJ3YznyL-jUHQ/s1600-h/Filmtosee9.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117208997459913618" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 207px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 219px" height="268" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBhXDPy5BHjZjjyBnaMULCe8ZC1-HDBOCr32cNS0Nm6SdUi5lNJrLkD1q-m1AJQQ_SGb1muK3WC5Smp5BBp8hy_nrrqLvwksTH_YGWoIfxrYxdPeKidp_X4Eq75CJ3YznyL-jUHQ/s320/Filmtosee9.jpg" width="216" border="0" /></a>LIONS FOR LAMBS.</span> Talk about helluva casting, and this one looks like Rushmore carved out of Beverly Hills: Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise.<br /><br />Redford, who scooped an Oscar for his directorial debut in Ordinary People, returns to call the shot in this "powerful and gripping story that digs behind the news, the politics and a nation divided to explore the human consequences of a complicated war."<br /><br /></div><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZUmqtSV0OqWyCsZtdDjztuBDeTU9XR3RRErepgWOkofsjVoxNghzAmSv5fOuIjg5h37DJ0yW0mdV2csEMB4yIQrkpPYu8G2H_U9rht7JpN3KGsmF1fr3RwQk2r_h5ZEt73cYenA/s1600-h/Filmtosee10.jpg"></a></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZUmqtSV0OqWyCsZtdDjztuBDeTU9XR3RRErepgWOkofsjVoxNghzAmSv5fOuIjg5h37DJ0yW0mdV2csEMB4yIQrkpPYu8G2H_U9rht7JpN3KGsmF1fr3RwQk2r_h5ZEt73cYenA/s1600-h/Filmtosee10.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117209366827101122" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 208px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 275px" height="320" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZUmqtSV0OqWyCsZtdDjztuBDeTU9XR3RRErepgWOkofsjVoxNghzAmSv5fOuIjg5h37DJ0yW0mdV2csEMB4yIQrkpPYu8G2H_U9rht7JpN3KGsmF1fr3RwQk2r_h5ZEt73cYenA/s320/Filmtosee10.jpg" width="208" border="0" /></a></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><span style="color:#660000;">JUNO.</span> Mythic is its meteoric appearance at this year's Toronto Film Festival. Better believe the rapt review from the critic Roger Ebert regarding this "fresh, quirky, unusually intelligent comedy" about a 16-year-old girl who deals with the madness of an unwanted pregnancy with an offbeat aplomb.<br /><br />"Magical screenplay," Ebert raves of the first-time script by a former stripper who calls herself Diablo Cody.<br /><br />From the Toronto fest where it ranked second to Cronenberg's <em>Eastern Promises</em>, Ebert reports with rapture: "I don’t know when I’ve heard a standing ovation so long, loud and warm as the one after Jason Reitman’s Juno, which I predict will become quickly beloved when it opens at Christmas time, and win a best actress nomination for its 20- year old star, Ellen Page</span>."</div></div></div></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-28270624093172990312007-10-02T02:22:00.001-07:002007-10-02T02:22:06.265-07:00health and the muscle of mirth<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><p><object height='350' width='425'><param value='http://youtube.com/v/yXEfjVnYkqM' name='movie'/><embed height='350' width='425' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' src='http://youtube.com/v/yXEfjVnYkqM'/></object></p><p>Laughter, after all, is the best medicine.</p></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-80122647571653581922007-10-02T00:46:00.002-07:002008-04-30T00:27:52.706-07:00surge of the slowpoke: take three<span style="font-family:georgia;color:#666600;">PROCRASTINATION IS A COUNTRY where I'm a constant inhabitant. That explains the laggardly pace of this blog lately, I concede. Allow me to cram and make up for the delay by posting the last three of my opinions columns in the op-ed pages of</span></span> </span></span><a href="http://www.sunstar.com.ph/"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#006600;"><strong>Sun.Star Cebu</strong></span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#666600;"> for last month. As they say, better late than...<br /></span><br /><br /><strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkqwh21iRV9oqCjn8JJI8rrjYGuerlAanYw-H4lGE6YFXfCeCsSmI9GdhtdJ_ACuPePdBn8sGEmV8TYuBfyY0bCdhKOSDKvDmJLv_ITAZHz92aUypwPWhY0Qjw2IUCj2BjGVC72g/s1600-h/Snail.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116648217509240034" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 343px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" height="300" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkqwh21iRV9oqCjn8JJI8rrjYGuerlAanYw-H4lGE6YFXfCeCsSmI9GdhtdJ_ACuPePdBn8sGEmV8TYuBfyY0bCdhKOSDKvDmJLv_ITAZHz92aUypwPWhY0Qjw2IUCj2BjGVC72g/s400/Snail.jpg" width="343" border="0" /></a><span style="color:#660000;">No Hurry, No Worry</span></strong><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;">NO way, speed is not for snails.<br /><br />Neither do they smash each other’s shell to smithereens down the road and turn turtle.<br /><br />Of happiness and contentment, the secret may be for the snail to tell. But, come on, who’s not in a hurry to spare time enough to lend an ear?<br /><br />Not the Mandaue City police official who might as well have heard thunder after his car collided with that of a TV news crew. Neither they who got more than deadline to beat, according to the allegation of the browbeaten officer.<br /><br />Suffice it to say that the whole affair was too tawdry to stimulate the offbeat characters in David Cronenberg’s “Crash” who, by the way, are sexually excited with injury in the wake of highway wrecks — an awful metaphor for the mishap of human connection in the age of technology.<br /><br />Last we heard, both parties were reportedly driving drunk. Did they deem it liberating to leave sobriety at full throttle, in the thrill of living in a whirl? So that there’ll be no more time left, perhaps, to fret about the drudge of catching up with criminals who are often faster at cutting corners with the law; which, by the way, always leave the TV news crew and the rest of the media breathless in the blur between the quick and the dead.<br /><br />In a culture that covets what’s instant —from noodles and coffee to reality show on fame and luck in the way of lotto — there’s nothing faster than the flyblown irony of the essentials — justice, truth, progress, peace — moving with a worm’s poise.<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlquppRNON489kZm0SoDEsIq3lY6V1eBSDN89jkht1T-4K1msiSu6srRBznUGoiNjPmmLKZ6_fYLCDAV-ncFaybAdsEXdqa66rhd7pVoNdO44_8hicIsh4ytnHRo9TMcmg4G1gZA/s1600-h/Snail2.jpg"></a><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;">But fast is not how bliss could be found, we know. In the same manner that satisfaction can hardly be reached in the dismal distance between premature ejaculation and orgasm.<br /><br />In sex as in eating and the rest of human exertions, nothing’s more desired than deceleration.<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuFcev9UvKkPjt351YdsbwKYcEQd4euE4Uhsp4Q2Xc-eA_AcOMe3VqjhOseObcZ51m42CHGSnpmPVcTrgBfRMXNjBDrREv4Mv-Vhpi4oebI0Lf1fP-mTCv_qdLDEa2VIvYv5TRZg/s1600-h/Snail2.jpg"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116653311340453170" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuFcev9UvKkPjt351YdsbwKYcEQd4euE4Uhsp4Q2Xc-eA_AcOMe3VqjhOseObcZ51m42CHGSnpmPVcTrgBfRMXNjBDrREv4Mv-Vhpi4oebI0Lf1fP-mTCv_qdLDEa2VIvYv5TRZg/s320/Snail2.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#336666;"><span style="font-family:georgia;">That’s the favorite word of Carl Honoré, the best-selling author of <em>In Praise of Slowness</em> as he spreads the gospel against the tyranny of time in modern life. With its cocktail of reportage, statistic, anecdotes of personal testimony, history and intellectual inquiry, the book clarifies “how the world got so fast and why slowing down can pay dividends in every walk of life.”<br /><br />Consider the advantage of deceleration as the book unravels what happens in “a Tantric sex workshop in London to a meditation room for executives in Tokyo, from a Chi Kung squash class in Edinburgh to a SuperSlow exercise studio in New York City, from a TV-free household in Toronto to Italy.”<br /><br />Beyond the exigencies of a deadline, there’s a lifeline. So argues Honoré: “These days, many of us live in fast forward — and pay a heavy price for it. Our work, health and relationships suffer. Over-stimulated, over-scheduled and overwrought, we struggle to relax, to enjoy things properly, to spend time with family and friends.”<br /><br />Lest he be misconstrued as a Luddite out to mock the convenience of all things modern, he avers: “You don’t have to shun technology, live in the wilderness or do everything at a snail’s pace.”<br /><br />Just breathe for a change. Yes, after spitting and cursing. You, too, can burn slow. </span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#333333;"><em>(September 25, 2007)<br /></em></span><br /><br /><br /><strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpxc5UY1vubTc-mBJEs9KfE9OAgWif0YmpY-PS337roT0s3RbpxIq-9qjfyMFxDu4LCwssSMI4AhN0g_LF6CipoNQLtFydRVpgakLtCzQ1aYgTFG2fyvVjX4I6sKUNdnWFG6-Ghg/s1600-h/Hiker1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116652602670849298" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpxc5UY1vubTc-mBJEs9KfE9OAgWif0YmpY-PS337roT0s3RbpxIq-9qjfyMFxDu4LCwssSMI4AhN0g_LF6CipoNQLtFydRVpgakLtCzQ1aYgTFG2fyvVjX4I6sKUNdnWFG6-Ghg/s320/Hiker1.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="color:#660000;">On Our Feet</span></strong><br /><br /><br />LET the others dream of flying. Long after the invention of rubber shoes, leave it to me to levitate horizontally with the repose of walking, to have a whistle of a time even if it means startling the birds away.<br /><br />It’s good for the body, they say. Never mind if the obstinate inhabitants under the skin of my beer belly strains to disagree. It bodes well, too, for the business of footwear and all related products for preventing the spirit of a dead rat to emanate from the purgatory between our toes.<br /><br />If I follow those who spread the gospel of a good hike, it’s also because it seems devoid of the breathless distress of joggers. Can’t hum or whistle, see, while they appear desperate not to bite the dust, or fall behind their inner slobs.<br /><br />Against the motions of the overweight trotting around Central Park, consider the condescending soliloquy of Woody Allen’s character in <em>Hannah and Her Sisters</em> as he goes on walking, waxing morbid about our common ground. Death, he ruminates, will overtake us all, health buffs or not, just the same in the end.<br /><br />Thus a sage once snorted: Why hurry if life is short?<br /><br />Maybe we walk to steer clear from the awful possibility that we’re better off crawling or groveling in the growl of everything gone awry with the world.<br /><br />See how the streets pave the march of placard-waving militants. Or the Zen-like rhythm of those rambling out of dire straits, like the jobless man kicking a can down the road.<br /><br />Walking affords one ample space to keep apace with the voices in one’s head, as Allen’s character in Central Park proves. That may explain why the deranged would rather loiter out of asylum walls.<br /><br />Here in America, where hikers’ trails under the shadows of trees would soon be carpeted with leaves falling colorful in autumn, nothing’s stranger than stray thoughts gravitating towards home.<br /></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBG6amOR8mNbOozAmUsKefqwWcXqFml5cTnRGOqWreIScMhy_iSlDjc5i0dLVRRw9Qu2ID7FpuVQcNl0Ewu-302NwcleKKzXa-S3UZ_Rj0qW600WhUWqu93dmPqj232_93m0B9HQ/s1600-h/Hiker2.jpg"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116653062232349986" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBG6amOR8mNbOozAmUsKefqwWcXqFml5cTnRGOqWreIScMhy_iSlDjc5i0dLVRRw9Qu2ID7FpuVQcNl0Ewu-302NwcleKKzXa-S3UZ_Rj0qW600WhUWqu93dmPqj232_93m0B9HQ/s320/Hiker2.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;">Where, last I looked at the news, there was nothing more relentless than rain. Where dead rivers often roar back in fury to sweep houses away, swamp the streets, and sometimes suck a toddler down a manhole. Which, by the way, ought to stay yawning wide if this were all it would take to swallow cell-phone snatchers off their tracks.<br /><br />That’s when homesickness becomes a watered-down version of happiness.<br /><br />That sounds off-kilter, off course, and utterly cloying like Charlie Chaplin, declaring, “I love walking in rain, because nobody can see me crying.”<br /><br />Last I heard, the Cebu City Council seemed like a bunch of rain-soaked chicks, squeaking while stumped about the city’s congested roads. Now here comes City Hall needing more money to construct mini-dikes in rivers often flaunting its habit of overflowing. Oh, as if their concerns are not up their necks, the City Council is also asking all barangay officials “to apprehend under-aged youth seen loitering in the streets beyond the 10 p.m. curfew to deter the prostitution of minors.”<br /><br />That, of course, is no less ill-fated than our boys and girls falling in manholes or drowning in the flood.<br /><br />Calamity funds are afoot, they promise. The city will stay above water, they say.<br /><br />Wish they can walk their talk. <span style="color:#333333;"><em>(September 18, 2007)</em></span><br /><br /><br /><strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx6kIi47CiSlx3O898MUe_7ryVxFP8U8NqvGFQwgobud1y24MV7AUEiqMOO7ElHz2131HidwP3BLM4GUQS4OEO4agQXHbVYchjuNw970HAIYFJZlz1sHpvMNuT6zJcEiNksyXhwA/s1600-h/vigilante1.jpg"><span style="color:#660000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116655823896321346" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx6kIi47CiSlx3O898MUe_7ryVxFP8U8NqvGFQwgobud1y24MV7AUEiqMOO7ElHz2131HidwP3BLM4GUQS4OEO4agQXHbVYchjuNw970HAIYFJZlz1sHpvMNuT6zJcEiNksyXhwA/s400/vigilante1.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#660000;">In The Mood For Blood</span></strong><br /><br />SO it happened that criminals up for execution were privileged to have their fill of their request for a last meal. There’s even this joke about a death-row fellow who dreamed, before the executioner could say grace, of getting a big bowl of strawberries.<br /><br />“Sorry, but strawberries are out of season,” the warden mumbled. “Ah, no problem,” the prisoner replied as if he got the luxury of time to relax until harvest. “I’ll wait.”<br /><br />But gallows humor like that does hit home. Go ask those gnashing their teeth, grieving for the victims of “vigilante killings” in Cebu or thumbing down the daredevil stunts by serial murderers gung-ho against alleged criminals.<br /><br />Confronted with such callous scorn of what he calls “the gift of life,” Cardinal Vidal reportedly muttered “with a laugh” regarding the recent slaying near the Archbishop’s Palace of an alleged robber who just got out on a bail: “It was very near my house pa naman. Is it coming my way?”<br /><br />It would have been breezy for the bloodthirsty squad —believed to be responsible for summary executions in Cebu City that have claimed about 180 lives since December 2004 — to knock on the door of the good cardinal in case their knees would crumple down under the weight of a conscience. If that could happen, would the cardinal be sure they’re not kidding him?<br /><br />Why can’t the police do anything about it, he whined in wonder. Now that’s enough to stir a stand-up comedian into rattling off a litany of rib-tickling reasons. Foremost of which, concur the cynics, could be that law enforcement has two faces enough for a clown’s masks handy for crying and chuckling his tonsils out at the same time.<br /><br />Also funny how this cradle of Christianity, in a city where piety is often worn on its devotees’ foreheads, gangland gore loosens its hair down. All because the silence of public apathy resounds like a choric undertone of “amen” for the shadowy squad playing angels of an avenging god.<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKaRwIx8NULs9kGOcUStLn-O1GDL153bWNwG81UNHnTd4yESTTR3kNhflSP5yxn0EDSVVmxLQIiGLLPjfuJBZR1vtLG3wzY4EmDC1oYiW3qaeXdAGcKtS6_MECJgeZ5zK_ZxyOnw/s1600-h/vigilante2.jpg"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#336666;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116656034349718866" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKaRwIx8NULs9kGOcUStLn-O1GDL153bWNwG81UNHnTd4yESTTR3kNhflSP5yxn0EDSVVmxLQIiGLLPjfuJBZR1vtLG3wzY4EmDC1oYiW3qaeXdAGcKtS6_MECJgeZ5zK_ZxyOnw/s400/vigilante2.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#336666;">Most of the victims had been convicted or served time in jail, stressed the cardinal who believed they could have availed themselves of deliverance and the grace of second chance. Or, maybe the vigilantes are not vocal enough about humming along to the tune of “Let Me Try Again.”<br /><br />Flaunting their sharp-shooting acumen, perhaps they’d be handy to win the war for American troops in Iraq. Or, considering their surgical precision at tracking down public enemies, why not push them to earn brownie points for Cebu by deploying them abroad and tracing the remnants of 9/11 terrorists or Osama Bin Laden?<br /><br />A good career move, God knows, is long overdue for publicity-prone executioners who might be itching behind their bonnets for the chance to show their faces.</span> (<em>September 11, 2009</em>) </span><br /><blockquote></blockquote>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-61299494040483633082007-10-02T00:46:00.001-07:002007-10-02T00:46:00.772-07:00a penis mightier than the sword<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><p><object height='350' width='425'><param value='http://youtube.com/v/UFfhxVmdXZ4' name='movie'/><embed height='350' width='425' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' src='http://youtube.com/v/UFfhxVmdXZ4'/></object></p><p>Here comes a perfect match for the ballsy banana cutter! :)</p></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-90936697080749172742007-09-13T07:15:00.000-07:002008-04-30T00:15:24.206-07:00why we need a kick in the head<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj0SIgrh2e_y5vwhBOFAc7ip1C4eBMgld_PwQjABRW9zRYdK33ftcVP-XN0_IWdznPe2losyiRMy0tp0fhgvsTpO23lWcLepkpkGXFwjOMrCCXdHlyEBIsuhlqKKssRE583_UXVQ/s1600-h/tartanilla.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5109694243605181986" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 166px" height="153" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj0SIgrh2e_y5vwhBOFAc7ip1C4eBMgld_PwQjABRW9zRYdK33ftcVP-XN0_IWdznPe2losyiRMy0tp0fhgvsTpO23lWcLepkpkGXFwjOMrCCXdHlyEBIsuhlqKKssRE583_UXVQ/s400/tartanilla.jpg" width="208" border="0" /></a><span style="color:#666600;">PROGRESS DOESN'T ALWAYS pave the way for a smooth-sailing life. Road congestion continues to be the bane fo urban living. </span><br /><br /><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">Regarding this problem, here's a reprint of my opinion column in the op-ed page of </span><a href="http://sunstar.com.ph/"><span style="color:#666600;"><em>Sun.Star Cebu </em></span></a><span style="color:#666600;">(4th of September, 2007):<br /></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#660000;"><strong></strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"><strong></strong></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"><strong>All the way</strong><br /></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#336666;">TOUGH luck, but it’s not totally berserk to bring the “tartanilla” back.<br /><br />For many motorists in Metro Cebu, getting kicked by a horse might be no more tragic than being trapped in the midst of traffic. With the former, at least, one would hurtle away from one spot to another really quick. Broken bones, too, couldn’t be more dismal than the headache and heartburn triggered by mayhem on the road.<br /><br />As it is, finding a way out of the woeful state of our major streets soon looks as farfetched as discovering a unicorn.<br /><br />Putting the cart before the steed, it seems, has long been the way of Cebu’s movers and shakers gone helter-skelter in pursuit of progress. No wonder Paul Villarete, the Cebu City planning and development officer, must have felt like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were just a snort away.<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPJzXXYFGoP6ds92QauwiHd7gUZUeuHTB_ZDDuHo3KrRXwaTq7Tcgk0XPXHFc2NYrKhpQwhxETkvEcbAVkr-LuNIuOGWLifoqKZPqFn08P2P5OpPe5xzWvI2q08YLm8f6beNPDdg/s1600-h/tartanilla2.jpg"><span style="color:#336666;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5109694561432761906" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPJzXXYFGoP6ds92QauwiHd7gUZUeuHTB_ZDDuHo3KrRXwaTq7Tcgk0XPXHFc2NYrKhpQwhxETkvEcbAVkr-LuNIuOGWLifoqKZPqFn08P2P5OpPe5xzWvI2q08YLm8f6beNPDdg/s320/tartanilla2.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#336666;">“Almost as many cars run in Metro Cebu as in Manila, but Cebuano authorities are not improving the major roads,” Villarete rued in a recent forum on Environmentally Sustainable Transport (EST). Only an escape artist like Houdini could have wiggled free from the cramped streets in Cebu City against these odds: at least 8,329 units of public utility jeepneys (PUJs); 5,788 units of taxis, and 952 units of buses and mini-buses.<br /><br />Through all this, of course, the air doesn’t go straight to anybody’s lungs like mountain mist and ocean breeze.<br /><br />Thumb your nose down, too, at Desiderata; there’s just no way you can go placidly amid uncollected garbage, flash floods during rain, the procession during fiesta, and the stream of mourners on the heels of a hearse. (Was the death due perhaps to road rage, cancer by recurrent inhalation of traffic fumes, or the burst of a blood vessel arising from existential anxieties only a traffic jam can cause?)<br /><br />As if it’s not enough that there’s a shortage of new infrastructure improvements in the city in the face of its burgeoning motorists, making matters worse is the dearth of discipline: the uncurbed issuance of franchise for public utility vehicles, the surplus of motorcycles as public transport, as well as drivers and pedestrians who are up and about like they got nine lives.<br /><br />Horse sense and time are of the essence, true. And while Villarete’s proposal for a “a high-occupancy bus” or mass transport system is long overdue, better count on the bureaucracy to get going in the back of the snail and the turtle.<br /><br />And because such a proposal can be green-lighted only with the prerequisite of political will, could the vote-fueled leadership steel its stomach to buck the backlash from displaced PUJ drivers come election time?<br /><br />Elsewhere in the world—particularly in Stockholm, London, and Singapore — the race is on to steer clear from clogged thoroughfares with eco-friendly innovations. By tapping the resources of corporations like International<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4EmoJhedD39TC0IP0QIAH_xC6tr0Qv217hM7IdcI23dXFw6TnYjV5lZfZvHtbHsM3nenG9-WdywCDLNz9_d5YoAKftLn6mql0Z9sStTWaGj5KP0AO-r9RWevLYGiq5cohnLe4-A/s1600-h/tartanilla1.jpg"><span style="color:#336666;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5109694814835832386" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="285" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4EmoJhedD39TC0IP0QIAH_xC6tr0Qv217hM7IdcI23dXFw6TnYjV5lZfZvHtbHsM3nenG9-WdywCDLNz9_d5YoAKftLn6mql0Z9sStTWaGj5KP0AO-r9RWevLYGiq5cohnLe4-A/s320/tartanilla1.jpg" width="320" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color:#336666;">Business Machines (IBM), these megacities have come up with the “biggest green initiative coming down the road these days,” according to New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tomas Friedman.<br /><br />“Congestion pricing—charging people for the right to drive into a downtown area—is already proving to be the most effective short-term way to clean up polluted city air, promote energy efficiency and create more livable urban centers, while also providing mayors with unexpected new revenue,” writes Friedman.<br /><br />Progress, in the long run, is about giving the will and imagination a full rein. So as not to be left behind, it’s up for Metro Cebu’s leaders to hold no horses with an open mind. </span>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21130453.post-97703613709414652007-09-09T16:25:00.001-07:002007-09-13T08:53:33.362-07:00madeleine and her majesty<span style="color:#336666;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCmuwuFHeXUsnGC7RKXW-DnFCNcp6hAaWwLRJW4-p7UIJxg1bLP9DQFSCJn1KqTYNdTIN4vinln3Rvm4h9EF3RQVgpXp1hzpxln4VLBmGF1BN4xkFHESh-lPcRTCkhhuMTcdBOg/s1600-h/madeline.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5109710598840645202" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCmuwuFHeXUsnGC7RKXW-DnFCNcp6hAaWwLRJW4-p7UIJxg1bLP9DQFSCJn1KqTYNdTIN4vinln3Rvm4h9EF3RQVgpXp1hzpxln4VLBmGF1BN4xkFHESh-lPcRTCkhhuMTcdBOg/s320/madeline.jpg" border="0" /></a>DEATH HAS REASONS to gloat and romp around with the royalty of his harvest so far this year: filmmakers <strong>Ingmar Bergman</strong> and <strong>Michaelangelo Antonioni</strong>, tenor <strong>Luciano Pavarotti</strong>, and most recently, author </span><a title="More articles about Madeleine L'Engle." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/madeleine_lengle/index.html?inline=nyt-per"><strong><span style="color:#336666;">Madeleine L’Engle</span></strong></a><span style="color:#336666;"> (She was 88.) </span><div><br /><div><span style="color:#336666;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#336666;">With her hoard of poetry, plays, childhood fables (particularly the children’s classic, <em>A Wrinkle in Time</em>, etc.) and religious meditations as well as science fiction, L'Engle has "transcended both genre and generation." So much so that the sheer range of her oeuvre has been cited in the Dictionary of Literary Biography for its “peculiar splendor.” </span></div><div><span style="color:#336666;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#336666;">I've been a fan of her writing since I devoured her book, <em>Walking On Water: Reflections on Faith and Art </em>(which I bought at the Doulos ship when it docked in Cebu in the late 90s.) If there's one book that lifted my feet an inch higher from the ground since then, this is it. No other work of non-fiction, besides those of Diane Ackerman and Pico Iyer, has unleashed a rapacity to partake of its wisdom and grace with a pilgrim's need to mark it--with underlines and dog-ears-- for a revisit time and again. </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#336666;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#336666;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYaU5prMIUK-uJPs-9Y7eCTkGX2_I283zbvp8TgitSm5HlQAIyvNjueOkClq23nuydJ9f-AtNCVfwhSIoEwj26VXRSsvaNMuK0m_k3eWQ5vncH7VJfPa2mMHRnXWlWq9T7Qpvlfg/s1600-h/madeline2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5109710938143061602" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYaU5prMIUK-uJPs-9Y7eCTkGX2_I283zbvp8TgitSm5HlQAIyvNjueOkClq23nuydJ9f-AtNCVfwhSIoEwj26VXRSsvaNMuK0m_k3eWQ5vncH7VJfPa2mMHRnXWlWq9T7Qpvlfg/s320/madeline2.jpg" border="0" /></a>Here are a few nuggets from L'Engle:</span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#336666;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#336666;">When asked where faith stops and art begins: There is no separating the two, she reasons, "it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory." </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#336666;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#336666;">Encouraging her readers to shift gears and slow down through the helter-skelter compulsions of survival, she argues for the imperatives of inspiration to turn the "chaos of life" into the "cosmos of art" by staying attuned to one's creative spirit: "Unless we are creators, we are not fully alive." </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#336666;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#336666;">"Complicated creatures we are, aware of only the smallest fragment of ourselves; seeking good and yet far too often unable to tell the difference between right and wrong; misunderstanding each other and so blundering into the tragedies of warring nations, horrendous discrepancies between rich and poor, and the idiocy of a divided Christendom."<br /><br />When one interviewer told her that God doesn’t send more trouble than a person can stand, L’Engle replied that she sometimes asks God, “Why are you overestimating my capacity to this extent?”<br /><br />“Why does anybody tell a story?” she once asked, even though she knew the answer.<br />“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.” </span></div></div>Michael U. Obenietahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09947614079852750873noreply@blogger.com0