Category Archive for: radikalchick.lit

radikalchick.lit

si kuya at kanta

this is up at Metakritiko where i’ve been alive in times that this blog isn’t. trying to link ’em all together obviously.

medyo hirap lang sa dating sariling namamayagpag sa blog na ito, na sa kasalukuyan (at dapat pala) ay (parating!) rine-revise. so in the meantime, eto ang isang sariling enjoy sa pagsusulat tungkol sa kulturang popular, lahat pinapatulan, lahat may posibilidad ng subersyon/pag-aklas/pagbabago, gaano man kaliit.

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Mix Tape 1: Ode to Sibling-hood

When I was a kid, my liking for the local was judged as baduy by my Kuya who took to liking everything not Pinoy. We fought over the remote control on Sundays when I couldn’t get enough of GMA Supershow, and he wanted the rerun of any other foreign show or movie on Channel 9. I watched That’s Entertainment, day in day out, to Kuya’s raised eyebrows. Yes, the talentless lived there, and they were “watermelon singing!” Kuya said, exasperated. That is, they didn’t know the words to the songs they pre-recorded and so they just keet repeating the word “watermelon.”

And here, the songs that I love(d) from the height of baduy Origina Pilipino Music (OPM) in the mid-80s to early 90s, all of which I’ve got memorized like a know how to ride a bike, to Kuya’s distress/disgust/despair, of course.

Side A: The Baduy Collection

  1. I Love You Boy, Timmy Cruz
  2. Points of View, Pops Fernandez and Joey Albert
  3. I Remember the Boy, Joey Albert
  4. Mr. Kupido, Rachel Alejandro
  5. Kapag Tumibok ang Puso, Donna Cruz
  6. Mr. Dreamboy Sheryl Cruz
  7. I Like You, Geneva Cruz

Ituloy ang pagbabasa todits.

radikalchick.lit

in process: travel with no man

speaking literally, in the sense that you carry your own bags, with no real options for help, no man to take pity, at least no man that’s yours. and this is the story of you, having a boy all the time, since you were in college to post-grad, working as teacher, living alone. there was always a boy.

and you do this on purpose of course, calling all your men, boys.

because that’s how they become, you find. they become such in the course of time, because you have the temerity to stay in relationships even when there were signs that told you to go, leave, walk away while you can. but alwaysyou see it through to what are generally painful ends, thinking it right that you do so, there is no other way,  you are proven wrong not soon enough.

and you struggle with your heavy bags and pray to the heavens that you’re going in the right direction to your bed and breakfast. you get to your room and find it unkempt, the last customer just left, the one who’s responsible missing. you get to the Eiffel tower by pressing on, you get there hungry, and with blisters on your feet, you chide yourself for these mistakes, no one else is at fault. you are always at fault.

you are in the Metro and it’s dingy and smelly, yet you need it to find your way, so you deal with its smell and chew some gum, light a cigarette. you plod on with a confidence that’s mistaken for certainty, you always know your way, you’re the one who knows what to do.

you shuffle through too many Metro stations, you walk through long unfamiliar streets. with blistered feet, you take some photos, plenty of them bad, some of them good. you have no conversation save for what’s in your head, and in there it is plenty and dynamic and brilliant, you wonder who can get it.

you wonder where you are. except that you’re here, where it’s clear what you’re up against and where you need to go. this is more than you’ve known of yourself since you’ve had a man. you should know to take this one as a sign.

radikalchick.lit

women’s month 2010: feminism on its head

This turned out to be a different creature altogether from what I imagined I would write about being invited to a Playboy launch party. Not surprisingly, talking about feminism and womanhood in the face of other Pinays just turned everything personal.

radikalchick.lit

cory and (lost) memory

the only thing that links me to Cory Aquino is really memory. because while yes, it has been about these images of yellow my grandfather and mother carried, as her death sinks in it’s also about many other images in my head.

of Butz Aquino and ATOM, and an uncle who was part of it. of Kuya at 13 asking that he be allowed to go with our older cousins to EDSA because, as he told my mother, what if there are 999,999 people there? he would make it one million! of a lola who scolded my lolo waving a huge foam laban sign at helicopters hovering over their house: friend! baka mabaril ka!

of being 10 years old, and not knowing much, really. except that three years earlier, Mama was so depressed that Ninoy Aquino was murdered. of finally seeing Cory, his widow, and of watching her campaign with Doy Laurel, and of the yellow and green fighting it out with the red and blue. of crazy elections, and walking with my father to Sto. Domingo Church to see who was winning in our district.

but too, i remember how at a certain point, there were no bottles of San Miguel Beer at our reunions. and the blue tubs of Magnolia Ice Cream were conspicuously absent, too. i imagine now that the adults must have had some Gold Eagle Beer, because what the kids had were Selecta Ice Cream, the less famous, therefore we presumed, less tasty choice.

but it must have tasted the same. after all ice cream is just ice cream to a kid.

what was different, i realize now, was how that unfamiliar tub of ube ice cream was a symbol of a nation coming together. of supporting this woman battling it out with the masculine dictatorship. of believing that it was possible to change things by choosing a different ice cream — or beer — brand. i realize now that this belief in Cory’s call for a civil disobedience campaign, did bank on innocence. a naivete about how capitalism works, and how a boycott rarely does.

that it was successful is also so telling of why our collective memory as articulated by the media has yet to remember this aspect of Cory’s rise as the widow who beat a dictatorship. maybe we have become afraid of remembering that it is possible to hold capitalism by the balls. maybe we have also ceased to appreciate our capacity at believing in one person enough, to change our lifestyles around her cause. maybe we have lost all innocence.

and with Cory dying, in the midst of another dictatorship, maybe even all hope.

kultura

seeing yellow

last friday, along katipunan avenue, ugly pink MMDA street dividers had yellow ribbons. today, driving through The Fort, lampposts and trees adorned with the same. on GMA 7’s sunday noontime variety show earlier today, all artists had yellow ribbons and pins on their shirts, Judy Ann Santos was in a crazy yellow bustier.

the UAAP’s main game between U.P. and Ateneo this afternoon had all basketball players and coaches with yellow ribbons attached to their uniforms.

and as in 1983, when mama had a yellow ribbon tied to our car, i found myself tying a yellow ribbon on my car last friday. it was meant to disappear, which it surely did by late that evening. but it was also meant to fly with the winds of the University of Makati, where the car was parked the whole day, the only car that was yellowed.

my love for cory isn’t so much about what she did for country as president — my activist-self keeps me from appreciating her in that way. but her icon is replete with memories. (more…)