Blog Archives

Of the last gasps of the dying: we wait for them to exhale.

Save for my grandmother, I’ve never seen anyone die.  I just check obituaries, or I hear the bad, sad news from a friend or an acquaintance that someone I know passed away.  Yet those are for sick and old relatives.  Over the years, I’ve grown used to the idea that my friends and acquaintances would probably die by suicide.  Many of them already have.

There’s a friend who hanged herself.  There’s a friend who overdosed on drugs.  I know someone who died from a vehicular accident because he was piss-drunk racing on the highways.  A couple of acquaintances shot themselves.  Someone sliced the flesh of her arm too deep, and died from hemorrhage.  One jumped off a bridge.  One by one, they died before they knew what it’s like – what it’s really like – to live.  I stopped counting at 20: either my memory fails me, or that the idea of counting every single dead friend and acquaintance is too much to bear.  I could have counted more, and I could probably count more as time passes by.

It’s particularly difficult to deal with it at funerals and wakes, where you’re supposed to remember the life and times of that friend in the coffin. Yet no round of tong-its or mystery of the Rosary will ever change the fact that this particular person’s last memory is that they died by their own hands.  Somehow, I can’t stand that thought.

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The Lumix was capturing every bit of the tattoo session, from a comfortable distance.  They call it “dutdutan,” where art and commerce – pleasure and pain – marry.  Then again, there’s a difference between watching someone get tattooed, and being tattooed.  Thank goodness I wasn’t seated on that chair.

Back in college, I was enamored by a professor’s lecture-exhibit on tattooing and tooth-staining in the Cordillera.  She showed us pictures and videos of how ritual tattooing was done in places where there were no tattoo parlors.  A man burned a sharpened stick of guava wood to soot, and the slow and painful process of “dutdutan” took place.  The designs were meaningful, although the prospect of getting tattooed with a very simple instrument looked – at least from where we were seated – extremely painful indeed.

That was many years ago: a bunch of soon-to-be – and wannabe – anthropologists have to unlearn cringing and squirming in the name of turning cultural curiosities into scientific discoveries.  Yet when I heard the tattoo gun start whirring and buzzing in the background, I felt my knees go weak.  Heck, I wasn’t the one getting tattooed, but my good friend, roxstar + photographer extraordinaire, Fritz Tentativa.

So, will this entry come across as a difficult-to-read blog entry that’s a futile attempt at trying to write a magazine article on the Internet?  Why, yes, of course.

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I never thought I’d inspire somebody with one post, but these are the things that make writing – and yes, paper crane folding – all worth it.

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Shaw Boulevard/EDSA, 10:00 AM, August 21

I thought it was a working day.  I walked back to the terminal to catch a bus home – or to wherever I was going – when I saw the old woman carrying the cake, wrapped in ribbons, placed in a red box.  She didn’t look like a little old lady who can afford cake.  Maybe some kind soul gave her the cake.  Or maybe looks can be deceiving, and that her barefoot, gaunt, and frail body actually has some deep pockets, and can afford the cake.

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The operative word is “humor.”

Ah, the quirks of modern Japan.  In the movie Lost in Translation, Bill Murray commits to a dry, humorous take on Japanese commercials starring American actors.  It’s a great case study in diffusion and acculturation; while the Japanese have been very successful in diffusing aspects of their culture to other parts of the world, they have been acculturated as well.  Take these examples:

• Whack-a-mole alarm clocks: to deactivate the alarm, you have to play a little whack-a-mole game.
• California roll: the nori is traditionally used to wrap sushi ingredients, but California fusion cuisine includes fruit in the roll, and is madeinside-out.
• Japanese whisky commercials: “For relaxing times, make it Suntory time” doesn’t really make sense, but it sells the stuff.
• Casio synthesizers: if you owned one, “Together Forever” by Rick Astley was in the “Demo” loop, and there’s a whole line of Japanese instruments including matsuri and shasimen.
• Karaoke: this one begs and demands no explanation.

So let’s talk about juice boxes and… milk.

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I think we obsess ourselves too much with what the President eats.  A sudden case of stomachache some years back was traced to puto at dinuguan, and now we’re talking steaks and wines at a fancy-schmancy New York restaurant and DC-area steakhouse.

Since media obsesses itself with the trivial (at least that’s what Cerge Remonde implies), ABS-CBN reported way back that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had breakfast some months back at McDonald’s as part of her itinerary to “spread goodwill.”

I doubt that Gloria would have been greeted this way:

Good morning Mamser President Gloria welcome to McDonald’s, ano pong order nila?

Then again, you never know.  Miss Universe ang drama ng lola nyo.  Congeniality and goodwill ang efek!  Washuuu…

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