Calabashes at the Jaro Plaza

These large hard-shelled globose fruits are calabashes. I happened to see them at the Jaro Plaza. They are grown in Dinglê, Iloilo, a town on the outskirts of Passi City. According to the farmer who sells this, the fruit is effective in bringing about recovery from diabetes. It's cooked in boiling water and its watery solution is drunk like tea. It tastes tangy with a strong aftertaste. The farmer will stay up at the plaza till 5 February, days after the famous fiesta of Jaro District.

Justice

a poem by Roger B Rueda

is like a pebble that once buried it'll not shoot
like a seed of a vine that grows up a trellis
and winds itself around tall trees
as it spreads out and obscures them as possible.
It will keep mum underneath the memory
of the living and silverfish.
It'll be lost sight of by the heart that feels for,
that understands.
But no. I will stifle it in texts which hide
on paper where silverfish are dead to the world.
The texts have magic. It is more than a seed.
It is a firework blowing up into the sky.
It will make anyone stagger back against the rail
and topple over, wiping out the gloom of oblivion.

Pity

a poem by Roger B Rueda

It blows up when I see a cat hit by a jeepney
and transforms itself into a scalpel so sharp
and jagged, each of its cuts bringing twinges
to my heart snivelling and withstanding
the torment and misery of helplessness.
It reminds me of the enormous, whose
conception consists of me and pity, so then
of supplication as whispered by faith
from the abysmal respites of my humanity:
All I want is the vanishing of grieves,
fairy-like and spiritual, in the lurch and faithful.
It clings to the sentience and conscience -
it draws the pith of my wits and gags
bliss and vanity and conceit with remorse and
regret smothering me to be more tangled.
It intrudes me and my vision: it goes with
the cat whose body is feeling at ease now
and whose avatar occupies my sentiment
which is river-like - it's full of water
that wells over the window of my quintessence
when I am all alone, grief-stricken, pity-warped.

NLRC

a poem by Roger B Rueda

It is full of fire and brimstone –
its autochthons and peons
are genetic copies of Beelzebub,
Mephistopheles, Apollyon:
atrocious, villainous,  fiendish,
abominable, depraved.
They eat crying shame
and drink dirty deal.
They love rarity and high living –
their secret selves are fighting
a blaze in the recesses
of their hearts.
They exchange smiles
as they pass in the hallway:
their lips are so crisp
and their eyes,
pleased as punch, their scruples
ice-covered in the glitter
of their real distance downward.
The sacrileges
of their wounded
are behind themselves
waiting to  unwrap their lips and
muffle their laughs in their sleeves.

First Sex

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I hugged his leg tightly to my chest.
His leg hairs like thin threads were tickling
my cheeks and lips,
his hands pushing my head off from him.
I moved his underwear
strap from his waist
towards the tops of his legs
with my teeth.
His penis like bubble gum touched me
on my clam-like lips which were ready
to close together to swallow
it as he put it
into my mouth, it getting
firm and more
difficult to bend and he
having a masturbatory
fantasy, I felt it was a golden
opportunity.
In a sudden paroxysm, it burst
a salty flavour.
I ate it the way I eat raw oyster,
thinking
lucky me. Then, we undressed and got
into the bath. I washed
his penis with
Safeguard, its bubbles falling
into his hands.
I licked his lips, cheeks, ears,
neck, and nipples,
he on bended knee and we
showering together.
Then he stabbed at me
with his penis.
I was bleeding, he sploshing water into
my flesh wound, the wound
which made me feel
a sense of freedom and baptism.
He kissed me on the mouth
and whispered
I love you in my ear, I was crying for
the pain in my bottom.
In a sudden paroxysm,
it burst whitish lotion
which I gently rubbed in.
Then we hurried back to school,
we put on
clothes,me taking up my bag
with my Grade Five
workbooks and he his folders and class records.

Wall

a poem by Roger B Rueda

A wall made of flat-sided pieces of stone
keeps a tight rein on emotion as if
it was a horse frenzied and out of control
when I’m feeling full of fear or dread.
It shields my body from cruel eyes
when I’m in the buff, and theirs
from mine, dagger-like, so sharp.
It wards off assailants of my poems:
as words surge from my mind
and spill over from my right hand,
nobody can rabbit on about the PDAF
or the DAP or the yellow ribbons,
or the flood in Iloilo City.
No one, even on the justice selling
of the NLRC, where crooked arbiters hole up.
Only the smell of my meals is lost, unbound –
it passes through my neighbours’
imaginings but never their cats,
which snaffle my other neighbours’ viand.
And, yes, when I snuffle but
never their fists or strikes with the foot.

The Lunok Tree

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Its roots and branches rigorously pruned,
the lunok tree rests with beauty
in a clay pot filled with soil and some
stones, everyone filled with wonder
as they sit at table, waiting
for the director’s visitor to go,
its leaves like small balls of paper
and its bole, a roll of shredded tobacco.
Its yellow buds like lolly.
When the fan blows, it blows too
as if in the wind, the kalachuchi outside
growing to a height of several feet
reeking of loss but celebrating indulgence.

Crab

a poem by Roger B Rueda

You’re a crab - you can't crawl or scuttle
on your legs and grasping pincers
out of the bucket full of hot water
loosening the shells and killing
you gently: your temperament
is barely believable: you clasp others
tightly to yourself in the surging crowd
of crabs lying in wait for their death.
You think I’m a crab, but never am I:
see, I’m boundless. I have no broad flat shell,
antennae, and five pairs of legs. You do.
I don’t scavenge through slurry.
We eat respect and conviction.
We’re not bound by lies and deception.
My cronies and I can take wing anytime.
We are eagles: we wrangle, we put
others forward, and we cut
and run together.Bye crabby!
I hope you put up with the warmth of death.

On Beauty and Gayness

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Is it proper to say so – that a handsome man can’t become a gay because only the ugly ones deserve to become one? But is it also proper to say that an ugly man can’t be a gay because only those who can look pretty deserve to become one? Our opinions and sentiments sometimes suck – and are puzzling.

Being gay isn’t based on one’s ugliness or handsomeness. For one, being gay is a way of thinking and what makes one tick. So saying that an ugly man is so unrealistic for becoming a gay is so illogical and unthinking. Much so when one is so handsome, because a lot would say that one is living in vain. Being ugly and being gay could effectively interweave. Why not? Being handsome and being gay, too. Being a gay has no system and design based on beauty or race or status in life. Anyone can be a gay regardless of his eminence and prominence –or even looks, so it’s atypical. Life is indeed hit or miss and predictable as well.

Whatever combination one has is thinkable and likely – an ugly gay or a handsome gay or a pretty gay or a freakish gay or a senseless gay or a plump gay. We can’t saddle someone with our own standard. Only a scientist can, to a robot or to his Frankenstein. People especially gays evolve and emerge with a lot of freedom in deciding how to behave and think, because everyone is at liberty. In a country such as the Philippines, all people are expected to be willing to listen to and consider other people's ideas and suggestions. Apparently, the most powerful people in the world are the people who love changes and new ideas. Their maturity and humanity are unforeseen yet felt.

Being gay is indefinable. Being gay has no restriction, yet being gay isn’t really extraordinary because being gay is no different from being a human being. A gay, like a man and a woman, knows love, too. He knows how to value and respect life. He also celebrates life as he is pleased and excited about his reality. He can be impaired by pain and suffering. He has feelings and thoughts because being a gay is a fact of life, something that relates to humanity and existence, something that cannot be discounted or repudiated or circumvented. It is a mystery of life which is appalling based on what is normal and anticipated, yet when not confronted or explored or plumbed up to its depth, we can’t know how enigmatic it is or how reflective it is. It is a fact of life which draws us to be free-thinking and permissive, because we value respect, consideration for others, and love for others based on their happiness and feelings more than the normalcy and what is usual. Being gay is not a choice, but it is being truthful or true to oneself. It is being sincere to one’s innermost complexity. It is recognising nature or the supernatural for what is felt or sensed rather than what is imposed by others. It is confronting oneself instead of disagreeing with it.

Being tolerant to gayness is being OK with more choice and diversity into the society. It is enjoying the uniqueness of everyone and the uniqueness of one’s experience.

Now I hope you’ve got my point and most likely use your imagination to weigh up a lot of things around us by understanding them or putting up with them or passing over them because so long as it doesn’t cause detriment to us, I think the best thing to do is keep mum. For one, we don’t know their hardship and struggle and desolation and misery because they, too, want to live life happily and normally as everyone does.

Life is so fabulous only if we know how to make one.

Napoles

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Napoles is a perplexity herself. Imagine she was economical with the truth behind all the scams she had devised herself and by her surreptitious mentors. At first, she wanted to look in the clear, well-intentioned and straightforward, while appearing on TV, comely and poised. Of course, it is her right to do so. After all, she is a private citizen. But later she came forth to bear out what she knows, perverting representatives and senators and even the Catholic Church. Now she is a lying detriment.

Having professed her innocence before the senate, Napoles with her new testimony now bamboozles the Filipino. Her credibility is lost, her face pinched and drawn as she goes deathly pale. Everyone thinks of her as a liar and a cheat. Well, she only has herself to blame. Had she told the truth before the Senate, then she could have blown up a blast in the government. She could have dishonoured the honourable criminals.

Then the Napolist began to filter through to the DOJ and some others. The confusion got underway. Why was it Napoles wasn’t quick and confident about incriminating her accomplices? Has she passed over some for reason that she and her family could be bumped off anytime or at some point?

Now the Napolist is sanitised. It has become beyond belief: why are some senators drawn in and some left out in the cold, based on whistle-blowers’ list? For what? Anyway, I hope Napoles has substantiations for all the people she has embroiled in controversy and dishonour.  Otherwise, all of this is all her way to mess up the truth to flummox the Filipino. If no one will be indicted, then indeed the Napoles thing is just a show set up to harass and embarrass the opposition and undesirable allies. And thus, she and her family and the whistle-blowers deserve to be sent down.

But I hope, too, that the Napoles thing is not a planned controversy for 2016, to disconcert the plans of some to run for president, or for vengeance for whatsoever – political or personal.

The PDAF scam expose is a bitter taste of truth that the impoverishment of millions of Filipinos is due to the greed and materialism of some representatives and senators. They have no respect for trustworthiness and decency when they secretly appropriated the money intended for the Filipino. That’s why a lot of representative and senators put themselves up for the posts because of the contentious PDAF, which is like a windfall, a gold mine – a secret trove that conceitedly bares their spurious bigheartedness and altruism before the illiterate and the unwitting.

I hope that all the evidence of the Napolist will be brought together soon so that the 2016 and beyond will be the years for squeaky-clean representatives and senators. And all the guilty politicians should be condemned and mortified by displaying their photographs and videos of them at malls and at museums and at schools, with captions or descriptions reminding everyone how immoral, unethical, dishonest, crooked, shady, and fraudulent these politicians are. A book titled ‘Napolist’ is also worthwhile, for children to bury themselves in for them to learn something vicariously – and perhaps with crisp resentment and aversion in their realisation. Only then we can say that we are all serious about our advocacy against corruption.

Inside the Philippines

an essay by Roger B Rueda

In the Philippines, honesty and integrity are only part of propaganda, but the truth is the ones telling of honesty and integrity are those who are lacking in them. The ones who hate the corrupt are those who have consummate corruption. The ones who disdain evils have archevils clad in angelic outfits close to them, manoeuvring them, waiting for their collapse – or they are evils themselves, unknowing that they are. The ones who help the poor are the ones whose family and kinfolk made millions to be poor or took selfish or unfair advantage of the poor to be poorer or down-and-out. Everyone now has their own inner conflict to keep cover, to survive socially, commercially, and politically. Everyone now especially the politicians has become more psychologically precocious and image-conscious behind all their malevolence and voracity. It’s time everyone became more prudent, or else they would be played away.

The national government is pushing for a corrupt-free government, yet the local ones have fraudulence and characteristic of their own. They are the paradox of what is campaigned for. They have agendas of their own. This happens because such a campaign is only made known in words and not operationally and seriously, without all the monitoring and setting up of feedback mechanisms that will provide useful information for future decisions and development of the government. Without this, all the campaigns on anti-corruption are only artificiality. It means it has no sincerity or spontaneity in here. They are all apparently vague and general, only high-flown rhetoric, only hoopla. Acting against corrupt officials only happens when the corrupt government officials are anti-national government, when they are put on the agenda.

Fortunately, anyway, no one is complaining to this point, but history will or after 2016, when everyone has realised the untruthfulness, pretence, and worst treachery of the previous government, whose agendas would have been unimaginable and whose paradoxes would have been two-faced and impertinent.

Another thing, not all local counterparts of the government are good and truthful. Most of them were evils arrayed in pretentious outfits of an angel, their hearts so malicious and avaricious. These local government officials protect anyone who has money despite his/her shameful, unwise, or regrettable act or activity that involves breaking the law. Money in the local level of government talks much and mightily and everyone listens to it, according to a local writer on my Facebook. Surprisingly, the national government is unspeaking about all these. This is a simple failure of sincerity and urgency, to stop all corruption in the government. Well, it is easy to believe this rhetoric when everything is OK, but when a lot in this country are hurtled down to injustice, mishandling, and disproportion – and unthinkable reality, such pomposity becomes exposed and discerned, like what is coming about now, slowly, increasingly – and the tall tale is coming into view like the tip of the iceberg.

The laws of the Philippines are also pretentious and hollow. It is perhaps for this country to be seen in a positive light globally. Imagine millions of workers receive pays below the minimum and whose benefits are deprived of them, yet the government turns its back on this issue and talks like everything is OK in this country before the international media and journalists and foreign legates. What is more substantial and central here – the law, the country’s image globally, the skint workers, who have no voice to express their unhappiness, or the well-fixed employers who grease the palms of the local politicians? Why does the government allow this abuse and violation to happen, reflecting its disrespect for the laws? If the laws are not followed, then why not repeal them – or at least amend them?

This government talks about its achievements, yet in truth, millions of Filipinos are putting up with inequality and injustice in all sectors of the government – as corruption is done in subtlety and with utter expertise, as a lot of poor people are exploited yet disregarded by the DOLE itself. Without addressing this problem, it points towards how unconcerned and lethargic the government is. It reflects how habitually careless or irresponsible the DOLE is. It reflects, too, how defenceless it is from moneyed employers and businessmen, which calls for the government to streamline its policies and ways to be more of help. Imagine this: the DOLE allows the erring employers to manage the distribution of back pays to their workers without its presence. Yes, workers can complain anytime, the DOLE would put in plain words – and the workers sign here. Really? Why can’t the DOLE act on this issue so that distrust and suspicion are avoided? Or does the DOLE itself want to get out of this to help employers do the chicanery lawfully deceptively? Isn’t it so obvious? Only the stupid can’t notice this. What has a representative/senator done about it? Is it OK, anyway? For me, it’s a favour to give latitude for the employers to defraud workers with authorisation. And I’m sure this is one of those good turns extended on the sly by the government to the most moneyed and influential.

I can say then that the laws of the Philippines are not for the welfare of everyone, but for the image the government has outside this country. To say at least that there is no injustice or abuse here because everything undergoes a process. Yet to the mind of the victims, they have become more helpless and adversely ill-treated – not only by their untruthful employers but by the inattentive and dissembling government. Some of them will just keep it in their heart, but to some, they will scatter it, like the scattering of seeds over the fields, over their family and friends, over the next generation. A lot of people know it and all government officials should inspire shame in themselves, because it is not that the people do not know it, they only keep mum to the level nobody knows – until, of course, the flare-up, like those made by militant and radical groups, until everyone is ready and resolute to pressure the government or worst to vanquish the oligarchy, the system favourable to the elite or toffs.

It is funny though that still a lot of our politicians and government officials pretending to be angelic hope to be recognised as an angel and a hero in the end despite the blatancy of their ill will and duplicity. Is it because they think all Filipinos are so thick or dispassionate? Well let’s see in 2016 who the PCOS is programmed to vote for. Let’s see if PR and PCOS are still the best towards a corrupt-free Philippines! And let’s see if PR can still romanticise the incompetence and failure and unfulfilled promises of the present government and the uncontrollability and leaning-on of the local government as all these go down in everyone’s consciousness and in history.

Justicebiz

by Roger B Rueda

The cohesiveness and camaraderie of lawyers and fraternities are adversaries of justice and subtle advocates of injustice. Bribery then is likely and inexorable as justice is big business in this country. No poor people can go in for justice because the process to realise it is full of prejudice and inequality, as everyone can be bought off. Duplicity and corruption are everywhere despite the Daang Matuwid, a pompous, ostentatious, and hollow watchword of the present administration. It promises disappointment, exasperation, and weariness. It offends the intelligence of the poor Filipinos. It eggs on the unfairness, favouritism, predisposition, and preconception of our society. It reflects the pointlessness, futility, ineffectiveness, and incompetence of the government. It disregards the poor intellectuals and pushes them to rise up and kick up a rumpus, to stand up for their right.

Justice in the Philippines is politically driven: anyone who supports a politician is fail-safe to realise justice, which can be brought about by palm-greasing.  Thus, this country is a country of unethicality and dishonesty. Its mediocrity, superficiality, and triviality are reflected by the services the government puts forward and the untruthfulness it can do despite depravity and paltriness all in the name of money and politics. With this, it is alarmingly discriminating to millions of Filipinos who do not play a part in prompting the government to be reliable and scrupulous, to rationalise its system, and to tick off the erring government officials like arbiters and judges. If the government does not follow through what is even-handed and appropriate, honest and humanitarian, and rational and judicious, it does not deserve to be deferred to or respected. All it deserves is to be disparaged for it misuses the rationality of this country. It promotes disparity and confusion amongst its people. It signals to the poor people to be apathetic about this country and its identity and national dignity and honour. And it inspires people to be high level criminals – corrupt officials whose charge is difficult to prove unless one is the enemy of the present government.

Depriving people of justice they deserve is more disconcerting than burglary, mugging, stealing, shoplifting, and pilfering. People who are bribed to supress justice are scoundrels and crooks more than pork barrel scammers. They are like an apple which looks so luscious yet its pulp has been ravaged by worms. They should be poked around by the ombudsman. In the Philippines, however, corruption and bribery are OK – a signal to the youth that everyone should strive to be high level criminals, as these kinds of crimes are subtly threatening and dishonouring. That being a criminal is OK so long as you are an arbiter or judge or a head of a local government agency.

I hope the social media will serve as a looking glass for the government to mull over itself and gauge its efficiency and inadequacy and laxity and incompetence.  

To the arbiter I hate most, don't be so bloody like the smell of the fish and your rotten soul! Do your job honestly!

Labour Injustice in Iloilo City

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Persuading someone to favour someone is bribery that both the lawyer and an arbiter should fight shy of especially when the case lacks subtlety and brims with clarity. All the lawyers I’ve consulted have been knocked for six as the decision of the corrupt and dishonest arbiter derides the intelligence of the sacked workers and the truthfulness of the law. My suspicion has been aroused with such a stupid decision, which can only be gotten done when bought off. It is so preposterous.

Such an arbiter should be kept an eye on and all his decisions before should be looked over – perhaps, by the CHR or ombudsman, as with this kind of arbiter, many human rights have been disregarded and defiled. I’m afraid that the ill-treated and misused were insulted and unfairly treated twice – in the workplace and a government agency labelled as or at least expected to be in ‘Daang Matuwid.’ This decision calls for organising a group that keeps this government agency under observation and asks for its abolition when it is so unscrupulous and depraved. This corrupt practice should be known by all Filipinos, whether they will react or not, act or not, express sympathy or not – to understand how justice is being carried out in the Philippines or in some places like Iloilo City, to inform everyone that the gremlins of bribery and corruption are full of zip and unscathed.

The only way to judge the Daang Matuwid is through one’s direct experience with the government, when one knows he/she is abused in the workplace, yet there is no government agency which can help him/her because of the arbiter who has the tendency to be deceitful.

If such an injustice happens in the local government agency, it means that the Daang Matuwid has no power in the local government or the local leaders betray the Daang Matuwid as they pretend to be upright, trustworthy, moral, good, decent, law-abiding, reliable, scrupulous, or honourable, yet it slurs over the intention of the Daang Matuwid. They treat the Daang Matuwid with scorn, as they pull it down to mockery and cynicism. They bear out how useless the Daang Matuwid is as it has no teeth. Then the President on TV brags about the Daang Matuwid. The Daang Matuwid is mentally overwhelming when the injustice it has not prevented has scored in the victims’ hearts and minds. (The Daang Matuwid should have its own eyes and ears in all government agencies.)

If one has the same case as the ten and the one has won and the ten has lost, does it mean that the one is not worth it (for buying off), but the class is because it involves a lot of money and bribery is worth it? Why is it that the decision is very short? And why does it only focus on one person, who quit then but returned after a few months and stayed for another year? How about the others who worked for the school for eight years? Why theirs aren’t discussed and as if circumvented or considered unreal?

I hope the administration of President Benigno Aquino pokes around this government agency in Iloilo City, for the sake of carrying out the Daang Matuwid. I hope the CHR will be as vigilant as it is, though it is not on TV or publicised. If injustice has taken place it means it has been happening since then. If injustice is not stopped, it signals everyone to revere money more than everything as justice means money, which purports justice.

Frankly, now I’m afraid that this country is getting so prejudiced against the poor, with lop-sided arbiters and government officials.

If the Daang Matuwid promises to alleviate the cancer of this society, then be it, and never should it act like it has no therapeutic claim – or else what is it out of the ordinary compared to the previous administration?

Ritz School Summer Speaking & Writing Programmes

Classes for the arts and music resume on Wednesday (9 April) on the second and fourth floors of the Saavedra-Pacis Building at 13 Del Rosario Street in Balasan, Iloilo - as the part of the school that has been burned away will be restored tomorrow (8 April).

So see you on Wednesday. For one, the rooms for practice have never been damaged. Only a small portion of the school was damaged, and fixing will start tomorrow.

***

The speaking classes and the writing classes have been rescheduled because some enrollees will still have regular classes on the 14th, so we'll start on the 21st, and it'll be until the 23rd of May. Certificates will be given.

***

Those who are interested to get the details of the summer programmes in speaking and writing, please request it  through bookiewordie@gmail.com or message +639154030975.

By the way, the teacher for the speaking classes is Jimmy Garcia Bedano. He is a well-known host. He'll teach American Accent Training, Public Speaking, Speech Communication, and Survival English.

Here is Jimmy's short biography:

Jimmy Garcia Bedano is a seasoned and inspiring public speaker. His past hostings include Miss Toltogan from 2005 to 2010 in Maasin, Iloilo, Little Miss Dinagyang 2006, Miss Dao 2008 and 2010 in Dao, Capiz, Surong Festival Queen 2012 and 2013 in Janiuay, Iloilo, Lin-ay sang Estancia in 2010, and Panagat Festival Queen 2012. He graduated from UP Visayas at Miag-ao:  has taught ESL at UPV at Iloilo City – and in Malaysia. He was a disc jockey at Q89 dot 5 Homeradio and Z100 FM. He also presented Music and Dance Ensemble Singapore in May 2010. He was 8finity’s concert host for Ryan Bang, Nina, Jovit Baldivino, and Marcelito Pomoy. He also hosted Sights and Sounds 2 West Visayas. Of late he has hosted Miss Iloilo Festival Queen 2014 and Hiyas sang Iloilo 2014. Message or ring him on +639288275462.

The objectives of the speaking classes are for students to deliver basic presentations concisely; deliver informative presentations clearly; deliver complex arguments persuasively, speak confidently with appropriate rate, projection, movement, and vocal variety; and evaluate and critique speeches insightfully.

Jimmy leads from the front, offering a powerful and passionate approach to speaking, that will help you step beyond whatever limitations or nerves you may currently face.

So, expect to be challenged, to be ‘seen,’ and to be nurtured through your speaking journey.

Training personally with Jimmy, you will build solid foundations and excellent technique and start to put the pieces in place to becoming a truly inspiring speaker.

***

I'll be for the writing programme. I'll teach Intensive Grammar & Usage, Intensive Writing, Stylistics, and Vocabulary Enrichment. Build new rhetorical tools or sharpen existing ones with our writing courses. Well, good writing matters - no matter the profession.

My writing classes are where students exchange words, ideas, talents, and support. They will be introduced to a variety of rhetorical concepts - that is, ideas and techniques to inform and persuade audiences - that will help them become a more effective consumer and producer of written, visual, and multimodal texts.

***

Enrolment is ongoing. It'll be until the 20th or until all the 30 slots are taken up. The programmes have two groupings:  (1) high school students and (2) university students/professionals.

***

If you’re unsure which of our speaking or writing courses at the Ritz School is right for your needs, please register early.

Just Before Summer

by Roger B Rueda

The 2nd Ritz Literary and Journalism Colloquiums is very successful indeed. Two schools took part: the Balasan National High School and the Iloilo King of Glory Christian Academy. Well along the Northern Iloilo State University at Estancia sent their two publication editors to attend my newswriting and editorial writing and as well as my poetry writing and short story writing. GMA 6 in Iloilo City graced the Colloquiums: sent Ms Fabienne Paderes to speak about newscasting for TV. The Colloquiums was shown on Ratsada, a local TV news programme of GMA 6.

The Balasan National High School and the Iloilo King of Glory Christian Academy are the two famous schools in Northern Iloilo in terms of writing and literary activities.  A lot of their students are talented and have won awards regionally and nationally. Some of their teachers were also present.

Mr Jimmy Garcia Bedano, a well-known host is now with Ritz English Institute after his talk and workshop on effective emceeing. He has an exciting voice. He has taught ESL in Malaysia.

Many thanks to Mr Rosie Garcia, my friend who is very good at emceeing and dramatics. He talked about declamation and oration at the Colloquiums. I know how busy he is as he has obligations in Iloilo City and the Office of the Congressman.

Ms Ruth Tuvilleja, an ex-DJ of StarFM, was also there: had won the regional extemporaneous speech of the DepEd. Her expertise is beyond compare.

Mr Angelo Tejada and Mr Raymund Cabrera were also speakers at the Colloquiums. They are both famous ESL teachers in Iloilo City. Angelo discussed some topics on intermediate grammar; Raymund, advanced grammar. Raymund used to teach ESL in Malaysia.

Mr Rene Sausa and his family are the reason why the Colloquiums is possible, and will be. I'm happy that there is this family who thinks of service first more than business. So despite the impracticality and hassle, the Sausas support all my proposals and projects. Mr Sausa is a visionary and I thank him for not giving up on me and the Ritz English Institute.

All the logistics and everything - from sending of the communication to the cars used to bring me to different schools in north Iloilo and Capiz to the food of the participants - were possible because of the Sausas and their hands, who are kind and cooperative despite their mechanical peculiarity.  The two secretaries are very nice and talented. They are very serene and hardworking.

Ms Edsel Salarda was also there despite her busy schedule. Her expertise in giving ice-breakers is very noteworthy. Mr Tim Lynes, too, our British teacher and now our marketing head, was very helpful, having noticed how difficult it was to accommodate participants while the other staff were doing something like fixing the speakers and projector.

So after the six day Colloquiums, Mr Jimmy Garcia Bedano and I are ready to fire up the summer programmes, which start on the 31st of March.

Stupidity

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Stupidity means lack of intelligence or rashness or thoughtlessness. The most dangerous thing about it is that it ramifies. It comes to blows with our reality – and worse, with our wealth, which we’ve got from our fraudulence. It is like a virus: It withstands even the idea of someone we think of as the sharpest one, so it can’t be fixed no matter how moneyed we are. The most painful is it is the idea of the most disloyal and dissembling, as one day we wake up and everything is not in favour of us. It flaunts our despondency. Funny: whatever route we are going to take leads us to our catastrophe – stupidity breeds stupidity.

Once a stupid idea, always a stupid idea. That is what I’ve learned of late. A stupid idea coated with pride is the most dangerous. It is like a cockroach approaching unnoticed and to your annoyance you pour a pool of petrol on it. So what will happen? Of course, conflagration. Then sometimes we can croak: can be horrified by our own doing. It is stupidity at its best.

Stupidity, however, can be expedient. With this, I love the word ‘bond.’ It comes with an appeal. An honest lawyer will always tell honesty; the deceitful one, deceit. And there my chuckles come in. A very obvious case is always an obvious case: it’ll always be straight, winning. It can never be politicised. That means it can be foretold. Problem here is the earnings of the lawyer. The more the case is delayed, the better for the lawyer. Logical: Well, sometimes, the lawyer’s shrewdness can be favourable to the plaintiffs. At least, there is no way to struggle to search out what the erring stupid person has. And the good thing about it is that dishonour can be eluded. This way at least money can spare an erring stupid person from mortification and outrage. Or else the whole city can see how his/her whole house is turned inside out. In plain sight, it will chop up his/her pride. Psychologically, even if that person’s major is psychology, it’ll be harrowing to him/her. For one thing, all that is judged against him/her is true, so it is guilt that cuts up his/her scruples.

I got one friend who was fired because of someone’s stupidity coated with pride and racism. All she thought everything would be OK because all she had done injustice with were domestic helps and nannies. So she thought she could do the same thing to anyone then. She fired my friend who happened to be smart and educated. She got married to her ex-student. The stupid employer said it was so unethical because to her, ‘student’ means ‘ex-student’ and ‘current student.’ (I hope she doesn’t include ‘future student’ or else I will be astounded by her stupidity.) So her stupidity went off: ramified. My friend was given a push. Her friends who supported her were harassed in the workplace: were thrown out, too. Stupid lies came out conflictingly, which only a stupid judge can believe. No fictionist can fix it, even Stephen King or Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22.

Now I can say that stupidity is like a spade. It can dig secrets of illegalities kept for years out of the hole, the hole of ruses, lies, and devilishness – all of which can smell reeks of wickedness. Funny: Stupidity reveals everything of the erring person’s artificiality and fraud. It transforms everything to sludge – all the good impressions about the person are scoffed at and mocked in everyone’s mind. Worse:  His/Her university where he/she graduated will know how wicked he/she is even how much defence is done by his/her arselicker. Worst: Christianity and Christ are sullied by all his/her hypocrisy as he/she claims to be a Christian. I hope Christianity and Christ won’t despise him/her – or else she’ll be shied at the perdition: will see Satan smile at him/her and his/her family and adore his/her stupidity.

Stupidity means wielding power at justice despite the recognisable truth that what one has done is truly an injustice and it is so wrong and anti-workers. Unbelievable: Stupidity is used to threaten people smarter than you as if they were uneducated and unthinking – and tax evasion is the best case for your employees who complain against your illegalities. Yes, it is reverse psychology, but dear, sorry, that is old music. Admit it: You are smart stupid. That’s the job of the BIR or else Kim Henares will resign because you are taking the place of her.

Stupidity is saying that criminals are OK so long as they help boost the tourism industry. Shockingly stupid. Tell it to the idiots, please. The UN can’t agree with you. Watch your word, stupid.

Edsa

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Edsa belongs to the people, the people who had faith in a very simple optimism. That is unseating the Marcoses was all the way out. Yes, Edsa successfully got rid of the dictator, but it was only short-term. It had no intellectual complexity. It was a chance move: brought the whole country to fumble – as some carpetbaggers made use of Edsa to retrieve what they had lost or to achieve what they failed to realise. For one, it is easy to bamboozle millions of people than just a group of people especially when these people do not have clear goals but only to end something in this country.

Yes, Edsa destroyed dictatorship, yet it has re-energised the system of oligarchy. It brought back media hegemony and everything that the dictator tried to abolish. It helped the oligarchs to breathe new life into the new government – the government that can be duplicitous and treacherous: it seems to solicit votes from the people, yet it doesn’t really mean to serve the interest of the majority. It wants to privatise everything that it has from universities to hospitals. In short, Edsa has paved the way to our hardship and poverty because during the Marcos regime, only they played on our resources but after the Edsa, more voracious and venal politicians came to make the most of our wealth and possessions for their advantage.

It was a revolution without direction because what it did was to pass on the country to several scoundrels, who seem to be good at play-acting. Thus, this country if you have noticed has the majority of the people who have become more hard-up and just a few have become extremely wealthy. Edsa has made some royalties: made millions flunkies and drudges.

Edsa is a big solecism. It was a consequence of antagonising the Marcoses for a mercenary intention by some people. It was a way of disregarding obedience because these people did not like equality amongst all Filipinos. Thus now many government offices do not have their own buildings but lease buildings from oligarchs. Ludicrous: it affronts the candour and resourcefulness of the government. It is an oligarch-serving action.

The thoughtless revolution made corruption pervasive. It was a knife-key tackle: dispatched the dictatorship and undid the door of untruthfulness and manipulation. It has made a government unresponsive to the poor as later government corporations were sold to rich people. Millions of Filipinos have been economic exiles, though political exiles came home.

So now Edsa means utopia for the oligarchs: averts inequality and gradually carves up the government to be privatised and denationalised – and, alas, corporatised at some point.

This country will celebrate Edsa so long as the power is not truly passed on to the people. So long as the people of this country do not understand what Edsa is. So long as the people have not realised the perfidy of antagonising the Marcoses and intention not to unshackle the country from despotism and poverty, Edsa will be called to mind and exaggerated.

Luis G Dato’s ‘Day on the Farm’

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Last night a friend of mine from Ateneo asked me to interpret the poem ‘Day on the Farm.’ Tired from a Roxas City trip, I slept early, disremembering to ascribe meaning to the poem.

When I opened my Facebook, I felt so guilty, having not made any analysis of the poem, so I explained it in a few lines. Then I sent it through the chatbox.  I promised him I would make a longer analysis the next day. So here is it.

***

Let’s establish who the speaker is first. He must be a husband, who loves his wife a lot, so he offers her everything he finds. All he wants perhaps is to make his wife pleased. So he is very happy to announce that he has found the fruits of sweetest taste.

The most amazing part of the poem is the word ‘duhat.’ It means a round or oval smooth-skinned fruit, usually red or purple, tasting pungent. The speaker here is a Filipino I think because he knows what a duhat is. One can’t tell what that fruit is the first time he sees it when he is not a Filipino. Thus, for me, the husband in the poem is not a universal husband. For one, someone who is not a Filipino will call it a plum, not a duhat. The wife I don't know has asked him to look for her a duhat – because, perhaps, she is becoming pregnant. By tradition, the husband has to follow what his wife asks for. Otherwise it is believed she would have a miscarriage. That’s why he has gone to a hill just to look for a duhat his wife craves for.

On the other hand, if one binds someone with something, it is bringing her under control. It means she is struggling or fighting back. It means she wants to get away as it the place she is not comfortable to stay at. She must be a city woman. The husband here sounds ironic: he seems to satisfy what his wife wants but the crying is the indication the wife here is not happy, not content. Her crying can mean her demonstration, her grievance, her resentment. The rare wildflowers can mean something of great value but the wife is not happy having with because all she wants is a different one – something that emancipates her from the shadow of men, something that attaches importance to her being a woman, something that bares her talents and abilities, something that shows her beauty on view, something that doesn’t confine her self to one perspective but regards her as someone endowed with lively intellect and ingenuity.

The husband here is someone who gives his wife something she doesn’t ask for. The wife is someone who cannot appreciate what her husband gives her. With what is happening, the husband convinces his wife to follow him instead of him following her. He tells her that she should not cry because she is no longer young to cry; only the young and the weak cry. But to her, crying is not being weak. It is her way of doing battle with the fallacies of being a woman and how women should be treated. That is crying their displeasure instead of keeping it in secret. It is stirring up the compassion of men and bumping off their triviality and callousness.

When the bells ring, something has to happen. It means they both need to be ready for something. When the rain falls in drop, they need to leave and take refuge. It is telling her to stop sulking. It is telling her to stop huffing and puffing. It is also assuaging her. His hearing of drops of rain is his telling her to stop crying and get up on feet and follow him because of the impending threat or predicament. There seems to have a masculine vanity that is involved here. On the other hand, he must just be so concerned with her.

In a relationship, however, a couple should know what one wants and what makes one happy. In the poem, both the husband and the wife do not know how their differences can become a foil for each other’s happiness and satisfaction. They both get the wrong end of the stick. Because of this, their relationship is so uneven. It becomes a misfortune that will miff them both repeatedly until they realise all their failings and shortfalls in each other.

The poem is full of paradox: he’s caught her in his arms an hour and taught her love’s secret where the mountain spirits meet, yet he doesn’t know what love is: he is so distant from her thoughts and longings, from her dreams and joy, from her contentment and interest; if he knows love’s secret, unbound, his wife will love him, smiling. And such an unusual reality becomes as mundane to the couple as indicated by the poem’s title, which tells where and when the poem happens.

The poem reminds me of an Iloilo woman who got married to a Korean farmer. She was a clerk at a copy centre. When he came to the Philippines, he introduced himself to the woman as a businessman. The woman fell in love with him and they got married after a few months. Later the man went back to Korea with her. Then she realised she got married to a farmer. All she wanted were given by her husband except that she was not allowed to go back to the Philippines. That time she felt so unhappy despite all the things her husband gave her. Their house was on a far-flung farm in rural South Korea, where they had no neighbours. With no one to talk to, she felt so lonely and downhearted. Every day she would cry and cry. It took years for her to go back to Iloilo. When I met her at a mall, she told me that she had to follow her husband or else she couldn’t see her children anymore forever. All her children then were left to her in-laws in Korea, so she couldn’t decide to leave him and stay in Iloilo for good.

Anyway, the husband in the poem doesn’t know what a woman is. He knows of her as someone who should follow him without considering what she thinks of. He is very old-fashioned and intolerant. He thinks of a woman as someone inferior to him, yet in many aspects the woman is intellectually superior to him. And that seems to be what he has failed to realise.

He wants to fill his wife with wonder, but he can’t do it to her. He fails to understand that women are not all the same. An oversimplified conception is very dangerous I think. He should know that individuality is much more in the cards than what he thinks of women or individuals. That being a husband is not something that gives him all the power to be in control. Marriage is not all about men who is in control – it is teamwork:  love cannot go on with modern women when men do not treat women as their equals. For love to work, both should realise their imperfection and inadequacy.

Here is the poem ‘Day on the Farm.’

I’ve found you fruits of sweetest taste and found you
Bunches of duhat growing by the hill,
I’ve bound your arms and hair with vine and bound you
With rare wildflowers but you are crying still.

I’ve brought you all the forest ferns and brought you
Wrapped in green leaves cicadas singing sweet,
I’ve caught you in my arms an hour and taught you
Love’s secret where the mountain spirits meet.

Your smiles have died and there is no replying
To all endearment and my gifts are vain;
Come with me, love, you are too old for crying,
The church bells ring and I hear drops of rain.

—Luis G Dato

Payslips

an essay by Roger B Rueda

The payslip is something that gives a proof that a company has paid an employee. It is signed by the company’s in charge and the employee herself/himself upon getting her/his money due to be paid on payday, of course aside from the payroll which the employee writes her/his signature on.

When a company refuses to let its employees have the payslip, that’s alarming. That is something the DOLE has to know. The employee’s assertiveness has to stir up the company’s deep-seated sense of dishonesties and disregard of her/his right. But this piece of paper is passed over. A shrewd boss especially some Korean bosses cannot issue payslips to their workers. These bosses are motivated not by a desire to practise the fair labour standards, but by fear of being sued someday: they are ready to break the law by dodging tax, by eluding the welfares of workers.

The payslip is like a dagger to them: impales them to be fined – or worse, their companies could be closed down. So one Korean woman I know has cut and run to save herself and her face – and her family who seemed to have adjusted in the Philippines. She was the one who would pay out workers every salary day.

Of late, the BIR has been asking a friend for some payslips: is very willing to sue the company, whose lawyer wanted to accuse its employees of tax evasion. Funny: it could have been the first ever case perhaps –  the one which BIR has not filed; a case initiated out of ignorance or exaggeration or intimidation. He should have advised his client to issue payslips, instead. At least this one has sense. And is legal. That one is so embarrassing: mocks his intelligence, I mean his inanity as a lawyer. He thought he was speaking to mindless people, the ones that pee on edge.

A company which doesn’t issue payslips is so despicable. Cheap: I want to shake my head, frowning. I want to wrinkle my brow inquisitively. Imagine it creates some kind of incongruity to those who have worked in a decent company. For one thing, they don’t issue payslips, yet they have two payrolls – for the BIR, SSS, Pag-ibig, and Philhealth and for the company. And then a mayor is OK with it. Gossiped: I hope not. Anyway no mayor would dare OK it when she/he is an honest one. BS: for tourism. What? Rubbishy mind.

I want to suggest to the DOLE and BIR that payslips have to be signed by their representative – for daang matuwid’s sake. And to avoid dishonesties as well. Copies of payslips, too, have to be given in to the DOLE and BIR every month. But who will when these dishonesties are protected and encouraged subtly and for other reasons not so clear to non-businesspeople. You know I can’t still understand why the DOLE doesn’t want to intervene in the paying out of money the company has failed to pay then. What if these workers were threatened to be sacked if they got their back pays? It’s up to them, makes me upset – an answer of shadiness and unconcern.

The payslip must be filed away, in any case. And the DOLE is just a phone away in case the company cannot make out what it is. I’m sure a dole official can pop up in your workplace and jog their memory. You need to have a forceful request of your payslips. If you are a bit weak and infirm then ask help from the DOLE and have just your identity withheld. There is one officer in there whose job is to sit at table and monitor the logbook aside from a security guard.  I’m sure your problem will be solved almost immediately.

An Observation About a DOLE Policy

an essay by Roger B Rueda

What I have observed with this policy the DOLE has in terms of how an employee is paid out of the money that accumulated for years for a company’s violations of some labour standards discovered by a DOLE inspector is that the company is allowed to pay an abused/cheated employee in secret, with no one else – and not at the DOLE, either. Yes, any employee is old enough to come to a decision for herself/himself. OK, that is given and expected. However, I just have one disagreement with this. Something that can be manipulated by a fraudulent company. For one, if they weren’t fraudulent, violations on labour standards could have been avoided earlier. And that should be the main consideration why all their actions should be scrutinised and arbitrated by the DOLE.

Some workers, undeniably, are not vocal and assertive: all these violations can be ignored by them so long as they have a job. For one, an assertion of all these monetary discrepancy can lead their employers to sack them. So, they would rather not assert anything just for them to stay. A job is more important to them rather than any payment of monetary discrepancy they’ve been deprived of by the company. I think millions are experiencing this practice, yet they all keep mum. And the drama continues every day: they are constrained to tell lies against themselves and their rights. No one notices this either. Or, perhaps, most of them have become oblivious or contentedly immersed in the concept of inequity and injustice.

For me such a process isn’t good. There seems a possibility that an employee can be blackmailed or threatened no matter how educated she/he is, so in the end an employee will just say a lie: will go to the labour office and say she/he has been paid despite disapproval in her/his mind, despite helplessness, for what she/he will do against her/his employer is like crawling up precarious ladders. See, this is obviously my point. Millions of employees in this country are not empowered to be vocal and assertive as they can be sacked straightaway for telling the truth, for not following what their employers have dictated them to do. Thus, I believe that the assertion of payment should not come from an employee herself/himself but from the DOLE itself. Yes, I know it is legal to do this. And understand DOLE lawyers for this. That is why I am appealing to our senators to make a more effective scheme on how workers whose rights are violated are going to be paid out in all conscience, and not mendaciously continually, without any threat of being sacked or beleaguered in the workplace.

A lot of workers in this country are vulnerable. They cannot make a stand against companies with Machiavellian legal representatives. And this is the truth that our legislators should ponder as well. If laws cannot be honestly followed, they need to be altered. Otherwise they become ostentatious laws. Something that exists in our illusion and frustration. If laws are not followed, then they become completely unreasonable: show contempt for our intelligence as a country.

It is high time that such a policy was changed. I hope a senator of this country can notice this problem. Yes, for me it is a problem, a big problem. It is a subtle human right violation, which our government ignores to notice to assume that an employee is old enough to decide for herself/himself. But in all honesty, I’m afraid that this policy causes unfair consequence. It offends the true purpose of an inspection. It indirectly disparages the power of an inspection and the DOLE itself. It isn’t deep. It is so procedural yet so insincere in a way. It can also be sidestepped, deceptively – who knows? Thus, the perfect solution is that payment should be done with a DOLE lawyer and key officials and militant groups from communities or universities like UP if possible. Then the pressure doesn’t come from a worker, which is what most workers avoid doing. What if the company hadn’t paid the worker the exact amount set by the DOLE? What if the company hadn’t paid the worker at all? These possibilities are theoretically capable of happening or existing, and likely in practice as well.

Changing this policy is a signal that the DOLE is sincere in helping workers whose rights are infringed. It also signals whether the government really means parity or whether there truly exists a political will to begin change for better and fairer labour standards and practices.

On Anti-gay Laws

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Anti-gay laws are extremely cruel. They are irrational. They reflect the bitterness and viciousness of a country. They manifest the lack of intelligence and sensitivity of a country. They are very distressing. They are doggedly unrelenting. They are made of doctrinaires and bigots and intellectual sloths. They are made by one-dimensional people.

Humane societies encourage people to act in a kind and sympathetic way towards others, even towards people they do not agree with or like. And those countries which have anti-gay laws are so unfeeling. I think these people have been very selfish. They've been mainly concerned with themselves. And I’m happy that the Philippines is a country whose leaders are non-judgemental and humanitarian.

As it happens, a lot of gays are more productive than non-gays. They send their siblings to school. They provide their family with money and food. They work hard. They share their life and talents with non-gays. They have respect and regard for others’ feelings. They cry when they are sad. They laugh when something is amusing. They take care of their family when they are sick or when they are old. They feel or show pity, sympathy, and understanding for people who are suffering. All these are normal attributes of being a human.

I know that culture and tradition have prejudiced many anti-gay advocates. They put the blame squarely on the Westerners for the existence of gays in their countries. But without the Westerners though, these countries would be so uncivilised and ignorant as yet. The Westerners could only expect ingratitude from these countries. I think they are rather churlish and unappreciative. Perhaps, their countries would still be populated by primordial forests; their people, destitute.

One African told me that gays are subhuman. For me, such a comment is openly contemptuous. If criminals like murderers, rapists, thieves, terrorists, and otherwise are considered as human how come he considers gays as subhuman. I think such a comment is crazy and illogical. His fear of gays and gayness is tenuous and pointless. I think he is a bigot.

If for no reason at all, the US declared that all Africans should be made as pets because they look like a monkey or gorilla and they don’t look like a normal human being, would that person feel good. Wouldn’t he raise objections or disapproval? Would he have power to change himself into a Caucasian so that he wouldn’t be made as a pet or a working animal?Does he think everything is just easy to transform himself to fall in what the influential power is imposing on him?

If Africans don’t like all the philosophies of the Westerners, why don’t they go back to their own ways? Why don’t they take off their clothes and live like those barbaric people hundreds of years ago? Why do they follow Western cultures when those destroy their custom and distinctiveness as Africans?

I think bigotry comes from the people who are particularly liable to discrimination. Their skin colour should remind them of who they are. Their being an African should remind them that the world respects them despite their undesirable/objectionable look. Openly telling me that gays are subhuman is impudent and insulting. If I told him I hate him because he is an African and he looks like an ape, would he feel pleased?Would he be happy that I don’t care if he is kind or educated or talented or productive because I hate him for being an African, for looking horrible despite the diamonds he is wearing?

Does being gay affect everyone’s life like how murder, rape, terrorism, or robbery does? It is insulting that gayness is equated with all these crimes. To murder someone means to commit the crime of killing him/her deliberately.If someone is raped, he/she is forced to have sex, usually by violence or threats of violence.Terrorism is the use of violence in order to achieve political aims or to force a government to do something.Robbery is the crime of stealing money or property from a bank, shop, or vehicle, often by using force or threats. These crimes hurt or kill someone. Has gayness hurt or killed someone? I think saying this is not based on logical reasons or clear thinking. It is denouncing before thinking. It is intellectual sloth.

I think societies like ours are getting sensible. In this country, everything is based on equity in the face of gender and sexual orientation. I’m happy that there is no anti-gay law in this country. Filipinos cannot allow dogmatism to stand in the way of progress.

I’m happy to hear comments from friends who are very bright and intelligent. I’m happy to know that they are non-discriminatory and compassionate and in the know of gays and their frame of mind and the issues they are facing in the present day.

Gays could be our parents, siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, friends, neighbours, professors, soldiers, police officers, doctors, workfellows, countrymen.

So, for me anti-gay laws suck. They are inciting social hatred and they are completely one-sided. They do gays and people who respect and love gays an injustice. They frighten gays into law-abiding subjection. They are a form of persecution.

The Passers-by

a poem by Roger B Rueda

She came growling and wagging her tail.

I thought she was a sweet young woman.

She was a freak, lunging at every life,

grabbingcoconut palms, bananas,

mangoes, acacias, and houses fiercely.

She was with the famished death,

their scythe seawater,by magic,

drowning out every life they passed by.

Unsurfaced roads churned into mud

byher invisible feet and her breath blew

offgables of nipa and cogon and tin.

No matter what theysaw to eat

they polished anyone off in an instant –

a baby, an old woman, a mother,

a husband, a wife, a professor,

a call centre agent, a gay, a beautician,

a soldier, a politician, a journalist,

a nurse, a doctor, a kitten, a mouse,

a goldfish, an iguana, a gecko.

They took a bite of every dream,

of every love, of every joy, chewed

and swallowed in hanging fire.

They cast out the beliefand disbelief,

the celebration and silence,

the memory and vacuity,

the way of life and rituals,

even the abhorrence and self-indulgence,

the positivity and pessimism,

leaving a cry of anguish bursting

from the lips of the victim survivors

shakingwith terror and with rage

as the passers-by hastened with quicksilver

steps towards other islands whose

victimhood was foreseen and reviled.

All over were remnants of mortal frailties.

Infection

fiction by Roger B Rueda

He felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He sat up and tried to know what was wrong with it. All of forty-nine, never did he experience such a curious pain that was as if gnawing his insides.

A doctor himself, Edgar observed the pain and he knew it was not a usual pain because it seemed the pain was so fresh.

He didn’t sleep anymore. He took the novel he was reading and began to bury himself in it. His wife was by him, sleeping deeply. He looked at her and covered her up with a blanket.

After an hour, Edgar began to vomit up blood. He was on the toilet when his wife got up.

‘Honey, what’s wrong with you?’ Venus asked, trying to get some sort of answer.

‘I must have eaten something,’ he said, he wanted to hide his situation at first, for he didn’t want her to worry. ‘Please hand me my antacid.’

***

Edgar didn’t pursue his plan to move to the US, though, of course, everything was ready and there was a job waiting for him there. He decided to stay in the Philippines and tried to know what was wrong with him, because his laboratory results showed nothing and there was nothing wrong with his body. However, the pain he could feel was undeniable. He carried out some fascinating research into that pain. There was no known cure for his disease, so since then he had given himself over to his infection.

Following a routine checkup, Edgar was discovered to have an unknown disease. That shockedhis friend into helping him to find a cure for his disease. There was a little birdlike organism with a pointed beak and darting eyes inside his abdomen. It would scratch about searching with its beak for fresh blood. It would ruffle its feathers and he was really quite uncomfortable. He would drink fresh human blood to stop all the pain he would feel, but it was eating into his savings, so it started to worry him.

One evening, he walked home from the hospital where he was working. He fainted dead away when he was at the village green, but it took him a short while to recover. He crawled across the street and in the woods.The thought of fresh blood made him salivate. When he saw a man, he ran to him, grabbed a hold of his legs and held on so he could not get away, and bit into his neck. The helpless man was shouting his head off. He then stabbed at the chest with a stick and scooped out his liver. The next morning the news that a manwas killed by a supernatural being took everyone by surprise.

Edgar got really angry with himself while he was eating breakfast in front of the TV. He attempted suicide, but he was so weak to pluck up the courage to do it. He had a fear of death. Besides, he was a Christian. He had faith in modern medicine, so he hoped and prayed that the research would go well.

His wife had got plenty of jobs to keep her busy. Her work involved a lot of travelling, so they would meet for lunch once or twice a month.

His sons were both reading medicine abroad.

He had been keeping a diary for twelve years now and one by one he would narrate the sequence of events which led up to the disaster.Strangely, no one would believe him when he would tell them he had been infected by a strange disease, so he wanted to manage to keep his illness secret from his family until he was well.

The birdlike organism in his abdomen grew large branching horns called antlers. When it was wild with hunger, it would flap its wings furiously and fly upwards to his throat. He had to endure the pain. He would close his eyes and lie in his bed screaming in agony. Sometimes, he would cry himself to sleep.

***

Edgar and Venus got married twenty five years ago. They were childhood playmates. He went to Iloilo, in a hick town, on holiday and stayed in a manor house his maternal grandparents owned. There he met Venus, a daughter of a market gardener. They and the other children spent the afternoon playing on the farm.

He hadn't seen her since that memorable evening of Dinagyang whenhe left Iloilo until he bumped into her tray, knocking the food onto her lap, at the university cafeteria. In those early months, there was a very close bond between them.They courted for five years before getting married.

***

Edgar, a month before his illness, went to Iloilo for their summer holiday. Venus went with him but returned to Manila after three days. Edgar stayed at the manor house with his in-laws, who are both centenarian. They gently tended him. They seemed a lot happier since they met him. They cooked himspecial meals. One of Venus’s cousins brought them a pig. The couple, on that day, tied the pig's leg across its chest and lugged it along, keeping it off balance. The old couplestruggled to attach a second cord and pulled its legs back to expose its throat.One puncture began an inexorable flood of blood, and death came after a minute of unanswered trumpeting calls for help.

The pig almost broke free of its bonds, giving everyone a fright, and granting the couple a higher feeling of accomplishment when it was dead.

The couple cleaned the hair off the pig. Edgar couldn’t believe his eyes how they had been working energetically all morning. He was not allowed to help kill the pig nor cook the meals. So, he with his nephew exercised in the garden.

They served him a bowl of blood stew and barbecued liver at lunch.

After lunch, he took a little nap. Several poor children and their parents were waiting for him in the yard to consult with him, but he felt slightly dizzy and disoriented, so he excused himself and went inside his room. He vomited up all he had just eaten. His saliva seemed like letting it fall on the string. He was genuinely surprised at what happened to him.

In the night, the couple cooked him valenciana, sisig, and menudo. He buried himself in a novel.

***

Their neighbour died an agonising death. So now his funeral wake was in progress. When he went there, the family shooed him out of the house. They were glaring at him and muttering something. Most people hated his in-laws, but they didn't dare to say so. Edgar would nod as though he understood the people he would meet.

***

Edgar recalled that he first vomited up during his latest vacation in Iloilo. He could vividly remember the feeling of pain and horror.  It seemed that he had profound amnesia and now he was beginning to recover from it. It suddenly occurred in his mind that it must have been the food he ate that had caused his illness.

His skin turned so brownish and black. Minutes later some feathers grew and his hands became his wings. He couldn’t stop himself. He went out of the house and flapped his wings noisily. He then emerged to the roof of the house. He couldn’t believe that situation, but he seemed like dreaming. He perched on the mango tree to try how good he was at flying. He was so brisk and he flew and flew, soaring thousands of feet high in the sky. He could feel, too, how his eyesight had become sharp and he could see even the smallest creature on land. He was beginning to like his situation. But he was worried that his friends might disdain him or might condemn him whenever they’d discover he was so mystical.

***

Edgar's tinted glasses are perched precariously on the bridge of his nose. Without them, a loud reddish glow lit his eyes. People in front of him cast their shadows over his eyes, in reverse, however, so he could not look anyone in the eye. He was wild with pain whenever someone saw an image on his eyes.

Edgar went everywhere for treatment, tried all sorts of quacks, until he met a witch-doctor. He has to learn the most ancient, and holiest aswang rituals, so he has to spend his time in prayer. For one, the bird inside him started to moult at around sixty weeks of age. He’d got a healthy appetite for blood and liver.

He put a poultice over his stomach. The witch-doctor raisedhis tutelary ghost, thathe might get well, and he did.

‘You need strength of mind to stand up for yourself.’ The witch-doctor was deep, mystical woman. Her voice was warm with friendship and respect.

She raised the stone by magic. She lifted her glass of blood and took a quick swallow. Edgar’s eyes seemed slightly dilated, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw it. He was too weak to move or think or speak, however.

She plucked the black chickens’ feathers on their throats and then slit them, one by one. She dressed them.

The witch-doctor decided on roast black chicken and vegetables, with alopí, a rice-cake made of rice-flour mixed with sugar and coconut-meat, wrapped up in banana-leaves and boiled, to follow.

The witch-doctor’s family feasted well into the afternoon on black chicken, some bizarre vegetables, and alopí. Edgar stuck hisgreenish tongue out. It looked very long and sticky. His eyes seemed to bulge like those of a toad. He metamorphosed to a dog and emerged onto the living room. His ears stood erect. The witch-doctor and her helps dragged him back to the room. One helper burned incense. It then started to perfume the air. The witch-doctor tried an herbal remedy to calm him down.

A swarm of his hinúptanan composed of animals and birds encircled the house of the witch-doctor.Some blackbird flew down and perched on the parapet outside his window. Some dogs were waiting for him under the house, as the flooring was made of bamboo. In the last five hours he’d undergone a physical transformation. He became a terrifying half-human, half creature with long fingernails, long snakelike hair, fiery eyes, black teeth, and the tusk of a wild boar. Edgar had to adopt so many disguises his prey wouldn't recognise him. In a month he needed to eat man beef at least five times, according to the witch-doctor.
‘Being an aswang is just a matter of practice.’ She rubbed the back of his neck and smiled ruefully at him. She handed him a cruet after she smeared him with oil from it.

Edgar flapped his wings keenly and flew away.With no idea of what to do for his next move, hehovered over a small village. Later, he salivated over something delicious, so he followed his nose. By instinct, he took the soft pith of a banana plant and licked it with relish. Then, he attacked a pregnant woman, strangling her with his tongue that hung down at great lengths, and the unborn child, and pulling out their livers. The woman seemed to have died a natural death, as the pith became the woman’s dead avatar.

Before dawn, he went home lugging a sow behind. He tied it to one of the trees in front of their house and ran in a rush inside the house to get his iPhone, as he wanted to take some photographs of the sow. He then uploaded them to his Tumblr.

Since then, he’d never been sick anymore, and he became a fully-fledged aswang. He became evasive, to the point of secretiveness.

The Death of Professor Wendam

fiction by Roger B Rueda

Myra Wendam, a professor, was killed in a head-on collision between a bus and a taxi outside the university.

Lots of students had a terror of her and her two gay colleagues, Ricky and Aba. They three had a heart of stone. They felt very bitter about their childhood and all that was denied them. They were subtle psychos. With the existence of the three at the college, all students were between the devil and the deep blue sea. So, some students wept for joy when they were told that their professor died.

A lot of students would get short shrift from them even if they fell sick while they were stressed out by being under a lot of pressure and, of course, by their waspish tongues which could hurt. The students found them arrogant and rude. Nobody could believe their pretentiousness but their innocent students, who thought that a diploma in communication arts was gold bullion. The three seemed to show signs of genius. They taught a lot of things, which they themselves didn’t know what these really were. Myra taught advertising, but never had she produced at least one half-decent advertisement. But they kept on believing that their MA’s (or EdD in the case of Aba) were credible evidence for convicting people around them.

***

Two years ago, both Ricky and Aba, who had been extorting money from their students for years, were found slain in an alley a block from a cinema where a lot of gays, who had promiscuous lifestyles, would go. Since then, the place was said to be haunted by the ghosts of the two gay professors.
There seemed no justice in the world as they were slain like that, but justice remained elusive for them and their family. Life just redressed the balance, perhaps.

***

Myra's cremation was a sad affair. Few mourners attended the funeral. All were her family. No students were there to symphatise. Only Ricky's family and his sister, who the rest of the class were sick of watching brown-nose, and Aba's cousin, who would dance attendance on all her professors. They all spent the entire afternoon schmoozing with Myra's family.

***

The death of Myra fuelled speculation that she had, indeed, struck terror into her students and that someone still must have held a grudge against her for doing all the bad things to him, or perhaps, her. The fault lay with her, whose manners were as worse as Ricky’s. But, of course, Ricky was a subtle evil genius.

No one, at first, knew what made the bus and the taxi collide at the crossroads, but after months of investigation the police suspected foul play. They investigated how a crime like that could have occurred. The killer or the mastermind must have borne any grudge against her. Myra died in mysterious circumstances, and there was a possibility that it was murder. For one thing, when the bus driver was in collision with a taxi, one passenger heard the noise of a gun firing at the helm.

The next scene was all a bit sudden. The one killed was not the real driver. The real driver had escaped, and her wife was on TV, weeping buckets and appealing to her husband to show up. After an autopsy was carried out, a week after, the police and the media concluded from the evidence that Myra was murdered.

A year ago, Myra kept herself aloof from what was happening around her. Her insensitivity towards the feelings of her colleagues, who would have a foul day with her at work, was remarkable. But one of her colleagues noticed that she'd been seeing someone on the quiet. The woman looked strangely familiar, though her colleague knew she'd never met her before.  When the woman and Myra saw her, they gave her a black look, and, as she left the secluded restaurant, she was confronted by the angry women, Myra and her companion, who tried to block her way. They threatened to kill her unless she did as they asked.  In order to escape threat, she resigned from her job unexpectedly and fled somewhere very far.  Since then, she seemed to have sunk without trace.

Myra’s family were surprised to see her pray. Praying became part of her morning and evening ritual. She was an atheist and what she was doing seemed paradoxical to them. She erected a statue to her god and decided to devote herself to him.  How she became like what she was remained a mystery until her death when, in the fading light, people saw bats flitting about on the street where the bus and the taxi ran into. Then police discovered a bundle of black books whose writings were difficult to decipher and small plastic discs whose information was fully encrypted and couldn’t be accessed. Myra's full name was carved into them. So, the police turned  them over to her family. A week after, her family got a going-over and all the books and discs were stolen. The family questioned the motives, but it remained wrapped in mystery save Myra's only daughter, Alexandria.

Some of her students recalled how Myra had paraded up Commonwealth Avenue, past Tandang Sora Flyover. She looked like some mad old woman in her wide-brimmed buri hat while she was dragging a cart with a statue of her god down to the street, her shoes and socks taken off, she walking barefoot. But when they remembered how she would start to swear at them in class, they would swear like a trooper, too. They loathed having known her in their life. What was very clear in their stories, which they were spreading, was their passionate hatred of her.

Everyone rejoiced at the news of her death. Her colleagues cried as if it was not for joy when they heard the accident. She was believed to have died not in the accident but in revenge for what she had done bad in the past.

The news of her death was around for a week, then slid into oblivion.