Category: DisOriented

Currently Reading, Backyard Fracking, and Filipino Rondalla

CURRENTLY READING: All of my reading lately has been on the non-fiction tip. The last fiction I’ve read was a slog of a collection that I haven’t finished yet. (It has some incredible craftsmanship, but damn if most of the stories just don’t do it for me.) Anyway, what HAVE I been reading? I’ve made it into the Dark Horse years of AMERICAN SPLENDOR. I’m about halfway through NOTHIN’ BUT BLUE SKIES: THE HEYDAY, HARD TIMES, AND HOPES OF AMERICA’S INDUSTRIAL HEARTLAND by Eric McClelland which I discovered while perusing BELT MAGAZINE’s website. And lest you think I’m just now jumping on the whole “Rust Belt Chic” bandwagon, I’ll just say that I grew up during most of the stuff in Chapter 4 of BLUE SKIES (i.e. the Cleveland chapter). It’s been enlightening nonetheless to look at the historical context of my early life.  And, I just picked up BIOPUNK: SOLVING BIOTECH’S BIGGEST PROBLEMS IN KITCHENS AND GARAGES the other day at a bookstore discount table for $4, because there just has to be a story in here somewhere.

BACKYARD FRACKING: Something I forgot to mention when I wrote up having seen the short documentary BACKYARD at FLEFF. During the Q&A with the filmmaker, someone asked if she attempted to get any comments from the fracking industry. She says she did, and that it was rather easy to. She was granted tours through various rigs — sans her camera crew — and interviewed workers who apparently only had the same pro-fracking talking points. She reported being unable to find anyone with a unique pro-fracking story, which she attributes to the industry’s powerful propaganda machine. Power that was corroborated by an audience member with an account of the presence of energy companies in the independent film business and festival circuit. Know thy enemy and co-opt. Basic, really.

FILIPINO RONDALLA: Of course they’d have a Filipino Rondalla group at the Ivy League for which I work. To paraphrase the motto, “Any person, any extracurricular activity,” apparently. It brought back some childhood memories of my first visit to the Philippines when I was about four. I remember a candle dance and a tinikling demo, just like what I saw at the group’s concert last Saturday. That said, I have to acknowledge that this student display of Filipino culture–the culture of my parents–isn’t the culture of everyone in the Philippines. I fear for the non-Filipino audience members who may have left feeling armed with a proper overview of “Filipino culture”, and then trying to share this knowledge with, say, someone from the Visayas or Mindanao. They may not be received well.  After all, Filipinos have stabbed people for far less….

Next time, I’ll probably talk about the lung pox I’m fighting.

It’s a Good Good Friday!

Mabuhay ng Pilipinas, motherfuckers! It’s that of year again for my personal Good Friday observance.  First, the obligatory theme song. Listen as you read on. [ETA: forgot the bloody video.]

This year gives us not one, but TWO stories from my motherland.  First, a sad note…

Good Friday: Philippines Bans Tourists from Participating in ‘Realistic’ Crucifixion, Says it’s not ‘Circus’

Earlier, the only requirement to participate in the annual crucifixion rites in Philippines was that the person needed to be a Catholic. However, this year only local Filipinos can participate.
Harvey Quiwa, chairperson of the committee in charge of the 2015 Holy Week rites, announced the ban stating that this year all efforts will be made to ensure that the Lenten rites do “not become a circus.”
Well, that really fucks up my plans.

Then again, my plans haven’t been fucked up like our good friend Ruben’s…

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Philippines—Still without a successor, signboard maker Ruben Enaje has been obliged to extend his real-life crucifixion act for another year, making the Good Friday reenactment in Barangay San Pedro Cutud in this Pampanga capital on April 3 his 29th year so far

Enaje said he was hoping that the council finds an appropriate replacement for him soon because his aging body can not bear further pain.

Enaje really wants out, though…

“The spots on my hands and feet that are pierced yearly get healed in six months but the pain on my right shoulder where I carry a big wooden cross persists year round,” he said.

We all have our crosses to bear, but damn.

Quickie Review: ILO ILO (2013)

A screening of this Canne Caméra d’Or-winning film was hosted by the dayjob and I went, having prepared myself to go all Hooper from Chasing Amy during the Skype Q&A with Singaporean director Anthony Chen. But this film about a Hong Kong family who takes on a Filipina maid during the Asian financial meltdown of 1997 thankfully wasn’t rage inducing.

During the Q&A, the director mentioned having been taken to task for not providing any critique of the OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker) system. I was just happy that we didn’t get either of the two “typical” OFW horror stories–Filipinas being physically or sexually victimized, or victimizing the families they work for, stealing money, abusing children and elders, etc. Hell, I half-expected Teresa (the maid) to have some anting-anting which makes her some Asian Mary Poppins who teaches young Jiale about, I dunno, love and family or somesuch. 

(She probably would have if this was some Hollywood film.)

Anyway, I’m fine that the film wasn’t about the plight of OFWs for two reasons. One, I think Chen gives a pretty even-handed representation of the part most people play in that whole system, in a way which jives with the memories I’ve had as a child observing Filipinas who were brought over to the United States to help with the families of other Filipinos. And two, that kind of message would’ve taken away from the film’s focus on the compelling study of how four very different people cope against forces outside their control.

5 out of 5.

“I will see you on Good Friday…”

As some of you know, my Good Friday tradition is listening to the song “Good Friday” by the Black Crowes while looking up who got crucified in the Philippines this year…

SAN FERNANDO, PAMPANGA (Updated) — Devotees in San Pedro Cutud village here had themselves nailed to a wooden cross to re-enact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as thousands of local and foreign spectators watch the bloody annual rites to mark Good Friday in Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation.

The money quote comes from Lasse Spang Olsen, a 48-year-old filmmaker from Denmark who joined in on the fun…

After being helped down from the cross, [Olsen] said of his experience: “Fantastic, you should try it.”

“I will not forgive you / Nor will I accept the blame…”

It’s that time of year once again where I celebrate that one special aspect of my cultural and religious heritage…

SAN FERNANDO, Philippines–Catholic zealots in the Philippines re-enacted the last hours of Jesus Christ on Good Friday, whipping their backs and nailing themselves to crosses in a grisly Easter ritual that persists despite Church disapproval.

(link)

“That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change…”

Seems like a lot of PBS documentary films set in the Philippines are coming out of the woodwork lately.  A few months ago, I saw Left By the Ship on Independent Lens , and last week on POV, Give Up Tomorrow. That’s awesome!!  Okay, I might be a little biased. 
Give Up Tomorrow was more relatable to me.  Not because anything in my life resembles the predicament of the film’s primary subject, Paco Larrañaga… well, come to think of it, no one’s life could.  Back in the late 90s, well before the social media and just before the 24-hour news cycle, I remember catching the occasional word about the Philippines’ version of “The Trial of the Century.”  I never took the time to learn much about it, thinking it was just some Filipino hyperbole.

From the film’s website…

As a tropical storm beats down on the Philippine island of Cebu, two sisters leave work and never make it home…

GIVE UP TOMORROW exposes a Kafkaesque extravaganza populated by flamboyantly corrupt public officials, cops on the take, and a frenzied legal and media circus. It is also an intimate family drama focused on the near mythic struggle of two angry and sorrowful mothers who have dedicated more than a decade to executing or saving one young man, Paco Larrañaga.

So, no, unlike Paco, I’ve never been convicted and sentenced to death for rape and murder, even though 35 witnesses and at least one photograph place me 350 miles away from the crime scene.  But when I hear the stories of the things the victims’ family and Larrañaga’s family did to try and prove Paco’s guilt or innocence–things people in most civilized countries would call trading in influence, corruption, cronyism, and nepotism–I remembered how I grew up hearing that those sorts of methods were, regrettably, simply “the way things are done.”  Or, in the immortal words of Bruce Hornsby and the Range, “That’s just the way it is.”  In other words, you needed to do what you needed to do in order to get your due in what everyone knows is a broken system.

Because if you think your son is suffering through what you see is a gross miscarriage of justice, and you had the position and influence to take advantage of an international law to get him moved to another country, what might you do?

If you think someone is about to get away with the rape and murder of your children because you fear his family could use their position and influence to do just that, and you have relatives who are cops, or who literally work in the office of the President of the Philippines, or who actually happens to be The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, what might you do?

The amazing thing about the film is it’s example of how virtually every person in it really does see her or himself as the hero of his or her own story.  From Paco, to the Larrañagas, to the Chiongs (the victims’ family), even down to the judge who gave these bizarre rulings and even fell asleep (yeah, you read that right) at different points during the trial.

Well, except for maybe one person.

Near the end of the film, Paco’s mother berates herself for not having allowed her son to flee the country to the US or Spain (where they have relatives) when the charges were announced, against the advice of virtually everyone around her.  That strategy isn’t so unusual, even for ostensibly innocent people: go on the lam for a bit, maybe to another province or another country, let the heat die down a bit, and let the evidence wind its way through.  But Paco’s mother refused to play that game.  She applied the reasoning that most others would apply: 35 witnesses + 1 photograph = This’ll get straightened out in a jiffy.  And because she made that bet, she continues to ask herself to this day if she was a bad mother.

When people can feel like a failure as a parent for trusting the system, it’s no wonder they think they live in a world where “some things will never change.”

Mabuhay ng Pilipinas, Motherf–kers!

Just three of the reasons I’m proud to be Filipino:

1
Toadies of Filipino martial arts practitioners talk the best smack…

2
We take Good Friday really fucking seriously…

3
We… uhh… apparently also take cosplay really fucking seriously…
(The video’s in Tagalog, but you’ll get the gist.)

Reminds me of what Dad always used to say: “Aba!”

Readin’, Writin’, Race

Two of my stories–“Good for the Gander” and “Tough Love”–have been listed in the 2009 Short Fiction by People of Color on the Carl Brandon Society wiki, and on the CBS’s blog as well.

It’s been a prompt for me to finally give some thought about readin’, writin’, & race.

…?

Oh, wait–you were expecting me to have thought those thoughts and expound on them? Unfortunately, I’m not quite there yet. But, I have considered a few back-of-the-envelope points.

1
I’ve put off thinking about this topic since I started spewing words onto paper five or so years ago. I had horrible visions of writing some manifesto that starts “As an Asian-American writer, I…” or writing some story about some thirtysomething First Generation Flipino.

2
For years I’ve been hiding behind my beginner status. (You could make a good argument that I should keep doing just that!) “Just learn how to write and get to the race stuff later,” I told myself. And to be honest, I never felt any real pressure to get to it. But not only did I feel some internal pressure, and it was a horrible push/pull situation. I subconsciously feared how much would be riding on writing “my “Filipino story.” I was probably overthinking the whole thing. Thing is, growing up Filipino and Catholic instills a fear of fucking up like you wouldn’t believe.

3
(or, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Race in My Writing Until I Had Something to Say”)

The only thing I can offer in my defense is that you wouldn’t have wanted to read any “Filipino story” I might’ve written 2-3 years ago. But as it happens, I’m working on a piece right now with Filipino characters. Not because of any pressure, nor to make any particular statement. I’ve got a yarn to spinl about certain characters who’ve grown up a certain way, who have made or will make choices about their life paths.

More to come later, maybe.