Ergonomically, they’re terrible workplaces. It’s hard to concentrate on work there. It’s annoying to have calls there, especially video calls.
But I miss working in those coffee shops. I need to get away from my room. I need to work away from these four walls. I am going nuts here. I will be confined to my 14″ laptop screen but that’s ok.
However, it’s still not safe until my children get vaccinated. What if I bring home the coronavirus? I may be asymptomatic since I already have the vax but I may carry it to infect my largely unvaccinated household.
Now here’s a different kind of missing. This essay by this NYTimes Madrid bureau chief has left me in a turmoil of emotions. I could feel his pain, you know, the kind of pain that hits your stomach when you haven’t eaten for a day or two. The hollowness makes the pain reverberate throughout your entire being. And for the writer, he has been trying to fill that void so it won’t hurt.
Then there’s his mom. Oh the pain of being stranded. I just realized that you can be left stranded all your life and keep waiting for that person who left you stranded to come back and rescue you with whatever boat that he has. But then you know within the deep recesses of your heart he will not come back. And you remain in that same spot for decades. That’s his mom. Tragic.
Why do people believe in fairy tales woven by the people we chose to love? Why do we hold on to flimsy memories when reality has already slapped you in the face that you were taken for a ride? Then we find ourselves standing on the same ground that we should have left long ago.
There’s so much hype surrounding Trese, an animated adaptation of the Filipino graphic novel of the same name that will be shown on Netflix. I haven’t had the opportunity to read the series but I will find time to watch the animated series.
From what I gather, this is about a Filipina, Alexandra Trese (trese is thirteen is Spanish, believed to be a number of bad luck) who is some kind of detective who deals with the underworld/supernatutal. It gave me the Witch Hunter Robin vibes but Trese looks like she is more kickass than Robin.
Based from reviews of the graphic novel series, readers are introduced to Philippine mythology, the stuff that terrorized us kids at night like:
1. tiyanak – a blood-thirsty baby monster that started out as an aborted fetus, or so what the elders told us;
2. mananaggal – a monster that takes human form by day and splits in half during full moons; the upper body splits from the lower body and develops bat wings to fly and feed;
3. kapre – a giant that resembles a man that hangs out in huge trees and smokes a lot. When you see a tree at night billowing smoke, most likely that’s a kapre on that tree. I’m not really sure what this creature does but maybe it has something to do with bringing you with him to the underworld
4. wakwak – a vampiric bird, similar to manananggal. We don’t call that kind of monster wakwak here in Luzon, most likely it’s referred to as manananggal especially if you’re in an urban or semi-urban area.
5. tiktik – it’s a small creature probably like a troll or something that makes the “tik tik tik” sound on rooftops, especially when there’s a pregnant woman in the house. The creature bores a hole through the roof with its razor-sharp tongue to reach the pregnant woman’s tummy to feed on the fetus inside.
5. tikbalang – a half-man, half-horse creature that is said to make people get lost in the woods, never to be found again. The old people said that when you’re in the woods/mountain and you get lost, it’s most likely you’re being toyed by a tikbalang. I don’t know if they feed on humans but I think they’re some kind of foot soldiers of the underworld. When we were kids, we were told that if we get played by the tikbalang, we should turn our shirts inside out so we can reverse the spell cast on us by the creature so we could find our way home.
6. duwende – dwarf or similar to leprechaun I think; they said they live inside earth mounds and sometimes they live outside old homes; they can put curses on you. We’ve had stories in our family about being played upon or cursed by duwendes because they got offended for some reason.
7. aswang – a shape-shifting monster. This is one I feared the most when I was a kid. This creature can be anything. Like a vampire, it feeds on humans but not just blood, it devours humans like how big cats shred their preys. Unlike the other creatures above, the aswangs aren’t brainless zombies that you can easily outwit. They’re diabolical or basically demons in human form, if they want to manifest in that form. Sometimes they can be huge black dogs that chase motorists at night and grab people from their vehicles. Sometimes they make a doppelgänger of your friend or family to trick you and mislead as you have become a prey. Sometimes they said some witches are aswangs and they steal bodies of the dead during a funeral to feed on. When they steal a body, they replace the body in the coffin with a banana tree trunk. This is one of the reasons why people in the rural areas hold 24-hr vigils during funerals so that the aswang will not steal the body. They also said that aswangs, if they live among humans in a village, do not socialize and they do not come out during daytime. They do not have philtrum, or the indentation above the lip.
I did a research on these mythical creatures more than a decade ago as I was writing a novel based on Philippine mythology. I almost didn’t finish my thesis for my MA because I was so preoccupied writing this novel. One of the major antagonists, if not the main antagonist, was Maria Makiling, a diwata (a nature spirit, like a minor goddess or a fairy, based on the Sanskrit word devata = god), who is said to inhabit the mountain of the same name in my hometown. This diwata was said to be antagonistic towards foreigners to the area (i.e. non-residents) and make them go around in circles in her mountain, similar to what tikbalangs do, to be forever lost. One version of the legends we have of her was that when she was in her human form, she was raped by a foreigner whom she snubbed because she already had heart set on a native suitor. She has since become vindictive. Hence, the volcanic nature of the mountain.
I won’t go into details of what I wrote as I burned all copies of it. It was causing me literal nightmares. Like nightmares of aswangs circling overhead inside the church next to my childhood home. Regular nightmares. My novel involved occult rituals and I don’t know how they came about or how I conjured them up in my head. But considering how the paternal side of my family was into occult, like the really bad one, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had it buried in my brain all along.
I want to watch Trese but I’m afraid of summoning again the nightmares. Even if it’s just an anime.
It hasn’t been easy. It’s still a bit hard but I’m a lot better now compared to when I was half-dead in December and January. I’ve come this far, at this stage that I never thought I’d reach.
I still struggle sometimes when memories hit me but they’re few and far between now compared to before.
There’s a man who is constantly searching. Searching for what, we don’t know yet. I think he doesn’t still know it yet. He is always wandering, never staying in one place for too long. Even if he stays in one city for a couple of years, he gets easily antsy and finds that he needs to move houses after a year or so. He is a restless soul.
At some point he thought what he was searching for is a home. He asked her for a home and she gladly gave him that. For a time it seems like he was home.
However, his spirit could never be still in one place. She knew that from the very beginning it was his nature but she thought that the ticking of the clock, the natural propensity of the body to get weary could finally anchor him down. It was her worst fear. But the time has come: his spirit longed to fly again. He felt caged. She refused to believe it was happening again and it was already too late when she realized that some people are created to be lone wolves. He may be an ambivert on the surface but deep inside she knows that he will thrive more being alone. It was already too late when she learned that there are different kinds of partnerships; it doesn’t mean that they have to be together. A partnership is an understanding of each other’s spirit, supporting each other without having to cage one another.
She had to let go and let him sail into the horizon against the setting sun. Sunsets mark the end of a chapter; but it is also a promise of a new one that both of them could write separately as their spirits dictate. She is just asking the Boatman to take care of the lone wolf in this journey. She whispered to the winds and waves and asked them to be gentle and to carry the wolf and the vessel safely to wherever the Boatman will direct them.
Then she scattered light on the boat as a farewell, to serve as a beacon in the night until daybreak when he finally writes a new chapter.
Maybe someday he can look back and remember he used to have a home somewhere on that hill, in that island in the middle of nowhere. Maybe when he comes to visit, that house in the middle of nowhere could be locked as nobody is home for she has embarked on an adventure of her own like slaying dragons and casting spells over kingdoms.
Or maybe it may still have smoke billowing from the chimney and a warm glow of candlelight that can be seen through the window from the outside, welcoming him back.
On my second attempt at book hoarding during the tailend of the Big Bad Wolf book sale, I found that I didn’t have much to choose from anymore. It took me some time before I could pick some books which I thought were just ok. One of those is Between Confidantes: Two Novellas by Chen Danyan.
The little pocketbook is part of a collection of modern Chinese literature for English readers. The authors were either immigrants to Shanghai or were born in Shanghai who had their works published in the 1970s to 1980s. I was intrigued with the collection since China to me during those decades was a blank slate. I do not know how the country fared after Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Deng’s market economy reform. The social construction I had of China was a mish-mash of Jackie Chan, the Chinese period dramas (the flying kung-fu heroes and heroines) shown by Channel 13 and Channel 5 when I was a kid, Zhang Yimou, HK movies, and history books. The first time I visited China–Shanghai and Hanzhou to be exact–was in 2003 at the height of SARS (and the experience was a bit terrifying and funny but that’s for another blog entry). I remember the eight-lane highways and huge suspended bridges. The manicured lawns of expat communities of Pudong. The Bund. I was back in 2014 and I couldn’t recognize the places except for The Bund. China is rapidly changing but I couldn’t fathom what was it like during the transition from being the ravaged China post-Cultural Revolution to the economic powerhouse that it is today.
I picked up Two Confidantes with low expectations. Now that I’ve read it, I should have picked up another pocketbook from that collection because it turned out to be decent.
The first of the two novellas is about two bestfriends working as nurses in a Shanghai hospital during the late 1980s or early 1990s, I think, because there was reference to VHS tapes. The story was told from the point of view of Xiaomin, who moonlights as a bar girl after her shift at the hospital so she could meet a potential rich husband since the bar where she works is frequented by businessmen. Her motivation for being a nurse was to meet a future husband as well. However, it was her meek but pretty bestfriend An’an who managed to snag a civil servant husband who had been a patient in their hospital. While An’an was sent to a field mission, Xiaomin and An’an’s husband, Little Chen, had a short-time affair. Xiaomin decided to cut her association with Little Chen right before An’an came back. Unfortunately, Little Chen lost his head and became obsessed with Xiaomin and was determined to ditch An’an and continue his affair with his wife’s bestfriend. That’s when things started to go downhill. Xiaomin was such a hateful character that the ending was satisfying.
The second story was about Yao Yao and her mother and how they were shaped by the transformation of China from the 1940s to the 1970s. This story left a lasting impression on me as it let me peek into what happened to the bourgeois set and the intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution. I knew that the Cultural Revolution was not for the faint-hearted but I had no idea of how they lived through it. The story was raw and excruciating especially as it was written by a native Chinese who may have first-hand experience of that horrible episode. The description of the squalid living conditions of the zealous urban youth who were sent to the rural areas was palpable. I could taste the desperation of those who could not accept the rapid changes and of those who were unjustly accused that they had to die by their own hands. And Yao yao’s end is like a punch to the stomach that took the wind out of me. I couldn’t decide whether I’d rather have it that way to end Yao yao’s misery or I’d like to scream at the author for not giving her some kind of reprieve.
I blame the horrid translation for not giving Chen Danyan’s stories the elegance of prose they deserve.
This is one of my random picks at the recent Big Bad Wolf book sale. I judge the book by its cover and I am not apologizing for it. I have this inexplicable desire to read Asian authors or Asian themes nowadays after finding myself getting tired of YA novels (of course I should get tired of it, I’m almost 40 years old!). I had been reading YA literature for a while because I always thought I will graduate as a YA novelist. I am also now taking a pause from my fantasy reads because Tamora Pierce gave me headaches (for a different reason, not because her writing was subpar).
Anyway, I was duped by that one line that says, “‘Breathtaking’–Adeline Yen Mah” on the cover
It’s supposed to be good. How can it not be when the subject is a real-life Manchu princess who was banished to Japan, married off to a Mongol prince, escaped Mongolia, then came back to China as a Japanese spy?
But Maureen Lindley bungled it. She really bungled it big time. It could have been a fascinating fictionalized story of a real-life adventuress if it had been handled well but all it had was the sexual exploits of a really baaaaaaaaaaaaaad person. I am having a hard time finishing this novel but I have to so I can move on to my other new books. And I’m no prude, so that says a lot.
As a writer, Lindley was passable in the sense that she is not as horrible as the creators of the Twilight Series and Fifty Shades (I never got past the first chapter of Fifty Shades, it was like a mangled fanfic). However, I have issues with her storytelling. Good writers show, they just don’t tell. (This is the same mantra for us journalists as well). Lindley doesn’t need to tell her readers in plain language that Yoshiko Kawashima was a horrible person (“I am bad.” LOL). Her thought process and description of her deeds were enough to show readers that her moral compass was off. The writer lacks that sophistication that allows a reader to peel layers upon layers of this complex person. In the hands of a master storyteller, Yoshiko could have been much more than the caricature that Lindley had painted.
In addition, Lindley’s writing–about the cultures (Japanese and Chinese) she hasn’t lived or experienced first-hand–feels contrived. Her description of Shanghai, the rooms she had lived in, and the life Yoshiko supposed to have lived in Tokyo made me feel like the author just wanted to paint the story as a really exotic one. Like it was meant for clueless Westerners. But these were just merely descriptions, without rhyme nor reason. I could feel in her prose that she doesn’t have a good grasp of the culture, the milieu, of the people she was writing about. She merely relied on rhetoric, which can easily be picked up from historical texts. Another giveaway was how Yoshiko observed, as Lindley wrote, that Empress Wan Jung called Manchukuo (the Japanese puppet state located in the Northeast now part of the Three Northeast provinces/Dongbei) as Manchuria, the alleged Chinese name. But according to historical texts, the Chinese never called it Manchuria, only the Westerners did since Manchuria was a Western/Japanese construct. Yes, there are Manchus (a Japanese construct/translation of Manshu/Manzhou) but no Manchuria.
According to Nakami Tatsuo, Philip Franz von Siebold was the one who brought the usage of the term Manchuria to Europeans after borrowing it from the Japanese, who were the first to use it in a geographic manner in the eighteenth century although neither the Manchu nor Chinese languages had a term in their own language equivalent to “Manchuria” as a geographic place name.[12] The Manchu and Chinese languages had no such word as “Manchuria” and the word has imperialist connotations.[13]
In contrast, Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth), who isanother Westerner writing about another culture not her own, had a better handle of the subject. She wrote about Wang Lung from a third-person point of view. Her writing captivated me, her prose clear and uncomplicated. She had the ability to transport me to China, to the middle of that devastating flood, to make me weep for O-Lan, to imprint in my mind the line that says Wang Lung cannot divorce O-Lan because it was like cutting a part of him, like his hand, but he cannot help being addicted to his favorite concubine. She made me feel the gravity of the earth, the preciousness of it, the beauty and madness of it. Buck had knowledge of the culture, of the people she wrote about–albeit as a spectator and not part of it–because she grew up in China as a child of missionaries and spent a good part of her adult life back in China.
So back to Lindley. I hate her for wallowing in so much BDSM like that was the only essence of Yoshiko. Yeah, the subject is probably hypersexualized than normal Chinese/Japanese but really, that is all you can write about this fascinating character?
