BEYOND THE SUNRISE
Sunday, February 29, 2004
at nakita ko na. hindi ako pah-tee girl.
went out with friends that i really really missed last night (especially duckyy and bea) and had a good time, sans the pretentious party culture. cori's right, we're nice-conversation people. i preferred the great grappa's beer and quiet moments in a small area in greenbelt than the loud see-and-be-seen strip of bars. i know i've been ranting about these things for more than two years, but it really just hit me now. ¶ 2/29/2004 11:32:08 AM
Sunday, February 22, 2004
(tired me) i'm tired of being critical. i'm tired of questions. i'm tired of having to watch myself speak, having to watch the words i write, checking that my claims are plausible, that i'm making sense.
so i'll be me tonight: silent and blank. i will retreat into a monologue.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.
(Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali) ¶ 2/22/2004 08:23:35 PM
Friday, February 20, 2004
on blogs and activism Have had a slew of emotions this morning. Read the blogs of a lot those heights, literary(ily) great people, and am really humbled by their ability to combine wistfulness with simplicity. I'm still hiding behind my words. (If I would go to self-pity mode, I'd say I'm not good enough.)
Anyway, I stumbled upon a really good article in the guardian. It seems that a lot of those high-profile politicians have joined the blogging bandwagon. Howard Dean and John Kerry (US democrat hopefuls) have already been using the blog as a format for being accessible to voters. And now Tony Blair wants to make his own blog so that he can begin an 'engaging dialogue with the people'. Dean claims that 'virtual activism' can be translated to 'real activism'... sounds cool, eh?
I'm suddenly reminded of the time when both MIRC chatrooms and those email surveys were all the rage. One of the questions from those surveys was, "Who and how many are your online friends?" To which we ought to have replied, "None, because I have real life friends!"
When I tried to teach globalization I made my students read two contrasting articles: one post-modern reading, emphasizing 'flows' and 'disjunctures' and a Marxist reading, emphasizing wb-imf imperialism and proletarianization. Threshing these arguments will be done another time, but it was interesting that my students found the former po-mo reading very appealing. The whole notion of flows and fluid landscapes sounded good, implying that the world now consists of multiple flows such that time and space are compressed and information can be handled in real-time, in no time.
It sure is appealing to believe that we are living in a single 'global village', but we have to ask a really important question -- who is dictating the common-sense of the age? Our friends working for multinational corporations have become part of a transnational capitalist class, believing that they live the lifestyle of their first-world counterparts, just look at our apparent 'affinity' with shows like Sex and the City. They seem to forget that while they work (slave) for first-world capital, they are still situated in the third world. The vestiges companies put in their call-centers, like American flags or forcing American accents on Asian workers act as forms of insulation from the realities of economic inequality and social inequity (read: poverty and social injustice). Has the neoliberal onslaught been so strong that we have lost our own ideologies, or at the very least, our ideals? Whatever happened to third worldism? Can it only be a politics of negation, anti-imperialism, Eastern versus Western values? What does it mean to be an activist? To live the manifesto, or to go shopping in Greenbelt? Has the politics of protest been reduced to the politics of consumerism?
And while we're at it, how can I move away from my own insulation? ¶ 2/20/2004 07:56:06 AM
Monday, February 16, 2004
just another political post :P just read that yet again there will be delays in the elections in afghanistan. the major dailies claim that it's because of the low voter turnout (especially the female vote, tallying to only 2%) and the fact that so many parts of the country are still ridden with pockets of violence. these things are said to be substantive hindrances to democratizing the country.
turning to iraq, practically the same rhetoric is being launched against fast-tracking the elections. and yet, the issue is probably more complicated than the inability to mobilize voters. i wonder if it's because of the rise to prominence of the politically powerful shia parties, who will precisely try to win legitimate power through elections. thing is, they're sympathetic to iran (dubya's axis of evil), close friends with ayatollah, and will probably contest the us' influence in the country. so now dubya and paul bremer are not just afraid of bringing democracy to iraq. now their biggest obstacle is the fact that they are afraid of bringing the wrong democrats to power. ¶ 2/16/2004 10:22:15 AM
Saturday, February 14, 2004
GOOD NIGHT -- Czeslaw Milosz -------
No duties. I don't have to be profound.
I don't have to be artistically perfect.
Or sublime. Or edifying.
I just wander. I say: "You were running,
That's fine. It was the thing to do.
And now the music of the worlds transforms me.
My planet enters a different house.
Trees and lawns become more distinct.
Philosophies one after another go out.
Everything is lighter yet not less odd.
Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.
We talk a little of district fairs.
Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,
Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.
That's better than examining one's own private dreams.
And meanwhile it has arrived. It's here, invisible.
Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.
Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.
Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell.
------ ¶ 2/14/2004 02:36:36 AM
Thursday, February 12, 2004
i can't seem to reconcile my being a student of politics with my lack of activism. i just had coffee with lawrence and aaron, and it hit me that i am probably one of the most a-political pseudo-marxists around. talk about bourgeois confinement--i am forever constrained by my background and social status. i am at best a student or even a sympathizer. but i can only approximate what i read, and hope that my theoretical rigour does justice to 'reality'. why then am i so afraid of 'selling out' when i have nothing concrete to sell?
yaack, angst issues. :P ¶ 2/12/2004 01:56:10 AM
Friday, February 06, 2004
ho-hum yes, i'm beginning to have a real aversion towards esoteric philosophers a la derrida. i'm trying to purge myself of jargon and complexity, believing that i can make some claims to truth and 'reality', especially claims to understanding social reality.
and in comes ning telling me that jacques precisely makes himself incomprehensible in order to make you aware of the complexity of language, in the same way that you can only become aware of the air you breathe when it's taken away from you. so we can be aware of language when we lose our capacity to speak, or our capacity to comprehend?
sounds nice, but i don't know if i buy it.
maybe we all should just say what we mean, and mean what we say?
Sunday, February 29, 2004
at nakita ko na. hindi ako pah-tee girl.
went out with friends that i really really missed last night (especially duckyy and bea) and had a good time, sans the pretentious party culture. cori's right, we're nice-conversation people. i preferred the great grappa's beer and quiet moments in a small area in greenbelt than the loud see-and-be-seen strip of bars. i know i've been ranting about these things for more than two years, but it really just hit me now. ¶ 2/29/2004 11:32:08 AM
Sunday, February 22, 2004
(tired me) i'm tired of being critical. i'm tired of questions. i'm tired of having to watch myself speak, having to watch the words i write, checking that my claims are plausible, that i'm making sense.
so i'll be me tonight: silent and blank. i will retreat into a monologue.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.
(Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali) ¶ 2/22/2004 08:23:35 PM
Friday, February 20, 2004
on blogs and activism Have had a slew of emotions this morning. Read the blogs of a lot those heights, literary(ily) great people, and am really humbled by their ability to combine wistfulness with simplicity. I'm still hiding behind my words. (If I would go to self-pity mode, I'd say I'm not good enough.)
Anyway, I stumbled upon a really good article in the guardian. It seems that a lot of those high-profile politicians have joined the blogging bandwagon. Howard Dean and John Kerry (US democrat hopefuls) have already been using the blog as a format for being accessible to voters. And now Tony Blair wants to make his own blog so that he can begin an 'engaging dialogue with the people'. Dean claims that 'virtual activism' can be translated to 'real activism'... sounds cool, eh?
I'm suddenly reminded of the time when both MIRC chatrooms and those email surveys were all the rage. One of the questions from those surveys was, "Who and how many are your online friends?" To which we ought to have replied, "None, because I have real life friends!"
When I tried to teach globalization I made my students read two contrasting articles: one post-modern reading, emphasizing 'flows' and 'disjunctures' and a Marxist reading, emphasizing wb-imf imperialism and proletarianization. Threshing these arguments will be done another time, but it was interesting that my students found the former po-mo reading very appealing. The whole notion of flows and fluid landscapes sounded good, implying that the world now consists of multiple flows such that time and space are compressed and information can be handled in real-time, in no time.
It sure is appealing to believe that we are living in a single 'global village', but we have to ask a really important question -- who is dictating the common-sense of the age? Our friends working for multinational corporations have become part of a transnational capitalist class, believing that they live the lifestyle of their first-world counterparts, just look at our apparent 'affinity' with shows like Sex and the City. They seem to forget that while they work (slave) for first-world capital, they are still situated in the third world. The vestiges companies put in their call-centers, like American flags or forcing American accents on Asian workers act as forms of insulation from the realities of economic inequality and social inequity (read: poverty and social injustice). Has the neoliberal onslaught been so strong that we have lost our own ideologies, or at the very least, our ideals? Whatever happened to third worldism? Can it only be a politics of negation, anti-imperialism, Eastern versus Western values? What does it mean to be an activist? To live the manifesto, or to go shopping in Greenbelt? Has the politics of protest been reduced to the politics of consumerism?
And while we're at it, how can I move away from my own insulation? ¶ 2/20/2004 07:56:06 AM
Monday, February 16, 2004
just another political post :P just read that yet again there will be delays in the elections in afghanistan. the major dailies claim that it's because of the low voter turnout (especially the female vote, tallying to only 2%) and the fact that so many parts of the country are still ridden with pockets of violence. these things are said to be substantive hindrances to democratizing the country.
turning to iraq, practically the same rhetoric is being launched against fast-tracking the elections. and yet, the issue is probably more complicated than the inability to mobilize voters. i wonder if it's because of the rise to prominence of the politically powerful shia parties, who will precisely try to win legitimate power through elections. thing is, they're sympathetic to iran (dubya's axis of evil), close friends with ayatollah, and will probably contest the us' influence in the country. so now dubya and paul bremer are not just afraid of bringing democracy to iraq. now their biggest obstacle is the fact that they are afraid of bringing the wrong democrats to power. ¶ 2/16/2004 10:22:15 AM
Saturday, February 14, 2004
GOOD NIGHT -- Czeslaw Milosz -------
No duties. I don't have to be profound.
I don't have to be artistically perfect.
Or sublime. Or edifying.
I just wander. I say: "You were running,
That's fine. It was the thing to do.
And now the music of the worlds transforms me.
My planet enters a different house.
Trees and lawns become more distinct.
Philosophies one after another go out.
Everything is lighter yet not less odd.
Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.
We talk a little of district fairs.
Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,
Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.
That's better than examining one's own private dreams.
And meanwhile it has arrived. It's here, invisible.
Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.
Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.
Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell.
------ ¶ 2/14/2004 02:36:36 AM
Thursday, February 12, 2004
i can't seem to reconcile my being a student of politics with my lack of activism. i just had coffee with lawrence and aaron, and it hit me that i am probably one of the most a-political pseudo-marxists around. talk about bourgeois confinement--i am forever constrained by my background and social status. i am at best a student or even a sympathizer. but i can only approximate what i read, and hope that my theoretical rigour does justice to 'reality'. why then am i so afraid of 'selling out' when i have nothing concrete to sell?
yaack, angst issues. :P ¶ 2/12/2004 01:56:10 AM
Friday, February 06, 2004
ho-hum yes, i'm beginning to have a real aversion towards esoteric philosophers a la derrida. i'm trying to purge myself of jargon and complexity, believing that i can make some claims to truth and 'reality', especially claims to understanding social reality.
and in comes ning telling me that jacques precisely makes himself incomprehensible in order to make you aware of the complexity of language, in the same way that you can only become aware of the air you breathe when it's taken away from you. so we can be aware of language when we lose our capacity to speak, or our capacity to comprehend?
sounds nice, but i don't know if i buy it.
maybe we all should just say what we mean, and mean what we say?
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