Tao rin pala, chapitre deux

This photo is of one of my favorite reredos in the whole wide world. It belongs to a humble little chapel somewhere in San Juan, in a small conference center that holds a special meaning for me. In that little oratory I learned what I was made for, and I'll never forget it. Over the break, when I was there, I sat constantly in the first row of pews for no other reason than to keep looking at the reredo and to imagine myself part of the scene. Whenever I was distracted during prayer I would wrench myself back by imagining that I was the one holding up the Baby Jesus' head. (I mean if you think about it, I don't think an infant this young should have been able to hold his head up so tensely yet.) You move me, my Lord, broken beneath the rod--but I also like to see you as an infant, because, like a saint once said, I can fool myself into thinking that you need me.

So what does this image of the Blessed Virgin Mary have to do with the Tao Rin Pala? Moments before we went backstage for our performance in the chorale competition, I realized that we hadn't prayed as a class, something we used always to do before any Big Thing. I mouthed this to Dane, our conductor, who mouthed back something to the effect of "I know--wait!" But the prayer didn't happen, because we had to go in right away. So backstage, I squared my shoulders and said a Memorare. In fact I said all the memorares I could fit into that brief period while class 2015 was finishing their song. Part of me was amazed at my daring. You know that rhyme--when she was good, she was very, very good; when she was bad, she was very very bad? Well, this week, I was very very bad indeed. No presence of God, no interior recollection, no spirit of penance--and so much ego, so much bad behavior and lack of charity and all-around kasungitan.

And here I was, on a Very Important Night, asking with all temerity for a favor: that we might win. It seems a very conceited thing to ask. In fact, the better, humbler, more loving plea would be: Lord, through the interecession of the Blessed Virgin, please help us to do our best but to accept Your Will whatever it may be! But I also know that, like a child asking her father for the moon, a father (or a mother) will love you for asking for even the most ridiculous things, because he knows you trust him enough to ask.

Of course there was some quick rectifying to be done moments before we crept on stage--Lord, scratch that; whether we win or not, I'll be happy because for a Christian, there is no reason to be sad!--but my point is that the Memorare is one prayer that comes spontaneously, and that it has never, ever failed me. All it takes is a sincere act of will and a looking back to that beautiful reredo, and all sadness, all fear evaporates. I prayed to win, sure; but I prayed for a good disposition too, which was more important.

Mama, I entrusted TRP to you (and I'm sure some of my classmates did too). And we won, and that victory is yours too. Let it be my (and Dane's) small rose for you, during this novena to your Immaculate Conception, and thank you, Mama, for hearing me, despite how terrible I've been to you and to my father.



For me, Mama, ikaw ang bida!

Move On

It's not Bernadette Peters. Surprisingly I like this more than the video I saw of her and Mandy Patinkin performing the same song (heresy I know). I'm a sucker for clean harmonies.

What fresh hell is this?

People use this quote a lot--I heard it on The Big Bang Theory once--and think that it's Shakespeare, not knowing that it's from American Poet and satirist Dorothy Parker. Apparently she said it whenever she was interrupted by the telephone, and took to using it in place of "hello" whenever someone rang.

This picture of her, to the left, is very pretty--and also gives you no idea of what a pessimistic person she must have been. As a teenager I took to the sarcasm, man-bashing, and blatant self-deprecation in her poetry. She was famous for short, poetic witticisms like "Men never make passes / at girls who wear glasses." Her poetry was sometimes irreverent, sometimes uneven in quality, but always interesting. I remember picking up Marion Meade's biography of her (called--guess what?--"What Fresh Hell is This?") and thinking excitedly that her life must have been as interesting as her poetry. I was, in a sense, disappointed--not because her life was uninteresting, because it was (and very bohemian too), but because Dorothy Parker's dim view of life was almost palpable in every page. You can always take poems as a joke, and assume in poems like this--

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying--
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

--that the author is merely making fun of the world and can't really mean it. But reading the biography, I think she kind of did. She died of a heart attack in 1967, having had an unhappy childhood, a string of affairs, three marriages (twice to the same man), and an increasing dependence on alcohol.

I'll always be fond of her poetry, anyway. She was famous for her wisecracks, but some of her poetry on love and friendship is actually really painfully spot-on and sincere and beauitful. Here are some that I either really like or could relate to at one point in time. My emo friends will like them.

But Not Forgotten
I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.
Though you may wander sweeter lands,
You will not soon forget my hands,
Nor yet the way I held my head,
Nor all the tremulous things I said.
You still will see me, small and white
And smiling, in the secret night,
And feel my arms about you when
The day comes fluttering back again.
I think, no matter where you be,
You'll hold me in your memory
And keep my image, there without me,
By telling later loves about me.

Distance
Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,
I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.

It were a sweet and gallant pain
To be a sea apart;
But, oh, to have you down the lane
Is bitter to my heart.

Anecdote
So silent I when Love was by
He yawned, and turned away;
But Sorrow clings to my apron-strings,
I have so much to say.

The False Friends
hey laid their hands upon my head,
They stroked my cheek and brow;
And time could heal a hurt, they said,
And time could dim a vow.

And they were pitiful and mild
Who whispered to me then,
"The heart that breaks in April, child,
Will mend in May again."

Oh, many a mended heart they knew.
So old they were, and wise.
And little did they have to do
To come to me with lies!

Who flings me silly talk of May
Shall meet a bitter soul;
For June was nearly spent away
Before my heart was whole.

The Lady's Reward
Lady, lady, never start
Conversation toward your heart;
Keep your pretty words serene;
Never murmur what you mean.
Show yourself, by word and look,
Swift and shallow as a brook.
Be as cool and quick to go
As a drop of April snow;
Be as delicate and gay
As a cherry flower in May.
Lady, lady, never speak
Of the tears that burn your cheek-
She will never win him, whose
Words had shown she feared to lose.
Be you wise and never sad,
You will get your lovely lad.
Never serious be, nor true,
And your wish will come to you-
And if that makes you happy, kid,
You'll be the first it ever did.

Intellectual Honesty

Reposted from my comment to a friend's link:

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20101126-305535/Becoming-human

Much as I hate it when RH bill opponents spout outdated evidence about the harmfulness of contraceptives (cancer etc. Modern contraceptives [except abortifacients] are just about as biologically harmful as any other kind of drug....), the whole premise of the article is dangerously silly. Pope BXVI quote taken horrendously out of context. 'the Pope now says using condoms can, in some cases, be “a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility"' --> refers to male prostitutes with HIV who are *deliberately* infecting their clients without full disclosure, plus those incidents where the use of a condom is intended to protect against disease (but, always in the context that sex for Catholics is only correct and moral whenever it's 1) within marriage and 2) with one partner of the opposite sex). There is no "titanic shift" in "his thinking" and to say that is just plain ridiculous.

I don't know if you're pro or anti or whatever (I'm anti myself), so I don't know your intent in posting this link, pero maaaan, nakakairita ang articles na walang intellectual honesty to completely ignore the context of the people it's quoting. It further muddies the issue of the RH bill and makes intelligent debate impossible.

"I'll take a whack at it!"

Closure

I never really understood
What they mean by it.
Nothing has been left ajar. A door
Has been closed, and irrevocably.
The veil drawn between us allows

Nothing.

Tao rin pala!

The happiest times of my whole week are when we get together in the SSWC and sit down (or kneel down or lean against the wall or whatever) and practice our TRP song. Time just flies by and before you know it, it's seven o'clock and you have to go home. But those two hours are glorious. I love singing now as much as I did when I was this small:


(I know I don't look much like her. But I do know that little kid in the sailor dress could rock Basia's "Time and Tide" like there was no tomorrow.)

And I'm always happiest when singing. Which is why, when I discovered I had a laryngeal nodule in November 2008, I was devastated. The doctors--now my teachers--were cautious. I convinced myself that I could still recover, that it could spontaneously regress. Well, it didn't. And what followed was a year that was like being in a long, dark tunnel with no light at the end. It wasn't merely the vanity of having a talent taken away from you, but the sharp sting of having to find another way to express yourself, and to know that things that had once been easy are now impossible.

My speech therapist said that an operation was out of the question, because to wound my vocal cords to take out the nodule would be harming my voice even more. So I despaired. Goodbye, dreams of live performances! Good-bye, Tahilan Christmas carolling and singing in the June 26 choir. Good-bye, performing for birthdays, and good-bye, singing to Sondheimian musicals in the shower ("We DO NOT beloooooong to-GE-ther...."). But then, in late 2009, we broached the idea of an operation with my long-suffering ENT doctor, and he agreed and set-up an appointment for the last week of 2009. (This webpage has a cool video on the kind of operation performed on me; it's called a micro-direct laryngoscopy with micro-flap mass excision).

And after not speaking for three weeks... there it was. I woke up the day after my doctor told me it was okay to speak, and I started singing songs from Jason Robert Brown's "Songs for a New World," and there it was. I remember bouncing into Dane's bedroom in Tahilan to wake her up for mass, so happy and ecstatic that I could sing again. Sometimes God giveth, and He taketh away--then He giveth it back!

And this is why, dear TRP, I'm giving you my all this year. Last year I was morose and couldn't even be bothered to memorize the piece, and I took offence at the well-meaning advice of this classmate of mine when she'd give me pointers on how to sing (My ego was swimming in a soup of indignation: You're teaching me how to sing? How dare you?), and mostly it was a terrible experience. But now, this year, I can actually sing, and I'll never take that for granted again. Maybe one day I'll join a choir again--who knows?--but for now, I just want to say, get ready for us, college of Medicine, 'cause you ain't seen nothing yet.

Through a glass darkly

Videmus nunc per speculum in enigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem; nunc cognosco ex parte, tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum.

There are things that, even when you bring them to prayer, you can't understand. The only solution is to bow your head and say, fiat voluntas tua. But Most Esteemed Lord Father, when I finally see you face to face, I will spend a long time asking you questions about these things I do not understand--the weakness of my nature, the funny nature of "coincidence," the vicissitudes of my own heart. I shall cease to wonder why--for Christ will explain each separate anguish in the schoolroom of the sky.
And I want to ask you lots of questions about why we hurt the people we care for the most.

You--not my esteemed Lord Father, but another person--probably don't even remember this incident. Or maybe you do, but because you're just so nice, you've chosen to forget it in a way that I'd find hard to do. But I read something today that reminded me about it quite forcefully--it felt like a blow to the stomach. I will apologize to you, probably over Christmas, because despite my ham-handed way of dealing with you and my all-around b*tchiness, I do count you as a great friend, one of the best, and I promise to never do that again. And I will keep doing nice things for you so that, one day, you can look back on that incident (because I didn't mean what I said, honest...), and not feel even a pang of resentment. So that one day, you'll forgive this stupid misanthropic idiot who always says the first thing she thinks and has "no filter" (words you used to refer to someone else, 2009). So that, one day I can be even half the friend you have been to me.