I work non-mainstream

I feel out of place. Don't you? I blame it on the gentrification of the struggle. But then my friends the real activists will say, Where have you been, anyway? NGOism is on its death throes, there is reason to celebrate. And still they don't want me undead, having survived the dogs.

Dear Mary, don't bye-bye me. When you're gone what will happen to me. What will happen to you.

I'm so sorry, but it's not as though I asked you to assassinate the Governor, did I? (I imagine you looking up, eyes lit up, on the verge of a smile. You will never say, Ye. Only my Father, you Father Slayer.)

Germie, did you see the letters they painted on the wall? Kill the rich, it says. I smell gunpowder, the proles rising. Class war is here again! I'm sorry I am such a leech, putting my weight around, but shame I long put away (Read Alice Walker), I am immune to it. Hubris as female agency (Read Beuwulf, Jesus, know your basics!).

I work with the angry, disaffected and disorganisized youth with worms in their heads a la... what's the name of that Jodie Foster starrer? Ya. Ala Robert de Niro. They're dismally illiterate, below the belt level, and hate the smartass bootlicking pretty girls who speak English and debate with the MILF. Thankfully, most of the time it's just my throat they want to slash.

Satur

During a meeting of the Davao Writers Guild, His Highness El Presidente Ricardo de Ungria at one time paid me an accolade. (Yah, it was a tribute, like Sawi calling me libidinal! only, less, because he is not Sawi.) We were, I recall, voting on something, the removal of Satur Apoyon as president and his (RdeU’s) assuming leadership. Satur,  at the  time of votation was absent, and Tita Lacambra Ayala, the poet, said she should have two votes because she is split personality. RdeU, who probably did not know how to count split votes, ignored the wit, saying How is that, and how about Sheilfa who is multiple personality. I was pinioned in thought, Tita, to make a rejoinder, “Then I should have multiple votes!” because I was thinking of how would Satur take it, he just went out to piss and when he came back, he is no longer president? Can’t we at least give him the chance to say, Okay friends, I am an old dog, I hand over to you the presidency. It’s like murder when one is not looking.

 I am partial to old men over assholes and jerks like RdeU, for as long as they don’t marry me .But it felt nice, like, wow, I out-avatared Tita ,though I know that for Tita I am just one egghead she rather appreciates, not a multi-avatared sleuth as RdeU perceived me.

Men don’t get women’s mind most days. What they get for staying down there when there was little up there.
 

Goodbye Miss Photogenic Smartass Bootlicker

I sometimes feel I am the girl in that Bridge poem. I do a better job than the Gawddamned UN, said she,  doing translation work for every body and nobody doing any translation work for her, all unpaid and deadly! the last four words of course belong to me. And since nobody does translation work for you, that means nobody loves you, uh-huh? 

I think I'm going to cry. Huhuhu.

Weeks back I was talking to a friend now with the Children Fund. I told her, how come I was given work this thick it’s three months worth in consultancy's worth and they only paid me eight pesos. She said be grateful they were able to scrimp eight pesos for you because they don’t have money anymore. (Read: Don't you know that consultants are out of job now?) So don’t complain, said she, if they have lots of money they pay you high, don’t they?

What I think is the state of the nation.

I could not tell her right on that that is not so because I was at her door selling a twenty-cents worth of crap, half of which in a language she cannot read. I could not tell her that when money was easy, I don’t think people needed talent. People don’t like to be around that bitch so difficult to work with. But now that they too lost purchasing power – much of it, anyway, contrary to the millions in funding they used to have while you licked your backsores – they want your best at your cheapest.

Ahaha, gotcha. Bitter. Bitter.

Alright, Mother Theresa. We the ungrateful… led by the unwilling, are doing the impossible for the unknowing.

I'm not really bitter, believe me. I am in fact happier today than I was yesterday. Must be my 50 years. The breadth it gave me, the range. Work posts? Books to my name? You wait, Fan. Just because you dig my stuff it doesn't mean I owe you crap.