Where have all the flowers gone

Have all the cadres relocated to FB? And what disgusting things everyone is  up to, like selling spiked bead bracelets and fuchsia pink ankle boots, though I recall there was a lot of moonlighting work too even in those days, from lotions and underwears to malongs and Ibaloi bedspreads in between illicit loves and workers strikes and ED sessions on LIC (if your past served you right, you will remember what that acronym stands for).

But now, victory can be counted in 20 likes. Jesus O. Kuraiyzt.

So you report to FB like FB was your regiment, your company, complete with presentation shows and when someone pinches you saying she misses you, you feel like crying, as though you were once trenchmates in WWII and didn’t meet across the toilet of a plush resort. Then one you met in-person during your hardy university days asks you to please remove the piece she wrote ages ago, she doesn’t want her boss to find it, doesn’t want them to find her mind out, she might lose her job keeping accounts for which office you now forgot, and that yesss, she assures you, you will not survive in America, you will not survive here dear.

Now G badgers you, why didn’t you blacken your profile pic there’s an online protest against this Cyber Law, you don’t know? for all the libel that you do? Lord, I wasn’t there most everyday, how am I to know about one cyber law? But abide you did, like there was ever any law that worried you. What annoys you is her turn of words, she could have said, like Schnapps, hating, couldn’t she? or maybe like your exes, she could have asked, cluelesslike and indignant, why are you always insulting? Why do you always write vitriol? Oh did I? I don't remember writing that way, I just don't remember.

Why do cats meow? Why do rains pitter-patter, why do dragons spit fire? why bleed why think ink. Why not be like dogs barking at all the wrong trees arf arf arf! But then what if that's how it reads, angry bitter writing, like you’re some wrinkly squash with a sore stuck butt ---- how right she is, isn't she, unless and until you have set down your opus, everything you do is fart, ineffectual. 

I love Cineuropa. You go out of the moviehouse craning because you were supposed to change the world and you can’t. But why are they making all these movies about massacred anarchists and suicidals and red flags waving marchers singing the Internationale at the height of capitalism’s irreversible triumph across the globe? Is it about the past or the future?

Then at Cybertown another surprise. A daughter reappears after close to twenty years of silence. You admonish her, careful not to show any family emotion at all, because love is a junkie, a hopeless junkie. Mommy! Remember Vigan? Lord, what about Vigan, that day I stole a book from the library? Eee si Mommy nagnakaw, nagnakaw ng book si Mommy! And aboard a kalesa exegeting on the politics of thieving they hush-hushed you. Shhh! Shhhh! Marinig ka ng kutsero! Nakikinig ang kutsero!  

Makoy has a baby now, she tells you, he is well on his way studying bar tending. San Fernando teems with tourists. It could have been worse. Once you thought he will never finish high school. Since the day you last called and turned him down, he never talked to you again. How hurt could a child be? And every time you spell-checked a cad in Jolo, you wondered if your son is any better in the way of the Lord. At least the dykes there long understood what they want to escape. Does he?

They had moved on, the children. Their days sunny, their bones young. You haven’t. Cannot leave, cannot disengage, Peripatetic Thou, forever trawling your dark! Arkkk akkkk.

And this blog, fuckingdamnshittingshit of a blog forever detaining me. Why do I have to report here each time? A way to say hey look, they haven’t cut my cabbage head off yet, have they?