Deathless love and hungry souls

IT WAS an end that my Yaya rudely judged to be “very another”.

For a while, “Walang Hanggan” threatened to carry out its threat of being neverending. The nearly one-year-old telenovela about star-crossed love made captives of everyone in our household, except perhaps for the family dog.

When the network gods finally decreed last Friday to end the drama, it chose a classic formula: kill the protagonists.

My Yaya wouldn’t first believe it. I don’t blame her. Pinoy dramas have the longest drawn-out dying scenes. And the fakest: despite the death watch, wailing music, farewell monologue/dialogue and other red flags of mortality, the hero/heroine clings to life and segues into a healthy happy long life.

Then Katerina dies, followed by Daniel. Yaya hisses her judgment. In canine sympathy, Udo’s hind legs kick the air. Or maybe it’s just a dream of dancing dog biscuits.

I think there’s a bit of happiness in the ending because the lovers are reunited, first as spirits chasing each other in an open field, and second, reincarnated as the son born to their parents, Emily and Marco (who were star-crossed themselves), and the daughter born to their neighbors.

If not made in heaven, it’s an ending at least made in time for All Souls’ Day.

A German colleague once made it a point to hop around cemeteries in the city on Nov. 1 and 2. He was amazed by the parties, sleepovers, sing-alongs and “fiesta” Filipinos conducted among the graves. Told that some of the dishes were offerings for the dead, he wondered if we thought our relatives were still hungry in the afterlife. And if they were, would they be looking for food?

I visit my father before or after All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days. Scraping the melted wax and throwing away faded flowers, I think even Papang, who preferred dogs to humans up close and personal, likes the surfeit of attention. Do we expect the dead to loosen up? I still leave his favorite Hope cigarettes by his marker. Hope gave him a rasping cough when he was alive. Without lungs to worry about, the dead do have it better than us.

Still, the thought of hungry souls worries me even as my Yaya doubts endless love among ghosts can ever warm the blood. I revisit the Greek Underworld, cauldron of undying passions.

The Underworld is the realm of Hades. It includes the Asphodel Meadows (where souls who lived neither a bad nor a good life are sent), Elysian Fields (for the virtuous) and the Isles of the Blessed (resting place of heroes).

The Underworld is more notorious, though, for its less than savory destinations. Darkest is the great pit of Tartarus. At first, it functioned as the Greek gods’ solid waste management. Later, it represents divine justice, where the punishment matches the crime.

According to myth, Tartarus imprisons, to name a few: Kronos the Titan leader, who overthrew and castrated his father, Uranus, the sky, and was himself overthrown and chopped to pieces by Zeus and his other god-sons; Sisyphus, who poisoned his guests, seduced his niece and gossiped about Zeus’s philandering; Tantalus, who stole the ambrosia of the gods and boiled his son and served him as the gods’ dinner; Ixion, whose immoderate lust pushed him to kill his father-in-law, steal Zeus’s wife Hera, ravish her clone and beget the breed of centaurs; the Danaides, who murdered their husbands; and Salmoneus, who tried to impersonate Zeus.

But in Greek myth, it wasn’t only the gods who had a problem with their lusts. The Underworld drew mortals who attempted the unmentionable: bring the dead back to life. When Eurydice was bitten by a snake, her lover Orpheus coaxed music from his kithara to trick Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of Hades, and Charon, the ferryman of death. Hades promises Orpheus he can have Eurydice back if he can walk without looking back until he joins the land of the living.

Nearing the end of his quest, Orpheus cannot bear not to look when he hears Eurydice walking behind him. He turns just as Eurydice is sucked back to the Underworld.

Death leaves a lot of hungers unsated, from above and below the grave.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s October 8, 2012 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column

Sign language

AMONG the things I have to get used to while traveling is understanding how cold and hot water taps work.

Not all bathrooms in the country are Filipinized. By this, I mean there is a plastic pail and dipper for those who think bath tubs, shower stalls and bidets are not the only necessities in life.

I usually have to solve a riddle of three to get a bath. The middle knob controls the faucet. But which of the outer ones ensures I don’t perish from a shower of fire or ice?

What confounds me is when the symbols don’t follow logic: when “H” and “C” knobs release anything but hot and cold water, or a choice of red and blue handle indicates no shift in the shower’s moods.

I realize that it’s easier to adjust to the peculiarities of hotel plumbing than to the vagaries of symbols. Signs have to work. These are roadmaps that cut short the trip that our mind has to travel from reading and understanding.

Signs also condition us for certain responses. In emergencies, I’ve entered the men’s comfort room because I spontaneously relate more to the symbol of the human silhouette in pants than the one with the skirt. Since I lose precious time apologizing to affronted males, backing out and darting inside the toilet nature and society designated for me, I’ve learned to seek and accept the female sign with the old-fashioned A-line skirt.

Some symbols, though, are hardwired and non-negotiable in their associations. After pop icon Madonna recently opened her concert in Denver, Colorado with a spectacle featuring guns and a blood-spattered screen, concert-goers called local radio stations to protest the star’s glorification of violence.

The backlash came even though Madonna, before her concert, issued a statement that she did not believe in violence. The guns symbolize “intolerance and the pain I have felt from having my heart broken,” Madonna was quoted in an AP report carried by www.sunstar.com.ph last Oct. 20, 2012.

A www.philstar.com report described the controversial second act of the Oct. 18, 2012 concert, where Madonna shoots a masked man with a fake gun and the giant screen behind the stage is splattered with blood. Concert-goers dancing to the song, “Gang Bang,” which includes the lyrics, “shot my lover in the head,” stopped, looked around and murmured. A few walked out.

Last July 20, during a special sold-out midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Returns,” James Eagan Holmes, wearing armor and a gas mask that could not hide hair tinted a shocking orange like the Batman villain, the Joker, entered through the emergency exit of the Aurora Theater in Colorado. Holmes shot dead 12 people and maimed 58 others, with some probably disabled for life.

The press agent of Madonna said that the scene with the shooting was also shown in other cities visited by the concert tour and could not be excised. “It’s like taking out the third act of Hamlet,” the agent was quoted in www.philstar.com.

In her pre-concert statement at Colorado, Madonna said she does not condone the use of guns. "Rather they are symbols of wanting to appear strong and wanting to find a way to stop feelings that I find hurtful or damaging.”

Semiotics, or the study of signs, covers semantics (the relation between signs and their denotation or literal meanings) and pragmatics (the relation between signs and their effects on the people using the signs). While semiotics seems to be a branch of knowledge that interests only academics, it’s a key to unlocking not just the different levels of meanings of symbols but also hidden agenda in mass media.

In the hands of hotel management cutting on costs, mismatched shower knobs mean only an irksome but short-lived inconvenience. In the hands of an influential artist with the power to make hundreds gyrate and let loose to the sounds and images of destruction and death, what can signs and symbols not do?

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s October 21, 2012 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column

Cyberthingie

ADOLESCENCE is not only maddening. Try understanding an adolescent on cyberspace.

My nieces in Australia mailed me their photos. That is, their mother/my sister got them to turn over their school snapshots to store in my wallet. A tone of duress wafts from one note written at the back of a photo.

Rory, 5, writes: “Dear Nanay and I will be your best firend Love love Rory Rory”. Nana, 15, is terse: “Dear Nanay, the photo needs no explanation. I ask that you refrain from showing this picture Love, Joanna”.

Beauty perhaps means differently at certain stages. Still nestling at the cusp of childhood, my younger niece is self-possessed. She smiles at the world, confident that it is beaming back at her.

A young woman loses the dew of openness. Framed by old man’s glasses, Nana’s eyes yet hold a glimpse of the child I first saw in my sister’s arms, later carting armloads of books and a puppy, and last seen up close afloat in the other world of “Twilight”.

I take my lovely girls and mystification to another teenager. My son Carlos, 19, directs me to Nana’s Facebook page. I “like” her profile picture but have to wrestle with my son, who tries to prevent me from leaving a comment.

I succeed. I post: “Hi, Nana!” I want to add more but feel tongue-tied in the company of Aratrika, Parth, Breanna, Sehar, Sherridan and Nana’s other friends who “like” her photo, too, but don’t leave a note.

Now I notice I am the only one who does (where is my sister?).

When Carlos sees my pallid, short-for-me note, he groans with all the what-have-you-done ominousness only a teenager can muster. From his raving, I gather that I might have mortified poor Nana until the next century, irrevocably trespassed some digital divide invisible to oldies but glaring like neon-sprayed disaster to the young.

I bluster. Doesn’t “hi” still mean “hello” on cyberspace? Why would I cyberbully a girl I love as a daughter?

My son only gives me a look. I feel like I’ve suddenly sprouted wild facial hair and spouted even wilder notions of truth and fairness like a certain favorite senator.

For the first time, I step into the shoes of those who see the virtual world as chaos waiting to be unleashed. Where the familiar and pedestrian, like windows and traffic, can become altered and new, and a slip can open a vein to stir up all frenzies.

To create order from this disorder, the temptation is to impose: pass a cybercrime prevention law that dangerously sweeps, along with 16 other cybercrimes like cybersex and child trafficking (as tabulated by Janette Toral of digitalfilipino.com), the constitutionally protected right of freedom of self-expression, as well as right to privacy, with a murkily defined cyberlibel.

Protesting hacktivists, Netizens and 15 Supreme Court (SC) petitions may have won a reprieve when, six days after Republic Act 10175 took effect, the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order that puts the law on hold until early next year.

Issues raised by the controversy—the definition and penalties of cyberlibel, as well as the manner by which this clause was “inserted” and the law passed without public hearing—should continue to engage us. How do we protect ourselves from the unscrupulous that will misuse quickly evolving digital technologies to invade privacy, steal identities, exploit gullibility? How do we ensure we don’t abuse the Web?

At the same time, with reason, we suspect that applying traditional means to control a new medium following new logic makes us vulnerable to the evils we swore never to let loose again: repression, dictatorship, chaos, death of society.

To break the impasse, many demand authorities consult stakeholders. Others call for online self-regulation and digital media literacy.

Adolescence and cyberspace are so much alike. Both are constantly shifting. It’s a maddening thing, sure. But the only way out is to go through it.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Oct. 14, 2012 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column

Teacher's pet

I WILL never forget my kinder teacher, Ms. Espina. She had a soft voice, calm hands. She was the kindest woman. In my five-year-old mind, she was the best thing about school.

For a while, I thought that our class was named after her: “kinder” for the woman my classmates and I were all drawn to, like ants homing in on molasses.

When I was promoted to prep, I was heartbroken to learn Ms. Espina stayed in my old classroom and I had to enter a new one. This was ruled by a teacher shorter and smaller than Ms. Espina.

Boy, was she fierce.

When a pupil bawled and ran after her mother on the first day, and my other classmates hiccupped and started to cry and also moved towards the door, our new teacher herded all the runaways back to the room. She locked the door. And leaned against it. And looked back at us.

My heart almost stopped beating as I wondered if I would ever see again my mother and father and Ms. Espina across the hall. When our class was dismissed shortly after recess, I walked past my old classroom. Ms. Espina was at her desk but I didn’t go in.

At six, I felt old, wise and doomed. Not only can I never be with this gentle soul again, I could not imagine the other teachers lying in wait out there until I finally would be old enough to never enter a classroom again. E-ver.

Well, I recently turned 47 and I’m still wondering about those teachers. Last June, I entered graduate school.

Two of my former students became my classmates. Instead of passing notes in class, we update each other through email, Facebook, e-groups, text. When our professors posted our class standing, the use of student I.D. numbers to mask identity didn’t apply to me. I have the only I.D. number that begins with “1983-…” while the rest of the class have “2000-…”.

I’m even older than my professors. One teacher and I are the only ones in our class that saw President Ferdinand Marcos alive. Later, I learned that my professor was still in high school while I was a senior undergraduate during the dying days of the dictatorship. While he was still into Archie, I was reading “Das Kapital” in comic book format. Cool.

Yet, sitting inside a classroom as a student, not as a teacher, I realize how I’m not drastically different from the six-year-old who realized that the only secret to getting unstuck from that seat and walking out to take deep gulps of blissful freedom is to please the one who can lock and unlock those doors.

That’s essentially how I got to be such a teacher-pleaser. I like school. I like assignments. I like commuting early to be in campus eight hours before my class starts. I like libraries where no one is selling coffee, blowing smoke my way or hoarding the newspapers. I don’t much like exams but I like tussling with a problem, pinning it down and walking away, feeling like the Terminator. Yeah.

Most of all, I like being a student and trusting my teacher to take me to a place I’ve never been before. No one will ever take the place of Ms. Espina in my heart, but it was actually fierce, tiny Ms. Prep who, true to her name, stood me at the edge of the precipice, challenging me with her eyes to jump.

Backwards to safety or forward to vastness and possibility.

On World Teachers’ Day, I write this letter to reassure Ms. Espina she will always be my first love but my gratitude goes to her and Ms. Prep and all my teachers who make magic.

Jump.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s October 7, 2012 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column

Teacher's pet

I WILL never forget my kinder teacher, Ms. Espina. She had a soft voice, calm hands. She was the kindest woman. In my five-year-old mind, she was the best thing about school.

For a while, I thought that our class was named after her: “kinder” for the woman my classmates and I were all drawn to, like ants homing in on molasses.

When I was promoted to prep, I was heartbroken to learn Ms. Espina stayed in my old classroom and I had to enter a new one. This was ruled by a teacher shorter and smaller than Ms. Espina.

Boy, was she fierce.

When a pupil bawled and ran after her mother on the first day, and my other classmates hiccupped and started to cry and also moved towards the door, our new teacher herded all the runaways back to the room. She locked the door. And leaned against it. And looked back at us.

My heart almost stopped beating as I wondered if I would ever see again my mother and father and Ms. Espina across the hall. When our class was dismissed shortly after recess, I walked past my old classroom. Ms. Espina was at her desk but I didn’t go in.

At six, I felt old, wise and doomed. Not only can I never be with this gentle soul again, I could not imagine the other teachers lying in wait out there until I finally would be old enough to never enter a classroom again. E-ver.

Well, I recently turned 47 and I’m still wondering about those teachers. Last June, I entered graduate school.

Two of my former students became my classmates. Instead of passing notes in class, we update each other through email, Facebook, e-groups, text. When our professors posted our class standing, the use of student I.D. numbers to mask identity didn’t apply to me. I have the only I.D. number that begins with “1983-…” while the rest of the class have “2000-…”.

I’m even older than my professors. One teacher and I are the only ones in our class that saw President Ferdinand Marcos alive. Later, I learned that my professor was still in high school while I was a senior undergraduate during the dying days of the dictatorship. While he was still into Archie, I was reading “Das Kapital” in comic book format. Cool.

Yet, sitting inside a classroom as a student, not as a teacher, I realize how I’m not drastically different from the six-year-old who realized that the only secret to getting unstuck from that seat and walking out to take deep gulps of blissful freedom is to please the one who can lock and unlock those doors.

That’s essentially how I got to be such a teacher-pleaser. I like school. I like assignments. I like commuting early to be in campus eight hours before my class starts. I like libraries where no one is selling coffee, blowing smoke my way or hoarding the newspapers. I don’t much like exams but I like tussling with a problem, pinning it down and walking away, feeling like the Terminator. Yeah.

Most of all, I like being a student and trusting my teacher to take me to a place I’ve never been before. No one will ever take the place of Ms. Espina in my heart, but it was actually fierce, tiny Ms. Prep who, true to her name, stood me at the edge of the precipice, challenging me with her eyes to jump.

Backwards to safety or forward to vastness and possibility.

On World Teachers’ Day, I write this letter to reassure Ms. Espina she will always be my first love but my gratitude goes to her and Ms. Prep and all my teachers who make magic.

Jump.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s October 7, 2012 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column