The Wonderful World of Innocence

“There are men who love to gaze with the mind at things that can never be seen, feel at least the throb of a beauty that will never be known, and hear over immense bleak reaches the echo of that which is no celestial music, but only their own hearts’ vain cries…”
From “Dusky Ruth” by A.E. Coppard

How I would love to scoff at my pretentious title. Yet, WWI could stand not for war but for something consequential like that.

It has no bearing whatsoever to the contents of this entry but only to suitably introduce that more than perfect passage, especially the mind gazing part. How does one appropriate this colloquially? Focusing your 20/20 vision blindly to the invisible? If someone asks me the concept of innocence, I will readily quote him or her those lines.

And now, for the goldsmith kind of hard speak.

Pretend that I am playing with a plastic ball (striped, in blue and white) in a field with dragonflies. Kites are flown by unseen hands. Color them yellow. Yes, the hands. Paint the kites in b&w stripes. Put some starchy white clouds over me and if you may, jumping centipedes nearby. I know centipedes do not jump but imagine them jumping anyway.

Chances are, I will never lose that ball even if those centipedes are undermining my solemn self. If I lose it, clearly, my claws shall remain intact. I choose where to hurl my slings where they make a difference. And, yes, I may be forgiven for that. I am far and so out of the loop.

On that note, I would like to appeal on behalf of my mother and her fellow retirees who are now directed to claim their pension benefits from the provincial office of the GSIS. I do not see the logic of dragging people of age, some even in wheelchairs, to travel far and wide when they had the luxury of waiting for them via post before. I told my mother, this may be for your own protection to prevent fraud. When I blurted this out, I nevertheless figured: what better way to guard the delivery of those checks than to bring them directly to the homes of these retirees? That is ensuring that recipients truly get their benefits and not just some people pretending to be them.

My mother--I guess, she is one breed of individual who will always follow guidelines and rules (except in lining up and market concerns sometimes). She received a letter from GSIS that beginning February, she is to claim her pension benefits from the provincial office (she needs to take two rides to reach it).

It smacks of any reasoning why people like my mother, some of them thoroughly sickly, must go through the winding road of claiming their benefits requiring long periods of travel when there is an aligned government agency (the post office) to secure those deliveries safely. It was working finely before. On a more material note, she also told me that my departed father’s survivor’s benefits no longer carried the 13th month pay privilege unlike the previous years.

These old people just sit down and discuss their predicament among themselves without a howl. They play scrabble and learn new words. Delightful aging I would say. I think they are too old to get angry and cut-out placards to seek redress. Mama’s companion asked : “Who are they to dictate on us?” They, meaning, whoever conceptualized the elderly-horrid idea that from now on, these old people shall pretend they do not have arthritis and can walk briskly like gym-pumped citizens to enjoy the fruits of their previous labors. Damn if they suffer from cardiac arrests.

Musicians, do you have mothers like me? Writers, how about you? It is quite puzzling. This is one of the gaps in basic social services I do not see working in prop wars. Where is the proper treatment to people who had served in public service after they have retired?

My mother and her colleagues ought to be given convenience they should get. She seldom whines publicly. She holds the household together at an advanced age of 72. Give her gang their just and dignified due. The elderly could not sow discord at this point in time. They worry more about their sugar levels.

The New Bang

In my own self-conscious effort to appear anywhere, I no longer do it to invite the people I want to link with but for other reasons. Say, to get tubular perhaps. They are already rightly herded for my own taking : melodies (for those who truly create music), paragraphs and all. So let me skip the opening pleasantries and write hey to all.

I have to correct myself. As always. The previous entries were stuffed with incorrect titles and chapters.

Someone told me it is Philharmonic. Or is it the Manila Symphonic Orchestra? Whatever the correct orchestra is, it does not tarnish the brilliancy of the music arranged for that purpose. I am sorry for the mix-up.

Secondly, the book of Jeffrey Sachs is “The End of Poverty : Economic Possibilities For Our Time”. My prepositions fainted under an environment of constant heaves. Anyway, the must read chapters re : guidelines are chapters 14 and up (and not 17 as written).

Bamboo’s song is “Noy-pi” and not “Pinoy Ako”. I have a mishmash of titles but you get the drift : the urgency of my mind flights sometimes kills me too. Nabokov had something to say on this verbal exigency. He said that when he converses, what comes out of his mouth is only the first draft. I do not have the luxury to double check. Yet, it is not an excuse to perpetuate erroneous statements. My apologies.

I do have a very erratic reading pattern due to the unavailability and/or inaccessibility of the writing pieces I need to read (when they are not fiddled gawkily as if I am the one who is copying). I have to dive out from my cocoon to know if I am actually connecting with the people I want to get connected with.

On the other hand, the writers have a long feedback gestation and it is purely because of my inadequate plugs to connect me to them that it takes a while to react. They did not fall on my dull moments of sloth. Mine is an intermediate world filled with kinetic-free gaps. Thus, whenever I read something that speaks straight from my mind (had I the intelligence like them and my pen did not run out of ink), it makes reading so meaningful. It enlivens the spirit. I feel the splendor of words not passing through my veins but becoming my veins. They give me positive jolts. These writers provide some vital statistics, weight, height and all, to that world already out of my sight and perception. In my present state, that counts a lot.

I have to say my thanks again. Why? I did not foresee the magnetism of interlinked passions and callings in that area where we can still trace our commonality from. Human nature. I do not approach it with whimsical but precise incisions (say, he likes lard that is why he often lies). Even with dizzying strides in science and technology, my greatest amazement still comes from surges of unexpected human responses. Foresight. Insight. Pluck&Nerve. Friendliness. Warmth. Honesty. Witticisms. DNA could not put those in vials and freeze them at below zero degree temperatures. No special sections of reading materials will feature them in bulk and sell them with the operative word “Breakthrough!”. Finally, I have a connection outside the grasp of money and I cherish it more since I could not press elsewhere what I need to articulate without wrinkling an already wrinkled face. When one has stumbled upon this realization, it is remarkably precious. It is made priceless because it is continuing.

Can I begin now? Yes I may, you say.

Let me specifically compose paragraphs on people whom I had omitted before.

The kindred spirits include writers of all kinds. One of my favorite pieces in an anthology of literature which I inherited from my father was an essay on boxing by William Hazlitt entitled “The Fight”. The slang term for boxing in the 18th century was Fancy. Fought with bare fists with no limit on the number of rounds. It is but natural that the medium can easily quote passages from poetry and plays. In describing the fighters that time, Hazlitt wrote :

“If there had been a minute or more allowed between each round, it would have been intelligible how they should by degrees recover strength and resolution; but to see these two men smashed to the ground, smeared with gore, stunned, senseless, the breath beaten out of their bodies; and then, before you recover from the shock, to see them rise up with new strength and courage, stand ready to inflict or receive mortal offense, and rush upon each other “like two clouds over the Caspian”-----this is the most astonishing thing of all: this is the high and heroic state of man! “

Appropriating that within the milieu of life, a pounced self is like a boxer’s jab straight to the right cheek. By standing up for what is right despite being ganged up by the most devious circumstances: that is the veritable shock. Nobody can curtail one’s mind from flowing. Nobody can plaster one’s mouth from piping melodies. Nobody can stop one’s pen from further inking. Heroic acts do not need especially sewn underwear and new coiffure to get noticed. Therefore, whenever I read defiance from that which assaults one’s sense of right and wrong, I automatically consider these people courageous fighters. Yes, even if they write about their pets or play golf and drink beer on Sundays.

I have seen one of these people in my movie incursions in the past. He and his wife scouted the arthouse films together and I considered it exceedingly captivating. One normally hears of couples doing opposite things as they advance into marriage. Watching an exception to this literally walk by, one gets a sense of an everyday myth that a billion people probably work very hard to execute. I recall that because now, he expressed regret over having clapped his hands and surged forth a voice of “this is what I stand for”. This can already be reeled off as an open sesame for upturned noses (from those who may be irked by the statement). I smiled at the way it was crafted. I can spot spunk when I read one. While I am at it, I once sent an impassioned comment about region-classed basketball league to this person’s equally prolific friend. It saw print and I never thanked him for it. Now is the time to express my gratitude.

To the other habitat of wordsmiths so enamored with entities screaming in shadows, the words are: Had I been disassembling the overlapping steel from my brain, I will still get the message of battered purses and stuff like that. Someone who wept over a seventh heaven gift (some mystics call this nirvana) must have been drizzled by question marks why the offered drink never came (it normally consists of water and some dye-colored beverage in my palate). I wish I can claim I have gone Tibetan but that is so novelic. Disappearing brew notwithstanding, the guffaw-magnetic lines still secrete chortles. If there is wonderment about the zilch-dimensional visions of a triangle---it is nothing but a piece of Toblerone without the nougat. You shuffle it with other shapes and the excitement of a promise---that a candy is shaped like hexagon-that is so scary-is lost. Ask your partner for verification purposes (insert a smiley with gap tooth here). Stay away from ferris wheels during concerts because you could miss those note transitions.

On another note, I couldn’t wait to hear some new eyeband’s compositions. Yes, a light always passes through to those who wear the same jacket, jeans and shades in both the supernatural and natural world. Chic Cor(n)ea. What an especially eyerating name. With engraved gems sparkling.

I am on to something semi-fulfilling that I have not finished yet. If by curves of pages, one can spot some inspired words coming out alive, let it be known, everyone who mattered contributed something to that state of mind. I will not trade it for anything else. The best people, at least in my list, are properly reined in. Brave souls, exciting minds, bloody hearts (as I said, they never flee).

In J.D. Salinger’s book “Franny and Zooey”, the acerbic actor Zooey admonished his younger sister Franny who was on the brink of a nervous breakdown :

“What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping---and it still does!”

Big words from a young man, especially when he followed it up with :

“I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while-just once in a while-there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time!”

When one feels cradling these words like one’s own, all the diversions present may seem meaningless. I quote these words to make clear where I am coming from when I switched on the television set one noontime. It has only two channels; one is government-owned.

The commercial channel glimmered first. This was around November of last year.

Immediately, I was presented with singing people. They were the faces I favorably wrote about in this blog not so long ago. Ordinary people, if you take that within the celebrity framework of the medium of television. They have not been salooned. They usually wore slippers and shorts. Some have lost their teeth; some their hair. Often, their bleakness was shielded from the spotlight.

I recognized the host. He bantered jokes with these common people. Tales and talks were exchanged. This reminded me of barbershop gossip of the folklore type. They spoke with hilarity. Their local fluency revealed the origins of their identities.

I found myself watching this show precisely because of that. How, as-a-matter-of-factly, the daily grinds of life became the sources of dialogue between the host and the game participants. The absence of glamour was striking since the show did not purport to be a magazine program but what may be slashly labeled as a variety-entertainment-game show.

You do not see big-named stars exposed lengthily. In their place were folks who must have passed by or had once lived in your houses : the laundrywoman, the plumber. There were also balikbayans who greet their families with contagious shrieks and grins. They were the ones who oftentimes provide instant financial assistance to the game participants. How a commercial presentation can package this as a truly authentic program without additional simulations for entertainment purposes, I leave that explanation to its creators. What I am interested about is that in such a short span of time that I had been watching this show, I never foresaw how it will stall one Saturday in utmost shock. It became a national headline because of a tragedy which left it open to issues of deeper probes. Poverty. Investigations. Culpabilities.

In the aftermath of this mishap, the ordinary people I saw on television who had willingly talked about their plight mostly with bravery, candor, hard-nosed wit and flair to entertain that I get astonished oftentimes, had unwittingly been incised to smaller proportions as either lazy or beggars. That they lack diligence. Some of them, by being there, were portrayed as greedy. That they trampled upon dead bodies still hoping to get the top prizes. Or are in constant crave for dole-outs.

I scanned the papers for other points of view. Obviously, most of the very insightful commentators focused on the larger deliberations of how shows like this promote mendicancy (a mendicant, according to the Thesaurus, is a vagrant, a vagabond, begging, indigent). That the answer to poverty should be hard work, true grit, self reliance and not through games of chance.

I do not claim knowledge of the show to provide wisdom as Zooey had laid out perfectly in my opening paragraphs. Nevertheless, the faces I saw were accurate representations of the poor segment of our society. Based on my viewings, they were not vagabonds. Some even manifested dignity in the face of privation.

It is for those few faces that I had glimpsed why I am writing this piece. How I wish they are articulate enough to engage in highbrow analyses as their plights are once again examined. People who rarely complete their 3x-a-day meal and merely subsist on water sometimes. They solely rest their faith to luck and the Creator.

For the benefit of the thinking force who have not watched this show, let me explain these characters as presented. They were so different from what is, by now, widely portrayed as people who were used to promote vagrancy.

What do these people do in this show? They sing, dance and even declaim/orate. Trademark countryside or urban-poor glib. Embracing life despite the harsh economic realities. These people, some of them have intermittent jobs. They collect garbage. They climb posts and fix electrical lines. They do the laundry. They are househelps. They tend small sari-sari stores.

The host often asked the participants how much they earn or if without a job, if the spouse is gainfully employed. They were also queried as to how they apportion their meager income to their families. It was from this show that I learned how much workers in an ice plant get. And that there is a difference in pricing for crushed ice and ice tubes. Some of these people receive P150/day. Their children sometimes help by doing labor themselves instead of going to school. How they breed largely might perhaps give one a starting point as to where the country’s population program is heading. They regaled common, often heard stories. Had I been not educated and gotten so blasé about my state of unemployment by covering it with the anti-climactic “But, I want to write”, I would easily be among these people who could use some game winning.

Greedy, they are not-if you put them in a habitable surrounding. One participant who looked like she was in need of help herself, forfeited her chance to receive her winning money because an opponent’s mother was sick. Some were separated from their husbands and/or wives. There were women who raised their children all by themselves. One time, the host asked one woman what, if there be any, her message was to the erring husband. With steel nerves, the woman unhaltingly said : “Wag ka ng bumalik sa akin!” How many wives have balls like that?

If everyone considered the prizes as dole-outs, one may be surprised again that instead of alternately choosing those shiny motorcycles and jeepneys, most of them chose money “to begin”. How? They wanted to return to their provinces and hope to be more productive in their places of origin. Money was used to send their children back to school. To help their sick parents. In short, these needs were immediate and urgently required. In one instance, the winner chose the money but divided it among those whom he beat in the game. His reason? So that more families will benefit from it.

In a macro picture, that is easily translatable. We know the congressional probes conducted on misappropriated public funds running to millions and millions of pesos. I said to my mother : “That show was giving away a mere P2 million on its anniversary. Paltry when you compare that with those funds under investigation. But look at its impact to a lot of people.” In short, the people profiled generally as pawns to vagrancy can offer better dynamics on how one fruit can benefit all by spreading it rightly, constructively as had been displayed by that one participant. I would pick him over someone with a degree who spends months diagramming how to cop out of a shady deal.

But as it is, the magnitude of that want had been misread. Throngs, they came. And some sacrificed their lives. If you want to present more ironic irony to that, I do not know what it will be.

My assumption is : these people can ably work; these people are not beggars; these people are not lazy if you provide them with jobs as Jeffrey Sachs had articulated in his book. Just give them a chance to reach the first rung out of poverty. If the common notion is to pin them more as to their dependence on luck and fate as encouraged by this show, we should have missed the larger and more significant values they had nakedly displayed. Stepping out of that show, some of these people would rather choose to become night scavengers than steal in order to eat. On deeper probing, they could teach one that wisdom sometimes comes from having experienced strife.

Sure there are structures to provide them with jobs but how accessible are these to the levels of competence as required by these jobs? Have they been given adequate learning mechanisms to compete in that labor market where even doctors choose to become nurses to earn better? This is no longer a talk of vagrancy promotion : there is a burning and crucial gap out there where structures had not responded as fast in providing rescue to hunger and joblessness. Laziness is no longer an option to lay the blame into. If there is an equivalent of this show in structured public forms to respond to those exigent needs----right on the spot----visible and transparent for the whole society to see, were the deliveries adequate, timely and responsive? How do you mount a job fair for people whose skills are confined to laundry? Yet, these are honorable jobs they had dutifully eked out. Who are willing to provide business talks to people who can ably fix faucet leaks but learn no other trade? If cooperatives and micro financing are in place, do these fit in the general capacities of the workers?

As a whole, these people never seem to give up on themselves either. They can still sing; they can still dance; they can still talk; you can humor them because their concept of dignity I think is receiving sincere smiles from people so “unlike” them and not solely to greedily dip their hands into the P2,000 they could get out of showing their false teeth. They can still express their thanks. The old and the sickly visit the program just to give the host a kiss. Perhaps, they saw in him a warmth secluded from the cold facade of their home surroundings if they have homes. One time, the host slightly scolded some of his staff when an unaided grandmother was left unattended as she was climbing up the stage. I also saw in this show balikbayans who willingly embrace people with no means.

I have a friend who recently went home from abroad and I kidded her why she did not pass by the show since she can be considered as a true “balikbayan” already. She said, she is ashamed that she can only give 50 pounds. You get the idea that had she much more money to spare, she would give all of that. Her brother then cited an episode where some retired teachers became the chosen contestants. He liked it. Instead of the prizes dangled, he had retentive anecdotes of those faces; how they corrected the sentences; how in spurts sometimes, the host would honestly say if there was one word to be spelled correctly: “Di ko rin alam yun ah.”

There is always an unwritten division in entertainment I guess. One goes to concerts and there will always be reserved seats for sponsors and VIPs. That is the privilege of the business so to speak. This show, refreshingly, broke that divisive line. The celebrities stand on the side; those ordinary people sit down. Did the producers even realize how important that was to a focused watcher?

What I am pointing out is : While others saw the show as a vehicle for mendicany, I saw its other, very bright side. The Filipinos in microcosm, in one surrounding, exchanging their stories of mischief and success. By providing examples to sharing, honesty (yes, it was a point repeatedly said by the host : “Wag mandaya” when they were asked to name song titles), preferential love for the elderly and the sick, friendliness, comedy of the street-talk type, love for Philippine dialects as participants talk in Ilongo, Ilocano, Cebuano, Bicolano or fractured English as they wish and yes, even industriousness as they openly discussed about their working hours with pride. In order to eat and educate themselves, they need to sweat in factories, households and baggage counters. Majority possess great singing voices. Not all of them were there for dole-outs. Perhaps, some of them really intend to showcase their talents long confined in bass-busted karaoke boxes. Those who truly need, only wanted to start.

Start what? Start being industrious by using their money to put up businesses. Start sending their children to school. Those are the jumpstarts that do not need long years to wait on. Exactly. Promises will not make them healthy overnight. That was how Jeffrey Sachs saw the indifference of the world to this poor segment globally.

Perhaps, taking a cue on this, we should have peeled one deeper layer as to how this show mirrors us as a society. How it provided a small skylight for us to peek into lives starkingly lived in want and poverty but who desire to courageously stay afloat. They do not cry themselves to death 24 hours a day (the greatest smiles come from the countryside folks: hardened faces, untouched by urban angst). They know their soul; they know their melodies; they know their wisecracks. They may be there for the big win but unlike the profiling done in the aftermath of the stampede---they, if one had closely watched it, have more angles to that singular, studied face as splashed everywhere.

There is a huge portion of social misery out there that urgently requires a response. The treatment of these stories as showcased in a daily entertainment medium certainly overrides, increasingly overrides, everything. In the end, the show chose to adopt an in-your-face, responsive slant: it decided to be blunt and applied straight-talk rather than wax hyperboles about these social plights (Host: “Ganun lang ang kita mo sa isang araw? Papano kayo nakakain tatlong beses sa ganyang kita at anim pa ang anak mo?” Answer : “Nakakaya naman po, awa ng Diyos.”). I do not think this was even envisioned by its creators when they started conceptualizing it. Those faces and their repartees echo as a bleak social commentary of what is truly happening outside that studio.

Rightly or wrongly, the gurgling social ills and the championing traits of Filipinos were appropriately captured by the show until that tragedy.