INAUGURATING THE NEW PROMISE

By: Iris P. Concepcion

I just got back from the inaugurals of the newly-elected President.

This is, again, another triumph of the creatively resourceful people who may have been dampened along the way by the very enterprising mechanisms of those who are not settled with being relegated to much less stellar positions. Nevertheless, they had managed to put up a pricking program. I have seen some people who actually broke down in tears along the excessive diversions of the past.

I was, again, pushed and even distracted. Nonetheless, the beauty of the speech, in Taglish form, was succinct in that it spares no easy condescension to those who had, to use his words, counter-flowed, whatever the world it means.

Of course, they tried to downplay it with irreverent remarks. But, you could not argue the videos running counter to nationalistic sentiments. If you have seen the flying balloons (sky diving) streaming down the wind while the People Power song was sung, it exposed more than anything else the power of truth over the senselessness of hypocratic oaths resolved by the masters of the beaten.

I think healing must come from them who were politely told, politely chastised, to sit down, shut up and to revert their odd energies to something useful this time. It was authoritative--this request that some media not block the platform this time, take away the spotlight from stuck skates and return it to the true meaning of the flag.

It was a sight to behold, that this transformation shall happen in that field of dreams, in such frankness that bites the sense of citizenship above else. Start from yourself. Much is expected to quell this animosity and we are taking it silently but louder.

The best part of the inaugural program was actually breaking down the program. When the singers started to belt out songs that conscience-wise, decomposed even the already dead people, tears fell as a result.

I vote for Noel Cabangon this time to the pinnacle of pure craftsmanship; his songs stole the thunder from the wayward hecklers. Anyone who has a copy of this original rendition, spread it! I cried when the lyrics started rolling. I felt weird but it is the much soulful, sincere underground Super Junior kicking in. His back-up, the GMA-7 artists provided a good support.

The voice of the people was heard. Those who had betrayed the faith did not receive applause this time. Not even a single clap, literally and figuratively. Do not call my name: I have faith and it is not for sale. After they were interviewed, there is just this nagging silence. This reception was deafening: the people just know. This too, will heal in time. We all learn something along the hopeful way.

I presume the speech shall be remembered for its intonation of fatherly discipline, its extolling the rules that must be followed. You feel one with the prexy when he said : "Nasagi at natulak ka na ba sa daan dahil sa naghari-harian? Naranasan ko na rin yan." It is the lament of true solidarity with the abused.

Kudos to the structures: the big watch, in Atlas Noynoy, is a masterpiece of the optical aesthetics (by Swatch). I am breaking away from my mold not to name brands this time. I think, corporate sharing must be rewarded with gratitude through this manner.

Dignitaries passed by in cars and buses and somehow, it stifled the haughtiness of those who may want to whack the proceedings. They must have felt queasy looking at their garages in that podium. The motion in front of the stage is more damning than any exhibit "A" to be presented in court. I like looking at their faces: those etches of being off-kiltered, of having to be reminded that this is wrong, of being told to embrace the good-trodden path this time.

And there is that hollering of helicopter in obvious color circling while fists are flying high underground. Talk about poetic injustice.

Noynoy said it well: Ngayon ka pa ba susuko na nanalo na tayo? It is not a win that courts power. It is a win that courts the possibility of informed, innovative and creative changes.

Thank you kids for putting up the fight. You had fought well and it showed. I like the way you had managed that coalition and you shall be remembered by those who are intelligently articulate to understand these things.

This time around, you had nailed it.

UFO SIGHTINGS
By: Iris P. Concepcion

I am incorporating a street interview into my daily dose of poetic license. I am deconstructing a biography of my life in a pseudo-static way while everyone around is pissed off by this self-imposed stasis and stoicism.

How else can you explain the phenomenal dissertation of mismatched conversations where words like a) place b) food c) blackened gums could mean alley-hooping tutorials. Some flee; the rest had managed connecting a world of dots in the centerfield.

Much piercing: I am taking my direction from an entity below three feet.

Appropos to the culmination of this underground Woodstock forbearing, you just wish you can wire up the body system into a non-fat yoghurt existence.

We are delving into a paranormal unknown that holds a promise more than the jiggling of cut-off toes.

Wait and see.

THE BUILDING

By : Iris P. Concepcion

If you are stuck in an Armageddonian traffic somewhere in the City Hall area, you must pause for a while, feel the ingress/egress breathing from your nostrils, get your hankie to wipe off that one trickling, perspiration dew just below your right eyelashes, drink from your bottled mineral water (with alkaline), and while you are feeling all that heat in maddening temperature, take a cursory glance at this building.

It is a side edifice of the main architectural structure open to multi-dimensional viewing but the intersection here is eternally ripe for public aesthetic appreciation. Whenever I am aboard a jeepney filled with either a) sleeping b) mumbling c) staring d) bored e) loud people, I always focus my pair of probing irises to these commemorative words : CITY HALL, ERECTED 1969.

I figured the designer of this engraved name has an exceptional sex life as his mind Jungan-ly connects the efficacy of those two words, double entendre if you may, and used the uncanny coincidence of its foundation as hewed in his fulfilled sexuality.

This building is a product of the luxuriously exposed, in-your-face virility of all times.

As my mind streams regularly on an insightful basis, always at this intersection (its front space is barren--it invites more fruitful and playful clay/wood/steel sculptural endeavors), I often wonder if my fellow writers had gotten stuck in this parallel realization but decided to shelve the essay with this as masterpiece in favor of a newly launched cosmetic powder.

I am in this phase where I want every kid to savor the existing museums in the country, walk by its nocturnal alleys with their parents, experience the wonderful visual journeys for what is essentially under their perspiring noses all the time.

Doubly, I am likewise in this phase where I want to strangle people if they do not, say, stare briefly, at this edifice, in this monumental intersection.

As a reel (my invisible camera is still rolling), I have always fantasized that people in the jeepney where I am riding, when at a halt in this particular place, like keyed-in robots (this is thrilling and excitable), while in that area, these passengers shall simultaneously look at this building as if it is a gaggle(?) of beautiful swans.

Then the imaginary arrow of a guide will show them the details: the cemented drapery (see windows), the fantastic line of cars in their precise parking colors, and that signage of course.

Don't you just dream this to be your house?

Sample:

M: "Where do you live?"

N: "City Hall, Erected 1969"

I could not think of any other functional banter than that.

WRITING BACK

By: Iris P. Concepcion

"The most interesting part of my job is that I get to observe powerful people at close quarters. Most people in government, I find, are there because they sincerely want to do good. But they're also exhausted and frustrated much of the time. And at these moments they can't help letting you know that things would be much better if only there weren't so many morons all around."---David Brooks--The New York Times

I actually had a personal encounter with someone who had challenged the insolubility of this prototype of an irresponsible gatekeeper: that third word from the last sentence of the quote.

While the rest of humanity brand me (like a beef cut) as a non-sequitor (I love it when they get mad; they actually show repressed images and I all I could think about is yawning), this challenger has actually better structured sentences up on his sleeves minus the dank (dunk) introduction of gore and vile. He is precisely interesting because he does not repeat himself.

Whenever I am on the verge of challenging status quos via evil text messages---they scramble for words and like a recorder, repeat their lines over and over again in badly simulated accents copied from their ecstatic hideaways. I do not know if they could even properly introduce Morcheeba (sample of jamming in: "I am the real *****ahhhh--you get my point---they now Google the name and impress you with copied intros).

They could not even leave their poor print properly on the street (roll the tabloid properly, with a cut of chocolate; it could improve readership quality).

I get hiccups instead. Hopefully can post pictures of aesthetic significance in this page soon. I have a picture of a building that was Erected in 1969 and it looks very impressive in that, it is Romanesque and clean. Respectable even.

I have quite a few of the remnants of these important visages: the fine print of promise.

L. MARIA GUERRERO

By: Ma.Charisma P. Concepcion

Amid guarding yourself from the picture-inspired jaws swimming on hills, I read some very illuminating articles on history minus the usual histrionics.I love it when readers scan the pages and get tongue-tied due to empty wires on the skulls (not fully hooked up inside). Do you ever wonder how their craniums get opened via telepathy?

I do not like piercing people that way though: I simply talk politely but bluntly, as if I own a Lincoln even when I only own a tattered wallet. I started out my blog by writing down these verbal interpolations; I see no other way why I could not replicate it even to bang-y people.

Just be armed with complete sentences when talking to me directly though. I do this whether you are a nomad or a Scandinavian tourist. It is no fluke. I simply speak this way. One person at a time. You had been served and I used to conduct this daily, even inside my own home. Ask my alleged "victims" there. Sniggers. It is no playtime: I pour out words in a dam sometimes. Conscience Prickler. I think that is a good tag for this corn.

Yes, McEwan reader, that person essayed succinctly is a true genius. He is not a mediocre crafter of the immediate, socially functioning literature. It is no urban legend that his copies are clean. He spots a ridiculous absence of a comma even via ten miles away. Rohmer and him have something in common. They give no flying kick when they could squeeze consciences like freshly plucked oranges in farm town. That is just their way.

And there you are, skinning my armour of haughtiness, only to flee from the board room via a hasty exit. Now, that is comedy. My people are giggling but they are rooting for your transformation lad. They are really rooting for your happiness conversion.

Edit? Hehehehe.I have millions of them lurking in these circuits. Like L. Maria Guerrero.

PANIC BUTTON

By: Iris P. Concepcion

Whenever there is a paramount event that should keep this country at bay with the progressively working things, the downtrodden start to kick in and show their fangs while talking about their wonderful mouths and huff credentials ("We are truly experts." I said Yes, you are, we are not fighting THAT spectacular portfolio; just back it up with solid and sound policies that trickle down to that poor kid mussing her hair with lice because that is fun, revo work) and doomsday predictions.

I figured, this is done to save their skin from being whacked. Despite their mass, they have not truly propelled a truly gratifying path to evolution: how the transformation gets spread, done and implemented. It is not that they lack comprehension, they are geniuses for crying out loud but, they are truly better off as hecklers more than being effective workers. They are good at picking on people with good track records in leadership while failing miserably to parry the vanishing fund conquests within their means to gatekeep.

They also create confusion and this is what I could not get: they routinely deface.

The reason given is: they contribute to the betterment of the country by not presenting their alternative options. Perhaps they have not been in the board room too long to conceptualize the immensity of a good platform or good work? Perhaps, flirting with students and acting like famous buffoons is better? I think that is their key point to an invigorating country---pure imaging.

This is understandable to say the least. Before the proclamation during the last election as essayed well in this blog, these vehemently intoned voices started camping on the streets and hollering at this poor writer like centipedes on the loose. I slept through that since the clock is ticking anyway. They likewise defaced some walls.

The fixers of this willed dirt, however, painted them clean, without fuss, to scrub the areas already vandalized for no reason except that their cause died by the rowdy and purposeless means they had employed it. We do not need howlers this time: we need pairs of hands, with firm backbones that excite so much for work, to keep this country moving in this digital era.

That is all we need to hear. How well have you implemented the plans before? If they had worked well, you wouldn't be in a bad propaganda fix right now. All you need is a nod.

Forerunners to growth take the bite of grinding it at the saltmine more than eating the produce of the saltmine.

TWO OPPOSITES OF HAIR GROOMING

By: Iris P. Concepcion

This is the first thing I see on a daily morning basis: people straightening their hair until they look like shining horse's tail. I have seen one guy did his overshot bangs this way and it freaked me out like some Blairwitch Project Redux.

On the other side, I saw these obnoxiously riotous groups of mane like mussed up carpets and they are genuinely curly like gangrened pubes or something (I couldn't believe I just wrote that---future employers, strike this out as a form of honesty) and it is absolutely a guffaw fest whenever I see these two contending hairstyles battling it out on the streets. It is like combat gear in reverse: to curl or not to curl. Or: to straighten or not to straighten. The battle has come to this? Salon Men are ruling the hood and it is putting some overworked scalps on the headline, finally.

Confession: does it make your tummy shake when you are looked upon like a pickled baby (the things you see in hospitals, inside the formaldehyde bottles) while you are eating some burger? The feeling is ghostly. You do not even look THAT way out of fear that pipes may burst sooner near the comfort room.

You fear the gestures; you sort of wonder if they eat with struggling elevators in mind. It does not help that people around are talking alien things as arrow pointers. Baffling. And can I say annoying? The thing you ask God for is : can I eat in peace without the subliminal curtailments of the unknown? Believe me, there was an urge to just go up there and pinch the ears then walk away just to prove my point.

Yes, it is totally, fabulously..........irksome.

It does not help that the starer looks like heaven. Drat.

QUOTATIONS

By: Iris P. Concepcion

"After all, what does life consist of really? Major impacts to human psyche do not happen in one snowball. They comprise scraps of the mundane---those snubbed domesticities frowned upon by "big" thinkers as inadequate for explorations."

"A source of conflict that an author utilizes to the hilt----to hold, to be in awe of, to suspend the crumbling pieces from dropping-----is debatable. A story's climax may come not from two wounded people so wretchedly torn but from a description of a table whose leg had been erroneously chopped off by an electrician. What am I saying? Peaks shoot off from everywhere, fiction included."

"Don't we do that mostly? We breathe, eat, go to school, work, earn, leave a place. We fart a lot of times. 9/10 of life unmiraculously constitute these things. A portion of humanity might have founded empires and recreations about their glories might have influenced narrative genres from fantasy to folk tale."

"Most of the pivotal actions take place in our minds and bowel movements unless we do carpentry or sent to battlefields to preserve civilization. In between we may have fallen in love, fled away from relationships, ruined our people relations, became hermits. We even threw the stale coffee from last night's monstrous indolence of sitting down. Under a pen, these ordinary spurts could lead to some provocative actions, something out of the blue like slaying the dragons."

"I have not realized how difficult it is to invent. Really. Play God to a situation of your imagination. You have to provide the plants and clouds and streets when you merely want one character to yell or else he is going to be marooned in a jungle somewhere in Guatemala."

"Somehow, you want to rebuff reality, allow your invented yet tormented people to chirrup like parakeets and say nothing. Wouldn't that be too indulgent? What reader would want that? I am the kind of reader who would want that."

"I also ponder: Isn't that the purpose of fiction----to provide an exciting suspension of a possibility? That something that could not happen, happens without constraint? That Hansel and Gretel will really be swallowed by that nasty machine especially constructed as a pastry processor? Inside a house made of candies and cookies no less! My subconscious is always aware of that whenever I observe the interiors of a bakery."

"Among those ensaymadas lined up in baking tins are the historically fictive ragamuffins: flattened Hansel and Gretel. Can you imagine them, these innocent children with pug noses and tattered clothes (see, I am embellishing but that's how a fable gets to me---unnecessarily victimized, they become rigidly adult under my rather sympathetic eyes) cut down to pieces courtesy of that finicky witch-cannibal who could not even eat the grubby kids wholly but had to, pray tell, bake them? They need to be filled with strawberry syrups and M&Ms. How cultured! There is your forerunner to Hannibal Lechter."

You may ask, who am I quoting this time?

MYSELF.

FATHER/DAD/TATAY

By: Iris P. Concepcion

A father is someone who would go a mile getting your right shoe size; buys you Serg's that tastes like Lindt; sends you out to know what it is like to be in.

As previously scribbled, I have essayed enough about my real father who passed away last 1996. At my tender age, that was what loomed heavily like a an impromptu moral legacy when growing up. He went home once, bringing me a pair of shoes he had bought in a faraway city (about four hours ride from home). It did not fit my feet though. I wailed like a killer whale and threw a tantrum much off-kilter than Tatum O Neal's father. I could not be pacified. I cried a lot. He sat. Then, even when tired from his daughter's bratty performance, he left the house and went back to the city to replace my shoes. Travelled far to appease his daughter.

Little things like this do mark forever in one's mind. Somehow, it shapes forever the fact that you are genuinely loved even if the whole world tells you otherwise; when everyone tries to make you look like a pathetic person had better keep this in mind: they could never reproduce a childhood that had fortified this character.

That is when you know you are made of sterner stuff deep down inside. Yes, it is because of my father---the ultimate sacrifice of getting my shoe size after bungling it the first time even when he was already tired and overtly spent with all his road travels. That is affection that could not be measured by any mathematical equation.

It is my deduction that children who may have moments like these with their parents turn out quite well when growing up. Punched maybe, but they always get up for a fight to preserve their souls.

Having lost him who had sired her, this writer acquired a million male figures that had kept on goading her to excel more. In all these instances, I am drawn to them since they resemble the disciplinary way of how my own father would put me in line; of protecting me; of voicing out my cause when I find my vocal chords already lost in the wilderness of optic translations.

For the several modules of ascendants that had graced my way, thank you.

Here is a poem:

You did say
A bird ought
To be protected

You did say
I should change my dress
Since the label is out there in front

You did say
I am
Better than the rest

You did say
Confoundingly
That I can write

You did say
That I must
Chase the man of my own heart

You did say
I shall have
A voice when I find mine gone.

All of these continue
As scepters to
A life lived, loved and fulfilled.

Happy Father's Day to all men without whom life will be unmerciful. Much gratitude and respect.

MY SUN SHADES
By: Iris P. Concepcion

In a hive of gastronomic site one time, I talked to two guys who were babbling about their eyeglasses.

They were exchanging some sensitive information about this optical gadget like total girlie weenies. They kind of looked like stand-up comedians in improv scripts. I munched my food, sipped my peach shake float listening to their banters. I am an unprofessional, albeit, quite an impressionable connoisseur of eyeglasses and I love them hugely built---lens wise.

They were quoting prices like bidding for antiques. They laid down their babies on my eating table.

I was feeling very forward and arrogant at this point in time and did my own glass flash.

While they were quoting thousands, I said my piece over my viand: "Mine's just 39.99"

"Dollars?"

"No. In pesos."

Confused stares and slightly impressed exchange of stares. I knew I have a whoppack of a pair. I mean it has steel ribbons via side view, a buckled steel.

They asked me: "Where did you buy that?"

I gave this magnificent answer: "You have to go to Mindanao and go to wet markets to buy these finds. There are only two outlets, I believe, beside the pots and pans store."

End of story.

I would like to take on merchandise assessment based on my viewpoint. I may have the cheapest- best bought glasses but you have to pay hefty for flying for it.

HOT DAY

By: Iris P. Concepcion

"The incoming President also said that (Roxas) who set aside his own presidential aspiration for Aquino would have unlimited access to him."--Yahoo News item

I am glad that the people behind the person I voted for the veep position can continue the novel implementations of his visions via a wiki governance.

Any creative and productive sharing of skills, talent and resource to make this country work effectively is always a welcome development worth the walk in our present dispensation.

I had personally seen how this lean but hardworking workforce beat the odds of policy implementations through informed influence. I am forever grateful that for once in my life, I had experienced, first hand, faster processing of government papers and positive computerization of government transactions. They did all these without any whimper and without even pats on their back. It could be a very lonely struggle as they are harped on and are continually being pricked for their good vision. Nonetheless, they continued their works and made use of their time in truly transformative ways that leave me silently proud.

Personally, there is a vast array and pool of workers in these islands that could genuinely put up and strengthen our institutional structures via creative governance.

It is my ardent hope that they shall continue their toil, even if silently, to get us through in the coming years.

I do not like loudmouths with nil track. This is the statement of the decent.

DO IT PRETTY WITH GRIT

By: Iris P. Concepcion

Some things wheeze on my brain recently that do not seem to coalesce with rationale deduction. I pick them up and sleep on them, flying within the sky-like brain, ready to transfer to my pen, then unto my notebook, and transpose to.........here.

As you are reading this, my title is the only line I can think of.

The pictures above were taken happily with the knowingness of familiar structures.

The first one is a striking bank detail as eyed in Divisoria. Second one is an art installation inside the Cultural Center of the Philippines area; the third one is a beautiful gated detail of Sta. Cruz church. The last one is a political installation via textile. I took it straight from a daily.

I had been amiss in my romantic and serviceable odes to the great better, nay, best other side of self. He is somewhere in the field plowing mud so I can walk with no bristles on my feet. He told me I am fat in a joking manner, and in that communique that I must truly articulate here. Otherwise, I'd go nuts NOT being able to speak when he does all these crazy "Oh, you know I am a hottie" and "I do not care how you'd look like anyway" and so on and so forth, like little waves in our sanctioned, peripheral world.

I wonder what kind of bind these people in a galactical, gut-bonding entails. I find it extremely funny listening to the corniest sentences ever invented. I like his friends, hands up, and they likewise spend crazy skeds following my trail to some aloft state. He does his print via my blank print space. There is a certain calm to his countenance and I envy that. He does it better than myself I suppose because he is attuned to himself as an individual.

G, stop eating my grapes. Can we do something with our rolled-up eyes? I m so envying your confidence. Keep the adlibs to myself. Smiley here? Yes.

WHAT YOU SEE WHEN CREATIVITY KICKS IN

By: Iris P. Concepcion

The first picture is a carved artwork inside the Far Eastern University (along the hallway). I intentionally took this picture, as is, to highlight the fact that it would be (if I were a student) satisfying to lounge in this area just to commune with the visual vibe. It could fill my mind with more than just accounting procedures.

That is its appeal to me: I like things being transformed (say, from a wood) in splendid forms like this manner of hard, wall drapery (sort of). This used to be flat when untouched by the artist. Look at the outcome. My premise is the same whether dabbling in politics, literature or science. You insert someone with a creative mind there and things bloom not so unlike Harold Bloom but Immeasurable Bloom.

This campus has undergone enormous changes over the years. I kidded one of its faculty members that it had fused the best of Ateneo, La Salle and UP in terms of structure and content. Its faculty area is likewise a democratic flow of principles: I saw its lockers beaming with different photos of all the running presidential candidates. Its vision has a large Q embedded in one of its buildings, with its vision placed there. Product of young minds, I said; not bad for a major lift-up.

The next picture is a new entrant I suppose among the National Museum pieces. This moved me as more than impressing from the gut because of the uniquely haunting expression of the mother: it is beyond being alive; it is unnervingly transcendental.

You might be awed by the fact that this is a miniature work---it is actually so small, like a figurine more than just an inch taller. And that is precisely its beauty: how can such littleness enable an expression like that to be molded so intricately?

A lament; a cry; a shout; a statement. You must see this and work your way into the artist's labyrinthian mind. Playing banduria in hugely-flowered gowns is good as a cultural display but hands up, this is more piercing as a cultural treatise on the human psyche and celebration/protection of life combined.

I egg on the people to capture small visual and aural gifts like these and propagate them via the information highway. This is the only way we can pay homage to the artists involved.

ON JARGONS ETC....
By: Iris P. Concepcion

That is the facade of a bookstore, a brick find in Divisoria. The enthralling white church interiors is not Rome. It is our own Quiapo Church.

Architecture as blown-up in fond lenses.

It is a good day to dip in the pool with just the face floating like a beach ball. I have always articulated this desire to people I had conversed with. No, I am not a swimmer; I do not know how to flap my legs nor zoom like butterfly in strokes. In short, I am a water-resistant mammal.

My swimming parody is exactly this: I go to a passable deep (that which does not drown me) and stay there like a starfish and remain motionless. It is like statue swimming. I do not know why it is overtly hot in this country; sometimes I feel like my bones are softened. Not with body lotion but by some heat wave.

If someone goes naked walking on the street, I wouldn't be aghast: perhaps, that is his way of coping with the perspiration's cause.

It is with this craving that I finished reading a book (quite hefty) on issues similar to what I am espousing. It is truly potent in that it started with a great intro and ended with a news clip that, definitely, captured the essence of modern-day, digital courage. I think the author is some kind of a verbal hottie in the blogsphere. The writer's name is Markus Moutsalis Zuniga.

To cap his well-written treatise on systems as a whole, the author nailed it via a report. He copied a news item about an ordinary guy who clubbed a robber's head with a coffee mug. All the while he was on it, he was not thinking of his life but this: how he would look like in the surveillance camera when it is finally uploaded in You Tube.

We are in this age where image does matter to explain cocky, but truthful lines like: "I have to give it to this guy," sort of talking back.

I do know someone with this kind of ballsy take on things (apart from myself, of course). If he were not taken from the womb of great debaters, I am pretty sure he came from my placenta. Sentences like "Change is never brought about by those who play it safe" often crops up in the pages.

I do feel alone sometimes engulfed with my words and I finally understand the mechanics of these dynamics that are written with ascerbic remarks but never without humor on them. Say this encapsulation of what I likewise underwent via marvelous sentences:

"The Frosts would've been far better off staying anonymous in the comfort of their home, far away from the public spotlight. Their decision to lend their voice to the debate exposed them to harassment, invasions of privacy and emotionally taxing attacks. They paid a price but their voices helped advance the cause of a noble government program that has the potential to help millions more children when it (a law being mulled) is eventually passed."

Or this:

"We may be a sliver of the broader netroots, but damn, we're a fun part of it."

Guys like this writer only leave when everything is settled. They find disarray and unfinished things an insult to their vision. New guys simply come in and would find breeze, realizing that the work had been done for them. The takers need only to implement them.

I kind of like the fusion of this guy's totality: a part of a whole, and a cozy whole with extremely familiar parts.

CREDITABLE WORK
By: Iris P. Concepcion

It is 100% scorchingly humid in this quite sub-Saharan enclave in the middle, smacked portion of our uppermost island. But it rained in the afternoon, a balanced act of the unknown.

I wonder what it is in the Philippines that gave it its splendor and allure despite its seemingly endless dates with the ubiquitous. I could not pinpoint exactly the source of its topographical charm.

I think it is the replication of its residents' undying human spirit, like an abandoned oasis of sort to take care of its spiritual voraciousness amid the wide arrays of food nearby: lugawan, binalot, kwek kwek, siomai, fishballs.

One seeks God and is gifted with a sight of a stall of piping rice pooridge. This embodiment of criss-crossed exchange of the heavenly and the gastronomic can only be appreciated by the likes of myself who continue to tread on, heeding the words from Above, trodding the path of clarity despite the makeshift haze.

And you continue to ponder what he had exactly put there that men had disregarded sometimes.

If God were an urban planner, He could have revived that edifice across the main post office building in Manila, the Met Theater.

This is a very beautiful structure with great historical impact. The dramatic location of this area is made manifest more by the overlooking train rail above. It cuts a figure of architectural prominence when viewed from the road. Look at the Post Office building: it is immaculate and still looks virginal over the years. It is in perpetual glint like an unbroken thread of design from the past.

I wish this could be revived and rehabilitated for wandering artists to bunk in while creating, molding, sharing, devising, making alive the city that has its claim the true beauty from within.

Imagine when night creeps in and from along its halls and magnificent facade, a voice beams in angelic positivity like an overcast audio: it could melt the traffic in great, regalian bow.

Its inhabitants can imagine then for a while that this country, with all its splendor, has found its voice amid a resurrected seat of the arts.

PAINTING SCANDINAVIAN WINTER IN SUMMERY PHILIPPINES
By: Iris P. Concepcion

"Beyond anything else, the Filipino people may rest assured that I stood firmly on the principle that has guided my entire political career: country above self."---MAR ROXAS

I am quoting the man above since his people had started a genuine flexing of vision from within over the past year with not so much fanfare. He may had been stabbed from within but his words kept on rolling. Twice, he had subjugated himself to the larger calls of the times; his was a young campaign made to turn this country into a younger Philippines. I was impressed with him more than ever with the way he dispenses his info e-mails to his constituents.

I think I had dined on the streets with his people without me knowing it. Now that the campaign has ended, I can already write freely about my first road-walk interaction with this person.

He walked beside me over a scorching, sweltering heat one day, plying the length of a punishing road that seemed to end on a detour. I had been coyly stumped from his gatherings via misinformation that I sometimes end up stuck with the wrong people without any thought of why I was around in say, some campus, or alley, or a municipal hall.

I am sometimes bullied in these gatherings but I was there for some personal cause. Sometimes I hold my tongue in soft bites; oftentimes, I answer the hecklers straight ahead. He does not know me but his office headquarters sent me well-crafted letters that are never intrusive nor overtly solicitous of myself as a potential voter. He had shared some funny pictures about incorrigible babies. Some of his correspondences were not "political" in the truest sense of the word. It is a very Wiki-like handling of communication without suffocating my sense of comprehension.

I had followed him then, accidentally, since I was once misdirected to a different site in a gathering. I found instead his tsinelas strides when I headed home. He was wearing a shining backpack. I asked him absent-mindedly: "Where to, Sir?" His reply : "There," pointing at an educational structure for me to screech my feet on. That is enough (to me) as touching the real base. Going to an entertainment haven for smooches may be good but quality interaction is far more important. I keep the conversations that had transpired as deep experiences, etched and latently material, sometimes conducted under moonlit caves and nearby halo-halo eateries.

These are the nookies where true dreams surge.

It was never lost on me that he never introduced himself as a biggie; the realization only struck me while he walked ahead, faster than my own miniscule steps, him wearing less flashier attire than myself: denim pants, worn-out shirt, sandals and a huge grin. I had to keep up; he faded like a blazing haze when I last looked up.

I could not likewise forget that particular sensing on his educational platforms that had been laid in both Filipino and English. He signs these manifestos simply as M. Historians must collect these correspondences for posterity. They are worth the read. I am never aware that while I am talking or writing about my inputs to social discussions, they had been picked up knowingly by some people. I often tell myself, I do not have the money to offer for their (Noy and Mar) campaign kitty. I might as well just offer my thoughts.

His was always the brave, soulful, transparent face to counter the tirades. I still believe he is best fit for the second highest government post having had a wide legislative and executive expertise in his entire public career.

The reason is his active, moving, foresight.

When I was asking for his campaign materials, his aides sent me notebooks and pens instead for me to distribute to school kids. It was a fresh take on his educational stand, I thought, at the very least. June is nearing and school children do need school supplies. I gave them away to my niece and kids in our town. It gave me pride that instead of flyers, I am giving away stuff to people who could not even vote!

That is what impressed me with his organization. They had foresight. And they do not mumble lengthily about this. On hindsight, fourteen million people had banked their faith on this man, what is there to lose? I hope his unselfish, novel outputs will be taken appreciatively by the candidates who are already placed there to create and manifest these changes.

Having said these, I hope the newly elected leaders shall have the balls to implement things that must be truly done; prove to the world that theirs is a hardworking service that could go beyond personal patronages.

Much is expected for this country, more than ever.

The moment of divisiveness has already passed. Let them work according to the true beat of this nation.

God Speed To Our Nation! Move Forward!