The 3 Month Rule

This post has two parts. The first is where I get to explain about the Three Month Rule:

(I never imagined that it will be on the internet, but lo and behold, like a lot of things you-have-thought-of and have-not-thought-of, it was!)

The Three Month Rule , also known as the 90 day rule, is about the length of time a person can reasonably say that he/she is in love with someone (during dating), or has gotten over someone (after a break up).

G and I have been discussing about the 3 month rule (as it pertains to break ups) as we were contemplating our own mortality. My father died just last year. And it brought home to me the importance of having a Last Will or a Living Will or Advanced Directives. I told G that I wouldn’t want to leave this world without having my affairs in order. And part of that is my preferences as to whether he will be allowed to have another partner when I move on to another plane. Needless to say, my significant other just looked at me incredulously, and said “How can you have a preference about that when you are dead?”

Good point, darling, good point.

In any case, if there are such things as ghosts and consciousness after death (highly unlikely), my dead self would not object to G having a second (or even a third or fourth) lover after me. My only request is that he honor the Three Month Rule of Breakups (death being the Ultimate Breakup, as Carrie Bradshaw-Preston had said in And Just Like That).

The Three Month Rule states you are supposed to wait 3 months multiplied by the number of years you were together before you can move on to a new relatioship. So suppose, you were together for 15 years; then 15 multiplied by 3 is 45 months. So 45 months will be the length of time one needs to wait before entering into a new relationship without the stink of the word “rebound” spoiling the whole thing.

Pretty neat huh? (I just heard G roll his eyes)

Image from https://www.bonobology.com/signs-rebound-relationship/

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The second part of this post is, yey, I have another story about Alice and Jonas!

Working Title: Like a Virus

(Alice’s POV. About Jonas, the time before.)

I was never a sickly kid. My earliest memories include 1. Catching dragonflies on the grasslands between rice paddies, 2. Climbing aratiles trees and staying there like a monkey while eating the tiny round seedly fruits until Auntie Juliette had begun to worry that I was kidnapped or worse, 3. Falling down our old wooden stairs spraining my arm, then howling at Baket Ikka as she applied coconut oil over the sprain.

I never contracted most of the usual viral infections growing up. I rarely had cough or colds, never had the flu, and the only time I had fever was when I caught chicken pox from my friend Aileen. I was febrile for a full 24 hrs; the next day I was up the aratiles tree again, a monkey with vesicles on her face.

So Jonas was a sickly kid, he is telling me now. When he was five years old, he developed a bad case of pneumonia, and he had to stay in the hospital for over a month. His mom, frantic with worry about Jonas, collected all sorts of saints and Catholic angels so that she could pray for the health and survival of her dearest only boy. His dad finally found him a very competent and distinguished pulmonologist who did a lot more to help in Jonas’s illness than any saint ever could.

“How could you stand being in bed for a month connected to all sorts of tubes and gadgets, I have no idea,” I tell him now as he hovers over my bed.

“I did not actually have a choice about it,” he tells me in that mild deadpan voice he always uses when I am in an irritable mood. “I was mostly sedated that time.”

“I hate being bedridden,” I grumbled. Admittedly, being sick makes me regress back to being a five-year-old.

“You are not exactly chained to your bed Alice,” he points out. “You can sit up, or walk to the bathroom if you want to. If you can.”

If I can. That second sentence really triggers me. Because the truth is … I can’t.

Jonas reaches out for my left hand, the one with the intravenous cannula, the one that was pricked like an emery bag yesterday because the nurse could not find an adequate vein. I could feel my eyes filling. Oh shit, self pity is such an unbecoming emotion!

“You do know that this is only temporary,” he said. “You will not exactly be sick forever,” his voice was as gentle as his hand.

“I know that. But I still hate it!”

They are still running tests to come up with a diagnosis. But the working impression is that I have a community acquired pneumonia. As such, I was pumped with a cocktail of antibiotics and round-the-clock paracetamol to bring the fever down. This morning my temperature is fine, but my disposition must be harrowing to my companion.

“I don’t know why you put up with me,” I tell him. “You actually flew all the way from Michigan.”

“My girlfriend is sick, what was I supposed to do?”

I stare at him, aghast. I did not know I was still his girlfriend. I thought that the break up that happened in Manila was still in effect.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says irritably. “Didn’t you think I won’t come here to take care of you?”

“Well,” I say helplessly, breathlessly. “You are not obligated to do that.”

“For fucking Christ’s sake, Alice, you are not an obligation. You are not a duty. You are not a hobby or a past time that I go to when I am bored. You are not work, you are not a plaything. You do not exactly bring me peace most of the time. And now with you being sick… it is worrying me half to death!”

His eyes are blazing and he looks like he might strangle me. I wanted to smile … Oh god, thank you, he still loves me!

“So what am to you then?” I ask.

“You are a virus that I have never been never able to get rid of this past 6 years.” It was a grumble, a confession, an endearment. I squeeze his hand and I close my eyes, suddenly sleepy. “Thank you. That is the sweetest thing I have heard all day.”

Bearing Witness, Playing God

Just after I finished residency training, I considered applying to Doctors Without Borders. I was a newly minted specialist; a rabid women’s advocate (in my heart at least, even if it was not publicly expressed), who believed that my calling in life should be about serving others, specifically the downtrodden and oppressed.

The Che Guevarra-ness of it all!

I downloaded the MSF application form, which was around 5 pages long (and included an essay); filled it up; made a rough draft of why I wanted to work with their organization — and did not mail it. (It was quite un-practical and fussy to pursue that route then as the recruitment center was in Hongkong and I had no money. Besides I didn’t think I could work in a job that would entail not seeing G for like 6 months at a time — yeah, as far as careers go, love can be a bitch).

I am looking back on all that now as I contemplate my work in this country so far from home; caring for people that I will never understand even if I spend my lifetime providing medical services for them; talking to them in a language that I will never really comprehend.

There is a word in French (another language as baffling as Arabic), témoignage, or “bearing witness” that is like a guiding principle in Doctors Without Borders. I think about it — and I have come to the conclusion that témoignage is as much an essential part of the intimacies in our lives as it is in Médecins Sans Frontières.

To love is to bear witness to another’s universe. And it can be a terrible thing; and a magical thing at the same. Considering that a big chunk of our lives is lived inside our heads, occupying another’s POV is an overwhelming experience. But that’s what interpersonal relationships are all about — to enable us to step outside this insular thing called “self” and to be able to see another; and in the process, to also be seen for who we really are.

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So that post was written over a year ago — pre-pandemic, as most of  our lives seem to bear that demarcation.

Today, I am preoccupied by the phrase “playing god”. Being a doctor  definitely falls under this category. Writers also like to imagine themselves as God (or god with a small g,  when they are feeling more secure about their place in the world). Same goes for world leaders, local government executives  and computer geeks who dream up codes in their sleep.

There is a book of short stories written by a Filipino doctor Arturo Rotor which has the title “The Men Who Play God”.  Very apt, albeit not politically correct, but  fact of the matter is during Rotor’s time most doctors are males who tend to regard  their medical practice as their own planet earth and they are Yahweh.

It is very exhausting to play god. A lot of gods have been burnt out of their celestial existence and chose to change careers into medical administrators, or academicians,  or medical informatic specialists, or have gone into non medically related businesses entirely.

I have been playing with the idea of leaving clinical medicine recently. I am tired of advising people on what to do with their bodies. And weary of women worrying about their pregnancies and their capacity of having a genetic progeny. I find it unjust that the burden of reproduction is borne by one gender while power over human lives is entirely monopolized by another.

The infuriating,  sad, unfair truth is: God is a man —  the fact that only females have uteruses and ovaries while males have physical and material power over them is an evidence of this.

Why should I be in a medical field that is party to my own subjugation?

I think I would rather cook. Feeding people, I think, is more morally justifiable.

Survival

Yes, I am still alive.

Though, I have no idea why.

Why am I alive when G’s batchmate K (who was a wonderful pediatrician) is dead? Why am I still breathing when more than a million people on Earth has stopped doing so in just over a year?

Why did I survive when so many more before me, more worthy, more brave, just …. more … are … gone?

The question I really like to ask is why someone like Rodrigo Duterte still alive when Edgar Jopson is dead? They would be almost the same age now (Digong was born 3 years before Edjop). They lived through the same upheavals my country has gone through — my semi post-colonial, semi-feudal, tribal, fatalistic homeland. They were both men with good intentions. They were both inclined to be leaders.

Why did one die and the other evolve to be a monster?

Is that what surviving means? Would Edjop have turned into the dark side (the way Harry Roque did) if he survived Martial Law and Marcos’s oppression?

I try to tell myself that Edjop died because he wanted to give his life to a higher cause. As such, he was good. Or was he good because he died? What if he lived through the new millennium? What if he were still alive now — would he have evolved into something else? Something like Jejomar Binay (human rights lawyer turned corrupt politician); or would he end up like Conrado De Quiros (activist-progressive writer now retired because of health reasons)?

What does surviving mean? To evolve? Into what? Into the kind of monster that this effing world require us to be?

These are dark times for my country. A lot of my people do not realize it. Some even consider these times as the good times (I can’t blame them, particularly my workmate & co-OFWs, A and L; who seem to believe that the Philippines would thrive more as an absolute monarchy than a republic).

Militarization is rife in the countryside; and now they are creeping into the schools.

Yesterday, my alma mater was in an uproar because a deal disallowing military personnel from infiltrating the University without permission from the school has been unilaterally revoked.

People are accused of being communist; just because they express dissent (like hello! communism has been a debunked ideology since 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell). Accusation means interrogation, or arrest or imprisonment. Or worse. We call this red-tagging; a big hypocrisy, for this is done by the same government which is enthusiastically licking China’s ass (the biggest self avowed Communist of them all).

I really don’t believe that China is a Communist country — it is behaving more like a fascist, authoritarian, wannabe-imperialist state (although this is a topic for another blog post)

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The Saint Helena olive (Nesiota elliptica), unlike me, is dead. Extinct, actually.

(from Wikipedia) St Helena olive was a plant from the monotypic genus of flowering plants Nesiota within the family Rhamnaceae.
It was an island endemic native to Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. Despite its name, it is unrelated to the true olive (Olea europaea). The last remaining tree in the wild died in 1994, and the last remaining individual in cultivation died in December 2003, despite conservation efforts.

So yes, I am still alive.

Whether that is a good thing or not, time will tell.

Trying Times

Those two words are a definite understatement. Especially for healthcare workers.

The whole world is presently reeling from a crisis that is straight out of a Suzanne Collins novel. How did it happen that a once-in-a-lifetime event happened in my lifetime? I have no idea. When I started this blog, I was settled to the fact that I will lead a humdrum existence devoid of any real-proximate-death-inducing risk — but  here I am.

image from https://www.wqpmag.com

On the bright side (and there are some), I am thankful for several things:

1. I celebrated the end of my 4th decade in this world yesterday; here’s to hoping for better days, weeks, months, years, decades to come …

2. The love-of-my-life is with me and we are still as crazy about each other as we were 17 years ago ….

4. My father, my sister, my brother, my aunts and I are in different countries (continents even), so at least if one of us contracts an infection (most likely me), social distancing will not be a problem (ha ha) ….

3. I am a healthcare worker, hence, I can do something active aside from fiddling my thumbs.

However, I  still feel like Frodo …

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

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This article,  written by a doctor in the Atlantic magazine, is sobering and reflective; and I just feel like posting some of these words right now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/were-failing-doctors/608662/?fbclid=IwAR3_J6u8FmXefRym4cyIfbMSclbwpNwMyvnS862c2iX6SaPB4LHZJmBdbuA

We don’t take these risks because of an abstract “ethical duty”; we take them because it is what we do every time we walk into the chaos and danger of the emergency department. We do it because it is our job.

Our duty is not boundless, and in bad situations, sacrificing providers is not what is best for society. If health-care providers are going to risk their life, then there is a reciprocal obligation—the fairness principle—that society, employers, and hospitals keep them safe and ensure that they are fairly treated, whether they live, get sick, or die.

Having colleagues sharing the burden is a crucial predictor for clinicians’ willingness to work despite the risk. But when the cascade starts, when you are forced to reuse your disposable face mask for the third day in a row, and another nurse doesn’t come in, because of her concern for her daughter, and you know that two of your colleagues are being treated in the ICU and another 10 are home infected, and then another physician calls out sick, and there are no clerks again today? Sooner or later, you look around and see so few standing with you. At some point, the system could break, and we will all be gone.

To My Dearest Friend L

Asalam allaikum Sister. I greet you this morning with peace and love.

I miss our weekend walks and our ranting about the hassles in our workplace. I miss drinking tea with you in that small cafe beside the gasoline station. I miss knocking on your flat, then you would tell me to come inside and ply me with cookies from that Iraqi bakery. I miss that you would call our Bangladeshi driver to take us to the souq where I would be making unplanned purchases just because it was so much fun.

“The Friends” by Gustav Klimt. Image from https://www.gustav-klimt.com/The-Friends.jsp

Sister, you voted for that pretender in the Palace. Yeah, I understand why you and your kin were so enamored of him. Remember we used to talk about Imperial Manila? And didn’t I agree with you that the Christians have taken lands you consider your own? I understand where your resentments come from — they come from the same place where mine used to reside. There was this place in my heart where I considered “others” to be the source of my pains. And you were one of the “others” until you became my friend.

I visited our country recently — and hey, we even bumped into each other at a conference! It was wonderful seeing you again; and I am happy that you are well and safe and thriving. Those three words, though, do not apply to most of our people, don’t you think? That is a sad fact. I used to believe, cynically, that being unwell, unsafe and un-thriving was just what most of our people deserved — because they are ignorant; superficial; they choose thugs or fools as leaders; and just because we are so clannish and clique-ish.

But I am here now, a land not my own, and I come to realize that nobody deserves to be “unwell, unsafe, un-thriving.”

I realize that one’s tendency to be superficial, to be ignorant, to make poor choices — can be rooted in one’s heritage, in one’s history. We are what our parents (our forebears) have made us. That is not an excuse for defects in our character and for the choices we make; but hey, it is a valid enough reason to explain why we are what we are.

I do not know if there is hope yet for our country, my sister. Though I know that I so very much want to come home.

I want to work for and build up things that are Mine (or will be). I want to see your lake, the one near your house — the house that was bombed and destroyed by ISIS; still to be rebuilt from the ashes. I want to feel Christmas — the fancy lights in our shanties, the carols of grimy kids, the parties where we sing and drink our sorrows away, the simple gifts we give just because. I want to speak our tongue — there are many of them and we make fun  of each other’s accents but we are all the same despite our differences.

Someday, inshallah, I will return home. I just need to learn to become the person that deserve it.

PhDs on LDRs

According to a 2017 survey, there are 2.3 million OFWs or overseas Filipino workers; and in another survey it was found that the Philippines is 3rd in the world when it comes to receiving the most amount of remittances at 30 billion US dollars (the 1st is India at 72 billion and the 2nd is China at 64 billion).

I was thinking of these numbers today because I was watching a CNN documentary in Netflix featuring Christiane Amanpour on the topic of Love & Sex around the world.

So far, she has gone to Lebanon, India, Japan, Ghana, Germany and China to find out the current mores and conditions pertaining to marriage, love and sexuality among these countries’ population. She has not visited the Philippines yet; which makes me curious as to how she will portray my country in her stories.

I have an idea, Christiane — and it is that of all the nations in the world, it is Filipinos who are the experts on long distance relationships (LDR).

If PhDs on LDRs will be endowed to anyone, it will be Pinoys who will graduate at the top of their class.

We have turned long distance romantic relationships into an art form.

A story: there is a woman named D who is married to a ship captain named M. The two of them were married just before M went into his first voyage overseas as a sailor (“seaman” is how we Filipinos refer to these men who run the world’s shipping vessels). Out of every year, M and D would meet and be together for one or two months; so 10 months out of 12 they would not be physically in contact. Before the days of internet, D and M would communicate with telegrams and snail mail and long distance phone calls (in fact, D was the first person in my neighborhood to have a telephone back in the days when only business establishments have phone lines; and in fact, my mom owes a lot to D and her telephone because my mom would communicate with her sisters in Canada using this device). Today, D and M have been married for 39 years. They are still together. Ten years ago, M stopped working and settled with his wife in their condo near a mall. Their only child (my childhood playmate K), has finished her studies and was about to get  married. So there is no more need for M to hop into a ship again. I  am curious though — how does it feel for D to now be constantly around M’s presence after him being gone all those long years?

D & M’s story is one that has been happening hundreds of thousands of times among Filipinos. Ever since the government made it a policy to send foreign workers abroad in the 70s to supplement our much-needed dollar reserves, the story of couples who have to sustain their relationships from thousands of miles away has been a quintessential Filipino story (or at least, Filipino middle class story — the class D and Class A have a different one, a topic for another blog post).

It takes a certain faith and resilience to make an LDR work. Especially an LDR that spans years or decades even. Not a few relationships that I personally know have crumbled because the male or female partner was abroad.

There is a song in Tagalog by Joel Ayala (I mentioned in a previous post that it was by Noel Cabangon; well I was wrong — my bad) which I think is the theme song for Pinoy OFWs and their significant others. It is called “Walang Hanggang Paalam”. It’s melody is a sad guitar, accompanied by what sounds like a banduria, and the lyrics go like, “at habang magkalayo, papalapit pa rin ang puso/ kahit na magkahiwalay, tayo’y magkasama sa magkabilang dulo ng mundo.” (we move farther apart though our hearts grow together, and meet from different ends of the world — my awkward translation)

Needless to say, I am a hopeless romantic. I believe that love prevails in the end. And despite the difficulties that distance or time or financial/resource constraints will impose, Pinoys will find a way to care for those they love.

Dubai Creek at night, from a boat. There are over 400,000 Filipinos living in Dubai at the moment, which is more than the population of Baguio City. Go figure.

 

Nationalism or What do Filipinos Care About?

I am presently working in a foreign country as a temporary economic migrant. Someday, I will return home, but for now, I owe my financial resources to this nation whose culture is as different from mine as night is from day.

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I was thinking about my situation when I came across this article from one of the blogs I follow and usually comment on.  It is asking about nationalism, how it can be a bad thing, and finally, what Filipinos care about.

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First, the question of whether nationalism is “good” or “bad” is maybe a question of gradient and context.  When I was in elementary, the message I got from my teachers is that nationalism is “good” – and that is something we should strive for. We sang the national anthem and recited the “Panatang Makabayan” every morning without fail so this vague thing called “nationalism” could be instilled in our young minds and hearts. I had this idea as a child that it is a noble quality to be willing to die for one’s country. Back then, I was not aware of the nuances – i.e: what exactly are you dying for your country for?

Fast forward to Now.

Nationalism has taken on a bad rap.  The idea that “nationalism” is a dangerous concept probably started in Europe with its issues about the Nazis; fascism;  the breakdown of Yugoslavia due to the nationalist tendencies of the states that made it up; and now the deluge of non-European migrants into European soil. Presently, the US President is the poster child of the poisonous “nationalist” – a word which has become almost synonymous with “bigot”.

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A personal story regarding nationalism & immigration:

My aunts and uncles have all migrated to Canada in the 1990s. They have worked there and paid their taxes and eventually became Canadian citizens. So recently, Justin Trudeau has been welcoming Syrian and other immigrants to Canada. I would think that given their previous positions as economic migrants, my relatives would agree with Trudeau’s policies, in the spirit of paying it forward. But, alas … no. When I spoke with my aunt and uncle, all they could complain about was how the Canadian government policies would mean more taxes for them to pay and how welcoming more immigrants would be such a drain on the economy and how these middle eastern migrants are terrorists-in-disguise etc etc. So I just rolled my eyes and stopped the debate because I love my relatives and I don’t want us to spend their vacation arguing over immigration policies.

So what has this story got to do with JoeAm’s blog post is this: “What inspires Filipinos, broadly? Family, faith in the rituals of it all, gossip, and the practicalities of life: eating and getting around. Where is the MORAL foundation?” — particularly, me, mulling the answer to that question.

F Sionil Jose once wrote that Filipinos are  a shallow people (by the way, FSJ also supported and probably voted for Rodrigo Duterte — go figure).

FSJ said that we are shallow because we are “mayabang” (arrogant), we do not read (hence we are under-educated) and that our  mass media is shallow.

Given this “shallowness”, what inspires us then? I mean what would one expect a child to be inspired of? JoeAm gives this answer “Family, faith in the rituals of it all, gossip, and the practicalities of life”– ouch, but true. If we want to get rid of our shallowness, of this narrow definition of nationalism that we have, then we have to start with the family. And because of this we must consider that the unmet need for family planning in the Philippines is presently at 17.5% — oops, but this is another topic for another blog post  🙂

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So, to connect the ideas of this meandering post: do I believe nationalism is bad? Not necessarily, depending on how it is used. I mean, if one will define nationalism as a sense of loyalty to one’s country of birth/allegiance, that is not a perilous thing. That is actually a virtue. However, if one uses nationalism to justify the exclusion or persecution of “the other”, meaning people who are not part of your country of allegiance then that would just be mean. And if nationalism is used to defend one’s laziness and shortsightedness and unwillingness to make the personal sacrifices needed to combat climate change, well, that is just stupid.

Do Filipinos have a sense of nationalism? Yes and no. We have a superficial (“shallow” is the word FSJ’s used) sense of nation. We love our families to our detriment; and we identify with our tribes/regions (i.e Ilokano, Tagalog, Maranao etc), to the exclusion of our identity as “Filipinos”.

Given this fact, the question of “what inspires us?”, with all due respect, is the wrong question. The question should be: “how should that which inspire us translate to love of nation?”

Like, I love my family, my family inspires me. But would my family have existed at all if Filipino nationalists have not asserted our independence from Spain, America or Japan? My grandmother was telling me a story how the Japanese used to bayonet babies in their village. Without Filipino nationalism, she could have been one of the kids who suffered and then I would not exist.

This is a what-if of history (something my aunts get exasperated about when I bring it up, saying it is futile to think of what ifs).  But part of learning history is wondering about what ifs.  And that is what Filipinos lack, I think, why our love of our family does not translate to love of nation. We lack history. Somebody stole it from us (the colonial masters, the fucked up educational system, the present elites, you name it) – and now we fail to be inspired.

 

 

 

Just Because Today is Feast of the Immaculate Conception*

I have always been a Mommy’s girl.

from https://thebirthbug.wordpress.com/tag/mother-and-child-art/

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When I was 5 years old, my brother got sick; so my mother would not let me sleep beside her because I might disturb my brother who had the privilege to sleep with her in view of his illness (that malingering twerp!). So Mommy told me to sleep beside Daddy instead. I erupted into a humongous insufferable fit of tantrums which resulted in a particularly vicious spanking. (When I related this tale to G, he just laughed and said that I totally deserved the punishment. G is another rascal, in the same league as my brother.)

I hated my Dad because he did not speak my language (Ilokano); he always wanted me to hug him (which seemed so needy and hence uncool); and he had all these hair on his face that made him look like a villain (see Max Alvarado, Paquito Diaz et al; all self-respecting Pinoy movie villains have moustaches).

So I loved my mother more (sorry Daddy). Given the choice between being a slut and being an old maid, I would have chosen the latter, not because of any deep abiding principle or a lack of proclivity — but out of love for my mother (who, after she died, I learned had been a slut after all, but that’s another story — courtesy of my Dad).

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from Reporter.ph

I got into all that personal introduction because of Leila de Lima. 

Yup, that Leila de Lima — the one with the alleged sex video and who was an alleged drug lord and is now imprisoned without bail.

I love Ms. de Lima, the same way I loved my mother.

I do not care if she fucked the whole basketball team and made a documentary out of it. (I mean, really, Mocha Uson and Sass Sassot have probably done worse.)

I do not  care if she was a strict, by-the-rules, priggish marmalade who was into human rights in ways that are impracticable in a slave-country like the Philippines.

I do not care if she is fat (although she lost weight after a year in prison and now she looks really great — eat your heart out Digong!), has boring outfits (fashion sense borrowed from Dinky Soliman; Ms. Leila, you should borrow Kris Aquino’s stylists more often), and a pedestrian taste in men (Really? Your driver?).

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from pinterest

I love her for all that she reminds me of my Mom — the steadfastness, the tenacity, the you-don’t-give-me-no-bullshit attitude.

I love that when she testified during the impeachment of Renato Corona, she brought her aging father who was a former government servant into the august halls of the Senate.

I love that she went after human rights violators who ordered the killing of children in their bailiwicks because of drug use — only a woman with true sense of compassion can understand that no, KILLING A CHILD IS WRONG. The child became a monster because of the adult. And if anybody should be blamed and gutted here, it should be the adults that allowed these kids to go out into the world in the first place. Only a mother can understand a mother’s heartbreak when that same child (no matter how Lucifer-like he/she is) dies.

from http://mythologian.net/hades-the-king-of-the-underworld/

I love how she carried herself during the time in the Senate when every self-righteous so called anti-drug-wannabe in this world ganged up on her. On the other hand, maybe I do not love her that much during that time — she appeared shrill and harpy-ish. But then, with all that stress, can we blame her?

from http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Valkyrie/Gallery

And now, I love her while she is in prison, because of the patience and grace with which she handles this ordeal.

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from Pinterest

When she died, my mother gave me the most precious gift — my freedom.

Fact is, I do not consider her giving me life (as in allowing her egg to be fertilized, going through almost 9 months of gestation and expelling me out of her vagina) as something she gave to me; rather, it was something she gave to herself.

(I did say in so many words, somewhere in this blog, that wanting to be/being a biological parent entails a bit of narcissism.)

But my mother’s dying was another matter. It set me free; in every way a person can be free.

It is probably morbid of me to thank her — but here it is: Thank you Mommy.

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*This is such a looong post, but the point of it is (as the title suggests): It irks me no end that the only time we consider women to be heroes is when they go through Virgin Births. I mean, seriously!?

Orphans

Image from pinterest

I am ambivalent about the morality of assisted reproductive technology (ART). That may be a reason why, despite being a fascinating scientific area of study, I chose not to go into Reproductive Endocrinology. More’s the pity as there are less than 200 board-certified reproductive endocrinologists in the Philippines, a nation of 120 million.

This article is not about doctor-shortage (although it is tempting to make it about that as I have a lot of rant on that topic as well), but rather this is my ruminations about parenting.

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The best and worst thing about having a progeny is being confronted with one’s mortality. It need not be a biological progeny: one can have a Grand Life Project — like maybe, “Giving Women the Right to Vote” (Alice Paul), or  “Ensuring Philippine Freedom From Colonial Spain” (Jose Rizal), or “Ending Marcos Tyranny” (Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino) etc etc.

If the point of living is to prepare us for dying then what better way to spend that prep time than to strive for something we are really passionate about. Life is to foreplay what orgasm is to dying.

Progenies remind us of death because they are what come after us — the orphans we leave behind.

It would be a wonderful universe if we leave our orphans with a situation that is better than what we had. Unfortunately, more often than not, the Universe  is cruel and uncaring. Our orphans are left destitute and scrounging for a place (any place) to exist. How many orphans have perished at the demise of their parents, I wonder?

We are puppies, kittens, cubs, nestlings, fingerlings, tadpoles, caterpillars — left behind by mothers and fathers who did not survive our births.

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Of course, it is a self-defeating attitude to resent a parent for not being strong enough to live. One is never ever ready to face a parent’s death. And a parent will never be able to protect its kid forever. That is Reality, sad but true.

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I was walking along a foreign road this morning, tears streaking down my face, remembering my mother. I would give an arm (the left one as I am right handed) to see her again.

Before she died I asked her plaintively what am I going to do when I have a kid of my own and she is not there. She said that I have my aunts to help me through that.

Well Mommy, that is an unsatisfying answer, I have expected something more Buddha-esque from you. To give you credit though, you have gone through more pain in your life than I can even imagine, so maybe I should cut you some slack for not being more philosophical.

While we are at it Mommy, let me remind you that being a doctor was never the greatest dream of my life. I can save a thousand bodies from dying an untimely death, but that will not satisfy my soul as much as making up stories can. Yes, I would rather be a professional liar than a professional healer. How’s that for a life goal, mother?

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Were you a good parent or a bad one?

(I would think that I have a right to judge you as I am your progeny. And since you are dead, eviscerating you in print won’t matter very much.)

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What makes a “good parent” versus a “bad parent”?

Should parenting subsume one’s life at the expense of everything else, the way women have done for centuries?

Why are biological progenies supposedly more acceptable than non-biological ones?

The world is overpopulated with humans so what is the point of having more of us?

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Mommy I don’t want to sound nihilistic (although I know I am), but maybe your biggest mistake was having me?

I keep thinking that if I did not come along, you would have lived longer; the same way your older sister (the one who went to another country and shares my name) is now living her life to the fullest.

What was the point of having me Mommy?

Seriously … I cannot understand. That is my problem.

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Romance (film), 1999

I watched Romance because I googled Rocco Siffredi, who apparently, according to G, is one of the more phenomenal porn male stars there are. Thank you G 🙂 🙂

 

The movie is brave for its time.

We must remember that in 1999, the internet was just a baby (or maybe a toddler). Emails were used primarily for business/academic purposes, MIRC chatrooms were the norm, “blog” is an unheard of word, there was no Facebook (Twitter was just a dream), internet porn was in the fetal stage.

On the other hand, video porn was available way back in the 1960s.

Romance by writer-director Catherine Breillat is not porn. Though, one can understand why a lot of people would think of it as such. It garnered XXX ratings in several countries. And it did feature explicit sex scenes, masturbation scene, cunnilingus, fellatio, BDSM, rape — you name it, it has it; except for bestiality, necrophilia and other conditions that may be considered pathologic.

The raciest thing it was accused of was featuring unsimulated sex between the lead actress Caroline Ducey and eye candy Rocco Siffredi.

Ladies and gentlemen (especially the gentlemen), take it from me, speaking as someone who has had sex in all manners of undress and in various positions before, Caroline and Rocco did not have unsimulated sex.

It is difficult, well at least uncomfortable for the man, to enter a vagina in that position. Trust me — or try it, whichever you prefer.

That must be the reason why, as Roger Ebert said in his review, “At a screening at the Toronto Film Festival there was some laughter, almost all female, but I couldn’t tell if it was nervous, or knowing.”

Roger, darling, the women were laughing because it was funny. Rocco and Caroline could not have had sex, like penis-in-vagina sex, because if they had done so, Rocco would have sued Catherine Breillat for a broken (or fractured) penis — which medically, is not an impossible condition.

The female audience may also have been laughing at the BDSM scene between Francois Berleand and Caroline Ducey. Their second BDSM encounter is really funny. Again, try it, to understand why.

It has been 18 years since Romance was screened. Thank God, I did not see it in 2012, otherwise, I would have had some seditious ideas (knowing how impressionable I was) and G would probably have had a nasty headache on his hands.

In any case, between 1999 and 2017:

• the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists,
• in a certain Southeast Asian country: Erap Estrada was booted out of office, GMA became a fake president for 9 years and Noynoy Aquino became the highest leader in a country despite being single and accused (probably unjustified) of autism (what is so wrong with being autistic, I have no idea, people with Asperger’s can lead perfectly happy and productive lives), then he was succeeded by self-confessed murderer, Rodrigo Duterte (proving that the Philippines as a nation is the one with mental disability)
• Friendster then Multiply then Facebook then WordPress then Twitter then Instagram were born … yipee!!
• Sheryl Sandberg became a CEO of Facebook, ditto for Marissa Mayer of Yahoo,
• Sex and the City re-defined how we see women who do (and I mean “do” in all sense of the word, prurient or otherwise), Girls finished 6 seasons and it redefined how we see women (or girls) interact with each other and the men (or boys) in their lives
• Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James became (undeservedly or not) a book and movie phenomenon (in the financial sense),
• the Arab Spring happened,
• Rocco Siffredi retired from porn (2004), then returned to porn (2009), then retired again (2015)

A lot of things can happen in 18 years.

When Romance was screened and Roger Ebert watched it, he had this to say:

“… the film has an icy fascination. Perhaps it is a test of how men and women relate to eroticism on the screen. I know few men who like it much (sure proof it is not pornographic). Women defend it in feminist terms, but you have the strangest feeling they’re not saying what they really think.”

It is my opinion that the reviewer sounded defensive or maybe baffled? I cannot blame the guy — he is a male, after all.

I wonder, though, what he will say about it now.