2 posts in one day

Because four years ago, on this very day I once wrote–

Today, on Halloween, I must make a confession: I am scared. There is a thought that encompasses all my irrational childish fears; a thought more frightening than Bluebeard with his ax, or the evil clown in the closet, or of flying cockroaches or of the evil rats that will bite off my toes when I’m asleep. I am afraid of the dark shadow that hangs over America. I am horrified that the person responsible for the paranoia and unfounded jingoism that festers in the hearts of some Americans, the person who has been the cause of so many senseless deaths, the person who has constantly (and unblinkingly!) justified a fabricated war is going to be reelected as the next President of the United States of America. Please. Say it ain’t so.

I don’t want to jinx this, but I feel hope( and yes, that Obamafied buzzword–change!) in the air today, on this Hallow’s eve.

I’m reminded every single day that I am not a perfect man. I will not be a perfect president.

But I can promise you this. I will always tell you what I think, and where I stand. I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.

I will listen to you when we disagree. And most importantly, I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in your own democracy again.

From the Wall St. Journal–

Obama and the Runaway Train

The race, the case, a hope for grace.

by Peggy Noonan

The case for Barack Obama, in broad strokes:

He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.

A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd “I have no comment,” or “We shouldn’t judge.” Instead he said, “My mother had me when she was 18,” which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn’t have to.

There is something else. On Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, Mr. Obama won the Alabama primary with 56% to Hillary Clinton’s 42%. That evening, a friend watched the victory speech on TV in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, saw on the screen “Obama Wins” and “Alabama.” She said, “Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school.” She said, “That’s where they used the hoses.” Suddenly my friend saw it new. Birmingham, 1963, and the water hoses used against the civil rights demonstrators. And now look, the black man thanking Alabama for his victory.

This means nothing? This means a great deal.

Read the rest of the article here.

educating margaret

Let’s draw our neighborhoods, I say. Think about your house, and the people you love, and your neighbors, and what you like to do on weekends. Let’s draw that.  She considers this.

The silence is interminable. Ay, hindi bumebenta si Maggie. I hear Leo’s voice in my head—ikaw kase, masyadong tee-eytch! Bombard her with a litany of suggestions, why don’t you?

I yield, disappointingly (predictably), but I’m still trying to sound unflappable and teacherly:  Or whatever, you know. Whatever you want to draw.

No, s’okay. I wanna draw my house and my dad and my cat. Finally, an acquiescence.

So we’re coloring furiously now, Taleisha and I. I’m thinking to myself, God, I fucking love crayola.  I remember how mama once bought me that mammoth box of (120!) crayons and how I fell in love with the color names more than the colors themselves: cornflower blue and goldenrod and sea green and dandelion and burnt sienna. Although no, I didn’t like that last one, because I knew a girl named Sienna and I would always imagine her burned to a stake, just like Joan of Arc. Gross. So yeah, that would always be the only one intact in a box full of broken crayons.

I am now drawing the gayest house in the world, with a (royal!) purple roof and (canary) yellow walls and I’m filling in my door with a color called Razzle Dazzle Rose. Hmmm. I don’t remember that one.  I draw a girl–long hair, tired eyes. Apparently I always have tired eyes.– in a midnight blue dress reading a book under a tree with dead branches. I color the sun Indian red and marvel at the unabashedly racially charged, un-PC name choice: I don’t see Chinese yellow or African American black or Chicano Brown here (ahem! colors which are, by all means not representative of these ethnicities. Yes. Unlike Crayola, I will always feel the need to be PC).* By the time I’m drawing nests with robin eggs in between the branches of my sad tree I realize that little Miss Taleisha is staring at me.

What.

That, she says, is just silly.

Why?

So that’s ‘spose to be you. And that’s ‘spose to be your house. She cocks her eyebrow upwards and purses her lips defiantly and her patent shoes are tapping on the linoleum. Clearly, this is a studied, well-rehearsed look, an amalgamated version of Raven Symone, Buttercup the Powerpuff girl and Amanda Bynes, the early years: The Skeptical Precocious Little Girl, as perfected by Taleisha.

Shit, she’s challenging me. Obviously, dili mauwat ang bata sa ako. Challenge her back! Shoulder-devil whispers in my ear.

Um, yeah. And why is that silly?

Because. She pauses and gives me this look, as if to say, Don’t bullshit me.

Because, she continues finally. You’re lying. No one has a house like that.

She points to my crimson sun, traces its elaborate curlicues and says, And the sun doesn’t look like that, all fancy and everything. And the sky isn’t that funny green color.

Well. In the first place, um. That isn’t green. It’s turquoise. (Great comeback, yes.)

T. pretends not to hear me and frowns. No fair, you told me we would draw our neighborhoods and I drew my house and I’m telling the truth but you’re not, that’s not the truth.

I look at her work and sure enough, there it is. A perfectly normal neighborhood: a red house with a white roof. A man in a green tie is cooking some hotdogs on a grill. There’s a girl in braids holding a black and white soccer ball and an ash-grey cat, with the words Sandy in parenthesis beside her. By all means, a truthful neighborhood. T. self-consciously snatches away her drawing, as if she is almost embarrassed by her colors that do not lie.

Five seconds become ten, ten seconds become fifty. Another endless silence with this sullen girl.

So. Do you know how to spell turquoise? (Why the F am I fixated on turquoise all of a sudden? Nice one, though!, Evil Jiminy Cricket laughs. There’s no way the little brat will be able to spell that. That’ll put her in her place. )

She’s glaring at me now. Still, she takes out a violet pencil from her High School musical pencil case and writes in fierce strokes: TURQUOYS.

I gush, I can’t help it. Wow, that was a very hard word, and okay, so you didn’t quite get it right…. but you spelled it with a Q and a U, which is correct! Most people think it’s spelled with a C or a K.

T. just blinks at me. Twice.

T-U-R-Q-U-O-I-S-E. I say. That’s how you spell it. When you combine O and I, you get an OY sound, right? But still, you almost got that one, Taleisha. That’s great.

She’s still glowering, and I swear to god I can hear her thoughts: Whoopdidoo girl, that’s awesome. Should I give myself a round of applause? Are you going to give me an “almost, but not quite excellent” gold star?

I sigh and stare at her pencil case. Zaquisha and Baby V and Ashley T and Corbin Bleu are all in their togas, in mid leap and they look so beautiful. So fucking young.  Haaaaay. Ugh why does this have to be difficult? Why can’t I be teaching at a school like that, where kids are gayer than gay and happy and just sing and dance? But here I am, next to an unimpressed 8 year old who is challenging the integrity of my artwork.

Okay, so my house doesn’t look like that, and the sky isn’t turquoise…most of the time. But I’m just pretending, Taleisha. Imagining, you know?

T is mumbling something.  I put my hand up to my ear, temporarily too tired to talk.

She repeats her statement slowly; she knows she is not talking to the sharpest knife in the drawer:

I , just, don’t, know, why, we ,alwaysalwaysalways, have, to, pretend.

*From Kuya Wiki: "Indian red" was renamed "chestnut" in 1999 due to concern that
some children thought the crayon color represented the skin color of Native Americans.[1]
According to the company, however, the name originally referred to a reddish-brown
pigment from India that is used in artists' oil paint. [1].

I guess our box had crayons from 1998? Whut. Ten year old crayons. Christ, the crayons
are older than Taleisha. This school needs more funding than I thought.

it’s 512 am on a wednesday

do you know where your daughter is, marilou costello?

she’s still in the Lauinger library: exhausted, freezing and fueled by numerous cups of breast-shrinking brew* (as well as the thought that this day will come to an end, eventually).

aaaaaaaah midterms!

*thanks to Jeline for the cautionary advice.

let them eat pie

I’m not too sure about sweet potato pie (never tried it), but that was just too goddamn cute so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. And Coconut cream pie? Magugustuhan siguro ni Barack ang buko pie ni Colette.

What about egg pie? I sincerely believe that egg pie does not get the props it deserves. I haven’t had a slice in years. It looks easy enough , so I should bake one after midterms are over.

As kids, Chris and I used to consume inordinate amounts of this because it tasted like leche flan inside a flaky shell. God. I really looked forward to Sunday because it meant going to the bakery in Divisoria (was it Ah Fat?)after mass and ordering an entire egg pie. One day, when I was 6 or so, I remember spitting out a bloodied tooth on the pavement right outside church. I had been wiggling that tooth with my tongue for a week, determined to extract it on my own terms. (Dad used to tie our teeth and pull them by himself. He would give a preliminary count off, saying he would tug on 3, but he would always, always tug on 2.) Delirious with pride, I picked it up and placed the tooth–coated with blood and saliva and God knows what lay on the sidewalk that day– in dad’s hands, saying–”I did it!” I recall him laughing and announcing, “Let’s celebrate with some egg pie.”

I am aware that my love for this pastry may be colored by my nostalgia.

But anyway. Yeah, Obama ftw.

a strange occurrence

I ran into three cats today; curiously, all of them seemed drawn to me.
And I, to them.

Equally odd:

I saw a dog
that I didn’t like at all

(the feeling was mutual).

Different planets, one roof

(i.e. The Intersections of the Unlikely Trio on Massachusetts Avenue.)

A reminder of how I used to space out in Math class: I’m green–to match my P. Pan complex, of course– R. is Purple, and A. is Blue.

As illustrated by my lovely Venn Diagram above (click it, go), we have somehow managed to find a common ground despite our stark differences in character. More often than not, though, we find this intersection in our cinematic and culinary tastes. Just look at how our weekend was spent:

Last night: watching American Gangster and swilling Pale Ale. (A–Mr. Red-blooded American male–’s influence)

This morning: watching Finding Nemo and eating sugary cereal. (M–Ms. I dress like a 13-year-old, act like I’m 8–’s influence)

Right now: watching Dreamgirls and sipping mimosas.(R–Mr. tragedy is synonymous with fabulosity–’s influence)

…

So much for unity in diversity: A. just walked out. How can anyone walk out on Deena Jones and the Dreams? How can anyone not want to lipsync to the frenzied Effie as she tells you that she’s NOT GOING?

Whatever. At least there’s more dance space. And mimosas.

This makes sense. No, really.

mags was a Trustworthy Monkey Trainer in a past life.Discover your past lives @ Quiz Me

i have half a mind to pack my bags, leave all of this behind and join the circus.

the blight man was born for

Enough has been said about the vivid ochres and magentas, or the crisp air or how it feels to be a child again, jumping on pile after pile of brittle leaves or muthafawkin pumpkin spice lattes. People seem to forget that fall is a season of dying.