Hopes and Hopes
When youth take on challenges, exciting things begin. I am eager and excited to see things unfold as we all focus on our respective projects. Last Friday was the Global Xchange Benefit Dinner. With the blaring music from the dance sport competition echoing from the outside, a group of young people presented their earnest appeal for support to family, friends and colleagues over dinner, poetry and music.
Tita Gang indulged us with Ani DiFranco's words. Thank you, thank you. You do enjoy that poem, and it does show. I'm posting it below.
Congrats Team 52.
*****
my i.q.
Ani DiFranco
when i was four years old
they tried to test my i.q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong
but when i was 13 years old
i woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that i live in a breakable takeable body
an ever increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
deface me
see,
my body is borrowed
yeah, i got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
i don't need anyone to hold me
i can hold my own
i got highways for stretchmarks
see where i've grown
i sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
i'm learning to laugh as hard
as i can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then i could relax
but a good brain ain't diddley
if you don't have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music
like we can make do
genius is in a back beat
backseat to nothing if you're dancing
especially something stupid
like i.q.
for every lie i unlearn
i learn something new
i sing sometimes for the war that i fight
'cause every tool is a weapon -
if you hold it right.
Surreal
There’s a surreal sense of normalcy around me. People still lining up for the MRT, music coming from downstairs as my housemates have breakfast, the electric fans still turn, swaying from left to right, right to left, much like the heads of those who cluck their tongues and shake their heads at the volatility of the current political situation. We’ve had enough, they say, and they sit right back behind their desks. Life goes on. We go to the corner stainless to avail of the cheapest, tastiest lunch of bopis and rice that we could find, we purchase fake DVDs and pore over movie schedules. We meet up with friends at Figaro and enthrall ourselves with the wonders of wifi.
It’s true what my friend said. By the age of 25 (which I will soon be), we should have reached our limit/quota of political uprisings. If there are martial law babies, perhaps we would be the coup d’etat kids? Political analysts point this to the precedent set by the first EDSA. Ah, the paradox of fighting for democracy and becoming too liberal with it. We have an EDSA 1, 2, 3, 4… We sit back and wrinkle our noses at the personalities who gather on the streets, accusing each of preserving themselves and their own interests. Political animals, these guys are. Hypocrites who use prayer as an excuse to standoff their agendas in public. We would be better off not making any trouble. Naku, mga pampagulo lang ang mga yan, as I’ve heard so many people say.
There are no heroes.
These are exercises in self-preservation, not moments of self-glorification. Not just for the political personalities who rally in the streets, but for us ordinary folks as well. What do we fight for? Put plain and simply, our rights. The rights which allow us to honestly and openly express how we feel about the current state of affairs, the rights which allow us to tell our public servants what we think without fear. The right to know and to learn about what is happening around us.
Ignorance isn’t bliss. It’s the traitorous lout that will bite you on the ass if you don’t shake it and put in your centavo’s worth.
Things may not seem that bad. We still get to enjoy our cups of coffee with friends, malls still have their sales, summer is fast approaching and we make our plans for trips to the beach. But if we still think everything is rosy and dandy, steady and normal, then indeed, that would be a reason for alarm.
