Archive for January, 2007

When a Child Asks

{ January 28, 2007 @ 11:02 am } · { Micro story }
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Perla was tucking Angelo, a mop top eight year old with cute dimples, for the night, with her mind set on applying that latest Regen-Cell® “Wrinkles Gone Overnight!” cold cream from Franciné Preto. She muttered a perfunctory ‘g’night Anjo’, and made for the Disney Characters posted pastel door. Upon reaching two feet she almost bounced backwards. Angelo had taken hold of her nightdress, which was stretched by the hem, exposing her formidable thighs.

“Let go, darn it!” He did, and the dress snapped to slap at her bottom.
“You forgettin’ somethin’, Ma,” he piped, the Dexter’s Laboratory lamp laying a halo at the back of his smallish head.
“And what would that be, young man?” Perla sounded like Meryl Streep in “A Series of Unfortunate Events”.
“We should say a prayer before going to sleep, shouldn’t we, Ma?” he pushed down the flannel sheet and knelt on the bed on which he sank some inches.
“Well, you can talk to the Old Man Upstairs and ask him what you want, and by George, He will give it to you. Good night again, Angelo.” This time, she made sure to secure the nightdress, on the pretext that she was just straightening the creases. She closed the door behind her with a careless pull.

Alone, Angelo spoke towards the twinkling stars of a very clear night sky that drifted through the window. “Thank You for giving me a wonderful Ma and Pa, but will You pay a visit to Ma and give her a…um…a wake up call? She seem forgetting me and Papa. I love You. Good night, Sir.”

The next morning…

“Good morning, Querida Mia!” Alfredo was already in his business suit but was more dignified looking with his earnest, dimpled smile and balding pate, joining mother and son at the plaid covered table, and attacking his fried rice a la Bilbao and still smoking chorizos. He observed Perla, in her rollers and Chinese style blue bathrobe, behind the haze of his coffee. She was leafing through a copy of Aging Beauty Today.

“Perla, I was wondering. Why did you jump out of our bed last night? You yelped as if someone poured water on you.” She set the magazine down on her empty plate, making the utensils chink.

“I had a nightmare. I was in some kind of Las Palmas country club, lounging by the pool with my comadres, when an old bearded man approached us.”

“And?”

“The old man said, ‘Nice tan’. Me and my friends told him, ‘Get lost!’. He had a pail with him, it appeared. He went over my side, standing above me, and said in the kindest voice I ever heard in my life, ‘Now, it’s time for you to WAKE UP.’ He had water in the pail, and he poured it all on my face! That’s when I suddenly ‘jumped up’, ‘Fredo’.” The husband started to snicker, and couldn’t hold it much longer, burst out laughing and tapping the table. Angelo was just plain amazed at this show of both his parents.

Perla snapped, “Put a lid, Alfredo.” With that, she almost crumpled the magazine in looking for the page she had been reading.

“Bueno, I better get going.” He stole a kiss at Angelo’s forehead and still managed to hug the seated little boy. When he went over to Perla, his puckered lips and closed eyes going for her luminous cheek, his eyes opened to kissing instead her palm, which was swiftly interposed with automatic precision. He offered the on-looking Angelo a sheepish grin, lovingly tussling his mop top as he passed.

“Bye, Pa! See you later!” Angelo looked after his father for a long time. Perla was still busy perusing for secrets in the glossy mag.

Angelo looked at his mother, and thought, he couldn’t wait for night to come. He believed that bedtime was the best best time in which It would be the most effective.

©2007 Tomachfive WordPress

Predatory Thoughts

{ January 26, 2007 @ 10:42 am } · { Micro story }
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You may want to skewer me with your harpoons, shoot me with your cowardly guns, or perhaps make me and my kind the ingredients in that paltry dish you call a soup, ha! and for what? For being what I am? This is what I was born to be, as my ancestors before me had done even way back to the time of the Plesiosaurs and Mosasaurs that terrorized the warmer oceans and us. They’re gone now, what you landlubbers call, extinct. The sea belongs to us now. It is our time now.

We meat eaters prefer wild game more. We’d love to track and ambush aging killer whales, biting off chunks of their plentiful meat. We prize the giant squid, tentacles and all. We rip apart and gobble sinewy dolphins, seals, and walruses. We snack on sea turtles, our jaws biting through their so-called protective shells. They are all exciting hunts because they try to evade us but still they fall to our unyielding search. They can run but they can’t hide, our keen senses detect the sound waves their fleeings make. We even feed on our own species. This is what we are.

So when one of your kind falls off your floating refuges or swim too far from the beach, we gag with disgust at having to surrender to the instinct of devouring such unworthy chase. Otherwise, we just do it for sport.

You flounder in the water like capsized gulls, without any true aquatic grace. Your bones may be crunchy but your meat doesn’t taste right. You violate my hearing as you scream at me, your nightmare made real. Just as well. Your so-called sentience has not stopped you from polluting our oceans with your foul effluents, depleting our fish reserves to alarmingly low levels, and littering our sea floors with your wrecks.

You hate us for being who we are, but not yourselves for being who you are not.

© Tom Navarro WordPress.com

On The Grass

{ January 24, 2007 @ 3:21 pm } · { Existentialist Poetry, Poem Analysis, Religious Poetry }
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This is a poem I analyzed for a student of mine.

Dear God
I read your
Advertisement in the churches
And I should like to have
A catalogue of the virtues that
I might possibly wish to own
And which will finally entitle me
To live with you
In heaven
It is understood that
This will not oblige me in any way
Yours very
Sincerely
The sinner.

I am now living at
The hotel d’evil

Let the catalogue be addressed
Care of the village priest

On Sunday
Two men stood over the body of a dead man
On the grass
He was sick
Said the doctor
He is holding the cross
Said the priest.

By Guillermo E. Castillo

Type: Prose Poetry – Prose poetry is usually considered a form of poetry written in prose that breaks some of the normal rules associated with prose discourse, for heightened imagery or emotional effect, among other purposes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_poetry
Imagery: it has religious, spiritual imagery in that the Bible or the teachings of the Christian church are expressed as ‘the catalogue of virtues’, the life of sin and decadence as ‘hotel d’evil’.
The poem used the figure of speech known as apostrophe by addressing God.
Apostrophe (Greek αποστροφη, turning away; the final e being sounded) is an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and directs speech to an imaginary person or abstract quality or idea. In dramatic works and poetry, it is often introduced by the word “O” (not to be confused with the exclamation “oh”).
It is related to personification, although in apostrophe, objects or abstractions are implied to have certain human qualities (such as understanding) by the very fact that the speaker is addressing them as he would a person in his presence.
Apostrophe is often used to convey extreme emotion, as in Claudius’ impassioned speech in Hamlet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_speech_apostrophe
However, the apostrophe used does not convey any emotion at all except of a somewhat cool attitude and a seeming lack of reverence toward God.
Irony: The sinner expressed ‘sincerity’ (Sincerely), however, from a proactive stance at spiritual virtues, the wishes of the sinner does not strike the reader as sincere at all but rather as a person who seeks the easy way out for spiritual obligations, more so when he stipulated that ‘ This will not oblige me in any way’. One need not talk to God to ask for goodness, being good to one’s neighbor is good enough!
Tone: Tone (literary), the mood or feeling of a literary work. The author’s tone may imply the consumerist, materialist attitude of a person influencing one’s spiritual beliefs, which in this poem, shows how one treats spiritual salvation as a commodity that could be bought or bargained with. The title, which is also where the ‘sinner’ was found dead, may allude to the result of such attitudes, that being lukewarm to spiritual matters would make one morally decayed or dead, as most decaying and dying things are found under or ‘in the grass’. Even if the author did not say whether the ‘sinner’ obtained what that person asked for, such a sorry end may not actually point vividly to salvation. It is left to the reader to contemplate, and probably, reflect on one’s own state of spiritual affairs.
Thus, the poem recasts religious thinking for today’s consumer cultured society. The poem may also serve as a symbolism as the half-hearted effort of some to be overtly religious but are actually spiritually empty. This may well be directed to the affluent who are forgetting gratefulness towards God, as the sinner stayed in the ‘hotel’.
The theme of poem may express the call for reassessing one’s spirituality, belief in God, and one’s moral integrity in a world wherein everything has a price, even justice.
Existentialist leanings: the ending of the poem in the death of its character homes on the importance of being reminded of one’s mortality in order to put meaning in one’s present actions and thinking in reference to the impending end everyone would soon come to.
Heidegger argues that Dasein, thrown into the world, is therefore thrown into its possibilities, including the possibility and inevitability of one’s own mortality. The need for Dasein to assume these possibilities, that is, the need to be responsible for one’s own existence, is the basis of Heidegger’s notions of authenticity and resoluteness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger#Being_and_Time
Reflection
Sometimes, because of one’s preoccupation with worldly goods and pleasures, one has the tendency to view religious matters with a lack of seriousness and respect. As was said in the Good Book, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 3:16-4:4). The word here may also mean the law, the unspoken codes of conduct, morality, ethics, and the general notions or norms of right and wrong.
Thus it is important to decide very well on where one should stand on spiritual matters and on matters on morality because in human relations, living an exemplary life of being good to one’s family, neighbors, and serving the community should be the primary motivation for an individual, financial and material gains only secondary.

Your Head is a Starblazer

{ January 21, 2007 @ 12:32 pm } · { Poetry, Sci-Fi Poetry }
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Zipping
Zapping
Through the dust nebulas blown by solar wind
Gas clouds of exhaust of combusting stars
Dodging
Converging
With starfinders
Magi.

Fire at unknowns
With laser
Words.

Repair and retrofit and rejuvenate
By mechanical arms and probes
Refuel
At the nearest galactic diner
Or the home planet table.

Process astrophysics data
Through the
Onboard computer
Extrapolating coordinates
Which systems to find contact
Which Black holes to avoid.

Millions of neon constellations
Blaze on the view screen
Time to go into
Stasis
The next sunrise is a
Billion light microseconds away.

Next stop
Visit friends
At interstate galaxy
At the click of a button.

Into Her Hands

{ January 20, 2007 @ 5:37 am } · { Micro story }
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sad girl

“So you’re leaving.”

Her eyes swelled from sobbing too much. Too much for the likes of me. Her double chin swung like a pendulum and quivered like mercury of the smashed thermometer she stuck under my tongue when before I had a fever. I was quite feverish that moment.

“I’m sick of you, Louise. I’m sick of your weight loss regimens and your teary evenings with Oprah.” That slow, slow contemptuous drawl of Dad’s was placed into sharp contrast with the jaggedly, wrist wringing, hurried, gaspful, gloating, and breathful mutterings I’ve heard from him lately, much too often. Much too often for the likes of me.

He spared Mom another disdainful glance and picked up his luggage.

“I found myself a rich young thing, Louise. Eager to please this gigolo. Strawberry blond at that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a plane to catch. Oh by the way, has any one of you found my gun? I’ve looked everywhere for…oh why bother.” He turned his narrowing eyes at me.

“I’m gonna miss you so much sweetie. Take good care of Mommy.” My fists clenched inside my jacket pockets, the knuckles probably turned white from grasping something hard.

He went out of the door, an exit of a prison. I followed him. Hearing gravel crunching under my excited sneakers, he stopped with a start. I did not bother closing the door behind me.

“What now, you little bitch, can’t get enough of Daddy?” His mouth made a little opening via a closing snicker. Unwise for the likes of me.

I stuffed the barrel just in time for him to say “mmff!” I cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger all within a second and some microseconds. I would always cherish the warm fuzzy feeling as the smooth metal finish of the revolver crashed between the upper and bottom rows of his teeth, an uninvited penetration, much like what Dad did to me when I was nine.

He seemed heavier than the red globules as he fell backwards on the path, thudding on it, his head bouncing a little. That’s when the crimson droplets peppered his $200 shirt and dotting his face.

Louise ran out, let out a Munchian scream, and proclaimed her undying love for Dad.

It’s been a week since they let me out. But I’ve never been freer than that moment. Now this new found freedom is too much for the likes of me.

[99% of sexual abuse survivors know their perpetrators-80% are abused by family members, 19% are abused by other trusted adults. This has to stop.]

Salivation for Intellectuals

{ January 12, 2007 @ 12:17 pm } · { Poetry }
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The more you grasp

The more you lose your grip

The art grinds

To a halt.

 

Fault

The extended dream

Leaving you drawn

The mind dragged

Far

From the starting point.

 

Anoint

Your forehead salved

With saliva

Salvation.

 

In salivation

Rubbed on your eyes

Ephphatha rise

From

Your human guise

A convert

Comes back

Among the

Living.

Depreciation

{ January 9, 2007 @ 5:08 am } · { Poetry }
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Anything is better than

Nothing

Ridicule

Me

And My

something

turns to

nothing

To

Them

Rats

To your

Pied Piper

Will

You

Drown them

Too

?

Lord of The Rings Trilogy Film Literary Critique

{ January 5, 2007 @ 10:39 am } · { Film Critique }
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images.jpgI know it’s a little late for this review but I wrote it anyway, eager to explore the many layers of meaning and perspectives that can be inferred and generated from this SFX bonanza from Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema.  I should’ve seen the animated early version in the eighties, but Mama closed the TV for rosary. Maybe the Father Peyton Crusade “The Family that prays together, stays together” saved me from becoming a Uruk-Hai (Anthropoid Orc).  I was gratefully to have finally seen this dazzling JRR Tolkien brainchild as a grown up. So here are my “reviews” of LOTR through the eyes of long dead social theorists and radical schools of thought. To my fellow bloggers and visitors, you may skip ahead to the critique section that appeals to you: (1) Marxist, (2) Deconstruction and Nativist, (3) Feminist, and (4) Symbolism.

1. Marxist

This film is condemnable for its affirmation of an oppressive social hierarchy: Monarchism, first of Theoden, then of Aragorn. This can serve as capitalist-elitist ideological apparatus (see Althusser). Even the life forms in the movie, the long lived and superior elves (Legolas, Elron), the squabbling humans, the uncouth dwarf, and the diminutive hobbitts could perpetuate the notion of class superiority and inferiority.  This may well encourage the privileged to view the lower class as “subhuman” or developing countries as pesky hobbitt nations.

2. Deconstruction and Nativism

As the blockbuster fantasy movie of the millenium, it’s naive to assume that the franchise had a moral to impart to cineastes in addition to the profit potential of cornering a ripe audience. However, a story with a coherent structure must necessarily have a moral, a theme.

The obvious lesson taught is the horror of war spawned by absolute power wielded by an autocrat.  However, the folkloric culture sampled in the story belongs to the nationalities (Western) that are already democratized. Now, being internationally distributed, it is to be expected this theme could be applied everywhere, to “enlighten” autocrats of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The lesson may as well be told to extraterrestrial bugs of Starship Troopers. The cultural context of the film would be the impediment for the theme to be imbibed by those of different culture. Thus, the intent of the author or the film maker’s, whether implicit or consciously made, is sous erature, “erased”, that the movie has no such merit in its supposed theme.  The theme is also in differance, that its theme’s universal effectivity is pending until probably all people adopt completely western paradigm in folklore and the like.

3. Feminist

Eowenn battling the warlock king and Arwenn’s thrilling equestrianism are but a few instances that “women are as good as men in waging war”.  Despite Aragorn rejecting fellow human Eowenn for the pointy eared Arwenn Elfess, this concession of Eowenn’s fighting as a man may placate gender equality advocates for so long.

4. My Personal Unbiased Critique – Film as Symbolism

I’ve read a book review that said LOTR the novel is an allusion to how war brings out the inhuman in man, but that is paltry to the fact of how power strips a person of even sanity (“…there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” – Bush and Rumsfeld). Both Hitler and Mussolini, Tolkien’s “Saurons”, both became insane.  The movie speaks ultimately so much of how the obsession for an object, symbolized by the ring, acts as both the strength and weakness of the obsessed (Gollum and Frodo). They are initially spurred to employ all means to attain such, then is thwarted by one’s own criminal predictability as if the loss of caring for fellow humans causes one to be less careful.

Humans, dwarves, elves, and hobbitts uniting might be the unspoken wish of Tolkien for humanity.  Showing Gollum as the unlikely downfall of Sauron and the Ring expresses the fractious minions of evil are the bane of each other as they competer for power.

Add the spirits of the dead Gondorians for the lifting of the siege of Menisterith and you have spiritual intervention in human warfare (Foo fighters in WWII Air Battles, In Hoc Signum Vinces of Emperor Constantine, Legalizer of Christianity in the Roman Empire…).

All in all I give the film 5 stars for visual, plot, overall appeal, another 5 stars for literary and philosophical merit.

Forgive Me, Feminist Father For I have Finned

{ January 3, 2007 @ 12:34 pm } · { Poetry }
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This question
Rapes my
Consciousness
Grabs the
Ass of my
Analysis
Mashes the
Breasts of my
Concern
And
Calls my
Sympathy
A
Whore
I
Ask
Why
Liberated
Women
Expect
Men to be More than
What
They
Are Born
With?
And Why
Men
See
Women
As
Objects
of their
Love
Am I a
Dolphin and
Blundering
Into an Ism of
Sharks
For Asking?
Do I
Get
Protection
By
Being
Neuter?