№ 156. Manila Walks: Manila Central Post Office

I had lived in Manila for close to three decades. And I had never explored this heritage building, until I moved to another city.

Sometimes, despite the almost conceded urban decay, I can still see the vignettes of the capital's charm. True, there aren't many. It takes a lot of faith and purpose to find them. But these enclaves in the middle of chaos do exist.

One such enclave sits in Lawton Plaza.

It is near the equally-historic Manila City Hall. By the banks of Pasig River just across Escolta and Binondo, it is an aging relic of Manila's post-colonial past. Just about a ten-minute walk from either Jones Bridge or Sta. Cruz Bridge, the Manila Central Post Office in its neo-classical architecture, fortunately, still looks elegant despite the fiscal neglect over the years.

The building, viewed from outside, looks sturdy and well-kept. But the interiors really need some face lift.

I hope for the day when we have enough resources to fix the place and restore it to its post-colonial, pre-martial law glory. These resources would entail funds, cultural capital, bureaucratic will and time.

Soon, I hope.

№ 155. Mindfulness & Quiet

"In A History of Reading (public library), Steven Roger Fischertraces how we went from the dawn of symbols to electronic text, and in the process deconstructs what it actually means to read.

He offers a poetic frame in the introduction:


'What music is to the spirit, reading is to the mind. Reading challenges, empowers, bewitches, enriches. We perceive little black marks on white paper or a PC screen and they move us to tears, open up our lives to new insights and understandings, inspire us, organize our existences and connect us with all creation.

Surely there can be no greater wonder.'" Brain Pickings

№ 154. The Question Mark

What is the shape of a curious mind?

Does it follow the curves of riddles as they flow out of our thoughts? As we seek out the strings of answers, do we not enter labyrinths with minotaurs ready to engage us in mortal combats? True, ignorance dies a thousand deaths and we gain iotas of neural networks. We also arrive at gardens rife with serpents and seeds of doubts. Seeds that grow into blasphemy, unorthodoxy and many meta-institutional offsprings.

The apple from the tree which was forbidden may just really be a fig of infinite curiosity that doesn't end with a wealth of answers. Answers are just a foretaste of the wellsprings of creation that lay inexhaustible underneath. As the multiverses expand, the supply of energy and matter and the inter-relationships that enrich the whole soup deepen in plenitude.

Mortality which was the price of disobedience is really the death of innocent, blind obedience. To disobey means to take a bite, despite the fiat, and move on for other quests and grow in the process. To disobey is to wander off and wonder where the lay of the land is demarcated between the knowns and unknowns. Reason and faith are really aspects of single reality. To be religious is to be curious and to ask questions. To disobey means to search for meaning, to fall from grace---that flat landscape of medieval earth, and to realize unending horizons of a sphere. Augustine, that bishop who struggled with inner demons, celebrated our happy fault which gained for us redemption.

This article from Brain Pickings is a gem as we are on the cusp of the lunar new year. To know is to experience the burning bush and spark an epiphany:

"This wonder at existence is the condition for an authentic encounter with things and opens up the possibility of knowledge. . . . This is a wonder that does not stop at an aesthetic sentiment, is not reduced to a momentary curiosity, but is the beginning of a process, kindling the desire to enter into relationship with the world, to get to know it."

№ 153. Negative Echoes

Modern world is a noisy, polluted space. It is still inhabitable but we are approaching a threshold that is close to barely. I came across this BBC article, during the quiet sweet spot of 2 AM, which writes about the search for the noiseless places on earth.

There are none that exist.

Even inside the human-crafted anechoic chamber, we can hear our bodies hum--- breathing, et cetera! There is no escape.

Should this be the next portable invention: iQuiet? A wearable contraption that can cancel out and seal off the ambient and intrusive sounds that civilize our lives --- cellphone beeps, tech white noise, air conditioning hum, elevator music, chatter, ad infinitum. Yes, there are just too many species in these aural zoos we live in.

Or even more radical, how about a device to escape from it all, just long enough to let the insanity simmer down: iDisappear? iThink people from Silicon Valley should pay attention.



Andy Warhol Sleep 1963 from screen_tests on Vimeo.

№ 152. Edge of the Word

Little Sparrows

He quivers,
a pat of butter
on skillet.

She's ice cube.
All it takes is his
Warm patience.

More? He asks.
Yes! Yes. Oh God yes.
Lips bitten.

№ 151. Knowledge & Knife

All This and More
By Mary Karr 

The Devil’s tour of hell did not include
a factory line where molten lead
spilled into mouths held wide,

no electric drill spiraling screws
into hands and feet, nor giant pliers
to lower you into simmering vats.

Instead, a circle of light
opened on your stuffed armchair,
whose chintz orchids did not boil and change,

and the Devil adjusted
your new spiked antennae
almost delicately, with claws curled

and lacquered black, before he spread
his leather wings to leap
into the acid-green sky.

So your head became a tv hull,
a gargoyle mirror. Your doppelganger
sloppy at the mouth

and swollen at the joints
enacted your days in sinuous
slow motion, your lines delivered

with a mocking sneer. Sometimes
the frame froze, reversed, began
again: the red eyes of a friend

you cursed, your girl child cowered
behind the drapes, parents alive again
and puzzled by this new form. That’s why

you clawed your way back to this life.

№ 150. Joy

"Joy cometh in the evening."--- from The People's Pope, Time, 20 December 2013, Howard Chua-Eoan and Elizabeth Dias.

This quote paraphrases Psalm 30:5 of the King Jame Version, "For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

Doodlers Anonymous

№ 149. Eyes Fastened with Pins

Eyes Fastened with Pins
by Charles Simic 

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in.
The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death’s laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death’s supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address is somehow wrong,
Even death can’t figure it out
Among all the locked doors ...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death’s side of the bed.