cat and dog

Friday Letters: but this time lines of poetry

We have always read in books especially those dealing with the female gender that women in the past didn’t have the same privileges and rights that we enjoy now and sometimes take for granted. We have read a lot of stories, most of them horror stories to the modern readers’ eyes, those sufferings of women in terms of being treated as objects to serve their family with the view of acquiring more power in the name of ‘marriage’ it happened not just in royal families but also in those families with noble bloods or those in trading field. We know of women who were never given a proper identification in history, those not treated as citizens, as exemplified in the Greek community – only the men were considered citizens therefore they had the exclusive right to decide for everyone. Those practices in other cultures where the wives will be buried alive along with their dead husbands. There was a time when women weren’t permitted to vote, weren’t allowed to enter libraries, weren’t allowed to go to school. Even in English language, we based the word women from the word men, female from the word male. It is like we are always defining ourselves as the other, we are not of males, therefore we must be females, expertly eradicating or devaluing anything unique that comes from being a female. Automatically placing our identity below or underneath the ‘standard,’ which is the male. It is in these very unfair standards, that even now women unconsciously surrender their power/authority to this deep conditioning, that the wonderful essay of Ursula Leguin, Introducing Myself was molded and has taken shape.

One thing in particular that I am most curious about is the inequality that women faced in receiving education. The books I have read about the history of education would more than oftentimes talk about males going to school, teaching in schools or academies, males doing research or writing or copying books, males discovering earth-shaking concepts or writing theories or treatises. The monopoly of males in the early days of education is not something that one overlooks. Let’s look at the early days of education in the Philippines, with the Spaniards bringing with them the Christian religion, they started setting up seminaries and then eventually large catholic schools in many parts of the country. These were our earliest form of schooling in Spanish colonial period, and of course, they were exclusive to males. Most of the Filipino thinkers who came from rich families got their education from these catholic schools/universities, and what about their sisters? The sisters mostly stayed home, learning domestic chores, tending to the daily needs of the family: cooking, washing dishes, washing clothes while their brothers went on to become doctors, philosophers, writers, priests, painters, lawyers, teachers, professors etc. We only started admitting Filipino females in schools in early 1900s, barely a hundred years. Therefore, if we look at it more closely, in our country, we are barely at the third or fourth generation of living the concept of the educated independent woman, free to choose the life she wants to live as she can study freely and earn freely and express herself freely in the 21^st century.

~

However, in such view of the old ways which is a kind of a grim picture for women all over the world that I want to tell a story about this particular woman. In the darkness of the past, women who were denied education or even denied basic rights to lead independent lives in the early centuries struggled hard to survive and flourish, some of them refusing the role forced upon them to play. It is in this grim background that I marvel at some courageous souls who dared to find a way to go against the prevailing norms and tried to live in the light, refusing to be confined in the constricting binds of the moral codes unjustly bestowed upon them. One of the names that floated was that of Veronica Franco (1546-1591), an Italian cortigiana onesta, an honored courtesan and a poet. She was raised by her mother who was also a courtesan, her intellectual life was nourished from sharing with her brothers’ education by private tutors. She was soon married to Paolo Panizza, an arranged union, which of course was the norm during that time because the radical concept of marrying for love only started around late 18^th to early 19^th century. She asked to be separated from him soon after, and she went on to become a famous poet and of course a courtesan to the elite.

As a poet, her words were filled with passion, bordering on erotic. Most of the subjects of her poems were based on her engagements with her clients and also there were some recordings of her everyday life, deemed to be a rich resource of the life of those in the same profession in that period of time. Let’s try to read some of the lines:

I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one. I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a wife's obedience. I confess I find more ecstasy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover's lips. His hands upon me, his arms enfolding me... Such surrender has been mine. I confess I pray still to be filled and enflamed.

                                                                -       From the movie A Destiny of her Own

Despite the religious undertones (using words like confess, prayer, surrender), we can easily read her all-consuming passion about being one with her lover. And she was just expressing what she truly feels. As indicated, the lines were taken from the movie, A Destiny of her Own a biographical film about Veronica Franco, which was released in 1992. A movie hailed by critics as a tale told from a woman’s point of view. However, many readers/watchers would have found it too erotic for a woman to feel, to express or to experience.

I wonder, would we even feel somewhat repulsed if these words came from a man and not a woman?

Once again, we can see this constricting standard on how women should behave in the society, what role must a woman play to be a respectable one. In this case a woman must be an obedient wife, which Veronica deliberately refused. But is it just because she wants another role to play, she is already wrong? Should a woman always try to fit the mold shaped for her without questioning why there is a mold in the first place? Should a woman live her life according to the expectations of others?

Another angle that I want us to look at is the age-old woman trope of the virgin and the temptress. The ideal woman is always the virgin and the fallen one is always the temptress. In this ultra-modern hyper-fast technological world, did we ever walk away from this dichotomy of what a woman must be? Is a thinking woman who wants to follow another path and in the process refusing to fit into the mold that was shaped for her will always be considered a temptress? And is the virgin will always be the obedient one, not thinking for herself, but she who will gladly go into the tight mold without any will to question why is it even there?

I believe women are far more complicated than any trope. It is not just black and white, there are huge spaces in between for gray areas.

sources:
https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/IWW/BIOS/A0017.html
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/17/ursula-k-le-guin-gender/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_Beauty
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/10-tropes-about-women-women-should-stop-laughing-about/325782/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/42634820?seq=1

Let's keep the peace

Something Wonderful / From the Broadway Musical The King and I

He will not always say What you would have him say, But now and then he'll do Something Wonderful.
~ He has a thousand dreams That won't come true, You know that he believes in them And that's enough for you. You'll always go along, Defend him where he's wrong And tell him, when he's strong He is Wonderful He'll always Need your love And so he'll get your love. A man who needs your love Can be Wonderful.

interchange #1

Bill Withers - Lovely Day (Audio)

Lovely Day / Originally performed by Bill Withers

When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way

Then I look at you

And the world's alright with me

❤️

Moods #1: typing on the keyboard, until after midnight

Monday once again!

Dear Readers,

Happy long weekend! Don't you feel the quietness of the morning? No rushing traffic, no mad-sprint going to the office, no student crossing the street going to school, yes, it is because it is a holiday today. Although, yes you might be thinking I am a little loony to think that even now I still look forward to what they deem as long weekend, when in fact we have been under quarantine for more than two months now, well please indulge me in this one. I know full well that we have all been staying home for more than what we wanted, and we haven't seen friends in person for such a loooong time, it is really such a sad situation. I never really thought that going out with friends constitute such a big part of my happiness. Virtual hugs to all my friends, I miss you all. 

Well, going back to being ecstatic for having a long weekend, it is a kind of a habit to consider it as one of the most sought after weekends of our year ~ we usually consider the long weekends when booking a flight, right? I usually associate long weekends to doing more things that are not part of our daily grind, like flying to visit a province, or reading books to our hearts content or cooking something grand or just staying in bed doing nothing and daydreaming, or spending more time with friends outdoors, in short it is a kind of break from the usual hectic schedule of our everyday lives.

Anyway, I honor this long weekend with these pages of one of my favorite books ~ it is a compilation of stories designed to make us believe in the beauty and goodness of humanity ~ the book is called Master Tells Stories volume 2. It is written by a Buddhist nun. And of course the stories are of Buddhist sensibilities, which are actually universal. So whatever your creed is, whatever faith we have, I think we can all learn and get inspired from this wonderful story. This makes it universal. We might come from different perspectives but I believe we still share the same vision of humanity, same definition of love and same aspiration for a beautiful future of the world.

I read this story whenever I feel too overwhelmed by my failures. It makes me believe that whenever we lose our way, stories have the power to drive us back to our real direction. And this is one of them.

There you have it, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did.

See you again dear readers.

Love,

Joyce

Friday Letters: An intense unclassifiable relationship

As part of my ongoing Friday Love Letters of great minds, I would like to introduce the complex love story of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller. Both intellectuals sensed that magnetic pull they exert on each other even at the very beginning of their interaction. Being proponents of the sweeping movement of Trancendentalism in the US, Waldo (1803) was seven years senior of Margaret (1810), but in each other they found a kindred spirit when it came to looking at the world, its intricacies and complexities. The major theme of their love story resided in their difference in definition of intimacy. Both sensed that within each other, their souls could communicate, that their minds could reach highs and depths together where never before could they imagine that it was really possible. An astounding revelation to both of them, and knowing full well that they could never find the same intensity in another person, that kind of mystery could only happen to the both of them.

Eventually, this kind of intimate connection must be put in speech, therefore both had started to venture discussing who they were in each other’s lives. A bit of a background, Waldo at that time was married, although he was announcing to the world that his marriage was dragging him to emotional and intellectual death, labeling it as Mezentian marriage. He could never hold a conversation with his wife the way he conversed with Margaret. He could never find the spark of mental stimulation and perhaps romantic awakening in his domestic relations with his wife, which consequently fueled the fire of intense relationship with his intellectual soulmate, Margaret.

“He and Margaret found themselves on one side of an invisible wall, the rest of the world on the other. But neither knew what to make of this uncommon bond that didn’t conform to any existing template. The richest relationships are often those that don’t fit neatly into the preconceived slots we have made for the archetypes we imagine would populate our lives — the friend, the lover, the parent, the sibling, the mentor, the muse. We meet people who belong to no single slot, who figure into multiple categories at different times and in different magnitudes. We then must either stretch ourselves to create new slots shaped after these singular relationships, enduring the growing pains of self-expansion, or petrify,” Maria Popova, Brainpickings

For Margaret, being a free-thinking, open-minded creature, she also had a parade of lovers while having her friendship with Waldo. Being fluid in her gender, she shared intimacies with both men and women, however she mentioned in many impassioned letters sent to Waldo that she felt, “so at home” with him alone. As mentioned earlier, the labeling of their unclassified relationship balled into a larger issue between them: she wanted to define the relationship, he didn’t want to. Mainly, he was afraid of jumping from a dead-weight marriage to another one if they indeed wanted to formalize their coupledom, he thought that it would be too much to be caged the second time. Although in his most demonstrative letter, Waldo told Margaret, “O divine mermaid or fisher of men, to whom all gods have given the witch-hazel-wand… I am yours & yours shall be.”

It is interesting to note how Maria Popova, an essayist, highlighted the definition of intimacy:

This false notion of the body as the testing ground for intimacy has long warped our understanding of what constitutes a romantic relationship. The measure of intimacy is not the quotient of friction between skin and skin, but something else entirely — something of the love and trust, the joy and ease that flow between two people as they inhabit that private world walled off from everything and everyone else.

If we will use this definition intimacy as our measuring scale to label the relationship between Waldo and Margaret, then we can say that they were definitely and unquestionably a couple already. Judging from their letters alone we know that both of them deeply knew the undeniable intimate relationship that they had. But refusing to be boxed in classification, the couple quietly agreed that they need not go through the rituals of marriage or living together. They just allowed the relationship to naturally grow and take flight.

Let us once again look at one of the letters Waldo sent to Margaret and marvel at his romantic words:

Let us live as we have always done, only ever better, I hope, & richer. Speak to me of every thing but myself & I will endeavor to make an intelligible reply. Allow me to serve you & you will do me a kindness; come & see me… let me visit you and I shall be cheered as ever by the spectacle of so much genius & character as you have always the gift to draw around you.

~

Something to ponder on:

If you were Margaret, would you let this relationship go on without both parties defining it? Don’t we need grounding, and definitely to achieve grounding, we must define something, only then can we achieve a clear look of its limits, its scope and its parameters?

Source
https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/06/05/ralph-waldo-emerson-margaret-fuller-letters-figuring/

Of afternoons and tea

I have always wanted to have my own little backyard farm where I can plant and harvest some veggies and some fruits. This video provides a vision of a lifestyle that I want to achieve eventually. 

Things to take note of:

Those jars, they are sorted well

Process of preservation

Drying, cutting, peeling fruits 

Simple country living

Vegetarian Junction #1: Garbanzos Patty

You can also find other posts here 

https://ruminationjunction.wordpress.com/

Oh, and about 33 things/phrases

As a way to close the past year, let me try to write a list of some of the memorable, exciting, unexpected, weird, fateful, incomprehensible, magical, illogical, happy, terrifying and wonderful things that happened in my small yet excitement filled life.

01 ~  reluctant packing up

02 ~  moving out 

03 ~  endless ride shares

04 ~  lalamove and moving in

05 ~  two blue suitcases

06 ~  honorary dismissal

07 ~  evening classes

08 ~  reflective portfolio on Education

09 ~  practice teaching

10 ~  fliptop battle

11 ~  Lapu-Lapu, Panday Pira, Urduja, St. Cecilia, St. Therese, St. Joseph and St. Monica

12 ~  grand demo

13 ~  the BIG day after grand demo

14 ~  visiting and staying in UMC with dad and mom

15 ~  Bambang and stethoscope 

16 ~  Soler St, Binondo

17 ~  GSIS Manila Building

18 ~  Yoga in Silang

19 ~  Bukid Kabataan

20 ~  two bookmarks and coffee GCs

21 ~  Christmas and New Year cards from China, Japan and Manila

22 ~  Breakfast at Antonio's

23 ~  explosion of Taal volcano

24 ~  Senior Citizen booklets

25 ~  fixing government documents

26 ~  BIR RDO

27 ~  Trasierra

28 ~  huge stationery hauls from Shopee and Lazada :)

29 ~  Gourmet Farm, yum

30 ~  online classes with my students

31 ~  pandemic and ECQ and lockdown

32 ~  blogging again 

33 ~  learning to cook more vegetarian dishes

As always, I am grateful for the year that was. It was filled with endings, beginnings, uncertainties and fateful encounters. Magical and absolutely unfamiliar. Definitely some of what happened last year will continue to spill into this year, but I still have to filter and define most of them. What I am really sure of now is that I am growing to be more accepting of myself. I am more connected to my core. Maybe adulting is not that bad after all but it takes a lot of effort and willingness to go through this journey.

To close this, let me bid 33 goodbye and hello 34.

Paradox, ECQ pain and you

Believer by Imagine Dragons

I was chockin' in the crowd
Building my rain up in the cloud
Falling like ashes to the ground
Hoping my feelings, they would drown
But they never did, ever lived, ebbin' and flowin'
Inhibited, limited 'til it broke open and rained down
It rained down like 

Pain
~

It took me so long to realize that I have been benefiting immensely from the protection the ECQ is giving me, though I couldn't also discount the fact that it has indeed brought misery to my life by starting a cycle of unending chaos of adjustment, of which I don't know yet how to cope.

From my statement above we can see the words benefit and misery, two adjectives I use to describe ECQ all at the same breath. Very paradoxical. But true nonetheless.

Paradox. I love this word. It is defined as a statement or situation that may be true but seems impossible or difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics by Cambridge English dictionary. Theoretically and poetically, paradox is beautiful. It has that mystery. It has innate richness and it is intangible, full of metaphorical visualizations. Sensational. But trying to live it in real life is dangerous as it can have adverse effects in the psyche and psychological stability. 

Sometimes I fantasize myself 
as someone 
who is built to handle a lot of complexities 
in psychological level 
and still live in the real plane 
as if nothing's bothering me. 
There are times I proved yes I can live it well, 
but eventually I have my limits too. 
My principles can only be stretched so far. 
I might not be able to handle 
you. 
I might not 
be able to handle 
this. 

I am afraid of so many things 
lately. 
I am worried of 
so many things lately. 
And I can't even find a way to open up 
because 
I don't know where to start 
and 
I don't know where to do it. 

Why is life never simple? 
Why does it become complicated again and again and again? 
Will it be extended, will it be lowered to GCQ?

Eventually, I believe I will know the answers but it will breed another set of questions. 

Innocent Confidence

There’s something captivating when non-native English speakers sing in English, it is so raw and innocent and it establishes a rhythm on its own. I marvel at this thought while listening to Yuka Honda & Miho Hatori collectively known as Cibo Matto, singing the song Moonchild. I am so amazed at their accent, it lends a different kind of layer in the language that enhances the melody of the song, it doesn’t sound flat. 

To continue reading, please visit this link below:

Innocent Confidence in Rumination Junction

General Cleaning

Today, I had this very intense desire to clean my room. So intense that upon waking up, I put out all of the beddings in the laundry area to soap and wash. Then, I prepared all the cleaning materials that I needed to clean each nook and cranny in my tiny room. I prepared cleaning towels, my very own cleaning spray: 10% distilled vinegar, lemon essence from lemon peels and slices with 80% water in my spray cleaner, rolling dirt remover and room cologne spray (I usually spray room cologne to make it smell fresher after cleaning.)

Of course, I regularly clean my room however it is just that today, I really feel the intense need to clean each wall, each corner, each little dent in my room. With careful planning, I started to rub each wall after spraying them with my own home-made cleaning spray. The layer of dust is not that bad, though I can see some webs stretching from the corner so I cleaned them off. As for the floor, each square of the rough tile must be rolled on first with the dirt remover then I rubbed it with wet towel. I spent the whole morning doing this, and after some time I could see the improvement that I am making step by step.

When there are far corners that I couldn’t reach, I normally use the cleaning stick of my mom. I put the towel on the other edge and then I wipe the ceiling and the corners of it, there is really some inexplicable satisfaction when the target clump of dirt come off neatly from the surface after careful nudging. Of course, after the area is cleaned, I spray another generous amount of my home-made cleaner to make sure that it is disinfected and that it will stay dirt-free for long.

There are many stocks of paper, books, file cardboard boxes and storage containers in my room that I neatly arrange in the small space I am provided, I usually wipe them all clean too when doing general cleaning. Most of the things have labels with dates or general names so I can easily identify them and group them effectively, yes, I know, some of you will say that I have this weird urge to label things around me. That’s right. Tagging and labeling stuff around me is truly important because it means that I really put a lot importance on that object and that it is part of something greater, maybe a month-long project or a year-long endeavor. But I want to make it clear that not everything can reach that part of labeling and tagging, I filter a lot of things first by deciding whether it is important or not, then if it passed the intense scrutiny, that’s the only time that I will honor the object with the label. I am ruthless when it comes to deciding what is deserving to get a space in my room, what will be included in the system, what will stay in my personal space, if in the end the object gets to be inducted in the system, then it means it has proven its worth. And if otherwise, then it will be put to a recycling box where it will be sorted, which is another system on its own, so I will discuss it next time.

After cleaning my whole room, my favorite part is to spray the room cologne. I usually combine scents, it can be the usual bottle of cologne that we can buy from the stores or it can be an essence from flowers, leaves or oils that I usually purchase from eco-stores or organic shops. It depends on my mood.

Today I am feeling a bit intense so I used the usual store colognes usually the bottle of cologne with colors: blue and green, because they smell nicely pungent for a long time.

I finished cleaning by the time my parents invited me to eat lunch. It took a long time but I am happy with the result. Happy Sunday to all.