what my heart will do today - it will think.

 Will beat 54,738 times, pump 803 gallons of blood, and push that blood nearly 6,849 miles throughout my body!

---> Got this from The Oatmeal, who redirected me to The Fitness Pal.

It's quite amusing that the heart symbolizes love. <3 

Sexual. For one, the human heart isn't even shaped like these, as it resembles more of the cow's. "The seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as a herbal contraceptive, has been suggested as the source of the heart symbol." [Wiki] The heart shape is also considered to depict female features such as the buttocks, mons pubis and the vulva which vaguely gives us the connection of love and sex. As for that matter, it remains a controversy and upon reading, I kind of feel awkward to draw another heart to show my love. 

Rationalizing emotions. As for the color 'red', it only resembles blood - the lifeline and as what we all know, metaphorically describes 'passion'. Aristotle considered the heart as the seat of thought, reason or emotion. In great contradiction with what Galen, the Roman physician, believed. Galen identified the heart as the seat of emotions and the brain as the seat of reason. He was the first one to isolate emotions from reason, pointing out the big difference between the brain and the heart - the logic and the illogical. [Yet in Psychology, the brain has also its doings in emotions - the chemicals, the neurons (I could not explain it further) but as I remember it has.]

 

 

 

I <3 YOU.

Therefore, the heart should not solely be blamed nor thanked for 'love'. "I love you" means there are reasons which my brain have why I do, yet my emotions makes me blind so I could not explain why. "I love you" means your emotions are making you stupid since no one could explain emotions, nor stop it from making you feel. 

Divinity. The Stoics, who by the way were the first ones to consider emotions as a source of errors in judgments or as I may call them 'the first positivists', taught the heart as the seat of the soul. Though they were scientists, they were not atheists, which intrigues me. In our time, it could be said that there is rationality in what they speak of. They didn't have the knowledge of the human anatomy, maybe that's why the Stoics left the explanation to the 'soul', the divine abstractness (because they couldn't explain the phenomena yet). Since then, the heart has been considered a mythical, divine figure up until now where the Catholics still use the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But in our time, we could already explain it! As I picked up from my fifth grade science class, the heart pumps our blood, the blood is the lifeline. It's the central organ of the body with the function of keeping us alive. It's our switch. With the decease of the heart, so does our life ends. When that happens it should not be colored red, it should be purple!

to feel two emotions at the same time

When I reconstructed this blog, I thought that what I would put will only be ideas and thoughts yet I forgot that humanity has another part of being human  - the emotions.

Is it even possible to feel two different emotions at the same time? To be happy and to be sad. I feel happy that I am enjoying the present yet i am sad whenever I look back at the past and somehow think that it would come back, that present never came. It would be all right again and that I would feel the same happiness I feel today that I felt in the past but still the past but then it's the present. The circumstances that lead for the past that happen is so sweet and sudden, same as what I feel now but the complication is that I don't know if it would even be permitted to have a future.  Complicated? Yes, it is and it keeps bothering me every minute of my day.

My friends say that the past is my least problem and been advised to move on by a couple of friends who had always been with me on the downside of my life. They know me even better than I know myself. It is the uncertainty, the distance and the sudden change. It's the cloud of black emptiness that surrounds my room when I'm alone. In the company of friends, it is hidden yet it suddenly bursts out when rubbed lightly, as I've seen it.

Confusion. Complicated. Confusion. Complicated. Yet Happy Yet Sad Yet Happy.

It has always been hurt. It never had happy endings, never was meant to be? Or maybe never was given effort to be meant to be? This is not a curse as I wouldn't believe it is but it's a sad phenomena that it always doesn't work out. I've always seen it in the early stages - the budding of attraction, the emotional explosion at the memory as well as the time together and the always interesting getting-to-know. It changes in a matter of 2-3 months, maybe because I also changed. At the early stage, I would be the scrutinizing critical hard-headed 'yin' but as time pass, I become softer.. almost equal to a fool and a martyr. Pessimism has never been a factor since whom he is in the now is what I visualize in the future.

It's the dream, the pang of guilt with sweet memories and the nostalgia every parting time. It's your gentleness, your wit, your perfectness. It's the physical, emotional and psychologcal satisfaction at the moment, I didn't want to end. I never want for the next day to come. It feels so right even when we think it's wrong. I'm at a loss of words and rationalizations when I'm with you. All I want to do is make you happy but then I know I make you feel sad. Is it even possible for us to be this way?

that confusion is the best path to clarity.

We can never have this side if we never have the other. There is no east when there is no west, no love when there's no hate and so there is no clarity with no confusion. It's the natural way of the attraction of opposites, a contradiction's need for the other in order to continually exist. The antithesis, we always need it.

I'm confused with love, with work and religion and I feel down-trodden that I have to seek answers to these 3 questions in my mind all in the same time. I think these three are all essentials in what we call 'life' or maybe in what I call 'my life' because it's those three that worked in the larger sphere of my consciousness that's why I continued to live. But then, a brick of un-lateral continuity (borrowed from Geology) hit the three and in a sense, my senses are failing.

Love.. is bullshit (as Urbandub sings) when you keep being rubbed by it. (The romantic love I mean) But then, I could always be at fault for my decisions yet I never want to regret. Maybe pride enters into the subject or maybe there is really what Jesse says my 'rationalizations'. "To be label one as feeler or a thinker is out of the question for we are all thinkers and feelers our selves", he said. Lagot siya kay Jung. xd Love makes me sad but then it also makes me happy. "Love is made of smiles and tears", as a key-chain from a friend once said. A thousand miles away, you are. I should be doing poetry right now. And in all these clarity, I'm still confused so I am letting it all go. To keep the bitterness is not my nature for I've always been into sweets.

Work. The pressures are coming - my family and my friends. The responsibility of being the first-born is dragging me into the perspective that 'I should be able to make more money, support the family' though I've always been contented with my work. I was happy. Before, money didn't matter for as long as I find dignity, pleasure and contentment with my work. It was a dream come true - to finally be with people doing every pinch of detail in order to make this world a better place. Yet, I have to make the decision and I already did and some were already set into motion - the only task that's left is letting go. I would, I would.

Religion. I lost my faith in religion (another Urbandub song, xd). As I dove deeper in reality and concreteness of poverty, the more I see how somehow the church has its' hands on preserving it. Into making one believe about the divinity, that there is one savior in all our sufferings, i see the blindness of the faith of the poor people and of the hopeful yet equally hopeless condition of them. "Religion is the opium of the masses", it's true. I even once cried in feeling the emptiness when I tried to rip all the faith off. I walked as an atheist for a few weeks, even debated and questioned my seminarian friends. But one stood still and listened to my confusion and Harold made me remember that I am living in a different kind of faith and of religion - Liberation Theology, the Redemptorists. As long as it's with the Redemptorists, I'm okay. There are always these questions yet these questions could be channeled in Philosophy and Theology so as to bring it back into Science. Anyway, it was philosophy that started the inquiry. :) 

So, not all of these are clear. I think it made even more confusion when I started to reflect as I was writing this blog. But I'm in the right path. Or so I think. Good morning bones! (another Urbandub song) :)

after 23 years, the life of our farmers hasn't changed.

January 22, 1987 - It's called the Black Thursday and what most people know as the "Mendiola Massacre". In this day, 13 peasants were killed, 39 had gunshot wounds and 12 sustained minor injuries.





It was just weeks right after President Marcos stepped-down from presidency and Corazon Aquino was hailed as the Philippines' new president. A product of a revolution? Not so. 

Even after Cory's death and Noynoy's attempt for presidency, farmers could not still forget the haunt and hollow which embraced them because of the Aquino's. For one, is the Mendiola Massacre. Second, the Hacienda Luicita Massacre and three, San Miguel Beer workers' continuous suffering, and four, the peasants until today still tilling their vast lands while Kris Aquino sits comfortably in "The Buzz" mourning about her beloved James Yap going after another girl. They are a perfect example of a feudal lord turned capitalist turned bureaucrats. The rich people - they always have been.

What did the peasants asked from the government that day?
It was agrarian reform - genuine agrarian reform. It was a year after that the CARP, which stands for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, was passed. Yes, we do have CARP but what difference does it make? Even in its extension, the loopholes of the said law are still working its way to preserve the wealth of the wealthy. In the Philippine government with which most of the personas are land lords, who would be interested enough to support genuine agrarian reform?

The need for Agrarian Reform.
Agrarian reform is the first step for development as proved by a first world nation such as Japan. After the war, Japan redistributed the lands to the peasants while the former land lords were asked to give in but will be supported with their industries. In the Philippines, there are lands which are left uncultivated, which remains as one's property waiting to be sold to another multi-national company. In the Philippines, 3/4 of our population are farmers as well as 3/4 of our lands remain agricultural. If these lands could have been given to the peasants with support for the development of agriculture, there could have been more yield, and technological advancements could have come from the peasants themselves who knows 'the soil they are tilling'. The land lords in their majestic seats would not take the time for thinking about these advancements as they would be contented with the fact that they receive 30% of the farmers' harvest, the land lease and the thought that the peasants have more than years to work for them as payment of their debts.

After agricultural development through agrarian reform could industrialization only come after. This is yet another reality in our country - that we do not even have a factory to produce a needle. The benign joke is that 'our only industry is the showbiz industry'. When can industry proliferate if the yields are not high, if there is no raw materials to use? At this time, we do have the raw materials... but the owner isn't the Filipinos and even if the Filipinos were the ones who planted it, they are not the ones who eat. 

After 23 years, the farmers are still the tillers yet not the consumer of what they till. Could we not feel more guilty about it?

Credits: Picture from http://donutsinbed.wordpress.com.

Hidden Stars (Poetry 2)

Hollow emptiness of the black sky embraced dearest Earth
A fear of the black hole replaced the effusive dream-like mirth
Lost glitter of lovely hopeful stellar along besmirched springs
The failure of continued connection of once strong-tied strings

In a song's quartet, amore struggled with the melody to live
Turning the pentagon as its shelter until vanity waiting's eve
Sudden and sweet decisions contrived with mighty Augustus
Argued by loneliness and discontent waged with Mars, the pius

Up on the vast Milky Way existed sure fields of uncertainty
One not knowing the end nor the future of one's galaxy
Though efforts and sacrifices were painstakingly held in the journey
Ode is made to question and inquire in Cupid's cheerful sanctuary

Stars aren't as inviting as they used to glimmer once at night
Seemed they're thrift and saved the beauty of shows, it might
In the white cotton of playful and lingering clouds remained
A hope to see the glitter of loving hopeful stellar after the rain

the hardships of being a worker

This post was overdue and would have been longer overdue if not for the loud music which I call noise from the party at our neighbor's rooftop, which is the landlady's house by the way.. so I didn't want to argue.

I've been in the workforce for a little less than 9 months, a new me should have been conceived. I have succumbed to the reality of rare opportunities, of the difficulty of landing in a high-paying job because I am just a neophyte and of struggling to live in each day of my life just to live the next day. I've been unconsciously dragged to the 'rat race' and I don't want to be part of it anymore. On the other hand, I don't want to be a 'furita' (Japanese term for freeter) or as Wiki defines "people who do not start a career after high school or university but instead usually live as so-called 'parasite singles' with their parents and earn some money with low skilled and low paid jobs."

I learned the difficulty of spending my own hard-earned money. Though I don't have much financial responsibilities such as food for a family and schooling for a son/daughter, I wonder how my hard-earned money could get spent away swiftly. I am left with awe in the thought that I have to still ask support from my father to get myself to the next payday. With a rumbling stomach and a fatigued body, the mind is what's left to live - think.

It's the high price of goods, the temptation to buy a new book, the latest gadget, the new EP from the many favorite bands, the new exotic-loooking clothes A.K.A. the 'consumerism', or as how a famous novel simply put it, 'being a shophaholic' is one of the reason. I know that I have been afflicted by the plague, but still.. it's difficult to resist the sweets than you've had cherished and enjoyed since time immemorial.

It's true that education doesn't assure you of a good future nowadays. In a conversation between my father and brother...

Papa: I tell you, don't enroll in the private schools. The quality of education is low.
Ian: And why is that?
Papa: Get on a public school, like your sister and see how her life is now. Miserable.
 

And yes, what a good father and brother they are but if they can't make me help in financial matters, they become frank and irritating. There was also a story showed in local TV drama that highlighted the plight of an academically excellent student from the University of the Philippines who ended up being a prostitute.

In a society of workers, it's quite just that the political system take into consideration the cycles of people studying-working-retiring. I mean the government should be abreast with what is happening with its people and if their manpower is harnessed for the good of the nation. Otherwise, it will be like here in the Philippines' that a few elite people are rich and that majority are living in less than 2 dollars a day. The other reason is the inequality; the inequality in everything which sprang up from not sharing everything.

my solemn catharsis (Poetry 1)

my solemn catharsis

in the comfort of darkness,
i began to shed tears,
bursting from pressures
i know i long feared.

under my blanket,
i hugged my trembling knees
i mourn for my lost self
inside this fondest years.

i wonder how much laughter it cost,
to hide the melancholic heart.
in this solemn catharsis,
i began to tear apart.

as the day turned to night,
my psyche starts to reap.
wrapped in bittersweet happiness,
clots of anxiety and fear, i keep.

courageously, i turned the light on,
and saw an unhappy girl,
a familiar reflection in the mirror
tonight, i didn’t know so well.

i don’t know if i’ll be happy,
when the world’s revolution speed up.
i’m not quite sure if by the end,
my world would still cheer up.

and then i think of you
with my idle pen and ink
with again a little light in this darkness
i try to fall asleep.

in the comfort of darkness,
i tried to enlightened my self,
mr burden and my worries,
by morning, i will forget.

*repost from my Friendster blog