CHRISTMAS 2011

dear RALPH,

it’s funny  how this year turned out for you!

JANUARY, you were completely on edge;

MIDYEAR, you got lost on your tracks;

AUGUST, you found your calling—and travels!

DECEMBER, you have made lifelong friends.

GOD IN THE DETAILS!

It couldn’t be any more accurate than this little note.

“Hard Times Come Again No More” was penned by Stephen Foster in 1854.

This is how novels about family are usually written: There are the grown-up children who vow never to be like their weird and crazy parents. (Dad sleepwalks naked/Mom claims she’s vegetarian when her rich vegetarian next-door neighbor is around; Mom and Dad are most likely Republicans living in the Midwest). Of course, these children lead weird and crazy lives themselves, although they wouldn’t admit any of this until halfway through the story. This basic plot is made interesting by anecdotes scattered here and there, such as the disastrous dinner table conversations where one child says something about his sibling that he or she isn’t supposed to—e.g., the other brother being gay, the sister having smoked pot in the bathroom, etc.—the rest of the family members jumping in, and then they’re all talking, yelling and cursing at the same time. A stroke of tragedy would hit them, and they all realize family is important and they always have one another no matter what.

Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections is a novel about family, but because it’s Jonathan Franzen, the prose is so much more elegant, the characters more layered and complex.

Where The Corrections departs from the basic plot (as described above), aside from the rather rich characterization, and the fact that this isn’t simply and solely about family, is in the ending. You reach that final sentence in the story without feeling fluffy with happiness and inspiration, but a rather sickening jab on the stomach when the truth hits you: that people, your parents and yourself included, don’t change—or refuse to change. That the parents you believed were crazy are crazy after all.

However, Franzen successfully paints the irony in it all. Alfred, the family patriarch, is crazy not because he has Parkinson’s and is slowly beginning to lose his grip on reality, but precisely because of his refusal to change, his unbending determination to kick against the rather powerful seduction of modern-day, capitalist America:

He understood what modernity expected of him now. Modernity expected him to drive to a big discount store and replace the damaged string….

Much better, Alfred thought, to stay out of the basement, to work with what he had. It offended his sense of proportion and economy to throw away a ninety-percent serviceable string of lights. It offended his sense of himself, because he was an individual from an age of individuals, and a string of lights was, like him, and individual thing. No matter how little that thing had cost, to throw it away was to deny its value and, by extension, the value of individuals generally: to willfully designate as trash as object that you knew wasn’t trash.

Modernity expected this designation and Alfred resisted it.

His three children are reciting the modern-day mantra to “take everything easy”, all blind and unquestioning. Chip, the middle son, goes to Lithuania to work on a website, the purpose of which is to defraud American investors. Easy money. Quick cash. His moral justification is that he feels more sympathy for the Lithuanian people than the greedy, fat-bellied American corporate kingpins. Gary, the eldest, can’t say no to his own children. His eldest asked him for a surveillance camera, and he just gives in after making a weak argument against it. And then Denise, the youngest, throws away a very good and stable job because she was infatuated with the boss’ wife. Enid, the matriarch, drowns her cares away by taking Aslan, the miracle pill, that is not even allowed in the U.S.

And yet, it is Alfred who is crazy.

Tradition versus Modernity, Old versus New, Then versus Now. In this sense, The Corrections is an articulation of some kind of a farewell to the past and its consequences on those who are caught in between. Alfred refuses to jump from the fence and land on two feet on the side where his children are. Enid, for her part, desperately makes the same jump, but she finds her other foot caught on the other side. She then limps, awkward and unsure, so she is regarded  as weird and crazy (labels she has carried even before) by those who can run with ease in the vast field of the present and the future.

Alfred was indeed a lion to the end. And Enid, well, she was “seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life.”

With all that has happened, I am reminded of “It is Well with My Soul”, an old hymn written by Horatio Spafford whose life and whose faith in God was like that of Job’s:

This hymn was written after several traumatic events in Spafford’s life. The first was the death of his only son in 1871 at the age of four, shortly followed by the great Chicago fire which ruined him financially (he had been a successful lawyer). Then in 1873, he had planned to travel to Europe with his family on the SS Ville du Havre, but sent the family ahead while he was delayed on business concerning zoning problems following the Great Chicago Fire. While crossing the Atlantic, the ship sank rapidly after a collision with a sailing ship, the Loch Earn, and all four of Spafford’s daughters died. His wife Anna survived and sent him the now famous telegram, “Saved alone . . .”. Shortly afterwards, as Spafford traveled to meet his grieving wife, he was inspired to write these words as his ship passed near where his daughters had died.★

Here is a wonderful rendition of this song by Daniel Martin Moore. He is a young musician from Kentucky. His album In the Cool of the Day is worth checking out.

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★From  Wikipedia referencing McCann, Forrest M. (1997). Hymns and History: An Annotated Survey of Sources. Abilene, TX: ACU Press.ISBN 0-89112-058-0. Pp. 154, 327-328, 359-360, 520, 597.

I saw a signed copy of Michael Chabon’s novel at Booksale, and my nerdy little heart was glad. I paid PhP 170 for it, and my not-so-deep pocket was satisfied.

“O God, be Thou exalted over my possessions. Nothing of earth’s treasures shall seem dear unto me if only Thou art glorified in my life. Be Thou exalted over my friendships. I am determined that Thou shall be above all, though I must stand deserted and alone in the midst of all the earth. Be Thou exalted above my comforts. Though it mean the loss of bodily comforts and the carrying of heavy crosses, I shall keep my vow made this day before Thee. Be Thou exalted over my reputation. Make me ambitious to please Thee even if as a result I must sink into obscurity and my name be forgotten as a dream. Rise O Lord, into Thy proper place of honor, above my ambitions, above my likes and dislikes, above my family, my health and even my life itself. Let me sink that Thou mayest rise above. Ride forth upon me as Thou didst ride into Jerusalem mounted upon the humble little beast, a colt, the foal of an ass, and let me hear the children cry to Thee, ‘Hosanna in the highest.’ Amen.”

A.W. Tozer, “Restoring the Creator-Creature Relation” in The Pursuit of God.

A couple of friends from work decided to come together for a progressive dinner which, for some reason, turned into a traditional potluck with an Italian theme. I volunteered to bring the appetizer, because that seemed less daunting than an entree (someone called dibs on the wine already, so that was no longer an option). One friend suggested that I make Bruschetta. As a responsible citizen of the world in the 21st century, I scoured the internet for the recipe. It turned out to be a simple dish. All it requires is a little hand action and a sharp knife.

Bruschetta

Warm Baguette slices. It's not Bruschetta without these.

Katie's Vegetable Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

Liw's Italian Supreme Tomato Cream Sauce on Whole Wheat Penne Topped with Fresh Basil and Red & Green Bell Peppers

Josiah's Wine

The floating cork is a story of man’s victory over a stubborn piece of impermeable, buoyant wood. It’s our own version of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Needless to say the corkscrew screwed up, so it took a couple of people and a dash of ingenuity to finally take it out make it float.

For dessert, we had these:

Brianne's amazing Banana Apple Tart Topped with Vanilla Ice Cream

We had Mumford and Sons playing in the background, thanks to Amy and her cool selection of songs. Not very Italian, but still, it’s Mumford and Sons.

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*Apologies to Ernest Hemingway. And thank you Ate Liw for the photos.

Music is like Math to me. I know it’s helpful and beautiful, but I don’t understand it enough. I can recognize the G-Clef, the sharp sign, and the 4/4 signature on a music sheet, but I can’t play any instrument. Sure, I unleash my inner rock star when I’m taking a bath, but that doesn’t count.

Last week, I watched an opera called Vision of the Night with friends from work and from church. Had my knowledge of music been better than that of a two-year old, I would’ve made a comment on the important role of polyphonic tones in moving along the plot of the story. Or I would’ve talked about the subtle differences between the spinet and the grand piano, and which of these would have helped reveal the layers of the characters’ emotions. To do so now would only make me a fraud.

The man behind the opera.

So I will instead say this: I loved the show and enjoyed it immensely because it was based on the story of Job, and there isn’t a more fitting subject for an opera than the life of Job. It has everything: God’s grace and goodness in the midst of adversity, man’s struggle to look for answers, the epic destruction of property and death of kin, betrayal of friends, etc.

It’s like your regular staple of Filipino telenovela, except that it’s way better. And classier.

The person who wrote the music, Antonius Priyanto, is a gentle, amiable fellow that sits several chairs from me in church every Sunday. To hear him exalt God at the end of the performance is music in itself.

Now I want to learn how to play the piano. Is it already too late?

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Thank you Kuya Jayrus A. for the photos.

I have nothing to compare it with except the beaches in General Santos City that have faux-white sand scattered along the shore—kick into the surface and you discover dark granules of earth conveniently hidden beneath. Or an undeveloped beach in Sarangani Province, which according to my parents, was beautiful and had a lot of promise. If you’re eight years old, anything with water in it is beautiful and promising.

So Boracay is good enough for me. Better even than what my initial expectations have been. I’ve been warned: Boracay water is dirty. Boracay night life is unbearably loud. Boracay is congested. It’s the last melon on the planet, and it’s where people congregate like a million little fruit flies.

The water looked clean to me, but then again my terribly myopic vision isn’t probably the most reliable judge of something like this. It’s in the middle of September, that time of the year when the weather is at its most fickle state and holiday breaks seem like a hundred years away, so people would rather stay in the city and wait for the summer.

So I enjoyed Boracay a lot. It’s my first time to go there, and first times are usually enjoyable. I wasn’t even one month at work, and I got treated to three days of rest and recreation. I met new friends, participated in meaningful conversations, and took lungfuls of fresh air.

But the highlight of the trip for me was waking up early in the morning and sitting on the shore as the sun slowly painted the world in hues of blues and greens and reds and oranges and yellows and all the colors in between. I would sit facing the sea, and wait until the sound of the waves turned from a cacophony of discordant tones into a pleasant, soothing music. And then I would open my Bible to a passage like this:

¹Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD:

   “I will sing to the LORD,
for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
he has hurled into the sea.

² “The LORD is my strength and my defense;
he has become my salvation.
He is my God, and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him.

⁸ By the blast of your nostrils
the waters piled up.
The surging waters stood up like a wall;
the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea.

¹⁰ But you blew with your breath,
and the sea covered them.
They sank like lead
in the mighty waters.

¹¹ Who among the gods
is like you, LORD?
Who is like you—
majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory,
working wonders?

[Passage taken from Exodus 15.]

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Thanks Katie R. for the photo.

“If you are to become a writer you’ll have to stop fooling with words,” she explained. “It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it’s time to be living. I don’t want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.”

“The Teacher” from Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.