Thursday, January 29, 2009
Who am I?
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
VIGNETTE
The best of times is now.
Tomorrow is so far away.
The best of times is now.
Not some forgotten yesterday.
So hold this moment last.
For, the best of time is now, now, now.
Tomorrow is so far away.
The best of times is now.
Not some forgotten yesterday.
So hold this moment last.
For, the best of time is now, now, now.
KISS MONSTER
Remember that sometimes monsters only need to be kissed to be turned into beautiful princes and princesses.
Visualize the most despicable person you know. Then envision the price or princess who also resides in him or her.
Visualize the most despicable person you know. Then envision the price or princess who also resides in him or her.
SCIENCE FOR PEACE NOT FOR GREED
Instruments of peace are things of beauty and of art. Weapons of war are products of technology and science.
I t seems to mean that art is the way to
peace, science the road to destruction. Quite true. Many countries have laid waste with guns, missiles , bombs , while Rizal, Luna , Gandhi and others have proven that painting, literature-the arts- are peaceful means by which we can conquer people’s minds. The intellectual human race, in its desire for progress, has dared Mother Nature and she is on revenge; the servants of arts have tried and succeeded in “concretizing” our most impossible dreams in the obra maestros. Through science, we have even the peace of the conscience. We have killed our fellow through abortion and the lethal injection. Worse we have created people who do not even have conscience. Just consider the inhumanity of the crimes drug addicts commit. On the other hand, the arts have also contributed to the increasing rate of crimes in the world, but more because of science. Works depicting the beauty ant the nature of emotion of man and woman are not the degree of privacy they need so they may be called truly art and nit just nude exposition. Thanks to privacy, which make available those masterpieces to those who cannot appreciate them.
But it’s not really science which is bad, is it? In fact, science presents peace as order and stability wherein in each unit of the universe behaves according to the unwritten, unchangeable natural law. The least diversion from natural law may result in very great chaos.
It’s we, humans, who intervene with the order of nature to satisfy our hunger for progress. It’s we who are too reckless in using science and technology just to make ourselves better. “The world is enough for everyone’s need, but not for anyone’s need”, as Gandhi put it. To these, we may add, science and arts must go together. For what good is the arts if there would be no progress in this miserable world? Can we just continue singing and dancing while poverty and crime remain realities? On the other side, the study of arts teaches values. When values are gone, there is an important question: what good is science, if there would be no one to use its principles for the betterment of humankind. Science is not for people of greed but for people or service.So, we may therefore conclude that role of science in our world depends on us who made it exist and for whom it exists. We can make it to become either beneficial innovator
I t seems to mean that art is the way to
peace, science the road to destruction. Quite true. Many countries have laid waste with guns, missiles , bombs , while Rizal, Luna , Gandhi and others have proven that painting, literature-the arts- are peaceful means by which we can conquer people’s minds. The intellectual human race, in its desire for progress, has dared Mother Nature and she is on revenge; the servants of arts have tried and succeeded in “concretizing” our most impossible dreams in the obra maestros. Through science, we have even the peace of the conscience. We have killed our fellow through abortion and the lethal injection. Worse we have created people who do not even have conscience. Just consider the inhumanity of the crimes drug addicts commit. On the other hand, the arts have also contributed to the increasing rate of crimes in the world, but more because of science. Works depicting the beauty ant the nature of emotion of man and woman are not the degree of privacy they need so they may be called truly art and nit just nude exposition. Thanks to privacy, which make available those masterpieces to those who cannot appreciate them.But it’s not really science which is bad, is it? In fact, science presents peace as order and stability wherein in each unit of the universe behaves according to the unwritten, unchangeable natural law. The least diversion from natural law may result in very great chaos.
It’s we, humans, who intervene with the order of nature to satisfy our hunger for progress. It’s we who are too reckless in using science and technology just to make ourselves better. “The world is enough for everyone’s need, but not for anyone’s need”, as Gandhi put it. To these, we may add, science and arts must go together. For what good is the arts if there would be no progress in this miserable world? Can we just continue singing and dancing while poverty and crime remain realities? On the other side, the study of arts teaches values. When values are gone, there is an important question: what good is science, if there would be no one to use its principles for the betterment of humankind. Science is not for people of greed but for people or service.So, we may therefore conclude that role of science in our world depends on us who made it exist and for whom it exists. We can make it to become either beneficial innovator
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
THE SUMMER GETAWAY
Traveling is prime time for family bonding. While it brings out both the best and the worst in everyone, going on a trip is, by far, the best way to bring the family closer. Schools out for the kids, so file for your vacation from work and get ready to create some of the most enjoyable and fun-filled memories under the sun, on the shore, or among tall pine trees. Summer is when the kids can try all the activities they otherwise can’t while buried in books so make sure they can swim, ride horses, pick flowers, eat out -of-town delicacies to their heart’s content.
Get everyone involved at every stage of your summer vacation- from planning the trip to arranging photos in the post-vacation family album. At the planning stage, assigning a role for each family member will make everyone feel important and crucial to the success and fun of the big summer out-of-town event. Get ate to make sure you’ve got enough rolls of film to document every memorable moment or site, and remind kuya that he’s in charge of counting all the bags at every stop. The little ones will find utter joy in making sure that the family is well-stocked with munchies – whether packed into the car on a road trip, or in hand –carried bags if you need to get on a plane.
Needless to say, the vacation itself will weave plenty of memories for the family, and bonding will continue long after you’ve unpacked back home. While making the family album, get everyone to contribute a line about the photo and scribble it on a piece of white sticker at the bottom of each picture. Working on the album will bring back all the fun-horsing around, eating mounds of seafood , snorkelling , and more eating-and will get everyone excited and looking forward to the next big summer getaway.
Monday, January 19, 2009
comparison of the story and a poem of the Last Leaf
The Last Leaf" is a story about 2 female roommates and aspiring artists that live in Greenwich village. One of them, Johnsy, gets sick with pnemonia, and the doctor doesn't give her much of a chance. Johnsy's roommate, Sue, keeps watch over her and notices her counting. She asks why, and Johnsy replies that she is counting the "Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too." Soon, there is only one leaf on the vine, and Sue is in despair that it will fall, and Johnsy will die. She expresses her fears to the unconventional and often grumpy old man that lives downstairs, Behrman. He comes up and sits with her for a while. The next morning, Sue opens the blinds to find the leaf still there, and Johnsy recovers. Later it is revealed that it was painted there by Behrman, who then, from exposure to Johnsy and the cold, dies of pnemonia. It's a classic O. Henry "surprise" ending, but a sweet commentary on not judging one by their outward personna.
Stanza 1
In "Memory," a woman still suffering from the break-up with her lover is addressed by the invisible "visitors" who inhabit a "seventh" dimension, the "sixth" being sex, which they have explained in poems that precede this one in the collection. The first line begins with their question: "And do we remember our living lives?" — our lives as they were lived without the revision of memory? In the first, five-line stanza, the woman in the poem recalls the details of a daily life in which strife and death are temporarily absent — details such as the clock measuring seemingly endless time or the door in which a lover enters. Near the end of this stanza, however, the reader becomes unable to deny what is coming, tipped off by language escalating in emotion from the almost quotidian though tender "I love you" to an urgent and anguished "why?" What caused the argument, which the poet does not actually discuss in detail in the poem. What was its now elusive trigger? What did the speaker mean to the lover who broke from her?
Stanza 2
In the second stanza, lines 6 through 10, the poet's unseen visitors reveal to her that death does not take the sting out of memory, improve the quality of its ability to record events, or resolve its conundrums. "You see," the visitors say, "our memories are much like yours, / here a shadow, a sound, a shred, a wisp." But they also frame for her the choice that she has, which will allow her to put aside memory's puzzle. "And what do we want to remember?" one said.
Stanzas 3 and 4
The third and fourth stanzas describe the poet's immediate rebellion. She believes she can improve her memories by summoning the courage to relive the terribly painful emotions this catastrophic lover's quarrel provoked. The third stanza begins, in the first three of five lines, as the poet's prayer: "Never never Oh give me the blurred wish / or the dream or the fact half-forgotten, the leaf in the book but not the read page." She asks for even more, not merely the facts but what they meant, what she can bear to know.
Stubbornly, perhaps, the woman in the poem tells her visitors in the next stanza that she has made a choice. "I recall only the blue dusk," the aftermath of dissolution in its sad and non-negotiable finality, and not the climactic pain of her last argument. But her visitors, made wise by the transformation of death and the realities of life in the untouchable seventh dimension, attempt to be instructive about the inevitable nature of memory. "Do you think you choose?" they say. "If only you could determine your secret determinates." The last line of this penultimate stanza reveals the poet's immediate reconsideration of her desire to overrule memory as it leads us to the poem's end. Her anguish is once again poignantly apparent.
Stanza 5
In lines 23 to 25 of the last stanza, the narrator's acknowledgement of "that terrible time" recedes, yielding again to the blue transition of dusk and leaving only the essence of catastrophe to the realm of "the inner eye."
Stanza 1
In "Memory," a woman still suffering from the break-up with her lover is addressed by the invisible "visitors" who inhabit a "seventh" dimension, the "sixth" being sex, which they have explained in poems that precede this one in the collection. The first line begins with their question: "And do we remember our living lives?" — our lives as they were lived without the revision of memory? In the first, five-line stanza, the woman in the poem recalls the details of a daily life in which strife and death are temporarily absent — details such as the clock measuring seemingly endless time or the door in which a lover enters. Near the end of this stanza, however, the reader becomes unable to deny what is coming, tipped off by language escalating in emotion from the almost quotidian though tender "I love you" to an urgent and anguished "why?" What caused the argument, which the poet does not actually discuss in detail in the poem. What was its now elusive trigger? What did the speaker mean to the lover who broke from her?
Stanza 2
In the second stanza, lines 6 through 10, the poet's unseen visitors reveal to her that death does not take the sting out of memory, improve the quality of its ability to record events, or resolve its conundrums. "You see," the visitors say, "our memories are much like yours, / here a shadow, a sound, a shred, a wisp." But they also frame for her the choice that she has, which will allow her to put aside memory's puzzle. "And what do we want to remember?" one said.
Stanzas 3 and 4
The third and fourth stanzas describe the poet's immediate rebellion. She believes she can improve her memories by summoning the courage to relive the terribly painful emotions this catastrophic lover's quarrel provoked. The third stanza begins, in the first three of five lines, as the poet's prayer: "Never never Oh give me the blurred wish / or the dream or the fact half-forgotten, the leaf in the book but not the read page." She asks for even more, not merely the facts but what they meant, what she can bear to know.
Stubbornly, perhaps, the woman in the poem tells her visitors in the next stanza that she has made a choice. "I recall only the blue dusk," the aftermath of dissolution in its sad and non-negotiable finality, and not the climactic pain of her last argument. But her visitors, made wise by the transformation of death and the realities of life in the untouchable seventh dimension, attempt to be instructive about the inevitable nature of memory. "Do you think you choose?" they say. "If only you could determine your secret determinates." The last line of this penultimate stanza reveals the poet's immediate reconsideration of her desire to overrule memory as it leads us to the poem's end. Her anguish is once again poignantly apparent.
Stanza 5
In lines 23 to 25 of the last stanza, the narrator's acknowledgement of "that terrible time" recedes, yielding again to the blue transition of dusk and leaving only the essence of catastrophe to the realm of "the inner eye."
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