DANCING SOLDIERS

Found this clip at YouTube. The comment of the person who uploaded the video was even funnier.

THE SWEETEST THINGS

“History does not record this, this passing of memory to momentary madness, needless impermanence, the lassitude of loving.” –Angelo V. Suarez, from The Nymph of MTV

There will come a time in everyone’s life when all the best things that happened will finally come to an end—childhood ended after elementary and innocence ended after high school. Each of them holds different memories that we can bring along as we journey on with our lives. And for every door that closed and opened, we can only look back and reminisce.
Sometimes, we miss playing with our G.I. Joes or shying away from the class muse. We miss staying up day and night to write our term paper for the terror teacher or climbing down from the second floor of our dormitory at midnight to have a much-needed mug of beer. And as years go by, eventually, we start missing life itself.
One of life’s inevitable features is leaving behind what we dearly hold on to – when it is not just an option but rather a necessity because we need to seek what we know will put us in a better position later on in our lives.
The moment I graduated from high school was the moment I knew I had to leave the old town where I lived my whole life. I knew I had to venture to a new place and learn to ease my way in.
Before I arrived in Dumaguete four years ago, I had no idea about what the place was like and even less about Silliman University. I was so bad in geography that I had to check the Philippine map to locate Dumaguete and Negros Oriental. I was to become the only Sillimanian in the family, the first among my two older siblings to choose a school that was a boat-ride away from my hometown in Bukidnon. The only thing I knew about Silliman was from the university brochure given to me when I took the SUAPE. What made me chose this university (despite the objections of my parents) was my high expectation about the education I thought would be the best for me.
But four years after, I got more than what I expected. Here, I found more about myself, my passions, and what my life would be like after graduation. Here, I found that more lessons are learned outside the classrooms, that my experiences shaped me to become who I am today, that people come and go into my life and I can never tell which one will remain, that there is nothing absolute in life, and that love remains elusive.
Now, I must ready myself to let go of this phase of my life as another door is about to open before me. I must ready myself to let go of being a student who is financially supported by his parents, I must ready myself for a stage where being a student is not an excuse for making mistakes. I must ready myself to wake up early in the morning whether I like it or not. After graduation I must brace myself to face the bigger, more challenging and much harsher world, and I must embrace my maturity despite my desire to forever remain a child.
It’s not easy to leave something behind, especially leaving something that is already part of myself. Dumaguete offered a lot of things to me. I am now spending the little time I have in recounting these memories because they are the sweetest things that I could look back onto whenever nostalgic sentiments overwhelm me.
Writing this last column reminds me of the three years I spent as part of the Weekly Sillimanian staff. Waiting for my remaining week as a college student reminds me of those long hours spent in the antiquated chambers of Guy Hall scrambling with my deadlines, while the College of Performing Arts plays Mozart in the background. I will miss having classes in the only place in the university where you can experience what it is like to have a class beside the sea.
Dumaguete has been so good to me but I know that I don’t belong here. After graduation I have to leave this place and only fate knows where it would take me next. I don’t know when can I return here or whether I will ever be back again.
Sometimes you must know how to let go of something no matter how heavy it is in your heart to do it. And sometimes it is better to know from the start that everything—even the sweetest things that happen in life—have to end.

LITERARY NEWBITS AND SPEAKING OF'S

NEWSBIT No. 1

After winning the Grand Prize last year, Sir Ian once again emerged as winner (2^nd place) of the 2nd Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards for his short fiction “The Sugilanon of Epefania’s Heartbreak”, making him the only person to win consecutively in the Gaiman contest. Take that from someone who also won in this year’s Palanca Awards.

NEWSBIT No. 2

Speaking of Neil Gaiman...
Thanks to Sir Ian, I had my copy of Neil Gaiman’s “Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions” autographed by the literature’s rock star himself, which means that I could probably auction it for Php100,000 fifty years from now.

NEWSBIT No. 3

Speaking of the Neil Gaiman Award…
LitCritters Manila Andrew Drilon also bagged the 2^nd place in the comic category for his “Lines and Spaces.”

NEWSBIT No. 4

Speaking of 2^nd places…
The Dark Blue Southern Seas, the literary supplement of the Weekly Sillimanian, was awarded by the College Editor’s Guild of the Philippines-Visayas 2^nd place and the only winner in the literary folio category during the 1^st Lubas Awards last October 24, 2007.

NEWSBIT No. 5

Speaking of LitCritters…
After many months of trying to write the story and until now I’m still not done, this is perhaps the hardest LitCritters Dumaguete challenge yet. With our ‘out-of-our-comfort-zones’ challenge and being deemed as the masculinist of the group, my challenge has a specification to write “a gay love story that will make all of us swoon.” Now how the heck are you going to write a story like that?

NEWSBIT No. 6

Speaking of fiction writing…
While attempting to finish my LitCritters Original fiction, I was also asked, at the same time, to write a short story for the Portal yearbook. The story is supposed to set in World War II Dumaguete and I’m supposed to write this for the students of the School of Basic Education. In just a day and in just one sitting, I finished my children story which is about a boy who uses his imagination to escape the realities of war.

SO, YOU'RE GOING TO CENSOR ME THIS TIME?

Perhaps the most underrated and misunderstood genre - be it in film, literature, painting, or in photography - is erotica. Many don't take this genre seriously, don't accept it as a form of art, and label it as pornography either because of people's personal religious prejudice, or morality issues, or simply because of their cultural ignorance.

It has been an old age claim that erotica is nothing but plain pornography and since then, those who believe themselves as "moralists" institutionalized censorship to respond to this. Many books and magazines are banned, many films are withheld from public screening, many paintings and photographs are burned, and many artists were jailed because of this offense.

Censorship has been a perpetual battle cry of many artists, saying that it kills their artistic freedom. National Artist for Literature Jose Garcia Villa once said that a piece of art should be appreciated as it is-as an art.

So where do we really draw the line between erotica and pornography?

Something 'sexually explicit' does not necessary equate to porn. If it titillates, stimulates (cerebrally or sexually) and doesn't leave one feeling degraded, then it's erotic. If it makes one feel ashamed, alarmed, disarmed, dis-empowered and repulsed, then it's porn.

American writer Erica Jong said that erotica celebrates the erotic nature of the human creature…and does so artfully, dramatically. Pornography on the other hand, serves simply as an aid to self-gratification, with no artistic pretension and no artistic value.

In erotica, the artists exhibit respect for all their characters. There is a motivation for the characters to act as they do, and they are portrayed as living, feeling beings, with an existence above and beyond their sexuality. Even if all you see in the scene described is sex, you are aware of the characters being human. There is likely to be at least an intimate relationship between the characters.

In the case of pornography, one or more of the characters is liable to exist solely to perform sex. There is no feeling of connection to, or respect for, these characters.

In Philippine literature, Villa was sanctioned for producing a work deemed to be pornographic. He was kicked out of the University of the Philippines for publishing a poem called "Man Song". Fast forward to contemporary time, another National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose wrote a very graphic rape scene in his short story "Dalipawen" and labelled it as children story. He was not penalized for it.

In the earliest history of film, Thomas Edison caused a very big controversy when his film showed a couple kissing in front of the camera he invented. But looking at this kind of display now, even Disney animated films have kissing scenes.

My point is this: standards change. Novelists D.H. Lawrence once said, "What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another."

The novels with erotic contents of Henry Miller, Georges Bataille, Marquis de Sade, and Pauline Réage are now considered as important literary classics. Alfonso Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien, which has a very sexual opening scene, was nominated for Best Original Screenplay in the Oscar. Jose Javier Reyes' Live Show, although banned in the Philippines, reaped awards and praises in international film festivals.

The ones who usually pose immorality issues against erotica usually get treated by history as 'hypocrites' who didn't know what they were talking about. Your reaction is basically a mirror of who you are. If you want to see something bad, then that's what you'll see. For instance, if you see the word 'penis' or 'vagina' and think it's obscene, then it's really obscene. But if you look at it as something very clinical, something that all people have, then there's nothing wrong with it. Certainly, a dirty mind sees dirty things.

I believe that erotica is a very underrated genre because snobby "intellectual moralists" are squeaky about sex. They would say that they are protecting the youth from the obscenities brought by erotica, but they are saying this without understanding the attitude of today's youths.

It is an undeniable fact that teenagers, especially college students, are sexually active these days. This is a product of the changing time that many adults don't understand. Teenagers can get sex everywhere and at the same time they are barraged by MTV and popular culture that they get this wrong information about sexuality. With this, their idea of sex are those scandal VCDs that they can buy at the musliman stalls for only P50 or less, or the unlimited supply of pornography they can get online.

And now comes erotica-which portrays sex in a creative, literary manner-and the "moralists" censor it. So, basically, they are pulling this kind of sex to the background. It is basically unsafe for the youth because it coats the whole thing into a forbidden territory. Nobody talks about it, so it becomes more dangerous.

A lot of people loathe erotica because a lot of them just feel that they are holy individuals. They like to think that they are so saintly than others, when they could just probably be covering their own insecurities about their own lives.

The youths these days spend most of their time developing their minds and careers, and are told very little of value about the emotional and the sexual. If those "moralists" really cared as much as they say they do about character development and depth, then they should realize that the danger comes in when that kind of information is deprived from them.

PALANCAS FOR LITCRITTERS

He turned 32 yesterday.

He won 3rd place on this year's Don Carlos Palanca Awards.

This is his 3rd Palanca.

Yes, my writing mentor, LitCritters Dumaguete moderator, and favorite person in the world is this year's 3rd place winner of the Palanca Awards for Children Story. What's so amazing is that this winning short fiction, "The Last Days of Magic" is the story that Sir Ian wrote for our first writing challenge in LitCritters Dumaguete last February. The story will also be published in the upcoming PEN Anthology, to be edited by Vicente Groyon III.

Here's more:

Speculative fiction guru and LitCritters founder Dean Francis Alfar will receive his 10th Palanca this year. His "Poor, poor Luisa," is the 2nd placer, also in the Children Story category.

TAKING A BUKID BOY AWAY FROM HIS MOUNTAIN

Living in Bukidnon for the 20 years of your life would deprive you from experiencing this kind of beauty.