Maybe I’m just getting old, but I find myself getting drawn more to poetry as a remedy to the crass displays of emotion that pop culture inflicts on us.

Sure, pop culture is a lot of fun (isn’t “Glee” wonderful?).

But pop culture is so pervasive; it is this machinery of focus groups, consumer trends, celebrity intrigues, product endorsements, beauty enhancements, sob stories, and other “infotainment news.”

The purveyors of noontime shows, television dramas, and showbiz programs have carpet-bombed us with slick, fast-paced, hilarious, well-lit attractive celebrities that act as our models of good consumer behavior.

However, there is something of pop culture’s wall-to-wall merriment and freewheeling consumerism that leaves one drained as well.

Sometimes, one yearns to escape from all the “high-definition” reality “shows,” all the manufactured “togetherness” and forced “awesomeness.”

All that public airing of grief, gaiety, and doubt can become cloying, and the “medium is the message” knowingness can be very exhausting.

I don’t have a garden, so my tonic for the oppressive omnipresence of pop culture is poetry.

I’ve recently come across the latest book of poet Joel M. Toledo.

Published by UP Press, “The Long Lost Startle” is a collection of 60 poems from the literature professor from Miriam College.

Written between 2006 and 2008, “The Long Lost Startle” is his second book of poetry.

I’m not going to lie; I don’t understand some of the poems here.

I even tried my best to comprehend Dr. Gemino Abad’s introduction, but I guess I don’t have enough brain cells (this must be what watching “TMZ” has done to me!).

But I appreciate Dr. Abad’s situation; writing intros to poetry books must be like trying to dress a shadow.

Poetry is complicated enough, why make their introductions even more so? Maybe it’s a tradition?

Perhaps it’s the mystery of poetry that draws me towards it (“There is no enlightenment here; just keenness”).

In Toledo’s work, one finds this humility in awe of those everyday mysteries that most of us – our senses dulled by “Wowowee” and its ilk –have somehow forgotten.

These things moving in wind,
we have names for them: feather, dust,
bird. That which, now and then, urges leaves
to nudge the movable branches. Sometimes,

we may even see their quiet collisions,
flecks of sudden and minute life
as this afternoon, sitting on the porch
and watching my wife dusting off blankets,

the sunlight gathering around her lithe body,
our children running under the swayed trees
and the startled birds, the dust swirling joyously
everywhere, celebrating their release. And I am held

in awe of the things that move in the world,
or are moved, and of the privacy of the living,
all the many rising objects revealed only by refraction,
and why I just sit here, straining.

(from “Dusting”)


I should read Dr. Abad’s intro again (after I finish watching tonight’s “Man Vs Wild,” of course).

I love how things attach themselves
to other things – the rocks sitting stubbornly
beneath a river, the beards of moss.

I choose a color and it connotes sadness.
But how long must the symbols remain true? Blue
is blue, not lonely. After a time, one gives up

reading the sky for shadows, even rain.
There is no promise, only a possibility.
A moment moves to another, and still it feels

the same. Like old letters in boxes.
Or how the rain, at times, falls invisibly.
Finally, the things we love demand more love,

as if we have always been capable of it. Yet
I can only offer belief, mirages that mean water,
long travels leading somewhere. I am reading

old letters, trying to make something
of what’s been said. It might be raining;
some pages are unreadable.

(from “Attachments”)

Again, I don’t understand all of it.

But I like uncovering tenuous connections that might lead to a sort of enlightenment.

If I want everything crystal-clear, I’d watch Fareed Zakaria or read Malcolm Gladwell. But if I want mystique, I head out to nature or read poetry.

the fireflies are satisfied with their nature,
their flickering envy of stars.
The same is true of the bullfrog,

announcing its presence by the pond,
and of the waiting owl, wide-eyed
and dark-winged and silent in the tree.

(from “Atonement”)


I don’t pretend to get all poetry, nor can I explain why some poems grab one’s attention and others don’t.

Summers we would climb trees, collecting the carcasses of cicadas.
Those were bright days, small suns flickering madly inside
the abandoned shells. And how could we have resisted them?
We were far from the city and its hard surfaces; we had so much time.

(from “Softness”)


One of these days, I’ll have to start tending to a garden. Or suit up on one of those marathons.

In the meantime, there’s poetry to explore on days when the machinery of pop culture gets a bit too much to bear.

I can do with less electricity,
preferring, say, more of the quiet
and strange commotions that take place
outside, somewhere in the bushes,
within those terrifying enclosures
that make us rise in the middle
of an evening and step out,
carrying nothing but our tired bodies.
There will be the gentle creaking,
slow feet on wood, and the great wanting
to climb some tree, confront its dark
branches, negotiate with the leaves.
Like wide awake and blind,
I would see the veins that complicate
all the living: my body, this tree,
the now visible embers glowing with power,
the natural heart that never sleeps.

(from “Pulse”)

I was able to reach the author and managed to fire off a few (okay, two) questions.

Me: What do you wish the reader will take away with him after reading “The Long Lost Startle”?

Toledo: I hope readers will notice that this book is much different than my first one (“Chiaroscuro”) because of its keener attention to craft. There are a lot of experimentations going on with language here, and how language intertwines with musicality in a poem – from assonances to enjambments to half-rhymes. I’m more inclined now toward taking risks with syntax and diction to achieve a more lyrical set of poems, and by “lyrical” I mean more musicality. I hope the readers will be able to distinguish the interplay of risk, language, and music in this new book.

Me: Where can people get a copy?

Toledo: UP Press, National Bookstore, Powerbooks, mag:net cafe Katipunan.

Me: Can you explain to me Dr. Abad’s introduction? I’m just kidding.

And some words of praise by Eric Gamalinda for “The Long Lost Startle”:

There is generosity and wisdom in these poems, a sense of wonder that elevates the most ordinary of things and bestows upon them a special place in the world.

Informed by both intelligence and compassion, Joel M. Toledo’s “The Long Lost Startle,” I believe, will be considered a major work in Philippine poetry; while the angel of history sees the future by turning his back on the wreckage of the world, Toledo fixes his gaze with attention and astonishment, and in the process heralds a future with some of the most memorable poems our country has ever produced.

I find that’s so much nicer to read than tweets about Kanye West.

I have no emotional investment in the US presidential race. My interest in this contest rests mainly in the pop cultural references made by late-night punch lines and parodies—the punking of Sarah Palin by a fake Nicolas Sarkozy, the Saturday Night Live skits, The Daily Show send-ups and the comments in the Huffington Post.

The specific issues that weigh on the mind of the American voter have nothing to do with me. Right now I am far more concerned about the intricacies of HSM3 (that’s “High School Musical 3”) so that I can explain to my nephews where I stand on the issue of Zac Efron’s hair. When HSM2 came out and I could not name the East High School’s basketball team my nephews expressed doubt over my ability and judgment to be an effective uncle.

But a short stay in Baler, Aurora Province, has given me occasion to revisit and re-think Barack Obama’s positioning of himself as the agent of a “Change You Can Trust.”




Obama’s soaring rhetoric about changing the world—repudiating the Cheney-Bush legacy—is inspiring legions of Americans who’ve grown tired (and poorer) after eight years of Cheney-Bush. On the eve of election Obama told a crowd of supporters that they are “on the verge of a new era” as the fired-up audience yelled back, “We Want Change!”

Is this a good thing for us? Does Obama’s promise of a more humane America extend to us who continually have to suffer the fallout of US foreign policy decisions? Or is it a hollow promise, based on the same ideology that the US has pursued for the last hundred years beginning when it built itself into the world’s leading industrialized nation?

What has our history taught us?





In the town square of Baler stands the unassuming Baler Church. Its stone façade doesn’t call attention to itself; the visitor’s gaze, in fact, is drawn more towards the well-landscaped Manuel Luis Quezon monument next to the church where a bronze statue of local boy Manuel sits comfortable and firm in his faith in the Pinoys’ ability to govern themselves—a belief we may not share in our more cynical moments—but that is why Quezon was a visionary and I am a grown man watching a (hit!) Disney musical.

Despite its plain appearance, the Baler Church has a colorful story: It was the last piece of Philippine territory held by the Spanish empire. A commemorative plaque traces the church’s history back to 1611, and in one sentence sums up the historic Siege of Baler which signaled a momentous event in world history—the fall of the once-mighty Spanish empire and the rise of a brash, young American one:

“…Isang may 54 kataong garison ng mga Kastila ang kinubkob ng mga Pilipinong rebolusyonaryo, Hunyo 27, 1898 hanggang Hunyo 2, 1899…”





The Siege of Baler lasted an incredible 11 months, with the 54-man Spanish force barricaded inside the church surrounded by about 800 Filipino militiamen. Unknown to the isolated Spanish, forces under Emilio Aguinaldo and the Katipunan had taken possession of most of the Philippines, except for Manila whose entry points the Americans controlled after Commodore George Dewey’s Manila Bay victory in May 1, 1898. The Spanish stragglers in Baler dug in and waited for the nonexistent reinforcements to arrive. In spite of efforts by the Filipinos to inform the holed-up Spanish that their empire has quit the islands, the poor, bewildered soldiers did not believe them and hung on, wracked by diseases and hunger.

Meanwhile, skirmishes occurred between Filipino and American forces in and around Manila as the Spanish empire limped away and Filipino insurgents became increasingly suspicious of American motives.

Heated debates erupted in the US Senate between the anti-imperialists and those who viewed the annexation of the “uncivilized” Philippines as a God-given duty (“The White Man’s Burden”). One of the two senators who opposed the Treaty of Paris was a Republican named George Frisbie Hoar who argued:

“This Treaty will make us a vulgar, commonplace empire, controlling subject races and vassal states, in which one class must forever rule and other classes must forever obey.”

On the opposing side an imperialist senator, Knute Nelson of Minnesota was quoted as saying:

“Providence has given the United States the duty of extending Christian civilization. We come as ministering angels, not despots.”

The imperialists won and in December 10, 1898, the Treaty of Paris sent the Spanish empire packing and the US made its debut as a colonial power (albeit a “benevolent” one, in the eyes of its leadership). The US annexed Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines (after paying $20 million).

As American colonial designs became clearer under the banner of “Manifest Destiny” and buoyed by an economy on overdrive, its military became more and more adventurous in targeting enemies on foreign soil—something that Obama has vowed to continue, in Pakistan, for example, if its leadership does not do anything about Islamic extremists.

A rescue party was sent by the Americans to relieve the Spanish stragglers inside Baler Church. A plaque to commemorate this event can be seen a few meters from the church. It reads:

“Lieutenant-commander James C. Gilmore, U.S.N., commanding the U.S.S. gunboat Yorktown, was captured, together with all his command, save two, who were instantly killed and two mortally wounded, by insurgent forces, when he came to Baler in April 1899 to relieve the half-famished Spanish garrison that had been besieged in the town church for nearly a year. Lt. Gilmore and the survivors were taken to Nueva Ecija, and then to northern Luzon. They were later rescued by American forces and taken to Manila.”

Thus the American experiment in “benevolent assimilation” or “making the world safe for democracy” began (its legacy can be seen in Iraq where more than 13,000 civilians have died). The imperialist American leadership of 1898, giddy from defeating the crumbling Spanish empire saw themselves as a kind of God-sent force, a beacon of hope for the “uncivilized” parts of the world.

Ever since 1898, the new superpower has “pursued a strategy of remaking the world in its image, through free trade, military dominance, and globalization,” in the words of Boston University professor and historian Andrew J. Bacevich in his book “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.”

How does this relate to present events? In a 2007 speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Senator Obama proclaimed:

”I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.

“I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world why this is so. This President [Bush] may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open. And it’s time to fill that role once more.”

Is this what constitutes a repudiation of the past, a break from the misbegotten policies of the Cheney-Bush years? Isn’t this a recasting of the imperialist Senator Nelson’s words of 1898, shorn of Biblical imagery and updated for the 21st century sound bite? “Providence has given the United States the duty of extending Christian civilization. We come as ministering angels, not despots.”





The Siege of Baler ended in June 2, 1899 when the survivors surrendered to the Filipino force, who, perhaps sensing that they were on the verge of a new era which required charitable acts, let the remaining soldiers return unharmed to Spain as heroes. Unfortunately, that era’s change agents, the “ministering angels” who landed in the Philippines full of good intentions, stayed for forty years of occupation in which an estimated half a million Filipinos were ultimately killed and injured in the guise of pacification.

Justifying his decision to annex the Philippines, President McKinley crowed: “There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them.”

So, as the US election campaign reaches fever pitch and Obama’s “Vote for Change” is on the verge of closing the deal, I cringe a little bit as I look on the plaques in Baler town which serve as silent reminders on how such good intentions by the American empire can turn hope into grief for us in the receiving end of American foreign policy since 1898.

It has been High Crimes and Misdemeanors Week.

Of late it’s been difficult to find a Pinoy in the news that can be proudly held as a role model for kids. Last week, when you got to watch TV, you were assailed by the news of generals and their wives caught with their hands in the cookie jar, so to speak. No wonder then our ill-equipped foot soldiers couldn’t find Commander Bravo in Mindanao, the AFP fat-cats have taken their money and high-tailed it to Moscow. But some say the P9 million is on budget and a lawful cash allotment for official uses and departments and all that, etcetera etcetera. I know, but no matter how you cook it, it still smells rotten though.

Next week promises more desultory tales of malfeasance with a former undersecretary who had fled abroad to avoid prickly questions about allegations over another money scam. This man seemed determined not to spend another winter in a US jail so he’s decided to come home to soak up our beautiful sunshine (some senators have promised instead to have him raked over the coals).

Where’s a role model when you need one?

Thank goodness then that TIME Magazine was found one beacon of hope—a single bright spot in the current crop of dubious Pinoy celebrities. TIME has hailed scientist Dr. Jurgenne Primavera as one of its “Heroes of the Environment in 2008.”

It’s good to see a person who’s done something productive lauded for her life’s work. While TIME did a bang-up job with her story and how she’s trying to strike a balance between saving mangroves and the demands of tiger-prawn farming (shrimp farms destroy a big chunk of the country’s remaining mangroves), TIME didn’t mention Dr. Primavera’s excellent handbook on Philippine mangrove species.



Published in 2004 by UNESCO, Dr. Primavera etal.’s “Handbook of Mangroves in the Philippines – Panay” is a product of more than a decade of fieldwork by the doctor and her collaborators Resurrecion B. Sadaba, Ma. Junemie H.L. Lebata and Jon P. Altamirano. Despite the “Panay” in the title, one can use this handbook to identify mangrove species anywhere in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia.

Ah, mangroves. The under-appreciated and hard-to-understand sister of the marine ecosystems family. They’re so hard to understand and appreciate that we are bulldozing them wholesale to make way for shrimp and fish farms (shrimp cocktails are easier to appreciate). Compared to the glamorous and oh-so-chic coral reefs with their supermodel denizens of Disney and Pixar appeal, mangroves are like Ugly Betty—they are no eye-candy but they do have a quirky appeal for geeks. Everyone wants to save Little Nemo and his cute little anemone house in the coral reefs, but what of the yucky worms that live inside mangrove stands? Don’t they deserve the same care and protection (and TV time) given their coral-living cousins? It’s easy to say yes when you’re staring at your monitor at home feeling righteous indignation, but try saying yes when a sumptuous lemon-grilled tiger-prawn cocktail is dripping sweet-chili lime sauce right in front of your eyes and you’ll realize the decision is not so clear-cut..

Are we willing to destroy our few remaining mangroves so the fat-cats among us can enjoy more spicy shrimp cocktails with spiced pistachio chutney? Dr. Primavera says there’s a middle way; to save both mangroves and maintain a steady supply of tiger prawns.

There’s no getting around the fact that mangroves are muddy, smelly and full of mosquitoes. But they do have an important function in nature. We have heard about how mangroves act as a buffer to prevent effluents from reaching the coral reefs. Or how mangroves act as a nursery for many marine and terrestrial animals. Or how mangroves help lessen coastal erosion. Or how supermodel Petra Nemcova was saved by a mangrove tree she clung to during the great tsunami a few years back. Or was that a coconut tree Nemcova hung on to?



It’s weird but there’s a saying about galaxies that remind me about mangroves: Galaxies are like people: the better you get to know them, the more peculiar they often seem.

The same is true about mangroves: They get more interesting the better you know them.

Manila got its name from Scyphiphora hydrophyllacea, also known as nilad in Tagalog and sagasa, bolaling, or hanbulali in Ilonggo. This mangrove species was said to be so abundant along Manila Bay and the Pasig River in pre-Hispanic times that the natives, according to lore, called the area “May-nilad.” Imagine if the Spanish explorers who landed on the mouth of Pasig had asked an Ilonggo-speaking trader who happened to be in Manila at the time. Maybe instead of “Metro Manila” we would have had “Metro Ma-Sagasa”? “Metro Ma-Bolaling”? It must be noted, too, that there are historians who dispute that this mangrove’s local name was ever nilad. Interestingly, nila is from the Sanskrit for “indigo tree” (where this trivia leaves us, I have no idea, but it’s interesting for “Jeopardy Nights.”)



But what I learned after reading Dr. Primavera’s very interesting field guide, “Handbook of Mangroves in the Philippines – Panay” is that the pre-Hispanic balanghai which was discovered in Agusan del Norte was made from mangrove wood called dungon. This mangrove species has wood so strong, waterproofed and salt-tolerant that it was used to make bridges, cart axles, ships, and entire wharves. As someone who usually sees mangrove plants as knee-high saplings during mangrove tree-planting press releases, this was a revelation. Mangroves big enough to make ships!

According to Dr. Primavera, various kinds of mangrove trees including pototan, bantigi, bungalon and piagao were known by early Pinoys for their strength and were used to make houses, rice mortars and pestles. Pototan or busain were used to make foundation pilings, house posts, flooring and cabinet work. Pototan was the source of the popular dark-red dye used for fish nets, ropes and sails. According to Dr. Primavera’s book, the Malaysian king’s throne is made from a mangrove wood known as piagao known for its “fine grain and deep-dark color.”



A mangrove wood called kawilan, was a favorite for carvers of knife handles in some areas in the Philippines. Another, pagatpat, was a popular wood to make musical instruments. Curiously, there is a local bird also called pagatpat whose noisy and grating call can politely be described as “nonmusical.”

A kind of bungalon was highly prized for firewood because it produces new branches quickly after cutting. The smoke of its dried branches acts as mosquito repellant and its leaves can be fed to livestock. Bungalon was also valuable to traditional salt makers: its ashes were used to line a funnel through which seawater was poured. The resulting filtrate was sun-dried to produce salt.

The original taku of Efren “Bata” Reyes, was said to be made of a kind of tough mangrove wood, bakhaw (which is also the catchall name for all mangrove trees) which, when it was still abundant in the Philippines was the preferred timber for railroad ties, mine posts, beams and joists.




The powdered bark or baluk of special mangrove trees is the source of the traditional dye that gives tuba its dark-red color. Tungog (also known as tangal and tagasa) reportedly gave the best baluk powder used in making tuba, bahalina and basi. If the preferred tungog baluk was not available, then other mangrove bark—bakhaw baluk—can be used as substitute to prepare tuba. I suppose if you could taste the difference, then you’re a true tuba connoisseur?

Dr. Primavera’s book is a field guide to mangroves but the trivia parts are fascinating. Take for instance the facts about Nypa fruticans also known as nipa, sapsap and sasa.



According to the ever-interesting Dr. Primavera, the word Nypatithau comes from Sanskrit which means “a man who gives everything.” No kidding, this remarkable mangrove plant literally gives everything of itself to people. Its uses include: roofing material, baskets, bags, hats, brooms, mats, vinegar and alcohol. The inside of its fruit, as well as its pith, is edible. One can imagine this plant, after giving itself to help humans (sniff sniff), asking “What more do you want?” as the bulldozers cut it down to make way for shrimp farms.



So if you can find Dr. Primavera’s Handbook, it would be a nice addition to a collection about Pinoy marine life, next to Genevieve Broad’s “Fishes of the Philippines,” Alan White’s “Philippine Coral Reefs, A Natural History Guide,” and Gutsy Tuason and Eduardo Cu Unjieng’s “Anilao.” Unless you seriously plan to identify mangroves in the wild, I suppose this handbook has a very limited practical use, but it’s cool that such a book exists anyway. It’ll probably make a nice present for that geeky teenager who dreams of becoming a marine biologist.

If you know of any other uses of mangrove wood and plant parts, post them here.

More than 600 species of birds have been recorded in the Philippines, an awesome number given a relatively small country.

Yet ask a Pinoy kid what Philippine bird species he knows and he can probably come up with ten, including those not normally occurring in the Philippines, like those darn-cute penguins, toucans and the American bald eagle (a raptor that is actually a lot smaller than our spectacular, albeit almost-extinct due to deforestation, Philippine Eagle).

It’s not the kids’ fault that they know so little of Philippine avian life. Or that they know more about cartoon ones like Daffy Duck or Tweedy Bird, or non-native species like penguins and robins than local species like the Philippine Duck and the Celestial Monarch.

Natural history—wildlife and outdoors appreciation—does not feature prominently in our school system. Nowadays, the grim economic reality makes it prudent to produce nurses, welders, and healthcare professionals for export rather than wildlife biologists, naturalists and scientists who will study our own flora and fauna.

In school, what we have are the annual visits to the zoo to “learn” about animal behavior, despite the fact that caged animals act, even sometimes look, different from their cousins in the wild. Caged parrots, for instance, stop grooming and cleaning themselves causing gunk to matte and destroy their naturally beautiful tails. Wild parrots are lustrous and the clean, well-maintained tail feathers are a source of a male’s pride. Once you have observed at length a parrot sunning itself in the wild, showing off its well-kept feathers and bright-red bill for the world to admire, you’ll realize how a filthy and tiny cage can destroy an animal’s spirit and pride. Zoo visits have their educational uses, of course, but they should not be substitutes to saving and observing animals in their natural habitats.

Let’s see, what birds can you name? Maya? Philippine Eagle (formerly known as Monkey-eating Eagle)? Tamsi? Tarat? Kuwago? Uwak? Tagak? Pugo? Tikling? Loro?Kolasisi?Kalaw?

Oldtimers can probably still identify and differentiate the lawin, agila, mamuhag, sakbit, bangkas, tikwe, limbas, labuyo, salagunting, talabong, lapay, kamaboy, kanduro, tariktik, balikasyaw, manunubing, salaksak and mamumugot.

Former hunters can probably tell you the differences among punay, alimukon, tukmo, balud, bato-bato and punyalada. They will also exaggerate their stories, while at it.

Pinoys who can tell you the difference between the kandarapa and the hagibas are becoming rarer. Those who can differentiate loro, abucay and kolasisi probably number more, although these birds are becoming rarer due to illegal collection for the bird trade and destruction of forests—their homes.

Those who think the national bird is still the maya (Chestnut Munia) are mistaken; it’s the Philippine Eagle. And then again, what is a maya? We have lots of “mayas”: mayang-bahay, mayang-kawayan, mayang-kosta, mayang-paking and mayang-dampol. There’s even a so-called “Baclaran maya,” those poor juvenile munias and sparrows which are hand-dyed blue, green or maroon by vendors and sold to kids outside the Baclaran church, along with Crested Mynas and Javan Sparrows. Sometimes, one sees these artificially-colored “Baclaran mayas” in the wild, escapees, joining their natural-colored kin. So when you see a maroon-colored maya zipping by, don’t call National Geographic yet to report a new discovery, chances are that red dye will wash off after a few rainy days.



Amid this dearth of information, any effort to increase public awareness about the plight of Philippine wildlife is welcome.

The newly-produced “Birdwatching in the Philippines Vol. I” is therefore a timely addition to the literature. This handsome book, produced by the Department of Tourism with help from The Wild Bird Club of the Philippines and Recreational Outdoor Exchange (R.O.X.), was designed by Robert Alejandro and written by Carlos M. Libosada Jr.



The book features photos of birds seen in the Philippines by leading Pinoy or Philippines-based wildlife photographers like Tina Mallari, Ivan Sarenas, Bobby Kintanar, Benedict de Laender, Nicky Icarangal, Orly Punzalan, Luis Limchiu and Nilo Arribas. The book shows the basics of responsible birding in the Philippines.



It’s human nature to save anything enjoyable. While various Philippine environmental NGOs are knee-deep in the nitty-gritty and often thankless (and not enjoyable) job of working with local communities to help preserve our forests and other natural habitats, this DOT book aims to make birdwatching an enjoyable pastime for foreign and local tourists. It is hoped, that when more Pinoys enjoy the wildlife around them, they will take an active interest in preserving these wild places and creatures, and not pave them over to make way for casinos, condos and parking lots.

What worries me about the fate of the almost-extinct Philippine Eagle is that most Pinoys don’t really enjoy this magnificent species outside of cages. Pinoys have become so used to seeing Philippine Eagles inside cages that there seems to be no urgent action—aside from pockets of conservation like the Philippine Eagle Foundation—to save the Eagle’s remaining wild population, or to seriously stop the cutting of native Philippine hardwoods, the preferred nesting trees of this unique raptor. If the Philippine Eagle goes extinct in the wild, it will be a damning indictment of Filipinos—a people who cannot even save its own national bird!



To observe and record birds in the Philippines, one needs a reliable guidebook. For all its nice features, “Birdwatching in the Philippines Vol. 1” is not a guidebook that will help one identify birds in the wild. It will not, for example, help you separate a Buzzing Flowerpecker from a Pygmy Flowerpecker, or a Chinese Goshawk from a Japanese Sparrowhawk. The only bird book guide for the Philippines remains “A Guide to the Birds of the Philippines” by Robert S. Kennedy etal. which is published by Oxford University Press. Unfortunately, this is not available in local bookstores.



But despite its limitations as a guidebook, “Birdwatching in the Philippines Vol. 1” is a good book for the beginner birder and budding naturalist to have. Some people I know always get goggle-eyed when I show them a picture by Tina Mallari of a White-bellied Woodpecker, a species found in the Philippines. Yep, we have woodpeckers in the Philippines, although, since they need extensive stands of forest to survive, they need our help. Clear-cutting of forests to make charcoal and furniture is dooming our woodpeckers.



Another family of birds that are harmed by our rapacious need for forest resources are owls. Little-understood, owls need big stands of trees to rest in during the day.



Aside from the larger, easier-to-see ones, we have a host of tiny, unobtrusive species like the smart-looking Silvery Kingfisher which can only be found in Mindanao, Bohol, Leyte and Samar. It has a chic black-and-white ensemble and bright-red “boots.” A photo of an individual by Benedict de Laender appears in this book.



And of course, a beautiful Blue-naped Parrot foraging on the tree canopy, by Tina Mallari, can also be seen in this book. Hopefully, people will note the difference here between caged and wild parrots and put an end to the practice of caging birds. If we take the time to search and observe these birds, we’d realize what a colorful country we have. If only we’d take better care of it.



All the birds require is that we leave them alone. Leave their nests alone, leave their feeding trees alone, leave their nesting-trees alone, leave the trees where they perform their courtships, leave the trees where they raise their young, leave the trees where they rest and sleep. Respect: It’s really not too much to ask.

The other day I found myself in one of those funny-exasperating incidents that make up the life of a pedestrian Metro Manilan. I was in the Cubao LRT station and saw a card-dispenser with an intriguing laser-printed sign scotch-taped over the machine’s front. The sign read:

This Machine Accepts 5 and 10-Peso Coins.
This Machine DOES NOT Accept New Coins.

An old-fashioned machine that demands which coins to digest! How novel. There was also something poetic about those two lines; it struck me as some kind of cruel joke-cum-poem created at the expense of poor pedestrians who have to suffer all manner of inconvenience and indignity just to get from point A to B around the metro. What’s more, as I took a step closer to the machine, I found out that its small LCD window showed a faint warning:

OUT OF ORDER

Just when I have the OLD coins the machine wants! Drats.

I fumbled around my bag for a camera but I found out that my camera needed recharging. Someone came up to me, read the sign, and together we had a bit of a chuckle. The security guard also came by and gave a sheepish grin when I pointed at the busted machine with the sign which seemed to resemble a cruel psych experiment.

So, with infinite patience, we left the tyrannical machine and lined up to get our LRT cards from the humans behind the windows. Queuing for the privilege of getting LRT cards from a human takes more time than using the card-dispensing machines, so while waiting one has to distract oneself with something.

While waiting in line, I was surprised to hear poems being read over the speaker system. With growing interest, I heard funny, unpretentious Pinoy poems being read. The two poems that stayed with me were by Fidel Rillo and Jose F. Lacaba. Unfortunately, I forgot to note down the Rillo poem but I enjoyed it immensely when I heard it. The Lacaba poem was read (very nicely too!) by Romnick Sarmenta (please don’t make me explain who Romnick is; ask your unmarried aunt or uncle who this guy is).

When I reached home, I frantically searched for the Jose F. Lacaba book of poems I know I have. Somewhere. After wrecking the room and flinging books, cats, unpaid bills, unused exercise equipment, unmatched socks, cobwebs, the long-lost pair of eyeglasses, and other items out of the way, I finally unearthed my Lacaba poetry book, “Edad Medya: Mga Tula sa Katanghaliang Gulang,” and I did a loud yell that scattered the cats across the room.

Spurred by what I heard over at the LRT station, I re-read Lacaba’s 103-page book cover to cover that night. It was like rediscovering a piece of treasure. The Lacaba poem I heard at the LRT station isn’t in this book, though, and I thought of searching for the other Lacaba book I know I have. Somewhere. But the cats peering from a tangle of flung books, magazines and other bric-a-brac gave me evil looks so I decided to give them a rest and look for the book some other time.



Re-reading Lacaba’s poems in “Edad Medya” is a pleasure. I must have read it first in 2000 (that’s the year my copy says Anvil published it). The price tag is still there: an amazing P75.

Here’s one of my favorite poems from Lacaba’s “Edad Medya”:

Sa mga umaga

Sa mga umagang tinatanghali ako ng gising,
inaabrasador ko ang iyong unan,
at marahang pinaplantsa ng bukas kong palad
ang gusot sa kama na iniwan ng iyong katawan,
at pagkatapos ay iginuguhit
ng isang daliri sa kama
ang memoryadong balangkas at hugis
ng iyong balikat, at baywang, at balakang.

Sa mga umagang tinatanghali ako ng gising,
mananatili ako sa kama, ninanamnam
ang gunita ng mga gabing nagdaan:
maaaring inunan mo ang aking dibdib,
dito, sa pagitan ng puso at kanang braso,
at nalanghap ko ang samyo
ng iyong buhok,
at maaaring inalis ko ang ilang hibla
na pumasok sa aking bibig,
kumiliti sa aking mga mata,
at maaaring hinaplos ko ang iyong buhok,
ang napakakinis mong buhok na tuwing umaga’y
nilalagyan mo ng langis ng niyog.

Sa mga umagang tinatanghali ako ng gising,
hinuhulaan ko kung saan ka naroroon:
maaaring sa likod-bakuran, winawalis
ang mga tuyong dahon ng makopa; o maaaring
sa kalsada, naglalakad nang mabilis,
hinahabol ang araw, nagpapawis,
paminsan-minsa’y humihinto para magbunot
ng pansit-pansitan sa gilid ng daan;
o maaaring nakarating na ng bahay
at matiyagang nililinis ang pansit-pansitan,
tinatanggalan ng ugat, inaalisan ng lupa,
bago pakuluan ang dahon at tangkay.

Tiyak na pagtayo ko’y isusumbat mo sa akin,
habang hinihigop mo ang sabaw ng pansit-pansitan,
na marami ka nang nagawa
—nakapaglaba, nakapaglinis, nakapagsaing—
habang ako’y nag-iinin sa higaan.
Subalit ang mga gunita ng mga gabing matalik
ay mga gunitang sumasalag sa anumang sumbat.
Huwag kang magagalit kung hindi ko
inaalintana ang sumbat
sa mga umagang tinatanghali ako ng gising.

This poem alone is worth the P75 book price in 2000. I don’t remember enjoying a Pinoy book of poems like this one before. One of the reasons could be that I have not bought another Pinoy poetry book since 2000. Maybe it has to do with the fact that books now cost considerably more than Lacaba’s P75 in 2000.

So the next day, I made sure to buy a new (post-2000) Pinoy poetry book. What I found was another treasure: Joel M. Toledo’s “Chiaroscuro” published by University of Santo Tomas in 2008 (which should be sufficiently current).



Toledo teaches Literature at Miriam College, Quezon City and has won a bushel of awards in poetry, national and international. Given the millions of poems and “poems” written by sad and lonely (possibly suicidal) Internet denizens, winning an international poetry contest is nothing to be sneezed at.

There is an exacting and measured quality in Toledo’s poetry which demands constant re-reading. Enjoyment comes from repeated readings and finding something new each time. Maybe this is the gift of poetry in these difficult times: it makes us sit up and think sublime, lofty thoughts that carry us, even for a moment, far from the humdrum.

One of Toledo’s poems in this collection is the following:

The Wild

What little I know of luminosity, I learned
from this: a cheerless child weaving into the night,
negotiating the paths of ghosts. He is ten,
his frail hands clutching small darknesses.

He doesn’t understand fear.
The fireflies have drawn him out, the evening
a terrible creature of jewels and gems. The house retreats
farther and farther back: broken, tamed.

How he wants to touch the lights, to own them.
He strains forward, groping for openings
in the wall of dark, fingertips finding
one another. Suddenly a world

kindled and pulsating. The fireflies throb ecstatic
in the distance, trapped in the curl of thumb
and forefinger, the child’s hands borrowing light.

But he knows such wildness cannot be held.
I find him a short walk from the house,
caught in the tangle of light.
He is stabbing into the darkness, raging.

And if I come closer, I will hear his heart pounding
fiercely, keeping wild rhythms, child breaking

into light: but listen, we must let go of these things.
I keep back and let the child be—broken, tamed.

I have no idea if Lacaba’s and Toledo’s books can be purchased in bookstores. Whenever I go to the country’s biggest “book chain,” all I seem to see are FHM magazine copies and school supplies on discount. The best way nowadays to get hold of copies of Pinoy poets may be to google Anvil Publishing House for Lacaba’s “Edad Medya” and UST Publishing House for Toledo’s “Chiaroscuro.” If anyone knows the Fidel Rillo poem that’s included in the recorded readings over at the LRT stations, please post it here.

Buen Calubayan’s “Crawling Man” which was shown at 1/of Gallery in Serendra, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, shows a figure on all fours, beaten, weakened, at the mercy of tormentors. According the accompanying media release, Calubayan’s work depicts the ravages of “mind-damaging habits.” But the global financial turmoil in recent weeks has given Calubayan’s work a broader significance for me.

Last week I woke up to find the following words in CNN: “Are we witnessing the decline of western civilization?” Whoa, that struck me as oddly overdramatic and yet, the days following saw multitudes of talking heads falling over themselves as they try to parse the ramifications of what have been described variously as “the global financial meltdown,” “global banking crisis,” “debt spiral” “capitalism in crisis” and my favorite, “Armageddon.”

Multinational financial institutions are in trouble. Visions of the crumbling towers at the end of “Fight Club” danced in my head. Or that scene in one Cold War miniseries where the KGB, using dummy corporations, had invested in the nascent stock markets and at a critical junction, suddenly and systematically pulled out their money, sending the capitalist system into freefall. Ha!

Of course, this is another case where the rest of the world has always been experiencing something dire, but it is only when the infection reaches the trading floor of Wall Street that the mainstream media will acknowledge the crisis as “global.” Haven’t we been suffering “financial meltdowns” in the Philippines for years. Anyway.

What started out as a “sub-prime crisis” and “credit crunch” is now a “banking crisis with serious mainstream implications” so severe (I hear but not necessarily understand) that the US government has proposed a controversial $700 billion rescue package for the ailing banks—those symbols of American economic might. The US presidential campaign has been put on the back burner as the presidential aspirants go to the US senate to hammer out a solution. The US Congress has rejected the Pres. Bush’s Wall Street bailout plan as Americans expressed their disapproval and dismay on why taxpayer money should be used to bail out fat-cat bankers. At the latest, the US senate is working on a revision and instead of “bail out” the package is now called a “rescue plan.”

That AIG is the shirt sponsor of Manchester United, the football team where a certain David Beckham made his bones: such is the sum total of my knowledge about global financial institutions. I don’t pretend to know how these multinationals operate and how their glass-and-stainless steel towers have come to represent the pinnacle of the capitalist system’s dominance in world affairs. In my youth, in more innocent times, I once heard a piece of folk wisdom: A town is in trouble when its tallest building is a bank.

I always thought of that as fair warning, especially since I grew up seeing one or two friends whose houses were seized by banks after their parents failed to meet the necessary payments. I never saw them again, and it was only through hushed tones that the real reason for their disappearance from school and neighborhood trickled to me. I’ve since looked at big financial institutions as dangerous beasts who lend you money but a single infraction on your end could be fatal. Banks in the Philippines, in my experience, were always tight and miserly.

So it was not without a hint of schadenfreude that I tuned in to CNN and Fox shows where commentators discuss the plight of the giant lending institutions. But later on, when news about layoffs and job losses joined the chorus of concerns, I lost my initial glee about seeing financial giants in trouble. I’ve heard that when the US economy continues to tumble, its citizens might start to forgo some luxuries including healthcare—this could be a cause for concern for Filipino nurses and other healthcare specialists hoping to work in the USA.

I don’t know how all this will pan out. Seeing the banking behemoths humbled as in Calubayan’s “Crawling Man’ is an awesome sight. Oh how the mighty have fallen! But then maybe this recession is just a blip in the march of capitalism as a dominant force in the world. History tells us that bank crises are temporary. Maybe the capitalist system will rebound stronger than before after this recession—with even more miserly banks whose services are out of reach for poor folks. Banks who lend only to the rich and never to those who actually need financial help.

Or maybe, just maybe, these extraordinary times will lead Pinoys to reexamine why, as they work their asses off just to make ends meet, the tallest, biggest buildings in town are owned by banks. Maybe this will make Pinoys reexamine why the banks are getting richer, as we, small folks, get poorer.

Second week of September: The season's first waves of wintering birds have arrived in the country. Keen to escape the Siberian winter, they wing towards tropical countries with balmy weather (and hopefully, hospitable grounds), including the Philippines, where they stay and bulk up as they wait out the harsh winter cold of their nesting grounds. The big question of course is, how the hell do they know where to go? No one knows. But every year, they find their way here without fail. The Brown Shrike (known in Tagalog as "tarat" because of its loud raspy chatter) is perhaps the most well-known wintering bird in the Philippines. Those who grew up in the countryside associate the shrike's arrival with the fruiting lanzones and rambutan.

Fact: The big wave of wintering shrikes from northern Asia reaches the Philippines like clockwork, so that observers have even pinpointed their arrival date: second week of September. How do these birds know it's the right time to leave their breeding grounds in mainland Asia? Again, no one knows.

As a way of greeting the shrikes and other wintering migrant birds when they reach the country, a group of Manila-based local birdwatchers troop to an inhospitable portion of Manila Bay that everyone else avoids like the plague: the strip of grassland along Manila Bay between the shiny SM Mall of Asia and the not-so-shiny Coastal Mall in Parañaque. This dirty and unsightly place will not make it to any eco-tourism brochure, but this is one of the easiest places in Metro Manila to observe migrating waterbirds and shrikes newly-arrived from their long, perilous journey. Those who've visited bird sanctuaries in other countries moan about how there's so much garbage in Tambo - a place that the government could showcase as an urban wildlife sanctuary if it was just cleaned up and some bird-hides set up (like that in Olango Island in Cebu).

Aside from shrikes, a host of wintering birds show up in Tambo. One of those is the Siberian Rubythroat, a species that breeds in Siberia, northern China and Japan. Tambo also has its resident bird populations like the Grass Owl that the patrolling security guards know about - although one of them sidled up to me and asked if owls attack humans. No, I had to tell the big swarthy man with a shotgun, owls keep the rat population in check. If we gun down our owls and destroy all the grasslands where they nest, we'll be doing the rats of Manila a big, big favor.

Birdwatchers just call this place the Tambo grassland. It's not an ideal place to birdwatch, what with the garbage, stray dogs and that annoying Manila fixture - the officious security guard who considers even public spaces his own domain. I guess this utmost seriousness on the job is what makes Filipino employees well-regarded outside the Philippines. But here, confronted by a belligerent security guard who doesn't understand the concept of public-access areas, it's kind of a hassle.

Tambo, in fact, is a poor birding site. There are no bird-hides where people can sit safe from the sun. There are no bird guides and no helpful signs. But, aside from those inconveniences, this is one of the last few wild places left in the metro.

And it may soon be gone. Fences have been erected and signs proclaim the soon-to-be-built "Pagcor Entertainment City" along the water's edge. No one knows if the Pagcor Entertainment City will keep a portion of the grassland as it is. Or if they will pave the entire area and convert it into a parking lot.

In other countries, the value of wildlife and pockets of wild places situated in urban areas add to the appeal and charm of those cities. The Pagcor Entertainment City, once built, will surely give the government much needed income. But hopefully, a portion of the money earned in its gambling tables will be spent to protect and/or build wildlife sanctuaries in the metro.

When our children grow and have children of their own, will they be proud of us if we build more casinos or nature parks? Which ones will improve their quality of life? Which decisions will make them proud of us? Will the future generations of Metro Manilans be proud of us if we keep on paving over the land and building malls and casinos given what we already know about the benefits of wildlife sanctuaries?

Aside from the Tambo grasslands, there are pockets of wild areas left around Manila Bay, but these wild pockets are shrinking each year and get choked by human-generated plastic rubbish.

In my previous post, I appreciated artist Jerson Samson’s detailed slice of Pinoy life, which showed people living cheek by jowl and conducting their business within confined places. But at the same time I was nagged by a persistent thought: When there’s too many people and space is a premium, where do the garbage go? Where do people in crowded areas throw their wastes?

Then the other day I received an interesting link. It was about two guys who made their own sea-going vessel from scrapped airplane parts and lots of plastic bottles and other rubbish.

To be exact: The duo made a 9-meter raft out of a Cessna fuselage, 15,000 plastic bottles, 20 salvaged sailboat masts and 5,000 plastic bags woven into rope to lash the raft parts together.

Their mission: sail from California, USA to the island of Hawaii to drum up global awareness about the serious problem of plastic debris and pollution in the world’s oceans. Along the 4,200 kilometer journey, the pair collected water and marine life samples to show how much of the seawater has actually become a “plastic soup.” Some of the fish they caught during their 87-day voyage, upon examination, showed horrendous amounts of ingested plastic pellets and other particles. Okay, so this is where our garbage go.

During their voyage, the duo of Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal met up with the adventurer and environmental crusader Roz Savage, who is on her own journey to raise global awareness about plastic debris—by sailing solo across the Pacific in a rowboat. Yes. Alone. In a rowboat. Across the Pacific.

The three want “single-use plastics” to be banned, saying they’re wasteful and usually end up in the ocean. “Recycling is one solution, but it’s just a small part of the puzzle,” Paschal was quoted online by the newspaper The Hindu.



On the Junk-onauts blog at http://junkraft.blogspot.com, videos, photos and diary entries from the journey can be viewed. As one can expect from such quixotic projects, the blog entries make for fascinating reading. Below is an excerpt when the pair was just about to enter the open ocean.

Then the Coast Guard showed up.

The U. S. Coast Guard, flying low in a C-130, circled us several times, each time banking in tighter circles.

“Uhh, sailing vessel this is Coast Guard aircraft circling above you, over,” our radio crackled.

“This is JUNK,” I responded. Joel and I wore grins from ear to ear.

“We’ve never quite seen anything like your vessel. What’s it made of?” they asked. We gave them the laundry list of materials: Cessna 310 fuselage, 15,000 plastic bottles, 20 sailboat masts, and 5000 plastic bags woven into rope.

“Do you guys have a website or something?” another voice inquired. After a few moments of polite introductions, the Coast Guard began asking the standard questions for any vessel, about life jackets, radios, sail plans, emergency equipment.

“Before we go do you guys need anything?” they asked.

“How about a weather report?” I replied. Far south from where we are is the breeding ground for tropical storms. They rarely come our way to warmer waters, but sometimes a hurricane will bend toward Hawaii. They came back with no information worth worrying about. We should have asked for a pizza.

They bid us good luck, fair winds and following seas. Before circling one more time, they gave us a phone number to call in case of an emergency. Like 911 for the high seas. Soon our last visitor for the day was gone.

The moon rises, the sails hang like curtains, the sea is gentle. We hope for wind.

The Junk raft’s Hawaiian trip made me think of the Philippines’ own monumental plastic woes. Last year, I was part of a small team that surveyed part of the Manila Bay coastline for wintering waterbirds. Our team went to the part of Manila Bay in Tanza, Navotas which is near Bulacan.

The sight that greeted us was truly astounding. A beach of plastic garbage. I write “astounding” because a few kilometers south of us, multimillion-peso condominiums are up for sale. The sellers of those Manila Bay condos touted the stunning Manila Bay sunset as a reason for the gargantuan prices. The same sunset that poor urban families in the coast of Tanza can enjoy for free!



The difference, of course, is that the posh Manila Bay condos are clean and relatively rubbish-free while the beach in Tanza, Navotas is a virtual garbage heap.

Garbage disposal is a NIMBY issue. Not In My Back Yard. The poor families eking out a living on the unglamorous part of Manila Bay can’t afford to demand NIMBY.

So, if you’re a Metro Manila resident, remember that every time you dispose of an innocuous plastic bag in some forgotten garbage can, that plastic bag will not just melt and disappear into the ether. It’ll end up somewhere. Probably inside a fish caught in Manila Bay that will eventually be served in your dinner table.



Many visitors to Manila are mystified why there is not swimming beach along Metro Manila’s coastline. Why Metro Manilans spend so much time inside malls instead of open-air gardens or public beaches. Well, this is one reason why. We’ve turned a potential swimming beach into a garbage dump. It’s the plastics that are enjoying the stunning Manila Bay sunsets in Navotas.

Jerson Samson’s “Ikatlong Mundo” (Third World) is a sardine-packed warts-and-all snapshot of urban Pinoy families living, loving, playing and making-do in tight conditions. Samson combines a persnickety “Where is Waldo?” obsessiveness with wry observations of Pinoy household scenes where religious piety and family togetherness are cherished and the concept of a personal bubble is as alien as the Abominable Snowman in Cubao. This work is being exhibited in ultra-cool Singapore and it makes me wonder how citizens of this enviable island-state who grew up in an orderly and efficiently-run system will view Samson’s vision of a human termite hill where things seem to be on the brink of chaos and disorder, but stop short of becoming utterly shambolic.

While my curiosity for how Singaporeans will interpret this work rages, I have no doubt that for the casual Pinoy art enthusiast, this work makes for fun viewing. Whenever confronted with works about slices of Pinoy life, I always look for three things:

1. The giant wooden rosary on the wall.
2. The giant wooden spoon-and-fork on the wall.
3. The wall decor which shows miniature bladed weapons from around the Philippines (with the tiny kampilan, itak, barong, etc.).

When I find any of those three telltale signs, then I know that the artist is really Pinoy!

Samson shows a keen anthropologist's eye for Pinoy street-level dynamics and household brick-a-brac. There is no hint of moral judgment from the artist, just a lucid recitation of observable facts on canvas.



Maybe for some, this is a worrying picture of rampant overpopulation; of humans gobbling up space and resources for themselves. An argument for responsible population control, perhaps? Look, are these creatures mired in the quotidian? Content to feed and copulate and raise their young, with no higher aspirations whatsoever? People whittling their time on petty matters? Are these just bodies occupying space? A nation of ant-like beings who have collectively achieved nothing of importance to benefit the rest of the world?



Or is this a picture of contentment? A lively representation of people who may not enjoy the luxuries that modern life has to offer, but derive comfort and joy from being around loved ones. Maybe this image shows that what matters most is affection’s persistence in the midst of material difficulty? Humble folk with simple needs who are tolerant and civil to each other given limited resources? Maybe surviving and thriving in masse is achievement enough?

"Ikatlong Mundo" will be on show at Utterly Art Singapore until September 7.

Now, can you find the giant wooden fork on the wall?

This teeming humanity in Samson’s work also somehow reminded me of a post-Olympics report from the website Marginal Revolution which sought to answer the prickly question: Given the size of its human population, why does India win so few Olympic gold medals? A few of the possible reasons mentioned were the lack of social mobility, corruption in government, lack of opportunities for young people to seriously get involved in sports, nutrition problems and others. It made for an interesting read, and the insights from India’s ongoing struggle to land more Olympic golds may also help the Philippines find ways to improve our own Olympic campaigns.

A battle royale erupted over at Sydney, Australia, over the fate of a week-old humpback calf named Colin (eventually found out to be a Colleen). Poor baby humpback got separated from its migrating pod and mistook Sydney yachts for its mother.

Heartbreaking reports tell of yacht owners awakened by a “sucking sound” as the lost and thirsty calf tried to suckle from their boats’ hulls. One boat owner reported that when the calf couldn’t get milk from his boat, it kind of sighed as if “thinking, this is no good.” Weakened and abandoned, there was little that authorities could do for poor Colleen. They mooted the suggestion of constructing a fake teat to feed her stating the enormous volumes of milk that would require. At one point a whale-whisperer was called into action. He sang and talked to Colleen and reported to the world’s media that “the little fella misses the big guys.”

Eventually, the difficult decision to put down baby Colleen was made. This received forceful objections from animal-rights groups who wanted Australia to do more to keep Colleen alive. As one reasoned out, the Australian government has always been on the case of Japanese whalers, so why is it giving up on one calf?

Long after humpback Colleen is gone, the debate will surely rage on whether mercy-killing was the right thing to do for the little big guy.

Speaking of whales, Jonathan Ching's enigmatic “Whale” on show at blanc artspace, shows a derailed locomotive resting on its side. If you squint real hard it does start to resemble a beached whale. Its cowcatcher—the grill-like device meant to scoop up cattle and other objects from the track to prevent derailment—faintly resembles baleen, the filter that a whale uses to sluice krill into its mouth. Yes, the locomotive is big, like a whale, obviously. But I guess the similarities end there unless we delve deeply into the nitty-gritty of whale biology and locomotive design (but who has the time). Maybe these coal-fed locomotives are becoming rarer, like some cetacean species? Nah, that's stretching the comparisons.

A far better way to approach this iron-clad “Whale” is to look at it in the same way that Rene Magritte painted a pipe and wrote "This is not a pipe" below it. Ever since Magritte’s iconic pipe, artists have time and again used this trick to label objects with paradoxical names or captions either as a kind of conceptual joke or to prove a point about the nature of reality and images ("It’s not a pipe, but an image of a pipe!; it’s not a whale but it has whale-like attributes). Twentieth century art showed that everything is relative, yes, and obscurity has its own rewards. You can go ahead and call something anything you want—the question is whether your audience will let you get away with it. This "Whale" (not a whale?) is part of Ching's "Whale Songs for the Disenchanted" at blanc artspace until September 1.

Anyone who grew up glued to The Muppet Show, Saturday-morning cartoons and reading MAD magazine compilations (particularly the anarchic Groucho Marx-meets-Salvador Dali comic surrealism of the Don Martin strips) will find kindred spirits in the paintings of Louie Cordero and Mariano Ching on show at blanc artspace in Mandaluyong City. Here we get pop surreal stuff like wild-eyed bike tots with knee-high socks charging towards zombie-lady made of glowing-green goo.

Zombies seem to figure prominently in pop surrealism and for those who’ve done time in the electronic salt-mines of the 24-hour call center industry with its graveyard shifts, Bizarro-world timekeeping and utter disregard for Third World body-clocks, zombiedom isn’t so much silly invention as a 21st-century career path.

Weird fun is the order of the day. Over at the University of Reading, scientists removed neurons from rat brains and hooked them to electrodes on a robot. The robot takes its instructions from the pink broth of rodent brains and manages to avoid obstacles 80% of the time (hell, even humans can't avoid 100% of obstacles in their way, right?).

So is this the beginning of SkyNet? Over at the University of Geneva, scientists are using the spanking-new Large Hadron Collider to explore how two subatomic particles can seemingly communicate nearly instantaneously, even if they are separated by cosmic distances. Einstein dismissed this in his lifetime, calling it “spooky action at a distance.” But it seems the LHC is going to find more and more situations where Einstein’s ideas don’t apply. Just last week, they seemed to have recorded sub-atomic particles “exchanging information” at speeds ten thousands faster than the speed of light opening the theoretical possibility of faster-than-light (FTL) warp speeds (cue “Star Trek” music). I write “seemed” because this report has generated quite a lot of dissenting opinions from astute particle-physics students (half of whom are named Vikram).

So it’s a brand new world out there. While most of it doesn’t make sense in terms of classical Newtonian physics, it's all in good fun (until the rat-brained machines take over and wipe us out).

Speaking of something that doesn’t quite make sense, I’ve read that Michael Phelp’s outstretched arms are three inches longer than he his tall. Hmm. And could Yelena Isinbayeva’s stomach muscles get any tighter? And, again, why is beach volleyball an Olympic event? And how come Usain Bolt’s singlet flapped in the wind, and yet he outraced his body-hugging jump-suited (supposedly more aerodynamic) competitors? Freaky!

Cordero and Ching’s heady dose of pop surrealism opened last August 15 at blanc artspace.

Let me open this blog about Pinoy visual arts by writing about "Alamat ng Lawa ng Sampalok" (pen and ink on A3-size art paper, colored in Photoshop) by Gerry Alanguilan.

My reasons (aside from it being a superb piece of art):

Reason 1. Like the bloke in the artwork, we are on a quest.

In this piece, a healthy young man is on a mission (judging by the looks of his backpack and staff). We catch him as he is about to step into a path guarded by a pair of hoary trees. Spread out in front of him is the dramatic landscape of Lake Sampalok with the mountains Cristobal and Banahaw. The vision seems to startle him a bit, as if he had just emerged from a dimly-lit moss-heavy jungle represented by the trees that frame the picture out into bright sunlight. It is as if our young man is from the past (with his tight pants with rolled-up trouser legs) and about to boldly enter the future, where, it is hoped he will fulfill his quest, and get a fashion makeover.

The trees aren't just any gracefully aging perennial, by the way. Alanguilan has painstakingly drawn them to look like they came straight out of a past wild and woolly. They are not just long-lived, they are antiquities itself. But there is something solid and dependable with these boskies, like old friends that need only
photosynthesis and not your money. Across the wide lake and forbidding mountains looms an uncertain future.

Like the young man, this blog will embark on a kind of journey about Pinoy visual arts and its myriad forms. It could get strange.

Reason 2. The artwork's appeal cuts across generations, which, hopefully, this blog can do as well.

This artwork in a way bridges the gap between the "Golden Age" of komiks (the late 1950s up to the 1960s, according to the late great artist Francisco V. Coching) with the more recent Pinoy comic book brands which are heavily influenced by video game aesthetics, the Neil Gaiman-and-Dave McKean axis and manga sensibilities.

Alanguilan, who gained wide acclaim for his work with the US comic book publishers Wildstorm and Marvel, modeled his style here after those of the old Pinoy comics greats like Coching, Nestor Redondo, Rudy Florese, Alfredo Alcala and others. Just look at those body-hugging pants with rolled-up legs, isn't that something that Coching used to do?

So we have here an artist, used to the slick and edgy styles of US titles, paying homage to our almost-forgotten local artists.

Reason 3. Being hung isn't the only thing that counts.

Why start a blog about visual arts with a post that is comics-related? Like many Martial Law kids who grew up in a small town, the visual art I mostly encountered while growing up were in the form of Marcos and KBL campaign posters, calendars with their tide schedules and smiley moon phases, giant movie billboards, the giant wooden spoon-and-fork set, the giant wooden rosary, the collection of tiny bladed weapons from around the Philippines and comic books. And of course, Catholic church art with their weepy saints and Jesus portraits with eyes that follow you around the room.

As for TV, we only had one channel—the Marcos propaganda channel—so I stayed away from that.

I had a friend whose house had a copy of Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" but that was that.

Thus, I've never put much thought into the supposed differences between art that hung in galleries and those in the pages of comic books.

Reason 4. In this blog, we get a chance to ask artists what they actually meant to show in their work, and not just guess badly.

And so Alanguilan was kind enough to answer my few questions about "Alamat ng Lawa ng Sampalok."

Me: What was the original purpose for this artwork?

Gerry Alanguilan: The "Sampalok" artwork was a preview for a comic book adaptation of the legends about the Seven Lakes of San Pablo City, which almost saw publication in 2006, but that project fell through. It's definitely something I will be working on in the future.

I have a lot of projects in the backburner. I seem to come up with stories faster than I could actually work on them, which is great because I write them all down in my big black book and I can do these stories one by one in the coming years. At least I won't have to worry about writer's block when the time comes because I have all these
stories written down.

Me: Of all the potentially spectacular images from the myths, why choose this "threshold of a new discovery" image as a preview?

GA: It's symbolic of the kind of journey that the reader will take in discovering the legends of the seven lakes of San Pablo. This artwork would have been significant to San Pablo residents [if the comic book had been made], especially to the majority who have no idea about the legends and myths about our hometown.

Me: Now the characters under the "S," who are they?

GA: They are characters that figure prominently in the legend of Sampalok Lake. The man holding the stick in the air is a god-like being who unleashed his wrath on the evil folks by calling upon a deluge to swallow them and their houses.

Me: Cool! Are those two trees "botanically-correct" sampalok trees? (I know my Philippine birds but not trees!)

GA: I did take extensive photographs of actual sampalok trees for reference, but no, those trees in this drawing are not sampalok trees. The sampalok tree itself will figure prominently in the story.

Me: Thanks Gerry. Much appreciated.

(View my blog at philvisualarts.blogspot.com (co-created by Jay Bautista). If you are a visual artist working in the Philippines and wants to have a work featured, just email me at philvisualarts@gmail.com. Toodle-oo)