WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY

There are so many things I want to write about, like the way I can be watching a play, here, in the Philippines, or rather a series of plays, and find myself instantly transported back to my senior year in high school, where myself and my class performed our play then watched some plays, as terrible as our own, as we stifled our laughter with grim smiles and unstoppable tears. Or the way that proximity to cancer simultaneously slows the nature of time itself down to a crawl, a gesture, while also somehow speeding life up, bring death nearer and nearer with each passing sigh. Or the sight of the clouds touching the mountains, almost drowning them, a fine mist that means no harm. Or my belief that we don't grow up, ever, and instead remain locked in time, held hostage by our own childhood dreams and beliefs, the nexus of responsibility and maturity a fool's game perpetrated by those who wish to hide their essential, youthful heart. Or what it feels like to watch a film in a cinema after ten, twelve months of having celluoid dreams reduced to the heartless size of a television. Or the way it is to experience, for the first time, an emotion like grief, one you've heard about but never truly understood except as an academic concept common to the human species. Or perhaps a comment or two is more than enough. Perhaps I do not need an extended essay to solidify what I feel. Perhaps a week from now, or a month, or a year, or a decade, I will look back on this post and sense what it is that I was trying to say -- something about the futility of words, the necessity of words -- and I will smile a self-satisfied, reflective smile, and wonder about my own extended efforts to say what I mean as fully as possible, with as much depth as the deep end of the swimming pool of your early childhood, blue and vast and filled with swimmers smarter and stronger and more aware than yourself.

VARIOUS SHADES OF LIGHT

For a good many months I've been reading at night without the benefit of a bedside lamp, the kind that people in the movies switch on reluctantly when a late-night phone call commences to wake them up and move the plot. I had been relying on the overhead bulb to illuminate my pages. It was fine, that bulb; it did what bulbs are supposed to do. It shone. I could see. Well enough to read. But I wanted more.

Now I have a small lamp to guide my eyes, and it is bright, bright enough to make me wonder why I had put off getting one for quite some time. The bulb is long and tubular, the neck gray and winding, the base aqua-green and plastic, the switch black and functional. (It does what switches are supposed to do.) Truth be told, it looks like some kind of prop that might be found in a movie about alien greenhouses. Not pretty. But who needs a pretty lamp? A lamp isn't supposed to be quaint; it's supposed to shine. Period.

This one does. In fact, it glows, goddamnit, which is all I ask of a lamp. I could give two shits if it blends in with assorted knickknacks that line this room in this house in this country, the Philippines.

I need a light that will make the words glow, mine and others. I need a light that will make me see clearer and deeper, from alternate angles that the overhead bulbs always seem to miss, almost intentionally. I need a light that will make me see, make me believe, make me persist in the necessary illusion that its glow will endure a little while longer, that I will find some kind of truth beneath its heat. That I will receive. If not a revelation, at the very least a pause, a respite, a thirty minute gap through which I can try to discern where the artificial light ends and some kind of authentic light can commence, transitory and unstable as it may prove to be.

THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND?

A few days ago, while walking down the street in downtown Baguio, I saw something I'd never seen before: two blind people, a husband and wife, or brother and sister, or friend and friend, holding onto each other, tightly, the one in front guiding the way, the one in back following, and I realized that the old expression is not true, not right, not altogether valid, because these people, shimmering in the sun, who some would call handicapped, did not look misguided or out-of-touch or without-a-clue, but instead seemed sure of where they were going, and certain of how they would get there.

LOOKING FOR VENKMAN

Watching the recent kids flick Zathura on the big screen with an eleven-year old in tow, noting his reactions, I remembered how I used to watch films and TV shows, and how I sometimes still do. Not so much watching as reacting, participating, shifting left and right in anxious anticipation as something bad may or may not happen to the central characters who flicker through the gaps from the projector's indifferent light. Rocking back and forth in the seat. Cringing in embarassment when something humiliating happens to somebody we like. As a child, I used to sometimes turn away from the screen while watching silly shows like Three's Company, because, silly or not, I didn't like to see John Ritter be humiliated; I couldn't stand it when the character not-in-the-know remained not-in-the-know while everybody else knew the real deal. The anticipation of waiting for when the unenlightened one had the light shone on him stressed me out. Or when somebody was about to be told something really, really hurtful, or truthful. (Which are usually the same things.) That was bad, too. 'Bad' meaning good, meaning I was there, in the moment, believing in what I saw. No cynicism, no maturity, no understanding of scripts and directors and actors and audiences. And I remembered, too, telling a four-year old acquaintance of mine, back when I was a wise old sage of thirteen, that Venkman in Ghostbusters II was not Venkman at all, but Bill Murray, an actor, paid to play a part. "No, no, he was Venkman," the kid, Blair was his name, insisted. And he was right. For him he was Venkman, not Murray. He was there, on the screen, and it was happening, to him, as we watched, immobile, inert, and sometimes, occasionally, on my good days, when I feel quite young and new, I can get those feelings back, hold them tight, almost horde them.

YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE

I was, if not an expert, at least not a novice. In my knowledge of comics, that is. Every Saturday or Sunday for a good many months during my tenth and eleventh year of life I would meet Jason and Joel, classmates of mine at Pine Grove, at the park adjacent to Evangelista Court, where I lived. We would climb the climbers and slide the slides, all the while discussing the intricate layers of past and present that formed the grid of super-hero powers and etiquette, histories and capabilities, writers and artists and storylines (oh my) that formed the crux of our reading. I had been reading comics a little bit longer than the other two, collecting them a little bit longer; I was a veteran. Years later, long after our weekend comic-chats had gradually faded into that slightly purple haze that childhood memories eventually succumb to, that anaesthesic mix of nostalgia and haziness, I heard about Jason and Joel again. From another friend of mine, Mariano, who attended the same high school as they did. As told to me by Mariano, when finding out that Mariano knew me, the two boys turned to each other, grinned, and said in a sing-song voice meant, I suppose, to replicate my own pre-adolescent tone: "Do you believe in God?"

We choose what we want to remember, at some level, unconscious or otherwise, and what I remember about my weekends with Joel and Jason are questions relating to Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, while what my playmates recollect are my inquiries of a more celestial nature. When hearing about their good-natured mockery of me, I was hurt, almost offended. I had always remembered, fondly, our afternoon bull-sessions; I didn't recollect any religious discussions. Now, from an even more distant vantage point, I can admit that I probably did question them regarding the nature of God's existence, and the ultimate validity of His supposed mojo. I don't remember doing so, but I also don't remember much about nursery school, either, and I'm pretty sure I spent a year there. (Though I do remember the apple juice they served, in little blue plastic cups. That was some good shit, that juice was.)

Raised in a non-religious house, I've always viewed religion itself, the organized kind, with a slightly puzzled detachment, curious but somewhat mystified by the whole spectacle, like an Upper-West Side New York intellectual watching highlights of NASCAR. (Is that where New York intellectuals live, the Upper-West Side?) Thesights and feelings and outright human emoting I could empathize with, even, at some level, yearn for; ti was the logic that eluded me.

I know, I know -- it's about faith, not logic. But the questions I had as a child are the questions I have now:

If you have to give your heart to Jesus to go to heaven, then what about all those people who were born before Jesus? Where are they? And what about all those people who died in the immediate days and weeks following his supposed resurrection, before word got out about his rise from the dead, and the subsequent rules that had to be followed? Were they fucked from the get-go? And what about all those people who were planning to convert, possibly next Tuesday, only to be run over by a Mack truck on Monday night as they raced home on a snowy, slippery road to watch the Leafs play Tampa? And what about all the child molesters and murderers who find God in the clink? What, they get a free pass into heaven, but Nelson Mandela doesn't? And what about the millions of Jews, one billion Chinese, one billion Indians, seventy million Thais, sixty million Vietnamese, and twelve million Cambodians whose faith is aligned with a different deity? They burn in Hell for eternity? I always thought that if there was a God who would do that to His people, than that wouldn't be a God I'd want to follow in the first place. And if Allah is the answer, why does He allow terrorists to wreak havoc in his name?

These are the questions that acquire a deeper resonance after seeing what an unfair shithole a lot of the world really is.

As I get older, as I travel, I'm starting to connect my own dots. They may, in the end, on my deathbed, end up forming a picture that resembles a Rorscach test designed by a lunatic, but so be it. (Or, considering my childhood pastimes, they would probably resemble a Horshack test, given how many episodes of Welcome Back Kotter I've seen. And am I the only who thought the show went to shit when Gabe Kaplan left and Travolta was reduced to the odd cameo every now and then? I mean, Kotter without Kotter would be like Laverne and Shirley without Laverne. Except, now that I think about it, Laverne left that show too, but they kept her name in the title. And if that's not enough to make someone an atheist, then I don't know what is...) I'm beginning to view religion itself as a gradual, man-made response to the sheer unknowability of life itself. Every culture has incrementally authorized its own interpretation of who we are, how we got here, and where it thinks we ought to be going. The fallacy of religious thinking, for me, is the belief that our way, my way, is the one way.

If something is taught to us as children, we believe it. It validates our existence. If we are taught that Jesus is the way, Buddah is the way, Allah is the way, it does not become a learned fact; it becomes an emotional reservoir. Someone much smarter than me once said, maybe it was John Ritter, possibly Don Knotts, that you can't use logic to argue somebody out of something that they didn't learn logic to learn to begin with. Most people's religious belief isn't logical; it's emotional. That's fine; I'm all for emotion. I live for emotion, adrenalized. But when I hear somebody like the Hawaiian-shirt wearing pastor Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose-Driven Life, advise people to "doubt their doubts and believe their beliefs", I throw my hands into the hair and sigh. (The fact that all pastors and priests often seem so damn smug doesn't help, with that calm, confident, condescending smile that arises when one realizes that they have booked a passage to Heaven, first-class, while the unenlightened ones are waving good-bye from the dock, waiting to be trampled by the horsemen coming sometime soon.) Don't question things, he's saying. Don't examine what you believe, and why. Just go along with what you've been taught and what you've been told and what your religion tells you. (And if that plan includes travelling to poor countries and informing their impoverished but good, decent citizens that their entire religions and cultures are based on false principles, and the only way to achieve immortality is to believe in what I believe, well, so be it -- God is great. Never mind that Hamas and Israel are killing each other for religious land. Never mind that a belief in the validity of one's one faith necessitates a belief that all others are flat-out wrong. Never mind that travel is supposed to broaden one's mind, not shrink it, ossify it, close it off. There is a plan, so I've been told, and, between you and me, if you're not part of it, well, hellfire is hot, have you heard?)

Fine. But that's not, well, human. A child is full of doubts, questions, concerns, uncertainties, proclamations. A child looks to the adults for the answers about why the sky is blue and where grandpa goes when he dies, and, all too often, the adult gives them what they want to hear, often in the form of a magic book that has all the answers, an idealized deity set in type.

Maybe I'm biased. I don't know. My church as a child was Marvel comics and the Lincoln Cinema, Ponch on C*H*I*P*S and the Duke boys barelling through Hazzard county, catching the crooks and swigging some moonshine. But I remember those sessions at the park, talking comics and, I guess, guessing about God. They were good times, maturing times. We were out in the world and wondering about it, in our own childlike way.

And maybe, in the end, it's better for adults to point the kids in the direction of their local park and say: "Look, those are tough questions, real questions that you're asking, but we're all novices in this department, and there are no experts, so why don't you head on down to the swings, and shoot the shit about comics and God and life, and see what kind of answers you come up with, because in the end, kid, your guess is as good as mine."

MY (BELATED) TOP TEN

Given that I haven't really seen enough of last year's films to produce a comprehensive list, I've decided instead to offer my top ten Steve Guttenberg films (a tradition I started last year, so why stop now?):

1. Police Academy
2. Diner
3. Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol
4. Short Circuit
5. The Bedroom Window
6. Three Men and a Baby
7. Cocoon
8. Police Academy III: Back In Training
9. Cocoon: The Return
10. Three Men And A Little Lady

WHY AMERICAN IDOL MIGHT JUST SIGNAL THE END OF THE WORLD

After watching the enormously entertaining season premiere of American Idol last night, I'm convinced that it's either the most compulsively watchable show on television, or an obviously imminent sign of the final apolcalpyse that awaits us all, the end of the world, the harbinger of the seven horsemen, minus the horses and plus Paula Abdul, which is not a bad compensation, come to think of it. Watching people with no talent assuming that they have talent, only to hear the distinguished panel of judges rip them to shreds in front of the whole world, appeals to our baser instincts, our less wholesome, voyeuristic qualities that get off on seeing other people in pain, while we sit tight, content, relaxed, swigging a Snapple and downing some Doritos. It's not a particularly American impulse, I don't think, given that the show originated in Britain, has licensed spin-offs around the world, not to mention innumerable rip-offs right here in the Philippines, but it is a fundamentally human impulse, of that I'm sure. And while it's undeniably kinda fun, I'm not so sure that it's totally healthy.

This is the thing. Competition makes the world go round, like it or not, love it or not, and a lot of us like to see others win while others fail. That's fine. That's normal. It might be built in to our genetic structure. Whatever. But it seems to me that this obsession with shows like American Idol, on the part of the participants and fans, hints at a darker, creepier desire, the one that says that the only validity in life comes from reams and reams of people worldwide clapping their hands in unison while shouting our names as we stand on a stage and smile and bask in the adulation. It's not the urge to make music or sing nice songs that's wrong, and a lot of the contestants on the show seem to genuinely have that gift; hell, most of the people in the Philippines are fantastic singers who sing for the sake of singing. But it seems like a good percentage of those bouncing around the American Idol stage are there simply because they need to be liked and loved, big-time, all the time.

There's this cool psychotherapist named Arthur Ellis, ninety-plus years old, who has boiled all of our foibles and insecurities and neuroses down into three simple categories, the anxiety over which fuel most of our (usually) irrational compulsions. We think thus:

1) People Must Like Me
2) I Must Do Well
3) The World Is Unfair

That's it. That's all. The winners and losers of American Idol seem to fit squarely into any or all of the above categories. (As do the rest of us.) Ellis's advice is rather startling, in this new-age, psycho-babble society we inhabit -- he recommends a) liking yourself regardless of what others think; b) liking yourself even if you do not do well; and c) recognizing, like an adult, that the world is unfair, so get over it.

Period.

So simple, and yet so difficult to follow.

He's basically saying: "Look, fuck what everybody else is saying, do what you want, do your best, and recognize that life sometimes, if not often, screws you over." Most of our problems arise not from the problem itself, he postulates, but from our worrying over the problem, its root, its source, its effect on the rest of our lives. Just like yourself because it makes life easier, he's saying; just live life and take the bad with the good and don't whine.

Again, not easy.

But I can't help but think that he's on to something. All those preening and desperately anxious faces on American Idol so want to be loved, need to be loved, because, well, that 's what our culture decides success is all about -- having groups of strangers applaud us for doing well and scorn us for trying, and usually failing. Fuck it, Ellis says; just get on with it, he says.

Good advice. Advice I will try to follow, to be sure.

In the meantime, should I happen to, you know, accidentally encounter the newest edition of American Idol on Star World Channel 28 next Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. (Filipino time), I might, you know, take a gander for a moment or two.

I mean, come on -- do you expect me to change overnight? And besides, Simon's one-liners, cruel as they are, can be spot-on and dead-on funny sometimes. Life isn't fair, and neither is he, which is either comforting or disturbing, depending on how you look at it.