a monastery in the age of touchscreen

the relevance of a monastery in the age of touchscreen, sunscreen, facebook and ipod

Many, I suppose, are afflicted with compulsive facebook and/or multiply syndrome. I mean how many of us grab any chance we can get to check facebook or multiply any given minute? (and now with iphone and its applications, checking these sites can be done heartbeat after hearbeat). Minute after minute to check what one is doing (in the loo) or what one is up to after being dead bored in the last 30 minutes or where one plans to go in an hour. These social networking sites, if one happens to still get his hands on a newspaper and really read the paper (in my generation, who buys newspaper anyway when many a site update news in real time; but if we do, it's either the Saturday paper for weekend party updates at sundown or Sunday paper for job hunting), can make or unmake a techie, build or rebuild friendships, create or break opportunities or worse, in the news not so long ago, these sites become the centerstage for one kiddo who ended his life for the world to see (I'm not sure though if it was a social networking site. i'm too lazy to google it). May his soul rest in peace.

The idea of keeping ourselves updated makes us also vulnerable to keep everything public, therefore easily accessible. Some, if you notice in many youtube anonymous comments, goes beyond propriety and unto the harsh reality of digital mudslinging and washing dirty underpants in public. Who can stand these verbal, rather digital assault? The stress level of this generation was never imagined in our grandparent's time. On the other hand, the demands in workplaces in concrete jungles can be as toxic as it can get. And for the most part, spa, mindless sex and what-not are all but temporary relief.

Though I am not saying the monastery offers one eternal solution in this modern age but in this age of touchscreen and online dating it has become a refuge for the heartbroken, an unwed pregnant woman and many urbanite souls who wish to take a walk away from lala land--and gallivant inside the hundred hectare property where peace and quite and good food (for the body and spirit) are well-prepared. Though not as disconnected from the world as you might think (stop thinking it's warped in medieval period. the monk I know has a cellular phone and email), you will feel transported to a place where peace and quite and good food is enjoyed by all.

You just let silence speak to you, and if, at any rate, it becomes deafening, you can always have someone to speak with--the Benedictine priest, the monks, the kitchen hand, the gardener and if you may, God inside or outside the adoration chapel.

I came there to experience what most people who have visited the place rave about--a very solemn dawn mass with a heavenly choir singing. But in the end, it was not what I was seeking after all. In there, I found my peace and sense of self even for just a couple of days. I surrender myself to a life of prayer in the tradition of the Benedictine monks. I hate to admit it, but the silence that spoke to me from the hills of Bukidnon made tears well up my eyes--and flowed endlessly until I feel a certain feeling of lightness.

What the guidebook didn't warn me is that I'll fall in love with the place the moment its perfect rhythm pumps into my system-- so hopelessly in love I'll be coming here for an annual self-retreat year after year after year.











it's not what you're thinking...(whilst waiting for the pealing of the bell for Misa de Gallo)

Benedictine Monastery

Monastery of the Transfiguration
Barangay San Isidro, Malaybalay, Bukidnon




By the time Malaybalay City wakes up to the chill of a December morn, I was already at the yellow box waiting for a Valencia-bound multicab. Manong the receptionist--who is from San Isidro where the monastery is located--back at the inn gave me directions and habal-habal rate from the highway to the Church of the Transfiguration--the church is the last project of the late National Artist for Architecture Leandro Locsin. After a series of adventures and misadventures, I was already two barangays beyond the junction.





Here now is the reason why I decided to spend two days and a night and a dawn mass (with the renowned Bukidnon Boy's Choir singing) inside this hundred hectare property in the middle of nowhere. The uber-friendly rate--hold your breath--of Php600.00 daily (it's actually called donation; and includes your room and three board meals, two snacks and 24-hour free-flowing coffee; meals and coffee all prepared by the blessed hands of the Benedictine monks) is beyond me.

More on breakfast with the monks next time.

Meanwhile...here is day ONE, away from all the worries and cares of the world and deep into silence and SELF and into a life of prayer. For one moment that eventually turned into days, I was at peace with the world and myself; and the call (..should i answer soon?) to the monastic life reverberates once more..and this time it's louder..








If heaven is on earth, this must be IT!

A Peso Short and Kilometers Away from Home

In his two-week backpacking trip to Mindanao, RV Escatron woke up to the sound of surf, got addicted to surfing in Surigao, rekindled old ties, holed up in the Benidictine Monastery of the Transfiguration in Bukidnon to attend the Simbang Gabi which gave him goosebumps through and through (which by far, he considers a paranormal experience), reawakened a call to the monastic life which he thought have long died eight years ago in New Manila, and in Cagayan de Oro City, he met an award-winning literary writer who happens to be one of his favourite poet whose account he stumbled upon facebook and whom he thought had gone reclusive and quit writing poetry altogether in the last 15 years and finally tried to find spare coins to cross the last leg of the trip—the sleepy hometown of his childhood.





I stopped counting the days and lost track of my expenses the afternoon I boarded the Mindanao-bound plane. In less than an hour after the airbus taxied the runway, here I am in the middle of the airport parking area waiting for a lift C had arranged, last minute, whilst I was in the boarding area in Mactan.

The ride from Butuan to a town in the fringes of the Pacific Ocean would take four hours at best. What C did not prepare me for was the four hours would stretch to six when in the middle of nowhere two of the flat tires had to be pulled off the car. And seven hours later, I would have had my first decent meal of the day.

The town of Placer marks the midway drive to Cantilan town, both in Surigao Province. And the rough stretch of road begins here past the Red Mountain’s one-lane road—boulders on one side, deep gorge on the other. On a night trip, these mountains, all in red sans the foliage, glow with restraint the day before full moon.

Two weeks have seen me in a love affair with surfing and break my heart all the same. The weeklong backpacking trip began in Cantilan, off-Siargao island and it stretches to days. But even before I have yet to unpack my things, I have to pack them again to attend Cousin El-el's wedding four hours drive away, past the town of Tandag, in Marihatag town. This sleepy town, still in the Pacific rim, offers me much of the waves and small islands that dot in the horizon. As the bus navigated the snaking road, the waves clashing the shores and the surf lining in the distance reminds me that next year, in the whole length of December, I will ride them again with much control and less fear. Ultimately, water will become my second skin.

(first of 10 parts)

wanted: girlfriend, no ugly

seen in Dumaguete today


POSTED's beside's a main road: how desperate can you get's? hahaha


hoookey. fine. contackin nyo.

my brother, father's son

How do you string words together and slip them into the hands of a person you barely know or a brother you only meet eight, nine or barely a dozen times in your entire lifetime?

He is your father’s son. And at an early age you have already acknowledged that he is. From what started as something of an overheard conversation in your grandmother’s wake—in the days that follow, with your fourth grade sensibility, you begin to shape and reshape the idea that you have a brother, older than you by two years. The kind of brother that you will never share house with because he is from your father’s bachelor’s past. Then that moment when truth falls so naturally, so gently, arrived. Though it escapes you already on whether or not it was your father or an uncle’s words that validates his existence, it doesn’t matter because all along, you wished for an older brother who will make you slingshots and toys from timber and who will carry you on his shoulder when you cross the pea green river beyond the rice paddies to bring lunch to your father who tills the land on Saturdays. But he came into your range rather too late when, at that age, you can already do things on your own.

Then you meet him for the first time. And there is no denying that he is your father’s son. He seems to be plucked straight from your father’s yellowed university graduation portrait. And you begin to get envious because he is handsomest than any of you in the family. But more distinctly, he has the typical silence, the timidity, the temperance—the trademark of your father’s clan.

Year after year, he sits in one corner on a Good Friday afternoon. Year after year, in the background while the priest prepares for the mass, over the mic, somebody always mouths with a voice that cracks for good theatrics, the Seven Last Words of Christ. You want  to approach him, your kuya and squeeze the space with the whole town which only go to church on a regular basis, three times a year—Christmas, New Year and Good Friday. But you, in the end, limit yourself to simple hand gestures and nod to acknowledge the presence of the unspoken, of a space between you, of a ken between brothers. Those were your last memories of him, ten or fifteen years ago. So, one day when your life, by far, takes one rewarding turn, you plan to invite him for a get-together. The date is indefinite. Anytime this year.

But just last week, at the onset of reunions and Christmas parties, he left. And the unsent dinner invitation will sit on top of your cabinet and gather dust. Until the paper turns yellow with age and the print fades with the distant past.

And you want to believe like most kids who console themselves when left with no definitive answer about their loved ones when they die; when you want to wax the glaring possibility of what-ifs; you want to believe—in the midst of grief, of a rainy Saturday afternoon in the middle of one of the twin lakes--that he is now one of the stars you see from the roof deck on a still, cloudless night.

for Kuya Obet who left just when September begins

 

of last trip and (the feel of) wind on your face

There is something about last trips that you particularly like. So you begin to recall the most recent one and dig the burrows of memory and found for yourself images that are hard to make out. It’s been a while since you’ve taken the ride and really, really found the joy of doing it.

 In an attempt to hit something hard and to start building images around it, you try to shape and reshape the shadows and nameless faces in a half-empty slow-moving ride home and probably put backstories into each of them. But in the end, it’s the wind on your face that grabs notice.  

  It’s a moonlit night and you are clinging by the rear entrance with your foot slightly above the running board; the position affords you the view of the mountain’s silhouette ahead as the jeep ascends toward the town at the foot of Mt. Cuernos de Negros. The wind is already balmy at this time of day. And the stillness of the landscape, like after the rain, heightened what you want. So you close your eyes and feel the wind on your face. And inside your head, one after the other, diverse images gradually fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

 The last trip home is at nine. Or sometimes, depending on sheer luck, it can be thirty minutes earlier. In some rare trips, if you’re lucky enough, the jeepney leaves even with just five or six or seven of you. It is through these trips that you can have the whole window to yourself and claim enough leg room and more than enough potential story sketches. The drive is not the kind that jolts you. Rather, it is, as always, slothful, lethargic and dangerously sappy.

 In front of you, near the rear entrance, is a woman, silver-haired and with tiny wrinkles at the corner of her eyes. Her hands are busy holding empty plastic containers. Many of them string together in a leash. She seems to have been abandoned by her family and left to fend for herself. What strikes you, more than the empty bottles and the grease on her skin and shirt, is a puppy, heads occasionally bobbing from the sack. The pup, in a state of malnourishment and therefore lacks the energy to bark, sits quietly on her lap.

 At the other end is a couple with one texting while the other in a med school uniform is sleeping with head comfortably resting on the other’s shoulder. The boy has what appears to be the girl’s thick book. A few spaces beside you, just behind the driver’s seat, are clerks in their uniform with grocery bags by their feet and students in their uniforms with books peering from their bags. The driver, who seems to stare blankly at the road ahead, has the look of assurance that with the pace, his trip gives everyone, himself included, the time to leave yours and his disquietude, even for just a while, and intently listen to the hum of the universe.

 

The MOST Hilarious TVC I've found this week!!!

By golly!! ROFL.!!!

UP Visayas Writers' Workshop

University of the Philippines Visayas Creative Writing Workshop :: UP VisWrite
UP Tacloban College

30 years. 30 days.

The tide turns. Waves race toward your toes. Tonight, you wonder if somebody at the edge of this sea, on a similar breakwater or probably on a parallel universe, sits and skips stones just like you do. But you can only make out a blink arranged neatly in the island before you.

It’s been 30 days and 30 years. And you want to find yourself elsewhere. Some place better than this. Perhaps on a cliff. No. A bamboo platform on a cliff. A room with doors that open to the sea. The gauze curtains gathered to one side. With the surf, hazy white lines that falls and rises. Falls. Rises.

c[]ngratulatiOns! Sam Gael Gulfan Macabit and Mr. & Mrs Primo Arbon

Start:	Jun 13, '08 10:00p
Location:	Tacloban City and Cagayan de Oro City

It's a red letter day TODAY for:

1. Mr. & Mrs. Ganymede Macabit--Christening of Baby Sam Gael in Tacloban City. I am supposed to be one of the godfathers. Dang! I miss it.

2. Mr. & Mrs. Primo Arbon III church wedding and reception near Cagayan de Oro City. Primo was a colleague at PAREF Springdale Private School for Boys who eventually relocated to Kansas for a teaching post.

My tight schedule prevents me from going to 2 different cities at one time. And I'm here in front of the PC fixing Monday's cultural exchange programme. hahays :-)

time out; method to this madness

In a fit of anger, you say you form a fist and count ten pussy cats to maintain peace and balance. And you added that when everything burns like hell’s kitchen, you lock your room, roll the shutters and holler at the top of your lungs.

But you never said anything about the days when you leave the doors and windows open to just stay in bed, lay on your back and count the number of grains or squares or cobwebs on the white ceiling. They often wonder if you turn green with madness or red with fury because you’ve never shown your emotion in public.

You only burst once when a salesclerk--in her own mistake thinks she can mask her negligence--raises her voice at you.  You just lose it. You comfort yourself that you are not angry; just stressing a point. In truth, the rage consumed your pride and ego that very moment. Since then, you stop wondering what you are capable of doing in public.

But lately you take a second look at being non-confrontational and the rooftop. The seldom used rooftop. In your head, in between ordinary days, in a fit of madness, you grab the yoga mat and roll it on a space that can hold a party of ten. On that night, as you lay on your back with the ocean of stars before you, the few secrets of the universe hums, rolls and unrolls with your mat.

Then you left that zone and retrieve Van Gogh from memory to distract the moment.

On a night like this, on a St-Remy’s asylum, Van Gogh translated these stars, eleven of them, into a circular form, magnified than what you see. There is no swirling clouds tonight, only the stars, dot-to-dot.

It always brings back memories of childhood when the family switches off the house lights and gathers at the yard, telling stories which you have long forgotten now. But the night lingers, with you sitting on the grass, with your five-year-old head on your mother’s lap, listening intently to a story about elves and a fiefdom that now belongs to a distant memory.

Or on a night the house was renovated--when the second floor windows are left with no covers. And the moon’s honeyed light peers from those windows to the ground floor where you are seated.

Then you come full circle even for just a moment--like that game in childhood on moonlit nights when you only need water to paint the moon; the earth as your canvas.

 

 

 

--RV Escatron | 8 June 2008

my classroOm today: Casaroro Falls

Lessons in Human Kinetics-performance evaluation for 14 students; Valencia, Oriental Negros



official dress code at school; our classroom, the world

Biga with loose translation/Libog

 

 

Biga

 

 

Ang biga         usa ka pulang tabanog

Sa madag-umong kahaponon

 

Hinam paminawon         ang adunay pahugong

Hagdyung         sa kilum-kilom

 

Moti-urok, mopasundayag kini sa hapak sa hangin

Mangidhat         sa gihidlaw nga kagabhion

 

Apan sa pagtagaktak         sa mga segundo, sa pagpakli,

Sa pagsidlak ug pagpahipi sa mga bitoon

 

Ang maung tabanog ikaw-it na lang unya

Sa lansang, sa luyo sa gipadlock natong pultahan

 

Dunay mga adlaw nga,         pwera buyag, lahi ang tabanog.

Paksit.         Modasdas kini sa kusog nga hapak sa hangin.

 

Paksit. Kay kung ikaw ang matungnan

Niining matang sa kuwang-kuwang nga tabanug

 

Inig human      ug tugpo, magtuyok-tuyok

Maglirung-lirong.      Magtuyok-tuyok sa tumuy sa tugot

 

Ug kung imo nang ihinay-hinay ug pulipot ang tangsi

Lisod na kini panaugon. Pastilan.

 

Apan kung imo kining anaron, pwede na nimong

Igaid sa haligi, biyaan ug ikaligo na lang sa kamig

 

Sa paglabay sa sayung kabuntagun.

 

 

 

 

 

ni RV Escatron, 25 May 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filipino translation

Libog

 

Ang libog         ay isang pulang saranggola

Sa makulimlim na hapon

 

            Mainam pakinggan         ang may *pahugong

            **Hagdyong         sa takip-silim

 

            Sisisid, magpapakitang-gilas ito sa sampal ng hangin

            Kikindat         sa nalilibog na magdamag

 

At sa lagpak         ng mga segundo, sa pihit,

Sa pagkinang at pagtiktik ng mga tala

 

            Ang saranggola ay isasabit na lang

            Sa pako, sa likod ng ating kinandadong pintuan

 

May mga araw na         ***pwera buyag, iba ang tulin ng saranggola

Paksit.         Lulusob ito sa dahas ng sampal ng hangin.

 

            Paksit. Kapag ikaw ang madiskitahan

            Nitong praning na saranggola

 

Pagkatapos         ****itugpo, iikot-ikot

Tatango-tango.         Iikot-ikot sa dulo ng tali

 

At kung iyo ng dahan-dahang ipupulipot ang sinulid

Mahirap na itong ibaba. *****Pastilan.

 

At kapag ito’y iyong naamu, pwede mo nang

Itali sa haligi, iwanan at iligo na lang sa ginaw

 

Sa pagdaan ng madaling-araw.

 

 

 

 

 

*native sound-making device made of bamboo and banana skin attached to the kite

**buzzing sound

***Bisayan expression meant to drive away evil spirit

****take-off

*****by golly

 

 

Tr. by the writer

 

 

 

 

One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (Translations from the Asian Classics)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Nonfiction
Author:	Peter McMillan

wishLIST lang po this month. you know. LOL

review:
"Peter McMillan's translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu has restored the importance and beauty of a collection of poetry too often dismissed as merely 'pretty.' This is by far the best translation to date." -- Donald Keene, Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University

13th Tribute to Bob Marley in Cebu

Start:	May 15, '08 12:00a
End:	May 17, '08
Location:	Park Mall

Walk the Proud Land: The 13th Tribute to Bob Marley
(May 15-17 @ Park Mall, North Reclamation)

Nike Training in Dumaguete

http://www.niketraining.com.ph/?ref=phlanding&sitesrc=phlanding
This sedentary lifestyle (the time I uprooted myself here in Negros) will backfire sooner than expected if I don't slug this out.

So, I train with Manny Pacquiao, Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer, Christiano Ronaldo, Maria Sharapova and Liu Xiang to complement my twice a week laps in the Aqua Centre.

It's been a year since my last workout, and for crying out loud, Dumaguete still lacks a good fitness gym! I have found one in the downtown area. Cramp. Extra cramp. Extra fees for locker and shower. And requires a pair of shoes exclusively for workout and blah blah blah. And there's another one at the basement of the Aqua Centre that looks rather seedy. And I need a good scooter to lift myself (8 km.) to the city center.

Over the radio, I heard a plug of another one. No contact detail was given though. Have to ask around. Tennis training has to wait. MY BEER BELLY! BY GOLLY! hahahhahahah

Why Waldorf Works - Introduction

http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/04_AWSNA/index.asp
"We love Waldorf kids. We reject some students with 1600s on their SATs and accept others based on other factors, like the creative ability Waldorf students demonstrate."
—Donna Badrig, Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions for Columbia University




Waldorf Education:

* Is based on a profound understanding of human development
* Provides a detailed, richly artistic curriculum that responds to and enhancesthe child's developmental phases, from early childhood through high school
* Cultivates social and emotional intelligence
* Connects children to nature
* Ignites passion for lifelong learning
* Is the fastest growing educational movement in the world



"The advent of the Waldorf schools was in my opinion the greatest contribution to world peace and understanding of the century."
—Willy Brandt, former Chancellor of West Germany, former Waldorf parent, 1971 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate