MANGKOKOLUM!

I’VE lost several friends to cancer. Ex-combat pilot-turned-painter/preacher Lino Severino. Erstwhile PCGG head Haydee Yorac. Hausfrau Avelina Lasa Mata. Stage actress Adul de Leon. Iaidoka , movie villain and sparring partner Ernesto Ortega. They passed away not exactly in that order. Cancer remains on the list of the nation’s top three killers. That bothers me, the “killer” tag. It’s bruited about as a lifestyle disease. We can take that to mean a lethal lifestyle. Cancer can be seen in a different light, though, something of an unwelcome growth within, an emerging factoid in the flesh. Maybe an insistent call for change, more likely, total transformation of being. Could be a tugging for the human organism to evolve some more, yes, attain its true potential-- to take a go at Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere and become truly human, maybe a try at becoming Friedrich Nietszche’s uberman or superman? Far out and far-fetched twitch of the imagination I’m having. I’ve wo...

Embattled residency THERE are presidents. There are residents. One globe-trotting, now probably grave-dwelling Virgilio Garcillano ought to tell us which is which. He can tell the difference between president and resident, whether a Malacañang occupant is one and not the other. Garcillano still haunts the nation. Ghosts do that, haunt. He has to be properly dead, feasted on by worms; his remains are at large and may likely be fully bundled and trussed by the presidential Executive Order 464, a gag order of sorts. So he won’t be allowed to spill the beans. Too, dead blokes tell no tales. It might be Garci’s remains or Garci remains as the missing key to the Malacañang dilemma that we can’t make heads or tails of. She’s president. She won the presidential polls, did she not? So asserts Macapagal-Arroyo fans in Congress. She’s resident and ought to be evicted, so maintain the restive rest of the nation. Garci couldn’t be haled or exhumed to clear the air. He coul...

THE workaday commute adds up to a total 5-6 hours— turbo-broiled chicken, ratatouille, dinengdeng , raw fiddlehead fern salad, steamed fish or beef stew takes lesser time, a lot less tedious, and tastier, too. Me ruego no juego —honest, I prey, oops , pray while in transit. See? It’s more fashionable these days to pray solely at wakes for the dead. Take note: passengers and commuters are in transit. The condition’s too close to that phase “in transition”— a crossing beyond the pernicious reach of taxes and lousy governance, a going to the great six feet under. So, it’s simply apt and fashionable to mutter or mumble a ton of prayers while in transit. A feast of prayers can be construed as a diet of sorts. It’s glorious food. Call it manna. Maybe it’s ambrosia, godly ichor or intoxicating liquor. Something burns inside, probably in some unexplored regions of the psyche—and it needs to be filled and well-fed to keep its fierce fire alive. Dull embers and cold ashes are for the dead-starv...