Skip to main content

मेंटल क्रेम्प्स

Mental cramps

DAILY rental for a house where a local television series may be shot runs from P15,000 to P50,000—quite a windfall for a homeowner whose abode grabs the fancy of a shooting location scout, ever on the lookout for settings that breathe chic, opulence, taste… maybe a certain ambiance or energy that hums and thrums in such living spaces.

Or, maybe that which the late Third Reich mystic Karl Haushofer referred to as lebensraum, “living space” that had fueled the Nazi hunger for geographic expansion: “Space is not a vehicle of power. It is power.”


The viewing fare jabbed like splinters into the eyes-- and minds-- of audiences trot out characters that, uh, they don’t belong to such spaces. They neither dwell nor live there.

Somehow, those cardboard characters betray dysmenorrhea in demeanor, terminal spinal fractures of speech that limn muddled marshy mindset, aah, even cockroach sensibility and paralytic sensitivity.

In short, they’re no better than zombies.

Claims statesman Winston Churchill: “We shape our dwellings and afterwards, our dwellings shape us.” (This too ancient notion goes by the Sanskrit term, darshan… or by the quantum physics word, “interface.”)

‘Twas natural historian Loren Eiseley who asserted—and gave proof—that man is an expression of his landscapes, his dwelling places, his milieux. Too easy to take the country boy out of the country—you just can’t eviscerate the country out of the boy, he’s been too steeped in it for ages… and that has imbued him with power.

So, power corrupts. And it’s likely the cardboard characters trotted in parade upon the unsuspecting viewer, they must have been zapped to a crisp, flung out to hang upon power transmission lines… that likely rubs off on them a few thousand watts to allow the character to shine like klieg lights or not-too-palatable flashes in the pan.


The characters don’t plunge into any worthy pastime. They don’t putter about. They don’t tinker. They can’t pursue small passions… they’re so insipid they don’t even turn on noise boxes that can spill out music, lectures, pod casts or the swelter of inanities gushed off the more popular radio stations…


Not any character I’ve chanced on TV-- on a bus bound for home any given workday—goes through a boring regimen of say, earnest prayer… physical workouts… growing orchids or trimming bonsai… going through the motions of mixed martial arts practice… doing household repairs, fixing a faucet leak, replacing a busted fuse or any human activity that a living space demands of its occupants… ‘tangna, ako pa rin ang naghahasa ng mga balisong ko… carborundum whetstone first, fine sandpaper next, then, leather strop and soft tissue paper for the final smoothing of the scalpel edge… aah, the blade turns a lot better for the closest of shaves…

No scene would ever present them rummaging over piles of tomes at Book Sale, or even doing the briefest of reading sessions…

They can’t try their hand at sudoku, solve crossword puzzles, yawn over an opponent across a skittles board or chessboard, do laps in a swimming pool, do field stripping of weapons, tend to a tool kit, try pole dancing or go through yoga postures, get their hands calloused in carpentry or cabinetry… they don’t keep and tend to pets, say, an entire flea circus upon a Labrador retriever’s head… what a lousy pack of do-nothing lazybones!

They are, the use the newest term available, all too busy “noynoying”!

Those louts don’t do any neuro-linguistic programming for themselves, yet, ply out such execrable NLP on viewers, ‘tangna talaga!

And so I hum an off-key Red Hot Chili Peppers number… “Throw away your television, time to make this clean decision… reinvent your intuition, now.”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ALAMAT NG TAHONG

SAKBIBI ng agam-agam sa kalagayan ng butihing kabiyak-- at kabiyakan, opo-- na nakaratay sa karamdaman, ang pumalaot na mangingisda ay napagawi sa paanan ng dambuhalang Waczim-- isang bathala na nagkakaloob sa sinuman anumang ibulwak ng bibig mula sa bukal ng dibdib. Pangangailangan sa salapi na pambili ng gamot ng kapilas-pusong maysakit ang nakasaklot sa puso ng matandang mangingisda. 'Di kaginsa-ginsa'y bumundol ang kanyang bangka sa paanan ng Waczim. Kagy at umigkas ang katagang kimkim noon sa kanyang dibdib: "Salapi!" Bumuhos ng salapi-- mga butil at gilit ng ginto-- mula papawirin. At halos umapaw sa ginto ang bangka ng nagulantang na mangingisda, walang pagsidlan ang galak, at walang humpay ang pasasalamat sa mga bathala. Nanumbalik ang kalusugan ng kabiyak ng mangingisda. At lumago ang kabuhayan, naging mariwasa ang magkapilas-puso na dating maralita. Nilasing ng kanyang mga dating kalapit-bahay ang mangingisda-- na hindi ikina...

Kuntaw

I T was more than an implement—tough as metal, soft as petal—wielded like lightning to repulse conquerors. Invading Mactan in 1521, Ferdinand Magellan and his men must have thought that their fabled Toledo steel swords would be more than a match more the island’s native defenders—they were dead wrong. The Spaniards never knew what hit them. In the 1900s, American occupation forces in Mindanao particularly in the Sulu islands found themselves under constant harassment from what they called “crazy hermits” or juramentados . The native fighters would fast for days, go through special religious rites, then go forth to storm American garrisons. Even as the .445 caliber pistol was plied out in 1911 to stop seemingly unstoppable fighters, the Americans still never knew what hit them. Looking back with pride at such points in history when their fighting mettle was unleashed in battle, Filipino Muslims, especially the Tausugs of Sulu will, with a little nudge and tug at their patriotic sentimen...

Baka talisay ang kailangan kung mabilis nilalabasan

KAMBAL na hitang nakabukaka ang pahayag—an open statement na hindi pinid at wala nang pasubali o baka masususugan pa. (“Susog” ang salitang ugat na katakam-takam talagang bigkasin dahil kung nanamnamin at hihimas-himasin para bang susong busog ang ibig sabihin.) We’re trying to make sense of a claim we stumbled into about the fruits of an ornamental tree. To wit: “The kernel of Indian almond has shown aphrodisiac activity, it can probably be used in treatment of some forms of sexual inadequacies (premature ejaculation).” For goodness’ sakes, what are those other forms of sexual inadequacies, er, shortages? What’s Indian almond? Higit nating kilala ang Indian almond bilang talisay. Tinatawag ding tropical almond, Java almond, Singapore almond, Pacific almond . Kilala din sa pangalang umbrella tree, badamier, ketapang, huu kwang , at sa mga botanist na mahilig sa boteny tulad ni Ama, Terminalia catappa . Makatas ang hinog na lamukot ng bungang talisay—karaniwang dilaw o namumula ang ku...