Tuesday, October 06, 2009

sur l'Anglais. auf Englisch. on English.

Labels: c'est la vie, writing

latest musing of Etchie at 12:58 0 comments

Thursday, August 14, 2008

stuck.

Rommel recently emailed me a story he wrote. He said he wanted me to read it and comment on it, constructively---grammatical and logical, he added. 

Labels: c'est la vie, writing

latest musing of Etchie at 04:31 2 comments

Friday, May 18, 2007

fic :: hypocrisy

It began with the phrase ego te absolvo, in nomini patri, et filli et espiritu sancti…

She could’ve answered it with Amen, but for no apparent reason she didn’t. Just a muffled noise, a pursed lip, bloodied and swollen. She lay there bleeding, tears welled in her eyes, asking for a crumb of forgiveness, but at the same time she was unusually adamant.

A victim of unyielding pride. Stubborness that went the fatal distance.

The priest remained calm despite his knowledge that the crumpled heap of flesh and bone in front of him was a lost cause. He knew that, in fact he was the one who attempted to plug the puncture holes in her frail carcass. He lost count on the knife wounds, and was simply there in case there’s something he could do—perhaps to administer the last rites. The small white cloth under the neck collar served as a calming presence, the evidence of God, merciful and forgiving.

However from the way he mustered this incident, she was becoming exceedingly resilient.

Death was never distant, he mused. She merely didn’t want to accept that reality. He waited, watching her as she gasped, like a candle on the slow process of mortal depletion.

* * * * *

Manang Linda was her name, or what they assumed her name to be. She was a prey of a planned reprisal that ended in senseless violence. Nobody saw what happened and the majority simply decided it was her own doing. A good riddance case, the police might call it—same thing that normally happen to drug addicts and other social menaces—exterminated for causes unknown, possibly of vigilante doing. In her case, it was different. She was stabbed not because she wasn’t a disease that plagued the perimeter of her residence, but there were other specific reasons.

They claimed she possessed stern religious convictions. A member of a charismatic organization that didn’t want her. She was neither a believer nor a follower, but she joined anyway in the belief that it could somehow redeeem her from all the shortcomings she had done in the past. Likewise, she believed that she could use the stringency of religion as the impeccable weapon to counteract any vice in her surrounding. Probably one that reaped her sufficient number of people who despised her. Beneath all the `goody-two-shoes’ façade she exuded in her daily lifestyle, Manang Linda was the perfect vestige of character deception: she has a terrible penchance for backstabbing while engaged in routine Wednesday novenas; her tongue could pierce through the thickest barrier of personal censors, often at the pole position of rumor-proliferation.

Albeit it was how people saw her, but the flaws in her attitude compensated for a heart opened to a selected few. Perhaps that maybe a number of her neighbors felt bad about her stabbing; she was a kind human being, and merely a product of probably an uncontented childhood or a family broken by whatever force one could muster. She may not be the perfect example of an ephemeral structure, yet she did what she thought could change the world she once attempted to recreate. All the while the failure was anything but it abruptly molded her into someone a lot started to express outright derision.

It was her appropriate retribution to the surge of misgivings that went before.

* * * * *

Fr. Eliseo Lara was supposedly on his way to a congregation meet at Tagaytay when the news of the stabbing precluded him from pushing through his journey.

He never knew Manang Linda, but he was aware she knew him. Perhaps one of the usual ten people who attend his daily 5 PM mass. Since his transfer from a rural assignment in the provinces, life in the slums nevertheless posed a challenge to his capacity to renew their faith. It should be a difficult task, the monsignor in the area had once confided in him, but Fr. Lara assumed otherwise. Slum people are mainly blind in the ways of God, he remarked, and the fact that negligence on our part also contributed to that realization. When he first celebrated mass in a decrepit chapel that the people there called their parish, only five people attended. He didn’t blame them to their blatant ignorance of God, however rebuilding the entire parish was worth a certain magnitude of sacrifice anyway.

Certain sacrifice? He mused as he grasped the sweat-drenched palms of the dying woman, her fingers searching for his. He had administered the last rites, the only thing he could do except to wait for the paramedics to arrive. When he absolved her, Fr. Lara noticed the hesitation on Manang Linda’s part, only a muffed sound, inaudible for him to construe an approval.

Fr. Lara saw this as practically a blessing in disguise for most people. He heard of everything about the person lay bloodied on his lap, multiple perforations on her lavender-colored blouse, now drenched in dark crimson. He attempted to plug the wounds with a wet towel, but she continued to moan and lose blood. In a sudden influx of panic, he turned the woman over and while her stomach was ripped apart by the brutality of the attack, her intestines spilled out. He nearly vomitted, nevertheless his presence somehow contributed an aura of comfort to the dying.

He forced a deep swallow and skillfully with both hands, he lifted her head towards his lap. She gurgled blood, the only sound she could produce at that moment. Fr. Lara slowly shook his head, apparently aware that the woman would die anytime soon. He noticed a pool of tears in her eyes, now half-closed, waiting for death to come and take whatever life has upon the battered structure. As she coughed, he felt God had punished him for allowing a human being to die on his hands, and he could hear the soft wheezes of air spraying from a contracted windpipe. A gasp, a moan, emanating from a small knife hole in her chest.

She has to die. Father Lara mercifully prayed. God please let her find her peace.

He looked for someone he knew, the people stood above him, eyed him with remarkable admiration. Nobody lifted a finger to help him, knowing how Manang Linda had sullied them in the past. Just because I’m a priest? He thought, that I should accept whatever punishment God has in store for me? And the dying woman wasn’t what he could consider as a punishment for any previous mistakes he committed. More of a corporeal mortification in anyway, his mind revolted at that statement. The degree of weight such incident had imposed upon him was tantamount to the flesh-penetrating lashes those people from Opus Dei use for their daily sacrifices.

Finally, he questioned himself, why should they deserve such kind of treatment? As life drifted out freely from a multitude of stab wounds, Fr. Lara could only stare in helpless disbelief.

Labels: fiction, writing

latest musing of Etchie at 17:00 0 comments

Saturday, March 24, 2007

the good writer

we all have to agree on the general consensus that good writers are those who possess the capacity to capture the audience’s attention and imagination. However, that left out the pertinent details on writing as a technicality.

Marshall McLuhan may have said that “the medium is the message”, but that doesn’t exactly represents the definition and the construction of the message accurately. The message may be on certain instances, distorted, and that would directly or indirectly have significant repercussions on the origin- - -which we could say, to be the writer. The whole thing (the medium and the message) may fall off and with it the entire point (and that would not label anyone as a “good” writer).

with this, let us enumerate several factors that we could say, may be something to make the “good” writer in us rolling:

1. A good writer should be properly knowledgeable on the topic at hand – It would be a huge bummer if he/she doesn’t know what they’re writing. Some writers tend to divert on the central idea and wander off to places unknown until the whole point collapses. He/She should stick on the topic no matter what.

2. A good writer should capture the audience – many a writer wanted this turnout as if hoisted on a pedestal. Once the audience is hooked, there is no turning back. Bestsellers became bestsellers primarily because the writer managed to get his/her target audience’s attention. A big plus, so to speak.

3. A good writer should be grammatically impeccable – one perennial mistake of mine. Most of us commit such mistakes often that we didn’t really pay much attention to it. Detail is the key and even the smallest quirk could cost the writer a downhill plunge.

4. A good writer should be prepared to accept criticisms – writing is a hit-and-miss “activity”. There are times that the thing you wrote may not conform nor appeal to someone. Somehow, I think, writing (like films) is an acquired taste. At certain in point in time, you’d write something that would not garner the similar recognition you received with the previous.

5. A good writer should not be reading this – to err is human, and to write is one thing that evidently illustrates the human frailty. From a personal experience, I write because I wanted to, not because it is and was an academic demand. I make gazillion blunders and I don’t worry about it. I have been rejected on a short fiction I wrote and lost confidence, but somehow it turned out to be the fuel to keep me writing.

the fact is, there is no such thing as a good writer. there are good stories and there are good articles. the important thing is we enjoy the attempt. the writing process itself is one thing that makes it worthwhile.

(note: i wrote this in response to a discussion question required by the writing class i am currently enrolled in---that although i am presently undergoing a tough stretch to complete the units for the IT degree, the writing class somehow lessens the stress of it all.)

Labels: writing

latest musing of Etchie at 00:44 3 comments

Friday, December 08, 2006

vignette: december 8

note: i've been in the mood for a short fiction for days now, but something is precluding me from putting it into writing. i don't know what is forcing me not to, and all i could think about was finishing a reply to a memo that was sent to me for a 'violation' that didn't really transpire. probably it was one of those circumstances wherein you have to answer everything even for the darndest nonexistent misstep you could've/would've taken (i'm still attempting to figure out whatever that was).

anyway, december 7 is the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and a story happened to be brewing up in my head. so read on.

* * * * * * * * * *

He was staring inebriatedly at the huge clock above him. It was three in the morning.

He'd been drinking since after dinner. The sad part was, he didn't need alcohol until he knew it was necessary. Necessity, he thought, the way women would play with you and leave you to wallow in a bottle of whiskey is necessity. He made a loud burp and struggled away, groggily zigzagged on the cement pavement, allowed his feet to take him home.

Home. Fuck. Where is home. He asked. More of a statement than a question.

He felt a sudden burning sensation creeping up from his ulcer and he vomitted. Liquified plastic and all---undigested dinner mixed with acid. His hands searched for something to grasp, and rested on a metal rail.

He thought of her. The vaudeville theatre in Quiapo. After Mass. Sundays brought in more of them. Girls that were pretty much wanting to liberate themselves from their mundane lifestyle. Amidst the crowded rows of awed spectators, he caught her eye. Locked in astonished gaze. Soon, he discovered that he was only deserving of a visceral romance. Nonetheless, he pursued her. Like a famished predator on hunting season. Though he knew it would be futile from the beginning, he made the attempt anyway.

The clock made a deafening boom and he thought the hour hand struck four. Today is the Feast of Immaculate Conception. He was aware that in the morning he would be facilitating the procession, and he could not bring himself to look like this in front of the people. But he knew he'd been vomitting for an hour now and the curfew would be lifted in another. But something was amiss, his mind queried. The sound could not have come from a movement of the hour hand. It was loud enough.

Slowly, he turned his head and glanced upwards. Saw the clock hand still pointing to three-fifteen.

What the hell? He wondered.

And then he heard the drone of planes.

Labels: fiction, writing

latest musing of Etchie at 11:11 0 comments

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