-- Keep Moving Because --

My mother had to be rushed to the hospital a couple of days ago because she started blacking out without warning. It turns out that she has arrhythmia, and she'll be needing a pacemaker. She'll be having to make some major lifestyle adjustments to keep herself healthy, including having to take on less work, probably. Pacemaker, pace-changer.

I decided to cut my trip short by a week and a half. It's been the hardest decision I've had to make during my stay here, because I could have (should have?) cut it shorter. I talked with my mother about it, and she asked me not to. Of course my mother would say that. I'm still not sure whether I made the right decision.

One thing for sure is that this trip has been good for me. Last night, I hung out with my friend from Austria, Thomas, and his brother Andi (who is tons of fun). I haven't seen since Thomas since Pearson. We've spent the entire weekend together, horsing around, playing board games, drinking, watching Futurama on his computer, catching up on what we've been doing over the past seven and a half years. It's been the most enjoyable, stress-free weekend I've had in months.

Thomas is doing his Master's in Experimental Physics in Graz, where he is working with an apparatus that will demonstrate (hopefully) the wave properties of atoms. (I had to dig deep in my academic past to understand his work when he tried explaining it to me!) I envy him and am proud of him for pursuing Physics. I have an inner geek-child that I've neglected, somewhere deep inside my heart. Seeing Thomas again reminded me of what I've forgotten.

Posted by Diego at 5:39 AM | Permalink | Comments

I'm happy to be here. No matter what else happens to me in life, I can say that once, I saved up to go to Europe to study dance. I learned to ride a bike and cycled everyday to class and around Vienna. I saw glorious old buildings of the city. I performed on a European stage. (A bit part, but who cares? I got applauded as loudly as the principals!) I learned William Forsythe and Ultima Vez repertory. I partied with an international crowd and met cool people. I got corrected, prodded, and praised by my teachers and peers. I got an honourable mention for the Holy Body Tattoo Emerging Artist Award. I saw Rosas onstage. I ordered food in German. I made my way from various airports to various unknown destinations intact and unmolested. I learned how to read a map. I've had talented dancers who I respect very much approach me and say that they want to work with me. I learned about a starchy side dish particular to this region, spaetzle, bought it from the supermarket, and cooked it. I learned to like stinky cheese.

For me, there's a particular kind of gratification that comes from having worked a soul-draining job for a year, and then used the money for my personal growth. I mean, I certainly will apply for a DanceWeb scholarship next year (which I highly recommend to all my dance compatriots in Canada and the Philippines!). But it just feels like I fought for what I wanted and got it, and not on a silver platter.

Several months ago, I expressed all my dance doubts and dance fears to one of my teachers, Marla Eist, as she was driving me home. I said that I didn't know if I could "make it" as a dancer. She said, "But you're already living it!"

Knowing what I know now, I can't agree more.

Posted by Diego at 7:05 AM | Permalink | Comments

I had a mind-boggling Shiatsu session with this woman, Daniela, who had been doing Shiatsu for 17 years, often with dancers. After working with my body for about ten minutes, she began telling me things that only people close to me know, as well as things that no one but I know. When I expressed my surprise, she simply said, "These fingers are like scanners. Your body tells me things."

By the end of the session, my body and my soul had been reduced. It felt like a layer of muscle two inches deep had melted away from my arms and torso. I felt like a small child again, limbs askew, body flappy and uncoordinated, nothing more than skin and bones. I recalled how I would have failed my Physcial Education classes in elementary school but for the pity of my gym teachers.

On that Shiatsu bed, fully clothed, I felt naked.

~

I am thinking about the time I cried over the puppy (or was it a kitten?) the my grandmother Inay had refused to let me and my cousins take care of. The puppy had been kept temporarily on the balcony of the original Maranan house in Baguio. I sat in my aunt Ellen's room, screaming with anguish, staring at the ceiling so that, to my eyes, the world began to fade until it became the same texture and colour as the ceiling. I wanted to create an impenetrable cream-coloured stucco oblivion, and then melt into it.


I spent only a few days with the puppy, but already I loved it with all my heart. It was the one thing that was weaker and more in need of affection than me.

~

The running joke here among the European dancers I've talked to is that every contemporary dance piece involves someone getting naked. And four out of the five performances I've seen have not disappointed. (The most extreme example was Emio Greco's "Hell", where eight fiercely talented men and women in the buff did a dizzying grand allegro to the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth. Tah-tah-tah-taaaaahhhn!)

If the point is to show the glory of the human body or to comment on fashion and clothing, fine. But I think the confusion lies with choreographers/directors wanting everyone to experience the sensation of vulnerability. The problem, however, is obvious: a naked performer does not a vulnerable spectator make.

Posted by Diego at 4:26 AM | Permalink | Comments

(Click each image for the full-size larger version)

[The interior of the Museumquartier (MQ), a huge complex of museums, shops, cafes, bars, and private residences. People hang out in the red structures at all hours of the day and night.]

[Still in the interior of the MQ. Children swim run around naked and dripping wet. They look like the own the place. It's like one big daycare, right in the middle of public space. Fabulous.]


[This sign is at the Arsenal, the former military complex where the ImPulsTanz classes are held. A strong statement, and not uncontroversial.]

[Don't think this needs translation. Or explanation.]

Posted by Diego at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments

~
Post-performance rush
~

Last night I had an interesting discussion with two dancers from the United States about why contemporary dance in Canada and the US is, by and large, struggling to find audiences, unlike in Vienna where audience members are often forced to buy standing-room-only tickets, or would be milling outside the theatre looking for people with tickets to sell.

The Viennese have a strong connection with contemporary dance because it is historically rooted in ballet and the European aristocracy. The problem with many cities in US and Canada is that ballet (and contemporary forms that stem from it, with the exception of Fosse jazz and its descendants) is not deeply rooted in the heart of the people. The original premise and promise of "America" was freedom for all those who could make their way to front door, a promise repeatedly broken and upheld and broken again. Slavery, then emancipation, and now ghettos. The land that invited the immigrant poor and the huddled masses now makes sure that they remain that way. This is what the US has been about: immigration (including forced migration), racial and class tensions, popular struggle, and promise-breaking. And these forces drive the most current and most potent dance forms in the United States, such as street jazz, hip hop, tap, break.

What I'm saying is that these dance forms embody what US history was supposed to be, what it never can be, and what it truly is now, resonating a uniquely American spirit of showmanship, skill, competition, tension, and struggle. Ballet, I argue, will always be the effete outsider, a reminder of a stuffy, European past. Any references to European works in American and Canadian dance is often ineffective or, worse, downright pretentious.

Here in Vienna, at least two of the five pieces I've seen references classic (i.e., canonical) European works (such as Nijinsky's "Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun", and Ballets Russes' "Parade"). But here, the audiences chuckle appreciatively or sigh resignedly. The jokes are funny (or tired), the commentary biting (or uninteresting), because the audience's understanding of canonical forms is broad enough and deep enough. Not that people have much of a choice. This year or last year was the Mozart tricentennial, and Vienna and Salzburg were practically saturated with his work. (I love the way my co-worker Tony Strangis put it, "It was nothing but Mozart, Mozart, Mozart.")

So what does this all mean for dance other than in Europe? I think we can begin building an answer by asking the following: When audiences aren't/weren't watching dance, what are/were they doing? (That something that Crystal Pite and Max Wyman had asked in a dance forum once.) And when watching dance, what do/did they see and where do/did they go? And what is it that dance can do that no other form can?

I'd like to start trying to answer those questions in Vancouver's case in future blogs. It's complicated because to start tackling those questions, I would want to take into account Vancouver's history of immigration, imperialism, aboriginal struggle, race relations, cultural proximity to the United States and all that this implies, and Vancouver's current positioning in Canadian dance. And there's my own subjectivity playing a part in all of this, too, of course...

For now, it's breakfast time.

Hmm... maybe after a little nap.

Posted by Diego at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments

July 21

I woke up this morning in pain. My back was like a slab of granite, and I'm now pretty sure that the pain I've been experiencing in my right shoulder is a torn rotator cuff muscle which was aggravated by the various stalls which we did yesterday. (I'm pretty sure I first injured it while doing handstand pushups during the Earth Project.)

My god, is it worth the pain? Maybe doing light exercise just to keep my muscle tone up is all I want. Get to a certain level, and then just maintain it.

~

July 24

Eight hours over two days of intense urban dance (a catch-all term for street jazz, hip hop, popping, crumping, etc.) is a shock to my system. It's been months since I danced like that. I woke up this morning in even more pain. But at the end of the class--which was brilliantly taught by a phenomenal dancer who trained at the London School of Contemporary Dance but kept up his street dancing al the while--I lay on the floor exhausted absolutely drenched in sweat and thought, "Right now, I am the luckiest person alive."

Actually, my anxieties have been dissipating rapidly since I came to Vienna. This break from everything in Vancouver, a chance to write about my thoughts, the friendliness I encounter everywhere, being in the company of people who share the same experiences, the necessity of keeping my senses open in this unfamiliar city, meeting all these new people and partying with them.

And perhaps most importantly, I may be slowly (and I do mean slowly) regaining a love for dance. I see that there are people out here who make a living by dancing and creating dance. Incredible. Tony Rizzi's piece last night was infused with outrage at how he had given up his body and soul for William Forsythe's company for 21 years, and having to suck up to (and sometimes just plain suck) people in power just to keep dancing. When the company folded up, he was left with nothing. (At the end of the piece, after an utterly gorgeous video section about nature bringing him back to a more grounded reality, Tony finds his way back into dance through the joy of disco. Incidentally, "disco" is something I found has come up a lot here at ImPulsTanz. It's pretty dope.)

By the way, did I write something about gay European men wearing white pants a lot? If I did, I stand corrected. To my Vancouver-trained fashion sensibility, all European men simply dress like they were gay.

Posted by Diego at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments

~
Spires in Vienna (I really ought to figure out the building names at some point...)
~

When I was around 14 (maybe), my uncle once removed told me that my guardian angel's name was Makaherievel.

Uncle Nonoy claimed that he could see and converse with guardian angels. All guardian angels, he said, have names that end with "-el", which means light. For example, a youthful female angel named Anaiel wore gold slippers and looked after my cousins, Pia.

I can't remember what Makaherievel was supposed to look like, or whether Makaherievel was a he or a she. I think it was a he. When I first learned my his name, I was mostly pissed off that he didn't have a succinct and elegant a name as, say, Anaiel. I was also mad that Makaherievel pointed out that I slept with my mouth open, which was true. I found this whole guardian angel business so abhorrent that I don't think I ever slept with my mouth open ever since then. Which is unfortunate, because sleeping with the mouth open is a sign that the jaw muscles are completely relaxed.

Because I was a hardcore atheist as well as a budding feminist at that age, I challenged Uncle Nonoy on the use of male pronouns when referring to God. He said that it was only because of linguistic convention, God is genderless, bla bla bla. Because he believed in "Our Lord God the Father", Uncle Nonoy automatically was a patriarchal misogynist to me, perpetuating the oppression of women through the subtle and powerful use of language, whether he realized it or not. I didn't have the words to describe this then, but I remember feeling and thinking of all of this very strongly.

Makaherievel advised me not to worry about things that I shouldn't be worrying about. At that time, it didn't understand what that meant. But this morning, I woke up from with the thought of dying in my head. The night before, I was listening to a particularly poignant track by Barbara Adler about her grandmother's death. The fear of my death flooded me again, which some part of me realized was absurd because there was nothing in my life that indicated imminent demise. I am in Vienna, having the time of my life, basking in radiant summer heat, rejoicing in the company of artist from around the world, with barely a care in the world.

I ought to stop expecting the worst. I can't enjoy an experience (any experience) without knowing the at some point, the other shoe is goinkg to drop. Sometimes I wonder whether I have more natural inclination to be a pessimist or an optimist.

I do know one thing: I am definitely an optimist when drunk, a state I find myself surprisingly often here in Vienna. For one thing, beer is excessively cheap here. For another, at the premiere of every dance show I go to (and pretty much every dance show here is a premiere), the theater holds a free buffet and open bar. The other night, I saw an Emio Greco show (wonderful dancing, great design, confusingly abstract) and got quite tipsy.

But today... ah today. As part of my 5-day, 30-hour coaching project with Marco Berrettini, he brought 3 bottles of champagne, a bottle of whiskey, and a bottle of vodka, which the 15 students drank in the span of an hour starting at 2:30 in the afternoon. The resulting rehearsal was, unbelievably enough, much much much better than the experiments we had been conducting since yesterday. It's really quite wonderful. We smoke like chimneys in this huge warehouse space where they've laid Marley floor, and then we drink while listening to Lionel Richie, U2, Barbra Streisand, The Korgis, Simon and Garfunkel. And then we... well... for a lack of a better word, we emote.

Tomorrow, we're doubling the booze. Ah, how artists suffer for their art! :)

I'm performing in a piece by Tony Rizzi, a former Forsythe dancer. I'll be doing a bit of club dancing during the last 5 minutes of his piece, along with 40 other people. Hard to have predicted that my European peformance premiere would involve hip-shaking and singing along to a German choir's rendition of Missy Elliot singing about her "motherfucking party people".

~

I don't know where Uncle Nonoy is now. I know that whatever it is he's doing nowadays, he and his guardian angel are in it together. It's comforting to know that one is never alone.

Posted by Diego at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments

I remember the first time that I felt my chest constricting as a sign that something was not going right. I suppose it's always done it, but that night it came into my consciousness. I was sitting at home with a boy--a dancer, actually--that I just had dinner with. He was very intense, endearing, probing, and, by his own accounts, straight. At a certain point, I started getting uncomfortable with the situation. He asked me what I was feeling. I reflexively did a check with my body and realized an odd sensation around my sternum and pectorals. It was tension. Months later, I was in ballet class, after not having taking any technique classes in a very long time. I was doing fine, all things considered, until we got to the grand allegro. The same sensation in my chest began to creep up on me. It was if I almost couldn't breath. (Yeah, I'm working on my allegros.) I think I had to leave the class. A Pilates teacher once recommended lying face down on the ground and putting an air-filled rubber ball right underneath my sternum. It was the oddest/grossest sensation ever; coming out of it, I felt a little... weak. I'm guessing that this response evolved as a way to protect the heart and lungs in times of distress. The body really isn't a perfect machine, because this response appears to me to hinder efficient overall functioning of the body. But maybe there's also increased adrenalin production which would have been more important than body efficiency. I should just look up a specialist in this area and ask. Then again, it's fun to conjecture based purely on sensation.

Posted by Diego at 3:58 AM | Permalink | Comments

~
Amber and me on our bikes in front of your typical building in Vienna
~

A monumental day. I walked from my apartment to the ImPulsTanz site (it took about an hour) to scope it out before classes tomorrow. As I walk into the main area, who should I see but Ms. Amber Funk-Barton. She let out a little scream and we hugged for what seemed like a full minute.

I ended up renting a hot pink bike from the school with "ImPulsTanz" emblazoned on it (it was pretty dope) and joined Amber and Louise, a Quebecoise dancer, for dinner at their hostel. We stopped by one of the few convenience stores open on a Sunday and picked up some wine and some dinner stuff. By the time the pasta was done and the ham had been sauteed and mixed with the pesto, a dancer from Switzerland had joined us for dinner. Amber and I, lovely pigs that we are, ate directly from the pot. It was my first decent meal in Vienna.

For the first time, I felt like I knew people in the city. And the sight of other dancers was oddly stirring. Alison Denham had onced pinned it down best for me: Dancers all around the world (who have gone through similar technical training) share common experiences. We've all been through similar things.

Let's see if I feel so welcoming of dancers tomorrow when 2,000 of them descend on the school.

Incidentally, I've decided what I want to do in Leiden when I return on the 15th. Delia's going to be gone for two weeks. I'm going to lock myself in Delia's apartment and read all day and work out on her Nautilus and be lazy and sleep and wake up to do groceries and buy pot and stretch and do dance conditioning and have wine in the evenings and put on some music read people's blogs and video conference with my sister and my friends. MAYBE I'll take class in Amsterdam.

I am so excited. :)

Posted by Diego at 3:55 AM | Permalink | Comments

Why do we use metaphors?

- For expediency.
- For generality.
- For safety.

Metaphors can be used to describe a class of phenomena conveniently. Metaphors pick out shared, salient features of the phenomena, and dispense with details irrelevant to the point the metaphor makes.

Metaphors can be employed if dealing with the thing which it represents (the "subject") can be dangerous. The subject might be traumatizing, in which case metaphor can create a buffer zone. Or metaphor can be used as a cipher. If correspondences between the metaphor and the subject is established in secret, parties can talk about the subject in public view and not reveal the true nature of the subject.

Of course, these reasons are not mutually exclusive from each other. For example, when the mind has accumulated a lot of similar experiences, all of which deal with a particular unbearable topic, metaphors can be used to deal with this class of experiences which also happen to be difficult to discuss. Take the endless repetitions of certain tasks (waking up, brushing one's teeth, cooking, eating, defecating, preparing for bed. These form a class of experiences that can known as "living". But to capture a particular emotional framing of these experiences--that life is a series of meaningless steps that we repeat over and over again--we invoke the metaphor of Sisyphus, which conjures images of tedium and punishment. Sisyphus is also a myth, and metaphor becomes myth when the metaphor recurs throughout human history.

(A related and possible conjecture is that with time, all metaphors become myths. A proof of this might involve the postulate that once a metaphor is born, it is inevitably passed on due to memetic forces. A proof may also postulate that all metaphors are intrinsically woven into the structure of the physical universe, and when they are first identified by humans, they are merely being expressed on a human scale for the first time.)

One metaphor I find interesting is the notion of using opposing forces to create coherence.

In my training as a dancer, opposition is key to clear, efficient, and emotionally-accessible movement. Yannick Matthon during one ballet class put it in new terms for me: "Once you feel the opposition in your body and in your movement, it begins to read to the audience on an emotional level." When opposing forces are manifest, the audience feels it.

When the body is held still by using opposing forces (as opposed to just clenching the body in the hopes that it will maintain whatever position it was last in), the audience is left in suspense: "Which force will take over? Where will the movement go?" And when the movement finally completes, there is a momentary sigh of relief: "Ah, so that was the decision they made."

Dance, in short, can be thought of as a series of decisions made--often at lightning speed--in the presence of opposing (even conflicting) physical forces exerted on and by the body.

Living in the presence of opposing forces is not pleasant. Anyone who has dealt with finding a balance between taking care of one's self and taking care of the people around you (i.e., pretty much everyone) knows this. But as one accumulates life experiences, learning to live with opposing forces becomes increasingly necessary. The deeper the sorrows we experience, the deeper the joys we seek.

However, another approach is to dampen the emotional range. Instead of seeking deeper joys, we allow ourselves only shallower sorrows. And some are more prone to having a wider emotional range than others. They feel more deeply. Sometimes (I suspect often) they would rather have a shallower range, if they could help it.

That's how I feel, at least.

But I would like to believe that we are all capable of extending our emotional range. I can't say for a fact whether this is true. But if it is, the question then is: why should we?

Posted by Diego at 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments

~
The toilet in my apartment in Vienna
~

I left Leiden at 7 am (woke up at 4 am) on July 15 , and arrived in Austria at around 10 am.

After lugging my luggage at on the train, up and down flights of stairs, another train, and yet more flights of stairs, I found myself in the Vienna apartment where I'll be renting a room for a month. It's very big, and very old, and very musty. The kitchen has no natural light, and the area around the sink reeks of mold. The Honey House (which was built in 1912) has nothing on this place. My room, fortunately, smells fresh and mold-free. I think. And it's humungous. It's almost the size of a small studio.

~

Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker: D'un soir un jour
~

It's 3:43 AM. I've had barely four hours of sleep. It's my fault. I had two hours of sleep the day before because I had two catch a 4:55 AM train from Leiden into Schiphol. And then when I got to the apartment at 10:30 am, I slept until 4 pm. I went around the city, and came back to the apartment and fell asleep at 12:30 am. And now I'm awake.

I woke from what I guess you could call pseudo nightmare. I dreamt that we were still in production for Earth. And Corey Giles was the Equity deputy for the cast. In the dream he was a total diva. A major feature of my dream was someone unexpected: Danica Poole. (I wonder how she's doing in Toronto.) She was reenacting a sitation when she was backstage, staging managing or ASM'ing a show, and had to perform a heroic feat to save the show... which was a lousy one, anyway.

But I woke up when I started dreaming about food. Specifically, I woke up when i came to the sushi table, which was creaking under the weight of large ika, rainbow, California, and salmon maki. All I had yesterday was a bacon-and-egg sandwich, a small piece of cake, a small bun with cold chicken, a giant kebab sandwich with lots of chicken, and a beer. The kebab and the beer I ordered in German, which was a feat of bravery on my part. I really ought to accept the fact that I'm a tourist and have to do touristy and potentially annoying things like ask, "Entschuldingen Sie, sprechen Sie English?"

The right side of my torso is in crisis. My trapezius area is perpetually sore. Some muscle or muscle that attaches to my right acromion prcess. This has been going on for the past three weeks. Ever since Earth=HOME finished. I don't know why I didn't see anyone about it. I was hoping it would go away. Plus my underarm has developed some sort of allergic reaction to something yesterday after the flight to Vienna. (Tt doesn't look nice) I guess it could be my antiperspirant but I don't think it would be that. I've been using that shit for years now, and this is sudden onset. However, it looks like (and feels like) my sweat pores are indeed blocked.

God, I'm hungry.

Tonight I saw Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's company, Rosas. (I thought of Jane Osborne all the way, who introduced me to her work and to the existence of the performance school she is associated with, P.A.R.T.S. in Belgium.) It was mildly disappointing, which means that I had expectations that weren't met. I've seen only her work involving endless repetition and variation.... which was not at all what was onstage tonight.

Posted by Diego at 6:07 AM | Permalink | Comments

As Delia tosses this pillow to me, she says, "Diego, change the pillow case . There's stains all over it."

This is in Delia's apartment in Leiden, a university town 20 minutes southwest of Amsterdam. It's a very contained and lovely thing. Space is allocated where it's needed, deprecated where it isn't. Well, at least according to me. We made a soup with porcini mushrooms, spinach, and some sort of ham-filled pasta that I've never seen before. Yum.

I made my way from Schiphol (which is a beautiful airport) to Leiden Centraal on a train. There's a lot of agricultural land. And a lot of canals. Those tourist guides weren't kidding. From the plane, I had a magnificent view of the canals. There's not really much I could say to do the canals justice, especially on a summer day like this and one can see hundreds of boats.

(Delia just made the same observation I had made on the plane: "When I first came here, there was something very odd about the landscape. I eventually figured it out: all the trees are evenly spaced and at the same height. What sort of people are these that would do this to their trees?!?!" Delia's a defender of all things green and leafy.)

I can't believe I'm here. I've been grinning like a maniac since the plane touched down. (Although it certainly wasn't because of Air Transat's "meals".)

Annique, Amber, Edmelia, Joanne, and Karl gave me a lovely send-off at the Vancouver airport. We sat around, drank red wine, ate chicken wings, and said some very sweet things to each other. Yesterday, Spencer and I drove around, went to Dairy Queen, and put together an IKEA shelf. Romi and I mucked about and went for random drinks around the drive; the highlight of that was braving an unknown sardine dish at WaaZuBee. Zailda gave me a whole lotta chocolate and a blank journal with the most inspiring quotes. Matt and I sat around last night and talked about how Vancouver is going to get worse over the next little while.

(My god, how mundane those descriptions were. Why can't I just say that I hung out with my friends and enjoyed their company and had a few tearful moments and lots of laughs?)

And now I'm in the Netherlands, and Delia is replanting her new basil plant in an old rice cooker pot. (The Teflon wore out, she claims.) We've settled into our old comfortable pattern. She talks, I'm busy with something else. But our respective neuroses have matured. It's great.

Posted by Diego at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments

After reading this article about Google and this article about Visisimo, I realized that Google is just another evil multi-billion dollar corporation. I have also decided that Clusty.com has an interesting premise, and I'm going to try using it as my default search.

Had a thought for testing which search engines are good for people. (I'm sure there are excellent people out there devoting their days testing and debating all sorts of philosophical and ethical and practical things about Search Engine Optimization. This is merely my naive stab at it.)

• Fire it with several kinds of queries by searching on:
• an excerpt from a quotation
• differents parts of speech:
• a proper noun
• an improper noun
• verbs, adjectives, etc.
  
• a description of an unnamed item
• random collection of words
• truly random
• taken from an appropriate ratio of nouns, verbs, adverbs, infinitives, etc.
  
• Collect data:
  
• Rate the "accuracy" (when this is an appropriate value) of the returned hits
  
• Rate satisfaction of the returned hits
• fun? unexpected? did it engross you for hours? did youget what you wanted
• Measure time spent searching
• Answer the question: Is google really all that great?
  

(CUE RANT)

Technology is evil. No, wait. Marketing is evil. Marketing people might be evil, but I think they're more just misguided and manipulated, more than they know. They're just trying to earn their (very expensive) daily bread. Whatever. Those Google people are evil geniuses.

(FINIS)

Posted by Diego at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments

I woke up this morning not remembering how I got home last night. I vaguely remember a taxi being involved, but everything I discovered when I clumsily got out of bed--a scraped nose, my running shoes piled on the duvet, the container of half-eaten jumbo poutine--was surprising.

When I told the story to friends, a couple of them jumped on an opportunity to administer advice: "That was dangerous," and from someone who barely knows me, "Sounds like something you should work on." And what I wanted to say was, "Give me a fucking break. I haven't gotten that smashed in a year. I have five days left in Vancouver. And guess what: I had an absolutely wicked time."

It's a pity I just can't remember some key details.

I believe that used in a controlled and carefully planned way, alcohol (or any drug, for that matter) can be used therapeutically. There are lessons to be learned from an intoxicated state, when barriers are broken and control is lost. The trouble is when you have to rely on alcohol to provide the lessons. If there's one thing I learned from theater training and reading Uta Hagen, it should be possible to replicate an altered state of mind through deliberate work. Pay attention to how muscles and joints feel, how the body moves. Which areas feel relaxed, which feel tense? Which parts feel weak? How is your breathing? (VERY important.) How much attention are you able to pay the outside world and to your inside world(s)? Is your eye focus completely inwards, completely outwards, or somewhere in between? Where is your voice? What resonators are you using? What sorts of thoughts is on your mind? What's the speed of your thoughts? Of your body? Of your thoughts? Of your emotions?

In my experience, though, it is crucial that I am very well rested and well fed before I can do that sort of work. My body is my tool, my body is my temple.



And this temple needs a late night snack. Egg, swiss cheese, bun. The fries I had during Amy's birthday bowling bash and the yummy snacks from Marjory's birthday party don't really count as dinner. Two birthday events! And lovely conversations during them, to boot. Lovely conversations over the past couple of days, really. I have good friends in this city, and I love them dearly. (You hear that, suckas? Lovelovelove!)

(Poutine photo courtesy of Gideon Tsang.)

Posted by Diego at 2:47 AM | Permalink | Comments

The Schengen visa has arrived. THE SCHENGEN VISA HAS ARRIVED. "Ecstatic" doesn't even begin to describe how I feel. That fucking purple-and-green sticker which is now affixed to my passport and which gives me access to fifteen (fifteen!) countries in the European Union excites me to no end.

So my mailing address(es) for the next little while:

July 15 to August 15
Girardigasse 1/1/22
A-1060 Vienna
Austria

August 15 to Sometime in September
c/o Delia Co
Boerhaavelaan 214
2334 EW Leiden
The Netherlands

Sometime in September to Sometime in January Next Year
Building 15, Unit 41
PAG-ASA
Quezon City 1105
The Philippines

Posted by Diego at 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

I spent the past hour hanging out with James, Sarah, Josephine, and Karl, doing the Keirsey personality test. According to the test, I am a (currently) an INFJ. If true, this explains a lot. Sarah claims (and I agree but only to a certain extent) that one is predisposed to a particular personality from birth. Brain chemistry, she argues. Which is surprising since I'm usually the reductionist in most conversations.

Over the past several years, my sense of being trapped in certain situations has crescendoed. But the entrapment has nothing to do with the magnitude of a situation. At work, I could be a key player in a high stress project involving several parties, and I could be behind schedule or lack sufficient knowledge to complete my tasks... but at the end of the day I can cope with it, because it's work. If anything, enterprises of more intimate scales confound me: meeting friends for drinks; listening to people talk about their day-to-day experiences. Small talk is increasingly annoying for me; and what I consider small is increasingly large.

Here's a conversation pattern I like being part of:

Me: %?
B: %. %?
Me: %. %%%%.
B: %%%. %%%%.
Me: %%%%. %%. %%%%%%%%. %%%%%%%%. %%%%%%%%%.
B: %%%! %%%%. %%%%%%%%. %%%%%.
(pause)
Me: %. %%%%? %%%! %%%%%.
(pause. we laugh spontaneously. a bird sings somewhere in the distance.)
B: %%%. %%%%? %%%%%%? %%%%%...%%%%%. %%. %%%%%%%%%! %%%%%. %%%%%? %%%%? %%%%!
Me: %%%%!?
B: %%%!!!
(pregnant pause)
Me: %%%%%%%%, %%%%%%%%%%%. %%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%! %%%%%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%?
(very pregnant pause. )
%% %%%%%%%%! %%%%%! %%%%%%%%%. %%%%% %%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%.
B: %%%%%%%%, %%%%%%%%%%%. %%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%... %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% %%%%%%%%%!!
(pregnant-as-in-triplets-pause.)
%%%%%%%%! %%%%%, %%% % % %%% %%%%%%. %%%%%%%% %%%%% %%% %%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%, %%%%%%%% %%%%% %%% %%%% %% %%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%.
(we start getting teary-eyed. it starts raining. a man on a porch somewhere in the neighborhood sings a song from "the old country". stephen harper wakes up from a visionary nightmare and decides to push through with the kyoto protocol.)

Here's the conversation pattern that I usually find myself in:

Me: %?
B: %%%, %%%%%%%%, %%%%. %%%%%%%%%%%%. %%%%%%%%, %%%%%%%. %%%%%%! %%%%%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%!! %% %%%%%%%%. %%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Me: %%%.
(pause)
%...
B: %%%%%%%%, %%%%%%%%%%%. %%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%! %%%%%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%? %% %%%%%%%%. %%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%.
Me: %.
B: (feigns interest) %%?
Me: ... % ...
B: %%%? %%%%? %%??????
Me: %%... %%.
B: %!!!! %%%%%%!!!! %%! %%%%%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%. %%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%! %%%%%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%? %% %%%%%%%%. %%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%.
Me: (nods)
B: %%%%%%%%, %%%%%%%%%%%! %%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%! %%%%%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%? %% %%%%%%%%. %%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%.
Me: (nods)
B: %%%%%%%%%%%... %%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%, %%%%%%%%%%%%%%?
Me: (tired and cannot think of anything intelligible to say) %. %?
B: %%%%%%%%, %%%%%%%%%%%. %%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%! %%%%%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%? %% %%%%%%%%. %%%%%! %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%....

I've come to realize that I spend so much of my time listening to other people, because that's what I think they need. I have a hard time asserting myself. So I patiently ask them what they think, how they feel, but then end up clamming up myself...

... and as the years pile on and more things are left unarticulated, thoughts and emotions become increasingly abstract and complex. Wonders gestate; terrors spring from the ground; paradoxes blossom and bear fruit in abundance. I feast on a cornucopia of emotions and thoughts, because I didn't know what else to eat. I don't mind, you know, but I do need to know that there's someone at the table with me. Mercifully, there are, but I somehow end up eating in silence all the same.

So now I am on a quest to allow the voices in my head to make their way into conversation. I want to find people with whom I won't feel pressured to be constantly urbane or witty, or even sane for that matter.

POSTSCRIPT:
I loathe self-indulgence. Everytime "I" or "My" crops up in a sentence that I (ouch) write, I (ugh) wince. Because I know I could talk endlessly about myself, and I know that there's so much going on around me that I'm not paying attention to. Even writing this paragraph is painful. My stomach writhes in distress when recursively second guessing.

(Then again, maybe I just need to have dinner. Which is entirely likely. Descartes fucked us all over when he severed mind from body. But I should be fair; he was only trying to protect humanity. As animals, humans have always instinctively known that the body is strong but tentative, its structure and functioning held together by the most ineffable of keystones. The destiny of the body is readily apparent: sagging skin, broken bones, leaking fluids. ("How fragile we are," Sting once observed.) What Descartes had tried to do was rescue the mind from the fate of the body. It was a nice gesture, but damn foolish. Thank God for people like Liz Lerman who have devoted their lives to undoing his work.)

Posted by Diego at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments

1) Ultima Vez repertory classes
2) Doing a 5-day workshop led by dance artist named Marco Berrettini who asks us to bring the "songs that are important to our life"... and the workshop is called, wait for it, "Feelings"
3) White Marley floors
4) Filipinos
5) Austrians
6) Seeing my old friend Delia in Leiden and Jorim in Amsterdam
7) Smoking BC pot in Amsterdam
8) Running around during torrential rain in the Philippines that lasts for hours.
9) Getting in touch with the Philippine Educational Theater Association and the Philippine High School for the Arts
10) Reading for pleasure!
11) Doing art for pleasure!
13) Writing for pleasure!

Posted by Diego at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments

When my aunt and uncle moved to Victoria from the Philippines three weeks ago, they didn't expect a full-on celebration by some members of the Filipino community in the area. They were greeted with gifts (microwave-safe ceramic casseroles, potted plants, wine...) and, of course, a buffet that lasted over eight hours.

I ferried my way from Vancouver to join in the festivities, and as usual I ended up hangindg out more with the women (who are generally lively and talkative and prone to jesting) than the men (who are tactiturn and generally harder to get to know... unless there's booze involved). The machismo is so pronounced that not only do the men hang out separately from the women, but some dishes (like papaitan) are considered to be more "man food" than others.

Filipino communities in Vancouver and Victoria, welcoming and hospitable though they are in many ways, are a segregrationist bunch. Apparently, Victoria-based Filipinos think that Vancouver-based Filipinos are stuck-up. And, presumably, Vancouver-based Filipinos (of which I am one) don't think about Victoria-based Filipinos at all.

The glue that does hold most Filipino communities together is religion. One of our hosts today asked my aunt and uncle which church they might like to attend in Victoria, to which my aunt said, "Hindi namin nakagawiang mag-simba." ("We don't really do church.") The (genuinely confused) reply was, "Ha? Parang niyo nang sinabing hindi kayo humihinga." ("What do you mean? That's just like saying that you don't breathe.") Arrrrgghhh!!!

I think (from personal experience) that Filipino disunity stems from several factors:

1. You can't expect a nation-state of 7,100 islands and a couple of hundred dialects to produce a unified, monolithic "Filipino community" in the old country, much less in the new country.
   
2. Filipinos have internalized white supremacy (due to 400 years of subjugation by first Spain and then the USA). They don't want to stir up shit in case the white hierarchy decides to exclude them entirely from The Game.
   
3. Filipinos are sick of the disunity of Filipinos back in the old country. So they don't associate with Filipinos, except with those who are similarly sick of said disunity. (There's a perverse, circular, but oddly coherent logic in this.)
   

One thing that there seems to be an agreement on among all the people at the party, is that racism exists in Canada. And it is subtle. And it is powerful. "But nothing is ever going to change," says one person, "so I'm not going to do anything." (See bullet 3 above for a similar logic.) "I'm just going to make a good living for myself and my loved ones, and ignore all the racist bullshit that goes on."

It's time that Filipinos and other migrant communities act on the truth about confronting the hegemony: if we put differences aside and fight racism collectively, working with First Nations and with other visible minorities and with white allies, we have a much better chance of bequeathing a better world for our children. That's why we moved to Canada in the first place, right? To give our children the legacy of a more just and liveable world?

Posted by Diego at 1:19 AM | Permalink | Comments

(... who travel in and out my dooooooor ...)

Well, mostly out the door. You see, I fall in love easily and with complete abandon. I leap into the unknown and expect that reciprocal affection will break the fall, if not hold me aloft completely. (Love lifts us up where we belong.) Of course, this rarely is the case.

I've always justified everything by saying that it's a cultural thing. When Karl and I were in a gay retail store in the Philippines, a boy approached me and point-blank said that I was cute, here's his number, what's mine, he knows he's not that good-looking (his words!) but I should call him anyway, he'll do anything to meet up with me before I leave, he'll call me. And he did call, but I wavered between Filipino naivete and Vancouverite guardedness, which confused things immensely. (Ah, hybridity is such sweet sorrow!)

But, yes, I am obssessive. In the past, it's gotten to the point of being creepy. And stalkerish. Uh-huh. So to all the boys I've loved before, I owe you not just an apology, because apologies are easy to administer...

What I owe you is an excuse.

"I was filled with so much joy and sadness that I needed another body to contain what I have, not realizing that you are probably overflowing with your own lived experiences. I was born with my heart open; I will die with it ravaged. Ah, l'amour, I'm a slave 4 U.

"If I was happy, I sought someone damaged. If I was unhappy, I sought those already happily involved in a healthy relationship. If I couldn't decide, I simply masturbated and kept you queued up in the wings of my mind's stage.

"But my affection for you has a mordancy that will persist across the years, and as it ages it becomes more gentle and less selfish. If my affection were a smile, it would soften from manic toothy grin to Mona Lisa-esque. If my affection were musical, it would mellow from symphonic Berlioz to gymnopedic Satie. If my affection were a cheese, it would ripen from Bocconcini to Stilton."

Posted by Diego at 2:07 AM | Permalink | Comments

The Honey House--which has been home to me and five or six friends for nearly two years now--has decided to disband. Sarah and Karl are moving in together, Ed is going to Italy on exchange, I'm going travelling, Dave and Zailda are moving out.

Something that some activist had once said comes to mind now: "The hardest thing in life is not fighting the huge struggles, but living with people." As chance would have it, I was cleaning the house today and found a piece of paper on which someone had scribbled, "The less control we have over the external, the more we seek to control the internal." Every fight has a cost, and sometimes the casualties hit too close to home.

Another quote, from the Magnetic Fields: "All the things I did and didn't do come flooding back to me now." There are so many little lessons in life, so many little thoughts, and they accumulate so quickly. A generation passes on its set of lessons, which are then transmuted, embellished, augmented, and passed on again by subsequent generations. How we survive the weight of accumulated experience is the triumph (or tragedy) of the human condition. Somehow, we continue.

Posted by Diego at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments

My room is empty and echoey now. It's surprising how much I was able to throw or give away with little regret---clothes, pillows, shoes, food, exercise equipment, computer peripherals...

Caelen dropped by today and I had a wonderful talk with him. There was little awkwardness, tons of ideas, and lots of passion. This was the first real heart-to-heart that I've had with him, and boy, we should have done it a long time ago. He's an awesome ally. He helped me understand positivism (check this out: homonormative positivist impulse. hebigat.) There's so much theory going on out there. Speaking of positivist impulses, what gives me the compulsion to write in English and then italicize Filipino?

Canadian immigration gave me a go-signal: No one at the airport will check whether I've overstayed. Can't wait to leave. Can't wait to leave. Can't wait to actually start figuring out where I'm going to store my shit.

Posted by Diego at 2:10 AM | Permalink | Comments