He said, “Go get yourself to a doctor, babe, Get checked your pretty little heart” As with blackened nails he clawed At my mother’s hollow chest
He said, “Take care, be happy, I want you To be my manic pixie optimist” As he chews with mouth open And spits clean the bones Of what’s left of my mother’s grace
My father, he said, “I’m back, have you eaten? I recall how much you made me feel loved” As all old men before him Fancying themselves twenty, strong, unwedded
As my mother with bony hands try To scoop up every last drop of blood Thirty-plus years of regurgitated flesh Hers and her children’s
The dainty little candles in the bathroom Were purchased for the promise of perfume For lithe flames that flicker lightly Despite the water’s constant threats
In the next life, they whisper Through thin whisps of smoke Long after their bodies have turned into puddles Their black wicks to soot and ash They will come back with no trace of fragrance No hint of color, no glitter or dried flower
And finding the brittle branch of some hollow fallen tree Ignite the brightest forest fire for all to see
My bark is gnarly with knots The cracks threaten with splinters
In case you haven’t noticed It took me years to grow these rings That no one man can ever encircle
I clung to the earth, dug my roots deep Preserved my balance Growing around the soft parts Until all shame is smothered Suffocated by growth
There’s life inside shunning light That might be worth exploring if maybe You care You want You ask How sturdy trees can come From such helpless little sprouts
But you’ll have to carry the axe And I will have to break
To Ocho Cascadas in the middle of the workweek at the speed of barely two mbps
It was 1981, I read before half-glancing at the clock on my screen
At two in the morning with cats, as I struggle to find my way back into words,
I confess that I regret not being within train distance of Puerto Vallarta
And not being born in the seventies, a tall Caucasian man with blond hair
The glass waters promise to cool despite the Mexican sun and my head, it feels warm
I stare at the deck, the foliage, the red flowers, at each shiny, frozen pixel
Just beyond the road, a sea rests before a mountain, before a sky
That looks bluer than anything I’ve ever seen
How many lives, I ask without trying to count, have I been missing so far?
I used to work for a boss who had a ready and very blunt remark to everything. At the time, I was in charge of a team of designers and was responsible for preparing art and layout for his final review. I remember him particularly for his colorful use of language to express his approval (“This design perfectly captures the happiness of a child!”) and disapproval (“This looks like poison! Rat poison!”), as if his compliments and insults were premeditated.
I especially remember how he would always judge us for our taste. He was very particular about art and would make the connection that poor work stems from poor taste. I found this a bit concerning as I’ve always believed that taste was subjective and that there’s truth to the saying “to each his own.” But working with him made me wonder if there was ever a definite answer to the question of taste. Maybe a study of some sort had already been done to differentiate good taste from poor taste. Maybe science actually had a way for me to prove that I, as a matter of verifiable fact, had a most excellent taste.
A girl can hope. So of course, I turned to the Internet to look for answers.
As you can imagine, the search yielded almost no substantial result. While we can trace back the discussion about beauty to Ancient Greece, it seemed as if modern science couldn’t be bothered to deal with the question. I did encounter an interesting study that said beauty was objective because a huge number of people could be relied upon to agree on the prettiest shape and color. The researchers conducted a survey and apparently, most of their sample agreed that blue was the prettiest color and circle was the prettiest shape. They even agreed that the ugliest thing was a brown rectangle. Therefore, that blue is the prettiest color in the spectrum was not a matter of debate, the study claimed, as if the popularity of any opinion ever made it factual.
Are blue and circle objectively the prettiest color and shape? Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash
So imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when world-renowned Austrian designer Stefan Sagmeister brought the topic up at the recently concluded Graphika 20/20. He started his talk with evidence that beauty was not in the eye of the beholder; he asked all 3,000+ of us what we thought the prettiest color and shape were, and the results were not the least bit surprising.
Sagmeister went on to list and reframe his happiest memories as outcomes of beautiful design, highlighting the importance of making beautiful things and not simply things that function. He argued ardently against Austrian architect Adolf Loos, whom he blamed for popularizing the view that ornamentation was a crime. He went so far as to claim that design caused people to live happy or miserable lives, citing the number of angry tweets from people who have to board public transportation in ugly terminals versus in grand ones. The desire for beauty is inherent to humans, he said, because if it weren’t so, why did prehistoric men felt the need to carve stone tools into perfectly symmetrical shapes?
I couldn’t help but be reminded of encountering the term ‘aesthetics’ back when I was a university student. Nowadays, we use the term aesthetics to refer to the visual appeal of any material, but aesthetics in philosophy as I learned in class, refers to the study of beauty, art, and our appreciation of either. I had to admit that given that it had its own term and study, beauty must be as important to us humans as the concepts of truth (logic) and morals (ethics).
A quick refresher for all of us: The discussion about beauty and art may go way back to the time of Plato, but the notion of taste only became popular in the 18th century. It was a time when rationalism was in vogue and prominent philosophers argued that the merit of any work of art can only be judged after a thorough process of examination. Nothing can be thought of as either beautiful or crass without justification. This was later contested by a group of thinkers who claimed that we do not reason for things to be beautiful but rather “taste” them as we do food. Jean Baptiste-Dubos said:
“Do we ever reason, in order to know whether a ragoo be good or bad; and has it ever entered into any body’s head, after having settled the geometrical principles of taste, and defined the qualities of each ingredient that enters into the composition of those messes, to examine into the proportion observed in their mixture, in order to decide whether it be good or bad? No, this is never practiced. We have a sense given us by nature to distinguish whether the cook acted according to the rules of his art. People taste the ragoo, and tho’ unacquainted with those rules, they are able to tell whether it be good or no. The same may be said in some respect of the productions of the mind, and of pictures made to please and move us.”
And lo! The concept of taste was born.
Do we judge art and other things with immediacy as we do food? Can we readily tell good art from bad art because of an inherent sense of taste? Photo by Olayinka Babalola on Unsplash
But whether or not you agree with the rationalists or with Baptiste-Dubos, the debate between immediacy and reason is just one issue among many. Discussions of taste and beauty always led to a hundred more questions: Do we judge something as beautiful because that’s how our community taught us to react to it? Do we think that someone is beautiful because it’s a biological instinct that encourages procreation and the survival of our species? Do we judge an app’s design to be beautiful because it gives us a pleasurable experience? If the answer to the latter was yes, would it then be possible to live a life of joy by surrounding one’s self with things perceived as beautiful? And could we actually design happier lives by way of designing beautiful things as Sagmeister said?
Is beauty all that stands between me and happiness?
The cab I rode on the way home from the conference was white with streaks of green paint. It was a bit battered and had obviously seen the passage of time. Inside, the space was cramped and the seats were of the color often described as the ugliest shade. Whereas I left the building via floor-to-ceiling glass doors, I entered my home through a rickety screen door. Like the taxi we took, the apartment my boyfriend and I rent is cramped; the space is littered with our things because the cats would always run around thrashing the place whenever we went out. We were lively discussing the things we heard at the conference a few minutes earlier, but we came home in silence.
I looked at the mirror and wondered whether or not I’d be happier if I thought myself a thing of beauty. This was the only question I had an answer for, as the dim light above my head made the circles around my eyes look darker than they actually are.
Even as a teen, I’ve always been fascinated with ornate hairbrushes and teacups that have survived their era only to rest in museums. I’ve always been in love with classical buildings and art deco establishments. I’ve always adored the beautiful remnants of bygone eras, despite a friend pointing out that these old, beautiful things weren’t necessarily markers of a time when ornamentation was standard; they’re beautiful things reserved for the people with power and money to afford them.
Is this a cultural marker or the province of the wealthy? Photo by Adora Goodenough on Unsplash
But hey, a girl can have taste… and maybe, a bit of hope.
How do you work at being kinder to yourself when the opposite concept is ingrained,
learned at a young age, and practiced, mastered over time?
When you wrestle with the thought of self-kindness being supposedly unconditional,
when you know for a fact that approval is earned only through struggle?
They say be a friend to yourself. “Would a friend tell you these things you keep on mouthing
as you angrily punch at your keyboard?”
And I look back to days I’ve sought cover from the missiles hurled by friends and families
That today, on kindness I suspend disbelief
How do you work at being kinder to yourself when the flaws on your skin are too obvious,
like a massive pimple under your nose that begs to be acknowledged?
“Look at my pimples, look at my blackheads, look at my thick thighs, look at my arm flabs,
Look at these flaws, look at these mistakes, look at how decidedly imperfect I am”
How do you work at being kinder to yourself when you learned from a model as a child
to always be questioning errors in the guise of constructive criticism?
How do you even begin to give yourself a pat on the back for anything
when you’re taught your best scores have all been average, subpar?
They say we work with the cards we’re dealt with, but I look at my cards and scratch my head,
I don’t know how to lay them all out flat on the table
They say you have to let go, ease up, but neglect to hand out the instructions
So I follow the kindness in their voices until it too tapers and burns out
“How do you work at being kinder to yourself?” “How do you work at being kinder to yourself?”
The question repeats itself too much, louder each time, that it heaves and crashes
I finished first grade at the top of my class. Only I was never able to pull off the same feat in the succeeding years, thanks to this girl.
Let me tell you about her: in sixth grade, she had poor eyesight like me so she had to wear glasses. She always seemed to have acne on her face although it never really made her look ugly. The most striking difference between me and her was that she was waifish while I ballooned to 62 kilograms at 12. We entered the same competitions and she would always come out as champion; I would place below her, forever her runner up. For grades second to sixth, she ranked top in our class, eventually graduating valedictorian.
At home, my father would hold it against me. “You let this girl beat you?” he would remark every time. And I would cry but would always manage to throw myself back in the ring. I would try to compete with her, although she probably never saw me as competition, not in Math, not in class, not in chess, not in anything. And yet I distinctly remember losing each time.
I don’t know what it was about her. All of my teachers loved her. The people I wished were my friends were actually her friends. She got the most medals and the highest grades. She wasn’t fat like I was. And the guy I liked was head over heels in love with her.
We parted ways after elementary. She went to the national high school I tried for but didn’t get in. I went to a Catholic school that was within walking distance from my house. After four years, I passed the entrance exam and went to a branch campus of the country’s top university. Of course, she got in the main campus after graduating valedictorian yet again in high school.
For the rest of my formal education, I never ranked top in anything ever again. My father would reprimand me, “You can beat these people. You’re just lazy!” In my heart though, I was beginning to doubt it.
When Facebook finally happened in the late 2000s, someone added someone and she and I reconnected. And by reconnected, I mean we became Facebook “friends” although we never really interact save for liking occasional posts. Every now and then, until today 15 years later, I visit her profile and pit my life against hers as I was trained to do.
She graduated with an award for Best Thesis in college. I got delayed and took up another year before I could graduate without any distinction.
She won an award, I think, for a campaign she was involved in in her first job. It took me a year and a half in mine before I was promoted to supervise one person.
She pursued graduate studies abroad. I was tapped to lead a department.
One time, I read her father died.
I don’t even know what happened. I don’t know if they saw it coming or if it took her family by surprise. The details were not privy to me who was just a social media spectator. I shared the bit of news with my own father when my schedule finally allowed me to visit the old house. To be honest, I can’t even remember how he responded.
I always imagined Charmaine’s parents to be extremely proud of her and her accomplishments. And what I imagine I’m betting she knows for a fact. Like I said, she’s smart—the kind of smart I guess I can only look at and not be.
In January, she wished me a happy new year via Messenger. I returned the greeting and told her that better times were ahead. Last time I checked her profile, she finished her Master’s in Australia. On my end, I left a company I’ve been with for six years to start over.
Sa pagkakaintidihan nagtatagpo
Ang mga bagay na walang kamay
Hindi nakikita o nahahawakan
Ngunit dikit, nakakapit, nakayakap
Kaya’t pinipilit kong umintindi
Sa kabila ng pisikal na distansiya
Mula sa bago kong opisina
Hanggang sa kung saan ka nila nakita
Gusto kong abutin ang mga daliri
Maski sa hinuha, tanging sa hinuha,
Bago pa naibuhol ang lubid
Ang dami kong gustong itanong
Walang oras
Walang pag-asa ng sagot
Walang pag-intindi
Iniisip ko kung nakuha mong sumindi
At saan kaya naiwan ang huling upos
At ano ang huling titik sa huling liham
At kung may pagsisisi kahit saglit
Gusto kong maintindihan
Kung para man lang may masabi
Kapag ang katahimika’y naghahanap ng patid
Kapag ang pait ay naghahanap ng kapatid
Kapag ang kapatid ay naghahanap
Ng paliwanag
Sana ika’y naabot
Gusto kong maintindihan
Sana ika’y nahigit, naikapit
Sana’y naiparamdam na kapos man
Ang pang-unawa
Narito ang bisig
—
Para kay Ryan, ang paborito kong Chicano
Larawan ni Paul Medalla
Hindi ko alam kung paano magsasabi
Nang sabay mong maintindihan at hindi maintindihan
Na ang ibig kong sabihi’y wala, nawawala’t nagwawala
Na ang ibig kong sabihi’y sana’y meron kang tenga
Kung pantapat lamang sa kawalan ko ng dila
Hindi ko sasabihing ako’y balisa
Alam kong karamay ko ang mundo
Bilyong mga taong hindi naging maligaya sa bahay, sa eskwela
Sa piling o hindi ng kaibigan at pamilya
Ang isasagot sa akin ay litanyang nakalilok na sa memorya
Tila dasal tuwing semana santa
Ako’y titikom upang hithitin ang lahat ng himutok na usok sa aking baga
Naiintindihan ko naman (yata) pero isipin mo rin sana
Kahit minsa’y hindi ko inginiti ang katotohanang nangangarap tayong mamatay
Hindi ako magsasalita dahil naibenta ko na ang aking bibig
Siko, suso, katawan kapalit ng mga saysay na tiwala kong ibinahagi
At maniwala ka na sa oras na ako’y umiyak sa iyong handang balikat
Maulit kong pipiliting tipuning muli ang luha bago ako matulog o hindi matulog
Ang dabog ay sa dibdib, ang hiyaw ay sa lalamunan
Pikit-matang pag-iimpit; walang dabog, walang pasa
Mga kuwentong hindi kailanman iluluwal ngunit ilang beses kong
Susubukang isilang bawat gabing ako’y tumitipa ng talinghaga
Para sa mga mata mong hindi naman nakakabasa
