Andrea, paano ba ang maging isang ina?

I first watched the film "Andrea, paano ba ang maging isang ina?" of Nora Aunor in 1990 when it participated in the Metro Manila Film Festival. Written by Ricardo Lee and directed by Gil Portes, it depicted the lifes and deaths of a mother struggling to liberate her country, her people, and herself from the oppressive structures in society that permits the exploitation of man by man.

I had the chance to score a copy of the film and watched it again after 21 years while waiting for my second son Ponso to wake from his morning slumber.

The film opened with a massacre scene somewhere in the countryside and the New Peoples Army being asked by the masses for help. Andrea (Nora Aunor) and her comrade-husband Momoy, are members of the New Peoples Army (NPA)who works in the area zoned by the military. Being pregnant that time, they opted (I guess its a they being in a collective set-up of organization) for Andrea to give birth in the urban area staying with her trustworthy friend played by Gina Alajar whom she met while in college. She is married to Lloyd Samartino for six years but cannot bear a child. Andrea was forced to leave baby Gabriel with Gina when Momoy succumbed to the fascist bullets. She was then caught by the government and were thought of as dead. So Gina and Lloyd brought baby Gabriel, now re-christened as Raymond, to the United States.

Andrea lived through the torture and escaped but was in communicado for sometime and in hiding. Pained and frustrated, she tried to recover Gabriel but her situation as a wanted person limited her mobility and capacity to pursue her son. She continued in the armed struggle and after seven years, had the chance to get her son back when Gina and Lloyd's family went home for the holidays.

She eventually gave up her claims after a heart to heart talk with Gina and asked for the last time to meet her son before they go back to the States and Andrea, to the armed revolution. She did meet Gabriel (Raymond) and even embraced him but they had to cut short their meeting because she was followed by the fascists and was eventually martyred in full view of her son.

The film is very tight and every Filipino should watch it. It reflected the situation of the country and is reflective of the internal turmoils of those dancing in the gallery of the struggle for national freedom and democracy and those who are invariably caught in the middle because of their apathy.

It is sincerely truthful in treating the emotions of the characters as it weaved the mothers represented in the film. Momoy's mother who felt betrayed and left out when her son, who was a law graduate, opted to join the NPA, a woman who continues hoping to find her dissappeared activist husband for six years, Gina Alajar's character who rebuilt her relationship with her husband through Gabriel, and Andrea who lost and found her child amidst the dysfunctional society she herself wants to change not just for the Filipino people but more so for her son.

It is an activist film as it showed the strengths of mothers in a set-up that requires mettle and courage to stand and be firm on societal challenges. It is an activist film as it never hid its bias towards the certainty and rightfulness of the revolution as represented by Andrea. The non-antagonistic debates between Nora Aunor and Gina Alajar was perky and might remind the audience of their time talking with their activist friends, as they always settled peacefully yet not letting go of their positions. The scenes are very realistic and might have been culled from real fact-finding reports of human rights groups. The checkpoints, the tortures, the massacres, and other numbing incidents experienced by an oppressed society are all in the film.

Even Andrea's resolve to join the activist rank was smoothly injected through Lloyd Samartino's questioning to explain the reasons why people become activists and revolutionaries. And the collective and scientific way of resolving problems and issues within the revolutionary movement was shown when Andrea was told that she can overcome her weaknesses through painstaking masswork and trust in the masses.

I for once will advocate charter change so I can insert the provision of compulsary viewing of the film Andrea, paano ang maging isang ina? to all Filipino people regardless of creed, belief and other shit. I admit that I get real angry and sometimes cry when I hear injustices committed in real time and real life but I also cried watching the film as I eat my early beefsteak lunch while Ponso spinned his beyblades before going to school.

Ceelo Green

Ceelo Green is in the house mofos.

Selling Books

As a resolution for the new year, I will seriously undertake my bookselling project to make money. I am in a quandary for sometime checking out viable ways to augment my shrinking beer money and other shites. For the past year, my cousin Ian and my friends were the sole reason why the magic liquid continues to flow in my veins.

I however still do not know how to market the books stuck in my house. I think I have a fairly good titles and authors that are good for book collectors and private libraries. For starters, I have brand new copies of Hermann Hesse's Siddharta and I am selling it for P180 each. It is priced low compared to the bookstore chains' P259 price.

It is one book that I really want to sell and share because of its buddha story and how it was written. A timeless classic that readers will enjoy. No shit. You will enjoy it or else you are a stupid motherfucker. Buy it so I can also enjoy my beer.

I am also selling Thich Naht Hanh's Being Peace for P120 each. The famous Vietnamese Zen Master who talks of zen and meditation in simple and practical ways. Ken Wilber' Up from Eden is up for P280. I hope I can post all the titles and the prices but the upload is just so slow.

I have to think of a way. A facebook account for the books maybe? Ive tried Multiply but it is just not feasible for me to maintain. Laos na ata yun. Hohum.

My Life with the Indigo Girls

I have been trying to list down my top 10 bands of all time while looking after Paco at home when my thoughts hanged as I listened to ‘Hammer and a Nail’ of the Indigo Girls. I first met Amy Ray and Emily Saliers in 1994 when I was checking out cassette tapes during the yuletide season at Isetann Cubao. Of all places, it was in Isetann Cubao when a saleslady recommended that I listen to Indigo Girls after getting a Tanika Tikaram tape. Feeling humble and kind due to the season, I delayed my usual snotty judgment and asked her to play the tape. A solid guitar rhythm reverberated in the Isetann music station that immediately hit me and changed my life forever. It was love at first hear, if there is such a shit.

Indigo Girls’ Rites of Passage album redefined my musicscape. Their melody and lyricism weaves well with the steady folk rock genre that connects well with my advocacies and principles in life. I got almost all of their albums and even shelled hard earned dough to score their original two CD live album that I have to order in Greenhills shopping center around 1997 or 1998 and wait for two to three weeks. It was well worth it.

I got an original Rites of Passage CD and had the chance listening to it along the Nevada-Arizona interstate waxing romantic just imagining my two music goddess trod the same lands they cherish and love through their music. Their activism on environment and peoples’ issues all the more raised my appreciation of these musicians who continues to enjoy their struggle for a better world. Let it be Me from the Rites of Passage album is one of my all time favorites. It is a prayerful song of a person sincerely trying to serve well and act well for the people and the environment.

I loved them even before the mushy “Power of Two” song (Swamp Ophelia) that could have raised their bar in the popular music scene in the Philippines. It was viciously played in the radios in the late 1990s with the song even reaching primetime noontime television sang in duet by the latest love teams of the land. The song however did not make a dent to give Indigo Girls that needed fame in the country that might have made them consider doing a concert in the Philippines.

From my deep down emotions on love, pain, happiness, to my advocacies and angst in this world, my life’s MTV revolves around Indigo Girls music.

I am lucky to be alive during their time.

Romance in the new Year

Its the new year and what better way to start by reading a book. I somehow hibernated from reading during the yuletide season and focused on being with the family bonding and doing shit with the boys. So, to jump start my reading again, I got hold of a book from my mother's book pile and just started reading and reading and reading and saw the title after intense reading about a man who wants to hire an assistant to take care of his shit and stuff while he works hard for the money. hold your breath....the title, motherfuckers, is "The Bachelor's Stand-in Wife" by Susan Crosby, a writer who is sure to please, according to the cover of her book. It gloriously proclaim that it is a special edition book and is included in the Wife-for-hire series of Silhouette.

I checked out the blurb and found this:

Tycoon David Falcon needed a wife.

Not someone to actually marry, but a superefficient, multitasking woman who'd keep his household humming along smoothly. Single mother Valerie Sinclair seemed the ideal candidate. Until an evening out led to an unexpected kiss.

Organizing the businessman's hectic life was one thing. Wanting to share his life wasn't part of the deal. But once Valerie got a taste of being David's girlfriend - even for just one night - how could she go back to being his stand-in spouse?

Valerie Sinclair got the job and did her best to give her daughter a sense of stability in their otherwise free-flowing not so stable life (I get it that if you are not financially capable of maintaining some caprice in life, then life is indeed shit). David Falcon is sleek and sensible and responsible and good. A clean, rich man whose penis was even described briefly when he went skinny dipping in his pool while Valerie was peeping from her bathroom. But for the record, Valerie's boobs was also described as normal, not big nor small and can perfectly fit David's hand (from David's own measure when checking out Valerie from afar, before they screwed each other).

She worked perfect and even her daughter Hannah loved to stay in the place. Valerie's strong stance to deal with her problems by herself sent conflicting message to David who she loved but was afraid to show because of her past experience having screwed her mother's boss' son and was treated shabbily when she got pregnant. David was also afraid of committing because of his past experience when his parents divorced.

But a good fuck can make the world go round. The sexual tension between them was consummated when the man inserted his penis to the woman's vagina and they kissed. They did it (clap your hand motherfuckers! clap! clap! clap! But what is the sound of one hand clapping?) but initially relegated it as an act of two perfectly healthy individuals who wants to let go off some steam. But David the man did not sleep well one night and was enlightened by the fact that he really loved Valerie, his personal assistant (whom he already screwed a couple of times) and said that he wants to marry the woman. So he had some landscaping done in the garden as a sign of his love and they told Valerie's daughter that they will get married. That is all I remember. It is a love story from Silhouette. It is like Sweet Valley High, only the lead woman is not a virgin anymore because she already gave birth and they describe the sexual organs and shit in the book.

It is romantic. You can read it if you want.