The Agricultural Worker's Ode to Labor

("I and the Village" by Marc Chagall, 1911.)

A farm worker, I make my rounds with every step upon the ancient soil, 

which bears my weight and carries me, as it had my forbears before me, 

steadfastly and silently.

The day is finally done, and my feet are sore, my shoulders weary. 

But tonight my spirit is light, and I’ll remember with blessedness, 

the labor of my kin and neighbors, milking cows and harvesting the field crops, 

patiently and purposely, that we may all live and grow as one community.

Tonight I will sing a hymn, thankful for the industriousness of my people, 

and with my guitar serenade the village, and the ricefield we plow but do not own,

as the countryside lays to rest under the evening sky,

guarded by its nipa huts, and solitary chapel.

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December Morns

December Morn 1

The sun must rise earlier in December:
I've driven by this intersection every weekday morning,
at quarter to seven, and it's the first time
the sunlight makes me squint.

Before I cross, an old lady on the left sidewalk,
and a young boy on the right, move to cross.
I stop and let them exchange places,
and I wonder, "Where are they going?"

Then I wonder, "Do they also wonder where
I'm going?"

A horn beeps behind me, this morn
when the sun goes up earlier
in cold December.

December Morn 2

It must be getting cold in the mornings:
was gargling and spitting
while peeing.

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I Hate Thuds!

I hate THUDS!

Ever since they grew up
to be rambunctious children, I
always pray that those
are nothing but the sounds
of their feet landing...

(Oh God! Only their feet -- PLEASE!)

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A Sonnet for Sasha Luss

So blind are they who say Russians don't smile;
I pity them who have not seen your face.
The glow of your smile lights the world for miles,
Goddess dwelling among the human race.

Your eyes exude an inviting sadness,
Two pieces of ice that can pierce a soul.
Who wouldn't embrace you with pure sweetness?
Who wouldn't cover you like a warm shawl?

But you are standing tall at five foot ten,
While I barely reach five foot and seven.
You're a fragile beauty of cold Moscow;
I'm from the tropics on my carabao.

       Your name, like a sigh when spoken, Sasha...
       And our distance as cold as Siberia!

(Photo of boy on carabao from http://filipinolifeinpictures.blogspot.com/.)

(Note: After completing the MOOC "ARPO222x: The Art of Poetry, a course of study offered by BUx, an online learning initiative of Boston University through edX" under former US poet laureate Robert Pinsky, I've decided to make this December my Sonnet Month. Next January will be my Villanelle Month.)

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Film, Foxcatcher, and Wrestling

(This is a work in progress...I'm featuring quotable quotes from the movie reviews of Foxcatcher on 1. the portrayal of wrestling in the movie, and 2. the critics' opinions on the sport itself -- from the latter's literary treatment and most-likely layman’s perspective. Already widely recognized as one of the best films of the year, Foxcatcher is a true crime drama revolving around the relationships between the Olympic champion brothers Mark and Dave Schultz and their former sponsor, the eccentric tycoon John du Pont. It stars Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, and Mark Ruffalo; directed by Bennet Miller. Foxcatcher is currently showing in theaters in the USA:http://sonyclassics.com/foxcatcher/dates.html.)

Consider this as my Christmas gift (this December 22, 2014 update), and a little divergence: This time, our quote is not from a movie critic, but from a Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic who claims she is "naturally drawn to the physical dimensions of performance," and "this film offers a banquet." Likewise, her article is an appreciative banquet on the art of wrestling (and wrestlers), on how the sport danced on Foxcatcher's movie reel. From What made Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum cry when filming "Foxcatcher"? (by Sarah Kaufman, The Washington Post, December 19, 2014):

Not only do Ruffalo and Tatum sport impressively hulky physiques as the brothers David and Mark Schultz, but they also move like wrestlers, with an authentic blocky, top-heavy carriage. [...]

 Both Ruffalo and Tatum have compressed, forward-sloping postures, like big teddy bears that you would never, ever cross. That posture comes from the shoulders, which take so much pressure in the sport, and the chest, which is developed more than the back. It gives the impression the beefy pectorals are dragging the body down. The actors also adopted the wrestler’s toe-in walk with a slight lateral roll, and rigid tree-trunk torsos. They have the cauliflower ears.

 They have no necks. [...]

 Ruffalo and Tatum start working out in the gym, clenching each other in a wrestling warmup that could also be a brotherly hug, or a dance. They are one lump, leaning and pressing on each other. For a few moments you’re not sure what’s going on. Are they fighting, embracing, horsing around?

All you hear is breathing and footfalls. It becomes a muffled tap dance. First slow and soft, like two plush bears. Then fast and staccato. There’s a sudden move and Ruffalo’s head jerks back. He wipes his nose on his shoulder; a bloodstain blooms there like a rose. For a tense second you wonder if he’s going to haul off and return the blow, but he only steps back, snorts out more blood and nods in sober admiration of his brother’s move.

Wrestling as a "muffled tap dance," with beats slow, then fast and in staccato. And then "There's Blood On The Dance Floor" -- or mat. 

Merry Christmas! 

*   *   *

From Cannes Review: Bennett Miller's 'Foxcatcher'...(by Jessica Kiang, The Playlist, May 19 2014):

...wrestling is not a glamor sport of endorsement deals and Hollywood wives. 

Ours is a sport of and for beautiful (though not necessarily glamorous) people. ;)  

...an interiority of loneliness and self-loathing that by the end we could even see coming across even in his style of wrestling. Which, incidentally deserves praise all its own—we’re no experts in the sport, but Tatum and Ruffalo both totally convinced in those fight scenes, especially the extended one of the two of them training that begins the film and that tells you, in course of a session that goes from cordial to aggressive, everything you need to know about their relationship.

Wrestling as a medium of inner turmoil. Wrestling as a language that can tell a story on its own. Interesting.

*   *   *

From Foxcatcher: A wrestling match with madness (by Liam Lacey, The Globe and Mail Nov. 28, 2014):

 ...the speed and violence of the sport they love – is captured in the opening scene: a prolonged practice session between the two brothers in an empty gym.

"Speed and violence"; fast and furious...

*   *   *

From 'Foxcatcher' a gripping story of seduction, rejection,murder (by Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13, 2014):

…wrestling, an unforgiving sport with demands and pressures that are as much psychological as physical, a naked sport that forces intimacy on its participants but finally leaves them with absolutely nowhere to hide.

Well, you try to hide, and then you get called for passivity…or disqualified due to default. ;)

"Foxcatcher" begins in 1987 with Mark working out in a college gym, practicing takedowns on a dummy with a sullen, glowering ferocity that makes him look frightening as well as somehow vulnerable.

Hmm, first impression lasts: So far, three of our movie reviews featured here (see the other two below) have written dramatically about the first scene which shows Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) practicing with the dummy.

...the actors allow their wrestling moves to reflect their relationship is so intuitively done here that Bennett said at Cannes (where "Foxcatcher" won him the director prize) that it enabled him to cut an entire scene of dialogue.

Yeah! Let the wrestling do the talking!

*   *   *

From Cannes 2014: Foxcatcher Review - Steve Carell gets to grips with his dark side (by Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, May 19, 2014):

The act of wrestling itself is an absorbing and obviously metaphorical contest. It is an unerotic clinch: as intimate as dancing. In an early training encounter, Mark is clearly furious with himself for being bested by Dave and accidentally-on-purpose butts him in the face. Dave just wipes away the blood and carries on. He doesn't say anything and his manly reticence and forgiveness just makes Mark's sense of defeat worse. 

Wrestling as real sport; wrestling as metaphor...

*   *   *

From Taken Down by Twisted Ambition, Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in 'Foxcatcher' (by Manohla Dargis, New York Times, Nov. 13, 2014):

The first time you see Mark he’s alone in a gym wrestling with a grappling dummy, an apparatus that looks like an anthropomorphized boxing bag, complete with head and stubby arms. It’s a crude pas de deux, somewhat like watching Gene Kelly get frisky with a beanbag, and hypnotic because of its exotic choreography. It’s also off-putting because there’s something slightly comic and borderline pathetic about a man who is, for all intents and purposes, wrestling with himself.' [...]
“Some of the best scenes in the movie are of the brothers, including an early one in which they train in their old gym, hitting and grasping in a pantomime of aggression and affection, the crowns of their heads touching like the antlers of young stags testing each other. It’s rare to see such physical male intimacy on screen, especially among men not bonded by war. And it’s in the depictions of this intimacy, in its tangle of bodies and desires — the images of John squirming on top of and below other men say more than any of his pitiful speeches — that “Foxcatcher” rises to the occasion of real tragedy.

The wrestling dummy as “an anthropomorphized boxing bag, complete with head and stubby arms," and wrestling with “the crowns of their heads touching like the antlers of young stags testing each other”… Five points each!

*   *   *

From 'Foxcatcher,' a quietly devastating drama (by Ty Burr, Boston Globe, Nov. 25, 2014):

When we first see him (Mark Schultz as played by Channing Tatum), he’s in an empty practice room, wrestling with all his might against a faceless dummy. It’s an image that haunts the rest of the film.

The "faceless dummy" alone is a haunting thing: it reminds me of the figure of a charred human remains -- with limbs burned into stubs. I remember years ago when our athlete in the UP Wrestling Club kept our dummy in her garage. Her mom, upon finding it there, had hair standing on end, as she thought it was a dead man. 

“Foxcatcher” dramatizes how Mark, in the wake of the brothers both winning gold medals at the 1984 Olympics, returned to a life of barely scraping by, speaking to auditoriums of bored schoolchildren until du Pont invited him to his private wrestling center at Foxcatcher Farms. A millionaire recluse, du Pont fancied himself a patron and a patriot, and he saw the sport — the most elemental of athletic competitions — as a way to prove his merit in the eyes of his distant mother (Vanessa Redgrave)...

True, ours is the most elemental of athletic competitions. 

Note: I'm simultaneously posting this running project on the Wrestling Association of the Philippines Facebook page.

An Epitaph of B's for van Gogh, Woolf, Plath, Miclat...

Brilliant Balloons of Blood, Flesh, Bone;
Becoming Filled with Burning Life
Beyond Breaking Point,
Burst.

Notes:

1. Just a short requiem, and personal theory why they...
2. Vincent van Gogh;
3. Virginia Woolf;
4. Sylvia Plath; and
5. Maningning Miclat.

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Where the World is

The

World

is

in

the

Palm

of

a

Poem.

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Wordplay: Suffer

I.

Sullen are the faces of family
and friends walking along
the hospital corridor.

II.

Surrender falls and fades
away the faces of those
entering the final door.

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At the intersection

Jack was counting commas in a Villa poem,

until he jotted thirty in his airy head.

He was just a short walk away from dear Jill’s home,

when the taxi beat the red light and dragged him dead.

If only Jack stopped at the very first period,

then he may not have been laid to his early rest,

here where traffic lights are not as commands followed,

but rather dismissed as weak and casual requests.

Note: In a way, this was inspired by Denise Levertov's poem "Poet Power."

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The beloved, writing haikus

I love watching you
count with your little fingers
when bleeding haikus.

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The Unread

Ah, I have a new book to read!
I exclaim to myself after paying the cashier
at BOOKSALE for my new purchase.
(An old copy, really, but new to me.)

Then a week, a month, passes, and again...

Ah, I have a new book to read!
I exclaim to myself after paying the cashier
at BOOKSALE for my new purchase.
(An old copy, really, but new to me.)

Last week, my wife stored all my unread
inside a plastic trunk, and yesterday, 
I opened it and exclaimed,

Ah, I have new books to read!

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We were sandwiched between two miscarriages

Hello. I am Little Jackie Paper. I am seven years old...Sometime ago, 
we watched the movie Maleficent. We watched the movie sandwiched 
between mommy and father, my younger sister and I.

It was fun. But we also have our story, my younger sister and I:

We were sandwiched between two miscarriages.
The first one, who would have been our eldest, gone in a month, 
a day after mommy and father became too playful one afternoon. 
Then, after four years, the one who would have been our youngest, 
lasted only two months in mommy's tummy. 
(Anyway, mommy and father already have a hard time 
raising the two who made it: my younger sister and I.)

And we almost did not make it, too. 
They say our doctors did a very good job with mommy's slippery tummy. 
(Lucky we, maybe, my younger sister and I.)

Father has a family. He has a wife. They have two young boys like me, 
the eldest eight years old. They also have a baby girl, younger than my sister. 
They are three and we are two.

They say we both look like father, and mommy loves us very much. 
(And he, sometimes, maybe, too, for my younger sister and I.)

*  *  *

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