This is for every mother this coming Mother’s Day.

You see her leave the house not to socialize or party, or to bask under the gleam of flash bulbs and spotlights.  You see her leaving the house for a trip to the grocery store or the market, haggling the cost of a kilo of pork, or ticking away non-essentials in a grocery list.  There won’t be new shoes or high heels for her feet today: that money went for new bedsheets or a stock of soap and shampoo.  She won’t get them free, most definitely, but she would get them on the best deal.  Not on the Groupon clone that she could spend hours on if she knew how, but the hours she spends in the store.  She basks under the gleam of her children’s smile.

Her look?  Nothing too fancy, nothing too stylish.  Her wardrobe is sparse, Spartan, utilitarian; the nicest clothes reserved for the wedding of her eldest, the graduation of her youngest.  Nothing too fancy either: probably the inexpensive ones from the department store or the rummage sale.  No thousand-peso jeans, no dress worth tens of thousands of pesos.  No splurges in the wardrobe, or the makeup department.  You never saw her put really expensive makeup on her face; she won’t have much use for that when she’s off to buy foundation for the eldest, or lipstick for the youngest.  Nothing too fancy, nothing too stylish.

Her most beautiful feature?  Her hands, most definitely.  The callouses, the rough palms, the very hands that do laundry, cleaning, cooking, and all sorts of things that come with motherhood.  The hands that feed children, discipline them, and teach them the right way that there is to life.  The same hands that wiped tears from eyes that see failing marks on class cards.  The same hands that comforted the shoulders of the weary, the tired, and even the brokenhearted.  Her hands are beauty, for in many ways, those hands have created life.

This is for every mother who wouldn’t have expensive make-up kits or thousand-peso dresses for Mother’s Day.  This is for every mother who saves for the daily grocery list, and not for the world’s most popular gadget.

This is for every mother whose comfort is sleep, perhaps even when awakened by the sounds of crying infants or the screams of pain for 20, or perhaps even 30 years.

This is for every mother who gave up on the caprices of the lives of ladies and took on motherhood, all out of the joy of comes with keeping life alive and well.

This is for every mother whose passion is in motherhood: that there is peace in the chaos of raising boys to be men, and girls to be women.

This is for every mother whose sanity is in family; where we men would often grow weak in the knees with just one diaper change to our credit, they do so and so many other things without fail.  And they do so out of love.

This is for every mother this coming Mother’s Day.  We, your sons, may find it so hard to say this just once, even on days dedicated to you, but we love you.

A few days ago, the Filipino blogging community lost a blogger.  The media lost a journalist, the industry lost a PR practicioner.  The Gagelonia family lost a father, a brother, a husband.  A few days ago, I lost a friend in Fernando “Ding” Gagelonia.

I first met Ka Ding some four years ago, when he called for an “eyeball” of sorts with the writers of Filipino Voices.  We were few back then; the blog was strong back then.  The meeting place was at Starbucks Tomas Morato – quite far from where I live – but I wouldn’t pass off the opportunity to meet bloggers and exchange notes with them, especially since political blogging was a rarity then.

I was sipping my vanilla frappe when Ding beckoned to me.  I was – and still am – rather obvious with my long hair and polarized eyeglasses.  It was then that I realized why the man specifically chose that place.  The big old man was almost in edema, bound to his wheelchair, the survivor of what looked to be a serious, life-threatening stroke.

I don’t know much of Ding to know the when’s and why’s of the illness, but thirty minutes into talking with the man, I recognized and respected the sharpness of his wit, the conviction of his words, and the desire to make something out of the medium he chose to spread his message.  The old man in the wheelchair was out to challenge the dominance of mainstream media, ready to fund a bloggers’ news agency with a few backers and friends to help him do it.  The man knew his technology, too: tinkering with his cellphones and laptops, even trying to capture every word I mumbled out during that first meeting.

And so it became meeting after meeting, Ding insisting on an agenda.  Ding wanted to form his movement.  There were meetings in Starbucks, in Gateway, plotting everything from blogger agencies to online rebellion to all sorts of plans and such that never really materialized.  There were many occasions with Ding and his friends that somehow soured our friendship over the years, but it never really boiled over.  We remained friends, but at an arms-length away.  That was after the 2008 “Bloggers Impeachment,” when some unsavory moments with Ding took a somehow long and lasting toll on a friendship born out of mutual respect.

Yet those are the moments I don’t want to remember Ding for.  In many respects, the unions that bloggers want to form, and the mainstream recognition bloggers want to have for themselves, were things that I think properly belong to Ding more than any other blogger today.  That search for recognition began with a man who spent much of his life in the newsroom, and whose passion for his vocation – informing the public – was rekindled by blogging.  Blogging lit the fire inside this old, wizened newsman struck ill by a stroke.

Anyone who would give an ear to Ding to listen to him talk about blogging would admire his knowledge and passion for the medium.  People half his age get bored of it, or get disillusioned: Ding Gagelonia sought, in the later years of his life, to bring the mainstream acceptance of blogging to the level we enjoy today.  He blogged so often that one wonders where he gets that energy from.  Indeed, it came from the passion he has from what some of us consider to be something so fleeting and transient.

Yet more than that, I’d like to remember Ding for things more important than his rightful place in the blogosphere.  On our first meeting, the first thing Ding did was to reach for his wallet and show me pictures of his family.  His children, his grandchildren.  They were the greater good in the world of Ding Gagelonia: that he writes on politics and shares his knowledge about political affairs not for recognition, or fame, or glory, or 15 minutes in a TV studio.

Ding wrote about politics to ensure the future generation of a better future than the past that he has experienced, and by extension, chronicled.  That was, at least in my view, Ding’s view of what fatherhood is, contrasted to what he chooses to do in life.  That is what I respected him the most for, and that is what I want to remember him by.

There are those who can probably write or speak a better eulogy for Ding Gagelonia: the people who remember him, the people who worked with him, those who were closer to him than I was.  Yet somewhere out there, in the echo chambers of the blogosphere, the words and thoughts of Ding Gagelonia remain.  What remains is a chronicle, a reference, a testament to a blogger and a journalist.

Rest in peace, Ding.  #

Well into her seventies, Lola was still very strong and able.  She was 73 when I was born, and her quaint figure was instrumental in raising me.  When my parents worked, she assumed a lot of roles: she cooked our food, she cleaned up after us, and kept us clean and healthy.  Well into high school she made sure we hit the books, steered us far and away from trouble, and into her eighties, even tucked me in from the top bunk that is my bed.  Carefully, at that: the two blankets and the comforter had to be perfectly aligned before she trudged out of the room, and into hers.

When she took the fall that kept her from walking – and I was old enough to be aware of the world around me – I realized how much of a toll age can have on the body and the spirit.  She gradually lost her hearing, and her eyesight failed her.  She had to spend much of her time either in bed, or on a wheelchair.  Still, at the age of 87, she took the oranges from her lap and carefully peeled them.  She wasn’t a big fan of ponkan because the pith was too thick, and kiat-kiat was too small.  Those inexpensive sweet oranges from the market were her favorite.

The oranges were always top of mind for Mama when she went to market, carrying a kilo or two when she got home.  It was to calm Lola: to keep her from trying to sit up, or breaking bowls, or to lie down in an awkward position that she and my sister will have to remedy before she gets a rash.  The oranges were for her.  While we gorged ourselves on the other things she bought, we knew that the oranges were bought for our Lola.

I often wished my Lola would recover and stop being so restless in her wheelchair.  For a very hardworking woman who held a long string of jobs – seamstress, washerwoman, hawker, handicraft maker, and her calling as a shrewd storekeeper – the last task that ever made full use of her very able hands was that of peeling oranges.  She was very careful at the task, avoiding having too many stringy pieces of pith on the fruit once she’s done.

It took her quite a while to finish one orange.  She broke the fruit in half lengthwise, and offered half to me.  Whenever she had oranges and I was around, she always offered half of it to anyone who would be there.  If she was alone, the fruit dried out slowly on her bedside table.  As the fruit aged, it gave away its scent to the room.  I guess that’s why the first smell that greeted us on the hallway leading to her room is not ointment or waste, but oranges.  Always the scent of oranges.

A little over five years ago, on a rainy January afternoon, she passed away in a hospital bed.  The day before she died, the last two fruits on the hospital tray included a banana and an orange.  The former for her to eat, and the latter for us to peel and share.

Yesterday was Grandparents’ Day.  The aged who can make it are whisked over to malls, the aged who can’t get a special meal.  The hospices play lively music, the shopping centers have a much slower pace.  For me, the oranges became rarer and rarer treats, not like they were five years ago.  Maybe in time I’ll grow old, and look for those sweet oranges too, and like Lola before me, give away half.

When I was young, I argued with theories.  I thought that my intelligence was the weight of the argument.  There was the compulsion to drop name after name, theoretical concept after theoretical concept.  I argued with the contempt and impunity that can only come from someone not old enough to be proven wrong.  I was on a mission to prove to the world that I am right, and everything in it is wrong, stupid, and idiotic.  Big words, too; words that, from the perspective of a youthful version of me, can summarize – and solve – the problems of the national Gessellschaft.

Then I grew old enough to take up a job.  After three or so years of writing copy and etching a name for myself in the glass walls of multinationals and transnationals – from newspapers to BPO to advertising – I realized that I only “knew everything” when I was young.  In the brave new world, beyond the shelter of the Geisteswissenschaften and the arguments of privilege that came with a chair in the classroom and a book from the library, there are some things I realized.

If there’s anything I can empathize with the bulk of young, opinionated writers on the Web who’ll fight tooth and nail for what they believe in, I’d (somehow) act like a big brother and ask them if they truly believe that their big words would pay taxes.  If their arrogant swagger would get that promotion.  Or if those sharp retorts put food on the table, pay the bills, or make one a good citizen.

I’m young (25 years old), and I’m as opinionated as any one out there, but after tempering my pen – and my enormous ego – with the fact that working people I rub shoulders with in the train don’t give a fiddler’s fart about my blog and my grand ideas about society, I realized something very important.  It’s not what you know that counts; it’s how you apply that knowledge.  The key to success is to translate that intelligence to wisdom.

I was never paid anything for big words and literary expositions, but for simple articles that people can understand.  When I wrote copy, I was never paid anything for a big word, because the limits of the copy design didn’t allow the phrase laissez-faire. In meetings, ideas were never discussed on the basis of their grandiosity and complexity; but whether or not they could be executed on time and implemented within a budget.  There were those times that I gave my all to try and impeach the President and create manifestos for groups of netizens willing to support a cause, but the rest of the day, I work in an office earning a living.

The stinging truth gets worse from here: nothing in society, no matter how big or small, was ever accomplished by dropping big words, by invoking grand concepts, the argument from that privileged position, or just being an asshole.  If any realization mattered more, it’s that when I was young – and as I grew older – I didn’t know everything.  Beyond moving along corridors in college there was something bigger that lay ahead: the school of life itself, where the big words and theories bought you a paycheck that’s gone in 10 days.  Intelligence makes you think you’re wise and you’ll never compromise, and it’s kind of hard to come to terms with reality when you’re out of touch with it.

Indeed, the very core concepts of the things I was taught remained with me – and are the very things I apply in my field in advertising and marketing – but the big words and the verbose theories remain anecdotal.  They facilitated learning, but they were never the lesson.  The difference between intelligence and wisdom is that the former is potential, the latter is practiced.  “Free market economics,” for example, can always be defined along the lines of Hayek’s spontaneous order or Misesian sovereignty of consumers, but to an ambulant peanut vendor along EDSA, it’s the freedom to peddle his goods from bus to bus without being rejected by the conductor.  To a poor mother, it’s to “economize” the pack of noodles in such a way that it becomes “free;” watering it down to serve as viand.  To a guy with an office job, “free market economics” is the 15th and the 30th.

Which brings me to something that has been gnawing my brain for quite a while now; shouldn’t our writing be for them?  To make them understand, to empower them?  Do our thoughts have value if they float around in cyberspace for purposes of proving intelligence?  Indeed not.

When I was young, I knew everything.  As I grew older I realized I knew very little of everything: snippets of physics here, bits of sociology there, pieces of politics every now and then.  Fiery idealism, tempered with a cold dose of hard reality, can either make a brittle rod of failure and missed opportunities, or the sharp-edged sword you need to succeed in a battle against life itself.

* – From “The Freshmen,” by The Verve Pipe

Fritz and Eloisa suggested wall-climbing, which me and my girlfriend Jam were more than eager to take.  She’s much more fit than I am (if you take up vice, you’re anything but “physically fit” no matter how many exercises you take up), and she took up climbing lessons before, so I was pretty much the group’s beginner.  With a pair of uncomfortable climbing shoes, I was all set.

“We really don’t have any need for wall-climbing in modern society,” I told Jam.

“Just think of it as a way for you to lose weight,” Jam replied.

There began my journey into physical fitness… or at least, the wall that stood between me and the rest of the afternoon.

For a guy who can consume four family-size packs of chips and around two liters of Coca-Cola in a given working day, I’m anything but a living, shining example of good health and physical fitness.  (The “pink of health” cannot exist in my wardrobe, either.)  Following the logic of a certain Presidential candidate, I couldn’t run for President.  I couldn’t run, period.  Stairs tire me out, and I couldn’t be counted on to carry a 5-gallon jug of water to anywhere.  Needless to say, I’m a wuss.  There’s some added motivation of having to buy shorts at the department store, and admit to three sales ladies that you now wear a size-36.

Indoor wall-climbing, though, came a bit naturally for me considering the number of walls and fences I had to scale when I was younger.  By “younger,” I mean when I was still a teenager.  At 24 turning on 25, you start using keys to get to the back door of your house, and you no longer have to do amateur Parkour to get across the neighborhood when you’re running late.  You start developing the joint problems that come with a steady diet of junk food, and your belly shows signs of buckets of beer you down in any given day, whether you’re depressed or not.

I was on the wall when I was even more discouraged with the sight of both Jam and Eloisa belaying me.  Plus, a kid 10 years younger than I am, with thicker glasses than I am wearing, was climbing that wall a’la Spiderman.  There’s nothing like the feeling of being high up on the wall belayed by two girls, while a boy climbs alongside you with the ease of a comic-book superhero.

I pushed on, grabbing on holds, thinking along like lines of Tomb Raider. I made that mental promise to myself that one day, I’ll be swinging along poles randomly extended along buildings and walls and escape the crushing impact of a giant brass globe rolling along the incline.  Life doesn’t exactly offer save points when that happens.  Even if the harness was cutting uncomfortably into my groin.

All this was going on when I was climbing a wall that was supposed to be the easiest at Centro Atletico.  Then I reached the top.  Success! I said silently.  All I had to do was to wait for my belayers to get me down.

“The ropes look a little tangled,” Fritz shouted from below.  Oh crap, I muttered, thinking I’ll probably stay there, hanging on stupidly from holds on top of a wall, with the risk of my hair getting ripped apart by rope.  I gently pushed away from the tangled ropes, as the girls belayed me down from the wall.

“Go for another wall,” Jam said.  I ended up doing three.  That, coupled with a hearty dinner of bulalo afterward, was enough for me to take this up again for a few more weeks.  I lost a few grams of weight and ended up with very, very cramped arms, but hey, the road to physical fitness is wrought with the irregular footholds of indoor climbing walls… or something like it.

Then I’ll take up something more interesting, like, say, Bikram Yoga.  Or some other Eastern meditative ritual where I get sandwiched between a beg of nails while people break cinderblocks on my awesomely ripped, rock-hard abs.  I’ll give myself 400 more climbs until I reach that.

Until then, get your grubby hands off my Jack N’ Jill Potato Chips.

* – Provenance of the image.

Choose life.  Choose sports.  Choose a reasonable distance.  Choose a comfortable pair of running shoes.  Choose a singlet, cap, running shorts loose enough to wick away moisture but tight enough to keep you from chafing.  Choose a number.  Choose the dramatic angle by which you cross the finish line.  Choose amber-colored sunglasses to keep the sun from fucking up your vision.  Choose brand placement and advertising on every miserable line of the race course.  Choose marathons, sprints, jogging, off-road trails.  Choose sport pedometers.  Choose Velcro arm-straps for your iPod.  Choose running.  Choose life.

Why would I want to do a thing like that?

Sure, there are times that I run, but it’s driven more out of a sense of urgency than a prize, a place at the podium, or some other motivation.  The bus stop at Paseo de Roxas, the quick dash to Herrera, the hard right to Valero and into the office.  Nobody’s playing Yanni’s “Santorini” or Vangelis’ “Chariots of Fire.”  The posh side-streets of Makati and Bonifacio High Street, and the shaded walks of UP Diliman; now those are places where you would find runners.  Health-conscious runners driven by competition: the kind of people who examine running shoes at sporting-goods stores like they would gold necklaces at the jewelry shop, or maybe sea cucumbers at the wet market.  No, not me: not for a guy who would cough up gobs of phlegm after a quick sprint up a flight of stairs.

Almost everybody runs these days, and maybe it’s a lot of fun and excitement for all of them.  It was just last year that everyone bought a badminton racket to work, a whole class of weekend warriors and afternoon athletes who promised themselves a sport for the year.  Nah, it’s not a fad; it’s more like a quarter-life extension of what we all didn’t like to do in high school physical education, running laps around the field to get passing grades or to exempt ourselves from squatthrusts and other inane punishments from the baril-barilan commander barking orders at a bunch of wannabe power-trippers sporting funny haircuts, carrying wooden rifles.

I’m taken back to HBO, with at least two Steve Prefontaine movies.  I wonder if we have the same motivation; maybe I may just be moved enough by the excitement of competitive running, and the triumph of the human spirit, if I started making my own running shoes, with rubber soles molded with an electric waffle-iron.  Maybe I should set lofty goals, like breaking Roger Bannister’s record and set a mile under five minutes.  Or maybe I’m just too lazy to run.  Maybe by the time I turn 35 I’ll be eating greasy potato chips from the folds of my stomach, cola dribbling out my mouth and into my quadruple-chin like a waterfall vanishing into El Niño.

Then again, maybe I should just buy a good pair of running shoes, run every race I desire, and probably forget about it all come the next big popular wave of ballroom dancing.

* – Apologies to Irvine Welsh for a liberal dose of “Trainspotting”