man to my cause

"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a 'drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgement, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho' your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and tho' you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw."

- Abraham Lincoln in his Temperance Address before the Washington Temperance Society (1842).

chagya pabo... the making...

sometimes we get ideas and the unstoppable desire to create something. could be for ourselves, or for another person.

i made chagya and pabo out of my own favorite clothes, to give them more of the sentiment that i wanted them to have.

thanks, chagya, for making me smile. and hope again.

love is MY semordnilap of evil

("InSPIEGABILE" / Pisa, Italy copyright 2007 photo taken by cris carpio-garing.)

ordinary day.

woke up. shot off to the gym where 20 minutes of cycling and 40 minutes of lifting failed to rouse my still semi-functioning mind.

walked two blocks to buy me some Rothmans, a carton of milk, pineapple juice.
as i was going into the house, this old lady blindsided me by the stairs. she was muttering to herself, obviously pissed off at something or someone. by the elevator, she turned to me and asked if i knew the people who were making a fuss last night around midnight. having had little sleep, i knew it was the Peruvian family up on the fifth. But our floor having been the victim of unreasonable complaints from other tenants, i knew better than to squeal.

"Ero sveglio tutta la notte e non ho sentito niente, signora. Forse si sbaglia."
( I was awake all last night and i heard nothing, ma'am. Maybe you're mistaken."

That shut her up. As she got out on the second, she continued grumbling and huffing.
I hid a smile.

Outside the door, i could hear the phone ring.

"Pronto?" Hmmmm... nod. Gasp. Shit. nod. nod. Fcuk. Fcuk. Fcuk. nod. nod. shake head. Damnit.

That phone call sure did the trick. It felt like i drank a pitcher of italian corretto (which i hear is quite popular back home nowadays, the sambuca). It was my best gal pal in the U.S., the torchbearer of love, my mythical image of all that is good and and wonderful and POSSIBLE about love.

after 15 years of delirious monogamy, her boyfriend-now-fiance-now-jerk broke ties with her, apparently, over a romantic dinner and over a close friend of hers.

her belief in love was rattled, shaken, utterly destroyed by what happened.
imagine mine.

it is simple, really. Yes, we choose our partners. things work out. things might not. and yet it is also damnably complicated. It was my 22nd birthday when i decided to break an elementary concept.

Live and evil is probably one of the most basic semordnilap couple. Spell live backwards and you get evil. At that time, i firmly believed that it was LOVE that formed evil's semordnilap. And i stressed, "eeeh-voool!"

i dont know why, but i turned to my friend Luisa Igloria's poem I HAVE A CRUSH On An ITALIAn TEnor. Luisa is a poet extraordinaire and Associate Professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program and Department of English, Old Dominion University. I had the amazing opportunity to meet her and interview her for the paper i worked for here in Italy last year. Her words are instruments, the structure of her verses the sections, and her poems the completed orchestra that has the power to amaze, flummox, aggravate or convey peace.

...in those few seconds when i felt my friend's heart crumbling to pieces, i heard the words... "and for one person only...we say I choose you...delegate the rest to coffee shop friends..."

here's the part of the poem that I'm referring to.

...But when you think about

the souls in The Symposium, separated from each other
and condemned to yearn eternally for what completes them
and makes them whole, you can begin to understand
the difficulty. Not everyone can fulfill such a dizzying
array of needs, and for one person only. It’s hard enough

to figure out who it is we were meant to be with—and yet
we point and say we choose, we say I choose you. Would it be
enough to recognize which of our most important needs are met
by our mates, and delegate the rest to coffee shop friends,
email buddies, jobs, hobbies, therapists; to running, reading,

writing, yoga, or massage therapy? Sometimes it is at
the hands of a complete stranger that the spine gentles
and relaxes on the linen-draped table. The head droops,
the shoulders slacken, the ribs exhale a longer breath.
And the back, all this time locked tightly in its habit of not

giving anything away, responds to the fingers
of the blind masseuse, in the same way the tenor sings
so ardently of a world he still desires, can still taste and feel,
though he can no longer see. Any stone would melt
like a heart, from the honey of even such imperfect love.

I HAVE A CRUSH ON AN ITALIAN TENOR
(Poetry East, fall 2007)
http://www.luisaigloria.com/


...in those few seconds, i was the rope that they all pulled at, for which they hurled and heaved and measured their strengths and worth.

this tug of war.

delusion and faith.

and i hear another beguilingly profound voice at the back of my head, Spike singing his bloody aria of "Love's a bitch". Crass, and yet finespun.

"...And the back, all this time locked tightly in its habit of not giving anything away..."

some days, you're better off not getting out of bed.

xxx.

the love songs of many-a-zeus

and he smeared the word itself
this four-letter secret that everybody else
seemed to know

and smeared themselves
thousands of times

it lived
and breathed
and died.

chthonic souls turned angels that fucked turned gods made chaos their master love their master
perfection their master turned slaves, this slavery

masters him. he cannot escape
and reads,

i am a simple guy. enjoys walks in the park, movies, meaningful conversations, love that never dies, my strengths are all listed here, and the rest of them you can view where my photos they can tell you make you see tease you make promises to you that i am who i say i am and my love never falters.

he shakes his head, laughs, distrusts
he is seeker and sought
and when he enters their world

he is simply lost

and he has known
the simple ones
the beautiful ones
the poor ones
the proud ones

and he has known how it is to read these love songs, troths that began with a smile, a chest, roughened thighs

this exercise of excesses that they, "their people", employ and the masks that they wear and he wears making them "his people" and his options exercised to his liking

and reads,

i seize the day and take what i can. i take you. i tell you you are mine and mine alone but i am not yours never will be alone. i fuck you and fuck you up then move on. i seized the day. i seized you.

and then his music
his tomes
his passions
his life

life smeared with that word
it comes up again
his own fractured fable

him, filled with the faces and bodies
of those he collects
like numbers and rainbows
they are polychromatic, and unending

he collects them

he is collected

a toy.

and reads,

or blank space

this fear
he is you, yet he despises being him or him or him
he is better, he is nothing
part of and cut off from the whole

i do my own thing

it reads

and suddenly, the unnecessary becomes desirable
the untruths getting new skins of
longstanding reason;

and he strives to read
between the lines

before he is carried away
to become the immortal that he was fated to be
his beauty set in stone
his heart hardened by time
and

that word

forgotten; that song,

unsung.

2008 Holiday Posters by... me!

when i arrived in Catanzaro last December, i found myself with a lot of spare time in my hands (what's new eheheh). Having decided to search for a job after the holidays, I would wake up with nothing to do. well, except for cooking for my brother and the rest of the peeps here, or struggling with french or korean, or just plain shivering from the tragic cold.

I was then caught by the poster bug!


For yo. Pabo!!!






























Of course i missed my brother! I havent seen him in 5 years!!! It was cool to realize how much we've changed and i marveled at how these changes allowed us to have a better rapport than before. I love my brother and I'm just so happy to spend my 'waiting time' here with him.


































My three wacky sisters would never have let it go had i not made one for them too! so in the spirit of their new business venture, the Coffee and Cookie Company (the cookies in the poster are all their handiwork! Im so proud of you guys!!!), here it is. Guess it really runs in the family!







































And here's one for my sister-in-law! Ate Judith is quite a lass, and though an unexpected choice, I believe, a right one that my brother made!





























I miss my godson so much! Back in Milan, I would babysit for him as his mother, best gal pal Lanie, had to work. Little Gabri is just the cutest wootest!





































The DOLGERS clan! My childhood friends. Wherever we are now, be it Dubai, Belgium or Manila, the bond is as thick as it once was!





























Another cutie baby! My other goddaughter, Danica. It's a real kicker and laugh riot how everytime she sees Gabri she just has to smother him with kisses!




























She was the girl who sat beside me in the benches of Milan's Loreto terminal. I felt her eyes on me while i was reading my book. She asked me abruptly if i were Filipino and if i spoke English. I answered yes to both. Then she asked if i were gay. The rest is history! Best fag hag ever! lolz





































My four years in Milan could be broken down into seconds of beauty, minutes of pain, hours of friendship, days of learning , weeks of loss and months of reflection. Whether i lived alone, with a roommate, slept on a bed or a divano, worked as a cleaner or a journalist, through it all.... these amazing people were behind me all the way. It was painful to leave them, but of course, it's never forever. i miss you guys! I'll see you all soon, i hope!

i just love cooking!!!

I remember watching my grandmother as she cut the vegetables up for the Filipino dish Chopsuey or show me how the batter for the rice cake or puto should look like. the buttery smell of the puto would always remind me of her and the Sundays that i spent in her kitchen. My grandma was a cook beyond excellence, and the credit goes to her heart, which is a main ingredient in her every dish. Each plate of scrumptiousness and each pot of godliness must have more than its share of ... love.

She taught my mother to cook, gave her all the recipes and the secrets and the trusted tips. But she parted leaving me something more precious.

Her passion for the culinary arts.

Whatever hardships i have to go through now in pursuit of a dream that at times seem to be so unattainable, i endure for the sake of her memory. One day I'll finally be able to leave Italy, move on to a place where I can study the arts and become a chef.

well, maybe in profession. But in truth, maybe just a simple guy with a lot of heart in his every dish.



( Learning about Calabrese dishes was given a major boost when i took on a job as stay-in caregiver cum cook for this wonderfully gentle man Signor Giuglio Altieri. Here are some of the recipes that i was able to prepare for him during my time in his home. )