Into The Sun

You give credence to what I’ve known all along. I believe that everything we do everyday is an unconscious step towards the happy ending that we want to write for our own individual story. We may not know it, but that’s really what we’ve been busy with.

We have been on an unrelenting quest for our singular happy ending.

You are proof.

Loneliness and being alone are momentary episodes. Long-drawn misery is such a cliché. Wintry streets do not remain cold forever. Sure we stumble and bumble, but you have picked yourself up one too many times. I admire your tenacity for rising back like the proverbial phoenix.

That is why I don’t underestimate the capability of humans. Man can take care of himself, with or without fate or luck. He (or she) has far more resilience stored up than we give him (or her) credit for. Really.

And now as you walk into the sunset, you are once again part of a metaphor that you absolutely want to figure in.

We can all fade into the sunset. We just have to set our sights on that glow on the horizon. And, my dearest friend, that big ball of fire up ahead ain’t an illusion.

I gaze at your slowly disappearing figure set against the immense backdrop of a fiery reality. You know as much as I do that you will find either a warm home or get consumed in complete conflagration somewhere there where you’re headed.

And now that you’ve decided to write a happy ending to your story, you will learn – as I have learned a long time ago – that a happy ending is not an end. It is actually only the beginning.

I was once a romantic, too. I used to think that the mind and imagination are the shapers of destiny, and not reason. But that was at a time long, long ago and in a kingdom far, far away. The only romantic notion left with me today is the belief in revolutions that transform peoples, as I still believe that revolutions are emotional endeavors and not intellectual efforts. Hungry stomachs spur revolts.

In the dire poverty of the society that I grew up in, I used to make my own paper dolls and their appropriate clothes made out of art paper that cost 20 centavos apiece. Being the eldest of two children, I was an only child in my first four years on earth. Those paper dolls kept me company. I would concoct stories in my mind and provide dialogue for my paper dolls, as I play out scenes with them. All the harshness and pain that I’ve seen have robbed me of the joy of creating and playing with those paper dolls. Those stories all have happy endings.

My paper dolls will be consumed in a second in that sun you’re headed to.

But this article is not about my story. It belongs to you.

I'm Loving Angels Instead

Faith is the positive result of good marketing. I can have faith in my organization, in a product or service, even in my religion. As with all marketing endeavors, the marketing of faith rests on the concept of benefit. My organization can make me feel wanted, needed, and accepted. A product can make my life easier. Religion will make me happier. And so on and so forth.

A moment of need or crisis is faith’s best promotional period. This particular juncture in time is an opportunity to sell the benefit and, thus, strengthen faith. Marketers always think that there are three groups of people: the gullible, the hypocrite, and the shrewd. And with all these three categories, the generic word ‘good’ can very well apply.

As with all things that thrive on faith of its believers, however, the product is the message. Thus, one can only endow faith on something that is verifiable. Religion, for instance, has been very difficult to verify. No one has seen God. Thus, wars ensue. Ugly phenomena result such as Islamophobia – a modern day quandary as to the limits of marketing efforts targeted at faith.

There’s nothing mystical with faith. It is all humanly possible to explain.

If the product is a lemon, blind faith is what’s needed. The blinder the faith, the better. And with this, henceforth, the emotional tug-of-war ensues. Blind faith is fed by the greatest form of advertising: word of mouth.

Marketing blind faith is a curious thing. The results are quite appalling. Some become suicide bombers, others become evangelists with their own television shows, some become multi-millionaire gurus, a few become madmen that serve cynanide-laced grape-flavored Flavor Aid (often misidentified as Kool Aid), while still others are madder men by willfully drinking what they knew for a fact was poison-spiked drink. In some cases, pilgrims die at stampedes. At some point, we start to believe in superheroes.

It’s all a difference in the level of epiphany.

Over on the other side, the true saint is the one that has led his or her fellowmen to action for the good of the greater many. But look closely, what this saint is doing is merely being a good human. He or she is not endowed with superhuman powers. He or she is endowed only with super humane powers.

The world has gone down the abyss of immorality and inhumanity, that when one person does good, he or she automatically becomes a figure of God. That’s how far overstretched our premium on faith has become.

And we succumb – blindly.

However, if it’s impossible to disprove the tooth fairy, then I can understand why over 70,000 Australians in 2001 officially declared themselves Jedi Knights and their religion the Jedi faith.

Above is the image of an angel that was caught by a camera. It was hovering above the heads of people attending the mass at the Vatican. Some say the photo is digitally-manipulated. The others say it is unretouched. I don’t offer any opinion here. I shall just take it as it is – an image.

Does it offer me a sign of hope? I can’t say, though I come from a place where the prevalent emotions are anger and hope, not happiness or sadness. In my moments of stillness, I drift to life-altering questions such as: have I lost faith because of all the ugliness I’ve seen?

Bear me this indulgence. I take to this chap like an ant does to muscovado sugar. If you’re not into Robbie Williams, however, you can skip this entirely and that won’t hurt me. No matter, I will still have great faith in you.

The marketers of blind faith have been crafty in creating myths. And when there are myths, we start believing in miracles.

The Past, the Present, and the Perhaps

I don’t know what lies beyond the here and now. Surely, neither do you. And since what we don’t know won’t kill us, the realm of the unknown up ahead is what gives us hope. We cling on to hope to calm ourselves from the panic, assuage our fear a little, abate our loneliness somehow, or generally promise ourselves that life won’t break us.

We have become so hopeless that we peg our hope on the uncertain.

Hope is a busy fellow. It is the promise of religions, upcoming elections, newly installed politicians, self-styled spiritual teachers a. k. a. gurus et. al. They thrive on the better ‘perhaps.’ And so, because the hopes that we pin on ‘perhaps’ will only mostly get us down and frustrate us, might it not be wiser to simply dwell on the ‘present’ and learn from the ‘past?’

Hope is precisely what is fooling us.

A centuries-old temple has become the stage of a very modern military standoff as Thailand and Cambodia quarrel over a piece of land on both the nations’ borders. It is both countries’ hopes that one will win over the other for the rightful ownership of the 800-year-old Khao Preah Vihear Temple. The holy dispute affects the Cambodian Buddhist monks the most as pressure has mounted, and both Cambodia and Thailand have escalated troop build-up near the historic border temple. We can only surmise as to what lies ahead for the Thai, the Cambodians, and the monks. Each party will otherwise want to have its own hopeful prediction.

George W. Bush transported more and more troops to Iraq, partly to help the Iraqis get united, but mostly to assure US taxpayers who have been funding the war that the White House has been right on target to hang on to the hope of victory. Now, all 5 surge brigades have left Iraq and the battle-riddled country is hopeful that the US will pull out all troops from combat by 2010. The air of uncertainty remains, however, over the fact that Iraqi troops still rely on American support and that Iraqi politicians may not really be capable to manage the country at this point.

The matter of Afghanistan is on both John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s foreign policy plate. Whoever wins the US elections means sending more troops to this yet another battle-riddled country, as US troop casualties are on the rise with the burgeoning Taliban mounting more attacks. Combat brigades of up to 15,000 troops will be sent to Afghanistan to tame the insurgency.

But terrorism and insurgency are only a part of Afghanistan’s pessimism. The country is grossly underdeveloped, having been ‘promised progress by every government since 1973,’ as a lowly Afghan worker laments. Afghanistan has been battling widespread drug addiction, corruption, lawlessness, and a massively handicapped economy. Where lies Afghanistan’s hope, then?

There really is just a ‘perhaps.’ It is the realm where solutions are found – or never found. The phrase ‘there’s hope in the future’ can be misleading. There’s only hope for the solution to certain aberrations of what can be deemed normal or ideal. There really is no hope for the tides to change.

That is why hope rests in the region of ‘perhaps.’ We are never equipped to find out the answer. Where problems and solutions are out of our reach, do we wring our hands and look up to heaven, or do we still nag ourselves with the question: are you part of the solution or part of the problem? The latter is the most stupid question that has floated around, really.

No need to ask that question. We are too small for that or too beyond it.

More and more, I’m seeing the logic why many of my countrymen go more often to lottery ticket outlets than to church. I can’t rob them of their newfangled definition of hope. Their religion and government have failed them.

If there is learned helplessness, there, too, is learned optimism. That is why I kiss a frog everyday.

Hope is like white light – immediately illuminating and blindly disorienting.

Alpha Female: The Bitch

If you never get lost in traffic or look good in a miniskirt – or both – chances are you may be called an alpha female. This one is as strong and faithful to the attributes of gender as an alpha male is. Sexuality is the overriding principle and factor for success with both the alpha female and the alpha male.

Think Margaret Thatcher – durable, resilient, iron-clad, iron-willed, and vain with appearance. Hers was also the only cabinet with no other woman in it. The alpha female is the devil who wears Prada. In charge, aloof, and ahead just like Anna Wintour, the editor of US Vogue.

The alpha female looks comfortable in the boardroom, and comes power-dressed. She may wear a tie but with such élan as matching it with fire red lipstick. She is also, most likely, not married nor about to have children. Neither does she obsess about relationships. Her focus on ambition is second to none.

Now, if you’re a homemaker and nurturer of family, you can hardly be considered an alpha female. This is because the alpha female syndrome is based on a male model – or, more appropriately, the masculine model (this is the uncanny quality of being a provider instead of nurturer).

The tie-with-killer-lipstick package is really a rebellion against male domination – giving credence to the movement of female domination. The alpha syndrome in both genders depends entirely on the concept of innate superiority.

Which is really what a huge part of the feminist movement has turned out to be. Feminism is inescapably beholden to the concept of male domination because it is the revolt against the supremacy of the male.

In the same light, alpha females behave aggressively towards their climb to the top. In the process, and because the world is essentially patriarchal, the alpha females are really mavericks or gender hybrids.

In spite of much ado about the uber-feminist, not many women really like to be an alpha female. In the first place, not many women like alpha females. Women want to be liked.

Which brings on the most important connotation of the alpha female. This one is the bitch – all at once frightening and domineering.

The alpha female is yet another by-product that trickled out of the feminine stereotype. She is both an icon and a caricature. She is seen as inhuman rather than superhuman. While she may be envied for her talent and capability (not to mention, overflowing sexuality), she suffers from reduced empathy from others because empathy naturally subtracts from her intractable superiority. Total achievement is the focus of the alpha female.

She also despises alpha males who are, in turn, terrified of her. Male-bashing is the alpha female’s favorite pastime.

The bitch is the bitter female. Can you think of a male counterpart of the bitch in the English language?

If you can’t, then there’s probably none.

You know why?

Because there is no bitter male.

And what’s more absurd is the fact that instead of employing the best female qualities, alpha females ape the masculine. And because they pattern themselves from the male model, alpha females are really men in drag.

Guerrilla Happiness

I’m sure you’re happy on your own. And you didn’t need anyone to tell you how to do that. You must have found it yourself! That’s because you are human and was endowed to have this little built-in mechanism to make your life worthwhile – and joyful while meaningful.

Most definitely, you found that happiness on your own, as well – without anybody teaching you or preaching from on high to you.

I am happy, and I come from a country that is happy (in spite of it being poor Third World). We never needed other people to tell us how to find our joie d’vivre. We don’t have the existential angst of not being happy if we haven’t found the ‘truth.’ We have survived thus far without having any “spiritual teacher” or “guide” to “lead us to Him.”

Our means to happiness may be considered guerrilla in nature – covert, unconventional, and with tools and weapons (ways and means) that we only stumble upon along the way. But, hey, it’s the same desired end we come upon, as well.

So, if you, like me, find all these advices about how to find the “truth,” and finding the one true “teacher” so you can meet Him (and this is purportedly the only true “path” to “happiness”), your happiness might just fly out the window!

Oops, the prophets of happiness and prophets of peace might use that to turn around and say, “See! If your happiness is what I’ve been saying as the real thing, then it surely will not fly out the window!”

What to do, great heavens? Pray tell!

If we were to follow the yellow brick road as prescribed by the prophets of truth, we will need a certain ‘someone’ to help us glean the truth, and as soon as we find it, we also would have found Him. Am I right so far? I really don’t read all these write-ups since their titles all look the same, anyway. But, really, one can digest the whole thing from the title alone.

And the plot thickens…

We have read countless statements about this mysterious “teacher” or “true guide” who is supposed to bring us to the truth or meeting Him – or something to all these effects. Just who is this mysterious “teacher” or one true “guide?”

Do you have any ideas as to who this never-named and ever so mysterious Mr. X or Ms. X (hey, I can’t be gender-biased) is? After a barrage of advice write-ups, this mysterious “guide” has remained precisely that – ‘mysterious.’ All reference to him has been left hanging. I wonder what is at the end of this line. I don’t know if you’re as curious as me about this.

Yes, I know that ideas should be freely shared, BUT writing is only half the thing. There are readers to consider. What I’m coming down to is this (and also what I’ve learned through my years of writing): you can only earn your stripes if you respect your readers.

And, most importantly, you can always share your viewpoint but you can NEVER SELL it.

Hard selling of views is yet the death of a writer.

You are my superstar!

You may not know it yet but I adore you. I’m annoyed that you don’t. I mean, do you even care at all?

What I like most about you is that you are always an ‘almost.’ And you don’t falter at being so. You could very well be a ‘done’ or a ‘never did,’ but those aren’t your cup of tea.

Some seriously fuss over what accessories will go with which outfit tomorrow, or think of killing themselves for having nothing to wear. But you can very well be willing to wear a loincloth, if only that will look good on you.

While I analyze the contents of my purse in relation to what they keep at the World Bank, you think money becomes evil when one starts keeping it. So, your advice is to spend it. That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have mortgage to pay.

You say that the color of faraway mountains is blue not green, and the color of faraway sea is green not blue. You know what? You are right! But the thing is you don’t even care if you are.

I know, I know, there are two types of people in this world: us and them. And you never made bones about it when you believe you’re neither.

While I like the spirit of victims who take matters into their own hands, you never consider yourself a victim. That’s a terrifying thought.

I hate the nonchalance of it all.

For me, it is always a privilege to be able to take sides and voice my opinion, as not everyone has that luxury.

At least, you don’t part the Red Sea nor ram the barricades with the les misérables.

But being an ‘almost’ does not also move you from comfortable to crippled, even if ‘almost’ is the most exciting time as it is between the ‘never’ and the ‘what could be.’

But you know what? When the free world starts forgiving, you won’t be one of those it does or doesn’t, either.

But it’s good that you find yourself safe wherever you are. It’s a mad world out there.

You’ll forever be an ‘almost.’ You are nothing, and you don’t even know it.

That’s an enviable position.

The Unbearable Lightness of Insignificance

Development work can be excruciating. One will traverse leech-infested rivers to reach towns, as well as walk 8 kilometers up a mountain to get to an isolated village. These instances can be depicted. Most defy description.

The mandate of development work is changing the fate of people. No matter how much tome you turn over, that’s the bottom line.

Years of doing this kind of work afford me one conclusion: fate plays a major role in the significance one can have in life. Unoriginal, but true. Fate is the invisible chain that imprisons potential.

I, however, do not refer to fate as that which is written in the stars. If you’ve been to where I’ve been, you’d come to know stars from the vantage point of the gutter.

The people I’ve met are those whose fate has been handed down to them, not from the movements of celestial bodies or the great unknown, but by the machinations of those who are on, yes, equally unreachable heights.

It shapes the lives and continues to dictate the state of this people’s future, as well as of their progeny’s future. Defying it is a concept that is not even known to them. What they know is that one cannot really budge from where one is.

This fate, however, has bound them to a lifetime of insignificance, making them resigned to the dustbin of mediocrity. Their milieu is exactly what Aesop meant when he said “Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety.”

The ignorant mother in a coastal town who doesn’t know what television is because the place she has known all her life has never had electricity is safe from the global fear and paranoia of economic recession. What she knows is contentment because the sea has provided enough thus far. And the sun will rise tomorrow, anyway. And the fruit on the branch will fall, anyway.

If you’re fated to be insignificant, then, by all means, you are.

Potential is a word that comes from the middle class, the affluent, and the civil society.

Maybe, all these efforts in development work to make people realize that they have a potential to achieve might just be disturbing the order of things in their universe. Life in the islands was peaceful and relationships were in better accord when the people were using alibata, an indigenous form of writing. Now, they have to memorize 26 letters in the English alphabet and learn syntax that is not only alien to them, but eventually useless. They are not about to get the chance to leave the island.

Just as Western colonizers were intrusive on our culture, so are we now who are really nothing but puppets of development whose tenets have been formed outside of these islands. We teach people to aspire to ideals that are benchmarked in the West.

We define happiness and contentment for them. We play the spinner of fate and hand them down our definition of potential. We fail to see that, in their ignorance, they are truly happy.

There is stillness in the sea, and it exists precisely for only that. And development workers such as me only disturb this stillness.

There are those who can and will be significant, as well as those who will forever remain inconsequential. And somewhere in between are those, like me, who persist to be a spinner of fate and move the forces of nature so that the lives of the trivial ones escape irrelevance, not knowing that there is a place under the heavens for us all.

Looking at the vastness of the ocean in this coastal fishing village, I conclude that I belong to those who are truly ignorant.

VENOMOUSsssss

The phenomenon of cheating has been around since the time the first woman cried foul. She must have felt the slings and pangs of outrageous fortune, having been cheated by her partner.

I don’t know when that was.

One thing I know, though, is that proof of this cheating phenomenon is not wanting. The Internet alone is crawling with such titles as 12 Cheating Myths, Cheating 101, Cheating Made Easy, How to Spot a Cheater, How To Spot a Cheater in the Dark, How to Spot a Cheater from the Corner of Your Eye, Your Gut Tells You He’s Cheating, Your Heart Tells You He’s Cheating, His Hands Tell You He’s Cheating, He Cheated - So What!, and so on and so forth.

Honesty must be the loneliest word.

It’s been said that being cheated devastates a woman. For many reasons, I can imagine. Betrayal of trust is one of the more common raison d’etre for hurting.

There is a gender bias statement here. I write, you judge: When a man cheats, he’s macho and suave with girls. (Lucky guy! What does he have that I don’t, huh?) When a woman cheats, she’s a whore. (Or whore-like, or promiscuous, or ‘easy,’ etc. etc.)

Almost always the center of debate in the issue of infidelity is between the man and the woman of legitimate status in the partnership scheme. The First Woman (let’s call her that) seems to enjoy the full rights of legitimacy.

In patriarchal societies, such as the Philippines that was ruled by Spain and its friars for 300 years, the legitimate female partner that cheats in a relationship suffers the worst and most painful of criticism. Her entire clan can look down on her for doing so.

On the other hand, the Other Woman (let’s call this one that) enjoys a more rosy reputation. She will still most likely fall under the generic category of ‘whore,’ but this time, ‘whore’ of the savvy kind.

In this country, the Other Woman is called ahas. That’s the Filipino word for snake. More colloquially, she is called ‘anaconda.’ It’s probably the sinful, deadly, and maliciously scheming metaphor of the snake that translated into the linguistic representation of the concept. Otherwise, it can be the characteristic of the anaconda to swallow an animal whole (supply your pun at your own risk).

While the First Woman is deemed a loser who was weighed but found wanting, the Other Woman is regarded as a winner with plus, plus points.

In the realm of infidelity, the rules of competition between the First Woman and the Other Woman have been handed down by the dictates of their society. These rules govern how society sees them both, as well as how they see themselves respectively.

After the storm, there are three characters in search of a more peaceful plot.

If I were the man, I’d contritely say, “I’m not sure if I should feel happy because I won another woman or feel sad that I lost one…”

If I were the Other Woman, I’d haughtily say, “Beat that!”

If I were the First Woman, I’d probably say, “It will be a long time before I can trust again…”

No, I’m lying. Personally, I’d say “Kill!!!” But of course you can do that either of two ways: with kindness or with a sharp, blunt, ultra-thin edged instrument of the metallic kind.

Infidelity is about losing. The man loses a loyal partner. The First Woman loses the capability to trust.

What does the Other Woman got to lose?

HAPPY!

Over the stretch of time, the most popular methods by which man has searched for happiness are turning to material satisfaction or searching for God, or that which most people have come to in search for answers during times when questions get to be overwhelming. I’m not sure by whose construct it was that material satisfaction became a polar opposite of God.

On the other hand, there are those who have come up with an organized method by which to scientifically measure happiness. They call it Gross National Happiness (GNH), a different yardstick altogether from Gross National Product (GNP). GNH is an attempt to define quality of life, an intangible concept that cannot be measured like standard of living can. Standard of living is a measurement of economic welfare.

Quality of life is said to have two components: physical and psychological. The physical will entail health, diet, and protection against pain and disease. The psychological aspect means stress, worry, pleasure, and other negative or positive emotions.

Quality of life rests on the benchmark of wellbeing, which, in turn, has been measured as happiness or satisfaction with life. However, wellbeing entails more than living ‘the good life.’ It has also come to suggest having a meaningful and worthwhile life.

By and large, happiness has come to mean, in the modern world, as the confluence of wellbeing and satisfaction.

Gross National Happiness (GNH) comes with a survey that has 7 wellness and satisfaction metrics: economic, environmental, physical, mental, workplace, social, and political. The GNH value is proposed to be an index function of the total average per capita of these measures.

In yet another research by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and based on global surveys, the findings reveal “a clear positive link” between wealth and “subjective well-being”. The results show that the facts about income and happiness are really simpler to correlate. The three trends that emerged are: rich people are happier than poor people, richer countries are happier than poor countries, and as countries get richer, they tend to be happier.

All these efforts only to go back to the question: “Can you be happy when you’re poor?”

Of course, that question is highly debatable. I’ll keep my answer to that, to myself, in my little corner of the world.

Earlier today, I received a chain email that boasts to have been voted as ‘Best Email of the Year.’ It contained the following pictures and texts:

If you think you are unhappy, look at them.

If you think your salary is low, how about her?

If you think you don’t have many friends...

If you think study is a burden, how about her?

When you feel like giving up, think of this man.

If you think you suffer in life, do you suffer as much as he does?

If you complain about your transport system, how about them?

If your society is unfair to you, how about her?

Enjoy life how it is and as it comes. Things are worse for others and a lot better for us. There are many things in your life that will catch your eye but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those.

When Chic Hits The Fan

Nothing Imeldific about it, but yes the room next to our bedroom is entirely for my collection of shoes. I just love stilettos! They make my legs look longer and leaner. I can’t count how many Louboutins, Ferragamos, and Manolo Blahniks I own. Some of them, I haven’t even worn yet.

My husband spoils me, alright. But we have a deal: I don’t ask where he goes and I tell him where I am all the time. No problem, really. I get to keep 5 credit cards in exchange. I’m a high-maintenance, low-impact wife. I keep my days creatively busy at the spa, with about 3 bodyguards outside on lean days. Their names all end in y, that’s all I know. Maybe, their names are Tenny, Jemmy, and Lenny.

Funny. My husband wants me all dolled up when he needs to bring me along to those blah and duh dinners with his fellow members of the House of Representatives. Yet, something always happens back home when a man so much as kept his eyes on me for 10 seconds. Geez, that means I’m going to have another Fanny session!

Fanny is my stylist, by the way. Oh, yes, I have one all for myself! Thanks to my husband who keeps Fanny on a juicy payroll. Saves a lot, really, since this glorious gay saves me from going to the hospital – which my dear husband most definitely doesn’t want me to do.

You see, Fanny is super talented. And busy with me, too, since I have a twice-weekly soiree with the other Congressional wives. I always manage to escape, though, the company of these absolutely ridiculous and totally obese women just before they start planning the monthly medical and dental missions, and gift-giving projects in yet another devastated area. ‘Devastated’ is a word I always hear at these meetings, apart from personal trainer and DI (that’s Dance Instructor, for you).

A Fanny session goes like this: he applies around three to four shades of waterproof foundation on parts of my face and body that have come to take on some kind of color other than my complexion. Not that my skin is multi-toned. It’s really not that fair. Must be because my maternal great grandmother is Puerto Rican. I guess, it just takes this much number of shades to expertly hide the many hues of purple. The Shu Uemura Limited Edition REBIRTH Spring Mode Makeup Collection line is the best. Fanny swears by it.

Last night, was really bad.

My husband wanted again one of those wham-bams, but I couldn’t take it anymore. The pain is too much for two to three days, so I can’t do it everyday. It’s like…well… rape but I know that it can’t be rape because we’re married.

I must have whined a little in disapproval before he grabbed me in bed. I did exactly the very thing he ordered me never to do: whine to let him know I don’t want to do it.

Like it has happened many times before, he went ballistic in three seconds. It happened so fast! He got up, yanked me out of bed and threw me against a wall. I can’t remember which wall. I must have slammed on more than one. The world was spinning after I hit a huge vase resting on a pedestal. I crashed to the floor along with the porcelain. I didn’t know porcelain could break easily, but I felt a big shard slicing under my jaw.

I lunged at him with what’s left of my strength. He grabbed a handful of my hair. We ended up in the next room. I flew to my sea of shoes. He rushed to me, quickly yanked me up and just as he was about to throw me again onto another wall, I was able to grab a shoe.

With all my might, I hit him with the pointed heel on anywhere I can. I saw blood, though I don’t know whose. I can hardly open my eye with all the blood down my face.

In a flash, he was able to wrestle the shoe from my hand and the next thing I knew some warm liquid was spurting from my head. My knees were growing too weak. From my slowly dimming vision, I see my husband walk to the bedroom phone and dial a number.

A thought crossed my fuzzy mind before everything blacked out. Fanny can’t fix this one, this time.

And me and my husband have a big family reunion, on his side, coming up this weekend. Oh, and I’ve got to go to my designer today to try that outfit I had him do last week. He never gets it right around the waist.

CAMP 7, somewhere in Cuba

This is a mysterious place with some dirty secrets.

Its location had been top secret, with its existence uncovered only in February this year when its top commander Rear Admiral Mark Buzby admitted it in an interview with the Associated Press. It’s a place for bounty-hunted detainees and teenagers, some 60 of them, and some as young as 13. One was just 14 in 2001 when Pakistani authorities seized him and sold him to the United States for a bounty, a fate common among those housed there.

Camp 7 is a place reserved for the al-Qaeda suspects that have been called ‘platinum prisoners.’ This moniker may have come about for various reasons. The title possibly connotes the men’s utmost importance in worth that’s far beyond gold. It can mean the exclusivity of their confines that’s strictly off-limits from the Pentagon’s media tour, as among them are 15 alleged senior al-Qaeda captives called ‘high-value detainees.’ What is certain, though, is that Camp 7 is run by its very own special unit – codenamed Task Force Platinum.

The International Red Cross has condemned the indefinite detention of prisoners there. The United Nations has found that techniques used inside those confines “amount to degrading treatment in violation of the [Geneva Conventions],” and recommended that it be closed “without further delay.” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said it should be shut down because it’s damaging to the world’s opinion of the United States.

In November last year, a ‘primary operations manual’ was published by the government transparency group Wikileaks. Within a week, it had appeared in hundreds of articles listed on the Google search engine.

The detailed how-to-manual indicates several rules such as: some prisoners to be designated as off limits to visitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and destroying a Styrofoam cup as a punishable offense “for destruction of government property.”

The SOP also revealed the routine use of isolation, sensory deprivation, and sleep deprivation on detainees in order to weaken them and make them ready for interrogations. These techniques are common methods of torture which, though commonly used, are still regarded as immoral, illegal, and inhuman.

There is one activity in Camp 7 that concerns water. It involves restraining a prisoner on a board with the subject’s head lower than his feet. Water is then poured on the face, triggering a gag reflex and choking the subject. Even the CIA and the Navy SEALS couldn’t stand it when they used it for their own training.

Camp 7, located in a military detention facility enclosed with barbed-wire fences and surrounded by hills with lush cactus growth, exists for the sole purpose of finding out the location, itinerary, and agenda of a purportedly eccentric bearded billionaire bogeyman, whose less than acceptable activities have been costing a whole lot of money to decipher.

It’s somewhere in Guantanamo.

God Ain't There On The Battlefield

The definitions of good and bad are askew on the battlefield. Neither exists over there. There are only good cause and good moves or bad timing and bad days. The words good and bad defy definitions in a time of war. Today, some things can be good for the victor and some, bad for the loser. Tomorrow, the victor scores less.

The battlefield is a place where morality does not exist – cannot exist.

God doesn’t visit there, either.

The myth of war is fraud. And for soldiers, the experience on the battlefield is so ludicrous as to absolutely require the strongest of obscenities.

No one wins in a war.

Does saying someone died for a good cause mean anything? Is the fact that they died saving fellow soldiers or saving the lives of civilians a good thing? When enemies are killed, or when civilians die at the crossfire, what of it? And when they are ordered by their superiors to hide the sordid truth because war crimes are punishable, who can say that that is wrong?

There is, however, moral courage.

When a soldier debunks the myth of war as fraud and calls a battle an enterprise of death and immorality, he condemns himself and his fellow soldiers as killers. Thus, the morally courageous becomes an outcast. Does the outcast become a patriotic soldier, then?

In the war memoir “The Sutras of Abu Ghraib” by Army Reservist Aidan Delgado that appeared in print in 2007, the author describes the attempts of his commanders to suppress the truth about Abu Ghraib, making it appear that Abu Ghraib is just a rumor. His captain said, “We don’t need to air our dirty laundry in public. If you have photos that you’re not supposed to have, get rid of them. Don’t talk about this to anyone, don’t write about it to anyone back home.”

The Winter Soldier investigation just outside Washington D.C in March 2008 was a scene of hard-core U.S. Iraqi veterans shaking at the podium, some in tears. Jon Michael Turner described the horrific incident on April 28, 2008 when he shot an Iraqi boy in front of his father. His commanding officer congratulated him for “the kill.” To a stunned audience, Turner presented a photo of the boy’s skull, and said, “I am sorry for the hate and destruction I have inflicted on innocent people.”

“Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians” by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian is based on hundreds of hours of taped interviews with Iraqi combat veterans. This pioneering work on the catastrophe in Iraq includes the largest number of eyewitness accounts from U.S. military personnel on record.

A soldier only knows disillusionment. When he turns against the military principle that truth is seditious, and when he starts to seek forgiveness and musters moral courage, his only one hope is to stop denying the truth.

Then, and only then, can he start to heal.