Holy Week begins...

All good gifts around us are sent from Heaven above...

In a quiet room, one can think. In a quiet space, one can pray. In the quiet, one can return and reflect after a meeting which one expected to go badly and yet, it did not. One can plan to eat a cheeseburger in a dark and quiet room. One can write in one's diary that he is tired of someone or he can write of someone's joke, the kind which he laughs over, the kind which he wishes he wrote himself. But the greatest privilege of quiet and dark room is that it has a door and one can close it. Lock it even. When one hears a knock, one does not necessarily answer.

A student fails to come to class for a week and a half. She appears one day. I return her barely passing midterm and her paper. She does not offer any explanation and I do not ask for one. Then an email comes from the dean's office and she is concerned about her grade. She is having personal problems but does not want to talk to me directly so a staff person writes to me to represent the student. The same one who vanished for a considerable period. I explain that the student, no longer a first year college student, should know better than to play these games. While we do not require her to divulge a private matter, she could have communicated the difficulty she was facing and informed faculty accordingly. As a result, she is left not without options but very little sympathy. Growing up is painful. Sometimes I wonder if there is no other way.

"Unless a grain of wheat..."

During this Lenten season, folks give up different things: chocolate, candy, meat, etc. In year's past, I have heard people suggest that it would be better to work on something rather than "give up" something. "I am going to work on being more positive..." The language of relinquishing has left people bereft somehow. Nonsense. People have amazing ways of expressing their inability to sacrifice. The reason why we give up something and know that is what we are doing is because we recognize that personal change is difficult. We do not try to change everything about ourselves but during Lent, a time of purification, we choose one thing in our lives that we face with difficulty and we struggle with it as a sign of one's love for God. God does not need it, but we do it because we need it. But too often, folks in society want things made easier and do not want to have to face the shortcomings that they have built into their lives. As a result, the idea of sacrifice falls on deaf ears. People can choose. But people can also choose poorly. Tobias Smollett once wrote: "Some people are wise, some are otherwise..."

The other day I was dining with a friend who said to me: "I know you will be disappointed..." She recounts a situation with an acquaintance in which she had the option of confronting an issue and avoided doing so. She knows that I prefer it when people confront people who need to be confronted. I don't mean hostile, finger waging stuff, but honest and direct communication. How nice it would be if we did so and lessened our need to speak rudely about the other behind his or her back. Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't resort to the cruel back-stabbing a passive-aggressive culture has finally given itself over to? But then I ask her: "Is she a friend?" And in all honesty, she was not going to be. Granted that initially, my friend thought she could be friends with this other woman but as it turns out, she has realized that this potential friend had little potential. So I explained that we only offer serious feedback or criticism to people who matter to us. We do not help people who have not merited our assistance merely because they are there. Why should we waste precious energy to offer something which may not be welcome? What is relationship if we cannot hear something truthful about ourselves? But an ego-weak culture struggles to hear the honest review. Meanwhile, more and more folks tune into shows which advocate direct feedback: Dr. Phil, American Idol, etc. People clamor for feedback so long it is not directed at themselves...so what of the soul if it rots against its own indolence. Why stand before a mirror if one cannot see what is reflected back?

A person eminent in his field comes to visit one's community. He is highly regarded for his work and people respect him. People read his books and he influences various movements in society. When he arrives, he is tired, beleagured because recent reviews of his work have caused a stir, controversy. He does not feel well and he is tired so he comes to stay in a distant academic community. The person who invites him cannot host him continually but assumes the local community will take care of him. The famous man is less than endearing. He is famous and wants everyone to know he is, he tries to be humble but his attempts are weak and he does everything short of speaking of himself in third person. Folks listen initially, respectful. Eventually, people stop trying and avoid him. They know he does not care to listen to their concerns. He presumes they have a relationship upon which he can draw upon their energies and he hopes where he lacks intimate connection, his hubris allows him to perceive that his public stature will ensure rapt attention. He hovers more and more in public areas, in search of conversation. He is at best, an annoyance. People are looking forward to his departure. He places so much energy on the writing, the books, the politics, but he has so little by way of friendship and his ditherings have not made him charming or cute, he is just another tiresome old man.

Sometimes, those exams just have to fail.

Where shall one go? Where is one going? Is it the proverbial road less traveled bit when in fact, people want to travel the road on which everyone treds? Generations have trod, that's fine but do we bring anything new.

Sometimes, one wants to eat alone. No conversation.

Dear Lady Chang,
I am looking for some peace of mind during a time in which we face nothing but war. Can you give me some advice? A friend of mine was nearly drowned in a swimming game and the person who may have done it was malicious in his intent. It is hard to prove but I think something should be done about it. Is it ok for me to drown this person? Or attempt to? What do you think, Lady Chang? I need your advice. I offer these flowers.
Love, Magdalene Aswang

The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.


from "The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator" Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems

Weekends in the spring can be glorious.

When a friend leaves after visiting, I always feel a little bereft afterwards. I do not necessarily want the friend to stay. But I am also missing him. He has to get back to work, to school, to other people. But I want that sandbox time again, that time to laugh and visit, to guffaw over the steering wheel as we consume burgers one late night. He flicks a bit of potato from his fingertips and I spill the dipping sauce for those fast-hardening chicken things called nuggets. Pass the napkins and he laughs aloud: "In other countries, that means feminine products," I laugh in reply knowing the minutes are passing. I know I will take Tagamet later.

One of the ways one stays in touch with friends is through this wonderful thing we call the post. I cannot speak well enough of how important it is to maintain contact in the various ways available to us: the Internet via email, faxes, telephones, cell phones, but somehow, the idea of a letter, romantic for some, is merely an idea torn from yesteryear. People do not imagine using their hands to write letters anymore. There is "quick" messaging from one's Instant Messenger site, there is Facebook or MySpace, etc. We can keep in contact with two hundred of my nearest friends. But what of time? Do I need to know this instant the news which my friend has yet to offer me? What difference does it make whether I know of his well-being right this moment or in the four days following, when I am able to sit down with a cup of China black tea, after work, sitting in the garden, reading his words. Ronald Rolheiser has suggested that we do not necessarily need to be more faithful but we do need to be aware of how busy we have become. In this busy-ness, we become less aware of one another, rushing past one another, hurrying from one activity to the next, speaking more and more quickly, failing to listen at all to what the other person has to say. Are social skills diminishing? For some, yes. And it is no surprise when people have so little practice at conversing. The most civilized thing we can do is have a real conversation. But that takes a bit of focus. Slowing down, listening, all the things which our culture is saying we do not need to do because it is rush, rush, rush. Standing in lines, waiting in lines, reading, cooking, gardening, these things cannot be rushed. I am glad. Sarton was right about that.

It is the year of the Golden Boar, a lucky year for a child born in this year. In a recent article in the newspaper, people consider where are the Asian-American pop stars in US culture? Some folks argue that people in the US are not ready for an Asian-American music celebrity (other than Yo-Yo Ma). Perhaps. Or perhaps we are hiding behind our culture's inability to see Asian-Americans as musically talented. Some will argue, somewhat fallaciously, that Asian-Americans have not come up with their own sound. What sound might that be? After the film version of Dreamgirls released, I was aware that the film reminds us that it was not that long ago that African-Americans suffered considerably from the racist white culture which refused its music. When the public heard music it liked produced by Blacks, they were quick to appropriate it in their own image. It seems we are still faced with the enormous legacy of Orientalism, in which "Americans" insist on seeing Asians as Other, the eternal alien, always from somewhere else. The recent controversy prompted by the racist writings of Kenneth Eng, former writer for AsianWeek, shows us that when Asians show their color, there are consequences. Eng's inflammatory language led to his firing which was rightly merited. But we have not asked a much more difficult question...what rage do Asians/Asian-Americans have about the racism they have encountered too often in this culture? How many young Asian-Americans find themselves increasingly aggrieved at the number of self-hating Asian-Americans who willingly "kiss up" to the dominant culture only to be stung by its hidden sting, just barely hidden by a well meaning, business-like smile? And what do Asian-Americans need to hear from one another and the larger culture to find a common citizenry at a time in which we seem to indulge the public's problematic rhetoric about Asian-American pop singers when there is no dearth of talented people out there, willing to try. Perhaps white America wants to stop feeling guilty. Just the other day, a white student told me how difficult it is for him to feel proud of his culture when there is this constant regurgitation of the wrong doings of his ancestors. While I was sympathetic, for he has inherited the sins of others, and those sins cast very long shadows, I was curious how he would answer my question at the lack of visible Asian-American singers, actors, entertainers out there, often reduced to stereotypical roles, just so folks can have their cake and eat it too? Well folks, that cake is rotten and if you want to eat it, you may find yourself choking eventually. Eng may have been stopped by justice-focused people but his rage does not dissipate quite so easily. Shall one have children in this year of the pig? She might want to sing someday. Better not encourage her for fear of getting her hopes up. Just ask her to major in business or nursing, computers or medicine. Those lucrative fields have a strange way of amassing enormous amounts of economic power. And that's just the beginning.