Stainless: 1. Perspective

This is something that's surely occurred to me before, in my previous trips to the Philippines, but I'm only noticing this now. It has something to do with perspective. It's like this. Guam, in sheer size and area, is much smaller than the Philippines--I think it is smaller then even just Luzon, the northern island--but in some way it doesn't feel smaller. I look around in Guam and I always see green and blue--the plants and the sky. I am always cognizant of the space not just in my vicinity at the moment, but of other vicinities. When I drive to work and go on the Route 16 overpass, I see Micronesia Mall from far away, and the ocean and the hotels beyond that. When I go to Kmart, I see not just Kmart but the jungles around Kmart and the cliffline upon which Chalan Pasaheru, Route 10A, was built. When I go to the beach in Tumon, not only do I see the hotels lining the beach view, but also Tanguisson and Two Lovers' Point, from miles away.

The same is not the case in Manila. You take the jeepney to Lawton, and all you see are the other sweaty faces riding with you on that jeepney. Try to peer outside the jeepney's open windows, and what you'll see are the facades of houses, businesses, and the people inhabiting the street right at that moment. You walk the street to RFC, and all you see is the street. Unless you're right at Real Street, you won't see that Jollibee or McDonald's that you know is just a minute's walk away, and even if you did, chances are you're looking at the large signs these businesses had to erect in order to compete with all the other signs all around them. In other words, you can't see Espana from Lawton, and you can't see E. Rodriguez from Espana.

Now, am I saying that this is a bad thing? On one hand, I do fear that the military buildup that is being planned for Guam may have the effect of "closing in" our vistas so that our perspectives cease to be open. Already I observe that once those four towers at Oka are built, they will be an inescapable sight for miles around, even as you're going towards the intersection between Routes 1 and 10A on that final stretch of road near Kmart. Now guess what you will see when you are standing at the Hospital parking lot, near the towers. That's right, the towers. Just the towers. Even since before the towers were built, you couldn't see the ocean from the GMH parking lot anyway, even if you tried, but now, with the towers in the way, you wouldn't even consider the possibility.

But perhaps this "closed-ness" that makes the very messy but functional public transport system in Metro Manila possible. Because the only landmarks available to them are the ones in their immediate vicinity, Filipino commuters soon learn to recognize them even within the confines of a jeepney where you have to hang down your head to see out the window. Perhaps they do not see their daily commute as a two-dimensional map, but rather as a linear ordering of landmarks that they consult as they ride the tricycles, jeepneys, and buses in their route. Because their vistas are closed, every intersection comes to look different. I think back to the time I dropped off a friend in Liguan Terrace. I dropped her off all right, but it took me 30 minutes of driving around to realize how to get back out to Marine Corps Drive. Why? The houses all looked the same at night, and the only landmarks I could find were faraway ones, in this case the tall trees that grow from some of the houses. Since the trees were far away, they look similar even when viewed from entirely different intersections.

I decided that an amorphous, market-driven public transport system would not take off in Guam, simply because of our lack of immediate (as opposed to large and faraway) landmarks. I'm pretty sure you've heard of Bear Rock, but what about Pacific Plaza? Would you be confident in getting dropped off at Pacific Plaza if you knew that there was another place called Pacific Place? (There is, by the way.) What about Baltej Pavilion? Sounds familiar, right? But where is it, and how could I use this information to get where I want to go?

This is when I realized that the tension between open vistas and closed vistas is a tension between the picturesque and the efficient. In fact, I did not set out to write this post the way you are reading it; I was supposed to say something about how Filipinos compensate for this lack of perspective with open minds. But that seems rather New-Agey and quite like that bit about the white woman Margaret Mead telling the Pacific Islanders from the outlying islands what they are really like in her book when really, in the opinion of the islanders, she really doesn't know what she's talking about.

So I am glad I instead talked about public transportation, as this is a topic that engages both my political and mathematical proclivities. For many reasons, Guam will greatly benefit from a public transport system. But how will it be accomplished? Perhaps this talk about getting the commuter thinking about his or her route as a series of landmarks in closed vistas might help quite a bit.

Thoughts?

Thanks for reading.

Song in my head: Hayley Williams, B.O.B., and Eminem, "Airplanes".

Status update

I guess it was wrong for me to assume that other people will remember me the way I remember them. First of all, there's more of them.

Song in my head: Keahiwai, "Where Did Our Love Go".

Heard it in a song

Tonight I finished writing a song that was in my head all week. When I realized that this was the case, I turned my car radio back on. You see, during the time that I am composing or writing a song I try not to listen to the radio or any kind of music so that I can hear the music in my head a bit more clearly.

Anyway, that got me thinking about all the things I did and the decisions I made based on what certain songs said. When I started to get really close to someone we'll call Prairie Dawn for now, that was when that song by Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours", was gaining traction in the radio. (This was the version that had a more stripped down, percussion-less arrangement and not the one in We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things.) One of the lines in that song went

I won't hesitate, no more, no more
It cannot wait, I'm sure
There's no need to complicate, our time is short
This is our fate, I'm yours.

I credit these lines for inspiring (if not dictating) my course of action towards P.D., which of course led me to going to the Philippines with her and two of our other friends and the subsequent birth of imo.

Has anyone else had the experience where some lines of a song inspired a decision or some subsequent behavior? Now it may turn out that I'm the only one susceptible to this, and that this is a non-question and should be dropped. I'd be fine with that. But if it happened more often, why does it happen at all?

As I reflected on it, it dawned on me that song lyrics gain power through the order in their composition. (See my previous post for more about order.) Maybe we're more likely to believe song lyrics because song lyrics are usually orderly in some way, and since the universe is also orderly, maybe an orderly song lyric closely describes the workings of the universe. And what, pray tell, makes song lyrics orderly? Well, rhyme, rhythm, the notes you sing those words on, any number or combination of those things.

Could it be that I broke my leg ice skating with a girl and brought to mind a new musical genre simply because of the words to a good Jason Mraz song? That'd be life imitating art, wouldn't it?

And who said that was wrong, anyway?

Thanks for reading.

Song in my head: Nickelback, "If Everyone Cared".

P.S. Here's another instance of life imitating art. I was driving Sexualspam around one night, when he suddenly called my attention to a scene playing out in front of a house whose corner we were rounding. In the moonlight, he saw some young punk and a girl, and the punk jumped over the gate, unlocked it, and let the girl in.

He jubilantly growled, "I just saw 'Hands Down' with my own two eyes!":

The streets were wet, and the gate was locked
So i jumped in and let you in
And you stood at your door with your hands on my waist
And you kissed me like you meant it

Seventeen syllables, No. 75

Ocean, your wrinkles
Look smaller from here; that's why
Sun visits nightly.

Seventeen syllables, No. 74

A myriad cotton
Clouds stampede serenely past
Me at Seat 2A.

Kumakantang bubuyog

Hoy!
Kumanta ka!
Sumama ka!
Makisali!
Hoy!
Isubok mo!
Ihataw mo
Ang awitin!
Hoy!

Simulation

When I was younger, I used to imagine that my life was a simulation--not the real thing. Whenever I looked around, I imagined that it was all a big movie production and I was on a set, and everyone around me was paid to appear there, and everything was a prop. I constantly tried to find evidence of this--every time I visited some new place, I quickly looked around the backs of buildings, checking whether "they" have had enough time to build a whole building just for me, or else just left the fronts of the buildings finished, propped up from behind by wooden planks. The fact that I never did see any prop buildings didn't really console me; it just increased my wonder at how complete and "big-budget" this production was.

Other times I imagined that my life was a video game, an ultra-realistic simulation of what life would be like as a nine-year-old living in a suburb in Metro Manila. But that was not as extensive as another storyline--that I was really not human. That I was really a cybernetic being that was planted into the Philippines by a shadowy security agency called the Network, whose aim it was to foil diabolical attempts to take over the world. I had continuous neural contact with an operator named "Rick", and a secretary named "Wanda", who orchestrated excuses whenever I was going to be missing for a mission. Now being missing from school for a mission--that was something I never was actually able to orchestrate myself. But that would've been fun, too. ^_^

I don't know what led to that thought process. I have no idea why I thought that my life imitated art. Looking back now, I think that by keeping to myself instead of playing at the playground with my friends, I became somewhat detached from reality... nevertheless aware of it, but feeling as if I was not a participant in it. It gave me a different kind of grounding than what my friends really did... and I think it's another reason that I'm still alone at this time.

That's not too bad, though; in fact it's shiawright. Understanding why you are a certain way goes a long way towards deciding whether a change would be either good or bad.

Thanks for reading.

Song in my head: Styx, "Mr. Roboto".

P.S. I just found out that at one point in time, Bobby Flay's girlfriend was Stephanie March. Yeah, one of the past ADAs from Law and Order. We can all hope for a comparable station in life. ^_^ Oh, well.