(written while listening to Satriani track of the same title)

He sat down on the porch, that warm night, when the air was like soup and the bulb glowed overhead. Putting his beer down, he reached up and switched off the porchlight, and everything became clear. As the curtain of haze died, the sky unfolded before him and he gazed up into the pin-pricks of light flickering in the dark blanket. He took a sip from the cold bottle.
She caught him in her headlights. The pickup rolled up the driveway, crunching the gravel beneath the almost bald tires. If he hadn't been blinded, he would have recognized the tires. Didn't matter, not when he could have told that truck from anywhere.
"Watcha doing?" she said, getting out of the truck and turning off the lights to the thanks of blessed heaven. Before he could answer she added, "Didn't think you were home."
"Yeah, turned off the lights."
"Duh," she plopped down beside him. She smelled like car oil, and grass and old clothes.
"Nothing much, just..." he began, but faltered when he looked at her in the darkness.
She grabbed his beer and took a sip, looking up at the sky. The hundred little glimmers looked back.
They sat in silence. No more words were needed.

I don't usually like posting lyrics, mainly because I think its cheesy. However, this time is an exception. I must share the beauty of this song, how it captures so much that's been on my mind lately. Last time I felt this way, I was watching "Rent" for the first time. This time, it's "Wicked".

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes: and leap!

It's time to try
Defying gravity
I think I'll try
Defying gravity
And you can't pull me down!

I'm through accepting limits
'Cuz someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I'll never know!
Too long I've been afraid of
Losing love I guess I've lost
Well, if that's love
It comes at much too high a cost!
I'd sooner buy
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I'm defying gravity
And you can't pull me down

So if you care to find me
Look to the western sky!
As someone told me lately:
"Ev'ryone deserves the chance to fly!"
And if I'm flying solo
At least I'm flying free
To those who'd ground me
Take a message back from me
Tell them how I am
Defying gravity
I'm flying high
Defying gravity

On some nights, when the homework is done, and the text messages have ceased, and the world settles for sleep to the rhythm of dripping rain and lazy electric fans, I find myself flipping rapidly through the web, looking into people's blogs and personal pages. Some are friends, others complete strangers. Here, a face smiles out from the computer screen. Anime characters adorn the background. YouTube posts load. Everyone tries to say something original, something new, something cool. Everyone tries to be their own person. Everyone tries to be profound. All this effort, with mixed results.

I won't say that I'm apart from this mixing bowl of humanity; rather i'm very much guilty of all my allegations above (except the anime characters thing). But looking through it all, it makes me wonder. How different are we really from one another? Who's one to say they've got a better idea then the next?

We have these ideas about a hundred ideas that take up the space of our minds. We think about justice and beliefs, pornography, cheeseburgers, Victorian literature, media convergence and My Chemical Romance. A thousand philosophies couldn't begin to describe a human being. I have only to look so far as every person's personal page to realize this.

I don't know about others, but I like to move through a circle of friends who are, for the most part, mainly concerned with the development of their minds. It makes me think about a quote from Richard Dawkins:

"We all think science is interesting; If you don't, fuck off."

Sure, this is me. I am this web-page. I am projected in my blog. I experience, I construct, I express. It is the continued pursuit of identity, shared by everyone else. We're all different, all the same. Cirque de Soleil had a show called Quidam. The word means "stranger" or more accurately, "a man who sits on the corner of the street". This is the person who is everyone to everyone else. We are all strangers, meaning nothing to each other, yet we all have our own stories to tell. To us, the pretty girl riding the escalator is just that. To us, the man selling cigaretes is just that. To us, the student with his backpack, waiting for a ride on a rainy day, is just that. And yet, they have lived lives full, as rich and as meaningful as our own. They've seen days come and go, they wake up in the morning, they eat dreary breakfasts, they've lost loved ones in antiseptic hospital rooms, they have dreams and aspirations, and bad memories that haunt them on cold nights. And yet, these wonderful things called human beings are mere shadows in our minds, as we glance at them through the window of a car, or look up from the book we're reading. They enter like brief flashes, and leave just as quickly, and we don't even allow the decency of an after-image.

You know, it's wierd. The human race, that is.

"Bring me that horizon."- Captain Jack Sparrow

When charting the course of life, one of the most important rules in my book is that no one else can decide for me what my heading should be. I decide where to go, and I am anchored by no one. Recently, i suffered a loss, a setback. But why should that turn me from my heading? Why should I let the weight of a woman strapped to a cannon pull the rest of my ship down as she goes to the depths? That's only too bad for her, she didn't want to stay aboard. Well, she couldn't really, but that isn't my problem anymore.

Wish her luck, and I'm off, just like i done with other people who have threatened to tie me down. I want to go places and do things, and they can't come along. Too bad.

I have set my course for further shores. Some people say settle down, find a steady job, find a steady partner, stabilize yourself... "if your truly brave." Bollocks, that's what it is. Why do that when there is so much in life, so much in this world to find? Can you imagine anything more boring then steady-stable?

There's a world of adventure out there, places, things and people. But if anything, moments like this recent one remind me of the need to not get attached. Ha, it was a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted. I don't dip; I plunge. But I won't stay in too long, because there are other adventures out there waiting.

Sure, it hurts to say goodbye to something so good. That's part of the game we play. Life wouldn't be so damned interesting if we couldn't savour every moment, every flavor, every emotion. Plunge into love, but when its time to move on, feel that heartache, that pain. Roll in it for awhile, then leap to action and set sail for the next chapter in the story.

The author of the book "The God Delusion", Richard Dawkins, makes an articulate and sharp-toothed case against the claims of religion, both as a basis of moral behaviour and the existence of God. Faith(belief in something contrary to evidence), argues Dawkins, provides the slippery slope into divisiveness, prejudice, and violence. Even though I am a Christian, I cannot deny this observation. History is littered with the evidence of how religion has worked against peace, tolerance and progress. Even today, the great "War on Terror" is at its heart, a religiously motivated conflict, a consequence of the battlelines drawn in the sand of Jerusalem between the Muslims and the Jews. In the heart of America, religious fundamentalism is also giving fuel to the actions of the right-wing politicians. On the documentary "The Root of All Evil?", Richard Dawkins confronted Ted Haggard, then pastor of the New Life Church. Haggard explained that the greatest issue facing the next generation will be the Islamification of Europe. *note: Haggard recently resigned as pastor of New Life because of allegations of sexual abuse and drug abuse.

Haggard doesn't think AIDS is a problem; he doesn't think climate change is an issue; Education in Third World countries doesn't get much merit either. The biggest problem is Islamification. From the point of view of an atheist, the whole religious conflict is really about two deluded parties arguing about who's delusion is better. And unfortunately, millions of people around the world buy into this pointless debate.

Furthermore, religous groups around the world are systematically engaged in, according to Dawkins' view, amounts to a Hitler Youth Camp-type indoctrination of children. In his essay, "Viruses of the Mind" he premises on the idea that children are programmed, by evolution, to be impressionable, and that religion takes advantage of this by setting up their false world view and teaching it as truth to the next generation of faithful, perpetuating the myths upon minds that havn't yet developed the capacity to think critically and weigh evidences.

Dawkins has a point about the consequences of religion. As the "faithful" categorically deny other perspectives as truth, assert their own beliefs as true, and perpetuate this absolutism, our society becomes polarized between religions. This has done the world no end of serious, bloody, and horrible conflict.

But what about Dawkins' arguments on the existence of God? His arguments are a highly articulate packaging of the same arguments atheists have used the world over: science, evolution, quantum theory, the lack of empirical evidence, cultural epidemiology. The case made with reason is overwhelmingly convincing.

But I believe, despite all the evidence and cuss me if you want, that God is out there and here. I don't have any reasons for why I believe that, but I do. And that's about as much as I have. It's enough for me. So what if its not enough for others?

I am not in the business of asserting my faith over others. That perspective is the slippery slope towards bombs on the tube, suicide bombers and restricting condom use in Africa. Trying to argue that my belief should be true for everyone else is the debate that leads to hatred and violence.

Faith is, on its own, nothing bad. For some, it's a delusion, for others, it's truth. However, what happens when a society begins to choose one truth over the other, and assert it without reason, without consideration, without acceptance, without critical thinking? That is where the danger lies. No one should dispute what you believe, but they can dispute how that belief is articulated and whether or not that belief should be the basis of how society will decide to act or how society should percieve one thing over the other.

He didn’t think it was a lonely spot in the park,
no matter what he actually felt inside.
A bench,
a row of trees,
the constant footsteps,
the muted sounds of traffic somewhere beyond the green.
The cigarette tasted like nothing,
and the newspaper in his pocket said nothing.
“Give a girl a light?”
A pair of eyes, faded, like his.
“Sure.”

She took the lighter, and touched the flame to her cigarette.
A slight breath,
and a cloud became a halo around her head.
All she needed now were the wings.

A couple walked by,
smiling
as if there was no such thing as
tomorrow.

She looked. He looked.
Quietly, on that summer day,
they shared a mutual winter.

Damn you. You think you can just brush this aside? You think you can go on, leaving me to sit here like a fool, standing me up and spinning me around? It's really simple, isn't it? At the flick of a switch, you make me disappear. You hide behind a wall of contrived words and pseudo-explanations, signifying nothing with a stream of silence. It's not supposed to be a cold december. It didn't have to be a cold december. But you quit on me. You threw reason out the window, you don't have the guts to answer the questions. You're a coward. Damn you.

It's waking up on a gray morning beneath the shadow of blue-windowed skyscrapers. It's asphalt, concrete, a million pairs of shoes and trees snuggled together on paved walkways. It's a line of buses screaming and screeching in mechanized chorus to harassed commuters. It's a boy selling cigarettes to a jeepney driver.

It's just another day of existence in the life of a city.

In some ways, the rally last friday held by the Silliman community was successful. We saw the students holding up their banners and loudly protesting the rise in crime in Dumaguete City. We saw the representatives of different sectors state their support for these voices, and we saw a catharsis of the pain and fear that has gripped the students that call Dumaguete their home away from home. When we watched the faces of those who have fallen victim to the crimes in Dumaguete—the young men and women whose lives were destroyed in acts of brutality and inhumanity at the hands of other human beings—we somehow felt that there was meaning in their deaths; that at last, the community was rallying around those who had suffered so much. The rally was a success-- in some ways.

But we have to understand that crime is a double-ended problem. It has both effects that follow from it, and causes that lead towards it. During the rally, several people mentioned the need to "crack down on crime" and call in the best the PNP has to offer. These statements were met with approval by the crowd gathered in the rainy darkness. But I couldn't clap, and I couldn't agree. Because in my mind, these statements missed a vital point: that crime is merely a symptom of a much deeper social disease. In my mind, the statements made by the officials was only half of the solution.

Let's look beyond the the individual tragedies. Let's be a little bit more scientific in our analysis of the problem. Let's examine and ask the fundamental questions.
Why is crime occuring in Dumaguete City?

In our effort to find a solution to the problem of crime, we must first understand why crime occurs. When we know why crime occurs, we can then neutralize its cause. If this action is combined with the better enforcement of law, then I am sure that we could very well see a dramatic drop in the incidence of crime in Dumaguete.
Crime is not normal human behaviour. Our cultural norm is not one of thievery and murder. All across the city of Dumaguete we have churches and cathedrals, all preaching and teaching moral behaviour. A Filipino is brought up to believe in family, friends and God. What would cause a deviation from the norm? Most of the crimes committed in Dumaguete are premeditated, falling along the lines of robbery and theft. Criminals often start with these small crimes, such as pick-pocketing and snatching, later on progressing to break-ins, rape and murder. But it all starts with acts of theft, the most common premeditated crime in Dumaguete.
Theft is the taking of something that isn't yours. It is the act of gaining material assets through illegal means: a purse, a wallet, a laptop, a cellular phone. Why would someone do this? Because they want something they can't have. The pattern is clear when we see that the crimes were being committed by people caught in the lower end of our economic scale. In other words, poor people are the people who are most likely to steal things—people whose economic circumstances kept them from access to things that they see other people have. This problem is only heightened in a setting like Dumaguete City, were a student with a laptop, walking around with her cellphone, her education being paid for by parents, driving a shiny new motorcycle-- has to share the same street as children who have to work at night to augment the family income, barely even able to sell the bags of peanuts they carry. The economic gap between people in Dumguete has grown increasingly wide, and it is creating an environment where marginalized individuals would consider taking desperate measures in order to close the gap; measures like theft.

The economic root of crime also has another fundamental psychological effect: it robs people of dignity. A man who no one sees, a woman who no one hears, is dehumanized by society. We see them for a brief moment, and our eyes pass by to look at prettier and shinier things then the pile of rags at our feet. We see the children begging, feel a pang of regret, and then a few blocks down, our minds are already thinking about what to cook for supper. People who are treated this way have no dignity. People treated this way are no longer human. In the mind of the people passing by, they are ghosts, existing only on the edge of the consciousness. What effect does this have? A person who is not given any respect as a human being becomes calloused and does not see other people as human beings either. In the same way that we consider them less then human, they would see us as less then human as well. We are only a collective of well-dressed, better monied objects. Why are we so surprised when the people we never treated as people, all of a sudden act more like animals then human beings? Is it truly so surprising that a brutal act of violence can be committed so callously and in cold blood?

The solution to crime that deals with the causes must then provide two things: it must help people improve their economic status, and it must give these people dignity. They have to be given employment, so they can makes something of themselves. They must be educated and made aware of their of their self-worth and role in our society. They must be empowered to achieve their own aspirations and dreams. They must be treated with dignity and respect, no matter what kind of clothes they wear, what barangay their from, or what they look like. They should be treated like any other person.

Before you start to think I'm a bleeding heart for criminals, I want to let you know that I'm not; anyone who commits a crime is accountable to the law, and must be dealt with swiftly and severely: too bad there isn't any death penalty. However, the point I’m trying to make is this: to deal with crime itself, we must not only deal with the criminals, but we must deal with the reasons for why there are criminals among us in the first place. Effective crime fighting deals not only with the criminal, but also with making sure that new criminals are not created by our society.

Let's make sure that the vicitims of crime in Dumaguete are given the justice they deserve: a justice that addresses not only the effects of crime, but its causes as well. Let's make sure that the brand of justice we speak of is justice for everyone: a justice of compassion, understanding and tolerance, and not a justice of hate and retribution.

Welcome to Dumaguete City, City of Gentle People. Don't mind the ice-picks, the high schoolers getting raped, the nursing student who was stabbed in the face, the shootings in the market area, the dozens of unemployed able-bodied men, the break-ins and robberies, the vibrant shabu business, the graffiti and gang wars between the "Bloods" and the "Crips", and constant petty law-breaking that every citizen engages in whenver they cut corners or ride a motorcycle without a helmet. This is a wonderful little town.

I've had the opportunity to live in different places, both around the Philippines and in America. It may not be as much as some people, but its enough for me to compare how life differs from one locale to another. I've lived in Manila, which was as much of a hive city as any other. I've lived in Stafford, an American suburbian niche filled with manicured lawns and cookie-cutter houses. I've lived in Los Baños, a university town caught between a mountain and a big lake.

Before I came to Dumaguete, I'd never experienced a break-in. I'd never seen a fatal motorcycle accident. I've never heard of someone being stabbed in the face with an icepick.

Why is it that in such a small place, that claims to be a "City of Gentle People" and a "University Town", i've been faced with violence and brutality that rivals the tabloid news of the streets of Metro Manila?

I'm not saying that the other places I've stayed in were devoid of crime; far from it. Everywhere I've been, I've heard of things happening around me. But it was always beyond the border, somewhere beyond the neighborhood. What makes Dumaguete stand out? The answer is this: in Dumaguete, the frequency and brutality of the crimes are disproportionate with the demographics and population. Now, i'll admit in my blog that this proposition has yet to be proven with hard statistics, but after having read the newspapers over the past years, and having lived here and heard and seen these things happening, i believe that this thesis may be correct. As a volunteer for the Dr. Jovito Salonga Center for Law and Development, I intend to use the Center's resources to find out.

If I'm right, and there has been a rise in violent crimes committed within the city and neighboring areas (including Bacong, Dauin, Sibulan, Tanjay, Talay and Valencia), then I'm spotting something very wrong with our local government.

What have they done? How visible is the anti-crime campaign? One rape, one murder, one forced break-in should be enough to spur our city officials to action. It should be enough to start an organized and systematic approach to eradicating criminal elements. One dead student should have been enough. But apparently, it wasn't. More people have to die. More people have to have their lives violated. More tragedies have to strike before the local government decides its time to take some action. It almost borders on negligence.

I'm not going to condmemn the men in uniform who patrol our streets and come to our houses at three in the morning when we make our 117 calls. What I will say is that they're not getting enough support. There aren't enough of them. They aren't being trained sufficiently. They don't have access to good equipment. They have to beg Cebu for the fingerprinting files. They don't have a criminal database.

This problem is also not just on the law-enforcement end, because crime is also a symptom for two deeper social diseases: poverty and lacking education. What has the city been pouring money into? Tourism? Business investment? Infrastructural development? All the while, people are still hungry on the streets, begging. Shame on the city council, and shame on the office of the mayor, because everytime a Dumagueteño goes for a walk downtown, they have to put up with people begging for money. Shame because there are so many young men just "standing by" waiting for one odd job or the other. Shame because kids have to work in the evening just to support themselves for school. Shame because our educational system doesn't provide affordable vocational training for those without livelihoods. Shame because when it comes to providing for the people who need help the most, the city has no visibility.

This is our wonderful little town.