Art and Nature

 As you will see in the paintings (and photos) my paintings are all about nature and its various forms. Organic forms.

 The goat, the lotus flower, the lotus leaves on pond water, the goat skull, the orange fishes, the reddish flowers. The humongous white boar.

These creatures have lively forms full of possibilities. One turn of the goat's head and new shapes and textures appear. I take a look at the lotus flower from a different angle and the light and colors change. And the fishes of course, so hard to capture them with a camera in their constant meanderings beneath the surface water, how can one show such liveliness on canvas?

Just looking at these live creatures makes me want to draw them, to recapture them on paper or canvas, and keep those images in my memory. It's like you want them to be part of you, your experience, forever.

My paintings are my first attempts to make visible what i see in these creatures. Of course these are but poor imitations of what is real, but nevertheless, they have become lively pieces on their own, worthy of a second look, a third look. The paintings are objects that allow one to ponder the nature of Nature.

As for the animals and fishes which inspired these paintings, I am fascinated by creatures that give delight just by being themselves. They are uncomplicated, well at least less complicated than people. 

And these creatures enrich our experience of life in so many ways.  

That many people nowadays don't delight in them is a reality too. That is why they are relegated to mere creatures that serve our culinary and gastronomic delights. We can't even consider them as pets, and therefore don't look at them as beings with complex feelings and ways. We relegate the animals to the farm because the city has no place for them. The city is meant for people only, for dogs and cats yes but more than this is still unthinkable. I mean, a goat for a pet? Hah, kinilaw would be the foremost in most people's minds. Those who haven't developed the empathy for other living creatures have their own reasons of course, but I wonder if people can evolve without learning to consider the reality and valid existence of non-human life forms.

 

 I would like to bring attention to these animals and the other life forms with which they live with, and perhaps the paintings could make people look at these creatures with more careful, if not caring, eyes.

We eat animals for food. If we see them as beings with personalities and with certain characteristics that make them unique among their own kind, perhaps we would think twice about butchering them.

It gave me delight that some people have responded to the goat painting. Others like the white boar painting too. As I was painting these, part of me was saying -- why are you even painting these? Would people be even interested in them? But I painted them nevertheless because I liked looking them. As simple as that.

Do they see the same things as I saw while painting them? Hopefully yes. Will they see the long, ivory-like, pointy horns, the white, coarse, flowing hair, the half-shut eye that gives it a mysterious look? Or will they see goat meat instead? Maybe we can start by just taking a real look at these co-earthlings of ours.JBB

That's my friend Paz posing with her favorite painting, the goat. All paintings are on exhibit at the Likha Diwa Vegetarian Cafe, C.P. Garcia Rd., QC near UP, till end of April 2011. Everything's for sale, if they haven't been bought yet.

Banaue- Camote Girl

This little girl is about two years old, couldn’t talk yet but could express what she wants. She came near me and lifted her arms and I understood that meant she wanted me to carry her and sit her on my lap. So I did. It was a sweet act, and I don’t know what went on her mind as she did that. She obviously liked me and trusted me so that she’s willing to approach a total stranger like me.

Her mother says she was fed camote, that’s why she is heavy and round. Camote is a familiar rootcrop in the mountains, easy to plant and easy to grow. Many years ago, in other parts of Mountain Province (the province next to Banaue, Ifugao) I would see old women digging the ground with a stick and unearthing camote from the soil. The women would do this for so many hours that they become permanently stooped.

This little girl’s mother and father own the small store at that place they call Saddle Point, where hikers like us stop to take a rest after some two hours of hiking, and from where we descend to another 30 minutes to one hour hike to Batad. Her mother sells softdrinks, cookies, candies, and local craftswork—necklaces, wood sculptures, and the like.

We bought softdrinks from her, since the hike was so challenging that one could not resist a bottle of softdrink to recharge (of course fresh fruit juice would have been better). Of course it cost us three times the price. The joke was that okay you can go back and buy softdrinks in town which is much cheaper, if you don’t want to pay the store price here.

On a normal day, we would have taken a jeep ride up to Saddle Point and would have avoided the two-hour hike. But we went there during the stormy season, October-November, and the roads were closed due to landslides. The hike was not an easy one as we had to navigate fallen rocks, stones, mud and slippery cement (where I slipped and landed on my butt), fallen trees and plants (where I fell again as my feet got tangled in vines). But the view was breathtaking. I’m glad we hiked instead of taking the jeep. It wouldn’t have been as wonderful an experience.

Banaue- the hanging bridge

The hanging bridge straddles the river which cuts  through the middle of the town. Made of scraps of iron sheets put together by wires, it swings as it bears the weight of the locals who cross it everyday; this path enables them to reach the lower part of the town in a few minutes instead of half an hour.

The people here are used to heights. They can look down at the river while crossing the bridge and they don’t feel any fear or anxiety in doing so. For them, the experience of being suspended in air, amidst the high mountains and rivers, is a very natural thing.Their kids grow up crossing such bridges in other parts of the mountains.

M, my friend, was so scared of crossing this bridge, more so when three men came down the steps and started walking toward her, causing the bridge to sway. She wanted to tell the men to stop so she can cross over first. The men did not stop; I didn’t tell them to stop because I felt foolish doing so, seeing that there was no real danger. It might have been insensitive of me but I was confident she would be okay. And she was, after going through some scary moments up in the air between river and sky. It was exhilarating despite the fear, but she didn’t venture to cross the bridge again to go back to the same end where we came from.We climbed the steep stone stairs up the mountain into the market instead.

 I could not imagine how fear of heights can be so real to some people. I think this is for people who have grown in the city and have not been out to the countryside so often as to get used to the expansive space above and below them. It is truly a strange thing to me. I guess civilized man started to have the fear of heights and open spaces when he started living in the city and lost the natural human response to high mountains and the vast wide sky. For people in Ifugao and the Mountain Province though, immense heights and spaces will always be part of their reality.

Banaue- the river view

The view from Greenview Lodge. Raging river down below, houses by the winding road. We walked this road on our way to the hanging bridge. These orchids, probably taken from the mountains. The sound of the flowing river puts us to sleep at night, and we woke up to the same sound in the morning. If this is where you live everyday of your life, one wonders what changes in one’s mind-frame will happen. I would think there would be a space and silence in the mind that will drown out a normally chattering city mind full of civilized concerns like today’s appointments and businesses, last night’s movie, facebook, and yes, the recent blog entry. If you want to quiet the mind, I would suggest one go to the river and listen to it all day long.

Banaue on a rainy day

The fog covers the sleepy town of Banaue on a rainy morning in November. The houses are engraved on the slopes of the mountain, descending (or ascending) on each other.They appear even more gray on this foggy day, which, on a sunny day, are as gray-looking as they are now-- the locals are very sparse with the use of color and paint.

Made of a combination of wood, cement and galvanized iron,  only the red roofs of these houses appear colorful. There is only one kind of house design here, the rectangular-shaped, and I would think that the people have not given much thought to the designing and painting of houses, as much as they did in planting rice and maintaining the rice terraces in good form. This is understandable,  producing rice for food is a basic need and one which will come first before the desire to paint or design ones house.

From my window, one can see the road that winds down through the town, with small buildings and houses on both sides. There is a church on the right, as could be seen in the white cross that stands on top of the building. This is the same road that led us to the more isolated village of Batad, where a more panoramic view of terraces could be seen .

It is as ordinary as any other Philippine provincial town, except that Banaue is surrounded by its terraced mountains and its ricefields, which altogether makes it an enchanting small town engulfed by mountains and fields.That their forefathers were able to come up with an amazing system of rice terraces that exists to this day should be remembered when one considers how un-ordinary the people here are.

Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore
By Haruki Murakami


First impressions. I’m still trying to figure it out. One would say its surrealist, or magic realist, postmodern, but let’s not go into these terms now.

There is Nakata, an old man, cannot read or write, but by Buddha’s definition he is one endowed with powers that come when the mind is empty. Because he does not read or write he was able to access abilities that do not involve the rational mind, like talking to cats, making the skies rain with fish, or with leeches. He was a craftsman for a long time. Somehow, doing things that do not involve reading or writing or using the critical mind makes the mind silent or empty, and I think that is how Nakata was able to develop his abilities.

Kafka Tamura. Fifteen years old, runs away from home; he hates his father, he grows up missing a mother and a sister. Loves to read, is quite world class in his readings. He has an alter ego named Crow. Crow gives him advise on how to survive in this world where Kafka finds himself totally alone.

Nakata kills Johnnie Walker, who kills cats and gathers their souls to make them into a powerful flute. I wonder what that flute and soul gathering is all about. Some folklore or mythology involved here that I am not yet aware of.
Johnnie Walker, a character taken after that scotch whisky ad, not supposed to be a real person but a concept. Just as the other character Col. Sanders, Kentucky fried chicken ad man. Johnnie is supposed to represent the dark force while col. Sanders the white force. Of course. Johnnie stands for alcohol, the colonel, for…fried chicken? A good force? Now this just one of the funny and confusing aspects of the novel.

Kafka was fated to kill his father and sleep with his mother and sister. Like Oedipus. So this is a remake of the Greek classic Oedipus Rex. A Freudian drama. I still couldn’t convince myself to believe in Freud, so if this is the premise of the novel then I shouldn’t go any further because there is no point. Because I don’t believe Freud’s penis-envy, incestuous theories.

But let’s not touch on the Freudian view for now. Let us however see it like in Oedipus Rex, Kafka is fated to kill his father. Whatever Kafka does, he will suffer because his destiny is to kill the father. I think it’s about the inevitability of suffering, but I just don’t know why suffering has to come in the form of murder and incest. (And I wonder what Foucault has to say about this). The extremes.

And so Nakata, the poor, simple man who can talk to cats and make the heavens rain with fish and leeches, takes Kafka’s fate and kills Nakata’s father instead. But he does not actually murder Kafka’s father because he believed that he killed Johnnie Walker, the man who kills cats. Still, in a “metaphorical way” (the author’s words) Johnnie Walker is Kafka’s father.

The novel is full of unrealisms, but is realistic in many ways too. At certain points I feel like reading a typical drama that’s one for the telenovelas, angst and self-pity and all (and we really have so much of this in the Philippines, that I think it’s preventing us from thinking more constructively about our lives. We just love drama.)

The storyline is focused on a boy who runs away from home because he has issues. Nothing new about this. What is new in the novel is how the author interprets this juvenile drama into the mysteries of life, of the looking at other fascinating aspects of reality that we normally ignore. Like the seeming ordinariness of cats, stones and simpleminded people; in the novel they are the ones whose brilliance shine through. I am happy of course to recognize Buddhist/Zen/Perennial philosophy at work here.

One thing we shouldn’t ignore though is Murakami, the author, is Japanese, he wrote in Japanese, and lives in Japan. The novel is a reflection of the social issues in Japan—the alienation of the youth like Kafka, neglected or misunderstood by their parents; the affluence that comes with such alienation, none of our third world poverty issues. The youth’s sense of alienation, some of our young, affluent, city-bred Filipino population can relate with.

And I am sure they will have many other things to recognize in the novel. These are just my first impressions. I did not let go of the book for three days, enjoying the philosophical, literary landmarks along the way. Apart from touring Murakami's interesting inner world, I am also introduced to how a male Japanese psyche thinks (sexual daydreams and all). Which is quite interesting, given that I have been reading female writers for the past months.

I will need to reread the novel. That’s for sure. There are certain things that will need more illumination, like the meanings of Johnnie Walker and Col. Sanders and the realities of Kafka’s parents and sister. The significance of the stone and the forest and the character of the androgynous Oshima. Also, Nakata and Kafka never got to meet each other.

The Poisonwood Bible

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Couldn’t put this book down once I opened it’s covers. Maybe because I am a product of American and Belgian missionaries, just like the Africans whose story is told in the book. And yes, it’s not exactly an eye-opener for me. A theme of the book is that of the Christian God and the Bible--that Christianity does not hold the sole Truth in this multicultural, multiperspective, multiple-Truths world. It is one truth that I have learned a long time ago, but one that many people still have to come to terms with.

Kingsolver's novel is an eye-opener in many ways.

It talks about American politics in the diamond-rich Congo, where children starve. It’s about missionary girls who realize the oppressive power of a Christian God as interpreted by their missionary father. It’s about being different from the common definitions of beauty, normality. It’s even about God the dictatorial father-figure coming face-to-face with God whose essence is found in the trees that provide shelter, and in the ravenous black ants that eat and destroy.

Christian missionaries from the US, believing that the Africans are condemned to hell unless they learn about Jesus and his offer of salvation, enter the Congo with their holy mission. A preacher and his wife and four daughters arrive in the forest village called Kilanga. Reverend Nathan Price,like all zealous preachers who listen to no one but to the Christian God (through the Bible of course), does not bother to truly encounter the people he plans to baptize and convert. It is his wife and daughters, all in fear of him, who tell the story of the consequences of his beliefs.

The story is told from the perspectives of the wife, and the four daughters, each having her own unique encounter with the Africans. The story comes in multiple perspectives, the African experience viewed in different angles. In this way, the story comes out fuller and richer.

In one way, it is saying that the Christian zeal is misdirected with its intention to save the world. It is the arrogance of claiming that it is the sole religion that holds the spiritual truth and all those who have not encountered Jesus will go to hell. And it’s their fault if they did not come to know Jesus before they die, because they lived in the farthest parts of the earth where the missionaries could not reach them on time.

Why Poisonwood Bible?

While clearing the ground to set up their backyard garden, the Reverend Price wrestled with a small tree, the Poisonwood. The African woman househelp warned them about the tree, but the self-important Reverend ignored her as he does to the other Africans, his wife and his four daughters who, in his mind, are lesser in wisdom than him.

It’s named Poisonwood because anyone who comes in contact with its bark and branches and white sap will soon suffer welts and inflammation of the skin. The Reverend Price soon learned about this as he himself felt his skin burn, to his dismay. It was just the first lesson not learned in this side of Africa, for the Reverend went on to commit the same mistakes.

The missionary kept telling the Africans that Jesus is Balanga, the local word for precious, but pronounced in a different way this same word means the poisonwood tree.The missionary who did not care enough to know the difference between balanga Jesus and balanga poison kept saying the poisonwood word, and thus preached the gospel of Jesus the poisonwood tree.

To the Africans in Congo, the Christian Bible is indeed poisonwood. It is poison to them who are forced to accept a foreign god and give up their local gods who have been guiding them and their ancestors.