Permutations of Love

Looking Glass 2

Doris Trinidad

• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• ISBN:
  9786214200528
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Dissertations en sociologie

Looking Glass, an earlier compilation of columns published in 1991, is back with its follow-up Looking Glass 2. Penned by Doris Trinidad, this new set of literary musings rises above mere journalese.

"In reading her compilation, I glimpse Doris' inner life and what I see gives me—as it will her readers—great joy. For her inner landscape yields countless metaphysical flowers and fruits."

— from the Introduction by Eugenia Duran-Apostol

I

Roses and Brickbats

Samsara: A Perfume By Any Other Name...

Although it is not quantifiably known how much a perfume’s name affects its sales, no doubt it is very important, and perfume houses spend astronomical sums in the process of discovering a name for the latest scents they have created. And because I promised Mr. Philippe Guerlain, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Guerlain to write something on my personal insights about Samsara, the Guerlain perfume recently launched by Rustan’s, here goes, Mr. Guerlain:

About the name Samsara, your researchers are quite right: it is a Sanskrit word that refers to the cycle of birth and rebirth undergone by a soul in the course of burning out its burden of Karma. I was just a bit bothered by the video presentation wherein the term Samsara was equated with Nirvana because to my knowledge the two words have quite different meanings and connotations. Samsara connotes struggle, birth, death, and rebirth until the purified soul is able to break away from the unrelenting wheel which binds it to repeated earthly existence. Nirvana on the other hand is the state of bliss attained by an enlightened soul. Therefore even though the two terms are not equatable, Samsara can be considered as the means, or the journey, or the search for Nirvana. In that sense your press releases are correct in relating Samsara to the search for harmony and perfection.

About the connotation of eternity, I likewise harbor doubts about its appropriateness. Samsara is sometimes called in esoteric literature “the wheel of the eighty-four” perhaps to illustrate the many reincarnations the soul undergoes before attaining perfection. But there is an end to the cycle; in fact an end earnestly hoped and strived for because after the tiring rounds is the prospect of God-union, or heaven, or Nirvana. Eternity is what’s in store after Samsara.

Of course, what’s done is done, and you have a really exquisite fragrance with a very intriguing and melodious name. I don’t think there are many who will feel discomfitted about the connotations of the word, perhaps only nitpickers like me. Just look at some very successful perfumes that have been launched with definitely (and deliberately) negative names like Poison, Opium, My Sin, Passion and one of my favorites, Arrogance. I was only wondering why your writers did not hatch up a line such as: Life after life I searched for you... or Samsara - the beckonings of eternity... Corny, aren’t they? I wasn’t cut out to be a perfume promoter.

Anyway, here I’ve kept my word, despite the fact that I ought to be writing about contingency plans in the event of war and fuel coupons and the sense of crisis that grips us as I write.

January 30, 1991

All Heart

This time we focus on that mysterious, spectacular thing we call the heart. As if on cue, just as we set about working on this issue, mine own heart started acting up — you know, thunderous palpitations, shortness of breath, dizzy spells, even pain in that region of the anatomy traditionally assigned as the generator of the grand emotion about which there’s a great to do every February 14. So I had to hie me to the hospital (St. Luke’s) to have the ole heart checked up - tested, photographed, listened to and monitored by various hi-tech devices. And truly hi-tech they were, a long way from the plain ECG which used to be the sole technological yardstick of a heart’s soundness only a few years ago. The cardiologist, young U.S. trained Dr. Benjamin Camacho ordered, aside from the ECG, an echocardiogram (also called the Doppler test) which uses amplified sounds made by the heart projected on a screen to detect abnormalities and malfunctions of that vital organ. By the way, amplified heart sounds are more startling than romantic, a kind of monstrous sucking, gurgling noise. I was also given a Holter, which turned out to consist of a cassette recorder attached to my body for 24 hours to “eavesdrop” on all the thumps, murmurs, quivers and whatnot my heart would make for one day. And finally a Pulmonary Function Test to measure the fitness — or otherwise — of my lungs. Here I was made to thrust a tube attached to a computerized machine into my mouth and asked to make rapid breaths, then to inhale hard, and exhale just as energetically, sustaining the exhalation until all the air was out. This series of acts were translated into a sort of free form triangle on the computer screen. I gathered that the larger the figure one’s lungs turned out, the stronger they are adjudged to be. Sad to say the figure my lungs made was rather below par, much to the disappointment of the technician. Since deadline intervened between all these hi-tech happenings and the revelation of their results, I’m sorry to be unable to disclose at this point the true state of my heart.

Still on the heart-y subject, in Shirley MacLaine’s book, Going Within she mentions that the color of the heart chakra (energy center) is not red at all, but green. This statement jibes with other information I have come across which confirms the greenness of that part of our body which is also correlated to the planet Venus and the metal copper, which as you know is greenish in its unpolished state.

The color red is in fact assigned to the base chakra which is located way down the spine, and associated not with love but with the most elementary body functions. So perhaps we have been miscoloring our Valentines all our lives? Something to think about on the Day of Hearts.

February 20, 1991

Ash Be With You

The subject today is ashes. One cannot escape it; it is everywhere, in the air, on the ground, on our roof and furniture, in the water, up our nose, into our lungs and finally our bloodstream. This fine, gritty matter that crept silently and totally into our lives one awesome never-before weekend is something we must take pains to know more about, instead of sweeping, shoveling or hosing it off in the effort to make it go away or disappear, because it won’t. This suddenly omnipresent ash ejected by Mt. Pinatubo’s violent breath will be with us for quite some time, a fact many of us have resigned ourselves to, seeing that no matter how you dust or flush the bothersome particles away, they’re back in no time at all. We might as well all be greeting each other, “Ash be with you,” and be greeted in turn, “And also with you.” The smothering reminder of our mortality came several months too late for the onset of Lent.

Living with the nitty-gritty is irritating to say the least, but just imagine how traumatic it is for the legion of evacuees from most afflicted areas whose homes, farms, animals and loved ones were buried under tons of the ashy stuff. An increasingly popular perception is that catastrophe seems to hound our land like the seven monsters of Apocalypse; no sooner do we begin to rise from the last than another descends to smite us. What is more irritating than the ashfall are the know-it-alls who profess to know why these calamities befall us. Not only irritating but downright disgusting are those who have to make self-extolling press releases about their donations to the Mt. Pinatubo victims. At the same time we commend those who give and work in silence with no need of the spotlight to prove their genuine concern and charity for the afflicted.

In the meantime the geniuses and the enterprising among us could find out in what manner this generous outpouring from a volcano’s heart may be utilized, turning it from blight to good: can we indeed use the sand-ash as component for building blocks, or as additive to cement, or even to concoct an amalgam for paving our rutted streets? A Hong Kong firm is reportedly interested in buying the volcanic material after its composition is ascertained. Perhaps our sculptors can make a monumental artwork out of it, capturing for aeons to come this searing episode in our national life.

I can’t help but call to mind the mystic’s “dark night of the soul” which is actually a presaging of the moment of enlightenment. For what it’s worth, let’s reflect on that.

July 10, 1991

Something Brewing

During times of natural calamities like the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo after a dormant state of 600 years, it is expected that people will look for causes and implications of the phenomenon. Doomsday scenarios will be reactivated as well as the mea culpa syndrome, attributing the volcano’s paroxysms to the wrath of an angry God on account of the sins of the populace. The Mt. Pinatubo eruption coming simultaneously with the eruption of Mt. Unzen in Japan, we are more inclined to believe the scientific theory of a “ring of fire” around our earth which inter-connects several active as well as dormant volcanoes whose smouldering hearts seem to have been triggered into activity these past months. If you recall, Taal Volcano was reported to be showing signs of impending eruption, even earlier than Mt. Pinatubo which as it turned out, beat Taal to the draw.

Is the earth experiencing an “eruption epidemic”? Along this likelihood, perhaps it won’t do any harm if we also monitor all those “dead” volcanos in our midst, because if we are to use Mt. Pinatubo as a yardstick, there’s no such thing as a dead volcano; volcanoes don’t die, they merely sleep, for centuries or millenia, but they wake up sooner or later. The Aetas who have made Mt. Pinatubo their home for many, many years blame the outsider’s tampering with the environment for the awakening of their volcano home. On the other hand Imelda Marcos blames the administration’s refusal to allow her husband a proper burial in his native land as the cause of the volcano’s wrath.

What is hardly given attention is a reported upheaval somewhere much farther than Zambales; actually it happened or is happening on the sun, the “god” of our planetary system. Astronomists recently spotted an unusually large solar flare on the surface of our sun which is expected to generate powerful and vast magnetic currents which can affect communications and weather conditions on earth. In fact, these awesome magnetic currents spawned by the recent sunstorm are right now hitting our earth, and though apparently no one has even thought about it, there might be a connection between the solar upheaval and the eruptions of earth volcanoes, with our Mt. Pinatubo and Japan’s Mt. Unzen as starters.

Other expected effects of the solar winds are malfunctions of electrical installations, dislocation of satellite positions and even an altering of the position of magnetic north, which as you may imagine, can throw shipping, airline and other earth activities askew. Something seems to be brewing out there, in heaven if you wish, something bigger and of more import than Apo Ferdinand’s unburial and the Aeta’s angst for their ancestral home.

July 3, 1991

Earth-Dreaming

In science fiction the earth is one united planet and all earthmen are also united in a single organization. No more so-called nationalities and nations concerned only with their own respective self-interests. One wonders when such a vision will develop into actuality, and division, distinctions, boundaries, and international wars will be merely memories, merely historical records of a supremely evolved human race. Because in such a united earth there would be no need to wrangle and tangle over one country using a part of another country as military bases. Decisions such as those would be decided holistically, whether or not it would be for the good of all. There would be no need to froth at the mouth over issues of sovereignty and independence, because the only sovereignty and independence we would be upholding is that of Mother Earth, our home planet. There would be no such thing as foreign debt and the concept of “foreign” as applied to different parts of the earth would be erased from the language, because how can anything or anyone be deemed foreign when the earth is one?

In such a united earth there would be no First, Second or Third World, because it would be just One World; no part would be called rich and the others poor, no superpowers and no colonies; no need to stockpile arms and weapons against each other. It goes without saying that if the earth were conceptually whole, there would be no rich and poor; the wealth and resources of the planet would be accessible to all. An impossible Utopia? Call it earth-dreaming, wishful thinking, pie-in-the-sky. We have turned to it in self-defense against the perplexity that engulfs us as we see our country — small dots in the global map — as we are being rent apart by an issue that would never need to crop up in the United Earth of a dreamed of future. In the earth of our dreams there would not be any need for a country to set up and maintain military bases to intimidate another country. If at all the military installations to be set up would be there in the interest of the entire planet and would therefore preclude the concept of rent or payment, preclude also perceptions of one part of the earth being taken advantage of by another. Such terms as “nationalist” and “Amboy” (and “Amgirl?”) would be terribly passé; superseded by something more au courant — “planetist” perhaps?

Forgive me this idle dreaming; it’s the easiest alternative to going nuts over what’s going on in our country today. By the way, what is going on? The question is what’s driving me nuts.

October 9, 1991

Hello Summer

This week we celebrate a season we call summer. A little too early for the rest of the world, which in the so called temperate zone is still shivering in near-zero degrees of a wet and chilly early spring. However here in our part of the world we have begun to notice the sunlight beginning to sear the skin; although the overstaying Siberian cold front has just caused the deaths of several countrymen in northernmost Aparri (first time in the Philippines that people died from cold) here in the metropolis the bougainvillas have begun to burst out their magnificent summer bloom. Time to bring out the sun block and the bathing suit, if one has the figure for it; otherwise one settles for a more realistic summer regalia: the old shorts cum T-shirt to invade the seawaters in.

But something disturbs us here. The bathable beaches are moving farther and farther away from where we live the rest of the year, slaving for the daily bread. In our halcyon childhood the sea off Parañaque was bucolic enough and Cavite was a veritable sand and sea paradise. But nowadays a summer day’s drive to the old seaside resorts along the Cavite shoreline yields nothing but dismay, even repulsion at sight of gray-brown water, garbage littered beach and all kinds of unrecyclable refuse floating as far as the breakwater. Puerto Azul and Marbella still look relatively unpolluted, but at the rate we are going, it will deteriorate in no time at all. The nearest beaches worthy of the name can only be found much farther north and south: Batangas, Quezon, Pangasinan, and the Ilocos.

One remembers with nostalgia the summers of one’s childhood. My mother, knowing we are city-bred and born, saw to it that each summer vacation we would go out of the city to experience the charms of rural living. Sometimes we took the train and other times the car: to Baguio, La Union, Laguna, Albay. The first time we motored to Baguio I could hardly breathe from apprehension: I thought the car would have to be driven straight up the Cordillera mountains! What a relief to be told the road actually wound around and around gradually until we reached the top. It was a pure and pristine Baguio then. Every afternoon the fog rolled in, so white and thick we could almost touch it. We ran and tried to outrace the milky cloud to the safety of the apartment even as it got into our eyes, nose and hair, fresh and fragrant with the scent of pine, now virtually unknown to the Baguio traveller.

But summer is really for memories, and even today, even amid polluted sea and denuded mountains, we are sure you will be hoarding enough of yours.

March 31, 1993

The Big C

So early in the year we awoke to the fact that the biggest culprit in our national life is still the Big C — not Cancer, not even the controversial Condom — but all-pervasive, deathless Corruption. The stars sail across the heavens; the animals prance across the Chinese calendar, and here we are still grappling our lost battles with the demon of corruption. Last year was the blackest in terms of power outages and resultant moribund businesses, and hardly had the first suns of the new year risen than we realized one of the principal reasons for the amazing inutility of our Nationa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Roses and Brickbats
• 2 More Than Men
• 3 The Lightness of Being
• 4 Taking Off
• 5 Permutations of Love
• 6 As Above
• 7 So Below
• 8 Room with a View
• 9 Unleaving