A Mediated Life: Living on Facebook

Confession time: while I was away from this blog, I spent most of my time working on a mystery story, reading, and, well, not updating this blog. I had lots of ideas for blog posts, but none of them seemed good enough, and I think some of them didn’t even count as content. I’m sorry, and I promise I’ll do better.

At the bottom of this post, one might find some buttons for sharing it on social media sites–this is a common thing that can be found on many websites now, especially news and lifestyle sites, and I’ve actually taken advantage of it on many occasions. There’s no doubt about it: we’re living in a social media-dominated era.

Maybe it sounds far-fetched and ridiculous, but I think that because of that, we might be living very mediated lives–a cause for concern, if not necessarily alarm. One of the most commonly used social media sites is Facebook, so I’ll use it as a springboard. Let’s explore it further, alright? 🙂

A Mediated Life on Facebook

The real me lives on the Internet!

(From the anime My Little Monster, episode 2)

Earlier, I used the phrase “mediated life” to describe the experience that some might be having in the social media age. I guess I should explain that.

When someone “mediates,” it usually means that they settle a fight or dispute between people; however, in this case, when I say “mediated,” I don’t mean that there are two people fighting and someone helping them settle their differences. Rather, life is mediated in the sense that something (social media) is there between the subject (for example, me) and my experience (life). The word is present in the phrase “social media” itself–separating it into two words, we have,

• Social- pertaining to society/community of people
• Media- a means of communication

Now, media can and undeniably does act as a means for communicating ideas and information, but it also has a secondary level: it can act as a lens, a filter (like an Instagram filter?) on our experiences. This is how life becomes “mediated,” and becomes even more so through on-the-go social media on mobile devices.

As far as I can tell, on Facebook, it operates mainly through three aspects:

1. The status message
2. The news feed, and
3. The mechanism of likes

The Status Message–“What’s on your mind?”

Not the relationship status–that’s different 😉 I’m referring to the box where one can type in text, upload pictures or videos, put in links, indicate where I am (“Checking in”), even what I’m doing and tag who else in my friends list is involved. The status message tells everyone what I’m up to.

It might be true that on the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog, but on Facebook it’s very clear that I’m not in a vacuum. There’s a chat box with green lights that indicate which people are online at the moment, and as if the news feed weren’t enough, there’s also a ticker box showing that So-and-So liked Such-and-Such’s picture or status, or Someone shared a link on Someone Else’s timeline.

It’s possible to turn off the chat function, of course, but it’s more difficult to turn off the knowledge and awareness that someone will see my posts.

This sort of environment, I think, fosters a certain kind of culture–one based on image and performance. Everyone on my friends list and their mothers can probably see this post, so there’s an urge to consciously and deliberately “perform” me as I’d like to be seen and thought of, instead of naturally being me.

Yes, perhaps I could make connections through that, but by “performing” me, isn’t it possible that I’m participating in a constructed reality? A mediated reality that exists onscreen, instead of an organic, human reality rooted in personal, face-to-face interactions and being with people . . . what’s the Internet phrase? IRL–in real life, in the here and now.

The News Feed–What’s everyone else up to?

The news feed shows what everyone else is up to, and for me, it’s probably one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen.

The first striking thing about it is the dizzying variety of content that shows up on it. There are links, videos, and status messages shared by friends, as well as sponsored ads for apps, products, and games. The strange thing about the news feed isn’t the content, but rather, us and the content of the content.

While scrolling through the news feed, one might come across funny Vines and cat videos, existing alongside news stories and Internet memes. One can watch Vines and cat videos and laugh at Internet memes for a few minutes, and then become indignant and scandalized over the latest news report involving a corrupt politician–for a few minutes, and then one can scroll and find other things.

The strange thing about the news feed, I’ve found, is not the salad of content one finds on it, but how it dulls us. Because all these different things show up at the same time, we can experience one emotion for a minute, and a completely different emotion the next. Eventually, our emotions get turned down several degrees, more or less like the flames on a kitchen stove, until righteous anger becomes dull annoyance and a loud laugh becomes a small smile, a like, and a share.

The emotions we experience become faint approximations, because all these things only exist on a screen, and we can simply scroll down or log out, turn off our devices and safely walk away.

The mechanism of likes

One thing has to be made clear: a “like” on Facebook is not a real like. Rather, it’s a simulation of actually liking something in real life; it’s nice, but it isn’t the real life. To like something in real life is an active rather than a passive action, something way beyond simply clicking on a button.

Another important thing to note is that likes have become commodities. Contests can actually be won based on how many likes a picture has received; the thousandth person to like a page might get mentioned by its admin, and maybe even receive some kind of prize. It’s likely (no pun intended) something perpetuated by the phenomenon of people celebrating and even bragging about how many likes their page or something they posted received (I hear this is widespread on Instagram? I’m not sure, though), and this trains and conditions us to view likes and notifications as something to be desired.

We are now looking forward to an intangible click on an intangible thing, and sometimes, rewarding intangible clicks with physical prizes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we should turn deactivate all our social media accounts and swear off them for the rest of our lives. It can’t be denied that it has its good qualities, and it can open us to new experiences. For instance, music is very important to me, and I actually discovered/rediscovered three of my favorite artists–Marit Larsen, HAIM, and Vanessa Carlton–during social media sessions. Social media is also very convenient and useful; it can keep us connected even over long distances. It’s the reason why I’m still connected to my high school friends. If something is useful and convenient, it’s something good, but as always, all good things in moderation.

After all, the real you doesn’t live on the Internet, but in real life. And nothing can ever replace that.

Aletheia Observer, signing off. Careful out there 🙂

– A.O.

P.S.

I owe you a song after that long post 😀 Here’s “I Don’t Want to Be A Bride” by the very talented–and very married–Vanessa Carlton.

I love hearing from you guys 🙂 Like, share, or drop me a line on the comments or at my email, aletheia.observer@gmail.com.

Pope Francis’ baseball moment

Very cool 🙂

CNS Blog

By now, more than 24 hours after it happened, there are probably only a few dozen people who haven’t seen Pope Francis bobble the baseball thrown to him from the stands — er, the crowd of pilgrims — at his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square yesterday.

If you’re one who hasn’t seen it, watch this closely:

Here’s a better shot, taken by Claudio Peri and distributed by the European Pressphoto Agency:

Pope Francis reaches out to grab a baseball thrown by someone in the crowd as he leaves his general audience in St. Peter’s Square Sept. 24. (CNS photo/Claudio Peri, EPA)

As you can see in the video, Pope Francis leaps and almost catches the high throw. According to Rafael Walter, who posted the “Popeball” video to YouTube, the toss was made by a member of the Koeppel family from St. Edward’s Church in Palm Beach, Fla., reportedly in the hope of raising…

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Words and Why They’re Not Just Words

Why are words so important?

For some reason, I had this question stuck in my mind lately (I always seem to think of the most random things! 😀 ). We use words every day– they’re second nature to us, and we seldom stop to think about them. In fact, we’re using them right now, and I know I didn’t stop to think about them until I reached this sentence 😉

A friend of mine, K.L., says that words are important because:

1. “Words carry meaning,” and therefore, they shouldn’t be taken lightly or dished out to just anyone you meet on the street. Her example was “beautiful”– you shouldn’t just call any woman you meet on the street that, because the word “beautiful” carries weight.
2. “They name the things we sense outside and feel inside,” and so, help us make sense of the world and ourselves.
3.  “They are convenient for discourse, but not perfect” because they try to express what she calls “superabundant, ungraspable [sic] realities.”

By now, it’ll be abundantly clear that K.L. is smarter than me 🙂 That makes perfect sense, because she’s a Physics major, and I think I’ve forgotten half my high school and college physics classes already. Her argument moves, so to speak, on two different levels: meaning and usefulness.

As a reader, I can appreciate the effective use of words: an elegant turn of phrase, a picture painted in words– in short, words that communicate. In a sense, words make the world “real” for us, and it makes me sad to see words abused and misused for whatever reason. It’s a subversion of an everyday miracle, and it poisons the wells of life.

“Words carry meaning”

When he was teaching at Oxford, C.S. Lewis had as his friend and colleague a philologist named J.R.R. Tolkien (I hear they’re making a movie about it). When Lewis was still an atheist, he used to have lively debates and discussions with the devout Catholic Tolkien, and during one of these discussions, Lewis said that myths were lies, even though “breathed through silver,” which the author of The Lord of the Rings naturally disagreed with. Trained from an early age in rhetoric, Lewis was very good at thinking on his feet in the heat of the moment, and so Tolkien expressed his thoughts in the poem “Mythopoeia,” or “myth-making.”

I’m mentioning this because in the poem, Tolkien says that the words we use to name things are a statement about their nature, passed down from Adam, though he doesn’t explicitly say so:

Yet trees are not `trees’, until so named and seen –

and never were so named, till those had been

who speech’s involuted breath unfurled,

faint echo and dim picture of the world,

but neither record nor a photograph,

being divination, judgement, and a laugh . . .

To use the often-convoluted language of our philosophy professors, calling a tree a “tree” is to express the nature of its “tree-ness” and how it is “tree-ing.” 😀 And because words carry meaning, using words and language, speaking about the things that concern us, isn’t just something we do to pass the time. That in itself is taking action, and in some places, it can get you in big trouble.

As a Catholic, this reminds me of the account of Creation in Genesis. A brief word, though: I feel it’s necessary to differentiate how Catholics and some fundamentalist sects read the Bible. We’re taught that Scripture isn’t always literal, and like Christ’s parables, it uses symbols and literary forms and devices to get its message across. For example, the story of the Creation in Genesis uses the familiar form of the creation myth because what it expresses is not facts, but Truth, in the metaphysical sense. But that’s another discussion for another time and another person 🙂

Anyway, in Genesis, God is depicted as saying, “Let there be light,” “Let us make Man in our own image and likeness,” and so on. It’s almost the same with us: our words carry meaning, and by speaking we are performing an action that helps us make sense of the world and ourselves, and in a sense, makes our world ever-new.

“Words are not enough”

As K.L. says, words are convenient for discourse, but not perfect, because they try to express “superabundant, ungraspable [sic] realities.” That applies, for example, for intangible concepts like love, beauty, or freedom. Because freedom doesn’t look like this:

It works in a different way for finite, tangible realities. For example, when I say “curtain,” I’m referring to the idea of curtains in general, and I am understood because a lot of people have a similar experience of a curtain’s “curtain-ness.”

Words like love, beauty, or freedom express intangible ideas and concepts, and so our understanding of what love, beauty, or freedom means isn’t direct, but rather, indirect and analogical. We understand them through our experience of them, and the words we use to describe what they feel like will always be inadequate, because they are experiences (I don’t think we can say “things) that are beyond words, an approximation of the distance between the temporal and the eternal.

Maybe that’s why the best storytellers are considered the best. It isn’t because they can describe exactly what those invisible, intangible realities are, but because they can approach it so closely, and they can tell us, in very human terms, if not what they are, then what they are like.

Aletheia Observer, signing off. Careful out there! 🙂

– A.O.

P.S. Here’s a song by Filipino artist Barbie Almalbis about loving and longing. It’s entitled “Dahilan” (“Reason.”)

Hyouka and Everyday Mysteries

source: hyouka-fan.blogspot.com

Mystery is by far one of the most interesting genres of fiction for me– I actually once considered getting an AB in Literature at this university that offered courses on mystery and detective fiction! 😀 I didn’t push through with that plan, but I’ve never lost my love for mystery stories. Which is why, when I heard of this anime entitled “Hyouka” last year, I was intrigued.

Hyouka (lit. “ice cream”) was originally aired in 2012, and having watched it in 2013, it’s very clear that I actually came late to the party 🙂 . Adapted from Honobu Yonezawa’s Classic Literature Club series, it’s primarily the story of Oreki Houtarou, a very observant freshman high school student at Kamiyama High School, who joins the Classic Literature Club at the request of his world-travelling elder sister Tomoe to prevent it from getting abolished by the school. He lives what he calls an “energy-saving lifestyle” and lives by the motto “I don’t do anything I don’t have to. What I have to do, I do quickly,” and generally seems to have succeeded at that when we first meet him and lives a rather dull and decidedly not rose-colored life– until Chitanda Eru, the poster-child of curiosity, bounces into his life with the ability to spur him into action with the simple words,

“Watashi, kininarimasu!” Also sometimes rendered as “I can’t stop thinking about it!”

Those words usually become the starting point of their adventures as they try to solve mysteries– or satisfy Chitanda’s curiosity– along with their friends Satoshi Fukube, the database of assorted facts, and Mayaka Ibara, the student-librarian.

In general, most mystery and detective fiction centers around two elements: a crime that has been committed (in modern mysteries, it’s usually murder) and a detective investigating it (Sherlock Holmes is arguably the most popular). The premise is simple, really. The universe has been thrown off-balance by this crime, and it’s up to the master detective to restore order and harmony to the universe by using his powers of deduction and bringing the story to an elegant denouement.

Not entirely the case with Hyouka.

Where the mysteries that detectives like, say, Gosho Aoyama’s Shinichi Kudo/Conan Edogawa or G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown solve are usually violent crimes, the mysteries that the Classic Literature Club usually gets involved in are more mundane: a book that regularly gets borrowed from the library and returned within the day, a cryptic announcement on the school’s P.A. system, and other “everyday mysteries,” so to speak. In fact, the closest they come to violent crime is a movie class project! 🙂 Nope, no spoilers. One of the worst sins in the world is to spoil a detective story.

It’s been argued elsewhere that Hyouka can be interpreted as an exploration of detective fiction; another interpretation of the series delves more into its slice-of-life elements. Personally, I think both the mystery and slice-of-life elements of it contribute to the overall identity and “this-ness” of the series, but I think that’s another discussion for another time.

In his “Defence of Detective Stories,” G.K. Chesterton talks about detective stories or “police romances” and how they show us the importance of morality, “the most dark and daring of conspiracies,” and this very much applies to conventional mystery stories. He also talks about how detective stories show us the poetry of modern life, and it’s this part of his argument that most applies to Hyouka. I’m sitting here, typing away on a computer, and you’re over there, reading it on a computer screen or some other device– haven’t you realized how utterly strange that is, and that it’s never been done before? That people have never been quite this connected before?

If you haven’t, it isn’t your fault, not completely. Experience tells us that the more “connected” we are with each other, ironically enough, the less inter-connected we become. As an example, from philosophy, we have Plato talking about “the good,” in the context of a society in The Republic, which makes sense, because he lived in a city-state with a few hundred-plus people; fast forward a bit, and as society becomes more urbanized, we have the rise of the Stoic philosophers, who are decidedly more inward and individual in their thinking. Right now, it seems we have more technology, but less Wonder. The world is full of everyday mysteries and miracles that we can’t see, because we don’t wonder.

Remember that slogan from the National Geographic Channel? “Live curious”? Curiosity isn’t the thing, it’s Wonder, the ability to see the new in the everyday. And perhaps when we can say “I can’t stop thinking about it!” like wide-eyed Chitanda, we might also be able to go looking for answers like Houtarou and the Classic Literature Club.

Aletheia Observer, signing off. I wonder . . . 😉

-A.O.

P.S.

In keeping with our “wonderful” theme, here’s “Nolita Fairytale” by Vanessa Carlton. Speaking of fairy tales, I wonder if I should write about “Once Upon A Time” one of these days?

In the News: the Golan Heights Standoff and State-sanctioned Trolling

“In the News” will be something which I hope I can do regularly, where I’ll write about news stories that have struck me.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I’m interested in people– in what they do and say, and why they do and say them. One (admittedly unscientific) way to do that, I’ve found, is to watch and read the news.

That in mind, in the news we have wars and rumors of wars, and sometimes rumors of rumors of wars: the Filipino peacekeepers in the Golan Heights and US cyber-warriors taking the fight against the Islamic State to cyberspace.

“The Greatest Escape”– Filipino Peacekeepers besieged

One of the most-discussed events recently here in the Philippines was the standoff between Filipino peacekeepers stationed in the Golan Heights and Syrian rebels. The peacekeepers are part of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) manning the buffer zone established between Syria and Israel after the 1973 Yom Kippur War; the current UNDOF commander is Lt. Gen. Iqba Singh Singha of India, who took over in 2012. More on him later.

To summarize what happened, on Wednesday, 27 August 2014, Syrian rebels overran the Quneitra crossing on the buffer zone; a day later, a number of Fijian peacekeepers were captured (the UN said 44, but the rebels reported 45) and Positions 68 and 69, manned by the “Blue Helmets” Filipino peacekeepers, came under siege from rebels demanding that they surrender their weapons and assuring them that would be treated well in captivity. The Filipinos refused, even when General Singha ordered them to raise a white flag and comply, and “exercised their right to defend themselves”– they traded fire for around seven hours. Apparently, Manila was kept apprised of the situation on the ground. On Saturday, the thirty-five peacekeepers stationed at Breiqa were safely escorted out of their encampment while being covered by the Irish quick reaction force. Shortly after midnight on Sunday, the other forty stationed at Rwihana fled under cover of darkness (“While the rebels were sleeping,” as the Philippine military reported) and walked across the minefields and rough terrain to make contact with the rest of the peacekeeping contingent. No casualties were reported, and as of this writing, all the Filipino peacekeepers are now safe (in a manner of speaking) at their base camp in Camp Ziouani.

The interesting thing about news sites on the Internet is how interactive they are. Before, people sent in letters to the editor if they wanted to comment on an article or pick a fight with a reporter, which took some time; now, most of them have social media plugins, and people can share them or pick a fight with the reporter in real time 😛 From reading the comments, I saw that most of them, barring the ones written by obvious trolls, fell into one of three camps (if you’ll excuse the word):

1. The “Proud to be Pinoy” and their supporters
2. Negative commenters
3. People who don’t quite know what’s going on

“Proud to be Pinoy” commenters are Filipinos (“Pinoy” is a slang term which we use to call ourselves) who are obviously very proud of their men and women in uniform, with just cause. Reports say that among those peacekeepers were members of the Scout Rangers of the Army’s Special Operations Command, elite and experienced troops who have probably fought against insurgents at home, though I’m not sure how reliable those reports are. Also, seven hours may seem relatively short, but I’m sure it’s a long seven hours when you’re under fire and certain death is whizzing past you.

They commonly cite a quote attributed to General Douglas MacArthur: “Give me ten thousand Filipino soldiers and I will conquer the world,” or bash President Obama (I’m not sure why) or General Singha, who must have been a lot of pressure at the height of the standoff– we won’t know for sure now, but some scenarios paint a dire picture and more lives put at risk.

And about General Singha, some are even insinuating that he’s working for the rebels from inside the UN, pointing out that he’s a Muslim (I’m not sure if he is, but many Sikhs apparently are). For me, it shows a sort of latent anti-Muslim tendency in my countrymen, maybe a sad holdover from colonial times when most of the country was Catholic while the Muslims in Mindanao held out and refused to fall in line. The stereotype is that Muslims are terrorists or purveyors of pirated DVD’s, and Indians (whom Filipinos refer to as “Bumbay” from “Bombay”) are usurious money-lenders. I’m a Catholic myself, and I think such talk does nothing useful. Christ is the Prince of Peace.

Some of these commenters seem to go overboard, though, to which I say: Guys, I’m proud of what our gallant Filipino peacekeepers have accomplished and I love my dear country, too, but we’ve got a lot of conflict already. I don’t think we need more. 😀

Negative commenters are mostly calling for the Philippine government to bring the troops back home, which is understandable. Gen. Singha commanding the peacekeepers to surrender their arms and raise a white flag was seen as him sacrificing the Filipinos to save the Fijians, which might be a little unfair; I think he owes everyone an explanation. In any case, they’ll probably get their wish, because after their tour of duty ends in October, the Philippines has indicated that it doesn’t want to send more peacekeepers to that part of the world.

They also cite the fact that up to now, the problems of the decades-long Communist insurgency and the Islamist separatists in the south– some of whom have allegedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State– haven’t been completely resolved yet, and that China seems to be threatening the country.

Another common theme is that the peacekeepers “ran away with their tails between their legs”– which is unfair to them. They nailed the colors to the mast and held out until they found a way to escape; it wasn’t really their job to fight and defeat the besiegers. They fought and survived together, and God willing, they’ll all come safely home for their hero’s welcome.

The ones who don’t quite know what’s going on include Filipinos who, well, don’t really know why the peacekeepers were there. It’s rather sad, since the peacekeepers are there doing an important job– keeping the peace. And they deserve some recognition for what they’re doing.

Also, like a lot of Filipinos, they’ve forgotten or haven’t heard of the PEFTOK– the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea, five Battalion Combat Teams who served in the Korean War; one of them was designated as an armored battalion, but it arrived in Korea without tanks and spent most of the war without them 😛 . Among them was a Second Lieutenant named Fidel V. Ramos, who later in life became President. It’s usually passed over as a footnote, but in Philippine schools, when we discuss the story of the martyred opposition senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr., we’re told that he went to Korea as a journalist. He was there to report on the PEFTOK’s campaigns. The Philippines is in the UN, and it isn’t uninvolved in the world.

For that matter, we shouldn’t be uninvolved in the world, either.

Twitter warfare– US cyber-warriors take the fight against ISIS to cyberspace

This will be shorter than the previous section, but apparently, the US Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (USCC) is now taking the fight against the Islamic State to cyberspace. They’re probably now flaming and trolling the IS on the Facebook, the Twitter machine, and all over the Internets in a war for hearts and minds.

I don’t know if it’ll be effective, but I hope it will be. And I hope somehow, someday, all this war and rumor of war, and rumors of rumors of wars, can stop. It isn’t the way things should be.

That’s all for now, friends 😀 I want to hear from you. What’s happening in your side of the world?

Aletheia Observer, signing off. Careful out there! 🙂

-A.O.

P.S. Obligatory music post, after a long blog post. This is “If A Song Could Get Me You” by Marit Larsen.

Someone I Used To Know

If I should pass you on my busy way
When I’m off to class with my head in the clouds
And all the while, when everything seems okay,
We’re suddenly together in this rushing crowd,
There won’t be a need for a “Hi” or “Hello,”
No need for a wave or your brightest smile;
You’re neither my best friend nor mortal foe,
Just someone I’m here with for a little while.
Though I wish I could talk, it’s just too late
And neither of us really want a scene
So let’s just forget those talks, those dates
And bury away what might have been.
I’ll be honest with you, though:
Aren’t you just someone I used to know?

–26 August 2012

~~~~~

Isn’t it sad when the people we used to know very, very well–our friends, or more-than-just-friends– become just “someone I used to know”?

Aletheia Observer, signing off. Careful out there! 🙂

-A.O.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

 

Of Fanfiction Stories

This is spotty. Sorry. I basically free-wrote this without notes or outlines.

I suppose you could say that I love watching anime and TV series, listening to music, and playing video games just as much as the next person does, but I’ve got to say that my first love has to be reading. Literature has always been one of my favorite subjects–though my analysis of literary texts is spotty and incomplete at best and completely off-target at worst 😀 I can’t discuss Marxist, Post-colonial or Feminist literary theory, or the Death of the Author, or Heteroglossia to save my life. I mostly just love reading, and that’s enough for me right now.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that fanfiction is also one of my interests. It’s one of those things where TV series, music, and video games intersect with my first loves, reading and literature. I’ve tried my hand at it before–“tried” being the operative word here. I failed at it and those stories haven’t seen the light of day ever since I locked them up in Pandora’s box and threw away the key (yes, it was THAT long ago).

But having read and admired a lot of good fanfic stories and writers, I’ve found that fanfiction can be read just like regular fiction, with an added dimension of defamiliarization to things. The characters in the books we read and in the case of bandfics, the members of the bands we listen to, are thrown into different situations, or even speculative alternate universes (AU) outside the canon; they can act as they’d act in the source material, or they can act in more unexpected ways. The most ridiculous example I can think of, off the top of my head, would be Tara Gilesbie’s Harry Potter fanfic (using the term loosely) “My Immortal.” That one seriously redefined the term “alternate universe” for me O_O

(As an aside, in the case of bandfics, what would the canon consist of? The interviews and news stories about them?)

Just like “regular,” mainstream fiction, there is good fanfiction and bad fanfiction. There are good concepts that are poorly executed, concepts that are alright but could use more polishing, etc. just like in mainstream fiction. It has its own conventions, in addition to those of the mainstream fiction upon which it stands. But for me, the most striking thing about fanfiction is that it’s a form of engagement–with the original creator/s and with other fans. They take something that they love and are passionate about and make it theirs. A cursory glance at any fanfiction story on Wattpad or Fanfiction.net makes it clear that it’s an interactive creative endeavor. Who knows how many story notes and plotlines have been modified or completely thrown out of the window because of a comment on the latest chapter (uploaded X hours, X minutes ago) of an ongoing story?

Fanfiction adds a different dimension to the classic storytelling dynamic. You’ve got the Source Material, and the fanfiction stories based on it written by the fans asking questions like “What if the Tenth Doctor had been able to have a relationship with Rose Tyler?” “What if Castle and Beckett had met earlier in their lives?” “What if we switch Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s personalities around?” “What if Este, Alana, and Danielle Haim were thrown into this sort of shenanigan?”

Just like the fairy-tales, most of which have different versions in different parts of the world, modern stories are the record of possibilities, and sometimes, they take a life of their own.

Aletheia Observer, signing off. Go read a fanfic! 😀

-A.O.

For the Time Being

Continuing an idea.

In another note, I wrote about Love (they tell me I’m always talking about Love!). I can’t summarize everything I said about Love in a short space like this, but I did say that for me, Love is not merely romance; it is service, sacrifice, and a promise: Love is for always.

One of my kind readers asked me to write more about the idea of Always. By saying that Love is for always, I suppose that I meant something by it. Being a lover of stories and poems who has been guilty of a few of them as well, I always say—there’s that word again—that we mustn’t misuse words or simply throw them around. No word is merely a word. Every word is a symbol that points not to itself, but to a reality outside of itself. The word “always” is not Always itself, only the word we use to express that idea.

So what’s the reality that this word points to?

The dictionary points me to two words related to “always”: “invariable” and “forever”; the former deals with change, and the latter with time. To me, dear friends, this brings to mind a common expression: for the time being.

When something is there “for the time being,” it means that it’s only there for now, and won’t be there forever. A good example of this would be the road rehabilitation projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways, or the escalator at the Ayala MRT station in Makati City that seems to regularly break down and require maintenance. They are like that for now, but they will not remain so forever—and in the case of those road rehabilitation projects, I should certainly hope they don’t. Love is for always, but road rehabilitation projects aren’t and shouldn’t be.

Love=for Always. Road repairs=not

“For the time being” says that though this is how things are right now, they won’t always be that way. The road will get fixed, the escalator will run again, some relationships will end, even if we don’t want them to, and that will break our hearts, though not irreparably. It seems to me, then, that the state of humanity isn’t Always, but For the Time Being. In his 1923 poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Robert Frost writes,

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay.

By now, dear friends, perhaps you might be saying that this renders the idea of Always absurd. If this world and we aren’t permanent, then, perhaps, there is no Always. If nothing gold can stay, then perhaps nothing else can, either.

But then, perhaps we haven’t yet understood it completely. Earlier, I mentioned two words in connection with “always”: those were “invariable” and “forever.” Invariable implies that something doesn’t change, and forever means that it will be so for all of time. Perhaps Always is more connected to time and change than we thought.I once played a word association game with my friend Kristine, which involved saying one word and replying with the first thing that came to mind upon hearing it. One of the words I gave her was “Always,” to which she replied, “Forever”; another word was “Permanent,” and her reply? “Nothing.” There is such a thing as forever, though nothing is permanent. And as my wise friend Kristine taught me through that simple game, the two aren’t necessarily exclusive.

If we look through photo albums—both the physical and social network kind—we can see pictures of ourselves as we looked before. Looking in the mirror now, we notice that we’ve changed quite a lot since those pictures were taken. We may also look back with a sigh, remembering past regrets, and say, “If only I knew then . . . ,” or smile at the memory of a joke or a special moment. True, we change both physically and in the way we view and relate to the world and the people around us. Of course we would, but why on earth should that mean that we are no longer ourselves? We are still ourselves, even if we change, and we will always be ourselves.Always doesn’t mean that time will stand still, though we sometimes wish it might, just so we could keep dancing with that special person or share that moment with her. Time, fortunately or unfortunately depending on who you ask, doesn’t stand still, for you, me, or anyone else. It continues to move whether you’re ready to go or not, though it’s still up to you to decide whether you’re ready or not. Yet even though time keeps moving, it doesn’t mean that there is no Always. Admittedly, it would be boring if Always meant a dance that would never end, or a moment that is always an eternal present.

Always means that though the dance has ended, you will meet again; though the moment is gone, you are still connected by a mystery that has no name, form, shape or dimension, only light and warmth, and a bond that will always bring you back to her through time and space.

Roads, escalators, and hearts indeed break, but they do not remain broken. When that which is whole has come, that which is in part shall be done away with. Roads, escalators, and hearts weren’t made to be broken; roads will be fixed, escalators will run again, and hearts will mend and learn to love again. We are not made merely for the time being, but for always.

This, I think, is what Always means: that things and time change, and yet that which is most pure and good does not; that I can hold a person’s hand, look into her eyes and promise to cherish her, and I can and will do as I have promised.

Love pushes us to make promises and fulfill them, for no other reason than that we love that person we made the promise to. Maybe this is why people who love know what Always means. Love, as I said before, is for always, but maybe, just maybe, Always is for lovers as well.

Aletheia Observer, signing off. Careful out there!

-A.O.

P.S.

Here’s a nice song after that rather long note: “If I Could Change Your Mind” by HAIM. 😀

Love and Divine Discontent

In speaking about Love, I feel a certain shyness, for Love is such a wide subject. As I see it, Love seems like this expansive garden spread over acres, where you can walk down paths lined with sweet-scented flowers or get lost in a forest of thorns. And here, you can look up at the stars shining on the deep night sky, and realize that you are merely one person in a universe that’s bigger than you can possibly imagine.. . . But that metaphor has run away from me, so I must get back on track.

To speak about Love makes me hesitant, because it’s such a universal subject. Love is an essential part of the human experience; nearly everyone has had some experience of Love, and therefore their own ideas of what Love is. I won’t say that my experience is everyone else’s, because I know for sure that it isn’t. All I can say about Love is what I know from my experience and reflections on them.

Right now, the word that I most associate with Love is “discontent.” But why “discontent”? Well, it isn’t because I’m bitter—or I’m not, as far as I know—so I guess I should explain.

When you say “discontent,” it means, basically, that you’re not contented with the way things are. There’s something missing in your life. Generally, for us, when something is missing in our lives, we don’t feel “complete.” This sense of completion is something which is different and yet the same for everyone. Different because human beings are different from each other, and everyone has their own idea of what would make them feel that sense of completion, and yet the same, because no matter how different we are from each other, there are things which everyone seeks, and which are part of the common desires of mankind. And when we don’t feel complete, usually the first thing we do is to try to find that missing piece and fit it into the tapestry of our lives, where it will add color and vibrancy to everything—where it will make us feel complete.

So where does Love come in?

It seems to me that the experience of Love is an admission that no matter how much we may deny it, and no matter how much we may feel that we have it all now, we don’t. The image that comes into my mind when I think of this is a scene from one of my favorite TV series, Castle. In this flashback scene, Joe (Nathan Fillion), a private detective in the 1940’s, meets Vera (Stana Katic), a gangster’s moll, in a jazz club. It’s the very first time they meet, and the first words that Joe utters are “Where have you been all my life?”

Yes, I realize that that’s merely a fictional example, but for me, that line is the type of an experience of love. Joe, the cynical private detective, meets the love of his life for the first time, and he says, wonderingly, “Where have you been all my life?” It’s an admission that before this moment in time, my life was not complete, or that I thought it was, but now I know that it isn’t. There is something missing in my life, and without that something, I am not complete. In that moment in time, when you experience Love, you wonder how you might have lived without it all this time. Your eyes are opened, as Joe’s were, and you direct that question to yourself, to your beloved, and to the universe in general: “Where have you been all my life?”

This is discontent. But it’s a different sort of discontent, I think, from the kind that drives us to look for food because we’re hungry, seek out water because we’re thirsty, or complain about our politicians because they’re not doing their jobs properly. In that kind of discontent, we know immediately what should happen to satisfy our discontent. We’re hungry, therefore we need food so we won’t be anymore; we’re thirsty, so we need water or something to drink; our politicians aren’t doing their jobs properly, so we should demand that they do, or else, short of violent revolution, we’ll recall them or remove them from office next election.

But when Love gives the effect of discontent, we’re not entirely sure what should happen so that we can be complete and fulfilled. Sure, I’d know that something is missing from my life, but it isn’t just her: something more is missing. I can court her, ask her out on dates, give her roses, and write her poems and letters. I might even enter into a relationship with her, but even that won’t completely satisfy me.

C.S. Lewis might call it sehnsucht, the longing for “something we know not what,” but, with respect to the Oxford don, since I’m using the word discontent, I’ll call it by another name: divine discontent. Yes, this discontent causes me to be confused. It tells me that something is missing, but it doesn’t tell me exactly what is missing, or why I need it, only that it is missing, and that I need it in order to be complete. And once I find it, I can be complete . . . sort of.

It seems to me that this sense of completion, instead of being a period at the end of the sentence, is merely a comma or a semicolon: the story goes on. In the fairy tales I used to read as a child, after Prince Charming meets his One True Love, they get married after all their difficulties and, as most of us know, live happily ever after. But that’s just it: they live happily ever after. The best, I hope, is yet to come.

In his sonnets, Shakespeare says that Love is

… An ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

We might scoff and shake our heads at such a poetic description of it, but I think the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon might have been on to something. Yes, when Romeo and Juliet met, sparks flew between them in their forbidden relationship; when Joe met Vera, he wondered, “Where have you been all my life?” but I hold that Love is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests, and is never shaken. I hold that Love is not merely romance, but service, and sacrifice, and a promise. At the end of that episode of Castle, with their future uncertain, Vera turns to Joe and, in a show of vulnerability for this strong-minded character, says, “Tell me you love me, Joe.” And he replies, “Always.”

You might say that Love is merely the result of chemical reactions, merely a spark of friction that causes ignition, and might cause you harm if you don’t call the fire station, (I’m sorry, I got carried away 🙂 ) but I hold that Love is divine discontent, for that human love that Rilke calls “two solitudes that meet, greet, and protect each other” is connected in a deep way to that desire that tells us that in our lives, there’s more than three dimensions, five senses and four walls. Love tells us that there is a greater scheme of things in which we all have a place. This Love is divine discontent, for it is a voice that calls me, like Abraham in the Old Testament, to travel far from familiar things and put my trust in things outside of myself. I long for Heaven and home, and Love tells me that I have a Heaven and home to long for.

Most importantly, and best of all, it tells me that Love is for always.

Aletheia Observer, signing off. Careful out there!

-A.O.

The A.O.

When you hear the word “observatory,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

I’m going to bet you’re thinking of stars and telescopes, like this:

Or a proper observatory, a scientific research institution that observes phenomena in the heavens and on earth–maybe a building with a powerful telescope.

When I was younger, I loved looking at the stars. For a while, I used to dream of being an astronomer as well. It seemed like the best job possible: studying stars and planets, conducting research about how space phenomena affected the earth. Oh, and telescopes. Who could forget telescopes? 🙂

It took me a while–well, longer, to be honest, more like a few years–but I realized that though stars, planets, and celestial bodies were interesting, people were even more so. We write music and literature, we dream and analyze, we fight and fall in love–and we take all these things for granted.

In ancient Greece, Aletheia (Greek ἀλήθεια) was a daimon, a spirit, the personification of truth and sincerity. The word also carries connotations of being “unhidden,” not just in the visual sense, but in every sense of the word. Just as there are so many ways of hiding and being hidden, there also many ways of undoing that and being unhidden.

I’ve always believed that the truth can be found. You just need to go out and look for it.

Aletheia Observer, signing out. Careful out there!

-A.O.