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Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

#no more mr nice guy

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multipleegos

This scene has stuck with me for 2 decades.

She brandishes her pain like a weapon

grasps it so tightly that it cuts her hands

but she mistakes all the blood for a sign that she’s winning

#poetry

why is the love we feel for another so utterly

separate

from the way they treat us?

#poetry

Always on thin ice. Always barely good enough.

#chromatic aberration

Rainbow over 60 West. (at 60 West)

anthonybourdain

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Tagalog, the language of the Philippines, is not an uncommon thing to hear in my household. Like many children all over the world, my daughter arrived home from the hospital to find a Filipino baby nurse. Vangie was with her from the very beginning of her life and in time my daughter came to know her son, her daughter-in law, their kids — and in time, an extended family and friends — in New Jersey, Southern California and the Bay Area — and of course, most importantly, Jacques, Vangie’s grandson, her best friend, from whom she has been inseparable since infancy — her older brother in every way but biological. Partners in crime. If I go back through old photos today, at least half will be of the two of them together. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, vacations and birthdays, are celebrated together, our families in and out of each others’ homes interchangeably.

So, I have noticed some things, some features of Filipino daily life that I thought worth investigating. There’s always singing, for instance. Everybody seems to sing — an affinity passed on to my daughter. Family — and church, of course, loom large (even in my otherwise atheistic household). And food. My daughter is no stranger to sisig and sinigang and adobo and holds me in disregard for being unable to procure her the delicious Filipino pastries and breads she finds at her other family’s home. She knows a few phrases in Tagalog and looks at me pityingly when I don’t know what she’s talking about.

Nothing goes to waste around here. Anything, no matter how small, that could be of use to anyone who might need it back home, gets packed in a big box and sent to the other side of the world — if not to family members, to someone in need.

So, that’s what this episode is really about. It’s NOT about the Philippines. How could it be? There are over 7000 islands in the Philippine archipelago and I’m pretty sure I’ll die ignorant of most of them. It’s not even about Filipinos — as my experience, however intimate, is limited in the extreme. And, as it turned out, our plans to explore beyond Manila were foiled by typhoon.

This episode is an attempt to address the question of why so many Filipinos are so damn caring. Why they care so much — for each others — for strangers. Because my experience is far from unusual. Hundreds of thousands — maybe millions of children have been raised by Filipino nannies. Usually mothers of their own children who they were forced to leave behind in the Philippines. Doctors, nurses, housekeepers, babysitters, in so many cases, people who you’d call “caregivers” but who, in every case I’ve ever heard of, actually care. Where does this kindness, this instinct for…charity come from?

For sure, to go abroad and look after others is a huge part of the Philippine economy. Overseas workers account for an enormous and vital part of the lives of those who remain. The government cannot be counted on to take care of its people — and Filipinos often have had to get really good at a do-it-yourself way of getting by, and hopefully, rising up. You see that attitude everywhere in Manila — in the makeshift Jeepneys that shuttle people to work and back, to the cobbled together homes in the poorer districts. Hammered together scrap wood but swept, kept clean, decorated with flowers or holiday decorations.

Not everyone in the Philippines, I should stress, has such limited options — but it is the overseas worker –and those they have had to leave behind, who interest me most this episode. I guess you could say it’s personal.

You will meet, in this episode, one woman — only one (and there are many, many like her) — who, in her 30 years abroad, separated from her children, raised DOZENS of people up, sent them to school, helped to improve their lives, built homes — before finally returning, her kids now middle aged. It is an astounding story — and not at all an unusual one.

There was one other bit of business I had to investigate.

For years now, in hotel bars in Chiang Mai, in lobbies in Singapore, cocktail lounges in Colombo and Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, wherever I go, I find a Filipino cover band able, on request, to play Dark Side of the Moon note for note — before moving on to Happy Birthday (in English, German or Cantonese), Patsy Cline, Celine Dion — and then Welcome to the Jungle. I had to know more. Where do they all come from?

I hope the overseas Filipinos and our fans in the Philippines like this episode more than they liked the last one on our other show. This is certainly not the definitive show on the Philippines — and it will not be our last show there.

I imagine this time around there will be tears. At least I hope so.

We tried to do right by people who’ve been very, very good to us.

What is a five-word phrase for something that everyone demands from you but nobody gives you in return? The benefit of the doubt.

thegoodvybe

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is shattered and she is not with me. This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. My sight searches for her as though to go to her. My heart looks for her, and she is not with me. The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same. I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing. Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before. Her voice. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes. I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her.

Pablo Neruda

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And this is a little bit like what Doug [Rushkoff] was saying earlier: we go in there; they want us. They’re desperate for us, because they think we know this shit; we know something they don’t know. We’re attached; we’re connected in some way that they don’t.. “they”, whoever “they” are; these poor bastards. They’re looking at us, like – coz I’ve got a leather jacket, I know something, y’know?! But that’s what they think. And what I think has actually happened here is: the culture’s getting weirder and weirder. "Back home in Britain, Tony Blair is putting up cameras in every street corner. And he’s talking about putting cameras in peoples’ homes. He’s gotten rid of trial by jury. This is like, fascist Britain 1999, y’know? "But the more he does this, the weirder things get. "The more cameras you put up, the more people will start to act like movie stars. The more people start to act like movie stars, the weirder things get. And then the *more* cameras they put up to try and deal with it! And the weirder it gets! "So let ‘em bring the cameras; I’ll fucking act the shit out of these bastards! Let’s have the cameras. Let’s have cameras everywhere. And we’ll show them what we can do. "And they’ll be watching, going: “Man, that guy’s getting fucked; I wish I was.

Grant Morrison, the Disinfo Con Speech

#chaos magick