bankador

July 9, 2009

2010-05-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 4:51pm

2010-05-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

While the dying embers of the Bonfires for Peace in the Conspiracy Café’s garden is mournfully crackling in the background, the fingerboard of Joey Ayala’s Taylor guitar is made aflame by Boy Dylan’s riffs and twangs. Boy Dominguez is on stage with his trademark harmonicas and rendition of Robert Zimmerman hits.
You are prevented from believing you are in the seventies, in the Folk House, only by the absence of room-filling smoke from the flower-loving habitués. Being thrown back in time is good vibration...groooooovy, as what my generation would quip.
Retros, golden oldies…most boomers know it by heart. This night however, gen-xers in the audience surprised me by singing along with correct lyrics to mellow Beatle songs rendered by Joey Ayala, Babes Alejo and Boy D. And even if the playful Joey carried us to Porter, Brothers Four, Platters, Jim Morrison, etc, they plodded on really well. No generation gap there. Pastiche of Queens, Doors, Cole Porter, Beatles, Animals, Donovan Leitch, Eric Clapton, back to more obscure Beatles (Joey seems to be enjoying testing the limit of his audience’s familiarity with the favfour’s rarely played songs), James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel, and more than my pilsen-addled brain can remember, filled up the room. Buoyed up by the audience response, Joey let go his by now classic Lailailailai repertoire: medley of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer, Mary Hopkin’s Those were the days, America’s ?, Trini Lopez’s ?, can’t recall anymore and I’m not blaming Alzheimer here. A real virtuoso, this Joey.
Without the stacked up beer cases with empty bottles waiting for us to pile another case with empty bottles in the background, I am properly oriented that this is real time, not a virtual memory of an Annapolis, Cubao bungalow in the 70s. Not since my Jingle Clan days did I jam with such accomplished musicians. Practically all contemporary musician of note visited this bungalow. And memories retrocede to Rox Lee, Ludwig Ilio, Dengcoy Miel, Noli Vilar, Dave Ogan, Ogie Tupas, Bert, Ben, Nes, Red, Hexel Hernando, the Guillermo brothers, the Jamir brothers, Ces Rodriguez, Penny, Nini Valera de Ungria, Eric Gamalinda, Juaniyo Arcellana, Eric Caruncho…Jingle Clan all.
Last night’s wine was fine. Embed in my mind in eternal loop this night. Noted.

ArtVentures@Conspi group

2010-05-06T19:30:00.001-07:00

2010-05-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

In Joey Ayala’s intro/spiel to his Mil ocho cientos noventa y seis song, he lightly posited that the Indios Bravos of the last century birthed the propaganda movement in some cerveza joint in Madrid. Predictably, the Philippine revolution ended up like all usapang lasing.

The ART VENTURES @ CONSPI had the same beginning, maybe not egged on by the same altruistic ethereal, think maybe Mona Lisa or Megan Fox, a more earthy aspiration. Hatched up in Sarah’s one inebriated night (as all nights in Sarah’s are) by Arnold (google me!) Molina Azurin, Boy Dominguez and some. It was decided that the scene of the crimes will be the Conspiracy Garden Cafe in Visayas Avenue. Although it has reaped a full year of fruitful saturdays, it is dangerously teetering to oblivion (another usapang lasing). We hope not!

But lucky dogs we all are (azurin kami). We never ran out of avatars of Venus and Caryatids worthy of Leonardo and Michelangelo’s time, who lent to us poor mortals their effervescent presence. We can all thank Arnold’s purported charms, debatable but not an issue. Arnold’s keen eye for beauty is what kept the group satiated with blessings. Soma of the gods and the eternal dinuguan are the other regulars that nourished the group. And not to forget Tita de Quiros, Ed Coronel and Adi Baen Santos’ music, which shooed away the Sandman from dusting our models but did not stop the artists from dreaming on and on. From Bach to Bacharach, Beatles, Jobim, Evans, Porter and more Beatles, good feel for old dogs.

Time and tide ever flowing. Time heals, and time destroys. Maybe the models were full aware of this. Ephemeral youth is borrowed. Her apos will believe her vague allegation of sultriness if she showed the sketches made of her sometime less thirty pounds ago. No one will or can disprove that of course. Some have more personal reason. Some really enjoyed the atmosphere of the group that they posed for them more than twice.

It will be a shame if this shared artistic synergy be put to an unwarranted demise. What a drag life will be.

C DARIO NOCHE

Conspiracy Garden Cafe art exhibit

2009-03-26T05:39:00.000-07:00

A few of the sketches I did for the Conspi exhibit, March 28, saturday.

A Parable

2009-03-17T06:02:00.000-07:00

A Parable

Buddha told a parable in a sutra:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted!

--#18 of 101 Zen Stories
compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki

**********

Jesus, son of Mary, peace be upon him, said:

“The world consists of three days: yesterday which has passed, from which you have nothing in your hand; tomorrow of which you do not know whether you will reach it or not; and today in which you are, so avail yourself of it.”

---Jesus A Prophet of Islam
Muhammad Ata ur-Rahim

manika

2009-03-06T02:18:00.000-08:00

2009-02-20T05:25:00.000-08:00

Sarah's

2009-02-12T04:31:00.000-08:00

Where credit is due:

Most pocket knives have their blades mounted to disappear into one side of the handle when not in use.

Butterfly – or double-handled knives have handles that divide into two halves and fold around the retracted blade. Whether the butterfly knife is open or closed, the two halves lock together to form a unity, turning back to back when the blade is out.

Butterfly knives originally came from the Philippines, where they are called balisong. Because of their violent potential they are prohibited in some countries.

A story about the Colt .45 model 1905:

The legend of the .45 has its roots at the turn of the century.

In 1892 the army had replaced its faithful Colt Single Action Army .45s of the Indian Wars with a more modern swing-out cylinder Colt revolver in .38 Long Colt. This fired a 150-grains bullet at 770 feet per second. Although no powerhouse, this had proved reasonably effective in the Spanish-American War and again in the fighting against the Filipino insurgents immediately after the war.

However, when the Americans attempted to pacify the island of Mindanao a couple of years later, there were numerous reports of failure against the fierce Muslim Moro warriors there.

In keeping with Islamic beliefs about achieving salvation through death in battle against infidel, these Moros would sometimes go “juramentado” or “amok” (whence the word amok or amuck in the American dictionary originated, the tagalog word bundok became boondock, appropriated at about the same time). After religious ceremonies and masochistic acts of self-torture, the Moro juramentado, having worked himself into a frenzy of fanaticism and hatred, would go forth to slay an infidel.

In an archetypal scenario, the white-robed Moro, wielding his barang or kris, would charge a hapless American soldier. The American would empty his Colt .38 into the chest of the incoming Moro to no effect, and the Moro would lop off the luckless doughboy’s head and go his way rejoicing before succumbing to his wounds or being gunned down by other nearby American soldiers.

Anyway, in response to demands from the Philippines, a quantity of Colt .45 Single Actions were furnished to the troops there and supposedly proved more efficacious against the Moros.

2009-02-05T05:12:00.000-08:00

More water photos...

My daughters...

Sabang beach, Baler, Aurora

Pasig river

2009-01-23T04:11:00.000-08:00

The Way

2009-01-23T03:46:00.000-08:00

Society of Philippine Illustrators and Cartoonists
circa late 60s:

Top:
Liborio GAT Gatbonton, Manila Chronicle
X
X
Eugene EGO Osin
Nonoy Marcelo, Manila Times
Larry Alcala
X
Generoso Gene Cabrera, Philippines Free Press
X
Ben Alcantara, Sunday Times Magazine
CORKY Trinidad
Mauro MALANG Santos, Manila Chronicle
Benedicto BENCAB Cabrera, Manila Times
Willi Samson
Demetrio Diego, Manila Times

Below:
Dario Noche, Philippines Free Press
Danny Dalena, Philippines Free Press
X
Pol GAlvez, Manila Bulletin
Rey Samson
Ernie Tagle, Philippines Herald
Sonny Liwanag
Isaac Tolentino
Esmeraldo EZI Izon, Philippines Free Press

2009-01-21T02:02:00.000-08:00

The Ferryman

‘Yes, Siddharta,’ he said. ‘Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exist for it, not the
shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?’

Vasudeva, the ferryman
from Siddharta by Hermann Hesse

Bankero would be the more precise word, but it’s also the name given to bankers or card sharks, people who handle oodles of money. That, definitely, is not me. So I made up the word bankador. Not in the dictionary, but I like it anyway. Thus was born the name.

Call it kismet if you think that way, but all through my life I have lived near a body of water: an estero, a creek or a river--great or small. I moved a lot; still the same environment would greet me. And the funny thing is I don’t know how to swim. But that didn’t stop me from liking and be pleased and at ease with the river. The sight of it is so calming and therapeutic, never mind if it’s a miry estero.

Sometimes I fancy myself as Siddharta, by the river. He is not just a tagailog, he is the river.

*********

What is meant by “to cross the expanse?”
from The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Mushasi

When one speaks of “crossing the expanse” it can be in the context of crossing a sea or crossing a channel. It can be a short distance or a long distance. In the course of a lifetime there are usually a number of difficult situations which could be likened to crossing an expanse. The “expanse” is crossed by piloting the boat, by researching the location of the “expanse” if it is located on a sea route, by knowing well the favorable and the unfavorable points regarding the water conditions, by making the necessary adjustments according to the conditions, regardless of whether another boat or other boats will be accompanying your boat, by relying on a crosswind or by being pushed by the tailwind, and if the wind direction changes, by rowing for three to five miles, all with the intention of reaching the port.

In order to pass through life, there is the need to have a spirit, to be decisive about exerting all of one’s energies to overcome the difficulties.

In Heiho* and in battle, also, crossing the expanse is important. Overcoming a difficulty, knowing the extent of the opponent, and being aware of one’s strengths and acting according to the principles of Heiho is the same as an excellent captain crossing a sea route.
Once you have overcome the difficulty, you can feel safe. By crossing the expanse, the weaknesses of the opponent come to light, and one is placed in a position of superiority so that in most cases, it is possible to achieve victory. Crossing the expanse is important; be it in terms of Heiho as applied to a conflict which involves many, or conflict which is one-on-one. This ought to be well and carefully appreciated.

*In Mushasi’s view, Heiho literally means the path to enlightenment. It is not enlightenment itself. While enlightenment or fulfillment or success in accomplishing your objectives may be the goal, Heiho is merely the way to get there—Mushasi’s way to get there. While Mushasi is convinced that using his Heiho will insure success, it is not the success, or the goal, that is the point.

It is the way you do something, how you do something, rather than what it is you actually do, that is addressed by Heiho. Heiho is what it takes to develop the right outlook, the right attitude, that frees you to be successful. Remember that success here is not the goal; the goal is the correct application of Mushasi’s Heiho to your activities.

*********

2009-01-20T00:34:00.000-08:00

These are some water photographs that I took.
It’s too hard to look at the water and not be affected by it.