Unfolding

               I was on cloud nine. I built my castle on the clouds only to see it fall. I have been living inside my head and not in the world I am in. All of these I’s and still it could not move the world. My voice was only good to those who too are lost and there I was, a delusional madman preaching to the mob. The mob’s approval began my source of strength and I thought they made me their king. I felt like royalty for wherever I walk I hear my name whether called upon by praise, despised by scums of the earth and feared by maggots. I was foolish to crown myself from words floating on air. Were those words not true? The rumor of an Archuleta’s empire? All men dream to be great and only few did become one says posthumous folklore. At what price? The throne I yearn was a temptation. Power corrupts, my fame clouded my vision. I was weak to hear praise and not know what to do with it. I did love the people; I did serve them but I must admit that...

              If one truly speaks from the abundance of the heart, then words are not too much to ask for. If the heart is empty, then silence echoes. Letters are the thin fabric that binds distant hearts and with all trust let it be the truth. A truth, not simply outright in complacency to please the other but a truth that projects the heartfelt thoughts. Hearing what one ought to hear can be manipulated with lies and if truth be told in such manner, myriad deception or absence of presence occurs. However, if one ought to hear what truly is meant by the speaker, then there is no other window to where the connection is evident.               I am troubled and lost at times for actual presence is at bay. I do not wish to delude myself with my own echoes, but let those be coming from you. Your lips taste sweet and your body warm, but words comfort the sou...

It has been three years and I have never regretted nor doubted the fact of my marriage to her. The decision was borne out of choice and borne out of love and if it was not, I could have moved on and changed my direction when our relationship was challenged and cut off during those years. Yet, I chose to stay not because of conscience nor was I forced to but because I truly love her. Stern as I am, I rarely give my heart to people. I can relate and talk with almost anybody, but most of the times they are simply mechanical as if I was condemned to interact given the situation that I am in. However, I am the kind of person who carefully selects who to be intimate with. I can be there for anybody, but I chose not to because I can only be with someone who I know is worth it. My wife is worth it. We had so much conflict before, especially when she was still in the process of overcoming a problematic home environment, role confusion and deep sense of self-pity coming from self-doubt. Ha...

               Intricately woven with utmost necessity and choice are our hearts when we are attached to somethings and much more with a someone. The weave can be binding that conscripts the heart when in rage and in jealousy. Choking it as it struggles to beat while the noose shrinks as the owner maliciously in desperation pulls the strings without second thoughts. As a pretentious man, who has built an immovable emotional edifice, who has made reason in dominion over affection, whose laughter at most times is an echo of reason that bullies and whose anger is extremely rationalized as divine justice, I too have those loose bricks that can crumble the wall by a single nudge and since we are talking about strings, a single pull of a significant block that sets the dominos tumbling. Gods bleed, angels cry and men too can be consumed in the flames of passion. My walls can be breached because the foundations are those who I keep dear in my life. I h...

Since when was the last time that I opened a book or a pdf file out of free choice to read? Even if I were to read what I want to read, but the wanting was more of coercion of circumstances rather than that volition to actually read. It has all too become forced, routine and a false but practical association to survival. I have become a knowledge processor and just like a machine I need the appropriate inputs in order for me dispense necessary outputs. Consider me a pedagogical machine. Teaching has been one of the jobs that demands to bring home the job itself. I sometimes envy my wife for not bringing any of her job at home. But mine, before I sleep at night and or when I arrive at home I am always thinking of what I am to do tomorrow and what I am to read and what are plans in order to make tomorrow happen. I love the job, but as time went by, it became all too draining as it saps the very luxury there is to reading. Reading and or studying has become a means for survival and here...

Sometimes I hit myself with remorseful thoughts. I have reached the point and have asked myself: “Why should I continue on teaching?”. Let me tell you straight that I have no license to teach (not technically a professional and finishing quality graduate studies while working overload is very hard). I graduated from an arts course, and if you can also consider the context of a major in philosophy here in the Philippines. It came to me that I have made a wrong choice because it offered me nothing in this industrialized world. I could have been better off with any of the technical vocational popular courses which are in line with the demands of the market, yet I chose a course that brought me more ignorance once I studied it even more. More so, I landed on the very field I thought I can do best and that is teaching. Giving to you my background earlier, it goes to show I do not get paid well. Let me be honest to myself, I am not worth as much as those who have the necessary papers to pr...

“Man can think in the sense that he possesses the possibility to do so. This possibility alone, however, is no guarantee to us that we are capable of thinking. For we are capable of doing only what we are inclined to do.” (M. Heidegger: What Calls For Thinking )                To think is a task and if it is a task, then it is not just a mere passing state but an act. Being conscious during the moment is different from thinking and many mistook a mere presence as the arduous intellectual task of thinking. Sadly, the prowess of intellectual activities has been equated and measured through stacking so many things in memory. To recall is different from thinking. But what is to think? Are we really thinking if we limit ourselves to the things we are inclined to? If we are inclined to some things are we just simply recalling? If we are inclined already to some things, are we really thinking or are we just following what i...

               Dictatorships troubled so many nations and ironically the immensity of its existence calls for the urgency of its removal. Dictatorship and its constant threat to rights imbues the conscious and practical oppressed to react and or rebel and as the saying goes ‘a cornered dog shows its teeth’. However, in the socio-political climate I lived in it is as seems that showing one’s teeth in dire struggle against the pincers of dictatorial rule is frowned upon. An interview with African female activists in Al Jazeera came into my head when she said that being an activist, a person who fights for an ideal and for the people is first hated by the very people whom she is trying to educate and to liberate. This is the typical allegory of the cave of Plato where liberation is seen as alien to the prisoners. The light is too bright for their petty eyes to relish. It is hard to saw or unshackle the chains of these people who will bite you for d...

(PS. I am sick. I am tired. Hopelessness dwell. The poet speaks) How much are our lives worth just to keep other’s joys worth? Since we did not choose to be born, they tell us death is not ours to make. Is it true liberation to be free from the shackles of fate? Fate not for us neither by our own hands, but from and for those upon our heads they stand. Life is supposed to be a gift, yet pain is constant and we cling to our grit. We were programmed to live, but on how to do it is worth of grief. They tell us to eat, to relax for tomorrow is another day upon the rack. They our captains, we their crew. I could have choke myself in the womb if I only knew. Yet, nurture, love, care are all but a virus. To support life as a disease. Malignant, contagious. Why is it that we yearn for a smile? We yearn for laugh? We are all going to die anyways. Why continue on breathing? Why can we not will this impulse to live? We are condemned to go on. Ironic. When we are abo...

INTRODUCTION      There are many versions of phenomenology that came after and surprisingly before Husserl mentioned it as his philosophy. Hegel used the term phenomenology in his Phenomenology of the Spirit yet we ponder was this the phenomenology that Husserl is stressing? Moreover, Husserls predecessors such as Kant also used the same term. Husserl embraced phenomenology and even baptized the term much later in his works for he was concerned first in creating arguments that are against the trend of psychologism during his time. Psychologism was a grand perversion of empiricism in a way that it has placed all into contingency without a way out. Most of Husserl’s early works are devoted into giving explanations against psychologism.  “His preoccupation with refuting ‘naturalism’ and ‘psychologism’ is the dominant theme in the first volume of  Logische Unterschungen . ” [1] Moreso, he wish to save the crisis that is looming especially that psychologism is ...