Letter to a friend on men and lovers

The hard thing is that we (women) like to talk and men don’t. We also get hurt more easily and invariably the hurt also lasts longer.

There is no need for the use of the word “enemy” here, though. The same things which make men difficult can also make them endearing, because it makes them humor us.

I cry when a man gets irrationally jealous or angry, but I find it comical that he would get jealous or angry over something which to me seems absurd, and I find it funnier still that his ego tells him not to apologize, which is tantamount to a silverback gorilla beating his chest.

We get hurt when they don’t call or come to see us. But in their mind they say, “Well, I think about her all the time, I thought about her during breakfast today, and then later on in the evening, when I had to check the hydraulic oil, I thought about her again.” But of course, in all this time that they believe that they think of us, it doesn’t occur to them that we can’t read their minds and that we just think, “He doesn’t call…”

Yes, men are endearing. The way they talk, the way they smile, the way they go about posturing themselves. They will always need you to show them that they are valuable, that they can go on fighting the good fight, and that they are invincible as long as they can get the love and support they need. In the end, we just need each other…

We fail to make sense of our differences because we are distracted by our differences…but nature—ah, she makes sense of it—nature knows that it is our differences which make us compatible. They make us need, long, want, feel an infinite pull towards each other. What else can soothe a man when he feels the world is indifferent to him but the sweetness of a woman? Who else can remind him how precious he is but a woman with whom he has endeared himself to? I have no case to rest…this has existed before thought; it is pure, it is instinct, a truth no intellectual can argue with.

Love,

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Letter to a friend on racism

Where do I start? It’s difficult to talk about even now.

The best way I can discuss it is to begin by saying, “You cannot hate, you cannot keep anger or you will diminish in your own heart, in your own humanity…”

It is the same blood which runs through your veins, which runs through those who “claim” they hate you and people of your race, and it is through this connection of blood, of life, that you are part of each other; you are part of the same miracle…

Because you are part of the same miracle, you would be doing yourself an injustice to hate that which is part of you.

They don’t even know what hatred is. They only think that, whatever it is, they have to perform it on you because of an injustice that they cannot rationalize, but they believe you caused.

Show these people that you will not return their resentment, and they will say to themselves, “How can this person who I believe to be inferior to me behave in a superior fashion to me? How can she return my resentment with kindness?” They will choose to equal your behavior because they cannot stand to be inferior. You won’t win them all, but you will win some. You will win enough…

Love,

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Letter to a friend on the Philippines

I think it’s a pretty country. Even when I take a trip to the most depressed areas the children have smiling faces as if oblivious to the task of survival ahead of them. It’s best to see a country through the innocence of its children. It is in this pure, untainted form of analysis and reflection that a belligerent history, or unforgiving politics, are left out and things are as optimistic as possible.

A little girl took my hand a week ago and showed me around her neighborhood. She wasn’t more than seven, she had no shoes, no teeth, scars from a skin infection, but she had the most beautiful smile. She was very confident in taking my hand, and I actually felt so honored I had to swallow some tears. The conditions of her little neighborhood were as bad as you could imagine. It smelled of and was littered with rotting garbage, feces, and burning charcoal, but I think you would be hard pressed to find the same quality of hospitality anywhere else. There is nothing more flattering than for a child to take you under her wing, to trust in the goodness of your intentions so unquestioningly. “Come here,” she says, without actually speaking a word. “Let me show you around. It’s not much but it’s my home and I want you to feel at home too.”

I worry sometimes, sweetie, though it’s not a worry which nags hurtfully because I’d like to believe in the goodness of people. I am embarrassed when a maid takes off her slippers before she walks into a room when I am allowed to walk in with muddy sneakers. I remember my World Literature Professor saying that what happened in France in the Tale of the Two Cities could happen in the Philippines because of the uncouth stratification of society here. Maybe it could happen, maybe it couldn’t, but there are people out there who need to believe that they are worth more than what they were born into because they are, and no matter how much you travel or get on better in another country, it’s still home...

We can’t go the Robespierre way or the Khmer Rouge way…so we talk, we give speeches, we write, try to get people to believe in themselves without percolating up an angry brew. Will you help me with that, sweetie? You would be better at it but I will be there along with you.

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Letter to a friend on anger

There are things that nibble and bite at my natural ability to get irritated. My list, like anyone else’s, is a googolplex.

But what can I do? I’ve told my self, comically hypnotized myself, programmed myself to believe that my heart does not have the ability to bear grudges. As a friend of mine put it, “Someone could do the most awful things to me, and I might get angry, but I know I’ll forgive him and that’s just the way God made me.”

It might seem like it hurts to forgive, but it’s actually a wonderful feeling…why do you think that when we tell someone we forgive them, we are rewarded with a feeling of relief?

Our hearts evolved that way because it is the best thing we could possibly do…every time we forgive, we bring ourselves closer to a purer form…

Love,

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On kindness towards men

It’s common for women to think that men do not hurt, cannot hurt…They are quite effective at putting up fronts which make them appear impervious to loss, disappointment, and pain.

More often than not, when they say something insensitive, it is not because they intend to be insensitive. It is because they intend to appear impervious.

This is why women are kind, when their nature is in contrast to the nature of men. It is an unusual kindness—unusual in that it is a dichotomy: it contrasts and yet it complements.

He cannot ask you to hold him, because he is afraid of appearing weak. Inside, at times, he beats his fists against a wall, which is the World taunting him everyday to prove himself, chipping away at his pride, making him feel unworthy. I have to hold him and make him believe in himself because he cannot ask. I can only know and anticipate this eventuality. The language is quiet, and assumes nothing, except that he questions his worth, and that his heart is in pain, and that it is kindness on my part to soothe him with discretion, without a request on his part…

Love,

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On kindness towards women

We feel deeply. When we are treated with respect, wanted, needed, loved…it justifies our existence.

When faced with an unkind situation, the sweet woman cries, because she does not want to be angry. She does not want to be angry because in her heart she struggles to be kind to you, in spite of your hasty, perhaps unintentional, unkind words.

It is so easy to be kind to her. Do you know that, to a large extent, your happiness is her happiness? She only wants to be acknowledged for her efforts, and why shouldn't she be? A woman, when she is virtuous, loves like a child. It is pure, selfless and with no malice.

Love,

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Letter on Pablo Picasso and Genius

“When I die, it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it.” - Pablo Picasso

“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.” - Pablo Picasso

“My mother said to me, ‘If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.” - Pablo Picasso

A well educated man (I talk of formal education in this case) told me that the difference between an average person and an exceptional person, is that an exceptional person would know what to do with a Picasso and an average person would think it was amateurish junk. “That is what I was taught in University, Connie.” The exceptional person being a genius recognizes in Picasso another genius.

Picasso was a jazz age man, a jazz age artist. It was a fashionable philosophy at that time to be volatile, even when it came to principles. As Henri Matisse, an artist friend of Picasso, said, “In love, the one who runs a way is the winner.”

I wonder how I would have turned out if my father had run away, or if I had friends who were only around during fair weather. Then I would wonder if the price of being fashionable, socially, intellectually, would be a price I would be willing to pay for having an unfounded experience of touch, unfounded experience of love. It is not worth it…

Was Picasso a genius? Maybe. People have their own ideas of what genius is. I believe a genius cannot be a product of his times. He must be infinitely beautiful, his principles timeless, and his love affair with humanity insatiable…

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” - Albert Schweitzer

The humane humility one finds in Schweitzer cannot be found in Picasso, or at least most of his work does not show it. There are mild suggestions in some of the things he had said which suggest, although not concretely, affection towards people. But then he had also said, “There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats.” And, “Women are suffering machines.”

When the humanity of a man is questioned, his genius is questioned. Can you separate a man and his principles from a man and his work? Shouldn’t genius be all-encompassing? Genius is the ability to recognize, and when a man fancies himself a genius and chooses to be overtly cynical, he fails to recognize how humanity is interwoven.

A genius is responsible. He is imperfect but, through his humility, finds infinity in finite things. He considers others, not only himself. A genius loves…

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Letter to a friend on heartbreak

I’d like to think that love is a condition that cannot coexist with transiency.

I can only be responsible in my own condition of love and its permanency. Some choose, and it is a choice, to love humanely, with compassion, with empathy, and some choose not to.

A man’s jealousy can wither what affection he has…

Heartbreak. The word itself carries so much weight, a feeling deeper than disappointment, not having your faith in someone else’s heart requited deservedly. There is a constant ache in your heart, because you cannot understand what you might have done for this pain to have to be necessary.

I am sorry he is lost, but I cannot be sorry for a sin I did not commit.

I wish I did not have to let go of such pretty pictures and memories of tenderness, or the overwhelming feeling of how wonderful things could have been…I must lock them away…but in a place in my heart that still wishes good things for him. Forgiveness and kindness are the only ways my heart can survive gracefully after such a blow. Only forgiveness. not confrontation. Only kindness, not resentment.

Sincerely,

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Letter to a friend on loss

You always think that you have enough time, enough time to show someone you love and admire how much they are worth. You have to point it out to them because they are too humble and sincere to see it in themselves, or they may be a vast deal very critical of their own accomplishments, their standards being so high.

I got caught up with my own immediate world of things to do. I knew he was sick. I just didn’t know how sick. I figured he would be there forever. Great people give off this sense of perpetuity. I always thought there was more time for me to let him know how rare and honorable and beautiful he was. It is so very human, so very flawed to believe in what you want to believe, instead of the truth.

When he finally fell, he could barely make anything out. I don’t know if the stories I told him to help him stay a little longer made any sense to him. The next day I thought I should read from Thoreau’s Walden (prose which I thought best reflected his goodness). I didn’t have the chance to read from Walden…

I cannot cry enough…It is the guilt of being so careless with my time, and that he has passed not hearing enough kind words from me…What is it some people say? “Most stars are regular stars, very few are shooting stars.” I knew he was a shooting star…

If there is one thing beautiful about loss, it is that it puts things into perspective. You learn the value of time, and you notice rare souls better.

Don’t make the mistake I did…I won’t make it ever again…

Love,

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Lunch with a survivor of a Nazi Prison Camp

“After being captured, we walked for many miles in the winter cold. We hadn’t eaten for weeks. When we got to the prison camp, I was taken aside for interrogation; maybe they thought I would be more cooperative. I was American, but ethnically I was German.  They sat me down in a small room with several Nazi officers. On the table was plate with a loaf of bread on it. One of the officers pushed the loaf of bread towards me.

“He said, ‘Now we want you to tell us who among your men are Jews.’

“I pushed the loaf of bread away from me and said, ‘We are all the same, we are all Americans. There is no difference.’

“They pushed me off the chair and onto the floor, kicked me down the stairs. ‘There’s is something worse than a Jew,’ the officer told me, ‘it’s a German who betrays his fellow Germans.’ They beat me until I was unconscious. Later on that night, I talked to my men and told them that under no circumstances should anyone say who among us were Jews.

“The next day they lined us up. Again, the Nazi officers asked who among us were Jews. My men stood their ground. They were men. They kept quiet knowing full well they could die for their silence. When it was clear to the Nazis that no Jew would be turned in, they decided to pick us off based on who ‘looked like a Jew.’ Dark curly hair, a certain nose, a certain eye shape…The ‘Jews’ were loaded on a train, and then one of the officers turned to me and said, ‘Kasten, you go too.’”
- Peter Kasten

It is important to hear these kinds of stories. Human interest stories. Peter Kasten was physically, ideally Aryan, with blonde hair and blue eyes, belonging to the same so-called ‘superior species’ as the Nazis who had interrogated him. Except that in their minds his psyche had been tainted, and tainted irreparably, by the idea that there was no difference between Aryans and Jews.

Hitler and his Nazis preached their doctrines over and over again until people believed them to be true. It was not hard to do this. The reparations under the Treaty of Versailles for WWI, which the Germans were required to pay, humiliated Germany and made them willingly responsive to assigning feral blame.

There was no way to prepare the men on that train for what lay ahead of them. They were worked hard. Many of them worked to death. They had to hang on to their lives by their fingernails. They walked their shoes through and had to endure frostbitten toes and fingers. Mothers, fathers, brothers, their sweethearts waiting for them back home—memories just too beautiful in contrast to the hell they were going through—felt so distant that they felt like dreams they had conjured up just to keep themselves from going insane.

Sometimes you would wake up and look over at your buddy, you’d get nervous, especially if he had been coughing the night away, you look over and see him clutched in his own arms frozen stiff, he didn’t make it and you wonder which one of you got lucky.

The Nazis were supposed to be this force of genius and organization to be reckoned with, a collective entity of cunning intelligence. How could their intelligence lead them to believe that soup made of grass could prevent men’s bellies from grinding holes into themselves, or that bony, bloody fingers and skinny torsos could haul huge stones to build Nazi barracks, that housing men in stuffy caves ridden with cholera and typhus guaranteed them a strong workforce…? How…? Why…? Where…? Where…were their souls, was it a hollow space or a tilted swastika lodged in there where their hearts used to be…?

One day, the prisoners marched through a forest, and one of them spotted a shriveled apple visible through the crust of ice. He dug it out desperately and ate it. Without a “Halt!” or any sort of warning, one of the guards shot him dead. “The apple is German property, and this prisoner had to be punished for stealing German property!” He was left there, unburied, to be encrusted in ice, just like the apple.

Rescue was a shock…Even with their bodies feeble skin and bones, they jumped up and down, up and down, up and down in their soiled stripped pajamas, crazy with disbelief. I’m going home, stand in front of dad like a man, marry my girl, my sweetheart, but mostly I want mom to embrace me…I want to just sob on her shoulder like a child…

Mama’s embrace even before I was born, the precise ticking of her heart—my first feeling of human love can erase the harshness of Nazi eyes staring down on me.

We are all children before we have to go war…and then going through the shock of it all, when we return to our mothers, we want to become children again.

Sincerely,

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The humility of your circumstances

You did not choose your cards. You could have just as easily been born seriously flawed. If you are born beautiful, it is an accident of birth.

“A true social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as if she were plain.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Beauty is the easiest thing to sell, but it is a short lived and empty victory in the end. Beauty cannot be sustained where there is no character…beauty is a lottery win, character a Congressional Medal of Honor.

So, my darling, I wish you would treat people as kindly as they treat you. Think of the humility of your circumstances. The shoe could easily have been on the other foot.

Love,

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The Story of Penny, or why husbands leave and then come back

“I’m sorry, Penny,” was all he said. The declaration was devoid of emotion, as if he had packed his love away in the two suitcases he carried with him. She clutched his arm in an attempt to ask him what was wrong. He pushed her away coldly “Don’t make this difficult. You’re making it difficult. I will talk to you later.” John made his way out the door. There was a bit of hail to the weather, but he made his way through the slate pathway very cleanly, almost regally. He put the suitcases in the trunk and drove away. Routine, very routine, too routine.

She wanted to call out to him, but her shock wouldn’t allow her. She was numb as she walked back to Anne, their daughter. Anne gurgled and gave her a toothless smile. She spit and giggled. Penny mashed her strained peas, her first taste of solid food. Anne didn’t complain. Penny wanted to smile, and she managed to a couple of times while mashed peas dribbled down Anne’s chin. After that, she put Anne to sleep. Penny brushed her teeth, looked at herself in the mirror, rinsed, turned the faucet off, looked at herself again…straight into her own eyes…and then she broke down...

She tried to keep her sobs down, afraid of waking Anne up. Thoughts raced across her mind. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. What was he sorry for? Sorry for the life they had built which seemed to her to be going well? She couldn’t begin to understand why he had left. Had he thought she was mercilessly flawed in some way? But then at that moment, even if she knew that he believed it was she who was flawed, she couldn’t at the moment—and for many moments after—justify his line of thinking. “Oh God—Oh God!” she called out, and she really was asking for God. “I worked so hard. I’ve always worked so hard...” the lever which controlled her tears had been pulled down as low as it could, and she couldn’t pull it back up. She finished a good half of a box of tissues, and then rechecked her calendar on what to work on the next day. She went into Anne’s room, clutched her daughters tiny fingers, “Oh Annie, I’m trying so hard, baby.” She slept on the couch in Anne’s room.

I couldn’t help but cry for Penny. Penny love. I suspected that John had been having an affair. I think Penny suspected it too. But knowing Penny, I knew she was respectful of John and his privacy. She never went through his phone or his emails. If she had to find out, it had to be in a respectful way, a way which didn’t compromise her principles. Penny didn’t have to try to find out. John told her a week later that he had fallen in love with another woman, Susan, one of the temps at John’s office.

Penny didn’t hold any resentment towards Susan, and neither did I. Susan was one of those women you talked to at company cocktails whom you had a general type of dialogue for, “Yes, no, that’s interesting, no, I think Chalize Theron looks better with blonde hair.” She might not have been terribly interesting, but she wasn’t someone you would think of as bad. Even after she found out Susan was the woman John had left her for, I think Penny pitied her rather than envied her. Penny was like that. You could put the most gorgeous supermodel in front of her and for a moment she might fancy the idea of having longer legs or a better manicure, but then she would wave the idea away with a smile. Once, when we were having a drink together, Penny studied two stunning girls at the table across us. Their outfits were quite skimpy. “Poor girls,” she remarked. “I hope they don’t get the wrong kind of attention.” She was kind in that way.

She was beautiful in that Audrey Hepburn-Hypathia way. Physically understated and unapologetic, but intellectually engrossing. I think it was that quality which threatened John, that approachable confidence which made her grow on people, made them look for her in a crowd. The women he had dated before Penny were beautiful, but altogether in a different league. Penny was the ultimate trophy when it came to feminine grace. She knew how to resign gracefully and intrigue pleasurably in conversations, and she didn’t fuss over herself. Except that, to Penny, Penny was just Penny, perhaps an intricate woman, but an intricate woman who wanted simple things…

John, on the other hand, had always managed to worry me from time to time. Sometimes he brought up brands too often. Rolex this or Ferrari that. Sometimes I think he tried too hard to look good. There was something in him that felt incomplete, that he felt needed to be filled. He was born to wealthy parents and, from what I gathered from John, they were more interested in luxuriating to maintain their social standing than in John. Penny showered him with kisses and hugs; she instinctively felt his emptiness and tried to make up for it. It was, however, very hard for John to unlearn what he had learned, and that Penny was optimistic of him made him feel inferior. 

“So what are you going to do, sweetie?” I tried to sooth her and recommended that someday, when the time was right, I would talk to John.

“Oh…” She smiled and sniffled. She patted the back of my hand. “I appreciate that, darling, but I think this is something John has to figure out on his own.”

“Have you talked to him recently?”

“Yes…” she looked up at me with crystal coated eyes. “I kept it short. I told him I didn’t think what he did was fair, but that I knew there was good in him, and that to some degree I understand what he is going through, where it stems from—the history of it…Maybe he will come back, maybe he won’t. If he does, it will take a while to get used to him again. If he doesn’t, I still have to keep things clean, for Anne…If she feels that I resent her father, she will feel like I resent her, John makes up half of Anne. I will not ruin the idea of love and family for Anne. She is a sweet gift I have to keep untainted…I cannot help but love him for now…you can’t just switch off love just like that. If women’s hearts worked that way, we wouldn’t be capable of being wives or mothers…not good ones anyway…”

I don’t know if John ever got a talking to, but a year later he showed up with the same two suitcases he left with. They had to sleep in separate bedrooms for a while, but in a few months things went back to normal. Well, maybe not everything went back to normal. John replaced his sports cars with hybrids. He joked about having a newfound love for a more quiet way of life, and Ferraris were not quiet. I think he finally found a way to fill his void, and I knew it was Penny who filled it. I don’t think I had ever seen him kiss Penny the way he did until after his affair. It was tender, confident, and grateful...

Love,

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The man I want to rescue

You left wanting to leave your boyhood behind, wanting to come back a man, but what you found were men with appetites alien to you, wanting to take your boyhood as a trophy for themselves, and women with allegoric volatile takes on love.

My dear child, the one whose eyebrows curve at the corner of his temples when he is thoughtful to reveal the potential of angel eyes, the one who kisses as tenderly as a saint when his trust allowed it…who wouldn’t want to rescue you from this world you have made for yourself?

I remember a Greek song I learned as a child—Odos Oniron—”Every boy has a knife and the kiss of the Virgin Mary in his pocket.”

The dichotomy is real and severe, and made more severe still by living with corruption. I have no glamour to present. I cannot lie to you about your circumstances, but many of your lovers and many of your so-called friends can, and they do it with 40 kilowatt smiles and shiny hair. It is not a surprise that, after having something or someone which only appears to be beautiful, that you feel empty…It is written on your face. I see it when I push your hair away from your eyes and you look at me with traces of purity but mostly with a look of loss…

I cannot coerce you to find peace, and truth, and beauty. It would defeat the purpose of truthful motives. These qualities are elusive and rare and require effort to procure, and an honest man would guard another from his own influence, he would prefer his friend make a decision of his own free will. Out of respect you see…

The truth is too brilliant in its own respect to require glamour, confident in itself that it wants no shiny packaging or anything which appears remotely pretentious.

I have no doubt that you are capable, but as to your desire, only you can decide on that.

I will always worry and wish good things for you…There is still an angel in there some where…

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A letter to a male friend on The Good Woman

Let it be said, and this is innately understood the world over, that the good woman is not a perfect woman.

Also, that the qualities between the good woman and others are more often than not discernable by men of strong character and confidence.

The good woman takes no pleasure in jealousy. She does not feel inferior to anyone, nor does she like the idea that someone feels inferior to her. She is humbled by the notion that she might be gifted and shares what she can while still protecting her interests.

She may have a sense of humor that may at times be sardonic in nature, but it is just that, humor. Her critical humor is either wholly meant, because she strongly believes in the ethics she speaks of, or not meant at all (a gentle tease to a friend or loved one). It is never half meant because ethics are important to her and she is not wishy-washy about them. She has the intelligence to be humorous, but knows when to be serious.

The good woman takes no pleasure in competing with others on matters of ego and especially with other women on such grounds as beauty. She does not care to ‘out beauty’ someone although she would like to be beautiful and attempts to be beautiful herself. To her beauty is a common commodity which is a talent undependable at best and corruptible at worst.

The good woman is supportive of the man she loves and helps him accomplish his dreams. She revives his faith when it is exhausted. She lets him know the truth for his own benefit, and the man has to ask himself, how many around him would actually put forth the truth? She is diplomatic and introduces conflicts and misdirection in a calm, analytic, and yet sweet manner. Though she may get angry, she prefers calm discussions and sincerely wants only improvement in matters of difficult conditions.

The good woman is neither conniving nor manipulative. She will only desire a result or action which is given freely. She does not use her cleverness or intelligence to take advantage of anyone, because she respects truth. In the end, it is a clever decision in itself; anyone will eventually be able to read a falsehood. Some might resent this, not because it is not true, but because it is.

She believes children are the salt of the earth, and knows when to be kind, and when to be stern with them.

She makes mistakes and does not need to be reminded to ask for forgiveness, nor is she stingy on giving forgiveness herself…

Her word is her word. It is sacred, cannot be bought, and on this aspect she cannot conceive of disappointing even on the smallest of promises…

If you ask me, “How does she manage to do all that? And how come I don’t see it on television?” It’s not an easy way to be, and not an easy sell. But then, a good woman is not for sale. She is something to be recognized by one who knows how.

Love,